“Handbag of the Gods”: detail of a gypsum stone relief carving of an Apkulla, from the northwest palace of King Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, c BCE 883-859, acquired in 1921 for The Walters Art Museum, posted three years ago by @ymutate via @punk-raphaelite via @octavio-world
The Walters Museum of Art translates Apkallu as a “winged genius”; other museums which have wall panels from the palace of King Ashurnasirpal II describe Apkallu as a “sage,” or a “genie.” These ripped, winged humanoid figures stood at the entrance of doorways in the palace, offering blessings or protection to passersby with a pine cone dipped into a small bucket of anointing liquid.
Apkallu relief from Room G of the northwest palace of Ashurnasirpal II, collection: The Walters Museum of Art
There is obviously much that can be said about Apkulla style: the feathered or fishskin cloaks; the fringed kilts; the beards, the workout, the armbands; the daggers; the horned diadems; the earrings; the rosette-covered wristbands. For starters, let’s just look at the bucket, or as Reddit is fond of calling it, the Handbag of the Gods.
In 2018, the Museum and Yale University Press published a monograph on Fifty Days, in which curator Carlos Basualdo interviewed d’Huart about her visit to Twombly’s studio. The Museum acquired five of d’Huart’s prints, including the image above.
Untitled (200 x 157), 2019, jpg, the Philadelphia Museum’s c.2019, 200px image of Twombly’s 10×12 ft Achaeans in Battle, 1978, expanded to 800px. They quietly got better since then, but still
When I said I can’t get autographs? I meant, unless conceptually.
Sitting with this unexpected Bach auction for a minute, I realized I actually do get autographs when they convey a meaning beyond, “This person signed this,” or “I met/corresponded with this person.”
Unititled (Merce at the Minskoff), 2015-2018, interim state
Or when I project entirely subjective meaning onto them. Like when I found a souvenir towel from a Merce Cunningham performance on Broadway signed by Cunningham, Cage, and Rauschenberg, and I conjured a “logic” for this object that involved getting Jasper Johns to sign it.
That “logic,” or the pretense of it, was predicated on Johns being the designer of the performance poster. But of course, there were multiple other logics possible, from the art historic to the romantic, to the starkly commemorative, forcing an object into existence that links these four men—physically, contractually, notationally, quasi-publicly, as if there weren’t already countless other products of their decades-long interactions, filling archives and beyond. Here the autograph functions as a singular piece of evidence, superficial and contrived, of some other form of more substantial cultural meaning. But when signs are few, signatures will do.
And of course, the significant emptiness can become the subject itself. Like in Rob Pruitt’s Signature Series, large-format autographs on Belgian linen he’s collected since the Pruitt-Early days. I remember several occasions when Rob would suddenly produce a big piece of linen and a fat Sharpie from his backpack, and turn around, offering his back as a writing surface when none other was available.
Rob Pruitt’s Autograph Collection, 2012, published by Karma back in the day
Autographs then became a project, an artistic practice, which art world celebrities and citizens alike could appreciate. I remember seeing a few loosies in the wild, but eventually, after years of accumulation, Pruitt showed The Signature Series en masse. And like Byron Kim’s skin tone monochromes, these accumulated markers of somebody else become a self-portrait of the artist moving through the world.
Now going back to Bach and his chopped up and shuffled autograph collection, it’s possible to interpolate meaning from the otherwise random-seeming clusters. Maybe the lots reflect the order in which Bach collected his autographs, a project of a lifetime sliced into tranches based on minimum viable auction estimate.
Sam Green’s Dodi Rosekrans’, Jho Low’s, and Swizz Beatz’ Warhol Round Jackie, 1964, image via Sotheby’s
Reading Karen K. Ho’s report that a Warhol soup can painting had been forfeited as part of the settlement of the 1MDB/Jho Low money laundering and fraud case, I wondered what it looked like.
I haven’t found it yet, because while searching the Justice Dept.’s 280-page complaint from 2020 I was distracted by the corny corruption of Sotheby’s executives falling all over themselves to loan Jho Low untraceable funds against some of the nearly $200 million in artworks Low & co. hoovered up.
