Hello everybody and welcome back to My Weekly Flickr.
Another odd week for weather, some more chill and lots of rain but today was another rather beautiful day. It’s May and I certainly hope the weather is headed in the right direction, that is, warm moving to hot.
Anyway I confess to being a little pooped, I did a remarkable amount of walking today. I did an art doubleheader visiting two auction houses. I had initially planned on visiting Sotheby’s today as they had an Impressionist viewing and then this morning my big brother told me that Christie’s had an Impressionist viewing, in addition to some American and European art and Dutch drawings. So I decided to visit both. Of course the thread of Andy G’s visits never runs too smoothly and this was no exception. I went to Christie’s site to check the hours and Google said it was closed this weekend. When I got to the site it showed the viewing. So I dialed their phone number. I didn’t expect anyone to be there as it was 7AM in the morning and the message came on and said that they were closed. It also gave a 24 hour emergency number if you had an issue. I went back to the computer and looked again and it certainly did show viewings today and tomorrow. So I called the emergency number and woke up a guard and asked about the viewing and he had to check with a supervisor but it turned out that the gallery was open. So I left the house around 8AM to take the bus into the City and walk over to Christie’s.
I got there at 9:01 AM and the door was locked but there was a guard behind it and when he saw me he motioned me to move to another door. I did and the guard opened the door and an employee of the gallery immediately put out his hand and said, Mr. so and so? I said, no, I was only here for the art. I had to laugh as he had mistaken me for a client who was coming in to discuss the purchase of items in the auction. It shows that it doesn’t matter what you look like nowadays, anyone can be someone with the kind of money to have auction employees defer to them. And rightly so, Hetty Green was known as the Witch of Wall Street at the turn of the 20th Century and was reputedly the world’s richest woman. But she didn’t present a very appealing mien. She was also a world class miser and wore a single black dress and the same underwear until it fell apart but she certainly would have been able to buy anything in this auction, if not all of it. It really doesn’t pay to judge anyone by their appearance, years ago Janis Joplin went into a department store with several thousand dollars in her handbag looking to buy clothes as I remember and the clerks didn’t want to serve this odd looking woman in the hippie outfit.
But I digress, unfortunately when I apprised them of my not being the mystery caller they informed me that the gallery didn’t open until 10AM and that I should come back then. I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the times listed on the website. So I wandered up to Sotheby’s but got there a little early so I sat and read my newspaper for 15 minutes until I thought they would let me in.
Once again there were a lot of very nice things, and far more noted artists than my last visit but nothing that took my breath away. The one thing I saw that I really took notice of was a surprise. Ingres is one of my favorite artists, his portraits are exquisite, there is one in the Frick and one in the Met that I always have to stand in front of and marvel at and he painted hundreds of these wonderful masterpieces. But he considered this his day job, something to put bread on the table so to speak. What he felt would be his legacy was his religious paintings. Those have been forgotten as not being near the quality of the portraits. And Sotheby’s had one of his religious paintings, Mary with the infant Jesus. And… it was very pedestrian and not exciting at all. The colors in his portraits glow and the fabrics hang in remarkable ways, not flat and one dimensional which is what this painting showed me. So, back to Christie’s.
The first thing I saw was an Edward Hopper watercolor of a blue boat. Very nice. A rather large Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Procession to Calvary, equally nice. Then, side by side a Guardi view of the Doge’s palace and a Canaletto view of a London Street. Two of my favorite artists with excellent representations. This was a big show with lots of big names and big price tags. These were paintings that were going to be auctioned off for millions and tens of millions of dollars. A lovely Modigliani of a young man, several Mary Cassatt’s, a fabulous large canvas of The Grand Canyon by Thomas Moran, sadly, a rather dark Van Gogh, not one of his better efforts. A number of beach paintings by Boudin who I am fond of. Simple scenes of people on the beach with the ocean in the background, usually with a dog or two and children running around. Wonderful works that were going to go for between $50 and $70K. My brother mentioned that they were auctioning off some of Huguette Clark’s paintings. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Huguette Clark, she was an heiress who left behind $300 million dollars. She had no children and no close relatives. She died at the age of 104 years having spent the last 20 years of her life living in a hospital. Not because she was sick, but because she liked living there. There was an enormous battle over the estate with distant relatives coming out of the woodwork to try and snatch pieces of the estate away from the many organizations that received bequests. It is a fascinating story. This is a link to her obituary in the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/nyregion/huguette-clark-recluse-heiress-dies-at-104.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 This is a link to a description of the items in the auction, 3 Renoir’s, Monet’s Nympheas which may go for $35 million, and works by John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase. These are beautiful, quality paintings which I have no doubt will engender a bidding war. Hopefully whoever is the winner of each of them will allow them to be loaned, display and finally bequeathed to a museum.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/02/huguette-clarks-monet-ready-for-auction/ This is link to the Christie’s brochure which discusses all the items being auctioned off.
http://www.christies.com/presscenter/pdf/2014/ClarkFamilyTreasures_2014.pdf I next visited the Dutch drawings which were top quality and very enjoyable, aside from a small rather non-descript Rembrandt and several by Hendrick Goltzius, none of the artists were especially well known but everything I saw was wonderful. There were many other interesting and beautiful things but I will only mention two more. I haven’t come across many Andrew Wyeth’s but there was a wonderful painting of several houses on a street which depict his mother’s birthplace which was really very nice. Quiet and charming. And a rather perky watercolor by Salvador Dali which looks like doodles but was able to transcend that. Dali, like Warhol, is sometimes a little hard to take as they were both frequently motivated more by money than art and weren’t above having employees create art which they then signed to give it a much higher value since it was being represented as their work. But many of their original works stand up and are pleasant to view.
So, my really long walk was a result of my misunderstanding of the Christie’s opening time which meant my having to walk back to the Port Authority instead of taking the bus and subway. Must have hiked 5 or 6 miles today. But definitely worth it.
Next week, another adventure, Princeton.
Andy G.
Wes in drag
https://www.flickr.com/photos/104546207@N08/14021374464Halloween in drag
https://www.flickr.com/photos/104546207@N08/14017834851 Danger/ Caution
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sexykellie/13741284543 Sissy Terry Keily The Bunny
https://www.flickr.com/photos/46491525@N07/13825396164 Cousin Dress Up
https://www.flickr.com/photos/radicalfeminist/14045585164 SPP-SquareDancer1
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8072809@N05/496593464Lingerie (High And Magic)_5
https://www.flickr.com/photos/trans_kyoko/13868693364 284
https://www.flickr.com/photos/91894461@N07/13889365913 Car wash in high heels
https://www.flickr.com/photos/95326358@N06/13877356524 Successful Princess Brunch with the Snow White and the 7 Drag Queens cast!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagophoenix/13837971075 Megateen
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hdi1998/13879311404 
Topic: Good Grief, can it finally be the Spring Flickr? (Read 24103 times)
