greg.org – the making of, by greg allen

Is That A Kusama In Your Pocket?

a small kusama infinity nets painting with a red background covered with a field of blue loops, and supposedly some glitter

Kusama Infinity Nets the bigger, the earlier the better, unless they’re tiny and from the 2000s.

This pocket-sized, 5×7 acrylic and glitter painting from 2000 has been around, the secondary market equivalent of cigarettes in prison. But it still delivers.

It just sold a few minutes ago at Sotheby’s in London, after not selling in 2017 in a horrible-sounding, two-artist sale/show with Louise Bourgeois at Sotheby’s S2 Gallery called Traumata, and then selling—untraumatically—three months later.

a small kusama infinity nets painting with a red background covered by thick brushy and uneven loops of yellow — Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Nets, 2002, 6×9 or so, acrylic on linen, sold in Milano in 2016

A few months before that, in November 2016, a similar, 6×9 Infinity Nets from 2002, with a little more facture and 100% less glitter sold at Sotheby’s in Milano.

a small kusama infinity nets painting with a black background covered by a field of tiny, uniform but still uneven field of yellow impasto loops — Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Nets, 1999, 9×11 in or so, acrylic on linen, sold at Christie’s Paris in 2024

As dense and loopy as it is, I almost think this 9×11-inch 1999 Infinity Nets might be slightly too big for the category. Though it feels wrong to put a limit on Infinity.

It all reminds me that there are modular phases in Kusama’s practice, where she focused on manageably small things that can be realized in a day and built up. The first Kusama work I saw in person was a small wooden box stuffed with painted phalluses, pocket-related, if not pocket-sized.

The Infinity Nets has always been like that, though; every painting is part of an infinite whole. Some larger paintings have giornata traces that show where Kusama might have stopped working, or reloaded her paint. But these tiny ones, she didn’t stop for anything, just kept moving towards Infinity.

Thursday Art Hour

I had an hour to see some shows today, and here are some things I saw.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Unnatural Landscapes at Lisson is his ongoing series of Diorama photos in large-format prints and on folding screens. I mostly came to see the screens, which, the painted diorama backgrounds printed in color on the washi surface are especially confounding.

Some dates are old, some are new, one is double-dated, but none of it seems to relate to when a print was made, another example of Sugimoto’s “extraordinary ability to suspend both time and reality,” ig.

a black and white portrait of felix gonzalez torres, a short haired latino man in his 30s laying on a chenille bedspread while wearing a dark t-shirt is set flush in a jordan wolfson aluminum slab with conical spikes on the corners — Jordan Wolfson, 8(L), 2026, Hand polished aluminum, aluminum spikes, digital UV substrate print on aluminum of an altered photograph of Felix Gonzalez-Torres by David Seidner with automotive clearcoat, 56 x 88 x 11 1/16 (lol) in., ed. 1+1AP, $275,000 at Gagosian

I really dislike the discourse of inevitability around this work, but I was glad to see that the UV prints are set flush with the aluminum surface. Still no idea why he dragged Felix into this.

diaphanous semitransparent fabrics in beige, dark blue& grey, and floral lilac arc across the open barnlike space of paula cooper gallery, each one a work by eric n mack. on the gallery floor below, a stainless steel tubular structure supports carefully composed drapes or other fabrics, while sewn geometric collage works are mounted on the walls behind

I regret not taking pics of the checklist for You Red The Shirt Off My Back, Eric N. Mack’s show at Paula Cooper, but each of these four suspended pieces is a separate work; they just also happen to look extraordinary together.

one element of a larger textile and steel sculptural installation by eric n mack is this white, quilted bed-shaped pad or coverlet, hanging loosely on the wall by its top corners. the left side is dyed a vivid persian blue, which has bled across the vertical center line of the textile

This is an element of a larger corner installation that reminds me of one of the paintings in Barnett Newman’s studio when he died, which Annalee cut up, then had a remorseful dream about, and got a conservator reassemble, and which David Diao made a version of.

