greg – Page 2 – greg.org

DH ATL 45 RPM FTW

Over the years as I’ve kept coming across David Hammons works, old and new, which hadn’t been publicly known, I try looking again for any info on one of his major public works—which also nobody knew.

In 1979 Hammons was one of a group of artists commissioned to make work for the big new airport under construction in Atlanta. Here is how ATL Airport Art describes it:

The initiative to display artworks at ATL originated in 1979, when the Domestic Terminal was constructed during Maynard Jackson’s first term as Mayor of Atlanta. In 1979-1980, the Airport commissioned and installed large-scale, permanent artworks by Curtis Patterson, David Hammons, Lynda Benglis, Benny Andrews, Sam Gilliam and others. The Airport received its first of two Governor’s Awards for the Arts for this series of commissions, but an ongoing program was not instituted and the artworks were not maintained.

Benny Andrews’ chronology says he made a 95-ft mural, as did 13 other artists. Indeed, here is a 35mm slide showing Benglis’s giant mural. But Patterson’s website includes a large bronze relief. [Two, actually; he made another after the first got remodeled out of place.] And the project has five folders in Gilliam’s archive. But I’ve never been able to find a photo or even a description of Hammons’ work, or news of its status. [Though I think now the Airport Art site makes it pretty clear these early works are gone.]

But then reading Dr. Kellie Jones’ 1986 interview with Hammons again for the Mandela piece, which does still exist in Atlanta, I realized she’d asked him about it. [Of course she did.]

KJ: You did pieces for a while that had dowels with hair and pieces of records on them. Like the piece you did for the Atlanta Airport. 

DH: Those pieces were all about making sure the black viewer had a reflection on himself in the work. White viewers have to look at someone else’s culture in those pieces and see very little of themselves in it. Like looking at American Indian art or Egyptian art—you can try to fit yourself in it but it really doesn’t work. And that’s the beauty of looking at art from other cultures, that they’re not mirror reflections of your art. But in this country, if your art doesn’t reflect the status quo, well then you can forget it, financially and otherwise. I’ve always thought artists should concentrate on going against any kind of order, but here in New York, more than anywhere else, I don’t see any of that gut. It’s so hard to live in this city. The rent is so high, your shelter and eating, those necessities are so difficult, that’s what keeps the artist from being that maverick. 

So dowels, records, and hair? You mean like the extraordinary sculpture that just turned up at Christie’s this month? Untitled (Flight Fantasy) is from 1978, and is made of spindly bamboo reeds piercing a broken record filled like a taco with unfired Georgia clay. It is on view right now.

a david hammons sculpture from 1978, untitled (flight fantasy) hangs on a white wall. two halves of a broken record form an arc , filled like a taco with unfired georgia clay. the edges of the records have been drilled, and long thin bamboo reeds passed through. the reeds curve down at the ends from their own weight. thin curved wedges of record, like leaves or feathers, sprout from the center of the record taco, and others hang from the ends of the reeds. tiny tufts of black hair and colorful wound thread punctuate the reeds. two small dark discs on either side of the records give the hint of eyes, as in a ceremonial mask. this gorgeous and fragil looking work is at christies in ny in nov 2024 — David Hammons, *Untitled (Flight Fantasy)*, 1978, bamboo, Georgia clay, record fragments, plaster, colored string and hair, 22 x 60 x 9 in., selling 21 Nov 2024 at Christie’s

This sculpture has been in the same collection since it was made. It’s very domestically scaled, and I am having a hard time imagining how it would scale up for an airport. And I’m having a hard time imagining how something so fugitive and delicate would survive in what soon became the world’s busiest airport. On the other hand, given what we know about the conservation of unfired clay, I’m having an easy time imagining why it’d longer exist.

21 Nov 2024, Lot 7B: David Hammons, Untitled (Flight Fantasy), 1978, est. $2-3m [update: sold for $3,922,000] [christies]
Previously, related: David Hammons’ Free Nelson Mandela is in Atlanta, Y’allhttps://greg.org/archive/2024/08/08/what-happens-in-midtown.html

Glenn Ligon Rubbing

I’ve listened to a couple of interesting interviews now where Glenn Ligon talks about Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place, the show he’s organized of his work and the collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Now it turns out there’s a benefit print for the show.

