architecture – greg.org

There Is No Me in Minka

a two page spread of a large book on a wood table is open to a black and white photo from the 1950s of an early 19th century sake shop in hiroshima, with a vast single room and a high ceiling made of impossibly thick curved wood beams. the ground floor is filled with white rectangles like tables or tanks or something related to sake i guess the point is these sick beams tho — Mukai-ya, a sake shop in Hiroshima built in 1832, 📷: Futagawa Yukio via Nihon no Minka

The months after coming back from Japan are always when it hits the hardest, the desire to live in a minka by the sea. Except most minka are not by the sea, so you’d have to move it there. Or you’d have to live where the minka remain, in the mountains.

a large photobook from 1962 sits open on a wooden tabletop to a large black and white photo that fills two pages. the image is of a village in kyushu japan with thatched roofs, stretching toward a small hill in the background. nihon no minka — whole bunch of minka in Satsuma Shinashi, Kagoshima, I think, 📷: Futagawa Yukio for Nihon no Minka

Instead, I just pull out my copy of Itõ Teiji and Futagawa Yukio’s incredible 1957-59 survey of minka, 日本の民家, and soak in it. I read Craig Mod’s accounts of walks, and consider that rapidly depopulating rural Japan is probably not the place for foreigners to grow old in.

And then I rewatch Minka, Davina Pardo’s extraordinary 2011 short film about the love and life of two men and their house. And as I wonder if Yoshihiro Takishita still has any minka lying around, waiting to be reassembled, and then I’m like, yeah, three hundred years in, the heating really does sound like an unsolved issue, maybe I’ll just visit.

Previously, related: Kusakabe House, Takayama

In Gropius-Bau What’d Andy Do? A Speer Lichtdom Erect

thomas hoepker photo of andy warhol from 1981, with andy in jeans, a white shirt and green and blue rep tie, standing sheepishly, as if andy had any other posing mode, next to a stuffed great dane mounted on a pedestal, and with a stacked diptych in red above white of a black silkscreened image of albert speer's lichtdom, the cathedral of light the nazi architect created for a nazi party rally in nuremberg in 1934. the screenprinting process abstracts the beams of light, which are inverted and painted black, and form a slightly conical structure that would have been visible in the cloudy night sky. — 1981 pic by Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker of Andy Warhol at 860 Broadway with the caption identifying the stuffed dog, but not the Albert Speer-related paintings behind him, via @twixnmix via @voorwerk

I swear, until this morning I was just going to like and reblog this photo of Warhol and move on. And then the Angel of History started piling rubble on top of rubble on the White House lawn.

Albert Speer was Hitler’s favorite architect, and Andy Warhol loved him. In the early 80s he made multiple paintings of Speer’s Lichtdom, and they seem to exist only in the backgrounds of snapshots of Warhol himself. Though they appeared in a major international exhibition in 1982, they seem to have been ignored by dealers and curators and historians then and since.

Curiouser and Curiouser: Alice Garden in Hiroshima

a screenshot from google street view of a pedestrian plaza in hiroshima with some trees surrounded by railings, asymmetrical and angled walls of tiled forms leading to the underground parking garage, and a parco department store in the background — Alice Garden on Streetview in 2017, when the two trees had railings for seating instead of platforms, and there was a coffee truck, and a tool shed.

Kenzo Tange’s Peace Memorial Park is the largest and most significant architectural public space in Hiroshima, and it always will be. But on a recent visit my curiosity was piqued by a weirdly eccentric post-modernist confection of a public plaza in the messy center of the city’s central shopping district. Even in aging cities outside of Tokyo, teardowns are the norm; the new Hiroshima Gate Park Plaza, built across the street from the ruins of the Genbaku Dome, on the site of the city’s old baseball stadium, is slated for recycling in less than 20 years. So it seemed wild to me that a small park/event space named Alice Garden has survived, mostly intact, next to the department store Parco, for over 30 years.

google map aerial view of alice garden, a public plaza and event space in central hiroshima, has the parco department store on the north/top edge; and two entrances to underground parking for bikes (west) and cars (south) that define the program. on the right side, buildings housing stairway entrances, restrooms, and maintenance, line the east edge, and help enclose the space, which remains largely open on the south. on the south west side, bleachers sit atop the parking entrance, facing an elliptical raised stage/platform on the north east corner, which also holds a red, cube-like geometric steel sculpture — the Google Maps plan of Alice Garden shows the program—fanciful entrances to underground parking on the upper west and southwestern sides, stair and ventilation structures and restrooms on the east, bleachers facing an ellipse-shaped plinth/stage with an “objet”

