photo of Jasper Johns by Bob Cato, via davidhudson
This morning David Hudson posted this c. 1950s photo of Jasper Johns I’d never seen in a space I didn’t recognize, and I had to know more. Looking for the photographer, Bob Cato, took me to another image he made of Johns and crew, which ran in the NY Times in February 2001, accompanying an article about a Carnegie Hall program celebrating John Cage and his collaborative circle. Kay Larson, who would go on to write a biography of Cage, did not actually discuss the photo.
1958 Bob Cato photo of Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, M.C. Richards, and Jasper Johns, as published in the NY Times, Feb. 4, 2001, via blackmountaincollege.org
oilcloth concept roundup, [clockwise from upper left]: but which Guyton? Richter Strip; a Rothko; Sturtevant’s—or any, really—Felix candy carpet
Yesterday on the good social media, I floated an idea about custom-printing an oilcloth for our table instead of stalemating over off-the-roll options. When I realized custom was even an option, my mind went first to Guyton/Walker, probably because tables, but also because their poppin’ designs feel like riffs on the most garish tropical oilcloth patterns out there already.
But then it occurred to me, what is a Wade Guyton painting but an artisanal and auratic, custom-printed textile? Which one would be best as a tablecloth? If process is the determinant, Gerhard Richter’s Strip paintings are also printed. But what isn’t these latter days of the flatbed picture plane?
I had the Felix Gonzalez-Torres catalogue raisonné out, and its all-over cover photos of candy suddenly felt like the perfect combination of representation and abstraction, object and pattern. But what color?
The Gonzalez-Torres image universe spilled out before me. Bead curtain? Death by Gun? [oof.] The dark surface of the sea? A bird in a cloudy sky? Black with a couple of lines of biography and historic events printed along one edge? Then I realized I already had a solution. Or at least an option.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (For Parkett 39), 1994, ed. 1/84 sold in Fall 2023 at the auction of a complete set of Parkett editions at Van Ham, Berlin
Sure, we could print the entire image of footprints in the sand from “Untitled” (For Parkett 39). Or, we could use the eight screenprinted panels of the 3×7-meter billboard edition separately. Except they are mostly square, around 160 x 170 cm, each, plus some border/overlap. So on their own, they don’t fit our rectangular table. They would need to be pasted together in a vertical pair. Do they need to be laminated? Coated? Thrown over with a clear vinyl tablecloth like at Grandma’s? Beyond unworkable, it feels wrong. [lmao as if the whole idea isn’t bad enough.] I’ve taken my Parkett billboard sheets out like twice, and that billboard stock is thick; they are not your crafty mama’s butcher paper.
I was unexpectedly giddy when Carolina Miranda posted on social media about the blank ruled page she came across in the collection of the Getty Museum.
In 1981 sculptor Elyn Zimmerman proposed to polish a sliver of the 300 ft tall basalt cliffs of the Palisades in New Jersey to a mirror finish, so that it would reflect—depending on your angle—the Manhattan bank of the Hudson, the river itself, or the sky.
She showed the maquette of the Palisades Project [above] at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, which also commissioned a related sculpture, a dramatic, 8 x 21-foot freestanding wall of one polished and seven natural cleft granite slabs, for the museum entrance.
Elyn Zimmerman, Palisades (Project), 1981, granite, 8 x 21 ft., selling at Christie’s 17 July 2024
When the NY Times visited it in 1982, it was untitled. At some point, it became known as Palisades (1981), and in 1990 it was reinstalled at a winery in Napa with the artist’s involvement, and a reflecting pool, echoing the Hudson, perhaps, was added. It was sold in 2014, and it is now for sale again, this second, decidedly mid reflecting trough not included. Christie’s calls it Palisades Project both times.
Zimmerman’s original proposal had an undeniably thrilling aspect to it, a spectacular vision born of mind-freeing drives upstate. Of course, it was also impossible. The basalt of the Palisades does not polish to a mirror finish. No doubt realizing this at the time, Zimmerman’s Yonkers exhibit included an alternate proposal to mount a polished granite skin on the cliff face, at which point you might as well just stick an actual 300-ft tall mirror on there.
Thus, though that one piece could maybe use some polishing, Palisades Project [sic] survives as the ideal realization of the concept. Bidding starts at $100, plus shipping.
[update: holy smokes, it sold to the lone bidder for $126, this is epic, hmu lucky winner!]
Speaking of epic editions from the 1990s at The Renaissance Society, they have Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ tattoo, “Untitled” (1992), available. Proceeds from the unlimited edition support the Renaissance Society and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. [status update: it’s complicated.]
This has long been on the top of my list of artist tattoos I would have gotten, had I gotten a tattoo, and I have considered getting it several times over the years. At some of those times, when I was getting close, I felt like the tattoo was not readily or easily available.
At some point, it felt like I missed a window in which the Renaissance Society offered it. That window is now open, but I find this level of engagement with the work has been sufficient for me. The description says, “you may also gift the tattoo,” so if I need to level up, I’ll just find someone who wants it.
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.
