Amazon has reportedly ended its financial support for the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, California, after the institution included an artwork that the company deemed critical of its business strategy in Southern California’s Inland Empire.

The news was first reported earlier this week by the Los Angeles Times. Just days after the article was published, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, who has recently become a high-profile collector, was spotted at Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the country’s leading art fairs.

Amazon’s decision to cut ties with the Cheech was revealed in a leaked document laying out several of the company’s business and PR strategies for 2024. It was posted to X (formerly Twitter) by Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, the chief officer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO and a former California State assemblyperson.

The L.A. Times was able to independently verify the authenticity of the document, and an Amazon spokesperson did not dispute its veracity to the paper.

Amazon spokesperson Jennifer Flagg told ARTnews that the L.A. Times article was a “blatant mischaracterization of Amazon’s work, and in fact, Amazon is proud to be engaged philanthropically in communities across the country.”

Bad artist documentaries—there are many of them—breed the myth of the lone great artist, the genius who works in isolation, without the help of studio assistants, to conjure up masterpieces. Anselm, Wim Wenders’s flimsy new film, now transposes that myth onto Anselm Kiefer, the German painter and sculptor whose persona hardly needs to be built up any more than it already has.

This documentary, which was shot partly using 3D cameras, is set mainly in two palatial French towns where Kiefer has set up shop: Barjac, the southern commune where he has erected a 98-acre compound that functions as an art installation in its own right, and Croissy-Beaubourg, the Parisian suburb where he currently runs a massive studio for his oversize art. Wenders, like many others who have visited those places, is clearly in awe of what Kiefer has done at both.

At many points in Anselm, Wenders’s camera sweeps around Kiefer’s many creations at Barjac. At dawn, it romantically encircles Kiefer’s steel sculptures of dresses, sans wearers; sometimes they are outfitted with objects like open books or metal globes for heads. In the fog, it traces Kiefer as he walks amid a suite of his towers that rise high into the air. On a sunny day, it floats godlike above it all, revealing the vast compound in all its glory.

Rarely, if ever, does Wenders show anyone other than Kiefer traipsing through Barjac, which dates back to the Renaissance. Perhaps that makes sense, given that the compound, known as La Ribaute, only opened to the public last year. (It’s also a two-hour drive from Marseille, not exactly a tourist destination itself.) But Wenders’s choice to depict a solitary Kiefer affirms this cloying film’s belief in the artist as a powerful soloist without really interrogating that line of thinking.

Witness the scenes set in Croissy-Beauborg, where Kiefer is shown creating paintings so big, they must be wheeled around. Most times, Kiefer is shown alone, slopping chunky paint onto his vast landscapes.

Art Basel Miami Beach took place a week and a day later than usual this time around, and that was a good thing. It meant that early arrivals could spend a couple of days of with the exhibitions already on view ahead of the hectic fair-hopping.

You could travel all the way to West Palm Beach to visit ARTnews Top 200 Collector Beth Rudin DeWoody’s collection or take in closer ones like those of the Rubell Family and Jorge Pérez. At the museums, the offerings range from a disappointing solo for Miami-based Hernan Bas to a standout survey for Charles Gaines at the Institute of Contemporary Art. 

Below, a look at some of the good and the bad on view in South Florida ahead of the fair.

Collectors with an Eye

DeWoody and her curatorial team, Maynard Monrow and Laura Dvorkin, are on a roll this year. Those who made the trek to West Palm Beach to visit her private exhibition space, the Bunker Artspace, could find a group of spectacular exhibitions that acted as a testament to the depth of DeWoody’s collection. Thankfully, those shows also don’t take themselves too seriously.

The art industry has once again descended on Miami for a week of “parties, paintings, and pills” at Art Basel Miami Beach, with several galleries already reporting sales of works over $1 million.

This year’s edition of ABMB takes place after a “fair and sober” evening auction season, but any concerns about international conflict or an economic recession were quickly mitigated during preview days.

