verso – greg.org

Raphael Facsimile Objects (R1 & R2)

chris santa maria's photo of two small vertical devotional painting panels at the metropolitan museum's raphael show. the one on the left is a penitent woman n a hairshirt, in a columnar gold frame; on the right a woman in a robe and tunic with the indentical background scheme, is in a red velvet lined frame. — Chris Santa Maria’s photo from the Met’s Raphael show of two small devotional paintings by Raphael on the backs of two amazing paintings

I will not have seen the Raphael show before it closes tomorrow. But it wasn’t until twelve days ago, that the loss of this opportunity hit me, when @chrissantamaria posted photos of these freestanding side panels, reunited from a lost triptych.

On the left is Mary Magdalene, on the right, Saint Catherine. The St. Catherine is on loan from the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino. The Magdalene sold last year at Sotheby’s for a mere $3.1 million. The cartoon for this panel is also included in the show, a loan from the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. I’m sure they’re a delight for many.

a composite image of two nearly identical raphael paintings on the backs of two narrow vertical wood panels. each shows a large dark roundel in the center with a mary-related prayer inscription. the rest of the panels are painted in splotchy swirling muiticolored abstraction, like patterns in an agate or other hardstone — [l] Raphael, Magdalene, verso, c. 1503, painted surface *verso*: 14 ¼ by 4 ⅝ in.; 36.2 by 11.7 cm, panel: 15 by 5 ¾ in.; 38.1 by 14.6 cm. [r] Raphael, St Catherine of Alexandria, verso, c. 1503, panel: 15 3/8 × 5 7/8 in.; 39 × 15 cm.

My interest was piqued and my lament intensified when I saw the backs. Though the frames are different, the verso of each panel is an inscribed roundel set into a variegated field of marble or hardstone. Is it? I mean, it honestly doesn’t even look like the grain of a stone at this point. The Magdalene panel on the left apparently includes a fingerprint, indicating Raphael’s technique of applying or working these painted surfaces by hand.

The trompe l’oeil inscriptions together form one entreaty: “NOS CUM PROLE PIA BENEDICAT VIRGO MARIA [May the Virgin Mary bless us with Her Offspring].”

The Mary Magdalene last sold in 2000 as a Saint Mary of Egypt, and has only one entry in its exhibition history: at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1983. In 1990 it was acquired by “a museum foundation,” and then went to a private New York collection, “probably in 1996.” This seems like information that could be known. Yet while the connoisseurial analysis of Christie’s 2000 lot essay for the Mary panel is extensive, the provenance is literally one guy.

Notably, it is the details of the reverse decoration and the measurement of the panels after both works passed through Christie’s (the St Catherine was sold there in 1991) that confirmed these to be side panels of a small triptych, and not fragments of a single, chopped up picture.

I will not see these versos [versi?] together, which is motivation enough to create facsimile objects of them.

Adequate reproductions of these lesser, minor, backs of the important Raphaels had proved difficult to find. Not for the Magdalene panel, obviously, which was well documented by Sotheby’s, even down to the dimensions of the painted areas vs the panel itself.

The Met’s thumbnail was useless, and the GNDM did not even have a photo of the verso, I thought. In response to my plea for visitor photos of the verso, greg.org hero Brian Hilley tracked down images online; it turns out the Galleria does publish it on their Italian site [though a hi-res image is only offered for the recto.]

a pair of verso paintings by albrecht durer on the backs of two small religious paintings. the one on the left is shorter, and depicts a fiery ball in the dark sky, possibly a meteorite; the one on the right is taller and filled with multicolored swirls that approximate a polished agate surface. this pair was made into a diptych in 2021 — Albrecht Dürer Facsimile Objects (D1) and (D2), both verso paintings obv

The Dürer Facsimile Objects made during the pandemic were conceived as surrogates for the inaccessible and underdocumented elements of these objects. They were time-limited to the moments when these Dürers were locked in empty museums. But seeing these Raphaels together will be impossible beginning on Monday, and for the knowable future. That kind of distorts the model.

