greg.org – Page 140 – the making of, by greg allen

On Roy Lichtenstein’s Films, Also Prop For A Film

I was intrigued by Roy Lichtenstein’s Prop For A Film when it showed up last summer at Phillips in London. Obviously, the main thing was the work itself: a large [3.5 x 8 ft] abstract, shaped field of Ben-Day dots, pretty fantastic, actually, which turned out to be a beach. The other thing about it, also obviously, was hey wha? Lichtenstein made a film? A film he showed at both LACMA and the US Pavilion at Expo70 in Osaka?
I was already pretty fixated on several of these related topics at the time, so I started poking around on the story of Lichtenstein, his film–films, actually–and his Prop For A Film. It’s all pretty odd and interesting, and somewhat complicated, and though I started gearing up to write about it, I’ve kind of held off, or haven’t gotten around to it, I guess, for almost a year now.
But then today, I see that Andrew Russeth reported for the Observer that Prop For A Film, which failed to sell at Phillips last summer, has turned up in Sotheby’s New York contemporary sale next month, albeit with a much lower estimate.
And though Sotheby’s catalogue copy seems almost identical to Phillips’, they added a note that the Whitney will show Lichtenstein’s films in October, the first exhibition of them in over 40 years.
So yeah, Prop For A Film. To get right down to it, I’m not sure it’s really a painting. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a very interesting Lichtenstein.

Starting around 1964, when the world was still trying to come to grips with the painterly implications of his print-related imagery and Ben-Day dots, Lichtenstein was already experimenting with other techniques and materials that challenged the definition of painting. His Electric Seascapes combined dots with new, high-tech materials like Rowlux [above], a prismatic plastic sheeting originally developed for reflective highway signs.

Fish and Sky (from Ten from Leo Castelli), 1967, screenprint, photo and offset, ed. 200, via wright20’s Sept. 15 contemporary sale
When Maurice Tuchman invited Lichtenstein to partner with Universal Studios for LACMA’s ambitious Art & Technology Program in 1968, the artist decided to continue his seascape experiments with motion, perception, and the flat picture plane by creating an actual “moving picture” of a landscape. So yes, this whole thing really fell into place around a seemingly simplistic, even banal play on words.
Sotheby’s pitch boils down the “moving picture” concept as it was exhaustively described in LACMA’s A&T report/catalogue:

[He used] sequences of filmed landscape fragmetns in combination with synthetic images using his trademark Ben Day dot grids or textured aluminum. The project expanded upon ideas he had explored in his landscape collages of 1964 and 1965, which were his most abstract compositions to date. In these works, the constituent elements of landscape were drastically reduced to two or three large areas of Ben Day dots representing sea, land and sky.

Because of cross-country logistics, Lichtenstein ended up doing almost all actual production with his friend, independent filmmaker Joel Freedman. Roy and Joel spent the summer of 1969 in Southampton, filming the props against the sky or the waves. Assistants would hold the props steady or rock them to simulate the motion of the ocean.
Only it never worked. The movie camera couldn’t accommodate different exposure levels for each component, and the depth of field never resolved to produce the planar flatness Lichtenstein was after. So they threw out the props, shot straight-on shots of the sky and lapping waves, and then added all the graphic elements in post.
I’ll leave the details of the films themselves for a separate post, but the point is, Prop For A Film never ended up in any of the films. And so the exhibition history–both Phillips and Sotheby’s list LACMA and Expo70–is tenuous at best. [Sotheby’s seems to realize this, threading a needle by saying “the work travelled to” Osaka, meaning the film installation. They also get the dates wrong; 1969 was the start of filming. A 2-screen installation at the Expo came first, in 1970, followed by LACMA’s 3-screen version in May 1971.]
Which, whatever, it’s still a large, stunning, early Lichtenstein painting, right? And its provenance, OK Harris–the gallery founded by longtime Castelli director and Lichtenstein discoverer Ivan Karp–is unassailable. Well, it’s certainly a Lichtenstein something.
When I first contacted Freedman last year, he told me how he’d saved the piece–it’s Magna on wood, not canvas–after the project ended, and had it on the wall of his loft for several years. The trademark dots meant people would visit and recognize it immediately as a Lichtenstein. Then, when he was in need of completion funds for a documentary–if I remember correctly, it was the mid-70s, so probably Broken Treaty at Battle Mountain–he gave the work to Karp to sell. At Karp’s suggestion, Freedman asked Lichtenstein if he’d help his project by signing the piece, and Lichtenstein generously agreed. The work was sold, and documentary was finished and released to great acclaim.
When he signed it in Karp’s gallery, Lichtenstein also wrote the title on the back. Or maybe it wasn’t a title, so much as a description: Prop For A Film.
Passed at Phillips, Roy Lichtenstein ‘Prop’ Moves to Sotheby’s [observer.com]
Lot 28 Prop for a Film, 1967, est. $400,000-600,000 [sothebys.com]
Lichtenstein’s project writeup from the1971 A&T catalogue [lacma.org]
Previously: Lichtenstein’s Electric Seascapes
BONUS: Freedman is running a Kickstarter campaign to complete a followup film, Land of the Brave. It ends in four days. [kickstarter]

