Tag: ellsworth kelly

IYKYK: Ellsworth Kelly Pink Triangle

Jonathan Horowitz, Pink Curve, 2010, acrylic on fiberglass, 83 x 147 in., inexplicably sold by the Brants at Christie’s for like a dollar in Dec. 2022

Until this morning, everything I knew about Ellsworth Kelly and pink triangles I had learned from Jonathan Horowitz. In 2010, Horowitz made a series of works critiquing the minimalist and abstract works Kelly and other artists made for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. “In the face of one of the worst things that’s ever happened, art is represented as having nothing to say,” Horowitz explained when he showed the works at Sadie Coles in 2011.

Two Rainbow Flags in the Style of the Artist’s Boyfriend, 2011, image:jonathanorowitz.com

Pink Curve (2010), above, paraphrases Kelly’s white Memorial (1992), transforming it into a reference to the pink triangle nazis forced gay people to wear in the concentration camps. Pink Curve called out the invisibility or omission of gay identity, not just in discussion of the Holocaust, but in a work by a gay artist. It’s similar to Horowitz’s critique of Jasper Johns—and/or of the discourse around his work—in works like Rainbow Flags For Jasper In The Style of The Artist’s Boyfriend (2011). [The artist’s boyfriend referenced here is Horowitz’s, Rob Pruitt—unless Johns was keeping a glitter-loving twink under wraps on his farm, obv.] And all that makes sense.

But also.

Olympic Tower Apartment by Arthur Erickson, interior by Francisco Kripacz, 1979, photo: Norman McGrath, s/o tumblr user runrabbitafterdark-blog

This morning I saw these photos, and is that not an Ellsworth Kelly pink triangle painting on the living room wall of a 1979 apartment in Olympic Tower, designed by Francisco Kripacz? Yes, yes it is.

Olympic Tower Apartment by Arthur Erickson, interior by Francisco Kripacz, with a raised glass floor and a pink Ellsworth Kelly, 1979, photo: Norman McGrath, s/o tumblr user runrabbitafterdark-blog

Well, technically, it’s not a triangle, but a triangle with asymmetrically truncated corners, so a pentagon, but still, it is rather trianglish. And technically, the architect, resident, and Kripacz’ partner, Arthur Erickson, called it “a very beautiful mauve” Kelly whose form is echoed by the custom steel coffee table [an actual triangle.]

Arthur Erickson and Francisco Kripacz, Teck Mining Group boardroom with an Ellsworth Kelly green painting between two trees, photo: Norman McGrath via arthurerickson.com

Maybe they bought in bulk, because they used an identically shaped green Kelly outside the Toronto boardroom of the Teck Mining Group.

Untitled (1979), EK 590, steel, 92 x 112 in., sold at Sotheby’s by Doug Cramer’s estate in 2021

Erickson and Kripacz were the most famous Canadian Design Gays of the 1970s and 80s. They renovated an iconic party house on Fire Island with a retractable roof and fence. They partied and schmoozed with all sorts of famous and powerful people. Gay architect and nazi Philip Johnson had dinner in the presence of the Kelly pink triangle. They kept working together after they broke up, with Kripacz setting up shop in Beverly Hills. And while I can’t find any party pics, I’m sure Dynasty producer Douglas Cramer had to know about Erickson & Kripacz’s pink Kelly triangle when he bought the Cor-Ten steel version in 1984. So maybe Horowitz was onto something.

Destroyed Ellsworth Kelly Floor Painting

OK, I guess it’s clear I was not paying close enough attention when I posted about Ellsworth Kelly’s Red Floor Panel (1992) in 2022. I recognized that Kelly made five floor works. They began in 1990, Matthew Marks wrote, with Yellow Curve, for Portikus and were followed by “two in black, one in blue, and this one in red.” I’d assumed that Glenstone purchased Yellow Curve (1990), but of course, it was later made clear that Kelly did not recreate Portikus’ Yellow Curve, but made it anew as an autonomous work, Yellow Curve (EK 808), 2015, for an identically dimensioned—and purpose-built—space. Which means technically, Kelly made six.

