Sad week, as the extent of a hurricane’s destruction becomes apparent:

• But Chelsea gallerists are a resilient breed. So discovers the New York Times as Roberta Smith assesses damage caused by Sandy
• Art is no longer cool, according to Jacob Willer. This could be the best thing to happen to art since, well, since it became cool in fact
• Thankfully, Chloe Nelkin does not (apparently) care about such niceties. She is totally bowled over by Seduced by Art at the National Gallery.
• Thinking LA was all villas and swimming pools, this photo essay on Uncouth Reflections was a grandiose revelation
• Mary Louise Schumacher draws inspiration from novelist Orhan Pamuk and calls for smaller more personal museums
• Tyler Green explores the line of influence between two giants of abstract epressionism, Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman
• Danh Vo wins the 2012 Hugo Boss Prize worth $100,000 and a show at the Guggenheim, but Art Fag City worries about the backstory
• Bit worrying to see how much video Adrian Searle is doing. (Don’t people read any more?) But his latest interview with Jane and Louise Wilson is worth a watch
• Tomas Saraceno’s latest installation at HangarBicocca in Milan is branded ridiculous by Animal NY. See why…
• Ai Weiwei has given up his fight against tax evasion charges. Now he’s returning donations to supporters 🙁
• Everyone should read and reread Don Quixote. But in the time-starved interim here are some 1968 illustrations of Cervantes’ novel.

Even as he maintains his emolient sales pitch for rich customers, it is worth bearing in mind the real world catastophe at which Jeff Koons’ puppy was at the centre.

This piece of inoffensive topiary is as cuddly as any 43ft high sculpture could ever be. Containing 60,000 plants it is said to be a piece about happiness and love .

But even as Koons declared this to be the case, pooch showed a darker side. It played a bit part in the killing of a Spanish policeman in 1997; it almost claimed the life of the Spanish king.

Joes Maria Aguirre was the unfortunate policeman who challenged three overalled gardeners, all bearing flowerpots, who appeared ready to tend to Koons’ sculpture.

One of them shot him dead. It wasn’t quite the way Bilbao officials had intended the inauguration of the city’s new contemporary art museum to unfold.

The gardeners worked for ETA. Their flowerpots contained grenades. A fire fight broke out and moved downtown. The ’gardeners’ stole three cars at gunpoint.

The episode is like something from the pages of a thriller. Art historians will no doubt love it in years to come, just as today they love the murderous life of Caravaggio.

And say what you like about ETA, but they engaged with Koons’ giant puppy with a certain wiley humour. It was a definitive rejection of the artist’s kitsch embrace.

But a friend recently told me about an interesting coda to events at the opening of the Guggenheim. The alleged triggerman turned up in 2011 in Cambridge, UK.

This to me is especially surreal as I grew up in the university town and am familiar with the Arbury estate where Eneko Gogeaskoetxea Arronategui lived.

To his colleagues at an IT firm he was family man Cyril Macq. He was also a squash fanatic and club treasurer. He never spoke politcs to anyone.

He was extradited and tried this year. But perhaps it is a measure of his popularity and rehabilitation that the graffiti pictured below was soon to crop up near Mill Road.

Free Eneko is not an artwork, not even a piece of street art. But it is a cry of resistance; it is real. It is the shadow cast by Jeff Koons’ monumental and perfectly obedient dog.

Puppy was acquired by the Guggenheim Bilbao in 1997 where has been installed to this day in a plaza named for dead policeman Aguirre.

Storms have pushed art somewhat off the agenda this week. Imagine what Sandy might have done to a Frieze tent, anyway, I digress:

• Hyperallergic art blog catered for all your climate news needs, with a collection of photos compiled from social media by Hrag Vartanian.
• On the Guardian’s Northerner blog, Liverpudlian Kenn Taylor takes the Anfield bus tour. A highlight of this year’s Biennial, it only sounds mundane.
• Heavyweight critic Dave Hickey gives a candid interview about the art world. (He’s sort of retiring so he can say what he likes. Via/ @hindmezaina)
• Pipe weighs up the evidence surrounding the demise of Vincent Van Gogh, in conjunction with a close reading of Martin Gayford’s book The Yellow House.
• In the Telegraph Mark Hudson reviews the show about vodou at Nottingham Contemporary. Enjoy the crash course on Haitian history and culture.
• JJ Charlesworth reposts a column from Art Review in which he bemoans the passing of things. We may never know their like again.
• Mike Nelson branches out with some heavy geometry at Malmö Kunsthalle. (Contemporary Art Daily)
• Smithsonian.com prints a collection scary kids in masks for Halloween. Do not want any of these on my doorstep.
• Also in the Halloween spirit, Art Wednesday posts a Marilyn Manson video. Again, I don’t know whether to laugh or soil myself.
• Ah, this is better: Animal NY post a quick piece on a playable tetris pumpkin. Must be seen to be believed. Both trick and treat.

Between the condoms by the notorious bed to the film about abortion, childlessness has emerged as a major theme in the work of Tracey Emin.

As if she has traded creative fecundity for motherhood, her prolific art has more in common with masturbation rather than procreation. She sketches the former activity at length.

In a photographic work I’ve Got It All, the artist can even be found scooping cash up into her crotch, but unlike Danaë her visit from a shower of gold results in nothing.

But since Emin practices a form of gesamtkunstwerk, allowing biography to become part of the art, her maternal status is all important.

The chances are we might not have allowed this working-class, female artist to have it all. To be rich, powerful, famous, okay. But a mother as well? It might have put the nation off.

Most celebrities get away with having babies and indeed so do many artists. But Emin would appear to be a romantic and likes to advertise a bit of suffering along with the stellar career.

For that reason, her contribution to a new book by Faber is touching. The publishers have been asking the great and the good for answers to common kids’ questions.

Emin was asked: What should you do when you can’t think what to draw or paint? The following is her answer, for the benefit of other people‘s children:

I often find I can’t make art. At times like this I go and do something else. I usually go partying, play dominoes, go out to eat, or swim, take long walks, go shopping – all the normal things.

I wake up most nights between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. and stay awake for around two to three hours. That’s when I would most like to work but I can’t because even though I am awake I am not awake enough to get dressed and go to my studio. But now I have an app on my iPad that lets me draw. The drawings are very different from my usual style because I do them with my finger and I am still a little sleepy so the drawings come from another part of my brain. Also they are very throwaway, so I feel freer.

Reading and swimming are the best things for me to do because the swimming physically makes me happier, and my brain starts working. And the reading fills me with other people’s images in my mind, which releases me from stress.

I need to make and create art – I’m an artist. Without creating my life makes no sense, I lose confidence and sort of forget who I am.

See below for infographic for Big Questions From Little People by Faber and Faber:  What Big Questions are on Your Child’s Mind?