Ellsworth & Kelly & Lorenzetti & Kubrick

tiger is a 1953  painting in five panels by ellsworth kelly, that forms a large square. the top quarter of the painting comprises three panels, yellow,  pink and orange. the bottom 3/4 is two panels, white and black. A demarcation line at about 60% of the width of the work leaves the yellow and white panels to be the widest. this painting is in the collection of the national gallery of art, and has not been exhibited since 2023, when it disappeared midway through the kelly exhibition at glenstone. have any news? hmu
Have you seen me? Ellsworth Kelly, Tiger, 1953, oil on five canvases, collection, NGA

I was listening to a recording of Ellsworth Kelly’s 1999 Elson Lecture at the National Gallery of Art, and I have some questions. Some could probably be answered by a video of the lecture—more of a conversation, with curator Marla Prather—or with a review of Kelly literature I don’t have.

Continue reading “Ellsworth & Kelly & Lorenzetti & Kubrick”

A Use Of Opulence Comes As Some Surprise

a jenny holzer bench from 2015 engraved with a truism, "the most profound things are inexpressible" in blue sodalite, which is intense blue with white and grey flakes and graining, really ostentatious, via glenstone
Blue sodalite in the Glenstone exhibition guide

I was not prepared to be taken out a Jenny Holzer exhibition, especially since her most recent show at the Guggenheim seemed so lost. But that was then and there, and this is here—in DC, at Glenstone—and now—in the midst of a fascist crime spree by and against the government.

a jenny holzer bench from 2019 engraved with a truism, "all things are delicately interconnected," in bvlgari blue marble, which is mostly blue and white grained in this photo, image via glenstone
from the Glenstone extended exhibition guide

It was not the merch in the tiny book nook. It was not the entire gallery of redaction paintings—enlarged, oil-on-linen facsimiles of damning documents of the torture and atrocities of Bush’s Iraq war—though I really do wish this country would not give Holzer quite so much content to work with. Turns out abuse of power comes as no surprise because it happens over and over and over.

a jenny holzer bench from 2023 engraved with a truism, "in a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy," in blue boquira quartzite, which is blue and grey grained, image via glenstone
from the Glenstone exhibition guide

It was the next gallery of the private museum sanctuary, with the large window onto an artfully crafted vista, where Holzer crashed a tsunami of opulence over my unsuspecting head. It was all benches and paintings, not an LED ticker or a bumper sticker in sight. The benches in Blue sodalite. Bulgari Blue marble. Blue Boquira quartzite. Persian travertine and Silver Wave marble. Paintings large and small, single and in rows, cinnabar and lacquer finishes covered in copper and gold leaf, glowing in the morning sun. The extravagance of Holzer’s materials was so relentless, it was wretched. The polish, the weight, the preciousness, the hand, the logistics, the overpowering beauty impossible to ignore.

seven gold leaf covered red paintings by jenny holzer, illegible at this distance or resolution, via guggenheim
Jenny Holzer, stake in the heart, 2024, gold leaf and oil on linen, each 3.5 x 2.5 ft, image via guggenheim
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Torn From Today’s Headlines

a robert rauschenberg screenprint of a collage made of clippings from newspapers in 1969, includes [clockwise from top left] a photo of cars stranded in the snow; a white woman in a miniskirt with a longer skirt drawn over her; a comet; ted kennedy, some racist judge nixon tried to put on the supreme court who eventually got voted down because twelve republicans still had enough conscience left to be shamed over unalloyed white supremacy, can you even imagine? anyway, several articles and photos of gm assembly lines and the threat of robots and depleted pensions; a chevron tanker truck overturned on a freeway; a hand holding a case of birth control pills; a sideshow entrance with the world's largest rats; a coal mining ship and a truck being craned onto a ship; more assembly line; and a ship docking on the hudson pier. from the 26-print portfolio known as Features from Currents, being sold at Wright 20 in apr 2025
Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (from Features from Currents), a 26-print portfolio, 1970, 40 x 40 in. sheet, being sold in April 2025 at Wright20

Though Our Most Important Art Historians disparage the practice, I could not resist zooming in to read the specific newspaper clippings that Robert Rauschenberg included in just one his 26 Currents prints. Honestly, I did not expect them to hit so hard, one after the other:

The threat of robots taking union jobs
The threat of executives taking union pensions
Gas tanker overturned on a freeway causing mayhem
WORLD’S LARGEST RATS
Birth control
Woman’s outfit-shaming
A problematic Kennedy
A criminal president’s supreme court nominee being exposed as a mediocre southerner whose only firm conviction is white supremacy, getting defended by an unperturbedly anti-semitic republican senator saying, “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

Even the auction itself, a couple of loosies being stripped and sold off piecemeal, feels topical: people don’t buy 26-print portfolios these days anymore than they read newspapers. And yet the politics and the challenges remain the same.

3 Apr 2025, Lot 283: Robert Rauschenberg, from the [Features from] Currents Portfolio, est. $1,000-1,500 [wright20]
Related: Features from Currents, 1970; Surfaces from Currents, 1970 [moma]

The Light String Going On And Off

a screenshot of kriston capps instgagram of a felix gonzalez torres lightstring hanging from the ceiling and pooling on the wooden floor of the national portrait gallery, with the toplit line of white wrapped candy against the white wall behind it, with the caption "the most peaceful/paintful experience you will find in the district today is always to return at the national portrait gallery. felix gonzalez-torres is the guide you need right now. the guide we need. find my review in artforum this month. and a comment by gregdotorg, me, "they turned it off!"
screenshot of Kriston Capps’ IG of an installation photo from the National Portrait Gallery of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ light string work, “Untitled” (Leaves of Grass), turned off. photo: Matailong Du/NPG

As my comment on Kriston Capps’ insta shows, it’s somehow always a surprise to see a Felix Gonzalez-Torres light string with the lights off. My reaction led Kriston to doublecheck with the National Portrait Gallery whether it’d been OK to post [tl;dr it was, but hold on], and it sent me looking for more.

a black and white 1992 installation photo of andrea rosen gallery in soho includes one gonzalez torres light string, lit up and swagged across the concrete beam ceiling and stretching down the right wall, and another hanging in the right corner, turned off. from the felix gonzalez torres foundation
“Untitled” (Toronto) [on] and “Untitled” (Miami) [off], installed in 1992 at Andrea Rosen Gallery, image via FG-T Foundation

Of course, it goes back to the beginning, where they were shown on and off, side by side. Gonzalez-Torres’ whole point of his works was that the owner [or exhibitor] was to decide how to display them, and that includes whether to turn them on. The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation has photos of an unlit “Untitled” (Tim Hotel), 1992, in a collector’s home, which feels like the normal, private state. Maybe it gets turned on for company, which raises the question of public vs. private presentation as well as space.

Because obviously, they look the sexiest when they’re on, and it’s understandable for curators of public exhibitions to want that glow. But that allure also underscores the impact and importance of seeing them turned off sometimes.

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Mies Kampf

memorial to the november revolution was a horizontally oriented solid jenga structure of unaligned and asymmetrical blocks, constructed of brick salvaged from buildings damaged in the revolution, or the walls against which anti-fascists were shot. a large five pointed star with a hammer and sickle on the upper right section of the memorial had a flagpole attached next to it. a low border of flowers in the berlin cemetery where the memorial was built sits behind a gravel sidewalk, and a chained, low gateway. designed by mies van der rohe and destroyed by nazis
Mies van der Rohe, Revolutionsdenkmal, Berlin, 1926, photo by Arthur Köstler via thecharnelhouse

On this, the anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s birth, I recalled the memorial erected to her and other anti-fascists, constructed out of the bricks taken from the walls against which they were shot in 1919. It was designed by Mies van der Rohe, built in 1926, and torn down by the nazis in 1935.

I have not yet found the testimony Mies gave in front of Joseph McCarthy’s House Unamerican Activities Committee, but I did find this paragraph from Dietrich Neumann’s foreword to his 2024 biography, Mies Van Der Rohe: An Architect in His Time:

“Politically, Mies was the Talleyrand of modern architecture,” historian Richard Pommer sarcastically noted, referring to the famously opportunistic diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, who was active under different masters before, during, and after the French Revolution. And indeed, a series of projects by Mies seem to suggest his indifference to political persuasions, be they the Bismarck Memorial, the Monument to the November Revolution [above], the Barcelona Pavilion, or the design for the Brussels World’s Fair pavilion for the nazi regime. Mies’s stand was hardly a profile in courage, but rather driven by opportunism and a desire to maintain the respect of his many left-leaning friends, while keeping his options open with conservative clients or the nazi regime. In the United States, he was suspected both of being a nazi spy and questioned by Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee about Communist leanings due to the Monument to the November Revolution.

