The Rake’s progress: last week in gossip

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

Andy Murray has been showing off his talents as a painter. According to the Daily Mail, the Wimbledon champion was inspired to hit the canvas after injuries stopped him playing tennis for a while. The complexity of Murray’s Abstract Expressionist-inflected style prompted the paper to invite art critic Estelle Lovatt to comment on the resulting works. The verdict? ‘Crude’ but ‘very vibrant, very energetic’.

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Following the success of Instagram-friendly ‘museum’ pop-ups dedicated to ice cream, avocados and selfies, some bright spark has taken the obvious next step: the Museum of Pizza. The venture (‘MoPi’ for short) will make its debut in New York for two weeks this October. Apparently, the attractions will include ‘pizza meditation’, a ‘cheese cave’ and, obviously, a ‘pizza art gallery’.

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Invited to fill out Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire, Ai Weiwei was nothing if not pithy. ‘On what occasion do you lie?’, asked the magazine. ‘When interviewed by Vanity Fair’, came Ai’s reply.

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To California, where the singer Chris Brown is back to doing what he does best: infuriating artists. The Brazilian artist Gabriel Picolo has accused the singer of lifting and editing his work, without crediting it, to promote Brown’s Black Pyramid fashion label.

This one is unreal:

Chris Brown went all the way to edit one of my drawings and repost it on his 42 million followers account

without credit pic.twitter.com/rvDOzpLZIw

— picolo (@_gabrielpicolo) April 27, 2018

Brown responded to Picolo’s accusations with with his signature eloquence: ‘No one cares about a damn instapic bruh […] suck it.’ Charming.

Got a story for Rakewell? Get in touch at rakewell@apollomag.com or via @Rakewelltweets.