OLD NEWS

PROTOZOA' FROM 'TOUT L’UNIVERS', 1958-1975)
<https://tinyurl.com/yspe986m> _RabihAlameddine

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THIS ARTIST ELEVATED HIS SUBJECTS — WITH WOODEN CLOGS by Sebastian Smee
<https://tinyurl.com/p5jyrtry>
You’re looking at a mid-18th-century painting by Jean-Étienne Liotard in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. You’re wondering, possibly, about the shoes.
They’re high-heeled Turkish clogs, or nalin, worn by women in the Ottoman Empire to keep their feet away from slippery soap and dirty water in the bathhouses. Often carved from a single piece of hardwood, they were decorated with mother-of-pearl or tortoiseshell inlay, the straps adorned with embroidery or jewels.
Unlike the tapering points of stilettos, which became popular in the West in the 1950s, the clogs’ supporting plates fan out near the base to maximize stability. The higher the plates, and the fancier their embellishment, the greater the wearer’s status.
The woman, holding a slender black smoking pipe, has much higher nalin than her companion, accentuating the height differential. Her status alongside the attendant is clear, too, from her sumptuous clothes: a richly embroidered red robe, scarves wrapped around her neck, a long necklace of gold coins and a filigree bracelet.
The attendant’s attire is more modest, although the shimmering pink and dull green stripes of her robe are a ravishing combination. She holds a tray with a pot of henna and a double-sided comb.
The picture, it’s clear, is a fiction — although more chaste than the eroticized fantasy pictures of “Oriental” bathhouses that became so popular in 19th-century European art. Since that tradition was not yet established when Liotard painted this picture, it may make more sense, suggests Charles Kang, a curator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (which holds a number of Liotard works), to see Liotard more as a sort of proto-ethnographer — concerned with authenticity even if prone to getting some things wrong — than a proto-Orientalist.
Between 1738 and 1742, he had lived in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and had traveled widely, even spending time in Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal state at the time. Returning to Europe, he fashioned himself as le peintre turc, or “the Turkish painter,” and moved about Europe’s capital cities wearing Ottoman robes, cap and baggy pants. This was almost a century before Delacroix’s travels in North Africa, and 30 years before “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” the Turkish-themed opera (or “singspiel”) that established Mozart’s reputation.
This painting is best understood, I think, as a domestic genre painting set in a foreign land — an exercise that gave Liotard a chance to show what he had learned while abroad, as well as a pretext to go to town with patterned fabrics and rich colors.
The brilliance of Liotard’s work certainly warranted a bit of showing off. Born in Geneva, he had trained as a miniaturist before turning to portraiture and had practiced trompe l’oeil. Most of his clients were aristocratic British contemporaries of Sir William Ponsonby, who had taken him to the Ottoman Empire in 1738, remaining a lifelong patron.
Liotard knew how to combine lively poses and expressions with meticulous execution and a lightly idealizing touch. Note, here, the tiny line of light that gives the mistress’s nostril its definition, setting off her richly shadowed eyes, dark brows and pursed red lips. (Both she and her attendant are almost certainly “Frankish” — the term for Europeans in the Ottoman Empire — rather than Turks.) And register the way the attendant’s vertically striped robe sets off her mistress’s horizontally striped sleeves.
Liotard made five versions of the composition. This one is in oil paint; all the others are in pastel, the medium for which Liotard is best known <https://tinyurl.com/37ezffps> .
It’s one of those pictures to which you return, noticing new things each time. After the shoes, for instance, you might notice both women’s fingertips, which are red. The color extends beyond the nails and all the way around.
Red fingertips are also visible in an earlier Liotard oil painting, “Turkish Woman With a Tambourine.” Here, the pot of henna on the attendant’s tray is the clue: red-tipped fingers, which could symbolize the blood of a lover, were a common adornment in the Ottoman Empire, and the henna was often applied as part of beautifying rituals in the bathhouse. _WashingtonPost

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DREAMS
<https://tinyurl.com/477ahm9n> _DavidShrigley

