Choose your side - Goya or Picasso?

That is the essence of the debate forcing Spain's art lovers to take a position on the question of which painter created the country's most important work of art.

It started when art critic Miguel Ángel Cajigal's insisted Picasso’s Guernica was Spain’s most significant work prompting novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte to champion Goya's Duel with Cudgels, saying "Picasso painted Guernica, but Goya painted our soul."

That led to Cajigal's defense of Picasso, telling the writer: "I have been teaching Spanish art classes to students from the United States for almost 20 years. The only painting they always know is Guernica."

Either way the choice - Picasso's epic work of death and destruction in civil war Spain or Goya's image of brutal violence - does not suggest the chances of a consensus emerging are high.

A legal row involving Peter Doig and sparked by an imprisoned painter could end up benefiting other jailed artists to the tune of $2.5 million.

It comes after the US Court upheld a sanctions ruling in favor of Doig after a court battle lasting more than a decade.

The case revolves around a desert landscape, signed Peter Doige, 76, bought by a Canadian prison officer from an inmate in the 1970s for $100 who he claimed was Doig - despite Doig never having been in prison in Canada and only being a teenager at the time.

A case brought on behalf of the prison officer and a Chicago art gallery accused Doig of devaluing the painting by disavowing it but it was thrown out after a trial in 2016. More legal action followed in 2022 when a federal court ordered the officer's lawyer and the gallery to pay the artist $2.5 million.

They appealed but the latest ruling backed the decision and ordered them to pay Doig, whose lawyer previously said any money received will go to a non-profit that gives incarcerated people the chance to make art.

The number of images of work by Salvador Dalí in a huge new book about his career. The book, published by Taschen and simply called Dalí, weighs 13 pounds and has been published in a limited run of 10,000 priced at $1,000 each.

Tributes have been paid to art collector and writer Doris Lockhart, the ex-wife of art collector and dealer Charles Saatchi, who is credited with her then-husband for re-shaping the British art scene.

She played a major part in the original Saatchi Gallery and its 1992 exhibition Young British Artists which helped launch a new generation including Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst and also supported the careers of Rachel Whiteread and Jenny Saville.

Writing on Instagram, art dealer Maureen Paley described her as "iconic", while duo Langlands & Bell said she had a "decisive influence in shaping the hugely influential Saatchi Collection".

They added she was "well ahead of her erstwhile husband in recognizing the talent of many of those who were soon to be known as the YBAs".

A photograph of her by Robert Mapplethorpe is in the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery.

Jeff Koons' 2.7-meter-high sculpture Balloon Venus Dolni Vestonice (Yellow) has been donated to Australia's National Gallery by tech tycoon Steve Shelley and his wife Kylie.

Koons was in Canberra to see the work, one of a series of five based on an ancient fertility figure carved from ivory, go on show.

The Shelleys said it "sparks conversation and curiosity" and "belongs in a public collection, where it can be experienced by all".

It follows recent acquisitions by the museum of work by artists including Edvard Munch, Tracey Emin, Julie Mehretu and Judy Chicago.

1 - New York's Kasmin Gallery is closing with senior staff Nick Olney and Eric Gleason opening a new venture called Olney Gleason. The gallery was founded in 1989 by Paul Kasmin who died in 2020.

2 - The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has acquired a 17th-century still life by the mysterious Italian artist known as Pensionante del Saraceni. The pseudonym was given to the unknown painter of a small group of works believed to have lodged with Venetian artist Carlo Saraceni in Rome.

3 - A huge collection of cricket-related art is being auctioned in London by Dreweatts. The sporting series of 146 paintings and prints was built up by UK financier Mark Antony Loveday and is estimated to fetch $53,000.