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

Felix Gonzalez-Torres Tattoo: Origins

a ring of 10 stylized dolphins drawn in black is printed in the middle of the window of a parisian gallery, with the cityscape behind it. this 1990 rub-on transfer edition by felix gonzalez torres was included in tattoo collection, a 1992 exhibit at jennifer flay gallery, as both a rub-on transfer and a tattoo. image: air de paris via felix gonzalez torres foundation — *“Untitled”,* 1990. Installed in *Tattoo Collection.* Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris, France. 3 Jun. – 18 Jul. 1992. Conceived by Air de Paris and Urbi et Orbi, image via Air de Paris by way of FG-T Fndn

Last weekend the curators of the National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art’s exhibition, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always To Return, held a public conversation about Felix Gonzalez-Torres tattoos. It was great. But no one, including the curators and art historians who have Felix tattoos, and not me, the rando blogger who’s written about them twice, quite knew the origin of the tattoo Felix made as an open edition in 1992.

In my question to the panel, I said I thought it had been created for a show of artist tattoos, but no one else had heard that, and then I saw that info is not on the Foundation’s website, and I was like, Oh no, did I just Felixsplain something to the professionals and get it wrong?

No, I did not. But I did forget that I’d written about the show sixteen years ago.

a low ceilinged art gallery with white walls and a concrete floor is filled with small works on paper, mostly tattoo designs created by artists. a june 1992 exhibit at air de paris gallery — Tattoo Collection, installation view, Summer 1992 at Jennifer Flay Gallery, Paris, via airdeparis

“Tattoo Collection” began as a project in 1991, conceived by gallerists Florence Bonnefous and Édouard Merino and Lawrence Weiner, for Air de Paris in Nice. The first 30 artists to create tattoo designs were also asked to invite someone else. Its first incarnation, of Weiner’s design on Bonnefous’ back, took place on a Monaco rooftop. Over two years the project expanded to six other galleries and almost 200 artists. 33 years ago today, 3 June 1992, it opened at Jennifer Flay’s Paris gallery as a summer group show.

In the years since I posted about it, Air de Paris has filled out the “Tattoo Collection” archive with a press release, a 2014 interview, a couple of installation photos, and the names of 189 participating artists, and the consignment forms for most of them—but only some of the tattoos themselves.

“Untitled”, the 1990 rub-on transfer edition of a stylized ring of ten dolphins that was included in Felix’s January 1990 show at Andrea Rosen, was included here, too. The consignment form from 14 Aug 1992 lists two works, both “Untitled” (or “sans titre,” so the survey was filled out by AdP, not Andrea Rosen), with dates of 1990 and 1992. The former is a rub-on transfer (ed. 20), and the latter is a photostat for the open edition tattoo.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres consignment survey for Tattoo Collection, 1993, airdeparis.com

AdP’s basic instructions survey on the consignment form say the tattoo can be bought by anyone, should be black, and should be placed on the “ankle or wrist.” Unsurprisingly, these were not static; the parameters in the certificate Meg Onli got when she purchased her edition from Rosen in 2011 are different and more expansive.

What does seem certain, though, is the connection between the tattoo and the rub-on transfer edition from two years earlier. Though the source of the dolphin motif is still unknown, the source of the tattoo image is the 1990 edition.

There is also much to be explored in the larger Tattoo Collection project. Bonnefous got the inspiration from the instructions for Weiner’s works, that “the work need not be built.” Between this conceptual core and the impermanence of the body, it’s seems realistic to say that the show—and the work—continues to this day, and it’s only our knowledge of it that is limited. Or our memory.

Cady Noland Pinkertons Pyramid

an untitled cady noland sculpture at glenstone in 2024 comprised of a forklift-sized aluminum palette, with a smaller extruded aluminum palette on top, fresh from amazon, with its product sticker still attached, and a galvanized steel milk crate on top of that, stamped with the threat of the pinkertons coming after you if you steal it. in the background is a black rubber mat with a black injection molded stackable palette on it. — Cady Noland, Untitled, 2024, as installed at Glenstone in October 2024

Now that she’s been having some shows, Cady Noland is known to make changes to installations of her work, even dramatic ones, even last minute. So maybe it was not so surprising to realize she added a new work to the exhibition at Glenstone last October, which came so late in the process it did not appear on the museum’s downloadable checklist.

