greg.org – Page 3 – the making of, by greg allen

It Is Human Nature To Sell Off The Richard Prince Print Separately

After already selling off their collection of modernist houses filled with iconic design and postwar art, Gabrielle and Michael Boyd are now liquidating their vast art, architecture & design library.

a richard prince print of four black ovals on a white vertical sheet of paper, arranged in a way that could very vaguely approximate two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but not really. selling at wright auction in 2026 — Richard Prince, orphaned screenprint from Human Nature (dub version), 2001, 24 x 17 cm, signed but unnumbered ed. 250, being sold by the Boyds at Wright20

The Warhol catalogue raisonné AND the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. Thirty eight Donald Judd books at a pop. Thousands and thousands of books, except, for some reason, the one they stripped this Richard Prince screenprint from: the deluxe edition of Prince & Glenn O’Brien’s little 2001 catalogue, Human Nature (dub version). Why ya holding back on us, Boyds?

a thin, cornflower blue cloth covered book by richard prince and glenn o'brien titled human nature in a cardboard brown-colored slipcover with four black ovals printed on it in a composition that resembles two eyes, a giant nose, and a little mouth, this copy being sold by nick harvill libraries in 2026 — a beautiful example of the non-deluxe version of Richard Prince & Glenn O’Brien’s Human Nature (dub version), 2001, ed. 750, with an inscription by O’Brien, at Nick Harvill Libraries

Lot 208: Richard Prince, Untitled from Human Nature (dub version), 2001, est. $600-800 [update: sold for $466, book not included] [wright20]

David Platzker on Artist Banners

screenshot of marian goodman gallery instagram post for an exhibition of banners at the independent art fair at sothebys in the breuer building that used to be the whitney museum don't get me started. the roy lichtenstein felt banner night seascape is tall and thin and has a benday dot streak of clouds across a full moon in a dark blue sky which is reflected and distorted in a dark blue sea in the lower quarter of the banner. it hangs on a featureless white gallery wall that is not, i think, the breuer. liked by matthew higgs 2015, and others — Screenshot of Marian Goodman Gallery’s IG post of Night Seascape, a felt banner made in 1966 in an edition of 20 + 2 AP by The Betsy Ross Flag & Banner Company, which is on view at Independent 20th Century.

At the Independent this weekend, David Platzker’s Specific Objects and Marian Goodman Gallery are showing a selection of artist banners from the Betsy Ross Flag & Banner Company. Additional banners are at the gallery in Tribeca, and there’s also a print publication where Platzker pulls together the history of the artist banner project, from a Madison Avenue art gallery’s attempt to advertise shows during the city’s newspaper strike in 1963; to an immediately successful traveling exhibition organized with the American Federation of Arts; to the founding of Multiples, Inc. to publish artist editions in non-banner formats; and eventually to Marian Goodman founding her own gallery.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Night Seascape (1966) [above] is from Betsy Ross’s breakthrough era, when artists were creating works specifically for the banner medium.

Andy Warhol, Pat for First Lady, 1963, 7 x 5 1/2 feet, nylon, image via the AFA Papers at AAA

Platzker documents 95 banners made over a decade, but one of his most remarkable finds is from the beginning, the Betsy Ross debut show at Graham Gallery in June 1963. It is a 7-foot banner by Andy Warhol, a 5.5-foot wide screenprint on nylon of a 1960 Richard Nixon presidential campaign button with Nixon’s wife Pat, and it was completely unknown and undocumented in Warhol’s oeuvre.

Pat for First Lady 1960 campaign button, 3 1/2 in. diameter, via LBJstore, h/t David Platzker

Nixon’s campaign organized a whole Pat for First Lady Week in October 1960. Platzker notes that “Nixon, having lost to Kennedy and then to Pat Brown in the 1962 California gubernatorial election, had recently moved to the Upper East Side,” started work as a corporate lawyer, and told the press, “he was never going to run for political office again.” So in the midst of Camelot, just months after Jackie had enlisted Mark Rothko and Franz Kline to help bring the Mona Lisa to the Met, Warhol was making a giant reminder of what might have been. And the Nixons might have seen it.

the dodgeball of prophecy meme of a stock photo of a young black girl in the right foreground ready to throw the red ball in her hands at her three friends on a suburban lawn, who are all bracing themselves for impact. a campaign button of pat for first lady is photoshopped over the dodge ball, and a text, warhol and the betsy ross flag and banner company, is over her arm and torso. the three target kids are labeled, america.

