Appreciating Eamonn McCabe’s work

Observer sports reporter Hugh McIlvanney’s introduction to ‘Eamonn McCabe, Sports Photographer’, published in 1982

‘She paints with the brush in her ass’: the artists sharing their worst savagings

In the book Bad Reviews, 150 artists have revisited their most brutal critiques – from an ‘unforgiveable’ Carolee Schneemann sculpture to the critic who suggested the artist should be jailed

The friend zone: art, music, films and more about platonic love

From Michelangelo’s male muse to Sex Education’s best pals, we pick five passionate but ultimately chaste partnerships

The big picture: Chris Killip captures a Sunday stroll in Skinningrove

This stark image of a family outing has an untamed quality that matches the North Yorkshire coastal village setting

Love Lucian by David Dawson and Martin Gayford review

Lucian Freud’s letters reveal the artist in all his rambunctious, irreverent and amusing glory

Longest single-volume book in the world goes on sale – and is impossible to read

The 21,450-page volume of manga series One Piece is physically unreadable, to highlight how comics now exist as commodities

Reflections on mortality: Alessandra Sanguinetti on her ​eerie images of the midwest

Inspired by a cult 1970s book, the Magnum photographer travelled to Wisconsin to create an eerie and timeless portrait of rural America

The Lindisfarne Gospels review – was Eadfrith the monk Britain’s first great artist?

This mind-bending illuminated manuscript was created in AD700 by Eadfrith, a monk who was as entranced by pattern and abstraction as Jackson Pollock

Folio from ‘world masterpiece’ illuminated manuscript goes up for auction

Section of the Shah Tahmasp Shahnameh is expected to fetch between £4m and £6m at auction next month

‘Like being beaten with a bat’: Georg Baselitz on eye-opening art – and his true feelings about female painters

Now in his 80s but as fiery as ever, the German provocateur talks about his pride at being a ‘degenerate’ artist, painting his wife nude – and revisits his assertion that: ‘Women don’t paint very well’

Odyssey of the overlooked: a journey around Black Britain

Photographer Johny Pitts and poet Roger Robinson wanted to use their art to reflect on the experiences of Black Britons. So they rented a red Mini Cooper and set off clockwise around the coast

The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel review – putting women back in the picture

This 500-year survey of art by women is an inspiring, beautifully written corrective

Edward Lear: Moment to Moment review – paradise with a runcible spoon

The master of nonsense verse made his living as an artist – and these magical sketches from his travels are dreamlike delights

An old smock and 60 cigs a day: Peter James learns tricks of art forger’s trade

The bestselling crime writer spent time with a former master faker as he researched his latest novel

Poetic justice: WB Yeats’s time in London to be celebrated at last

Years of campaigning will come to fruition this week with the unveiling of a sculpture in Bedford Park to the great writer