OLD NEWS

THE RED FOX: A FORMIDABLE PREDATOR by Mary Holland
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Proof of the Red Fox’s hunting skill is pictured – the feathers of an American Robin that it stalked, captured, plucked and ate. Imagine the stealth required to surprise a bird before it can even attempt to use flight to escape. An acute sense of hearing and smell certainly contribute to a fox’s success. Its ability to pounce high (as much as 6 feet) from a crouch, land and pin a bird with its front paws and then clamp down on its neck or head make even the most alert prey vulnerable. _NaturallyCurious

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ON
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MARTIN PARR, PHOTOGRAPHER ACCLAIMED FOR OBSERVATIONS OF BRITISH LIFE, DIES AGED 73
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Martin Parr, the British documentary photographer who captured the peculiarities of the nation with clarity and hilarity, has died aged 73. He had been diagnosed with cancer in May 2021.
“He is survived by his wife Susie, his daughter Ellen, his sister Vivien and his grandson George. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Known for his acute observations of the English class system, Parr’s images covered sunbathers and Conservative clubs, village fetes and coffee mornings, often in vivid colour and with more than a dash of humour. His iconic 1986 photobook The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton captured working-class holidaymakers in Wirral, Merseyside, and helped mark a sea change in British documentary photography, from the gritty, black and white style of the past towards a cheekier and more colourful style.
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“I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment,” Parr once said by way of a mantra.
It was when the couple moved to Wallasey in Merseyside, however, that Parr produced what he later claimed was his greatest work. The Last Resort was the product of three summers spent on the beaches of New Brighton, photographing fish and chip wrappers, crying children and fairground rides.
The director of Autograph, Mark Sealy, said: “Some people read the work as cruel, but you see the warts when you’re close to things. It wasn’t about ridicule, there was an intimate distance.
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“He treated people through his lens with a sense of equality, if you were about to shove a pie in your face, he was going to capture it regardless of who you were.”
It made his name but The Last Resort was not entirely well received. Parr faced significant criticism for the way he depicted working-class families from his privileged vantage point, with some decrying an unflattering focus on his subject’s sunburnt flesh and cheap vices. But for his admirers, this was all part of Parr’s unflinching gaze: he wanted to capture normal life as it was for most Britons, not shy away from it.
“No one contributed more to the rise of the photobook as a popular medium over the past 20 years than he did,” said the author and photographer Johny Pitts.
Thanks to his sharp, anthropological eye, Parr’s work could provoke multiple reactions – humour, empathy, disgust – often within the same image. It mirrored his own love/hate relationship with his homeland;
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Parr was not just a photographer but a collector too, of photobooks as well as postcards and strange items of memorabilia. His 2019 book Space Dogs: The Story of the Celebrated Canine Cosmonauts involved his array of paraphernalia devoted to the likes of Laika, Belka and Strelka. His collection of Saddam Hussein watches also became a book in 2004.
But photography itself was always Parr’s greatest obsession. “You have to be fearless if you’re to be a photographer,” he once said. “There’s no time for being intimidated.” _GuardianUK

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MAN IN BOTTLE, ALBUMEN SILVER PRINT FROM GLASS NEGATIVE BY JOHN C. HIGGINS, CA. 1888
<https://tinyurl.com/3yybrwpm> _JesseLocker

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HOLLYWOOD PHOTOGRAPHER EDWARD S. CURTIS by greg
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The general contours of Edward S. Curtis’s decades-long struggle to produce his 20-volume photographic epic, The North American Indian, are not the issue, though much of the details hit differently now than they did when I was a dewy-eyed child. This 2012 Smithsonian article does a fine job of laying out the top-line WTFs, like destroying his glass negatives to keep his wife from getting them in the divorce. And selling his $75,000 Kwakiutl restaged documentary to the American Museum of Natural History for $1,000 during WWI.
But what I was not prepared for Curtis’s Hollywood era.
In 1920, a broke 52-yo Curtis moved to Los Angeles, where he shot celebrity portraits, and took promotional film stills for his friend Cecil B. de Mille. Here is a hand-colored portrait of Anna May Wong, which sold at Christie’s in 2002.
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Here is one of seventeen film stills from de Mille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) in the collection of the California Historical Society.
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This is the only one that has the filmmaker in it; the rest are all posed or captured moments of the world of the film. But this one, too, of course, feels staged.
Curtis may have dismissed his commercial and commissioned work, but it still embodies his process, techniques, and aesthetic choices. Curtis has been criticized for his staging and manipulation of his North American Indian images, for the romanticization and exoticizing of his subjects, and for ignoring the active oppression and cultural violence Indigenous people were experiencing throughout his project.
The Hollywood work feels like a perfect lens for recognizing what’s going on in photographs, Curtis’s or otherwise. _greg.org

