Copy Number 4 of Alexandro Jodorowsky’s Dune Bible, printed in 1975, for sale at Christie’s Dec 2024
Nothing quite captured the hopes, dreams, ambition, and stupidity of the crypto moment like the 2021 acquisition by Dune DAO [aka Spice DAO] of Jodorowsky’s Dune Bible for EUR 2.67 million, more than 100x its estimate.
The Spice DAO epic involved Copy Number 5 of the Dune Bible, a nearly 300-page art and concept octavo, privately published in 1975. When it was sold in November 2021, Christie’s Paris surmised that there were likely only 10 to 20 copies produced, and only a fraction survived. Given its rarity, it was expected to sell for EUR25-35,000.
Now Copy Number 4 has appeared in an online auction at Christie’s London, with an estimate of GBP250-350,000. The way this price is at once a 90% discount and a 1000% markup really captures the lost surrealist magnificence of the Jodorowsky Dune vision. But the true magnificence comes from noting how Christie’s both copies large chunks of the 2021 lot essay, while assiduously not mentioning the previous sale, or indeed the production or existence of any other copies of the book.
Jasper Johns, Leo from The Leo Castelli 90th Birthday Portfolio, 1997/98, etching with aquatint, 45×30 cm plate on 37 x 27 in. sheet, ed. 90+17AP+?, this one from MoMA
While looking something else up at the Philadelphia Museum, I realized I’d missed a major appearance of the three stick figures I call Jasper Johns’ little guys: they make their astronomical—or astrological—debut in a print created in 1997 for Leo Castelli’s 90th birthday.
It was published by Jean-Christophe Castelli in a portfolio, and so wasn’t printed by Johns’s two major print foundries, Gemini GEL and ULAE, so I missed it in my survey. But it does really capture the way Johns expanded the ways he put them to work in his pictures. Beyond their function in his composition and scale, they also start to imply their own narrative, whether in a picture or as its audience.
Detail from Untitled (D587) showing those little guys doing something new, 1997, graphite, 15 3/4 x 20 1/4 in., via JJ Drawings CR
The idea of these stick figures under a night sky seems to first appear in 1997, and it would reappear often as Johns incorporated more astronomical imagery into his work. It really does give these little guys a primordial vibe, like they were here before us all.
Of course, while the sketch above has them looking at the Big Dipper or a spiral galaxy, in Leo from the Leo…, the little guys are looking at the constellation Leo. [Or most of it; the line that forms the lion’s back is missing.] Which maybe did not matter so much; Leo Castelli, born September 4th, was a Virgo.
[next day update: on bluesky Peter Huestis points to Sketch for Leo, a 1997 work on mylar, in the National Gallery. This is not in the drawings CR, I believe, but it’s perfect. It’s described as “charcoal transfer,” which I do not understand. It is not in reverse, so it is at least one step removed from the creation of the printing plates.]
Jasper Johns, “Sketch for Leo,” 1997, charcoal transfer, graphite, and red pencil on mylar, in the collection of the National Gallery from whence it cannot be downloaded.
Andrew Russeth’s photo of Francis Cape’s 2013 catalogue, We Sit Together: Utopian Benches from The Shakers to The Separatists of Zoar, via bluesky
I was surprised to have never heard of a book Andrew Russeth just called, “one of the great art books of this century.” Now I am enthralled with Francis Cape’s project, book, and exhibition of benches from America’s utopian societies.
Cape had begun researching, documenting, and reproducing examples of historical benches from several utopian communities in 2010, when Richard Torchia of Arcadia University learned of the project and proposed an exhibition.
Installation view of Francis Cape’s Utopian Benches at Arcadia University, 2012, photo: Greenhouse Media via Arcadia.edu
FC: I was and am interested in the intent the communes share, rather than their differences. They share [an emphasis on] communal living, and with that, they chose to value sharing over individual profit or pleasure. This required a degree of separation from the mainstream, so another thing [they have] in common is their setting themselves apart physically as well as in intent from that mainstream.
