Winter is almost over! As the clouds clear up and the grey fades away (at least in Paris, which saw huge floods over the past few weeks), there is art world drama as usual, new fashion collaborations and trolling. As we enter black history month with new monuments, protest letters and Instagram appropriation art, here is the best of the art world buzz so far.
In case you didn’t hear, there’s drama around a proposed Jeff Koons public art sculpture in Paris. Koons proposed a memorial to honor the terror victims in Paris has drawn outrage from the locals, who signed a public letter to call for it not to be installed. Bouquet of Tulips is meant to honor the 2015 attack at the Bataclan concert hall, but it is proposed to be installed in front of the Palais de Tokyo museum. “Installing such a sculpture in front of the [Palais de Tokyo] museum would make no sense,” wrote Stéphane Corréard, director of the Galeristes salon. “It would be like putting a Ronald McDonald statue in front of a gastronomic restaurant!”
Meanwhile, New York artist Chuck Close has been accused of sexual harassment by eight women who said he groped them after asking them to pose nude for him at his studio. Now, museums around the world are wondering what to do with his work. “Some people felt the show should come down; others felt that that was the last thing we should do,” said Brooke Davis Anderson, director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, who is currently showing Close’s work.
For black history month, the news website Mic.com has launched the Black Monuments Project, where they’ve teamed up with Snapchat’s Lens Studio, an augmented reality application which erases some American monuments and replaces them with others—black activists.
Kanye West finally gets his long-overdue respect from the fashion world after creating a photo series of “Kim Clones” that premiered on Kim Kardashian’s Instagram this week. West got fashion models – including Paris Hilton – to dress up in Yeezy season 6 wear, looking uncannily like Kardashian. This is modern-day appropriation art, people. Oh and Diplo is trolling them with his own mock photos, where he wears a Donatella Versace-esque wig.
Text via Nadja Sayej
Images via Instagram, Twitter