Ellsworth Kelly, Black Curves, 2011, installed at Haus der Kunst, photo: Wilfried Petzi

Red Floor Panel was reconstitutable and not site-specific, and Yellow Curve was not. Which are two potential conditions a floor piece can have. And now while researching Kelly’s 1955 painting Bar, I surfed across the 2011 exhibition, Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White at Haus der Kunst in Münich. For this venue Kelly was commissioned to create a floor panel the Haus called Black Curves [though Artforum called it Two Curves For Floor]. This panel extended 11 meters across a bay of the museum, and was destroyed when the show moved to Wiesbaden.

Ellsworth Kelly, Black Curves, 2011, lithograph, 197 x 261 mm, ed. 100, this ex. 61/100, sold at Neumister, was flipped upside down for schematic effect

It lives now only in proportion, memorialized in the diminutive fundraising edition created for the exhibition. Though with the dimensions and the plan, it feels ripe for recreating; all you need is a space with an 11m hypotenuse.

Previously, related:
Ellsworth Kelly Red Floor Panel (1992)
EK 808: The Making Of

Destroyed Ellsworth Kelly Painting

Ellsworth Kelly wore khakis: 1956 photo in his Broad Street studio, by Onni Saari via IG

Last April during the centennial year of the artist’s birth, photographer Onni Saari posted a 1956 image to Instagram of Ellsworth Kelly in his studio on Broad Street in lower Manhattan. In addition to some tantalizing little works on paper and images stuck into the door frame, three paintings are visible behind him. Counter-clockwise from the bottom they are, Bar (EK87), Red Curves (EK81), and Marblehead (EK IDK?)

The first two, at least, were included in Kelly’s first show at Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956.

Ellsworth Kelly posing in 1955 with Marblehead (left, est 60×40 in. destroyed 1995)
and Red Curves (right, 45×35 in.), photo: IG/ellsworthkellystudio via kundst and voorwerk

In November 2023, the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation posted this 1955 photo of the artist posing with Marblehead and Red Curves on his Broad St rooftop. The caption read, “Ellsworth considered Red Curves to be an epiphany of sorts, leading to many more curves, though the same cannot be said for Marblehead. The black, pulsing blue, and irregular bands made it a favorite with a Betty Parsons dealer [sic], but Ellsworth’s dislike of the composition was so strong that he destroyed it in 1995. ‘One I never cared for,’ a scrupulous Ellsworth wrote in his notes.”

The circumstances around Kelly’s decision to destroy Marblehead after 40 years intrigue me, but in writing this post, I have run out of time to get to the catalogue raisonné to find out what happened.

Previously, related: Destroyed Robert Gober Ellsworth Kelly Painting

In Conclusion, Buffalo AKG Is A Land Of Contrasts

Maybe it’s living on the border, or the multiple additions, but my strongest sense of visiting the Buffalo AKG, the museum formerly known as the Albright-Knox, is of marveling at the things they put next to each other.

By entering through the parking lot and the new Gundlach Greenhouse, I ended up walking backwards, chronologically, through the museum, beginning with a gallery of large paintings made in 2013. Then there was the 90s room, then on back, to the room with this pairing of a Rothko and a Frankenthaler that just felt wild for some reason. But at least I got a picture. The mid-70s pairing of a Susan Rothenberg horse next to a blurry pre-squeegee abstract painting by Gerhard Richter was so unexpected, I forgot to photograph it.

The Coenties Slip room, though, was pleasantly sublime, with Ellsworth Kelly’s 1950s NY NY living across from Agnes Martin’s Tree just like old times. That’s a detail below, obviously; just imagine that extending in infinity.

There were some other nice moments in the permanent collection—the Stanley Whitney retrospective was spectacular, btw. Those little paintings he makes at the end of the day with his leftover paint!

Olafur’s pavilion tree situation was nice, and better than the courtyard it replaced, for sure. Is it worth having to have the Gundlach wing, too? I will defer to the Buffalovians, who did seem pleased with the place.