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A RARE WATTEAU, LONG HIDDEN
<https://tinyurl.com/yc6bexnb>
Watteau’s Actor Holding a Guitar Under His Arm was previously known only from a black-and-white photograph in the artist’s 1996 catalogue raisonné, where it was described as being “from an inaccessible private collection.”
<https://tinyurl.com/3srw2ejb>
Executed with red and black chalk, the drawing features a male figure whose pose and period garb recalls the titular Pierrot in Watteau’s well-known 1718–19 masterpiece <https://tinyurl.com/3cesmb9v> in the collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Pierrot is a “sad clown” stock character of Italian pantomime, identifiable by his puffy white suit.
Musicians, and guitarists in particular, are recurring subjects in Watteau’s work, with the stringed instrument typically rendered in precise and accurate detail. This particular drawing appears to match written descriptions of the theatrical character Mezetin as portrayed by Angelo Constantini in the 1683 production of Comédie Italienne. _artnet

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THE SEXY MODERNISTS OF LITCHFIELD by MONDOBLOGO
Who knew architecture could be so titillating?
The core of the old dead blog MONDOBLOGO was a lot of “reviews” of books I liked or loved that I presented on ye olde internets for the first time. I’m going to return to that formula today, but with something that is already on the internet, but maybe something that you missed, and I am here today to turn you on to it. It’s a book and a film called “Breuer’s Bohemia” <https://tinyurl.com/bdcmh322> by an internet friend of mine James Crump. I’ve only met James once at a book signing at Michael Bargo’s loft for Ronnie Sasson’s beautiful book <https://tinyurl.com/bdffsnfz> launch published by another friend Dung Ngo. Ronnie is James’s wife, and that was quite a design name drop! Anyway, ignore me and pay attention to this book and film. I reread the book, finishing it last night, and need to rewatch the film. I enjoyed both immensely and learned so much. I was already a huge Marcel Breuer fan, having visited, stalked, and even slept in a couple of his modernist residences over the years since teaming up with my wife Alex Gilbert, who was an architect and turned me on to the pleasures of tracking down and actually living (if only for a week) in these simple, yet beautiful and relaxing spaces in New York, Connecticut and Cape Cod. Most of the houses we have visited (and plenty we haven’t (yet!)) are in the book and documentary. James’s writing is informative and makes it easy to imagine you are back in this magical period hanging with Breuer, Gropius, Matter, Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, Calder, Paul Newman and even Marylin Monroe for God’s sake! The list of notables in the art and design worlds that traipsed through, partied in and got jiggy in these Breuer houses is stunning, and there is so much gossip and intrigue as well, but delivered here in a fascinating manner, like getting a peek behind the curtain of the lives of Breuer and his clients, who became very, very, very close friends. This was the beginning of the sexual revolution, and God knows these modernist are quite open about ideas of how one should live: publicly, personally and privately. I won’t spoil any of the sexy bits for you here, you will have to watch the film <https://tinyurl.com/3sktdpxh> for that or better yet get the book <https://tinyurl.com/cs84snrt> .
Below are some of my favorite images from the book with some commentary below each:
<https://tinyurl.com/2ra6avvj>
The house that you could say started it all, the Breuer “House in the Museum Garden” from 1948 at MoMA. The Stillmans, who became Breuer’s biggest clients, first saw Breuer’s work here and quickly commissioned him to build them a house, the first of 4 residences that the architect would design for them, not to mention the referrals and corporate business Rufus and his wife Leslie passed on to Breuer and his firm.
