Let Them Eat Soup: Cindy Sherman Limoges

a pink soup tureen on a pink platter with elaborately screenprinted portraits of cindy sherman as madame pompadour, created in 1990 in an edition of at least 100, 25 in each of four colors, this one being sold at christies in feb 2025
Cindy Sherman Madame Pompadour Soup Tureen & Platter, 1990, ed. 25 for each of four colors, with Rose being the best, selling 26 Feb 2025 at Christies

In addition to being the art world’s second-greatest tureen, her Sevres porcelain soup tureen with her self-portrait on the side as Madame Pompadour (née Poisson) is Cindy Sherman’s second-greatest work. It has a perfect harmony of content, context, image, and medium that made the Untitled Film Stills so lastingly powerful.

a three tiered display of a pink and white limoges porcelain dinner service and tea service, plus a pink soup tureen and platter, all by cindy sherman, but only some—the tureen and platter, the interior of the tea cups, the tea pot, and the presentation plates—with screenprinted photos of sherman as mme pompadour. via christies feb 2025
Cindy Sherman 30-piece dinner service, 21-piece breakfast/tea service, each in an edition of 75 in each of four colors, with Rose, again, being the best.

The only thing to improve it would be setting it among the complete Limoges dinner set and the tea & breakfast set Sherman produced with Artes Magnus in 1990, in the sclerotic culture of Reagan/Bush, and then to sell it into the darkening maw of our burgeoning technomonarchist oligarchy.

I have no doubt the successful buyer will track down whoever lost the lid to the sugar bowl and have them audited, chained to the floor of a LC130, and shipped off to GTMO before the Christie’s wire transfer even clears. February 26 is coming.

Ends 26 Feb 2026, Lot 170: Cindy Sherman, Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson), 1990, est $8-12,000 [christies]

Also available retail, from Artware Editions, with $15 shipping and 10% off if you sign up for their newsletter:
Tea Service by Cindy Sherman in Green, Rose, Yellow or Cobalt, $10,000
Dinner Service by Cindy Sherman in Apple Green, Royal Blue, or Rose, $12,000
Soup Tureen by Cindy Sherman in Cobalt or Green, $42,500

Previously, Artes Mundus- and tureen-related:
Thank you for your silver service, Donald Judd X Puiforcat
Just the Tureen

Cy Twombly’s Nuts

a color photocopy of a cy twombly polaroid of a renaissance painting of an upturned female face, mouth agape, gaze pointed upward, surrounded by a dark background, except that the lower right quarter of the image is filled with reflected glare from a light source, probably a window, that highlights the cracked surface of the painting. a caption in this screnshot reads 7 cy twombly: painting detail, gaeta, 2000, 43.1 x 27.9 cm, dry print on cardboard, by which they mean color photocopy on cardstock, but anyway, this was from a talk turned into a chapted of an anthology by steffen siegel, given originally in 2012 at a cy twombly conference in cologne.

I could not remember where I got this 2000 Cy Twombly photo, until I found a screenshot with a caption, and I realized it was from Steffen Siegel’s presentation on the photos at Cy Twombly: Bild, Text, Paratext, a 2012 conference held at the University of Cologne. It went undiscussed. Even though it seems to embody Siegel’s ultimate point, that Twombly made photos as an exercise to capture the artist’s vision. In this case, a glance at a raking angle of sunlight reflecting on the crackled surface of a painting in his house at Gaeta.

Siegel talks about Twombly’s blurriness and “excessive nearness” as he takes photos with “mediocre” equipment, as if the instantaneous intimacy is not obvious, and obviously what attracted Twombly to his medium.

a screenshot of a color photocopy of a blurry polaroid by cy twombly of the edge of a painted wood table or credenza, which cuts across the lower quarter of the image, and the upper portion is filled with cracked walnut shells of various sizes and shapes on a dark mottled tabletop. a caption below reads, 9 cy twombly, nuts, gaeta, 2004, 43.1 x 27.9 cm, dry-print on cardboard, from steffen siegel's talk at cy twombly: bild, text, paratext, in 2012 at the university of cologne

Siegel discusses this at more length in regard to Nuts (2004), another image from Gaeta, of an extreme closeup of walnut shells on a painted credenza.

