Destroyed Donald Judd

on the terrazzo ramp of the guggenheim museum sit two concentric circles of waist-high steel. the inner circle is of uniform height and thus follows the slant of the floor. the base of the outer circle is at an angle that matches the 3% grade of the ramp, leaving the top level. the discrepancy between the two is subtle but quite apparent. donald judd made this sculpture for the 1971 guggenheim international this photo was from an artforum review.
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1971, 32 3/4 in. x 15 ft diameter, hot rolled steel, as installed at the Guggenheim International, via artforum

Donald Judd was extremely critical of the Guggenheim for, among many things, not buying art from him and other artists over the years. In 1990, around the time of the Guggenheim’s controversial acquisition of works from Giuseppe Panza, Judd wrote about participating in the Guggenheim International:

The one time that I’ve been involved with the Guggenheim is that for one mass exhibition I made a circular work of steel for the ramp in an attempt to deal with and acknowledge F.L. Wright’s architecture, which the museum itself is now desecrating, meanwhile, contrarily, expanding north and overseas. Despite my warning, this work was sold over a summer by Joe Helman to someone in St. Louis, who in passing on, passed it along to the Guggenheim, which evidently concluded that the work and the owner should remain together and stored it outdoors to irreparably rust. Years went by. Then last year Diane Waldman wrote that the museum wanted me to remake the piece. Well, the museum destroyed a work of art. Should the artist make good? I don’t want to have my work in Count (1940) Giuseppe Panza di Biumo’s Collection in the Guggenheim Museum and in its corporate departments of mass MOCA, Salzburg and Venice. I don’t share the attitudes back of this kind of behavior.

The 15-ft diameter work, above, comprised two concentric circles of steel. The inner one was of uniform height. The base of the outer circle matched the 3% grade of the Guggenheim’s ramp, and so the top appeared to be level. This discrepancy created an interesting tension and instability, even in an old photo. This image ran in an issue of Artforum with Richard Serra’s similarly round, steel, and site-specific work embedded in the pavement on 183rd St in the Bronx, on the cover. [Serra made it for the 1971 Whitney Annual.]

And besides the torqued ellipses, obviously, Judd’s sloped work also reminded me of a steel wedge Serra made for a ramp in what used to be a loading dock at Gagosian’s 24th St space. And the whole point of mentioning it here is that leaving the work outside to rot and then assuming the artist will remake it for you is almost exactly what happened with Cady Noland’s Log Cabin.

This circular Judd is not on the Guggenheim’s collection list at the moment.

40,000 Words By Or About Donald Judd

Donald Judd’s “Una Stanza Per Panza” is a fascinating, rambling, exasperated defense of the primacy of the artist in making and making decisions about his work, threaded through a fierce, bitchy, gossipy rant about the pomposity and presumptuousness of problematic and profiteering collectors. And dealers. And museums. Some museums. The ones who didn’t support working artists for decades, but who then give tens of millions of dollars to a collector who made grand, hollow promises to hoover up works on the cheap.

It was all driven by the years-long conflict with Giuseppe Panza over the terms for realizing artworks, sold by Leo Castelli as certificates or plans on paper. Judd’s understanding was that these were permanent, site-specific installations to be constructed under his supervision. Panza saw them as authorizations to make Judd sculptures when and where he desired, including making local copies for museums, and for sale. The evolving realization [sic] of how far apart these views of art were is a subcurrent of Judd’s 25,000+ word text. Though whatever his position at any given moment or paragraph, Judd never wavers in his own rightness.

Continue reading “40,000 Words By Or About Donald Judd”

Johns In Paris

a framed poster of a 1961 jasper johns exhibit in paris is dominated by a reproduction of a johns lithograph, 0-9, with all the numbers drawn over each other. the show was at galerie rive droite in paris.
Jasper Johns 1961 exhibition poster, 74 x 46.3 cm, as sold by Thomaston Auction in 2022

Even MoMA lists it as 1960, and they got their copy from the artist in 1961, so maybe. But the exhibition being announced here, Jasper Johns’s first show in Europe, absolutely took place in the Summer of 1961.

