Summer arrives with monsters, minimalism and a memorial quilt – the week in art

Big names liven up the Royal Academy’s annual extravaganza, Durham digs into its past and Tate welcomes the Aids memorial quilt – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Tracey Emin unveils a stunning Crucifixion, while Cornelia Parker, Frank Bowling and George Shaw are also among the stars of this huge, often rewarding show.
• Royal Academy, London, 17 June to 17 August

Also showing

Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun
There isn’t any reason to join these artists together but Colquhoun is well worth discovering.
• Tate Britain, London, until 19 October

Sanctuary!
An exhibition centred on one of Britain’s most fascinating medieval artworks, the monstrous head, part Medusa, part Green Man, that for centuries greeted those seeking sanctuary in Durham Cathedral.
• Durham Cathedral Museum until 29 June

Josef Albers
A retrospective of the calming, minimalist prints of this hugely influential abstract artist and teacher.
• Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, until 29 August

UK Aids Memorial Quilt
This moving combination of protest art and mourning takes over the Turbine Hall.
• Tate Modern, London, until 16 June

Image of the week

Tamara de Lempicka’s La Belle Rafaëla, which has been described by critics and scholars as “one of the most remarkable nudes of the century”, is to be auctioned by Sotheby’s this month, with an estimate of £6m-£9m. The painting, which depicts the young sex worker Rafaëla, who was the artist’s lover, is just one example of Lempicka’s defiance of the subject of the female nude as a historically male artist’s domain. Read the story.

What we learned

Painter Rachel Jones hopes her abstract works ‘invite people to speak’

Art deco was the first artistic movement to deliberately appeal beyond the elites

A new show highlights Martin Parr’s low-key visits to Bristol Pride

Megan Rooney explained why she attacks her paintings with power sanders

Yoshitomo Nara added sombre reflections on Fukushima to his trademark punk brats

Seen as cosy now, the impressionists were originally considered ‘deranged lunatics’

‘Sculptural potter’ Gordon Baldwin has died aged 92

The sculptures of ‘Wigan’s Gaudí’ Kevin Duffy are under threat after his death

New York’s ‘queer Xanadu’ Fire Island is home to architectural masterpieces

AI could be used to restore paintings not valuable enough for traditional approach

Masterpiece of the week

The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam by Emamuel de Witte, about 1660

There’s a sense of disjunction, of modernity, in this painting of 17th-century Dutch people in a medieval church. The soaring gothic architecture, illuminated by the ever-changing daylight the big windows let in, belongs to another age. The painting self-consciously sees a difference between the medieval past embodied by the enigmatic stone fabric, and the artist’s own new era. The Dutch had fought a long war against Spain for religious freedom as well as national sovereignty, and the way worship and profanity are mixed here – no one minds that a dog is urinating – may suggest the Reformation’s disrespect for clerical power and idolatry. But this is also a painting illuminated by the new scientific spirit of 17th-century Europe. De Witte coolly observes patterns of light and shadow, reflecting the optical discoveries of his time. That rational gaze sees nothing inherently sacred in this old building.
• National Gallery, London

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