After wandering into the space by chance and being surprised by the extent of its design—and, again, its survival—I’ve spent the last couple of weeks researching Alice Garden and its designer/architects. So far, I’ve had little success. Its architecture is mostly undocumented online, and questions of design and history fall beyond the capacity of the city offices tasked with managing the space and calendar. Though maintenance is a mess, the site is not wholly neglected. Alice Garden was in regular, light, use, and active with event programming. But its integrity feels threatened by indifference to its holistic design, and to its barely historic era: a boldy whimsical, almost corny, post-modernist plaza from the early 90s feels very susceptible to underappreciation.

parked bikes ring the angled glass and tile geometric structure, tilted at various angles, that leads to underground bike parking. a mint green and purple square column and beam towers over the corner of the parking structure, with faded paint above the reach of the maintenance workers' attempts to paint over graffiti and flyers. — How I found it: this wacky, angled, bike parking structure, tagged and faded, but intact. all the pics, until otherwise noted: me.

At its core, there are contradictions in Alice Garden that make it more interesting, but that also put it at more risk. One is, there’s no creator to rally around. So far, I can’t find an architect or firm involved besides Parco, whose tile-covered new building [shinkan], completed in 1994, matches the all-tile plaza. The closest I’ve come to identifying an architect is Parco Space Systems, the shopping center company’s design subsidiary. After decades of corporate consolidations, it has been subsumed into J. Front Prime Space.

And then there’s the fundamental design incongruity between the Garden and one of its central elements. Linear Cycle (1994) is a major public sculpture by artist/musician Takashi Suzuki, that sits on an elliptical plinth that doubles as as an event stage. Suzuki’s sculpture is modernist and rational in a way that belies the surrealist narrative po-mo jumble of the park it inhabits. Whatever brought these elements together, I think the passage of time—and their survival—has made them a family. They have earned their place, and deserve attention—and more attentive care.

Der Schwerbelastungskörper und Die Schwerbelastungskörperaussichtsplattform

a 21-meter diameter cylinder of solid concrete rises 14 meters among trees in berlin, built by fucking nazis to test the soil's capacity to hold their stupid bombastic architecture. it couldn't. via ted grunewald — view of the heavy load-bearing structure from the viewing platform, via @tedgrunewald.bsky.social

So a nazi-aping fascist’s monomaniacal proposal to build an arch on swampy riverfront is in the news. In 1941 Hitler’s architect Albert Speer got approval to build a giant triumphal arch on a main axis of a redesigned Berlin, and quickly built the Schwerbelastungskörper, or heavy load-bearing structure, to test the ability of the marshy soil to support such a ridiculously large structure. It was built with forced labor from captured French soldiers.

The Heavy Load-Bearing Structure is a cylindrical pressure body made of solid concrete 14 meters high, with a diameter of 21 meters. Its 11-meter diameter concrete base extends 18 meters deep. The 12,650 ton weight was calculated to approximate one of the arch’s four base legs.

The war diverted resources and attention from the arch and the redesign of Berlin, and the HLBS was left behind. Scientists and soil management technicians used the structure for data collection until 1983—postwar analysis showed the ground was too soft to have supported Hitler’s arch without major intervention, btw. And it became a historical monument in 1995, “the only tangible example of National Socialist urban planning.”

a screenshot from google streetview of a small information kiosk with a four-story staircase on the outside that winds up to a viewing platform, all wrapped in a metal cage of steel bars, all to view a heavy load bearing structure made of 12000 tons of solid concrete left behind by the nazis — heavy load-bearing structure visitor information center and viewing platform via google streetview

Now there is a visitor information center, monthly tours, and a Schwerbelastungskörperaussichtsplattform, a Heavy Load-Bearing Structure Viewing Platform, which looks exactly like what a visitor center for a useless nazi concrete plug should look like.

ISA USA W54 NYC

a middle aged white guy reflected vaguely in the window of the galerie buchholz, with his head lined up to the isa genzken world receiver panasonic short wave radio on a pedestal inside. behind the radio several table vitrines recede in perspective.

The Isa Genzken show at Buchholz has an archival feel interspersed with some bangers. It’s focused on Genzken’s public projects. Actually, no, it’s what it says on the label—Projects for Outside—and so it excludes public commissions like the U-bahn station she did with Richter. And yet there is the OG 1982 World Receiver. And a Kunstverein edition World Receiver further in. And original documentation of her original 1987 World Receiver installation in a music store window. Which counts as a project for outside, I guess? I have to say, the World Receiver in the window of Buchholz’s new space on 54th St is so close to the glass, the only way to photograph it is from outside. So yes. Also, yes, this was the Manolo Blahnik store.

