greg – Page 57 – greg.org

On Writing About Mormon Architecture for Art in America

Surrender Dorothy, a classic, early 80s view of the Washington DC LDS Temple from the Beltway, which someone almost immediately flagged as resembling Oz. Ganked from the Washington Post or wherever

A few months ago the editors at Art in America asked if I’d like to write about Mormon architecture for a religion-themed issue. I was like, “Do you want the spectacular space-age temples; the scrappy DIY pioneer rusticity; the mass-produced, suburban Mormcore cringe; or the unprecedented grappling with historical preservation?” And they said, “Yes, absolutely.”

The article is now online. “Building Mormonism: The Fascinating History of LDS Architecture.” Honestly, it feels like it could be three articles, and three more would come out of it. The more I dug and looked, the more interesting and revelatory stuff I found about the way the Church has approached its physical spaces and structures over its almost 200-year history. There’s probably a dissertation to be written on the early 20th century mandate to include a basketball court in every new meetinghouse. Or on the building missionary program that tried to optimize expertise and volunteer labor when demand for churches outstripped the local members’ construction skills. Or the impact on the built sacred environment of having a trans woman lead one of the most ambitious architectural eras in the Church’s history. [I think she’s already writing that last one herself.]

c. 1904 stereograph, The Mormon Temple at Kirtland, Ohio, image via LOC

I’ll add links to resources I found especially useful, and images of the buildings mentioned in the piece, so check back. In the mean time, I would have been lost without two blogs and one book:
Historic LDS Architecture, where Bridger Talbot has been posting original research, photography, and travelogues since 2014
ldsarchitecture.wordpress.com went dormant in 2012, but is still full of photos and accounts of visits to architecturally notable church buildings.
Places of Worship: 150 Years of Latter-day Saint Architecture is Richard W. Jackson’s 2003 historical survey of all the worship places of the LDS Church, and an institutional history of the Church’s Architecture Department, where he worked for many years.
scottcsorensen.templephotos on Instagram provided a steady drip of inspo, and also a sense of perspective, that there was someone else spending even more time thinking about Church architecture than I was.
And of course, whether that is comforting or Content Warning @TexturesofMormonism is the go-to source for recognition of the Church’s 70s and 80s homogeneous aesthetic.

Drawing of the facade of the Nauvoo Temple by architect William Weeks, now in the collection of the LDS Church History Museum, after being preserved for over a century by Weeks’ family

Paul Thek’s Birthday Cake Of Flesh

Fred McDarrah, *10-24-64 Paul Thek “Birthday Cake of Flesh” Stable Gallery*, 7.25 x 4.5 in., image via Sotheby’s

I lost out on everything I bid on in Kenny Schachter’s fourth no-reserve sale at Sotheby’s, which ended today. The one I got outbid on the most, at least percentage-wise, was Fred McDarrah’s October 1964 photo of Paul Thek and his sculpture, titled, “Birthday Cake of Flesh.” Estimated at USD 300-400, the print sold for $4,410. [It is, of course, of Thek, not by Thek. Is this a record price for a McDarrah, though? Three vintage prints of McDarrah’s Kusama photos sold for $5,040 last year]

The print was in a selling exhibition at Sotheby’s London in 2019-2020. Maybe Schachter, who’s been hyping and trading Thek works a lot the last few years, picked it up there.

The photo was at the Stable Gallery, where Thek had his first show, which McDarrah covered for the Village Voice. The notes and stamps on the back of the print relate to the caption and size for printing the photo in the paper. So this print’s seen some stuff.

Birthday Cake is, of course, made of pigmented wax that resembles a pyramid of slabs of meat, part of Thek’s Technological Reliquaries series. According to Cynthia Hahn’s The Reliquary Effect, Thek also titled the work, Josef Albers Homage to the Square. And though I can see how the top-down view of a 4-tier pyramid by itself would work, the strong diagonals of the vitrine’s steel, and the horizontal bands etched or painted into the sides seem like they’d obliterate the reference. Is the cake even a pyramid? Or is it a ziggurat?

