The Art Gorgeous Weekly Dispatch.
🏛 Mona Lisa Gets a Glow-Up
The Louvre is finally tackling its traffic jam problem. A €270 million architectural competition is underway to redesign the entrance and create a subterranean gallery fit for La Joconde herself. Five finalists are expected by October, with the winner crowned early next year, part of Macron’s grand “New Renaissance” for the museum. Let the render wars begin.
💥 Basel’s Not Dead
BOF reported that despite a shaky start, think unsold Giacomettis and ghosting American collectors, Art Basel 2025 surprised the sceptics. While sales weren’t exactly soaring, the vibe? Rejuvenated. A new wave of artists, platforms and formats breathed life into the fair, proving once again that perception rules the art market. Cocktails at Kronenhalle included.
⛰ Concrete Poetry: Gormley Meets Ando
For his monumental Museum SAN survey, Antony Gormley has teamed up with iconic Japanese architect Tadao Ando to create Ground, a 25-metre concrete dome buried beneath a flower garden. Inside, Gormley’s ‘Blockworks’ figures squat, stand and sit beneath a single oculus, lit like relics in a futuristic Pantheon.
🦶 Rick Owens on Feet & Philosophy
“A little bit of wicked fun is elegant,” says Rick Owens, whose retrospective just opened at Palais Galliera in Paris. He’s also (casually) launching an OnlyFans. Of his feet. Inspired by a 19th-century Italian aristocrat who photographed her own until old age. We wouldn’t expect anything less.
🎪 Glasto Gets Gorgeous
Glastonbury might be a music mecca, but this year’s festival was also a feast for design lovers. Highlights included a Tesla flattened by a tank (courtesy of activist group Led by Donkeys), a plant-covered stage watered daily by cherry picker, and a wool fountain sprouting seeds in the Hayes Pavilion. Yinka Ilori also made his festival debut with a vibrant floral “shrine for plants”, while a 40-metre stained-glass dragon swooped into the site’s new dance zone.
Until next week, stay bold, stay baroque.
XOXO, The Art Gorgeous Team
