The power of Auerbach, the perils of Venice and seaside pleasures from Martin Parr – the week in art

Frank Auerbach’s Bacchus and Ariadne, showing at Newlands House in West Sussex. Photograph: Auerbach, Frank/Tate/Tate Images

Exhibition of the week

Frank Auerbach: Unseen
One of the most powerful painters of modern times gets a survey of his work so far.
• Newlands House Gallery, Petworth, from 2 April

Also showing

The Grand Canal, Ascension Day: The embarkation of the Doge of Venice for the Ceremony of the Marriage of the Adriatic … from the Woburn Abbey Canaletto collection at the National Maritime Museum, London. Photograph: Woburn Abbey Collection

Canaletto’s Venice Revisited
Twenty four views of 18th-century Venice reveal its decay even then, while a final section brings the city’s peril up to date.
• National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, until 25 September

Inspiring Walt Disney
How the exquisite objects of 18th-century France fuelled the films of Disney. If talking teapots are your thing.
• Wallace Collection, London, 6 April to 16 October

Parr’s eye view … Martin Parr at Giant Gallery. Photograph: Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

Martin Parr: Life’s a Beach
Inimitably tacky and compassionate photos of British beach life, showing at a seaside gallery.
• Giant Gallery, Bournemouth, 2 April to 26 June

The Wig
Gianmaria Andreetta, Megan Plunkett, Richard Sides, Jason Hirata and Angharad Williams in a group show with a great name and a thesis about postmodern artifice.
• Mostyn, Llandudno, until 12 June

Image of the week

From Love & Justice by Laetitia Ky Photograph: Laetitia Ky

Ivory Coast-born artist Laetitia Ky links hair extensions to her own natural fro and then moulds both into shapes, sometimes using wires and glue. Her extraordinary sculptures – towering growths of coils and curls – tackle taboos. She talked about how learning to love her natural hair taught her to love being a black woman – and western criticism of her work. Her book Love and Justice: A Journey of Empowerment, Activism, and Embracing Black Beauty (Princeton Architectural Press, £19.99), is published on 5 April. Read the interview here.

What we learned

Barbara Walker continues to foreground Black figures in classical art

Australia’s Indigenous art triennial celebrates Aboriginal knowledge in “the heartland of whitefella sacred ground”

The British Museum is facing legal action over its refusal to allow 3D scanning of a Parthenon marbles piece

Trinidad-born textile artist Althea McNish made Britain bloom in the 1950s and 60s

William Morris’s Cotswold home has been restored to its former glory …

… but Britain in is thrall to the wrecking ball

Joel Meyerowitz’s seminal Redheads photo book has been reissued with new images

Anna Neubauer’s best photograph is a kiss

The Oxford house with shark sculpture on the roof is now a heritage site

Masterpiece of the week

The Deposition by Ugolino di Nerio, 1325–28
This is one of the most moving and upsetting scenes in the art of Christianity. The gentle lowering of the dead Christ from the cross would be painted with poetry and ingenuity by Rogier van der Weyden, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Rubens and many more, down the centuries. But here it is plainly told in a work from before the Black Death. The near-naked dead man seems almost to respond to his mother Mary kissing him. The red-robed Magdalene meanwhile caresses his arm. In a distressing realistic detail, giant pincers are used to pull out the nail that pinions his feet. These acutely human encounters by the cross helped to make the story immediate to everyone. They still do, if you let your emotions respond to this painting’s agony.
• National Gallery, London

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