Maurizio Cattelan Copyright Dispute, Louvre’s Delacroix Painting Targeted, Marilyn Monroe Mansion Risks Demolition, and More: Morning Links for May 8, 2024

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THE HEADLINES

(ANOTHER) COPYRIGHT DISPUTE. Artist Anthony James has sent a legal letter to Maurizio Cattelan accusing the latter of making strikingly similar artwork to his own, reports Artnet News. Both artists opened shows in New York featuring panels of reflective metal sheets shot with bullet holes. The only physical difference between them is that Cattelan’s panels are plated in gold, while James has been making similar sculptures for a decade on mirror-polished stainless steel. “There’s no chance that he hasn’t seen them or that they haven’t come to his attention,” James reportedly said. But Cattelan, known as the art world’s ironic jokester, has fended off copyright infringement claims in the past, and when speaking to the New Yorker’s Calvin Tomkins, suggested he had been equally startled to learn of James’ work. “I’m very surprised. The resemblance is uncanny. All I can say is good luck to both of us,” he said.

MUSEUM REBUILDING. Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro is set to receive a massive collection of fossils, after a fire all but gutted the 200-year-old building in 2018. Sparked by an electrical short-circuit, the fire destroyed an estimated 85 percent of the museum’s collection, making this latest donation by Swiss-German collector Burkhard Pohl of over a thousand fossils, a vital gift. The fossils originate from northeastern Brazil, and include dinosaur remains, and possibly the earliest snake fossil, called a Tetrapodophis. The museum said it is working on gathering some 10,000 objects by the time it hopes to reopen in April, 2026. “It was an enormous tragedy but we need to look ahead and rebuild the institution. Brazil needs its national museum back,” the institution’s director, Alexander Kellner, told reporters.

THE DIGEST

The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s former home are suing the city of Los Angeles for the right to demolish it. In January, the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission recommended the house be given landmark status, putting the brakes on the owners’ plans to demolish the Spanish Colonial-style home and combine it to their next-door property. The owners, heiress Brinah Milstein and husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, claim the city acted unconstitutionally and used “backdoor machinations.” [The Los Angeles Times]

Saudi Arabian officials permitted and used lethal force to clear land for a future, car-free city called The Line, which is part of the Saudi Vision 2030 project to diversify the economy into the cultural sector and away from oil, according to the BBC. One person was shot and killed after refusing to be evicted from the area where The Line is set to be built in a new eco-region called Neom. [BBC]

Ground-penetrating technology has revealed a mysterious, L-shaped anomaly underground, beside the Giza pyramids, where archaeologists had long-observed an apparent “blank area” in Giza’s Western Cemetery, despite it be surrounded by ancient mastaba tombs and the over 4,500-year-old pyramids of kings Khufu and Khafre. [The Art Newspaper]

Two activists from the group Riposte alimentaire [Food counterattack] have struck again but left no damage. Yesterday, they plastered signs on the wall beside the newly restored Eugène Delacroix painting, Liberty Leading the People, at the Louvre in Paris. Their posters said, “Resistance is vital,” and they chanted “social security, sustainable food.” [Le Monde]

The Louvre in Paris will lend an intricately carved 10^th century ivory container from Spain’s Umayyad period to the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, and in return, will recuperate Leonardo da Vinci’s 16^th century painting, Saint John the Baptist, which went on loan to the UAE museum in 2022. [The National]

The theme for the forthcoming Venice Architecture Biennale from May to November 2025, has been announced, with the title: “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.” The exhibit will interlink art, engineering, biology, data science to urban design and climate change, according to a statement. [Artforum]

 The Olympic torch arrived in Marseille from Greece yesterday, escorted by a flotilla, and aboard a 128-year-old, three-masted ship known as Le Belem. Broadcast live, it was greeted with concerts and celebrations into the night. [Le Figaro]

THE KICKER

ART IN TIMES OF PERIL. In the latest “Irving Sandler Essay” for The Brooklyn Rail, writer Greg Allen asks whether “this is a time to look for something else in art, to look at art that resonates with this moment on the precipice of authoritarianism, and to learn from it.” He shares a personal list of artworks he used to “visit or contemplate when needed,” and “when the world was dark,” as a counter to daily troubles. But things are different now, and Allen says he hasn’t been able to find respite as he once did, from “the pandemic’s swirling gyre, genocide in Gaza and indifference to it, persistent bigotry and ascendant fascism in the US and beyond.” So he asks what can be gleaned by reconsidering art made in similarly dangerous situations in the past, not with the complacent relief of historical distance, but with an awakened sense of urgency for our own time and place?” Quit a lot, it turns out.

The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s former home are suing the city of Los Angeles for the right to demolish it. In January, the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission recommended the house be given landmark status, putting the brakes on the owners’ plans to demolish the Spanish Colonial-style home and combine it to their next-door property. The owners, heiress Brinah Milstein and husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, claim the city acted unconstitutionally and used “backdoor machinations.” [The Los Angeles Times]

Saudi Arabian officials permitted and used lethal force to clear land for a future, car-free city called The Line, which is part of the Saudi Vision 2030 project to diversify the economy into the cultural sector and away from oil, according to the BBC. One person was shot and killed after refusing to be evicted from the area where The Line is set to be built in a new eco-region called Neom. [BBC]

Ground-penetrating technology has revealed a mysterious, L-shaped anomaly underground, beside the Giza pyramids, where archaeologists had long-observed an apparent “blank area” in Giza’s Western Cemetery, despite it be surrounded by ancient mastaba tombs and the over 4,500-year-old pyramids of kings Khufu and Khafre. [The Art Newspaper]

Two activists from the group Riposte alimentaire [Food counterattack] have struck again but left no damage. Yesterday, they plastered signs on the wall beside the newly restored Eugène Delacroix painting, Liberty Leading the People, at the Louvre in Paris. Their posters said, “Resistance is vital,” and they chanted “social security, sustainable food.” [Le Monde]

The Louvre in Paris will lend an intricately carved 10^th century ivory container from Spain’s Umayyad period to the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, and in return, will recuperate Leonardo da Vinci’s 16^th century painting, Saint John the Baptist, which went on loan to the UAE museum in 2022. [The National]

The theme for the forthcoming Venice Architecture Biennale from May to November 2025, has been announced, with the title: “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.” The exhibit will interlink art, engineering, biology, data science to urban design and climate change, according to a statement. [Artforum]

 The Olympic torch arrived in Marseille from Greece yesterday, escorted by a flotilla, and aboard a 128-year-old, three-masted ship known as Le Belem. Broadcast live, it was greeted with concerts and celebrations into the night. [Le Figaro]

ART IN TIMES OF PERIL. In the latest “Irving Sandler Essay” for The Brooklyn Rail, writer Greg Allen asks whether “this is a time to look for something else in art, to look at art that resonates with this moment on the precipice of authoritarianism, and to learn from it.” He shares a personal list of artworks he used to “visit or contemplate when needed,” and “when the world was dark,” as a counter to daily troubles. But things are different now, and Allen says he hasn’t been able to find respite as he once did, from “the pandemic’s swirling gyre, genocide in Gaza and indifference to it, persistent bigotry and ascendant fascism in the US and beyond.” So he asks what can be gleaned by reconsidering art made in similarly dangerous situations in the past, not with the complacent relief of historical distance, but with an awakened sense of urgency for our own time and place?” Quit a lot, it turns out.