The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

Charlotte Salomon (Royal Academy)

"Life? Or Theatre?", Salomon's life in pictures (right). Her 405 raw gouaches tell the story of the German Jewish girl's haste before Auschwitz - an expressionistic operetta in three colours. To 17 Jan

Neurotic Realism

(Saatchi Gallery)

First instalment of Charles Saatchi's new made-up art movement, which, by a happy coincidence, consists entirely of works in his own collection. To 28 Mar

Chris Ofili

(Whitworth Gallery, Manchester)

This 1998 Turner Prize-winner is an upbeat original, his surfaces dense and decorative, with swirls of dots, Afros and black icons, and incorporating elephant dung. To 24 Jan

Edward Burne-Jones

(Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery)

This centenary exhibition gathers together many favourites illustrating Burne-Jones's romantic and medievalist nether world. To 17 Jan

Grinling Gibbons (Victoria & Albert Museum)

The best chisel-work of the great 17th-century English woodcarver, who made intricacy and the abundance of nature his trademark. To 24 Jan