Oh, Barnett, We’re Really In It Now

two side by side versions of the same photo of a white guy in jeans and a tshirt with a jacket over his shoulder standing in front of barnett newman's voice of fire, an 18 foot tall painting of two dark blue fields flanking a central red one. the left shows the painting intact, as it is viewed at the national gallery of canada. the right is a proposal by greg allen to cut it up into variously sized sections for dispersal and marketability.
Study for Chop Shop Newman Painting Nos. 1 [L] and 2-6 [R], 2016

When I first made a modest proposal of cutting up Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, it was to make it more manageable to live with. I knew its purchase by the National Gallery of Canada in 1989 was controversial. When I suggested cutting it up to save it, though, I really did not have any idea of where the nihilist authoritarian government threat might come from:

So should Canadians ever face an arts crisis where, say a Taliban- or ayatollah-style regime takes over that is decidedly unsupportive of the kind of painting Newman practiced, I’d think cutting it down and dispersing the painting would be far better than burning it. Or bombing it, Buddhas-of-Bamiyan-style, out of existence.

When I actually did start cutting it up, in early 2016, as part of Chop Shop, it was a direct critique of the exploitative market machinations of Stefan Simchowitz. And again, who could have known where that year would end up?

a book with an entirely red cover, except for a very thin yellow line on the right edge.
Krisjan Gudmundsson, 200 Pages on Barnett Newman, 2001, 24 x 27 x 3 cm, ed. 100, via The Archive
Is Limited

Still, how is it only when I saw Kristjan Gudmundsson’s artist book, 200 Pages on Barnett Newman, THIS MONTH, that I finally computed the terrible implications of chopping up a Barnett Newman painting? Because Gudmundsson surely knew it in 2001 when he made the book.

Continue reading “Oh, Barnett, We’re Really In It Now”

Hi Bart, I Am Making A Stained Glass Window!

a detail of a stained glass window where two scenes are separated by thick arched bands of red and black, forming a v. on the left, two workers assemble a panel of stained glass in a workshop. it is upright and has the same scalloped design as this window. on the right, two other workers load the flat panel into a kiln. from a window of the martyrdom of st stephen at the basilica in saint quentin, in northern france, posted to wikipedia by jojomarg
Detail from a 13th-century window in the Basilica of Saint-Quentin depicting the creation of a stained-glass window in Middle Ages, posted to wikipedia by JojoMarg

Looking something up about the history of stained glass, I found this detail of a 13th century window of stained glass makers making the stained glass window, which,

marge simpson standing in front of a loom at a renn faire or something, looking back over her shoulder with a pleased look on her face, having just woven a tapestry that reads, "Hi bart i am weaving on a loom!" via acme archives direct, because rather than go with the cropped reddit version, i decided to post the full production cel that includes the 20th century fox seal and serial number of authenticity in the lower left corner.
an original production cel from The Simpsons, Season 6, ep 2F15, “Lisa’s Wedding,” via Acme [d’oh, sold]

l’Ottoman Necessaire d’Hermès

an hermes leather ottoman in cinnamon colored saddle leather is shaped like the world's chicest cooler, with a very slightly concave top, echoing the form of a saddle or a pringle. a rotatable leather handle is attached to the center of the short sides. spoiler alert, the entire leather top piece slides up and off to reveal the storage bin inside.

In January I was watching an Hermès making of video for something I don’t remember in the Necessaires d’Hermès collection, I think, and there were brief shots of this incredible-looking object. I scoured the website to figure out what it was, and it looks like it’s not available in the US, which serves us right, frankly.

screenshot of a pair of extremely well groomed white hands sliding the leather top of an hermes ottoman over the canvas twill storage bin inside. the bin sits in from the edge of the leather covered base, so that the leather top fits flush. two metal posts connect the base and the handle to either side, and the top has slits, not shown here, that slide down onto either side of the posts in an extremely well-fitted way, i'm sure.

But it turns out to be an ottoman, but it also has storage, and a handle. The whole top slides off, and it can hold a blanket, as these screenshots show. For something that doesn’t seem that capacious or actually portable, it sure is beautiful. I will keep it in the necessaires column.

well-groomed white hands of a person with thigh gap lowering a saffron colored wool blanket into the leather trimmed storage bin of an hermes ottoman.

Weirdly, the ottoman gets kind of lost or ignored in the Salone 2013 debut of Philippe Nigro’s capsule collection, les Necessaires d’Hermès.

