Exhibition of the week
Emii Alrai: River of Black Stone
Sculptures and installations that respond to Compton Verney’s collection of paintings of Vesuvius, the volcano that buried Pompeii.
• Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 15 February to 15 June
Also showing
Goya to Impressionism
Fine paintings by titanic talents such as Cézanne and Manet but this show has no energy or purpose. Read the review here.
• Courtauld Gallery, London, until 26 May
Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture
A huge bouquet of floral imagery in contemporary art, from Elizabeth Blackadder to Yayoi Kusama.
• Saatchi Gallery, London, until 5 May
Artists’ Bookmarket
Weekend festival of the artist’s book, featuring Lydia Davies, David Faithfull and more.
• Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 15-16 February
Salt Cosmologies
Installation and exhibition by artist duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser) about the political economy of salt.
• Somerset House, London, 20 February to 27 April
Image of the week
In 1977, the punk band Buzzcocks released a single called Orgasm Addict, with a record sleeve as jolting as the song’s title. Linder Sterling, Manchester’s punk and dada genius, created the collage which depicted a lean and muscular, oiled-up naked woman with an iron for a head and smiling, lipsticked mouths for nipples. It was scary, sexy and shocking. Read more here.
What we learned
Surrealism’s ignored female artists are having a late boom in recognition
JMW Turner believed in the redemptive power of landscape art
Henri Matisse’s favourite model was his illegitimate daughter, Marguerite
Thousands of artists have called for an AI art auction to be cancelled
A beautiful retrospective of LA painter Noah Davis is a revelation
Henri Michaux produced addictive wonders of abstract art
Overlooked artist Linder thinks flowers are “nature’s pornography”
Masterpiece of the week
Dr Forlenze by Jacques-Antoine Vallin, 1807
A Paris-based surgeon shows off his Neapolitan roots in this flamboyant portrait from the age of Napoleon. Dr Forlenze was a living embodiment of Napoleon’s belief in the “career open to the talents”: his pioneering work in eye surgery, including on French soldiers with illnesses they got during Napoleon’s Egypt campaign, won him recognition by the Emperor. Here he wears his recently awarded Légion d’honneur. But the aloof figure before us is even prouder of his origins in southern Italy, as he expresses by standing in the harbour of Naples with the terrific, smoking, sublime volcano Vesuvius behind him.
• National Gallery, London
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