greg.org – Page 85 – the making of, by greg allen

Répliques at the Musée des beaux-arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, 30 June 2017

Just when you thought The Grand Tour couldn’t get any grander.
I am psyched, though no longer quite as surprised as you might be right now, to announce that Our Guernica Cycle – Ivanka / Merkel 2017.03.17 will be included in an exhibition at Musée des beaux-arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Titled “Répliques : l’original à l’épreuve de l’art”, the show explores the history, distribution, and appreciation of art through replicas, duplication, and appropriation. It includes post-war works from the collection of Olivier Mosset, which the artist donated to the Musée in 2007, as well as other historical and contemporary works from the permanent collection. The show is organized by Gabriel Umstätter.
When the Musée folks emerged to identify themselves from the Kickstarter campaign, there were a few harried weeks to get the concept, the image, the object, and the logistics all pinned down in time for the opening. I must say I’m impressed by the cool confidence, precision and thoughtfulness, and I’m relieved that what was essentially a wild test of a print turned out great. [Did I bury the lede here? Has a museum ever acquired a work straight out of a Kickstarter campaign before?]
The Musée will feature a full-scale, Renaissance Edition print of the Ivanka/Merkel painting. I imagine the conceptual disaster-in-the-making of an outsourced painting of a crucial historical instant made in the style of a disgraced, redemption-seeking politician and reproduced following the modified pyramid schema of America’s most mindlessly popular painter offers many, many entry points for a discourse on the moment. But then again, from this artist list, I’m sure there’s no shortage of eye-popping insights:

Greg Allen, Carl Andre [! -ed.], Ian Anüll, John Armleder, Olivier Babin, Robert Ballagh, Aimé Barraud, Francis Baudevin, René Bauermeister, Ben, Mike Bidlo, Julius von Bismarck, Nicolas Boissonnas, Bryan Cera, Jerome Cavaliere, César, John Dogg (Colin de Land & Richard Prince), Gérard Collin-Thiébaut, le Dessinateur (automate Jaquet-Droz), Marcel Duchamp, Gretchen Faust, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Sylvie Fleury, Christian Floquet, Camille Graeser, Peter Halley, Charles Humbert, Donald Judd, Jean-Blaise Junod, Edouard Kaiser, Scott Kildall, Frank Kozik, Joseph Kosuth, L/B (Sabina Lang & Daniel Baumann), Alix Lambert, Bertrand Lavier, Louise Lawler, Jørgen Leth, Sherrie Levine, Claude Loewer, Michael Mandiberg, Jean-Luc Manz, Allan Mc Collum, Claude Mellan, Ana Mendieta [No? I guess I added that one. -ed.]Mathieu Mercier, Olivier Mosset, John Nixon, Richard Pettibone, Raoul Pictor (Hervé Graumann & Mathieu Cherubini), Bernard Piffaretti, André Ramseyer, Martial Raysse, Léopold Robert, Walter Robinson, Norman Rockwell, Bob Ross, Claude Rutault, Yara Said, le Tampographe Sardon, Lily van der Stokker, Elaine Sturtevant, Peter Tillessen, Corinne Vionnet, Wallace & Donohue, Joan Waltemath, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Dick Whyte, Ian Wilson, Madeleine Woog.

I am as humbled as I am mystified by the sense of accomplishment this situation gives me right now.
Répliques : l’original à l’épreuve de l’art, Musée des beaux-arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, 30 June – 29 Oct 2017 [chaux-de-fonds.ch]
Related: Our Guernica, After Our PIcasso Kickstarter campaign page [kickstarter]

Proposte monocrome, gris, 2017, as photographed by @bshaykin

Installation view: Proposte monocrome, gris, 2017, dimensions variable, paint on plaster, as installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2017. photo: @bshaykin
If you’re hustling to the Metropolitan Museum to see my work, Untitled (Andiron Attributed To Paul Revere, Jr.), in the American Wing, you might be in for a treat.
Benjamin Shaykin has Instagrammed a beautiful photo of another piece, Proposte monocrome, gris, which is installed, at least for the moment, in the French Impressionists gallery. If you see it, take a pic!
You’ll probably have to hurry, though. And if you don’t make it in time, there’s always the Kawakubo show. And a rare pair of Caravaggios.
@bshaykin [instagram]
Weekend Update: Word is it’s still there. No word on whether it has a label, but it looks good, and right, just like I intend it. [thanks, J]

Previously: Untitled (Andiron attributed to Paul Revere, Jr.), 2014
Proposte monocrome, eBay, rose