Brandstorming

michael appleton for nyt
Such a great shot, such artful product placement. While it’s unfortunately still true that you cannot buy publicity like this, only the most foolish brand evangelist will find himself unprepared when disaster coverage strikes.

hiroko masuike for nyt
The truth is, news photographers want to include your store or brand in their hurricane coverage; it can add excitement and content to the shot. The trick is to help the journalist by making that sexy storefront/logo shot not just easy, but irresistible.

reuters via daylife
Be respectful, not demanding. Craft your message with current media standards in mind, if only to increase your chances of actually getting it on the air.
Most brand messaging during a disaster buildup often feels impulsive, improvised.

joygarnett.tumblr.com
Which works great for a nimble, inherently creative brand like agnes b.

reuters via daylife
But let’s face it, executing on-brand on the fly is tough. Even if guy from Reuters takes a picture of your defiant but slightly odd scrawl, the benefits to your brand are limited if readers have to rely on the caption to learn that Lush is actually the name of your irreverent beer and winé shop.
But it shouldn’t always have to be so ad hoc. This scaffolding covering the glass cube at the Fifth Avenue Apple store looks absolutely fantastic. Those guys really are brand geniuses.

via johnrevill’s flickr
Except it’s actually for an ongoing renovation project. They got lucky. Here’s Getty coverage of a very high-quality boarding-up underway at the Georgetown Apple Store:

getty via daylife
A barrier which, however strong physically, utterly failed from a brand standpoint. The raw OSB–and not just OSB, but mismatched OSB!–is almost as detrimental as the hidden logo.

“Must Buy Apple Products,” image m.v. jantzen via flickr
In fact, a quick survey shows, with the exception of a few strikingly on-point, silver sandbags in the Meatpacking District, hurricane preparedness design is a glaring weakness in Apple’s heretofore vaunted retail strategy.

jeremy m. lang for nyt
Another tenet of disaster coverage messaging is to balance long and short term objectives. On the one hand, there’s marketing to do and money to be made. On the other, you don’t want to be seen as exploiting either the situation or your customers. So make sure the statement about fair plywood panel pricing is in the shot with the helpfully upselly hurricane shopping list.

“WOWOW look at what Best Buy is doing! Selling cases of water for over 40 bucks!” via @AConDemand
And remember, a hurricane is no time for business-as-usual, and that goes for branding, too. So instead of squeezing out full, point-of-sale retail for every bottle in inventory, be creative. Offering a case of water free with purchase of every flatscreen could build goodwill toward the brand, which may pay off immediately by mitigating any effects of post-storm looting.
There will always be naysayers who think that putting even a little thought into your brand’s disaster coverage presentation is crass and exploitative. Or who are willing to just hand over complete control of the presentation of their brand to freelance photographers and shiftless twitterers.
To these people, I would say simply, “Follow the experts.”

Monocle’s artfully, pointlessly taped storefront, via eric etheridge’s awesome hurricane retail roundup
Not the branding experts who, in their obsessive preservation of brand essence, apparently miss the entire point of taping a window in the first place.
No, the other experts, the ones who live and breathe disaster coverage; the ones whose job it is to stand ready to help, to be prepared to move in wherever The Weather Channel’s satellite trucks may roll. When you’re wondering what your hurricane brand strategy should be, ask the important question first, “What would the Red Cross do?”

colin archer for nyt

Vintage Neutra Plywoodporn

Whatever else it is, Hurricane Irene is the greatest thing to happen to plywood fetishists since the Puerto Rican Day parade.
I love the sight of a freshly boarded up facade under any circumstances, the fiery, manufactured beauty of the plywood grain before it’s sullied by spray paint or Clive Owen movie posters.
Do you remember how they managed to find more of just the right vintage Douglas fir ply in 2001 so they could install Donald Judd’s spectacular 1976 piece, Untitled (Slant Piece) all the way across the back wall of Paula Cooper’s space? I’m getting chills just thinking about it.
I can’t find a picture, either, so these snapshots of the deep, honey-colored plywood I saw around the previously undocumented Richard Neutra lodge I discovered in rural Utah last year will have to suffice:

There was this one piece loosely covering up the fireplace in the living room, beautiful, but really, just a teaser.

