collecting Picasso

Wuzzon da Block?

Collecting

There are some nice offerings at the fall auctions in NY, but before we get to the paintings, it is noteworthy that for the first time, at least of which I’m aware, prints have made one of the storied evening sales.  Both their low estimates exceed the million $ barrier, and both are at Christie’s, consisting of an unsigned Minotauromachie and a signed impression of  La Femme qui Pleure, I (Bl.1333), the final (7th) state: What’s even more remarkable, it seems to me, is the unusually large number of really nice paintings, eleven in the Christie’s evening sale alone. At Sotheby’s, there’s the fascinating 1927 Guitare accroché au mur: and the huge late Picasso painting, one of the nicer ones, […]

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Picasso Orphans

General

Deux vieux lisant une lettre, 1962  Earlier today, while shelving some recent auction catalogues, I started leafing through one of them to the dog-eared pages which marked the Picassos, when a wonderful drawing hit me again.   Now don’t call me a grumpy old man, but I find it surprising when every now and then a great work falls through the cracks and the art market doesn’t notice.  Take these two old men.  Sure, this is not a drawing of a woman, much less a naked woman,  and it doesn’t have a drop of color.  It’s not large (but at 35 cm, not that small either) and it’s not an oil, just a lowly pencil and paper.   But the above

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Jerry Won!

General

The “Ledor Gallery Race Car”, courtesy of driver/owner Jerry Kroll, propelled by dachshund power, just won the 2011 Sports Club of America (SCCA) Championship for Formula Enterprise.  Go Jerry!  

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The Measure of the Man: Introduction to the de Young Picasso Exhibit

General

  It is impossible to fully appreciate the breadth and depth of Picasso’s art without pouring through his catalogues raisonnés (the tomes that illustrate all of his known artworks).  Visiting the Picasso Museum in Paris is as close as one can come to achieving this goal by looking at the actual art.  The traveling loan from that museum at the de Young includes many masterpieces but is still a very small sample of his work.  It’s about as representative as 150 of his artworks could be, but he created so many varied styles and subjects that they couldn’t be included in any depth, or some of them included at all, in a show of this size.  The exemplars of the Blue

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WHAT’S NOT THERE

General

The Picasso Museum on wheels, currently at the de Young in San Francisco, is such a wonderful show (see “Picasso by the Bay” below) that it’s almost easier to discuss what’s not there than what is.  Well not quite, though each great Picasso, in addition to being loved and understood on its own merits, must be seen in the context of his entire oeuvre for full appreciation, given the added dimensions that the context inevitably provides.  I won’t again trot out the by now overused Picasso-ism about the movement of his thought interesting him (in his later years) more than the thought itself–there, I said it anyway. But nowhere is that movement better preserved, with the exception of the successive

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Picasso by the Bay

General

  San Francisco is so awash in Picasso this summer that I feel like I never left New York.  First the Steins’ Picassos, then the de Young, last night Woody Alan (pleasant fluff, but what a one-dimensional Picasso; though I suppose Woody may not have needed any more dimensions in the service of his film), and we haven’t yet even gotten to the ceramics show at the Legion of Honor.  The Steins Collect show at the SFMOMA is quite wonderful (ending Sept. 6; see above), but since it trails off near the beginning of Synthetic Cubism (when Picassos grew too dear for the Steins’ budget), it is good preparation for the de Young Museum exhibit: Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National

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THE STEINS COLLECT

General

Among the ways the Stein collection (currently on view at the SFMOMA) can be viewed is as one family’s referendum on the time-honored debate among art lovers: Picasso versus Matisse.  Those two artists contributed most of the significant pieces to the collection. Yet in addition to her brother Leo’s objection to  Gertrude’s sapphic relationship, the disagreement that developed between these siblings as to who was the better artist, Matisse or Picasso, tore them apart, drove Leo out of their shared apartment, and caused each of them to divest most of his or her holdings of the artist who had lost favor.  They’re presumably not the first couple to have suffered such a fate (though they may have been the first).  The poet

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Role Reversal?

Collecting

Lately I’ve come to think that the market and I see things differently.  For example, I would have significantly altered the estimates on the Picasso lots in the recent Sotheby’s New York Imp/Mod Evening Sale.  The giveaway of the night, and in my opinion the best Picasso oil of the season, is the above 1930 Femme.  This surrealist masterpiece was hugely underpriced and should have easily fetched three times the $8M it went for.  At least two people must have had a glimmer of its value, since it nicely exceeded its $3-5M estimate.  But, in my opinion, this painting is one of the very best of Picasso’s “meat eaters”, rivaling even the MOMA’s great La Baigneuse, which you know so

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This Ad Campaign will take the World by Storm

Collecting

…and put “Got Milk” to shame.  Actually, it’s just a kind gesture from my new friend, the car racer and entrepreneur Jerry Kroll.  If nothing else, it’s probably a safe assumption that we’re the first art dealers ever to advertise on the back of a race car.  May it only drive as fast as Picasso drew!  Here’s a close-up: So step right up, sports fans, and bet on a Picasso for a change!

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Dachshund Alert!

General

I think I’ve finally met my match.  Last week we were visited by an intellectual, race car driver, entrepreneur,  and art collector, who I’m happy to report is just as quirky as I am.  Only the object of his obsession is not Picassos in general, but just portraits of Picasso’s dachshund Lump.  Now, I love my dog as much as my next child, but this guy’s got me beat.  His dachshund is five, and he says that’s the longest relationship he’s had with any woman.  He dotes on his girl, and wants to hang her portrait.  But it’s gotta be by Picasso! Problem is, there are no available Picassos of Lump, or at least none that I know of.  There

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