OLD NEWS

BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1593, IN ROME, ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI.
One of the great painters of Baroque Italy.
Endured shit and painted about it.
Here, herself as a martyr, Saint Catherine, 1616.
<https://tinyurl.com/ywmk6s8s> _Dr.PeterPaulRubens

>>>

TWO
<https://tinyurl.com/ylc6jmq6> _DavidShrigley

>>>

ON KAWARA CODES, CODECS, CODEX by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/ytjc37td>
In the 2015 Guggenheim catalogue for On Kawara — Silence curator Anne Wheeler wrote that there were eight Code drawings: three made of hash marks in colored pencil; two typed texts of extremely large and small numbers; two pictograms; and a poem printed in braille.
Duncan McLaren counts nine Code works: there are actually four Code hashmark drawings, with varying titles. But then he says there are eight, because two pictograms are the same. Except the two pictograms McLaren references seem to be just two sides of one of the pictograms Wheeler mentioned, in a catalogue; the other was a poster in a window. And he notes that braille is only a mystery if you don’t know braille. Honestly, I’m taking braille and pictograms off my Code list.
<https://tinyurl.com/yro5ecyt>
And I’m adding back the Date painting-style, graphically encoded paintings Kawara made in 1965, before starting the Date paintings, which he destroyed. The surviving Code works begin in 1965, and cluster in the 1960s. But except for a 1996 artist book, most of Kawara’s Code works were unpublished and almost entirely unconsidered until his Guggenheim retrospective in 2015. One filled sixteen pages and the cover of a massive, major 1996 catalogue, and yet seems to have gone unacknowledged. In 2015 Ben Slyngstad, a gallery guide at the Guggenheim, deciphered Kawara’s last Code drawing, Voice from Moon (2011), which turned out to be the transcript of the July 20, 1969 moon landing. Unaware of Slyngstad’s achievement, McLaren also deciphered it in 2022, and identified the source of the title and the transcript as the front page of the NY Times.
<https://tinyurl.com/yngn7w65>
Which is all prelude to the mindboggling realization that in 2024 McLaren, Anders Delbom, and Tommy Wrede deciphered all but one of On Kawara’s surviving Code works. McLaren’s account of the deciphering extends over seven parts, and it is quite a journey, and it ends with a call for help in cracking the last Code. Which is the first, but first:
The hashmark drawings—one of which, Les Lettres d’Amour/ Love Letters <https://tinyurl.com/2xxrx9du> (1965), was also reproduced as a seven-page screenprint in the Codes (1996) artist edition—end up being straightforward enough susbtitution ciphers, where a pair of colored hashes represents a letter from the Roman alphabet.
One drawing, Traveler’s Song, or Traveler no Uta (1965) turned out to be a partially translated Japanese folk song, with the mix of English and romanized Japanese lyrics complicating typical pattern/frequency recognition.
<https://tinyurl.com/ywpqlxcs>
The two large number Code works, <https://tinyurl.com/yt2mrrpc> include Eight Quintillion… (1969), six pages of typed out numbers, and No Title (1996?), in which each typed out number corresponds to a sentence or line? And thus the constituent digits substitute for letters. Kawara gave a clue to the [most unlikeliest] source of the 1969 text in a rare 1970 interview. Fortunately the same cipher key was used for the sprawling 1990 text, too.
The last Code work to decode is the earliest, Code <https://tinyurl.com/yme8q6dn> , or Colored Cryptogram (1965), in the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo. The hashmarks appear to encode Japanese phonetic syllables. And as the surprise at what McLaren and his collab have accomplished wears off, it’s replaced by surprise that they haven’t cracked the Japanese code, too. I mean, come on, it’s been a year! _greg.org

>>>

WINSLOW HOMER, TWO GIRLS IN A ROWBOAT, 1880
<https://tinyurl.com/282qogyz>
Winslow Homer, Two Boys in a Pasture, 1974
<https://tinyurl.com/ynb4ets3> _RabihAlameddine

