Samurai erotica, a metal-and-flesh sculptor and Jenny Holzer’s big glow-up – the week in art

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Exhibition of the week

Samurai
A tremendous, awe-inspiring journey into Japan’s past, with samurai armour so sublimely crafted it seems darkly alive, as well as exquisite landscapes, erotica and other arts that delighted the samurai between battles. Read the review here.
The British Museum, London, from 3 February to 4 May

Also showing

Julia Phillips
Uneasy conjunctions of metal and flesh in sculptures incorporating casts of the artist’s body.
Barbican Curve, London, until 19 April

New Contemporaries
Kat Anderson, Hadas Auerbach, Deborah Lerner and other artists at the beginnings of their careers.
South London Gallery until 12 April

Jenny Holzer
The pioneering political artist exhibits her glowing words and searing statements.
20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, from 31 January to 13 June

Quentin Blake
Lovely portraits and whimsical images of flight from the beloved illustrator.
The Sherborne, Dorset, until 12 April

Image of the week

Petra Alvarado, factory worker, El Paso, Texas, 1982

From crying miners to birthday girls via a body therapist and a meat packer, portraits of working-class heroes from Richard Avedon’s celebrated series In the American West are on show in a new exhibition curated by his granddaughter. Shown here is Petra, photographed on her birthday, posing with money given to her by family and friends to mark the occasion. See more pictures here.

What we learned

Robert Crumb elevates sexual deviancy to an art form

Photographer Don McCullin has turned away from war towards the classical world

Sibylle Fendt captures the intimacy of caring and dying

Pierre Huyghe has added uncertainty to Berlin techno club Berghain

Former YBA Sue Webster celebrates her punk past in her latest paintings

Níall McLaughlin is a deserved winner of architecture’s top award

Artist Anne Imhof has released her first album

A new £1.5m awards scheme has been launched to celebrate visual art education in the UK

Photographing nature can heal the soul

Masterpiece of the week

Erminia Takes Refuge With the Shepherds by Circle of Annibale Carracci

This is a scene from a poem that had a huge impact in an age when the Catholic church was trying to revive the passions of the Crusades. Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered is a pseudo-medieval epic of chivalry and adventure with a strong religious theme as it portrays Christian knights battling Muslim enemies in the First Crusade. So far so simple, but this painting depicts Erminia, a Muslim woman who in Tasso’s poem falls in love with the Christian Tancred. She also puts on male armour as she searches for him. This painter at the end of the classically obsessed Renaissance depicts her in ancient Roman-styled armour, instead of the chain mail Crusaders wore. She has taken off her plumed helmet to show her long hair and reveal that she is a woman. The shepherd offers her shelter. It looks like the landscape outside Rome with the Tiber flowing through it, in this moment of peace from an epic of war.
National Gallery, London

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