Author: greg

General Idea made hundreds of handpainted porcelain sushi plates with the TV test pattern on them for their 1988 show at Spiral in Tokyo. They made 432 plates, in three grids of 144. [The work turned up at Miami Basel in 2019.] They also made an edition [MoMA says ed. 238; this guy says 300] which came in a cardboard box. The Stedelijk image is the best for getting a sense of what gorgeous objects these are, though it does make it easier to not read them as paintings.

Which is all useful context, I think, for this thick little painting, Black Trinitron #5, being sold next week at Doyle in New York. Sony had just introduced a Trinitron color TV where the screen was actually black, not grey, when it was turned off.

But that may not be important now, or then, for that matter. In 2020, another test pattern painting, Trinitron #15 (1987), turned up at Sotheby’s in Milan, that was not black.

These Trinitron paintings really get the collapse of painting and screen, the slight convexity of the cathode ray tube on the surface of the canvas, and the objectness of both painting and TV (though TVs were much deeper obv). But what they give is sushi plate edition, and the box the sushi plate edition comes in.

[a few minutes later update: If it hadn’t been prompted by seeing the Trinitron paintings, I could have titled this post, “General Idea Dishes?”]

How I missed this, I cannot even imagine, but you and I still have four days to get to Petzel in Chelsea to see this wall of 58 smaller paintings by Charline von Heyl.

They range from 10×8 to 24×18 inches. And though a couple have oil or charcoal, too, they’re acrylic on burlap, so they must be a distinct painting experience from the 7-ft tall, (mostly) oil on linen ones. There are 15 of those in the show, too, ofc.

[a few hours later update: why are so many of these little paintings titled “Paradoxical Lamb,” and did it come from a BYU Religious Studies analysis of the symbolism of Revelations? The mind reels.]

6 Nov 2023, Lot 112: A Georgian-Style Silver-Plated Warming Stand from the estate of Barbara Walters American Icon est $1500-2500, no reserve [update: sold for $1, 024] [bonhams]
Meret Oppenheim, Traccia Table, 1939/1981, bronze, gold leaf, wood [vam.ac.uk]
Claude Lalanne, Choupatte Géante, 2015/2016, bronze, in an edition of 8
plus 4 APs[!], exhibited at Ben Brown Fine Arts in 2017 [benbrownfinearts]

While ZillowGoneWild went wild for the sunken living room in this Bloomfield Hills, Michigan house, I’m obviously freaking out over the presence of Vermeer’s most famous painting, Girl With A Pearl Earring, over the woodburning fireplace. The Mauritshuis didn’t even say anything.

Which can only mean that is Vermeer’s The Concert, stolen in 1990 from the Gardner Museum in Boston, poking out from under the sectional sofa cushion. Case solved!

It is not clear the specific circumstances during his study abroad in Rome in 1988 under which rich, Southern twink Douglas Bassett Andrews met Cy Twombly, then 60, but they became close friends. “I think it was the Southern connection,” Andrews once told The New York Times.

Not this one, anyway. That I actually like Caillebotte, and can recognize the brushy Impressionist goodness of this painting of his family’s dog, Paul, and yet have no FOMO about not being in London to see it, and don’t worry too much if I ever do, maybe just tells me that I really am not a dog painting person. I am a facsimile object person, and I’ve found that facsimile objects over 50-60cm or so just don’t quite work the same way. [Also, how could this have an estimate so much greater than Manet’s Minnay?]

Maybe if Caillebotte had just painted his bougie carpet. Even if this were his second best painting of a floor, the yawning gap between Nos. 1 and 2 kind of dulls that praise. Do you think he spent the next 11 years trying to reattain the heights of The Floor Scrapers?