Inland Steel Curtained Wall

google streetview image of the steel and glass lobby of chicago's inland steel building with two white curtains hanging inside, between the two revolving doors. circa 2022
Inland Steel Building, 1958, Chicago, as documented in Aug 2022 by Google Streetview

While looking at Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s Inland Steel Building in Chicago, I was surprised to find curtains had been hung in its iconically transparent lobby.

google streetview image of the lobby of the inland steel building in chicago with full unobstructed glass panels between steel mullions, richard lippold's eight pointed star shaped sculpture radiant 1 against the black background of the lobby wall, and frank gehry's cast glass blobs assembled into a security desk against the glass, between the two revolving doors. a bright red pedestal with perhaps a model of the building itself is against the left glass wall. circa 2017
Inland Steel Building, Lippold, and Gehry, as documented in Sept 2017 by Google Streetview

Installed between the 2017 and 2018 Streetview updates, the curtains entirely block the view of Radiant I, Richard Lippold’s perfect lobby art, a sculpture of webbed wire, steel, gold and copper, hovering above a reflecting pool. But I suspect that is just collateral visual damage, and they were really installed to block the view of the massive cast glass jumble of Frank Gehry’s security desk. Or perhaps they’re really just to give the security guards a bit of privacy in which to check their websites, and blocking the view of Gehry’s desk is just a bonus.

Continue reading “Inland Steel Curtained Wall”

[Heliostat and] Window for Moving Light

a closeup of ornately carved gothic finials on a wooden choir wall that are painted what seems to be white, with the larger space of the cathedral nave extending into the background, but the main feature of this photo is this architecture bathed, from bottom to top, in red, orange, yellow, and blue light, pouring in through the handblown glass window installation by olafur eliasson. at the st nicholas cathedral in greifswald germany.
Olafur Eliasson, Window for Moving Light, 2024, stained glass and heliostat, St Nicholas Cathedral, Greifswald, Germany, image: Jens Ziehe via olafureliasson.net

Olafur Eliasson has created a work of light and handblown glass for the east windows of St. Nicholas’s Cathedral in Greifswald, a Hanseatic city near the Baltic coast of Germany, which was the birthplace of Caspar David Friedrich. Originally built in the 14th century, the church was remade in the 19th century with woodwork by Friedrich’s brother, Christian Adolph, including the elaborate Gothic choir wall which closes off the windows from the rest of the interior.

The work is titled, Fenster für bewegtes Licht (Window for Moving Light). Because the east window only catches the morning sun for a small portion of the day—and that portion is limited further by the building directly across the street—Eliasson installed a heliostat, a mirror that tracks the movement of the sun, on that building to reflect afternoon sun into the morning window.

the east facade of a gothic brick cathedral in greifswald germany is dark against the deep blue sky of late afternoon or early evening, flanked by shadowy trees. the three tall, thin gothic windows with white tracery glow in a rainbow spectrum, dark red at the bottom to deep blue at the top, so mostly oranges and yellows in the middle, an installation by olafur eliasson
Olafur Eliasson, Window for Moving Light, 2024, exterior view of the east facade of St Nicholas’s Cathedral, Greifswald, photo: Jens Ziehe via olafureliasson.net

When I first discussed with Olafur an idea for a work that involved a heliostat reflecting light into our north-facing apartment in New York, in 2003, [while I had the concept, he already knew what a heliostat was and where to get one], I imagined sunlight that doesn’t move around the room would become very unsettling.

So it is buck wild to see a similar setup behind the altar of a church, where it is intended to encourage “pause and reflection – aspects central to both the Romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich and Protestant spirituality.”

Or does an beam of sunlight coming at an uncharacteristic time into a building oriented so specifically have a different effect? The afternoon sun from the east can become a metaphor, or it can encourage pause and reflection on the human, artistic intervention that produced it, drawing viewers’ attention to the world outside the church.

