How to spend it in April

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Yorgos Lanthimos’s on-set photographs 

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos always takes photographs on the sets of his films, capturing actors in between takes, lighting rigs or solitary props. This month, the director will present his first exhibition of photography at Los Angeles’ Webber Gallery, drawing from two recently published books with Void and MACK that chronicled the making of Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness. The images include close-ups of Emma Stone’s long, jet-black hair on the set of Poor Things, religious figurines and an eerie drained pool. Inès Cross 

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The chicest Easter eggs

Praline eggs, strawberry charlotte pastries and caramel vanilla flans are some of the treats available at Paris’s Hôtel de Crillon this Easter. The collection has been cooked up by pastry chef Matthieu Carlin, who is known for his elegant chocolate creations. Have yours delivered anywhere in Paris or the surrounds, or enjoy on-site at the Butterfly Pâtisserie. Rosanna Dodds

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Sarah Sze’s multi-layered paintings

Sarah Sze’s paintings, installations and sculptures often probe the experience of taking in digital information, and the idea that, as she once said “images have replaced objects”. Her latest exhibition, opening at Gagosian Hong Kong (her first show in Asia) continues this line of inquiry with a new series of paintings and sculptures that ask how we make meaning from photographs. She layers oil, acrylic, coloured tape, torn paper printed with images and ink to make large, collageistic paintings that at first threaten to overwhelm, but swiftly become deeply absorbing. Baya Simons

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Raise a toast with Pharrell

Musician and Louis Vuitton men’s creative director Pharrell has teamed up with French winery Moët & Chandon to produce a series of special-edition bottles designed specially for marking birthdays. The results are suitably festive. Bottles of Brut Impérial have been redesigned with gold, red, or midnight blue foil and a monogram of Pharrell’s name (£50), magnums come with adorned with bows made by Parisian embroiderers Atelier Baqué Molinié (from £540) and a pearly-white jeroboam features design by artist Astrid de Chaillé and a jewelled bow that can be repurposed as a brooch (£25,000). BS

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Radical work by a trio of New York artists

The American painter Marcia Marcus was at the core of New York’s art scene of the ’60s and ’70s: she frequented Warhol’s Factory, hung out with Willem de Kooning and exhibited at the Whitney Museum. It was this social milieu that Marcus, now 97, captured in her paintings. Now, a new exhibition at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York, brings Marcus’s work together with paintings by fellow artists Alice Neel and Sylvia Sleigh, who were working in the city at the same time. In one painting, Marcus depicts feminist writer Jill Johnston, known for her radical writings on lesbianism, in a red bowler hat. A group portrait by Sleigh, meanwhile, captured the first all-female cooperative gallery in New York. AM

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Tea time with Lily Vanilli 

This spring, London-based cake maker Lily Vanilli is bringing her whimsical creations to the Four Seasons hotel in London’s Tower Bridge. Expect a colourful afternoon-tea menu featuring her signature buttercream cakes, rich tiramisu tarts, anchovy and olive gildas (for some savoury respite), and mezcal-based espresso martinis for when cocktail hour arrives at the hotel’s Rotunda Bar and Lounge. IC

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Victoria Beckham tries her hand at make-up brushes

“I love seeing a brush that looks just as good as it performs,” says Victoria Beckham, so for her debut collection of make-up brushes, she has opted for sculptural, curved handles made from walnut wood. The nine designs include a dual-ended Define & Line eye brush and an elegant fan brush designed for her signature bronzing technique, finished with a hand-dipped blonde tip. Each reflects her view of make-up as “all about creativity, expression, and, most importantly, precision”. AM

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Postcards from Japanese design history

Published from 1928 to 1930 by a collective of Japanese designers, The Complete Commercial Artist comprised 24 volumes crammed with geometric posters, pamphlets and designs for neon signs and shop displays. The visuals were the result of a period of great cultural exchange: Japanese aesthetics swept Europe during the Japonisme craze of the 19th century, feeding into the new art deco and art nouveau styles. These were then, as Gennifer Weisenfeld wrote in a 2024 re-edition of the book, “enthusiastically reabsorbed” by 20th-century Japan. A selection of these striking graphic designs has now been compiled into a set of 40 postcards. Adverts featuring stylised mermaids and toothpaste-squeezing elephants offer a glimpse into the origins of Japan’s contemporary visual culture. Postcards from design history. Marion Willingham

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Painter Sam McKinniss’ debut monograph gives celebrity culture a new gloss 

The American figurative painter Sam McKinniss takes images from popular culture and reinterprets them in lush, hyper-saturated oil paintings imbued with a queer sensibility. He’s painted Lil Nas X in his pink cowboy suit, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and a self-portrait in the style of a J Crew advert. But, as his debut monograph from Rizzoli demonstrates, he is much more than a painter of pop culture, and is equally drawn to subjects from the natural world: cows, flowers, which he paints in the style of 19th-century French painter Henri Fantin-Latour, and swans. In an interview with the writer and curator Jarrett Earnest, McKinniss sums up his uneasy relationship with his work: “I want painting to terrify me a little bit and turn me on while becoming an image of something extremely refined.” Kin Woo

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Café Deco pops up in NYC

Café Deco, the Bloomsbury eatery beloved for its egg mayonnaise and natural wine list, heads to Brooklyn for a two-day takeover of neighbourhood restaurant Margot this month. The menu will be dictated by the produce available from Union Square Market on the day, but “given that it’s April, there will for sure be asparagus and most likely rhubarb too”, assures owner and head chef Anna Tobias. IC

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A fashion photographer turns her lens on motherhood

It was the birth of her second child that inspired the Paris-based fashion photographer Priscillia Saada to turn her lens on new mothers. “I wanted to challenge the traditional image of motherhood, which is often portrayed in a romanticized yet exhausted way,” she says. Over the course of a year, she photographed 40 mothers as they carried their children around, focusing on the wardrobe slip-ups that ensued (buttons left undone, legs exposed as they knelt to upright toppled children). “I wanted to showcase moms who are dynamic, sexy, full of energy, humour, and always on the move.” BS