Texting “Hi Banks! I hope you are well. Is that ‘Surrender Dorothy’ sign your piece? The owner of the property has asked me to help her sell it.” is a helluva way to try to simultaneously authenticate an artwork and get an OK to sell it. Especially when you know full well whose it is, and what it’s doing on the roof of the Williamsburg townhouse where your gallery partner’s staging a show in his other side hustle gallery with his other partner.
The texter is Caroline Snow, of the Dash Snows and Thurmans and de Menils, whose Snow Gallery was not formally involved in Beginning of (The End), the Banks Violette show Frank Haines organized at New Dracula Theater, an exhibition space and recording studio in Brooklyn he opened last year with fellow artist Chip Kolpen. Violette collages on aluminum hung inside; a video projection filled the garden shed out back, and a giant sign of aluminum and painted wood reading SURRENDER DOROTHY was perched on the roof.
It’s not clear that NDT had any expectation to sell anything, or that formalities like loan agreements or consignment forms were ever contemplated. But it does sound like they arranged the local fabrication of the sign. And perhaps the owner of the building, who obviously agreed to its installation on her roof, also covered its construction, and thus felt like it was her Violette to sell. It was not.
The disagreement over the status of the sign, and its appearance in Snow Gallery’s inventory on Artsy, for $50,000, broke out of the group chat and into public view on Instagram stories yesterday [7/23], where Ian of 202 Arts Review watched the situation unfold live. This morning [7/24], Artnet, which recently merged with Artsy, covered the dispute. After not responding to Violette’s dealer Todd Von Ammon’s insistence to remove the listing, the external attention seemed enough to persuade Snow to remove it without comment or apology.
In the screenshot chat, Violette said the sign is “not an actual artwork — it’s closer to a prop or stage dressing and isn’t intended to have any life beyond the NDT show. Hope that helps.” Violette called it an artwork to Artnet’s Gabi Vidal-Irizarry, though, while explaining that, “The person who listed it didn’t have the rights to sell that artwork.”
I was going to say, ironically, but it is actually quite unironic that Violette compared this sign to a prop or stage dressing, because props and stage dressing are his artistic language. So many of his sculptures take the form of stages, platforms, and backdrops, and are often used as such. Other sculptures are quite like signs or billboards and the structures that comprise them. Which is not, of course, to dispute Violette’s point: his artwork is what he says is his artwork, and he authorizes its sale or not, by whom he chooses.
I have to imagine none of this was lost on Snow, who still somehow contrived to finesse the interests of the landlord who has and (presumably) paid for the sign, and the artist. Never mind the constellation of artist/gallerists and gallerist/dealers involved.
In all this churn the (non) artwork, SURRENDER DOROTHY, is underappreciated for what it is. Violette explains its classic reference to Artnet: “There is a famous piece of graffiti outside of Washington, D.C., with ‘Surrender Dorothy’ spray painted on a bridge that frames a distant Mormon temple.” DC punk alum and designer Joseph Keefer posted a shot of another version the graffiti, which has been repainted many times.
From the photos it is clear that Violette treats the reversed letters as the face of the sign—they are painted, unobstructed by bracing and meant to be seen from the garden. The sign is positioned far back on the roof, facilitating this private, backyard view—which is also the temple side of the sign— and also preventing it from being seen from the street. Well, from the surface street.
Like the original SURRENDER DOROTHY, Violette’s work should be—or should have been—prominently visible from the highway, which passes right in front of it. I figure it looks a little something like this. I have not found any photos like this. Though the NDT show ended on Flag Day, over a month ago, perhaps the sign is still there? Why not take a drive on the BQE and let me know?
In the mean time, Violette may have declared this sign is not an artwork, but I am happy to declare SNOW SURRENDER DOROTHY is, and it looks just like this. Or it will. It would, if it were realized. That it is not realized at the moment is very useful for distinguishing between it and Violette’s sign. One way they are the same, though, is that I, too, do not authorize Caroline Snow to sell it.
[UPDATE] I got some stuff right and some stuff wrong, mostly by giving the heiress and the landlord any benefit of the doubt. See the clarifications here.
Related: Banks Violette talked on the StyleZeitgeist Podcast about his work, and mentioned the FDT gig as his first NYC show in years