OLD NEWS

SNOWFLAKE SHAPES by Mary Holland
<https://tinyurl.com/24bcpjmm>
Snowflakes form when water vapor converts directly to a solid around particles in the atmosphere, often around dust or pollen. As these ice crystals grow, they fall. Our recent snowstorm produced exquisitely delicate and complex stellar flakes – much lighter and more intricate than those we are used to. What factors determine the shape of a snowflake?
It is the temperature at which a crystal forms — and to a lesser extent the humidity of the air — that determines the basic shape of an ice crystal. Contrary to the belief that it can get too cold for snowflakes to form, snowflakes can form at any temperature as long as there is moisture in the air.
25°F.-32°F.: thin, flat, hexagonal plates
21°F.-25°F.: needles
10°F.-14°F.: star-shaped plates (stellar plates)
3°F.-10°F.: traditional six-branched flakes (dendrites)
(Snowflake Bentley “Snowflake Thermometer” and degree/crystal shape chart above do not totally agree. Most accurate source is the chart above, not Snowflake Bentley’s Thermometer, but Bentley’s photographs worth posting!) _NaturallyCurious

>>>

SIMILAR
<https://tinyurl.com/ydtkbs4e> _DavidShrigley

>>>

AMY SILLMAN’S ALTERNATE SIDES
<https://tinyurl.com/4ef8yfex>
Can painting achieve new forms of fluidity once it subjects free association to self-imposed restrictions?
Amy Sillman has been heralded as a feminist painter, her typically gestural, intuitive and unruly brushstrokes interpreted as traces of fraught intimacy, aborted memory and bodies adrift with violent eroticism. However, it is evident that a certain interpretive tendency attaches to Sillman and her women painter peers such as Laura Owens, Jacqueline Humphries and R.H. Quaytman <https://tinyurl.com/msjb39b7> , who have, alongside new developments in feminist and queer cultural theories, risen to prominence since the early 1990s with largescale works that meticulously think through the circulation and production of postmodern images and repressed histories.
Art historians and curators tend to frame these painters in clichés, presupposing that they take conceptual and formal cues from the unconscious, for instance, or that they delight in the spontaneous eruption of affect or are attuned to the vitality of matter. While these claims hold some truth, as seen in Sillman’s earlier paintings that figure tragicomic sexual encounters, mythological scenography and abject confrontations with mortality, recent developments in Sillman’s three-decade practice, characterised by the artist’s nonhierarchical attitude towards materials, artistic movements and references, depart from a set of demanding questions irreducible to such theoretical frameworks: can painting achieve other forms of fluidity once it subjects free association to self-imposed restrictions? Can precision and control coexist with care and affection for more democratic modes of viewing and making sense? Can authorship exist in both singular and plural forms?
Alternate Side (Permutations #1–32) is conceived as one site-specific installation, consisting of a series of 32 framed and untitled monotypes, hung on gallery walls that are themselves host to improvised painting and screenprinting. The monotypes, which offer an interplay between image and asemic writing, deploy a small pool of forms, ranging from vertical, slightly zigzagging lines of various lengths and thickness to ovals of different sizes. In one, lines of burgundy and storm-cloud grey wiggle against a light pink backdrop. Another is filled with whirling bands of Persian blue and black. Sillman couples and decouples these shapes against hazy colour fields and seems to revel in her own mark-making processes, laying bare traces of production.
<https://tinyurl.com/2s3zfz9t>
Printmaking can be unpredictable. These monotypes – produced during Sillman’s residency at Two Palms, an organisation that supports the production of artists’ prints and multiples – are irreproducible, full of chance and accident. Their surfaces, with the artist’s investments and gestures scraped, reworked and repeated but never erased, allow for a multitude of traces to coexist. The multiplicity of scales and shapes is most prominent in the black-and-white screenprints on the north wall. These monochrome prints, with their shallow depth of field, recall a ruined facade but ultimately point to their own making, demonstrating Sillman’s careful play with density, volume, definition and flatness, and how such play turns the painterly logic of time back on itself.
Around them, the painted and screenprinted walls appear at first as a ground of sketches, or a site of construction, that reveals the building blocks of the artist’s monotypes. Alternate Side continues Sillman’s problematising of painting as an autonomous object and closed field of operation. The south walls beam with quasi-Fauvist vibrancy, thanks to the artist’s frenzied application of unconventional materials – like turmeric – using sponges and squeegees. The resulting shapes splinter and fuse; vaguely figurative but ultimately disturbed by Sillman’s avoidance of direction and depth, they retreat into opacity and illegibility. The north walls see spatters, pulls and pours of ink that flow and wander into subdued lines of flight, loosely corresponding with the screenprints installed on them, which harbour more condensed forms and gestures.
Sillman resists the ontological and epistemological purity of painting, yet she ultimately isn’t interested in easy ambiguity or ambivalence. Instead she rejoices in her environments and her influences, at every turn complicating these with an intentionally devised and imposed grammar and rules. Sillman sets up binary oppositions only to collapse the two in one operation of immanence and unpredictable order, one that measures the inexact borders between language and perception, cause and effect. _Qingyuan Deng _ArtReview

