The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

Charlotte Salomon (Royal Academy)

"Life? Or Theatre?", Salomon's life in pictures. Her 405 raw gouaches tell the story of the German Jewish girl's haste before Auschwitz - an expressionistic operetta in three colours. To 17 Jan

Neurotic Realism

(Saatchi Gallery)

First instalment of Charles Saatchi's new, made-up art movement, which, by a happy coincidence, consists entirely of works in his own collection. To 28 Mar

Chris Ofili

(Whitworth Gallery, Manchester)

This 1998 Turner Prize-winner is an upbeat original, his surfaces dense and decorative, with swirls of dots, Afros and black icons, and incorporating elephant dung. To 24 Jan

Edward Burne-Jones

(Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery)

This centenary exhibition gathers together many favourites illustrating Burne-Jones's romantic and medievalist nether world (above). To 17 Jan

Grinling Gibbons (Victoria & Albert Museum)

The best chisel-work of the great 17th-century English woodcarver, who made intricacy and the abundance of nature his trademark. To 24 Jan