Category: dc

The Making Of An Artist

There are many poor choices involved here, but one straightup mistake I made was not skipping the first fifteen minutes of this video, which was so insipid it left me unable to keep watching the actual event for more than nine months. Nine months of this thing sitting in my tabs, paralyzing me like a wireless fence whenever I’d get too close or it started autoplaying.

Well, the world is in a state where listening to the experiences of George W. Bush’s three art teachers is officially a less-worse option than [gestures around] all this. And that’s what the questions, the anecdotes, the uncomfortable pauses, were all about: what was it like meeting and interacting with Bush?

Continue reading “The Making Of An Artist”

Ruh-Roe

a rephotographed poster for the movie point break with a young keanu reeves' disembodied head floating above a group of bank robbers with president masks on, and behind is the disembodied head of patrick swayze except that swayze's face has been photoshop replaced by roe ethridge's own young mug, this would be his greatest self portrait ever if he hadn't made that one with the black eye before this. still, just incredible work all around, and this copy is being sold to pay off the creditors and clients of art advisor lisa schiff who is at the moment serving time i think for her crimes. anyway this is at phillips in july 2025

How no one bought the second greatest self-portrait Roe Ethridge ever made last fall, when it would have brought the creditor victims of Lisa Schiff’s purloining $3-4,000 before Phillips’ fees, is beyond me. Anyway, violent mask-wearing thieves disguised as US presidents could not be more on brand right now, and so it’s back, with a lower estimate and at least one bid.

2 July 2025, Lot 172 | Roe Ethridge, Untitled (Point Break), 2010, ed. 1/5, est. $2-3,000, current bid: $1,000, PROPERTY TO BE SOLD TO BENEFIT THE CREDITORS OF LISA SCHIFF AND SCHIFF FINE ART [update: sold for that one bid, $1,270] [phillips]

30 seconds later update: LOL this is insane. I just read an article about someone who suddenly decided to pay off a school’s entire lunch debt of $865, and then went on to raise money to pay off more, and then got a law passed to abolish lunch shaming. So if you have only $2,000, do NOT spend it on this Roe Ethridge portrait, the net proceeds of which will go to several millionaire collectors who won’t even notice. Instead, pay off an entire school’s lunch debt with it. And if you have much more than $2,000, pay off a school’s lunch debt, then just contact Kreps and buy another edition of this perfect picture. What are we even doing here?

George Inness, Industrial Niagara

a george inness painting of niagara falls is misty and indistinct in the lower, watery, bluish white half, and smoky hazy in the cloudy, smoggy purplish mauve of the smokestack spewing sky half. at the bottom left edge a thin strip of green landscape is inhabited by two tiny white flecks, presumably canvases of indistinctly painted painters. in a thick but not overly ornate gilt frame. at the smithsonian american art museum, c. 1889.

I had to go check something at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for a thing, and on the way, I got stopped by the tiny painters in the lower left corner of George Inness’s misty, smoky 1889 painting of Niagara. It had just recently been declared a state park, and the factories, mills, and brothels along the cataract had not yet been cleared away. Pretty sure it’s an edenic paradise now, at least from some angles.

A Pile of White House Bricks

a pile of 18th and early 19th century bricks in a variety of finishes sits in a five-layer stack on the floor of a rural virginia auction house. a manila envelope on top of them has white house brick documents 166 bricks written on it. because these bricks are from the white house.

What’s that, you say?

VERY RARE HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF WHITE HOUSE BRICKS?

I AM LISTENING.

Enslaved people made the bricks for the White House from clay on or near the White House grounds at least twice. After the White House was burned in 1812, most of the original 1792 bricks were too damaged to use in the 1814-17 reconstruction. The 1817 bricks were removed during the 1948-52 gut reconstruction of the White House by President Harry s. Truman. 95,000 went for projects at Mount Vernon. 10,000 went to a project at Fort Myer. A New York congressman bought White House bricks left over from the Fort Myer pile, along with 1600 lbs of White House stone, and stored it at some guy’s farm for a while. When came to pick up most of it, he left this lot of 166 bricks. “This may very well be one of the last large groups of White House bricks in public hands,” says the Shenandoah Valley auctioneer Jeffrey S. Evans.

I’m trying to imagine the excitement if these original White House bricks were returned to the White House, or if they were exhibited publicly near the White House today. Or tomorrow.

The bricks will be auctioned June 28, 2025.

