Rockefeller Blur, 2018

a 2018 real estate listing photo of the 2nd floor living room of david and peggy rockefellers' extremely wide east 65th st townhouse shows wood paneled walls, a giant persian carpet, several seating areas with antique chairs and upholstered sofas, a lot of table lamps, tall casement windows, a built in bookcase in one corner, a thin chandelier in the center of the unadorned ceiling, which is nonetheless surrounded by a thick af carved wood crown moulding, but the point here is, the painting over the fireplace at the far end of the room is blurred out with a terra cotta square, and the painting between the windows on the north wall, over a yellow sofa, is blurred out, too. both these pictures were for sale at the same time as the house though, so wtf? the first is a bonnard, the second a corot.
2018 real estate listing photo of the Rockefellers’ E 65th St living room with a Bonnard [L] and a Corot [R] obscured

In 2018, while I was still in my late blur and middle monochrome and real estate eras, I conceived a project that would realize all the blurred artworks in the real estate listing for Peggy and David Rockefeller’s extrawide townhouse on East 65th Street. I’d seen digitally blurred art from MoMA before. I’d seen significant art obscured in real estate listings before. But I had not seen the same art that had been photographed in situ before, being blurred in a real estate listing, at the same moment it was being promoted and sold in the biggest private collection sale in Christie’s history.

a pic of the rockefeller's 65th st living room with cezanne's boy in a red vest, a 1955 gift to moma, with some strings, hanging between two red curtained tall windows and over a yellow sofa. table lamps on various chippendale pie crust tables give the whole wood palneled room a golden glow. there is an ancient figure of a seated pipe player of some kind in the corner, i didn't look it up. this is already going on too long
Cezanne’s Boy in a Red Waistcoat, a 1955 gift to MoMA, but not yet; the Rockefellers kept an interest in the work until their deaths, and it came home with them from time to time. via Christie’s, I think

So I went through the listing, the auction, and other documentation of the Rockefellers’ house to identify everything, so that each work would be the correct dimension and appearance. No slapdash conceptualism here; authenticity rules. So the Bonnard Interieur over the fireplace and a Corot to occupy the spot between the windows when the Cezanne is at the Modern. [The Rockefellers retained a life interest in the works they donated to museums, so they could keep them around.]

the rockefellers entry hallway and foyer where the curved staircase is set in an arched niche, but the parquet floor has some carpet on it, and the furniture is american antique because the house is colonial revival, like the rockefellers themselves i guess, but this is where the manet vase of lilacs was hanging, on the right, though it's been replaced here by a redon which is blurred out in this real estate listing, both were clearly presented at christies
2018 real estate listing photo of the Rockefellers’ foyer with ten blurred out artworks including a Picasso by the stairs and a Redon on the right.

Though I mapped out the project, 30 works, I was undecided on the best way to realize the blurred works. Transmuting such digital-first source material into another medium has been a challenge since the first blurred and pixellated and pano-torqued images appeared on Google Maps and Streetview. But the Facsimile Object-style dye sublimated prints on aluminum seem promising. I just found my 2018 spreadsheet this morning, though, so it’ll take me a minute to reorient myself to this project.

Meanwhile, I have posted some pics of the pointless flipper renovation of the house that the Rockefellers lived in for 69 years on bluesky.

Previously, related: Les Blurmoiselles d’Avignon (2011); Monochrome House (2016); Untitled (A Painting For Two Rooms By Cactus Cantina) & Untitled (Macomb Wall Painting) (both 2017); Untitled (Blurred Frida) (2020)

Unrealized Rockefeller Diptych (1650-2018); Untitled (Love, Henry) (2018)