OLD NEWS

CAPROPHAGY by Mary Holland
<https://tinyurl.com/32xtcczd>
Coprophagy is the act of eating feces, both one’s own as well as that of other animals, primarily for the calories and nutrients that they contain. Many animals engage in coprophagy, including those that consume other animals’ feces (opossums that visit otter latrines, salamanders that eat bat droppings) as well as those that consume their own feces, such as rabbits and hares.
It may surprise some that the familiar round, brown pellets we identify as rabbit and hare droppings have actually been through the rabbit or hare’s digestive system twice. The first time through, rabbit and hare droppings are soft and green — rich in protein, vitamins and beneficial bacteria. Rabbits and hares eat these special nutrient-rich feces, called cecotropes, directly as soon as they are produced, so we never, or rarely, see them. After the second time through their digestive system, the droppings appear as the much firmer dark brown pellets with which we are familiar. One couldn’t ask for a better example of how wildlife wastes little and makes the most of every available resource. _NaturallyCurious

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REALITY
<https://tinyurl.com/fbswcrjh> _DavidShrigley

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NEW YORK FILMMAKER AMOS POE DIES AT 76
Amos Poe, the New York director and screenwriter credited with chronicling the city's downtown punk movement, died on Thursday at 76 after a battle with an aggressive cancer, his wife and daughter said on social media.
Poe, diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2022, underwent intensive chemotherapy before moving to home hospice care.
Poe was a leading figure in the so-called No Wave cinema of experimental and low-budget filmmaking in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which has influenced today's world of independent movie making.
Poe was a fixture in New York’s downtown cultural scene, helping shape the punk explosion on the Bowery and documenting it on film. His seminal work, "The Blank Generation", along with "The Foreigner" and "Subway Riders", cemented his reputation.
In comments in 2011, Poe talked about the emergence of No Wave cinema.
"Our whole aesthetic, or the way we approached it, was that you didn't necessarily have to have the professionalism or the understanding of making films, you had to have the inspiration and the will to put yourself completely into it."
Poe turned to directing his own features, starting with "Unmade Beds", a DIY project starring friends Duncan Hannah, Eric Mitchell and Debbie Harry, followed by "The Foreigner" and "Subway Riders". Alongside contemporaries such as Jim Jarmusch, Abel Ferrara and Vivienne Dick, Poe became a central figure in the No Wave scene.
In 2024, Poe posted from Greece: "My stomach and intestines are a colossal mess. What I needed was to get back to work - but as anyone who's been in intense, unrelenting pain will tell you, it's tiring as hell. So a few weeks, a month in the Mediterranean seemed the right prescription ... and here we are. The Mrs. and I." _Reuters

