I have some bits and pieces lying around that, individually, wouldn’t have make a proper post so I’ve decided to gather them all together and drop them here. That’s how The Beatles recorded the medley at the end of Abbey Road. They merged several half-baked songs together and created a masterpiece.
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Speaking of The Beatles…Carnegie Hall has a wonderful museum with some fun relics and artifacts on permanent display. Here’s a program from February 12th, 1964 when The Beatles played their first U.S. date. This was just three days after their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, a broadcast that was viewed by over 74 million people and one that changed the course of popular culture. It’s signed by all four Beatles! Can you imagine what this would fetch on today’s market?!
Apparently, The Beatles weren’t THAT well known, because there’s a typo. They got McCartney’s name WRONG.
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I bought a new winter coat this season. It’s a good thing because the city has been bitterly cold over the past several days with more on the way. It’s long. Almost to my knees. The other day I ate something that didn’t agree with me and it gave me terrible wind. It was wafting up through the coat and exiting at the neck. I was riding on the subway and almost passed out. Awful.
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When I was a kid, Norman Rockwell was not cool. His flag-waving Americana was viewed as antiseptic and lacking soul. That was then. Today, his stuff sells for millions. Steven Spielberg is a collector, which makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Here’s an atypical and striking work by Rockwell that recently sold at Christie’s.
The Thing to Do With Life is Live It! (Outrigger Canoe)
Estimate: $800,000 – $1,200,000. Sold for $1,625,000
This painting was commissioned by Pan Am Airlines in 1955 as a travel poster. Here’s a detail. Note the company logo on the bags and happy, well-fed tourists.
I don’t think he captured the water spray. It looks like–I don’t know–paint. But just look at the way the sun is hitting their arms. Nice work, Norman.
I’m reluctant to admit this because it sounds idiotic but this image strikes me as the quintessential, mid-1950’s Republican fantasy. Soft, middle-aged, wealthy, white people are served by island savages. Everyone knew their place in this ring-a-ding, rob roy, on the rocks era. They miss it. It’s what they’re trying to turn the clocks back to. It’ll never work.
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Last weekend when I took the daughters gallery-hopping, we were walking up 10th Avenue and 12-Year Old stopped dead in her tracks looked down and said, “Guys! Look at this!”
Someone painted this portrait onto the sidewalk. Don’t you love that!? It looks like it was dribbled off the tip of a paint brush. I think he captured something here and the reason it’s so striking is because it’s on concrete. No artist accreditation anywhere. Created because he had to. Because it would have killed him not to. And I love the impermanence of it. Four months from now it won’t be there anymore. It’ll have been scuffed onto the bottom of shoes or scraped away under the blade of a snow shovel.
My Bride had to spend Saturday conducting Christmas biz-niz so I took the girlies into the city and went gallery hopping in Chelsea. There’s an unusually robust selection of interesting exhibits up right now. This is all a part of my program to brainwash them into loving New York as much as I do. Plus, as any two-bit psychologist will tell you, I’m trying to be a better father than that poor, broken soul who raised me, which shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. The bar wasn’t set that high.
The first stop was the Mary Boone Gallery on 24th St. Two fine, new sculptures by KAWS are on display. This is ALONG THE WAY.
They’re 18′ high and made of wood. They look like two, sad Disney characters who lost their franchise, poor things.
I’m not entirely sure what kind of wood he used but it’s polished and smooth with beautiful grain. The wood glows in the light that streams in from the skylights. This is the other sculpture. This is AT THIS TIME. Daughter improvised that pose. I didn’t direct her to do that. I’m a proud papa.
As with many of these pieces, I’m not entirely sure what practical application can be made. They’re enormous.
This is INSIDE OUT by Richard Serra at the Gagosian Gallery on 21st St. It’s made from his trademark curved steel walls. Here’s a shot from the catalog that gives you a proper overview of the piece.
You can’t really see how expansive it is from the ground. I think they should provide a catwalk or something so you can view it from on high.
We went to a similar Serra exhibit a few years ago at the same gallery. This stuff never gets old for me.
Surprisingly, the girls remembered the last exhibit and even the artist’s name. Mwwhahaha. It’s working.
I have to constantly remind the little one not to run her finger along the edge of the wall. The gallery is paranoid about the oil from your skin somehow degrading the surface. I suppose if enough people did it, it’d have an effect.
