62 Sarah Sze: Infinite Generation
Claude Picasso speaks with his longtime friend Sir John Richardson about photography, his enjoyment of vintage car racing, and their shared memories.
Louise Neri interviews the artist on the occasion of her exhibition in Rome.
40 Urs Fischer: PLAY Urs Fischer and choreographer Madeline Hollander tell Natasha Stagg about the philosophy and choreography underpinning their project play.
70 The Bigger Picture: (RED) and Light Theaster Gates and Sir David Adjaye speak about the upcoming (RED) auction, which is raising money to fight aids.
Photo credits: Front cover: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017 (detail), oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, gel medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, in 24 parts, overall: 18 feet 4 inches × 20 feet 6 inches inches (558.8 × 624.8 cm) © Richard Prince. Photo by Rob McKeever Back cover: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2016–17 (detail), oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 91 ½ × 138 inches (232.4 × 351.8 cm) © Richard Prince. Photo by Rob McKeever
96
From the Polaroid and Back Again Jessica Beck explores Andy Warhol’s lifelong use of Polaroid photography and its relationship to his art practice.
Top row, left to right: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Artwork © 2018 The Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Giuseppe Penone, Leaves of Light – Tree, 2016 (detail), bronze and stainless steel, 689 × 472 ½ × 472 ½ inches (1750 × 1200 × 1200 cm) © 2018 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Image © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo by Greg Garay Bottom row, left to right: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, charcoal, acrylic, collage, matte medium, and inkjet on canvas, 116 ¼ × 140 inches (295.3 × 355.6 cm) © Richard Prince. Photo by Rob McKeever
72
Joe Bradley, Vanguard, 2018, oil on canvas, 88 ¼ × 106 ¼ inches (224.2 × 269.2 cm) © Joe Bradley. Photo by Rob McKeever
On the one year anniversary of the unveiling of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone sat down to discuss their collaboration.
82 In Conversation Dorothy Lichtenstein sits down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the changes underway at the Lichtenstein Foundation.
86 Ed Ruscha: Works on Paper In anticipation of the release of Ed Ruscha’s second volume for his catalogue raisonné of works on paper, editor Lisa Turvey unpacks the themes and evolution of the artist’s drawings from the 1970s through the mid-’90s.
48
Richard Prince: High Times Richard Hell discusses the artist’s High Times paintings and Hippie Drawings on the occasion of Prince’s exhibition in New York.
106 The Lives of the Artists, Part Four: Rock Baby A short story by Francine Prose.
Rain of Light
112 Sterling Ruby: Bloody Pots
126 Before & After the Fall
Garth Clark writes on Ruby’s sculptural practice, focusing on his allegiances and divergences from traditional ceramics.
Richard Calvocoressi examines pre- and postwar German and Austrian art from the 1930s through the mid-1950s.
120 Veil & Vault
134 Book Corner: Copernicus
James Lawrence examines how artists give shape and meaning to the passage of time, and how the passage of time shapes our evolving accounts of art.
Rare-book expert Douglas Flamm tells the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier about the historic De Revolutionibus (1543) by Nicolaus Copernicus, one of humanity’s most significant scientific texts.
154 Game Changer Jeff Koons’s Puppy (1992). Text by Derek Blasberg.
26
Work in Progress: Joe Bradley We visit the artist’s studio as he prepares for an exhibition in London. Text by Phyllis Tuchman.
TABLE OF CONTENTS WINTER 2018
34 Claude Picasso & John Richardson
62 Sarah Sze: Infinite Generation
Claude Picasso speaks with his longtime friend Sir John Richardson about photography, his enjoyment of vintage car racing, and their shared memories.
Louise Neri interviews the artist on the occasion of her exhibition in Rome.
40 Urs Fischer: PLAY Urs Fischer and choreographer Madeline Hollander tell Natasha Stagg about the philosophy and choreography underpinning their project play.
70 The Bigger Picture: (RED) and Light Theaster Gates and Sir David Adjaye speak about the upcoming (RED) auction, which is raising money to fight aids.
Photo credits: Front cover: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017 (detail), oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, gel medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, in 24 parts, overall: 18 feet 4 inches × 20 feet 6 inches inches (558.8 × 624.8 cm) © Richard Prince. Photo by Rob McKeever Back cover: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2016–17 (detail), oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 91 ½ × 138 inches (232.4 × 351.8 cm) © Richard Prince. Photo by Rob McKeever
96
From the Polaroid and Back Again Jessica Beck explores Andy Warhol’s lifelong use of Polaroid photography and its relationship to his art practice.
Top row, left to right: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Artwork © 2018 The Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Giuseppe Penone, Leaves of Light – Tree, 2016 (detail), bronze and stainless steel, 689 × 472 ½ × 472 ½ inches (1750 × 1200 × 1200 cm) © 2018 Giuseppe Penone/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Image © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo by Greg Garay Bottom row, left to right: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, charcoal, acrylic, collage, matte medium, and inkjet on canvas, 116 ¼ × 140 inches (295.3 × 355.6 cm) © Richard Prince. Photo by Rob McKeever
72
Joe Bradley, Vanguard, 2018, oil on canvas, 88 ¼ × 106 ¼ inches (224.2 × 269.2 cm) © Joe Bradley. Photo by Rob McKeever
On the one year anniversary of the unveiling of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone sat down to discuss their collaboration.
82 In Conversation Dorothy Lichtenstein sits down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the changes underway at the Lichtenstein Foundation.
86 Ed Ruscha: Works on Paper In anticipation of the release of Ed Ruscha’s second volume for his catalogue raisonné of works on paper, editor Lisa Turvey unpacks the themes and evolution of the artist’s drawings from the 1970s through the mid-’90s.
48
Richard Prince: High Times Richard Hell discusses the artist’s High Times paintings and Hippie Drawings on the occasion of Prince’s exhibition in New York.
106 The Lives of the Artists, Part Four: Rock Baby A short story by Francine Prose.
Rain of Light
112 Sterling Ruby: Bloody Pots
126 Before & After the Fall
Garth Clark writes on Ruby’s sculptural practice, focusing on his allegiances and divergences from traditional ceramics.
Richard Calvocoressi examines pre- and postwar German and Austrian art from the 1930s through the mid-1950s.
120 Veil & Vault
134 Book Corner: Copernicus
James Lawrence examines how artists give shape and meaning to the passage of time, and how the passage of time shapes our evolving accounts of art.
Rare-book expert Douglas Flamm tells the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier about the historic De Revolutionibus (1543) by Nicolaus Copernicus, one of humanity’s most significant scientific texts.
154 Game Changer Jeff Koons’s Puppy (1992). Text by Derek Blasberg.
26
Work in Progress: Joe Bradley We visit the artist’s studio as he prepares for an exhibition in London. Text by Phyllis Tuchman.
TABLE OF CONTENTS WINTER 2018
34 Claude Picasso & John Richardson
I
t is an honor to be a storyteller at Gagosian, where we have so many remarkable artists and thinkers all around us. To hear from so many of you about articles you have enjoyed, or about ideas we have shared that have made an impact, fills our team with energy. Thank you for connecting with us! Our cover this issue comes from High Times, a new body of work by Richard Prince. Musician and writer Richard Hell got a sneak peek and uses these pages to muse on the images’ connections to children’s drawings, popular culture, and the artist’s earlier work. An appreciation of joyful engagement abounds in Urs Fischer’s recent exhibition play. Beginning with mundane objects—office chairs—he has tackled a grand technological challenge to foster the perception of unique personalities and identities. Collaborating with choreographer Madeline Hollander, he has made those chairs dance. Art as innovation! This issue hosts two coveted interviews with people who, from inside an artist’s most intimate circle, have watched undeniable brilliance at work: John Richardson talks with Claude Picasso, son of Pablo, Derek Blasberg with Dorothy Lichtenstein, wife of Roy. They tell us their unique stories and describe the rewards and challenges of their deeply personal connections to artists of genius. We acquaint you with Joe Bradley’s latest series of paintings, which recently brought his signature blend of abstraction and figuration to a London audience. And we present a conversation between Sarah Sze and Louise Neri during the preparations for the artist’s first exhibition with Gagosian, in Rome, this fall. As our second year comes to a close, we are already challenging ourselves to make this magazine even more robust for you in 2019. See you next year! Alison McDonald, Editor-in-chief
GAGOSIAN QUARTERLY ONLINE Right: Mary Weatherford at Gagosian West 24th Street, New York, 2018. Video still courtesy Pushpin Films. Artwork © Mary Weatherford Below, left: Sarah Sze in her New York studio, 2018. Video stills courtesy Pushpin Films. Artwork © Sarah Sze
Below, top right: Carlos Basualdo and Giuseppe Penone in Turin, Italy (2016). Photo by Angela Moore Below, bottom right: Harmony Korine, 2018. Video still courtesy Pushpin Films
Behind the Art: Mary Weatherford Featuring an interview with the artist, this video brings a unique look into the preparations and final display of the exhibition Mary Weatherford: I've Seen Gray Whales Go By.
Gagosian Quarterly Talks: Giuseppe Penone and Carlos Basualdo Giuseppe Penone discusses his life’s work and celebrates the publication of his new monograph, Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Life of Forms with editor Carlos Basualdo at The Greene Space, New York, on November 10.
Work in Progress: Sarah Sze
Artist Interview: Harmony Korine BLOCKBUSTER
Step into the artist’s studio as Sarah Sze prepares for an exhibition of new work in Rome.
Learn more about Korine’s latest exhibition in an exclusive video featuring an interview with the artist.
1
I
t is an honor to be a storyteller at Gagosian, where we have so many remarkable artists and thinkers all around us. To hear from so many of you about articles you have enjoyed, or about ideas we have shared that have made an impact, fills our team with energy. Thank you for connecting with us! Our cover this issue comes from High Times, a new body of work by Richard Prince. Musician and writer Richard Hell got a sneak peek and uses these pages to muse on the images’ connections to children’s drawings, popular culture, and the artist’s earlier work. An appreciation of joyful engagement abounds in Urs Fischer’s recent exhibition play. Beginning with mundane objects—office chairs—he has tackled a grand technological challenge to foster the perception of unique personalities and identities. Collaborating with choreographer Madeline Hollander, he has made those chairs dance. Art as innovation! This issue hosts two coveted interviews with people who, from inside an artist’s most intimate circle, have watched undeniable brilliance at work: John Richardson talks with Claude Picasso, son of Pablo, Derek Blasberg with Dorothy Lichtenstein, wife of Roy. They tell us their unique stories and describe the rewards and challenges of their deeply personal connections to artists of genius. We acquaint you with Joe Bradley’s latest series of paintings, which recently brought his signature blend of abstraction and figuration to a London audience. And we present a conversation between Sarah Sze and Louise Neri during the preparations for the artist’s first exhibition with Gagosian, in Rome, this fall. As our second year comes to a close, we are already challenging ourselves to make this magazine even more robust for you in 2019. See you next year! Alison McDonald, Editor-in-chief
GAGOSIAN QUARTERLY ONLINE Right: Mary Weatherford at Gagosian West 24th Street, New York, 2018. Video still courtesy Pushpin Films. Artwork © Mary Weatherford Below, left: Sarah Sze in her New York studio, 2018. Video stills courtesy Pushpin Films. Artwork © Sarah Sze
Below, top right: Carlos Basualdo and Giuseppe Penone in Turin, Italy (2016). Photo by Angela Moore Below, bottom right: Harmony Korine, 2018. Video still courtesy Pushpin Films
Behind the Art: Mary Weatherford Featuring an interview with the artist, this video brings a unique look into the preparations and final display of the exhibition Mary Weatherford: I've Seen Gray Whales Go By.
Gagosian Quarterly Talks: Giuseppe Penone and Carlos Basualdo Giuseppe Penone discusses his life’s work and celebrates the publication of his new monograph, Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Life of Forms with editor Carlos Basualdo at The Greene Space, New York, on November 10.
Work in Progress: Sarah Sze
Artist Interview: Harmony Korine BLOCKBUSTER
Step into the artist’s studio as Sarah Sze prepares for an exhibition of new work in Rome.
Learn more about Korine’s latest exhibition in an exclusive video featuring an interview with the artist.
1
SOUS LE SIGNE DU LION NECKLACE, SAUTOIR AND RING IN WHITE GOLD AND DIAMONDS
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SOUS LE SIGNE DU LION NECKLACE, SAUTOIR AND RING IN WHITE GOLD AND DIAMONDS
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LOUIS VUITTON
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CALVIN KLEIN
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CALVIN KLEIN
CONTRIBUTORS Richard Calvocoressi
Louise Neri
A scholar and art historian, Richard Calvocoressi has been a curator at the Tate Gallery, London; director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and director of the Henry Moore Foundation. Photo by Miriam Perez
Louise Neri has been a director at Gagosian since 2006, working with artists across the gallery’s global platform. In this issue, she discusses Sarah Sze’s first exhibition with Gagosian in Rome this fall.
Garth Clark
James Lawrence
Garth Clark is the leading scholar and critic on modern contemporary ceramics, with over ninety books and writings to his credit. He is currently completing Mind Mud: The Conceptual Ceramics of Ai Weiwei and Lucio Fontana Ceramics. He has earned many awards and honors, including the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London.
James Lawrence is a critic and historian of postwar and contemporary art. He is a frequent contributor to The Burlington Magazine and his writings appear in many gallery and museum publications around the world. Photo by William Davie
Sir John Richardson
Alain Fleischer
Jessica Beck
Picasso biographer John Richardson, son of Sir Wodehouse Richardson, was born in London in 1924. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, then began writing for The New Statesman, The Burlington Magazine, and other British journals. In 1950, he and the modern-art collector and scholar Douglas Cooper moved to a château in the South of France where Picasso was a frequent visitor. Richardson began writing his biography A Life of Picasso in 1980. The first volume was published in 1991, the second in 1996, and the third in 2010. He was appointed Slade Professor of Art at Oxford in 1995 and knighted by Her Majesty the Queen in 2012. Sir John lives in New York, where he is completing the fourth volume of his Picasso biography. Photo by Ross Finocchio
Since studying literature, linguistics, and anthropology, Alain Fleischer has taught in a number of universities and in film, photography, and art schools in France and abroad. A laureate of the Académie de France in Rome, Fleischer created Le Fresnoy–Studio national des arts contemporains, serving as the institution’s director since 1997 on assignment for the French ministry of culture.
Jessica Beck is the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum. Since starting at the Museum in early 2014, Beck has co-curated Chuck Connelly: My America and Pearlstein, Warhol, Cantor: From Pittsburgh to New York. She oversaw the installation of Michael Chow aka Zhou Yinghua: Voice for My Father and Andy Warhol|Ai Weiwei, and organized Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body.
Claude Picasso Born in 1947, Claude Ruiz-Picasso is the son of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot. After studying in France and Great Britain, he lived in New York from 1967 to 1974. He assisted photographer Richard Avedon and studied at the Actor’s Studio while working as a photojournalist. At the death of his father, Claude returned to France to take care of the Succession Picasso. In this issue he speaks with John Richardson about his passions for photography, vintage car racing, and more.
Urs Fischer Urs Fischer mines the potential of materials—from clay, steel, and paint to bread, dirt, and produce—to create works that disorient and bewilder. Through scale distortions, illusion, and the juxtaposition of common objects, his sculptures, paintings, photographs, and large-scale installations explore themes of perception and representation while maintaining a witty irreverence and mordant humor. In this issue he speaks with Natasha Stagg about the exhibition play. Photo by RobertBanat.com
Richard Hell
Natasha Stagg
Richard Hell’s 1977 album Blank Generation was rereleased last year by Rhino Entertainment in a two-disk fortieth-anniversary deluxe edition. His books include two novels, Go Now and Godlike; a collaboration with Christopher Wool, Psychopts; his autobiography, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, and the 2015 essay collection Massive Pissed Love. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne
Natasha Stagg is the author of the novel Surveys (2016) and of an upcoming essay collection to be published by Semiotext(e).
Sarah Sze
Jean Nouvel
Sarah Sze’s art utilizes genres as generative frameworks, uniting intricate networks of objects and images across multiple dimensions and mediums, from sculpture to painting, drawing, printmaking, and video installation. In this issue, Sze discusses her first exhibition at Gagosian, which remains on view in Rome through January 12, 2019.
Madeline Hollander Madeline Hollander is a New York– based artist and choreographer who works with performance and video to explore how human movement and body language negotiate their limits within everyday systems of technology, intellectual property law, and pop culture.
18
Jean Nouvel is a key protagonist of intellectual debate in France regarding architecture, and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l’Architecture. First assistant to the architect Claude Parent and inspired by urban planner and essayist Paul Virilio, Jean Nouvel started his first architecture practice in 1970. His strong stances and somewhat provocative opinions on contemporary architecture in the urban context together with his unfailing ability to inject originality into all the projects he undertakes have formed his international image. His works have gained world-wide recognition such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi project which he speaks about in this issue with Giuseppe Penone. Photo by Katarina Premfors/The New York Times/Redux
Lisa Turvey Lisa Turvey is the Editor of the Ed Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of Works on Paper. Before joining Gagosian in 2008, she was the Managing Editor of October. She has written for publications including Aperture, Artforum, Art Journal, and October.
19
CONTRIBUTORS Richard Calvocoressi
Louise Neri
A scholar and art historian, Richard Calvocoressi has been a curator at the Tate Gallery, London; director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and director of the Henry Moore Foundation. Photo by Miriam Perez
Louise Neri has been a director at Gagosian since 2006, working with artists across the gallery’s global platform. In this issue, she discusses Sarah Sze’s first exhibition with Gagosian in Rome this fall.
Garth Clark
James Lawrence
Garth Clark is the leading scholar and critic on modern contemporary ceramics, with over ninety books and writings to his credit. He is currently completing Mind Mud: The Conceptual Ceramics of Ai Weiwei and Lucio Fontana Ceramics. He has earned many awards and honors, including the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London.
James Lawrence is a critic and historian of postwar and contemporary art. He is a frequent contributor to The Burlington Magazine and his writings appear in many gallery and museum publications around the world. Photo by William Davie
Sir John Richardson
Alain Fleischer
Jessica Beck
Picasso biographer John Richardson, son of Sir Wodehouse Richardson, was born in London in 1924. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, then began writing for The New Statesman, The Burlington Magazine, and other British journals. In 1950, he and the modern-art collector and scholar Douglas Cooper moved to a château in the South of France where Picasso was a frequent visitor. Richardson began writing his biography A Life of Picasso in 1980. The first volume was published in 1991, the second in 1996, and the third in 2010. He was appointed Slade Professor of Art at Oxford in 1995 and knighted by Her Majesty the Queen in 2012. Sir John lives in New York, where he is completing the fourth volume of his Picasso biography. Photo by Ross Finocchio
Since studying literature, linguistics, and anthropology, Alain Fleischer has taught in a number of universities and in film, photography, and art schools in France and abroad. A laureate of the Académie de France in Rome, Fleischer created Le Fresnoy–Studio national des arts contemporains, serving as the institution’s director since 1997 on assignment for the French ministry of culture.
Jessica Beck is the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum. Since starting at the Museum in early 2014, Beck has co-curated Chuck Connelly: My America and Pearlstein, Warhol, Cantor: From Pittsburgh to New York. She oversaw the installation of Michael Chow aka Zhou Yinghua: Voice for My Father and Andy Warhol|Ai Weiwei, and organized Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body.
Claude Picasso Born in 1947, Claude Ruiz-Picasso is the son of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot. After studying in France and Great Britain, he lived in New York from 1967 to 1974. He assisted photographer Richard Avedon and studied at the Actor’s Studio while working as a photojournalist. At the death of his father, Claude returned to France to take care of the Succession Picasso. In this issue he speaks with John Richardson about his passions for photography, vintage car racing, and more.
Urs Fischer Urs Fischer mines the potential of materials—from clay, steel, and paint to bread, dirt, and produce—to create works that disorient and bewilder. Through scale distortions, illusion, and the juxtaposition of common objects, his sculptures, paintings, photographs, and large-scale installations explore themes of perception and representation while maintaining a witty irreverence and mordant humor. In this issue he speaks with Natasha Stagg about the exhibition play. Photo by RobertBanat.com
Richard Hell
Natasha Stagg
Richard Hell’s 1977 album Blank Generation was rereleased last year by Rhino Entertainment in a two-disk fortieth-anniversary deluxe edition. His books include two novels, Go Now and Godlike; a collaboration with Christopher Wool, Psychopts; his autobiography, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, and the 2015 essay collection Massive Pissed Love. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne
Natasha Stagg is the author of the novel Surveys (2016) and of an upcoming essay collection to be published by Semiotext(e).
Sarah Sze
Jean Nouvel
Sarah Sze’s art utilizes genres as generative frameworks, uniting intricate networks of objects and images across multiple dimensions and mediums, from sculpture to painting, drawing, printmaking, and video installation. In this issue, Sze discusses her first exhibition at Gagosian, which remains on view in Rome through January 12, 2019.
Madeline Hollander Madeline Hollander is a New York– based artist and choreographer who works with performance and video to explore how human movement and body language negotiate their limits within everyday systems of technology, intellectual property law, and pop culture.
18
Jean Nouvel is a key protagonist of intellectual debate in France regarding architecture, and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l’Architecture. First assistant to the architect Claude Parent and inspired by urban planner and essayist Paul Virilio, Jean Nouvel started his first architecture practice in 1970. His strong stances and somewhat provocative opinions on contemporary architecture in the urban context together with his unfailing ability to inject originality into all the projects he undertakes have formed his international image. His works have gained world-wide recognition such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi project which he speaks about in this issue with Giuseppe Penone. Photo by Katarina Premfors/The New York Times/Redux
Lisa Turvey Lisa Turvey is the Editor of the Ed Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of Works on Paper. Before joining Gagosian in 2008, she was the Managing Editor of October. She has written for publications including Aperture, Artforum, Art Journal, and October.
19
R ALPH LAUREN
r a l p h l a u r e n . c o m / 5 0
R ALPH LAUREN
r a l p h l a u r e n . c o m / 5 0
Pepi Marchetti Franchi Hala Wardé Founding director of Gagosian Rome, Pepi Marchetti Franchi has overseen more than forty exhibitions at the gallery since it was established, in 2007. Raised in Rome, she lived in New York for many years, including eight years spent working at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Photo by Andy Massaccesi, courtesy Mutina
Hala Wardé is the founding architect of HW architecture. Long-term partner of Jean Nouvel, Wardé led the Louvre Abu Dhabi project and the One New Change development in London. In 2016, HW architecture won the architectural competition for the Beirut Museum of Art, the future landmark museum in Lebanon.
Theaster Gates
Bob Monk
Francine Prose
Theaster Gates’s work focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Living and working in Chicago, he draws on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation to redeem spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates works by focusing on the possibilities of the “life within things.” He smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of black space as a formal exercise—one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. Photo by Julian Cassady Photography LTD
Bob Monk has been a director at Gagosian New York for over twenty years, working closely with Ed Ruscha and Richard Artschwager. He has curated numerous Gagosian exhibitions, including the multivenue Ed Ruscha Books & Co. Monk worked in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art in the production of their Richard Artschwager commissioned elevators.
Francine Prose is the author of twentyone works of fiction, including, most recently, the highly acclaimed novel Mister Monkey. She is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, and was a Director’s Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Center for Scholars and Writers. Photo by Christine Jean Chambers
Sir David Adjaye Sir David Adjaye OBE is the principal and founder of Adjaye Associates. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, he has established himself as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision through his broadly ranging influences, ingenious use of materials, and sculptural ability. His largest project to date, the $540 million Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened on the National Mall in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2016 and was named Cultural Event of the Year by the New York Times. In 2017, Adjaye was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the year by Time magazine.
Giuseppe Penone In an oeuvre spanning almost fifty years, Giuseppe Penone has explored the subtle levels of interplay between man, nature, and art. His work represents a poetic expansion of arte povera’s radical break with conventional media, emphasizing the involuntary processes of respiration, growth, and aging that are common to both human beings and trees, with which he is so deeply involved. His works can be found in many major museum collections around the world. Photo by Manuel Lagos Cid/Paris Match Contour by Getty Images
22
Phyllis Tuchman Phyllis Tuchman writes for artnews. com, Artforum, and the New York Times. This past summer she curated the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly in the Hamptons for Guild Hall, East Hampton, and lectured on Helen Frankenthaler at the Provincetown Art Association. She is currently working on This Is the Land: The Life and Times of Robert Smithson.
Pepi Marchetti Franchi Hala Wardé Founding director of Gagosian Rome, Pepi Marchetti Franchi has overseen more than forty exhibitions at the gallery since it was established, in 2007. Raised in Rome, she lived in New York for many years, including eight years spent working at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Photo by Andy Massaccesi, courtesy Mutina
Hala Wardé is the founding architect of HW architecture. Long-term partner of Jean Nouvel, Wardé led the Louvre Abu Dhabi project and the One New Change development in London. In 2016, HW architecture won the architectural competition for the Beirut Museum of Art, the future landmark museum in Lebanon.
Theaster Gates
Bob Monk
Francine Prose
Theaster Gates’s work focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Living and working in Chicago, he draws on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation to redeem spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates works by focusing on the possibilities of the “life within things.” He smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of black space as a formal exercise—one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. Photo by Julian Cassady Photography LTD
Bob Monk has been a director at Gagosian New York for over twenty years, working closely with Ed Ruscha and Richard Artschwager. He has curated numerous Gagosian exhibitions, including the multivenue Ed Ruscha Books & Co. Monk worked in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art in the production of their Richard Artschwager commissioned elevators.
Francine Prose is the author of twentyone works of fiction, including, most recently, the highly acclaimed novel Mister Monkey. She is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, and was a Director’s Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Center for Scholars and Writers. Photo by Christine Jean Chambers
Sir David Adjaye Sir David Adjaye OBE is the principal and founder of Adjaye Associates. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, he has established himself as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision through his broadly ranging influences, ingenious use of materials, and sculptural ability. His largest project to date, the $540 million Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened on the National Mall in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2016 and was named Cultural Event of the Year by the New York Times. In 2017, Adjaye was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the year by Time magazine.
Giuseppe Penone In an oeuvre spanning almost fifty years, Giuseppe Penone has explored the subtle levels of interplay between man, nature, and art. His work represents a poetic expansion of arte povera’s radical break with conventional media, emphasizing the involuntary processes of respiration, growth, and aging that are common to both human beings and trees, with which he is so deeply involved. His works can be found in many major museum collections around the world. Photo by Manuel Lagos Cid/Paris Match Contour by Getty Images
22
Phyllis Tuchman Phyllis Tuchman writes for artnews. com, Artforum, and the New York Times. This past summer she curated the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly in the Hamptons for Guild Hall, East Hampton, and lectured on Helen Frankenthaler at the Provincetown Art Association. She is currently working on This Is the Land: The Life and Times of Robert Smithson.
Gagosian Quarterly, Winter 2018
Editor-in-chief Alison McDonald
Founder Larry Gagosian
Executive Editor Derek Blasberg
Business Director Melissa Lazarov
Managing Editors Shannon Cannizzaro and Wyatt Allgeier
Published by Gagosian Media
Text Editor David Frankel Design Director Paul Neale Design Alexander Ecob Graphic Thought Facility Website Wolfram Wiedner Studio
Publisher Jorge Garcia Advertising Manager Mandi Garcia Advertising Representative Michael Bullock For Advertising and Sponsorship Inquiries Advertising@gagosian.com Distribution David Renard Distributed by Pineapple Media Ltd Distribution Manager Kelly McDaniel Prepress DL Imaging Printed by Pureprint Group
Cover Richard Prince 24
Contributors Sir David Adjaye Wyatt Allgeier Jessica Beck Derek Blasberg Richard Calvocoressi Garth Clark Urs Fischer Douglas Flamm Alain Fleischer Theaster Gates Richard Hell Madeline Hollander James Lawrence Pepi Marchetti Franchi Bob Monk Louise Neri Jean Nouvel Giuseppe Penone Claude Picasso Francine Prose John Richardson Natasha Stagg Sarah Sze Phyllis Tuchman Lisa Turvey Hala WardĂŠ
Thanks Lidia Andich Jennifer Aubin Julia Bleznak Bono Joe Bradley Tyler Britt Melissa Burgos Michael Cary Serena Cattaneo Adorno Robert Chew Alice Chung Sarah Conaway Mary Dean Owen Deutsch Chrissie Erpf Anita Foden Mark Francis Matt Gaughan Andreas Gursky Abby Haywood Kat Hughes Delphine Huisinga Anselm Kiefer Jeff Koons Angela Kunicky Dorothy Lichtenstein Lauren Mahony Matilde Marozzi Rob McKeever Lily Mortimer Ruggero Penone Elena Pinchiurri Richard Prince Sheila Roche Annie Roff Lauran Rothstein Sterling Ruby Ed Ruscha Sarah Sickles Lilias Wigan Kelso Wyeth 25
Gagosian Quarterly, Winter 2018
Editor-in-chief Alison McDonald
Founder Larry Gagosian
Executive Editor Derek Blasberg
Business Director Melissa Lazarov
Managing Editors Shannon Cannizzaro and Wyatt Allgeier
Published by Gagosian Media
Text Editor David Frankel Design Director Paul Neale Design Alexander Ecob Graphic Thought Facility Website Wolfram Wiedner Studio
Publisher Jorge Garcia Advertising Manager Mandi Garcia Advertising Representative Michael Bullock For Advertising and Sponsorship Inquiries Advertising@gagosian.com Distribution David Renard Distributed by Pineapple Media Ltd Distribution Manager Kelly McDaniel Prepress DL Imaging Printed by Pureprint Group
Cover Richard Prince 24
Contributors Sir David Adjaye Wyatt Allgeier Jessica Beck Derek Blasberg Richard Calvocoressi Garth Clark Urs Fischer Douglas Flamm Alain Fleischer Theaster Gates Richard Hell Madeline Hollander James Lawrence Pepi Marchetti Franchi Bob Monk Louise Neri Jean Nouvel Giuseppe Penone Claude Picasso Francine Prose John Richardson Natasha Stagg Sarah Sze Phyllis Tuchman Lisa Turvey Hala WardĂŠ
Thanks Lidia Andich Jennifer Aubin Julia Bleznak Bono Joe Bradley Tyler Britt Melissa Burgos Michael Cary Serena Cattaneo Adorno Robert Chew Alice Chung Sarah Conaway Mary Dean Owen Deutsch Chrissie Erpf Anita Foden Mark Francis Matt Gaughan Andreas Gursky Abby Haywood Kat Hughes Delphine Huisinga Anselm Kiefer Jeff Koons Angela Kunicky Dorothy Lichtenstein Lauren Mahony Matilde Marozzi Rob McKeever Lily Mortimer Ruggero Penone Elena Pinchiurri Richard Prince Sheila Roche Annie Roff Lauran Rothstein Sterling Ruby Ed Ruscha Sarah Sickles Lilias Wigan Kelso Wyeth 25
WORK IN PROGRESS
JOE BRADLEY With preparations underway for an upcoming exhibition in London, Phyllis Tuchman visited the artist’s studio in Long Island City, NY, to learn more about this new body of work. 26
27
WORK IN PROGRESS
JOE BRADLEY With preparations underway for an upcoming exhibition in London, Phyllis Tuchman visited the artist’s studio in Long Island City, NY, to learn more about this new body of work. 26
27
U
nlike lots of postpainterly abstractionists, particularly those associated with the Color Field movement, Joe Bradley works with oil-based pigments, and has since 2010. He finds the color richer and more intense than those of acrylics. Oil takes longer to dry than acrylic, but Bradley doesn’t mind the delay; it gives him time to consider what he’s done and where he’s headed. “The way I approach painting,” he told me recently as a sudden rainstorm forced him to close windows in his Long Island City studio, “is that it involves a lot of waiting around.” As he puts it, “There will be a flurry of activity followed by a period of just looking. Waiting for the moment to strike.” He’s learned to be patient because nothing, it seems to him, happens quickly. Bradley also applies paint straight from the tube to his canvases. He doesn’t mix his own colors because he’s not interested in that type of nuance. Instead, the New York–based artist wants his palette to refer to nothing other than itself. “I want my red to be the red you see when you look it up in the dictionary,” he explained to me. As it is, Bradley might begin a painting by depicting a recognizable image on a canvas that’s lying directly on the floor. During my visit to his studio, he told me that had I come by a year ago, I might have found some reclining figures. “In the early stages of a painting,” he said, “there might be more overt figuration. I usually begin by painting a figure or something. This typically gets buried in the course of making a picture.” Sometimes a few body parts remain. Bradley is a reluctant abstractionist. He is aware, though, that viewers respond differently to abstract art. “When you stand in front of a Rothko,” he said, “It’s like hitting pause. The chatter in your head fades and you are left with just the painting.” It’s amazing that Bradley got to this point in his career as quickly as he did. Growing up in the coastal town of Kittery, Maine, as one of nine siblings—he was born in Georgia in 1975—he was more familiar with cartoons than with old master paintings. “My first exposure to art,” he told his friend Dan Nadel a few years ago, “was through comic books when I was really young, like eight or nine years old . . . and when I was in high school I got turned on to R. Crumb and his contemporaries.” If you gave him a pencil, he’d sit quietly and draw. His talent did not go unnoticed. After a gap year spent as a dishwasher, Bradley ended up at the Rhode Island School of Design. “I was just sort of devouring art history because I didn’t know that much about it, which was really exciting,” he has recalled. As an art student, he was intrigued by the Chicago artists Roger Brown and the Hairy Who group. He discovered late Philip Guston, too—“a big deal for me,” he has said. Nevertheless, Bradley wanted to make his own mark. He also told Nadel that “at a certain point, I got frustrated because I thought I would be chasing these guys around forever.” For a painter who now works on large canvases, he started small. Initially, he painted pale-colored landscapes measured in inches rather than feet, much less yardsticks. Some are scenes as if rendered by a Minimalist. Reproduced in a catalogue published by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 2017, you’ll find a painting of a calm, placid lake or pond beneath a big sky with a geometric sun. During the years in which Bradley went from student to exhibiting artist, he also painted small checkerboards more reduced in size than their real-life, tabletop counterparts. And with acrylic he executed a few creamy, patterned camouflage works that were a 28
29
U
nlike lots of postpainterly abstractionists, particularly those associated with the Color Field movement, Joe Bradley works with oil-based pigments, and has since 2010. He finds the color richer and more intense than those of acrylics. Oil takes longer to dry than acrylic, but Bradley doesn’t mind the delay; it gives him time to consider what he’s done and where he’s headed. “The way I approach painting,” he told me recently as a sudden rainstorm forced him to close windows in his Long Island City studio, “is that it involves a lot of waiting around.” As he puts it, “There will be a flurry of activity followed by a period of just looking. Waiting for the moment to strike.” He’s learned to be patient because nothing, it seems to him, happens quickly. Bradley also applies paint straight from the tube to his canvases. He doesn’t mix his own colors because he’s not interested in that type of nuance. Instead, the New York–based artist wants his palette to refer to nothing other than itself. “I want my red to be the red you see when you look it up in the dictionary,” he explained to me. As it is, Bradley might begin a painting by depicting a recognizable image on a canvas that’s lying directly on the floor. During my visit to his studio, he told me that had I come by a year ago, I might have found some reclining figures. “In the early stages of a painting,” he said, “there might be more overt figuration. I usually begin by painting a figure or something. This typically gets buried in the course of making a picture.” Sometimes a few body parts remain. Bradley is a reluctant abstractionist. He is aware, though, that viewers respond differently to abstract art. “When you stand in front of a Rothko,” he said, “It’s like hitting pause. The chatter in your head fades and you are left with just the painting.” It’s amazing that Bradley got to this point in his career as quickly as he did. Growing up in the coastal town of Kittery, Maine, as one of nine siblings—he was born in Georgia in 1975—he was more familiar with cartoons than with old master paintings. “My first exposure to art,” he told his friend Dan Nadel a few years ago, “was through comic books when I was really young, like eight or nine years old . . . and when I was in high school I got turned on to R. Crumb and his contemporaries.” If you gave him a pencil, he’d sit quietly and draw. His talent did not go unnoticed. After a gap year spent as a dishwasher, Bradley ended up at the Rhode Island School of Design. “I was just sort of devouring art history because I didn’t know that much about it, which was really exciting,” he has recalled. As an art student, he was intrigued by the Chicago artists Roger Brown and the Hairy Who group. He discovered late Philip Guston, too—“a big deal for me,” he has said. Nevertheless, Bradley wanted to make his own mark. He also told Nadel that “at a certain point, I got frustrated because I thought I would be chasing these guys around forever.” For a painter who now works on large canvases, he started small. Initially, he painted pale-colored landscapes measured in inches rather than feet, much less yardsticks. Some are scenes as if rendered by a Minimalist. Reproduced in a catalogue published by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 2017, you’ll find a painting of a calm, placid lake or pond beneath a big sky with a geometric sun. During the years in which Bradley went from student to exhibiting artist, he also painted small checkerboards more reduced in size than their real-life, tabletop counterparts. And with acrylic he executed a few creamy, patterned camouflage works that were a 28
29
far cry from Andy Warhol’s much enlarged silkscreen treatments of the same theme. Bradley would have continued to make landscapes, except he became, in his words, “more interested in painting as an object.” “The subject,” it seemed to him, “was arbitrary.” He also felt that the brushstrokes became “a distraction.” He briefly stopped painting and became, for lack of a better term, a process artist. He remembers feeling as if he were fabricating a sculpture, but ironically enough, he was still making paintings except they weren’t executed with pigments from tubes or jars. Working from preparatory drawings, including some sketched on graph paper, he stretched and attached sheets of vinyl to multiple stretchers. The material came in a range of colors, including the primaries of red, blue, and yellow as well as orange, magenta, black, and brown. Large, broad-planed, and stick-figure-like, some configurations of panels look like robots escaped from a video game; others evoke the sculpture of Joel Shapiro. Because it was difficult to make the vinyl taut, there are lots of creases. T hese stacked, modular paintings were well received. In the New York Times, critic Ken Johnson called them “surprisingly sweet and mysteriously resonant.” They garnered the fledgling artist an invitation to show in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. On view in the Breuer building, his vinyl pieces impressed a reviewer for Time magazine with their “ferocious colors and color contrasts [that] give his work a weirdly commanding presence.” But as Bradley told the artist Dike Blair, a former professor of his at RISD, in a conversation published in Bomb magazine in 2009, “My studio practice was starting to resemble manual labor, just staple gunning all day. I felt like someone else’s assistant!” Bradley has never been afraid to try new approaches, even if they make him seem all over the place. Take the Schmagoo series (2008–09). Instead of continuing to work with vinyl, the emergent artist began floating giant line drawings on fields of somewhat distressed canvas. These paintings might have been—and perhaps still are—among the oddest bodies of work put on exhibition a decade ago, not to mention when they were included a few years later in The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, at The Museum of Modern Art in 2014. For starters, “schmagoo” is a ’50s slang expression for heroin. If nothing else, they present images seen from a child’s perspective, and they are yet another group of canvases that defy conventional definitions of what constitutes a painting. With grease pencil on somewhat soiled, loosely stretched canvas drop cloths, Bradley drew large, awkward symbols, one per picture: an unruly cross. The Superman logo. A wavy line. An upsidedown car. The number 23. These works will never be confused with technically adept pictures by someone like Thomas Kinkade, or even run-of-the-mill painters exhibiting at a gallery in a local strip mall. Still, they call to mind Pablo Picasso’s comment that it took him years to learn how to draw like a child. Bradley made yet another one-off series after the Schmagoo paintings when he silkscreened eight-foottall black silhouettes, loosely styled after Egyptian wall reliefs, on untreated canvas grounds. The bathers and dancers he depicted became the last hurrah to date of overt figuration in Bradley’s corpus. Today, representational images are more explicit in his drawings. “The imagery,” he said recently, “tends to be buried in the paintings.” Once again, Bradley was back at square one, needing to determine what to do next. His solution? Twosided abstract paintings. He initially spread distressed drop cloths rather than standard canvases on the floor, so that making a painting wouldn’t seem like a precious activity. “Working with the canvas on the floor 30
WORKING WITH THE CANVAS ON THE FLOOR ALLOWS ME TO APPROACH THE PAINTING FROM ALL ANGLES. Joe Bradley
31
far cry from Andy Warhol’s much enlarged silkscreen treatments of the same theme. Bradley would have continued to make landscapes, except he became, in his words, “more interested in painting as an object.” “The subject,” it seemed to him, “was arbitrary.” He also felt that the brushstrokes became “a distraction.” He briefly stopped painting and became, for lack of a better term, a process artist. He remembers feeling as if he were fabricating a sculpture, but ironically enough, he was still making paintings except they weren’t executed with pigments from tubes or jars. Working from preparatory drawings, including some sketched on graph paper, he stretched and attached sheets of vinyl to multiple stretchers. The material came in a range of colors, including the primaries of red, blue, and yellow as well as orange, magenta, black, and brown. Large, broad-planed, and stick-figure-like, some configurations of panels look like robots escaped from a video game; others evoke the sculpture of Joel Shapiro. Because it was difficult to make the vinyl taut, there are lots of creases. T hese stacked, modular paintings were well received. In the New York Times, critic Ken Johnson called them “surprisingly sweet and mysteriously resonant.” They garnered the fledgling artist an invitation to show in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. On view in the Breuer building, his vinyl pieces impressed a reviewer for Time magazine with their “ferocious colors and color contrasts [that] give his work a weirdly commanding presence.” But as Bradley told the artist Dike Blair, a former professor of his at RISD, in a conversation published in Bomb magazine in 2009, “My studio practice was starting to resemble manual labor, just staple gunning all day. I felt like someone else’s assistant!” Bradley has never been afraid to try new approaches, even if they make him seem all over the place. Take the Schmagoo series (2008–09). Instead of continuing to work with vinyl, the emergent artist began floating giant line drawings on fields of somewhat distressed canvas. These paintings might have been—and perhaps still are—among the oddest bodies of work put on exhibition a decade ago, not to mention when they were included a few years later in The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, at The Museum of Modern Art in 2014. For starters, “schmagoo” is a ’50s slang expression for heroin. If nothing else, they present images seen from a child’s perspective, and they are yet another group of canvases that defy conventional definitions of what constitutes a painting. With grease pencil on somewhat soiled, loosely stretched canvas drop cloths, Bradley drew large, awkward symbols, one per picture: an unruly cross. The Superman logo. A wavy line. An upsidedown car. The number 23. These works will never be confused with technically adept pictures by someone like Thomas Kinkade, or even run-of-the-mill painters exhibiting at a gallery in a local strip mall. Still, they call to mind Pablo Picasso’s comment that it took him years to learn how to draw like a child. Bradley made yet another one-off series after the Schmagoo paintings when he silkscreened eight-foottall black silhouettes, loosely styled after Egyptian wall reliefs, on untreated canvas grounds. The bathers and dancers he depicted became the last hurrah to date of overt figuration in Bradley’s corpus. Today, representational images are more explicit in his drawings. “The imagery,” he said recently, “tends to be buried in the paintings.” Once again, Bradley was back at square one, needing to determine what to do next. His solution? Twosided abstract paintings. He initially spread distressed drop cloths rather than standard canvases on the floor, so that making a painting wouldn’t seem like a precious activity. “Working with the canvas on the floor 30
WORKING WITH THE CANVAS ON THE FLOOR ALLOWS ME TO APPROACH THE PAINTING FROM ALL ANGLES. Joe Bradley
31
allows me to approach the painting from all angles,” he told me. “I don’t get bogged down thinking about composition—how upper-left corners look.” When he noticed that a surface had gotten muddled up, Bradley flipped the picture over. “I’m a frugal guy,” he has claimed. Since the original canvas was still wet, pigments stuck to the f loor. Consequently, the anomalous colors attached themselves to fresh surfaces when they rested on top of them. Bradley thought the “incidental marks were exciting and led to unexpected twists in how I resolved a painting.” He started to intentionally work on both sides of his works. When he stretched these canvases, he chose which picture was the primary one. This body of work is rife with unfettered colors, many of them floating freely on the canvas grounds. For the most part, broad passages of pigment assume relatively undefined shapes. There are few lines, curved, straight, or angular. Sometimes you’ll find a footprint. Viewers are essentially greeted by works of art that project a refreshing, improvisatory character. Then, Bradley noticed that one section of a painting might look better if it were attached to a different picture. Consequently, he decided to cut out substantial parts, say a quarter—or a bit more or less—from an unfinished canvas. After purchasing an industrial sewing machine, he attached the homeless parts together. On occasion he just added a blank area. His method of mix-and-match engendered an inventive form of collage on a scale never dreamt by Picasso, Georges Braque, or Juan Gris. Besides introducing new themes and colors with this latest type of collage, Bradley has incorporated the edges of the additional canvases variously. Sometimes he has fashioned them as assertive lines. The auxiliary material in some sections hangs down as inches-wide flaps. Whatever the situation, this became just the sort of thing that Bradley knows “you wouldn’t get if you farmed out your work.” Between incorporating migrating paint from his studio floor into the surfaces of his canvases and pioneering the use of an industrial sewing machine to create collaged effects, the artist ended up with, 32
as he has described it, “a way of creating unexpected results.” For the past two years, Bradley has been executing tidier, layered paintings with casual geometric divisions. He continues to be intent on “building a painting rather than composing one.” These days he uses oil pigments rather than unusual materials. Bradley still paints on the floor. He still waits patiently for the ever increasing number of layers to dry. But now he divides the topmost surface into quadrants, sometimes halves, sometimes quarters. One recent canvas has a large square of yellow with two black discs that rest below a red rectangle containing a more exacting circle, while on the right, a chunk of black stretches from the top of the canvas to its bottom. Another stunning panel has a block of blue next to a less wide slab of white; highlights of yellow, red, and blue are visible in areas where he has scraped away paint. Because of their networks of patches, Bradley’s latest surfaces resemble sunlit, shimmering water. You might even be reminded of some of Claude Monet’s expansive water lily panels. Wherever your glance falls, it meets an intriguing detail or highlight. You’re also made aware of the places where the blocks of color meet, be it a point or a lengthier stretch of canvas. Bradley titles his works carefully. He even keeps a preliminary list of phrases handy. How he names a work, like much else about his art, is not arbitrary for him. He sees a title as being “helpful for setting a tone. It’s like an olive branch to the viewer.” The recent paintings relate to city life. That’s why Bradley has called two of them Inner City and High Rise. Although he constructs abstractions, he is fascinated by the mysteries of the everyday world. He knows that nonrepresentational art can be more inclusive than was ever suspected possible as modernism evolved. With color and skewed geometries, Joe Bradley has brought us back to the origins of abstraction and then returned us to a joyful, vibrant present day.
Artwork © Joe Bradley. Photos by Rob McKeever
BOUTIQUES GENÈVE • PARIS • LONDON • BERLIN • NEW YORK MIAMI • BEVERLY HILLS • LAS VEGAS MOSCOW • DUBAI • TOKYO • HONG KONG SINGAPORE • SAINT-TROPEZ • CANNES COURCHEVEL • ZERMATT • ZÜRICH
Big Bang Unico Red Magic. Case in vibrantly-coloured and patented red ceramic. In-house UNICO chronograph movement. Limited edition of 500 pieces.
allows me to approach the painting from all angles,” he told me. “I don’t get bogged down thinking about composition—how upper-left corners look.” When he noticed that a surface had gotten muddled up, Bradley flipped the picture over. “I’m a frugal guy,” he has claimed. Since the original canvas was still wet, pigments stuck to the f loor. Consequently, the anomalous colors attached themselves to fresh surfaces when they rested on top of them. Bradley thought the “incidental marks were exciting and led to unexpected twists in how I resolved a painting.” He started to intentionally work on both sides of his works. When he stretched these canvases, he chose which picture was the primary one. This body of work is rife with unfettered colors, many of them floating freely on the canvas grounds. For the most part, broad passages of pigment assume relatively undefined shapes. There are few lines, curved, straight, or angular. Sometimes you’ll find a footprint. Viewers are essentially greeted by works of art that project a refreshing, improvisatory character. Then, Bradley noticed that one section of a painting might look better if it were attached to a different picture. Consequently, he decided to cut out substantial parts, say a quarter—or a bit more or less—from an unfinished canvas. After purchasing an industrial sewing machine, he attached the homeless parts together. On occasion he just added a blank area. His method of mix-and-match engendered an inventive form of collage on a scale never dreamt by Picasso, Georges Braque, or Juan Gris. Besides introducing new themes and colors with this latest type of collage, Bradley has incorporated the edges of the additional canvases variously. Sometimes he has fashioned them as assertive lines. The auxiliary material in some sections hangs down as inches-wide flaps. Whatever the situation, this became just the sort of thing that Bradley knows “you wouldn’t get if you farmed out your work.” Between incorporating migrating paint from his studio floor into the surfaces of his canvases and pioneering the use of an industrial sewing machine to create collaged effects, the artist ended up with, 32
as he has described it, “a way of creating unexpected results.” For the past two years, Bradley has been executing tidier, layered paintings with casual geometric divisions. He continues to be intent on “building a painting rather than composing one.” These days he uses oil pigments rather than unusual materials. Bradley still paints on the floor. He still waits patiently for the ever increasing number of layers to dry. But now he divides the topmost surface into quadrants, sometimes halves, sometimes quarters. One recent canvas has a large square of yellow with two black discs that rest below a red rectangle containing a more exacting circle, while on the right, a chunk of black stretches from the top of the canvas to its bottom. Another stunning panel has a block of blue next to a less wide slab of white; highlights of yellow, red, and blue are visible in areas where he has scraped away paint. Because of their networks of patches, Bradley’s latest surfaces resemble sunlit, shimmering water. You might even be reminded of some of Claude Monet’s expansive water lily panels. Wherever your glance falls, it meets an intriguing detail or highlight. You’re also made aware of the places where the blocks of color meet, be it a point or a lengthier stretch of canvas. Bradley titles his works carefully. He even keeps a preliminary list of phrases handy. How he names a work, like much else about his art, is not arbitrary for him. He sees a title as being “helpful for setting a tone. It’s like an olive branch to the viewer.” The recent paintings relate to city life. That’s why Bradley has called two of them Inner City and High Rise. Although he constructs abstractions, he is fascinated by the mysteries of the everyday world. He knows that nonrepresentational art can be more inclusive than was ever suspected possible as modernism evolved. With color and skewed geometries, Joe Bradley has brought us back to the origins of abstraction and then returned us to a joyful, vibrant present day.
Artwork © Joe Bradley. Photos by Rob McKeever
BOUTIQUES GENÈVE • PARIS • LONDON • BERLIN • NEW YORK MIAMI • BEVERLY HILLS • LAS VEGAS MOSCOW • DUBAI • TOKYO • HONG KONG SINGAPORE • SAINT-TROPEZ • CANNES COURCHEVEL • ZERMATT • ZÜRICH
Big Bang Unico Red Magic. Case in vibrantly-coloured and patented red ceramic. In-house UNICO chronograph movement. Limited edition of 500 pieces.
JOHN RICHARDSON So what brings you to New York? CLAUDE PICASSO Well, tomorrow is my birthday and
I thought I’d spend it with [my mother] Françoise [Gilot]. It’s amusing because we’re exactly twentyfive years apart, so it’s easy to remember: when I turned twenty-five, she turned fifty. When she turned seventy-five, I was fifty. This week she said, “And what are you going to be? Oh, seventy-two? So it means I’ll be a hundred” [laughter]. I said, “Not yet.” JR We have lunch with her as often as we can and she’s still so sharp and full of life. Did your grandparents on the Gilot side live to as advanced an age? CP My grandfather didn’t live to be so old, on account of the wars—he spent four years, more or less, in the trenches during the First World War and then in the Second World War he was called back. Can you imagine? He suffered from rheumatism, which happened when you live in the trenches, so the end of his life wasn’t pleasant—but Françoise’s mother lived to be eighty-six, and her grandmother also lived to be quite old. JR Good genes. CP My grandfather was interesting because he was an agronomical engineer, which meant that he was automatically made an officer in the army. But he refused to be an officer. He said, “If I’m going to be in this war, I want to be just like the other men.” JR He was principled. CP Yes, exactly. People were that way in those days. But my grandmother’s two brothers also went to war and both of them were made officers, so they had to dress up in this absurdly extravagant way, you know, red and blue and feathers and whatnot. And their outfits were entirely made by Hermès [laughter]. JR When I went to sign up for service, the doctors examined me and found I had a disease I didn’t know, something that had never declared itself. They said, “Oh, you can never go to war,” and I pretended, “Oh please, let me go to war! [laughter] Please! Oh, this is awful, my family will be so upset.” “You cannot go to war.” I said, “ . . . Are you sure?” [laughter] So I ended up an air raid warden— we used to parade Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, look up and see what was happening in the sky, but we were just firemen, basically [laughter].
CLAUDE PICASSO & JOHN RICHARDSON
Picasso’s biographer and family friend John Richardson sits down with Claude Picasso for a wideranging conversation. The two discuss Claude’s photography, his enjoyment of vintage car racing, his encounters with Willem de Kooning, and the future of scholarship related to his father, Pablo Picasso. 34
Wasn’t your father quite important in the military? JR And knighted for it. But my father was seventytwo when I was born, and died when I was six. My grandfather was born in, I think, 1815 or 1817, so I have this ludicrous sort of—I go back in two generations to the Napoleonic War [laughter]. I’m a bit of a freak in that respect—I don’t fit into any kind of ordinary timetable. CP You are timeless! [laughter] JR And here I am, age ninety-four, still in reasonably good shape and fully intent to go on until I’m a hundred. CP That’s a bit like my family. My grandfather on the Picasso side was born in the early nineteenth century, then I was born when my father was quite old, he was sixty-five. Now I have a little son who’s ten. So it’s two centuries, you know, a span of two centuries. JR And you and I go back a long way as well. CP I remember when I was quite young that when you and Douglas [Cooper] used to come to visit, you would wear shorts, which I thought were only for children at the time [laughter]. JR [laughs] That’s very embarrassing. I thought I looked okay in shorts, but Douglas— CP That’s the point—there was one young man in shorts who looked quite spiffy and another one who was a bit more dubious [laughter]. Coming up the steps—it was quite a sight for me. We were told that you were Australians, both of you. JR Douglas’s father was Australian, so that was partly true. CP My father said, “You see these two—the Australians are coming” [laughter]. So I just thought Australians were very exotic. I had no idea what Australia was, but they wore shorts there [laughter]. And you wore very short shorts. JR Oh dear [laughter]. CP It’s strange that I picked up on this with you, because I didn’t pay that much attention to other people. But I always thought you were fun, both of you. Most people who came to visit absolutely ignored us, but you would actually speak with us, the children. So we thought, “Ah—we matter.” JR Yes, of course you mattered—we loved visiting with you. It was almost as if there were three generations—you and [your sister] Paloma CP
and [your step-sister, Jacqueline Roque’s daughter] Cathy were there; [your half-brother, Olga Khokhlova’s son] Paul, Françoise, Jacqueline, and I were all around the same age, and then there was your father, and friends like [Henri] Matisse and [Jean] Cocteau, who’d known each other forty-plus years. And Picasso clearly loved to have children around. We always took care to speak with Cathy especially, as we felt it must have been hard to suddenly join this complicated family of the most famous artist in the world. But it was a magical time and a magical household. Do you still take photographs? CP A little bit, yes. I’m trying to reconnect with photography at the moment, so I’ve been looking at the work I did before and trying to see if there’s some sort of through line or feeling that I seem to have pursued by accident. I’d like to try and start from there, but it’s not so clear. JR But why did you stop in the first place? Or did you feel that you stopped at some point? CP Basically, I stopped because I couldn’t work professionally anymore, I was too busy with the estate and running the Picasso Administration. When I was still quite young, my brother, Paul, said it was fortunate I was there because I’d “solve the future,” or “solve everything.” It was a strange thing to say, but it turns out that’s what I ended up doing—it’s sort of shocking. I never expected or desired to have any kind of role like this, or have any influence over my father’s legacy. Paul also said, shortly before he died, “You know, if we’re in the shit we’re in, it’s all your fault” [laughter]. And he and Françoise laughed like crazy, because, you know, they were such good friends. It was typical of Paul to say something like that, his sense of humor. So because of the Picasso Administration, little by little, I had to quit photography. Not all of a sudden but little by little. JR How did you first meet Richard Avedon? CP When he photographed Paloma and me. JR Professionally you’re the head of the Picasso Administration, but you’re also a bit of a professional race car driver. How long have you been racing? CP I started very late. I got involved with cars and racing because of the photographer David Douglas Duncan. One day I met him by chance and he
I’ve come here today with real joy and emotion, and it’s not because I’m nostalgic about the past, I’m not at all—I’m vaccinated against it. Claude Picasso
Opposite: Claude Picasso, New York, November 29, 1967, contact print. Photo by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation
35
JOHN RICHARDSON So what brings you to New York? CLAUDE PICASSO Well, tomorrow is my birthday and
I thought I’d spend it with [my mother] Françoise [Gilot]. It’s amusing because we’re exactly twentyfive years apart, so it’s easy to remember: when I turned twenty-five, she turned fifty. When she turned seventy-five, I was fifty. This week she said, “And what are you going to be? Oh, seventy-two? So it means I’ll be a hundred” [laughter]. I said, “Not yet.” JR We have lunch with her as often as we can and she’s still so sharp and full of life. Did your grandparents on the Gilot side live to as advanced an age? CP My grandfather didn’t live to be so old, on account of the wars—he spent four years, more or less, in the trenches during the First World War and then in the Second World War he was called back. Can you imagine? He suffered from rheumatism, which happened when you live in the trenches, so the end of his life wasn’t pleasant—but Françoise’s mother lived to be eighty-six, and her grandmother also lived to be quite old. JR Good genes. CP My grandfather was interesting because he was an agronomical engineer, which meant that he was automatically made an officer in the army. But he refused to be an officer. He said, “If I’m going to be in this war, I want to be just like the other men.” JR He was principled. CP Yes, exactly. People were that way in those days. But my grandmother’s two brothers also went to war and both of them were made officers, so they had to dress up in this absurdly extravagant way, you know, red and blue and feathers and whatnot. And their outfits were entirely made by Hermès [laughter]. JR When I went to sign up for service, the doctors examined me and found I had a disease I didn’t know, something that had never declared itself. They said, “Oh, you can never go to war,” and I pretended, “Oh please, let me go to war! [laughter] Please! Oh, this is awful, my family will be so upset.” “You cannot go to war.” I said, “ . . . Are you sure?” [laughter] So I ended up an air raid warden— we used to parade Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, look up and see what was happening in the sky, but we were just firemen, basically [laughter].