0-9 is a 1960 lithograph by jasper johns where the digits 0 through 9 are drawn over each other in a nearly illegible cacophony of lines. this copy of the print was sold at craig starr gallery in 2004
Jasper Johns, 0-9, 1960, 30 x 22 in., showed in Craig Starr’s first show in 2004

I get the confusion, though. Because the poster—most were actually mailers—reproduces a Johns lithograph, signature, date, edition number and all. 0-9 (ULAE 3), 1960, was published in an edition of 35. And whoever got No. 28 photographed it for this poster. Did the Galerie Rive Droite produce the poster, with Johns’s name in his already distinctive stencil? Or was it made in the US? That freeform accent over the Saint-Honoré makes me wonder. In any case, it has a nearly uniform handmade elegance that belies its offset print reality.

a 1961 sculp-metal collage by jasper johns of the numbers 0 thru 9 cut out of this putty/aluminum powder material, and laid on top of each other in a way that their overlaps and layers come through while the color of the surface is a nearly uniform but slightly shiny medium gray. this sold at christie's in 2024
Jasper Johns, 0-9, 1961, sculp-metal and collage on canvas, 67.6 x 54.2 cm, originally shown at Galerie Rive Droite, and sold in 2024 at Christie’s

Galerie Rive Droite was around the corner from the US Embassy where, in the week after his opening, Johns, Rauschenberg, Jean Tinguely, and Niki de St-Phalle organized an art-filled performance for pianist David Tudor. June 20, 1961.

a mostly grey toned painting in encaustic by jasper johns has 15' (minutes) entr'acte stenciled/traced into the bottom third of the canvas, a reference to intermission at the performance art event johns participated in at the us embassy in paris on 20 june 2025. now in the museum ludwig
Jasper Johns, Entr’Acte, 1961, encaustic & collage on canvas, 92 x 65 cm, currently the Collection Ludwig

Johns sent flowers in the shape of a target* and whipped up a painting in the Paris studio of Alabamian ceramist Fance Franck. Though there was no actual intermission and the action never stopped, Entr’Acte was placed on stage for 15 minutes. Like the Sculp-metal 0-9 collage in the exhibition, Entr’Acte was bought by the secretary at Galerie Rive Droite, Georges Marci.

But was it really? To Google her now, Georges Marci shows up in the provenance of various blue chip artworks, is repeatedly called the “grand dame of contemporary art in Switzerland,” which has to be a self-anointed thing, and is known for opening the first gallery in Gstaad. But I guess people never thought the tapes would be made public, because in her 1974 oral history for the Archives of American Art, dealer Judith Richardson basically called Marci a thief who murdered her husband.

Richardson worked for both Sidney Janis and Ileana Sonnabend, Castelli’s ex. Which meant she worked with many overlapping artists with Galerie Rive Droite, run by Jean Lecarde. Lecarde wanted to open a gallery in Switzerland, and to get around the residency requirements, he transferred all the inventory to Marci’s name. And then she just froze him out and kept it, and he went bankrupt. This is how Arman tells the story, Richardson said. Arman was there, she said he said, when Marci set her depressed Egyptian husband up with the pills he used to kill himself. And then she got all his Coptic art.

Anyway, where were we? Johns found encaustic in Paris, borrowed a studio, and made this painting in like a day or two. While also finding time with Bob to shoot some paintings at St Phalle’s. Eric Doeringer just saw one at the Tate, shot by both Rauschenberg and Johns, and texted me about it. Turns out it was in St Phalle’s show that opened June 30, 1961. A busy summer in Paris.

Previously, related: The Performance Art in Embassies Program
* I have long wanted to see, then make, this flower arrangement, but I can’t remember where I’ve ever seen a photo of it. Somewhere, though. I’ll look.

