OLD NEWS

IT'S THUMB APPRECIATION DAY! 👍
Photogravure by Al Taylor, 1997:
<https://tinyurl.com/3646bk8e> _‪PeterHuestis‬

>>>

ALI EYAL GIVES TESTIMONY
<https://tinyurl.com/3475cbcf>
When Iraqi artist Ali Eyal was nine years old, his mother took him and his siblings to an amusement park in Baghdad. She ushered them onto the Ferris wheel and told them to take in the view of the city, urging them to burn that image into their minds. It would be the last time Eyal saw his homeland as a peaceful place. Days later, the United States launched airstrikes across the country. It was the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the beginning of a nearly nine-year war that would rewrite Eyal’s life.
“We were kids, and I didn’t understand that gesture from her,” Eyal said in an interview, “but now it’s resonating. Sometimes you need time to understand simple gestures. It takes years to detect them.”
<https://tinyurl.com/3h8ybex2>
This memory is the basis for Eyal’s new oil painting, “Look Where I Took You” (2026), which debuts at the Whitney Biennial on Sunday. The scene reads as a nightmare, with dream logic darkening an innocent atmosphere. The Ferris wheel’s cars have been replaced by heads, seemingly impaled by steel spokes. An armed guard keeps an eye on the queue of grotesque fairgoers. To the left, a prankster haunts in a Ghostface mask, holding a grim reaper’s scythe — a stand-in for the American troops who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, by most estimates. In the foreground, Eyal himself, depicted as a child, processes the scene blankly, not yet understanding the horrors before him.
“Look Where I Took You” captures the essence of Eyal’s style. He works in painting, drawing, installation, and video to share the story of a life marked by trauma, grief, and childlike innocence. Eyal left Baghdad almost a decade ago — he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, then worked in Lebanon and France, and moved to Los Angeles in 2022 when his spouse, interdisciplinary artist Samar Al Summary, began attending the University of California, Los Angeles. But he is still processing the war, and the impact it had on his family.
<https://tinyurl.com/3pjy682f>
One core memory is the disappearance of his father. Eyal described him as a poor man who worked for the municipality, ostensibly not a threat. He recalls an Iraqi militia storming their house during the Arba’in pilgrimage, a holy walk that is the second-largest public gathering in the world. Eyal’s family had thought the militia was out to protect the pilgrims, but the men instead used the event as a cover, smashing their door and kidnapping his father.
“They had a list of names,” Eyal said. He helped his mother search for his father in forensic hospitals and American military bases, but they never found him.
“I was nine years old, and I felt like I lost that childhood,” Eyal said.
<https://tinyurl.com/4xku5pth>
Eyal explores memories of his father and his disappearance in numerous works. “The road to an unknown hand” (2024) shows his family squeezed tightly into a sedan, swerving on a foggy road, with imprints of the tires’ rims trailing ahead, careening towards a crash. In “Please look where they took us” (2026), Eyal’s father, cartoonish and oversized, towering over the children, points at the charred remains of a car in the distance, two bodies still visible within. Each of these works foreshadows the fate of Eyal’s father’s vehicle, which was bombed, the culprits unknown.
Most of Eyal’s works are accompanied by text that shares a story from his childhood. He may talk about lying on the floor and watching ants for hours, or about the time his father grabbed a stone from a destroyed shrine, hoping it would ward off evil. The core memory is always true, but he often fictionalizes the margins. “And Look Where I Went” (2025), his Mohn Award-winning piece from the most recent edition of Made in L.A., imagines a hot dog vendor in New York City, forlorn because he left his family in Egypt. His memories dominate the right side of the canvas, where a person weeps, body bags loom, and water pours into an abyss. On the left-hand side, Eyal paints himself into the scene. He reaches out towards the tortured vendor, as if to comfort him.
<https://tinyurl.com/5dzfw4rp>
Eyal bends the truth partially due to PTSD, which has fractured his memory and left it fuzzy, but also because it helps him build empathy with his audience. His scenes offer onlookers a new way to understand the battleground — “fertilizing it with my own fiction with respect to the victims and people who survived,” as he puts it. This is his way of giving testimony.
Eyal does make a point to bring beauty into his work. These may originate from small, tender moments. “Could you please paint this?” (2025), for instance, includes a hand holding out a moldy orange. It belongs to his mother, who saw enchantment in the rotting fruit; she wanted her son to capture the orange and green hues of the peel.
But heaviness is inextricable from his art. Often, Eyal’s scenes are illuminated with gorgeous sunsets that bathe them in orange and yellow. These hues and what they represent, however, also carry a dark history. The US typically launched its heaviest attacks at sundown, and dusk still makes Eyal anxious. He is currently working on a monograph about sunsets as a way to ease his fear.
<https://tinyurl.com/344s6e87>
Though Eyal has been using his artwork to heal, trauma from the past lingers. Two days before Eyal’s interview, the US and Israel bombed Iran. In response, Iran bombed military bases throughout the Gulf region, including in Baghdad, where Eyal’s mother felt the shocks. Pundits drew parallels between this act of aggression and the war of his childhood.
“I feel paralyzed. I felt like I became a kid when I looked at a TV this morning,” Eyal said. “The only thing that I wish for my mom, and my family, is to have rest from wars.”

