Unbox Your Noguchi Coffee Table

a kidney shaped glass table top for an isamu noguchi coffee table sits among corrugated cardboard and 2x4s in its original crate, awaiting an auction in june 2025 at potter & potter
Mint, partially in box? The wood base has been unboxed for this photo showing the untouched and apparently intact glass top of a Noguchi Coffee Table, from the era before foam packaging, selling 5 June 2025 at Potter & Potter

The Eames plywood leg splint market knows how to handle splints in their original packaging, partly because there are so many of them. The Noguchi Coffee Table market, OTOH, has to be looking at this thing and scratching their collecting heads.

Chicago-based Potter & Potter Auctions has a garageful of Eames- and Herman Miller-related material that must have come from a colleague or employee. There are blueprints, Girard & Bertoia, fabric samples, unsigned paintings attributed (by proximity?) to Ray Eames—and an Isamu Noguchi IN50 Coffee Table in apparently mint, unused condition, in its original Herman Miller crate.

the profile of the 2x4 lumber crate for a noguchi coffee table from herman miller has a paper label with IN50 written on it, and a dot matrix printed shipping address for charles eames in venice california, via potter & potter

The crate has a shipping address on it, twice, for Charles Eames at the Venice studio. It feels like a grail of some kind? But of what? That address has a zip code, so it’s after 1963. And it is printed with a large-format dot matrix printer, which, according to my IBM sources, was not even a thing until like the late 1970s at the earliest. Charles died in 1978.

So unless it’s going straight to a new garage, I assume whoever buys this will unbox it immediately, and end up with a nearly 50-yo coffee table that looks like you just bought it at DWR.

05 June 2025, Lot 38, Isamu Noguchi, IN50 for Herman Miller, mint in box [liveauctioneers via @pwlanier]

Simone Prouvé’s Jean Prouvé Table

in a featureless white setting, a bent metal rectangular dining table with a base in weathered red paint has a translucent gray top, which turns out to be steel mesh laminated between two sheets of safety glass. each leg sits on a small square of rust colored iron, hinting, i think, at the artcurial auction house description of a newer iron frame. the red table is by jean prouve, the top is by simone prouve, his daughter, and it is being sold from her estate in may 2025
Prouvé X Prouvé dining table, 72 x 202 x 92 cm, painted steel, iron, stainless steel, laminated glass, from the estate of Simone Prouvé, selling 27 May 2025, Lot 84, at Artcurial

See, maybe not this one specifically, but this is the kind of FrankenProuvé collab vision I’m talking about.

It sounds like Simone Prouvé made this dining table by taking a base from her father, reinforcing it with an iron frame [which is now rusting], and putting a laminated glass and woven steel top of her own, based on an idea from “self-described Goth” architect Odile Decq, for whom Prouvé wove a steel facade for MACRO in Rome. So that’s around 2006-7.

27 May 2025, Lot 84, Table de salle à manger, est EUR500-800 [artcurial]

Jean Prouvé’s Jean Prouvé Sideboard

27 Mai 2025, Lot 31a, Jean Prouvé Bahut « tout aluminium n. 151 », designed c. 1951-2, artcurial via @pwlanier

This « tout aluminium n. 151 » Prouvé sideboard is being sold among a bunch of textile and other design objects from Simone Prouvé, Jean’s daughter. So it could have only ever been hers and still accurately described as “Famille de l’artiste, puis par descendance.”

But it cannot be the case that she had to buy it retail, right? And just because Artcurial is only going with the date it was designed, and the EUR60-80,000 estimate seems low [sic], I’m—caveat emptor—sticking with this title format.

27 Mai 2025, Lot 31a, Jean Prouvé Bahut « tout aluminium n. 151 » [artcurial via @pwlanier]
Previously, related:
Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table
Gio Ponti’s Gio Ponti Shelf

Gio Ponti’s Gio Ponti Shelf

a close up view of the end of a long, shallow wall-mounted shelf by gio ponti for his own apartment in milan. the square u shape of the profile is left unpainted, while the inside is a pale butter color. two vertical pieces of wood  reach the back of the shelf, but are set back from the front edge. combined with a very shallow curved beveling of the undersides of the two horizontal shelf pieces, this creates an unexpectedly elegant cantilever, and makes the shelf look thinner than it acually is. gio ponti was in these details. the shelf is being sold in april 2025 by phillips london
Gio Ponti’s shelf up close, with that subtly curved underside, selling at Phillips in London 30 Apr 2025

In other exquisitely cheap-looking but actually rather expensive furniture from designers’ own homes news: Check out this unique painted wood & laminate shelf Gio Ponti made in 1957 for his Milan apartment.