Paul Thek, *Birthday Cake*, 1964, but dated in Parkett and beyond as 1967, photo: D. James Dee

NEXT MORNING UPDATE: Bryan Hilley’s search for other photos of Birthday Cake turn up a mystery that is a problem. This color photo of Birthday Cake by D. James Dee ran in black&white in Holland Carter’s 1991 Parkett essay on Thek, one of the first reassessments of the work after Thek’s death in 1988. [pdf] And it’s given the date of 1967.

All the other Technological Reliquaries are listed as 1965-66, which would make Birthday Cake a late Reliquary, even a culmination. Also, Cotter reads the glassed off meat as wistful commentary on the liberation of the Summer of Love, which, at 35, had just passed Thek by. Obviously, Cotter’s take is more involved than that, and boomers can bemoan the telescoping passage of time all they want. But it seems important to understand Thek’s work to know the time and place he made and showed his work, and for Birthday Cake and other meat works, it was October 1964 at the Stable Gallery, six months after Andy Warhol showed his Brillo boxes there.

Paul Thek, *Meat Piece with Warhol Brillo Box*, 1965, image: whitney.org, where they get the timeline right in their 2010 audioguide

I think he was up to something else.

I Want To Live in A Cyklopen

Cyklopen Kulturhas, 2013, Stockholm, design by Viktor Marx

If the Eames House was not available, I decided it would be fine to live in a gas station felt like an appealingly modernist alternative. I’ve kept a list, to which I also added a decommissioned Minneapolis skyway, a temporary MoMA fire escape, and a reconstituted world’s fair pavilion or two. I would also add a greenhouse. There used to be a most excellent abandoned greenhouse on the roof of a building which you could see from the Roosevelt Island tram. Perhaps, I thought, Lacaton & Vassal could help me persuade the family, who, it turns out, really do not want to live in any of these repurposed industrial structures.

Cyklopen ground floor and mezzanine, image: archilovers

Now there is another. [shoutout Geraldine for the heads up] From 2011 until 2013 Stockholm architect and organizer Viktor Marx worked with Cyklopen, an autonomy-minded community organization, to rebuild their gathering space, which had been firebombed by neo-nazis. The result, Cyklopen Kulturhas is as spectacular as it is utilitarian.

Cyklopen ground floor looking the other way, image: mies van der rohe prize

The 2-storey, 459 sq. m. structure was optimized for safety, for flexibility, and for the self-sufficient group’s donated labor. A laminated lumber core was raised by hand, Amish barn-style, and ringed with upscaled scaffolding, on which the greenhouse-style tinted polycarbonate skin was hung. The upper floor, aka The Box, is enclosed and climate controlled; the open ground floor and mezzanine space are not. Let’s say it’s responsive to the climate.

Cyklopen 2 concept art showing Tetris-style tint design, also how The Box fits

There is room to spend a little more than almost no money to bougie up the place without, I think, losing the adapted reuse credibility. Solar panels. Radiant floors. Some Kieran Timberlake-style Bosch Rexroth extruded aluminum beams. [It’s fascinating that even with some formalist similarities, KT’s Cellophane House was optimized for the diametric opposite factors to Cyklopen: high end components were pre-constructed offsite, then shipped and craned into place in midtown in a few days, with stupendous logistical complexity and expense.]

Kieran Timberlake’s *Cellophane House*, 2008, temporarily built on West 53rd Street for MoMA’s prefab show, Home Delivery, image: Aaron Peter at KT

Ultimately, I find what is holding me back from living the gas station/greenhouse/shed dream–besides the family buy-in, obviously–is the suburbanity, the single family house-ness of it all. I am a city person. We are city people, and a site where I could reasonably build a Swedish anarchist Bifröst greenhouse is nowhere near a subway–at least since MoMA built that Jean Nouvel supertower on the vacant lot next door. So I will add Cyklopen to the moodboard in my heart, and wish the original a bright and impactful future.

They accept donations, btw. [cyklopen.se, thanks to @geraldine@post.lurk.org for the heads up.]

Jayson Musson, Ollie Doll from Fabric Workshop

Jayson Musson, *Ollie Doll*, 2022, plush doll, 30″ tall trapped in a box, ed. 90 from the Fabric Workshop & Museum

Jayson Musson’s show, His History of Art, continues at the Fabric Workshop & Museum until the end of the year. It’s not clear, though, whether this 30″ plush version of his pothead rabbit sidekick Ollie, from his kids sitcom-looking, three-channel video installation will last that long.

