Eileen Agar’s seaside surrealism and Thomas Becket’s lost medieval Britain – the week in art

Exhibition of the week

Eileen Agar
One of the most imaginative and quirky early 20th-century British artists gets a fresh look – is Agar’s seaside surrealism due a revival?
• Whitechapel Gallery, London from 19 May until 29 August.

Also showing

Jean Dubuffet
Wildly subversive star of postwar French art whose concept of art brut – raw art – is suddenly urgent again in our age of authenticity.
• Barbican, London from 17 May until 22 August.

Becket
This is a beautiful and exciting encounter with the lost world of medieval Britain, packed with fascinating art.
• British Museum, London from 20 May until 22 August.

The Making of Rodin
An amazing array of plaster casts from the Rodin Museum in Paris that reveal this protean creator’s abundance.
• Tate Modern, London 18 May to 21 November.

Veronica Ryan
Seed pods, volcanic ash and other natural residues fuel Ryan’s sculptural meditation on landscape and history.
• Spike Island, Bristol from 19 May until 5 September.

Image of the week

As she starts to rebuild her life after cancer surgery, Tracey Emin shared her unflinching self-portraits taken during treatment, talked about seeing dead people in hospital walls, and explained why she’s buying herself a punchbag – and kittens. Read my full interview with her here.

What we learned

One of the Turner prize nominees criticised its main sponsor

The British Museum helped return a 2,000-year-old looted statue to Libya …

… and its Thomas Becket exhibition is a five-star triumph

We got the low down on the Design Museum’s Sneakers Unboxed show …

… while the Shoephoria exhibition opens at the Fashion Museum in Bath

David Hockney said: ‘I’m teaching the French how to paint Normandy!’

A bear drawing by Leonardo is expected to fetch £12m at auction

Tate is among British institutions facing uncertainty in the shadow of Covid-19

The government was told arts education cuts risk UK cultural leadership

Leading British artists lamented the decline of drawing classes

Tintin heirs lost a legal battle over an artist’s Edward Hopper mashups

Refugees, volunteers and students captured the pandemic in patchwork art

America’s racial reckoning came to a San Francisco art museum

Photographers documenting Myanmar’s military coup must remain anonymous

Ryoji Ikeda explained the spectacular sensory overload of his art

Artist and architect Maya Lina brought a ghost forest to New York

Eileen Agar’s singular collages, sculptures and paintings reveal a reluctant surrealist

Carinthia West hung out with rock stars and movie legends – and has the pictures to prove it

A giant puppet of refugee girl is to take a 12-week ‘walk’ across Europe

An interactive structure in West Hollywood aims to bridge outdoor advertising and public art

Rodin wasn’t a radical, just a plain old genius

The Great British Art Tour drew to a close with a Victorian marriage, Uncle Tom’s Cabin wallpaper and a painful nude painting

Adam Gray was overall winner of the BPPA press photographer of the year awards

Artist Moyra Davey delved into renowned US photographer Peter Hujar’s archive

Comic creator Barry Windsor-Smith returned with a drama of Nazi science and psychic powers

Photographer Christopher Wilton-Steer took an epic trip on the old Silk Road …

… while Timothy Spurr explored a multi-ethnic street in north London

Roger Ballen’s pictures find poetry in pain

Drone photography gets a whole new angle on synchronised swimming

A 21-year-old photographer captured suburbia’s teen spirit

Helmut Jahn, who has died aged 81, was ‘the Flash Gordon of architecture’

Masterpiece of the week

Manet’s Portrait of Eva Gonzalès
In his portrait of the successful 19th-century artist Eva Gonzalès, the ironic painter of modern life Manet goes out of his way to suggest how gender roles constricted women’s creativity. Gonzalès can’t be seen in a paint-spattered smock but sits elegantly in a long white flowing dress, which almost comically fills the canvas. She reaches delicately with her brush to finish a still life. But Manet is not mocking Gonzalès. Far from it. She was his pupil, and the flowers she is painting have much in common with his own heady depictions of flower arrangements. The very awkwardness of this scene is liberating. It ironises expectations to depict Gonzalès as a modern woman painting from life.
• National Gallery, London.

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