OLD NEWS

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

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MURAKAMI’S MONET MONOTYPE by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/25dn6c46>
I heard two discussions of Takashi Murakami’s show in Los Angeles today, from people who could not be more different. And basically, it sounds and looks fascinating.
Murakami’s facility with Japanese art history has always been one of his secret superpowers. And it sounds like the current SUPERFLAT show slots into his overarching and innovative critique of western art history’s relationship to Japanese art and culture. It looks specifically at 18th and 19th century Japanese painting and ukiyo-e, and their connection to and co-optation by the Impressionists and the Japonisme movement.
Murakami has made intricate copies of ukiyo-e that traveled to 19th century France. And he’s made a full-scale copy of Monet’s 1875 painting, Woman with a Parasol — Madame Monet and her Son. Whether it’s a work like the Monet, painted in one quick, plein air session, or the dense woodblock prints, Murakami unifies them with his own technique, described as, “layer upon layer of silkscreened acrylic paint, applied with a special squeegee work application method.”
Which, what?? I am absolutely down for using exhaustive screenprinting for a monotype. But after seeing details on Perrotin’s website,<https://tinyurl.com/yas7afkx> this squeegee work application method is beyond my understanding. And I, for one, would like to see it.
[MORNING AFTER UPDATE] Oh, right, I can.
I googled at first, but only found that I’d joined the legion of content mills who republished Murakami’s press release text as-is. So I ended up at the sources.
Here are details of how Murakami translated Monet’s wet-on-wet brushstrokes into however many screens. Sometimes the scratchy structure of an emptied brush gets preserved, like the tan dots above the ‘M’. And sometimes it becomes a gradient of color, like the bottom of the ‘t’.
<https://tinyurl.com/4yfz9c43>
<https://tinyurl.com/5n8hxhyk>
Some colors get more intense in Murakami’s version, like that mustardy flame above the ‘n’, which is barely a thing in the Monet. But that same effect also makes the bare canvas/underlayer of Monet much more intricate. Like everything going on above the ‘et’ feels very different. Murakami’s resolution is higher, or seems higher, an oversharpening fallacy. But his colors look more liquid; they were laid down in the precise shape of a flow that never happened. _greg.org

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LOVE
<https://tinyurl.com/255er6bh> _DavidShrigley

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43. TIMEX by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/4bnxvcbd>
America’s most ubiquitous timepiece has almost disappeared, many times, but Timex has always found a way. Founded in 1854 to compete with expensive European models, the company synchronized industrial society in the late 19th century with the Yankee pocket watch. Priced at just one dollar—within reach of workers—the “dollar watch” eventually sold over 40 million units. Timekeeping became accessible, commonplace.
Facing bankruptcy after WWI, the company joined forces with Walt Disney to produce the 1933 Mickey Mouse watch. It launched at the Chicago World’s Fair, selling 11,000 units in one day. A cartoon character and a dying watch company saved each other by offering the country an affordable, whimsical morale boost.
The slogan “Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking” helped Timex dominate the postwar years, with advertised torture tests—placed in a paint mixer, frozen in an ice cube tray, swallowed by a cow—establishing Timex as the best-selling watch in the world by the late 1960s.
When Japanese companies introduced inexpensive, highly accurate quartz watches in the 1970s, Timex faced being beaten at its own game. The company revived itself with the Ironman Triathlon in 1986—still the gold standard for endurance athletes. In 1993, Indiglo’s glowing blue-green face lit a darkened staircase for evacuees fleeing the World Trade Center bombing.
Recently, the embrace of analog has recast Timex as a desirable anti-smartwatch, with re-released classic midcentury designs (one version is called The Draper). Which begs the question: what version of time will we need next? _TheImpatientReader

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TODAY'S MOOD:
Wayne Thiebaud, "Clown & Beast," 2018-19
<https://tinyurl.com/yue4snmh>
Wayne Thiebaud, "Stack of Books," 1991-92
<https://tinyurl.com/muerfjt2> _MichaelLobel

