Month: May 2025

Green and Red

a vertically oriented painting on paper by ellsworth kelly titled green and red is a green bulbous form like a water tower, surrounded by a rectangle of red. brushstrokes are evident all over, showing a give and take between the two areas of color, and a couple of tiny gaps of blank paper as well, selling at sothebys in may 2025
Ellsworth Kelly, Green and Red, 1964, oil on Arches, 30×22 in. or so, selling [UPDATE: or not] 16 May 2025 at Sotheby’s

I liked it well enough for itself, but after arguing with the Sotheby’s essay in my head over what’s actually going on in this Ellsworth Kelly oil on paper, I love it even more.

It mentions “a single, vibrant and amorphous green form set against a flat, saturated red ground,” and says “The green shape, defined by sweeping, confident brushstrokes, floats within the field of red with a quiet, commanding presence.” Yet it feels like there is neither a ground or a field to float on. These two colors and the forms they make are side by side on a sheet of paper.

The visible brushstrokes absolutely do reveal how Kelly made the picture, how there might be a bit over overlap of green on red paint along the right side, but also how the vertical strip where the slightly angular green neck goes was narrowed with red. Rather than surrounding a form, or coloring in a void, it feels like Kelly made the picture as a whole.

It’s got borders like a print, too, which echoes the series of lithographs he was making for Galerie Maeght at the time. It also seems Kelly held onto this until 2007.

16 May 2025, lot 323, Ellsworth Kelly, Green and Red, 1964 [update: did not sell] [sothebys]

The Clip-On Method, p. 186

a photograph of a cady noland catalogue on a wooden table. the book is open to page 186, which is filled by a single 1991 work, SLA Group Photo with Floating Head, a distorted image of a group of white people in black posed with the seven headed snake logo of the symbionese liberation army behind them like a princess amidala headdress, only the face of the person whose head is lined up with the logo has been crudely cut out, leaving a void, and the face is stuck into the upper left corner. this whole messy composition was screenprinted onto a sheet of aluminum, which is now, in may 2025, for sale at sothebys
SLA Group Photo with Floating Head, 1991, paint and silkscreen on aluminum, 75 1/2 x 60 5/8 in., formerly of the Sammlung Goetz, yet another private museum which started offloading stuff, illustrated in what is now being used as Cady Noland’s de facto catalogue raisonné

Instead of posting an artist disclaimer on a work for sale, Sotheby’s just cites its appearance in the artist’s book, and the four three museums, public and private—and whatever Peter Brant is doing—which hold other variations on the work. Whatever else is going on in the world, we do live in a Golden Age of Cady Noland Marketing.

16 May 2025, lot 529: Cady Noland, SLA Group Shot With Floating Head, 1991 [sothebys]

For Your Jasper Johns Tablescape

a dinner plate printed with a round jasper johns pastel drawing from 2001 of two stylized heads hanging from stems of a leafy green treebranch. the left head is light purple with a central blush of orange, a distorted picasso head. the right is a yellow/orange optical illusion of a young and old woman's faces. 150 of these plates will be sold in two weeks in may 2025, most at an art fair, to raise money for the coalition for the homeless
Jasper Johns, Artist Plate Project, 2025, via Artware

I gotta say, I did not expect to see Jasper Johns in the Artist Plate Project. But as Benjamin Godsill was telling APP organizer Michelle Hellman in the latest episode of Nota Bene, this year is full of bangers.

This is the fifth year that Hellman has put together a collection of artist-designed plates whose sale benefits the Coalition for the Homeless in NYC, and it is remarkable. Once the APP began debuting the plates at art fairs, they’ve taken on a wild, competitive philanthropic eshopping energy.

This year there are fifty plates, each in an edition of 150, with the first 100 reserved for the opening day of Frieze NY. The rest will go on sale the following week at Artware Editions. The plates are just $250 each, about the price of a lunch at an art fair. [Artware also has some previous years’ plates, including individually signed plates, and a couple of complete sets, no waiting.]

a round jasper johns pastel drawing from 2001 comprises two stylized heads hanging from stems of a leafy green treebranch. the left head is light pinkish purple, a distorted picasso head. the right is a yellow/orange optical illusion of a young and old woman's faces. via matthew marks gallery
Jasper Johns, Untitled, 2001, pastel on paper, 25 1/2 inches diameter, via Matthew Marks Gallery

What’s wild about Johns is not that he did it, but that he had a tondo drawing ready for instant plate adaptation. Johns had used both the Picassoid head and wife/mother-in-law optical illusion in many works for years; having them sprout surreally from a tree branch, in a round pastel? Not so much. But he showed this picture in the 10th anniversary drawings show at Matthew Marks at the end of 2001.

Oh wait, actually he did not. That is an entirely different work—same motif, different object. When the Marks drawing turned up at auction in 2015, it had an uncharacteristically full essay, especially for a day sale, with a surprisingly full discussion of Johns’ references.