Danes with machetes, foolish Albion, and pulsating techno Squidzup – The Week in Art | Art and design

Exhibition of the week

Anna Ancher: Painting with light
This powerful Danish painter of everyday life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries echoes Vermeer in her still lifes.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, from 4 November to 8 March

also appear

Ben Edge: Children of Albion
Wacky paintings of modern Britain with enthusiastic references to Blake and the Green Man.
Fitzrovia Abbey, London, from 6 to 26 November

Wayne McGregor
The famous choreographer branches out into art installations centered around the human body.
Somerset House, London, until 22 February

David Blandy
A film based on the Canterbury Tales that explores the lost history of common land in Britain.
Amelia Scott, Tunbridge Wells, until 11 January

Future tense
The installations by Squidsoup and Liz West will immerse you in the age of technology with lots of pulsating lights.
York Art Gallery until January 25

Picture of the week

Ben Edge has shown us how his new dynamic understanding of Britain today, as seen in major paintings such as The Children of Albion (above), was sparked by seeing a procession of priests marching past a KFC restaurant. Read the full story

What we learned

Last week’s jewelry theft at the Louvre Museum is the latest in a long history of burglaries

A Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired dream home was built on Loch Long

David Adjaye’s first big project since scandal rocked his company is Artistic Ambush Labyrinth

Mrinalini Mukherjee’s magnificent sculpture gains little collective exposure around it

Don McCullen looks back seven decades as he depicts war and tragedy

Donald Trump has fired the federal board that was examining the controversial White House ballroom

The Met Museum in New York is being sued because it bought a Van Gogh painting that was looted by the Nazis

The Artes Mundi 11 international fair is an arrogant, theatrical and artificial nonsense in itself

Masterpiece of the week

Saint Zeno expelling Galen’s daughter, Filipino-Libyan drawing and workshop, 1455-60

It is the power of Christ that commands you! This is the medieval predecessor to The Exorcist for Halloween. This 15th-century painting shows how deeply rooted the belief in demon possession was in the European past. The victim here looks sick and distraught, her face in pain and her eyes empty, as the little demon that lived within her is exorcised. In other words, it is a realistic painting of some kind of psychological or nervous crisis. In the world of medieval Christianity, this could be diagnosed as demonic possession. Libby and his team depict the demon as a dark creature with wings and claws, strangely leaping from the victim’s mouth. People would continue to experience such visions until the late 17th century. Today we enjoy it as a form of entertainment. Dad, can you help the old altar boy?
National Gallery, London

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