In her MoMA retrospective, Leah Dickerman had a photo of Rauschenberg painting on stage while David Tudor played the piano. But she also said Johns carried his painting on stage to signal intermission, while Tomkins said Johns refused to go on stage. Both could somehow be true.

a 1961 shunk & kender photo of a 1m or larger square flower arrangement in the form a jasper johns target sits on a stage in paris, a grand piano in the rear left, and robert rauschenberg and jean tinguely in between curtains and backdrops on the right, from jasper johns's catalogue raisonne, vol. 5
Shunk & Kender, is there anyplace you weren’t in the 60s? Jasper Johns’ Floral Target, 1961, at David Tudor’s performance of Cage’s Variations II in Paris, via Roberta Bernstein’s chronology in JJ CR, vol 5

I knew I’d seen it somewhere. A closer look at Roberta Bernstein’s chronology shows Johns was booked and very busy in Paris: he made two plaster casts** in Tinguely’s studio; his costumes appeared on Merce dancers June 12; his show opened June 13; Tudor’s performance on the 20th; and he helped install Saint-Phalle’s show, which opened on the 28th. Also, what part of this itinerary did Shunk & Kender plan to be there for? Because it is amazing that they were around for an impromptu concert that came together in a matter of weeks.

** About those plaster casts: they were made from moulages made of the sculp-metal 0-9 and a similar Figure 3 from the Rive Droite show. So a 2nd generation cast. Which Johns used to promptly cast four more 0-9 in aluminum and, in 1997, four Fig. 3 in bronze. I low-key love that this feels like Johns wanting to keep engaged with works of his own that he expects not to see again, at least for a while.

Five Friends? Nine Friends

a black and white souvenir photo from 1958 of two white men in suits, john cage and karlheinz stockhausen, with their left arms draped over the edge of a painted cardboard picture of a junker plane, as if they're riding in an open car. the plane image is composited above a landscape photo of a ferry on the rhine, with the iconic ruins of a medieval castle on top of the famous mountain, drachenfels in the background. the whole image is blurry as if it's been copied and reprinted several times over. from october magazine, august 1997

Not only did they go back, they brought all their friends.

When I posted this 1958 souvenir photo of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen flying over the romantische ruins of the castle at Drachenfels, I thought it’d be a stretch to make too contemporary a connection. And so I didn’t mention the landmark exhibition, Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly which is on right now at the Museum Brandhorst in Münich. It’s the first exhibition to look at the work of these five as a tightly interrelated group of queer artists in an intense cultural moment.

And then Bluesky blew my mind when Michael Lobel and Michael Seiwert both posted this photo:

a black and white tourist photo of nine white ppl crowded into and around a fake helicopter photo backdrop from drachenfels on the rhine in germany. inside the chopper are carolyn brown, merce cunningham, john cage, mrs stockhausen whose name i forget, david tudor, and michael von biel. underneath the helicopter, because they wouldn't fit, are steve paxton, karlheinz stockhausen, and robert rauschenberg. paxton, brown, and a couple of other folks are holding glasses of beer. this photo was taken on a world tour of merce's dance company
Inside: Carolyn Brown, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Doris Stockhausen, David Tudor, Michael von Biel; Underneath: Steve Paxton, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Robert Rauschenberg, a 1964 photo from Königswinter at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, via Museum-Brandhorst

The 1958 photo reminded Lobel that he’d seen this larger group shot in a 2016 Rauschenberg essay at Tate. Seiwert noticed it because it’s IN the Brandhorst exhibit.

Germans see this 1964 photo taken during a Merce Cunningham Dance Company world tour and are like, Mein Volks! The Tate caption incorrectly says it’s from Cologne, but it’s got Drachenfels written right on the helicopter. Seiwert points out that in 1964, Stockhausen was living near Königswinter and Bonn, the capital of West Germany, so it would have been an obvious destination for our intrepid dance troupe.

Meanwhile Jasper Johns was at home, painting.

Five Friends runs through 17 August 2025 at the Museum Brandhorst [museum-brandhorst.de]

I Would Benefit From Seeing This Cady Noland

screenshot of matthew higgs instagram where he posted a photo of a late 1990s checklist for a white columns benefit auction, specifically the 1992 work donated by cady noland titled we are all sanpaku, paint on metal, 24 x 36 x 1/8 in., courtesy of the artist, estimated value $4000, opening bid $3000. not clear what it is or if it sold. the caption is an announcement of the 2025 auction on june 26 via matthewhiggs2015

White Columns’ archives have a lot of amazing stuff, but not all of it. Director Matthew Higgs regularly posts outtake gems to his instagram, like he did yesterday when he announced the upcoming White Columns Benefit Auction (June 26, tickets and exhibition start next Friday) by posting some pics of previous benefit auction checklists.

