Movie Shop on 06 Oct 2008
Art & Music Tips admin on 06 Oct 2008
Collecting Art - Do You Have the Bottle
The headline reads “Undiscovered master piece sells for millions at Auction”. The family was overjoyed to discover that a picture that had hung on their grandfather’s wall for years attracted a six figure price at auction. Grandson and heir said “The whole family knew he collected odds and ends but we never envisaged it would amount to anything.”
Ok the above is fiction, but it’s what’s at the back of the majority of collector’s minds, especially those who collect art. Buy it cheap and sell it for millions. Just don’t rely on it as your retirement fund. In many respects it is a lottery, your betting your collection decision against that fickle beast, public opinion. The beauty of the art collecting lottery is you can hang the ticket on your wall. A win, win situation, your wall decorations are working for you and all your friends can admire your taste.
Now that can be scary, because 90 out of 100 people know damn all about art. If it isn’t chocolate box pretty it isn’t art, right. Wrong, have a look at the masters of art in your local museum or better still here on the internet and see how many pretty pictures you can find. Look at Picasso, Gauguin, Pollock, Matisse, Cezanne or Van Gogh to mention a few.
It’s Ok, I’ll wait.
Not much prettiness there. What is there is life, both the depiction of it and in the picture itself. There is an energy that radiates from art and if you allow it that energy will take you places you have never been before. But be prepared, it will confront you, it will challenge you, it is opinionated and isn’t afraid to speak its mind, it is prepared to stand up and be counted, it is art.
As such it is in the vanguard of human experience, it is raw, it is fresh and new. It isn’t the tried and true of recipes of yesterday rehashed, it is pushing the boundaries. In the 21st Century it is computer generated art in all of its many and varied forms. Be it fractal art, manipulated photography or cartoon cells, the collectable artists of today are using a keyboard and a mouse. If Michelangelo were to paint the Sistine Chapel today you can bet London to a brick he wouldn’t be using intonaco. Now as then he would be using that latest technology available to him.
For the collector this just adds another level of complexity. Because computer art is so easily reproduced, what does one actually collect? As in the past, collect signatures, preferably from a limited edition. Obviously, the shorter the edition the better. If an open edition with a signature is all you can afford, go for it, it is better than a poster with or with out a digital signature. If your print isn’t signed by the fair hand of the artist, as a collectable, it is worthless and that includes digital signatures. It is a $29.99 commodity and barely worth the paper it’s printed on. Although the frame may attract a bid or two.
If you consequently come across your print on the cover of Vogue or in a TV commercial for whatever, chances are you’re on a winner. That is the paperback of your signed first edition. Assuming of course your print has staying power, for so much of the mass media is based on ephemera. It is the quick hit that attracts attention and while this can be true of art there is a deeper relationship just waiting for your attention in works that can stand the test of time.
For anyone seriously considering collecting art, the pieces to acquire are those you can live with. If you like it from the start that is a bonus though not essential because if you have chosen wisely you will, over time and many conversations, come to love your new found friend. Works of art do become trusted friends and when it comes time to dispose of them it is a gut wrenching experience. This I know for I have been there and done that. When I had to dispose of my collection a few months ago my main concern was that they were going to good home rather than the financial return they could afford me. Consequently the ROI was less than if I had been less sentimental.
Though if ROI is your motivation and you can be hard nosed at the end of the day you will have many hours of enjoyment from your friends upon your walls along the way.
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Henry Bateman is an artist/photographer and collector. His art can be seen at http://www.pissedpoet.com and this article with pictures at Collecting Art |
Entertain Review admin on 06 Oct 2008
Andy Warhol - Dream America SD Museum of Art - Art Show Review
America. Dream America, daydream nation. Where do we go if we want to understand this country? The news won’t be much help. Our news media in the U.S. is so closely tied to both the corporate and political structures as to be useless. You’ll get plenty of information. Of course, it will only be the information that either the Whitehouse or Phifzer wants you to see.
What else is there? History books? Aside from a few brilliant but marginalized voices such as Howard Zinn, Cornell West and Noam Chomsky you’d be hardpressed to find much of value. The version of history we teach and have available to us tends to be a one-sided stream of cardboard cutout stereotypes displaying America’s ‘great achievements”. So, where do we go? We crave meaning. Human beings are wired to seek out meanings and patterns. Our eyes can’t rest on an object for more than a few seconds without seeking out how it fits into our schema or understanding of our experience.
I’d put forth that if you’d like to get a glimpse of what makes America tick you could do worse than spending some time at the San Diego Museum of Art’s new show, “Andy Warhol’s Dream America”. Andy puts it best; “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
I don’t think Andy’s being coy there. Well, at least not entirely so. Surfaces are what his work is all about. I know we often identify the surface of things as not having much to do with depth. ‘You can’t judge a book by it’s cover” and “Beauty is only skin deep” are two of our timeworn responses to surface. But in Warhol’s work what surfaces there are! Shadows made from ink mixed with diamond dust. Ultra-vivid greens, purples and red popping off of canvas and paper. Repeated faces of celebrities in every color imaginable. Green Marilyn Monroes pouting at blue eye shadow wearing Chairman Mao’s. Cotton candy pink and silver electric chairs nestled amongst day-glo cow heads. These pieces are a miracle of color and line.
The technique is so clean and masterful that if that were all, it would still be worthy enough to warrant our contemplation. This isn’t to say that Warhol’s meaning is cheap, shallow or easy to understand.
At the exhibit I sat watching the long, single-take film portraits of various New York undergroundites called, “Screen Tests” when a lady cautiously approached. She’d been by a few times and had finally decided to ask me a question. Why she chose me, I have no idea. Perhaps she figured that as I sat there seemingly enjoying these films, I must be able to help her.
“Is something going to happen?” I looked up not entirely sure what she meant. “I mean does something come on or change?”
I explained that these were called “Screen Tests” and that Warhol made them of almost everyone he met but that no, nothing else would actually happen on the screen. I said that they were sort of film portraits that revealed a lot by doing very little. She nodded and said, “So, there’s no biographical information coming up?” As I answered no she walked off with a disappointed look. I don’t add this to make fun or stand above. Sometimes the hardest things to see are right in front of us.
America is all about surfaces. Walk through any city and you’ll see it. Shiny glass and mirrors echo every move. What space isn’t reflective is cluttered with repeated logos and advertisements. So perhaps Andy Warhol’s art can fill us in on the most prevalent features and details of this country. It’s all there; the deaths, the ads, the old west, the celebrities, the surface. In a sense walking through this exhibit of Warhol’s work is a photorealistic portrait of life in America, Dream America, Daydream Nation.
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