There are worse crimes than misnomers. But after he arranged these shop-bought basketballs all that Jeff Koons had to do was name them. How could he get it so wrong?

Alert readers will by now realise there are in fact four columns and six rows. Koons is no doubt aware of his slip. So it shows something of a contempt for language.

That’s not a good look for a serious artist, let alone one who strives for perfection in the way his technicians execute each new painting and sculpture.

Or has he gone with the title to admit that, hey, he has feet of clay after all. It could be a way of appearing before us as naked as he did for the Made in Heaven series.

Either way, it bugs me. Nothing for it but to enjoy the product. Forced to read the packaging, you could for a moment imagine slam dunking one or two . . .

. . . if that’s something you’ve ever been able to do. But in Koonsland anything seems possible. It seems possible to live without shame, for example, but it is not.

If this sculpture were not tactile enough, the copy on the boxes advises you of their amazing grip. It is palpable. Surely you could bounce one? No not even that

To unpack would be to destroy it, in the same way as Koons’ vacuum cleaners are not to be switched on. He points towards a perfect world and then he seals it off.

This keeps collectors hungry for the next empty promise. To paraphrase a stunt by Damien Hirst, the work is beautiful inside the head forever. Now that I guess was a title.

Jeff Koons (ARTIST ROOMS) can be seen at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery until September 8 2013

Feel free to peruse another bevvy of internet links:

• Brian Dillon talks about the so-called Phantom Rides of the early 1900s and segues into an intelligent review of the Simon Starling piece of the same name, currently on show at Tate Britain
• This is probably all kinds of reactionary, but does still hold a certain charm. Check out Salvation Mountain, the epic work of outsider artist Leonard Knight. (Thanks @felsteadwaddell)
• @WriteWell tipped me off about this piece on the site of ABC News. A brave journalist recreates that visa-less Edward Snowden Moscow experience
• A 700-1000 CE royal tomb filled with gold artefacts has been unearthed in Peru, but keep it hush hush. Archeological plunder is rampant here
• Beverley Knowles caught a Marcia Farquhar performance in Venice and stayed for some more performance art by The Girls. Sounds fantastic in an uncomfortable way.
• Spiegel Online interviews philosopher Renata Salecl. Check it out for some convincing views on the tyranny of choice, no irony intended by the inclusion in a selection of links
• Jack Vettriano gets a shoeing in the Telegraph. You almost feel sorry for this populist painter who came away from a Bacon exhibition feeling like a sham
• Here’s a bit of harmless fun. Korean designer Sang Mun has developed some fonts to foil the NSA. But “autocratic predators” will soon catch up
• The snappily named Fathers4Justice endear themselves to art lovers everywhere when one of their campaigners carries out an ‘attack’ on Constable’s Hay Wain
• And finally @Hrag wrote about some cat loving art lovers and their art loving cats, who favour above all the steel abstraction of Anthony Caro. No dog would ever get away with this.

I’ve just got back from a camping holiday in Normandy, but don’t worry I’m only bringing you the highlight, and that was a trip to MuMa.

The region is holding its second ever Festivale Normandie Impressionniste and as luck would have it we caught what must be the flagship show in Le Havre.

The theme to this year’s festival is water and Camille Pissarro scores double here – with a view of the River Seine, painted on a rainy day.

Here is a view of the same bridge (Boieldieu) “at sunset with smoke”. Vapour in all its forms appears to have held a fascination for Pissarro.

Here’s a wonderful detail: watery shade from the bridge going head to head with a mellow evening light, turning the river first green then gold.

This time morning mist has caught the master’s eye, and it’s all of a piece with the steam from the quayside. This is another Rouen bridge, The Pont Corneille.

Geek fest: four views of the same breakwater in Le Havre. Pissarro had the impressionist’s knack of taking a single viewpoint and generating totally different scenes from it.

The exhibition pulled in a few comparable paintings, including this one by Albert Marquet. In this glassy scene of The Bassin du Roy in Le Havre, the buildings appear to ripple as much as the sea.

This also caught my eye.In 1930, Henri de Saint-Delis paints the market in Honfleur. For an early brandscape, this sure is purty.

Pissarro in the Ports: Rouen, Dieppe, Le Havre, is at MuMa until 29 September.