And while there were also shipping palettes from Amazon stacked in the gallery that were also not on the checklist, the status of this work, Untitled (2024), was only uncovered/confirmed three weeks later, when Alex Greenberger reviewed the show for ARTnews. And it took still more weeks to add it to the checklist, the only prepared information available to visitors.

screenshot of a diagram of a gallery of cady noland sculptures at glenstone, with numbered squares and other shapes to reference the various works. some shapes don't have numbers, and thus don't have titles or info provided, but at least one turned out to be a work loaned from the artist. there was time enough to put the square on the map, but somehow not to put the number or work info on the checklist. — No indication it’s even a work, yet there was time to add an unnumbered square next to the 6

At the time, I wrote that such a move was not an error: “This incompleteness, this inaccuracy, is part of the encounter; this disconnect between what you see and what you’re told is part of the experience.”

Well, now I wonder if it might have been omitted for reasons other than coy mystery. Because the most prominent elements of the work Noland added are a palette with the Amazon sticker still attached, and a milk crate stamped with a threat from the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons who chase down milk crate thieves, but who are most famous for attacking striking steelworkers on the orders of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick.

I had not realized that last summer, before the museum had fully reopened from its remodeling, Glenstone’s hourly workers voted to form a union, and that the Raleses had hired the same anti-union lawyers and consultants as everyone else—including Amazon. Kriston Capps reported on the union’s efforts and voting almost a year ago. That would have been right around the time Noland was installing her show.

There is not much information beyond Capps’ early reporting. The last post on the instagram account for Glenstone Museum Workers Union, affiliated with the Teamsters, was from November 22nd. It says two bargaining sessions were completed, in September and October–and that the November 2024 meeting had been canceled without explanation. A December meeting was TBD. Noland’s show opened October 17th, in what seems to be the middle of a breakdown of negotiations.

To drop a pyramid of unionbusting references in the center of the gallery could be read as a show of solidarity with the union. If anyone knew to look. Now the prolonged omission of the Pinkertons work from the checklist feels like it could have been a move to deflect or diminish the impact of Noland’s gesture of support.

Unless? Do we really know that Noland’s invocation of the Pinkertons thugs isn’t a shoutout to management, an homage to the Fricks of our day, the industrialist connoisseurs who bought basically every major piece of the artist’s work to come up for sale in the last twenty years? If it was, maybe Glenstone would have bought it. Or they would have at least included Noland’s loans in the documentation of the show.

Previously, related: Cady Loan’d

Forbidden Curators: Whitney Shuts Down Independent Study Program

four 20x16 inch panels in a row, close together, each painted a single color from the palestinian flag: green, red, black, white. this 1988 work by felix gonzalez-torres is untitled (forbidden colors), a reference to the israeli government's prohibition on these colors in the occupied territories, a ban which was briefly lifted by the oslo peace accords, but which has been turned into a global hasbara campaign to censor any criticism of israeli genocide and war crimes and to silence any support or bare acknowledgment of the humanity of palestinian people. this painting is in the collection of moca. — ISP alumnus Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Forbidden Colors”, 1988, 20 x 67 in., acrylic on panel, collection MOCA

Extraordinary. The Whitney is burning down the Independent Study Program to save the Independent Study Program. Scott Rothkopf issued a statement suspending the ISP. He fired the new associate director, who had named him in her criticism of the censorship by senior museum administration of a pro-Palestinian capstone exhibition and performance last month by ISP participants. And he cited the absence of an ISP director as a reason to rethink the ISP altogether, without acknowledging that he had eliminated the ISP director’s job in February, before all this censorship started. Or became public.

Brian Boucher’s report on artnet has details, quotes, and links to previous incidents, including protests and callouts of trustees last week. The trustees’ involvement in arming Israel and supporting its settler-led ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is not a non-issue, but I think Rothkopf is no puppet; he is fully in control of this situation, and accountable for it. Pushing the timeline back, Dorothy Lichtenstein only died last year, and the Lichtenstein Foundation’s gift of their home and studio to the Whitney as a home for the ISP only took effect last year. We don’t have enough information yet to tell if we’re seeing the realization of the Lichtensteins’ vision for the ISP, or its betrayal.

