Warhol Big Electric Chair Big Lie

an andy warhol painting of a photo of the electric chair at sing sing prison, screenprinted in black onto a monochrome background that looks orange or salmon, but which one art adviser described as pepto bismol, which is a sickeningly bright pink. having not seen this painting myself before christie's disappeared it, i cannot confirm the color, only its significance and withdrawal.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Big Electric Chair, 1967-1968. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas. 54 x 74 in (137.2 x 188 cm). Estimate on request. Disappeared from the 20th Century Evening Sale on 12 May 2025 at Christie’s in New York

I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

On 11 April 2025 Christie’s announced that Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair from the Matthys-Colle collection will highlight Christie’s 20th century evening sale, with a low estimate in the region of $30 million.

the verso of andy warhol's big electric chair is tan canvas or lining, with the salmon pink pulled around all but the bottom edge, and some museum exhibition stickers on the stretcher. via christies, which then deleted it when they withdrew the lot from sale in may 2025

On 25 April 2025, Christie’s published, “Christie’s specialists talk 9 standout lots at auction this May,” including Lot 55A, Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair.

These Big Electric Chair works are very rare at auction because most of them are in major museum collections like the Centre Pompidou and the Art Institute of Chicago, so they have taken on an almost mythical quality within the art market, Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art Alex Rotter said.

a white guy in black is standing in a white cube gallery space with his back mostly turned, ostensibly viewing an orange-pink warhol painting of an electric chair that is around six feet wide. this composite image was created by christies to illustrate the scale of the painting, which they announced they'd sell, and which was then withdrawn from sale, in may 2025

On 12 May 2025 the Matthys-Colles withdrew Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, which did not have a guarantee, from the sale. The lot listing was deleted. Christie’s published, “Christie’s specialists talk 8 standout lots at auction this May” with a date of 25 April 2025.

Here, the image is cropped more tightly, which not only makes the chair bigger but almost abstracts it. He’s isolated the chair from the context of a room, so it becomes an everyday object that is elevated as a still life. And what could be a more ultimate still life than a chair that will take the life out of you? It becomes a traditional painting in the vein of 17th century vanitas; a memento mori of sorts.

And yet, the chair is also this transformative object of ending. It can end someone’s life, yet when isolated, is just a chair with electricity running through it. I think that’s the play Warhol wanted to get at. He’s putting this within the canon of still lifes, and the electric chair is the most poignant of all. That’s a very Warholian thing to do, to explore multiple meanings of an object depending on how it’s presented, Alex Rotter no longer said.

In one sense, one might say, it deeply doesn’t matter. It’s just auction house marketing. But things happened.

The painting’s sale was announced. The specialists talked. The painting was marketed. The collectors were praised. The advisers and reporters discussed it. The potential bidders balked at it. The owners withdrew it, and then Christie’s not only erased its traces and actions and publications, it altered them retroactively with no notice.

At this moment this important painting whose comparables are in major museums around the world was put up for sale at a price no one wanted to pay, and so it was withdrawn from sale. The switch was not thrown, the painting was not burned, but it’s perniciously ridiculous to act like it wasn’t strapped in the chair.

Olafur Eliasson Pattern Detection

olafur eliasson triptych of tall narrow stained glass windows, with the center window taller than the two on the sides, but with a uniform gradient of color across all three: fiery reds and browns at the bottom, yellow to pale blues and whites across the center, and darkening blues near the top. photo jens ziehe for olafur eliasson.net
Window for moving light, 2024, stained glass and heliostat, St Nicholas’s Cathedral, Greifswald, photo: Jens Ziehe via olafureliasson.net

I didn’t notice it when I blogged about it last December, probably because I was so fixated on the heliostat. But a few weeks ago I gave a talk about stained glass, and the prolonged looking at Olafur Eliasson’s 2024 stained glass project, Window for moving light led to a realization.

detail photo of olafur eliasson's 2024 stained glass window for a church in germany shows handblown glass in various shades of blue in overlapping circles of tracery, amidst the gothic trefoil mullions and arches of the window itself, via olafur eliasson dot net
Upper section detail, Window for moving light, 2024, stained glass and heliostat, St Nicholas’s Cathedral, Greifswald, photo: Jens Ziehe via olafureliasson.net

“The geometric pattern of the stained-glass window installed in the Gothic eastern windows develops from diamonds and squares at the bottom to large overlapping circles above. The glass panels transition in color from red to yellow to transparent and blue at the top, creating a chromatic fade inspired by the palette of Caspar David Friedrich.”

