MotherPie

Innocent Art? Star Art?

Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled (Black Figure), left, estimated to sell between $8 and $12 million, sold for $8.8 million in the fall contemporary NYC fine art auctions.

Mark Rothko's Untitled (Black and Gray), right, was estimated to sell between $10 and $15 million, sold for $9.5 million while his Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange), estimated for between $25 and $30 million, sold for $30.5 million.  In May '07 Sotheby's estimated that a Rothko would sell for twice the current record paid for the artist's work. It sold at $72.8 million, with the buyer's premium.  White Center (Yellow, Pink, and Lavendar on Rose), 1950, was formerly owned by David Rockefeller.  Maybe the provenance is what helped push the number up.  Regardless, this fall didn't have that sort of cachet sales for Rothko  and some think that the estimates are tools to entice buyers.

The art of Rothko, Basquiat and Cy Twombly all remind me of children's art.  Could you do this?  Maybe so, but not for millions.  These artists are celebrities, man.  They are attention-getters.

O'Keeffe's Works Not All Here...

Rats.  Georgia O'Keeffe's signature 1927 oil painting ''Radiator Building -- Night, New York,'' left, won't be coming to Santa Fe anytime soon. The O'Keeffe Museum here in Santa Fe is the legal representative of O'Keeffe's estate, but the painting and others which are part of the 101-work collection donated by O'Keeffe to Fisk University in 1949 (at the time blacks didn't have access to art and she felt her donation to the historically black university would help that situation) will stay there and the judge set an October deadline for the financially strapped university to put the works on view.

Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton has her eye on the collection, too.

If you ask me, O'Keeffe's works have been best displayed as a collection here at the O'Keeffe Museum.  Seeing a work here and there - like a few at the Met, or a couple at MOMA, just doesn't do a collection justice, although the best collection I've seen outside of Santa Fe of her work is in the museum in Canyon, Texas, where she first became acquainted with the unique landscape of the west right where Palo Duro Canyon inverts the plateau landscape she learned to love in New Mexico.

Digital Photography in Museums...

These tourists enjoyed posing in front of Andy Warhol's Cambell's Soup Cans, 1962, at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.  My museum visits are ultra enhanced when I can use cameras.  The Metropolitan Museum and MOMA both allow no-flash photography and it makes visiting the museums fun. Think of how these people will enjoy sharing this photo.  They can capture the moment of standing in front of a cultural symbol.

More museums should allow this.  I'd love to see a good debate on the pros and cons but as we move into digital, the art as a tangible object becomes less so digitally and more available.  If these two museums can lower the barriers between art and art appreciators, others should follow suit.  Most don't, though.

I just found a site today, Strictly No Photography, that publishes photos from places that ban them like galleries and museums (or the Kremlin). The site has the mission of organizing the forbidden visuals to increase accessibility and usability.  Warhol is going everywhere, 20 years after his death.

Personal Expression: Tactile Collages...

Art forms. Appropriation. Mash-ups. Reinterpretation. Reiteration.  Collages are all of these and an art form that I find intruiging.

Jason Mercier calls himself a mosaic portrait artist and has produced portraits using found things.  The tactile nature of these portraits makes you want to reach out and touch them.  His work has been published in major publications, such as this one, left, published as the illustration for a NYTimes article about the mind.

NYTimes has an interesting slide show on dorm room doors (slide show is at the side of the article), a canvas of personal expression that is a real-life portal to the lives of college students that is in opposition to the online personal pages presented through facebook.

At Texas colleges the dorms are decorated with sorority stuff. 

The Art of The Economy...

The week's best economy art is the cover for this week's Economist. The illustration is for the cover story, The Panic About the Dollar.  The dollar's George Washington, goggled and descending a la Red Baron, with flames, and that sardonic smile, leading us to worry about... a crash?  Great graphic to capture a jittery time.  I like the fact that Washington's hair stays in place. 

Next best: Patrick Thomas' illustration for the NYTimes this week. His Recession graphic for the grey lady's story, The U.S. Economy: Trying to Guess What Happens Next  was the most dynamic art in the Sunday paper. The lettering, in red -- the most attention-getting color, is immediately impactful.  Tanking down to the right, in the same visual descending motion as George Washington's dollar illustration, shows the idea of submerging, the idea of something that could sink beneath, tilt to disappear.  Using the dollar signs for the letters, right at the point of loss, is a great artistic design.  The uneven use of ink reminds one of the rubber stamps...