After the Graham Gallery, the AFA sent the show, Banners USA, on a two-year national tour. On November 22, 1963, it was on view at East Tennessee State University, its second of fourteen stops.

FREE AS IN FREE TIBET BEANIE

Traffic stopped where it should flow, and got absolutely jammed on the diverted sidestreets where it should have trickled, and I assumed Xi Jinping was on the move to or from the Chinese Embassy, which is in the neighborhood.

a white guy's forehead in a free tibet beanie with a large march of tibetan protestors in the street behind him, sept 2026 in dc

Just the opposite. I went down the street to see, and it was a huge protest march for Tibet, larger than I’ve seen in years. So I stood to watch. Then this guy walks by with this rad beanie, and so I wade in, and ask him where to get one, and he’s like, “you want this hat?”

And I’m all, “One like this?”

And he goes, “Have this one!”

And I’m like, “Really? Thanks!”

an actylic knit beanie with a simplified version of the tibetan flag, with a gold sun against a radiating red and blue background, and a white perspectival base that reads free tibet in black, sits on an enzo mari pine tabletop, a memento of a tibetan rights protest march that just passed through my neighborhood in dc, during the sept 2026 visit of xi jinping — Free as in Tibet: a Free Tibet hat a Tibetan rights marcher just gave me

So I stood there with my new FREE TIBET beanie, smiling back at the marchers, and then I see a couple of other guys with the hat, and so I wade in and ask them where it came from, and they’re like, “My friend just gave it to me.”

So I still don’t know. I see some online, discontinued products on the Amazon archipelago. Some variations are a little more sophisticated, double-sided, or with the red and blue radiating out to better match the flag.

a 2007 installation in an industrial space in geneva turned into a gallery of superflex's free beer project, with a table in the center of the space with a small brewing kit, like a pressure cooker or something, and bottles on a shelf underneath, a redbottle drying rack that could have been more duchampian but no, a couple of minifridges in the back with finished product, and a giant yellow banner suspended above the table in mid air, with the words free beer free beer on the left in an iconic but freely available block style, and on the right, free as in free speech, a reference to the richard stallman quote that launched the project in 2005, when superflex was like, why couldn't the beer be free too? photo by francis ware — Superflex, Free Beer/Brewing Kit, 2005, installation at Centre d’Art Contemporaine in Geneva in 2007 by Francis Ware via superflex

So maybe this is just a Free Tibet hat that circulates among friends of Tibet, a free Tibet hat. In any case, I will add it to the greg.org Free Tibet Textile Collection.

©/®/™ Warhol x Uniqlo T-Shirts

Uniqlo, you know my email conversion rate, and I’m literally inside your linen shirt right now. And The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., I will always be grateful for that AWP award that one time. So know that I am coming from a place of love when I say, “‘ANDY WARHOL TRANSFORMATION Discover the collection that traces the sources of Warhol’s inspiration by exploring the everyday images that inspired his iconic works.’ WTF?”

a headless white guy modeling a black uniqlo tshirt printed with handwritten instructions for screenprinting patricia caulfield's photo of four hibiscus flowers next to a warhol painting of same, standing against a blurry green and yellow background that, I suspect, is based the warhol flowers painting itself. a mechanically produced signature of andy warhol, probably from the cash print, or a rubber stamp or something, is superimposed on the figure at the bottom of the image, from a uniqlo email campaign — Did you forget to ask Elaine?

And the image is a workup of the screen from Modern Photography editor Patricia Caulfield’s magazine spread of hibiscus photos, which she successfully sued you for using?

a screenshot of the banner on the uniqlo store for the warhol transformation tshirt collection. the banner is black with a digital collage of warhol selfportraits, including a photobooth strip of black and white headshots from 1964 flanked by a green screenprinted portrait made from one of the goofier sunglasses warhol photobooth pictures, and a yellow self portrait made from a more butch warhol picture. the mechanical andy warhol signature with a couple of printing artifacts is across the top in white, and appears now to be the warhol foundation's go-to logotype for licensed merchandise. there is a ©/®/™ claim by the foundation along the bottom of the banner, though what elements it refers to is unclear, since none of the original images here is likely under copyright individually. maybe they want the whole transformational collage — ©/®/™ The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

And on the collection banner is one of the self-portraits made with the same photobooth picture as the Red Self Portrait Bruno B that Warhol put on the cover of Rainer Crone’s 1972 catalogue raisonné, the lawsuit over the deauthentication of which led to the dissolution of the Andy Warhol Authentication Board?