The David Zwirner Gallery on 19th St. is hosting I WHO HAVE ARRIVED IN HEAVEN by Yayoi Kusama. It’s a treat!
It’s a series of inflatable stalagmites and stalactites that are illuminated from within. The colors slowly change.
You enter a small room, just a few people at a time–it’s a controlled entry– and are given one minute. The walls, ceiling and floor are made of mirrors, so once you’re inside and the door is closed, you get a reflection-within-a-reflection infinity effect. It’s quite disorienting.
“Listen…When you go into these exhibits, whatever you do, don’t touch the artwork, okay? DO NOT TOUCH THE ARTWORK.”
There’s also a brief film of Ms. Kusama reciting a poem. Again, she uses mirrors to effectively convey a infinite depth of view.
You’ll never guess what’s at the Gagosian Gallery on 24st Street? Another new Richard Serra sculpture! This is INTERVALS, a room full of steel plates in varying heights.
Also sharing the same gallery space is 7 PLATES, 4 ANGLES. Plates stand toe-to-toe and are arranged in a “V” shape.
Again, who am I to criticize, but it’d be awesome if they provided a view from on high.
The total cost of admission to all these galleries:
$0.00. Nothing. Nyet. Zilch. Right this way, sir. Null. Gratis. Complimentary.
Is this a great town or what?
We also paid a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 12-Year Old Daughter is on a Greek mythology kick and she had an insatiable need to see marble Gods and Goddesses. I won’t include photos of those, but I’ll leave you with this magnificent curio.
Ready for this?
PAIR OF EYES. Bronze, marble, frit, quartz and obsidian. Greek. 5th century B.C. or later. Huzzah.
I work in an office tower on 6th Avenue in the middle of Manhattan. As you might expect, there aren’t many residential buildings nearby. It’s almost exclusively pencil-pushing, paper-shuffling edifices. Other neighborhoods—Chelsea, the Upper East and West Sides, the Villages—are more resident-oriented. But that’s not to say there aren’t ANY residential buildings in Midtown.
Directly across the street from my office is an apartment building. Architecturally, it’s a quiet affair; not at all like the soulless glass and steel structures that surround it. Its facade is brick with some flourishes.
Central Park, which is on fire right now with autumnal splendor, is just three short blocks away. Aside from immediately after a gigantic snowstorm, fall is when the city is at its most pastoral and beautiful. People come from all over the world to stroll through Central Park in the fall. These fortunate few, these denizens of the better addresses, can simply walk out their door, turn left, and in a matter of minutes be enveloped in Manhattan’s rustic beauty.
But sometimes, you don’t want to make that three-block walk. It may be too early in the morning. You might not look your best. In that case, you take your coffee and your iPad and sit outside on your sun-drenched terrace.
And that’s no reason to miss out on the splendor of autumn. You can always spend a small fortune to have a landscaper haul autumn up the service elevator and reconstruct it right outside your terrace door.
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Within a 48-hour period last week:
At a jewelry auction in Geneva, the Pink Star diamond fetched $83,000,000, a record price for a gemstone. At the conclusion of the auction, the auction house played The Theme from the Pink Panther by Henry Mancini. Get it?
Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for $142,000,000 at Christie’s, the most ever paid for a work of art. Wild applause broke out after six minutes of frantic bidding.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 both achieved record highs.
Those first two points are intrinsically linked to the third. I wonder what it’s like to inhabit that ionosphere? Do you think they’re aware of the rare air they breath? Do they possess the proper depth of appreciation for their circumstances or are they blissfully blasé about it? I’d like to be blissfully blasé.
I’ve entered the prices realized from last week’s Post-War Modern Art auction at Christie’s (scroll down). It was a phenomenally successful event. The results far exceeded their wildest, sugarplums-dancing dreams. I read an excellent commentary on how it was difficult to actually see the art through all the dollar signs. The author found the auction…
“…painful to watch yet impossible to ignore and deeply alienating if you actually love art for its own sake.”
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Here’s an interesting little doodad by Camille Norment that was on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art recently.
Triplight. 2008
It’s an old-timey Shure microphone—the kind that Sinatra and Billie Holiday used—with the guts replaced by a small, slowly pulsating light.
The shadow cast is supposed to be a “luminescent rib cage” that calls to mind the absent performer; the pulsating light reminiscent of breathing. Well, I don’t know about all that but it was mesmerizing to look at.