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WEIRDEST WHITNEY BIENNIAL
The work that appeared most nightmarish to me was the first one I encountered during my tour of the Biennial: Ali Eyal’s painting Look Where I Took You (2026). Eyal, who showed at last year’s Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum, makes paintings that look a little garish to me, though this is almost certainly the point. The story behind Look Where I Took You is itself fascinating. Knowing that the forthcoming US invasion of Iraq would forever change the Iraq his family knew, Eyal’s mother took him to an amusement park one last time. Eyal’s painting is not some twee tableau waxing poetic about a society forever altered. The nightmare is already here: the ferris wheel comes apart, people fly out of their chairs, the carousel’s horses have been shot through with arrows, the grim reaper looks on wearing a Ghostface mask. _Maximilíano Durón _ARTnews

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RODIN GARDEN REDUX
<http://tiny.cc/8zrz001>
LACMA is reinstalling its Rodin sculpture garden north of Wilshire, outside the David Geffen Galleries. The works are posthumous bronze casts donated by financier B. Gerald Cantor and wife Iris from 1973 to 1990.
<http://tiny.cc/gzrz001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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NEWFIELDS IS CLOSING THE LUME AFTER A FIVE-YEAR RUN
<https://tinyurl.com/3c2wtmjn>
Newfields confirmed Feb. 27 that it will close the Lume, the cinema-like digital gallery on the fourth floor of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the following day.
The announcement, first reported by the Indianapolis Business Journal, comes as the current experience, "Connection: Land, Water, Sky — Art & Music from Indigenous Australians," was scheduled to end. The museum usually announces its new Lume iterations in the spring; this year, it has not yet shared details of what's to come for the fourth floor.
"This transition allows us to make room for a new monumental exhibition that will further advance the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s contemporary art vision and expand how audiences experience art at Newfields," said Mattie Wethington, Newfields' director of marketing and communications, in an emailed statement.
Newfields opened the Lume in 2021, showcasing an immersive installation with nearly 150 projectors that emblazoned details of Vincent van Gogh's paintings across almost 30,000 square feet.
The experience delighted many but also upset some, who expressed frustration that longtime contemporary art favorites were moved from the fourth floor. Since then, Newfields has integrated several contemporary pieces throughout the galleries and opened the exhibit "The Message is the Medium," which has brought back more favorites.
Over the past five years, Newfields worked with Grande Experiences to showcase several themes in the Lume, including the work of Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet and Impressionists, and, most recently, "Connection: Land, Water, Sky — Art & Music from Indigenous Australians."
Newfields will hold a farewell event, "A Nightcap in the Lume: A Culinary Tour Through France, Spain, and Australia" to celebrate the digital gallery's five years at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 28. The event will include culinary offerings from the Lume's previous iterations. Tickets are $85 for the public and $75 for members. _IndianapolisStar

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SOPHISTI-CUTS WING, ND
<https://tinyurl.com/4ydht3n7> _RuralIndexingProject

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LINE OF FIRE. As the death toll rises amid a widening war in the Middle East, the region’s museums are also under threat. Iranian bombings of the United Arab Emirates, which began over the weekend, caused debris to fall on Abu Dhabi’s cultural center, Saadiyat Island, home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and other institutions, Le Quotidien de l’Art reports. The museum is equipped with a fire-protected gallery that can double as a shelter in the event of an attack. However, the Jean Nouvel–designed building has no underground armored bomb shelters, raising concerns about potential damage to its holdings, including loaned artworks from the Louvre in Paris. Meanwhile, Qatar’s museums—notably the Museum of Islamic Art and the National Museum of Qatar—have closed as a precautionary measure, with no indication of when they will reopen. _ARTnews

