OLD NEWS

IT'S NATIONAL UMBRELLA DAY
Insect with Umbrella, lithograph by Roy Lichtenstein, 1950
<https://tinyurl.com/4snpdjfm> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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HOW TO TAKE R. CRUMB AT FACE VALUE
<https://tinyurl.com/2p9jk277>
In Untitled (Horny Harriet) (undated), ‘Horny Harriet’ appears as a teen – an optimistic estimate, considering her pigtails – drawn in a thick, bulging outline, which delineates the story of her sexual proposition to, and eventual engagement in cunnilingus with, a bovine. On an adjoining wall to this romp is an ink on paper self-portrait by the octogenarian artist, The R. Crumb Dartboard (1992). It sees the artist as a lecherous, dribbling fiend within target rings. Robert Crumb surrounds his self-portrait with an acerbic but clearly sadomasochistic text suggesting that any female viewer taking offence to him – and his work – should accept this image of him at face value and employ it for easy skewering.
Across two floors, There’s No End to the Nonsense presents work from the outset of Crumb’s career, in the 1960s, to today. It neither apologises for nor exaggerates the more questionable aspects of his still controversial oeuvre, instead placing the crudeness beside Crumb’s more touching humanisms. It is Crumb at face value, foregrounding his caustic irony, antibourgeois sentiment and love of ‘Amazonian’ women without caveats. Stabs at the public’s fondness for a more palatable type of licentious genius are made in Picasso (2025), which sees a Georges Bataille quotation alongside an image of the dwarfish master tugging at (Picasso’s lover) Marie-Thérèse’s towering figure, as she coos: ‘First he rapes the woman, then he does the painting… teehee giggle…’; in Crumb Family Covid Exposé (2021), a narrative interjection by Crumb, mid-sexual romp with his wife, winds up post-MeToo concerns: ‘To you “wokies” – is this too “rapey”?’
<https://tinyurl.com/yc5bjwmd>
A selection of Crumb’s early work made at the height of Haight-Ashbury’s 1960s comic scene is shown alongside sketches ranging from 1970 to 2025, and the only work not on paper, Untitled (1974), a painted plywood cutout in the shape of Crumb’s infamous Mr. Snoid – a strutting, short-statured sex pest. Other career-defining characters, such as the bearded Mr. Natural, also appear, albeit nostril-deep in orifices.
Unlike illustrators whose mutual interest in grotesque exaggeration – the now-fashionable homoerotics of Tom of Finland <https://tinyurl.com/ybddk96m> , or the unselfconscious BDSM of Eric Stanton – Crumb is often grouped with, his view is broader, continuously reaching into political commentary. In Conspiracy Theories! (2025) and Deep State Woman (2024, not shown here), his style is that of an anti-Norman Rockwell, an American vernacular grounded in personal paranoia, continuing to utilise the underground ‘comix’ medium to distribute countercultural nostrums. However, the show’s opener, I Don’t Know What I’m Doing (2025), makes it clear that comparisons with great social satirists like Daumier or Hogarth must end at a certain point: the work sees a typical stereotype of the Capitalist, monocle and top hat, being towed by a lowly ‘Crumb’ iteration. An endnote states: ‘This is not a political cartoon… It is a representation of my personal inner conflict.’
<https://tinyurl.com/4mn84zcs>
Evidently, Crumb’s politics stem from his deep-seated rejection of authority, whether it be at state-level or cultural – a remnant of a then-hopeful but now largely forgotten 60s counterculture. Crumb’s persistent, if reflexive, narcissism poses questions for younger generations: his images of women are oft uncomfortable, out of touch and irreverent – but misogyny isn’t the best label. It’s obvious he has a kink for built women – based on a childhood obsession with Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. But from a woman’s perspective, Crumb’s most endearing quality is the self-acknowledgement of his base perversion – a preferred outlook to a contemporary culture offering surgical services to standardise the female form. To put it lightly, he’s a proud simp for a highly specific musculature. Crumb’s unbridled id is the irreverent motor behind his work, sitting firmly between each densely hatched line. And that criticism is, evidently, another fire under his bony rump.
_Lydia Eliza Trail _ArtReview

