OLD NEWS

PORCUPINES DENNING by Mary Holland
<https://tinyurl.com/5cxrd9xc>
Those are porcupine fecal pellets you see pouring out of the cavity at the bottom of a large Ash tree – a sure sign that this tree is inhabited by a prickly rodent. To find a porcupine den, look for the scat that accumulates outside the den as it spills onto the ground – pellets about the size of a cashew and slightly curved. Your nose should tell you when you’re near a den, even before your eyes, as both the scat and urine of a porcupine have a very distinctive smell.
Porcupines usually use dens in the winter, be they in rock crevices, hollow logs or standing trees, for protection from the weather. Well-marked trails (with scattered scat and quills) radiate out from the den tree to nearby feeding trees, often hemlock. Being nocturnal, porcupines are often in their dens during the day, but frequently up high inside the tree or hidden amongst the rocks in an outcropping, so seeing one even if you succeed in finding a den is not guaranteed. _NaturallyCurious

>>>

INTENTION
<https://tinyurl.com/yj296rzv> _DavidShrigley

>>>

PASS THE SPOON – DAVID SHRIGLEY SERVES UP A MACABRE KITCHEN OPERA
<https://tinyurl.com/3jpee87u>
Spare a thought for Amy J Payne, the gutsy mezzo-soprano who plays the title role in Opera North’s Pass the Spoon. Divas, of course, are used to leaping from castle walls or being swept away in avalanches but seldom is a singer required to be swallowed whole by a monstrous gourmand. Payne plays June Spoon, the vociferous host of a TV cookery programme, and whether or not she will be “passed” or, alas, be turned into excrement is the 11th-hour dilemma in this frankly bonkers show.
The idea was cooked up (pardon the pun) back in 2008 when Irish composer David Fennessy and director Nicholas Bone hooked up with David Shrigley, the visual artist famous for his distinctive, darkly humorous line drawings and witty captions. Described as “a sort-of opera,” it premiered at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2011.
Shrigley considers life with its mundane cruelties and responds with a scabrous wit and deadpan irreverence. In the opera, June and her hapless assistant Phillip Fork, plan a slap-up meal for the reputedly baby-eating Mr Granules. The real heroes, however, are the foodstuffs: a trio of terrified tubers, a manic-depressive egg and a banana convinced of his superiority as an exotic fruit compared with mere root vegetables. The cast is completed by a psychotic butcher and a dancing turd.
<https://tinyurl.com/5n88darx>
Fennessy’s score, played by an onstage chamber orchestra of 11 all dressed as chefs, held the attention throughout. Rooted in 20th-century modernism – at its most macabre, Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy<https://tinyurl.com/2em78eze> sprang to mind – he wasn’t averse to trotting out a tune here and there or even purloining Für Elise. Motoric rhythms, caustic strings and the hiss of sharpening knives all played their part, as did wah-wah trombone, chamber organ, harp and a kitchen drawerful of percussion. Opera North music director Garry Walker kept things tight, especially important given the orchestra was frequently required to sing and shout.
Bek Palmer’s set complete with table, counter and shiny red fridge complemented the playful costumes, designed by Shrigley in his signature style. With their tiny eyes and quivering slits for mouths, the doomed vegetables were surprisingly moving amid the general air of lunacy. The silent Mr Granules, a cross between a waddling ogre and a gluttonous businessman, was a hoot. The resourceful Bone moved his pieces around the board with a cool efficiency.
Payne worked tirelessly as Spoon, pumping out the decibels each time she hurled forth the word “soup”. She was well paired with Xavier Heatherington, who slipped effortlessly in and out of head voice as the querulous Fork. Mark Nathan was an authoritative Banana with Peter Van Hulle a curiously disturbing Butcher. Stealing the show, though, was Frazer Scott doubling as Mr Egg and the delightfully lavatorial Shit.
_Clive Paget_GuardianUK

>>>

MAE ROCKLAND TUPA, HANUKKAH LAMP, 1974
<https://tinyurl.com/2dff2f6j> _MichaelLobel