What to do when it’s 1950, and you’re out in a desert field, finishing up your client’s hunting lodge, and you’ve got a bunch of plywood scraps left over? Don’t fret the grain matching, just knock together a small dresser or two.

And then just stick the rest down in the basement, so he can use it to close up the house during inclement weather.
Previously: Beckstrand Lodge, Richard Neutra, 1950

Raumlabor At Storefront: Chairs X Urbanity

People walking the city streets with made-on-the-spot chairs. First there was the Chaise Bordelaise. Then it was the Sedia Veneziana. And yet, though The Generator by Raumlabor has had two incarnations at Storefront for Art & Architecture this year, there has still not been a New York Chair. Instead, it’s CHAIRS X URBANITY.

Well, we take what we can get. After we make it, that is. Unfortunately, I was out of town, and thus was unable to make and/or take anything at all. Sigh.
Generator 02: Chairs for Urbanity [storefrontnews.org]
Generator Event at NY Festival of Ideas, May 2011 [flickr]
CHAIRS X URBANITY Chair Fare Make and Take August 13, 2011 [facebook]
Previous Raumlabor coverage: sedia veneziana, chaise bordelaise

Autoprotestazione

image: designboom
Enzo Mari was brought in to design the exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, Vaudon-Vodun, African Voodoo Art from the Collection of Anne and Jacques Kerchache. It’s simple and spectacular, and designboom has, as usual, rather comprehensive visual coverage of the project.
Above, a “film set” Mari calls The Village, autoprogettazione-esque backdrops to evoke the original context in which Kerkache would have first encountered the impressive household guardian figures. At least that’s how Mari explains it in the exhibition’s making-of interview video:

Holy smokes, filmmakers having Mari manhandle one of the guardians! Whether it’s our aging Maestro or the conservators, your insanely staged B-roll stunts are gonna give someone a heart attack!

You don’t bring in a legend like Mari for his finesse at grouping sculptures. You bring him in to fill your glitzy Nouvel folly of a museum with endearingly humble-deluxe, purpose-built pine furniture!

image: designboom
For the major autoprogettazione moment in the film/lecture/reference/public event space, with EFFE tables and SEDIA I chairs. Mais, qu’est ce-que c’est ca? New additions to the series? What’s that wood-framed flatscreen?

And are those DIY display vitrines ringing the room?

images above via designboom.com
Because the laborer should be able to knock together his own home theater–autoprogezzione?–and a case for his ephemera collection in a weekend using just the most humble materials from the corner hardware store. Or as designboom puts it, and quotes Mari:

the showcases, designed for this exhibition, partake of the same vocabulary.
“‘autoprogettazione’ has been a project for making furniture that the user could assemble simply from raw planks of wood and nails. a basic technique through which anyone with a critical mind could address the production of an object.”

So it’s for the [vitrine] user with a critical mind. Autoprogettazione as Institutional Critique. Can I have my show now, please?
Let’s go to the tape: “There’s a display stand.”

No no, no pressure, just Enzo #$()%ing Mari watching you build his iconic chair there.
“It must be simple.” Oh no, you B-roll knucklehead don’t do–

“A stand without the arrogance” YOU DID IT! YOU MADE HIM PICK UP THE HAMMER!

Oh, the horror. Why not just take him to a computer and make him fake type something for you? Or walk faux-purposefully down the Boulevard Raspail? How could– No.

You did not just ask Enzo Mari to hammer something while he was holding it. If you can’t get your $#)(%ing shot, that’s your problem, don’t take it out on a great man like Prof. Mari. “It needs a carpenter’s hammer”? It needs a revolution. Langlois did not lose his job at the Cinematheque so that museum marketing video directors could wrap their late capitalist tyranny in the honorable flag of auteur theory. To the autoprogattazione barricades!
Right after we lock down the salvage rights to those 30 chairs, four tables, eight vitrines–and one flatscreen.