But the surprise and delight was the Jacob Kassay installation, developed in collaboration with the visually impaired education folks, where he lined the outer edge of the handrail with the letter H in Braille, creating a tactile onomatopoetic evocation of breathing, or sighing, as visitors drag their hand along. It was the perfect opposite of spectacle.

EK 808: The Making Of

Ellsworth Kelly created his first floor piece, Yellow Curve-Portikus, in 1990 in Frankfurt. When the Raleses sought to recreate it, Kelly made a new work, Yellow Curve (EK808), in 2015. He supervised a test installation at Glenstone before he passed away. The video above is about the realization of Yellow Curve this year, for the EK 100 exhibition marking the centenary of the artist’s birth.

I love that at Portikus, the architecture was the fixed constraint, providing the parameters Kelly used to create the shape of the work. And at Glenstone, the work Kelly made provides the parameters for the space, which is built to fit. A perfect inverse which results in, seemingly, the same visual and physical experience. It’s the little differences.

Previously, related, it sounds like this one is a refabrication of the 1992 floor piece, though. How does that work?: Ellsworth Kelly, Red Floor Panel (1992)

Ellsworth Kelly, Green Panel (Ground Zero), 2011

Ellsworth Kelly, Green Panel (EK1022), 2011, painted aluminum, ACII sold at Sotheby’s in 2013

The circumstances of the shape are well-known, and generative: Ellsworth Kelly saw an aerial photo of the World Trade Center site illustrating a 2003 New York Times article about the controversies over what to build. Kelly collaged his proposal, which he sent to the Times, which Herbert Muschamp donated to the Whitney. Interestingly, Kelly’s collage vividly captures the color of his proposal to fill the entire site with a large, grass-covered mound, used only for resting and gathering, while the flat, isometric image elides the actual form. Neither, as it happens, is it captured in the abstracted aluminum object he made in 2011, which somehow feels even flatter.

The circumstances of making this object are unclear, at least to me. There is the possible timing of an anniversary, of course. The collage was included in Peter Eleey’s show, September 11 at MoMA PS1, but a green panel was not.

The size of the panel is very small, even domestic: 22 1/4 x 49 1/2 in. (56.5 X 125.8 cm). This feels like an object to live with. It was produced in painted aluminum by Carlson Baker, fabricators who were very familiar to Kelly. It was made in an edition of three. Kelly gave ed. 1/3 to the Whitney. The example sold as a fundraiser for something at Sotheby’s in 2013 was listed as AC II, so Kelly had at least two for himself. The title then was Green Panel (Ground Zero), but the fabricators listed it as Green Panel, with the CR number, EK1022. The example hanging in the final gallery of the EK100 show at Glenstone is from the collection of Jack Shear. I recall it as thicker than expected, an aluminum slab rather than an aluminum sheet. Maybe that is the first one. Did they have it up in their house?

Chasing Ellsworth Kelly’s Tiger

Ellsworth Kelly, Tiger, 1953, 80 x 85 in. oil on canvas in five joined panels,
a gift of the artist to the nation, in the collection of the National Gallery of Art

One of the great rewards of the Ellsworth Kelly @ 100 retrospective at Glenstone is seeing this foundational, early multi-panel work, Tiger, from 1953, which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.

Kelly worked out the colors and dimensions of the five monochrome panels in Sanary, a seaside village in France he visited in 1952. It’s one of the largest of the very few paintings he actually made in France and brought home with him to New York in 1954. The work he developed in Sanary has been on my mind for years; it’s some of his formative work that would inform his whole career.