Continue reading “Olafur Eliasson Pattern Detection”

Sheila Hicks Mile High Club

a wide, flattened arch of tan silk embroidered in a checkerboard pattern with the thick strands discernible in each square, shifting to a field of smaller nubs at the curved edge hangs on a white wall. it was originally made to fit the curved walls and ceiling of the upper deck of a boeing 747, where it would be the back wall of a first class lounge area. air france commissioned the panels from sheila hicks, who kept this one until her husband donated it to moma in 2017
Sheila Hicks, Panel for the interior of Air France 747 upper deck lounge, 1969-77, silk on cotton, 51 3/4 × 157 × 2″, a 2017 gift to MoMA from Melvin Bedrick, the artist’s husband

Yesterday art historian Michael Lobel posted Sheila Hicks’ bas relief panel of embroidered silk, four meters wide, which MoMA says is the only survivor of the 19 panels Hicks made for Air France between 1969 and 1977. Lobel has jokingly assigned me the case for tracking down any other remaining panels. So instead of not finding one Jasper Johns Short Circuit flag, I can now not find eighteen back walls from the upper deck first class lounges of Air France’s first generation of Boeing 747s. I am ON it.

Continue reading “Sheila Hicks Mile High Club”

Primary Information: Buy Things, Send Cash

a tan softcover book cover, horizontally or rather, cinematically, oriented, and mostly blank, with slides of a changing painting on the upper right, and below it, a 1990 quote from robert gober: "For about a year, between 1982 and 1983, I painted on a small board. Over this board I had mounted my camera, and as I changed the painting I would take slides of the process. So that in the end nothing remained but the photographic record of a painting metamorphosing."
the cover of Slides of a Changing Painting, 2025, a book of Robert Gober, published by Primary Information

“For about a year,” Gober explained in 1990, “between 1982 and 1983, I painted on a small board. Over this board I had mounted my camera, and as I changed the painting I would take slides of the process. So that in the end nothing remained but the photographic record of a painting metamorphosing.”

a two-page spread of robert gober's slides of a changing painting with photos of a painting of a tree against a thick leafy green backdrop with a sleeveless sundress slipped onto its forked trunk, and a white flag or towel or pillowcase suspended from an upper branch, published in may 2025 by primary information

Gober first showed Slides of a Changing Painting as a 3-screen slide projection work for just one week [??] in May 1984, at Paula Cooper Gallery. I saw the work first at the Walker Art Center. It’s been central to major retrospectives of Gober’s work, and to understanding his larger project, many, many seeds of which are contained in the Slides.

But it’s the extraordinary book version of Slides of a Changing Painting, coming out in a few days from Primary Information, that has been looming so large in my present. It was shipped early to annual subscribers, and it gives an unprecedented chance to see Slides slowly, one phase at a time, in a way that the actual work avoids by design. But the sheer heft and density of the book— it is small, beautiful, and nothing but images—also gives a chance to get lost in the world Gober painted into—and then out of—existence.

Slides of a Changing Painting is somehow just $30, and it’s $25 on pre-order, but it feels like it should be $50 or $100. Which, about that. Executive director Matthew Walker just sent out an email announcing that Primary Information is one of the many arts non-profit organizations that suddenly had their NEA grant canceled, blowing a $40,000 mid-year hole in their tiny budget.

For nearly 20 years, Primary Information has been publishing and republishing highly important artist texts, bringing them back into the discussion at cost. They have an entire slate of books to come. So when you order, if you’re able, why not pay double, or triple, of 10x, with a donation at checkout, and help keep Primary Information’s work going? Or buy some solid and yet not exorbitant fundraising editions. Or just straight-up slip them a tax-deductible donation.

