I like to say that there was only one truly creative genius in the whole of art history: the first caveman (or woman) to draw a mastodon on that cavern wall. All other artists have been stealing from him or her ever since. I’ve been reminded of this assertion lately while working on a series of lectures on American art that I’m giving for the Lifetime Learning Institute at Vassar College. Reviewing the biographies of the noted artists of the Colonial Era and the first years afterwards, I was struck time and again at how difficult it was for a would-be artist to learn his craft back then. Art needs other art, unless you’re the prehistoric genius mentioned above. Books were expensive and difficult to come by, but a budding poet in Colonial America had a chance to learn his craft from the works of Shakespeare or Milton. At the very least, he could undoubtedly lay hands upon one of the masterpieces of English prosody: the King James Bible. But what could painters see? The masterpieces were in Europe. If you were in Boston, you came up against the Puritans’ suspicion of visual art, a consequence of the Second Commandment’s prohibition of graven images. If you were in Philadelphia, you had to battle the Quaker aversion to anything that was not deemed plain and modest. There were no magnificent church altarpieces or frescoes to encounter at Sunday worship, no princes displaying works in their palaces. John Singleton Copley, writing as a young artist in 1766, complained in a letter to Benjamin West, who was working in England, “In this Country...
My wife and I just got back from two weeks in California, visiting our daughters. As always, Roberta and I were struck by the beauty of the California landscape. It brought back a question I have occasionally pondered: why bother to paint landscapes in California? I mean, a Californian can simply look out his or her window and see soaring mountains, dramatic shorelines, and wildflowers everywhere. How can an artist hope to compete with all that? Yet artists have been trying for well over a century, and places such as Sausalito, Carmel, Laguna Beach, La Jolla, and many more have become famous as artists colonies. The first artists to achieve real note in the 20th century were the California Impressionists – Guy Rose, John Marshall Gamble, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, and many more – several of whom had studied in France, particularly at Giverny, where Monet had his famous garden. Guy Rose (1867-1925), View of Wood’s Cove. Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 inches. Photo courtesy Bonhams Impressionism became extremely popular in California and persisted there as a style long after its reputation had faded elsewhere. Indeed, California Impressionism has been described as “the Indian Summer of American Impressionism.” The reaction, when it came, came hard. By the mid-20th Century, California Impressionists were dismissed by art historians who deigned to notice them, particularly on the East Coast, as illustrators whose sweet images belonged on chocolate boxes, not in museums among “serious” modern artists. An indication of how low their reputations had fallen was to be seen in the mid-1970’s when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art deaccessioned several...
In Chicago in the mid-1950’s, Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977) was acknowledged as the “Queen of Bohemian Artists.” She grew up in Hyde Park, home of the University of Chicago, the daughter of itinerant opera singers, but she became a painter, not a musician, though she had real musical chops, as her reputation as an improvisational jazz pianist attested. With her second husband, music critic Frank Sandiford (Dizzy Gillespie played at their wedding), she was an active participant in what might be called Chicago’s South Side art scene. The parties held in their rambling old house were the closest thing to Gertrude Stein’s fabled Parisian salons a generation earlier. One might encounter jazz musicians such as Sonny Rawlins, singers like Sarah Vaughan, surrealist painters like Marshall Glasier, or authors such as James Purdy, who immortalized Abercrombie in his book Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue. She was also the inspiration for jazz pianist Richie Powell’s composition “Gertrude’s Bounce.” The year she died, 1977, she had a retrospective at the Hyde Park Art Center. I was in Hyde Park at the time, attending grad school at the University of Chicago, but I didn’t see the show. Even if I had heard about it, I might have dismissed it as a show of some retardataire regional painter from the old days. Although she had briefly studied figure painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, Abercrombie’s main training had been received at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, an institution for students seeking careers as commercial artists, and she had worked as an illustrator for Sears in early adulthood. She went on to work...
I got a query through my website the other day, seeking an appraisal of some real estate. Thanking the sender for his interest, I told him that I am an art appraiser and am not qualified to appraise real property. I directed him to the professional organizations whose members specialize in real estate appraisals. But what makes someone qualified to be an art appraiser? In matters of real estate, there are state laws requiring this or that certification before someone can set himself up as a real estate appraiser. In matters of personal property appraisals for the IRS, however, qualifications have been much more nebulous. 50 years ago, the only qualification required for doing an appraisal for tax purposes was to not have been disqualified for such appraisals. Over the past 40 years, however, there has been a major push to professionalize the practice of appraising. Following the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 90s, when large numbers of American savings institutions failed due to bad loans that had been made on properties that had been grossly overvalued, Congress authorized the establishment of The Appraisal Foundation. That foundation in turn has developed the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) a guide which appraisers must follow. To be accepted by the Appraisers Association of America, I had to take a two-day class and pass a test in USPAP, among other requirements. That, however, was only the beginning. Ever since my initial qualification, I have had to take a class every two years to update myself on any changes to USPAP in the intervening period. I am also...
There are two kinds of collectors that can make a dealer tear his hair. The first kind don’t know exactly what they want; they’re just in the mood to buy something. “I’ll know it when I see it,” they tell you. You end up pulling out paintings of every conceivable style and subject, but none of them seems to fit the potential clients’ ideas of what they want to see hanging on their walls. The second kind know exactly what they want and won’t consider anything else. It may be a particular color scheme – they want something mostly purple for over the sofa. It may be a particular subject — a King Charles Spaniel, a view of Venice, or a still life of raspberries. Raspberries and Venice are fairly easy to come up with; King Charles Spaniels, less so. Unlike me, who can tell a bulldog from a chihuahua but not much more, dog fanciers know precisely what their favorite breed looks like and are quick to tell you that what you’re offering as a painting of an English Setter is actually a Llewellin Setter, and you ought to be ashamed of your ignorance. Small wonder that there are art dealers specializing only in dogs. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a particular color or subject when you’re looking to buy art. As I tell collectors, it’s your home. You have every right to buy something that will give you nothing but pleasure when you see it hanging on your wall. If a particular dominant tone in a painting will catch the light in your room just right and...
