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Richard Woods’s sculpture Holiday Home joins work by Tracey Emin and others at the Frieze Sculpture Park.
Richard Woods’s sculpture Holiday Home joins work by Tracey Emin and others at the Frieze Sculpture Park. Photograph: Alan Cristea Gallery
Richard Woods’s sculpture Holiday Home joins work by Tracey Emin and others at the Frieze Sculpture Park. Photograph: Alan Cristea Gallery

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

This article is more than 5 years old

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Frieze Sculpture Park
Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture.
Regent’s Park, London, 4 July until 7 October.

Also showing

Glenn Brown
The decadent and erudite imagination of Glenn Brown is maturing into a wonder of modern painting.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, until 21 October.

Jameel prize
Artists and designers who draw in different ways on Islamic tradition, from Hala Kaiksow’s couture to Wardha Shabbir’s abstract art.
V&A, London, until 25 November.

Matisse Prints
A graphic encounter with the impeccable master of modern art.
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, 6 July until 15 September.

Idea of North
As part of the Great Exhibition of the North, this group show featuring Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Matt Stokes and more explores the concept of a northern identity.
Baltic, Gateshead, until 30 September.

Masterpiece of the week

Saint Sebastian, circa 1623, by Gerrit van Honthorst. Photograph: National Gallery

The legend of Saint Sebastian has licensed some of the most powerful homoerotic images in art. It was Oscar Wilde who first pointed this out when he wrote about his response to Guido Reni’s sensual Baroque vision of a nude Sebastian. Honthorst’s painting is even more provocative. Painted under the influence of the subversive genius Caravaggio, it sets out to shock and confuse. Honthorst had recently travelled from his native Utrecht to Rome, where he joined the “Caravaggisti”, painters who emulated this notorious rebel’s use of light and shadow and passion for raw reality. Soon after he got back to the Netherlands he painted this bold exploration of desire, pain and death. The uncomfortable conjunction of beauty and horror is sharply emphasised by that bright Caravaggesque light that heightens and isolates the impaled body.
National Gallery, London.

Image of the week

Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson), 2010, by Kehinde Wiley. Photograph: Serge Hasenböhler/© Kehinde Wiley

Hero, giant, four-eyed alien … the National Portrait Gallery’s fascinating show On the Wall reveals how the king of pop inspired artists to project on him all manner of idealistic and perverse ideas.

What we learned

Why graffiti artists risk their lives …

… Vandalism or art? Graffiti artists’ deaths have reignited debate

Michael Jackson is the ultimate muse

How art merch broke out of the gift shop

Timber! Michael Kenna has an eye for magical trees

Moroccan artist Younes Rahmoun conjures a cosmic world

How to hurricane-proof our homes

What New York is like, through the eyes of the queen of street photography

Picasso at my sister’s wedding party: Tina Barney explained her best shot

We remembered Philando Castile through art

South African photographer David Goldblatt has died aged 87 …

And he caught apartheid’s grotesqueness –without ever letting anger take over

The £10,000 Jarman award shortlist includes works on architecture and artificial intelligence

James Henry Pullen was one of the strangest geniuses of the 19th century

Architectural Association is awaiting its “Spanish tornado”

We remember influential designer Martin Hunt

How Iranian art is challenging preconceptions

Marlene Dietrich cut a striking figure at the Palladium

Christo’s floating installation in London makes a big impression

There’s beauty amid the flipside of the American dream

Photography Nigerian women’s elaborate hairstyles has many meanings and messages

What the 20 photos of week are

Alison Wilding is an artist whose time has come

Lee Miller and Viviane Sassen take on photography and the female gaze

Don’t forget

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