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70 Million
Post #1462 • March 2, 2010, 8:32 AM • 61 Comments
"70 Million" by Hold Your Horses (via).
70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.
2.
March 2, 2010, 1:30 PM
Held hostage by a medium
Lot# - 133, Dream of Galilee, 1996, acrylic and watercolor on canvas, 16 x 20 in.
Lot# - 135, With love and disregard: rapture blessing, 2002, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 84 in.
Lot# - 136, Evening mist, 1996, pastel on paper, 23 x 30.7 in
3.
March 2, 2010, 1:35 PM
I'm going to guess that there was a little too much pasting and not enough copying in #2.
4.
March 2, 2010, 2:11 PM
Sotheby's New York - Contemporary Art - March 9, 2010 Day Sale --> See p14 for lots 131-140
Nope. I look at the pics without the info and just check who did it when I see something that stops me for some reason or another. Three media variants, and I felt that the color and bumpy physicality mix is a wrong turn ending up at Bram Bogart. Luminosity has no shadow.
5.
March 2, 2010, 2:14 PM
I'm seeing three identical pictures at three identical links.
6.
March 2, 2010, 2:22 PM
Yes me too. I don't get it.
7.
March 2, 2010, 2:35 PM
I like the Van Gogh bit.
8.
March 2, 2010, 2:40 PM
Some rummaging turned up the top page of the auction (which link hopefully will work). The first few works are from Kehinde Wiley, John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, and Raymond Pettibon, so have a barf bag handy.
The images George is referring to are all Olitski paintings up for auction. Dream of Galilee, With love and disregard: rapture blessing and Evening mist.
9.
March 2, 2010, 3:17 PM
Sorry, I was busy...
Lot# - 133, Dream of Galilee, 1996, acrylic and watercolor on canvas, 16 x 20 in.
Lot# - 135, With love and disregard: rapture blessing, 2002, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 84 in.
Lot# - 136, Evening mist, 1996, pastel on paper, 23 x 30.7 in
10.
March 2, 2010, 3:33 PM
"Busy" and "commenting on a blog" are two incompatible modes of existence. Anyway, Chris got it already.
11.
March 2, 2010, 3:37 PM
Franklin, please. They're only incompatible modes for ordinary mortals. Exceptional people are, well, exceptional. Or something to that effect.
12.
March 2, 2010, 3:57 PM
In my world, "busy" and "commenting on a blog" are synonymous.
13.
March 2, 2010, 4:01 PM
As in "Leave me alone, kids! I'm BUSY COMMENTING ON A BLOG! You know where the fire extinguisher is!"
14.
March 2, 2010, 7:41 PM
I like her:
The Hon. Mrs. Stanhope (click image to enlarge as needed)
It's a mezzotint after Sir Joshua Reynolds, but there are elements suggestive of Thomas Gainsborough, his great rival (though they had great mutual respect for each other).
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15.
March 2, 2010, 9:11 PM
very excited that titian's diana paintings are, among many other high profile paintings, coming from a museum in scotland later this year to the High museum. they then will be going to houston and i think MN. dr. shapiro has done it again. weak permanent collection, but great track record for shows since the olympics were here in atlanta.
http://blogs.ajc.com/inside-access/2010/02/26/high-to-show-titian-paintings-never-seen-in-u-s/?cxntlid=sldr_hm
16.
March 2, 2010, 9:44 PM
The Hon. Mrs. Stanhope is quite pretty.
Titian painting never before seen in the U.S. going to Atlanta, Houston, Minnesota. You see something wrong with this painting? No, of course not. New York City's not in the list because we're too busy showing Tino Sehgal and crap masterpieces like that.
17.
March 2, 2010, 10:53 PM
The Met, of course, couldn't possibly accommodate this show. It needs the space to display the Hirst shark. Or Koons balloon thingies. Or anything that will make somebody like Jerry Saltz sufficiently excited to over-emote profusely and embarrassingly.
18.
March 2, 2010, 11:52 PM
Titian lacks mojo.
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20.
March 3, 2010, 10:44 AM
I didn't care for this one, Jack. Can't say why. Perhaps it looks too "deliberate"?
21.
March 3, 2010, 11:07 AM
I hesitated to say it, but then opie did.
22.
March 3, 2010, 11:19 AM
The Pears thread closed, but I thought you'd enjoy this, courtesy of Jonathan Butterick (from RISD, remember) via his Facebook page:
OMG I 8 all teh plumz SO SW33T n C0000ld!!!!!!!!! LOL SRY!!! ^__^ --WCW
23.
March 3, 2010, 1:31 PM
It's an aggressive pot. I'm having an aggressive day.
24.
March 3, 2010, 3:16 PM
Jack, if all your aggression is expressed through your taste in pots, you are either frustrated or saintly, or both.
25.
