Tag: david hammons

I did not see David Hammons’ sprawling 2019 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles in person, and I only flipped through the catalogue/artist book when it came out last year. But I had to move it recently from its loadbearing position at the bottom of its stack, and give it the full attention it demands. Honestly, it’s a stunning retrospective feast I’m not sure any of us actually deserve. Along with Michael Crichton’s 1977 Jasper Johns catalogue and the Smithsonian’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return), it’s now only the third exhibition catalogue I’ve read straight through, cover-to-cover. And there aren’t even any words.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The H&W installation photos that fill most of the second half of the 404-page book pick up the handwritten labels and instructions that punctuated the show.

And when I hit this spread about 80% of the way through, I felt like the book was literally reading my mind, or, less supernaturally, that I was being taken through the show—and decades of work—by the artist himself.

Not that I’d expect Hammons to just say how many abstract paintings he’s covered with how many street tarps. And when I went back through to count, I had to decide whether to include paintings with metal panels affixed. And what about other things draped or covered with tarps or metal plates? And what about the Kool-aid paintings, where the covers feel less found? Anyway, I’d say there were at least thirty in the book, but it also sinks in that they’re in almost every installation shot, somewhere.

As for The Holy Bible: Old Testament, I’d wondered, since the times I’ve seen it exhibited it was on a lectern or a prie dieu and practically commanded personal devotion. But in LA it was naked on a pedestal.

Anyway, at this point, if you hear someone calling Hammons elusive or mysterious, it just means they haven’t put in the time to look at the bounty the artist has laid before us.

Previously, directly related [apparently I have been blogging about this show for seven years]:
Free as in Jazz and Books, TK Smith’s May 2025 review of the catalogue
Critiquing modernism and capitalism, one Hauser & Wirth show at a time
DH H&W LA: the oral history
David Hammons Lights
&c., &c.

In the first paragraph he calls David Hammons’s massive artist book disguised as a six-years-later Hauser & Wirth exhibition catalogue a gift. But with his review of the 7-lb, textless object for Art in America’s newsletter, TK Smith definitely does the work. I’d say he earned it:

Here, I found myself questioning my desire for this book to be legible, conventional, and useful. Is he challenging me, scolding me, or flirting with me? His refusal to make it easy to intellectualize his work feels like an invitation to a wider audience to exercise a different set of skills: he is inviting us to see as he sees while making room for our own responses and interpretations. It is evident through the book’s images that so much of Hammons’s work is made possible by everyday audiences, whether that audience is indulgently purchasing ephemeral artworks or simply taking time to witness the sublime in the mundane. You travel through the pages and experience what compels you. It may be wholly cliché to say, but the book reads much like jazz—there is a rhythm, but it is not consistent. It lingers here or there, it gets loud and hot before lulling to a confident hum.

Does Hauser & Wirth have a conventional commercial relationship with David Hammons? As Zhou Enlai said when Henry Kissinger asked him about the impact of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to say.”

In a just-published oral history Marc Payot, a president at Hauser & Wirth, remembers the early days:

Continue reading “Critiquing Modernism & Capitalism, One Hauser & Wirth Show At A Time”

I thought I’d see more organically, but now I’ll go look, but at least/at last Nereya Otieno has an insightful review at Hyperallergic of the restaging of David Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue at Hauser & Wirth LA.

AND it explains the phone situation: you have to lock your phone in a bag. Are there swaths or pockets of LA life where this happens now? People moving in and out of NDA/privacy/IP leakage control/be-in-the-moment woo woo zones? Or is it just for once-in-a-generation art installations?

HEADS UP, though, I thought it was on until June 1, but the H&W site now says May 25. Don’t sleep on it.

February was a distracting month, so I did miss Eileen Kinsella’s account of visiting Concerto in Black and Blue during Frieze LA.

Mark Pieterson’s review for Sculpture Magazine is good, if bleak. But then [looks around] how could it not be?

In her account of visiting Concerto for Artillery, Brittany Menjivar sounds a little surprised by the experience of the work.

