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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jonathan Jones

The Turner prize heads to Merseyside and sofas get sexy – the week in art

A Dream of Wholeness in Parts by Turner prize nominee Sin Wai Kin.
Eyes on the prize … A Dream of Wholeness in Parts by Turner prize nominee Sin Wai Kin. Photograph: Sin Wai Kin/Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei/Soft Opening, London

Exhibition of the week

Turner prize
Ingrid Pollard, Sin Wai Kin, Veronica Ryan and Heather Phillipson duke it out for the title and prize money.
Tate Liverpool from 20 October-19 March.

Also showing

Henry Fuseli
Intense and fascinating erotic art by the man who painted The Nightmare.
Courtauld Gallery, London from 14 October-8 January.

Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design
Exhilarating and hardcore trip into the surrealist brain.
Design Museum, London from 14 October-19 February.

Reena Kallat
Mumbai artist Reena Saini Kallat works across media to reflect on the history of India and Pakistan.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire from 20 October-22 January.

The Legend of King Arthur
How the pre-Raphaelites created our modern love of the (probably) mythic king.
William Morris Gallery, London from 14 October-22 January.

Image of the week

Anthea Hamilton, Giant Pumpkin No 1, 2022.
Anthea Hamilton, Giant Pumpkin No 1, 2022. Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock

Painting was back in vogue at the Frieze art fair, but two giant vegetables stole the show with visitors invited to “pose with the pumpkins!” Anthea Hamilton’s sculptures – bold, orange, funny and meaningless dominated Thomas Dane Gallery’s stand and, no doubt, many people’s Instagram accounts.

What we learned

Cecilia Vicuña produced the most moving Tate Turbine Hall installation for years

A book-lovers’ paradise is Britain’s best new building

David Hockney took centre stage in his new digital artwork

Lucian Freud was fascinated with plants

Cerith Wyn Evans returned home

Jimmy Carr might destroy a painting by Hitler

Rachel Whiteread’s Covid-inspired art is to be displayed in government buildings

Sudanese painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishag took inspiration from William Blake and Francis Bacon

Masterpiece of the week

Bouquet in a Clay Vase by Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1609.

Bouquet in a Clay Vase by Jan Brueghel the Elder, about 1609
The soft yet vibrant colours of this melting still life calm and please you, like living flowers might in a real vase. Delicate blues, pinks, yellows and whites are painted with a misty suggestiveness that was hugely original in its time. But then Brueghel came from a brilliant family. His father, Pieter, was the greatest painter in late Renaissance Europe. But he died when Jan was little, and according to the 17th-century art writer Karel van Mander, Jan and his brother got their first training from their grandmother Mayken Verhulst. She was an accomplished miniaturist. You can surely see something of her influence in the precision and love with which Brueghel paints these flowers. He was one of the very first north European still life painters, inspiring cohorts of artists to follow in his floral footsteps.
National Gallery, London.

Don’t forget

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