Previously, related: Albrecht Dürer Facsimile Objects

A List of Sargent Subjects I Had Not Known

a sketch of a motorcycle head-on, by john singer sargent in 1918, at the national gallery of art — John Singer Sargent, Motorcycle, inscribed as Peronne, Oct. 1918, charcoal on paper, 7 x 5.1/8 in., one side of a sheet at the NGA

a looser, more incomplete sketch of a motorcycle head-on on the back of another motorcycle sketch, both by john singer sargent at the national gallery of art — The other side of the sheet at NGA

4. Motorcycles [at least three studies, made in October 1918 in Peronne, at the Somme, and donated by Sargent’s sisters to the Corcoran, so now at the NGA.

3. Octopuses

2. Turkeys

1. A Black person

Imi Knoebel Table for Eindhoven

a wood table with an irregular 12-sided top painted pink with sides and five unturned but beveled or mitered legs painted in white blue red yellow and black, a 1987 sculpture edition by imi knoebel — Imi Knoebel, Table, 1982/1987, wood and paint, ed. 11/25, 74,5 × 162 × 157 cm, selling at Grisebach

NGL, I’ve never been as interested as I perhaps empirically should be in Imi Knoebel’s work, and that’s on me. I feel like it requires more understanding or immersion in the context of 80s German painting discourse than I’ve been willing to take on. And so frankly I only end up with an auction’s-eye view of it, which has never thrilled me.

the unpainted underside of imi knoebel's 1987 table with its twelve irregular sides, the supporting frame underneath held in place with keys, and the five legs jutting up, each painted yellow white black blue and red, with a stenciled label in the center, vam for van abbe museum, eindhoven, imi knoebel, 11/25, this table is being sold in june 2026 at grisebach — Imi Knoebel, Table, 1982/1987, verso, via Grisebach

Which is all a setup to still fail to explain how smitten I am by this wack Table from 1987. What even is going on here, table-wise? But the multiple side and underside views at Grisebach show an extraordinary construction, a weird mix of kludgy and precise, where dimensional lumber legs are mitered to the precise, weird angles they’re set into, and the whole thing looks painted by brush, and held together with tensioning keys?

This is not a table, but a table-shaped painting and/or sculpture. And though it was produced as an edition of 25 [?!] for a show at the Van Abbemuseum [?! love those guys], it’s very much a handmade object. What a wild combination of attributes for a glitched out Memphis monster that somehow feels very much of its time?

a vector map of germany in green rotated about 30 degrees counter-clockwise from its normal north orientation to match a picture of an imi knoebel table. original vector map via simplemaps — Germany rotated 30 degrees to the left, vector image via simplemaps

[A few minutes later update] Am I high, or is this table the shape of a then-not-yet-reunited Germany?

[Later in the day update] OK, no. The table is properly from 1982/87. I went lowkey mad searching for a Knoebel solo show at Van Abbemuseum in 1987, but it was in 1982. It included the second installation of Ghent Room, 1980, Knoebel’s pivotal exploration of color and space which, for the purposes of this post, looks like 115 monochrome tabletops of various dimensions. It was shown later that year at Documenta 7, and by 1987, had been installed three more times, including at Dia.

Anyway, Table was an edition from the 1982 show. Tafel ed. 2/25 sold in 2023, in The Hague, with a stamp and a handwritten date from 1983. It was purportedly acquired in 1987, at the artist’s solo show at the Van Abbemuseum which, again, did not happen. The edition number of the Van Abbemuseum’s own example of Table is not known, but it is listed as a 1982 work, produced in 1987.

Perhaps it took the Van Abbemuseum a while to complete production of their edition. Perhaps it took the Van Abbemuseum community a while to collect all 25 tables. But this table comes from 1982, and at least one example was signed and dated by Knoebel himself.

