Blu Whitewash

True Art long since moved out of the confines of the gallery, creating a schism between art that is truely contemporary, and the sanitized approximation of modern art, that the world of big gallery acceptance would have us believe is modern.

Cosying up to rebellion and controversy can lead to much cachet. It can also backfire, as street art champion Jeffery Deitch director of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art found this week, when he was forced to whitewash out a mural by Italian graffiti artist Blu.

The giant mural featured rows of coffins with dollar bills attached to the lids. A yawn-some anti war protest that might not go down to well with MOCA’s big money sponsors and moneyed fine art clientele? A decision that I leave to the conscience of individual Juicelings.

But big Jeff didn’t take any chances, and the offending work was painted over quicker than an unsavory epithet scrawled with a sharpie on one of MOCA’s restroom walls.

According to Marcel Duchamp, ‘All art must shock and provoke thought.’ fine words from the creator of the signed latrine and the godfather of the prototypicaly rebelious Dada movement. A sentiment that certainly applies to the work by Blu. But do we really want to be shocked and provoked all the time? Do we care about political cliche writ large on the gallery wall?

The real statement here is of course the disrespect and the metaphorical wedgie that Blu has pulled on MOCA and Deitch, who has only made things worse for himself by claiming the mural might upset Japanese American veterans and that Blu can return to paint another (presumably less controversial) mural if he likes. Oh dear, it would seem big Jeff and MOCA’s David Geffen wing aren’t quite as hip as they thought they were after all.

Picasso art hoard sparks controversy

It’s hard to find good help these days. Overcharging, shoddy workmanship and all manner of service sector shennanigans lay in wait anyone foolish enough to invite the modern tradesperson over their threshhold. It is therefore vital to use trusted and well referenced help when planning home improvements. The wheels of commerce should always be well oiled with cash tips, the occasional bottle of good quality booze and perhaps a brace of partridges from the country estate, when season or occasion demands it.

It is therefore understandable that Claude Picasso was some what surprised to learn that the families former electrician Pierre Le Guennec, 71 of the French Riviera town Mouans-Sartoux, has come forward with 271 works by Pablo Picasso claiming that Jacqueline Picasso the great artists final wife had bestowed the works on him as thanks for his deft wiring skills.

Le Guennec, Picasso's electrician between 1970 and 1973, had been storing the pieces in his garage,  The works including watercolors, sketches and collages date back to the period between 1900 and 1930,


"It was madame who gave them to me, because she was pleased with my service," claimed the tousel haired codger, who also appears to be a collector of plaid shirts. At a present day value of $79 million, that is quite some tip from Madame Picasso. French culture is naturally socialist minded of course and this egalitarian gesture is to be commended. Sadly, Jacqueline Picasso passed away in 1986, so confirmation of the legitimacy this generous gift may be hard to come by.

Le Guennec presented the works to the artists estate  for authentication in September. The estate much surprised at the reemergence of such a large quantity of work once thought destroyed, claimed theft and sued for possession.  The works were seized last month by the Office Central de Lutte contre le Trafic de Biens Culturels, the French art-trafficking squad. Perhaps we should look out for the opening of yet another Picasso Museum? Watch this space.

$42m for a Lichtenstein? Ohhh…Alright…

A Roy Lichtenstein painting previously owned by billionaire money bags and sharp elbowed art fancier Steve Wynn made  $42.6 million at Christie’s International today.

Titled “Ohhh ... Alright...’’ (1964) this classic Lichtenstein represents Pop Art iconography at it’s most alluring.

The  picture topped out the current $16.3 million auction record for the artist. 


The Christies New York sale of contemporary and post-war  in  art achieved $272.8 million in sales. confirming a growing belief that the art market is heading out of the recession.

Warhol, Liz Taylor and a drunken night out with Hugh Grant

Actor and Hollywood boulevardier Hugh Grant is just one of the many men who have fallen before the enchanted countenance of Elizabeth Taylor. Grant now confesses he was drunk at the time. It was a night on the tiles that cost the floppy fringed star $3.3 million dollars. The Elizabeth Taylor in question was a 1962 Warhol print.

