greg – greg.org

Talking this morning with Matt, our book man in Venice, about the intense passions of collectors of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and he reminded me that Richard Prince’s own bibliophilia covered Ulysses, too.

In Prince’s birdtalk texts from 2014, there’s a bit about yearning for the copy Joyce inscribed to Ezra Pound. And another about going to Dijon to see where Ulysses was first printed, and hunting down the Greek flag blue that appeared on the cover of the 1st edition.

Which was the same moment Prince opened It’s A Free Concert, a show at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, which included a large, book cover lithograph-shaped monochrome diptych, Untitled (Ulysses), in Joyce’s—and Greece’s—blue. It’s dated 2011, so he’d had it on his mind for a while.

The Spiritual American Pavilion

the title on a brochure that says fondazione prada helter skelter arthur jafa and richard prince — The brochure is tall. If there were any plebeians in Venice rn, the show would open for them Saturday

I have read the gallery guide for Helter Skelter Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, Miuccia Prada’s two-artist show curated by Nancy Spector. I have created a mind palace and walked through it. I’m not sure these artists are operating on the same register.

The exhibition segregates them on the ground floor, and they get together in the fancy rooms upstairs. Spector notes shared ideas, themes, visuals, approaches, without forcing too hard. It feels more like parallel play than direct engagement or dialogue. [Which makes me very interested to see what Jafa and Prince’s collaborative zine ends up like; it could be the song of the summer.]

The image used to promote the show feels like its apotheosis. Prince’s iconic Rasta painting, Graduation (2008) and a Vodoun witch doctor from Jafa’s Mickey Mouse Was A Scorpio (2019) are shown side by side, along with two other Canal Zone paintings, near the end of the show. In the text, Spector focuses on appropriation and juxtaposition, and Jafa’s critique of ownership in the historical context of chattel slavery.

an arthur jafa artwork with a black and white line drawing of mickey mouse next to a mostly black and white photo of a vodoun priest with whiteface resembling a skull, or mickey mouse, and wearing a light suit jacket, is stacked on top of a pairing of the same vodoun priest image and a richard prince painting of a rasta playing a guitar, mostly black and white with blue ovals over his face, in ways that resemble the whiteface next to it. this is the promotional image for the prada foundation's show of these two artists' work in venice in 2026 — [top] Arthur Jafa’s Mickey Mouse Was A Scorpio, 2019, at Museum Brandhorst… cropped and combined [bottom] with Richard Prince’s Graduation, 2008, for the Prada Foundation show.

But the elision of Mickey Mouse feels crucial. Jafa has talked about how placing their images next to each other reveal Mickey and Damballah, the Vodoun spirit represented by the witch doctor, are two iterations of the same entity. Placing a whiteface figure next to Prince’s Rasta says blackface, without the hard “R.” But hanging Mickey next to Graduation brings out the minstrel in both.

The autobiography of desire echoes throughout the show, with each artist exploring the yearning of being someone else, an other. Prince made his Girlfriends photos because he “wanted to be a girlfriend.” And Jafa’s Man-Monster self-portrait embodies transformation in ways that resonate with his 2024 race-switching re-edit of Taxi Driver, BG, which in Venice is titled Ben Gazarra [is the misspelling intentional?].

the poorly lit gallery in a venetian palazzo has an arthur jafa work with a large black and white photo of a vodoun priest in a suit with whiteface printed on aluminum next to an ornate doorway, where a video of a black gospel choir is projected on the far wall, and to the right of the doorway is a richard prince painting of four dark ovals on a painterly white ground, in such a way that it looks like the cartoon face of mickey mouse. — installation view of Helter Skelter so that Mickey’s cropped out again, but that surprised Mickey face-like group of ovals isn’t. image: Fond. Prada via hypebeast, which I only read for the google images

What’s less clear, perhaps, in the show is that Prince testified that painting Rastas was an act of love, of desire, of substitution like the Girlfriends: he wanted to look like them, to be them. For all the real talk of the Black experience, white supremacy, and American masculinity, I feel like both of these artists are mapping the psychosexual contours of a violent, white, imperialist, colonialist elephant, while Spector and Prada are maybe saying, keep the blindfolds on.

