Yeah, don't spend any money on art. Scrounge. Look in dumpsters. Beg. WC
----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, May 11, 2012 3:17:19 PM Subject: Re: auction prices This is probably the only way I'll ever be able to cash in on something by a famous artist. (Although $14.14 is kinda high for me): http://abcnews.go.com/Business/ohio-man-sells-pablo-picasso-print-thrift-store/story?id=16327311 On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:50 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > The new auction records for Rothko, Newman, and other icon artists of the > high > modern period are disturbing even as they are expected in this age of 1 > percenter excess. (See today's NYT). My problem is not with the prices as > such > but with the aura they cast around the art that is selling at those prices. > It's becoming very difficult to look at a Rothko anymore as an artwork. > These > works are supposedly the inspiration works of an era, helping to define > the best > of the best in aesthetic terms. They've been the mile-markers ambitious > young > artists for two or three generations. But more and more they seem to fall > flat > for me. Dead. The more a Rothko sells for the less art it seems to be. I > saw a > few Rothkos at the National Gallery in D.C.. a few days ago. Admittedly, > they > are not the finest I've seen (the Phillips Collection, also in D.C. has > better > examples) but they looked very ashamed to me, so embarrassed, and dull; > pompous > but empty. I wonder if my aesthetic expectations for the Rothkos has been > raised to a high level somehow analogous to their stratospheric auction > records. > > 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. When an artwork -- especially a fragile > painting -- sells for multiple millions, well beyond the cost of anything > else > that could be put into a room, it might as well be rolled up, tied, and > shoved > under the guillotine. > wc
