Tag: rh quaytman

The Skull Collection

meret oppenheim's x-ray profile of her skull and shoulders and one hand raised, printed in black on white, reverse, using the original x-ray plate as a negative. oppenheim's two hoop earrings and two rings and necklace are all solid while the elements of her body are more permeable to x-rays, and appear in gradient softer form. via peter freeman inc
Meret Oppenheim, Röntgenaufnahme des Schädels M.O. / X-Ray of M. O.’s Skull (1964). Contact silver print from the original x-ray plate, 15 7/8 x 12 in., via Peter Freeman

In 1964 Meret Oppenheim made a self-portrait with an X-ray machine of her head—skull and jewelry—in profile. Then she made perhaps three contact prints using the X-ray plate, though only one is currently known. Peter Freeman presented it in 2022.

Oppenheim’s self-portrait is better known through the editions she made later, including a smaller, 10 x 8 in. edition of 20, released in 1981, which bears the caption, “Meret Oppenheim (1913-2000).” Whether she lived til 2000 [she did not, but died in 1985], Oppenheim was amused to imagine the photo encouraging future historians to state she did.

an installation shot of the renaissance society from 1992 with their trademark rafter beams across the ceiling, a dark floor filled with reflective light from a blownout daylight from a skylight bouncing off a wall at the far end of the gallery, illuminating isa genzken's resin-coated steel x-shape basket structure that looks like a large laundry dryer. on the left wall are two enlarged photo prints of genzken's x-ray self-portraits of her skull in profile while she drinks or does something undistinguishable, but similar. 1992.
Installation view of Isa Genzken, two photographic works titled X-Ray, 1990, each 40 x 31.5 in., Renaissance Society, Chicago, Summer 1992

Between 1989 and 1991 Isa Genzken made several X-ray self-portraits of her head, some engaging in activities like laughing and drinking. Two were included in her 1992 exhibition at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, “Everybody needs at least one window.”

an x-ray image of a human figure in profile drinking from a wine glass. a self portrait by isa genzken from 1990 via moma
Isa Genzken, X-ray, 1990, via MoMA

Three were included in her retrospective at MoMA in 2013.

r h quaytman's small 2012 work genzken's skull is a small square wood panel painted in ultramarine blue with a kind of oceanic green skull in profile filling the square, mounted atop a pink gessoed wood panel of the same height but wider, so a pink rectangle protrudes on the right underneath. at the renaissance society in chicago in 2013
R.H. Quaytman, Passing Through The Opposite Of What It Approaches, Chapter 25 (Genzken’s Skull), 2012, wax, tempera, gesso, on two panels, 12 3/8 x 12 3/8 in. and 12 3/8 x 20 3/8 in. via Ren Soc

In 2013 R.H. Quaytman presented a show at the Renaissance Society that referenced the 40 year career of executive director Susanne Ghez. Passing Through The Opposite Of What It Approaches, Chapter 25 (Genzken’s Skull) (2012) includes an inverted version of one of Genzken’s X-Ray self-portraits.

gerhard richter skull painting from 1983, a soft blur painting of a skull in profile sitting on a dark table in a starkly lit space, black and white zones in the background that meet as if in a corner at the top of the skull. the first in a series of skull paintings richter made, he kept this one for himself, but made a photo edition in 2017, for the masses [sic]
Gerhard Richter, Skull (CR 548-1), 1983, oil on canvas, 55 x 50 cm, via Gerhard Richter

I don’t think any of this has anything to do with Gerhard Richter making a series of Skull paintings in 1983—a year into his 11-year marriage to Genzken— or to him making a laminated photo edition of Skull in 2017.

R.H. Quaytman Book Talk

A couple of weeks ago Miguel Abreu Gallery hosted a launch event for Book, the second volume of R.H. Quaytman’s catalogue raisonné/artist book, which covers her work through 2022.

I’ve always been interested in Quaytman’s accounts of being the child of a painter, and of inheriting the legacy—and full storage spaces—of her father Harvey Quaytman.

But that is not important now, because now all I want to hear about is the incredibly dynamic of being on a panel with your mom. Quaytman’s mother, the artist-turned-poet Susan Howe, absolutely ran away with this conversation, even as she managed to (mostly) keep the focus on her daughter and her book.

Which, she cannot believe she called her book Book, what was that about? Just when you think the family dynamic has ebbed, and the conversation has slipped back into typical panel mode, everyone jumps on the pile of discursive rubble trying to figure out what Benjamin meant with the Angel of History.

I hope there is a mother-daughter podcast in the works, because I’ve got $5/month burning a hole in my pocket rn.

R.H. Quaytman, Ones, Chapter 0.2, has been extended through July 12, 2025 [miguelabreugallery]
Previously, related: R.H. Quaytman, Paul Klee, and Martin Luther walk into a bar

R.H. Quaytman, Paul Klee & Martin Luther Walk Into A Bar

Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, 1920, oil transfer on Japan paper mounted on engraving on cardboard, 31.8 x 24.2 cm, though Quaytman points out the Israel Museum’s given dimensions only relate to the top layer, so the engraving had not been considered as part of the work. photo: Elie Posner

I’ve had some tabs open for six months about R.H. Quaytman’s work relating to her discovery of an 19th century etching of Martin Luther underneath Paul Klee’s 1920 monoprint, Angelus Novus. That was when I saw a vitrine in Quaytman’s exhibition at Glenstone related to Ch. 29: Haqaq, Quaytman’s Nov. 2015 show at Miguel Abreu, which was a reworked version of her 2015 solo show at the Tel Aviv Museum.

I am trying to make some sense of them by neatly stacking this pile of rubble at the angel’s feet.