Lot 2124 | VERY RARE HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF WHITE HOUSE BRICKS, est $10-20,000 [jeffreysevans]
Previously, related: Untitled (George Washington’s Coffin), 2016

[few minutes later update: It’s my brick in a box]

Felix Gonzalez-Torres Tattoo: Origins

a ring of 10 stylized dolphins drawn in black is printed in the middle of the window of a parisian gallery, with the cityscape behind it. this 1990 rub-on transfer edition by felix gonzalez torres was included in tattoo collection, a 1992 exhibit at jennifer flay gallery, as both a rub-on transfer and a tattoo. image: air de paris via felix gonzalez torres foundation
“Untitled”, 1990. Installed in Tattoo Collection. Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris, France. 3 Jun. – 18 Jul. 1992. Conceived by Air de Paris and Urbi et Orbi, image via Air de Paris by way of FG-T Fndn

Last weekend the curators of the National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art’s exhibition, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always To Return, held a public conversation about Felix Gonzalez-Torres tattoos. It was great. But no one, including the curators and art historians who have Felix tattoos, and not me, the rando blogger who’s written about them twice, quite knew the origin of the tattoo Felix made as an open edition in 1992.

In my question to the panel, I said I thought it had been created for a show of artist tattoos, but no one else had heard that, and then I saw that info is not on the Foundation’s website, and I was like, Oh no, did I just Felixsplain something to the professionals and get it wrong?

No, I did not. But I did forget that I’d written about the show sixteen years ago.

a low ceilinged art gallery with white walls and a concrete floor is filled with small works on paper, mostly tattoo designs created by artists. a june 1992 exhibit at air de paris gallery
Tattoo Collection, installation view, Summer 1992 at Jennifer Flay Gallery, Paris, via airdeparis

“Tattoo Collection” began as a project in 1991, conceived by gallerists Florence Bonnefous and Édouard Merino and Lawrence Weiner, for Air de Paris in Nice. The first 30 artists to create tattoo designs were also asked to invite someone else. Its first incarnation, of Weiner’s design on Bonnefous’ back, took place on a Monaco rooftop. Over two years the project expanded to six other galleries and almost 200 artists. 33 years ago today, 3 June 1992, it opened at Jennifer Flay’s Paris gallery as a summer group show.

In the years since I posted about it, Air de Paris has filled out the “Tattoo Collection” archive with a press release, a 2014 interview, a couple of installation photos, and the names of 189 participating artists, and the consignment forms for most of them—but only some of the tattoos themselves.

“Untitled”, the 1990 rub-on transfer edition of a stylized ring of ten dolphins that was included in Felix’s January 1990 show at Andrea Rosen, was included here, too. The consignment form from 14 Aug 1992 lists two works, both “Untitled” (or “sans titre,” so the survey was filled out by AdP, not Andrea Rosen), with dates of 1990 and 1992. The former is a rub-on transfer (ed. 20), and the latter is a photostat for the open edition tattoo.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres consignment survey for Tattoo Collection, 1993, airdeparis.com

AdP’s basic instructions survey on the consignment form say the tattoo can be bought by anyone, should be black, and should be placed on the “ankle or wrist.” Unsurprisingly, these were not static; the parameters in the certificate Meg Onli got when she purchased her edition from Rosen in 2011 are different and more expansive.

What does seem certain, though, is the connection between the tattoo and the rub-on transfer edition from two years earlier. Though the source of the dolphin motif is still unknown, the source of the tattoo image is the 1990 edition.

There is also much to be explored in the larger Tattoo Collection project. Bonnefous got the inspiration from the instructions for Weiner’s works, that “the work need not be built.” Between this conceptual core and the impermanence of the body, it’s seems realistic to say that the show—and the work—continues to this day, and it’s only our knowledge of it that is limited. Or our memory.

Cady Noland Pinkertons Pyramid

an untitled cady noland sculpture at glenstone in 2024 comprised of a forklift-sized aluminum palette, with a smaller extruded aluminum palette on top, fresh from amazon, with its product sticker still attached, and a galvanized steel milk crate on top of that, stamped with the threat of the pinkertons coming after you if you steal it. in the background is a black rubber mat with a black injection molded stackable palette on it.
Cady Noland, Untitled, 2024, as installed at Glenstone in October 2024

Now that she’s been having some shows, Cady Noland is known to make changes to installations of her work, even dramatic ones, even last minute. So maybe it was not so surprising to realize she added a new work to the exhibition at Glenstone last October, which came so late in the process it did not appear on the museum’s downloadable checklist.

