greg.org – Page 9 – the making of, by greg allen

“Untitled” (The Neverending Self-Portrait)

a single line of pale silver painted text runs along the top of the wall at the national portrait gallery, picked out by a carefully aligned row of accent lighting. in the right corner a single swag of a lightstring arcs out of frame. felix gonzalez-torres' 1989 self-portrait, "untitled", in one of two simultaneous installations in the exhibit hilariously and falsely criticized for queer erasure — *“Untitled”* (1989), paint on wall, with exceptional accent lighting, at the National Portrait Gallery

We were in the neighborhood, and so we went back to see the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Which was the first time we spent time with “Untitled” (1989), a portrait work which appears twice, in two different configurations, in two different spots of the exhibition. [Technically, it’s in three spots: the work is owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it’s been on view since December 2023.]

In the show it felt impossible to do more than sense the differences between the two installations. It seemed that, in the absence of a subject named in parentheses, this was a portrait of the artist himself, but the variety of posthumous additions made it non-obvious. So we left with questions: How was this portrait adapted for this dual/triple version? Besides the title, how [else] was it different from the others? If it was indeed a self-portrait, how did this portrait practice come to be?

Helpfully, the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation collects documentation of each version as it is installed. As the first portrait [sic] that was, indeed, a self-portrait, which was in Andrea Rosen’s collection [The AIC got it in 2002], “Untitled” (1989) may be one of the most frequently exhibited; the documentation for [at least] 42 versions runs to 17 pages [pdf].

Twombly Cinematic Universe

this sally mann photo of cy twombly's studio is from 2011, probably. a densely calligraphed white on deep blue painting sits in a thick, old carved giltwood frame on a dark easel, next to a work table cluttered with mail, books, posters, acrylic paint jars, and a five-tiered square wedding cake of a twombly sculpture made out of white boxes with what looks like a caketopper-like figure in a chair, but is probably a blob of plaster-soaked rag. on one of the plinths of the sculpture rests a black an dwhite polaroid photo. two thin stalk-like sculpture elemtns rise behind the table, and the whole scene is blown out and backlit by the light coming through the thin accordion style blinds in the background. sally mann is a professional photographer so this is an artistic choice. it's not like she was going to tell twombly to relight or restage his studio. we're lucky to have this — Sally Mann photo of Cy Twombly’s Lexington Studio from *Remembered Light*

Looked through Remembered Light: Cy Twombly in Lexington, Sally Mann’s 2016 book of photos of Twombly’s places, for the first time the other day, and saw this. A perfect little painting in a fat, baroque giltwood frame in his cluttered storefront studio.

But this is not just any perfect painting. [I don’t actually know what painting it is, tbh.] I just know it was a major plot [sic] in Tacita Dean’s 2011 film, Edwin Parker.

a 12yo detail of a screenshot from tacita dean's 2011 film edwin parker is the interior of twombly's cluttered studio, where twombly, his back to the camera and wearing a camel colored corduroy jacket, is standing in front of a red green orange and black swagged painting which he's trying to reset in an old, carved giltwood frame sitting on an easel. A white guy in workwear and a baseball hat, twombly's driver and local assistant in lexington virginia whose name is literally butch, like, butch is his name, is standing to the left, not quite helping, but trying to be ready to help with some tape or whatever. a yellow measuring stick has been inserted behind the painting to wedge it into the frame, by nicola del roscio, twombly's companion or whatever, who understood that on the easel, there was nothing holding the painting in place.

Maybe plot is a little strong. In her quiet, attentive film Dean doesn’t follow Twombly around so much as just be where he is, and observe. And for most of the film, he’s in this little studio. The first action or narrative drama, such as it is, involves a painting that has fallen out of this picture frame, and Twombly tries to fix it. The two men with him—first, Butch, his local assistant, and then Nicola Del Roscio—alternately hover and jump in to help with tape and a tape measure.

a screenshot from tacita dean's 2011 film edwin parker which shows twombly's storefront studio after the three men have gone outside, on their way to lunch. the jury-rigged painting with the tape measure sticking out is in the center right middle ground. the clutter of a table, with books and boxes and bags and the tiny head of a porcelain frog from a yard sale are out of focus in the lower foreground. a couple of white painted sculptures or sculptures in progress stick up like lone buildings in this messy skyline. the pleated accordion shades probably bought at walmart are down, the light is better than sally mann's photo, at least stereotypically better. — detail of a screenshot from Tacita Dean’s *Edwin Parker*, 2011

When I had a review copy of Edwin Parker like ten years ago, I got kind of fixated on this painting, wondering what it was, where it was, and taking grainy screencaps so that I could track it down.

