Advice on Buying Art

Alan Bamberger writes an article on art collecting that offers a very reasoned and lucid set of questions that prospective collectors should ask themselves when buying art. Bamberger is a San Francisco based art consultant whose website offers lots of good counsel and common sense for both artists and collectors.

Having said that, I would point out that using Bamberger's advice a collector of the 1890s would have been wise to ignore Vincent Van Gogh, who was an unknown artist, working in an idiosyncratic style, had been largely self-taught and who was recommended by almost no one. And similarly, we would judge based on Bamberger's advice that Damiem Hirst is "it," being the highest paid, living artist in the history of mankind. But Hirst is not it. He is the art version of a junk bond.

Bamberger is giving first rate advice in his piece. But the missing element is taste, intelligence, sensibility, having good hunches, having a great eye ... is all tied up with some kind of je ne sais quoi logic that combines various felicitous abilities. Buying really fine quality art involves one in an intellectual quest for which no amount of advice from the status quo can help. It's a little like getting married. Your relatives can all weigh in with their two cents, but it's your heart.

Knowing how to see the kind of powerful visual idea that will be tomorrow's acclaimed masterpiece means being in the right place at the right time (for buying a Van Gogh in 1890 it would have meant being in France and being friendly with Theo Van Gogh) and having a strong inner sense of what constitutes both beauty and meaning.

However, this is not a bad outcome. We were meant to wonder about these things and to search for them.

Otherwise, I'd say heed Bamberger's advice. Buy things you love. Make certain of their pedigree with as much information as you can get. But if you want to buy truly great art, the kind that is "boldly going where no one has gone before," you have to step outside the comfort zone of the status quo and go with your gut. And your luck!

[The painting that illustrates this post is by Ignacio Iturria, contemporary Uraguayan painter.]

Opportunity

I am a captured moment of time.
I stand on a ball constatly turning
I have wings on my feet
and a razor in my hand.
You may grasp me
by the lock of hair on my forehead
but the back of my head is shaved
so that once I take my leave,
I cannot be held.

From this site.

If you have an idea: Draw it

Let your thoughts be visual thoughts. The appearances of things are so marvellous, and meaning will get dragged in whether you wish it or not.

So draw!

How to draw

Begin with something you like. Take a pencil. Draw the lines that you believe describe this thing in the most direct way you know. Put lines down like you mean them. Draw boldly. This drawing of a shell was made by a child of nine.

To draw with directness of this kind makes a great beginning. It connects you to things. Objects will not be just appearances that you name: they will become shapes and forms and gestures.

Drawing

For a long time I remembered a passage I'd read somewhere about Degas, that his was the art of the "ensemble." A group of dancers, a group of horses, the audience of a concert, or the loitering people at the ballet rehearsal, all these collections of things have the sense of being united in very natural and unself-conscious ways. Ever since reading that -- and of course noting it in Degas's pictures -- I have had some curiosity about how to capture a similar sense of things in my paintings.

This drawing of horses is made from my daughter's toys. I arranged them to overlap, to seem as though they were moving in a line together, perhaps out of a corral. Drawing them, one thinks about real horses and wants them to seem life-like. Yet, I also think about them as toys. They have many happy associations as my daughter's toys, all the loveliness of watching her learn and grow.

The green that surrounds the horses is added without reference to anything. It's amazing how just the addition of the color creates the beginnings of landscape and weather and temperature.

The spiral coil of the notebook, the fact that the drawing spilled over into the facing page, prevents this drawing from being framed for sale. But artists of course have drawings that are made strictly for personal reasons, and they should always make many such drawings. Some of the best drawings in history were privately made for the appreciative audience of one.

The art of writing about art

I have been practicing writing about my paintings. Some people are visually sensitive by nature. Others need a little help understanding visual things. So, writing about the paintings is meant to help the less visual person acquire a more nuanced understanding of the purely visual aspect of a painting. The difficulty that some people have with paintings arises from a certain reluctance to give themselves over to the pure enjoyment of a visual spectacle. As a species, we tend to trust words over and above images.

