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Posts tagged ‘art’

Oct 19

Auction Day 2: The Sale

The Skinner European and Decorative Arts auction spanned two days.  I watched some live and overall it was quite calm and orderly.  Bidders in the room came and went but usually there were only a dozen or so active at one time.  Some were clearly some “professionals” (antique shop owners? interior designers?) but there were also “private citizens” like me.  There were 8-12 employees on the phone with buyers.  Another two were handing all the active on-line bidding.  With 1300+ lots, things moved at a pretty good pace but I followed along without a problem.

It was interesting listening to the bidding volley back and forth.  Here was one of my favorite exchanges from the auctioneer:

“So we’ll open at $700.  $700 where?”

“$2100 online”

“(Laughing) $2100 is even better.  Do I have $2200?

Lot 3, Fine Yellow Gold, Cloisonne Enamel, and Stone-mounted Carved Rock Crystal Bowl (Photo: Skinner, Inc.)

Sadly, I wasn’t present for the most exciting item of the auction: a carved crystal bowl with a gold, enamel and stone base.  It was a delicate piece and had an auction estimate of $8-10, 000.  It sold for $201,450 including the buyer’s premium!  That’s incredible!  Other items going above their estimates included a 18th century French screen, a 19th century wooden Dionysius copy (which I presume is a rarity), and a painted porcelain plaque.  There were also many items that sold below their estimates so patience would have really paid off if you were looking to buy.

Lot 1127, Portrait of a Lady and Her Maid (Photo: Skinner, Inc.)

I was happy with one of the predictions I made during the preview session.  I really liked the early Spanish colonial Portrait of a Lady and Her Maid.  It was detailed and had a dark palate characteristic of its era.  There was also a wonderful naivete to it as evidenced by the woman’s face, upheld arm and her awkward position in a very non-linear chair.  This was a beautiful piece of folk art and I knew the $300-500 estimate was too low.

Lot 590, Georges Doussot's La Plage en Ete (Photo: Skinner, Inc.)

Of course, there always has to be the “one that got away” and in this case it was a lovely Impressionistic French beach scene from 1964.  I loved the bold colors, the composition and that you could still see the bare tan canvas since it wasn’t completely painted in.  Doussot’s style started out more somber and eventually became very cartoonist and child-like so this painting was a great treat.  I had bid more aggressively for another item and so I missed out on this one.

The good news is, I did buy a painting!  (If you recall, I left conservative bids on four items.)  I am really happy with it and the final auction price.  I am currently enjoying it on my wall!  Maybe I’ll write about it soon once I can do some more research on the piece and the artist.  Overall I had a great time at the auction and would recommend it to anyone with interest in art, history or the antiques industry!

Oct 18

Vincent Van Gogh: Murder or Suicide?

Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait (1889), Musee d"Orsay, Paris

60 minutes had a good story Sunday on a new biography of Vincent Van Gogh.  Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize for their biography of Jackson Pollock, wrote Van Gogh: The Life which was released today (Oct 18).  The authors appear to have written an authoritative 976 page biography enlisting the help of several assistants to pour over every scrap of letter or newspaper associated with Van Gogh.

I’m curious to read their analysis of Van Gogh’s potential medical diagnoses and his relationships with other, but the most surprising revelation of the book appears to be their theory that he was shot by someone else and did not commit suicide.  The 25min news piece sets up the argument nicely with historical inconsistencies and some reflection on Van Gogh’s extreme loneliness and isolation.

Vincent Van Gogh’s art is visionary and his works are masterpieces.  Aside from the potentially sensational murder or suicide story, I am looking forward to a well researched biography of the artist most easily discounted as just insane rather than purposefully creative by art history.

Oct 17

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Art Auction Day 1: Previews

I’ve always envisioned that down the road I would be able to own some antiques and pieces of art.  If you look around, you can find affordable decorative pieces for not much more than modern equivalents made in China from the home decor big box stores.

As part of my quest, I have started going to art and antique auctions.  It is standard practice for an auction to hold “preview” sessions beforehand so that interested buyers can inspect pieces up close.  These viewings are in many ways like visiting a museum with a very eclectic collection but are also way more hands-on since you are allowed to open drawers, turn over statues and handle objects (carefully of course).  Even if you are not a very serious buyer, visiting an auction preview can be a lot of fun.This past weekend, there was a European Furniture and Decorative Arts auction at Skinner in Boston.  Overall I was impressed with the diversity of items offered.  There were painted porcelain vases, chandeliers,  gilded mirrors, loads of tortoise shell boxes and delicate glass pieces in addition to the usual dressers and paintings.  You can flip through the catalog online or view each individual item here.

Lot 1004, Grand Tour Micromosaic Plaque (Photo: Skinner Inc.)

One of the obvious highlights of the show was a micromosaic depicting Rome.  It was less than a foot in length but incredibly detailed.  Examining it really closely, I still couldn’t believe it was constructed of inlay.  It would have been difficult to execute even if it were a painting.  Clearly the craftsmanship made this a rare and spectacular work of art.  The subject matter was not as unique as I saw several 19th-20th century “grand tour” art examples including oils, watercolors and bronzes all with the obvious beach, castle and ruins included.  Having just seen the whole range of tourist art in Greece, it’s funny to think that people have always wanted and continue to pick up souvenirs when they travel abroad.

