Author: greg

Overpainted, Underhyped

Just WTEFAF? Look at this thing.

a 17th century Dutch portrait of a man's head turned 90 degrees counterclockwise, and overpainted with part of a maritime scene in which four small ships get tossed around to varying degrees. the overpainting makes it seem like the head is extending below the horizon, and white clouds billow in the overpainted sky "above" him. via simon dickinson's tefaf booth

Let’s stipulate that it is wild that objects survive for hundreds of years, so each one is a little miracle and marvel of its own. But how did this painting come to be, and how did it come to be in Simon Dickinson‘s booth at TEFAF?

At least I can understand how it showed up in front of me: artnet published a TEFAF highlights roundup, which pwlanier posted on tumblr. Tracking it down beyond that only turns up Dickinson’s press release, some instagram shoutouts, and a brief youtube video of Dickinson son Milo discussing the painting.

Basically, it’s a 17th century Dutch seascape painted over a slightly earlier 17th century Dutch portrait of an unidentified man. As artnet reports, the head was only uncovered after a recent cleaning. So for centuries, the painting had looked like a regular, little seascape, c. 1685-1690, which Dickinson attributes to Ludolf Backhuysen, Amsterdam’s leading marine painter at the time.

The cleaning also apparently revealed the seascape painter’s meticulous, intentional preservation of the portrait—which Dickinson attributes to Isaack Luttichuys, with a date of 1655-1660.

a 17th century painting of a dutch guy, turned upright, so now the seascape with waves and boats runs down the left third of the painting, overlapping part of his face and cheek. via simon dickinson and tefaf

I do not have the connoisseurial chops to raise any issue with the Dickinsons’ attributions; for what it’s worth—nothing—they look solid to me. Backhuysen was already a leading painter by 1665, receiving commissions from local burghers and studio visits from foreign kings. He was not scrimping, scavenging for a used panel to paint on in 1685. Luttichuys, a generation older, was well-known in Amsterdam as a portraitist, and he died well-known in 1673, presumably content in the belief that this and his many other portraits would survive him.

In Judith Benhamou’s video, Milo mentions that this surreal composition is exceptional, but that they’d seen some things like it, or kind of similar to it. And I guess it’s true that overpainting is extremely common in the history of paintings: fig leaves get added, draperies get touched up, windows get painted out. But reading through the 1995 catalogue of the National Gallery’s 17th Century Dutch painting [pdf], overpainting is equated with chasing fashion or botched restoration; it’s a scourge to be obliterated on the way back to a painting’s earlier, more authentic state.

And that is very clearly not what Backhuysen was up to when he painted on top of Luttichuys’s head, turning it into a darkened storm cloud that hovers over four civilian boats. Was it perhaps a philosophical gesture? A reference to the giant on the frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan [published in Latin in 1668]? Did it relate to the war in which William III of Orange set sail to seize the English throne from James, his father-in-law?

I guess I’m fine with not being able to know for sure. But I do wonder why we have to rely on the serendipity and close reading of a single gallery to discover incredible objects like this. I mean, TEFAF is good at surfacing rarities and lost masterpieces, but it still feels hermetic and almost random. What else are we missing?

About That Robert Irwin Documentary

I watched the Robert Irwin documentary, A Desert of Pure Feeling, and it is good. [It is currently on Kanopy for free, support your local public library.]

Some things stand out:

Irwin’s mystical-sounding development of his pursuit of perception was fascinating: posting up on Ibiza and not talking to anyone for eight months? wandering around the desert or whatever, painting dots for 16 hours/day, 7 days/wk? But he was not, in fact, alone in that pursuit. Some art world context would have been more helpful than repeating his refusal to allow his work to be photographed.

The Whitney installation was nice, but it felt somehow confusing, which is weird because there was even a real reinstallation of it, with footage and everything. The filmmakers did somehow manage to shoot other phenomenological aspects of other installations coherently.