March 3, 2010, 5:42 PM
Just ran across this on CNN's iReport about Spender Tunick's latest "herd of naked people" project. The phrase that stuck me was in the third paragraph: "it felt safely rebellious" to be one of the minions. Seems like a good summary of what goes on in the whole art world these days. A safe rebellion.
26.
March 3, 2010, 5:54 PM
A yuteki tenmoku ("oil spot") glaze:
Chaire (tea caddy) 1
Chaire (tea caddy) 2
Chaire (tea caddy) 3 (ivory lid)
27.
March 3, 2010, 5:59 PM
That's more like a conveniently rebellious-looking pose, John. Apart from everything else, it's both banal and boring. The Victorian era has been over for quite some time.
28.
March 3, 2010, 6:25 PM
"it was collective courage", gag me with a spoon.
29.
March 3, 2010, 6:45 PM
For those of you who must know these things, Miami now has yet another private contemporary art museum to showcase the holdings of major collectors Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz. It's three stories and 30,000 square feet. I may visit at some point. One of my main motivations is to see how the bathrooms compare to those at the Rubell Collection museum. Those were some pretty nice bathroom facilities, let me tell you. The art on view, not so much.
30.
March 3, 2010, 7:42 PM
If you ever need to go while in the vicinty of 57th and Fifth I heartily recommend the bathrooms in Ana Tzarev's gallery.
By the way, Peter, that was pretty funny. Or should I say :)
31.
March 3, 2010, 8:45 PM
I like this; it's soothing, sort of like a moss-covered fertility symbol:
Double gourd vase (click image to enlarge as needed)
32.
March 3, 2010, 9:02 PM
Late 19th century etching by a minor name; it feels very immediate, like being there:
English landscape
33.
March 3, 2010, 9:02 PM
in general i like double gourd pieces, but this one somewhat looks like a vase on top of a vase. i really like the colors though.
i have one that, not unlike this one, looks like an olitski spray painting, but brown with no border lines as well. i have had the same funky tree branch in it for years even while my kids have tried to destroy it many times.
34.
March 3, 2010, 9:14 PM
Yes, the coloring is key. It sort of resembles an interesting patina on bronze, but not really metallic, more organic or plant-like. It's both simple and subtle. It invites touch.
35.
March 3, 2010, 11:35 PM
That landscape looks immediate, as if someone immediately traced a photo.
36.
March 4, 2010, 7:15 AM
the oil-spot & double gourd pots are fine. The latter looks like cast bronze. Very nice.
37.
March 4, 2010, 9:14 AM
Chris, when you can "trace" that well with a needle, a metal plate and acid, let me know and I'll be happy to post your work here. Even if this etching was based on a photo, it feels more alive and breathes more than the photo would.
38.
March 4, 2010, 9:36 AM
TODAY:
CLEMENT GREENBERG PORTRAIT TALK, historian David C. Ward discusses the modernist-era art critic and his portrait. 6 p.m., National Portrait Gallery, Eighth and F streets NW. Free. 202-633-1000.
39.
March 4, 2010, 9:40 AM
You need to get out more, Jack. I personally know at least ten people who, given the right tools, could do work as good or better than that. Heck, I'm pretty sure I could, and I'm not even the best draftsman I know.
When I was at SVA I went up and spent an hour or so with one of the guys doing the printmaking residency. I can't remember his name at all, and I feel bad about that. His day job was a resident estate painter in England: He was paid to go out onto the estate of some wealthy noble and paint it. Here's the manor house, here's the pond, here's the old tree, whatever. Tourists visiting the grounds would meet him while he was working and he'd chat.
His real love, though, was American boxing. He came to New York not just to practice etching and printmaking, but also to visit the boxing gyms and see some matches. He'd make sketches then come back and turn them into etchings. I watched him work on printing one, which is what convinced me printmaking was not for me. Too much work.
His etchings were more expressionistic than this but far more accomplished. I wish I could show them to you.
40.
March 4, 2010, 9:42 AM
Sorry, MC, tonight's the figure drawing session I've been putting together every other week. Week three and still going strong!
41.
March 4, 2010, 10:12 AM
Chris, while I could stand to get out more, that's neither here nor there. I was not implying this etching was a masterpiece, which is why I said minor name. You're welcome to your opinion, but you underestimate what it takes to pull off even an etching like this one, not to mention a better one.
42.
March 4, 2010, 10:22 AM
Getting back to the latest exemplar of the so-called "Miami model" (private museums to showcase the owner's collection), the de la Cruz place has more exhibition space than the Miami Art Museum (MAM) or the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). It may well have a larger collection than either of those public entities. What it does have is certainly eminently correct, and then some.
43.
March 4, 2010, 12:02 PM
The etching is very nice. I suspect that photography is involved in it somewhere, which may enhance the hazy immediacy of it, but that's just another tool, of course.
I especially like the way values are handled, the reflections on the stream - characteristic of a bright overcast day - and the barely discrernible but very fine details in the distance, along the hills.
44.