Wait, what? Mies van der Rohe, whose most famous building was the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona World’s Fair, also designed a German Pavilion for the nazis at the 1935 Brussels World’s Fair? Was this not mentioned in Mies in Berlin, Terry Riley and Barry Bergdoll’s 2001 MoMA exhibition on the architect’s work through 1937?

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DEI Goin’ Fishin’

While researching Arthur Dove’s inexplicably titled cow sketch, Public Enemy, I googled my way to the catalogue for Three Centuries of American Art, a labyrinthine exhibition at the Musée du Jeu de Paume organized in 1938 by The Museum of Modern Art.

The proto-blockbuster put every department of the museum to work. It included not only painting & sculpture and prints & drawings, but architecture, photography, and cinema—and Mrs. Rockefeller’s folk art collection.

a black and white still from the 1931 warner brothers film, the public enemy in which two white men in suits and hats are facing each other at the corner of a heavy stone building. the one on the left, in the bright daylight, is beginning to fall from being shot in the back. the one on the right, james cagney, btw, in the shadowy side more protected from the ambush, is holding the edge of the building. the picture is reproduced in a moma catalogue published in france in 1938, and has a caption, "100 l'ennemi public, 1931. warner brothers (public enemy). Mise en scene de william wellman; avec james cagney," like i was saying. via moma.org

Honestly, the installation shots look a bit of a mess, and the use of photography in display, including the architecture section, looks more interesting than a lot of the photography section itself. But there was actually a public screening program [more on this in a minute], and a phalanx of film stills. And let’s be real: the still from The Public Enemy (1931) would make a Renaissance painting jealous.

a 1938 black and white catalogue reproduction of arthur dove's 1925 assemblage portrait of a Black man fishing on a dock near Dove's houseboat. The bamboo sticks of the assemblage form an arm and raised hand, and perhaps a torso, while the man's head is represented by a rectangular piece of dock wood with a button eye. The caption has one of Dove's original racist variations on the title, which included the N-word in both english and french, great work everybody. The work is listed as from the philliips memorial gallery, washington dc, and it is indeed in the collection still. though after funding and collecting dove's work for 16 years, he did manage to get him to change the title to goin' fishin', that had not yet happened in 1938. via moma.org
Arthur Dove’s 1925 collage which had a racist af title for the first twenty years, including when Duncan Phillips loaned it to MoMA for this exhibition in Paris in 1938. image via MoMA

There was one work by Arthur Dove, and it is—oh, wait, ayfkm? It displaces Public Enemy as the instant and permanent winner of the WTF, Arthur Dove? Most Problematic Title award. It’s listed as belonging to Duncan Phillips, Dove’s biggest collector and most important supporter, and it is indeed still in the Phillips Collection, with the deracistified title, Goin’ Fishin’. [n.b. Unless they sold it since, MoMA didn’t own a Dove in 1938.]

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FBI White (2025)

The FBI’s stated Core Values are
RESPECT
ACCOUNTABILITY
LEADERSHIP
DIVERSITY
COMPASSION
FAIRNESS
RIGOROUS OBEDIENCE TO THE CONSTITUTION, and
INTEGRITY

or at least they were.

toothlessly captioned new york times photo posted to the nazi social media platform x by nyt reporter adam goldman of a government employee painting over the fbi core values word cloud mural at quantico with battleship gray paint roller. the stroke forms a large W that allows words like respect, initiative, leadership, integrity, seriousness, diversity, intergrity, and constitution to be read before being obliterated.
A photograph submitted to the New York Times of a Core Values word cloud at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia being repainted on January 29, 2025. Of the 595 color and finish specifications in the US Government procurement standard AMS-STD-595, 110 are commonly named gray. Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to say this is AMS-STD-595/26270, Interior Haze Gray (Semi-Gloss). image via NYT/Adam Goldman

Now I honestly can’t decide if this guy is making a subtle shoutout to fellow government worker-turned-painter George Bush, or if the new FBI Core Values is WHITE.

