FOR MORE NEWS AND ANALYSIS, VISIT THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM U. ALLEMANDI & CO. PUBLISHING LTD. EVENTS, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS MONTHLY. EST. 1983, VOL. XXVII, NO. 297, JANUARY 2018 UK £8.50/US $14.99/RoW £10.50 PUTIN’S PULL THE YEAR AHEAD GOOGLE IT Artists react Where to go, what Director Amit Sood to Russian to see: our pick on how the Google president’s bid of the big shows, Cultural Institute for fourth term biennials and museum is driving visitors openings in 2018 to museums NEWS REVIEW REVIEW PAGE 14 PAGES 4-15 PAGE 19 Trump: the first year How have artists responded to the US president’s first 12 months in office? WASHINGTON, DC. It has been one year it’s making me less productive. Trump is since Donald Trump’s inauguration as the parasite that won’t stop sucking on the 45th president of the United States. my brain stem,” he says. Tomaselli first In that time, he has presided over a started incorporating pages from the profound degeneration in public life, New York Times in his art more than a actively discouraging trust in institu- decade ago, but this source material now tions and belief in the concept of truth, has renewed relevance, he says, as the and inciting hatred and division. The press is “the only institution still holding art world, a predominantly liberal col- Trump and his collaborators accounta- lective, has reacted with indignation to ble for their lies”. this degradation of democracy in the US. Many artists say that they now feel Many artists profess themselves to be impelled to make work that expresses their sense of dread. “I feel as though we must, as individuals, state our dismay “Trump is the before the fascist wave overwhelms us,” parasite that won t the Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw ’ says. A series of his black-and-white stop sucking on caricatures of Trump, which depict the president in grossly distorted poses, my brain stem” are on display at Metro Pictures in New York (until 9 January), alongside “Neo- “shocked” and “disgusted” by the new Abstract Expressionist” paintings that political reality. But beyond these indi- show the commander-in-chief “smeared vidual expressions of outrage, how has in and out of recognisability”. The work Trump affected the art they are making? is vicious and very, very funny. “I have no Some say that they have been “para- illusions that the power of ridicule in the lysed” since Trump took office, finding halls of the coastal elites will have any it hard to work at all. In the past year, real-world impact, but it seems that it’s Brooklyn-based Fred Tomaselli has “con- the least I can do,” Shaw says, adding that sumed record amounts of news through beyond art-making, those who oppose print, radio, internet, TV, late-night the president need to ask themselves comedy and beyond. It’s a sickness and CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 Leonardo da Vinci is big business for copyists Meet the peacemakers SINCE THE $450M sale of Leonardo da favourite—so much so that the brothers, AN ALLIANCE OF Israeli rabbis and Muslim Vinci’s Salvator Mundi at Christie’s New who trained in St Petersburg, are planning leaders from across the Middle East is York last November, the Russian brothers a show in Berlin next year of their copies of working to keep the peace in Jerusalem and Semjon, Eugen and Michael Posin, who paintings by the Renaissance master, includ- across the wider region after US President run a studio in Berlin copying Old Master ing their version of the Salvator Mundi, to Donald Trump’s unilateral recognition of paintings, have received more requests for mark the 500th anniversary of his death. the city as the capital of Israel. Sheikh Raed the artist’s work than ever before. “An authentic copy of the Salvator Mundi Bader of the Southern Islamic Movement of The trio routinely provide collectors, in the original size, framed, on a wooden Israel and the former Israeli cabinet minister whom Eugen Posin describes as “business- panel with cracks and patina, would cost Rabbi Michael Melchior, pictured at the men, academics, lawyers, doctors, world- around €10,000,” Eugen Posin says. “More United Nations in New York last year, are part renowned conductors, art historians and complex works” such as Botticelli’s Birth of of this covert religious peace network. “We even priests”, with realistic imitations Venus (around 1484) or 17th-century Dutch are not a government or in power but… we all of works by Caravaggio, Raphael and still-lifes can cost up to €20,000. Semjon, Michael and Eugen Posin with try to help each other,” Melchior says. L.G.F. Sheikh Raed Bader and Rabbi Michael TRUMP: GETTY IMAGES. POSINS: COURTESY OF EUGEN POSIN. PEACEMAKERS: ALF/UNAOC. PUTIN: © ALEKSANDER DEMCHENKO. FRIDA KAHLO’S MI NANA Y YO (MY NURSE AND I) I) AND NURSE (MY YO Y NANA MI KAHLO’S FRIDA