Seaside shenanigans, Newcastle grit and dinosaurs of the deep – the week in art
Rye spies a quirky summer show, Leonora Carrington’s surrealism is knowingly Freudian and ancient reptiles take over the Natural History museum
Exhibition of the week
The Air of Ideas
Artists represented by Kate MacGarry Gallery escape to an 18th-century house in East Sussex for this quirky summer group show, including Lisa Milroy, Marcus Coates and Francis Upritchard.
• 301/2 High Street, Rye, until 31 August
Also showing
Tish Murtha and Kuba Ryniewicz – Close to Home
Murtha’s moving photographs of working class life in Elswick, Newcastle in an era of dereliction and decline are complemented by contemporary responses from Ryniewicz.
• Baltic, Gateshead, from 4 July until 4 April
Jacques Henri Lartigue: Life in Colour
This renowned French photographer is usually remembered for his black and white work but here his experiments with colour from the 1930s to 1980s are revealed.
• MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, until 4 October
Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal
An extended run means more time to wallow in this British surrealist’s knowingly Freudian fun.
• Freud Museum, London, until 10 August
Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep
Take a deep dive into seas crowded with lethal ancient reptiles including pliosaurs and mosasaurs in this family summer blockbuster.
• Natural History Museum, London, until 3 January
Image of the week
Ai Weiwei’s Button Up! exhibition opened this week in Manchester featuring skeleton chandeliers, a real-life temple and, as the title suggests, tonnes of buttons. It is a massive, ambitious takedown of colonial history, warfare and the migrant crisis that sees the Chinese artist at his most monumental.
What we learned
Artist Lydia Wood is on a mission to sketch every pub in London
A valuable Spanish painting thought stolen was found on the street by a man who liked its frame
People are queueing online for up to nine hours for tickets to see the Bayeux tapestry in London
Ana Mendieta’s art triumphs 30 years after her troubling death
The £1.3bn revamp of London’s Olympia is an Aztec-tinged tiara-topped triumph
There’s plenty of free medieval around if you know where to look
Masterpiece of the week
Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels by Sandro Botticelli, about 1475-80
It was genuinely hard for the young Botticelli to restrain his feeling for beauty. At the time he painted this homage to Francis, the medieval saint who preached poverty and reverence for nature, he was mingling with the Medici and absorbing their cult of pagan gods and lush love affairs. That sophistication threatens to destabilise this early work by him. Francis is a harrowed ascetic figure in brown robes, contemplating the cross with an intense, inward face that resembles drawings by Botticelli’s rivalrous friend Leonardo da Vinci, also starting his career in Florence at this time. Is Botticelli perhaps trying out Leonardo’s style? However, the angels who surround Saint Francis are pure unadulterated Botticelli – their poetic, heavy eyes and wavy locks would have entranced a Victorian aesthete. Even in a painting of the patron of poverty, Botticelli delights in precious courtly fashion.
• National Gallery
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