Category: art

Liens 4 Your Warhol

In other Warhol Jackie at the center of legal dispute news, if the latest developments in the Libbie Mugrabi dispute with the art lending firm Art Capital Group are confusing, we can go back to Page Six’s report last February.

Wanted poster as altered by the NY Post (though they didn’t obscure Mugrabi’s gmail address)

That is when Mugrabi handed out wanted posters in front of ACG’s office, claiming they’d stolen her Warhol. ACG hadn’t filed a defamation lawsuit yet, so they were still talking to the press. Combined with the exhibits filed in their lawsuit [NYC County Supreme Court, 654058/2024] explained that Mugrabi had sought a 12-month, $3 million loan at at least 11.25%, plus a 2.25% referral fee to one of those guys up there—all booked up front, so she’d net $2.595m—against a Basquiat she said was worth $30 million.

Because she didn’t have the $12,500 processing fee required by the term sheet she signed, ACG suggested she use the Warhol as security against the expenses she agreed to, like shipping, research, insurance, storage, etc. And that is how they came to have custody of both the Basquiat and the Warhol, even though, by February 2024, it had become clear to ACG that they couldn’t find anyone to hold the Basquiat loan.

I think any of us would be understandably pissed if we were charged $12,500, or $27,000 or $97,000 and counting for a loan someone couldn’t deliver. Even if the reason they couldn’t make the loan was because of all the other legal claims and disputes being made against us by all sorts of creditors and mortgage holders and former household employees.

All of this is deeply uninteresting, though, especially compared to the absolute buck wild marvel of someone named Mugrabi having only one Warhol. And what, then, is that Warhol? As the Wanted poster teases, it is a blue, 20 x 16-inch, Jackie from 1964. And Libbie told Page Six her ex-father-in-law Jose had purchased it “at Christie’s seven years ago” for $869,000.

Some part of that might be true. About seven years before February 2024, Christie’s sold at least three nearly identical blue 1964 Jackie paintings. All have the same scant info and direct provenance: “Andy Warhol Works from a Private Collection” acquired directly from the artist, no date given. The first, in a morning sale on 16 November 2016, sold for $703,500 against a $700k-1m estimate. On 18 May 2017, another one sold for $595,500 against an estimate of just $400-600k. Then in an evening sale in Hong Kong on 27 May, the last sold for HKD5.954, or $764,000, against a roughly $400-600k estimate.

Andy Warhol, Jackie, 1964, 20 x 16 in., polymer and ink on canvas, sold 18 May 2017 at Christie’s

Barring the possibility of a fourth Jackie sold privately, to the world’s biggest Warhol trader, for 15-60% more, and based on the trace of black along the upper right edge, I think Libbie’s Jackie was the cheapest one, from 18 May.

Andy Warhol Round Jackie, the provenance, it burnsssss

Lmao how did I only just realize that this is the same screen Warhol used for the round gold Jackie from the Jho Low/Swizz Beatz/US Marshalls sale situation?

1MDB Warhol Round Jackie
2009: Have You Seen Me? The Find The Warhols Project
On Second Thought, Don’t Find The Warhols
2012: So Appropriate: Find The Warhols At House of Switzerland

The Second of 39 Louise Bourgeois Shackle Necklaces Is For Sale

Louise Bourgeois, Chus Burés, sterling silver necklace, 1999, ed. 2/39, selling as Lot 129 on 14 Nov 2024 at Lempertz, Cologne

I’m glad to have provided some text to the lot description of the Louise Bourgeois shackle-shaped silver necklace coming up for auction in Cologne next month. Even if I don’t get credit.

In related news, a silver shackle-shaped necklace made by Chus Burés for Louise Bourgeois with a very low number from the edition of 39 is coming up for auction next month.

Lot 129, 14.11.2024: A patinated Sterling silver shackle necklace. EUR15-20000 [lempertz]
Previously: This Louise Bourgeois shackle necklace by Chus Burés has no title.

Charles Sheeler Barns Collection

Charles Sheeler, Barn Abstraction, 1917, chalk on paper, 14 1/8 x 19 1/2 in., collection: Phila Museum

Speaking of Doylestown,

I was so immediately in love with the precisionist paintings, and the dramatic photos, that it took me a while to appreciate the late, semi-abstract barn paintings of Charles Sheeler.

