In the November 2000 issue of Artforum, Richard Hawkins concluded his ‘Top Ten’ list — which included everything from Robert Altman’s 1977 film Three Women (number 6) to ‘Good stuff on TV this summer’ (number 2) — with a rave for ‘Any painting made without using masking tape’, immediately followed by this zinger: ‘If the masking tape factory burned down, there’d be no painting in LA for at least a season.’ If you were cruising the galleries in southern California circa Y2K, you’d know he was hitting below the belt. Ouch.

"The Haunted Dolls’ House" was written by M. R. James. James, it’s said, was the father of the English ghost story; if his wasn’t the first ghost story about a haunted dollhouse, it was the first to be famous. Its fame is enduring: though it was written in the 1920s, it's still in print. It's also in the public domain. Richard Hawkins is an American artist who recently had a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago; the retrospective opened at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles this month.