The Spring auctions are around the corner, and after looking at Sotheby's beautiful new e-catalogue online tonight (check out the "relative scale" feature which completely blew me away), I am thrilled to report that it looks absolutely amazing, especially compared to the tentative and uneasy Fall offerings. What a selection, including a large-scale Jean Michel Basquiat (Lot #23: Red Man One, $3,000,000 - 5,000,000), a wonderful witty Richard Price joke painting (Lot #35: Can You Imagine, $600,000 - 800,000), and a 1986 Warhol camouflage painting (Lot #39: Camouflage, $1,800,000 - 2,500,000) that we rarely see in an evening sale. These late paintings are among my favorite of Warhol's work, because the series also included images of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting of the Last Supper, thereby taking a turn into the realm of religious art. They were joyfully documented by one of my thesis advisers and author, Jane Dillenberger, during the time I was studying with her. What an amazing way to discover and learn to appreciate this late period of Warhol's work.
The artworks shown pictured above are spectacular. Jeff Koons' sculpture (Lot #9: Baroque Egg with Bow, $600,000,000 - 800,000,000) is from his Celebration series, which (like Warhol's entire oeuvre) took images from our every-day life and exhalted them to high art. Here, the familiar and nostalgic Easter egg becomes a hyper-realistic, perfectly crafted, intellectually satisfying sculpture. The monumental scale and artistic precision (thanks to a factory of workers, again, like Warhol) make it even more enticing - and best seen in person. Martin Kippenberger's painting (Lot #7: Untitled, $3,500,000 - 4,500,000) is new to me, but I like him immediately. This self-portrait brings to mind the harsh, unforgiving paintings of Lucian Freud. According to the catalogue notes, Kippenberger was a master of self-portraiture, in which nothing was left sacred. In his later paintings, of which this is the best example, his self-mocking depiction of his aging body was offered up to the viewers as a stark contrast to his hero, Picasso, the ultimate master of the self-portrait.
The price points for the Koons and Kippenberger, as well as the inclusion of several Twombly drawings, a Bill Viola video and a Jeff Wall lightbox, make this particular auction pretty exciting and diverse.
Zeng Fanzhi
I watched a documentary on Thomas Merton this weekend, as I have been thinking about him quite a bit this week after recently discussing his life and writings with an old friend of mine. Merton was an inspiration for me when I was in graduate school many years ago. His retreat from society in the 1930's to cloistered life at a Trappist monastery fascinated me, as did his dedication to prayer, surrendering his will and what he called "false ego" to God, and finding a new freedom in serving others. He was a Catholic writer and peace activist, and later expanded his theological writings to include a "demand of all humanity by God", including those outside the Christian world. Either God has all of us, or none of us. These convictions became the foundation for my own structures of belief that I had started to build for myself at the time, and which continue to stay with me today.
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The chief aspect of the life and career of Jackson Pollock that has always fascinated me was his self-destructiveness. He struggled for years to achieve success and fame, and when he received it, following the period in which his "drip paintings" took the world by storm and landed him the cover of Life Magazine (1949), he abruptly abandoned the style altogether. He simply stopped making them. When he returned to work a few years following the magazine article, the color in his compositions was gone, as well as the all-over dripped lines of paint. Instead, he painted in black, some abstract compositions, but mostly figurative works that recalled some of his earliest pieces.Why would he have seemingly turned on himself and his success, at the peak of his fame? Why would he have abandoned the technique of drip painting that he had literally invented, and which had changed the course of modern art history?
It has been a year since my last entry, and I thought that writing about Laurie Simmons would be the perfect place to begin. Simmons was one of the first women photographers in the 1970s, creating work during a decade in which photography was still becoming accepted as a viable medium for art making. "In and Around the House", her seminal work from 1976-1978, is a series of photographs that depict scenes from the interior spaces of a dollhouse. These scenes are nostalgic and traditional, and what you might expect to find within its walls. However, on closer look, some of these scenes and in particular, the placement of the miniaturized dolls, are unexpected. One critic describes them to be "about the time of memory, and about those emotions which are fundamentally temporal: longing, nostalgia, presentiment, anxiety, expectation, dread." Simmons describes her pictures of the doll (which she named Jane, after her friend, the painter Jane Kaplowitz) as looking "empty and desolate. I felt that their mood counterbalanced the cuteness of the doll, and I surprised myself by finding them acceptable."
I read an article in the Washington Post this morning about the newly installed Guston paintings at the National Gallery of Art (from their permanent collection), and was happy to see that it was written from the art experience/art viewing perspective. In particular, the observation was made that by opening up the skylight in the tower of the National Gallery of Art, where the Gustons are now placed, the paintings could be viewed in an entirely new way - a way in which the paint becomes not just "tones", but colors that change and communicate with the viewer as the sunlight changes position above.
For the past several weeks, since the Louise Bourgeois survey opened at the Hirshhorn, I have been anxious to see her work again in person. This is one artist with whose work I have a real connection because of my visit to the attic of Dia:Beacon many years ago, where some of her most important pieces are permanently installed. During that visit, I had spent quite a long time on the main level, enjoying the beautiful open, airy, naturally lit spaces and the large open format of the galleries. Paintings and sculpture by Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt - these were pieces that we took in quite easily and with much joy.
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