DEMCHENKO. ALEKSANDER © PUTIN: ALF/UNAOC. PEACEMAKERS: POSIN. EUGEN OF COURTESY POSINS: GETTY IMAGES. TRUMP: SHUTTERSTOCK SOOD: 2017. SIAE, TRUST, MUSEUMS KAHLO FRIDA RIVERA DIEGO MÉXICO DE OLMEDO/BANCO DOLORES MUSEO ARCHIVO © OTADA; MEZA/XAVIER ERIK (1937): Michelangelo. But Leonardo is a perennial Gareth Harris one of their replicas of the Mona Lisa • For more, see p10 Melchior: key figures in the peace network p001,012_TAN1_Cover Trump NEW.indd 1 20/12/2017 18:05 52 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 297, January 2018 Art Market Auctions OBJECT LESSONS Notable sales include a 14th-century crucifixion by Lorenzo Veneziano, furniture by Roy Lichtenstein, a Roman head of Ganymede and a painting by a sexually frustrated Stanley Spencer Maria Lassnig, Innerhalb und außerhalb Piero Manzoni, der Leinwand I (1984-85) Achrome piece (1961) DOROTHEUM, VIENNA, 22 NOVEMBER: CONTEMPORARY ART 1 BRUUN RASMUSSEN, SOLD FOR €295,800 (EST €180,000-€320,000) COPENHAGEN, 5 DECEMBER: A late work by the Austrian PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS artist Maria Lassnig, the first SOLD FOR DKK 1.3M female university professor of art in (EST DKK 1.5M-DKK 2M) German-speaking Europe, was one In the late 1950s, the Italian of two works by the artist in the conceptual artist Piero Manzoni sale. Lassnig, who died in 2014, was developed a series employing mixed ignored for much of her career for materials like textiles, wood and some- her emphasis on figuration during times glass and kaolin to create tex- an age dominated by minimalism, tured but achromic works, a deliberate but is currently being reappraised rejection of Abstract Expressionism. as a proto-feminist. Although she These caught the attention of the was shown by Vienna’s avant-garde shirt manufacturer and arts patron Galerie nächst St. Stephan in her Aage Damgaard in Herning, Denmark, early career, Lassnig only received who invited Manzoni to explore them critical acclaim in her 60s. In 2013, further in two residencies in 1960-61. she received the Golden Lion award “Incredibly I was hired by a shirt at the Venice Biennale. Since then her star has risen, with solo shows at Hauser factory (room and board, plus 11,000 & Wirth London (2017) and Tate Liverpool (2016). In 2014, Dorotheum sold Lire a day and an assistant with a car) Der Wald (1985) for an artist-record price of €491,000 with premium. A.B. for a month, with all the technicians of the factory at my service”, wrote Manzoni in a letter at the time. This piece, which has been held by a single Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke owner since it was acquired in 1962, Chair and Ottoman (1986-88) is being offered at auction for the first time. Earlier this year, Christie’s sold a WRIGHT, NEW YORK, 21 NOVEMBER: gridded square cotton-wool Achrome MASTERWORKS of a similar size for around £390,000 SOLD FOR $341,000 (est £120,000-£180,000), while (EST $200,000-$300,000) Sotheby’s sold a pleated kaolin varia- The work, made from laminated and lacquered tion for around £1.2m (est £500,000- white birch plywood, is the bon à tirer from £700,000). G.Ai. an edition of four and one of the last remaining in private hands. Eight editions of the chair without the ottoman were also produced, as well as variations in bronze. Lichtenstein’s stylised brushstroke motif was appropriated from a 1964 comic called Strange Suspense Stories by Dick Giordano. As the artist’s sculptural works are undergoing a reappraisal, an ottoman-chair pair last surfaced on the auction market nearly two decades ago in 2000, when Christie’s New York sold an edition for $182,000 (est. $150,000-$200,000). Other editions are included in major collections, including The Broad in Los Angeles, and one featured in the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s career in 2012 at Tate Modern, London. G.Ai. Lorenzo Veneziano, Crucifixion (14th century) BONHAMS, LONDON, 6 DECEMBER: OLD MASTER PAINTINGS SOLD FOR £1.7M (EST £400,000-£600,000) This 14th-century crucifixion by the Venetian painter Lorenzo Veneziano spent the past century in what Andrew McKenzie, the director of Bonhams Old Master paintings, describes as an “Italophile English family… concealed from the eyes of the world’s art historians”. In the animation of the figures, the gold ground panel—which survives in unusually good condition—illustrates how, in the mid-14th century, Veneziano broke away from the static mode of the Byzantine icon towards a looser, more emotionally vivid Gothic style. Displayed in this crucifixion, McKenzie says, are “a number of the more modern elements that Lorenzo had come to adopt by the 1360s” such as the “more physical presence” of the figures, a “growing interest in elaborate decoration” and a more sympathetic interaction between the mourning figures in contrast to “the earlier, almost violent manner in which Lorenzo had tended to arrange them”.