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Fast fashion giant Shein’s Frida Kahlo collection ignites a trademark controversy.
“Fast fashion juggernaut Shein launched a new collection inspired by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. However, the Chinese online retailer’s collaboration is with the Frida Kahlo Corporation, a Panamanian licensing and commercialization company that has been fighting with members of the artist’s family for almost ten years over trademark and property rights. The news of the Shein x Frida Kahlo collaboration was first reported by the Spanish daily newspaper El País. The new collaboration appears to be the latest episode in the ongoing dispute between FKC and some of Kahlo’s relatives.” [H/T ARTnews]
Brisbane Indigenous art collective proppaNOW scoops this year’s Jane Lombard Prize.
“Indigenous Australian art collective proppaNOW has won a prestigious prize that will take them to New York next year after the selecting jury found their practices would serve as ‘models for political empowerment throughout the world.’ But don’t expect traditional Aboriginal artworks. Established in Brisbane in 2003, proppaNOW emerged to give voice to urban-based Indigenous artists. Nearly two decades later, that voice has gone global, with the collective awarded the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice on Friday evening in the United States.” [H/T The Guardian]
The Art Deco bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park in Queens, New York. Photography by Sylvester Zawadzki…
The Art Deco bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park will soon undergo a sweeping renovation.
“The 90-year-old Art Deco bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park will be restored to its former glory as a beachfront hub under a $50 million rehabilitation project. CBSK Developers and the architect firm Beyer Blinder Belle will transform the iconic, but underutilized, 1932 building into a multi-purpose public space with restaurants, a bar, a pool, event spaces, and a 28-room boutique hotel. The bathhouse, which was once home to two restaurants, a cafeteria, and concession stands, was completed in 1932 and renovated by Robert Moses in 1937. It was actively used until the 1970s, but after years of neglect, ownership was transferred to the Gateway National Recreation with plans to restore the building.” [H/T 6sqft]
RH is doubling down on the hospitality space by opening 15 restaurants in the U.S.
“On a recent night at the Dining Room at RH Guesthouse New York—a restaurant from the home-design company formerly known as Restoration Hardware—the server began her tableside spiel with a paean to the surroundings: “Welcome to our very beige space.” The room was built from white oak and Italian travertine. Each table, chair and light fixture was custom made. RH has opened 15 restaurants across the U.S. and Canada in the last decade, most of them connected to stores, and they have resonated with diners, many of them drawn by the décor. Each restaurant earns an average of $10 million annually, said Gary Friedman, the company’s CEO. RH restaurants aren’t just a way to draw in shoppers. They’re central to Mr. Friedman’s goal of promoting RH as a luxury company.” [H/T The New York Times]
Iranian activists stage a protest for Mahsa Amini at New York’s Guggenheim Museum.
“A group of Iranian artists, frustrated with the inaction of Western museums in the face of human rights abuses in Iran, unfurled a series of banners covered with the face of Mahsa Amini at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on Oct. 22. Amini died in an Iranian hospital last month after being detained by the regime’s morality police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations. Her death sparked ongoing mass protests in Tehran and cities across Iran. The anonymous collective unraveled the banners, which also proclaimed, “Women, Life, Freedom” from the top floor of the museum’s recognisable rotunda. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Shiva Balaghi—a Middle East scholar at the University of California Santa Barbara—says that the “anonymous collective action is in keeping with the protest movements happening across Iran now.’” [H/T The Art Newspaper]
German climate protesters throw mashed potatoes at Claude Monet’s Les Meules.
“German climate protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum in the state of Brandenburg, about 20 miles southeast of Berlin. They approached Monet’s Les Meules and threw the potato over the painting and its gold frame. The protesters wore orange high-vis vests and glued themselves to the wall below the painting. ‘Does it take mashed potato on a painting to make you listen?’ said one of the activists. ‘This painting is not going to be worth anything if we have to fight over food. When will you finally start to listen?’ The painting was unharmed, the museum said, and authorities stated they are investigating the protesters, whom police did not name, for property damage and trespassing.” [H/T Euronews]
Peter Schjeldahl, the New Yorker’s widely read and longtime art critic, dies at 80.
“Peter Schjeldahl, the eminent and widely read New York art critic, died Friday at his home in the tiny upstate town of Bovina, near the Catskills. He was 80. In the mid-1960s, Schjeldahl began to contribute gallery reviews to the Village Voice, where he would join the staff full time in the following decade. Since then, there was barely a moment when his eloquent, lapidary observations on art old and new could not be read—in the New York Times, ArtNews, Art in America, 7 Days, and other magazines, plus assorted gallery catalogs. In 1998 he began a nearly 24-year stint on the art critic’s perch at the New Yorker where, following the New York School’s 1950s heyday, Harold Rosenberg had held forth.” [H/T Los Angeles Times]
Today’s attractive distractions:
Kanye West’s unaccredited Donda Academy has some bizarre activities.
AI is posing a legitimate threat to the longevity of singers and producers.
Great Britain’s economy may be stumbling, but scotch whisky has soared.
This two-armed robot broke the world record for “speedfolding” clothes.
