National Gallery, LondonBarack Obama’s portraitist took black Londoners to Norway and filmed their frozen adventures. Shown alongside his diverse reworkings of great paintings, the result is an exhibition full of resonanceKehinde Wiley, the official po…
Louis Wain’s anthropomorphic cats to go on display at Bethlem museum
Eccentric artist was famed for outlandish drawings produced while a patient at ‘Bedlam’ psychiatric hospital“He has made the cat his own,” HG Wells once said of Louis Wain. “English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of the…
Capsule of 1765 air reveals ancient histories hidden under Antarctic ice
Polar Zero exhibition in Glasgow features sculpture encasing air extracted from start of Industrial RevolutionAn ampoule of Antarctic air from the year 1765 forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition that reveals the hidden histories contained in polar …
From The Addams Family 2 to Andy Warhol: a complete guide to this week’s entertainment
Whether it is a live gig, a new film or a game to play at home, our critics have your plans for this week coveredThe Addams Family 2Out nowHaving started life as a comic strip, the Addamses have come full circle with their latest incarnation in an anim…
Unseen Van Gogh sketches that rework scorned masterpiece to go on display
Preparatory work for ‘redoing’ of The Potato Eaters – savaged in his lifetime – to feature in exhibitionA collection of Vincent van Gogh’s preparatory drawings sketched ahead of a planned “redoing” of The Potato Eaters, a masterpiece brutally slated by…
‘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; Summer Exhibition 2021 review – there can be no winner
Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry; Royal Academy, LondonSocial activism not art is the benchmark of a collective-juggling Turner prize. And Yinka Shonibare begins to shake things up at art’s annual pro-am fixtureFirst! That is the exultant boast for this y…
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…
Forced from home: the humans and animals under threat – in pictures
Nick Brandt visited five animal sanctuaries in Africa to portray the people displaced by droughts and the creatures whose very existence is under threat Continue reading…