>>>

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/2b2dra8z> _LisaAnneAuerbach

>>>

VAN GOGH AND CAFÉ CULTURE:
<https://tinyurl.com/mr6fs7vs>
In Van Gogh’s time, social life for men often revolved around the café. In Paris these were not simply coffee houses, there was always wine, most served food—and some offered entertainment. By 1886, when Vincent moved to the French capital to stay with his brother Theo, cafés had become a central part of modern life and an attractive subject for avant-garde painters.
For Van Gogh, a single man in Paris, cafés represented places to drink, eat or read a newspaper. But above all, they were congenial places to hang out with his fellow artists. Living at Theo’s apartment in Montmartre, Vincent was plunged into the centre of a dynamic social scene.
The culture of cafés is the lively subject for an exhibition opening shortly: Café Society: Art and Sociability in Belle Epoque Paris. With more than 50 paintings by a wide range of turn-of-the-century artists,
La Guinguette à Montmartre
(October 1886) was presumably an establishment where Van Gogh regularly enjoyed a drink, close to Theo’s apartment in Rue Lepic. A guinguette is a simple rural café or tavern with outdoor seating. In Van Gogh’s time Montmartre was still almost semi-rural, although rapid development meant that the city was quickly encroaching on the hill.
<https://tinyurl.com/mvsj8sd6>
The location of Van Gogh’s guinguette remains uncertain, although the restaurant La Bonne Franquette in Rue des Saules, five minutes’ walk from Theo’s apartment, now claims the honour. If indeed it is the place, then the outdoor seating area has been replaced by a 20th-century extension. A modern plaque on the restaurant’s facade records that it was once a “rendez-vous d’artistes”, with legendary regulars claimed (perhaps over ambitiously) to include Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet.
<https://tinyurl.com/3ay9w6fm>
Restaurant Rispal at Asnières (May-June 1887) was painted in the northern suburbs of Paris, on the banks of the Seine. The Rispal restaurant was probably located at 117 Quai de Seine (now Quai Aulagnier), near the Pont de Clichy, although the site has now been replaced by a dual carriageway and modern blocks.
In the late spring and early summer of 1887 Van Gogh sometimes worked in Asnières with his artist friend Paul Signac. Years later Signac recalled: “We painted on the riverbanks of the river, ate in a guinguette and returned on foot to Paris”, a journey of just over an hour. Van Gogh walked “waving his freshly painted size-30 canvas”. Restaurant Rispal at Asnières is in fact the largest of Van Gogh’s Asnières pictures so it could have been the one referred to, although it is slightly smaller than a size-30 canvas.
On another occasion Signac recalled that Van Gogh would finish his day in a café: “Having no real home of his own, he would take his seat on the terrace of a café. And the absinthes and brandies would follow each other in quick succession.”
<https://tinyurl.com/2sdeeab7>
The final Van Gogh painting in the Café Culture exhibition is by far the most personal, a portrait of the Italian woman who ran Le Tambourin bar and was for a time his girlfriend: former artists’ model Agostina Segatori. Le Tambourin was a lively haunt known for its tables with tambourine-shaped tops. Its signature dish, Timbale Bolonaise (a pasta bake with meat and tomatoes), was served in tambourine-shaped ceramic bowls.
<https://tinyurl.com/4xkmmpxs>
In the Café: Agostina Segatori in Le Tambourin (January-March 1887) shows the proprietor relaxing at a tambourine table, a beer and cigarette close at hand. On the wall behind her are Japanese prints, which are likely to be those lent by Van Gogh, who was a great admirer of them.
<https://tinyurl.com/4caukshu>
The Ordrupgaard show also includes a painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec which is closely related to Van Gogh’s life. Moulin de la Galette (1889) depicts customers in the famed café and dance hall at the top of the hill of Montmartre, five minutes’ walk from Theo’s apartment. Although Van Gogh never did a painting its interior, he made more than a dozen landscapes of the windmills and the area around the entertainment complex.
what is fascinating about Parisian cafés at the turn of the century is the sheer variety of the clientele: “Artists, musicians and writers; dandies, oddballs and lovers; labourers, socialites and prostitutes; dancers, singers and actors; partiers, alcoholics and loners.”
These welcoming venues were creative hubbubs of people sharing and debating their thoughts. “Cafés created the first social networking sites”._Martin Bailey _ArtNewspaper

