1. Gilbert and George: Urethra Postcard Art | White Cube
Gilbert and George's genius for design is always apparent in their meticulous formal patterns of repeated images. These collages of postcards they have found in souvenir shops, museums, galleries and specialist suppliers show a more intimate, gently humorous side to their art.
2. Gauguin: Maker of Myth | Tate Modern, London SE1 (020 7887 8888), until Jan 16
Humdinger of a show devoted to the French stockbroker-turned-artist who exchanged Paris’s civilised boulevards for a more primitive life in the South Seas, where he concocted intoxicating canvases dominated by fierce, flat colours, simplified designs and strange, fetid symbolism.
3. Venice: Canaletto and Rivals | National Gallery, London WC2 (020 7747 2885), until Jan 16
Sumptuous views of La Serenissima by Giovanni Antonio Canal, aka Canaletto (1697-1768), as well as several of his contemporaries, including Michele Marieschi, Bernardo Bellotto and Francesco Guardi. In the 18th century, no Grand Tour of Italy was complete without a souvenir painting of a Venetian landmark such as the St Mark’s Square or the Rialto, and Canaletto quickly established himself as the king of the genre.
4. Bronzino – Artist & Poet at the Court of the Medici | Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, until Jan 23
The work of Agnolo Bronzino – court painter to Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany – has provoked violently diverse responses. This exhibition sets out to rescue the painter from 19th-century stereotype and 20th-century neglect. It is the first comprehensive show dedicated to the work of Bronzino, drawing together more than 70 of his paintings.
Due to their fragility, painted in oil on panels of wood, this is a show that will not travel beyond Florence and may well never be repeated. It is unlikely that the painter will ever be seen in such depth and breadth again.
5. Journey Through the Afterlife | British Museum, London WC1 (020 7323 8299), until March 6
Major exhibition devoted to unravelling the mysteries of the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian compilation of spells and incantations designed to help people chart a course through the underworld to immortality. The show features a wealth of fragile objects, including works on papyrus and linen, funerary figurines and amulets, as well as resplendent mummy masks.
6. Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance | National Portrait Gallery, London WC2H (020 7306 0055), until Jan 23
Ravishing paintings by the popinjay portraitist of the early 19th century – a charming, self-taught child prodigy who succeeded Reynolds as Painter in Ordinary to the King. Lawrence captured the glamour of Britain in her prosperous pomp, and his fluid, showboating brushwork caught the eye of the great French Romantic painter Delacroix. This is the first exhibition of Lawrence’s work in Britain since 1979.
7. Paul Cézanne: The Card Players | Courtauld Gallery, London, until Jan 16
Cézanne’s series of paintings The Card Players is the cornerstone of his work between 1890 and 1895, and the prelude to the explosive creative achievement of his last years. It was a simple but inspired idea for the Courtauld Gallery to bring together three of the five versions of the picture and to display them alongside the preparatory studies in pencil, watercolour and oil. In addition, three of Cézanne’s most powerful portraits, all showing one of the models Cézanne used for The Card Players, complete our understanding of how he worked during this crucial period.
8. Norman Rockwell | Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until March 27
Rockwell said that his aim was to “tell a whole story with a single image” and with his great narrative gift he was completely successful in achieving this. Don’t bother with the paintings; turn instead to the display of all 322 covers he made for The Saturday Evening Post between 1916 and 1963
9. Nam June Paik | Tate Liverpool, until March 13
Nam June Paik is not as well-known in this country as he is in America or Germany, where he is revered as the father of video art. This two-part retrospective at Tate Liverpool and Fact (the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), the first major exhibition of his work in Britain since 1988, suggests that he deserves recognition on these shores, too, as the patron saint of the YouTube generation.
10. Francesca Woodman | Victoria Miro, London N1 (020 7336 8109), until Jan 22
Selection of around 50 unsettling yet beautiful black-and-white photographs by the American who specialised in uncanny self-portraits and committed suicide in 1981, aged 22. Since her death Woodman has become a cult figure, and this show offers an opportunity to understand why.