Evelyn Hankins, who curated Irwin’s spectacular Hirshhorn retrospective, was thoughtful and present—but that show was somehow not, at all.

Which, wtf, the MCA San Diego’s masterpiece, 1° 2° 3° 4°, was done dirty here. Is it the ultimate “you had to be there” Irwin? Except for the Chinati building, which took up the last third of the film?

The dynamics of shooting and interviewing around Marfa and Chinati was weird. Marriane Stockebrand, the inviter, I guess, was everywhere, but Jennie Moore, the director who dragged that project across the finish line was airkissed in one crowd shot? Maybe that is #chinatiworldproblems, I guess I’ll demur. The weird caginess over whether he’d attend the 2016 ribboncutting was eerie, too; it made it sound like he died in production. [Spoiler: he stuck around for seven more years.]

For a documentary about perception and reproduction, it did shoot Irwin’s own dot paintings immaculately. But the shimmering moiré of halftone dots and pixels during pans across archival photos was hilariously distracting.

Seeing Arne Glimcher as a producer both makes sense and raises some flags, but how is that any different from anything the Glimchers have done all this time? It is what it is.

For such a singular thinker, who’d done so much work on his own mind and being, maybe give the film a title that reflects something he said, not just something he quoted?

David Diao, Barnett Newman, and Books

david diao painting of barnett newman's output is a wide red canvas, with years of newman's activity running along the left side in blue and the right side in yellow, echoing the composition of one of newman's last painting series. five columns of years, slowly ascending in height from left to right, have tallies next to the years for how many artworks newman produced, by category: drawings, paintings, sculpture, prints, and other. via greene naftali gallery
David Diao, Barnett Newman: Chronology of Work (Updated), 2010, acrylic & vinyl on canvas, 84 x 156 in., image via Greene Naftali

Speaking of books derived from Barnett Newman paintings and paintings derived from Barnett Newman books, David Diao’s got both. Barnett Newman: Chronology of Work (Updated), 2010 [above], turns Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue into an infographic tallying Newman’s output, as recorded in the artist’s catalogue raisonné.

a wide purple monochrome painting bisected vertically by an uneven and jagged white line, derived from a scan of the cracked and worn spine of david diao's copy of the 1966 sofcover catalogue of barnett newman's stations of the cross exhibition at the guggenheim museum, which is this same purple color. via greene naftali
David Diao, BN Spine (2), 2013, acrylic and silkscreen, 72 x 100 in., image via Greene Naftali

BN Spine (2), meanwhile, makes a zip from the cracked and worn spine of Diao’s copy of the 1966 Guggenheim catalogue for Newman’s Stations of the Cross. Diao worked as an installer on that show, and meeting Newman and his work had a foundational impact on Diao’s own project.

a purple cloth covered book with the name DIAO printed in black all caps near the center top.
David Diao, On Barnett Newman, 1991-2023, 2024, via Greene Naftali & Gregory P. Miller

After Diao’s 2023 show at Greene Naftali, the gallery and Gregory P. Miller published a catalogue about his decades-long engagement with Newman’s work.

Previously, related: just look at the David Diao tag.
But also: Diao’s 2013 talk on Newman for Dia’s Artists on Artists series

Oh, Barnett, We’re Really In It Now

two side by side versions of the same photo of a white guy in jeans and a tshirt with a jacket over his shoulder standing in front of barnett newman's voice of fire, an 18 foot tall painting of two dark blue fields flanking a central red one. the left shows the painting intact, as it is viewed at the national gallery of canada. the right is a proposal by greg allen to cut it up into variously sized sections for dispersal and marketability.
Study for Chop Shop Newman Painting Nos. 1 [L] and 2-6 [R], 2016

When I first made a modest proposal of cutting up Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, it was to make it more manageable to live with. I knew its purchase by the National Gallery of Canada in 1989 was controversial. When I suggested cutting it up to save it, though, I really did not have any idea of where the nihilist authoritarian government threat might come from:

So should Canadians ever face an arts crisis where, say a Taliban- or ayatollah-style regime takes over that is decidedly unsupportive of the kind of painting Newman practiced, I’d think cutting it down and dispersing the painting would be far better than burning it. Or bombing it, Buddhas-of-Bamiyan-style, out of existence.

