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Exhibition of the week
Jon Rafman: Nine Eyes of Google Street View
Images appropriated from Google Street View give an eerily intimate and creepily intrusive vision of life on Earth.
• Sprüth Magers online until 25 July.
Also showing
Annie Leibovitz
Photographs of a still, silent quarantine experience that are being sold to support causes including Black Lives Matter.
• Hauser and Wirth online.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Best man at Luther’s wedding, witch-burning magistrate and painter of sinful nudes – Cranach stood at the strange heart of the German Renaissance. You can visit online and, later in the summer, in person – extended to the end of the year.
• Compton Verney, Warwickshire until 31 December.
Helmut Newton
If you are in the Sussex countryside seek out this unlikely retrospective of the photographer who was Cranach’s kinky heir, now open by appointment.
• Newlands House, Petworth, West Sussex until 30 August.
A Creepy Crawl through the Collection
With schools far from fully reopened, art can be an educator, and this online exploration of insects in art is a nice introduction for children to the National Gallery’s more curious treasures. Fun for grownups too.
• National Gallery, London.
Image of the week
Queen II first-class stamp, 2020
A different queen is about to appear on British stamps – the rock group Queen, that is. The latest special edition from Royal Mail celebrates the phenomenally successful rock group with a series depicting album covers and live shots. Only two other bands have previously had this honour: the Beatles and Pink Floyd.
What we learned
In our Black British culture special, artists across generations discussed their experiences of how racism affects their work …
… read architects Elsie Owusu and Shawn Adams on the ‘concrete ceiling’
… and Michaela Yearwood-Dan and Mary Evans on art world discrimination
Spain’s latest botched art restoration drew condemnation from professionals
The National Gallery led the way with plans to reopen after lockdown
Coronavirus claimed this year’s Glastonbury but the V&A offered a seven-day online celebration of the festival
Sculptures honouring the Windrush generation will be unveiled in London in 2021
How lock-up garages became a fashion startup hub in Poplar
Elliot Caunce looked for hermits in Scotland
Alicia Canter explored maternity in lockdown
Former slave Bill Traylor’s artistic legacy is under threat from forgers
A Nigerian scholar has called for a halt to auction of sacred Igbo artworks
We enjoyed previously unpublished shots by Japanese photographer Issei Suda
Prix Pictet-shortlisted photographer Alexia Webster examined her family legacy
A new book documented the demolished, abandoned and damaged buildings of Cairo
Photographers sold rare prints of musicians including Jagger and Lady Gaga to support the industry during the Covid-19 crisis
Our great British art quiz came from Bradford, Scarborough, Perth, the National Army Museum and Carmarthenshire
Li Zhensheng, photographer of China’s Cultural Revolution, has died
And we remembered architect Stephen Marks
Masterpiece of the week
Max Ernst, The Joy of Life, 1936
Adolf Hitler was in power, the Spanish civil war was starting – and while other artists were politically engaged, the German surrealist Max Ernst was painting this dreamy garden. But look again. A monstrous mantis crawls towards the figures caught in the undergrowth. This is the Garden of Eden gone mad, a paradise become hellish. Even the colour green, so symbolic of life, can be nauseating when it runs riot. Ernst has delved into the fetid psyche of Europe in the age of the dictators and seen the unhealthy garden of the modern mind.
• National Galleries of Scotland
Don’t forget
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