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Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s entertainment agency, is a well-oiled machine, capable of putting together complex live performances all around the world for millions of fans. But, to create The Book of HOV, a public exhibition chronicling Jay-Z’s musical legacy at the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), Roc Nation found itself with a unique challenge: how to build a sprawling exhibition inside a public library. An added wrinkle: they had to make sure it was designed in such a way that patrons could continue to use the library while the show was on view.

To accomplish this, Roc Nation brought on partners the company had collaborated with in the past, like Bruce Rodgers’ Tribe Inc, which had produced 17 Super Bowls, 4 of them alongside Roc Nation, and Ian Schatzberg’s General Idea Agency (GIA), a brand design agency. Together, with the input of Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Jay-Z’s art dealer, and many other experts and crews, The Book of HOV came together.

“It’s not a classic museum exhibition in a traditional museum context, obviously,” Schatzberg told ARTnews. “The ambition was to design a story about Brooklyn’s finest, within the context of one of Brooklyn’s great public institutions, while also augmenting and amplifying the sort of ethos and purpose of the public library, which was to be accessible for everybody.”

But because the library isn’t designed as an exhibition space to move people sequentially from room to room, Schatzberg and his team had to come up with an exhibition that didn’t need to be experienced chronologically. Instead, GIA focused on creating thematic chapters that could be viewed out of order, while reflecting on their context within the library.

“For example, with the young adult section and kids section, we were attentive to those audiences,” said Schatzberg. “How do we tell a story thinking about philanthropic efforts and public leadership to young people?”

Following the release of his second series of silkscreen prints at Castle Fine Arts earlier this year, the embattled actor Johnny Depp has decided to continue his artistic practice by tackling a new subject: himself, according to the Associated Press.

The mixed-media silkscreen and archival pigment work is based on an image from a photoshoot directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino for Dior’s fragrance Sauvage. According to a promotional video, the work’s title, Five, relates to what Depp calls “the fifth year of madness” that surrounded him following the libel trials between the actor and his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, who claimed in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed that Depp physically abused her.

In one trial, in Virginia, Heard lost, with the jury claiming that her references to “sexual violence” and “domestic abuse” amounted to defamation. Another trial was held in England when Depp sued the owner of the Sun after that publication reported that he had abused Heard. Depp lost that trial and was subsequently asked to step back from the “Fantastic Beasts” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” film series.

Depp began work on the portrait in 2021, during what he described in the promotional video as a “time that was, let’s say, a bit dark, a bit confusing.”

The work continues the comic book style screenprints that Depp sold through Castle both last year and in March 2023. The series “Friends & Heroes” and “Friends & Heroes II” featured celebrities who either inspired Depp or whom he befriended during his almost 40-year acting career, including Heath Ledger, Bob Marley, River Phoenix, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Two climate activists who glued their hands to the frame of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna at the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden should pay for “community damage to property,” the Dresden prosecutor’s office announced today. 

According to dpa, the prosecutor’s office has requested the 22-year-old and 29-year-old activists each pay 1,500 euros.

The pair, members of the German environmental group Letzte Generation (Last Generation), entered the gallery on August 23, 2022, and attached one hand each to the frame of the world-famous altar painting from the 16th century. The picture itself was not damaged, however the demonstration left traces of superglue on the frame and harmed the frame’s protective finish, resulting in property damages of around 2,300 euros. 

The Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, more commonly called SKD) subsequently filed a complaint with the city’s public prosecutor’s office for “damage to property that is harmful to the community” and initiated civil proceedings for damages. The pair has also been banned from all 15 of SKD’s institutions.

The case against a 23-year-old activist who filmed the action and posted it to social media was dropped. 

An ancient Maya relief sculpture that was identified in a German antique shop has been returned to Mexico via the Mexican consulate in Frankfurt on Tuesday. It’s believed that the artifact was looted from Mexico.

The relief carving depicts a profile of a skull. Experts believe the block relief would have been part of a wall, where similarly stacked carvings were intended to recall a Tzompantli (skull rack). Mesoamerican palisades were part of a ritual display of skulls belonging to sacrificial victims and prisoners of war.

The artifact is thought to have been created during the Late Classic or Postclassical Mesoamerican periods between 750–1244 CE and it has similarities to objects from the famous Mayan city Chichén Itzá.

“The restitution of this archaeological piece is a sample of the work of the government of Mexico, and the success of the legal strategy of the foreign ministry’s legal team, in the identification and restitution of the patrimony of the country that is abroad, as well as the fight against the trafficking of cultural assets and international cooperation for the conservation of the historical past of nations,” a spokesperson for Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement.

As part of a larger campaign by the Mexican government to recover illegally trafficked and culturally significant artifacts, the country has seen the return of a 2,500-year-old Olmec statue, 65 pre-Hispanic artifacts, and a U-shaped stone trophy in the last year alone.

