Exhibition of the week
Unicorn
Medieval bestiaries, Renaissance art and narwhal horns make for a fascinating first exhibition in this impressive new Scottish museum.
• Perth Museum, Perth, 30 March to 22 September
Also showing
Enzo Mari
The playful artist and designer who helped shape the look of Italy’s postwar economic miracle.
• Design Museum, London, 29 March to 8 September
Soufiane Ababri
Queer art from Morocco that takes on imperialism, racism and homophobia.
• Barbican Curve, London, until 30 June
Ellen Lesperance
Paintings and ceramics inspired by Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.
• Hollybush Gardens, London, until 27 April
Anwar Jalal Shemza
There is a boldness to the early portraits by Shemza in this show, done after he moved to Britain from Pakistan in 1956.
• Hales Gallery, London, 4 April to 18 May
Image of the week
Richard Serra, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, was a daunting, fascinating artist. When I first met him in 1992, I was extremely nervous. Like his art, Serra emanated seriousness. Both had gravity and gravitas. However obdurate and physically imposing, his art has great subtlety and a complexity that only emerges when you spend time with it. It has the capacity to slow us down, engaging us physically but also psychologically. It is always in the here-and-now but begs the idea of timelessness. It is direct, but invites misreading. Read Adrian Searle’s appreciation in full here.
What we learned
The Stones’ Ronnie Wood is a talented painter
Serendipity can result in a fabulous photograph
Dundee has been meticulously mapped out in 20,000 photographs
Raymond Briggs was “not a normal person”, according to Raymond Briggs
The trauma of war in Ukraine has resulted in some extraordinary artworks
If you go down to Cheltenham promenade today, you’re sure of a big surprise
Nick Cave tells a tragic story through his devilish ceramics
A sculpture of Prince Philip is so awful that no artist will admit to making it
Masterpiece of the week
The Dead Christ and the Virgin by Neapolitan follower of Giotto, probably 1330s-40s
The death of Christ became central to European art in the middle ages. It was a mystery that absorbed entire communities in the religion which both bound and ruled them: they marvelled at how God’s own son was born to die as a mortal human. This painting is a highly emotive rendering of the grief that the holy corpse evoked – a grief explicitly depicted here as that which any mother might feel for her child. It’s influenced by Giotto, the Tuscan artist who made art more human, intimate and characterful in the 1300s. But this painter is technically naive in a way that makes it all the more moving and raw.
• National Gallery, London
Don’t forget
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