The week in art news: Ai Weiwei vase smashed, chaos at Cai Guo-Qiang firework display, Oscar Wilde’s heir slams new sculpture and more…

40th Turner Prize opens to the public… and divided reviews. Works by the four shortlisted artists – Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas – were unveiled at Tate Britain on Tuesday. Laura Freeman at The Times rated it “too flat and inadequate to summon much fury,” while Adrian Searle at The Guardian gave it four stars out of five, and writing for Plaster, Mark Hudson eviscerated the prize like a young calf. The winner of this year’s award and its £25,000 prize will be announced on 3rd December. Whether it continues, we’ll see…

Ai Weiwei vase smashed… and for once, he’s not to blame. CCTV footage posted to Ai’s instagram shows a man walking into the PV of his exhibition ‘Who am I?’ at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna and pushing a vase off a plinth. 57-year-old Czech man Vaclav Pisvejc was caught by security guards and arrested by police. According to curator Arturo Galansino, Pisvejc is well-known by the city’s museums for committing a number of art attacks in recent years. Ai called Pisvejc’s actions “unacceptable”. Of course, Ai has his own history of smashing pots but back then he called it art…

Cai goes bang – chaos in Los Angeles as firework display by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang injures viewers and terrifies locals. The 15th September daylight display at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was supposed to celebrate the launch of PST ART: Art & Science Collide at the The J. Paul Getty Museum, however delight turned to disaster as some viewers were struck by debris launched by the low altitude explosions and others nearby mistook the explosions for terror attacks. The Getty later issued an apology.

Oscar Wilde’s grandson slams Paolozzi sculpture – Merlin Holland, the Victorian aesthete’s grandson and an expert on his works, has slammed a new bronze sculpture by the late Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, calling it “absolutely hideous.” The sculpture was originally designed in 1995 for Wilde’s Trafalgar Square monument, but it was rejected in favour of a work by Maggi Hambling. It’s now going to be placed on public view in Chelsea, London. Holland told The Observer, “I’m all for any sort of innovations in modern art. But this does seem to me to be unacceptable. It looks absolutely hideous.”

Small town mindset – an art gallery in Hay-on-Wye faced a visit from the police after complaints were made about a painted nude in its front window. The painting at, which shows a naked woman wearing cowboy boots and spreading her legs, was described to the police as ‘pornography’, in fact, it’s a work by Central Saint Martins student, Poppy Baynham. The police asked gallerist Val Harris to move the picture to the back of the gallery, but she refused and instead put up a sign offering to debate any critics on Instagram.

Remember the Michael Jackson art auction? Back in August, a Los Angeles auction house said it was selling a collection of original drawings by the Smooth Criminal singer. However, the sale was cancelled at the last minute when the consigner claimed bankruptcy. It was quite a messy situation. Now, a judge has ruled that the auction can go ahead. There’s still controversy over the authenticity of the works, but if you fancy owning an ‘original’ ‘MJ’, get yourself down to King Auctions, LA.

If you want to find genuine art, perhaps try looking in bins? An Albrecht Durer print found on a dump diving trip has just sold for $44,000. Mat Winter was 11 when he spotted the work on one of his regular dump diving trips, back in 2011. For 13 years the print sat in a drawer, long-forgotten. Winter recently had the work appraised, and it turned out his worthless reproduction was the real deal: a first edition engraving of Knight, Death and the Devil (1513). On 18th September, it sold for £33,390 ($44,000) to a German collector.

London’s worst public space is getting erased: this October, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson will digitally blur the hideous (and hideously expensive) advertising hoardings of London’s tourist-infested Piccadilly Circus. The artist told the Guardian that ‘Lifeworld’ is, “not about banning the screens … It’s about slowing down. It’s about tenderness. It’s about abstraction.” ‘Lifeworld’ will also screen at K-pop Square in Seoul, Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and Times Square in New York City. Please Eliasson, save us all from these shitty screens.

And in Los Angeles, Refik Anadol is promising to pollute our eyes and empty our wallets by opening the world’s first museum dedicated to ‘AI’ ‘artwork’. Dataland will open in The Grand, a new development designed by Frank Gehry, in LA’s downtown. According to the LA Times, images licenced from the Smithsonian and London’s Natural History Museum will be used to generate the ‘art’ on display, leaving us asking, why not just visit the museums? “I’m calling this new art form not AR, not VR, not XR — so we are still finding a name for it.” Anadol said. Here’s an idea, call it BS.

NADA Miami announces 2024 exhibitors. The 22nd edition of the Florida fair will be held at Ice Palace Studios between 3rd – 7th December. This year, 150 galleries representing 37 countries and 66 cities will be taking part. 82 are already members of NADA (the New Art Dealers Alliance) and 59 are exhibiting at the fair for the first time.

Everything must go! There’s a few major sales coming up this autumn that will be worth watching. Lucien Freud’s late nude, Ria, Naked Portrait (2006-07), is going up at Christie’s 20th / 21st Century London evening sale on 9th October. Damien Hirst is selling a Jeff Koons, Balloon Monkey (Blue) (2006-2013), from his personal collection at Christie’s. And Christie’s New York has also got its hands on René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1954), expected to sell for ‘in excess’ of $95M. Sotheby’s is selling the $200M collection of the late businesswoman Sydell Miller. 25 works, including Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (c1914-17) and Pablo Picasso’s La Statuaire (1925), will be sold in a single-owner sale this November in New York. While Phillips is selling the collection of disgraced art dealer Lisa Schiff. The works are expected to bring in a total of around $2M, which will go towards Schiff’s considerable debts.