Colin de Land, Four Walls, and a Supermodel’s Autograph: “Claudia Schiffer Day,” 1994

By Jacob Proctor
November 15, 2023
Detail of color image of Claudia Schiffer sitting at a table signing a calendar. There is green floral pot holding pins next to her, and a display of her calendar and a sign reading “Claudia Schiffer” behind her.

Claudia Schiffer sits at a long table covered with a black cloth with two men. There is a security guard next to the table and members of the crowd surrounding it. There are racks of cassettes and compact discs in the background, a display sign for Mariah Carey’s album Merry Christmas, and specially designed signs with pages from Schiffer’s calendar, and a sign behind the table reading Welcome Claudia Schiffer.
Claudia Schiffer at a signing event for her 1995 swimsuit calendar, 15 November 1994. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

One November morning in 2021, I was the Williamsburg, Brooklyn basement of artist Michael Ballou. Along with Ballou and fellow artist Adam Simon, I was going through the records of Four Walls, the unconventional exhibition and event space that the two of them had operated out of Ballou’s converted garage from 1991 to 2000. (Simon had initially founded the space with his wife Michele Araujo in Hoboken in 1986.) Amongst the various forms of documentation and ephemera, I remember coming across a particularly unusual artifact: a 1995 swimsuit calendar featuring the German supermodel Claudia Schiffer bearing the inscription “to 4Walls, love Claudia Schiffer.” By way of explanation, Ballou offered that the calendar was from a signing event held at a midtown Manhattan location of the music chain store Sam Goody. Ballou explained that he and dealer Colin de Land had attended the event together and both had come away with autographed calendars. He also recalled that de Land had been upset because Schiffer had signed the Four Walls calendar with “love” while he received a more tepid “best.” De Land, he recalled, had gone through the line a second time, hoping to obtain a more effusive dedication, only to be rebuffed and turned away when he reached the front of the queue. It was a funny story, but we had a lot of material to get through and quickly moved on.

LEFT: Calendar cover with Claudia Schiffer posing in a blue bikini with white butterflies against a light-colored fabric background. Turquoise and blue text reads, “Claudia Schiffer 16 month 1995 calendar photographed by Gilles Bensimon.” It is signed in cursive by Schiffer “to 4Walls Love, Claudia Schiffer.” There are ink or paint smudges on the page. RIGHT: A photograph of Schiffer with her arms behind her head, standing in front of a white pyramid by a large body of water, wearing a blue and green bikini takes up half of a calendar page. There is a small calendar on the bottom right for the month of December 1995 and a small photograph in the same bikini and location inset on the top right, just above her printed signature. Schiffer has signed it in cursive using a sharpie, “to Colin, Claudia Schiffer.”
LEFT: Claudia Schiffer and Gilles Bensimon. Claudia Schiffer 1995 calendar signed by Schiffer to Four Walls, 1994. Four Walls records. RIGHT: Claudia Schiffer and Gilles Bensimon. December page from Claudia Schiffer 1995 calendar signed by Schiffer to Colin de Land, 1994. Colin de Land Collection. Both Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The following June, 2022—a month or so after finalizing the acquisition of the Four Walls records—I was in the Washington, DC office of the Archives of American Art, looking through the Colin de Land collection when I came across pages from de Land’s signed calendar, complete with a salutation even more succinct than Ballou had remembered: a terse “to Colin, Claudia Schiffer.” A little more digging turned up an envelope of snapshots that capture the event. Schiffer signs calendars, while Ballou and others stand in line, pose with other attendees, and generally mug for the camera.

Color negative of a close-up of a man’s hands holding an advertisement torn from a newspaper for a signing event for Claudia Schiffer’s 1995 swimsuit calendar at Sam Goody.

Color negative image of Michael Ballou holding an advertisement for a signing event for Claudia Schiffer’s 1995 swimsuit calendar at Sam Goody, 15 November 1994. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Man with salt and pepper hair, mustache and beard, and wire frame glasses, wearing a black vest and tee shirt winks at the camera. Behind him are several people lingering and a large red electric sign with white letters that reads Sam Goody.

Michael Ballou at a signing event for Claudia Schiffer’s 1995 swimsuit calendar, 15 November 1994. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Crowd at a record store event, including members of the press with recording microphones and cameras. In the foreground is a rack of cassette tapes, and a sign in the background reads LISTEN.

Michael Ballou filming in a crowd at a signing event for Claudia Schiffer’s 1995 swimsuit calendar, 15 November 1994. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Claudia Schiffer sitting at a table signing a calendar. There is green floral pot holding pins next to her, and a display of her calendar and a sign reading “Claudia Schiffer” behind her.

