Exhibition of the Week
Mona Hatoum
A welcome retrospective for this artist who makes the personal uncomfortably political and the familiar very strange indeed.
• Tate Modern, London, 4 May until 21 August.
Also showing
To Be Human
A survey of the existentialist moment in modern portraiture, with works by Auerbach, Freud, Giacometti and more.
• Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, until 26 June.
Graham Fagen
Drawings and site-specific works are brought together in a partial retrospective of this provocative Scottish artist, nicely entitled The Mighty Scheme.
• Dilston Grove Gallery, London, 5 May until 26 June.
Alberto Giacometti
Sombre modern sculpture comes to this on-campus art gallery in a complete survey of the revered Swiss artist.
• Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, until 29 August.
Ettore Spalletti
As cool and sophisticated as plunge in a swimming pool at a five-star hotel, Spalletti’s paintings have an invincible calm.
• Marian Goodman Gallery, London, until 4 June.
Masterpiece of the week
This is the most indulgent rococo confectionary ever painted. Nature becomes a boudoir and paint a refined machinery of titillation in Fragonard’s funny and sensual celebration of the eye. Fragonard provocatively equates art with sheer pleasure and uses his painterly genius in a self-consciously trivial way, to create a masterpiece of visual luxury.
• Wallace Collection, London.
Image of the week
What we learned
The tiny Bethlem Museum of the Mind is up against the V&A for Museum of the Year 2016
Grayson Perry, John Akomfrah and Tracy Chevalier champion their favourite
Wolfgang Tillmans has produced pro-Europe posters ahead of the EU referendum
National Gallery director Gabriele Finaldi can’t deny he is ‘strongly European’
Jenny Saville said she used to be anti-beauty ... before she became a mother
Polly Penrose strikes an awkward (naked) pose for women everywhere
Phyllida Barlow finds her late success an ‘out-of-body experience’
Anish Kapoor says Boris Johnson foisted Carsten Höller’s slide on his Orbit
Perhaps every British landmark would be improved by a slide
Maria Eichhorn has shut the Chisenhale gallery – and given staff the month off
Meanwhile Mark Fell is making art in a derelict pub in Sheffield
Pablo Bronstein is mixing Madonna and baroque at Tate Britain
The National Portrait Gallery is putting early black British life in the frame
All that glitters is embroidered as the V&A announce its big autumn show
Liverpool Biennial will revisit the day 10,000 children marched on the city
Alberto Giacometti and Yves Klein make for a provocative pairing at Gagosian
Bruce McClean considers himself a ‘sculptor who makes live work’
New Mona Lisa research suggests Da Vinci used both sexes as inspiration
Frieze art fair has struck a deal with a Hollywood talent agency
Zhang Kechun travelled the length of the Yellow river to capture these images
Meanwhile these photographers have found something sinister in landscapes
And finally, Lego says that refusing to sell bricks to Ai Weiwei was a mistake
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