Designer Paul Smith Sends Banksy to Auction, Prix Ars Electronica Winners Named, and More: Morning Links for June 20, 2023

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The Headlines

TAKING IT TO THE BANK-SY. Fashion designer Paul Smith is sending a Banksy painting to auction at Bonhams in London, where it will be offered on June 29 with a top estimate of £1.8 million (about $2.3 million). Titled Congestion Charge (2004), the work is a pastoral scene rich with trees and plants—and a sign for London’s then-new congestion pricing scheme for cars entering certain parts of the city. (Cheeky!) Smith also sold a Banksy through Christie’s in New York in 2021, the Art Newspaper notes. On that occasion, Sunflowers from Petrol Station went for a within-estimate $14.5 million with fees. Smith has been busy on the art front of late, also staging a Pablo Picasso show at the Musée Picasso in Paris that runs through August 27.

NOTHING IF NOT CRITICAL. In London, Tate Modern just opened a show titled “Capturing the Moment,” and some of the early reviews are . . . not good. Presenting choice loans from collector Pierre Chen’s Yageo Foundation (Hockney, Picasso, Bacon) alongside museum holdings, the exhibition aims to look at the relationship between painting and photography, “a hopelessly broad, well-worn premise for an exhibition,” Jackie Wullschläger writes in the Financial Times, terming the affair a “lazy apology for an exhibition.” In the Guardian, Laura Cumming asks, “Why are the walls of one of our foremost public art museums being given to a private collector in this way?” The show’s “premise feels like nonsense,” she argues, writing, “There is no thesis, no catalogue, no developed argument.” The exhibition runs through January 28.

The Digest

Four ancient Roman temples have opened to the public in Rome. The structures, which date as far back as the third century B.C.E., were unearthed amid demolition work in the 1920s. [The Associated Press]

The 2023 Prix Ars Electronica awards, for artists working with various forms of technology, have gone to Ayoung Kim, Atractor Estudio and Semantica Productions, Winnie Soon, and Sonja Höglinger. They will each get €10,000 (about $10,900). [ArtReview]

At the Detroit Institute of Arts, Yuriko Jackall has been named department head of European art and curator of European paintings. She is currently head of the curatorial department and curator of French paintings at the Wallace Collection in London. [Press Release/ArtDaily]

Michael Finkel’s new book, The Art Thief, follows the exploits of the notorious Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole some 300 works of art over the course of eight years. “This ultra-lucrative, odds-defying crime streak is wonderfully narrated,” Kathryn Schulz writes. [The New Yorker]

To mark the reopening of London’s National Portrait Gallery after an extensive renovation, the Guardian had notables pick their favorite examples of portraiture. Critic Adrian Searle went with a wild Maria Lassnig self-portrait, artist Thomas J. Price an Adrian Piper classic, and curator and critic Rianna Jade Parker an Errol Lloyd painting. [The Guardian]

Headed to Venice this summer for its architecture biennale? Tara Isabella Burton has a guide to exploring some of the quieter corners of the Floating City. [The Wall Street Journal]

The Kicker

ART IS FOREVER. Whoever thought this up deserves a marketing award. The Associated Press reports that the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam is currently hosting tattoo artists, who are giving visitors tattoos of Rembrandt sketches for €50 to €250 (about $55 to $273). Discussing how his process diverges from the Old Master’s, one tattoo artist offered this thought: “The canvas is different. The canvas can talk to you, move too much, float, even faint. That didn’t happen for Rembrandt.” The program is called “A Poor Man’s Rembrandt.” [AP]