<https://tinyurl.com/27afzjkz>
Rufus & Leslie visiting Breuer’s Cottage in Wellfleet, MA in 1952. Lots of eating, drinking and apparently bed swapping happened in Wellfleet as well as in Litchfield, CT.
<https://tinyurl.com/fty3k8y8>
Lajkó was Breuer’s nickname for intimates.
<https://tinyurl.com/22ew65xn>
Breuer and the Stillmans wanted to recreate the magic of the Upper Cape in Litchfield. Here we see Serge and Barbara Chermayeff (2 great houses on this property) relaxing with friends in Wellfleet.
<https://tinyurl.com/4zt8svvh>
This is the Serge Chermayeff designed guest house on the property.
<https://tinyurl.com/5n7tt3c7>
Breuer also spent a lot of time in Wellfleet with his former teacher, boss and partner Walter Gropius and his lovely wife Ise, with whom he was rumored to have an ongoing affair.
<https://tinyurl.com/47w6hsr4>
Ise on the roof deck of the Gropius House in Lincoln, Mass. in 1945. This house and the one Breuer built nearby while working at Harvard would pave the way for his work with the Stillmans in Connecticut.
<https://tinyurl.com/4rn5uamj>
Connie and Lajkó in the interior of their first house in America, c. 1940. Photo by Ezra Stoller.
<https://tinyurl.com/2m8fhx7y>
Calder with his mobile and Josep Lluís Sert during a party at the house in 1941. Calder would become very close with the Breuers and Stillmans, designing murals and sculpture for all of their buildings and generally being the life of the party.
<https://tinyurl.com/5n794bc6>
Here is Calder painting a mural at the Stillman House 1. His initial design was deemed to risqué for Litchfield. It was titled “Old and Young,” and the original 11” x 25” ink on paper is said to reside in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, but I can find no record of it, frustratingly. Here is James’s description of it, and please excuse the photo of the text as I can’t type!
<https://tinyurl.com/3pbtwckn>
If anyone has an image of this piece please pass along to me!
<https://tinyurl.com/u95vv34s>
Here is how the mural looks today. It’s been repainted obviously but still looks good.
<https://tinyurl.com/bdeyb68r>
Enter into the picture Andrew Gagarin and his wife Jamie (pictured here in the 1960s). Andrew and Rufus Stillman worked at the same corporation (Torrington Manufacturing Company) and were quite competitive, yet very intimate friends, so close that that it is rumored that they were also trying out each other’s beds. Through Rufus’s introduction to Breuer, Andrew and his wife commissioned 3 houses by him, the first being the largest Breuer ever designed (12,200 sqft) and the last possibly being the smallest (600 sqft).
<https://tinyurl.com/y5yyfc9w>
Stillman House 2, this is where James and Ronnie spend their summers. We have yet to visit, but that is on our 2026 houses to see list for sure.
<https://tinyurl.com/4hx7n9ff>
The amazing interior as it looks now, get Ronnie’s book to see much much more of the art and design inside as well as the interiors.
<https://tinyurl.com/55h9rurz>
Remember, what happens in Wellfleet stays in Wellfeet!
This photo is on the cover of the book and shows Gropius, Breuer, Herbert Bayer and Xanti Schawinsky frolicking on the beach, not quite the Cape, and hours away from CT, but I also think this photo sums up the vibe of this great group of friends and colleagues at their most uninhibited…
So I’ve incoherently and in quite a scattershot manner described this very interesting book, but don’t let that keep you from seeing the film and checking out the book. It’s highly recommended, and know that there will be more on all of these amazing people, places and buildings in the future here at MONDOBLOGO as they are all very close to my heart and to our new home in Litchfield County, and no it’s not a Breuer house unfortunately!
Thanks for looking and reading!
-Patrick_MONDOBLOGO’``

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KONRAD KLAPHECK, 'DIE SITTENRICHTER,' 1963.
<https://tinyurl.com/hd4xhbym> _MichaelLobel

