June 2022 – greg.org

Ketchup, The American Sauce

Paul McCarthy, *Ketchup Sandwich*, 1970, glass, ketchup, taken in 2010 at the Moderna Museet by Tomislav Medak, image via flickr

Ketchup messes and tantrums always reminded me of Paul McCarthy.

Here is a photo of a 2010 realization of Paul McCarthy’s 1970 sculpture, Ketchup Sandwich, acquired by the Moderna Museet in 2006. According to the accompanying sketches, also acquired, the 30 x 30 x 30 inch cube is comprised of 100 to 120 layers of alternating plate glass and ketchup, plus the empty glass bottles.

If I needed a DC or presidential reference, I’d come back with American Decay, a sculptural installation pre-murder Carl Andre created to protest the re-election of Richard Nixon, which was installed in Max Protech’s DC gallery during the inauguration. American Decay was a maxed out version of Nixon’s favorite salad: a 500 pound, 12 x 18 foot field of cottage cheese, topped with 10 gallons of ketchup, spread out on tar paper so Protech didn’t lose his deposit.

After today tho, I guess that’s all been thrown out the window. So to speak.

Sam Gilliam, Swagger (1933-2022)

Sam Gilliam, *Seahorses*, 1975, installation view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, photo: Johansen Krause via Pace & Kordansky Galleries

I was very sad to learn of the passing of DC legend Sam Gilliam Saturday. My condolences go to Annie and the rest of his family and friends. When he didn’t make the opening of his [COVID-delayed] show at the Hirshhorn last month, I was concerned for a minute, but Gilliam also had the temperament and tenacity that made you feel like he’d go on forever, and dare you to think otherwise.

Beyond the fascination of experiencing his work, I had the great thrill and honor to get to know Gilliam a bit, and to do a deep research dive into his career and practice a few years ago for a magazine article. As I said at the time, “my takeaway is utter respect for Gilliam’s work and his practice, which evinces the kind of fierce independence required to sustain six-plus decades of experimentation, only some of which happened in the spotlight of the mainstream art world.”

Especially since 2012, the mainstream art world and its institutions have finally made it possible to see more of Gilliam’s work, and to see significant examples of it. His dedication to abstraction and experimentation, and his simultaneous fluency with painting and sculpture, are sure to continue growing in significance, even as we now face a difficult world made even harder by his absence.

Remembering Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) [pacegallery.com]
Previously: On Sam Gilliam for Art in America

Wotruba Church Model at TEFAF

Bronze model of Carmelite church by Fritz Wotruba, as photographed at TEFAF 2022 by garyschwartzarthistorian.nl

From the report of noted Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz’s first TEFAF since 2020 comes this extraordinary surprise:

A bronze model, dated 1967, by Viennese sculptor/architect Fritz Wotruba for a church, originally commissioned by Dr. Madelina Ottilinger for an order of Carmelite nuns. The nuns rejected the design, and Ottilinger and Fritz G. Mayr persevered to have the church built elsewhere in Vienna. It was completed in 1976, after Wotruba’s death.

Remarkably, the chapel seems to follow the bronze model, only in concrete slabs. It’s like Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Building, but without the restraint. Perfect for being exorcising the site of an old Nazi barracks.

If I can figure out who brought this to TEFAF, I’ll add it here. [Update: Thanks to Dr. Schwartz, who emailed to report it is at Sascha Mehringer, of Munich. TEFAF runs through June 30th.]

406 TEFAF Days [garyschwartzarthistorian.nl]

And We’re Done: An Archive of Livetweets of Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present

On May 31, 2010, I livetweeted the end of Marina Abramovic’s MoMA performance, The Artist Is Present, as experienced online via Marinacam. A few other folks were tweeting in person, including artists Man Bartlett (@manbartlett), Amy White (@parallelarts), and @museumnerd.

Over the years, this collection of tweets has been one of a few small things that kept me from deleting all my old tweets. I’m documenting them here to remove that obstacle. For the moment, ~~they’re still visible on Twitter here.~~

The tweets are interspersed with screenshots from the Marina Abramovic Webcam tumblr.

In addition to backing these up from twitter, this post was prompted by Abramovic’s announcement that she is releasing an NFT series, 25 FPS, comprised of frames of video of her sitting on a horse holding a white flag, part of her 2001 video work, The Hero. Her talk at Art Basel was literally titled The NFT is Present, and I could not be more nonplussed if she said she was minting NFTs of the 1545 headshots Marco Anelli took of her sitters, including my own damn face.