Any number of things are beautiful. (I will leave it a tacit argument for the present that most great art is in some manner fundamentally beautiful, whatever else it might be.) Almost anybody will tell you that a sunset is beautiful, though how many people will go out of their way to observe the sunset? How many people would schedule their hours so that they could be outdoors when sunset occurs? Or finding themselves in front of a beautiful sunset, how many people will stand and gaze at the changing colors, the effects of light and dark that tinges the entire landscape? How many will watch the light until it departs and revell in the glory of the spectacle? And a sunset is after all reality.

A painting is a simulacrum. Oddly people will sometimes spend more time gazing at and studying a painting than they would spend studying the reality. (This, of course, is not something that an artist complains about.) When people study paintings in that scrutinizing way, they are sometimes trying to figure out how it is done -- how it is possible that the image looks so "real"? This response equates painting almost with magic. (Again, the artist profits by such interest so we won't complain.)

But the element of the painting that most deserves our continued attention is not the mechanics of it, but its beauty -- the grace, the rightness of colors, the fineness of effects, the harmony of the whole. All these things will bring along with them meanings, thoughts, memories, insights, feelings. All these things are fine qualities to linger over also.

A really great painting helps reveals parts of ourselves to us. It enlarges our world.

It's things like this that I try to write about with regard to my own painting. I do so in part to help the audience see the picture better. But I also do it to help me see my own picture better. Sometimes I learn things that help me continue deeper into the picture. It's then that writing becomes a form of visual invention.

Thinking about the Imagination

I recently found an enthusiastic buyer for an image that has found many admirers. It has reminded me that when you make images that relate to life, people will be attracted to them. The crazy art world appeals to ideas that people have about what art is "supposed" to be, but art that explores life (in contrast) takes its meaning from several places, all of which are authentic.

First it takes some of its meaning from life. If you observe the world, you discover the meanings that inhere in real things. So a still life of food has the meanings that food has -- nurture, pleasure, providence, sensuality (it depends upon the character of the image, does it not, what kind of feeling-tone will affix itself to the image). The second place where meaning enters is in the visual character of the thing, whether it is light or dark, richly colored or muted, crisply delineated or adumbrated, large or small, busy or simple, and so on. All the myriad qualities that can characterize something each bring forth different sensibilities. And the third place where meaning enters is from the spectator's personal associations with the image, the ways that it connects to an individual life -- perhaps quite arbitrarily -- whether it is the artist's life or somebody else's.

Art that does connect in this way really begins to have a life of its own. If in addition to all these things, the image is crafted with mastery -- well, maybe it becomes a great work of art.

We're recently experiencing a crisis in the real estate industry that has begun to spill over into related businesses. It's causing some uncertainly in the markets. I suppose that means that real art is a particularly good investment now. Of course, great art is always a good investment. People have trouble trying to sort out what "great art" is. (Hint: it's not the stuff you see in the trendy museums, the stuff you stand in front of, scratching your head wondering what it is).

If an image draws you in, if it is somehow incredibly beautiful, if it has meaning that deepens the more you think about it, if it is skillful and not ordinary, and yet can speak to ordinary life -- the chances are quite good that it's "the real deal," real art, maybe great art.

I'm certainly trying to make my pictures ones that collectors will profit by owning. When my work appreciates in value, it will benefit the collector and me together. But the first profit I wish to see from it is an increase in its meaningfulness.

Art ought to really matter. Real art does really matter. And that's what makes it real.

Curator Incubators

They are the latest fad. The appearance of these platforms to teach emerging curators "how to" mount an exhibit ought to draw more attention than they do. It's a natural enough development flowing out of the whole "installation" rage. And it's a sad and revealing trend that these curator gigs spring up without commentary, that most artists don't appear to find anything troubling about them, for they are the latest in a long series of steps leading to diminishing stature for the artist.

Most of us "grew up" with the stereotype of Picasso as "the artist." Picasso represented what a real artist is supposed to be -- a free spirit, someone who lives by his own set of rules, an Ur-creator who will steadfastly do as he sees fit and brave poverty before surrendering one iota of command over his own vision. And, as far as it goes, much of that stereotype was true for Picasso. He did brave much for the sake of what he wanted to do, and he successfully persuaded the world to accept his strikingly bizarre images and became unimaginably wealthy in doing so as well.

