the making of, by greg allen
Remember how some of Cy Twombly’s photos were made by hand by a secretive French family who’s perfected some ludicrously complicated and luxurious wet-printing process, and the others were made by enlarging Polaroids on a color copier?
Yeah, these tulips are some of the former. Fresson Prints. Ask for them by name.
22 Nov 2024, Lot 690: Cy Twombly, Tulips (iii), 1993, est. $50-70k [christies]
Previously, related: Makin’ Copies: Cy Twombly Photos
A lot of bangers in the mix at States of Change, a limited-duration, open edition photo print fundraiser to support State Voices, a growing coalition of grass roots organizations around the country that work to preserve and expand voting rights in the US.
A lot of really good artists have put in some very solid work for an important cause at a critical moment. But NGL, these kind of prints are nice, but small—digitally printed on 10×12 paper—and unsigned. So a little slight in themselves. But what they are designed for is to shake $100 or more needed dollars from you. So just pick your favorites and go for it, while you can.
States of Change is open through November 4, 2024, to US citizens and legal permanent residents. [statesofchange.us]
To recognize that censoring Dorothea Lange’s photos of American citizens being incarcerated without charge or cause by the US government because of their race has a long history absolutely does not help when they do it again.
The Wall Street Journal reports that “[U.S Archivist, Colleen] Shogan and her top advisers told employees to remove Dorothea Lange’s photos of Japanese-American incarceration camps from a planned exhibit because the images were too negative and controversial, according to documents and current and former employees. Shogan’s aides also asked staff to eliminate references about the wartime incarceration from some educational materials, other current and former employees said.”
It’s among a whole host of controversial, conservative, and censorious demands Shogan and her team have made as part of the renovation of the National Archives Museum. Every reported change whitewashes American history with explicit conservative slants, and silences or erases non-white Americans.
Just as the racism-fueled shameful injustice of Japanese American incarceration during WWII was ordered by FDR, this cowardly censor running the Archives was appointed by Joe Biden.
[next day reactions update: via @shannonmattern.bsky.social comes Charles Pierce’s context-setting on Shogan’s pre-emptive cowardice in the face of, of all people, Josh Hawley]
Prevously, all too related:
2018: A Brief History of Blogging About America Imprisoning Children, 6/X
2011: I Am An American
I know it’s about writing, but I also loved listening to Cassie Packard and Mary Louise Schumacher talk about editing, and Packard’s approach to art show reviews. The story about the college kid Packard was sharing Amy Sillman’s epic 2011 essay, “Ab-Ex and Disco Balls” is also choice. But after teeing up a slew of Packard’s writing in the links I hadn’t known before, my next biggest takeaway from her Rabkin Interview is introducing me to Merve Emre’s podcast, The Critic And Her Publics, which is now filling up my queue.
Cassie Packard 2024 Rabkin Foundation Interview [rabkinfoundation.substack]
Someone on a social media site had quoted Kate Zambreno on her favorite Manet, in the opening pages of To Write As If Already Dead, and unfinished canvas he kept in his studio for nearly 30 years:
The Funeral (1867) is said to depict Charles Baudelaire’s funeral on September 2, 1867. The absence of a crowd could possibly be explained by others being away from Paris on holiday, or the threat of the gathering storm. Manet was one of the few mourners present. Although Baudelaire spent his last years in a nursing home in Paris, he had been estranged from the city for some time, in his penurious exile to Belgium. No longer being able to share walks with his friend in the Tuileries, Manet would write complaining about the shocking reception of his paintings in the Salon, which had previously rejected him, how he was savaged and caricatured by the press, both he and his paintings seen as stupid, abominable, ugly. Baudelaire had little patience for his friend’s bourgeois crav- ing for approval. One caustic reply, from 1865: “Do you believe you are the first man to find yourself in such a place? Have you more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? People mocked them quite a lot don’t you know. They did not die from it.” The painting was unfinished, only discovered in Manet’s studio after his death. I wonder how often he looked at it, and when he did, whether he still thought of his friend. Perhaps it was unfinished because there was something still unsettled, even private, for him about the canvas.
Pissarro traded his own works to Vollard for it, and his widow sold it back a few years later. It’s been at the Met since 1909.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return, at and around the National Portrait Gallery is excellent in several precise and unexpected ways:
The inclusion of all 55 of the artist’s puzzle works [first shown like this at Art Basel 2019, including with five exhibition copies, which I didn’t know was a thing here.]
The inclusion of strong non-signature works like “Untitled” (Fear), above, and “Untitled” (A Portrait), the artist’s only video work.
The inclusion of two variants of the portrait [sic] of flowers on Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas’ grave. [n.b.: There are more.]
But the most intriguing and effective thing was the threading of Felix’s work throughout and among the collection of the NPG. It worked in small, even tiny ways, like reuniting a little Eakins portrait of an ancient Walt Whitman with a candy pour, “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), which had been shown together at the NPG’s 2010 Hide/Seek exhibition of queer portraiture.
