Great Works
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Attempt At The Impossible (1928)
Paintings visualise the world for us. They observe or imagine what it looks like. They show us the sight of things. But not always. Some paintings do just the opposite. They show us something, while declaring that they've no idea how it really was. Take the early pictures of René Magritte.
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The Vale Of Rest (1858-9)
Millais's The Vale of Rest was painted for an audience that liked and expected a picture to have a story. It could be a story taken from a novel, a poem, from history or even a news report.
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Saint Serapion (1628)
The English Jesuit priest Edmund Campion was executed in London in December 1581. Standing on the scaffold with the noose round his neck, he began to speak: "Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, angelis et hominibus".
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In Pictures
Alien landscapes Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s images of nature focus on the places we’d rather not see: copper mines, oilfields and the scarred craters of giant quarries. Few people have captured man’s destruction of the planet more vividly
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FIVE BEST EXHIBITIONS
Wyndham Lewis (National Portrait Gallery, London)
The greatest English Modernist was one of the best portrait painters ever. Includes his masterpiece of T S Eliot, not seen in this country for 25 years. (020-7312 2463) to 19 Oct
Hadrian (British Museum, London)
The life, loves and legacy of the emperor who transfored the character of the Roman world is celebrated with sculptures and artefacts in bronze and marble. (020-7323 8181) to 26 Oct
Psycho Buildings (Hayward Gallery, London)
Artists do fantasy architectural installations, and despite the “Psycho” billing, it’s an extremely child-pleasing summer-months show. Rachel Whiteread features. (08703 800 400) to 25 Aug
Street Art (Tate Modern, London)
Six urban interventionists decorate the outer walls of the gallery. Among them are Blu from Bologna and New York’s Faile collective. (020-7887 8888) to 25 Aug
The Lure of the East (Tate Britain, London)
Nineteenth-century British painters explore the Near and Middle East: William Holman Hunt, Lord Leighton and Richard Dadd and others contemplate turbans, harems and hookahs. (020-7887 8888) to 31 Aug