The flaw in the stereotype was in supposing that it was defining. While it might have suited Picasso's life, Picasso's art, it is not a model that necessarily flows over into anybody else's authenticity. Nevertheless, the Picasso idea of a great master was one that rightly put the horse before the cart, rather than the other way around. That ideal of the artist recognized that it is the artist who creates things out of the exigencies of his or her own life. And it is the art world that discovers and learns to understand these products.

Unfortunately once "anything" became art, the artist's role declined in what should have been a thoroughly predictable way! The Dadaist gesture of a urinal in a museum might have seemed liberating to some desperately gauche persons decades ago, but it definitely did nothing for those who were searching in art for something high, something difficult, something inspiring or beautiful or meaningful or deep or natural or wonderful or self-revealing.

Well, all that is ancient history now. That all kinds of easy and bizarre objects are heralded with the "art" label is nothing new. To suggest that things should be otherwise is to risk getting hammered with the dreaded "T" word -- or the "C" word (traditional, conservative). These labels are blinders that make the avoidance of thought an easy task. Certainly to really spend time looking at images and trying to engage their meanings can be a bit more diligent work than some people can bare. What, for instance, would be the harm in appreciating a painting that really was traditional? What would be the harm in discovering meaning in a place where lots of people have even stopped looking for it?

To flaunt the whole, facile dichotomy of modern/traditional is something that goes beyond the accepted notion of art appreciation. We are supposed to engage with objects that challenge us -- and it's better if the challenge is out-there obvious. It should come clothed in socially accepted standards of "edginess." But real art that breathes like real life is always going to come from somewhere else. It won't be the Hip Kids who find it. It will linger in some quiet corner of life -- somewhere like the small French towns where Van Gogh worked in obscurity.

And the truth is today, pretty much as it always has been (here tradition gets it right), that the best and most serious art takes time to know and understand. It is intellectually challenging. It might seem "traditional" upon first examination and really be very daring -- but its daring will all have been of a very deep kind that easily slips by the crowd. It might seem like the ultimate in contemporary -- but it's authentic inner meaning will elude the notice of the Culture Vultures.

Anything is art (I have over-shot my topic a little) and consequently the artist is much less significant. If it's trends and edginess that count, well these things are in constant flux. The artists engaged in making these things must be constantly looking over their shoulders to assure themselves that they're still doing the hip thing. And then these "important" artists will come and go.

It certainly opens up a place for the Curator to shape and direct what art IS now. And that's exactly what has happened. We'll still need these monkeys wielding paint brushes, but the Theme will be directed from someone with nice credentials.

We still have a Salon. And most artists are not fighting it, rather they vie to get in. "Pick me!" is the cry. The more they reinvent themselves in the latest fad, the more irrelevant they become.

And no one seems even to have noticed. Or to care.

New Whateverism in Art

Click here.

Official-dom

Officialdom verses how an artist really lives? Our whole edifice of contemporary art, all the rationalization that keeps the modern museums humming, the outlandish prices, the culture of hipness, the elitism, the mystique, all these things are founded upon a mistaken notion concerning 19th century French art.

As the myth goes, all the really important artists of the late 19th century (Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, et al) were misunderstood and unappreciated because they were ahead of their times. The official art of the era belonged to the Salon with its academic entrenched habits of thought and sight. And so far as that goes, it has its kernel of truth. From this premise arose the idea of the artist as the bête noire, and Picasso in the 20th century was to have epitomized the type: the artist genius who lives by his own rules. Fast forward a bit, through various mutations, and one arrives at the present dogma of the church of high art where it has become the stock notion that if art is "accessible" it cannot be very important. Hence, the viewer must be scratching his head wondering what the object is if it is to be genuine, "edgy," avant garde, etc.

The only problem with this notion is that it's wrong. Otherwise, it's grand. It just happens that the audience for the French Impressionists (as the first group of "bête noires" were called) was probably there all along. The paintings they made are ravishingly beautiful and full of touchstones to the art of predecesors. But the Salon had a political lock on the art market of the 19th century (though that was beginning to change even then as private dealers gained prominence).

