“I was not only exhausted, I was having a breakdown”
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This Week
💦Lana Del Rey weeping in the nearest babbling brook
💦lies, one upmanship, trophy touting and greed
💦Basel goes cottagecore
Events
🧊 19 Jun | 7:30pm | Natural Wonder Beauty Concept, ICA [Charing Cross] | £22.51, tickets here
🧊 20 Jun | 6-9pm | Arthur Poujois: Impossible Translation, General Assembly [Green Park]
🧊 20 Jun | 6-8pm | Staub (Störung): Maren Karlson, Soft Opening [Cambridge Heath]
🧊 20 Jun | 6-10pm | Strand News: Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Eden Chau-Morrow, Marcus Jefferson, Xooset, 145 The Strand, WC2R 1JD [Covent Garden]
🧊 20 Jun | 7-8pm | Adam Rouhana x Amah Rose Abrams talk, TJ Boulting [Oxford Circus]
🧊 20 - 23 Jun | RCA2024: School of Arts & Humanities postgrad show, Royals College of Art, Performance timings here [Battersea]
🧊 22 Jun | 11am-12pm | RA Schools degree show tour, Royal Academy [Green Park]
🧊 22 June | 6:30pm | Karol Radziszewski in conversation, Auto Italia [online]
🧊 24 June | 5.45pm | Screening of Harmony Korine’s Gummo, Prince Charles Cinema [Leicester Square] | Tix here
Hot Links
🚜 “wealthy collectors running through fields… saying ‘That’s hot’ in the spirit of Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton” – From the Barbican to Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Louis Elderton explores the art world’s embrace of cottagecore through the lens of Basel Social Club, the ‘non-fair’ that received mixed reviews in the press and even worse reviews in the DMs…
🤳 “the quasi-religious behaviour of fandom”– In her latest snappy substack round up, of goings-on-by-the-Rhine, Janelle Zara walks us through realities at the top and bottom of the market, also explaining what Jesus and Justin Bieber have in common – asking the question on everyone’s lips, after last week’s antics: “What if we met in the Agnes Denes field and took a selfie under the Art Basel logo?”
🫠“Duplicitousness had become my way of life” – We recently discovered that the most gloriously titled All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art book by Inigo Philbrick’s best buddy - Orlando ‘I was not only exhausted, I was having a breakdown’ Whitfield - is on Spotify! Please, settle in for a bitter bitter telling of the ‘lies, one-upmanship, trophy touting and greed’ of the art world… scandalous x
🎥“No one knows who Jackson Pollock is” – what does the artworld look like from the outside? What does it look like in Hollywood? Isabel Walter digs deep for Plaster into the (surprisingly large) caché of hollywood-films-set-in-the-art-world. She asks, can their depictions of art-world dating help us avoid falling for that narcissistic artist, again?
🚫 “Some collectors were so furious that they instantly started pressuring artists to remove their names. Some did (pussies).” – Filthy Dreams goes in on Artforum editor Tina Rivers Ryan’s first editors letter, ‘Horizon Lines’, accusing the letter of being ‘woefully generic’ and essentially an ‘over 2,000-word explanation for why she took this prominent but, until now, untouchable gig in the first place’. Ouchies
🌪️ “Ye was adamant about disconnecting his house from the grid” – a super fascinating long-read in the New Yorker about Kanye West’s long and messy encounter with getting starchitect Tadao Ando to do up his Malibu Beach House, which brings together modernist furniture, the artist’s fall from grace, and Jason Oppenheim from Selling Sunset… the perfect article doesn’t exi-
Add-to-Cart
We are obsessed with Inez Valentine (aka @aircrush)’s new collection, which is up on her website now! After seeing her fab work for Mowalola we (and our bank accounts) are over the moon to see her launching new work under her own label. We’re gutted the leopard print leather jacket has already been snapped up but we have our eyes on the lipstick leather skirt and cute beetle baby tee – run don’t walk, it’s moving fast! Available here
Parting Shot
spittle was very surprised to see that at this weekend’s Prada menswear show, Raf and Miuccia took inspiration from the early modernist French artist Bernard Buffet, who, according to an Independent article from a while back was a “purveyor of kitsch, a mere faiseur (poser)” and “for many years a great favourite with non-academic lovers of art, otherwise known as ‘ordinary people’”... incredible description. Anyway, now that kitsch is kool, Vanity Fair observes that Buffet’s work is being reconsidered… with many hilarious references, including some classic Picassoisms, this piece is a treat xo