Hockney hits a high and Spandau Ballet capture the cold war – the week in art

Exhibition of the week

Gainsborough’s Family Album
This artist who made a living profiling the rich painted some of his greatest portraits for himself, to record his love of his family.
National Portrait Gallery, London, until 3 February.

Also showing

Fernand Léger
The metallic optimism of Léger’s paintings of a utopian – and feminine – future makes him one of modern art’s simplest delights.
Tate Liverpool, until 17 March.

Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho: News from Nowhere
A science fiction film that has partly been shot in Liverpool provokes thoughts about art and society in the tradition of William Morris’s utopian work News from Nowhere.
Tate Liverpool from 23 November.

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Brent Wadden
Abstract art that’s partly inspired by the Bauhaus designs of Anni Albers.
Pace Gallery, London, until 11 January.

Bojan Šarčević
Freezers and Spandau Ballet feature in an installation that evokes the last days of the cold war.
Modern Art, London, until 21 December.

Masterpiece of the week

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The Healing of the Man Born Blind, circa 1307-11, by Duccio di Buoninsegna
This medieval masterpiece has a precocious grasp of pictorial space that lets Duccio and his assistants create a tiny vignette of real life. The passionate foreground scene of Christ giving sight to a man who was blind is set against a very real and solid portrayal of a town in simple perspective. The buildings recede away from us in space, giving depth and solidity to this painted world. Artists had not been able to do this before and the idea of perspective would not “officially” enter art until a century later. Nor is this just a technical gimmick. Duccio worked in the Tuscan walled city of Siena and it’s this town we see. Lifelike art brings Christ on to the streets where hope is needed.
National Gallery, London

Image of the week

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Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures), 1972, by David Hockney
One of David Hockney’s much-loved California swimming pool paintings set a new auction sale price record for a living artist: $90.3m (£70.5m). The work, estimated at $80m, was sold at Christie’s in New York. In the picture, Hockney’s former lover and muse Peter Schlesinger is standing at the edge of the pool looking down at a figure swimming towards him. The picture dates back to the year their affair ended, and it has been speculated that the swimmer was Schlesinger’s new lover. Read the full story.

What we learned

Cerith Wyn Evans won the Hepworth prize for sculpture

Penny Woolcock is good with young people

Polly Borland discussed how her art has morphed over the years

You can tell a Michelangelo by the wonky toes

Overlooked at the time, Andy Warhol’s late work looks radical now

Nominees for the moving-image Jarman award see things differently

Film-maker Nathanial Kahn questions The Price of Everything

Cody Ellingham finds small details in megacities

… while satellites get a dizzying view from above

Can Tbilisi’s architecture biennial turn the tide against trophy building projects?

Since antiquity, the penis has held a fascination

… and body fluids never run out of uses

Brendan Huntley makes pottery punk

Paula Rego tells cruel stories

An artist and a refugee were reunited

The V&A will be swinging when it stages a Mary Quant retrospective

… and Tate Liverpool will exhibit Keith Haring

Robert Indiana’s legacy is in question

Paris Photo is an enthralling spectacle

Hoda Afshar challenges assumptions about Iranian culture

Martin Parr returns to Manchester

Milton Kent reminded us of Sydney past

Today’s travel photographers flock to Japan

Photo Vogue embraces diversity

Jerry Hall was good at parties

Found photographs reveal a lost Detroit

We remembered photographer and humanitarian Jean Mohr

And Stan Lee, the Marvel superhero’s superhero, died at 95

Athens Biennale is fighting the power with Kim Jong-un and jockstraps

Don’t forget

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