When I actually did start cutting it up, in early 2016, as part of Chop Shop, it was a direct critique of the exploitative market machinations of Stefan Simchowitz. And again, who could have known where that year would end up?

a book with an entirely red cover, except for a very thin yellow line on the right edge.
Krisjan Gudmundsson, 200 Pages on Barnett Newman, 2001, 24 x 27 x 3 cm, ed. 100, via The Archive
Is Limited

Still, how is it only when I saw Kristjan Gudmundsson’s artist book, 200 Pages on Barnett Newman, THIS MONTH, that I finally computed the terrible implications of chopping up a Barnett Newman painting? Because Gudmundsson surely knew it in 2001 when he made the book.

Continue reading “Oh, Barnett, We’re Really In It Now”

Hi Bart, I Am Making A Stained Glass Window!

a detail of a stained glass window where two scenes are separated by thick arched bands of red and black, forming a v. on the left, two workers assemble a panel of stained glass in a workshop. it is upright and has the same scalloped design as this window. on the right, two other workers load the flat panel into a kiln. from a window of the martyrdom of st stephen at the basilica in saint quentin, in northern france, posted to wikipedia by jojomarg
Detail from a 13th-century window in the Basilica of Saint-Quentin depicting the creation of a stained-glass window in Middle Ages, posted to wikipedia by JojoMarg

Looking something up about the history of stained glass, I found this detail of a 13th century window of stained glass makers making the stained glass window, which,

marge simpson standing in front of a loom at a renn faire or something, looking back over her shoulder with a pleased look on her face, having just woven a tapestry that reads, "Hi bart i am weaving on a loom!" via acme archives direct, because rather than go with the cropped reddit version, i decided to post the full production cel that includes the 20th century fox seal and serial number of authenticity in the lower left corner.
an original production cel from The Simpsons, Season 6, ep 2F15, “Lisa’s Wedding,” via Acme [d’oh, sold]

l’Ottoman Necessaire d’Hermès

an hermes leather ottoman in cinnamon colored saddle leather is shaped like the world's chicest cooler, with a very slightly concave top, echoing the form of a saddle or a pringle. a rotatable leather handle is attached to the center of the short sides. spoiler alert, the entire leather top piece slides up and off to reveal the storage bin inside.

In January I was watching an Hermès making of video for something I don’t remember in the Necessaires d’Hermès collection, I think, and there were brief shots of this incredible-looking object. I scoured the website to figure out what it was, and it looks like it’s not available in the US, which serves us right, frankly.

screenshot of a pair of extremely well groomed white hands sliding the leather top of an hermes ottoman over the canvas twill storage bin inside. the bin sits in from the edge of the leather covered base, so that the leather top fits flush. two metal posts connect the base and the handle to either side, and the top has slits, not shown here, that slide down onto either side of the posts in an extremely well-fitted way, i'm sure.

But it turns out to be an ottoman, but it also has storage, and a handle. The whole top slides off, and it can hold a blanket, as these screenshots show. For something that doesn’t seem that capacious or actually portable, it sure is beautiful. I will keep it in the necessaires column.

well-groomed white hands of a person with thigh gap lowering a saffron colored wool blanket into the leather trimmed storage bin of an hermes ottoman.

Weirdly, the ottoman gets kind of lost or ignored in the Salone 2013 debut of Philippe Nigro’s capsule collection, les Necessaires d’Hermès.

OK, it was a Necessaires video, which is on the product page, and I had to have been watching it for the Groom wardrobe stand, or the Long Bench, a name which loses the sense of the French: Cheval d’Arçon, pommel horse.

