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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jonathan Jones

Creepy AI blooms, Raphael’s crafty treasures and a neglected pop star – the week in art

Those Infamous Works 2, Mat Collishaw.
Those Infamous Works 2, Mat Collishaw. Photograph: Mat Collishaw

Exhibition of the week

Mat Collishaw: Petrichor
Creepy and disconcerting flower pictures, fabricated using AI and resembling Dutch still lifes corrupted by sin.
Kew Gardens, London, until 7 April

Also showing

Celebrating Picasso Today: Infinite Modernism
Artists including Peter Halley and Genieve Figgis pay homage to Picasso’s living influence.
Almine Rech, London, until 11 November

RB Kitaj: London to Los Angeles
This painter who mixed pop with history saw himself as persecuted by critics – does he deserve a fresh look?
Piano Nobile, London, 25 October to 26 January

History in the Making: Stories of Materials and Makers, 2000BC to Now
A tapestry designed by Raphael is among the treasures from Woburn Abbey in this survey of craft traditions.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 21 October to 11 February

Derek Boshier: Reinventor
One of the first pop artists is still playing with contemporary culture in a show of new work.
Gazelli Art House, London, until 18 November

Image of the week

exterior of new Aviva Studios, Manchester

Manchester unveiled a giant new arts venue, Aviva Studios, designed by architecture firm OMA. The £240m venue will form the HQ of the Manchester international festival, and opened with a stage spectacle, Free Your Mind, directed by Oscar winner Danny Boyle. Architecture critic Oliver Wainwright gave his assessment of the building.

What we learned

Britain’s best new building is no ordinary retirement home

The late Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi’s art collection is ‘mostly worthless’

Pokémon star Pikachu sparked scenes at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum

A Glasgow museum says its £3m Auguste Rodin sculpture is missing

Fifty years on, the builders of Sydney Opera House looked back at their work

Was the Renaissance a sexually subversive love-in?

Bobby Baker’s landmark 70s work of edible art is being recreated for a vegan age

Indigenous Australian artist Vincent Namatjira said he wields his brush like a weapon

Illuminating: an illustrated guide to some of the world’s most remote lighthouses

Marcel Duchamp’s founding work of conceptual art may have been someone else’s

Velázquez’s famous Black model Juan de Pareja became a renowned artist himelf

Masterpiece of the week

Venus Rising from the Sea (‘Venus Anadyomene’) by Titian, c. 1520

Venus Rising from the Sea, Titian, 1520.

Although this painting is based on a Greek myth told by the poet Hesiod about 2,600 years ago, and echoes an ancient sculpture, it has a sensual directness that leaves classicism far behind. The lofty cultural references feel irrelevant to what is surely a portrait from life of Titian’s model, maybe even his lover, wringing her hair dry. Titian paints life, not art. His bold intimacy with this woman is unmistakable. So is the worship he confesses by depicting her as Venus.
The National, Edinburgh

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