The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

Bridget Riley (Serpentine Gallery, London)

The classic Op period (right): paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, blazing and shifting in black, white and magically elusive and illusive shades of grey. To 30 Aug

Disasters of War (Imperial War Museum, London)

Three ages of European war through the etchings of Jaques Callot, Goya and Otto Dix. Black-and-white flashes of horror, mass executions, madness and blood everywhere. To 26 Sept

Chuck Close (Hayward Gallery, London)

The original painter of the very big face, analysed into pixel fragments. Work from the photorealism of the 1960s to the current tesserated, bright- candied images. To 19 Sept

Notorious (MoMA, Oxford)

One hundred years after his birth, Alfred Hitchcock lives. Group show looks at his legacy in art, most cunningly in the Phoenix Tapes. To 3 Oct

As Dark As Light (Venues around Cornwall)

A countywide contemporary art festival, focusing on the solar eclipse. James Turrell's open-air sky-dome, The Elliptic Ecliptic, is the sight to see. To 20 Nov