From the Belgian artblogger at Utopia Parkway, we learn that Nuts was included in Cy Twombly: Le temps retrouvé, an exhibition at Collection Lambert in Avignon in the summer of 2011, one of the last shows Twombly worked on before he died. Twombly selected photos by a whole range of artists—Brancusi, Lartigue, Lawler, Mann, Sherman, Sugimoto—to show alongside his own. I would think that a closer look at this show, organized, we’re told, by an “artist eager to renew the experience” of his last successful show at Collection Lambert, with a title taken from the last volume of Proust, would yield more insight into Twombly’s view of his photographic project than parsing Barthes for the hundredth time.

The entirety of the 2014 english translation of the Paratext conference is in such a wonky format on academia.edu, that I didn’t link to it at first.

Who Will Be Stuck With Leo DiCaprio’s Hanging Endangered Shark Chair Next?

a plush shark embroidered with graffiti and save the earth type messages hangs from a two-point harness, its mouth wide open because that is where you're supposed to sit. it is a hanging chair, with a giant red tag/label from the artist, porky hefer, srsly, and the leo dicaprio foundation, which i guess underwrote the cost of this, and would have been the recipient of some portion of the net proceeds of its sale in 2018. but not of the auction in feb 2025 where it's getting dumped. image via milleabros
current bid, $1,900 [SOLD FOR TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS LMAO]

There’s an auction going RIGHT NOW, and if you hurry, you could be the one who gets stuck with this Endangered Shark Hanging Chair by South African white guy Porky Hefer, which the Leo DiCaprio Foundation exhibited at Design Miami/Basel in 2018, alongside a bunch of even bigger Endangered Animal As Furniture objects.

a low platform and a mushroom colored corner with a deactivated flatscreen at the design miami/basel fair in 2018 are the setting of this press photo of five giant, shaggy and/or plush furniture objects in the shape of endangered species, including three hanging: a sloth, a blue whale, a great white shark; and two flop lounging: an orangutan that wouldn't fit in a sprinter van, and a polar bear on its back in a nsfw way. the objects were made by a white south african artist who goes by porky hefer, which may be his name, and it was organized by some art advisory people, and sponsored by the leo dicaprio foundation as some sort of greenwashing thing, where some of the proceeds of sales of these monstrosities went to leo's ngo, but what happens if they don't sell? these ed. 1s sit in storage for seven years and then turn up at a random auction. which happened to the shark as i type this in feb 2025. image by james harris via wallpaper magazine, btw, what a commendation of journalistic integrity. but at least pr photos don't get deleted after the license expires in a year, so thanks for that
James Harris had to photograph this, and Nurit Chinn had to rewrite the press release under their own name for wallpaper*, maybe art journalism is the real endangered species here, people

It’s ed. 1/3, and let me guess that there are no ed. 2 or 3, and someone associated with this Miami PR stunt got tired of paying their shark storage unit. On the bright side, this is the smallest one. Go for it!

Lot 197 | Porky Hefer, hanging chair, 2018 [milleabros via greg.org hero jack]

Claudio Santambrogio, Shadows

shadows by claudio santambrogio is basically a black and white photograph of the wrinkles, creases, and surface undulations of a long, vertical piece of japanese paper, which has been treated with photo chemicals and exposed to the raking light of the sun. the brushmarks of the chemical application feather around the edges of the paper.

Speaking of the seeming undulations of a seemingly pliable surface, and soothingly enthralling videos about the photochemical magic of analog image production, greg.org hero and correspondent Claudio Santambrogio has been making Shadows, a cameraless series of photographs, since 2016.

Japanese paper is treated with silver gelatin, and the raking light of the sun indexes the paper’s texture, wrinkles, and undulations as an image. The process and Santambrogio’s other explorations of developer-based photography are in a peaceful video by Gudrun Thielemann on his site, The Gardener of Shadows.