Here’s a shot, though, from Comrade Elena Vidor’s flickr.
UPDATE woo-hoo, and here’s an update from Venice, where Bruno Jakob has installed Breath, a very similar-looking, seven-part series of invisible paintings in and around the Arsenale.

Breath, 2011, via peterkilchmann
Vaudou-Vodun, runs through Sept. 25 [vaudou-vodun.com]

Okehed

Since I was researching the family murder last night–an 11-year ranchers’ feud, irrigation wars, shovel fights, gouged-out eye, yearlong revenge plot, shotgun ambush, an old guy named “Boss”–this alternate spelling of OK’d, which I came across in a little story, tacked onto the bottom of a regional news roundup in The Richfield Reaper, c. about 1948 or ’49, is only the second most shocking thing from the past that no one had ever told me about.

Not Steinberg, Wallace, Nabakov Or Qaddafi

Oh brother, I have this giant post mostly written about how Leo Steinberg’s awesome 1997 lecture Encounters With Rauschenberg includes all these references that show that, not only did he recognize the intimate interrelationships between Johns’ and Rauschenberg’s early works, he also identified hints of dialogue, reference, in works made decades later.
And of course, I’m referring to Steinberg’s discussion of The Ancient Incident, the 1981 Combine/sculpture of a pair of lover/chairs pyramided atop some old steps, which is going to be in Gagosian’s Rauschenberg show in Paris next month. [Hold on, unless that’s the bronze replica Rauschenberg made of the sculpture in 2005. I think it may be. Except I just read the title of the image file, so no. 9/14 update: Except I just read the caption on the email announcement of the same show, and sure enough, this is patinated bronze, and, confusingly, is also titled The Ancient Incident (Kabal American Zephyr), but it has a date, 1981-2006, like it’s the same work, except it’s a different one, or. Anyway.]
I was really going to publish it, but it feels a little, I don’t know, sappy, hokey, romantic, even. But not crazy, AFAIK. As I write out these 2.25 paragraphs, I’m starting to wonder if the best way to put the info out there isn’t as an annotated, footnoted, republished version of Encounters With Rauschenberg, which reveals the lecture to actually be a secret, epic poem of the founding of Bob & Jap’s hometown of Zembla. I so totally called it.
But while busily not writing that, then, and worrying my over-conversational voice, over-excited art historical imagination, and my over-reliance on semicolons and footnotes is a sign of my over-doing it on the David Foster Wallace homage front–but see, Maud, my footnotes are from Pale Fire, not Infinite Jest! I don’t think I’m not copying Wallace; I think I’m not copying Nabokov! Nice work in the NYT Mag, btw!–John Powers matter-of-factly produced the greatest greg.org post ever. On his own blog, Star Wars Modern.
It’s all about the connections between previously overlooked satelloon mentions by Arthur C. Clarke and J.G. Ballard and Robert Smithson and Spiral Jetty. And with some steampunk Contact thrown in for free. I bow my head in awe and gratitude, and I look forward to seeing you back here after you’ve finished reading it.
And then I didn’t post it last night because, well, Libya, of course. Did anyone else notice this crazy, masking tape rebel flag behind these doctors treating a pro-Qadaffi soldier? [nyt/ap]

And then I didn’t fix the post because I was interested in Art In America’s report [via rkjd] that several months ago, John Chamberlain and Gerard Malanga quietly settled their lawsuit over the sale of 315 Johns, which Malanga and like a million other people insisted was his work, made of tons of silkscreened Chamberlain portraits as “an homage” to Warhol, but which Chamberlain claimed he had traded for with Warhol, and that Andy, he, and Henry Geldzahler had cooked it up in the first place, which is how Chamberlain managed to get it authenticated–and which he sold for $3 million at Art Basel “to an unidentified collector.” Mhmm.

My favorite part is how the case got resolved “a few weeks before the May 5 opening of Chamberlain’s first show at Gagosian.” Actually, that’s my second favorite part. My favorite part is the awesome quote Malanga’s lawyer Peter Stern gave AiA:

“[T]here has been no retraction of allegations in the complaint and no one has acknowledged that they are in possession of or know the whereabouts of the painting.

Well now. Glad that’s all cleared up.

EPIC FOIA DHS

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security on the government’s deployment of body scanner technology on streets and in roving vans.

These are the three pages of the FOIA report that did not come from a scanner manufacturer’s publicly available brochures and website, and that were not the publicly available agenda for a scanner industry conference.

