Madonna and Beeple Link Up for NFT Project, Barbara Kruger Creates ‘Post-Roe’ Response, and More: Morning Links for May 10, 2022

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The Headlines

RECORDS FALL. On Monday night at an auction at Christie’s in New York, dealer Larry Gagosian won Andy Warhol’s storied painting Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) for $195 million (with fees included), a record for a 20th-century artist on the block, Angelica Villa reports in ARTnews. That was almost double Warhol’s previous high mark at auction—the $105.4 million paid for the 1963 Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) at Sotheby’s in 2013—but it fell below the $200 million low estimate that the house had tagged to the piece. The work came from the estate of Swiss dealers Thomas and Doris Ammann, who also had 35 other works go before bidders in the Rockefeller Center salesroom. All-in, the night brought $318 million, above its $284 million low estimate. Proceeds will go to a foundation started by the Ammanns that focuses on healthcare and education.

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INTO THE GROOVE. Digital artist Beeple and superstar singer Madonna have collaborated on three videos that will be sold as NFTs, raising money for charity, Zachary Small reports in the New York Times. “This is such an absolute, insane honor,” Beeple, aka Mike Winkelmann, told the Times. The works—with the “Ray of Light” singer nude, birthing “flora, fauna and technology,” per Small—will be offered on the SuperRare marketplace this week. The charities that will benefit from the project are Black Mama’s Bail Out, the City of Joy Foundation, and the Voices of Children Foundation.

The Digest

Barbara Kruger created the cover for the latest issue of New York magazine. A kind of update of her legendary 1989 piece Untitled (Your body is a battleground), its text reads, “Who Becomes a ‘MURDERER’ in Post-Roe America?” [New York]

Paris’s Centre Pompidou has suspended a donation of some $619,000 from Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin, who has given more than $1 million to the museum in recent years. Potanin, who quit the Guggenheim Museum‘s board in March, has been sanctioned only in Canada amid the war in Ukraine. [Artnet News]

Architect Deborah Burke, whose firm has done work for the 21c Museum Hotels and the Yale School of Art, answered 21 questions for Curbed. Where would she live, if she could live anywhere in New York? “In the 79th Street Boat Basin, in a boat I would design,” she said. [Curbed]

The New York office of OMA released designs for a 22,300-square-foot arts and education facility in Detroit called Lantern. The firm is working on the project with the Library Street Collective, a local group that creates art spaces, and it will include galleries, studios, and more. [Dezeen]

In other auction news: An online sale of items once owned by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including a portrait of her by artist Eleanor Davis and a Josef Albers print, brought in about $800,000, which will go to the Washington National Opera, an organization she supported. [Associated Press]

Steve Cohen—the hedge-fund billionaire and art collector (who is reported to own another Warhol “Shot Marilyn”)—is said to be a fan of Macklowe whiskey, an elixir going for $1,500 a bottle. Its owner is Julie Macklowe, whose parents-in-law are divorced collectors Harry and Linda Macklowe. Work from their collection is being offered at Sotheby’s this month. [Bloomberg]

The Kicker

ARTIST MATTHEW WONG, a gifted painter who died by suicide in 2019, at 35, is the subject of a comprehensive profile in this week’s New Yorker. The piece is by Raffi Khatchadourian, who writes that Wong made “works of astonishing lyricism, melancholy, whimsy, intelligence, and, perhaps most important, sincerity.” The artist’s voice emerges in old Facebook messages, texts, and notes to friends. In 2012, when he was experimenting with photography, he told a friend, “To take photographs is a way of confirming that I exist, which is something I question all the time. When I can make an image I’m satisfied with, then that question goes away for a little while.” [The New Yorker]

Source: artnews.com

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