Ellsworth Kelly, Painting for a White Wall, 1952, 23 x 71 in., oil on canvas on five joined panels, photographed for Glenstone by Ron Amstutz

The NGA’s text, written by curator Molly Donovan, cites Yve Alain Bois’ research that Kelly began with found colors, a set of paper stickers used in French kindergartens known as papier gommette. The colors are very similar to another multipanel work from the same moment, Painting for a White Wall, 1952, which is now in Glenstone’s collection. As Yve-Alain Bois discussed here when his CR Vol. 1 came out, Tiger was instrumental to the beginning of Kelly’s official exploration of color behavior; it was where he set out to understand “the strange orange/pink” that had occurred in the found colors of Painting for a White Wall.

Ellsworth Kelly, Study for Tiger, 1952, collage on paper, 6.5 x 6.9 in., via Art Basel 2017

Anyway, the relationships of the various panels are intuited, not mathematical. Kelly worked them out in sketches and collages, like the one Matthew Marks brought to Basel in 2017.

detail of an Ellsworth Kelly Sanary sketchbook page ganked from Goossen’s 1973 MoMA catalogue

What I didn’t know until seeing the painting in person and reading up on it, is Kelly’s interest in the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald. In the 1973 catalogue for Kelly’s MoMA retrospective E.C. Goossen mentions Kelly’s Sanary-era sketchbooks include drawings of the altarpiece’s hinged construction alongside drawings of various compositions of windows and shutters, and even studies for a hinged painting. The connection to Kelly’s most important Paris painting—also in the Glenstone show—the multipanel construction repeating the window of the Musée d’Art Moderne, is obvious.

Jasper Johns, Perilous Night, 1982, 67 x 96 in., oil and encaustic and silkscreen and arms on canvas, in the Meyerhoff Collection at the NGA

What most intrigues me, though, is the possible connection to Jasper Johns. In 1987 Jill Johnston did an exhaustive and revelatory analysis of Johns’ incorporation of fragments and details of the Isenheim Altarpiece into his paintings in the 1980s. One of the first is Perilous Night, from 1982, a work that is also at the National Gallery.

Actually, now that I put it up there, the composition of Johns’ painting feels very resonant with that of Kelly’s panels in Tiger. Johns did tell Johnston he got a book about the Isenheim Altarpiece from a friend. Didn’t say who, though. From Short Circuit to Flag to In Memory of My Feelings, hinged and multipanel paintings were on the minds of young artists in downtown Manhattan in 1954. I wonder what we could learn from a Kelly/Johns show. I’m sure Tiger would be a fascinating starting point.

[Next day update: On an impulse I checked for reservations at Glenstone last night, and there was space available this morning, so I went, and it was hot and glorious. I listened to most of an aquatic horticulturist lecture pondside, which was fascinating. The pond in the center of the Pavilions building is as thoughtful as the rest of the landscape, which really never disappoints. Even Split Rocker looked good. Not landscape per se, but you know.

Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance VII, 1951, 99 x 100 cm, collage on paper, at Glenstone

There were some new pieces in the Charles Ray pavilion, always a marvel. And a couple of beautiful Kelly works on paper, including the dazzling, large collage above, from 1951, in the spot where Tiger was hanging. So I guess they rotate things. It was a low-key flex that they had such an amazing work on hand and didn’t just jump to include it in the show, but chose to let the loans tell the fuller story of Kelly’s practice. Truly a dynamic place amidst all the contemplative stillness.]

Happy EK100 To All Who Celebrate

Yellow Curve Cookie and hibiscus lemonade at Glenstone

Today is the 100th anniversary of Ellsworth Kelly’s birth. There is a lot of Kelly content you can consume to commemorate. The Ellsworth Kelly Foundation has an EK100 list of public events [most of which are past] and current exhibitions.

The Glenstone retrospective is, of course, amazing, but also closed today. Unless there a whisper network of private visits on days the museum is closed? I would certainly hope so.

Ellsworth Kelly retrospective at the Guggenheim, 1996, image via guggenheim.org

If you can go back in time, definitely see the Kelly retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1996, one of the most phenomenal art experiences of my life and, along with the Dan Flavin installation and Hilma af Klint, one of the the greatest shows ever installed in that museum. The Guggenheim has resurfaced a nice 2004 Q&A with Kelly for EK100.

