Exhibitions on now in London

"I've never been a huge Baselitz fan: I found the whole upside down painting thing an affectation and I would have happily fronted a campaign to have all his work shown the right way up so we can see what it's really about. I also think he churned out the same painting for decades. But this is brutally emotional stuff."

"These were revolutionary photographs at the time – and they still feel new in their search to express the inexpressible. The dimly lit, subterranean gallery keeps you cocooned in this elegiac, brooding atmosphere. Kawada is drawn to images that trace the extremities of the Earth, the visible outer edges of our existence – the sky, the horizon, water, burning suns and scorching fires."

"In parts of the show, Moore's love of natural forms seems to run counter to the Victorian splendour of Kew. One of his bone-like pieces, Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (1968-69), sits in front of the Palm House. Moore's irregular, undulating tripartite form seems to echo – or mock – the pane-glass and wrought-iron symmetry of the older building."

"Then, in 1865, Whistler suddenly paints the sea as if it was a piece of silk decorated with white lace and a ribbon. Green and Grey, Channel is a stunning declaration of artistic independence. He takes the sea, the element humans can't control, the roaring theme of Turner's visions, and makes it a painterly plaything."

"In a manifesto-like move, all three of this summer's big exhibitions at Tate Modern celebrate an individual female artist; the others are Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo. This is by far the best."

"The word 'visionary' is done to death but the 17th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán demands it: he paints supernatural things naturally and natural things supernaturally. Space becomes different in his world, melting distance and erasing the barrier between you and the picture."

"The rounded, white plaster objects are cut open to reveal deep blue interiors that seem immemorial, although Hepworth has simply painted them. Across the blue illusionistic depths, red-painted strings are tautly fixed. The red strings might suggest seaweed if, like me, you can't get nature out of your head looking at these abstract yet evocative works."

"Escher, this utterly traditional artist, makes you see that we walk a world we don't understand. We are his funny little people, going up and down the stairs, thinking we ascend or descend when we're on the flat, propping up our everyday lives with cosy assumptions to hide from the infinite, the impossible real."

"The Texan is the third film-maker to be given a retrospective at the Design Museum, following Stanley Kubrick and Tim Burton, and this is the pick of the three. Cinema like this can feel incredibly extravagant — some canine puppets for Isle of Dogs took three years to make and were on screen for a matter of seconds. Here, though, you can spend time with it all."

"In Anderson's work, the natural world is almost ominously abundant. Greenery seems to suffocate man-made structures, which often appear dilapidated – like ruined temples in a jungle. The sense of melancholy this generates is offset by the pleasure that Anderson evidently derives from manipulating paint. His compositions – some of which flirt, ingeniously, with abstraction – are awash with attractive blotches and drips."

"The focus on religion is heavy-handed at times – perhaps loving the Spice Girls or Elvis is just not that deep? – and it feels remiss for the exhibition not to question what happens when these obsessions go too far, if they are always healthy, or if idolising celebrities should be seen as a blanket positive thing. Still, Holy Pop! is a joyous celebration of pop culture fandoms, and all their quirky, messy extremes."

"Elsewhere, slender ceramic figures are gathered like pawns on a chessboard, though here they are more crowded, more claustrophobic, not helped by the cages covering their heads. What are we to make of these structures? Devices for trapping fruit-eating pests, or part of a wider system of confinement, of lives hemmed into structures larger than themselves."

"And she is magnificent — not merely critically, but commercially. Brown is among the most expensive living female painters in the world, her canvases commanding prices that would make lesser talents weep. The market, for once, is not wrong."

"Others (like me) may be put off by his somewhat patrician perspective: a landowner surveying a plot in which everyone is busy at work, driving cows or ploughing fields. This small show at Hampstead's Burgh House offers something like an olive branch to Constable haters."

"As an exhibition, it's a leaf through a scrapbook rather than a comprehensive survey. Summers run together, the days seem long and hazy, the irises are always in bloom. I left this evocative and convivial show craving ratatouille, resolving to plant irises and level the earth at the back of the garden for a greenhouse of my own."

"In an era when art often seems content with small, dry efforts, Kapoor soaks the Hayward in the blood and guts of his unfettered imagination."

"Walking into Tate Modern's huge Tracey Emin retrospective is like walking in on her crying, naked, sobbing and snotty, as if you have stumbled into something painfully private. Don't come here looking for a good time – you won't find it. But come looking for pure, unapologetic, undiluted, full-frontal love, grief, heartache and sadness, and you will end up feeling more feelings than you've probably felt for years."

"For the past 50 years, Hockney has flitted between these two modes, returning occasionally from noodling to remind us of his gift for direct communication (see his portrait of the performer Divine, the affecting drawings of his ageing mother, or his paintings of the Yorkshire landscape in the 2000s). But, sad to report, it is to the late stages of the jazz tendency that most of this exhibition belongs."

"That's the trouble with art. It may set out to change the world, as Le Parc and his pals in GRAV did, but ends up as entertainment. This is a very enjoyable exhibition but its revolutionary impulse gets lost in the light."

"In that regard, and in staking her claim as an active participant in how she was perceived during her lifetime, it's a success. But Monroe is so chameleonic, so charming, so conscious of audience and image that – between star and photographer – we only get an occasional glimpse of the human behind the pictures."

"Inside, you are plunged into near-total darkness, feeling your way along softly curving corridors lined with compact, hair-like roots. And unlike the dank, musty odour one might expect from a mound of soil, Morelos' beast smells unexpectedly good: infused with clove and cinnamon and softened by the cool scent of earth after rain."

"Certainly, blockbusters showing Van Gogh have the most populist pulling power, but credit is due to the National for truly seeking to provide a fuller geographic and historical view of other artists and movements. To this end, this Waldmüller showcase is the art historical equivalent of eating your greens: it may not quicken the heartbeat but is nonetheless a healthy exercise forming a fully balanced palate."

"But for pure painterly excellence, you won't get much better than Glen Pudvine and Harriet Porter. The former's image of two hands unfolding a piece of paper is stunningly executed. The latter's painting of a small, silver pot is beautiful, hazy, minimal, serene."

"Tate's blockbuster show about this rightly beloved artist asks how and why she became an "icon". But I've never seen an exhibition about how Picasso got famous or the cultural invention of Rembrandt. We know they are great artists and how they were historically recognised is for scholars."

"But the exhibition does not sing. It spits out theory instead. Every section is framed as an essay, with artworks chosen to illustrate an argument: one bay is based around the ideas of sociologist Stuart Hall, which the works don't seem to illustrate anyway. This is a show that wants to conjure up a utopian place, Panafrica, and make it real, which would be a powerful piece of political enchantment."

"Yet art rock is not art. In a live gig or on vinyl (White's preferred medium), sounds and words, gestures and rhythms, create atmospheres that can be elusive and fragile in their romantic power, even when the lyrics are banal or nonsensical. But as a visual artist, White is a complete nonstarter."