Picasso / Breton Photomural @ Art Basel

We haven’t had a good, old-fashioned photomural post on here for a while, and I’m kind of crazy with work and stuck with writing, so I won’t get into it now. But Galerie 1900-2000’s booth at Art Basel this year features a sweet photomural blowup of Andre Breton’s living room as a backdrop for a Dora Maar portrait Picasso gave him. Very nice. [image via Benjamin Westoby for Artsy]
Previously, related architectural photomurals: Barcelona Pavilion photomural for Craig Ellwood’s 1966 Mies van der Rohe show at LACMA
Stephen Shore photomurals or ‘architectural paintings’

Untitled (Adidas Art Basel), #001, 2017

Study for Untitled (Adidas Art Basel), 2017, nylon and ink on Adidas EQT shoe, image: ebay seller miadrian10
Art Basel is suing Adidas for trademark infringement over these kicks. A thousand pairs were given away at a string of branded flashmobs in Miami on November 30th, two days before the opening of the art fair they had no official marketing agreement with. Is there a term for astroturfed flashmobs? Is there any other kind these days? Did you know Adidas been hypin’ kicks at #ABMB since at least 2010? Does a viral flash mob still count if you have to Google it?

image: taetalentagency
Anyway, 2016. According to hype groupies like high snobiety and World Red Eye, a mirror-wrapped school bus drove 48 performance artist/brand ambassador/whatevers around town. Stops included a high school in the Design District, HdM’s parking garage, and some millennial-branded Hilton in South Beach.

screencap from @britneyc0807
They were decked out in #monochromatic reflective gear. They stood in formation, Vanessa Beecroft-style. They did some dance moves. Ideally, their gear did its retroreflective blast out thing when it was photographed.

image: worldredeye
Then they unloaded their loot, lined it up like a freakin’ Eleanor Antin street team, and, I guess, handed it out to the ‘gramming masses like rations off the back of a UN truck. Then everyone started flipping their swag on eBay. It’s hard to say where the stunt’s brand impact actually landed the hardest: on the 1st-to-know sneaker chasers, the day-of hashtaggers, the eBay resale remoras, or now, on the so-DGAF lawsuit bad bois.

images: ebayseller sorry, lost it
Art Basel is suing over the tongue tags on these free sneakers, and in addition to brand damages, is demanding Adidas destroy all the infringey sneakers it still has. If you budget for ex-post trademark settlements, is it actually a bootleg?

Study for Untitled (Adidas Art Basel), 2017, retroreflective paint and ink on panel, 50x50cm
Untitled (Adidas Art Basel) is a series of 1,000 numbered paintings based on this tongue tag composition, made in various sizes. Or should I say they will be made. Might be. Conceived to be.

Study for Untitled (Adidas Art Basel) photographed, 2017, retroreflective paint and ink on panel, 50x50cm
I know what I’ve written about artists having a successful system, but honestly, it’s debatable whether the world needs 10 more paintings at all right now, much less 1,000. Of these. Can you even imagine having a thousand of these paintings lying around? You literally could not give them away, lawyers or no. Or maybe you can? Just put a few hundred super-shiny posters in a stack and BAM, you’re in Venice.
Ima get to work on one, see if it delivers that retroflective kick the study’s promising. Then I’ll let my estate sort out the rest.
Art Basel is Suing adidas Over its Limited Edition ‘Art Basel’ Shoes [thefashionlaw via artforum, thanks @kyle_petreycik]
Here’s How You Can Get 1 of Only 1,000 Pairs of adidas’s “Art Basel” Limited Edition EQT ADV [highsnobiety]
Adidas Flash Mob in the Miami Design District [worldredeye]
Previously, related: Webdriver Torso as Found Painting System
When Form Becomes Content, or Luanda, Encyclopedic City

Untitled (Repressed Memory X Raf, Fall/Winter 2013-14)

Untitled (Repressed Memory X Raf FW2013-14), 2017, mylar satelloons, Magritte-ian floor, unidentified trauma, installation shot from Dior F/W2013-4, image: thesartorialist
Oh hi! What do you remember from 2013? More than me, I bet! Take Feb/March 2013, for example. I’m only now realizing I was so busy putting the finishing touches on “Exhibition Space,” the satelloon show I was opening the next week at apexart, that I completely forgot-and obviously forgot to hype-my colabo with Raf Simons. The one where I stuffed a bunch of satelloons onto the runway of the Dior Fall/Winter show.
Dior F/W2013-4, image: not thesartorialist
Fortunately The Sartorialist was there to document it, or I might never have remembered. To be honest, it’s still all quite hazy. Was I even involved? Why would I have scooped my own show?
“Warhol also echoed in the silvered spheres suspended in the room (like the artist’s iconic ‘clouds’)”, said Vogue, shadily.
Does this mean Raf read my blog? Or that I’m friends with Sterling Ruby? Holy crap, Peter Marino soundbite? It’s all a work now, but if this really happened to me, I can see why I’ve repressed the memory. (thanks, random Russian LJ)

