Scary beaches, folkloric visions and mysterious landscapes in Ireland reveal a secret – The Week in Art | Art and design

Exhibition of the week

Surah and the sea
If you thought 19th-century French sea paintings were all blissful Impressionism, you’ll be confused, then immerse yourself in Seurat’s eerie modernist shores. Read the review.
Courtauld Gallery, London, until 17 May

also appear

Delin Le Bas: Unfair Ground
The mural created for Glastonbury lies at the heart of this artist’s folkloric vision of Britain today.
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until 31 May

Yinka Shonibare
With sarcasm and wit, Shonibare spans global history and puts the empire in its place.
Sagittarius, Winchester, from February 14 to June 3

Sean Scully
Photographs of Ireland’s mysterious landscapes reveal a secret source for Scully’s abstract art.
Lisson Gallery, London, from 18 February to 9 May

Jimmy Mills: Fireworks for Vincent
Sculptures that evoke both Robert Rauschenberg and the Cornish landscape.
Anima Mundi, St Ives, until 22 March

Picture of the week

The French architect René Guilhoustet, whose nose Jean-Marie Le Pen once broke, created ecologically brutalist apartment complexes with cascading balconies that seemed to have surrendered to nature. She remains beloved by her residents, and when she died in 2023, residents of Le Lligat, a social housing complex she completed in 1982, placed a large handmade sign reading: “Renée Mercy.” There is now an exhibition dedicated to it in London. Read more here.

What we learned

A legal battle over a Picasso painting has exposed the offshore finances of Farage’s billionaire patron in Davos

Ai Weiwei had no fear of returning to China on a very important trip to see his mother

Cherie Blair has not been a model for long for the tired artist Ivan Uglu

“Only women are capable of painting great female nudes.”

Amnesty International has cast doubt on the identity of who painted two works attributed to Jan van Eyck

Plans for Washington’s grandiose ‘Trump Arch’ are said to ‘go all Roman’

London’s Southbank Center’s Grade II listing justifies the glory of the Brutalism

Lucian Freud’s paintings are as wonderful as his drawings are terrible

Rembrandt’s lion drawing raised $18 million for big cat conservation

The ‘Lowry effect’ is the rejuvenation of Salford and Manchester

Masterpiece of the week

fancy With a devastating bow by Francesco Guardic.1775

Why are the effects great? Everything and everyone eventually becomes ruin. Entropy, the tendency of order to decay into chaos, is a fact of physics as well as everyday experience. But then, as now, the shiny and new were often valued above the old: old churches were destroyed in the Renaissance, for example, to make way for larger, “better” churches. This painting shows how this situation was turned upside down in the 18th century. For the first time, ancient ruined buildings were cherished as atmospheric and picturesque wonders. Guardi was so enamored with monuments that he invented one, imagining a dilapidated and partially collapsed medieval abbey or palace against a blue Italian sky. When was it built and who lived here? It invites you to imagine the glorious past of this architecture while savoring the beauty of its sad present.
National Gallery, London

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