Shadows makes me think of Tauba Auerbach’s crumple paintings, and Isa Genzken’s Basic Research paintings, while being fundamentally different from both. Auerbach printed a photograph of a crumpled piece of paper onto canvas, and then painted it by hand; her work marks the distance between what is seen and what it is, and the many steps it took to get there. Genzken, meanwhile, basically made monotypes by painting her floor and pressing the canvas against it. So what’s being indexed is the floor. Santambrogio’s Shadows are the paper itself. And the chemicals, and the light.

Claudio Santambrogio, Shadows [resettheapparatus]
Claudio Santambrogio’s site [csant.info]

Danielle Mysliwiec Tiny Painting

gather, miniature (red) is a 4 by 3 inch oil painting in which the red paint is extruded in such a way that it appears to be a loosely woven textile or basket, an effect enhanced by a diagonal ripple or ridge in the surface connecting to the lower left corner of the canvas-wrapped panel. the links of paint along the ridge are looser, less systematic, like a braid in some places, and around the edge of the painting, loose points of paint protrude like little anemones or spikes. by danielle mysliwiec from her insta
Danielle Mysliwiec, Gather, Miniature (red), 2024, 4 x 3 in., oil on linen on panel, via ig:daniellemysliwiecstudio

I would not say a sucker for any tiny painting. But maybe that’s like how, all evidence to the contrary, I don’t think I’m a dog painting guy, either.

Anyway, Danielle Mysliwiec just posted this gorgeous little painting to her Instagram. She made it for Barely Fair last year in Chicago. The work’s title, Gather, is perhaps a reference to the undulation in the painting’s surface, which alludes to a woven material, while being unmistakably an extruded one: paint.

Most of Mysliwiec’s works are much larger, but no less intricate, and time-intensive. So there’s something rare here: a painting made in one go.

ZOMG there are three more tiny paintings alongside this one on her website. OK, fine, I am a these tiny paintings guy.

Danielle Mysliwiec — Paintings [daniellemysliwiec]

Rockefeller Blur, 2018

a 2018 real estate listing photo of the 2nd floor living room of david and peggy rockefellers' extremely wide east 65th st townhouse shows wood paneled walls, a giant persian carpet, several seating areas with antique chairs and upholstered sofas, a lot of table lamps, tall casement windows, a built in bookcase in one corner, a thin chandelier in the center of the unadorned ceiling, which is nonetheless surrounded by a thick af carved wood crown moulding, but the point here is, the painting over the fireplace at the far end of the room is blurred out with a terra cotta square, and the painting between the windows on the north wall, over a yellow sofa, is blurred out, too. both these pictures were for sale at the same time as the house though, so wtf? the first is a bonnard, the second a corot.
2018 real estate listing photo of the Rockefellers’ E 65th St living room with a Bonnard [L] and a Corot [R] obscured

In 2018, while I was still in my late blur and middle monochrome and real estate eras, I conceived a project that would realize all the blurred artworks in the real estate listing for Peggy and David Rockefeller’s extrawide townhouse on East 65th Street. I’d seen digitally blurred art from MoMA before. I’d seen significant art obscured in real estate listings before. But I had not seen the same art that had been photographed in situ before, being blurred in a real estate listing, at the same moment it was being promoted and sold in the biggest private collection sale in Christie’s history.

a pic of the rockefeller's 65th st living room with cezanne's boy in a red vest, a 1955 gift to moma, with some strings, hanging between two red curtained tall windows and over a yellow sofa. table lamps on various chippendale pie crust tables give the whole wood palneled room a golden glow. there is an ancient figure of a seated pipe player of some kind in the corner, i didn't look it up. this is already going on too long
Cezanne’s Boy in a Red Waistcoat, a 1955 gift to MoMA, but not yet; the Rockefellers kept an interest in the work until their deaths, and it came home with them from time to time. via Christie’s, I think

So I went through the listing, the auction, and other documentation of the Rockefellers’ house to identify everything, so that each work would be the correct dimension and appearance. No slapdash conceptualism here; authenticity rules. So the Bonnard Interieur over the fireplace and a Corot to occupy the spot between the windows when the Cezanne is at the Modern. [The Rockefellers retained a life interest in the works they donated to museums, so they could keep them around.]

the rockefellers entry hallway and foyer where the curved staircase is set in an arched niche, but the parquet floor has some carpet on it, and the furniture is american antique because the house is colonial revival, like the rockefellers themselves i guess, but this is where the manet vase of lilacs was hanging, on the right, though it's been replaced here by a redon which is blurred out in this real estate listing, both were clearly presented at christies
2018 real estate listing photo of the Rockefellers’ foyer with ten blurred out artworks including a Picasso by the stairs and a Redon on the right.

