— Chapman Bros Plan Tattoo Parlor: Artists Jake and Dinos Chapman want to launch a tattoo parlor in their hometown of Hastings, England, but first they must raise £25,000 on the Art Fund’s new crowd-funding site. The proposed show would take place at Jerwood Gallery with the brothers applying the tattoos. “We will be seeking out the dark underbelly of Hastings, to find its seething evil,” Jake said. “And then we’re going to tickle it.” [The Guardian]
— Stamp Sale Shatters World Records: A rare 19th-century, one-cent magenta postage stamp from British colonial Guyana set a new world record when it sold for $9.5 million at Sotheby’s New York on Tuesday. In just under two minutes an anonymous collector calling in by phone snapped up the tiny stamp, which Sotheby’s had valued at $10-20 million. Supposedly the only surviving example of its kind, it was made in 1856 and has broken a world record price four times since 1922. [Art Daily]
— Delaware’s “Isabella” Falls Short at Auction: The first painting up for sale by the Delaware Art Museum, William Holman Hunt’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil,” fell short of Christie’s low estimate of $8.4 million, only achieving $4.25 million on Tuesday morning. USA Today reports that the pre-Raphaelite painting sold in two minutes and speculated that the low sale price might push the museum to sell up to four works to reach its goal of $30 million. The institution initially attempted to sell “Isabella” privately, but wasn’t offered a high enough bid. [USA Today]
— Old Institutions Get Help With Instagram: Meet photo retoucher Dave Krugman, the man who has helped institutions that are not so savvy on social media (the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum) build their Instagram presences and attract younger audiences. [NYT]
— Saltz Lampoons Abstract Painting Trend: “Galleries everywhere are awash in these brand-name reductivist canvases, all more or less handsome, harmless, supposedly metacritical, and just ‘new’ or ‘dangerous’-looking enough not to violate anyone’s sense of what ‘new’ or ‘dangerous’ really is, all of it impersonal, mimicking a set of preapproved influences.” [NYM]
— Ceramics in the Spotlight: Ceramics are more and more popular with artists and curators, but not all collectors are on board. [TAN]
— Massimo Torrigiani and Davide Quadrio will curate Contemporary Istanbul’s New Horizons section, which will host China as this year’s guest country. [Art Daily]
— Edward Biberman’s New Deal mural “Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice” is the centerpiece of LACMA’s exhibit on the history of Venice. [LAT]
— London gallery Victoria Miro has expanded its roster and nabbed Kara Walker, Eric Fischl, Secundino Hernández, and Celia Paul. [TAN]
ALSO ON ARTINFO
Art Basel Kicks Off With a Big Bang of Serial Sales
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See Highlights From Art Basel’s Feature Section
Collector Profile: Michael and Seren Shvo Buy From the Gut
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