Pausing The Pod for Neptune Frost

I’ve been working my way back through David Naimon’s Between the Covers, and was listening to a 2023 conversation about translation and African language with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, when I had to pause the pod’ for Neptune Frost. The 2021 Afrofuturist musical was made in Rwanda by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman in February & March 2020, escaping a global pandemic shutdown by four days, like the Deathstar plans leaving Scarif.

The 2022 US trailer from Kino Lorber is kind of choppy, and more about the film’s critical reception, while the earlier, 2021 Directors’ Fortnight trailer gives more of a sense of the film’s atmosphere.

Uzeyman and Williams’ conversation with Eugene Hernandez at the 2021 NYFF gives a sense of the project’s origin, their artistic influences, and the euphoria of pulling it all off.

Hang Together: White Columns 2025 Print Portfolio Just Dropped

five silkscreen editions in white columns 2025 portfolio include a watery black and white rendition of luigi mangione's mug shot by sam mckinniss; a purple and green line-intensive drawing of a willem dekooning woman and a sassy amy winehouse with a dekooning-esque hand up; a pink haloed moon reflecting across a blue sea in a dark blue sky by ann craven; a triptych of picassoid forms with a scribbly, fuzzy undercurrent by arthur simms, and a black on yellow sketch of a long-lashed sun, with radiating beams all around.
White Columns 2025 Print Portfolio, silkscreen prints by [clockwise from top left] Sam McKinniss, Rachel Harrison, Ann Craven, Arthur Simms, and Tabboo!, dimensions variable, ed. 100, via whitecolumns.org

The White Columns 2025 Print Portfolio just dropped, and it looks like a thousand bucks. Each. And yet it’s only a thousand bucks for the whole thing. If ever there was a portfolio designed to hang together instead of hanging separately, it’s this one. With Tabboo!’s sun and Ann Craven’s moon; and Craven’s moon and whatever is radiating on the right side of Arthur Simms’ triptych. And the way Simms’ framed head or whatever resonate with Sam McKinniss’s Luigi mugshot. But most of all,

sam mckinniss's grey and black toned brushy rendition of luigi mangione's mug shot feels like a nod to warhol's most wanted men paintings.
cheap Luigi is the new free Luigi: Sam McKinniss, no title, 2025, 12 x 19 in., signed and numbered ed. 100
rachel harrison has made a whole series of ink pen-like drawings of amy winehouse, with an emphasis on hair, eyes, and here, a sharply manicured hand. this purple and green silkscreen also has a de kooning woman with large, uneven eyes and a pasted on smile. between them both there are four green-clad breasts very much bringing the color to the composition
Rachel Harrison, no title, 2025, 24 x 28 1/2 in., stamped and numbered ed. 100

the way McKinniss’s Luigis and Rachel Harrison’s DeKooning Woman & Amy Winehouse just feel like a call to action. So act now, gallerists are standing by.

Simone Prouvé’s Jean Prouvé Table

in a featureless white setting, a bent metal rectangular dining table with a base in weathered red paint has a translucent gray top, which turns out to be steel mesh laminated between two sheets of safety glass. each leg sits on a small square of rust colored iron, hinting, i think, at the artcurial auction house description of a newer iron frame. the red table is by jean prouve, the top is by simone prouve, his daughter, and it is being sold from her estate in may 2025
Prouvé X Prouvé dining table, 72 x 202 x 92 cm, painted steel, iron, stainless steel, laminated glass, from the estate of Simone Prouvé, selling 27 May 2025, Lot 84, at Artcurial

See, maybe not this one specifically, but this is the kind of FrankenProuvé collab vision I’m talking about.

It sounds like Simone Prouvé made this dining table by taking a base from her father, reinforcing it with an iron frame [which is now rusting], and putting a laminated glass and woven steel top of her own, based on an idea from “self-described Goth” architect Odile Decq, for whom Prouvé wove a steel facade for MACRO in Rome. So that’s around 2006-7.