The problem is that the intelligent, ordinary person whose experience of life and whose taste was being sought in these very humane pictures was not an audience that was easily captured. There was enormous variety in the kinds of art being produced, but there was only one official and lucrative outlet for making a career. And the niche market had not arrived in its full splendor, and the means of communicating to potential audiences was limited also.

But look at who loves French Impressionism now, and you get a glimpse of the natural audience for art. Just as ordinary people love the tenderness, the loveliness, the elegance of French painting, today's real life-affirming art appeals directly to people. Such an appeal has nothing to do with fashion. Indeed, art that deals in the real sensations of living goes contrary to the foppishness that characerizes elites today and in eras past. Real art appeals to the senses, to beauty, to memory, to intelligence, to curiosity -- all things that a person of sensibility possesses and uses to make judgments.

In Byzantium, during the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in China and elsewhere, art has appealed to intellect, to the senses, to the sense of divinity, to the narrative of mythologies or the Bible or other cosmologies. All these sources address a deep, living awareness in us. Real art always makes appeal to life. And ordinary people are more in touch with life than are people who move through their days as poseurs. Why should it be otherwise now?

Still, dogmas die hard. And money talks. And money and morality do not always go hand in hand. For the entirety of the 20th century the "isms" have had the day. Of course real artists made real art (one need only consider Matisse, Bonnard, and yes even Picasso, Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn, Andrew Wyeth, numerous others).

A real artist living today has to be true to oneself. You have to make the things that your own life presses you to make and not cave into meaningless and ephermal trends. The Spanish Guitar Player at the top of the page was a drawing after a ceramic figure that I bought impulsively for my daughter when she was very little. It never became hers, it's always been mine. But somehow a certain magicalness of a ceramic guitar player with a few nicks here and there (I found it in a thrift store) enchanted me as something to transform in drawing. It was something I wanted my daughter to see. I don't know why. Just to see how someone made a ceramic image of a romantic idea, which I later turned into a different idea through drawing.

She is a real woman in the drawing, not a statue. And she is also lines, a figure composed of lines.

Nostalgia

The Art Writer has been doing something that I hope everyone takes time to do once in a while: rereading old letters. Of course it goes without saying that to reread them, you probably had to write some -- to which these that you reread are replies.

When the Art Writer was young and first struggling with learning to paint, these letters exchanged with a friend were a source of shared feeling of camaraderie and purpose. I never realized when these letters were new how much they lifted my spirits. I enjoyed them immensely then. But reading them now has an effect that is really hard to describe. The correspondent, and I have lost touch over the years. But the topics of the letters takes on renewed meaning.

Over time, you can begin to question the worth of what you do. Artists really struggle with this worry when they are earnest and idealistic -- as we were. Over the years -- even though you have various triumphs (I've come a long way with my painting from where I began) -- it's still tough not to doubt, especially when the current of the "art world" rushes past in a different direction.

Reading these old letters from my friend reminds me of the ways we held ourselves to high standards -- to how we were quite firm in our decision to do painting the way we wanted -- as realists (of a sort) when realism wasn't at all trendy. (Goodness, it's so less trendy now!)

I admire our spirits of determination back then. We were so young. But we had guts. We did so much work from life. We wanted to have the immediacy of the subject before us. We looked at things really deeply. We wanted to understand nature and life.

I am also struck by our qualms. My friend particularly asked again and again: is this the right way to be an artist? Gosh, I wish we got some of the well deserved credit for earnestness that truly characterized our seriousness of purpose.

How many others ask themselves in spells of recurrent soul-searching -- does what I do matter? Do congressmen in their endless finger pointing ask this? Do all those companies that put you on hold when you call them ask this? Do bureaucrats who put you through endless mazes ever ask themselves? Artists, real artists, don't get near enough credit for their very laudable sense of purpose and their high standards.

Does what I do matter?

And so often, in the cases where the answer is resolutely "yes" -- yes, what you did really did matter -- in those cases, so often the answer doesn't even come until decades, perhaps even centuries later!

That's dedication!

