Last November writer and curator Hilton Als delivered two lectures at the Menil Collection about his research into its founder Dominique de Menil. They’re predictably unexpected, wonderful, and important.
Month: November 2022
Why Not? Make An Eames Saarinen Womb Chair Cake Chair?
As a cake, it’s a bit of a mess, tbqh. But as a concept, it’s flawless.
This 1949 photo by Charles Eames of a Saarinen Womb Chair cake came from Lillian Saarinen’s estate. Did you know she was Edie Sedgwick’s cousin? Lillian’s mom was a Sedgwick. Though Lillian was almost 30 years older, so maybe they were second cousins or something. Edie was first cousins with Kyra Sedgwick’s father, in case you want to six degrees of Kevin Bacon the maker of this chair cake.
Which, do we assume Ray made the cake? It looks like a sheet cake has been draped over a Womb Chair frame. Judging from the size of the candles, the doilies, and the icing blobs, it looks like it’d fit on a cookie sheet. The frame looks legit, and out of wrought iron. Did Knoll have little centerpiece-sized Womb Chair samples lying around, or did the Eameses whip up a frame for the cake?
Either way, the point is, now I want a Womb Chair embroidered with these designs, with thick, ropy white stitches on that classic, rough, jute-like wool. You got this, etsy? Or am I gonna have to do it myself?
17 Nov 2022 Lot 106: Charles Eames photograph of Womb Chair Cake for Lillian Saarinen [lamodern]
Joan Didion Mail Art
If she’d pinned it to the wall, or stuck it on the fridge, it would have been lost. The catalogue would have ended up in a stack, in another lot.
Fortunately, Joan Didion framed her invitation to the October 2018 opening of “Disappearing Acts,” Bruce Nauman’s retrospective at MoMA and MoMA PS1. Framing it made it worth something, or at least worth saving.
The auction house disposing of Didion’s estate describes this “offset reproduction” as a “print cut from a paper exhibition invitation.” Which means it has, in fact, been examined out of frame. I will guess she cut the flap off.
The lot includes the catalogue for the show, which first opened at the Schaulager in Basel, and was organized by Kathy Halbreich with Heidi Naef & Isabel Friedli, and with Magnus Schaefer and Taylor Walsh. [I did not want to reproduce the entire credit block any more than I wanted to only namecheck Halbreich, though of all the curators’ guest lists, I imagined that’s whose included Didion.]
The lot also includes a bookplate, which, if you’re the MF who pays more than attention on November 16th, you will be able to affix inside the catalogue, as you construct an authentic assemblage After Joan Didion, as depicted above. Buying makes it worth saving.
[UPDATE: $41,600.]
Lot 106: After Bruce Nauman, &c., &c., est. $200-300 [stairgalleries.com]
WilliWear Showroom by SITE, 1982-87
SITE founder James Wines spoke at Harvard GSD last night for the first–but hopefully not last–time in his 90 years. [It was great, and available online. s/o Alexandra Lange]
Though SITE is most frequently brought up in an architectural context for their BEST Products stores, a project that jumped out at me from Wines’ talk was the 38th Street showroom he and SITE partner Alison Sky created for WilliWear, the groundbreaking ’80s street fashion label of designer Willi Smith. SITE and Smith both had a love for found materials, salvage, junk, and the fabric of the city. Wines talked about how Smith took him on inspo trips to seedy gay clubs on the West Side, and then they’d jack construction material, hardware, plumbing, fencing, bricks, you name it, which ended up artfully installed in the showroom.
SITE’s simple genius was to #monochrome it all out, painting everything a highly aesthetic, and flattering backdrop grey. A runway rulebreaker, Smith used the showroom for fashion shows, too, which, Wines giddily announced, included much nudity.
SITE has used the monochrome strategy in other contexts, to great effect; Wines mentioned how it helps make the public notice each other, and to look good to each other. He didn’t mention Warhol, though, or the Silver Factory, which had a similar effect almost twenty years earlier.
And he didn’t mention if a young Cady Noland worked as an intern at WilliWear, or as a fashion reporter cutting her chops covering these performance art-like shows. But this urban hardwarescape is definitely putting off a Nolandian vibe, which is something I’d not considered before.
Wise also didn’t mention SITE’s design for the Willi Smith retrospective at the Cooper Hewitt. Which, the much-anticipated show opened, haplessly, at the beginning of March 2020 and existed–I can’t say it was open or closed–until the end of 2021. I can’t find any photos; maybe no one saw it in person?
He did mention Rauschenberg as an American Arte Poverist and an inspiration, which Hilton Als had just mentioned, too, in his review of the JAM show at MoMA: “if there is a Black aesthetic it’s about making do, and using what little you have to express who you are.” JAM was Smith’s era, but it’s not clear if it was Smith’s jam; there don’t seem to be any mentions of JAM or Linda Goode Bryant in the Willi Smith Community Archive (yet).
I did not see the Willi Smith desk turn up in Miami last year. Wines recreated the pile of scavenged bricks and glasstop desk from Smith’s office for Friedman Benda. It is/was available in an edition of 10, though I think he’d respect a bootleg. If you want to head out to a construction site tonight, I’ll bring the car around.
Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: James Wines [harvard.edu]
SITE site [sitenewyork]
Willi Smith: Street Couture [cooperhewitt.org]
No Title, Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Red Canoe 1987 Paris 1985 Harry the Dog 1983 Blue Lake 1987 Interferon 1989 Ross 1984
We’ve been here before. As a diptych stack by the artist once endlessly put it, “Somewhere better than this place/ Nowhere better than this place”.
Doyle is offering a work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres that threads every conceptual needle. It is an edition. From an endlessly replenished stack. It’s in the catalogue raisonée, but not as a work.
Continue reading “No Title, Felix Gonzalez-Torres”