When the Hirshhorn was wrapped in his giant curtained scrim, the swag and slightly lurid colors made me worry Twombly’s painting was by Nicholas Party. When I was making Facsimile Objects about inaccessible Dürers in German museums, I wondered if it was the freely painted verso of something more mundane.

a google streetview screenshot of the back of a durer painting in the state museum in karlsruhe, germany, which is mounted on a white pedestal in a black and gold edged frame. the back of the painted panel is swirling red green pink blue, pale yellow, interpreted as a slice of agate, and I forget what's on the front. some devotional image of jesus [love him, don't get me wrong, but not the point rn] the gallery floor dominates the image; it is strip wood. the walls are pale grey with a dark grey stone baseboard. google streetview cruft and ui elements abound obv — gsv of a Dürer in Karlsruhe, via

Later in the film, Del Roscio is holding the blue & white painting up top, flipping it around, as Twombly says it’ll fit in the frame. It looks like it’s related to the series of paintings Twombly made for the Louvre in 2008, as part of his ceiling deal.

a woman in a black hijab walks with her phone outstretched, presumably filming or photographing as she walk along a series of cy twombly paintings on the white wall of the louvre abu dhabi. the paintings are vertical, larger than human scale, in deep dark blue with loose, thick gestural calligraphic loops and rows of marks in white. the nine paintings were bought by the louvre for the louvre abu dhabi, and then the louvre in paris had twombly make a blue ceiling mural for them. the image originally comes from cnn — installation view of Cy Twombly’s *Untitled I–IX*, 2008, at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, screenshot via CNN

So the plot, such as it is, involves the swapping out of one painting for another. Technically, this climax does not happen in Edwin Parker; Del Roscio is only shown setting the little painting carefully against the wall.

Whether that makes Mann’s photo a spoiler, a sequel, or just a post-credits teaser, I cannot say. All I know is now I have two little paintings to track down.

Cy Twombly Worked-On Paper

a screenshot of a photo of a clear plastic box filled with tiny balls of rolled up paper, sitting on its lid in a featureless ground, a 1953 sculpture by cy twombly, as published in katie nesin's 2014 book, cy twombly's things, the original photo taken by nicola del roscio himself, amazingly, for the cy twombly foundation — Twombly, Get me some tissue: Cy Twombly, *Untitled*, 1953, paper balls in plastic box, tape, 1 7/8 x 3 1/4 x 2 5/8 in., as published in Katie Nesin’s *Cy Twombly’s Things* (2014, Yale Univ. Press), photo: Nicola Del Roscio himself [!]

A lot of Twombly tabs open, as is the custom. After watching Art Institute curator Katie Nesin’s lecture about it, I checked out her 2014 book, Cy Twombly’s Things, an art historical close read of the artist’s sculptures.

Nesin examines at great length Twombly’s practice of painting his sculptures. It’s something Twombly referenced in one of his few artist statements, and which curators addressed, too. I know what they all mean, I really do, and so do you, but it is really hard to read statements coming straight outta Lexington like, “The reality of whiteness may exist in the duality of sensation (as the multiple anxiety of desire and fear). Whiteness can be the classic sttae of the intellect, or a neo-romantic idea of remembrance—or as the symbolic whiteness of Mallarmé. The exact implication may never be analyzed, but in that it persists as the landscape of my actions, it must imply more than mere selection.” And Kirk Varnedoe talking about “the increasing self-consciousness of his commitment to white,” and Nesin concluding “it is white’s susceptibility to contamination that remains the point,” in 2025 and think it all stays neatly contained in the art box.

