Exhibition of the week
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
A blood-soaked blockbuster full of dragons, Vikings, magic … and some remarkable illuminated manuscripts.
• British Library, London, until 19 February.
Also showing
Edward Burne-Jones
The wan Arthurian visions of an artist often hailed as Britain’s great symbolist.
• Tate Britain, London, from 24 October until 24 February.
NOW
Monster Chetwynd is the focus of a front-line view of art at this very moment.
• Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, from 20 October until 28 April.
Michael Chance
Grotesque realist paintings by a young artist who channels Dix and Grosz to satirise money and power.
• Mercer Chance Gallery, London, until 28 October.
Richard Pousette-Dart
This softly introspective contemporary of Jackson Pollock reveals a lesser-known side to abstract expressionism.
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, from 23 October until 6 January.
Masterpiece of the week
The Lewis Chessmen
From the helpless king and his unhappy queen, who rests her head on her hand in a pose that symbolises melancholy, to their loyal knights and pious bishops, these masterpieces of early medieval art portray social types with fierce human accuracy. It is a portrait of the medieval feudal world carved by Scandinavians who, with their Viking heritage, could cast an outsider’s eye on this miniature ivory court and its army.
• British Museum, London.
Image of the week
The Republican Club
President Donald Trump shares a Diet Coke with previous Republican presidents in this celebrity montage by the American artist Andy Thomas. Best known for western and civil war scenes, Thomas also likes to imagine past leaders hanging out playing pool or playing cards. But he didn’t know Trump admired his work – until the painting was spotted hanging on a White House wall during a TV report on the CBS programme CBS 60 Minutes. Read the full story.
What we learned
The British Museum’s new gallery of Islamic art is a miraculous wonder
The biggest arts centre in the world has opened in Taiwan – and it’s epic
The invisible women of architecture are getting their own back
Edward Burne-Jones loved dashing off quirky sketches of everyday life
There’s more to the $450m Salvator Mundi mystery than meets the eye
Gothic creepiness lives again in Strawberry Hill
Alice Mann won the Taylor Wessing prize for her portraits of South African drum majorettes
Thomas Gainsborough captured the essence of celebrity – in 1785
Rembrandt’s Night Watch will be restored in public
All public art is political in America
… and San Francisco’s murals are being defaced with Trump Maga hats
The Mummy is the mother of all movie posters
Sex Pistols’ artist Jamie Reid is still a punk at heart
It’s red hot in Kate Ballis’s Infra Realist desert
New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana explained why she stole Captain Cook’s trousers
Stephen Shames saw Robert Kennedy in his final days
Photographer Edward Burtynsky sees environmental destruction on a huge scale
… while in Mali, sand digging is on a more human scale
Sophie Calle’s cat is singing to us from the grave
Prison artists have a thing to say about those profiting from their misery
Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam has been jailed for his exposures
Hellbenders and hummingbirds took the podium at the Wildlife photography awards
The Landscape photographer of the year competition offered stunning scene
Japanese photographers were there at their nation’s rebirth
David Goldblatt recorded racial strife in South Africa
In Victorian times, the Guardian believed in fairies
The National Portrait Gallery celebrates women
Banksy had intended to shred his work completely
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
Data protection laws have changed in the UK, under an initiative called GDPR. Make sure you continue to receive our email roundup of art and design news by confirming your wish here.