Frameless Hammershøis at SMK

I understand the important protection and handling convenience frames provide. And I get why it’s cringe to call it rawdawging, but I have stayed wanting more art without frames.

A couple of months back, after that frameless Da Messina situation, Claudio Santambrogio sent along a link to a fascinating semi-frameless show I’d completely missed at SMK in Copenhagen. There I Belong. Hammershøi by Elmgreen & Dragset was a group show of Vilhelm Hammershøi paintings along contemporary artists curated by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in 2019. The duo highlighted the ominous feelings of Hammershøi’s interiors and the sense of foreboding they could engender.

on the grey wall of the royal art museum in copenhagen, a small framed photo of an open door in a german house hangs equidistant from a small frameless painting of a 19th century danish interior, also with an open door, and the gallery's own doorway. taken in 2019 by inge pollet — Three doorways: Installation shot of Hammershøi and Ruff in There I Belong, 2019, at SMK, photo: Inge Pollet

One particular pairing jumped out—actually, that’s too energetic, maybe it bubbled over: a 1980 Thomas Ruff Interieur photo of a door and Hammershøi’s 1888 painting, Interior, The Old Stove. Albertinelyst, which is also largely about a door. Hammershøi gets called serene and austere, but Elmgreen & Dragset’s sense of an unwelcoming stillness is also correct. When I think about hygge, it is now not this.

a brightly lit photo of an empty open doorway in a traditional european home, that happens to be the artist thomas ruff's house in dusseldorf. the door and frame are white, the wall cream, the floor very dark stained wood. a wide matte and thin maple wood frame surround the photo, via david zwirner — Thomas Ruff, Interieur 8C, 1980, C-print, 10 7/8 x 8 1/8 in., Framed: 18 1/2 x 22 1/2 in., Ed. 20, 5 AP, via David Zwirner

an 1888 painting in a range of naturally lit whites on the walls and open doorway, and dark browns on the wood floor, and even darker paint on the tiered porcelain stove in the corner of this austere empty danish room painted by vilhelm hammershoi — Wilhelm Hammershøi, Interior, The Old Stove. Albertinelyst, 1888, oil on canvas, 61.6 cm x 51.5 cm, collection SMK, image: creative commons

I have to think that showing the paintings naked, without frames, only heightened the unease. Except the image above, also frameless, came from SMK’s incredible Wilhelm Hammershøi Digital Archive. The VIHDA is the culmination of a five-year research initiative into the methods, materials, and construction of over 130 Hammershøi works. Every painting is photographed frameless, naked as the day it was made. And then, in addition to digital scans, there’s a whole range of technical images for each work, too; the dawgs have never been so raw.

There I Belong. Hammershøi by Elmgreen & Dragset, 27 April – 1 September 2019 [smk.dk]
The Vilhelm Hammershøi Digital Archive [smk.dk]
[Thanks to the SMK press office for their kind assistance with details about the exhibition.]

Marty Margulies’ Olafur Grid

an eight-row grid of photos, perhaps even portraits, of individual islands in iceland by olafur eliasson. though they're all the same width, the photos on the top rows are shorter, more horizontal in their orientation, hugging the more horizontal island profiles, while the lower rows, for the chunky boys, are squarer. via lempertz — Olafur Eliasson, The Island Series, 1997, 56-part c-print grid, ed. 3, this one from Marty Margulies’ bathroom is the AP, selling at Lempertz in Cologne

The first place I saw Olafur Eliasson’s Islands Series photogrid was in MoMA’s New Photography show. The second place I saw it was in Marty Margulies’ master bathroom in Miami. That’s Marty’s above, which is now for sale in Germany, perhaps destined for less humid climes.