Anywho, that’s a dissertation for another day. I mention it because Nesin traces the development of Twombly’s practice of painting his sculptures white with a picture of one of the few, early sculptures he didn’t paint white. Untitled (1953) is white on the inside. It’s a tiny plastic box filled with little rolled up balls of paper. Nesin argues that it’s also “derivative” because its size and nature refer to the scatole personali, the little fetish boxes, objects, and constructions Robert Rauschenberg showed in their two-person show in Florence in mid-March. [In a sharp detour from whiteness, Twombly showed geometric tapestries he constructed from textiles he bought in Tangier.] Which, yes, I see the connection.

robert rauschenberg's 1953 work Untitled Paper Painting was an 18 x 14 x 4 inch glass display case with a thin beveled wood base, filled with crumpled tissue paper that cy twombly said came from shoe boxes, sitting on a rough wood floor against a black background. the photo is from the rauschenberg foundation, the sculpture is lost or destroyed. perhaps by twombly tearing it up into little balls and putting it in his own box, who knows — Robert Rauschenberg, *Untitled (paper painting)*, 1953, 18x14x4 in., shoe box tissue paper, glass, wood base. lost or destroyed, or maybe rolled up into little balls in Twombly’s pocket

But there is a closer reference in 1953. In the then-couple’s Fulton Street studio, Robert Rauschenberg filled a glass case with tissue paper from shoe boxes and called it a paper painting. Did Twombly take some of Rauschenberg’s tissues and make them into balls he could keep in his pants? Did they make their his & his tissue boxes together? Whose personal fetish are we talking about, actually? While it’s impossible to say for sure who came first, it does seem likely these two came together.

Etel Adnan’s Language of Painting

a small etel adnan gouache painting of a dark red sphere, shaded in darker red and black along the lower and right edge to give it volume, in an unevenly watery square of light greens, in the center of an otherwise blank sheet of 10.5 by 14 inch paper, dated from the 1960s and signed Adnan in the lower left corner, it on view at galerie lelong in nyc until april 5, 2025 — Etel Adnan, Untitled (c. 1960s), Ink and gouache on paper. 10 ⅝ x 14 in., via Galerie Lelong

First things first, Galerie Lelong’s exhibition of Etel Adnan’s works on paper is on view for two more days, so get going.

I’ve been listening to Kaelen Wilson-Goldie’s interview about Adnan on Bulaq, the podcast of Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey (ArabLit editor), and right around 24:00 Wilson-Goldie turns the question back to her book-centric hosts, to ask what they think the complicatedly multilingual Adnan meant by her statement that she “painted in Arabic.”

I would love to know more of the context in which she first said that. Wilson-Goldie, Lindsey, and Qualey talk about Adnan’s shifts from writing in French to English as her perspective and contact with French and US colonialism changed. But also how her return to Lebanon in the 1970s included a mutual embrace with the new Arabic poetry communities of the day.

I can absolutely see the appeal of a painting language that did not carry with it the political baggage, while also making an affirmative assertion of solidarity. Or maybe that characterizing painting as a language separate from the ones she used for writing helped justify it, or at least made it make sense within/alongside her multi-faceted, text-based practice. Or maybe it just gave her the psychological and linguistic space she needed for a personal expression. I’m trying to think of many novelist/poets who were also recognized for their painting, but ngl, my head is not primed for unfettered rumination on poetry today [noon]. Wonder why.

In any case, I feel like I have to rethink my understanding of Adnan’s work a bit precisely because I’d always read it—or seen it presented— as being an Arabic-inflected modernism being subsumed into the larger modernist project. And I have to consider that that could be just how it looks from my perspective in the distended belly of that empire.

[listened to the end of the podcast update: OK, so Adnan had various complex takes on what it meant, and why she did not, in fact, learn Arabic. And I wonder what it means that this was the language she analogized to her painting.]

