Richard Prince, Untitled (Portrait), 2014, inkjet on canvas, 65 3/4 x 48 3/4 in., selling at Rago Arts
Wow, has it really been twelve years? This rasfotos picture is one of Richard Prince’s New Portraits that broke through the static and really made people think, “WTF, is he actually doing this? Instagram screenshots??”
Seeing it again after so long, and after so much art chatter, social media mayhem, and legal wrangling, it really does feel like if he wasn’t everything for making these works, Richard Prince was definitely something.
The voluptuous photo, the bafflingly intense comments [“The fight for earth doesn’t end until one of us is gone?” What even is that?], the austere composition, this really could only have been made twelve years ago, minus five days. Art is a fascinating thing.
R.H. Quaytman, ד Chapter 24, 2012, 20 x 20 in., ink and gesso on plywood, selling at Rago Arts
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.
Glenn Ligon’s black Moon Jars got me looking through the exhibitions at Tokyo’s Rat Hole Gallery, which was an underground space operated by the streetwear brand Hysteric Glamour. It closed at the beginning of COVID. Some of their shows are documented on Contemporary Art Library, including their third show with Roni Horn, The Selected Gifts (1974-2015), in 2017-18.
“37 Album of owl postcards, 38 Mosaic color sample card, 39 naturally round rock, 40 ‘Untitled’ (1987) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 41 Handmade miniature olive tree, 42 Fortune cookie fortune, 43 Die (solid sterling silver)” installation view of Roni Horn, The Selected Gifts (1974-2015), 2017 at Rat Hole Gallery, Tokyo, via Contemporary Art Library
Horn presented “a vicarious self-portrait” as told by a series of mostly life-sized photographs of 43 gifts received over 41 years. “Collectively, the gifts tell a story, through a language of the self as mediated through both objects and others—a reflection through the warped optic of others that shows a level of accuracy beyond that of any mirror,” Horn said in the show’s press release.
“Of course, by selecting and photographing the gifts, and presenting them in the formal language I developed, I am also crafting a self-portrait with a certain level of distance,” Horn did not also say.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres snapshots signed and given to a friend in 1994 who was not Roni Horn, and sold at Phillips in 2021
The press release says the identities of the givers “remains a mystery,” but nine of the gifts are artworks by folks like Tacita Dean, Matthew Barney, Jürgen Teller, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. And two of the gifts are the kitschy little cartoon figurines of the kind that filled Gonzalez-Torres’ apartment, and which he regularly shared with friends. [He also gave snapshots of the toys to friends, and now I imagine this photographic potlach as part of a practice he and Horn also shared.]
Roni Horn, 25 Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone, from The Selected Gifts (1974-2015), at Rat Hole Gallery in 2017-18, via contemporary art library
What else stands out is Horn’s sense of humor as she assembles this self-portrait, airing out friends who’ve given two copies of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, two copies of Djuna Barnes, and wtf—a photo album of owl postcards? Can you imagine giving bird pictures to Roni Horn, and they end up in a show?
Screenshot of Glenn Ligon’s Dec. 17, 2019 instagram announcement of the opening of “In a Year With A Black Moon,” the show at Rat Hole Gallery in Tokyo where he first exhibited his black Moon Jars
I have loved Glenn Ligon’s Moon Jars since they first appeared in “In A Year with a Black Moon” in 2019, in what turned out to be the last show at Rat Hole Gallery in Tokyo. And by love, I mean hearted them every time I’ve seen them on Instagram.
Their narrative hasn’t changed much in the intervening years, though: Ligon developed them with a Korean ceramicist in Japan over three years. They’re made with black clay instead of the kaolin white clay of Joseon originals. The rest of the discussion quickly shifts to Moon Jars themselves, and their history, and even that can be a very short conversation.
Glenn Ligon Moon Jars installed at “All Over The Place” at the Fitzwiliam in Cambridge in 2024, 📷: ig/glennadamson
Installation view of Glenn Ligon, Black Moons at APMA Cabinet, Seoul, Aug-Sept 2026, 📷: Hauser & Wirth
But there’s no hint yet about Korean responses to these reworkings of an iconic national form, or to its complicated historical entanglements with western Modernism, and with Japan.
From Instagram, at least, Ligon’s long, personal and creative engagement with Japan appears steady and extensive, going well beyond tourism or fandom. And it’s easy to imagine an organic and productive context for the Moon Jars’ development.
