Mind-boggling Beardsley and Helmut Newton's sexy century – the week in art
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Version 0 of 1. The painter who delighted in depravity, the photographer who revelled in reality, plus Rembrandt in his youth – all in your weekly dispatch Online exhibition of the week Helmut Newton 100The photographs of Helmut Newton are some of the most real-seeming ever taken. His powerful black and white contrasts give depth and form to bodies in space, however you see them – in a gallery, book or online. Oh and some might find them sexy. Launches digitally on Thursday on IGTV.• Newlands House gallery, Petworth. Also showing digitally Young RembrandtSimon Schama is your authoritative guide to the Ashmolean’s Rembrandt show on BBC Four on 28 April. Glasgow InternationalThis year’s cancelled Glasgow International has launched an ambitious digital replacement, featuring Georgina Starr, Alberia Whittle, Jenkin van Zyl and more. Aubrey BeardsleyThe depraved and exquisite art of this Victorian reprobate boggles the eye and mind, even when filtered through the comparatively respectable lens of a curator’s tour on the Tate website. Artists’ Film InternationalOnline screenings from the Whitechapel gallery of films by artists all over the world, including Dominika Olszowy and Miguel Fernamdez de Castro. Image of the week Parallel Lives, 2020, by George Condo Featuring an estranged couple with too many eyes and mouths, Parallel Lives – created under lockdown in New York State – is typical of Condo’s work. It’s a hot mix of the desiring and devouring, aggression and the ridiculous. Read more here. What we learned Ai Weiwei told us how he turned his 81-day confinement into art Domestic art became a lockdown obsession … … as the National Gallery kicked off its “slow looking” lessons A human artwork is still sitting in an empty gallery for six hours a day Charlotte Gainsbourg is selling a self-portrait to help fight Covid-19 … … and Wolfgang Tillmans is selling £50 posters to support threatened venues Grayson Perry wants bored Britons to get creative at home A healthcare worker clashed with an anti-lockdown protester Choreographer Akram Khan posed online for Sky’s Portrait Artist of the Year Seen from above, the empty streets of Sydney have an eerie beauty More UK museums devised quizzes for Guardian readers to explore their collections Olafur Eliasson released ‘“dotty” interactive works for Earth Day Tristram Kenton celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday in pictures Photographer Ryan McGinley revealed the terrors of his religious youth Where Spain’s loneliest people are to be found … … where the world’s most inspiring rock-climbing locations are … … and how a Sumatran tiger took a selfie in the jungle Terry O’Neill was licensed to shoot James Bond How the late photographer Peter Beard communed with the wild The day a Van Gogh painting was stolen in a sledgehammer raid Masterpiece of the week The Exhumation of St Hubert, late 1430s, by Rogier van der Weyden and workshopThis is a surreal marriage of modern artistic methods and a truly medieval world view. Rogier van der Weyden was one of the first artists to master the realistic portrayal of people and space, and, in this panel from an altarpiece he and his team created in Brussels almost 600 years ago, his consummate abilities are on display. Look at the way the Gothic architecture of a cathedral curves around the scene in eye-fooling depth and the lifelike faces of the priests. But he uses these new techniques to depict a macabre miracle. As they uncover the body of a bishop who has been dead for a century, the assembled clergy are astonished to see his flesh perfectly preserved. Rogier’s realism lets us contemplate this wonder, too. Explore this painting on the National Gallery’s website. Don’t forget To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign. Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here. |