Exhibition of the week<\/p>\n
Monument to the Unimportant Also showing<\/p>\n Lasting Impressions Humphrey Ocean Performing Trees William Nicholson Image of the weekPaula Rego\u2019s Scarecrow III, 2006. Photograph: \u00a9 Estate of Paula Rego. Courtesy Ostrich Arts Ltd and Cristea Roberts Gallery<\/p>\n When the great artist Paula Rego saw a shocking play by Martin McDonagh about the torture of children, she began an excitable correspondence with him and asked for more dark stories. He ransacked his bottom drawer to find them and it was these cruel tales which would go on to inspire some of her best works. Read the full story.<\/a><\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n A previously unknown Renoir painting has sold for \u20ac1.8m in Paris<\/a><\/p>\n Tate staff began a week-long strike over pay amid reports of workers using food banks<\/a><\/p>\n Turner-winning sculptor Tony Cragg is fine with selfie-takers<\/a><\/p>\n An exhibition in London will explore mental health and social bonds in \u2018polarised\u2019 times<\/a><\/p>\n Artists are going to great lengths to recreate rubbish<\/a><\/p>\n Three thrilling Caravaggio works raise a question: who was the artist\u2019s anarchic muse?<\/a><\/p>\n Tala Madani uses AI-generated robot children to critique how women giving birth are treated<\/a><\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Actor Frances McDormand put on an adult-sized cradle art project<\/a><\/p>\n Onyeka Igwe and Morgan Quaintance have jointly won the Jarman prize for artists working with moving images<\/a><\/p>\n Tom de Freston\u2019s paintings of his wife pregnant and nude helped the couple during an emotional journey<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the week<\/p>\n Still Life: A Goblet of Wine, Oysters and Lemons by Jan van de Velde, 1656<\/p>\n Photograph: piemags\/Alamy<\/p>\n The still life has attracted artists for thousands of years. Ancient Greek artists competed to paint the most accurate bunch of grapes and depictions of foodstuffs decorated houses in Pompeii. The genre was revived around 1600 by artists including Caravaggio and Jan Brueghel the Elder. By the time this was painted in 17th-century Amsterdam there was a flourishing market for pictures with no story, no symbolic meaning \u2013 just a finely focused attention to the yellow of lemon peel, the way light is held by a wine glass, the silvery glint of opened oyster shells. This humble arrangement of food and drink is actually a humblebrag: oysters may not have been so hard to come by in the sea-surrounded Netherlands but lemons were posh in northern Europe four centuries ago, and that\u2019s no common wine glass but a richly made, expensive one. So with quiet spiritual calm, a merchant might contemplate this image of passing pleasures and earthly wealth, and look forward to supper. 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
With the birth of modernism, artists turned their gaze from the heroic to the \u201cunimportant\u201d. This attention to the everyday continues, as Rachel Whiteread, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Gober and others demonstrate.
Pace Gallery, London, until 14 February<\/a><\/p>\n
A century of prints by women including Faith Ringgold, Laura Knight and K\u00e4the Kollwitz.
V&A, London, until 27 September<\/a><\/p>\n
Quietly haunting vistas of architecture by the former bassist of Kilburn and the High Roads.
Gainsborough\u2019s House, Suffolk, until 22 March<\/a><\/p>\n
The brilliant George Shaw features in this survey of arboreal imagery in art.
The Whitworth, Manchester, until 4 April 2027<\/a><\/p>\n
Paintings of the golden summer before 1914 by a notable British artist whose life straddled two centuries.
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until 10 May<\/a><\/p>\n
National Gallery, London<\/a><\/p>\n