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CENTRE POMPIDOU’S NEW JERSEY MUSEUM IS OFFICIALLY ‘DEAD,’
<https://tinyurl.com/yck27rz4>
A Centre Pompidou satellite museum that was expected to open in Jersey City is officially not happening anymore, the city’s Mayor said on Wednesday.
The museum, officially known as the Centre Pompidou x Jersey City, would have been the only North American satellite operated by Paris’s biggest museum of modern and contemporary art, which is currently closed for renovations.
The Pompidou also runs satellites in Shanghai and Málaga, Spain. Others are expected to open in Hanwha, South Korea, and Paraná, Brazil, yet both pale in comparison to the most ambitious Pompidou satellite in the offing: Kanal, a new museum in Brussels. Some have raised concerns, however, about whether Kanal will ultimately open as Belgium continues to face a prolonged government shutdown.
Like the rest of these satellites, the Jersey City museum was years in the making. It was first announced in 2021 as a 58,000-square-foot museum set in a 109-year-old building on Journal Square. But as often happens in New Jersey, local politics interfered, and the plan quickly festered.
In 2023, Republican lawmakers began to raise concerns about the Centre Pompidou x Jersey City, claiming that the museum would cost $200 million, with some $58 million of that coming from the pockets of taxpayers. After months of back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, the state pulled money from the project, causing the plan to implode.
The next year, the Pompidou renewed its effort, announcing a new plan for an even bigger Jersey City museum, which now had a new location. Now, it appears that rebooted version of the Centre Pompidou x Jersey City won’t happen either.
“We will not be doing Pompidou, to be clear,” said James Solomon, the Democratic Mayor of Jersey City
_Alex Greenberger _ARTnews

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APPARENTLY MARCH IS ALL ABOUT SEAFOOD.
[Joachim von Sandrart, The Month of March (1642),
from a series of months in Schleissheim Palace.]
<https://tinyurl.com/38959n3k> _JesseLocker

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U.S. SUPREME COURT REJECTS BID TO GRANT COPYRIGHT TO A.I.-GENERATED ARTWORK
<https://tinyurl.com/bddyhtvh>
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the ​issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning ‌away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.
Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office ​decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ​because it did not have a human creator.
Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for ⁠a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," visual art he said his AI ​technology "DABUS" created. The image shows train tracks entering a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and ​purple plant imagery.
The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear Thaler's appeal.
The Copyright Office has ​separately rejected bids by artists for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. Those artists argued that ​they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance - unlike Thaler, who said his system created "A Recent ‌Entrance to ⁠Paradise" independently.
A federal judge in Washington upheld the office's decision in Thaler's case in 2023, writing that human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the ruling in 2025.
Thaler's lawyers told the Supreme Court in a filing that his case was of "paramount importance" considering the ​rapid rise of generative AI.
With ​a refusal by the ⁠court to hear the appeal, Thaler's lawyers said, "even if it later overturns the Copyright Office's test in another case, it will be too late. The Copyright Office ​will have irreversibly and negatively impacted AI development and use in the creative ​industry during ⁠critically important years."
"Although the Copyright Act does not define the term 'author,' multiple provisions of the act make clear that the term refers to a human rather than a machine," the administration said.
The Supreme Court previously rejected Thaler's request, opens new tab ⁠to hear ​his argument in a separate case involving prototypes for a beverage ​holder and a light beacon concerning whether AI-generated inventions should be eligible for U.S. patent protection. His patent applications were rejected by ​the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on similar grounds. _Reuters

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BEST PAINTING TITLE EVER:
Men fighting and women ignoring them
Mughal, 18th C
<https://tinyurl.com/ma5ua26f> _RabihAlameddine