“Sales at the booth have been strong since the opening hours of the fair, signaling an optimistic shift in this year’s sleepier market and economy,” Lehmann Maupin partner Fionna Flaherty said in a press statement. (Sales are self-reported by galleries, making the data difficult to confirm.)

Dealers reported robust attendance from collectors, curators, and museum groups hailing from Aspen to Paris to Hong Kong, as well as sales of works valued as highly as $20 million.

Below, a look at seven works that galleries said sold during Art Basel Miami Beach’s opening days, as well as a major work that could break an artist’s sales record.

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November 12 – December 2, 2023

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Why Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl's 1987 hit delights – and shocks

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7 min read

Pre-newspaper times

Even though the printing press was introduced to England in 1476, it was only in the 16th century that printed news took off, and even then, at a very slow pace, due to the necessity of town criers to provide them, stemming from the illiteracy of the general population. Early forms of printed news varied from printed news books to news pamphlets and usually related information pertaining to a singular event (e.g., battles, disasters or public celebrations). The earliest record of such a pamphlet details an eyewitness account of the Battle of Flodden (1513) between the English and the Scots, where the former were victorious. However, the Tudors kept strict control over the dissemination of news, preferring its delivery from church pulpits. Furthermore, by the 1500s, all printing matters were reserved to royal jurisdiction. King Henry VIII (r.1509-1547) issued a list of proscribed books in 1529. Nine years later he proclaimed that books needed to be examined and licensed by the Privy Council, or its deputies, to be published and did not allow for any unlicensed books to be published. Mary I (r.1553-1558) provided the Stationers’ Company, a guild of stationers tasked with handling the trade of books and related activities, with a charter in 1557. As a result of this charter, the Company now held the right to find and seize unlawful or pirated works. The Stationers’ Company was given further measures of control and licensing during the reign of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) due, in part, to concerns over the circulations of material which attacked or undermined the queen’s religious settlement of 1559.

The Star Chamber, a court consisting of judges and privy councillors, supplementary to common-law courts, thus put forth a decree in 1586, in which print trade became heavily regulated and the publication of news was wholly forbidden. This decree restricted printing to only London, with the exception of two other printing presses, one at the University of Cambridge and one at the University of Oxford. A petition for the recognition of a press was put forth to Elizabeth I, two years earlier, by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Chancellor of the University of Oxford. The decree granted the University one printer and printing press.

The need for news

Considering the strict control over printed content in England, the first newspapers to be printed in English were called corantos, published in Amsterdam around 1620 and smuggled into England. A group of London publishers and printers began circulating printed sheets with news in this style shortly after, and one of them, Thomas Archer, was even jailed for printing corantos without permission. In 1621, a translated version of a Dutch coranto called Corante, or, newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was published. The content of this work contained no information on national news, but rather happenings around Europe, with a focus on the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War became a widespread media phenomenon and it ultimately led to the suspension of news publications between 1632 and 1638, by order of the Star Chamber, due to complaints of unfair coverage from Spanish and Austrian diplomats.

England at this time was ruled by Charles I (r. 1625-49), who believed in the divine right of kings, meaning that no one but God could overrule him. For 11 years he led England under Personal Rule, having dissolved Parliament and ruled by decree. In February 1640 he had no choice but to summon Parliament (also known as Short Parliament), as he needed funds to finance the Bishops’ Wars in Scotland. However, he dissolved it after only three weeks, as Parliament was more concerned about addressing numerous grievances they had with him. After losing the poorly funded Bishops’ War, Charles I had no choice but to recall Parliament for a second time (Long Parliament). In 1641, the Star Chamber was abolished by the Parliament, with the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1640. Without copyright laws being enforced, media was freer than ever without restrictions, and there was a high demand for news to keep up with the events of the Civil War. Both pro-Royalist and pro-Parliamentarian publications were printed to drum up support from the public on each side.

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