Charles Sheeler, Bucks County Barn, 1915, gelatin silver print, sheet 10×8 in. mounted on 18×14 in., from a $10 edition of 10 made for sale at MoMA in 1941, and sold at Christie’s in 2012

It was probably the early photos from Doylestown and Bucks County that opened it up for me, and realizing that the barns were not late and out, but early and the whole point.

installation view of Barn Abstraction, 1917, in Charles Sheeler, Oct. 1939, The Museum of Modern Art, photo: Beaumont Newhall

I mean, making a drawing like Barn Abstraction in 1917 is kind of amazing. This one, at the Philadelphia Museum, because it was owned by the Arensbergs, was literally the first work in Sheeler’s 1939 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. It feels like Sheeler was in his Morton Schamberg era, in a good way.

Charles Sheeler, Barn Abstraction, 1918, lithograph, sheet: abt 19 1/2 x 24 1/2 in., selling at Christie’s 23 Oct 2024

In 1918 Sheeler used the drawing as the basis for his first print, a lithograph, of which maybe ten copies exist? That’s the number MoMA uses, and it’s cited in the lot description for the example being sold tomorrow at Christie’s. It’s the first of five Sheeler prints being sold—he only made six, and they’re all low volume.

Installation view of Charles Sheeler at MoMA in 1939, showing Upper Deck, 1929, from the Fogg, and American Landscape, 1930, from MoMA, photo by Beaumont Newhall

But that’s all less important than this installation photo from MoMA’s 1939 show, in which two of Sheeler’s precisionist masterpieces—Upper Deck (1929) and American Landscape (1930)—look like they’ve been reworked into a resin pour by Anicka Yi. What would Sheeler do with a painting of this photo? Is that even possible?

M.O. Williams, Mo Buddhas

M.O. Williams, Great Buddha, 175 Feet Tall, Bamian, Afghanistan, 1931, gelatin silver print, 7 3/4 x 5 3/4 in., on 14 x 9 in. mount, sold at Christie’s in 2012 by National Geographic

On Tumblr, @pwlanier’s been posting things sold by the National Geographic Society at Christie’s in 2012.

One image that stood out to me was Maynard Owens Williams’ 1931 photo of the Great Buddha at Bamian, one of two monumental sculptures created in the 5th-6th centuries in what is now central Afghanistan.

It stood out because I found myself talking about the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamian Buddhas in 2001 in my Rabkin Foundation interview a while back. Which was not something I’d planned or anticipated, tbqh; that fragment had just been lying there in my head, I guess, and I picked it up.

TIL M.O. Williams was the Society’s first field correspondent. He photographed the Buddhas [and this other scene, from Herat in western Afghanistan] on the Citroën-Haardt Expedition, a 7,000-mile trans-Asiatic road trip by motor car, tractor, pony, camel, and yak between Beirut and Beijing. [At the time, the project was known by the more racist title, la Croisière Jaune, the Yellow Expedition.] And French philosopher, Jesuit—and sinopaleontologist??—Pierre Tielhard de Chardin was on the trip, too. Who knew?

Gonzalez-Torres Candy Porch, 2024

Study for Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Porch), 2024, good candies in wrappers, endless supply, ideal weight 175 lbs

Ten days out, our neighbors have already put a bowl of candy on a table next to their front door. I am baffled. But as leaving piles of candy for the taking season approaches, I was hit by the idea of a Felix Gonzalez-Torres candy pour for Halloween. A Sturtevant show just opened in Paris, so I feel good about putting this out there while you people with porches still have time to shop for 175 ideal pounds of candy.

Sturtevant Zip Zap! 12 Oct – 21 Dec 2024 at Thaddeus Ropac [ropac.net]
Previously, related: How Does Sturtevant’s Candy Pour Work?

Just What Is It That Makes Today’s A Guide To Modern Camp Homes So Different, So Appealing?

The whole thing was unexpected, tbqh, but one of the surprise bonuses of the Rabkin Foundation writers award situation was meeting artist/photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki when he came to make my portrait. I asked him to bring a copy of his 2013-and-counting artist book, A Guide to Modern Camp Homes.

Modeled after Sears brochures for selling kit homes, Miyazaki’s Guide combines quotes from official notices and chirpy marketing with bright archival photos and renderings, as if racially segregated detention camps in the desert were the next step in the American Dream:

Customize Your Home
Your new home is unfurnished, aside from your bed frames, mattresses, and stove. You may wish to customize it with room partitions made from hanging sheets, and optional handmade items such as chairs, tables, shelves and window curtains. At some centers, large piles of discarded, green wood may remain from the home building process…

Where Sears would have run blurbs from satisfied customers, Miyazaki quotes the testimonies of former detainees, firsthand accounts of the sort gathered by Densho. In 2013 when he first conceived the Guide, I imagine the juxtaposition of deadpan form and horrible content was meant to foster a meaningful reflection on the wrongs that had been perpetrated by the US government against its own citizens.