>>>

WHO IS SHE?? by Miranda July
<https://tinyurl.com/yodvalrz>
This pose. The lighting. The furrow between her eyes. This blouse! She’s the sole model in an Etsy shop I just stumbled into called MyRagsShop. It’s in Wroclaw, Poland but they don’t charge for shipping. Also everything is really cheap — like $30 to $60. It’s possible she will raise the prices after I post this and frankly I don’t blame her. But at the time this story was filed (what?) a lot of things were strange prices like $30.12 and $55.32. Maybe something to with the zloty to dollar exchange rate.
<https://tinyurl.com/yljmfej2>
I want to believe the woman in the pictures is also the shop owner but probably not. I love it when she looks to the side from behind like this. And what a dainty blouse. Linen long sleeves shirt/ 90s vintage linen blouse/ casual blue shirt/ size S
<https://tinyurl.com/ynrxumph>
I suddenly love the veins in my hands! Also maybe want this Vintage large, insulated coat, 90s trench / gray oversize trench / vintage coat /unisex trench / size XL. You understand that I don’t know this person and am not profitting here, right? You are falling down the rabbit hole in real time with me. Who is taking the pictures? I need more production credits!
<https://tinyurl.com/yszs2hmt>
What is this fit? What is this collar? Handmade Vintage orange sweater/ Norway wool Sweater/ Retro 80s pullover/ size XS-S. I’m feeling how I used to feel looking at the Tweeds catalogue as a teenager. So covetous I couldn’t see straight. I did save up and order one thing from there once, a moss green cardigan, cropped and textured.
<https://tinyurl.com/2xan3zg9>
Whoever buys these things has to send us picts. Linen vintage jacket with lining /casual red and pink jacket Made in Italy/comfortable linen and cotton jacket/old vintage/size 42/oversize
My questions are who is she? What is her name? How old is she? What does she do when she’s not modeling? I probably have other questions but I have to keep going through the shop.
<https://tinyurl.com/yqvb4e6k>
Ok, I admit I ordered this for myself. But I showed alot of restraint to leave the other things for you guys. Vintage cotton dress/80s casual dress/oversize dress/size 38-40/Oversize . I probably bought the wrong thing but I felt like it was my duty to get something that other people wouldn’t want.
<https://tinyurl.com/yrrzpqvm>
Her hair is cute this way too. If she gets a big modeling career from this I don’t need to be mentioned as part of the discovery but if I was that would be fine also. I’m sure she has busy and satisfying life and just does this as a favor for her friend and doesn’t want to model as a career. Miu Miu S/S ‘26. That’s all I’m going say. If she does walk I would like be in the front row but whatever, do what you want. Pearls. I’m dropping pearls here, left and right.
<https://tinyurl.com/ywnbbelx>
Chic piece. Only other women will like it but we just want to be comfortable in this life.
<https://tinyurl.com/yogocrmj>
I feel like I’m going crazy. Not even my style and sort of cheap-looking but those big sleeves and you tie it loosely and it’s kind of sloppy and sexy.
<https://tinyurl.com/yveqay9l>
I like her hair darker but honestly she can’t lose. The furrow and now the eye bags. I do understand that she’s very, very pretty and thin and this is not how most of us look with furrows and eyebags. But we still need aspirational images in the furrow and eyebag and hand vein department! Because we understand and love ourselves by looking at other women (remember the body presentation post.) The throat skin is also not perfectly smooth. But honestly I’m only really noticing these things now, the main thing is just an enjoyment of her beauty and vibe and an excitement about the clothes. She’s probably 43. This coat is sick. Whenever they say the brands I’ve never heard of them. I guess HIRMER is a German brand of wool items. Classy. You know that’s warm.
<https://tinyurl.com/ystcm6pm>
Well, this jumpsuit is going to make someone’s day. I’d snap it up but my torso is surely too long. I’ve hit the post length limit but just know there is way, way more in the Etsy shop. Clothes of all sizes and shapes. Even a chair. If you get something tell us in the comments or in the chat. But for everyone else, I hope you have enjoyed this photo exhibition of an unknown-as-of-yet woman in Poland. I’ll let you know if I learn more =========
UPDATE: Her name is Karolina Ćwik, a Polish artist. Here is her website <https://tinyurl.com/ykacx5ej> . It’s good stuff, you’re going to be happy. She’s a mom and I love her photographs. Nevermind about the modeling, we are now about sharing her work with a larger audience — (although she’s already pretty established Europe.) These are from a series called “Let’s Build The Virus”:
<https://tinyurl.com/2x5emwnf>
<https://tinyurl.com/ywzkd4oy>
“Her projects are intimate diaries, in which she documents her experience of being a mother, daughter and an artist. She is a graduate of Law and Administration at the University of Wroclaw and a student of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (the Czech Republic).”
And OMG, it’s HER STORE. This is the info we wanted, from this interview:
Recently, I started a business that I can run without leaving the house. I have an online vintage-clothing store and take the ‘sales photos’ with my husband. I’m the model – a tired mother at the end of a long day. My friends laugh that you can see the bags under my eyes a little. The quarantine has probably made that worse.
These are from a series called “Don’t look at me”:
<https://tinyurl.com/yl7ppmko>
<https://tinyurl.com/yspbcjls>
I’m inspired. The best possible outcome. Good luck today, everyone.
x
mj _MirandaJuly

