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Friday, Aug 22, 2025

The state of painting, black British resistance and a fake Banksy NFT – the week in art

The state of painting, black British resistance and a fake Banksy NFT – the week in art

Lisa Brice and Oscar Murillo feature in a sweeping survey, Tottenham Rights highlight Black communities and an unlucky buyer falls foul of an elaborate hoax – all in your weekly dispatch

Lisa Brice and Peter Doig feature in a sweeping survey, Tottenham Rights highlight Black communities and an unlucky buyer falls foul of an elaborate hoax – all in your weekly dispatch
Exhibition of the week
Mixing It Up: Painting Today
A state of the art survey of contemporary painting that stars Peter Doig, Lisa Brice, Oscar Murillo and many more.
*  Hayward Gallery, London, 9 September to 12 December

Also showing
Sophie Barber

Bright, raw daubs of birds, lovers and the East Sussex seaside.
*  Alison Jacques, London, until 2 October

Ray Harryhausen
See the original models and drawings for some of the most dreamlike sequences in cinema in this deservedly extended celebration of a unique genius.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two), Edinburgh, until 22 February


Photo London

International photography fair featuring artists from Abdourahmane Sakaly to Anton Corbijn, and a special show by award winner Shirin Neshat.
*  Somerset House, London, 9 September to 12 September

War Inna Babylon
A survey of resistance by Britain’s Black communities, organised by Tottenham Rights.
ICA, London, until 26 September

Image of the week
The fake Banksy NFT, title Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster


It’s the NFT every collector would want: Banksy’s first. Unfortunately for its buyer, the recent auction of a Banksy non-fungible token was not what it seemed. This piece (called Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster) did enough to convince a buyer to pay the equivalent of £244,000 in cryptocurrency as the victim of what appears to be an elaborate hoax.

What we learned


Porcelain seized by the Nazis is set to fetch more than £2m at Sotheby’s in New York

Tasmania’s leading gallery has made Covid jabs compulsory for staff …

… while Brussels doctors will be able to prescribe museum visits for Covid stress

A Netflix documentary about US painter and TV host Bob Ross has caused a stir

A boy has made £290,000 selling NFTs of digital whale art

… and an art show co-curated by a five-year-old can be nuanced and deep

Plans for a London skyscraper threaten Britain’s oldest synagogue

Berlin spent £120m fixing its dysfunctional Mies van der Rohe art gallery

Young black photographers are changing the face (and bodies) of fashion photography

Photographer Hiro’s experimental images transformed fashion and beauty advertising

Brooklyn-based artist Sophia Dawson has created artwork using correspondence from jailed black activists

The British Press Photographers’ Association Assignments exhibition celebrates its members’ best work …

… while the French city of Perpignan is also celebrating photojournalism

Feminist artist Judy Chicago, who has a retrospective in San Francisco, would throw one hell of a dinner party

Abstract expressionist Douglas Abercrombie has died aged 87

Artists are reviving St Austell in Cornwall

William Mullan’s obsession with apples began in Waitrose

Frank Gehry’s Luma Arles is the glittering icon of a new cultural campus

It’s possible to get into art collecting on a budget

London’s Courtauld gallery is reopening after three years, with a Van Gogh and some Cézannes returning

Work by forgotten Indian masters of nature painting are going on show before an auction in October

Agi Katz, who championed artists Josef Herman, Mark Gertler and David Bomberg, has died

Masterpiece of the week

Sassetta: The Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, 1437-44

The Stigmatisation of Saint Francis by Sassetta.


Two bloody holes appear on the palms of this revolutionary saint as he prays in a remote rocky hideaway: the nails that crucified Christ have pierced his flesh. Francis of Assisi was a wealthy young man who rejected his comfortable life and chose to have no possessions. He preached love for all nature and is even said to given a sermon to a flock of birds. In another painting in this series of touching scenes, he negotiates with a wolf that was terrorising the town of Gubbio. Sassetta worked in the Renaissance but uses a deliberately archaic style, influenced by the much earlier Giotto, to express the vision of one of Christianity’s most radical thinkers.
*  National Gallery, London

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