And while there were also shipping palettes from Amazon stacked in the gallery that were also not on the checklist, the status of this work, Untitled (2024), was only uncovered/confirmed three weeks later, when Alex Greenberger reviewed the show for ARTnews. And it took still more weeks to add it to the checklist, the only prepared information available to visitors.

screenshot of a diagram of a gallery of cady noland sculptures at glenstone, with numbered squares and other shapes to reference the various works. some shapes don't have numbers, and thus don't have titles or info provided, but at least one turned out to be a work loaned from the artist. there was time enough to put the square on the map, but somehow not to put the number or work info on the checklist.
No indication it’s even a work, yet there was time to add an unnumbered square next to the 6

At the time, I wrote that such a move was not an error: “This incompleteness, this inaccuracy, is part of the encounter; this disconnect between what you see and what you’re told is part of the experience.”

Well, now I wonder if it might have been omitted for reasons other than coy mystery. Because the most prominent elements of the work Noland added are a palette with the Amazon sticker still attached, and a milk crate stamped with a threat from the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons who chase down milk crate thieves, but who are most famous for attacking striking steelworkers on the orders of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick.

I had not realized that last summer, before the museum had fully reopened from its remodeling, Glenstone’s hourly workers voted to form a union, and that the Raleses had hired the same anti-union lawyers and consultants as everyone else—including Amazon. Kriston Capps reported on the union’s efforts and voting almost a year ago. That would have been right around the time Noland was installing her show.

There is not much information beyond Capps’ early reporting. The last post on the instagram account for Glenstone Museum Workers Union, affiliated with the Teamsters, was from November 22nd. It says two bargaining sessions were completed, in September and October–and that the November 2024 meeting had been canceled without explanation. A December meeting was TBD. Noland’s show opened October 17th, in what seems to be the middle of a breakdown of negotiations.

To drop a pyramid of unionbusting references in the center of the gallery could be read as a show of solidarity with the union. If anyone knew to look. Now the prolonged omission of the Pinkertons work from the checklist feels like it could have been a move to deflect or diminish the impact of Noland’s gesture of support.

Unless? Do we really know that Noland’s invocation of the Pinkertons thugs isn’t a shoutout to management, an homage to the Fricks of our day, the industrialist connoisseurs who bought basically every major piece of the artist’s work to come up for sale in the last twenty years? If it was, maybe Glenstone would have bought it. Or they would have at least included Noland’s loans in the documentation of the show.

Previously, related: Cady Loan’d

On The Materialization Of The Art Work

a selfie of the blogger, a middle aged white guy, in the blue mirror that is a manifestation of felix gonzalez torres' untitled (fear), with a felix light string in the reflection behind, at the national portrait gallery in october 2024
a selfie in the work at npg [honestly, maybe the real art is the way the light reflecting off my dome lines up with the light string behind me]

“If an owner has chosen to lend the work for an exhibition, the owner may choose to simultaneously install the work.”

“An authorized manifestation of [the work] is the work, and should be referred to only as the work.”

Via a recent post to Instagram by the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation I learned what I could have realized many years ago: that “Untitled” (Fear), 1991, the blue-tinted mirror, is not an object, but a work. And as such, it can be presented in multiple manifestations simultaneously.

In fact, it has, and it is.

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Picasso Would Not Have Blogged Dali’s Sea Urchin Photos

a black and white photo of fascist clown salvador dali standing amid a cluttered studio landscape, with a plaster cast of a greek statue wearing a mask and hood, part of a painting of a vaulted arch, and two large photos on hanging bars of old engravings of sea urchins, by edward quinn, whose massive watermark sits atop the entire image
1957 photo by Edward Quinn of fascist clown Salvador Dali posing with sea urchin props in his studio

The exhausting and endless stream of idiots pouring out of America’s fascist clown car these days makes me hate Salvador Dalí’s attention-grabbing, money-craving, absurdist bullshit even more.

Now every time I have to see, like, Dalí putting a starfish on his head for a 1957 photoshoot about how he’s trying to get a sea urchin to make a painting with a swan’s feather in its mouth, or maybe a dry flower, I can only think of how it distracts from the news that he’d just had another audience with Franco.

So instead of calling him out, and the art world folks who stuck by him for the art, from MoMA and the National Gallery to Duchamp to the whole Suzi Gablik crew who summered in Cadaqués, and then pointing out the admittedly striking photo enlargements of 19th century engravings of sea urchins, should I have followed Picasso’s example, and never spoken or blogged his name or work again?

Anyway, in the five seconds I spent trying to reverse image search the engravings he used, I decided that sea urchins are very aesthetic and should not be canceled because of their worst fans. But also that 18th and 19th century engravers copied and recopied each other for generations, and though the details and quality of execution might vary, the results are basically the same. And in that way, they’re like fascists.