There are only 90 in the edition, and they’re the wackest art world plush toy since Mike Kelley’s emotionally needy Little Friend, which dropped in an edition of 850 in 2007. Collect’em all!

Mike Kelley collaborator Ahrum Hong posing with *Little Friend* back in 2007

Jayson Musson: Ollie, Certified Emotionally Fulfilling! $300 [fwm]

BOGO Morisot

Berthe Morisot, *Peonies*, 1869, oil on canvas, 41x 33cm, collection: Gift of Paul Mellon to the National Gallery of Art

The first work on the National Gallery of Art’s Artle quiz yesterday this Berthe Morisot painting of a vase of peonies, which, you have to admit, looks rather Manet-ish. I figured it wasn’t Manet, because if it was, I’d have already seen it–unlike the dogs, which–we’ve been over this–are occasionally incredible, basically every [late] Manet painting of a little arrangement of flowers is, as far as I’m concerned, a masterpiece, and I can’t imagine the National Gallery holding out on me by never showing this masterpiece. But I guessed Manet anyway, as a compliment.

Not that this is a masterpiece, ofc. Obviously, it’s a bit of a mess, with some moments of greatness. And some meaningful echoes of Manet, who Morisot met in 1868. Morisot’s family became close to Manet’s, and she modeled and sat for him. And let him rework her paintings. And married his brother.

Edouard Manet, *Peonies*, 1864-65, 60 x 35 cm, collection The Met

So Morisot would have known the peonies Manet liked to grow–and paint. Some of the half dozen paintings of peonies Manet made around 1864 had been shown repeatedly by the time the Morisots came to call.

Edouard Manet, *Vase de pivoines sure piédouche*, 1864, 93 x 70 cm, collection: Musée d’Orsay

What’s more amazing about this Morisot, though, is that it was unknown until 1980, when it was discovered underneath another painting, Un percher des blanchisseuses, from 1875. The title translates as a perch of laundresses, but the apparent English title is Hanging The Laundry Out To Dry. The combination of picturesque rural life and factory smokestacks encroaching on the horizon make the likely site of this painting Gennevilliers, a village outside Paris where the Manets owned property.

Berthe Morisot, *Un percher de blanchisseuses*, 1875, 35 x 45 cm, Gift of Paul Mellon to the National Gallery of Art

Morisot included the laundry scene in the second Impressionist exhibition in 1875, where it was one of at least four works by the artist purchased by Dr. Georges De Bellio. It passed through various heirs and dealers until Paul Mellon bought it in 1950. Given that timeline, it seems the most likely explanation is Morisot stretched a new canvas over the existing painting.

As a work from a historically important show, blanchisseuses was exhibited often over the years, and obviously included in the Wildensteins’ 1961 Morisot catalogue raisonné. But it was only thirty years later, when the Mellons were getting ready to donate it to the National Gallery that the peonies painting was discovered underneath it.

The Mellons ended up donating Morisot’s Hanging out the laundry in 1985. But they kept Peonies until 1994, which, wouldn’t you? For all this, I’d expected more study of this double painting, and how it came to be. Despite decades of Morisot and Impressionist popularity, Peonies has never been exhibited outside the National Gallery.

I see at least five other paintings from the period, mostly around 1875, of the same dimensions, including two other Gennevilliers landscapes. Were these pre-stretched canvasses from the art supply store? It’s now been 40 years; has anyone checked under them?

Jeff Koons In Print

Koons’ description of Baptism as a six-page project–three 2-page spreads–excludes this sultry portrait intro page.

Today Artforum’s Lloyd Wise mentioned a project Jeff Koons did for the magazine in November 1987. Titled Baptism, the seven-page spread ran a year before his Art Magazine Ads series in the same magazine, which promoted his unprecedented, three-venue Banality show. Unlike the Ads, though, which were released as a print portfolio, Baptism seems to have been its own, standalone thing.

Anyway, as one of the sites, George Washington’s restaged pew at St. Paul’s Church on Broadway [right], has since become an object of fascination here, I thought I’d look up the rest.