Etel Adnan on Paper: 1961-2021 runs through Apr 5, 2025 [galerielelong]
Bulaq | Etel Adnan: ‘I write what I see, paint what I am’ [sowt/bulaq]
Whoops, missed Etel Adnan centenary show at White Cube [whitecube]
ArtSeen | Ann McCoy on Etel Adnan [brooklynrail]

Heading To Bassano, Wish You Were Here

The startlingly beautiful hues of a tropical Florida Sunset are depicted here in all their splendor and completeness that Cy Twombly didn’t need to add anything, not even his signature, via Maison d’Art

It’s the little differences. Where Marcel Duchamp’s letters to his collector friend Katherine Dreier are all, “shipping is $34, please send me $34,” Cy Twombly’s letters to his collector friend Reiner Speck are like, “we await you in the summer castle.” I have read the Twombly correspondence with noted urologist and Proust expert Herr Dr. Reiner Speck in the catalogue for Maison d’Art’s current exhibition, and here’s the expanded tl;dr:

Ellsworth & Kelly & Lorenzetti & Kubrick

tiger is a 1953 painting in five panels by ellsworth kelly, that forms a large square. the top quarter of the painting comprises three panels, yellow, pink and orange. the bottom 3/4 is two panels, white and black. A demarcation line at about 60% of the width of the work leaves the yellow and white panels to be the widest. this painting is in the collection of the national gallery of art, and has not been exhibited since 2023, when it disappeared midway through the kelly exhibition at glenstone. have any news? hmu — Have you seen me? Ellsworth Kelly, *Tiger*, 1953, oil on five canvases, collection, NGA

I was listening to a recording of Ellsworth Kelly’s 1999 Elson Lecture at the National Gallery of Art, and I have some questions. Some could probably be answered by a video of the lecture—more of a conversation, with curator Marla Prather—or with a review of Kelly literature I don’t have.

A Use Of Opulence Comes As Some Surprise

a jenny holzer bench from 2015 engraved with a truism, "the most profound things are inexpressible" in blue sodalite, which is intense blue with white and grey flakes and graining, really ostentatious, via glenstone — Blue sodalite in the Glenstone exhibition guide

I was not prepared to be taken out a Jenny Holzer exhibition, especially since her most recent show at the Guggenheim seemed so lost. But that was then and there, and this is here—in DC, at Glenstone—and now—in the midst of a fascist crime spree by and against the government.

a jenny holzer bench from 2019 engraved with a truism, "all things are delicately interconnected," in bvlgari blue marble, which is mostly blue and white grained in this photo, image via glenstone — from the Glenstone extended exhibition guide

It was not the merch in the tiny book nook. It was not the entire gallery of redaction paintings—enlarged, oil-on-linen facsimiles of damning documents of the torture and atrocities of Bush’s Iraq war—though I really do wish this country would not give Holzer quite so much content to work with. Turns out abuse of power comes as no surprise because it happens over and over and over.

a jenny holzer bench from 2023 engraved with a truism, "in a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy," in blue boquira quartzite, which is blue and grey grained, image via glenstone — from the Glenstone exhibition guide

It was the next gallery of the private museum sanctuary, with the large window onto an artfully crafted vista, where Holzer crashed a tsunami of opulence over my unsuspecting head. It was all benches and paintings, not an LED ticker or a bumper sticker in sight. The benches in Blue sodalite. Bulgari Blue marble. Blue Boquira quartzite. Persian travertine and Silver Wave marble. Paintings large and small, single and in rows, cinnabar and lacquer finishes covered in copper and gold leaf, glowing in the morning sun. The extravagance of Holzer’s materials was so relentless, it was wretched. The polish, the weight, the preciousness, the hand, the logistics, the overpowering beauty impossible to ignore.

seven gold leaf covered red paintings by jenny holzer, illegible at this distance or resolution, via guggenheim — Jenny Holzer, stake in the heart, 2024, gold leaf and oil on linen, each 3.5 x 2.5 ft, image via guggenheim

David Hammons Lights

a 1933 px wide screencap of an artforum jpg of a david hammons installation is all black, with a blurry lens flare of blue, with a center of white light, from a single blue flashlight of the sort hammons distributed to guests in a little basket at the gallery entrance. via ursula, the art magazine named after the mother/mother-in-law whose pharmaceutical fortune has underwritten the hauser & wirth gallery empire, a fitting tribute — Wait, Ursula made a screenshot of the installation image from the 2002 Artforum critics’ picks of David Hammons’ *Concerto in Black and Blue* instead of right-click-saving it? Now I feel like I’m betraying history by renaming the file.

