The week in art news: tributes paid to Sarah Cunningham, art heist damages Warhols, New Zealand’s most controversial sculpture removed and more…

Tributes paid to 31-year-old painter, Sarah Cunningham. The Lisson Gallery artist was reported missing early on Saturday 2nd November. On Monday 4th November, the Met Police said that a body had been found at Chalk Park Underground Station, and that Cunningham’s family had been informed: “While we await formal identification, Sarah’s family have been informed of this development. They have asked that their privacy is respected at this very difficult time.” The police said that the death was unexpected but not suspicious.

Patricia Johanson, land artist and environmentalist, dies, 84. Johanson was born in Brooklyn in 1940. In her youth she worked as an assistant to Georgia O’Keeffe. Johanson started her own art career in the 1960s as a minimalist painter, before turning to land art in the early ‘70s. Her major break came in the 1980s, with the restoration of Fair Park Lagoon. Unlike other land artists, she sought to incorporate plants and nature into her work, rather than sculpt the earth to fit her vision. She specialised in restoring waste sites and dumps into living artworks. Johanson died of congestive heart failure on 16th October at her home in Buskirk, New York.

You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off: Andy Warhol prints stolen and damaged in bomb blast art heist. On the night of 31st October, thieves used explosives to break into MPV Gallery in Oisterwijk, the Netherlands and steal two silkscreen prints from the artist’s ‘Reigning Queens’ series: one of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and one of Margrethe II of Denmark. A work from the series recently sold for $646,000, however the blast at MPV was so strong that experts reckon the prints will be damaged beyond repair and ultimately worthless.

The artist formerly known as Stuart Semple has changed his name by deed poll to Anish Kapoor. Never happy if his name isn’t in the press, this is the latest caper in an eight-year, one-man crusade by Semple against Kapoor’s exclusive artistic licence over the light-absorbing, ultra-black material Vantablack. Semple’s hoping that with the name change he’ll now be allowed to use Vantablack. Semple’s previous stunts include gaining a licence over the ‘pinkest pink’ and ‘whitest white’ and banning Kapoor from using them. All we can say is, have fun, Stuart!

Spanish artist to ‘marry’ AI BF. Alicia Framis is tying the knot with her hologram boyfriend on Saturday 9th November at Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. It’s the latest stage of her ongoing project ‘Hybrid Couple’. It’s not the first artificial relationship the artist’s had: In 1995, she lived with a mannequin in Villeneuve, France, documenting their intimate relationship in a series of 36 photographs titled, ‘Cinema Solo’. “Love and sex with robots and holograms are an inevitable reality,” says the artist. Let’s hope not!

New Zealand’s most controversial sculpture removed. You might think it’s a monument to some historic coloniser or a badly-modelled sports star, but New Zealand’s polarising sculpture is a giant “misshapen and misunderstood” anthropomorphic hand named ‘Quasi’. Artist Ronnie van Hout designed the work as a ‘partial self portrait’, and named it after Quasimodo. Unfortunately for him, critics slated it. The glaring hand-face was first mounted in 2016 on the roof of Christchurch Art Gallery, in 2019 it moved to City Gallery Wellington, where it loomed over the city square. To the delight of many, it’s now being taken down and shipped off to Australia to an undisclosed location.

A statue depicting Donald Trump making a ‘grab her by the pussy’ gesture has been revealed in Maja Park, Philadelphia. It’s not clear who’s behind the work, however some reckon they might be related to the turd and torch sculptures placed on the National Mall last week. The gesturing Trump statue is positioned behind the bronze sculpture Maja (1942) by German sculptor Gerhard Marcks and features a plaque detailing its creation, “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault.”

A new statue of NBA champ Dwayne Wade dubbed “The Worst Statue in the History of Sports”. The bronze 7’3” sculpture of the Miami Heat player was unveiled in front of the Kaseya Center on 27th October, and drew an immediate backlash. Critics, including former basketball player Charles Barkley, Atlantic writer Ross Andersen and governor Tim Walz, weighed in on the strange sculpture, calling it a disservice to the player. The work, by artists Omri Amrany and Oscar Leon, is supposed to recall the iconic gesture Wade made in a 2008 victory against the Chicago Bulls.

Banksy’s bezzie dumps collection. Steve Lazarides, who worked with the graffiti artist for several decades, auctioned off most of his Banksy collection (173 lots in total) on 31st October at Julien’s Auctions, Los Angeles. The sale was estimated to bring in around $1M, in the end it netted around $1.4M. An artist proof of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon sold for $104,000, nearly double its $60,000 estimate. Lazzer says that he’s selling the works to focus on his own artistic and photographic career, “I just want it out of my in-tray and to go back to concentrating on taking photographs again,” he told The Guardian.

Want to see Jeff Koons’ studio? It’ll cost you. This November eleven New York artists are opening their studios in exchange for charitable donations to the International Fine Print Dealers Association Foundation. $1,000 will get you one of five places on a tour of the artists’ studios. Those taking part include Koons as well as Katherine Bradford, Leonardo Drew, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Vera Lutter, Joel Mesler, Marilyn Minter, Tschabalala Self, Joel Shapiro and Mickalene Thomas. Tickets are on sale from 9th November.

Miami Beach city commission gives $1M to arts orgs after governor cuts state funding. Back in June, Ron DeSantis vetoed the entire Florida $32M arts budget and managed to piss off some of the billionaire collectors and donors he’d been courting in the city. The Miami Beach city commission stepped in to cover cancelled funds, and originally planned to cover 50% of the money, when it came to the vote this was increased to 100%. $960,000 will now be split between 17 organisations that lost out on state funds.

Just Stop Oil activists banned from protesting within London. The three activists, Mary Somerville, Stephen Simpson and Phil Green, souped Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers hours after JSO activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were sentenced to prison for souping the same painting two years earlier. With the National Gallery now cracking down on security and banning all liquids, and increasingly harsh sentences being handed down to peaceful protestors, is this the end of the art attack protest meme?

Spanish artist to ‘marry’ AI BF. Alicia Framis is tying the knot with her hologram boyfriend on Saturday 9th November at Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. It’s the latest stage of her ongoing project ‘Hybrid Couple’. It’s not the first artificial relationship the artist’s had: In 1995, she lived with a mannequin in Villeneuve, France, documenting their intimate relationship in a series of 36 photographs titled, ‘Cinema Solo’. “Love and sex with robots and holograms are an inevitable reality,” says the artist. Let’s hope not!