The Good Life

This is how the Art Writer spends time (when not art writing, of course).

a Mid-range Refrigerator

This refrigerator object is a bargain. Unlike other refrigerator art objects featured on this blog, this one is yours for only $50,000. Folks that's a lot less expensive than 19 million. Please send your inquiries to the Art Writer, but better hurry before somebody snaps this up.

For a larger, contextual view click here.

To see other refrigerators, click here and here.

The Salon

Art exhibits once consisted of busy looking installations like this. The many narratives jostling for attention is mind-boggling. The widely differently scaled pictures collaged together like wall paper is madding. But it also looks like a very big mess from which one might get innumerable ideas for making things. Artists hated it, but had they been able to envision today's antiseptic installation orthodoxy, they might have been less hasty to complain.

The Nude

Having posted a Degas nude in comparison with a contemporary academic artist's figure drawing, I just have to post an elegant concise nude by one of my hero artists. Richard Diebenkorn.

The Fine Art of Art Collecting

The first wise rule of collecting is to start with beauty. Try to find it, try to understand it. It leads you into interesting discoveries about yourself, as you find out what kind of beauty speaks to you. It also leads you into an education in what has been beautiful in the history of man, during different times, in different cultures.

The first stop in one's education about beauty needs to be a museum. However, for many people there isn't a world class museum next door. The alternate place to learn is a library that has strong holdings in art history books. Barring that, the internet.

Many artists begin their own education with reproductions of masterworks. They assemble works they love on the studio wall, sometimes in reproductions the size of a postcard. Collectors might be wise to begin their own search in a similar manner. Before you buy real art, start collecting reproductions (including ones printed off the internet) to use in adorning your wall with images that have meaning for you. It's the first step in connoisseurship that ultimately leads to buying real works.

That said, consider this: the Degas at the top of this post is already in a museum and would be beyond the financial resources of most collectors even if it were on the market. But the nude drawn with sanguine conte by Don Srull that I saw recently in a regional art venue was priced at $300. It's a beautiful work. Whether Srull will make future works as valuable as Degas is uncertain, perhaps unlikely. But he has already assimilated certain characteristics of figure drawing, learned ideas from predecessors like Degas which he translates with wonderful and sensitive mastery.

If I wanted an elegant, classic image for my living room, I would invest $300 in a work like this.

I am not arguing that buying a beautiful drawing like this one is the end product of collecting. Quite the contrary, this might be the wise first step.

To see some paintings in my own collection, click here.

The Art of Collecting Art

Art collecting need not be as perilous as this [Pieter Bruegel, Blind leading the blind. 1568. Galleria Nazionale, Naples ] Though it could be. Depends upon what your goals are.

I recently saw an article on the subject in a recent Charlotte Observer. Also the internet is ripe with advice sites, here's one. I offer my own advice which is better advice than what you'll get from the others.

Buy what you like. And be careful what you like. If you like Ellsworth Kelly, try liking something else instead. Click to see why. Kelly's works sell for astronomical amounts and are bad investments, unless you are very rich and need a short-term alternative to currency for use in moving money around.

But if you love art, you should in general avoid Kelly and similar artists who do things you can easily do yourself. You can make your own Ellsworth Kelly; so if you like solid colors, you're wise to make your own Kelly. Then you can make it in any color and any size you please. You don't even have to call it a "Kelly." You can take all the credit for it yourself.

A corollary of this rule goes thusly, and we'll call it a first rule for collectors: "Don't believe everything people tell you." If the art work looks stupid, it probably is stupid.

If you are not sure how to recognize something stupid, ask an ordinary person. Do not ask anyone with a Ph.D in contemporary art history, especially if they spent a lot of money for their education. They have too much face to save and too much invested in defending the status quo.

More advice, next post.

Terry deBardelaben

This is stream of consciousness -- the sculpture current. While I'm posting sculptors, I don't want to forget this wonderful artist who is not as well known as she ought to be: Terry deBardelaben. You can read some of her own commentary on her work here.