Lot 50 05.06.2026 Olafur Eliasson, The Island Series, 1997, est. EUR30-40,000 [lempertz]

David Hammons Walkthrough

I did not see David Hammons’ sprawling 2019 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles in person, and I only flipped through the catalogue/artist book when it came out last year. But I had to move it recently from its loadbearing position at the bottom of its stack, and give it the full attention it demands. Honestly, it’s a stunning retrospective feast I’m not sure any of us actually deserve. Along with Michael Crichton’s 1977 Jasper Johns catalogue and the Smithsonian’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return), it’s now only the third exhibition catalogue I’ve read straight through, cover-to-cover. And there aren’t even any words.

a page from a david hammons exhibition catalogue has a photo of a gnarly black woven plastic tarp tucked and swagged, presumably, over an abstract paintng, and on the white wall next to it is written in pencil, all caps, how many of these did you make? an installation view from hauser and wirth los angeles 2019 — “How many of these did you make?” A wall text next to a David Hammons abstract painting covered by a street tarp at Hauser & Wirth in 2019, as published in the book at the exact moment I wondered.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The H&W installation photos that fill most of the second half of the 404-page book pick up the handwritten labels and instructions that punctuated the show.

a skeewampus photo of a spread in a david hammons catalogue with an angled photo of an open book bound in black leather on a white pedestal. the book is open to the last page, where the label for the holy bible old testament and the 2002 edition information is affixed, and david hammons's signature is at the bottom. below that, written on the pedestal in pencil in all caps, is the instruction, yes you can turn the page. an installation view from hauser and wirth los angeles 2019 — “Yes you may turn the page” of the artist’s proof of *The Holy Bible: Old Testament*, Hammons’s epic 2002 artist book that rebound the Duchamp catalogue raisonné to look like scripture

And when I hit this spread about 80% of the way through, I felt like the book was literally reading my mind, or, less supernaturally, that I was being taken through the show—and decades of work—by the artist himself.

Not that I’d expect Hammons to just say how many abstract paintings he’s covered with how many street tarps. And when I went back through to count, I had to decide whether to include paintings with metal panels affixed. And what about other things draped or covered with tarps or metal plates? And what about the Kool-aid paintings, where the covers feel less found? Anyway, I’d say there were at least thirty in the book, but it also sinks in that they’re in almost every installation shot, somewhere.

As for The Holy Bible: Old Testament, I’d wondered, since the times I’ve seen it exhibited it was on a lectern or a prie dieu and practically commanded personal devotion. But in LA it was naked on a pedestal.

Anyway, at this point, if you hear someone calling Hammons elusive or mysterious, it just means they haven’t put in the time to look at the bounty the artist has laid before us.

Previously, directly related [apparently I have been blogging about this show for seven years]:
Free as in Jazz and Books, TK Smith’s May 2025 review of the catalogue
Critiquing modernism and capitalism, one Hauser & Wirth show at a time
DH H&W LA: the oral history
David Hammons Lights
&c., &c.

Sturtevant Duchamp Fountains at Ropac

a tiny, imperfectly formed urinal shaped like duchamp's fountain but modeled out of plasticine and painted an old chalky white against a stark white ground, a work by sturtevant at thaddeus ropac milano — Sturtevant, Fountain, no date, painted plasticine, 7 x 5 x 4 cm, at Thaddeus Ropac Milan

Sturtevant was using the work of Marcel Duchamp from almost the beginning of her public career in the 1960s, so this kawaii, undated, Bôite-en-Valise-size [but Stieglitz photo-shaped] plasticine Fountain could have been from anytime, really. Or anytime before 1997, when it appears in a collage of Stieglitz-style photos and distorted photocopies.

twelve identical black and white passport-size photos in a four-row grid, all depicting a plasticine model of duchamp's fountain, a white porcelain urinal laid on its back, with several of the urinals in the photos collaged over with identically sized photocopies of the urinal, at various degrees of repetition or degradation, a 1997 work by sturtevant at thaddeus ropac milano — Sturtevant, Duchamp Untitled, 1997, photo and lasercopy collage on paper, 33.5 x 29 cm, via Thaddeus Ropac Milan

Both these works, a 1969 drawing of Fountain by Sturtevant similar a 1964 Duchamp etching, and many more works by both artists are in a show at Thaddeus Ropac Milan, Marcel Duchamp & Sturtevant: Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs, until 23 July 2026. [ropac.net]