John Coplans’ 1969 Artforum cover essay is one of the first serious attempts to understand Kelly’s work on his own terms, and to recognize the foundational importance of his early work in France to his project.

Edgar Howard and Tom Piper’s 2007 documentary, Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments screened a couple of weeks ago in Chatham, NY. Watching the trailer I recognized Kelly’s trip retracing his steps through Paris from the photos the studio posted on Instagram the other day:

Ellsworth Kelly seated under the Pont des Arts in 1949 and 2006, image via ig/ellsworthkellystudio

I also learned that he lived above our ice cream store? We rather ridiculously had Berthillon shipped to our wedding party in NYC. Anyway, Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments is on Vimeo in full.

screenshot of Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments (2007), dir. Edgar B. Howard and Tom Piper, which screened at the Crandell Theater in Chatham, NY on May 21.

This all resonates with something Yve Alain Bois wrote in 1996 about Kelly’s own practice—still little understood or fully appreciated—of looping back, revisiting, and circling:

Kelly’s oeuvre is very diverse, even though his mode of thinking allows for periodic returns, canceling any attempt at pinpointing a linear evolution. Better here to state his patience: very early on, he had understood the field of Modernism as an enterprise of motivation (it is against the arbitrariness and subjectivity of “invention”-as-expression that he had coined his various strategies); at the very beginning of his career, he had surveyed this field, seen both its limits and, within those, its vast expanse of fallow territory. Because he was alone then in envisioning all at once the many possibilities it could yield, he had accepted his historical task as that of tilling this land, digging out many unexpected treasures along the way.

Now, in a culmination of remembrances of his life and work—and his practice combining the two—I wonder about his relationship to time. To the way he found something from his own past to make work from in a certain present. How long did it take? When was it ready? How did he know? What did it need? What if the indexing of works to their archival, historical sources wasn’t an accounting tedium, but a way to understand and experience the work—and the life—more fully?

“Everywhere I looked, everything I saw became something to be made,” Kelly said, “and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added.” How long it would take, and when it would be made, he did not say.

Ellsworth Kelly, Seine, 1951, at the Philadelphia Museum, which is currently doing an EK100 show of drawings and other works related to reflection and water

Kelly never sat by the same Seine twice, but he did build bridges across time, between the things he saw, and the things he made, and those bridges are only beginning to be mapped.

EK100 Centennial [ellsworthkelly.org]

Kelly, Green

Lot 141: Ellsworth Kelly, Voor Vincent van Gogh, 1989-90, est. $20-30,000 at Rago, 23 May 2023

This is not an Ellsworth Kelly blog, I swear, but with the 100th anniversary of Kelly’s birth coming up in a few weeks, the Kelly Information Complex is kicking into high gear.

“Green | White Paper /”: detail from Voor Vincent van Gogh

Or maybe seeing a Kelly show makes me more attuned to entirely random Kelly content floating by. Like this slightly wild meta-Kelly, a Kelly sketch. It’s a large drawing of a trapezoid made of two lines and the edges of the paper, with the colors—green and white paper—in each section. A piece of paper is collaged at the bottom that reads, “Voor Vincent van Gogh.”

Ellsworth Kelly, Voor Vincent van Gogh Poster, 1990, offset print, image via Kröller Müller Museum

I think it’s the printer’s schematic for this poster, part of a series of artist posters published by the Stichting Van Gogh in 1990 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of that artist’s death. Lichtenstein did one, de Kooning did one. Or had one done. And apparently Kelly did one. Or had one done.

This drawing [sic] has sold twice already, going up about $5,000 each time. So maybe it’s less like a poster design and more like a security. [This is not investment advice.]

23 May 2023, Lot 141: Ellsworth Kelly, Voor Vincent van Gogh, est. $20-30k [update: sold for $27,720][ragoarts]

Glenstone In May 2023

Spider web on Richard Serra’s Sylvester at Glenstone, May 2023

We went to Glenstone to see the Ellsworth Kelly exhibition last week, which is wonderful. The show is an overwhelming physical experience the likes of which I don’t recall having with Kelly’s work, even at the Guggenheim. So that’s interesting. The loans were tremendous; the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s roomful of later paintings makes sense, as they’re taking the show. It also felt interesting that some major collectors of Kelly’s work weren’t involved. It didn’t diminish the show, though.

