Alan Turing is decoded, Hastings bags a prize and Gilbert & George go wild – the week in art

A new way to crack Turing’s genius, a mighty pier in Hastings, and Scotland rewinds to 1540 – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Ken Currie
Troubling images of disfigurement and war by the visceral Glasgow expressionist painter.
Flowers Gallery, London, 8 November to 9 December.

Also showing

Living With Gods
The relationship between art and spirituality is explored to tie in with a new Radio 4 series by former British Museum boss Neil MacGregor.
British Museum, London, until 8 April.

Ages of Wonder
The story of Scotland’s art collections from 1540 to today.
Royal Scottish Academy Building, Edinburgh, from 4 November to 7 January.

Codebreakers and Groundbreakers
Connections between the codebreaking genius Alan Turing and the linguist Michael Ventris are explored in this exhibition of ideas.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 4 February.

Gilbert & George: The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting
Early drawings by the provocative pair explore their philosophy and ideas while also being very beautiful.
Lévy Gorvy, London, until 2 December.

Masterpiece of the week

Beach Scene, 1874, by Gustave Courbet
This desolate vision of Lake Geneva reveals how much Romanticism there is in Courbet’s realism. In the mid-19th century this proudly radical artist unveiled a new style that homed in on the brutal realties of poverty, work and death. Courbet’s tough paintings such as A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) are craggy outbursts of unvarnished truth. His political idealism was serious. In 1870, he became a leading participant in the Paris Commune and was thrown in prison after it fell. He painted this after his release. Its melancholy surely reflects his shattered state, yet it is also typical of the introspective passion for landscape that pervades his art and makes him one of the great natural artists of the 19th century.
• National Gallery, London

Image of the week

Hastings Pier, by dRMM
The East Sussex seaside town’s pier was destroyed by fire in 2010. Now a modern, elegantly spare structure, by architects de Rijke Marsh Morgan, has risen in its place and been crowned Britain’s best new building by the Royal Institute of British Architects, which has awarded it the 2017 Stirling prize.

What we learned this week

Hito Steyerl tops the contemporary art power list

Stockholm metro’s menstruation posters have upset commuters

… while Torbjørn Rødland’s tooth photos were too much for his dentist

Seoul launched its first architecture biennale

Bloomberg’s new London HQ is a £1bn ecological marvel

Palestinians crashed Banksy’s street party in Bethlehem

The art world is not immune from sexual harassment scandal

The impressionists have returned to London

A first world war painting could fetch £1m at auction this month

Stags, zombies and grindcore – there’s a new wave of gothic art

Text artist and “news junkie” Barbara Kruger is taking her political message to the skatepark

Monochrome is shocking yellow … and 500 shades of grey

Black Chicago tells an alternative history of the Windy City

Nature is taking a hand in fashion design

… while evolution champion Ernst Haeckel has been revealed as a gifted illustrator as well as a great scientist

Hungarian photographer André Kertész was an everyday poet

Photographer Nigel Shafran has made a video portrait of Radio 4’s Today programme

Frestonia, a west London squatted street in the 1970s, was a strange place

More unseen Bowie backstage photos have emerged

… and Elvis has gone on tour again

Get involved

Our A-Z of Art series continues – share your art with the theme X for Xenophilia. And check out the entries we selected for the theme W for women.

Don’t forget

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