A Wall by George Nakashima

a timber and stucco modernist house with a single peaked roof and a white wall, inclined outward, with a black on white abstract mosaic by ben shahn, with a stone or sand zen garden in the foreground and winter trees behind, this is the arts building at george nakashima's woodworking compound in new hope pennsylvania — Please note the angle of the wall at the left, the one that seems covered with Brice Marden graffiti, but it is a Ben Shahn mosaic mural. George Nakashima, Arts Building/Minguren Museum, New Hope, PA, photo: World Monuments Fund

The Nakashima Compound in New Hope, Pennsylvania feels well-loved, impressive when visited, and very haphazardly documented. Probably because it is and has been in near constant use and change since George Nakashima built his first workshed in the 1940s. Maybe also because Nakashima did all the designs, and though he was trained as an architect, he was most known by the photographing and publishing classes, at least, as a woodwizarding furnituremaker.

a photo from the side or rear corner of george nakashima's arts building traces the tilted paraboloid roof, curved like a membrane on two axes, which is anchored at a corner on the left, but it all made of plywood. the white and black mosaic mural wall of ben shahn is on the right edge, grass or moss, perhaps, in the foreground amidst the trees whose leaves clog the drainage system of this experimental and rotting roof — Please not that angled wall again, or rather, please note the angle of that wall. photo: April Frantz for PA Historic Preservation

Whatever the situation, it has been difficult to find the photos I need to understand something that fascinates me in the Arts Building (1965 or 1967), first known as the Minguren Museum, the pointy, triangular-looking open structure with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof made of plywood. [There is also a poured concrete paraboloid roof structure, the Conoid Building, and the slatted, curved ceilings look similar inside, which is confusing. Also, did Nakashima really name buildings after his furniture lines as part of the marketing? I think a trip to the Compound/showroom/workshop was part of many large commissions, when clients came to select a tree or whatever. Maybe it all makes sense on the ground.]

In this Pennsylvania Historic Preservation blog post, it says this experimental roof was, in 2021, the subject of a Getty-funded conservation project undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania. After it had been flagged by the World Monuments Fund. So maybe there’s documentation after all. [Also, as someone from Raleigh, a town whose pioneering concrete hyperbolic paraboloid roof house masterpiece was neglected and destroyed by absolute idiots, I have to say the potential longer term viability of the Nakashima plywood roof gives me new hope.]

the pointed corner of the arts building with windows on both sides is softened by a gently arched ceiling of plywood. in the center of the light filled space stand some of george nakashima's most magnificent wood slabs, left here for contemplation in the natural ight. a dining table surrounded by nakashima chairs fills the foreground. in the center background of the photo, the loft of concrete and fieldstone that encloses the foyer below, is filled above with barely discernible furniture prototypes and folk art. — interior of Minguren Museum with some truly epic wood slabs, and the fieldstone and concrete coffered foyer and mezzanine in the corner, with a cast-in-place concrete parapet and railing at an angle via IG

But that’s not the point right now. Look inside the Arts Building or Minguren Museum, or the Nakashima Foundation for Peace. Entering at the building’s apex into a coffered concrete and fieldstone foyer, and discovering the space opening up, yes, and then the Loft definitely not floating above you.

Rirkrit Tiravanija in Milano

the colorful but horribly lit interior of a childsized house with yellow ikea play table and chairs, blue scalloped wallpaper, and a couple of stuffed animals on the yellow table is the interior of an artwork by rirkrit tiravanija in sweden in 1995. beyond a row of windows, actual adults mill about, indicating the scale of the space, and the fact that it's inside a museum space of some kind. this photo is from the pirelli hangar, another art space where this house will be installed, this time in milan

The Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in BF industrial Milan [but in a different BF industrial Milan from the Fondazione Prada, so plan accordingly] is about to open a show of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s architectural projects.

