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Exhibition of the week
Pioneers
Leading commercial galleries offer their samplings of influential contemporary artists from Victoria Miro’s delve into the work of British conceptualist Stephen Willats to Helly Nahmad’s presentation of Antoni Tapies. All the fun of the fair without leaving home.
• Art Basel online until 27 March.
Also showing
Titian Tour
Last chance to virtually visit the National Gallery’s ravishing exhibition of Titian’s mythological canvases.
• National Gallery online until 31 March.
Dismal Thoughts: Thomas Carlyle on Race
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery investigates the racial beliefs of this famous Victorian historical thinker who was one of its founding figures and was powerfully photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron.
• Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh online.
Democracies
This provocative selection of works about democracy, including Richard Hamilton’s Northern Ireland history painting The State, and Bob and Roberta Smith’s All Schools Should Be Art Schools, can be enjoyed online until the show opens for real at Tate Liverpool in May.
• Tate Liverpool online.
Royals and Rebels
The V&A has the finest collection of India’s art outside India. This talk about the history of the Sikh empire sheds light on one aspect of the cultural complexity it reflects.
• V&A, London, online until 29 March.
Image of the week
Work by British artist Sacha Jafri consisting of the world’s largest painting on canvas was sold for $62m (£45m) at an auction in Dubai. The Journey of Humanity is split into 70 framed sections spanning 1,595.76 sq metres – equivalent to almost four basketball courts. Organisers said the work sold for $62m, double the amount targeted, with the money going to charities helping children. Read more here.
What we learned
Ai Weiwei joined artists reflecting on a year of Covid culture
We got to look behind the scenes at the V&A under lockdown
A house on Mars is the latest digital art work to make a fortune
Gerhard Richter has donated his Holocaust art to Berlin
German plans to return Benin bronzes to Nigeria pile pressure on UK institutions …
… with the University of Aberdeen announcing it will return a pillaged bronze
Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival has cancelled a planned art work made from Indigenous people’s blood …
… prompting a wave of artists to demand change at parent museum Mona
Chinese architects are building a rural revolution
One of the most stolen pieces of art of all time has been fitted with a €30m glass case
Ja Rule sold a Fyre festival NFT artwork for $122,000 – and threw a real painting in too
Photographer Charlie Phillips is finally getting his due
JRR Tolkien’s illustrations are appearing in The Lord of the Rings for the first time
Female street photographers around the world revealed their inspiration …
… as young mothers pin their hopes on the American dream
A new photo archive celebrates the history of queer black Britain …
… and Qatar’s Tasweer photo festival salutes the New Black Vanguard
Thomas Demand made a cannabis lab out of cardboard
The V&A East’s Gus Casely-Hayford is dragging museums into the 21st century
The 24 photo project has reached its 18th year
The UK’s National Gallery is sending Monet to Southampton
Molly Goddard is turning up the volume in fashion
A new film reveals a darker side to Alvar Aalto
The Great British Art Tour uncovered an inspiration for suffragettes, tarnished hopes, Gypsy culture, the dignity of Paul Robeson and riots on the streets of South Wales
Van Gogh’s art paid for his sister’s care
Downing Street’s media makeover was a blue day for design
Photographer Claudia Andujar captured the under-threat Yanomami in Brazil …
… while Joel Meyerowitz’s wild flowers entranced
We remembered designer Zeev Aram
… and Byzantine scholar Cyril Mango
Masterpiece of the week
Master of Saint Veronica, Veronica with the Sudarium, circa 1420
This German medieval painting depicts one of the spookiest and strangest Christian artistic traditions. Saint Veronica holds up the cloth she is said to have offered Christ so he could wipe his sweaty face as he carried his cross to Golgotha. When he gave her hanky back, an image of his face was imprinted on it. A relic said to be the Sudarium survives in the Vatican. Much more famous in modern times is the Turin Shroud, said to show a complete image of Christ’s face and body, which photographic negatives gave a new lease of life in the 20th century. So try to see this painting as if it were the Shroud: ghostly “proof” of both the historicity and supernatural being of Christ. This smooth, forward-gazing, bearded image of Jesus was emulated by Renaissance artists in the belief it was miraculously accurate. Even Leonardo da Vinci created his own version of it in Salvator Mundi.
• National Gallery online.
Don’t forget
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