As we watched the news of the deep freeze in Texas, our horror at the images of people burning furniture to stay warm and lined up for hours trying to buy food was made doubly shocking, whether we realized it or not, because of the unconscious perception most of us carry around of Texas as a broad-shouldered, can-do state, tough as an oilfield roughneck. Texans themselves carry a sense of being larger than life and will miss few opportunities to demonstrate it. In the art world, nothing symbolized this Texan self-aggrandizement more than the Western Heritage Sale, an annual event from 1975 to 1985 that was held at the world-famous Shamrock Hotel in Houston. A black-tie affair, hosted by former Governor John Connally and some of his friends from the oil patch, the sale had alternating lots of contemporary cowboy art, thoroughbred horses, and prize-winning Santa Gertrudis bulls. (They didn’t sell the actual bulls, just “straws,” as they are called, of the bulls’ semen.) The bidders at the Western Heritage Sale may have been as expensively-coutured as attendees at one of the evening Impressionist sales at Sotheby’s or Christie’s in those days, but any resemblance ended there. Attending the Western Heritage Sale, I always found the greatest cognitive dissonance in the spectacle of elegant ladies sipping champagne as they strolled between livestock pens, the odor of manure overpowering the delicate scent of expensive perfumes. Once inside the ballroom, attendees were seated at banquet tables, and the liquor flowed freely. At New York art auctions, the auctioneer calls the bids in a plummy voice, “One million. I have one million. ...
Back during the days of the Reagan Administration, I was participating in the Tri-Delta Antiques Show in Dallas. Among the artworks on display in my booth was a cast of Frederic Remington’s iconic bronze The Bronco Buster. An older gentleman visiting the booth examined it for several moments and then turned to me. “My grandfather had one of these when I was a boy, and he told me he was leaving it to me,” he said. “Oh, really?” I answered. “Well, if you still have it, I’d love to talk with you about buying it.” “Have it?” He fumed, “I never got it! My mother gave it to the White House!” Now, every time he turned on the evening news, there was President Reagan in the Oval Office, and there in the background was the sculpture that my visitor felt rightly belonged to him. It is a mercy that my visitor probably shuffled off his mortal coil years ago, given all the aggravation he would have suffered during the period since our chat, because through every administration, Republican or Democratic, persons viewing an image of the current inhabitant of the Oval Office could be assured of seeing The Bronco Buster sitting somewhere in the background. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Federal statute mandating that it be always on view. I’ve been thinking about Remington since I viewed a recent webinar on the traveling exhibition “Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington,” which is currently on view at the Amon Carter Museum. The speakers at the webinar were Maggie Adler, the curator of American art at...
This past March, as the reality of the Coronavirus began to make itself felt in the United States, I sent out an email entitled “Art in an Uncertain Time” in place of my normal blog. Galleries were being shut down, and dealers were working remotely. I quoted Eric Baumgartner of Hirschl & Adler Gallery who had written me from his home office, “We are trying to stay productive and busy, but I must say that I am hesitant to reach out to people about something so trivial and unnecessary as fine art right now when everyone is in full-on survival mode.” Nobody knew what would happen to the art market. Nobody ever does, really, but things seemed much more apocalyptic in March – was this the beginning of the end? Yet the dire scenarios did not come to pass. Some galleries failed, but many have survived. People still wanted art. Like the rest of the retail economy, art dealers dealt with the challenge by upping their games. Websites were made more sophisticated, more online outreach to collectors was begun, and galleries were open on an appointment-only basis to a few socially-distanced clients at a time. Art fairs in new virtual formats became more specialized in the galleries they presented and more targeted to specific demographics. In my conversations with fellow dealers over the past few months, I have found no one excited, but everyone admits to doing some business. With their operating expenses slashed to the minimum, dealers are surviving. The virtual art fairs are enabling enough sales to justify the outlay. Collectors can still fall in love with...