Fenster für bewegtes Licht (Window for Moving Light), 2024 [olafureliasson.net]

The Opposite of Dumpster Fire

olafur eliasson photo edition of a mass of icicles and just ice, covering an undetermined pile of garbage and debris in a weedy field in front of a dark loading dock near the berlin warehouse where his studio was in the early 2000s. produced as an edition titled atlantis.
Olafur Eliasson, Atlantis, 2003, photogravure on Hahnemühle, 34 x 68 cm plate on 54 x 84 cm sheet, ed. 35, produced in 2004 by Niels Borch Jensen Editions, image via olafureliasson.net

I don’t know why, but this early-ish Olafur Eliasson work popped into my head this morning: a pile of debris accumulated outside Eliasson’s studio near the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, which the artist sprayed regularly with water until it formed this mass of ice. Which, I never realized all this time, he photographed at night. Maybe it was called Atlantis because it was soon lost. Not clear whether it’d ship in time for Christmas, but you can check.

Is This Really A Print Of Derek Jarman’s Blue?

a vertical strip of 35 millimeter film stock is entirely blue, with two white waveforms of an optical audio track running in black down the left side. sprocket holes punctuate either side of the film strip. this is apparently a piece of a print of derek jarman's monochrome blue film, Blue, made in 1993, as he was losing his sight as a side effect of aids and related medications.

Is this really a 35mm print of Derek Jarman’s Blue, no frames or nothin’?

Thanks to art historian A.V. Marraccini, I saw this Doc Films at the University of Chicago using this image to promote a screening of Blue this week.

2013 was my last exercise to understand how Jarman made Blue blue. Early live performances used a filmed loop of an Yves Klein painting. That was replaced by a blue gel. Rowland Wymer’s 2006 book said the blue was “electronically produced,” which, if the image above is to be accepted, means it was not filmed in camera, but on the film stock itself.

Perhaps it is far past time to make some actual inquiries instead of just poking around in books.

[a little later update: In 2014, Mason Yeaver-Lap wrote about Blue, “a film without film,” and how the Walker Art Center exhibited it on a loop in a gallery. Though the museum has a 35mm print, for conservation reasons, they went with, “a flickering projector (aided by a piece of kit called T’he Flicker-O-Meter,’ whose manual can be found in the Walker archives) [which] would beam through a projection window coated with a blue gel. This filmless projector would thus throw a perfectly IKB shade, accompanied by a CD dub of the soundtrack. Again, Blue was a film without film.”

FWIW, this blog post will be the second mention on the internet of the “Flicker-O-Meter. We’re gonna need to see that manual.

This really is my Saturday night. DVDBeaver has technical information on the various DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Blue, and the greatest set of screencaps the medium has ever produced.]

Previously, very related: International Jarman Blue

Schunk’s Glaspaleis, by Werner Mantz

a black and white 1936 print of a photo by werner mantz of schunk department store in heerlen, the netherlands, shows an eight story square building encased in large sheets of glass curtain wall, which leaves the internal concrete slab and flared column structure completely visible and unobstructed. the plaza in front of the store is framed with trees along the image's edges. for sale at grisebach, a german auction house, in dec 2024
Werner Mantz, photo of Schunck’s Glass Palace, Heerlen, NL, 1935-6, 169 x 227 mm, gelatin silver print, selling 15 Dec 2024 at Grisebach

Before seeing Werner Mantz’s photo of it, I had never heard of Shunck department store, which sits at the center of Heerlen, a coal mining town in the southern tail of the Netherlands near Maastricht (actually, it’s closer to Aachen, Germany). Commissioned in 1932 from unorthodox modernist Fritz Peutz, it has an extraordinary glass curtain wall separate from but surrounding its 8-story, beamless reinforced concrete structure, on three sides.

Deparment store owner Peter Schunck and Peutz were apparently inspired by the Van Nelle Factory (1925-31) near Rotterdam, which has a pioneering but less ambitious glass curtain wall. I’m not going to get into the dispute of who designed that one.

google streetview image from 2019 of schunk glass palace in heerlen, a color image of the all glass and steel skin of the eight story building with a red flag atop it, and a slightly larger tree in the right foreground. the building is now the town's cultural center and a music school.
Schunk Glaspaleis, Heerlen, NL, c 2019 via Google Streetview

Anyway, the building quickly became known as the Glaspaleis, and it was rescued from destruction in the 1990s, beautifully restored, and now functions as the town’s cultural center. The spot where Mantz was standing is now a McDonald’s. Nice work, everybody.

