Claes Oldenburg, Fire Plug Souvenir — Chicago August 1968, 1968, 8 1/4 in. tall, acrylic on plaster, ed. 100, this one, 27/100, is Lot 44 at Hindman on 12 Sept 2023, via liveauctioneers
Adding Fire Plug Souvenir — Chicago August 1968 to my list of Oldenburg multiples I’ve surely seen but never noticed before. I’ve even written about the show this was created for, which Oldenburg and Richard Feigen organized to raise money for the ACLU, who was defending protestors attacked by police during the Democratic National Convention. Those protestors included Oldenburg himself; he was beaten and kicked, but not charged with anything.
Anyway, in his 1991 multiples exhibition catalogue, Oldenburg said his idea was to make a souvenir like you’d pick up at the airport. The scale he wanted was cobblestone-size, though the plan to throw one through the window of the gallery did not happen. Maybe we should say it hasn’t happened yet. If you buy this busty, dusty little tchotchke of the revolution next month, capitalism says you can throw it wherever you want.
[update: if my performative cluenessness is what it takes to learn about writing like “Fireplug, Flower, Baboon: The Democratic Thing in Late 1960s Chicago” [pdf], Rachel Zorach’s 2011 essay on Oldenburg, Picasso, conceptual art, and the political context of Vietnam War-era Chicago, then so be it. Thanks, Andrew!]
Claes Oldenburg’s Miniature Soft Drum Set, 1969-70, ed. 79/200, from Multiples, Inc., Lot 43 at Hindman, 21 Sept 2023 via liveauctioneers
There is a large and growing subcategory on this blog of documenting the moment I notice something that I’ve surely seen or known, but somehow missed? Maybe I should take some time to reflect on how I could have seen multiple Claes Oldenburg retrospectives, a Multiples, Inc. retrospective and catalogue, and hundreds of auctions, and yet this is the first time I’ve ever really noticed Oldenburg’s Miniature Soft Drum Set?
Maybe it’s because I’ve been making a base this week. But enough [sic obv] about me.
April 15, 1964, publicity photo of Thirteen Most Wanted Men released by the World’s Fair
This morning Michael Lobel brought some art historically significant mug shots to the social media discourse, including one of my long-time favorites, Andy Warhol’s Thirteen Most Wanted Men, a grid of 22 mug shots mounted on the facade of the New York State Pavilion Theaterama at the 1964 World’s Fair. Within two days of its unveiling, the work drew complaints from officials, and the 25 panels were painted over with silver aluminum paint.
It seemed so bold and promising. Bettmann dates the release to the press of the image above to April 15, 1964. The original caption gives the piece a different title, but it also had World’s Fair officials—and Johnson—on record explaining and promoting Warhol’s project—for one day:
A Place at the Fair. Flushing Meadow, N.Y.: Photos of New York City’s 13 Most Wanted Criminals -resplendent in all their scars, cauliflower ears and other appurtenances of their trade, unabashedly adorn masonite facade of the New York State Pavilion at the World’s Fair. The display an arrangement of official Police Department “mug shots,” forms a 20×20 foot mural mounted on the pavilion. Philip Johnson, a designer of the pavilion, said the mural is “a comment on the sociological factor of American life.”
Jeff Koons, Serpents, 1988, porcelain, AP alongside an edition of (at least) 3, sold at Christie’s in 2019
Not everyone is on holiday in Italy this August. Last weekend IP expert Prof. Eleonora Rosati posted about an Italian Supreme Court decision in a dispute over Serpents, a purported 1988 Jeff Koons porcelain sculpture. The objects were purchased at an Italian customs auction in 1991, after their crate had sat unclaimed for two years in Milan. On at least three occasions over the years, Koons refused to acknowledge the work, calling it “counterfeit.” [Can you srsly imagine a Koons counterfeiting ring starting with 3-foot-long, googly-eyed, porcelain HR Puffinstuff snakes?] Then, after thwarting one Christie’s sale, Koons blew up a private deal for the Serpenti [Italian for contested objects which kind of do look like Serpents] in 2014 when he admitted it was his, but it was not a work of art, only a worthless, “imperfect prototype.” A what? So the owner sued.
I’ve been thinking about the works Sturtevant made of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ works lately, and noticed this spread in the catalogue for her 2004 exhibition at the MMK Frankfurt. It’s called a catalogue raisonné, but maybe that was to subvert the idea of a catalogue raisonné. This notebook page feels a little more reliable, and yet.
It’s not clear when this was written, but the continuity of the pen makes me think it was after 1997, when her (Blood) bead curtain was shown at Ropac. Some of the artist’s notebook pages reproduced contain sketches, as if the work was not realized yet. This page, neatly laying out two works, feels like a transcription from other, less formalized sources. A lot of the objects’ details have been worked out, and this is how future exhibitions and sales will be recorded. A CR in progress.