The pic above is from Untitled, 1995, which was a half-scale version of a modernist house by Sigurd Lewerentz which Tiravanija built at the Rooseum in Malmö. MoMA’s 1997 caption described the interior decorations as “by the children of the Storken day care center ages 5-7,” but that was clearly preceded by a trip to Ikea.

eight swedish 5-7 year olds hang out in front of or in the second floor window of a diminutive modernist box-style house, created at half-scale in a gallery in malmo in 1995. the house is clad in unfinished pine and the four kids outside, at least, are clad in matching aprons with bears on them. they're all presumably taking a break from decorating the inside of the house as part of rirkrit tiravanija's art project. the caption under the photo says as much, as this whole thing is screenshot from a 1997 moma brochure — Collaborators: photo of Rirkrit’s 1995 Malmö installation from the brochure for his 1997 MoMA Project

Which makes Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, whose connections to the nazis were first disclosed in 1994, a more tangential nazi than Philip Johnson, who designed both the Glass House Tiravanija replicated at half-scale and MoMA’s sculpture garden where he put it, but anyway. I’m excited to see the show.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, The house that Jack built, 26 mar – 26 jul 2026 [pirellihangarbicocca.org]
Projects 78: Rirkrit Tiravanija [moma.org]
Previously, related: Transactional Aesthetics, or the highly collectible Rirkrit Tiravanija

Cyhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Bed

the brightly lit salon of cy twombly and tatianna franchetti's apartment in rome has six whilte leather breuer wassily chairs around a large coffee table or perhaps it's a mattress, covered with a recently unfolded, unprimed cotton canvas. a twombly painting lies unstretched and unrolled on the lower fore edge of the composition. the green marble doorway on the right wall echoes the dark warhol painting of tuna fish cans on the left. the two windows on the back wall, on either side of a crushed galvanized steel john chamberlain sculpture, are open to the view of the via di monserrato. by ugo mulas, the hidden historian of 20th century art — Ugo Mulas, c. 1969/70, the Twombly/Franchetti salon in Rome, with Warhol and Chamberlain installed properly, and a Bolsena painting, off its stretcher and unrolled ON THE FLOOR WTF, via *Cy Twombly Homes & Studios*

We still live in a Cy Twombly world Horst built. His European dealers made their own versions of via di Monserrato to live in. And whether it’s to identify works in the background, or to copy the floor, we’re all left poring over the same few photos, a dozen or so slivers from which we try to construct some meaning, to conjure a view of a place and a moment. We make do with what history has left.

Except there’s more. Photographer Ugo Mulas was everywhere in the art world in the 1960s and 70s, taking pictures of everyone and where they worked and everything they made there. Mulas published a couple of books early on, hard to find and expensive; fact is, we haven’t really seen Mulas’s world or processed it. And it feels like every one of his thousands of photos could change Art History forever, yet his only apparent option is to try to sell a dozen of the aesthetic ones as editioned prints.

There are a dozen Ugo Mulas photos of c. 1969/70 via di Monserrato in the Cy Twombly Homes & Studios book, including the one above. There’s another photo of the same room in which the large table covered with an unprimed canvas looks like a mattress. In a third photo, there are instead two acrylic coffee tables covered with photos and art tchotchkes, so the mattress was a choice, or a moment.

Those spindly floor lamps are everywhere in Mulas’ Twombly photos, and nowhere in Horst’s. So is non-Twombly artwork. Warhol, Chamberlain, Johns, Alex Hay, Picasso, the Franchettis didn’t just have an artist in the family; they had direct access to Castelli’s backroom—and a guy who could get it for them wholesale.

But when I say every single Ugo Mulas photo could change Art History, this is what I mean:

a dramatically lit bed with a green velvet cover, green pillows, and a tan fur throw sits on a green wall-to-wall carpet, lit by two chrome floorlamps. behind the bed, a warhol screenprint of a promotional still from bela lugosi's dracula about to bite the neck of a swooning white lady hovers in the blackness. a 1969/70 photo of cy twombly's bed by ugo mulas — Bela Lugosi, Bed

Is this where the mattress ended up? The bedroom is not in Horst, and this Mulas is not in Homes & Studios. The carpet, the velvet, the sheets, Twombly’s love affair with green didn’t start in Bassano. The Kiss (Bela Lugosi) is one of Warhol’s earliest screenprints, which he made himself, on paper. On November 22, 1963.

[a few weeks later update] As I was saying…

This photo of the Twombly sofa is apparently from 1969, by Mulas. Which means every photographer at via Monserrato since then decided NOT to photograph this sofa. They’re all implicated. The Mulas interior shots were also apparently for/published in Vogue Italia in 1971 [not Jul/Aug, Nov, or Dec.] Also, here is a 1968 fashion shoot in Twombly’s apartment.