These interviews with Mack are in increasing order of appeal.

the bottom edge of the olive grey putty colored central panel of brice marden's waxy-finish monochrome painting is a bit ragged, the carefully smoothed encaustic surface not reaching to the very edge. sublime skin — Brice Marden, Point (detail), 1969

I thought I’d go to the Tauba Auerbach show afterward, but I spent too long and not long enough in the Brice Marden show. It felt like there were some things missing, but ngl, it was mostly bangers, and lots of them.

a vertical bone colored painting with black-grey tangles of gestural marks made at a slightly uncontrolled distance, by brice marden — Brice Marden, 4 (Bone), 1987-88, oil on linen, 84 x 60 in., collection Helen Marden at Gagosian

To go from what he was painting to these must have been an extraordinary experience.

red green black and yellow tendrils of paint curl over under and alongside each other over a hi-viz orange ground in this particularly complex but fully mastered section of a brice marden painting. the 15 or 30 million or whatever dollar painting has reflective glass over it, allowing a middle aged white guy to inadvertently take a selfie while trying to capture this detail — Brice Marden, Round Rock, Tight Rock (4), detail, 2000-02, oil on linen, 75 x 107 in.

To get to the top of a mountain and see more peaks beyond, and then to scale them, too.

There are other details I loved. There are painting series I remember seeing during a studio visit. A couple of these loopy paintings felt a little drained. Then the two latest works, one sickly pink, Lingerie and Ridge, both 2022-23, felt like they were disintegrating.

It’s hard not to read a biographical narrative into these paintings when they so consistently put you right in the spot where Marden made them.

Today would have been Marden’s 88th birthday.

FIND THE NOLAND! Oozewald Wanted Poster

two folding tables with shallow trays of black wood on top stand slightly out of alignment in gagosian's davies street gallery in london. the nearer one contains a stack of wanted posters printed on white paper, with an image of a cady noland sculpture of lee harvey oswald punctured with holes. the table behind has the same image printed on aluminum, another smaller print, and an acrylic cube with a sheriff's badge encased in it. — Cady Noland, Untitled, 2026, printed posters, 2 1/2 x 36 x 27 in., installed on a table next to Untitled, 2026, table, UV print on aluminum, sheriff’s badge in acrylic, 33 x 60 x 30 in., at Gagosian Davies St, London, 📷: a greg.org hero on the ground

The important news from Cady Noland’s new exhibition at Gagosian in London is that an edition of Oozewald has been stolen, and the artist wants it back.

According to the STACK OF WANTED POSTERS WHICH CONSTITUTE A WORK IN THE SHOW, ed. 3 of 4 of Oozewald (1989) was last seen in September 1995 at Paula Cooper Gallery. No information on the circumstances of its disappearance, the 31 years of silence about the theft, or whether the complications of broken provenance might affect the work’s authenticity.

There’s also an AP, but that’s not important now. The Stones’ edition went, I think, to Glenstone. Pinault has—or had—one; the M HKA Antwerp has one. So maybe the AP is important, as is the one that’s unaccounted for.

a large, emtpy, white gallery wall is empty save for a wanted poster of a cady noland sculpture printed on aluminum, and a sideways gallery label, also printed on aluminum, next to it. the whole installation is a work, says the artist. — Cady Noland, Untitled, 2026, UV print on aluminum or aluminum and aluminum honeycomb, the whole installation is 108 x 121 15/16 in., which feels like the wall? The poster is 36 x 36 x 1/4 in., but the label is not 22 7/8 x 12 15/16 in., Gagosian Davies St., it looks more like 8 9/16 x 4 15/16 in.

In addition to a UV print-on-aluminum WANTED poster incorporated into the untitled table work next to the poster stack table, a wall-sized installation work at Davies Street includes UV prints of the poster on aluminum honeycomb panel, and a UV-on-aluminum print of the work’s original Paula Cooper label.

Oozewald is, according to its original label, 6 x 4 1/2 feet by 3/8 inches of aluminum with flag. Which does not include the bracket, or the Coca-cola drinking cup which was mentioned only on the sculpture’s appearance at MMK Frankfurt. In case you find a different Oozewald.

For any information, the poster says, contact OOZEWALD@CADYNOLAND.INFO

There is, the poster says, a reward, as if the work wasn’t enough.

Cady Noland is on view through 19 December 2026 at Gagosian Davies Street [gagosian]
Previously, related:
FIND THE WARHOLS, 2009
FIND THE WARHOL JEWS, 2015
FIND SOME OTHER WARHOLS, 2016
On the stack as medium: When Form Becomes Content, 2016

Adélie: Hello

a black and white picture of the head of a wide-eyed penguin with its beak slightly open, and the caption, an angry adelie penguin, p.3, from g murray levick's 1914 book, antarctic penguins, a study of their social habits — a photo by G. Murray Levick of a fronting penguin, from the front of his book, via

“The first Adélie penguins arrived at the Ridley Beach rookery, Cape Adare, on October 13,” Dr. G. Murray Levick recorded in his observation diary in the Southern Summer of 1911. Levick was the staff surgeon-turned-zoologist on Robert Scott’s Terra Nova British Antarctic Expedition, one of six men who stayed to study the coast. His findings were published in 1914 as Antarctic Penguins: A Study of their Social Habits, which is available in its original, censored form on the Internet Archive.

