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Junta Watanabe: Ships To Albania

I really think I’ve been thinking about Junta Watanabe the wrong way.

For years since registering the domain name, I’ve imagined what a Junta Watanabe fashion line would look like. How to make it. How much or how little it should evoke CdG. How many or how few items to produce to make it work. How good or idiotic a few t-shirts would be. Should these pieces of clothing be mass or artisanal? Did Sterling Ruby validate clothes as art objects or ruin them?

a telephoto image of eight brown migrants in black and purple tracksuits surrounded by italian cops and handlers on the dock of an albanian port in 2024, where they were shipped to await refusal of asylum in the eu. one cop leading the way looks like a dad at a soccer game, only with a badge around his neck. the one next to him is husky in jeans and a hi-viz hellow DATCH t-shirt that matches his sneakers — eight Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants getting taken by Italy to a detention center in Albania in Nov. 2024, via aia.al

Who should the clothing be for? The guerrillas or the junta? The idealistic junta or the power-mad monster junta? What if it’s conceived as critique, but ends up looking like prepper chic? Reactionary insurrectionistware? Half the looks I’d considered ironically a few years ago now appear on the ICE, who look like doughy Watchmen cosplayers.

Anyway, I think it’s all wrong, and I have to go back to the roots, to the MO for one of my first domain-inspired projects, mafiaboy.com. For that I was blogging without blog software, collecting links and lifestyle-related quotes from the investigation and trial of the Montreal teenager whose DDOS attack took down Yahoo! It was meant as a critique of the way hacker or script kiddie culture was conveyed in the media via pop cultural and fashion references. And because Mafiaboy was a minor, who couldn’t be named or depicted, these references took on outsized importance for courtroom reporters. And hilariously, I closed the loop when I got a check for like $48 from Rocawear for affiliate links to Mafiaboy’s satin bomber jacket.

The Givova Tuta Visa Triacetato 4S Unisex in Nero/Viola, EUR14,90 at Givova

Point is, Junta Watanabe is already out there, on the runways of life. In this catalyzing case, that’s the bold purple and black tracksuits Italy dressed eight migrants in in 2024, before shipping them off to a detention camp-for-hire in Albania. The report yesterday of other EU countries adopting third-country removal and detention brought Italy’s pioneering looks back into view: it’s Italy’s own Givova Visa Triacetato 4S in Nero/Viola, a bold look for one-way border crossings. And while they don’t ship to the USA, they will ship to Albania.

So watch this space, I guess.

EU greenlights controversial return hubs in ‘strictest ever’ new migration law [euronews, h/t @alexanderchee]

Muji Car 1000 or Muji Car 170?

a white two door hatchback nissan march with steel wheels and no badges, because it's a muji car, and right hand drive sits in a gravel parking lot with some other cars behind it that may or may not also be for sale on car bye buy, a japanese used car website — a Muji Car 1000 for sale in Kanagawa, via kababa

Muji announced a car collaboration with Nissan in 2001, the 「MUJI Car 1000」.

The Muji Car 1000 was a debadged and stripped down 2-door version of the Nissan March, with the smallest engine, an automatic, steel wheels, and A/C, available in one color: white. It was sold only online at muji.net, in a limited edition of 1,000.

According to the seller of this Muji Car 1000 in Kanagawa, though, there were only around 170 actually sold. And this is one. It’s in pretty remarkable condition for a 25-yo car, with only 100k kilometers. At 710,000 yen, it’s 2-3x more expensive than comparable Nissans, but still only like $US4,400.

If you’re a Muji compleatist who likes extremely basic, internal combustion cars which exist only as marketing experiments, with only the thinnest veneer of design innovation, but that will only get rarer over time, this may be your best chance.

Curiouser and Curiouser: Alice Garden in Hiroshima

a screenshot from google street view of a pedestrian plaza in hiroshima with some trees surrounded by railings, asymmetrical and angled walls of tiled forms leading to the underground parking garage, and a parco department store in the background — Alice Garden on Streetview in 2017, when the two trees had railings for seating instead of platforms, and there was a coffee truck, and a tool shed.