Museum of Modern Art, Wednesday, October 30, 12:55 p.m.
Typically, I don’t do back-to-back auction posts but there are extenuating circumstances. Some of the galleries at Christie’s were vacated after an auction last week so they put more pieces on display from this week’s Post-War and Contemporary Art auction. Here are a few more high (low?) lights and one piece that I found deeply offensive and depressing.
This frivolity is by Maurizio Cattelan.
Frank and Jamie. $1,500,000–2,500,000 Sold for $965,000. What a deal!
This was good for a laugh but, again, I have to wonder about the practicality of a piece like this. Where would you put it? In the foyer? The estimate may provide the biggest laugh.
But this isn’t the one that offended me.
This beauty is by British bad boy (no, not Banksy) Damian Hirst
Inviolability. $900,000–1,200,000 Sold for $1,205,000
I saw one of these in the Cleveland Museum of Art over the summer. A security guard yelled at me for taking a picture of it. You know what is is made of, don’t you? Butterfly wings.
Thousands and thousands of butterfly wings. He breeds them specifically for these pieces. Here’s the center.
The materials used are listed as “…butterflies and household gloss on canvas mounted on panel.” Here’s another piece that’s smaller.
Psalm 28: Ad Te, Domine. $150,000–200,000 Sold for $305,000
And the detail.
They’re beautiful but cruel. Yet, they didn’t offended me.
This sculpture is by Antony Gormley and I loved it.
Domain LXVI. $400,000–600,000 Sold for $545,000
There’s something about the way it stood in a pool of light and glistened when you walked by that really worked for me. It somehow manages the trick of being both slight and powerful at the same time. Obviously, this isn’t the one that offended me.
I was offended by this.
3-Meter Girl. $2,000,000–3,000,000 DID NOT SELL. Of course, it didn’t.
Horrible. This ugly objectification of women is courtesy of Takashi Murakami. Do you know how you’re supposed to respect other cultures and not criticize what they might consider art? That it’s okay to not like something, but to condemn is it in poor taste? Well, in the words of Le Clown, fuck that noise. Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with Japanese men? They seem to have a proclivity towards sex-up little girls. Do they feel threatened and intimidated by adult women?
All I kept thinking was that I’ve got two beautiful daughters at home and how, no matter what age, I wouldn’t want them looking at this. I wondered what it would do to their body image and self esteem.
Or, do I just need to lighten up? Go ahead. You can tell me. I can take it. I do like how this last photo came out, though. Good composition and shadowing.
It’s time, once again, for my semi-annual lunch hour trip to Christie’s to review a few choice lots from the upcoming Impressionist & Modern Art sale. Here’s a cavalcade of outrageously expensive works whose quality ranges from the sublime to the truly terrible. Remember, these pieces are passing from one private collector to another. In most cases, they haven’t been seen in public before and, after the auction, won’t be see again. They’ll hang above the mantle of a 1%-er in Aspen or Dubai or Beijing. As always, I’ll come back after the auction and post the prices realized. There’s lots of ground to cover so let’s get going. We’ll start off with this beauty by Mark Rothko.
No. 11 (Untitled). $25,000,000–35,000,000 Sold for $46,085,000
I’m dissatisfied with this photo. It doesn’t capture the painting’s vibrancy and movement. I must have stood in front of this thing, unblinking, for five minutes. It washed over me.
Our old pal, Andy Warhol, is here with a few pieces.
Mao. $3,000,000–5,000,000 Sold for $3,525,000
Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Grand Prix Car (Streamlined Version). $12,000,000–16,000,000 Sold for $13,045,000
I don’t see many Mao paintings coming up for auction and this one is particularly bright. The Mercedes piece is HUGE. I might be able to fit it in my garage but my living room is out of the question. One of Warhol’s grand jokes he played on the art world is here, too.
Brillo Soap Pads box. $700,000–1,000,000 Sold for 725,000
It’s a flippin’ box of soap pads. That’s all I ever see when I look at these. A+ Andy! You got em’ good that time! I call bullshit on this one. I don’t really understand this next one, either.
Coca-Cola. $40,000,000–60,000,000 Sold for $57,285,000
I believe the stratospheric estimate might be because it’s from 1962 and, hence, very early in Warhol’s career. Perhaps it has both aesthetic and historic significance? I don’t know. I don’t see where the value lies. As long as I’m feeling feisty, here’s another real head-scratcher.