Ousmane Sow

Don't know about your local art critic, one of Art Writer's local art critics likes to rave about Donald Judd. Donald Judd manufactured boxes. Ousmane Sow makes sculptures of human beings. I almost never hear Sow's name mentioned in art discourse. I have never seen one of his actual works knowing him only from books, the internet and from Rick Steves's travel show (Ousmane Sow sculptures were once in the background of a segment on Paris). If Sow suddenly becomes the thing (which would be wonderful), please remember you heard about him here first. And then you, like me, will have loved him before he became hip. Always that.

Ah Xian

A contemporary who would be interesting to see in exhibit with Elizabeth King (previous post) would be Ah Xian.

Speaking of the Hirshhorn

I have never seen this sculpture of Elizabeth King's at the Hirshhorn. I know it from an exhibit at the Nancy Drysdale Gallery years ago. At least the Hirshhorn now includes a photo of the work on their web site. To really see this piece to its best advantage, they would need to place it in a context of compatible works. Something we can almost count on the Hirshhorn never doing. A good start in arranging the comparisons appears on the next post.

Diebenkorn, Fra Filippo Lippi

Man and Woman in a Large Room, 1957. Oil on canvas 71 1/8 x 62 1/2 in. (180.7 x 158.8 cm) Richard Diebenkorn. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Saint Benedict Orders Saint Maurus to the Rescue of Saint Placidus; c. 1445/1450; tempera on panel, 40 x 69.5 cm (15 3/4 x 27 3/8 in.) Fra Filippo Lippi, National Gallery of Art in Washington.

This is the kind of "academicism" that I like. I think Diebenkorn has either looked at Italian primitives and incorporated certain ideas that he assimilated from them into his imagery. Or he independently arrived at a similar feeling. Or he gets there via Matisse (who loved the Italian primitives). Or all three of the above.

These two works make for a wonderful comparison. But if you want to do it from life, you're going to have to do some serious walking. Wear comfortable shoes. (And don't expect the Hirshhorn to have Diebenkorn always on view, sadly.)

academic drawing

This striking drawing was made by Neil Harvey, a UK artist whose work I stumbled upon while looking for something else. I cannot say I enjoy the painting he puts it into, but the drawing itself is certainly interesting, well-drawn and entertaining in a partly unintentional way.

It may come to pass that readers of Art Writing will suppose that the author is traditional or conservative or some other label more aptly applied to religion or politics.

Actually, the Art Writer is traditional and contemporary (if we must have labels) which is to say that Art Writer has sought to gain skills and ideas from the history of art to use in the making of modern images. The Art Writer would be the first to praise the study of art history, and the last to argue that the "old ways" need a revival.

Really important ideas never really need PR, since the audiences to which they matter can grasp the idea without being taught. There's a certain kind of intelligent idea that can defend itself, which knows when to speak and when to be silent. It may not speak to everybody, but when it does speak, it speaks clearly enough.

Or then it might just make itself visible.

Amazing, the difference

These are two photos of the same set of pencils. The difference between the black and white shot and the color is rather dramatic. The effect of tonality in art is super important. You can tell whether an artist is thinking about tone by seeing the image photographed in black and white. A great many impressionist effects rely completely upon color, the idea of black and white not playing much of a role in the idea. Certain Renoir paintings, in particular, bear this out. Cezanne, in contrast, was seriously concerned about both color and tone, and again black and white photography reveals it. Rewald's catalog of the artist's work is mostly black and white, but the solidity of the images still comes through. Even in reproduction, even in small plates.

The pencils above were arranged in their orderly pattern by the resident child, the Art Writer's "art child."

Great ideas are bound to be Rediscovered

Picasso's Saltimbanques and Veneziano's St. John in the Desert have much in common given the spare settings of both, the classical sources both artists turn to for their idea of man, and the narrative about being an outsider that threads through both. Picasso's painting is very large. Veneziano's is very small. However, when we equalize them by reproducing them the same size, we can see how similar they are pictorially. Comparing the arrangement of each composition shows them using the space formally in similar ways, the colors are similar, even allowing for differences in size, the paint handling is similar. And they are very nearly the same format.