15 Dec 2024, Lot 1384, Werner Mantz, Glaspaleis, c. 1936, est EUR 700-900 [grisebach]

On Seeing Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black

dawoud bey's nighttime photo of a 19th century white painted farmhouse near cleveland with a white picket fence in front of it, this image has been lightened to be more legible in reproduction. via the art institute of chicago
Dawoud Bey, Night Coming Tenderly, Black, Untitled #1 (Picket Fence and Farmhouse), 2017, digital dissemination image, via Art Institute of Chicago

How I missed Night Coming Tenderly, Black, Dawoud Bey’s extraordinary series of photos about the Underground Railroad is completely beyond me. Maybe Colson Whitehead had me looking one way, and Bey was right in front of me with portraits. Still, I have no excuse. So thank you, Michael Lobel for putting this 2017 project in my timeline.

Night takes its title from two lines by Langston Hughes, and its deep, dark tones and printing from Roy deCarava, but the evocation of place, history, memory, and the at-once embracing and ominous atmosphere of these nighttime spaces is entirely Bey. The series, 25 images, printed large, was commissioned by FRONT International: the Cleveland Biennial curated in 2018 by Michele Grabner. It was installed in St John’s Episcopal Church, the oldest church in Cleveland, and one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad for enslaved people before crossing Lake Eerie to freedom in Canada. In 2019 the series was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago.

dawoud bey black and white print of a photo of a 19th century farmhouse and white picket fence outside cleveland, a speculated stop on the underground railroad, this image is darker to better approximate the extremely dark print bey made, which the art institute of chicago aquired
Dawoud Bey, Night Coming Tenderly, Black: Untitled #1 (Picket Fence and Farmhouse), 2017, 44 x 55 in. silver gelatin print, printed in 2019, as reproduced in the Collection record of the Art Institute of Chicago

When it opened in Cleveland, Maurice Berger discussed it in the Times, and Judd Tully did a feature on Bey keyed to the show in Chicago. But the most in-depth discussion I’ve found so far on the project is from the Art Institute photography curator Matthew Witkovsky, which was, for some reason, published in Art in America.

What absolutely blows my mind is that Bey printed these giant, 44 by 55 inch gelatin prints, manipulating the details of tone in the darkroom, and resulted in prints you can really only see in person:

By printing large, he makes room for the viewer’s body, and by printing so darkly, he effectively renders the viewer’s knowledge partial as well. The works demand time. We must stand before them and wait until details become clearer, then change our position to overcome additional interruptions from reflections or glare.

The prints, moreover, do not reproduce well. All illustrations of the works (including in these pages) are made from image files that Bey lightened with dissemination in mind. The originals would be hard to decipher in print, and they are also difficult to transmit via smartphone—they come through as black rectangles. The nighttime passage may thus be grasped only in person; it cannot readily be “shared” or “liked” and the version made available to a broad audience is a deliberate compromise.

Even between the image circulated by the museum for the show [top] and the image used to record the Night print the museum acquired, the difference is dramatic.

dawoud bey's large, nearly all black prints from his night coming tenderly, black, project, installed in 2018 just above the pews in the somewhat decaying st johns episcopal church in cleveland. the white walls are a bit flaky, but the stained glass behind the altar and the large arched windows bring in a lot of light. the black bey photos are almost illegible unless you get right up close. via front international
Dawoud Bey, Night Coming Tenderly, Black, 2017 installation view at St John’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland, for FRONT International, via archpaper

But from the installation view in St John’s Church, it is only partly accurate. The prints look like monochrome slabs that only reveal their image over time, to someone sitting in front of them in the pew.

Bey’s project turns out to not to be an illustration of the secret network which was only possible because of its invisibility, but an incarnation of that invisibility itself. And of the difficulty we in the present face as we try to look back into the past.

Escaping to Freedom, In the Shadow of Night (Berger) [nyt]
Dawoud Bey’s Shadowy Landscapes… (Witkovsky) [art in america]
‘I Ranged Far and Wide’… (Tully) [artnews]

Little Guys Show Trials

In 2010 the National Gallery of Art acquired hundreds and hundreds of trial proofs from Jasper Johns. They document, if not easily reveal, the intricate process of making Johns’ prints, a process Johns has brought into the center of his practice from almost the beginning.

