Exhibition of the week<\/p>\n
British Landscapes: A Sense of Place Also showing<\/p>\n Lisa Ivory Jack White Delaine Le Bas Wendy McMurdo Image of the week Photograph: \u00a9 Steven Shearer Courtesy the artist, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, and David Zwirner<\/p>\n Reclusive Canadian painter Steven Shearer usually prefers his work \u2013 such as Tokerman shown here \u2013 to do the talking. Nevertheless, our writer managed to get him to open up<\/a> about how his paintings conjure art history through the lens of adolescent ennui and coming-of-age alienation.<\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n T Venkanna paints joyous carnivals of copulation<\/a><\/p>\n The British abstract painter Tess Jaray has died at the age of 88<\/a><\/p>\n A new artwork will transform preserved wood from the felled Sycamore Gap tree into a \u201cliving archive\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Phyllida Barlow has disrupted a stately home<\/a><\/p>\n Two artists auctioned their works to fund a renewables power plant in Nigel Farage\u2019s Essex seat<\/a><\/p>\n A fraudster trying to sell fake ancient statues to Sotheby\u2019s was foiled over bogus invoices<\/a><\/p>\n Photographer Lee Friedlander could turn \u201cany scrap of junk into a lavish puzzle\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n A Leonora Carrington painting made in a psychiatric hospital is on show for the first time<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the week<\/p>\n Portrait of a Poet by Palma Vecchio, about 1516<\/p>\n Photograph: Heritage Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n He\u2019s elegant, he\u2019s sensitive and he appears to have a laurel tree growing out of his head. That arboreal sprouting surely symbolises that the sitter was a poet, or wanted to be portrayed as one, for the sharp dark green leaves of the laurel were saturated in poetic associations in Renaissance Italy. In the 14th century the revolutionary love poet Petrarch, who put inner feeling at the heart of the budding Renaissance, dedicated his many sonnets to a woman he calls Laura, knowingly playing on her name and on the ancient myth in which the god Apollo pursued a woman who escaped by becoming a laurel tree. Petrarch\u2019s Laura may or may not have been real, but he sowed the connection of laurels, love and poetry into a new vernacular Italian culture, even being crowned as Rome\u2019s poet laureate. In the 15th century the poet and politician Lorenzo de\u2019 Medici proudly played on his own laurel-like name. But who is this poetic soul? Laurels and sonnets were the food of love, so perhaps Palma Vecchio is celebrating this man\u2019s lyrical passion rather than portraying a particularly famous versifier. 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
The romance and mystery of Britain\u2019s green and pleasant land, as captured by artists from Gainsborough to Hepworth.
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, from 30 May to 1 November<\/a><\/p>\n
Creepy gothic paintings with skeletons and nudes in shadowy landscapes that evoke the history of art, darkly.
Gramercy Park Studios, London, until 26 June<\/a><\/p>\n
Is the Detroit-born musician and, er, upholsterer also a good artist? Damien Hirst\u2019s gallery says yes.
Newport Street Gallery, London, until 13 September<\/a><\/p>\n
Mystical new artworks including pieces made in glass at Venice\u2019s Murano workshops.
Maureen Paley Gallery, London, from 4 June<\/a><\/p>\n
Portraits that play on the border between reality and digital fantasy in a 30-year survey of this Scottish artist\u2019s work.
Portrait, Edinburgh, from 30 May to 25 October<\/a><\/p>\n
National Gallery, London<\/a><\/p>\n