Though I mapped out the project, 30 works, I was undecided on the best way to realize the blurred works. Transmuting such digital-first source material into another medium has been a challenge since the first blurred and pixellated and pano-torqued images appeared on Google Maps and Streetview. But the Facsimile Object-style dye sublimated prints on aluminum seem promising. I just found my 2018 spreadsheet this morning, though, so it’ll take me a minute to reorient myself to this project.

Meanwhile, I have posted some pics of the pointless flipper renovation of the house that the Rockefellers lived in for 69 years on bluesky.

Previously, related: Les Blurmoiselles d’Avignon (2011); Monochrome House (2016); Untitled (A Painting For Two Rooms By Cactus Cantina) & Untitled (Macomb Wall Painting) (both 2017); Untitled (Blurred Frida) (2020)

Unrealized Rockefeller Diptych (1650-2018); Untitled (Love, Henry) (2018)

Liz Deschenes @ Eastman Museum

long, narrow, vertical strip photograms of varying shades of silver and of varying widths are installed on the wall on either side of a column at the george eastman museum, a show of liz deschenes' work in 2025
Liz Deschenes, Frames Per Second (Silent), 2025, installation view at the George Eastman Museum via ig/i_phil_taylor

Liz Deschenes likes to decouple her instagram feed from the urgency of the now by often posting images of shows or work from the past. So it took me a moment to realize that this show at the George Eastman Museum, posted with curator Phil Taylor, is on right now, from January through August.

Frames Per Second (Silent) gets its title from a body of photogram-based works Deschenes made that transmute the framerate of cinema to architectural space. When she showed them at Miguel Abreu in 2018, the viewer’s movement through the gallery flickered across the uniform photograms’ surface like a zöetrope, or a motion study of Étienne-Jules Marey.

In Rochester, the photograms are syncopated, and of varying width within a work, a reference to the variable frame rates of silent film. [This 2015 essay by Nicola Mazzanti on about variable archival frame rates and the transition to digital cinema projection is as thoughtful and detailed as anything you’d find on David Bordwell’s blog. It sounds like silent film frame rates, cranked by hand at 16, 20, or up to 30 fps, varied even within a single film, and for a variety of reasons, including content-driven aesthetic choices. Deschenes’ variations reflect that (sic).]

an installation of three liz deschenes monochrome yellow photographs, dye transfer prints with a viscerally powerful color in person, arranged so they slightly overlap each other as they lean on a white exhibition shelf, covered with a similarly leaning large sheet of glass pinned at the top where it meets the wall, at the george eastman museum in rochester, ny in january 2025
not a vitrine: Liz Deschenes monochrome dye transfer prints installed at the George Eastman Museum, via ig/i_phil_taylor

But the show also contains other works, including a monochrome on Gorilla glass, and—ngl, this is what pushed me to post—a set of dye transfer monochromes. I love the way they’re installed, on a little shelf, with a sheet of glass pinned over them. It’s an elegant an unobtrusive solution for these fragile objects of saturated color. A road trip is in order.

[next morning update: Liz responded to point out these are new dye transfers made with the Kodak dye transfer dye on Epson papers. Anachrony is one of her mediums.]

