The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

Rembrandt by Himself (National Gallery, London)

The self-portraits (right). The first and most searching autobiography in paint. The great pictorial statements of honesty and mortality, of the human depths. To 5 Sept

Joseph Beuys (Royal Academy, London)

Beautiful and mysterious: 456 drawings using blood, fat, pencil and gold leaf, offer clues to Beuys's mythology. To 16 Sept

Helen Chadwick (Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield)

Photographic pieces of nature, death and pleasure from Chadwick's short career - animal skins, flowers, embryos and unexpected fluids (she used chocolate and Windolene). To 28 Aug

Notorious (MoMA, Oxford)

One hundred years after his birth, Alfred Hitchcock lives. This group show looks at his legacy in art, with the likes of Douglas Gordon, Cindy Sherman and Atom Egoyan. To 3 Oct

W Eugene Smith (Dundee Contemporary Arts)

Retrospective of an American photojournalist with an increasingly campaigning eye: see the terrible images of industrial poisoning victims in Japan. To 27 Aug