Yeah, I think I just need to look at some John Singer Sargent watercolors for a bit.
Clouds
Brother Tuymans & The Temple
I didn’t post The Temple, Luc Tuymans’ 1996 portfolio of aquatint etchings, in 2017 because I’d tried but couldn’t figure out the source of his images. Also, unlike his painting and his Edition Schellmann sandblasted photo edition of Altar (2002), related to the second image above, of a sealing room in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple, I hadn’t ever seen The Temple in person.
Nothing’s changed on those fronts, but seeing the original version of Altar yesterday, the [stolen] 1996 painting The Heritage X, relit the blogging fire. And while I still don’t know the source of the “European TV” documentary about Mormonism Tuymans photographed, I know some facts, which feels like the diametric opposite of Tuymans’ project here.
Continue reading “Brother Tuymans & The Temple”Shoutout to the 2026 Rabkin Prize Winners
A big congratulations to the art writing winners of the 2026 Rabkin Foundation Prize:
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Damien Davis, Melaine Ferdinand-King, Tyler Green,
and Alicia Inez Guzmán, Julia Halperin, Jan Tumlir, and Sarah Lewis
Beyond the recognition and the money, the Rabkin Foundation has been working to connect and support art writers for going on ten years. It’s been an honor to be part of the discussions they’re fostering, and I’m psyched to welcome this new cohort into the Rabkin community.
And I, for one am seated for their conversations with Mary Louise Schumacher, which start dropping next week. Stay tuned.
The New Hotness: Highlights From The National Stolen Art File
Has it really been ten years since I poked through the FBI’s National Stolen Art File? Yes, yes it has. What’s been stolen—or reported stolen—in the mean time?
Starting with the biggest heists, believe me when I say if this 3×6 foot Luc Tuymans painting from 1996 of a stealth photo of a marriage altar in the Salt Lake City Temple had been included in the FBI database in 2016, I would have written about it.
Continue reading “The New Hotness: Highlights From The National Stolen Art File”Lucien Smith, Lost Time, Stolen Paintings
As his friends and admirers rush forward with an outpouring of grief after the too-early death of Lucien Smith, a lot of folks might be wondering what to do in the face of loss.
One thing, of course, is to reach out to friends and see how they’re doing, especially if you know they’ve had a tough time. In the case of artists who got exploited to hell by the art speculation and celebrity system when they were young, maybe don’t make that experience or that work—or the art world itself—the point, especially right now. And if you could get past all that while they’re still around, all the better.
Another thing one could do to mitigate loss, specifically in this case, is to help recover the ten Lucien Smith paintings stolen in late 2015, soon after they were made. [Thanks in these difficult times to Yoshi Hill for the heads up on the theft.]
Continue reading “Lucien Smith, Lost Time, Stolen Paintings”We See What Happens On The Couch
It’s like being a nepo-baby, having a John Chamberlain couch: it takes a lot of work to keep it from being your entire personality. And even then you’re still not going to escape it entirely. So you just acknowledge it and carry on. And maybe make a podcast about it.
Not every episode of Season 1 of On The Couch, the John Chamberlain Estate’s new podcast, begins with Estate director and Chamberlain’s stepdaughter Alexandra Fairweather asking her guest if they’ve ever sat on a John Chamberlain couch before? What do they think? I grew up on this couch.
Only most of them do.
Continue reading “We See What Happens On The Couch”Andy Warhol Brillo Fabric Paintings
I guess we know that Warhol screenprinted fabric so Sarah Dalton and Suzanne Moss could make dresses to wear to the April 1964 Stable Gallery afterparty at the Factory.
When Moss took her Brillo Box dress on yellow canvas to Sotheby’s in 2007, she gave this “Guess this is my 15 minutes!”-style quote about it before it sold for $264,000:
I was visiting Andy at the Factory when out of the blue he proposed that I make a dress to wear at the Brillo Box Exhibition after-party. Wow! I raced to the Garment District and returned with the lightweight canvas he’d requested. He and Gerard Malanga immediately screened the Brillo images onto the material and off I went to create the dress. Andy was speechless upon my arrival! I felt like a New York City Cinderella, dancing the night away in my Box dress, wolfing down hot dogs from an umbrella cart man Ethel Scull had dragged in from the street…
Off I went, Andy was speechless, sure sounds to me like Warhol saw the dress for the first time at the party. The dress which is actually a skirt and a top, is pieced together from eight printed panels in two separated tiers. The yellow Brillo Box (3¢ off) is smaller and rectangular, not square, so it has two sides 13 x 16 inches, and two sides 13 x 11 inches, a configuration Moss did not follow.