Kenzo Tange’s Peace Memorial Park is the largest and most significant architectural public space in Hiroshima, and it always will be. But on a recent visit my curiosity was piqued by a weirdly eccentric post-modernist confection of a public plaza in the messy center of the city’s central shopping district. Even in aging cities outside of Tokyo, teardowns are the norm; the new Hiroshima Gate Park Plaza, built across the street from the ruins of the Genbaku Dome, on the site of the city’s old baseball stadium, is slated for recycling in less than 20 years. So it seemed wild to me that a small park/event space named Alice Garden has survived, mostly intact, next to the department store Parco, for over 30 years.

google map aerial view of alice garden, a public plaza and event space in central hiroshima, has the parco department store on the north/top edge; and two entrances to underground parking for bikes (west) and cars (south) that define the program. on the right side, buildings housing stairway entrances, restrooms, and maintenance, line the east edge, and help enclose the space, which remains largely open on the south. on the south west side, bleachers sit atop the parking entrance, facing an elliptical raised stage/platform on the north east corner, which also holds a red, cube-like geometric steel sculpture — the Google Maps plan of Alice Garden shows the program—fanciful entrances to underground parking on the upper west and southwestern sides, stair and ventilation structures and restrooms on the east, bleachers facing an ellipse-shaped plinth/stage with an “objet”

After wandering into the space by chance and being surprised by the extent of its design—and, again, its survival—I’ve spent the last couple of weeks researching Alice Garden and its designer/architects. So far, I’ve had little success. Its architecture is mostly undocumented online, and questions of design and history fall beyond the capacity of the city offices tasked with managing the space and calendar. Though maintenance is a mess, the site is not wholly neglected. Alice Garden was in regular, light, use, and active with event programming. But its integrity feels threatened by indifference to its holistic design, and to its barely historic era: a boldy whimsical, almost corny, post-modernist plaza from the early 90s feels very susceptible to underappreciation.

parked bikes ring the angled glass and tile geometric structure, tilted at various angles, that leads to underground bike parking. a mint green and purple square column and beam towers over the corner of the parking structure, with faded paint above the reach of the maintenance workers' attempts to paint over graffiti and flyers. — How I found it: this wacky, angled, bike parking structure, tagged and faded, but intact. all the pics, until otherwise noted: me.

At its core, there are contradictions in Alice Garden that make it more interesting, but that also put it at more risk. One is, there’s no creator to rally around. So far, I can’t find an architect or firm involved besides Parco, whose tile-covered new building [shinkan], completed in 1994, matches the all-tile plaza. The closest I’ve come to identifying an architect is Parco Space Systems, the shopping center company’s design subsidiary. After decades of corporate consolidations, it has been subsumed into J. Front Prime Space.

And then there’s the fundamental design incongruity between the Garden and one of its central elements. Linear Cycle (1994) is a major public sculpture by artist/musician Takashi Suzuki, that sits on an elliptical plinth that doubles as as an event stage. Suzuki’s sculpture is modernist and rational in a way that belies the surrealist narrative po-mo jumble of the park it inhabits. Whatever brought these elements together, I think the passage of time—and their survival—has made them a family. They have earned their place, and deserve attention—and more attentive care.

A Slice of Augustus Vincent Tack

a tall vertically oriented painting of an oval abstract painting is surrounded by gold. the abstraction is mostly dark blue, purple, brown, and seems like a steep cliff face running diagonally from the upper right. other sections in lighter colors might reference the sky or vegetation, part of a series of paintings by augustus vincent tack in the 1930s — Augustus Vincent Tack, *Untitled Oval (Golden Morning)*, 1930, oil on canvas on board, 69 x 43 in., the Phillips Collection

I’ve been a fan of Augustus Vincent Hack’s landscape-based abstract paintings from the 1930s ever since I saw them at the Phillips Collection. To be frank, it’s hard to see them anywhere else. Duncan Phillips was a close friend and longtime supporter of Tack’s work, which, in the 1930s, looked like it could be as important to the American abstract avant-garde as anyone. It mostly was not, but the paintings are still nice, and sometimes a little strange.

The first time I noticed the strangeness apart from the niceness was in 2014, when I realized that Tack had painted a trompe l’oeil frame around an abstracted view of the sky, essentially a representational painting of an abstract painting.

While his extremely conventional, even boring, portraits have sold at auction for nearly nothing, Tack’s abstractions do great. So I was very interested to see what happened to this wild painting that just came up for sale this morning:

a portrait of a young white lady with the beginnings of grey hair, seated, with her arm on a table, wearing a black dress with white polka dots and frills on the shoulders. on the cream wall behind her, a segment of an oval-shaped abstract painting with a gold frame peeks into the upper left corner, augustus vincent tack's portrait of lotte lehmann — Augustus Vincent Tack, Portrait of Lotte Lehmann, 30 3/4 x 25 3/4 in., sold at Copake’s, via Invaluable

Unlike all the judges or bank vice presidents whose names are lost, this Tack portrait is already rare for having an identifiable subject—and one who has a wikipedia page. Lotte Lehmann was an internationally famous soprano who discovered the Von Trapp Family Singers. She helped launch the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, and there’s a theater at UC Santa Barbara that still bears her name. But most importantly, this painting has a slice of another painting in the corner.