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THE (UN)DAILY PIC by Blake Gopnik
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is Alex Webb’s 1979 photo of “Mexicans arrested while trying to cross the border to the United States. San Ysidro, California,”
The image could so easily have been taken any day this year—how heartbreaking to think that nothing has really improved in almost 50 years. The very fact that desperate people feel the need to cross a dangerous border points to some kind of larger, world-wide systemic injustice that needs correction—as almost never seems to be pointed out even in so-called “liberal” publications.
But looking at this image, I’m reminded of how photojournalism of that era was always trying to rival the stylish effects of composition and color typical of modern “fine art.”
I’m not sure the situation has changed that much, except that the “documentary turn” in (post)modern fine art has freed photojournalism to go back to its earliest, ostensional model. “Just the facts, ma'am,” is as stylish a position as one could hope for, in the 21st century.
But I’m actually not sure it does a better job of communicating the facts than the earlier model did. _BlakeGopnik

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/yc7uxfvj> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT DIDN’T JUST DESIGN BUILDINGS
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Wright was never one to turn in architectural drawings of pure utility, instead approaching each one as a total artistic product. These presentations—which spanned plans for the building’s bearings to its materials and interiors—were finished off with lettering of his own design. They were singular letterforms: the O characters were made up of arcs that almost but never met; his Ss were created with a mild flourish; and the As and Hs carried eye-catching double crossbars.
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These lettering styles were meant to echo Wright’s design of the buildings, but also bore geometric traces of the Arts and Crafts movement which Wright had embraced. By using these character designs in his presentations, the architect could illustrate and deliver on a holistic vision right down to the last letter. “He believed works of architecture should be complete works of art,”
Today, Wright’s letterforms have survived, not just on his architectural drawings, but in the form of digital typefaces. The first font based on his letters arrived in 1993: dubbed Eaglefeather, it was created by designer David Siegel in partnership with the Wright Foundation.
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The font family was based on Wright’s characters for his Olive Hill designs, a 1915 project commissioned by Aline Barnsdall. The heiress had called on the architect to design a vast complex on a plot of land in East Hollywood that was dotted with olive trees. Construction stalled, however, due to budget overruns and personality clashes; only parts of the compound were ultimately built, one of which was the Hollyhock House.
Using the 19 characters Wright had hand-lettered for Barnsdall, Siegel and a fellow designer fashioned a clean, monoline typeface—the angular Es and Fs offset by the pronounced curves of the Bs and Ss. “We wanted each letter to have a draftsmanlike quality to it,” Siegel told in 1997. Believing “Olive Hill” didn’t do justice to the font’s elegance, he named it after another Wright project in Malibu.
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More Wright fonts followed, created and released by P22 Foundry, which also took over the licensing of Eaglefeather. In 2000, there was Exhibition, drawn from the letterforms on the architect’s exhibition drawings and models, while nodding to the cover of the early edition of Wright’s 1931 publication Modern Architecture. Playing with geometry and asymmetry, the font is a modernist outing with surprising features—from the sliced O to the skewed X.
Terracotta, released in 2001, is a tad more decorative, derived from Wright’s earlier Chicago designs for structures such as the Winslow (1894–95) and Husser House (1899). The font family is distinctive for its flared serifs and organic strokes. A casual Wright shows up in 2006’s Midway, a typeface based on his letterforms for the Chicago Midway Gardens (1913–29). Spontaneous and expressive, it is marked by looping strokes and quirky angles, most prominently in the W, featuring Wright’s signature intersecting cross strokes.
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The architect’s letterforms have even inspired a line of house number plaques that mirror the characters of his 1930s exhibition drawings. According to the Wright Foundation, which sells the numbers, they have been created using “45 and 60-degree slanted lines and two compass curves,” with alignment and spacing determined by Wright’s own brand of unit measurement. It’s the kind of precision that, in short, transforms typography into architecture. _artnet

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FRANK GEHRY'S MOST ICONIC WORK
<https://tinyurl.com/4w77cfam> _BBC

