The Dirtiest Word
Fear not, Gentle Reader. The word you are about to hear may be said in the presence of small children and eminent divines. It will not cause a single eyebrow to be raised when dropped at the dinner table or inserted into august deliberations. Most people would deem...
Dog Days
Yes, these are the dog-days, Fortunatus: The heather lies limp and dead On the mountain, the baltering torrent Shrunk to a soodling thread. -from “Under Sirius” by W.H. Auden A few years ago, I interviewed Alex Katz at his summer place in Lincolnville, Maine....
Michelangelo, Taxi Driver
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. -Thomas Gray Years ago, I read an interview with the actor Bruno Kirby (Godfather II, City Slickers) who spoke in passing of the role that luck and connections had played in his...
Why the Hopper didn’t hop, and other ruminations on last week’s auctions
If you look at my rules for collecting, you'll see that one of them is "It is better to have a home run by a .200 hitter than a pop foul by Babe Ruth." You're not collecting autographs; you're collecting paintings. Even the greatest artists had bad days. Last week...
First Blog Entry: The first in a monthly series on artists and the art market
I began my art dealing career in 1981, when I moved my family from Chicago to New York. A former art history professor of mine at the University of Chicago kindly arranged an interview for me with Ira Spanierman. In short order, I found myself the second-in-command of...