In 2014, Knoebel produced three new tables, which jigsaw together in two or three pieces, which he showed at Galerie Bärbel Grässlin in Frankfurt. With these works, “Knoebel returns to one of his works from 1982, a table that he had produced in an edition of 25 for a solo show at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven at the time.” According to the Contemporary Art Library version of the press release the tables are “meant to be used,” and come in editions of 3+2AP, or 15 tables made of 40 smaller tables.

Lot 764, 5 June 2026, Imi Knoebel, Table, 1987, est. EUR 8-12,000 [grisebach]
Previously, Van Abbemuseum-related:
Piet Mondrian Stage Sets with 1980s update
Shanzhai Vanabbemuseum by Li Mu
SUPERFLEX free Sol Lewitt sculptures at Van Abbemuseum

Antonello da Messina Pocket Painting

I’d been thinking about the idea of ditching the frame before this Roy/Rashid Johnson/Rubens situation came up a couple of weeks ago.

In the run-up to the Old Masters sale in February, Sotheby’s dropped this video of the incredibly named Christopher Apostle, SVP, International Head of Old Masters, with the star lot, a double-sided devotional painting by Antonello da Messina.

a sad millennial looking jesus in pain is painted shirtless head tilted, against a black background in a small devotional painting by da messina, here in a tasteful but rather thick gold frame, because it is double sided and small enough to fit in your pocket ig — Antonello da Messina, Ecce Homo; St Jerome, c 1463-65, oil on panel, 8 x 5 7/8 in., sold but not auctioned at Sothebys in February 2026

The tiny panel with Christ, Ecce Homo, on one side and St Jerome in Penitence on the other, is smaller than an iPad, and dates from 1463-65. Which would be several years after Antonello returned to Messina from Naples, where exposure to van Eyck and his circle brought oil paint to his attention. [Though this panel is made in tempera grassa, a transitional medium in which oil is added to egg-based tempera.]

screenshot of a video over the shoulder of a white bearded white guy in a dark suit cradling a frameless panel painting of jesus suffering, while he's trying to sell it at sotheby's — screenshot of Sotheby’s Christopher Apostle rawdogging Antonello da Messina’s Ecce Homo, via

Which is not the point right now, the point is Apostle is sitting in some church, rhapsodizing on the painting while spinning it naked, in his hands, and honestly.

The video ends with Apostle in full render unto Caesar mode, talking about how 500 years of devotion have imbued this panel with a spiritual charge:

“If Christ could speak in this painting, he’s saying, ‘I’m just like you. I am you.”
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Incredible stuff. Then just a few days later, after Italy intervened, and the painting had been withdrawn, it came back. Ben Luke asked Danh Vo his penultimate question, what one work of art would he live with? Vo replied:
“I’m not that type. I need to live with a lot of things. But you know, the Messina. Thank goodness the Italian state bought it, but recently the last privately held Messina painting was on auction. And, I tell you, I was calling all my galleries, ready to prostitute myself. And that was actually interesting, I would sell everything I have if I could live with that pocket painting, I thinking that would be enough. Did you see that the Jerome on the back was kissed so much that he disappeared!”
“Yes, what an amazing fact!”
“Oh, my God. So good. So good.”
“Wonderful.”
“A painting kissed away. You can’t get it better.”

screenshot of an over the shoulder shot of a white bearded white guy in a dark suit cradling a frameless wood panel painting by da messina, this is the back of the painting, which depicts a kneeling st jerome in the wilderness beating his chest with a rock. the detailed grotto-based landscape is apparently evocative of sicily, says the sotheby's guy trying to sell this incredible thing. — screenshot of Christopher Apostle and the faceless Messina St. Jerome, via Sotheby’s

“Pocket paintings” “A painting kissed away.”

As if I didn’t love a great verso painting before now. To live with art out of the frame is all I ask. And double sided. And in my pocket.

