Exhibition of the week<\/p>\n
In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World Also showing<\/p>\n Alexis Ralaivao Beneath the Great Wave Seth Price Swords of Lucknow Image of the week Photograph: Baiba Sprance<\/p>\n Performance artist zack mennell waded into British waterways to highlight sewage pollution and the way benefit claimants are labelled as a drain on society. \u201cOK,\u201d mennell thought, \u201cI\u2019m going to be the parasite.\u201d But their taking on of pollution was more literal than they intended; they contracted Weil\u2019s disease from rat urine in the water. Read the full article<\/a>.<\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n World heritage sites in Iran have been damaged by US-Israeli bombing<\/a><\/p>\n The European Commission will cut funding for Venice Biennale if Russia is included<\/a><\/p>\n The Deutsche B\u00f6rse photography prize ranges from real prison life to invented facts<\/a><\/p>\n A new show of the great British painter of animals George Stubbs\u2019s art is far too small<\/a><\/p>\n The V&A\u2019s redesigned Gilbert Galleries present a complicated legacy<\/a><\/p>\n David Hockney\u2019s 90-metre vision of nature only looks great on your phone<\/a><\/p>\n Painter Harold \u2018the Kangaroo\u2019 Thornton had an extraordinary, forgotten life<\/a><\/p>\n Politics is everywhere at the Sydney Biennale \u2013 but with nuance, beauty and heart<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the week<\/p>\n A Bowl of Flowers by Marie Blancour, 1650s<\/p>\n Photograph: \u00a9 The National Gallery, London<\/p>\n This painting is signed by Marie Blancour, a 17th-century French woman\u2013 and it is her only known work. She was obviously talented. Tulips, a daffodil, a poppy and other blooms curl and twist in flamboyant flowing sail-like sheets of colour, delivering intense hits of yellow, red and the tulips\u2019 richly variegated white and pink. Nature itself seems to sign up to the baroque style here, with its spectacular curvaceous theatre of billowing form and bright colour that flourished throughout Europe and beyond in the 1600s and early 1700s. So on the small apparently modest scale of a flower arrangement, this artist is exploring big bold aesthetic ideas with a blazing paintbrush. Who was she? What happened to her other works? And why is this rare painting by an early modern female artist not currently on display at the National Gallery? 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
Lovely flower paintings to herald the spring, but all is not what it seems in this survey of how science, trade and tulip crazes helped shape the modern world.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 19 March to 16 August<\/a><\/p>\n
Paintings that hover provocatively between abstraction and fleshy erotica.
Pilar Corrias, London, until 23 May<\/a><\/p>\n
Hokusai and Hiroshige get the Turner and Constable treatment in this look at two print masters.
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, from 14 March to 15 November<\/a><\/p>\n
Cave paintings, Renaissance art and the digital revolution are among the themes of this video installation.
Sadie Coles HQ, London, from 17 March to 2 May<\/a><\/p>\n
Last chance to see this exhibition of shimmering 18th and 19th-century blades from Lucknow\u2019s court.
Wallace Collection, London, until 22 March<\/a><\/p>\n
National Gallery, London<\/a><\/p>\n