How could you put this Warhol Greatest IP Lawyer-trolling Hits collection together and not include the cover of Vanity Fair’s special commemorative issue, The Genius of Prince?

a digital collage created as fair use critique and transformational unique art object, of a young asian lady with a dark bob modeling an off-white uniqlo tshirt over which has been superimposed an image of the cover of the vanity fair commemorative magazine the genius of prince, which features a warhol screenprint painted portrait of prince in black on orange, based on lynn goldsmith's photo of the musician, which condé nast licensed for the first publication of a painting warhol used it for, but not, inexplicably, for this posthumous one? how condé nast skated out of the copyright infringement lawsuit in this case is baffling; ten years on, the whole case is still baffling. and yet, there's no t-shirt about it? why? — ©/®/™ T-shirts are the new Conceptual T-shirts: a transformational critique reporting fair use mockup of an art object I will not produce

For Sale: Robert Gober Plywood

robert gober's handmade sculpture of a sheet of plywood leans against a gallery wall. — Robert Gober, Plywood, 1987, 94 3/4 x 47 x 5/8 in., verso, via Christie’s

I saw this Robert Gober Plywood at Boesky in 1998, and it blew my Gober sink- and crib- and leg-addled mind. Now it’s for sale.

Gober was already fluent in sinks and beds by 1987 and was seeking to try to make, he said, an abstract sculpture. “What I ended up making is an extremely realistic sculpture of a more or less abstract object.”

The faces are indeed realistic, the kind of rough veneer used to manufacture plywood. Gober got Peter Ballantine’s help to get a minimum order of veneer—one flatbed truckful—from a mill in Oregon. Yet he did not make a truckful of sculptures from it, just two.

In addition to the artisanal dimensions, the Goberian handcrafted moment here is the edges, which are built up from 1/8-inch strips like marquetry to resemble the internal plys of manufactured wood, and to hide the particleboard core within.

the verso of robert gober's sculpture of a sheet of plywood photographed straight on, so it's a rectangle leaning against a white wall, with r. gober, plywood, 1987, top, in sharpie at the very top edge. — Robert Gober, Plywood, 1987, 94 3/4 x 47 x 5/8 in., verso, via Christie’s

I tried to zoom in on Christie’s photo to show the detail of the edges, and it dissolved into what looked like CG or a Sylvia Plimack Mangold, keeping the abstract/realist tension alive.

I love that he signed the very ↑TOP↑ edge. It goes on view—presumably, face out—on Friday, the 25th, for a week.

[this weekend update] thanks to greg.org hero Ian for sending this photo of the handmade edge of Gober’s Plywood. This is the good stuff:

the close up photo of the five-ply edge of robert gober's 1987 sculpture plywood is actually three tiny veneer strips applied to simulate the laminated cross plys of actual plywood. photo by @ia.ware at christie's in sept 2026

1 Oct 2026, Lot 344, Robert Gober, Plywood, 1987, est. $400-600,000 [update: did not sell] [christies]

Marian’s Other Richters: New Year’s Card

a landscape oriented gerhard richter schmear of red green blue and white paint on the top half of a cream card, with tiny pencil lines tracing down from paint dots to the bottom edge of the paper, and an inscription wishing marian [goodman] a very happy new year from gerhard and family written in a hand that does not look like any of gerhard's handwriting i've seen but why should it — Gerhard Richter, Untitled [sic], 2001, oil, ink and graphite on paper, inscribed, “Dear Marian, have a great and happy new year/ All best, Gerhard and family,” either 8 1/4 x 11 5/8 in. or 22.2 x 21 cm, but not both, at Christie’s [update: the imperial dimension are right; it’s a big card!]