A Brush With…Danh Vo [theartnewspaper]
05 Feb 2026, Lot 18, Antonello da Messina, Ecce Homo; St Jerome [withdrawn][sothebys]

Colen-oscopy: Towards A Complete History of Holy Shit

a dingy white painting on plywood with the upside down words holy shit painted on it to look spray painted leans against a white wall. dan colen's painting as it was sold at christie's in sept 2025 — Dan Colen, Holy Shit, 2004-2006, enamel and spray paint on plywood [sic?], 4 x 3 ft, sold by Peter Brant, finally, at Christie’s this week, for bupkis, but at least it’s done

Yesterday on artnet ace market reporter Katya Kazakina noted the mighty fall of Dan Colen’s 2004-06 painting, Holy Shit, a 4×3-ft plywood board with the words HOLY SHIT painted on it, and turned upside down. It was the last lot in Christie’s modern/contemporary sale Monday, where it sold for $12,700, a 96% drop from its last public sale, when it opened Sotheby’s evening sale on November 13, 2013. As befits its title, Holy Shit has passed through the art world’s dual systems of veneration and digestion. Now is the fleeting, interstitial moment to stare at it, try to think back to what we ate and think forward to what it means.

James Lee Byars Dog Cage

In a way, it’s the quintessential experience of James Lee Byars’ art: clicking through a letter to Sam Wagstaff, written three words at a time on an endless stack of envelopes grabbed? left over? from the Green Gallery, where he showed in 1967, piecing together a plea to stage a museum show of a room—just a small one, though—entirely covered in gold, “A state of complete simplicity/ costing not less than everything. Love B.”

Then the next page in the digitized archive is this:

an undated black and white press photo of a qing dynasty dog cage made of the most ornate cloisonné with jade rings along the bars, tiny hooks on the finials for silk draperies, and little wheels, like you're going to pull it along behind you, a 1964 acquisition by the philadelphia museum of art, which found its way, via james lee byars, into the sam wagstaff papers at the archives of american art, correspondence, box one, folder 9 — a jpg of a pdf of a scan of a press photo by a.j. wyatt of the philadelphia museum of art’s most important acquisition of 1964, a qianlong era (1736-95) cloisonné, jade, and gilt bronze dog cage, preserved in the Sam Wagstaff Papers as UAN AAA-wagssamu00041-000035 by the Archives of American Art

followed by this:

the verso of a press photo from the philadelphia museum of art for a dog cage has a letter from james lee byars written over the handwritten and stamped notations from the museum, in a multitude of different handwriting sizes and directions, and what i can read is half in byars' abbreviations, so who even knows, but this feels like a situation where digitization should make something more accessible, but instead, i just feel dazed and paralyzed by the overlapping texts, where to even start, and why? from the sam wagstaff papers at the archives of american art — i have no idea: a jpg of a pdf of a scan of the back of the dog cage press photo, onto which james lee byars has written sam wagstaff a letter, or a note and a hundred annotations, or, i don’t even know where to start, you probably have to go straight to the Archives of American Art and examine UAN: AAA-wagssamu00041-000034 yourself in person. If you do figure it out, lmk

And now I don’t know whether to keep trying to decipher Byars’ five sizes and orientations of abbreviation-filled handwriting; to scour the world for my own archival photo of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Imperial cloisonné dog cage; or to just head straight to Philadelphia.

a color photo of an 18th century cloisonne, gold, and jade dog cage made during the qianlong emperor's reign, elaborately decorated with finials, little wheels, little hooks for hanging silk curtains, an obscenely beautiful and useless object, in the philadelphia museum of art — Dog Cage (Goulong), Qianlong Dynasty (1736-95), brass, gilt, cloisonné, jade, 45 1/2 in. high, from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which somehow has negative object info on it

So for now, I’m rereading a bunch of Byars recollections from the 2014 retrospective at MoMA PS1, and just blogging it out.