>>>

CHURCH WEBSTER, SD
<https://tinyurl.com/yoymxzye> _RuralIndexingProject

>>>

A FORGOTTEN FRA ANGELICO FRESCO HAS BEEN RESTORED
<https://tinyurl.com/2x5rafac>
A long-forgotten fresco by the early Renaissance master Fra Angelico has emerged from centuries of neglect in a secluded Tuscan convent, newly restored just in time for a landmark exhibition in neighboring Florence. Hidden high in the chapter house of San Domenico in Fiesole, the quietly majestic Crucifixion—possibly the artist’s earliest known work—has been painstakingly revived by conservators, offering visitors a rare glimpse into the spiritual and artistic beginnings of one of Italy’s most revered painters.
The simple but powerful image of Jesus on the cross against a deep purple-blue ground was produced by Fra Angelico shortly after he moved into the convent of San Domenico in around 1420, when he was in his mid-twenties. High up in the convent’s chapter house, it is among his earliest recorded works and may even be the first. Later, the friar-turned-painter went on to work in many Italian cities, including Florence and Rome.
The convent remains off the beaten trail in a remote church in the hilltop town of Fiesole, so only the most intrepid tourists have made the pilgrimage to see it over the centuries. It’s no surprise, then, that the secluded artwork had languished in a state of disrepair. That is until last year, when it was encountered by Bottega Belacqua, a trio of Italian and American doctors who are passionate about Renaissance art. The group raised the alarm with Friends of Florence, a U.S. non-profit dedicated to the preservation of the city’s cultural legacy, which was able to provide the funding necessary to assemble a team of Italian restorers.
<https://tinyurl.com/ys57r2xb>
Fra Angelico, along with near-contemporaries like Masaccio, has been credited with transforming Western medieval painting and ushering the Renaissance in the early 15th century thanks to his use of illusionistic space and linear perspective. His work would influence some of the great masters of the High Renaissance, such as Raphael and Leonardo, who followed a generation later. Famous 16th-century artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari described Fra Angelico as having “a rare and perfect talent” and Victorian artist and author John Ruskin praised his work as “near heaven as human hand or mind will ever or can ever go.”
Despite his enduring legacy, Fra Angelico’s early career remains lesser known and works attributed to the artist from before the 1430s are rare.
To learn more about the Fiesole fresco’s storied past, the Bottega Belacqua consulted the convent’s chronicle, which is known as the Chronica quadripartita and dates back to 1516. This tome had played a crucial role in recording the presence of the artwork, which could easily have been lost after it was whitewashed in 1566. Though the reasons for this act aren’t known, Popple speculated that “it may have been or hygienic reasons, maybe there was a pestilence, or it was just considered old-fashioned.”
<https://tinyurl.com/ypze6voq>
In 1881, the convent’s prior decided to reveal the fabled artwork, which had at that time been concealed for over three centuries. Unfortunately, he decided to remove the whitewash himself, despite having inadequate experience. The fresco suffered serious damage as a result but, shortly afterwards, was restored and partially reconstructed.
Popple noted that, at some point, water managed to infiltrate through the roof, resulting in the loss of significant portions of the fresco that have been reconstructed during previous restoration attempts. This includes the area below Jesus’ feet and most of the frame, although the central crucifixion scene is original. The last major restoration effort was made by Dino Dini in 1955.
Thankfully, Popple and Conti found the fresco in a structurally stable condition, though in serious need of some touching up. Water infiltration had resulted in some lingering damage, including sections of plaster that had begun to peel away and some dark markings from the water infiltration. There was also an inevitable layer of dirt.
In an effort to preserve Dini’s masterful work, the team were particularly delicate in cleaning with water, only using resins for some problem areas. They also consolidated the plaster and did minimal but necessary reconstruction and retouching.
<https://tinyurl.com/ysjpgtrx> _artnet

