OLD NEWS

LOOKING AROUND
<https://tinyurl.com/4bwxkv69> _ON&ON / Jeff Weiss

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WHY I WANTED TO MEET THADDEUS MOSLEY by John Yau
<https://tinyurl.com/dtsnxuv3>
Thaddeus Mosley’s carved wood sculptures first came to New York in 2004 when the poet Nathaniel (“Nate”) Mackey curated the debut exhibition of his work at CUE. I went because I love Nate’s work both as poet and editor and am interested in anything he does. I had never heard of Mosley before and was not sure what I would see. His exhibition reminded me of something I had long known: There are many artists of color that the art world blithely ignores.
A year later, still thinking about Mosley’s sculptures, I decided to invite myself to his studio in Pittsburgh, even though I was not writing for any art magazine and I did not have the money to go there and back on a train, much less stay in a hotel. I did not think much past wanting to talk to Mosley.
I got his number from the poet Ed Roberson, who was, like Mosley, from Pittsburgh. After a few days and lots of hesitation, I called him up at around 9pm and got his voicemail. As he was in his 80s, I wondered if I had tried too late. A few hours later, around midnight, my phone rang. It was him. He told me that he had just gotten home after going to a club to hear some local jazz musicians. We talked for half an hour. By the end I knew Mosley was a special spirit.
<https://tinyurl.com/3nva2u3t>
For years, driven only by his passion and curiosity, and with the support of a small group of close friends and family, the self-taught artist carved wooden sculptures out of logs he salvaged from the Pennsylvania forest on weekends, patiently transforming them into art during his spare time. Constructed from notched sections that he fitted and balanced together without nails, they often reached quite high.
Much has now been written about Mosley’s magnificent, tender, abstract sculptures, and how he transmuted his encounters with Constantin Brâncuși and Isamu Noguchi at the Carnegie Museum of Art into something all his own, but today that seems beside the point. Regarding him as an extension of modernist art and mid-20th-century innovators strikes me as superfluous, the stuff of museums (or what Robert Smithson called “mausoleums”).
<https://tinyurl.com/3vej4xnc>
Thinking about his work, which stood without a pedestal, self-supporting, rising and reaching, each section joined seamlessly to another, I realized his art came from improvisation, and what the wood told him to do. Inspired by jazz (particularly John Coltrane and Tommy Turrentine, who was a friend) as much as by Modernist art and the visual culture of Central and West Africa and the American South, he played with the unique qualities of walnut, cedar, and other woods until something unexpected arrived.
As I wrote this piece, I thought about what Charles Olson wrote in his poem, “Maximus to Gloucester: Letter 2”: “people don’t change. They only stand more revealed.” As much as Olson’s line suggests a useful way to see Mosley’s work, now that there will be no more of it, I feel like it does not capture something that has been nagging me for days. Instead, I keep going back to what Ed, who was more than a decade younger than Mosley, told me at a literary conference in Louisville, Kentucky, a few weeks ago, when he alerted me that Thaddeus was in hospice. At the end of the conversation, Ed, speaking for those who revered him, said: “Mosley was a model for us.”
You only have to look at Mosley’s sculptures and the process by which he made each one to understand what Ed meant. His work has little to do with Modernism in a conventional sense and everything to do with the circumstances of each making and what it means to be an artist and member of a community. This is why I wanted to go to his studio and sit with him. _Hyperallergic

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WISH
<https://tinyurl.com/sknymwb8> _DavidShrigley

