Author: greg

Here are snapshots of On Kawara’s family attending Gerhard Richter’s New Year’s party.

They were included in, “From the Desk of Anne Rorimer: On, Anne, On,” an exhibition staged over a series of weekends in Apr-May 2024 in what looks like a student lounge at the University of Chicago. The material was taken down every night so it wouldn’t disappear. It was the fourth and final show of Longino, IAH, a curatorial project by post-war Japanese Art History graduate student Alan Longino. Longino’s idea was a show focused on an art historian, and Rorimer gamely opened her lifetime of files and correspondence, and archive of artist interactions to him.

More than most artists, Kawara’s work was so intertwined with the medium of interaction, correspondence, and daily activity, and the professional and personal ephemera give glimpses of life beyond the edges of his practice.

The identification of the snapshots was from Rorimer herself, who mentioned the exhibition and Longino in late June at Dia, where she and curator Jordan Carter discussed her work with Kawara and other Dia artists.

Rorimer began working with Kawara in 1979, when she included him in the 79th American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Judging by the age of Kawara’s daughter in the lower snapshot, the party would probably have been in the late 1980s. A more intrepid soul than I might deduce the year from the date formats of paintings produced around the holidays. Or it’s on that pink envelope. [update: which, that Sojourner Truth stamp was issued in 1986.] Or just ask Rorimer.

Of Longino, IAH, there is a text by Calvin Lee on Longino’s Google Drive, but the most thorough documentation of the show for the moment is Longino’s Instagram. I was stunned and saddened to learn Longino, 36 and at the very beginning of his career, passed away from cancer in July, barely a week after Rorimer & Carter’s conversation.

Longino, I.A.H. [longino-iah.com]
previously, related: I Hunted Butterflies

As an album Loose Nut may have been the middle of beginning of the end for classic Black Flag, but this Loose Nut skatedeck is an absolute banger of a kickoff for this auction of Raymond Pettibon Punk Era art and ephemera that David Platzker of Specific Object is throwing at LA Modern. [Technically at their Chicago affiliate, Wright 20. Online bidding goes through 22 August 2024.]

For one thing, it’s actually signed by Raymond Pettibon, which is a flex. But more importantly, it’s been used, ground to hell, in fact, with razor tail that eats into the Black Flag logo. Because if you’re gonna put art on a skatedeck, you should have the decency to skate on it.

There are four other skatedecks in the auction, a slew of t-shirts, and a ton of flyers and such.

Raymond Pettibon: The Punk Years, curated by Specific Object/David Platzker, 22 August 2024 at LAModern/Wright20 [wright20.com]

Add MoMA conservators to the list of people who did not, in fact, go into 2016 with an idyllic, carefree existence. For a glimpse of the drama and stress that befell them, I quote here from their 2017 article in Object Specialty Group Postprints [pdf], published annually by the American Institute for Conservation, on the conservation of Untitled (1976), an unfired mud sculpture by David Hammons, which had just been donated to the Museum by AC Hudgins and family:

The work was first exhibited in 2015 for MoMA’s exhibition Take an Object (fig. 3). Its deteriorated condition was already a concern to the curator, conservators, and registrar, so they had it installed under a custom Plexiglas bonnet. As the work was being deinstalled from the exhibition that a small clump of mud fell from the sculpture and landed on its base. This event, in addition to the work’s condition, led us to question its overall structural stability and basic conservation maintenance plan. So precarious was the
piece that the slightest vibration caused the cone to sway, creating a cloud of dust. Moreover, a large crack exposed an interior wooden dowel.

The report captures the history of caring for an unfired clay object; the considerations of treating an artwork vs. a cultural or religious artifact; the test replica-making process; and, most entertainingly, the fascinating challenge of working with a living artist who is perhaps best known for his disinterest in art world conventions. The title, “Do what’s right,” turns out to be the entirety of Hammons’ input to the Modern’s conservation team. I hope they put it on some tote bags.

Thanks to the gentle, offsite querying of Hudgins, a longtime Hammons friend and MoMA trustee, it was learned that Untitled was cast in a traffic cone. And as they theorized from studying their replica, yes, many of the black-eyed peas inserted into the soft mud had popped out soon after it dried.

To find out what conservators did with the fallen clumps and cracks, and to see photos of Untitled‘s new custom crate, read the report. The only spoiler I have to share is that not only is the Hammons on MoMA’s No Travel list, it is “currently one of only four sculptural works at MoMA that cannot be transferred to storage in Queens.” And now I wonder what the other three are.

“DO WHAT’S RIGHT”: THE CONSERVATION OF A DAVID HAMMONS MUD SCULPTURE, OSG Postprints, 2017 [culturalheritage.org]

Because the resulting work is dated 1990, I forget that the invitation by the National Gallery of Iceland to make a permanent public sculpture came in 1988, while Richard Serra was still in the throes of suing the US Government over the removal of Tilted Arc.

Anyway, I’ve been three times over the years to see Afangar, the series of nine pairs of basalt columns around the edge of Viðey Island in the harbor of Reyjkavik, and it works every time. Like the giant steel plates Serra installed in Qatar, the tops of the 18 columns are the same elevation around the edge, subtly marking the changes in topography.

