How easy is it to stage a dialogue between two artists when they are, in fact, separated by over a century? And is it really an artistic conversation that takes place or merely an imposition of values by the living over the dead? This pertinent question confronts the viewer in an exhibition of two photographers of war-torn Afghanistan. The first, John Burke, took sepia-toned documentary photographs of the second Anglo-Afghan war, from 1878 to 1880 (the first having taken place in 1839-1842), while the second, Simon Norfolk, takes artfully constructed contemporary photographs that blur the boundaries between art photography and documentary.

Damien Hirst is finally getting his first UK retrospective in a public gallery next year, but the question seems to be, “Why now?” It seems both far too late and far too early, especially since Hirst has made no significant work in some years. That the Tate is organising it to coincide with the year of the Olympics, will, of course, be good for them: it will almost certainly see an unprecedented number of visitors, and tourists from around the world will flock to see it.

Gabriel Orozco has been something of an art-world secret, for some mysterious reason. He has been fêted at the Venice Biennale, he showed at the prestigious Documenta in Kassel, had a blazing Serpentine show, an Artangel commission and been flavour of the month for more than a decade to those who follow contemporary art. But to the general public? Nada, nothing, zip. And God knows why, for, as this fine Tate retrospective shows, Gabriel Orozco is the real McCoy; a dazzling creator, a serious thinker, a joyous, liberating mind and a pair of eyes that helps us see new. On top of that, as an artist he has charm to burn. For heaven’s sake, what’s not to like?

Gabriel Orozco has been something of an art-world secret, for some mysterious reason. He has been fêted at the Venice Biennale, he showed at the prestigious Documenta in Kassel, had a blazing Serpentine show, an Artangel commission and been flavour of the month for more than a decade to those who follow contemporary art. But to the general public? Nada, nothing, zip. And God knows why, for, as this fine Tate retrospective shows, Gabriel Orozco is the real McCoy; a dazzling creator, a serious thinker, a joyous, liberating mind and a pair of eyes that helps us see new. On top of that, as an artist he has charm to burn. For heaven’s sake, what’s not to like?

If you found yourself thinking that you were watching Mission: Impossible rather than Imagine, you could have been forgiven. Alan Yentob had clearly been banned from meeting Ai Weiwei in China, and so one of their interviews was conducted over a webcam, with Yentob sitting in the dark, like some spymaster of the arts.

A snaky conga of women in white pantsuits snuggling their loins together in a Spanish dance, and wiggling their way along a wall behind a Joseph Beuys installation may well be one of the indelible sights of my dance year. Mine, and that of only a few dozen other people, who happened to be in the right Tate Modern gallery at the right moment when this extraordinary little event took place.

Howard Jacobson, fresh from his Booker Prize triumph, was on an admirable mission last night: to rescue the good name of the Victorians. He wanted us to stop caricaturing our 19th-century forebears as prudish, self-righteous, pompous and hypocritical - you know, the sort of people who were so repressed that they went about covering piano legs in case thoughts should turn to the sensual curve of a lady’s well-turned ankle, but who were also notorious for sexual peccadillos involving underage maidservants, and worse.

Three days after its closure, and just a few days after opening, Tate Modern is still to make an announcement over the future of Ai Weiwei's interactive Turbine Hall installation. Will the closure of the dust-emitting artwork be permanent? Or are the Tate perhaps thinking of issuing dust masks to the public, which may, in fact, add a thrilling "danger zone" dimension to the experience?

It may be remembered that Tate Modern faced similar fears when it opened a decade ago. With the high number of visitors, it was suggested that the untreated wooden floors were creating enough dust to cause long-term damage to the paintings. But health and safety fears have also dogged previous Turbine Hall commissions:  in 2006, injuries were reported from visitors hurtling down Carsten Höller's slide (see below) and the following year people were tripping over Doris Salcedo's 167-metre floor crack.

Contemporary art lovers may like their art to be edgy and dangerous. But just how dangerous?

One is so used to encountering spectacle in the Turbine Hall that visitors may feel distinctly underwhelmed by Ai Weiwei's minimal installation, the 11th Unilever Commission at Tate Modern. There appears at first to be nothing at all to see: the work, which resembles a huge blanket of ash by the time you reach the stairs to the bridge, is the same colour as the surrounding pale grey walls.

Gauguin has always been the poor relation in the art-legend sweepstakes. Unlike Van Gogh, there is no heartwarming story of overcoming lack of technical facility; no ghoulishly enjoyable story of genius crushed by madness. Instead, there is a story that veers from irritating to deeply unattractive: a businessman and Sunday painter, Gauguin acquired his technical skills across a range of art forms with almost insolent ease, before abandoning his wife and children in poverty to flee to ever-more exotic locales, where he lived with a succession of (in today’s terms) underage girls, some of whom he made pregnant while infected with syphilis, others of whom he rejected for being too "Western".