When a penny cost more than one cent to produce, well... spend a penny in British idiom means to urninate.    Count your pennies... Dollars and cents.  Art and sense.  An illustration is worth a thousand words.

Kickin' Cowgirls...

Two great cowgirls were nationally noted last week. One of my favorite artists, Donna Sickles-Howell, was inducted this last week into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame for her work with the imagery of the cowgirl.  Her work is fun, whimsical and appealing.  She has developed quite a following.

Her work usually breaks out of the frame in some way and her compositions use bright colors, cowgirls and revolve around horses and female friendships for the most part.  She has been interested in cowgirl imagery in art since her college years.  I think she taps into several deep themes with her work.  Cowgirls were some of the first original female athletes in America.  Early photo imagery of those long-ago cowgirls not only inspired her, but led her to focus on an original American (female) go-get-'em spirit.

Just recently I enjoyed a Canyon Road gallery show at McLarry Fine Art in Santa Fe that featured some of her newer works.  Her cowgirls are contemporary, with big white white smiles. It is exciting to see her work evolve over the years.    Her book, Cowgirl Rising, is a good one and my cousin gave it to me for Christmas a couple of y ears ago.  If you like notecards or scarves, or know a cowgirl that might, you can buy them directly from her.

Terry Stuart, a real cowgirl running ranches in Oklahoma, was also inducted last week into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.  She has a post-grad degree in Ranch Management from TCU in Ft. Worth (she was number one in her class). She has become a legend in the Southwest for her successful running of her ranches, some of which date back to the original Oklahoma ranches of her ancestors.

The Pony Logo...

When we first moved to NYC, the BIG PONY LOGO shirts by Ralph Lauren were the hot item. The current one at left, with a pink metallic oversize logo, is $90 and is for the fight against cancer. In 2005 the large oversize logo was introduced for the U.S. Open so the logo would be visible on TV.  Ralph Lauren worried it would be called "The Big Mistake."  I would call it xtreme branding. Not only did the Big Pony sell out, but it caused an uptick in the smaller pony logo items.  The Big Pony was again used as part of the official Wimbledon line.

I personally am against logos writ large. Buying the brand will not buy you cachet, I say. But as the branding, especially for luxury goods, is trying to reach a broader market, this x-treme logo identity makes perverted sense (for profits). People who can't afford luxury items are buying them, lulled by consumerism.  A pony won't make you popular.

Ralph Lauren, though, took the look of the West as well as the traditional look of the English, and made it into authentic American.  The former, our western heritage, is one of our true authentic looks...

Shifting Foreign Currency? Jittery Art Markets...

Second evening of the two-week art auctions and... just as I was wondering about the economic unease in my post yesterday, the jitters have set in. Sotheby’s sale last night totaled $269.7 million, not reaching the pre-sale estimate of $355.6 million. During the evening, 76 works were offered and 20 failed to sell.  Markets and Dollar Sink as Slowdown Fear Increases blares the NYTimes headline today, noting signals that China might shift its foreign currency reserves.

Top Art Sale at Sotheby's last night - Paul Gauguin's 1892 Te Poipoi, from the estate of Joan Whitney  Payson. It has been called the greatest Gauguin Tahitian painting remaining in private ownership and was expected to sell for as much as $60 million.  NYTimes writes that "(Gauguin's Te Poipoi) attracted only a lone bidder and sold for just $35 million ($39.2 million including Sotheby’s buyer’s premium), failing to reach even the low end of its $40 million to $60 million estimate."

The lone bidding buyer? The same guy who set art markets buzzing last year -- the Blue Mao Warhol record-setting purchase, Joseph Lau, a Hong Kong collector.  Maybe he will go back to Christie's on November 13th for Hugh Grant's turquoise Liz and add to his Warhol collection.  Lau is listed #458 on Forbes World's Billionaire list.   

Pricey Picasso and Market Jitters...

Picasso's "Tete de Femme (Dora Maar)1941"* sold for $16.2 million, more than double the presale estimate at Christie's last night.  The sale of Impressionist and Modern art was estimated to bring between $349 million and $487 million and the sale ended up bringing in $394 million. Not bad for art sales on the cusp of big global market tremors. Henri Matisse's "L'Odalisque, harmonie blue" sold for $33.6 million, breaking Matisse's previous record of $21.7 million.  Alberto Giacometti works set records yet some works by Picasso, Cezanne and Renoir failed to meet their reserves.  Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art auctions are continuing today...

