Exhibition of the week
Linderism
The photomontage genius of Manchester punk brings her cutting blade to gentle Cambridge.
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 26 April.
Also showing
Lines of Beauty
Drawings by Rembrandt, Poussin and many more from the collection of the Duke of Devonshire.
• Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, until 25 May.
Haley Morris-Cafiero
Artist bites back at cyberbullies – by masquerading as her unlovely trolls.
• TJ Boulting, London, until 14 March.
Harland Miller
Paintings of Penguin and Pelican books in a reverie on Miller’s Yorkshire childhood.
• York Art Gallery from, until 31 May.
David Hockney and Alan Davie
Pop wit versus abstract rage in this comparison of two young artists in postwar Britain.
• Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, 15 February to 31 May.
Image of the week
Critic Avelina Lésper accidentally destroyed a $20,000 installation by Mexican artist Gabriel Rico at an art fair in Mexico City when she placed an empty soda can near it to express her disdain for the piece – a sheet of glass with a stone, football and other random objects suspended inside. “It was like the work heard my comment and felt what I thought of it,” Lésper said later.
What we learned
Sonia Boyce will be the first black woman artist to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale
Bansky gave a Valentine’s gift to a Bristol house – officially
Book illustrators dreamed a poem of love
Rem Koolhaas says the countryside, not the city, is where the excitement’s at
Barbara Kruger is making a statement at LA’s Frieze art fair
A historic gold telephone was saved from a skip
Counterspace will be the Serpentine pavilion’s youngest designers
Sharona Franklin’s jelly sculptures break the mould
The Sony world photography awards shortlist was revealed
The Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience is a deflating one
An image of two mice fighting won the wildlife photographer of the year award
Melbourne is in a lather about street art
A new book reveals more to Dorothea Lange that Migrant Mother
Steve McQueen gets close to some sticky aspects of life
Three Armada portraits of Elizabeth I will sit together for the first time
Yelena Popova is counting the cost of nuclear waste
Léon Spilliaert liked a deserted beach
Cold War Steve has made a downloadable exhibition to cut out and keep
Young London photographers are tackling identity
We remembered collagist Elisabeth Wild, who has died aged 98
… and French cartoonist Claire Bretécher
Masterpiece of the week
Leda and the Swan, 1530, After Michelangelo
Love comes in strange shapes in Renaissance art – bulls, clouds, eagles and goats are among its diverse embodiments. Many such transformations depict the disguises in which the god Jupiter has sex in Ovid’s ancient Latin poem, the Metamorphoses. This painting uses the theme to suggest something secret and subversive. It is the best surviving record of a lost painting by Michelangelo that depicts Jupiter taking the body of a swan to snuggle with Leda. But Michelangelo’s female nudes are, famously, not very female. The body of Leda here is based on his own statue, Night, and neither makes much attempt at looking like a woman. For Michelangelo loved men. He escaped accusations of “sodomy” by saying his passion for male beauty was purely spiritual. This painting suggests otherwise. Leda’s face is a portrait of his male assistant Antonio Mini, and the way the swan’s beak approaches Leda’s lips is clearly meant to suggest fellatio.
Michelangelo painted this transgressive image when he was commander of fortifications for the Florentine Republic during a brutal siege. He expected to die soon alongside the ardent young men defending the battlements. In that moment of crisis, he created this deeply personal confession of desire – a dangerous Valentine.
• National Gallery, London
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