Now this is the Marian’s Richter I want to see. A squeegee New Year’s card signed from “Gerhard and family.”

thomas struth's 2002 portrait of the richter family has gerhard and sabine sitting in the chair and ottoman of the black leather eames lounger, respectively. young max, who's like 7 here? idk, sits on the edge of his father's chair and both of them place their right hands flat on the glass top of the mies coffee table. the younger daughter whose name i'm not going to look up is on the ottoman with her mother, in a black and grey wool party dress but like an austere party, and her mother holds her in place with a hand on her chest/waist, in a way that pulls the kid back a bit, tilting her head down, like she's being folded in half, but also giving the hardest look at struth's camera that would do the entire family proud. a richter painting of a skull and a richter painting of sabine's head hang on the walls behind them. if i were to buy a struth portrait of another family, it would absolutely be this one, it's terrifyingly good — “All best, Gerhard and family”: Thomas Struth, *The Richter Family I*, 2002, 1356 x 1942 mm sheet, c-print facemounted on acrylic, ed. 10, I think? collection: Guggenheim

Who do you think signed it, and who do you think drew the little lines down from the squeegee marks? Because this truly feels like a fun Richter family project. I hope there are 35 more in the next 35 auctions.

2 Oct 2026, Lot 5: Gerhard Richter [and family], 2001 New Year’s Card, est. $30-50,000 [update: sold for $115,200] [christies]

Marian’s Other Richters: Orchidee II (2)

Much like mourning, shopping never ends. And though several months have passed since we honored, ogled, and fervently bid on Marian’s Richters, with fall comes a new round of auctions to remind us of what we’ve lost, and what’s newly available.

a 1988 print between plexi of a gerhard richter painting of a photo of a full heavy bloom of orchids hanging off a pot on the left. — Orchidee II-II? Marian Goodman’s second Gerhard Richter edition, 1988, offset print on lightweight card between plexiglas, this one is ed. 21/25, the one last May was ed. 18/25

And if some of it feels familiar, that’s just how grief works. And art dealers, who apparently keep at least two examples from the edition for themselves. Orchidee II is both the title of the 1988 print-of-a-painting-in-plexi edition, and the number appearing in Marian Goodman’s collection. So far. If I’m the underbidder from last May’s $57,150 sale, I guess I’m glad to have another chance at a beautiful print. But I’m also asking just how many more of these specific Richters Marian had tucked away, if only for the possibility of staging a Germano Celant-style small utopia of celebration of the art multiple’s democratizing power, by buying them all.

the verso of a hiroshige woodblock print of a snowy evening scene in rural japan with houses and roofs in the little valley formed by trees on either side of the image. because it's the back, everything is faint because it's soaked through. a glitch in christie's sale of an otherwise unrelated marian goodman richter print — I normally shrink down images and rename them to give credit for their source, but I’m leaving the Christie’s filename of this Gerhard Richter/Utagawa Hiroshige glitch collab intact.

Or maybe this October example, ed. 21/25, is actually unique. Christie’s currently shows the verso of the Gerhard Richter print to be a snow scene from Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō by Utagawa Hiroshige. Which would be truly baller. And almost possible? Richter’s 1988 offset print is 11.5 x 14 5/8 in., and the woodblock on Hiroshige’s 1834 print is 10 x 14 5/8 in.

a spread from a gerhard richter book showing two sides of an ink drawing made by strategically having inks bleed through the paper. so they're similar, related, but not identical — recto/verso spread from Gerhard Richter’s November, the trade edition published by HENI

At first I thought this was an unusually faint or faded print, but it turns out the image is actually the Hiroshige verso; it shows the ink bleeding through the paper [plus the station number, 16, on the margin, in red]. This material- and absorbency-based image relationship resonates with Richter’s series of ink drawings November, from 2008. The recto/verso pairs are easy enough to see in the book; when they were first exhibited in 2013, the collection of 54 recto were on one wall, and 54 reproductions of the verso on the other.

a digital collage of gerhard richter's orchidee ii photopainting print of an orchid in bloom printed on top of hiroshige's kanbara winter scene, and it's a little wild how the left to right downward arc of the orchid echoes the valley and roofs in the japanese landscape, and how the leaf of the orchid echoes the tree in the print foreground. it would be wild if this is how we found out richter was using japanese woodblock print compositions as patterns for his paintings supposedly based on photographs, but here we are — Orchidee II x Kanbara yoru no yuki, as imagined in Marian Goodman’s powder room for 38 years

And while I reiterate that a Richter printed on a Hiroshige would indeed be amazing, this image is actually probably the Hiroshige Christie’s sold last week, and I assume the glitch will not survive the resumption of business on Monday.

