Exhibition of the week<\/p>\n
Seurat and the Sea Also showing<\/p>\n Delaine Le Bas: Un-Fair-Ground Yinka Shonibare Sean Scully Jamie Mills: A Firework for Vincent Image of the weekHousing in Ivry-sur-Seine designed by Ren\u00e9e Gailhoustet. Photograph: Sacha Trouiller \/ NVBL Architects<\/p>\n The French architect Ren\u00e9e Gailhoustet, who once had her nose broken by Jean-Marie Le Pen, created eco-brutalist apartment blocks with cascading terraces that seemed to have surrendered to nature. They are still loved by their residents and when she died in 2023, the residents of Le Li\u00e9gat, a social housing block she completed in 1982, put up a large handmade sign saying: \u201cMerci Ren\u00e9e.\u201d There is an exhibition dedicated to her on now in London. Read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n A court battle over a Picasso painting exposed the offshore finances of Farage\u2019s billionaire Davos sponsor<\/a><\/p>\n Ai Weiwei had no fear in going back to China on a momentous trip to see his mother<\/a><\/p>\n Cherie Blair didn\u2019t model for long for exhausting artist Euan Uglow<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cOnly women can paint great female nudes\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n AI has cast doubt on who painted two works attributed to Jan van Eyck<\/a><\/p>\n Plans for a grandiose \u201cArc de Trump\u201d in Washington were said to \u201cgo full Roman\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The Grade II-listing of London\u2019s Southbank Centre vindicates a brutalist glory<\/a><\/p>\n Lucian Freud\u2019s paintings are as brilliant as his drawings are terrible<\/a><\/p>\n A Rembrandt lion drawing raised $18m for big cat conservation<\/a><\/p>\n The \u201cLowry effect\u201d is rejuvenating Salford and Manchester<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the week<\/p>\n A Caprice With a Ruined Arch by Francesco Guardi, c.1775<\/p>\n Photograph: The National Gallery, London<\/p>\n Why are ruins fascinating? Everything and everyone becomes a ruin eventually. Entropy, the tendency of order to decay into chaos, is a fact of physics as well as everyday experience. But in the past, as now, the shiny and new was often valued above the timeworn: old churches were destroyed in the Renaissance, for instance, to make way for bigger, \u201cbetter\u201d ones. This painting shows how in the 18th century that attitude was turned upside down. For the first time, broken old buildings were cherished as atmospheric, picturesque wonders. Guardi is so in love with ruins that he invents one, imagining a crumbled, partly collapsed medieval abbey or palace against a blue Italian sky. When was it built, who lived here? He invites you to imagine this architecture\u2019s glorious past while savouring the melancholy beauty of its present. Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get in touch<\/p>\n
If you thought French 19th-century paintings of the seaside were all happy impressionism, you will be disconcerted, then absorbed by Seurat\u2019s eerie modernist shores. Read the review<\/a>.
Courtauld Gallery, London, until 17 May<\/a><\/p>\n
A mural made for Glastonbury is at the heart of this artist\u2019s folkloric vision of Britain today.
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until 31 May<\/a><\/p>\n
With irony and wit, Shonibare spans global history and puts empire in its place.
The Arc, Winchester, from 14 February to 3 June<\/a><\/p>\n
Photographs of Ireland\u2019s mysterious landscapes reveal a secret source of Scully\u2019s abstract art.
Lisson Gallery, London, from 18 February to 9 May<\/a><\/p>\n
Sculptures that evoke both Robert Rauschenberg and the Cornish landscape.
Anima Mundi, St Ives, until 22 March<\/a><\/p>\n
National Gallery, London<\/a><\/p>\n