>>>

THE WILTON DIPTYCH - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
<https://tinyurl.com/mwcc5bpf>
On this week's episode of the podcast I do,
Waldy & Bendy's Adventures in Art,
Watch it here. <https://tinyurl.com/yfm8vu25> _ArtHistoryNews

>>>

22. OLD FAITHFUL INN by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/4xu3evx9>
The Yellowstone Caldera—the vast magma chamber that lies beneath Yellowstone Park, causing its geysers and colorful geothermal pools—is one of the largest active volcanic systems on Earth. The saying goes that it’s “overdue” for another eruption. From a scientific perspective, this is hogwash, at least when considered in a human-scaled timeframe. The caldera’s last major eruption, about 640,000 years ago, predates Homo sapiens as a species, and it could be another half million years before it erupts again.
It is interesting to think about Yellowstone in terms of time, however. The Old Faithful Inn, the oldest and grandest of our National Park lodges—the building that coined the term “parkitecture”—has stood near the Old Faithful geyser, the great showpiece of the caldera’s ongoing activity, for just over 120 years. This feels like an age in the midst of our loud, emotional, urgent human history.
The Inn itself feels venerable and old, so old, like a vast log cabin from another era. Its spectacular lobby rises eighty-five feet, all gnarled supports and raw logs. A massive tree house—a tree palace, actually, although it’s not luxurious. Or rather, what is luxurious about it has nothing to do with gilded ornament.
No, the Old Faithful Inn is luxurious like a cathedral. Nothing is cheap, minimal, or “optimized,” but extravagant in its use of space and materials, gently instructing visitors to pause, linger, and look up in reverence for our national inheritance, for beauty and craft. A caretaker of awe. _TheImpatientReader

>>>

BASEBALL MUSCOTAH, KS
<https://tinyurl.com/2n4b2hrx> _RuralIndexingProject

>>>

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART’S 2025 ACQUISITIONS
The Baltimore Museum of Art has added 250 artworks in the past year to its encyclopedic collection. The wide-ranging acquisitions—from all over the world and spanning centuries—“reflect the museum’s focus on expanding the range of global voices represented within its collection,” according to a statement released by the museum.
<https://tinyurl.com/3zdpkck2>
<https://tinyurl.com/y5pykabv>
<https://tinyurl.com/5dmvyf3n>
<https://tinyurl.com/bddnr9js>
<https://tinyurl.com/yzch9bfn>
<https://tinyurl.com/ycye38yd>
<https://tinyurl.com/y8v65n5s>
<https://tinyurl.com/38cyz4x9>
<https://tinyurl.com/66thspj>
<https://tinyurl.com/bdhs9nrn>
<https://tinyurl.com/3pxyptz8>
<https://tinyurl.com/yssxz5ne>

>>>

MORE THAN 200 CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES ACROSS SPAIN WILL GO ON STRIKE
from 2–7 February to protest against the government’s 21 per cent VAT charge for art sales. Spain currently has the highest VAT rate on art in western Europe, has led to a ‘loss of competitiveness’, according to a comment made by Marc Domènech of Galerie Domènech in Barcelona to the Art Newspaper. In 2024 Spain’s minister of culture, Ernest Urtasun, promised to lower VAT on the purchase of art, yet VAT for the sector has remained at 21 per cent since 2012. Without changes, said Daniel Cuevas of Galería Daniel Cuevas in Madrid, the current VAT rate will ‘force many artists to abandon their careers and many galleries to close’.