>>>

FACE
<https://tinyurl.com/ymhn5adt> _DavidShrigley

>>>

ARTISTS BEHIND REMOVED TRUMP-EPSTEIN STATUE HAVE PLACED A NEW ONE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
<https://tinyurl.com/ytj4d433>
The anonymous artists behind The Secret Handshake, the guerrilla public art statue of President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, are at it again. On Tuesday, the group emailed photos of a new statue placed in Washington, D.C., again depicting Trump and Epstein.
Titled KING OF THE WORLD, the 12-foot tall statue depicts the US president embracing Epstein in the now iconic pose of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the 1997 film Titanic. A plaque below the statue makes the connection explicit, reading: “The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches. This monument honors the bond between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship seemingly built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches.”
On either side of the statue, which is placed across the US Capitol building on 3rd Street West between Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive, are 10 banners honoring Trump and Epstein. Why? “Because 2026 has been a banner year for President Trump,” the email explains. “Meaning…he’s added giant banners of his face to federal buildings all across DC. We want to help him on his mission by tossing a few of our own in the mix.” _ARTnews

>>>

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/yft349sb> _LisaAnneAuerbach

>>>

TOMÁS SARACENO AND INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES BUILD ART COMPLEX IN ARGENTINE SALT FLATS
<https://tinyurl.com/32zyxcyn>
“We don’t eat batteries. They take away the water; they take away life.” This pronouncement, in Spanish, appears in a photograph that the artist Tomás Saraceno sent via WhatsApp last month from Salinas Grandes, a high-altitude salt flat in northern Argentina. There, in one of the world’s largest lithium reserves, the artist is working alongside 11 Indigenous communities to build El Santuario del Agua (The Water Sanctuary), a monumental work about the global energy transition.
Located in the provinces of Jujuy and Salta, Salinas Grandes sits 11,300ft above sea level. Water rises from underground aquifers, evaporates under the sun and crystallises into salt, creating, after rainfall, a vast mirror-like surface in which the sky appears reflected. The region is arid, receiving only about 300mm of rain per year. To produce a single ton of lithium carbonate for use in smartphone batteries, more than two million litres of fresh groundwater are evaporated.
Construction of El Santuario del Agua recently got underway and the site is due to open in October. The project consists of five semicircular structures built principally of salt in varying sizes, ranging from 7ft to 99ft in diameter and up to 50ft high. Their forms will be completed when reflected on the ground, “when the water returns its hidden half”, Saraceno says. Visitors will be able to climb stairs carved into the back of the structures to elevated viewing platforms.
<https://tinyurl.com/h5k3dj9p>
The five structures, inspired by apachetas (stone mounds traditionally placed as offerings to Pachamama, the Andean earth deity) take their names from Andean cosmology: Inti, Killa, Ch’aska, Hawcha and Tiqsimuyu.
“Water—puri—is not an element but a living being, an essential part of life,” Saraceno and representatives of the Red Atacama, a coalition of Indigenous communities, wrote to The Art Newspaper in a joint message sent from Salta. Joining him there are the Indigenous leaders Miguel Casimiro, Iván Arjona Acoria, Romualdo Fabián, Justo Casimiro, Celeste Valero, Andrei Fernández and Álvaro Simón Padrós, whose ancestors have lived on these lands for centuries.
<https://tinyurl.com/5365te2r>
“We are building a sanctuary, a work of art that seeks to reinforce the activism Atacameño communities have long led in defence of water and territory,” Saraceno said. “It is about safeguarding ancestral knowledge and resisting development models imposed without consultation.”
The collaborators on the project are hoping to establish a community-led model of sustainable tourism that generates funds and long-term employment while also responding to extractive economies. All the income from the project will remain with the communities, which will own and administer the project. It is expected to attract between 100 and 350 visitors per day in an area that receives more than 1,500 tourists daily. Admission will be $20 per person.
“We hope we can imagine more sustainable ways of living together in a world that feels increasingly fragile,” Saraceno added _ArtNewspaper