a glenn ligon print of a carbon and graphite rubbing made on kozo (mulberry) paper of the surface of a glenn ligon painting, which is comprised of repeated stencilings of a text by james baldwin. which is all good to know, but the print of the rubbing drawing is even more illegible than the thickest parts of the painting, with just forms of some letters coming through. the print is set in a very sleek and stylish but not overly fussy black folder, which they call a wallet, which appears to have a small disk magnet closure. it is available for sale at the website where i ganked this image, curating cambridge dot co dot uk — Glenn Ligon, *Untitled*, 2024, digital pigment print on Hahnemulhe, 41.9 x 30.5 cm, ed. 30+15AP via curatingcambridge.co.uk

It’s a digital print based on one of his recent drawings he calls Kozo Drawings on his site, after the kind of paper (mulberry). In the edition description, they’re explained as frottage, graphite rubbings Ligon made of the craggy surface of his own paintings. In this case, it’s a painting of a text from James Baldwin.

this carbon and graphite rubbing, which glenn ligon calls a kozo drawing because of the textured mulberry paper used for it, is vertically oriented, and shows the faint outlines of a stenciled text, almost enough to make you want to make out the words, not just the letters. a dark smudge obscures the left side of the three central rows. the size is 18 x 12 inches, it is untitled, but numbered (10), from 2023, and is on the fainter, more legible end of the series, it seems. it is not the one used for the fitzwilliam print tho — For example: Glenn Ligon, *Untitled #10*, 2023, carbon and graphite on Kozo paper, 18 x 12 in., via glennligonstudio

There’s something interesting about Ligon adding another layer to the mediation of his text pictures, particularly when it depends on their [also] being an object. Then there’s something else when the rough, fragile, abradedd sheet is translated to an ultrasmooth print. It feels almost like a facsimile. [And speaking of which, I can’t lie, as interesting as the print and drawings are, it was the sleek black envelope the print ships in that pushed me over the blogging edge. I’ve been making janky versions for Facsimile Objects, and this looks so much sleeker.]

Ironically, the prints were produced at Griffin in NYC, but now will ship from the UK. All for a good cause, though.

Glenn Ligon, Untitled, 2024 Limited Edition Print, GBP 1200 or so [curatingcambridge.co.uk via ig/@glennligon]

What Might Cady Noland Be Up To?

Looks like more writeups of the Cady Noland installation at Glenstone are turning up—and more images of it are getting out. Ian Ware at 202 Arts Review has apparently found the same stash of Noland photos online—though he is more assiduous in his image copyright crediting than I was.

And that’s all reason enough to rejoice. But beyond that, Ware has a very interesting, site-specific take on Noland’s take on her works’ new home. He finds a relationship between the temporary walls Noland erected to block a distracting view of the museum’s pond, and the museum’s own temporary walls blocking off the building’s renovations.

He also sees in Noland’s alterations and additions to the installation a critique of the Raleses and their multibillion-dollar project. Here he draws on the larger context of the Raleses’ business dealings and Glenstone’s construction–and the lawsuits with its contractor that precipitated the current closure and renovations of the new museum building—and even some of the lurid investment shenanigans by the contractor’s family—a local real estate dynasty, apparently—that “may as well have been written for a tabloid delivered straight to Noland’s doorstep.”

What feels more resonant—and which I think takes more properly into consideration the involvement of Emily Wei Rales, in curating, collecting, and institution-building—is the exhibition of Noland’s work alongside the text collages of Lorraine O’Grady and the powerful sculptures of Melvin Edwards.

As someone who’s watched the Raleses develop their vision from various vantage points, I feel like they’ve been thoughtful to iterate away from the narrow trophyism of, say, the Fisher and Broad collections. The collecting path from Split/Rocker did not have to lead to Noland, or O’Grady, or Edwards, but here they are. If they do take a couple of hits from an artist they think is significant, I imagine they’d be undaunted, maybe even appreciative. Their venture faces more credibility risk from privileging artists’ approbation than from accommodating their critiques.

But this gets to the crux of Noland’s work today, when the poisonous forces of media, politics and power have outstripped everything she flagged back in the day. Can her new work make a similar impact to her earlier hits? Is that even something she considers? Or does the proliferation of objects trapped and neutralized in acrylic blocks, perched on industrial logistics flotsam target a new, contemporary source of dread we’re still too asleep to realize? And does this luxuriously contemplative installation help us to see, or does it sedate us?

