Art / Exhibitions

Tate Britain reopened in November. The oldest part of the building has been restored, combining some of its most architecturally impressive parts with new elements. New learning studios and archive space follow the opening in May of new galleries to display "the best of British art."

£45 million has been spent on the overhaul and it's clear that a lot of the cash has come from big business. One space has been named the Sackler Octagon, while rooms that focus on particular artists or themes are given to us by BP.

Paul Klee has been described as "the left's favourite artist". This reputation stems in no small part from the use by the German critic and writer Walter Benjamin, in a typically poetic analogy, of one of Klee's works in his Thesis on the Philosophy of History:

His work is seen as straight talking stuff and "much loved" - no art school rubbish here. I naturally grew up loathing him.

This exhibition shows him in a wider context. In fact, nearly all I thought about him was wrong. He was not working class but brought up very upper middle class and only fell into the lower middle when he was in his 20s. He was not self taught and based his art on late French impressionism - until the 1940s he was shown more in Paris than in Britain.

Jeremy Deller, a Turner Prize winner who is becoming renowned for drawing influence from social issues and protest movements, has been selected to curate the British Pavillion at the international art festival in Venice.

But now an exhibition in his home city belatedly shows off the best of his graphic and dynamic prints and etchings.

It is his prints, influenced by Futurism and the Vorticists, which are by far the most exciting.

A fine example is the 1932 lino print called Grinders, a striking monochrome image of two men sharpening knives which is clearly symbolic of Sheffield's steel industry.

The work has a real sense of rhythm typical of movements that revelled in the speed of modern life and the triumph of mechanisation.

Comprising 120 works, many of which have never been seen before, this exhibition brings together paintings and sculpture made by the artist over six decades.

Two experiences seem to have had a great influence on Choucair's work. The first was a visit to Egypt in 1943 where she developed a profound love of Islamic design and architecture. The second was a few years in France in the 1940s, where she embraced modernism and joined the studio of the great painter Fernand Leger before returning to Beirut. She also drew influence from the celebrated modernist architect Corbusier.

It was also the political reference point for many Catalans, who looked north to the more exciting, progressive and forward looking Paris rather than the artistically and politically conservative world in Madrid.

In an exhibition at the Galerie Vollard - from which several exhibits are on display here - Picasso showed works revising many of the themes of Post-Impressionism. He also echoed the styles of great painters before him, from Manet and Renoir through Degas, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.

The exhibition is arranged into three groupings: "Language and Making", "Representation and Relationships" and "Culture and Possibility". The boundaries of these categories are fairly loose, and a lot of effort has gone into creating a continuity of themes throughout the exhibition.

Presented in the indoor galleries and open air of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Shonibare's work here follows pieces on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth and at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. His work, at once vibrant and varied, fits well into these differing spaces.

As well as producing beautiful and dramatic pieces, Shonibare references themes from environmental destruction to the Arab Spring. Stand out works include the playful collage Climate Shit and intricate sculpture Alien Man on Flying Machine.

The new "David Bowie Is" exhibition at the V&A Museum is a fascinating insight into one of one of the most contradictory figures in popular culture over the last 50 years.

For some on the left, the start and end point of David Bowie's story is his mid-1970s flirtation with far-right iconography and symbolism: his cocaine-addled statements about believing "strongly in fascism" or calling Hitler "one of the first rock stars". But Bowie's story - from Ziggy Stardust to elder statesman of eclectic pop - is one that parallels many social changes in post-war Britain.