On Wednesday, Judge William Orrick of the US District Court for the Northern District of California heard oral arguments on defendants’ motion to dismiss in the case of Andersen v Stability Ltd, a closely-watched class action complaint filed by multiple artists against companies that have developed AI text-to-image generator tools like Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt.

During the hearing, the judge appeared to side with AI companies, thus making it likely that he would dismiss the case.

“I don’t think the claim regarding output images is plausible at the moment, because there’s no substantial similarity [between the images by the artists and images created by the AI image generators],” Orrick said during the hearing, which was publicly accessible over Zoom.

The issue is that copyright claims are usually brought against defendants who have made copies of pre-existing work or work that uses a large portion of pre-existing works, otherwise called derivative works. In other words, a one-to-one comparison typically needs to be made between two works to establish a copyright violation.

But, as explained in the most recent Art in America, the artists in the lawsuit are claiming a more complex kind of theft. They argue that AI companies’ decision to include their works in the dataset used to train their image generator models is a violation of their copyrights. Because their work was used to train the models, the artists argue, the models are constantly producing derivative works that violate their copyrights.

Since its independence in 1947, India’s blank canvas has dramatically transformed in color, size, and texture as a result of a checkered, often violent, and constantly evolving post-colonial history.

When England decided to let go of its crown jewel 75 years ago, its rushed departure resulted in the unceremonious division of its Indian territories into three parts, with the Hindu-majority mainland becoming India, flanked by two Muslim-majority regions which became West and East Pakistan. The two ends of Pakistan were further partitioned in 1971, leading to the birth of Bangladesh in the East.

Lines drawn on maps decided the fate of millions and caused untold death and destruction. A region known for centuries of peaceful communion despite differing religious beliefs, cultures, foods, dress, languages, and rulers, was suddenly and arbitrarily torn asunder overnight.

In the wake of these violent acts, artists from the region drew, painted, designed, embroidered, and creatively reimagined their homeland’s numerous configurations for posterity.

Three-quarters of a century on, this has resulted in a rich legacy of work that can be loosely classified as “Partition art,” a tendency that captures both the negative and positive aspects of life after the traumatic events of 1947.

Amid deep concerns about the risks posed by artificial intelligence, the Biden administration has lined up commitments from seven tech companies — including OpenAI, Google and Meta — to abide by safety, security and trust principles in developing AI.

Reps from seven “leading AI companies” — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — are scheduled to attend an event Friday at the White House to announce that the Biden-Harris administration has secured voluntary commitments from the companies to “help move toward safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology,” according to the White House.

“Companies that are developing these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure their products are safe,” the Biden administration said in a statement Friday. “To make the most of AI’s potential, the Biden-Harris Administration is encouraging this industry to uphold the highest standards to ensure that innovation doesn’t come at the expense of Americans’ rights and safety.”

Note that the voluntary agreements from Meta, Google, OpenAI and the others are just that — they’re promises to follow certain principles. To ensure legal protections in the AI space, the Biden administration said, it will “pursue bipartisan legislation to help America lead the way in responsible innovation” in artificial intelligence.

The agreements “are an important first step toward ensuring that companies prioritize safety as they develop generative AI systems,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “But the voluntary commitments announced today are not enforceable, which is why it’s vital that Congress, together with the White House, promptly crafts legislation requiring transparency, privacy protections and stepped-up research on the wide range of risks posed by generative AI.”

A vast sculpture park and museum in Brazil is now home to a permanent gallery devoted to Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist whose “Infinity Mirror Rooms” have generated mass appeal in the past decade.

Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho recently opened its Galeria Yayoi Kusama, host to two of her installations, one of which is an “Infinity Mirror Room.” That work is Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009), a wood, metal, and glass construction. Once inside, viewers see their reflections multiply amid a panoply of lights.

A version of that work is also on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas, where there have reportedly been long lines to see the installation. Instituto Inhotim, run by collector Bernardo Paz, acquired the piece the year it was made.

Another Kusama that Inhotim acquired in 2008, I’m Here, But Nothing (2000), will be on view alongside it. That installation features pieces of furniture arranged around a room cast in black light. This allows certain dots to become illuminated.

Allan Schwartzman, a prominent art adviser and founding director of Inhotim, said in a statement, “the opening of Galeria Yayoi Kusama fulfills a central artistic ambition at Inhotim for the work of one of the most visionary artists of our time.”

The subjects in Xinyi Cheng’s figurative paintings exist in blank spaces, uncluttered by details that might supply a reality effect. Despite their sparseness, “I spend a lot of time on my backgrounds,” the Paris-based painter said when we spoke on the phone this past February. “It’s usually the first thing I need to figure out about a painting.”