CLAUDE PICASSO & JOHN RICHARDSON
Picasso’s biographer and family friend John Richardson sits down with Claude Picasso for a wideranging conversation. The two discuss Claude’s photography, his enjoyment of vintage car racing, his encounters with Willem de Kooning, and the future of scholarship related to his father, Pablo Picasso. 34
Wasn’t your father quite important in the military? JR And knighted for it. But my father was seventytwo when I was born, and died when I was six. My grandfather was born in, I think, 1815 or 1817, so I have this ludicrous sort of—I go back in two generations to the Napoleonic War [laughter]. I’m a bit of a freak in that respect—I don’t fit into any kind of ordinary timetable. CP You are timeless! [laughter] JR And here I am, age ninety-four, still in reasonably good shape and fully intent to go on until I’m a hundred. CP That’s a bit like my family. My grandfather on the Picasso side was born in the early nineteenth century, then I was born when my father was quite old, he was sixty-five. Now I have a little son who’s ten. So it’s two centuries, you know, a span of two centuries. JR And you and I go back a long way as well. CP I remember when I was quite young that when you and Douglas [Cooper] used to come to visit, you would wear shorts, which I thought were only for children at the time [laughter]. JR [laughs] That’s very embarrassing. I thought I looked okay in shorts, but Douglas— CP That’s the point—there was one young man in shorts who looked quite spiffy and another one who was a bit more dubious [laughter]. Coming up the steps—it was quite a sight for me. We were told that you were Australians, both of you. JR Douglas’s father was Australian, so that was partly true. CP My father said, “You see these two—the Australians are coming” [laughter]. So I just thought Australians were very exotic. I had no idea what Australia was, but they wore shorts there [laughter]. And you wore very short shorts. JR Oh dear [laughter]. CP It’s strange that I picked up on this with you, because I didn’t pay that much attention to other people. But I always thought you were fun, both of you. Most people who came to visit absolutely ignored us, but you would actually speak with us, the children. So we thought, “Ah—we matter.” JR Yes, of course you mattered—we loved visiting with you. It was almost as if there were three generations—you and [your sister] Paloma CP
and [your step-sister, Jacqueline Roque’s daughter] Cathy were there; [your half-brother, Olga Khokhlova’s son] Paul, Françoise, Jacqueline, and I were all around the same age, and then there was your father, and friends like [Henri] Matisse and [Jean] Cocteau, who’d known each other forty-plus years. And Picasso clearly loved to have children around. We always took care to speak with Cathy especially, as we felt it must have been hard to suddenly join this complicated family of the most famous artist in the world. But it was a magical time and a magical household. Do you still take photographs? CP A little bit, yes. I’m trying to reconnect with photography at the moment, so I’ve been looking at the work I did before and trying to see if there’s some sort of through line or feeling that I seem to have pursued by accident. I’d like to try and start from there, but it’s not so clear. JR But why did you stop in the first place? Or did you feel that you stopped at some point? CP Basically, I stopped because I couldn’t work professionally anymore, I was too busy with the estate and running the Picasso Administration. When I was still quite young, my brother, Paul, said it was fortunate I was there because I’d “solve the future,” or “solve everything.” It was a strange thing to say, but it turns out that’s what I ended up doing—it’s sort of shocking. I never expected or desired to have any kind of role like this, or have any influence over my father’s legacy. Paul also said, shortly before he died, “You know, if we’re in the shit we’re in, it’s all your fault” [laughter]. And he and Françoise laughed like crazy, because, you know, they were such good friends. It was typical of Paul to say something like that, his sense of humor. So because of the Picasso Administration, little by little, I had to quit photography. Not all of a sudden but little by little. JR How did you first meet Richard Avedon? CP When he photographed Paloma and me. JR Professionally you’re the head of the Picasso Administration, but you’re also a bit of a professional race car driver. How long have you been racing? CP I started very late. I got involved with cars and racing because of the photographer David Douglas Duncan. One day I met him by chance and he
I’ve come here today with real joy and emotion, and it’s not because I’m nostalgic about the past, I’m not at all—I’m vaccinated against it. Claude Picasso
Opposite: Claude Picasso, New York, November 29, 1967, contact print. Photo by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation
35
told me he was going to sell his car, the famous Mercedes Gullwing. I said, “You don’t have to do that. It’s your old horse. You can’t just throw him out of the house” [laughter]. He said, “No, no, I decided and I’m going to sell it to so-and-so.” And I said, “No, not to him, forget it, this car is mine. If you’re really going to let it go, it’s mine. Here is a check.” So I ended up with this old piece of junk and I said to a friend of mine, “I just acquired this thing. What do I do with it now?” He told me of these races for old cars—“vintage,” they call them— and I entered one race and then another. But it’s a complicated car—it’s heavy and difficult, so I started looking for a lighter car and then another and I kept switching cars and getting better at driving, I took classes and ended up doing track and rally and so on, and I became, you know, little by little, very involved. And so now I am semiprofessional. But vintage! [laughter] JR How many races do you do in a year? CP I used to do up to ten or twelve, which took up a lot of time, so I had to cut back. Now I specialize in certain races, like one in Morocco in the desert, or in Finland on the ice and the snow—racing on the frozen sea or in the woods. Quite dangerous, actually, but I became very good at these difficult races. JR Do you still own the Gullwing? You must remember it from your childhood because Duncan always had it around La Californie during the years he was photographing Picasso? CP Yes, of course. That’s why I said “That’s my car” [laughter]. And I still own it! In a way, one of the reasons I became a photographer is that Duncan was always around, clicking away, and I thought oh, this would be an interesting occupation. When I was about seventeen, he very kindly gave me a professional camera. JR He gave you one? Do you remember what it was? CP A Nikon. I still have it, too! JR Do you keep an archive of your photographs? CP I do, but I don’t have all of them, I’ve lost a lot of things over the years. In the old days, the magazines and newspapers I worked for used to keep them. JR Life magazine sent you on assignment to photograph Willem de Kooning when he returned to the Netherlands for the very first time since emigrating to New York.
For his big exhibition in 1968, yes. I had been sent by Life magazine to London to cover a rock band called the Incredible String Band, which wasn’t that incredible [laughter]. I was traveling around with them and it was the most awful experience. They lived as a commune in Wales, they lived with the animals and were very laid back, really hard-core hippies, and I was trying to get this thing to look like something presentable for Life magazine. At the time it was still a kind of old-fashioned magazine, so I always wore a suit and tie, I had to cut my hair and—you know, the works—but I was young so supposedly I would fit in [laughs]. So I was there with not much of a job and not much to do, actually, so I got saved by de Kooning coming to Holland and I was sent there because I knew him and his daughter—and there I fit in! De Kooning was very proper and wore a tie and we went around to all the museums and met up with a friend from his youth in Rotterdam and I just kept shooting. They were house painters when they were young men and we walked around looking at houses and how well painted they were [laughter]. JR Do you still have the images of that trip? CP A few that are not so exciting. JR How did you first meet de Kooning? CP I had met him in the Hamptons—I used to go there often when I lived in New York in the 1960s. In those days it was a very small community. There were always get-togethers—the artists’ and writers’ picnic, or the artists’ and writers’ football match. Nobody knew how to play [laughter]. It was probably just an excuse to get drunk and have fun, so we’d meet on the beach or at someplace or other. And so you met everyone, because it was only a handful of people out there; Lee Krasner was around, Jimmy Ernst, Conrad Marca-Relli, and less well-known people you haven’t even heard of. JR This was the ’60s and early ’70s? I think you got the best time out there. CP Yes, you can imagine. We had a party for the landing on the moon [laughter]. We had a small television set and took it into the garden and everyone was there, sitting around drinking and laughing. JR Have you ever written about that time? CP No, but I wrote some other, connected pieces. I published a piece in the Saturday Review, which was fun—they were trying to make Saturday Review a little more exciting so I was hired to do something. CP
I thought, OK, people collect art, so I’ll investigate what kinds of things artists collect. I went around to all the gang, and of course I had to find artists who collect something different from their buddies. That led me to Andy [Warhol], who collected just about everything [laughter]. The project was so funny and unexpected and they included a photograph of Andy with his cookie jars on the cover. JR I’m working on a Warhol exhibition for Gagosian in London we’ll put on sometime next year— society portraits. They’re fascinating—there’s so much invention and variety, they aren’t “simply portraits” at all, it’s a deceptively simple subject. The portraits he makes in the late 1960s are completely different from the ones he makes in the ’70s and ’80s—he almost progresses through “periods” with the portraits alone. Yet, as his interest in portraiture develops, he becomes a sort of self-conscious portrait painter of a traditional kind. I don’t remember Picasso ever saying anything about Andy Warhol, do you? CP No. JR I mean, I think he just didn’t realize. CP Yes, I think he just wasn’t curious. But you remember that Andy came to prominence just about the time I was sent away, after my mother’s memoir was published. I didn’t see my father after that. Then maybe two, three years later, I came to New York and discovered the scene here. I always thought it was a pity that I couldn’t come home and tell him about it. JR Yes. CP At least to see what it would have meant for him to hear about it. Because I met all these people, I was living in the midst of the whole art scene. But it wasn’t possible. Pierre Matisse used to write letters to his father [Henri] about the goings-on in New York, and he also visited my father, so may have said something, but the reactions we don’t know about. JR Picasso was rather insulated in those years— but perhaps that was what he wanted, to keep on working and concentrate his energy to keep creating until the very end. I feel it too: at my age, I’m still full of beans and ready to get down to work every day, but I have a great team of researchers to help me and we keep each other on track. They keep distractions at bay. I appreciate now that it was heroic of Jacqueline to give Picasso the peace Left: Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque with David Douglas Duncan in his Mercedes-Benz 300SL, 1957. Photo by Gérald and Ynes Cramer Opposite: Robert Capa, Françoise Gilot and Claude Picasso, Vallauris, France, 1949 © Cornell Capa © International Center of Photography/ Magnum Photos
36
I never helped anyone condemn Picasso, but it’s not like I was a defender of the truth or something. Picasso could stand on his own two legs. Claude Picasso
and protection to create. But that was also Jacqueline’s nature; I knew she was the right woman for Picasso—not only because she was very beautiful and just his type, but she also had the temperament to take him on and to keep up. I mean, Picasso was a lot of work, and she was tireless. One may slow down, but one never imagines giving in and stopping. At ninety-four, I’ve just about finished volume 4 of the biography, which brings us up to 1943—but the problem is we keep uncovering masses of new stuff to include, so I’m constantly going back and adding and revising. CP You know, John, I pick up information or I meet people, but I’m not on a mission—people are always asking me to write about my life or past anecdotes, and I hate that, because it doesn’t add anything—just one more anecdote, it’s boring. So I meet people and find out useful things, but not the way you collect information for the book you’re writing. I can write, but I don’t want to write about that. I’ll leave it to you [laughter]. JR You say you never got to speak to your father about the New York scene and the artists you met— CP No, because I was out of the picture.
But those artists must have been interested in talking to you about Picasso? CP Not so much. People would come to me and complain, in a way [laughter]: I had nothing to do with it—don’t blame me! But he was always in the mind of the people here in New York, like a great classic, or a frustrating, castrating image. I was probably too young, I was extremely patient with everyone—I listened, and I didn’t comment or provoke them in any way, I never helped anyone condemn Picasso, but it’s not like I was a defender of the truth or something. Picasso could stand on his own two legs. JR He certainly could, yes. CP People would come to me and say “Your father this-and-that,” and I’d always reply, “Picasso this-and-that”—to make people understand they were discussing something I could discuss, not something personal. Because otherwise it’s a mess and the discussion is polluted. If Picasso didn’t appear too curious about contemporary painters of the 1950s, especially in America, that was a shame, because those artists still referred openly to Picasso, at least in talking JR
about the problems of painting and abstraction. But then there was a shift, and contemporary artists became Conceptual, Minimal, or made Land art— it would be curious to find out how they felt about Picasso. They would have seen his giant concrete Sylvette, which was installed near New York University in the mid-’60s—Picasso always wanted to make monumental sculptures. Scale and materials were languages they could have spoken with Picasso. JR So young guys like Mr. [Richard] Serra and Mr. [Michael] Heizer would have been aware of those works. CP I would think so. But what was considered Conceptual art was moving closer to [Marcel] Duchamp, and Duchamp being present around here, he had a sort of moral influence. I’m not sure how well anyone understood Duchamp, but many gravitated toward him and went to almost extreme measures to avoid Picasso. But that attitude misses the idea that Picasso was a bit of a philosopher, right? He had a philosophical approach to breaking barriers and to how art can operate—the kind of philosophy that later Conceptual artists were 37
told me he was going to sell his car, the famous Mercedes Gullwing. I said, “You don’t have to do that. It’s your old horse. You can’t just throw him out of the house” [laughter]. He said, “No, no, I decided and I’m going to sell it to so-and-so.” And I said, “No, not to him, forget it, this car is mine. If you’re really going to let it go, it’s mine. Here is a check.” So I ended up with this old piece of junk and I said to a friend of mine, “I just acquired this thing. What do I do with it now?” He told me of these races for old cars—“vintage,” they call them— and I entered one race and then another. But it’s a complicated car—it’s heavy and difficult, so I started looking for a lighter car and then another and I kept switching cars and getting better at driving, I took classes and ended up doing track and rally and so on, and I became, you know, little by little, very involved. And so now I am semiprofessional. But vintage! [laughter] JR How many races do you do in a year? CP I used to do up to ten or twelve, which took up a lot of time, so I had to cut back. Now I specialize in certain races, like one in Morocco in the desert, or in Finland on the ice and the snow—racing on the frozen sea or in the woods. Quite dangerous, actually, but I became very good at these difficult races. JR Do you still own the Gullwing? You must remember it from your childhood because Duncan always had it around La Californie during the years he was photographing Picasso? CP Yes, of course. That’s why I said “That’s my car” [laughter]. And I still own it! In a way, one of the reasons I became a photographer is that Duncan was always around, clicking away, and I thought oh, this would be an interesting occupation. When I was about seventeen, he very kindly gave me a professional camera. JR He gave you one? Do you remember what it was? CP A Nikon. I still have it, too! JR Do you keep an archive of your photographs? CP I do, but I don’t have all of them, I’ve lost a lot of things over the years. In the old days, the magazines and newspapers I worked for used to keep them. JR Life magazine sent you on assignment to photograph Willem de Kooning when he returned to the Netherlands for the very first time since emigrating to New York.
For his big exhibition in 1968, yes. I had been sent by Life magazine to London to cover a rock band called the Incredible String Band, which wasn’t that incredible [laughter]. I was traveling around with them and it was the most awful experience. They lived as a commune in Wales, they lived with the animals and were very laid back, really hard-core hippies, and I was trying to get this thing to look like something presentable for Life magazine. At the time it was still a kind of old-fashioned magazine, so I always wore a suit and tie, I had to cut my hair and—you know, the works—but I was young so supposedly I would fit in [laughs]. So I was there with not much of a job and not much to do, actually, so I got saved by de Kooning coming to Holland and I was sent there because I knew him and his daughter—and there I fit in! De Kooning was very proper and wore a tie and we went around to all the museums and met up with a friend from his youth in Rotterdam and I just kept shooting. They were house painters when they were young men and we walked around looking at houses and how well painted they were [laughter]. JR Do you still have the images of that trip? CP A few that are not so exciting. JR How did you first meet de Kooning? CP I had met him in the Hamptons—I used to go there often when I lived in New York in the 1960s. In those days it was a very small community. There were always get-togethers—the artists’ and writers’ picnic, or the artists’ and writers’ football match. Nobody knew how to play [laughter]. It was probably just an excuse to get drunk and have fun, so we’d meet on the beach or at someplace or other. And so you met everyone, because it was only a handful of people out there; Lee Krasner was around, Jimmy Ernst, Conrad Marca-Relli, and less well-known people you haven’t even heard of. JR This was the ’60s and early ’70s? I think you got the best time out there. CP Yes, you can imagine. We had a party for the landing on the moon [laughter]. We had a small television set and took it into the garden and everyone was there, sitting around drinking and laughing. JR Have you ever written about that time? CP No, but I wrote some other, connected pieces. I published a piece in the Saturday Review, which was fun—they were trying to make Saturday Review a little more exciting so I was hired to do something. CP
I thought, OK, people collect art, so I’ll investigate what kinds of things artists collect. I went around to all the gang, and of course I had to find artists who collect something different from their buddies. That led me to Andy [Warhol], who collected just about everything [laughter]. The project was so funny and unexpected and they included a photograph of Andy with his cookie jars on the cover. JR I’m working on a Warhol exhibition for Gagosian in London we’ll put on sometime next year— society portraits. They’re fascinating—there’s so much invention and variety, they aren’t “simply portraits” at all, it’s a deceptively simple subject. The portraits he makes in the late 1960s are completely different from the ones he makes in the ’70s and ’80s—he almost progresses through “periods” with the portraits alone. Yet, as his interest in portraiture develops, he becomes a sort of self-conscious portrait painter of a traditional kind. I don’t remember Picasso ever saying anything about Andy Warhol, do you? CP No. JR I mean, I think he just didn’t realize. CP Yes, I think he just wasn’t curious. But you remember that Andy came to prominence just about the time I was sent away, after my mother’s memoir was published. I didn’t see my father after that. Then maybe two, three years later, I came to New York and discovered the scene here. I always thought it was a pity that I couldn’t come home and tell him about it. JR Yes. CP At least to see what it would have meant for him to hear about it. Because I met all these people, I was living in the midst of the whole art scene. But it wasn’t possible. Pierre Matisse used to write letters to his father [Henri] about the goings-on in New York, and he also visited my father, so may have said something, but the reactions we don’t know about. JR Picasso was rather insulated in those years— but perhaps that was what he wanted, to keep on working and concentrate his energy to keep creating until the very end. I feel it too: at my age, I’m still full of beans and ready to get down to work every day, but I have a great team of researchers to help me and we keep each other on track. They keep distractions at bay. I appreciate now that it was heroic of Jacqueline to give Picasso the peace Left: Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque with David Douglas Duncan in his Mercedes-Benz 300SL, 1957. Photo by Gérald and Ynes Cramer Opposite: Robert Capa, Françoise Gilot and Claude Picasso, Vallauris, France, 1949 © Cornell Capa © International Center of Photography/ Magnum Photos
36
I never helped anyone condemn Picasso, but it’s not like I was a defender of the truth or something. Picasso could stand on his own two legs. Claude Picasso
and protection to create. But that was also Jacqueline’s nature; I knew she was the right woman for Picasso—not only because she was very beautiful and just his type, but she also had the temperament to take him on and to keep up. I mean, Picasso was a lot of work, and she was tireless. One may slow down, but one never imagines giving in and stopping. At ninety-four, I’ve just about finished volume 4 of the biography, which brings us up to 1943—but the problem is we keep uncovering masses of new stuff to include, so I’m constantly going back and adding and revising. CP You know, John, I pick up information or I meet people, but I’m not on a mission—people are always asking me to write about my life or past anecdotes, and I hate that, because it doesn’t add anything—just one more anecdote, it’s boring. So I meet people and find out useful things, but not the way you collect information for the book you’re writing. I can write, but I don’t want to write about that. I’ll leave it to you [laughter]. JR You say you never got to speak to your father about the New York scene and the artists you met— CP No, because I was out of the picture.
But those artists must have been interested in talking to you about Picasso? CP Not so much. People would come to me and complain, in a way [laughter]: I had nothing to do with it—don’t blame me! But he was always in the mind of the people here in New York, like a great classic, or a frustrating, castrating image. I was probably too young, I was extremely patient with everyone—I listened, and I didn’t comment or provoke them in any way, I never helped anyone condemn Picasso, but it’s not like I was a defender of the truth or something. Picasso could stand on his own two legs. JR He certainly could, yes. CP People would come to me and say “Your father this-and-that,” and I’d always reply, “Picasso this-and-that”—to make people understand they were discussing something I could discuss, not something personal. Because otherwise it’s a mess and the discussion is polluted. If Picasso didn’t appear too curious about contemporary painters of the 1950s, especially in America, that was a shame, because those artists still referred openly to Picasso, at least in talking JR
about the problems of painting and abstraction. But then there was a shift, and contemporary artists became Conceptual, Minimal, or made Land art— it would be curious to find out how they felt about Picasso. They would have seen his giant concrete Sylvette, which was installed near New York University in the mid-’60s—Picasso always wanted to make monumental sculptures. Scale and materials were languages they could have spoken with Picasso. JR So young guys like Mr. [Richard] Serra and Mr. [Michael] Heizer would have been aware of those works. CP I would think so. But what was considered Conceptual art was moving closer to [Marcel] Duchamp, and Duchamp being present around here, he had a sort of moral influence. I’m not sure how well anyone understood Duchamp, but many gravitated toward him and went to almost extreme measures to avoid Picasso. But that attitude misses the idea that Picasso was a bit of a philosopher, right? He had a philosophical approach to breaking barriers and to how art can operate—the kind of philosophy that later Conceptual artists were 37
engaging with. It’s not all Duchamp. So it’s interesting that Picasso ignored contemporary art, but the artists did not ignore him. JR I always think young artists should try to wrestle with Picasso—move toward him or away, but engage somehow. It’s far from easy. Any new, bright young scholars working on Picasso coming up, who’ve got a different angle? CP Mostly they’re interested in little subjects. I find some interesting, but they focus on one small aspect and develop a theory, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes crazy [laughter]. But that’s nice too. Because why not? JR Yes, exactly. It’s a way to explore. CP I have a feeling there are going to be more, because there are too many people involved with contemporary art, and in the end, it could be a little unsatisfying. So there may be people coming back to the nitty-gritty of history, but that’s also more difficult. It’s a hard job. And there’s still a lot to learn from Picasso. There’s a story I sometimes tell, something that was very important for me, determining for my attitude. My father and I were at a bullfight in Nîmes or Arles, and it was El Cordobés, the bullfighter, who had a very unacademic way of bullfighting. So after the bullfight my father and I 38
always had these big discussions dissecting what had happened in the ring, and I was complaining that El Cordobés was always doing strange things and that he didn’t kill the bull properly and wasn’t fighting in the proper way. So my father said, “What are you saying? You should like him. He’s a Beatle.” Like the Beatles! [laughter] And then he said, “What would ever have happened if I’d painted like Delacroix?” So you know, “Pfft.” And I thought, yeah, right, okay. Okay, it’s important to take another risk. JR That is so like Picasso. Claude, it’s such a joy to see you. CP Yes, and it’s such a pleasure to have known each other for so long. JR Yes, it is very much for me. CP It’s really special, because I don’t know very many people who are still around and who are as interesting and amusing and fun and pleasant to be with, and always a pleasure to spend time with. It’s very difficult, John, it’s very rare, you know. I’ve come here today with real joy and emotion, and it’s not because I’m nostalgic about the past, I’m not at all—I’m vaccinated against it [laughter]—but really, it’s just because we can have a pleasant conversation and a bit of fun, and we can talk about anything, lightly and also profoundly. Thank you.
Claude Picasso and John Richardson, New York, 2018. Photo by Michael Cary
engaging with. It’s not all Duchamp. So it’s interesting that Picasso ignored contemporary art, but the artists did not ignore him. JR I always think young artists should try to wrestle with Picasso—move toward him or away, but engage somehow. It’s far from easy. Any new, bright young scholars working on Picasso coming up, who’ve got a different angle? CP Mostly they’re interested in little subjects. I find some interesting, but they focus on one small aspect and develop a theory, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes crazy [laughter]. But that’s nice too. Because why not? JR Yes, exactly. It’s a way to explore. CP I have a feeling there are going to be more, because there are too many people involved with contemporary art, and in the end, it could be a little unsatisfying. So there may be people coming back to the nitty-gritty of history, but that’s also more difficult. It’s a hard job. And there’s still a lot to learn from Picasso. There’s a story I sometimes tell, something that was very important for me, determining for my attitude. My father and I were at a bullfight in Nîmes or Arles, and it was El Cordobés, the bullfighter, who had a very unacademic way of bullfighting. So after the bullfight my father and I 38
always had these big discussions dissecting what had happened in the ring, and I was complaining that El Cordobés was always doing strange things and that he didn’t kill the bull properly and wasn’t fighting in the proper way. So my father said, “What are you saying? You should like him. He’s a Beatle.” Like the Beatles! [laughter] And then he said, “What would ever have happened if I’d painted like Delacroix?” So you know, “Pfft.” And I thought, yeah, right, okay. Okay, it’s important to take another risk. JR That is so like Picasso. Claude, it’s such a joy to see you. CP Yes, and it’s such a pleasure to have known each other for so long. JR Yes, it is very much for me. CP It’s really special, because I don’t know very many people who are still around and who are as interesting and amusing and fun and pleasant to be with, and always a pleasure to spend time with. It’s very difficult, John, it’s very rare, you know. I’ve come here today with real joy and emotion, and it’s not because I’m nostalgic about the past, I’m not at all—I’m vaccinated against it [laughter]—but really, it’s just because we can have a pleasant conversation and a bit of fun, and we can talk about anything, lightly and also profoundly. Thank you.
Claude Picasso and John Richardson, New York, 2018. Photo by Michael Cary
PLAY Urs Fischer and choreographer Madeline Hollander speak with novelist Natasha Stagg about the ways in which choreographic experimentation and an interest in our ability to project emotion onto objects led to the one-of-akind project PLAY. I visited Urs Fischer in his studio last year to talk about the beginning stages of play, an interactive exhibition involving office chairs that have been rebuilt as silent, reactive robots with varying levels of autonomy. Before the chairs were physical objects, they were rendered on a screen, in an animation Fischer showed me to explain his hiring of a choreographer to help him with their movements. He also showed me older sculptures and other projects he was working on, linking them all with his thoughts about art, objects, and an audience’s projected experience. Nearby stood an early version of Things (2018), a slightly larger-than-lifesize aluminum statue of a rhinoceros with a photocopier, a laptop, a vacuum cleaner, and many other things partly submerged in its silver flanks, its size and strangeness a distraction from our conversation. Like Untitled (Bear/Lamp) (2005–06), a massive lacquered-bronze teddy bear impaled with a desk lamp, Things in part represents our unwillingness to accept simultaneity. “Let’s say you see that chair,” Fischer explains, “but you have a very different association of what that chair is than I have. Maybe you think of your grandfather and I think 40
of the color red, or whatever. So it’s totally different but you perceive the same object. So, to have an object that is two things at once, it’s almost a dumb version of a more complex thing, the thought that everything goes through you, like sound, other people’s anxieties, nature. If you go to nature, you feel it. Everything basically passes through your existence. As if you’re not a defined thing. You see yourself as a defined thing in your mind but then everything just slides right through it.” The “protagonist” of Things, as Fischer calls the rhino, is organic and heavy, a creature that “almost pushes through time.” It was important in this case to anchor the idea with an animal: “I mean, if you feel something for anything, it’s probably not the photocopier. All these other things are interfering. They’re nothing, you know, they’re just bullshit.” In play, though, the protagonists are pieces of office equipment while the interference comes from us humans. As Fischer points out, the work’s viewers may bring entirely different associations to these chairs—a grandfather, the color red— and through the use of highly sensitive and sophisticated machinery, he has developed an ongoing
depiction of our emotional projections onto them within a defined space. A year after my first studio visit, I found Fischer, choreographer Madeline Hollander, and a team of engineers testing a few of the robot chairs in the Gagosian space on West 21st Street, New York. The gallery had been rigged with discreet sensors that measured the whereabouts of both the chairs and the humans present, immediately implicating each party in the performance. A green chair spun listlessly in a corner while a shorter red one crawled curiously toward us. A blue one’s back had been disassembled, its exposed circuitry resembling a raw nervous system next to its lifelike colleagues. Ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Fischer and Hollander discussed the many ways it could go, depending on the participants’ perceptions. As we talked, engineers working on laptops sat on metal folding chairs around a table, while gallery staff sat on their own rolling office chairs at their desks. The robot chairs, on the other hand, took up the entire room, nervously zooming around it or pacing the walls, as if perusing art that wasn’t there. 41
PLAY Urs Fischer and choreographer Madeline Hollander speak with novelist Natasha Stagg about the ways in which choreographic experimentation and an interest in our ability to project emotion onto objects led to the one-of-akind project PLAY. I visited Urs Fischer in his studio last year to talk about the beginning stages of play, an interactive exhibition involving office chairs that have been rebuilt as silent, reactive robots with varying levels of autonomy. Before the chairs were physical objects, they were rendered on a screen, in an animation Fischer showed me to explain his hiring of a choreographer to help him with their movements. He also showed me older sculptures and other projects he was working on, linking them all with his thoughts about art, objects, and an audience’s projected experience. Nearby stood an early version of Things (2018), a slightly larger-than-lifesize aluminum statue of a rhinoceros with a photocopier, a laptop, a vacuum cleaner, and many other things partly submerged in its silver flanks, its size and strangeness a distraction from our conversation. Like Untitled (Bear/Lamp) (2005–06), a massive lacquered-bronze teddy bear impaled with a desk lamp, Things in part represents our unwillingness to accept simultaneity. “Let’s say you see that chair,” Fischer explains, “but you have a very different association of what that chair is than I have. Maybe you think of your grandfather and I think 40
of the color red, or whatever. So it’s totally different but you perceive the same object. So, to have an object that is two things at once, it’s almost a dumb version of a more complex thing, the thought that everything goes through you, like sound, other people’s anxieties, nature. If you go to nature, you feel it. Everything basically passes through your existence. As if you’re not a defined thing. You see yourself as a defined thing in your mind but then everything just slides right through it.” The “protagonist” of Things, as Fischer calls the rhino, is organic and heavy, a creature that “almost pushes through time.” It was important in this case to anchor the idea with an animal: “I mean, if you feel something for anything, it’s probably not the photocopier. All these other things are interfering. They’re nothing, you know, they’re just bullshit.” In play, though, the protagonists are pieces of office equipment while the interference comes from us humans. As Fischer points out, the work’s viewers may bring entirely different associations to these chairs—a grandfather, the color red— and through the use of highly sensitive and sophisticated machinery, he has developed an ongoing
depiction of our emotional projections onto them within a defined space. A year after my first studio visit, I found Fischer, choreographer Madeline Hollander, and a team of engineers testing a few of the robot chairs in the Gagosian space on West 21st Street, New York. The gallery had been rigged with discreet sensors that measured the whereabouts of both the chairs and the humans present, immediately implicating each party in the performance. A green chair spun listlessly in a corner while a shorter red one crawled curiously toward us. A blue one’s back had been disassembled, its exposed circuitry resembling a raw nervous system next to its lifelike colleagues. Ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Fischer and Hollander discussed the many ways it could go, depending on the participants’ perceptions. As we talked, engineers working on laptops sat on metal folding chairs around a table, while gallery staff sat on their own rolling office chairs at their desks. The robot chairs, on the other hand, took up the entire room, nervously zooming around it or pacing the walls, as if perusing art that wasn’t there. 41
Previous spread: Photo by Chad Moore This page: Photos by Cassandra MacLeod Opposite, top: Photo by Chad Moore Opposite, bottom: Photo by Cassandra MacLeod
There are so many different elements to a project like this. Did you get a chance to see inside the chairs? NATASHA STAGG Yeah, I saw the masses of circuitry, wires, blinking lights. UF There’s no way one person could construct a project of this nature—there are nine different sensors involved, for instance, which collect information that’s continually updated and inputted into the chairs. It’s beyond complex and I’m not a technical person per se. NS Right, so many moving parts and interrelations. UF So many, but in the end, despite the complexity of the parts, the exhibition as a whole is pretty simple. It’s about what you, the viewer, project onto it. It’s not about chairs, it’s about humans. NS How so? UF It’s the human who projects onto the object. The object is nothing and everything, you know? The chair is just a chair; it could be something else. play isn’t about technology—that becomes irrelevant when you look at it. NS So the different styles and colors of the office chairs you’re using, those tie into our projection? UF Yes, we read different emotions into different colors. It’s also an aesthetic choice: if you line the chairs up, you build a spectrum. Color gives us options, another variable. You read something else into the red chair than you do into the green chair doing the same moves. You just do. NS Yeah, I was noticing the red chair seemed more aggressive, but then I was wondering if I was just making assumptions or interpretations based off my own references rather than its actual behavior. UF Right. The red one always reminds me of a Valentino dress. There’s a behavior script that could as easily be activated in any of them at any given time. All the chairs take on different personalities during the day, they change the pattern of their behavior, nothing is set. If the green chair were on the same script and behaving the same way, would it still seem aggressive to you? This goes back to how we project onto things. You won’t experience the same thing twice. Everything is variable and changing. In their gentle ways, I hope they can evoke a broad range of emotions and reactions. From shyness to flirtation, from passivity to aggression. Basically, when I say that the work is about people, I URS FISCHER
42
mean it’s about expectations. There are some choreographed elements where the chairs show very articulate movements and coordination, recognizable patterns and formations. But the majority of what they do is behavior based. They will take their clues from the activity in the space. This leads you to the place where you relate to the work the way you relate to another human being, or an animal, or really anything that’s alive and moves. As we try to read what’s going on around us we constantly project onto anything. Humans are little projectors. NS When you say there’s a choreographed performance, is it obvious that the chairs are assembling in a formation? UF At times, yes. Some are clearly in formation and some are exploring other types of choreography. Madeline did an amazing job with all of them. It was highly educational. There’ll be a lot of these layers. We have to figure out what will work in the space and with varying numbers of people. NS And isn’t it also the case that the ways in which we project onto the chairs, and our responses to them, will affect them over time? UF Yes, the chairs’ reactions are dependent on the audience, and as they interact with audiences more and more, and as we log their interactions with people, we try to get to the point where they can evolve behaviorally. That’s a long way from now. In the beginning stages they’ll read body language in a very basic way, like whether you’re static or active. What I’m looking for is an experience that’s different for everybody every time. Something that never repeats itself. So in a way, the exhibition puts people on display as much as it does the work in the space. They become one. NS Can you tell me about the show’s title, play ? UF I’m curious to see how people play, how they interact, how they try to figure things out. We can’t help it, our urge to structure everything. Order. You have play in pretty much anything. Politics are play to some degree—not child’s play but animals’ play. Play is a way of interacting with the world, testing it. Real but not. A simulation. NS The more recognizable, programmed choreography—could it continue if someone interrupted it? Or would the programming be overridden by the new stimulus the chair has received through the sensor? UF Yeah, the audience can interrupt it. The
programming allows the chairs to check for themselves if they want to resume what they did before the interruption or move on. NS There are so many decisions. That’s great. UF If you like to make decisions, that’s great! The life of the project comes down to individuals. It’s dependent on what they bring to it. There are so many little decisions that somehow narrow down what it is, but also open it up. I’m not interested in controlling all the elements that get implemented; what I focus on is the few core things I need, and then the rest should be much more varied than what I can bring to the table. All the amazing people that help me leave a mark on the work. It’s a conglomerate of thought, imagination, and, to a large degree, limitation. A collective effort, with lots of little nooks. NS I’m picturing a room filled with people. The chairs, in their sympathetic way, are trying to create a dance for them. What if there are too many people? How do you get people to let the performance happen? UF At this stage we don’t know, we’ve never had a room with a hundred people in it, or even all nine chairs working simultaneously. There will be tests, experimenting, and insight gained from that. There’s probably a cutoff for the number of people who can cohabit the space with the chairs. The chairs, when outnumbered, disappear. That said, this is interesting because then there’s a new situation for the programming to account for. I often think of Grand Central Station at rush hour, the agency of everyone’s movements. And then the ones who wait or just wander amongst the crowds on their way to some place, home or work. It’s all transit. NS If we think of the exhibition as a metaphor for our relationship to artificial intelligence and how it’s affecting the world, I’m sure that everyone will just let it happen, let themselves be instructed, because that’s the way things are moving, you know? People defer to machines in so many cases. UF Oh, AI has always existed, you know, in some form in nature. I try to keep play from being only about technology. The idea is to make the chairs so graceful that we don’t even think about that element. Everything we do is part of nature. Certain topics just overwhelm us with fear. Our imagination goes wild. NS So that the work becomes more generally about our perceptions of objects.
Yeah. That’s why the object itself isn’t very interesting. You see, these were chairs I had in my office. Even though they’re now 90 percent remade, they’re still just that: office chairs. NS I f ind myself feeling something for the object even though it has no face or limbs, just its movement. UF Glad you do! I dream about them by now. I think all of us here do by now. We’ve built relationships, surprising experiences of coexistence. You know, we people, we’re assholes, basically—we look down on everything nonhuman. We see a dog and we put ourselves above it. I’d like to get to the place with this work where viewers may still see themselves superior to the chairs, but they’ll respect that the chairs have their own thing going. I want to build a respect between the viewer and the object—not just “Oh yeah, I get it, I can crack the pattern,” or “I can make it do what I want,” or “I’ll figure this one out.” If the chair decides that it’s had enough, “I’m not taking this shit” and splits, you tend to take that personally. Maybe you reconsider your assumptions of superiority. It’s a push-pull, our programming, or patterns of behavior. That’s basically the project at the core of it, for me. To give and to take. Let’s see. NS There does seem to be a common fear of technology and machine learning, though—that it will outsmart you eventually. UF Yeah, good. I mean, we’re not that smart to begin with. NS But we’re creating the machine, so we don’t want to be outsmarted by it. UF Our species creates all sor ts of things, but look at what else we do: we tap into natural resources like there’s no tomorrow, knowing it’s bad for us as a species and for the rest of life on this planet. But we do it with very elaborate, smart machines. . . . There are a lot of things we do that we don’t want to talk about because we don’t like the solutions. We procreate like crazy, creating more of us, caring about the ones close to us but not about a bigger picture. We just mess everything up. How smart are we? I tend to think that we’re idiots. We’re smart enough to do things but too dumb to understand what we do. The fear of machines outsmarting us, the feeling, the emotional side of this—I don’t think that’s new. The world has always been ending. The apocalypse is as old as history, just with different ingredients. UF
And the chairs aren’t trying to learn about human weakness. They’re not learning about us for someone’s gain. UF No. If you think of them as a very simple species, they will try to learn more about us, but just to communicate better. NS Or not for the same reason Amazon’s Alexa, say, would try to learn more about us—to gather data for somebody else to make money. UF Humans are always collecting data for a specific, usually selfish reason. The chairs can’t be selfish in the same way: they accumulate data in a closed system. What they look for isn’t individualized in any way, it’s just to enhance their own continued movement and behavioral flexibility. Basically to better serve. NS Do you see the chairs as an extension of your earlier works? UF Yeah. Totally. NS Any in particular? UF Many, but most immediately I think of Nach Jugendstiel kam Roccoko [After Jugendstil came rococo, 2006], the cigarette pack that moves through space and then starts to fly. That was driven by a NS
43
Previous spread: Photo by Chad Moore This page: Photos by Cassandra MacLeod Opposite, top: Photo by Chad Moore Opposite, bottom: Photo by Cassandra MacLeod
There are so many different elements to a project like this. Did you get a chance to see inside the chairs? NATASHA STAGG Yeah, I saw the masses of circuitry, wires, blinking lights. UF There’s no way one person could construct a project of this nature—there are nine different sensors involved, for instance, which collect information that’s continually updated and inputted into the chairs. It’s beyond complex and I’m not a technical person per se. NS Right, so many moving parts and interrelations. UF So many, but in the end, despite the complexity of the parts, the exhibition as a whole is pretty simple. It’s about what you, the viewer, project onto it. It’s not about chairs, it’s about humans. NS How so? UF It’s the human who projects onto the object. The object is nothing and everything, you know? The chair is just a chair; it could be something else. play isn’t about technology—that becomes irrelevant when you look at it. NS So the different styles and colors of the office chairs you’re using, those tie into our projection? UF Yes, we read different emotions into different colors. It’s also an aesthetic choice: if you line the chairs up, you build a spectrum. Color gives us options, another variable. You read something else into the red chair than you do into the green chair doing the same moves. You just do. NS Yeah, I was noticing the red chair seemed more aggressive, but then I was wondering if I was just making assumptions or interpretations based off my own references rather than its actual behavior. UF Right. The red one always reminds me of a Valentino dress. There’s a behavior script that could as easily be activated in any of them at any given time. All the chairs take on different personalities during the day, they change the pattern of their behavior, nothing is set. If the green chair were on the same script and behaving the same way, would it still seem aggressive to you? This goes back to how we project onto things. You won’t experience the same thing twice. Everything is variable and changing. In their gentle ways, I hope they can evoke a broad range of emotions and reactions. From shyness to flirtation, from passivity to aggression. Basically, when I say that the work is about people, I URS FISCHER
42
mean it’s about expectations. There are some choreographed elements where the chairs show very articulate movements and coordination, recognizable patterns and formations. But the majority of what they do is behavior based. They will take their clues from the activity in the space. This leads you to the place where you relate to the work the way you relate to another human being, or an animal, or really anything that’s alive and moves. As we try to read what’s going on around us we constantly project onto anything. Humans are little projectors. NS When you say there’s a choreographed performance, is it obvious that the chairs are assembling in a formation? UF At times, yes. Some are clearly in formation and some are exploring other types of choreography. Madeline did an amazing job with all of them. It was highly educational. There’ll be a lot of these layers. We have to figure out what will work in the space and with varying numbers of people. NS And isn’t it also the case that the ways in which we project onto the chairs, and our responses to them, will affect them over time? UF Yes, the chairs’ reactions are dependent on the audience, and as they interact with audiences more and more, and as we log their interactions with people, we try to get to the point where they can evolve behaviorally. That’s a long way from now. In the beginning stages they’ll read body language in a very basic way, like whether you’re static or active. What I’m looking for is an experience that’s different for everybody every time. Something that never repeats itself. So in a way, the exhibition puts people on display as much as it does the work in the space. They become one. NS Can you tell me about the show’s title, play ? UF I’m curious to see how people play, how they interact, how they try to figure things out. We can’t help it, our urge to structure everything. Order. You have play in pretty much anything. Politics are play to some degree—not child’s play but animals’ play. Play is a way of interacting with the world, testing it. Real but not. A simulation. NS The more recognizable, programmed choreography—could it continue if someone interrupted it? Or would the programming be overridden by the new stimulus the chair has received through the sensor? UF Yeah, the audience can interrupt it. The
programming allows the chairs to check for themselves if they want to resume what they did before the interruption or move on. NS There are so many decisions. That’s great. UF If you like to make decisions, that’s great! The life of the project comes down to individuals. It’s dependent on what they bring to it. There are so many little decisions that somehow narrow down what it is, but also open it up. I’m not interested in controlling all the elements that get implemented; what I focus on is the few core things I need, and then the rest should be much more varied than what I can bring to the table. All the amazing people that help me leave a mark on the work. It’s a conglomerate of thought, imagination, and, to a large degree, limitation. A collective effort, with lots of little nooks. NS I’m picturing a room filled with people. The chairs, in their sympathetic way, are trying to create a dance for them. What if there are too many people? How do you get people to let the performance happen? UF At this stage we don’t know, we’ve never had a room with a hundred people in it, or even all nine chairs working simultaneously. There will be tests, experimenting, and insight gained from that. There’s probably a cutoff for the number of people who can cohabit the space with the chairs. The chairs, when outnumbered, disappear. That said, this is interesting because then there’s a new situation for the programming to account for. I often think of Grand Central Station at rush hour, the agency of everyone’s movements. And then the ones who wait or just wander amongst the crowds on their way to some place, home or work. It’s all transit. NS If we think of the exhibition as a metaphor for our relationship to artificial intelligence and how it’s affecting the world, I’m sure that everyone will just let it happen, let themselves be instructed, because that’s the way things are moving, you know? People defer to machines in so many cases. UF Oh, AI has always existed, you know, in some form in nature. I try to keep play from being only about technology. The idea is to make the chairs so graceful that we don’t even think about that element. Everything we do is part of nature. Certain topics just overwhelm us with fear. Our imagination goes wild. NS So that the work becomes more generally about our perceptions of objects.
Yeah. That’s why the object itself isn’t very interesting. You see, these were chairs I had in my office. Even though they’re now 90 percent remade, they’re still just that: office chairs. NS I f ind myself feeling something for the object even though it has no face or limbs, just its movement. UF Glad you do! I dream about them by now. I think all of us here do by now. We’ve built relationships, surprising experiences of coexistence. You know, we people, we’re assholes, basically—we look down on everything nonhuman. We see a dog and we put ourselves above it. I’d like to get to the place with this work where viewers may still see themselves superior to the chairs, but they’ll respect that the chairs have their own thing going. I want to build a respect between the viewer and the object—not just “Oh yeah, I get it, I can crack the pattern,” or “I can make it do what I want,” or “I’ll figure this one out.” If the chair decides that it’s had enough, “I’m not taking this shit” and splits, you tend to take that personally. Maybe you reconsider your assumptions of superiority. It’s a push-pull, our programming, or patterns of behavior. That’s basically the project at the core of it, for me. To give and to take. Let’s see. NS There does seem to be a common fear of technology and machine learning, though—that it will outsmart you eventually. UF Yeah, good. I mean, we’re not that smart to begin with. NS But we’re creating the machine, so we don’t want to be outsmarted by it. UF Our species creates all sor ts of things, but look at what else we do: we tap into natural resources like there’s no tomorrow, knowing it’s bad for us as a species and for the rest of life on this planet. But we do it with very elaborate, smart machines. . . . There are a lot of things we do that we don’t want to talk about because we don’t like the solutions. We procreate like crazy, creating more of us, caring about the ones close to us but not about a bigger picture. We just mess everything up. How smart are we? I tend to think that we’re idiots. We’re smart enough to do things but too dumb to understand what we do. The fear of machines outsmarting us, the feeling, the emotional side of this—I don’t think that’s new. The world has always been ending. The apocalypse is as old as history, just with different ingredients. UF
And the chairs aren’t trying to learn about human weakness. They’re not learning about us for someone’s gain. UF No. If you think of them as a very simple species, they will try to learn more about us, but just to communicate better. NS Or not for the same reason Amazon’s Alexa, say, would try to learn more about us—to gather data for somebody else to make money. UF Humans are always collecting data for a specific, usually selfish reason. The chairs can’t be selfish in the same way: they accumulate data in a closed system. What they look for isn’t individualized in any way, it’s just to enhance their own continued movement and behavioral flexibility. Basically to better serve. NS Do you see the chairs as an extension of your earlier works? UF Yeah. Totally. NS Any in particular? UF Many, but most immediately I think of Nach Jugendstiel kam Roccoko [After Jugendstil came rococo, 2006], the cigarette pack that moves through space and then starts to fly. That was driven by a NS
43
primitive mechanism in comparison, but as with play, there were stories you could read into it. Stories, fictions, have no physical body. All these works do is move. Movement resolves rigid form, like a Calder mobile. In this way the cigarette pack is not dissimilar from play, with the main difference being that play is actually making contact with you. It relates. NS Right. And unlike the ordinariness of the office chair, a cigarette pack is loaded with meanings. A person can read cigarettes as a taboo, something tempting, something archaic. UF If they want, yeah. But the cigarette pack really could be anything. Why I liked it is that it has a disposable nature. An empty shell, thrown away after it’s served its purpose. At which point it becomes liberated. NS So how do you assume people might read the chairs, if they do? Even though they’re more neutral, they’re something designed. UF I could tell you how I read them. That’s about all I know. NS How do you read them? UF I love chairs. They’re made for the human body. They’re the one object besides clothes that
most resembles the body because they’re specifically made for that purpose. We stand, we lie, but then we sit. There’s so much variety in chair design—a very colorful manifestation. Beds might qualify too. NS The chair has to be one of the most often-designed objects of all time. UF It is. That’s why I picked these in particular, because they’re ergonomic chairs. They weren’t designed from just an aesthetic point of view. And being ergonomic, they tie into the economic: your company doesn’t want you to have back problems, it wants you to be minimally impeded, so you perform better. These chairs are comfortable but they’re mainly a workplace chair. They need to function and to fulfill the demands of the workplace, which relate to economics and efficiency. The emotional and aesthetic aspects of the design just make you feel better about that. NS You can define an office by its chairs. I once worked in an office where we weren’t allowed to sit in anything but Eames chairs, which actually weren’t that comfortable. Beautiful but not comfortable. UF They’re designed for their look, not for ergonomics, and you can tell at the end of the day. NS Madeline, could you tell me about the choreography we’re looking at right now? MADELINE HOLLANDER We’re in the simple random walk phase. They’re about to start a wakeup sequence—that’s what we’re working on, testing the wakeup sequence, which occurs after they’ve been charging overnight. Every morning they come to life, and before the gallery even opens, one chair, the ringleader, will go around to each of the sleeping chairs and do this little nudging behavior and wake each one individually. But even this will be different every day based on where they’re at from the day before. NS The ringleader chair will be different, too? MH Yes. There are many different personalities, and we can shift personalities and behaviors per chair and per day and within set time limits. More than that, it depends on the audience. If someone begins stepping in and following a chair, it may decide to shift into a shyer behavior instead of an aggressive behavior, a behavior where it’s more interested in corners of the walls than it is in people. UF Or maybe the others come to help. MH Exactly. Or if there’s a group of people, there
might be two very social chairs who will be interested in that crowd and kind of help the less social chairs. UF The whole objective is to make the chair relatable. It doesn’t need to be human, but it needs to be something we can relate to as human beings. MH It should be able to conjure empathy. UF And then once that’s established, it will engage in next-level behaviors, whether as an individual or in a group. MH We have what I call personality scripts, of which there are ten that rotate among the chairs. Depending on their tendencies, their parameters, those scripts determine which chairs will end up pairing with each other, or joining together in groups. And their interactions aren’t necessarily always relatably human—it could be as if a gust of wind had just entered the gallery and they’ve all gotten blown in one direction. UF Yes, sometimes it’s poetic. Sometimes it’s architectural and related to the space. We want surprises and we want layers. NS How did you two find each other for this project?
This page, left: Photo by Chad Moore This page, right, and opposite: Photos by Cassandra MacLeod
44
THE LIFE OF THE PROJECT COMES DOWN TO INDIVIDUALS. IT’S DEPENDENT ON WHAT THEY BRING TO IT. 45
primitive mechanism in comparison, but as with play, there were stories you could read into it. Stories, fictions, have no physical body. All these works do is move. Movement resolves rigid form, like a Calder mobile. In this way the cigarette pack is not dissimilar from play, with the main difference being that play is actually making contact with you. It relates. NS Right. And unlike the ordinariness of the office chair, a cigarette pack is loaded with meanings. A person can read cigarettes as a taboo, something tempting, something archaic. UF If they want, yeah. But the cigarette pack really could be anything. Why I liked it is that it has a disposable nature. An empty shell, thrown away after it’s served its purpose. At which point it becomes liberated. NS So how do you assume people might read the chairs, if they do? Even though they’re more neutral, they’re something designed. UF I could tell you how I read them. That’s about all I know. NS How do you read them? UF I love chairs. They’re made for the human body. They’re the one object besides clothes that
most resembles the body because they’re specifically made for that purpose. We stand, we lie, but then we sit. There’s so much variety in chair design—a very colorful manifestation. Beds might qualify too. NS The chair has to be one of the most often-designed objects of all time. UF It is. That’s why I picked these in particular, because they’re ergonomic chairs. They weren’t designed from just an aesthetic point of view. And being ergonomic, they tie into the economic: your company doesn’t want you to have back problems, it wants you to be minimally impeded, so you perform better. These chairs are comfortable but they’re mainly a workplace chair. They need to function and to fulfill the demands of the workplace, which relate to economics and efficiency. The emotional and aesthetic aspects of the design just make you feel better about that. NS You can define an office by its chairs. I once worked in an office where we weren’t allowed to sit in anything but Eames chairs, which actually weren’t that comfortable. Beautiful but not comfortable. UF They’re designed for their look, not for ergonomics, and you can tell at the end of the day. NS Madeline, could you tell me about the choreography we’re looking at right now? MADELINE HOLLANDER We’re in the simple random walk phase. They’re about to start a wakeup sequence—that’s what we’re working on, testing the wakeup sequence, which occurs after they’ve been charging overnight. Every morning they come to life, and before the gallery even opens, one chair, the ringleader, will go around to each of the sleeping chairs and do this little nudging behavior and wake each one individually. But even this will be different every day based on where they’re at from the day before. NS The ringleader chair will be different, too? MH Yes. There are many different personalities, and we can shift personalities and behaviors per chair and per day and within set time limits. More than that, it depends on the audience. If someone begins stepping in and following a chair, it may decide to shift into a shyer behavior instead of an aggressive behavior, a behavior where it’s more interested in corners of the walls than it is in people. UF Or maybe the others come to help. MH Exactly. Or if there’s a group of people, there
might be two very social chairs who will be interested in that crowd and kind of help the less social chairs. UF The whole objective is to make the chair relatable. It doesn’t need to be human, but it needs to be something we can relate to as human beings. MH It should be able to conjure empathy. UF And then once that’s established, it will engage in next-level behaviors, whether as an individual or in a group. MH We have what I call personality scripts, of which there are ten that rotate among the chairs. Depending on their tendencies, their parameters, those scripts determine which chairs will end up pairing with each other, or joining together in groups. And their interactions aren’t necessarily always relatably human—it could be as if a gust of wind had just entered the gallery and they’ve all gotten blown in one direction. UF Yes, sometimes it’s poetic. Sometimes it’s architectural and related to the space. We want surprises and we want layers. NS How did you two find each other for this project?
This page, left: Photo by Chad Moore This page, right, and opposite: Photos by Cassandra MacLeod
44
THE LIFE OF THE PROJECT COMES DOWN TO INDIVIDUALS. IT’S DEPENDENT ON WHAT THEY BRING TO IT. 45
Right: Photo by Chad Moore Below: Photo by Cassandra MacLeod All images: Installation view, Urs Fischer: PLAY, with choreography by Madeline Hollander, Gagosian West 21st Street, New York, September 6– October 13, 2018 Artwork © Urs Fischer
Through Angela Kunicky, at Urs’s studio, and the neuroscientist Leah Kelly, whom I’ve worked with before. I’ve mostly choreographed dancers but I’ve also worked with objects. Most of my research is in gestural interaction. NS How is this project a departure for you, if it is? Is this the first time you’ve worked with robotic mechanisms? MH This is unlike anything I’ve ever done. But I’ve worked with robotics before, and I’ve done a lot of motion capture and a lot of choreography with gestural interfaces and interfaces for new tech. So this project was a perfect hybrid of all these other pieces coming together in an intimate, animate object. NS When you say “personality scripts,” is that a term you came up with just for this project? Or do you use that term more generally in choreography? MH A whole new language emerged from this process. Behavior scripts, personality scripts, movement sequences, group choreographies, micro-movements, beats—it’s a fusion of my choreographic terminology with the software and the parts of the chair. We have a whole vocabulary specific to this process of melding three distinct MH
46
discourses to communicate seamlessly. Or more than three, actually: the programmers, the animators, the engineers, the choreography, and the hardware all have their own discourse. What was so fascinating for me, as a choreographer, was how much variation you can get from just the word “footing,” say, which is the wheels spinning, acceleration, speed variation, and seat angle. It’s kind of like having nothing above your hips: there are no arms or head to work with, so how much can you get across meaning-wise in twisting the feet angle with the hip angle and then including acceleration, rate, and whether you’re going forward, backward, or at an angle? Combinations of all of those really do evoke different personalities. So you can have a chair that looks like it’s limping or one that looks like it’s superexcited or flirting or energetic or about to collapse, based on different combinations of those very few variables. UF It was important to reduce the movable elements. MH Right. More limitations. UF There’s beauty in restraint—in life generally, but here the restraint results in more grace. Imagine if the armrest were going up and down and waving—the chairs would be like clowns. It would become entertainment. MH And even with these limitations, there are endless sequences and endless behaviors available. The personality scripts are like the baseline— kind of how each chair gets dressed in the morning. Then we can assign how often the personalities switch. But there are even more variables: we’re making day scripts, where at certain hours some of the personalities will be way more social or way more introverted. There are ones that incorporate a lot more choreographic sequences, or movements pulling from sports and culture and dance, and then others that pull from conversation and interactive sequences. UF As data of the movements through space accumulates, we’ll try to understand patterns, and which elements are successful one way or another. From there we’ll take it to the next stage. When the exhibition opens, it will be like the chairs are leaving home for the first time and will have to learn a lot. The idea is that they become gradually more and more their own, continuously learning. This is just the beginning.
And the only way to learn will be having the show’s run and interacting with a public that’s not familiar with them. Because right now I know all of the limitations, so our testing isn’t really giving us the data required for the AI to get smarter. There are so many factors, you know: what does a crowd do, what does a group of kids do, or a dog, or people who leave their bags on the ground? There are so many different sensors and ways that the chairs experience and react to space that we haven’t really gotten to explore. They’re not going to need us anymore after a while. UF I’d say they’re eleven-year-olds now. MH Eleven? Yeah. Smart eleven-year-olds. UF Eleven-year-olds who think they’re fourteenyear-olds. We’ll try to get them to eighteen by the time the show opens, no? MH Sixteen, seventeen. . . . UF We’ll try. NS They can get their drivers’ licenses. MH That’s the goal, yeah. Because then they can drive us around. And that’s kind of what we’re working on right now: figuring out ways to herd or corral not just the chairs but the viewers. The chairs will have to learn how to approach situations for the best results. For instance, if three of them travel in a line, that will probably make people more likely to move back. So if we want to present a bigger choreography, where it’s more of a spectacle or a dance, there’ll be ways to have the chairs announce that they want to clear the stage, in a way that’s not aggressive but inviting. I think a lot of the movement in the installation allows you to fluctuate between anthropomorphizing and deanthropomorphizing the chairs. They’ll kind of switch roles, so you’re flipping back and forth between those spaces. And what’s interesting is that the viewers also go between being the audience and being a part of the installation. That might be confusing for people who may be anticipating something more like a performance, but the chairs are participating, watching the viewers and literally making sense of their behaviors, working around or reacting to them. It’s a real communication system. UF I look forward to watching people trying to make sense of it all. It’s like when you go to a concert and you don’t focus on the people onstage. Instead, you start to look at all the people looking, and it’s awesome. MH
Right: Photo by Chad Moore Below: Photo by Cassandra MacLeod All images: Installation view, Urs Fischer: PLAY, with choreography by Madeline Hollander, Gagosian West 21st Street, New York, September 6– October 13, 2018 Artwork © Urs Fischer
Through Angela Kunicky, at Urs’s studio, and the neuroscientist Leah Kelly, whom I’ve worked with before. I’ve mostly choreographed dancers but I’ve also worked with objects. Most of my research is in gestural interaction. NS How is this project a departure for you, if it is? Is this the first time you’ve worked with robotic mechanisms? MH This is unlike anything I’ve ever done. But I’ve worked with robotics before, and I’ve done a lot of motion capture and a lot of choreography with gestural interfaces and interfaces for new tech. So this project was a perfect hybrid of all these other pieces coming together in an intimate, animate object. NS When you say “personality scripts,” is that a term you came up with just for this project? Or do you use that term more generally in choreography? MH A whole new language emerged from this process. Behavior scripts, personality scripts, movement sequences, group choreographies, micro-movements, beats—it’s a fusion of my choreographic terminology with the software and the parts of the chair. We have a whole vocabulary specific to this process of melding three distinct MH
46
discourses to communicate seamlessly. Or more than three, actually: the programmers, the animators, the engineers, the choreography, and the hardware all have their own discourse. What was so fascinating for me, as a choreographer, was how much variation you can get from just the word “footing,” say, which is the wheels spinning, acceleration, speed variation, and seat angle. It’s kind of like having nothing above your hips: there are no arms or head to work with, so how much can you get across meaning-wise in twisting the feet angle with the hip angle and then including acceleration, rate, and whether you’re going forward, backward, or at an angle? Combinations of all of those really do evoke different personalities. So you can have a chair that looks like it’s limping or one that looks like it’s superexcited or flirting or energetic or about to collapse, based on different combinations of those very few variables. UF It was important to reduce the movable elements. MH Right. More limitations. UF There’s beauty in restraint—in life generally, but here the restraint results in more grace. Imagine if the armrest were going up and down and waving—the chairs would be like clowns. It would become entertainment. MH And even with these limitations, there are endless sequences and endless behaviors available. The personality scripts are like the baseline— kind of how each chair gets dressed in the morning. Then we can assign how often the personalities switch. But there are even more variables: we’re making day scripts, where at certain hours some of the personalities will be way more social or way more introverted. There are ones that incorporate a lot more choreographic sequences, or movements pulling from sports and culture and dance, and then others that pull from conversation and interactive sequences. UF As data of the movements through space accumulates, we’ll try to understand patterns, and which elements are successful one way or another. From there we’ll take it to the next stage. When the exhibition opens, it will be like the chairs are leaving home for the first time and will have to learn a lot. The idea is that they become gradually more and more their own, continuously learning. This is just the beginning.
