Exhibition of the week
Francis Bacon: Human Presence
The cutting eye of Britain’s most brilliant modern artist is turned on the traditional genre of the portrait. There will be blood.
• National Portrait Gallery, London, 10 October to 19 January
Also showing
Letizia Battaglia
This Palermo-based photographer documented the agony and ecstasy of Sicilian life under the shadow of the mafia.
• Photographers’ Gallery, London, 9 October to 23 February
Mire Lee
Decaying organic forms and a sense of entropy will hopefully make the latest installation in the Tate Turbine Hall a poetic wonder.
• Tate Modern, London, 8 October to 16 March
Haegue Yang: Leap Year
This South Korean artist promises to turn the Hayward into an abstract multiform wonderland.
• Hayward Gallery, London, 9 October to 5 January
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998
A crucial period in the history of modern India is illuminated by the era’s art.
• Barbican Gallery, London, 5 October to 5 January
Image of the week
Since the 1920s restaurants in Japan have displayed hyper-real fake food in their windows in an attempt to lure customers inside. A new exhibition celebrates this fine art and the craftspeople responsible for these mind-boggling banquets.
What we learned
The louche charm of old Soho can still be found – if you take a 12-hour bar crawl
A painting found in a cellar by a junk dealer is an original Picasso, experts claim
Photographer Michael Ormerod captured the offbeat charm of forgotten America
Anya Gallaccio’s new show of impermanent objects turns art into theatre
Neutron tomography sheds fresh light on 75 Asian treasures dating back millennia
Scientists say original artworks are 10 times more stimulating than reproductions
In the late 90s, a US performance artist began a joke campaign to make Donald Trump president
Masterpiece of the week
Portrait of a Woman by Anthony van Dyck, 1625–7
She looks at you with confidence and a dash of humour, her face perceptive over a lacy ruff collar that’s painted with spontaneity and freedom. This unknown woman is almost certainly a member of one of the wealthy families who dominated 17th-century Genoa in northern Italy. When we think of Anthony van Dyck’s portraits we picture long-haired English cavaliers, but before he worked for Charles I in London, this Antwerp-born artist journeyed to Italy. This portrait with its red background follows a grand style his friend Rubens had created when he worked in Genoa a few years earlier. Evidently the Genoese liked the way Rubens portrayed them so Van Dyck painted them in a similar way. The velvety, enclosed setting isolates this woman, allowing us to engage intimately and directly with her. She dominates the canvas and you feel you could speak with her. You might start by asking her name.
• National Gallery
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