Welcome to Midnight Art Club!

This week, between robot dogs that poop NFTs, a Warhol at $18 million, and Matisses disappearing out the back door, the art world has definitely earned its weekly dose of drama. So here we go:

THIS WEEK’S NEWS SELECTION

• Beeple and his robot dogs in Miami
At Art Basel Miami Beach, Beeple is showing robot dogs with very recognisable heads that photograph visitors and then “defecate” printed images sold as artworks. Everything went for $100,000 per robot — proof that the market absolutely loves crap, as long as it’s famous.

Recognise them? ? Warhol, Zuckerberg, Musk, Picasso, Winkelmann (Beeple)

• Warhol, Richter and the safe bets
Same fair, different vibe: a Gerhard Richter going for around $6M at Zwirner, and a Warhol featuring Muhammad Ali tagged at $18M at Lévy Gorvy Dayan. Collectors are clinging to the same comforting names, that’s true… but at least things are moving!

• Matisse heist in São Paulo
In São Paulo last Sunday, two armed men robbed the Mário de Andrade Library and walked out with 13 works, including 8 Matisses linked to the Jazz series (I’ll get to that in a second) and five Portinaris.

TO KNOW - Matisse, the art of being in recovery

We usually know Matisse for his very colourful paintings, reclining women and sun-drenched interiors, much less for his Jazz series.

So imagine this: in the early 1940s, Matisse has just come out of major surgery. He’s over 70, so big canvases on an easel, ladders, big sweeping gestures, that’s over. Most people would have seen that as the end of their career. He doesn’t. He basically tells himself:

I’m just very simply going to change tools.

He gets sheets of paper painted in gouache, then cuts into them. He calls it “drawing with scissors”. Painting turns into collage.

Henri Matisse, Jazz, 1947. Image : Yoyo Maeght.

It’s in this very intimate little lab that Jazz is born, published in 1947. Twenty works printed from his cut-outs, with a handwritten text next to them where Matisse explains what’s at stake for him in each piece: the risk of starting, the gap between what he has in mind and what actually appears, the attempts, the failures, the do-overs.

The subjects themselves look very light: circuses, acrobats… But Jazz is a bit misleading: it looks playful and simple, like a children’s game, while in fact Matisse is, between the lines, talking about life as it really is, with its risks, its doubts and its moments of resilience.

Moral of the story: asking what Matisse would do in our place can really help us move forward, and see things with a fresh eye. That’s also what art is for: stealing ideas from geniuses.

Today, these works are being pampered in museums: complete Jazz portfolios at MoMA, at the Centre Pompidou, at the Musée Matisse in Nice, under glass, soft lighting, alarms ready to scream… Except for the ones carried out of a library in São Paulo on a Sunday morning, almost as casually as the crown at the Louvre.

Apparently, they may have found a culprit though…

THE GOSSIP - The day everyone looked at a Matisse upside down

Let’s stay with Matisse but change the setting: New York, 1961.

MoMA is dedicating an exhibition to Matisse’s last cut-out gouaches. Among them, a very stripped-down little piece, Le Bateau.

Except that… the painting is hanging upside down. Oh yes. And it’s going to stay like that for 47 days, seen by more than 100,000 people, critics included. No one says a word, because after all…

If it’s hanging like that at MoMA, it must be on purpose, right?

We swallow our gut feeling, stand up straight, act like we’ve understood. Proper little soldiers. Then finally, along comes Geneviève Habert. She, something is bothering her:

Matisse would never have put the most detailed motif at the bottom and its simplified shape at the top.

She buys the catalogue, compares, comes back, checks again. She points out the problem to a guard, who basically tells her, to keep it short, that it’s not his problem.

Since nobody takes her seriously, she contacts the New York Times. The article comes out, MoMA discreetly flips the painting and calls it a moment of carelessness. Le Bateau will therefore have spent more time upside down than the right way up.

All because everyone told themselves: “If they’re showing it like that, it must be me who doesn’t understand.” Oh look, impostor syndrome again…

And apparently it wasn’t the only one… even better. If one day a painting really looks like it’s hanging upside down to you, you are officially allowed to say so. We’re actually begging you to.

Right way up or upside down? I gave you a clue earlier…

To be honest, with this Matisse it wasn’t exactly obvious, don’t you think?

THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATIONS

à New York :

• Museum : Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream, MoMA, until April 11, 2026
  Personally, I’m all about Surrealism, so I’m not complaining here. A mix of Surrealism and Afro-Caribbean influences. And while you’re there, go say hi to Matisse’s Dance on the fifth floor, just to see in real life what he was doing before the scissors.

• Gallery : Louise Bourgeois: Gathering Wool, Hauser & Wirth, 22nd Street, until April 18, 2026
  Textiles, tissus cousus, formes organiques: Bourgeois transforme la galerie en laboratoire, à voir.

à Paris :

• Museum : Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hulten, Grand Palais, until January 4, 2026. If you want to dive into a time when people were literally shooting at paintings, this one is for you!

• Gallery : Gerhard Richter, David Zwirner, until December 20, 2025, so hurry!
  A concentrated version of Richter for those who don’t have time to run to Fondation Louis Vuitton. To be seen very close-up to understand why some people pay millions for them.

à écouter :

• English : Art Basel Miami Beach, Louvre crisis deepens, Helene Schjerfbeck, The Art Newspaper
  Special episode on Art Basel Miami and the Louvre crisis, perfect to put the robot dogs into a slightly broader context.

• French : Matisse et Marguerite, le regard d’un père, MAM Paris
  An intimate Matisse, seen through his daughter’s eyes: portraits, drawings, doubts and reinventions, the perfect complement to everything we’ve already told you in Midnight Art Club.

See you next week… same day, same time!

Juliette,

To contact me: info.midnightartclub@gmail.com

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