Previously, related? Marie Antoinette’s Dog House

My First Cady Noland Disclaimer

a 1994 cady noland artwork leans against a white gallery wall. it is a rectangular slab of honeycomb filled aluminum panel, and reproduces in blue ink what one must believe is the authentic design of a flyer or advertisement inviting people in new hampshire to an old time political rally with music, balloons, and fun for all, for ronald reagan the senile celebrity horse ridden into power by a republican partyful of the most venal ideologues of the 20th century, whose political machinations and corruption have been the source of decades of documented suffering and damage in the world. this once belonged to, or at least passed through the gallery of goldman trader turned dealer robert mnuchin, father of goldman trader turned trump treasury secretary steven, and whoever bought it from mnuchin is selling it at christie's in may 2025 — Cady Noland? Untitled, 1994, 15 ½ x 13 x 2 in., screenprint on aluminum panel, Christie’s says it’s signed twice, but without a statement from the artist, can we really even know?

For the first time in several years, Christie’s has *not* published a disclaimer from the artist when it brought a Cady Noland sculpture to the market. And boy, does it need one, so let me try:

Talking Siena at The Brooklyn Rail

Mark Leckey’s conversation with Charlotte Kent organized by the Brooklyn Rail brought the Siena show at the Met back to my mind today.

Which led me back a few weeks to a conversation between Siena curator Stephan Wolohojian and BR contributing editor Alex Nagel. Wolohojian was also the curator of Manet/Degas.

Among other things they talk about seeing “the other side” of these rarely moved panel paintings, a subject that’s always welcome here.

what the brooklyn rail's alex nagel calls the other side, or verso, of the walker art gallery, liverpool's simone martini painting of teen jesus getting in trouble with mary and joseph for going to the temple, but that's not what is photographed here. this side has the engaged frame, built in, and has a reddish swirl with black and greys, a simulation of a fantastical grain of stone, but all in paint. there are also four labels slapped rather unceremoniously onto the painted surface, but those hadn't been seen for over 150 years, and no one at the museum even knew what this looked like from the back until it was loaned to the met, where this pic was taken in december 2024 — my pic is a little clearer than the slide on zoom: “the other side” of Simone Martini’s *Christ Discovered in the Temple*, once apparently titled, *Joseph and The Virgin remonstrating with [the] Savior on his return from the temple.*

Some were painted to resemble a fantastical stone, like Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple, from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Another, a Martini borrowed somehow from the Gardner Museum, was finished in silver.

the back, or other side, as the brooklyn rail's alex nagel puts it, of the isabella stewart gardner museum's smaller simone martini painting is shown in this photo by the metropolitan museum to be finished in silver, incised all over with intricate patterns like the gold sections on the front and frame, except silver tarnishes to a darker mottled grey over 600 years so

Alex was a great editor and sounding board last year when I wrote a piece for the Rail on art & autocracy. Hard to imagine now how I ever thought that’d be a relevant subject.

Warhol Newspaper Sculptures

a crumpled sheet of newspaper with an ad for gimbe's department store in a clear plexi vitrine turns out to be a screenprint on metal sculpture by andy warhol from 1983. image prob via christie's — Andy Warhol, Daily News – October 19, 1983, 1983, silkscreen on metal, via @voorwerk

On the tumblr this morning, @voorwerk reblogged this odd Andy Warhol sculpture, which looks like a crumpled up tabloid page from the New York Daily News. A friend once had a Warhol sombrero made of crumpled dollar bills, so maybe there was a phase when not everything got swept into the time capsule?

a black and white photo of a lost 1953 artwork by robert rauschenberg that he called a paper painting, which consisted of shreds of tissue paper loosely filling a countertop-sized glass vitrine with a wooden base. cy twombly said the tissue paper came from shoe boxes. — Robert Rauschenberg, *Untitled (paper painting)*, 1953, 18x14x4 in., shoe box tissue paper, glass, wood base. lost or destroyed.

The vitrine especially made me think of the lost 1950s Rauschenberg “paper painting” made of tissue liners of shoe boxes, perhaps gleaned from his window dressing era. In any case, it all seemed possible that such a thing could be a “Warhol.” But this thing is different.