And even though there are hundreds of them, somehow it’s been easier to see the sculpture in Iceland than to see the various prints Serra made of them. Of the five series and three prints, my favorites, in theory, are the tiniest ones, the Videy Afangar series, made on a series of deepcut, 4×6-in. copperplates. I say in theory because I think I’ve only ever seen the entire set of ten prints once, and never for sale, and have just spotted loosies online since, but never in person.

But the contrast between the scale of the image and its size, and the general monumentality of Serra, is really nice. They feel like they were taken straight from his sketchbooks.

If you ever get a chance to see Afangar in person, definitely do it, and if you ever have tips on seeing some related prints, definitely hmu.

All the Icelandic prints Serra made with Gemini in 1991 [nga.gov]
Richard Serra Icelandic prints, biggies only, at MoMA in 1991 [moma.org]

Looking up the details of the c.1972 interior of Kenneth Noland’s Manhattan apartment, photographed for Vogue by Horst—he’s not just for Twombly anymore!—which Condé Nast is monetizing the crap out of, badly, I have found the following:

It was called a loft, but those ceilings feel kind of low. It was designed by Chessy Rayner and Mica Ertegun, whose lighting concepts embody their unfathomably deep hatred of painting. Their main victim, the large spray painting over the sofa, is by Jules Olitski. It’s 1972, so of course there’s also a Morris Louis painting, also uplit by cans on the floor, but it’s really not legible here. Rounding out the Bennington theme, the sculpture is by Anthony Caro. Noland would have been on his third marriage. Cady would have been 16.

But that’s not important now. Because the Wikipedia article section on Kenneth Noland’s influence has one fact, and it is that “In 1984, US menswear designer Alexander Julian incorporated Noland’s designs and coloring in his knitwear.” The citation is a 1984 article from the NYT Magazine about patterned knitwear, which simply states, “Alexander Julian, long an admirer of Kenneth Noland’s work, interpreted the artist’s graphic linear patterns into more than one of his sweaters.”

As this crap screenshot clearly demonstrates, the legacy of Julian, like Noland, a North Carolina native, whose innovations are centered on color and textile, is poorly served by a largely black & white print media landscape. And the vintage clothing market dgaf; 80s/90s is more than close enough to sell to people who weren’t alive in the 1900s.

But scrubbing past the Monet, Klee, and Kandisky references in the woozy jazzy 2006 documentary short made by the Aldrich Museum [?] yields this screenshot of a saxe-playing mannequin in Julian’s house wearing what I think is the 1984 sweater from the Noland namecheck. Actually, no, that is not it, but it is close, and the colors are rather Nolandish. Also, isn’t that Inigo’s father?

Here is a 2015 Castelli show of period Nolands, c. 1976-80, which show his color story at the time. In a 1992 profile about his new spread in Ridgefield, Connecticut (thus the Aldrich) which I could only find via newspapers.com, Julian explains how he got friendly with Noland when they were neighbors somewhere, and Noland made him a “tie” of an offcut edge of painting. [Which, 1984 was also when Andy Warhol and Keith Haring called the trimmed edge of a painting to Sean Lennon as a birthday present a “tie,” according to Haring and his buddy Oswald.]

I feel like this could be resolved, but it will take some primary source intervention. Meanwhile, that 1984 Times article also says Perry Ellis’s entire collection was “a singular salute” to Sonia Delaunay, and I’m sorry, but I was an impressionable child in North Carolina at the time and spent every cent I had on a handknit Perry Ellis sweater that year, with two cables down the front, and it was just burgundy. So this Delaunay connection will have to be unpacked in another post.

[update: Thanks to art historian Alex Grimley, who identifies this tragically lit but otherwise gorgeous Olitski as Lavender Liner (1967), which Noland bought from Emmerich in 1968. Of particular relevance among the other writings on Grimley’s site is a link to his Brooklyn Rail review of a 2023 exhibition at Pace that included Noland’s Plaid paintings.]

In a way, that’s a good description of how we put the exhibition together. There are many interconnected parts creating multiple storylines, which I think is much more how most artists work or at least how I work. Interviews are more about answers, and art is at its most interesting when it’s opening up new and old questions.

Paul Stephens has a hard time getting past Christopher Wool’s text paintings, which came up precisely because they aren’t in Wool’s current show, See Stop Run, but his Bomb Magazine interview with the artist is still interesting.

One of the more interesting topics are the typeface-based abstract illustrations images Wool contributed to What Just Happend, Richard Hell’s 2023 book of poetry and writing. It’s one of several collaborations Wool and Hell have made, and relates to some of Wool’s ULAE prints going back almost a decade.

Yo, Bomb says See Stop Run goes until “the end of July,” the 31st, but the See Stop Run internet website says it ends the 28th. Don’t get stuck outside, ppl.

Christopher Wool by Paul Stephens [bombmagazine]
See Stop Run stops running July 28th, 2024 [seestoprun]
What Just Happened, 2023, from Winter Editions, is $20 [wintereditions]