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THE ROLE OF ARCHITECTS IS SHIFTING: FROM SOLITARY VISIONARIES
For a long time, architecture was understood as an essentially individual activity, dependent on the figure of a creative genius and centered on the ability to solve problems through drawing. Over time, this image began to fade. The protagonism once concentrated in a few names reached its peak during the era of the starchitects and gradually became distributed among offices, collectives, and multidisciplinary teams. Today, architects are expanding their boundaries into other fields such as gastronomy, music, design, and the corporate world, applying spatial thinking to address challenges of various kinds. As social, environmental, and political crises deepen, the role of the architect continues to evolve from a solitary author to a mediator, activist, and collective agent of transformation. This shift reflects an ethical awakening and a recognition that design, regulation, and care are inseparable dimensions of contemporary practice.
"When architects work collectively, they move from being isolated authors to becoming part of a shared process of transformation", says Alina Kolar, campaign manager of HouseEurope!, a citizens' initiative that received the 2025 OBEL Award for its advocacy of the Right to Reuse across the European Union. The campaign argues that existing buildings should be prioritized over new construction, reducing unnecessary demolitions and promoting the rehabilitation of the built environment. This year marked a turning point for the Foundation, as it was the first time the OBEL Award was granted to a movement rather than a single office or project. As stated by the Foundation, "This angle is exciting for us because it is the first time we have awarded a movement and a call to action that extends beyond architects, urban planners, or people in the building sector.
HouseEurope! emerged as a collective act of advocacy, founded by a group of architects, urban planners, activists, and economists. It represents a shift in how architects engage with public life. Faced with the urgency of climate goals and the increasing loss of existing buildings, the group mobilized their professional expertise beyond the boundaries of the discipline, translating spatial thinking into political action, drafting legal frameworks and public campaigns that argue for the Right to Reuse across Europe. The proposal seeks to make the reuse of existing buildings a legal presumption, ensuring that what already stands is considered first, both as a cultural and carbon resource. HouseEurope! demonstrates how architects can act as civic agents, shaping not only spaces but the systems and policies that define them.
The project became a manifesto showing how renovation can be a democratic, ecological, and economically intelligent alternative to demolition. As the architects describe it, the Grand Parc is "a scalable reference," a model capable of inspiring public policy and design practices that view existing buildings not as constraints but as opportunities for urban and human regeneration. _ArchDaily

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ATWOOD LUNCH BOX ATWOOD, IN
<https://tinyurl.com/4k5yvkuy> _RuralIndexingProject

