Looking at Art in All the Wrong Places

/snob alert/

A fellow gallerist who was born in Russia tells the joke about two New Russians who go to an art gallery and haggle with the dealer over a newly available van Gogh (estimates for any of which run in the tens of millions). Eventually they secure it (after an exchange that must be more funny in Russian) and walking out the door one remarks, "Well, that takes care of his card, now what do we get him for a birthday present?"

Again, it must be funnier in Russian, because my friends all laughed harder at the untranslated version than I did the translated one, but it highlights the widely held perception that the nouveau riche in Russia are splurging on art that they may not exactly appreciate as much as their previous owners did. This New York Times article elaborates:

At Vladimir Nekrassov's Arbat Prestige cosmetics emporium on Peace Prospect here, monumental paintings of Lenin, Stalin and the Battle of Stalingrad jostle with perfume, lipstick, anti-cellulite gels, tampons and Antonio Banderas Diavolo cologne. Nearly 400 canvases — of Nikita S. Khrushchev, Yuri Gagarin, churches, moody nudes, Soviet industry and collective farms — bedeck the emporium, a former fish store. The Tretyakov Gallery borrows paintings from Mr. Nekrassov for its exhibitions.

I know it's more tempting to rant about the appropriateness of collecting images of Lenin or Stalin but forget that for a moment (just this once, please). This raises some interesting class issues. As much as I want to object to hanging valuable art in a cosmetics store or this absurdity:

He opened two more galleries last year and holds theme exhibitions for target audiences, like paintings for the nursery, or "How Steel Is Tempered" for owners of metallurgical plants.

...this isn't the first time a new generation of suddenly rich people gobbled up art treasures and raised eyebrows. In the early 1900s a British dealer named Joseph Duveen caused a firestorm as he brought hundreds of masterpieces from Europe to the American industrialists. He is credited as having had a major influence in (if not total control over) the collections of Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, and Joseph E. Widener.

I've always celebrated Duveen's accomplishment (although his methods of securing the works were a bit scandalous). I love going to see the Frick collection and the National Gallery of Art (which Duveen convinced Mellon to open in DC) is astonishing. I do, however, think the Europeans at the time must have considered the placement of their treasures in the homes of the former colonialists as distastful as I do the sale of a Reubens to a Russian nightclub owner. So long as he leaves it to a good museum...

/snob alert end/

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

Real Art

I have just spent two days downloading page after page of Bouguereau and Alma-Tadema masterpieces and am like really really upset that you evil modern art types have buried the greatness of little girls with big sad eyes and winged cherubs flying around naked nymphs.

After the counter-revolution those paintings of Stalin and the Army of Tractors will finally be appreciated.

[Edward]

Bob,

I never assume what someone's position on art is just because they like or dislike little girls with big sad eyes or winged cherubs. Having been trained to suspect, if not assume, irony in everything, I also suspect sincerity in everything.

Having said that the ARC's mission statement contains two or three contradictory objectives. I won't bore everyone with what they are, but let me know if you agree.

You've also opened up an opportunity to share one of my favorite Duveen anecdotes. When one of his collectors threatened to buy a painting from another dealer (and Duveen definitely saw such a proposal as a "threat"), Duveen noted that the painting wasn't bad, but asked if the collector knew that the Cherubs in it were homosexual. The collector, flustered, passed on the painting. When the same painting later fell into Duveen's possession, the sexual orientation of the cherubs had magically changed.

[bob mcmanus]

Tigertail

Eduard, I was being 75% ironic. I know nothing at all about art. I was on one of my periodic wallpaper binges (above is another site I visited this weekend, got some Balla and Diebenkorn I didn't have before), and accidentally came across the ARC site. They got good scans.

I cycle wallpaper every 15 minutes, hoping by osmosis to gain some taste. Current is a Tooker, previous was Klee, Tale a la Hoffman.

I just skimmed the textual material, but plan on going back. Certainly I was impressed by the technique of the Academic stuff at ARC, but was disturbed by much of the subject matter and conventions. And maybe a little disturbed by my reaction. Don't really get Orientalism, and even contemporary Realists seem to have this fixation on little girls. Form and content may be related in some way I am not getting. I am ok fine with modernism, but not uncritical.

So I guess I can't find your contradictions. You couldn't have meant that the entire site and the Ross essay was some sort of ironic joke?

Current WP: Durer "Death of Orpheus" engraving

[bob mcmanus]

I am going back to study ARC, I promise.

But a little more on topic, and no offense intended cause I know you make a living off this, but this discussion about competition for possession of artworks has a problem for me. I have 5000+ scans on my PC of artworks, and a few $300-%500 oils on my walls. Would love Bill Gates's big screen in every room idea.

But I seldom visit museums, and even the cheap stuff on my walls bothers me a little. Unlike literature or music, it seems the ideas in a painting can't be separated from the actual object. And for some reason, this disturbs me. I guess this makes me the opposite of a collector, or something else weird, but I think actually owning a Rubens would make me crazy. Not because of the money value, but that something so important is not indestructible or reproducible offends me.