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/yz9uc25a> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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WHAT DO WE WANT FROM ANTIQUITY? (750 WORDS) by Rainey Knudson
"I could, I suppose, start this off with another complaint about the state of the world today, except that’s how we got into this state. People wishing for a past that never existed"". - A Christmas Movie a Day
Why can’t life look like the ancient marble statues? We encounter these glorious objects and we recognize our own experience in them—a distilled and idealized version of our experience anyway, if only our lives weren’t so messy and mundane. If only the world hadn’t descended as it has.
<https://tinyurl.com/465s9w6m>
Right now the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has a remarkable exhibition1 of Roman sculptures that presents them in a way I’ve never seen before. Each one has an accompanying line drawing with shaded areas that show what is original; what is ancient but not original to the sculpture; and what is “modern” (which could mean a restoration carved during the Renaissance). The drawings clearly show how we get a Roman torso with an ancient head from another statue stuck on, a Renaissance arm, and 19th-century additions “in the style of.”
You stand there, looking back and forth between the marble perfection and the shaded drawing, and you realize that these figures we imagine to be wholly authentic are pastiches, cobbled together from broken bits over centuries of tinkering, adding, and—in the case of Renaissance artisans—scraping off any residual paint.
<https://tinyurl.com/5e58bpww>
Because we know the statues were originally painted, we’ve all heard that. We know that the people who made these things had no interest in plain stone. But we still believe, reflexively, in the authenticity of the white marble. When we see the occasional digital re-creations showing the statues brightly painted—and there is a video at the Kimbell showing just that—they look garish, ridiculous.2 These days, museums have whole conservation departments that specialize in cleaning paintings and restoring bronze patinas. But we never repaint the old marble statues. A replica maybe, like the giant Pallas Athena in the Nashville Parthenon. But never the original.
Except, the Kimbell exhibition shows plainly, there is no such thing as the original. Details of the poses, the hand gestures and objects held, have been guessed at in the subsequent centuries. In a few cases, marble critters have even been added to the base. In short: these statues look nothing like their ancient originals, no matter how much we unconsciously project a sense of noble, unified authenticity onto them. And of course, the same is true of our understanding of Rome itself.
Since the Renaissance, we’ve looked back on the Roman Empire, compressed and distantly visible on the far shore of the centuries we call Dark. The story goes that Rome shone; Rome fell; the lights went out; and Florence switched them back on. Suddenly, artists remembered how to depict muscles.
--In a fascinating article <https://tinyurl.com/mwck5x9r> recently published by Works in Progress, Ralph S. Weir posits that contemporary renderings of repainted ancient statues get it horribly wrong. He says it’s like trying to recreate the Mona Lisa from a few bits of residual pigment on an empty canvas.
_TheImpatientReader

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THIS TIME OF YEAR I ALWAYS THINK OF THIS DELICIOUSLY UNHINGED PHOTO SHOOT
with Truman Capote & Andy Warhol for High Times magazine's 1978 Xmas issue,
<https://tinyurl.com/4xmyv7n2>
with Capote soused to the gills & Warhol gamely playing along as Santa.
<https://tinyurl.com/mrxbxcf6>
I want someone to write an extended oral history of this photo shoot alone
<https://tinyurl.com/3ueapxyz>
According to the Warhol Diaries,
supposedly the plan was
for Capote to be dressed as a little girl to match Warhol's Santa,
but the writer refused
(he said he was already dressed like a little boy).
That same issue of High Times included a conversation between the two:
<https://tinyurl.com/4pbzpzbd>
two more images from the photo shoot,
just because they're so great.
<https://tinyurl.com/bu2fvhbm>
They were taken by Mick Rock,
photographer of rock music icons like
David Bowie, Lou Reed, & Iggy Pop, among many others
<https://tinyurl.com/msjmxw8r> _MichaelLobel