Liz Deschenes: Frames Per Second (Silent) 18 Jan – 17 Aug 2025 [eastmanmuseum]
Previously, somewhat related: an 18-min video from Zwirner of the laborious process of making a dye transfer print, by Eggleston’s dye transfer folks

Portrait in Time of Mammy Prater

a photo portrait of anna "mammy" prater, circa 1920, from the library of congress, depicts the 115-year-old Black woman with a strong, weathered face and haunting eyes looking off to the left of the camera, sitting in a rocking chair outside, a house and shrubbery out of focus in the background. prater wears a thin white bonnet, a dark crocheted shawl over a white dress. her hands rest on her lap at the bottom right corner of the photo, where she holds a small white paper bag and some candies. via the library of congress
photo of Annie “Mammy” Prater, c. 1920, probably by the LA Times, via LOC

From her conversation with Saidiya Hartman, I learned about Dionne Brand’s poem, first published in 1990, “Blues Spiritual for Mammy Prater,” which is a response to a c. 1920 photograph of a 115-year-old formerly enslaved woman in Los Angeles:

what jumped out at me was how Mammy Prater’s figure in the photograph exuded a weight and patience, a knowledge about a future time when something might be recognized in the photograph. The poem talks about how she waited for her century to turn, until the technology of photography was ready to capture this something. It seemed to me that the statement she conveyed through the photograph was waiting to be understood by us in much later years. It could be understood in her time, but not sufficiently—not in in a way that could repay that pose. Only in the future could that pose be repaid by an understanding of what it took to sit there and be there.

Though the Library of Congress has several photos of her, most of the understanding of Prater today is due to Brand’s evocative poem. The only substantive account of Prater’s story I can find is on author Kimberly Tilley’s blog, Old Spirituals. She seems to recap an uncited 1920 article in the Los Angeles times about a US Census worker interviewing Prater on a farm in Los Angeles, and being shocked by her reported birth year: 1805. The story somehow involves a visit by J[ames] B[radley] Law, a descendant of the Darlington, South Carolina planter who enslaved Prater, who corroborated her stories and claims. The LOC’s photos have the upbeat, patronizing captions of the newspaper: “Mammy Prater, a 115-year-old ex-slave who is still hale and hearty.” “One hundred and fifteen years have failed to dim the keen eyesight of [Mammy Prater] this ex-slave” “Age has not dimmed Mammy Prater’s love for sweets.” Other images from the same shoot circulate in the stock photo archives.

henry g fitz jr's 1840 self portrait is probably the first photo of an american. the head of a white man in his 30s is photographed in three quarters view. he has dark short hair, and no beard. his eyes and mouth are closed in a still, but slightly tensed way. his high collar and coat obscure his neck. the image, on a copper plate, is dark, and speckled all over with white spots from the rudimentary chemical process. and perhaps its 180 year-old age. from the smithsonian
Henry G. Fitz, Jr., Self-portrait, prob early 1840, 80×60 mm Smithsonian, National Museum of American History via The Art Newspaper

Prater was 35 when the first photographic portrait of an American was made in 1840, a self-portrait by Henry G. Fitz, Jr. of Baltimore, who kept his eyes closed during the long exposure time required of the Daguerreotype process. [It was just discussed on The Week in Art, because it is on loan from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to a Rijksmuseum exhibition of American photography.]

Prater was 13 when Frederick Douglass was born in 1818. Douglass, of course, escaped slavery and went on to make himself the most photographed person in the 19th century. Isaac Julien’s 2019 multi-channel portrait, Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass, includes several scenes of him making photographs. It’s on view at the Smithsonian through 2026. When Douglass died in 1895, Prater was just 85.

Aunt Mary, a 1935 photo by Charles Sheeler, shows Mary Brown, an elderly Black woman in a 19th century bonnet, dress, and apron, sitting in a windsor chair at a desk in a colonial era kitchen, a large fireplace over her right shoulder, and an array of copper ladles over the desk on her left. a brass candlestick sits next to her arm, as does the wrapper for a loaf of bread from contemporary richmond, virginia
Charles Sheeler, Aunt Mary, 1941, deaccessioned from the Museum of Modern Art in 2018, image via Christie’s

Prater was 60 when Mary Brown was born in 1865. Brown would be photographed 70 years later by Charles Sheeler, while she was dressed as “Aunt Mary,” a fictionalized enslaved cook she portrayed when she worked as one of the few Black performers at the Rockefellers’ Colonial Williamsburg in 1935-36.

