Exhibition of the week
Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything
A unique cache of drawings by one of the world’s best-loved artists offers a closer look at the genius who created the Great Wave.
British Museum, London, from 30 September
Also showing
Turner Prize
Cooking Sections, Gentle/Radical, Black Obsidian Sound System, Array Collective and Project Art Work are the nominees for this year’s all-collective Turner.
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, 29 September to 12 January
Noguchi
A mammoth survey of the great Japanese American modernist sculptor.
The Barbican, London, 30 September to 9 January
Gold of the Great Steppe
An entrancing encounter with the nomadic peoples of east Kazakhstan around 2,700 years ago.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, from 28 September to 30 January
Theaster Gates
Art and ideas are flung together on the potter’s wheel by the radical Chicago artist in this exhibition about the uses of clay.
Whitechapel Gallery, London, 29 September to 9 January
Image of the week
Untitled (mask 2), 2020, by Michael Craig-Martin
Artist Michael Craig-Martin’s ongoing project to paint everyday objects in minimal style has embraced the ephemera of the pandemic, as revealed in his latest exhibition.
What we learned
The Jameel prize shortlist find subversive possibilities in Islamic art
Betye Saar reversed and radicalised racist stereotypes …
… and black UK artists have been energised by the Black Lives Matter movement
The National Gallery of Australia has commissioned a $14m Lindy Lee sculpture
Nick Brandt’s startling portraits showcase African animals – and humans – under threat
Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations is a public artwork about data privacy
John Constable took it on the chin when asked to paint a neighbour
Helen Frankenthaler’s woodcuts are transcendent
Cameras are helping refugee children to heal
Charles Jencks’ extraordinary pomo house is opening to the public …
… and Greenwich’s Design District is open for business
Yorkshire Sculpture International is under way …
… and neon flickers back to life in Wakefield
A Guardian documentary reveals how “nuns” canonised Derek Jarman …
… while another film shows how Picture Post photojournalism changed Britain
The UK National Gallery’s new chair is a Tory donor
Designers are engaged in making smart toilets…
… meanwhile, the British Rail logo’s green makeover is “a mess”
The Ocean Photographer of the Year awards were announced
All Aboriginal art is political
Haley Morris-Cafiero’s guerrilla photos deal with body image
Edward Thompson sees strange things in Kent
Sponges, blood cells and sound-art feature in the UK’s first ever cancer research exhibition
The race to crown China’s ugliest building is on
Mass Isolation Australia made a visual record of its pandemic
Sydney Powerhouse chief Lisa Havilah holds family treasures dear
Photo Basel has gone colourful
A Frida Kahlo self-portrait could set a new Latin American record
We remembered potter Richard Batterham
Masterpiece of the week
The Louvre Under Snow, 1902, by Camille Pissarro
You can see the echoes of Japanese prints by Hokusai and his contemporaries in this Impressionist picture of the floating world. Pissarro’s brush alights on the passing beauty of a winter white-out, observing central Paris from an apartment he rented for its great view of the Seine. The cinematic way he frames the scene, the sense of ephemerality and immediacy, even the joy in winter as a beautiful season all speak of Pissarro’s debts to Hokusai. He shares this enthusiasm with Van Gogh, Whistler and Monet. Japanese art hit Europe’s avant garde in the the 19th century like a great wave.
National Gallery, London
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