1981 pic by Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker of Andy Warhol at 860 Broadway with the caption identifying the stuffed dog, but not the Albert Speer-related paintings behind him, via @twixnmix via @voorwerk
I swear, until this morning I was just going to like and reblog this photo of Warhol and move on. And then the Angel of History started piling rubble on top of rubble on the White House lawn.
Albert Speer was Hitler’s favorite architect, and Andy Warhol loved him. In the early 80s he made multiple paintings of Speer’s Lichtdom, and they seem to exist only in the backgrounds of snapshots of Warhol himself. Though they appeared in a major international exhibition in 1982, they seem to have been ignored by dealers and curators and historians then and since.
“The Ultimate Fight ring had not yet been erected on the White House lawn.”
The first line of the survey I did for Art in America of museums’ America 250 shows already locks it into a slightly less bleak past, April, when this stupid UFC thing did not yet stand. And reading the piece for the first time in over a month, I gotta say, it goes downhill from there.
The headline is, “As the Country Turns 250, Why Won’t Its Museums Meet The Moment?” My editor’s working title for the piece was “Picturing Independence”; mine was “Museums Will Not Save Us.” It started bleak, and it got bleaker, but I am grateful for the opportunity and the insights and all the folks who helped along the way.
For reasons beyond me that perhaps relate to the article appearing first in print, the links I used for reference do not appear in the Art in America published version. So I’ve gathered them here, like bonus content for a DVD. [Ask your parents.]
Giovanni di Paolo, Creation of the World and Expulsion from Paradise, 1445, tempera on panel, 18 1/4 x 20 1/2 in., locked in the Lehman collection at the Met
I saw some color theory on tumblr last night that reminded me of this painting, and I could not remember who made it or where it was. I felt like it was not at the Met, probably the National Gallery. And I started to wonder if there was an executive order banning searches for rainbow apocalypse. Was it in a gallery that’s closed for renovation?
Anyway, this morning Peter Huestis generously suggested he thought he knew which painting I was talking about, and that was indeed at the Met. And eventually yet, there it was. And the reason I couldn’t picture it at the Met was because it’s in the Lehman Gallery section, segregated off from the rest of the 15th century Italian paintings, including the other piece the Met has from the same Sienese altarpiece.
And it turns out that’s not a rainbow encircling a vision of another plane; it’s the nested spheres of the heavens with the paradisiacal earth at the center. I readily recognize that this is perhaps a suboptimal practice, and that my memory palace needs some refurbishing and a rehang. So be it.
John Singer Sargent, Motorcycle, inscribed as Peronne, Oct. 1918, charcoal on paper, 7 x 5.1/8 in., one side of a sheet at the NGAThe other side of the sheet at NGA
4. Motorcycles [at least three studies, made in October 1918 in Peronne, at the Somme, and donated by Sargent’s sisters to the Corcoran, so now at the NGA.
A really great conversation at Hyperallergic between Valentina Di Liscia and artist Jamie Nares. Come for the essence of the brushstroke—one of Nares’s most intensive interests—stay for the incredible visuals like the wall of handmade brushes in her studio in Chatham, or the still from an early experimental film where Roman togas were doing a lot of long-unacknowledged gender work.
Besides Nares’s own work and story, there are a couple of moments where the difference between generations really comes through: Nares’s story of complimenting Frank Stella at an opening, and Di Liscia’s gentle deadpan, “It’s what we call a soft launch.”
Speaking of sick artist fits from upper Fifth Avenue museums:
The Neue Galerie offers a replica of Gustav Klimt’s artist smock in indigo linen with hand-embroidered epaulets, based on Moriz Nähr’s iconic 1911 photo of the artist and his cat, Katze:
Looking for the story on this Schiele portrait, it turns out Klimt’s friend/partner/muse Emilie Flöge operated a couture shop in Vienna that promoted the Reformkleidung, Reform Dress, a loose, flowing, and liberating fashion refutation of Edwardian-era corset-based dresses.
Gustav Klimt in his painting smock & Emilie Flöge in her Reform Dress, c. 1909, photo: Heinrich Böhler, via Klimt: Sonderausgabe
The twelve pieces made of “hand-drawn and hand-stitched” “grids and stripes” on “natural fabrics such as linen and canvas” were adapted from specific Martin artworks. They all seem to be from the 60s, none of the works that ended up in the Guggenheim’s Agnes Martin animated gif campaign. I thought I’d hunt them down, but I don’t have my Martin books handy.