There were spiderwebs on the torqued ellipse, both across the sunnier surfaces inside, where they were like glitter, and also in a few of the gaps up high. The Koons was still unplanted, I guess I’m glad they didn’t feel the need to rush it for the Kelly opening.

EK 808 for Glenstone, a reinstallation of Kelly’s 1990 floor work for Portikus, ganked from the studio’s instagram

The floor work was incredible. After all this, I didn’t realize it was considered by the artist to be a new work, not just a reinstallation of the original 1990 piece at Portikus. It felt like a Turrell, or a Doug Wheeler. There’s something extraordinary, though, about the Rales’s capacity to recreate an architectural space of a specific, historic dimension, to accommodate an artist’s work. It’s here with the Gober room, and with the Kelly. In the Kelly’s case, there is also a fascinating vitrine outside with documentation of the work, and Kelly’s involvement in realizing it at Glenstone, including the specs for the support and the recipe for the color. Let a thousand bootleg Kelly floor pieces bloom.

Officially a Yellow Curved Cookie, and hibiscus lemonade

We took these cookies home to plant them, in hopes that they’ll grow to fill the room. Stay tuned.

Ellsworth Kelly’s Color Panels for A Large Wall II (1978), viewed across the pond, from the entrance to the Twombly sculpture Brice Marden gallery

I was sure that the smaller Color Panels for a Large Wall, Kelly made for himself, which were at Marks in 2019, was in Glenstone’s collection, but it doesn’t show up on the list rn. It is so great up close. So here is a picture of it from far away.

I was going to write about how the only problem with the Kelly show was the difficulty of getting reservations to see it again, but then I checked, and there was an opening today, so I rearranged my schedule, and am heading back.

A few hours later update: The way the Glenstone pieces are grouped together is interesting, like concentrated emphases on Kelly’s practice. It feels more seriously engaged than, say, the Vuitton Fondation buying four works from a late show.

The loans, meanwhile, are mostly from museums and private collections arranged by Matthew Marks. It reminded me of Emily Rales’ conversation with Charlotte Burns last month on The Art World: What if…? podcast, where Rales talked about being a little surprised that Glenstone agreeing to almost every loan request was definitely not standard exhibition procedure. I pictured an inordinate amount of goodwill, more fungible than the niceties of donor development museums are prone to.

For that matter, Rales also talked about Glenstone eventually building a board, and thinking through the question of what a board looks like that is not beholden to fundraising. Though they are surely respectful and perhaps even friendly—as well as competitive—toward other collectors, Glenstone is not beholden to them. And Glenstone’s relationship with other collectors will not necessarily follow the paradigms other museums have created.

Ellsworth Kelly, Yellow Curve, Portikus, 1990, offset print poster, via Susan Sheehan Gallery

And for that other matter, taking more time to study the documents for Kelly’s Portikus floor work felt of a piece. Portikus’ Yellow Curve and the other floor panels were all created in relation to a specific, existing space. When Glenstone acquired their Kelly, in 2015, they created a space in their original Charles Gwathmey building [now called The Gallery], to fit the Portikus work. And then Kelly made it [again.] That realization, during the construction of the new building, was never publicly shown, just an extraordinary treat for the collectors, made possible by an extraordinary deference to the artist.

Previously, related, from 2022: Ellsworth Kelly, Red Floor Panel (1992)

EK 10 MAR 23 T

Ellsworth Kelly, 13 Drawings, 1979 8.5 x 11 in each, graphite on paper, marked “EK 1-13 JAN 25 79” on the verso, to be sold at Christie’s NYC on March 10, 2023, with an estimate of USD 300-500,000.

