Protect Me From What I Want (Sushi Platter), 1997, 14 x 22 x 2 in., etched glass and eight little silicone dot feet, one slightly misaligned, ed. 25 from the Renaissance Society, selling at Wright20
Thank you, Renaissance Society and Wright Auctioneers, that from now on, every time I hear the phrase, PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT, I will not only imagine the words SUSHI PLATTER appended to it. I will hear it in the cadence of the girl reciting the alphabet on Sesame Street with Kermit the Frog saying COOKIE MONSTER.
1968 installation view of Andy Warhol’s Silkscreen for Portrait of Sidney Janis, image via MoMA
Overnight on tumblr, @voorwerk sent me looking again to Blake Gopnik’s Warhol biography for clues about the freestanding silkscreen-on-plexiglas sculptures Warhol made from some of his film frames.
Frame is part of object: Andy Warhol, Silkscreen for Portrait of Sidney Janis, photosensitive gel on silk, wood frame, 7’11” x 6’4″ x ?”, basically, collection: MoMA
I didn’t find anything, but Gopnik’s account of Warhol’s Sidney Janis-related commissions did. Janis, a dealer and trustee at the Museum of Modern Art—a combination that museum ethical standards would eventually frown on—commissioned a dumb little portrait of himself using eight family photos, which he donated to MoMA sight unseen in 1967. Gopnik notes that Warhol also got MoMA to take one of the 8-ft tall screens of Janis’s headshot, which the artist had used to make a sprawling 7-panel mural. A mural Janis declined to either buy or donate. Sad!
Point is, Gopnik wrote that Warhol intended for the screen “to be displayed free-standing and lit from behind,” a request MoMA apparently ignored when they showed it in 1968, as part of Janis’s collection gift to the museum [above].
1964 photo by William John Kennedy of Warhol holding a 30-in acetate of a Marilyn, via Guardian
So not only do these see-through Plexi screenprint sculptures relate to the acetates Warhol used to make his screens, in their freestanding frames they could relate to the framed silkscreens themselves.
Large Sleep (1965) and Large Kiss (1966) installed at Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, 1989, via MoMA
Tracking that Round Jackie took me back to MoMA’s 1989 Warhol retrospective, and now I wonder why I never think about Warhol’s Plexiglas sculptures.
Large Sleep and Large Kiss are two of at least five examples of Warhol screenprinting frames from a film onto Plexiglas. He made them a couple of years after the films, as he was supposedly retiring from painting. According to Marco Livingstone’s essay in the MoMA catalogue, Warhol also made Plexiglas sculptures of frames of Empire, Couch, and Henry Geldzahler.
Does Warhol’s Large Henry Geldzahler [?] look like the 1997 VHS copy of the movie? image via artsy
Was MoMA the first place these were ever shown? They look so much like Duchamp’s Large Glass it’s crazy that no one seems to have made the connection until 2017, when Thomas Morgan Evans published 3D Warhol, the first book on the artist’s sculpture. Warhol’s intersections with Duchamp were dense: a Bôite-en-Valise, Richard Hamilton, the Pasadena retrospective, Mark Lancaster, Screen Tests, “retiring,” and, here, making Large Glass-looking sculptures with Large in the name.
Warhol’s Large Sleep installed at the Whitney in 2018, photo: Ron Amstutz
So it’s a little weird that MoMA’s 1989 catalogue reproduced them without their frames, essentially negating their sculptural nature and throwing them squarely back into Warhol’s image pool. Livingstone traced their origins to the acetate transparencies used to make Warhol’s screens, which sometimes decorated the walls of the Factory. It’s not wrong, but still.
Warhol’s Mylar and Plexiglas Construction, 1970, installed at the Whitney in 2018, photo: Ron Amstutz
Though they’ve been on view at the Warhol Museum over the years, the 2018-19 Whitney/SFMOMA retrospective was probably the biggest audience for Large Sleep in 30 years. But who even noticed, when Mylar and Plexiglas Construction was hogging the spotlight? What. Was. Going. On?
Warhol’s Mylar and Plexiglas Construction, 1970, via Whitney
If Large Sleep was a throwback to Duchamp, Mylar and Plexiglas Construction somehow throws forward to Koons. Warhol made this flaming Minimalist monument the year after Stonewall, the year his Rain Machine (Flower Waterfall) sculpture debuted in the US Pavilion at Osaka 70 World Expo; and the year before James Bidgood anonymously released his cellophane fantasy film, Pink Narcissus. Morgan Evans says that this was functional and made for the Factory. But unlike the film-related sculptures, this one got out; it’s in a private collection somehow, somewhere.
“Untitled (Mylar and Plexiglass Construction), 1970s. Three rolls of colored Mylar, each mounted on cardboard tubes, Plexiglas slabs, rollers, and pegs, 46 x 36 3/4 x 12 1/4 in.” via Warhol Foundation
[a few still-fixated days later update: In their bio of the artist, the Warhol Foundation included an image—uploaded in 2021—of the bottom element of the Whitney Mylar and Plexiglas Construction as its own thing, with a date of “1970s”. The patterns on the Mylar match, so it’s not some rogue second or fourth construction. I’m going to have to visit the CR, I guess.]