Computer, what is the diametric opposite of a photo of a Glenn Ligon Moon Jar? Lucy Rie photographed by Snowdon next to the Joseon moon jar Bernard Leach gave her, which the British Museum bought at Bonham’s in 1998, image via FT
But imagining is all there is, because I don’t see any more discussion of their origins or their making. Or in the moon jars’ intersections with Japanese colonialism, and the complicated dynamics around the elevation of simplified, utilitarian ceramics in the early 20th century by Japanese craft modernists like Sōetsu Yanagi, and then by modernists in the west It feels relevant that both of the major Joseon moon jars at Christie’s came from deep in Japanese collections—and that rather than discuss their provenance at all, Christie’s rehashed the Anglo-centric story of the moon jar at the British Museum.
Screenshot of Glenn Ligon’s Sept. 12, 2026 instagram post of his handmade brick sculpture in St Louis for Counterpublic’s Triennial
In contrast, Ligon just unveiled another sculpture of fired clay, where the complex context of who made what, how, and where, feels baked right in. For Coyote Time, the triennial in St Louis organized by Counterpublic, Ligon has created Who Builds Anything In This Country? a serpentine wall of handmade bricks marked with the fingerprints and marks of local students and seniors. This, in a state and a country where, before the Civil War, most bricks were made by enslaved people.
There’s a fuller moon jar discussion to be had, and almost ten years into Ligon’s project, I cannot be the only one who’d love to have it. I’d also like to see them in person.
Elizabeth Catlett, I am the Black Woman, 1946-47/1989, 9. My role has been important in the struggle to organize the unorganized, 6 1/8×9 in., ed. 9/20, selling in October 2026 at Swann
A rare complete set of Elizabeth Catlett’s iconic linocut portfolio, I am the Black Woman, is coming up for sale at Swann Galleries on October 1st.
Catlett’s first edition, published in Mexico City 1946-47 as I am the Negro Woman, had fifteen prints. The second printing was made in 1989 with the surviving 14 blocks. MoMA bought the last complete set to come up in 2021.
14. My right is a future of equality with other Americans, 9 1/8 x 6 1/8 in., ed. 9/20 via Swann
Even the set in the National Gallery’s Catlett retrospective was assembled from various sources. I don’t know if it’s complete or matching, but the DC public high school Catlett attended and later taught at had an original set in rough condition, which strikes me as the most historically important. For this set, I imagine museums will be competing against themselves to catch up.
Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992, oil inks on canvas, 120 x 165 in. or so, AP from an ed. of 1, selling at Rago Arts in September 2026
Speaking of unstretched canvases and flowers, this 10-by-14 foot printed canvas edition is hands-down the best way to own Jeff Koons’s Puppy: you still need some space, but it also rolls up; you don’t have to spend $75,000-100,000/year on gardening; and you don’t have to be Peter Brant.
This “oil inks” print is made the same way, I think, as the billboard-sized liquor and cigarette ad canvases from the earlier Luxury & Degradation series. Rago’s calling it a painting, the AP from an edition of 1, and low-key wildly, it’s being sold unstretched, with the original stretcher included. So if you win, you could even just drive out to New Jersey in a Sprinter van and bring it home yourself.
Not sure why the estimate is barely the $274,000 it sold for in 2002. But the money that people spend on Koonses has always confounded me, so why should this be any different?
composite image of John Singer Sargent’s Still Life, Daffodils, 1891-94, oil on canvas, 28 x 33 1/2 in,. collection Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum
I’m not such a John Singer Sargent superfan that I retreat into his work for solace, but maybe a little for distraction.
In 1937, years after his death, Sargent’s sister gave the Fogg Museum at Harvard a bunch of stuff from his studio, including his palette, some brushes, some tubes of paint, and an unstretched little tabletop still life of daffodils that had spent way too many years rolled up somewhere.
John Singer Sargent, Tailor’s Shop, Cairo, 1905, watercolor on paper on board, 10 5/8 x 14 1/2 in., sold at Sotheby’s in 2014
Frankly, I cannot quite believe this exists, but here it is, one of the wildest, almost abstract Sargent watercolors there is.
According to the inscription on the back, John Singer Sargent made this little sketch, Tailor’s Shop, Cairo, in 1905. But it’s written in the hand of his sister Emily, and seems not to have been shown anywhere. Maybe it’s something Sargent kept, but didn’t like.
Like maybe the way that black in the center and right takes over and spreads was a bit too much of a mess for him.
