is smooth good?

This smoothness (lack of) also affects 'high' culture; from lack of advanced warning to exhibitions that are not finished to deadline (these are stands still being built after ARCH Moscow opened) to the weird experience of the current Rothko show at Garage.

Here, the pictures are well hung but the lighting is pretty poor and the alarm sensors oversensitive. The effect is a kind of sound installation ballet. You have to lean forward to read the captions to each work, which sets off the alarms (each at a slightly different pitch). A resigned security guard walks towards you gesticulating, so you back off. They retire, only to have to do the same thing as another alarm sounds. This is non-stop and - for a while - quite amusing. But in a London gallery we are so used to everything being smooth; with the amount of effort behind each exhibition made invisible precisely because of obsessive professionalism.

Well, I think that is what it is.....