On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:50 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Nearby the National Gallery Rothkos is a small -- not bigger than 3 feet -- > Bradley Walker Tomlin, tacked to the wall too near a doorway, as if it was > crowded into position by a sympathetic curator. It's an astonishing > painting, > full of risk, wild technical abandon and yet so beautifully composed, as > if it > is paint caught in the wind and rain at the most perfect moment. Of > course I've > always loved Tomlin's work since I first saw one of his paintings back > around > 1948 in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Collection. I have no idea what his > work > sells for now but I'd bet that it's well within the comfort zone of prices > we'd > expect to pay tor, say, a pricey sedan -- something sensible in the public > mind > for a fine work of art. I can appreciate the Tomlin. I can experience it > as an > artwork, a source of aesthetic pleasure and a demanding intellectual and > painterly object that has no other purpose. I don't think about its > monetary > value at all. But the poor Rothkos and their cohort, now turned to pure > suffocating gold, have lost their vitality and their art forever, or until > the > bubble bursts or the world sinks into catalytic horror. Go look at a > Tomlin. Go > look at any of the art that can still be seen as art. That's where the > future > is, if there is to be a future... - Good art weathers the ages because once in so often a man of intelligence commands the mass to adore it. Ezra Pound