27 May 2025, Lot 84, Table de salle à manger, est EUR500-800 [artcurial]

Jean Prouvé’s Kit of Jean Prouvé Parts

a large squarish lacquered metal sliding door with a vertical wooden handle stands behind an ensemble of metal components from jean prouve furniture: three red painted drawers, a perforated aluminum drawer, and maybe four bent aluminum shelf/sheets, in a sale of the estate of simone prouve at artcurial in may 2025

What’s even more intriguing than Jean Prouvé’s [Daughter’s] Jean Prouvé sideboard is the next lot in the Artcurial sale: a bunch of Prouvé parts.

What could you make with a sliding sideboard door, five shelf/plates, and four drawer/boxes, toute from la famille Prouvé? I am seriously tempted to cook something up.

27 Mai 2025, Lot 32, Jean Prouvé, Ensemble d’éléments en metail, EUR800-1000 [artcurial]

Jean Prouvé’s Jean Prouvé Sideboard

27 Mai 2025, Lot 31a, Jean Prouvé Bahut « tout aluminium n. 151 », designed c. 1951-2, artcurial via @pwlanier

This « tout aluminium n. 151 » Prouvé sideboard is being sold among a bunch of textile and other design objects from Simone Prouvé, Jean’s daughter. So it could have only ever been hers and still accurately described as “Famille de l’artiste, puis par descendance.”

But it cannot be the case that she had to buy it retail, right? And just because Artcurial is only going with the date it was designed, and the EUR60-80,000 estimate seems low [sic], I’m—caveat emptor—sticking with this title format.

27 Mai 2025, Lot 31a, Jean Prouvé Bahut « tout aluminium n. 151 » [artcurial via @pwlanier]
Previously, related:
Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table
Gio Ponti’s Gio Ponti Shelf

Koyo Kouoh RIP

a screenshot of an instagram post of an elegant Black woman with thin, straight braids in a white dress, with her arms crossed over her crossed legs, sitting on a low bench in an art space, with several elements of a painting behind, presumably it is an official portrait of koyo kouoh, the director and chief curator of zeitz mocaa, the south african contemporary art museum which posted it to instagram while announcing news of kouoh's sudden death

Extraordinary and sad news, that Koyo Kouoh, most recently of Zeitz MOCAA, and the curator of the next Venice Biennale, has died. Aruna d’Souza posted the Zeitz MOCAA Instagram announcement on bluesky.

Having never seen a show of Kouoh’s, I found the most insight and inspiration from her two-part interview in 2024 with Charlotte Burns for Schwartzman &’s What if…!? podcast. I’ve listened to it multiple times since.

Just a person of extraordinary and urgent thinking and action, now gone.

The Art World: What If…?! Season 2, 9, Koyo Kouoh, Part 1 [schwartzmanand]
The Art World: What If…?! Season 2, 10, Koyo Kouoh, Part 2

James Lee Byars Dog Cage

In a way, it’s the quintessential experience of James Lee Byars’ art: clicking through a letter to Sam Wagstaff, written three words at a time on an endless stack of envelopes grabbed? left over? from the Green Gallery, where he showed in 1967, piecing together a plea to stage a museum show of a room—just a small one, though—entirely covered in gold, “A state of complete simplicity/ costing not less than everything. Love B.”

Then the next page in the digitized archive is this:

an undated black and white press photo of a qing dynasty dog cage made of the most ornate cloisonné with jade rings along the bars, tiny hooks on the finials for silk draperies, and little wheels, like you're going to pull it along behind you, a 1964 acquisition by the philadelphia museum of art, which found its way, via james lee byars, into the sam wagstaff papers at the archives of american art, correspondence, box one, folder 9
a jpg of a pdf of a scan of a press photo by a.j. wyatt of the philadelphia museum of art’s most important acquisition of 1964, a qianlong era (1736-95) cloisonné, jade, and gilt bronze dog cage, preserved in the Sam Wagstaff Papers as UAN AAA-wagssamu00041-000035 by the Archives of American Art