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TECH BROS BRING BURNING MAN ART TO SF.
If it’s been looking like the new public art in San Francisco borrowed a page from Burning Man, that is no coincidence. As Frieze’s Moses Hubbard informs us, a new project called Big Art Loop, privately funded by tech baron Sid Sijbrandij’s eponymous foundation, is installing up to 100 large-scale artworks around San Francisco, most of which, thus far, were originally designed for Burning Man, the annual “festival that has become a favored venue for Silicon Valley elites to raise venture capital while tripping on psychedelics,” as Hubbard sees it. But this raises a few burning problems. The sculptures in the Big Art Loop sidestep publicly funded art vetting processes, handing the Sijbrandij Foundation outsized sway over the curated results. This has translated into 18 artworks installed in the city thus far, which mostly share a “Burner ethos” that generally goes for spectacle, scale, and a quick read. “The ultimate litmus test for most of the sculptures made for Burning Man is their ability to make you stop and say, whoa,” for a hot minute, before moving on, writes Hubbard. _ARTnews

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AN OCTAGONAL CEILING PAINTING OF CHRIST RESURRECTION BY TINTORETTO,
<https://tinyurl.com/3h29t5y5>
which had been turned into a rectangular galley picture,
<https://tinyurl.com/3k3uny56>
was re-framed at the Ashmolean Museum this week.
I carved a frame based on Venetian 16th century ceilings to cover the additions.
<https://tinyurl.com/45kbx9ju> _PeterSchade

