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It is a paradox of a sort that the only fully authentic Holbein painting of King Henry VIII of England should now reside in Madrid, in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. It left Britain as late as 1933, sold by Earl Spencer, grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales. Holbein is, after all, the author of what is perhaps the most iconic and formidable of all British royal images. Fittingly, the Thyssen-Bornemizsa portrait adorned the cover of the catalogue that accompanied the "Holbein in England" exhibition at Tate Britain in London.

Of all the British poets of my generation, Ted Hughes, now nearly 20 years dead, left behind him both the grandest and most sulfurous reputation. The controversies he aroused rumble on, and the hurts, in certain quarters, are still keenly felt. Any life story that comprises not just two but actually three suicides, plus a murder, does wrap a cloak of darkness about itself.

When I visited the huge Damien Hirst exhibition staged by the Gagosian Gallery in New York in 1996, one of the most striking pieces was a large glass tank full of live fish. Dumped among the fish were an obstetrical couch, in a rather decayed condition, and various obstetrical implements. For some time after I had seen the show, this image tugged at my mind. It reminded me of something - but of what? Finally, memory dragged up the reference I needed: Hirst's piece was a direct descendant of Salvador Dali's installation, "Rainy Taxi".

The current agitation about the restitution of artistic treasures of all kinds to their original locations is usually presented as overdue justice for faults committed by European colonialism. In fact, this is a serious oversimplification. Conquering armies have always regarded works of art as legitimate spoil. Modern attitudes to the legitimate or illegitimate possession of famous artworks can be traced to the European Enlightenment that blossomed in the late 18th century.

Andrea Palladio is the most influential architect who ever lived - much more so than those heroes of the Modern Movement - Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. It is significant that buildings we call "Palladian" are still being built today - for example, by the British architect Quinlan Terry. Palladio’s ideas were disseminated not only by his buildings, but also, even more effectively, by his writings, most notably by his didactic masterpiece, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), published in 1570.

Dr. Glyn Thompson’s digital book, Duchamp’s Urinal? The Facts Behind the Façade, at first tends to make the heart sink. Dr. Thompson has done his homework, and he is insistent that you should do it too. "No skipping over the chapter-and-verse, boy, in search of something a bit racier." Some of the facts are, however, sufficiently racy in themselves. The urinal, or Fountain, as it is now officially called, turns out not to have been the work - or wheeze - of Duchamp himself, but that of a mad German baroness.

British, even more than most countries, like to have a "boss" artist - an artistic figure who is indubitably the head of the profession. In the old days, this need was easily accommodated within the establishment structures of the time. The big boss could be Sir Joshua Reynolds, knighted by the monarch of the day, or Lord Leighton, given a peerage. Both of these were also presidents of the Royal Academy.

Byzantine art has a slightly odd reputation. It is regarded, on the one hand, as something remote, hieratic, and difficult. On the other hand, the word Byzantium has a very romantic ring - it lives in our minds as the name of a citadel of civilization, a place that preserved for posterity both intellectual and material treasures that would otherwise have vanished forever. The remarkable exhibition now at the Royal Academy in London touches on both of these aspects.

We live at a time when there is great confusion, certainly here in the West, about contemporary art in Russia. It is now nearly a quarter of a century since the Soviet Union fell. No convincing narrative has emerged concerning the development of Russian art during that period.

This may seem a funny moment to proclaim that nothing much is happening in art - certainly not in contemporary art. In many ways, the art world has never seemed more vibrant and active, and this activity is increasingly focused on what is defined as contemporary. There hasn’t, in fact, been a moment like this in the relatively recent history of art since the mid-19th century. If one looks at the years of political and economic chaos between 1789 and 1815, as the fortunes of war swayed back and forth, this is not surprising.

The British Museum has two quite different archaeological exhibitions on view at the moment. In some ways, they echo one another. In other ways, they are quite strongly contrasted. The strongest link, of course is that they are about the archaeology of the Mediterranean, and that in addition, they both have ties to the classical Greek and Roman world that is still the main taproot of Western civilization.

The tendency for art to detach itself from any duty to reflect observed reality manifested itself in avant-garde art production almost from the beginnings of the Modern Movement in art. It is already present in pure form in Malevich’s drastically reductive Black Square, which consists of exactly that, a black square on a white ground. It is interesting to note the way in which this work was exhibited when it was first put before the public.

This exhibition, based on a single, very personal and - dare one say it? - extremely distinguished private collection, tackles a large subject within a relatively small compass. It aims to examine a now universally recognized crisis, which is what is happening to painting as an art form. Quite a large number of critics and curators have, in recent years, proclaimed that painting is dead: that attention must now be paid to other kinds of art.

The new exhibition at the National Gallery in London is entitled "Delacroix - And the Rise of Modern Art". In other words, Delacroix, one of the most important artists of the first half of the 19th century, is presented as being important, not so much for what he actually did as an individual creator, but because he in so many ways foreshadowed the kind of art that was made immediately after his demise - in particular by artists linked to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and even Fauvism.

The term avant-garde continues to be used, in my opinion with far too much frequency, in discussions of contemporary art. It derives, of course, from military terminology, and implies that the art to which it is applied is somehow ahead of the game. It’s worth taking a look at how this assumption works in practice. Essentially, Western and now world art has witnessed the emergence of a series of avant-gardes since just before the third quarter of the 19th century.

Edward Lucie-Smith reviews Frieze Art Fair London 2013, in a critical take on the contemporary scene. It's pretty easy to get the point of the Frieze Masters art fair, now in its second edition, after a very successful start last year. Its purpose is to present the best of the best - or, at the very least, a good slice of the top quality art that is currently on the market. One of the great pleasures of Frieze Masters, this year more than ever, is the accidental confrontations the event manages to set up.

The immense and very sudden success of contemporary Chinese art in Western markets is a phenomenon that Western critics are still struggling to assess. Many link it, not unreasonably, to the economic resurgence of China during the past decade and a half. This resurgence should not have been unexpected. Up to and perhaps including the period of the Ming emperors, China represented as much as 25% of the whole world economy.

Charming Baker is a phenomenon. Right now, a much bigger phenomenon in the British art scene than the much touted, but now rather tired and fading YBAs. The YBAs, after suitably Bohemian, in-your-face beginnings, are now the official face of British art. You will find most of them (though not quite all) represented in the closing galleries of the new hang at Tate Britain, which aims to tell the complete story of British art, from the Tudors until now.

Very seldom in London can a major show of modern and contemporary art at a highly respected national institution have received such universally negative reviews. As I write this, not all the verdicts on the Royal Academy’s exhibition of Modern British Sculpture have been delivered. However, it is already clear that the majority will be hostile. Paradoxically, it is this, more than any other factor, which makes it seem like an important event - a turning point if you like.

There is an increasing tendency to set up body artists and performance artists - the two categories are often interchangeable - as the real heroes and heroines of the contemporary avant-garde. In fact, we need to look much further back for its beginnings. The first body art performer, as well as the first professional bodybuilder, was the showman, Eugene Sandow (1867-1925). Though Sandow’s heyday occurred before the birth of the Modern Movement, there are compelling reasons for giving the primacy to him.