![gwyneth's montecityo living room is pale gold and pink and grey in its vibe. a drapey lighting fiture of multiple light elements across the ceiling are connected with catenary swags of black cable. it echoes slightly the fake ruth asawa [turns out it's fake, lol, that's one result of this post] hanging wire sculpture in front of a double glass door, one of two on either side of the fireplace, the garden beyond that. the main architectural feature of the room is not the curvaceous mod wood or italian chairs, or the large squared off grey sectional sofa, which just sticks in from the right. it is the bonkers scale black and white marble bar, freestanding, with a matching marble console and thick slab wall behind it, which feels like it was extracted from some other setting. the lightnig makes it look pink. over the flat black fireplace is a john baldessari diptych: a square gold monochrome on the left, and a white square painting with the words avant garde in the center, on the right. it is legible only in the photo still from architectural digest, and blurred in the video with goop herself. a licensing thing. an ridiculous.](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/baldessari-paltrow-archdig-1024x688.jpeg)
Alexandra Lange brought Gwyneth Paltrow’s troublesome installation of her Ruth Asawa sculpture in front of her patio door to Twitter’s attention this morning. And I confess, seeing the Architectural Digest photos, that included Lindsey Adelman’s drapey light installation, and a Ralph Pucci hammock also hanging from the ceiling of Paltrow’s new Montecito living room, I, too, was troubled. For a minute.
But after watching the video tour, and hearing the care and attention to detail, feel, design, and material that Paltrow and her people put into this project, I became fine with it. How else *should* an Asawa sculpture live, but in an actress-turned-influencer’s slightly louche, ultra-deluxe living room full of stuff hanging from the ceiling? Not everything should be a white cube. As long as the door, or the dog, or the kid, doesn’t hit the fragile sculpture, go wild, Gwyneth. [LATER THAT DAY UPDATE: NOT an Asawa! Problem solved! Or, rather, replaced with new problem!]

That’s not important now. Not when the Baldessari diptych over the fireplace is blurred out in the video. I’m guessing A/D did not want to splurge for the video license from ARS? I also love that all they felt they needed to blur out is the text on one half of the work; the monochrome painting is undefaced.

Speaking of face, there’s a new one in town. Untitled (Prima Facie), 2022, is a lenticular print mounted on aluminum and enamel on canvas diptych where the avant garde grows increasingly sharper with a move to the right.
It is inspired by Baldessari’s Prima Facie (Fifth State): Avant Garde, a 2007 diptych which is itself based on a spread found in Baldessari’s 2006 artist book, Prima Facie: Marilyn’s Dress: 2006/2007 – a poem in four parts, which was available in both book and deluxe book with a print editions. Earlier states of the Prima Facie series had photographs of actors and actresses where the monochrome is here, with words chosen to be the instant, descriptive equivalent–and equal in visual impact-to the image. Baldessari showed works from the Prima Facie (Fifth State) at Sprüth Magers in London in mid-2006, where Paltrow might have seen them, but this 2007 work came from Marian Goodman. These works are depicted in David Platzker et al’s Baldessari Catalogue Raisonée, of course, and the Museum Dhondt-Daehnans in Belgium put out a comprehensive-at-the-time catalogue of Prima Facie works for a show in 2005-06. Untitled (Prima Facie) is a greg.org exclusive.