Duccio Verso Metropolitano

the eight surviving back predella panels of Duccio’s Maestà, reunited at the Met for three more weeks.

Three more weeks to see the Siena show at the Met.

That’s the Kimbell Art Museum’s Healing of Lazarus on the right, next to the Transfiguration and Healing of the Blind Man from the National Gallery in London. No explanation why the one is in that lol strip frame, though.

Lucio Fontana Taken From Behind

the back of a lucio fontana painting at il ponte auction house in milan with drips of dark blue underpainting and the lighter blue top coat on the brown wood stretcher bars, held in place with wood shims. two vertical strips of black fabric tape in the center of the canvas hold the slashes in the loose stasis we expect from fontana. the title and signature are written in quick fast italian cursive with an arrow indicating the orientation — the verso of Lucio Fontana’s *Concetto Spaziale, Attese*, 1966, 47 x 38 cm, sold at Il Ponte in Nov 2024, via @octavio-world and @archiveofcanvas

For a split second after @octavio-world brought this image of the back of a little Lucio Fontana that sold this week in Milan into my tumblr timeline, I had to process the ghost of the World Trade Center. Then I marveled that I’d never seen the back of a Fontana before, and did they really all look like this?

a light blue lucio fontana concetto spaziale with two parallel slashes in the center, a typical fontana you'd find anywhere, though this was sold in milan in nov 2024 at il ponte — Now from the front, “water paint on canvas” via Il Ponte

Fontana, whose whole spatial concept for his Concetto Spaziale was the piercing and slashing of the picture plane, then carefully bound it back up with black tape?

Yes, yes he did. This remarkably similar little Fontana was found at the flea market on 6th Avenue in 2001, was cleaned up, consigned at Christie’s, and then withdrawn after being declared by the Fondazione Lucio Fontana to be authentic but “irremediably damaged.”

a persian blue fontana, or former fontana, is a 58 cm square diamond, with a single slash from top to bottom, sold at wright20 in 2014 — “Originally executed by Lucio Fontana, *Concetto Spaziale, Attesa*,” n.d., acrylic on canvas, 58×58 cm, sold at Wright20 in 2014

When Wright20 sold it in a design auction in 2014 [for $50,000, a tenth of what the Milan painting just sold for], they noted this alleged but unspecified damage was not apparent to the conservators or auctioneers.

the verso of a diamond-shaped fontana found at a flea market, then authenticated then disclaimed, with the black fabric tape covering the slash has been frayed and pierced. signature, title, and other text in fontana's quick cursive, via wright20 — Verso of the painted object originally executed by Lucio Fontana, via Wright20

But in addition to some discloration and unevenness to the field of color on the front, the back shows this black tape has been frayed, torn, or itself punctured anew. Was this black fabric strip, ostensibly meant to ensure a featureless backdrop to the slashed void, and to prevent further tearing, also actually holding the work together conceptually?

a fontana concetto spaziale in paper is framed in a bland dark gold. it is a series of uneven rows of stab marks, like with scissors, roughly outlined with an egg like oval. sold at rago in 2024 — Lucio Fontana, *Concetto Spaziale*, 1964-65, blotter paper, 59 x 46 cm, sold in Sept 2024 at Rago Arts

A third Fontana makes me wonder if what’s going on in the back has been more important than we realize. This Concetto Spaziale on paper, with a series of orderly stabs contained in a roughly outlined egg shape, sold at Rago Arts in September 2024.

the messy back of the paper fontana shows the frame, the wire, a simon dickinson label, and the raw paper, which seems to have been stabbed from this side — stabbed in the verso, via rago

Comparing the recto and verso, and the direction of the tears and paper residue, it looks to me like Fontana stabbed it in the back. We may have been looking at the wrong side of these works the whole time.