In Levick’s introduction, he quotes the description of penguins made by Emil Racovitza, the Romanian zoologist on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition in 1897: “Imagine a little man, standing with two broad paddles instead of arms…Have this creature walk on his two feet, and give him at the same time a droll little waddle, and a pert movement of the head; you have before you something irresistibly attractive and comical.”

This kawaii anthropomorphization of penguins is inextricable from the severe moral language Levick used to describe the penguins’ sex-related behaviors, and the subsequent suppression of his observations for almost 100 years. Which is laid out in Chris Coates’ fascinating and disturbing bluesky thread. Levick called the behaviors “depraved,” “crimes,” and the aggressive, unpaired male penguins involved in most of it, “little knots of hooligans.”

The Natural History Museum printed Levick’s findings as a separate, four-page pamphlet, Sexual habits of the Adélie penguin, in 1915. But the 100 reported copies were not published, and only two are known to survive. One turned up in the NHM Library and was published and analyzed for its historical, cultural, and scientific implications, in 2012. Levick’s observation of a complete mating and fledging cycle of Adélie penguins remains unequaled, and the behaviors he reported have all been observed and analyzed in less shocked terms since.

‘No Edition Was Produced [Until Now].’

an austere gerhard richter painting based on a photo of a wine bottle next to a red apple on a light colored, featureless table, against a white wall. light from the right casts long shadows onto the objects. this is actually a photo print edition of the painting, or one of them, because richter made three, via david zwirner — Gerhard Richter, Flasche mit Apfel, Bottle with Apple, 2026, “fine art print mounted between dibond and perspex,” 83 x 62 cm, ed. 25+5AP, via David Zwirner

In 1988 Gerhard Richter made three paintings after a still life photo of a bottle and apple, which is on the same sheet of Atlas as his portrait of his daughter Betty. The Flasche mit Apfel paintings are all the same size, and seem to vary only a little in overall light intensity and the shape of their shadows.

In 2003, Richter made some digital Lambda print proofs of Flasche mit Apfel GR 663-2, facemounted on acrylic, for an edition. But according to the 2017 Phillips auction listing where one of the proofs didn’t sell, “No edition was produced.”

Until now. Maybe? Maybe it’s the improvement of digital printing technology, or the nostalgia of seeing one of the paintings in the massive Richter retrospective last year at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, qui sait, pas moi, but Richter has finally made that edition. Sort of.

David Zwirner is previewing a “Fine Art Print” mounted between Dibond and Perspex at Art Basel Paris. Which sounds like the language of the HENI-era Facsimile Objects, which were rebranded as prints. But instead of 500, there are only 25 of these Flasche mit Apfel, plus five AP. Whether those include the four proofs made in 2003, whether they’re even of the same painting, whether they’re signed or just numbered, and whether a taxonomical consolidation is underway in Richter’s oeuvre, are all questions whose answers might be found in a few days, at the Grand Palais, or by reaching out to your handler at Zwirner.

The Secret JFK Memorial Hat Wreath

a top down photo of a wreath or circle of curved and slightly stylized branches and foliage, punctuated by the round tops of various military dress hats, with a smaller circle of branches at the center, sits atop a stone paved surface. a documentary photo found on ebay by the oak spring garden foundation — An undated photo mislabeled as “War Art” on eBay, but which was, in fact, a photo of the JFK memorial wreath sculpted by Louis Féron, acquired by Oak Spring Garden Foundation, via Ploughshares

An absolutely fascinating story about a lost JFK memorial sculpture unfolded in 2022-24 at the otherwise serene enclave of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, the former estate of Bunny Mellon.

It seems to have unfolded twice, or at least to be recounted twice. So far. And I am enthralled by both accounts, which art historian Andrew Wasserman just laid before me. Except now I must repent of some of my judgments of Mrs. Paul Mellon, or at least allow her more grace.