Continue reading “Andy Warhol Brillo Fabric Paintings”Warhol Foundation Cardboard Brillo Box
Beyoncé. Louis Vuitton. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Truly we are in a WTF thousand-dollar limited edition box moment.
The Warhol Foundation has licensed three of its copyrighted and trademarked versions of AbEx painter James Harvey’s iconic Brillo Box design to Avant.Arte, which has turned them into three collectable cardboard boxes, framed flat or ready to assemble, each in a limited edition of 1,000. Yellow Brillo boxes were rare. Green ones were non-existent [this colorway is from a poster for a 1970 show in Pasadena.] But churning out hundreds of boxes, in slightly varied dimensions, fabricated by someone else, at a distance, with vague authorization, were definitely the norm for Warhol’s Brillo Boxes.
And it turns out to be the norm for Warhol Foundation Brillo Boxes, too. In 2013 there was the Brillo Pouf, produced for Fab in coated foam [by Quinze & Milan, the marketing studio whose commercially produced Burning Man pavilion turned out to be part of an ongoing Lexus campaign to debut a new model at Art Basel Miami Beach.]
![a yellow warhol brillo box copy in plywood with a lid sits on a plywood rietveld zigzag chair copy, with half a dozen other zigzag chairs in the background in a variety of minecraft block ass paint textures, and a wall of yet more plywood cubes, some with arty doors, all from the plywood paradise that is dope! art [sic] gallery](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/dope-warhol-brillo-box-1024x1024.jpeg)
There’s a possibly bootleg plywood box with a lid introduced as an edition of 500 in 2016, which seems to live on as a DIY kit produced by Chinese Plywood Mill?
Any of Avant.Arte’s boxes are too small to hold the Warhol Foundation x kidrobot Brillo Plush – LARGE, but they probably fit one of kidrobot x Warhol Foundation’s 2017 Brillo Blind Boxes. Each Brillo tin holds one of sixteen Warhol Foundation plush or vinyl mini collectibles. According to this rarity ratio, 1/12 were white vinyl mini Brillo Boxes, and 1/48 were yellow.
Unlike the Warhol Foundation, I’m just going to stop.
[FEW MINUTES LATER UPDATE] I can’t stop. @ware.ian just pointed out there are also 100 “lifesize” cardboard Warhol Foundation Brillo Box Collectables, which simultaneously evokes and has no relation to the 500 actual cardboard Brillo boxes Pontus Hulten shipped to Stockholm for Warhol’s 1968 show at the Moderna Museet. Hulten went on to fabricate entire generations of Brillo Boxes after lying about having received Warhol’s authorization to do so in 1968. I, for one, would like to see a Stockholm-Type cardboard Brillo box.
Previously, related: ‘The Oberlin Brillo Boxes‘
Facture-Checking Warhol’s [sic] Brillo Boxes
Louis Vuitton Cardboard Jewelry Box
I don’t know what I was expecting with an edition of 850, but I was still surprised to see how many Louis Vuitton cardboard jewelry boxes there are out there.
They were made as invitations for the opening of a Vuitton building in 1989, and contain actual cardboard jewelry: brooches by Arman and César, and a necklace by Ben Vautier. The Arman is a stack of cardboard keys in resin; the César is a scrunched stack of gold-painted cardboard; and the Vautier is a cardboard mystery box on a cord that says “it might contain a diamond.”
The example coming up at Christie’s this month is a little rough, so if you’re in it for the whole pristineness of it all, you might as well look around or wait—or spend your money on a Beyoncé wooden box instead. Or maybe this is exactly the cardboard box to buy for the jewelry itself, which, franchement, seems more interesting. More people should wear cardboard jewelry, even if it is from Arman.
Lutz Bacher, Pizza Party →
I love people who see the sign for the Lutz Bacher Pizza Party on the 6th Floor and say, this needs to be saved for the future.
And then it circulates to someone else who cares for it, along with the other sign from Bacher’s visit to NYU for her 2018 show at 80WSE, and catalogues them against their Heriz.
And then you make a post about artworks with arrows, and someone laughs about their thwarted plot to steal Louise Lawler’s sign and sends you images they saved from a five-year-old instagram post.