Previously, related: Cy Twombly’s Homes, Picassos

Marfa Sculptural Appropriation

a mosaic panel installed vertically, with red and black tangled lines against an off-white ground, on the wall of a white cube gallery space, with several related sculptures made or inspired from tangles of wire found on the west texas prairie, by christopher wool. this image is from glasstire's review of wool's 2-yr show in marfa — Christopher Wool’s See Stop Run installation view in Marfa, thru 2027, photo: Glasstire/Alex Marks

Gotta admit, 2025 was that kind of year, and I lost track of Christopher Wool’s See Stop Run exhibition, which I’d assumed ended in a tasty book. Turns out it up and moved to Marfa, the artist’s own [other] home. It’s installed for two whole years in two large gallery spaces, right in town, on Highland Avenue.

christopher wool's red and black snarly lines transformed into a stone and glass mosaic, which was then installed, horizontally, in a gutted prewar office space in lower manhattan in 2024 — Christopher Wool, mosaic, installed [sideways?] at See Stop Run in NYC in 2024, image via seestoprun

Mary Etherington’s review for Glasstire is a useful compare & contrast. One big specific difference may be due to ceiling height. Wool’s first foray into mosiac is shown in 16.5 x 11-ft portrait mode in Texas, while it was shown in 11×16.5 landscape in New York. Considering the 4x larger mosaic Wool made for Hudson Yards is also horizontal, the change doesn’t feel like a corrective as much as a variation.

The bigger difference is one Etherington works around to: the change in context. At first it seems obvious that means the difference between NYC’s sprawling, gutted skyscraper floor, and the adapted storefront white cubes in Marfa. And that compact blankness certainly intensifies the works’ relationships with each other vs the space.

Instead/also, it is Marfa and West Texas itself that makes the difference. I lol’d when Etherington literally called out Wool—again, a fairly longtime Marfa resident—for Marfa sculptural appropriation:

Pretty much everyone in Marfa has a collection of found wire. A visitor to Marfa picked up some cheese at the store and a little wire on the street, then posted it on social media. In New York, the smaller gauge wire sculptures felt out of place, too familiar. My dismissiveness was born of what felt like appropriation of the essence of Marfa. Don’t @ me.

What makes it click, though, is Wool’s installation of gigantized, wire-inspired sculptures in three scattered sites around town. So he’s not just taking from the Marfa found wire culture; he’s also giving back.

Disruption of Time & Place in the Classroom [glasstire]
See Stop Run still running [seestoprun]
Previously, related: Adam & Eve & Charles & Christopher

David Diao Has The Floor

a brown jute doormat with the word welcome in large, all caps red, is overpainted with a fat black spraypainted stripe from upper right to lower left, a 1996 work by david diao being sold at wright auction in february 2026 — David Diao, Untitled, 1996, spray paint on jute, 27 x 16 x 1 in., selling 4 Feb 2026 at Wright

I never really thought of David Diao as an sculptor, and though it really does feel like it belongs on the floor, technically, this unwelcome mat IS painted. Wright put it in their Chicago sale, but there’s nothing in Chicago in Diao’s 1990s exhibition history, so maybe it comes from a Chicago collector. Even with no info, it really does feel like it captures the moment right now.

a deep brown horizontal painting with a cream rectangle floating on the right side. the rectangle has five holes in it that reveal the brown paint below, and which references the floorplan for the furniture in philip johnson's living room. along the bottom of the painting is a text, i think in vinyl lettering, that reads: a visitor to the glass house: mr johnson, do you ever move the furniture around? johnson: why would i? would you change anything at chartres cathedral? this 2007 painting by david diao is at tanya leighton in berlin — David Diao, *Do You Ever Move the Furniture?*, 2007, acrylic and vinyl on canvas, 18×36 in., via Tanya Leighton

But it still barely cracks my top five floor-related Diao works. In the early 2000s, Diao made a series of works called Perfect Arrangement, paintings exploring the found composition of Philip Johnson’s detailed schematic for positioning the furniture in the Glass House. He showed the works at Tanya Leighton in Berlin in 2008-09, and she brought one of the breakouts to Art Basel in 2015.

a 30 by 40 inch rectangular sheet of cream industrial felt has four squares and one rectangle cut out of it, a composition that mirrors phiip johnson's placement of two chairs, a daybed, a coffee table, and an ottoman on the area rug of his glass house in connecticut. a 2005 artwork by david diao — Perfect Arrangement at 1/4 Scale, 2005, felt, 30 x 40 in., ed. 5, via Tanya Leighton

Perfect Arrangement at 1/4 Scale, 2005, is an edition with the floorplan cut into a 30 x 40 inch sheet of industrial felt. So rather than being a mat, it represents a carpet. And it very much goes on the wall.