But it hit hardest and most unexpectedly in the most intrusive installation: “Untitled” (Death by Gun), the stack of photos of Americans killed in one week of gun violence, on the floor of a heavily trafficked hall gallery, in front of two works that felt like the NPG’s 19th century bread and butter.
The painting turns out to be Christian Schussele’s 1862 Men of Progress, an amalgamated portrait of various American inventors, including Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolver pistol that made shooting people easier, quicker, and more convenient.
Next to them [in a way I could have photographed all three together, had I only realized the complexity of the connection] is a print after a George Catlin painting, where the artist shows off a Colt rifle to a group of Carib Indians. Turns out that after the economic failure of his massive “Indian Gallery” project, Catlin accepted a commission for a series of paintings for an aggressive marketing campaign promoting Colt’s new guns. That went well. For the gunmakers, at least.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return runs through June 2025 or until the end of the republic, whichever comes first [npg]
Previously, related: on Hide/Seek and the controversies around its censorship
The timing of Duchamp’s Bouche-évier multiple is a bit unclear to me. He Macguyvered the drain stopper for his bath in 1964, but didn’t have the editions of it cast in bronze, steel and silver—100 each—until 1967. So he was coming off his Pasadena retrospective, and in the middle of his Schwarz readymade fabrication-palooza. So minting his own coin or medal must have felt last icing on the selling-out cake.
None of which is that interesting, tbh, and with 300+ out there, the stoppers turn up all the time. What I’ve never seen, though, is one with an original leather pouch. It certainly is.
Marcel Duchamp, Bouche-évier, 1964, APII in bronze with sac, selling 21 Nov. 2024 at Cottone [liveauctioneers]
Ed Ruscha made a drawing in 1986 with the saying carved into the science building entrance of Hollywood High School. In 2022 (RED) and Gagosian used the drawing for a silk scarf edition by Massif Central, with (NET) proceeds going to equitable COVID relief around the world, matched by the Gates Foundation. Not sure if all that shophilanthropy is still in effect, but while science is still around, there are still scarves available at Artware.
[after thinking about it for five minutes update:] I think they really did just tack a $1000 premium on these (Red)scha scarves, and said, oh hey don’t worry about buying these scarves in a pandemic; we’re raising [sic] a million dollars.
Ed Ruscha Science Is Truth Found Out Scarf, ed. 500, $1,600 [artwareeditions]
We have some idea about the 17 urinals—17 or so, I haven’t kept up. But where are Marcel Duchamp’s shovels? Arturo Schwarz produced editions of eight replicas of 14 Duchamp readymades in 1964, originally offered in a complete set for $25,000. Were there really only eight? In Advance of a Broken Arm (Schwarz, 1964) is listed as the fourth version. Where are the previous ones?
[The most concentrated source of info on Duchamps comes, unsurprisingly, from Francis Naumann, who has been researching and trading in Duchamp’s works for decades. Check, for example, his 1999 book, The Art of Making Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which steps through Duchamp’s physical production chronologically. Or Naumann’s readymade market recap from 2003.]
I think there are 16 shovels to account for. 12 exist; 2 are exhibition copies; and 2 are lost. Here they are in roughly chronological order [of where they ended up]:
Continue reading “In Advance of a Sale of In Advance of a Broken Arm”While searching for something else, I came across what is apparently the only work of Walter de Maria ever sold at Phillips, and I was not prepared for a “For Sale: Baby shoe. Never worn”-level tragedy—and in an original canvas slipcase.
Walter de Maria
The Pure Polygon Series: six plates
1975-76
Six graphite template drawings, on American Etching paper, with full margins, all contained in the original pine and maple wood portfolio and canvas slipcase.
all I. variable
all S. 36 x 36 in. (91.4 x 91.4 cm)
All signed, titled, dated and numbered 12/21 in pencil on the reverse, published by the artist, lacking Nonagon.
Catalogue Essay
Titles include: The Triangle of Seven Template Drawings; The Square of Seven Template Drawings; The Pentagon of Seven Template Drawings; The Hexagon of Seven Template Drawings; The Heptagon of Seven Template Drawings and The Octagon of Seven Template Drawings.
Everything reminds me of her
Some time in 1988 before November, Glenn Ligon made Untitled (I Am A Man), which is called his first painting of a selected text, based on a 1968 civil rights protest poster he’d seen as a student in the local office of Congressman Charlie Rangel.
In November 1988, Jamaica Art Center visual arts director Kellie Jones’ proposal of sculptor Martin Puryear to represent the US at the São Paulo Bienal was announced. Puryear was the first Black artist to represent the US at an international exhibition. [He went on to win the grand prize and a MacArthur that year.]
One of the ten members of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions, which made the selection, was Hirshhorn Museum chief curator Ned Rifkin, who actually said, to The New York Times, “There is a consciousness we all have that he is a black American artist, but I think his work is really superior and stands on its own.”
Also in 1988 Ligon was working on stenciling found texts, on paper. Including quotes from “dreambook” pamphlets, street handouts that coupled dream interpretations with advertisement for an underground lottery his father worked at.
