David Hammons, one of today’s greatest living artists, does not appear in The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons, a new documentary about him that is directed by Judd Tully and Harold Crooks. This won’t be a surprise to anyone who knows even a little about Hammons, who almost never gives interviews to journalists and has a tendency to be evasive with dealers, collectors, and curators. He’s an artist who is more often heard about than seen—a figure who often seems constantly present yet always just barely out of reach.

It’s not clear whether Hammons himself was ever given an opportunity to comment for this documentary, not that it really matters—he would have said no anyway. The late artist Steve Cannon alludes to this at one point when he says, “David believes that the less said about him, the better it is.”

Regardless, everyone seems to have something to say about Hammons, and The Melt Goes on Forever is chock-full of stories about him. Tully is a journalist (he’s published articles in this magazine), and Crooks is a documentarian; together, they have assembled an impressive array of interviewees, from artists like Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor, and Fred Wilson to critics like Antwaun Sargent and Richard J. Powell, to shed light on a truly great sculptor whose objects are frequently shown and little understood by most who come in contact with them.

The picture of Hammons that emerges is that of an elusive chronicler of Black life in America who plays by his own rules. At times, it feels as if the viewer is the butt of Hammons’s jokes. For his justly famed piece Higher Goals (1986), he sculpted a grouping of basketball hoops that were so high as to be virtually unusable, even to a giant. For Concerto in Black and Blue (2002), a cult favorite among Hammons heads, he invited viewers into a totally darkened gallery and gave them blue flashlights to navigate the empty space.

“A good comedian, whoever’s speaking, has to know how to handle the hecklers, as well as those who aren’t,” Hammons tells filmmaker Michel Auder in archival footage. One way to deal with hecklers and fans alike, it seems, is to crack jokes that nobody completely gets.

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In the last stretch of auctions staged in London this week, Phillips held an evening sale offering works of modern and contemporary art evening at its U.K. headquarters, bringing in a combined total of £17.5 million ($21 million) with fees.

The 33 lots offered spanned works from mid-career artists like Shara Hughes and Caroline Walker to less valuable pieces by historical figures like Cy Twombly. Thirty-one works sold, with two withdrawn in advance. Six pieces, including examples by Flora Yukhnovich, Damien Hirst, and Stanley Whitney were secured with irrevocable bids.

The total hammer price for the entire group before fees came to £14.3 million ($17.5 million), landing at the low end of its combined presale estimate of £13.5 million–£18.4 million ($16.4 million–$22.4 million). The total with premium was $21 million.

The energy for the hour-and-a-half-long sale, led by auctioneer Henry Highly, was higher than in sales led by its larger competitors—Christie’s and Sotheby’s this week—whose sales are twice the size. More than in the other London sales, which were anchored with top lots by canonized male artists, Phillips relied on some of the market’s youngest artists to activate momentum with bidders.

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The Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine-era religious building in Istanbul, Turkey, was reportedly damaged last week when heavy cleaning equipment cracked the marble floors. It is just the latest incident in recent years that has seen the site damaged.

The Hagia Sophia, constructed by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I between 532 and 537, served as the largest Christian cathedral in the world until Constantinople was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. It was then turned into a mosque and subsequently into a museum by Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1935. Considered one of the most important religious and cultural sites in the world, it was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.

In 2020, the Turkish government decided to convert the structure from a museum back into a mosque. The decision sparked controversy both globally and locally, and required that the Department of Religious Affairs take over control of the Hagia Sophia from the Ministry of Culture’s Department of Antiquities.

Since 2020, reports have documented other kinds of damage at the site. The Imperial Gate, also known as the Door of Repentance, which dates back to the sixth century, is one such example. The doorway stands at roughly 23 feet tall and is, according to the Byzantines, constructed of oak from Noah’s Ark. Above the door is a mosaic depicting Jesus alongside the Theotokos, or mother of Jesus and Saint Mary of Egypt—all of which were brought from the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The Imperial Gate would have been used solely as an entrance for the emperor.

Earlier this year on April 18,  a group called the Turkish Association of Art Historians documented vandalism to the gate in a Twitter post. “We discovered that the historic Imperial Gate of Hagia Sophia is in such a state and we photographed it, around 20:45 tonight,” they wrote. The photo accompanying the post shows deep gouges in the wood surface.

On Thursday afternoon, Beyoncé unveiled the cover for Renaissance, her newest album, and many fans immediately took to social media that it looks a lot like a famed painting from the 19th century.

The cover, which was shot by Carlijn Jacobs, features a scantily clad Beyoncé atop a silvery horse. It bears more than a few similarities to John Collier’s 1880/98 painting Lady Godiva, which depicts a nude woman who figures prominently in Anglo-Saxon lore.

As legend has it, Lady Godiva rode a horse in the buff sometime during the 11th century as a protest against plans from her husband Leofric to impose a harsh tax on the citizens of Coventry, England. Leofric said he would call it off if she appeared in town naked and on horseback, and she took him up on the dare. (She is believed to have told all the citizens to stay home so she could retain her dignity, and all but one, a man now known as Peeping Tom, did, although this part is thought to be apocryphal.)

The painting by Collier, an artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, is currently held by the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, England, which owns a collection of works that depict Lady Godiva.

We’re thrilled to announce that Contemporary Art Library has been awarded a grant from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts! We humbly thank the foundation for supporting our work organizing, preserving and making accessible the history of contemporary art.

The Politie, the national police force of the Netherlands, said it had arrested two men who had allegedly been involved in a robbery at TEFAF Maastricht on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, both men were released from custody, and the two were cleared of involvement in the robbery, according to the Associated Press.

The two men, both of whom are Belgian, are in their 20s. They were arrested while driving what the police identified as a gray car with a Belgian registration number that had been seen near the William-Alexandertunnel in Maastricht.

TEFAF is known for its world-class—and often expensive—antiquities and Old Master paintings. (The fair, whose Maastricht edition closes today, also mounts two New York events annually.) But rather than going for these objects, the thieves had attempted to steal jewelry by smashing open a display case at one booth.

The dealer who brought that jewelry to the fair, and what the thieves managed to steal, has not been identified by either the Politie or TEFAF itself.

In video posted to social media, one of the armed thieves nearly hurls a vase filled with flowers as another rams a stanchion into a booth. Following the robbery, the fair was briefly evacuated. TEFAF previously said it “has robust procedures in the event of a security breach. These were precisely followed, and all visitors, exhibitors and staff were safely evacuated.”

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