Architect Balkrishna Doshi Dies at 95, Kunsthaus Zurich Looks for Missing Paintings, and More: Morning Links for January 25, 2023

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The Headlines

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THE TRAILBLAZING ARCHITECT AND EDUCATOR BALKRISHNA DOSHI, who completed inventive public-housing complexes, university buildings, and so much more, died on Tuesday in Ahmedabad, India, at 95, the New York Times reports. Doshi was a pioneer of modernism in his native India, and the first architect from the country to win his profession’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize. He got his start working in the 1950s for Le Corbusier , when the French architect had a number of commissions in the country. Doshi started his own firm in 1956, and won renown for the sensitive, nuanced approaches he took to projects. In a 2018 interview that the Times quotes, he said that “my buildings are not pure and clear but designed to anticipate changes.” Writing in the Indian Express, columnist Shiny Varghese says that Doshi had an “infinitely curious mind, which allowed him to learn from everyone and everything around him.”

SELL MY CLOTHES, I’M GOING TO HEAVEN. The collaborations between fashion designers and contemporary artists just keep coming! Chanel creative director Virginie Viard tapped Frenchman Xavier Veilhan to make large animals for the luxury label’s runway show in Paris on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. (The cardboard, paper, and wood creatures were inspired by animal items in founder Coco Chanel’s apartment.) A day earlier, artist Mickalene Thomas created sprawling collages for a Josephine Baker–inspired Dior show from designer Maria Grazia ChiuriHarper’s Bazaar reports. Loewe also commissioned runway-show material from Julien NguyenARTnews has a primer on the artist—and then there is, of course, the Louis VuittonYayoi Kusama juggernaut, which has taken the world by storm.

The Digest

Marilyn Stafford, a photojournalist known for her disarming portraits of celebrities and outside-the-box fashion images, has died at 97. Astonishingly, her first serious shoot was of Albert Einstein, in 1948. [The New York Times]

The Kunsthaus Zurich is looking for two 17th-century paintings—one by Robert van den Hoecke, the other by Dirck de Bray—that have gone missing. The works, on permanent loan to the museum, had been sent out for restoration following a fire last August, and “the possibility of theft can no longer be ruled out,” it said. [SWI]

Artist, curator, and dealer John Riepenhoff will organize the 2023 edition of Sculpture Milwaukee, the annual outdoor public art exhibition in Cream City. Riepenhoff is co-owner of the Green Gallery, which is based there, and runs the Beer Endowment, which brews tasty beverages to support artist-run organizations. [Milwaukee Record]

In 1969, Artforum devoted its entire March issue to a landmark essay by art historian Michael Fried on Édouard Manet. To mark the great modernist’s birthday on Monday (he would have been 191), the magazine (owned by the same parent company of ARTnews) has made Fried’s epic piece free online. [Artforum]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), director Laura Poitras’s documentary on the art and activism of photographer Nan Goldin, has been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary category, ARTnews reports. Elena Goukassian also has an overview of Goldin’s work.

The Kicker

CHARM OFFENSIVE. In a new, posthumously published memoir by Janet Malcolm, the perspicacious journalist (and profiler of artist David Salle, editor Ingrid Sischy , and so many more) looks at old family photographs that document her earliest years as a Jewish refugee fleeing Prague and settling in New York. Judging by some quotes included in a generally positive review in the Guardian by Rachel Cooke, Malcolm is characteristically unsparing in her final work. At one point, she discusses her views on charm—her mother apparently had “European charm.” She writes, “By being charming, you are lowering yourself. You are asking for something.” [The Guardian]

Source: artnews.com

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