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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jonathan Jones

Turner’s turn-ons and Freud’s family affair – the week in art

Turner: Nude Swiss Girl and a Companion on a Bed, (1802) in Between the Sheets at Turner’s House, London.
Turner: Nude Swiss Girl and a Companion on a Bed, (1802) in Between the Sheets at Turner’s House, London. Photograph: Tate Images

Exhibition of the week

Between the Sheets: Turner’s Nudes
JMW Turner is famous for landscapes but he also loved to paint erotica. His secret stash of sensuality gets an airing at the house he designed for himself near his beloved River Thames.
Turner’s House, London, from Saturday to 30 October

Also showing

Ingrid Pollard
Trenchant photographic investigations of landscape and history by one of the artists shortlisted for this autumn’s Turner prize.
Turner Contemporary, Margate, from Saturday to 25 September

Living with Ghosts
Shadows of slavery and empire are confronted in a group show that includes Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Torkwase Dyson and Bouchra Khalili.
Pace London, until 5 August

Daniel Silver
Expressionistic, brightly painted sculptures of the fragile human form.
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until 25 September

White Cube at Arley Hall
Artists from Jay Jopling’s gallery including Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans and Mona Hatoum turn up in the gardens of a stately home.
Arley Hall, Cheshire, until 29 August

Image of the week

Esther and Albie by Lucian Freud, 1995.
Esther and Albie by Lucian Freud, 1995. Photograph: Bridgeman Images

Lucian Freud’s paintings are on show until January at his famous grandfather’s house in London – including this one of the painter’s daughter feeding his grandson, with which which Sigmund Freud would no doubt have had a field day. Read our full review here.

What we learned

David Hockney has painted Harry Styles

Artist and sloganeer supreme Barbara Kruger spoke about Roe v Wade and other political battlegrounds

Video artists the Otolith group want to reprogramme your neural networks

Mhairi Killin’s new exhibition is about whales and the noise in the ocean

Uta Kögelsberger has made a video art disaster movie

An exhibition in New York is letting artists show their lighter sides

Architect Bas Smets has revealed his plans for rebuilding the area around Notre Dame cathedral

New York-based photographer Camila Falquez has been shooting community leaders the same way she shoots Lil Nas X and Zendaya

Early photography reveals life in late imperial Japan

Winold Reiss is an underappreciated figure in modern art

Just Stop Oil campaigners glued themselves to artworks in Britain’s major galleries

Masterpiece of the week

The Scale of Love by Jean-Antoine Watteau, c 1715-18

Jean-Antoine Watteau 1684 - 1721 The Scale of Love 1715-18 Oil on canvas 50.8 x 59.7 cm © The National Gallery, London

Turner was not the first artist to mix landscape and lust. It is a tradition that goes back at least to the Renaissance, when artists such as Titian and Correggio painted hedonist pastoral scenes. Here, the genius of French frippery Watteau creates a dreamy, softly yielding landscape where lovers linger in musical flirtation. Decorated with classical sculpture and full of shady nooks, the park is an unreal space crafted by and for Watteau’s amorous imagination.
The National Gallery, London

Don’t forget

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