OK, this review [sic] at Flaunt was either written by AI, or it is a review of the YouTube video Hauser & Wirth posted in April, which has a soundtrack. Because there is no concerto playing in Concerto. [Unless? Was there a Japanese performer playing koto at this opening, too?]

Tomorrow, 17 May at 11AM, Darby English will be moderating an IRL conversation at H&W LA with Jasper Marsalis, Harryette R. Mullen and Joe Ray on the question, “How do we see the work’s darkness now?” Eventbrite says few tickets left.

[23 May update:] Wayne Bremser has a great account of his visit today. Just in time!

David Hammons Gets At The Why? Of It [hyperallergic]
Previously, related: David Hammons Lights

How has there not been more Concerto in Black and Blue content floating around? Do people not go to Hauser & Wirth LA anymore? Is the glow of people recording themselves on their phones ruining it? David Hammons has restaged his epic 2002-3 work in LA. It’s on til June MAY 25. So grab a little flashlight and become the artwork.

Meanwhile, Ursula has a great essay by legendary filmmaker, gallerist and Hammons whisperer Linda Goode Bryant, who filmed the opening night of Concerto in Black and Blue at the vast NYC outpost of Ace Gallery:

He allowed me to be inside for the opening, to make a short film of what happened inside. And what people didn’t know is that David was actually in there himself that night. I only knew where he was because I had a microphone on him. But he was otherwise totally invisible, moving around among everyone else, watching what they did and what they made, present and at the same time absent.

LGB talks incisively about walking and seeing with the artist, and getting hints of how he sees and works. It confirms my theory/suspicion/last-ditch hope that we are in fact living in David Hammons’ world, and often just don’t realize it.

[MAY 2025 UPDATE?? IT REALLY TAKES UNTIL MAY?] Nereya Otieno’s review of Concerto in Black and Blue explains the online silence and invisibility of Hammons’ extraordinary show: You have to bag your phone to enter. She did manage to get installation shots, though. And in some places Hauser still says it runs through June 1, and others say May 25, so don’t get stuck missing it.

Meanwhile, the book finally documenting Hammons’ sprawling 2019 show at H&W LA is out now, not in May, which means the lamp with the Flavin X Sotheby’s shopping bag lampshade I had to scavenge screenshots in the backgrounds of peoples’ youtube videos like a dog to see is now beautifully photographed on its own.

A Walker in The City | Linda Goode Bryant [hauserwirth/ursula]
David Hammons, Concerto In Black And Blue, 18 Feb – 1 June 25 May 2025 [hauserwirth la]

untitled_picksimg_large-6.jpg, 2025 [greg.org]
Previously, related: Untitled (unnamed.jpg), 2019
Previously, related jpg constraint, alternate naming convention: Untitled (300 x 404); Untitled (290 x 404)

Each issue of the 1980s Eye Magazine had a different editor inviting artists to make a work, which would be copied and collated into a spiral-bound volume. Sometimes artists would submit an entire edition of prints, or objects, and some issues were published looseleaf, or in boxes.

There is no comprehensive archive of Eye Magazine. The largest holding I’ve found is in the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry at the University of Iowa, which has seven issues from between 1982 and 1986, including the most famous [sic] one, Cobalt Myth Mechanics, Eye No. 14, edited in 1986 by Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, otherwise known as Paul H-O. Earlier issues in the Sackner archive list edition sizes of 150 or 155. Cobalt Myth Mechanics is listed in Iowa as having a run of “around 200,” and all signed editions are numbered out of 200.

But an old eBay listing scraped by worthpoint quotes Paul H-O in a 2011 online text, now unfindable, as saying: “[the] binding process and handmade covers were, in fact, killing me… They were so labor intensive each copy averaged over two hours after collating so I produced the copies in small batches, and in fact never finished more than about 150.”

The 1987 announcement of Eye #14 in The Print Collectors’ Newsletter says the contributing artists all “share social concerns.” From H-O’s editiorial note: “Not one of the people who’ve made these pages is guilty of not caring about man’s fate.” MoMA reproduces 16 artist folios, but not the title pages or H-O’s text.