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GERHARD RICHTER AT FULL SCALE
If you live into your 90s, you’ll find yourself inhabiting a radically different world to the one you grew up in – and, just possibly, one that’s also the same in disturbing ways. You might, say, have been born in Dresden in 1932, narrowly escaped being caught up in the firebombing of that city in 1945 and later devoted decades to making art constituted as being after fascism, only to see said ideology roar back in your sunset years. You might have begun your exhibiting career as a participant in the short-lived, consumerism-critiquing Capitalist Realist movement of the 1960s yet become, six decades later and to your chagrin, the most expensive living artist in a world of rampant inequality. And also, the subject of a massive, darkly celebratory retrospective in the €800-million-euro, Frank Gehry-designed private museum of a French luxury-goods brand owned by Bernard Arnault, one of the world’s wealthiest men.
‘Gerhard Richter’, at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, is a 275-work survey that surely won’t be equalled for scale and wealth of loans in its subject’s lifetime. It is exhaustive and, as its five ascending floors progress (and as Richter, after a certain point, mostly does not), somewhat exhausting. Arranged chronologically, it includes rooms of great intensity, traverses eras displaying an almost omnidirectional virtuosity and features long late passages of wheel-spinning aesthetic finessing. As a titanic summation of Richter’s practice – much more so than the touring ‘Panorama’ retrospective of 2011–12, since it’s almost twice the size and includes work dating to 2024 – it demands we gauge his achievement. It is, furthermore, an exploration of what happens when you set out to make paintings that are full of doubt about the purpose of art after Auschwitz, but often so loaded with complicated affect and verve that a viewer may well enter them and be moved anyway. Arguably, it’s a comparative study in good emptiness and bad emptiness.
<https://tinyurl.com/ycxpkxfa>
Symbolic erasure is built into Richter’s art from early on. Table (1962), in the show’s opening room, is nothingness as form. Having made a black-and-white realist painting of a piece of furniture, the artist has scrubbed out the central part, leaving a hovering grey cloud. Painterly destruction and voiding, we’re forewarned, are going to sit in counterpoint with the wider social context: an increasingly prosperous but unhealed West Germany of the 1960s, whose citizens were determinedly not talking about the war and where many former Nazis were still in positions of power. Transcendence was henceforth not painting’s goal; a poetics of negation and downfall might be. Richter’s artworks, he has suggested in interviews, are no more than what they are: a figurative image is only a reflection of the corner of reality it depicts. If choice of subject suggests an editorialising opinion, one might get around that by painting everything, from a toilet roll to a hanged woman.
Context creeps in, nevertheless. Much of Richter’s early figurative work, based on black-and-white historical photographs subjected to his signature blurring, is ghosted by hindsight, by implicit reminders of what happened after the original image was made. Here, in Uncle Rudi (1965), is the smiling face of uniformed fascism and its horrific proximity within one’s own family line; here, in Aunt Marianne (1965), is Richter’s schizophrenic aunt, happily holding the artist as a baby in the mid 1930s, unaware that soon enough she will be euthanised by the Nazis. Here, in the Warholian Eight Student Nurses (1966), are the young women, mostly smiling, who will become victims of a mass murderer in Chicago. The power of these works derives from a multivalent shimmer: the images feel inaccessible and the narratives they point to certainly irreversible; the blur creates a sense of remove and of the artworks unavoidably, melancholically arriving too late. At the same time, the blur points to loss and the paintings also present an artist locating pictorial and conceptual space where none appeared to be – moving on somehow. _Martin Herbert _ApolloMag

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HERBERT’S RICHTER FIVE STAGES OF PAINTING
<https://tinyurl.com/4tzrwfkv>
Martin Herbert writing on Gerhard Richter for Apollo
For three decades, he could increasingly do anything, while coolly suggesting that perhaps none of it mattered in the grand scheme of things, even as his paintings also persistently whispered that maybe it did. Like so much great art, his can be endlessly revisited due to its fathoms-deep ambiguity. Look at an earlyish, unassuming canvas like Bridge (at the Seaside) (1969): a spit of land and outstretching bridge forming a horizon line under a delicately blueing, star-dotted evening sky, nobody around, the lower half fuzzily ambiguous: maybe it’s water, maybe beach, maybe half of each. Here is a casual, banal, snapshot-style update of the German landscape tradition, a knowingly minor thing. Yet it’s also somehow hushed and beautiful, almost tender—everything and nothing swirling together for you to tease apart or accept, finally, as indivisible.
I had wanted to avoid exhausted, but maybe I need to get to the Fondation Louis Vuitton Richter retrospective after all, for the acceptance of indivisibility _greg.org

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REAR ELEVATION ELECTRA, TX
<https://tinyurl.com/mpc9a323> _RuralIndexingProject

