Paul Merson has claimed that Gabriel Jesus should not leave Manchester City for Arsenal, claiming that ‘Pep Guardiola trusts him’.

The Gunners are expected to add at least one new forward to their attack this summer, with Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah into the final months of their current contracts.

While our interest in City’s Jesus was seemingly confirmed last weekend, Paul Merson doesn’t believe he should make the move to the Emirates, and should stay with his current side.

‘Gabriel Jesus should stay at Manchester City. There’s speculation about his future and people think he’s unhappy he doesn’t play enough – but he’s started 17 Premier League games this season,’ Merson wrote for his column in the Daily Star.

‘I think that’s a lot. He’s played 36 times for City this season. And started a lot of big, big games. Where is he going to go where he can do any better than that?

Arsenal are claimed to have enquired with Bologna about the availability of Aaron Hickey, which could mean an end to Nuno Tavares’s role as Kieran Tierney’s backup.

The Portuguese has proved to be a raw talent this term, and while he has impressed on occasions, he has proved costly in others.

His name on the teamsheet does worry me unfortunately, and reports by ViolaNews who cite Radio Kiss that we are interested in a deal to sign Aaron Hickey is one that I hope comes through. The 19 year-old made the brave move to leave Scotland for Italy shortly after his 18th birthday, and while his debut season may not have been as fruitful as he would have liked, he has really found form this term.

While I would love to see him come in as backup to Tierney, I feel like he would turn down a move to any club that couldn’t guarantee him regular playing time. He supposedly snubbed Bayern Munich for Bologna due to guarantees on his playing time, and it would seem like a backwards move in that context knowing that his fellow Scotsman will take some budging from his role as first choice.

Does our efforts to sign Hickey mean that Tavares will be moved on in the summer? Do you think Hickey could challenge Tierney for his role at LB next term?

If Burnley win at Watford on Saturday it means Everton have to face Chelsea on Sunday 5 points from safety.

Suddenly the idea of the Toffees getting relegated, so often deemed ‘too good to go down’, becomes very real.

One of 6 clubs never to drop out of the Premiership, the Evertonians have been in the topflight since 1954, second only to Arsenal in the longest sequence of being In the English top division.

If Frank Lampard can’t sort things out, you can argue Everton would be the biggest name to finish in the bottom three in the Premier League era.

Before that time, even the likes of Man United and Liverpool found themselves in the second tier.

March 4 – April 30, 2022

March 19 – May 1, 2022

Jan Fabre, an artist and choreographer who is well known in Belgium, received an 18-month suspended prison sentence from an Antwerp court today amid an investigation into claims of sexual harassment and indecent assault.

He was found guilty in six cases, including the one concerning assault, which involved an alleged French kiss. The artist has denied that this act and any other forms of harassment took place.

The Brussels Times reported that the suspended sentence—meaning he does not have to serve his sentence in a prison if he meets certain conditions—also strips Fabre of his civil rights for the next five years, preventing him from undertaking activities like voting in the country he has long called home.

In 2018, 20 people formerly affiliated with Fabre’s Troubleyn dance company alleged that the artist had sexually harassed employees. The accusations were made public in a letter to the culture magazine Rekto Verso. Eight signed the letter with their name, while the remaining 12 were mentioned anonymously.

According to the letter, Fabre would contact women with opportunities to dance for him. Then he would “approach the performer sexually.” The letter also accused Fabre of tricking people into sitting for erotic photographs. These actions allegedly became a “hidden currency” within the company, which at once point received around $1 million from the Flemish government annually.

The lobby of the Paris townhouse occupied by the Pierre Yovanovitch office and showrooms is not beige, per se, but rather a warm cream. Two floors of the townhouse are dedicated to exemplifying what your house could look like if you were to hire Yovanovitch’s firm. As they’re showrooms, these two floors are completely stocked with the interior designer’s furniture line (though he mixes designers in his actual projects), and art fills the walls just so. Like the furniture, the art is switched in and out regularly, supplied by acclaimed contemporary gallery Kamel Mennour, whose Paris spaces were designed by Yovanovitch. The townhouse is within striking distance of all the major Parisian museums, but after passing through the grand entry door—so common in Paris—the bustle of the tourist-packed area disappears. Stepping inside is to step into a hush.

On display in one of the showrooms is a Yovanovitch piece recently acquired by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs: the Mama Bear chair. It is the middle-sized piece in a set of three inspired by the Goldilocks fairytale; there are also a larger Papa and a smaller Baby. As the name suggests, the chair looks something like a bear, with the upper corners bloomed into ears, the armrests and larger segments plumped, and two indents in the middle of the back giving the impression of eyes. The Bear chairs are upholstered in a white textured fabric that looks fluffy from a distance, but on closer look one can see the fibers are actually gathered into something more pebbly, more robust. Like all good-quality furniture, it doesn’t sag as soon as butt meets cushion but embraces the body instead; it encourages lounging, but not slacking.

The Bear chairs were designed in 2012 for a private client, but Yovanovitch introduced them to the public only in 2017, showing them at the R & Company gallery in New York, which sells his furniture. “It’s a way for me to become a brand,” Yovanovitch says without irony, while settled on one of the long couches in his office. Although he formally launched his furniture line, consisting of 45 pieces, only last year, he has run his studio for more than 20 years. As he designed interiors, it made sense to start creating furniture for the houses he was renovating. “It gives me more freedom,” he says, “because I can design what I want.”

