Exhibition of the week
Gillian Wearing
A stunningly intelligent and sensitive lockdown project in which the celebrated video artist set out to paint her self-portrait.
• Maureen Paley, London, until 25 October.
Also showing
Episode 5: Sophie Barber
Funny, mysterious images are smattered in squeezes of rich colour. There is a seaside feel to Barber’s paintings, reflecting her life on the Sussex coast. Birds and camping feature, as well as art history guests.
• Goldsmiths CCA, London, until 25 October.
Havering Hoard: A Bronze Age Mystery
Why did ancient Britons throw swords and armour in rivers or bury them? Between 900BC and 800BC, hundreds of weapons were buried in what is now east London. This exhibition digs into the meaning of a sensational find.
• Museum of London Docklands until 18 April.
Image of the week
Be it on God, guns or Greta, social media offers neat solutions for our messy feelings. Grayson Perry writes about how this map of the US reflects a battle-torn landscape where nuance, compromise and empathy are casualties in the culture war. “I love maps. They have an air of authority, they show us where to go,” writes Perry. “This map toys with the common delusion that there is a clear and certain route out of our mess of feelings.” Read the story.
What we learned
Frank Gehry declares an end to the age of bombastic “great man” monuments
… while the overall winner, who takes home $100,000, will be announced on 25 September
Lockdown ushers in a golden age of the balcony
A slavery tour of London lays bare the atrocities of the past
Artists are making tech simulations of life’s squishy stuff for the Covid-19 era
UK care home residents’ lockdown art offer visions of hope
Gillian Wearing’s lockdown self-portraits peel back the mask and show the truth
The Festival of Brexit is trying to unite Britain – artists have ideas how
How to take great pictures – according to six acclaimed photographers
Designer Terence Conran, who transformed British taste, as died …
… and Observer critic Rowan Moore wrote about how Conran restyled Britain
Modernist Edinburgh has never looked as good as on these embroidered postcards
Elizabeth Price’s new exhibition baffles – and enthrals
Olfaur Eliasson is talking nazism and Brexit – and his new Berlin show
Artist Wendy Ewald gave Appalachian kids $10 cameras – and told them to shoot their dreams
Danh Vō combines ancient sculptures with plants and human limbs in troubling art for the apocalypse
Joseph Cultice walked us through his shot of Marilyn Manson with prosthetic breasts
Mohamed Bourouissa has won the £30,000 Deutsche Börse photography prize
There is a race to protect ‘sublime mural’ in an Oldham church by artist who fled the Nazis
Cecily Brown brought her apocalyptic vision of England to Blenheim
Dutch photographer Dana Lixenberg’s 20-year project digs into a forgotten part of LA
Blowing up a Transit van wiped out £1m of debt
More than 300 artists sign letter in support of striking Tate workers
A £9.3m “Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer” outside Birmingham gets the go-ahead
A dazzling makeover of 90-year-old Spanish lighthouse divides opinion
South African photographer Jürgen Schadeberg has died aged 89
Young love trumps dreams of stardom in rural Argentina
Masterpiece of the week
Italian Woman c.1870, by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Dark deep-set eyes and a private expression turn away from us under a pink headdress. Bright blue and lemon yellow add to the exotic colours caught in a strong light. But this is not an observation of someone on the streets of Naples or Rome. Corot painted it in his studio, long after first visiting Italy, and she is a model he paid to put on Italian clothes from his collection. Perhaps he is trying to recapture a youthful memory, to dress her like a love object seen long ago. That would account for the sharp shadows of melancholy and introspection that cut into this mysterious portrait left to the National Gallery by its previous owner, Lucian Freud.
• National Gallery, London
Don’t forget
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