[Oh wait, do we know that Bacher was actually there? Her not going and there just being a Lutz Bacher-related pizza party sounds almost better.]
[next morning update] SHE WAS THERE AT THE PARTY, SERVING PIZZA
Open The Kimono, Bacher’s 2018 artist book launched at NYU, is available at Greene Naftali [greenenaftaligallery]
previously, related: the times when an artwork is remembered is important
Pompon Tray: Needs Work
As a witness to the historic 2023 rupture in the Pomponiverse, when fifteen people at Sotheby’s collectively decided to pay $279,000 for a life-size painting by Jacques Barthélémy De Lamarre, one of dozens known to exist, of a tiny, bare-ass dog “parfoit dit Pompon,” the utterly undocumented “favorite” of Marie Antoinette, I cannot stay silent about what is happening here.
Because here is a picture of Pompon on a 19th century papier-mâché tray in NYC “being offered in pre-owned condition with noted need of restoration.” Honestly, since De Lamarre supposedly painted it, the French monarchy’s been through four restorations and it is currently defunct, yet is somehow still in better condition than this hapless tray and its gutless dog.
And with an estimate of $7,449-$9,683, and an opening bid of $5,700, which, with the buyer’s premium, is already $7,125, it’s already being priced as an intact, signed, Pompon painting on canvas in normal condition—and as one of the most expensive 19th century papier-mâché trays anywhere. And that’s before spending who knows how much to consolidate the visibly flaking paint—and repaint a whole third of the dog.
And while we’re talking about paint and condition, what is even happening on the entire tray? There seems to be a large field of black surrounding Pompon, which overruns the more brown & gold border designs. It’s almost as if a picture of Pompon was lacquered onto an already extant tray. And then some Marie Antoinette hater dropped a bocce ball on it, or punched it a couple of times.
Local pickup is said to be impossible, but I would love it if someone went to visit this thing and make some sense of it. Maybe the real takeaway here is that if someone’s going to have to paint half a Pompon, they might as well paint a whole Pompon. Maybe we should let this tragedy usher in a Pomponissance, with new facsimiles of Pompon and new interpretations by artists of our time. I can see the group show coming together now.
19 Sept 2026, Lot 1809F: French papier mache tray with Pompon dog portrait attributed to Delamarre, Bidhaus [liveauctioneers]
‘Condition. Is always top of the list’: Guide To Antique Papier-Mâché Trays [antique-collecting.co.uk]
Previously, related:
2023: Jacques Barthélémy De Lamarre Facsimile Object [D1], ‘Pompon’
2025: Somehow Pompon returned
The Nose & The Mouth & The Eye & The Brain
While poking around on the Laurentian Library yesterday, I came across a 2014 paper on the history of how people tried to make sense of Michelangelo’s puzzling reality: the classical orders he violated, mathematical composition and proportion, and anthropomorphy. Which, given the Vitruvian principle that the ideal proportion is the human body, was sort of the same thing.
But I was surprised to see the argument lead off with this drawing from the Casa Buonarotti of column bases with a human face in them. Or so I was told.
I stared at the base on the left in lowkey disbelief. Michelangelo was really out here hiding a stunned Beetle Bailey profile in his architecture, and this is how I find out about it? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Jasper Johns?
No, we should not invite Jasper Johns; he was already here. Reading the Casa Buonarotti curator’s notes on the drawing, I realized I’d been looking for a Johns vase-style negative profile instead of a Michelangelo caricature-style profile, which is in the base on the right:
in his imagination, the upper molding takes on the appearance of a turban, while the base profile transforms into a screaming human face, to which are added, in a caricatured manner, an eye, a nose, and a gaping mouth (for further considerations on this sketch and its possible connection with the Vitruvian idea of ‘architectural anthropomorphism’, cf. ELAM 2012, pp. 94-95, [which I cannot find, btw, but it’s not important now. -g.o]).
But at least it led me back to Johns’s seemingly disjointed but ultimately insightful 2007 interview with John Yau in The Brooklyn Rail:
Yau: It seems to me that some of your motifs, such as the ones of the faces in profile/vase, are irritating because one sees either the faces looking at each other or the vase between them, but never both at the same time. There is a continuous frustration in the looking. The figure and ground keep changing places, and one becomes aware that one never sees this image in its entirety. The feeling I get from this motif is both satisfying and maddening. Why does this conundrum hold interest for you?
