Apollo

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice

Virgin Reading (c. 1510), Vittore Carpaccio. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Renaissance painter’s talent for story-telling is the focus of this retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope

Abakan Orange (1971), Magdalena Abakanowicz. Tate.

The Polish artist’s monumental woven sculptures get the spotlight at Tate Modern

The Glitter and Poison of the Twenties: George Grosz in Berlin

The Eclipse of the Sun (detail; 1926), Georg Grosz. Huckster Museum of Art, New York

The German artist’s visceral satires of 1920s Berlin go on show in Stuttgart

‘I think I’ll have to keep tearing bodies apart’ – an interview with Vanessa Baird

The artist Vanessa Baird

The Oslo-based artist has never shied away from explicit – or controversial – material, but it’s not just about creating a shocking scene

The week in art news – Mark Hallett named director of the Courtauld

Mark Hallett Courtauld

Plus: museum directors denounce Just Stop Oil protests, Paul Allen collection sells for more than $1.6bn, and the rest of the week’s top stories

The first billion-dollar auction? Plus ça change…

Christie’s Paul Allen

The sale of masterpieces at Christie’s shattered records – but has it really changed the art market?

Digital Benin opens a new chapter in the restitution saga

Armcuff Digital Benin

The project that launched this week is not the first to attempt cataloguing the Benin Bronzes, but it’s by far the most comprehensive

The really radical work of Nellie Mae Rowe

What It Is (detail; 1978–82), Nellie Mae Rowe. Photo: High Museum of Art, Atlanta; © 2022 Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Having spent most her life serving others, Nellie Mae Rowe came to art in her retirement years and found a joyful defiance in the creation of other-worldly scenes

In the studio with… Hernan Bas

The Miami-based artist isn’t especially keen on visitors, but he has a television and an 18th-century cooling casket to keep him company

For the arts in England, levelling up feels a lot like levelling down

The Arts Council’s latest funding announcement has moved money out of London, but the entire sector has a lot to worry about

Her Brush: Japanese Women Artists from the Fong-Johnstone Collection

The Nun Ryonen (Ryonen-ni) from Famous Women of Past and Present (Kokon meifuden) (detail; 1864). Utagawa Kunisada.

The Denver Art Museum explores how Japanese women artists flew in the face of social conventions

Louis Boulanger, Painter of Dreams

A close friend of Victor Hugo, this painter made his own key contribution to Romanticism

Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin

Circus – Before the Show (1908–10), Marianne Werefkin. Museo Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Ascona

The Royal Academy shines a light on the women artists who were central to the development of German Expressionism

Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water

The Rye Marshes, East Sussex (1932), Paul Nash. Hull Museums Collection

An exhibition at Pallant House gallery explores how the South Downs have captured the imaginations of artists through the centuries

How does a ‘prank’ Basquiat measure up to the great art-world hoaxes?

Jean-Michel Basquiat at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, in 1987. Photo: Karen Petersen/Everett Collection

Selling a misattributed work was a ‘prank’, according to André Heller – which leads Rakewell to reflect on the real classics of the genre

How Roger Hilton played fast and loose with the human form

Nude (detail; c. 1962), Roger Hilton.

The St Ives painter best known for his abstract works also created his own kind of figurative art

The fetishistic side of Henry Fuseli

The Debutante (detail; 1807), Henry Fuseli.

The artist’s drawings of women are a testament to his private proclivities. It’s no wonder he never put them on public display

The week in art news – Arts Council England announces its national funding portfolio

The Barbican Arts Centre in London is among the institutions dropped from the Arts Council’s national funding portfolio. Photo: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

Plus: Subhash Kapoor sentenced to ten years in prison, and the rest of the week’s top stories

Auction highlights – Christie’s first billion-dollar sale

The collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is set to be the first to break the $1bn barrier next week – though it is unlikely to be the last

Tadesse Mesfin’s beaming visions of Ethiopia are pure joy

Tadesse Mesfin, photographed in his studio in Addis Ababa in February 2022

The pioneer of Ethiopian modernism tells Apollo about his years in the USSR and his depictions of brightly-dressed women at market

Acquisitions of the Month: October 2022

Jardinière (c. 1730), China. Strawberry Hill House, London

This month’s highlights include the 18th-century Chinese jardinière that Horace Walpole famously used as a fish bowl

On point – the wearing of lace has always been tied up with social status

Punto a fogliamo (leafpoint) lace reworked as a collar

Lace-making is an exacting craft – and who gets to wear the results is an equally delicate matter

Chasing the dragons – the art of ritual in ancient China

Cup with dragon handles (12th–14th century) China. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Curator Dany Chan takes a close look at an exquisite jade cup in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Art of the Terraces

This show in Liverpool contends that the influence of the football Casuals extended far beyond the stadiums