Hairy paint, boozy sculpture and Michelangelo’s final years – the week in art

Exhibition of the week

Michelangelo: The Last Decades
Passionate and confessional drawings by one of the greatest artists of all time.
• British Museum, London, from 2 May until 28 July

Also showing

Urs Fischer
The Swiss artist famous for turning celebrities and artistic masterpieces into gradually melting candles brings his latest provocations to Scotland.
• The Modern Instiute, Glasgow, until 25 May

LR Vandy
Vandy makes rope sculptures in her studio beside the former Royal Navy dockyard in Chatham, Kent, which evoke the history of sailing ships and enslavement.
• October Gallery, London, until 25 May

Peppi Bottrop
Surreal tangles of metal and hairy paint from this California-based German artist.
• Pilar Corrias, London, until 25 May

Rasheed Araeen
A circular floor installation of booze bottles offers a bleak parody of Richard Long’s land art.
• The Showroom, London, until 4 May

Image of the week

This portrait of the African American slavery abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond was commissioned as part of the Guardian’s Cotton Capital series. It is among the works considered for this year’s Turner prize, for which Claudette Johnson has been shortlisted.

What we learned

This year’s Turner prize shortlist is one in the eye for petty nationalists

A survey of the 20th-century Blue Rider painters is an exhilarating riot of colour

War in Gaza and Ukraine is making itself felt at the Venice Biennale

Work from Nigeria, Bulgaria and the global south at the Biennale is revelatory

Our critic found the festival “filled with the clamour of conflicting voices”

Caravaggio is our screen age’s art superstar

Augustus John’s granddaughter says his later works should have been burned

“Social sculptor” George Wyllie now has his own museum, The Wyllieum

A new exhibition charts the astonishing career of photographer Tim Hetherington

A Washington DC show gathers 28 female artists grappling with social upheaval

A Gustav Klimt painting, thought lost for 100 years, has sold for €30m

Tired of colonial artefacts being hoarded, two artists use tech to redistribute them

Masterpiece of the week

Mars and Venus by Palma Giovane, circa 1590

Venus and Mars can’t wait to get to it in this completely unabashed erotic painting. The affair between these two ancient pagan deities, the god of war and goddess of love, is told of by classical writers such as Ovid and Lucretius. Renaissance artists who got it from such sources often portray it as a courtly romance: in Botticelli’s version in the National Gallery, Venus reclines decorously while Mars slumbers. But Palma homes in on the physical passion. Venus is already naked and demanding a snog as Cupid helps Mars undress. This was painted in Venice where such artists as Titian and Veronese created some of the lushest nudes ever painted. If there’s any doubt such art was meant to arouse, this removes it.
• National Gallery, London

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