Sardine Bed, F’ing Couches, Judd Table

Not everything is absolutely terrible.

a wide installation shot of furniture designed by artists at leo castelli gallery in soho in sept 1972 is mostly open loft floor. in the back of the photo, some silvery minimalist objects sit on the floor. to the right, in front of the row of white painted columns, is a cube shaped chair made of intricately cut and assembled wood, by gus spear. above the open floor, a swing/chair by mark di suvero is suspended from the ceiling. its form resembles an opened paper clip or staple, made from thick pole, not wire. via aaa — installation view of Furniture Designed by Artists, with Marc di Suvero’s swing hanging in the center of Leo Castelli Gallery, Sept. 1972, photo: James Patrick via LCG Archives at AAA

For example, if I hadn’t gone to the Archives of American Art looking for information on Cy Twombly & Robert Rauschenberg’s two-artist show at Leo Castelli in 1974, I might not have found the September 1972 show at Castelli, Furniture Designed by Artists, which listed Twombly along with “Chamberlain, Judd, Lichtenstein, Morris, Stella [and] Warhol.”

TWOMBLY FURNITURE?? CLICK TO OPEN! Yeah so far, nothing, and the Warhol might be a Campbell’s Soup print on the wall. [Yeah, no, there is a typical Castelli invite for the show on ebay that lists six furniture artists: Chamberlain, Di Suvero, Judd, Lalanne, Rauschenberg, Charles Ross, and Gus Spear. Maybe everyone else was just art artists.]

a top down black and white photo of lalanne's sardine bed, made of foam and covered in silver-painted leather, as installed at leo castelli gallery in 1972. nine sardine-shaped cushions are lined up inside the foam "tin". in the upper right, an unidentified organic sculpture, perhaps a chair, sits on a white pedestal. on the upper left, a still coffee table by donald judd suddenly looks a lot like a tin of sardines. via aaa — installation view of Lalanne’s Sardine Bed, 1972, at Furniture Designed by Artists, Leo Castelli Gallery, Sept. 1972, photo: James Patrick via LCG Archives at AAA

But if I hadn’t clicked, I’d have definitely kept missing this Lalanne Sardine Bed. Which was a one-off, commissioned by the show’s organizer, Jane Holzer, of the Warhol Factory Jane Holzers, who at 31, had rebooted herself as an impresaria. Leo Castelli was apparently involved in her artist furniture startup Daedalus Concepts, which, except for the Times puff piece for this show, exists only in the provenance listings of of various John Chamberlain sofas.

a color photo of lalanne's 1972 sardine bed is a tray-shaped box of foam and wood finished in silver-painted leather filled with eight or nine elongated cushions, all in a row, that are painted silvery leather, and resemble sardines. one at the back is askew, sticking its head up a bit. via sothebys october 2023, where this thing sold for like $200,000+ I forget how much — Francois Lalanne, Sardine Bed, 1972, as sold at Sotheby’s in October 2023

I still can’t tell if anyone bought it for $4,000, but I’d never have known the Sardine Bed was put up for sale at Sotheby’s twice, once successfully, in October 2023. And that its silver-painted leather was subsequently being restored by bougie French shoemaker J.M. Weston, who posted a press release about it on their blog. [And that some Lalanne sardines have been sold separately, or with other silver-painted leather furniture.]

a terrible 3rd generation reproduction of a photo of an open loft interior in house beautiful magazine, october 1972, with the foreground mostyl empty except for an area rug. two chunky, cube-shaped foam sofas by john chamberlain face each other across a large low white square coffee table. a row of potted trees stands toward the image's back, in fron tof the large arched windows. a couple of columns painted white hold up the pressed tin ceiling, also painted white. or who knows, because it's a black and white photo, via aaa — a detail of an installation photo from a photocopied clipping from House Beautiful, Oct 1972, of John Chamberlain sofas across a Robert Rauschenberg Water Table, next to Rauschenber Tire Lamp, in the Daedalus Concepts show of artist furniture at Leo Castelli, 420 West Broadway, Sept. 1972, except this does not look like 420 via AAA