The Bear chairs, specifically, were made to be round to counter the very straight lines of the original house Yovanovitch was designing (he has since started embracing more curves in rooms’ architecture). He wanted something with humor, thinking that private spaces shouldn’t be too serious—it’s where we’re supposed to be ourselves, after all.

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Soft pastels not only are more powdery than hard pastels but because they contain less binder they also contain more pigment. The very best of them are formulated with an incredibly high ratio of pigment to binder to offer unmatched color richness, all while leaving less dust in their wake. Professional-grade pastels also have excellent lightfastness. While these colorful sticks can be costly, a set of reliable and beautiful ones is a worthwhile investment, especially if you sell your work. Unlike student-grade pastels, these higher-end ones are often available by the piece, so you can gradually fill your arsenal with different brands if you find yourself drawn to certain colors by different makers. Here are five of our favorites.

ARTnews RECOMMENDS
Rembrandt Soft Pastels
Rembrandt’s pastels lean soft but are versatile enough to take you through an artwork from start to finish. In other words, these are great go-to pastels: You can use them for underlayers, then gradually build solid coats or glazes of color while blending and scumbling with ease. Still, they’re sturdy enough to use for crisp, detailed strokes, and they aren’t as prone to breaking as softer brands like Schmincke (more on that below). Each stick is made of pure pigments mixed with high-quality kaolin clay, which gives the paste a velvet consistency. Rembrandt’s line is also excellent in its color offerings, with 42 pure colors available in 40 shades and 121 tints—and they’re sold in half-sticks, too, so you can buy more shades while spending less. In addition to individual sticks, you can purchase thoughtfully grouped sets of similar color values, from reds to violets to greens.

WE ALSO LIKE
Schmincke Soft Pastels
Schmincke likely makes the softest pastels on the market—and the most fragile—but with individual sticks costing more than $5, they’re too pricey to be our top pick. Combining strong saturation with an almost fluffy, smooth consistency, these pastels excel when used for multilayered techniques, allowing different value ranges to come through even on dark papers. They are also particularly well suited for creating highlights. Artists can enjoy an impressive range of 400 colors—specifically, 75 pure colors in five grades as well as dozens of neutrals, darks, and whites. Those who want to treat themselves can purchase large assortments of 60 colors and up that come display-ready in gorgeous maple boxes.

ANOTHER OPTION
PanPastel Artists’ Painting Pastels Sets
This product offers a fun and different way to use and experiment with pastels. Soft pastels are compressed into little disks rather than sticks, which means they can be used almost like paints. You can apply them with special applicators or sponges to cover large areas in uniform color blocks, cutting down on time compared with traditional coloring, or use the edges and pointed tips of these tools to create fine details. The pan format also reduces the need for binders and fillers, so these pastels are less dusty than their handheld counterparts while still being perfectly compatible with traditional pastels.

The U.K.’s High Court ruled this week that NFTs are considered property and thus victims of NFT theft can now have their stolen assets frozen through court injunctions.

The decision comes after months of repeated NFT thefts, as savvy hackers have exploited loopholes and poor security literacy to seize high-profile NFTs. Just earlier this week, Bored Ape Yacht Club, possibly the most well-known NFT project, was hit with a massive hack, leading to an estimated $3 million in NFT assets stolen. So far, victims of theft have been left without much recourse given that the market is unregulated and decentralized.

That may now change, at least in the U.K., thanks to the case Lavinia Deborah Osbourne v (1) Persons Unknown (2) Ozone Networks Inc Trading as Opensea, which was filed this past March. Osbourne, the founder of Women in Blockchain Talks, had two of her NFTs stolen from the Boss Beauties collection, a series of 10,000 NFTs depicting illustrated, diverse, successful career women.

The High Court’s ruling on the case, which is due to come out in writing next week, would allow victims to obtain court injunctions against individuals whose cryptowallet has been identified to be carrying a stolen NFT and to the NFT platform on which the stolen asset is being sold.

Kate Gee, a lawyer who has been briefed on the case by Osbourne’s barrister, Racheal Muldoon, told ARTnews the injunction can be served in just a matter of hours. That is, if you have the right information.

A German group dedicated to Jewish causes has criticized how Documenta, the famed quinquennial in Kassel, responded to allegations of anti-Semitism raised earlier this year.

Documenta first came under scrutiny in January, when the German group Alliance Against Anti-Semitism Kassel accused the quinquennial of “involvement of anti-Israeli activists” in this year’s edition, which is curated by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa. Documenta has vehemently denied the allegations of anti-Semitism, some of which were picked up by major German publications.

In response to the controversy, Documenta said it would organize an events series at which it would address anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism. Titled “We need to talk!,” the series’ stated aim is to focus on “zeroing in on the blank spots in the German debate surrounding antisemitism and racism.” Its first event is set for May 8.

In a letter penned to Germany’s culture minister Claudia Roth, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, accused Documenta’s event of having “a clear bias against anti-Semitism” with the event. The German press agency dpa first reported news of the letter.

According to dpa, Schuster’s letter centered around an event planned for May 22, which focuses on “anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism,” according to its description. “Only clear commitments and much more, decisive political action at every level of politics, art, culture and society help against anti-Semitism,” Schuster wrote. “No one may acquit themselves of this responsibility—not even in the name of artistic freedom.”