Rothkopf’s statement crossed media paths with an open letter of support for the censored artists and curators, signed by more than 300 ISP alumni. On the top of their website, ispalumni.org, is Forbidden Colors, the 1988 work by ISP alumnus Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and an excerpt from his statement about the work as a sign of privileged solidarity with Palestinian life and freedom:

“This color combination can cause an arrest, a beating, a curfew, a shooting, or a news photograph. Yet it is a fact that these forbidden colors, presented as a solitary act of consciousness here in Soho, will not precipitate a similar reaction.”

As we’ve seen over the last year and a half, that fact has changed.

Get a Gonzalez-Torres Forbidden Colors (2021— ) whenever you need one

Quartet In Black & Blue, 2025

two 2 by 2 rectangular jewelry trays lined in black velvet, with a single blue LED key fob-size light on a thin steel ring in each compartment, a work from greg.org — Quartet in Black & Blue, 2025, dimensions variable, ed. 2+1AP

Whenever democracy dies in darkness, art struggles to be born. In darkness. Wait, what? Point is, now you and three friends can experience art together at home, or wherever your dark place is. There really are so many possibilities, and they’re increasing every day!

Koons Is Hulk Is Koons

jeff koons, middle aged white guy in a suit, poses like the hulk sculpture he's standing right next to and slightly behind, at the white cube gagosian hk gallery in 2014. the hulk is larger than life size, and based on a raging inflatable version of hulk, with green skin and purple pants. this one has several smaller inflatable toys and animal figures across its shoulders, which explains the title, Hulk (Friends). it's all made, ridiculously, out of cast and polychromed bronze. may tse shot this for the south china morning post, which handed it over to getty images, so i want to make it clear that i'm using and crediting the original, but also that the purpose is specifically to critique koons's performative approach to such publicity photos as this one, and in a less onerous photo usage regime than the one getty lords over, I could do an entire art historical essay on the variety and analysis of koons's photographic relationship to his own work. — it was there all along: May Tse’s 2014 photo of Koons hulking for the South China Morning Post at Gagosian HK

On the latest episode of artnet’s Art Angle podcast, Andrew Russeth called the Hulks Jeff Koons’s self-portraits, and now every photocall of Koons making deranged faces and poses around his sculptures for the last thirty years makes sense.

kusama is a young japanese woman in a black short sleeved dress, hair pulled back, arms crossed in front of her, and a dour expression on her face. she stands in front of an infinity net painting, and there is a double exposure which covers her and the entire image with an infinity net pattern of painted white loops. c. 1960, via moma's 1998 catalogue, i think — Yayoi Kusama, double exposure self-portrait, 1960, via MoMA’s 1998 catalogue, I think.

I think you have to go back to Yayoi Kusama to find an artist more embedded, photographically, in their own work. To the extent it represents her own obliteration, Kusama’s work is a kind of self-portrait, too, I guess.

a warhol painting made by screenprinting a black image of elvis dressed as a cowboy, legs wide, holding a gun, twice, on a silver canvas, this 1963 painting sold at christie's in 2019 for $53 million on an estimate of $50-70m, so they barely eked that out. — Warhol, *Double Elvis (Ferus Type)*, 1963, silkscreen ink and silver paint on linen, 82 x 53 or so, I’m rounding for legibility. The guarantor who paid $53m for it at Christie’s in 2019 knows how big it is

Koons calls these Hulks Hulk Elvis, presumably because of the stance. Warhol’s Elvises never registered with me as self-portraits the way Deborah Kass’s Yentl paintings do. But clearly, I’ve been missing the signs.

a deborah kass painting made by screenprinting a near lifesize image of barbra streisand dressed as yentl, in a long coat, pants, vest, and cap, holding a talmud or something, hand in pocket, twice, overlapping and somewhat transparent, on a silver canvas. kass echoed warhol's paintings of a similarly stanced elvis, tho ofc elvis was dressed as a cowboy. via kavi gupta gallery — Deborah Kass, Double Ghost Yentl (My Elvis), 1997, silkscreen ink and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 52 in., via Kavi Gupta Gallery

Russeth also referenced Peter Schjeldahl when saying that Koons’ operative mode is rage, which, after all, is what provoked Bruce Banner to transform into the Hulk. The specific line I remember is from Schjeldahl’s review of Dakis Joannou’s collection exhibition at the New Museum, where he was a trustee, and he said “his deepest passion is anger.” But I think Russeth’s closer. Which reminds me, isn’t the New Yorker art critic desk still open? Can we not manifest this?