SoiL Thornton Putting The PR in Praxis

People were talking about Josh Kline’s essay on artists crushed by the economics of the art world in New York. A review of the Whitney Biennial lamented the children of Cameron Rowland. But the press release for SoiL Thornton’s show at Swiss Institute feels like the most visceral and vital documentation of the state of the art at this dire, resilient but, again, dire moment:

Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter realization suppression / Rihanna_work.mp3 (2026), a large-scale video installation composed of digital rips from YouTube recordings of 79 artist lectures and interviews, excerpted at the moment when the speaker says the word “work.” Each instance corresponds to an utterance of the word in Rihanna’s 2016 hit single Work, with every clip slowed by the same percentage. “Work” hovers between effort and object, verb and noun, insistence and refrain. Through its rhythmic accumulation, the cadence of the pop anthem becomes legible even as the meaning of the references to labor or the art it manifests dissolves. The video is projected onto an existing film setup left in place from the previous exhibition, an “assist.” These remains are used as is. Support is neither neutral nor hidden.

Adjacent to the projection, a framed wall piece assembles documents from the artist’s recent eviction proceedings, including the initial notice and records of its resolution. It also includes email correspondence with the exhibition’s curator, a signed agreement with Swiss Institute, and a kitchen dish towel acquired when Thornton moved into their apartment ten years ago. Production funds for the exhibition were, in part, directed toward eviction relief, collapsing distinctions between the work and the conditions that sustain it.

Dried lavender, associated with relaxation and calming, spreads across the gallery floor in a quantity indexed to the curator’s weight. Its scent lingers as the form is broken down; soiled, tracked and redistributed underfoot by visitors. Nearby, a transparent inflatable structure contains the artist’s mattress and bedding. The bed is both protected and displaced, evoking temporary shelter while staging rest as something deferred.

“Sensory warning: this installation contains a strong lavender fragrance that may be overwhelming or trigger sensitivities.”

You know what else overwhelms and triggers sensitivities? Realizing that diverting exhibition budget by reusing the previous show’s setup to thwart an artist’s eviction, and exhibiting the documentation, in a gallery amply funded by the arts program of another nation is truly the kind of art experience that can only happen in New York.

SoiL Thornton: Metabolizing eviction try, work_mp3 and other games of topping, 29 Apr – 5 Jul 2026 [swissinstitute.net]

Vindicatrix, The Refusal of Beauty, The Disfiguring Myth

I’ll let Horace D. Ballard’s positively vibrating review of MONUMENTS and his description of filmmaker Cauleen Smith’s installation, The Warden (2025) speak for itself. Just google him and Vindicatrix.

Vindicatrix, which slipped right by me when I read Carolina Miranda’s earlier piece in the NY Review of Books, maybe because my brain was overloaded by her take on Kara Walker’s “aberrant chimera” of a de-reconstructed Stonewall Jackson sculpture at The Brick. Miranda’s description of the Lost Cause, though, it sticks with me as I think about Smith, and about Vindicatrix: “Walker’s surgical reimagination of the Jackson statue instead dismantles the pleasing aesthetics of white supremacy to reveal the ugliness within: the disfiguring myth of the Lost Cause, which has papered over the racist cornerstones of the Confederacy with romanticized stories about sacrifice and bravery.”

I can’t find a video of her whole conversation, but the student paper at Occidental gives an account of Smith’s explanation of The Warden, made with and around Vindicatrix, a decommissioned idealized female allegorical statue from Richmond symbolizing confederate vengeance: “I really had problems with the way her beauty was always discussed in the description of the statue…and I thought that we should be denied some kind of access to her, or that she should be denied the power to project that beauty.”

From both Miranda and Ballard’s accounts, I think The Warden succeeds most fully as an in-person experience—I haven’t seen the show irl. But it’s Smith’s attunement to the weaponization of beauty and how it resonates with the disfiguring myth that haunts me right now.