Jeff Koons, *Baptism*, page 1 or 2, Artforum, November 1987

I haven’t gotten very far because I was surprised by this first object, a porcelain figurine of Don Quixote by Enzo Arzenton for the Italian manufacturer Capodimonte. Actually what surprised me was the image, which is the same one found on the website of this Staten Island Capodimonte importer almost forty years later.

LZ-47, Collezione Laurenz, by Enzo Arzenton for Capodimonte, via capodimontemadeinitaly.com

Koons appropriated this image from some catalogue, brochure, or ad, and it’s still in circulation. I don’t know why that seems wild to me.

Doris Duke Cartier Necklace Mounting

Platinum and baguette diamond necklace mounting by Cartier, c. 1937, sold for $53, 775 by the Doris Duke Foundation at Christie’s in 2004

I was absolutely certain I’d written about this, but I guess I’ve just been thinking about this wild Cartier necklace mounting, minus most of the diamonds, which the Doris Duke estate sold for $54,000 for 18 years. It was truly a standout in the auction of Duke’s jewelry.

The preposterously scaled necklace was purchased by Duke’s boyfriend, a couple of years before they got married. She raided the necklace over the years, and remounted 79 of the diamonds in other pieces, leaving a gorgeous, platinum husk.

Doris Duke’s Zombie Cartier Diamond Necklace, reconstituted with period-correct diamonds and offered at Christie’s Geneve in May 2017 for CHF 3-5 million, image via alaintruong

A jewelry aficionado with an absurdly advanced appreciation of historical accuracy, and possessed of a conceptual sophistication rivaled only by their access to money, apparently spent years assembling period-correct cushion and Old European-cut stones to reconstitute Doris Duke’s Depression-era diamond fringe necklace. This zombie necklace was offered for sale at Christie’s in 2017, with an estimate of CHF 3-5 million. It did not sell, at least publicly.

Out of respect for the time and effort required to assemble them, I don’t want the diamonds to be released back into the wild; put them in a little bag. But definitely take them out, and let the necklace be restored to its perfect, skeletal state. It’s what Doris would have wanted.

Textiles In Space, Joshua Reynolds (Attr.), late 18th Century

Sir Joshua Reynolds (attr.), *Textiles in Space*, c. late 18th century, oil on canvas, 226 x 131 cm

At some point in the late 18th century, it is believed Sir Joshua Reynolds painted extensions to a portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, painted by Sir Anthony Van Dyck in the 1630s. The portrait was in the collection of the 2nd Earl of Warwick, who wanted to decorate his castle with identically sized, full-length portraits of the highest quality.

Reynolds is argued because of the quality of the execution, the importance of the portrait and the collection, and the importance of Warwick as Reynold’s patron. The attribution is not universally embraced, however.

The conjoined paintings by Van Dyck and his 18th century collaborator were sold in 1978, in situ, along with Warwick Castle, to the Tussauds Group, which was acquired by Blackstone in 2006, which did not sell them at Sotheby’s in 2015, but did sell them in 2016.

Anthony Van Dyck, *Queen Henrietta Maria in a Gold Gown*, c. 1630s, 103 x 84 cm, as exhibited at the Yale Centre for British Art, photo: Stephen Hand via adamfineart

The paintings were decoupled and the resulting Van Dyck, restored, was loaned to Yale for five years. It sold at Christie’s last night. The location and status of the possible Reynolds, and its original frame, and stretchers, is unknown.

2022: Lot 11: Property of a Gentleman, sold for GBP 2.442 million [christies]
2015: Lot 28: Property of a Private Equity-Controlled Amusements Operator, I guess, didn’t sell for GBP 1.5-2.5m [sothebys]
Previously, related: On The Execution of Maximilian

2018: Van Dyck before and after – Royal Edition [arthistorynews]
Charles’s Queen Gets The Chop [adamfineart]

Not Standing For It

I think I understand most of the issues around the Restitution Study Group’s unsuccessful attempts to get an emergency restraining order to stop the official transfer of the Smithsonian’s Benin Bronzes to the Nigerian government–everything except the timing. Why is this story dropping now, almost two months after a judge denied the motion? The RSG is insisting reporters note that its lawsuit is still active, even though the judge’s refusal of the ERO seems to find every argument in the Smithsonian’s favor. Going public now is somehow part of a strategy to amend their complaint and add new theories to the public debate over what to do with Benin Bronzes. Or more interestingly, to add a new constituency to that public and new voices to that debate.