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BAYEUX TAPESTRY SET TO BE COVERED BY £800MN UK TREASURY INDEMNITY
<https://tinyurl.com/mr2p53cs>
The Bayeux Tapestry is set to be covered by a UK Treasury indemnity of about £800mn during its loan to the British Museum in 2026, in a sign of the extraordinary value attached to the 70-metre fabric depiction of the Norman Conquest.
The indemnity, backed by the British taxpayer, will cover the tapestry against damage or loss during its transfer from Normandy to London and while it is on display for what is expected to be the biggest blockbuster exhibition for a generation.
Officials briefed on the project said they expected the final valuation to be “around £800mn”, a sum not disputed by the finance ministry, although it declined to comment on the price expected to be attached to the priceless artefact.
That is more than twice the value of the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction
The transfer of the almost 1,000-year-old woollen embroidery on a linen backing from its home in Bayeux to the British Museum in central London has been criticised by some in the French art establishment, who fear it will be damaged during its loan to Britain. _FinancialTimes

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JEAN-ÉTIENNE LIOTARD, GIRL SINGING INTO A MIRROR
The Swiss pastellist and painter, especially famed for his portraits,
also did a number of charming pictures
of his family members such as this of his daughter
<https://tinyurl.com/y2hexnrs> _JesseLocker

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FAITH RINGGOLD'S STORY QUILTS GET TO THE HEART OF BEING HUMAN
<https://tinyurl.com/33aujuwj>
Faith Ringgold’s words have rhythm. They jaunt through her stories, printed on pages and quilts, their bright, succinct language as engaging as their visual counterparts. The late artist was a storyteller and visual artist in equal measure — her knack for prose and her herculean visual skills go hand in hand. She utilized craft to experiment with form, medium, and message, challenging the parameters of fine art, demanding equal attention for her textiles and her striking canvases.
<https://tinyurl.com/mu9a9v2b>
I was first introduced to Ringgold as a girl, through her children’s books. Cozied into library nooks, I read Tar Beach (1991), her tale of a Harlem girl dreaming of flight. Years later, her work can conjure in me similar feelings of joy. Her story quilts and prints drew me in, featuring poems and stories that resurfaced the nostalgic sensation of appreciating history and learning through art, again awed by Ringgold’s aptitude for braiding the visual and narrative arts.
<https://tinyurl.com/2s4w27u5>
Born in 1930 in New York City, Ringgold was a child of the Harlem Renaissance. This is evident in her artworks, stylistically informed by the politics and aesthetics of the landmark cultural era. Her affinity for Black history at large — its music, literature, and art — appears with regularity across her oeuvre. Her 1973 Slave Rape series comprises gutting interpretations of sexual violence, based on the likenesses of Ringgold and her daughters, painted on tapestries inspired by Tibetan thangkas.
Her Jazz Stories quilts (2004–7) honor the music genre’s creative power, depicting sensuous clubs swirling with smoke and stages led by curvaceous women rapt in song. On quilts dominated by black, red, and green, she honored the words and likenesses of revolutionary luminaries Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King Jr.
<https://tinyurl.com/2eeury7b>
In her Coming to Jones Road series, developed over a decade, from 1999 to 2010, Ringgold adeptly tackled the topic of domestic life under enslavement and emancipation. Some wordless, and others integrating brief but mighty tales, they are a highlight Text circles the perimeter of “Coming to Jones Road Part II #4 Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tate” (2010). “Aunt Emmy could be in two places at the same time — outback cuttin up wood for the fire and tendin to them kids stirrin up trouble in the field and Uncle Tate could vanish in a flash and show up in the same way,” Ringgold wrote. “Well one day they just up and walk to freedom an nobody see ’em go. Not nobody. Nobody. Not nobody but Jesus.” It’s a work of profound microfiction — fantastical, concise, and haunting. On paper and fabric, Ringgold returned to these narratives of a family blighted by slavery but buoyed by love, centered on Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tate, and their journey to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
<https://tinyurl.com/58hh9x8y>
One of Ringgold’s famed story quilts, always a delight to behold, relating funny and heart-wrenching accounts in a colloquial, stream-of-consciousness tone. “The Bitternest #3: Lovers in Paris” (1987) follows two ill-fated lovers, from their meeting to their demise. It packs a punch in 14 panels, amusing, erotic, romantic, and tragic all at once. Ringgold’s hybrid text-and-image artworks reach inside of you and require a response, whether titillation, empathy, or something else. She was generous with her gifts, at times witty in her social commentary, sometimes scathing in her critique, periodically self-reflective, and always innovative. Through her creative lives as author, illustrator, painter, quilter, sculptor, and activist, she deployed potent personal and political messages that speak to the urgency, vulnerability, and tenderness of life. Ringgold responded and reacted to the world around her, conjuring new, emotive ways to tell stories as a Black artist.
<https://tinyurl.com/38s64py9> _Jasmine Weber_Hyperallergic