‘We had Duchamp’s last readymade!’

a red circle overlaps an identically sized pale blue circle screenprinted onto a black sheet of paper, a color swatch by alison knowles signed by marcel duchamp — Marcel Duchamp [& Alison Knowles], Color Swatch, 1968, screenprint, 7 ½ x 5 ¾ in., unique, selling at Christie’s in May 2026

When this little Duchamp was sold at Grisebach in 2016, it was, Untitled (from Coeurs Volants), and Alison Knowles was only listed in the provenance.

It’s a color test for the Something Else Press screenprint edition of Coeurs Volant, a collage Duchamp made for Christian Zervos which was printed on the cover of Cahiers d’Art in 1936. Printed and signed in the spring of 1968 before the Duchamps left New York for Spain, it turned out to be the last work Duchamp put out before his death on October 2nd. [Obviously there was Étant Donnés, and he did make some 3D drawings of a fireplace in the house in Cadaqués, but the point here is, on the ground in NYC, it seemed like his last work.]

this screenprint of marcel duchamp's coeurs volants, or flying hearts, is four unevenly sized spaced and cutout hearts set within each other asymmetrically in alternating red and blue, with the intent to reference an optically dynamic effect, if not to actually reproduce it, on black paper. this copy of this edition belonged to andy warhol, who probably bought it as soon as he heard duchamp had died. just a guess — Andy Warhol’s Marcel Duchamp Coeurs Volants, 1968, 24 x 18 in. framed? ed. 11/24, sold at Rago in 2022

Knowles worked at Something Else Press. On her website, here’s how Knowles described the work and told its story:

Coeurs Volants (Flying Hearts) (1967) ->
15 x 22″ Silk Screen on Black Coloraid Paper
Alphabet Edition of Twenty Four.
Color Swatch, 4 x 5″ Silk Screen on Black Coloraid Paper
by Alison Knowles signed by Marcel Duchamp.
Collection Wolfgang Feelisch, Remscheid

Through Daniel Spoerri, the Something Else Press arranged to meet Marcel Duchamp. This screen print was preceeded by a four by five color swatch showing two circles one red, one blue. He selected this color swatch one day while we are having tea at his tenth street apartment in New York. There were eleven color swatches, each showing blue and red circles but in different intensities. He selected one and lefted it out on table saying “Oh, that’s it.” I put the others in my brief case and we kept talking. Teeny Duchamp walked by the table, saw the color swatch and said “MARCEL, when did you do this?” He asked for a pencil, smiled and signed the color swatch. This color swatch was quickly framed and the rumor quickly spread through New York that we had Duchamp’s last readymade! I kept this little swatch for about a year and then sold it to a collecter in Remsheid. Richard Hamilton, to whom I gave a copy of a final print, called this work a piece of memorabilia, not a readymade. Duchamp died the following year but I am sure he would have agreed. I like the story very much because it describes the process as important as the product according to a master.

Which, a lot going on here, starting with Richard Hamilton of all people being kind of a bitch about Duchamp memorabilia, especially after getting a copy of the print. But they’re both not wrong, and I’m sure Duchamp would have approved of the mess.

I don’t think I’m so into Knowles’ takeaway from the story, though I am very interested in what she took away from the meeting, namely the other ten other color swatches that she made, and Duchamp touched but didn’t sign. That Duchamp memorabilia sets my heart aflutter.

But let’s put all that aside and conjure up in our minds the world inside the sentence, “the color swatch was quickly framed and the rumor quickly spread through New York that we had Duchamp’s last readymade!”

19 May 2026, Lot 143: Marcel Duchamp & Alison Knowles, Color Swatch, 1968 [?], est. $15-20,000 [christies]
Previously, related, and also from an auction in 2016: World’s Greatest Richter or World’s Greatest Non-Richter?

Marian’s Richter Goes Both Ways?