When the Works Progress Administration began to gather more than 2,300 first-hand accounts and over 500 photo portraits Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-38, Prater would have been 131. By that point, though, was through waiting.

Two Interviews With Dionne Brand About Salvage

Our oldest had to read Mansfield Park in 9th grade and very much did not like it, and so I’ve avoided it. Until I heard poet Dionne Brand talking about it with David Naimon on the Tin House podcast, Between The Covers. [youtube] Brand’s latest book, Salvage: Readings From The Wreck, is a forensic return to a whole host of “classic” texts, including Austen’s Mansfield Park, that find Blackness where it has been omitted by the structures of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery. But Brand goes beyond literary analysis to question the function of a novel, and how forms of writing—and thus thinking—perpetuate and protect the structures that spawned them.

Anyway, now I just read another conversation between Brand and Saidiya Hartman, from Bomb Magazine last fall. Here they discuss the larger goal outlined in Salvage:

[Dionne Brand] I’m rereading these texts with the hope of abandoning them as aesthetic objects. When these texts were written, they were done so self-consciously as colonial objects. If they were being made as aesthetic objects, they were for the European bourgeoisie. In fact, these texts were created and encouraged because they told readers about the wonderful life that slave-owning, the eradication of Indigenous peoples, and violence allowed.

[Saidiya Hartman] I really like that formulation: to reread these texts with the hope of abandoning them as aesthetic objects. Salvage clearly articulates the ways in which a colonial project, a settler project, even when it does not announce itself explicitly and politically, finds refuge in the categories of the aesthetic and the beautiful.

Even if I hadn’t heard Brand’s conversation, I like to think I’d have spotted the glaring anxieties of capitalism that obsess almost every character in Mansfield Park, as well as the many references to Antigua and, thus, the direct dependence on plantation slavery of the family’s fortunes—and their entire world. I’m only halfway through, and this book [Austen obv] is grim as hell.

Brand’s not through, though. Her and Hartman’s discussion of photography, visual art, aesthetics, and beauty continues to work away in my mind.

[meanwhile, in case you needed any evidence that this conversation happened in September: “Soon that phrase will be outlawed in the States. (laughter)

Dionne Brand: Salvage: Readings From The Wreck [tinhouse]
Dionne Brand interviewed by Saidiya Hartman [bombmagazine]

Talking Siena at The Brooklyn Rail

Mark Leckey’s conversation with Charlotte Kent organized by the Brooklyn Rail brought the Siena show at the Met back to my mind today.

Which led me back a few weeks to a conversation between Siena curator Stephan Wolohojian and BR contributing editor Alex Nagel. Wolohojian was also the curator of Manet/Degas.

Among other things they talk about seeing “the other side” of these rarely moved panel paintings, a subject that’s always welcome here.

what the brooklyn rail's alex nagel calls the other side, or verso, of the walker art gallery, liverpool's simone martini painting of teen jesus getting in trouble with mary and joseph for going to the temple, but that's not what is photographed here. this side has the engaged frame, built in, and has a reddish swirl with black and greys, a simulation of a fantastical grain of stone, but all in paint. there are also four labels slapped rather unceremoniously onto the painted surface, but those hadn't been seen for over 150 years, and no one at the museum even knew what this looked like from the back until it was loaned to the met, where this pic was taken in december 2024
my pic is a little clearer than the slide on zoom: “the other side” of Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple, once apparently titled, Joseph and The Virgin remonstrating with [the] Savior on his return from the temple.

Some were painted to resemble a fantastical stone, like Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple, from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Another, a Martini borrowed somehow from the Gardner Museum, was finished in silver.

the back, or other side, as the brooklyn rail's alex nagel puts it, of the isabella stewart gardner museum's smaller simone martini painting is shown in this photo by the metropolitan museum to be finished in silver, incised all over with intricate patterns like the gold sections on the front and frame, except silver tarnishes to a darker mottled grey over 600 years so

Alex was a great editor and sounding board last year when I wrote a piece for the Rail on art & autocracy. Hard to imagine now how I ever thought that’d be a relevant subject.

