Exhibition of the week
Elizabeth Price: Underfoot
The often gothic Turner prize-winner Price applies her imagination to Glasgow’s industrial heritage.
• The Hunterian, Glasgow,until 16 April.
Also showing
Making Modernism
The great and harrowing Käthe Kollwitz stands out in this small survey of early 20th-century female German artists, also featuring work by Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin.
• Royal Academy, London, 12 November to 12 February.
Richard Long: Drinking the rivers of Dartmoor
The work of the British artist who, since the late 1960s has honed walking as a romantic immersion in landscape, has never been more urgent.
• Lisson Gallery, London, 16 November to 21 January.
Lucie Rie
The modernist potter produced pure, simple forms inspired by prehistory.
• Mima, Middlesbrough, until 12 February.
Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso
Paul Dash, Errol Lloyd and John Lyons show their images of carnival alongside historical art from the Fitzwilliam Museum including Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Flemish festivities.
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 12 November to 19 February.
Image of the week
An imposing brick wall runs in a sweeping curve along the edge of the North Circular road in Finchley, lined with arches and crowned with crenelations, looking like a fragment of an ancient walled city. A cartoonish pair of towers poke up at either end of the 200-metre long structure, dotted with projecting lookout balconies, as if keeping watch over all who enter. The building bears the unmistakable hallmarks of Peter Barber, one of the country’s most distinctive housing architects, who has just been named winner of the prestigious 2022 Soane medal. Read the full story here.
What we learned
Digital Benin is reuniting bronzes looted by British soldiers
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s art collection hit a record $1.5bn at auction
The genius of Käthe Kollwitz stands out like a raw wound at London’s Royal Academy
The National Gallery entrance revamp row recalls King Charles’s “monstrous carbuncle” jibe
Painter Matthew Krishanu harnesses the unsettling power of the playground
A Brooklyn installation shows every “stolen election” lie told by Donald Trump and his cronies
Rankin will recreate family photos for people bereaved during Covid
A peaceful, soothing haven has appeared in east London
Masterpiece of the Week
The Sea at L’Estaque, 1876, by Paul Cézanne
“It’s like a playing card,” wrote Cézanne of the Mediterranean fishing village L’Estaque, where he stayed in 1876: “red roofs against the blue sea.” Those words illuminate this painting. A playing card is a flat surface with no pretensions to be anything else: hearts or clubs, the images are simply shapes on a plane. The way he paints the houses and sea here creates a similar effect. The sea doesn’t recede in waves like an ocean painted by Turner but stands up in a solid wall of blue. This unyielding hard water is juxtaposed with the yellow walls, red roofs and oval leaves of the “foreground” in a way that makes them all seem equal, just like symbols on a playing card. Cézanne exhibited this painting with the impressionist group yet he is pushing further than they did, into a sun-blasted future where space no longer exists.
• National Gallery, London
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