Searching through proofs on the NGA’s website is a bit of a slog, but when this sketch for Leo Castelli’s Little Guys print turned up, I thought I’d better go through the stacks.

a trial proof by jasper johns for a 1990 print titled the seasons includes three plates: the top two are tiled together into a wonky boomerang shape and contain the head and part of the arms of a stick figure johns quotes from picasso; the bottom landscape rectangle contains three stick figures, a motif he first used in 1982, in a little group, each holding a brush or two. there is an x on what seems to be the ground of the space they inhabit. this tria print is in the colleciton of the national gallery of art.
Jasper Johns, The Seasons (Trial Proof), 1990, etching & aquatint, three plates on a 29 3/8 x 21 1/4 in sheet, collection National Gallery of Art

And so I found this trial proof for The Seasons, a 1990 ULAE print that is one of the earliest print appearances of the trio of stick figures. And it looks like they travel by themselves. The proof is actually three separate plates from what would be a much larger composition. Coincidentally or not, the other plates contain part of the other stick figure Johns uses, from the UNESCO Picasso.

the seasons, 1990, by jasper johns, is a 50 inch tall print published by ulae with a jumble of motifs relating to the series of paintings of the same name: angled ladders and shaded areas form an indistinct cruciform arrangement, with a figure of some kind in each arm: a shadow of the artist, a shadow filled with dots, a silhouette of a small child standing like the aliens in close encounters, if you ask me, and a stick figure from picasso. other motifs johns likes to use are sprinkled around, and below them all are the three little stick figures that are the most interesting to me. ymmv obv
Jasper Johns, The Seasons (ULAE 0249), 1990, intaglio, 50 1/4 x 44 1/2 in., ed. 50, via ULAE

Whether all prints, or all Johns’ prints, are made this way, I have no idea. But now that you mention it, this print in particular feels very much like that: composed by assembling and setting multiple, prepared plates together like an old timey newspaper publisher. That certainly takes away much of the stress of working images into a 50-inch plate without error or change, I guess.

In any case, the plate with the Little Guys is 4 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, and notably includes another element, an X marking the spot over to the left, and a line defining their ground.

The Picasso stick figure is embedded in the center of the composition, and all the other figures—the child silhouette, the shadows and inverted shadows from the Seasons paintings read as Johns himself, the Duchamp profile, even the snowman—are integrated as well. But these three stick figures at the bottom seem to still be set apart and doing their own thing, in their own space, even with their own ground to stand on—while still a part of the entire image.

Jasper Johns, The Seasons (trial proof), 1990 [nga.gov]
Previously: Jasper Johns’ Little Guys: Origins

Mijn Hoet Hij Heeft Drie Hammons

In 2021, on the occasion of the sale of the most significant artwork documenta IX curator and SMAK Ghent founder Jan Hoet received from David Hammons, his daughter Marianne Hoet, Head of Business Development and Deputy Chairwoman, Phillips Europe, reflected on accompanying her father to the artist’s studio in the late 1980s:

At the studio, we were able to touch objects and works, without being sure if it was an object or already an artwork. At that time, David always gathered objects and found inspiration in the streets. As an outsider in the contemporary scene, he was able to transform material into experience, which also alludes to an African-American tradition of creating art from found objects … Most important was to understand and feel the deep friendship between David and my father. It was a friendship as we remember from our childhood, soulmates as outsiders.

It echoed the uncredited lot description for the sale in 2018 of the most significant artwork Jan Hoet got from David Hammons that his family still owned:

Hammons’ oeuvre is a masterful narrative on the experience of the African American community in American society, introducing his own physicality into his work as well as the debris surrounding him. Through a deft reworking of found-objects, Hammons’ sculptures assume a quasi-mystical status; soldered, glued and nailed, these extracted materials are composed into beautifully rendered structures of detritus, utilising quotidian objects which are often loaded with associative connotations. The present work thus forms a crucial part of Hammons’ highly original artistic approach and, at the same time, symbolises a pivotal relationship between innovative artist and curator, both unified in their shared motivations.