“Just wanted to bring you up to speed on the big loan opportunity,” wrote one Sotheby’s Financial executive to his colleagues in early 2014. “[The borrower] doesn’t want us to use his name in our communications, he wants to be referred to as ‘the client’ and we will refer to this transaction as project Cheetah (referring to the speed at which we are trying to move).”
And then I was distracted by another Warhol, not part of the loan collateral, and current status TBD, but it did come from Sotheby’s. Jho Low acquired Round Jackie (1964) in November 2013 for $1,055,000 from Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in New York. It was one of two gold round Jackies that fabulist curator Sam Green sold to socialite Dodie Rosekrans. They both came up for sale at Sotheby’s in 2011; one sold for $3.7m, and this one didn’t sell. Weird.
Anyway, Low gave Round Jackie to Swizz Beatz in early 2014, who hung it in New Jersey, then consigned it for sale somewhere before February 2020, when Vogue came for 73 Questions. The Justice Dept. came for it in July 2020, and it was sold at a US Marshals auction in February 2021. The price was $1.04 million.
1MDB Warhol Round Jackie Unboxing, 2021, from Gaston & Sheehan Auctioneers to the U.S. Marshals, via Internet Archive
As far as I know, Sturtevant never made a Jackie, so I will put this one on my to-do list.
Rachel Harrison, Untabled (Title) 1694, 2017 Wood, polystyrene, cement, acrylic, Krion, gymnastics rings, straps, toy gun, and bandana, installed at Greene Naftali in 2017, now in the collection of MoMA
Come to the catalogue for Sitting in a Room, Rachel Harrison’s 2022-23 exhibition at the Astrup Fearnly Museet in Oslo, for the extensive documentation of all the installations of Marilyn with Wall.
Stay for the Lars Bang Larsen text mentioning Sturtevant in Harrison’s repetition and incorporation of other artist’s work, like the sculpture Robert Morris showed at the Green Gallery in 1964, which Harrison had made in sleek Krion™ Fall Green, as seen here at the Greene Naftali installation. [Krion™ is Porcelanosa’s next-generation competitor to Corian™. The chicken-with-a-durag-and-a-gun form is Harrison’s more familiar house blend of cement over polystyrene.]
And buy a print copy right now for the unexpected greg.org shoutout in the footnotes of Anne Dressen’s text, where Louise Lawler and I make the case for figuring out audio wall labels? [d’oh but not in the Norwegian.]
I am now making a sticker to attach next to this footnote, in a signed edition of 2000, one for each copy of the print catalogue. Buyers or owners of the Sitting in a Room catalogue should email me a pic of your book and your mailing address, and I’ll send you two stickers. One will be for your copy, and one for installing on another copy of the catalogue that might someday cross your path.
Maybe I should do this for the Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné, too.
I thought it’d be nice to commemorate Juneteenth with a photo of David Hammons’ African American Flag flying over his public art installation, America Street, commissioned in 1991 as part of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, and preserved through the efforts of local community members. [The piece was installed on a vacant lot owned by the city.]
But the flag, which has been replaced over the years, is missing from the latest Google Street View image, taken all the way back in January 2023.
Hammons America Street, August 2019
Was GSV working from home during the pandemic? Because the next most recent image is only from August 2019, and it shows a flag with stripes so faded they could almost pass as white. [sic] Which may mean the last replacement flag was the one imaged in Jan. 2017?
What’s the word on America Street now, Charlestonians? Has the flag been replaced in the last 18 months?
Édouard Manet Facsimile Object (M4), “Fleurs”, 2024, 22 x 13 7/8 in., dye sublimation print on high gloss aluminum, with handmade COA in India ink on Arches, signed, stamped & numbered, available until the sale at Sotheby‘s on May 15, 2024
I wish I knew how to quit you, Manet Facsimile Objects.
I thought they were done, products of the moment, the moment when we couldn’t travel, or shouldn’t, when the museums were closed, and when full-scale facsimile objects would serve as proxies, simulating the experience of being in the presence of the artwork.
an arrangement of Facsimile Objects: the OG peeking out from behind Credit Suisse Dürer Diptych
[They also each include a standing offer to exchange the original work for a certificated Facsimile Object, a liberatory gesture to help you, the new owner, to focus on yourself and your experience, and not worry for a minute over the work’s condition, state, or worth. I’m ready to exchange whenever you are; hmu.]
