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The genius of Cézanne, Black beauty and a sci-fi voyage – the week in art

A major exhibition of the post-impressionist artist, pastoral photography from Tyler Mitchell and a science spectacular to get you thinking – all in your weekly dispatch

Paul Cézanne’s Bathers c1894-1905 at Tate Modern, London. Photograph: Tate

Exhibition of the week

Cézanne
The mountain, the apples and so much more – a chance to encounter true genius.
Tate Modern, London, from 5 October-12 March.

Also showing

Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination
A journey through the genre that turns science into fantasy while, at its greatest, making you think about science itself.
Science Museum, London, from 6 October-4 May.

Tyler Mitchell: Chrysalis
Pastoral photographs of young Black men and women in idyllic settings.
Gagosian Davies Street, London, from 6 October-12 November.

In-Side-Out-Side-In
Laura Wilson and Helen Chadwick are among the artists in this group show about the body and society.
Site Gallery, Sheffield, until 22 December.

Peter Halley
A new show by this postmodern abstract painter of systems and structures.
Modern Art Helmet Row, London, until 5 November.

Image of the week

Rebel (Portrait of Zinat Moadab), 2021. Photograph: Soheila Sokhanvari

In her series of paintings Rebel Rebel, artist Soheila Sokhanvari celebrates 27 feminist icons from pre-revolutionary Iran, many of whom were forced into exile and erased from Iranian cultural history. View the full gallery here.

What we learned

Marina Abramović was not present in her latest show, Gates and Portals

From the Queen to his ex-wives, Lucian Freud painted his subjects with an unsentimental eye
There was an imperial showdown on the fourth plinth

Fourth plinth artist Samson Kambalu believes everything in Oxford was built with dodgy money
JMW Turner’s masterful paintings were given a sombre soundtrack

South African artist William Kentridge’s epic show spanned 40 years

Picasso admired Paul Cézanne so much he bought his mountain

Insects ran wild in an Amsterdam gallery

The smiley face means big business

An artist is fighting Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro with parrots, pink dolphins and six-legged beetles

Masterpiece of the week

The Four Times of the Day: Morning, about 1858, by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
A red dawn glow on the horizon is the only hint of drama in this painting of rustic peace. A man is at work in the woods that fill the foreground, as we soothe our nerves by sinking into a calm scene of nature, undisturbed by trains or factories (in his day) or jet streams in the sky (in ours). Corot created landscapes such as this one that merge a Romantic sensibility with the classical tradition of French scenery established in the 1600s by Claude and Poussin. Soon the impressionists would give this territory a liberating blast of immediacy and spontaneity. Yet the landscapes of Paul Cézanne, which are being shown at Tate Modern, paradoxically return to Corot’s silent eternal countryside.
National Gallery, London

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