A lot of details, but not all. It’s interesting to see what Sturtevant needs to repeat, and what she does not. Here, for example, she was still working through the titles. Here these works are called “Torres Untitled” (Something in parentheses, whether it’s Go-Go ^Dancing Platform or Blood). As it happens, I’d just been reading Tino Sehgal and Andrea Rosen’s conversation in the Specific Objects Without Specific Form exhibition catalogue, and Andrea spoke at length about the specificity of Felix’s “Untitled in Quote” (Something in parentheses) title format. Sturtevant seems to have considered it, maybe even used it for a while, before going with her own format: Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform).
And “1994-95.” [FWIW, this was published as 1995 in 2004.] I don’t know how it only just occurred to me that Sturtevant was making these works while they were being shown in Gonzalez-Torres’ retrospective at the Hirshhorn, MOCA, and Guggenheim.
Brice Marden and Robert Rauschenberg in Bob’s Lafayette St studio in 1968, photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson [via Brice’s 2015 oral history for the RRF]
Helen just posted that Brice Marden passed away in his sleep. Peace to him and his loved ones.
I went to Glenstone this morning to see Marden’s commission, Moss Sutra with the Seasons, which he worked on for five years. In the four, multi-layered monochrome panels on either side, the intricacies of his marks are only visible up close, in raking light, as you move yourself. Some are matte, and evenly so, like wax or earth.
The red and black* panels on the right, though, are glossier. In the indirect, overcast light, Marden’s vinelike tendrils of blue-black paint have a greater reflectivity than the blue-black that first reads as a veil, then as a base. As you move in front of it, you realize they’re a mirror, and the palimpsest in the painting is a figure. You’re standing where the artist once stood as he made it, and as he pronounced it complete.
* I’ve always read that panel as black, but in describing it, Marden calls it blue. But blue in the end. Every panel has every color, in layers, he said.
It will respire, inflate and deflate, to help make air visible. As it “exhales” it will transform “into an array of cloud-like configurations.” On first, second, and third glances, it does resemble the satelloons and sculptural, inflated spheres that are the never-dissipating obsession of mine for the last 16+ years. It is comforting and encouraging to have astute friends and colleagues like Andrew Russeth see a 14m balloon ball project in Australia and think, “Oh, I need to send this to Greg.”
Paul Chan, Khara en Penta (Joyer in 5), 2019, image: Greene Naftali via Walker Art Center, where a show of Chan’s Breathers was on view until last month
As I type this up, the nature of Brunsdon’s project seems to relate even more closely to Paul Chan’s Breathers, whose undulating sculptural shapes are created by the flow of air through them. (This is) Air feels like a massive, Platonic solid (sic) version of Chan’s contorted, figural objects.
Martin Creed’s Work No. 2821, (half the air in a given space), 2017, was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which illustrates it thus.
It also brings to mind Martin Creed, whose “half the air in a given space” series uses smaller balloons, and obviously involves an enclosed space. Of course, a 14m-diameter sphere contains almost exactly half the air, by volume, of a 14-meter cube. So in a way, Brunsdon’s outdoor project also makes it possible to imagine, not just the air, but the space it would be given.
Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955, encaustic on newspaper on canvas, painted plaster & wood, acquired in 1958 by The Museum of Modern Art
In late 2019, just before the world shut down, I wrote a long article about the Museum of Modern Art’s instant embrace of Jasper Johns, from the moment his first show opened at Castelli Gallery in 1958. Over half the works from that show were acquired by The Modern’s curators, trustees, and supporters, both for the museum, and for their private collections. Not on that list: Ethel and Robert Scull. And that has been nagging at me ever since, because something weird happened at MoMA, and I can’t figure it out.
Louise Lawler, A Movie Will Be Shown Without The Picture, 1979, invitation card, 4 5/8 x 7 1/8 in., collection: metmuseum, a 2014 gift of the artist
Never too much of Louise Lawler. This morning Andrew Russeth saw something on social media that reminded him of Lawler’s 1979 work, advertised above, A Movie Will Be Shown Without The Picture. The piece was presented in conjunction with Lawler’s first show. The first movie she showed without the picture was John Huston’s The Misfits (1961), but she likes for the movie to change each time it’s presented, and for the title to not be published in advance.
The most recent screenings I’m aware of were in 2017, during her retrospective at MoMA. I guess she doesn’t want the titles of the films screened archived, either.
Dave Dyment points to Bruce Hainley, who makes a very satisfying connection between A Movie Will Be Shown Without A Picture and the book work Lawler published the previous year, “a screenplay without a movie.” The book now known as Untitled (Black/White) was sold for either $4.95 or $100, depending on which price was circled. Dyment shows an example where someone requested Lawler to sign a cheaper version, which she called “perverse”—in the signed note she provided instead. The relevance of this anecdote will, I hope, only deepen in the coming days.
