Welcome to the Art Girl Fax newsletter, where we explore the intersection of art, fashion, and pop culture.
This week, the art world is in a surprisingly playful mood. Marina Abramović is swapping endurance for inflatable planets, Supreme is once again turning artists into streetwear co-signs, and VERDY is gathering his creative universe under one Tokyo roof. Meanwhile, an Elizabeth Peyton portrait of the Gallagher brothers has landed at the center of a copyright dispute — a reminder that inspiration, appropriation, and ownership remain some of art’s trickiest territories.
As summer slowly winds down, consider this your curated cultural catch-up: the stories, collaborations, and slightly unexpected moments worth knowing about right now.
🎈 MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ IS HERE TO PLAY
After a career built around endurance, silence, pain, and testing the limits of the human body, Marina Abramović is embracing something rather unexpected: play.
Her first inflatable artwork, Snowy/Windy/Spring on Planet Z, has landed at New York’s new Balloon Museum as part of its inaugural Daydream exhibition. Inspired by an imaginary planet Abramović dreamt up as a child, visitors wander through inflatable grass, flying paper snow and an otherworldly soundscape narrated by the artist herself.
At 79, Abramović says she is becoming more playful with age — and increasingly interested in shifting the experience from artist to audience. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all? One of performance art’s most famously serious figures reminding us that playfulness might be exactly what we need right now.
🎸 WHEN DOES INSPIRATION BECOME INFRINGEMENT?
A 30-year-old Elizabeth Peyton painting of Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher has suddenly become the center of a very contemporary art-world question: who owns an image?
Welsh photographer Justin Thomas has filed a copyright lawsuit against Peyton, David Zwirner and Sotheby’s, claiming that her 1996 painting Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel) copied his 1995 photograph of the Gallagher brothers. The painting sold at Sotheby’s in May for $1.92 million.
Artists have borrowed from photography for generations, from Warhol to Richard Prince — but as the value and visibility of the resulting artwork grows, so do questions around authorship, transformation, and creative ownership. An Oasis portrait may just have become the latest test case in one of contemporary art’s longest-running debates.
🛹 SUPREME’S ART WORLD ROLLS DEEP
Supreme has never treated art as decoration — artists have always been part of the brand’s cultural DNA. And for Fall/Winter 2026, the New York label is once again assembling an eclectic roster of creative co-signs.
The collection draws on work from names including Rita Ackermann, Larry Clark, Art Dealer, Shaun Crawford and James O’Barr, moving freely between contemporary art, photography, illustration, comics and underground culture. South Korean artist Art Dealer returns for a third consecutive season, with his graphics appearing across tees, hats, knitwear and hoodies.
More than another artist collaboration, Supreme’s approach shows why its relationship with the art world has endured: it doesn’t simply borrow cultural credibility from artists — it has spent decades building an ecosystem in which art, skate culture, fashion, music, and image-making naturally coexist.
🤝 VERDY GETS HIS FRIENDS TOGETHER IN TOKYO
Sometimes the best exhibitions begin with a group chat.
Japanese artist and designer VERDY, the creative force behind Girls Don’t Cry and Wasted Youth, has teamed up with longtime collaborator Paulo Calle for In Good Company at GYRE Gallery in Tokyo.
Rather than building the exhibition around a single curatorial theme, the pair invited 14 artists whose work has personally inspired them, including Coco Capitán, Reginald Sylvester II, Alake Shilling, Shaniqwa Jarvis and Zoé Blue M. Painting, photography, sculpture and ceramics sit alongside VERDY’s own work in a show centered on friendship, influence and creative affinity.
In an art world often obsessed with positioning, In Good Company offers a refreshingly simple proposition: show the work of people whose work you genuinely love.
On view at GYRE Gallery in Shibuya through September 27.