The main thing to point out is that the entire gerhard-richter.com website has been down for months, and there is no information about it. The website was always a project by/for/with collector/lawyer/facsimile object printer/eventual HENI founder Joe Hage. I’m sure there other people in Richterwelt–dealers, wives, kids, archivist/catalogue raisonné editors, studiovolk, foundations—with views about the website, and maybe even plans for it. In the mean time, there’s now a giant, website-shaped hole where exhaustive, open, authoritative information about the artist’s work, publications, exhibitions, and chronology used to be. [UPDATE: Somehow I missed Kenny Schachter’s April 14 column, where he mentions Hage taking the site offline in January, and pegs the whole thing to the introduction of David Zwirner to the mix. greg.org regrets being offline for even a day.]
[WEEKEND UPDATE: via Wayne Bremser‘s forensics, it looks like the website had a security breach sometime soon after Nov. 7 when I got Lobby Art images from it; Nov. 9 has a security notice, and the site’s been gone since.]

a rendering of a male figure with short dark hair dressed all in black standing with hands behind his back in a gallery space to show the scale of a 2-meter tall 1.4 meter wide squeegee painting by gerhard richter — Christie’s scale rendering of Marian Goodman’s 1995 Gerhard Richter painting, Poppies/Mohn [CR 830-1] in vertical orientation

Which means when Marian Goodman’s Richter paintings turn up for sale at Christie’s, there’s no easy way to research which way this incredible 1995 squeegee painting, Poppy/Mohn [CR 830-1], is supposed to go. Because Christie’s shows it in vertical orientation, with dimensions of 200 x 140 cm. And the essay talks about the artist meticulously balancing “the horizontal thrust of his squeegee with the vertical pull of his spatula,” and attacking “the left side of the canvas with verve, exposing myriad underlayers of vibrant pigment.” Which is what it seems we see.

a vertical image of the verso of gerhard richter's 1995 painting CR 830-1, with a lattice of stretcher bars, and 830-1 in the upper right corner and richter 1994 in the lower left corner, except that both of these are sideways, and designed to be read by rotating the canvas 90 degrees. via christie's — Gerhard Richter, Poppy/Mohn [CR 830-1], 1995, verso, via Christie’s

But then the verso is shown vertically, but not only has D-rings on the top and bottom [sic], it’s signed sideways. And that’s exactly how Marian hung it, rotated 90 degrees clockwise. With vertical thrusts and horizontal pulls? Does the way it was made determine the way it is hung? [By the time Corinna Belz filmed him in the studio, Richter was pushing, pulling, and squeegeeing in both directions.]

in the late marian goodman's well appointed home a supposedly vertically oriented gerhard richter squeegee painting hangs horizontally on a white wall above a small dark multidrawered chest, and all we know is the caption that says "alternate orientation," which, when has that been a thing? always? never? just for marian? we should not be learning about this kind of thing from an auction catalogue photo caption is my point — Gerhard Richter “(in an alternate orientation)” in Marian Goodman’s house, via Christie’s

And literally all Christie’s has to say about it is in the caption for the photo from Marian’s house, where it’s described as being “(in an alternate orientation).”

Which is where the artist’s website would come in, to clear things up. And so however he signed it, and however it hung for thirty years, on the Internet Archive Richter had this painting catalogued as vertical. There is no universe where I’m going to call out either Goodman or Richter for this. But I do think the implications of a bi-orientated squeegee painting at the dawn of the mature squeegee painting era have been seriously under-considered. And I am certain I’m not the only one around here who’s curious.

Previously, related, from 2010: The Gerhard Richter Website Reveals All. Almost All.

‘A granular texture and a gunmetal sheen’

a grey lithographed flag by jasper johns painted over 20 years later with a brushy wash in a different color grey, being sold at christies in 2026 — Jasper Johns, Flag, 1972/1994, carborundum wash over lithograph on paper, 17 1⁄8 x 23 3⁄8 inches, selling at Christies in May 2026

In 1974 collector Victor Ganz told Jasper Johns that a couple of prints had been damaged by a water leak. Johns said to send them, and he’d see what he could do. He then reworked them with gouache, pencil, and pastel into new, unique drawings. “Victor naturally called Johns to thank him, and when asked what he had been up to, Victor replied, ‘I am pouring water on all the other prints.’”

