Exhibition of the week
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall and Amy Sherald are among the artists in this survey of Black identity in painting.
National Portrait Gallery, London, until 19 May
Also showing
William Blake’s Universe
Enter the intense world of Blake and his fellow romantic artists, including Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 19 May
Jemimah Stehli: Happenstance
Splashy abstract expressionist-like paintings by an artist best known for her subversive photographic work.
Marlborough London, until 23 March
Do Ho Suh
Retrospective of this Korean-born, London-based artist’s poetic drawings and sculptures.
Modern One, Edinburgh, until 1 September
Accordion Fields
Group show by painters including Tim Stoner, Pam Evelyn and Dexter Dalwood.
Lisson Gallery, London, until 4 May
Image of the week
The trickiest part of the job for Italian restorer Eleonora Pucci is capturing the dust and spiders’ webs that lurk in David’s curls. The cleaning of Michelangelo’s statue at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence takes at least half a day and has been compared to cleaning a bathroom by the gallery’s director.
What we learned
An oversized herd of animal puppets is planning to walk 20,000km
One of Francis Bacon’s most emotive paintings is going on sale
David Hockney and other artists have picked their favourite paintings
Yoko Ono’s Tate Modern retrospective is huge, moving and full of surprises
Frederic Leighton’s clever, titillating Flaming June is visiting the UK from Puerto Rico
A sweet potato and a black cat are vying for a place on London’s fourth plinth
Zineb Sedira’s installations lead viewers through cinematic classics
Prism, a three-part film essay, turns the camera on race, colour and imperialism
A new John Singer Sargent show reduces his portraits to facts about hats and frocks
A tunnel 150m below the Atlantic boasts a six-mile-long art installation
Masterpiece of the week
The Skiff by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1875
Two women go boating on the Seine in a shimmering weightless utopia of light. Every brushstroke unleashes a different mix of gold, silver, green and blue in this amazingly dappled and variegated painting. Renoir raises a very ordinary scene of modern leisure to something sublime. Reality is consummately depicted yet seems to blaze with Arcadian majesty. Messing about on the river has rarely been so charged and poetic. The impressionist movement included women as artists, most brilliantly Berthe Morisot, and also in paintings as the autonomous subjects we see here, having fun without men.
National Gallery, London
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