Free As In Jazz And Books

a square book of substantial thickness is wrapped in a pattern of crinkled torn paper? paint? i have not received a copy yet so I cannot say, and has the name david hammons in black on the spine. there is no other text in this book from hauser & wirth

In the first paragraph he calls David Hammons’s massive artist book disguised as a six-years-later Hauser & Wirth exhibition catalogue a gift. But with his review of the 7-lb, textless object for Art in America’s newsletter, TK Smith definitely does the work. I’d say he earned it:

Here, I found myself questioning my desire for this book to be legible, conventional, and useful. Is he challenging me, scolding me, or flirting with me? His refusal to make it easy to intellectualize his work feels like an invitation to a wider audience to exercise a different set of skills: he is inviting us to see as he sees while making room for our own responses and interpretations. It is evident through the book’s images that so much of Hammons’s work is made possible by everyday audiences, whether that audience is indulgently purchasing ephemeral artworks or simply taking time to witness the sublime in the mundane. You travel through the pages and experience what compels you. It may be wholly cliché to say, but the book reads much like jazz—there is a rhythm, but it is not consistent. It lingers here or there, it gets loud and hot before lulling to a confident hum.

Yes, Tumblr, I Am Interested

in a darkening evening street, joaquin phoenix's white loser character in spike jonze's her (2013) sits on a low wall, hands clasped, leaning forward, looking kind of sad or like a loser as people walk in front of him, oblivious. a giant screen behind him, and walls of video monitors on either side of that, like in a tv store, all show the same slow-mo stock footage clip of a horned owl swooping down, wings extended, talons out and pointed right, it turns out, at phoenix's back. for me this happens infinitely because i only know this scene from an animated gif created on tumblr by bladesrunner — Screencap from Spike Jonze’s *Her* (2013), from a gif by @bladesrunner

Imagine an internet retail revolution that not only created online shopping, but that brought digital shopping into the physical world. The mp3 store. The gaming store. The stock footage store.

a closeup video of a horned owl with red eyes against a blurry grassy background, with an istockvideo watermark, fills the letterbox-dimensioned screen on the wall of the matthew marks gallery in 2019. it is a 2010 work by sturtevant. — Sturtevant, *Simulacra*, 2010, single channel 16:9 video, installation view at Matthew Marks, 2022

The stock footage store.

Imagine a bustling day in 2009 or ’10 at the iStockVideo store in Paris, in the old BHV, the department store where Duchamp bought his readymades. Under the high ceiling a long table arrayed with great horned owl footage. A chic but cantankerous Sturtevant and a cheery, slightly sheepish Spike Jonze both rummaging through the tablets, realizing each other’s presence when the reach for the same clip. They look up, Jonze smiles, says, “Pardon” in his downtown French, and pulls back his hand. He casually peruses his way to another clip.

a darkened gallery is lit from the left side, and also from a wall of at least 14 flatscreens, stacked two high, on the far wall, all with the same istockvideo loop of a horned owl with red eyes and a blurred grass background, a sturtevant installation in 2019 at Freedman Fitzpatrick — Installation view of Simulacra, 2010, from Sturtevant: Memes, at Freedman Fitzpatrick, 2019, via CAD

Imagine in that world, as in ours, Sturtevant opens a show at the Serpentine in 2013. Spike Jonze’s Her, 2013, was released in France on March 19, 2014, and Sturtevant died on May 7. Imagine this 89 year old Deleuzian, in what would be the last few weeks of her life, going to the cinema to see the movie about the guy in love with his bot. In that world, as in ours, she just opened a show at the Serpentine with a video wall of owl footage. She sees this scene of Joaquin Phoenix on the sidewalk.

installation view of Rock & Roll Simulacra, Act 3 (2013) in Leaps Jumps & Bumps, 2013 at the Serpentine Galleries, image: Jerry Hardman-Jones

Does she then remember that fleeting encounter, years earlier, at the owl clip shop? Is the question I’d rather consider than the one this world has presented me when tumblr’s algorithm presented this gif to me because it thought I “looked interested.”