Either way, it’s unfortunately an early candidate for painting of the year.

Previously, slightly related? An unrealized proposal by Jacob Kassay to paint over an ‘overly celebratory’ photomural of racist federal government resegregator Woodrow Wilson at Princeton

Cornelia Noland Art Family Tree

a kind of simplistic line art drawing of a tree, more a diagram of a tree, with a trunk thick enough to put a listicle on it, and branches spaced apart just enough to fill the gaps with leaves inscribed with artist or art administrators' names, this snarky "family tree of modern art in washington" was published in 1967 by cornelia noland in washingtonian magazine, via aaa.
A Family Tree of Modern Art in Washington, by Cornelia Noland, Washingtonian, Feb. 1967, via AAA

While researching the Pan American Union in the Archives of American Art, I stumbled across this two page spread from the 1960s, “A Family Tree of Modern Art in Washington, by Cornelia Noland.” It is a little snarky, a little petty, but quite revealing? “The modern art establishment here is, to be gentle, confused,” Noland wrote.

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DC Artists @ SAAM

a narrow white cube gallery at the smithsonian american art museum with wood floors and a black mies bench at the center, features all dc artists: from left, a round painting divided into muted 60s color quadrants, the only public painting by mary pinchot meyer; and a dark atmospheric nebula-filled painting by kenneth young are on one wall. on the right, with a plinth to keep people back, a paint soaked canvas by sam gilliam hangs in swags from four chains in the ceiling, and next to it, the poured rainbow corner of a wider morris louis painting. 10/10 no notes

You can’t go to the National Portrait Gallery without going to the American Art Museum, and vice versa. So after the Felix thing yesterday, I made a run through the SAAM contemporary galleries. Nam June Paik’s neon America was blinking red, and this gallery of DC artists was a great grouping.

[THE] Mary Pinchot Meyer painting in a public collection was up, next to a nice Kenneth Young, a classic Sam Gilliam, and a good Morris Louis. Behind me was a weirdly levitating Anne Truitt and a huge Alma Thomas. The way they hung a Carmen Herrera outside the gallery, but visible between the Meyer and the Thomas, was a nice touch.

In The Building

a dark black and white photo by thomas eakins of an ancient walt whitman in dark fit and scraggly white beard and hair, with a small window letting in some light over his right shoulder, exhibited at the national portrait gallery in a pairing with works by felix gonzalez torres, because whitman is considered, to quote the wall text, felix's queer ancestor
Queer Ancestor: Thomas Eakins, Walt Whitman, 1891, printed 1979 [? how’d that work?] installed with FG-T at the NPG

Well that took five minutes.

The erasure or diminishment or downplaying or whatever of the gay, AIDS, and immigrant identity of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and those identity characteristics as vital context and reference in which he made his work in the 1980s and 1990s, is real and should be called out and resisted. It happened publicly and messily at the Art Institute. It happened similarly at Zwirner. It happened in subtle, coercive ways art historians and critics called “oppressive.” But addressing it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and, as Johanna Fateman skeeted, and expanding the meaning of the work, the contexts in which it resonates, and the changes in the world around it every time it’s exhibited should build on the artist’s achievement in its original moment, not replace it.

Anyway, this debate is not advanced by the current outcry over the show at the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always To Return, because the claimed erasure is not happening. I’m not going to litigate Ignacio Darnaude’s impassioned but wrongheaded, blinkered, and inaccurate article condemning the way “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), a 1991 candy pour is presented. Its connection to AIDS is not erased. Felix’s connection to Ross is not erased. And as I walked out of the Felix galleries, past the James Baldwin and The Voices of Queer Resistance exhibition next door, and on through the permanent collection install, I have to say, there is no museum anywhere doing more of the work right now than the NPG & SAAM.

installation view of a small, darkened gallery at the smithsonian with a string of white lights hanging in the center and pooled on the floor, a foot-wide strip of multicolored striped candy along the base of the right wall, and a dark illegible photo (of walt whitman) on the far wall, and a pile of white candy visible on the floor of a brighter room beyond.
l to r: eakins’ whitman, leaves of grass, ross in la @ npg

So. Here is the way “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is presented.