Anyway, this livetweet really was the beginning of the end for me with Abramovic. In an instant, the Artist’s presence was replaced by the Celebrity, as she gladhanded for the camera crews she’d brought for herself. The gala that followed, where she appeared in a custom Givenchy jacket made from 127 endangered pythons, and fed guests chocolate casts of her own lips, felt for a moment like an absolute betrayal, but really, it was all perfectly on point. And so is a late and desperate scramble for relevance by selling boring af selfies of someone who brags about not knowing how to write an email. Anyway, enjoy!

So Abbas Kiarostami Stole 10??

An extraordinary disclosure coming in the media backdoor: Abbas Kiarostami, the late giant of Iranian filmmaking, reportedly stole the film Ten (10), which was nominated for the 2002 Palme d’Or at Cannes, from the young, female filmmaker who was its taxi-driving protagonist, Mania Akbari.

In a screenshots of a newsletter tweeted by Bulgarian film writer Yoana Pavlova (@roamingwords), Akbari writes that she conceived and shot the dashcam footage–which, famously, is almost all seemingly unscripted conversations between a taxi driver (Akbari) and her passengers.

Akbari showed this footage to Kiarostami, who asked to use it as inspiration for a script, but instead he edited it into the film known as 10. Then, Akbari writes, in a Q&A at Cannes, in her presence, he claimed full credit for the film, and that he directed Akbari through a hidden earpiece. Akbari says this is all entirely false, and that she has been dealing with the repercussions ever since.

Amina Maher, Akbari’s filmmaker daughter (who appeared in 10 as her young son) has herself addressed the sense of exploitation and violation she felt as a child who did not know she was being recorded (though presumably at the time, her mother, who was doing the recording, did. Maher’s website says she separated from her family at 15).

Maher and Akbari both assert that there was never any consent or contract between them, other family members who appear in the film, and Kiarostami, and have served notice to its producers and distributors to prevent its screening. It’s an extraordinary and shocking situation which Kiarostami’s people–he died in 2016–have yet to account for, afaik.

I’m now going to try to watch Kiarostami’s 2004 making of documentary, 10 on Ten, which also screened at Cannes. In that film, Kiarostami uses the same dashcam setup to deliver his digital filmmaking tips. It’s interesting that Manohla Dargis found it “tediously didactic” compared to Ten‘s original freshness. Maybe that’s because they were made by different people. [Turns out most of it is on YouTube.]

We Are Amused, Thomas Ruff

*Untitled (worktitle)*, 2021, double-sided 15×20 cm print accompanying an artist’s book, ed. 30, image via mo-artgallery

I really do not going around during jubilee season looking for roadtripping pictures of the Queen to post; they come to me.

As someone who has been collecting old press photos for many, many years, I was very disappointed to see Thomas Ruff’s show of press photos at Zwirner in 2016. His approach to these prints, much-handled survivors of a quick and dirty daily newspaper publishing process, was to overlay the back annotations on the marked up front, and to print them in a giant, slick, digital format. [You can take the photographer out of Dusseldorf…]

Thomas Ruff, Untitled (worktitle), 2021, verso,

The print that accompanies a recent artists book, Untitled (worktitle), about which I can find almost no information, is different. It’s small, perhaps even original size, and it’s printed on both sides. It’s almost–can I say it?–a facsimile.

But what first caught my eye was the slightly blurry image itself, which gave me the momentary sense of envy-tinged-excitement that Ruff had snagged a press photo of an early, obscure Gerhard Richter.

Only to find out the whole book is press photos of the Queen. Oh well. Carry on, I guess.

Thomas Ruff editions [mo-artgallery.com]

Regina, RGB

Wolfgang TIllmans, Regina, 2002, ed. 1/1+1AP, inkjet on paper, 137 x 206cm, sold for GBP68750 at Christie’s London during Frieze Week 2018

The last time the Queen of England rode around London in the Gold State Coach was for her 50th anniversary, and Wolfgang Tillmans was there.

Halberds out: *Study for Tillmans Regina*, 115 x 206 cm, 2022, sky news screencap, which, alas, does not include the giant

If he was there today to see the Queen’s subjects waving at a hologram of her riding in the GSC, it might look a little something like this. Protip: the way you can tell my Tillmans from Tillmans’ Tillmans is the aspect ratio.

*Study for SCREEN COVERAGE…*, 2022, it’s a diptych

And while mine will ship with a separate
SCREEN COVERAGE WILL CONTINUE
AFTER THE HORSES HAVE SAFELY PASSED BY
monochrome, I feel like Wolfgang would have been able to get both screens in one shot.

Previously: Yas, Regina