Exhibition of the week
Maria Prymachenko
This beloved folk artist has become a symbol of Ukraine’s struggle for freedom and survival. Her intensely coloured, mythic images miraculously defied Stalinist censorship and now inspire her country to resist Putin.
• Saatchi Gallery, London, until 31 August.
Also showing
Raphael’s Tondo
Decide for yourself if AI is right to designate the De Brécy Tondo an authentic Raphael, or if it is just a Victorian pastiche of his great Sistine Madonna.
• Cartwright Hall Gallery, Bradford, until 17 September.
Oren Pinhassi: False Alarm
Mysterious totemic sculptures with echoes of Timbuktu’s mosques and Brâncuși’s abstract art.
• Mostyn, Llandudno, until 7 October.
Wakefield Sculpture Trail
A new trail of public art, including pieces by Andy Holden and Annie Morris.
• At sites across Wakefield.
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art
The great medieval artist Simone Martini stars in a relaunch of this museum’s excellent pre-modern collection.
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, from 29 July.
Image of the week
“Hong Kong often comes across as an international tourist capital,” says Wong Chung-Wai, “but I’ve downplayed its stereotypical image to rediscover my internal landscape.” The photographer, like many Hongkongers, decided to leave the city after China introduced the national security law in June 2020, which has triggered continuous crackdowns and threatened civil liberties in the former British colony. His haunting work, showing emptiness and intimacy in a half-hidden city, is a farewell letter to Hong Kong. See more here.
What we learned
Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme inadvertently helped birth Britpop
A dazzling Dutch masterpiece made its first public appearance
Grayson Perry failed to land his latest satirical punch
Looted artefacts were found in a Met trustee’s home
Alan Turing may soon take his place on the fourth plinth
Eve Arnold knew it was hard work being Marilyn Monroe
The Marquis de Sade was not for the faint-hearted
Climate crisis artists are aiming for optimism
Masterpiece of the week
Basin, made by a follower of Bernard Palissy, late 1500s to early 1600s
A dark green snake slithers across the bottom of this brilliantly decorated Renaissance ceramic bowl. Other hyperreal imitations of nature add to the slimy fun: fish and shells, crawling crustaceans, a frog, fern fronds and leaves all set in a blue aquatic evocation of seas and rivers. It is in the style of Bernard Palissy, who devised a way of replicating nature through life casting. Yet the vision that proliferates on this fantastical banquet basin is not as scientific as it may seem. Why does it recreate a riverbank, where you might find the frog and snake, while also featuring shellfish, from the sea? That’s because in medieval and Renaissance thought, “water” is one of the four elements that constitute the world. Everything that belongs to water is connected, so deep-sea creatures and riverbank reptiles belong together: thus, another work of art that mixes fresh and saltwater inhabitants is Arcimboldo’s 1566 painting Water from his series The Elements. This sophisticated ceramic artwork is a magical meeting place of ancient and modern views of nature.
• Wallace Collection, London
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