O’Keeffe’s art is currently having a moment. Not Georgia O’Keeffe’s – that’s as popular as it’s ever been. No, I’m talking about the art of her little sister, Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe (1889-1961), which scored a huge success at Christie’s last week. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Ida studied art with the same teacher as her older sister and a younger sister, Anita, in Williamsburg, Virginia, where the family had moved when she was 13. The sisters’ family was artistic – both grandmothers had been artists, and yet another sister, Catherine, was also a painter – but family finances were often precarious, and the girls learned early that they would have to make their own ways in the world. Both Georgia and Ida became public school art teachers, but Ida later became a nurse. Ida continued her art studies, however, eventually receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1932. While living in New York, Ida was in close contact with her older sister and with Georgia’s husband, the noted art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, but sibling rivalry often made things uncomfortable. Georgia’s biographer, Laurie Lisle, noted in a 1980 book that Ida “got the emphatic message that Georgia wanted to be the only O’Keeffe who painted.” Georgia forbade Stieglitz from ever exhibiting her sister’s work. “I’d be famous, too, if I’d had a Stieglitz,” Ida later groused. In her first New York exhibition, she listed herself as Ida Ten Eyck. That may have been as much a matter of Ida’s not wanting to be compared to her sister as of Georgia’s sharp elbows. At any rate, Ida left New York...
It was the spring of 1985, and seven women artists were still pissed. The previous summer, the Museum of Modern Art in New York had held an exhibition entitled, “An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” to inaugurate the museum’s newly renovated building. The exhibition had included the works of 165 artists, supposedly the best of the best. Only 13 were women. The women who met the following spring had participated in a picket line across the street from the museum during the exhibition’s run to protest the exclusion of female artists, but New Yorkers are fairly oblivious to picketers, at least if the protests aren’t accompanied by large, inflatable rats. Something more media-savvy was needed. The seven women who met that spring decided to call attention to the facts and figures of the situation, laid out on inexpensive, well-designed posters, and many SoHo buildings soon had these posters pasted on their walls. But a moment foregrounded by nothing but grievance can turn off potential supporters, so the women brilliantly hit on another factor in their campaign: humor. In those days not long after the Vietnam war, Americans were well-acquainted with the term “guerilla warfare.” The women decided that the name of their insurrection against the art establishment would be the Guerilla Girls. Photo courtesy National Museum of Women in the Arts The founders of the movement and the other women artists who soon joined them wore gorilla masks in their public protests. To emphasize the collective nature of the movement, the identities of individual members were kept secret. As a spokesperson said, “We wanted the focus to...
A reader of this blog recently sent me an article from Bloomberg News entitled, “Prices of Contemporary Indigenous American Art Have Risen Over 1,000 Percent.” That statement is undoubtedly true, although, as with all “hot” tips on Wall Street, by the time the tip reaches the general public, insiders have already made their profit and moved on. New buyers will pay much higher prices. The savviest contemporary collector I know transitioned his buying from Black art to Native American contemporary art at least three years ago. It’s easy to get cynical about the art market. Is Native American contemporary art just the new Flavor of the Month? With art, there is no inherent demand. You have to eat; you need someplace to live. Prices for food and housing may go up or down, but there will always be a market. The market for works of art, by contrast, is influenced by any number of things, all of them artificial, no pun intended. Dealers are seeking to get in on the ground floor of the latest thing, trying to create a demand they can stoke. Curators are aware of political concerns as much as aesthetic ones as they try to organize shows that will receive critical approbation while still bringing in crowds. Critics are looking for new movements on which they can make their names. The climate is constantly changing, and art fads can be as short-lived as those of the world of fashion. After centuries in which art markets and art museums were dominated by white men, hitherto under-represented artists are now being aquired with a vengeance, particularly by...
My wife says that you know you’re getting old when you visit an antique store and recognize something from your past. “Oh, my grandmother had one of these!” you say, picking up a kitchen implement. “Oh, my mother had one of these!” you say, picking up something else. “Oh, I had one of these when I first got married,” you think, wondering where the time has gone. Selling antiques is a tricky and ever-changing affair, as can be seen in The Winter Show, formerly The Winter Antiques Show, now being held at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue in New York. Courtesy Winter Show, Photograph by Simon Cherry Premiering in 1955 as an exhibition to benefit the East Side House Settlement, the show soon established itself as the most prestigious antiques fair in the United States, an event that brought curators, designers, and collectors to New York from around the country each January. But times change. What, today, constitutes an antique? “Antique” is in the eye of the beholder. Is a 1985 edition of a Mario Brothers video game an antique? Somebody thought it was worth $660,000 (see previous blog), so if it’s not an antique, it’s at least being regarded as a very special old thing. A school lunch box with Star Wars characters on it and a silver tray commemorating the accession of Queen Victoria – can they be seen in the same light? Both of them have utilitarian functions, but they also fall into the category of decorative art. Are we being snobs if we say that one of them is more worthy of aesthetic...
No artworld topics this month. But here’s an article I published five years ago in The Country and Abroad magazine. It’s relevant to a time of year that is always dark, but this year seems darker than usual. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons On December 21, a few years back, I attended a Winter Solstice celebration. The leaders of the celebration were a bespectacled, self-identified Native American, who looked and dressed like everyone else except for the birch-bark headdress he was wearing and the drum he carried, and an English woman wearing a bird costume. They were well-meaning sorts, but I soon left the ceremony and came home feeling disappointed. That evening I pondered the winter solstice and what it means to us today. There’s no denying that the shortest day of the year can arouse something deep within us. For thousands of years, our ancestors gathered to perform celebrations designed to acknowledge the darkness and pray for the light’s return. Basically, we’re all a bunch of primates terrified that the sun is going to disappear forever. But there is also a deep urge to feel our old selves die with the old year and be reborn in the lengthening days to come. It is a fact that we cannot enter into the mindset of our prehistoric ancestors. You can pick up a bow and arrow and run through the woods wearing nothing but a loincloth and moccasins, but you’re not the same as the Native American for whom it was a matter of life or death whether he killed that deer. In the same way, as I stood with...
