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…
Frida Kahlo self-portrait sold for record $34.9m at auction
Diego y yo (1949) becomes most expensive Kahlo and Latin American work to go under the hammerIt is one of Frida Kahlo’s last self-portraits and represents the artist’s vulnerability and emotional turmoil over her husband Diego Rivera’s adultery.Seven d…
Poussin and the Dance review – the greatest frozen ballet in all art
National Gallery, LondonBacchus and his cavorting retinue of centaurs, satyrs and naked nymphs are in constant motion and yet spellbindingly still in the precision-engineered art of Nicolas PoussinThe scene: a chain of dancers in a glade, Roman tunics …
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…
Hervé Télémaque review – ‘His work is just waiting for some pretentious fool to decode it’
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-…
On my radar: Sam Fender’s cultural highlights
The Tyneside rocker on his favourite bath time podcast, a second world war memoir and where to get the best breakfast kippersSam Fender was born in 1994 and raised in North Shields. He began writing songs aged 14, building on an affinity with Bruce Spr…
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…
Francis Bacon estate implies artist’s friend created parts of Tate collection
New book says many pieces in Barry Joule Archive bear ‘scant resemblance’ to artist’s work, but donor insists they are realThe Estate of Francis Bacon has launched an astonishing personal attack on Barry Joule, one of the artist’s friends, and the vast…
Frida Kahlo estimated $30m self-portrait set to smash records
Diego y yo is expected to become most valuable Latin American artwork ever publicly soldA sorrowful Frida Kahlo self-portrait which shows her cheating husband, Diego Rivera, in the centre of her forehead, is expected to smash auction records as it beco…