Édouard Manet Facsimile Object (M1) “Minnay”, 2021, a Facsimile Object of a painting that had never been seen in public, and which surfaced at auction for only 2.5 days during COVID
But now, in the midst of [gestures around to the city and the world] all this, the call has come forth, and it is impossible—for me, at least—to heed it. Andrew Russeth’s effusive invitation to visit Manet’s rapturous late still life, Vase de fleurs, roses et lilas (1882), at Sotheby’s in New York, where it is on view only until it is sold on May 15th.
Édouard Manet Facsimile Objects (M2) & (M3), 2022, based on Ann Getty’s Manets, of which “Bob” [left] turned up at the same Getty Manet show as the flowers of (M4) Fleurs. Then they were sold.
As Andrew notes, this is the only sure window of time in which to see this rare painting, which has only been exhibited three times in 50+ years. Of course, all three of those times were in 2018-2020, a generous gesture on the part of the unidentified seller. It is not at all known what the next owner will do, so we must strike while we can, and get to Sotheby’s if you can.
Édouard Manet Facsimile Object (M4) is for those who cannot, and also for those who will not buy the painting next week. Well, not everyone. If you have the means to buy this Manet and don’t, I really suggest you sit this Facsimile Object out.
There is an irrevocable bid, so the Manet will sell to someone, but if you’re thinking that no, anything beyond the $7-10 million estimate is irrational, and you, with your financial savvy, elect not to pay, do not get the ÉMFO (M4). If you think it will stand as a trophy to your sophisticated investorial victory while honoring your connoisseurship, LMAO no it won’t. If you have the means and still somehow decide not to buy this painting, I fear Facsimile Object will offer you cold comfort in your folly and a sober reckoning of your failure. Every time you look at its high-gloss aluminum finish, you’ll see yourself looking, and remember that you could have bought the Manet instead, and you didn’t. You’ll get a Facsimile Object from me—and a handmade Certificate of Authenticity—but you won’t have my sympathy. I can’t even promise you’ll get my pity.
If you actually take a run at it and lose, OTOH, I hope you have pre-ordered the Facsimile Object as FOMO insurance; because if you wait til the auction is over, it will be too late, and your regret will be doubled. For you, dear underbidder, my heart would ache, but the concept is inviolate. And of course, for the winner, a Facsimile Object is always set aside, and a trade is always on the table. Straight across, with the COA thrown in to sweeten the deal.
ceci n’est pas un Facsimile Objet: a Drouot representative simulating the experience of holding ÉMFO (M1) using Édouard Manet’s le Chien “Minnay” in February 2021.
Andrew calls this a “small picture,” but honestly, at 22×14 inches, it’s a large Facsimile Object, almost 4x the size of the previous ones. One unexpected thing about Minnay [and all subsequent FOs] was how tactile they are, how nice it feels to hold them. Until this week, I would have compared it to a luxuriously thin iPad. But whether in your hands, on a shelf, or on a wall, this will be a substantial presence, and it is, admittedly, daunting to think about.
In fact, this whole thing feels like folly. But maybe it’s just the folly we need in these darkening times, the folly of flowers, friendly gestures of fleeting beauty, which also give us a glimpse of ourselves.
Order Édouard Manet Facsimile Object (M4) “Fleurs”, with signed, stamped & numbered COA, before the Manet sells on 15 May 2024 around 8PM EST.
[15 May update: I will be offline during the sale, but to preserve the conceptual nature of the project, orders will only be accepted which arrive before the Manet lot hammers down. Thank you for your engagement.
OK, that was that, $8.5 million hammer, sorry Beijing underbidder, you may not get a Facsimile Object to assuage your loss.]
“Untitled”, 1991, handloomed wool rug, 2.4 x 1.8m, ed. 25? via Equator Production
So on my journey from WTF to “Yes, please!” on the Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Free Tibet” rug edition that was later declared to be non-work, I passed the following:
It’s not just that Equator Production was using weavers and non-profits associated with the Tibetan diaspora in India to make their carpets. 1991 was also officially, The Year of Tibet.
And 1988 was the year of Tiger Rugs of Tibet having a breakout show at the Hayward Gallery in London, so the specific Tibetan Buddhist tradition of tiger-motif prayer rugs and monastery rugs had been launched in the West. Even if Felix didn’t see the Hayward show, there was a lush catalogue. In 1991 ABC Carpet in New York had a Year of Tibetan Tiger Rug collection. So it was around.