I haven’t been able to identify a specific picture Tack reproduced here. And it’s also not clear when Tack painted this. Lehmann was born in 1888, so she was in her 40s when Tack started painting his abstracts. In 1939 her husband died—is that his urn behind her?—and Lehmann she moved in with Frances Holden, a “psychologist who specialized in the study of genius.” So that puts her on the ground in Santa Barbara. Tack died in 1949, so that’s the window.

In any case, I love it, and I put a bid in so I wouldn’t forget to watch it. And then I completely forgot. And it ended up selling for just $300. Whoops. The greatest bargain ever–on a square inch basis—for one of Augustus Vincent Tack’s most important paintings. Or part of one, anyway.

Cy Twombly Sweater Set

a tall willowy cy twombly in a thickly knitted cream wool beanie and matching cowl neck sweater and dark trousers and dress shoes descends a flight of whitewashed greek steps with an expression at once pensive, wary, and somewhat zoned out, in this detail from a black and white photo taken by his then new wife and likely stylist tatiana franchetti, as published in stella honey in 2026 — a photo by Tatiana Franchetti Twombly of her husband Cy in the late 1950s or early 1960s, clothes: the artists’ own, via reference-point

How the Cy Twombly Style Community can sleep on Maia Twombly’s book of Tatiana Franchetti Twombly’s photos knowing there are 99 other previously unknown photos in it, and 8900 negatives remaining in the queue? I have no idea.

Buy Stella Honey, photos by Tatia Franchetti Twombly [reference-point]
previously, related: Twombly & Twombly by Twombly
Three Photographs Presented in Chronological Order

Jasper Johns, Tiny Three Flags

a tiny painting of three flags, or rather three paintings of gradually smaller us flags stacked on top of one another, made of acrylic paint on plastic, and attached to the top half of a roughly a4-sized sheet of plastic, and then matted and framed with a thin maple frame, a 2000 work by jasper johns, from the artist's collection, on view in spring 2026 at craig starr gallery in nyc — Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 2000, 11 x 7 1/2 in., acrylic and graphite on four sheets of plastic, collection the artist, on view at Craig Starr

Can’t you just imagine making this? Or rather, Jasper Johns making this?

In 2000, when he was seventy, he sat down with three flag-shaped sheets of plastic, a pencil, and a ruler, and painted this tiny version of Three Flags, which he affixed to another sheet of plastic. His signature is like filigree.

He’s made stacked Three Flags works on paper [sic] before. What prompted this, I wonder? He’s kept it, as one would, obviously. Can you imagine doing anything else with this but keep it?

I’m trying to remember where I read that the parts of the Three Flags covered by flags are actually painted a monochrome grey. Is that from the CR? Emily Tremaine’s biography? I’ll work on that.

Meanwhile, who is going to find out what’s under these flags on plastic? The plastic should be easier than the canvases to investigate non-invasively. But who’s going to ask Johns to take it out of the frame so they can shine a light through it? Not me. I’ve peppered him with enough Flag-related requests already.

Jasper Johns: Flags, in memory of Agnes Gund is on view at Craig Starr through 27 June 2026 [craigstarr]

You Had Me At Orange, Glowing Orb

Whether for utility or poetry, the alt text has not sunk into the lower layers of Gagosian Quarterly. Editor Wyatt Allgeier’s interview with Nancy Spector about her Arthur Jafa/Richard Prince show, “Helter Skelter” has exactly one image with an alt tag. The rest are from the related articles links in the footer:

Video still of orange, glowing orb against black background

Black-and-white portrait of Wyatt Allgeier

Black and white portrait of Nancy Spector

Rollin’ High and Mighty Traps: Richard Prince

Richard Prince: Cowboy

Richard Prince

NGL, the show looks better than it sounds.

