Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Front Desk Apparatus presents Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Revenge), 1991. This is the first in an ongoing series of one-work, one-month presentations that take inspiration from Lillie P. Bliss, an art collector who resided at this address from 1866 until 1929. Presentations are not conceived as exhibitions, but align with Lillie’s preference to show works discretely—one work at a time. Lillie also hosted lectures and recitals. Sometimes she would play the piano. Her activity observes the private conduct of a collector as it transitions into something more public. In 1913 (the year of the International Exhibition of Modern Art), she acquired Edgar Degas’s Jockeys on Horseback Before Distant Hills from Durand-Ruel, New York. The painting, a small oil from 1884 for which she paid $20,000, is the work the Museum of Modern Art would eventually exchange for Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. When Alfred Barr exhibited Les Demoiselles two years later in November 1939, he was showing the work ten years after MoMA’s inaugural Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh exhibition. At the time (November 1929, two weeks after the October 24 market crash), Lillie is vice president (MoMA’s first) and one of its three founders. Eight of her works are exhibited in MoMA’s inaugural exhibition.

Before then, one could find these propped on an easel—one at a time—next to Lillie’s piano on the parlor floor at 29 East Thirty-Seventh Street.

Special thanks to the private collection in New York who generously loaned this artwork.