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Installation view of “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors,” 2017, at Seattle Art Museum, Seattle.
COURTESY SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
Fair Enough
Jerry Saltz bemoans the state of art fairs, noting that they are “like America: They’re broken and no one knows how to fix them.” [Vulture]
The main attraction in the New York art world right now is, of course, Frieze. But there are more fairs taking place this week, too, and the New York Times has surveyed just a few of them. [The New York Times]
But if it’s Frieze that you want, here’s a report from yesterday’s opening, where the sweltering heat dampened many collectors’ buying moods. Nevertheless, there were some major sales, including a Georg Baselitz painting that went for $850,000 at Thaddaeus Ropac’s booth. [ARTnews]
Bidding Adieu
Che Gossett eulogizes Laura Aguilar, the influential Chicana photographer who died last week at 58, writing, “Aguilar’s self-portraiture remains so powerful in the ways that it inverts and queers the given, turning it into elsewhere and de-materializing the self so that there is a mimeticism with the environment and surroundings.” [Frieze]
James Tarmy writes on Noah Charney’s book The Museum of Lost Art, which argues, rather morbidly, that much of the world’s finest art is already gone. All the destroyed art in the world, Charney says, amounts to “more masterpieces than all of the world’s museums combined.” [Bloomberg]
Music
Sasha Frere-Jones on the experimental composer Julius Eastman: “He left New York without telling anyone. He changed New York without telling anyone.” [The Village Voice]
Big Money
Collectors Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman and Suzanne Deal Booth have teamed up to create an $800,000 art prize for one artist. The prize includes a $200,000 cash award, a catalogue, and a solo show that will make stops at Contemporary Austin in Texas and the FLAG Art Foundation in New York. [The New York Times]
Felix Salmon on the phenomenon of institutions around the world putting on art exhibitions that have high budgets and low quality standards: “If a museum becomes popular by putting on blockbusters, then people start to think of it as a place to check out temporary exhibitions and see no reason to go there at any other time.” [Slate]
Art critic John Yau has won the Jackson Poetry Prize, which comes with $60,000 and is awarded by Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of Arts. [Poets & Writers]
Auctions
Christie’s auction of works from the estate of Peggy and David Rockefeller may be one of the biggest sales ever. According to ARTnews editor-in-chief Sarah Douglas, Chinese collectors might play a major role in the auction. [Marketplace]
A statue of a naked Donald Trump has sold for $28,000 at Julien’s Auctions in Los Angeles. [NDTV]
Drinking
Peruse the history of bars where artists socialized, got too drunk (sometimes), and thought up some amazing work (often). A bonus: As this article points out, Honey’s in Brooklyn currently serves draft beers using taps designed by artist Jessi Reaves. [Artsy]
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