Which reminds me of one of the Sargent watercolors at the Met visited recently by YouTuber Vijay Surendra. [s/o Wayne Bremser’s wife for the link]. It was a canalscape from Venice that the artist had folded in half, not good enough to show, but too good to throw away.
Sargent gave it to Ena Wertheimer, a friend and frequent portrait subject, who later sold it to the 6th Earl of Harewood after he got Veronese’s study for the Apotheosis of Venice, the big oval painting on the Grand Council ceiling.
John Singer Sargent, An Interior in Venice, 1899, oil on canvas, 23 x 32 7/8 in., collection Royal Academy
But what’s most interesting is how it presages An Interior in Venice, the painting Sargent made the next year while staying with the family of his friend/cousin Ralph Curtis at the Palazzo Barbaro. Sargent really did love a dramatically lit Venetian salone. Mrs. Curtis didn’t like the painting, though, so Sargent submitted it for his diploma at the Royal Academy, who claims copyright on it and its 18th century frame lol.
Luc Tuymans, The Temple, 1996, portfolio of 8 aquatints, 33 x21 in., ed. 35+2AP, published by Peter Blum Editions and rearranged to reflect the order the artist explained them in one time
I didn’t post The Temple, Luc Tuymans’ 1996 portfolio of aquatint etchings, in 2017 because I’d tried but couldn’t figure out the source of his images. Also, unlike his painting and his Edition Schellmann sandblasted photo edition of Altar (2002), related to the second image above, of a sealing room in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple, I hadn’t ever seen The Temple in person.
Nothing’s changed on those fronts, but seeing the original version of Altar yesterday, the [stolen] 1996 painting The Heritage X, relit the blogging fire. And while I still don’t know the source of the “European TV” documentary about Mormonism Tuymans photographed, I know some facts, which feels like the diametric opposite of Tuymans’ project here.
and Alicia Inez Guzmán, Julia Halperin, Jan Tumlir, and Sarah Lewis
Beyond the recognition and the money, the Rabkin Foundation has been working to connect and support art writers for going on ten years. It’s been an honor to be part of the discussions they’re fostering, and I’m psyched to welcome this new cohort into the Rabkin community.
And I, for one am seated for their conversations with Mary Louise Schumacher, which start dropping next week. Stay tuned.
Has it really been ten years since I poked through the FBI’s National Stolen Art File? Yes, yes it has. What’s been stolen—or reported stolen—in the mean time?
Have you seen me? Luc Tuymans, The Heritage X, 1996, oil on linen, 33 x 74 1/2 in., stolen from David Zwirner Gallery in 1996,via FBI/NSAF
Starting with the biggest heists, believe me when I say if this 3×6 foot Luc Tuymans painting from 1996 of a stealth photo of a marriage altar in the Salt Lake City Temple had been included in the FBI database in 2016, I would have written about it.
Lucien Smith, Smashed Pieta, 2015, oil on linen, 6 1/2 x 8 in., stolen in 2015, 📷 luciensmithstudio
As his friends and admirers rush forward with an outpouring of grief after the too-early death of Lucien Smith, a lot of folks might be wondering what to do in the face of loss.
One thing, of course, is to reach out to friends and see how they’re doing, especially if you know they’ve had a tough time. In the case of artists who got exploited to hell by the art speculation and celebrity system when they were young, maybe don’t make that experience or that work—or the art world itself—the point, especially right now. And if you could get past all that while they’re still around, all the better.
Lucien Smith, Monkey in Cage, 2015, oil on linen, 8 x 10 1/2 in., stolen in 2015, 📷: luciensmithstudio
Another thing one could do to mitigate loss, specifically in this case, is to help recover the ten Lucien Smith paintings stolen in late 2015, soon after they were made. [Thanks in these difficult times to Yoshi Hill for the heads up on the theft.]
You can change the color On The Couch: Alexandra Fairweather & Sasha Bikoff on On The Couch via youtube
It’s like being a nepo-baby, having a John Chamberlain couch: it takes a lot of work to keep it from being your entire personality. And even then you’re still not going to escape it entirely. So you just acknowledge it and carry on. And maybe make a podcast about it.
Think pink: Alexandra Fairweather and Akari Endo-Gaut on On The Couch via youtube
Not every episode of Season 1 of On The Couch, the John Chamberlain Estate’s new podcast, begins with Estate director and Chamberlain’s stepdaughter Alexandra Fairweather asking her guest if they’ve ever sat on a John Chamberlain couch before? What do they think? I grew up on this couch.