The next dates on the Guide, though, are 2017 and 2024, when Muslim bans; refugee children imprisoned and separated from their families; genocide; and campaign promises of industrial-scale detentions and deportations were back. And the guy behind it all just compared the jail sentences of the rioters convicted in the 2021 coup attempt to the WWII detention of 120,000 Japanese Americans.

And so now Miyazaki’s Guide functions, not as a gentle appreciation of the experience of the artist’s family and the Japanese American community, but as evidence in itself. That even just a few years ago, we held the truths of the deep, unjust, racist, violations of peoples’ fundamental rights and liberties to be self-evident, and that was reason enough to never let them happen again.

Read Kevin J. Miyazaki’s A Guide to Modern Camp Homes [kevinmiyazaki.com]
Previously, related:
2003: I mean, just look how happy they were!
2010: Ansel Adams’ Japanese American Internment Camp Photos at MoMA [Shhh!]
2011: I Am An American
2015/18: A Brief History of Blogging About America Imprisoning Children, 6/X

Siddhartha Miter’s Rabkin Interview Dropped

I finished listening to Siddhartha Miter’s conversation with Rabkin Foundation Executive Director Mary Louise Schumacher this morning, and it was insightful and sobering. They talked a lot about the art writing field and its precarity, and that was as depressing as you can imagine. But they also talked about the windows art writing affords into new, expanded views of the world, beyond the luxury object trade talk we’re inundated with, and it was awesome. Then I’ve been clicking through the sheer number of powerful pieces Miter has written about incredible artists, exhibitions, movements, and publications, and it’s extraordinary. A combination of vast treasure and barely scratching the world’s art surface.

If you need me, I’ll be filling up my reading list, starting with Jupiter Magazine, one of the art publications Miter namechecked. The theme of Jupiter’s latest issue, The Theater of Refusal, revisits and renews Charles Gaines’ foundational 1993 exhibition of contemporary Black art and its critical context. Its form was a series of readings and screenings throughout the summer, which I will now try to approximate in my head.

2024 Rabkin Interview with Siddhartha Miter [rabkinfoundation.substack]
Jupiter [jupiter-mag]

Cady Noland Pavilions

“Beginning October 17, and spanning three rooms of the Pavilions, Glenstone will share a presentation of works by Cady Noland. Developed in collaboration with the artist, this presentation will mark the first major survey by a U.S. museum of her decades-long career.”

Reader, the presentation has been marked. Last year I poured one out for anyone who’d hoped to buy a new Cady Noland work. But now I feel for anyone who’s been trying to buy a major Cady Noland the last 17 years.  Because Glenstone got them all. Look at that map; Glenstone has Cady Nolands even Glenstone doesn’t know about.

Three of the six open pavilion spaces are Noland’s work. [The others are two galleries of works by Lorraine O’Grady and Melvin Edwards, and the little library.] The first thing you see as you go down the stairs is not a Noland sculpture, but a Noland architectural intervention. At first it read like an Ellsworth Kelly, if only because architecture-scale Kellys were just on view here. Up close, no, closer, inside it, it read like an Anne Truitt, of the back of the Anne Truitts that had backs.

The no photography proscription is excruciating, and I find myself trying to no spoilers my way through this post, as if it’s feasible to say, let’s discuss it after you’ve seen it. The artist adjusted the space to minimize distraction and focus attention on her work, and it works. They borrowed Clip-on Man. Charles Gatewood’s book with the source image is in the library.

The Raleses purportedly acquired Noland’s entire show last year at Gagosian, but it also somehow fills a space three times the size. There is a lot less tape, except when there isn’t.

There are pallet plinths that are not elements of the work, except when they are. There are foam and carpet blocks that precede an installation, except they’re still here. It’s at once pristine and provisional.

The paper labels remain on the white wall tires. You may not ride the tire swings. The internal gear to lift the massive stockade is freshly lubed, but the crank is padlocked. The chain that connected the bench is gone. Oozewald has its corrected and copyrighted stand. The wear on the corners of one (non-mirror-finish) aluminum panel propped on the floor is enough to make the owner of Cowboys Milking weep.

It’s like this survey surveys not only the range of Noland’s work as she made it, but as it was presented, processed and purchased since. Maybe being cast in acrylic and thoughtfully placed in the contemplative suburban art temple of benevolent billionaires is not, after all, all bad.

Painting On Sargent Dog Painting Violence

Peter A. Juley & Sons photo of John Singer Sargent’s Pointy, 1881, oil on panel, 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 in., via the Photography Study Collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

While looking for John Singer Sargent’s entangled octopus painting at the Smithsonian’s vast Photography Study Collection, I could not help but notice this painting he made of a dog. I really, really am not a dog painting guy, but apparently I am dog painted in Paris by one of two artists. Or three. Okay four, max.

