Storied Dealer Richard L. Feigen Has Died, Antiquities Donated to Cambodia, and More: Morning Links from February 1, 2021

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The Headlines

THE ART WORLD HAS LOST A LEGEND. The storied New York dealer Richard L. Feigen, whose expertise ran from the Renaissance to the contemporary, has died at the age of 90, Alex Greenberger reports for ARTnews. The cause was complications from Covid-19. Feigen had galleries in Chicago, Manhattan, London, and Los Angeles during his long career, and hosted Francis Bacon’s first U.S. show. He was also an eagle-eyed collector, and a major patron. Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said in an Instagram post that Feigen had stopped by the museum just six weeks ago and visited a Carlo Saraceni altarpiece that he had donated to the Met for its 150th birthday. That 400-year-old painting is a beauty.

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IT WAS A STRONG WEEKEND FOR ART CRITICS. Surveying the recent behavior of big-league art buyers like Leon Black and Steven CohenLaura Cumming writes in the Guardian, “Being an important collector doesn’t even seem to imply intelligence, never mind judgment.” In the SpectatorDean Kissick bemoans the surplus of “bad figurative painting” being made and sold these days. (Here’s Alex Greenberger on the subject of such zombie figuration last year in ARTnews.) Meanwhile, Jason Farago’s latest single-work deep dive in the New York Times considers a Juan Gris classic, and Carolina A. Miranda has taken a careful look at Karen Carson’s ingenious 1970s Post-Minimalist work—swaths of canvas affixed with zippers and pinned to the wall. She quotes Dave Hickey’s appraisal: “They were smart, funny, good-looking and secretly serious.” What more can you ask for?

The Digest

New Zealand painter Bill Hammond is dead at 73. [RNZ]

When Douglas A.J. Latchford, a major collector of Cambodian antiquities who had been accused of trafficking in looted material, died last year, his holdings went to his daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak. Now she has donated the trove to Cambodia. [The New York Times]

The Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, said that its collection was undamaged after an attempted theft. [WHEC]

In an interview, artist José Villalobos discussed his latest show, at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas, which was inspired by “a gay farm worker who was part of the Bracero Program that brought millions of Mexican laborers to the United States between 1942 and 1964,” Bryan Rindfuss writes. [San Antonio Current]

A legal battle is brewing about the fate of murals by Christoforos Savva in the abandoned Cypriot town of Varosha. [The Washington Post]

The Hotel Solway, a renowned Art Nouveau treasure designed by the Belgian architect Victor Horta, is now open for public tours. [AFP]

The Holt/Smithson Foundation has invited five artists to propose a piece for an uninhabited Maine island that the late artists Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt bought in 1971. [The Art Newspaper]

Big news day for Maine! Collector William Tsiaras has given given 500 photographs to the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville. Tsiaras, an ophthalmologist, “has a good eye,” Helen Stoilas writes. [The Art Newspaper]

When the pandemic ends, Charles Gaines wants to use a gallery space in his Los Angeles studio for public programming. [Wallpaper]

Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg and artist Shirin Neshat discussed how they have been spending their time during coronavirus. [The New York Times]

The Kicker

DOUBLE LEGEND ALERT: Rapper Megan Thee Stallion took to Instagram over the weekend to showcase a handbag from Dior’s recent collaboration with artist Judy Chicago. The bag is based on Chicago’s 1973 painting Let It All Hang Out. In her autobiography, Through the Flowerthe artist writes that, when she finished it, “I cried for several hours. The painting was forceful and yet feminine. I had never seen those two attributes wedded together in an image.” Here’s hoping the artists link up for a collaboration of some sort soon. [@theestallion/Instagram]

Thank you for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Source: artnews.com

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