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CHARLES HINMAN, STILL LIVING, WAS BORN ON THIS DATE IN 1932
<https://tinyurl.com/mv7seapc>
and was an innovator in using shaped canvases in the 60s, a mixed blessing to be sure.
<https://tinyurl.com/cw2jcmk7>
He worked alongside artists like Agnes Martin and Ellsworth Kelly,
<https://tinyurl.com/4rs762ff>
but he seems to be little discussed today.
<https://tinyurl.com/z3ebc96s> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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A COLLAPSE OR A TRANSITION TO A SMARTER MARKET?
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Leo Tolstoy wrote in the opening of Anna Karenina. The line is so iconic that it gave rise to a principle: for success to occur in any complex endeavor, all key factors must be present and functioning properly, while failure requires only a single missing element. This year, as the art market faltered, many dealers learned that lesson the hard way.
It is possible that every such business, like every unhappy family, has its own reasons for calling it quits, and in fact there are varying explanations for the raft of gallery closures this year. But when the numbers overall tell indisputably of a shrinking market, it’s hard to believe that many don’t come down to the same thing: too much money going out the door on implacable overheads, not enough coming in from buyers.
reporting is excessive. Alex Greenberger rejoiced in February at the appearance of small new galleries. Galleries large and small also expanded. And it’s true that ever since Art Basel Paris, the mood in the art market has brightened, and November saw the New York marquee auctions move some $2.2 billion in art, which for many indicated heightened confidence.
But overall, when it came to galleries, the dominant vibe was one of endings more than beginnings—and it continued a building drumbeat. Those who closed or significantly downsized in 2025, after all, joined others that have expired in previous years. These may all be part of natural cycles; Miami dealer Frederic Snitzer recently called it “a healthy, natural thinning of the herd in terms of quality.” But the scene is such that Artnet News even recently published a guide for those throwing in the towel, titled “how to close your gallery.”
So—what does it all mean? At least one market insider warns against giving in to pessimism.
“Closures tell different stories,” said Kinsey Robb, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA),. ADAA represents over 200 member galleries in nearly 40 U.S. cities and runs an annual art fair. “Some reflect exhaustion or high overhead or a shifting business model but then you have others, we really should acknowledge, that are part of a natural generational turnover, as we’re in a field where many galleries are owner-run small businesses.
“I think this period has looked difficult for some, but I don’t see it as a collapse for the market but rather as a moment of transition,” she said. “2025 has felt dramatic as a whole year, not just in the art world. I try to keep that perspective.”
Robb pushed back on some of the reporting, resorting to a common expression: “It’s not all doom and gloom,” she said, “but more a cautious, more selective, smarter, more flexible art market.” _ARTnews

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EL GRECO THIEVES ESCAPE WITH COPY INSTEAD OF ORIGINAL
<https://tinyurl.com/43m76b7d>
The Spanish media have reported on news that thieves who attempted to plunder El Greco's Penitent Magdalene from the parish church of San Eutropio in Paradas, Seville, walked off with a reproduction instead of the original painting itself. The break-in, which happened on 24th December, was foiled (it appears) due to the original being kept behind a fence and alarm. It seems that the thieves were content to take a copy instead.
_ArtHistoryNews

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EVOLUTION OF A BEEHIVE, HONEYCOMB PROCESS, CA. 1950
<https://tinyurl.com/5aw33pwt> _RabihAlameddine