Bedlam dreams, digital age visitors and summer shepherds – a week in art | Art and design

Show of the week

Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam
Terrible creatures of the night and vivid dreams – and these are the “wise” paintings of the Victorian artist who painted before he was imprisoned in Bedlam, where his vision became unstable.
Royal Academy, London, 25 July to 25 October

Also show

Felicity Powell
Dream-like images on social media of this artist who died in 2015 after documenting his cancer.
Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, until 3 October

Autopsy
UFOs, the “alien” of Roswell and the inaccessibility of truth in the digital age provide strange fodder for Paul McCarthy, Chino Moya and many others.
Seventeen Gallery, London, until 15 August

Elizabeth Blackadder: The Life of a Nation
The colorful Scottish artist’s paintings are accompanied by his paintings and drawings.
Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, until 14 November

Clare Woods: The Seasonless Garden
New pastoral and floral images that focus on nature in the show are in keeping with the season.
Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, London, from 29 July to 8 November

Picture of the week

Ray Exworth spent his life filling Cornish houses with impressive sculptures – but he never let anyone see them. Now, after his death, his secret body of work has been revealed. Read the full article

What we learned

At 100 years old, artist, sculptor and painter Ken Turner is still breaking the mold… and sometimes Tesla.

Sheffield’s Designers Republic lit up the north with their work on Aphex Twin, Pulp… and Pringles.

Trent Park House Museum reveals the story of wartime ‘secret audiences’

The Manifesta biennale brings a sustainable collective spirit to Germany’s struggling towns

Hundreds of works of art went into the beautiful fabrics that exhibit Entangled and Woven

Jessica Morgan has taken a ‘big cut’ to become the Tate’s new director

Mine of the week

Portrait of a Poor Woman by Vincent van Gogh, circa 1884

When Vincent van Gogh abandoned his early attempts at painting, teaching and missionary work to study painting, he saw art as a social work. Instead of saving the poor by preaching he would have helped them by explaining their brutal life. This simple woman is one of the people she painted from life in Nuenen in the south of the Netherlands in her first ambitious work: a passionate attempt to document the rural poverty that culminated in her famous 1885 painting The Potato Eaters. He sees the sadness and bewilderment in her eyes as she sits patiently for him, her personal presence enhanced by a mysterious background that leaves nothing but the image. Van Gogh shows the tension between his workaday appearance and a rich, complex inner life. Later he accepted interpretations and modern forms in search of ways to open up the permanent part of life.
National Gallery, London

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