And the only way to learn will be having the show’s run and interacting with a public that’s not familiar with them. Because right now I know all of the limitations, so our testing isn’t really giving us the data required for the AI to get smarter. There are so many factors, you know: what does a crowd do, what does a group of kids do, or a dog, or people who leave their bags on the ground? There are so many different sensors and ways that the chairs experience and react to space that we haven’t really gotten to explore. They’re not going to need us anymore after a while. UF I’d say they’re eleven-year-olds now. MH Eleven? Yeah. Smart eleven-year-olds. UF Eleven-year-olds who think they’re fourteenyear-olds. We’ll try to get them to eighteen by the time the show opens, no? MH Sixteen, seventeen. . . . UF We’ll try. NS They can get their drivers’ licenses. MH That’s the goal, yeah. Because then they can drive us around. And that’s kind of what we’re working on right now: figuring out ways to herd or corral not just the chairs but the viewers. The chairs will have to learn how to approach situations for the best results. For instance, if three of them travel in a line, that will probably make people more likely to move back. So if we want to present a bigger choreography, where it’s more of a spectacle or a dance, there’ll be ways to have the chairs announce that they want to clear the stage, in a way that’s not aggressive but inviting. I think a lot of the movement in the installation allows you to fluctuate between anthropomorphizing and deanthropomorphizing the chairs. They’ll kind of switch roles, so you’re flipping back and forth between those spaces. And what’s interesting is that the viewers also go between being the audience and being a part of the installation. That might be confusing for people who may be anticipating something more like a performance, but the chairs are participating, watching the viewers and literally making sense of their behaviors, working around or reacting to them. It’s a real communication system. UF I look forward to watching people trying to make sense of it all. It’s like when you go to a concert and you don’t focus on the people onstage. Instead, you start to look at all the people looking, and it’s awesome. MH
Richard Prince Text by Richard Hell
High Times Chronicles’ autobiographical prose reminds me of Rich-
–
ard’s a little bit too), or Andy Warhol (not to men-
Richard Prince is an artist. He has always been an
tion Guillaume Apollinaire and Jim Carroll). The
artist and he always will be an artist. I don’t know
trickery is not malicious but funny and haunting and
how an artist becomes an artist. And I don’t think
edifying, if frustrating at times, and self-protec-
anyone else does either. It is something deep and mys-
tive, like an umbrella. He told me, regarding the
terious inside of a person that cannot be explained.
hippie drawings, which are the foundation of this new
It is something that no one understands. It is some-
High Times series of paintings, but also regarding
thing that no one will ever understand. I asked Rich-
his fundamental inclination to appropriate the core
ard Prince once how it came about that he was an art-
content he uses, how, once he started to elaborate
ist, and he said, “I don’t know. It is something deep
in color and decoration on his initial black-on-white
and mysterious inside of me that cannot be explained.”
imitations of his kids’ drawings, “I started to kind
On the other hand, in the catalogue for Prince’s
of like do my own drawings. [. . .] But it wasn’t as
2007 Guggenheim Museum retrospective, his good friend
if I was drawing them. I was still very uncomfortable
and a major contributor to the catalogue, Glenn
with the idea of doing things that solely came from
O’Brien, quoted this from Richard: “Art is not the
me. I’ve always been uncomfortable about that, and
expression of personality but an escape from personal-
that was my bag.”
ity. Only those who have personality and emotions and sensitivity know what it means to want to escape from
Prince: The work always had to start in a public
these things.” I’ve seen that statement in Richard’s
place or it had to have some sort of relationship
published works too. O’Brien added, “To me, that goes
to the real world.
to his essence.” I agree. The funny thing is that
Hell: It’s not like self-expression. It’s using
the quote wasn’t originally Richard’s but was written
imagery that’s there.
by T. S. Eliot in an essay called “Tradition and the
Prince: I thought I could get away with [the hippie
Individual Talent,” published in his book The Sacred
drawing work] if I put it under the umbrella, this
Wood in 1920. Eliot was talking about poetry rather
hippie thing that would repel the rain and I could
than visual art, so Richard substituted “art” for
stand under this thing. [. . .] I could become
“poetry,” along with, curiously, adding “and sensitiv-
another persona.
ity” to the list of traits to be escaped. Eliot was arguing against the value of “self-expression” assumed
Richard writes a fair amount about his experience and
by the Ramones. I mean, the Romantics. He preferred
intentions but you can never be sure how much of it
some distance.
is “true.” Except all of it is true because it’s the
As an artist, Richard lies and steals in a casual unconcerned way that’s also strategic and a state-
actual underpinnings of his works, which are great. After I interviewed Richard about his work in gen-
ment about his doubts about himself, reality, and who
eral and his new series of paintings I went and found
owns what, not to mention history. This is all on
Howdy Doody on YouTube. Richard refers to Howdy Doody.
the record. He’s like Bob Dylan in that way (whose
I started to drift, like doze, like die. Howdy Doody
48
Richard Prince Text by Richard Hell
High Times Chronicles’ autobiographical prose reminds me of Rich-
–
ard’s a little bit too), or Andy Warhol (not to men-
Richard Prince is an artist. He has always been an
tion Guillaume Apollinaire and Jim Carroll). The
artist and he always will be an artist. I don’t know
trickery is not malicious but funny and haunting and
how an artist becomes an artist. And I don’t think
edifying, if frustrating at times, and self-protec-
anyone else does either. It is something deep and mys-
tive, like an umbrella. He told me, regarding the
terious inside of a person that cannot be explained.
hippie drawings, which are the foundation of this new
It is something that no one understands. It is some-
High Times series of paintings, but also regarding
thing that no one will ever understand. I asked Rich-
his fundamental inclination to appropriate the core
ard Prince once how it came about that he was an art-
content he uses, how, once he started to elaborate
ist, and he said, “I don’t know. It is something deep
in color and decoration on his initial black-on-white
and mysterious inside of me that cannot be explained.”
imitations of his kids’ drawings, “I started to kind
On the other hand, in the catalogue for Prince’s
of like do my own drawings. [. . .] But it wasn’t as
2007 Guggenheim Museum retrospective, his good friend
if I was drawing them. I was still very uncomfortable
and a major contributor to the catalogue, Glenn
with the idea of doing things that solely came from
O’Brien, quoted this from Richard: “Art is not the
me. I’ve always been uncomfortable about that, and
expression of personality but an escape from personal-
that was my bag.”
ity. Only those who have personality and emotions and sensitivity know what it means to want to escape from
Prince: The work always had to start in a public
these things.” I’ve seen that statement in Richard’s
place or it had to have some sort of relationship
published works too. O’Brien added, “To me, that goes
to the real world.
to his essence.” I agree. The funny thing is that
Hell: It’s not like self-expression. It’s using
the quote wasn’t originally Richard’s but was written
imagery that’s there.
by T. S. Eliot in an essay called “Tradition and the
Prince: I thought I could get away with [the hippie
Individual Talent,” published in his book The Sacred
drawing work] if I put it under the umbrella, this
Wood in 1920. Eliot was talking about poetry rather
hippie thing that would repel the rain and I could
than visual art, so Richard substituted “art” for
stand under this thing. [. . .] I could become
“poetry,” along with, curiously, adding “and sensitiv-
another persona.
ity” to the list of traits to be escaped. Eliot was arguing against the value of “self-expression” assumed
Richard writes a fair amount about his experience and
by the Ramones. I mean, the Romantics. He preferred
intentions but you can never be sure how much of it
some distance.
is “true.” Except all of it is true because it’s the
As an artist, Richard lies and steals in a casual unconcerned way that’s also strategic and a state-
actual underpinnings of his works, which are great. After I interviewed Richard about his work in gen-
ment about his doubts about himself, reality, and who
eral and his new series of paintings I went and found
owns what, not to mention history. This is all on
Howdy Doody on YouTube. Richard refers to Howdy Doody.
the record. He’s like Bob Dylan in that way (whose
I started to drift, like doze, like die. Howdy Doody
48
Left: Richard Prince’s studio, New York, NY, 2018. Photo by Richard Prince
Previous spread: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2016–18, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 118 × 93 inches (299.7 × 236.2 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
Opposite: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, acrylic, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, in frame, 77 × 57 1 ⁄2 inches (195.6 × 146.1 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
Opposite: Richard, Untitled, 2017–18, oil stick, acrylic, collage, charcoal, and inkjet on canvas, 68 1⁄2 × 55 inches (174 × 139.7 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo This page (left): Richard Prince, Untitled (Hippie Drawing), 1998, marker on paper, 11 × 8 1 ⁄2 inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo
Following spread, from left to right: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas. 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
This page (right): Richard Prince, Untitled (Hippie Drawing), 1998, marker on paper, 11 × 8 1 ⁄2 inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo
Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
and Buffalo Bob are cowboys. I’d forgotten that. I’d
drawings. Prince told me, “I started imitating, as
of pictures of gruesome sword-fighting, though I
going on since the beginning of fucking time.
almost forgotten that Howdy was a puppet. Richard
I usually do, other people. I was trying to imi-
didn’t notice the fighters at first. At the same
So I decided why not put, instead of a contem-
looks like Howdy Doody. Somewhere he said he was in
tate or channel what my kids were doing, because, you
time, the paintings were childlike and colorful,
porary drawing of a fighter . . . [. . .] They
the Peanut Gallery when he was five. (It was a lie.
know, I can draw. But what I was interested in was
like Basquiat, or like Picasso’s late musketeer
don’t have guns or machine guns; they have swords
“What time is it, kids?”) I remember watching Howdy
the way they were drawing.” He guessed that it was
paintings—or even like the rhythmic and complexly
and they’ve got armor. I thought they fit in the
Doody, the way it was compelling when you were five.
the naïveté or childishness of the hippie that pro-
colored allover abstractions that Jackson Pollock
context. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about
The powerful memory it is. (Richard and I are almost
vided the link of child to hippie in his mind, but
was making just before the extreme of his “drip”
the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and
exactly the same age, August and October 1949.) Now
also, one can’t help thinking, it must have been con-
paintings, and the High Times paintings employ
you know, the billy clubs and [. . .] it contin-
I’m nearing death (which is to say I’m getting old)
nected to his preoccupation with recent American sub-
a similar palette to those works too. The works
ues the narrative. I don’t know. I mean, again,
and Howdy Doody returns, even more powerful than
cultures, especially the youth cultures he’s been
felt to me like Richard’s depiction of the idyl-
I just think it’s cool. If I have to explain it,
ever. Richard Prince. How does Prince pick what to
exposed to, and that have preoccupied America too.
lic, pastoral hippie era shifting to punk, when
yeah, that’s all.”
feature? Comforting, gorgeous, and frightening, like
The freak-flag color range as well.
the flowers went to hell with assassinations,
the Marlboro man. Bikers’ girlfriends. Muscle cars.
For the paintings, he scanned some of the hundreds
Richard is an obsessive reader and bibliophile
Manson, race riots, Altamont, and prolonged Viet-
and books and magazines play a major role in his
Sexy but bloody and threatening nurses. Though these
of 8 1/2-by-11-inch hippie drawings he’d made in
nam. Anyway, they were powerful, a weird mix
works. He collects mainly first editions and man-
subjects are nothing until transformed by Prince’s
the late 1990s and had the images enlarged and ink-
of childish whimsy, modernism, and foundational
uscripts of English-language fiction, poetry,
sensibility into the epic and funny works of sensual
jet-printed onto big canvases. He also painted such
violence.
essays, and autobiography published between 1949
beauty he does.
figures directly onto the inkjetted canvases and sta-
Some of my favorite paintings in the show
and 1984, 1949 being both the year of his birth
The way he explains his signature motivation, what
pled to the canvases cutout versions of some of the
extend further psychedelically by using as
and, as he points out, the year of the publi-
originally drove him to appropriate the work of oth-
inkjet enlargements. All these figures are arranged
grounds inkjetted extreme enlargements of photos
cation of Orwell’s 1984. It can’t be missed,
ers, or, as he has described his first uses of mag-
vertically and the spaces between them painted black
not of the hippie drawings but of people gathered
though, that those years, from birth to age thir-
azine ads, “rephotograph” them is that he says he
or deep blue. There are also a few enlargements of
in sunlit woods for some festivity, with hippie
ty-five, pretty well comprise a person’s most
didn’t like his own work so he started doing other
his primitive black-on-white line-drawing copies of
drawings in various sizes superimposed on them
impressionable and inspired period, and Richard’s
people’s. I believe that. It has the ring of truth
pictures of medieval and/or Renaissance warriors
and yards of silk added, also with imagery on it,
collection is like a portrait of that period, as
and it’s funny. I went to see a psychiatrist. He said
stabbing and viciously bludgeoning each other, cop-
cut to hang and drape across the greater part of
known to him, captured in books. He has also pub-
“Tell me everything.” I did, and now he’s doing my
ied from imagery he’d come across at the Met. All the
the canvas, like memory gauze or Ecstasy. These
lished much—often semiautobiographical—writing
act.
figures are arranged tightly, with some body portions
pictures are the remaining vestiges of an ear-
himself, and he almost always produces large-for-
squeezed into spaces between the figures against that
lier concept of the show that would have added a
mat trade picture books of various categories/
published in a 2005 book called Hippie Drawings.
black, so that the ultimate effect is classic, flat,
few further subcultures to the original hippies
series of his paintings, such as Jokes and
Those drawings were candy colored, crude, flat (no
allover painting.
and hippie-punks, and the exhibit would have been
Cartoons, Check Paintings, Cowboys, and Nurse
subtitled Beat, Hippie, Punk, Hop, Trance.
Paintings. There are books from his collection
The High Times paintings incorporate drawings he
illusion of depth), frontal figures that looked like
I knew the book Hippie Drawings. When I first saw
included in this High Times show, and in its cat-
the work of a psychotic or someone tripping on drugs,
these new paintings, the week I interviewed Rich-
or doodles by someone who couldn’t draw, or like
ard, they looked great but also almost demonic, mon-
sprinkled among the kindergarten figures, Rich-
alogue he prints extracts from ’60s and ’60s-
children’s drawings. I checked a drawing I’d kept
strous—a reaction of mine that probably had some-
ard said: “The fighting, the battles. I mean,
oriented literature by Joan Didion, Eve Babitz,
from when my daughter was four. They’re children’s
thing to do with the black ground and the sprinkling
it’s just not going to fucking end. This has been
and Kim Gordon to complement the images. (Rachel
Regarding the vintage hand-to-hand combat
51
5
Left: Richard Prince’s studio, New York, NY, 2018. Photo by Richard Prince
Previous spread: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2016–18, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 118 × 93 inches (299.7 × 236.2 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
Opposite: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, acrylic, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, in frame, 77 × 57 1 ⁄2 inches (195.6 × 146.1 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
Opposite: Richard, Untitled, 2017–18, oil stick, acrylic, collage, charcoal, and inkjet on canvas, 68 1⁄2 × 55 inches (174 × 139.7 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo This page (left): Richard Prince, Untitled (Hippie Drawing), 1998, marker on paper, 11 × 8 1 ⁄2 inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo
Following spread, from left to right: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas. 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
This page (right): Richard Prince, Untitled (Hippie Drawing), 1998, marker on paper, 11 × 8 1 ⁄2 inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo
Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
and Buffalo Bob are cowboys. I’d forgotten that. I’d
drawings. Prince told me, “I started imitating, as
of pictures of gruesome sword-fighting, though I
going on since the beginning of fucking time.
almost forgotten that Howdy was a puppet. Richard
I usually do, other people. I was trying to imi-
didn’t notice the fighters at first. At the same
So I decided why not put, instead of a contem-
looks like Howdy Doody. Somewhere he said he was in
tate or channel what my kids were doing, because, you
time, the paintings were childlike and colorful,
porary drawing of a fighter . . . [. . .] They
the Peanut Gallery when he was five. (It was a lie.
know, I can draw. But what I was interested in was
like Basquiat, or like Picasso’s late musketeer
don’t have guns or machine guns; they have swords
“What time is it, kids?”) I remember watching Howdy
the way they were drawing.” He guessed that it was
paintings—or even like the rhythmic and complexly
and they’ve got armor. I thought they fit in the
Doody, the way it was compelling when you were five.
the naïveté or childishness of the hippie that pro-
colored allover abstractions that Jackson Pollock
context. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about
The powerful memory it is. (Richard and I are almost
vided the link of child to hippie in his mind, but
was making just before the extreme of his “drip”
the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and
exactly the same age, August and October 1949.) Now
also, one can’t help thinking, it must have been con-
paintings, and the High Times paintings employ
you know, the billy clubs and [. . .] it contin-
I’m nearing death (which is to say I’m getting old)
nected to his preoccupation with recent American sub-
a similar palette to those works too. The works
ues the narrative. I don’t know. I mean, again,
and Howdy Doody returns, even more powerful than
cultures, especially the youth cultures he’s been
felt to me like Richard’s depiction of the idyl-
I just think it’s cool. If I have to explain it,
ever. Richard Prince. How does Prince pick what to
exposed to, and that have preoccupied America too.
lic, pastoral hippie era shifting to punk, when
yeah, that’s all.”
feature? Comforting, gorgeous, and frightening, like
The freak-flag color range as well.
the flowers went to hell with assassinations,
the Marlboro man. Bikers’ girlfriends. Muscle cars.
For the paintings, he scanned some of the hundreds
Richard is an obsessive reader and bibliophile
Manson, race riots, Altamont, and prolonged Viet-
and books and magazines play a major role in his
Sexy but bloody and threatening nurses. Though these
of 8 1/2-by-11-inch hippie drawings he’d made in
nam. Anyway, they were powerful, a weird mix
works. He collects mainly first editions and man-
subjects are nothing until transformed by Prince’s
the late 1990s and had the images enlarged and ink-
of childish whimsy, modernism, and foundational
uscripts of English-language fiction, poetry,
sensibility into the epic and funny works of sensual
jet-printed onto big canvases. He also painted such
violence.
essays, and autobiography published between 1949
beauty he does.
figures directly onto the inkjetted canvases and sta-
Some of my favorite paintings in the show
and 1984, 1949 being both the year of his birth
The way he explains his signature motivation, what
pled to the canvases cutout versions of some of the
extend further psychedelically by using as
and, as he points out, the year of the publi-
originally drove him to appropriate the work of oth-
inkjet enlargements. All these figures are arranged
grounds inkjetted extreme enlargements of photos
cation of Orwell’s 1984. It can’t be missed,
ers, or, as he has described his first uses of mag-
vertically and the spaces between them painted black
not of the hippie drawings but of people gathered
though, that those years, from birth to age thir-
azine ads, “rephotograph” them is that he says he
or deep blue. There are also a few enlargements of
in sunlit woods for some festivity, with hippie
ty-five, pretty well comprise a person’s most
didn’t like his own work so he started doing other
his primitive black-on-white line-drawing copies of
drawings in various sizes superimposed on them
impressionable and inspired period, and Richard’s
people’s. I believe that. It has the ring of truth
pictures of medieval and/or Renaissance warriors
and yards of silk added, also with imagery on it,
collection is like a portrait of that period, as
and it’s funny. I went to see a psychiatrist. He said
stabbing and viciously bludgeoning each other, cop-
cut to hang and drape across the greater part of
known to him, captured in books. He has also pub-
“Tell me everything.” I did, and now he’s doing my
ied from imagery he’d come across at the Met. All the
the canvas, like memory gauze or Ecstasy. These
lished much—often semiautobiographical—writing
act.
figures are arranged tightly, with some body portions
pictures are the remaining vestiges of an ear-
himself, and he almost always produces large-for-
squeezed into spaces between the figures against that
lier concept of the show that would have added a
mat trade picture books of various categories/
published in a 2005 book called Hippie Drawings.
black, so that the ultimate effect is classic, flat,
few further subcultures to the original hippies
series of his paintings, such as Jokes and
Those drawings were candy colored, crude, flat (no
allover painting.
and hippie-punks, and the exhibit would have been
Cartoons, Check Paintings, Cowboys, and Nurse
subtitled Beat, Hippie, Punk, Hop, Trance.
Paintings. There are books from his collection
The High Times paintings incorporate drawings he
illusion of depth), frontal figures that looked like
I knew the book Hippie Drawings. When I first saw
included in this High Times show, and in its cat-
the work of a psychotic or someone tripping on drugs,
these new paintings, the week I interviewed Rich-
or doodles by someone who couldn’t draw, or like
ard, they looked great but also almost demonic, mon-
sprinkled among the kindergarten figures, Rich-
alogue he prints extracts from ’60s and ’60s-
children’s drawings. I checked a drawing I’d kept
strous—a reaction of mine that probably had some-
ard said: “The fighting, the battles. I mean,
oriented literature by Joan Didion, Eve Babitz,
from when my daughter was four. They’re children’s
thing to do with the black ground and the sprinkling
it’s just not going to fucking end. This has been
and Kim Gordon to complement the images. (Rachel
Regarding the vintage hand-to-hand combat
51
5
Left: Richard Prince’s studio, New York, NY, 2018. Photo by Richard Prince
Previous spread: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2016–18, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 118 × 93 inches (299.7 × 236.2 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
Opposite: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, acrylic, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, in frame, 77 × 57 1 ⁄2 inches (195.6 × 146.1 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
Opposite: Richard, Untitled, 2017–18, oil stick, acrylic, collage, charcoal, and inkjet on canvas, 68 1⁄2 × 55 inches (174 × 139.7 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo This page (left): Richard Prince, Untitled (Hippie Drawing), 1998, marker on paper, 11 × 8 1 ⁄2 inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo
Following spread, from left to right: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas. 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
This page (right): Richard Prince, Untitled (Hippie Drawing), 1998, marker on paper, 11 × 8 1 ⁄2 inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm). Photo by Jena Cumbo
Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal, matte medium, collage, and inkjet on canvas, 100 × 81 inches (254 × 205.7 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever
and Buffalo Bob are cowboys. I’d forgotten that. I’d
drawings. Prince told me, “I started imitating, as
of pictures of gruesome sword-fighting, though I
going on since the beginning of fucking time.
almost forgotten that Howdy was a puppet. Richard
I usually do, other people. I was trying to imi-
didn’t notice the fighters at first. At the same
So I decided why not put, instead of a contem-
looks like Howdy Doody. Somewhere he said he was in
tate or channel what my kids were doing, because, you
time, the paintings were childlike and colorful,
porary drawing of a fighter . . . [. . .] They
the Peanut Gallery when he was five. (It was a lie.
know, I can draw. But what I was interested in was
like Basquiat, or like Picasso’s late musketeer
don’t have guns or machine guns; they have swords
“What time is it, kids?”) I remember watching Howdy
the way they were drawing.” He guessed that it was
paintings—or even like the rhythmic and complexly
and they’ve got armor. I thought they fit in the
Doody, the way it was compelling when you were five.
the naïveté or childishness of the hippie that pro-
colored allover abstractions that Jackson Pollock
context. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about
The powerful memory it is. (Richard and I are almost
vided the link of child to hippie in his mind, but
was making just before the extreme of his “drip”
the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and
exactly the same age, August and October 1949.) Now
also, one can’t help thinking, it must have been con-
paintings, and the High Times paintings employ
you know, the billy clubs and [. . .] it contin-
I’m nearing death (which is to say I’m getting old)
nected to his preoccupation with recent American sub-
a similar palette to those works too. The works
ues the narrative. I don’t know. I mean, again,
and Howdy Doody returns, even more powerful than
cultures, especially the youth cultures he’s been
felt to me like Richard’s depiction of the idyl-
I just think it’s cool. If I have to explain it,
ever. Richard Prince. How does Prince pick what to
exposed to, and that have preoccupied America too.
lic, pastoral hippie era shifting to punk, when
yeah, that’s all.”
feature? Comforting, gorgeous, and frightening, like
The freak-flag color range as well.
the flowers went to hell with assassinations,
the Marlboro man. Bikers’ girlfriends. Muscle cars.
For the paintings, he scanned some of the hundreds
Richard is an obsessive reader and bibliophile
Manson, race riots, Altamont, and prolonged Viet-
and books and magazines play a major role in his
Sexy but bloody and threatening nurses. Though these
of 8 1/2-by-11-inch hippie drawings he’d made in
nam. Anyway, they were powerful, a weird mix
works. He collects mainly first editions and man-
subjects are nothing until transformed by Prince’s
the late 1990s and had the images enlarged and ink-
of childish whimsy, modernism, and foundational
uscripts of English-language fiction, poetry,
sensibility into the epic and funny works of sensual
jet-printed onto big canvases. He also painted such
violence.
essays, and autobiography published between 1949
beauty he does.
figures directly onto the inkjetted canvases and sta-
Some of my favorite paintings in the show
and 1984, 1949 being both the year of his birth
The way he explains his signature motivation, what
pled to the canvases cutout versions of some of the
extend further psychedelically by using as
and, as he points out, the year of the publi-
originally drove him to appropriate the work of oth-
inkjet enlargements. All these figures are arranged
grounds inkjetted extreme enlargements of photos
cation of Orwell’s 1984. It can’t be missed,
ers, or, as he has described his first uses of mag-
vertically and the spaces between them painted black
not of the hippie drawings but of people gathered
though, that those years, from birth to age thir-
azine ads, “rephotograph” them is that he says he
or deep blue. There are also a few enlargements of
in sunlit woods for some festivity, with hippie
ty-five, pretty well comprise a person’s most
didn’t like his own work so he started doing other
his primitive black-on-white line-drawing copies of
drawings in various sizes superimposed on them
impressionable and inspired period, and Richard’s
people’s. I believe that. It has the ring of truth
pictures of medieval and/or Renaissance warriors
and yards of silk added, also with imagery on it,
collection is like a portrait of that period, as
and it’s funny. I went to see a psychiatrist. He said
stabbing and viciously bludgeoning each other, cop-
cut to hang and drape across the greater part of
known to him, captured in books. He has also pub-
“Tell me everything.” I did, and now he’s doing my
ied from imagery he’d come across at the Met. All the
the canvas, like memory gauze or Ecstasy. These
lished much—often semiautobiographical—writing
act.
figures are arranged tightly, with some body portions
pictures are the remaining vestiges of an ear-
himself, and he almost always produces large-for-
squeezed into spaces between the figures against that
lier concept of the show that would have added a
mat trade picture books of various categories/
published in a 2005 book called Hippie Drawings.
black, so that the ultimate effect is classic, flat,
few further subcultures to the original hippies
series of his paintings, such as Jokes and
Those drawings were candy colored, crude, flat (no
allover painting.
and hippie-punks, and the exhibit would have been
Cartoons, Check Paintings, Cowboys, and Nurse
subtitled Beat, Hippie, Punk, Hop, Trance.
Paintings. There are books from his collection
The High Times paintings incorporate drawings he
illusion of depth), frontal figures that looked like
I knew the book Hippie Drawings. When I first saw
included in this High Times show, and in its cat-
the work of a psychotic or someone tripping on drugs,
these new paintings, the week I interviewed Rich-
or doodles by someone who couldn’t draw, or like
ard, they looked great but also almost demonic, mon-
sprinkled among the kindergarten figures, Rich-
alogue he prints extracts from ’60s and ’60s-
children’s drawings. I checked a drawing I’d kept
strous—a reaction of mine that probably had some-
ard said: “The fighting, the battles. I mean,
oriented literature by Joan Didion, Eve Babitz,
from when my daughter was four. They’re children’s
thing to do with the black ground and the sprinkling
it’s just not going to fucking end. This has been
and Kim Gordon to complement the images. (Rachel
Regarding the vintage hand-to-hand combat
51
5
7
Opposite: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, charcoal, acrylic, collage, matte medium, and inkjet on canvas, in frame, 107 1⁄2 × 93 3 ⁄4 inches (273.1 × 238.1 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Right: Richard Prince’s studio, New York, NY, 2018. Photo by Richard Prince Artwork © Richard Prince
Kushner also contributes a hippie punk essay too.) In a way, all of Richard’s paintings are history
and Picasso and Dubuffet; it’s because the imagery and style of those painters are just as legitimate in the
paintings. They run modern American culture, mostly
way of technique or of raw material for Prince as is
from 1949 on, or its mass-media embodiment, and the
all recent generations’ lifelong environment of mass
basement cravings and drives of that culture—through
media, and as legitimate a material as landscapes and
Richard’s sensibility, with the understanding that
historical subjects were for earlier painters.
mass media and electronic information are the nature
In the tangled twenty-first-century wilderness, in
into which we have been born. It turns out that one
the wild history that is Richard’s opus, once you iso-
of the very first of the hippie drawings was the sim-
late a theme or a tendency or see a pattern at all,
ple black-on-white line drawing that Richard thinks
it suggests ideas and implications and specific anal-
of as the “hippie punk.” He gives it extra play, he
yses—both backward (precedents) and forward (impli-
acknowledges its significance, by not only including
cations, intimations)—that fascinate and continue to
this atypical (or early) black and white image in mul-
proliferate like some kind of wildfire of meanings.
tiple paintings in the series, but by using it as the
The High Times paintings are spectacular, suggestive,
frontispiece for the show’s catalogue. So I felt as
and scary, and seeing as how, to me, art is personal,
if my first reaction—of the paintings’ capturing the
they pass the ultimate test of quality, which is that
pivot point of flower child to punk—had been accurate
I’d like to have one on my wall even if nobody’d ever
enough, even though Richard seemed mystified by my
heard of Richard Prince.
reading of the High Times hippie population as ultra
All artists are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the
aggro. There’s also an interesting pattern in the way
very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.
these paintings are created and exhibited now, in
Making a piece of art is a horrible, exhausting strug-
2018, when so much media is being devoted to the fif-
gle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One
tieth anniversary of the international youth-led revo-
would never undertake such a thing if one were not
lutionary turmoil of 1968, and we feel the similarity
driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist
of the Nixon America that festered then and the Trump
nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is sim-
America we face now.
ply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for
Another major aspect of Prince’s output, apart from
attention. And yet it is also true that one can paint
his surfing of modern American culture, is that it
nothing worthwhile unless one constantly struggles to
explicitly plays on modernism in art, uses it as a
efface one’s own personality.*
subject or a running subtext, playing on it amusingly, which, of course, is typical of postmodernism, which
58
*Thanks and apologies to George Orwell, author of 1984, for
trend in painting Prince helped to create. I don’t
this final paragraph, which is very slightly modified from
think it’s merely coincidental that these High Times
his “Why I Write” (1946); also, to Joe Brainard for the first
paintings recall his mental environment of Basquiat
paragraph of the essay, from his “Ron Padgett” (c. 1966).
59 59
3
54
55
5
3
54
55
5
7
Opposite: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, charcoal, acrylic, collage, matte medium, and inkjet on canvas, in frame, 107 1⁄2 × 93 3 ⁄4 inches (273.1 × 238.1 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Right: Richard Prince’s studio, New York, NY, 2018. Photo by Richard Prince Artwork © Richard Prince
Kushner also contributes a hippie punk essay too.) In a way, all of Richard’s paintings are history
and Picasso and Dubuffet; it’s because the imagery and style of those painters are just as legitimate in the
paintings. They run modern American culture, mostly
way of technique or of raw material for Prince as is
from 1949 on, or its mass-media embodiment, and the
all recent generations’ lifelong environment of mass
basement cravings and drives of that culture—through
media, and as legitimate a material as landscapes and
Richard’s sensibility, with the understanding that
historical subjects were for earlier painters.
mass media and electronic information are the nature
In the tangled twenty-first-century wilderness, in
into which we have been born. It turns out that one
the wild history that is Richard’s opus, once you iso-
of the very first of the hippie drawings was the sim-
late a theme or a tendency or see a pattern at all,
ple black-on-white line drawing that Richard thinks
it suggests ideas and implications and specific anal-
of as the “hippie punk.” He gives it extra play, he
yses—both backward (precedents) and forward (impli-
acknowledges its significance, by not only including
cations, intimations)—that fascinate and continue to
this atypical (or early) black and white image in mul-
proliferate like some kind of wildfire of meanings.
tiple paintings in the series, but by using it as the
The High Times paintings are spectacular, suggestive,
frontispiece for the show’s catalogue. So I felt as
and scary, and seeing as how, to me, art is personal,
if my first reaction—of the paintings’ capturing the
they pass the ultimate test of quality, which is that
pivot point of flower child to punk—had been accurate
I’d like to have one on my wall even if nobody’d ever
enough, even though Richard seemed mystified by my
heard of Richard Prince.
reading of the High Times hippie population as ultra
All artists are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the
aggro. There’s also an interesting pattern in the way
very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.
these paintings are created and exhibited now, in
Making a piece of art is a horrible, exhausting strug-
2018, when so much media is being devoted to the fif-
gle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One
tieth anniversary of the international youth-led revo-
would never undertake such a thing if one were not
lutionary turmoil of 1968, and we feel the similarity
driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist
of the Nixon America that festered then and the Trump
nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is sim-
America we face now.
ply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for
Another major aspect of Prince’s output, apart from
attention. And yet it is also true that one can paint
his surfing of modern American culture, is that it
nothing worthwhile unless one constantly struggles to
explicitly plays on modernism in art, uses it as a
efface one’s own personality.*
subject or a running subtext, playing on it amusingly, which, of course, is typical of postmodernism, which
58
*Thanks and apologies to George Orwell, author of 1984, for
trend in painting Prince helped to create. I don’t
this final paragraph, which is very slightly modified from
think it’s merely coincidental that these High Times
his “Why I Write” (1946); also, to Joe Brainard for the first
paintings recall his mental environment of Basquiat
paragraph of the essay, from his “Ron Padgett” (c. 1966).
59 59
7
Opposite: Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017, oil stick, charcoal, acrylic, collage, matte medium, and inkjet on canvas, in frame, 107 1⁄2 × 93 3 ⁄4 inches (273.1 × 238.1 cm). Photo by Rob McKeever Right: Richard Prince’s studio, New York, NY, 2018. Photo by Richard Prince Artwork © Richard Prince
Kushner also contributes a hippie punk essay too.) In a way, all of Richard’s paintings are history
and Picasso and Dubuffet; it’s because the imagery and style of those painters are just as legitimate in the
paintings. They run modern American culture, mostly
way of technique or of raw material for Prince as is
from 1949 on, or its mass-media embodiment, and the
all recent generations’ lifelong environment of mass
basement cravings and drives of that culture—through
media, and as legitimate a material as landscapes and
Richard’s sensibility, with the understanding that
historical subjects were for earlier painters.
mass media and electronic information are the nature
In the tangled twenty-first-century wilderness, in
into which we have been born. It turns out that one
the wild history that is Richard’s opus, once you iso-
of the very first of the hippie drawings was the sim-
late a theme or a tendency or see a pattern at all,
ple black-on-white line drawing that Richard thinks
it suggests ideas and implications and specific anal-
of as the “hippie punk.” He gives it extra play, he
yses—both backward (precedents) and forward (impli-
acknowledges its significance, by not only including
cations, intimations)—that fascinate and continue to
this atypical (or early) black and white image in mul-
proliferate like some kind of wildfire of meanings.
tiple paintings in the series, but by using it as the
The High Times paintings are spectacular, suggestive,
frontispiece for the show’s catalogue. So I felt as
and scary, and seeing as how, to me, art is personal,
if my first reaction—of the paintings’ capturing the
they pass the ultimate test of quality, which is that
pivot point of flower child to punk—had been accurate
I’d like to have one on my wall even if nobody’d ever
enough, even though Richard seemed mystified by my
heard of Richard Prince.
reading of the High Times hippie population as ultra
All artists are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the
aggro. There’s also an interesting pattern in the way
very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.
these paintings are created and exhibited now, in
Making a piece of art is a horrible, exhausting strug-
2018, when so much media is being devoted to the fif-
gle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One
tieth anniversary of the international youth-led revo-
would never undertake such a thing if one were not
lutionary turmoil of 1968, and we feel the similarity
driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist
of the Nixon America that festered then and the Trump
nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is sim-
America we face now.
ply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for
Another major aspect of Prince’s output, apart from
attention. And yet it is also true that one can paint
his surfing of modern American culture, is that it
nothing worthwhile unless one constantly struggles to
explicitly plays on modernism in art, uses it as a
efface one’s own personality.*
subject or a running subtext, playing on it amusingly, which, of course, is typical of postmodernism, which
58
*Thanks and apologies to George Orwell, author of 1984, for
trend in painting Prince helped to create. I don’t
this final paragraph, which is very slightly modified from
think it’s merely coincidental that these High Times
his “Why I Write” (1946); also, to Joe Brainard for the first
paintings recall his mental environment of Basquiat
paragraph of the essay, from his “Ron Padgett” (c. 1966).
59 59
SARAH SZE: INFINITE GENERATION Sarah Sze’s exhibition at Gagosian Rome comprises collaged panel paintings, a large-scale video installation, and an outdoor sculpture fashioned from a natural boulder. Louise Neri talks with Sze about the new primacy of the image in her explorations between and across different mediums.
SARAH SZE: INFINITE GENERATION Sarah Sze’s exhibition at Gagosian Rome comprises collaged panel paintings, a large-scale video installation, and an outdoor sculpture fashioned from a natural boulder. Louise Neri talks with Sze about the new primacy of the image in her explorations between and across different mediums.
Previous spread: Sarah Sze, Untitled, 2018, oil paint, acrylic paint, archival paper, UV stabilizers, adhesive, tape, ink and acrylic polymers, shellac, and water-based primer on wood, 73 1⁄2 × 49 × 3 inches (187 × 124.5 × 7.6 cm) Opposite: Sarah Sze, Centrifuge, 2017, mixed media, mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, video projectors, ceramic, acrylic paint, and salt, dimensions variable Right: Sarah Sze in her studio, New York, 2015. Photo courtesy the artist
In the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture. A sculpture is a marker in time. – Sarah Sze LOUISE NERI In the context of a singular artistic prac-
tice where objects, space, time, and context have been your principal materials, why do images hold so much appeal for you now? SARAH SZE I painted with oil from age nine to twenty-five, working from the live figure on the one hand and Josef Albers’s color theory on the other. I started with the image. Painting is the lens through which I came to approach sculpture in the ’90s. LN Can you explain how? SS From my study of painting I borrowed color, mark, and composition to inform my sculpture, as well as scale, circulation, and utility from architecture. What’s interesting now is that I can see the influence of painting and architecture through a more elusive and psychological lens. I see their inf luence on the content of the work—through painting’s engagement with intimacy, improvisation, immediacy, and architecture’s play with memory, behavior, and narrative created over time. LN So why did you stop painting in the first instance? SS At that time I didn’t feel that I had a subject. Despite being academically trained, I didn’t know why I was doing it, other than for the joy and the absolute seduction of spending time in front of it. LN So what changed? SS I found my subject matter. Over the last year, I’ve been drawn to the way time works in painting, how every mark changes the entire equation. I’m finding incredible freedom in making paintings again. LN R ichard Ser ra once cred ited you w it h “changing the very potential of sculpture.” What do you think he meant by it? Would you say that your sculptural practice informed your return to painting? SS In sculpture I found a language of entropy, dynamism, and instability, which remain central drives for me. Specifically, sculpture allowed me to address issues of gravity, mobility, site, seeing things in the round; how I could spill from the edge 64
into the world in this very complex way that wasn’t bound by the frame. Now, in my new paintings I’m interested in how the world spills into the frame— and, to even take it a step further, how we confuse that frame with the world. With the incredible ubiquity of images, which has intensified over the past twenty years, images and objects have become conflated, layered, fused. How we are oriented and disoriented in the world is not just spatial; it’s increasingly influenced by the role and power of the image. I think in the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture. A sculpture is a marker in time. LN The sculptures that constituted Triple Point, your exhibition for the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013, were described as models of uncertainty or instability; is this true of your paintings too? SS All my work addresses uncertainty and instability, but the sculptures are more literal. They actively perform those ideas. In their very existence they play around with the idea of trying to embody concepts physically, and how an object can represent ideas in the form of a dynamic model or a tool of measurement. So I’m modeling uncertainty, live. In two dimensions, this kind of modeling is employed with flat images that can be used as tools to measure, like the use of the blueprint in the permanent tiled mural for the 96th Street subway in Manhattan, or the eye chart and color-blindness test I use in silk screens; or an actual yardstick becoming part of the paintings for Rome—a kind of flat modeling that Jasper Johns does so elegantly, whether with a map, target, or silhouette. Subsequently, this idea of locating oneself and falling apart again is very much what drives the new paintings. To find places in them that you can look at, and how that’s affected by the distance between the viewer and the painting. From far away it has a totally different quality; close up it falls apart. And that approach comes from making sculpture. LN Did this approach also motivate your new stone sculpture? SS The split stone sculpture opens like a cut in a geode to expose an interior image on each inner
face. I was also thinking of the stones as tools to make images, like a potato print or a Chinese chop—a basic tool for imprinting an image using pressure and gravity, where the material processes of making images intersect with the forces of sculpture. There are several scale shifts in this new work, from the presence of the weighty boulder to the fragility of the embedded colors in the smooth split surfaces and, finally, the vast landscape that the pixels come together, one by one, to depict. These scale shifts are active in space as the viewing range for the sculpture moves from far away to close up. LN Most of your sculptures involve some degree of site sensitivity, where the contingent architecture becomes part of the whole. Do the paintings allow you to disengage from this problem? SS I’m still interested in that problem, but not in the limitations of its attendant critical language. Paintings were once site specific; now they are seen as migrant in different ways. Five hundred years ago, Titian made his paintings for the Frari in Venice specifically for the church, fitting them snugly into the shapes of the architecture and reflecting the columns of the space perspectivally in the space of the painting itself. So to talk about “site specificity” or “site sensitivity” as being tied to any specific medium is more a semantic limitation of twentieth-century thinking and discourse than anything else. What interests me about paintings now is that they are extremely mobile and site specific: they are themselves wherever they go. When I began making sculptures, it was with the idea of the kiosk in mind. I was always drawn to Russian Constructivism, in art, architecture, and philosophy, and to its idea of the kiosk as a small architectural structure that you could fold down and bring to public space, indoors or outdoors. To set up a station of information was a model for me for making sculpture. My sculptures often model larger systems but are sometimes small and portable, sometimes literally on wheels, lit from below; they feel like kits that can be put together on the ground. LN In fact, they really are kits, they can be 65
Previous spread: Sarah Sze, Untitled, 2018, oil paint, acrylic paint, archival paper, UV stabilizers, adhesive, tape, ink and acrylic polymers, shellac, and water-based primer on wood, 73 1⁄2 × 49 × 3 inches (187 × 124.5 × 7.6 cm) Opposite: Sarah Sze, Centrifuge, 2017, mixed media, mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, video projectors, ceramic, acrylic paint, and salt, dimensions variable Right: Sarah Sze in her studio, New York, 2015. Photo courtesy the artist
In the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture. A sculpture is a marker in time. – Sarah Sze LOUISE NERI In the context of a singular artistic prac-
tice where objects, space, time, and context have been your principal materials, why do images hold so much appeal for you now? SARAH SZE I painted with oil from age nine to twenty-five, working from the live figure on the one hand and Josef Albers’s color theory on the other. I started with the image. Painting is the lens through which I came to approach sculpture in the ’90s. LN Can you explain how? SS From my study of painting I borrowed color, mark, and composition to inform my sculpture, as well as scale, circulation, and utility from architecture. What’s interesting now is that I can see the influence of painting and architecture through a more elusive and psychological lens. I see their inf luence on the content of the work—through painting’s engagement with intimacy, improvisation, immediacy, and architecture’s play with memory, behavior, and narrative created over time. LN So why did you stop painting in the first instance? SS At that time I didn’t feel that I had a subject. Despite being academically trained, I didn’t know why I was doing it, other than for the joy and the absolute seduction of spending time in front of it. LN So what changed? SS I found my subject matter. Over the last year, I’ve been drawn to the way time works in painting, how every mark changes the entire equation. I’m finding incredible freedom in making paintings again. LN R ichard Ser ra once cred ited you w it h “changing the very potential of sculpture.” What do you think he meant by it? Would you say that your sculptural practice informed your return to painting? SS In sculpture I found a language of entropy, dynamism, and instability, which remain central drives for me. Specifically, sculpture allowed me to address issues of gravity, mobility, site, seeing things in the round; how I could spill from the edge 64
into the world in this very complex way that wasn’t bound by the frame. Now, in my new paintings I’m interested in how the world spills into the frame— and, to even take it a step further, how we confuse that frame with the world. With the incredible ubiquity of images, which has intensified over the past twenty years, images and objects have become conflated, layered, fused. How we are oriented and disoriented in the world is not just spatial; it’s increasingly influenced by the role and power of the image. I think in the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture. A sculpture is a marker in time. LN The sculptures that constituted Triple Point, your exhibition for the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013, were described as models of uncertainty or instability; is this true of your paintings too? SS All my work addresses uncertainty and instability, but the sculptures are more literal. They actively perform those ideas. In their very existence they play around with the idea of trying to embody concepts physically, and how an object can represent ideas in the form of a dynamic model or a tool of measurement. So I’m modeling uncertainty, live. In two dimensions, this kind of modeling is employed with flat images that can be used as tools to measure, like the use of the blueprint in the permanent tiled mural for the 96th Street subway in Manhattan, or the eye chart and color-blindness test I use in silk screens; or an actual yardstick becoming part of the paintings for Rome—a kind of flat modeling that Jasper Johns does so elegantly, whether with a map, target, or silhouette. Subsequently, this idea of locating oneself and falling apart again is very much what drives the new paintings. To find places in them that you can look at, and how that’s affected by the distance between the viewer and the painting. From far away it has a totally different quality; close up it falls apart. And that approach comes from making sculpture. LN Did this approach also motivate your new stone sculpture? SS The split stone sculpture opens like a cut in a geode to expose an interior image on each inner
face. I was also thinking of the stones as tools to make images, like a potato print or a Chinese chop—a basic tool for imprinting an image using pressure and gravity, where the material processes of making images intersect with the forces of sculpture. There are several scale shifts in this new work, from the presence of the weighty boulder to the fragility of the embedded colors in the smooth split surfaces and, finally, the vast landscape that the pixels come together, one by one, to depict. These scale shifts are active in space as the viewing range for the sculpture moves from far away to close up. LN Most of your sculptures involve some degree of site sensitivity, where the contingent architecture becomes part of the whole. Do the paintings allow you to disengage from this problem? SS I’m still interested in that problem, but not in the limitations of its attendant critical language. Paintings were once site specific; now they are seen as migrant in different ways. Five hundred years ago, Titian made his paintings for the Frari in Venice specifically for the church, fitting them snugly into the shapes of the architecture and reflecting the columns of the space perspectivally in the space of the painting itself. So to talk about “site specificity” or “site sensitivity” as being tied to any specific medium is more a semantic limitation of twentieth-century thinking and discourse than anything else. What interests me about paintings now is that they are extremely mobile and site specific: they are themselves wherever they go. When I began making sculptures, it was with the idea of the kiosk in mind. I was always drawn to Russian Constructivism, in art, architecture, and philosophy, and to its idea of the kiosk as a small architectural structure that you could fold down and bring to public space, indoors or outdoors. To set up a station of information was a model for me for making sculpture. My sculptures often model larger systems but are sometimes small and portable, sometimes literally on wheels, lit from below; they feel like kits that can be put together on the ground. LN In fact, they really are kits, they can be 65
Left: Rendering of a split stone sculpture, 2018, dimensions variable Opposite: Sarah Sze, Centrifuge, 2017 (detail), mixed media, mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, video projectors, ceramic, acrylic paint, and salt, dimensions variable
dismantled and reconstructed according to a precise manual. SS And because they look mobile, they look right anywhere they go, the way cardboard boxes do. Paintings are the same; they contextualize themselves among other things wherever they end up. So if you think about it, a white-cube gallery exhibition of paintings is a strange idea, because ultimately they’re going to end up elsewhere and in other company. LN It’s a temporary herding. SS Exactly. Paintings have this way of remaining themselves in the world; like books and letters, each of them is a complete story. LN Given all this, would you say that your approach to both mediums is converging? SS Robert Rauschenberg said, “You begin with the possibilities of the material,” and I’m interested in asking what a painting can do that a sculpture can’t, and vice versa, but essentially I approach making a sculpture and making a painting in the same way. I think of a painting as a sculpture and a site. In the most traditional form of painting you start with a gestural underpainting, an overall composition on a canvas. This is how I first imagine my sculptures, in broad strokes in space that then funnel down into detail—maybe like the last mark in a portrait painting could be the stroke of light in the eye with a single-hair brush. LN Before moving on, can we touch on the evident impact of Rauschenberg's process-driven, combinative approach to image-making on your own practice? SS Specifically, Rauschenberg was able to utilize the language of a single medium while moving fluidly among several at the same time, resulting in newly hybridized art forms that resisted generic definitions. Modern image production has allowed me to intensify this approach; I use genres and mediums simply as frames to generate endless possibilities, rather than as ends in themselves. Every mark in a painting is a part to a whole, and each part is defined by an edge—soft, hard, fast, slow, or tonally hot or cold. Similarly in video or sculpture I’m always thinking about the transition between things. The idea that meaning is 66
created in the moment of transition is a classic filmic idea, but it belongs to painting and sculpture too, intimately, simply in how you position any one color or gesture or object at the edge of the next. There’s a delicate equilibrium in those transitions and relationships, a fragile tension that exists across all mediums. LN You often cite your firsthand experience of Japanese gardens as an influence on the way you organize a sculptural installation—the idea that there would be a subtle visual parcours to draw one’s attention to things along the way, and to encourage the exercising of one’s powers of perceiving different kinds of perspective and shifts in scale. Is the same true of the paintings? SS I think a painting has the capacity to throw the viewer into an imaginary space. It may be flat and dumb, and you’re not supposed to touch it—it’s not a film with magic and light and narrative—and yet you will take it and run with it. In my paintings, a gray area can take you into an almost cosmic space, and whenever that scale shift happens it reminds you of just how much work the eye and the imagination do. In this way one could say that while a sculpture occupies space, a painting can create it. Images are different; they propose a portal for you to slip into. In both the three-dimensional and the two-dimensional work, I’m interested in trying to keep you just on the edge of that slippage in scale, so that while you’re slipping, you’re aware of the slip, rather than being completely sucked into it. LN How has photography affected your recent painting? SS What’s interesting about a photograph is that our eye is told what’s in focus and what’s out of focus, which is not how we actually see. With a painting the eye is often trying to rectify and deal with light and color and materiality at all times. But I would hazard to say that today there are few painters who aren’t using photography as a tool in some way. For example, I think there’s a lot of ground that people haven’t picked up on from Gerhard Richter about memory, photography, and painting. The works that are interesting to me are the photographs that he dips into paint, that simple
gesture in time, and the physicality of the photograph with the paint right on top, that rawness and tactility. LN What, then, is the significance of the torn photographic image, which is both the image and the subject of your new collaged and painted works? SS To tear an image reminds you that it’s printed on paper, and that the typical squareness of a sheet of paper is as artificial as the rip. So the illusion becomes interrupted by an edge, which reminds you that the image is not so different to an object. LN And as vulnerable. SS Yes, vulnerable in the process of being exposed to time. The rip is a moment in time that is difficult, perhaps impossible, to re-create. We know how to cut a square of paper and repeat that process endlessly, but the rip is an impulsive, unique moment. The illusion that the image provides of being broken, interrupted, is important; so my paintings are as much about behavior as materials. I wanted to locate the rawness of time and improvisatory quality that painting possesses, but by employing sculptural strategies. LN In your sculptures, you work with the inherent properties and taxonomies of objects; there is an evident order of things. How does this correlate to painting? SS Painting is different now, in the context of the glut of images we live in. I think there now exists a taxonomy of images high, low, found, created, pixelated, clipped, shot, personal, public. We trade them like objects. A crafted image is now a rare commodity in the constant onslaught of random images. Perhaps that’s what holds painting’s appeal, for the maker and the viewer. LN You recently published an article in The New Yorker about your Timekeeper video-installation series, describing it as a resistant gesture to “recover our sense of time through tactility.” Can you elaborate? SS Take, for example, when our generation was growing up, I don’t think we were really aware that the television would become obsolete so quickly, whereas now we know from the moment 67
Left: Rendering of a split stone sculpture, 2018, dimensions variable Opposite: Sarah Sze, Centrifuge, 2017 (detail), mixed media, mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, video projectors, ceramic, acrylic paint, and salt, dimensions variable
dismantled and reconstructed according to a precise manual. SS And because they look mobile, they look right anywhere they go, the way cardboard boxes do. Paintings are the same; they contextualize themselves among other things wherever they end up. So if you think about it, a white-cube gallery exhibition of paintings is a strange idea, because ultimately they’re going to end up elsewhere and in other company. LN It’s a temporary herding. SS Exactly. Paintings have this way of remaining themselves in the world; like books and letters, each of them is a complete story. LN Given all this, would you say that your approach to both mediums is converging? SS Robert Rauschenberg said, “You begin with the possibilities of the material,” and I’m interested in asking what a painting can do that a sculpture can’t, and vice versa, but essentially I approach making a sculpture and making a painting in the same way. I think of a painting as a sculpture and a site. In the most traditional form of painting you start with a gestural underpainting, an overall composition on a canvas. This is how I first imagine my sculptures, in broad strokes in space that then funnel down into detail—maybe like the last mark in a portrait painting could be the stroke of light in the eye with a single-hair brush. LN Before moving on, can we touch on the evident impact of Rauschenberg's process-driven, combinative approach to image-making on your own practice? SS Specifically, Rauschenberg was able to utilize the language of a single medium while moving fluidly among several at the same time, resulting in newly hybridized art forms that resisted generic definitions. Modern image production has allowed me to intensify this approach; I use genres and mediums simply as frames to generate endless possibilities, rather than as ends in themselves. Every mark in a painting is a part to a whole, and each part is defined by an edge—soft, hard, fast, slow, or tonally hot or cold. Similarly in video or sculpture I’m always thinking about the transition between things. The idea that meaning is 66
created in the moment of transition is a classic filmic idea, but it belongs to painting and sculpture too, intimately, simply in how you position any one color or gesture or object at the edge of the next. There’s a delicate equilibrium in those transitions and relationships, a fragile tension that exists across all mediums. LN You often cite your firsthand experience of Japanese gardens as an influence on the way you organize a sculptural installation—the idea that there would be a subtle visual parcours to draw one’s attention to things along the way, and to encourage the exercising of one’s powers of perceiving different kinds of perspective and shifts in scale. Is the same true of the paintings? SS I think a painting has the capacity to throw the viewer into an imaginary space. It may be flat and dumb, and you’re not supposed to touch it—it’s not a film with magic and light and narrative—and yet you will take it and run with it. In my paintings, a gray area can take you into an almost cosmic space, and whenever that scale shift happens it reminds you of just how much work the eye and the imagination do. In this way one could say that while a sculpture occupies space, a painting can create it. Images are different; they propose a portal for you to slip into. In both the three-dimensional and the two-dimensional work, I’m interested in trying to keep you just on the edge of that slippage in scale, so that while you’re slipping, you’re aware of the slip, rather than being completely sucked into it. LN How has photography affected your recent painting? SS What’s interesting about a photograph is that our eye is told what’s in focus and what’s out of focus, which is not how we actually see. With a painting the eye is often trying to rectify and deal with light and color and materiality at all times. But I would hazard to say that today there are few painters who aren’t using photography as a tool in some way. For example, I think there’s a lot of ground that people haven’t picked up on from Gerhard Richter about memory, photography, and painting. The works that are interesting to me are the photographs that he dips into paint, that simple
gesture in time, and the physicality of the photograph with the paint right on top, that rawness and tactility. LN What, then, is the significance of the torn photographic image, which is both the image and the subject of your new collaged and painted works? SS To tear an image reminds you that it’s printed on paper, and that the typical squareness of a sheet of paper is as artificial as the rip. So the illusion becomes interrupted by an edge, which reminds you that the image is not so different to an object. LN And as vulnerable. SS Yes, vulnerable in the process of being exposed to time. The rip is a moment in time that is difficult, perhaps impossible, to re-create. We know how to cut a square of paper and repeat that process endlessly, but the rip is an impulsive, unique moment. The illusion that the image provides of being broken, interrupted, is important; so my paintings are as much about behavior as materials. I wanted to locate the rawness of time and improvisatory quality that painting possesses, but by employing sculptural strategies. LN In your sculptures, you work with the inherent properties and taxonomies of objects; there is an evident order of things. How does this correlate to painting? SS Painting is different now, in the context of the glut of images we live in. I think there now exists a taxonomy of images high, low, found, created, pixelated, clipped, shot, personal, public. We trade them like objects. A crafted image is now a rare commodity in the constant onslaught of random images. Perhaps that’s what holds painting’s appeal, for the maker and the viewer. LN You recently published an article in The New Yorker about your Timekeeper video-installation series, describing it as a resistant gesture to “recover our sense of time through tactility.” Can you elaborate? SS Take, for example, when our generation was growing up, I don’t think we were really aware that the television would become obsolete so quickly, whereas now we know from the moment 67
Left: Sarah Sze, Untitled, 2018 (detail), oil paint, acrylic paint, archival paper, UV stabilizers, adhesive, tape, ink and acrylic polymers, shellac, and water-based primer on wood, 84 × 105 × 4 inches (213.4 × 266.7 × 10.2 cm) Artwork © Sarah Sze
we purchase a new mobile phone that we’ll soon need another one. This new reality, this sense of the speed of the turnaround of technology, coupled with our dependency upon it, is very intense, inferring a huge loss of the physicality of time. LN In what sense do you understand “the physicality of time”? SS If, say, you considered time in bands, how wide would any one band be? I think that the ways in which images are being experienced now is close to early film and photography. The Timekeeper series reflects on our return to a filmic way of seeing images, in succession, in multiples, at random, scrolling through them over time. The still image itself is dying: we hold a button down on our iPhone by mistake and record a “live” image. We look at images and take them in streams, in rapid succession. Look at the very beginnings of film, say, with Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey and, later, Harold Edgerton: how they saw things filmically, but in a photographically scientific way, producing visual tools with which to understand reality. So this process allows me to go back and consider how the photograph has become a primary tool of communication, one that’s replacing written language at a surprising rate. LN You edit from an endless supply of made and received images, which don’t seem to have any real hierarchy in terms of importance. How do you select them? SS The palette of images is in constant f lux, being added to and taken away from. They all are moments when your sense of time seems to slow or speed or be marked in time somehow, like the landing of a plane or the explosion of a kernel of corn as it pops. They also often describe very material, tactile processes, like water dripping, fire burning, structures collapsing. But often the most memorable, I think, are quite idiosyncratic. The burning pot, for example, is a total fluke. I burned some popcorn while making it and threw it out onto the grass to avoid burning the house down, and then saw it circling in the pot because of the wind, pulled out my iPhone and filmed it. When you see it, you can’t understand or explain it. The videos of my daughters running around the pyramids of Giza 68
and sleeping were totally spontaneous. The video “snow” creates a sort of visual hum and indicates a sort of absence or malfunction—the death of the image itself, even. LN So how do you maintain the tension between the poignant and the dispassionate, the personal and the archetypal, in these images? SS One of the first sculptures I made at graduate school was right after my grandfather died. To see how he dealt with possessions, what really mattered at his stage in life, affected the way I made sculpture: what did he keep? What didn’t he keep? Usually what was kept had to do with value in terms of a memory, as a retainer of experience. So it’s interesting for me to consider what’s retained over time—which artworks stay with you, and how do they burn into your memory? My goal is to create a state where you’re seduced by the workings of film, but at the same time uncertain—and then the rug is just partly pulled out from under you. One foot on the ground, one foot on the rug. You’re not involved in a classic cinema experience where you can give up uncertainty. You’re alert. It’s an editing model for how I strive to create a locus that’s teetering between two things. So every time you find your bearings in my sculpture or my video installation or my painting, you’re just as quickly disoriented, and your experience teeters back and forth between finding footing and losing it. LN Eating one’s own trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak. SS And you know you’re eating them! You’re asleep and awake. You’re in the state of the imagined and the image itself. The pictured and the picture. You’re in it but still outside of it enough to question why I chose this or that image. LN Why is this state of teetering so important for you? SS Breakdown. All of my decisions are about time and its breakdown, whether the inevitable breaking down of the image, digital breakdown, the way light hits water or paint is dragged across a surface. My edits all convey a sense of time. They’re all one-minute loops and each loop has a kind of dying out in that they pixelate or break apart, so that you can observe the image in the process of
self-destruction. This is partly to remind that the image itself possesses material qualities—there’s a machine behind it, it’s light on paper and the paper is moving. And importantly, all the loops are deliberately not synced; the juxtapositions and intersections are all random to affect a kind of live experience for the viewer. LN Does this “live” experience also involve sound? SS Yes. For the Rome installation, live-recorded sound experiments accompany the video installation, such as a squeaky motor that ended up in the mix. There’s also machine feedback; I came in one day and the sound system was making a “kerplunk” sound that became part of the soundtrack. The machines, just like the paint, are evolving materials. LN It sounds Cageian. SS Absolutely. When you’re in it, you can’t tell what’s ambient and what’s recorded. LN How do the specif ic spatial qualities of the Rome gallery affect your approach to the exhibition? SS Obviously the video installation is talking to the curved walls of the elliptical gallery, which is very special, given that the walls of most galleries are flat and perpendicular. I’m also drawing attention to the smooth stone floor, using it as a surface on which to materialize light using paint. For me, the spill of light has always been a painterly gesture. LN Particularly in Rome, where light is such a powerful motif in Baroque painting and sculpture. SS Yes, and also Baroque architecture, with its extraordinary activation of space through light itself. So I’m thinking about the history of the building and the scale and height of the ceiling, and playing on that with regard to the idea of the planetarium: what’s interior, what’s exterior, and how to harness the architecture to become part of the space of the work itself. Here I can make painterly gestures into filmic gestures, and filmic gesture painterly, and sculptural gestures filmic, and break down the frames between them all.