Speaking of Fresh Widows

Marcel Duchamp was in the throes of completing and framing his Large Glass when he made Fresh Widow in 1920, a French window-shaped sculpture that evoked, it was said, the widows of World War I.

marcel duchamp's fresh widow is a freestanding miniature replica of an eight-pane set of french doors, painted sort of a turquoise, with black leather over the glass panes and push pins for the knobs. it is set on a thin matching turquoise plinth, which is then mounted on a thin dark wood plinth. the title and rose selavy 1920 copyright notice painted on the turquoise base in black block letters are not very legible from this angle. this 1964 edition of the 1920 original was offered for sale by levy gorvy at some point, and the marcel duchamp estate run by his step grandchildren claim copyright over it all — Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow, 1920, Schwarz Edition, 1964, as offered at some point by Levy Gorvy

By the time Duchamp agreed to Arturo Schwarz’s proposal to fabricate Fresh Widow and other early works in editions in the summer of 1964, Col. D. Harold Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository, had already removed the sixth floor window from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK.

the black painted six-over-six casement window with a worn surface from which jfk was shot in 1963 is mounted in a freestanding white and honey oak finished frame, with unfinished wood shims or brackets holding it open in a way that evokes the shooting i guess. two cursive printed bronze colored plaques are affixed to either side of the base that read, the window, jfk was assassinated from this window on november 22, 1963, this image was prepared by heritage auctions which put this window up for sale in june 2026

The convoluted authenticity and ownership disputes over the window displayed for many years as The Window or The Sniper’s Perch are described briefly in the Heritage Auctions listing for the window. The auction includes all the documentation, court transcripts, and original museum plaques, that establish “conclusively and without ambiguity the identity, provenance, and legal ownership of this historic artifact.”

18 June 2026, Lot 47079: President John F. Kennedy Assassination: The Texas School Book Depository “Sniper’s Perch” Window [heritageauctions]

Fabergé Cactus

a cactus made of deep green nephrite with gold needles and two pink rhodonite blossoms on top sits in a jasper pod in a yellow and white silk and velvet case from the hammer galleries, a faberge objet being sold by the heirs of a couple of louisiana oil heiresses at christies in june 2026 — Fabergé cactus study, c. 1900, nephrite, rhodonite, labradorite, jasper, enamel, gold, 4 1/2 in. high, selling next month at Christie’s

Get yourself a reins-taking Louisiana oil heiress aunt to take you globe-hopping and to leave you all the Fabergé hardstone plants she accumulated over the years from Armand Hammer’s shady Russian sources ig. And her 50-carat diamond ring.

10 June 2026, Lot 258, Enamel, gold and hardstone study of a cactus, est. $120-150,000 [christies]

Highlights Alt Writing

a screenshot of an email from a gallery before I load the images

The biggest megagallery in the art world publishes a print magazine with features on the most influential artists of the day. As a tribute to these important efforts to keeping art writing alive, here is the alt text from the images in the Gagosian Quarterly Highlights from May 2026 email:

Chanel High Jewelry ad features a diamond necklace in the shape of a perfume bottle against a black background

The Other Felix, Prince of Vuitton

Weird thing happened while processing Nicolas Ghesquière’s Louis Vuitton Cruise 2027 collection show at the Frick: I read the comments. If fashion week shows are still nominally for the industry, cruise/resort collection shows are for content and client service: spectacles presented in destinations to generate views and to reward high-value retail customers.

And so it was that LVMH’s YouTube livestream got almost 5 million views in two days. But not because it was advertised on a wraparound billboard at the Holland Tunnel. Like 90% of the first 200 comments were praising Felix, and thanking the True Prince of Vuitton for inviting them.

And because LVMH were speedrunning models through a museum in cringe Haring merchandise, I had one mononymical Felix in my mind—the art Felix—and didn’t even consider the KPop Felix—who didn’t even walk in the show, he just attended, and was barely visible for like five seconds, but who apparently sent a fifth of his 32 million Instagram followers to watch the show.

two copies of a getty images photo by arturo holmes of a model with shoulder length dark hair and olive skin strutting through the frick in a white silk tunic that looks like a bodega plastic bag of the kind that now costs five cents if you can find them, with a unaccountably cropped corner of a keith haring painting in purple with drips coming down, which he deliberately left unfinished, but which here is just the finished part, and on the right, the same thing with a stretched out pile of brightly multicolored candy wrapped in cellophane, a portrait by felix gonzalez torres of his parter ross, reimagined here as a christmas tree shaped field of swarovski crystals which, truth be told, would probably weigh a ton, dragging this waif to the ground — study for a worse idea, s/o @octavio-world. sorry to drag you into this, getty images’ arturo holmes

And for a moment, instead of a bodega bag-shaped silk tunic with Keith Haring’s dramatically self-elegiac Unfinished Painting on it, I envisioned a bodega bag-shaped silk tunic with Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) on it, maybe executed in a pile of shimmering Swarovski crystal candy pieces. In case you thought luxury spectacles in the capital of capital couldn’t get any more descrative. Click here to pre-order.

