Exhibition of the week
Jesse Darling
Sprawling multifarious installations that mock social structures and systems of power.
• Modern Art Oxford from Saturday until 1 May
Also showing
Damien Hirst
The latest episode in Hirst’s year-long takeover of Gagosian’s gallery near King’s Cross brings together the animal vitrines that made him famous.
• Gagosian Britannia Street, London, from 10 March
AR Penck
Expressionist cartoon paintings by an artist who escaped East Germany and found fame in the west.
• White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, 9 March to 14 April
Lubaina Himid
New paintings by the Turner Prize winner that explore the nature of time.
• Hollybush Gardens, London, until 14 April
Virtual Veronese
An experiment in bringing the lost contexts of Renaissance art to life in VR, if you’re sick of just seeing paintings in the National Gallery.
• National Gallery, London, 7 March to 3 April
Image of the week
See main image above. My Robben Island, five signed artworks Nelson Mandela made after his imprisonment there, will be made available as a limited run of NFTs next week, along with a handwritten text that explains Mandela’s visualisation of the harsh island prison. They will be sold over a six-hour period on 9 March, at $3,495 (£2,620) for the collection, or $699 (£525) for an individual work. There is no set number for sale, although there is an upper limit of 10,000. “However many are sold in that six-hour window is the edition,” said Bonhams’ Giles Peppiatt.
What we learned
Unseen photographs and paintings of JRR Tolkien were released on a significant date
The Postwar Modern show at the Barbican is crammed with surprises and delights
Concerts, dance recitals and exhibitions by Russians are being cancelled worldwide
Architectural icon the Barbican turns 40 this month
There are fears the entire Lismore art gallery collection may have been lost during flooding
Much-loved author and illustrator Shirley Hughes died – we looked back at her work in pictures
Donatello bronzes have been moved from the churches where he installed them 600 years ago for a ground-breaking exhibition
Eerie photographs were recovered from an 1857 shipwreck
Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan has turned her despair into beauty
Masterpiece of the week
Portrait of a Young Man by Andrea del Sarto, 1517-18
Books are symbols of the inner life. They make you look serious and thoughtful. But this youth is not just a poseur in a bookshop. He seems genuinely engrossed in the volume he’s reading and annoyed to be disturbed. There’s a different kind of passion in his gaze, too. The person who has come in the room matters to him. He reluctantly tears himself out of his reading into his immediate surroundings and relationships. To create this subtle psychological moment Andrea del Sarto shows him from the side, with a fine silk sleeve towards us, turning his head as if suddenly. It’s not just a portrait but a piece of silent theatre that leaves you guessing who he is, what he was reading – and who he holds in those intense eyes.
• National Gallery, London
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