Man Ray does glam – the week in art

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/feb/08/man-ray-glam-art-weekly

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Exhibition of the week: Man Ray

Long before Andy Warhol came along, the American dadaist Man Ray took an artistic interest in celebrity. Beauties from Kiki of Montparnasse and Lee Miller to Catherine Deneuve keep company with such artist friends as Picasso and Marcel Duchamp in these photographs that appeared in magazines such as Vogue. Man Ray was happy to do magazine work – and surrealist adverts – at the same time that he was creating abstract photographic experiments. Nor was he only a photographer: Marcel Duchamp was not just someone he photographed, but a close collaborator. Man Ray documented the creation of Duchamp's works, contributed photography to them and made his own dada and surrealist objects and paintings. His portraits are driven by desire and fascination. This is a window on modern art's glamour age.<br />• National Portrait Gallery, London WC2H, until 27 May

Other exhibitions this week

Glam: The Performance of Style<br />Connections between David Hockney, David Bowie and so forth are made in this survey of art and pop culture.<br />• Tate Liverpool, Liverpool L3, until 12 May

<strong>Statics</strong><br />Scotland-based artists Ashanti Harris, Suzanne Dery, Ash Reid, Urara Tsuchiya and Joe Sloan feature in this group show.<br />• Transmisison Gallery, Glasgow G1, until 2 March

<strong>Bacon–Rodin</strong><br />Potentially fascinating encounter between two modern greats.<br />• Ordovas, London W1, until 6 April

<strong>Simon Martin</strong><br />Video, animation and digital art meditating on our relationship with the world of things.<br />• Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland SR1, until 3 May

Masterpiece of the Week

<strong>Moment (1946) by Barnett Newman</strong><br />What is the meaning of the vertical "zip", the straight narrow band that Barnett Newman made his signature? This abstract trench – or big silent 1 – is at its simplest and purest in this early example of his decisive style. In later works, from Vir Heroicus Sublimis to his Stations of the Cross cycle, the vertical lines interrupt and dramatise large, often awe-inspiring canvases. Here the shaft descending from above – or is it ascending from below? – gets the scene to itself. Religious connotations seem unavoidable. In Titian's Assumption, a strong sense of the vertical makes us believe in the image of Mary rising to paradise. In Rembrandt's Three Crosses, forceful, blistering shafts of light from above illuminate Christ on the cross – the cross being another vertical. Clearly, Newman's line is a bolt from the beyond, a revelation that connects heaven and Earth.<br />• Tate Modern, London SE1

What we learned this week

The London Underground is a labyrinth to Mark Wallinger

Picasso is still the daddy at the gallery and on the market

That 23,000-year-old art is as captivating as a Leonardo

Glam rock started in 1964

A lost Murillo was found in Sussex

Spider-Man is a fan of Peter Zumthor

And finally ...

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