And bought some stuff. And made some stuff. The press release discussed it in the context of hashtag collector, and Roberta Smith called it “a resonant portrait of the United States.” But Robert Gober’s exhibition at Demisch Danant, “Cows at a Pond,” felt like the self-portrait of an artist trying to live and work ethically in a present where the injustices and suffering of history repeat themselves. So I guess they’re both right.
I sat in Gober’s chair to read his notes—unfinished and unpublished, except, of course, for putting them in a show—of attending the art forgery lawsuit against Knoedler Gallery. One important observation was the purported shock at the naked fraud perpetrated by the “venerable” gallery, a term Gober remembered from the 2000-2001 coverage of the price-fixing crimes of two “venerable” auction houses: Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
There has been surprisingly little written about Cady Noland’s show at Gagosian’s Park & 75th Street storefront space. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t know quite what to make of it all, either. All the years of absence and anticipation just end, and people maybe don’t quite know what to do or say. In the last 20 years, Noland’s practice has been understood as a harbinger, coming from the past, with relevance for the present. In the 80s and 90s she threw the dodgeball of prophecy about American violence and celebrity politics and art world commodification at our heads, and every disclaimer, auction record, and lawsuit of this century was another hit.
As Noland’s first show of new work, and a lot of it, in decades, it’s easy to want it to be important. But now that means figuring out what it’s doing now; is it relevant in this moment, or is it yet another harbinger?
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.
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (5 relief prints), 1998, installation view, Renaissance Society
In his 1998 exhibition at the Renaissance Society, Mementos, Kerry James Marsh paid unsettled homage to the historicization of and nostalgia for the US Civil Rights Movement, and for the Black experience of living through it [sic].
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!
Tomigaya, Richard Rogers, Project Partner: Laurie Abbott, 1990-1992, unbuilt. images via RHSP
Just as the bubble was popping, a developer asked Richard Rogers to make a building on a tiny, triangular lot in Tomigaya, on the southwest corner of Yoyogi-Kōen. The zoning permitted a 45m height, but only three stories. And project partner Laurie Abbott came up with this all-glass, wedge-shaped exhibition space with movable mezzanines and an external crane to lift yachts and helicopters and such into place.
earlier iteration of Tomigaya exhibition hall concept with adjustable mezzanine heights and external elevators, made from Erector sets or whatever, 1990-1992, Richard Rogers/Laurie Abbott
Obviously, it was never built, because if it existed, I would have already reconfigured my life to have bought it in the overlapping window of post-bubble malaise and dotcom bubble madness, and I’d be living in it today. Probably with a crossfit studio or something renting out the lower level.
Google Maps looking east: I think the site is the triangular bldg on the right with the white marker? Obviously they got a zoning variance to build more than three floors of vanilla condos
Shoutout to Philip Oldfield for identifying the Tomigaya tower as his favorite unbuilt high-tech building on social media, and for Kate Wagner for the tip.
Donald Baechler’s invitation to Miss Lucy’s 3 Day (Doll) House Party, March 1993, from a screenprinted edition of “around 20” by Cy Twombly, selling this week at Stair Galleries
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.
A gorgeous 1970s swag given by Sam Gilliam to one of his longtime friends and print collaborators, that fits perfectly in a modest domestic setting? Sign me tf up.
Artist/printmaster Lou Stovall and Sam Gilliam were tight for decades until they weren’t. With Stovall’s passing earlier this year, maybe they’re reconciling in the beyond. Meanwhile, in the here and now, Stovall’s estate is selling this intensely saturated drape painting, which Gilliam gave to Stovall in 2006. RIP to those resting, and happy bidding and swagging to everyone else.
It feels like worlds ago, and world ago all the way down. And also just yesterday.
For a few hours in the Summer of 2023, an Instagram account that tracks the work of artist Richard Prince posted a picture of a rusty shoe tree, standing in front of an abstract painting. It echoed the original image of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which Alfred Stieglitz photographed in front of a Marsden Hartley painting in 1917.
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, photographed in front of Marsden Hartley’s The Warriors on April 19, 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz
The Instagram image included text elements: DEPOSITION above and RICHARD PRINCE below, with a url and password to an unlisted video file. The video, more than six hours long, appeared to be a recording of Richard Prince’s deposition in a pair of conjoined lawsuits filed by photographers Donald Graham and Eric McNatt, in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Both men objected to photos they took, posted to Instagram by others, which appeared in Prince’s 2014 New Portraits series.
Untitled, 2020, 84 x 69 in., image via Matthew Marks
My first thought on seeing the image of this Wade Guyton painting was of a burning cop car in Brooklyn surrounded by artists with easels and Epson printers. And by the time the Epson printer’s done, the fire is out.
Sam McKinniss, Cop Car in Brooklyn, 2020, 11×14 in., oil on linen, via JTT
Then Alex Greenberger called Guyton’s painting of Manet’s The Ham“a simulacrum” while noting the Manet is currently on loan to The Met.
Untitled, 2023, 84 x 69 in., image via Matthew Marks
And it occurred to me that while the untitled painting itself is Guyton-size, Guyton’s image of The Ham is basically true to the size of the Manet. With both on view in New York simultaneously, there really is no need for a Facsimile Object of either of them, but a Guyton’s Manet’s Ham Facsimile Object would look a little something like this:
Study for Wade Guyton Facsimile Object (G1), 16.25 x 12.75 in., 2023, jpg
Gustave Caillebotte, le Chien Paul, c. 1886, 65 x 54 cm, selling as Lot 3 on 13 Oct 2023 at Christie’s London, with an estimate of GBP 400-600,000 [update: it did not sell yesterday.]
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?
Dan Hopewell turned up a 2017 thread on social media by Simone Odino about film writer Joe R. Frinzi, who noticed that the aliens in 2001: A Space Odyssey decorated the astronaut’s hotel room with a painting from Roger Moore’s room at Max Zorin’s château in the 1985 Bond movie, A View To A Kill. The idea of A View To A Kill existing in the 2001 universe is a lot to process. But given Clarke’s premise that they gleaned details of Earth from TV broadcasts, I guess we should have at least been aware of the possibility.
Detail of Christophe Huet’s 18th century monkey business paintings in the Petite Singerie at Château de Chantilly, image: Marc Walter via CdeC
A View To A Kill was filmed at the Château de Chantilly, whose most famous decorative paintings, in the Grande and Petite Singeries, are Christophe Huet’s 18th century wall paintings of monkeys dressed and carrying on as French aristocrats. Perhaps someone paint a version of the opening scene of 2001 in the style of Huet.
If Frinzi mentions the painting in his new book, Kubrick’s Monolith: The Art and Mystery of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I couldn’t find it in his just-dropped interview on the Kubrick Universe Podcast. They were operating on a different level of fandom entirely, tbqh.
A few hours later update: following up to a comment on tumblr by @brocatus about whether this was an intentional quote, I looked on IMDb. The Art Director for A View To A Kill was John Fenner, who also worked with Stanley Kubrick. He worked as a draftsman on The Shining (1980) and 2001 (1968, uncredited), and would go on to work as art director on Eyes Wide Shut.
Somewhere on social media in response to the Frinzi mention, someone Odino wrote that when he asked about the identity of the painting in the Hotel Room, Christiane Kubrick said she recalled MGM making it themselves “[MGM] might as well have made it themselves,” and she had no idea.* If Fenner didn’t make it, he surely would have recognized it, and would have been in a position to place it. Someone else pointed out that the studios for the two productions were different. Perhaps Fenner not only made the painting, but has it?
*Corrected the quote and credited Odino after he chimed in and clarified on social media.
