Not all art ephemera is created equal. At Gallery 98 our diverse inventory includes many DIY flyers from downtown art spaces in the 1970s and 80s, mostly hand-lettered and cheaply printed on black-and-white xerox machines. Commercial galleries, on the other hand, hired designers, and used color-offset printers to produce the cards and posters that promoted their exhibitions.
The dramatic expansion of art as an upscale commodity in the 2000s is directly reflected in art ephemera. Leading the trend was the Gagosian Gallery whose multiple venues in the US and Europe exhibited some of the most commercially successful artists. Having started his art career selling posters, Larry Gagosian understood the importance of ephemera, and his gallery empire includes its own publishing house and quarterly magazine.
Gagosian announcement cards are luxury items — they are bigger, they are printed on thicker, more durable material, and they were mailed in custom envelopes to avoid damage. For those lucky enough to be on the gallery’s mailing list, these were items to display and keep. This collection of cards comes primarily from renowned art dealer Annina Nosei, who stored them in a closet filled with other treasures.
Jeff Koons, Cracked Eggs (Blue), Gagosian Gallery, London (Davies Street), Card, 2006
Jeff Koons, Cracked Eggs (Blue), Gagosian Gallery, London (Davies Street), Card, 2006. Size: 7 x 7 Inches. — Available
“A large two-part stainless-steel sculpture from the mythic Celebration series that he began with Balloon Dog in 1994. Cracked Egg (Blue) is a unique work and the first of five versions… each rendered in a different vivid color.” — Gallery Press Release
Ghada Amer, Breathe Into Me, Gagosian Gallery, New York (West 24th Street), Card, 2006
Ghada Amer, Breathe Into Me, Gagosian Gallery, New York, (West 24th Street), Card, 2006. Size: 10 x 8 Inches — Available
“She is best known for her use of the great symbols of feminist ire: embroidery as “woman’s work,” hardcore pornography, and religious fundamentalism.”
— Gallery Press Release
Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years and Triptychs, Gagosian Gallery, London (Britannia Street), Fold-Out Card, 2006
Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years and Triptychs, Gagosian Gallery, London (Britannia Street), Fold-Out Card, 2006. Size: 8 x 10 Inches. Foldout Size: 24 x 10 Inches. — Available
“A Thousand Years, one of Hirst’s most provocative and engaging works, contains an actual life cycle. Maggots hatch inside a white minimal box, turn into flies, then feed on a bloody, severed cow’s head on the floor of a claustrophobic glass vitrine.”
— Gallery Press Release
Andy Warhol, Camouflage, Printed on Cloth, Gagosian New York (Wooster St), 1998
Andy Warhol, “Camouflage” (1986), Gallery Invitation Printed on Cloth for the Exhibition Camouflage, Gagosian Gallery, 1998. Size: 8 x 10 Inches — Available
“One of the last serial groups of paintings Warhol completed before his death in 1987, these paintings are inspired by the military motif of camouflage… The Camouflage Paintings confront issues of pattern and design within the context of the New York School of Abstraction.”
— Gallery Press Release
Douglas Gordon, Self Portrait of You + Me After the Factory, Gagosian Gallery, New York (Madison Avenue), Irregularly Shaped Card, 2007
Douglas Gordon, Self Portrait of You + Me After the Factory, Gagosian Gallery, New York (Madison Avenue), Irregularly Shaped Card, 2007. Size: 7.5 x 9.75 — Available
“Warhol’s immortalized cultural icons here take the form of charred, browned bits of commercial reproductions floating on mirrored backgrounds, singed remnants of the heroic originals that nonetheless possess an eerily powerful presence.” — Gallery Press Release
Cy Twombly, Lepanto, Gagosian New York (W24 St), 2002
Cy Twombly, Lepanto, Folded Card, Gagosian Gallery, 2002. Size: 10 x 8 Inches — Available
“Cy Twombly’s Lepanto, a painting in twelve parts, was first exhibited at the 49th Biennale di Venezia in the summer of 2001… This suite of paintings depicts the famous sixteenth-century sea battle of the combined European forces under Venetian leadership against the Ottoman invasion.” — Gallery Press Release
Tukashi Murakami, Tranquility of the Heart Torment of the Flesh — Open Wide the Eyes of the Heart and Nothing is Invisible, Gagosian Gallery, New York (Madison Avenue), Fold-Out Card, 2007
Tukashi Murakami, Tranquility of the Heart Torment of the Flesh — Open Wide the Eyes of the Heart and Nothing is Invisible, Gagosian Gallery, New York (Madison Avenue), Laminated Fold-Out Card, 2007. Size: 8 x 10 Inches. Unfolded Size: 24 x 10 Inches. — Available
“In his approach, high art and popular culture, East and West, present and past, humor and gravity, skepticism and belief are all sides of the same coin.”
— Gallery Press Release
Ed Ruscha, Then & Now, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, Panoramic Fold-Out Card, 2005
Ed Ruscha, Then & Now, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, Panoramic Fold-Out Card, 2005. Size: 10 x 8 Inches. Foldout Size: 30 x 8 Inches — Available
“Ed Ruscha: Then & Now, a set of photographic prints that documents Hollywood Boulevard, first in 1973 and then thirty-one years later in 2004. This exhibition also marks the ten-year anniversary of Gagosian Beverly Hills.”
— Galley Press Release
Yayoi Kusama, Flowers That Bloom at Night, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, Card, 2009
Yayoi Kusama, Flowers That Bloom at Night, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, Card, 2009. Size: 7 x 7 Inches
“These astonishing triffid-like flowers, which measure from four to sixteen feet in height, are cast in highly durable fiberglass-reinforced plastic, then hand-painted in urethane to jazzy perfection… To date, Kusama has completed several major outdoor sculptural commissions… In 2007 the Beverly Hills City Council in Los Angeles commissioned Kusama’s first public sculpture in the United States, just a stone’s throw away from Gagosian Gallery.”
— Gallery Press Release
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gagosian New York (W 24 St), Poster with Photo by Tseng Kwong-Chi, 2013
Jean-Michel Basquiat in his Great Jones Street studio (1987), Photo by Tseng Kwong-Chi, Gagosian Gallery (New York), Exhibition Poster 2013. Size: 14 x 14 Inches. — Available
“The frenetic, allover quality of many of the large works suggests a drive towards a sort of disjunctive mapping rather than the building of a classically unified composition, where seemingly unrelated marks suddenly coalesce in syncopated rhythms—like the best experimental jazz.”
— Gallery Press Release
From our newsletter archives — Originally published January 20, 2022
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