Forbidden Colors, NFL (2025)

During Kendrick's halftime show a man unfurled a Palestinian flag and was chased off stage and eventually tackled and removed by security.

Read the book Abolish Rent (@jphillll.bsky.social) 2025-02-10T02:04:22.930Z

The first video I saw of the dancer in the Super Bowl halftime show breaking the choreography and unfurling a Palestinine/Sudan flag is still the most jarring. He runs around unimpeded with his flag, joining the crowd of flag wavers during Kendrick Lamar’s performance, and you can imagine him hatching plan in rehearsal. Seeing the A Minor flags, and Lamar’s mic drop ending where he stands amid a field of Black men in red, white, and blue gear, forming a giant American flag around him, and asking, “What flags are missing? Which flags aren’t being raised at this moment that should be?”

screenshot of a video from the superbowl halftime show depicting two agent smith type security agents in dark suits grabbing a dancer holding a palestine/sudan flag, about to tackle him to the ground on the edge of the football field. in the foreground are a couple dozen more dancers in formation, wearing red white and blue sweatsuits, waiting for their cue to start stepping. another dancer with a large black flag depicting the white silhouette of two little children reaching toward a capital a, a sign for A Minor, from kendrick lamar's not like us, posted to bluesky by jphillll

The chill comes from the end, though, where suited security agents tackle him while a grid of focused dancers continue their stepping in the foreground.

The next morning, the AP’s report of the incident, which did not make it onto the main broadcast, said the individual had been detained by New Orleans police while “law enforcement is working to determine applicable charges in this incident.”

[a few minutes later update: no charges, and a lifetime ban from the NFL.]

@jphillll.bsky.social [bsky.app]
Gonzalez-Torres Forbidden Colors, May 2021—

Gerhard Richter, Viral Artist

a blattecke print by gerhard richter depicting a painting of a curled corner of a sheet of paper, used by the artist as note paper in 1969. he wrote to his dealer august haseke that he was delivering 101 more signed copies of the edition, which were infected by his cold, which he tried to spread evenly across all the sheets. this sheet and one other used for notes were included in the auction of haseke's estate at lempertz in 2018, but did not sell.

And here I thought that Gerhard Richter’s critique of the art market by making an offset print in an open edition was surpassed only by his using the prints as note paper. Claudio Santambrogio is much better than I at deciphering Richter’s handwriting, and he figured out the entire note Richter wrote to his dealer August Haseke in November 1969 when he finally delivered the first half of his 1967 open edition, Blattecke. And it is a whole new art direction casting its shadow:

Lieber August,
Hier sind heute endlich 101 Stück (Nr 286-386).
Jetzt liegen noch ca. 350 Stück hier; zu Deiner Information.
Ich bin so erkältet, dass ich die 101 Stück gut signieren konnte. Ich 
habe mich bemüht, die Viren gleichmäßig über die Blätter zu verteilen.
(Die nächsten 50 hoffe ich mit etwas schickeren Viren infiltrieren zu 
können, vielleicht Tollwut oder so was).
Eine ganz neue Kunstrichtung wirft ihre Schatten.
Alle gute Euch
herzliche Grüße
Dein Gerhard


Dear August,
Here are finally 101 pieces today (nos. 286-386).
Now there are still about 350 pieces here; for your information.
I have such a cold, I could sign 101 pieces. I have tried to 
distribute the viruses evenly over the sheets.
(I hope to infiltrate the next 50 with some fancier viruses, maybe rabies 
or something).
A whole new art direction is casting its shadow.
All the best to you
best regards
Your Gerhard

expanding brain meme with four stages: 1) GERHARD RICHTER UNDERMINING THE ART 
MARKET BY: MAKING  AN OFFSET
PRINT OF A PHOTO OF A PAINTING
AS AN OPEN
EDITION; 2) STARTING WITH 739, 
NOW AT 906+; 3) USING THE PRINTS
AS NOTE PAPER;
4) TURNING THEM INTO A VIRAL VECTOR BY SIGNING THEM ALL WHILE HE WAS SICK

This is not what I envisioned when I mentioned a Felix-like stack, and yet the shadow is cast.

