Bold pastels, pale impressionists and existential bodies – the week in art

Jenny Saville’s visceral new work, sketchy stuff from Renoir et al and Antony Gormley meditates some more – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Jenny Saville: Ekkyklema
New paintings and works on paper by this bold and visceral figurative artist.
• Gagosian Davies Street, London, from 30 November until 10 February

Also showing

Impressionists on Paper
Powerful works by Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh bring this lackadaisical show to life.
• Royal Academy, London, from 25 November until 10 March

Antony Gormley
The artist of the existential body continues his meditations on our common humanity.
• White Cube Bermondsey, London until 28 January

Fashion City
A celebration of the Jewish artisans who dressed the swinging 60s.
• Museum of London Docklands until 14 April

Turner prize
As the judges prepare to announce a winner in early December, make your own choice between Ghislaine Leung, Barbara Walker, Rory Pilgrim and Jesse Darling.
• Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, until 14 April

Image of the week

German artist Thomas Bayrle, 86, who has opened a major retrospective of his work in Turin, talked about his longstanding fascination with the automobile. “The car sped up every aspect of our society,” he says. “But these days there’s a counter-argument that cars are no longer progressive, and there’s something in that. They are also monsters, crazy monsters.” Read the full interview

What we learned

Pope.L, famed for crawling across New York in the 70s, opened his first London show

A cartoonist started the rumour that Napoleon was short, while other painters caught his truth

Mário Macilau’s spellbinding photos of Mozambique have won the James Barnor prize

The Venice Biennale’s new director was once active in neo-fascist politics

Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia turned a barn in Cumbria into an international artists’ hub

The reopened National Museum of Women in the Arts rewrites art history

Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim is finally taking her place in the UK art pantheon

Jarman award-winner Rehana Zaman shares earnings with the people she films

Banksy revealed his first name in a resurfaced interview clip

Sunil Gupta’s images of 80s Pride marches recall a time before commerce took over

Masterpiece of the week

The Blood of the Redeemer by Giovanni Bellini, c 1465

The blood of Christ was at the heart of late medieval Europe’s dominant religion. It was believed to be literally present in the wine at mass and believers were encouraged to meditate intimately on the physical suffering and death of Christ, the tragic human fragility of his bleeding body. Here Bellini depicts Christ’s body with sensual feeling, making each sinew and bone seem real. He stands risen from the tomb, a transformed being, no longer mortal but godlike: yet still in carnal form, dripping blood from his wounded side into a chalice held by an angel. Bellini sets this vision against a real north Italian landscape, whose forbidding city walls and rocky hillsides imply a barren, brutal reality, redeemed by this gift of blood.
• National Gallery, London

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