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CHOOSE
<https://tinyurl.com/4264jvd5> _DavidShrigley

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MICHELANGELO? TWO WORKS NEWLY LINKED TO THE MASTER
<https://tinyurl.com/mrfba3bc>
Even 550 years after his birth, Michelangelo Buonarroti’s body of work appears to keep growing. Scientific analysis has linked a Pietà scene to the Renaissance master, just as an Italian researcher is claiming a bust in a Roman basilica is similarly by his hand.
First up: the painting, which depicts Mary holding the dead Christ in her arms. It was acquired by a private collector, who spotted it at Wannenes Art Auctions in Genoa. In a catalog, the lot was described as a 16th–17th century work by an anonymous artist, “inspired by the models of Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Francesco Salviati, and, of course, Michelangelo.” When the collector received the canvas in 2024, he realized it bore two signatures and sent it away for technical analysis.
<https://tinyurl.com/57fbaj2u>
The study was conducted by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage of Belgium (KIK-IRPA), which dated the painting to 1520 and 1580, within Michelangelo’s lifetime. The work’s pigments also fell within that same period: a crimson hue, Cochineal red lake, dates to 1540, while a blue smalt was also used by Michelangelo on his Sistine Chapel frescos.
X-ray fluorescence analysis further tied one of the monograms on the canvas to the Italian master. The signatures were also applied to the original dry paint layer, with crackles running through them, “so they were definitely not applied after the craquelure in the paint had formed,” Steven Saverwyns of the KIK-IRPA noted. A mysterious series of lines that accompanies the signatures has also been linked to the cryptic numbers 1-5-4 that appear in the master’s correspondence.
<https://tinyurl.com/5dv5rtsm>
Stylistic analysis offered more clues. The team found the multi-directional brushstrokes, such as the cross-hatching used to depict fabric and flesh, mirrored the same technique in The Torment of Saint Anthony. The presence of “reddish reserves” used around shapes to heighten their effect, too, represents what Michel Draguet of the Free University of Brussels called “a hallmark of the master’s hand.”
The iconography of Virgin and Christ is also one that Michelangelo returned to repeatedly—most notably his Pietà (1498–99), housed at St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Rondanini Pietà (1552–64), his last, unfinished sculpture at Sforza Castle in Milan.
<https://tinyurl.com/knutabkk>
In the current work, which has been titled Spirituali Pietà, the team has noted several of the master’s motifs, including the torso of Christ, which they note is borrowed from The Dream (<https://tinyurl.com/3b2v6axr> ca. 1533), and his arms, which mirror that of Silenus in the bottom right of A Children’s Bacchanal <https://tinyurl.com/fvvpctaf> (1533). Draguet deems the canvas “an essential milestone leading to the Bandini Pietà and the artist’s final work.”
Another Claim Emerges
Meanwhile, a bust hidden in plain sight in a Roman church has been attributed to Michelangelo by independent researcher Valentina Salerno, who suggests that it was one work among many that was secreted away to safeguard the artist’s creations.
The marble sculpture depicting Christ the Savior, held in the Basilica of St. Agnes Outside the Walls, was long believed to be the work of an anonymous artist. Salerno’s new, non-peer reviewed study, however, relies on a decade’s worth of archival research into notarial records, inventories, wills, and correspondence to link the bust to Michelangelo.
“I am not an art historian—in fact, I don’t even have a university degree,” she told Reuters, “but the strength of ​my research lies in its reliance on public archival documents.”
<https://tinyurl.com/54rbvxkz>
Though Salerno’s study shies away from stylistic analysis, she does note the bust’s resemblance to artist Tommaso dei Cavalieri. The old master was so besotted by the Italian youth that he dedicated several drawings to him in the 1530s.
The research further tests the long-held notion that Michelangelo was prone to destroy his work later in his life (he famously hacked away at the Bandini Pietà, from ca. 1547–55). Rather, Salerno suggests that his students had carefully stashed the artist’s works away in a locked chamber. It was part of Michelangelo’s “maniacal plan,” she told the AFP, to protect his artworks from being inherited by “a nephew he detested.”
“The goal was to pass on to his poor, vulnerable, non-noble descendants the material to be able to continue studying, to transmit his art to future generations,” she added.
<https://tinyurl.com/2ppxhc47> _Min Chen _artnet```

