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The Headlines
THE WAR IN UKRAINE. Two United Nations groups—the U.N. Satellite Center and UNESCO—said that they are undertaking efforts to track damage to cultural locations in Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, the Associated Press reports. The initiative involves compiling a list of sites that have been damaged, like historical buildings, and sourcing satellite imagery to ascertain the extent of the destruction. Krista Pikkat , of UNESCO, told the wire service, “It’s important for us to document the damage, but also to make sure we have the information available before the recovery.” The country’s seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites have so far reportedly not been damaged amid the fighting. The list of affected sites currently numbers about 205.
Related Articles
ARTISTS UP CLOSE. Henry Taylor got the profile treatment from Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times, in advance of his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. Taylor’s “work is so incredibly direct, like an arrow through the heart,” fellow painter Mary Weatherford said. Barbara Kruger, who has work on view at the Venice Biennale and MoMA, spoke in Bomb with Osman Can Yerebakan. “I try to be vigilant about how my work is sited: about context, histories, cultures, and hierarchies,” Kruger said. “I’ve always been wary of artists doing a touristic dip into a location and creating a gloss or a knowledge claim.” And Wallace Chan is in Tatler, discussing the six months he spent as a monk while studying Buddhism—and fasting for two weeks. “It gave me a sense of freedom; I became more curious and aware,” he said.
The Digest
Artist Sonia Boyce’s show at this year’s Venice Biennale, which won a Golden Lion, will travel to England in 2023, stopping at the Turner Contemporary in Margate in February (where Frieze cofounder Matthew Slotover was just named chair) and the Leeds Art Gallery in May. [The Guardian]
Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman considered the “curious case of the Alexander McQueen graffiti skirt,” from a line that bears a striking resemblance to the graffiti-related art of Adam Pendleton. The artist wants attribution, the house said it did not copy his work, and “the two sides are in a standoff,” Friedman says. [The New York Times]
The Tampa Museum of Art in Florida received 88 works of Haitian art—by Rigaud Benoit, Wilson Bigaud, and other artists—as well as $1 million, from the Arthur R. Albrecht Revocable Trust. [Tampa Bay Times]
Marine archaeologists working for Vrak—aka the Museum of Wrecks in Stockholm—in the waters east of the Swedish capital said they have found Äpplet (“Apple”), a 17th-century warship intentionally sunk in 1659 to protect the city. Its whereabouts were long unknown. [The Associated Press]
A building once owned by Andy Warhol on Bowery in Lower Manhattan will go to auction in December with an opening bid of about $5.7 million, after being on the market for $9 million. “Jean-Michel Basquiat was known to paint in the backyard, and The Cramps would often play in the basement,” per Architectural Digest. [AD]
Artist Ethan Cook’s Manhattan home—a fifth-floor SoHo loft—features art by Sterling Ruby, Al Freeman (a giant knife sculpture!), Stanley Whitney, André Butzer, and many more. [Clever/AD]
The Kicker
‘PEAS IN A POD.’ Artist Damien Hirst has been a friend and admirer of Ashley Bickerton for decades. “He’s never got it that he’s my hero,” Hirst says in a conversation in Gagosian Quarterly about Bickerton with writer James Fox (who co-authored Keith Richards’s memoir). It is a long, moving chat, with many good lines. Here is one, from Hirst: Bickerton “fixates on the perfection. But really, his works are already perfect. They’re examples of truth revealed in a world where there is no truth. We can’t live without it, and we’re not prepared to accept that there isn’t any.” What more can you ask for from an artwork? [Gagosian Quarterly]