The Devil Wears Chanel

“Are those the—”

a jordan wolfson artwork exhaustively detailed in the caption below is a reproduction of a renoir painting of a small french girl in a white smock, enlarged to fit on a door-sized aluminum panel with sharp, 5-inch conical aluminum spikes on each corner. the work rests on the floor, so the bottom corners only have spikes on two axes; the top corners have all three. at gagosian in 2026 — Jordan Wolfson, 13 (L), 2026, hand-polished aluminum, aluminum spikes, digital UV substrate print on aluminum of a f’ing Renoir he credited in the ingredients even tho it’s public domain, automotive clearcoat, 53 x 88 x 11 1/8 in., ed. 1+1AP, 📷: Owen Conway for Gagosian, obv

“— the Chanel punk jacket spikes Virginie Viard wore in the photo Karl Lagerfeld took in 2011 for his and Caroline Roitfeld’s The Little Black Jacket Book, which was used in most of the stories this week about Viard getting fired by the Wertheimers after 30 years? Yes, yes they are.”

a book open to a fullbleed black and white photo of a white woman with dark eyeliner and shaggy black bangs in a chanel jacket covered with punk pins, safety pins on the sleeve, and clusters of spikes poking through the tweed weave on the shoulders. virginie viard was at the time of this 2011 photo by karl lagerfeld the director of chanel studio — Karl Lagerfeld, “Virginie Viard, Chanel Studio Director,” 2011, styled by Caroline Roitfeld

Actually, no, ofc, Roitfeld’s are just off the rack punk spikes, but it did seem weird that it’s happened twice.

Mies IBM Console

a four inch tall console of walnut with a dark grey granite top extends eight feet along a white wall. supposedly by mies van der rohe, who died while plans for the ibm building in chicago were being finalized. — Mies van der Rohe, custom wall-mounted console, 1969, 4 x 84 x 18 in., walnut and granite, selling at Wright20

In other Things I Didn’t Know Existed Five Minutes Ago And Do Not Need But Now Very Much Need news, I suddenly need this Mies van der Rohe granite and walnut wall-mounted console from the IBM Building in Chicago.

I can just imagine the 83-year-old architect now, in 1969, pushing aside the many staffers at his firm who have been working for three years on the many details of what would be Mies’s largest—and last—corporate commission: the 1.3 million square-foot office tower for IBM’s Chicago headquarters, and saying, “No, no, that wall-mounted console is not quite right. Leave it to me. I will design it if it’s the last thing I do”

And then he died, and it was. And when the building was actually built three years later, there this console was.

Lot 290, 21 Oct 2026, Mies van der Rohe, Custom Console, est. $6-8,000 [wright20]
Previously, mismatched but related: These Earthenware Egyptian Revival Bookends Will Fix Me, My Books

A Kind of Symbolic Language To Those Feelings

a single monumental painting of an art auction scene hangs on a beige paneled wall in a wood-floored gallery. to the right a multicolored sculpture of a somewhat distorted and featureless human figure stands on a small pedestal, with one hand holding the edge of a flatscreen video monitor over its head, a 2025-26 installation of nicole eisenman's work at 52 walker in nyc — The Auction (2025), as installed in STY, Nicole Eisenman’s 2025-26 show at 52 Walker

One of the monumental paintings in STY, Nicole Eisenman’s show at 52 Walker last winter was The Auction (2025), in which an artist stood by in a crowded salesroom as a black-robed auctioneer and a sieg heiling bidder faced off over the artist’s work. It was acquired by MoMA. A couple of weeks ago, she told Julia Halperin that The Auction “was partly inspired by collectors’ threats to sell her work at a moment when the art market was being deployed as judge and jury of her actions.” Some dealers and collectors criticized Eisenman and other artists in 2023 for signing an open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which has since been obliterated in an ongoing genocide, without originally noting Israelis had been killed in the October 7 attacks.

a 7x10 color printout of a news photo of an idf tank in the desert is painted over with blue green acrylic to seem like it is submerged in water (there is a little fish in there). a rough pen drawing of a cage overlays the painted image, extending to or becoming the border of the image, including the cropped upper left corner, which follows the perspectival rendering of the cage. the sheet is mounted on a piece of tan paper, which is all floated in a white shadowbox frame. — Nicole Eisenman, *I.D.F. In a Cage, In a Swamp*, 2024, Mixed media on paper, 8 1/2 x 11 in, donated by the artist to benefit the Drawing Center

As Eisenman explained to Shiv Kotecha after STY closed, “My project has always really been about looking at the world and all the abhorrent politics going on in it, seeing how that experience lands emotionally, and then assigning a kind of symbolic language to those feelings. Once you find the symbolic language for the feeling that this shitstorm is producing in you, you’ve got your painting.”