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/4c9cx627> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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45. CAPITOL STONE BURNED IN 1814 by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/3s8phvdu>
We think of the country as inevitable, but it’s always been a chancy gamble. The American Revolution’s success was thanks to lucky breaks and a handful of people pulling through while most of the country worried on the sidelines, wondering what their neighbors were thinking, joining the other side?
A scant 36 years later, the War of 1812 was another haphazard, deeply controversial near-disaster. Today, inasmuch as it’s remembered at all, it’s for the Star-Spangled Banner and the Battle of New Orleans—a victory that meant nothing strategically, as the war had already officially ended with the Treaty of Ghent 14 days prior, but which allowed the country to tell a story about a humiliating, unpopular stalemate being a glorious victory.
Who, for instance, remembers that we began the War of 1812 by invading Canada? The attempted territory grab was a dismal failure, not the easy victory Thomas Jefferson had predicted when he said taking Canada would be “a mere matter of marching.” Within two years, the war had flipped so dramatically that British troops invaded Washington, D.C. Their first stop was the Capitol: they piled up furniture in the House and Senate, mixed in rocket powder, and applied the torch. Both chambers, and the Library of Congress—3,000 volumes—were destroyed.
After the war, the nation rebuilt both its central architectural symbol and its mythology. We do ourselves a disservice, though, wallpapering over the past. Our imperfect union has always been contentious, has always required surviving infighting and failure. _TheImpatientReader

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DREAM_MEGA - FINANCIAL PLACEHOLDER
by Joel Kyack +
Lisa Anne Auerbach & Ryan Weinstein
<https://tinyurl.com/m8yvy3pt> _PostPresentMedium