2 Oct 2026, Lot 4: Gerhard Richter, Orchidee II, 1988, ed. 21/25, est. $25-35,000 [update: sold for $51,200] [christies]
22 May 2026, L0t 2: Gerhard Richter, Orchidee II, 1988, ed. 18/25, sold for $57,150
Previously, related: Marian’s Richter Goes Both Ways

Glenstone 20 Merch Drop

This honestly feels like a monkey paw wish situation.

To celebrate 20 years of me nagging them about merch, Glenstone has just launched merch. And it’s got Jeff Koons or Andy Goldsworthy on it.

a composite of two photos of glenstone 20th anniversary merch:
on the left a black tshirt with a white line drawing by jordan awan of a fox scampering through a meadow with richard serra's corten steel sculpture contour 290 curving tinily in the background, $40. on the right, a black good baseball cap with 20 years glenstone embroidered in white, sitting on the blonde wood bench of the entrance pavilion, where reservations are not required to buy this merch — Glenstone 20th anniversary limited edition t-shirt with one of four illustrations by Jordan Awan, $40. and Glenstone 20 black hat with white embroidered logo, $35. via glenstone

OK, the fox t-shirt with the Serra Contour in the background is kind of nice. And the hats. And the totes.

Glenstone 20th anniversary merch, IRL only [glenstone.org/merchandise]
Previously, related [Jenny Holzer merch]: A Use of Opulence Comes As Some Surprise

Art of Glass

a low-res photo of a pane of glass with four steel brackets holding it away from the white wall of gerhard richter's studio, with a small vertical rectangular work and strong sunlight from a window on a facing wall and floor as reflected in its surface, a 2002 work originally titled pane of glass — Gerhard Richter, Pane of Glass / Glasscheibe, GR 876-7, 2002, 150 x 150 cm, image via gerhard-richter.com [rip]

a somewhat higer-res photo of a pane of glass with four steel brackets holding it away from the white wall of gerhard richter's studio, with no small vertical rectangular work and strong sunlight from a window on a facing wall and floor as reflected in its surface, a 2002 work originally titled pane of glass, the sunlight reflected on the glass is identical to another image that also contains the reflection of another work, which makes it hard to figure out why sotheby's would be using an altered 2002 photo in 2025 to sell this work. except that they must not have wanted the hassle of installing and photographing it themselves, after all it's only selling for 292,000 pounds — Gerhard Richter, Antelio Glass, fka Pane of Glass, CR 876-7, glass and steel, sold at Sotheby’s in 2025 for GBP 292,100

I’m ready to look at Gerhard Richter mirrors all day, but I confess, I’d forgotten completely about his Panes of Glass. Not the sculptural ones, like the iconic 4 Panes of Glass (1967) set into pivoting steel frames. But the singles. [a couple of weeks later update: Reader, it gets worse. I forgot I’d posted about some of these two years ago. lol]

Gerhard Richter Lost & Found

20 gerhard richter grids of 9 rectangles of color on white board are arranged in three rows in 2014 at the museum abteiberg — installation view, Gerhard Richter, 180 Farben/180 Colours, 1971, restored and shown at Museum Abteiberg in 2014

Sorry, did you say something? I didn’t hear you; I was too engrossed in the Museum Abteiberg digital archive.

Did you know that in 2014, when the museum loaned its permanent installation of 8 Graue Bilder from 1974 to Gerhard Richter’s retrospective at the Beyeler, Richter made a special loan of long-lost works to fill the space? And so far as I can tell, the only account of the story of these works is in the Museum’s archive?

