Exhibition of the Week
Vuillard
This sensitive painter of everyday life portrays his mother in his many homages to her support for his work.
• Barber Institute, Birmingham, until 20 January.
Also showing
Artes Mundi 8
Bouchra Khalili’s film about how Jean Genet met the Black Panther Party and Trevor Paglen’s photographs of state surveillance stand out in this politically charged international art competition.
• National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, until 24 February.
Hepworth prize for sculpture
Cerith Wyn Evans, Magali Reus, Michael Dean, Mona Hatoum and Phillip Lai compete for this esteemed award.
• Hepworth, Wakefield, until 20 January.
Alison Watt
Trompe l’oeil ingenuity by this painter who creates a spiritual mood through close observation of real things.
• Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, until 2 February.
Rachel Maclean
This grotesque contemporary satirist brings her version of Pinocchio to Cardiff.
• Chapter, Cardiff, until 31 March.
Masterpiece of the Week
Portrait of a Man (1720s) by Rosalba Carriera
This Venetian artist’s distinctive use of pastels to create ethereal portraits in grey and silver makes her work easy to recognise, yet she has long languished in obscurity. Carriera was a hit in her lifetime, attracting clients from all over Europe. In particular, English aristocrats on their grand tours flocked to pose for her. This man, however, is probably a native Venetian whose style and flair bring to life the last sensual age of a declining republic. Today Carriera is rightly becoming recognised as an important rococo artist.
• National Gallery, London.
Image of the week
The Codex Amiatinus, the oldest surviving complete Latin Bible, features in the British Library’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition – “a world that gradually ensnares the imagination and sheds light on the madness that swarms Britain’s sense of itself today”. Read our full review.
What we learned
A converted art deco pool is making a splash in Roubaix
Pete Souza’s portraits of Obama are spiky ripostes to Trump
Thailand’s risk-taking artists are defying taboos
The British Library’s Anglo-Saxon show is a barbaric blockbuster
Sculpture By the Sea festival is animating Sydney’s coastline
Seven stacks of Las Vegas boulders have landed in Liverpool
Atlanta architect John Portman has created a Disneyland for adults
A new exhibition traces the history of black women within art
Edward Burne-Jones’s art shows how boring beauty can be
Street artists have reinterpreted photos of hip-hop legends
Atlanta is at the heart of America’s black art renaissance
Maverick architect Freddy Mamani is taking his pinball palaces to Paris
Hull’s Jamie Reid retrospective takes in 50 years of punk subversion
Marc Quinn will not allow New York to forget the refugee crisis
A new exhibition smashes stereotypes of Chinese Americans
Yugoslavia’s war memorials are sights of brutalist beauty
Brad Goldpaint is the astronomy photographer of the year
Jack Bond has made a touching documentary about rock’n’roll painter Chris Moon
Instagram has fallen in love with Atlanta
Michele Palazzo’s best photograph is a blue Beetle in Soweto
Hoda Afshas portrait of Behrouz Boochani won the Bowness photography prize
Jeremy Deller has made a blow-up Stonehenge
William Morris’s country home has been saved from dilapidation
The Artes Mundi prize has been undermined by its liberal agenda
Rinko Kawauchi captures life’s luminous fragility
Don’t forget
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