The week in art news: junk painting is genuine Picasso, Just Stop Oil soupers jailed, Evening Standard serves up Brian Sewell AI slop and more…

Junk painting is genuine Picasso – the portrait, believed to be of muse Dora Maar, was found by Luigi Lo Rosso during a clear-out of a villa in Capri in 1962. Lo Rosso didn’t recognise the artwork and simply hung it in “a cheap frame” for decades. His family even thought about throwing out the “horrible” painting. It was only after his son Andrea looked through an art history book that they sought answers. After examining the painting’s signature, Italian experts have said that the “horrible” painting is a genuine Picasso.

Porridge over soup: Just Stop Oil activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland have been  sentenced to two years and 20 months respectively for throwing tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) at the National Gallery in 2022. The eye-catching protest against climate destruction inspired many others to vandalise artworks in the name of politics. Their sentences, given by judge Christopher Hehir, are the longest ever given in England to peaceful protestors. Now, we love art, but two years for wetting a picture frame?

And just hours after the sentences were passed, more paintings were vandalised in protest. At 14:30 on 27th September, three Just Stop Oil activists threw baked beans over two sunflower paintings in the National Gallery’s ‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’ exhibition. The paintings were briefly removed from display before being cleaned and returned. Artnet News reports that one of the activists, Ludi Simpson, said, “we will be held accountable for our actions today, and we will face the full force of the law. When will the fossil fuel executives and the politicians they’ve bought be held accountable for the criminal damage that they are imposing on every living thing?”

Perrotin to launch first London gallery. The gallery will occupy a 350 sq m space in Claridge’s that was previously used for temporary exhibitions. It’s planned to open in 2025, after a full rennovation of the space. The art gallery, founded by Emmanuel Perrotin in 1990, already has locations across the globe – Paris, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai – so why London, especially when Paris is just a Eurostar away? “We have a long-standing relationship with the UK art scene and collectors,” Perrotin said in the announcement, “I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to set up the gallery in the right conditions.”

Art criticism is officially dead: Evening Standard revives late critic Brian Sewell via ‘artificial intelligence’. The infamous arch camp art critic died in 2015 aged 84, after thirty years of “homophobia”, “misogyny”, “demagogy”, “hypocrisy”, “artistic prejudice”, “formulaic insults” and “predictable scurrility” according to one notorious complaint letter. The AI Sewell reviewed the National Gallery’s ‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’, and nobody’s impressed. The fact he’s been revived right after the Evening Standard cut its daily paper and 150 staff and relaunched as a weekly magazine named The London Standard, seems suss. Is this just another case of AI ragebait? Or do the remaining eds think they can get away with AI slop?

Speaking of shit: a river-based performance piece has been cancelled due to turds in the Thames. Rasheed Araeen’s Discosailing: A Ballet On Water, was due to take place on 27th September on the Waterworks River at the Olympic Park in east London. The work features nine performers floating on inflatable discs, responding to the wind and currents. Discosailing was first performed back in July, but September’s performance was cancelled after high levels of raw sewage were detected in the water.

Deplorable and pornographic! That’s the judgement of the philistines in the Nevada Republican Party over a 13m nude effigy of Donald Trump that was hung up along the interstate between Las Vegas and Reno. The anonymous artists behind the sculpture, titled Crooked and Obscene, said that they wanted to make “a bold statement on transparency, vulnerability and the public personas of political figures.” The effigy has now been taken down, but will go on show in other swing states until the November election. God forbid anything “deplorable” and “pornographic” happen in Las Vegas!

Adrian Cheng’s out! The major east asian art collector has resigned as CEO of his family’s Hong Kong property development company, New World Development, after suffering losses of $2.5B. The first losses the company has posted in the past 20 years. Cheng will still control K11, the culture-commerce focussed brand which he founded in 2009, and remains the chair of Hong Kong’s Mega Arts and Cultural Events Committee, but his demotion at the family firm is a major blow to his reputation and his wallet.

Li Hei Di joins Pace Gallery. Born in 1997, Li is now the youngest artist on the mega gallery’s roster. When Plaster interviewed Li back in March, during her exhibition ‘700 Nights of Winter’ at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, she spoke about her finding her direction and a sense of self.

Kasmin Gallery announces global representation of Jackson Pollock. The gallery, which has represented the work of Pollock’s wife Lee Krasner since 2016, called the move an “artistic reunion,” it’s the first time in 50 years that the American abstract expressionists, who died in 1956 and 1984 respectively, have shared a gallery. The gallery will represent the artists through their shared Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Major art fairs commit to cutting climate emissions. Art Basel, Frieze, TEFAF and 40 others are working with the Gallery Climate Coalition to reduce their emissions by 50% by 2030. What will a climate-friendly art fair look like? It might mean fewer paintings and more performance art, no taxis and definitely no jets, meat off the menu, climate-sensitive foods such as coffee and champagne replaced by dandelion and burdock and Irn-Bru, and fewer disposable freebies. Of course, the most climate-friendly art fair is no art fair at all…

American abstract painter Richard Mayhew dies aged 100, as reported by Artnews. Mayhew was known for his loosely painted, brightly coloured abstract works that some called landscapes and he called ‘mindscapes’. He saw these works as a connection between the emotional experience of slavery and the landscape of the USA. Mayhew was born in Amityville, New York, in 1924. He served in the marines during the Second World War and later studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. In 1963 at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Mayhew joined Spiral, a collective of African American artists. In later life, he lectured on art and interdisciplinary thinking at a number of US universities.

Remember the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania? First it was sued for not allowing men into the women only exhibition, then it lost the case and mounted the artworks in the loos, then it turned out all the artworks were fake, and now the Tasmanian Supreme Court has overturned that ruling. But now we know that it was all a scam highly profitable piece of performance art conducted by the museum founder’s wife, will anyone want to go there?

Cancel the memes – Moo Deng sells out! The baby pygmy hippo captured the hearts and algorithms of the world. Now, her owners at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chon Buri, Thailand, are looking to bank the small wet beast’s fame by trademarking the baby hippo’s likeness. This raises some important questions, such as: what is the likeness of a baby hippo? And will Richard Prince challenge this?

Here’s your chance to snoop around Jean Dubuffet’s Paris studio. The artist’s former home and studio has gone on the market for €12.5M ($13.9M). The small 6th arrondissement space was originally designed in 1920 by Auguste Perret. The home features large glass windows alongside two sides of a small garden courtyard. Perret designed a number of similar studios in the local area. Dubuffet moved into the space in 1945 and stayed there until his death in 1985. Few original features remain, but as the estate agent’s photos show, it’s still beautifully finished.