While exploring the ostensible paradox of putting frames on Jacob Kassay paintings, I came across an entire set of paintings with frames by the artist himself. In January 2023, Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels staged an online/backroom exhibition of eight new Kassays, at once familiar and strange.
The OVR’s only text, from a 2010 essay by Anthony Huberman, links these works to Kassay’s silvery, electroplated and singed paintings which lit up the art market’s way out of the global financial crisis. But there is also silvery runoff and splatter on the floating cedar frames. Which would mean Kassay was dipping the whole framed objects in his electroplating bath? It reminded me of Rauschenberg’s order, “DO NOT REMOVE…FRAME IS PART OF DRAWING.” written in all caps on the back of Erased deKooning Drawing. If that were the wildest discovery in this virtual show, it would have been enough.
But there was also this completely other mystery:
It’s an overpainted photograph that appears to be a study for a mural [?] at Princeton. The extensive caption reads: “Jacob Kassay, Princeton Charlie (studies for the removal of Woodrow Wilson mural), 2018, paint on photograph
Washington Post article, Princeton to remove ‘overly celebratory’ mural of Woodrow Wilson, Mary Hui and Susan Svrluga, April 27, 2016:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/27/princeton-to-remove-overly-celebratory-mural-of-woodrow-wilson.” To the dates, 2016 and 2018, the jpg filename adds 2021, for a study shown in 2023.
A seven-year span of events, yet I could find no image of the completed mural. Or even a mention. Or any confirmation that it even is a mural.
Continue reading “Destroyed Or Unrealized? Jacob Kassay Princeton Mural”