dc – Page 2 – greg.org

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.

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:

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.

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.

No King, 2025

a screenshot of laura hoptman's instagram post of a vertical cardboard sign with NO KING in big black letters above of brushy red bluish-white American flag rippling in a breeze, a protest sign painted and carried on april 5 2025 by artist verne dawson — Verne Dawson, No King, 2025 paint on paper and cardbaord, via IG/lhoptman

I love No King. I love the flag. I love Verne Dawson, who painted this protest sign, and carried it in a massive protest. I love the millions and millions of people around the country who protest. I love Laura Hoptman who posted it on IG. I hate that instagram took their sweet time showing it to me ten days after Laura posted it, and Verne carried it. And I hate that there’s a guy trying to be a king, speedrunning the violations of human rights and liberty in the Declaration of Independence with such malevolence, that it compels so much effort to stop it. And I hate that it’ll take more effort, but here we are. No King.

“Untitled” (The Neverending Self-Portrait)

a single line of pale silver painted text runs along the top of the wall at the national portrait gallery, picked out by a carefully aligned row of accent lighting. in the right corner a single swag of a lightstring arcs out of frame. felix gonzalez-torres' 1989 self-portrait, "untitled", in one of two simultaneous installations in the exhibit hilariously and falsely criticized for queer erasure — *“Untitled”* (1989), paint on wall, with exceptional accent lighting, at the National Portrait Gallery

We were in the neighborhood, and so we went back to see the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Which was the first time we spent time with “Untitled” (1989), a portrait work which appears twice, in two different configurations, in two different spots of the exhibition. [Technically, it’s in three spots: the work is owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it’s been on view since December 2023.]

In the show it felt impossible to do more than sense the differences between the two installations. It seemed that, in the absence of a subject named in parentheses, this was a portrait of the artist himself, but the variety of posthumous additions made it non-obvious. So we left with questions: How was this portrait adapted for this dual/triple version? Besides the title, how [else] was it different from the others? If it was indeed a self-portrait, how did this portrait practice come to be?

Helpfully, the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation collects documentation of each version as it is installed. As the first portrait [sic] that was, indeed, a self-portrait, which was in Andrea Rosen’s collection [The AIC got it in 2002], “Untitled” (1989) may be one of the most frequently exhibited; the documentation for [at least] 42 versions runs to 17 pages [pdf].

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.

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

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.

Johns Flag On Orange Field, 2025

a jpg study of a repetition of a jasper johns flag on an orange field painting in which the us flag is painted upside down, as a symbol of dire constitutional distress — study for Johns Flag on Orange Field, 2025, jpg of encaustic on canvas, 54 x 36 in, original image via Glenstone

in times of dire distress

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?

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.]