>>>

1-2-3
3000yrs-14yrs-29mins
<https://tinyurl.com/y9fc33n8> _ON&ON / Jefrf Weiss

>>>

GERHARD RICHTER BACKS ADMISSION FEE AT TIKTOK-FAMOUS CATHEDRAL
<https://tinyurl.com/2hu2tfhv>
Germany’s famed Cologne Cathedral will start charging tourists admission this fall—and Gerhard Richter, whose stained glass windows are one of the highlights of the church’s architecture, is on board with the new policy.
When asked for his opinion on the new fee by the German Press Agency, Richter said he approved, pointing out that some other major European churches also charge admission, such as the Duomo de Milano and the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, reported Monopol. The cathedral hopes selling tickets will raise money to help cover the increasing costs of maintenance and operations of the historic building, according to the Associated Press.
Richter, now age 94, created his 65-foot-tall Cologne Cathedral Window in 2007. It measures 1,100 square feet, featuring 11,263 glass squares in 72 colors arranged by a random number generator. The abstract design, a marked departure from the original commission to depict 20th-century martyrs, was originally somewhat controversial, but has since become a hallmark of the cathedral, bathing the interior with colored light on sunny days.
(In something of a follow-up to the cathedral project, Richter created three stained glass windows for the Benedictine Tholey Abbey, in Saarland, Germany’s oldest monastery church, in 2020.)
The church expects to spend €16 million ($18.6 million) on the property this year, and is still looking to replenish its finances after forced closures during the pandemic halted revenue from paid tours of the towers and treasury. _artnet

>>>

I LIKE TO THINK OF THIS SCHOOL OF PAINTING AS AUTOMOTIVE AUTOFICTION.
<https://tinyurl.com/ywh54t22> _CarolinaAMiranda

>>>

48. THE AERON CHAIR by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/mr2tndz7>
When tech companies started going belly up in the dot-com bust, the morbidly curious could watch employees pushing fancy chairs out of office buildings, their belongings piled in the seats. The Aeron chairs looked expensive and high-tech, made for commanding a spaceship rather than typing and waiting for stock options to vest.
Ironically, the chair was designed to be something you didn’t notice—something designer Bill Stumpf said would “inspire a lack of awareness.” But when it was released in 1994, the chair instantly became one of the most recognizable office objects ever designed. It turned decorative furniture into biomechanical engineering, introduced the word “lumbar” into the vernacular, and eradicated chair hierarchy in the office: everyone, from executives to junior employees, used the same cool, heroic chair.
Stumpf was passionate about good design: freeing up the body, working against “hermetically sealed artificial spaces” that “denied the human spirit.” He spent years researching how people sit. His partner Don Chadwick was obsessed with materials, studying Formula One suspensions and bicycle frames. Chadwick helped invent Pellicle, a mesh fabric capable of shifting in multiple directions.
For 10 years, Stumpf and Chadwick worked on seating for the elderly—solving problems of pressure points, heat buildup, and circulation for people sitting long hours. Their breakthrough was abandoning upholstery. Higher-ups were initially skeptical; the chair was weird looking. No upholstery? But three decades later, it’s beloved, ubiquitous. And a chair that emerged from designs for the dying elderly became the throne of young tech millionaires. _TheImpatientReader

