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The Headlines
TRUMP IS BACK. By Wednesday morning, some art media outlets were beginning to process Trump’s return to the White House. Writing before the final results were in, Artforum‘s Editor-in-Chief Tina Rivers Ryan said, “it is hard to imagine any result that does not lead to considerable chaos.” To help us gain perspective, she suggested looking at how others have faced volatile political situations, expressed by artists ranging from Ade Darmawan and Timoteus Anggawan Kusno in Indonesia, and “a moment of reckoning” of Switzerland’s colonial past, in two art exhibitions on the topic, to name a few. Elsewhere, Saskia Trebing for Monopol Magazine asks, “Why was art so helpless under Donald Trump?” She argues “a lot of well-intentioned but unsuccessful protest art” against Trump, such as a “naïve and trivializing” giant balloon depicting him as a fat, screaming orange baby by artist Leo Murray. But “culture resonates most when it deals with topics that go deeper than the current president,” she said. “It is possible that the best Trump works are still to come with a second term in office.”
BOTCHED WARHOL GETAWAY. Dutch police have arrested a 23-year-old suspect in the theft of two Andy Warhol artworks last week, reports AFP. There’s no word yet on whether the artworks have been recovered. Two thieves made off with the Warhol screen prints of former queens, Elizabeth II of the UK, and Margreth II of Denmark, late on Thursday night. But because they were torn from their frames, they are believed to have been severely damaged, according to earlier reports. Two other prints from the same series were left damaged on the street, likely too large to fit into the getaway car.
The Digest
A sculpture depicting the well-known figure of French priest Abbé Pierre (1922-2007) lying dead, covered in a shroud, with a visible erection, has shocked many in France. Installed in a church, the artwork titled Silentium by French conceptual artist James Calomina, was exhibited in a former church in Toulouse that was deconsecrated. The artist said the piece was meant as a critique against the Church’s silence over numerous sexual abuse allegations made against Abbé Pierre, including the rape of one child at the time. [Le Figaro]
Artist Isabel Nolan will represent Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026. Georgina Jackson, the director of The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art at Trinity College, Dublin, will be the Irish Pavilion’s curator. [The Art Newspaper]
Paris Photo opens for VIP previews today at the Grand Palais with an expanded program. The newly renovated venue offers more floor space for the 240 exhibitors from 34 countries, who increasingly hail from non-Western hubs, particularly South America. Meanwhile, women photographers represent 38 percent of featured artists at this latest edition, versus 20 percent in 2018. [Le Journal des Arts]
Warsaw’s Wschód and Cologne’s Galerie Khoshbakht are joining forces in Manhattan’s Lower East Side for one year, and opening together on November 20 in the space Wschód has run since 2023. Their first show will include work by Polish video artist Igor Krenz and British sculptor Beth Collar. [The Financial Times]
Japanese painter Atsushi Uemura has died at the age of 91. He is best known for his traditional bird and flower kacho-ga paintings. [ArtAsiaPacific]
The Kicker
KEHINDE WILEY SPEAKS. Artist Kehinde Wiley, who is accused of sexual assault by four men, has sat down with a “watchful PR rep” for a rare interview since the allegations broke with Vulture’s Rachel Corbett. The central question she asks in an in-depth report is whether Wiley’s “empire,” built from painting young Black men in streetwear, depicted as celebrated heroes of art history in the place of white counterparts, can survive these accusations. Wiley needs little introduction. He painted the presidential portrait of Barack Obama and his monumental, hugely popular paintings are in museums around the world. He also built an artist residency in Dakar. To date, Wiley’s accusers have not filed legal suits against him, but his future remains uncertain, and as his market appears to stall, the public is left with a “he said, he said.”
