Jasper Johns' hot wax, Big Tom's geometry, and the strangest surrealist ever – the week in art

Jonathan Jones

Friday, 22 Sep 2017

# Turner prize 2017

The great America unfurls his flags, targets, maps and beer cans, an old master called Big Tom reveals some weird geometry, and the Turner prize hits Hull – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Jasper Johns
The intellect and emotion of the objects and paintings, prints and assemblages of this exquisite artist put him at the centre of the art of our time. Flags, targets, maps and beer cans – Johns has done them all with unequalled wit. He managed to invent pop art, conceptual art and minimalism all in one go when he started to make an American flag out of waxy paint layered over newspaper collage in 1954 and has been meditating with the same serious irony about objects and their meanings ever since.
• Royal Academy, London, from 23 September to 10 December.

Also this week

Turner prize 2017
May it be forever young – but not ageist any more, with Lubaina Himid and Hurvin Anderson both riding roughshod over the “under 50” rule in a shortlist that also includes Andrea Büttner and Rosalind Nashashibi.
• Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, from 26 September to 7 January.

Marcel Broodthaers
This great Belgian visionary began as a surrealist and became the wittiest and strangest pioneer of conceptual art.
• Hauser & Wirth, London, from 27 September to 18 November.

Jesse Wine and Haffendi Anuar
London’s latest venue for public art is Battersea power station. Will the first sculptures in a new series called Powerhouse Commissions outdo Pink Floyd’s flying pigs in exploiting this iconic setting?
• Battersea power station, London, from 26 September.

Daniel Buren
The veteran French conceptual artist reveals his latest works, in which brightly coloured geometric shapes are repeated and reflected in big mirrored surfaces.
• Lisson Gallery, London, from 22 September to 11 November.

Masterpiece of the week

The Virgin and Child (1426) by Masaccio

The short-lived early-Renaissance genius Masaccio – known to posterity only by his nickname, which roughly means “Big Tom” – was in his late 20s when he died in around 1428 or 29. Yet he had already taken European painting into its future by showing how the perspective method could create deep illusions of space on a flat surface. His frescoes in Santa Maria Novella and the Brancacci Chapel in Florence are his masterpieces, but this rare surviving panel painting by him preserves the severe grace of his style. The Virgin’s throne is a powerful example of how he makes the world look more real in painting than it ever had before. Yet this is no mere technical experiment. Masaccio is an artist of profound religious feeling.
• National Gallery, London

Images of week

Two new Banksy artworks appeared at the Barbican, London, inspired by the centre’s Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition. The murals were confirmed as genuine on the artist’s verified Instagram account, where he said: “Major new Basquiat show opens at the Barbican – a place that is normally very keen to clean any graffiti from its walls.”

The first image, which is possibly mocking the exhibition, as Basquiat was originally a graffiti artist, is of a ferris wheel with people queueing up at a ticket booth. The second post is captioned: “Portrait of Basquiat being welcomed by the Metropolitan police – an (unofficial) collaboration with the new Basquiat show.” In a work clearly inspired by Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, Banksy portrays police officers searching and questioning a boy figure as a dog looks on.