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The Headlines
THE FOOD FIGHT. Food-wielding climate protesters struck again on Sunday, throwing mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet on view at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, Alex Greenberger reports in ARTnews. The 1890 landscape was on loan to the institution from collector Hasso Plattner, who acquired it for $110.7 million at auction in 2019. The activist group Letzte Generation , which staged the affair, said that the work “was not damaged in the action. Quite in contrast to the immeasurable suffering that floods, storms, and droughts are already bringing upon us today as harbingers of the impending catastrophe.” The museum plans to put the piece back on view on Wednesday. Two protesters were arrested. Meanwhile, Jan Dalley has a succinct history of the defacing of art in the Financial Times, ranging from Henry VIII’s vandalization of Catholic cathedrals to the recent climate protests. “All these incidents show one thing: the power of art as a symbol both temporal and spiritual,” Dalley writes.
Related Articles
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST. Architect Moshe Safdie—of Habitat 67 fame—has written a memoir, If Walls Could Speak, and gave a candid interview to the Guardian about his long career. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s, my ideas were ignored,” he said. “I was antagonistic to postmodernism and I paid a price.” Meanwhile, writer Eva Hagberg has penned a book about architect Eero Saarinen and his second wife, Aline Louchheim, titled When Eero Met His Match, and did a rollicking interview with Bloomberg. “She was so hot for Eero,” Hagberg said, “and would write in her letters about how she’d be a great wife and essentially give him a job application, but then also drop that she has lots of other lovers.” They were married from 1954 until his 1961 death.
The Digest
Candice Breitz lampooned fellow artists Gilbert & George on Instagram for saying that they are opening a private museum since, at other institutions, “it’s all black art, all women art.” Breitz proposed that they move to Berlin, which remains “a safe haven for white men.” Other artists joined the criticism in the comments. [The Art Newspaper]
Rapper Cardi B won a copyright lawsuit filed against her by a man who alleged that she had improperly used images of his back tattoos for the cover art of a 2016 mixtape. The “Bodak Yellow” superstar had argued that she was not aware of the use and that it was covered by fair use. [The Associates Press]
Maud Lewis buyers, beware: Fake works by the Canadian folk artist, who lived from 1903 to 1970, have been turning up as her fame and market have risen in recent years. One dealer said that he believes that one-third of the supposed Lewis paintings he has seen are not the real deal. [The Current/CBC News]
The ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, is releasing a compendium of Joseph Beuys’s actions as a DVD edition. A collaboration with the late artist’s estate, it clocks in at a cool 10 hours, features work from 1963 to 1986, and comes with a 520-page book. [ArtDaily]
ARTIST UPDATES:Oscar yi Hou, who has a show up at the Brooklyn Museum, was profiled in the New York Times; Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan is now making art and spoke with the Guardian; and Ai Weiwei (who wrote an op-ed for the Times late last week) is one of 12 artists who has created a limited-edition rug to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund, Ocula reports.
The Kicker
BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE. The esteemed lawyer and Scottish nationalist Ian Hamilton, who was part of the group of university students who stole the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey in London in 1950, died earlier this month at 97, the New York Times reports. Back in 2008, recalling the adventure to make off with the relic (which England took from Scotland in 1297), he told the Telegraph , “You sort of know that when you take a crowbar to a side door of Westminster Abbey and jimmy the lock that there really isn’t any going back, don’t you?” The culprits eventually surrendered it, and in 1996, British Prime MinisterJohn Major returned the item to Scotland, but it will make a temporary visit back to London next year for the coronation of King Charles III. [NYT]