Left: Sarah Sze, Untitled, 2018 (detail), oil paint, acrylic paint, archival paper, UV stabilizers, adhesive, tape, ink and acrylic polymers, shellac, and water-based primer on wood, 84 × 105 × 4 inches (213.4 × 266.7 × 10.2 cm) Artwork © Sarah Sze
we purchase a new mobile phone that we’ll soon need another one. This new reality, this sense of the speed of the turnaround of technology, coupled with our dependency upon it, is very intense, inferring a huge loss of the physicality of time. LN In what sense do you understand “the physicality of time”? SS If, say, you considered time in bands, how wide would any one band be? I think that the ways in which images are being experienced now is close to early film and photography. The Timekeeper series reflects on our return to a filmic way of seeing images, in succession, in multiples, at random, scrolling through them over time. The still image itself is dying: we hold a button down on our iPhone by mistake and record a “live” image. We look at images and take them in streams, in rapid succession. Look at the very beginnings of film, say, with Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey and, later, Harold Edgerton: how they saw things filmically, but in a photographically scientific way, producing visual tools with which to understand reality. So this process allows me to go back and consider how the photograph has become a primary tool of communication, one that’s replacing written language at a surprising rate. LN You edit from an endless supply of made and received images, which don’t seem to have any real hierarchy in terms of importance. How do you select them? SS The palette of images is in constant f lux, being added to and taken away from. They all are moments when your sense of time seems to slow or speed or be marked in time somehow, like the landing of a plane or the explosion of a kernel of corn as it pops. They also often describe very material, tactile processes, like water dripping, fire burning, structures collapsing. But often the most memorable, I think, are quite idiosyncratic. The burning pot, for example, is a total fluke. I burned some popcorn while making it and threw it out onto the grass to avoid burning the house down, and then saw it circling in the pot because of the wind, pulled out my iPhone and filmed it. When you see it, you can’t understand or explain it. The videos of my daughters running around the pyramids of Giza 68
and sleeping were totally spontaneous. The video “snow” creates a sort of visual hum and indicates a sort of absence or malfunction—the death of the image itself, even. LN So how do you maintain the tension between the poignant and the dispassionate, the personal and the archetypal, in these images? SS One of the first sculptures I made at graduate school was right after my grandfather died. To see how he dealt with possessions, what really mattered at his stage in life, affected the way I made sculpture: what did he keep? What didn’t he keep? Usually what was kept had to do with value in terms of a memory, as a retainer of experience. So it’s interesting for me to consider what’s retained over time—which artworks stay with you, and how do they burn into your memory? My goal is to create a state where you’re seduced by the workings of film, but at the same time uncertain—and then the rug is just partly pulled out from under you. One foot on the ground, one foot on the rug. You’re not involved in a classic cinema experience where you can give up uncertainty. You’re alert. It’s an editing model for how I strive to create a locus that’s teetering between two things. So every time you find your bearings in my sculpture or my video installation or my painting, you’re just as quickly disoriented, and your experience teeters back and forth between finding footing and losing it. LN Eating one’s own trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak. SS And you know you’re eating them! You’re asleep and awake. You’re in the state of the imagined and the image itself. The pictured and the picture. You’re in it but still outside of it enough to question why I chose this or that image. LN Why is this state of teetering so important for you? SS Breakdown. All of my decisions are about time and its breakdown, whether the inevitable breaking down of the image, digital breakdown, the way light hits water or paint is dragged across a surface. My edits all convey a sense of time. They’re all one-minute loops and each loop has a kind of dying out in that they pixelate or break apart, so that you can observe the image in the process of
self-destruction. This is partly to remind that the image itself possesses material qualities—there’s a machine behind it, it’s light on paper and the paper is moving. And importantly, all the loops are deliberately not synced; the juxtapositions and intersections are all random to affect a kind of live experience for the viewer. LN Does this “live” experience also involve sound? SS Yes. For the Rome installation, live-recorded sound experiments accompany the video installation, such as a squeaky motor that ended up in the mix. There’s also machine feedback; I came in one day and the sound system was making a “kerplunk” sound that became part of the soundtrack. The machines, just like the paint, are evolving materials. LN It sounds Cageian. SS Absolutely. When you’re in it, you can’t tell what’s ambient and what’s recorded. LN How do the specif ic spatial qualities of the Rome gallery affect your approach to the exhibition? SS Obviously the video installation is talking to the curved walls of the elliptical gallery, which is very special, given that the walls of most galleries are flat and perpendicular. I’m also drawing attention to the smooth stone floor, using it as a surface on which to materialize light using paint. For me, the spill of light has always been a painterly gesture. LN Particularly in Rome, where light is such a powerful motif in Baroque painting and sculpture. SS Yes, and also Baroque architecture, with its extraordinary activation of space through light itself. So I’m thinking about the history of the building and the scale and height of the ceiling, and playing on that with regard to the idea of the planetarium: what’s interior, what’s exterior, and how to harness the architecture to become part of the space of the work itself. Here I can make painterly gestures into filmic gestures, and filmic gesture painterly, and sculptural gestures filmic, and break down the frames between them all.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
(RED) AND LIGHT
Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you live. –Bono As of 2017, 37 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and 26 million of those people are living in sub-Saharan Africa. (RED) fights to lower this alarming statistic. Through its partnerships, supporters, and fundraising initiatives, (RED), since its inception in 2006, has raised over $500 million to support Global Fund HIV/aids programs in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia. Remarkably, 100 percent of that money is directly dedicated to HIV prevention, testing, treatment, medication, and education. Gagosian and Sotheby’s have worked with (RED) over the past decade to raise money for the fight to end aids. In 2008, Damien Hirst curated a record-breaking auction of contemporary art on behalf of (RED). In 2013, Jony Ive and Marc Newson curated a moment in design history with their auction. Collectively, these two sales raised $68 million for the aids fight, thanks in part to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation matching monies for Jony and Marc’s auction. This year, at the Art Basel art fair in Miami Beach, (RED) will hold its third auction to benefit the fight against aids. Olly Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s, will helm the auction in Miami’s iconic Moore Building on December 5. Speaking about this year’s co-curators, (RED)’s co-founder Bono said, “Theaster Gates, Chicago’s South Side. Sir David Adjaye, London by way of Accra. Their work is brazenly distinctive, but it has this in common: the spaces that Theaster and Sir David build convey a sense of awe, of illumination. Which is the sensibility they’ll bring to (RED)’s auction when they shine their light on the aids crisis—which is at risk of slipping back into the shadows.” Until now, the proceeds of (RED)’s fundraising have gone entirely to aids programs in sub-Saharan Africa. This year, in a break from that practice, 10 percent of the Miami auction proceeds will head to Theaster’s Rebuild Foundation in Chicago to provide health education for youth there. In anticipation of the auction, the co-curators sat down to discuss this year’s curatorial theme, (RED) & Light; the ambitious goals they have set for the third auction; and some sneak peeks at the works that will be included. David and Theaster, you’re co-hosts and curators of the (RED) auction for the third installment in a series with Sotheby’s and Gagosian. Can you tell me when this collaboration first began with you both and the (RED) organization? I had lunch with Bono—I already knew about (RED)’s work and the previous auctions that Sotheby’s and Gagosian did with Damien Hirst curating in 2008, and then Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s design auction in 2013. Bono asked me if I’d consider curating this one. It’s a big commitment and I had a sense that, if I was going to do it, I’d want to do it with someone else. David’s a dear friend whose work I deeply respect and admire. Asking him just felt right. THEASTER GATES
I was thrilled to get the call because it’s been a great excuse for us to get together more. But more seriously, we’ve both grown up around the aids crisis. My parents are Ghanaian, I was born in Tanzania, and I grew up on the African continent. I’ve been traveling and working throughout Africa and I’ve just opened an office in Accra. So DAVID ADJAYE
70
the cause is very important to me. And while significant progress has been made in the aids fight today, Africa is still very much affected—and it’s unacceptable that the crisis is still ongoing. It needs to be eradicated. We have a very binary choice here: we can end aids by 2030 or we can blow it. Have you been involved with (RED) previously or is this your first experience working with them? This is our first time, but we were both familiar and very impressed by their work. (RED)’s got an allegiance to culture, style, design, and art as ways to get people involved in a critical global issue that’s so easily overlooked. It’s dangerous to think that this epidemic is behind us in the rearview mirror. TG
(RED) is smart for tapping into people’s passions to keep this issue relevant, but it’s also hyperefficient. The statistics are striking: since (RED) began, in 2006, it has generated more than $500 million for the aids fight, and 100 percent of that is used on the ground. (RED) has made an impact on roughly 110 million lives through Global Fund programs. DA
What do you hope this auction will achieve? Are there new goals you’ve set with this auction? This auction is about shining a light on the risks of complacency. What we’re talking about here is globally completing the work that has happened in the US. Fifteen years ago, if you went to your doctor in the US and got a diagnosis of HIV, you could be sent home with a prescription for lifesaving medication. In the exact same scenario in Accra, your doctor had to tell you there was nothing they could do for you because the same pills weren’t available. You’d be sent home to die. Medication has gotten to more than 20 million people since then. We’re on the brink of ending this pandemic if efforts continue. Complacency threatens to undo the progress that’s been made. As Bono says, “You don’t get halfway to the moon and turn around.” That’s why we’re here. TG
AUCTION PROCEEDS GO TO THE FIGHT TO END HIV/AIDS
Can you tell me about some of the works in the auction?
110 MILLION LIVES IMPACTED BY GRANTS THAT (RED) SUPPORTS
We’re going to push it to the brink. We’ve got some beautiful pieces. Jony Ive and Marc Newson are creating a unique diamond ring, which will be grown from a carbon seed with Diamond Foundry. Jean Pigozzi is arranging for the diamond to be donated for this ring, which will be sized for the successful bidder. Sean Scully’s been supergenerous with a beautiful red painting; Tadao Ando has donated one of his limited-edition red versions of his book Ando X Ando. Jeff Koons is donating, Marilyn Minter, Wangechi Mutu with a fabulous sculpture, Frank Gehry, Christo, Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson. We’re excited. TG
DA As Theaster said, we have some incredible contributions. Adding to the list, we also have a red table from Zaha Hadid’s foundation. Guillermo Kuitca’s collage of Carnegie Hall is in red. James Ca sebere’s donat ion is a n a rch iva l-qua l it y Cibachrome print employing a process that’s rarely in use now: it won’t fade even with lengthy exposure to sunlight. It’s beautiful. I’m also delighted to donate bespoke versions of some of my own designs: a red version of the Corona table and the Skeleton chairs with Knoll and the MA770 wireless speaker for Master & Dynamic, reimagined in red concrete.
Tell me about this year’s auction’s curatorial theme, (RED) & Light. The theme for the auction is “light.” There seems to be a lot of darkness in the world right now. We need more light than ever. We’ve suggested to artists that they could consider this theme by literally applying light in their work, or suggesting it thematically. They could also consider donating pieces in red. TG
What do you want people to take away from this auction and exhibition? The passion and involvement of our fellow contributors and the community only highlight the power of creativity to catalyze attention and turn it into tangible impact for the aids fight. This initiative is sending a very clear and confident signal that the aids fight is a fight that can be won if we choose to. . . . There’s no time to waste so let’s mobilize our efforts and do this together. DA
What’s been the most rewarding aspect of your involvement with what I imagine is an endeavor years in the making? To see lives being saved with just a 20¢ pill. Mothers who are still alive because of the medication made available to them—and not only to save their lives but to safeguard their babies from contracting the virus. The opportunity to champion an initiative that has this kind of direct impact is truly rewarding, and I feel very privileged and humbled. And, that this is an excuse for Theaster and I to work together and spend more time together, which is such fun. DA
For those who can’t make the auction, follow @red on Instagram to see all the ways you can get involved.
(RED) HAS GENERATED MORE THAN $500 MILLION OVER 10 YEARS 71
THE BIGGER PICTURE
(RED) AND LIGHT
Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you live. –Bono As of 2017, 37 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and 26 million of those people are living in sub-Saharan Africa. (RED) fights to lower this alarming statistic. Through its partnerships, supporters, and fundraising initiatives, (RED), since its inception in 2006, has raised over $500 million to support Global Fund HIV/aids programs in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia. Remarkably, 100 percent of that money is directly dedicated to HIV prevention, testing, treatment, medication, and education. Gagosian and Sotheby’s have worked with (RED) over the past decade to raise money for the fight to end aids. In 2008, Damien Hirst curated a record-breaking auction of contemporary art on behalf of (RED). In 2013, Jony Ive and Marc Newson curated a moment in design history with their auction. Collectively, these two sales raised $68 million for the aids fight, thanks in part to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation matching monies for Jony and Marc’s auction. This year, at the Art Basel art fair in Miami Beach, (RED) will hold its third auction to benefit the fight against aids. Olly Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s, will helm the auction in Miami’s iconic Moore Building on December 5. Speaking about this year’s co-curators, (RED)’s co-founder Bono said, “Theaster Gates, Chicago’s South Side. Sir David Adjaye, London by way of Accra. Their work is brazenly distinctive, but it has this in common: the spaces that Theaster and Sir David build convey a sense of awe, of illumination. Which is the sensibility they’ll bring to (RED)’s auction when they shine their light on the aids crisis—which is at risk of slipping back into the shadows.” Until now, the proceeds of (RED)’s fundraising have gone entirely to aids programs in sub-Saharan Africa. This year, in a break from that practice, 10 percent of the Miami auction proceeds will head to Theaster’s Rebuild Foundation in Chicago to provide health education for youth there. In anticipation of the auction, the co-curators sat down to discuss this year’s curatorial theme, (RED) & Light; the ambitious goals they have set for the third auction; and some sneak peeks at the works that will be included. David and Theaster, you’re co-hosts and curators of the (RED) auction for the third installment in a series with Sotheby’s and Gagosian. Can you tell me when this collaboration first began with you both and the (RED) organization? I had lunch with Bono—I already knew about (RED)’s work and the previous auctions that Sotheby’s and Gagosian did with Damien Hirst curating in 2008, and then Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s design auction in 2013. Bono asked me if I’d consider curating this one. It’s a big commitment and I had a sense that, if I was going to do it, I’d want to do it with someone else. David’s a dear friend whose work I deeply respect and admire. Asking him just felt right. THEASTER GATES
I was thrilled to get the call because it’s been a great excuse for us to get together more. But more seriously, we’ve both grown up around the aids crisis. My parents are Ghanaian, I was born in Tanzania, and I grew up on the African continent. I’ve been traveling and working throughout Africa and I’ve just opened an office in Accra. So DAVID ADJAYE
70
the cause is very important to me. And while significant progress has been made in the aids fight today, Africa is still very much affected—and it’s unacceptable that the crisis is still ongoing. It needs to be eradicated. We have a very binary choice here: we can end aids by 2030 or we can blow it. Have you been involved with (RED) previously or is this your first experience working with them? This is our first time, but we were both familiar and very impressed by their work. (RED)’s got an allegiance to culture, style, design, and art as ways to get people involved in a critical global issue that’s so easily overlooked. It’s dangerous to think that this epidemic is behind us in the rearview mirror. TG
(RED) is smart for tapping into people’s passions to keep this issue relevant, but it’s also hyperefficient. The statistics are striking: since (RED) began, in 2006, it has generated more than $500 million for the aids fight, and 100 percent of that is used on the ground. (RED) has made an impact on roughly 110 million lives through Global Fund programs. DA
What do you hope this auction will achieve? Are there new goals you’ve set with this auction? This auction is about shining a light on the risks of complacency. What we’re talking about here is globally completing the work that has happened in the US. Fifteen years ago, if you went to your doctor in the US and got a diagnosis of HIV, you could be sent home with a prescription for lifesaving medication. In the exact same scenario in Accra, your doctor had to tell you there was nothing they could do for you because the same pills weren’t available. You’d be sent home to die. Medication has gotten to more than 20 million people since then. We’re on the brink of ending this pandemic if efforts continue. Complacency threatens to undo the progress that’s been made. As Bono says, “You don’t get halfway to the moon and turn around.” That’s why we’re here. TG
AUCTION PROCEEDS GO TO THE FIGHT TO END HIV/AIDS
Can you tell me about some of the works in the auction?
110 MILLION LIVES IMPACTED BY GRANTS THAT (RED) SUPPORTS
We’re going to push it to the brink. We’ve got some beautiful pieces. Jony Ive and Marc Newson are creating a unique diamond ring, which will be grown from a carbon seed with Diamond Foundry. Jean Pigozzi is arranging for the diamond to be donated for this ring, which will be sized for the successful bidder. Sean Scully’s been supergenerous with a beautiful red painting; Tadao Ando has donated one of his limited-edition red versions of his book Ando X Ando. Jeff Koons is donating, Marilyn Minter, Wangechi Mutu with a fabulous sculpture, Frank Gehry, Christo, Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson. We’re excited. TG
DA As Theaster said, we have some incredible contributions. Adding to the list, we also have a red table from Zaha Hadid’s foundation. Guillermo Kuitca’s collage of Carnegie Hall is in red. James Ca sebere’s donat ion is a n a rch iva l-qua l it y Cibachrome print employing a process that’s rarely in use now: it won’t fade even with lengthy exposure to sunlight. It’s beautiful. I’m also delighted to donate bespoke versions of some of my own designs: a red version of the Corona table and the Skeleton chairs with Knoll and the MA770 wireless speaker for Master & Dynamic, reimagined in red concrete.
Tell me about this year’s auction’s curatorial theme, (RED) & Light. The theme for the auction is “light.” There seems to be a lot of darkness in the world right now. We need more light than ever. We’ve suggested to artists that they could consider this theme by literally applying light in their work, or suggesting it thematically. They could also consider donating pieces in red. TG
What do you want people to take away from this auction and exhibition? The passion and involvement of our fellow contributors and the community only highlight the power of creativity to catalyze attention and turn it into tangible impact for the aids fight. This initiative is sending a very clear and confident signal that the aids fight is a fight that can be won if we choose to. . . . There’s no time to waste so let’s mobilize our efforts and do this together. DA
What’s been the most rewarding aspect of your involvement with what I imagine is an endeavor years in the making? To see lives being saved with just a 20¢ pill. Mothers who are still alive because of the medication made available to them—and not only to save their lives but to safeguard their babies from contracting the virus. The opportunity to champion an initiative that has this kind of direct impact is truly rewarding, and I feel very privileged and humbled. And, that this is an excuse for Theaster and I to work together and spend more time together, which is such fun. DA
For those who can’t make the auction, follow @red on Instagram to see all the ways you can get involved.
(RED) HAS GENERATED MORE THAN $500 MILLION OVER 10 YEARS 71
One year after the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone sat down with Gagosian’s Pepi Marchetti Franchi, Alain Fleischer, and Hala Wardé to reflect on how the museum and Penone’s commissioned artworks for the space came to be.
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RAIN OF LIGHT
One year after the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone sat down with Gagosian’s Pepi Marchetti Franchi, Alain Fleischer, and Hala Wardé to reflect on how the museum and Penone’s commissioned artworks for the space came to be.
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RAIN OF LIGHT
architectural in scale, that would mark the main public spaces and would relate to the elements. Because that’s what there was on the site—sky, sea, and sand— along with a long history of earlier life. That was what I thought of you for: I wanted someone who could do something with the space in full awareness of the elements. You had a lot of freedom and you used it. I was delighted, of course, to have the tree in the middle, given that the tree calls for meditation on the vault of the heavens, it seems to me, or in any case on its symbol, the building’s dome, since architecturally a dome is always a symbol of the sky. So you were working with a sort of theoretical infinite as your horizon, because even while a dome is finite, it evokes the universe. That must have been difficult, since your work had to confront the building without clashing with it. The tree manages that perfectly, and it also talks about history. GP When I first went to see the building, my immediate reaction was that it married perfectly with the idea of the sand dune. There was probably a scattering of sand dust on the dome. JN I prefer it like that. GP It’s incredible. And there’s this feeling of something floating in space, but what I found extraordinary was that architecture archetypally is the thing that protects those inside it, shielding them from the sun and the elements, and it’s this primordial function of architecture that your building epitomizes. That was my first thought, and my second had to do with the way the dome fragments light, this extraordinary rain of light in the interior. It was in response to that idea, embodied in the architecture, that I came up with the tree. I chose a tree with a structure of branches going off in all directions, and I set mirror elements in different places to index certain aspects of the architecture. Usually when I do something for a place, even just for a temporary exhibition, I try not to create a contrast with the space and the view but instead to engage them in dialogue, to create a synergy. There’s no point making something that competes. JN It became clear to us very quickly that the tree and its branches would link directly to the dome. And looking at it now, it seems, amazingly, to be readable in two ways, both as the tree ascending and as if a fragment of the dome were descending, like a kind of petrified bronze lightning coming down to the ground. And at the top of the tree, the edge
O
ne year ago, on November 8, 2017, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Abu Dhabi unveiled the magnificent Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Jean Nouvel. Ten years in the making, the museum’s extraordinary design has won accolades worldwide— it was hailed “a galactic Arabic wonder” and an “utterly original blockbuster building” by the New York Times and the Financial Times alone. The structure comprises a mesmerizing 490-foot-wide geometric-patterned dome, which filters sunlight to create what’s been called “a rain of light” on the medina of fifty-five individual but connected buildings arranged below, including the museum’s gallery spaces. A universal museum for the Arab world, the institution, according to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, aims to focus on “stories of human creativity that transcend individual cultures or civilization.” Penone is one of two contemporary artists, the other being Jenny Holzer, who were invited to respond to the building and its mission with a site-specif ic permanent commission. Titled
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Germination, Penone’s three-part installation takes center stage under the museum’s dome, creating a subtle yet powerful dialogue with the surrounding architecture and the landscape beyond it. We recently sat with Penone and Nouvel to discuss the extraordinary experience the building offers. Over toasted almonds and raspberries at Nouvel’s home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, followed by a hearty lunch at the legendary Colombe d’Or across the street, we learned about the opportunities and challenges presented by this unprecedented endeavor. We were joined by Hala Wardé, Nouvel’s partner on the project, and the film director Alain Fleischer, who is currently producing a documentary on the museum. —Pepi Marchetti Franchi ALAIN FLEISCHER How did this project begin?
Well, when I first came to Jean’s studio in Paris, in June of 2014, I’d been contacted about the project by the Louvre, and I’d seen images of it in the press, but that visit was the first time I saw the maquette. What really struck me was that it had a hole so you could get your head into the interior—it was a great idea to see the space on that scale. GIUSEPPE PENONE
JEAN NOUVEL Yes. . . . But you did have to crawl on all fours to get in! GP Yes, but putting your head into the space gave you a way to understand it, it gave you the feeling. Afterward I was asked to propose works for two windowlike vitrines built into the walls, one opposite the other, in a collaboration with la Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. But looking at the maquette and at the drawings, I thought there’d be an opportunity to propose a third work, the bronze tree, to connect the ideas in the two vitrines. JN We need to make clear, though, that on this project I’d asked at the start to have artists working with me. When I say with me, I mean with the architecture: I wanted their work to be completely and permanently integrated into the building. I always say that architecture is the mother of the arts, it’s there to welcome artists in. Beyond the fact that architects are artists, they’re also the welcomers, and they have a role as coordinators, determining a hierarchy among spaces and among the meanings of those spaces for their occupants. I wanted the building to be marked in two ways: once in its flesh, in its walls—and for that I immediately thought of Jenny Holzer, as an artist of inscription—but I also wanted works that were
Previous spread: Rain of Light © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo by Roland Halbe Opposite: Roof plan with dome. © Architect: Jean Nouvel Right: Model for Giuseppe Penone’s Leaves of Light – Tree 2016 © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel
between tree and dome can be very difficult to pick out, depending on the time of day. GP Exactly. JN Obviously the mirrors complicate that again, because they introduce a geometrical element that relates to the apertures in the dome. So there’s an osmotic quality that at the same time effects a kind of dematerialization. All that is symbolic—in fact, if you agree that a dome symbolizes the cosmos, it’s obviously ultra-symbolic. And when you have the branches connecting these elements in these two different ways, and becoming increasingly polysemic, you look at that and you see there’s a relationship, but what’s up there and what’s down here? What is that relationship? Does the tree touch the dome or does it not? Why is there a tree here in the first place? Why is it bronze? All these questions get mixed up together. GP It connects earth and heaven. JN Trees generally have an osmotic relationship to the sky: they always let some of the sky through, so they seem to be dissolving into the sky. GP The other aspect was the earth. I didn’t want to have the tree springing out of the floor, that would have felt very unnatural. So I thought of enlarging a handful of earth. It’s like a base that isn’t a base,
which relates to and completes the idea of the tree. JN It symbolizes the earth, and it’s one more mystery. GP As a form, it’s not immediately legible. You only understand it later. JN I don’t know if you ever understand it, but you don’t have to. The tree emerges out of something, whether it’s a rock or what you don’t know, but it rises up in a totally abnormal way. Yet the question of anchoring, of rooting, is solved, because if you’d had a slender trunk going into the floor, that would have been bizarre. GP The entire installation comprises three individual works under the overall title Germinazione [Germination]: the bronze tree sculpture; a vitrine with a terra-cotta vase; and another vitrine in which, on a porcelain wall, there’s a drawing developed out of the thumbprint of Sheikh Zayed, founding father of the United Arab Emirates. The tree establishes a dialogue with the space and its architecture, while the two vitrines connect with the museum’s mission and region. I’d been told about the idea that the museum should be a museum of global culture, and that’s what prompted me to create a work with handfuls of earth
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architectural in scale, that would mark the main public spaces and would relate to the elements. Because that’s what there was on the site—sky, sea, and sand— along with a long history of earlier life. That was what I thought of you for: I wanted someone who could do something with the space in full awareness of the elements. You had a lot of freedom and you used it. I was delighted, of course, to have the tree in the middle, given that the tree calls for meditation on the vault of the heavens, it seems to me, or in any case on its symbol, the building’s dome, since architecturally a dome is always a symbol of the sky. So you were working with a sort of theoretical infinite as your horizon, because even while a dome is finite, it evokes the universe. That must have been difficult, since your work had to confront the building without clashing with it. The tree manages that perfectly, and it also talks about history. GP When I first went to see the building, my immediate reaction was that it married perfectly with the idea of the sand dune. There was probably a scattering of sand dust on the dome. JN I prefer it like that. GP It’s incredible. And there’s this feeling of something floating in space, but what I found extraordinary was that architecture archetypally is the thing that protects those inside it, shielding them from the sun and the elements, and it’s this primordial function of architecture that your building epitomizes. That was my first thought, and my second had to do with the way the dome fragments light, this extraordinary rain of light in the interior. It was in response to that idea, embodied in the architecture, that I came up with the tree. I chose a tree with a structure of branches going off in all directions, and I set mirror elements in different places to index certain aspects of the architecture. Usually when I do something for a place, even just for a temporary exhibition, I try not to create a contrast with the space and the view but instead to engage them in dialogue, to create a synergy. There’s no point making something that competes. JN It became clear to us very quickly that the tree and its branches would link directly to the dome. And looking at it now, it seems, amazingly, to be readable in two ways, both as the tree ascending and as if a fragment of the dome were descending, like a kind of petrified bronze lightning coming down to the ground. And at the top of the tree, the edge
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ne year ago, on November 8, 2017, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Abu Dhabi unveiled the magnificent Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Jean Nouvel. Ten years in the making, the museum’s extraordinary design has won accolades worldwide— it was hailed “a galactic Arabic wonder” and an “utterly original blockbuster building” by the New York Times and the Financial Times alone. The structure comprises a mesmerizing 490-foot-wide geometric-patterned dome, which filters sunlight to create what’s been called “a rain of light” on the medina of fifty-five individual but connected buildings arranged below, including the museum’s gallery spaces. A universal museum for the Arab world, the institution, according to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, aims to focus on “stories of human creativity that transcend individual cultures or civilization.” Penone is one of two contemporary artists, the other being Jenny Holzer, who were invited to respond to the building and its mission with a site-specif ic permanent commission. Titled
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Germination, Penone’s three-part installation takes center stage under the museum’s dome, creating a subtle yet powerful dialogue with the surrounding architecture and the landscape beyond it. We recently sat with Penone and Nouvel to discuss the extraordinary experience the building offers. Over toasted almonds and raspberries at Nouvel’s home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, followed by a hearty lunch at the legendary Colombe d’Or across the street, we learned about the opportunities and challenges presented by this unprecedented endeavor. We were joined by Hala Wardé, Nouvel’s partner on the project, and the film director Alain Fleischer, who is currently producing a documentary on the museum. —Pepi Marchetti Franchi ALAIN FLEISCHER How did this project begin?
Well, when I first came to Jean’s studio in Paris, in June of 2014, I’d been contacted about the project by the Louvre, and I’d seen images of it in the press, but that visit was the first time I saw the maquette. What really struck me was that it had a hole so you could get your head into the interior—it was a great idea to see the space on that scale. GIUSEPPE PENONE
JEAN NOUVEL Yes. . . . But you did have to crawl on all fours to get in! GP Yes, but putting your head into the space gave you a way to understand it, it gave you the feeling. Afterward I was asked to propose works for two windowlike vitrines built into the walls, one opposite the other, in a collaboration with la Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. But looking at the maquette and at the drawings, I thought there’d be an opportunity to propose a third work, the bronze tree, to connect the ideas in the two vitrines. JN We need to make clear, though, that on this project I’d asked at the start to have artists working with me. When I say with me, I mean with the architecture: I wanted their work to be completely and permanently integrated into the building. I always say that architecture is the mother of the arts, it’s there to welcome artists in. Beyond the fact that architects are artists, they’re also the welcomers, and they have a role as coordinators, determining a hierarchy among spaces and among the meanings of those spaces for their occupants. I wanted the building to be marked in two ways: once in its flesh, in its walls—and for that I immediately thought of Jenny Holzer, as an artist of inscription—but I also wanted works that were
Previous spread: Rain of Light © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo by Roland Halbe Opposite: Roof plan with dome. © Architect: Jean Nouvel Right: Model for Giuseppe Penone’s Leaves of Light – Tree 2016 © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel
between tree and dome can be very difficult to pick out, depending on the time of day. GP Exactly. JN Obviously the mirrors complicate that again, because they introduce a geometrical element that relates to the apertures in the dome. So there’s an osmotic quality that at the same time effects a kind of dematerialization. All that is symbolic—in fact, if you agree that a dome symbolizes the cosmos, it’s obviously ultra-symbolic. And when you have the branches connecting these elements in these two different ways, and becoming increasingly polysemic, you look at that and you see there’s a relationship, but what’s up there and what’s down here? What is that relationship? Does the tree touch the dome or does it not? Why is there a tree here in the first place? Why is it bronze? All these questions get mixed up together. GP It connects earth and heaven. JN Trees generally have an osmotic relationship to the sky: they always let some of the sky through, so they seem to be dissolving into the sky. GP The other aspect was the earth. I didn’t want to have the tree springing out of the floor, that would have felt very unnatural. So I thought of enlarging a handful of earth. It’s like a base that isn’t a base,
which relates to and completes the idea of the tree. JN It symbolizes the earth, and it’s one more mystery. GP As a form, it’s not immediately legible. You only understand it later. JN I don’t know if you ever understand it, but you don’t have to. The tree emerges out of something, whether it’s a rock or what you don’t know, but it rises up in a totally abnormal way. Yet the question of anchoring, of rooting, is solved, because if you’d had a slender trunk going into the floor, that would have been bizarre. GP The entire installation comprises three individual works under the overall title Germinazione [Germination]: the bronze tree sculpture; a vitrine with a terra-cotta vase; and another vitrine in which, on a porcelain wall, there’s a drawing developed out of the thumbprint of Sheikh Zayed, founding father of the United Arab Emirates. The tree establishes a dialogue with the space and its architecture, while the two vitrines connect with the museum’s mission and region. I’d been told about the idea that the museum should be a museum of global culture, and that’s what prompted me to create a work with handfuls of earth
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from all over the world. Earth has memory, a memory of the animal, mineral, and vegetable life of the place it comes from. Another concern I had was to relate the work to the reality of the country; there isn’t a pictorial tradition in that culture but there’s a tradition of pottery, a tradition of ordinary, useful objects. Vases are found in every culture, and the shape is anthropomorphic, stemming from the human body. So in one of the vitrines I created a vase shaped like the profile of a pregnant woman. It’s made out of clay found in various parts of the world, and on the wall behind it I’ve drawn its shape again, using pigments from different regions of the world. In the other vitrine is the drawing Propagazione (Propagation), made at Sèvres on a porcelain wall and developed out of the thumbprint of Sheikh Zayed. JN That was a wonderful idea, to get clays from different parts of the world. They have different textures, different colors, and there’s a symbolism there as well. GP The idea of placing a fingerprint, of introducing touch, the fingerprint of Sheikh Zayed who has an almost holy status, so that would help tie the work to that particular place. Toward the end of his life, the sheikh couldn’t write his signature any more, so he
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used a fingerprint. And I got a photo of that print. HALA WARDÉ A very poor photo. GP A very poor photo, and I had to interpret it somewhat for the lines, but after a long struggle to get it, at least I had a basis I could work on. Afterwards, I redid that drawing so it corresponded to every line in Sheikh Zayed’s thumbprint. JN The work is so symbolic of the country’s identity, it’s wonderful. It’s exactly what was needed—to mark a building with a permanent work, it has to include messages of basic importance, things that anchor the building. If architecture is to relate to its context, it must include elements that couldn’t be moved anywhere else. In any particular place, I always try to do things you can’t do anywhere else. Obviously these things have to be specific to each case, and in Abu Dhabi everything works in relationship to the dome. Everything is symbolic of the country, its topography, its earth, its trees. And all this work with the light and with the ground leads to art that’s different in kind from the objects displayed as part of the collection, because a collection changes over time. So you have two categories of work in the museum, one integrated with the architecture and part of the place forever, and one in the collection
and capable of wandering off from time to time, coming back, even disappearing. GP Unlike the works in the collection, the works that are integrated with the architecture are also necessarily contemporary with it. JN Yes, they testify to the moment. They testify to the relationship between the architecture of the time and the art of the time. GP Which is not the same as a curator’s choice of contemporary works for the collection. Personally I’m happier to have my work integrated into the architecture than to have it just join the collection. AF Giuseppe, you’ve done very beautiful works where you’ve marked the surface of water through the effects of something other than light. GP It’s bubbles of air. JN I’ve always wanted to inscribe something in water. GP You mentioned that to me when we first met, and I said that I preferred a drawing on water, and in fact I’ve done a work like that: there’s a surface in the pool with holes in it, and air bubbles rise up from it and create a drawing on the surface of the water. The piece appears and disappears, a bit like breathing: you see the bubbles trouble the water surface
Above: Exterior view of Louvre Abu Dhabi. © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo by Roland Halbe Right (top): Giuseppe Penone, Jean Nouvel, and Hala Wardé reviewing the model for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2014. © Photo by HW architecture Right (bottom): Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone pictured with Leaves of Light during the museum’s construction, 2017. © Photo by HW architecture
for five or ten seconds and then disappear. I’ve done that at Venaria, a palazzo near Turin. It works even in the cold because compressed air is warmer than the water, and stops it from forming ice. AF What leads you to an artist for a particular building? You don’t always do that. JN No, but it’s always a question. First of all it’s a question for the client: we often make a proposal, but the art is the first thing to go. Many projects never get started. After that, of course, we have to find out whether the artist is interested. And then, for a long time now I’ve been deeply troubled by France’s 1-percent principle [the obligation to spend 1 percent of the cost of a public building project on art]—it makes for little things that come in after the rest, have no relationship to the place, and take up a lot of time. And the procedures for choosing the artists, and the places where the art will go—it’s a bureaucratic process, and that’s not how art should get into a building. I think the artist is a maître d’oeuvre in the same way the architect is, and the art is a significant part of the building. That was how it was in earlier eras with artists and craftspeople: just look at our civilization’s religious art, sculpted tympana, carved capitals, stained-glass windows, wrought iron, painted
ceramics—they’re completely inseparable. GP There wasn’t a distinction between the different domains. JN You might think the abstraction of modern architecture would have helped it to integrate art, but exactly the opposite has happened. Paintings and tapestries go up on the walls, sculptures punctuate corners, but it’s rare to find a really osmotic relationship. GP Very few architects really think about art. JN Yes, and when you think about the entire history of architecture, that’s incredible. Something’s gone wrong. AF Jean, can you imagine creating art for your buildings yourself? You originally wanted to be an artist. JN Yes, I wanted to be an artist, but I soon realized I could do something with architecture, and in the end there’s not that much of a difference. It’s what suited me, really. GP In the past there were sculptors who were also architects, such as Bernini and Michelangelo. There was a continuous dialogue between these different possibilities. It’s only recently that you see a specificity to each form of expression. The difference is,
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from all over the world. Earth has memory, a memory of the animal, mineral, and vegetable life of the place it comes from. Another concern I had was to relate the work to the reality of the country; there isn’t a pictorial tradition in that culture but there’s a tradition of pottery, a tradition of ordinary, useful objects. Vases are found in every culture, and the shape is anthropomorphic, stemming from the human body. So in one of the vitrines I created a vase shaped like the profile of a pregnant woman. It’s made out of clay found in various parts of the world, and on the wall behind it I’ve drawn its shape again, using pigments from different regions of the world. In the other vitrine is the drawing Propagazione (Propagation), made at Sèvres on a porcelain wall and developed out of the thumbprint of Sheikh Zayed. JN That was a wonderful idea, to get clays from different parts of the world. They have different textures, different colors, and there’s a symbolism there as well. GP The idea of placing a fingerprint, of introducing touch, the fingerprint of Sheikh Zayed who has an almost holy status, so that would help tie the work to that particular place. Toward the end of his life, the sheikh couldn’t write his signature any more, so he
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used a fingerprint. And I got a photo of that print. HALA WARDÉ A very poor photo. GP A very poor photo, and I had to interpret it somewhat for the lines, but after a long struggle to get it, at least I had a basis I could work on. Afterwards, I redid that drawing so it corresponded to every line in Sheikh Zayed’s thumbprint. JN The work is so symbolic of the country’s identity, it’s wonderful. It’s exactly what was needed—to mark a building with a permanent work, it has to include messages of basic importance, things that anchor the building. If architecture is to relate to its context, it must include elements that couldn’t be moved anywhere else. In any particular place, I always try to do things you can’t do anywhere else. Obviously these things have to be specific to each case, and in Abu Dhabi everything works in relationship to the dome. Everything is symbolic of the country, its topography, its earth, its trees. And all this work with the light and with the ground leads to art that’s different in kind from the objects displayed as part of the collection, because a collection changes over time. So you have two categories of work in the museum, one integrated with the architecture and part of the place forever, and one in the collection
and capable of wandering off from time to time, coming back, even disappearing. GP Unlike the works in the collection, the works that are integrated with the architecture are also necessarily contemporary with it. JN Yes, they testify to the moment. They testify to the relationship between the architecture of the time and the art of the time. GP Which is not the same as a curator’s choice of contemporary works for the collection. Personally I’m happier to have my work integrated into the architecture than to have it just join the collection. AF Giuseppe, you’ve done very beautiful works where you’ve marked the surface of water through the effects of something other than light. GP It’s bubbles of air. JN I’ve always wanted to inscribe something in water. GP You mentioned that to me when we first met, and I said that I preferred a drawing on water, and in fact I’ve done a work like that: there’s a surface in the pool with holes in it, and air bubbles rise up from it and create a drawing on the surface of the water. The piece appears and disappears, a bit like breathing: you see the bubbles trouble the water surface
Above: Exterior view of Louvre Abu Dhabi. © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo by Roland Halbe Right (top): Giuseppe Penone, Jean Nouvel, and Hala Wardé reviewing the model for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2014. © Photo by HW architecture Right (bottom): Jean Nouvel and Giuseppe Penone pictured with Leaves of Light during the museum’s construction, 2017. © Photo by HW architecture
for five or ten seconds and then disappear. I’ve done that at Venaria, a palazzo near Turin. It works even in the cold because compressed air is warmer than the water, and stops it from forming ice. AF What leads you to an artist for a particular building? You don’t always do that. JN No, but it’s always a question. First of all it’s a question for the client: we often make a proposal, but the art is the first thing to go. Many projects never get started. After that, of course, we have to find out whether the artist is interested. And then, for a long time now I’ve been deeply troubled by France’s 1-percent principle [the obligation to spend 1 percent of the cost of a public building project on art]—it makes for little things that come in after the rest, have no relationship to the place, and take up a lot of time. And the procedures for choosing the artists, and the places where the art will go—it’s a bureaucratic process, and that’s not how art should get into a building. I think the artist is a maître d’oeuvre in the same way the architect is, and the art is a significant part of the building. That was how it was in earlier eras with artists and craftspeople: just look at our civilization’s religious art, sculpted tympana, carved capitals, stained-glass windows, wrought iron, painted
ceramics—they’re completely inseparable. GP There wasn’t a distinction between the different domains. JN You might think the abstraction of modern architecture would have helped it to integrate art, but exactly the opposite has happened. Paintings and tapestries go up on the walls, sculptures punctuate corners, but it’s rare to find a really osmotic relationship. GP Very few architects really think about art. JN Yes, and when you think about the entire history of architecture, that’s incredible. Something’s gone wrong. AF Jean, can you imagine creating art for your buildings yourself? You originally wanted to be an artist. JN Yes, I wanted to be an artist, but I soon realized I could do something with architecture, and in the end there’s not that much of a difference. It’s what suited me, really. GP In the past there were sculptors who were also architects, such as Bernini and Michelangelo. There was a continuous dialogue between these different possibilities. It’s only recently that you see a specificity to each form of expression. The difference is,
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to understand what he had the right to do. GP At one point they told me the tree was too big, that I’d have to make it smaller. There were a few restrictions like that. JN And of course everyone wanted their say. That’s democracy—but art and democracy don’t always go together very well. You have to see what’s legitimate in those terms; people have to understand that the artist is there to create a place, a place for everyone, for the whole society. Artists are generous in their philosophy: they’re there to enrich, they’re there to testify, they’re there to do the very best they can. That’s how you create something that’s a testimony to its time. It’s not something you can do piecemeal. AF You choose artists in terms of what you know about their work, obviously, but when you invite them to participate in a project, are you specific in what you ask for? Do you know what you want? JN I’m not very specific. I’m specific about my thinking on what it means to have a work permanently integrated with the architecture, but once that basis is established, I always hope to be surprised. I’m not at all someone who says, You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that. On the other hand, I also know what I don’t want, which is a clash. It’s easy for an artwork to destroy a space. GP In my case the whole thing started with the vitrines. JN Yes, that was the Trojan horse. GP The vitrines in a space like that offer endless possibilities, there were a lot of things I could have done. There’s really no such thing as a good space or a bad space; some are certainly better than others, but in principle, if you can integrate the piece with the environment, it works. If you have a really high-quality space, it will work that much better, but even in a very ordinary space, if the piece has a real, honest relationship to it, it will work. AF Jean, have you ever changed a space to adjust it to an artist’s proposal? JN Oh yes, I’m ready to do that. I just have to be convinced. If it’s suggested that I alter a space for an artwork, I often have no problem with that at all, I see it as a way of developing the architecture. And I enjoy working with artists as professionals who have something to say when considering architectural or spatial features in depth. When you work in greater depth on certain parts, it really shows—those areas become architecture has a responsibility and function of providing habitable space—it’s practical—while art is generally free from the need to be available for use, unless it falls into being decor. JN Something that’s changed a lot in the contemporary period is that artists now claim absolute autonomy—in the age of the white cube, they’ve wanted to be alone in the world—and with a commissioned work you can’t do exactly what you want. But many masterpiece Renaissance paintings were commissions, and the commissions of tough clients who had clear and constraining demands. I think it’s important to bring back the idea of integration: the artist shouldn’t be all alone in the world. And accepting commissions doesn’t stop you from doing what you want elsewhere, in freestanding works for museums and collectors. It’s absolutely necessary for artists to return to the kind of permanence involved in giving a place its character. Because a place that gets its character through art has another advantage: it will have that character forever, and if you want to see it you have to go there, it will never move elsewhere. It represents a complete recharacterization of a city, a neighborhood, a building, a garden, whatever. Art really has to get back into everyday life.
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GP In my work, if an exhibition is to be a good exhibition and it’s outdoors, whether it’s there for two weeks or three months, it has to look as if it’s there forever. That’s the only thing that allows the work to be. Otherwise it’s just something that’s been put there, that has no roots. So when we began our collaboration I was comfortable with it, because I’m in the habit of thinking about the place and the work together. The work has to be integrated into the space, has to form part of the space. Otherwise it becomes decor, something you can put somewhere and move around. That kind of independence of art from reality is rarely right for my work. JN Museums sometimes accentuate that when they uproot art, taking religious works, say, and removing them from their original conditions, losing the effects of light, scale, materials, and place. Those works suffer an amputation—they’re seen and interpreted in a context in which they can no longer be felt. AF Did the two of you talk a lot before deciding what to do? JN Not a lot, no, but as much as we needed to. It was important to me to explain the building to Giuseppe, to tell him about my thinking, and for him
Opposite: Giuseppe Penone, Leaves of Light – Tree, 2016 (and detail), bronze and stainless steel, 689 × 472 1⁄2 × 472 1⁄2 inches (1750 × 1200 × 1200 cm) © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo (top) by Roland Halbe. Photo (bottom) by Greg Garay Above: Giuseppe Penone, Earth of the World – Vase, 2016, terra-cotta and porcelain, vase: 18 1⁄8 × 12 1⁄4 × 12 1⁄3 inches (46 × 31 × 31 cm); base: 45 1⁄4 × 30 × 21 5⁄8 inches (115 × 76 × 55 cm). Photo by Greg Garay
Following spread (center): Earth of the World – Vase, with Giuseppe Penone’s Earth of the World – Clay Lumps, 2016, terra-cotta and iron, 237 3⁄8 × 177 5⁄8 × 11 7⁄8 inches (603 × 451 × 30 cm). Photo by Greg Garay Following spread (top and bottom): Giuseppe Penone, Propagation, 2016, drawing on porcelain, 141 3⁄4 × 165 3 ⁄8 × 4 inches (360 × 420 × 10 cm) All artworks by Giuseppe Penone © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Interview translated from French by Dafydd Roberts.
loci of crystallization, they become expressive. AF Giuseppe, is it very different for you to work with an architect rather than a collector? GP It’s unusual for me to get a commission from a collector; my collectors generally buy something they’ve seen, the work is already made. And then, when I can, I go see how it ought to be installed, to make sure it’s properly received. With architects, though, you make a proposal. The proposal becomes a project, and a project is complex. A young architect’s main concern is to get work built; only if it’s built will later commissions open up. So there’s often a level of dependence, the architect isn’t completely in control. In painting or sculpture, on the other hand, you can do something completely personal and autonomous. Maybe a commission will follow, but the approach is very different. The difficulty of making great architecture is that it’s dependent on a commission, which the making of a sculpture is not. JN That’s also a matter of collaboration, of shared ambition. GP Yes, of course, but it can be difficult for someone to imagine a work. The architect, the sculptor, the artist, may be able to see it in their minds, but it can be hard to make others understand it. I’ve found
that people often prefer a rendering done on a computer to a great drawing, because they don’t necessarily know how to read a drawing. JN They’re not always attuned to feeling, essentially. They want to understand, and understanding is useful, but the crucial thing is feeling. AF Jean, would you say that most of today’s best new buildings are related to culture, to art: museums, opera houses, concert halls? JN I don’t think that’s true. AF Can you give me examples of remarkable buildings that aren’t cultural centers? JN Religious spaces continue to inspire. And there’s plenty of bad architecture in the museum and gallery world. I think the commissioners in that world, though, are often more accepting, more ready to allow certain freedoms. They’re often open to a building that stands out, that’s iconic—in fact that’s often what they’re after. And that can lead to the production of more-heroic architecture. Though that’s certainly not always the case. Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths in Vals aren’t a museum, and they’re a contemporary masterpiece. His chapel, too. GP Let’s not forget that museums are cultural
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to understand what he had the right to do. GP At one point they told me the tree was too big, that I’d have to make it smaller. There were a few restrictions like that. JN And of course everyone wanted their say. That’s democracy—but art and democracy don’t always go together very well. You have to see what’s legitimate in those terms; people have to understand that the artist is there to create a place, a place for everyone, for the whole society. Artists are generous in their philosophy: they’re there to enrich, they’re there to testify, they’re there to do the very best they can. That’s how you create something that’s a testimony to its time. It’s not something you can do piecemeal. AF You choose artists in terms of what you know about their work, obviously, but when you invite them to participate in a project, are you specific in what you ask for? Do you know what you want? JN I’m not very specific. I’m specific about my thinking on what it means to have a work permanently integrated with the architecture, but once that basis is established, I always hope to be surprised. I’m not at all someone who says, You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that. On the other hand, I also know what I don’t want, which is a clash. It’s easy for an artwork to destroy a space. GP In my case the whole thing started with the vitrines. JN Yes, that was the Trojan horse. GP The vitrines in a space like that offer endless possibilities, there were a lot of things I could have done. There’s really no such thing as a good space or a bad space; some are certainly better than others, but in principle, if you can integrate the piece with the environment, it works. If you have a really high-quality space, it will work that much better, but even in a very ordinary space, if the piece has a real, honest relationship to it, it will work. AF Jean, have you ever changed a space to adjust it to an artist’s proposal? JN Oh yes, I’m ready to do that. I just have to be convinced. If it’s suggested that I alter a space for an artwork, I often have no problem with that at all, I see it as a way of developing the architecture. And I enjoy working with artists as professionals who have something to say when considering architectural or spatial features in depth. When you work in greater depth on certain parts, it really shows—those areas become architecture has a responsibility and function of providing habitable space—it’s practical—while art is generally free from the need to be available for use, unless it falls into being decor. JN Something that’s changed a lot in the contemporary period is that artists now claim absolute autonomy—in the age of the white cube, they’ve wanted to be alone in the world—and with a commissioned work you can’t do exactly what you want. But many masterpiece Renaissance paintings were commissions, and the commissions of tough clients who had clear and constraining demands. I think it’s important to bring back the idea of integration: the artist shouldn’t be all alone in the world. And accepting commissions doesn’t stop you from doing what you want elsewhere, in freestanding works for museums and collectors. It’s absolutely necessary for artists to return to the kind of permanence involved in giving a place its character. Because a place that gets its character through art has another advantage: it will have that character forever, and if you want to see it you have to go there, it will never move elsewhere. It represents a complete recharacterization of a city, a neighborhood, a building, a garden, whatever. Art really has to get back into everyday life.