That story came from modern print dealer Susan Lorence, and it was included in Pepe Karmel’s essay for “Drawing Over,” a 2010 show of Johns’s overdrawn and overpainted prints at Castelli Gallery. [The gallery has a PDF of the catalogue.]

six flags heh by jasper johns installed in a row along a gallery wall at castelli gallery in 2010 — Six Flags: installation view of Jasper Johns: Drawing Over, at Castelli Gallery, Nov-Dec. 2010

Lorence’s Flag, above, was one of six reworked Flag lithograph proofs included in that show. Karmel explained the process, where, in 1994, Johns painted and drew over a set of proof prints from the upper stone from a 1972 lithograph, Two Flags, in a variety of mediums. Several, including Lorence’s were repainted with a corborundum wash, a material used in intaglio printing, that, like the graphite washes Johns used in the 1960s, had “a granular texture and a gunmetal sheen” that stood apart from the lithograph ink’s matte surface.

The other corborundum wash Flag in the show sold at Christie’s in 2016. I saw another one at Matthew Marks in 2024. Christie’s says Johns reworked seven 1972 Flags, though I don’t know if that’s the Castelli six plus one, or if they mean he did seven corborundum wash ones. They’re all in the CR, though, so you’ll have time to research it before the Contemporary Day Sale on May 21st. I’m just happy for the granular texture and the gunmetal sheen.

21 May 2026, Lot 429: Jasper Johns, Flag, 1972-94, est $1-1.5m [christies]

Untitled (USS Sturtevant), 2026

a conical silver vase with an undulating flat wide rim is engraved from the crew of the uss sturtevant, 30 june 1926. and is being sold at auction in tampa in may 2026, probably to be melted down. it is here presented as a work of art whose object will thus soon cease to exist. — Untitled (USS Sturtevant), 2026, engraved silver presentation trophy vase, 11.5 in. tall. photo via an auctioneer who believes in leaving the patina of neglect on

If I were ever in the navy, I would serve on the USS Sturtevant, just for the swag.

Then after three years of command and successful torpedo destroyer training maneuvers off the coast of Virginia, maybe my fine crew would present me with an engraved silver trophy vase like the one they gave Lt Cmdr Freeland Allyn Daubin at the end of his command, a hundred years ago this summer.

But alas, the USS Sturtevant is no more. While patrolling the waters off Key West in 1942, the Sturtevant hit a mine the US Navy had not disclosed to itself, exploded, and sank, killing fifteen.

This trophy vase is being sold by the heirs of an antique store owner in Tampa, and the uncertainty about the weight of its weighted base vs the 10, 15, or 20 troy ounces of silver the auctioneer speculates it might yield when it is melted down.

If I were to make it into an artwork, a found readymade that namechecked one of Duchamp’s great interrogators and one of my own heroes, and which turned out to have a previously undiscovered familial connection to lay alongside Sturtevant’s ex-husband Ira, who went on to sexually revolutionize the world by introducing his next partner Meg Crane’s home pregnancy test to market, we could lock in a more prolonged cultural appreciation, for this battered uterus diagram-shaped trophy vase, if not a greater market value.

But a genealogical search yields no apparent relation between the home pregnancy test/conceptual artist-divorcing Sturtevants of New York and New England and the family of Ensign Albert Dillon Sturtevant of Washington DC, after whom the destroyer was named. And my art practice is unlikely to produce a five-figure object in the next two weeks. So unless and until I end up having to repeat this vase in the future, this blog post will soon be the only thing holding this concept together, and this will be [yet] an[other] artwork whose object has ceased to exist.

