Exhibition of the week
Rodney Graham
The Canadian punk conceptualist famous for his philosophical videos here exhibits a set of disconcertingly impressive paintings that echo early 20th-century modernism.
Lisson Gallery online space
Also showing
Damien Hirst x Snapchat
A chance to create your own Hirst Spin Painting that’s not only energising and a great release but supports global charity Partners in Health. Throw that virtual paint.
Snapchat
The Botanical Mind
Adam Chodzko and Eileen Agar – two great British surrealists – are among the visionaries past and present exploring spiritual and psychedelic aspects of the floral, in a show that would have been wacky in real life and is still pretty out there online.
Camden Art Centre online
Frieze New York
With all art now online it’s as easy to visit an art fair in New York as in London – and you can create your own VIP space at home by cooking chips, putting them in small paper cones and training your child to serve them.
Frieze Viewing Room until 15 May
Home is where the art is
Here’s art doing something that matters: use works from Scotland’s national collections to offer a bit of zest to your child’s home learning.
National Galleries Scotland
Image of the week
Game Changer, a new work by Banksy paying tribute to the NHS. The street artist has been working within the constraints of lockdown to produce an intimate piece that shows a boy playing with a nurse superhero toy, with figures of Batman and Spider-Man discarded in a bin. Banksy left a note for hospital workers, saying: “Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if it’s only black and white.” Read the full story
What we learned
Banksy’s latest work is an intimate celebration of superhero health workers
Suzanne Moore is calling for a post-pandemic rethink of arts funding
Police seize 19,000 stolen artefacts in an art trafficking clampdown
The V&A is telling the Covid-19 story through everyday objects
Coronavirus claims its first major casualty among Sydney’s arts venues
Covid-19 is causing artist Lorna Simpson to cry for hours
Photographer Matt Eich is chronicling family life under lockdown
Butlin’s built a fantasy world on knobbly knees and birdie songs
‘I’ve been known to go about on all fours,’ admits our art critic Adrian Searle
David Goldblatt photographs criminals at the scenes of their crimes
Pedalling photographer Martin Godwin is capturing cycling during lockdown
Arts leaders in Australia are warning of a string of closures due to Covid-19
We remembered Photographers’ Gallery founder Sue Davies
Masterpiece of the week
Claude Monet, Poplars on the Epte, 1891
Cézanne said his contemporary was “only an eye – but what an eye”. But Monet was much more than an eye, as this powerfully conceptualised painting proves. Far from just looking and painting, he seems to be reaching for strange and elusive ideas about the very nature of perception and reality. The trees against a cloud-ghosted blue sky are a repeated, regular motif – trees of the mind. They haunt your eyes. Time stops. You can forget everything painful. Monet heals with light.
Don’t forget
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