78
GP In my work, if an exhibition is to be a good exhibition and it’s outdoors, whether it’s there for two weeks or three months, it has to look as if it’s there forever. That’s the only thing that allows the work to be. Otherwise it’s just something that’s been put there, that has no roots. So when we began our collaboration I was comfortable with it, because I’m in the habit of thinking about the place and the work together. The work has to be integrated into the space, has to form part of the space. Otherwise it becomes decor, something you can put somewhere and move around. That kind of independence of art from reality is rarely right for my work. JN Museums sometimes accentuate that when they uproot art, taking religious works, say, and removing them from their original conditions, losing the effects of light, scale, materials, and place. Those works suffer an amputation—they’re seen and interpreted in a context in which they can no longer be felt. AF Did the two of you talk a lot before deciding what to do? JN Not a lot, no, but as much as we needed to. It was important to me to explain the building to Giuseppe, to tell him about my thinking, and for him
Opposite: Giuseppe Penone, Leaves of Light – Tree, 2016 (and detail), bronze and stainless steel, 689 × 472 1⁄2 × 472 1⁄2 inches (1750 × 1200 × 1200 cm) © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Architect: Jean Nouvel. Photo (top) by Roland Halbe. Photo (bottom) by Greg Garay Above: Giuseppe Penone, Earth of the World – Vase, 2016, terra-cotta and porcelain, vase: 18 1⁄8 × 12 1⁄4 × 12 1⁄3 inches (46 × 31 × 31 cm); base: 45 1⁄4 × 30 × 21 5⁄8 inches (115 × 76 × 55 cm). Photo by Greg Garay
Following spread (center): Earth of the World – Vase, with Giuseppe Penone’s Earth of the World – Clay Lumps, 2016, terra-cotta and iron, 237 3⁄8 × 177 5⁄8 × 11 7⁄8 inches (603 × 451 × 30 cm). Photo by Greg Garay Following spread (top and bottom): Giuseppe Penone, Propagation, 2016, drawing on porcelain, 141 3⁄4 × 165 3 ⁄8 × 4 inches (360 × 420 × 10 cm) All artworks by Giuseppe Penone © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Interview translated from French by Dafydd Roberts.
loci of crystallization, they become expressive. AF Giuseppe, is it very different for you to work with an architect rather than a collector? GP It’s unusual for me to get a commission from a collector; my collectors generally buy something they’ve seen, the work is already made. And then, when I can, I go see how it ought to be installed, to make sure it’s properly received. With architects, though, you make a proposal. The proposal becomes a project, and a project is complex. A young architect’s main concern is to get work built; only if it’s built will later commissions open up. So there’s often a level of dependence, the architect isn’t completely in control. In painting or sculpture, on the other hand, you can do something completely personal and autonomous. Maybe a commission will follow, but the approach is very different. The difficulty of making great architecture is that it’s dependent on a commission, which the making of a sculpture is not. JN That’s also a matter of collaboration, of shared ambition. GP Yes, of course, but it can be difficult for someone to imagine a work. The architect, the sculptor, the artist, may be able to see it in their minds, but it can be hard to make others understand it. I’ve found
that people often prefer a rendering done on a computer to a great drawing, because they don’t necessarily know how to read a drawing. JN They’re not always attuned to feeling, essentially. They want to understand, and understanding is useful, but the crucial thing is feeling. AF Jean, would you say that most of today’s best new buildings are related to culture, to art: museums, opera houses, concert halls? JN I don’t think that’s true. AF Can you give me examples of remarkable buildings that aren’t cultural centers? JN Religious spaces continue to inspire. And there’s plenty of bad architecture in the museum and gallery world. I think the commissioners in that world, though, are often more accepting, more ready to allow certain freedoms. They’re often open to a building that stands out, that’s iconic—in fact that’s often what they’re after. And that can lead to the production of more-heroic architecture. Though that’s certainly not always the case. Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths in Vals aren’t a museum, and they’re a contemporary masterpiece. His chapel, too. GP Let’s not forget that museums are cultural
79
institutions, intended to communicate, to disseminate, so the buildings are often better known than others. JN Yes, that’s true. But the program of a museum puts many constraints on the interior. I think a lot of museum buildings follow an ethos of “Look beautiful and keep your mouth shut!,” which isn’t exactly architecture’s role. GP I want to ask about moral rights, because the integrity of an artist’s work has to be respected and there are generally accepted rules. You can’t alter a painting. JN I’m in favor of buildings changing and developing; it’s simply a question of realizing that there are different ways of doing it and getting it right. There has to be respect for the integrity of the original work, whether it’s art or architecture—it’s as simple as that. PEPI MARCHETTI FRANCHI The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a truly extraordinary building and an extraordinary collaboration. It’s a unique example of an important European museum opening an exhibition space in the heart of the Arab world. Did that context play a role when you were developing the project? Or is it perhaps, Giuseppe, the same to you as doing a piece someplace more ordinary? GP Obviously doing a work in the Emirates now
80
gets a lot of attention. The same thing done elsewhere would attract less interest. PMF Do you find it critical to know about the tradition and the region? Or not? GP Of course you immerse yourself, you learn, but you don’t have to live in a country to make work there. PMF And you, Jean? JN Well, you’re always somewhere, and you have to reveal that somewhere, you have to get deeper into that somewhere. So, depending on where that somewhere is, your response will differ. To me, buildings aren’t interchangeable, they have roots, they have reasons for being that go very, very deep. And probably in a situation like Abu Dhabi, given the comparative roles of culture and religion there, to show different forms of thought over the ages, and to show that things are different, and extraordinary, in other places, takes on a very political significance. A museum like this one may have been more keenly awaited there than elsewhere because it’s in a situation where it’s meant to present a universal art. We’re also expected to prove that the creation of a total work of art is possible in the prevailing historical, geographical, and political conditions there. HW Giuseppe, when we were in Abu Dhabi and the tree was being installed, there was a pretty
judygeib.com Boulder Opal Split Necklace, 22K gold and silver
extraordinary moment as it was getting more and more upright, and then suddenly it was completely absorbed by the dome. I felt there was something at that moment that you hadn’t anticipated. GP That’s true. I’d seen the work against the sky, but when we were there, it fused with the ribs of the dome, and that surprised me to some degree. AF You had a little adventure together, you and Hala: you chose this tree from among all the other trees. GP Yes, we did. There was a problem of size, there was a problem of form, and I had three possibilities of trees that for various reasons had to be cut down: one possibility was a very beautiful tree, but it didn’t work from a budgetary point of view. There was another tree that I thought might work, but then we found this third tree, which was bigger but there was a place where it was missing a branch. I added that back in later, and reworked the overall shape, but at that point I still wasn’t sure. Then I was concerned that it shouldn’t come too close to the skin of the building, that was another worry. But we did it, with Hala, and we made the right choice. PMF Where did you find it? GP In my woods in San Raffaele, near Turin. HW There’d been a lot of discussion to get to that point, because in fact, when you saw the dome, the idea came to you right away. PMF You’d seen the dome in a drawing at that point, but not the real dome. HW It didn’t exist yet, but when you saw the site you could imagine it. GP When I was first there I couldn’t see the dome, but I could see the scale of the architecture. PMF Were the buildings up? HW Yes, the buildings were up but the dome was still under construction. GP I was surprised that Jean agreed to have the work where it is, almost in the middle of the dome. HW But Jean was very keen on that idea. It’s true there were people who wanted to decide on the locations for the permanent works; we had to explain that it was the artists who had to choose. GP For the vitrines there was no choice, but I suggested doing the third work. HW The tree, which was installed in the center. It’s become a meeting point, you hear everyone on their phones: “Where are you?” “I’m by the Penone tree.”
institutions, intended to communicate, to disseminate, so the buildings are often better known than others. JN Yes, that’s true. But the program of a museum puts many constraints on the interior. I think a lot of museum buildings follow an ethos of “Look beautiful and keep your mouth shut!,” which isn’t exactly architecture’s role. GP I want to ask about moral rights, because the integrity of an artist’s work has to be respected and there are generally accepted rules. You can’t alter a painting. JN I’m in favor of buildings changing and developing; it’s simply a question of realizing that there are different ways of doing it and getting it right. There has to be respect for the integrity of the original work, whether it’s art or architecture—it’s as simple as that. PEPI MARCHETTI FRANCHI The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a truly extraordinary building and an extraordinary collaboration. It’s a unique example of an important European museum opening an exhibition space in the heart of the Arab world. Did that context play a role when you were developing the project? Or is it perhaps, Giuseppe, the same to you as doing a piece someplace more ordinary? GP Obviously doing a work in the Emirates now
80
gets a lot of attention. The same thing done elsewhere would attract less interest. PMF Do you find it critical to know about the tradition and the region? Or not? GP Of course you immerse yourself, you learn, but you don’t have to live in a country to make work there. PMF And you, Jean? JN Well, you’re always somewhere, and you have to reveal that somewhere, you have to get deeper into that somewhere. So, depending on where that somewhere is, your response will differ. To me, buildings aren’t interchangeable, they have roots, they have reasons for being that go very, very deep. And probably in a situation like Abu Dhabi, given the comparative roles of culture and religion there, to show different forms of thought over the ages, and to show that things are different, and extraordinary, in other places, takes on a very political significance. A museum like this one may have been more keenly awaited there than elsewhere because it’s in a situation where it’s meant to present a universal art. We’re also expected to prove that the creation of a total work of art is possible in the prevailing historical, geographical, and political conditions there. HW Giuseppe, when we were in Abu Dhabi and the tree was being installed, there was a pretty
judygeib.com Boulder Opal Split Necklace, 22K gold and silver
extraordinary moment as it was getting more and more upright, and then suddenly it was completely absorbed by the dome. I felt there was something at that moment that you hadn’t anticipated. GP That’s true. I’d seen the work against the sky, but when we were there, it fused with the ribs of the dome, and that surprised me to some degree. AF You had a little adventure together, you and Hala: you chose this tree from among all the other trees. GP Yes, we did. There was a problem of size, there was a problem of form, and I had three possibilities of trees that for various reasons had to be cut down: one possibility was a very beautiful tree, but it didn’t work from a budgetary point of view. There was another tree that I thought might work, but then we found this third tree, which was bigger but there was a place where it was missing a branch. I added that back in later, and reworked the overall shape, but at that point I still wasn’t sure. Then I was concerned that it shouldn’t come too close to the skin of the building, that was another worry. But we did it, with Hala, and we made the right choice. PMF Where did you find it? GP In my woods in San Raffaele, near Turin. HW There’d been a lot of discussion to get to that point, because in fact, when you saw the dome, the idea came to you right away. PMF You’d seen the dome in a drawing at that point, but not the real dome. HW It didn’t exist yet, but when you saw the site you could imagine it. GP When I was first there I couldn’t see the dome, but I could see the scale of the architecture. PMF Were the buildings up? HW Yes, the buildings were up but the dome was still under construction. GP I was surprised that Jean agreed to have the work where it is, almost in the middle of the dome. HW But Jean was very keen on that idea. It’s true there were people who wanted to decide on the locations for the permanent works; we had to explain that it was the artists who had to choose. GP For the vitrines there was no choice, but I suggested doing the third work. HW The tree, which was installed in the center. It’s become a meeting point, you hear everyone on their phones: “Where are you?” “I’m by the Penone tree.”
IN CONVERSATION
Dorothy Lichtenstein sits down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the changes underway at the Lichtenstein Foundation, life in the 1960s, and what brought her to—and kept her in—the Hamptons.
82
Derek Blasberg: I’m so
and in 1964 we did this
happy to be in Southampton
great exhibition called “The
in the middle of the week!
American Supermarket,” which
Normally I only come out for
is how I first met Roy. We
the weekends, but you live
asked Roy and Andy [Warhol]
here full-time, right?
if they’d put an image on
Dorothy Lichtenstein: I
a shopping bag. I met Roy
stay out here as much as I
when he came in to sign the
can. We bought this house
shopping bags.
in 1970. We kept a place in New York for a few years,
DB: Wow. I wonder where those
but eventually we just let
shopping bags are today.
it go.
DL Well, they’re around! I have a pretty battered one.
DB: What drew you guys out
Back then, no one could have
here?
known what was going to come
DL We first bought a house
of this moment. When I met
with some friends, but
Roy, I had a broken leg and I
with teenage boys it got
was in a cast. A few people
crowded. At the end of the
like George Segal and Claes
summer of 1969 we got a call
Oldenburg signed it, which
that this house, which was
I think about sometimes,
originally just a garage,
because back then, after
was available. It had a path
several months I didn’t care
to the ocean and my job in
who’d signed it—I wanted it
those days was going to the
off and I never wanted to see
beach! We looked at it, said
it again.
yes, and then came out here the following summer. We
DB: The idea of preservation
didn’t move back for twelve
and conservatorship didn’t
years.
apply at the time. DL Honestly, no one actually
DB: I bet in 1970 this town
thought that anyone was going
looked a little different
to make it really big. Back
than it does now.
then, a “successful” artist
DL Are you kidding? In 1970,
was someone who didn’t have
even the butcher closed and
to have a day job, like drive
went to Palm Beach in the
a cab or teach at art school,
winter.
to pay the bills. You’d made it if all you had to do was
DB: Let’s start at the
your art.
beginning: where were you born and raised?
DB: Do you remember the first
DL I’m a Brooklyn girl.
time you and Roy laid eyes on
I went to Midwood High
each other?
School, a public school in
DL It was when he came in to
Brooklyn, and then I went to
sign these shopping bags.
a small girls’ college in
But at the time he had a
Pennsylvania, called Beaver
girlfriend he was seeing,
College at the time. It’s
and he had promised her that
been renamed Arcadia, but
he’d take her to Paris when
when I went it was called
he had his first show at the
Beaver and there were no
Sonnabend Gallery there.
end of jokes. Arcadia has
The good soul that he was,
now become a serious art
he took her and then called
school.
me up when he and she had separated officially.
DB: You didn’t study art in college, did you?
DB: Do you think anyone
DL I studied political
working and living at the
science but I did minor
time had any idea that
in art history. My family
they were on the verge
was completely involved in
of an artistic moment or
Democratic politics, that
revolution or culture shift?
was their social life and
Could you feel something in
their political life—my dad
the air?
was eventually a judge in
DL What I felt in the air
New York. So I’m a genetic
as a culture shift was more
Democrat. After school I
political. The real changes
came back to New York and
didn’t start happening until
got a job in a small art
the end of the ’60s—Martin
gallery on the Upper East
Luther King was shot, two
Side called Bianchini
Kennedy’s were shot, the
Gallery. I started in 1963,
Vietnam protests. Yes, some
83
IN CONVERSATION
Dorothy Lichtenstein sits down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the changes underway at the Lichtenstein Foundation, life in the 1960s, and what brought her to—and kept her in—the Hamptons.
82
Derek Blasberg: I’m so
and in 1964 we did this
happy to be in Southampton
great exhibition called “The
in the middle of the week!
American Supermarket,” which
Normally I only come out for
is how I first met Roy. We
the weekends, but you live
asked Roy and Andy [Warhol]
here full-time, right?
if they’d put an image on
Dorothy Lichtenstein: I
a shopping bag. I met Roy
stay out here as much as I
when he came in to sign the
can. We bought this house
shopping bags.
in 1970. We kept a place in New York for a few years,
DB: Wow. I wonder where those
but eventually we just let
shopping bags are today.
it go.
DL Well, they’re around! I have a pretty battered one.
DB: What drew you guys out
Back then, no one could have
here?
known what was going to come
DL We first bought a house
of this moment. When I met
with some friends, but
Roy, I had a broken leg and I
with teenage boys it got
was in a cast. A few people
crowded. At the end of the
like George Segal and Claes
summer of 1969 we got a call
Oldenburg signed it, which
that this house, which was
I think about sometimes,
originally just a garage,
because back then, after
was available. It had a path
several months I didn’t care
to the ocean and my job in
who’d signed it—I wanted it
those days was going to the
off and I never wanted to see
beach! We looked at it, said
it again.
yes, and then came out here the following summer. We
DB: The idea of preservation
didn’t move back for twelve
and conservatorship didn’t
years.
apply at the time. DL Honestly, no one actually
DB: I bet in 1970 this town
thought that anyone was going
looked a little different
to make it really big. Back
than it does now.
then, a “successful” artist
DL Are you kidding? In 1970,
was someone who didn’t have
even the butcher closed and
to have a day job, like drive
went to Palm Beach in the
a cab or teach at art school,
winter.
to pay the bills. You’d made it if all you had to do was
DB: Let’s start at the
your art.
beginning: where were you born and raised?
DB: Do you remember the first
DL I’m a Brooklyn girl.
time you and Roy laid eyes on
I went to Midwood High
each other?
School, a public school in
DL It was when he came in to
Brooklyn, and then I went to
sign these shopping bags.
a small girls’ college in
But at the time he had a
Pennsylvania, called Beaver
girlfriend he was seeing,
College at the time. It’s
and he had promised her that
been renamed Arcadia, but
he’d take her to Paris when
when I went it was called
he had his first show at the
Beaver and there were no
Sonnabend Gallery there.
end of jokes. Arcadia has
The good soul that he was,
now become a serious art
he took her and then called
school.
me up when he and she had separated officially.
DB: You didn’t study art in college, did you?
DB: Do you think anyone
DL I studied political
working and living at the
science but I did minor
time had any idea that
in art history. My family
they were on the verge
was completely involved in
of an artistic moment or
Democratic politics, that
revolution or culture shift?
was their social life and
Could you feel something in
their political life—my dad
the air?
was eventually a judge in
DL What I felt in the air
New York. So I’m a genetic
as a culture shift was more
Democrat. After school I
political. The real changes
came back to New York and
didn’t start happening until
got a job in a small art
the end of the ’60s—Martin
gallery on the Upper East
Luther King was shot, two
Side called Bianchini
Kennedy’s were shot, the
Gallery. I started in 1963,
Vietnam protests. Yes, some
83
DB: Everyone has these crazy stories like, “Oh, my grandfather bought a [JeanMichel] Basquiat for fifty bucks.” We glamorize the idea of the money curve. I’m sure people ask you all the time what prices were like in Southampton when you moved out here. DL Of course, and we actually got a really good deal on this land. There was nothing that cost more than $200,000 around here, if you can believe it. DB: Did you still follow the gallery world when you moved out here? DL I did. We would go in for openings, and there were
Honestly, no one actually thought that anyone was going to make it really big. Back then, a “successful” artist was someone who didn’t have to have a day job, like drive a cab or teach at art school, to pay the bills.
[the Whitney] has a lot of
going to have a residency
is Edward Hopper. I love
[in the Southampton house
Hopper’s work too. It just
and studio]. Anyone who buys
seems to make sense, and
this will tear it down!
they’ve already been doing some events at Roy’s studio.
DB: I hope not!
I mean, I’d like to see the
DL I hope not too, but it’s
studio become part of the
the way.
Whitney—not a Lichtenstein
museum, but in whatever way
and almost zenlike. He
it would be useful to them.
didn’t leave a mess behind.
Roy was very clean
Then I look around at my desk DB: I like their educational
and wonder who’s going to
programs, and they have all
have to deal with this? He
this awesome programming.
had a steady way of working
I wonder if other artist
and even living. I used to
foundations will follow
joke about how predictable
suit.
he was and he would joke that
DL Some foundations already
he should take curmudgeon
do their own thing. The
lessons just to have more
Rauschenberg Foundation has
edge.
a big residency in Florida, which is amazing. They
DB: To be more of a tortured
here. We had the chance to
invite a dozen or so artists
artist?
meet [Willem] de Kooning
every six weeks to come down,
DL Right. But he got to do
because he was living out
some of whom actually get to
what he loved to do, you
here too. At some point
work in Bob’s studio.
know? And do it well and
other artists who lived out
earn more than he thought
people began to talk about “the Hamptons,” but before
DB: That must be such a treat
he would probably get as
that we didn’t even have
for them!
a professor. So I think he
that term. Prior to that it
DL I think it’s amazing
really appreciated it. He
was still East Hampton or
for them. There’s a lot
had that genuine sense of
Southampton and hadn’t been
of freedom in it and it’s
being lucky.
lumped together into one
multidimensional. There are
fabulous destination.
choreographers and writers and curators and artists,
DB: You announced last
so everybody really does a
month that the Lichtenstein
different thing. They plan
Foundation was winding
to go on for a long time
down, and that much of its
and have the resources to
collection is going to the
do so. I believe Jasper is
Whitney Museum of American
planning a residency in his
Art. They must be terribly
Connecticut place. We’re not
excited. DL We’re all really happy things were happening in the
the mores. Certainly sex was
the double-digit thousands
about it! The Whitney picked
art world, but even within
really a huge part of it. A
he got a check from Leo
things that are relevant
that there was all this other
friend always says, “If you
[Castelli] and said, “We’re
to what they already own or
political stuff happening.
can remember that time, you
thousandaires!”
aspire to, but it’s right in our “hood.” It’s right
weren’t there.” DB: I’m curious because my
DB: What do you think about
down the street [from the
generation glamorizes the
DB: That’s a good line!
the prices now?
Lichtenstein studio]! I
’60s so much and I always
DL By the ’70s, though, a lot
DL I think all money is
think it’s just great.
wonder if it was as great as
of people had moved away:
funny. I mean, nobody really
But it will take a while,
we portray it in films and in
Bob Rauschenberg moved to
knows what a billion looks
we’re thinking maybe six or
fashion.
Florida, Jasper [Johns]
like. I mean, I wouldn’t
seven years, because it’s a
DL You know what? It was!
moved up to Stony Point,
mind having it but I don’t
study collection that the
It was really free, with
even Andy bought a house in
think people can really
Foundation has given.
a sense that the world was
Montauk. There came to be the
Previous spread:
spend that kind of money.
changing. Even the idea that
idea that you could escape.
Roy Lichtenstein and Dorothy
The idea of a million dollars
DB: When did you start making
Lichtenstein, 1968. Photo by
used to be huge, but now you
that decision?
Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
can’t even buy an apartment
DL Practically since it
in New York City with it.
started. I would wonder,
women could throw away their bras—I remember in the late
DB: When were you and Roy
’50s, girdles and gloves
aware of your relevance in
were a must! The art world
the timeline of art history?
Above:
Money has changed, and now
“When is this going to be
embraced it, of course. San
DL Maybe never. He always
Dorothy Lichtenstein in Roy
with things like Bitcoin it
over?”
Francisco had a really big
had this idea that fame is
Lichtenstein’s Southampton
makes you realize it’s all an
movement and London too. The
fickle. He would joke that
studio. Photo by Kasia
abstraction anyway.
whole idea of Carnaby Street
one day someone was going
Wandycz/Paris Match via
was a big thing. But, I
to shake him awake and give
Getty Images
mean, maybe Coachella makes
him his medication. He
everybody feel great now?
certainly appreciated the
Ha. I do think we knew there
DB: The “New York Times” had a great quote from the
DB: What do you think Roy
Foundation’s director,
would make of the prices
Jack Cowart: “We wanted to
Opposite:
today?
get out of the art-holding
success, but it was never a
Dorothy Lichtenstein and Roy
DL I think he’d take them
business.”
was a new freedom. I mean,
defining moment. The first
Lichtenstein, 1968. Photo by
with a grain of salt—but he
DL Roy never wanted a museum.
people were breaking out of
time a painting was sold in
Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
would take them! Ha!
Also, the other artist
84
85
DB: Everyone has these crazy stories like, “Oh, my grandfather bought a [JeanMichel] Basquiat for fifty bucks.” We glamorize the idea of the money curve. I’m sure people ask you all the time what prices were like in Southampton when you moved out here. DL Of course, and we actually got a really good deal on this land. There was nothing that cost more than $200,000 around here, if you can believe it. DB: Did you still follow the gallery world when you moved out here? DL I did. We would go in for openings, and there were
Honestly, no one actually thought that anyone was going to make it really big. Back then, a “successful” artist was someone who didn’t have to have a day job, like drive a cab or teach at art school, to pay the bills.
[the Whitney] has a lot of
going to have a residency
is Edward Hopper. I love
[in the Southampton house
Hopper’s work too. It just
and studio]. Anyone who buys
seems to make sense, and
this will tear it down!
they’ve already been doing some events at Roy’s studio.
DB: I hope not!
I mean, I’d like to see the
DL I hope not too, but it’s
studio become part of the
the way.
Whitney—not a Lichtenstein
museum, but in whatever way
and almost zenlike. He
it would be useful to them.
didn’t leave a mess behind.
Roy was very clean
Then I look around at my desk DB: I like their educational
and wonder who’s going to
programs, and they have all
have to deal with this? He
this awesome programming.
had a steady way of working
I wonder if other artist
and even living. I used to
foundations will follow
joke about how predictable
suit.
he was and he would joke that
DL Some foundations already
he should take curmudgeon
do their own thing. The
lessons just to have more
Rauschenberg Foundation has
edge.
a big residency in Florida, which is amazing. They
DB: To be more of a tortured
here. We had the chance to
invite a dozen or so artists
artist?
meet [Willem] de Kooning
every six weeks to come down,
DL Right. But he got to do
because he was living out
some of whom actually get to
what he loved to do, you
here too. At some point
work in Bob’s studio.
know? And do it well and
other artists who lived out
earn more than he thought
people began to talk about “the Hamptons,” but before
DB: That must be such a treat
he would probably get as
that we didn’t even have
for them!
a professor. So I think he
that term. Prior to that it
DL I think it’s amazing
really appreciated it. He
was still East Hampton or
for them. There’s a lot
had that genuine sense of
Southampton and hadn’t been
of freedom in it and it’s
being lucky.
lumped together into one
multidimensional. There are
fabulous destination.
choreographers and writers and curators and artists,
DB: You announced last
so everybody really does a
month that the Lichtenstein
different thing. They plan
Foundation was winding
to go on for a long time
down, and that much of its
and have the resources to
collection is going to the
do so. I believe Jasper is
Whitney Museum of American
planning a residency in his
Art. They must be terribly
Connecticut place. We’re not
excited. DL We’re all really happy things were happening in the
the mores. Certainly sex was
the double-digit thousands
about it! The Whitney picked
art world, but even within
really a huge part of it. A
he got a check from Leo
things that are relevant
that there was all this other
friend always says, “If you
[Castelli] and said, “We’re
to what they already own or
political stuff happening.
can remember that time, you
thousandaires!”
aspire to, but it’s right in our “hood.” It’s right
weren’t there.” DB: I’m curious because my
DB: What do you think about
down the street [from the
generation glamorizes the
DB: That’s a good line!
the prices now?
Lichtenstein studio]! I
’60s so much and I always
DL By the ’70s, though, a lot
DL I think all money is
think it’s just great.
wonder if it was as great as
of people had moved away:
funny. I mean, nobody really
But it will take a while,
we portray it in films and in
Bob Rauschenberg moved to
knows what a billion looks
we’re thinking maybe six or
fashion.
Florida, Jasper [Johns]
like. I mean, I wouldn’t
seven years, because it’s a
DL You know what? It was!
moved up to Stony Point,
mind having it but I don’t
study collection that the
It was really free, with
even Andy bought a house in
think people can really
Foundation has given.
a sense that the world was
Montauk. There came to be the
Previous spread:
spend that kind of money.
changing. Even the idea that
idea that you could escape.
Roy Lichtenstein and Dorothy
The idea of a million dollars
DB: When did you start making
Lichtenstein, 1968. Photo by
used to be huge, but now you
that decision?
Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
can’t even buy an apartment
DL Practically since it
in New York City with it.
started. I would wonder,
women could throw away their bras—I remember in the late
DB: When were you and Roy
’50s, girdles and gloves
aware of your relevance in
were a must! The art world
the timeline of art history?
Above:
Money has changed, and now
“When is this going to be
embraced it, of course. San
DL Maybe never. He always
Dorothy Lichtenstein in Roy
with things like Bitcoin it
over?”
Francisco had a really big
had this idea that fame is
Lichtenstein’s Southampton
makes you realize it’s all an
movement and London too. The
fickle. He would joke that
studio. Photo by Kasia
abstraction anyway.
whole idea of Carnaby Street
one day someone was going
Wandycz/Paris Match via
was a big thing. But, I
to shake him awake and give
Getty Images
mean, maybe Coachella makes
him his medication. He
everybody feel great now?
certainly appreciated the
Ha. I do think we knew there
DB: The “New York Times” had a great quote from the
DB: What do you think Roy
Foundation’s director,
would make of the prices
Jack Cowart: “We wanted to
Opposite:
today?
get out of the art-holding
success, but it was never a
Dorothy Lichtenstein and Roy
DL I think he’d take them
business.”
was a new freedom. I mean,
defining moment. The first
Lichtenstein, 1968. Photo by
with a grain of salt—but he
DL Roy never wanted a museum.
people were breaking out of
time a painting was sold in
Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
would take them! Ha!
Also, the other artist
84
85
ED RUSCHA WORKS ON PAPER 86
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ed Ruscha, like many other artists, began to feel restless with the status quo when it came to making artworks. He stopped painting for two years and began to experiment with various materials, especially organic substances such as chocolate, axle grease, and caviar. For the 1970 Venice Biennale, he produced his famous Chocolate Room (now in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). In protest of the Vietnam War, no American artist would agree to individually represent the US at the Biennale. Therefore, a printmaking collaborative was set up, press and all, in the United States Pavilion in the Giardini. Ruscha’s finished piece was hung in the building’s left-hand gallery, taking up the entire room, with dozens and dozens of sheets covering the entire wall surface. Smelled like chocolate, looked like . . . . Around this time, while Ruscha was shifting his representation from Alexander Iolas to Leo Castelli in New York, and from Irving Blum to James Corcoran in Los Angeles, he embarked on a series of drawings of words and short phrases on paper, using pastel or organic materials, in a process known as reverse stenciling. After the page receives the pigment and the mask is peeled away, the negative space of the white paper reveals the letters as subject and image. As Ruscha completed these works in the studio, he would send several at a time to Castelli Gallery at 4 East Seventy-Seventh Street. There, Leo would casually lean the drawings on a white Formica counter in the center room of the gallery. The response from the art-viewing public was dramatic, and very positive. Folks were smitten with the work; they smiled sometimes, often staring at the words, too. Others were bewildered—a drawing of words! Words as drawing! During the same period, Ed came to New York and was visiting with Leo at the Seventy-Seventh Street gallery. He and Leo had a great mutual fondness for each other. They were so different that it was humorous sometimes seeing them together. On this occasion, as they entered the middle room of the gallery, where three drawings were leaning against the counter, Leo pointed to one drawing, Three Darvons and Two Valiums, and said, “Oh Ed, I wouldn’t want to take that.” Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue, in 2017, was the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Ruscha’s text drawings from the 1970s and ’80s, specifically 1974–84. Exhibiting these drawings at Gagosian Madison Avenue, down the block and around the corner from 4 East Seventy-Seventh Street fortysome years later, completed a delightful arc of pleasure in a neighborhood filled with art-world history. In late 2018 we will see the publication of Ed Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 2: 1977–1997, which will document all drawings from these two decades. In the following text excerpted from her essay in Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue, Lisa Turvey, editor of the catalogue raisonné of Ruscha’s works on paper, examines a selection of these drawings in anticipation of the book’s release. —Bob Monk 87
ED RUSCHA WORKS ON PAPER 86
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ed Ruscha, like many other artists, began to feel restless with the status quo when it came to making artworks. He stopped painting for two years and began to experiment with various materials, especially organic substances such as chocolate, axle grease, and caviar. For the 1970 Venice Biennale, he produced his famous Chocolate Room (now in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). In protest of the Vietnam War, no American artist would agree to individually represent the US at the Biennale. Therefore, a printmaking collaborative was set up, press and all, in the United States Pavilion in the Giardini. Ruscha’s finished piece was hung in the building’s left-hand gallery, taking up the entire room, with dozens and dozens of sheets covering the entire wall surface. Smelled like chocolate, looked like . . . . Around this time, while Ruscha was shifting his representation from Alexander Iolas to Leo Castelli in New York, and from Irving Blum to James Corcoran in Los Angeles, he embarked on a series of drawings of words and short phrases on paper, using pastel or organic materials, in a process known as reverse stenciling. After the page receives the pigment and the mask is peeled away, the negative space of the white paper reveals the letters as subject and image. As Ruscha completed these works in the studio, he would send several at a time to Castelli Gallery at 4 East Seventy-Seventh Street. There, Leo would casually lean the drawings on a white Formica counter in the center room of the gallery. The response from the art-viewing public was dramatic, and very positive. Folks were smitten with the work; they smiled sometimes, often staring at the words, too. Others were bewildered—a drawing of words! Words as drawing! During the same period, Ed came to New York and was visiting with Leo at the Seventy-Seventh Street gallery. He and Leo had a great mutual fondness for each other. They were so different that it was humorous sometimes seeing them together. On this occasion, as they entered the middle room of the gallery, where three drawings were leaning against the counter, Leo pointed to one drawing, Three Darvons and Two Valiums, and said, “Oh Ed, I wouldn’t want to take that.” Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue, in 2017, was the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Ruscha’s text drawings from the 1970s and ’80s, specifically 1974–84. Exhibiting these drawings at Gagosian Madison Avenue, down the block and around the corner from 4 East Seventy-Seventh Street fortysome years later, completed a delightful arc of pleasure in a neighborhood filled with art-world history. In late 2018 we will see the publication of Ed Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 2: 1977–1997, which will document all drawings from these two decades. In the following text excerpted from her essay in Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue, Lisa Turvey, editor of the catalogue raisonné of Ruscha’s works on paper, examines a selection of these drawings in anticipation of the book’s release. —Bob Monk 87
T
he text in a 1976 drawing, Ed Ruscha said later, came from a dream: He walks into a meeting hall full of workers and yells out, “O.K. What is it you guys want, Pontiac Catalinas?”1 The first few words summon that classic man-walks-into-a-bar joke formula, but in place of a humorous payoff is an inscrutable question, lacking background or elaboration. A viewer/reader—occupying the hybrid position that much of Ruscha’s art necessitates—has no frame of reference to identify “he” or “you guys,” or to evaluate why the former thinks the latter might desire a particular full-size sedan, or even to estimate whether the inquiry is sincere or sarcastic. Yet the sentence, rather than registering as nonsense, hangs together. Although the punch line (if one can call it that) is absurd, the gambit is familiar; the slant rhymes of hall, full, and yells, and the inversion of the terminal syllable of Pontiac as the initial syllable of Catalinas, lend metrical coherence; and the slang of O.K. and you guys, in addition to the prosaic nuance of meeting hall, workers, and Pontiac Catalinas, beget a certain relatability. What’s more, and pertinent to the following, the drawing makes us, if not laugh exactly, at least smile. The body of Ruscha’s work to which Pontiac Catalinas? belongs, the drawings of the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s, comprises single words and more often phrases amid modest-size expanses of pastel, dry pigment, or organic substances. In the 1970s, the words are limned in a Futura-like typeface; by the early 1980s, Ruscha had shifted to “Boy Scout Utility Modern,” lop-cornered letterforms of his own devising. The period is bookended by explorations of illusionism. It was preceded by the “ribbon” drawings of the late 1960s and early ’70s, in which
Ruscha depicted words that look as if they were composed of strips of paper to orchestrate a host of representational mises en abyme. By the mid-’80s, he had turned to acrylic, sometimes applied with an airbrush, for much of his work on paper, and had reintroduced imagery in conjunction with text. This imagery often took the form of pictorial tropes (windows, silhouettes, glasses) literalizing age-old representational dilemmas of picture-plane integrity and window-on-the-world space. In the drawings considered here, Ruscha’s process largely nullifies matters of spatial illusion. Using an X-Acto blade, he cut the words from tape affixed to the paper, applied layers of pigment using rags, cotton balls, and cotton swabs, and finally removed the tape. The “figure” in these drawings— the knocked-out words—is thus formed of the paper ground, a canny switch that effects, and accentuates, their flat frontality. This reversal is striking in drawings made with biodegradable materials. The spinach used in The Chapel Window (1975) and the carrot juice in Hold On for a Minute. I’m No Martian (1980)—agents of Ruscha’s quest for mediums that would “go through the support to the other side”— saturate the paper.2 Drawing is the mode in which Ruscha is not only most experimental but most prolific, and the sheer quantity of his work on paper complicates the endeavor of identifying through-lines. It is easier to establish what the drawings of this interval lack. To begin with, surprisingly little ties them to LA. There are periodic allusions to commuting hassles (Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today, 1977) and intermittent evocations of a California sunset, as in the horizontal bands of They Called Her Styrene (1977), but the drawings of the 1970s and ’80s are generally detached from geographic Previous spread: Leo Castelli and Ed Ruscha outside Castelli Gallery, New York, 1973. Photo by Samantha Eggar Left: Ed Ruscha near Joshua Tree National Park, California, with Today (1985), 1985. Photo by Tim Street-Porter Opposite (top): Ed Ruscha, “Pontiac Catalinas?”, 1976, pastel on paper, 22 5⁄8 × 28 5⁄8 inches (57.5 × 72.7 cm). Private collection. Photo by Rob McKeever Opposite (bottom): Ed Ruscha, Gimme a Warmup Boy, Are You a Fool, 1977, pastel on paper, 22 1⁄2 × 28 5⁄8 inches (57.2 × 72.7 cm). Heithoff Family Collection, Minneapolis. Photo by Rob McKeever Following spread: Ed Ruscha in his Hollywood studio with drawings including One Night Stand Forever (1982), Japan Is America (1982), Waves of Advancing Technology (1983), and Yes Trees (1983), 1983. Photo by Steve Ellison
88
origin. Their references are mostly untethered to time as well, with a handful of exceptions: the period-specific pharmaceuticals named in Three Darvons and Two Valiums (1975); the nod to Poly Styrene, a British musician who had a moment in the late 1970s; the quotation of a Captain Beefheart song in A Squid Eating Dough in a Polyethylene Bag is Fast and Bulbous . . . Got Me? (1982). This last is a comparatively rare instance of fruitful source-hunting in Ruscha’s phrases, which come, he said, “from any space in life: things I heard on the radio, fragments of conversations, phone talk, things I’ve seen written, phrases from books, titles.”3 Conventional schemas for evaluating drawing are of similarly little utility in providing a context. Ruscha’s process exchanges and collapses figure and ground, and in a work such as I Live Over in Valley View (1975), landscape-hued gradations serve less to intimate recession or nature than to affirm the words’ flushness with the support. Reverse stenciling, in turn, inverts the medium’s habit of darker marks against a lighter ground. Since linear incident, that essence of drawing, is deemphasized or missing, also gone is any hierarchy between line and color, and in the absence of imagery, color is ergo nonreferential. For every sporadic play between hue and meaning (the peas-and-carrots arrangement of Nice, Hot Vegetables, 1976, or the chocolate-colored field of Thick Blocks of Musical Fudge, 1976), there are dozens more examples in which no evident tie between palette and phrase obtains. In some cases Ruscha stages a humorous encounter of the two: the words in An Extremely Hostile Individual (1977) emerge from tranquil striations of sky blue. These works also defy drawing’s abiding distinction as a material trace of thought, a narrative of the evolution of
T
he text in a 1976 drawing, Ed Ruscha said later, came from a dream: He walks into a meeting hall full of workers and yells out, “O.K. What is it you guys want, Pontiac Catalinas?”1 The first few words summon that classic man-walks-into-a-bar joke formula, but in place of a humorous payoff is an inscrutable question, lacking background or elaboration. A viewer/reader—occupying the hybrid position that much of Ruscha’s art necessitates—has no frame of reference to identify “he” or “you guys,” or to evaluate why the former thinks the latter might desire a particular full-size sedan, or even to estimate whether the inquiry is sincere or sarcastic. Yet the sentence, rather than registering as nonsense, hangs together. Although the punch line (if one can call it that) is absurd, the gambit is familiar; the slant rhymes of hall, full, and yells, and the inversion of the terminal syllable of Pontiac as the initial syllable of Catalinas, lend metrical coherence; and the slang of O.K. and you guys, in addition to the prosaic nuance of meeting hall, workers, and Pontiac Catalinas, beget a certain relatability. What’s more, and pertinent to the following, the drawing makes us, if not laugh exactly, at least smile. The body of Ruscha’s work to which Pontiac Catalinas? belongs, the drawings of the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s, comprises single words and more often phrases amid modest-size expanses of pastel, dry pigment, or organic substances. In the 1970s, the words are limned in a Futura-like typeface; by the early 1980s, Ruscha had shifted to “Boy Scout Utility Modern,” lop-cornered letterforms of his own devising. The period is bookended by explorations of illusionism. It was preceded by the “ribbon” drawings of the late 1960s and early ’70s, in which
Ruscha depicted words that look as if they were composed of strips of paper to orchestrate a host of representational mises en abyme. By the mid-’80s, he had turned to acrylic, sometimes applied with an airbrush, for much of his work on paper, and had reintroduced imagery in conjunction with text. This imagery often took the form of pictorial tropes (windows, silhouettes, glasses) literalizing age-old representational dilemmas of picture-plane integrity and window-on-the-world space. In the drawings considered here, Ruscha’s process largely nullifies matters of spatial illusion. Using an X-Acto blade, he cut the words from tape affixed to the paper, applied layers of pigment using rags, cotton balls, and cotton swabs, and finally removed the tape. The “figure” in these drawings— the knocked-out words—is thus formed of the paper ground, a canny switch that effects, and accentuates, their flat frontality. This reversal is striking in drawings made with biodegradable materials. The spinach used in The Chapel Window (1975) and the carrot juice in Hold On for a Minute. I’m No Martian (1980)—agents of Ruscha’s quest for mediums that would “go through the support to the other side”— saturate the paper.2 Drawing is the mode in which Ruscha is not only most experimental but most prolific, and the sheer quantity of his work on paper complicates the endeavor of identifying through-lines. It is easier to establish what the drawings of this interval lack. To begin with, surprisingly little ties them to LA. There are periodic allusions to commuting hassles (Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today, 1977) and intermittent evocations of a California sunset, as in the horizontal bands of They Called Her Styrene (1977), but the drawings of the 1970s and ’80s are generally detached from geographic Previous spread: Leo Castelli and Ed Ruscha outside Castelli Gallery, New York, 1973. Photo by Samantha Eggar Left: Ed Ruscha near Joshua Tree National Park, California, with Today (1985), 1985. Photo by Tim Street-Porter Opposite (top): Ed Ruscha, “Pontiac Catalinas?”, 1976, pastel on paper, 22 5⁄8 × 28 5⁄8 inches (57.5 × 72.7 cm). Private collection. Photo by Rob McKeever Opposite (bottom): Ed Ruscha, Gimme a Warmup Boy, Are You a Fool, 1977, pastel on paper, 22 1⁄2 × 28 5⁄8 inches (57.2 × 72.7 cm). Heithoff Family Collection, Minneapolis. Photo by Rob McKeever Following spread: Ed Ruscha in his Hollywood studio with drawings including One Night Stand Forever (1982), Japan Is America (1982), Waves of Advancing Technology (1983), and Yes Trees (1983), 1983. Photo by Steve Ellison
88
origin. Their references are mostly untethered to time as well, with a handful of exceptions: the period-specific pharmaceuticals named in Three Darvons and Two Valiums (1975); the nod to Poly Styrene, a British musician who had a moment in the late 1970s; the quotation of a Captain Beefheart song in A Squid Eating Dough in a Polyethylene Bag is Fast and Bulbous . . . Got Me? (1982). This last is a comparatively rare instance of fruitful source-hunting in Ruscha’s phrases, which come, he said, “from any space in life: things I heard on the radio, fragments of conversations, phone talk, things I’ve seen written, phrases from books, titles.”3 Conventional schemas for evaluating drawing are of similarly little utility in providing a context. Ruscha’s process exchanges and collapses figure and ground, and in a work such as I Live Over in Valley View (1975), landscape-hued gradations serve less to intimate recession or nature than to affirm the words’ flushness with the support. Reverse stenciling, in turn, inverts the medium’s habit of darker marks against a lighter ground. Since linear incident, that essence of drawing, is deemphasized or missing, also gone is any hierarchy between line and color, and in the absence of imagery, color is ergo nonreferential. For every sporadic play between hue and meaning (the peas-and-carrots arrangement of Nice, Hot Vegetables, 1976, or the chocolate-colored field of Thick Blocks of Musical Fudge, 1976), there are dozens more examples in which no evident tie between palette and phrase obtains. In some cases Ruscha stages a humorous encounter of the two: the words in An Extremely Hostile Individual (1977) emerge from tranquil striations of sky blue. These works also defy drawing’s abiding distinction as a material trace of thought, a narrative of the evolution of
idea into image. Beyond the occasional X-Acto incision, or tiny abrasion on the surface caused by the removal of adhesive, there is little record of Ruscha’s method or hand. As in the preponderance of his work, all was preplanned. Lacking signifiers of place or era, at odds with the conventions of their medium, past the moment of not only Pop but also Conceptual art (to both of which Ruscha is at once essential and dissident): the drawings of this decade might best be described as incongruous relative to the contexts they nonetheless elicit. And it is this discord between what is expected and what is that lends the work its singular humor. “According to the incongruity theory,” writes philosopher of art Noël Carroll on this most widely recognized theory of humor, “what is key to comic amusement is a deviation from some presupposed norm . . . an anomaly or an incongruity relative to some framework governing the ways in which we think the world is or should be.”4 Much of Ruscha’s art, like most jokes, hinges on some sort of category jump or incongruity, and its humor is commonly acknowledged. Snippets from reviews of the work of this period might well be a thesaurus entry for “funny”—“hilarious,” “witty,” “wry,” and so on; “deadpan,” a seemingly obligatory term for any discussion of his output, usually describes a mode of comedy.5 And while there has been no sustained critical reckoning with this aspect of his work, the drawings of the 1970s and ’80s are an excellent place to start.6 “I don’t consciously think of injecting humor,” Ruscha said last year.7 Specifically, he tries to avoid puns, and indeed only a few out-and-out puns in his oeuvre come to mind. One is the homophonic pun in the drawing Chili Draft (1974), which was an accident, the plan having been the spelling “chilly.” There is a homonymic pun in a recurrent Ruscha phrase, “Brave men run in my family,” wherein run might refer either to a heritable disposition for valor or to cowardice. Although he has made it his own, that play on words is not Ruscha’s, but a Bob Hope line in The Paleface (1948), and other especially overt instances of humor are borrowed as well. The words in the 1981 drawing Hello I Must Be Going were sung by Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers (1930), and “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” presented in a 1990 painting, came from the comic strip Popeye. The bulk of Ruscha’s phrases are his own, however, and their humor is subtle, quiet, and skewed. It is a humor of the smile, not of the laugh; a humor that is funny-strange, not funny ha-ha; a humor that dawns over time, not immediately (we “Laugh Tomorrow,” as a 1984 drawing puts it). In the drawings of this period, humor stems from play with the structural properties of language: its sounds (phonology), its appearance (morphology and orthography), and its sense (syntax and semantics). Ruscha’s linguistic mischief is that of not only the poet but the comic, and it sponsors the kind of reflection on language that a good joke does. “Rhyme and pun are twins,” notes an essay on the subject: both “join words that have no association by sense but only by sound.” 8 If Ruscha mostly forswears puns, it’s impossible to overlook his attraction to rhymes. Early in his career, when he tended to picture single words, this attraction emerged across the body of work, and even a casual skim of those years yields a proliferation of aural correspondences: consider the drawings Royal, Foil, Soil, and Spoil (all 1971), or the print portfolio News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues
90
(1970). By the mid-1970s, as full phrases came to feature routinely in Ruscha’s drawings, internal and end rhymes had surfaced within individual works: Severely Clear (1975), Several Beverages (1976), Girls with Narcissistic Personality Disorders (1982), and Crispy and Specific (1983). Sometimes the rhyme issues from letter patterns—in the duplicated “agg” of Jaggy Daggers (1977), the echoed “ck” of Thick Blocks of Musical Fudge (1976), or the repetition in Million Dollar Doll (1976), whose triplet of double L’s lends the drawing not only rhythmic but visual cohesion. Elsewhere the prosody is understated, apparent only in enunciation. The recurring sh sound in She Sure Knew Her Devotionals (1976), as critic Dave Hickey observes, springs from three differently spelled phonetic units in She, Sure, and Devotionals.9 Of course the simple fact of a rhyme is not, in isolation, funny (though it’s hard to gainsay the humor in some of the rhymes Ruscha contrives, including I’m Out to Lunch without My Sugar Bunch, 1979, and N’ Dinette Sets, 1981). But to forge a correspondence between two or more things that otherwise have nothing to do with one another is to approach the incongruity theory of humor, and to apprehend the correspondence is to experience the same spark of amused recognition one feels in getting a joke. If play with phonology is humor for the ear, play with morphology and orthography is humor for the eye. On occasion, Ruscha modifies conventional spelling and punctuation to accentuate or shift meaning, often to comic effect. In omitting the apostrophe from Don’t and cleaving the word Retrospective, he magnifies the insouciance of I Dont Want No Retro Spective (1979), and by abbreviating Company to Co. in He Enjoys the Co. of Women (1976), he turns what might have been a bland euphemism into a sly and probably pointed observation. The notation of “half ” as 1/2 in 1/2 Starved 1/2 Crocked 1/2 Insane (1981) has a parallel comic effect, conjuring an imprecise state with the precision of fractions. In Wazza Problm? (1981), Wadda World This Iz (1981), and Wanna Party? (1983), for example, Ruscha also alters spelling to convey phonetics; a number of his phrases scan as having been transcribed by a listener, not a reader. The stuttering denoted in Pr-Pr-Process Food (1976), The S-Sea of D-Desire (1979), and B-Blez You B-Baby (1979), among others, trades on the humor whereby, as one linguist remarks, “the sound of identical repeated consonant vowel clusters in English . . . triggers certain kinds of jokes.”10 And talk (ephemeral, idiosyncratic, spoken) rendered as text (static, standardized, written) produces a sense of humorous incongruity that is fundamental to much of Ruscha’s work. (Ever ahead of the zeitgeist, Ruscha in these drawings anticipates the condensation of speech and text that has come to dominate contemporary communication, namely those formats—e-mails, texts, tweets—that hybridize the two.) While Ruscha denies an interest in the pun, he has repeatedly mentioned the allure of another comic category, that of the absurd. “Absurdity and enigmas and paradox—all these sorts of things that suggest illogic—appeal to me,” he said recently. 11 In the drawings of the 1970s and ’80s, his preoccupation with the absurd materializes in non sequitur–like phrases that skirt the boundaries of sense. Some are fragments that, although grammatically plausible, are semantically baffling: what to make of Piggyback Daggers (1977), Algebra of the Sky (1982), or Overly Nervous Body Armor (1982)? Others are full sentences that evoke setups in need of a punch line, or,
91
idea into image. Beyond the occasional X-Acto incision, or tiny abrasion on the surface caused by the removal of adhesive, there is little record of Ruscha’s method or hand. As in the preponderance of his work, all was preplanned. Lacking signifiers of place or era, at odds with the conventions of their medium, past the moment of not only Pop but also Conceptual art (to both of which Ruscha is at once essential and dissident): the drawings of this decade might best be described as incongruous relative to the contexts they nonetheless elicit. And it is this discord between what is expected and what is that lends the work its singular humor. “According to the incongruity theory,” writes philosopher of art Noël Carroll on this most widely recognized theory of humor, “what is key to comic amusement is a deviation from some presupposed norm . . . an anomaly or an incongruity relative to some framework governing the ways in which we think the world is or should be.”4 Much of Ruscha’s art, like most jokes, hinges on some sort of category jump or incongruity, and its humor is commonly acknowledged. Snippets from reviews of the work of this period might well be a thesaurus entry for “funny”—“hilarious,” “witty,” “wry,” and so on; “deadpan,” a seemingly obligatory term for any discussion of his output, usually describes a mode of comedy.5 And while there has been no sustained critical reckoning with this aspect of his work, the drawings of the 1970s and ’80s are an excellent place to start.6 “I don’t consciously think of injecting humor,” Ruscha said last year.7 Specifically, he tries to avoid puns, and indeed only a few out-and-out puns in his oeuvre come to mind. One is the homophonic pun in the drawing Chili Draft (1974), which was an accident, the plan having been the spelling “chilly.” There is a homonymic pun in a recurrent Ruscha phrase, “Brave men run in my family,” wherein run might refer either to a heritable disposition for valor or to cowardice. Although he has made it his own, that play on words is not Ruscha’s, but a Bob Hope line in The Paleface (1948), and other especially overt instances of humor are borrowed as well. The words in the 1981 drawing Hello I Must Be Going were sung by Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers (1930), and “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” presented in a 1990 painting, came from the comic strip Popeye. The bulk of Ruscha’s phrases are his own, however, and their humor is subtle, quiet, and skewed. It is a humor of the smile, not of the laugh; a humor that is funny-strange, not funny ha-ha; a humor that dawns over time, not immediately (we “Laugh Tomorrow,” as a 1984 drawing puts it). In the drawings of this period, humor stems from play with the structural properties of language: its sounds (phonology), its appearance (morphology and orthography), and its sense (syntax and semantics). Ruscha’s linguistic mischief is that of not only the poet but the comic, and it sponsors the kind of reflection on language that a good joke does. “Rhyme and pun are twins,” notes an essay on the subject: both “join words that have no association by sense but only by sound.” 8 If Ruscha mostly forswears puns, it’s impossible to overlook his attraction to rhymes. Early in his career, when he tended to picture single words, this attraction emerged across the body of work, and even a casual skim of those years yields a proliferation of aural correspondences: consider the drawings Royal, Foil, Soil, and Spoil (all 1971), or the print portfolio News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues
90
(1970). By the mid-1970s, as full phrases came to feature routinely in Ruscha’s drawings, internal and end rhymes had surfaced within individual works: Severely Clear (1975), Several Beverages (1976), Girls with Narcissistic Personality Disorders (1982), and Crispy and Specific (1983). Sometimes the rhyme issues from letter patterns—in the duplicated “agg” of Jaggy Daggers (1977), the echoed “ck” of Thick Blocks of Musical Fudge (1976), or the repetition in Million Dollar Doll (1976), whose triplet of double L’s lends the drawing not only rhythmic but visual cohesion. Elsewhere the prosody is understated, apparent only in enunciation. The recurring sh sound in She Sure Knew Her Devotionals (1976), as critic Dave Hickey observes, springs from three differently spelled phonetic units in She, Sure, and Devotionals.9 Of course the simple fact of a rhyme is not, in isolation, funny (though it’s hard to gainsay the humor in some of the rhymes Ruscha contrives, including I’m Out to Lunch without My Sugar Bunch, 1979, and N’ Dinette Sets, 1981). But to forge a correspondence between two or more things that otherwise have nothing to do with one another is to approach the incongruity theory of humor, and to apprehend the correspondence is to experience the same spark of amused recognition one feels in getting a joke. If play with phonology is humor for the ear, play with morphology and orthography is humor for the eye. On occasion, Ruscha modifies conventional spelling and punctuation to accentuate or shift meaning, often to comic effect. In omitting the apostrophe from Don’t and cleaving the word Retrospective, he magnifies the insouciance of I Dont Want No Retro Spective (1979), and by abbreviating Company to Co. in He Enjoys the Co. of Women (1976), he turns what might have been a bland euphemism into a sly and probably pointed observation. The notation of “half ” as 1/2 in 1/2 Starved 1/2 Crocked 1/2 Insane (1981) has a parallel comic effect, conjuring an imprecise state with the precision of fractions. In Wazza Problm? (1981), Wadda World This Iz (1981), and Wanna Party? (1983), for example, Ruscha also alters spelling to convey phonetics; a number of his phrases scan as having been transcribed by a listener, not a reader. The stuttering denoted in Pr-Pr-Process Food (1976), The S-Sea of D-Desire (1979), and B-Blez You B-Baby (1979), among others, trades on the humor whereby, as one linguist remarks, “the sound of identical repeated consonant vowel clusters in English . . . triggers certain kinds of jokes.”10 And talk (ephemeral, idiosyncratic, spoken) rendered as text (static, standardized, written) produces a sense of humorous incongruity that is fundamental to much of Ruscha’s work. (Ever ahead of the zeitgeist, Ruscha in these drawings anticipates the condensation of speech and text that has come to dominate contemporary communication, namely those formats—e-mails, texts, tweets—that hybridize the two.) While Ruscha denies an interest in the pun, he has repeatedly mentioned the allure of another comic category, that of the absurd. “Absurdity and enigmas and paradox—all these sorts of things that suggest illogic—appeal to me,” he said recently. 11 In the drawings of the 1970s and ’80s, his preoccupation with the absurd materializes in non sequitur–like phrases that skirt the boundaries of sense. Some are fragments that, although grammatically plausible, are semantically baffling: what to make of Piggyback Daggers (1977), Algebra of the Sky (1982), or Overly Nervous Body Armor (1982)? Others are full sentences that evoke setups in need of a punch line, or,
91
more often, punch lines minus a setup: Did Anyone Say “Dreamboat”? (1975), That Housing Tract Is Only Texture (1976), Honey, Hand Me the Can of Nu-Smell Please (1980), and It Is Party Time (1982). They sound like attempts to set up riddles. Find Contact Lens at Bottom of Swimming Pool (1976), an imperative proposing an impossible task, reiterates its own syntactic opacity. The independence of sense from syntax in non sequiturs renders them incongruous, and hence humorous, Carroll explains, “because they subvert our expectations that conversations and stories will be comprised of parts that are coherently and proportionately linked.”12 Consider Gimme a Warmup Boy, Are You a Fool (1977), whose pictorial structure reinforces its grammatical ambiguity. Is its sole punctuation mark a comma splice connecting two independent clauses, one an imperative and one an interrogative without a question mark? Or, as its position as a separate line of text implies, is “Boy, are you a fool” a declarative statement, its subject the butt of derision due to some unknowable relationship to some unknowable “warmup”? Ruscha’s non sequiturs, which in failing to provide situation or closure forfeit the symmetry of the neat joke and its expected chuckle, proffer instead a comedy of the absurd. “A human response to absurdity is laughter,” writes philosopher Ted Cohen. “When we laugh at a true absurdity, we simultaneously confess that we cannot make sense of it and that we accept it. Thus this laughter is an expression of our humanity . . . our ability to live with what we cannot understand or subdue.”13 Ruscha has offered a version of this idea as the raison d’être of any artist, himself included: “The most that an artist can do is to start something and not give the whole story,” he remarked in 1988. “That’s what makes mystery.”14
92
To “not give the whole story” might be understood as a distancing strateg y, and Ruscha’s phrases—enigmatic squibs, absent referent or background—violate the tacit social consensus that a joke necessitates. “Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo,” Henri Bergson wrote; “our laughter is always the laughter of a group.”15 Ruscha’s jokes speak to no readily identifiable group or audience, at least not in the way that the jokes in the work of Richard Prince or Mike Kelley, for example, assume a shared social lexicon. Stronger sympathies lie with early avant-gardists such as André Breton, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp, whose black-humor double entendres were aimed at a cadre of insiders. But Ruscha’s target viewer/ reader is a smaller contingent still; in many cases, his phrases seem to be in-jokes with an audience of one: himself. “Everything I do is kind of on spec for myself,” he has said; and “my things are really individual and not thought about in terms of communicating to a viewer.”16 Yet the works of this period are not hermetic, let alone alienating—expressly the opposite. They are disarming, affective, and funny. Various of their mentions—Pontiac Catalinas, housing tracts, Nu-Smell spray—call up someone who might be, to cite a 1976 drawing, Just an Average Guy, and such middlebrow allusions, crafted as fine art with meticulous care, engender the sense of demotic levity that critics and audiences a decade earlier had discerned in much Pop art. That a number of Ruscha’s verbalisms are, or have the ring of, familiar expressions enhances their accessibility. Some are well-worn set phrases: It’s Curtains (1976), Just Us Chickens (1977), Let’s Face It (1981, 1983), and The Answer Is No (1981). Others have the syntactic feel of a truism or cliché, but tweaked: Thermometers
Below: Ruscha with Elect . . . Tricity (1979), c. 1979. Photo by Paul Ruscha Opposite (top): Ed Ruscha, I Dont Want No Retro Spective, 1979, pastel on paper, 23 × 29 inches (58.4 × 73.7 cm). Private collection. Photo by Rob McKeever Opposite (bottom): Ed Ruscha, A Squid Eating Dough in a Polyethylene Bag Is Fast and Bulbous . . . Got Me?, 1982, pastel on paper, 23 × 29 1⁄8 inches (58.4 × 74 cm). Private collection, Los Angeles. Photo by Rob McKeever
Following spread: Ed Ruscha, Science is Truth Found Out, 1986, acrylic on paper, 29 1⁄2 × 40 inches (74.9 × 101.6 cm). Private collection. Photo by Rob McKeever Artwork © Ed Ruscha
more often, punch lines minus a setup: Did Anyone Say “Dreamboat”? (1975), That Housing Tract Is Only Texture (1976), Honey, Hand Me the Can of Nu-Smell Please (1980), and It Is Party Time (1982). They sound like attempts to set up riddles. Find Contact Lens at Bottom of Swimming Pool (1976), an imperative proposing an impossible task, reiterates its own syntactic opacity. The independence of sense from syntax in non sequiturs renders them incongruous, and hence humorous, Carroll explains, “because they subvert our expectations that conversations and stories will be comprised of parts that are coherently and proportionately linked.”12 Consider Gimme a Warmup Boy, Are You a Fool (1977), whose pictorial structure reinforces its grammatical ambiguity. Is its sole punctuation mark a comma splice connecting two independent clauses, one an imperative and one an interrogative without a question mark? Or, as its position as a separate line of text implies, is “Boy, are you a fool” a declarative statement, its subject the butt of derision due to some unknowable relationship to some unknowable “warmup”? Ruscha’s non sequiturs, which in failing to provide situation or closure forfeit the symmetry of the neat joke and its expected chuckle, proffer instead a comedy of the absurd. “A human response to absurdity is laughter,” writes philosopher Ted Cohen. “When we laugh at a true absurdity, we simultaneously confess that we cannot make sense of it and that we accept it. Thus this laughter is an expression of our humanity . . . our ability to live with what we cannot understand or subdue.”13 Ruscha has offered a version of this idea as the raison d’être of any artist, himself included: “The most that an artist can do is to start something and not give the whole story,” he remarked in 1988. “That’s what makes mystery.”14
92
To “not give the whole story” might be understood as a distancing strateg y, and Ruscha’s phrases—enigmatic squibs, absent referent or background—violate the tacit social consensus that a joke necessitates. “Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo,” Henri Bergson wrote; “our laughter is always the laughter of a group.”15 Ruscha’s jokes speak to no readily identifiable group or audience, at least not in the way that the jokes in the work of Richard Prince or Mike Kelley, for example, assume a shared social lexicon. Stronger sympathies lie with early avant-gardists such as André Breton, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp, whose black-humor double entendres were aimed at a cadre of insiders. But Ruscha’s target viewer/ reader is a smaller contingent still; in many cases, his phrases seem to be in-jokes with an audience of one: himself. “Everything I do is kind of on spec for myself,” he has said; and “my things are really individual and not thought about in terms of communicating to a viewer.”16 Yet the works of this period are not hermetic, let alone alienating—expressly the opposite. They are disarming, affective, and funny. Various of their mentions—Pontiac Catalinas, housing tracts, Nu-Smell spray—call up someone who might be, to cite a 1976 drawing, Just an Average Guy, and such middlebrow allusions, crafted as fine art with meticulous care, engender the sense of demotic levity that critics and audiences a decade earlier had discerned in much Pop art. That a number of Ruscha’s verbalisms are, or have the ring of, familiar expressions enhances their accessibility. Some are well-worn set phrases: It’s Curtains (1976), Just Us Chickens (1977), Let’s Face It (1981, 1983), and The Answer Is No (1981). Others have the syntactic feel of a truism or cliché, but tweaked: Thermometers
Below: Ruscha with Elect . . . Tricity (1979), c. 1979. Photo by Paul Ruscha Opposite (top): Ed Ruscha, I Dont Want No Retro Spective, 1979, pastel on paper, 23 × 29 inches (58.4 × 73.7 cm). Private collection. Photo by Rob McKeever Opposite (bottom): Ed Ruscha, A Squid Eating Dough in a Polyethylene Bag Is Fast and Bulbous . . . Got Me?, 1982, pastel on paper, 23 × 29 1⁄8 inches (58.4 × 74 cm). Private collection, Los Angeles. Photo by Rob McKeever
Following spread: Ed Ruscha, Science is Truth Found Out, 1986, acrylic on paper, 29 1⁄2 × 40 inches (74.9 × 101.6 cm). Private collection. Photo by Rob McKeever Artwork © Ed Ruscha
Should Last Forever (1976), The Girl Always Did Have Good Taste (1976), Kills Germs by Millions on Contract (note the malapropism—not “contact”!) (1981), and Science Is Truth Found Out (1983, 1986). Still others sound like vaguely salacious gossip, disclosed or overheard: She Caught My Attention (1975), I Plead Insanity Because I’m Just Crazy about That Little Girl (1976), Last Night . . . Wow (1981), and They Did It on Several Occasions (1981, 1983, 1984). One can’t help but notice, in the preceding examples and elsewhere, the abundance of pronouns in Ruscha’s art. Pronouns of all stripes—personal, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite—are there in profusion. As shifters—placeholder words whose meaning varies depending on context and use—pronouns introduce challenges related to those posed by Ruscha’s orphaned punch lines; they are contingent, in order to signify unequivocally, on additional frames of reference that are withheld. Some works incorporate one pronoun or several as part of a longer clause, while others consist almost entirely of pronouns: This—That (1970) and You and Me (represented in seven works). Ruscha relishes shifters, frequently presenting instances of not only personal but temporal and spatial deixis, or pointing, as well: There and Here (2007), Then and Now (1989), and Mr. Tomorrow, Mr. Yesterday (1985). Certain works that combine the categories—We’re This and We’re That, Aren’t We (1977, 1982, 1984, 1989), We’re Here—We’re There (1982), and That Was Then This Is Now (1989, 2014, 2015)—seem to lampoon the idea of circumscribing identity, time, or location. Personal pronouns in Ruscha’s drawings tap into the medium’s long-standing associations as a mode of confession. If his methods generally preempt any
94
divulging of their procedures, however, his use of pronouns serves a parallel function: he makes them obscure rather than reveal, compounding ambiguity rather than resolving it. This referential ambiguity is precisely what makes shifters, the “visual comedy of verbal humor,” fertile territory for jokes.17 The impossibility of gaining the external knowledge that Ruscha’s personal, spatial, and temporal referents presuppose as their very condition is in itself a comic absurdity. Yet their use can also work to contravene this dissociation, producing the opposite effects of fellow feeling and connection. To wit: who among us hasn’t uttered the phrases depicted in I’m Completely Exhausted (1976), Let’s Be Realistic (1976), or It’s About Time (1981)? These glimmers of recognition, in which we can imagine ourselves in Ruscha’s linguistic orbit, allow the intimacy to which the joke-teller aspires. Since the act of analysis puts mirth at risk of vanishing, to analyze humor is hazardous. Perhaps this is why writers on Ruscha have largely sidestepped the subject of humor, even as they universally concede its presence in his work. Or perhaps it is simply that humor has traditionally been a marginalized art-historical topic, not least due to the difficulties of untangling its mechanisms. Whatever the reason, this is an area prime for further scrutiny. For his part, Ruscha—always generous about interpretation—has left the door open. When pressed in an interview about the possibility of intentional linguistic play in his work, he demurred at first, only then to acknowledge, “Other people have come along and pointed out various things that have surprised me, so then I think that they maybe are really a part of my whole working habit.”18
1. Ed Ruscha, in Jan Estep, “Devil Coming Down the Road: Interview with Ed Ruscha,” New Art Examiner 32, no. 6 (March 2001): 42. 2. Ruscha, quoted in Margit Rowell, Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2004), p. 19. 3. Ruscha, in “A Conversation between Walter Hopps and Edward Ruscha,” in Edward Ruscha, Romance with Liquids: Paintings 1966–1969, exh. cat. (New York: Gagosian Gallery/Rizzoli, 1993), p. 103. 4. Noël Carroll, Humour: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 17. 5. On the deadpan in Ruscha, see Hal Foster, The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 210–47. 6. One exception merits mention: Peter Schjeldahl’s “Ed Ruscha: Traffic and Laughter,” in Edward Ruscha, exh. cat. (Lyon: Musée Saint-Pierre Art Contemporain/Octobre des Arts, 1985), pp. 40–53. 7. Ruscha, quoted in Ben Hoyle, “Ed Ruscha, the Pop Painter with ‘the Coolest Gaze in American Art,’” Times (London), February 25, 2017, p. 244. 8. Debra Fried, “Rhyme Puns,” in Jonathan Culler, ed., On Puns: The Foundation of Letters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 83. 9. Dave Hickey, “Wacky Molière Lines: A Listener’s Guide to Edwerd Rew-shay,” Parkett no. 18 (1998): 28–29. 10. Debra Aarons, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 113. 11. Ruscha, in “Ed Ruscha: In Conversation with Andrew McClintock,” SFAQ (San Francisco Art Quarterly) 2, no. 5 (May– June 2016): 4. 12. Carroll, Humour, p. 25. 13. Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 41. 14. Ruscha, in Fred Fehlau, “Ed Ruscha,” Flash Art no. 138 (January–February 1988): 72. 15. Henri Bergson, “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic,” 1900, in John Morreall, ed., The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 119. 16. Ruscha, in Estep, “Devil Coming Down the Road,” p. 43; Ruscha, in Fehlau, “Ed Ruscha,” p. 71. 17. Aarons, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind, p. 45. 18. Ruscha, in Paul Karlstrom, “Interview with Edward Ruscha in His Western Avenue, Hollywood Studio” (1980–81), in Ruscha, Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, ed. Alexandra Schwartz (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2002), p. 157.