Think: About It

two square video monitors in black cases are stacked on a thin black metal rolling cart. on the shelf below two black panasonic laserdisc players fresh from the box are stacked on each other, with four white vacuum molded plastic clamshell folders for holding laserdiscs are on top of the players. a single black remote control sits atop that. a tangle of black cables connects to a generic powerstrip on the maple strip floor of a soho loft, and a couple of cables snake off to the right edge of the image, perhaps to a transformer. on the monitors, the tightly shot head of a middle aged white guy, the artist bruce nauman is captured in a single frame. the head on the lower monitor is upside down. this 1993 work, think, by bruce nauman, entered moma's collection in 1996, but this image has to predate that. — Bruce Nauman, Think, 1993, a 1996 gift of the Dannheisers to MoMA [via @voorwerk]

I saw this two-channel Bruce Nauman piece, Think, on the tumblr and marveled briefly at how, when you were soaking in it, the 1990s aesthetic wasn’t an aesthetic; it was just the world around you.

And then I zoomed in to see what exhibition catalogues were stacked on top of the player, and that’s when it hit me: those are no catalogues. They’re the plastic storage cases for laserdiscs. Sitting on top of two new Panasonic LX-101 mini-players, so new they still have the showroom stickers on them.

Riding The Rail: Laib, Washburn,

How did I miss that Wolfgang Laib is talking on The Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series today? And Joan Washburn on Thursday? With Lydia Millet and Diana Al-Hadid in there, too. This is the last week of Rail talks until September, btw.

At Least Luigi Lucioni Got His Copy Of Ulysses Back

thirst trap head shot of paul cadmus, 24, with sculpted brows, slightly pursed lips, chin down, staring down his guy luigi, while wearing a dark wide-striped suit with a bit of a collar gap, actually, and a poppin green tie. a white cloth not quite covering the studio wall in the background — Luigi Lucioni, Paul Cadmus, 1928, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 in., acquired in 2007 by the Brooklyn Museum

In 1926 Luigi Lucioni, 26, and his Art Students League classmate Paul Cadmus, 21, were roommates for a fellowship at the Louis Tiffany Studio on Long Island. In 1928 Lucioni painted this portrait of Cadmus, which got recognition of some kind at the exhibition where it debuted.

Well Hung: The Buckminster Fuller Chandelier

a lattice of long, thin, acrylic prisms held together at the ends by fishing wire froms a truncated icosahedron sphere, which buckminster fuller called a chandelier. almost a meter in diameter, it hangs over a deep brown desk in an artfully rough brick space, reflecting light from the wide window behind it. a draftsman's articulated lamp is clamped to the edge of the table. the chandelier is reflected in a polished tabletop in the foreground, and a single column runs along the left side of the photo, which was cropped from a larger image taken in the drawing matter archive in central london by jesper authen. — Buckminster Fuller Geodesic Chandelier as installed at Drawing Matter London, image: Jesper Authen

I still don’t have it/one, but that’s not important right now. What matters is that the truncated icosahedron chandelier made of Perspex prisms and fishing line that Buckminster Fuller concocted as a belated wedding present for HRH Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon remains in good hands, and is well-cared for.

At some point after blogging about its 2007 appearance in a World of Interiors feature, and after tracing its original sale, I realized that was not some random table in a random former cheesemaker’s cottage in Somerset it had been sitting on. It had been acquired by Niall Hobhouse, and the cottage was part of Shatwell Farm. Hobhouse had made the working corner of his ancestral lands into the site of Drawing Matter, his ambitious archive of architectural drawings and research.