OK, it was a Necessaires video, which is on the product page, and I had to have been watching it for the Groom wardrobe stand, or the Long Bench, a name which loses the sense of the French: Cheval d’Arçon, pommel horse.

Les Necessaires d’Hermes Ottoman, by Philippe Nigro, $CA19,100 [hermes]

Caillebotte: Painting Men [And Dog]

the getty's alt text for this gustave caillebotte painting is three lean, shirtless men scrape away the finish off of a studio floor
Gustave Caillebotte said shirtless workers’ rights: The Floor Scrapers, 1875, collection: Musée d’Orsay

Fellas, is it gay to depict athletic male bodies in form-revealing outfits in suggestive work that makes room for a desiring gaze that is not necessarily male or heterosexual? Is the question not quite asked and not not answered by the Gustave Caillebotte retrospective that has come from the Musée d’Orsay to the Getty. William Poundstone has a rundown of the LA version of the show, its premise, shifting titles—Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men is the Getty’s low-key hilarious variation—and the wall text I paraphrased in the first sentence.

caillebotte's painting of his family's grey whippet or whatever, a thin, short haired dog sitting up, with its front legs extended, its rear legs pulled in, on a carpet of red, green and some blue brushstrokes, in which some pattern, or border, can be barely discerned, it's almost an abstract painting of the kind monet would make in years to come, plus a dog, plus the dog's name, paul, painted into the upper right corner, all in a gilt frame
Gustave Caillebotte, le Chien Paul, c. 1886, 65 x 54 cm

What’s important is, the show also includes Caillebotte’s second best painting of a floor: his 1886 portrait of his dog Paul on a Persian rug, that didn’t sell in London a little while back.

Gustave Caillebotte: “Painting Men” [lacmaonfire s/o bremser]
Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men is at the Getty through May 2025 [getty.edu]

Vija Celmins Postcard

vija celmins collage of a black and white photo of the moon's surface, with some grid lines along the bottom and right, atop a photo postcard of what seems to be the moon, which peeks through a hole in the moonscape that corresponds exactly to a collaged photo of a round rock? or is it the surface the sea, on which a penguin is flapping its wings? which is offset to reveal the moon. celmins sent this to collage artist wallace berman in 1969, and it was in a 2019 show at matthew marks gallery
Vija Celmins, postcard inscribed “to Mr. Wallace Berman,” collage, 1969, 11×15 cm, via Matthew Marks Gallery

The day after humans landed on the moon, Vija Celmins collaged a photo of a penguin on a rock onto a photo of the lunar surface, onto a postcard of the moon, and she sent it to Wallace Berman.

According to the catalogue for the latest of Matthew Marks Gallery’s 100 Drawings exhibitions, held in 2019, Celmins had reached out to Berman to compliment his 1968 show at LACMA.

But that show ran from April-June, and the entire message on the back of this card was, “Cheers.” So this was not about that. It was just a, “Hey, penguin on the moon!” collage sent to a collage artist who was close to the hallucinatory witches shadowing JPL. Can you even imagine? I cannot.

The Light String Going On And Off

a screenshot of kriston capps instgagram of a felix gonzalez torres lightstring hanging from the ceiling and pooling on the wooden floor of the national portrait gallery, with the toplit line of white wrapped candy against the white wall behind it, with the caption "the most peaceful/paintful experience you will find in the district today is always to return at the national portrait gallery. felix gonzalez-torres is the guide you need right now. the guide we need. find my review in artforum this month. and a comment by gregdotorg, me, "they turned it off!"
screenshot of Kriston Capps’ IG of an installation photo from the National Portrait Gallery of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ light string work, “Untitled” (Leaves of Grass), turned off. photo: Matailong Du/NPG

As my comment on Kriston Capps’ insta shows, it’s somehow always a surprise to see a Felix Gonzalez-Torres light string with the lights off. My reaction led Kriston to doublecheck with the National Portrait Gallery whether it’d been OK to post [tl;dr it was, but hold on], and it sent me looking for more.

a black and white 1992 installation photo of andrea rosen gallery in soho includes one gonzalez torres light string, lit up and swagged across the concrete beam ceiling and stretching down the right wall, and another hanging in the right corner, turned off. from the felix gonzalez torres foundation
“Untitled” (Toronto) [on] and “Untitled” (Miami) [off], installed in 1992 at Andrea Rosen Gallery, image via FG-T Foundation

Of course, it goes back to the beginning, where they were shown on and off, side by side. Gonzalez-Torres’ whole point of his works was that the owner [or exhibitor] was to decide how to display them, and that includes whether to turn them on. The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation has photos of an unlit “Untitled” (Tim Hotel), 1992, in a collector’s home, which feels like the normal, private state. Maybe it gets turned on for company, which raises the question of public vs. private presentation as well as space.