Lot 1253, Bronze of a Classical Muse (Photo: Skinner Inc.)

One piece that I really loved was a bronze Classical Muse by French sculptor Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1827-1887).  I liked the figure’s pose and her elegant, detailed costume.  At over a foot tall and two feet wide, it is a pretty substantial work of art and was probably more than I was looking for right now.

I did find four items that I was interested in buying and left bids. My art budget is pretty low right now, so my bids were all under the auction estimates.  If I won, then great, I would have bought a really nice piece of art and if not, there would be future auctions.  I also left bids rather than bid live to make sure I didn’t get carried away!

Stay tuned to see how the auction went and how I did….

Oct 12

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Photo of the Week: Spanish Artist Examines His Work

The Artist inspecting his work (Photo: EPA/ALFREDO ALDAI)

Bilbao – Spanish artist Antonio Lopez looks at his work of art Man and Woman, consisting of two sculptures in polychrome wood, during the presentation of an exhibition dedicated to him at the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, Spain, 10 October 2011. The exhibition runs from 10 October 2011 to 22 January 2012. EPA/ALFREDO ALDAI.  Story and photo from Artdaily.com

At first I didn’t realize this was the artist inspecting his work.  I like the photo much more when I imagine the old man to be a somewhat intimidated museum-goer.

Oct 11

Why Art Lovers Should Care about the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded last week to Dan Shechtman “for the discovery of quasicrystals”. On hearing that, no doubt some people shrugged their shoulders and thought, “You can win THE Nobel Prize for discovering not-quite crystals?”  (Not quite.)  While this Nobel discovery may not cure diseases, it has a very compelling history and a visual appeal that has not been captured in the Press. In 1982, Shechtman discovered physical evidence for something that science thought was impossible. He was smart enough to realize what he was looking at and was strong enough to defend the discovery.  However, it was only a matter of time until someone found the physical evidence since mathematicians had proved the possibility of quasicrystals in the 1970s and amazingly artisans had conceptualized them graphically 600 years earlier.

The unit cell in red can be cut and pasted, or translated, to yield the repeating winged lion pattern in the blue boxes. (Photo: mcescher.com, symmetry gallery)

Crystallography is the study of how matter packs in 3D.  For stability, solids organize in repeat patterns of a discrete unit (call this the “unit cell”) so that all atoms, in all three dimensions, are in the same pattern and are related by some sort of symmetry.  The most basic symmetry is called “translational symmetry” which is like “cut and paste symmetry”. You take the unit cell and paste it to left, and then again, and then so on.  In the 2D M. C. Escher image above, the unit cell is shown in red and in blue are the translated unit cells showing how the pattern repeats.  Crystalline materials can also have rotational symmetry which means that if you turn the unit cell you get the same thing you started with.  In the image above, the winged lions do not have rotational symmetry because they only overlay correctly if you rotate them 360*.

It was believed that translational symmetry was the most fundamental ordering pattern so only rotations that maintained the cut and paste pattern were allowed, such as 180*, 120*, 90*,  and 60* rotations or what is known as 2-, 3-, 4-, and 6-fold symmetry.  Sven Lidin illustrates this proof and why 5-fold symmetry is not allowed in the Nobel Prize citation for Shechtman, shown below.  There is some more rigorous mathematical proofs behind this, but you essentially can see the set up for Shechtman’s discovery.

4-fold (above) and 6-fold (below) rotations preserves the translational symmetry of design. 5-fold rotation (middle) generates a new disordered pattern. (Source: Sven Lidin, Nobel Prize Committee)

While looking at an aluminum-manganese material, Shechtman realized he had found 10-fold and 5-fold rotational symmetry which was thought to be not allowed. The material did have long-range order like a crystal but not translational symmetry.  Quasicrystals are therefore ordered materials that lack translational symmetry.  It seems like a simple concept but proving it required telling the entire crystallographic community that they had completely missed something. Luckily, art and mathematics had set the groundwork for this discovery.

A Penrose tiling, named after Sir Roger Penrose who formalized this geometry in the 1970s, lacks translational symmetry but has a 5-fold rotational symmetry (Photo: wikipedia)

The Penrose tiling above is a 2D quasi-crystal in that it does not have translational symmetry but has long-range order and 5-fold rotational symmetry (i.e. if you turned it clockwise from one point of the central start to the next point on the central star, it would be the same).  After the discovery of quasicrystals, physicists Peter J. Lu and Paul J. Steinhardt published a wonderful article in Science describing the appearance of Penrose patterns in Medieval Islamic tile work from as early as 1200 CE.  The supplementary data section in this paper has some lovely architectural examples.

(above) Spandrel detail from the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan, Iran; (below) graphical depiction of the tiling pattern overlaid on the spandral image (Credit: Ju and Steinhardt, Science, 315, p1106-1110.)

Albrecht Dürer also drew some quasicrystalline tiles in his 1525 work “A manual of measurement of lines, areas and solids by means of a compass and ruler” which were subsequently analyzed by Casper and Fontano in 1996.

Albrecht Dürer penrose tiles done in 1525 (Photo: rarebookroom.org)

It’s exciting to see places where science and art overlap.  Congratulations to Dan Shechtman for the Nobel Prize and also to the mathematicians and artists who contributed to a deeper understanding of the organization of matter.

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