My 2022 Top Two List of Pieces Of Correspondence Involving Douglas Cramer

It’s the time of year when people are publishing lists. And here’s mine. Starting with number 2:

2. Letter to Peter Norton
When Peter Norton joined the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, he apparently asked Douglas Cramer, who chaired the Committee on Painting & Sculpture, if he could sit in on the Committee’s acquisition meetings, to see how they worked. Cramer wrote back to express his utter bafflement at such a request, the audacity of which neither The Modern, nor the art world at large, had ever known, and that such things were not done, so no. Norton had the letter framed and hung it in the front hall of his Central Park West apartment, where he hosted many collection visits.

1. Joan Collins Visits Gemini! Postcard from Ellsworth Kelly

a torn newsprint photo of joan collins's head and bust looking to the left, collaged onto the figure of ellsworth kelly, and a piece of white paper collaged to look like a wall, with an additional collage of a relief sculpture by kelly, so that it looks like joan collins is looking at the sculpture. — Ellsworth Kelly, *Joan Collins Visits Gemini!* 1985, collage on exhibition card, sold out from under me at Bonham’s in April 2022

On Tuesday, March 26, 1985, Joan Collins, star of the Douglas Cramer-produced Dynasty, was photographed meeting Princess Diana at a charity fashion show in London. The wire service photo of their meeting ran in the Los Angeles Times a few days later, on Friday the 29th. Did Kelly see it there? That weekend he had back-to-back shows in New York; a painting show closing at Blum Helman, and a wall reliefs show opening at Castelli.

a newswire photo of joan collins meeting princess diana in 1985, the source image for ellsworth kelly's collage of colllins's head — Tues., 26 March 1985 AP Wirephoto of Princess Diana meeting Joan Collins in London, via ebay

Christopher Knight wrote an essay for Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini 1983-85, a catalogue/brochure of four series of editions now listed as being published in 1984. The cutout paper collage on the left of the card[-shaped piece of paper] above is similar in composition to Cupecoy Relief, from one of the 1984 series. Cupecoy is the name of a nude beach on St Martin, where Kelly & Jack Shear, and Cramer, would visit Jasper Johns. Was there an announcement card for the book or the works? Was there an exhibition? Was there an ad clipped from an art magazine and trimmed to postcard-size? Does the collage cover the text details of the series/book/show? Does the up-do’d head of Joan Collins cover a photo of the artist, as the caption says, at Gemini?

cupecoy relief, by ellsworth kelly is a white slightly curved slice of a form, a segment from 6 to 9 o'clock, but asymmetrical on top of a white rectangle that is slightly larger than it. cupecoy is the name of a nude beach in st martin, and kelly made an approximation of this relief as a collage on his postcard to douglas cramer — Ellsworth Kelly, *Cupecoy Relief*, 1984, painted aluminum, 58x50x3.75 in., produced by Gemini G.E.L. in an edition of 3 plus 2 AP, image: nga.gov

The card is inscribed on the back, “Joan Collins Visits Gemini!” Maybe because now it looks like Joan Collins is looking at an Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini. It is also signed, “EK 85.59,” which makes me think that Kelly revisited the card after giving it to his collector/friend Cramer, and gave it a catalogue number. Or did Kelly keep a running registry in his head at all times, ready to sign and number whatever cleared the artistic bar? You see the layers of awesomeness involved here.

But the work was also signed, “Love, Joan Collins.” The ultimate Cramer flex? Or did Kelly get Collins to sign a card when she visited Gemini? The making and sending and signing of this card hangs on the answers to these chronological questions.

If you are the person who practically walked away with this Ellsworth Kelly Rosetta Stone for one thousand two hundred and seventy five dollars [?!], please share your insights-and let me know when you’re ready to sell.

the verso of ellsworth kelly's postcard collage shows the original frame douglas cramer put it in, with a cutout to expose the title written in kelly's hand, Joan Collins visits GEMINI! above a very lyrical autograph, love, Joan Collins, and kelly's own signature and dating of the work to 1985. via singulart — the verso of Ellsworth Kelly’s *Joan Collins Visits Gemini!*, 1985, collage on postcard, showing Collins’ autograph on Kelly’s exhibition announcement, via Singulart

[2025 update: The buyer is indeed ready to sell, and I am sure you won’t find this Joan Collins Visits Gemini! postcard collage at a better price anywhere.]

