Faking it … Maisie Maud Broadhead's Keep Them Sweet references Simon Vouet's Allegory of Wealth. Photograph: Maisie Broadhead/Sarah Myerscough Fine Art
Exhibition of the week: Seduced by Art – Photography Past and Present
If the National Gallery was New York's Metropolitan Museum it would have a rich photography department alongside its collection of paintings. Its younger London sister museum, the V&A, does have such a collection. But at the National Gallery, paintings hang in solitary splendour – oil on canvas is king. So this is a revolutionary event, a direct encounter between photography and painting, at a gallery that has always stood for the pure daub. It emphasises two moments in the story of photography: the mid-19th century and the present day. Victorian photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Roger Fenton emulated painting. The results are fascinating. Today, photography is art, and artists use the camera tumultuously. Yet artists here from Ori Gersht to Tacita Dean do so in rich and strange ways that draw on the history of painting.
• National Gallery , London WC2N from 31 October until 20 January 2013
Other exhibitions this week
Frank Auerbach
Tremendous thick tangles of paint and feeling by a modern master.
• Offer Waterman & Co, London SW10, from 2 November until 1 December
Galápagos
Artists meditate on the islands that inspired Darwin.
• Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh EH1, from 2 November until 13 January 2013
Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings
These powerful drawings reveal Hepworth's inner passion.
• Hepworth Wakefield, WF1, from 27 October until 3 February 2013
The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein
Holbein's works in the Royal Collection, which feature in this survey of the Renaissance in northern Europe, are utterly formidable.
• Queen's Gallery, London SW1A, from 2 November until 14 April 2013
Masterpiece of the week
Photograph: The National Gallery, London Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Princess Pauline de Metternich, c1865
Degas was deeply interested in photography and he based this portrait on a photograph long before painters like Warhol and Richter made that practice famous. The spooky, smudged look of Princess Pauline's face resembles a 19th-century photograph – and not by chance. Degas has meticulously imitated a photograph of her. His rendering of a photographic aesthetic in paint is startling and provocative so early in the story of modern art.
• National Gallery, London WC2N
Image of the week
Ai Weiwei dances with his friends as they make a cover version of the music video of Gangnam Style by South Korean singer Psy in the courtyard of the dissident artist's studio in Beijing. Photograph: Reuters What we learned this week
How Ai Weiwei's Gangnam Style spinoff differs from the original
A Seattle gallery has swapped all works on its walls by men with those by women. But has it made its point?
How much flamingos, dogs and frogs have added to the world of black and white photography
That Barbara Hepworth rejected sculpture in favour of surgical drawings to show off her idealism
That the world's biggest clock tower is casting its time and shadow over the holy city of Mecca
That the Guardian has a new photography blog – take a look
And finally …
• The new Share your art theme is government. Got a message for Cameron or Clegg? Give it your best shot
• Post your images to the Art and Design Flickr
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• Are you the assistant curator the V&A are looking for? To see more Visual Arts roles on Guardian Jobs click here
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