Is recent art history repeating itself? An increasingly long roster of new all-women group exhibitions and their corresponding press seem to suggest so. From blue-chip stalwarts Hauser Wirth & Schimmel and Saatchi to smaller project and artist-run spaces to last night’s Marc Straus opening If Only Bella Abzug Were Here, are all-female group shows an indication of a permanent commitment to gender equality in the art world or is it just another doomed-to-disappear trend?
What is the world coming to? The pizza rat may be a hoax! [Gothamist]
Cait Monro questions whether Saatchi’s all-female show “Champagne Life” is really a step in the right direction. An all female show isn’t a very sophisticated theme for a show, and there is a dirth of female solo shows. (No new ideas here, but I guess it still has be said.) [artnet News]
French artist Orlan has spent decades getting implants on her face for a project she calls “Carnal art”. Now she’s suing Lady Gaga for 31.7 million because she believes Gaga’s video “Born that Way”, steals from her art work. Gaga appears to be wearing facial implants. What a stupid lawsuit. It’s not like the idea of getting a face implant is so unique to Orlan that she deserves a payout. [Page Six]
Speaking of lawsuits, will the Richard Prince lawsuits never end? This week, he’s being sued by Donald Graham, for having appropriated one of his Instagram images and enlarged it. [Hyperallergic]
Marc Spiegler, the director of the Art Basel fairs, thinks galleries need to be more transparent about their pricing—like auction houses. His arguments make sense. Amongst the more compelling, he says that today’s “super-elite art buyers are people who work for their money and are no longer part of a “leisure class” with time to devote to visiting commercial galleries “in Chelsea [New York] or Mayfair” every week.” [The Art Newspaper]
Of the 200 units in downtown Brooklyn’s massive City Point development are 50 market-rate, rent stabilized units. One-bedrooms start at $2,750 and the two-bedrooms start at $4,500. So glad to see the upper middle class won’t be squeezed out of the city. [Curbed]
Ladies and gentleman, the world’s first passenger drone. [Dezeen]
More from the Keith Haring Journals. Just for starters, “I can't believe that some people are so shallow as to worry about whether one person, like Saatchi, collects me or not,” says Haring. “How can one person be an important determiner of what is good or not? In fact, if someone is trying to use their power or collecting to impose their taste and standardize the taste of the entire culture, then I think they are the most suspicious suspects of all.”
Felix Salmon has a good post about the Warhol auction racket, if you can parse the Warhols. According to Salmon, seven same-sized large self-portraits exist, each painted in 1986. Christie’s claims “[a]ll the other versions are in museums or in foundations open to the public”, but only four are easily traced to such institutions: one in the Guggenheim, one in Fort Worth, and two in Pittsburgh. Remaining is the one Christie’s will auction May 11, and one sold at Sotheby’s last year, and another, which was described by Sotheby’s last year as part of a private collection.
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com
Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director