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FIRST LOOK: HUNTINGTON'S UPDATED AMERICAN GALLERIES by William Poundstone
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The Huntington's Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art has reconfigured six rooms of early American art. On view for the first time are recent acquisitions by Winslow Homer and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, plus the Trickey House Mural, a decorative room painting from 1830s Maine.
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At its opening in 1984, the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries consisted of just five rooms, forming a plus-sign shape around a central square. The reinstallation covers those five galleries, plus two in the Fielding wing: one that formerly displayed Early American chairs, and another with selections from the Gail-Oxford collection. A space showing videos by youthful creators of the Ghetto Film School has also been reconfigured.
The new installation is billed as thematic, but don't let that put you off. For the most part, the rooms observe chronology and geography as well as the old installation did. The display expands the scope of American art to include a few Caribbean works and of course, the Carpeaux.
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"Global Objects." This room is loosely organized around Colonial luxury goods made possible by global trade. The space has been renamed for Long Beach collectors Thomas H. Oxford and Victor Gail, and it now shows many of their furniture pieces alongside silver and ceramics from other donors.
At center left above is the only known oil portrait of Puritan missionary John Eliot. He edited the first translation of the Bible into an indigenous language (Algonquian). Henry Huntington bought both the book and the portrait for his library.
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Debuting are three small genre paintings of Dominican (British West Indies) women by the Italian-born painter Agostino Brunias (about 1730–1796). In spirit they fall somewhere between Mexican castas and Gauguin. Bruinias often portrayed his American beauties in shocking dishabille. The center picture, Free Women of Dominica, is grounded in Old Master versions of Diana and Her Nymphs.
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"A New Nation." This room, spanning the early Republic, has been opened up to allow a view into the central gallery.
Thomas Dougherty was one of the first artists to paint the American landscape. His River Rapids imagines America without actual Americans—the tiny figures wear Roman togas. Made at nearly the same time is Charles Bird King's portrait of Ioway Chief Moanahonga.
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"Zebulon Trickey House Mural." The mural is by Jonathan Poor, apprentice and nephew to the better-known muralist Rufus Porter. Such works were advertised to "those gentlemen who are desirous of spending gloomy winter months amidst pleasant groves and verdant fields." The mural consists of seven panels, of which three are currently displayed. It's the first such Eastern mural in a West Coast museum. The rest of the room displays seating and hand-painted furniture, including the Pennsylvania German schrank (wardrobe).
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Newly on view are two of the latest Fielding gifts. Above is a painted dressing table with marbleized top and silhouette portrait. In an adjacent room is a suitably large Jumbo-themed trade sign for a boot and shoe store in Peekskill, New York. Jumbo, an African elephant captured in 1882, spent 16 years at the London Zoo before P.T. Barnum purchased the creature for $10,000. Jumbo became an international sensation and a brand for anything big.
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"Contested Ground." The center square of the old VSSG is now devoted to art made circa the Civil War. Only the new Homer actually shows soldiers during wartime. It's hung on a raised platform, after the fashion of Important Small Paintings You Might Otherwise Miss, and is flanked by postbellum paintings by Eastman Johnson and (African-American artist) Edward Mitchell Bannister. I learned from the label that Johnson's maple syrup-themed "Sugaring Off" would have been understood as a middle finger to the South's plantation economy of sugar cane. The Bannister glows and might be the first of the three you'd notice from across the room.
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Does a French sculpture belong in an American wing? Houdon portraits of the nation's founders are often shown with American art of the period. Unlike Houdon, Carpeaux never set foot in the U.S., though he must score some American credentials for the fact that his studio assistant, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, created the Statue of Liberty. The Huntington is using Why Born Enslaved! as a symbol of America's original sin. Slavery is not otherwise addressed in the collection's mid-century artworks, though the display does include a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation owned by William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State. Steward also owned the room's centerpiece painting, Thomas Cole's Portage Falls on the Genesee.
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Lily Martin Spencer is best known for her gently humorous takes on 19th-century gender roles. She was also a skilled practitioner of still life. Strawberries, purchased in 2023 and shown for the first time, holds its own against three heavy hitters of American still life: Raphaelle Peale, William Michael Harnett, and John Frederick Peto.
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"Imagined Pasts." On view are turn-of-the-20th-century adaptations of Western myths (Paul Manship) as well as those of Egypt (John Singer Sargent, Jo Davidson) and Japan (Toshio Aoki). An unusual Japanese-inspired redwood panel designed for a Pasadena home provides a segue to the adjacent Greene & Greene gallery.
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"By and By: Telling Stories Through Silhouettes." This is the most distinctive theme, the one that mixes up the chronology. It juxtaposes early American silhouette portraits alongside contemporary African American art using literal silhouettes (Kara Walker) or nearly black depictions of black bodies. It's interesting, informative, and not at all dumbed-down.
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Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jay Last, who donated a huge collection of vintage commercial lithographs to the Huntington (and African art to the Fowler) also collected American silhouettes. Now in the Huntington collection, these include works by many of the best documented artists. The Last silhouettes form one wall of the display.
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The rest of the display (spilling out into an adjacent hall) includes a pop-up book by Walker, two tapestries by Diedrick Brackens, a photo piece by Todd Gray, and a 1960s triptych by Charles White. It's an idea that could stand to be realized on a larger scale (with, say, Lari Pittman and Kerry James Marshall, both absent here).
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The new hang does little to clarify the galleries' confusing floorplan. The problem isn't the themes so much as the architecture. The galleries have accreted in a series of expansion campaigns, and the installation is constrained by donors' desires/demands to keep their collections together. Several movements—early portraits, the Hudson River School, Neoclassical sculpture—are rent in two, with works you'd expect to see together instead being separated by multiple rooms. Some striking, multi-room sightlines help navigation but reveal how quirky the layout is.
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<http://tiny.cc/d16w001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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ON THE LUCAS MUSEUM WEBSITE,
the page on its museum leadership has evaporated,
but there is one for corporate sponsorships!
Rent the museum for your event!
<https://tinyurl.com/3cewue46> _CarolinaAMiranda


I'M GOING TO POST THESE LEE LOZANO DRAWINGS—
seen yesterday in LA—
because they're so delightfully bonkers
<https://tinyurl.com/4rvnemkv>
Lee Lozano, Untitled, 1961
https://tinyurl.com/mryr3f65<
Not sure who Ron K. is
but I'm glad he's living his best life
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It's been suggested to me that Ron K.
may be a reference to artist R.B. (Ronald Brooks) Kitaj,
although I'm not sure the dates line up,
given Kitaj's long residence in the UK.
But props to anyone who emails the Kitaj estate
to inquire about the artist's vacuum cleaner proclivities _MichaelLobel

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JOANNE'S GARDEN
Early December
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<https://tinyurl.com/57wc3752> _JoanneCarson