As to the transformative moment, it was more the visible moment in an ongoing transformative time. It began when Bush was re-elected in 2004, and I found I could not go on making art about art. The Bush White House’s use of language to conceal rather than to reveal led me reject all falsehood: false wood in the form of the mdf I had been using; cover ups in the form of painting; and most of all, illusion. I was talking with a colleague whose thesis is that artists have found illusion to be anathema since the early twentieth century. I guess I’m a late starter.
So for the benches to be real, they had to be sat upon . . . what better way [for them to be used] than to be shared while talking about sharing?
janky screenshot of Marsden Hartley, Fig Tree, 1926-27, 24 x 20 1/2 in., as reproduced in the exhibition catalogue for the Wadsworth Atheneum’s 2003 Hartley retrospective.
Marsden Hartley moved from Vence to Aix-en-Provence in 1926, at the invitation of the Kuntzes, and set to working in Cezanne’s old studio.
According to the chronology in Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser’s 2003 retrospective, which originated at the Wadsworth Atheneum, this is when Hartley began working on Fig Tree.
The Google Books preview does not include the text about Fig Tree, but earlier texts seem to date it earlier, to 1924, when Hartley was in New Mexico. I will need to find out more about this buck wild painting, which seems to have nothing to do with channeling Cezanne.
Still from Moving Picture (946-3) Kyoto Version, 2019-24, by Gerhard Richter & Corinna Belz, as introduced by Gagosian for an upcoming immersive installation in Rome, Dec. 2024.
As we try to make sense of wtf happened, and what the future holds, let me try to bring some clarity. As fields and factions drunk on their own importance clamor for dominance, let me try to bring a shared understanding.
So far there have been computer animations based on two Gerhard Richter paintings. They have followed the slicing and mirroring mathematical process of the artist’s Strip series (2009-2013). Richter provided the image to and they were made by filmmaker Corinna Belz. They have been accompanied by music commissioned from multiple composers.
The project having its “gallery debut” next month, which Gagosian Rome is pleased to announce, Moving Picture (946-3) Kyoto Version (2019–24), is of the second painting, Abstraktes Bild (CR 946-3), from 2016. It is, thought, the first to be presented as an immersive installation in film and sound, and the first to be sold, in an edition of eight. What is it, and how did it come to be?
Benjamin Cottam, Yves Klein(Dead Artists), 2002-03, silverpoint, 11 x 9 cm, selling at 27 Sept 2024 at Rago Arts
Eventually, every artist will be a dead artist, but so far only a select few have been included in Benjamin Cottam’s Dead Artists Series. Done in silverpoint on a fine little card, the exquisitely ghostly little portraits are only the size of a fingernail.
Benjamin Cottam, Arshile Gorky (Dead Artists), 2002-03, silverpoint, 11 x 10 cm, selling at 27 Sept 2024 at Rago Arts
It feels like these two, Yves Klein and Arshile Gorky, fall into an exceptional category: artists whose deaths become a significant element of their art historical narrative.
Maybe that distinction is just me. Back in the day, in the thick of Cottam’s project, we got Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson, and Eva Hesse. Looking through some of the other Dead Artists in the series, there are certainly plenty whose main qualification does seem to be that they were dead. [A lot of those are also just faces in a smudgy haze, with an even eerier vibe than these disembodied heads.]
Another criteria, though might be the availability of a suitable reference photo; when I asked the artist about a Felix Gonzalez-Torres, he looked around and the very few Felix pictures around at the time, and said it wouldn’t work.
So yeah, we have some of these, we love them, and these feel right in sync with those. So am I a dope for hyping them before scoring them? I guess I’d also be happy to see them spread around. Too may Dead Artists in one place might raise suspicions.
Before there was bluescreen or greenscreen, there was yellowscreen, and it was better.
beam splitter prism graphic, screenshot from Collision Crew
In the 1950s Petro Vlahos created an in-camera, sodium vapor process which filmed actors lit frontally with white light, against a monochrome backdrop, backlit by yellow sodium vapor lamps, using a beam splitting prism that recorded the color image and its monochromatic mask simultaneously on two reels of film. It is basically a dichroic version of Technicolor, invented by Wadsworth E. Pohl, which used prisms to split an image into three color-separated frames.
