The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

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 18 Apr

Portraits by Ingres (National Gallery)

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

Andreas Gursky (Serpentine Gallery)

Photographs 1994-98: wide-vision, high-finish, micro-detailed vistas of our world - stock-exchange floor, alpine valley - images filled with more than the eye can see. To 7 Mar

Disasters of War

(Wolverhampton Art Gallery)

"I saw this" - three ages of European war through the etchings of Jacques Callot, Goya and Otto Dix. Visions from the blackest of times. To 20 Mar

Willie Doherty (MoMA, Oxford)

"Somewhere Else": a nervy, multi-screen video installation by this leading Irish artist, reflects on sectarian terror and state security. To 4 Apr

Tom Lubbock