Exhibition of the week
Winston Churchill: The Painter
Britain’s eloquent war leader kept himself sane by puffing on cigars, swilling brandy – and painting the world around him.
The Wallace Collection, London, from 23 May to 29 November
Also showing
Kira Freije
There are shadows of Berlin Dada in the hollow metal people created by this Turner-shortlisted artist.
Modern Art Oxford from 23 May to 16 August
Miriam Elia
An artist known for her witty take on Ladybird books turns her eye towards Moses in this exhibition for Jewish Cultural Month.
JW3, London, until 30 June
Liam Young
Futuristic but lo-fi worlds you can walk through, in a series of installations finding hope for our planet.
Barbican, London, until 6 September
Zsuzsi Ujj
First UK solo show for this cult figure in Hungary’s dissident art and underground music scenes.
Arcadia Missa, London, from 22 May until 18 July
Image of the week
Tapp und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) was a typically provocative but playful 1968 performance piece by the fearless Austrian feminist artist and film-maker Valie Export, who died this week. Subverting beauty standards on the silver screen, her cinema gave people the opportunity to interact with and appraise a real female body: her own. We reported on Export’s life and work in this news story and asked other artists, including Peaches, Florentina Holzinger and Joan Jonas, what her example has meant to them.
What we learned
Taiba Akhuetie makes wild creations out of hair – Rihanna and Cate Blanchett are fans
Whistler should have used better paint to capture his mother
Nina Simone’s chewing gum is going on show in a new exhibition celebrating the superfan
Christo made the invisible visible
Grayson Perry’s life story is to be made into a musical
Gen Z can’t get enough of the king of colour, Mark Rothko
Sanya Kantarovsky’s paintings of Christian iconography and children will haunt you
Masterpiece of the week
The Judgement of Paris by Joachim Wtewael, 1615
Don’t dare to judge the gods; the loser won’t take it lying down. Here, the Trojan prince Paris is foolish enough to rate the beauty of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, Venus, goddess of love, and Juno, the wife of the king of the gods and a cosmic power in her own right. He gives the prize to Venus in return for her helping him seduce the legendary beauty Helen, wife of a Greek king. Out of this moment the Trojan War began, with the Greeks supported by the furious Juno. For a 17th-century artist there is terrible piquancy here. War devastated Europe in the 1600s, from the struggle between Wtewael’s Holland and the Spanish empire to the 30 years’ war that would soon devastate central Europe. Perhaps that is why this painting feels so edgy and unrelaxed. Wtewael’s bony, angular style, which prefers wilful, exciting distortions to conventional beauty or harmony, is known as mannerism. Here, he fills a woodland with rich, eye-catching flowers, feathers and feasting – yet there’s an overabundance to it all that presages doom.
National Gallery, London
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