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SEURAT AND THE SEA IS POSTCARD PERFECT
<https://tinyurl.com/5c3dd8ez>
Whether by accident or design, the Courtauld Gallery’s Seurat and the Sea immediately follows the National Gallery’s major survey on the same artistic movement. At least one painting came directly from that show without stopping at home first. While the National’s show, drawn from the Kröller-Müller collection, examined weighty issues of socialism and politics, this — purportedly the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the artist’s seascapes — is more like a presentation of very nice postcards.
This is not to belittle it in the slightest, for the paintings were conceived as such. Of the 45 or so canvases that Seurat produced in his lifetime, we are told that over half are seascapes painted during annual summer trips to the Channel coast between 1885 and 1890, and he intended them to “cleanse one’s eyes of the days spent in the studio.”
The narrow subject matter doubly exposes pointillism’s limitations as a technique. As in the National show, this one includes a diagram explaining how Seurat used opposing color theory to create a shimmering optical illusion of tonal modeling through innumerable short strokes and, later, dots of pigment. While the Impressionists, many of whom are represented in the Courtauld’s collection, achieved that zingy and highly variable seaside light through expertly selected contrasting pastels, the visual brilliance of Seurat’s work comes from the masses of closely scattered dots. The color itself is mainly limited to contrasting primary tones, yet the full pictorial space is minutely exploded all over.
<https://tinyurl.com/yc6n78ze>
<https://tinyurl.com/msncvpzf>
The exhibition really succeeds with its preparatory versions of the larger completed paintings. Compare, for example, “Le Bec du Hoc (Grandcamp)” from the Tate and its miniature study version from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (both 1885). In the study, the singular beak-like rock formation is rendered in larger “points” of relatively consistent distribution and direction, with slightly elongated horizontal dashes defining the sea area. For the final version, the angular dash direction is dialed up a notch, and the diagonal hatching is more distinct, resulting in a chaotic atmosphere. Similarly, the presence of a preparatory study for “The Channel of Gravelines: An Evening” (1890) from the Victoria & Albert Museum is fascinatingly alarming because it is the visual and formal antithesis of its finished version at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; in the study, smooth Conte crayon outlines silhouetted anchors against a flatly delineated beach.
That the captions for individual works constantly return to the same refrain — how pointillism works and its essential theory — indicates how little artistic, intellectual, or academic depth there is to chomp into here. They read, for instance, “Seurat’s radical technique consisted of juxtaposing dashes and dots of unmixed colour on the canvas” and “Each colour appears in the painting in varying intensities, harmonising the scene as a whole.” These statements could be applied interchangeably to nearly any piece. This is not a bad thing, for the show’s real takeaway is the meditative and unbending consistency with which Seurat applied his technique, committed and undeviating even when on holiday. Let the artworks wash over you pleasantly like their seaside vistas.
<https://tinyurl.com/mwkws6sc>
<https://tinyurl.com/v92yxwnh> _Olivia McEwan_Hyperallergic

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/mwv3ty2a> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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MARGIELA HOMESCHOOL DRIP by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/45ry6xf8>
Some people made sourdough to get through the pandemic. Cheryl Donegan went through her closets and Margiela’d the hell out of what she found: 90s-era Dries van Notens, her grandmother’s doilies, her kids’ soccer kit. Six years into her one-of-one fashion upcycling project, Donegan has opened Margiela Homeschool, an exhibition at Three Star Books in Paris.
<https://tinyurl.com/ye26hsyj>
For those unable to rifle through the racks IRL, the collection is also documented piece by piece on the Margiela Homeschool account. There are skirts made from dress shirts. dresses made from track pants. Lagerfeld tuxedo pants and an antique tablerunner turned into a loincloth. And the Ultimate shorts with accent scarf she made for her son, perhaps as penance for chopping up all his old t-shirts. Parents. Kids. _greg.org

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LOUISE BOURGEOIS, BE CALM, 2005
<https://tinyurl.com/mw72jbcy> _MichaelLobel