Lot 235, 4 Feb 2026: David Diao, Untitled, 1996 [update: sold for $699][wright20]
David Diao, ‘Best Laid Plans’, Oct 2008-Jan 2009 [tanyaleighton]
Diao installed works at the Glass House during his 2014 retrospective at the Aldrich [theglasshouse.org]

Previously, related: Au Bout de la Nuit, Johnson’s lost Giacometti

Los Ladrillos de Étant donnés

a black and white photo of a rustic wooden door set into a flat brick arch on a rough stucco wall, the exterior view, the only one permitted, of marcel duchamp's etant donnes at the philadelphia museum of art — Marcel Duchamp Exterior of Étant donnés, 1946-66, as installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Mixed-media assemblage, published by Michael R. Taylor via

I realize that he spent twenty years working on Étant donnés, so why does it still surprise me that Marcel Duchamp sourced the door AND the bricks for the arch from BF Spain?

a grainy black and white snapshot of a small white woman in a black summer dress posed next to a large rustic wood door in a larger brick arch doorway and wall, in a rural village in spain, from the archive of marcel duchamp and his wife teeny's visit in the early 1960s, now at the philadelphia museum of art — Marcel Duchamp, snapshot of exterior door of *Étant donnés* in its original setting, with Teeny Duchamp, La Bisbal, early 1960s, collection The Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives, published by Michael Taylor, via

The door came from a town called La Bisbal, where Marcel and Teeny went doorscouting in the early 1960s, I guess? It was only in the summer of 1968, though, that Duchamp selected 150 bricks for the doorway arch, to be shipped to the US by a contractor in Cadaqués, his regular vacation spot. [Presumably, Duchamp was trying to match the crumbled brick wall already included in the work, which frames the nude mannequin and landscape. presumably brought back from Spain at some earlier date.

a black and white photo of a rustic wood door from spain, with a row of three square brick-patterned vinyl tiles above it, right up against an absolutely generic modern office building door and doorway, a december 1968 documentary photo by denise brown hare of marcel duchamp's last artwork etant donnes, before it was moved to the philadelphia museum of art — Denise Browne Hare, 11th St installation of Étant donnés, with vinyl brick tiles, December 1968, from a documentation portfolio published for the first time in 2009 by Michael Taylor via

Until the bricks arrived, Duchamp put up a row of brick-shaped vinyl tiles as placeholders in the 11th St studio where the Étant donnés diorama was constructed (or reconstructed, because he’d already had to move it once).

Duchamp, of course, never took delivery of the bricks. He died in October 1968, and in anticipation of the disassembly and move of Étant donnés, Teeny had it photographed by Denise Browne Hare in December.

The bricks, meanwhile, went on their own convoluted journey, and the shipping and customs delays getting them caused weeks of drama for the Philadelphia Museum, which was rushing to secretly install the work before word got out—and before Teeny left to Spain for the summer.

It’s so chill now, but the entire saga of Étant donnés is buck wild, from the secrecy of its creation; the logistics of its acquisition and installation; the sheer institutional freakout over its existence, voyeur/creeper and nudity factors; and the paranoia and draconian constraints over its documentation and reproduction.

They all culminate in the tragicomedy of, of all people, Arturo Schwarz, Duchamp’s dealer and the editor of his catalogue raisonné, WHICH WAS READY TO GO, only finding out about the existence of Étant donnés as it was being dismantled in NYC and shipped to Philadelphia, and literally writing the CR text on it at the museum as soon as it opened to the public. He then proceeded to politely rage for permission to photograph the work for the second edition of the CR, which the museum was absolutely too terrified to do. Schwarz was forced to reproduce bootleg snapshots taken through the work’s peephole.

The sweet irony is that all this extraordinary detail is laid out in full in Michael R. Taylor’s 2009 book, Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés. The Genesis, Construction, Installation, and Legacy of a Secret Masterwork, published on the work’s 40th anniversary by the Philadelphia Museum. I have a copy somewhere, but it’s so much easier to read on this heroic Slovenian artist’s website [shruggie emoji].

Free Potato Wallpaper, Bertjan Pot x apartamento

a corner of a modern domestic space is dominated by wallpaper made of freely copied raster dot enlarged images of potatoes on light grey paper. in front of the wall is a slim red table with a mac and a dutch design magazine and an extremely large rhododendron in a teal pot. to the right is a coatrack shaped like a pencil with some colorful cloth shopping bags hanging on it. a white mesh pendant light hangs over the table, the whole scene is designed by bertjan pot, of rotterdam, in 2009, for apartamento magazine, of barcelona — installation view of Free Potato Wallpaper, 2009, by Bertjan Pot for apartamento #4, via bertjanpot.nl

The issue of apartamento with Enzo Mari’s studio (#4, f/w 2009-10) also included a project by Rotterdam designer Bertjan Pot: Free Potato Wallpaper.