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AI-ASSISTED DAVID SALLE PAINTING COPYRIGHT CONTROVERSY
<https://tinyurl.com/2trc24mn>
A painting in David Salle’s new exhibition in Los Angeles has been removed from view after critics questioned whether the painter copied another artist’s work.
Salle’s painting, Hatchet (2025), features as its primary subject a woman in a black-and-white dress—her face cropped by the edge of the canvas—brandishing a sledgehammer. The exhibition, titled “My Frankenstein,” opened on February 24, and social media chatter quickly picked up on the resemblance to Kelly Reemsten’s painting Impact (2021).
In a video that has since drawn nearly 10,000 views, the Minneapolis-based artist Josie Lewis asked: “Did Salle steal this woman’s idea, or is it just harmless appropriation?” Reemtsen later shared the video
She declined to comment
In an emailed statement, dealers drew attention to Salle’s appropriations of the past, noting that he “has historically borrowed images from popular culture, advertising, art, his own photographs, and other sources to create his own interpretations on canvas, continuing a long tradition of artists drawing from the past and from one another. In turn, his works have been used by other artists without his permission.”
They continued: “For his latest exhibition, ‘My Frankenstein,’ Salle has continued to mine a variety of images from physical and online domains, some of which may be recognizable or attributable to other sources. He acknowledges that his use of Kelly Reemtsen’s image has restarted a decades-long dialogue about authorship for new audiences. While both Salle and the gallery feel this is an important conversation to have, in consultation with David Salle, and out of respect to both artists, this work has been removed from view.”
Salle declined to comment.
The oil-and-acrylic paintings in Salle’s latest exhibition were created with artificial intelligence. In recent years, Salle has collaborated with an engineer on a generative AI model trained on his own oeuvre, feeding it curated selections of past works and prompting it to produce new image configurations.
Amy Adler, a legal professor at New York University specializing in art and law, told: “If this went to litigation, I think Salle would have a tough time defending this under fair use,” given the likeness and fact both are practicing fine artists. “[Salle] is one of the pioneers in this conversation about borrowing in art, and I respect that taking the image down was a gesture toward [Reemtsen]. Nonetheless, that it was taken down would not be legally relevant under a copyright lawsuit.”
She added that his defense would likely hinge on several key pressure points: whether the message or meaning of the original image was sufficiently transformed; whether the two works serve different purposes; and whether the disparity in the artists’ price ranges effectively places them in isolated markets.
“Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, there has been a greater emphasis on purpose [in fair use disputes]. So a defendant like Salle would have a hard time in court because he and Reemsten appear to have the same purpose, making fine art,” said Adler.
According to the exhibition’s website, the project “reflects the artist’s recognition of the conflict inherent in [Salle’s] embrace of this new, still-evolving technology.” The text adds that the works also function as a “potent metaphor for the unintended consequences of scientific ambition,” invoking Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein.
Speaking to The Art Newspaper in April 2025, on the occasion of his show “Some Versions of Pastoral”, David Salle described training his AI to produce digital images as “lengthy trial and error” but ultimately “so rewarding … [and] inviting [of] my intervention” as an artist. He added that the experience sharpened his own “ability to respond with a brush” alongside “the machine imagery evolving.”
Salle added that the process grew more complex, “when I fed the machine dozens of paintings I made that were essentially thick-brush sketches of figures in space and domestic settings of household objects, of things in nature. But the subject was not important; what was important was the creation of an edge with a brush—that’s a meaningful mark and/or shape.” _Tessa Solomon _ARTnews

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CY TWOMBLY FROGGIE by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/3wkt3e4n>
This screenshot from months ago was mis-saved into my research folder for an article I’m tryna finish, no idea why. But the story Sally Mann told about this photo is less interesting than the photo itself, and much less interesting than the fact that Twombly had this junk store froggie in his Lexington studio and called it Froggie. It’s in her Twombly photos book.
I think the frog is only like 3.5 inches tall.
[update: nvm, Tacita Dean photographed it too, and it is three apples tall.] _greg.org

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GETTY’S NEXT PST ART TO FOCUS ON EXCHANGE BETWEEN LOS ANGELES AND PACIFIC RIM
The next edition of the Getty Foundation‘s PST ART will be themed around cultural exchanges between Los Angeles and the Pacific Rim. The fourth edition of the initiative is set to open at institutions across Southern California in September 2030.
Justine Ludwig, the inaugural creative director of PST ART, officially started in her role last October but even before then she began meeting with different stakeholders around Los Angeles, “asking people what they were thinking about in this moment, what were the themes and issues they were seeing in the field, the blind spots that they felt like we had, and also, what were the advantages and challenges of past PSTs,”
The overwhelming consensus, Ludwig said, was that “all of our conversations were pointing to this as being the right time to address transpacific exchange and thinking about how the larger Pacific Rim has really been integral in forming culture in Southern California.”
She added, “A core tenant of PST since its founding has been, how do we reorient art history? How do we look at opportunities to shift the canon and think from a different perspective and more expansively?”
Among the historical moments that will likely figure into the research for PST ART exhibitions are “the arrival of Chinese porcelain in the Spanish missions, the dialogue between Los Angeles artists and their Asian counterparts after World War II, the deep connection between Japanese visual culture and modern architecture and design in Los Angeles, and the seismic influence of Korean popular culture today,” according to a release.
<https://tinyurl.com/yndrdzh9> _artnet

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IN 1964-65, POP ARTIST JAMES ROSENQUIST
painted an 86-foot-long depiction of the F-111,
one of newest fighter jets at the time,
<https://tinyurl.com/3bhv7xr3>
interspersing it with consumer imagery
to comment on the military-industrial complex.
<https://tinyurl.com/5t39fu6y> _MichaelLobel