Les Necessaires d’Hermes Ottoman, by Philippe Nigro, $CA19,100 [hermes]

Caillebotte: Painting Men [And Dog]

the getty's alt text for this gustave caillebotte painting is three lean, shirtless men scrape away the finish off of a studio floor
Gustave Caillebotte said shirtless workers’ rights: The Floor Scrapers, 1875, collection: Musée d’Orsay

Fellas, is it gay to depict athletic male bodies in form-revealing outfits in suggestive work that makes room for a desiring gaze that is not necessarily male or heterosexual? Is the question not quite asked and not not answered by the Gustave Caillebotte retrospective that has come from the Musée d’Orsay to the Getty. William Poundstone has a rundown of the LA version of the show, its premise, shifting titles—Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men is the Getty’s low-key hilarious variation—and the wall text I paraphrased in the first sentence.

caillebotte's painting of his family's grey whippet or whatever, a thin, short haired dog sitting up, with its front legs extended, its rear legs pulled in, on a carpet of red, green and some blue brushstrokes, in which some pattern, or border, can be barely discerned, it's almost an abstract painting of the kind monet would make in years to come, plus a dog, plus the dog's name, paul, painted into the upper right corner, all in a gilt frame
Gustave Caillebotte, le Chien Paul, c. 1886, 65 x 54 cm

What’s important is, the show also includes Caillebotte’s second best painting of a floor: his 1886 portrait of his dog Paul on a Persian rug, that didn’t sell in London a little while back.

Gustave Caillebotte: “Painting Men” [lacmaonfire s/o bremser]
Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men is at the Getty through May 2025 [getty.edu]

Vija Celmins Postcard

vija celmins collage of a black and white photo of the moon's surface, with some grid lines along the bottom and right, atop a photo postcard of what seems to be the moon, which peeks through a hole in the moonscape that corresponds exactly to a collaged photo of a round rock? or is it the surface the sea, on which a penguin is flapping its wings? which is offset to reveal the moon. celmins sent this to collage artist wallace berman in 1969, and it was in a 2019 show at matthew marks gallery
Vija Celmins, postcard inscribed “to Mr. Wallace Berman,” collage, 1969, 11×15 cm, via Matthew Marks Gallery

The day after humans landed on the moon, Vija Celmins collaged a photo of a penguin on a rock onto a photo of the lunar surface, onto a postcard of the moon, and she sent it to Wallace Berman.

According to the catalogue for the latest of Matthew Marks Gallery’s 100 Drawings exhibitions, held in 2019, Celmins had reached out to Berman to compliment his 1968 show at LACMA.

But that show ran from April-June, and the entire message on the back of this card was, “Cheers.” So this was not about that. It was just a, “Hey, penguin on the moon!” collage sent to a collage artist who was close to the hallucinatory witches shadowing JPL. Can you even imagine? I cannot.

The Light String Going On And Off

a screenshot of kriston capps instgagram of a felix gonzalez torres lightstring hanging from the ceiling and pooling on the wooden floor of the national portrait gallery, with the toplit line of white wrapped candy against the white wall behind it, with the caption "the most peaceful/paintful experience you will find in the district today is always to return at the national portrait gallery. felix gonzalez-torres is the guide you need right now. the guide we need. find my review in artforum this month. and a comment by gregdotorg, me, "they turned it off!"
screenshot of Kriston Capps’ IG of an installation photo from the National Portrait Gallery of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ light string work, “Untitled” (Leaves of Grass), turned off. photo: Matailong Du/NPG

As my comment on Kriston Capps’ insta shows, it’s somehow always a surprise to see a Felix Gonzalez-Torres light string with the lights off. My reaction led Kriston to doublecheck with the National Portrait Gallery whether it’d been OK to post [tl;dr it was, but hold on], and it sent me looking for more.