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STAR ARTIST IBRAHIM MAHAMA WEIGHS LEGAL ACTION AGAINST POLICE AFTER ‘BRUTAL ASSAULT’
<https://tinyurl.com/496kfkc7>
Ibrahim Mahama, a Ghanaian artist whose work has appeared in an array of shows was hospitalized after he was attacked on Saturday in Tamale, Ghana. Mahama alleged that his attackers were part of a special operations police unit known as the Black Maria.
According to Mahama, officers with the unit made their way through a traffic jam and entered a bus that the artist was riding following a visit to a mosque. After a passenger questioned their actions, Mahama began recording the incident on his phone. “They broke into our bus, forced me to open my phone, and deleted the pictures,” Mahama told 3news.com. He has since called the beating that followed a “brutal assault.”
On Monday, Mahama led a press conference to say that he planned to take members of the Black Maria to court. “I don’t think I can even travel for the next month because the last few days I have not even eaten solid food because my lips are all bruised, and three of my teeth are broken, I have sores in my mouth,” Mahama reportedly said, adding that the attack had “put my whole life on hold.”
Ali Adolf Mboridiba, north regional minister of Ghana, subsequently denounced the attack while also saying that he knew of no activity by the Black Maria in the area. “We cannot tolerate this kind of lawlessness in the region, and anyone found culpable will be dealt with,” Mboridiba said.
Mboridiba added, “Ibrahim Mahama is a diplomat, and an attack on him won’t be tolerated.”
The Ghana Police Service also denied that the Black Maria was involved, calling Mahama’s claims “false” in a release announcing an investigation into the attack.
Mahama is one of the most famous contemporary African artists, known both for his own sculptural installations and for his work within Ghana, where he founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Nkrumah Volini, and Red Clay Studio, three art spaces in Tamale. He topped the ArtReview Power 100 list in 2025, the year that he exhibited a full-size diesel locomotive at the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria as a comment on British colonization during the 19th century. _ARTnews

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TREAT'S FOR HER PLYMOUTH, IN
<https://tinyurl.com/2w434swa> _RuralIndexingProject

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58. EMILY DICKINSON’S FASCICLES by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/47328twk>
She had no economic need to publish, and the few poems that were published in her lifetime were mangled from the original. So she wrote her cryptic, provocative, heretical poetry for herself and a small audience of friends and relatives. She left behind handwritten pages sewn together, an intimate, almost botanical preservation of her work. Each poem contained multiple meanings knotted up so intricately that they never fully untangle.
Although she’s not a war poet, the years of the Civil War, 1861-65, were by far her most prolific. Maybe poetry was her way of carving a narrow channel for life to flow through the hideous onslaught of bad news. Her quiet life in Amherst was insulated from the war, and yet was soaked with it, with the awful casualty lists, the newspapers and rumor.
She could not stop the machinery of the age, so she retreated from it, turning her attention to home, friendship and love, death and immortality, and nature. One wonders: which aspects of 21st-century life would she find appalling, which improved—and which unchanged? We seem even further removed from uninhabited nature than in her time. And yet, whenever we pause and turn to look for it: there it is. As much a part of us and we of it. Just as much.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
Emily Dickinson, “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – (236) _TheImpatientReader

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THE SENSE OF SIGHT
by the mysterious Neapolitan painter known as the Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds,
<https://tinyurl.com/2veuvdma> _JesseLocker

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PHOTO: LUCAS MUSEUM GALLERY by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/6ct0101>
Mellody Hobson's account has posted a photo of a gallery interior at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. This is notable, as I'm not aware of any previous photos (or even renderings) of Ma Yansong's gallery spaces. As shown here, the ceiling exposes beams, ducts, and radially arrayed track light rails, all painted off white to match the gallery walls. The free-standing wall at right appears to be slightly curved at its left end. The floors are a checkerboard parquet.
The framed artwork is by French street artist JR, documenting the 70-ft-tall cut-out of a Mexican toddler that he installed at the border wall in Tecate, Mexico, in 2018.
Hobson's post has drawn comments from Kaws, Ava DuVernay, and Monica Lewinsky.
_LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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ATTENTION GREG DOT ORG:
awkward lobster andirons on Antiques Roadshow. Just thought you should know.
<https://tinyurl.com/dsh9c4f9> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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KENNEDY CENTER RENOVATION HIT WITH LAWSUIT FILED BY PRESERVATIONISTS
A group of eight associations representing preservationists and architects asked a federal district court to halt the Trump administration’s renovation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was announced suddenly last month, sparking fears that the storied building could face radical changes or even demolition.
In the lawsuit, filed Monday morning, the coalition requests that the court require the administration to comply with historic preservation laws and obtain permission from Congress to undertake the renovation, which is expected to close the arts venue for about two years. The group is seeking a preliminary injunction that would immediately stop any destruction of the structure or significant redesign until requirements are met. _WashingtonPost