Felix Navidad Exhibition Copy

a horizontal snapshot of a string if white light bulbs stretched across a white wall, darkened without any other source of illumination, is sandwiched in a plexi standing frame held up by two little plexi feet, in an exhibition of felix gonzalez torres work in the archives of american art gallery at the national portrait gallery building. this was a christmas card sent to moma curator anne umland. actually this is an exhibition copy of that correspondence — A snapshot sent from Felix Gonzalez-Torres to Anne Umland, dated Dec. 21, 1992, MoMA at NPG

One unexpected thing from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is the inclusion of a few examples of the artist’s correspondence, the notes and snapshots he regularly sent to friends and colleagues. They’re shown amidst all 55 of the artist’s photo puzzles, which underscores their similarity to the photos and letters Felix used. But only to an extent. By expanding the borders of the pool of imagery and text from which the artworks were drawn, they reveal nuances of the artist’s decisions.

the back of a snapshot sent by felix gonzalez torres to anne umland has a somewhat personalized christmas 1992 greeting to her. it is encased in a standing plexi easel frame with plexi feet, inside a vitrine which reflects a felix light string light bulb, the only source of illumination in the national portrait gallery space. the background is the pale blue painted wall on which all of felix's puzzle works were installed, and a doorway. — verso note from FG-T to Anne Umland, collection, MoMA

And when it’s correspondence with curators and collaborators, they trace the network of relationships in which Gonzalez-Torres worked and lived. One example is two similar Christmas cards sent to Julie Ault and MoMA’s Anne Umland in 1992. Umland’s lightstring snapshot might be the OG Felix Navidad.

The text reads: “Dear Anne, To more years of living, loving, leaving for long train trips, fat cats, sweaters, breathing deeply salty air, new white shirts, unexpected flowers, new friends, streets full of lights, simple moments, views to remember, tough art objects, Paris, moving poems, writing, crying, learning, growing, shopping, hoping, waiting for love letters, heart beatings on one’s [?], little radios, and more, so much more, …in 1993 and beyond, Feliz Navidad, Felix”

One thing I can’t figure out, though: according to the checklist, this is an exhibition copy, on loan from MoMA. Did the museum decide not to loan a piece of correspondence from their archive? Or did Umland keep the personal card, but give the museum a facsimile? What goes into producing a double-sided photo & handwritten text? Because I feel some new facsimile objects coming on.

Archival Bühler-Rose

At first glance intarsia is strange medium for portraiture, for immediacy, or for conveying information at all. But that is looking at it through the wrong end of the chronoscope. In his current show at New Discretions, I Want Your Skull, Michael Bühler-Rose uses this permanent—or at least persistent—medium to transform temporal and subjective content into objects for history.

Michael Bühler-Rose, *Verso (R.R., Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1958),* 2024, Wood Intarsia/Inlay: Padauk, Kadyakshe Ebony, Slate Matti, Slate matti dark, Jackfruit Wood, Orange Fruit Wood, Rosewood and Mukurche woods, 33.25 x 28.8 x 1.5 in., via newdiscretions

The large, multi-panel studiolo scene is familiar, partly because it consciously evokes the intarsia room-as-portrait of the 15th century Studiolo Gubbio at the Met, but also because Bühler-Rose has lately shown similar studiolo selfies, with different configurations of autobiographical objects.

The other three works feel like they’re doing something different. The one that caught my eye on Instagram [I have not seen the show irl yet] is the museum sticker-covered verso of Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing. As someone who’s been enthralled by the underseen backs of famous artworks—including this one—this feels like using intarsia’s excessive intricacy to right a historical wrong.

*Puzzle for F.G.T. and R.L (Paris, Last time, 1989*), 2024, Wood Intarsia/Inlay: Slate Matti, Ebony, Rubber Wood and Mukurche woods, 12.5 x 15.75 x 1.5 in., via newdiscretions

The other two works are the verso of a small Dali painting, and the front of a Felix Gonzalez-Torres puzzle, complete with puzzle pieces and plastic bag. Besides their relatively small scale, the main connection I see here is that both the artworks referenced sold at Christie’s in mid-May 2024. So intarsia turns a moment in time into timeless objects.