Related: DODDOACID, one of a suite of six Redaction Paintings made in 2007 by Jenny Holzer from FOIA documents, and acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2010 [nga.gov]
FOIA Note #20 (August 15, 2011) Government Transparency [epic.org via @wagnerblog]

On The Nature Of The Office Of War Information

Via Tyler Green comes another awesome installment of Alan Taylor’s photoblogging journey through WWII for The Atlantic. This time, a selection of stunning Kodachrome transparencies made by the Office of War Information, selected from the Library of Congress’s growing digitized collection. And look what else is in there?

The OWI was created in 1942 to propagandize domestically and abroad for the war. It sounds like a rather hotly contested mess of a government operation, and its domestic operations were basically defunded by Republicans and segregationists who complained that the OWI was actually using the war effort as an excuse to promote FDR, the New Deal, and racial equality.
A couple of things it did do: launch the Voice of America radio broadcast system, and take over the Farm Service Administration’s photography program. Which means the OWI was also involved in some way with Edward Steichen’s late 1942 MoMA photo exhibition, “Road To Victory,” which included many FSA images.

In any case, the OWI certainly turned the center of New York City into their propaganda playground. I mean, holy smokes, check out these photos of “This Is Our War,” just one of an ongoing series of exhibitions they staged in Rockefeller Center. This was in March 1943, and focused on the United Nations, the 28 countries and governments in exile who first signed onto Churchill’s Atlantic Charter, which articulated the Allied principles for the war, and incorporated FDR’s Four Freedoms. Which are embodied here by four giant, allegorical, golden sword statues: a dog, a snake, a dragon [?] and a pair of unbound hands. [2023 update: In answer to a query by a reader, I have discovered that the sculptures were by Hugo Robus, and were destroyed after the exhibition.]

In case you didn’t get the point from the inspirational photomural cutouts or the giant, somewhat awesome V for Victory, the exhibit also featured “amplifiers at each end broadcasting speeches by Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang Kai-Shek every half hour.”

I know she wasn’t physically delivered into the world until 13 years later, but I wonder if Cady Noland wasn’t somehow born right here on Fifth Avenue.

But wait, there’s more! Here’s how the NY Times reported the opening of the OWI’s next show:

The fanatical scream, “Hell Hitler!” ripped through the air in Rockefeller Center. It took startled crowds some time to realize that the cry and the bark of Hitler’s voice came from some captured German sound films.

For “The Nature of The Enemy,” the OWI ringed the skating rink with massive photomurals showing Hitler, bombed out refugees, crying Chinese peasants, and flaming battleships. If you bought a war bond, you could sign a bomb that’d get dropped on Berlin.

Along the Promenade, a half dozen dioramas were, like the giant banners running the length of the buildings, just depicting the facts, ma’am: “THE ENEMY PLANS THIS FOR YOU”: “Desecration of Religion,” Militarization of Children,” “Concentration Camps,” &c., &c.

I’m sure the uneven spacing and kerning of this otherwise awesome [painted plywood? were there cabinetmakers on staff whose job consisted of building giant letters?] sign/sculpture was frightening enough to cause a dozen Madison Avenue ad layout men to enlist on the spot.
The Nature of The Enemy exhibition, Rockefeller Center, June 1943, 56 images [loc.gov]

Johns On Rauschenberg: A Show In Tokyo

Fear not, I have not given up the search for the missing Jasper Johns Flag painting. The one which was in Robert Rauschenberg’s 1955 combine, Short Circuit, a combine which was originally shown with the title, Construction with J.J. Flag. The combine which was the subject of an unusual agreement between the two artists after their bitter 1962 breakup, that it would never be exhibited, reproduced or sold. Which technically did not happen, since the flag painting was taken out in 1965, and Rauschenberg put the piece, with the title, Short Circuit, on a national tour in 1967 as part of a collage group show organized by the Finch College Museum.
Which, point is, in looking for the flag, I keep finding more things I had never heard about Rauschenberg’s and Johns’ time together, a point at which they each were making hugely important, innovative work. And frequently, it seems, they were working on it together. His, mine, and ours.
For a few months now, I’ve been thinking about a letter Johns wrote to Leo Castelli, which I’d come across at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. I’ve been kind of slow to mention it, partly because it just feels a little weird, like going through someone else’s mail. Which I guess it exactly what an archive is, but still. Also, I’ve been wary of reading too much into a single letter, or of over-interpreting a single statement.
But then I’m constantly struck by how frequently a particular phrase uttered in a single interview can get echoed across the writing about an artist, as if that one statement from decades earlier is somehow not just a snippet of a conversation, but a key to deep meaning. So this overdetermining tendency is not mine alone, and whatever, take it for what it’s worth.
In the spring and summer of 1964, while Johns traveled to Japan, he scouted out Kusuo Shimizu’s Minami Gallery for a future Rauschenberg exhibition sometime after the fall. Johns had some pretty specific suggestions about what kind of Rauschenbergs would work in the small, tight space:

I should think that smaller works as different as possible from one another would be good. Or if Bob is going to ~~use repeated~~ repeat images in all the paintings, one work the size of a wall + several much smaller things. If Bob were willing, I think a good effect could be made by having one large painting + several smaller ones which used the same silk screen images but reduced in size. That is, two screens should be made of each image – one large + one small. The opposite would also work – a large painting with smaller images + smaller ptgs. with larger images.

It’s not that Johns is prescriptive, designing his ex-partner’s paintings at a distance. His language is very careful to couch the decisions as Rauschenberg’s to make. But Johns also has a marked fluency in Rauschenberg’s composition and process, and he seems comfortable discussing it, at least with their mutual friend and dealer.
Johns could discuss Rauschenberg’s silkscreening techniques in detail in 1964, even though Rauschenberg only began using silkscreens in 1962, the year the two finally broke up. [Crocus, done in the late summer/early fall of ’62, is one of the first/earliest silkscreen paintings.]
In any case, one more datapoint. As it turns out, Rauschenberg’s show at Minami never ended up happening. Fresh off his hyped and controversial grand prize win at the Venice Biennale, but while he was still also working as the stage manager for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s world tour, Rauschenberg visited Minami Gallery in the fall of 1964.
According to Hiroko Ikegami, Rauschenberg walked in, saw an exhibition of Sam Francis, [“who was still respected and popular” in Japan], and walked right out. Shimizu was offended, and canceled Rauschenberg’s show. Maybe before Rauschenberg canceled it himself, who knows? The Merce tour was a personal disaster for Rauschenberg, and a rift developed between him and Cage and Cunningham which took several years to heal.

Great Minds Think Alike, But Only Some Of Us Write For The New Yorker

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I didn’t read it earlier, and I have to read it now, obviously, now that it’s finally been published in the US. But I wonder if my first short film may be an inadvertent adaptation of Geoff Dyer’s 1994 essay on World War I and the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval, France.
The Millions has a nice interview with him about it:

TM: You write in the book, “The issue, in short, is not simply the way the war generates memory, but the way memory has determined – and continues to determine – the meaning of the war.” Can you describe the meaning of the war?
GD: Always in the book I’m just trying to articulate impressions of it. It’s certainly not a history book. I always have faith in this idea that if I remain honest and open about my own confusion, the blurriness of my impressions – it’s not because I’m short-witted or stupid – the chances are those feelings will be shared by other people. And I just had this very distinct sense of the First World War as being something rather buried in its own memory. There’s so much discussion, as the war is going on, about how it will be remembered, or if it will be forgotten. So right from the start it just seems preoccupied with how it will be remembered. The other crucial thing is that distinction I make with the Robert Capa pictures of D-Day, where it all seems to hang in the balance and there’s a great sense of immediacy. With the First World War there’s no immediacy to it. It comes buried in so many layers of myth and memory.

Hmm, actually, maybe not. Or maybe the opposite. In 2001-2, I was looking at what a place of horrible destruction was like when there was no one left who did remember it. The difference between remembering and knowing, perhaps. Or the past and the experience of the present.
Also, Spiral Jetty first re-emerged in 1994, not 1999. I’d have thought the New Yorker would’ve caught that.
The Millions Interview | Geoff Dyer on the London Riots, the Great War, and the Gray Lady [themillions.com]
The Missing of the Somme (Vintage) [amazon]

Flip Books, Floats & Photomurals: More On Robert Breer

So wonderful. William Smith writes about visiting Robert Breer’s home studio as part of Triple Canopy’s publication in residency last Winter at MOCA Tucson. Which sounds like the awesomest boondoggle ever, btw:

Breer famously composed most of his films one frame at a time by photographing individual drawings he made on index cards. Thousands of these drawings were filed away in his Tucson studio in what looked like old card-catalogue cabinets. As we asked about his films he would reach into the files, pull out a sequential handful of cards, and make an impromptu flip book, animating a short clip with his hands. The setup recalled the earliest days of cinema, when filmmakers would submit still prints of every frame of a movie to the Library of Congress for copyright purposes and, eventually, preservation. One can only hope that Breer’s trove of drawings will find such a home.