Phillips has other wider views, but the whole point here, I think, is the very shallow, rounded bevel on the undersides, and then not painting the very thin edge. Beautiful.

gio ponti's smallish milan dining area photographed at an angle, with a dark doorway on the left and a dark open space above it and a wall that doesn't reach the ceiling extending to the right, above another, closed door. between the doors a white painted wood shelf is mounted to the wall, with an array of glassware on top. below, two rush seat ash superleggera chairs, very spindly. the center of the picture is a round table with four chairs and a pale yellow cloth, set for two. a tall shelf of similar wood is mounted on the right wall, and actually has some stuff in it. a white mentos-shaped lamp hangs near the ceiling. in the lower left corner, some kind of cowhide situation there is no need to get into. from the gio ponti archives via phillips, which is selling the little shelf in april 2025
Gio Ponti residence, Via Dezza, Milano, no date, photo © Gio Ponti Archives via Phillips

Here it is in situ. Uh oh, don’t look at that. Because now you realize there’s another one, that you can’t get. Also, did the stylist really pull all the glasses off the shelf for this photo? Also, is the floor reflecting onto the ceiling, or is this some kind of 4th floor of 101 Spring St-style plane matching? Also, need me some Superleggera chairs.

30 Apr 2025, Lot 66: Gio Ponti, Unique shelf, from Gio Ponti’s residence, Via Dezza, Milan, est. £12,000 – 18,000 [update: sold for £55,880] [phillips]

Eileen Gray’s Very Important Hermès Mailbox

the entrance to la villa e-1027 is concrete or stucco painted dark blue, with a hideous mural by le corbusier in orange yellow and green facing the hapless visitor. in the center of the photo by manuel bougot, and thus on the left wall of the entrance, is a lamp attached to the wall, a thinly painted square of glass held by two aluminum brackets, very raw, exposed, industrial. below is a black saddle leather mailbox held to the wall with a palladium bracket. it is by hermes but no one told me i had to find out about it myself by stumbling into the artcurial benefit auction catalogue from 2019
Eileen Gray’s Hermès mailbox, replicated by Hermès in 2018 for E-1027, here seen in a print donated by photographer Manuel Bougot to Artcurial’s June 2019 auction for Association Cap Moderne

I don’t know how I can be thirty years and a week into a fairly fervent admiration of Eileen Gray and only be finding out now that her original mailbox at E-1027 was made out of an Hermès saddle bag. And that in 2018 Hermès made a replacement, which I must have walked past multiple times, without knowing—was it actually even there? Yes, there it is in Iwan Baan’s photo.

an hermes mailbox that seems to be about the size of a laptop but 20cm thick, is made of black saddle leather, with a palladium backet, a palladium ringed hole in the lower center, to see into, and what looks like a palladium ring on the side, perhaps to open it. the letters spelling lettres are stamped in silver on the face. it's attached next to a thin vertical window, on the deep blue wall of the entrance of the villa e-1027, by eileen gray, who designed the house and the original mailbox, made from an hermes saddlebag, in 1929. this is 1 of 2 replicated by hermes, the other of which was sold at artcurial in 2019, in an auction where this photo came from
Hermès boîte aux lettres unique [sic], a 2018 replica of Eileen Gray’s original 1929 design, also fabricated by/from Hermès, created in an edition of two. image via Artcurial

And there it is in Manuel Bougot’s photograph of the entrance of E-1027, a print of which he donated to the 2019 Artcurial auction to benefit the Association Cap Moderne, which led the restoration of E-1027. The auction that included an overnight stay for two in the E-1027 guest room, but who cares? Because the Hermès “boîte aux lettres unique was not, in fact unique; it was “Faite main et sur mesure par la Sellerie Hermès en deux exemplaires en 2018, une pour la Villa E1027, une pour vous.”