Kapital Wool Nepal Crewneck Sweater $611, NOT AVAILABLE, via Stag Provisions
What is not around is the Nepal Tiger Crewneck Sweater which Japanese heritage denim brand Kapital dropped in F/W 2019. But it still replaced every idea I had about repeating Felix’s Free Tibet carpet with a vision of these:
study for Gonzalez-Torres Free Tibet Sweater, 2024, ed. 25? Maybe available in Fall, if not in China
Whatever the edition, one will be set aside for the reincarnation of Sturtevant.
In 2014 art historian Anna C. Chave presented an absolute banger of a talk at a symposium organized by Dia as part of the Carl Andre retrospective. Chave laid out how art world figures and institutions, including the curators and catalogue contributors of Dia’s show, stayed silent on Andre’s involvement in the death of his wife Ana Mendieta, but still could not manage to ignore it completely. It is truly a damning reading, and all the more extraordinary for taking place at Andre’s show, at Dia’s invitation.
In the revised version published in the Winter 2014 edition of CAA’s Art Journal, titled, “Grave Matters: Positioning Carl Andre at Career’s End,” she even called out the organizers of the symposium for changes to the format that appeared intended to head off any possibility that the artist and the curators might face any questioning from—or even any engagement with—Chave.
a spread from Untitled (Grave Matters), 2024, an artist publication by greg.org
One thing Chave discussed was an anomalous and macabre sculpture Andre included in his first New York exhibitions after his acquittal for Mendieta’s murder. Titled Large Door (1988)—a pun, Chave argues on, l’Age d’Or—it was actually a window, with a gash in it. Robert Katz mentioned it at the end of his 1990 book on Andre’s trial, Naked At The Window, but it was only published for the first time in Dia’s catalogue.
Andre refused to give Chave permission to reproduce Large Door and another work she discussed, a photo of a vase of roses on Andre’s apartment balcony, in her essay.
So to celebrate New York Art Book Fair Weekend, I am releasing Untitled (Grave Matters), 2024, a new artist book, which comprises JSTOR screenshots of Chave’s essay, with the missing images added. I will mail a signed and stamped edition to anyone who requests one this weekend, just email me to tell me where to send it. After that, we’ll see.
[We have seen, and they are done, thank you to all who engaged!]
[note: your information will only be used to send you an art zine.]
The performance lecture form has been of interest to me and a topic on this site for an extended period of time.
It has its origins in my own professionally driven interest in Powerpoint as a Creative Medium [oof so many dead links, from when I also believed hotlinking images would be the best practice/fair use realization of a Project Xanadu-like networked utopia. I’ll fix them in a minute.]
But I also ended the lecture by declaring it a work of art, in an edition, and I sent around a stack of signed and numbered certificates of authenticity for anyone who wanted one. I think I made 100, and got 40 or so back? [Shoutout to my OG collectors, that turned out to be CR-1.]
Relational Aesthetics for the Rich performance, 2010, image via hyperallergic
Lot 14: Andirons, c. 1790-1810, formerly the property of the Brooklyn Museum, sold by Brunk
When David Platzker first sent me the link to the Brooklyn Museum’s recent deaccession auction, I immediately thought of the phrase, “museum quality.” It has long been used by dealers to sell an object of such stature, manufacture, and significance that it should be—or at least could be—in a museum. How does it work, though, for objects that a museum sells off? Is “museum quality” only now for objects a museum wants to keep? Are these now pieces of “former museum quality”? “Some museum quality”? “Almost museum quality”? Brooklyn Museum Quality.
This all came to a head on the first page, when I saw Lot 14, this pair of Federal engraved andirons, estimated to sell for $400-600. Three is a trend, I thought, as I indexed these in my mind against the andiron that started it all—a photo of a lone andiron that turned out to be part of a pair, which was donated to the Metropolitan Museum in 1971 with an attribution to Paul Revere.
And the andirons sold by the Wolf Family last year that matched the Met’s in almost every physical detail, but which had an unbroken provenance and an origin and date that differed from the Met’s. What would these Brooklyn Museum andirons add to this situation, conceptually?