Meanwhile, from another dormant browser tab, here’s a screengrab of a video from 2003, an exhibition of E.A.T. at NTT’s ICC, the Inter-Communication Center, a multimedia arts space in Tokyo.

I love the kind of unabashed way the giant-but-not-lifesize photomural of E.A.T.’s Pepsi Pavilion relates to Breer’s full-size Floats. I’d assumed these floats were refabricated for Tokyo, but maybe Pepsi has kept them all this time. I think they’re at the Baltic Center retrospective now. Maybe someone could find out and let me know.
Float on: Robert Breer, RIP [canopycanopycanopy]
◎ E.A.T.─芸術と技術の実験 [ntticc.or.jp]

In The Actor’s Studio

The backlog around here is so big, I was joking with a friend this morning that I should rename the blog, “Things I’ve Been Meaning To Write About.” But for some reason, I can’t let another day go by without saying something about the upcoming auction of items and artwork [!] from The Estate of Tony Curtis.

Tony [actual name, Bernie Schwartz] was not only a famous actor, he was a dedicated artist. A painter, mostly, though he also made objects, sculptures, shadowboxes filled with found objects, slightly less creepy than Joseph Cornell’s.
The Julien’s Auctions catalogue has some big pull quotes from the late artist himself. The best one is on the boxes:

There’s a child-like simplicity about them…but there’s also supposed to be deep and profound meaning. This is what separates the men from the boys in art. The meaning (of art) is always in the eye of the beholder. I can talk until I’m blue in the face, but some people won’t understand, even then. [emphasis added]

Anyway, it’s really, really not the art that interests me, so much as something like an admiration, maybe with a mix of pathos? Sympathy? Is that too presumptuous? About the mix of over-the-top celebrity living combined with a generally unappreciated pursuit of artmaking.
[According to the Independent, art was his primary occupation for the last 25 years of his life. The article is also strangely focused on how such a manlyman as Curtis could produce such feminine art: Matisse-inspired paintings and Bourgeois [uh, no, really??]-inspired boxes.]
First, up top, just wow. Collector AND artist. There are several photos in the Julien’s catalogue from this shoot, which I assume was in Curtis’s old Beverly Hills place. Mondo Blogger wondered what that Op Art piece over the fireplace is? It’s not in the sale. Neither are those zebra skin butterfly chairs. Too bad. The Warhol Some Like It Hot Shoe drawing is, though.

A lot of boxes in his studio. Holy smokes, did you know that he got his faux 18th-century dining/work table from Marlene Dietrich?? [Lot 385: est. $2-4,000]
According to the Independent, art was Curtis’s primary occupation for the last 25 years of his life. But it must also have been his lifelong passion. Just look at the young Curtis there working shirtless at his easel.

That article is also strangely focused on how such a manlyman as Curtis could produce such feminine art as his crafty little shadowboxes, or his Matisse-inspired paintings. Speaking of paintings and easels, did you know Curtis got this easel from Edward G. Robinson? He even put a protective plexi cover over EGR’s initials.

Curtis was apparently selling limited edition gliclee prints on canvas of his work, signed and with “applied objects and handpainted enhancements,” on his website, which, good for him. The original overpainted photo of Curtis and Sinatra is probably my favorite of his works. He really cut loose. Very Vegas.

But it kind of breaks my heart a little to read the lot descriptions for some of these prints [actually, the Sinatra piece is the original]: “Numbered 9/250 on the verso. NOTE: According to the Tony Curtis Estate, only 15 copies of this giclee were produced.”

But these late painting/print/whatevers, as well as many of the shadowboxes, appear to be explorations of Being Tony Curtis. With maybe a little exploitation thrown in. I guess he figured his celebrity was what people wanted [to buy], hopefully in editions of 250. Oh well.
There are mountains of household tchotchkes and objets, too, typical ticky-tacky decorator infill–and yes, I think having Tony Curtis’s porcelain elephant plant stands would be cooler than having generic Pasadena antique store porcelain elephant plant stands, but not by much.