Sam Green’s Dodi Rosekrans’, Jho Low’s, and Swizz Beatz’ Warhol Round Jackie, 1964, image via Sotheby’s
Reading Karen K. Ho’s report that a Warhol soup can painting had been forfeited as part of the settlement of the 1MDB/Jho Low money laundering and fraud case, I wondered what it looked like.
I haven’t found it yet, because while searching the Justice Dept.’s 280-page complaint from 2020 I was distracted by the corny corruption of Sotheby’s executives falling all over themselves to loan Jho Low untraceable funds against some of the nearly $200 million in artworks Low & co. hoovered up.
“Just wanted to bring you up to speed on the big loan opportunity,” wrote one Sotheby’s Financial executive to his colleagues in early 2014. “[The borrower] doesn’t want us to use his name in our communications, he wants to be referred to as ‘the client’ and we will refer to this transaction as project Cheetah (referring to the speed at which we are trying to move).”
And then I was distracted by another Warhol, not part of the loan collateral, and current status TBD, but it did come from Sotheby’s. Jho Low acquired Round Jackie (1964) in November 2013 for $1,055,000 from Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in New York. It was one of two gold round Jackies that fabulist curator Sam Green sold to socialite Dodie Rosekrans. They both came up for sale at Sotheby’s in 2011; one sold for $3.7m, and this one didn’t sell. Weird.
Anyway, Low gave Round Jackie to Swizz Beatz in early 2014, who hung it in New Jersey, then consigned it for sale somewhere before February 2020, when Vogue came for 73 Questions. The Justice Dept. came for it in July 2020, and it was sold at a US Marshals auction in February 2021. The price was $1.04 million.
1MDB Warhol Round Jackie Unboxing, 2021, from Gaston & Sheehan Auctioneers to the U.S. Marshals, via Internet Archive
As far as I know, Sturtevant never made a Jackie, so I will put this one on my to-do list.
Vija Celmins, Untitled (Source Materials), 1999, Iris print, ed. 76 or 80/100, image: 357 × 309 mm frame: 797 × 595 × 37 mm, via Tate
When @garadinervi posted Vija Celmins’ 1999 Iris print, Untitled (Source Materials), it baffled me. It felt familiar, yet I’d also somehow missed it for 25 years? It’s an edition of 100, yet there are almost none in the aftermarket churn?
Tate shares either ed. 76/100 [via the text] or ed. 80/100 [via the pic] with the National Gallery of Scotland as part of the Artist Rooms series, acquired in 2008. SFMOMA has ed. 78/100, but theirs is just Untitled, and dated 1998, but they got theirs in 2000. Clamp Art Gallery has one for sale online rn, and their ed. number looks unfilled in, or photoshopped out. It all seemed very unfixed.
More to the point, how did this work exist, and yet not only did I not know it, I didn’t have it? Turns out I did, and I did, and then I very much didn’t, and I don’t.
The streets were scouted. The fashion schools were emptied. The gazar was unfurled. The skaters were evicted. And Rick Owens’ Spring/Summer ’25 men’s collection processed momentously around the courtyard of the 1937 Palais de Tokyo— twice—to a very extended remix of the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th.
In the description on his YouTube channel, Owens cites as inspiration his own youthful flight to Hollywood Boulevard, Jack Smith & Kenneth Anger, and “THE LOST HOLLYWOOD OF PRE-CODE BLACK AND WHITE BIBLICAL EPICS, MIXING ART DECO, LURID SIN AND REDEEMING MORALITY.”
Which sounds and looks like Cecil B. DeMille’s original 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, with better costumes.
screenshot from The Ten Commandments (1923), dir. Cecil B. DeMille, via internet archive
And, ngl, it also sounds and looks a lot like Intolerance (1916), D.W. Griffith’s unwieldy and obsequious sequel to his breakout klanfic hit, The Birth of A Nation (1915), with much better costumes.
screenshot of Intolerance (1916), dir. D.W. Griffith, showing the lost Babylonian set [which has been recreated in tiny part as a mall at Hollywood & Highland], via youtube
The creation of Griffith’s spectacle, from the cast of thousands to the mammoth set built on Hollywood & Sunset, was a centerpiece of Anger’s book, Hollywood Babylon.
“EXPRESSING OUR INDIVIDUALITY IS GREAT BUT SOMETIMES EXPRESSING OUR UNITY AND RELIANCE ON EACH OTHER IS A GOOD THING TO REMEMBER TOO… ESPECIALLY IN THE FACE OF THE PEAK INTOLERANCE WE ARE EXPERIENCING IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW…” also wrote Owens.
I am not really sure how the master’s spectacularly propagandistic tools are going to dismantle his ideological house. But maybe it’s the show’s second lap, where each model walks again solo. I do want one of those jackets, though.
Jonathan Horowitz, Leftover Glitter Abstraction (Two Rainbow American Flags for Jasper in the Style of the Artist’s Boyfriend), 2018, oil, glitter, on linen, via Sadie Coles HQ’s presentation at Basel in 2018
With the red and green and whitespace, I realized I was just one black post away from a Palestinian trifecta. This painting by Jonathan Horowitz has been in my drafts for a few days. It’s from his Rainbow American Flags for Jasper in the Style of the Artist’s Boyfriend series, and Sadie Coles showed it at Basel in 2018.