Dating Sturtevant

When you go to the Rauschenberg show at MoMA, take your opera glasses.
A question I was never able to figure out was when, exactly, Sturtevant’s Johns Flag took the place of Johns’ Johns Flag after it was stolen in 1965.

When they split, Johns & Rauschenberg made an agreement that Short Circuit, or perhaps Construction with J.J. Flag, as it had also been known, would not be exhibited. Presumably, with Johns’ Flag gone, Rauschenberg felt free to include the work in a collage-themed group show at Finch College in 1967.
He posed with the work [above], holding the cabinet door ajar to obscure the space where Johns’ Flag had been, and in his artist statement, he said, ” Elaine Sturtevant is painting an original flag in the manner of Jasper Johns’ to replace it.” Is painting, present tense.
Did she finish in time? It’s not clear. All published accounts of the exhibition mention the openable doors with paintings behind them-but also that they were nailed shut. So who knows? Sturtevant’s Johns Flag is like Schrodinger’s Cat, both alive and dead, both in there, and not.

detail of Elaine Sturtevant’s Johns Flag in Rauschenberg’s Short Circuit
But. If you take a close look at Short Circuit‘s Sturtevant Johns Flag at MoMA, you might be able to see a legible scrap of newspaper on its surface. Actually, you can see many, but one has a date: Sunday, January 15, 1967. And a typeface that looks like the Times.

image: nytimesmachine
And sure enough, it is. Page 69. The headline: “Powell Case, in 6 Years, Has Involved 80 Judges 10 Courts, 4 Juries, 15 Lawyers and congress.” The story: a full-page recap of a convoluted lawsuit brought against Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., involving defamation and allegations of police corruption.
The Finch show opened on March 9th, so it is at least possible that Sturtevant finished her painting in time to put it in. I mean, it can’t be ruled out [the way a scrap of newspaper visible in Johns’ own MoMA Flag dating from after the 1955 exhibition of Short Circuit almost certainly means that the Short Circuit flag was the “first” flag.]
What’s more interesting, though, is to the right. Doesn’t that look like Johns? In a tuxedo? Perhaps attending an opening? I’ve only done the most cursory search so far, and I can’t find a source for that image from 1965-67. Would Sturtevant have kept a party shot clipping from Johns’ Jewish Museum show in 1964? Would Rauschenberg?
Previously, related: Art in Process: Reading Finch College Museum
Jasper Johns’ first Flag

Untitled (Unpainted Wall), 2017

Untitled (Unpainted Wall), 2017, brick, concrete, 18 lag shields, exterior latex paint. Installation view, Chevy Chase, Maryland
In his 1977 Whitney catalogue, Michael Crichton wrote about the origin of Jasper Johns’ 1967 painting Harlem Light:

It has a peculiar background. Johns was taking a taxi to the airport, traveling through Harlem, when he passed a small store which had a wall painted to resemble flagstones. He decided it would appear in his next painting. Some weeks later when he began the painting, he asked David Whitney to find the flagstone wall, and photograph it. Whitney returned to say he could not find the wall anywhere. Johns himself then looked for the wall, driving back and forth across Harlem, searching for what he had briefly seen. He never found it, and finally had to conclude that it had been painted over or demolished. Thus he was obliged to re-create the flagstone wall from memory. This distressed him, “What I had hoped to do was an exact copy of the wall. It was red, black, and gray, but I’m sure that it didn’t look like what I did. But I did my best.”
Explaining further, he said: “Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me. They-whoever painted the wall-had an idea; I doubt that whatever they did had to conform to anything except their own pleasure. I wanted to use that design. The trouble is that when you start to work, you can’t eliminate your own sophistication. If I could have traced it I would have felt secure that I had it right. Because what’s interesting to me is the fact that it isn’t designed, but taken. It’s not mine.” [p. 54-55]

And that, my friends, is how I am different from Jasper Johns: I got the picture.