>>>

NOT WITHOUT CONTROVERSY,
this day in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell received patent 174,465 from the US Patent Office ,
and so became known as the inventor of the telephone.
After telephones he turned his attention to enormous geometric kites...
<https://tinyurl.com/9eahe3fn> _PublicDomainReview

>>>

PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI PORTRAIT GOES ON VIEW FOR THE FIRST TIME
<https://tinyurl.com/mwdbztwc>
A never-before-exhibited portrait of the poet Christina Rossetti by her painter brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is the centerpiece of a show exploring one of Victorian Britain’s most influential families.
Unlike Rossetti’s Pre-Raphaelite paintings of winsome maidens surrounded by flowers, the 1877 chalk portrait of his sister offers a flat, realistic impression. She wears an impenetrable expression and dull-colored clothing that blends into an unadorned background. The somber tone is the product of family tragedy: Christina remains in mourning following the death of her older sister Maria, a writer and Anglican nun, in 1876.
Created on the north Kent coast, where the painter had decamped to escape depression and the pressures of London, it is, in effect, a tribute to Maria and an acknowledgement of the grief that Christina and Dante share—Christina, by contrast, expressed her feelings in the poem An October Garden. As his younger brother William would write a decade later, the portrait had a positive effect: “The experiment turned out a complete success. [Dante] perceived at once that nothing but an effort of will was needed to enable him to continue working at his art.”
<https://tinyurl.com/zxhxxs73>

>>>

ARAB MANUSCRIPT, CA. 1766, TRAITÉ D’HIPPIATRIE
<https://tinyurl.com/4mzhctx2> _RabihAlameddine

>>>

THE (UN)DAILY PIC
<https://tinyurl.com/njaumdfv>
is a view from the show by Pat Oleszko, at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, New York.
In reviews that I’ve read so far, critics have talked about how great it would be to see her work on the street in a march, and I think that gets things right, in a profound way. At the No Kings demonstrations I’ve attended, I’ve been desperate for some really grand and impressive ceremonial objects, to rile and cheer up the crowd, and Oleszko’s blow-ups would have perfectly fit the bill. They’d have served a better purpose, there, than serving as “fine art” in a grand gallery. There are many other, sometimes better functions for a piece of visual culture than inviting attention as fine art. That should be seen as an option, when it suits, rather than as a creative object’s highest calling. _BlakeGopnik

>>>

CHRISTO & JEANNE-CLAUDE DID NUMEROUS WORKS USING OIL BARRELS.
In June 1967, following the Six-Day War between Israel and a group of Arab states,
the artists proposed to close the Suez Canal with a wall of 10 million oil barrels,
a project that was—unsurprisingly—never realized
<https://tinyurl.com/2vkx6f2p>
Christo & Jeanne-Claude, "Wall of Oil Barrels—The Iron Curtain" (1961–62),
an installation of stacked oil barrels that completely blocked the historic rue Visconti,
one of the narrowest streets in Paris, and slowed traffic through the city's Left Bank
<https://tinyurl.com/ek5thu4y>
The artist Christo photographed in 1962 in front of "Wall of Oil Barrels—The Iron Curtain"
<https://tinyurl.com/yj298aht> _MichaelLobel

>>>

60 PERCENT OF SUDAN NATIONAL MUSEUM’S HOLDINGS HAVE BEEN LOOTED, OFFICIALS SAY
<https://tinyurl.com/antrnm9j>
In September 2024, officials reported that the National Museum of Sudan in the country’s capital city, Khartoum, had been subjected to looting by members of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Now, museum officials have made public the extent of that looting.
“More than 60% of the museum’s holdings were looted,” said Ghalia Jar Al-Nabi, the Sudanese director of the General Authority for Antiquities and Museums, according to a report by NBC News. “For months of the war, no one could know what became of these museums.” Several of the museum’s display cases are currently empty, Al-Nabi added, confirming that gold and jewelry from Sudan’s ancient kingdoms had been stolen.
The RSF occupied the museum from April 2023 to early 2024.
Prior to the conflict, the museum contained more than 150,000 artifacts in its holdings. The National Museum said that some 8,000 pieces were taken from the exhibition halls alone. So far only 570 pieces have been recovered, _ARTnews