>>>

MYCENAEAN MASTERY AT THE GETTY VILLA by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/3hyo001>
Bros think about the Roman Empire, but nobody thinks about the Mycenaeans. It wasn't always that way. To Homer the Mycenaean epoch was a golden age of Greek prosperity and heroism, the setting for the Iliad and Odyssey. Despite that, Mycenae has little name recognition in 21st-century America, and important Mycenaean material is rarely encountered in museums. The first large U.S. museum survey is the Getty Villa's new, post-fire-closure show, "The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece." It assembles over 230 objects from Messenia, the Western part of the Mycenaean realm, and particularly from Pylos, a kingdom that came to rule about 800 square miles.
<http://tiny.cc/ahyo001>
<http://tiny.cc/bhyo001>
The Mycenaeans lived on the Greek mainland and were innovative architects and engineers, producing palaces, beehive-shaped tombs, roads, and bridges. As artists they produced wall paintings, painted pottery, decorated weapons, carved gems, and jewelry. They prized the older, more refined art of Minoan Crete (much as Rome looked back to Greece). The show contains a number of Minoan pieces found in Mycenaean excavations.
<http://tiny.cc/dhyo001>
The Kingdom of Pylos" introduces a number of recent finds, notably the tomb of the "Griffin Warrior" discovered in 2015 by a husband-and-wife team of American archaeologists, Jack L. Davis and Sharon Stocker of the University of Cincinnati. The Griffin Warrior, named for an ivory relief on view, was buried with over 3500 precious objects.
Most of the objects in "Kingdom of Pylos" are diminutive, and the star piece is "incomprehensibly small" in Davis' words. That's the Pylos Combat Agate (top of post), a 1.4-in.-wide sealstone probably made in Crete. The quality of the gem's carving has already upended art history. Davis feels the command of anatomy is more like that associated with the Classical period (a millennium later) than the late Bronze Age. This raises questions both art-historic and technological. It's assumed that the carver must have used a magnifying glass to achieve such fine detail. Lenses were discovered at the Minoan Palace of Knossos, one capable of 11× magnification. The carving would have used miniature drills, lubricated with olive oil. Perhaps the biggest mystery is how Aegean artists achieved such mastery, only to lose it. Mycenaean culture ended about 1050 BCE, followed by a Greek "dark age" with few surviving records. That in turn was succeeded by the Geometric Period (900–700 BCE), with its abstract, much less naturalistic sculpture.
<http://tiny.cc/ekyo001>
The Pylos Combat Agate is displayed in a shrine-like case below a large reproduction visible across the gallery. A touchscreen allows visitors to zoom in on details otherwise invisible. The touchscreen also has diagrams explaining the weapons and jewelry (Mycenaean warriors took their best jewelry and cosmetics into combat). The carved warrior is shown wearing a bracelet and sealstone not unlike the Agate itself.
<http://tiny.cc/kkyo001>
Today's archaeology incorporates DNA sequencing and AI. On view is a digital reconstruction of the Griffin Warrior's appearance. He looks like he could play himself in a Netflix miniseries. He was 30-something, 5-1/2 ft, and did not die in combat—the skeleton has no evidence of trauma.
<http://tiny.cc/okyo001>
Other objects come from the nearby Palace of Nestor, named for the king of "sandy Pylos" in Homer. (As far as we know, King Nestor is as fictional as Achilles.) The palace contained a trove of clay tablets inscribed with Linear B script, the earliest written form of the Greek language. The palace burned down about 1250 BCE, baking the clay tablets and preserving their inscriptions for posterity.
<http://tiny.cc/2lyo001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