But there are a few things that seem to bear the mark of the artist’s hand more than others. The pair of black-lacquered cedarwood boxes, for example, one filled with sea glass and topped with a shark fin-like surfboard skeg, and the other lined with one of Houdini’s bookplates. I mean, right?
If I end up bidding, though–and this may be why I’m writing about it, to psyche myself up or out of bidding–there’s only one thing I’m going for: the Tony Curtis Artwork Chandelier.

A unique piece, it’s described as “A spiral brass hanging light fixture with multiple Lucite tags, each featuring a different piece of Tony Curtis artwork.” An entire Curtis retrospective in a spiral light fixture. It’s Boite en Valise-meets-The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths. [Lot 400: est. $300-500] Maybe I’ll hang it over Marlene Dietrich’s dining table.
Property From The Estate of Tony Curtis, Sept 17, 10:00AM PST [julienslive.com]

View Of New Amsterdam

I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated with the Netherlands, or more precisely, why it’s the source/site/subject of so much of my art/object/image/culture interest. Maybe it’s because of New York, which has always felt to me of a piece with Amsterdam in some way. Whatever, maybe the particulars are not that important right now.
But I’d like to see more thinking and writing and reporting like Steven Erlanger’s NYT piece on immigration, religious tension, politics and Dutch identity.

The sometimes violent European backlash against Islam and its challenge to national values can be said to have started here, in a country born from Europe’s religious wars. After a decade of growing public anger, an aggressively anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders, leads the third-largest party, which keeps the government in power.

Wow, I just re-read the 2010 post I wrote about remembering Laurence Wechsler writing on Vermeer. It’s the same things. And you know, maybe these particulars are important right now.
Amid Rise of Multiculturalism, Dutch Confront Their Questions of Identity [nyt]
Previously: What I Looked at in 1995: Vermeer’s View of Delft

On Robert Breer, Floats, Rugs & Flags

I’ve had Michelle Kuo’s interview with Robert Breer [artforum, nov 2010] open in my browser tabs for months now, ever since Steve Roden posted about his incredible little toy Float, which was sold at MoMA’s gift shop in 1970, at the same time one of Breer’s original Pepsi Pavilion Floats had been liberated from Expo’70 in Osaka and set loose in the Abby Aldrich Sculpture Garden. [A PDF of The Modern’s Aug. 25 press release for the piece, titled Osaka I, said the toy Floats would be sold for $7.95, or two for $15,” in the Museum’s Christmas Shop.]

Kuo’s is one of the best interviews I’ve seen with Breer; most never got past the basic, “how did you get into animation?” “So you lived in Paris on the GI Bill?” chestnuts. With what is now a terrible lack of urgency, I’d made a few attempts to track down Breer this year, in hopes of following up with him about what he’d probably consider the least important aspects of his creative practice: the commercial work and product design and TV animation [including still unidentified segments on The Electric Company] he would bring up–and then insist be kept separate.
Because Breer’s consistently innovative filmmaking and playfully minimalistic/animalistic sculptures–and the fact that he did his most monumentally awesome art work for Pepsi–hinted at the potential relevance of the work he kept in his commercial closet.
Which, amusingly, is not really the point, except to say I want to find a Float of my own, please.
No, the immediate point is, wow, how awesome is Breer’s 1966 sculpture, Rug? This was the work that introduced Breer’s sculpture to me, at a show that also opened my eyes to the revelatory breadth of his filmmaking. It was recreated for the first time in decades in 1999 at AC Projects. Their small second floor space in off-Chelsea was creeping and crawling with little Breer sculptures, while the Mylar Rug slowly shifted around in place. The other works felt alive, droid-like. Rug‘s movements were creepier, more ominous, like something was alive underneath it.

Good for the Walker, it looks like they acquired the mylar Rug [there are others, in other colors/materials] just this year.

Anyway, while poking around GB Agency, Breer’s Paris gallery, I came across this sketch, dated 8/71, which includes an incredible proposal for a Rug piece made from an American flag. [The text underneath reads, “float flat on floor (flags) + motors”.] The storyboard-like drawing not only ties Breer’s sculptural and animation projects together nicely; the other three sequences–“cloud in sun,” “bushes in breeze,” and “daisies”–help site Breer’s work in observation, duration, and the natural world. Which may have mitigated the political implications in 1971 of something lurking under a crumpled US flag.
In any case, I expect, if not exactly look forward to the day when, this work will be realized for a future Breer retrospective.