by Show of the week
Deeply grown souls Like Rivers: Black Artists of the American South
The art of resistance in the former Confederate states of the United States uses whatever lie-in-hand in the backyard. Found things and artisanal skills are used here by artists from Thornton Dial to the quilt makers of Gee’s Bend to assemble a black vision of the South.
• Royal Academy, London, until 18 June
Also showing
Rites of passage
Tell the home secretary! Migration is celebrated by this group show which includes Elsa James’ Ode to David Lammy MP and works by Patrick Quarm, Adelaide Damoah, Phoebe Boswell and others.
• Gagosian Britannia Street, London, until 29 April
Painted prints
Typographer Jimmy Merris uses deeply constructed color to create his funny and sad philosophical comics. With Liorah Tchiprout and the late Gillian Ayres.
• Marlborough Graphics, London, until 22 April
A tough man is nice to find!
A survey of 60 years of gay nude photography including Patrick Procktor, Cecil Beaton and Angus McBean.
• Photographers’ Gallery, London, until 11 June
Paradise found
Contemporary artists explore the Blackdown Hills, a favorite landscape of the Camden Town Group more than a century ago. Is it still a “paradise”?
• Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Devon, 18 March to 3 June
Picture of the week
A Banksy mural has been demolished alongside a derelict farmhouse in Herne Bay, Kent. An image of a boy with a cat, opening the curtains to greet the day, appeared on the side of the building just days before it was demolished. When the artist reclaimed the work, following its destruction, the owner and the demolition contractors were both “gutted”. Another Banksy has recently sparked controversy a few miles up the coast in Margate. It is hoped that both works can be recreated at the city’s Dreamland amusement park.
What have we learned
Sculptor Phyllida Barlow, who died this week aged 78, has always done great
The architecture of LA’s boutique cannabis shops is wild
A new tower in Los Angeles is an ominous cyberpunk creation
Ingenious ceramist Lucie Rie defied convention and the Nazis
Leonardo da Vinci was attracted as much by the grotesque as by beauty
A Banksy mural has been demolished alongside a derelict farmhouse in Herne Bay
Artists in the UK public sector earn well below minimum wage
The Parthenon Marbles will not be returning to Greece anytime soon
Artists and footballers unite for the Manchester international festival
Karolina Wojtas broke all the rules in photos from her Polish school
The Gherkin may have been inspired by a Bond villain’s lair
Paddy Irishman is taking on a racial stereotype
Los Angeles’ twisted new skyscraper is a grotesque monument to its creator’s ego
Masterpiece of the week
Rembrandt, Old Man and Child, circa 1639-40
Rembrandt’s compassion and empathy inhabit the fastest lines and simplest sketches. These drawings of an old man playing with a child effortlessly combine precise observation, allegorical symbolism and pure vision of the human condition. The man’s walking stick beckons us to see it as an emblem of youth and age, an eloquent study in the effects of time – yet any cold analysis is undermined by the child’s irrepressible playfulness and evident enjoyment of mirth from part of the elderly companion. This was drawn nearly 400 years ago in a very different world than ours, yet the everyday fun it displays could be any family snapshot, yours or mine.
• British Museum, London
Do not forget
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