The House is (Still) on Fire, But There’s a Cady Noland Show to See. [202artsreview]

No, Clyfford Still Only Threatened To Exhibit A Blank Canvas

John Perreault recounted the story in his 2005 review of Mike Bidlo’s Erased de Kooning Drawings show, but I think he got it from Robert Rosenblum’s catalogue essay, who got it from Bidlo himself: that Clyfford Still once submitted a blank canvas to a museum group show out of spite, and then Bidlo did it out of homage. Here is how Bidlo explained it to Rosenblum in 2003, in Artforum:

RR: And didn’t you also do some kind of performance/installation piece about a mythical Clyfford Still?

MB: Oh yeah, that was the show curated by Alan Jones. The piece was based on the time Clyfford Still was asked to take part in a museum exhibition of regional work from California. Still claimed he didn’t want to compete with other artists, so he suggested that his contribution be a six-by-ten-foot unprimed canvas. I found this story in the Metropolitan Museum’s Clyfford Still catalogue. The idea of the blank canvas fascinated me. So many other artists have used blank canvases to make aesthetic statements, but Still’s gesture seemed to be the most nihilistic, a true act of anti-art. When we installed the piece in the Philippe Briet Gallery in SoHo, I included the text from the catalogue in a frame next to the painting.

I couldn’t find the Met’s Still catalogue, but Rosenblum did, and said the show was a group show of large-scale drawing at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, in 1949, and that Still sent a, “6-by-10-foot canvas blank as the fabric comes from the factory.”

But there is an earlier source for that quote, and it sounds like neither Bidlo nor Rosenblum knew of it, because it did not exactly go down that way.

It’s a letter Still wrote to Mark Rothko, a transcription of which is in the library of the Still Museum in Denver. [pdf] The letter is from December 1949, and includes a reference to “two days ago.” But there is also a “postcript” in which Still mentions repeating the tale “years later.” So did the show happen in 1950, or sometime closer to his arrival at the California School of Fine Arts in 1946?

Most of the story is Still mocking his colleagues’ efforts to supply a large drawing to the show, while refusing the invitation himself. Still didn’t show a blank canvas; he only threatened to:

Two days ago after a very sumptuous dinner at the Curator’s, the issue was revived. “All the show needs is a drawing by you, Clyff. That will really put it over. How about it, Clyff. Just a nice big drawing.”

“O.K. I’II give you a picture. After alI, this show to an artist of integrity can only be a gesture. Since it is made for a museum program, I will give you my gesture, my respect for the public art gallery working in these terms. I will give you my contempt for the whole business: a 6 x 10 foot canvas blank as the fabric comes from the factory.”

The matter was not mentioned again.

I don’t quite get how the postscript timing works—

Postscript: I told the story years later to Ed Cahill in New York City. He said, “I would have taken you up on that and hung your canvas.” I repIied, “I know you would have, Ed. That is why I wouldn’t have made even that offer to you.”

—but there are letters in the Still Archives from 1954 where Still refuses Cahill and Dorothy Miller’s group show invites more graciously.

For his part, Bidlo was happy to contribute to a group show, which was titled, improbably “Clyfford Still: A Dialogue.” It was organized in October 1990, and Roberta Smith described Bidlo’s massive blank canvas as, “mostly as an accessory to a story of Still’s megalomania told in an accompanying wall label.” The fate of Bidlo’s Not Still is unknown to me at present.

Oh, Walter de Maria’s Africa Lithograph for Hommage à Picasso, We’re Really In It Now

After Picasso died in 1973, publishers in Berlin and Rome decided to capture the moment with a sprawling print portfolio project, Hommage à Picasso. It included 69 artists in six boxed volumes in red linen. Even though many of the 58 artists in the initial five volumes were Americans, there was also a separate 11-artist volume for America’s Hommage à Picasso—which included two works too big to fit in the box. There were also three artworks delivered in matching linen-covered tubes.

It’s really all over the place, and Hommage à Picasso‘s most accurate embodiment of Picasso’s influence on the 20th century art world is that it was almost entirely men (66), almost entirely white (65), and the portfolios that didn’t go to museums have often been broken up and stripped for parts. [Sotheby’s had a complete set in 2017, and Wettman sold a 54/58ths Hommage last May, with a complete America’s Hommage sold separately.]

