When Daniel Joseph Martinez first installed The House America Built, his replica of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, which was a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden cabin, at The Project in September 2004, it didn’t quite fit, so he cropped it. Also it was split, like Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting (1974).
Kaczynski’s cabin had become famous as a piece of evidence in his trial in Sacramento in 1996, and had been dramatically photographed by Richard Barnes for The New York Times Magazine in 1998. It’s fate in 2003-04, however, when Martinez conceived of his piece, was unknown.
The House America Built was painted in the colors of the season from Martha Stewart Everyday Colors, chosen by Martha Stewart Living Magazine from the paint line licensed to K-Mart by Stewart’s firm, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: Araucana Green, Hosta Leaf, and Cosmos Lemon. In the spring of 2004 Stewart had been convicted of insider trading and obstruction of justice and sentenced to five months in federal prison, which she began serving in October. The prosecutor in Stewart’s case was James Comey.
Sometimes even just writing the facts of something that happened feels insane.
The caption for The House America Built in the Spring 2005 issue of CAA’s Art Journal, in which a 2003 conversation between Martinez and David Levi Strauss was published, lists these colors as “Martha Stewart Signature House Paint,” which I find confusing. After Martha Stewart Everyday Color was discontinued by K-Mart in 2004, in the midst of her legal controversy, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia did not launch The Martha Stewart Signature Colors collection with Sherwin Williams until spring 2005, after she’d been released from prison. This licensing arrangement only lasted until 2007.
When Martinez refabricated The House America Built in 2009 for Disorderly Conduct: Art in Tumultuous Times, curated by Karen Moss at the Orange County Museum of Art, there were no official Martha Stewart branded paints to be purchased. It is possible, of course, that Martinez could still obtain seasonal color trend information from Martha Stewart Living Magazine.
In 2017, Martinez installed The House America Built twice, in two installations of HOME—So Different, So Appealing. In a video for the MFA Houston version, which was striped, Martinez says he used Martha Stewart Fall 2017 colors. Which implies that the preceding installation at LACMA, in the spring, which had camo, used Spring 2017 colors. Honestly, it looks to me like there’s some overlap.
These installations, too, must likely not use Martha Stewart licensed paints, which, after a brief return to The Home Depot between 2010 and 2012, were discontinued, though their formulations remain available for matching. Instead, they must likely reflect the editorial content of Martha Stewart Living Magazine.
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was acquired by Sequential Brands Group in 2015, the year Stewart became friends with Snoop Dogg after sitting next to him at the Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber. Sequential Brands, which also owned Jessica Simpson, experienced financial trouble and sold the Martha Stewart brand to Marquee Brands in 2019.
The Magazine ceased printing in 2022, but whether it is from the CBD gummy line she launched in 2020 or one of her multiple reality TV shows, I suspect Stewart will still be able to provide color trend information to Martinez if or when he needs it again.
I began this post thinking I would just document the changes in Martha Stewart paint trends over the life of this artwork, revel in some found poetry mixed with technocapitalist critique, and be done. But then I found that Martinez did not automatically publish the names of the colors used in later refabrications of The House. And even those seemed unstable, as the actual history of Martha Stewart paint was discovered to be far more complicated and convoluted than I remembered it. Neither this kind of product-embedded information nor the lifestyle trend content of Stewart’s magazine, has been regularly published, archived, digitized, or preserved in a useful way. I must say I expected more from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
But I was also lowkey surprised to find that over time, Martinez’s comments and the discourse around this work have tended to gravitate toward Kaczynski and to diminish Stewart, even though the original impetus was to draw some kind of equivalency between these two Ivy-educated [well, Barnard], second generation Polish immigrant felons and their implications for American capitalism. While I, of course, wish Stewart a long, healthy, and happy life—she turned 85 two weeks ago—I wonder if Martinez will find the need to adapt his strategy when her living presence no longer lends its aura to the seasonal colors associated with her brand.
Though if the CBD pâte-de-fruits are any indication, it does seem possible that a platonic Martha Stewart palette of bright garden colors is coalescing around Chill [Tangerine, Yuzu, Pomelo], Sleep [Elderberry, Montmorency Cherry, Boysenberry], and Wellness [Meyer Lemon, Kumquat, and Blood Orange].