Exhibition of the week
Executions
A gory Halloween history lesson that includes relics of the beheaded Charles I, as well as 18th-century death-cell portraits and an axe or two.
• Museum of London Docklands, until 16 April
Also showing
Sarah Biffin
This highly successful 19th-century artist became celebrated for painting meticulous portraits although she was born without arms or legs.
• Philip Mould & Company, London, 1 November to 21 December
Strange Clay
Lindsey Mendick and Edmund de Waal are among the subversive ceramicists in this crafty look at contemporary art.
• Hayward Gallery, London, until 8 January
Jala Wahid
Oil drilling and rare flowers feature in this meditation on the history of Kurdistan.
• Baltic, Gateshead, until 30 April
Taylor Wessing prize
See the latest in photographic portraiture in a show muted by pandemic memories.
• Pavilion Gallery, Cromwell Place, London, until 18 December
Image of the week
Britain’s artistic psyche is strange and tortured, according to The Horror Show! The survey, on show at London’s Somerset House, covers visual art, music, TV, film and pop culture as it explores obsession with all things sinister.
What we learned
Prime ministers come and go – and so do their lecterns
Sonia Boyce’s Biennale winner will come to Margate and Leeds
Remarkable architect Moshe Safdie reflects on his legacy with a memoir
British black artists celebrated a significant birthday
Trans artist Claye Bowler casts his lived experience
Artist Rone has laid a treasure trail in Melbourne’s Hidden Ballroom
Lifecasting is a neighbourly art
Alicja Kozłowska embroiders everyday art
A Just Stop Oil activist tried to glue his head to Girl with a Pearl Earring
Masterpiece of the week
Girl Threading a Needle by Candlelight by Godfried Schalcken, late 1670s
This painting looks innocuous enough. A young woman works at night, giving Schalcken an opportunity to do what he loved: linger on the golden effects of candlelight. This Dutch artist of the late 1600s worked in a tradition of dramatic lighting and shadow started by Caravaggio about 70 years earlier. In Schalcken’s work the Caravaggesque is softened: what might once have been a penitent Magdalene with a skull becomes, here, a peaceful domestic scene. Or does it? The gothic writer Sheridan le Fanu proposed another interpretation of Schalcken’s night scenes. His story Schalcken the Painter tells how this artist, as a young pupil of Gerrit Dou, saw his master’s daughter get a proposal of marriage from a dead-eyed, grey-faced stranger. The terrifying consequences are dramatised in a classic BBC adaptation that’s a true Halloween treat – see it and you’ll always shudder in front of this artist’s chiaroscuro scenes.
• Wallace Collection, London
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