Catch up on this week's most clicked stories.
Cait Munro
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VIEWER’S CHOICE
Attention all artists, art journalists, PR people, art history students, and anyone else who puts pen to paper, as it were, to form sentences about art: Ben Davis has a bone to pick with you. 30 bones actually, in the form of art writing clichés he would like you to abandon in the new year. This includes words like “concerns,” “deconstructs,” and “problematic,” the term “Borgesian,” and the descriptor “on acid.” For the rest of the words we don’t want to see anymore, check out “30 Art-Writing Clichés to Ditch in the New Year.”
HOMICIDE
The 29-year-old son of a prominent Swiss art dealing family has confessed to the murder of a 23-year-old man. The crime took place at his parents villa in the affluent village of Küsnacht on Zürich’s gold coast. The suspect, whose father is an art dealer, opened his own gallery several years ago specializing in Pop and street art on both the primary and secondary market. For more information about the crime, see “Prominent Swiss Art Dealer Confesses to Homicide.”
ART HEIRESSES
Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter, Marina Picasso, is selling off a trove of her grandfather’s works, said to be worth $290 million. Instead of going with an auction house, the heiress has opted to sell the works directly, personally meeting in Geneva with interested parties. According to an anonymous source, the upcoming sale “is about letting go of the past.” To see which works she’s selling, check out “Picasso’s Granddaughter Is Selling $290 Million Worth of His Art.”
BIG EGOS
artnet News columnist JJ Charlesworth details the myriad ways in which everybody’s giant egos are ruining the art world. Who’s guilty? Jeff Koons and Marina Abramović for starters, along with James Franco and, well, pretty much every other celebrity pseudo-artist you can think of. For more on this disappointing state of affairs, read “The Ego-Centric Art World is Killing Art.”
CHARLIE HEBDO
Coline Milliard pens a thoughtful essay on how the Charlie Hebdo killings, along with other tragedies of the past year, might be a wake-up to the art world to produce something besides the kind of masturbatory work Charlesworth outlines above. “We need more art tackling politics not because artists are better people,” she writes,”or better equipped than all of us citizens to deal with situations that resists comprehension—but because, if they are any good, they will touch others.” For the rest of the essay, see “Why the Killing of Charlie Hebdo Cartoonists Will Make Art Stronger.”
NEWS TO KNOW
Larry Gagosian’s New Sushi Joint Slammed With Zero Stars in Times Review
MFA Boston Unlocks the Country’s Oldest Time Capsule
Madonna Posts Offensive ‘Bondage’ Images of Basquiat, Lennon, Princess Di