Continue reading “R.H. Quaytman, Paul Klee & Martin Luther Walk Into A Bar”

The Real World: Orchard

R.H. Quaytman, Orchard Spreadsheet, 2009, inkjet, ed. 10, 82×51 in., published by MER Paper Kunstahalle, Gent, which won Specific Object’s Publication of the Year

We had a small kid and were living in two cities, so I barely made it to a handful of their shows, but Orchard has always felt like one of the defining presences in my art life. I knew some of the members, so I felt drawn to it, but not well enough to really get sucked in, alas. It was new and wild—for being limited-term, historically aware, and not-so-commercial, which doesn’t seem like much to type it, but it was really a lot—and people were always talking about it.

But not like this. Frieze has an oral history of Orchard, and it blows my mind how conflicted and contentious it sounds:

R.H. Quaytman I remember there being two factions: the group that included me, Rhea [Anastas] and Andrea [Fraser]; and the one with Jeff [Preiss], Nicolás [Guagnini] and Karin [Schneider]. Nic had the idea to open an office; Andrea wanted to open a gallery and be the dealer. So, we ended up meeting.

This is the true story
of twelve art world people
who chose to start a gallery
work together
and fifteen years later
to find out what happens
when people stop being polite
and start getting real.

So to someone teetering on the other side of the fence from Orchard, none of the conflicts were apparent by the time they were all putting on their shows. It already felt so transparent at the time, that in 2009, when Rebecca Quaytman published Orchard Spreadsheet, a three-year ledger of the gallery’s finances—in reverse chronological order, like a blog—as a print edition, the only surprise was that, contrary to what my art star-fixated mind had originally assumed, it hadn’t been primarily underwritten by Dan Graham.

And while Quaytman’s work was the huge discovery for me from Orchard—and, it sounds like, for her, too—to learn Fraser wanted to “open a gallery and be the dealer” makes excruciatingly perfect sense.

If anything, her responses here still show her extraordinary awareness of how the dynamics and structures of art and art history operate, and that includes art magazine oral histories. Orchard felt like The Real Art World, and it was, but it was not only that, which feels worth remembering.

Remembering Orchard, New York’s Iconic Artist-Run Gallery [frieze]
Orchard [47orchard.org]
Orchard Spreadsheet, Specific Object’s 2009 Publication of The Year [specificobject]
Download a PDF version of Orchard Spreadsheet [specific object]

On The Nightmare Of The Rack

kristoncapps_immortalized.jpg
Kriston Capps’ tweet to Powhida about art and immortality instantly reminded me of RH Quaytman’s conversation with Steel Stillman, which ran in Art in America last summer, and which upended my own comfortable memory of first encountering Quaytman’s little storage rack sculpture back in 2008:

rh_quaytman_rack_anaba.jpgSS For “Ark, Chapter 10,” which was the three-person show you organized at the end of your time at Orchard, you made paintings that related to Orchard’s history, and displayed several of them on storage racks similar to ones you have here in your studio. The display of paintings became a sculpture [From One O to Another].
RHQ I felt I needed to acknowledge–within the structure of the pieces themselves–the fact that I would be showing my own works, becoming, in effect, my own dealer. The storage racks, like the racks in a typical gallery’s back room, enabled visitors to pull out the paintings the way a dealer might, when showing them to prospective clients.
SS The racks addressed the nightmare, which perhaps all artists have had, that their work will never be seen.
RHQ Making the storage-rack pieces reminded me of the trauma of putting my stepfather’s and father’s works in storage after they died. Those experiences and the questions they raised–about artists’ estates, and about the life of the work itself once the artist has gone–left a big impression on me.
SS In 2008, you made a book, Allegorical Decoys, whose centerpiece is an essay you wrote about the development of your work. Having been your own dealer, you became, in effect, your own historian and publisher.
RHQ I realized instinctively that, in some sense, the paintings wouldn’t exist unless they were written about and collected. Otherwise, they would be like trees falling in the forest with nobody there to hear them. Writing that essay was an opportunity not just to reflect on my practice, but to locate my work within a larger critical conversation on my own terms.

[image: [From One O to Another], via anaba]
Features | RH Quaytman, June 2010 [artinamericamagazine]
Previously, Jan. 2010: Nice Rack! RH Quaytman on MoMAPS1’s blog

Nice Rack! R.H. Quaytman On MoMA/PS1’s Blog

rh_quaytman_rack_anaba.jpg
So jealous. MoMA bought R.H. Quaytman’s awesome little storage rack of paintings, Iamb: Chapter 12, Excerpts and Exceptions, with Painting Rack, which the artist filled over the course of eight years, and showed in 2009 at Miguel Abreu. [Abreu, whose whole program is pretty much en fuego, had two of my favorite shows last year: Quaytman’s and Liz Deschenes.]
Before that, she showed a storage rack full of paintings at Orchard [I miss them], in 2008, which is where Anaba got this photo. Then, it–or the show, anyway, was called Chapter 10, Ark, and it had more paintings in it, and you could pull them out like books. These racks are the most significant works of a blindingly smart artist whose paintings seem designed to actively thwart significance, at least individually.
P&S Curatorial Assistant Paulina Pobocha has a very nice writeup of it at Inside/Out, MoMA/PS1’s forum-style blog.
Few people know it, unfortunately, but MoMA was the first museum anywhere to have a blog. Back in 2004, while I was co-chair of the Jr. Associates, we pushed hard for over a year to get permission to start a blog for our group’s education and fundraising activities. There were even raging debates over whether we could call it a “blog.” [No, it turned out.] It went well while we had a Museum employee dedicated to it, but when she went to grad school, it kind of fizzled.
It’s good to see they’ve finally got some sweet blog momentum going.
R.H. Quaytman’s Storage Rack: An Archive of Images and Associations [moma.org]