Exhibition of the week
Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt
The Rosetta Stone is at the heart of a blockbuster journey into the sands of time.
• British Museum, London, 13 October until 19 February.
Also showing
Cecilia Vicuña
Spectacular arrays of thread fill the Turbine Hall in this latest outsized installation.
• Tate Modern, London, 11 October until 16 April.
Cerith Wyn Evans
The internationally successful Welsh artist gets a big show in the land of his parents.
• Mostyn, Llandudno, 8 October until 5 February.
Frieze
The autumn fair and its companion Frieze Masters bring new art and big money to Regent’s Park.
• Regent’s Park, London, 12 to 16 October.
Alice Neel
Realist portraits by the American painter, who is also celebrated this autumn at the Pompidou Centre.
• Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 11 October until 12 November.
Image of the week
Triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, who had flouted dress laws, the rising demands for freedom in Iran are being helped by militant graphic work. This viral Instagram image by Jalz combines an image of the Azadi (Freedom) tower with Matisse’s dancers and the “women, life, freedom” protest slogan which is so central to the revolutionary movement.
What we learned
V&A has dropped Sackler funding over opioid crisis
Marina Abramović left our critic feeling mutinous in Oxford
Stern modern master Cézanne shows his playful side at Tate Modern
Tschabalala Self is the hottest artist in America right now
In France, an ‘ordinary’ vase valued at $2,000 sold for €8m
‘The visual sense of a lug wrench’: artists shared their worst reviews
Art lovers can now check out an exhibition of shopping lists
Science fiction has landed at the Science Museum, London
Masterpiece of the week
Late Afternoon in Our Meadow, 1887, by Camille Pissarro
This painting has an uncanny, cinematic feel like the final shot of some epic Italian film of rural life. The woman in the light-bathed field is isolated and still as a statue. The whole world seems to stop and think as a warm golden day comes to a close. This elegiac mood is intensified by the sense of almost infinite colours contained in the sunshine, for Pissarro, one of the founders of impressionism, here adopts Georges Seurat’s very different aesthetic, dotting his canvas with pointillist pinpoints of different colours, meant to mix in your eye. The effect is strange and distancing as it freeze-frames the afternoon.
• National Gallery, London
Don’t forget
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