Ravishing Renoir, cool Britannia and mighty Aphrodite – the week in art
Renoir and Love
Joyful and sumptuous, yet realist and raw, Renoir’s impressionist paintings glow in this immaculate exhibition.
National Gallery, London, from 3 October until 31 January
Also showing
The 90s: Art and Fashion
The fin de siecle decade gets a fresh look that puts fashion alongside art to take us back to when Britannia thought it was cool.
Tate Britain, London, from 8 October until 14 February
Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess
The ancient god of love and desire, often known by her Latin name Venus, returns on her shell in the art of Botticelli, Michelangelo Pistoletto and more.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 8 October until 11 April
Mike Nelson: Double Negative (The Clown)
Another soul-harrowing installation by the sculptor of urban labyrinths.
Modern Art Oxford, from 3 October until 11 April
Painting the French Riviera
There are masterpieces here by Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse, but it’s a weary slog and the beach is miles away.
Royal Academy, London, until 31 January
Image of the week
How much is that doggy in the window? Well, if it’s a rare painting of Hockney’s adored dachshund Stanley, you’re looking at an estimated £1.5m-£2.5m. The painting will be sold at auction on 14 October during the Frieze art fair, but anyone can see it for free at Christie’s in London from Thursday.
What we learned
Some art seems better when it’s broken
Balraj Khanna paints biomorphic blobs, candy-coloured galaxies and cosmic spectacle
Celeb set designer Es Devlin’s studio has a lot going on
A row has erupted over a Cairo mural depicting Tutankhamun with dark skin
after newsletter promotion
Masterpiece of the week
Fête Galante by Jean-Baptiste Pater, probably about 1721-5
People are picnicking on the grass, in a woody parkland that’s given extra mystery by classical sculptures and urns, even though a view through the trees reveals ordinary rural buildings rather than a great house. This is the ambiguous pleasure-world of the fête galante, a genre of painting invented by Pater’s teacher Antoine Watteau, in which lovers dance and talk and sometimes go off together into the woods, in an enigmatic, timeless and softly brushed fantasy realm. Pater is nothing like as poetic as Watteau, but still, you get the idea in this typical example of his work: women in silk dresses that catch the light and men in archaic, Renaissance-style costumes have escaped the cares of the city and the everyday to gather and celebrate love in this clearing under the gentle, feathery trees. Renoir revives this suggestive yet delicate genre in the much more material and solid setting of 19th-century Paris in his impressionist paintings.
National Gallery, London
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