“What do you see?”

The parking spot I’d vacated in front of our house was still open when I returned from the morning school run. I looked at the sidewalk, the ramp at the crosswalk, the exact same steps I walked yesterday afternoon.

I came in, and as I was posting this, I re-read Linda Goode Bryant’s essay on walking the city with David Hammons:

David’s walks count among his most amazing works. And I think he does see them not only as preparation or ways to find material but as a part of the work itself, along with so many ephemeral things he’s done on the streets, things that maybe only he or a few other people around him ever knew about. On his walks, David pushes beyond the merely observant, even the acutely observant, into something much more profound.

Yesterday, just seconds after I’d parked, and before I’d gotten out of the car, an elderly neighbor fell, and was lying on the ramp at the crosswalk. I was the fourth person to come up on her. Two younger women must have seen her fall, and were kneeling on either side of her.

My hands were full of unwieldy things I should have had a bag for, and as I stood there, I silently asked the third person, who was on the phone, if she was calling 911. And she was.

The fifth person to come to the woman’s aid right then was a nurse, she said, and had crossed from the other side of the street to help. The woman’s spindly hand was bent at a terrible angle. Blood around her mouth, she must have fallen forward and failed to catch herself. She was responding groggily but wanting to move when she probably should not. She rolled herself onto her side, though, as I, with no way to help, left.

By the time I got to my desk, the sound of the ambulance came in the window. I did not recognize the woman, but I thought of the difficulties she’d face, how incomplete or impossible healing can be at her age, how her independent life may have ended at that moment I’d just missed when I got out of my car.

I thought of my own grandmother, proud, strong, in her nineties, doing her thing, until she broke her hip, tripped on a hose on her porch, the home she’d built with my grandfather, which her kids rushed to remodel the bathroom with a walk-in tub, &c., so it’d be ready when she got out of the assisted living center, but to which she never returned, her family eventually waving and pantomiming to her through the window during COVID, telling her to put the phone on speaker. The funeral not even allowed to happen in the pandemic-closed church, but it did anyway, for a few cousins, and the local funeral home couldn’t figure out Zoom so they streamed it on facebook, which entailed getting an entire account. I downloaded the video, but haven’t watched it since.

When I looked at the sidewalk this morning, I wondered if anyone else would notice the dark stains on the ramp, much less recognize them as blood. Only I, and the people who’d stopped to help first, would ever have any idea of how, in an instant, a neighbor’s life was turned upside down, on the corner.

[late afternoon update: it’s about to pour down rain.]

RTFM: FG-T @NPG/AAA BTS

a white hand holds a small white hardcover book with a silver foil mirror-like cover to take its picture, the dude's other hand, black iphone case, and tie dye bandaid on one finger tip all reflecting in the cover. along with a light string, not turned on. behind the book, is an array of reflective facsimiles of manet paintings, and one bagged facsimile of a felix gonzalez torres puzzle. the book is felix gonzalez-torres: final revenge (a workbook), published by the national portrait gallery and the archives of american art in 2025. the hands are mine.

There is a book. I did not know there is a book. I’ve visited the Felix Gonzalez-Torres show at the National Portrait Gallery & Archives of American Art multiple times and have written about it even more, and I did not know there was a book. I fixated on Felix’s “Untitled” text portrait in both its installed versions, and wondered how the Smithsonian’s curators made them, and I picked through the history of this and other text portraits, and wrote a whole-ass blog post about it, and I didn’t know there was a book.

Reader, there is a book, and it is literally about all of that. In Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Final Revenge (A Workbook), co-curators Josh T. Franco and Charlotte Ickes wrote a whole essay on their experience and process of creating the versions of “Untitled” they’ve showed. Along the way, they fill out many key aspects of Felix’s work, from its changing history to its changing present.

Continue reading “RTFM: FG-T @NPG/AAA BTS”

My First Cady Noland Disclaimer

a 1994 cady noland artwork leans against a white gallery wall. it is a rectangular slab of honeycomb filled aluminum panel, and reproduces in blue ink what one must believe is the authentic design of a flyer or advertisement inviting people in new hampshire to an old time political rally with music, balloons, and fun for all, for ronald reagan the senile celebrity horse ridden into power by a republican partyful of the most venal ideologues of the 20th century, whose political machinations and corruption have been the source of decades of documented suffering and damage in the world. this once belonged to, or at least passed through the gallery of goldman trader turned dealer robert mnuchin, father of goldman trader turned trump treasury secretary steven, and whoever bought it from mnuchin is selling it at christie's in may 2025
Cady Noland? Untitled, 1994, 15 ½ x 13 x 2 in., screenprint on aluminum panel, Christie’s says it’s signed twice, but without a statement from the artist, can we really even know?

