Natalia LL, an artist whose boundary-pushing performances and films are credited with helping usher in a wave of avant-garde art in Poland, has died at 85, according to her Instagram.

Natalia LL’s most well-known works take on the male gaze with subversive imagery that is explicitly erotic. Their content has periodically proven controversial and has in some cases led her work to be censored.

When she began making these works during the 1970s, she was working to bring art into closer contact with reality, making conceptual work at a time when it was still relatively new. She made it her mandate to focus on activities that seemed banal.

“Art is in the process of becoming in every instant of reality: to the individual every fact, every second is fleeting and unique,” she wrote in 1972. “That is why l record common and trivial events like eating, sleeping, copulation, resting, speaking etc.”

Her series “Consumer Art” (1972–75), her most famous body of work, prominently features photographs and films of the artist licking and suggestively eating a bruised banana. In one film, she goes on to spoon melted ice cream into her mouth and then to spit it back out, letting it roll down her chin. These images, which are followed by shots of other women eating frankfurters, recall pornography with a feminist twist—she and the other women are now in charge.

New York City will invest $4.5 million in the ongoing revamp of the Isamu Noguchi Museum, steward of the celebrated Japanese American artist’s sculptures and designs, city officials announced Thursday.

The announcement came from Laurie Cumbo, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) commissioner, who visited the Noguchi Museum Thursday, just blocks from the Long Island City riverfront.

Cumbo announced that the museum had been awarded $4.5 million in capital funding, $1.5 million of which came from Mayor Eric Adams and the rest from Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. The funds are part of a landmark $220 million investment from the DCLA and City Council and Borough Presidents in more than 70 cultural organizations citywide, including the Queens Museum and the artist-run residency program Flux Factory.

The cornerstone of the Noguchi Museum’s expansion and unification project is a restoration of the artist’s original 1959 living and studio space situated opposite the museum. When completed, the public will be able to tour the studio building for the first time in its history.

Brett Littman, director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, said in a statement: “Isamu Noguchi was a fearless, category-defying, cross-disciplinary polymath, and our new Noguchi campus, which will include the Art and Archive Building and the renovation of his 10th Street studio and apartment, will allow us to better reflect on the complex nature of Noguchi’s work and life.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed a new law that will require museums to acknowledge artworks that were stolen from Jews by the Nazis. Crucially, the law extends the definition of this kind of theft to include forced sales of art.

“As New Yorkers, we are united in our solemn commitment to Holocaust survivors: We will never forget,” Hochul said in a statement.

The legislation notes that some 600,000 paintings were looted from Jews during World War II.

“The looting was not only designed to enrich the Third Reich but also integral to the Holocaust’s goal of eliminating all vestiges of Jewish identity and culture,” the law reads. “Many museums now display this stolen art with no recognition of their provenance.”

The bill specifies that the artworks should be accompanied by a “prominently” placed placard or other form of signage. The legislation was championed by Senators Anna Kaplan and Nily Rozic.

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The Headlines

THE ARTISTS SPEAK. Jayson Musson, who shot to fame as the wise art YouTuber Hennessy Youngman, has his first museum show up at the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, and is in the New York Times. “Jokes can be powerful, but it’s not easy to tell a good joke,” he said. Feminist great Suzanne Lacy has a survey up at the Queens Museum in New York, and is in the Art Newspaper. “Activism is impacting change,” she said. “I’m not convinced that art does anything profound and unique in and of itself, but that it operates to support and push a general, social, political idea forward.” And T: The New York Times Style Magazine spoke with artists who are fighting mass incarceration through their work. “I’m not interested in only telling the story of the innocent,” Sable Elyse Smith said. “I am interested in confrontation.”

AUCTION ACTION. Entertainment giant Endeavor‘s IMG has snapped up a majority stake in the collector-car auction company Barrett-Jackson in a deal worth $261 million, Deadline reports. The firm’s many other holdings include the Frieze art fair and New York Fashion Week. Meanwhile, the estate of writer Joan Didion is heading to auction later this year at Stair Galleries in Hudson, New York, Architectural Digest reports. The material coming to the block is said to include art, furniture, and of course, books. A catalog for the offerings arrives October 31; the sale will be on November 16. 

The Digest

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June 11 – August 20, 2022

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How a children's book writer has found an unexpected following

July 16 – August 13, 2022

June 25 – August 15, 2022

July 9 – August 13, 2022

June 29 – August 13, 2022

How a remarkable epic about Jesus Christ takes over a German town every decade

How ancient myth, magic and sci-fi are inspiring fantastical Afrofuturist art

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July 14 – August 12, 2022

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