unnamed.jpg, 930x1212px jpg displayed at 786x1024px, press release for David Hammons’ show at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 18 May – 11 August 2019, via email
David Hammons is having a show. And the gallery, Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, sent out a press release. I marveled at it this morning, but it wasn’t until Powhida tweeted [d’oh, deleted!] about framing it that I realized it needed realizing.
The press release is a jpg titled, unnamed.jpg. It is 1212 x 930 pixels and 72px/inch resolution. In order to print it at that size, I converted it to a pdf 12.92 x 16.83 inches. I haven’t figured out quite how to print that yet, but it has only been a few minutes, so maybe chill or take care of it yourself? I’ll take a crack at it tomorrow.
Cy Twombly, Alessandro Twombly [via di Monserrato, Roma], 1965, 43.2 x 28 cm, ed. 5, image via artblart
In his biography Chalk, Joshua Rivkin includes a Cy Twombly story he heard in Lexington, Virginia, where the artist spent much of his later years:
One night the artist came over for dinner and after they sat together on the front porch of the house as lightning bugs flashed under a canopy of sycamores. The host’s small child, three or four years old, came out to the porch to say goodnight to all. The father gathered his son in his arms and took him upstairs, his bedroom just above the porch, and tucked him into bed. When he returned to his drink and their conversation, Twombly pointed up to the boy’s bedroom and said, of his own son, of Alessandro, “I don’t know where he slept.”
This anecdote came to mind when I saw this haunting 1965 photo of a young Alessandro, because at least Twombly knew where the kid sat.
Cy Twombly, Alessandro Twombly [via di Monserrato, Roma], 1965, 28.9 x 19.2 cm, ed. 6, photographed at the Centre Pompidou by Florence Briat Soulié
The photo, published at a date I can’t determine, in an apparent edition of five, was included in the Pompidou’s Twombly retrospective in 2016. Another, smaller version of the scene, which crops out the dark hallway entirely, was also included. It was apparently an edition of six. Florence Briat Soulié photographed it for her lyrical review of the exhibition. Alessandro has extricated his arm from the chairback, and has one leg up on the seat, but he maintains his gaze into the unlit hallway of the palazzo, where his father was snapping away.
Horst’s 1965 photo of Cy Twombly & Tatianna Franchetti’s bust of Nero and Gerhard Richter, Frau Marlow (1964)
The photos, and the setting, and the timing, immediately call to mind Horst P. Horst’s iconic Vogue photoshoot of la Famiglia Franchetti-Twombly. Except nothing so plain as that Thonet chair is to be found in Horst’s images. And neither is that fluted column. That bust of Nero, and the simple diamond patterned floor do appear, though, along with Twombly’s Richter leaning against a steel shelf.
Those locks, those umbrellas, it looks like the ingresso. But that floor and that doorway don’t match, and there’s no steps. And that bust sure moves around. And it looks slightly less like Trump in the light.
Horst’s 1965 photo of what appears to be Cy Twombly’s foyer, via mondo-blogo
I sat on these photos and this post for a couple of months, ngl, wondering if I wanted to deal with the possible blowback that might arise from the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio’s assertion of copyright over these and all of Twombly’s photos. Part of me wanted to just make a point by linking to them only on pinterest.
Frederick Ediwn Church, Drawing, Katahdin Lake, Maine, 12×20 in. or so, before 1878, collection: Cooper Hewitt Museum
Come for the sketch Frederick Edwin Church made of Mount Katahdin, but stay for the sketch Frederick Edwin Church made of Katahdin Lake.
When he tweeted it today, Tyler Green said that was one blue brushstroke, and the beach was one white one. Staring at the zoomed in jpg, I am not sure. The white could be one deftly twisted stroke, but the blue looks like it it probably a few. In any case, it is just beautiful, and not the kind of thing you [I] expect from Church.
Frederick Edwin Church, cut-out stencil of Mount Katahdin, 3×17 1/2 in. or so, c 1856-60, collection: Cooper Hewitt Museum
Inspired by Thoreau, Church made several trips to Katahdin between the 1850s and 1880. This sketch was likely painted before 1878, but after 1856-60, which is when Church made a stencil of Katahdin and the surrounding landscape as seen from across the lake. Because the mountain was outlined with the stencil.
The Cooper-Hewitt acquired over 500 paintings and 1500 drawings from Church’s son in 1917, including at least two made from the stencil, plus the stencil. Which is fantastic, but not as great as that lake or that beach.
I was looking for information on an early Elmgreen & Dragset piece where they laid pristine, white carpet at the entrance to their gallery. But the only Google result was for an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist for their 1998 “Powerless Structures” catalogue. It had been hosted on Nicolai Wallner’s website, but seems to have been taken down after 2016, when they stopped working with him. So I have reproduced it here, for Google’s sake.
The installation I had in mind was for Nuit Blanche 1998, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris. I came for the quick debunking of J freaking R acting all, tant pis, his paper artwork unfurled across the entrance to the Louvre got trampled on, and I stayed for Michael’s story of meeting Felix Gonzalez-Torres and discussing the infiltrative power of Minimalism.
Anyway, it’s wild how not online that 1998 catalogue is. I may have to do a photocopy bootleg version a la Wade Guyton’s Avalanche.
Before Tico Mugrabi, Emmanuel Perrotin, Per Skarstedt, and Francesco Bonami, there was Nigo. Nigo tagged KAWS. Nigo collabo’d with KAWS. Nigo collected KAWS. Nigo commissioned KAWS. And now Nigo has sold KAWS. Some of them. At a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong named after himself.
These texts by Virgil Abloh and W. David Marx are from the print catalogue for the auction, NIGOLDENEYE®. [Nigo also started putting a registered trademark sign after his name.]
The texts seem relevant only because the main KAWS painting sold for $14.7 million, and because they articulate with unabashed uncriticality the ultimate ambition of art as a tool of capital.