COS says the collection was also inspired by the artist’s own wardrobe. And yet, they ignore her most iconic looks:
Charles Rushton portrait of Agnes Martin in New Mexico, 1991. Collared shirt, cardigan, sensible trousers, sneakers: the artist’s own.Agnes Martin photographed in 1960 in her unheated loft in Coentie’s Slip by Vogue creative director Alexander Liberman. Thermal quilted liner ensemble: artist’s own.
And of course:
An undated photo of Agnes Martin by Mildred Tolbert, with the painting Night and Day in the background, from an exhibit in the lawsuit filed in October 2016 by Mayor Gallery against the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné LLC
Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, Pulling Down The Statue of King George III, New York City, 1852-53, oil on canvas, 32 x 41 in., collection NYHistorical
I have a piece in the Summer 2026 issue of Art in America, buy it wherever print magazines are sold! I’d say I’m psyched, but it was lowkey depressing as hell. Though it’s in the reviews section, it’s more a preview, of what US museums are showing for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, at a moment when the country’s facing an ongoing fascist existential attack. tl;dr, museums are not going to save us.
But one museum is doing the most, and it’s honestly not who I’d have expected. The NY Historical has had Johannes Adam Simon Oertel’s 1852-53 painting of New Yorkers pulling down the gilded lead statue of King George III after a public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776, since 1925. And the online text goes deep on the symbolism of the Native American family turned away on the left, and the Black figure on the ground at the center, about to get crushed. But they don’t say why Oertel painted this when he did.
What the Historical also has, though, are pieces of the statue itself.
Medusa, 2003, Barbara Gladstone’s own Richard Prince car hood, 62 x 45 x 5 1/2 in., selling at Sotheby’s
I’m scrolling through the Sotheby’s sale of furniture from Barbara Gladstone’s well-appointed home and wondering why there’s so much art mixed in. Was there concern that some art might attract less attention in a design auction? Or was it the other way around? Were there so many artist-designed furniture objects, that they made sure to add some art art objects so art art collectors didn’t miss the sale?
Franz West, INRI, 1991, wood, gauze & plaster, 101 3/4 x 64 1/4 x 9 1/2 in., from Barbara Gladstone’s own sanctuary, being rendered unto Caesar at Sotheby’s
Whatever it is, it includes Franz West’s table & chairs, perhaps the most collectible thing from his Hamsterwheel installation at the 2007 Venice Biennale. [Also this buck wild, 10-foot tall cross, for the Franz West true believer.]
Christopher Wool, New Linen, 2012, hand-dyed silk carpet, 119 by 97.5 in., ed 3/15, walked on by the conservation-minded Barbara Gladstone, now selling at Sotheby’s
Scott Burton, Cafe Table II, 1987, violetta calcutta, absolute black granite, 28 ⅝ by 29 ⅝ by 15 ⅞ in., ed 4/10, from under the cocktail glass of Barbara Gladstone, selling at Sotheby’s
Actually, that was like the second thought I had. The first thought was that Barbara bought this 1987 Burton table from Andrew Kreps in 2011? MoMA could really do a lot worse than having a dealer like Kreps take over the Scott Burton estate.
I was just checking Cy Twombly’s childhood address yesterday by looking up his 1946 draft card on Familysearch, as one does, and saw his signature: Edwin PCy Twombly.
Did the high school senior standing in front of Mrs Beatrice McKenny Garth of the Rockbridge County Draft Board start to sign his government name, and then switch to Cy? Except Cy Twombly fits on the line. Did he sign his name, and Mrs Garth was like, “I am not writing this all out again, young man. Fix it.”?
The real thing I wonder is if Twombly hadn’t developed an art practice so infused by handwriting and line, and a writing style so intrinsic to that practice that his notes and letters often came to stand on their own as artistic objects, would I have ever even noticed?
Cy Twombly, 14 Papers (Silverwood at 5130) [CR Cat. no. 210], 1985, April 24 85, gouache, watercolor, graphite and felt-tip pen on two attached sheets of paper, 22¾ x 22¼ in., sold at Christie’s in 2004 [update: Christie’s said this was 1983, because honestly, it says April 24 83. Nicolas’ CR says it’s 85, but I think that’s based on other 14 Papers drawings having a more distinct hat on the 5. This really does feel like a 3.]
