The critical list

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Some recent art criticism worth reading:

• Richard Lacayo takes a sober look at next week’s high-profile Sotheby’s sale in London, in which Damien Hirst will bypass his galleries and take a slew of brand new works, including a gilded cash-cow dubbed ‘The Golden Calf’ (est.: $14 million to $21 million), directly to the auction floor.
• The dearth of monumental public sculptures of women, virtually non-existent compared to those of men, is pondered by Germaine Greer.
• An exhibition in Melbourne displaces Earthworks and environmental sculpture with ‘climate change art,’ writes Andrew Stephens.
• Ben Davis smartly identifies the typically overlooked Socialist Realist aspects of Frida Kahlo’s otherwise Surrealist-inflected paintings, on view in a traveling retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

-- Christopher Knight

photo: Damien Hirst, ‘The Golden Calf,’ Sotheby’s