Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto Dies at 71, New York’s Jewish Museum Plans Chloé Show, and More: Morning Links for April 2, 2023

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The Headlines

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, the genre-crossing Japanese musician and composer who was a member of the storied Yellow Magic Orchestra, died last Tuesday at the age of 71. Over a career that spanned half a century, Sakamoto wrote revered film scores (including for 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, in which he acted alongside David Bowie), developed music for video games and ringtones for mobile phones, collaborated with a variety of musicians, and inspired still more. The visual artist and musician Carsten Nicolai, who partnered with Sakamoto on various projects, told the New York Times, “The big theme of him is curiosity. Ryuichi understood, very early, that not necessarily one specific genre will be the future of music—that the conversation between different styles, and unusual styles, may be the future.”

DISCOVERIES. Researchers at work on an island in Krabi, Thailand, uncovered cave paintings dating back between 3,000 and 5,000 years, according to the Bangkok Post. They show “masked humans, half-human creatures, people on boats, animals and geometric objects,” per the report (something for everyone!), and may have been part of ritual practices. ● Archaeologists at the Temple of Esna at Luxor in Egypt found a rare complete set of Egyptian astrological symbols, Insider reports. While such symbols were common on private tombs and sarcophagi, there are only three known complete sets of them in Egyptian temples, according to one researcher on the project. ● And National Geographic has an accounting of how the remains of England’s King Richard III came to be found in 2012 beneath a car park in Leicester. That wild find was the subject of the film The Lost King (2022), which was released late last year.

The Digest

In October, New York’s Jewish Museum will host the first major show ever focused on fashion designer Gaby Aghion and her Chloé brand. “Very few people appear to know that Gaby was Jewish or as much about her incredible life and entrepreneurship as they should,” the museum’s director, Claudia Gould, said. [The New York Times]

A study group has been formed by authorities at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, France, to decide what to do about mosaics installed there that are by the Jesuit artist Marko Ivan Rupnik, who has been punished by the Vatican for sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women. [The Associated Press]

The sea walls known as MOSE have been successfully guarding Venice from horrible flooding in recent years, but they have had to be deployed far more than experts expected, which “could render Venice’s lagoon a fetid swamp choked by noxious algae,” according to a deep-dive report on the project. [The New York Times]

A man who broke off a thumb from an ancient Chinese terracotta warrior statue during a party at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has accepted a plea deal on charges that carry a maximum sentence of two years in prison and a $20,000 fine. [Philadelphia Voice]

Mami Kataoka, who directs the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, has been tapped to lead a new National Center for Art Research in Japan, which is being created by the Independent Administrative Institution National Museum of Art to bolster ties between Japanese museums and peers abroad. [ArtAsiaPacific]

ARTISTS IN PROFILE. Painter Lois Dodd is in the New York Times, sculptor and writer (and more) Roni Horn is in the Financial Times, multidisciplinarian Aura Rosenberg is also in the Times, and portraitist Kehinde Wiley is in the Guardian.

The Kicker

THE SPIN DOCTOR. Somehow it feels strange that it took so long for this to happen: Working with the art-tech venture Heni, artist Damien Hirst has creating a program that lets users digitally generate an image in the mode of his “Spin Paintings”—and then buy an NFT of it for a cool $2,000, the Art Newspaper reports. If you want a printed and signed version, you will have to shell out more. In a tweet, Hirst said, “I have called the series ‘The Beautiful Paintings’ for obvious reasons.” Obvious, yes. [TAN]