Continue reading “In The Building”

Specific Objections About Specific Identities

Specific Objects Without Specific Form, the 2010-2011 retrospective of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work, curated by Elena Filipovic, was a pivotal influence in the posthumous reconsideration of the artist’s work and legacy. It was co-curated with three artists, Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal, in three European museums: WIELS (Brussels), the Fondation Beyeler (Basel), and MMK Frankfurt.

Frequent changes and reinstallations were the default, and each artist brought entirely different concepts for reimagining the work and its history. I would be surprised if a hundred people on earth saw every iteration and variation over the show’s 15-month run, and so the massive catalogue, published in 2016, is the primary vehicle for transmitting the experiments and experience of the exhibition.

the silver textured cover with white lettering of felix gonzalez torres specific objects without specific form curated by elena filipovic with danh vo, carol bove, tino sehgal

The core of the catalogue, at least as it relates to the recontextualization of Gonzalez-Torres’ work, is a 20+ page conversation between Tino Sehgal and dealer Andrea Rosen. Rosen is the single most influential figure in the history of FG-T’s work, and the single biggest reason it’s been preserved, shown, and studied during his life, and after his death. I don’t know of any more extensive discussion of Rosen’s views on Gonzalez-Torres’ work, and the core of her message here is that it is about change.

Though there are some persistent, static objects in Gonzalez-Torres’ body of work, the most significant ones are all recreated every time they’re shown. It is the discussion and decisions that occur around each of these realizations that constitute the history of the work. Those changes, and marking them, and questioning them, and questioning the context a work is presented in each time it is realized, are, Rosen argues, central to Gonzalez-Torres’ original intention for his work.

“He would always say,” Rosen quoted Felix as saying, “‘If someone chooses to never install a work again, or manifest a manifestable work again, it may not physically exist, but it does exist, because it did exist.'” Some of his works have recently been manifest at the National Portrait Gallery, and the changes and decisions around them have prompted criticism. This has happened before, with these same works, with the same institution, even, and with some of the same people—including Rosen—stewarding Gonzalez-Torres’ work. The most public shift and criticism has been specific objections about specific identities: the seeming erasure or diminishment of the artist’s identity as a gay man, a person with AIDS, and a Cuban-American, as generative to his work. It got attention after Rosen brought David Zwirner in to co-represent the artist’s estate. But, as this show, and this book, and this interview, document it’s been underway for much longer.

I’m going to take another look at these contested works, and reread the Rosen/Sehgal interview, and report back. brb

Previously, related: Felix Gonzalez-Torres @ NPG
A 2010 visit to Hide/Seek: ‘It Gets Better’ doesn’t mean the bullying stops

The Painter of The Age

At the beginning of the first Trump administration, I began a project to capture moments of historic significance “in the manner of the most relevant painter of the age, George W. Bush.” Well, that project got gigantic and depressing as hell very fast.

But nothing in the intervening years has changed my view, though, of George W. Bush, who, in addition to giving us this Supreme Court, remains the most relevant painter of our age.

I was not surprised, neither was I pleased—it’s not the kind of thing you can take much comfort in—to learn via Chris Rusak, that Bluesky art critic @dickius.bsky.social shared the same view.

trademark george w bush painting of a hideous looking henry kissinger, with white and blue hair, splotchy skin that somehow evokes trump's terrible application of makeup in real life, droopy ears, massive jowls, no neck, with kissinger looking off to his left. this was copied from a photo of the very very old kissinger, but i'm not going to look it up. bush included it in his book, of many, one, america's immigrants. in case anyone wanted evidence that alien war criminals are indeed invading our country, they'd have started here but that's never the point is it.

Responding to a prompt for a painting of the age, dickius skeeted, “This painting by G. Walker Bush. It really captures an era defined by the worst people on earth getting away with their crimes — indeed, being rewarded for them.”

In February 2020, weeks after Biden’s inauguration, I went to see Bush’s paintings in person at the Kennedy Center. I wondered then about whether the world would be better off with more paintings like this in it. Today, I can’t imagine a better fit.