Catherine Opie

Touching the Art is kind of like Borat meets Gallery Girls in the best possible way. In the parodic webseries, VFILES star and Dazed columnist Casey Jane Ellison interviews a panel of art world thinkers, all while wearing black lipstick and speaking through a healthy dose of vocal fry.

After six years of court battles, Panamanian photographer Patrick Cariou has dropped his copyright case against artist Richard Prince. The two have settled outside of court. [The Art Newspaper]

Though you still can’t click on Richard Prince’s “Canal Zone” paintings up on his website. [Richard Prince]

Art gallery magnate Larry Gagosian has negotiated a $48.8 million mortgage on his Chelsea gallery. Thanks to this tabloid-y piece for letting us know that Gagosian uses Bank of America! [Commercial Observer]

If you go to the Sydney Biennale, the Guardian is here to inform you that Pippilotti Rist’s installation contains the “largest uncircumcised penis you are ever likely to see in an artwork.” [The Guardian]

The artists are back at MOCA. Last night, MOCA announced that artist board members John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, and Barbara Kruger will rejoin the museum after leaving in July 2012. Mark Grotjahn has joined their board, effectively replacing Ed Ruscha. [The Los Angeles Times]

Art Recovery Group, a new competitor to the Art Loss Register, a private company that recovers stolen artworks, opened its offices in London this week. [Art Hostage]

This week’s proof that doge is planning to appropriate every meme. [Doge2048]

What’s the point of writing about culture if the world is gonna end? I’ve been severely depressed since reading this Nation piece last night, “The Coming ‘Instant Planetary Emergency’”, another essay suggesting that humanity may end within the century. While we need the reminder, I wish these articles would come with a call-to-arms, like ‘don’t have kids’ or ‘meet at 5 PM outside the White House to urge the government to tax petroleum’. Adbusters basically organized Occupy Wall Street, so if writers chose, they could direct attention elsewhere. [The Nation]

Looks like the MoCA Board is already more attractive to artists who left during the Jeffrey Deitch debacle. Catherine Opie has publicly told the LA Times that she’s interested in serving on the board. [The L.A. Times]

Art Critic Deborah Solomon heads to The Colbert Show to promote her book on Norman Rockwell. She shows Stephen Colbert that he’s not a very good art critic. [Gallerist]

While we’re on the apocalypse, here’s some listicle porn: 16th century illustrations depicting the end of the world from Taschen’s Book of Wonders. [The Verge]

Artist and former MOCA board member Catherine Opie gives her thoughts on the possible LACMA-MOCA merger. [ArtInfo]

Mat Gleason pulls apart LACMA Director Michael Goven’s statement on the possible merger with MOCA. It’s a great between-the-lines read, but the stuff that’s not so between-the-lines is perhaps most interesting. Gleason points out that Goven is clearly asserting that in this merger, MOCA will be dissolved. [Huff Po]

Janaina Tschape lost $150k to her assistant, who traveled in luxury and spent money on EZPasses for her family. [NYPost]

The Times has a front page feature on how concerns about the Art Market’s lack of regulation is rising. The article is a 101 course on the gallery and auction world, and lists anything from gallery failure to list prices at their door (not a real problem) to third party guarantees (actual problem). Our favorite exchange in the piece occurs over the subject of “Chandelier bidding”, a practice in which auctioneers bring the price of an object up in the absence of bids, by pointing to the ceiling, and grabbing them out of thin air.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable, given the clientele and players, to have that little bit of theater,” Mr. Aponte, the consumer affairs commissioner, had said in 1986 during an earlier debate.

Mr. Feigen, the art dealer, said in later hearings that he did not find that argument compelling.

“If I want drama, I’ll go to Broadway,” he said, “not to a financial market.” [NYTimes]

We read a lot of complaints about Blouin ArtInfo’s Canada’s Top 30 Under 30. Listicles suck and older, under-recognized artists need the attention seemed to the gist of it. As a Canadian, you’ll forgive me for giving this one a pass. As far as I’m concerned there aren’t enough lists like this one! [Blouin ARTINFO]

Catherine Opie discusses her new series of introspective, “formal” portraits on view at Regen Projects and her departure from MOCA. Lots of great stuff in here including this bit of galling info: Opie left MOCA when she learned that a day after she’d donated a portfolio to preserve a person’s job in Education, that person was let go. [Los Angeles Times]

International Art English gets its own feature in the UK. Many Triple Canopy readers may remember the term from last year—David Levine and Alix Rule coined the term in the journal last year after unleashing a computer program that analysed languages on an archive of e-flux press releases. Andy Beckett asks for their reflections on art speak once more for this article. [The Guardian]

Frieke Janssens’ eyeroll inducing photographs of smoking youngsters in period costumes have been brought to our attention thanks to AFC’s new intern Christina Capela. We’ve got nothing to say about this work, except to note that Nir Hod’s paintings depicting the like at Paul Kasmin were marginally better. Mysteriously, they too got a write up from Huffpo. We’re waiting for a third story to appear on the site so we can write up a trend piece. [Huffington Post]

MoCA’s controversial forced resignation of Paul Schimmel can officially be upgraded to SOS. In a series of open letters and public resignations, MoCA board members have spent the past week letting the museum know what they think of its decision.