Pour moi? Mais, non! Because I did not know. Also I did not bid €11,000 for it.

a black and white photo from 1929 of the entrance to e-1027 by eileen gray has the black leather hermes mailbox on a grayish wall at the center, abutting a thin vertical window that runs from floor to ceiling. the top pane of the window is open. a light fixture of a pane of glass and a lightbulb is above the mailbox. to the right is the passageway to the service entrance. the wall on the right has yet to be vandalized by le corbusier, image by editions albert morancé by l'arch. vivante in 1929
photo of the boîte aux lettres et al published in the portfolio, E1027 Maison en bord de mer, by l’Architecture vivante in winter 1929

But now I have une question. Because the English auction listing said this is “replicating precisely the one made by Eileen Gray from a Hermès saddle-bag in 1929 for E1027,” while the French text says it was made from “à partir d’une selle Hermès,” which, I understand selle to be a saddle. So far I can find no info about the original mailbox at all, much less what Hermès product Gray might have chopped up to make it.

The c. 1929 photo of the boîte published in Jean Badovici’s own architecture magazine does indeed look just like the Hermès replica. According to Peter Adam, Gray put the hole in the box and a mirror in the window so you could check the mail from bed. But my limited mind cannot conceive how it is reworked from a bag, and not just made to Gray’s design from saddle leather. Does the original still exist to have been replicated? Are there some archives that need diving into to solve this mystery? Because now that I know it existed, I can’t figure out why, at this point, it’s not a mailbox, a bag, or both..

Eileen Gray’s Important Bedroom Furniture

a black and white photo of eileen grey's paris bedroom circa 1930, with a cabinet serving as a low wall, with the door behind it, and a chair an vanity situation in front of a wall mounted mirror, and then a low headboard with some lights and switches built in, and a fur throw on the bed. a translucent screen stands in front of the large window on the left background of the photo
Important Cabinet and Headboard in Eileen Gray’s Paris apartment, circa 1930? if Pinterest is to be trusted, and frankly, half the reason for this blog post is to make sure there’s another non-Pinterest version of this photo out there.

If you put the phrase, “Important Headboard” in the subject line, you will absolutely have my attention. And if it involves Eileen Gray, and it’s her own furniture, and there turns out to be some specific photodocumentation, all the better.

a white painted wood headboard of flat, modernist design is set into a corner, and along the adjacent wall is a lattice of interlocking open rectangles forming a series of shelves. a built-in light, some switches, and a cantilevered pivoting nightstand table are all elements eileen grey used elsewhere at the same time, circa 1930. image via christies, where, let's be real, an old painted piece of plywood headboard with cloudy plastic covers on the lights, and pitted nickel plating, is a hard sell for six figures, even if it is important

And so, while digging around on Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table last week, I came across Eileen Gray’s Important Headboard and Wall-Mounted Bookcase AND Eileen Gray’s Important Cabinet. Both were from Gray’s own apartment in Paris, at 21 rue Bonaparte.

an eileen grey cabinet of white painted wood has three grey drawers on the top left that pivot out, above a cupboard, and on the right, another cupboard over a couple of open shelves backed with glass or something, circa 1930, image via christies

These are not fine cabinetry made by the ebenistes to Versailles. They’re painted wood. But while Gray did design some extremely refined pieces on commission, or for her store, Jean Desert, the furniture Gray was making for herself around 1930 all looked like this: utilitarian to an extreme.

a photo of a daybed in the corner of a modernist interior circa 1929, with a flat pulldown desk opening on top of a pillow, and a cantilevered night stand that now kind of resembles an airplane seat tray when there's not a seat in front of you. this alcove is really just a corner, there's a door right there. it's eileen gray's living room at e-1027 via moma
photo of E-1027 sleeping alcove in the living room with switch panel and cantilevered night table, from MoMA’s 1980 Eileen Gray exhibition catalogue

The cabinet’s pivoting drawers, and the headboard’s built-in switches and cantilevered nightstand are all features of furniture Gray made at E-1027. The cantilevered night table actually looks identical to the one she put on a divan in Jean Badovici’s studio apartment in Paris in 1930. So she was working from a repertoire of ideas—and parts.