And Marianne’s comment was considered worth repeating to sell in 2023 what is…what is a productive way to describe this…the most conceptual? most austere? most elemental? artwork Hoet got from Hammons, which is this stick.

this sculpture by david hammons is a one meter long stick that has been smoothed a bit, and has the words head warmer on one end. it is being sold for the second time by marianne hoet, whose father jan obtained it from hammons. this image is from phillips, where marianne works, and where it did not sell in 2023. now in december 2024 it is at christie's, which has to sting a bit. maybe if they added some duct tape
David Hammons, Head Warmer, 1998, 99 x 4 x 4 cm, wood, img from a 2023 PhillipsX pop-up collab with AQUALEX a provider of fine drinking water systems in Knokke-Heist, the Hamptons of Belgium

In each case Hoet’s relationship to Hammons is considered an inextricable element of the work’s significance in ways that surpass mere provenance. This may explain why this stick, on which this phrase Head Warmer is carefully lettered, and which is is also signed, was made available first to the Belgian collecting world who also knew Hoet—or Hoets at this point—via a pop-up sale at the beach in August.

Well, Belgium passed, and now the stick is at Christie’s. And what does Christie’s have to say about Head Warmer? Just that it “is emblematic not only of Hammons’ ability to transform found materials into art but also of the close relationship that Hoet and Hammons shared.”

The Hoets’ claim for this work/these works as somehow manifestations of Jan’s relationship with Hammons exceeds but is inextricable from their view of Hammons as a quasi-mystical shaman of the Black Found Object Arts. For a curator who put himself on the cover of his documenta catalogue while writing off Africa as irrelevant, I guess we should expect nothing less. Me, I’d just be happy to have gotten three free Hammonses.

18 Dec. 2024, Lot 31 | David Hammons, Head Warmer, 1998, est. USD50-70,000 [christies]
Summer Wave, August 2023, Lot 20: David Hammons, Head Warmer [phillips]
Previously, stick provenance-related: A Walking Stick Frederick Douglass Gave To John Brown Would Be Quite A Find

And The Oscar Goes To

a peach satin cape and a peach beaded and sequined dress on headless mannequins, both circa 1961, from augusta auction's sale on december 3, 2024
Lot 236: Couture Lanvin Castillo Garments from Archive of Oscar de la Renta, est $800-1200, selling 4 December 2024 at Augusta Auction

This couture cape in peach paduasoy and the sequin and crystal embroidered chiffon gown are both from Jeanne Lanvin, circa 1961. The cape, at least, is attributed to Oscar Renta Fiallo, who that year left his apprenticeship with Cristóbal Balenciaga to work with Antonio del Castillo, the Spanish designer brought to Paris to revive Lanvin. Both garments belonged to Baroness Aino de Bodisco.

I had to look up paduasoy, which is maybe a Spanish term for peau de soie, a variant of silk satin. Which is absolutely the least important thing in this situation. Because the auction listing of these two items also includes a copy of the mindboggling, handwritten pledge the 24-year-old man who would become known as Oscar de la Renta made to Bodisco in June 1956.

the text of this letter reads as follows:It is absolutely my own free will and decision to put on legal terms, valid in all countries in the world, my personal engagement in our agreement, where by I, Oscar Orlis de la Renta Fiallo, will give you, Aino Pusta van Wagenberg, at all times and during all my life, and by will and testament after my death, one half of all my possessions, incomes and earnings, starting on this day of Thursday, June the 22nd of 1956 in Madrid.

This engagement from me to you, to be permanent and unchangeable agreement regardless of our personal relationship or legal status as unmarried, married, divorced or widowed

Madrid Junio 22, 1956
Oscar Renta Fiallo
Continue reading “And The Oscar Goes To”

Dune Bible 4 Calling Spice DAO 2

a copy of the jodorowsky dune bible photographed by christies at a slight angle to show the faded blue cloth spine, the 300 page thickness, and the pasted on color cover image with a hawk bodied spaceship with two star trek like nacelle things sticking out the top, except they're hollow like beveled paper towel tubes, and are maybe guns or something idk, the whole ship is painted with contrasting black and white strips and red and white checkerboards and chevrons, and the title dune is in fat non serif all caps, and a bunch of collaborators are listed below. this copy is number 4, and is for sale at christie's london in december 2024
Copy Number 4 of Alexandro Jodorowsky’s Dune Bible, printed in 1975, for sale at Christie’s Dec 2024

Nothing quite captured the hopes, dreams, ambition, and stupidity of the crypto moment like the 2021 acquisition by Dune DAO [aka Spice DAO] of Jodorowsky’s Dune Bible for EUR 2.67 million, more than 100x its estimate.

