Welcome to our very first edition of Midnight Art Club!

So happy to have you here with me. As you’ll see, this is a place where we talk about art normally, no pretension, no jargon, just the pleasure of understanding and discovering.

Every week, you’ll get carefully picked art news, a few stories about artists or movements tied to what’s happening now, a little gossip, and our recommendations!

THIS WEEK’S NEWS SELECTION

Lately, the art news has been impossible to ignore. Last week was especially intense, so here is a very quick roundup to keep you from feeling lost at the dinner table:

• Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) from 1940 sold at Sotheby’s New York for $54.7M.
It set a new auction record for a female artist, and I will tell you more about Frida just after this.

• Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer from 1914 to 1916 reached $236.4M.
It became the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction.

• Maurizio Cattelan, the artist behind the banana taped to the wall that sold for $6M in 2024, saw his famous gold toilet America sell for only $12.1M at Sotheby’s.
A single bid, just slightly above the melt value of the gold itself, which is a good reminder that the art market is not always wild and irrational.

TO KNOW - Frida Kahlo, the moment a tramway made an artist

Frida Kahlo was born in a hospital bed, which in itself is nothing unusual… except she was 18 at the time.

In 1925, Frida was 18, living her student life and dreaming of becoming a doctor. Then fate stepped in. The bus she was riding was hit by a tram in Mexico City. She survived, just barely, but her body was shattered: A broken spine, a crushed pelvis, months of immobility, a plaster corset from neck to hips. It was there, literally stuck in bed, that she began to paint seriously and became the Frida Kahlo we all know today (at least by name) the one breaking records…

Her father set up a special easel for her and fixed a mirror above her bed. Not (only) to stare at herself, but simply because SHE was the only thing she could paint. That is how her first self portraits were born, without many other options.

Later she would say:

I paint myself because I am often alone and because I am the subject I know best.

And this was only the beginning of her wild life: a free and chaotic relationship with Diego Rivera, famous lovers including Leon Trotsky, politics, brilliance, mess. She lived at least a hundred lives, and I promise I will come back to her again. If you cannot wait, you can already dig in by watching the biopic starring the incredible Salma Hayek.

The takeaway : sometimes all it takes is a small push or a very big crash to set a destiny in motion and break a few records along the way.

As for who bought the painting, no one knows yet, but it may resurface in 2026 at the major retrospective Frida: The Making of an Icon at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston from January to May, then at the Tate Modern in London from June 2026 to January 2027. A major exhibition that will revisit her entire body of work and her influence, so if you’re around…

The painting El sueño (La cama) sold at Sotheby’s.
And with all this in mind, I imagine you are not seeing it quite the same way anymore?

THE GOSSIP - Without wanting to reopen this debate for the millionth time…

Without wanting to reopen the eternal question of what can actually be considered art, a debate that was very much revived last year with Cattelan’s banana, it seems that even professionals get a little lost sometimes…

Back in 2015, at the Museion in Bolzano in Italy, an installation by Sara Goldschmied and Eleonora Chiari titled Where shall we go dancing tonight? was on view.
Picture a messy end of party scene with empty bottles, confetti and trash bags (photo below). A real commentary on the excess of the eighties, on capitalism, on chaos.

Except the museum cleaning staff arrived early in the morning, saw the scene, and VERY naturally thought:

Oh. Trash. Let us clean this up.

Thanks to this excellent initiative, the entire artwork ended up in the bin.
To their credit, they sorted everything properly: plastic in one container, glass in another.

When the museum realized what had happened, panic followed. How do you explain this to the public? To the artists?

In the end, the story almost reinforces the concept of the piece. It is hard to find a more perfect example of how easily we confuse art, chaos and trash.

And this was not even the first time. In 2001, a Damien Hirst installation was also accidentally cleaned up in a London gallery. A wonderful track record.

So if you have ever been to an exhibition and hesitated about whether you were allowed to sit on that ONE chair or not, feel free to feel a little less alone and a little less silly next time.

© Eleonora Chiari

If you want the full juicy story behind this mistake, you can read this here

THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATIONS

In New York:

• Museum: Calder’s Circus at the Whitney Museum, on view until March 9, 2026. A miniature circus entirely handmade by Calder with wire, fabric, corks and scraps of almost nothing. It is incredibly poetic, incredibly clever, and honestly impossible to watch without smiling.regardant.

• Gallery: DownTown/Uptown, at Lévy Gorvy Dayan. A stunning exhibition created in collaboration with Mary Boone. It brings together Basquiat, Schnabel, Warhol and Sherman, among others, to recreate the atmosphere of New York in the eighties.
  You have until December 13 to see these masterpieces.

In Paris:

• Museum: Gerhard Richter at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. I have not seen it yet, but I have heard only glowing reviews. I cannot wait to tell you more. It is on view until March 2, 2026.

• Gallery: Lee Ufan: Response, gallery Mennour. A solo show by one of my favorite artists. He explores emptiness, space and the idea of the artist’s right place. On view until December 20.

To listen:

• Podcast: Art Talks - Bullshit Art. Two episodes of 20’ each. I love this podcast. It breaks down how art has been deconstructed through time. Perfectly aligned with the eternal debate suggested by the title.

To contact me : info.midnightartclub@gmail.com

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