Mark Rothko: The Seagram Murals The greatest abstract paintings in Britain, commissioned for a New York restaurant but given by Rothko to the Tate, cast their dark spell all over again. • Tate St Ives, Cornwall, until 5 January
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Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look Intimate encounter between the renowned British painter and Renaissance genius Piero della Francesca, whose masterpiece The Baptism of Christ is owned by the National Gallery. • National Gallery, London from 8 August until 27 October
Royal Portraits Photographs of the Windsors, from Cecil Beaton to Andy Warhol whose portrait of Elizabeth II is based on a photo by Peter Grugeon, and sprinkled with diamond dust. • King’s Gallery, London, until 6 October
A vibrant portrait of the LGBTQ+ and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, by Sarah Jane Moon, has been hung in the National Portrait Gallery’s History Makers gallery as part of a drive to better reflect the diversity of the UK. The 72-year-old activist’s rainbow tie celebrates almost six decades of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. Tatchell, who has experienced more than 300 violent assaults and has been arrested or detained by police more than 100 times, said he was “delighted and honoured” to see it “alongside so many esteemed public figures … I love the bold, expressive, joyful style, which reflects the spirit of my campaigns,” he said. Read the full story
Why would a painter try to depict the experience of blindness? For Rembrandt, the sightless Tobit, whose story is told in the Book of Tobit in the Old Testament Apocrypha, may have access to a mystery beyond the visible. This painting lures us towards that enigma. The white, harshly bright daylight framed by the window seems empty and dead. By contrast, the shadowy interior of Tobit’s room in its deepening darkness is an image of the inner sanctum of consciousness. Rembrandt searches in these shadows for what cannot be pictured – and anticipates the abstract expressionism of Rothko. • National Gallery, London
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