Tim Burton’s bestiary, Vivienne Westwood’s baroque and fashionable figuration – the week in art

The film-maker reveals his visual secrets, the great designer goes rococo and George Rouy gets fleshy – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

The World of Tim Burton
Enjoyable tour through the goth film-maker’s imagination, though short on surprises.
• Design Museum, London, until 21 April

Also showing

Framing Fashion: Vivienne Westwood
The couture maverick’s fascination with rococo art is explored in this show celebrating her unique imagination.
• Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, until 2 March

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words
The lives of European women more than 600 years ago as revealed by illuminated manuscripts and other artefacts.
• British Library, London, until 2 March

George Rouy
Fleshy, fragmentary and fashionable paintings by this British artist.
• Hauser and Wirth, London, until 21 December

Stills Salon
Edinburgh photographers who use the analogue and digital facilities at this gallery show their works.
• Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until 30 November

Image of the week

Baron Munchausen stands on a lunar landscape looking at a silhouette of the Earth, in Ray Harryhausen’s proposed adaptation of the classic Rudolf Erich Raspe novel. This is a rare oil painting by Harryhausen, which features in a new exhibition at Waterside’s Lauriston Gallery in Sale, Greater Manchester, examining the workings of one of the greatest animators in cinema history. See more images from the show, which opens on 26 October, here.

What we learned

Roma families are defiantly filling rural Romania with Las Vegas bling

The David Bowie archive will be a big draw at the V&A archives next year

Photographer Alejandra Carles-Tolra had a bruising time with a women’s rugby team

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s fabric collages pay tender homage to her Romani roots

National Gallery of Australia’s $14m commission from Lindy Lee proved controversial

Painter Jack Coulter explained how his synaesthesia made music a key inspiration

Michael Blebo resisted pressure to join Ghana’s army and became a ‘creative military’

Afro-Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino’s work is being recognised across the world

Masterpiece of the week

Aurora Abducting Cephalus by Peter Paul Rubens, about 1636-7

The baroque genius of Rubens glows in this spontaneous sketchy painting, as does his admiration for women. Aurora is not just a strong female character but an actual deity, the Greco-Roman goddess of dawn. The chariot which she is due to ride through the sky waits in the background, its white horses rearing and eager to be on their heavenly path. But she runs, powerful and muscular in her swirling robes, to embrace Cephalus with whom she has fallen suddenly in love. This is an image of the thunderclap of desire, disrupting nature itself as the dawn is delayed by Aurora’s obsessive passion. Rubens makes you feel as well as see the story with his eye for a world in supercharged motion.
• National Gallery, London

Don’t forget

To follow us on X (Twitter): @GdnArtandDesign.

Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter

If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.

Get in Touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email [email protected]