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SPANISH IRIS, MORNING GLORY, CHERRIES. 1638
Promises of spring (it's coming, truly!) from Georg Flegel
<https://tinyurl.com/8p2fkhuj> _Dr.PeterPaulRubens

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ART COLLECTOR ‘GALERIE’ MAGAZINE FOUNDER LISA FAYNE COHEN FAWNED OVER JEFFREY EPSTEIN
<https://tinyurl.com/3sp3yxmm>
Documents in the Justice Department’s release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein appear to show ties between the financier and convicted sex offender and a New York art collector and magazine publisher, and her developer-investor husband.
Lisa Fayne Cohen and her husband, Jimmy Cohen—founder, CEO, and chairman of the real estate and development firm Hudson Capital Properties—were in close contact with Epstein in 2015 and early 2016, long after his crimes were a matter of public knowledge, according to emails released in the so-called Epstein Files, which began to be released in December. There is no indication in the files of any wrongdoing on either’s part.
In one email exchange, Lisa Cohen was laying the groundwork for the launch of Galerie magazine. Not long after, Epstein’s Paris apartment appeared anonymously on the cover of the magazine’s second issue, in fall 2016, and in an extensive spread inside.
The Cohens began collecting art in 2009 with a work by French modernist Fernand Léger, according to a 2023 Artnet News profile, which noted that they own an apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan, along with homes in East Hampton, Palm Beach, and New Jersey. Artnet reported that the couple owns works by modern and contemporary artists including Jennifer Bartlett, Cecily Brown, George Condo, Jean Dubuffet, Mark Grotjahn, Keith Haring, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, and Joan Mitchell.
Galerie, which was launched in 2016 and is still operating, covers art, luxury, interiors, design, and architecture, with a stated circulation of 125,000. The magazine says its subscribers include art collectors, interior designers, private jet terminals, art galleries and fairs, and five-star hotels and spas.
In one of the first relevant emails in the file, NEXT Model Management cofounder Faith Kates wrote to Cohen on November 2, 2015, saying the financier would like a visit that day if possible. (She later retired after her links to Epstein became known, but reportedly attributed the decision to being a “30 year cancer survivor” who wanted to “step back… in order to give back.”) “Copying him here (he’s flying now) but email him he has wifi (haha),” wrote Kates. Cohen responded that she was on deadline “with the arts and design website and magazine I am working on,” but suggested a meeting on November 3.
That day, according to the emails, Cohen went to 9 East 71st Street, Epstein’s mansion from 1995 until his death in 2019. On November 14, Cohen corresponded with Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff, saying she wanted to speak with Epstein about “possible interior design ideas and plans for the NY townhouse.” On November 15, she wrote to Groff to say that she had spoken with Epstein: “We want to photograph a few rooms in Jeffrey’s Paris apartment re: a story on Vintage [Alberto] Pinto design.” The next day, Cohen emailed Groff, “Thanks so much for arranging Paris De Pinto shoot with Suzanne for the 9th.” (Suzanne Slesin, publisher and editorial director at New York–based Pointed Leaf Press, had been tapped as the magazine’s editor in chief.)
The Galerie issue features a heavily beige apartment on the cover, accompanied by the cover line “Vintage Paris.” The 16-page spread describes a 7,500-square-foot residence in “one of the grandest 19th-century apartment buildings on Paris’ exclusive Avenue Foch,” renovated that year at a reported cost of about $1.3 million by French photographer and interior designer Alberto Pinto, who reportedly counted Epstein as “a longtime international client.” Pinto’s other clients included “royal families, Middle Eastern potentates, billionaires, and celebrities,” as well as “Agnellis, Rothschilds, Kochs, and Safras,” Galerie notes.
As described in the magazine, Pinto commissioned Paris-based artist Florence Derive to create Constructivist-inspired wall paintings and to paint the living room ceiling in crimson, with plaster clouds surrounding an “enormous” 1950s Murano glass chandelier. Other artworks included a wood sculpture by French artist Jacques Berthaux, a charcoal drawing by Korean artist Yoo Hye-Sook, and a steel-and-plastic elephant chair by French artist Bernard Rancillac. The apartment would later sell for $10.5 million to Bulgarian businessman Georgi Tuchev. _ARTnews

