Exhibition of the week
Gavin Jantjes: To Be Free!
A retrospective of the South African artist who has spent much of his life in Britain, originally as a political exile in the apartheid era.
Whitechapel Gallery, London, from 12 June until 1 September
Also showing
Zanele Muholi
Welcome restaging of a pandemic-hit show by the acclaimed photographer of South Africa’s LGBTQ+ community, with new works added.
Tate Modern, London, until 26 January
Keith Haring: Subway Drawings
The beat goes on as Haring’s brilliant early drawings in the New York subway are celebrated.
The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until 5 September
Charles Lutyens
Insights into illness and the self by an expressive artist who worked as an art therapist.
Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Beckenham, from 8 June until 31 August
Leilah Babirye: Obumu (Unity)
Striking new works hewn from trees that have lived and died in Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 8 September
Image of the week
Morgan Otagburuagu’s striking, experimental imagery celebrates the strength of the Black body and the iridescent beauty of Black skin. The Lagos-based artist, who is a master of light, is just one of the photographers on display at Photo Basel this year. See the full gallery.
What we learned
A dazzling new Degas show trains a light on Black women and modernity
Boscoe and Geoffrey Holder’s paintings broke new ground depicting Black beauty
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, whose work mixed camp and melancholy, has died aged 78
Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône returned to Arles after 136 years
Tate director Maria Balshaw explained why she ‘still comes into work feeling terrified’
Alvaro Barrington traced his path from a “little shack” to Tate’s Duveen Galleries
Gavin Jantjes said UK galleries used ‘stopgaps’ to diversify after Black Lives Matter
Turner prize nominee Delaine Le Bas is battling Romany discrimination
Greece won an unlikely ally in its campaign to retrieve the Parthenon marbles
The French artist Ben, known for his ironic painted slogans, died aged 88, hours after wife’s death
Masterpiece of the week
The Transfiguration by Duccio, 1307 to 1311
This painting’s mystical mood is more complex than it seems. It is instantly moving and powerful: you feel an inner calm when looking at it, as if you’d entered a silent chapel or mood-altering art installation. But why? Duccio is clearly influenced by Byzantine icons in his heavenly use of gold. Yet he also has a new, subtle sense of space. Earlier medieval paintings don’t have any feeling of depth at all: figures are lined up in a flat mess. Here, by contrast, the rock on which Christ and his disciples stand is painted with the rudiments of perspective. They consequently seem to be spread out in a real place, even if they do float off the ground a bit. This poetic ambiguity, at once physically rooted and spiritually suggestive, is what makes the art of medieval Siena, where Duccio worked, so hauntingly beautiful.
National Gallery, London
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