March 4, 2010, 12:14 PM
I love the glaze on that double-gourd vase. The only problem with it, but a crucial one, is that the top separates from the bottom (visually, of course). It looks as though there are two pots. A result of a number of factors that could probably have been mitigated by slight adjustment of any one: the way the glaze darkens around the bottom curve of the top shape, the exact narrowness of the pinched part could change in half a dozen ways, the globular roundness of the top half, etc.
Have I made this comment elsewhere recently? I'm getting a little deja vu here.
45.
March 4, 2010, 12:41 PM
The star attraction in that vase is certainly the glaze. The shape is a little too exact, perhaps, so a more natural gourd shape may have been preferable. However, a more interesting shape may have distracted attention away from the subtleties of the coloring.
46.
March 4, 2010, 1:02 PM
Re #38, one assumes Rosalind Krauss and cohorts will be picketing outside the building.
47.
March 4, 2010, 1:57 PM
Perhaps not.
Rosalind Krauss considers what she has come to call the "post-medium condition"—the abandonment by contemporary art of the modernist emphasis on the medium as the source of artistic significance. Jean-François Lyotard argued that the postmodern condition is characterized by the end of a "master narrative," and Krauss sees in the post-medium condition of contemporary art a similar farewell to coherence. The master narrative of contemporary art ended when conceptual art and other contemporary practices jettisoned the specific medium in order to juxtapose image and written text in the same work. For Krauss, this spells the end of serious art, and she devotes much of Perpetual Inventory to "wrest[ling] new media to the mat of specificity."
48.
March 4, 2010, 2:15 PM
I like the picture in the Amazon ad, complete with monospaced type and those little fill inin the "e"s that develop unless you clean your typewrite frequently. But for my money (and mind), Terry Fenton trumps everything in the editorial paragraph Franklin quotes. Fundamentals are what count in art, and "post-medium condition" is not one of them, though there are hints that Krauss has come to oppose it, whatever it is.
Read Fenton's About Pictures if you want to get a handle on where it is at now, where it has been at for the past 500 years, and where it will remain for the indefinite future. Then re-read it. "Perpetual inventory" may be a helpful exercise if you lose sight of what counts, but it is hardly a necessary method if you don't.
49.
March 4, 2010, 2:53 PM
If this is a new book, as it appears to be, that cover photo is rather questionable--unless Krauss is equating "perpetual inventory" with "perpetual youth."
50.
March 4, 2010, 3:58 PM
Those pomo loonies don't seem to understand that there is a real world out there where everyone is painting merrily away. The only thing that got "jettisoned" was these space cadets and their castles in the air.
51.
March 4, 2010, 4:03 PM
And John, Fenton's book is basically common sense, which is highly unlikely to get one tenure in academia or notice in fashionable circles.
52.
March 4, 2010, 6:49 PM
Another etching by a minor name, c. 1925:
Doge's Palace, Venice
One thing I like about this is that it conveys a different kind or dimension of reality than a photo would, and it feels more alive or less frozen, less static.
53.
March 4, 2010, 6:59 PM
And here's a terrific Japanese print by a minor name, c. 1830:
Kuniyasu (click on image to enlarge as needed)
54.
March 4, 2010, 7:10 PM
A relatively tame shunga print (click image to enlarge as needed):
Eisho
Detail
I think it's a terrific design. And Chris, try to control yourself.
55.
March 4, 2010, 9:08 PM
An early to mid 19th century folk pottery plate:
Seto 1
Seto 2 (detail)
Seto 3
This was made for ordinary use by ordinary people, but it was sufficiently out of the ordinary that it was protected and survived. The seller refers to its "exquisite vagueness," which seems apt.
56.
March 4, 2010, 9:29 PM
Jack, love the Doge's Palace. Reminds me of Sargeant. And Franklin, I saw that R. Kraus quote myself recently. Interesting.
57.
March 4, 2010, 10:33 PM
The English landscape etching is by Percy Robertson. The Venice etching is by Andrew Affleck. They were both successful and appreciated in their time, but neither was considered major, front-rank talent. Of course, the competition then was plentiful and formidable, and standards were very high.
58.
March 5, 2010, 9:36 AM
Yes Jack. Terrific design. Very subtle.
Getting bored with pots, are we?
59.
March 5, 2010, 9:49 AM
Well, OP, considering it's porn, I find it very good as graphic work (no pun intended), including the punchy color. I certainly prefer it to Koons porn, though admittedly that's saying rather little. Besides, I can't be exquisitely sensitive all the time, you know.
61.
March 5, 2010, 12:55 PM
Oh, and OP, that print I posted is about as subtle as shunga gets (except for the cover print of a shunga album, which was typically toned down so as not to scare the kids or shock guests).
1.
MC
March 2, 2010, 12:00 PM
There's just something about that "Death of Marat" that just works, even in video re-enactment.
In other news, Museum Attendance Up During Recession...