The point of all this is that Eye #14 includes two unique contributions from now-canonical artists, and one of them is also an art market star: Karen Finley, and David Hammons.

Continue reading “An Eye For A Hammons”

Over the years as I’ve kept coming across David Hammons works, old and new, which hadn’t been publicly known, I try looking again for any info on one of his major public works—which also nobody knew.

In 1979 Hammons was one of a group of artists commissioned to make work for the big new airport under construction in Atlanta. Here is how ATL Airport Art describes it:

The initiative to display artworks at ATL originated in 1979, when the Domestic Terminal was constructed during Maynard Jackson’s first term as Mayor of Atlanta. In 1979-1980, the Airport commissioned and installed large-scale, permanent artworks by Curtis Patterson, David Hammons, Lynda Benglis, Benny Andrews, Sam Gilliam and others. The Airport received its first of two Governor’s Awards for the Arts for this series of commissions, but an ongoing program was not instituted and the artworks were not maintained. 

Benny Andrews’ chronology says he made a 95-ft mural, as did 13 other artists. Indeed, here is a 35mm slide showing Benglis’s giant mural. But Patterson’s website includes a large bronze relief. [Two, actually; he made another after the first got remodeled out of place.] And the project has five folders in Gilliam’s archive. But I’ve never been able to find a photo or even a description of Hammons’ work, or news of its status. [Though I think now the Airport Art site makes it pretty clear these early works are gone.]

But then reading Dr. Kellie Jones’ 1986 interview with Hammons again for the Mandela piece, which does still exist in Atlanta, I realized she’d asked him about it. [Of course she did.]

KJ: You did pieces for a while that had dowels with hair and pieces of records on them. Like the piece you did for the Atlanta Airport.   

DH: Those pieces were all about making sure the black viewer had a reflection on himself in the work. White viewers have to look at someone else’s culture in those pieces and see very little of themselves in it. Like looking at American Indian art or Egyptian art—you can try to fit yourself in it but it really doesn’t work. And that’s the beauty of looking at art from other cultures, that they’re not mirror reflections of your art. But in this country, if your art doesn’t reflect the status quo, well then you can forget it, financially and otherwise. I’ve always thought artists should concentrate on going against any kind of order, but here in New York, more than anywhere else, I don’t see any of that gut. It’s so hard to live in this city. The rent is so high, your shelter and eating, those necessities are so difficult, that’s what keeps the artist from being that maverick.  

So dowels, records, and hair? You mean like the extraordinary sculpture that just turned up at Christie’s this month? Untitled (Flight Fantasy) is from 1978, and is made of spindly bamboo reeds piercing a broken record filled like a taco with unfired Georgia clay. It is on view right now.

This sculpture has been in the same collection since it was made. It’s very domestically scaled, and I am having a hard time imagining how it would scale up for an airport. And I’m having a hard time imagining how something so fugitive and delicate would survive in what soon became the world’s busiest airport. On the other hand, given what we know about the conservation of unfired clay, I’m having an easy time imagining why it’d no longer exist.

21 Nov 2024, Lot 7B: David Hammons, Untitled (Flight Fantasy), 1978, est. $2-3m [update: sold for $3,922,000] [christies]
Previously, related: David Hammons’ Free Nelson Mandela is in Atlanta, Y’all; What Happens in Midtown

A few months ago artist David Horvitz was looking into a story of one of his artist neighbors who knew David Hammons back in the LA day. While poking around for some corroboration, I realized this invitation to a 1986 Hammons show at JAM was only and ever published in Elena Filipovic’s 2019 Afterall One Work: Bliz-aard Ball Sale.

Filipovic’s researcher, Alhena Katshof pulled the invitation out of MoMA Library’s legendary Ephemera File, where it was scanned for the first time, I learned, by legendary librarian David Senior.