1979 moma installation shot in black and white of eileen gray's four panel translucent fluted glass screen—or is it painted metal mesh?—standing on a pedestal behind a small night stand sized cabinet painted white, with pivoting drawers. some unreconizable photos or diagrams hang on the wall next to the display. via moma obv
MoMA 1980 installation photo by Mali Olatunji showing, I think, the translucent four-panel screen from Eileen Gray’s apartment, plus a very matchy little cabinet

Part of me was bummed that these two pieces were split up when they came up for sale in 2023, though the headboard does seem pretty specific. And they had been on different, intersecting paths since leaving rue Bonaparte. But then I think the screen in the window of Gray’s apartment, which I think was in the MoMA show, seems to have already gone its separate way, too; so maybe it’s too much energy to worry about keeping the ensemble together. I would absolutely love to see someone spend $250-450,000 on these two pieces, though, and make the sickest, authentic monastery cell on the Left Bank, just fueled by IYKYK energy. Even Eileen Gray knew not everything had to be eighteen coats of hand-pumiced lacquer.

Brooklyn woodworker Joel blogged about seeing the Gray furniture at Christie’s, saying: “The pieces are very practical, made out of very prosaic materials, and are pretty poorly made. Exactly what a practical designer living on a budget might want for herself! For me they seem right out of Ikea, albeit with maybe a few more curves. And that idea is way advanced for it’s time.” Metaphorical curves, maybe, and not really on a budget, but yeah, Gray was doing this before Ingvar Kamprad was even a Nazi, much less a furniture titan.

eileen gray's paris bedroom is pretty plain, dominated by a big peach striped bed, no fancy pillows and no headboard, and two supertall black lacquer frames that reach to the ceiling. a black lacquer sling chair, like a deck chair for a yacht of one, sits in the corner. beyond the screens, a dangerous looking step up to a very narrow platform with a work table and rolling stool, in front of a window covered by straight cream curtains. over the bed on the left wall, a flag sized painting of blue white and yellow horizontal bands is slashed through by two red diagonals that read like pennants on a ship's line. image via sotheby's, which sold the screens for like $800k in 2023
it’s an Important Headboard or no headboard at all for Eileen Gray. she wanted no unimportant headboards in her Paris apartment image via sothebys

I take back what I said about the hand-pumiced lacquer. Earlier in 2023 Sotheby’s sold an Important Pair of Screens, also from Gray’s apartment, from an Important New York Collection. By the 70s she’d remodeled, settling into her all-lacquer phase, with a Transat Chair, and what looks, ngl, like a very precarious rolling stool and step situation. We should be amazed she lived so long and so well. So did she put the Important Headboard in storage, or did someone buy her used furniture along the way?

Anyway, now I want to find out about the Not Important Enough To Have A Credit Or Any Info Online About It Painting above her bed, which looks like a throwback to her E-1027 days.

Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table

eileen gray adjustable table is two chrome rings, one the foot (which is partially open) and the other the top (full ring) connected by a chrome tubular steel rectangle that both holds and pierces the top. the top is painted black. being sold by lempertz in may 2025
Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table, being sold as Lot 432 at Lempertz in Cologne, on 15 May 2025

OK, have a seat, and pull up a table. The Cologne auction specialists at Lempertz are calling this, “An incunabulum of early 20th century design history,” and a “‘table ajustable’ for E.1027 from the personal collection of Eileen Gray.” The dates are 1925-28. The dates for E-1027 are 1926-29.

“Incunabulum,” of course, is a rare book term for the earliest printed books, before printing presses actually took off. So the implication here, is this is an ur-table of some kind. After all, this table has a black lacquered plywood top. And even the OG E-1027 table ajustable, in E-1027, in the guest room, which was designed for Gray’s sister to have breakfast in bed, had a glass top.

a black and white slightly washed out photo of a modernist bedroom, with a blocky double bed pushed into a corner. a metal screen at the end of the bed gives privacy. a night stand is cantilevered off the wall. a round chrome cantilevered side table that can slide under the edge of the bed is slid under the side of the bed. the image of eileen gray's guest room at e-1027, her house in roquebrune france, was published in a moma catalogue in 1979, where lempertz used it without credit, but no sweat, i found it.
vintage photo of E-1027 Guest Room with an OG Table, probably from Prunella Clough’s Gray Archive, as published in J. Stewart Johnson’s 1979 MoMA catalogue, Eileen Gray: Designer [sic], via Lempertz

“For E-1027” is not necessarily the same thing as “from E-1027.” The original furniture for E-1027 was sold off while the house itself languished, but Gray’s foundational modernist designs were recognized and canonized during her lifetime. MoMA dates the E-1027 Table to 1927. Their example was fabricated in 1976, the year of Gray’s death, and has a dark glass top on sheet steel. [I think. Maybe someone can doublecheck? It’s on view rn in the David Geffen Wing.]