Richter exhibits a series of 20 lacquer paintings that were shown in 1971 [link added. -ed.] at the Kabinett für Aktuelle Kunst / Cabinet for Contemporary Art in Bremerhaven, but which were then lost for a long time. In Richter’s catalogue raisonné, they are listed as Colour Plates (9 Colours), which are actually individual groups from the large concept of 180 Colours which he thematized in the Bremerhaven exhibition. Unexpectedly found again in an early stock [DE: Lager, warehouse] in Cologne, Richter restored them carefully and corrected their title, 180 Colours, presenting the entire series of 20 white-ground colour panels for the first time in public again.

gerhard richter mirror work a square mirror on a white wall, photographed at an angle so it makes a trapezoid and reflects 20 framed paintings of color charts in three rows hanging on the adjacent wall, an installation shot from museum abteiberg in 2014 — installation view of Gerhard Richter’s 180 Colours reflected in a larger, squarer Spiegel/Mirror than Richter’s exhibition history lets on, at the Museum Abteiberg in 2014

None of this loss, rediscovery, retitling, or restoration is evident on the artist’s [defunct 🙄] website. The museum notes that the individual works were made of industrial paints in chance compositions. And the 25 works gerhard-richter.com listed in the show do not seem to align with the 28 works in the museum’s installation views. There is a 1024 Colours-style painting, and the Spiegel/Mirror above does not look Grau to me. It looks more like CR 485-1 or -2 from 1981.

Sure wish there was a website that put out information on Richter’s work as archivally rigorous and useful as the Museum Abteiberg’s.

GERHARD RICHTER, GRAU & 180 FARBEN, für Johannes Cladders
25. Mai – 7. September 2014 [museum-abteiberg.de]

No Gentleman: On Warhol & Trans Visibility

Having that throwback picture of artist Sean Fader on my screen yesterday led me, via his 16yo tumblr post to an absolute barnstormer of a lecture by art historian David J. Getsy at Dia last February.

Getsy spoke about Warhol and trans visibility in the 1970s, but it wasn’t so much a critique or analysis of Warhol. Warhol was a lens as Getsy laid out a complicated and fascinating narrative where the prominent but stereotypical depictions of trans Factory actresses like Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, and Jackie Curtis in Paul Morrissey’s Warhol-branded films became an object of critique by queer underground theater artists, specifically The Magic Hype, a 1973 transploitation spoof of Warhol’s Factory by the trans and street queen theater troupe, Hot Peaches. I cannot believe that’s one sentence.

Iconic Richard Prince Instagram Portrait Holds Up

a richard prince inkjet on canvas painting of a screenshot of rasfotos 2014 instagram post of a white guy shirtless with chest hair and a porn stache looking more than a little like hipster john travolta is dramatically lit, while a white manicured hand and a pensive black figure with slicked down short hair and big glasses rests their face intensely on the man's chest. below this instagram post are two comments, one from karaakter: he was everything. and one from richardprince4, the fight for earth doesn't end until one of us is gone tnt" honestly no idea but it's iconic now — Richard Prince, *Untitled (Portrait)*, 2014, inkjet on canvas, 65 3/4 x 48 3/4 in., selling at Rago Arts

Wow, has it really been twelve years? This rasfotos picture is one of Richard Prince’s New Portraits that broke through the static and really made people think, “WTF, is he actually doing this? Instagram screenshots??“

Seeing it again after so long, and after so much art chatter, social media mayhem, and legal wrangling, it really does feel like if he wasn’t everything for making these works, Richard Prince was definitely something.

The voluptuous photo, the bafflingly intense comments [“The fight for earth doesn’t end until one of us is gone?” What even is that?], the austere composition, this really could only have been made twelve years ago, minus five days. Art is a fascinating thing.

[next morning update] as Alan points out on social media, Sean Fader, whose social media performance was appropriated here, turned it into more work, including an #artselfie background. Remember #artselfie?

And being sold, I think, by Bloomberg commodities commentator-turned-energy-industry-flack Alix Steel. We’re all truly standing an inflection point for our culture.