The Wives of Genius Club

a top down photo of small flowers growing in dark soil: purple, red, pink/white, light blue, a 1992 work by felix gonzalez torres of alice b toklas and gertrude stein's grave, this img via christie's 2005 — “Untitled” (Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein’s Grave, Paris), 1992, ed. 1/4+1AP plus some other prints now considered non-work, but which are conceptually very fecund, this one sold at Christie’s in 2005

One of the great surprises in the exhibition catalogue for Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return)—which I brought up to curators Charlotte Ickes and Josh T. Franco in our conversation yesterday—is the essay by Joshua Chambers-Letson about Felix’s 1992 photo of flowers, “Untitled” (Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein’s Grave, Paris). Chambers-Letson discusses the work as portraiture, and in the context it’s traditionally been seen in, of “queer death, queer grief, and queer love.” But then pivoting to the work as an affirmation of queer life, he proceeds to expand on Stein and Toklas’ relationship as a complicated but revolutionary and rather boldly open example of queer companionship in a hostile world.

Chambers-Letson traces the contours of Stein & Toklas’ relationship IRL and in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Its queerness stands as “the open secret at the heart of the book” in which Stein places Toklas “among the ‘wives of genius.'”

And I Alley Oop

a vertically oriented orange painting has a three row comic strip in the center of the upper half, painted over in colors that obscure but roughly match the scenes underneath. jasper johns' alley oop was made for robert rauschenberg in 1958. — Jasper Johns, *Alley Oop*, 1958, oil on newsprint and paper on cardboard mounted on masonite, 23 1/4 x 18 in., selling from the collection of S.I. Newhouse at Christie’s on 18 May 2026

Some of the most amazing artworks in S.I. Newhouse’s collection are coming up for sale, and of the sixteen works at Christie’s next month, Jasper Johns’s Alley Oop is the one I’d place an insider petroleum futures trade about the reopening of the Straits of Hormuz for. Actually, no, but it is l0w-key the best, even among some greats.

the page from a color comic book showing the 22 june 1958 comic strip alley oop, four rows of panels in which a caveman in a fur loincloth discusses a time machine with a couple of older bougie white guys, mostly while sitting in various rooms of a house. via christie's — Christie’s has a cleaner image of the 22 Jun 1958 Alley Oop comic strip that Johns painted over than that guy who’s so mad about Lichtenstein. Johns also either reformatted the panels to fit his form, or had a version printed wider than this onw.

Though it is similar in form to Johns’s two Flag on Orange Field paintings that precede it, it’s based on an entirely different found image: a comic strip about ae thrown-out-of-time caveman named Alley Oop, collaged onto a piece of cardboard, and abstracted with gestural brushstrokes in oil.

The provenance is tight, not because it was in S.I.’s collection, but because Johns made it for Rauschenberg, and it stayed with him until Newhouse bought it in 1988. Rauschenberg sold his art collection to finance ROCI, his multi-year international initiative to foster cross-cultural understanding and appreciation of differences through art.

a 1958 comic strip about a shirtless caveman in modern times, reformated from four rows of panels to three to match the version jasper johns used in his painting alley oop — Alley Oop from 22 June 1958 reconfigured to match the 3-row layout Johns used. Newspapers regularly edited comic strips, so maybe this is how Johns found it? Or did he reconfigure it himself to make it more flag-shaped? Why not buy Alley Oop and have your conservators study it and see?

It was first seen in public in 1964, in Johns’s show at the Jewish Museum, but it is a painting for one person, or rather, for two. Jonathan D. Katz did important work tracing Alley Oop to comic strip references in two of Rauschenberg’s early combines made in 1954—Collection and Charlene—artworks that the artists lived with throughout their time together. Rauschenberg actually used three copies of the same comic strip, from multiple copies of the same day’s newspaper, in the two works. But the twist is, the comic was called Moon Mullins, and it used the original acrobat-related meaning of Alley Oop as a punchline about the reckless things a boy does to impress a girl.

Whatever its meaning—and Katz floats several possible queer theory-based interpretations as he maps out the context of these artists at this moment in their lives, and at this moment in their homophobic culture—Alley Oop was a reference Johns and Rauschenberg shared. It’s an example of the private language of couples that appeared in both of their work at a pivotal point in their practices, when such personal, autobiographical, and expressionistic content was supposedly stripped from their art.

It turns out it’s there, but it was just not meant for you, or me, or anyone else to recognize. And I love that for them.

Author: greg

Kinko’s Heritage Site

Richard Prince’s Ulysses Blue