Art: The Five Best Shows In London

1

Monet in the 20th Century

Royal Academy

The gardens and ponds at Giverny dissolve into elemental visions: fiery lights, haze, liquid reflections, voids and depths. The strange last works of Impressionism. To 8 Apr

2

Portraits by Ingres National Gallery

Some of the smartest, most intense portraiture ever. Men: icons of power. Women: exquisite melanges of flesh and fabric, dreams of sex and money. Images of triumphant bourgeois luxury. To 25 Apr

3

Andreas Gursky Serpentine Gallery

Photographs 994-98: huge, wide-vision micro-detailed vistas - stock exchange floor, city-scape, airport, alpine valley - with more than the eye can see. To 7 Mar

4

Zang Tumb Tumb Estorick Collection

A display of the Italian Futurists' dynamic experiments with language, typography and graphics. Books, mags, ads and manifestos. To Apr

5

Julian Schnabel South London Gallery

In the 980s, this US artist was touted as the best painter since Picasso; then he was almost immediately forgotten and unshown here for 2 years. To 28 Feb

... AND BEYOND

Bridget Riley Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal

Small retrospective spanning Riley's career as top British abstractionist, from the shimmering monochromes of her early Sixties Op Art fame, to colour, stripes, diagonals, and curves. To 3 Jan

2

Disasters of War Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Three ages of European war through the etchings of Jaques Callot, Goya and Otto Dix. Black-and-white visions from the blackest of times. To 20 Mar

3

Oppe Watercolour Collection Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Classic and still fresh: 8th- and 9th-century British watercolours, largely outdoors, including works by Constable and John Sell Cotman. Ends tomorrow

4

Willie Doherty MOMA, Oxford

Contemporary Irish artist using photos and video to reflect on the imagery of terror and security - the road-block, the surveillance camera, the burnt out car, the interview in silhouette. To 4 Apr

5

Edward Weston De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea

Masterpieces of modernist photography by one of the American pioneers: vegetables, nudes and landscapes, closely observed and metamorphosed. Tue to 2 Mar