It’s late January. It’s cold and gross back home, but you’ve gotten away. You’re at the beach. Let’s say St. Maarten. The house fits a few friends. It’s quiet, peaceful, relaxing, private. Or maybe it’s joyous, raucous, uninhibited, and freeing. Honestly, I don’t know, I wasn’t there. One morning before breakfast, or maybe it was a late afternoon after a hot day at the beach, you notice your friend Ellsworth sitting on the edge of his lounge chair, facing away from the pool and toward the rhododendrons. You don’t disturb him. As you’re about to drive him to the airport, he presents you with a sheaf of drawings, a token of thanks for a wonderful visit. You cherish those drawings and the memories they evoke for 44 years, then you sell them at Christie’s for half a million dollars.

EK 10 MAR 23 T, 2023, silkscreen on Hanes Authentic T-shirt, $30 or $40, shipped.

Everyone marks the 100th anniversary of Ellsworth Kelly’s birth differently. Some people organize a massive, traveling exhibition. Some sell the stack of plant drawings Kelly gave them from January 25, 1979. And some people celebrate the sale of those drawings with a T-shirt.

The EK 10 MAR 23 T is silkscreened on daffodil yellow Hanes Authentic T, and is accompanied by a hand-signed and numbered certificate of authenticity. The shirt will be available only until the completion of the sale of Lot 139, Ellsworth Kelly, 13 Drawings, at Christie’s New York, this Friday, March 10. The sale starts at 10AM Eastern, with Lot 101. After the sale ends, two shirts will be available, upon proof of ownership, as a prize for a successful bidder—or, worst case, as a consolation for an unsuccessful seller. Otherwise, get your orders in before like 10:30 Eastern?

[Note: If the project reaches a breakeven number of 10 t-shirts, it’s a go, otherwise I’ll refund everyone and cancel it. This is the first shirt project I’ve done since Elmugeddon, and I frankly have no idea what my social media reach is these days. Or what t-shirt fatigue may be setting in, for you or for me.]

The shirt is $30 shipped in the US, and $40 shipped worldwide. Order an EK 10 MAR 23 T via PayPal until the morning of Friday, March 10, 2023:

[morning of Friday, March 10, 2023 update: the drawings failed to sell at a top bid of $220,000. Please accept two t-shirts as your consolation prize, dear seller, and thank everyone else for engaging!]

Previous, related: four other conceptual t-shirt projects

Gober Kelly Red Blue

Pic of the “copy of an Ellsworth Kelly painting that Gober made from memory as a teenager,” illustrating his recollection of his first visit to an art museum, in his 2014 MoMA catalogue

In Peter Schjeldahl’s review of Robert Gober’s 2014 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, he told a story of an 11-year-old Gober so “thunderstruck,” “baffled,” and “intrigued” by an Ellsworth Kelly painting he saw at the Yale University Art Gallery, that he went home and “remade it in his family’s basement.” I was psyched, and I would like to see it, I wrote at the time, as I tried to figure out what Kelly Gober had seen–and what Kelly Gober had made.

A few weeks ago, hero Matt Shuster answered at least the second question: RTFM. Turns out there is a photo of Young Gober’s Kelly in the basement in the detailed narrative chronology contained in The Heart Is Not A Metaphor, the exhibition catalogue for the MoMA show. Which I’d stashed, wrapped, and lost track of in 2014.

Continue reading “Gober Kelly Red Blue”

My 2022 Top Two List of Pieces Of Correspondence Involving Douglas Cramer

It’s the time of year when people are publishing lists. And here’s mine. Starting with number 2:

2. Letter to Peter Norton
When Peter Norton joined the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, he apparently asked Douglas Cramer, who chaired the Committee on Painting & Sculpture, if he could sit in on the Committee’s acquisition meetings, to see how they worked. Cramer wrote back to express his utter bafflement at such a request, the audacity of which neither The Modern, nor the art world at large, had ever known, and that such things were not done, so no. Norton had the letter framed and hung it in the front hall of his Central Park West apartment, where he hosted many collection visits.