>>>

WALNUTS. JUST WALNUTS. BUT EXCELLENT WALNUTS. NUTTY.
Painted by Antonio de Pereda
<https://tinyurl.com/yj3drykt> _Dr.PeterPaulRubens

>>>

LEON BLACK’S EXTENSIVE ART COLLECTION REVEALED IN EPSTEIN FILES by Alex Greenberger
<https://tinyurl.com/44uv27nj>
The newly released Jeffrey Epstein files contain a 51-page document cataloging a host of masterworks that appear to belong to Leon Black, a major art collector and businessman whose dealings with Epstein are well-documented.
The document does not name Black, a trustee and former board chair at the Museum of Modern Art. His connections to Epstein, a convicted sex offender, fully came to light in 2021, resulting in him not seeking reelection as chair. At the time, several high-profile artists called for his removal from the board altogether.
But the document does state these artworks—by artists ranging from Michelangelo to Picasso—belong to entities labeled Narrows and AP Narrows. Previously reported that Narrows Holdings and AP Holdings are corporate entities operated by Black.
This document is dated to 2017 and contains many artworks listed on another document featuring valuations by Sotheby’s from 2013. The document with the Sotheby’s valuations names institutions stewarding some of them alongside Black. By cross-referencing those museums’ websites, was able to establish that the artworks in question are owned by Black.
For example, the document with the 2013 valuations lists Sentinel (1961), a sculpture by the Abstract Expressionist artist David Smith. It was then valued at $8 million and under the partial ownership of MoMA. On MoMA’s website, the sculpture is listed as a fractional and promised gift from Black and his wife Debra,
The document also lists The Archangel Gabriel announcing the birth of Christ, a drawing from the 1520s by the Dutch painter Lucas van Leyden. Reportedly valued at $4.5 million by Sotheby’s in 2013, the van Leyden is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which also lists the piece as a promised gift from Leon and Debra Black.
While these works were previously identified on their respective museums’ website, many listed on the document were not publicly linked to Black before. If the document is accurate, it could provide an in-depth look at one of the richest art collections in the US—much of which has been kept out of the public eye. The 2017 document is reproduced in full at the bottom of this article.
The artworks listed in the 2017 document act as a who’s who of Western art history, from Italian greats like Leonardo da Vinci and Pontormo to Dutch Old Masters such as Rembrandt. There are modernists such as Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Piet Mondrian, and there are also postwar icons such as Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock.
Among the most highly valued works listed here is a Paul Cézanne piece billed as being a part of his beloved “Château Noir” series. The 2017 document does not include years for the artworks, which makes it difficult to tell which work is being referenced, but other related pieces are owned by MoMA and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This one is said to have been worth $50 million at the time and is listed as being owned by Narrows.
Also listed here is what appears to be a two-sided Michelangelo drawing called The Risen Christ. It was apparently valued at $25 million and is also said to be own by Narrows. Other entries include a Kazimir Malevich work reportedly priced at $50 million, a Constantin Brancusi piece said to be worth $40 million, and a Claude Monet allegedly valued at $45 million.
At least one work on the 2017 list sold around the time of the document’s production. A work by Wassily Kandinsky, titled Oben und links, appears on this list, which is dated to March 19 of that year and which values that piece at $6 million. On May 17, 2017, Katya Kazakina reported in Bloomberg that Black was the seller of a 1925 painting of that same name at Christie’s, where it brought in $8.3 million.
<https://tinyurl.com/4vtdafdn> _ARTnews

>>>

ZACK ZDRALE PRESSURE SYSTEM 2022
<https://tinyurl.com/5cc2ze6u> _RabihAlameddine

>>>

NEWLY RELEASED JEFFREY EPSTEIN FILES SHOW DONATION TO THE MET COSTUME INSTITUTE
On Friday, the US Department of Justice publicly released over three million additional documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender.
Tucked into those files is a copy of a donation check dated April 29, 2014 for $5,000 from Enhanced Education, a long-running foundation set up by Epstein that was once portrayed as a “charitable powerhouse,” according to the New York Times. The recipient of the donation: none other than the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the amount earmarked to the Costume Institute Benefit, otherwise known as the Met Gala. _ARTnews

>>>

TODAY'S MOOD(S) CAPTURED PERFECTLY BY CHARLES LE BRUN:
"Extreme despair" and "Anger mixed with rage"
<https://tinyurl.com/3x3ks8xp> _JesseLocker