Pointy was the dog of Louise and Valerie Burckhardt, the daughters of Swiss-American friends of the Sargent family, and Pointy (1881) is one of at least three works young Sargent made as a gift for the family. [It says “to my friend Louise” on the back.]

Make that four works. Sargent’s full-length portrait of Louise Burckhardt was a hit at the Salon of 1882. Sargent inscribed it, “to my friend Mrs. Burckhardt”. If auction lot texts are to be believed, Mrs Burckhardt was trying to spark a romance between the painter and his subject. Or maybe we only know this story because someone in Sargent’s publicity department told it. He never married because he was so dedicated to his work, insisted the family members and academics gatekeeping his CR.

Pointy, 1881, via Christie’s 2007, where it did very well

Anyway, auction texts. The Burckhardts kept Pointy until 1991, when they sold it at Sotheby’s, and then it sold again in 2007 at Christie’s in an auction literally titled, “The Dog Sale,” which I am absolutely not clicking on.

Seeing it in color, it’s enough to know that the Grand Central Gallery, which hosted a Sargent’s greatest hits show in 1924, did not literally paint their copyright claim on the face of the picture after all. But it also makes me think that Sargent, whose elegant, eel-like initials J.S.S. are on the bottom right, did not paint POINTY on the top, either.

19yo John Singer Sargent and The Two Octopi

John Singer Sargent, Two Octopi, 1875, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 5/8 in., private collection, via @mentaltimetraveller via @punk-raphaelite

Move over Turkey (1879), there’s a new favorite Sargent I’d never seen nor heard of in town.

John Singer Sargent, Turkey in a Courtyard, 1879-80, oil on canvas, 14×10.5 in., private collection

Maybe Turkey can be my favorite Sargent I’ve ever seen, and Two Octopi can be my favorite Sargent I haven’t.

Sargent, a student at the Beaux-Arts, was 19 when he painted Two Octopi, a scene from the deck of a fishing boat in Brittany. The first paintings Sargent showed and sold were seaside scenes from Brittany, but that wasn’t until 2-3 years later. This is Sargent’s only documented oil from 1875.

In “John Singer Sargent’s ‘Devils'”, a 2011 essay for Gastronomica: The Journal for Food and Culture, emily arensman pins down the limited sourcing (a letter to Charles Knoedler only known through a citation in a 1942 Parke-Bernet catalogue) and some context. Was this painting in Sargent and the Sea, a 2009 exhibition at the Corcoran [which traveled to the Royal Academy] of the artist’s early, little-known marine works?

Meanwhile, though the discussion and quotes are mostly references to eels, Alison Mairi Syme’s mention of Two Octopi in her 2010 book, A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-siècle Art, as a 19th-century queer-coded handshake, is now impossible to unconsider. And there was a fisherman involved in this picture, too.

[later in the day update]:

John Singer Sargent, Octopus, 1875, as photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son, via the Photography Study Collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

From the Juley Photos collection at the Smithsonian, we can see Sargent signed this work, titled simply Octopus, at least when the Juleys photographed it. The collector at the time was either a Connecticut painter or a Mayflower descendant, but perhaps not both.

There’s Still Some Art For Kamala

This is the Louise Lawler Democrats want: Three Flags (swiped and moving), 2022, dye sublimation print on museum box, 48 x 85 5/16 in., ed. 4/5+1AP

So far 105 artworks donated to the Artists for Kamala fundraising campaign have been sold. The remaining 67 works will remain available through October 18th. Because the purchases are subject to campaign donation laws, buyers must file donor statements. Also, they can’t be foreign nationals or lobbyists.

Also they may not want to be Republicans. 100% of the proceeds goes to the Harris Victory Fund, which allocates it to Harris for President, the DNC, and the state Democratic parties.

Interestingly, another edition of this Lawler is at Paula Cooper Gallery through October 26th, in a Flag-themed show. A portion of the proceeds from that show will go to America Votes, a coalition of GOTV and voting rights organizations.

On The Politics Of Collecting

On the New Books Network podcast, library scientist Jen Hoyer has an invigorating conversation with Eunsong Kim about Kim’s new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property. Kim looks at the structural inequities of the systems that determine what gets preserved and valued: archives, museums, philanthropic ventures.

In the raking light of her critical literarary scholarship, Kim examines the contours of Henry Clay Frick’s art collecting after the 1892 Homestead Strike, and the intensive campaigns by Marcel Duchamp and the Arensbergs for the most advantageous museum placement of their collection. And much more!

New Books Network: Eunsong Kim, The Politics of Collecting [newbooksnetwork]
The Politics of Collecting [dukeupress.edu]