>>>

A FORGOTTEN FLOWER PAINTER: MARIE-ALEXANDRINE-OLIMPE ARSON by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/g4hw001>
The Getty Museum has acquired a watercolor Flowering Cactus by Marie-Alexandrine-Olimpe Arson (1814–1901). Pupil, collaborator, and protégé of famed flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Arson became the youngest artist ever to win a medal at the Salon (she was 21). Yet Arson's brilliant career ended just five years later. In 1840, after the death of Redouté, she entered the convent of Neuilly-sur-Indre. There she taught drawing and lived another 61 years in obscurity.
The Louvre holds nothing of Arson's output. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has her Bunch of Centifolio Roses, <http://tiny.cc/l4hw001> signed and dated 1832. That early watercolor has the plain white background associated with Redouté and botanical illustration. In later work Arson veered towards still life. A Basket of Flowers <https://tinyurl.com/y696huv4> (1839), sold at Christie's in 2022, is shown on a ledge in the corner of a garden. The lush effect is completely different from the austerity of Flowering Cactus. Measuring 13-9/16 by 10-7/16 in., the Getty watercolor is signed on the terracotta pot and includes a trompe l'oeil water droplet. As far as I can tell, Flowering Cactus is only the second Arson work to enter a museum collection.
Cacti had been known to Europeans since Columbus' voyages. It wasn't until the early 1800s that a profusion of ornamental species were imported to Europe. Redouté painted flowering cacti as if they were posies (LACMA has an example). But with its restricted palette and attention to the sculptural form of the cactus, Arson's image seems timeless and even modern.
At the Getty, Flowering Cactus augments a group of watercolor still lifes and nature studies by women artists Giovanna Garzoni, Maria Sibylla Merian, Barbara Regina Dietzsch, Sarah Stone, and Hilma af Klint.<http://tiny.cc/q4hw001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

>>>

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/4zrxpm7v> _LisaAnneAuerbach

>>>

THE GLITTER AND DOOM OF LEE MILLER'S VISION by Michael Glover
<https://tinyurl.com/ycx9d67e>
Who was Lee Miller? There were two of her, really.
One was the photographer featured in a current retrospective at Tate Britain, who was born in New York in 1907, moved to Paris in 1929, and then to London. She went to Europe in restless pursuit of the desire for others to believe in everything she had to offer — her multiple gifts as an artist, for example.
The other was a model. Modeling in New York in the 1920s was her opening gambit. She had the looks and poise to succeed and her talents were quickly recognized. She arrived in Paris in the flapper era — sinuously tall, her hair close-cropped. My goodness, that wonderful androgynous look! She seemed made for the part — and the historical moment.
But modeling had its limitations. Was there not too much idle self-regard in that ready capitulation to another’s camera? Perhaps. She had too much energy and ambition to be someone else’s glamorous image of the passing moment.
<https://tinyurl.com/4c7xa4mx>
So she went to work for Man Ray in Paris. She modeled for him — but it was much more than that. They worked together on Surrealist experimentation. She took pictures and did some odd freakery on them: solarization, deep shadow, the isolating of strange and provocative detail. They collaborated, but unsurprisingly she did not get full credit for what she did. He tended to claim that what emerged from the studio of Man Ray (emphasis on Man?) was his. She needed to wrest back control, to be the one calling the shots.
<https://tinyurl.com/58s4m7mt>
She returned to London in 1939 and worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue magazine. The shadows of war loomed over. Her art began to take on a new urgency, and to strike a note that any small and embattled country needs to strike if it is to retain its morale, its need to fight back against a dangerously predatory enemy.
<https://tinyurl.com/mr43phbw>
She made images of women in the not-so-glamorous clothing that wartime demanded, but she did it with style and aplomb — in Miller’s hands, the stuff of war looked positively alluring. In addition to the working women, she photographed the London Blitz. In one photograph, a bomb-blasted gap in a London terrace looks like a conscious act of framing. She posed a model in a ruined street, as if a fleeting instance of beauty could defy the casual barbarism of war. She showed her great courage in roaming those dangerous streets to produce images that were odd, spirited, and spirit-lifting, too — and possessed a quality of defiant humor.
Following this, Miller went to Europe to work as an accredited war correspondent with the US Army. Nothing fazed her. She was determined to stare hard into the face of the awful reality of evil on its filthy rampage.
<https://tinyurl.com/34ettwv5>
She had her friend, Life magazine photographer David Scherman, photograph her bathing in Hitler’s bathtub <https://tinyurl.com/a2897ysv> at his abandoned residence in Munich the day of his suicide in Berlin — that old mix of defiance, poignance, and brazen, oddball humor. She went to the Nazi concentration camps and photographed the worst things that any human being might ever witness. This gallery has a warning notice: not for children. I was told not to photograph her images so I can’t show you what she saw.
Lee Miller pushed herself to the limits and beyond, and suffered for it. In later life, she returned to a farm in Sussex and became a gourmet chef, leaving behind the nightmares that she captured on film.
<https://tinyurl.com/25fh3vkf> _Hyperallergic