The three pieces they discuss and play, by Steve Reich, Julius Eastman, and Jason Moran, are all bangers of their kind. No spoilers, but Ligon’s made work related to a Reich text piece [above]; Moran scored a Ligon film, and it turns out Ligon and Eastman will be in a two-person show at 52 Walker in January.
This just in from Our Correspondent In Berlin: the recent blog post about Sol LeWitt’s Black Form — Memorial to the Missing Jews (1987/89) is as incomplete as it was unexpected. Let’s go in chronological order, and from what should have been most obvious.
Sol LeWitt, Black Form – Dedicated To The Missing Jews, 1987/89, painted concrete, Hamburg, via
It is not enough to site the 1987 sculpture in the context of a Germany—actually Germanies—that had yet to address the issue of memorials or counter-memorials to the Holocaust. Or even to note—which I didn’t—that the 1989 re-creation of Black Form in Hamburg was not only larger, but happened just as the Berlin Wall was taken down. And of course, Black Form has existed in Hamburg ever since.
What most needs correcting is the context of LeWitt’s statement, “This was the only political art that I made and the only political thing about it was the title, but I thought I owed it to the Germans – and the Jews – to make one comment.” And the perception of exceptionalism it gave to the Skulptur Projekte, and the constraint it put on the political and memorializing element of LeWitt’s work.
Because that LeWitt quote was from 2000. And while it may have been true that Black Form was the only political art he made to that point, it was not the last, either for the Germans or the Jews. And those later memorials were very much related to Black Form, and not just because of their titles.
“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.
was gonna post about some building i saw on insta, but then i got on my laptop and saw more pics of it, and it looks like crap, so shoutout to the photographer who found one angle for it, i guess.
From Sag Harbor to Monaco to Linz to Cologne to megagallery Los Angeles, the outlook of art world is pretty f’ing dire. Peoples’ critical faculties are failing them. But maybe that just vibes with the rest of the world rn.
five minutes later update: I just read the sentence, “An exceptional team led by Jeff Katzenberg springs into action to produce five weeks of riveting ‘content’ leading up to the Convention…
D245: Sketch for The Barber’s Tree, 1975, watercolor on paper, 22 1/4 x 30 1/4 in., collection of the artist, never been shown [at least through 2014], via JJCR-D
Maybe not being able to find the flagstones motif source, a Harlem wall glimpsed once through a taxi window and then lost, changed Jasper Johns’ approach a bit. Because by 1973, he did take note of the inspiration The Barber’s Tree. At least for the sketch [above], if not the painting, which turned out to be a mostly typical crosshatch motif executed in red and white.
And now we know what Johns knew.
Here is photographer Charles O’Rear’s image from “Mexico: The City That Founded A Nation,” a dispatch by Louis de la Haba and Albert Moldvay from the May 1973 issue of National Geographic.
It is small, and slight, but indeed eye-catching. It’s not clear who is responsible for this cringe caption, though, about “Indulging the national craze for color” and “The Mexicans’ passion for bright hues,” when every barber pole north of the border has the same color scheme.
What is notable, perhaps, is that Johns chose this painting—found, vernacular, and anonymous—only after seeing this on the preceding page:
Albert Moldvay’s spread of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ March of Humanity, one page before the anonymous barber painting a tree in Nat Geo May 1973.
Looking on the web for contemporary images of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ absolutely gargantuan mural, la Marcha de Humanidad, in what was supposed to be the auditorium for the Hotel de Mexico, I can’t see that anyone managed to capture it more fully than Albert Moldvay did in 1973. The Mexicans sure have a national craze for murals. Jasper Johns, not so much.