followed by this:

the verso of a press photo from the philadelphia museum of art for a dog cage has a letter from james lee byars written over the handwritten and stamped notations from the museum, in a multitude of different handwriting sizes and directions, and what i can read is half in byars' abbreviations, so who even knows, but this feels like a situation where digitization should make something more accessible, but instead, i just feel dazed and paralyzed by the overlapping texts, where to even start, and why? from the sam wagstaff papers at the archives of american art
i have no idea: a jpg of a pdf of a scan of the back of the dog cage press photo, onto which james lee byars has written sam wagstaff a letter, or a note and a hundred annotations, or, i don’t even know where to start, you probably have to go straight to the Archives of American Art and examine UAN: AAA-wagssamu00041-000034 yourself in person. If you do figure it out, lmk

And now I don’t know whether to keep trying to decipher Byars’ five sizes and orientations of abbreviation-filled handwriting; to scour the world for my own archival photo of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Imperial cloisonné dog cage; or to just head straight to Philadelphia.

a color photo of an 18th century cloisonne, gold, and jade dog cage made during the qianlong emperor's reign, elaborately decorated with finials, little wheels, little hooks for hanging silk curtains, an obscenely beautiful and useless object, in the philadelphia museum of art
Dog Cage (Goulong), Qianlong Dynasty (1736-95), brass, gilt, cloisonné, jade, 45 1/2 in. high, from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which somehow has negative object info on it

So for now, I’m rereading a bunch of Byars recollections from the 2014 retrospective at MoMA PS1, and just blogging it out.

Previously, related? Marie Antoinette’s Dog House

James Lee Byars Did Not Cast The First Stone

I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

That dinner plate-sized, Junior Mint-shaped Galactic Senate hoverpod-shaped James Lee Byars sculpture that the American Medical Association bought from Robert Mapplethorpe’s estate auction is NOT untitled, it is NOT undated, and it is NOT made of lacquered bronze.

Continue reading “James Lee Byars Did Not Cast The First Stone”

It’s Seven Oranges, Matthew. How Much Could It Cost? $40,000?

a 1966 drawing by ellsworth kelly of seven oranges is seven circles on a page, one in the center, and six distributed evenly around it. a couple barely touch each other, but the center orange overlaps the orange at 10 o'clock just enough to give the entire composition a sense of space and depth. then it snaps back to being seven circles again. via matthew marks gallery
Ellsworth Kelly, Seven Oranges, 1966, graphite on paper, 22⅝ × 28½ in., image via Matthew Marks

Every time I worry this site is just becoming an Ellsworth Kelly fanblog, I recommit to myself to stop posting Kellys when they start going downhill.

That moment is not yet. This 1966 drawing, Seven Oranges, which was a standout in a standout show of plant drawings at Matthew Marks in 2017, is for sale next week at Phillips. I assume whoever bought it is dead or dead broke, because why would you ever just decide to give this up? And for what? $40,000?

[update: did not sell, but on the bright side, they get to keep it. ]

Somehow Pompon Returned

a closeup photo of a pastry shop case shelf, on which rests a puppy-shaped pastry made out of white, piped meringue or cream, with a smiley dog face, and a crumb-sided cake with cookies and cream-lookin frosting and decorations in the background. the sign on the front edge of the shelf reads white and chocolate puppy, and the price is $3.99. via lamignonette's tumblr

It shouldn’t need explaining, but @punk-raphaelite’s reblog of @lamignonette’s collection of lapdog-shaped meringues and pastries put me in a Pompon mood.

After rereading that post and reliving that bonkers 2023 Pompon moment, I thought to check in on the current state of the Pomponiverse. Has even one scintilla of evidence or scholarly discussion turnd up to support the antique dealers’ story that Jacques Barthélémy De Lamarre was painting Marie-Antoinette’s favorite dog?

Désolé, mais non, it has not. But another Pompon has.

Continue reading “Somehow Pompon Returned”