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.

Continue reading “Ellsworth & Kelly & Lorenzetti & Kubrick”

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
Continue reading “A Use Of Opulence Comes As Some Surprise”

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. 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.

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 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.”

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.

Continue reading “946-3 Is The New 724-4”

“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:

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

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”:

Continue reading “Lingerie & The John Cage Kimono”

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.]

Overpainted, Underhyped

Just WTEFAF? Look at this thing.

a 17th century Dutch portrait of a man's head turned 90 degrees counterclockwise, and overpainted with part of a maritime scene in which four small ships get tossed around to varying degrees. the overpainting makes it seem like the head is extending below the horizon, and white clouds billow in the overpainted sky "above" him. via simon dickinson's tefaf booth

Let’s stipulate that it is wild that objects survive for hundreds of years, so each one is a little miracle and marvel of its own. But how did this painting come to be, and how did it come to be in Simon Dickinson‘s booth at TEFAF?

At least I can understand how it showed up in front of me: artnet published a TEFAF highlights roundup, which pwlanier posted on tumblr. Tracking it down beyond that only turns up Dickinson’s press release, some instagram shoutouts, and a brief youtube video of Dickinson son Milo discussing the painting.

Basically, it’s a 17th century Dutch seascape painted over a slightly earlier 17th century Dutch portrait of an unidentified man. As artnet reports, the head was only uncovered after a recent cleaning. So for centuries, the painting had looked like a regular, little seascape, c. 1685-1690, which Dickinson attributes to Ludolf Backhuysen, Amsterdam’s leading marine painter at the time.

The cleaning also apparently revealed the seascape painter’s meticulous, intentional preservation of the portrait—which Dickinson attributes to Isaack Luttichuys, with a date of 1655-1660.

a 17th century painting of a dutch guy, turned upright, so now the seascape with waves and boats runs down the left third of the painting, overlapping part of his face and cheek. via simon dickinson and tefaf

I do not have the connoisseurial chops to raise any issue with the Dickinsons’ attributions; for what it’s worth—nothing—they look solid to me. Backhuysen was already a leading painter by 1665, receiving commissions from local burghers and studio visits from foreign kings. He was not scrimping, scavenging for a used panel to paint on in 1685. Luttichuys, a generation older, was well-known in Amsterdam as a portraitist, and he died well-known in 1673, presumably content in the belief that this and his many other portraits would survive him.

In Judith Benhamou’s video, Milo mentions that this surreal composition is exceptional, but that they’d seen some things like it, or kind of similar to it. And I guess it’s true that overpainting is extremely common in the history of paintings: fig leaves get added, draperies get touched up, windows get painted out. But reading through the 1995 catalogue of the National Gallery’s 17th Century Dutch painting [pdf], overpainting is equated with chasing fashion or botched restoration; it’s a scourge to be obliterated on the way back to a painting’s earlier, more authentic state.

And that is very clearly not what Backhuysen was up to when he painted on top of Luttichuys’s head, turning it into a darkened storm cloud that hovers over four civilian boats. Was it perhaps a philosophical gesture? A reference to the giant on the frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan [published in Latin in 1668]? Did it relate to the war in which William III of Orange set sail to seize the English throne from James, his father-in-law?

I guess I’m fine with not being able to know for sure. But I do wonder why we have to rely on the serendipity and close reading of a single gallery to discover incredible objects like this. I mean, TEFAF is good at surfacing rarities and lost masterpieces, but it still feels hermetic and almost random. What else are we missing?

About That Robert Irwin Documentary

I watched the Robert Irwin documentary, A Desert of Pure Feeling, and it is good. [It is currently on Kanopy for free, support your local public library.]

Some things stand out:

Irwin’s mystical-sounding development of his pursuit of perception was fascinating: posting up on Ibiza and not talking to anyone for eight months? wandering around the desert or whatever, painting dots for 16 hours/day, 7 days/wk? But he was not, in fact, alone in that pursuit. Some art world context would have been more helpful than repeating his refusal to allow his work to be photographed.

The Whitney installation was nice, but it felt somehow confusing, which is weird because there was even a real reinstallation of it, with footage and everything. The filmmakers did somehow manage to shoot other phenomenological aspects of other installations coherently.

Evelyn Hankins, who curated Irwin’s spectacular Hirshhorn retrospective, was thoughtful and present—but that show was somehow not, at all.

Which, wtf, the MCA San Diego’s masterpiece, 1° 2° 3° 4°, was done dirty here. Is it the ultimate “you had to be there” Irwin? Except for the Chinati building, which took up the last third of the film?