Last fall, Drawing Matter moved into town, and the chandelier came with it. Came home, in a way. In 2008, seeking to fill out its history, Hobhouse invited His Lordship to share his recollections of this singular object. Apparently it was too big to fit through the doorway of their private apartments at “KP,” so it was installed over the stairs. And indeed, it was remembered less as a two-years-late wedding present, and more of a way for Fuller to gain an audience, and perhaps, patronage for his world-building architectural schemes.

Anyway, last week Jesper Authen of Drawing Matter kindly sent along a photo of the chandelier, which lends a mid-century Kensington Palace vibe to the archive’s new Central London space. Truly I’ve never seen it looking better.

Buckminster Fuller: Geodesic Chandelier [drawingmatter.org]
Previously, related: On The Table: Buckminster Fuller Chandelier
Found, Sort Of: That Buckminster Fuller Chandelier
In other Anthony Armstrong-Jones Home Decor news: his guncle’s needlepoint rug

Pictures At An Orchestra Rehearsal

a brushy painting of an orchestra rehearsing in the round in a steep amphitheater, their sheet music the only clear things among a foggy blur, and three lazy clowns sitting in the foreground, by john singer sargent — John Singer Sargent, Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d’Hiver, 1879, 93 x 73 cm, on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago

John Singer Sargent made these two vertiginous paintings of orchestra rehearsals in the Cirque d’Hiver when he was in his early 20s. The wild grisaille one at the MFA Boston, tighter, and without the lounging clowns, is thought to be influenced by a similar monochrome rehearsal study by Degas, whose work Sargent knew.

a blurry grisaille wash painting of an orchestra rehearsal, from a cheap seat, all the musicians a blur of black, with sharp, thin brushstrokes picking out the bare reflections of light on brass instruments, and the white sheet music providing the dominant geometric motif. by john singer sargent. — Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d’Hiver, 1879-80, 57 x 46cm, collection, MFA Boston

The extended text at the MFA Boston makes it sound like Sargent whipped out a canvas in the middle of rehearsal and just started painting. It does look that way, though the Art Institute canvas is almost a meter tall. They’re both at the Met rn for the Sargent in Paris show.

On The Materialization Of The Art Work

a selfie of the blogger, a middle aged white guy, in the blue mirror that is a manifestation of felix gonzalez torres' untitled (fear), with a felix light string in the reflection behind, at the national portrait gallery in october 2024 — a selfie in the work at npg [honestly, maybe the real art is the way the light reflecting off my dome lines up with the light string behind me]

“If an owner has chosen to lend the work for an exhibition, the owner may choose to simultaneously install the work.”

“An authorized manifestation of [the work] is the work, and should be referred to only as the work.”

Via a recent post to Instagram by the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation I learned what I could have realized many years ago: that “Untitled” (Fear), 1991, the blue-tinted mirror, is not an object, but a work. And as such, it can be presented in multiple manifestations simultaneously.

In fact, it has, and it is.

The Art Of Endangered America

a blue whale that is also a hanging chair is covered in mottled blue fabric that looks like bathmats but the dominant feature is its gaping mouth, the seat/opening, which is screened by a curtain of white beads that represents the whale's baleen. a cursed art object several times over by porky hefer, selling at millea bros in june 2025 — Porky Hefer, Endangered Blue Whale Hanging Chair, 2018, ed. 3/3 [so not so endangered then?] for sale on 11 June 2025 at Millea Bros

Look, it was already weird to have one nickel for every hanging endangered sea creature chair sculpture South African white guy Porky Hefer made for the Leo DiCaprio Foundation to show at Design Miami in 2018 auctioned my Millea Bros. that turned out to be from the asset liquidation portion of client funds-spending art adviser Lisa Schiff’s bankruptcy proceedings. So the very possibility that we might be at two nickels now is off the charts.

a dark mushroom colored exhibition space with a suspended light grid and black ceiling that might as well be ikea but is at the design miami basel fair in 2018 is strewn with the misguided greenwashing art furniture creations of porky hefer, made as pr for the leo dicaprio foundation. gargantuan and clumsy furniture in the shape of endangered species include from left: a sloth hammock/sling; a polar bear? rug/tuffett, an orangutan lap dance chair, and blue whale and shark hanging chairs with mouths agape for climbing inside. like that one ikea chair in the kids section. anyway wallpaper magazine ran this image by james harris as part of their uncritical design-forward coverage of whatever. unbelievable that it continues to haunt culture solely because the art adviser who helped organize it ended up spending her client's money on her own lifestyle expenses — remember when wallpaper* ran this photo as part of their exclusive report on our culture’s greatest tastemakers assembling for an astroturf design fair in miami? thanks, james harris, for documenting this

