Excellent reporting by Dan Duray on GalleristNY reveals the lawsuit between art printer, Robert Blanton of Brand X, who developed a monoprint technique that had to convince Christopher Wool to try out by cutting an unorthodox deal that would eventually backfire into a lawsuit against the artist and his gallery:

Brand X alleges that Mr. Wool wasn’t sure how the monoprints would turn out and consequently entered into an agreement (over e-mail) whereby Brand X would finance their production in exchange for one-third, or 20, of the finished products. Mr. Wool and Luhring Augustine would then split the remaining 40, according to the complaint’s description of the agreement.

The complaint then describes the production process during which, it alleges, Mr. Wool and the gallery came to realize the works may be more valuable than they’d previously thought. It says that a gallery representative stopped by the Brand X studio and called the prints “beautiful,” adding that they “look like candy.”

Mr. Wool allegedly then tried to talk Brand X into accepting only one-quarter of the works, and then asked to pay for the production costs in exchange for all of them. Brand X refused, and work on the series stopped at 34 monoprints, which the complaint says Mr. Wool now refuses to sign.

Christopher Wool, Luhring Augustine Sued for $12 M. (GalleristNY)