Exhibition of the week
New Contemporaries
Find out how artists at the start of their careers are seeing the world, and maybe spot stars of the future.
ICA, London, 15 January-23 March
Also showing
In Attendance: Paying Attention in a Fragile World
Rachel Kneebone, Paula Rego and Phyllida Barlow are among the artists in this exhibition at the location of King Charles’s Christmas broadcast.
Fitzrovia Chapel, London, until 9 February
Breaking Lines: Futurism and the Origins of Experimental Poetry
The radical poetic innovations of the Italian futurist movement and their influence on later concrete poetry.
Estorick Collection, London, 15 January-11 May
Lydia Wood: Locals
Wood shows 100 drawings from her ongoing project to portray every pub in London.
Gerald Moore Gallery, London, until 15 February
Karen McLean
In her installation Stitching Souls, McLean remembers the enslaved Africans murdered on Liverpool ship the Zong in 1781.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, until 2 March
Image of the week
This sculpture, The Blanket by Ukrainian-Dutch artist Maria Vashchuk, is about the Russian bomb attacks on her home country, after which Ukrainian child casualties’ bodies are covered in colourful blankets. It is lent further resonance by its unique setting in the artist’s adoptive city: it sits in a former jail cell in Haarlem’s vast Koepel panopticon prison. This “terrordome” has been repurposed as an arts hub, and now houses a cafe, podcast studio and cinema alongside its many “gallery spaces”.
What we learned
Jake Grewal is a young artist whose nudes in nature are causing a big stir
An exhibition of John Singer Sargent portraits upends the “dollar princess” stereotype
Bradford is gearing up for its year as UK city of culture
Andrew McCarthy’s photo of the sun shows a giant plasma tornado that’s 14 Earths tall
Jeff Koons is known for his hands-off approach to making art but refuses to use AI
Jake Auerbach paid tribute to his father Frank, revealing his fondness for pub quizzes
Cuban artist Zilia Sánchez, known for her ‘erotic topographies’, has died aged 96
Masterpiece of the week
The Diligence in the Snow by Gustave Courbet, 1860
Winter kills in this bleak painting by the radical French artist Courbet. Self-proclaimed leader of “realism”, Courbet painted it how it was, from raw nudes to his bitter funeral scene, A Burial at Ornans. Here he shows how easily civilised human assumptions can be upturned by a bit of bad weather. The carriage is sinking hopelessly in the depths of whiteness, the people flailing hopelessly like doomed souls in a Turner shipwreck. But what holds you is the rough power of his brushwork and the feeling of stark truth it conveys.
National Gallery, London
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