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.

Timothée Chalamet has become the latest unlikely art-world sensation, now that some bright wag has set up an Instagram account in which the actor’s face has been photoshopped into a host of well-known paintings. The star of Call Me by Your Name and Homeland can be glimpsed playing his part in masterpieces such as The Arnolfini Portrait, American Gothic and Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit.

American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood #timotheechalamet #chalametinart

A post shared by badly photoshopped timmy (@chalametinart) on Jul 1, 2018 at 5:06am PDT

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In a letter published in the Financial Times last week, David Hockney queried the paper’s suggestion that life expectancy may have been increased by government drives to stop people smoking. ‘Smokers are living longer as well, and I was told by a doctor many years ago that what was making people live longer was the washing of hands and the cleaning of teeth,’ Hockney wrote. ‘I instinctively believed this. I am still a smoker at 81 but I wash my hands and clean my teeth regularly.’

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Theaster Gates has been hanging out with former One Direction heart-throb Harry Styles, after the latter performed a concert in Chicago. ‘Harry Styles Rocked Chicago!’, Gates declared on his Instagram feed. ‘Thank you man for your gift and friendship and vision.’ Could there be a collaborative album in the works?

Harry Styles Rocked chicago! Thank you man for your gift and friendship and vision.

A post shared by Theaster Gates (@theastergates) on Jul 22, 2018 at 6:06am PDT

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The State Department is unusually late in revealing the artist who will represent the US at next year’s Venice Biennale. Quite why the announcement has been so long in coming is anybody’s guess – but if the relevant authorities have yet to choose, art critic Jerry Saltz has a rather unorthodox suggestion…

Honestly, King Turd is so deep into the mouth of the graveyard that the artist for the this Venice Biennale should be ultra-right-wing academic-conservative figure painter Jon McNaughton – who paints batshit stuff like Obama burning the Bill of Rights & Trump saving Common Man. pic.twitter.com/qHtcpGALgR

— Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) July 23, 2018

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