For Love of Art

[drinkanddestroy]

Big art auction at Sotheby's tonight, including Edvard Munch's "Girls on the Bridge," which is expected to go for over $50 million
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SOTHEBYS_IMPRESSIONIST_MODERN_ART?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[drinkanddestroy]

The Munch went for $54.5 million, but overall, the Sotheby's  did not go as high as expected

Here is an article from The Wall Street Journal

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sothebys-sale-makes-a-thin-impression-1479181883

Sotheby’s Sale Makes a Thin Impression

$157.7 million auction of impressionist and modern art is dominated by bargain hunters

By Kelly Crow

Sotheby’s New York kicked off a major week of fall auctions Monday with a tepid, $157.7 million sale of impressionist and modern art dominated by bargain hunters who lobbed lone bids to win pieces by Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso.
Thin bidding sapped the energy from Sotheby’s York Avenue salesroom, which met its $142.8 million expectations but only managed to find buyers for 81% of its offerings—a passable performance but a long way from the runaway exuberance of a couple of years ago.

The sale’s star, Munch’s 1902 “Girls on the Bridge,” sold for $54.5 million to an anonymous telephone bidder that Sotheby’s had locked in before the sale using a financial mechanism called an irrevocable bid, whereby the bidder pledges to bid and buy a work if no one else steps up in the sale. (In exchange for taking such a risk, Munch’s winner received a $2 million discount.) The Munch was sold by Swiss-based collector Larissa Chertok and was estimated to sell for about $50 million.

At one point during the sale, Sotheby’s auctioneer Helena Newman—the first woman to wield the gavel in a New York evening sale—tried to buy time and coax additional bidders for the Munch by sipping water and making small talk with a colleague who typically bids on behalf of Chinese collectors, to no avail.

It took only one bid to win Picasso’s 1963 “Painter and His Model” for $12.9 million. Maurice de Vlaminck’s Fauve scene from 1906, “The Orchard,” sold following two bids to another telephone bidder for $7.5 million, above its $7 million low estimate.

Dealers, sensing potential steals, largely held sway. London dealer Alan Hobart of Pyms Gallery won Picasso’s 1951 bronze bust, “Head of a Woman,” for $8.4 million, above its $8 million high estimate but far less than the $29 million record price paid for another Picasso bust nine years ago.

Zurich dealer Mathias Rastorfer paid $6 million for “EM 1 Telephone Picture,” a spare, geometric abstract by Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy, well over its $4 million high estimate. Moholy-Nagy was a professor in the Bauhaus school whose retrospective, “Moholy-Nagy: Future Present,” is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago—garnering praise and cries that his prices are low compared with his peers, such as Kazimir Malevich, whose pieces have sold for as much as $60 million. Before Sotheby’s sale, Moholy-Nagy’s record stood at $1.6 million.

The night’s biggest casualty was Henri Matisse’s 1923 “Woman in Blue at a Table, Red Background,” which was estimated to sell for at least $5 million but stalled at $4.2 million and failed to sell. Christie’s and Phillips will counter with their sales later this week.

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

[drinkanddestroy]

So, I stopped posting pictures here a long time ago, for a number of reasons: ImageShack was awful; I posted a bunch of pics from there a while ago, now I lost the pics cuz it was over a year or two ago. Photobucket was better - those pics are still there - but it's still a huge pain in the ass to post pics here, having to upload them to PhotoBucket and then re-size each one etc. etc. It's insanely time-consuming and annoying. Anyway, since most museums I go to have a page for each of their paintings, I'll provide links here to some of the interesting paintings I have seen, from the museums' page or wikipedia. I hope you click 'em; there's some cool stuff here  

I will begin with some nice paintings I saw on recent visits to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, aka "The Met."

This is one of my favorites: check out the depth of field in "Prayer in the Mosque" (1871) by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436482

another painting with a nice depth of field (this one Christian): "Monks in the Cloister of the Church of Gesù e Maria, Rome" (1808), by French artist François Marius Granet http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438659

Here is a painting by famous Western painting Frederic Remington, called "On the Southern Plains" (1907) http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11867

Here is a majestic Western canvas by Albert Bierstdadt http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10154

some more Bierstadts:

http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10158

http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10150

http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10151

http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21186



I saw some nice canvases by Norwegian Peder Balke; they have an exhibit of his artworks on display through July 9th http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/objects?exhibitionId=df4cfbc5-24af-45b5-98c8-333a38431614  

here is a magnificent canvas by Norweigian Johan Christian Dahl - who was mentor to Balke -  called Copenhagen Harbor by Moonglight (1846) - it's in a private collection, but I saw it - along with some of the Balke artworks - when DJ and I visited The Met last summer; there must have been a special exhibit of Norwegian art  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Christian_Dahl#/media/File:Dahl_-_Copenhagen_Harbour_by_Moonlight.jpg

Finally, here is one more really cool privately owned painting that DJ and I saw at The Met last summer: The Three Sisters (1896), by Belgian artist Léon Frédéric https://curiator.com/art/leon-frederic/the-three-sisters

 

[drinkanddestroy]

after each visit to The Met, which closes at 5:15 p.m., I then head across the street to Ronald Lauder's Neue Gallery, which closes at 6:00 p.m. http://www.neuegalerie.org/

The main attraction there, of course, is "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," subject of the movie Woman in Gold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Adele_Bloch-Bauer_I

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II is on display temporarily at Neue Gallery; 10 years after buying it for $88 million, Oprah Winfrey recently sold it to a Chinese collector for $150 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Adele_Bloch-Bauer_II

one of my other favorite Klimts, which are also owned by Neue Gallery, are "The Dancer" http://www.klimt.com/en/gallery/late-works/klimt-die-taenzerin-ria-munk-2-1916.ihtml
and Forsthaus in Weissenbach II http://www.klimt.com/en/gallery/lake-atter/klimt-forsthaus-in-weissenbach-am-attersee-2-1914.ihtml

(the latter two links are not very good versions of these paintings; the actual color is much nicer than it appears at these links)

[dave jenkins]

April is poetry month in the U.S. Schools usually do poetry units then. The publisher Knopf sends out a poem a day for the month if you sign up for the free service. Today, on the last day, they sent me this. I figured at least D&D would get something out of it--maybe someone else will too. It is by Edward Hirsch.

Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925)  
 
 
Out here in the exact middle of the day,
This strange, gawky house has the expression
Of someone being stared at, someone holding
His breath underwater, hushed and expectant;

 This house is ashamed of itself, ashamed
 Of its fantastic mansard rooftop
 And its pseudo-Gothic porch, ashamed
 Of its shoulders and large, awkward hands.

 But the man behind the easel is relentless.
 He is as brutal as sunlight, and believes
 The house must have done something horrible
 To the people who once lived here

 Because now it is so desperately empty,
 It must have done something to the sky
 Because the sky, too, is utterly vacant
 And devoid of meaning. There are no

 Trees or shrubs anywhere—the house
 Must have done something against the earth.
 All that is present is a single pair of tracks
 Straightening into the distance. No trains pass.

 Now the stranger returns to this place daily
 Until the house begins to suspect
 That the man, too, is desolate, desolate
 And even ashamed. Soon the house starts

 To stare frankly at the man. And somehow
 The empty white canvas slowly takes on
 The expression of someone who is unnerved,
 Someone holding his breath underwater.

 And then one day the man simplydisappears.
 He is a last afternoon shadow moving
 Across the tracks, making its way
 Through the vast, darkening fields.

 This man will paint other abandoned mansions,
 And faded cafeteria windows, and poorly lettered
 Storefronts on the edges of small towns.
 Always they will have this same expression,

 The utterly naked look of someone
 Being stared at, someone American and gawky.
 Someone who is about to be left alone
 Again, and can no longer stand it.

 
 
 



 

[dave jenkins]

This is amusing:

[drinkanddestroy]

Poetryschool.com want visitors to their site to send in poems but I'd probably better not send them the following:

There was a guy from Brooklyn
who was really good lookin'
but his latest conquest was a bit of a lush
with a very hairy bush
and not very good at cookin'.

  

She is now also my latest ex-conquest    Like Obama, I am now doing a "pivot to Asia" - spendig time again with the very pretty but very prudish Miss Hong Kong who will never let me get nearly close enough to find out whether or not she has a bush. I mentioned that she hardly speaks a word of English. Well there is a new phrase she says all the time: "Don't touch me!" 

[dave jenkins]

The goat and the shrew! The perfect couple. Check out That Obscure Object of Desire sometime, Drink. Bunuel had your number 40 years ago.

[dave jenkins]

Drink, check this out. In 20 years, this could be you! http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2017/04/rewritten-version-peter-weirs-green-card/

[drinkanddestroy]

The goat and the shrew! The perfect couple. Check out That Obscure Object of Desire sometime, Drink. Bunuel had your number 40 years ago.

Speaking of Bunuel: I once knew a girl (the one you met) who refused to wear anything but an old ugly pair of Doc Martens. Day after day, night after night. Occasionally in the summer she wore some not-very-pretty sandals. But generally it was the same awful Doc Martens. Day after day, night after night. I teased her, harrased her, pleaded with her, mocked her, ridiculed her, nothing doing. Those Doc Martens were the bane of my existence. Then one day, for the first time, I had one reason or another to open her clothes closet - you know, the place where you bury the shit that you never wear. I open the door ... and out tumbles about two dozen pairs of sexy heels. Unbelievable.

[drinkanddestroy]

Drink, check this out. In 20 years, this could be you! http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2017/04/rewritten-version-peter-weirs-green-card/

 

The Hungarian babe - the one who loves me like CRAZY and worships the ground I walk on and is a smoking beauty with the greenest eyes you ever saw, but a tad nuts - mentioned to me this concept about getting married (not specifically with me; just in general for immigrants) so that in three years she becomes legal. Her brother paid some woman a few thousand dollars to "marry" him. They never spent a night together nor do they say a word to each other to ever see each other. After three years, they'll get divorced, but he'll have his green card.

[dave jenkins]

Then one day, for the first time, I had one reason or another to open her clothes closet - you know, the place where you bury the shit that you never wear. I open the door ... and out tumbles about two dozen pairs of sexy heels. Unbelievable.

Heels, I understand, are a lot of work to wear. A gal has to be pretty nuts over a guy to wear them when they're out together. If one can't be bothered . . . well, take it for a warning sign in the future.

[drinkanddestroy]

I'll tell ya something funny: Chinese girls hardly have hair. Both Chinese girls I have been with have never had to shave their legs! The Honk Kong babe's legs are like a baby's ass and she never shaved it.

Our entire communication, btw, is through typing on our phone and then having Google translate it

[dave jenkins]

yeah, you may want to bring up the pre-nup thing soon . . .

[drinkanddestroy]

Problem is, she loves the hairless thing so much, she tells me she wants me to shave my legs and arms! I tried explaining that only queers do that.

But I guess I deserve her harrassment over that; you know, karma over how many girls I have harrassed for similar offenses