Exhibition of the week
Sound art inspired by everyday objects and the eerie harmonies of history provides the latest artistic intervention in Tate Modern's biggest space. Read more here.
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, from 13 October to 11 April
Also showing
The colossal art fairs offering a luxurious view of the new, the old and everything in between.
Regent's Park, London, from 14-18 October
The latest surreal self-fashionings from this pioneer of the fantastic and grotesque.
Hauser & Wirth, London, from 13 October until 23 December
Julien's film about 19th-century anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass comes to a Scottish city where he delivered four of his inspiring speeches.
Perth Museum, from 9 October until 11 April
Perhaps the most powerful and unforgettable works of the German artist who died this year.
Thaddaeus Ropac, London, from 13 October until 18 December
Image of the week
Shopfront, scaffolding, throbbing car bodies … 37 artists take the temperature of the nation in a show which demonstrates the breadth and eccentricity of British identity. Read more about British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers.
What we learned
Tate Britain missed the mark with breathlessly superficial exhibition of 90s art and fashion
Why children have always adored taking pictures – and what their images can tell us
Whether your brain can handle a show that only has white paintings
The Greek goddess Aphrodite was thrown on the rubbish heap in Oxford
A £110m gallery can still run the risk of looking like a fashion mag
Masterpiece of the week
An Angel in Red With a Lute by Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, c1495–1499
Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been sent to the court of Milan by Lorenzo de' Medici to play on a bizarre stringed instrument of his own invention. His drawings do include inventions for novel musical devices. This painting is closely influenced by Leonardo: not only does it imitate his shadowed, dreamy style but it was originally part of the same altarpiece in Milan as his National Gallery masterpiece The Virgin of the Rocks. Leonardo, De Predis and every other Renaissance artist associated music with the mathematics of Pythagoras and the harmony of the universe: the angel here is playing, could we but hear it, such heavenly music. But it is the lute that suggests a very direct influence by Leonardo. The precise and detailed, entrancing way that De Predis depicts its nine strings and the angel's highly realistic fingering echo Leonardo's fascination with machinery and technology – in this case the sweet machinery of music. Painted under the hypnotic sway of the Tuscan polymath who was Milan's court artist, this painting holds you charmed and soothed by the sound of silence.
National Gallery, London
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
Get in touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com