This table has an Eileen Gray mark on the underside. It was put there—and on the rest of his collection—by Gray champion/biographer Peter Adam. Turns out Adams’ heirs put the table up for sale at Sotheby’s Paris in May 2021, where it was described as a “prototype.” Adam bought it from Gray’s neice, Prunella Clough, who inherited it from Gray. The date for the table then was “vers 1970.” Was it a prototype for a variant with a plywood top? Did it break? Had it been broken for years in the garage, and she was like, “I’m 92; just put a plywood top on it”?

It is all a marvelous mystery, because the auction specialists at Lempertz have provided absolutely no information. While I have blogged myself out of excitement about this table’s history, I am very excited to watch Eileen Gray’s table that didn’t sell four years ago for EUR40,000 sell next month for EUR150-200,000.

[sale morning update: apparently I am the only one wanting to watch this sale, because the table was withdrawn at some point after this post. Though the page has completely disappeared, there is still an extensive, two-page spread on the table in the pdf catalogue. It has all the detail and discussion one would hope for from an experienced firm like Lempertz, including:

“Peter Adam lists six known examples of the ‘table ajustable’ from the period between 1925 and 1928. The Galerie Jean Désert offered an initial small-scale production run from 1927 to 1929. In 1970, Eileen Gray sold the license for series production of the side table (and a few other of her designs) to the Galerie Zeev Aram. Today, we do not know which version formed the basis of her agreement with Aram. Our table has the lacquered top—and is thus perhaps the earliest. It is very likely that she later moved on to more functional solutions (i.e., a metal and subsequently a glass top).”

While this does not account for the 2021 “vers 1970” dating, it certainly provides more insight for this sale—if it had happened.]

Villa Jasper: He Sold The House in St Martin

the patio and pool of a hilltop villa in st martin is enclosed by trees along the right edge. on the left, a tile roof held by thick, round columns shades a teak seating arrangement on the terra cotta tile patio. through it to the left, past a row of blue upholstered lounge chairs facing the rectangular pool, another deep veranda with tile roof leads inside a white stucco house and immediately through to a distant view of blue water, shore activity, and green mountain. the sky is bright blue with clouds. at the lower front edge, the corner of a similarly rectangular lily pond is surrounded by low shrubs. villa jasper used to be jasper johns' house in st martin, where he'd spend almost every winter since 1980 working. it's now a luxury rental property, part of the st martin blue luxury villa collection.
Oh sprawling farm in Sharon, we’re really in it now: the pool and patio at Jasper Johns’ old place in St Martin. I do not think the flamingo conveyed.

Speaking of artists retreating to remote beaches, it turns out Jasper Johns, 94, sold his hilltop house and studio in St Martin early in the pandemic.

Johns began visiting St. Martin in 1968, two years after a fire destroyed his home and studio in Edisto, South Carolina. He bought a house in 1972, which he had nazi architect Philip Johnson renovate in 1980.

From Sotheby’s International Realty: “While major upgrades have been made to the property’s comfort and amenities, much care and attention was taken to ensure that Philip Johnson’s distinct minimalism and purity of line was preserved and that the soul of Jasper John’s [sic] house remain palpable.”

It is now called Villa Jasper, and is available for rent as part of the St. Martin Blue Luxury Villa Collection. If the flamingo in the pool is not new, we’ll have to significantly update our understanding of Johns’ home vibe.

About That Robert Irwin Documentary

I watched the Robert Irwin documentary, A Desert of Pure Feeling, and it is good. [It is currently on Kanopy for free, support your local public library.]

Some things stand out:

Irwin’s mystical-sounding development of his pursuit of perception was fascinating: posting up on Ibiza and not talking to anyone for eight months? wandering around the desert or whatever, painting dots for 16 hours/day, 7 days/wk? But he was not, in fact, alone in that pursuit. Some art world context would have been more helpful than repeating his refusal to allow his work to be photographed.

The Whitney installation was nice, but it felt somehow confusing, which is weird because there was even a real reinstallation of it, with footage and everything. The filmmakers did somehow manage to shoot other phenomenological aspects of other installations coherently.

Evelyn Hankins, who curated Irwin’s spectacular Hirshhorn retrospective, was thoughtful and present—but that show was somehow not, at all.