Haring Haunted House

“You can feel the ghosts,” Nicolas Ghesquière said of the Frick, which the House of Louis Vuitton rented and closed down for several days for the livestreamed presentation of the 2027 Cruise Collection. “Not just the art, but the furniture, the objects, the lifestyle.”

But also the art. And the objects.

Cy Had The Range

facsimile objects of two cy twombly polaroid photos on a steel countertop. the one on the left is a pale grey square, with a faint horizon line and waves, a nearly abstract photo of the adriatic sea at miramare, and the one on the right is a jumbled closeup of a bunch of angry spongebob plushtoys from the lexington virginia walmart where twombly loved to hang out. — Cy Twombly Facsimile Objects CT3 & CT4, 2026, dye sublimation prints on aluminum

A trip to Rimini was not on his chronology but Twombly’s photo of Miramare was from 2005, and I think his trips to Wal-Mart in Lexington were endless, but this one was from 2007. The range is incredible. NGL, these things are intoxicating.

Rhymes With Cy

I’ve never been able to keep up with Robert Rauschenberg’s print practice, which has often passed by me in a blur. So I wasn’t surprised not to recognize @garadinervi’s post of what turned out to be a proof of a single stone from Visitation I & II, a pair of 1965 ULAE lithographs. Each of the “actual” prints was made with two of three different stones, but when the Art Institute of Chicago bought ULAE’s collection, they also got seven variants.

Sorting this out led me to ULAE’s own site and archive, and the 1999 Ruminations series, where Rauschenberg made splashy portrait/homages of nine people who influenced his early life and artistic career, by brushing developer of photogravure plates. The resulting images echo the imperfections of his earlier solvent transfer process works, and seems to use previously published photos of the subjects, so no new intimacies or revelations. But honestly, what gets me is the project itself—and the names.

Ileana, Tanya, Jap and John [Cage] are canonical. ‘topher for his son Christopher (and his uncredited ex-wife Susan Weil), Bubba’s Sister (the artist’s sister Janet) and Big and Little Bullys (his parents) feels like a lot of familial complexity. And the last two exes, Ace (Steve Paxton) and Eagle Eye (Cy Twombly).

There’s a combine titled Ace (1962) from the Paxton era. But unless it’s Cockney rhyming slang, the best I can come up with so far for Eagle Eye is Dodie Kazanjian’s 1994 Vogue profile of Twombly where Rauschenberg has all the best quotes. [“He spent my half of our grant on Roman sculpture.” It was Twombly’s grant.] Anyway, of their window shopping in Rome, Kazanjian wrote, “His eagle eye for quality deceives some people into thinking of him as a great decorator,” and I wonder if it stuck.

Tacita Dean Massive Photos of Ancient Trees

tacita dean's massive 8 by 12 foot black and white photo of the 1500 year old usuzumi cherry tree in gifu japan is printed in four vertical sections pieced together, and hangs on a white gallery wall. the tree is in bloom and its dark trunk and massive branches are supported by dozens of wood poles and braces to alleviate the weight the tree must bear. dean colored most of the photo besides the tree itself in pale pink pencil, which is most evident in the sky, and it allows the black and white tree to stand out from a busy background. this 2024 photo was from frith street gallery in london — Tacita Dean, Sakura (Usuzumi II), 2024, Coloured pencil on handprinted Foma matte silver gelatin photograph mounted on paper, 254.5 x 366.8 cm / 100 1/4 x 144 3/8 in., via Frith Street Gallery

Speaking of pieced together monumental gelatin silver prints of ancient Japanese treasures, Tacita Dean has made towering photographs of centuries-old cherry trees and colored them by hand. A couple were included in Blind Folly, her 2024 show at the Menil. The one above, Sakura (Usuzumi II), 2024, is from her London dealers, Frith Street Gallery.

Dean has been making portraits of ancient trees for a while, a practice which harkens back to the beginnings of photography. And the handcoloring of the sakura pictures makes them feel like 19th century photos. Except inverted, because she tints the trees’ surroundings, not their blossoms, which forefronts the human-made structures and braces holding up the trees’ branches. While venerating these trees for surviving 1,500 or even 2,000 years or more, it becomes clear that without these interventions, nature would have taken them out long ago. These aren’t only trees, or trees alone, buy monuments to centuries of symbiotic care and aesthetic value.

Embarrassingly, ages ago, I happened to live in Ogaki, the city in Gifu Prefecture that is the closest transit point to this Usuzumi tree, one of the Three Great Cherry Trees of Japan. I literally had no idea, and only realized the connection now, after I started digging on Dean’s photo of Jindai-zakura, the oldest cherry tree in Japan, which belongs to François Pinault. [The photo, not the tree. Yet.]