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Exhibition of the Week
Bridget Riley
This ravishing display of Riley’s art is not only the exhibition of the week, but the year.
• Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, until 22 September
Also showing
Elisabetta Benassi: Empire
This installation of terracotta bricks evokes the rise and fall of the Roman empire and maybe other empires, too.
• Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, until 27 October
Beyond Landscape
Landscapes that verge on the abstract in the lovely setting of this harbour art gallery.
• Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 9 November
Huguette Caland
Bright and bouncy, cartoon-like paintings by this Lebanese artist add to the summertime fun of St Ives.
• Tate St Ives until 1 September
Seaside: Photographed
Martin Parr, Jane Bown, Susan Hiller and more document our love of sand, sea and candyfloss.
Turner Contemporary, Margate, until 8th September
Masterpiece of the Week
Mars, Venus and Cupid, c1580, by Paolo Veronese
Mars, the Roman god of war, is normally imagined as a raging killer but the great Venetian colourist Veronese makes him softly loving. This kinder, gentler war god embraces his lover Venus as she dotes on her son, Cupid. He also lowers a drapery to expose her breasts to us. This happy family is playfully subversive. Venus and Mars were illicit lovers behind the back of Venus’s husband Vulcan, so this is a portrait of a happy family outside marriage that expresses a Venetian libertine ideology. Worse: this sensual pagan set-up is a parody of paintings of the Holy Family. Venus looks at Cupid like Mary looking at Jesus – but she ain’t no Virgin. Does it seem far-fetched to claim a Renaissance artist would satirise the sacred Christian image of the Virgin and Child? It’s perfect believable because the Inquisition accused Veronese of heresy with another religious painting. Why, he was asked, had he included drunkards and other reprobates in his Last Supper? He answered flippantly, and simply changed its title. So Veronese really was capable of the blasphemy we see here – and getting away with it through sheer painterly panache.
Image of the week
A set of fluorescent pink seesaws has been built across the US-Mexico border by Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture, and Virginia San Fratello, a professor of design. Seeking to bring a playful concept of unity to the two sides of the divide, Rael calls the seesaws “a literal fulcrum” between the countries. He said the event was about bringing “joy, excitement and togetherness at the border wall”.
What we learned
Boris Johnson’s photographs are “wonderfully inane”
The ‘world’s tallest work of public art’ will land on a Belgian motorway
Chilean-born art provocateur Alfredo Jaar is bringing sandwich boards to Edinburgh
A British art dealer has been jailed for fraud involving works by Picasso and Chagall
Pedestrianising Delhi’s Chandni Chowk could be a step too far for architects
Architects and designers revisited their first commissions
A tax bill was settled with Peter Lanyon artworks
Cork might be an unstoppable building material
Máté Bartha made Kontakt inside Hungary’s army camps for kids
Afrofuturism in Berlin was criticised for being too white
We took a closer look at Ibrahim Mahama’s postcolonial Ghana
Katrin Rodegast is mapping the human body with paper
A wartime Lowry painting is returning to Salford
Niall McDiarmid’s portraits show an ungentrified south London
One PhotoEspaña show takes a long-term view of Europe
Some US streets look better in the dark
The Observer’s archive reminded us of Ralph Steadman’s approach to caricature
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
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