by exhibition of the week
Deep grown souls Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South
The art of resistance in the former Confederate States uses all the lies lying in the backyard. Here, found objects and craft skills are used by artists from Thornton Dial to Gee’s Bend quilt makers to piece together a black vision of the South.
• Royal Academy, London, until June 18th
also show
rites of passage
Tell the Home Secretary! Migration is celebrated through this group exhibition, which includes Elsa James’ Ode to David Lammy MP and works by Patrick Quarm, Adelaide Damoah, Phoebe Boswell and others.
• Gagosian Britannia Street, London, until April 29th
Painted prints
Graphic artist Jimmy Merris uses deeply constructed color to create his funny-sad philosophical cartoons. Also with Liorah Tchiprout and the late Gillian Ayres.
• Marlborough Graphics, London, until April 22nd
A hard man is good to find!
An overview of 60 years of gay nude photography with Patrick Procktor, Cecil Beaton and Angus McBean.
• Photographers’ Gallery, London, until June 11th
Paradise found
Contemporary artists explore the Blackdown Hills, a popular landscape of the Camden Town Group more than a century ago. Is it still a “paradise”?
• Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Devon, from 18 March to 3 June
picture of the week
A Banksy mural has been torn down along with a derelict farmhouse in Herne Bay, Kent. An image of a boy with a cat opening the curtains to greet the day appeared on the side of the building just days before it was demolished. When the artist claimed the work after it was destroyed, both the property owner and the demolition contractors were reported “eviscerated.” Another Banksy recently caused controversy a few miles up the coast at Margate. It is hoped that both works can be recreated at the city’s Dreamland amusement park.
What we learned
Sculptor Phyllida Barlow, who died this week aged 78, had always made it big
LA cannabis boutique architecture is wild
A new tower in LA is a menacing cyberpunk creation
The brilliant ceramist Lucie Rie defied convention and the Nazis
Leonardo da Vinci was as attracted to the grotesque as he was to beauty
A Banksy mural was torn down along with a derelict farmhouse in Herne Bay
Artists in the UK public sector earn well below minimum wage
The Parthenon Marbles will not return to Greece anytime soon
Artists and footballers team up for the Manchester International Festival
Karolina Wojtas broke all the rules in her Polish school photos
The Gherkin may have been inspired by a Bond villain’s lair
Paddy Irishman adopts a racial stereotype
LA’s twisted new high-rise is a grotesque monument to its creator’s ego
masterpiece of the week
Rembrandt, Old Man and Child, c.1639-40
Rembrandt’s compassion and sensitivity inhabit the quickest lines and the simplest sketches. These drawings of an old man playing with a child effortlessly combine close observation, allegorical symbolism, and sheer insight into human existence. The man’s cane invites one to see it as a sign of youth and old age, a telling study of the effects of time – but any cool analysis is belied by the child’s irrepressible playfulness and the elderly companion’s evident delight in good humour. This was drawn nearly 400 years ago in a world very different from ours, but the everyday fun it depicts could be any family snap, yours or mine.
• British Museum, London
Do not forget
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