a black and white 1992 installation photo of andrea rosen gallery in soho includes one gonzalez torres light string, lit up and swagged across the concrete beam ceiling and stretching down the right wall, and another hanging in the right corner, turned off. from the felix gonzalez torres foundation
“Untitled” (Toronto) [on] and “Untitled” (Miami) [off], installed in 1992 at Andrea Rosen Gallery, image via FG-T Foundation

Of course, it goes back to the beginning, where they were shown on and off, side by side. Gonzalez-Torres’ whole point of his works was that the owner [or exhibitor] was to decide how to display them, and that includes whether to turn them on. The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation has photos of an unlit “Untitled” (Tim Hotel), 1992, in a collector’s home, which feels like the normal, private state. Maybe it gets turned on for company, which raises the question of public vs. private presentation as well as space.

Because obviously, they look the sexiest when they’re on, and it’s understandable for curators of public exhibitions to want that glow. But that allure also underscores the impact and importance of seeing them turned off sometimes.

Continue reading “The Light String Going On And Off”

Dominique de Menil’s Cousin Hung Their Rothko Upside Down

the black and white limestone tile of the stair hall in pierre and sao schlumberger's parisian mansion was photographed by horst to show its decoration, the white painted swagged console flanked by two white upholstered and painted fauteuils were arranged under an upside down rothko painting in red, black, orange, and brown. in the back of the space, under the curve of the stone staircase, a vertical ad reinhardt painting of dark blues hung in shadow. the intense spot of light on the base of the stairs indicates a glass door just out of the photo on the right. via collector walls instagram, but originally from vogue 1974
1974 Horst photo for Condé Nast of Pierre & São Schlumberger’s house in Paris, where they hung Rothko’s No. 21 (Red, Brown, Black, Orange), 1951 (but dated 1953), upside down. via ig/collectorwalls

Speaking of hanging paintings upside down, a few days ago Claudio Santambrogio shared a link to a Sotheby’s Magazine story by Lucas Oliver Mill about a Franz Kline that Cy Twombly’s brother-in-law had hung upside down. In it he mentioned Pierre & Sã0 Schlumberger “famously [hanging] their Rothko upside down in the entryway of their Paris home out of pure preference.”

Which sounds like new information from last July, when Mill posted Horst’s photos of the Schlumbergers’ hall on his Instagram @collectorwalls. Then it wasn’t famously, but “Curiously,” and it was unclear if the inversion was “by personal choice or perhaps by mistake.”

Well, when Horst shot their house for Vogue in 1974, the Schlumbergers were the life of the party in Paris; São was the biggest single customer of couture in the world; and in 2014, Sotheby’s liquidated their estate, including the Rothko. So no one in that crowd was going to say the Rothko hang was anything but a masterful decorating gambit, sir.

Continue reading “Dominique de Menil’s Cousin Hung Their Rothko Upside Down”

Phone It In, Vol. 1: an Art Writing Mixtape

Thanks to everyone who called in, and who shared the word about this little audio experiment, which I’ve called an anthology, a compilation, and now a mixtape. Phone It In, Vol. 1 [mp3] is also a reading list, with sources and links to the included quotes. As you’ll see from the playlist below, there are some classics, some fresh finds, and even a breaking news story.

Whatever it is, if you come across some art-related writing that sticks with you for whatever reason, please call and share a bit of it at 34-SOUVENIR, and I’ll bundle those up, too, and put them out here.

As I was putting the tracks together, I discovered that when I first downloaded the calls, I’d accidentally overwritten Carolina Miranda’s call over everyone who called after her. And for a minute I thought, her call is such a mic drop, I really should just go with that. Instead, I moved it to the end, one of the only chronological shifts in the compilation. [Miranda’s cold open is a lol clapback to my voicemail greeting, which I shortened from a full explanation of the project to “Whadja find??”]