Should Last Forever (1976), The Girl Always Did Have Good Taste (1976), Kills Germs by Millions on Contract (note the malapropism—not “contact”!) (1981), and Science Is Truth Found Out (1983, 1986). Still others sound like vaguely salacious gossip, disclosed or overheard: She Caught My Attention (1975), I Plead Insanity Because I’m Just Crazy about That Little Girl (1976), Last Night . . . Wow (1981), and They Did It on Several Occasions (1981, 1983, 1984). One can’t help but notice, in the preceding examples and elsewhere, the abundance of pronouns in Ruscha’s art. Pronouns of all stripes—personal, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite—are there in profusion. As shifters—placeholder words whose meaning varies depending on context and use—pronouns introduce challenges related to those posed by Ruscha’s orphaned punch lines; they are contingent, in order to signify unequivocally, on additional frames of reference that are withheld. Some works incorporate one pronoun or several as part of a longer clause, while others consist almost entirely of pronouns: This—That (1970) and You and Me (represented in seven works). Ruscha relishes shifters, frequently presenting instances of not only personal but temporal and spatial deixis, or pointing, as well: There and Here (2007), Then and Now (1989), and Mr. Tomorrow, Mr. Yesterday (1985). Certain works that combine the categories—We’re This and We’re That, Aren’t We (1977, 1982, 1984, 1989), We’re Here—We’re There (1982), and That Was Then This Is Now (1989, 2014, 2015)—seem to lampoon the idea of circumscribing identity, time, or location. Personal pronouns in Ruscha’s drawings tap into the medium’s long-standing associations as a mode of confession. If his methods generally preempt any
94
divulging of their procedures, however, his use of pronouns serves a parallel function: he makes them obscure rather than reveal, compounding ambiguity rather than resolving it. This referential ambiguity is precisely what makes shifters, the “visual comedy of verbal humor,” fertile territory for jokes.17 The impossibility of gaining the external knowledge that Ruscha’s personal, spatial, and temporal referents presuppose as their very condition is in itself a comic absurdity. Yet their use can also work to contravene this dissociation, producing the opposite effects of fellow feeling and connection. To wit: who among us hasn’t uttered the phrases depicted in I’m Completely Exhausted (1976), Let’s Be Realistic (1976), or It’s About Time (1981)? These glimmers of recognition, in which we can imagine ourselves in Ruscha’s linguistic orbit, allow the intimacy to which the joke-teller aspires. Since the act of analysis puts mirth at risk of vanishing, to analyze humor is hazardous. Perhaps this is why writers on Ruscha have largely sidestepped the subject of humor, even as they universally concede its presence in his work. Or perhaps it is simply that humor has traditionally been a marginalized art-historical topic, not least due to the difficulties of untangling its mechanisms. Whatever the reason, this is an area prime for further scrutiny. For his part, Ruscha—always generous about interpretation—has left the door open. When pressed in an interview about the possibility of intentional linguistic play in his work, he demurred at first, only then to acknowledge, “Other people have come along and pointed out various things that have surprised me, so then I think that they maybe are really a part of my whole working habit.”18
1. Ed Ruscha, in Jan Estep, “Devil Coming Down the Road: Interview with Ed Ruscha,” New Art Examiner 32, no. 6 (March 2001): 42. 2. Ruscha, quoted in Margit Rowell, Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2004), p. 19. 3. Ruscha, in “A Conversation between Walter Hopps and Edward Ruscha,” in Edward Ruscha, Romance with Liquids: Paintings 1966–1969, exh. cat. (New York: Gagosian Gallery/Rizzoli, 1993), p. 103. 4. Noël Carroll, Humour: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 17. 5. On the deadpan in Ruscha, see Hal Foster, The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 210–47. 6. One exception merits mention: Peter Schjeldahl’s “Ed Ruscha: Traffic and Laughter,” in Edward Ruscha, exh. cat. (Lyon: Musée Saint-Pierre Art Contemporain/Octobre des Arts, 1985), pp. 40–53. 7. Ruscha, quoted in Ben Hoyle, “Ed Ruscha, the Pop Painter with ‘the Coolest Gaze in American Art,’” Times (London), February 25, 2017, p. 244. 8. Debra Fried, “Rhyme Puns,” in Jonathan Culler, ed., On Puns: The Foundation of Letters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 83. 9. Dave Hickey, “Wacky Molière Lines: A Listener’s Guide to Edwerd Rew-shay,” Parkett no. 18 (1998): 28–29. 10. Debra Aarons, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 113. 11. Ruscha, in “Ed Ruscha: In Conversation with Andrew McClintock,” SFAQ (San Francisco Art Quarterly) 2, no. 5 (May– June 2016): 4. 12. Carroll, Humour, p. 25. 13. Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 41. 14. Ruscha, in Fred Fehlau, “Ed Ruscha,” Flash Art no. 138 (January–February 1988): 72. 15. Henri Bergson, “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic,” 1900, in John Morreall, ed., The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 119. 16. Ruscha, in Estep, “Devil Coming Down the Road,” p. 43; Ruscha, in Fehlau, “Ed Ruscha,” p. 71. 17. Aarons, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind, p. 45. 18. Ruscha, in Paul Karlstrom, “Interview with Edward Ruscha in His Western Avenue, Hollywood Studio” (1980–81), in Ruscha, Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, ed. Alexandra Schwartz (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2002), p. 157.
FROM THE POLAROID AND BACK AGAIN On the occasion of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Andy Warhol retrospective, Jessica Beck, the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, considers the artist’s career-spanning use of Polaroid photography as part of his more expansive practice.
FROM THE POLAROID AND BACK AGAIN On the occasion of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Andy Warhol retrospective, Jessica Beck, the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, considers the artist’s career-spanning use of Polaroid photography as part of his more expansive practice.
Previous spread (all images): Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top left: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Ileana Sonnabend, and Unidentified Man, 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top right: Andy Warhol, Ed Wallowitch, 1958, Polaroid Type 42, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom left: Andy Warhol, Shoes, 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom right: Andy Warhol, Edwin Denby, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Right: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1958, Polaroid Type 42, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
T
he scholarship and exhibition history of Andy Warhol’s work have broken up his practice into different acts: the celebrated 1960s; the portrait commissions of the 1970s, after he was shot; and the final decade, which in terms of art criticism remains one of the most unresolved. Scholars too tend to segment Warhol’s practice by medium, rather than showing the interconnectedness that Warhol created between photography and painting. While the artist’s shooting, by Valerie Solanas in 1968, contributed to a rupture in his intense productivity throughout most of the 1960s, a consistent grammar persisted at the core of his work, a pattern circulating around ideas of instantaneity, a progress toward the new, and an embrace of the moment. Warhol’s practice is fundamentally tied to the use of new technology, the sociopolitical climate, and the popular culture of his time. One might wonder, then, why interest in his work prevails over decades of shifting styles and trends. He made art from his surroundings and created a social practice that involved recording and documenting interactions at parties and in his studio. He let us in on his working methods and set a precedent for our contemporary fixation on recording, posting, and sharing details of our lives with strangers online. Warhol’s principal tools for evading the grip of history were his camera and his use of photography. As a tool for recording, the camera became a means of staving off death and forgetfulness and left a treasure trove of memories and moments that continue to tell stories of his past and to unlock insight into his art.
Photography is in fact the one constant throughout Warhol’s career. Beginning with a Kodak Brownie when he was a boy, Warhol experimented with and collected cameras throughout his life. The Polaroid camera, with its ability to produce a photograph instantly, became a constant companion in the studio, as a tool for his painting process, and at social outings, as a party trick with friends, socialites, and celebrities. While Warhol worked with many different cameras, he gravitated toward models that were easy to use and handle—the Minox 35 EL, for example, which he enjoyed throughout his final decade—or could produce images immediately or quickly, such as the Polaroid Big Shot, which he used primarily in the early ’70s. His enormous archive of unexplored audiocassettes, video diaries of the Factory, television episodes, and the surprisingly revealing yet overlooked early Polaroids expose his constant penchant for recording his life and work. Hundreds of early Polaroids taken between 1961 and 1963 reveal his intimate partnerships, the social nature of his work, and his practical use of photos to generate drawings. They also demonstrate an early signature style that he returned to a decade later, in 1970, when his Polaroid and painting practices resparked. In fact Warhol’s commissioned portraits, a large part of his work throughout the 1970s, began with Polaroids, a technique originating when he drew and traced images from his Polaroids in the early 1960s. The stories embedded in his Polaroids tie the Warhol narrative together—a narrative that sits outside the conventional art history that insists on dividing his practice.
Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and its film, had conceived of the process during a trip to Santa Fe with his young daughter, who asked why she couldn’t see a photo he had taken of her right away. His invention, one of the first cameras to produce a photographic print more or less immediately—developing time was sixty seconds— was first marketed in 1948, and his hope for it, he said, was that it would offer amateurs “a feeling of personal identification with the world in a way that photography has always hoped to do.”1 This sense of personal identification, and this fascination with seeing and sharing a moment immediately, lie at the very core of much of Warhol’s work. The fact that a Polaroid could be shared gave the process a social aspect, and the camera was democratic: any amateur could perfect its point-and-shoot method, and one click to open the hatch on the back made the printed image appear like a magic trick. By 1962, the Polaroid had become for Warhol a tool of self-portraiture, documentation of domestic gatherings and erotic encounters, and source material for a new abstract drawing process. At the time, the camera was advertised heavily on television and in printed media. Although the Polaroid company marketed its camera as fast and simple, in the early stages of production the device had one unresolved issue: preserving the print from exposure to light and air. In 1951, black-and-white packages included a new tool, a print coater—a small, wandlike tube soaked in a fixer fluid that gave the image longterm stability. Fixing the film, though, was a messy and smelly process that involved rubbing the print with this pungent solution and then polishing it to 99
Previous spread (all images): Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top left: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Ileana Sonnabend, and Unidentified Man, 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top right: Andy Warhol, Ed Wallowitch, 1958, Polaroid Type 42, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom left: Andy Warhol, Shoes, 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom right: Andy Warhol, Edwin Denby, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Right: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1958, Polaroid Type 42, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
T
he scholarship and exhibition history of Andy Warhol’s work have broken up his practice into different acts: the celebrated 1960s; the portrait commissions of the 1970s, after he was shot; and the final decade, which in terms of art criticism remains one of the most unresolved. Scholars too tend to segment Warhol’s practice by medium, rather than showing the interconnectedness that Warhol created between photography and painting. While the artist’s shooting, by Valerie Solanas in 1968, contributed to a rupture in his intense productivity throughout most of the 1960s, a consistent grammar persisted at the core of his work, a pattern circulating around ideas of instantaneity, a progress toward the new, and an embrace of the moment. Warhol’s practice is fundamentally tied to the use of new technology, the sociopolitical climate, and the popular culture of his time. One might wonder, then, why interest in his work prevails over decades of shifting styles and trends. He made art from his surroundings and created a social practice that involved recording and documenting interactions at parties and in his studio. He let us in on his working methods and set a precedent for our contemporary fixation on recording, posting, and sharing details of our lives with strangers online. Warhol’s principal tools for evading the grip of history were his camera and his use of photography. As a tool for recording, the camera became a means of staving off death and forgetfulness and left a treasure trove of memories and moments that continue to tell stories of his past and to unlock insight into his art.
Photography is in fact the one constant throughout Warhol’s career. Beginning with a Kodak Brownie when he was a boy, Warhol experimented with and collected cameras throughout his life. The Polaroid camera, with its ability to produce a photograph instantly, became a constant companion in the studio, as a tool for his painting process, and at social outings, as a party trick with friends, socialites, and celebrities. While Warhol worked with many different cameras, he gravitated toward models that were easy to use and handle—the Minox 35 EL, for example, which he enjoyed throughout his final decade—or could produce images immediately or quickly, such as the Polaroid Big Shot, which he used primarily in the early ’70s. His enormous archive of unexplored audiocassettes, video diaries of the Factory, television episodes, and the surprisingly revealing yet overlooked early Polaroids expose his constant penchant for recording his life and work. Hundreds of early Polaroids taken between 1961 and 1963 reveal his intimate partnerships, the social nature of his work, and his practical use of photos to generate drawings. They also demonstrate an early signature style that he returned to a decade later, in 1970, when his Polaroid and painting practices resparked. In fact Warhol’s commissioned portraits, a large part of his work throughout the 1970s, began with Polaroids, a technique originating when he drew and traced images from his Polaroids in the early 1960s. The stories embedded in his Polaroids tie the Warhol narrative together—a narrative that sits outside the conventional art history that insists on dividing his practice.
Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and its film, had conceived of the process during a trip to Santa Fe with his young daughter, who asked why she couldn’t see a photo he had taken of her right away. His invention, one of the first cameras to produce a photographic print more or less immediately—developing time was sixty seconds— was first marketed in 1948, and his hope for it, he said, was that it would offer amateurs “a feeling of personal identification with the world in a way that photography has always hoped to do.”1 This sense of personal identification, and this fascination with seeing and sharing a moment immediately, lie at the very core of much of Warhol’s work. The fact that a Polaroid could be shared gave the process a social aspect, and the camera was democratic: any amateur could perfect its point-and-shoot method, and one click to open the hatch on the back made the printed image appear like a magic trick. By 1962, the Polaroid had become for Warhol a tool of self-portraiture, documentation of domestic gatherings and erotic encounters, and source material for a new abstract drawing process. At the time, the camera was advertised heavily on television and in printed media. Although the Polaroid company marketed its camera as fast and simple, in the early stages of production the device had one unresolved issue: preserving the print from exposure to light and air. In 1951, black-and-white packages included a new tool, a print coater—a small, wandlike tube soaked in a fixer fluid that gave the image longterm stability. Fixing the film, though, was a messy and smelly process that involved rubbing the print with this pungent solution and then polishing it to 99
This page: Edward Wallowitch, Andy Warhol, c. 1950s, chromogenic color print, 8 × 10 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top left: Andy Warhol, Holly Woodlawn, 1971, Polaroid Type 107, 4 ¼ × 3 3⁄8 inches (10.8 × 8.6 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top right: Andy Warhol, Male Torso, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom left: Andy Warhol, Still-Life (Toilet), 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom right: Andy Warhol, Still-Life (Toilet), 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
remove fingerprints or dust. The archives of the Andy Warhol Museum contain Polaroids from this period that maintain the deep blacks and grays of the print, but others are heavily yellowed or covered with fingerprints, suggesting that they were never fixed after printing and were passed around when wet. Still others were fixed incompletely, so that only parts of the original image remain intact. Given the number of Warhol’s Polaroids showing yellowing and fingerprints, Warhol seems either to have lost his print coater or found using it cumbersome or disagreeable. These qualities might also explain why researchers have so consistently overlooked the nearly 300 Polaroids prints in the archives. The first major exhibition on Warhol’s photographic practice, Andy Warhol: Photography, at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 1999, omitted these early Polaroids entirely from both the checklist and the catalogue essays. While the scholarship within remains important, it does overlook the early connections between Warhol’s social circles and career aspirations and instant photography. Warhol’s townhouse at 1342 Lexington Avenue, which he shared with his mother, Julia, was part art storage, part living space, and part salon. In 1962 and ’63, Warhol used a Polaroid Land camera to photograph visitors to his studio—artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist; writers such as Charles Henri Ford, Walasse Ting, and Edwin Denby; curators and art dealers including Henry Geldzahler and Ileana Sonnabend; and his own lovers Ed Wallowitch and John Giorno. In Popism, Warhol’s first autobiography, Warhol recounts 100
visits by collectors and curators and confesses his hopes of courting the gallerist Leo Castelli and his aspirations to fitting in with the rising stars Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. As he shared his earliest silk-screen paintings with many of these artworld insiders, he repeatedly took out his Polaroid Land camera and took photos that he immediately shared with his guests, like a party trick. Denby is pictured smiling widely, reviewing a curling photo fresh from the camera. Art dealer Virginia Dwan and artist Ed Kienholz are photographed on a sofa sharing Warhol’s Polaroids. Castelli and his gallery director Ivan Karp, and artists Larry Poons and Ray Johnson, are all recorded in Warhol’s townhouse with curling Polaroids in their hands. A photograph of Rauschenberg on the couch with Sonnabend records a visit in September of 1962, when Warhol showed Rauschenberg his first silk-screen prints. The visit inspired Rauschenberg’s shift from his painstaking solvent-transfer process—in which, as Warhol and Pat Hackett wrote in Popism, he transferred images “by putting lighter fluid on magazine and newspaper illustrations and then rubbing it onto the paper”—to the more streamlined screenprint technique, medium of some of his most iconic works.2 Warhol used the Polaroid to record these visits but he also took more private pictures with the camera, showing either intimate partners or sexual encounters. These two forms of intimacy are pictured very differently in the photographs. Images of his early lover Wallowitch, for instance, capture a sweetness or shyness between the two; Wallowitch’s photographs of Warhol, similarly,
are among those that show him at his most vulnerable. Wallowitch was one of the closest people to Warhol during the artist’s first decade in New York. A photographer himself, and a rising star, he was represented in Edward Steichen’s legendary Family of Man exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955, and was the youngest photographer to have work acquired by the same museum. In the early 1950s, he shot strikingly vulnerable and tender photographs of Warhol, his lens often mere inches from the young artist’s face, or positioned above him as he lay on the ground. Wallowitch must have been standing over Warhol, perhaps even straddling his shoulders. As early as 1957, Wallowitch’s photographs became source material for Warhol’s canvases of young children and for drawings of elderly women and men at the automat. The close relationship between the two men might have slipped out of history but for these intimate photographs; Warhol makes very little reference to Wallowitch in The Andy Warhol Diaries or Popism. And while Wallowitch’s lens makes plain the emotional intimacy between the two, Warhol’s Polaroids of Wallowitch are much more distant. Warhol expressed desire much more overtly in a series of images of men posing on toilets, naked or suggestively unzipping their trousers. The Polaroid was in many ways perfect for the intimacy of closeted eroticism. With its instant process, no contact sheets had to be sent to a developing lab, and desire could be exchanged freely. Warhol’s images of unidentified men urinating, posing with an erection, exposing a bare behind to the camera, or playing suggestively with such props as a glass Coke bottle
This page: Edward Wallowitch, Andy Warhol, c. 1950s, chromogenic color print, 8 × 10 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top left: Andy Warhol, Holly Woodlawn, 1971, Polaroid Type 107, 4 ¼ × 3 3⁄8 inches (10.8 × 8.6 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, top right: Andy Warhol, Male Torso, 1963, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom left: Andy Warhol, Still-Life (Toilet), 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Opposite, bottom right: Andy Warhol, Still-Life (Toilet), 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
remove fingerprints or dust. The archives of the Andy Warhol Museum contain Polaroids from this period that maintain the deep blacks and grays of the print, but others are heavily yellowed or covered with fingerprints, suggesting that they were never fixed after printing and were passed around when wet. Still others were fixed incompletely, so that only parts of the original image remain intact. Given the number of Warhol’s Polaroids showing yellowing and fingerprints, Warhol seems either to have lost his print coater or found using it cumbersome or disagreeable. These qualities might also explain why researchers have so consistently overlooked the nearly 300 Polaroids prints in the archives. The first major exhibition on Warhol’s photographic practice, Andy Warhol: Photography, at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 1999, omitted these early Polaroids entirely from both the checklist and the catalogue essays. While the scholarship within remains important, it does overlook the early connections between Warhol’s social circles and career aspirations and instant photography. Warhol’s townhouse at 1342 Lexington Avenue, which he shared with his mother, Julia, was part art storage, part living space, and part salon. In 1962 and ’63, Warhol used a Polaroid Land camera to photograph visitors to his studio—artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist; writers such as Charles Henri Ford, Walasse Ting, and Edwin Denby; curators and art dealers including Henry Geldzahler and Ileana Sonnabend; and his own lovers Ed Wallowitch and John Giorno. In Popism, Warhol’s first autobiography, Warhol recounts 100
visits by collectors and curators and confesses his hopes of courting the gallerist Leo Castelli and his aspirations to fitting in with the rising stars Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. As he shared his earliest silk-screen paintings with many of these artworld insiders, he repeatedly took out his Polaroid Land camera and took photos that he immediately shared with his guests, like a party trick. Denby is pictured smiling widely, reviewing a curling photo fresh from the camera. Art dealer Virginia Dwan and artist Ed Kienholz are photographed on a sofa sharing Warhol’s Polaroids. Castelli and his gallery director Ivan Karp, and artists Larry Poons and Ray Johnson, are all recorded in Warhol’s townhouse with curling Polaroids in their hands. A photograph of Rauschenberg on the couch with Sonnabend records a visit in September of 1962, when Warhol showed Rauschenberg his first silk-screen prints. The visit inspired Rauschenberg’s shift from his painstaking solvent-transfer process—in which, as Warhol and Pat Hackett wrote in Popism, he transferred images “by putting lighter fluid on magazine and newspaper illustrations and then rubbing it onto the paper”—to the more streamlined screenprint technique, medium of some of his most iconic works.2 Warhol used the Polaroid to record these visits but he also took more private pictures with the camera, showing either intimate partners or sexual encounters. These two forms of intimacy are pictured very differently in the photographs. Images of his early lover Wallowitch, for instance, capture a sweetness or shyness between the two; Wallowitch’s photographs of Warhol, similarly,
are among those that show him at his most vulnerable. Wallowitch was one of the closest people to Warhol during the artist’s first decade in New York. A photographer himself, and a rising star, he was represented in Edward Steichen’s legendary Family of Man exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955, and was the youngest photographer to have work acquired by the same museum. In the early 1950s, he shot strikingly vulnerable and tender photographs of Warhol, his lens often mere inches from the young artist’s face, or positioned above him as he lay on the ground. Wallowitch must have been standing over Warhol, perhaps even straddling his shoulders. As early as 1957, Wallowitch’s photographs became source material for Warhol’s canvases of young children and for drawings of elderly women and men at the automat. The close relationship between the two men might have slipped out of history but for these intimate photographs; Warhol makes very little reference to Wallowitch in The Andy Warhol Diaries or Popism. And while Wallowitch’s lens makes plain the emotional intimacy between the two, Warhol’s Polaroids of Wallowitch are much more distant. Warhol expressed desire much more overtly in a series of images of men posing on toilets, naked or suggestively unzipping their trousers. The Polaroid was in many ways perfect for the intimacy of closeted eroticism. With its instant process, no contact sheets had to be sent to a developing lab, and desire could be exchanged freely. Warhol’s images of unidentified men urinating, posing with an erection, exposing a bare behind to the camera, or playing suggestively with such props as a glass Coke bottle
Opposite (all images): Andy Warhol, Bea Feitler, 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Right: Andy Warhol, Natalie Wood, c. 1962, graphite on Strathmore paper, 28 ¾ × 23 1⁄8 inches (73 × 58.7 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
picture fetish and eroticism directly. There are also photographs of toilets, an object with a particular resonance for closeted homosexual encounters. In the 1950s, gay sex was known to happen in public toilets, in “tearoom trade” as it was known in the United States, or “cottaging” in Britain. The public toilet was a place for gay, single, closeted, black and white men to engage in public sex.3 This connection recurs in the 1970s works shown in Warhol’s first published book of photographs, Exposures (1979). In many ways Warhol’s early Polaroids of artworld elites, and even his images of toilets, mirror the photographs he chose for Exposures. Originally titled Social Disease, Exposures repeats many tropes of the Polaroids of 1962–63. Reflecting Warhol’s shift of focus in the 1970s from the avantgarde to popular stardom, art-world insiders are swapped out for celebrities, designers, and musicians; the social patterns remain the same. The reference to gay sex also endures. The first lines of the book in many ways reference the nature of disease and risk involved in tearoom trade: Warhol writes, “I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.” The early Polaroids reveal Warhol’s burgeoning social circle but also mark a shift in his drawing practice, from his commercially successful blotted-line style to the more abstract, gestural line that he eventually brought to the canvas in paintings such as Coca-Cola (2) and Campbell ’s Soup Can (Tomato Rice). During this moment of transition, in 1961, Warhol was formulating a language that was no longer directly attached to commissioned
advertisement work. This new image language involved a series of gestural lines, a line suggesting abstraction—the dominant approach of the era— and movement. In 1961, Warhol made drawings that he sourced from newspapers and from Wallowitch’s photographs, but he also worked from his own Polaroids to draw shoes, cosmetics, and MJB coffee cans in this new gestural style. A group of the Polaroids from this period reveals a direct connection to these drawings. Mixed in with the nearly 300 Polaroids of friends, lovers, collectors, and others is a handful of images of still life objects, some showing a Campbell’s soup can with a ripped label, others a pair of men’s shoes set on white paper (with Warhol standing over them), and others a can of MJB coffee. All of these were used as sources for drawings. There is also a surprising number of Polaroids— twenty-one, nearly three rolls of film—of a striking, dark-haired young woman sitting in a wingedback chair. In many of the photographs her eyes are closed or her head is tilted to the side, but in several this unidentified subject makes direct eye contact with the camera, as shadows catch the corners of the chair, softening and darkening her features. In one of these Polaroids, pen marks trace the outline of her figure, and in another, a white grease pen has been used to extend the open V neck of her dress, dramatizing her cleavage. Warhol turned this Polaroid into a drawing, now in the Andy Warhol Museum, where it has been mislabeled for two decades as a portrait of the actress Natalie Wood. Having made a quick sketch from the Polaroid, Warhol added abstract pencil marks and gestural
lines, details pointing to his early interest in using a Polaroid as part of his drawing process and a departure from the blotted line, the signature style of his commercial commissions. Over ten years later, Warhol used the Polaroid yet again to create a new approach to his artistic practice. His use of the Polaroid in his drawing and painting practice, then, started as early as 1961; furthermore, he carried forward this grammar of image-making into his renewed interest in Polaroids as the source for his portrait commissions nearly a decade later. In 1968, Warhol was shot by Solanas. He underwent long surgery and would suffer physical pain for the rest of his life. After this near-death experience, Warhol stepped away from the canvas and from silk-screen printing for a period. In 1969, in an effort to encourage him to reconnect with painting and produce sellable work, as any good manager is wont to do, Fred Hughes began to encourage him to paint commissioned portraits. 4 It was, in fact, the Polaroid Big Shot camera that reinvigorated his painting practice and his return to the canvas. As in his early days, this camera allowed him to make the commission process interactive by sharing the Polaroid with the sitter on the spot. In this way Warhol could make edits with the sitter, making immediate adjustments of pose, hair, makeup, and lighting. This editing in situ also helped him to develop a relationship with the sitter, so that, in a sense, he gained not only a commission but also a lasting social connection to advance his name and career—a process not far from his use of the Polaroid with artists, dealers, and collectors at his townhouse in 1962 and ’63. Further, this new process 103
Opposite (all images): Andy Warhol, Bea Feitler, 1962, Polaroid Type 47, 4 ¼ × 3 ¼ inches (10.8 × 8.3 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Right: Andy Warhol, Natalie Wood, c. 1962, graphite on Strathmore paper, 28 ¾ × 23 1⁄8 inches (73 × 58.7 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
picture fetish and eroticism directly. There are also photographs of toilets, an object with a particular resonance for closeted homosexual encounters. In the 1950s, gay sex was known to happen in public toilets, in “tearoom trade” as it was known in the United States, or “cottaging” in Britain. The public toilet was a place for gay, single, closeted, black and white men to engage in public sex.3 This connection recurs in the 1970s works shown in Warhol’s first published book of photographs, Exposures (1979). In many ways Warhol’s early Polaroids of artworld elites, and even his images of toilets, mirror the photographs he chose for Exposures. Originally titled Social Disease, Exposures repeats many tropes of the Polaroids of 1962–63. Reflecting Warhol’s shift of focus in the 1970s from the avantgarde to popular stardom, art-world insiders are swapped out for celebrities, designers, and musicians; the social patterns remain the same. The reference to gay sex also endures. The first lines of the book in many ways reference the nature of disease and risk involved in tearoom trade: Warhol writes, “I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.” The early Polaroids reveal Warhol’s burgeoning social circle but also mark a shift in his drawing practice, from his commercially successful blotted-line style to the more abstract, gestural line that he eventually brought to the canvas in paintings such as Coca-Cola (2) and Campbell ’s Soup Can (Tomato Rice). During this moment of transition, in 1961, Warhol was formulating a language that was no longer directly attached to commissioned
advertisement work. This new image language involved a series of gestural lines, a line suggesting abstraction—the dominant approach of the era— and movement. In 1961, Warhol made drawings that he sourced from newspapers and from Wallowitch’s photographs, but he also worked from his own Polaroids to draw shoes, cosmetics, and MJB coffee cans in this new gestural style. A group of the Polaroids from this period reveals a direct connection to these drawings. Mixed in with the nearly 300 Polaroids of friends, lovers, collectors, and others is a handful of images of still life objects, some showing a Campbell’s soup can with a ripped label, others a pair of men’s shoes set on white paper (with Warhol standing over them), and others a can of MJB coffee. All of these were used as sources for drawings. There is also a surprising number of Polaroids— twenty-one, nearly three rolls of film—of a striking, dark-haired young woman sitting in a wingedback chair. In many of the photographs her eyes are closed or her head is tilted to the side, but in several this unidentified subject makes direct eye contact with the camera, as shadows catch the corners of the chair, softening and darkening her features. In one of these Polaroids, pen marks trace the outline of her figure, and in another, a white grease pen has been used to extend the open V neck of her dress, dramatizing her cleavage. Warhol turned this Polaroid into a drawing, now in the Andy Warhol Museum, where it has been mislabeled for two decades as a portrait of the actress Natalie Wood. Having made a quick sketch from the Polaroid, Warhol added abstract pencil marks and gestural
lines, details pointing to his early interest in using a Polaroid as part of his drawing process and a departure from the blotted line, the signature style of his commercial commissions. Over ten years later, Warhol used the Polaroid yet again to create a new approach to his artistic practice. His use of the Polaroid in his drawing and painting practice, then, started as early as 1961; furthermore, he carried forward this grammar of image-making into his renewed interest in Polaroids as the source for his portrait commissions nearly a decade later. In 1968, Warhol was shot by Solanas. He underwent long surgery and would suffer physical pain for the rest of his life. After this near-death experience, Warhol stepped away from the canvas and from silk-screen printing for a period. In 1969, in an effort to encourage him to reconnect with painting and produce sellable work, as any good manager is wont to do, Fred Hughes began to encourage him to paint commissioned portraits. 4 It was, in fact, the Polaroid Big Shot camera that reinvigorated his painting practice and his return to the canvas. As in his early days, this camera allowed him to make the commission process interactive by sharing the Polaroid with the sitter on the spot. In this way Warhol could make edits with the sitter, making immediate adjustments of pose, hair, makeup, and lighting. This editing in situ also helped him to develop a relationship with the sitter, so that, in a sense, he gained not only a commission but also a lasting social connection to advance his name and career—a process not far from his use of the Polaroid with artists, dealers, and collectors at his townhouse in 1962 and ’63. Further, this new process 103
Right: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait with Skull, 1977, Polaroid Polacolor Type 108, 4 1⁄4 × 3 3⁄8 inches (10.8 × 8.6 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
not only allowed Warhol to create a steady income stream but rejuvenated his connection to the canvas. As in his early use of the Polaroid, the work of the 1970s was again painting that started with the camera. Commissioned portraits dominated Warhol’s studio practice for nearly a decade and helped him to accrue a roster of society elites and social influencers among his clients. Here, in a similar fashion to his first paintings in 1961 that progressed from an abstract to a clean line, he formulated two styles of painting: one that was more minimal, with a monochrome background and a simple screenprinted photograph, and the other more abstract, with heavy brushstrokes, a range of colors and tonal differences, and at times even the marks and squiggles of the artist’s fingers. As Warhol renewed his painting practice with the Polaroid, he regained creative energy and reestablished his studio practice with new hires, a crew of young men—Ronnie Cutrone, Vincent Fremont, Bob Colacello, and eventually Christopher Makos—who could help him revive his painting, video, and commercial commissions. His habits of the 1970s and ’80s mirror, yet again, many of his earliest pursuits: books, advertising, new media such as video and television, and a near-daily obsession with taking photographs. The last decade of Warhol’s career was consumed by a habit of photo-taking that paralleled a reinvigorated interest in large-scale painting. In 1976, while on a trip to Bonn with Colacello, Warhol purchased a new camera, the Minox 35EL, according to Colacello “the smallest camera available then that took full-frame 35mm photographs.” 104
This point-and-shoot model, with a “a sleek, allblack, James Bond look,” was small enough to fit in his pocket and could be taken everywhere.5 And everywhere is where Warhol took his camera. During the next eleven years, Warhol took thousands of photographs with his new automatic camera, and his contact sheets present repetitions from the past. Over thousands of contact sheets, Warhol’s grammar and signature lexicon emerge in his focus around social occasions, eroticism, and love. The most photographed subject of these sheets is Warhol’s boyfriend Jon Gould, whom he followed closely with his camera, shooting Gould on the beach, exercising, dancing at parties, eating breakfast. Where Warhol’s earlier photos of Wallowitch had been intimate, however, in these ones the lens rarely got close—and when it did, it often caught Gould with his hand up, pushing the camera back or away. The camera can’t seem to hide the physical tensions between them, or Warhol’s insistence on concealing the intimacies of their relationship. And where earlier he had often shot in his townhouse, during this final decade he rarely photographed at home, in his private living spaces. Where the camera once revealed tenderness, it now seems to call out the walls and barriers Warhol mounted after his life-altering shooting. The world he gives us access to is highly mediated, and centered on his close proximity to the elites of fashion, Hollywood, and the music industry. A tool that once connected him to art-world insiders now became one for protecting his fame and brand. Photography was central to Warhol’s practice— it was, in fact, the principal conduit of his artistic language and ultimately the link between his
drawings and paintings. It opened doors for him in his social life and his professional career; became a crucial means of image-making for him; and gave him a means of self-fashioning that locked in over time, providing his artistic persona with an enduring afterlife. Instead of segmenting his practice into different mediums, different acts, it’s more useful to think of common threads in his work that link the decades into a single play. In some ways Warhol’s consistent use of photography is also the reason for our continued fascination with his painting. That medium has gone through a series of deaths over the last century, and Warhol dabbled with distancing himself from it at certain points, famously proclaiming he had retired from painting in 1970. Ultimately, though, he united painting and photography, often seen as formidable opponents. There is a harmony in his work between the two mediums, between the labored and the instantaneous touch. Warhol was neither a painter nor a photographer— he was both. 1. Edwin Land, quoted in Victor K. McElheny, “Edwin Herbert Land, 7 May 1909–1 March 1991,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146, no. 1 (March 2002):117. 2. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, Popism: The Warhol Sixties (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1980), p. 29. 3. See Paul B. Franklin, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and the Art of Queer Art History,” Oxford Art Journal 23, no. 1 (2000):27–29. 4. The first portrait that Warhol produced with a Polaroid camera was of art dealer Alexander Iolas. Warhol took Iolas’s portrait in Paris in 1969, using a Polaroid Land camera, then executed seven canvases in early 1970. The portrait of Iolas is Warhol’s first commissioned portrait of the 1970s. See Neil Printz and Sally King-Nero, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 3, Paintings and Sculptures 1970–1974 (New York: Phaidon Press, 2010), pp. 54–55, 72–73. 5. Bob Colacello, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, 1990 (reprint ed. New York: Vintage, 2014), p. 438.
Right: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait with Skull, 1977, Polaroid Polacolor Type 108, 4 1⁄4 × 3 3⁄8 inches (10.8 × 8.6 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
not only allowed Warhol to create a steady income stream but rejuvenated his connection to the canvas. As in his early use of the Polaroid, the work of the 1970s was again painting that started with the camera. Commissioned portraits dominated Warhol’s studio practice for nearly a decade and helped him to accrue a roster of society elites and social influencers among his clients. Here, in a similar fashion to his first paintings in 1961 that progressed from an abstract to a clean line, he formulated two styles of painting: one that was more minimal, with a monochrome background and a simple screenprinted photograph, and the other more abstract, with heavy brushstrokes, a range of colors and tonal differences, and at times even the marks and squiggles of the artist’s fingers. As Warhol renewed his painting practice with the Polaroid, he regained creative energy and reestablished his studio practice with new hires, a crew of young men—Ronnie Cutrone, Vincent Fremont, Bob Colacello, and eventually Christopher Makos—who could help him revive his painting, video, and commercial commissions. His habits of the 1970s and ’80s mirror, yet again, many of his earliest pursuits: books, advertising, new media such as video and television, and a near-daily obsession with taking photographs. The last decade of Warhol’s career was consumed by a habit of photo-taking that paralleled a reinvigorated interest in large-scale painting. In 1976, while on a trip to Bonn with Colacello, Warhol purchased a new camera, the Minox 35EL, according to Colacello “the smallest camera available then that took full-frame 35mm photographs.” 104
This point-and-shoot model, with a “a sleek, allblack, James Bond look,” was small enough to fit in his pocket and could be taken everywhere.5 And everywhere is where Warhol took his camera. During the next eleven years, Warhol took thousands of photographs with his new automatic camera, and his contact sheets present repetitions from the past. Over thousands of contact sheets, Warhol’s grammar and signature lexicon emerge in his focus around social occasions, eroticism, and love. The most photographed subject of these sheets is Warhol’s boyfriend Jon Gould, whom he followed closely with his camera, shooting Gould on the beach, exercising, dancing at parties, eating breakfast. Where Warhol’s earlier photos of Wallowitch had been intimate, however, in these ones the lens rarely got close—and when it did, it often caught Gould with his hand up, pushing the camera back or away. The camera can’t seem to hide the physical tensions between them, or Warhol’s insistence on concealing the intimacies of their relationship. And where earlier he had often shot in his townhouse, during this final decade he rarely photographed at home, in his private living spaces. Where the camera once revealed tenderness, it now seems to call out the walls and barriers Warhol mounted after his life-altering shooting. The world he gives us access to is highly mediated, and centered on his close proximity to the elites of fashion, Hollywood, and the music industry. A tool that once connected him to art-world insiders now became one for protecting his fame and brand. Photography was central to Warhol’s practice— it was, in fact, the principal conduit of his artistic language and ultimately the link between his
drawings and paintings. It opened doors for him in his social life and his professional career; became a crucial means of image-making for him; and gave him a means of self-fashioning that locked in over time, providing his artistic persona with an enduring afterlife. Instead of segmenting his practice into different mediums, different acts, it’s more useful to think of common threads in his work that link the decades into a single play. In some ways Warhol’s consistent use of photography is also the reason for our continued fascination with his painting. That medium has gone through a series of deaths over the last century, and Warhol dabbled with distancing himself from it at certain points, famously proclaiming he had retired from painting in 1970. Ultimately, though, he united painting and photography, often seen as formidable opponents. There is a harmony in his work between the two mediums, between the labored and the instantaneous touch. Warhol was neither a painter nor a photographer— he was both. 1. Edwin Land, quoted in Victor K. McElheny, “Edwin Herbert Land, 7 May 1909–1 March 1991,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146, no. 1 (March 2002):117. 2. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, Popism: The Warhol Sixties (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1980), p. 29. 3. See Paul B. Franklin, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and the Art of Queer Art History,” Oxford Art Journal 23, no. 1 (2000):27–29. 4. The first portrait that Warhol produced with a Polaroid camera was of art dealer Alexander Iolas. Warhol took Iolas’s portrait in Paris in 1969, using a Polaroid Land camera, then executed seven canvases in early 1970. The portrait of Iolas is Warhol’s first commissioned portrait of the 1970s. See Neil Printz and Sally King-Nero, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 3, Paintings and Sculptures 1970–1974 (New York: Phaidon Press, 2010), pp. 54–55, 72–73. 5. Bob Colacello, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, 1990 (reprint ed. New York: Vintage, 2014), p. 438.
the lives of the artists iv
It was believed that a spirit named Rock Baby dwelt in the rock and made rock paintings. If one returned to a rock art site and found that more images had appeared, they were said to be the handiwork of Rock Baby. If one touched a rock painting and then rubbed one’s eyes, sleeplessness and death could result. The images thus possessed inherent power . . . they were not merely pictures. —David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, 2002 She has no word for memory. No one knows what memory is. Something happened, then it stopped. Then something else happened. Or didn’t. Or the same thing happened again. Each moment is only itself. Here was one thing that happened: they didn’t know which animals tasted good. So they killed them all. Ant hill. Tree. Red rock. Dead tree. Big root. River bed. Tree. She knows the way out, and then the way back, how to leave and come home. Another thing happened just before: the grasses were taller than she was. She ran. She heard voices calling her. She ran. The women thought she’d been killed by an animal, then eaten or not eaten, depending on how she tasted. The men thought she’d been eaten by an animal. Everyone wondered which animals tasted good. No one was allowed to paint on the walls. Someone drew a tiger, and one man had a dream and then every man had the same dream. In their dreams the tiger came alive at night and jumped off the walls and ate them while they slept. The women dreamed that the animals on the walls roared so loud and all night, every night, that no one could sleep, not ever, and so they all died. After those dreams they had to move to a clean place, a new place, with nothing on the walls. They believed that they had to move. But why? It wasn’t what Rock Baby wanted. Rock Baby wanted to speak. Rock Baby waited. After the first time the animals came to her, and surrounded her, and let themselves be killed for her, the others let her do what she wanted. She was the only one allowed to paint on the walls. That was how she met Rock Baby, but Rock Baby already knew her. Rock Baby knew her from before. Rock Baby had been watching her. Rock Baby made the animals come.
francine prose
This was what happened: she ran and got tired and stopped. She smelled the animals before she saw them. She closed her eyes. The smell got stronger. One animal came, then another, another. They sniffed her hands and rubbed up against her. She smelled them and felt their
the lives of the artists iv
It was believed that a spirit named Rock Baby dwelt in the rock and made rock paintings. If one returned to a rock art site and found that more images had appeared, they were said to be the handiwork of Rock Baby. If one touched a rock painting and then rubbed one’s eyes, sleeplessness and death could result. The images thus possessed inherent power . . . they were not merely pictures. —David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, 2002 She has no word for memory. No one knows what memory is. Something happened, then it stopped. Then something else happened. Or didn’t. Or the same thing happened again. Each moment is only itself. Here was one thing that happened: they didn’t know which animals tasted good. So they killed them all. Ant hill. Tree. Red rock. Dead tree. Big root. River bed. Tree. She knows the way out, and then the way back, how to leave and come home. Another thing happened just before: the grasses were taller than she was. She ran. She heard voices calling her. She ran. The women thought she’d been killed by an animal, then eaten or not eaten, depending on how she tasted. The men thought she’d been eaten by an animal. Everyone wondered which animals tasted good. No one was allowed to paint on the walls. Someone drew a tiger, and one man had a dream and then every man had the same dream. In their dreams the tiger came alive at night and jumped off the walls and ate them while they slept. The women dreamed that the animals on the walls roared so loud and all night, every night, that no one could sleep, not ever, and so they all died. After those dreams they had to move to a clean place, a new place, with nothing on the walls. They believed that they had to move. But why? It wasn’t what Rock Baby wanted. Rock Baby wanted to speak. Rock Baby waited. After the first time the animals came to her, and surrounded her, and let themselves be killed for her, the others let her do what she wanted. She was the only one allowed to paint on the walls. That was how she met Rock Baby, but Rock Baby already knew her. Rock Baby knew her from before. Rock Baby had been watching her. Rock Baby made the animals come.
francine prose
This was what happened: she ran and got tired and stopped. She smelled the animals before she saw them. She closed her eyes. The smell got stronger. One animal came, then another, another. They sniffed her hands and rubbed up against her. She smelled them and felt their
hot sticky breath. Then she fell asleep. When she woke, the animals were all there, surrounding her, all of them gathered around her. Some were sleeping, some grazing, some nursing their young, some staring at her with their deep wet eyes. The big brown furry ones with the hooves and curved horns, the curly tails and pointy chins. The shy thin golden ones also with curved horns, the black and white ones, the long-necked blotchy ones, the pink birds, the bird with the rat in its beak, the golden ones that roared, the big black cats with the blue eyes, the ones who looked like us, who had faces like us. The animals trusted her. They were friendly and curious. None of them had ever seen a little girl. Not one. Or maybe the birds, but from too high up in the sky to know what kind of creature she was. She knew not to be afraid. They made grunts and wheezes and rumblings. Squawks. They were telling her not to be frightened, but she knew that. They were the ones who should have been afraid, but none of them knew that. None of them knew, not even her. She and the animals weren’t asleep. Nor were they awake. She heard the voices calling her, voices sliding over the sand, the noise of their feet like bad weather, or some disturbance deep in the earth. She told the animals to run away, but they wouldn’t. She closed her eyes. She heard people shouting, animals screaming. She opened her eyes and saw the women killing the animals because they thought they would hurt her. The men killed them because they were afraid they would hurt her and also because they didn’t know which ones tasted good. They killed them because they didn’t know which ones were good to eat, so they killed them all. The people had been hungry, but now they had plenty to eat. All because of her. Because of this thing she could do. Making the animals appear. She had made the animals come. She’d made them come to her. After that they had plenty of food. More than they could eat. The cooking-meat smell was delicious. She was the only one who couldn’t eat. Her head was hot. She shook with cold. She slept and dreamed and saw the animals. Still alive. Not yet food. The animals told her they didn’t mind, but she didn’t believe them. It happened again. Ant hill. Tree. Red rock. Dead tree. Big root. River bed. Tree. She didn’t know if the animals were the same or different. They had to be different. Did they know the dead ones? She didn’t know what made her run. Maybe because she was hungry. This time, when they found her, no one thought that the animals were going to hurt her. Now they knew which ones tasted good. They killed them all anyway. Why not? The people were scared of the animals. They feasted without her again.
After that she could do what she wanted. She could call the animals: food. All at once, in one place. No one had to go out hunting, looking for them. She found the animals. They found her. Now she didn’t have to go out when the others went out. She could leave and come back when she wanted, though now someone followed her to see if the animals came. Sometimes the animals did come, sometimes they didn’t. They came when she was hungry, but then she couldn’t eat. When the animals came, they killed them. There was nothing she could do. The thing that she was sorry for was that it happened more than once. Once, and then again. Her body changed and changed again. None of the men would touch her. One night Rock Baby said: Wake up. The rocks were glowing, casting a beam of light across the ground, over the sleepers. Rock Baby said: Follow the light. A pile of red dust shone in the moonlight. Rock Baby said: Scoop it up in your palm. Spit in your hand. Now listen to what I’m saying. The first time it was just her hand. Rock Baby told her to spread the paste all over her hand and press it flat against the wall. She did it again and again and again. It wasn’t till they built a fire that she and the others saw what she had done. Her hands were all over the walls. The red paint was still on her hand. They knew right away who’d done it. She laughed, and the others laughed too. They didn’t tell her not to. One man and then other men and a woman heard hands clapping all night, and they couldn’t sleep, and they all moved to another room, deeper away from the light. She was afraid that she’d left Rock Baby behind in the room with the hands. But one night Rock Baby said: I’m still here. That was me, clapping my hands inside the stone wall. Rock Baby woke her and said: Now. Grab a coal from the fire. The pain was so shocking she wanted to scream. She bit her hand instead. Not a live coal, Rock Baby said. A dead one, from the edge. In throwing the live coal back into the pit, she stirred up the flames. The room was unusually bright. She waited for the others to wake, but no one woke. Someone murmured, someone cried.
hot sticky breath. Then she fell asleep. When she woke, the animals were all there, surrounding her, all of them gathered around her. Some were sleeping, some grazing, some nursing their young, some staring at her with their deep wet eyes. The big brown furry ones with the hooves and curved horns, the curly tails and pointy chins. The shy thin golden ones also with curved horns, the black and white ones, the long-necked blotchy ones, the pink birds, the bird with the rat in its beak, the golden ones that roared, the big black cats with the blue eyes, the ones who looked like us, who had faces like us. The animals trusted her. They were friendly and curious. None of them had ever seen a little girl. Not one. Or maybe the birds, but from too high up in the sky to know what kind of creature she was. She knew not to be afraid. They made grunts and wheezes and rumblings. Squawks. They were telling her not to be frightened, but she knew that. They were the ones who should have been afraid, but none of them knew that. None of them knew, not even her. She and the animals weren’t asleep. Nor were they awake. She heard the voices calling her, voices sliding over the sand, the noise of their feet like bad weather, or some disturbance deep in the earth. She told the animals to run away, but they wouldn’t. She closed her eyes. She heard people shouting, animals screaming. She opened her eyes and saw the women killing the animals because they thought they would hurt her. The men killed them because they were afraid they would hurt her and also because they didn’t know which ones tasted good. They killed them because they didn’t know which ones were good to eat, so they killed them all. The people had been hungry, but now they had plenty to eat. All because of her. Because of this thing she could do. Making the animals appear. She had made the animals come. She’d made them come to her. After that they had plenty of food. More than they could eat. The cooking-meat smell was delicious. She was the only one who couldn’t eat. Her head was hot. She shook with cold. She slept and dreamed and saw the animals. Still alive. Not yet food. The animals told her they didn’t mind, but she didn’t believe them. It happened again. Ant hill. Tree. Red rock. Dead tree. Big root. River bed. Tree. She didn’t know if the animals were the same or different. They had to be different. Did they know the dead ones? She didn’t know what made her run. Maybe because she was hungry. This time, when they found her, no one thought that the animals were going to hurt her. Now they knew which ones tasted good. They killed them all anyway. Why not? The people were scared of the animals. They feasted without her again.
After that she could do what she wanted. She could call the animals: food. All at once, in one place. No one had to go out hunting, looking for them. She found the animals. They found her. Now she didn’t have to go out when the others went out. She could leave and come back when she wanted, though now someone followed her to see if the animals came. Sometimes the animals did come, sometimes they didn’t. They came when she was hungry, but then she couldn’t eat. When the animals came, they killed them. There was nothing she could do. The thing that she was sorry for was that it happened more than once. Once, and then again. Her body changed and changed again. None of the men would touch her. One night Rock Baby said: Wake up. The rocks were glowing, casting a beam of light across the ground, over the sleepers. Rock Baby said: Follow the light. A pile of red dust shone in the moonlight. Rock Baby said: Scoop it up in your palm. Spit in your hand. Now listen to what I’m saying. The first time it was just her hand. Rock Baby told her to spread the paste all over her hand and press it flat against the wall. She did it again and again and again. It wasn’t till they built a fire that she and the others saw what she had done. Her hands were all over the walls. The red paint was still on her hand. They knew right away who’d done it. She laughed, and the others laughed too. They didn’t tell her not to. One man and then other men and a woman heard hands clapping all night, and they couldn’t sleep, and they all moved to another room, deeper away from the light. She was afraid that she’d left Rock Baby behind in the room with the hands. But one night Rock Baby said: I’m still here. That was me, clapping my hands inside the stone wall. Rock Baby woke her and said: Now. Grab a coal from the fire. The pain was so shocking she wanted to scream. She bit her hand instead. Not a live coal, Rock Baby said. A dead one, from the edge. In throwing the live coal back into the pit, she stirred up the flames. The room was unusually bright. She waited for the others to wake, but no one woke. Someone murmured, someone cried.
Rock Baby said: They’re dreaming. Rock Baby told her what to do. The animals were already in the rocks. Rock Baby showed her how to find them. Here. Here. An antelope hoof. Like this: the stripes of a tiger. Here, then here: the head of a bear. Something here: a horn, another horn. Here, then here. Here, then here and again and again: a herd of bison. A bison appeared, then a bear, then an antelope. She’d seen them before. They’d surrounded her out in the wild. The bison and the antelope had been good to eat, but not the bear. They’d killed it anyway. They’d been inside the walls, and Rock Baby helped her find them. Rock Baby showed her how to find the animals inside the walls and put them on the outside of the walls, where they were no longer hidden, where they could be seen. It didn’t bring them back to life. It didn’t say she was sorry for letting it happen twice. It didn’t say if it would happen again. If she would make it happen again. It was a picture of the animals. That was all Rock Baby wanted. This time no one complained about the pictures. They weren’t just lines on the wall. They weren’t wild beasts who would jump off the walls and kill them, animals whose noise would keep them awake till they died. This time they were looking at food. Food of the past and the future. The walls were covered with animals. The bison were the color of blood. Rock Baby said: That’s all. Rock Baby said: The animals will be here. I will always be here with them. She heard Rock Baby speaking to her. She had no word for always. But she saw it, the future, as in a dream. She saw what Rock Baby meant.
“The Lives of the Artists, Part Four: Rock Baby” by Francine Prose. Copyright © 2018 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved.
Rock Baby said: They’re dreaming. Rock Baby told her what to do. The animals were already in the rocks. Rock Baby showed her how to find them. Here. Here. An antelope hoof. Like this: the stripes of a tiger. Here, then here: the head of a bear. Something here: a horn, another horn. Here, then here. Here, then here and again and again: a herd of bison. A bison appeared, then a bear, then an antelope. She’d seen them before. They’d surrounded her out in the wild. The bison and the antelope had been good to eat, but not the bear. They’d killed it anyway. They’d been inside the walls, and Rock Baby helped her find them. Rock Baby showed her how to find the animals inside the walls and put them on the outside of the walls, where they were no longer hidden, where they could be seen. It didn’t bring them back to life. It didn’t say she was sorry for letting it happen twice. It didn’t say if it would happen again. If she would make it happen again. It was a picture of the animals. That was all Rock Baby wanted. This time no one complained about the pictures. They weren’t just lines on the wall. They weren’t wild beasts who would jump off the walls and kill them, animals whose noise would keep them awake till they died. This time they were looking at food. Food of the past and the future. The walls were covered with animals. The bison were the color of blood. Rock Baby said: That’s all. Rock Baby said: The animals will be here. I will always be here with them. She heard Rock Baby speaking to her. She had no word for always. But she saw it, the future, as in a dream. She saw what Rock Baby meant.
