Alan Turing is decoded, Hastings bags a prize and…

Fire of faith … six Zoroastrian tiles from the late 1980s from a domestic Parsi shrine in Living With Gods at the British Museum. Photograph: British Museum

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.