Author: greg

Jonathan Monk has been expanding his international network of Picture Post Cards Posted from Post Boxes Pictured for almost 20 years. Now, Brooklyn gets its own edition. Jonathan Monk has just published a post card edition with Jonathan A. Hill Booksellers (no relation). Which means Monk signs and addresses the postcard [above] to you, and Hill et al drops it in the mailbox [also above], which, as you can see from the skyline in the background, is near the entrance to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

Here is the very mailbox on Google Streetview, in fact, at the intersection of Orange Street & Columbia Heights.

The bootleg possibilities are either endless or redundant, I can’t quite tell.

Picture Post Card Posted From Post Box Pictured, Jonathan Monk 2023, $50US [jonathanahill]

All thinking about early, tiny Yves Klein paintings inevitably turns to the most and smallest of them all—if they existed—Yves Peintures.

While poking around to write another blog post about Yves Peintures, which the Estate calls the “first gesture” of Klein’s public career as an artist, I find I am more confounded and confused than ever about what the project/object actually is, what it was, and what it became.

At the most basic level, Yves Peintures is a portfolio, sometimes called an artist book, Klein made in late 1954 in Spain, that echoes the form of a Parisian exhibition catalogue. Rectangles of colored paper mounted on sheets printed with captions seemingly illustrate ten monochrome paintings of various colors, dates, sizes, and cities of creation. All are attributed to Yves. Some “paintings” have “Yves” printed in cursive on the lower right corner, as if they are signed.

Continue reading “Yves Peintures, Qu’est Ce Que C’est?”

Yesterday I relistened to JTT’s 2022 podcast episode where gallerist Jasmin Tsou talks with Sam McKinniss about Mischief, his 2022 show at JTT, and about Costume Drama, a 2020-21 show at the Ovitz Collection in Los Angeles. Costume Drama opened in a moment when it was almost not even possible to go to shows, and McKinniss talked about his attempt to convey that early COVID-19 era experience of historic disaster and looming uncertainty. The show included a sweeping 6×8-foot painting of the sinking Titanic—or rather, of a shot from the movie, Titanic—amid almost tiny paintings, including an 11×14 painting of a cop car on fire. Tsou asked him about how he decides the size of his paintings:

Continue reading “‘You Can Imagine Yourself Owning It’”

We had a small kid and were living in two cities, so I barely made it to a handful of their shows, but Orchard has always felt like one of the defining presences in my art life. I knew some of the members, so I felt drawn to it, but not well enough to really get sucked in, alas. It was new and wild—for being limited-term, historically aware, and not-so-commercial, which doesn’t seem like much to type it, but it was really a lot—and people were always talking about it.

But not like this. Frieze has an oral history of Orchard, and it blows my mind how conflicted and contentious it sounds:

R.H. Quaytman I remember there being two factions: the group that included me, Rhea [Anastas] and Andrea [Fraser]; and the one with Jeff [Preiss], Nicolás [Guagnini] and Karin [Schneider]. Nic had the idea to open an office; Andrea wanted to open a gallery and be the dealer. So, we ended up meeting.

This is the true story
of twelve art world people
who chose to start a gallery
work together
and fifteen years later
to find out what happens
when people stop being polite
and start getting real.

So to someone teetering on the other side of the fence from Orchard, none of the conflicts were apparent by the time they were all putting on their shows. It already felt so transparent at the time, that in 2009, when Rebecca Quaytman published Orchard Spreadsheet, a three-year ledger of the gallery’s finances—in reverse chronological order, like a blog—as a print edition, the only surprise was that, contrary to what my art star-fixated mind had originally assumed, it hadn’t been primarily underwritten by Dan Graham.

And while Quaytman’s work was the huge discovery for me from Orchard—and, it sounds like, for her, too—to learn Fraser wanted to “open a gallery and be the dealer” makes excruciatingly perfect sense.

If anything, her responses here still show her extraordinary awareness of how the dynamics and structures of art and art history operate, and that includes art magazine oral histories. Orchard felt like The Real Art World, and it was, but it was not only that, which feels worth remembering.

Remembering Orchard, New York’s Iconic Artist-Run Gallery [frieze]
Orchard [47orchard.org]
Orchard Spreadsheet, Specific Object’s 2009 Publication of The Year [specificobject]
Download a PDF version of Orchard Spreadsheet [specific object]

I’ve been in low-key awe and gratitude for the artists who stepped in to rescue Nina Simone’s childhood home in 2017, and who have continued to lead the effort to make it a site of public history and memorialization. It kicked off with Verne Dawson, who is local in western North Carolina, where Simone’s small house is, and he helped rally Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson, Adam Pendleton, and Julie Mehretu to buy the house and start the preservation process.

Now the National Trust for Historic Preservation is on the case, and their African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is raising money for the project. As part of that, Adam Pendleton and Venus Williams are co-curating a benefit auction to be held at Pace next month, and so far, it is bangers all the way down.

Seriously, the thing to do would be to buy all the things, but especially the works of the quartet of artists central to the rescue and restoration project. The auction is conducted by Sotheby’s and processed by Pace. As of now, only Mehretu’s painting, New Dawn, Sing (For Nina), also includes a right-of-first-refusal clause, which is to be executed with Marian Goodman Gallery. Which seems very reasonable.

May 20, 2023: Nina Simone Childhood Home: Benefit Auction Co-Presented by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and Pace Gallery | Hosted by Sotheby’s [sothebys]

The Artist Formerly Known As Hilma af Klint was a collective. Documents only discovered in 2021 show that af Klint’s major works were made with a co-equal collaborator (and likely former lover), Anna Cassel, and that together, they led a collective of at least 13 women to produce the paintings that have been considered af Klint’s visionary work alone.

The Artforum from the archives newsletter delivers the news with big how it started/how it’s going energy from Daniel Birnbaum, the art world’s most powerful Hilma af Klint whisperer.

Continue reading “Anna Cassel Is The New Hilma af Klint”

For the announcement of his third show of Brice Marden’s work, in October 1995-January 1996, Matthew Marks sent out a photo of the artist in his studio in Eagles Mere, PA, taken by another gallery artist, Nan Goldin.

I still have the catalogue for this show, but the announcement is long since gone. Marc Miller at Gallery98 currently has the above example for sale.

LOL Update: greg.org reader/hero TW notes that Matthew Marks also has copies of this poster for sale. And on sale, too.

Brice Marden, October 1995 [matthewmark]
Brice Marden, Nan Goldin, Poster, Matthew Marks Gallery, 1995 [gallery98]