The dynamics of shooting and interviewing around Marfa and Chinati was weird. Marriane Stockebrand, the inviter, I guess, was everywhere, but Jennie Moore, the director who dragged that project across the finish line was airkissed in one crowd shot? Maybe that is #chinatiworldproblems, I guess I’ll demur. The weird caginess over whether he’d attend the 2016 ribboncutting was eerie, too; it made it sound like he died in production. [Spoiler: he stuck around for seven more years.]

For a documentary about perception and reproduction, it did shoot Irwin’s own dot paintings immaculately. But the shimmering moiré of halftone dots and pixels during pans across archival photos was hilariously distracting.

Seeing Arne Glimcher as a producer both makes sense and raises some flags, but how is that any different from anything the Glimchers have done all this time? It is what it is.

For such a singular thinker, who’d done so much work on his own mind and being, maybe give the film a title that reflects something he said, not just something he quoted?

David Diao, Barnett Newman, and Books

david diao painting of barnett newman's output is a wide red canvas, with years of newman's activity running along the left side in blue and the right side in yellow, echoing the composition of one of newman's last painting series. five columns of years, slowly ascending in height from left to right, have tallies next to the years for how many artworks newman produced, by category: drawings, paintings, sculpture, prints, and other. via greene naftali gallery
David Diao, Barnett Newman: Chronology of Work (Updated), 2010, acrylic & vinyl on canvas, 84 x 156 in., image via Greene Naftali

Speaking of books derived from Barnett Newman paintings and paintings derived from Barnett Newman books, David Diao’s got both. Barnett Newman: Chronology of Work (Updated), 2010 [above], turns Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue into an infographic tallying Newman’s output, as recorded in the artist’s catalogue raisonné.

a wide purple monochrome painting bisected vertically by an uneven and jagged white line, derived from a scan of the cracked and worn spine of david diao's copy of the 1966 sofcover catalogue of barnett newman's stations of the cross exhibition at the guggenheim museum, which is this same purple color. via greene naftali
David Diao, BN Spine (2), 2013, acrylic and silkscreen, 72 x 100 in., image via Greene Naftali

BN Spine (2), meanwhile, makes a zip from the cracked and worn spine of Diao’s copy of the 1966 Guggenheim catalogue for Newman’s Stations of the Cross. Diao worked as an installer on that show, and meeting Newman and his work had a foundational impact on Diao’s own project.

a purple cloth covered book with the name DIAO printed in black all caps near the center top.
David Diao, On Barnett Newman, 1991-2023, 2024, via Greene Naftali & Gregory P. Miller

After Diao’s 2023 show at Greene Naftali, the gallery and Gregory P. Miller published a catalogue about his decades-long engagement with Newman’s work.

Previously, related: just look at the David Diao tag.
But also: Diao’s 2013 talk on Newman for Dia’s Artists on Artists series

Oh, Barnett, We’re Really In It Now

two side by side versions of the same photo of a white guy in jeans and a tshirt with a jacket over his shoulder standing in front of barnett newman's voice of fire, an 18 foot tall painting of two dark blue fields flanking a central red one. the left shows the painting intact, as it is viewed at the national gallery of canada. the right is a proposal by greg allen to cut it up into variously sized sections for dispersal and marketability.
Study for Chop Shop Newman Painting Nos. 1 [L] and 2-6 [R], 2016

When I first made a modest proposal of cutting up Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, it was to make it more manageable to live with. I knew its purchase by the National Gallery of Canada in 1989 was controversial. When I suggested cutting it up to save it, though, I really did not have any idea of where the nihilist authoritarian government threat might come from:

So should Canadians ever face an arts crisis where, say a Taliban- or ayatollah-style regime takes over that is decidedly unsupportive of the kind of painting Newman practiced, I’d think cutting it down and dispersing the painting would be far better than burning it. Or bombing it, Buddhas-of-Bamiyan-style, out of existence.

When I actually did start cutting it up, in early 2016, as part of Chop Shop, it was a direct critique of the exploitative market machinations of Stefan Simchowitz. And again, who could have known where that year would end up?

a book with an entirely red cover, except for a very thin yellow line on the right edge.
Krisjan Gudmundsson, 200 Pages on Barnett Newman, 2001, 24 x 27 x 3 cm, ed. 100, via The Archive
Is Limited

Still, how is it only when I saw Kristjan Gudmundsson’s artist book, 200 Pages on Barnett Newman, THIS MONTH, that I finally computed the terrible implications of chopping up a Barnett Newman painting? Because Gudmundsson surely knew it in 2001 when he made the book.

Continue reading “Oh, Barnett, We’re Really In It Now”