ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
GEORGES SEURAT’S iconic The Bathers at Asnieres (1884) and its “companion” canvas A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1886) are probably among the best-known paintings by Impressionists.
But, unlike others, Seurat eschewed spontaneity for a meticulously scientific approach to colour and once memorably said: “Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I only see science.”
Early on, he had met and worked with chemist Michel-Eugene Chevreul, who had noticed that the perception of colour was not about the individual pigment but how the human brain processed adjoining colours.
MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist
Gin Lane by William Hogarth is a critique of 18th-century London’s growing funeral trade, posits DAN O’BRIEN