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6. EVERLAST ALUMINUM HANDBAG by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/3nrjdn3e>
It was already eight or nine years into the Great Depression, and the grinding dreariness of that, the constant vigilance over money, coupled with all the troubling geopolitical events in Europe and Asia, must have been taking their toll on Americans.
What a pleasure then to happen upon a smart little object that didn’t cost too much and gave a lift. A clever geometric handbag, a flattened hexagon made from aluminum—the stuff of modernity, of airplanes!—with its unexpected snakeskin pattern wrought in metal, its satisfying rounded handles, pleasant to grip. It was a small pleasure, a fun thing for people who needed fun things.
Aluminum had been a precious metal in the 19th century, more costly than gold or platinum. By the 1930s, aluminum was still novel—the process for producing it at scale had existed fewer than 50 years—but it had become affordable enough to be made into everyday consumer goods. It also carried the aura of modernity, suggesting a future that was lighter, cleaner, more rational. It was a substance for hope, the ideal material for ordinary consumers who couldn’t afford luxury in those hard times.
The Everlast brand was known for its aluminum serving pieces: trays, bowls, and covered dishes, mostly. But they also tried their hand at more unusual items, including fashion accessories. An aluminum purse was not an object for hard, everyday use. It was pleasingly impractical, almost absurd, made for special occasions—proof that delight and beauty still existed. Still mattered. _TheImpatientReader

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/yh6c3p89> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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TO SAVE AND PROJECT AND PREMIERE: UNSEEN WARHOL FILMS AT MOMA
<https://tinyurl.com/mr26rcv9>
Incredible. MoMA will close the latest installment of its film preservation series, To Save and Project, with a mountain of never-before-seen footage from Andy Warhol and The Factory. There were more than eighty 100-ft rolls of exposed black & white film in Warhol’s archive that had never been developed. Turns out it includes several Screen Tests, material from the shoots of several films [including, I guess, the shot above, of Jack Smith in Batman Dracula], some explicit goings-on from the Factory, and Warhol around town in 1964 _greg.org

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ELISABETTA SIRANI, WHO HAD THE RIGHT IDEA. BORN JANUARY 8, 1638.
<https://tinyurl.com/3p4vt3xk> _JesseLocker

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‘UNREALISTIC’ €600M LOUVRE REDEVELOPMENT PLANS MUST BE SCRAPPED, SAY STRIKING
Staff at the Musée du Louvre yesterday staged another walk out, citing concerns around working conditions and infrastructure, and demanding that controversial plans for a new entrance be scrapped. The action led the Paris museum to close on Monday morning before partially reopening at noon.
Some of the museum's most well-known works, including the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace were then accessible, while all other galleries remained closed. Visitors entered the building via a separate entrance on the side of the Seine river, while staff held a meeting near the main entrance under the glass pyramid.
Striking workers and union representatives will meet again tomorrow morning (the museum is closed on Tuesdays) and will continue negotiations with France's Ministry of Culture. According to the CFDT spokesperson, while there may be some progress made on job maintenance and wages, the main problem remains “the complete breach of trust between the staff and the director, Laurence des Cars”.
In a statement, unions demanded for the first time that des Cars drop her “unrealistic” €666m project to build a new entrance to the museum, alongside a subterranean complex around the Mona Lisa and an exhibition hall. Instead, they called for the director to “focus on the technical works” badly needed to preserve the collections.
However, in her 2026 budget, Des Cars has set aside €100m for preliminary studies for her grand plan, and only €15m for technical maintenance, including €1.8m for the safety of the museum's works.
This latest strike follows a three-day walk out at the Louvre during the week before Christmas and the theft of the crown jewels in October. The objects have not been recovered despite the arrest of four men accused of carrying out the robbery.
Several official reports issued in the wake of the heist have since pointed out the “accelerated degradation” of the museum's infrastructure due to “considerable delays” in maintenance work and priorities redirected to “visible and attractive operations”. _ArtNewspaper

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A FABULOUS PIECE OF FURNITURE
for people who truly hate their books
and want them to die.
<https://tinyurl.com/3324n7d3> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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UFFIZI STAFFERS PROTEST MASS LAYOFF OF PART-TIME WORKERS
<https://tinyurl.com/45ceb8x9>
Roughly one hundred Uffizi staffers staged a demonstration in the courtyard of the venerable Florence institution on January 4, protesting an effective layoff of the museum’s casual workers spurred by a change in service managers
At issue is a September 2025 contract change that saw the museum replace its service manager of nearly twenty years, Opera Laboratori Fiorentini, with competitor CoopCulture. The contract with CoopCulture stipulated that permanent staff would retain their jobs, but made no such provision for the temporary employees, most of whom work nine months out of the year. Staffers let go included those assigned to security, reception, ticketing, the bookstore, and the cloakroom; some who lost their jobs had worked at the Uffizi for more than ten years. _Artforum

