Exhibition of the week
Saint Francis of Assisi
This fascinating, unexpected exhibition shows what connects the Arte Povera movement with the 800-year-old rough robes of Saint Francis and what Marvel has in common with Caravaggio. Read our review here.
• National Gallery, London, 6 May to 30 July.
Also showing
Titanosaur
A colossal dinosaur skeleton that makes diplodocus look diddy is the star of this show.
• Natural History Museum, London, until 7 January.
Marguerite Humeau
Last week to see this installation of sprawling, spiky sculptures in which artificial intelligence collides with craft.
White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 14 May.
Laura Wilson
Installations that tease historical and social meaning from everyday materials.
• CCA Derry-Londonderry, until 3 June.
Takahashi Hiromitsu
Kabuki theatre scenes that mix traditional printmaking with pop art.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, until 4 February.
Image of the week
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s piece Comedian, valued at around $120,000 (£95,500), was being exhibited in a Seoul museum when it was brazenly removed and eaten by a student who said that he was hungry after skipping breakfast. Read the full story here.
What we learned
A curvy mermaid statue is ‘too provocative’
Not every artist is downbeat about AI
Prince Charles’s crown-maker stuck a gold-covered ping pong ball on it
A John Lavery portrait has come out of its 100-year hiding
Pakistani artist Misha Japanwala is shameless
An Airbnb bandit pinched artwork – and replaced it
We need to take a fresh look at Gwen John
The royal family’s art collection is not for the likes of you
80s art collective the Blk Art Group have reunited for a fresh look at race
Masterpiece of the week
Equestrian Portrait of Charles I by Anthony van Dyck, c.1637-8
Royal pride comes before a very big fall in this portrait of the first King Charles. Van Dyck channels a rich and regal artistic tradition to depict his employer on horseback. Those softly dappled bronze and green leaves against a blue and white sky evoke the Renaissance painter Titian, whose portrait of the Habsburg Charles V on Horseback this painting echoes. Charles Stuart would have enjoyed the allusion: he had seen Titian’s equestrian masterpiece in Madrid and he himself owned a whole room of canvases by Titian. Van Dyck uses ripe and referential artistic splendour to overcome the stiffness of his subject: he strives to make Charles I’s frozen quality an image of discipline and control amid the sensual colours. But that uncommunicative personality, among other things, would by 1642 plunge Charles into a civil war with his own parliament that led to his execution and the first English republic.
• National Gallery, London.
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.
Get in Touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com