The little A5 magazine had four sheets of rasterized potato images, and instructions for scaling them up to A4 for pasting. With the print issue long unavailable, Pot has made an A4 PDF available on his studio website.

two greyscale, rasterized images of potatoes in opposite corners of an otherwise blank a4 sheet, one of four sheets of a wallpaper design by bertjan pot and his intern Charlotte Dumoncel d’Argence for apartamento magazine in 2009 — one of four sheets of Free Potato Wallpaper, an A4 pdf as a resized jpg, via bertjanpot.nl

Because the paper is printed basically as tiles instead of rolls, the trick to getting a more random potato effect is to turn some sheets upside down. Of course your desire for some respite from an uncertain world may also inspire you to paper your wall in elaborate potato patterns. Quick, while you still have the freedom to choose.

Enzo Mari’s Fireplace

a flat concrete ziggurat in the corner of a white walled studio has an apparently shallow fireplace cut out of the center of it, which produces a soot mark on the third step above the opening. the side steps and the several smaller steps up to the top all hold an array of decorative ceramic tiles, some snapshots, other memorabilia, belonging to enzo mari. a book is ridiculously placed right next to the fire on the hearth level. the arm of a chair sticks in from the left edge of the image, very cramped. there is no fire screen, but a tall narrow flame, like a roman candle rises from the little pieces of wood. — via @lukegauthier (circa 2023) via @s-u-m-a-c

This is apparently Enzo Mari’s fireplace, where it looks like he burned a postcard of Julia Louis Dreyfus in effigy every month? I have no idea, but the only other domestic images I can find from his studio are from this apartamento magazine interview from 2009, when I was deep in Enzo Mariology. [Everything else for this image is unattributed fluff. And do you know how hard it is to search for Enzo Mari’s own house? This is ridiculous.]

I will update this post with more info when I find it, and if it turns out to be all locked away for two generations in Mari’s archive, I’ll post an update about that, too.

[next morning update]
Thanks to Milanese photographer/greg.org hero Claudio Santambrogio, we have info on the fireplace via an elegaic 2015 profile of Mari, then 83, at home in Corriere della Serra Living, which was republished in 2020 after Covid took both Mari and his wife Lea Virgine in quick, sad, succession:

nell’angolo il camino, uno ziggurat domestico con le foto di nipoti sorridenti. «Questo è uno degli interventi fatti nella casa, come la cucina-corridoio. Non ci sono disegni, l’ho pensato e fabbricato insieme al muratore. Per ogni piano due strati di mattoni, poi intonacati. Per me è stato un gioco, un passatempo, la realizzazione di un sogno dopo aver spiato le case dei contadini. Sarebbe bello potersi occupare solo di mantenere vivo il fuoco»

“in the corner the fireplace, a domestic ziggurat with photos of smiling grandchildren. This is one of the interventions made in the house, such as the kitchen-corridor. There are no drawings, I thought it and manufactured it together with the mason. For each level two layers of bricks, then plastered. For me it was a game, a pastime, the realization of a dream after spying on the homes of peasants. It would be nice to be able to take care of keeping the fire alive.”

Lichtenstein Swiss Cheese Doors Escaped Containment

a slightly sassy thin older white guy in a dress shirt and jeans does a classic contraposto in the gap between slightly open freight elevator doors painted bright yellow, with black and white holes, a cartoonish rendition of swiss cheese. the wall around them is painted a deep royal blue, a matched steel security bar leans against the right wall, which has a section painted black-on-white benday dots, because this is roy lichtenstein in his studio — Roy Lichtenstein posing with his Swiss Cheese freight elevator doors to his loft studio, which appears to be just part of the whole Lichtensteinworld painting scheme.

