A rollicking statue, Beryl’s buddies and a swimming pool in a roundabout – the week in art

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Exhibition of the week

Tschabalala Self
A rollicking triumph of a statue that spreads good feelings and smiles in the heart of the capital. Saucy genius.
Fourth plinth, Trafalgar Square, London

Also showing

Beryl Cook and Friends
Some may see similarities between Tschabalala Self’s Trafalgar Square statue and Cook’s vibrant fun.
House of Voltaire, Bicester Village, until 25 October

Peter Howson
Gnarly, bloody, and bloody-minded paintings of Christ’s Passion.
Flowers Gallery, London, until 10 October

Liz Larner
Sculptures that meditate on myth, metamorphoses and our fragile earth.
Camden Art Centre, London, until 17 January

Monika Sosnowska
The sadness of Polish history haunts Sosnowska’s abstract sculptures and installations.
South London Gallery until 22 November

Image of the week

people bathe in a large square pool in an urban setting

The theme for this year’s biennial European Prize for Urban Public Space is architectural projects that repurpose infrastructure built for cars. Among the five finalists is Round About Baths, a true urban oasis for which Swiss architect Leopold Banchini has turned an obsolete roundabout in Logroño, northern Spain, into a public pool. Read more here.

What we learned

Star Wars director George Lucas has opened a spaceship-sized art museum

Argentina must return to the owner’s heir an 18th-century painting stolen by Nazis

Veteran Califiornia sculptor Liz Larner has been making ceramics based on asteroids

Along with flowers and deserts, Georgia O’Keeffe also painted stunning urban scenes

Our critic wondered why French thieves bothered stealing Renoir paintings

Masterpiece of the week

Saint Paul and a Donatrix by followers of Gerard David, 1515

In late medieval and Renaissance Europe, one of the most popular ways to spend money was on an altarpiece for a chapel in your local church. And if you were paying, why not have yourself painted into everyone’s grateful prayers? This is a wing of a folding multi-panelled painting on wood: the woman it shows is not known by name but she was one half of a well-off couple who probably lived in Bruges. We can feel close to her as she kneels piously with none other than Saint Paul himself behind her. For the painting’s first beholders, she may have been someone they often saw and spoke to in the street or at market, but here she’s enfolded in a holy, supernatural reality that’s one breath away from the visible. Paul is placing a supportive hand on her back – a direct contact between the donatrix – the donor – and the divine. Donor portraits come from a world that is very alien to our attitudes yet also very human: this woman’s confident portrayal as someone who communes with the saints in heaven seems narcissistic and naive yet it is a moving attempt to connect everyday experience with something beyond.
National Gallery, London

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