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Exhibition of the week
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Powerful expansive drawings and a Blake-like invented mythology make this Nigerian-American artist’s first British show, titled A Countervailing Theory, seem like a walk-through graphic novel. Includes an immersive soundscape by Peter Adjaye.
• The Curve, Barbican, London, 11-24 August.
Also showing
Gauguin and the Impressionists
Rare works by the inventors of modern art, also including Manet and Renoir, show how art was revolutionised in 19th-century France.
• Royal Academy, London, until 18 October.
Steve McQueen
Tate Modern reopens its retrospective of the artist who straddles cinemas and galleries – and projects a serious vision in both.
• Tate Modern, London, until 6 September.
Phyllida Barlow
A selection of vivid assemblages by this sculptor of found stuff chosen from her recent shows, including the Venice Biennale.
• Firstsite Colchester until 11 October.
Abel Rodríguez
The Amazon rainforest looks pastoral and gentle in these delicate landscapes by the indigenous Colombian artist. Rodríguez is an intimate guide to the natural world, yet the Amazon he paints is a remembered place being destroyed even as you enjoy this art.
• Baltic, Gateshead, from 10 August.
Scene Through Wood
Survey of modern wood engraving in the century since the Society of Wood Engravers was founded in 1920.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 10 August.
Aubrey Beardsley
Decadence has never looked dirtier than it does in the visions of this doomed youth. Diagnosed with tuberculosis aged seven, Beardsley raged against the dying of the light in scenes of perverse freedom. His illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salome were just the beginning of his journey into erotic dreams.
• Tate Britain, London, until 20 September.
Linderism
The art of collage was revived in Britain in 1977 in the cut’n’paste visuals of punk, with Linder Sterling providing record covers for Buzzcocks. She has stayed loyal to collage ever since.
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 11 October.
Image of the week
Tom Wood spent decades photographing the pubs, clubs and bus rides of Liverpool – and the people who inhabited them. His new book paints an affectionate portrait of his adopted home town. Read about and see more images in our gallery.
What we learned
The government’s catastrophic planning reforms will create a “generation of slums” in England
The coronavirus offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reimagine the office
A 3D reconstruction of Raphael’s face proves he was buried at the Pantheon
The Imperial War Museum has unveiled a film marking 75 years since Hiroshima bomb …
… and it shows how a bomb changed life on Earth in a flash
Thomas Heatherwick’s calming space for cancer patients in Leeds is a triumph
David Goldblatt’s apartheid-era photos are the subject of a major London exhibition
A new show remembers when rock’n’roll arrived on the Isle of Wight …
… while another remembers the New Haven’s Black Panthers on trial
Ngarralja Tommy May has won a major $50,000 Indigenous art award in Australia
Thomas J Price’s Reaching Out is one of only three public sculptures of black women in UK
Danny Lyon’s best shot is a 1967 snap of two boys holding a puppy
A Purple Rain installation in Paris lets visitors role-play as Prince
Eusebio Leal Spengler, the man who saved Havana’s old town from ruin, has died
The great British art quiz visited Blackburn, Southampton, London, Glasgow, and Huddersfield
Masterpiece of the week
The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr, c1507, by Giovanni Bellini
St Peter Martyr was a medieval inquisitor who, it is said, was murdered by the heretics he was so good at catching. Bellini’s painting makes the story both real and fairytale-like with its eerie setting in a shady woodland. In this dark and obscure wood, Saint Peter and a companion are set upon by the medieval equivalent of “terrorists”, whose opposition to the Catholic religious order is equated with brutality and evil. The assassins are members of the Cathar sect, which believed the material world was utterly evil; it was popular in parts of south-western France between the 12th and 14th centuries. Bellini’s juxtaposition of pastoral landscape and extreme violence makes this propaganda story utterly compelling.
• National Gallery, London.
Don’t forget
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