Sam McKinniss, Joe Santos, Class Passing, 2006, 29 1/4 x 39 1/4 in.,
I’ve been wanting some Sam McKinniss painting in my life, and I did not see the show he just had in LA. So I looked through the auction internet, and found this great, odd, early painting of actor Joe Santos? Is that what I’m seeing? A 2006 painting of Joe Santos looking like an Instagram Birkinfluencer? Did it really sell at the Auction Barn last August for just $900? Was everyone at the beach? WTF is happening?
Only when I was looking for the backstory, and looking at the back of the painting, did I realize it had actually sold once before, in 2015. For $1800, also in Random, Connecticut. The first seller had the invoice and McKinniss’s CV and artist statement in a folder taped to the hanger wire. Very responsible.
Which is all fine. But in 2006 Sam was still an undergrad, finishing his BFA at the University of Hartford. His first solo show, at the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, was only in 2007. It was titled, Portraits. What else was in this show? Is it in the new book?
[a bit later after ordering the book update]: It might be in the book. In a conversation with Natasha Stagg, McKinniss explains that he used to take photos of “people in his life” that he would turn into paintings “in a diaristic way, not dissimilar to examples set by Nan Goldin, Jack Pierson, or Mark Morrisroe, the Boston School.” This practice extended into the mid-2010s, while it’s not so clear when McKinniss began painting from iconically found paintings. So maybe we should be more awed at an early, incredibly deep cut publicity photo of young actor Joe Santos in a regional production of Brideshead Revisited, than a glamor shot of one of McKinniss’s classmates doing Insurance Executive Realness.
Lowell Nesbitt, Alex Katz’s Studio – 72, 1972, oil, 65 x 95 in., somehow didn’t sell in 2015 OR 2016?
Nine feet wide? This painting by Lowell Nesbitt of Alex Katz’s studio is an absolute unit. And look at that floor. That wall. That blank canvas. Those chairs. OK, maybe not the chairs so much, but actually, yes, the chairs, too. Like so many of Nesbitt’s paintings, it’s odd, slightly off, and beautiful. And the kind of thing that could hang a Sam McKinniss painting next to.
Sam McKinniss’s Pansies in a Basket (2019), from a Swiss Institute benefit auction;
Louise Lawler, Silent Night, 2011/13, cibachrome on museum box, 51 x 39 x 2 in., via Sprüth Magers
and Louise Lawler’s Silent Night (2011/13) are three of the over two hundred artworks and design items included in the inventory of assets of Lisa Schiff and her former advisory firm, Schiff Fine Art. The inventory was filed as part of a bankruptcy proceeding and, as recently reported here, will possibly be liquidated at auction as early as November.
I broke out the inventory from its larger filing [pdf]. It’s after the jump.
In other filings from May, the bankruptcy trustee is seeking to recover deposits paid to two galleries by Schiff Fine Art of nearly $1m for work whose sale was never completed. $575,000 was paid to Thaddeus Ropac for a $750,000 Cory Arcangel work, Topline (2019). [idk, but Arcangel lists Topline as the title of a 2019 show in which none of the works have that title. Maybe it’s me for not keeping up with his prices, but that does seem like the price of an entire show?] And $398,000 was paid to Gladstone for a $650,000 sculpture by Wangechi Mutu, The Seated IV (2019), which was installed on the facade of the Met.
Though not identified in the filings, both purchases were initiated on behalf of Candace Carmel Barasch, the collector and former client who sued Schiff in 2023 for $6.3 million in undelivered art. It must suck to have a million dollars of your money sitting somewhere, and to have it classified as the assets of a bankrupt company, and you’re classified as a creditor, not an account holder. Has Barasch’s and others’ lawsuits prompted people to change the fiduciary or custodial agreements they made with their agent/art advisers?
Untitled, 2020, 84 x 69 in., image via Matthew Marks
My first thought on seeing the image of this Wade Guyton painting was of a burning cop car in Brooklyn surrounded by artists with easels and Epson printers. And by the time the Epson printer’s done, the fire is out.
Sam McKinniss, Cop Car in Brooklyn, 2020, 11×14 in., oil on linen, via JTT
Then Alex Greenberger called Guyton’s painting of Manet’s The Ham“a simulacrum” while noting the Manet is currently on loan to The Met.
Untitled, 2023, 84 x 69 in., image via Matthew Marks
And it occurred to me that while the untitled painting itself is Guyton-size, Guyton’s image of The Ham is basically true to the size of the Manet. With both on view in New York simultaneously, there really is no need for a Facsimile Object of either of them, but a Guyton’s Manet’s Ham Facsimile Object would look a little something like this:
Study for Wade Guyton Facsimile Object (G1), 16.25 x 12.75 in., 2023, jpg
Sam McKinniss, Joyce Carol Oates, 2023, Oil on linen, 20 x 16 x 1 1/2 inches Photo: Hannah Mjølsnes via Blum & Poe
Blum & Poe are not splitting quietly. They just opened “Pictures Girls Make,” a show of portraiture curated by Alison Gingeras that looks fantastic.
The title comes from Willem de Kooning, a derogatory quip about his wife Elaine’s portrait practice. So of course there’s an excellent, faceless portrait of Frank O’Hara to start the refutation. A rocky Gertrude Abercrombie self-portrait, Beauford Delaney’s glowing yellow painting of an unidentified man, and a spare, muted picture of John Ashbery by Fairfield Porter are just some of the unexpected vintage treats. It’s an unusually literary show.
Sam McKinniss, Lana Del Rey reading The Paris Review, 2023, ed. 25, 30×22 in. sheet, via TPR
Literally cracking up in response, Nate goes, “It’s a perfect Sam McKinniss painting, because it’s a painting of a subject, and it’s a painting of so much more than that”
“And it’s a tough picture, but it’s so well done, it is really, absolutely fantastic.”