Which, wtf, the MCA San Diego’s masterpiece, 1° 2° 3° 4°, was done dirty here. Is it the ultimate “you had to be there” Irwin? Except for the Chinati building, which took up the last third of the film?

The dynamics of shooting and interviewing around Marfa and Chinati was weird. Marriane Stockebrand, the inviter, I guess, was everywhere, but Jennie Moore, the director who dragged that project across the finish line was airkissed in one crowd shot? Maybe that is #chinatiworldproblems, I guess I’ll demur. The weird caginess over whether he’d attend the 2016 ribboncutting was eerie, too; it made it sound like he died in production. [Spoiler: he stuck around for seven more years.]

For a documentary about perception and reproduction, it did shoot Irwin’s own dot paintings immaculately. But the shimmering moiré of halftone dots and pixels during pans across archival photos was hilariously distracting.

Seeing Arne Glimcher as a producer both makes sense and raises some flags, but how is that any different from anything the Glimchers have done all this time? It is what it is.

For such a singular thinker, who’d done so much work on his own mind and being, maybe give the film a title that reflects something he said, not just something he quoted?

Mies Kampf

memorial to the november revolution was a horizontally oriented solid jenga structure of unaligned and asymmetrical blocks, constructed of brick salvaged from buildings damaged in the revolution, or the walls against which anti-fascists were shot. a large five pointed star with a hammer and sickle on the upper right section of the memorial had a flagpole attached next to it. a low border of flowers in the berlin cemetery where the memorial was built sits behind a gravel sidewalk, and a chained, low gateway. designed by mies van der rohe and destroyed by nazis
Mies van der Rohe, Revolutionsdenkmal, Berlin, 1926, photo by Arthur Köstler via thecharnelhouse

On this, the anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s birth, I recalled the memorial erected to her and other anti-fascists, constructed out of the bricks taken from the walls against which they were shot in 1919. It was designed by Mies van der Rohe, built in 1926, and torn down by the nazis in 1935.

I have not yet found the testimony Mies gave in front of Joseph McCarthy’s House Unamerican Activities Committee, but I did find this paragraph from Dietrich Neumann’s foreword to his 2024 biography, Mies Van Der Rohe: An Architect in His Time:

“Politically, Mies was the Talleyrand of modern architecture,” historian Richard Pommer sarcastically noted, referring to the famously opportunistic diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, who was active under different masters before, during, and after the French Revolution. And indeed, a series of projects by Mies seem to suggest his indifference to political persuasions, be they the Bismarck Memorial, the Monument to the November Revolution [above], the Barcelona Pavilion, or the design for the Brussels World’s Fair pavilion for the nazi regime. Mies’s stand was hardly a profile in courage, but rather driven by opportunism and a desire to maintain the respect of his many left-leaning friends, while keeping his options open with conservative clients or the nazi regime. In the United States, he was suspected both of being a nazi spy and questioned by Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee about Communist leanings due to the Monument to the November Revolution.

Wait, what? Mies van der Rohe, whose most famous building was the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona World’s Fair, also designed a German Pavilion for the nazis at the 1935 Brussels World’s Fair? Was this not mentioned in Mies in Berlin, Terry Riley and Barry Bergdoll’s 2001 MoMA exhibition on the architect’s work through 1937?

Continue reading “Mies Kampf”

OG MoMA Screening Room @Jeu de Paume

a black and white photo from 1938 of a tall ceilinged gallery in the musee du jeu de paume in paris set up as a screening room. thick dark curtains on the doorway on the right wall are currently open. 75 or so simple wooden cafe chairs are arranged in twelve rows facing the far wall, on which a white screen that looks a lot like a robert rauschenberg white painting, is hung high on the wall. the dimensions are for 16m, 4:3, basically. a folding screen stands in the corner below it. on the left wall, two giant windows let in all kinds of beautiful daylight, which, I must admit, is not something I'd have considered for a screening room. via moma archive

Even though it was a film [still], The Public Enemy (1931) that brought me to Three Centuries of American Art, MoMA’s ambitious 1938 Paris exhibition, I was not prepared to find an actual screening room at the end of the 85-pic slideshow of installation photos from the Musée du Jeu de Paume. But here it is.

