Photographic enigmas, chewing gum paintings and…

Photographic enigmas, chewing gum paintings and ice-skating clergy – the week in art

A detail from Salvador Dali by Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1999. Photograph: Hiroshi Sugimoto/© Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of the artist.

Exhibition of the week

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Eerie, captivating photographs of a stilled and silent world by this true artist of the camera.
• Hayward Gallery, London, 11 October to 7 January

Also showing

El Anatsui
One of Africa’s greatest living artists brings his redemptive eye to the Turbine Hall.
• Tate Modern, London, 10 October to 14 April

Frieze London and Frieze Masters
The art fair that for many defines the new in art – and its twin that celebrates the old.
• Regent’s Park, London, 11-15 October

Real Families
Tracey Emin, Lucian Freud and more in an exhibition that draws on social science to show how we live now.
• Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 7 January

Nengi Omuku
Big paintings of nature by this artist based in Lagos, who works not on canvas but a Nigerian fabric named sanyan.
• Hastings Contemporary from 7 October

Image of the week

A selection of chewing gum paintings created by artist Ben Wilson on discarded pieces of chewing gum that have been left on the Millennium bridge.

These chewing gum paintings, created by artist Ben Wilson on discarded pieces of chewing gum that have been left on the Millennium Bridge, are due to be removed this week as the bridge closes for engineering and cleaning work. The artist has made a plea for his work to be saved.

What we learned

The man who makes the smallest sculptures in the world uses eyelashes as paintbrushes

Ridykeulous’s new art show lives up to their name

Ecofeminism has evolved from anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common to ‘multiple clitoris’ art

It’s easier to connect with the past through early photographs when you add colour

London’s Design Museum is getting dolled up to exhibit the history of Barbie

The winners of the AOP awards included Marie Antoinette-inspired images of excess

Philip Guston’s cartoonish renderings can still cause controversy more than 40 years after his death

The National Gallery is to showcase a 17th-century Dutch master – that isn’t Rembrandt

Masterpiece of the week

Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Henry Raeburn, c1795

The Skating Minister, Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Sir Henry Raeburn, circa 1795.

It lifts your soul to see this joyful painting in Edinburgh’s National (as the Scottish National Gallery is now known) as this 18th century minister of the city’s Canongate Kirk seems to levitate and glide among less mobile canvases. Ice skating in art had never been so graceful before. In Dutch paintings, it’s more about thickly coated kids mucking about at ice fairs. But this was the Scottish Enlightenment, when reason was applied to everything from history to medicine by Edinburgh’s leading intellects. Walker seems to apply that same Enlightened spirit in his sport: he charms the wilds of nature and makes the harsh winter his friend.