Exhibition of the week
Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian
Two pioneers of abstract art who were both separately inspired by spiritual visions to paint the invisible.
• Tate Modern, London, until 3 September.
Also showing
Frank Auerbach
The great modern painter, now 91, unveils his new self-portraits.
• Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Gallery, London, from 19 April to 14 July.
Mat Collishaw
A robot stag is among the surreal attractions in this technologically savvy artist’s darkly ironic take on digital life.
• The Bomb Factory, Marylebone, London, from 20 April to 21 May.
All Islands Connect Under Water
Asha Athman, Islam Shabana, and Samra Mayanja explore the social and cultural symbolism of the sea.
• CCA, Glasgow, until 3 June.
Kathryn Maple
Dappled paintings of parks, gardens and people by the winner of the 2020 John Moores prize.
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, until 30 April.
Image of the week
A new exhibit at San Francisco’s de Young fine arts museum gives viewers a new way to connect to a revered American photographer. Ansel Adams in Our Time brings together more than a 100 of Adams’s works including the above view of the Tetons and Snake River in Wyoming alongside 23 contemporary photographers who reflect and build on it. The exhibition also returns Adams to the city where he launched his career and continues the conversations he began about conservation and national parks in his first exhibition at the same museum nearly a century ago. Read the full story here.
What we learned
A Picasso-hating comedian has co-curated an exhibition of the artist’s work
A man admitted to making Basquiat forgeries in less than 30 minutes with some of his fakes displayed in a museum
A 96-year-old comic strip artist is angry after discovering Lichtenstein “stole” his art
The wee urchins in Joan Eardley’s midcentury Glasgow paintings are on BBC Radio 4
Hip-hop producer Brandon Deerer has an Afrofuturist exhibition in New York
Artist John Olsen, talented foundryman Ken Cook and pioneering Mad cartoonist Al Jaffee have died
The V&A’s Diva show will celebrate female creativity
Singer Peter Brathwaite is reclaiming Black history by recreating historical paintings
An experimental takeover of the Barbican’s Curve gallery invites visitors to do the work
Masterpiece of the week
Mask by Haida artist, 1800s
This eerily lifelike mask shows the variety and individuality of Native American art in the Pacific north-west. It may also reveal interaction between Indigenous art and European conventions of “realism”. It has movable eyelids operated by rods and string, as well as a leather moustache and beard: the goatee may mean this is a portrait or caricature of a European. The hand of a particular artist has been detected in this and other carvings – in other words it comes from a culture in which originality flourished alongside tradition. It’s one of a dazzling collection of masks from the north-western US and Canada in the British Museum, which includes objects collected by James Cook in the 18th century.
• British Museum
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