In place of sweeping landscapes or fussy interiors are buttery layers of muted monochrome colors. Her favorite hues are “sophisticated grays,” which provoke undefined yet specific feelings and permit a certain struggle with light. These backgrounds contribute tension— which Cheng calls a “guiding principle of creation”—to her paintings. “I search for the sexual nature of desire that holds a painting together and makes you feel immediate to it,” she says. In her encounters with both her own work and that of other artists, she seeks a physical response.

Cheng derives her subject matter from an eclectic range of sources. One painting, Old Stories Retold (2022), depicts the bodies of three men trapped in water with disturbingly vacant facial expressions. Recently exhibited in a solo show at Matthew Marks, the work draws on 20th-century Chinese writer Lu Xun’s short story “Forging the Swords.” That haunting and surreal parable concludes with three severed heads bobbing around in boiling water. Incroyable (En route), 2021, portrays three long-faced men staring out at the viewer from a convertible, a sunset blazing behind them. The painting’s composition is based on a ’90s Saturday Night Live sketch, a silly segment in which Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, and Chris Kattan nod their heads in sync to the Haddaway song “What Is Love” while driving from one place to the next, crashing a high school prom, a wedding, and bedtime at a senior home along the way. Cheng’s painting transfigures the campiness of the music video into a searching portrayal of a midlife journey to recapture something of the past. In Smoked Turkey Leg (2021), a shirtless man gnaws at a long, barren bone with primal exasperation and a ferocity reminiscent of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

In our conversation, Cheng emphasized her interest in the inexhaustible questions that paintings can pose, listing examples with simultaneous urgency and reverence. Can she paint the abstract idea of somebody disappearing? How about the specific physical experience of falling through space and getting caught in a net? Can she use unnatural colors to render a face, and make those colors seem utterly natural? “The studio has always been my space for solving the formal issues these questions produce,” Cheng says.

Right now, Cheng is focused on creating a new body of work to answer her latest set of questions, which include how to represent a head with feathers and how to create her own composition inspired by Edvard Munch’s “Jealousy” series. She is enjoying her new studio in Charonne, where, she says, she finally feels she has enough physical and mental space to work.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, wealthy New Yorkers made a beeline for the Hamptons. Soon enough, galleries and auction houses followed the exodus down Montauk Highway and set up shop.

That year, Pace, Skarstedt, Van de Weghe, Michael Werner, David Lewis, Hauser & Wirth, and Sotheby’s opened spaces in East Hampton and Southampton. For a while, the Hamptons appeared ready to mature into a robust art scene, commensurate with the astounding real estate market that regularly sees one-percenters drop $50 million or more on an oceanfront villa. And yet, post-Covid, only David Lewis and Hauser & Wirth remain. Turns out, it’s difficult to hack it in the Hamptons, especially after most Manhattanites have retreated to the city.

“There’s this false conception,” Ryan Wallace, cofounder of Halsey McKay, in operation in East Hampton since 2011, told ARTnews, “that because of the wealth here, you can open up a store and billionaires are gonna walk in and buy art from you. But that’s just not how it works.”

While Wallace said that he didn’t see a dramatic shift in sales during the pandemic, nor did he feel in serious competition with gallery giants like Pace, his longtime clientele were suddenly more available. The second the fairs reopened, that changed.

7 min read

Where can a lady get a dip around here?

Both Parson’s Pleasure and Dame’s Delight are two now-defunct bathing places, opposite of the land strip known as ‘Mesopotamia’, a term of Greek etymology meaning ‘land between two rivers’, which is also used to refer to an area between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq.

This strip of land was purchased by the University of Oxford as part of an expansion of the University Parks, which occurred between 1860 and 1865. Before the early 1800s, Parson’s Pleasure, otherwise known as Paten’s Pleasure and Loggerhead in the 17th and 19th centuries respectively, was deemed by locals as an ‘open’ bathing place, available to all. However, it should be noted that throughout the duration of its operation, it was mostly used as a nude bathing place for men.

In 1865 wooden screens were erected to enclose Parson’s Pleasure as a result of a new footpath being introduced, linking South Parks Road to the parish of St. Clements, which would have increased the risk of indecency as the number of daily passers-by surged due to the footpath’s connection to the city. Though it was previously commercialised in the 1830s, Parson’s Pleasure became more and more select nearing the end of the 19th century, mostly due to its high entry fees. Though public access was considered, the bathing place was only open to members of the university and their families and friends between 1874 and 1890s. However, by the turn of the century it became widely used by the public, especially in the summer, partially propagated by the boating craze of the 1890s, when rollers were built at Parson’s Pleasure to facilitate pushing boats into the river Cherwell.

June 3 – July 15, 2023

May 13 – July 16, 2023