The spaces are different. We are much farther away from St. John than we are from the circus people. But if you focus your attention on forms, you'll note that various other things stand in compositionally for the places occupied by figures in Picasso. For instance, where the woman sits on the right hand side, we find a big rock in Veneziano. Where the tallest man is standing in Picasso, we have the largest of the mountains ascending in Veneziano. One for one are the boy in Picasso and the saint in Veneziano. Of course, one is a child and the other a man. But they are approximately the same height with respect to their settings.

Great minds run alike. Of course, Picasso stole from everybody. But he couldn't have known this painting. Hence, he even sometimes stole from works he didn't even know. And that just demonstrates his pictorial-scholarly acumen -- which was immense.

I learn the old fashioned way

I copy things. Or I try out ideas of artists whose work matters to me. I think that sometimes the only way you understand another artist's ideas is to walk a mile in his shoes.

Above a painting by Richard Diebenkorn; below a drawing of mine in a similar manner, measuring 52 x 60 inches.

Ignacio Iturria

Ignacio Iturria was here

Bonnard was here

This bathtub could go on the market. I'll keep you posted.
Click to see "before."

Cabinet of Curiosities

Sorry, this refrigerator is sold

To see an installation view, click here.

The Problem with Trends

The problem with trends is so obvious one wonders that it isn't constantly upon the lips of artists. The fact that it is not really tells you a lot about the "art world."

One would think that artists would be constantly chafing against fads. The official line is that artists are free-spirits, always bucking the rules. Why then does a quick survey of almost any gallery produce a reliable crop of the "usual suspects"? Evidently, the whole claim about artistic peculiarity is not completely accurate as regards the sociology.

Au contraire, artists follow trends assiduously. A lot of artists read ArtNews religiously, or pop in at a Gallery-near-you to see what's on the wall. Conformity to these results follows quickly along afterwards.

But why? Why do people even want to be artists, in this sense? (More on that some other time.)

A trend is the MOST limiting thing. It means that "everybody" is doing such-and-such, and if you are not doing something similar that you are outré. Being an artist in these circumstances means that you cannot even predict what you will be doing, making, showing, etc., because unless you've got a crystal ball, you just can't be sure what to make.

The opposite of this quandary is what real art is about. In making real art, you are following some line of inquiry (in the visual world) that has meaning for you. You have some question, interest, love, impulse, which for you is over-riding. Call it curiosity. So you learn what you need to learn to follow your heart.

You are not busy looking over other people's shoulders. What does their art have to do with your heart? Yes, sometimes you find something you love that another artist is doing, and you discover that it holds something you need. This discovery is quite different from cruising the trends because it still comes authentically from inside your own life.

Real art is almost scientific in its quest for something authentic. And what difference could it possibly make if your heart is not in sync with the trends? Is life, is reality, something you just drop like a hot rock in favor of the hippest, latest thing?

The difficulty with real art -- of course it has its own bumps in the road -- is that real art is harder to make, takes longer to figure out, often leads one down wonderfully meadering paths, occasionally down a blind alley. But real art has the final merit: it is real.

For Sale

Freezer door: Refrigerator Art. Price: 19 million US dollars.
contact: the art writer (serious inquiries only, please)

To see a detail, click here. (anyone can click)

Please also CLICK on the photo to see it beautifully enlarged.
Note that this is a multicultural piece.

Sometimes artists follow "trends" without knowing

Some ideas come from -- one knows not where. Whether Evan Wilson and Mark Dassoulas know each other is not something I can say. I'm guessing they don't. I'm guessing that the idea of this subject arose for each in very different ways. Certainly upon deepening inspection we find different ideas about the uses of the drape in each of these bedroom pictures.

when will we understand simplicity again?

Does Kilimnik's hip-ness mean that

Fairfield Porter will finally have his day in court?

Karen Kilimnik and contemporaries

Just found this stunningly direct portrait by Karen Kilimnik on roberta's (of Artblog's roberta and libby) flickr photos. I'm not familiar with Kilimnik's work (though she and the art writer are contemporaries, both born in 1955). Well, another site has her born in 1957. But whatever. More works by the artist can be found on artnet.

She has her hip side as evidenced here or here or here. And I must attest that I don't get the irony-coated element in some of what she does. The art writer is not necessarily anti-hip. The art writer just doesn't like its being endlessly the boring requirement.