I declared a Facsimile Object exclusively for governance tokenholders of Spice DAO, and never heard or thought about it again. Until now.

The Spice DAO epic involved Copy Number 5 of the Dune Bible, a nearly 300-page art and concept octavo, privately published in 1975. When it was sold in November 2021, Christie’s Paris surmised that there were likely only 10 to 20 copies produced, and only a fraction survived. Given its rarity, it was expected to sell for EUR25-35,000.

Now Copy Number 4 has appeared in an online auction at Christie’s London, with an estimate of GBP250-350,000. The way this price is at once a 90% discount and a 1000% markup really captures the lost surrealist magnificence of the Jodorowsky Dune vision. But the true magnificence comes from noting how Christie’s both copies large chunks of the 2021 lot essay, while assiduously not mentioning the previous sale, or indeed the production or existence of any other copies of the book.

12 Dec 2024, Lot 10 | The Dune Bible, est GBP250-350,000 [christies]
22 Nov 2021, Lot 116 | Herbert, Jodorowsky, Giraud, Dune [christies]
Related: Spice DAO Facsimile Object (S1), 2022

Jasper Johns Little Guys for Leo

in jasper johns 1997 etching for leo castelli's 90th birthday, three stick figures holding brushes in a configuration johns has used since at least 1982 are at the bottom edge of the plate/frame, while a brushy gradient dark blue sky rises above them. at the top edge in the heavens, are the nine stars which make up the constellation leo, printed in yellow, and mostly connected by faint lines. this example is from moma
Jasper Johns, Leo from The Leo Castelli 90th Birthday Portfolio, 1997/98, etching with aquatint, 45×30 cm plate on 37 x 27 in. sheet, ed. 90+17AP+?, this one from MoMA

While looking something else up at the Philadelphia Museum, I realized I’d missed a major appearance of the three stick figures I call Jasper Johns’ little guys: they make their astronomical—or astrological—debut in a print created in 1997 for Leo Castelli’s 90th birthday.

It was published by Jean-Christophe Castelli in a portfolio, and so wasn’t printed by Johns’s two major print foundries, Gemini GEL and ULAE, so I missed it in my survey. But it does really capture the way Johns expanded the ways he put them to work in his pictures. Beyond their function in his composition and scale, they also start to imply their own narrative, whether in a picture or as its audience.

in a detail from a 1997 sketch page by jasper johns, two square panels are drawn in pencil, each with three tiny stick figures along the bottom edge, looking at the big dipper in one, and a spiral galaxy in the other, an example of johns experimenting with compositions using the stick figures. from the johns drawings catalogue raisonne D587
Detail from Untitled (D587) showing those little guys doing something new, 1997, graphite, 15 3/4 x 20 1/4 in., via JJ Drawings CR

The idea of these stick figures under a night sky seems to first appear in 1997, and it would reappear often as Johns incorporated more astronomical imagery into his work. It really does give these little guys a primordial vibe, like they were here before us all.

Of course, while the sketch above has them looking at the Big Dipper or a spiral galaxy, in Leo from the Leo…, the little guys are looking at the constellation Leo. [Or most of it; the line that forms the lion’s back is missing.] Which maybe did not matter so much; Leo Castelli, born September 4th, was a Virgo.

[next day update: on bluesky Peter Huestis points to Sketch for Leo, a 1997 work on mylar, in the National Gallery. This is not in the drawings CR, I believe, but it’s perfect. It’s described as “charcoal transfer,” which I do not understand. It is not in reverse, so it is at least one step removed from the creation of the printing plates.]

a sketch on mylar by jasper johns titled, sketch for leo 1997, has his three stick figures holding brushes in dark charcoal near the bottom edge, some reddish smudges around them, a faint horizon line above their teeny little heads, and the constellation leo picked out in faint circles and light red lines. this became the etching johns made for leo castelli's 90th birthday portfolio. it is in the collection of the national gallery of art, but not, i believe, in the artist's drawings cr, which i am certain i scoured for stick figures
Jasper Johns, “Sketch for Leo,” 1997, charcoal transfer, graphite, and red pencil on mylar, in the collection of the National Gallery from whence it cannot be downloaded.