Tim Davis, Girl in a Red Hat (from Permanent Collection), 2003, 22×20 cm, c-print, ed. 6, being sold at LA Modern on Aug. 1, Lot 155
I last thought of Tim Davis’ Permanent Collection project a couple of years ago, during Louise Lawler’s last show at Metro Pictures of Judd sculptures in the dark at MoMA. Lawler’s big dye sublimation prints had a reflective gloss that made them feel like a Davis photo. Meanwhile, like Lawler, but completely different, Davis made so much of the light falling on artworks, and the palpable experience of them.
Anyway, it’s only now, with this full-scale, Permanent Collection image of the National Gallery’s Vermeer, Girl in a Red Hat, glowing with raking light, that I see the project hits closer to Facsimile Object home. Definitely need to go back and look more closely.
Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2003, installed at Andy’s Gamma Gulch Site in Pipe’s Canyon, Pioneertown, for High Desert Test Sites 2, photo: Regen Projects
Looking back at a desert X I can support. This Wade Guyton sculpture from the second High Desert Test Sites in 2003 came to mind this morning. No reason.
Lot 313: Takashi Murakami, MOCA Flowerball Chargers, 2007, via LA Modern
Takashi Murakami designed the printed plastic chargers that decorated each place setting at MOCA’s 2007 Gala. During the dancing, with Tom Ford egging her on, Naomi Campbell started collecting chargers from unattended seats. When people realized what she was up to, it triggered a hoarding frenzy. If you ever see a full set, though, you can guess who the seller is.
This pair chargers must have hailed from a calmer section of the party. A corner where a savvy galagoer had the foresight to bring a Sharpie and invite the guest of honor to sign the their chargers on the verso. He even took several seconds to add doodlese of his little characters. Was there perhaps a line, a scrum, of eager autograph seekers? Did MOCA’s wealthiest patrons stand around in a circle with their little plastic plates, or did they bring them to the gala’s head table where Murakami and Nigo were holding court?
As is the nature of Gala Art, to know how it went down, you had to be there. And now if you buy these plates, you can pretend you were.
Sometimes a volcano’s just a volcano, but probably not here: Robert Smithson, Buried Angel, 1962, oil on canvas, 125 x 125 cm, sold at Christie’s in 2008
Today is the 50th anniversary of Robert Smithson’s death, and an occasion to revisit Zack Hatfield’s Artforum review of Suzaan Boettger’s biography of the artist, Inside The Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson.
Hatfield reminded me that in addition to Smithson’s almost mystical Catholicist early days, Boettger goes deep on his interest in numerology. And she looks closely at Smithson’s early work, only some of which has been shown before. Which reminded me of a wild group of works sold a few years ago—wow. it was 2008—by the family of George Lester, a diplomat/collector/dealer who invited 23-yo Smithson to stage a show in Rome in 1961.
Robert Smithson, Two Frogs Guarding The Palace, 1962, gouache, oil, ink and collage on paper, 24 x 15 1/4 in., sold from the Galleria Lester archives at Christie’s in 2008
The metric dimensions of Buried Angel, the canvas up top with an angel buried in jumbles of numbers and letters, make me think it was painted in Europe. The dimensions of the fantastical collage, Two Frogs Guarding The Palace, meanwhile, could go either way.
In his 1972 AAA interview with Paul Cummings, Smithson described the work from this period as “phantasmagorical drawings of cosmological worlds somewhat between Blake and…oh, a kind of Boschian imagery…They were sort of based on iconic situations…They dealt with explicit images like, the city; they were kind of monstrous as well, you know, like great Moloch figures.”
Tin French loaf cross section from Owen Simmons’ The Book of Bread, 1903, via Public Domain Review
Owen Simmons’ scientific guide for commercial bakers, The Book of Bread, was published in an elaborately produced edition de luxe in 1902, and in a trade edition in 1903. The de luxe edition includes original silver bromide prints of full-size photos of various types of bread pasted in, while the trade edition uses photogravure.
Martin Parr considers it to be the first artist’s photobook, and I can’t think of a reason to disagree.
French Tin loaf in actual size but not here, silver bromide print from The Book of Bread deluxe edition, 1902, via a link mentioned on Public Domain Review
Prof. Shannon Mattern [@shannonmattern.bsky.social] brought this back to my attention this morning, after Public Domain Review posted about it in January, referencing a 2020 thread by a rare book dealer I don’t mention on a social media site I don’t link to. But that dealer’s thread did include images of the silver bromide prints, which are extraordinary, whereas the PDR scan is of the beautiful-but-more-conventional trade version.