[Next morning update: Joke’s on me, it’s been on my shelf the whole time. While looking for an image of the 1975 painting The Barber’s Tree, I stumbled on it and O’Rear’s photo in Michael Crichton’s 1977 Whitney catalogue:
it was worth $6 to see it in color, I guess, and to discover the Siqueiros. But let’s be honest, without the intervening watercolor, this tree motif feels kind of far from Johns’ cross-hatches.
I’ve been saying it is barber pole-colored, but Crichton describes The Barber Tree (1975) as “flesh-and-blood colors.” Which, you’ll have to trust him, because the catalogue only had black & white images, and it was in the Ludwig’s collection until they donated it to the National Art Museum of China in 1996.
The Barber’s Tree, encaustic and collage on canvas, 34 x 54 in. (87 x 137.8 cm), snapped from the Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 3 (P196)
Now that they’re all together, maybe the overlapping structure of the cross-hatches is what carries through from the tree. Crichton noted Johns deployed different structures in the cross-hatch paintings of this period, 1973-76, including various degrees of mirroring or duplication. That is not what’s going on here.
She reported on the documentary almost two months ago, and Macdonald told her the same fascinating-to-me thing he told Josh Slater-Williams, that Galliano’s Fall 2022 show was about being the subject of a documentary. Which, if you look at that show, is all kinds of problematic. But.
She also adds so much more context: that it was Anna Wintour who dangled a Galliano documentary on the hook for several years until a director—Macdonald—bit. And crucially, as I read it, that the whole thing pivoted on documentary’s backers at Dior—and LVMH.
The reputation being laundered by the documentary is not Galliano’s—or not just Galliano’s—but Galliano’s collections for Dior. So cooperating effusively was, Macdonald suggested, “a great way for them to say, ‘Okay, we’ve laid that to rest.’ And I think, so, for Dior and for John, I think that was their agenda.”
Galliano near the Met Gala but not at it, fitting Kim Kardashian into a Margiela dress, screenshot via Mikelle Street’s social media
“It is also, of course,” wrote Tashjian-Wise, “an agenda that allows them to make more money off Galliano-designed products.” And so it seems unsurprising that weeks after the documentary dropped, Galliano was declared “the real winner of the Met Gala.” Tashjian-Wise notes that Galliano dressed six celebrities for the Met Gala, including Kim Kardashian, and Zendaya—twice. The actress skipped the co-chairs receiving line at the top of the Met’s stairs to take a second lap outside, wearing a vintage Galliano-era Givenchy.
Both Tashjian-Wise and Chantal Fernandez at The Cut reported rumors that Galliano had been Anna Wintour’s and curator Andrew Bolton’s intended subject this year’s Costume Institute exhibition. After someone at the Met nixed the plan last year, Bolton had to throw together a collection exhibition about spring florals based on a dystopian Philip K. Dick story.
A Wintour-orchestrated, LVMH-sanctioned documentary. A triumphant LVMH-sponsored museum retrospective, and reported “suggestions” that Galliano would return to LVMH. The plan really was going to be, put the antisemitic outrage outrage to rest, and use the Met Gala to launch a rebooted Galliano. The world—and some museum trustees, apparently—have intervened, but it does cast a stark light on the Met Gala as a wholly instrumentalized tool of the luxury industry.
Fernandez’ article on Andrew Bolton gets into the Costume Institute’s weird governance and curatorial shenanigans, but we’ve never gotten a breakdown of the Met Gala’s actual value proposition as the the world’s most extravagant sponcon. It’s a Condé Nast-branded, pay-to-play fashion show, combined with a party giving Vogue advertisers both content opportunities and facetime with celebrities, and the venue gets a cut of the door. And we’re all either too starstruck or too grateful for the fundraising to acknowledge how, beneath the museum’s sheer veil of cultural credibility, the Met Gala is naked.
Shoutout to @dailyrothko for bringing this darkest of all Rothkos to light.
Ink on paper, 42 x 50 inches, not titled, dated, or signed, but from 1969, referred to as 1969, and annotated on the back, “no number/ black/ no. 1” in two different corners. In the National Gallery’s collection since the Rothko kids’ gift in 1986, but I’m not sure it’s been shown. I, for one, would love to see it.
