Art Crime in the News

General

It has both a good and bad week for art crime in the news.  The bad news is the heist of a number of Picassos from his granddaughter Diana’s home, two paintings of which (shown below) have been valued together at $66 million. On the bright side is the following article that AP ran on March 8, 2007: “A couple who sold art through televised auctions admitted selling bogus works and forging signatures of artists including Picasso, Chagall and Dali in a scam that bilked buyers out of millions of dollars, prosecutors said. “In court documents filed Monday, Kristine Eubanks, 49, and her husband, Gerald Sullivan, 51, of La Canada, in Los Angeles County, were charged with conspiracy to commit […]

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PICASSO’S GREATEST PRINT?

Aesthetics, Collecting / 2 Comments

Yesterday Casey and I attended a half-day symposium at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art about its current exhibition, “Picasso’s Greatest Print: The Minotauromachy in All Its States”. The exhibit was small but choice: it included an impression of each of the seven states of this wonderful etching, all but the final state of which are exceedingly rare (there are but two of each in existence) plus one of the two hand-colored proofs of the final state. The collection comes from an anonymous private collection on long-term loan to the Paris Musée Picasso, supplementing the museum’s collection of the other known impression of six of the seven states and of its colored proof. The exhibit was nice of course,

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ELBOW GREASE: A slick review of the current Picasso market

Collecting

  Now that the dust has settled after the fall auction season and the pundits have all weighed in on the current art market, it’s time to look at the recent Picasso sales in greater depth. The season has been marked by a number of notable events, chiefly a Picasso that would have been the highest-priced painting ever sold (La Rêve, 1932), had Steve Wynn not put his elbow through it. It would have been a short-lived triumph anyway, since the sale of a rather homely Pollock shortly thereafter topped it (reportedly) by a million. The prices of these paintings were predictable, in that they just exceeded the previously highest-priced sale, the Lauder Klimt. Clearly, art collecting is a blood

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A Tribute to Picasso on his 125th Birthday

General

  The 25th of this month marks Picasso’s 125th birthday. Although Picasso’s work was largely inspired by his famously extreme joie de vivre, his long life also spanned and bore witness to the principal horrors of the last century. Yet in the 33 years since his death, the world has become a bleaker and more uncertain place. Picasso immeasurably enriched our lives with the unutterable beauty and poignancy of his art, but, as he said, “Painting is not made to decorate apartments; it’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.” Those of us in Picasso’s thrall would do well to remember that his work is not merely decorative, that it rises above ornament to celebrate all that is beautiful

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Just Paintings on Your Walls

Collecting, General

“Are you aware of the wonderful quote attributed to Picasso when, in the 60’s or 70’s there was a sudden diminution of prices at auction of his (and others’) works, he was asked what he thought of the loss of value.  He is alleged to have said (although I don’t recall the exact words) ‘for years people have been collecting my art as an investment, and suddenly all they have are my paintings on their walls.’”  -Jerry  G.

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THE WATER IS THE WINE

Aesthetics, Picasso and Printmaking

As we know, Picasso was the most prolific artist of all time, and also the artist with by far and away the largest number of styles. But an observation that has not been widely addressed is that he also portrayed a truly vast number of different themes. More often than not, the themes he portrayed tended toward the mundane, and, in so doing it he turned the quotidian into the sublime. It’s amusing to reflect that the most high-brow artist of our times reveled in low-brow scenes. Sure, there was the occasional series of musketeers and nobility. But most subjects tended toward the everyday and everyman. Picasso is definitely by, of, and for the masses. A review of his oeuvre reminds

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Foot-in-Mouth Disease

Collecting

Sometimes I just say the wrong thing, and then of course it’s too late to take it back. So to expiate my sins, I guess I have to write about it. It happened two years ago, right after my wife and I, baby in tow, had finished viewing arguably the world’s greatest Picasso collection in private hands. Or at least formerly in private hands, as the famous art dealer, Heinz Berggruen, all but gave it to Germany in return for a lousy $150,000,000 and a rent-free penthouse in his eponymous Berlin museum. Still teetering from his stunning, earth-shattering collection, baby in tow, we stumbled into the bookstore at the ground level. While I’m examining his autobiography, my wife Casey starts

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Window Treatment

Technical Matters / 2 Comments

I am home having film applied to the windows. I ended up getting a newer type that is made by 3M. It is more expensive but has no metal in it to interfere with cell and all other wireless stuff…. a problem in our apartment building. It is also slightly brighter but filters all the bad stuff just as well. -Heidi M.

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Picasso’s Illustrated Books Exhibition

Picasso and Printmaking

For any of you Picasso illustrated book fans, if you ever plan on visiting the Bay Area, the next several months might be a good time to do so. You could see the small but wonderful show of some of Picasso’s illustrated books currently on view at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco, through September 3rd. It features some of his best, rarest, and priciest illustrated books. Short on quantity but couldn’t be longer on quality. Just fantastic! While you’re there, you wouldn’t want to miss the magnificent still life oil and a plaster sculpture in the permanent collection upstairs. And if you still have time to spare, you could always take in the Monet show…. Also, the

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