Previously typed this in, related: Driving Taxis Through Heavy Neighborhoods To Look At The Paintings

Erased Twombly Drawing

Untitled (Delian Ode), 1960/61, pencil, ballpoint pen, and grease crayon on paper, image: peter freeman
I mean, can you even imagine doing it? I admit it, I can, and I just cannot. De Kooning said he wanted to give away one he’d miss. And one that’d be hard for Rauschenberg to erase. If there’s any other kind of Twombly drawing, I haven’t seen it.
We’ll put this one in the “Think about it”/”Unrealized” category.
Previously, related, badly titled: Ghetto Erased de Kooning Drawing

John Cage’s Stony Point House

After he was booted from his white-on-white-on-white loft when the Bozza Mansion was torn down, John Cage kind of drifted for a while. Apparently it was hard to find a good deal on a great space in Manhattan in 1954 [when you had no money.]
So for a while, Cage moved to The Land, one of the names for the pseudo-commune/art colony started by Paul & Vera Williams on 116 acres in Stony Point, Rockland County, NY. Paul was an architect friend of Cage’s from Black Mountain College, and he’d purchased the property after inheriting some money.

I don’t know why, but I’d always assumed Cage and the other The Land folks lived in little cottages. Not quite. It turns out Williams, a student of Breuer, created some classically modernist boxes.
The first pictures I’ve ever seen are in Brendan W. Joseph’s 2016 book, Experimentations: John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture, which goes into some detail on the development of The Land and its surprising impact on Cage and his work.
Cage shared a building, a duplex, with the Williamses. He lived in 1 or 2 rooms on the left in the image above, separated by a stone wall he and Vera built. It looks quite nice, if simple, a bit like the Black Mountain College buildings everyone built together. Indeed, from Joseph’s account, it sounds like Williams was hoping to recapture some of that BMC mojo with his co-op experiment.

Night In Front Of The Museum

The NFL Draft is being held tonight at the top of The Rocky Steps. Which is another name for the courtyard of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Which has a giant Greek temple facade. But which apparently didn’t work for the NFL folks’ shot, so they built a replica of a piece of the museum facade into their set, in front of the museum.
I just finished reading some Sturtevant repetition and simulacrum a few minutes ago, and there’s surely plenty to say about mediated images in circulation. But I think the real takeaway here is the NFL’s Sforzian backdrop lighting game is flabby and weak.
THEY BUILT A FAKE ART MUSEUM ON THE NFL DRAFT STAGE IN FRONT OF THE ACTUAL PHILLY ART MUSEUM [csnphilly, h/t @briansholis]

Untitled (I Can See Russia From My House), 2017

Installation shot: Untitled (I Can See Russia From My House), 2017, 15′ x 10′ x 6′, dye sublimation printed carpet, bolts, washers, lumber.
I’m psyched to announce the public installation of a new work, Untitled (I Can See Russia From My House), in Warrenton, Virginia. It is a dye sublimation print on carpet, mounted on a wood support.

I suppose it could also be installed indoors, but it would lose a lot of the impact; it really is a piece that is best come upon in the course of daily life.

Untitled (I Can See Russia From My House), 2017, washer and bolt installation detail
The carpet is affixed to the support using bolts and washers [above]. Longtime Kremlin watchers will note that the image, of the south facade of St. Basil’s Cathedral, is here reversed.

Although an installation shot from December 2016 shows unrelated works installed nearby. It is the artist’s intention that this piece be viewed and appreciated on its own. Despite what you might assume, it is currently not for sale.

Better Read #013: Modern Art Shackled To Communism, by Congressman George Dondero

The Mellow Pad, 1945-51, by Stuart Davis, co-founder of the American Artists Congress in 1936, image: whitney.org
This edition of Better Read features a speech delivered by Michigan Republican congressman George Donderos on the House floor on Tuesday August 16, 1949 titled, “Modern Art Shackled To Communism.” I came across quotes and excerpts from this speech while researching the American Artists Congress, the group that brought Picasso’s Guernica to the United States for a fundraising tour in 1938.
Dondero made several fiery speeches against modern art during this, the McCarthy era, repeatedly accusing modernism and all its subsidiary “isms” of being a vile foreign-led Communist plot to destroy American art and values.
Near as I can tell, this is the first time Dondero’s complete speech has been available outside the Congressional Record, which turns out to be a lot harder to get ahold of than I expected. I am currently preparing a compilation of all Dondero’s art-related speeches, and the responses they engendered from the accused, the threatened, and even, surprisingly, the nominally allied. Because even I have a hard time listening to a robot for 26 minutes, the complete text of Dondero’s speech is included after the jump.
Download Better_Read_013_Dondero_Communist_Shackles_20170417.mp3 [26:49, 39mb, mp3 via dropbox greg.org]