The only reason I mention any of this is because in 1974, Walter de Maria was at Virginia Dwan’s ranch, working on the first version of Lightning Field. And I can only imagine him taking a break from precisely driving stainless steel spikes into New Mexico soil to make his contribution for America’s Hommage à Picasso portfolio:

Walter de Maria, *Untitled (from America’s Hommage à Picasso)*, 1974, published 1975, lithograph on 30 x 22 in. sheet, this is Dorothy Miller’s proof at MoMA, but Stair has another AP rn

In a more just world, this would be the most famous work of art of age. In an actually just world, though, it would never have existed.

20 Nov 2024, lot 368: Walter de Maria, Africa-Picasso [sic], est. $500-700 [update: sold for just $400!] [stair]

The Little Prince

a 14 x 11 in painting by richard prince floats in a plain white frame. on a monochrome kelly green surface, a joke is screenprinted somewhat jankily in pale pink ink: you know i was up there in prison talking to charlie manson and he says to me, he says, is it hot in here or am i crazy? selling at christies in nov 2024 — *Untitled*, 1992, 14 x 11 in., acrylic & silkscreen on canvas, selling this month at Christie’s

Over the years, I’ve tried making some myself and used them as references for other works. Nothing profound to say here, I just really, really like Richard Prince’s little joke paintings.

a richard prince painting, 14x11 inches, is painted all over in brushy bright yellow, with splotches of green peeking through from underneath, like a change of plans or a correction. a joke is screenprinted on the center in dark purply black ink: my mother and father keep fighting. they rand and they rave and they shout. who is your father somebody asked. that's what they're fighting about.
I think this one sold at sotheby's a while back, but these little paintings were originally shown at john mcwhinnie's rare book gallery in the 1990s. rip — I mean, they’re like trading cards

They also do remind me of John McWhinnie, who showed them, and was amazing, who always had discoveries, and is gone, which sucks. So maybe it’s weird that a monochrome joke painting can also be mournful, but here we are.

22 Nov 2024 Lot 811: Richard Prince, Untitled, 1992, est. $100-150K [update: sold for $296,000] [christies]

Cady Loan’d

Alex Greenberg not only has a review of Glenstone’s Cady Noland exhibition, he breaks news about it. And he not only breaks news about it, HE HAS PICTURES. Run, click, don’t walk. I’ll wait.

OK, while I think he’s kind of overinterpreted the transgressive unavailability of those black palettes Noland has added to the room otherwise filled by the contents of the artist’s Gagosian show last year, Greenberger is right to notice the slipperiness of the exhibition checklist. There are objects that are on the map, but not on the works list. The stacked palettes are an “element” in this category, and so is another stack of aluminum objects—which turns out to be a 2024 work “on loan” from the artist [scare quotes in the original].

It’s been almost three weeks, and they have not “corrected” their information, and the Glenstone folks get a little coy when Greenberger asks if they will. Now Glenstone is a professionally run and thoughtful institution where the impact of subtle detail is not unappreciated. This incompleteness, this inaccuracy, is part of the encounter; this disconnect between what you see and what you’re told is part of the experience.

clip-on man is a 1989 work by cady noland depicting a cropped photo of a wild drunk middle aged white guy in a dark suit with empty six pack rings clipped to his belt, a beer in his hand, and one left dangling in front of his crotch. the image is screenprinted in black on an aluminum panel, while a grid like a flimsy set of strainer bars sticks out on the right side, roughly forming a square. the work sits on a wood floor and leans against a white wall. the pic is via gagosian but the work is currently on loan from the artist [shhhh] to glenstone. the photo is by a guy named charles gatewood; he took it at mardi gras in the early 70s — Cady Noland, *Clip-On Man*, 1989 screenprint on aluminum, image: Gagosian via Beach Pkg c. 2017

Let me add another piece of info in turn, which I don’t know whether to believe myself, but that fits: Clip-On Man, the 1989 work at the pavilions’ entrance, listed as being from a “private collection,” is also a loan from the artist.

In 2017, Beach Packaging Design blogged about Clip-On Man and the source of Noland’s deranged image: Sidetripping, a gonzo street photography book by Charles Gatewood, with a text hustled from William Burroughs, published in 1975 [hey, the same year as that Joan Didion speech!]