Johns: I am not certain that one can’t see both at once. Has someone who knows about the eye and the brain made a determination?
Not only can I see both of Michelangelo’s faces at once, I couldn’t unsee them if I wanted to.
After Yau works through years of accumulated questions [which, ngl, very relatable now. I should call him. -g.o], there’s an actual [sic] dialogue for a minute, about different aspects of Johns’s use of the term “helpless,” and suddenly:
Yau: Is the helpless behavior of a material, the puddling of the ink when used on plastic, for example, one of the parallels between art and life?
Johns: I imagine that our understanding of the behavior of materials is closely related to our understanding of the rest of what we think of as reality.
Michelangelo In The Brooklyn Rail
I’d have posted about William Corwin’s illuminating review in the new Brooklyn Rail of Rothko in Florence at some point. But it’s not the close color reads of the Rothkos alongside the Fra Angelicos in San Marco that’s making it happen now, this second, as soon as I finished reading it. In fact, it’s not about Rothko at all.
It’s this line about one of the buck wildest spaces in town, Michelangelo’s ricetto for the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, which had two small studies for Rothko’s Seagram Murals installed facing that trippy staircase [Rothko said the non-windows were an inspiration, and the vibe]: “In the corners of the vestibule, the corbels even seem to melt into each other in a bizarre overlap that is a casualty of classicism’s desperate need for symmetry.”
I have not been in that space for a long time, but I knew exactly what Wilson was referring to, an almost comically sublime architectural gesture in a confounding blizzard of ornament. But I didn’t remember them as melting into each other.
It made me want to look up a picture of the corbels—which are actually volutes. Alexandra Korey has a nice one, with kind of wonky lighting that makes the whole situation feel even more artificial. And I guess I’d say that no, I wasn’t misremembering, but the way the forms come together is varied.
The top striations are interleaved, like shuffled cards or combs’ teeth, which is what, I think, had left its impression on me so long ago. But looking now at the bottom volute, they’re just abutting each other; the lighting makes it look like a clunky photoshop. Such a weird thing, easily lost among the rest, and one which, tbqh, I hadn’t thought about in ages. Read the Brooklyn Rail for Hot Michelangelo Takes, I guess!
Necessary Miracles: Rothko in Florence [brooklynrail.org]
Fondation Cartier: Some Art Left Behind
When the Fondation Cartier moved out of its 1994 Jean Nouvel building on boulevard Raspail into its Jean Nouvel renovation at the Palais Royale last year, it left some art behind. I got no response from the Fondation during the run-up and opening, and figured I’d give it some time, let them sort it out. But they haven’t responded to renewed inquiries, so I just assume their plan is to ignore and erase the works abandoned and destroyed by their move.
Continue reading “Fondation Cartier: Some Art Left Behind”A Compilation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres Not On View
Felix Gonzalez-Torres showed “Untitled” (Natural History) for the first time in Every Week There Is Something Different, his May 1991 show at Andrea Rosen’s second floor gallery in SoHo. As the show’s title suggested, the artist changed the configuration and works on display each week. In Week 1, the twelve black and white photos of words carved into the Theodore Roosevelt monument in front of the American Museum of Natural History were in the front gallery, and the thirteenth picture, 21 Club, the bougie former speakeasy with its wrought iron balcony and staircase full of lawn jockeys, was exhibited separately, in the back room. In Week 2, only three of the twelve photos stayed up—Ranchman, Soldier, and Historian—the others, including 21 Club, came down.
After that, Gonzalez-Torres decided that 21 Club should not be exhibited, although it should remain as part of “Untitled” (Natural History). Which is an edition of three, and ed. 3/3 was broken up and sold separately, someone has only 21 Club, and they’re not supposed to show it. This, the moment when I look to see if that orphaned 21 Club has turned up anywhere, is when I realize I’d already written this entire post about “Untitled” (Natural History), including the part I was going to mention next, that Carol Bove defied the artist’s instructions and showed 21 Club in her historical re-creation of Every Week There Is Something Different at the Beyeler in 2011, in 2020, when the AMNH announced they were taking down their racist Teddy Roosevelt statue.
The point of all this now, though, was to look at how Gonzalez-Torres developed a strategy of invisibility; of work existing but not being shown, or seen; of absence; and of absence transfigured into presence.
Continue reading “A Compilation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres Not On View”