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.

Star Wars director George Lucas has caused controversy with his ambitions to build a museum of ‘narrative art’ – a broad genre that includes everything from paintings by Degas and Winslow Homer to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoons. Whatever one makes of Lucas’s approach to art history, there can no doubt that he’s invested heavily in the collection.

This is in stark contrast to Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films. In an interview with SFX magazine, Hamill admits to having been an avid collector of comic books – a hobby he abandoned when prices got out of hand. ‘I thought, “What the heck am I spending $11,000 on a ten-cent comic book for?” It’s crazy,’ he said. Hamill has since switched to collecting an altogether less dear commodity – to wit, cereal boxes.

*

Last week, Nice’s Musée d’art moderne et d’art contemporain held a press conference about a forthcoming exhibition dedicated to Yves Klein, one of the city’s most famous sons. One visitor, straining to hear a speech by former Nice mayor Christian Estrosi, edged towards the front of the press pack and unwittingly trampled over a Klein installation of blue pigment on the museum floor, treading powdery traces of Yves Klein Blue in his wake. Perhaps he was seeking to start a new modern art trail?

*

It seems that veteran US broadcaster Alex Jones, long known as a conspiracy theorist, is hoping to set the record straight. A lawyer representing Jones – who is currently embroiled in a custody battle with his estranged wife – has suggested that his increasingly bizarre rants are not made in earnest, and that he is in fact a ‘performance artist’. Well, aren’t we all?

*

Theresa May’s surprise announcement of a general election has raised a few eyebrows – the Rake’s included. The vote will take place on 8 June, the day that Grayson Perry’s show at the Serpentine Gallery is set to open. Its title? ‘The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!’

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