Tragedy Continues to Unfold for LA Arts Community, Frieze LA Assesses Event, Douglas Chrismas Sentenced: Morning Links for January 14, 2025

This post was originally published on artnews.com

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The Headlines

DEVASTATION FOR LA ARTS COMMUNITY CONTINUES. The ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles continue to destroy homes and historic, cultural buildings, including those of the city’s rich art community, whose livelihoods are bound in the physical objects they make and sell, now turned to ash, reports Karen K. Ho for ARTnews. Meanwhile Frieze LA is “assessing” whether to go ahead with the fair on February 20, according to Artnet News. “As the situation continues to unfold, we are taking the necessary time to assess and determine the best course of action for all involved,” a Frieze spokesperson said. Among those affected, artist Alec Egan has lost his home, studio, plus two years of nearly completed works for a forthcoming show at Anat Ebgi gallery. Others include artist Diana Thater and T. Kelly Mason, Camilla Taylor, Kelly Akashi, Paul McCarthy, and Ross Smonini. Taylor was preparing for three exhibitions, McCarthy has had to postpone his upcoming show at Hauser & Wirth, London, and Akashi was scheduled to have her inaugural exhibit at Lisson Gallery in LA later this month. The New York Times also reported an estimated 100,000 scores and parts by the 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg were destroyed. Additionally, the library and archive of art critic Gary Indiana was lost to the flames after it was moved to Altadena on January 7, the day before the fire, where it was due to become a library for an artist retreat. If Indiana’s rare art books and signed editions “had come a day later, there would have been no address to deliver them to, so they would have been saved. But on that Tuesday, unfortunately, there still was an address,” Colm Tóibín wrote in an essay for the London Review of Books. See below for personal accounts from artists who survived the fires.

ACE IN THE CAN. Also from LA, The New York Times informs us that Ace Gallery dealer Douglas Chrismas, 80, was sentenced on Monday in federal court to 24 months in prison for embezzlement. Chrismas founded Ace Gallery, which helped expand the LA art scene in the 1970s and 90s, but over the last decade he has been in prolonged bankruptcy proceedings, and subject of multiple lawsuits over non-payment. In May, he was convicted on three counts of embezzlement and released on bond, but by February 17 he’s due behind bars. Sam Leslie, the appointed bankruptcy trustee, reportedly said in a statement that Chrismas used a “pattern of lies and thefts,” involving diverting funds from his gallery to a defunct museum and gallery, which amounted to over $14 million, and “would have been sufficient to pay all creditors in the Chapter 11 case. Instead, the remaining claims will never be paid.” 

The Digest

An ancient petroglyph (rock carving) of a hand has been irreparably damaged in Mexico’s Coahuila state. The drawing is among some 150 others accumulated over thousands of years, and was removed from a large rock at La Cueva Pinta in the mountains of Sierra de Australia. Archaeologists also discovered that someone attempted to remove at least two other drawings from the same rock, likely using an electric saw, causing extensive damage. [The Art Newspaper]

Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian artist and illustrator of the groundbreaking comic and film Persepolis, has refused France’s Légion d’honneur award, due to the country’s lack of support for Iranian dissidents, including artists, who have attempted to seek refuge in France but were denied visas, as well as French citizens “kept hostage” in Iranian prisons. In the meantime, children of “Iranian oligarchs walk around Paris like in Saint-Tropez without it causing any problem,” she said in a social media post. [Le Monde]

Oliviero Toscani, the innovative and controversial photographer who made history with his ad campaigns for the United Colors of Benetton in the 1980s and 1990s, has died at the age of 82. He was a pioneer in shining a light on issues such as AIDS, racism, the death penalty, and homosexuality. [WWD]

Six artists will submit proposals to revamp the weather- and time-worn stone-carved Nazi relic of the Imperial Eagle, located on the Ulm tax building in Germany. The eagle was also splattered with red paint years ago. [Monopol and dpa]

The Kicker

LA ARTISTS ON LOSING EVERYTHING. Santa Monica-based Cultured Magazine is in the thick of the unfolding LA wildfire disaster, and in their latest long read, it’s asked local artists to share what they’ve lost and experienced in their own words. Among the moving testimonies, here is a sample that bears repeating. “Since I thought we were leaving prematurely and out of an abundance of caution, we took nothing but a change of clothes and a toothbrush,” said Andy Ouchi, a multimedia artist. “I lost all of my archive, furniture I had made that I had hoped to pass along to my children, … physical photographs pre-Internet that can’t be replaced along with negatives… everything…. Really the biggest loss of it all, though, is something that isn’t specific to art making or being creative—it’s the fact that our house became a quilt of memories of our children’s upbringing that has now been vaporized.” And this from Ross Simonini, an interdisciplinary artist and musician: “Beyond my family’s home, my studio, and my entire community, I lost nearly all the work I have ever made in the Eaton fire. That includes childhood drawings I made with my mom, the drawing that helped me believe I could be an artist, and several new bodies of work. I don’t think I will ever stop grieving that loss, but the loving response from the art community has already started transforming that grief into something else: a feeling of deep, human connection that I’ve looked for all my life. It only took losing everything to get it.”