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CLOSE READING OF TWOMBY’S TWIRLS SHOWS HIS PRESCIENCE 🔮
<https://tinyurl.com/3uw99emk> _kennyschachter

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THE BIG FAKE:
<https://tinyurl.com/579c3zca>
A well-known Greek art dealer, accused of trafficking forgeries, stolen art, and looted antiquities, was arrested in Athens on Friday.
The “Greek FBI” (the Organized Crime Division) has arrested Giorgos Tsagarakis and one of his employees and dismantled an extensive network of counterfeit art.
Following a series of coordinated raids in the affluent Athenian districts of Kolonaki, Elliniko, and Glyfada, authorities uncovered a massive cache of illicit goods. The Hellenic Police (ELAS) seized an unprecedented collection of items, including:
321 paintings, the vast majority of which were deemed forgeries by the National Gallery
4 ancient wooden icons and a sacred Gospel manuscript of unique historical value
3 ancient amphorae, a Byzantine pitcher, and various Byzantine-era artifacts
Large sums of cash ($32,607 USD and €26,760 EUR), a firearm, and digital evidence
Investigators reportedly tracked Tsagarakis after he posted a video on social media showcasing certain items. This footage provided the “smoking gun” needed for the Organized Crime Division to execute the search warrants.
The scandal deepened when legitimate art owners recognized that paintings presented in Tsagarakis’ televised auctions did not belong to him. Furthermore, prominent figure Lola Daifa publicly claimed she recognized a pair of her own stolen earrings being offered for sale on his television program.
In an official statement, Tsagarakis Gallery LTD denied the allegations. The gallery claims the paintings found in storage were part of the owner’s private family collection, inherited from his parents over forty years ago, and were not intended for sale. Regarding the sacred Gospel, the gallery maintains it has already contacted authorities to evaluate its authenticity and potential purchase by the Greek State, citing a lack of in-house expertise in religious artifacts.
Authorities are now working to determine if the seized religious items are linked to recent thefts from monasteries or private collections across Greece and Cyprus.
The arrest of Giorgos Tsagarakis feels less like a local news report and more like a live-action sequel to Netflix’s The Big Fake (Il falsario).
Both stories center on the “myth of the expert”—the idea that a single individual, armed with enough charisma and a deep understanding of the market’s hunger for “lost masterpieces,” can dictate what is real and what is not. Just as the film’s protagonist, Toni, transitions from a starving artist to a master of deception by exploiting the vanities of the elite, the Greek case reveals a modern-day “Big Fake” where the lines between a legitimate gallery and a criminal warehouse become indistinguishable.
<https://tinyurl.com/4j9msux6> _GreekReporter

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RUTH HALLENSLEBEN - ALONG THE BODENSEE AT MAINAU, GERMANY, 1961
<https://tinyurl.com/3t2hb7tx>
Rene Burri - Wilted Lotus Blossoms, Summer Palace, Kunming Lake, Beijing, 1964
<https://tinyurl.com/4cysmtyx>
Alfred Stieglitz - Rain Drops, 1927
<https://tinyurl.com/3rvws4um> _RabihAlameddine