Blue Black portraits, electric light relief and sugar in space – the week in art

Claudette Johnson’s intimate observations, Anthony McCall’s gleaming geometry and Tavares Strachan’s rocket launch – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Claudette Johnson: Darker Than Blue
The enigmatic portraits of this Turner-nominated artist hold you and haunt you with their mixture of careful observation and conceptual suggestiveness.
• Barber Institute, Birmingham, 22 June to 15 September

Also showing

Tavares Strachan
All kinds of artworks that right the wrongs of history from collages to a sugar-powered rocket.
• Hayward Gallery, London, until 1 September

Six Lives
Henry VIII’s wives get the attention they deserve in this trip to the Tudor age.
• National Portrait Gallery, London, until 8 September

Anthony McCall
Pioneering British light artist illuminates Tate Modern with his geometric beams, like a Pink Floyd album cover run riot.
• Tate Modern, London, from 27 June until 27 April 2025

Women in Revolt!
On tour from Tate Britain, this exhibition celebrates women’s radical art and activism in the era of punk and Greenham Common to Section 28 and the AIDS epidemic.
• Modern (Modern Two), Edinburgh, until 26 January 2025

Image of the week

This Buick-inspired Thierry Mugler dress is among the lighthearted installations of Naomi: in Fashion at the V&A in London, which celebrates the supermodel Naomi Campbell’s career. Also in the exhibition: a mannequin sprawled on the floor in 12-inch platform heels, recreating Campbell’s infamous 1993 catwalk fall; her Covid-era airplane outfit – a Burberry cape over a hazmat suit; and the Dolce & Gabbana evening gown she wore while doing community service after she threw her phone at an employee.

What we learned

Sculptor Ronald Moody was also a poet, broadcaster, educator – and dentist

Hi-tech imaging has revealed that Rubens tinkered with Herri met de Bles’s painting

Works by Dora Maar, Picasso’s muse, show off her own neglected brilliance

A survey of Gavin Jantjes’ work shows off the South African’s extraordinary range

Photographer Sujata Setia’s series A Thousand Cuts focuses on domestic violence

The Yoshida family’s brilliant prints are ill served by effacing their turbulent history

Salisbury residents say a new wooden sculpture spoils view of the cathedral

A ‘masterpiece’ by Paula Rego is expected to break auction records

Masterpiece of the week

The Adoration of the Kings, by the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, 1475-80

Renaissance paintings of the three Kings, or Magi, who travelled from afar offered artists a chance to explore diverse people and costumes. In a medieval tradition apparently started by the Venerable Bede, one of the Magi was often depicted as the legendary Black ruler Balthazar. But this Venetian painting goes much further than most Adorations in embracing globalism. Venice traded all over the Mediterranean world and communicated directly with the Ottoman empire. Giovanni Bellini’s brother, Gentile, went to Istanbul to portray Sultan Mehmet II. That family interest in Muslim culture is very evident here as Giovanni’s busy workshop attempts to realistically depict an Ottoman delegation arriving in Bethlehem as if they were on an official visit to Venice itself.
• National Gallery, London

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