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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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      Don Perlin, Comic Book Artist Who Found Success Late, Dies at 94

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      His Moon Knight was a hit in the 1970s, 30 years after he began his career. Bloodshot, another popular superhero, followed two decades later.Don Perlin, a veteran comic book artist who, after decades in the industry, helped create the popular but nontraditional superheroes Moon Knight and Bloodshot, died on May 14 in Jacksonville, Fla. He was 94. His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his stepson Leslie Blumenfeld.Mr. Perlin began working in the comic book industry in the late 1940s, but some of his greatest successes came later — first in the ’70s and later in the ’90s.In 1974, he was recruited by Roy Thomas, an editor at Marvel, to draw the series Werewolf by Night. The next year as part of that series, he and the writer Doug Moench created Moon Knight, a mercenary armed with silver weaponry to slay supernatural creatures. In 1976, the creative team introduced the idea that Moon Knight had multiple identities, which would eventually be revealed to be a sign of a dissociative identity disorder. In 2022, Oscar Isaac starred as the character in a six-part series on Disney+.“He appreciated the idea that these characters that he, his colleagues and his friends had created so long ago endured,” said another stepson, the jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld.Another enduring character Mr. Perlin worked on was Bloodshot, a hero powered by nanotechnology. The character, created with the writers Bob Layton and Kevin VanHook, first appeared in 1992 in a comic book published by Valiant. Vin Diesel played the character in a 2020 feature film.The character Bloodshot, right, created by Mr. Perlin with Bob Layton and Kevin VanHook, first appeared in 1992.Valiant ComicsWe 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