Because obviously, they look the sexiest when they’re on, and it’s understandable for curators of public exhibitions to want that glow. But that allure also underscores the impact and importance of seeing them turned off sometimes.

Continue reading “The Light String Going On And Off”

Dominique de Menil’s Cousin Hung Their Rothko Upside Down

the black and white limestone tile of the stair hall in pierre and sao schlumberger's parisian mansion was photographed by horst to show its decoration, the white painted swagged console flanked by two white upholstered and painted fauteuils were arranged under an upside down rothko painting in red, black, orange, and brown. in the back of the space, under the curve of the stone staircase, a vertical ad reinhardt painting of dark blues hung in shadow. the intense spot of light on the base of the stairs indicates a glass door just out of the photo on the right. via collector walls instagram, but originally from vogue 1974
1974 Horst photo for Condé Nast of Pierre & São Schlumberger’s house in Paris, where they hung Rothko’s No. 21 (Red, Brown, Black, Orange), 1951 (but dated 1953), upside down. via ig/collectorwalls

Speaking of hanging paintings upside down, a few days ago Claudio Santambrogio shared a link to a Sotheby’s Magazine story by Lucas Oliver Mill about a Franz Kline that Cy Twombly’s brother-in-law had hung upside down. In it he mentioned Pierre & Sã0 Schlumberger “famously [hanging] their Rothko upside down in the entryway of their Paris home out of pure preference.”

Which sounds like new information from last July, when Mill posted Horst’s photos of the Schlumbergers’ hall on his Instagram @collectorwalls. Then it wasn’t famously, but “Curiously,” and it was unclear if the inversion was “by personal choice or perhaps by mistake.”

Well, when Horst shot their house for Vogue in 1974, the Schlumbergers were the life of the party in Paris; São was the biggest single customer of couture in the world; and in 2014, Sotheby’s liquidated their estate, including the Rothko. So no one in that crowd was going to say the Rothko hang was anything but a masterful decorating gambit, sir.

Continue reading “Dominique de Menil’s Cousin Hung Their Rothko Upside Down”

Phone It In, Vol. 1: an Art Writing Mixtape

Thanks to everyone who called in, and who shared the word about this little audio experiment, which I’ve called an anthology, a compilation, and now a mixtape. Phone It In, Vol. 1 [mp3] is also a reading list, with sources and links to the included quotes. As you’ll see from the playlist below, there are some classics, some fresh finds, and even a breaking news story.

Whatever it is, if you come across some art-related writing that sticks with you for whatever reason, please call and share a bit of it at 34-SOUVENIR, and I’ll bundle those up, too, and put them out here.

As I was putting the tracks together, I discovered that when I first downloaded the calls, I’d accidentally overwritten Carolina Miranda’s call over everyone who called after her. And for a minute I thought, her call is such a mic drop, I really should just go with that. Instead, I moved it to the end, one of the only chronological shifts in the compilation. [Miranda’s cold open is a lol clapback to my voicemail greeting, which I shortened from a full explanation of the project to “Whadja find??”]

Miranda’s quote, from Annie-B Parson, really laid bare the unspoken essence of what I was hoping for here: not just favorite line, or a moment of memorable or powerful writing, but something that you read now that had an impact now.

It feels like an impossible ask, or at least a daunting one, but I really wanted to hear examples, even snippets, where art-related writing mattered in this dire af moment. I think everyone came through, and I am psyched and grateful.

Play or download Phone It In, Vol. 1, an art writing mixtape from greg.org [mp3, 7.4 mb, 15:20]

Continue reading “Phone It In, Vol. 1: an Art Writing Mixtape”

This Is The Time To Hang Your Johns Flags Upside Down

an installation view of three jasper johns flag paintings on a white wall with a dark floor, from a 2018 show at the broad collection in los angeles, but each painting has been turned upside down. original image by eugenio rodriquez via artforum
altered installation photo of upside down flag paintings from The Broad’s 2018 exhibition, “Something Resembling Truth,” original image by Eugenio Rodriguez, via artforum

When I first thought of it, it was still within the framework that has dominated art critical discussion of Jasper Johns’ work since the beginning: Is it an upside down flag painting or a painting of an upside down flag?