>>>

HORSES VIOLA, TN
<https://tinyurl.com/bdf99jfn> _RuralIndexingProject

>>>

MONDOBLOGO IS BACK
<https://tinyurl.com/4urer2m6>
It was nice to start seeing emails from Patrick Parrish in my inbox again, but it was not until he posted his speedrun of the recent design auctions in NYC that I realized how much I’d missed his design blog, MONDOBLOGO, in my online life.
Here is Parrish’s photo of Marcel Breuer’s lights reflected across a Ron Arad chair, one of two that didn’t sell at Sotheby’s. He also has photos of a private dinner being set up in the gallery, which used to be the Whitney Museum of American Art, then the Met, then the Frick. _greg.org

>>>

LOUVRE CLOSED AS WORKERS BEGIN STRIKE, IN LATEST BLOW TO FRENCH MUSEUM
<https://tinyurl.com/5d2xc5xs>
The three major unions representing Louvre workers—the CGT, CFDT, and Sud—announced the strike last week in a notice to France’s Ministry of Culture. The notice, shared with press, reads, “The theft of 19 October 2025 highlighted shortcomings in priorities that had long been reported.” The notice further said that museum workers “feel that they are now the last line of defense before collapse,” and that management had failed to create “sufficient awareness of the crisis we are facing.” The Louvre Museum in Paris was forced to close on Monday after hundreds of employees went on strike to protest “increasingly deteriorated working conditions.”
Around 400 of the museum’s 2,100 staffers participated in the strike, blocking the museum’s iconic pyramid
For the striking workers, the brazen robbery of $102 million in French crown jewels in October was clear evidence of deep rot and dysfunction in the museum’s operations.
Indeed, it has been a difficult year for the Louvre, with staff repeatedly warning of bad conditions at the museum and threatening to strike. In January, amid staff unrest, a memo written by director Laurence des Cars leaked to the press. In it, des Cars warned of water leaks, overcrowding, a “proliferation of damage in museum spaces.” Des Cars went on to call for a major overhaul of the museum, which is run by the state. A week later, President Emmanuel Macron announced an extensive renovation plan, estimated to cost €700–800 million. But with work on that not to be completed until 2031, it did little to alleviate staff discontent. In June, the museum closed when staff launched a wildcat strike.
In October, after the infamous burglary, the staff—along with the general public—was furious in the aftermath, even booing des Cars in a staff meeting days after. An official report then found that the museum’s security systems were outdated and inadequate, while union officials complained about cut hours and staff reductions, which they felt hindered security.
As if that wasn’t enough, the museum was forced to close its southern Sully wing in late November after structural weaknesses were found in some of the wings. A water leak around this time also damaged hundreds of books in the museum’s Egyptian antiquities department library _ARTnews

>>>

THROUGH A MUDDLED HISTORICAL TRADITION,
Judith was associated with the festival of Hanukkah.
In some accounts, she made cheesy pancakes
<https://tinyurl.com/3spddc9s>
for Holofernes so he would ask for wine, get drunk, and she could kill him.
<https://tinyurl.com/2vfwuyzj>
Although there’s no sign of it in European art,
<https://tinyurl.com/ykjy7uj>
here are some pictures of Judith anyway.
<https://tinyurl.com/3p67zj8h> _MichaelLobel

