The Times - UK (2022-06-08)

the times | Wednesday June 8 2022 33

Wo r l d

A tree in California believed to be the
oldest in the world may be knocked off
the top spot by a challenger from Chile.
Methuselah, a gnarled bristlecone
pine that grows at a secret location in
Inyo County, is believed to be 4,853
years old. Its rings were counted in 1957,
and it is considered the tree with the
greatest confirmed age.
But its title is at risk: scientists in
Chile have identified a challenger in a
damp ravine in the Alerce Costero
national park.
Alerce Milenario, which translates as
“the thousand-year-old Patagonian cy-
press”, is known as Gran Abuelo —
Spanish for great-grandfather — and
may be more than 5,000 years old,
according to Science magazine. Dr
Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean
researcher at the Climate and Environ-
mental Sciences Laboratory in Paris,
has estimated that the Patagonian
cypress is older than Methuselah.
The claim has been met with suspi-
cion by some dendrochronologists —

scientists who track tree ages by exam-

ining growth rings — because of how it

was formulated.

Barichivich’s calculation did not in-

volve a full count of the rings but was

based on a partial boring and statistical

modelling. His findings have yet to be

published and peer-reviewed. “The

only way to truly determine the age of

identity, told the newspaper: “We find

them everywhere. And almost always

they have no idea we’re looking for

them. They think, ‘We’re home free.’ ”

American law enforcement relies

on the unit to apprehend targets

because police cannot operate inde-

pendently in Mexico. The Americans

thank their colleagues with FBI apparel

and invite them for training exercises

and dinners. The gringo hunters have

recently been catching an average of 13

Americans a month. Since its forma-

tion in 2002, the unit has captured

more than 1,600.

A couple accused of murder in

Hilmar, California, are among those

apprehended. They were traced to San

Felipe, a small fishing town about 125

miles from the US border. During the

investigation the unit blended in with

tourists on the beach, having a barbe-

cue while covertly carrying out recon-

naissance. The couple were eventually

detained on a remote beach road.

‘Gringo hunters’ on trail

of America’s most wanted

Keiran Southern

Grandfather of trees has rival in the ring

a tree is by dendrochronologically

counting the rings, and that requires all

rings being present or accounted for,”

Professor Ed Cook, a founding director

of the Tree Ring Laboratory at

Columbia University, told Science.

Other dendrochronologists are open

to the discovery. “I fully trust the ana-

lysis that Jonathan has made,” said

Professor Harald Bugmann, of the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

in Zurich. “It sounds like a very smart

approach.”

Barichivich estimated that the

Chilean conifer was 5,484 years old,

with an 80 per cent chance that it had

lived for more than 5,000 years.

“It was astonishing,” he said, adding

that he had been expecting the tree to

be about 4,000 years old. Barichivich

said his grandfather had discovered

Gran Abuelo in the early 1970s.

Methuselah’s precise location in a

remote region between California’s

Sierra Nevada mountain range and the

Nevada border is kept secret because

the US Forest Service fears it could be a

target for vandalism.

Keiran Southern

American fugitives have long run for

the border, hoping to lay low in Mexico

while evading capture by US law

enforcement. But criminals seeking to

escape justice must also contend with

the “gringo hunters”, a Mexican police

unit in the state of Baja California that

is determined to track down runaways

and hand them over to the Americans.

Murderers, drug smugglers and sex

offenders all look for refuge in northern

Mexico, and it is the job of the Inter-

national Liaison Unit to catch them.

Fugitives have been caught in night-

clubs, trailer parks, fishing boats and in

cars with sex workers, according to The

Washington Post. They have included

former Playboy models and priests and

some on the run have gone to drastic

lengths to evade capture, including

having plastic surgery.

Ivan, an officer with the unit whose

full name was withheld to protect his

Methuselah, in California, is being

challenged by a Chilean conifer

Andres Valencia, ten, evokes Picasso and cubism In his vibrant paintings, Including a work depicting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, right

It lacks only

one thing:

originality

I

blame Picasso. He

doctored the dates

on his early drawings

and then claimed

that, even as a child,

he was a rival to the great

Raphael (Rachel

Campbell Johnston

writes). Now every parent

of precociously talented

offspring seems inclined

to believe that they have

a Picasso in the making

— perhaps rather too

literally in the case of

Andres Valencia, who has

painted a Ukrainian

update to the landmark

Guernica.

It’s great that this ten-

year-old seems so

intelligently passionate.

At his age I probably

thought cubism was

something to do with

playroom building blocks.

Valencia has studied

some pretty testing

painters, George Condo

among them, and then

offered his take on them.

His canvases are bright,

bold and confident. They

pack quite a punch.

But the reason

Picasso’s work was so

powerful was that it was

utterly fresh. He showed

us a new way of looking.

To imitate his style is to

miss its point. However

proficient a painted

imitation, aesthetically

speaking it leads nowhere

much. “Every child is an

artist,’’ the great Spanish

modernist said. “The

problem is how to remain

an artist once we grow

up.’’ I hope that one day

Andres will face this

difficulty head on. But in

the meantime he is

selling out to our fickle

contemporary markets.

They are always ready to

leap on the latest novelty

but they then roll

indifferently on. Many a

crushed reputation lies

abandoned in their wake.

Comment

with a collecting

audience inside an

art fair. We’ve had

everybody attend

our shows, all great

celebrities and per-

sonalities. But this lit-

tle ten-year-old boy

brought down the house.”

Andres is not afraid of

heavy subjects. Inspired by Picas-

so’s anti-war masterpiece Guernica, he

created a painting depicting the

horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Korniloff was reluctant to predict

what his work may be worth to future

investors but is confident it will endure.

“The work holds the wall just as good as

anything else I’ve seen in a long career,”

he said.

When Andres Valencia starts to doodle
in primary school, his friends gather
round to watch.
They are not the only ones to have
noticed his talent. The ten-year-old has
the art world buzzing with excitement
and will make his global auction debut
this month.
The art prodigy, from San Diego in
California, first picked up a paintbrush
when he was five and sells his pieces for
tens of thousands of dollars.
He uses a step ladder to create his
larger works and his talent was spotted
early by his parents, Guadalupe, a 50-
year-old lawyer, and Elsa, a 47-year-old
psychologist and jewellery designer.
They encourage his work, which is
influenced by Picasso and cubism, but
just want him to enjoy painting.
“To be quite honest, we try not to talk
too much about it in front of him,”
Guadalupe said. “We certainly don’t
refer to him as a prodigy or anything
like that. We just keep it simple with
him. At home, he just does his art.
“So I don’t think that he knows the
magnitude of what the art world and
people think about it.”
Guadalupe said that he and Elsa had
resisted calls to home-school their son
so that he can focus more on painting.
“We want him to go to school like a
normal kid. And because he’s
ten, it’s not like a lot of
artists, they go to work
for six, eight, ten hours
a day painting.
“So he paints
after school and on
the weekends, but
he also plays with
his friends.”
Andres earned
global recognition
at Miami Art Week
in December. Jordan
Belfort, the former
trader whose life story was
made into the Hollywood
film The Wolf of Wall Street, bought
one of his paintings, as did the actress
Sofía Vergara.
Nick Korniloff, director of Art Mi-
ami, said that experts had been
impressed before they knew his age.
“I’ve been doing this for 21 years,”
Korniloff said. “And this was, without a
doubt, the most incredible interaction
I’ve had with an artist and experience

United States
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Little Picasso takes art world by storm