Previously: Jasper Johns’ Little Guys
Jasper Johns’ Little Guys: Origins

Lucio Fontana Taken From Behind

the back of a lucio fontana painting at il ponte auction house in milan with drips of dark blue underpainting and the lighter blue top coat on the brown wood stretcher bars, held in place with wood shims. two vertical strips of black fabric tape in the center of the canvas hold the slashes in the loose stasis we expect from fontana. the title and signature are written in quick fast italian cursive with an arrow indicating the orientation
the verso of Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1966, 47 x 38 cm, sold at Il Ponte in Nov 2024, via @octavio-world and @archiveofcanvas

For a split second after @octavio-world brought this image of the back of a little Lucio Fontana that sold this week in Milan into my tumblr timeline, I had to process the ghost of the World Trade Center. Then I marveled that I’d never seen the back of a Fontana before, and did they really all look like this?

a light blue lucio fontana concetto spaziale with two parallel slashes in the center, a typical fontana you'd find anywhere, though this was sold in milan in nov 2024 at il ponte
Now from the front, “water paint on canvas” via Il Ponte

Fontana, whose whole spatial concept for his Concetto Spaziale was the piercing and slashing of the picture plane, then carefully bound it back up with black tape?

Yes, yes he did. This remarkably similar little Fontana was found at the flea market on 6th Avenue in 2001, was cleaned up, consigned at Christie’s, and then withdrawn after being declared by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana to be authentic but “irremediably damaged.”

a persian blue fontana, or former fontana, is a 58 cm square diamond, with a single slash from top to bottom, sold at wright20 in 2014
“Originally executed by Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa,” n.d., acrylic on canvas, 58×58 cm, sold at Wright20 in 2014

When Wright20 sold it in a design auction in 2014 [for $50,000, a tenth of what the Milan painting just sold for], they noted this alleged but unspecified damage was not apparent to the conservators or auctioneers.

the verso of a diamond-shaped fontana found at a flea market, then authenticated then disclaimed, with the black fabric tape covering the slash has been frayed and pierced. signature, title, and other text in fontana's quick cursive, via wright20
Verso of the painted object originally executed by Lucio Fontana, via Wright20

But in addition to some discloration and unevenness to the field of color on the front, the back shows this black tape has been frayed, torn, or itself punctured anew. Was this black fabric strip, ostensibly meant to ensure a featureless backdrop to the slashed void, and to prevent further tearing, also actually holding the work together conceptually?

a fontana concetto spaziale in paper is framed in a bland dark gold. it is a series of uneven rows of stab marks, like with scissors, roughly outlined with an egg like oval. sold at rago in 2024
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1964-65, blotter paper, 59 x 46 cm, sold in Sept 2024 at Rago Arts

A third Fontana makes me wonder if what’s going on in the back has been more important than we realize. This Concetto Spaziale on paper, with a series of orderly stabs contained in a roughly outlined egg shape, sold at Rago Arts in September 2024.

the messy back of the paper fontana shows the frame, the wire, a simon dickinson label, and the raw paper, which seems to have been stabbed from this side
stabbed in the verso, via rago

Comparing the recto and verso, and the direction of the tears and paper residue, it looks to me like Fontana stabbed it in the back. We may have been looking at the wrong side of these works the whole time.

Robert Gober Potato Print

robert gober print of the lyrics to rogers & hammerstein's climb ev'ry mountain from the sound of music on white paper mounted on a light blue board in a white painted wood frame, from an edition of 15 on view at krakow witkin gallery. the text is printed in black, and the copyright notice at the bottom in red, using engraved potatoes.
Robert Gober, Untitled, 2011, potato print in artist’s mount and frame, 19 1/2 x 16 in., ed. 15, at Krakow Witkin Gallery

I’m repeatedly fascinated by how Robert Gober brings the same extraordinary production detail to his editions as to his sculptures. Sometimes the goal seems to be uncanny, handmade verisimilitude, as when he makes a receipt or a movie ticket stub. But Untitled (2011) is something else.

Untitled is a two-color potato print of the lyrics to the Rogers & Hammerstein song, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” from The Sound of Music, along with the copyright notice. It is mounted in an artist’s frame, so it is really an object, not just a print, but the primary point is, it is a potato print.