Miranda’s quote, from Annie-B Parson, really laid bare the unspoken essence of what I was hoping for here: not just favorite line, or a moment of memorable or powerful writing, but something that you read now that had an impact now.

It feels like an impossible ask, or at least a daunting one, but I really wanted to hear examples, even snippets, where art-related writing mattered in this dire af moment. I think everyone came through, and I am psyched and grateful.

Play or download Phone It In, Vol. 1, an art writing mixtape from greg.org [mp3, 7.4 mb, 15:20]

Continue reading “Phone It In, Vol. 1: an Art Writing Mixtape”

This Is The Time To Hang Your Johns Flags Upside Down

an installation view of three jasper johns flag paintings on a white wall with a dark floor, from a 2018 show at the broad collection in los angeles, but each painting has been turned upside down. original image by eugenio rodriquez via artforum
altered installation photo of upside down flag paintings from The Broad’s 2018 exhibition, “Something Resembling Truth,” original image by Eugenio Rodriguez, via artforum

When I first thought of it, it was still within the framework that has dominated art critical discussion of Jasper Johns’ work since the beginning: Is it an upside down flag painting or a painting of an upside down flag?

But this is not the moment for glib rhetorical dualities. Right now an upside down flag does not have to be either “a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property” or a political protest. With active attacks on democratic institutions and the rule of law under the US Constitution, it can be and must be, unfortunately, both.

Continue reading “This Is The Time To Hang Your Johns Flags Upside Down”

Cy Twombly—Rainer Speck at Maison D’Art

a nearly empty off white title page of an exhibition catalogue has cy twombly printed in very very small letters in the upper center, and "To Rainer, Cy T" written by hand by the artist. from the collection of rainer speck at maison d'art in los angeles in feb-may 2025
the signed title page of Rainer Speck’s copy of the 1987 exhibition catalogue for Cy Twombly Series Sobre
Paper 1959-1987, which traveled from Bonn to Fondació la Caixa. image: Maison D’Art

I’ve been hearing about it from people in LA and seeing it on various instagrams, and the Maison D’Art exhibition of Dr. Rainer Speck’s collection and correspondence with Cy Twombly sounds like an absolute winner. It runs through May; I bought the little catalogue instantly.

Speck rolled up on Twombly in Rome in 1970 as a young collector, and the two kept in touch:

A selection of letters from Twombly to Speck is the foundation of this project. For Speck, the thrill of collecting lies in interrogating the ways that art, reading, and writing influence one another; these letters are a personal manifestation of this interest. In placing these letters alongside the ephemera and artworks they discuss, this exhibition and its publication strive to materialize these conversations and to create a tangible transcript of their relationship.

With their layers of text and imagery, Twombly’s works function as another kind of transcript, merging poetic and painterly elements and creating subtle visual palimpsests. Twombly’s works evoke the literary, mythical, and historical worlds of Western culture and interweave them with his abstract gestures and contemporary reflections. These works reveal Twombly’s artistic depth and highlight the integral role of language and literature to his process—a pursuit that resonates with Speck’s devotion to literature.

This relationship between drawing and writing, art and poetry, is an endlessly rewarding way into Twombly’s work. Poet Dean Rader talked about this last year at the Nicola del Roscio Foundation; and Tacita Dean spent part of her night in the Menil’s Twombly Pavilion trying to replicate words from his paintings. As with his photographs, bringing Twombly’s letters and books into consideration of his project feels long overdue.

NGL, the way the jpg above was cropped in my browser left me reeling as I imagined Twombly breaking out his sickest, most stripped back letterhead to write Speck the most stripped back letter: “To Rainer, Cy T.” But it turns out to be the title page dedication of an exhibition catalogue. Which is still great, but it does mean I don’t have to jump on a plane to LA this second; I can plan a little.

Cy Twombly—Reiner Speck: Fragments of an Adoration, curated by Donald Ryan and Sabine Schiffer, is at Maison D’Art in LA through 24 May [maisondart]