Rachel Harrison, Untabled (Title) 1694, 2017 Wood, polystyrene, cement, acrylic, Krion, gymnastics rings, straps, toy gun, and bandana, installed at Greene Naftali in 2017, now in the collection of MoMA
Come to the catalogue for Sitting in a Room, Rachel Harrison’s 2022-23 exhibition at the Astrup Fearnly Museet in Oslo, for the extensive documentation of all the installations of Marilyn with Wall.
Stay for the Lars Bang Larsen text mentioning Sturtevant in Harrison’s repetition and incorporation of other artist’s work, like the sculpture Robert Morris showed at the Green Gallery in 1964, which Harrison had made in sleek Krion™ Fall Green, as seen here at the Greene Naftali installation. [Krion™ is Porcelanosa’s next-generation competitor to Corian™. The chicken-with-a-durag-and-a-gun form is Harrison’s more familiar house blend of cement over polystyrene.]
And buy a print copy right now for the unexpected greg.org shoutout in the footnotes of Anne Dressen’s text, where Louise Lawler and I make the case for figuring out audio wall labels? [d’oh but not in the Norwegian.]
I am now making a sticker to attach next to this footnote, in a signed edition of 2000, one for each copy of the print catalogue. Buyers or owners of the Sitting in a Room catalogue should email me a pic of your book and your mailing address, and I’ll send you two stickers. One will be for your copy, and one for installing on another copy of the catalogue that might someday cross your path.
Maybe I should do this for the Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné, too.
image from House of Leda by Dr. Sophie Hay, whose instagram is @Pompei79
The bird is only one element of the stunning red wall from the House of Leda posted on social media by Pompeii archaeologist Dr. Sophie Hay, whose instagram is full at the moment of similarly Pompeii Red delights from the House of the Artists.
I thought it’d be nice to commemorate Juneteenth with a photo of David Hammons’ African American Flag flying over his public art installation, America Street, commissioned in 1991 as part of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, and preserved through the efforts of local community members. [The piece was installed on a vacant lot owned by the city.]
But the flag, which has been replaced over the years, is missing from the latest Google Street View image, taken all the way back in January 2023.
Hammons America Street, August 2019
Was GSV working from home during the pandemic? Because the next most recent image is only from August 2019, and it shows a flag with stripes so faded they could almost pass as white. [sic] Which may mean the last replacement flag was the one imaged in Jan. 2017?
What’s the word on America Street now, Charlestonians? Has the flag been replaced in the last 18 months?
It’s wild that after cleaning and removing some clunky additions, this painting turned out to be not one of a dozen copies of Quentin Metsys’ Madonna of the Cherries, one of the most celebrated paintings of 16th century Antwerp, but the long-lost original.
Whoever bought it for GBP250,000 in 2015 even did dendrochronological analysis of the boards of the panel it was painted on, and found it was from the same tree as a painting in the Rijksmuseum.
installation view of Rachel Harrison’s Marilyn with Wall, 2018, in Faithless Pictures at the Najsonalmuseet in Oslo
Speaking of Rachel Harrison, for the last post I was going back through the catalogue for Life Hack—an exhibition in a book if ever there was one, and with a sweet artist-designed cover I had a computer read aloud to me. And there was a big, beautiful spread of the eighth incarnation of Marilyn with Wall that felt like an even more direct nod to Louise Lawler than all the rest.
a painting by Thomas Scheibitz and a sculpture and four drawings by Rachel Harrison installed at the Wexner Center’s After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists, in 2015. photo: Stephen Takacs
This current of nihilism or violence has been present in Harrison’s work for some time, via its excavation of America and Americana; in 2015, it became literalized, when actual bullets were fired into her work at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, by an ex–security guard who spray-painted and shot several pieces of art in the After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists exhibit before taking his own life. After defacing the art—including sending a bullet into the forehead of a framed drawing of Al Pacino in Harrison’s 2012 sculpture Valid Like Salad (a new, tragic echo of Davidson’s mop in the head)—the ex-guard, Dean Sturgis, sat in a folding chair and shot himself in the head (a new, tragic link to Circle Jerk).
Whatever urge toward defacement, whatever hostility toward art qua art, whatever exploration, however lighthearted, of American breeds of masculinity, celebrity, and sociopathy may have been at play in Harrison’s work (in 2007, she titled a show “If I Did It,” after O. J. Simpson’s much-maligned memoir)—all must now sit uneasily with the legacy of Sturgis, whose bullet holes serve to remind us that our everyday includes mortal threat and terror as much as it does remote controls and air fresheners.
Nelson makes it sound like this association with the Wexner Center shooting was foisted on Harrison’s work, that it’s been tragically linked, passive voice. But that elides the artist’s own agency, and her own decisions, and risks diminishing her own insights about her work, both before and after it was shot.
If I had a significant Christopher Wool painting in Basel that became famous for not selling with even a single bid, I would simply turn it over and sell it immediately for well above the ask.
