artnet News Cheat Sheet

Our top stories for the week of July 14-18.

One of Mike Meyers's paintings of Colonel Sanders.
Courtesy the artist, via the Society of Gentlemen.
The certificate for Damien Hirst’s Bombay Mix. Photo: via the Telegraph.

The certificate for Damien Hirst’s Bombay Mix. Photo: via the Telegraph.

 

MYERS’ MUSE
Comedian and actor Mike Myers, of Wayne’s World and Austin Powers fame, has apparently spent the past few years in his Soho studio, creating art history-themed portraits of KFC mascot Colonel Sanders. Myers said of his Kentucky fried inspiration: “It’s a great character. He has his own unique silhouette—you can draw him in three lines. On the day that Lucian Freud died, I painted my version of a Freud with the Colonel, naked, holding a palette, painting himself. Then I did the Colonel with the Pearl Earring…” 

A SPOTTY DEBATE
Damien Hirst is blocking the sale of an early spot painting titled Bombay Mix, which he created many years ago on the wall of a friend’s home. When the house was later sold, the work remained, and now the current owner is looking to cash in on what could be a major profit. Hirst claims that his company, Science Ltd, still holds the certificate for the piece and is therefore the rightful owner. According to Science Ltd, “The painting should have been painted over when the previous owner traded the wall spot for a work on canvas.” Instead, the owner had the work removed from the wall, mounting it on an aluminum board. Both she and antiques dealer Andrew Lamberty, who is storing the work in the interim, have expressed that they feel that it is doing no good languishing on a wall in an anonymous home. “I prefer to take the view that this picture should go into an important collection commensurate with its importance in art history,” Lamberty told artnet News.

FAKE WATCH
In a recent episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, America’s favorite family encountered a fake Modigliani. A painting bearing many of the hallmarks of a work by the Italian artist was unearthed in the attic of Kourtney’s boyfriend Scott Disick’s late parents. Unfortunately, after a sample from the painting underwent chemical analysis, we learned that it cannot be authenticated as a Modigliani, and thus, Scott’s dreams of “being super-rich” and owning a helicopter were crushed.

ART ADVISORY
Meet Maria Brito, the woman responsible for turning Diddy onto art. The Venezuelan-born, Harvard-educated art adviser has helped the rapper and music mogul amass a collection that boasts some of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art, including Ai Weiwei, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She told the Daily Beast, “I don’t want to take credit for bringing him into the art world, but before me he didn’t really have any art…He never had a chance for someone to explain things to him in a way that would engage his mind, like how to look at contemporary and conceptual art.”

CURRENT EVENTS
Khaled Jarrar, a Palestinian artist whose work is featured in the New Museum’s recently opened show “Here and Elsewhere,” was turned back by Israel on Sunday while attempting to travel to Jordan to catch a flight to the New York, Ben Davis reported. While this has prevented him from participating in a scheduled panel discussion as well as other festivities, Jarrar’s piece, a 70-minute film called Infiltrators, will still be present on the New Museum’s third floor.

NEWS TO KNOW
Sotheby’s Lays Off Staff Amid Restructuring

Japanese Artist Arrested Over 3D Model of Her Vagina 

Yvon Lambert Slams Art Speculators

23 Portraits of Lady Gaga Are Coming to Watermill Art Center

Publishing Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife Leaves His Art Collection to Two Museums


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