Exhibition of the Week<\/p>\n
Lucian Freud: Drawing Into Painting Also showing<\/p>\n Gwen John: Strange Beauties Lynda Benglis and Giacometti Vincent Hawkins Origin Stories Image of the week Photograph: Charmaine Watkiss<\/p>\n The artist Charmaine Watkiss explained to the Guardian how she has explored the botanical links connecting the Caribbean, the UK and the African continent in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. \u201cWhile in my studio, I thought: all this knowledge must have travelled with the enslaved.\u201d This led her to illustrated portraits depicting women of African descent alongside medicinal plants, evoking the herbal knowledge they drew on to survive. Read the full interview<\/a><\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n Gabrielle Goliath sued South Africa\u2019s arts minister for banning her Venice Biennale show<\/a><\/p>\n An angel that looked like the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was removed from a church fresco in Rome after an uproar<\/a><\/p>\n Artists including Marina Abramovi\u0107 are filling Kerala\u2019s Fort Cochin for its biennale<\/a><\/p>\n Artist Sarah Sze explained how she makes work that \u2018unravels over time\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Writer Daisy Lafarge described how acute pain made her take up painting<\/a><\/p>\n A new show looked at the many ways the human body has been captured on film<\/a><\/p>\n A painting imagining Donald Trump conducting an orchestra got a lot wrong<\/a><\/p>\n Ovid\u2019s unsettling Metamorphoses informed a wide-ranging show at the Rijksmuseum<\/a><\/p>\n Claire Tabouret\u2019s stained-glass windows cast Notre Dame in a new light<\/a><\/p>\n A hidden detail found in an Anne Boleyn portrait was a \u2018witchcraft rebuttal\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the week<\/p>\n Portrait of a Man (Self-Portrait?) by Jan van Eyck, 1433<\/p>\n Photograph: \u00a9 The National Gallery, London<\/p>\n His eyes gaze at the world with cool, calm openness, as if every object, every colour and shade of light, pours into those moist orbs and is preserved. The keenness of these two perceptual windows is one reason to believe this really is the self-portrait of the artist who put observation at the centre of painting for the first time in history. No one before had ever painted real faces with the clarity Van Eyck here gives his own. We see not only his lucid eyes but the wrinkles under them, together with the stubble on his chin, flare of his nostril, a shadow under his nose, the pursed lips \u2013 all these stark fleshy facts decorated and set off by the magical red swathing of his extravagant headdress that proclaims pride in his success and fame. Van Eyck even adds a motto, \u201cAs I can\u201d, and in an age when artists rarely signed their works he does so with bold emphasis: \u201cJan van Eyck made me on 21st October 1433.\u201d That\u2019s nearly 600 years ago. But he is in your moment, now, alive with you, when you look into those eyes. 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
Dig deep into the vision of this great artist with an exhibition that follows his portrait process from paper to canvas.
National Portrait Gallery, London, from 12 February to 4 May<\/a><\/p>\n
One of the most original and authentic British artists of the early 20th century brings it all back home to her native Wales. Read the review<\/a>.
National Museum Cardiff, from 7 February to 28 June<\/a><\/p>\n
The artist who subverted minimalism with floppy molten slumping artworks takes on Giacometti.
Barbican, London, from 12 February to 31 May<\/a><\/p>\n
Make like Madonna<\/a> and go to the Kent coast to catch this show of expressive paintings by Margate-based Hawkins.
Tracey Emin Foundation, Margate, from 7 February to 29 March<\/a><\/p>\n
The story of art schools in Scotland since 1826, the year the Royal Scottish Academy was founded.
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until 8 March<\/a><\/p>\n
National Gallery, London<\/a><\/p>\n