>>>

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/yteq7nhs> _LisaAnneAuerbach

>>>

BARCELONA'S MUSEUM OF FORBIDDEN ART CLOSES ITS DOORS DUE TO PROTESTS
Promoter and founder of the museum Taxto Benet assured the unwanted closure is attributed to the losses caused by the protests of the SUT union in front of the building over the last four months.
The workers’ union began the indefinite strike in February over poor working conditions including no proper climate control, long hours standing without seating or breaks, insufficient pay, lack of holiday compensation, and what they say is the museum’s failure to address their demands.
The collection will now tour internationally with exhibitions in different countries. "A collection that will remain alive and will be a meeting point to stand up to censorship," Benet said.
The museum featured more than 200 works that had been censored for political, social or religious reasons. Some pieces depicted controversial figures, including dictator Francisco Franco inside a fridge, Spain’s former king Juan Carlos I in a sexual scene with a Bolivian activist, and Saddam Hussein tied up and floating in a glass tank.
According to the museum, the protests have caused a 75% drop in revenue, compared to the same period last year, and a 95% decrease in the expected growth.
A statement on the museum's website reads :
The Museum of Forbidden Art arrived in Barcelona in 2023 to give visibility to and vindicate censored artworks from around the world. This June, the museum is forced to close its doors indefinitely.
It is a painful and undesired closure, but an unavoidable one, due to the financial losses caused by the protest staged outside the museum for the past four months, led by the SUT labor union. During this period, the threats and slander resulting from this situation have disrupted the museum’s normal operation, and the losses have become unsustainable.
After a year and a half since its opening, the world’s only museum dedicated to displaying banned artworks is closing intending to become a nomadic collection, with traveling exhibitions around the globe. A collection that will remain alive and continue to stand as a meeting point to confront censorship. _ArtdependenceMag

>>>

CHIURA OBATA, "POINT LOBOS, MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA," 1922.
We are all this tree.
<https://tinyurl.com/ylxplm4j> _CarolinaAMiranda

>>>

BAYEUX TAPESTRY WILL RETURN TO THE U.K. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 950 YEARS
<https://tinyurl.com/yv6uhqp9>
The Bayeux Tapestry will return to Britain for the first time in 950 years in a historic deal between Britain and France, which is set to be finalized on July 9. The epic 230-foot-long textile, adorned with scenes of the Norman Conquest of 1066, will be loaned to the British Museum in London. Though experts believe it was likely produced by nuns in Canterbury, England, the historical marvel has remained in France since 1077.
The tapestry will appear in a once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster exhibition about the Norman Conquest, which will feature other loans as well as highlights from the British Museum’s collection.
<https://tinyurl.com/ykqb5gs6> _artnet

>>>

ROMARE BEARDEN GETS A CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ!
A tranche of material from 1964 to 1969 is already live. Enjoy:
<https://tinyurl.com/ylja53nv> _AndrewRusseth

>>>


SUPERRARE’S NEW GALLERY
<https://tinyurl.com/ymqo46jb>
The days of the $69 million NFT may be far behind us, but as far as the owners of trading platform SuperRare are concerned, that may be a good thing, since digital-minded art takes many forms—and they plan to showcase that fact in a New York gallery space that they are debuting. The new venue will set up shop in the space formerly occupied by Jeanne Greenberg-Rohatyn’s art and design gallery, Salon 94.
One of the nice parts of being where we are is that it’s super easy to get to, it’s located near other galleries, and obviously the New Museum is right there. We feel pretty blessed to be in such proximity to such an incredible institution.”
The new gallery’s launch will be marked by a week-long festival. Featured as part of the lineup are a set of site-specific dance performances One performance interweaves movement and digital display to plumb the intersection of bodily energy and machine logic; the other depicts an NFT auction
<https://tinyurl.com/ywkpqvrf> _artnet

>>>

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, BORN JULY 8, 1593
<https://tinyurl.com/ywrohfo5> _JesseLocker