“The Lives of the Artists, Part Four: Rock Baby” by Francine Prose. Copyright © 2018 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved.
On the occasion of Sterling Ruby: Ceramics, a traveling exhibition first hosted at the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, and on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, though March 2019, ceramics expert Garth Clark explores the artist’s practice, addressing the work’s allegiances and divergences from tradition.
112
STERLING RUBY BLOODY POTS
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On the occasion of Sterling Ruby: Ceramics, a traveling exhibition first hosted at the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, and on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, though March 2019, ceramics expert Garth Clark explores the artist’s practice, addressing the work’s allegiances and divergences from tradition.
112
STERLING RUBY BLOODY POTS
113
T
he bloodiest of Sterling Ruby’s pots is not ceramic but a teacup of Styrofoam, urethane, wood, and spray paint. Monolithic, The Cup (2013) spilleth over with so much blood that one cannot believe the donor to this event will survive. And given the meanings that have been ascribed to this sculpture, that donor is mankind. Here, the character of ceramic vessels comes into play. A coffee cup would not have had impact—it is a beverage on the fly, informal, and does not suggest the finesse, civilization, ritual, and succor that tea does. As a result, the conceptual resonance is richer, more perverse, and humanized. While The Cup is a large work, even by the standards of Ruby’s bigger sculpture, it is not giant. Nonetheless, there is an impact on the viewer when a subject known for its intimate scale, four inches high in this case, explodes in size. The monumentality becomes greater than the sum of its measurements. *** Several factors drew me to Ruby’s art. One was that his love for ceramics was not cocooned in a “special” place; his enthusiasm flowed and popped up into other aspects of his work, as, for example, in The Cup, his print Kiln #2 (2005), and the Debt Basin bronzes (2011–14). His ceramics themselves have roiled both the ceramics community and the art world. The 2014 Whitney Biennial featured three works from his Basin Theology series (2009– ); they were the most debated objects in the exhibition. Opinions depended on which planet one came from: the ceramics world has put Ruby up as a poster boy for the sloppy, mindless ceramics they see emerging from fine art; the fine-art world has largely been enthralled by his work. Indeed, New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz, writing in the magazine’s online outlet Vulture, offered these “prehistoric-like wrecked giant 114
ceramic ashtray-objects” as best in show.1 The impact of the ceramics community on the fine arts is negligible. Therefore, why even raise the issue? Because its influence is growing as more of its best are crossing over into art, and what ceramics can bring to the table should not be ignored. Fine art’s knowledge of ceramics, and of pottery in particular, is scant. Its critics often betray their poor understanding of the medium whether they write to praise or damn. Yet ceramics, over the last century, has produced an exceptional library of history and scholarship from which critics can learn. Some collaboration would benefit both sides. My particular skill set has long been to walk the middle road between the two, and this essay seeks both to explain to the ceramics world how much they misunderstand about the importance of Ruby’s work and to highlight how much the art world has yet to learn about a complex medium. One often hears of ceramics being a “recent” medium for Ruby—code for untutored mishaps. Not true. His direct studio involvement stretches back over twenty years, when he enrolled in a ceramics class to test the belief that working with clay could be a therapeutic tool. What struck him was that his fellow classmates “were not artists,” and so there was an innocence to making. Ruby did not intend ceramics as a career path but remembers, “I became fascinated with the fact that very different people were making the same type of biomorphic and anthropomorphic work. A lot of it was sexual, with holes, extensions, and everything overly glazed. Clay does give people an innate and unfettered sensibility. I loved it.”2 Ruby’s connection goes back even further. As a child, his family moved from Germany (his father was in the American military) to a farm near New Freedom, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch craftland. His Dutch mother collected ceramics, so the pot had its place as an objet
Previous spread: Installation view, Sterling Ruby: Ceramics, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, June 9– September 9, 2018. Photo by Rich Sanders
Above: Sterling Ruby, ASHTRAY 457, 2018, ceramic, 2 ½ × 16 ¼ × 14 ½ inches (6.4 × 41.3 × 36.8 cm) Opposite: Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology/The Pipe, 2013, ceramic, 39 ¾ × 43 ½ × 44 inches (101 × 110.5 × 111.8 cm)
115
T
he bloodiest of Sterling Ruby’s pots is not ceramic but a teacup of Styrofoam, urethane, wood, and spray paint. Monolithic, The Cup (2013) spilleth over with so much blood that one cannot believe the donor to this event will survive. And given the meanings that have been ascribed to this sculpture, that donor is mankind. Here, the character of ceramic vessels comes into play. A coffee cup would not have had impact—it is a beverage on the fly, informal, and does not suggest the finesse, civilization, ritual, and succor that tea does. As a result, the conceptual resonance is richer, more perverse, and humanized. While The Cup is a large work, even by the standards of Ruby’s bigger sculpture, it is not giant. Nonetheless, there is an impact on the viewer when a subject known for its intimate scale, four inches high in this case, explodes in size. The monumentality becomes greater than the sum of its measurements. *** Several factors drew me to Ruby’s art. One was that his love for ceramics was not cocooned in a “special” place; his enthusiasm flowed and popped up into other aspects of his work, as, for example, in The Cup, his print Kiln #2 (2005), and the Debt Basin bronzes (2011–14). His ceramics themselves have roiled both the ceramics community and the art world. The 2014 Whitney Biennial featured three works from his Basin Theology series (2009– ); they were the most debated objects in the exhibition. Opinions depended on which planet one came from: the ceramics world has put Ruby up as a poster boy for the sloppy, mindless ceramics they see emerging from fine art; the fine-art world has largely been enthralled by his work. Indeed, New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz, writing in the magazine’s online outlet Vulture, offered these “prehistoric-like wrecked giant 114
ceramic ashtray-objects” as best in show.1 The impact of the ceramics community on the fine arts is negligible. Therefore, why even raise the issue? Because its influence is growing as more of its best are crossing over into art, and what ceramics can bring to the table should not be ignored. Fine art’s knowledge of ceramics, and of pottery in particular, is scant. Its critics often betray their poor understanding of the medium whether they write to praise or damn. Yet ceramics, over the last century, has produced an exceptional library of history and scholarship from which critics can learn. Some collaboration would benefit both sides. My particular skill set has long been to walk the middle road between the two, and this essay seeks both to explain to the ceramics world how much they misunderstand about the importance of Ruby’s work and to highlight how much the art world has yet to learn about a complex medium. One often hears of ceramics being a “recent” medium for Ruby—code for untutored mishaps. Not true. His direct studio involvement stretches back over twenty years, when he enrolled in a ceramics class to test the belief that working with clay could be a therapeutic tool. What struck him was that his fellow classmates “were not artists,” and so there was an innocence to making. Ruby did not intend ceramics as a career path but remembers, “I became fascinated with the fact that very different people were making the same type of biomorphic and anthropomorphic work. A lot of it was sexual, with holes, extensions, and everything overly glazed. Clay does give people an innate and unfettered sensibility. I loved it.”2 Ruby’s connection goes back even further. As a child, his family moved from Germany (his father was in the American military) to a farm near New Freedom, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch craftland. His Dutch mother collected ceramics, so the pot had its place as an objet
Previous spread: Installation view, Sterling Ruby: Ceramics, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, June 9– September 9, 2018. Photo by Rich Sanders
Above: Sterling Ruby, ASHTRAY 457, 2018, ceramic, 2 ½ × 16 ¼ × 14 ½ inches (6.4 × 41.3 × 36.8 cm) Opposite: Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology/The Pipe, 2013, ceramic, 39 ¾ × 43 ½ × 44 inches (101 × 110.5 × 111.8 cm)
115
de vertu in his early life; so did quilting. Ruby initially took a conceptual approach in working with clay: “I first thought of my early ceramic works as sociological and psychological studies, case studies in art therapy. But over time I have come to see and embrace their strong connection to craft.”3 This interest came when the medium was still verboten; he recognized that artists of his age were not working in ceramics. He recalls, At that time, clay was seen as craft, not conceptual. Handmade objects were associated with gesture and sincerity, and many artists my age had no interest in those things; most artists were grappling with the fallout from postmodernism and conceptual art. To be an instinctive artist was completely at odds with how I was taught. My generation was told to have a premeditated concept, an already answered theoretical question before making anything. Using clay became a way to just make something; it represented the gesture I was longing for. I started to see my ceramics as monuments to my desire to make a sincere gesture, and the shame that came with it. So now, 15–20 years later, ceramics represent that transition for me. It might also mean that a younger generation of artists who don’t have the same hang-ups that I did can readily use the material for what it is, just making vessels, ashtrays, dishware, figurines. 4 That is what he made: ubiquitous domestic items, bread baskets, ashtrays, basins. In some cases the technique seems rudimentary, particularly in the ashtrays, which perhaps more closely resemble pizza pie 101. And this is where part of the problem emerges. 116
High-skill makers (not just ceramists) experience anxiety when they see prominence being given to a work that is to their way of thinking inept. That threatens the pillar of their aesthetic. “There’s a misalignment of what signifies ‘amateur,’” says Garth Johnson of the Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University, Tempe. “The general public sees lumpy, lopsided, gestural work, and it communicates lack of craftsmanship, when in fact, true beginner work always strives for perfection and winds up mired in that struggle.” The judgment is usually “That is the best they can do,” not understanding that taking on the amateur can be an aesthetic choice, not a technical one, to deny the medium the preciousness of High Craft.5 This ploy, essentially faux humility employed to make a point, has been used in the United States by George E. Ohr (1857–1918), the visionary potter from the turn of the last century; by Peter Voulkos, in his revolutionary application of abstract expression to ceramics; and by the California Funk master Robert Arneson, who famously had inscribed on his car’s license plate the legend “Ceramics is the world’s favorite hobby.” Of all Ruby’s vessel series, it is Basin Theology that is the most powerful. It is instructive to hear what the artist himself said in 2015 about the intent of this work:
Above: Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology/SACRUM SACRAL, 2017, ceramic, 20 × 66 × 43 inches (50.8 × 167.6 × 109.2 cm)
Following spread: Installation view, Sterling Ruby: Ceramics, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, June 9– September 9, 2018. Photo by Rich Sanders
Opposite: Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology/Pentedrone, 2014, ceramic, 39 × 46 ½ × 44 ¼ inches (99.1 × 118.1 × 112.4 cm)
Artwork © Sterling Ruby Photos by Robert Wedemeyer unless otherwise noted
I have been making large ceramic basins and filling them with broken materials that look like animal remains and architectural waste. I am smashing all of my previous attempts, and futile, contemporary gestures, and placing them into a mortar, and grinding them down with a blunt pestle. I am doing this as a way of releasing a certain guilt. If I put all of these remnants into a basin, and it gets taken away from me, then I am no longer responsible for all my misdirected 117
de vertu in his early life; so did quilting. Ruby initially took a conceptual approach in working with clay: “I first thought of my early ceramic works as sociological and psychological studies, case studies in art therapy. But over time I have come to see and embrace their strong connection to craft.”3 This interest came when the medium was still verboten; he recognized that artists of his age were not working in ceramics. He recalls, At that time, clay was seen as craft, not conceptual. Handmade objects were associated with gesture and sincerity, and many artists my age had no interest in those things; most artists were grappling with the fallout from postmodernism and conceptual art. To be an instinctive artist was completely at odds with how I was taught. My generation was told to have a premeditated concept, an already answered theoretical question before making anything. Using clay became a way to just make something; it represented the gesture I was longing for. I started to see my ceramics as monuments to my desire to make a sincere gesture, and the shame that came with it. So now, 15–20 years later, ceramics represent that transition for me. It might also mean that a younger generation of artists who don’t have the same hang-ups that I did can readily use the material for what it is, just making vessels, ashtrays, dishware, figurines. 4 That is what he made: ubiquitous domestic items, bread baskets, ashtrays, basins. In some cases the technique seems rudimentary, particularly in the ashtrays, which perhaps more closely resemble pizza pie 101. And this is where part of the problem emerges. 116
High-skill makers (not just ceramists) experience anxiety when they see prominence being given to a work that is to their way of thinking inept. That threatens the pillar of their aesthetic. “There’s a misalignment of what signifies ‘amateur,’” says Garth Johnson of the Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University, Tempe. “The general public sees lumpy, lopsided, gestural work, and it communicates lack of craftsmanship, when in fact, true beginner work always strives for perfection and winds up mired in that struggle.” The judgment is usually “That is the best they can do,” not understanding that taking on the amateur can be an aesthetic choice, not a technical one, to deny the medium the preciousness of High Craft.5 This ploy, essentially faux humility employed to make a point, has been used in the United States by George E. Ohr (1857–1918), the visionary potter from the turn of the last century; by Peter Voulkos, in his revolutionary application of abstract expression to ceramics; and by the California Funk master Robert Arneson, who famously had inscribed on his car’s license plate the legend “Ceramics is the world’s favorite hobby.” Of all Ruby’s vessel series, it is Basin Theology that is the most powerful. It is instructive to hear what the artist himself said in 2015 about the intent of this work:
Above: Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology/SACRUM SACRAL, 2017, ceramic, 20 × 66 × 43 inches (50.8 × 167.6 × 109.2 cm)
Following spread: Installation view, Sterling Ruby: Ceramics, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, June 9– September 9, 2018. Photo by Rich Sanders
Opposite: Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology/Pentedrone, 2014, ceramic, 39 × 46 ½ × 44 ¼ inches (99.1 × 118.1 × 112.4 cm)
Artwork © Sterling Ruby Photos by Robert Wedemeyer unless otherwise noted
I have been making large ceramic basins and filling them with broken materials that look like animal remains and architectural waste. I am smashing all of my previous attempts, and futile, contemporary gestures, and placing them into a mortar, and grinding them down with a blunt pestle. I am doing this as a way of releasing a certain guilt. If I put all of these remnants into a basin, and it gets taken away from me, then I am no longer responsible for all my misdirected 117
efforts. I will no longer have to be burdened with the heaviness of this realization. This is my Basin Theology.6 Before exploring this further, it is helpful to look at a sister series, Debt Basins, and at a unique work, Excavator Dig Site (2010). These works are in bronze, but to use a biblical metaphor, they are “born of clay.” To make a point that is poorly understood, clay and ceramics are not the same practice. Clay is a natural material. Our intervention of firing it turns it into a completely new compound, ceramic, and the clay is lost. Ceramic is mankind’s first synthetic material (traditional potters loathe that point). In essence, it is the same pairing as oil (natural) and plastic (synthetic). Working with unfired clay has become big in contemporary sculpture, with Adrian Villar Rojas, Mark Manders, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Urs Fischer among the major practitioners. In this we see the difference between the Basin Theology and the bronze Debt Basin series. The latter metaphorically evokes archaeology more literally and potently; one can imagine a Mesopotamian dig in the desert revealing, among other materials, unglazed ceramic objects. To quote Ruby, “The positives are made primarily from clay, along with added scrap of metal, wood, foam, etc. Once they are sculpted, they are then molded and cast in bronze using a lost-wax technique.”7 Both the textural sensitivity of the casting and the patina choice emulate their source. And in this work, we see Ruby’s affection for the ceramics of Peter Voulkos; Ruby echoes the power of that artist’s last works, wood-fired wall platters. As to the meaning of “debt,” Ruby offered this insight: “What does one owe history? The history of art, the history of oneself (autobiography), the history of the objects that fill the basin (salvage).”8 The impact of Basin Theology is surprisingly 118
different from that of Debt Basins considering that they have a similar metaphoric root in archaeology. The elements are more architectural in the latter and more organic in the former. For me, embracing the works was no problem, but there was difficulty in adding the archaeology tag. And this is where I get back to bloody pots. They are not just “muscular” but look like slabs of muscle, too big for a human—horses, maybe. When the New York Times critic Roberta Smith saw these “obstreperous ceramics” for the first time, her take was that they contained charred animal remains.9 Why not the same fleshiness for Debt? In part, it is because the bronzes are texturally dry. The ceramics are wet, their surfaces resembling blood, mucous, or the iridescent shimmer that one sees on large slabs of meat. This sense is exaggerated or reduced depending upon the color or type of glaze, but it never goes away. Even Basin Theology/ HATRA, though blue-black, has the light gloss and soft quiver of liver. This association is not new. One of the great Chinese glazes from the Ming Dynasty was a copper red known variously as sang de boeuf (ox blood), flambé, and, when it tends toward the blue side, horse’s liver. Ruby takes it much further; the red glazes drip, spread, pool, and coagulate all over his form. The interior contains the artist’s history of feeling, making, projecting, leaving behind detritus, some digested and now formless, some partially digested, and some resolutely indigestible and indestructible. The scale and gravitas—these works weigh a few hundred pounds—confront the viewer with mass and volume that border on violence. Not a minor achievement for a pot—or any artwork, for that matter. *** Ruby invited me to visit his Los Angeles studio in June 2017 to choose works for the Regarding George Ohr show.10 His studio manager took me on
a tour of many departments within his four-acre space and its 120,000-square-foot building. In each department, a staff of specialists managed that specialty: big paintings, small paintings, textiles, metal sculpture, and so on. Finally, we got to the ceramics and I met the man I assumed to be Ruby’s clay guy. Thirty minutes flashed by as we talked, and I was impressed that Ruby had found someone with such a passionate feeling for the medium, so much knowledge, and who saw the big picture, wittily skewering the fine-arts/ceramic reticence, and was so sly in understanding the vast ceramics community and Ruby’s contested status within that world. The conversation was electric yet I knew I had yet to meet the maestro himself. As I was turning away, reluctantly, to move on, I asked, “What is your name?” “Sterling Ruby,” he replied. This essay was commissioned and published by the Des Moines Art Center to accompany the exhibition Sterling Ruby: Ceramics. The full exhibition catalogue is available for purchase at the Gagosian Shop. 1. Jerry Saltz, “Seeing Out Loud: There’s a Smart Show Struggling to Get Out of This Big, Bland Whitney Biennial.” Available online at www.vulture.com/2014/03/jerry-saltz-on-the-whitney-biennial. html (accessed August 2018). 2. “Sterling Ruby—Why I Create,” September 2017. Available online at http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2017/ september/12/why-i-create-sterling-ruby/ (accessed August 2018). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Garth Johnson, quoted in Sarah Archer, “The Meaning of Clay at the Whitney Biennial,” Hyperallergic, April 24, 2014. Available online at https://hyperallergic.com/122270/the-meaning-of-clayat-the-whitney-biennial/ (accessed August 2018). 6. Ruby, “American Perspectives,” quoted in Alessandro Rabottini, Permanent Mimesis: An Exhibition about Simulation and Realism, exh. cat. (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2010, for GAM—Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino, Turin). 7. Ruby, quoted in Tyler Britt, email to the author, January 29, 2018. 8. Ibid. 9. Roberta Smith, “Art in Review: Sterling Ruby,” New York Times, March 21, 2008. Available online at www.nytimes. com/2008/03/21/arts/design/21gall.html (accessed August 2018). 10. Regarding George Ohr: Contemporary Ceramics in the Spirit of the Mad Potter, Boca Raton Museum of Art, November 7, 2017–April 8, 2018.
efforts. I will no longer have to be burdened with the heaviness of this realization. This is my Basin Theology.6 Before exploring this further, it is helpful to look at a sister series, Debt Basins, and at a unique work, Excavator Dig Site (2010). These works are in bronze, but to use a biblical metaphor, they are “born of clay.” To make a point that is poorly understood, clay and ceramics are not the same practice. Clay is a natural material. Our intervention of firing it turns it into a completely new compound, ceramic, and the clay is lost. Ceramic is mankind’s first synthetic material (traditional potters loathe that point). In essence, it is the same pairing as oil (natural) and plastic (synthetic). Working with unfired clay has become big in contemporary sculpture, with Adrian Villar Rojas, Mark Manders, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Urs Fischer among the major practitioners. In this we see the difference between the Basin Theology and the bronze Debt Basin series. The latter metaphorically evokes archaeology more literally and potently; one can imagine a Mesopotamian dig in the desert revealing, among other materials, unglazed ceramic objects. To quote Ruby, “The positives are made primarily from clay, along with added scrap of metal, wood, foam, etc. Once they are sculpted, they are then molded and cast in bronze using a lost-wax technique.”7 Both the textural sensitivity of the casting and the patina choice emulate their source. And in this work, we see Ruby’s affection for the ceramics of Peter Voulkos; Ruby echoes the power of that artist’s last works, wood-fired wall platters. As to the meaning of “debt,” Ruby offered this insight: “What does one owe history? The history of art, the history of oneself (autobiography), the history of the objects that fill the basin (salvage).”8 The impact of Basin Theology is surprisingly 118
different from that of Debt Basins considering that they have a similar metaphoric root in archaeology. The elements are more architectural in the latter and more organic in the former. For me, embracing the works was no problem, but there was difficulty in adding the archaeology tag. And this is where I get back to bloody pots. They are not just “muscular” but look like slabs of muscle, too big for a human—horses, maybe. When the New York Times critic Roberta Smith saw these “obstreperous ceramics” for the first time, her take was that they contained charred animal remains.9 Why not the same fleshiness for Debt? In part, it is because the bronzes are texturally dry. The ceramics are wet, their surfaces resembling blood, mucous, or the iridescent shimmer that one sees on large slabs of meat. This sense is exaggerated or reduced depending upon the color or type of glaze, but it never goes away. Even Basin Theology/ HATRA, though blue-black, has the light gloss and soft quiver of liver. This association is not new. One of the great Chinese glazes from the Ming Dynasty was a copper red known variously as sang de boeuf (ox blood), flambé, and, when it tends toward the blue side, horse’s liver. Ruby takes it much further; the red glazes drip, spread, pool, and coagulate all over his form. The interior contains the artist’s history of feeling, making, projecting, leaving behind detritus, some digested and now formless, some partially digested, and some resolutely indigestible and indestructible. The scale and gravitas—these works weigh a few hundred pounds—confront the viewer with mass and volume that border on violence. Not a minor achievement for a pot—or any artwork, for that matter. *** Ruby invited me to visit his Los Angeles studio in June 2017 to choose works for the Regarding George Ohr show.10 His studio manager took me on
a tour of many departments within his four-acre space and its 120,000-square-foot building. In each department, a staff of specialists managed that specialty: big paintings, small paintings, textiles, metal sculpture, and so on. Finally, we got to the ceramics and I met the man I assumed to be Ruby’s clay guy. Thirty minutes flashed by as we talked, and I was impressed that Ruby had found someone with such a passionate feeling for the medium, so much knowledge, and who saw the big picture, wittily skewering the fine-arts/ceramic reticence, and was so sly in understanding the vast ceramics community and Ruby’s contested status within that world. The conversation was electric yet I knew I had yet to meet the maestro himself. As I was turning away, reluctantly, to move on, I asked, “What is your name?” “Sterling Ruby,” he replied. This essay was commissioned and published by the Des Moines Art Center to accompany the exhibition Sterling Ruby: Ceramics. The full exhibition catalogue is available for purchase at the Gagosian Shop. 1. Jerry Saltz, “Seeing Out Loud: There’s a Smart Show Struggling to Get Out of This Big, Bland Whitney Biennial.” Available online at www.vulture.com/2014/03/jerry-saltz-on-the-whitney-biennial. html (accessed August 2018). 2. “Sterling Ruby—Why I Create,” September 2017. Available online at http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2017/ september/12/why-i-create-sterling-ruby/ (accessed August 2018). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Garth Johnson, quoted in Sarah Archer, “The Meaning of Clay at the Whitney Biennial,” Hyperallergic, April 24, 2014. Available online at https://hyperallergic.com/122270/the-meaning-of-clayat-the-whitney-biennial/ (accessed August 2018). 6. Ruby, “American Perspectives,” quoted in Alessandro Rabottini, Permanent Mimesis: An Exhibition about Simulation and Realism, exh. cat. (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2010, for GAM—Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino, Turin). 7. Ruby, quoted in Tyler Britt, email to the author, January 29, 2018. 8. Ibid. 9. Roberta Smith, “Art in Review: Sterling Ruby,” New York Times, March 21, 2008. Available online at www.nytimes. com/2008/03/21/arts/design/21gall.html (accessed August 2018). 10. Regarding George Ohr: Contemporary Ceramics in the Spirit of the Mad Potter, Boca Raton Museum of Art, November 7, 2017–April 8, 2018.
VEIL & VAULT The current exhibition at the Broad in Los Angeles, A Journey That Wasn’t, prompts James Lawrence to examine how artists give shape and meaning to the passage of time, and how the passage of time shapes our evolving accounts of art.
120
In the spring of 1888, Vincent van Gogh took a brief trip from Arles to the nearby seaside town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He hoped that trip would reinvigorate his graphic style and loosen constraints of technique that dampened spontaneity. He made several fine pen-and-ink studies there, including Two Cottages at Saintes-Maries-dela-Mer (1888). There are hints of Japonisme, then in vogue, in Van Gogh’s technique with his reed pen: brisk hatching and dense dabs of ink conjure up foliage and roofs thatched with grass. Two Cottages preserves the spontaneity of its execution, the kind of present-tense and inconclusive rendering that can make a work by a long-dead artist seem urgent. When Van Gogh sent some drawings to his brother Theo a few days later, he held this one back as a possible source for a painting in oil. No such painting followed. The drawing held onto its unrealized potential for nearly seventy-five years, passing from heirs to collectors before Eli and Edythe Broad acquired it at auction in 1972. It was their first major acquisition, and the genesis of a private collection that has since grown to institutional proportions.
T here are several ways to present what followed. A story about collecting might describe a path from two cottages in the South of France to the capacious, innovative museum in downtown Los Angeles that Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed to house the Broad Collection. A story about cultural influence might stress a process of acorn-to-oak f lourishing that spans a little more than maximum human longevity and continues with the Broad’s unusually active program of loans to other institutions. A more personal account might dramatize the poignancy of attachment and loss, or at least of crisis and decision: the Broads affirmed their commitment to the art of their own time in 1983, when they traded the Van Gogh drawing for a 1954 Red Painting by Robert Rauschenberg; the Van Gogh drawing is now at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Or perhaps we might tell a different kind of story that notes the human figure in the doorway of one of Van Gogh’s cottages, and treats the drawing as an early hint of the social focus that characterizes the Broad Collection. Each of these stories would be true, but not the whole truth.
Collections of art, like the history of art in general, are compendia from which we can assemble stories. The most viable stories gain traction until they seem to be the way things were, are, and will remain. Perhaps the best place to start is on an escalator in the museum. Visitors ascend from the lobby to the collection galleries on the third floor by passing through the “vault,” a concrete-and-plaster mass that contains offices, workshop space, and collection storage. The vault is inescapable: visitors pass through it to get to the collection galleries, and walk on top of it once they are there. Visitors walking down the stairs can see glimpses of works in storage. The shell of the building, the “veil,” envelops the vault and admits filtered light that changes subtly in the collection galleries as time passes. The layout is effective in serving the interests of visitors and institution alike. It is also an enticing metaphor for two complementary states of artistic communication: the avowedly public display that gradually reveals a cogent story, and the sequestered, glimpsed repository of meaning awaiting attention and activation. 121
VEIL & VAULT The current exhibition at the Broad in Los Angeles, A Journey That Wasn’t, prompts James Lawrence to examine how artists give shape and meaning to the passage of time, and how the passage of time shapes our evolving accounts of art.
120
In the spring of 1888, Vincent van Gogh took a brief trip from Arles to the nearby seaside town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He hoped that trip would reinvigorate his graphic style and loosen constraints of technique that dampened spontaneity. He made several fine pen-and-ink studies there, including Two Cottages at Saintes-Maries-dela-Mer (1888). There are hints of Japonisme, then in vogue, in Van Gogh’s technique with his reed pen: brisk hatching and dense dabs of ink conjure up foliage and roofs thatched with grass. Two Cottages preserves the spontaneity of its execution, the kind of present-tense and inconclusive rendering that can make a work by a long-dead artist seem urgent. When Van Gogh sent some drawings to his brother Theo a few days later, he held this one back as a possible source for a painting in oil. No such painting followed. The drawing held onto its unrealized potential for nearly seventy-five years, passing from heirs to collectors before Eli and Edythe Broad acquired it at auction in 1972. It was their first major acquisition, and the genesis of a private collection that has since grown to institutional proportions.
T here are several ways to present what followed. A story about collecting might describe a path from two cottages in the South of France to the capacious, innovative museum in downtown Los Angeles that Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed to house the Broad Collection. A story about cultural influence might stress a process of acorn-to-oak f lourishing that spans a little more than maximum human longevity and continues with the Broad’s unusually active program of loans to other institutions. A more personal account might dramatize the poignancy of attachment and loss, or at least of crisis and decision: the Broads affirmed their commitment to the art of their own time in 1983, when they traded the Van Gogh drawing for a 1954 Red Painting by Robert Rauschenberg; the Van Gogh drawing is now at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Or perhaps we might tell a different kind of story that notes the human figure in the doorway of one of Van Gogh’s cottages, and treats the drawing as an early hint of the social focus that characterizes the Broad Collection. Each of these stories would be true, but not the whole truth.
Collections of art, like the history of art in general, are compendia from which we can assemble stories. The most viable stories gain traction until they seem to be the way things were, are, and will remain. Perhaps the best place to start is on an escalator in the museum. Visitors ascend from the lobby to the collection galleries on the third floor by passing through the “vault,” a concrete-and-plaster mass that contains offices, workshop space, and collection storage. The vault is inescapable: visitors pass through it to get to the collection galleries, and walk on top of it once they are there. Visitors walking down the stairs can see glimpses of works in storage. The shell of the building, the “veil,” envelops the vault and admits filtered light that changes subtly in the collection galleries as time passes. The layout is effective in serving the interests of visitors and institution alike. It is also an enticing metaphor for two complementary states of artistic communication: the avowedly public display that gradually reveals a cogent story, and the sequestered, glimpsed repository of meaning awaiting attention and activation. 121
Previous spread: Ed Ruscha, Azteca/Azteca in Decline, 2007, acrylic on canvas, each: 48 × 330 inches (121.9 × 838.2 cm). The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © Ed Ruscha Left: Vincent van Gogh, Two Cottages at Saintes-Mariesde-la-Mer, 1888, reed pen and brown ink over graphite, 12 3⁄8 × 18 5⁄8 inches (31.5 × 47.3 cm). The Morgan Library & Museum, New York Below: Illustration of the two main components of the Broad’s building—the veil and the vault. Photo courtesy the Broad Opposite: Anselm Kiefer, Maginot, 1977–93, acrylic, emulsion, and shellac on woodcut mounted on canvas, 150 1⁄2 × 196 5⁄8 inches (382.3 × 499.4 cm). The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © Anselm Kiefer
Nearly a third of the Broad’s exhibition space is on the first floor, in galleries reserved for traveling and temporary shows. The current exhibition there, A Journey That Wasn’t, is drawn entirely from the permanent collection. The show takes its title from a film by Pierre Huyghe, from 2005, that purports to record an expedition to the Antarctic in search of a rare albino penguin. In that film, sequences of majestic and brutal subzero conditions yield periodically to scenes from a performance on the ice rink in New York’s Central Park, complete with an animatronic penguin and a musical score commissioned for the event. The essentially unreliable nature of the narrative—undermined from the outset by a title that hints at fictitious treatment— conspires with the cinematography and editing to wrest poetry from prose. Documentary credibility yields to fertile doubt. Discontinuities of time and place give ambiguity an ethos. Refusal to confirm or deny becomes an aesthetic sensibility.
122
The exhibition to which Huyghe’s film gives its name is primarily concerned with various approaches that artists take to the problems and conditions of time’s passage. In some respects that is a limitless remit, for the passage of time is an irreducible condition. There is surely no work of art that does not display, record, embody, or engender one or another variety of temporal richness. The Broad’s show, in which each exhibit is primarily or exclusively figurative, tacitly restricts itself to a sense of time with a social aspect. Figuration calls for what might best be called “narrative time,” or “public time”—a sense of time held in common among a work’s viewers, much as the conventions that make a figure legible are held in common. This is also the sense of time that governs public exhibitions, accounts of art-historical development, and the conversations through which we discuss our experiences of art. It differs from the sense of time that we might discern as we stand before an expansive painting by Barnett Newman, for example, or as we walk through an undulating sculpture by Richard Serra. That sense of time is deeply personal, inseparable from our sense of self, and— crucially—resistant to narrative. Narrative conditions favor shape, direction, and boundaries. Narrative time requires a sense of difference, of comparisons and contrasts that can reveal a particular current within the boundless temporal ocean. Perhaps an artist finds evocations of mortality in the mundane, whether depicted through the iconography of Netherlandish still lifes; in the stark white characters setting out the date in each painting in On Kawara’s Today series (1966–2014); or in the scale that makes Ron Mueck’s diminutive, elderly Seated Woman (1999–2000) so poignantly slight in the exhibition at the Broad. Another artist might exploit the capacity of art to defy or modify time. Six “typologies” of water towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher, all from 1972, share a gallery with photographs by Gregory Crewdson of the Rome film studio Cinecittà (2009). The Bechers photographed
industrial structures in overcast conditions to suppress shadows, bolstering homogeneity and distilling several times and places into arrays that invite careful looking. Crewdson’s photographs of Cinecittà show film sets in disuse at a moment of economic uncertainty: hiatus in the guise of ruination. That kind of layering, with different modes of time on display simultaneously, is readily available to artists not only because their works are primarily objects that invite sustained examination, but also because we do not examine those works with innocent eyes. Artists, collectors, curators, critics, historians, and viewers all carry with them assumptions about how and where a given work might fit—or, occasionally, refuse to fit—into their understanding of art. Whatever a work of art might try to tell us about the world, it almost certainly also tells us something about the history, definition, or purposes of artistic creativity. Paul Pfeiffer’s video piece Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (2001) shows three looped sequences of a basketball slam-dunk contest in which the figure of the player has been digitally erased. The title of the work refers directly, and its format indirectly, to the renowned triptych that Francis Bacon painted in 1944. Neither Pfeiffer nor Bacon offers straightforward Christian iconography. Each, however, found in the theme of crucifixion a set of conventions that isolates and elevates moments of human profundity—particularly in relation to physical extremes, whether of triumph or, in Bacon’s case, of cruelty.
Pfeiffer’s effaced video loops offer elusive mysteries; Bacon’s figures seem persistently in extremis. In each case, much of the power comes from the connotations of types and precursors. Every moment in art comes with a backstory. Works of art construct their own immediate, local conditions of time, even as they contain passageways to other works with their own self-contained temporal fields. Exhibitions, and collections that can generate them, reconfigure those connections in physical ways that verbal and literary narratives cannot emulate. When art is seen—and particularly when an exhibition prompts viewers toward a mode of dedicated looking—complex networks of associations become active. More important, they become apparent and even tangible. Andreas Gursky’s series F1 Boxenstopp I-IV (2007) is particularly rich in such associations. These imposing prints capture moments of almost choreographed technical complexity—againstthe-clock repairs and renewals in pit stops during Formula One motor races—but present those moments with an air of calm that belongs less to the principle of the frozen photographic moment than to an ethos of composed grandeur. Gursky compiled several photographic instances into coherent digitally edited scenes, much as a record producer may mix several isolated and adjusted performances into a track that sounds like a group or ensemble performing together. Familiarity with the habits of viewing appropriate to a range of
The exhibition provides viewers space in which to reflect on their own malleable experiences of time, illusion and memory. Joanne Heyler
As vehicles for meaning, works of art are always unfinished, imperfect: informed by the past, persistently and physically in the present, and oriented toward the future. James Lawrence
123
Previous spread: Ed Ruscha, Azteca/Azteca in Decline, 2007, acrylic on canvas, each: 48 × 330 inches (121.9 × 838.2 cm). The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © Ed Ruscha Left: Vincent van Gogh, Two Cottages at Saintes-Mariesde-la-Mer, 1888, reed pen and brown ink over graphite, 12 3⁄8 × 18 5⁄8 inches (31.5 × 47.3 cm). The Morgan Library & Museum, New York Below: Illustration of the two main components of the Broad’s building—the veil and the vault. Photo courtesy the Broad Opposite: Anselm Kiefer, Maginot, 1977–93, acrylic, emulsion, and shellac on woodcut mounted on canvas, 150 1⁄2 × 196 5⁄8 inches (382.3 × 499.4 cm). The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © Anselm Kiefer
Nearly a third of the Broad’s exhibition space is on the first floor, in galleries reserved for traveling and temporary shows. The current exhibition there, A Journey That Wasn’t, is drawn entirely from the permanent collection. The show takes its title from a film by Pierre Huyghe, from 2005, that purports to record an expedition to the Antarctic in search of a rare albino penguin. In that film, sequences of majestic and brutal subzero conditions yield periodically to scenes from a performance on the ice rink in New York’s Central Park, complete with an animatronic penguin and a musical score commissioned for the event. The essentially unreliable nature of the narrative—undermined from the outset by a title that hints at fictitious treatment— conspires with the cinematography and editing to wrest poetry from prose. Documentary credibility yields to fertile doubt. Discontinuities of time and place give ambiguity an ethos. Refusal to confirm or deny becomes an aesthetic sensibility.
122
The exhibition to which Huyghe’s film gives its name is primarily concerned with various approaches that artists take to the problems and conditions of time’s passage. In some respects that is a limitless remit, for the passage of time is an irreducible condition. There is surely no work of art that does not display, record, embody, or engender one or another variety of temporal richness. The Broad’s show, in which each exhibit is primarily or exclusively figurative, tacitly restricts itself to a sense of time with a social aspect. Figuration calls for what might best be called “narrative time,” or “public time”—a sense of time held in common among a work’s viewers, much as the conventions that make a figure legible are held in common. This is also the sense of time that governs public exhibitions, accounts of art-historical development, and the conversations through which we discuss our experiences of art. It differs from the sense of time that we might discern as we stand before an expansive painting by Barnett Newman, for example, or as we walk through an undulating sculpture by Richard Serra. That sense of time is deeply personal, inseparable from our sense of self, and— crucially—resistant to narrative. Narrative conditions favor shape, direction, and boundaries. Narrative time requires a sense of difference, of comparisons and contrasts that can reveal a particular current within the boundless temporal ocean. Perhaps an artist finds evocations of mortality in the mundane, whether depicted through the iconography of Netherlandish still lifes; in the stark white characters setting out the date in each painting in On Kawara’s Today series (1966–2014); or in the scale that makes Ron Mueck’s diminutive, elderly Seated Woman (1999–2000) so poignantly slight in the exhibition at the Broad. Another artist might exploit the capacity of art to defy or modify time. Six “typologies” of water towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher, all from 1972, share a gallery with photographs by Gregory Crewdson of the Rome film studio Cinecittà (2009). The Bechers photographed
industrial structures in overcast conditions to suppress shadows, bolstering homogeneity and distilling several times and places into arrays that invite careful looking. Crewdson’s photographs of Cinecittà show film sets in disuse at a moment of economic uncertainty: hiatus in the guise of ruination. That kind of layering, with different modes of time on display simultaneously, is readily available to artists not only because their works are primarily objects that invite sustained examination, but also because we do not examine those works with innocent eyes. Artists, collectors, curators, critics, historians, and viewers all carry with them assumptions about how and where a given work might fit—or, occasionally, refuse to fit—into their understanding of art. Whatever a work of art might try to tell us about the world, it almost certainly also tells us something about the history, definition, or purposes of artistic creativity. Paul Pfeiffer’s video piece Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (2001) shows three looped sequences of a basketball slam-dunk contest in which the figure of the player has been digitally erased. The title of the work refers directly, and its format indirectly, to the renowned triptych that Francis Bacon painted in 1944. Neither Pfeiffer nor Bacon offers straightforward Christian iconography. Each, however, found in the theme of crucifixion a set of conventions that isolates and elevates moments of human profundity—particularly in relation to physical extremes, whether of triumph or, in Bacon’s case, of cruelty.
Pfeiffer’s effaced video loops offer elusive mysteries; Bacon’s figures seem persistently in extremis. In each case, much of the power comes from the connotations of types and precursors. Every moment in art comes with a backstory. Works of art construct their own immediate, local conditions of time, even as they contain passageways to other works with their own self-contained temporal fields. Exhibitions, and collections that can generate them, reconfigure those connections in physical ways that verbal and literary narratives cannot emulate. When art is seen—and particularly when an exhibition prompts viewers toward a mode of dedicated looking—complex networks of associations become active. More important, they become apparent and even tangible. Andreas Gursky’s series F1 Boxenstopp I-IV (2007) is particularly rich in such associations. These imposing prints capture moments of almost choreographed technical complexity—againstthe-clock repairs and renewals in pit stops during Formula One motor races—but present those moments with an air of calm that belongs less to the principle of the frozen photographic moment than to an ethos of composed grandeur. Gursky compiled several photographic instances into coherent digitally edited scenes, much as a record producer may mix several isolated and adjusted performances into a track that sounds like a group or ensemble performing together. Familiarity with the habits of viewing appropriate to a range of
The exhibition provides viewers space in which to reflect on their own malleable experiences of time, illusion and memory. Joanne Heyler
As vehicles for meaning, works of art are always unfinished, imperfect: informed by the past, persistently and physically in the present, and oriented toward the future. James Lawrence
123
A Presentation of Works from the Marciano Collection
Today’s sketch might become tomorrow’s institution. James Lawrence
Above: Andreas Gursky, F1 Boxenstopp III, 2007, C-print mounted on Plexiglas in artist’s frame, 74 × 200 inches (188 × 508 cm). The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © 2018 Andreas Gursky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
124
material—high-level commercial photography, cinema in the era of digital effects, fresco cycles—leads us to accept, and then scrutinize, visual anomalies in Gursky’s prints. Discrepancies of light and shadow, stringently consistent composition across the four prints, and a surfeit of legibility all lift the veil of split-second reality and expose the painstakingly assembled simulacrum beneath. It might be sufficient to treat the result as a supreme demonstration of skill with the tools currently available to a photographer, or as a revelation of the gap between the appearance of reality and its true constitution. The temporal dissonances in the prints support such attitudes, which are perfectly valid. In the context of an exhibition and a collection, however—and therefore of whatever special realm art inhabits and constructs—those dissonances also point to a tradition that enhances the language of Gursky’s compositions. The intermingled figures of pit crews in team uniforms might call to mind martial figures from history paintings or Hellenistic friezes. The composition of each scene, with two balanced and self-contained groups in the foreground and an array of elevated figures in the background, calls up the same spirit of casual artifice that makes Raphael’s School of Athens (1509–11) effective: a language in which figures seem to have assembled, almost by chance, into something that renders the captured moment timeless. That ethos of persuasive composition remains valid even though the rhetorical and didactic purposes that generated it have mostly fallen into disuse. Within the context of an exhibition or a collection, it remains a viable exemplification of artistic values. In reading the results, we readily accept the existence of much more than meets the eye. Presumption of semiotic intent can give even the swiftest of glances a life of its own. Ed Ruscha’s diptych Azteca/Azteca in Decline (2007) is a depiction of a glimpsed motif—a political mural that Ruscha drove past in Mexico—and a similar but hypothetical depiction of the same motif in a state of physical collapse. It is an eloquent, abbreviated, and mordant presentation of cultural fatigue, akin to Augustine’s observation “Senescit mundus,” “The world grows old.” Since February 2008, when the Azteca diptych first appeared in public at Gagosian’s Britannia Street gallery in London, the
course of global events has confirmed its underlying lessons. Its theme is at least as timely now that it is on display at the Broad for the first time. Public presentation of a work generates layers of meaning and connotation—perhaps unintended, but present nonetheless—that soon become inseparable from the object itself. Long after its first appearance in public, a painting can acquire an air of wisdom about the way things are. As vehicles for meaning, works of art are always unfinished, imperfect: informed by the past, persistently and physically in the present, and oriented toward the future. That situation comes with profound opportunities and grave risks. Artists who focus on history—and, in particular, on lapses in our grasp of history—are particularly attuned to the power of images to reinforce the veil of reality. Several of the artists represented in A Journey That Wasn’t address this theme. In Narratives (1993), a suite of etchings in the style of title pages from nineteenth-century slave narratives, Glenn Ligon sets précis of his own experiences in the typography and vernacular of the past in order to expose how systemic flaws in social relations remain inadequately addressed. Anselm Kiefer’s Maginot (1977–93) depicts a landscape with a fortified tower; dominating the painting is an interconnected array of woodcut portraits that came from a volume of Nazi propaganda proffering a pseudohistorical claim of cultural and racial lineage for the Third Reich. Kiefer’s reconfiguration of those portraits is only possible because that earlier configuration failed, along with the regime it served. Figures and images operate not as autonomous individuals in an indifferent sequence but as elements that can be extracted and reconfigured within all kinds of temporal states: quiescence, recurrence, transience, persistence, or whatever best sets the terms for the story being told. Behind every veil—every story that seems to be whole and satisfactory—is a vault full of complications and contradictions, confirmations and exceptions. This can make life difficult for anyone seeking a clear narrative line. On the other hand, it holds out the promise of looser, more spontaneous approaches that suit the energetic sprawl of contemporary art. Postwar art calls for innovative storytelling. Today’s sketch might become tomorrow’s institution.
Marciano Art Foundation
HOURS
4357 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90010
Thursday: 11am–5pm Friday: 11am–5pm Saturday: 10am–6pm Sunday: 11am–5pm
FREE RESERVATIONS marcianoartfoundation.org
URS FISCHER Green Solace, 16 handles, Red Solace, 2017 3 Panels: Aluminum panel, epoxy, reinforced polyurethane foam, honeycomb composite, acrylic adhesive, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, Green Solace: 93 ⅜ × 70 ⅛ × 70 ⅛ × 1 inches, (237.3 × 178.1 × 2.5 cm); 16 Handles: 87 ⅝ × 70 ¼ × 1 inches (222.6 × 178.4 × 2.5 cm); Red Solace: 87 ¼ × 70 × 1 inches (221.6 × 177.8 × 2.5 cm) ©Urs Fischer. Courtesy of the artist, Gagosian, and Jeffrey Deitch, Inc., New York. Photo: Mats Nordman.
A Presentation of Works from the Marciano Collection
Today’s sketch might become tomorrow’s institution. James Lawrence
Above: Andreas Gursky, F1 Boxenstopp III, 2007, C-print mounted on Plexiglas in artist’s frame, 74 × 200 inches (188 × 508 cm). The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles © 2018 Andreas Gursky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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material—high-level commercial photography, cinema in the era of digital effects, fresco cycles—leads us to accept, and then scrutinize, visual anomalies in Gursky’s prints. Discrepancies of light and shadow, stringently consistent composition across the four prints, and a surfeit of legibility all lift the veil of split-second reality and expose the painstakingly assembled simulacrum beneath. It might be sufficient to treat the result as a supreme demonstration of skill with the tools currently available to a photographer, or as a revelation of the gap between the appearance of reality and its true constitution. The temporal dissonances in the prints support such attitudes, which are perfectly valid. In the context of an exhibition and a collection, however—and therefore of whatever special realm art inhabits and constructs—those dissonances also point to a tradition that enhances the language of Gursky’s compositions. The intermingled figures of pit crews in team uniforms might call to mind martial figures from history paintings or Hellenistic friezes. The composition of each scene, with two balanced and self-contained groups in the foreground and an array of elevated figures in the background, calls up the same spirit of casual artifice that makes Raphael’s School of Athens (1509–11) effective: a language in which figures seem to have assembled, almost by chance, into something that renders the captured moment timeless. That ethos of persuasive composition remains valid even though the rhetorical and didactic purposes that generated it have mostly fallen into disuse. Within the context of an exhibition or a collection, it remains a viable exemplification of artistic values. In reading the results, we readily accept the existence of much more than meets the eye. Presumption of semiotic intent can give even the swiftest of glances a life of its own. Ed Ruscha’s diptych Azteca/Azteca in Decline (2007) is a depiction of a glimpsed motif—a political mural that Ruscha drove past in Mexico—and a similar but hypothetical depiction of the same motif in a state of physical collapse. It is an eloquent, abbreviated, and mordant presentation of cultural fatigue, akin to Augustine’s observation “Senescit mundus,” “The world grows old.” Since February 2008, when the Azteca diptych first appeared in public at Gagosian’s Britannia Street gallery in London, the
course of global events has confirmed its underlying lessons. Its theme is at least as timely now that it is on display at the Broad for the first time. Public presentation of a work generates layers of meaning and connotation—perhaps unintended, but present nonetheless—that soon become inseparable from the object itself. Long after its first appearance in public, a painting can acquire an air of wisdom about the way things are. As vehicles for meaning, works of art are always unfinished, imperfect: informed by the past, persistently and physically in the present, and oriented toward the future. That situation comes with profound opportunities and grave risks. Artists who focus on history—and, in particular, on lapses in our grasp of history—are particularly attuned to the power of images to reinforce the veil of reality. Several of the artists represented in A Journey That Wasn’t address this theme. In Narratives (1993), a suite of etchings in the style of title pages from nineteenth-century slave narratives, Glenn Ligon sets précis of his own experiences in the typography and vernacular of the past in order to expose how systemic flaws in social relations remain inadequately addressed. Anselm Kiefer’s Maginot (1977–93) depicts a landscape with a fortified tower; dominating the painting is an interconnected array of woodcut portraits that came from a volume of Nazi propaganda proffering a pseudohistorical claim of cultural and racial lineage for the Third Reich. Kiefer’s reconfiguration of those portraits is only possible because that earlier configuration failed, along with the regime it served. Figures and images operate not as autonomous individuals in an indifferent sequence but as elements that can be extracted and reconfigured within all kinds of temporal states: quiescence, recurrence, transience, persistence, or whatever best sets the terms for the story being told. Behind every veil—every story that seems to be whole and satisfactory—is a vault full of complications and contradictions, confirmations and exceptions. This can make life difficult for anyone seeking a clear narrative line. On the other hand, it holds out the promise of looser, more spontaneous approaches that suit the energetic sprawl of contemporary art. Postwar art calls for innovative storytelling. Today’s sketch might become tomorrow’s institution.
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URS FISCHER Green Solace, 16 handles, Red Solace, 2017 3 Panels: Aluminum panel, epoxy, reinforced polyurethane foam, honeycomb composite, acrylic adhesive, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, Green Solace: 93 ⅜ × 70 ⅛ × 70 ⅛ × 1 inches, (237.3 × 178.1 × 2.5 cm); 16 Handles: 87 ⅝ × 70 ¼ × 1 inches (222.6 × 178.4 × 2.5 cm); Red Solace: 87 ¼ × 70 × 1 inches (221.6 × 177.8 × 2.5 cm) ©Urs Fischer. Courtesy of the artist, Gagosian, and Jeffrey Deitch, Inc., New York. Photo: Mats Nordman.
Richard Calvocoressi examines the trajectory of pre- and postwar German and Austrian art from the 1930s through the mid1950s, revealing how the events leading up to and following World War II affected this generation of artists.
BEFORE AND AFTER THE FALL
Richard Calvocoressi examines the trajectory of pre- and postwar German and Austrian art from the 1930s through the mid1950s, revealing how the events leading up to and following World War II affected this generation of artists.
