Massimo Bottura
Photo: Alice Jessica via Wikimedia Commons

The Profile: Many a diner at three Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana, rated the third best restaurant in the world last year, have gaped at the gaul of its proprietor, Massimo Bottura, to leave a bag of trash sitting in the middle of his restaurant. But, as any familiar with Bottura’s obsession with contemporary art will soon attest, it’s no ordinary trash bag but a bronze work by YBA Gavin Turk. As the WSJ’s Jay Cheshes recounts in this fantastic profile of the prolific collector and master chef, the Turk is just one of many works stashed around the restaurant—others currently include pieces by Olafur Eliasson, Matthew Barney, Francesco Vezzoli, and Maurizio Cattelan.

The Remembrance: A negroni-fueled, post-memorial-service reception for legendary New York critic Rene Ricard brought together, “very possibly the most impressive art crowd assembled anywhere in recent years,” Gallerist’s Andrew Russeth reports. Among the more memorable eulogies: Richard Hell’s “Rene’s writing was so brilliant and whacked out and entertaining, you knew that anything he liked had to be good,” Larry Gagosian’s, “There was really no way of getting around Rene, nor would you want to avoid him,” and Raymond Foye’s account of he and Ricard blowing a $10,000 advance from Pace in and afternoon and evening until when, “Later the next morning I dropped him at the men’s homeless shelter on the Bowery, penniless.”

MF Husain, The Hindu Triad (2008-2011)
Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Eye Candy: As London’s V&A opens a show of “godfather of contemporary Indian art,” Maqbool Fida Husain’s final triptychs, Tim Adams takes to the Guardian for a long look at Husain’s work. Due to his exile during the last five years of his life, “Husain was forced to satisfy himself with the India he carried in his head. This was the insistently inclusive world of his youth; alive with mythologies and faith, hungry for independence and progressive politics,” Adams writes, making the works now on view some of the painter’s absolute best.

The Trend: Taking cues from the seemingly indefatigable food truck trend, gallery owners are grabbing up their own delivery trucks and turning them into movable, micro-exhibition-spaces, according to the New York Times. Exponents include Rodi Gallery—whose owners are based in Yorktown Heights but have parked their art truck in 14th Street, under the RFK Bridge, and in the heart of Bushwick Open Studios this past weekend—and former Seattle gallerist Brenda Scallon who swapped bricks and mortar for aluminum, driving her Airstream trailer across country to various cultural events. While they might dream of a future art world in which Art Basel and Brooklyn’s “flea food market” Smorgasburg might be indistinguishable save from smell, others are skeptical.

Svetlana Petrova’s take on Titian’s Venus of Urbino
Photo: Courtesy Svetlana Petrova

The WTF: Russian artist Svetlana Petrova has written a new chapter in appropriation art history (okay, probably not). In an ongoing series, which recently gained attention, Petrova Photoshops her extremely fat cat, appropriately named Zarathustra, onto canonized works such as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus or Michelandgelo’s The Birth of Adam. The results are, well, purrfect

The Extra-WTF: Curator extraordinaire Hans Ulrich-Obrist may just be a hoarder. According to pictures published by Germany’s Monopol, HUO’s Berlin apartment is full from floor to ceiling with towers of boxes and books, leaving only small pathways through the rooms. The images were taken during an intervention by architects Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge and Sam Chermayeff, and curator Clara Meister, in which a group of seven were invited to visit HUO’s abode. The only catch? They had to climb a ladder to the fifth floor and enter through his kitchen window.

Still from “Bringing the funny: Tamsin Greig finds the best jokes in art”

The Video: In the latest chapter of Tate’s Unlock Art series, actress Tamsin Greig scours the annals of modern and contemporary art for the best uses of comedy in art, from Bas Jan Ader and Marcel Duchamp to Sarah Lucas and David Shrigley.

The Extra-Curricular: Over on Medium, writer and political cartoonist Susie Cagle makes a compelling argument against the so-called sharing economy (hallmarked by the likes of Silicon Valley sensations AirBnB, Uber, and Lyft). She writes: “The sharing economy’s success is inextricably tied to the economic recession, making new American poverty palatable. It’s disaster capitalism. “Sharing” companies are not embarrassed by this — it appears to be a point of pride.” According to Cagle, those companies herald a return of village-like communal goods. But, the underlying reality is one in which those villagers often simply can’t afford the entirety of their homes or automobiles, and spend their free time hawking shares of them in order to get by.