EXHIBITIONS / Critic's Choice

Beyond Belief

If says anything about the spirit of art today, it suggests that the spirit of the Surrealists and the Dadaists is still alive, if muted. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is open to debate. Lisson Gallery Bell St, NW1

Gainsborough and Reynolds

Reynolds said that he would have liked to be Michelangelo, and Gainsborough painted as if he would have liked to be Watteau. What united them was their desire to be other than they were, and their subtle defiance of a society whose tastes they found restrictively narrow. Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, SW1

Goya

The RA's show, with its preponderance of minor and little known works, is fascinating despite its limitations. It presents the spectacle of an artist working against the grain of his own temperament. Strange and alienated and incorrigibly weird, pictures of pastoral idylls where things always seem slightly but nastily awry. Royal Academy, Piccadilly, W1