Previously, related, what even is this arc:
2013: Ellsworth Kelly Postcards: Wish You Were Here!
2015: Untitled (Joan Collins Toile de Jouy), 2015
2017: Ellsworth Kelly Dancing Monkey
2022 Wish I Was There! Ellsworth Kelly Postcards

Sargent Painting

John Singer Sargent, *“The Holy Trinity,” after el Greco*, 1895, 31.5 x 18.5 in., oil on canvas, private collection currently on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

I went for the watercolors, but I could look at John Singer Sargent’s paintings of other artworks all day long. The first gallery of the Sargent and Spain show at the National Gallery is almost entirely copies of paintings Sargent made in the Prado, mostly Velásquez and El Greco.

John Singer Sargent, *“Las Meninas,” after Velásquez*, 1879, 45 x40 in., oil on canvas, collection The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, at the NGA

I can’t believe we’ll have to some day go to George Lucas’s museum to see Sargent’s copy of Las Meninas. But at least that day is not yet.

John Singer Sargent, *Virgin and Saints*, 1895, watercolor over graphite with gouache, 12.5 x 9 in., private collection via nga

The show was crowded, and I mistakenly figured I could look up everything I needed to know afterward, but I guess they’re saving it all for the book. From the room full of Sargent’s studies of Spanish religious painting, sculpture, and architecture, I wrongly assumed that the watercolor above of an altarpiece was related to the Gardner Museum’s study of the Caananite goddess Astarte/Ishtar for the Boston Public Library, which was hanging next to it. But the altarpiece dates from 1895, after that section of the library murals were completed. [Revisit update: it definitely informed Sargent’s depiction of the Virgin at the other end of the library, though, including the arrangement of candles in front of it.]

John Singer Sargent, *Astarte*, 1892-94, study for murals for the Boston Public Library, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

A lot of these works were definitely not made to be shown. Sargent was making them for other reasons: For himself. Maybe like how Richter just wanted a Titian, Sargent just wanted a Velásquez. Or he was trying to figure something out. To capture a moment, a detail, a lighting effect, a space, an experience, a turkey.

John Singer Sargent, *Turkey in a Courtyard*, 1879-80, oil on canvas, 14×10.5 in., private collection

I will have to go back to see if there is any explanation at all for why Sargent went approximately 100x harder in the paint on this photobombing turkey in a Spanish courtyard than on the courtyard itself. This may be my new favorite Sargent ever.

Courtyard of the Casa de Chabiz, 1913, oil on canvas, at the NGA. Notice the carved capitals are the same

[Revisit update: there is zero mention of the Turkey in the weirdly sparse catalogue, even though Sargent returned to paint the same 16th century Granada courtyard 30+ years later, and included some donkeys.

Wait, is that a turkey standing exactly in the painting’s vanishing point?? Put there the same year he made the turkey bronze below? Please do not make me need to write a paper on Sargent’s turkeys. It’s Sargent; how has this scholarship not been done to death already?]

John Singer Sargent [!] *Turkey*, c. 1913, bronze, 18 inches [!], Corcoran Museum/NGA

[Completely unrelated, I’m sure: Turkey, c. 1913, a nearly life-size [?!] bronze the Corcoran Gallery acquired out of Sargent’s estate sale in 1925.]

Betty Parsons Rock 👀

Betty Parsons, Untitled, 1976?, painted rock, 3×6 in., image via Doyle New York

Sometimes it’s just impossible not to love a Betty Parsons sculpture. Just look at this little thing. The date on the back’s hard to read, but what if Parsons was 76 when she painted these eyes [?] on this rock. This is definitely one of those situations where I blog about it so I don’t buy it. But ngl, I do want it.

update: Parsons in a double exposure in her studio on the invitation for a 1975 exhibition at Studio Gallery in DC is not quite how I imagined her painting this little rock owl or whatever, but it’s probably closer to how it went down.

image via gallery98, also in the aaa betty parsons papers, but nfs, obv

Also a good time to remember that in his architect phase, Tony Smith designed Parsons’ studio and guest house on the North Fork.

