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Exhibition of the week
Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen
Some of Munch’s most powerful and bleakly beautiful paintings in a quietly devastating display.
Courtauld, London, until 4 September
Also showing
Tracey Emin
As her colossal statue The Mother is unveiled at the Munch Museum, Oslo, this is a chance to explore Emin’s sculptures in a pastoral setting as well as see her latest works.
Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, 28 May to 2 October
David Hockney: Love Life
Hockney draws better than Bacon or Freud. This show of his sketches from the 1960s and 70s is guaranteed to delight.
Holburne Museum, Bath, until 18 September
Stanley Schtinter: The Lock-In
A 96-hour video compiled entirely from EastEnders scenes set in the Queen Vic, screened in pubs over the Jubilee weekend and beyond.
London pubs, 1 June to 1 July, then at the Barbican through July
Mary Gillick
The sculptor who created the young Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait for British coins.
British Museum, London, 2 June to 31 July
Image of the week
Sarah Biffin was born without arms or legs and was put on show in touring fairground attractions billed as The Limbless Wonder, but her outstanding talent as a painter shattered Victorian ideas about disability. Read the full story here.
What we learned
The fraudulent US art dealer Inigo Philbrick was sentenced to jail
LA’s film-star bridge has a thrilling sequel – on seismic springs
A modernist art show in New York offers optimism and rare diversity
Greece has rejected the British Museum claim that the Parthenon marbles were “removed from rubble”
Why art sale prices are going through the roof
Cornelia Parker creates a poetry of objects
The Royal College of Art’s Herzog & de Meuron studio building, is a business-facing behemoth
Camille Pissarro has been brought into the light
Designers have created self-shaping furniture
Masterpiece of the week
Queen from The Lewis Chessmen
(Probably made in Scandinavia, circa 1150-1175)
The Queen has been drinking. She holds a drinking horn in her left hand, while her right palm supports her face as she slumps miserably on her throne. This is a tremendously vivid portrait, or caricature, full of life – yet it’s part of a hoard of chess pieces made for playing with, not looking at. There are no other medieval chess pieces as fine as these. Discovered in Uig on the Isle of Lewis in 1831, they were probably carved in the recently Christianised Norse regions and abandoned by a merchant ship. This masterpiece of medieval art is also an emblem of emotion. The Queen’s pose, with her face on her hand, was the symbol of the melancholy humour, seen too in Renaissance art and even Munch’s painting Melancholy. Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown.
British Museum, London
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