I read Sidetripping at Glenstone last time I was there, sitting on Martin Puryear’s elegant bench, facing a tastefully manicured wilderness. Gatewood revels in the underbelly of New Orleans as a degraded destination of American freakdom. Burroughs’ text is a highly baked, freeform riff on the photos, which Gatewood put in front of him while working on assignment for Rolling Stone. In subject, luridness, and bleakness, it felt like a touchstone for Noland’s entire project, if not a straight-up Rosetta Stone. I can see why she’d put that at the entrance of her show. [And name her previous show after it, and her book.]

a heavily patinated galvanized metal milk crate, square with solid sides and open handles on all four sides, via atlanta auctions

[NEXT DAY UPDATE: I went back to Glenstone today to see this shiny stack I’d seen before, now disclosed to be a new work from the artist. This Pinkerton’s crate situation is a bit overdetermined, I think. There are actually two similar crates of stamped, galvanized sheet metal in the gallery, each with the name of a different regional dairy, and each threatening the involvement of the Pinkerton’s if you steal it. One looks like this, complete but very vintage. The one Alex says was cast certainly has a pristine finish. It could be sandblasted or remade, for sure. I did find a picture of the previously unacknowledged work on the internet:

a pyramidal stack of three shiny silver metal objects, two pallets of one half the size of the other, and of slightly different construction, topped by a solid-sided stamped metal milk crate embossed with the name of miss georgia, a local dairy, and a threat that the crate is being guarded by the pinkertons, this is an untitled work from 2024 by cady noland, loaned without announcement to her installation at glenstone in potomac maryland. next to it in a square plexi bos are a cast aluminum george washington and horse, part of another sculpture nearby. behind it a nestable black plastic pallet sits on a square black vinyl mat on the whole field of light grey terrazzo flooring. this picture was found on the internet — a previously unacknowledged untitled artwork from 2024 by Cady Noland, seen in an uncredited photo found on the internet, also showing a pallet whose auratic status has yet to be disclosed.

That middle pallet is the one with the Amazon ASIN sticker still on it: the Vestil AP-ST-2424-SB, currently listed on AMZN as unavailable, though it can be easily found on other retail sites.

Speaking of Amazon and pallets, that black pallet in the background is of the type also mentioned in Alex’s review. It, too, is findable online, though maybe you need a commercial account to purchase it. I think the “violation of state law” thing is, like the Pinkerton’s warning, a boilerplate assertion of ownership for property that circulates unattended on these mean streets. A cattle brand for corporate assets.

On my way home, I had to return a cursed Amazon purchase, and so made a rare trip to a Whole Foods, where I was greeted by this:

in a whole foods parking garage a stack of black plastic nestable pallets sits next to a stack of chartreuse nestable pallets of a different model, but same concept, while garbage bags of paper rest atop them. the black pallets are identical to the ones cady noland includes in her installation at glenstone, though so far, she has not identified them as a work or part of a work, just part of the landscape, like here.

While we wait to hear if these pallets, too, are a previously unacknowledged Cady Noland, we can bring their implication in the monopolistic retail/digital/content behemoth engulfing our world into the unsullied noncommercialism of the Glenstone installation. Also, if, looking back at the Gagosian show it felt like half the non-vintage elements were sourced at The Container Store, remember there is one in Chelsea, right next to a huge Whole Foods. Instead of an artist who has walked away from artmaking, we may have to reimagine Noland as someone making art from the churning world she passes through every day on her way to the gym.

Richter Cinematic Universe [ed. 8]

a still of richter and belz's computer animated film, moving picture (946-3) shows mirrored and repeated vertical sections of a richter squeegee painting in reds pinks greens yellows, and some turquoise across the middle. the abstract and random squeegee marks become baroque geometric patterns when mirrored and morphed in varying widths, which is a technique richter began using in strip paintings from 2009-2012, and which he documented in a book, patterns, which provided the impetus for the film. this image is via gagosian, but it's the same one that's been circulating with the work since at least 2019 so — Still from *Moving Picture (946-3) Kyoto Version*, 2019-24, by Gerhard Richter & Corinna Belz, as introduced by Gagosian for an upcoming immersive installation in Rome, Dec. 2024.

As we try to make sense of wtf happened, and what the future holds, let me try to bring some clarity. As fields and factions drunk on their own importance clamor for dominance, let me try to bring a shared understanding.

So far there have been computer animations based on two Gerhard Richter paintings. They have followed the slicing and mirroring mathematical process of the artist’s Strip series (2009-2013). Richter provided the image to and they were made by filmmaker Corinna Belz. They have been accompanied by music commissioned from multiple composers.