Lot 332, Dec. 8, 2022: Betty Parsons, Untitled, est. $300-500 [doyle, update: sold nicely for $1,512]
Previously, related: Rothko & Parsons at the National Gallery, curated by Bunny Mellon

Throwback: Jayson Musson Vine Sculpture, 2013

Jayson Musson Vine screencap, May 9, 2013

In 2013 artist Jayson Musson created a sculpture live on Vine & Twitter, and offered it for sale. Though I was in DC at the time, I saw it, bought it, and rallied some friends on the ground to pick it up before it got scooped or tossed. That saga was capped in a blog post. And now, on the moment of decoupling this site from the site of the sculpture’s creation, I have finally installed it. It’s a little dusty, but it holds up.

Jayson Musson, *Punk is dead. Art was never alive. If I said I never stressed about money that’d be a lie.*, 2013, found materials. [also a Maki Tamura scroll drawing, pour one out for A/C Projects]

Tejo Remy X Balenciaga

Katja Meirovsky, Uniform Clothing, image via Stefan Rollof via Erin L. Thompson

via Prof. Erin Thompson comes the story of Katja Meirovsky, who in 1940 wore a red dress to her Berlin art school which she made by cutting the swastika off a stolen nazi flag. She became part of the Red Orchestra, the largest civilian resistance movement against Hitler. The group and its members are the subject of an exhibition at the German Resistance Memorial Center by artist Stefan Roloff, which Thompson reviewed at Hyperallergic.

Tejo Remy Re-Bench made from Balenciaga deadstock fabric at the London store, Nov. 2022, via

In other problematic textile repurposing news, Droog designer Tejo Remy, who has always made custom Rag Chairs from the client’s bags of old clothes, has collaborated with Demna. Remy made Re-Benches out of deadstock and offcut fabric for Balenciaga, which were installed this month in ten boutiques worldwide. After two weeks on display, they went up for sale online. Artnet says the drop on the 22nd was a surprise, and sold out immediately. But there was time to put out press releases to the hypesphere. Balenciagattention was then promptly devoured by the rightwing vortex of shit, when online q-trolls fed the latest ad campaign through the p3do conspiracy outrage machine in the stupidest way possible. The company responded by loudly suing itself and its creative team.

None of which is the point here. The point is that Demna, too, is recycling. Remy made a Rag Chair last September at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs as a performance. He used linen panels left over from the exhibition, « Luxes », the hometown version of « Dix mille ans de luxe », with the Musée programmed for the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2019, sponsored by the Confédération Européenne du Lin et du Chanvre, the European Confederation of Flax and Hemp.

August 2022: Gap before the stormfront, image: @owen_lang

The video recap very much does not look like a performance, but it does work as a how-to for making your own Rag furniture. Whether you use the leftover scenery from your pandemic-era exhibitions or your bags of damning fits by suddenly outré designers, you can tell your own story! Or maybe you have a lead on those giant bins of cancelled Yeezy x Gap joints you can turn into at least ten of the dankest Rag Chairs ever.

Tasty Chandigarh Bookcase

Lot 270, Toomey & Co. design auction, 13 dec 2022

Where has this Pierre Jeanneret teak and steel and glass bookcase been all my life? The Central State Library, you say? Can you loot three more to match?

Suddenly I’m rethinking my moral objections to the emptying of Chandigarh for the aesthetic enrichment of the bourgeoisie of the west. [oh wait, I already rethought it.]

[A couple of obsessed hours later update: there is another. A similar bookcase was sold at Christie’s in Paris in November 2021. It had the same estimate, was in what looks to be less attractive condition–and sold for EUR225,000.]

The lot essay says Jeanneret’s “crenelated shelves of the Central Library display case recall the undulating glass panels and alternating railings of the interior architecture he had designed.” Hmm. Here is a photo of the cases installed in the library.

Interior views of the Central State Library, Sector 17, Chandigarh, India by Pierre Jeanneret, photo: Jeet Molhothra, via CCA

Lot 270: Bibliothèque from the Central State Library, Chandigarh, est. $30-50,000 [UPDATE: sold for just $30,700!] [toomey]
Previously, very much related, in that they’re Chandigarh pieces I want: Chandigarh Find