Continue reading “Better Read #013: Modern Art Shackled To Communism, by Congressman George Dondero”

Remember, Remember, The Grift Of November

The first draft of history. History written by the victors What even is it? The barrage of nonsense comes so fast and thick and is so full of bullshit that the very notion of history feels out of date. Which is probably someone’s point. Or at the very least, in someone’s immediate interest.
Do you even remember the outrage when the Japanese Prime Minister’s Press Office released publicity photos of Shinzo Abe meeting Donald Trump at Trump Tower on November 17th, which revealed that Ivanka and Jared were sitting in on the meeting?
And then like two weeks later, the Times kind of buried the lede that at that very moment, Ivanka’s fashion label was negotiating a licensing deal with a Japanese apparel conglomerate whose majority shareholder is a development bank owned by the Japanese government.
Oh, hands were wrung, potential conflicts of interest were ruminated upon, denials and assurances were floated. And it all turned out to be bullshit, and that was also the same time Jared and Ivanka were in fact preparing to take up offices and jobs in the White House.
So maybe that’s a power of a painting: the ability to slow things down, even just long enough to have an impact, to make something stick, to give some context. It rewards the exercise of looking, looking longer, and looking back.
Campaign Ends April 26th: Our Guernica, After Our Picasso: A Kickstarter

Our Guernica, After Our Picasso: A Kickstarter

I’m not saying we should commission GWB to paint this, but I’m not saying we shouldn’t [deleted twitter url to a pic of angela merkel giving side-eye to ivanka trump at a white house mtg]

— gregorg (@gregorg) March 17, 2017

I swear, I tried not to do it, but the image was too strong. In the days since I started drafting this Kickstarter campaign, I quit several times. And then history kept catching up to this image. In fact, history started lapping it.
So yes, we need to mark this moment, this look on Chancellor Merkel’s face, on all our faces, when it was still possible to not believe what was happening before our eyes. And there’s only one painter who can do this moment justice. Unfortunately, he and justice are not really in a great spot right now, so we’re gonna use #chinesepaintmill and the Thomas Kinkade Editions Pyramid.

Our Guernica, After Our Picasso: collaged details from Michael Kappe/dpa photo, George W. Bush painting, and Picasso’s Guernica
In my darker moods, I imagine a series of paintings of such moments will come- Angelus Novus looking back and piling JPG upon JPG at his feet as the storm irresistibly propels us into the future. Can our brush-wielding Chinese allies capture the essence of Trumpian corruption with authentic Bushian flourish? Can we spread the resulting image(s) to the four corners of the warming, flooding earth to bear adequate witness? Let’s start with one and see.
Back “Our Guernica, After Our Picasso on Kickstarter now
UPDATE #1 After just a couple of days the project has gotten over halfway to its funding goal, thanks!
It has also been the subject of reportage by Will Fenstermaker at Artspace [who is also a backer, write what you know!] and AFC [“that’s a lot of layers to unpack for what’s essentially a meme” I do not disagree!]
On the more depressing news front, today, Day 3, might pass without a single new backer. Perhaps everyone’s too stunned at the floating of #Ivanka2024 by The Daily Caller [not linkin’, look it up], and worrying how a painting can somehow head off this meta-disaster. It probably can’t, but there’s a lot to be done in the mean time.
I’ve also noticed that backers are a savvy bunch. Folks seem to prefer the lower-priced, smaller prints at this stage. Possibly, I thought, because you’re reluctant to put up larger amounts of money for an artwork that you’ve 1) not seen because 2) it doesn’t exist yet.
It might be useful to reframe the entire project as a single conceptual piece, in which case, the physical manifestations are secondary to its core expression. But it’s still natural to wonder how it’ll look, especially if you’re contemplating getting a big one. I’m trying to think up a solution for this. Any advice or thoughts are welcome. And thanks again for spreading the word!
UPDATE #2 WHOA IT IS HAPPENING, THANKS! THE BALL IS ROLLING, THE CAMPAIGN IS CONTINUING. LET’S BUILD THAT PYRAMID AND LAUNCH A WHOLE BUSHMASTER CYCLE OF PAINTINGS TO DOCUMENT THIS THING!

Destroyed On Kawara Paintings

In 1965, before he figured out his Today Series date paintings, On Kawara experimented with several other types of paintings about language, text, and information. They contained a word or phrase, or a graphically encoded text. The National Gallery has a triptych, Title, that weren’t, but most of them were destroyed. [image from the Guggenheim’s exhibition catalogue via ig/mondoblogo]