You were staring at R.H. Quaytman’s painting on the auction website, wondering if you were going blind trying to figure out what was happening. This is not something that would happen if you’d seen it installed at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach in 2012. Because you’d know immediately that you were standing in front of a 20 x 20 inch plywood panel with a beveled edge, that had an image screenprinted on it of a slightly crushed black cardboard box with a die cut square window near the top, and a library label wrapped around the side.
And it’d be seemingly obvious that the box resembles Quaytman’s own catalogue for the show, ד (Dalet), Chapter 24, which was made in the mode of the often incredible box catalogues Josef Beuys and the museum’s director Johannes Cladders began producing in the 1960s. Quaytman’s box contains images of all 61 paintings in the chapter/show, plus some texts, and is still available at the Museum, but is also available—and helpfully documented—at Saint Martin Bookshop.
But it’d still be clear, or become clear, that the box catalogue in Quaytman’s painting is not her own. And then it’s odd that she doesn’t mention the source at all in her book, Book, though this painting of it seems to appear on p.147, though it is listed with one of the other two dimensions of work in the show, PS1 (12 3/8 in sq.), not PS2 (20 x 20).
And then it’s odder that the flagship image for the show itself is the photograph of the library box Quaytman used, but with the Dalet from her show composited inside it. And this isn’t explained anywhere, either.
And so if you don’t have the incredible-looking catalogue of box catalogues, DIE KASSETTENKATALOGE DES STÄDTISCHEN MUSEUMS MÖNCHENGLADBACH, by Susanne Rennert & Susanne Titz, published by the Museum in 2020, and designed, it turns out, by Petra Hollenbach, who Quaytman does mention, because the show was the moment they began working together, then you’re left to poke around the even more incredible digital Archive of the Museum and its exhibitions and its box catalogues, another project of the Susannes, using your roadtrip German to eventually find Quaytman’s source.
And it is the 1970 exhibition by Hans Hollein, who, in 1982, designed the Museum and the square temporary gallery and the temporary walls that became the inspiration and site of Quaytman’s show. And then you find that though Hollein’s exhibition is usually titled, Alles ist Architektur, or Alles ist Architektur, Eine Ausstellung zum Thema Tod, the full title of the show was, Alles ist Architektur, Eine Ausstellung zum Thema Tod, Archäologische Felder, Funde, Heimgräber, Grabbeigaben, Altäre, Totenkulte, Leichentücher, Sterbebetten usw. sowie einige Fragmente zu früheren Arbeiten, or Everything is Architecture: An Exhibition on the Theme of Death, Archaeological Fields, Finds, Domestic Tombs, Burial Objects, Altars, Death Cults, Shrouds, Deathbeds, Etc., as Well as Some Fragments of Earlier Works.
And then you’d discover that in addition to some installation shots and texts, the box catalogue contains dried leaves and flowers, and for his headshot Hollein had submitted an X-ray of his skull.
And then you’d realize that it was in Chapter 25, her very next show, at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, that Quaytman made a painting of Isa Genzken’s X-ray self-portrait, which she’d exhibited at the Society in 1990.
And by you, I obviously mean me.
23 Sept 2026, Lot 215, R.H. Quaytman, ד Chapter 24, 2012, est. $8-12,000 [update: sold for $10,880] [ragoarts]
Previously, related: The Skull Collection