One of my achievements over the past 30 years has been discarding New York condescension to art from what NYC calls “the boondocks” and realizing that there have been good artists everywhere. New York continues to be where most art world reputations are made, obviously, but artists across the land struggle with the same problems: what do you have to say, how can you best say it, and how can you share your vision with others? In front of a blank canvas, every artist is the same. Two shows Roberta and I recently saw on a West Coast trip illustrate the situation from opposite ends of the spectrum. Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest, curated by Theresa Papanikolas and on view at the Seattle Art Museum through August 2, is an exhibition of works by artists who worked in the Pacific Northwest during the second and third quarters of the 20th century. Mark Tobey and Morris Graves have the biggest reputations today, and it was interesting to see paintings done before they arrived at the styles that brought them national fame. Working Man, a 1942 painting by Tobey, for example, is a striking example of Social Realism, but the white lines denoting the folds in the worker’s clothing hint at the fully abstract style he will soon adopt. Mark Tobey, Working Man, 1942, gouache on board, 43-1/2 x 27-1/2 inches. Seattle Art Museum, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection. Photo: Roberta Upshaw I knew Tobey’s and Graves’s work, of course, but it was a treat to discover several artists who are unknown outside the Pacific Northwest. Many of them worked under the...
The divine Raphael. Only Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci stand with him in the trinity of the Italian High Renaissance art. Through June 28, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is hosting Raphael: Sublime Poetry, an exhibition of over 170 works by the master, many of them not seen in this country before. The show has drawn predictably huge crowds. Photo by the author I’ve written before about the challenges of blockbusters, and this show has those challenges aplenty. My advice, if you have the luxury of returning to the museum over the course of the show, is to enjoy a room or two of Raphael and then call it a day. No one, not even the most dedicated scholar, could possibly give the works the attention they deserve in one visit, particularly not a visit where you’re standing shoulder to shoulder. In addition to scholarly wonks, the show was filled by the general public, many of them snapping selfies. It’s inevitable, and there’s really no stopping it, but to my mind it goes against the viewing opportunity, a situation summed up in a poem published in the latest issue of The Brazen Head by a museum-goer (me) with a rather jaundiced eye: Selfies The Louvre announced that it will builda new extension made to housethe Mona Lisa only. Thisshould handle all the milling crowds lifting their smartphones to attempta photo with the famous face.The Prado and the Vatican,and any other well-known place are filled today with tourists takingselfies with a culture’s floweras if a feigned proximitycould somehow let them share its power. Expect to find them on returnscrolling...
Many years ago, when I was just starting out in the art business, a Mexican art dealer visited the Manhattan gallery where I worked. She had flown in from Mexico the day before, and she was looking for works of art by well-known artists that were small enough to fit into a briefcase. Mexico was about to institute a revaluation of its currency, and the dealer’s panicked, wealthy clients were looking for places to sock away money, including works of art that could be readily transported out of the country, on the person if need be. Such objects are called “flight assets.” Evidently, we didn’t have any artworks that filled the bill, as I don’t remember selling her anything, but her visit came to memory this week amid the current turmoil taking place in the Mideast. As I write this, everything about the war is changing by the hour, but the bottom line is that the world economy suddenly looks very uncertain. With all that oil locked up in the ground, sitting in unmoving ships, or burning in bombed refineries, people may be wondering if it’s time to convert some of their petrodollars into oils that can be taken off a wall and put in a car trunk before fleeing. It’s the same impulse that motivated the Mexican dealer’s clients all those years ago. Photo courtesy of CNN Portable wealth always has its allure in times of uncertainty, from gemstones sewn into the linings of coats to cash hidden in false-bottomed suitcases. Artworks are a different matter. People fleeing oppression, such as European Jews fleeing the Nazis, have had...
Fine art appraisers typically use what is called the Sales Comparison Approach when calculating a value; that is, the appraiser looks at what similar paintings by the artist have sold for and then derives from those sales a value for the work being appraised, allowing for differences in size, subject matter, condition, and other factors. But what do you do when the artist being appraised has no auction records?It is a problem I had to solve last year when I was appraising works from the estate of Margo Pelletier (1951-2016). Born in Bangor, ME, Pelletier showed an early interest in art, and her parents encouraged her studies of painting, sculpture, and photography. She attended the Boston Museum School and the Hartford Art School before receiving her BFA from the Cooper Union for Science and Art in 1988. Pelletier was active in left-wing New York politics and was a co-founder of the artist advocacy group Progressive Culture Works. In the late 1970’s, she worked with the May 19th Communist Organization in Brooklyn, eventually leading their propaganda facility, the Madame Binh Graphics Collective. After an action to protest Apartheid in 1981, Pelletier was arrested and spent six months in the city jail on Rikers Island. Those six months, more than any other experience in her adult life aside from identifying as post-queer, shaped the foundation of her work to come. In the early 1990’s Pelletier was one of the founding members of the artists’ community at 111 First Street in Jersey City, NJ. By the end of the decade, she had become interested in the medium of sound and began studying...
Who’s the greatest American artist of the late 19th century? I think you have to leave John Singer Sargent out of the running: though he had American citizenship, he was born in Italy, trained in France, and spent most of his life in Europe. Sargent aside, I suspect that most art historians would award the crown to either Thomas Eakins or Winslow Homer. You can make the case either way, but I prefer Homer, and much of the American art public agrees with me, or so it seems based on the crowds for the recent Homer exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Winslow Homer exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, photo by author. Roberta and I attended the show a week before its closing, and the place was packed. You needed Roller Derby-style elbow armor to see everything, or at least an enormous amount of patience. (Roberta asked a guard when the best time to see the show was if you didn’t want to feel as if you were on the subway at rush hour. “Wednesday afternoon, 4:00 PM to closing,” was his answer.) It’s not surprising. Generations of schoolchildren grew up seeing reproductions of Snap the Whip, The Herring Net, The Gulf Stream, or half a dozen other Homer paintings in textbooks or as illustrations on the wall of their classrooms. Union soldiers in the Civil War, deer hunters in the Adirondacks, elegant young ladies playing croquet, fishermen earning a cold and brutal living — Homer captured all aspects of American life. There’s a subject in his work to interest almost anyone. Most of the works...