1. Joan Collins Visits Gemini! Postcard from Ellsworth Kelly

a torn newsprint photo of joan collins's head and bust looking to the left, collaged onto the figure of ellsworth kelly, and a piece of white paper collaged to look like a wall, with an additional collage of a relief sculpture by kelly, so that it looks like joan collins is looking at the sculpture.
Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Collins Visits Gemini! 1985, collage on exhibition card, sold out from under me at Bonham’s in April 2022

On Tuesday, March 26, 1985, Joan Collins, star of the Douglas Cramer-produced Dynasty, was photographed meeting Princess Diana at a charity fashion show in London. The wire service photo of their meeting ran in the Los Angeles Times a few days later, on Friday the 29th. Did Kelly see it there? That weekend he had back-to-back shows in New York; a painting show closing at Blum Helman, and a wall reliefs show opening at Castelli.

a newswire photo of joan collins meeting princess diana in 1985, the source image for ellsworth kelly's collage of colllins's head
Tues., 26 March 1985 AP Wirephoto of Princess Diana meeting Joan Collins in London, via ebay

Christopher Knight wrote an essay for Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini 1983-85, a catalogue/brochure of four series of editions now listed as being published in 1984. The cutout paper collage on the left of the card[-shaped piece of paper] above is similar in composition to Cupecoy Relief, from one of the 1984 series. Cupecoy is the name of a nude beach on St Martin, where Kelly & Jack Shear, and Cramer, would visit Jasper Johns. Was there an announcement card for the book or the works? Was there an exhibition? Was there an ad clipped from an art magazine and trimmed to postcard-size? Does the collage cover the text details of the series/book/show? Does the up-do’d head of Joan Collins cover a photo of the artist, as the caption says, at Gemini?

cupecoy relief, by ellsworth kelly is a white slightly curved slice of a form, a segment from 6 to 9 o'clock, but asymmetrical on top of a white rectangle that is slightly larger than it. cupecoy is the name of a nude beach in st martin, and kelly made an approximation of this relief as a collage on his postcard to douglas cramer
Ellsworth Kelly, Cupecoy Relief, 1984, painted aluminum, 58x50x3.75 in., produced by Gemini G.E.L. in an edition of 3 plus 2 AP, image: nga.gov

The card is inscribed on the back, “Joan Collins Visits Gemini!” Maybe because now it looks like Joan Collins is looking at an Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini. It is also signed, “EK 85.59,” which makes me think that Kelly revisited the card after giving it to his collector/friend Cramer, and gave it a catalogue number. Or did Kelly keep a running registry in his head at all times, ready to sign and number whatever cleared the artistic bar? You see the layers of awesomeness involved here.

But the work was also signed, “Love, Joan Collins.” The ultimate Cramer flex? Or did Kelly get Collins to sign a card when she visited Gemini? The making and sending and signing of this card hangs on the answers to these chronological questions.

If you are the person who practically walked away with this Ellsworth Kelly Rosetta Stone for one thousand two hundred and seventy five dollars [?!], please share your insights-and let me know when you’re ready to sell.

the verso of ellsworth kelly's postcard collage shows the original frame douglas cramer put it in, with a cutout to expose the title written in kelly's hand, Joan Collins visits GEMINI! above a very lyrical autograph, love, Joan Collins, and kelly's own signature and dating of the work to 1985. via singulart
the verso of Ellsworth Kelly’s Joan Collins Visits Gemini!, 1985, collage on postcard, showing Collins’ autograph on Kelly’s exhibition announcement, via Singulart

[2025 update: The buyer is indeed ready to sell, and I am sure you won’t find this Joan Collins Visits Gemini! postcard collage at a better price anywhere.]

Previously, related, what even is this arc:
2013: Ellsworth Kelly Postcards: Wish You Were Here!
2015: Untitled (Joan Collins Toile de Jouy), 2015
2017: Ellsworth Kelly Dancing Monkey
2022 Wish I Was There! Ellsworth Kelly Postcards