Have any of you ever heard of Christopher Wool?
Apocalypse Now. $15,000,000–20,000,000 Sold for $26,485,000
I’m going to confess that prior to reading about an exhibit of his work that just opened at the Guggenheim, I had never heard his name. The quote in the painting is from Apocalypse Now, hence the title. I don’t like it. It’s lazy and it leaves me cold. But SOMEONE must be paying attention. $15M ain’t cow feed.
Seductive Girl. $22,000,000–28,000,000 Sold for $31,525,000
Number 16. $25,000,000–35,000,000 Sold for $32,645,000
He usually didn’t go for those reds and teals. I like it. Not for thirty-five millions dollars, but I like it.
I have a love/hate relationship with Jeff Koons’ work. His sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles the Chimp is awful but I like his balloon dogs. They’re playful and dopey.
Balloon Dog (Orange). $35,000,000–55,000,000 Sold for $58,405,000
There are only five of these balloon dog sculptures. Each is a different color. This orange one is owned by newspaper magnate Peter Brant. Wall Street thief Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital owns the yellow one, although probably not for much longer. Heh. There are also versions in blue, magenta and red. The art world is not-so-quietly snickering at the $35–55M estimate. He who laughs last, etc.
Get ready to barf. I hope you’ve finished your lunch/breakfast/dinner.
Untitled. $25,000,000–35,000,000 Sold for $29,285,000
Jean-Michel Basquiat sucks eggs.
Untitled. $2,000,000–3,000,000 Sold for $1,925,000
Hideously ugly. I have tried over and over to understand what this guy was trying to do but I just don’t get it. I believe his work trades not on its merits, but on the cult of personality that arose after he ODed.
Untitled (Head of Madman). $7,000,000–9,000,000 Sold for $12,037,000
Even uglier than the first two, which didn’t seem possible. I wouldn’t give you seven bottle tops for this, much less $70,000 Benjamins.
Margaret Thatcher once called Francis Bacon “That horrible man.” That’s good enough for me!
Three Studies of Lucian Freud. Estimate on Request. Sold for $142,405,000. Oh, my.
Holy shit. If some estimates run to the $35M range, how high is Estimate on Request?! Actually, I did some digging and they think it might sell for as much as $80,000,000. Can you imagine? Good thing they don’t give that money to poor people. They’d just waste it on stupid shit.
Details from Three Studies.
I like it. It’s a triptych, so you have to buy all three. You can’t just say, oh, I’ll take that middle one. You’d be surprised how much this actually does look like Lucian Freud. Fun fact: Freud was Sigmund Freud’s grandson and a great artist in his own right.
I guess it wouldn’t be a proper Impressionist auction without a Monet. This is a fine example, don’t you think?
Entreé de Giverny en hiver, soleil couchant. $5,000,000–8,000,000 Sold for $5,205,000
I don’t really dig Giacometti’s paintings and drawings, but his sculptures are killer.
Femme Debout (Figurine). $2,500,000–3,500,000 Sold for $5,429,000
Here’s a painting by William de Kooning, an overrated hack if ever there was one.
Untitled VIII. $20,000,000–30,000,000 Sold for $32,085,000
Just look at that mess. I told one of the security guards that I’m pretty sure it’s hung upside down. Could you live with that? Could you live with anything that guy did?
I heard a clinking clanking sound off in the corner of the gallery. I traced it to this sculpture by Jean Tinguely:
Untitled. $80,000–$120,000 Sold for $75,000
It’s kind of interesting to watch for a minute or two but if you had this thing sitting on a coffee table or kitchen counter at home, it would drive you mad.
Some people think Edward Hopper is kind of pedestrian but, man, I love him. And this painting, especially.
East Wind Over Weehawken. $22,000,000–28,000,000
It reminds me of the old neighborhood back on the near west side of Cleveland where my grandmother lived. Again, the photo doesn’t do justice to the painting. Funny thing…the title card with the description and auction estimate also stated “Do Not Touch.” I don’t recall ever seeing that on a title card before.
I’M TOUCHING YOUR PAINTING!
I’M TOUCHING YOUR PAINTING!
I’M TOUCHING YOUR PAINTING!
The Thing to Do With Life is Live It! (Outrigger Canoe)
I don’t think he captured the water spray. It looks like–I don’t know–paint. But just look at the way the sun is hitting their arms. Nice work, Norman.
Exile on Pain Street 