[week later update: these notes and additional related material are now in the Richter Archive in Dresden. Apparently it took Richter three years to work his way through signing the first 739 Blattecke.]

Previously, related: There Are At Least 906 Blattecke
Stack(Ed.)
When Form Becomes Content, or Luanda: Encyclopedic City, On The Stack as Medium

Wayne Bremser on Eggleston’s Slideshows

white guy in a wassily chair in david zwirner's la gallery taking a picture of a slideshow of william eggleston photos. the slide projected on the wall is of another white guy in a taupe suit sitting on an orange cushioned rocking sofa on a paved patio surrounded by a trellis, a 1970 photo taken of eggleston by a family friend using his camera, via wayne bremser

Wayne Bremser has a fascinating tumblr post about William Eggleston’s use of slideshows to exhibit his color photography before he figured out a successful way to print it. Eggleston has been generally credited, along with Stephen Shore, of bringing color photography into the fine art world. But Bremser also gives an important shoutout to Helen Levitt, who was showing her color photos of NYC two years earlier at MoMA—as a slideshow.

The impetus was a show at David Zwirner LA of Eggleston’s “Last Dyes,” the vintage prints using a long-discontinued dye transfer process. Dye Transfer is a whole journey in itself; for me the culminating color achievement of the dwindling print technology was early Liz Deschenes’ monochrome photos. I have not seen a Liz Deschenes slideshow.

Eggleston’s Slideshows [bremser.tumblr.com]
Previously, related: Apparently, Bill Levitt’s Sister Was Something of A Photographer
Later, related: Liz Deschenes showing new dye transfers at the George Eastman Museum

There Are At Least 906 Blattecke

gerhard richter's 1967 edition blattecke, sheet corner, is a photo of a painting depicting a curled up lower right corner of a sheet of cream colored paper that is white on the back. it casts shadow on the surface below it, and richter signs and dates each edition in this "underneath" spot, with the number of the edition written on the corner of the curved sheet. this is no. 555 of an original edition of 739, btw, but we'll get into that.
no. 555/739+ of Gerhard Richter’s Blattecke, 1967, sold by a consumer in 2024 at Christie’s

Happy belated Blattecke Tag to all who celebrate. 6.2.67, Februrary 6th, 1967, the date Gerhard Richter signed on most of the 739 examples of Blattecke (Sheet Corner) [Ed. CR 11], the 1967 offset print edition based on a full-scale photo of a little 1965 painting, Umgeschlagenes Blatt (Turned Sheet) [CR 70-2], which was 24 x 18 cm.

739 seems like a pretty big edition already, but Richter conceived of the edition as open and unlimited. How open and how unlimited is not clear. Richter’s website only mentions two additional examples, one dated 15.5.97, bringing the total to 741.

an example of gerhard richter's 1967 edition blattecke, sheet corner, a print of a photo of a painting depicting a curled up lower right corner of a sheet of cream colored paper that is white on the back. it casts shadow on the surface below it, where richter signed and dated this one 11.2.2017, and numbered it 906 on the curled sheet, selling in feb 2025 at grisebach
Gerhard Richter, Blattecke, 1967/2017, 232 x 174mm, offset print on cardboard, selling at Grisebach

Well, another post-’67 Blattecke just turned up for sale at Grisebach with a date of 11.2.2017. But in addition to the date, Richter puts the edition number on the corner of the turned up page. So by February 2017, the count was at 906.

What’s happened since?

Continue reading “There Are At Least 906 Blattecke”

Stanley Brouwn at Portal 5

an invitation card stamped with stanley brouwn/ 13-28 feb. 2025 on it, and some postal service scuff marks, for a show opening at portal 5 in tribeca

A Stanley Brouwn show does not happen every day, and even when it did, odds are you weren’t supposed to tell anyone about it.

But next week, Portal 5 in Tribeca will open a stanley brouwn: in a certain direction, organized by Timothy Y. Hill, of Jonathan A. Hill rare booksellers.

373 Broadway, Suite 511, the Tribeca Spaces Bldg below White and above Ricky’s. You want me to draw you a map? email timothy.y.hill@gmail.com for an appointment.