More Ann and Gordon Getty Material Heads to Christie’s, Illustrator Bruce McCall Dies at 87, and More: Morning Links for May 8, 2023

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The Headlines

TROUBLE IN PARIS. On Sunday, a Miriam Cahn painting that has been the subject of right-wing vitriol was vandalized in her current show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Alex Greenberger reports in ARTnews. The alleged vandal sprayed purple paint onto the piece, which depicts a person with their hands tied performing a sex act on a taller person. Cahn, an acclaimed Swiss artist, has said she created the work after reading about human-rights abuses in Ukraine. Some conservative politicians and children’s-rights groups have claimed that the piece promotes pedophilia. The alleged culprit was apprehended by guards and turned over to police, the AFP reports. Per the artist’s wishes, the defaced work will remain in the show until it ends its run on Sunday.

ARTISTS CLOSE UP. In the Los Angeles Times, Carolina A. Miranda reports on infighting among members of the storied Chicano artist collective Asco over the authorship of some of their trailblazing pieces. The “disputes could now affect how Asco’s work is displayed and how its story is ultimately told,” she writes. ● Also in the L.A. Times, artist Max Hooper Schneider, who makes dense, frenetic, action-packed installations and sculptures, got the profile treatment from Leah Ollman. “I think of the studio as a gut, and I’m like a digestive enzyme, circulating through it,” said Hooper Schneider, who has a new show up at the François Ghebaly gallery in L.A.. ● And in the Financial Times, photographer Martin Parr discussed the work of six peers whom he admires, including Mohamed Bourouissa, Markéta Luskačová, and Rinko Kawauchi.

The Digest

Last year, material from Ann and Gordon Getty’s home in the S.F. neighborhood of Pacific Heights made more than $150 million at Christie’s. In June, art and design from their residence in nearby Berkeley, known as the Temple of Wings, will be offered by the auctioneer, with proceeds again going to charity. [Datebook]

Police in Greece arrested four on allegations of pursuing illegal construction projects on the islands of Mykonos and Rhodes. In March, a government archaeologist was beaten in an Athens suburb, an attack that authorities believe was related to his work evaluating projects near archaeological sites in those tourism hotspots. [AFP/Barron’s]

Artist Steve McQueen said that he has invited dozens of U.K. politicians to visit the Serpentine Gallery in London to view his new film about the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72, but that most have not replied. “Their silence says a lot about what is happening in this country,” he said. [The Guardian]

The illustrator Bruce McCall, whose richly detailed satirical visions of American life graced more than 80 covers of the New Yorker, died on Friday at the age of 87. Graphic designer Michael Bierutonce termed McCall “our country’s greatest unacknowledged design visionary,” William Grimes writes in his obituary. [The New York Times]

Theatrical producer Jenna Segal has been building a collection of work by all 31 artists featured in an all-women show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in 1943. She is still looking for a Gypsy Rose Lee piece, and is presenting her holdings at her Midtown Manhattan offices later the month. [The New York Times]

Allegations are flying in a battle over the wealth and art collection of billionaire Hubert Neumann and his family. His second daughter, Belinda Neumann-Donnelly, has filed suit against him, saying that he has taken funds from trusts and engaged in other improper behavior. His lawyer rebutted the claims. [New York Post]

The Kicker

THE KEY TO LONGEVITY. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, the philosopher and poet Paul Woodruff talked about undertaking meaningful projects as the end of his life nears. “As I think of dying, I make each day a time for living, for having something to live for,” he wrote. A reader responded with a letter to editor, noting that that worldview matched that of the great artist Harry Liebermann, who died at 106. According to the letter’s author, Liebermann said, when he was already past 100, “The reason I am living so long is before I go to bed, I imagine what I will be painting the next day.” [The Washington Post]