>>>

SHINGLES COVINGTON, IN
<https://tinyurl.com/49y9uz5a> _RuralIndexingProject

>>>

COLLECTIVE CLIMATE ACTION IMPLEMENTED BY LOS ANGELES ARTS INSTITUTIONS
In part a reaction to the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles just over one year ago, a number of the city’s most significant arts institutions issued a collective pledge to follow climate-minded guidelines known as the Bizot Green Protocol.
Initiated in 2015 by the Bizot Group, a network of art museum directors from institutions around the world, the protocol has been amended and revised in the decade since, as catastrophes attributable to climate change have intensified. Institutions behind the newly issued pledge include the Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Hammer Museum, and the blue-chip gallery Hauser & Wirth. _ARTnews

>>>

WONDERFUL REDISCOVERED PAINTING OF THE ARTIST'S STUDIO BY GIUSEPPE BONITO, 1738/1740,
<https://tinyurl.com/2t78cf6f> _JesseLocker

>>>

THE US ART MARKET IS STABILIZING—BUT IT’S A DIFFERENT MARKET NOW
The US art market showed signs of life in 2025. Auction sales rose 23 percent from the previous year to about $3.17 billion, according to a new report from Bank of America and the analytics firm ArtTactic. But the rebound did not come from a surge in demand. Instead, it was driven largely by major estate consignments, renewed interest in well-known historical artists, and an auction system increasingly supported by financial guarantees.
Yes, the market appears to be stabilizing, but in a very different form than the speculative boom that defined the early years of this decade.
As a whole, the report suggests the art market is entering a more cautious phase. The surge of speculation that pushed prices for younger artists to precipitous levels earlier in the decade has started to fall flat. More than ever, auction houses are relying on financial guarantees to secure major consignments. And collectors are increasingly spread across the country rather than concentrated in traditional hubs like New York. For dealers, collectors, and artists trying to understand where the market stands now, these shifts may matter more than the headline sales figures that people obsess over.
Collectors Shift from Wet Paint to Established Names
During the pandemic-era art boom, flipping newly purchased works at auction, sometimes within a year or two, became common. That style of business is now proving far riskier.
According to the report, artworks resold within five years of purchase produced negative returns on average in 2025, losing about 5.7 percent annually. Works held longer than a decade, by contrast, continued to generate positive gains.
The shift has reshaped what collectors are buying. Historical categories such as Impressionist and Modern art saw strong growth last year, while the market for younger contemporary artists contracted sharply. Sales in the “young contemporary” segment fell roughly 40 percent last year. The message from collectors appears straightforward: after several years of speculation, it’s time to return to established artists and longer holding periods.
Changing Demographics and Geography
Demographics are the root here.: Many of the most significant private collections in the United States were assembled by baby boomers during the late 20th century. As those collections are divided among heirs, donated to museums, or sold, auction houses could see a steady flow of high-value estates entering the market.
The report also suggests that the geography of collecting in the United States is shifting. Buyers in the western United States—including California, Washington, and Arizona—accounted for the largest share of art purchases in 2025, representing 35 percent of the total. Meanwhile, the Northeast has steadily lost market share over the past decade. In 2015, collectors in that region accounted for more than half of purchases above $1 million. By 2025, their share had fallen to roughly one-third.
Rising wealth in states such as Florida and Texas, along with a growing art ecosystem in cities like Los Angeles and Miami, has helped redistribute buying power across the country.
The report also challenges the longstanding claim that art functions as a strong financial investment. In 2025, works resold at auction generated average annual returns of about 4.4 percent, down from 5.3 percent the year prior. By comparison, the S&P 500 rose roughly 16 percent _Daniel Cassady _ARTnews

>>>

IT'S INTERNATIONAL PIPE SMOKING DAY!
Rothko with Pipe, drypoint by Milton Avery, 1936,
<https://tinyurl.com/2mjj8tez>
and the zinc plate from which it was printed:
<https://tinyurl.com/mk2396b7> _‪PeterHuestis‬