I have had a no-engagement policy with JCO for my entire tenure on Twitter, but as that world falls apart, I will make an exception offsite, for Sam. Because it does rock rather intensely.
Sam McKinniss, Cop Car in Brooklyn, 2020, 11×14 in., oil on linen, via JTT
Yesterday I relistened to JTT’s 2022 podcast episode where gallerist Jasmin Tsou talks with Sam McKinniss about Mischief, his 2022 show at JTT, and about Costume Drama, a 2020-21 show at the Ovitz Collection in Los Angeles. Costume Drama opened in a moment when it was almost not even possible to go to shows, and McKinniss talked about his attempt to convey that early COVID-19 era experience of historic disaster and looming uncertainty. The show included a sweeping 6×8-foot painting of the sinking Titanic—or rather, of a shot from the movie, Titanic—amid almost tiny paintings, including an 11×14 painting of a cop car on fire. Tsou asked him about how he decides the size of his paintings:
A month before Art Basel, Thom Browne engaged Cultural Counsel to develop his profile as an artist and unveil his first ever public artwork in Miami’s Design District. Tol bolster our traditional PR strategy, we secured a high profile curator Deana Hagag, CEO Of United States Artists, for the installation, an programmed a panel with Thom Browne, Artforum Editor-in-Chief David Velasco, and Haggag, creating a strong foundation for the designer to build his art world credibility. Our VIP guests for the opening included Diplo, Jamian Juliano-Villani, and Kimberly Drew.
…except this image, which is from worldredeye‘s ace coverage
Thom Browne, the designer, is an established visionary in the fashion world, acclaimed for his cropped suits and unorthodox approach to tailored separates. But Thom Browne the artist has, until now, maintained relative obscurity.
Browne has been making art on the down-low for the better part of a decade. He paints minimalist compositions inspired by Pointillist techniques, and counts giants of 20th-century American painting—from Milton Avery to Andrew Wyeth to Edward Hopper—as influences. Browne has also dabbled in sculpture, integrating those works over the years into fashion runway shows that are more like full-blown thespian extravaganzas than industry events.
In his view, clothing was only a piece of a larger creative project for a designer with no formal training, but a strong taste for iconography and pageantry. So he dotted his runway shows with his installations, continued to privately paint, and waited. He had a one-off portrait in a 2014 group show at the Metropolitan Opera, but he continued to be known as a designer.
“It’s not that much of a secret,” Browne said in his office recently, referring to his longtime art practice. “I think the secret would be more opening it up to show to people.” For the most part, he thought, it was simply unclear that the installation for his 2013 Amish-inspired collection or the 2009 performance he staged for his show in Florence were meant to stand on their own.
After keeping his fine-art practice more or less under wraps for years, Browne is finally stepping out with his first-ever public artwork: a 21-foot-tall likeness of a palm tree that will go on view in Miami’s Moore Building come December 5, when Art Basel Miami Beach opens to the public.
“All this time, Thom has been…upending rigid gender assumptions, exploring uniformity and individuality, and investigating the monotony of everyday life,’” says the project’s curator, Deana Haggag, who is also the president and CEO of the nonprofit United States Artists. “We’ve become accustomed to reckoning with some of these tensions, but Thom has been consistently and meticulously considering them for years. I think it’s tremendous that we finally get to see him expand fully into this artistic dimension of his making practice.”
Painting, Browne says, is the medium that currently interests him the most, but performance remains his bread and butter. While Palm Tree I doesn’t move, Browne considers the sculpture to be a performative artwork, “in the way that it invites the viewer to interact with the piece and the environment made for it through the sandpit and mirror,” he explains.
In the Spring of 2020, Cultural Counsel worked with Thom Browne to launch an international campaign around their Samsung cellphone, staging an event to unveil the collaboration at Sotheby’s in New York. Cultural Counsel handled guest list management, on-site support, and targeted media outreach that resulted in top-tier coverage in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, GQ, and Vanity Fair.
Though Browne said fashion remains his primary outlet, he debuted his first stand-alone sculptural installation at Art Basel Miami in December. The Sotheby’s performance continued in that vein. “This performance was more art performance than fashion,” Browne said, “that’s what I told the models that were actually in the performance.”
At the beginning of the performance, rows of models sat at desks with typewriters in front of them, frozen in an eerie quiet. One model by one, a standing ringleader activated them to begin their task: an athletic bout of typing. By the time he made it to all the desks, the room was clattering with keys, until the latter of a pair of phone calls eventually ended the din, one typewriter by one, and the models processed out of the room with their workdays complete.
Ermenegildo Zegna acquired an 85% stake in Thom Browne at a $500 million valuation in 2018, which appeared to leave the future of the brand secure. “In the past I did collaborations of course that I was proud of,” Browne said on Wednesday, “but more to keep the business going. Now I don’t really need to do collaborations, so I only do collaborations with companies who make a product that I really, really believe in.”
The main problem with Browne’s commitment to his silhouette, then, might have been that it worked. He described himself as permanently restless, and after the Zegna acquisition and the Cleveland Cavaliers’ and FC Barcelona’s public embraces, where to go next if not Miami in December? “After a while, people—I don’t think they get bored—but they expect more,” Browne said. “And I think now is the perfect time to show them different sides.”
Until I got to the last paragraph, I could not figure out why Browne needed to be identified as an artist to launch a Fashion Week phone collabo, but this is all inspo for all artists looking for innovative ways to support their practice, whether painting, sculpture, or performance. If I ever find footage or a transcript of the panel discussion, I will add it here. [h/t]