But this is not the moment for glib rhetorical dualities. Right now an upside down flag does not have to be either “a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property” or a political protest. With active attacks on democratic institutions and the rule of law under the US Constitution, it can be and must be, unfortunately, both.

Continue reading “This Is The Time To Hang Your Johns Flags Upside Down”

Cy Twombly—Rainer Speck at Maison D’Art

a nearly empty off white title page of an exhibition catalogue has cy twombly printed in very very small letters in the upper center, and "To Rainer, Cy T" written by hand by the artist. from the collection of rainer speck at maison d'art in los angeles in feb-may 2025
the signed title page of Rainer Speck’s copy of the 1987 exhibition catalogue for Cy Twombly Series Sobre
Paper 1959-1987, which traveled from Bonn to Fondació la Caixa. image: Maison D’Art

I’ve been hearing about it from people in LA and seeing it on various instagrams, and the Maison D’Art exhibition of Dr. Rainer Speck’s collection and correspondence with Cy Twombly sounds like an absolute winner. It runs through May; I bought the little catalogue instantly.

Speck rolled up on Twombly in Rome in 1970 as a young collector, and the two kept in touch:

A selection of letters from Twombly to Speck is the foundation of this project. For Speck, the thrill of collecting lies in interrogating the ways that art, reading, and writing influence one another; these letters are a personal manifestation of this interest. In placing these letters alongside the ephemera and artworks they discuss, this exhibition and its publication strive to materialize these conversations and to create a tangible transcript of their relationship.

With their layers of text and imagery, Twombly’s works function as another kind of transcript, merging poetic and painterly elements and creating subtle visual palimpsests. Twombly’s works evoke the literary, mythical, and historical worlds of Western culture and interweave them with his abstract gestures and contemporary reflections. These works reveal Twombly’s artistic depth and highlight the integral role of language and literature to his process—a pursuit that resonates with Speck’s devotion to literature.

This relationship between drawing and writing, art and poetry, is an endlessly rewarding way into Twombly’s work. Poet Dean Rader talked about this last year at the Nicola del Roscio Foundation; and Tacita Dean spent part of her night in the Menil’s Twombly Pavilion trying to replicate words from his paintings. As with his photographs, bringing Twombly’s letters and books into consideration of his project feels long overdue.

NGL, the way the jpg above was cropped in my browser left me reeling as I imagined Twombly breaking out his sickest, most stripped back letterhead to write Speck the most stripped back letter: “To Rainer, Cy T.” But it turns out to be the title page dedication of an exhibition catalogue. Which is still great, but it does mean I don’t have to jump on a plane to LA this second; I can plan a little.

Cy Twombly—Reiner Speck: Fragments of an Adoration, curated by Donald Ryan and Sabine Schiffer, is at Maison D’Art in LA through 24 May [maisondart]

Rochelle Feinstein Is Over The Rainbow

a concrete-colored granite slab floored gallery with a bright white grid of overhead lighting and a stairway in the corner at the secession in vienna is installed with several large square paintings in red, orange, and yellow, on the far wall, plus a square of the same size marked out in blue tape containing three rows of smaller images. two strings of laminated postcard-size photos hang from the ceiling; a cart loaded with some rainbow palette abstract paintings is in the left corner, and an indistinct object in a swirl of color and solid acrylic slab is on the floor in the lower foreground, an installation view of rochelle feinstein's 2024-25 show, the today show
Installation view of Rochelle Feinstein’s The Today Show, at Secession, Vienna, Dec 2024-Feb 2025, photos: Oliver Ottenschläger via Galerie Francesca Pia

In her solo presentation, The Today Show, which closed a couple of weeks ago at the Secession in Vienna, Rochelle Feinstein left blue painter’s tape around some works to reveal the process of exhibition making and encased other objects in slabs of acrylic. Obviously, I was very interested.

a top-down photo of a flat, slightly rectangular object, a blurrily painted canvas dropcloth, predominantly blue orange and a hint of yellow and green, is encased in a slab of acrylic resin slightly larger than it. it is called embedded, a 2024 work by rochelle feinstein
Installation view of Rochelle Feinstein’s The Today Show, at Secession, Vienna, Dec 2024-Feb 2025, photos: Oliver Ottenschläger via Galerie Francesca Pia

I was especially interested in the beautiful and slightly inexplicable object on the floor, which looked like a painting embedded in a slab of acrylic. There was no checklist, and no caption. [shoutout @voorwerk for reblogging @peabah on tumblr.]