Continue reading “OG MoMA Screening Room @Jeu de Paume”

Harrisonfahrkartenschalter

a freestanding ticket booth at wurstelprater, an amusement park in vienna, is built to resemble a graggy brownish grey cliff two stories tall, except it rests on a plinth of stone or concrete, which the concrete fake rock appears to overlap, like an overgrown tree root. and there is a wide plate glass window with an irregular edge and a level shelf, which contrasts with the seeming natural wildness of the rock. and on the upper right is an air conditioning compressor on its own ledge cut into the fake rock, an even starker contrast of nature and machine than the window. power lines, the tops of various rides behind the booth, etc. poke up from the top. the bottom edge foreground is a neat cobblestone
Don’t tell me it’s not a Rachel Harrison? Wurstelprater via Christian Oldham

It eventually wore off, but for a long while after seeing my first Gabriel Orozco show, it changed me, and I saw his art in every condensation ring on every counter, and every tin can balanced on a watermelon.

Rachel Harrison’s work is the opposite, in that I’ve been looking at it for years now, and this is the first time an object in the real world has seized me with her vision. And if you want me to believe that this fake stone ticket booth at the buck wild Wurstelprater amusement park in Vienna, with the air conditioner perched on its little ledge is not the world’s largest Rachel Harrison sculpture, well, the burden is on you.

Related? Wurstelprater in October, from Half Letter Press [halfletterpress]

Good In Bed, Better Against A Wall

the reid white house, a 19th century red brick house in downtown lexington virgnia, is photographed from this oblique angle because just to the left, behind that hedge, is the post office, which is built on the house's front yard, and so there's no clear view of the house. it has two chimneys on each end, and a white columned porch. the double porch in the background was added later. via vlr
the house formerly known as the Reid-White House, photographed for the Virginia Landmark Register in 2016 by Sarah Traum, in such a way that the post office in the front yard can’t be seen.

What to do with this story from Sally Mann’s memoir?

Every time [Cy Twombly and I] would leave his house and catch a glimpse of the neighboring Reid White house behind the trees, one or the other of us would repeat our favorite line from a story my mother used to tell about the occupant of that house, Mrs. Breasted White. That’s what I swear I remember her saying: “Mrs. Breasted White.” But now, writing that name, it somehow seems highly improbable.

Anyway, we’d say the punch line, sometimes in unison, and then we would both howl with laughter, as if we had just heard it for the first time. Here’s how the story goes:

Continue reading “Good In Bed, Better Against A Wall”

A Solicitation of Wood Scraps and The One-Mat Room

a woodblock print in two halves of a corner of the one-mat room, a study built by matsuura takeshiro in 1887. on the left a low writing desk in dark wood sits in front of a large, open window. on the right, a hibachi and tea implements are lined up aaginst a fusuma sliding wall panel which has text written on it in japanese. various pieces of wood are marked by katakana characters, which correspond to a key running down the left edge of the page, identifying the catalogue item number of each piece of ancient wood and its source. from mokuhen kanjin, image via henry smith
Matsuura Takeshiro’s drawing of one corner of his One-Mat Room, with katakana keys to identify the various pieces of wood or other artifact, as published in Mokuhen Kanjin, and screenshot from Prof Henry D Smith II’s Oct 2024 lecture at the Noguchi Museum

After two decades as an explorer and cartographer, Matsuura Takeshirō, who gave the northern island of Japan its name, Hokkaidō, settled into a second life as an antiquarian. In anticipation of his 70th year (1888), he decided to build a tiny study onto his small house in central Tokyo, and asked his antiquarian colleagues across Japan to each send him a piece of old wood. He called the study the Ichijōjiki ((一畳敷), or One-Mat Room, though it is actually slightly larger than its single tatami mat. Matsuura documented each piece of wood, its source and significance, and its donor, in a tiny, self-published catalogue, Mokuhen Kanjin (木片勧進), which Columbia professor emeritus Henry Smith II translates as, A Solicitation of Wood Scraps.

