Ellsworth Kelly, Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 1949, oil on wood and canvas, two joined panels, 50 1/2 x 19 1/2 in., a gift of the artist to the Centre Pompidou, image via ellsworthkelly.org
In our timeline, in October 1949, Ellsworth Kelly, a young former soldier studying painting on the GI Bill, saw the windows of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in a new way, as a composition, one that could become a painting/object just as it was, and in fact, the whole world was like that, full of subjects he could spend his whole life discovering and transforming into paintings.
In another timeline, a young Ellsworth Kelly saw these two off-the-shelf prairie mullion windows kludged together to look like one tall, misaligned, window on a house in the middle of a gravel field in North Carolina that was just posted on McMansion Hell, and drove straight to the army to re-enlist as a requisitions compliance auditor, eventually retiring from a job at a cubicle in Ring C of the Pentagon. His little yard is full of old stoves, which he salvages from apartment turnovers, repairs, and sells on Facebook.
Enslaved people made the bricks for the White House from clay on or near the White House grounds at least twice. After the White House was burned in 1812, most of the original 1792 bricks were too damaged to use in the 1814-17 reconstruction. The 1817 bricks were removed during the 1948-52 gut reconstruction of the White House by President Harry s. Truman. 95,000 went for projects at Mount Vernon. 10,000 went to a project at Fort Myer. A New York congressman bought White House bricks left over from the Fort Myer pile, along with 1600 lbs of White House stone, and stored it at some guy’s farm for a while. When came to pick up most of it, he left this lot of 166 bricks. “This may very well be one of the last large groups of White House bricks in public hands,” says the Shenandoah Valley auctioneer Jeffrey S. Evans.
I’m trying to imagine the excitement if these original White House bricks were returned to the White House, or if they were exhibited publicly near the White House today. Or tomorrow.
Buckminster Fuller Geodesic Chandelier as installed at Drawing Matter London, image: Jesper Authen
I still don’t have it/one, but that’s not important right now. What matters is that the truncated icosahedron chandelier made of Perspex prisms and fishing line that Buckminster Fuller concocted as a belated wedding present for HRH Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon remains in good hands, and is well-cared for.
At some point after blogging about its 2007 appearance in a World of Interiors feature, and after tracing its original sale, I realized that was not some random table in a random former cheesemaker’s cottage in Somerset it had been sitting on. It had been acquired by Niall Hobhouse, and the cottage was part of Shatwell Farm. Hobhouse had made the working corner of his ancestral lands into the site of Drawing Matter, his ambitious archive of architectural drawings and research.
Last fall, Drawing Matter moved into town, and the chandelier came with it. Came home, in a way. In 2008, seeking to fill out its history, Hobhouse invited His Lordship to share his recollections of this singular object. Apparently it was too big to fit through the doorway of their private apartments at “KP,” so it was installed over the stairs. And indeed, it was remembered less as a two-years-late wedding present, and more of a way for Fuller to gain an audience, and perhaps, patronage for his world-building architectural schemes.
Anyway, last week Jesper Authen of Drawing Matter kindly sent along a photo of the chandelier, which lends a mid-century Kensington Palace vibe to the archive’s new Central London space. Truly I’ve never seen it looking better.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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..
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 absolutelyhave 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.]
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.
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 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.
“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?
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.
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.