Greetings all. Another week, another collection of art links form that week. So click away:

• Vanity Fair visits the studio of James Bridle for a piece about the New Aesthetic which might be a little overdue. Brightonians will be familiar with his work
• Guy with amazing collection of Black Flag fliers goes public in Vice magazine. These are all designed by Raymond Pettibon which makes them even amazinger (thanks Hyperallergic)
• Not the most extensive gathering of interesting photos, but The Casual Optimist has posted two or three crackers. Not what you might expect from the archives of National Geographic
• In a story rich with layers of irony, Art F City reports on queues of up to four hours to see rAndom International’s piece at MoMA with folk waiting in the rain to get into the Rain Room
• On another precipitational note, this photo suggests that snug Tokyo bars are a great place to pass a rainy day (from the Tokyo Times)
• Grayson Perry writes on the subject of taste and class in the Telegraph; now the dust has settled on his Channel 4 series, he reminds Brits who we really are
• Photographers Broomberg and Chanarin are compared with Jeremy Deller as they win the 2013 Deutsche Börse prize a most political project
• It may not be as timely or important, but it exists nevertheless. Leo Caillard has made over a range of classical sculptures as hipsters
• Via Salon and Hyperallergic, an incredible story about the art factory in North Korea. Paintings and sculpture for global destinations at prices you can’t beat
• This video report is a good primer on two current shows at Tate Britain. Anna McNay talks you through the careers of Patrick Caulfield and Gary Hume.

Here’s the weekly selection of links. Thanks for reading, and please note this blog will be on a week’s holiday-enforced hiatus from . . . now.

• Entrepreneur plans world’s biggest art gallery on UK billboards. 15,000 displays of British art to go up soon. Street Fine Art or Fine Street Art?
• Check your phone and laptop at the door and welcome to the Marina Abramović. There has been talk of a performance art cult
• Eduardo Chillida comes indoors for a Mayfair show of the monumental sculptor’s work. Read about that, and his sporting endeavours, in an otherwise luke warm review
• At last an MA thesis which could prove useful to a financially burdened grad. We Make Money Not Art interviews Larraine Henning about the art of squatting
• Check out the newest addition to my blogroll: kdoutsiderart. Kate Davey writes well informed pieces about outsider art, such as this, her latest post, on Alfred Wallis
• I loved this piece on web reading habits from Slate (by Farhad Manjoo), and yes I did read to the end. I read all these links to the end 😉
• Beautiful/Decay lives up to at least the second half of its name with a suite of photos from a new Chapman Brothers show in Hong Kong: “pessimistic in a joyful sense”.
• A colourful review of a colourful painter, Adriam Hamilton takes a look at Chagall, Tate Liverpool, and writes it up for the Independent
• Blouin Art Info reports on a Major Pissarro exhibition which opens in Madrid. A chance to see why Cezanne called the painter “humble and colossal”
• George Sugarman may be an equally neglected artist. Hyperallergic reviews his show at Gary Snyder Gallery, New York.

Since we now have to pay tax on extra bedrooms, here’s a worthwhile bit of DIY. Why not transform your spare room into a gallery? Even if there’s no guarantee it will pay out.

Requirements include lights and paint, both white, plus a tonne of hard work. But at least now the gallerist (Daniella Norton) can sit back and welcome people to a sterile yet domestic space.

The white paint, however, looks blue as you walk into the six work solo show by Tessa Payne. The painter has said her pallette is inspired by the sky, and it bleeds into the surrounding space.

Payne appears to paint faces. Her subjects, if they so be, are distilled from photographs and pushed as far from reality as you can get. Perhaps it is a weakness to see, eyes, mouths.

Or perhaps it is a real 21^st century malaise, now that we live alongside emoticons, and enthusiastic photographers prowl the wider world looking for faces in things.

It is safer to get back to the colours. The work created to sit above a radiator is perhaps the warmest, with belts of gentle pink which ripple across the surface like isotherms.

The piece opposite (pictured), for all the world as grey as a cold spring day in London, also has unexpected hints of purple. Payne uses colours expressively, but also minimally.

You might say this was a portrait of an elephant, but the joke would probably be on you. Painting may be a wilfully dumb medium at times, but it is rarely as childlike as it appears.

The show title, Maps, might provide a clue, suggesting an urban terrain. But then again faces can also be mapped, by machines, for security or so-called security purposes.

But Payne’s faces, with their flyaway eyebrows and tick box eyes would surely pull up an error message. They function like masks to conceal the sitter’s true identity.

House guests with masks; sounds like a great party. It is certainly a good way to kick off Brighton’s newest gallery, Now and Again, 17B Beaconsfield Villas.

The show is open next Saturday afternoon. So check it out if you’re in town.