And yet, there it was, hanging right in front of us—and behind the Endangered Orangutan Lounge Chair. Casual observers may think this Endangered Blue Whale Hanging Chair is just an Endagered Shark Hanging Chair with a slipcover. Connoisseurs will see it is covered in recycled t-shirt fabric handwoven to look and feel like your grandma’s bathmat. And conservators will note that the baleen curtain made of strings of beads are, according to the condition report, experiencing “active bead loss.” But honestly, who among us wouldn’t want to just curl up in the mouth of a whale for a few days? It worked great for Jonah. Eventually.

a ghost of the american flag by sterling ruby made of acid washed denim as a 2015 fundraising edition for the chinati foundation, trying to sell again at millea bros auction in june 2025 — Sterling Ruby, *CHINATI FLAG (DNM)*, 2015, “treated” denim, 45 x 70 in., ed. 100, trying again at Millea Bros on 11 June 2025

Also at Millea Bros [again] is another lot that I think must have come from Schiff: Sterling Ruby’s acid-washed denim flag, made in 2015 as a benefit edition for the Chinati Foundation. Is there any artwork that captures the moment better than an American flag ghost, with its estimate slashed in half since February, with the proceeds going to pay back some collector who got fleeced on the sale of an Adrian Ghenie painting?

In a way, it’s too bad it’s all being liquidated, because these two pieces—and Schiff’s art collection generally—are the fruit of her life as much as her crimes. They’re superlative examples of the kind of art that piles up along the way when you travel the circuit of art fairs, galas, and opening dinners. Fundraising editions and leftover PR pieces, artworks donated to benefit auctions, gift bag swag, and kickback pieces bought on heavy discount from the galleries where you bring your whales. All accumulated in the service of people with actual wealth—for whom the entire system exists—with their expropriated money.

shelves and platforms stuffed with stuff line three walls of a white cube gallery, the accumulated objects and mementos of the artist martin wong, transformed by the artist danh vo into a single work so they could be preserved together, here in the acquisition photo of the walker art center — Danh Vo, *I M U U R 2*, 2013, like 4,000 things that belonged to Martin Wong, collection Walker Art Center

Maybe all Schiff’s works could have been kept together as a more significant, cautionary gesamtkunstwerkdokument, like how Danh Vo turned all Martin Wong’s tchotchkes into an installation so it could be preserved—and acquired. A Schiff Study Collection would be a snapshot of this frenzied moment, now obviously over. But that would have required much more adventurousness on the part of her collector/investor/client/creditor/victims, who, never forget, were most interested in flipping Adrian Ghenie paintings.

Shang Marble Recumbent Frogs!

a shang marble frog of exquisite simplicity photographed against a black background by sothebys hk — Recumbent frog, marble, 25.8 by 17 by h. 12 cm, Early Shang (pre-Anyang) era, 1600-1298 BCE, sold at Sotheby’s HK in 2022

Look at this frog. Just look at it. A marble frog the size of a good spaghetti squash, carved with exquisite simplicity, with that flat mouth, the rear legs in relief like a pair of wings, THOSE EYES. It’s barely been published or shown—once at the Century Club in 1955? Does that even count?

the side view of this shang dynasty marble frog statue is all legs, the giant rear legs folded flat against the top of the body, the stumpy front legs anchored against the ground, and then the flat, angled under chin, whoever made this 3000 years ago had it going on. — Side view of the Sotheby’s HK 2022/Japanese/Eskenazi/Century Club Shang marble recumbent frog

And then in 2022 it pops up at Sotheby’s HK, out of a private Japanese collection, who’d bought it in 1991 from Eskenazi, and is hailed as an outstanding sculpture from the Shang dynasty, one of just three known Shang marble frog sculptures. Of course it would sell for HKD 28 million (USD 3.5m), almost 10x its original estimate.