Swiss Cheese Day was yesterday, and Peter Huestis celebrated on Bluesky by posting about the swiss cheese freight elevator doors Roy Lichtenstein painted in his 29th St. loft in 1984. The loft was sold, probably in the 90s, and the buyer, unsurprisingly, wanted to keep the doors, and so they were entered into Lichtenstein’s catalogue raisonné. The most important part to me, though, was the security bar, painted to match, which did not get a CR entry separate from the doors. If that was all a trip into the Lichtenstein Foundation website yielded, it would have been enough.

a petite white woman in a fanciful red and white printed coat took a selfie in the polished bronze double doors designed by roy lichtenstein to look like swiss cheese at the limestone entry vestibuile of the knapps' 1990s mansion in bel air california. a giant lichtenstein brush totem is reflected behind her, in the center of the mansion's motor court, and behind that, a thick grove of trees. the roy lichtenstein foundation owns the rights to this image and, now that i've posted it without their express written permission, my firstborn child ig — I traded the rights to everything I’ve ever written and my firstborn to the Lichtenstein Foundation so that I could properly celebrate Swiss Cheese Day by illustrating the existential reckoning Roy Lichtenstein left behind with these polished brass and glass doors (1993)

But no. There is another. And another. And another. Lichtenstein made THREE more sets of Swiss cheese doors. They’re dated to 1993, fabricated in 1993-97 [by Jack Brogan, Robert Irwin and Larry Bell’s guy], and only installed, posthumously, in 1998. They were mirror finish bronze, and they were made for two entrances and an elevator in the atrocious house Hugh Newell Jacobsen built in Bel Air for Betsy and Bud Knapp, one-time owners of Architectural Digest and Bon Appetit.

After another artist praised them, I had to reconsider the bronze doors, and I found an explanation that lets me agree: Lichtenstein created these doors so that every time the Knapps entered their 15,000 square-foot home made of fifteen 1,000-square foot post-modern pavilions, they were faced with their own reflections, and compelled to remember that they were people who commissioned three sets of mirror-finish bronze cartoon Swiss cheese doors.

a deceptively intimate village like entrance facade to a 15000 square foot mega mansion made of dozens of little simplified house-shaped modules is sin lit against the cloudless blue sky of bel air california, with the motor court hilariously glowing because it has been wet down for a photo shoot for the 2011 mls real estate listing of the house. the recessed entry has a mirror finish bronze double doorway with black and white hole patterns, like a cartoon swiss cheese, as designed by roy lichtenstein for his collectors, bud and betsy knapp. in a central bricked pit in the middle of the motor court, an uplit sculpture tower, a totem pole of flat, metal, gargantuan cartoon models of brushstrokes in green, yellow, and white, loom against the darkness, another late lichtenstein, from his era where what could be realized far outstripped what should be. via zillow — It makes a village: the wetted motor court of Hugh Newell Jacobsen’s Brobdignagian mutation of his House Pavilion, with a Lichtenstein brushstroke sculpture and a pair of bronze and glass Swiss cheese doors, from the 2011 MLS, still somehow on Zillow in 2026

The Knapps could only endure the self-scrutiny for so long. They put the house on the market in 2011 for $24 million. Nobu bought it in 2013 for $15m, said not my existential terror, and got rid of the doors.

a real estate listing photo of a mahogany colored paneled library with a grey and white jasper johns painting of a target, from 1992, over the fireplace. black leather club chairs, it doesn't matter what else the point of the photo is that people did show their trophy art in their real estate listings at one point. — People really did be having their Jasper Johns Target (1992) in their 2011 LA real estate listings. TBH except for the early Irwin, the art all looks like it was bought new for the house. Which feels very Bel Air.

At least until then they were contained. They now roam the earth who knows where, just waiting to strike again. The Knapps’ Jasper Johns, meanwhile, has, after a couple of stops, been safely ensconced in Larry Gagosian’s place since at least 2021, when it was loaned to the Philadelphia Museum’s half of the retrospective.

MONDOBLOGO is BACK

a mirror finish aluminum chair in the cuplike shape of an upturned cabbage leaf or something sits on the slate floor of the lobby of sothebys on madison avenue, a black-clad figure moving behind it giving the only indication of space in the photo. the curved surface of the chair, meanwhile, reflects and distorts the grid of round light fixtures marcel breuer designed for the whitney museum, which sold this building to sotheby's a couple of years ago. patrick parrish took this photo in december 2025 for mondo blogo. this chair did not sell.

It was nice to start seeing emails from Patrick Parrish in my inbox again, but it was not until he posted his speedrun of the recent design auctions in NYC that I realized how much I’d missed his design blog, MONDOBLOGO, in my online life.

Here is Parrish’s photo of Marcel Breuer’s lights reflected across a Ron Arad chair, one of two that didn’t sell at Sotheby’s. He also has photos of a private dinner being set up in the gallery, which used to be the Whitney Museum of American Art, then the Met, then the Frick.