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INSIDE FRIEZE by The art daddy
Then I remembered I had bigger fish to fry. Namely: retrieving the Frieze tote I had been promised.
Let me tell you something. This was not a tote. This was infrastructure. The largest, thickest, most structurally sound canvas tote of my life. The Frieze press liaison who handed it to me? Immaculate. British. Charming. We bonded instantly. I was handed additional swag. I was offered the media room. I was welcomed into the soft glow of institutional legitimacy.
This was grown Daddy energy. I arrived disoriented, slightly congested, flanked by my Australian art husband and my sworn content nemesis. I left the entrance sequence with elite tote privilege and sanctioned writing space.
I also want to directly thank the Frieze press person who made it happen. You are lovely. You are a hero. The tote was nicer than maybe the vip totes people get unless I am so out of the vip tote loop nowthere may even be vip levels of them.
After that, the real fever dream began. Not the Insta version. The cortisol version. Try going to an art fair as your art world alter ego while also reporting for legitimate outlets. It is psychic split-screen. One brain tracking gossip velocity. The other tracking form, labor, and long arcs of recognition. One ear tuned to whispers. The other to wall text. Seductive and clinical at the same time.
From the entrance it was wall to wall bodies, art, intensity. The hangar ceiling swallowing sound but somehow amplifying it. The air thick with perfume, linen, ambition. Advisors speed-walking. Collectors drifting with intent. Dealers projecting calm while recalibrating mid-sentence.
And the daddies. So many California, East Coast, and European 50+ daddies I almost had heat stroke and an actual stroke. Linen blazers. Loafers without socks. Architectural eyewear. Silver hair in various stages of strategic acceptance. I got married at least twenty times in my head before making it past the first aisle.
<https://tinyurl.com/yfs8cscd>
The demographic spread alone was enough to destabilize hydration levels.
When I am at a fair, I move in work mode. First pass is instinct. Second pass is structure. Third pass is commitment. Where did my body pause? What felt decorative versus durable? Because I was covering the week for two outlets, I was toggling constantly. Market temperature in one eye. Cultural thesis in the other. That shaped where I lingered.
Preview Day always carries voltage, but Frieze Los Angeles inside an airplane hangar hums differently. Industrial scale makes everything feel heightened. Every handshake witnessed. Every sale mythologized. Every glance loaded.
I saw and spoke with Jeffrey Deitch, who moves through these rooms like he owns the lighting. I did not see my Lare Bear sworn enemy Erica, though reports confirm her orbit. I crossed paths with Magnus Resch and James Franco multiple times. That constellation deserves its own dispatch.
But beneath the spectacle, patterns emerged. There was a strong showing of textiles, quilts, ceramics, painting, and installation. The textile density in particular felt deliberate, not trend but correction. Mediums historically coded as domestic, feminized, or secondary now commanding booth real estate and serious attention.
One booth that held me featured a female abstract painter from the 1970s whose work resisted spectacle. Structured compositions. Layered surfaces built slowly rather than theatrically. Paintings made in a period when abstraction was still dominated by male mythologies of scale and bravado. Seeing them here did not feel nostalgic. It felt corrective.
Nearby, Proyectos Monclova brought work by Gabriel de la Rocha that operated in a different register. Measured. Controlled. Confident without aggression. In a fair environment that rewards volume, the work held through structure. It did not shout. It steadied.
<https://tinyurl.com/zc8uk4be>
Textiles weren’t just aesthetic mood. They cleared.
Translation: the hangar wasn’t just a vibe. It was liquidity. If you zoom out, the pattern becomes clear. Institutional names moving at scale. Women artists securing serious placements. Textile and material practices holding steady demand. Legacy galleries performing stability while newer programs showed velocity.
I was poolside, champagne sweating in my hand, filing copy between conversations. Sick. Sunburned. Five days deep in Los Angeles. Working. Writing. Watching. And yet, that exact moment typing under a cabana while collectors floated in sunglasses made the entire trip feel worth it.
Felix is adjacency. It’s who leans over your shoulder. Who pretends not to see you across the pool. Who locks eyes in a hallway and looks away half a second too late. Art people. Actual LA people. The hybrid species we all claim not to study but absolutely do.
Daddy wasn’t window shopping. Daddy was reallocating capital.
Felix
Felix was the 1960s Don Draper fever dream I came west for. East Coast ambition stepping into West Coast light and pretending it was always meant to live there.
The hotel is iconic. The David Hockney–painted pool shimmering like it knows its own mythology. Cabanas lined up like soft power boxes. The kind of blue sky that makes exhaustion look intentional. If Frieze is industrial capitalism in an airplane hangar, Felix is mid-century seduction with a bar tab.
When you first enter the hotel, it feels slightly wrong. High ceilings. Thick carpet. Hallways that smell faintly of history and sunscreen. Then it clicks. Every gallery has taken over a room. Doors open onto beds stripped out, art hung where headboards used to be. Wallpaper doing its best to hold conceptual rigor. It’s chic. It’s Hollywood. It’s a little absurd. Which is exactly why it works.
The 11th and 12th floors hum differently than a convention center ever could. You move from elevator to balcony to pool deck without fully leaving the fair. It’s porous. You’re never quite sure if you’re in a booth visit or at a pre-party. You’re always almost in someone’s room.
And it was 90 degrees on a Friday.
<https://tinyurl.com/n34mj5pc>
I was poolside, champagne sweating in my hand, filing copy between conversations. Sick. Sunburned. Five days deep in Los Angeles. Working. Writing. Watching. And yet, that exact moment typing under a cabana while collectors floated in sunglasses made the entire trip feel worth it.
Felix is adjacency. It’s who leans over your shoulder. Who pretends not to see you across the pool. Who locks eyes in a hallway and looks away half a second too late. Art people. Actual LA people. The hybrid species we all claim not to study but absolutely do.
Diva Corps
Which bring me to Diva Corps. LA Art Week is usually their peak mating season. Maximum visibility. Maximum performance. Maximum anonymous authority. They hosted a party, there was a magazine launch.
This year, though, the energy felt unstable. Not loud. Not triumphant. Just slightly winded. Rumors floated through the pool deck air like chlorine. One theory says it is an editor at Artforum. Another insists it is multiple operators sharing a login and a superiority complex. Meanwhile, I am told people are still placing bets on my identity, which is flattering but misplaced. For the record, no, I am not a gay man. Though I admire the confidence of whoever started that.
The latest evolution is hiring a comedian to appear publicly on their behalf, which feels less like satire and more like outsourcing mystique. Add in a newly surfaced troll adjacent account orbiting under their name and the whole thing starts to read less like razor wit and more like brand maintenance. If I troll, I do it in daylight. I sign my work. I stand in rooms. This feels different. Strategic opacity is only powerful when the strategy is clear._ Theartdaddy

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/59bspfbm> _LisaAnneAuerbach