Wales revs up, Turner casts his shadow, Gursky goes large and Wool keeps it woolly – the week in art

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Exhibition of the week

Artes Mundi 11
Six artists compete in the UK’s most global art prize, giving an internationalist picture of the moment we’re in.
National Museum Cardiff, until 1 March

Also showing

The Shelter of Stories
Marina Warner co-curates an exhibition about the power of narrative and the lure of home.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, from 25 October to 22 February

Turner: Always Contemporary
Damien Hirst? Jeff Koons? This survey of JMW Turner’s influence promises to go beyond the usual suspects.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, from 25 October to 22 February

Andreas Gursky
Epic images by the renowned contemporary master of the photographic sublime.
White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, until 8 November

Christopher Wool
Sculptures, drawings and prints by this acclaimed American abstract, or maybe post-abstract, artist.
Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, until 19 December

Image of the week

Gerhard Richter has painted everything from a candle to 9/11, walked his naked wife through photographic mist, and turned Titian into a sacred jumble. Now, a thrilling Paris show, boasting 270 works, reveals the German visual artist in all his contradictory brilliance. Read the full review.

What we learned

Trump’s bulletproof ballroom is giving dictator-for-life vibes

Renoir’s lesser-seen drawings star in a major new exhibition

Winning the Turner prize made Helen Marten more ferocious

The Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist ranges from fierce documentary to AI experiment

The finalists for the Jarman film art prize take in Jamaican rivers and Lagos’s motorbike taxis

A guerrilla scheme lets skint artists mass-share gallery membership cards

The Louvre raiders had dreadful taste in art

American artist Kara Walker breathtakingly transformed a Confederate monument

Photographer Coreen Simpson used wit and luck to capture Muhammad Ali and Toni Morrison

Masterpiece of the week

The Grotto at Posillipo by Thomas Jones, 1782

The 18th-century Welsh artist Thomas Jones made a long journey to Naples, living there at a time when many artists were drawn by Mount Vesuvius which was erupting although it didn’t threaten the city, instead offering a “sublime” spectacle. Jones, who wrote about his travels, made the obligatory trip to see the lava streams but as an artist he was more drawn to quiet, mysterious scenes in Naples and its surrounding landscape. Here he finds himself alone sheltering from the afternoon heat in the shady entrance to an ancient Roman tunnel that connected Naples with the seaside town Pozzuoli to its north. Jones finds a powerful fascination in the deserted silence of the place, the dark mouth of the sinister underground passage, the uneasy beauty of the hollow.
The National Gallery, London

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