But maybe I’m overly fixated on differences when one clear similarity is right. there. Because all four works in Bühler-Rose’s show are based on photographs. The studiolo is self-evidently a composed still life. The Rauschenberg’s verso photo is a key part of its art historical record. The Felix puzzle is itself a transformation of a snapshot into an object, whose photograph is transformed in turn. And Dali’s verso picture, cropped for its inlay version, only turned up because the painting came up for sale. So photography put through its theorized paces.

And unlike other any other printing—or production—techniques, these photos have been fixed in a form we know could last 500 years, because it already has.

[A few hours later update: Bühler-Rose’s unparalleled side hustle, https://boot.foundation, will be having a bootlegs and books popup at Situations this Sunday, October 6th, from 12-6. A reminder to always check insta before posting.]

I Want Your Skull is at New Discretions at Situations’ 127 Henry Street location through 20 October 2024 [newdiscretions]
Studies for Studiolo, 2019 — [michaelbuhlerrose.com]
Studiolo Gubbio, c.1478-82 [metmuseum.org]

This Is Kasper König’s Welt

Ellsworth Kelly, *Die Welt*, 2011, offset on vellum, ed. 90/100+20AP, sold at Rago in 2021

On October 6, 2011, Berlin newspaper Die Welt replaced all the pictures in their daily edition with Ellsworth Kellys. They also published a signed, limited edition reproduction of the front page on archival paper. Which stays brighter longer, which is nice. But it’s only printed on one sheet, on one side. And so it misses the entire point of the project, while replacing it with a picture souvenir.

Ellsworth Kelly, *Die Welt, 06.10.2011*, 57.5x40cm, selling 02 Oct 2024 at Van Ham

With this signed, dedicated copy of the actual paper being sold this week, Kelly gave Kasper König the best of both worlds. It was König’s invitation that led Kelly to make his first floor piece, Yellow Curve – Portikus (1990), the work which was re-realized at Glenstone in 2015. I guess they stayed in touch.

Sure König’s Welt already turning yellow, but it’s got eleven other Kellys inside it. And there’s even a recursive version of itself on the back. And Lufthansa knocking off Milton Glaser. AND Amanda Knox.

And again, it’s an actual newspaper, not a picture of one. And that makes all the difference.

[Ellsworth Kelly’s 102nd birthday update: they even sent me multiple years of artist newspapers, yet idk why I had Die Welt in Munich, when, as tumblr user @11059 points out, it’s in Berlin, but it is in Berlin. Also Die Welt is right-wing and tacking harder right, with a Trumpist CEO and Elon endorsing AfD in the opinion page, so let’s celebrate Kelly’s birth by reminding Die Welt who he opposed in WWII.]

02 Oct 2024, Lot 146: Ellsworth Kelly, Die Welt, est EUR1000-1500 [update: sold for EUR5940, which is the most] [vanham]
Previously, related: I Wanna The Kelly Welt, Chico, An Everthinisinnit
Oh right, I saw it in person, and it rocked: Wade’s Welt, Excellent

Cady Noland Tire Swing

A Steven Parrino I think is *Bradley „The Beast“ Field R.I.P.*, 1997, and Cady Noland’s *Trashing Folgers*, 1993-94, installed in Noland’s exhibition at MMK Frankfurt in 2019

Sometimes I really am slow on the uptake. Like when it took me all this time to really look at the extensive installation views of Cady Noland’s exhibition at MMK Frankfurt. Somehow I’d just been stuck with the imageless brochure/checklist, and the works I wasn’t familiar with remained unnoticed to me, even when I should have known better.

Like Trashing Folgers (1993/94), the large landscape above, a full-bleed screenprint on aluminum of a c. 1969 wire photo of the junked up backyard from Barker Ranch, the post-murder desert hideout of Charles Manson and his “family.” It’s in the collection of FRAC Grand Large in Hauts-de-France, which is on my Lacaton Vassal bucket list, but which does not help me here.