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GUGGENHEIM UNION RALLIES OUTSIDE RECEPTION FOR NEW CONTRACT
On Wednesday in Manhattan, VIP guests trickled into the Guggenheim Museum to celebrate its buzzy Carol Bove show, while outside, its unionized staff—conservators, archivists, educators, front-facing staff, and others—rallied for a second contract that the group hopes will be more robust.
The Guggenheim staff, who voted to join UAW Local 2110 in 2023 after more than two years of negotiations with management, are back at the bargaining table under renewed urgency. Last year, the museum cut 20 jobs—7 percent of its staff—across multiple departments, marking its third round of layoffs in five years.
At the time, museum leadership cited an “overall financial picture” that “is not where it needs to be” as the reason for the job cuts, which were framed as part of a broader “reorganization.” The museum’s union said it had not been given advance notice of the layoffs. In February 2025, a grievance was filed against the museum, and contract negotiations have since positioned job security as a top priority. _ARTnews

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SOMEWHAT DISTURBED BY THE RAPTUROUS RECEPTION FOR CAROL BOVE'S GUGGENHEIM SHOW.
It's fine.
Nice interior decoration.
Fundamentally minor art.
The best-looking stuff was loaned by the best collections,
and many fine things are available from leading galleries.
The Guggenheim should be more ambitious. _AndrewRusseth

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CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS IN BEIRUT SUSPEND OPERATIONS AMID ESCALATING CONFLICT
Cultural centers in Beirut have suspended operations amid the escalating regional conflict, reports ArtAsiaPacific. They include the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, the Sursock Museum, Dar El-Nimer for Arts & Culture, and Beirut Art Center. Lebanon’s ministry of public health reported that at least 72 deaths and 437 injuries following Israeli airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon in response to Hezbollah-launched rockets toward Israel.
Several cultural institutions in Beirut have shuttered or scaled back operations amid escalating regional hostilities earlier this week.
The ongoing conflict involving the US, Israel, and Iran has entered a new phase after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon, launched rockets toward Israel on March 1. In response, Israel carried out airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs and parts of southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health reported that at least 72 people have been killed, 437 injured, and more than 83,000 displaced.
Against this backdrop, several cultural institutions in the Lebanese capital—including the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, the Sursock Museum, Dar El-Nimer for Arts & Culture, and Beirut Art Center—have suspended public programs, according to announcements shared with the press and on their own social media channels.
Beirut Art Center’s residency space, Room For Practice, said that it will remain open “to gather, rest, and create for all those whom it may serve,” offering a limited space for community use even as broader activities pause. _ArtAsiaPacific

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JACKSON STORAGE TRANSFER ROCKY FORD, CO
<https://tinyurl.com/28fzr2tv> _RuralIndexingProject

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BRITISH MUSEUM STAFF MEMBER STOLE OVER 300 PIECES OF ART BEFORE BEING CAUGHT
A former British Museum staff member stole over 300 pieces of art, selling them at an antiques market, before being caught red-handed, a new book has revealed.
Nigel Peverett, who worked at the museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings in the early 1970s, had remained a “frequent visitor” to the museum until one day in April 1992, when he was caught leaving it with 35 prints worth around £5,000.
When police, following up on the attempted theft, searched Peverett’s cottage in Kent, they discovered 169 more prints, worth an estimated £27,000. Peverett then admitted stealing a further 150 prints, which he had already sold.
Peverett had taken the antique artworks – sometimes going into the British Museum with one bag and “coming out with four” – and using a razor, had scraped off the museum catalogue numbers, or cut them down in size, before selling them through a dealer who sold them at his stall at Portobello Road antiques market. _IndependentUK

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IT'S NATIONAL CABBAGE DAY!
The Gardener, oil on canvas by Camille Pissarro, 1883-1895:
<https://tinyurl.com/ktw3mrab> _‪PeterHuestis‬