the making of, by greg allen
The cover of tomorrow’s print edition [pdf] of The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, compiles text messages from yesterday’s campus shooting. It is a work of extraordinary grief, power, and anger, and it should be printed in endless stacks placed everywhere the politicians who let this violence continue go.
The Daily Tar Heel [dailytarheel, 30 Aug 2023 pdf]
Previously, Better Read, #008, “Untitled” (Death by Gun), a work from f’ing 1990
Listening to Nicki Green talk about her plinths with Tyler Green had me reimagining Enzo Mari’s autoprogettazione through a trans lens:
The plinth is such a fascinating object in the way that it, in a really naive sense, tries to be neutral or an extension of a gallery space: it’s not here, but it’s here. That act of fabricating something that is meant to not be seen, or meant to not be focused on, I find it so fascinating to think about the material and physical presence of those objects. You know, “Look at me, don’t look at me.”
And really, I might go as far to say there’s a kind of relationship to trans-ness, in that idea of playing with—maybe juggling—the idea of passing, assimilating, the way that a form is visible and not visible in space. I could talk about this endlessly, but specifically, to speak to the plinth, I for a long time felt really resistant to using the language of the gallery, the language of the museum in the sort of “furniture” sense. I was really inspired—I am really inspired by the way Arlene Shechet talks about “the furniture”, or “the architecture” is the language that she uses, the architecture of the object.
Continue reading “Thinking about autoprogettazione & Trans-ness”And for a solo exhibition I did in San Francisco in 2019 at Et al, Etc. Gallery, we built out the gallery furniture using a stash of 2x4s that the gallery had in their back room, and there was something so exciting to me about the provisional quality of the furniture. I think of it a lot as the diasporic quality of the furniture, the way that the anchor, the way that the architecture, the way that the objects are sort of situated in space can sort of change, and evolve with the work or the exhibition itself.
Nicki Green, interviewed on Modern Art Notes, No. 615, Aug 2023
For 2023 the Swiss Post Office launched a concrete wall stamp printed with cement pigments in an ultra-matt finish for tactile effect. The only thing more Swiss is the stamp’s entire product description, which details how this stamp aligns with the three pillars of Swiss Post’s art support policy [revised in 2020], and how that policy aligns in turn with Swiss Post’s ongoing policies for supporting the arts.
In 2021, to announce this newly updated art policy, and to draw attention to Swiss Post’s art collection and architecture, Swiss Post introduced a blank canvas stamp. It is sold out, but when augmented by a CHF0.10 stamp, is still valid for use. The making-of video is as sublimely boring as one could hope; it must have been a great source of comfort in the midst of pandemic uncertainty.
The concrete stamp is available in single, 4-, or 8-stamp sheets. [post.ch, thanks Bruno]
Previously, related: Destroyed Gerhard Richter Stamps
Thomas Hirschhorn Stamps
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!]
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.
Continue reading “Kawaii Claes Oldenburg Miniature Soft Drum Set”
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:
Continue reading “And In Other Mug Shot News”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.”
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.
Continue reading “Che Cazzo è un Prototipo Imperfetto?”
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.
[Morning after UPDATE: That e-flux link discusses how “Untitled” (Blood) was shown at the Hirshhorn in 1994, but I wonder if it’s more relevant that it was also shown in Paris, where Sturtevant lived, at the Musée d’Art Moderne, in 1995-96. The go-go dancing platform was most definitely not shown at the Hirshhorn, though it’d be wild to imagine Jesse Helms busting in on it seconds after the dancer left. Interestingly, artist Pierre Bal-Blanc, who made a #GRWM work about being a dancer on the platform in 1992, said in 2020 that he discussed it and performance with Sturtevant in 1992. Ofc, thanks to Bruce Hainley’s digging, it was long known by 2020 that Sturtevant did performance work in the 1960s, and specifically dance, so it’d be interesting to know more of what Sturtevant said about it in 1992.]
The second in what I guess will be an ongoing series. Any Republican senator could end this installation at any time.
MONDAY MONOCHROME UPDATE: Now the Navy makes it a triptych.
Previously, related: USM(ono)C(hrome), 2023
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.
Brice Marden discussed the layers and process of Moss Sutra with the Seasons in a 2012 artist talk at Tate Modern.
* 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.
Perth architect Nic Brunsdon’s inflatable and undulating sphere, (This is) Air, will be realized in the garden of the National Gallery of Victoria this December, as part of the 2023 Triennial.
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.”
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.
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.
2023 NGV Architecture Commission: Nic Brunsdon, (This is) Air [ngv.gov.au]
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.
Continue reading “MoMA Johns Scull-duggery”
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.
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.
1 Aug 2023, Lot 155: Tim Davis, Girl in a Red Hat (from Permanent Collection), 2003, est. $1,000-1,500 at LA Modern [lamodern]
2016 Tim Davis interview with Jordan Weitzman [magichourphoto]
whoops, looks like Prof. Davis’s domain name expired last year. [bard.edu]
Louise Lawler: Lights Off, After Hours, In The Dark, Sept.-Oct. 2021 [metropictures]
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.
High Desert Test Sites [hdts.site]