Exhibition of the week
The Rossettis
Poetry, painting and Victorian sexual experimentation in a show that sets Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sensual paintings in their complex biographical context.
• Tate Britain, London, 6 April to 24 September.
Also showing
The Paradisical Pictures
The apotheosis of the legendary art duo Gilbert and George at the charming, welcoming, free permanent gallery they have created for their work just off Brick Lane.
• Gilbert and George Centre, London, from 1 April.
Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism
The great impressionist painter gets her due.
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 31 March to 10 September.
Soutine | Kossoff
The late Leon Kossoff shown alongside one of his art heroes, existential expressionist Chaïm Soutine.
• Hastings Contemporary, 1 April to 24 September.
Ad Gefrin
A new museum of Anglo-Saxon art and history that is also a distillery. Drink deep of the past.
• Wooler, Northumberland, open all year round except for second and third weeks of January.
Image of the week
In his series Fulu Act, Brussels-based documentary photographer Colin Delfosse (who has been shortlisted in the Sony world photography awards 2023), captures street artists in Kinshasa, who craft striking costumes out of everyday objects to raise awareness of environmental issues facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here, artist Florian Sinanduku poses in his pill costume. “Finding medicine is a big issue. You never know where it comes from and what it is made of,” says Sinanduku.
• Sony Photography Awards 2023 is at Somerset House, London, 14 April-1 May. View our gallery Rubbish fashion: street art costumes of Kinshasa here
What we learned
The future of Russian-owned Phillips auction house may be in “significant doubt”
Banksy’s Brace Yourself! has sold for more than $2m
Stanley Whitney, America’s greatest Black abstract artist, has a new show in London
Old master artists went to work on an egg
There are too few female artists at the National Gallery in London’s After Impressionism
Japanese designers made great posters about big issues
Eiffel Tower pyrotechnics may have inspired Van Gogh’s The Starry Night
The photography Dorothy Bohm has died
Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame are still not up
Many forgers were great artists, says the Courtauld, ahead of a show of fakes
An ordinary married couple pulled off a massive art heist
Tracey Emin has opened her own art school in Margate
Masterpiece of the week
Rhinocerus, Albrecht Dürer, 1515
The German city of Nuremberg was a news hub in the Renaissance, where printers, publishers and artists exchanged images and stories of everything from werewolves to new worlds. Evidently, accurate reports of the rhinoceros reached the city, for its most brilliant artist, Albrecht Dürer, was able to construct this chunkily convincing, almost dreamlike portrayal totally from secondhand information. He’d never seen a rhino. Nor had anyone in Europe except maybe a few travellers, until the king of Portugal was sent one from Goa as a gift and regifted it to Pope Leo X, although it died before reaching Rome. Such new sensations fascinated Dürer – the archetypal artist of Renaissance curiosity who also wrote with awe about Aztec art and portrayed himself, in fine costumes and even naked, as a wonder of the world.
• British Museum, London
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