>>>

FRIDA KAHLO-BRANDED LUXURY CONDOS GO UP FOR SALE IN MIAMI
<https://tinyurl.com/mw7wd9pc>
In the market for a crash pad after late nights during Art Basel Miami Beach? Look no further: units in a yet-to-be built, Frida Kahlo-branded luxury condominium development in Miami went up for sale this week. The two sleek towers planned for the site are “inspired by Frida Kahlo’s expressive spirit” according to promotional materials.
Renderings of the Frida Kahlo Wynwood Residences show a massive image of Kahlo on the side of the 14-storey tower designed by architect Carlos Ott, who also designed the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Another eight-storey tower will also be built as part of the project. The renderings also show interiors outfitted with neutral tones.
The project is moving forward with the blessing of the Frida Kahlo Corporation, the firm founded by Kahlo’s niece Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, her daughter, Maria Cristina Romeo Pinedo and the Venezuelan businessman Carlos Dorado. The company handles licensing of the artist’s name and image and is notoriously litigious. The Frida Kahlo Corporation will oversee a curated art collection at the development, a food and beverage component and the pool deck, according to Mansion Global
."Frida Kahlo was never meant to live only on walls, she was meant to be lived,” Bea Alvarado, the chief operating officer of the Frida Kahlo Corporation told
The corporation has undertaken a plethora of collaborations in recent years with brands like the fast-fashion behemoth Shein and Barbie, the latter of which resulted in a legal battle between members of Kahlo’s family. The Frida Kahlo Corporation has faced backlash for licensing the image of Kahlo, a committed Communist, for commercial deals. The Frida Kahlo Wynwood Residences have not been immune to such criticism: some social media users described the units going on sale this week as “soulless” and “bland”. _ArtNewspaper

>>>

CATHERINE O’HARA WARDROBE POLAROIDS FROM SECOND CITY, 1983. RIP
<https://tinyurl.com/57tbj9t5>
an absolute legend & icon💔
<https://tinyurl.com/3u3xj3y9> _MichaelLobel

>>>

HOW SOTHEBY’S IS DEEPENING ITS TRANSFORMATION FROM AUCTION HOUSE TO FINANCIAL INSTITUTION
<https://tinyurl.com/yt2yvewz>
This week Sotheby’s Financial Services (SFS) announced that it had priced a $900 million securitization backed by loans secured against artworks and, for the first time, collectible cars, according to the company. The deal is scheduled to close on February 3 and is expected to receive top-tier credit ratings from Morningstar DBRS, Sotheby’s said.
In simple terms, the transaction bundles hundreds of loans made to collectors, using artworks and luxury vehicles as collateral, and sells the right to collect those future loan payments as bonds to institutional investors. Those investors receive regular payments as borrowers repay their loans, while Sotheby’s gets cash up front that it can use to make new loans.
This is the second issuance under a securitization program Sotheby’s launched in 2024, when it priced roughly $700 million in bonds backed exclusively by art-secured loan. That earlier deal was notable for pushing art lending into the same kinds of financial markets long used for mortgages, car loans, and other consumer debt. The new issuance builds on that foundation, both in size and scope.
The addition of collectible cars is the clearest signal of where Sotheby’s sees the business heading. Rather than treating art lending as a niche service tied to auction activity, the company is positioning itself as a broader luxury-asset finance platform, capable of lending against everything from paintings to prized automobiles.
The expansion into collectible cars may also point toward where this kind of financing could go next. Industry executives and advisors have long discussed the potential to lend, and eventually bundle loans, against other high-value collectibles, including watches, wine, jewelry, and designer handbags. Many of those markets already support active secondary trading and price benchmarks, making them easier to evaluate than art once was. Whether they ultimately enter large-scale securitization will depend on liquidity, transparency, and how those assets perform through the next market cycle. _ARTnews

>>>

ROYAL ALBATROSSES HAVE A NEW YEARS BASH
Welcome to the hottest New Year’s party in New Zealand! Northern Royal Albatrosses gather around WYL and his egg at the Plateau nest site for a lively meet-and-greet. These social gatherings—often made up of younger birds and nonbreeders—are a regular part of colony life and sometimes spill into areas near active nests. They give young birds a chance to practice the complex displays and vocalizations of courtship, helping them learn how to impress future mates.
<https://tinyurl.com/ypex64dm> _CornellLab