Like this one from at least 1996, when Cady Noland donated a work from 1992 that does not appear anywhere else in the public record. What is/was it? A cozily sized screenprint on aluminum, sure, but of what?

We Are All Sanpaku is a phrase that probably felt so culturally obvious at one point that it was hard to imagine having to explain it. But We Are All Sanpaku’s moment was not 1992. It had already reached New Yorker cartoon punchline by 1985. Nixon was sanpaku, and—most crucially here, I think—Charles Manson was sanpaku, too.

We Are All Sanpaku is the despairing public’s confessional response to the 1965 declaration, You Are All Sanpaku, a best-selling book on Japanese physiognomy and macrobiotic diets by a guy with at least six aliases, including Georges Ohsawa. Sanpaku, three whites, is when the sclera, or white of your eye, is visible on three sides of the iris, rather than the normal [sic] two. Like your blood type and being born in the year of the goat, sanpaku has dire health, psychological and prophetic implications.

After diagnosing the western world—and the most prominent people in the news in the 1960s and 70s, including JFK, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Nixon, and Manson—with not meeting Japanese beauty standards, Ohsawa said it could be cured with brown rice.

dust jacket of the 1965 edition of you are all sanpaku, written in red non-serif type above a charcoal drawing of a scowling, left eye with dark circles and more red text in the center, to make the point that sanpaku, having white below your iris, means you're evil or sick, and need brown rice
Sakurazawa Nyoiti is just one of his names

Which, whatever, my point here is that the aesthetic possibilities of what Noland painted on that metal sheet are a rich feast, and I want to see it. Charles Manson’s mugshot that ran on the cover of LIFE? The ominous eye from the first edition dust jacket? Nixon? In the spirit of sanpaku, I might just make something up and pretend it’s real.

Shoutout To The Rhine Romantics and Cage Haters

a 1900 postcard with weirdly intense colors, depicting the upper rhine valley site of drachenfels, a mountain over the river with a medieval ruin on top. on a lower hill next to drachenfels is a c.1883 neo-gothic castle built by some prussian aristo, and below that, on the river's edge, are the buildings of the town of koenigswinter. at the very bottom of the image, on the opposite bank, are three figures, the whole thing feels made up, which, well, yes and no
Autochrome postcard of the ruins of Burg Drachenfels above the shiny newness of Schloss Drachenfels above Königswinter, c. 1900, LOC via wikipedia

In the Niebelungenlied, the dragon Fafnir lived in Drachenfels, a mountain towering above the Rhine. Siegfried killed him and became invulnerable by bathing in his blood. The poems of Byron and travelogues of Schlegel turned the Burg Drachenfels and other ruins of medieval castles along the peaks of the Rhine Gorge into Romantic tourist destinations, from which western culture has not recovered. Since 1883 a railway has taken tourists to the Burg Drachenfels, which once protected Cologne from southern invasion. Halfway up is the Niebelungenhalle, a shrine to Richard Wagner filled with Hermann Hendrich’s paintings of the Ring Cycle.

At the base of the railway, in the town of Königswinter, from the end of WWII until the rise of cellphone cameras, Richard Kern ran his family’s Schnellfotografie studio, taking instant souvenir photos for tourists. His 90th birthday last fall was the occasion for all of Germany to remember their childhood visits to Königswinter, when they sat on the donkey, and behind the cardboard plane.

a whole-ass german family lined up with their left arms over the edge of a painted german plane, father in front, that appears to be flying over the mountains and river of koenigswinter, a tourist spot on the rhine. this black and white souvenir photo by richard kern happens to be of martin kippenberger's family, and was published by his sister susanne, the baby in the center of the group, but from the sound of it, every german born in the 20th century ended up taking a picture like this when they went to koenigswinter, and they all went.
Young Martin Kippenberger sitting in front of his baby sister Susanne in a souvenir photo taken at Königswinter by Richard Kern, probably around 1959. via nyt
Continue reading “Shoutout To The Rhine Romantics and Cage Haters”

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 a sturtevant show at the serpentine gallery in 2013 includes a reverse pyramid of nine flatscreens, all showing an istockvideo clip of a horned owl headshot. on the right wall is a diptych of sturtevant marilyns, one square grid of marilyns in color, abutting another square grid of marilyns in black on white.
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.

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