Or, perhaps, your drawing. The small work Eisenman donated to the Drawing Center benefit auction seems like it emerged from the eye of the shitstorm she experienced. IDF in a Cage, in a Swamp (2024) is a printout of a news photo of an IDF tank in Northern Gaza, overpainted up to its turret with a dark blue swamp, and overdrawn in pen with a perspectival cage. The work and the other works at auction, “The World is the Work,” just went on view today.

In addition to the 52 Walker show earlier this year, which is part of the Zwirner organization, Eisenman just opened a show at Sadie Coles in London. Though many artists’ galleries share credit for donating their works to the Drawing Center auction, Eisenman’s is solely “courtesy of the artist.”

“The World is the Work,” 2026 Benefit Auction, ends 14 Oct 2026 [drawingcenter.org]
Nicole Eisenman, 23 Sept — 21 Nov 2026 [sadiecoles]
Nicole Eisenman, STY, Oct 30, 2025 — Jan 10, 2026, comes with an intense related readings list [52walker]

In The Mirror

The Mirror of Civilization:

Nina Paley, All Creative Work is Derivative, 2010, music by Todd Michaelsen, via youtube

The Mirror of Judgment:

a buddha statue stands with its hand raised against a mirror finish stainless steel panel in a london gallery — Michelangelo Pistoletto, The Mirror of Judgment — Buddhism, 2011, installed at the Serpentine, image via Guardian

The Mirror of Poor Judgment:

an animatronic robot attached by a rod at the waist to the mirrored wall it faces is dressed as a blonde exotic dancer in a tight short skirt white platform kneehigh boots, and a goblin mask, or maybe it's the real face. the robot's white skin, legs, arms, and other bits are worn and scratched, signs of applied wear. the robot is in the middle of a dance pose, knees slightly bent, arms gesturing out. eli broad bought this before he died and probably felt pretty special for it — Jordan Wolfson, (Female Figure), 2014, installation shot from The Broad

Who’s Doing Whose Act?

a richard prince joke stenciled in black letters on white in the style of christopher wool, because it's a collab with christopher wool, that reads, i went to see a psychiatrist he said tell me everything i did and now he's doing my act — Christopher Wool & Richard Prince, My Act, 1987-88, primer and alkyd on paper, 44 1/2 x 34 1/2 in., selling at Sotheby’s Paris

I was gonna say this is buy one get one free, but with this estimate for a work on paper, it definitely feels like you’re paying for both a Richard Prince AND a Christopher Wool. Kinda cool, though, ngl.

Lot 208, 23 Oct 2026, Christopher Wool & Richard Prince, My Act, est. €1.8-2.5m [sothebys]
Related, and half the price: an early Richard Prince-only Joke Painting that’d make Donelle Woolford blush

La Tête-Crâne d’Alberto Giacometti

There is no skull in Dürer’s Melancholia, although one might have been expected. But this great thing, blind as a stone, closed as a tomb, this geometrical block which seems to have allen into the engraving like a meteor, as a speculation of the most abstract intellect into the midst of what should have been a place of life and confidence, is surely the nearest thing to a death’s head, to a skull. And it induced Alberto to perceive in his own geometrical form, first conceived, who knows, as an innocent abstraction, this head which may be either living or dead, this token of presence but assailed by nothingness, which was increasingly to obsess his mind, exploring like a modern Hamlet, the eternal mystery.

On the same page of Minotaure in 1934, like another apparition on the same dark night pierced by a single moonbeam, there was, moreover, a sculpture that is now, explicitly a skull like poor Yorick’s: the Man’s Head—gender specified, although there is nothing but sexless bone and empty sockets—to be known later as Cubist or Cubical Head.