Claudia Schiffer at a signing event at Sam Goody for her 1995 swimsuit calendar, 15 November 1994. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Man and woman holding up signed copies of calendars signed by Claudia Schiffer at a record store. There are displays with various media around them, and a man in a suit in the background.

Michael Ballou and unidentified woman (Jacqueline) at a signing event for Claudia Schiffer’s 1995 swimsuit calendar, 15 November 1994. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Color photograph of an artwork consisting of a piece of white paper with a photograph of Colin de Land standing at a table getting a calendar signed by Claudia Schiffer, wearing a trucker’s cap backwards. The photograph is held in place by three white plastic pushpins and has an illegible signature marking below the photograph. Above it written in capital letters in black marker is text reading “A response to MAMA initiated by Art Club 2000.” The artwork is pinned to a wall with a message from a phone memo

Art Club 2000, “A Response to MAMA, initiated by Art Club 2000,” from the exhibition “Mapping: A Response to MoMA,” mixed media, 1995. Unidentified photographer. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In several of the images, Ballou can be seen operating a handheld 8mm film camera, while one negative frame shows him holding a newspaper advertisement that pinpoints the date of the event as Tuesday, November 15, 1994. Nearby, a folder of photos documenting the 1995 exhibition “Mapping: A Response to MoMA,” a group show “initiated” by artist Peter Fend, reveals another view of the event. A photo-within-the-photo shows de Land—visible from behind sporting his trademark trucker hat—at the signing table with Schiffer, pinned to a sheet of paper titled “A Response to MAMA, initiated by Art Club 2000.” I took a few pictures with my phone and sent them to Ballou. He responded “Ha!!!!! Didn’t even know those existed! . . . Want me to look for the Super 8?” A few weeks later, Ballou delivered a reel of film labeled “Colin + Claudia” to the Archives New York office, where I added it to the Four Walls records.

Manila envelope with speckled with paint and Claudia + Colin 94 written in black ink, and a white plastic reel loaded with 8 millimeter film, and Colin + Claudia written in black marker and red paint on top of it.
Michael Ballou. Envelope and film of Colin de Land at Claudia Schiffer calendar signing, 15 November 1994. Four Walls records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

“Claudia Schiffer Day,” as de Land termed it, is just one of many connections that emerge between the two collections. Many of the artists involved with Four Walls also exhibited at either de Land’s American Fine Arts, Co. (AFA) or with de Land’s partner, gallerist Pat Hearn. For example, Jason Simon, brother of Four Walls founder Adam Simon, was represented by Hearn, while Jason’s partner Moyra Davey was represented by de Land. Mark Dion and Andrea Fraser, both of whom were core AFA artists, also participated in shows at Four Walls in Hoboken. Claire Pentecost, who was part of the programming committee when Four Walls relocated to Brooklyn, also showed at AFA. In addition to these and other relationships within the New York art world, there are international points of contact as well. In 1990, at the same time that Four Walls moved to Brooklyn, the artists Josef Strau and Stephan Dillemuth founded a space called Friesenwall 120 in Cologne. Much like Four Walls, Friesenwall 120 was an intentionally loose and flexible structure, serving multiple functions and becoming an important social nexus within its local scene. In 1993, Four Walls hosted a Friesenwall 120 exhibition and event, documented in the form of photographs, printed material, and a Hi8 videorecording. (Pat Hearn mounted a Friesenwall 120 show in her SoHo gallery the same year.) In 1997, as part of a public conversation with Adam Simon, Friesenwall co-organizer Nils Norman exhibited The Four Walls Micro Farm, Brooklyn, NY, a two-part work comprised of a scale model and a large diagram explaining the redesign of Four Walls into a small self-sustainable urban farm. The conversation coincided with Norman’s solo exhibition of similar proposals at American Fine Arts.  In addition to photo and video documentation, the Four Walls records include the work itself, with AFA labels still attached.

It's always exciting to discover these kinds of intimate connections between different collections. This happens most often with correspondence—commonly with incoming letters, postcards, and the like. Most collections only contain one half of any epistolic exchange, and it’s especially useful for researchers when we can locate the other half in another collection. In this way our collections are often in conversation with each other. However, this may be the Archives’ only known case of a supermodel’s swimsuit calendar doing the talking.

 

Jacob Proctor is the Gilbert and Ann Kinney New York Collector at the Archives of American Art.

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American Fine Arts, Co • Four Walls (Gallery) • De Land, Colin, 1955-2003 • Ballou, Michael, 1952-

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