Anyway, the invitation is a silvery painted postcard with a hand-stamped ball, and a date, 3/13/83. One of the very few other examples of the invitation known to exist, along with the show’s terse press release, mention 2/13/83, so perhaps this one is an error. The show, Icestallation, consisted of a dingy 3-year-old snowball in a used and altered freezer, set amidst the detritus of JAM’s gallery renovation. As printed on the verso, the show was in April/May, so the date, presumably, was the snowball’s birthday? And so the date of Hammons’ Bliz-aard Ball Sale action?

Without contemporary recollections of the invitation’s production, Filipovic speculated, based on the size, that Hammons might have used a silver-painted tennis ball to imprint them. I think the seams on a tennis ball disqualify it, though. I’ve spent time trying to identify a similarly sized, seamless, and fuzzy-enough ball Hammons could have used. A round sponge seems like the easiest, but is it the most Hammons-ian? I’ve done the same exercise with Hammons’ favored printmaking medium—his own body—to imagine what might reliably produce a few hundred unperturbed, round imprints. Because it’s not a ball. So a knee? A calf? A cutout and a buttcheek? Is it even actually printed, not stenciled?

Previously, related, silvery, printed: David Hammons’ Spade, Again

The way I have the installation views of David Hammons 1990 PS1 retrospective, Rousing the Rubble, open in my tabs for months, like a talisman or something, and still have to make the effort to see the unfamiliar right in front of me.

Like this work, A Fan, from 1989, in which a white female mannequin head is perched on a table leaf, turned toward a TV and VCR playing an archival interview with Malcolm X. Next to the TV is a palm fan, and an arrangement of funeral flowers on a white wire stand.

A Fan caught the attention of poet Yuko Otomo, who attended Hammons’ opening, and recorded the intense experience of the walkthrough in her journal. Otomo is an incredibly perceptive viewer. The Areidolia link above includes her writing about Hammons’ 2016 show at Mnuchin, too. Here’s an interview with her.

Hammons showed A Fan the year before, too, in “Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos,” an exhibit of chaos science-related work curated by Laura Trippi at the New Museum. It was seen there by critic Maurice Berger, who wrote about it, and the resurgence of Malcolm X’s voice into contemporary white-dominated cultural discourse, in his 1990 ARTNews essay, “Are Art Museums Racist?”. ARTNews republished the essay in March 2020, to mark Berger’s death from COVID. It is depressingly fresh:

Without the Hammons piece the sensibility of “Strange Attractors” would have been very different, more typical of the splashy group shows of contemporary art that simply ignore the issue of race. That one image threw the entire show into question and pointed up the racial bias of its institutional context. Increasingly, across the country, similar catalysts are inserting painful questions into the heretofore complacent space of exhibition as curators with good intentions attempt to “include” the cultural production of people of color.

Berger quotes some of the Malcolm X video Hammons used: “There is nothing that the white man will do to bring about true, sincere citizenship or civil rights recognition for black people in this country. They will always talk but they won’t practice it.” Which, though it sounds like it could have been said yesterday, is an interview from UC Berkeley from October 11, 1963.

The TV, VCR, flowers, and fan are all different between the two installations. At the New Museum, the name Malcolm is spelled out in gold glitter on the red bow on the flowers. Of Hammons’ work at PS1, Otomo wrote, “[T]he feeling of being challenged was merely a result of the implosion of the ingrained hypocrisy inside us. Hammons’ work never shows off theory or words. They threaten us, the viewers, just by being there.” She noted that her companion Steve, explaining the unfamiliar cultural references to her, said he “had tried to listen to Malcolm X’s arguments in the 60s.”

Though it would be good to see it now, the present whereabouts/status of A Fan is unknown.

David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble, 1969-1990 [ps1.org]
Perpetual Ripplets: On David Hammons, Yuko Otomo, June 2016 [areidolia]
Strange Attraction: Signs of Chaos [newmuseum.org]
Maurice Berger’s Are Art Museums Racist? [artnews]
1963 Interview with Malcolm X [c-span.org]

Previously, related:
Also David Hammons in 1989: How Ya Like How Ya Like Me Now?
Also David Hammons in 1990: Pissed Off: Can You Hold It?
David Hammons in 1991: Public Enemy Nos. 2 — ?
David Hammons in 1995: School of Rock Fan