Ayanda Mabulu’s extremely-NSFW painting of South African president Jacob Zuma… which we have censored with a Pokemon.
- While giving her speech at the Republican National Convention last night, Melania Trump plagiarized an entire paragraph from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic Convention speech. The campaign just straight up denies this happened. It’s insane. [CNN]
- Resource for artists and professionals: Clarion List has links to things you need often like framers and things that are extremely specialised like art risk consultants. [Clarion List]
- Parviz Tanavoli, the Iranian pop artist who was mysteriously detained earlier this month has had his passport returned to him and he is free to travel. He promptly left Tehran for Vancouver. [The Art Newspaper]
- Wow, two days in a row we get something dumb from Jonathan Jones, what are the odds? Today, he enlightens everyone on the topic of “artwashing.” It’s a tough subject that Jones breaks down for you like this, “There is such a thing as civilisation – and it has a way of looking a bit like “gentrification.” Yes, low-income neighborhoods are uncivilized. This makes art look bad. [The Guardian]
- The Prado’s Hieronymus Bosch exhibition marks one of the only times in the past five centuries that this many of the artist’s works are together in one place. Insane. [New York Post]
- “When I see Ayanda Mabulu, I am going to wrap my fingers around his neck and throttle him.” -Edward Zuma, son of South African president Jacob Zuma on a painter who has criticised the administration. [News24]
- 17 buildings by Le Corbusier have been designated world heritage sites by UNESCO, including the the National Museum of Western Art, in Tokyo and the Unité d’habitation in Marseille. [Curbed]
- Mladen Stilinović, the Croatian conceptual artist whose contributions to the tiny country’s contemporary art scene helped put it on the map, has passed away at 69. [artnet News]
- The de Blasio administration has tapped Toronto’s Adam Giambrone as the new Brooklyn-Queens “Streetcar Czar”. Let’s hope Giambrone has learned what makes streetcars suck so much from Toronto’s example: trains don’t do well in mixed traffic. Seriously, every time a car double parks or hits a train the whole damn system gets held up. Why do people keep talking about streetcars like they’re the technology of the future? They made sense in the Victorian era when they didn’t have to share the road with someone’s Hummer. If this idea is going to be remotely usable in New York, they’re going to have to close the streets and give this baby signal prioritization. [Curbed]
