It is hard to say which is more surreal, Robert Gober's new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery or the way it has been received. The Metropolitan Police reviewed it before anyone else and decided that Gober's Male and Female Genitalia Wallpaper, which currently lines the walls of two of the Serpentine's four galleries, constituted a threat to public morality. The windows were accordingly screened off from the gaze of potentially shockable passers-by, and signs warning that some people may find the contents of the exhibition offensive were placed at the entrance to the show.
 
This has (naturally) had the effect of guaranteeing the attendance of large numbers of people who would never normally dream of visiting an exhibition of modern art. It has also been largely responsible for giving a new lease of life to a form of journalism previously believed extinct: the tabloid newspaper art review.
 
This literary genre has never really been the same since the golden days of British press philistinism, the early 1970s, when the Sun launched its memorable campaign against the Tate's acquisition of Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, alias ''The Bricks''. But Gober's show has revived this endangered species of writing. Two classic examples have been published in the last fortnight, each demonstrating a complete mastery of the requirements of the genre: moral outrage, dismissive humour and an affecting nostalgia for the days when art was a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.
 
Michael O'Flaherty, writing in the Daily Express, made telling use of what has always been one of the dominant conventions of tabloid art criticism, known in the trade as the Nudge-Nudge Wink-Wink Pun. ''It's not the sort of wallpaper any normal person would want in their bedroom . . . however well hung,'' was his summary of...

To read the full article please either login or register .