23 Sept 2026, Lot 199, Richard Prince, Untitled (Portrait), 2014, est. $25-35,000 [update: sold for $23,040, practically a steal][ragoarts]

On Looking Into This R.H. Quaytman

a screenprinted painting of a black and white photo of a black cardboard box lid with a square window cut out of the top center, and a library label wrapped around the bottom left edge, a work by rh quaytman selling at rago in sept 2026 — R.H. Quaytman, *ד Chapter 24*, 2012, 20 x 20 in., ink and gesso on plywood, selling at Rago Arts

You were staring at R.H. Quaytman’s painting on the auction website, wondering if you were going blind trying to figure out what was happening. This is not something that would happen if you’d seen it installed at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach in 2012. Because you’d know immediately that you were standing in front of a 20 x 20 inch plywood panel with a beveled edge, that had an image screenprinted on it of a slightly crushed black cardboard box with a die cut square window near the top, and a library label wrapped around the side.

Selections From Roni Horn, The Selected Gifts

Glenn Ligon’s black Moon Jars got me looking through the exhibitions at Tokyo’s Rat Hole Gallery, which was an underground space operated by the streetwear brand Hysteric Glamour. It closed at the beginning of COVID. Some of their shows are documented on Contemporary Art Library, including their third show with Roni Horn, The Selected Gifts (1974-2015), in 2017-18.

an installation of a row of roni horn photos, with variant views above or below a particular image, of gifts the artist has received, as installed in 2017 at rat hole gallery tokyo — “37 Album of owl postcards, 38 Mosaic color sample card, 39 naturally round rock, 40 ‘Untitled’ (1987) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 41 Handmade miniature olive tree, 42 Fortune cookie fortune, 43 Die (solid sterling silver)” installation view of Roni Horn, The Selected Gifts (1974-2015), 2017 at Rat Hole Gallery, Tokyo, via Contemporary Art Library

Horn presented “a vicarious self-portrait” as told by a series of mostly life-sized photographs of 43 gifts received over 41 years. “Collectively, the gifts tell a story, through a language of the self as mediated through both objects and others—a reflection through the warped optic of others that shows a level of accuracy beyond that of any mirror,” Horn said in the show’s press release.

“Of course, by selecting and photographing the gifts, and presenting them in the formal language I developed, I am also crafting a self-portrait with a certain level of distance,” Horn did not also say.

two snapshots of a white painted brick fireplace in a prewar manhattan apartment covered and filled with dozens of little plastic or rubber cartoon figurines, mostly mickey mouse, but also the flintstones and whoever else felix gonzalez-torres was vibing with at the flea market — Felix Gonzalez-Torres snapshots signed and given to a friend in 1994 who was not Roni Horn, and sold at Phillips in 2021

The press release says the identities of the givers “remains a mystery,” but nine of the gifts are artworks by folks like Tacita Dean, Matthew Barney, Jürgen Teller, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. And two of the gifts are the kitschy little cartoon figurines of the kind that filled Gonzalez-Torres’ apartment, and which he regularly shared with friends. [He also gave snapshots of the toys to friends, and now I imagine this photographic potlach as part of a practice he and Horn also shared.]

a photo by roni horn of two rubbery toy dolls of barney rubble and fred flintstone in fake fur outfits, with shoes on, and barney has green hair, or maybe he's wearing a leaf on his head it's not clear, but these are not quite canonical outfits, anyway horn photographed them against a white background and framed the pic in white for a 2017 show in tokyo — Roni Horn, 25 Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone, from The Selected Gifts (1974-2015), at Rat Hole Gallery in 2017-18, via contemporary art library

What else stands out is Horn’s sense of humor as she assembles this self-portrait, airing out friends who’ve given two copies of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, two copies of Djuna Barnes, and wtf—a photo album of owl postcards? Can you imagine giving bird pictures to Roni Horn, and they end up in a show?

I ❤️ Glenn Ligon Moon Jars

a screenshot of glenn ligon's december 2019 instagram post of the opening of his show, a year with a black moon, at rat hole gallery in tokyo has a photo of a single asymmetrical black moon jar on a white pedestal, and likes and comments by nancy spector, scott rothkopf, and thelma golden, among others — Screenshot of Glenn Ligon’s Dec. 17, 2019 instagram announcement of the opening of “In a Year With A Black Moon,” the show at Rat Hole Gallery in Tokyo where he first exhibited his black Moon Jars

I have loved Glenn Ligon’s Moon Jars since they first appeared in “In A Year with a Black Moon” in 2019, in what turned out to be the last show at Rat Hole Gallery in Tokyo. And by love, I mean hearted them every time I’ve seen them on Instagram.