I was confused by this Cy Twombly work on paper which I saw for the first time this morning via @paintedout via @octavio-world, and which sold at Christie’s in 2004. It was very similar to a Twombly that belonged to Emily Fisher Landau, and which sold at Sotheby’s in 2024.
Untitled (14 Papers from Silverwood), 1985 [Cat no. 212], signed CT Lexington VA Jun 24 85, oil, acrylic, wax crayon and graphite on paper, 22 by 22½ in. [UPDATE: Let’s be real, this looks like it says June 24 85. the CR says they’re all 24 Apr 85.]
First off, when were these made? Apr 24 1983 AND Apr 24 1985? When was Twombly in Lexington? His mother and sister were still there in the mid-80s, but not in Silverwood, and he didn’t have a house of his own there until 1994. Emily’s 14 Papers is not described as two joined sheets, but it clearly is. The Christie’s 14 Papers is not described as oil and acrylic, but it clearly is. Christie’s does feel right about the red felt tip pen, though?
[NEXT DAY GET REAL UPDATE] Thanks to greg.org hero Claudio Santambrogio for helping me to keep things real here. He first flagged my error about Christie’s error: in 2004 they dated their 14 Papers drawing to 1983, not, as I misremembered, as 1982. But from there we went through a whole series of exchanges about what is said about these drawings vs. what they actually say, and honestly, the situation is, as Claudio so neatly put it, “as messy as CT’s handwriting.” So I’ve added notes to the captions above, and at the end of the post below, to sort things out. When I get my hands on Yvon Lambert’s 1997 drawings CR, I’ll add that second/third semi-authoritative source.
I really think I’ve been thinking about Junta Watanabe the wrong way.
For years since registering the domain name, I’ve imagined what a Junta Watanabe fashion line would look like. How to make it. How much or how little it should evoke CdG. How many or how few items to produce to make it work. How good or idiotic a few t-shirts would be. Should these pieces of clothing be mass or artisanal? Did Sterling Ruby validate clothes as art objects or ruin them?
eight Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants getting taken by Italy to a detention center in Albania in Nov. 2024, via aia.al
Who should the clothing be for? The guerrillas or the junta? The idealistic junta or the power-mad monster junta? What if it’s conceived as critique, but ends up looking like prepper chic? Reactionary insurrectionistware? Half the looks I’d considered ironically a few years ago now appear on the ICE, who look like doughy Watchmen cosplayers.
Anyway, I think it’s all wrong, and I have to go back to the roots, to the MO for one of my first domain-inspired projects, mafiaboy.com. For that I was blogging without blog software, collecting links and lifestyle-related quotes from the investigation and trial of the Montreal teenager whose DDOS attack took down Yahoo! It was meant as a critique of the way hacker or script kiddie culture was conveyed in the media via pop cultural and fashion references. And because Mafiaboy was a minor, who couldn’t be named or depicted, these references took on outsized importance for courtroom reporters. And hilariously, I closed the loop when I got a check for like $48 from Rocawear for affiliate links to Mafiaboy’s satin bomber jacket.
The Givova Tuta Visa Triacetato 4S Unisex in Nero/Viola, EUR14,90 at Givova
Muji announced a car collaboration with Nissan in 2001, the 「MUJI Car 1000」.
The Muji Car 1000 was a debadged and stripped down 2-door version of the Nissan March, with the smallest engine, an automatic, steel wheels, and A/C, available in one color: white. It was sold only online at muji.net, in a limited edition of 1,000.
According to the seller of this Muji Car 1000 in Kanagawa, though, there were only around 170 actually sold. And this is one. It’s in pretty remarkable condition for a 25-yo car, with only 100k kilometers. At 710,000 yen, it’s 2-3x more expensive than comparable Nissans, but still only like $US4,400.
If you’re a Muji compleatist who likes extremely basic, internal combustion cars which exist only as marketing experiments, with only the thinnest veneer of design innovation, but that will only get rarer over time, this may be your best chance.
Alice Garden on Streetview in 2017, when the two trees had railings for seating instead of platforms, and there was a coffee truck, and a tool shed.
