art & design
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Cornelia Parker and Jarvis Cocker share their spoilsThe tooth of a sperm whale, a street sign to a ghost village, issues of Romania Today … Cornelia Parker’s new show is a treasure trove of finds chanced upon by everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Marina Warner -
Why does Austria flirt with fascism?Gustav Metzger used a photo of Jewish men scrubbing Viennese streets under the gaze of sneering Nazis to remind the world about antisemitism. The narrow defeat of Norbert Hofer proves his message is as relevant as ever
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The sketcher blurring activism and artArmed with her paintbrush, the illustrator and journalist is redefining reportage with her portraits of Guantánamo Bay, Trump and Syrian refugees -
The stone I married is beautiful and dignified – it will never let me downShe may now prefer horse-riding to hell-raising, but Tracey Emin is still full of attitude. As she takes a break from the art world, she talks about the ‘horrible’ press, banning high heels – and why a paleolithic partner is a perfect pick-me-up
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How the Soviets rewrote children's booksFrom the capitalist ice cream eater who came to a sticky end to the Malevich-inspired adventures of two squares, Bolshevik kids’ books sparked an avant garde revolution in illustration
in pictures
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Joining the dots: Shigeo Anzaï's constellation of art stars – in picturesFrom Damien Hirst in his boxers to Yayoi Kusama in a polkadot wonderland, Shigeo Anzaï tracks art’s biggest names to their natural habitats and captures them in candid black and white
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talking points
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Explosions in the sky: why Mount Etna erupting is as pretty as a paintingTuri Caggegi’s recent volcanic YouTube footage is uncannily similar to Joseph Wright’s 18th-century art of Vesuvius – both capture an Italian night on fire
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Inside Facebook and friends: a rare tour around tech's mind-boggling HQsFacebook has wifi-enabled wildflower meadows, LinkedIn an inhouse pastry chef, and Samsung tai chi in the cactus garden. But they’ll all be left behind by Amazon’s jungle biospheres. Take our tour of the tech campuses of Silicon Valley
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reviews
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An embarrassment of richesThe raw melodrama of Francis Bacon meets the humour and humanity of Maria Lassnig in this superb double bill
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Archaeology dressed up as an action movieThis frustrating show about the ‘lost worlds’ of the Nile Delta has too much Indiana Jones nonsense – and not enough genuine wonders
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A beacon of optimism on a West Bank hilltopWith gardens of native species in lieu of a perimeter wall, this bright limestone hangar is a powerful and positive presence – even without any contents
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David King obituaryArtist, designer and photographer who built up a massive archive of Soviet-era artefacts
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Surfing in Palestine: everyday life in the occupied territoriesJovial bodybuilders, sun-kissed surfers, free-running teenagers … can this really be Palestine? Tanya Habjouqa explains her astonishingly fresh take on occupied life
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Neil Libbert’s New York street scenesThe Observer photojournalist arrived in the city in the 1960s as a young man and set to documenting his first impressions of its wild life
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Forever blowing bubbles: summer beach days – in picturesFor Hackney-based photographer Emily Stein, the carefree days of youth need not be forgotten when we grow up
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The 20 photographs of the weekThe EgyptAir crash, violent demonstrations in Paris and Nairobi, Leicester City’s victory parade, Iggy Pop crowdsurfing in London, the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week
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Story of cities #future: what will our growing megacities really look like?Will we live in buildings made out of waste, heavily surveilled smart cities, or maybe floating communities designed to cope with rising sea levels?
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Going Going Gone review – Nick Broomfield gets sentimental about old ruinsThe documentarist explores two of Britain’s crumbling ruins – and meets the people who danced, and fell in love in them. Plus: Secret Life of the Human Pups shows us life on all fours, in PVC
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These monoliths that dominate the skyline expose the tainted wealth that has the capital’s gullible politicians in thrallLondon’s empty towers mark a very British form of corruption
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Timelapse footage of Tate Modern Switch House being built – videoWatch the construction of Tate Modern’s new £260m tower, the Switch House, which has been in the works since mid-2000
the big picture
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The life and death of my glamorous grandmotherRachel Cox charts with painful honesty her grandmother’s final days with a degenerative brain disease in this Lens Culture award-winning photo series
you may have missed
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The most dazzling art and design of summer 2016Dive into underwater cities, swoon over O’Keeffe’s ravishing blooms, and swoosh down Carsten-Höller’s slides and hang out with Hockney and his friends in LA
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Meet the Anatomical VenusThey were reclining beauties with ecstatic expressions – and lift-out intestines. Enter the necrophiliac world of 18th-century anatomical models
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Maria Lassnig: under the skinLassnig’s paintings of herself as a robot, a monster and an elderly naked gunslinger have seen her hailed as the perfect artist for the age of the selfie. But her ‘body awareness’ work is about more than just surface
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Yves Klein and the birth of the blueThe time Yves Klein spent working in a London frame shop was crucial to his artistic development, so why is it forgotten?
video
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The making of a London replicaDestroyed by Isis in October 2015, a 2000-year-old arch from Palmyra, Syria, has been meticulously recreated through 3D printing for Trafalgar Square
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Ai Weiwei visits migrants at Greek border campThe artist says the situation is a ‘big violation of human rights’
Guy Le Querrec's best shot A flying handbag at a monastery in China