>>>

ART MUSEUMS WERE PREPARED FOR VANDALS. THEN CAME THE THIEVES.
Museums spent the past few years sinking resources into outsmarting climate-change activists who sloshed tomato soup, cake icing and other foodstuffs all over iconic masterpieces to get attention. Now, museums and cultural spaces are battling a bigger problem: Brazen art thieves.
In the past two months, two dramatic heists—first at Paris’s Louvre Museum, another on Sunday at a public library in São Paulo—represent a different threat level altogether, one involving weapons, threats to staff, getaway vehicles and missing artworks worth over $100 million, all happening in broad daylight. The result has sent a chill throughout the art world as security directors prepare for fewer foodfights and more brute-force attacks.
“Copycat crimes are inevitable because everyone is talking about these thefts, and the bad guys all think they’re too smart to get caught,” said Geoff Kelly, a retired art-crime investigator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who now works for a private firm, Argus Cultural Property Consultants. “It’s a combination of hubris and arrogance.”
The uptick in high-profile heists is a massive and elusive headache for cash-strapped museums already under pressure to attract tourists and showcase their collections even as they sidestep political tripwires. As art values skyrocket, criminals increasingly see easy payout potential in their treasures on view, no matter how impossible it may be to resell afterward. _WallStreetJournal

>>>

PUVIS DE CHAVANNES WAS BORN ON THIS DATE IN 1824.
The Shepherd's Song, 1891, from a great cycle at The Met,
shows his odd theatrical moodiness,
almost like he's predicting Paul Delvaux and the Surrealists:
<https://tinyurl.com/y3ehwxcf> _‪PeterHuestis‬

>>>

GIMME THE LOOT.
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art said it will return three Khmer Empire sculptures to Cambodia as part of its commitment to removing unlawfully obtained objects from its collection. The works—Head of Harihara, The Goddess Uma, and Prajnaparamita—are believed to have been looted more than 50 years ago during Cambodia’s civil conflict. A fter Cambodian officials questioned the provenance of Khmer works in the museum’s holdings, curators reviewed acquisition files and found missing export permits and evidence that the objects had passed through known traffickers. According to museum director Chase F. Robinson, the circumstances raised significant ethical concerns. The returns are the first under a Smithsonian-wide policy adopted in 2022 that urges all 21 museums to consider broader historical factors—including colonial-era plunder and illicit trade during periods of war—when evaluating repatriation claims. Cambodia’s culture ministry welcomed the Smithsonian’s openness, noting that decades of unrest left the country vulnerable to looting. Officials are now discussing ways for the works to remain on view through partnership agreements. The move aligns with similar efforts at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, which is preparing to return 13 Cambodian objects linked to the late dealer Douglas A. J. Latchford, whose network has been tied to widespread art trafficking. _ARTnews

>>>

TRUMP SAYS BUILDING ‘TRIUMPHAL ARCH’ IN D.C. IS TOP DOMESTIC POLICY PRIORITY
<https://tinyurl.com/yj8jpw3p>
Amid concerns that he has failed to address a worsening affordability crisis, with health insurance premiums about to spike dramatically for over 20 million Americans, Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that his domestic policy chief’s main priority is building a triumphal arch for Washington DC. _GuardianUK

