Exhibition of the week
Judy Chicago: Revelations
An illuminated manuscript that Chicago started in the 1970s and is only now being published reveals the thinking behind her renowned work The Dinner Party.
• Serpentine North, London, 23 May to 1 September
Also showing
Fragile Beauty
Photographs from the collection of Elton John and David Furnish range from 1950s jazz portraits to eerie reportage of 9/11.
• V&A, London, 18 May to 5 January
The Vinyl Factory – Reverb
This huge immersive exhibition of sound and art should set your eardrums popping.
• 180 Studios, Strand, London, 23 May to 28 September
Sunlight: Roger Ackling
Survey of a pioneering British artist who made sculpture in and of the land.
• Norwich Castle and Museum, 18 May to 22 September
Anne Desmet: Kaleidoscope/London
Abstract and intricate woodcuts that reflect on contemporary matters including climate change.
• Guildhall Art Gallery, London, until 8 September
Image of the week
The Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, Norway – ‘an incredible phallic landmark!’ according to the ‘trillion dollar man’ Nicolae Tangen, head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, who co-funded the gallery, once a grain silo. “We walked around town thinking, ‘Where would be nice to have our museum?’,” Tangen adds. “Then there it was.” Read the full story here.
What we learned
A Leonora Carrington painting sold for £22.5m in record for UK-born female artist
South African artist Lebohang Kganye has won the Deutsche Börse photography prize
Many spectacular buildings were never made
Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of Charles III is formulaic flattery
The London show Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain is seismic
Palestinian artist Maisara Baroud does a Gaza drawing every day
Francis Bacon loathed his art dealers
There’s still no plan to restore Glasgow’s burnt-out School of Art
Tate Britain has acquired its first painting by pioneering artist Louise Jopling
Masterpiece of the week
The Virgin and Child with Saint John by Bernardino Luini, probably late 1510s
This painting shows how Leonardo da Vinci electrified and obsessed people in his lifetime, just as he grabs us today. It is a frank imitation of his style and imagery. Luini was based in Milan, where Leonardo worked for years, and must have looked long at the paintings of the Tuscan genius. This scene is a pastiche of Leonardo’s compositions of Mary with Jesus and the young John the Baptist. It even includes a depiction of rock strata inspired by Leonardo: yet Luini probably didn’t know that Leonardo’s images of geology grew out of detailed, highly subversive research into fossils and the history of the Earth. He reduces Leonardo’s true strangeness to a more conventional Christian art. Could Luini, as has been claimed, be the real painter of the record-breaking religious icon Salvator Mundi?
• National Gallery, London
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