The project having its “gallery debut” next month, which Gagosian Rome is pleased to announce, Moving Picture (946-3) Kyoto Version (2019–24), is of the second painting, Abstraktes Bild (CR 946-3), from 2016. It is, thought, the first to be presented as an immersive installation in film and sound, and the first to be sold, in an edition of eight. What is it, and how did it come to be?

Joan Didion’s Commencement Robes

Maybe Joan Didion’s 1975 commencement speech at the University of California Riverside was better when it was ‘lost’ and all we had were the YOLO excerpts from the end. Well, it’s all here now:

I think what you might be blinded for, what you ought to watch out for, is the habit of saying no, the habit of not believing anybody or anything. You’ve got to watch out for moving into a world where you don’t think there’s any objective reality, where there’s only you and that tree you just planted. There’s an objective reality, there is an objective social reality. Take it on faith.

All I want to tell you today, really, is not to do that. Not to move into that world where you’re alone with yourself and your tree. I want to tell you to live in the messy world, throw yourself into the convulsion of the world.

I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment.

Hhmm! While I’m glad she made a plug for reality, the idea of graduating from college, and Joan Didion driving out to Riverside to say don’t try to make the world better frankly sucks.

Joan Didion’s ‘lost’ commencement address, revealed [ucr.edu via jodi kantor]
Previously, related; Joan Didion’s Mantle

“Did you ever see them again?”

I watched Corinna Belz’s documentary, Gerhard Richter Painting today, thinking that the artist hard at work in his studio would clear my head, or at least distract me.

Then I was overwhelmed anew by an exchange with Belz as Richter is sorting through stacks of old photographs. As Richter held a snapshot of his middle-aged parents, Belz asked, “You left Dresden, East Germany, in 1961. Did you ever see them again?”

“No, never.” Richter replied. “I was a recognized refugee. A certified political refugee. And it wasn’t possible. I couldn’t get a permit…a travel permit for the East.

“Not until later, 1987, when I had an exhibition there. Then, with the ambassador, suddenly everything was possible.

“But by then they were all dead.”

“Did you realize in the 60s that you would never see them again?”

“No. Absolutely not. You think things will change and it won’t last. You don’t think people will grow old and die. When you leave them, they’re young.”

I knew this was here; I’ve seen this movie dozens of times, and it inexorably changed the way I thought of Richter’s relationship to photographs, his subjects, and the arc of his entire project. A young artist becomes a refugee when his war-ravaged country splits apart, and he never sees his family again is not the Richter origin story we were used to. And Richter lost in sadness as his answers to the questions linger in his silence is not the icy master of critical detachment we’ve been taught.

But today, my ache over the career of this artist built on personal trauma that unfurled across the shifting fascist and imperial politics of the 20th century was overshadowed by my dread of the future. Because part of my processing today involved replaying with unwanted, fresh intensity the idea of leaving, of fleeing.

The questions of where? when? how? land differently than they did even yesterday. But at least I asked them. Am I ready to never see my parents again? wasn’t even a question I’d thought of. Neither, it turns out, did Richter.

Diese Genzken Tin Foil Hat

The anxiety I’m experiencing while imagining having to take care of the tin foil on this Isa Genzken sculpture is actually a welcome change from the anxiety I woke up with.

It seems odd that this is apparently not considered a Weltempfänger (World Receiver), even though it certainly looks Weltempfängerisch.

29 Nov 2024, Lot 714N, Isa Genzken, Untitled, 2016, EUR40-60,000 [grisebach]

Property Art

Reese Lewis writes for the Brooklyn Rail about Cameron Rowland’s commission and exhibition at Dia, including Plot, a one-acre section of Dia Beacon’s site on which Rowland and their company, Plot, Inc., have placed a burial ground easement, under the assumption that it contains the unmarked graves of formerly enslaved residents on the land.

Surrounded by Dia’s landed property, Plot feels like it is floating arbitrarily in space with no real constraints other than the conceptual desire to be sized at the singular unit of one acre. In all of the text, Rowland does not suggest that we go up digging burial grounds or claim this site to be a discovery. Rather, this site is ultimately a universal model that suggests if one parcel of land is capable of being an unmarked slave burial, any site in the US is capable of being one.

Rowland also produced Estate (2024), a publication detailing Dia’s own real estate holdings, which include the thousands of acres it acquired and placed restrictions on to protect the vistas of Walter de Maria’s Lightning Field. Any site in the US is capable of being subject to such easements, but Dia feels exceptional in its institutional position as a custodian of the real estate of art.

