Exhibition of the week
Turner prize
Kira Freije creates a waste land peopled by Rodinesque ghosts in the machine, Simeon Barclay meditates on masculinity, Tanoa Sasraku takes on big oil and Marguerite Humeau gets lost in wonderland in the most exciting Turner prize in years.
• MIMA, Middlesbrough, from26 September until 29 March
Also showing
Korea
A survey of 2,000 years of Korean art, belief and philosophy – but will it be as big as Bayeux?
• British Museum, London, from 1 October until 31 January
Fail We May, Sail We Must
Artists from Salvador Dalí to the 18th-century British painter George Romney star in another eclectic dip into artist Glenn Brown’s impressive collection.
• Brown Collection, London, until 7 August
Mark Wallinger: Circling the Square
Paintings and a film from the Turner prize winner, that explore abstraction and the vitality of nature with a nod to Dylan Thomas.
• Paul Stolper Gallery, London, until 24 October
William Kentridge: A Nicely Built City
A new animated film by this artist who takes drawing into new dimensions gets its world premiere.
• Goodman Gallery, London, until 7 November
Image of the week
Goons in the military fatigues and wraparound shades beloved of ICE agents ride around in a clown car – a pretty clear comment on contemporary US. Elsewhere a solitary figure amid the ruins of Stonehenge is overwhelmed by the universe – are we now lost in in cosmic speculation? Welcome to the abstract, humorous yet deeply unsettling world of Nicole Eisenman. Read our review here.
What we learned
101-year-old art warrior Ce Roser has had an amazing life
Dutch sculptor Magali Reus reimagines rubbish into vast versions of sardine tins and fishing lures
A new Magritte exhibition showcases his surrealist brilliance and his occasional trash
The Greek PM has said a deal to return Parthenon marbles could still be reached
Beverly Buchanan’s ramshackle mini barns memorialise the survival of enslaved people
Rachel Kneebone’s porcelain sculptures are edgy and marvellous
Masterpiece of the week
An Elderly Man as Saint Paul by Rembrandt, probably 1659
You can see he’s wearing archaic garments and has religious trappings that identify him as the early Christian Paul, but all that slips your mind compared with this man’s incredibly real, suffering face. Paul, who set out some of the Church’s most severe views on matters including sexuality, doesn’t usually come across as anything like as doubtful or hesitant as this pensive soul. He is surrounded by the shadows of evening, or night, or death, and in his eyes you see a world of cares and regrets. Rembrandt has no respect for the conventions of art or storytelling that would make this a picture of Paul and allow us to move on after recognising that: instead he wants you to be shocked into recognition of the human predicament. You are held by this face, dragged behind the painting, into the man’s mind or soul or whatever we call the essence of the human. Nothing else, for Rembrandt, is worth making art about.
• National Gallery, London
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