And also condescending quotes by major museum curators published in the newspaper. Untitled (There is a consciousness we all have…) comprises two sheets of the same size as the dreambook painting above. It shows an early example of Ligon stenciling a found text multiple times. In a composition similar to No. 291 (Language), faint and effaced versions of Rifkin’s quote can be seen on the top and bottom, respectively, of the left sheet, while the right sheet seems to bear traces of marks made by pushing the stencil itself.
So it is that I only heard of this quote, and this work, this morning, while reading Kriston Capps’ extended reflection on the Hirshhorn in the Washington Post occasioned by the museum’s 50th anniversary. Capps’ reference sent me on a search for the work and the quote, and the curator and the context.
And I thought this is how it must have felt to first encounter Ligon’s work. Much is made of Ligon’s choices of text and the resonance of their sources, but it feels worth noting how much of that information exists apart from his paintings. Though he eventually began mentioning titles in his own titles, early sources like dreambooks and Ned Rifkin were untraceable and unrecognizable, at least to someone who didn’t live them. So their first reference is Ligon, who put them there, not the source he got them from. Which makes Rifkin’s quote even more outraging, offensive—and, for a young Black artist reading it, dispiriting.
In 1991 Ned Rifkin left the Hirshhorn for the High Museum in Atlanta, and Ligon was in his first Whitney Biennial. In early 1993, presumably before he showed Notes on the Margin of The Black Book at the Whitney Biennial, the Hirshhorn acquired their only Ligon works to date: a door painting, Untitled (Black Like Me #2), and Untitled (Four Etchings), both from 1992. The painting was loaned to the White House for four years beginning in 2009. The National Gallery of Art acquired Untitled (I Am A Man) in 2012.
“The illusion of light, long a desiderata of painters in Western art history, is here the result of applying thin, translucent layers of pigment in succession, with a precision of execution that creates a completely seamless transition through the color spectrum. The pristine, vaporous rainbow seems to emanate from the paper, the large scale enveloping the viewer in color.”
I know there’s a whole gallery of them, but the watercolors in Olafur Eliasson’s show opening today at Tanya Bonakdar in NYC look absolutely unreal to me. I keep waiting for the images to finish loading.
Olafur Eliasson: Your Psychoacoustic Light Ensemble, 24 Oct-19 Dec 2024 [tanyabonakdar]
I listened to Thomas Lawson’s conversation with the Rabkin Foundation’s Mary Louise Schumacher on the way home this afternoon. I aspire to accomplishing so much and being so concise I can get it all done in a 31-minute podcast. He should win an editing award on top of the writing.
Lawson mentions his January 1988 essay in Artforum on the history and contemporary resonance of cyclorama paintings, and I just read it. The ending is absolutely eerie in its torn-from-today’s-headline vibe. And by today, I mean not just 1988, but 2024. How is that possible?
I wish I’d known of Lawson’s essay in 2010 when I was writing a series of posts proposing ways of saving Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Building at Gettysburg, which was under threat of demolition by the National Park Service. TBF I was focused much less on the cyclorama painting—which had already been moved to a new, purpose-built visitor entertainment center—than on how the surviving architecture related to the built and marked history of memorialization on the battlefield. [Spoiler alert: it was destroyed.]
Thomas Lawson 2024 Rabkin Interview [rabkinfoundation.substack]
I missed this when it streamed live, so I was psyched to get the heads up from Gladstone Gallery that Diamond Stingily & Matthew Barney’s conversation from October 5, 2024, has been uploaded to YouTube.
I listened to it in the car and had expected to hear a lot of effusive praise for Carrie Mae Weems, in whose show the event was staged; for Precious Okoyomon, who organized the event; and for Bottega Veneta, which sponsored something. [Weems rather amazingly recreated some of her most iconic photos as Bottega ads, which, I’ve never wanted someone to get a bag more.]
Anyway, no, it has one of the coldest opens of any artist talk I’ve ever heard. A lesson to everyone. Also, Matthew Barney cut Barbara Gladstone’s hair, more than once.
In 2018 Andrea Fraser published 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics, a 933-page report documenting the 2016 political expenditures of all the trustees of 125 museums across the United States. More than half the $6.4 billion poured into the 2016 US elections came from just a few hundred people, and, Fraser finds, most of them also dominate the country’s art and cultural institutions.
It is described as “like a telephone book,” by which I hope they don’t mean “so obsolete half the people alive right now have never seen one.” Well, now’s your chance. Fraser’s 2016 has been released as a PDF, available at the Wattis Institute. It includes texts by Fraser and Jamie Stevens, who led a year-long season of events and exhibitions at the Wattis focused on Fraser’s work.
It is still available in print, too, and I hope a suitable number of copies will be secreted away around the globe to show future historians of the 21st century that at least some people were aware enough to put out exhaustive reports.
Andrea Fraser, 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics, published by Westreich Wagner, CCA Wattis, and MIT Press, in PDF and print ($125) [wattis.org]
Previously, related: Why Does Andrea Fraser’s Work Make Me Cry?