Kenzo Tange’s Peace Memorial Park is the largest and most significant architectural public space in Hiroshima, and it always will be. But on a recent visit my curiosity was piqued by a weirdly eccentric post-modernist confection of a public plaza in the messy center of the city’s central shopping district. Even in aging cities outside of Tokyo, teardowns are the norm; the new Hiroshima Gate Park Plaza, built across the street from the ruins of the Genbaku Dome, on the site of the city’s old baseball stadium, is slated for recycling in less than 20 years. So it seemed wild to me that a small park/event space named Alice Garden has survived, mostly intact, next to the department store Parco, for over 30 years.
the Google Maps plan of Alice Garden shows the program—fanciful entrances to underground parking on the upper west and southwestern sides, stair and ventilation structures and restrooms on the east, bleachers facing an ellipse-shaped plinth/stage with an “objet”
After wandering into the space by chance and being surprised by the extent of its design—and, again, its survival—I’ve spent the last couple of weeks researching Alice Garden and its designer/architects. So far, I’ve had little success. Its architecture is mostly undocumented online, and questions of design and history fall beyond the capacity of the city offices tasked with managing the space and calendar. Though maintenance is a mess, the site is not wholly neglected. Alice Garden was in regular, light, use, and active with event programming. But its integrity feels threatened by indifference to its holistic design, and to its barely historic era: a boldy whimsical, almost corny, post-modernist plaza from the early 90s feels very susceptible to underappreciation.
How I found it: this wacky, angled, bike parking structure, tagged and faded, but intact. all the pics, until otherwise noted: me.
At its core, there are contradictions in Alice Garden that make it more interesting, but that also put it at more risk. One is, there’s no creator to rally around. So far, I can’t find an architect or firm involved besides Parco, whose tile-covered new building [shinkan], completed in 1994, matches the all-tile plaza. The closest I’ve come to identifying an architect is Parco Space Systems, the shopping center company’s design subsidiary. After decades of corporate consolidations, it has been subsumed into J. Front Prime Space.
And then there’s the fundamental design incongruity between the Garden and one of its central elements. Linear Cycle (1994) is a major public sculpture by artist/musician Takashi Suzuki, that sits on an elliptical plinth that doubles as as an event stage. Suzuki’s sculpture is modernist and rational in a way that belies the surrealist narrative po-mo jumble of the park it inhabits. Whatever brought these elements together, I think the passage of time—and their survival—has made them a family. They have earned their place, and deserve attention—and more attentive care.
Augustus Vincent Tack, Untitled Oval (Golden Morning), 1930, oil on canvas on board, 69 x 43 in., the Phillips Collection
I’ve been a fan of Augustus Vincent Hack’s landscape-based abstract paintings from the 1930s ever since I saw them at the Phillips Collection. To be frank, it’s hard to see them anywhere else. Duncan Phillips was a close friend and longtime supporter of Tack’s work, which, in the 1930s, looked like it could be as important to the American abstract avant-garde as anyone. It mostly was not, but the paintings are still nice, and sometimes a little strange.
The first time I noticed the strangeness apart from the niceness was in 2014, when I realized that Tack had painted a trompe l’oeil frame around an abstracted view of the sky, essentially a representational painting of an abstract painting.
While his extremely conventional, even boring, portraits have sold at auction for nearly nothing, Tack’s abstractions do great. So I was very interested to see what happened to this wild painting that just came up for sale this morning:
Augustus Vincent Tack, Portrait of Lotte Lehmann, 30 3/4 x 25 3/4 in., sold at Copake’s, via Invaluable
Unlike all the judges or bank vice presidents whose names are lost, this Tack portrait is already rare for having an identifiable subject—and one who has a wikipedia page. Lotte Lehmann was an internationally famous soprano who discovered the Von Trapp Family Singers. She helped launch the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, and there’s a theater at UC Santa Barbara that still bears her name. But most importantly, this painting has a slice of another painting in the corner.
I haven’t been able to identify a specific picture Tack reproduced here. And it’s also not clear when Tack painted this. Lehmann was born in 1888, so she was in her 40s when Tack started painting his abstracts. In 1939 her husband died—is that his urn behind her?—and Lehmann she moved in with Frances Holden, a “psychologist who specialized in the study of genius.” So that puts her on the ground in Santa Barbara. Tack died in 1949, so that’s the window.
In any case, I love it, and I put a bid in so I wouldn’t forget to watch it. And then I completely forgot. And it ended up selling for just $300. Whoops. The greatest bargain ever–on a square inch basis—for one of Augustus Vincent Tack’s most important paintings. Or part of one, anyway.
