View in browserThe world according to Jet magazine and a century of bodywork – the week in art | Art and design | The Guardian
| | The world according to Jet magazine and a century of bodywork – the week in art | Bacon, Freud and Rego paint from life, Lorna Simpson dips into old magazines and Jasmina Cibic builds a nation – all in your weekly dispatch | | | | Surreal … a detail from Lorna Simpson’s Unanswerable at Hauser and Wirth in London. Photograph: James Wang | Jonathan Jones | Exhibition of the week All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life
The genius of Lucian Freud and his meaty friend Francis Bacon seen in a context of British “figurative” art from Sickert to Paula Rego and beyond.
• Tate Britain, London, 28 February to 27 August Murillo: The Self Portraits
This 17th-century Spanish painter’s self portraits are haunting metaphysical meditations on fame, time and death.
• National Gallery, London, 28 February to 21 May Lorna Simpson: Unanswerable
Surreal collages and dreamlike paintings that reuse old Ebony and Jet magazines to explore African American identity.
• Hauser and Wirth, London, 1 March to 28 April In the Land
Hepworth, Nicholson, Piper ... it’s the usual suspects in a survey of landscape in mid-20th-century British art.
• Whitworth, Manchester, until 28 October Jasmina Cibic: This Machine Builds Nations
The politics of modernist design explored in a trilogy of films entitled Nada, shown in a specially created installation.
• Baltic, Gateshead, until 28 May Masterpiece of the Week | | | The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, completed in 1475, by Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo The human body is good to paint, especially when it is suffering. Francis Bacon knew that and so did the Pollaiuolo brothers, who created this visceral image of torture at a time when the nude had only recently been revived as an artistic theme after centuries of censorship. They painted this altarpiece for the church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence, whose possession of a “miraculous” medieval painting gave it a special association with artists and made it the perfect place to demonstrate the very latest techniques. What this shocking picture does is dramatise and eroticise the male nude by having soldiers fire phallic arrows into Sebastian’s bare flesh at close range. Every detail, from their crossbows to the perspective of the landscape, is state of the art for 1470s Florence. This painting takes us to the bloody heart of the Renaissance.
National Gallery, London Image of the week A drawing of the red ladder symbol from the La Pasiega cave near Bilbao in Spain | | | | | | The ladder painting itself at La Pasiega. Photograph: Reuters | This is a drawing, executed in 1913, of the red ladder symbol from the La Pasiega cave near Bilbao in Spain. The original painting it depicts is at least 64,000 years old, though it is unclear whether the animals and other symbols were painted later. In what was described as a “major breakthrough in the field of human evolution”, scientists said that Neanderthals had painted on cave walls in Spain tens of thousands of years before modern humans arrived. The discovery overturns the widely held belief that modern humans are the only species to have expressed themselves through works of art. What we learned this week Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera will create Tate Modern’s next Turbine Hall commission Paula Rego discussed the power of life drawing Strange things happen in LiarTown USA Mars rover Curiosity is a tortured artist Chinese artist Wu Di puts environmental activism at the heart of his work Female US artists are fighting sexual harassment Meghann Riepenhoff captures time and tides The UK has some exciting new museums to visit in 2018
US urban development has a divisive history Amy Sherald is feeling the Obama effect We can compare Freud and Bacon through their portraits of the same man Sound art is transforming the Australian city of Perth ... … while Sydney photographers mark 40 years of Mardi Gras Eastern European photographers are sharing their Post-Soviet Visions ... … while in one corner of Moldova, communism never died China demands harsh punishment for a man who damaged a terracotta warrior The London Business School photography awards focus on a changing world An MoD house has been given new life Comedian Hannah Gadsby has a thing to say about the male gaze Scientists have given Picasso an x-ray We remembered architects Robin Spence and Leslie Fairweather Don’t forget To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign. |
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