How has there not been more Concerto in Black and Blue content floating around? Do people not go to Hauser & Wirth LA anymore? Is the glow of people recording themselves on their phones ruining it? David Hammons has restaged his epic 2002-3 work in LA. It’s on til ~~June~~ MAY 25. So grab a little flashlight and become the artwork.

a circal 2002 jpg, 400 x 301 pixels wide, of david hammons' concerto in black and blue, is a field of all black, with a single slightly refracted burst of blue light on the left edge, caused by one tiny blue flashlight of the kind handed out to gallery visitors. via artforum — oh wait, the original Artforum img is actually beautiful. 2012/12/picksimg_large-6.jpg, 400×301 px. I must make this a work.

Meanwhile, Ursula has a great essay by legendary filmmaker, gallerist and Hammons whisperer Linda Goode Bryant, who filmed the opening night of Concerto in Black and Blue at the vast NYC outpost of Ace Gallery:

He allowed me to be inside for the opening, to make a short film of what happened inside. And what people didn’t know is that David was actually in there himself that night. I only knew where he was because I had a microphone on him. But he was otherwise totally invisible, moving around among everyone else, watching what they did and what they made, present and at the same time absent.

LGB talks incisively about walking and seeing with the artist, and getting hints of how he sees and works. It confirms my theory/suspicion/last-ditch hope that we are in fact living in David Hammons’ world, and often just don’t realize it.

[MAY 2025 UPDATE?? IT REALLY TAKES UNTIL MAY?] Nereya Otieno’s review of Concerto in Black and Blue explains the online silence and invisibility of Hammons’ extraordinary show: You have to bag your phone to enter. She did manage to get installation shots, though. And in some places Hauser still says it runs through June 1, and others say May 25, so don’t get stuck missing it.

a screencap of a 2019 corey vs corey youtube video documenting a visit to the david hammons exhibition in la, where a floor lamp with a sothebys shopping bag for a lampshade stands in an otherwise empty corner of the vast gallery. youtube ux cruft and the cvc art tv watermark along the bottom of the img — Hammons Sotheby’s Bag Lamp coreyvscorey-screencap

Meanwhile, the book finally documenting Hammons’ sprawling 2019 show at H&W LA is out now, not in May, which means the lamp with the Flavin X Sotheby’s shopping bag lampshade I had to scavenge screenshots in the backgrounds of peoples’ youtube videos like a dog to see is now beautifully photographed on its own.

a spread from david hammons' 2025 book about his 2019 show at hauser & wirth LA as two installation photos: on the left, a thin, mid-20th century brass floorlamp stands in the corner of a white cube gallery, plugged into the wall. its traditional lampshade has been replaced by an upside down shopping bag with a dan flavin light grid on one side, the kind that would hold an auction catalogue, or a gift bag. on the right, a french antique style red upholstered fauteuil with the front legs cut off sits on its side underneath five large, vertical framed photos of white people sitting in the chair outdoors, in a parklike setting, using their own legs to complete it. from the hauser and wirth shop

A Walker in The City | Linda Goode Bryant [hauserwirth/ursula]
David Hammons, Concerto In Black And Blue, 18 Feb – ~~1 June~~ 25 May 2025 [hauserwirth la]

untitled_picksimg_large-6.jpg, 2025 [greg.org]
Previously, related: Untitled (unnamed.jpg), 2019
Previously, related jpg constraint, alternate naming convention: Untitled (300 x 404); Untitled (290 x 404)

Ellsworth Kelly Extra Small

a tiny ellsworth kelly print, red curve, has a red curve from the top left corner to about 40% of the way down the right edge. The bottom edge of the red shape is straight from the lower right corner up to about the middle of the left side. no print border, it goes right to the edges. love it. now. but didn't love it enough to buy it back in the day, alas. live and learn. — Ellsworth Kelly, Red Curve, 2006, lithograph, 12 x 6 3/4 in., ed. 100, plus 20 ap and 18 sp, this one via Bonham’s

While poking around the Gemini G.E.L. CR, I was surprised to find that River II (2005), one of Ellsworth Kelly’s superlong prints, was also his second to last print made with Gemini.