BEFORE AND AFTER THE FALL
W
het her or not t he overlap wa s pla n ned, t he ex h ibit ions Before the Fall: Ge rman and Austrian Art of the 1930s, at the Neue Galerie, New York, a nd Inve ntur— Art in Germany, 1943–55, at the Harvard Art Museums’ Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, coincided for about three months and complemented one another in stimulating ways. Before the Fall included international names from Germany’s prewar period such as Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Ernst, and Otto Dix; similarly, Inventur represented most of the crucial figures of postwar German abstract painting—Willi Baumeister, Rupprecht Geiger, K. O. Götz, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Bernard Schultze, Emil Schumacher, Hann Trier, Heinz Trökes, Theodor Werner, Fritz Winter, and others—along with the abstract sculptors Karl Hartung, Hans Uhlmann, and Norbert Kricke. Some of the artists in this second group were also represented by earlier, figurative work, made in the last years of the war or shortly afterward, when they were turning to sources in prewar avant-garde movements such as Expressionism and Surrealism, before the increasingly international language of tachism or nonformal art became de rigueur in West Germany. In each show, it was the forgotten or simply unknown artists who, taken as a whole, demonstrated the most surprising diversity of stylistic and psychological reactions to the imminent catastrophe and its grim aftermath. This was particularly the case with Inventur, which included a wide range of abstract or nonobjective work, some of it created by members of utopian groups (zen 49, Gruppe 53, and others), some by relatively isolated figures such as Hermann Glöckner, who was unable to exhibit or sell his sculptures during the Third Reich years and chose to remain in Communist East Germany after the war. Inventur featured artworks made out of poor, discarded materials—which postwar artists used as much from necessity as choice, faced by dire shortages and an all-pervading environment of rubble, especially in the bombed cities—and also, by contrast, a section on the sleek modernist design that emerged once the “economic miracle” of the 1950s was under way, demonstrating an idealistic belief in a renewed relationship between art and industry. Unlike Inventur, Before the Fall covered Austria as well as Germany. At the entrance to the exhibition, large blown-up photographs of Adolf Hitler addressing ecstatic crowds in Vienna shortly after the Anschluss, in 1938, reminded visitors that the Führer himself was originally Austrian (he renounced Austrian citizenship in 1925). In entering Vienna, he was in a sense coming home to the city where he had spent his formative years: turned down for a place at the city’s Akademie der bildenden Künste, he had imbibed the anti-Semitism of Mayor Karl Lueger and his Christian Social Party. A frustrated artist, Hitler would surely have derived satisfaction from the fact that once Austria had been incorporated into the Reich, Vienna became a stop on the tour of the Nazis’ 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate art). As an introductory panel in Inventur pointed out, only about a quarter of the more than 128
100 German artists included in Entartete Kunst fled Nazi Germany or Austria, with the remainder opting for various forms of what after the war came to be called Innere Emigration (inner emigration). Both shows’ curators, Olaf Peters (Before the Fall) and Lynette Roth (Inventur), emphasize in their respective catalogues that this was a contested term with no accepted definition; it meant something different in each individual case. Before the Fall movingly made clear which artists did not survive, dying in battle or bombing raids or, like Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Felix Nussbaum, being persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. An Austrian, Dicker was one of the students of Johannes Itten who followed him from Vienna to the Bauhaus. In the early 1930s, having returned to Vienna, Dicker taught art in kindergartens, joined the Communist Party, and produced sociopolitical photocollages, often focusing on child welfare. Arrested and interrogated, she emigrated to Prague in 1934 and later married Pavel Brandeis. In 1942 they were apprehended and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where she took it upon herself to encourage children to draw as a means of preserving a modicum of dignity and calm in the face of their impending fate. In 1944 she was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but not before hiding thousands of drawings by her young charges, which were found after the war. Dicker’s oil painting Verhör II (The Interrogation II, 1934–38), based on her own experience at the hands of the Austrofascists, is a terrifying image of blindness and pulverized f lesh that anticipates the anonymous pulped heads of Nazi victims evoked so shockingly in Jean Fautrier’s Hostage series a decade later. In Nussbaum’s Selbstbildnis im Lager (Self-Portrait in the Camp, 1940) the artist eyes us warily, gaunt and unshaven, while in the background one fellow inmate defecates into a dustbin and another, seminaked, searches the prison yard for scraps. The painting, which is in the Neue Galerie’s permanent collection, was one of several arresting realist works in the show. Nussbaum was interned by the French in 1940 as a German “enemy alien,” despite being a Jew in flight from Germany. Deported back there, he succeeded in escaping and for the next four years lived a life on the run or in hiding. In 1944 the Nazis caught up with him and, like Dicker, he was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed. The artists represented in Inventur survived the war, but while they hadn’t been hunted down and killed, a significant number had been ostracized by the Nazi regime, forbidden to exhibit, teach, or sell, or even imprisoned. Others were bombed out of their homes and studios, losing all or most of their work. Of the men who were called up to fight, some returned home wounded while others ended up in a Russian or American POW camp. Women experienced evacuation to the country, or, worse, the Soviet occupation of Berlin. After such hardship and suffering it is remarkable that anyone had the will or strength to make art at all. Rather than being organized chronologically, Before the Fall was divided into traditional genres such as portraiture (both individual and group), landscape, and still life, with separate sections on photography and works on paper. But that innocuous-sounding structure gives no hint of the anxiety or threat emanating from many of the images on show. Mythical birdlike creatures become metaphors for mass hysteria and sadistic violence in
Beckmann’s Hölle der Vögel (Birds’ Hell, 1938), painted in exile in Amsterdam. An equally sinister spirit pervades those paintings by Ernst featuring monstrous animal hybrids and unnatural plant forms, such as Die Barbaren (Barbarians, 1937). Artists as different from one another as Hans Adolf Bühler, Karl Hubbuch, Richard Oelze, Franz Radziwill, Rudolf Schlichter, and Franz Sedlacek appear to have used landscape, whether dreamlike or apocalyptic, to denote various sorts of political allegory. Forest paintings, recalling the darkest aspects of German Romanticism or Grimms’ fairy tales, suggest that irrational fears were never far from the surface. It would be dangerous, however, to read too much of a sense of foreboding into the hallucinatory intensity of Radziwill’s landscapes or the obsessive precisionism of Sedlacek’s gothic fantasies. Both artists were members of the Nazi party, although Radziwill (dubbed “Naziwill” by artist Karl Hofer after the war) later edited his oeuvre to make it seem as if he had been opposed to the regime. The Austrian Sedlacek, on the other hand, showed work in the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) in Munich in 1937, mounted simultaneously with Entartete Kunst in that city as a contrasting show of Nazi-approved art, and demonstrating, as Jonathan Petropoulos argues in his book Artists under Hitler, that a kind of soft modernism could fit under the rubric of such work. 1 In 1945, as a fifty-four-year-old officer in the Wehrmacht, Sedlacek went missing, presumed dead, on the Russian front. Another Austrian, Rudolf Wacker, endured arguably a worse fate: an opponent of the Nazis, he was hauled before the Gestapo after the Anschluss and suffered a fatal heart attack under interrogation. His still lifes, which often include dolls or wooden busts as human surrogates, were
Previous spread: Max Beckmann, Birds’ Hell, 1938, oil on canvas, 47 1⁄4 × 63 1⁄4 inches (120 × 160.7 cm), Private collection © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG BildKunst, Bonn Opposite (top): Felix Nussbaum, SelfPortrait in the Camp, 1940, oil on panel, 20 5⁄8 × 16 3⁄8 inches (52.5 × 41.5 cm). Neue Galerie New York © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG BildKunst, Bonn. Photo by Hulya Kolabas Opposite (bottom): Rudolf Wacker, Two Heads, 1932, oil on panel, 39 3⁄8 × 24 3⁄4 inches (100 × 63 cm). Belvedere, Vienna, Photo courtesy Belvedere, Vienna Below: Franz Sedlacek, Landscape with Rainbow, 1930, oil on panel, 17 3⁄4 × 16 3⁄8 inches (45 × 41.5 cm). University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive. Photo by University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive
129
W
het her or not t he overlap wa s pla n ned, t he ex h ibit ions Before the Fall: Ge rman and Austrian Art of the 1930s, at the Neue Galerie, New York, a nd Inve ntur— Art in Germany, 1943–55, at the Harvard Art Museums’ Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, coincided for about three months and complemented one another in stimulating ways. Before the Fall included international names from Germany’s prewar period such as Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Ernst, and Otto Dix; similarly, Inventur represented most of the crucial figures of postwar German abstract painting—Willi Baumeister, Rupprecht Geiger, K. O. Götz, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Bernard Schultze, Emil Schumacher, Hann Trier, Heinz Trökes, Theodor Werner, Fritz Winter, and others—along with the abstract sculptors Karl Hartung, Hans Uhlmann, and Norbert Kricke. Some of the artists in this second group were also represented by earlier, figurative work, made in the last years of the war or shortly afterward, when they were turning to sources in prewar avant-garde movements such as Expressionism and Surrealism, before the increasingly international language of tachism or nonformal art became de rigueur in West Germany. In each show, it was the forgotten or simply unknown artists who, taken as a whole, demonstrated the most surprising diversity of stylistic and psychological reactions to the imminent catastrophe and its grim aftermath. This was particularly the case with Inventur, which included a wide range of abstract or nonobjective work, some of it created by members of utopian groups (zen 49, Gruppe 53, and others), some by relatively isolated figures such as Hermann Glöckner, who was unable to exhibit or sell his sculptures during the Third Reich years and chose to remain in Communist East Germany after the war. Inventur featured artworks made out of poor, discarded materials—which postwar artists used as much from necessity as choice, faced by dire shortages and an all-pervading environment of rubble, especially in the bombed cities—and also, by contrast, a section on the sleek modernist design that emerged once the “economic miracle” of the 1950s was under way, demonstrating an idealistic belief in a renewed relationship between art and industry. Unlike Inventur, Before the Fall covered Austria as well as Germany. At the entrance to the exhibition, large blown-up photographs of Adolf Hitler addressing ecstatic crowds in Vienna shortly after the Anschluss, in 1938, reminded visitors that the Führer himself was originally Austrian (he renounced Austrian citizenship in 1925). In entering Vienna, he was in a sense coming home to the city where he had spent his formative years: turned down for a place at the city’s Akademie der bildenden Künste, he had imbibed the anti-Semitism of Mayor Karl Lueger and his Christian Social Party. A frustrated artist, Hitler would surely have derived satisfaction from the fact that once Austria had been incorporated into the Reich, Vienna became a stop on the tour of the Nazis’ 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate art). As an introductory panel in Inventur pointed out, only about a quarter of the more than 128
100 German artists included in Entartete Kunst fled Nazi Germany or Austria, with the remainder opting for various forms of what after the war came to be called Innere Emigration (inner emigration). Both shows’ curators, Olaf Peters (Before the Fall) and Lynette Roth (Inventur), emphasize in their respective catalogues that this was a contested term with no accepted definition; it meant something different in each individual case. Before the Fall movingly made clear which artists did not survive, dying in battle or bombing raids or, like Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Felix Nussbaum, being persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. An Austrian, Dicker was one of the students of Johannes Itten who followed him from Vienna to the Bauhaus. In the early 1930s, having returned to Vienna, Dicker taught art in kindergartens, joined the Communist Party, and produced sociopolitical photocollages, often focusing on child welfare. Arrested and interrogated, she emigrated to Prague in 1934 and later married Pavel Brandeis. In 1942 they were apprehended and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where she took it upon herself to encourage children to draw as a means of preserving a modicum of dignity and calm in the face of their impending fate. In 1944 she was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but not before hiding thousands of drawings by her young charges, which were found after the war. Dicker’s oil painting Verhör II (The Interrogation II, 1934–38), based on her own experience at the hands of the Austrofascists, is a terrifying image of blindness and pulverized f lesh that anticipates the anonymous pulped heads of Nazi victims evoked so shockingly in Jean Fautrier’s Hostage series a decade later. In Nussbaum’s Selbstbildnis im Lager (Self-Portrait in the Camp, 1940) the artist eyes us warily, gaunt and unshaven, while in the background one fellow inmate defecates into a dustbin and another, seminaked, searches the prison yard for scraps. The painting, which is in the Neue Galerie’s permanent collection, was one of several arresting realist works in the show. Nussbaum was interned by the French in 1940 as a German “enemy alien,” despite being a Jew in flight from Germany. Deported back there, he succeeded in escaping and for the next four years lived a life on the run or in hiding. In 1944 the Nazis caught up with him and, like Dicker, he was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed. The artists represented in Inventur survived the war, but while they hadn’t been hunted down and killed, a significant number had been ostracized by the Nazi regime, forbidden to exhibit, teach, or sell, or even imprisoned. Others were bombed out of their homes and studios, losing all or most of their work. Of the men who were called up to fight, some returned home wounded while others ended up in a Russian or American POW camp. Women experienced evacuation to the country, or, worse, the Soviet occupation of Berlin. After such hardship and suffering it is remarkable that anyone had the will or strength to make art at all. Rather than being organized chronologically, Before the Fall was divided into traditional genres such as portraiture (both individual and group), landscape, and still life, with separate sections on photography and works on paper. But that innocuous-sounding structure gives no hint of the anxiety or threat emanating from many of the images on show. Mythical birdlike creatures become metaphors for mass hysteria and sadistic violence in
Beckmann’s Hölle der Vögel (Birds’ Hell, 1938), painted in exile in Amsterdam. An equally sinister spirit pervades those paintings by Ernst featuring monstrous animal hybrids and unnatural plant forms, such as Die Barbaren (Barbarians, 1937). Artists as different from one another as Hans Adolf Bühler, Karl Hubbuch, Richard Oelze, Franz Radziwill, Rudolf Schlichter, and Franz Sedlacek appear to have used landscape, whether dreamlike or apocalyptic, to denote various sorts of political allegory. Forest paintings, recalling the darkest aspects of German Romanticism or Grimms’ fairy tales, suggest that irrational fears were never far from the surface. It would be dangerous, however, to read too much of a sense of foreboding into the hallucinatory intensity of Radziwill’s landscapes or the obsessive precisionism of Sedlacek’s gothic fantasies. Both artists were members of the Nazi party, although Radziwill (dubbed “Naziwill” by artist Karl Hofer after the war) later edited his oeuvre to make it seem as if he had been opposed to the regime. The Austrian Sedlacek, on the other hand, showed work in the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) in Munich in 1937, mounted simultaneously with Entartete Kunst in that city as a contrasting show of Nazi-approved art, and demonstrating, as Jonathan Petropoulos argues in his book Artists under Hitler, that a kind of soft modernism could fit under the rubric of such work. 1 In 1945, as a fifty-four-year-old officer in the Wehrmacht, Sedlacek went missing, presumed dead, on the Russian front. Another Austrian, Rudolf Wacker, endured arguably a worse fate: an opponent of the Nazis, he was hauled before the Gestapo after the Anschluss and suffered a fatal heart attack under interrogation. His still lifes, which often include dolls or wooden busts as human surrogates, were
Previous spread: Max Beckmann, Birds’ Hell, 1938, oil on canvas, 47 1⁄4 × 63 1⁄4 inches (120 × 160.7 cm), Private collection © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG BildKunst, Bonn Opposite (top): Felix Nussbaum, SelfPortrait in the Camp, 1940, oil on panel, 20 5⁄8 × 16 3⁄8 inches (52.5 × 41.5 cm). Neue Galerie New York © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG BildKunst, Bonn. Photo by Hulya Kolabas Opposite (bottom): Rudolf Wacker, Two Heads, 1932, oil on panel, 39 3⁄8 × 24 3⁄4 inches (100 × 63 cm). Belvedere, Vienna, Photo courtesy Belvedere, Vienna Below: Franz Sedlacek, Landscape with Rainbow, 1930, oil on panel, 17 3⁄4 × 16 3⁄8 inches (45 × 41.5 cm). University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive. Photo by University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive
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Opposite: August Sander, National Socialist, 1937–38 (printed c. 1990), gelatin silver print, 10 1⁄8 × 7 3⁄8 inches (25.8 × 18.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur–August Sander Archiv, Cologne/ARS, New York 2018 Right: Wilhelm Rudolph, Zöllnerstr., from the series Zerstörtes Dresden (Dresden Destroyed), 1945–46, pen and ink on paper, 19 7⁄8 × 25 5⁄8 inches (50 × 65 cm). KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Photo © BPK Bildagentur/KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden/Art Resource, NY Below: Willi Baumeister, Wachstum der Kristalle II (Growth of the Crystals II), 1947/52, oil with resin and putty on hardboard, 31 3⁄4 × 39 1⁄4 inches (80.7 × 99.5 cm). Harvard Art Museums/ Busch-Reisinger Museum © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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among the most disturbing images in Before the Fall—examples of Neue Sachlichkeit at its most glacial and alienating. In the sections devoted to works on paper and photographs, it was exciting to see a group of satirical caricatures by Alfred Kubin from the 1930s, a period of his work that is less celebrated than the morbid, proto-Surrealist visions of his earlier symbolist phase: Max Klinger has yielded to Goya and Daumier as inspiration. Already fifty-six when Hitler “seized” power, Kubin seems to have been under no illusion about what was in store. The photographer Helmar Lerski is relatively little known today, but in Berlin in the 1920s he was an acclaimed cameraman on a number of Expressionist films, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; his manipulation of light and shadow in close-ups of the human face was particularly admired. In
1929 he became a full-time portrait photographer and in 1931 published a book called Köpfe des Alltags (Heads from everyday life), intended to reveal archetypal “truths” rather than individual physiognomies—a sort of abstract version of August Sander’s more famous decades-long Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century) project, portraits from which were also shown in Before the Fall. Lerski left Germany in 1933 for Palestine, so it was puzzling to find him represented in the exhibition by a later project, Verwandlungen durch Licht (Metamorphosis through Light, 1936), consisting of multiple images of a single face, even though he did regard it as his masterpiece. The same question could have been asked about the appearance in the exhibition of Kokoschka’s allegorical portrait of the elderly Tomáš Masaryk, f irst president of Czechoslovakia, painted in Prague in 1935–36. Kokoschka, an outspoken critic of tyranny in all its forms, had left Austria in 1934, deeply concerned by the collapse of the country’s democratic government and rapid slide into authoritarianism. He alludes to Masaryk’s humane, democratic policies by showing him next to the figure of a mutual hero of the two men, the great seventeenth-century educational reformer Jan Amos Comenius. Since Masaryk stood for values antithetical to Nazi ideology, the inclusion of this magisterial portrait in the exhibition was fully justified. While sitting for Kokoschka, Masaryk helped him apply for Czech citizenship; this stood the artist in good stead a few years later in Britain, where he was classified as a “friendly alien” and thus not interned, as so many political refugees from Germany and Austria were in the panic of 1940. Inventur contained over 160 works by nearly fifty artists, grouped under five main headings: “Modern Art in Nazi Germany,” “War’s End,” “Postwar Pluralism,” “Economic Recovery,” and “The 1950s.” Its powerful argument was that the artistic diversity of West Germany’s immediate postwar period has been overshadowed by a narrative that posited abstraction as the predominant style, usually in opposition to the propagandist Socialist Realism expected of artists in East Germany from the late 1940s onward. The show’s end date of 1955 was significant: this was the year of 131
Opposite: August Sander, National Socialist, 1937–38 (printed c. 1990), gelatin silver print, 10 1⁄8 × 7 3⁄8 inches (25.8 × 18.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur–August Sander Archiv, Cologne/ARS, New York 2018 Right: Wilhelm Rudolph, Zöllnerstr., from the series Zerstörtes Dresden (Dresden Destroyed), 1945–46, pen and ink on paper, 19 7⁄8 × 25 5⁄8 inches (50 × 65 cm). KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Photo © BPK Bildagentur/KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden/Art Resource, NY Below: Willi Baumeister, Wachstum der Kristalle II (Growth of the Crystals II), 1947/52, oil with resin and putty on hardboard, 31 3⁄4 × 39 1⁄4 inches (80.7 × 99.5 cm). Harvard Art Museums/ Busch-Reisinger Museum © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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among the most disturbing images in Before the Fall—examples of Neue Sachlichkeit at its most glacial and alienating. In the sections devoted to works on paper and photographs, it was exciting to see a group of satirical caricatures by Alfred Kubin from the 1930s, a period of his work that is less celebrated than the morbid, proto-Surrealist visions of his earlier symbolist phase: Max Klinger has yielded to Goya and Daumier as inspiration. Already fifty-six when Hitler “seized” power, Kubin seems to have been under no illusion about what was in store. The photographer Helmar Lerski is relatively little known today, but in Berlin in the 1920s he was an acclaimed cameraman on a number of Expressionist films, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; his manipulation of light and shadow in close-ups of the human face was particularly admired. In
1929 he became a full-time portrait photographer and in 1931 published a book called Köpfe des Alltags (Heads from everyday life), intended to reveal archetypal “truths” rather than individual physiognomies—a sort of abstract version of August Sander’s more famous decades-long Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century) project, portraits from which were also shown in Before the Fall. Lerski left Germany in 1933 for Palestine, so it was puzzling to find him represented in the exhibition by a later project, Verwandlungen durch Licht (Metamorphosis through Light, 1936), consisting of multiple images of a single face, even though he did regard it as his masterpiece. The same question could have been asked about the appearance in the exhibition of Kokoschka’s allegorical portrait of the elderly Tomáš Masaryk, f irst president of Czechoslovakia, painted in Prague in 1935–36. Kokoschka, an outspoken critic of tyranny in all its forms, had left Austria in 1934, deeply concerned by the collapse of the country’s democratic government and rapid slide into authoritarianism. He alludes to Masaryk’s humane, democratic policies by showing him next to the figure of a mutual hero of the two men, the great seventeenth-century educational reformer Jan Amos Comenius. Since Masaryk stood for values antithetical to Nazi ideology, the inclusion of this magisterial portrait in the exhibition was fully justified. While sitting for Kokoschka, Masaryk helped him apply for Czech citizenship; this stood the artist in good stead a few years later in Britain, where he was classified as a “friendly alien” and thus not interned, as so many political refugees from Germany and Austria were in the panic of 1940. Inventur contained over 160 works by nearly fifty artists, grouped under five main headings: “Modern Art in Nazi Germany,” “War’s End,” “Postwar Pluralism,” “Economic Recovery,” and “The 1950s.” Its powerful argument was that the artistic diversity of West Germany’s immediate postwar period has been overshadowed by a narrative that posited abstraction as the predominant style, usually in opposition to the propagandist Socialist Realism expected of artists in East Germany from the late 1940s onward. The show’s end date of 1955 was significant: this was the year of 131
much of the photography and film of the period. However, in the entire exhibition only one work referred directly to the concentration camps: Carl Buchheister’s striking abstract assemblage of blood-red paint and found objects, Komposition mit brutalen Gegensätzen (Composition with Brutal Oppositions, 1949), and then only in its subtitle, KZ Bild (Concentration Camp Picture). Otherwise, on the subject of the camps, silence prevailed, as if the Holocaust had never happened or was too enormous a crime for German artists to address. It would take another decade for it to surface, however obliquely, in the work of Joseph Beuys; another generation for it to haunt Anselm Kiefer’s landscapes of death.
1 Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), especially the chapter “Accommodation Realized,” pp. 177–91. 2. Lynette Roth, “Inventur—Art in Germany, 1943–55,” in Inventur—Art in Germany, 1943–55, exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums, 2018), p. 30. 3. Ibid., p. 49.
the first in the documenta exhibition series, in Kassel, West Germany, which promoted a theory of continuity between prewar and postwar cultural modernism. By the second documenta, four years later, a wall panel in Inventur reminded us, “postwar art had become synonymous with Western abstraction.” Fifty-six of the works exhibited in Inventur are in the Busch-Reisinger’s permanent collection, nineteen of them acquired in the last couple of years. The Busch-Reisinger also possesses earlier work by artists who featured prominently in the exhibition, such as Baumeister, whose Kopf (Head, 1920), in oil paint, pencil, and plaster relief, was on display elsewhere in the museum. That work shows that Baumeister’s interest in unusual combinations of materials predated his postwar experiments. Wachstum der Kristalle II (Growth of the Crystals II, 1947/52, also in the Busch-Reisinger collection and included in the exhibition), demonstrated to striking effect the combing technique that he used to pattern and color smears of putty with combs left over from his training as a decorative painter before World War I. In the early 1940s, Baumeister, together with Oskar Schlemmer and Franz Krause, were employed at a lacquer factory run by Dr. Kurt Herberts in Wuppertal, investigating the properties of new synthetic paints. Privately, they experimented with an “automatic” abstract language of mixed media, brushless application, and fluid color dripped onto small steel panels. These works would appear to have had important implications for artists such as Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter in the 1960s. Inventur took its title from a 1945 poem by Günter Eich, written in an American prisoner-of-war camp, in which the poet poignantly lists his few worldly possessions, including his precious pencil and notebook, as if they were all that lay between him and an existential void. In her introductory essay to the show’s catalogue, Roth states that “after war’s end, most Germans avoided direct political engagement, instead turning with renewed vigor to the private sphere.”2 It didn’t take long, however, for what she calls “the ruinscape of the country’s major cities”3 to work its way into art, becoming a popular pictorial trope in the paintings of Werner Heldt, Erwin Spuler, Dix, Hofer, and others, as well as informing 132
Left: Hermann Glöckner, Räumliche Brechung eines Rechtecks (Spatial Refraction of a Rectangle), 1945–46, copper, 22 1⁄4 × 15 3⁄4 inches (56.5 × 40 cm). Harvard Art Museums/ Busch-Reisinger Museum © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Johannes von Mallinckrodt
MUDAM LUXEMBOURG MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE GRAND-DUC JEAN
Below: Carl Buchheister, Komposition mit brutalen Gegensätzen (KZ-Bild) (Composition with Brutal Oppositions (Concentration Camp Picture), 1949, mixed media and collage with aluminum, wooden slat, and cord, 30 1⁄8 × 22 inches (76.5 × 55.7 cm). Collection of Bernd Rathenow, Germany © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Johannes von Mallinckrodt
05.10.2018 – 06.01.2019
JEFF WALL APPEARANCE Jeff Wall, Mask maker, 2015 (detail) Courtesy of the artist © Jeff Wallå
much of the photography and film of the period. However, in the entire exhibition only one work referred directly to the concentration camps: Carl Buchheister’s striking abstract assemblage of blood-red paint and found objects, Komposition mit brutalen Gegensätzen (Composition with Brutal Oppositions, 1949), and then only in its subtitle, KZ Bild (Concentration Camp Picture). Otherwise, on the subject of the camps, silence prevailed, as if the Holocaust had never happened or was too enormous a crime for German artists to address. It would take another decade for it to surface, however obliquely, in the work of Joseph Beuys; another generation for it to haunt Anselm Kiefer’s landscapes of death.
1 Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), especially the chapter “Accommodation Realized,” pp. 177–91. 2. Lynette Roth, “Inventur—Art in Germany, 1943–55,” in Inventur—Art in Germany, 1943–55, exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums, 2018), p. 30. 3. Ibid., p. 49.
the first in the documenta exhibition series, in Kassel, West Germany, which promoted a theory of continuity between prewar and postwar cultural modernism. By the second documenta, four years later, a wall panel in Inventur reminded us, “postwar art had become synonymous with Western abstraction.” Fifty-six of the works exhibited in Inventur are in the Busch-Reisinger’s permanent collection, nineteen of them acquired in the last couple of years. The Busch-Reisinger also possesses earlier work by artists who featured prominently in the exhibition, such as Baumeister, whose Kopf (Head, 1920), in oil paint, pencil, and plaster relief, was on display elsewhere in the museum. That work shows that Baumeister’s interest in unusual combinations of materials predated his postwar experiments. Wachstum der Kristalle II (Growth of the Crystals II, 1947/52, also in the Busch-Reisinger collection and included in the exhibition), demonstrated to striking effect the combing technique that he used to pattern and color smears of putty with combs left over from his training as a decorative painter before World War I. In the early 1940s, Baumeister, together with Oskar Schlemmer and Franz Krause, were employed at a lacquer factory run by Dr. Kurt Herberts in Wuppertal, investigating the properties of new synthetic paints. Privately, they experimented with an “automatic” abstract language of mixed media, brushless application, and fluid color dripped onto small steel panels. These works would appear to have had important implications for artists such as Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter in the 1960s. Inventur took its title from a 1945 poem by Günter Eich, written in an American prisoner-of-war camp, in which the poet poignantly lists his few worldly possessions, including his precious pencil and notebook, as if they were all that lay between him and an existential void. In her introductory essay to the show’s catalogue, Roth states that “after war’s end, most Germans avoided direct political engagement, instead turning with renewed vigor to the private sphere.”2 It didn’t take long, however, for what she calls “the ruinscape of the country’s major cities”3 to work its way into art, becoming a popular pictorial trope in the paintings of Werner Heldt, Erwin Spuler, Dix, Hofer, and others, as well as informing 132
Left: Hermann Glöckner, Räumliche Brechung eines Rechtecks (Spatial Refraction of a Rectangle), 1945–46, copper, 22 1⁄4 × 15 3⁄4 inches (56.5 × 40 cm). Harvard Art Museums/ Busch-Reisinger Museum © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Johannes von Mallinckrodt
MUDAM LUXEMBOURG MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE GRAND-DUC JEAN
Below: Carl Buchheister, Komposition mit brutalen Gegensätzen (KZ-Bild) (Composition with Brutal Oppositions (Concentration Camp Picture), 1949, mixed media and collage with aluminum, wooden slat, and cord, 30 1⁄8 × 22 inches (76.5 × 55.7 cm). Collection of Bernd Rathenow, Germany © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Johannes von Mallinckrodt
05.10.2018 – 06.01.2019
JEFF WALL APPEARANCE Jeff Wall, Mask maker, 2015 (detail) Courtesy of the artist © Jeff Wallå
BOOK CORNER
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
Rare-book specialist Douglas Flamm tells the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier about Nicolaus Copernicus’s historic De Revolutionibus (1543), one of humanity’s most significant scientific texts, as they inspect a first-edition copy.
Let’s start with the basic facts surrounding the publication of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus orbium caelestium libri sex [On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres in six books]. The first edition was published in 1543. Do you know how many copies were created? DOUGLAS FLAMM It’s a bit of a debate—there aren’t printer’s records definitively stating a quantity— but the ballpark estimate is between 400 and 500 copies. And then, from that, there are 276 extant copies. Most of those are in institutions, such as university and public libraries. According to the astronomy professor Owen Gingerich, there are only eight copies in private hands. So while 276 copies seems like a large number for such a rare book, the fact that eight copies are in private hands makes it exceedingly rare for someone to search out today. WA T he book is such an impor tant par t of humanity’s collective intellectual inheritance— it makes sense that most are in institutional holdings. WYATT ALLGEIER
134
That’s just it. As far as human thought goes, De Revolutionibus is completely groundbreaking. It challenged and ultimately overturned an idea that had existed for 1,400 years. WA Which was the Ptolemaic model, correct? DF Yes. Without getting into the details of the Ptolemaic model, we can say simply that the prevailing concept was of the earth at the center of the universe—a bit of chauvinism, that earth and humanity must be central, with everything else revolving around us. Through the study of astronomy, meaning decades of careful observations and advanced mathematics, Copernicus demonstrated that this model fails to account for the way things actually are. WA Right. I recall Gingerich mentioning that it took over twenty years to gather the astronomical observations required. And he did this without a telescope! DF Yes, that innovation wouldn’t come about until Galileo. It was definitely a different pace from the way we gather information today. It really DF
was extraordinary. We take the understanding of the heliocentric model for granted—it has been an accepted and continually reified fact for so long— but in Copernicus’s lifetime this was unheard of. He literally discovered the solar system. So it’s easy to see why, as far as scientific achievements go, this is considered one of the three most important books ever published. Copernicus, Newton, Darwin: all scientists who worked out fundamental tenets of human knowledge. WA How was the book printed and bound? DF It was printed much like the Gutenberg Bible (which, let’s remember, was only published eighty years prior), with moveable type. It was printed in folio, meaning the paper was only folded in half, and then those signatures were gathered. At that time, when a book like this was published, it wasn’t bound—it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that it became more common for a publisher to bind a book—so people would take the loose signatures to their own binder. This copy that we’re talking about was bound in Paris.
BOOK CORNER
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
Rare-book specialist Douglas Flamm tells the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier about Nicolaus Copernicus’s historic De Revolutionibus (1543), one of humanity’s most significant scientific texts, as they inspect a first-edition copy.
Let’s start with the basic facts surrounding the publication of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus orbium caelestium libri sex [On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres in six books]. The first edition was published in 1543. Do you know how many copies were created? DOUGLAS FLAMM It’s a bit of a debate—there aren’t printer’s records definitively stating a quantity— but the ballpark estimate is between 400 and 500 copies. And then, from that, there are 276 extant copies. Most of those are in institutions, such as university and public libraries. According to the astronomy professor Owen Gingerich, there are only eight copies in private hands. So while 276 copies seems like a large number for such a rare book, the fact that eight copies are in private hands makes it exceedingly rare for someone to search out today. WA T he book is such an impor tant par t of humanity’s collective intellectual inheritance— it makes sense that most are in institutional holdings. WYATT ALLGEIER
134
That’s just it. As far as human thought goes, De Revolutionibus is completely groundbreaking. It challenged and ultimately overturned an idea that had existed for 1,400 years. WA Which was the Ptolemaic model, correct? DF Yes. Without getting into the details of the Ptolemaic model, we can say simply that the prevailing concept was of the earth at the center of the universe—a bit of chauvinism, that earth and humanity must be central, with everything else revolving around us. Through the study of astronomy, meaning decades of careful observations and advanced mathematics, Copernicus demonstrated that this model fails to account for the way things actually are. WA Right. I recall Gingerich mentioning that it took over twenty years to gather the astronomical observations required. And he did this without a telescope! DF Yes, that innovation wouldn’t come about until Galileo. It was definitely a different pace from the way we gather information today. It really DF
was extraordinary. We take the understanding of the heliocentric model for granted—it has been an accepted and continually reified fact for so long— but in Copernicus’s lifetime this was unheard of. He literally discovered the solar system. So it’s easy to see why, as far as scientific achievements go, this is considered one of the three most important books ever published. Copernicus, Newton, Darwin: all scientists who worked out fundamental tenets of human knowledge. WA How was the book printed and bound? DF It was printed much like the Gutenberg Bible (which, let’s remember, was only published eighty years prior), with moveable type. It was printed in folio, meaning the paper was only folded in half, and then those signatures were gathered. At that time, when a book like this was published, it wasn’t bound—it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that it became more common for a publisher to bind a book—so people would take the loose signatures to their own binder. This copy that we’re talking about was bound in Paris.
Right, so printed in Nuremberg by Petreius’s print shop, then bound in Paris some years later. DF Yes, exactly. WA For me, and I imagine for many others who can’t read Latin, what makes the book so appealing, apart from its historical significance, is its many diagrams and charts, which are visually beautiful. They’re geometric modelings and calculation proofs, so they’re pragmatic in intent, but there’s this striking power to them. DF Yes they have a very sixteenth-century aesthetic. Very simple, clean, straightforward, and beautifully printed in woodcut on cotton-rag paper, which is how it was done at that time. There were other books of the period that used wood engravings, which allowed for a greater level of detail, but these were all woodcuts. Vesalius’s major early work of anatomical studies, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem [On the fabric of the human body in seven books]—which was coincidentally printed in 1543 as well—was illustrated using wood engravings. It’s interesting to me that these two revolutionary books were published in the same year. WA
136
The interesting thing about the most famous illustration, which depicts not the orbit of the planets around the sun, as is sometimes thought, but rather the cross-sections of the planetary spheres, is that it depicts the moon going around the earth. It doesn’t go into the moons of the other planets; I don’t think it’s really until Galileo, with the advent of the telescope, that that’s really seen. It’s this great detail in there. WA In mentioning Galileo, I’m reminded of another misconception, one that I had for a while: the book’s relationship to the Catholic Church. While De Revolutionibus was a revolutionary book from day one, it wasn’t actually seen as a threat to the Catholic Church until over a century later, as the model received further backup from Kepler and Galileo. DF Exactly. The Church did not take issue with it initially. It wasn’t until 1616 that it wound up on the Vatican’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum [Index of forbidden books]. Before that, many people within the Church found that the observations recorded in the book allowed them to determine
where Easter would fall on the calendar with greater accuracy. WA Yes, apart from being a whole new model of the planets’ rotations, it allowed for more accurate accounting of astronomical behaviors and relationships. For such a long time I thought that, because it was such a new idea, it would have been more immediately controversial. DF Right. It was tempered by a few different things. In addition to the more accurate dating, it was a very technical book and was presented as a theory, not an assertion. Compounded to this is the figure of Andreas Osiander— WA A clergyman, right? DF Yes, and as the book was being printed, with Copernicus on his deathbed—you know, it took months to print a book in the sixteenth century— Osiander wrote the Ad Lectorem [To the reader], which was a sort of preface included in the final book. It was an unauthorized move and greatly annoyed Copernicus’s aide, the mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus. This preface stated that the book’s findings were only theories and ideas,
not statements of fact about the real mechanics of the universe. WA A sneaky move, but it may have helped to forestall any initial anger or charges of heresy. DF Exactly, until 1616, when it wound up on the list of banned books, where it stayed until 1835. WA Do you know the provenance of the copy you currently have? DF It was originally in the Jesuit library, Collegii Parisiensis Societat Jesu, in Paris and has a well-documented provenance from there. It’s a very bright and fresh copy, which is really nice. Some copies are heavily annotated and show considerable signs of wear. This copy does have a few notes in the margins, but it’s really quite crisp. Crispness is one of those things you get when handling a sixteenth-century book, when the paper still has sort of a crinkle to it and you can hear it. And it’s one of those sounds that—you know, going through a book can be sort of a sensory experience, physically holding it in your hand. The smell, too—it’s a very pleasant combination of ink and leather.
I’m awestruck by this book—how it changed and advanced human thought in a broad stroke. Copernicus’s ability to put away assumptions and just look at the facts, and then have the courage, the conviction, and the knowledge to bring that together and publish his work, is extraordinary. WA He was nervous about it, though. There was definitely a fear that he would be hissed offstage, as the legend has it. DF Absolutely. He was working away on the manuscript for close to thirty years with no in-place plans to publish. It took the review and encouragement of Rheticus for Copernicus to finally decide to let it be published, and therefore shared. WA I found Rheticus really fascinating—he was paramount in the survival of Copernicus’s findings. There was a real chance that these observations and conclusions about the heliocentric model would have remained a single manuscript on a shelf in Poland, where Copernicus lived. Then this young mathematician shows up—he wasn’t actually invited, he just came after hearing some of Copernicus’s ideas—who helps carry
De Revolutionibus into existence, through his encouragement and by physically transporting the manuscript to Nuremburg and overseeing much of its printing. DF Absolutely. This is how science works: someone has a hypothesis and collects data relating to that hypothesis. This data and its relevance are inspected by others, then published, and then the next generation builds on it. Kepler took Copernicus’s ideas one step further, which doesn’t diminish the earlier achievements— WA No, it fortifies them. DF Exactly. It builds on what we call human knowledge and our understanding of the world around us. It’s through these great thinkers that we realize that we’re in motion, in movement around our light source, the sun, as are all these other planets. The accomplishments of this book cannot be overstated.
Photos by Rob McKeever 137
Right, so printed in Nuremberg by Petreius’s print shop, then bound in Paris some years later. DF Yes, exactly. WA For me, and I imagine for many others who can’t read Latin, what makes the book so appealing, apart from its historical significance, is its many diagrams and charts, which are visually beautiful. They’re geometric modelings and calculation proofs, so they’re pragmatic in intent, but there’s this striking power to them. DF Yes they have a very sixteenth-century aesthetic. Very simple, clean, straightforward, and beautifully printed in woodcut on cotton-rag paper, which is how it was done at that time. There were other books of the period that used wood engravings, which allowed for a greater level of detail, but these were all woodcuts. Vesalius’s major early work of anatomical studies, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem [On the fabric of the human body in seven books]—which was coincidentally printed in 1543 as well—was illustrated using wood engravings. It’s interesting to me that these two revolutionary books were published in the same year. WA
136
The interesting thing about the most famous illustration, which depicts not the orbit of the planets around the sun, as is sometimes thought, but rather the cross-sections of the planetary spheres, is that it depicts the moon going around the earth. It doesn’t go into the moons of the other planets; I don’t think it’s really until Galileo, with the advent of the telescope, that that’s really seen. It’s this great detail in there. WA In mentioning Galileo, I’m reminded of another misconception, one that I had for a while: the book’s relationship to the Catholic Church. While De Revolutionibus was a revolutionary book from day one, it wasn’t actually seen as a threat to the Catholic Church until over a century later, as the model received further backup from Kepler and Galileo. DF Exactly. The Church did not take issue with it initially. It wasn’t until 1616 that it wound up on the Vatican’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum [Index of forbidden books]. Before that, many people within the Church found that the observations recorded in the book allowed them to determine
where Easter would fall on the calendar with greater accuracy. WA Yes, apart from being a whole new model of the planets’ rotations, it allowed for more accurate accounting of astronomical behaviors and relationships. For such a long time I thought that, because it was such a new idea, it would have been more immediately controversial. DF Right. It was tempered by a few different things. In addition to the more accurate dating, it was a very technical book and was presented as a theory, not an assertion. Compounded to this is the figure of Andreas Osiander— WA A clergyman, right? DF Yes, and as the book was being printed, with Copernicus on his deathbed—you know, it took months to print a book in the sixteenth century— Osiander wrote the Ad Lectorem [To the reader], which was a sort of preface included in the final book. It was an unauthorized move and greatly annoyed Copernicus’s aide, the mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus. This preface stated that the book’s findings were only theories and ideas,
not statements of fact about the real mechanics of the universe. WA A sneaky move, but it may have helped to forestall any initial anger or charges of heresy. DF Exactly, until 1616, when it wound up on the list of banned books, where it stayed until 1835. WA Do you know the provenance of the copy you currently have? DF It was originally in the Jesuit library, Collegii Parisiensis Societat Jesu, in Paris and has a well-documented provenance from there. It’s a very bright and fresh copy, which is really nice. Some copies are heavily annotated and show considerable signs of wear. This copy does have a few notes in the margins, but it’s really quite crisp. Crispness is one of those things you get when handling a sixteenth-century book, when the paper still has sort of a crinkle to it and you can hear it. And it’s one of those sounds that—you know, going through a book can be sort of a sensory experience, physically holding it in your hand. The smell, too—it’s a very pleasant combination of ink and leather.
I’m awestruck by this book—how it changed and advanced human thought in a broad stroke. Copernicus’s ability to put away assumptions and just look at the facts, and then have the courage, the conviction, and the knowledge to bring that together and publish his work, is extraordinary. WA He was nervous about it, though. There was definitely a fear that he would be hissed offstage, as the legend has it. DF Absolutely. He was working away on the manuscript for close to thirty years with no in-place plans to publish. It took the review and encouragement of Rheticus for Copernicus to finally decide to let it be published, and therefore shared. WA I found Rheticus really fascinating—he was paramount in the survival of Copernicus’s findings. There was a real chance that these observations and conclusions about the heliocentric model would have remained a single manuscript on a shelf in Poland, where Copernicus lived. Then this young mathematician shows up—he wasn’t actually invited, he just came after hearing some of Copernicus’s ideas—who helps carry
De Revolutionibus into existence, through his encouragement and by physically transporting the manuscript to Nuremburg and overseeing much of its printing. DF Absolutely. This is how science works: someone has a hypothesis and collects data relating to that hypothesis. This data and its relevance are inspected by others, then published, and then the next generation builds on it. Kepler took Copernicus’s ideas one step further, which doesn’t diminish the earlier achievements— WA No, it fortifies them. DF Exactly. It builds on what we call human knowledge and our understanding of the world around us. It’s through these great thinkers that we realize that we’re in motion, in movement around our light source, the sun, as are all these other planets. The accomplishments of this book cannot be overstated.
Photos by Rob McKeever 137
FROM THE SHOP
4
5
6
7
SOMETHING SPECIAL 1
3
2
8
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
This copy of Video Time—Video Space, a monograph on the work of Nam June Paik published in 1993, contains an original two-color wax-crayon drawing by Paik on the front endpaper. Inscribing the book to “Aviva and Jacob [Baal-Teshuva],” Paik also signed and dated it “4/1/92.” This richly illustrated publication, edited by Thomas Kellein and Toni Stooss, includes a variety of primary documents from the artist, as well as interviews and essays by various authors.
This limited edition catalogue for Piero Manzoni’s posthumous 1969–70 exhibition at the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach comes encased in a clear plastic box with eight indents. The catalogue includes twenty-two black and white offset images. With essays by Johannes Cladders and Udo Kultermann (in German). This copy is numbered #101/440.
Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Life of Forms is a new examination of the artist’s more-thanforty-year career, revealing what constitutes sculpture through the interplay between the human body, nature, and art. Four new essays and a conversation between the artist and the book’s editor, Carlos Basualdo, appear in one volume, while twelve insightful texts by Daniela Lancioni, each an independent booklet, investigate the main typologies that constitute the work’s organizing principles.
Michael Craig-Martin’s Violin Plates (pink), produced in 2016, is a set of three different-sized bone china plates with a fragmented image of a violin spread across them. In Craig-Martin’s words, “It was an extraordinary coincidence it fit so perfectly. I am happy that the plates can be used to eat from in an ordinary way, displayed on a table or a wall to reassemble the violin, placed in an orderly stack from large to small.”
William Copley’s SMS (Shit Must Stop) is a six-issue periodical from 1968. Each issue, in the form of a mailed box, contains assorted materials, including etchings, tapes, booklets, diagrams, constructions, Xeroxes, mail art, assemblages, vinyl and mylar sheets, and more. The six issues are preserved in their original cardboard mailers. From an edition of 100 signed copies.
Roy Lichtenstein’s Folded Hat, from 1968, was produced for Copley’s SMS no. 4. This clever take on the childhood paper hat takes the form of an offset lithograph printed on a plastic sheet.
This recent monograph on Jenny Saville, co-published by Gagosian and Rizzoli, is the most comprehensive on the artist, whose large-scale nudes continue to challenge accepted ideals of beauty. The volume unites new work with many earlier paintings and drawings, while the accompanying essays, by Richard Calvocoressi and Mark Stevens, explore the artist’s fascination with the human body within a broad art-historical context. The book also includes an interview between Saville and Sally Mann.
Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, widely recognized as the first definitive monograph on the legendary Swiss sculptor, was written by Yves Bonnefoy and published in English by Abbeville for Flammarion in 1991. Totaling 576 pages, this comprehensive publication takes on the historical context underpinning Giacometti’s work and covers not only his sculptures but also his drawings, paintings, and lithographs.
138
139
FROM THE SHOP
4
5
6
7
SOMETHING SPECIAL 1
3
2
8
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
This copy of Video Time—Video Space, a monograph on the work of Nam June Paik published in 1993, contains an original two-color wax-crayon drawing by Paik on the front endpaper. Inscribing the book to “Aviva and Jacob [Baal-Teshuva],” Paik also signed and dated it “4/1/92.” This richly illustrated publication, edited by Thomas Kellein and Toni Stooss, includes a variety of primary documents from the artist, as well as interviews and essays by various authors.
This limited edition catalogue for Piero Manzoni’s posthumous 1969–70 exhibition at the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach comes encased in a clear plastic box with eight indents. The catalogue includes twenty-two black and white offset images. With essays by Johannes Cladders and Udo Kultermann (in German). This copy is numbered #101/440.
Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Life of Forms is a new examination of the artist’s more-thanforty-year career, revealing what constitutes sculpture through the interplay between the human body, nature, and art. Four new essays and a conversation between the artist and the book’s editor, Carlos Basualdo, appear in one volume, while twelve insightful texts by Daniela Lancioni, each an independent booklet, investigate the main typologies that constitute the work’s organizing principles.
Michael Craig-Martin’s Violin Plates (pink), produced in 2016, is a set of three different-sized bone china plates with a fragmented image of a violin spread across them. In Craig-Martin’s words, “It was an extraordinary coincidence it fit so perfectly. I am happy that the plates can be used to eat from in an ordinary way, displayed on a table or a wall to reassemble the violin, placed in an orderly stack from large to small.”
William Copley’s SMS (Shit Must Stop) is a six-issue periodical from 1968. Each issue, in the form of a mailed box, contains assorted materials, including etchings, tapes, booklets, diagrams, constructions, Xeroxes, mail art, assemblages, vinyl and mylar sheets, and more. The six issues are preserved in their original cardboard mailers. From an edition of 100 signed copies.
Roy Lichtenstein’s Folded Hat, from 1968, was produced for Copley’s SMS no. 4. This clever take on the childhood paper hat takes the form of an offset lithograph printed on a plastic sheet.
This recent monograph on Jenny Saville, co-published by Gagosian and Rizzoli, is the most comprehensive on the artist, whose large-scale nudes continue to challenge accepted ideals of beauty. The volume unites new work with many earlier paintings and drawings, while the accompanying essays, by Richard Calvocoressi and Mark Stevens, explore the artist’s fascination with the human body within a broad art-historical context. The book also includes an interview between Saville and Sally Mann.
Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, widely recognized as the first definitive monograph on the legendary Swiss sculptor, was written by Yves Bonnefoy and published in English by Abbeville for Flammarion in 1991. Totaling 576 pages, this comprehensive publication takes on the historical context underpinning Giacometti’s work and covers not only his sculptures but also his drawings, paintings, and lithographs.
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New York 976 Madison Avenue 976 Madison Avenue New York, ny 10075 +1 212 744 2313 newyork@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7:30
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New York Park & 75 821 Park Avenue New York, ny 10021 +1 212 796 1228 parkand75@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6
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New York West 21st Street 522 West 21st Street New York, ny 10011 +1 212 741 1717 newyork@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6 Beverly Hills 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills, ca 90210 +1 310 271 9400 losangeles@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6 San Francisco 657 Howard Street San Francisco, ca 94105 +1 415 546 3990 sanfrancisco@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6
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The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, volume 5, Paintings 1976–1978, is a two-book publication that demonstrates the subversive core of Warhol’s art. While the work of these years includes self-portraits and portraits of athletes, Warhol was intent on radically departing from his portraiture of the early 1970s. This raisonné includes the Skull and Hammer and Sickle series, the Torso and Sex Parts paintings, and the abstract Piss, Oxidation, and Cum canvases.
Published this year on the occasion of the exhibition Harmony Korine, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this careerspanning publication includes an essay by Alicia Knock, an interview with the artist by Emmanuel Burdeau, and a complete filmography. With 192 fully illustrated pages, this comprehensive catalogue, published by Rizzoli in association with the Centre Pompidou and Gagosian, is the definitive account of Korine’s diverse career in film and art.
The Skateroom and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation have collaborated to create Overdrive, a limited-edition triptych of skateboards printed with the artist’s iconic imagery. Five percent of the sales will go to support the Foundation’s grant program on issues of art, social justice, climate change, and education.
Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine set the bar for what a magazine looking to capture the intersection of art, music, fashion, and culture at large would have to achieve. This copy of the June 1979 issue (volume XI, no. 6) features Debbie Harry on its cover and an interview with the Blondie singer by Glenn O’Brien inside. Signed by Warhol in black ink, this rare back issue also includes an essay by Fran Lebowitz, interviews with Truman Capote and Richard Gilman, and much more.
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Rome Via Francesco Crispi 16 00187 Rome +39 06 4208 6498 roma@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10:30–7 Geneva 19 place de Longemalle 1204 Geneva +41 22 319 36 19 geneva@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10–6 Athens 3 Merlin Street Athens 10671 +30 210 36 40 215 athens@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–6 Hong Kong 7/F Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street Central, Hong Kong +852 2151 0555 hongkong@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–7 Gagosian Shop, New York 976 Madison Avenue New York, ny 10075 +1 212 796 1224 shop@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7:30 Gagosian Shop, Paris 6 rue de Ponthieu 75008 Paris +33 1 75 00 05 92 shop.paris@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–7
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LOCATIONS
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New York 980 Madison Avenue 980 Madison Avenue New York, ny 10075 +1 212 744 2313 newyork@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6
London Davies Street 17–19 Davies Street London w1k 3de +44 20 7493 3020 london@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10–6
New York 976 Madison Avenue 976 Madison Avenue New York, ny 10075 +1 212 744 2313 newyork@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7:30
Paris rue de Ponthieu 4 rue de Ponthieu 75008 Paris +33 1 75 00 05 92 paris@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–7
New York Park & 75 821 Park Avenue New York, ny 10021 +1 212 796 1228 parkand75@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6
Paris Le Bourget 26 avenue de l’Europe 93350 Le Bourget +33 1 48 16 16 47 paris@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–6, by appointment only
New York West 24th Street 555 West 24th Street New York, ny 10011 +1 212 741 1111 newyork@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6
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New York West 21st Street 522 West 21st Street New York, ny 10011 +1 212 741 1717 newyork@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6 Beverly Hills 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills, ca 90210 +1 310 271 9400 losangeles@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6 San Francisco 657 Howard Street San Francisco, ca 94105 +1 415 546 3990 sanfrancisco@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–6
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The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, volume 5, Paintings 1976–1978, is a two-book publication that demonstrates the subversive core of Warhol’s art. While the work of these years includes self-portraits and portraits of athletes, Warhol was intent on radically departing from his portraiture of the early 1970s. This raisonné includes the Skull and Hammer and Sickle series, the Torso and Sex Parts paintings, and the abstract Piss, Oxidation, and Cum canvases.
Published this year on the occasion of the exhibition Harmony Korine, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this careerspanning publication includes an essay by Alicia Knock, an interview with the artist by Emmanuel Burdeau, and a complete filmography. With 192 fully illustrated pages, this comprehensive catalogue, published by Rizzoli in association with the Centre Pompidou and Gagosian, is the definitive account of Korine’s diverse career in film and art.
The Skateroom and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation have collaborated to create Overdrive, a limited-edition triptych of skateboards printed with the artist’s iconic imagery. Five percent of the sales will go to support the Foundation’s grant program on issues of art, social justice, climate change, and education.
Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine set the bar for what a magazine looking to capture the intersection of art, music, fashion, and culture at large would have to achieve. This copy of the June 1979 issue (volume XI, no. 6) features Debbie Harry on its cover and an interview with the Blondie singer by Glenn O’Brien inside. Signed by Warhol in black ink, this rare back issue also includes an essay by Fran Lebowitz, interviews with Truman Capote and Richard Gilman, and much more.
140
London Grosvenor Hill 20 Grosvenor Hill London w1k 3qd +44 20 7495 1500 london@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10–6 London Britannia Street 6–24 Britannia Street London wc1x 9jd +44 20 7841 9960 london@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10–6
Rome Via Francesco Crispi 16 00187 Rome +39 06 4208 6498 roma@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10:30–7 Geneva 19 place de Longemalle 1204 Geneva +41 22 319 36 19 geneva@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10–6 Athens 3 Merlin Street Athens 10671 +30 210 36 40 215 athens@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–6 Hong Kong 7/F Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street Central, Hong Kong +852 2151 0555 hongkong@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–7 Gagosian Shop, New York 976 Madison Avenue New York, ny 10075 +1 212 796 1224 shop@gagosian.com Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7:30 Gagosian Shop, Paris 6 rue de Ponthieu 75008 Paris +33 1 75 00 05 92 shop.paris@gagosian.com Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–7
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grillo (detail), 1984. Fondation Louis Vuitton. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo : © Fondation Louis Vuitton Marc Domage
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Peacock Waistcoat, Standing, 1911 Ernst Ploil Collection, Vienna
Egon
Jean-Michel
Basquiat Schiele J. M. Basquiat and E. Schiele, two exhibitions organized by the Fondation Louis Vuitton Book now: fondationlouisvuitton.fr and fnac.com | #FondationLouisVuitton | #SchieleFLV #BasquiatFLV |
8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Bois de Boulogne, Paris, France
Exhibitions 3 October 2018 > 14 January 2019
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grillo (detail), 1984. Fondation Louis Vuitton. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo : © Fondation Louis Vuitton Marc Domage
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Peacock Waistcoat, Standing, 1911 Ernst Ploil Collection, Vienna
Egon
Jean-Michel
Basquiat Schiele J. M. Basquiat and E. Schiele, two exhibitions organized by the Fondation Louis Vuitton Book now: fondationlouisvuitton.fr and fnac.com | #FondationLouisVuitton | #SchieleFLV #BasquiatFLV |
8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Bois de Boulogne, Paris, France
Exhibitions 3 October 2018 > 14 January 2019
303 Gallery, New York Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York Acquavella Galleries, New York Altman Siegel, San Franciso Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Tanya Bonakdar, New York The Box, Los Angeles Château Shatto, Los Angeles Sadie Coles HQ, London Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles Thomas Dane Gallery, London Massimo De Carlo, Milan Jeffrey Deitch, New York Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles Gagosian, New York François Ghebaly, Los Angeles Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Alexander Gray Associates, New York Greene Naftali, New York Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles Herald St, London Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles Gallery Hyundai, Seoul Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Casey Kaplan, New York Karma, New York Karma International, Zurich kaufmann repetto, Milan Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles Tina Kim Gallery, New York David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles Kukje Gallery, Seoul kurimanzutto, Mexico City LA Louver, Los Angeles Lehmann Maupin, New York Lévy Gorvy, New York Lisson Gallery, London Luhring Augustine, New York Matthew Marks Gallery, New York Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo Metro Pictures, New York Victoria Miro, London The Modern Institute, Glasgow Night Gallery, Los Angeles OMR, Mexico City Pace Gallery, Palo Alto Maureen Paley, London Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles Parker Gallery, Los Angeles Perrotin, New York The Pit, Los Angeles Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich Almine Rech Gallery, New York Regen Projects, Los Angeles Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London Salon 94/Salon 94 Design, New York Esther Schipper, Berlin Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles Sfeir-Semler, Beirut Jack Shainman Gallery, New York Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London Société, Berlin Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles Vermelho, São Paulo Susanne Vielmetter LA Projects, Los Angeles White Cube, London David Zwirner, New York
The International Art Fair Launching at Paramount Pictures Studios February 14–17, 2019
Photograph: Trevor Hernandez @gangculture
FRIEZE
303 Gallery, New York Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York Acquavella Galleries, New York Altman Siegel, San Franciso Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Tanya Bonakdar, New York The Box, Los Angeles Château Shatto, Los Angeles Sadie Coles HQ, London Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles Thomas Dane Gallery, London Massimo De Carlo, Milan Jeffrey Deitch, New York Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles Gagosian, New York François Ghebaly, Los Angeles Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Alexander Gray Associates, New York Greene Naftali, New York Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles Herald St, London Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles Gallery Hyundai, Seoul Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Casey Kaplan, New York Karma, New York Karma International, Zurich kaufmann repetto, Milan Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles Tina Kim Gallery, New York David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles Kukje Gallery, Seoul kurimanzutto, Mexico City LA Louver, Los Angeles Lehmann Maupin, New York Lévy Gorvy, New York Lisson Gallery, London Luhring Augustine, New York Matthew Marks Gallery, New York Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo Metro Pictures, New York Victoria Miro, London The Modern Institute, Glasgow Night Gallery, Los Angeles OMR, Mexico City Pace Gallery, Palo Alto Maureen Paley, London Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles Parker Gallery, Los Angeles Perrotin, New York The Pit, Los Angeles Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich Almine Rech Gallery, New York Regen Projects, Los Angeles Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London Salon 94/Salon 94 Design, New York Esther Schipper, Berlin Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles Sfeir-Semler, Beirut Jack Shainman Gallery, New York Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London Société, Berlin Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles Vermelho, São Paulo Susanne Vielmetter LA Projects, Los Angeles White Cube, London David Zwirner, New York
The International Art Fair Launching at Paramount Pictures Studios February 14–17, 2019
Photograph: Trevor Hernandez @gangculture
FRIEZE
Whiteread Rachel Whiteread THROUGH THROUGH JANUARY JANUARY 13, 13, 2019 2019
WHITEREAD
The Tate Britain Theexhibition exhibitionisisorganized organizedby bythe theNational NationalGallery GalleryofofArt, Art,Washington, Washington,and and Tate Britain The Theexhibition exhibitionisismade madepossible possiblebybyDr. Dr.Mihael Mihaeland andMrs. Mrs.Mahy MahyPolymeropoulos Polymeropoulos ItItisisalso alsosupported supportedby byAmanda Amandaand andGlenn GlennFuhrman Fuhrmanand andThe TheFLAG FLAGArt ArtFoundation Foundation Additional ofof ArtArt Additionalfunding fundingisisprovided providedby byThe TheExhibition ExhibitionCircle Circleofofthe theNational NationalGallery Gallery Rachel Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, ©© Rachel Whiteread 2018 RachelWhiteread, Whiteread,Due DuePorte, Porte,2016, 2016,resin resin(two (twopanels), panels), Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rachel Whiteread 2018
N N AA T T II O ON N AA LL GG AALLLLEERRYY OOFF AARRTT O N T H E N A T I O N A L M A L L , W A S H I N G T O N , D C W W W. N G A . G O V O N T H E N A T I O N A L M A L L , W A S H I N G T O N , D C W W W. N G A . G O V
Whiteread Rachel Whiteread THROUGH THROUGH JANUARY JANUARY 13, 13, 2019 2019
WHITEREAD
The Tate Britain Theexhibition exhibitionisisorganized organizedby bythe theNational NationalGallery GalleryofofArt, Art,Washington, Washington,and and Tate Britain The Theexhibition exhibitionisismade madepossible possiblebybyDr. Dr.Mihael Mihaeland andMrs. Mrs.Mahy MahyPolymeropoulos Polymeropoulos ItItisisalso alsosupported supportedby byAmanda Amandaand andGlenn GlennFuhrman Fuhrmanand andThe TheFLAG FLAGArt ArtFoundation Foundation Additional ofof ArtArt Additionalfunding fundingisisprovided providedby byThe TheExhibition ExhibitionCircle Circleofofthe theNational NationalGallery Gallery Rachel Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, ©© Rachel Whiteread 2018 RachelWhiteread, Whiteread,Due DuePorte, Porte,2016, 2016,resin resin(two (twopanels), panels), Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rachel Whiteread 2018
N N AA T T II O ON N AA LL GG AALLLLEERRYY OOFF AARRTT O N T H E N A T I O N A L M A L L , W A S H I N G T O N , D C W W W. N G A . G O V O N T H E N A T I O N A L M A L L , W A S H I N G T O N , D C W W W. N G A . G O V
Lunch Monday–Saturday 12–3pm Dinner Monday–Saturday 6–11pm 976 Madison Avenue, New York T. 212 906 7141 reservation@kappomasanyc.com
Lunch Monday–Saturday 12–3pm Dinner Monday–Saturday 6–11pm 976 Madison Avenue, New York T. 212 906 7141 reservation@kappomasanyc.com
GAME CHANGER Each issue we look at a particular artwork that influenced the course of contemporary art. Here is Jeff Koons’s Puppy (1992). Text by Derek Blasberg.
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Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2018; © Jeff Koons; © Ed Ruscha; © Vera Lutter; © 2012 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved
Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992, stainless steel, wood (at Arolsen only), soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, live flowering plants, 486 × 486 × 256 inches (1234.4 × 1234.4 × 650.2 cm) © Jeff Koons. Photo by Dieter Schwerdtle
When it first appeared—in 1992, at the Rezidenzschloss Arolsen castle in Bad Arolsen, Germany— Jeff Koons’s Puppy was already begging like, well, like a dog, for art-world attention. While not officially part of the documenta 9 exhibition thirty miles away in Kassel, the heartwarming sculpture was erected during that international survey and in many ways became its centerpiece. Over forty feet tall, Puppy sports a steel armature covered with nearly 17,000 real flowers. (It includes a trap door and an interior ladder for routine watering.) Paired with the playful visage of a well-behaved terrier, this massive construction commanded a big smile. Puppy was a giant wink from a man whose compulsion for mashing up obsessions with childlike bliss and avant-garde kitsch had landed him as one of the world’s best-known artists. As Roberta Smith wrote in the New York Times when the piece debuted, “Perhaps he’s unique: a kind of
avant-gardist/folk artist who wants all his work, whether sacred or profane, kitschy or pornographic, simply to celebrate life.” In the 2 ½ decades since Puppy’s debut, these qualities have become the hallmarks of Koons’s work. And this specific little doggy has flowered all over the world, from Germany to Australia to Bilbao and even to a perch in the middle of New York’s Rockefeller Center, each time including slight adjustments to the floral composition. According to critic Jerry Saltz, the sculpture, much like man’s best friend, “receives and redeems. People love it.” (Eight years after Puppy, Koons debuted Split-Rocker, another giant flowering tribute to adolescent delight, which also blossomed in Rockefeller Center.) So why a dog in the first place? “I wanted to make an image that communicated warmth and love to people,” says Koons. “I wanted it to be a contemporary Sacred Heart of Jesus. Puppy is a role model of God.” Bow wow! 4
GAME CHANGER Each issue we look at a particular artwork that influenced the course of contemporary art. Here is Jeff Koons’s Puppy (1992). Text by Derek Blasberg.
154
Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2018; © Jeff Koons; © Ed Ruscha; © Vera Lutter; © 2012 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved
Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992, stainless steel, wood (at Arolsen only), soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, live flowering plants, 486 × 486 × 256 inches (1234.4 × 1234.4 × 650.2 cm) © Jeff Koons. Photo by Dieter Schwerdtle
When it first appeared—in 1992, at the Rezidenzschloss Arolsen castle in Bad Arolsen, Germany— Jeff Koons’s Puppy was already begging like, well, like a dog, for art-world attention. While not officially part of the documenta 9 exhibition thirty miles away in Kassel, the heartwarming sculpture was erected during that international survey and in many ways became its centerpiece. Over forty feet tall, Puppy sports a steel armature covered with nearly 17,000 real flowers. (It includes a trap door and an interior ladder for routine watering.) Paired with the playful visage of a well-behaved terrier, this massive construction commanded a big smile. Puppy was a giant wink from a man whose compulsion for mashing up obsessions with childlike bliss and avant-garde kitsch had landed him as one of the world’s best-known artists. As Roberta Smith wrote in the New York Times when the piece debuted, “Perhaps he’s unique: a kind of
avant-gardist/folk artist who wants all his work, whether sacred or profane, kitschy or pornographic, simply to celebrate life.” In the 2 ½ decades since Puppy’s debut, these qualities have become the hallmarks of Koons’s work. And this specific little doggy has flowered all over the world, from Germany to Australia to Bilbao and even to a perch in the middle of New York’s Rockefeller Center, each time including slight adjustments to the floral composition. According to critic Jerry Saltz, the sculpture, much like man’s best friend, “receives and redeems. People love it.” (Eight years after Puppy, Koons debuted Split-Rocker, another giant flowering tribute to adolescent delight, which also blossomed in Rockefeller Center.) So why a dog in the first place? “I wanted to make an image that communicated warmth and love to people,” says Koons. “I wanted it to be a contemporary Sacred Heart of Jesus. Puppy is a role model of God.” Bow wow! 4