March highlights
Aubrey Beardsley
Tate Britain, London 4 March–25 May www.tate.org.uk
Beardsley’s erotic, often controversial illustrations for works such as Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (pictured) catapulted him to fame during his short but eventful life. With a large number of his drawings shown alongside published prints, this display focuses attention on his technical flair as a draughtsman.
Gerhard Richter: Painting After All Met Breuer, New York 4 March–5 July www.metmuseum.org
Taking its starting point from two recent series, which draw on photographs from Birkenau and the work of the composer John Cage, this show asks why the German painter has persisted in two contrasting genres – photorealism and abstraction – throughout his long career.
The Land of Monsters: Léopold Chauveau (1870–1940)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris 10 March–29 June www.musee-orsay.fr
A doctor by trade, Chauveau taught himself to sculpt around 1905, crafting fantastical beasts from plaster, bronze or wood that drew on medieval European and Japanese ideas of the grotesque. He was also, as this display attests, a prolific illustrator of children’s books.
Raphael
Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome 5 March–2 June www.scuderiequirinale.it
Marking the 500th anniversary of the Florentine master’s death, this show of more than 200 works is the largest ever staged. Drawing together paintings from museums across the world, it focuses on the years Raphael spent in Rome, working on papal commissions and perfecting his elegant late style.
Malangatana: Mozambique Modern
Art Institute of Chicago 22 March–5 July www.artic.edu
Malangatana combined the influences of European modernism, Ronga folklore and Christian allegory in his paintings of Mozambique life.
This survey of his work from 1959–75 reveals how his style developed during the nation’s struggle for independence.
John Baldessari
Moderna Museet, Stockholm 21 March–16 August www.modernamuseet.se
This is the first Swedish survey of work by the American conceptual artist, who died earlier this year. It explores how Baldessari abandoned painting in the 1960s, instead making use of photographs and text cribbed from popular and academic sources to create provocative and irreverent works.
Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins Getty Villa, Los Angeles 18 March–27 July www.getty.edu
This show of sculptures, cuneiform tablets, astronomical records and other artefacts charts the birth of civilisation between the Euphrates and Tigris in modern-day Iraq. It extends from the earliest Sumerian cities in around 3200 BC to the time of Alexander the Great.
Titian: Love, Desire, Death National Gallery, London 16 March–14 June www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Commissioned by Philip II of Spain, Titian’s series of largescale scenes from Ovid, which the painter called his poesie, are considered to be among the finest mythological paintings in Western art for their high drama and virtuosic handling. This show reunites all six for the first time in four centuries.