“one w/slightly loose construction and leans slightly to the left, old repair/reinforcement to base”
Their date, 1790-1810, and manufacture, “American,” take us away from more specific understanding, not toward it. While they are of an identical type, they are different in enough details—the engraving the swaglessness, the flanges, the feet—that even an amateur andironologist would not suggest they were made by the same hands, the same shop, or even in the same town.
And then there’s the provenance. Though the auctioneer made careful note of the andiron’s physical condition—”one with slightly loose construction and leans slightly to the left”? Who among us, amirite?—the only provenance information provided is the freshest: “Property of the Brooklyn Museum.” I mean, we can guess there’s no conservation history, but whatever object record, accession or donor data, or historical documentation the museum may have held for these andirons is not provided.
Someone clearly knew something, though. Because they paid $41,000 for these andirons, 100x their low estimate, and 5x the price of the perfectly provenanced Wolfs’. People are willing to pay for that Brooklyn Museum quality.
As reported today on social media, Ubu has stopped adding things.
“As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer active. The archive is preserved for perpetuity, in its entirety.”
Preserved for perpetuity, in its entirety, except, of course, when it’s not:
“Everything is downloadable on UbuWeb. Don’t trust the cloud, even UbuWeb’s cloud,” said UbuWeb as recently as January.
And as Kenneth Goldsmith said as recently as yesterday, “Let’s keep UbuWeb well alive!” and “Don’t bookmark. Download. Hard drives are cheap. Fill them up with everything you think you might need to consult, watch, read, listen to, or cite in the future.”
A .tar of the site would be really handy right about now.
Gerhard Richter, Grauer Spiegel, 2021, 40×34 cm, pigment on bicoloured glass, ed 100+20AP, image via David Zwirner
Happy belated birthday, Gerhard Richter, who is apparently too busy painting, drawing, and collaging to update his website. The Grauer Spiegel (2021, No. 179, pigment on glass, ed. 100+20AP), included in Richter’s current show at David Zwirner in London is not there. It looks like the pigment is actually on the recto of the glass, a depiction of a mirror, not a mirror itself. But that’s just how it’s photographed. Installed at the Points of Resistance IV: Skills for Peace exhibition at Zionskirche in Berlin in 2022, its mirror nature was on full view.
Vija Celmins | Gerhard Richter, Double Vision, exhibition catalogue from Kunsthalle Hamburg
Posting about underseen little grey Richters really brings out the underseen little grey Richters. In a conversation begun on bluesky, Michael Seiwert mentioned seeing several in a very interesting show last Summer at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Vija Celmins | Gerhard Richter, Double Vision, curated by Dr. Brigitte Kölle, is an intriguing Celmins show that is also a very rare two-artist Richter show.
Vija Celmins, Explosion at Sea, 1966, 13 1/2 x 23 1/2 in., oil on canvas, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago
I love the show’s idea of “juxtaposing such a strong female position with the work of Gerhard Richter, so often presented as a singular phenomenon,” not just to see his work “with a fresh eye,” but because it puts both of them in a larger, richer context. These artists clearly share interests, approaches, motifs, and even biographies, that felt unexpected at first, but feel obvious now.
Spread showing rough times at sea from Celmins | Richter, Double Vision exhibition catalogue
Some of the resonances between Celmins’ and Richter’s practices come immediately to mind: photo-based painting, found/everyday objects, seascapes, fighter planes, grey, they’re all in there. But browsing the catalogue, I was straight up surprised by the spread above, which features a 1963 Richter titled Schlachtshiff [Battleship], and a 1966 Celmins, Explosion at Sea.
Destroyed Richter Painting #02 (ship), 2012, 40 x 30 in., oil on canvas
That Richter, though, is one the artist destroyed in the mid-1960s. It was the first of the Destroyed Richter Paintings I had remade in China in 2012, after seeing a photo of it, from Richter’s Archive, in Spiegel. OK, technically, and explicitly to the point, I had Richter’s archival photo painted at the scale of the destroyed painting it depicted, and I have shown and lived with this picture. So it is wild to see it included in this discussion. As Jaboukie might have said if he’d ever posed as Richter on twitter, “Just because I destroyed it doesn’t mean I can’t miss it.” Obviously, I am buying the book immediately.