Kilimnik's portrait is, I think, really amazing. It's nice to see that she can really paint. However, being able to paint like this, certainly it was important that she have some other, ironic hipster side -- if she wanted to survive, one supposes.

It reminds me of Richter's 1977 Betty. Neither image is just a portrait. In both the artist realized that a face, simply a face, is the radical thing. A face is the radical thing.

It needs some repeating.

[Above in order: The Art Writer's drawing, Richter's Betty, and Karen Kilimnik's Portrait of a girl.]

More Hero Worship

The other thing I marvel at about Rhapsody is its audacity. It is so big. I suppose she really had no guarantee of its being accepted when she was making it. She could not view the whole of it in her studio at one time due to its size. The outlay of materials was daunting. A couple hundred steel plates, each 12 x 12 inches, each silk screened with a grey grid. That was a large and unusual expense to incur at the outset of an iffy project.

I have a series of paintings I have been planning. Some of the images already exist in one format. Others are in the works. For the moment I have painted them in acrylic paint because its easier to use for large scale works than oil is. But I know that my idea would be better in oil paint. Oil paint has a certain "je ne sais quoi" that is unrivalled yet by other techniques.

But I've hesitated to do my ideas in large oil paintings because I wonder what the heck I'll do with them if I cannot sell them right away. Large oil paintings are more fragile than acrylic and do not store so easily.

I am admonished by Bartlett's Rhapsody, though. It might seem now, in retrospect, as though the path to stardom was always all carved out for her. But it wasn't. Yes, it's true she had tested the waters previously with similar smaller works. But they do not take anything away from the pluck of her endeavor.

Her work makes me want to paint. It restores my hope in painting generally. It encourages me to think that you have to take that leap, have to believe in your idea. If the idea is good .... And I think most artists (and artist-pretenders) know the difference. If you examine your idea closely and if you are honest with yourself. Yes.

Having done that, if the spark is truly there, go for it.

That's what I get from Bartlett's Rhapsody. And, finally, again it is delightful. Why should art not be delightful? Critics of decoration and delight should click here.

Why I like my hero

Jennifer Bartlett's paintings always affect me in a needling way. I find myself returning to them again and again. However, I always ask myself "what is her relationship to great art?" Is Rhapsody a great painting? Okay, but if she is not Giotto, maybe she is just Duccio. Well, Duccio isn't bad either.

I guess my asking the question might be rather beside the point. So often in regard to contemporary art, artists' works are invoked with such seriousness. A lot of that is pretense. Maybe that's part of what I find attractive about Bartlett's images: the fact that they are beautiful without apology. They prove that something can be delightfully beautiful without hammering you with obvious meaning. They have depths to them, but they're also quite content to play at the decorative level.

So much criticism has been leveled at Bartlett for the decorativeness of her painting. Most that criticism comes from critics rather than artists. Few artists can create decoration on a parr with Bartlett's. The mistaken notion lies in supposing that her kind of decoration is easy.

Well, it's easy for her.

I guess the thing that brings me back again to this painting that I've never seen in person is its sheer delight. It makes me want to paint. Like the old masters, Bartlett is not afraid to make a bad painting. She cranks images out. The old masters didn't think it a waste of their time to be always painting. If something came out that was not up to ideal, they had at least garnered what was there to be learned by the continual act of drawing. Bartlett is like that. And she lacks pretension in just the living way that makes art exploratory and vibrant.

The artists who were truly innovative were never reluctant to keep pressing forward, and understandably they produced varying results. Some of Rembrandt's firmly attributed works have awkward elements (the Julius Civilis fragment is one prominent example). Bonnard is a very uneven painter and takes a constant whooping from critics for it. But his best paintings are awe-inspiring. No one has figured out Marthe in the Bath yet. So many people aren't even aware of it as something to be figured out. It is still very ahead of its time. So much that we haven't caught up with it yet.

I love Bartlett's paintings because they fill me with a desire to work. How I wish Rhapsody was on permanent exhibit.

[Top, Rhapsody installed at the Addison Gallery of American Art, next is Bartlett's Sea Wall 1985, last image is ArtRighter's painting in a simulated exhibit.]