t is too early to tell if the Covid-19 pandemic will produce an artistic legacy on a par with Edvard Munch’s Spanish flu portraits, but this virus and its fallout have already garnered a huge response by artists. Unlike Munch’s horrifying self-portrait made while he was struck down with the early 20th-century disease, or a morose second painting made in recovery, the work produced by today’s artists in response to coronavirus has been to either raise morale or money for charity. One of the most depressing things about the lockdown is that it coincided with the advent of spring. Playing on this melancholia is a new print by London-based artist Nicholas Cheveldave depicting a pink cherry blossom emerging in full bloom. There’s a darkness to the work, which is being sold by Emalin gallery in London to raise funds for the Hackney Food Bank: the artist has overlaid the image with Use By stickers and scratched tally marks, a sign perhaps that the season will pass while we’re still imprisoned at home. The seasonal bloom features, too, in a photograph by Nan Goldin, a branch in a vase taken by the artist on her first days quarantined at home in Brooklyn. Proceeds from the sale of the prints (in an edition of 150) will go to Urban Survivors Union, which works with drug users. Goldin, who has been vocal about her own battle with opioids, notes that those with addiction issues often have compromised immune systems, making them particularly susceptible to Covid-19. Delving into the frustrations of isolation, and its impact on mental health, is a new series of paintings by American artist Rashid Johnson, exhibited in Hauser & Wirth’s online viewing rooms. Anxious Red Drawings are just as the title describes: pissed-off washes of deep red paint consume the canvas, recalling abstract expressionism in its darkest moods. While most of the works mentioned below are affordable, Johnson’s work isn’t for most (he regularly commands six figures at auction) so will hopefully bring in a tidy amount for the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund, to which the artist and gallery are each donating 10% of their profits. White Cube is doing its bit, too, having raised £1.25m for charities in London, New York and Hong Kong, the cities in which the blue-chip gallery operates, by selling a limited edition print by Harland Miller. The work features the artist’s signature paperback book motif, this one with the title Who Cares Wins. The painting was originally made in homage to the carers who looked after the artist’s father, who had dementia – now it is repurposed as a tribute to those on the NHS frontline and those working in social care. While artists and galleries working at the top end of the art market can afford such generosity, most of the arts sector faces a bleak economic future. In recognition of this, Wolfgang Tillmans has roped in more than 40 artists to produce unlimited editions. These will be donated to small cultural outfits internationally – be they barely-for-profit music venues, squeezed community centres or minority safe-spaces – who are then invited to sell the works for £50 each. Some of the best prints available display a nostalgia for social closeness: Sabelo Mlangeni’s photograph of a fabulous festivalgoer (which is being sold by Ballez, a radical ballet company in Brooklyn); Spyros Rennt’s photo of a sweaty club scene (stocked by Berlin’s free queer sheet Siegessäule); and, a favourite, painter Nicole Eisenman’s black and white Never Forget Kissing in Bars. The last is a homage to being drunk and horny, which the London charity Hospital Rooms has taken to fundraise for their work in alleviating, through art, the clinical environments of mental health facilities. Betty Tompkins’s Sex Painting #4, an edition produced for Tillmans’ initiative, is also available as part of the Art Technician Emergency Fund, an auction in aid of the often underappreciated freelancers who hang exhibitions and assist artists, many of whom have lost all employment. Among the paintings up for sale are a brushy cartoonish butterfly by Mimei Thompson and a hand-coloured digital portrait by Laura Wilson of 20th-century cabaret artiste Josephine Baker and her co-star Chiquita, a very pampered cheetah. Likewise, commercial gallery Arcade is hosting a series of three weekly online exhibitions via sales platform Artsy to benefit UK artist-run spaces. Currently Hove’s 650mAh project room, working with the artists Lloyd Corporation and Joey Holder, is selling limited edition decorated e-liquid bottles for vaping. Any stimulant to get through this is welcome. A paramedic friend told me that, while he didn’t want to be clapped (he just wanted adequate supplies of PPE), as he went to work he found the drawings of rainbows in people’s windows, made by isolated children, very moving. For me, while walking the streets, enjoying my government-sanctioned exercise, these homemade works have become a raw expression of our time: a collective action during a moment of ubiquitous tragedy. Long encouraging the arts as a way of working through tricky stuff has been the Gate, a drop-in centre in London’s Shepherd’s Bush for adults with learning disabilities, offering art classes and music sessions. Forward thinking – with a weekly radio show, Gate Kicks, on Resonance FM and collaborations with the V&A, ICA and Tate Modern – the organisation is now fundraising to provide art materials for its clients to document their time in isolation. Towner Gallery in Eastbourne is embarking on a similar project, distributing packs of sketchbooks and coloured pencils (the bags designed by Fraser Muggeridge) via the town’s food bank and a charity working with refugees and asylum seekers. For all the star names addressing coronavirus – not least Damien Hirst, who has produced a printable version of the rainbow motif – the greatest artistic legacy of the lockdown may turn out to be the work made at home: a great mass of folk art which should surely be preserved as a record of this extraordinary moment.