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MOORE GOOD TIMES VIRGINIA, IL
<https://tinyurl.com/cz8dy6b7> _RuralIndexingProject

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AMID WIDESPREAD HUMANITIES CUTS, ELITE UNIVERSITIES SUSPEND OR REDUCE ART HISTORY
Amid widespread budget deficits, several top universities have suspended admissions to their art history graduate programs or cut the size of the cohorts they will admit, along with modifications to other humanities concentrations. Boston University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Princeton University are among those institutions seeing changes.
The cutbacks come in the context of a widely discussed crisis in higher education. Philadelphia-based public radio station WHYY reported in November that both public and private colleges and universities are facing “enormous challenges,” including declines in state and federal funding, reductions in the numbers of foreign students owing to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and a sharp decline in the number of college-aged students due to demographic trends.
Humanities programs at numerous universities are facing cutbacks. In one particularly notable example, Syracuse University in Upstate New York paused admission for 20 undergraduate majors, including fine art and digital humanities, while launching a new Center for the Creator Economy, which will support podcasters, streamers, and influencers.
In an undated post regarding admissions to graduate arts and sciences programs for the 2026–27 academic year, Boston University indicated that the history of art and architecture program was not admitting candidates, along with American studies, anthropology, religion, and romance studies programs. In November 2024, meanwhile, the school had already indicated that its department of the history of art and architecture would not accept Ph.D. students for the next academic year, In an email obtained by the publication, the heads of the College of Arts and Sciences, which includes the art history department, “pointed to increased costs associated with the union contract that graduate student workers won after their historic, nearly seven-month strike ended in October.”
The University of Chicago’s arts and humanities division paused art history admissions, along with most of its doctoral programs, for the 2026-27 academic year, according to an announcement on its website from September, calling it a “one-time pause.” The school faces a $160 million deficit in fiscal year 2025, down from $288 million in fiscal year 2024, the school noted in November. A message from provost Katherine Baicker later published on the school’s website notes that the school plans to reduce its internally funded PhD population by thirty percent by the 2030-2031 academic year.
The Harvard Crimson reported in October that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences would cut the number of Ph.D. student admissions in the arts and humanities division, which includes the department of the history of art and architecture, by about 60 percent for the next two years. Some departments were preparing for drastic decreases in their Ph.D. student numbers, reported the student paper, based on interviews with five faculty members and emails obtained by reporters. Departments that would only have one new Ph.D. seat after the reductions would not be allowed to admit any new students, according to one faculty member.
At Princeton University, meanwhile, the Daily Princetonian reported in November that most graduate program cohorts would see a “modest reduction” in the current admission cycle and that all departments and academic units had been directed to cut their budgets by 5–10 percent in the wake of cuts in federal research funding amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. _ARTnews

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CONGRESS MOVES TO PROTECT NEA AND NEH FUNDING
With another potential government shutdown looming at the end of the month, Congress has unveiled a bipartisan partial funding package. If passed, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) would both see their budgets hold steady at $207 million—despite the proposed budget from President Donald Trump calling for the elimination of both agencies. _artnet

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GUY WILDENSTEIN HAS STEPPED DOWN AS PRESIDENT OF WILDENSTEIN & CO –
but says that it has nothing to do with his conviction for tax fraud. Wildenstein, who is 80 years old and was president of the dealership for 35 years, was found guilty of tax fraud by a French court in 2024. He was sentenced to four years in prison – two suspended, two spent under house arrest – and ordered to pay a €1m fine and hundreds of millions of euros in back taxes. Wildenstein’s son David will take over as president, and his daughter Vanessa will be vice-president. _ApolloMag

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MAX BRÖDEL - 'KIDNEY AND BLADDER STONES', 1922
<https://tinyurl.com/2xbpw6fs> _RabihAlameddine