Cameron Rowland: Properties [brooklynrail.org]
Cameron Rowland Properties is at Dia:Beacon thru October 2025* [diaart.org]
Previously, related: One Acre and Dia Mule

*As if planning for such things a year from now is normal.
** “That things just go on is the ‘catastrophe’.” -Walter Benjamin

Felix Navidad Exhibition Copy

A snapshot sent from Felix Gonzalez-Torres to Anne Umland, dated Dec. 21, 1992, MoMA at NPG

One unexpected thing from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is the inclusion of a few examples of the artist’s correspondence, the notes and snapshots he regularly sent to friends and colleagues. They’re shown amidst all 55 of the artist’s photo puzzles, which underscores their similarity to the photos and letters Felix used. But only to an extent. By expanding the borders of the pool of imagery and text from which the artworks were drawn, they reveal nuances of the artist’s decisions.

verso note from FG-T to Anne Umland, collection, MoMA

And when it’s correspondence with curators and collaborators, they trace the network of relationships in which Gonzalez-Torres worked and lived. One example is two similar Christmas cards sent to Julie Ault and MoMA’s Anne Umland in 1992. Umland’s lightstring snapshot might be the OG Felix Navidad.

The text reads: “Dear Anne, To more years of living, loving, leaving for long train trips, fat cats, sweaters, breathing deeply salty air, new white shirts, unexpected flowers, new friends, streets full of lights, simple moments, views to remember, tough art objects, Paris, moving poems, writing, crying, learning, growing, shopping, hoping, waiting for love letters, heart beatings on one’s [?], little radios, and more, so much more, …in 1993 and beyond, Feliz Navidad, Felix”

One thing I can’t figure out, though: according to the checklist, this is an exhibition copy, on loan from MoMA. Did the museum decide not to loan a piece of correspondence from their archive? Or did Umland keep the personal card, but give the museum a facsimile? What goes into producing a double-sided photo & handwritten text? Because I feel some new facsimile objects coming on.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres @ MLK

It’s also installed at the National Portrait Gallery, but after seeing the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation’s instagram, I realized I had missed this 1991 stack, “Untitled” (Party Platform 1980-1992), at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. So I went back to see it, and the place was full of people voting.

Oddly, it does not get out much.

Previously: Felix Gonzalez-Torres @ NPG

All The Erased de Kooning Drawings

The first wall at Glenstone that used to have Hilma af Klint drawings has been rotated. Now there is a whole row of stunning Willem de Kooning drawings of women, each, I thought the other day, more tantalizingly erasable than the next.

*Mike Bidlo Erased de Kooning Drawings*, installation view, Francis Naumann Fine Art, Sept-Nov 2005

While contemplating this embarrassment of targets and what Duchamp guru Francis Naumann had to say about the shovel, I was primed yet unprepared to know that in 2005 Naumann staged an entire show of Mike Bidlo’s Not Rauschenberg Erased de Kooning Drawings.

Mike Bidlo, *Not De Kooning Woman, c. 1951*, 12 1/2 x 9 1/4 in., as published in Francis Naumann’s 2005 catalogue, *Mike Bidlo Erased de Kooning Drawings*

According to Robert Rosenbaum’s essay in the catalogue I just got—and which seems like the only source for images of the actual works—Bidlo’s NREdKD began as almost a performance, when he erased what looked like a de Kooning in front of his shocked fellow guests at an artsy retreat in Maine in 2003. When a collector couldn’t buy it, he appealed to Naumann, who appealed to Bidlo, who agreed to make a whole show of them.

Mike Bidlo’s *Not Robert Rauschenberg: Erased de Kooning Drawing*, 2005, 22 1/4 x 18 3/8 in., ibid.

For each work, he made a beautiful Not de Kooning drawing, which he erased into a Not Rauschenberg. Each got a Johns-style label, and a facsimile FRAME IS PART OF ARTWORK frame, in a variety of dimensions. The show included documentation of the drawings, but also all the eraser crumbs, under glass, which, ngl, seems kind of corny.

Still as someone who, as I’ve already confessed here, thinks about erasing de Koonings whenever I see one, I can do naught but stan.

Mike Bidlo Erased de Kooning Drawings, Sept-Nov 2005 [francisnaumann]
previously, related riffs on Erased de Kooning Drawing: Archival Bühler-Rose