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    Anton van Dalen, Whose Art Examined an Evolving Neighborhood, Dies at 85

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    He traced the dramatic transformation of the Lower East Side from his building, where he lived for 50 years. He also assisted the cartoonist Saul Steinberg.Anton van Dalen — a socially conscious artist, dedicated pigeon keeper and longtime assistant to the illustrator Saul Steinberg — lived on the Lower East Side for more than 50 years, documenting the neighborhood’s evolution from dereliction to gentrification in paintings, drawings and sculptures.His best-known work was, perhaps, a performance piece called “Avenue A Cut-Out Theater,” a three-foot-tall cardboard model of his townhouse at 166 Avenue A. He filled it with hand-painted and photographed cutouts of police officers in riot gear, junkies, homeless people, sex workers, hawks, pigeons and dogs, as well as a burned-out car, churches, temples and community gardens.At performances, often for students at his home studio, he reached inside the model, removed the cutouts and laid them on a table and on the floor. He told the story of a neglected part of the city that reminded him of a war zone — like his native Holland during World War II — when he moved there in the late 1960s and how it turned into an enclave of wealthy residential and commercial developers.Mr. van Dalen in 1996. He was best known for “Avenue A Cut-Out Theater,” a three-foot-tall cardboard model of his townhouse at 166 Avenue A.Tom Warren, via PPOW, New York“Falling House,” 1976.Anton van Dalen, via PPOW, New YorkDescribing a performance by Mr. van Dalen in 2015, the critic David Frankel wrote in Artforum: “The box also gave him something of the quality of the old-time itinerant musician or carny with a hurdy-gurdy or box of puppets on his back — in other words, someone unfixed and mobile, making a self-contained kind of art that he can produce easily wherever he goes.”“It was magical, like seeing Calder’s Circus,” said Wendy Olsoff — a founder of the PPOW Gallery in Manhattan, referring to the troupe of miniature circus performers and animals that the sculptor Alexander Calder created and performed with. The gallery has hosted three solo exhibitions of Mr. van Dalen’s work.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pigeon Collared as a Possible Chinese Spy Is Freed After 8 Months

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      Animal rights activists in Mumbai celebrated an end to the “wrongful imprisonment” of a mystery bird that a detective concluded was probably a lost racer from Taiwan.Suspicion of foreign espionage, cursive messages in ancient Chinese, a sensitive microchip — and a suspect that could not be stopped at the border.Ravindar Patil, the assistant Mumbai police sub-inspector assigned to the case, was scratching his head for answers. But first, he had to find a place to lock up the unusual captive.So he turned to a veterinary hospital in the Indian metropolis, asking it to retrieve a list of “very confidential and necessary” information about the suspect — a black pigeon caught lurking at a port where international vessels dock.“The police never came to check the pigeon,” said Dr. Mayur Dangar, the manager of the hospital.After eight months, the bird was finally set free this week, its innocence of spying for China long confirmed through crack detective work, but the jail doors flung open only after a newspaper report, repeated letters to the police by the veterinary hospital, and intervention from an animal rights group.The group, PETA India, celebrated what it called the end of a “wrongful imprisonment.”“PETA India handles 1,000 calls a week of animal emergencies, but this was our first case of a suspected spy who needed to be freed,” said Meet Ashar, who leads the organization’s cruelty response division.Mr. Ashar said the case had put the hospital’s staff members in a dilemma: They didn’t want to expose a healthy bird to the sick and injured, but they also couldn’t set it free because “it was such a high-profile case and the charge was so serious.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More