I’ll have to check the Kelly prints catalogue raisonné for details—the second edition was published in 2012, but Kelly sure seemed booked and busy right up to the end in 2015.

It’s also a surprise because the last print he made with Gemini was maybe his smallest ever. Red Curve (2006) is a single color lithograph, cropped so the shape goes right to the edges and the corners of the 12 x 6 3/4 inch sheet.

Red Curve was published for Kelly’s show at the Serpentine Gallery, a cheap, unframed edition of 100. I feel like it was easily under GBP1000, and at the time, it didn’t even seem real somehow. Now it is fascinating and formally intriguing, especially after the other full-bleed prints he’d just made, that resonate between print and object. Also it’s utterly adorable.

the glass walled entrance to joni weyl's gallery has ellsworth kelly painted in small all caps near the door handle. three of the smallest prints kelly made for gemini gel hang on the walls, and a fourth larger print is on the wall through the doorway. from left, red curve, blue thumb or whatever, and blue gray green red, four abutting blocks, are in simple white or natural frames. i swear, did they put the most stealable works in the entry just to tempt me?

[OK, close to the smallest but not the last: Blue Gray Green Red (2008) was part of the Gemini-organized Artists for Obama portfolio. Here they both are installed at Joni Weyl in 2019.]

later this afternoon update: I went through the CR, published in 2012, but it does end in 2008. I feel like if there were more prints coming, they could have fit them in. So what seems like the last last print for Kelly was a large (48 x 130 in.) version of Blue Gray Green Red. He went big, then he went home.

an ellsworth kelly print titled red curve in the shape of a guillotine blade, in a white matted natural frame, 10 x 7.5 inches, made for parkett and sold at rago in 2021 — Ellsworth Kelly, *Red Curve (for Parkett 56)*, 1999, 10 x 7 1/2 in., lithograph, ed. 70, this one sold by
Rago in 2021

The only smaller edition, though, might be Red Curve (1999), which he made for Parkett, which is 10 x 7 in. And for the 1973 Works By Artists in The New York Collection for Stockholm portfolio, Kelly made an untitled black on white screenprint that is 12 x 9 in. And while there are a couple of similarly sized Concorde etchings in the early 1980s, they’re on traditional, larger sheets.]

Rather than delve into why Kelly stopped, or what the very last prints mean, Richard Axsom, the prints CR editor, looked at what was there: a complete, ambitious, and exceptional project, and said, “River is a great summa to Kelly’s prints.”

Ellsworth Kelly Extra Long

a long lithograph by ellsworth kelly with 18 horizontal blocks of color spaced out into two rows, a 1982 lithograph by gemini gel. — Ellsworth Kelly, *18 Colors (Cincinnati)*, 1979-82, lithograph (ed. 57), 16 x 90 in. sheet, Gemini G.E.L., image via MoMA

They’re hard to fit on my walls, but Ellsworth Kelly’s superlong prints are permanently installed in my heart.

946-3 Is The New 724-4

a gerhard richter squeegee painting from 1990 is mostly whites and greys over red, with yellow at the top and bottom, and a patch of pink down the left side. — Gerhard Richter, *Abstraktes Bild (CR 724-4)*, 1990, 92 x 126 cm, image via gerhard-richter.com

Once every 36 years, a new Gerhard Richter squeegee painting comes along that changes everything. For a long time it was (CR 724-4) (1990), which went on to become at least eleven editions, two artist books, four tapestries, a Facsimile Object, all the Strip paintings, and a movie. (CR 724-4) has been in fourteen museum exhibitions, including all the venues for Richter’s biggest retrospectives at MoMA and Tate Modern, and his COVID-shortened show at the Met.

a gerhard richter squeegee painting from 2016 is dark reds over a very rivuletted structure of yellow, with some overpainted patches of pink and white, against a dark blue and turquoise ground — Gerhard Richter, *Abstraktes Bild (CR 946-3)*, 2016, 175 x 250 cm, image via everywhere and gerhard-richter.com

Now there is (CR 946-3), a 2016 painting that’s already been exhibited six times, including Richter’s last show at Marian Goodman in 2020, and his Foundation’s extended loan to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, where it’s on view through at least 2026.