>>>

`JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S JANKY ART POPS UP AT AUCTION by Ben Davis
<https://tinyurl.com/56cu5bzs>
I’ve speculated before about the meaning of Jeffrey Epstein‘s ghoulish taste in art. Well, now we have some more answers about what happened to his collection, and what was in it.
The new details surfaced in a New York Post story, which reports that the New Jersey auction house Millea Bros. Auctioneers has been selling off bits of art and other decor from Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion—though with no indication that that’s where the items are coming from. Daniel Weiner, an attorney representing Epstein’s estate, told the Post that the items had been disposed of in “a bulk sale—not a consignment—last year to a NYC metro-area auction house.”
The proceeds benefited the estate’s administration, which includes paying settlements to Epstein victims. Unfortunately, because of Epstein’s “unique” taste, his art just isn’t worth very much.
This is not the first time it appeared on the auction block. Last year, my colleague Annie Armstrong noted that a canvas of a woman showering by Brooklyn artist Limor Gasko, from his Palm Beach property, was sold for $8,500 by Neely Auction as “Jeffrey Epstein commissioned art.”
Earlier this year pictures of the interiors of Epstein’s Manhattan abode, which prominently featured a bronze sculpture of a woman suspended on a rope, dangling in his stairwell. That work seems to have been sold off by Millea Bros. in June. It went for $1,500.
The “hanging woman” artwork was a bit of an enigma. Indeed, I thought that it might not even be an artwork, since Epstein had a penchant for simply buying art-like things, as if to keep visitors guessing. Well, according to the Millea Bros. listing, the piece is the work of a French artist, Arnaud Kasper. The auction house provided the title Female Nude, and noted that the sculpture is marked as being number six from an edition of eight.
Kasper is a fairly obscure artist. On his website, he shows an identical suspended bronze figure he calls Regard sur le monde (2019), also from an edition of eight.
As it turns out, a version of the notorious sculpture, which launched much speculation about its sinister meaning when glimpsed in Epstein’s home, is located at the City Hall in the town of Sarrebourg, in Eastern France. The artist has also installed white variants as outdoor attractions elsewhere in France,
Kasper does not seem to have ever shown the figure in a wedding dress, as it was displayed in Epstein’s mansion. Putting it in a dress might have been an affectation of Epstein himself—so I was half right that it was a made-up artwork.
<https://tinyurl.com/mtbfv335>
The other minor mystery of Epstein’s art collection had been the painting of a woman baring her breast, Femme Fatale (ca. 1905), by Fauvist artist Kees van Dongen. It stood out as a rare bit of blue-chip art among Epstein’s collection of random props and fakes. The original Femme Fatale would be worth millions.
And, indeed, Epstein’s work turns out to have been less than it appeared, like most of his decor. Back in July, Millea Bros. sold a work that seems to be the one photographed in Epstein’s home behind his desk, listed as “After Kees van Dongen.” The medium is described as “large giclee on canvas,” meaning it is a high-quality print scaled to look like a painting.
That lot sold for just $275, probably less than the value of the frame, which is from Eli Wilner and Company, one of New York’s major high-end specialty frame dealers.
<https://tinyurl.com/2p9m8aje>
Elsewhere, there’s a maquette by sculptor Tom Otterness that the Post identifies from photos of Epstein’s mansion, where it seems to have been used as a bookend. It depicts two bulbous cartoon figures dancing atop a big bag of money. A giant version in bronze was installed on Park Avenue back in 2003. Millea Bros. sold it for $5,000, making it one of the pricier items we know about.
There was also a small painting that copies a work by little-known Italian rococo painter Giuseppe Nogari (1699–1766). It is listed as “After Giuseppe Nogari,” though no date appears to indicate when the copy was painted. It went for $500.
<https://tinyurl.com/2sr6ey2k>
The Post notes that a number of lots in these sales are listed as being associated somehow with the late French decorator Alberto Pinto, who is known to have styled Epstein’s Upper East Side pad. Since Millea Bros. doesn’t indicate which lots came from the Epstein trove, it remains to us to guess whether, say, the set of “French erotic engravings, ex-Alberto Pinto,” which sold in July for $425, belonged to him.
One item definitely glimpsed in Epstein’s house and sold by Millea Bros. is a painting of a misshapen, orange-skinned head with large, glowering eyes and stringy hair. Millea Bros. touted it as an “Expressionist style oil on canvas” from the “late 20th century.” It bears the signature “Melia,” but the artist remains unknown as of now. It sold for $850.
<https://tinyurl.com/yuw3tjz4>
Speculation is rife about this painting, and at least one online commenter has joked that it is a portrait of Donald Trump, with whom Epstein had a friendship that went sour. There is no indication that it is. However, Epstein was known to keep deliberately unsettling art depicting public figures in his house, most notably Parsing Bill, the infamous image of Bill Clinton in a blue dress by New York Academy of Art student Petrina Ryan-Kleid, so the speculation is not way off base _artnet

>>>

KAMISAKA SEKKA FROM MOMOYOGUSA (A WORLD OF THINGS) 1909-1910
<https://tinyurl.com/24hw5exm>
<https://tinyurl.com/y5abzxwy>
<https://tinyurl.com/3w748cpw>
<https://tinyurl.com/mrxvjjm5>
<https://tinyurl.com/mryxdcn4> _RabihAlameddine