An example of the edition of 15 is on view in Boston at Krakow Witkin Gallery’s One Wall One Work series. The gallery also has published an extensive account of the production process, which could not be more different from the time you or I made a potato print at camp with a pen knife and tempera paint.

It involves freeze drying potato slabs, and infusing them with something solid enough to engrave the text with a CNC router. In the first step, it perhaps resembles Gober’s presentation of a bag of donuts. The latter engraving process feels like the kind of technical challenge a master printer would love. Then there’s preparing the paper, and bringing it all together.

Indeed, the whole process here, and its innocent childhood implications, seems to be as prominent as the subject and content itself. As the gallery puts it,

A potato print is a rudimentary printmaking technique often used by young students, using half of a potato rather than metal or stone plate. Gober has taken this makeshift single-use medium and refined it to such an extreme that he could create a highly detailed, illusionistic image repeatedly (in an edition of 15). The themes of ‘how what can work for children can also be used by adults’ and that ‘there can be creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable situations’ feel directly related to “The Sound of Music,” nostalgia in general, and the present moment.

[next morning update: the details of the production history and technique seem to originate in an uncredited document published in May 2024, as part of the Brooklyn auction of AP 1/5 from the edition. Thanks to @bbhilley.bsky.social for finding it.

It now makes me wonder where it came from, and where it circulated. It contains much detail of the behind-the-scenes between the conservators, engravers, printers, and studio; was it provided to buyers by the gallery? Do the buyers of Gober’s work receive a packet of information to the inevitable question, “How’d he even do that?” Does there exist among Gober collectors a layer of intricate knowledge even beyond that gleaned by living with his work?

And I wasn’t going to get into it last night because of the sheer fascination of the potato, but the gallery’s mention of the careful reproduction of the copyright notice and the artist’s receipt of authorization from the Rogers & Hammerstein folks also appears in this production document. The exactness with which Gober, et al. observe the lyrics’ IP—and then document it—brings the whole cultural system of music publishing and performing into this work that was, again, printed with potato.]

One Wall, One Work: Robert Gober is on view through Dec. 7, 2024 [krakowwitkingallery via greg.org hero matt]

Taking And/Or Making A Breather

Martin Herbert on Marion Baruch:

In her studio, many dozens of these works, constituting acres of potential wall space, were folded into little boxes, closely stacked: the canny stratagems of an artist without much money, physical mobility, arm strength, storage space, or external expectations of what she should be doing, but with an inextinguishable urge to make art. I thought about that, afterward, whenever I saw a show where an artist had evidently been handed a large production budget and acquiesced to making more of the stuff that demonstrably sold.

The particular work he’s describing is made from the textile offcut/void/remains Italian fashion designers. Which is fascinating enough, but he also considers other artists not producing on an assembly line: Paul Chan, Duchamp, Bruce Connor, Sarah Rapson, Sara Deraedt. No one writes better than Martin Herbert about artists thwarting the art world in the name of art.

“You made me do this.” Martin Herbert [moussemagazine.it via geraldine]

OG Nam June Paik’s Fin de Siecle II

1989 ap photo of artist nam june paik standing in front of his sculpture fin de siecle ii at the whitney museum. it is a wall of over 300 television sets in various sizes and grid configurations showing seven different channels of programming, but the caption only says its david bowie. popped up on ebay, then disappeared oh well

I cannot believe I missed this 1989 publicity photo on ebay of Nam June Paik posing in front of the original installation of Fin de Siecle II.

Paik created it for a show at the Whitney, “Image World: Art and Media Culture.” According to the caption, “The art is made up of more than 300 television sets and controlled by a digital computer. The sculpture features music and synchronized images of rock star David Bowie.”

Which, well, yes, and,

What an amazingly clipped description.

The Whitney acquired it in 1993, but never showed it. When they decided to show it again in 2019, it turned out nearly a third of the hardware was inoperable and unusable. [The keyframe on the conservation video below shows the original configuration.]

It’s now listed as having “207 video monitors in scaffolding and seven video channels.” Also mentioned are the other video sources, including Rebecca Allen’s Kraftwerk animations; video by Paik’s assistant Paul Perrin accompanied by Philip Glass; Merce Cunningham; Joseph Beuys; and Gera. Most are Paik-related or Paik-adjacent, which makes the whole work feel, along with everything else, a little like a self-portrait.