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Yoshio Taniguchi Hardhat

The groundbreaking for the Yoshio Taniguchi addition to The Museum of Modern Art took place in May 2001 under a tent in the demolished Sculpture Garden, which had been repurposed as a staging area. I was sitting on the outer edge of the first bay of seats, stage right, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s security detail was standing behind me, on the aisle, while he was on the low dais with everyone. Architect Yoshio Taniguchi was on the far side of the arc of trustees and dignitaries. There were silver MoMA Builds hardhats and shovels for everyone, arranged in rows on edge of the dais next to the dirtbox.

david rockefeller and rudy giuliani hold silver polished shovels and fake dig in some dirt for the groundbreaking of moma's yoshio taniguchi renovation. taniguchi and agnes gund and other folks stand on the dais behind, waiting their photo opp turn. the setting is a white tent, with some crowds visible in the background, applauding. image circa may 2001 via bizbash, a corporate party rental portal that is going strong in 2024, i guess
David Rockefeller and Rudy Giuliani ceremonially breaking ground for MoMA’s renovation in May 2001. Architect Yoshio Taniguchi talks with Agnes Gund in the background, image: bizbash

When it came time to do the ceremonial groundbreaking, there was some not completely scripted bustling around, as everyone got their hardhats on, and when someone tried to hand a hardhat to the mayor, his security guards sprung forward and hissed to each other intensely: “Oh shit, not the hat, not the hat.” because Giuliani was still in his combover era. He ended up not wearing a hardhat.

After the photo-opp broke up and the mayor left, gladhanding and milling about began, and I grabbed one of the unclaimed hardhats from Taniguchi’s end of the dais. [A shovel seemed a bit much.]

gothamist photo from a moma catwalk facing down onto the atrium, which is being set up for a party/preview, with drink stations and cater waiters milling about. the green grey slate floor dominates. barnett newman's bronze sculpture, broken obelisk, an obelisk perched upside down on the tip of a pyramid, is at the atrium center. on the back wall, monet's water lilies look flat as hell.
Gothamist‘s November 2004 photo of the inaugural installation of the atrium, with Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk looking great, and Monet’s Water Lilies looking flat af

The dedication of the Taniguchi addition took place in November 2004 in the Marron Atrium. I brought the hardhat in my eight month-old daughter’s stroller. As the event was breaking up, I took her to meet the Taniguchis, and presented the hardhat to him to sign, which he graciously did. I’ll post a pic of it when I can.

matisse's dance hung above a floating staircase with glass safety rail, and long window beyond facing onto moma's atrium, with multiple catwalks and the sculpture garden beyond, one of the dramatic details of yoshio taniguchi's moma redesign, image: tim hursley, 2004
This was originally called the Matisse Stairwell. My 2004 copy of this Timothy Hursley photo is 250 pixels wide.

The stairway with the window on the atrium; the separate window onto the atrium that gathers dust beautifully; the windows onto the city; the restored entrance of Goodwin & Stone’s building; the porches on the Garden; and the corner where he resolved Cesar Pelli’s otherwise unrooted tower in the lobby and the Garden, are my favorite elements of Taniguchi’s design. They’re all moments where Taniguchi sought to integrate his space and structure with its context and history.

The galleries have always been fine for me; I think I was cured of misplaced nostalgia for the Pelli-era or earlier galleries by a conversation with Terry Riley, where he relayed a conversation with Taniguchi. After the finalists had been selected, Riley suggested to Taniguchi that he reconsider his more reverential approach to the existing galleries. He showed plans of the evolving museum, and how the galleries echoed the dimensions and plans of the rowhouses that had been demolished with each expansion. This constraint was long gone, Riley showed, and the new building could—and should—take its program from the art and the curators who would use it. I remember thinking this was profound and correct. But over time, I’ve also come to recognize that those phantom townhouses didn’t just impact the floorplan, but the kinesthetic experience of viewing art in the spaces they influenced. MoMA’s galleries felt a certain way, and that has changed as the building and the institution evolved.

a gothic window of st thomas's church on fifth avenue is tightly framed by the glass walls and soaring white steel roof of the porch of yoshio taniguchi's moma, while a tree in the sculpture garden inhabits the middleground, and two curved plates of rusted corten steel of a richard serra torqued ellipse fill the left and lower section of the photo, taken from inside serra's sculpture in 2005
Taniguchi and Serra and St Thomas Church, 2005

Taniguchi delivered beautifully on what he was asked to do, opening up the museum to the city as a spectacular stage for the likes of Richard Serra and Marina Abramovic. It set the stage for what followed, too: the real estate maxxing, the Nouvel supertower, and Diller + Scofidio turning the townhouse-sized Folk Art Museum into a void. [No bronze tables yet, though.] I wonder how often Taniguchi visited.