Obviously, quoting Yves Bonnefoy is never something to be undertaken lightly, but the occasion absolutely demands it.

a black and white illustration in a monograph of alberto giacometti shows a page from a 1934 magazine, minotaure, with black and white images by man ray of two giacometti sculptures: on top a smaller image of a cubistic skull, titled here man's skull; and below a larger picture of a 13-sided polyhedron, like an attenuated or squashed cube, on a small rolling pedestal with curved legs, titled here nocturnal pavilion, but later titled cube. the fullpage image on the facing page of a bronze version of cube is cropped out, but left in enough to give the sense of book. — Giacometti’s *Man’s Head (Cubist Head)* and *Nocturnal Pavilion (The Cube)* in Minotaure no. 5, 12 May 1934, as reproduced in Yves Bonnefoy’s *Giacometti* (Flammarion, 1991)

This is not about The Cube, which Georges Didi-Huberman addressed, and which has been addressed here before. It is not about The Cube, except it is. Because in the pangs of realizing Cube, and grappling with abstraction, Giacometti, Bonnefoy writes, also saw Cube as a head, a skull. Or saw that there was a skull inside it, waiting to be excised. The other apparition caught in Minotaure‘s moonbeam.

a geometric, faceted and cubistic skull made of plaster with rounded shallow indentations for eye sockets on the flat planes of this polyhedron, sits in a blank display environment. a sculpture by alberto giacometti at sotheby's paris — Alberto Giacometti, Tête-crâne (AGD 4814), 1934, plaster with insular coating for molding, 7 1/4 x 8 x 9 1/4 in., slightly bigger than all the rest, I think, selling at *Sotheby’s Paris*

.A Head Skull, or Tête-crâne, is coming up for sale in Paris during Art Basel. has been in the family of a friend of Giacometti’s since 1935. It was exhibited once—”probably”—in 1946, though let’s be real, auction house research is not what it used to be. Every publication or illustration of Tête-crâne listed is of “another version.” Which, how many are there? The Fondation Giacometti has one, and lists this one and two more, all in plaster. They do not seem to mention the plaster at The Met. Or the one the Kravises have promised to MoMA. Or the terra cotta at the Pompidou. Or the marble at the Nasher. Or the bronze in Bonnefoy, which may be the one promised to LACMA? But you get the idea:

The museums have enough; this one belongs in my house.

Lot 204, 23 Oct 2026, Alberto Giacometti, Tête Crâne, est, EUR 2-4m [sothebys]
Previously, related: le Cube d’Alberto Giacometti

Another Richter Glass

a low-res photo of a 4x5 camera reflected in a gerhard richter pane of glass artwork, with an unidentified painting on the studio wall behind it. the glass work has two dark lines of steel on its vertical edges, part of the framing structure that differed slightly among works in this 2002 series. — Gerhard Richter, Pane of Glass/Glasscheibe, aka Antelio Glas GR 876-5, 2002, glass and steel 95 x 100 cm, selling soon at Sotheby’s

Like a wind rattling the windows in their aging frames, a decent auction result can shake loose other Gerhard Richter Pane of Glass from their storage spaces.

With its dark steel banded frame, GR 876-5 seems completely different from the other [also retitled] Antelio Glas works, which only have tiny steel prongs, too small to sign and label. And all apparently too precarious to install and photograph anew. Truly, with the auction houses’ help, we’re gonna bring zombie gerhard-richter.com back online one scavenged jpg at a time.

four three meter tall by one meter wide panels of glass painted dark grey on the back are arranged next to each other on a white gallery wall to create a four-meter wide gerhard richter mirror painting. selling at sotheby's london in october 2026 — Gerhard Richter, Grauer Spiegel, GR 766, 1992/2025, pigment on glass, 300 x 400 cm overall, selling at Sotheby’s

Meanwhile this whole four-panel mirror work from 1992 was refabricated last year under the artist’s direction, and now has a double-date. See it during Frieze Week, and lmk if those panels are each angled slightly like a set of shutters left slightly ajar.

Lot 371, 16 Oct 2026, Gerhard Richter, Antelio Glas GR 876-5, est. GBP 200-300,000 [update, no bids at GBP 160,000] [sothebys]
Lot 31, 15 Oct 2026, Gerhard Richter, Grauer Spiegel, 1992/2025, est. GBP 700-1,000,000 [update: didn’t sell]
Previously: Art of Glass
also previously: Behind Grey (behind glass)

Andy Warhol: Portrait Of The 70s

Andy Warhol, Portraits of the 70s, signed six times, from the estate of Mrs. Beverly Chalfen Grossman, late of Minneapolis, selling at Freeman’s in Chicago

It hit me: David Whitney’s Andy Warhol’s Portraits of the 70s is a foundational text for a clearer, bleaker postwar art history. Bleaker than the one Robert Rosenblum thought he was writing when he compared the “upper-income virtuosity” of rainbow sherbet brushstrokes’ to the “lower-income austerity” of Brillo boxes and Most Wanted Men:

With Warhol’s gallery of contemporary faces, the decade of the 1970s high society is instantly captured. In this glittering realm, light and shadow are bleached out by the high wattage of spotlights; colors seem selected from the science-fiction rainbow invented by the likes of Baskin-Robbins, and brushstrokes offer an extravagant, upper-income virtuosity which appears to be quoting, for conspicuous consumption, a bravura tradition that extends from Hals through de Kooning. By comparison, the look of Warhol’s 1960s paintings was often of lower-income austerity and dreariness, of Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans, of the faces of criminals, innocent victims, or remote superstars who could barely sparkle through the smeared newsprint. On more than one level, Warhol has wrapped up two decades for our social time capsule.

But that wasn’t the moment. It was 84 lots into the auction of her Chanel sweatshirts and It Bags where Mrs. Beverly Chalfen Grossman’s personalized copy of the Whitney catalogue appears. Warhol signed it on five different pages and the cover. I wondered why.

On Three Deliberate Greys For Jasper Johns

brice marden's 1970 triptych is three monochrome grey panels of equal size hanging in a white wall gallery, all right next to each other. the left panel is a deep anthracite, the right is medium like a battleship, and the center is the lightest, but still kind of putty colored. these references are not marden's, of course; his references were deliberate greys related to jasper johns. — Brice Marden, Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns, 1970, oil and beeswax on canvas, 183.2 x 382.8 cm overall, purchased in 1971 by the National Gallery of Canada

Shoutout to Abigail Kabaker for guiding Dexter Dalwood’s LRB review of the Jasper Johns show in Bilbao into my timeline. Dalwood’s kicker is an anecdote that now floats free of attribution:

“In 1970, the minimalist painter Brice Marden painted a monumental canvas, Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns, and called Johns to ask him if it was OK to use that title. Johns replied: ‘Sure, as long as the greys are deliberate.’”

Roberta Smith included it in her posthumous assessment of Marden’s legacy for the Times on August 14, 2023. But it originates from Smith’s sometimes colleague at the Times, Deborah Solomon, who, on August 10th, the day after Marden’s death, shared the story on a cursed social media site. Rather than link to it, I have copied it here:

Brice Marden once told me that when he painted his monumental canvas, “Three Deliberate Grays for Jasper Johns,” he phoned Johns to ask him if it was okay if he used that title. Johns replied, “Sure, as long as the grays are deliberate.”
R.I.P. Brice.

Solomon is working on a biography of Johns, so I expect she has many more such stories saved, in classic Times writer’s fashion, for the book.

a 1974 black and white photo from moma of two artworks by brice marden installed in a white walled gallery: on the left of a doorway is a triptych which we happen to know is three shades of grey. on the right is a diptych which, who knows, because the picture is black and white, but honestly, tonally, it looks like a light & dark pair from the triptych. — Installation view of Brice Marden’s Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns [L] in Eight Contemporary Artists at MoMA, 1974, 📷: MoMA/Kate Keller

What strikes me is that when Marden was included as one of Eight Contemporary Artists at The Museum of Modern Art in 1974, Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns was exhibited upside down. Or backwards, whichever is more applicable with a Marden. Or maybe you can install it either way, as long as it’s deliberate.

[Only a couple of days later update] In response to my question to the NGC about the hanging order for this Marden triptych, Dr. Christopher Etheridge, Associate Curator/Conservateur associé explains: the three panels were originally bolted together when the NGC acquired the work in 1971, but were later taken apart to alleviate structural issues. Also, an inscription on the verso of the darkest panel supports the dark-light-medium order, and the NGC has always shown it that way.

two brice marden triptych paintings in various shades of grey monochrome hang on two adjoining white gallery walls at moma in 2006. panels of the larger work on the right are in the original order, dark-light-medium that the work came bolted together in when the national gallery of canada bought it in 1971. — Brice Marden’s Three Deliberate Greys for Jasper Johns installed OG style in MoMA’s 2006-07 retrospective, 📷: Jonathan Muzikar for MoMA

Whether Marden knew of approved of MoMA’s 1974 installation of the now-freewheeling canvases is not known, but when MoMA borrowed the work again for Marden’s 2006 retrospective—which the artist was closely involved in—it was hung in the original NGC order. I am deeply grateful to our neighbors to the north for their ready and thoughtful engagement, and for their careful stewardship of our shared culture.