“Hey We Got A Computer! Oh No, We Had A Fraud.”

richard diebenkorn's large light blue is an etching and aquatint of a refrigerator-shaped plate printed in leftover watery blue ink, with a top of ochre green and pink/violet, centered in a 40 x 26 inch sheet. via sotheby's apr 2021 — Not necessarily hot! Diebenkorn’s *Large Light Blue*, 1980, trial proof, sold at Sotheby’s in Apr 2021

The Spring 1984 newsletter for Crown Point Press [pdf] was notable not just because it was the first in two years. Or because they reflected on their 20th years of enabling contemporary artists to engage with intaglio. Or because they announced their principled expansion into woodblock prints through a collab with master artisans in Japan. Or because they launched their artist-designed silk lingerie collection, which, well. Or because they got a computer, and a new sales director. Actually, let’s stop there and have CPP director Kathan Brown expand on that:

One thing (totally unexpected) the computer has done for us is uncover fraudulent activity perpetrated by our former Sales Representative, Thomas Way. We have a warrant out for his arrest in connection with the theft of many prints. It appears now that he even took home some rejected prints during projects before the printers had a chance to destroy them. These were Diebenkorn’s and the RD signature was easy to forge-one print that we have recovered was even hand-colored (not by Diebenkorn)! Way apparently had a side business going the whole time he worked for us. If you bought anything from him personally, or have any other information, please call.

So wow, while it seems slightly wild to put the guy on blast like that, I guess that’s how print market justice worked in the 80s? Brown’s letter to the editors of Print Collector’s Newsletter ran in the May-June 1984 issue, and contained more details of the caper and the hot, forged prints:

Lingerie & The John Cage Kimono

a hip-length kimono style robe in cream charmeuse silk with one sleeve in mauve, one striped with bone, and the bottom edge striped in mauve or light grey, on an archival hanger against a grey background. designed by john cage, or rather, conceived by john cage and designed using chance operations, and produced by crown point press, now in the collection of famsf — John Cage *Kimono and Sash*, 1982, hand-painted silk, published [sic] by Crown Point Press, via FAMSF

Is it really chance operations if a seemingly tangential Google search leads me to The John Cage Kimono?? From the Crown Point Press Archive, a gift to the de Young and/or Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco?

And then an immediate follow-on search turns up the Crown Point Press Spring 1984 newsletter [pdf] which, the contemporary editions drama! I’ll get to the computers and fraud later, but first the “lingerie business”:

Torn From Today’s Headlines

a robert rauschenberg screenprint of a collage made of clippings from newspapers in 1969, includes [clockwise from top left] a photo of cars stranded in the snow; a white woman in a miniskirt with a longer skirt drawn over her; a comet; ted kennedy, some racist judge nixon tried to put on the supreme court who eventually got voted down because twelve republicans still had enough conscience left to be shamed over unalloyed white supremacy, can you even imagine? anyway, several articles and photos of gm assembly lines and the threat of robots and depleted pensions; a chevron tanker truck overturned on a freeway; a hand holding a case of birth control pills; a sideshow entrance with the world's largest rats; a coal mining ship and a truck being craned onto a ship; more assembly line; and a ship docking on the hudson pier. from the 26-print portfolio known as Features from Currents, being sold at Wright 20 in apr 2025 — Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (from Features from Currents), a 26-print portfolio, 1970, 40 x 40 in. sheet, being sold in April 2025 at Wright20

Though Our Most Important Art Historians disparage the practice, I could not resist zooming in to read the specific newspaper clippings that Robert Rauschenberg included in just one his 26 Currents prints. Honestly, I did not expect them to hit so hard, one after the other:

The threat of robots taking union jobs
The threat of executives taking union pensions
Gas tanker overturned on a freeway causing mayhem
WORLD’S LARGEST RATS
Birth control
Woman’s outfit-shaming
A problematic Kennedy
A criminal president’s supreme court nominee being exposed as a mediocre southerner whose only firm conviction is white supremacy, getting defended by an unperturbedly anti-semitic republican senator saying, “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

Even the auction itself, a couple of loosies being stripped and sold off piecemeal, feels topical: people don’t buy 26-print portfolios these days anymore than they read newspapers. And yet the politics and the challenges remain the same.

3 Apr 2025, Lot 283: Robert Rauschenberg, from the [Features from] Currents Portfolio, est. $1,000-1,500 [wright20]
Related: Features from Currents, 1970; Surfaces from Currents, 1970 [moma]

The Knowledge of Tree

detail of a laura owens room-sized painting at matthew marks, focused on a tree, actually now it is clear it is two trees with trunks twisting around each other, painted in thick, frosting like brushstrokes, against a crisp, brighter screenprinted background of a lattice wall in a garden of seasonal flowers. actually, there are two lattices; in between the tree and the background is another, more dense, intricate lattice with a couple of openings in it. if it's a fence, it is at a very different scale from the other elements in this section of the painting. on the right, meanwhile, is a plant/tree/bush-like composition which seems to take shape from a variety of screenprint, painting and cutout processes, but is actually not cut out at all. at matthew marks in march 2025

I kept catching myself being attracted to the thick impasto schmears of paint in Laura Owens’ show at Matthew Marks. There was one metallic gold paint object—some of them almost seem to substantial to call them brushstrokes—that sat atop a seam in the panels of the main room, and yes, it turns out she kept working on it after it was installed.

So this tree in the center of the main room felt like the centerpiece, the bravura moment in an already almost unfathomably impressive painting installation.

a detail of a room-sized painting by laura owens, of two trees or bushes next to each other, painted in wildly divergent styles; the one on the left is very brushy, and on top of it, owens has made even more pronounced, thick frosting-like brushstrokes in greens and browns. on the right, a screenprinted pattern atop a thin, brushed branch appears to be cut out and collaged on top of a screenprinted background, but it was actually screenprinted there itself. at matthew marks gallery in march 2025

But even the instant after I took the photo above, I realized that the tree next to it is just as impressive and alluring; it just did it by not standing out [literally]. Should I retake a picture of them together? The combination of silkscreen and painting, the composition, the visual layering—the actual layering? How does this even work? There’s fluidity, or viscosity, on one hand, and precision and control on the other, but fluency all around.

I’m barely able to process the experience of seeing Owens’ show once; but I keep wondering what the experience of making it was like, and the experience of conceiving it, and marveling at it at every turn.

a white guy's hand holding a hardback cover of west wing reads, with a dust jacket that is a photo of the oval office, empty, with the title in two typefaces, and the presidential seal in the middle. behind the book is a purple wrapped cabinet of wonder, each drawer containing another artist book. the corner of a red white and blue board book with some plastic contraption on the cover, I can't remember, maybe it was about candy cigarettes? the drawer pull is in the shape of a half-smoked cigarette. all by the artist laura owens, and shown at matthew marks gallery in march 2025 — Laura Owens, *West Wing Reads*, 2019, commercial print-on-demand book with dust jacket, on view at Matthew Marks Gallery

[It’s a contrast, in a way, with the artist books in their cabinets next door. Every single one felt like an understandable achievement, but it was possible to grasp the reality of their creation, even the mindblowing ones that were drawn by hand in unique editions. What is hard to grasp is the scope of her overall book practice. Even as someone who makes art objects that are books, it sometimes feels like she’s inventing entire new genres. Her 2019 work, West Wing Reads, for example, a scraping or compilation of right-wing news reports during the Trump presidency, was like a slab of malevolent poison in the innocuous form of a banal airport book. The sequel, which is probably being written by AI as I type this, will be even worse.]