For the first time in several years, Christie’s has *not* published a disclaimer from the artist when it brought a Cady Noland sculpture to the market. And boy, does it need one, so let me try:

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Some Things John Waters Collected

a tight cluster of smallish aworks from john waters' collection on the wall of the baltimore museum of art in 2022 includes, most prominently, at the center, four warhol jackie-style black on blue or white silkscreen paintings of jonbenet ramsay by erik luken, a campbells soup can drawing that's probably mike bidlo, above a flyer for empire, the 1964 film. on the left is most recognizably, a spot painting, which is actually an eric doeringer bootleg
Installation view from Coming Attractions: The John Waters Collection, a 2022-23 exhibition of promised gifts at the Baltimore Museum of Art

Yesterday Eric Doeringer posted his discovery of his bootleg Damien Hirst spot painting among the works John Waters has promised to the Baltimore Museum of Art. It was on view at the museum in 2022-23 in a selection—curated by Catherine Opie and Jack Pierson—from nearly 400 works from Waters’ collection. It hung next to a Warhol Jackie-style grid of Jonbenet Ramsay portraits by Eric Luken. While being perfect objects on their own terms, these two works help situate Waters in the place, moment, and discourse of art. For the Doeringer, that was on the mean streets of early 2000s Chelsea. For the Luken, that was probably an emerging art fair. [His only show (so far?) was with Joel Mesler & Daniel Hug’s short-lived LA gallery that rode the 2000s art fair wave.]

a low-contrast mimeographed flyer for the premiere of andy warhol and john palmer's 1964 film empire is a horizontally oriented film still of the top half of the empire state building against an empty evening sky, with three tiers of lighting at the top. maybe that's the moon, that tiny white dot on the lower center, or maybe it's the light on top of a distant building. made by jonas mekas in 1965

Speaking of short-lived collabs you never hear about, Waters also has the best/only thing you can really collect from one of the greatest artworks of the 20th century: a flyer made by Jonas Mekas for the world premiere of EMPIRE (1964), by Andy Warhol and John Palmer.

If you think I’m leading with all this to head off criticism that I’ve become a one-topic fanblog, you’re only partially not wrong. Because this is all stuff I found along the way while trying to get a legible image of the work beneath Doeringer’s painting, which is a scrap of paper on which Cy Twombly wrote his address.

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We’re All Paul Reveres Now

April 18th, 2025 was the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns in Old North Church, which signaled to fellow patriots across Boston Harbor that British troops were on the move. Political historian Heather Cox Richardson recounted the incident in a riveting and inspiring talk at the Old North Church.

Her emphasis was on the ordinariness of the people involved, and the seeming smallness of their actions, even though they faced real, dangerous consequences. This is all the more important now as we ourselves are confronted with choices to do the next right thing without assurance of the impact. [the YouTube channel that posted video of the speech could not be more random, and its nascent virality is leading it to be reuploaded, so I’ll watch to keep the most authoritative version here.]

The star of the “one if by land, two if by sea” story is Paul Revere, but Cox Richardson gives full attention to his collaborators, John Pulling, Jr. and Robert Newman, who had access to the Old North Church and who actually lit the lanterns. [As a keyholder for the church, Newman was arrested the next morning, and Pulling bounced to Nantucket.]

the sons of liberty bowl is silver and photographed from the side on which paul revere engraved the dedication to the 92 massachusetts colony legislators who resisted the king's order to rescind their support for an earlier letter calling for self-governance. collection, mfa boston
Actually, it’s because it’s been polished so much that it looks like that. Paul Revere, Jr. Bowl, 1768, silver, 5 1/2 in high, 11 in. diameter, collection MFA Boston

The seeming insignificance of a particular action of resistance was on my mind when Liz Deschenes posted a picture of the Sons of Liberty Bowl on instagram today. Conceptually, at least, I’m a Paul Revere engraving fan, but I confess, I’d never given the Sons of Liberty Bowl much thought. And despite what the MFA Boston says, if you had asked me to tell you the nation’s third “most cherished historical treasures after the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” I would never in a million years have said the little punchbowl Paul Revere made for his friends.

But we are in different times, and have a different relationship to tyranny than we did even a few months ago. And it has been worth giving the bowl a new, closer look.

Continue reading “We’re All Paul Reveres Now”