But...still... I'm waiting to find out about the Warhol Liz with the clownish lips, right. Actor Hugh Grant is selling his Warhol "Liz" at a $25 million to $35 million price estimate at Christie's Post War and Contemporary Art Sale in NYC on November 13.  He paid $3.6 million six years ago.  If it doesn't sell at the price, the loss is Christie's, not Grant's -- the Warhol Liz carries a guarantee, like more than 100 of the artworks in the evening sales, according to an article on 11/6 by Alexandra Peers in the WSJ. 

The turquoise 'Liz' (one of the ugliest ones in the series) is one of 13 images of Elizabeth Taylor that Andy Warhol made from a publicity photograph in 1963. Another in the series, the scarlet 'Liz', sold for $12.9 million in 2005, the highest at auction for the Liz series.

The New York Sun's article on the Christie's sale last night, Weak Dollar, Strong Sale, addressed the market jitters in the headline. Elsewhere the newspaper headlines blared about Recession Obsessions -- as consumers endured a week of sinking confidence as the housing market continues to slide, credit problems mount and the subprime issues continue to unfurl.

Gee.  What a day today!  Jitters, yea, right.  While watching these art happenings, the New York Sun (I'm so glad I can continue to read this paper online now that I'm not in NYC) editorial notes "five of the largest Wall Street finance houses have announced that they will disburse a total of an astounding $36 billion in bonuses to a total of 173,000 employees, a 30% increase over last year....The list of financial institutions offering the record bonuses — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns — doesn't even include the three largest American banks...Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase."  Me?  I thought it was all rather surreal when I lived there, a post-modern house of myopic mirrors.  Outsider status views. But most there see NYC as the world's capital city, where art and finance feather pockets and walls and flying money is seen as the beacon of success.  I guess it does seem so to some. Funny money ?  I've wondered where the money is tethered.

The Dow Jones fell more than 360 points today, just about matching last Thursday's drop.  Oil today traded above $98 per barrel for the first time, gold closed at a record $833, the 13-nation euro hit a new record against the dollar, not to mention jitters with financial stocks. Standard and Poor's fell below the psychological benchmark of 1,500... 

I'm watching the art markets for signs of frivolous expenditures or good investments...

Hugh Grant is smiling, regardless.  He should be. His timing is excellent. His Warhol will go on auction next week and is the cover of the Christie's catalogue. He's guaranteed to make a tidy profit on his art investment.  Last year Warhol's Blue Mao set an auction record for a Warhol (with a Hong Kong buyer and I covered it in How Now Blue Mao).  Warhol's record was broken again last May with a $71.7 million sale at Christie's.

Who is buying? What is selling, what isn't?  That is what I wondered about the hot Chinese Art Market, going out the roof.  I always think the art markets are the last fluffy time of feeling all bubbly before the bubbles burst. Well... I'm no expert. I'm just another (art lovin') mother.

*11/8 correction update: originally I posted the 31.5 inch bronze Picasso, left,  at the top of this post  rather than the painting  by Picasso.  11/14 update: Both are titled "Tete de la Femme (Dora Maar).  This one, at left, is dated 1955 and was sold at Sotheby's the same night. It was estimated to sell between $20 $30 million and sold at $26 million.

Ralph Lauren, J.C. Penny's & 1970s Fashion...

Johnny Virgil found a J.C. Penny's catalogue from 1977 while cleaning out an elder relative's attic. He scanned photos of the ugly polyester fashions, added his own commentary and his post has gone viral.  I was alerted through an email. 

It was in reaction to those hideous fashions that Ralph Lauren invoked history to create an American classic look, borrowing polo fashion first for men. In Oklahoma, Harold Powell capitalized on marketing to the college crowds to sell the traditional clothing through his Harold's store.  University of Oklahoma guys who bought clothes at Harold's first store had a classic look and they stand out with timeless relevance when you look at photos from the 70s.

Full circle? Lauren will launch in early '08 a line of clothing for J.C. Penny's but not under the Ralph Lauren label.  To capture the upscale young audience, he is launching Rugby stores. Girls in the 1970s would wear boys rugby shirts on campus... at least I did.   With jeans.

Did you ever know anyone who wore those Penny's fugly orange jumpsuits?  Lauren thinks that the Penny's crowd is college-educated looking for more price-conscious clothing.  I think it is an example of the wane of the luxury market.