Their narrative hasn’t changed much in the intervening years, though: Ligon developed them with a Korean ceramicist in Japan over three years. They’re made with black clay instead of the kaolin white clay of Joseon originals. The rest of the discussion quickly shifts to Moon Jars themselves, and their history, and even that can be a very short conversation.

glenn adamson's instagram photo of glenn ligon's 2024 installation of nine black moon jars arrayed on a long white pedestal at the fitzwilliam museum in cambridge, with a tall hall flanked by glass vitrines filled with other porcelain objects — Glenn Ligon Moon Jars installed at “All Over The Place” at the Fitzwiliam in Cambridge in 2024, 📷: ig/glennadamson

Glenn Adamson, who posted about Ligon’s Moon Jars installed at the Fitzwilliam in 2024 went on to write for FT about the record-setting Joseon Moon Jar from Christie’s in 2023 turning up at Frieze Seoul in 2025. And that article got scraped into the lot essay glazing the next Important Moon Jar at Christie’s last spring.

Meanwhile, the Hauser & Wirth exhibition of Ligon’s Moon Jars in Seoul last month seems almost invisible—except for this video of Ligon talking about them himself for Frieze Seoul 2026. There are insights into the cultural specificities of blackness, and the celebrated imperfections of the moon jar’s fabrication, both concepts that resonate deeply with Ligon’s larger practice.

an installation photo by hauser & wirth of glenn ligon's 2026 show in seoul has four black moon jars each on a white pedestal in the fore and middlegrounds, and a female figure in a black mid-calf dress and black sneakers with black straight hair in mid-step blurred by movement and the longer exposure. on the white gallery wall behind are two nearly monochrome paintings of static, one black and one white. — Installation view of Glenn Ligon, Black Moons at APMA Cabinet, Seoul, Aug-Sept 2026, 📷: Hauser & Wirth

But there’s no hint yet about Korean responses to these reworkings of an iconic national form, or to its complicated historical entanglements with western Modernism, and with Japan.

From Instagram, at least, Ligon’s long, personal and creative engagement with Japan appears steady and extensive, going well beyond tourism or fandom. And it’s easy to imagine an organic and productive context for the Moon Jars’ development.

a photo of whiteness by snowdon of ceramicist lucy rie, a tiny old white lady in white shirt, slacks and sneakers, sitting with her hands in her lap on a chair next to a white glazed moon jar on a white painted table with a white cloth and apron draped over it, up against a white studio wall and door frame, did i mention white? — Computer, what is the diametric opposite of a photo of a Glenn Ligon Moon Jar? Lucy Rie photographed by Snowdon next to the Joseon moon jar Bernard Leach gave her, which the British Museum bought at Bonham’s in 1998, image via FT

But imagining is all there is, because I don’t see any more discussion of their origins or their making. Or in the moon jars’ intersections with Japanese colonialism, and the complicated dynamics around the elevation of simplified, utilitarian ceramics in the early 20th century by Japanese craft modernists like Sōetsu Yanagi, and then by modernists in the west It feels relevant that both of the major Joseon moon jars at Christie’s came from deep in Japanese collections—and that rather than discuss their provenance at all, Christie’s rehashed the Anglo-centric story of the moon jar at the British Museum.

a screnshot of glenn ligon's instagram post of the top of a serpentine brick wall emerging from a rough grassy slope toward an elevated roadway, a sculpture he made in st louis for the counterpublic triennial — Screenshot of Glenn Ligon’s Sept. 12, 2026 instagram post of his handmade brick sculpture in St Louis for Counterpublic’s Triennial

In contrast, Ligon just unveiled another sculpture of fired clay, where the complex context of who made what, how, and where, feels baked right in. For Coyote Time, the triennial in St Louis organized by Counterpublic, Ligon has created Who Builds Anything In This Country? a serpentine wall of handmade bricks marked with the fingerprints and marks of local students and seniors. This, in a state and a country where, before the Civil War, most bricks were made by enslaved people.

There’s a fuller moon jar discussion to be had, and almost ten years into Ligon’s project, I cannot be the only one who’d love to have it. I’d also like to see them in person.