In the press kit it is called Embedded (2024), and is described only as a “resin floor piece.” In his catalogue essay the show’s curator, Damian Lentini calls it Embedded I, and notes how its “creased, slightly-off-rainbow-coloured dropcloth…appears as an almost fossilised remnant from a bygone era.”

three white ppl sitting on a very low dais in viennese chairs with viennese side tables between them: from left, rochelle feinstein, in dark clothes with long, curly hair parted in the middle; in the middle justin lieberman, a bald bearded thin fellow in khakis and a festive red printed shirt, is pointing toward feinstein; on the right, stephanie weber, younger-seeming, with short bobbed brown hair, also parted in the middle, black pants and a geometric sweater. all have their legs crossed. behind them is a two-part painting by feinstein whose main element is vertical stripes of primary/rainbow/or tv test pattern colors, crossed multiple times with thick passes of sprayed color of the same palette. it is a screenshot of a conversation from december 2024 at the secession in vienna.

About 36 minutes into their pre-opening conversation with the artist last December, Justin Lieberman and Stephanie Weber asked Feinstein about the resin-embedded work [tl;dr I’m not interested anymore]:

Continue reading “Rochelle Feinstein Is Over The Rainbow”

Calling it: lmk a great bit of art text

What’s a bit of art writing that you loved? That stuck with you? That made you think? That made you cringe? That made you want to see something? That made you want to say something? Something in a review? A critique? An essay? A blog post? A social media post? A press release? An auction catalogue? A wall text?

If you read an amazing, short piece of art-related writing recently, why not hold up to the light, so we can all marvel at it together?

Call the greg.org voicemail at 34-SOUVENIR (347-688-3647) and leave a message with:
* your name or handle [optional],
* you reading one brief art-related text [e.g., a sentence or two, 200 hundred or so words, a paragraph max, not the whole thing]
* the writer and source.

You can quote yourself, and if you’re sitting on a gold mine of great texts, you can call more than once, but please keep it to one quote per call. And no slop, bots or twitter.

When I get enough, I’ll edit them together and post a compilation here with links to the sources. Will that be in a day? A week? A month? Never because the idea of making a voice call is ridiculous? I have no idea!

So your recording may be used [unless it’s hateful or absolutely sucks, obv, editor’s call], but any other info goes nowhere and nothing is done with it.

For mine I’m gonna go with either a couple of lines from My night with Cy, the notes Tacita Dean made while spending the night in the Menil’s Twombly galleries, which are inserted in Cy Dear, her new book from the Menil & MACK books, or nine words I could never have imagined before, and which I now can’t imagine being without: “This copy of Ulysses belongs to me, Marsden Hartley.”

[NEXT MORNING UPDATE: After living with this expectation for a few hours, I see that it cannot be a crowdsourced panning for art writing gold, which is anxious and stressful. Instead, I’m treating it as a note to myself, a way to mark, remember, and share a good quote or idea as I find them. So if you read something that makes you think, stop, lol, or smdh, take a second and share it by calling 34-SOUVENIR.]

Hitting Frieze Like Peak Drone Strike Obama

a telepresence robot at a frieze la art fair booth running into a wall-sized painting by flora yuhknovich while a black-clad gallery attendant reacts in startled horror. is the concept here, but the original video is from a telepresence robot test in the offices of the verge
live Frieze LA booth attendant reaction:

I already mentioned it on social media, but am archiving it here for the future, but Nate Freeman calling Benjamin Godsill’s remote navigation of Frieze LA via an on-the-ground assistant, facetime, and a desktopful of preview PDFs “Peak drone strike Obama” was just about perfect. The Nota Bene boys truly are the chroniclers of this, our historic art world moment. [chef kiss emoji] [target emoji]

the situation room at the white house in which obama and a younger and alert joe biden (sigh) sit across from hilary clinton and a bunch of other ppl all staring off camera to the left, as they watch on a monitor out of the image as their art advisor facetimes in from frieze la art fair, reporting on the condition, suitability, and availability of various paintings. in front of hilary, exposed to the camera, are images of the tyler mitchell preview pdf she got from gagosian, and the rashid johnson preview pdf on her computer screen that iwan wirth sent over for her consideration, is the concept here. they were actually, i believe, watching seal team six take out osama bin laden. i don't know of any images of peak drone strike obama
Rashid & Tyler preview

For History—and for Carolina Miranda—I made these explanatory graphics.