Two thwarted smugglers, an old master of VR and Bruegel go sketching – art week | Art and design

Exhibition of the week

Edinburgh Art Festival
Vincent van Gogh, Tracey Emin and Burke and Hare can all be found in this sprawling visual response to the fringe, as well as canalside commissions and community projects.
Edinburgh sites, July 28 to August 28

Also showing

Artemisia Gentileschi
A virtual reality encounter with this baroque avenger is heightened by his real-life painting Susanna and the Elders, who lives here.
Burghley House, Lincolnshire, July 23 to August 31

tracks
Flemish Renaissance drawings, including sketches by the wonderful Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Courtauld Gallery, London, until September 25

Frank Auerbach
Last weeks to catch this exceptional meeting with a great modern.
Newlands House Gallery, Petworth, until August 14

Ilana Savdi
Paintings that rejoice in the subversive spirit of carnivalesque.
White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 9/11

Picture of the week

Famous pop artist Claes Oldenburg has died aged 93. He specialized in monumental sculptures where mundane objects suddenly became much larger than life. See a gallery of his work here.

What we learned

RIBA Stirling architecture prize shortlist includes arts center covered in recycled bowls and school without hallways

Painter Frank Bowling is an abstract sculptor on the side

Boris Johnson’s fantasy town in the city is now a Ballardian ghost town

Europe’s tallest piece of street art has been completed in Leeds

Spanish customs seized a Picasso sketch worth €450,000 which had not been declared by a passenger

Surpassing their Spanish counterparts, Italian police have prevented the illegal sale of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi

The last resident of Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth will be an anti-colonial hero by sculptor Samson Kambalu

A Catalan town hopes to acquire the surreal labyrinthine complex Espai Corberó, created by artist Xavier Corberó

A new exhibition in London will examine the influence of surrealism on design

Magnum photographer Colby Deal captures black life in his hometown of Houston, Texas

masterpiece of the week

Portrait of Margaret Lindsay of Evelick: the Artist’s Wife by Allan Ramsay (1758-1760)
The noble born Margaret Lindsay ran away with the highly successful but far from aristocratic Scottish painter Allan Ramsay, marrying him in Edinburgh to her father’s fury. She seems a sensitive and serious soul in her portrayal of her, engaging your gaze with candor and self-awareness as she is surrounded by a delicate mix of pale pinks and blues, the flowers next to her playing on its ribbons and lace. Ramsay is an artist of great emotional insight. He worked in the Scottish Enlightenment when Edinburgh thinkers questioned nature and society. When we contemplate the presence of character in his wife, we see how he questions the very nature of individuality.

Scottish National Gallery

do not forget

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