Serpentine Gallery, LondonFrom military operations to the death of André Breton, the Parisian artist loved to paint seismic events. But it’s odd and themeless, proving nothing dates more badly than pop artYou can’t accuse the Serpentine of relentlessly…
‘Some of art’s most luxurious orgies’ – Poussin and the Dance review
National Gallery, LondonSo sombre Poussin was actually a hedonist? What a surprise! By dwelling on his decade in Rome, then a city revelling in raw sensuality, this show casts him as Caravaggio’s lewder cousin Nicolas Poussin intimidates me. This 17th-…
Turner prize 2021 review – lashings of creativity in a collectivist clash
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry The decision to have only artists collectives nominated has resulted in a show that ranges from a recreation of a 1980s Northern Irish gay bar to pretentious prattling about fishCelebrating the creativity of peo…
Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything review – wonders beyond The Great Wave
British Museum, LondonRare black and white sketches by the Japanese genius are magnificent explorations of the human condition Like me, you may think of the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose long and brilliantly productive life ended in 1849, a…
Turner prize 2021: a collective effort to make art radical again
Pickled cows and unmade beds: the art award has always challenged convention. But in 2021 it is going further, by abolishing individual artists altogetherThe Turner prize has given us some great characters. Grayson Perry was a little-known alternative …
Gold of the Great Steppe review – the breathtaking lives of history’s ‘barbarians’
Fitzwilliam Museum, CambridgeFrom their astounding burial mounds to their dazzling horses dressed up as mythical beasts, this exhibition about Kazakhstan’s ancient nomads shows the power of archaeology to revive the deadA young archer was buried around…
The Lost Leonardo: has a new film solved the mystery of the world’s most expensive painting?
Is the $450m Salvator Mundi a fake? This film – featuring tearful sycophants, sneering experts, dodgy dealers and a secretive superyacht – may finally settle the great da Vinci controversyIt is almost exactly 10 years since Salvator Mundi was unveiled,…
Emeka Ogboh’s Brexit lament, the brilliant Joan Eardley and a Viking hoard – the week in art
Ogboh fills Edinburgh’s Burns Monument with sound, Eardley’s seascapes get a welcome outing and a detectorist’s extraordinary find – all in your weekly dispatchEmeka Ogboh: Song of the UnionA sound installation of Robert Burns’s Auld Lang Syne, sung in…