I would not have seen the Robert Rauschenberg Tire Lamp ($500) on the floor. Or the John Chamberlain foam sofa covered in quilt facing the Chamberlain foam sofa covered in kilim rugs ($1,500-4,000). I still don’t know what the Rauschenberg Water Table between the sofas, which is mentioned in the House Beautiful caption is about, but at least now I know it was there.

the invitation card for a show of john chamberlain's fucking couches, where fucking is spelled with f, five dashes, and a g, at lo giudice gallery in soho, in 1972. the card reproduces a three strips of photos from contact sheet of a small crowd of white people goofin jumpin lounging, and dogpiling on two or three of john chamberlain's couches, which are made from massive, carved up blocks of foam. one, maybe two of the couches is upholstered, but the other(s) are raw foam, which, these things have been coming up at auction, and who knows what happened on them? via the aaa — Voulez vous couches avec moi? Daedalus Concepts says to call Leo Castelli about the John Chamberlain F—–g Couches show at Lo Giudice Gallery around the corner. Also, those f— sofas are raw, which, no. thank. you. via AAA

I’m sorry, I missed that. Did you say the John Chamberlain F_____g Couches? Now the Times’ mention of six smaller sofas, raw or with a variety of upholstery options, makes more sense. Calling Leo to get into LoGiudice Gallery two blocks away, though, makes less.

And I would have missed that other silver rectangle in the installation photo, the one in the upper left corner. The Donald Judd coffee table with a sliding top covering the storage compartment, which the Times says are “stainless steel,” “box-like,” and produced by the artist himself for “$3,000 each”. 1972.

black and white 1972 photo by james patrick of donald judd's stainless steel rectangular table with partially open sliding lid, on the hardwood floor of leo castelli gallery — ceci n’est pas un Judd table for Daedalus Concepts Inc at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1972, by James Patrick via AAA

And if you’ve watched Amie Siegel’s 2016 Dia lecture on Judd’s furniture a hundred times, turning to it often for Siegel’s measured voice to bring fact-grounded order to a spiraling world, you’d recognize that coffee table as the Judd ur-furniture. And you’d recall that it was unique, and dated to the “late 1960s,” and that Judd said he’d destroyed it because it didn’t work as furniture, or as sculpture. And that his next attempt at furniture was his own bed at 101 Spring St in 1970, and after that it was the kids’ beds in 1978.

amie siegel, a petite white woman with straight dark hair brushed forward, sits at a table with two laptops and a mic on a stand, giving a lecture at dia art center in 2016. behind and above her is a projection on a white wall of donald judd's 1960s-1970s stainless steel coffee table, a 3x4 ft rectangle 22 inches high with a recessed top, made of two 2x3 ft pieces of equal width, so that one can slide under the other to gain access to storage. via youtube — Amie Siegel in 2016 with the big Judd coffee table auction reveal at like 23 minutes in. the dimensions here: 22 x 48 x 36 inches in stainless steel.

But also that the supposedly unique, supposedly failed, supposedly destroyed coffee table turned up years later at auction, as perhaps an edition of three, with a date of 1970-71.

But nowhere in there would you have heard about the coffee table(s) he made and showed and offered for sale via Jane Holzer’s furniture business at Leo Castelli Gallery. This all could have seemed fine at the time, of course. It could have seemed fine when it was just one table, and a bed in your empty loft for you, and a bed in your empty divorced dad house for your kids. And as you got into it, and people started to ask questions or make assumptions, you gained new experience, perspective, you rethought, adjusted. This is a good thing. We should celebrate it.

a polished brass donald judd sculpture in the form of a 4x3 foot rectangular box 22 inches high with a sunken top panel that leaves a ridge around the top edge, sits on a white oak floor in a white cube space. this 1968 untitled sculpture has often been on view at moma, and every time i've seen it except maybe once, it had a handprint on it. people cannot stop touching this coffee table shaped sculpture — Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968, brass, 22 x 48 x 36 in., a 1980 gift of nazi Philip Johnson to MoMA

And we should be able to have a conversation about you know what, this sculpture—you know the one, with the identical dimensions—does look a lot like this table, and vice versa, and hold those concepts in our mind. I did not realize until just now that it only came into the Modern’s collection in 1980, long after Judd’s table dilemma had played out. Could this acquisition have been a catalyst for the artist’s retconning?