The Appraisers Association of America is releasing a new edition of its handbook Appraising Art next spring. I was asked to contribute a chapter on appraising the art of the American West. Since finishing my chapter, I’ve been thinking about how different my contribution would have been if it had been written, say, 30 years ago. Much of the advice I give now would have been the same then, such as the fact that you need to compare apples with apples: paintings of European subjects by artists who are commonly classed as Western artists bring a fraction of what their Western subjects bring. A painting of a Prussian soldier by Frederic Remington will bring less than a painting of a U.S. cavalryman. A landscape of the Alps by Albert Bierstadt will bring less than a painting of the Rockies. In writing my chapter today, however, I found myself obliged to discuss how recent social changes have affected the value of Western art. Paintings of Native Americans that portray them as bloodthirsty savages are not going to be sought after by museums and many collectors. This rejection of stereotypes applies not only to Native Americans. A painting such as this early oil by Charles M. Russell is practically unsalable today. Charles M. Russell. Making the Chinaman Dance. Black Lives Matter and other movements have changed the landscape for collecting. It’s irrelevant whether an appraiser personally feels that such changes are long overdue social justice or whether an appraiser thinks that PC has gone too far. Just as changes in aesthetic fashion cause the value of a particular artwork to rise...
The Supreme Court just came out with a ruling that caught the attention of the art world as well as the general press. It involved the appropriation by Andy Warhol of a photo that had been taken by photographer Lynn Goldsmith of the pop star Prince, and it dealt with the problem of “fair use,” an issue that has been brought up often in recent years as technology has made it increasingly easy for a visual artist to “sample” another artist’s work. The problem has been an issue in the music world for years, but the recording industry has long had a system to ensure the payment of royalties. I was going to write this month’s blog about the ruling, but I’m just not up to it. I refer you to Sarah Cascone’s excellent summation of the issues in Artnet. One of the reasons I’m not up to it is my brain, which looks forward to parsing legal arguments with as much enthusiasm as it does to actually reading the technical manuals that accompany major household appliances. The other reason is that I’m physically tired right now after a day of digging and weeding in the garden. My activity, however, got me to wondering about artists and their gardens. Not paintings of gardens, mind, but actual gardens that have been created by artists. The most famous example of such a garden in the past 150 years is Claude Monet’s water garden in Giverny. Monet’s garden, GivernyPhoto courtesy Wikimedia. Of course, by the time he created his garden, Monet was a world-famous artist and had the funds to employ a...
I was on a business swing through the Midwest recently and visited the Art Institute of Chicago to view Salvador Dali: The Image Disappears, the first exhibition at the museum to be devoted to the work of the artist most associated in the public mind with Surrealism. It was a strong show, displaying works from the 1930’s, a pivotal decade in the artist’s career. Paintings like the one below, included in the exhibition, would make his name. Salvador Dali, William Tell, 1930, Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, ParisImage courtesy Wikiart. Born in the Catalonian region of Spain in 1904, Dali received a thorough grounding in Old Master techniques in Madrid at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. Intelligent, articulate, a tireless networker before the term was even invented, and an exhibitionist with a talent for attracting notice, he went through brief Cubist and Futurist phases after art school before becoming a proponent of Surrealism, a style in which his classical chops could be put to full use. He would become the most important member of the movement. Art historians and certainly Andre Breton, the founder of the movement who later expelled Dali from its ranks, would disagree with the above statement, but in terms of popular recognition, the verdict is in. The person in the street may not be able to define the term “surrealist,” and they may not have heard of Max Ernst, Hans (Jean) Arp, or Yves Tanguy, but everyone knows the name Dali. St. Petersburg, Florida, is not generally noted as an artworld hotspot, but over 400,000 people visit the Dali Museum there each...
Roberta and I were in Paris recently and took the opportunity to visit the Musée National de l’Orangerie des Tuileries for the first time. Built by Napoleon III in 1852 to house his citrus trees during winter, the building, commonly called just l’Orangerie, retained its botanical use after the fall of the Empire, as well as being used for public events such as music concerts, art expositions, contests, and dog shows. Starting in 1922, however, l’Orangerie took on a new function: as a place to exhibit the massive water lily paintings of Claude Monet (who just happened to be a good friend of France’s prime minister Georges Clemenceau). Courtesy Musée l’Orangerie, photo credit Sophie Crépy Accordingly, two enormous oval-shaped galleries were constructed, each of them about 75 yards long, with skylights to permit the natural light the artist wanted. Construction took five years, with the installation opening to the public in 1927, a few months after Monet’s death. Monet envisioned the galleries as an environment where visitors, enveloped by his paintings, could experience the peace that he had found while working in his garden in Giverny. A sign at the entrance to the galleries admonishes, “The waterlily rooms were designed by Claude Monet as a space for meditation. In order to respect his wishes, we would ask you to view this exceptional work in silence.” Good luck with that. While the guards will shush anyone talking on a cellphone, the galleries are packed with people (timed admission is required), and a constant undertone of conversation accompanies any viewing of the work. Since the invention of the smartphone, however, another...
Ever heard of Babe Ruth? Sure you have. How about his teammate Lou Gehrig? Probably. What about their contemporaries Tris Speaker or Walter “Big Train” Johnson? Maybe not, although both of the latter were among the greatest baseball players of the 1920’s and were later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was at a reception recently and got to chatting with Nick Dawes, who handles special collections for Heritage Auctions. We were talking about high prices for sports memorabilia, a field in which Heritage is the dominant player, and Nick said something that surprised me. I knew that baseballs signed by Babe Ruth are extremely popular (the baseball shown brought $93,000 at Heritage in 2021). What I didn’t know was that collectors prefer to let stars have the stage all to themselves. You would think that a baseball signed by several well-known players would bring more than a ball with only one signature, but that’s not the case. More signatures drag the price down. Last year, for example, a baseball signed by Ruth, Gehrig, Speaker, and Johnson sold for only $10,500 at Heritage. Differences in condition between the two balls doubtless also played a role in the disparity of values, but collectors like to see one signature showcased, and multiple signatures prevent that. The event at which I spoke with Nick was a viewing at Bonhams of for an upcoming sale of contemporary prints, a subject about which I know far more than about sports memorabilia. Old Master prints can be a tricky subject, with thousands of dollars riding on which state of the plate from which...