Grant ordered an underling to bid for the painting at an auction in New York, after indulging in a two-day drinking spree—never expecting the bid to succeed. When he sobered up, he discovered to his horror that he was the proud owner of a multi million dollar painting.

Grant sold the painting in 2007 for the vastly inflated price of $20.8 million. ‘I slightly regret selling it now, even though it made me rich.’ confessed the actor with characteristic sheepishness. 

Warhol is a master of the ironic flourish and the commoditization of popular culture, however Juicelings may notice in the  above painting a more than passing resemblance to Batman nemesis. The Joker. Intention or happen-chance? Discuss.

$35 Million for a Coke?

Rumors of inflationary pressures are hitting the US this week, but at $35 million dollars there is only one kind of Coke bottle we can be  talking about—one by Andy Warhol. Sotheby’s New York made the sale of the monochrome artwork tuesday. The sale was some what overshadowed the previous day by another piece of Warhol high campery: a 1962 Elizabeth Taylor repeat print, who’s grainy countenance fetched an astonishing $63 million at auction house Phillips de Pury & Co.

Jerry Robinson Legend

There has been much talk in Creative Juicings lately over the price of art.  If it is return on investment  you are looking for, it is perhaps the Golden age of Comics you should be looking to. Just as the work of  artists such as Titian and Picasso define the spirit of the age in which they lived. The graphic art of the illustrator and the comic book artist defines our age.  Perhaps galleries who are wringing their hands over high prices of art they cannot afford should talk to comic book legend Jerry Robinson while his work is still in their price range.


Jerry Robinson, the creator of Batman’s villainous nemesis the Joker is auctioning off two of the world’s most valuable pieces of comic art for up to $1.4 million. Robinson was the driving force behind such comic book legends as Detective Comics, Batman and  Superman. He created his ‘Double-guns Joker’ cover for Detective Comics No. 69  at age 18.  Now 88 he is reluctantly selling the artwork through the online auctioneer ComicConnect.com. The  1942 cover artwork is considered to be one of the greatest ‘Golden Age’ superhero covers of all time. Most original comic art work from this era no longer exists as publishers had no will or facility to store such artworks and they destroyed it as a matter of course. The Joker cover, one of Robinson’s first, is the only image to depict the Joker using guns. It survived because Robinson made a personal request to the printer for its return.

A student of literature at Columbia University, Robinson had the idea of creating a Shakespearean super villain  with maniacal tendencies and warped sense of humor. His brother and mother were champion bridge players, watching them play gave him the idea of creating The Joker. Subsequent to creating this cover he realized it was the Jokers twisted personality, rather than guns that would be his defining mark of villainy.

The record for a piece of original comic art, attained this year, is $380,000 (£235,000) for a 1955 Weird Science cover by Frank Frazetta. The record for a comic book is $1.5 million (£927,000), set last year, for a 1938 premier issue of Action Comics featuring Superman .

Robinson, who is the subject of a new biography,‘Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics,’ is the only creator from the 1940’s  golden age of comics  still alive.

The man who named Cubism & Fauvism

Henri Matisse The Roofs of Collioure (1905)

The Hermitage, St Petersburg

Influential French art critic Louis Vauxcelles (1870-1945) coined the terms  Fauvism (1905), and Cubism (1908).

The Fauves included  Matisse, Derain, Marquet, Rouault, Vlaminck, and the Dutch-born artist van Dongen. After visiting the Fauves influential first show at the Salon d'Automne 1905 Vauxcelles is reported to have pointed to a Renaissance-like sculpture in the middle of the same gallery and exclaimed: ‘Donatello au milieu des fauves!’ (‘Donatello among the wild beasts’). His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in daily newspaper Gil Blas, and passed into popular usage.

What is not as widely known is that  Henri Rousseau’s large jungle scene The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope was exhibited near Matisse’s work and may have had an influence on the pejorative used.

Vauxcelles first used the term Cubism in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described Braque’s work as bizarre cubiques and said, “M. Braque scorns form and reduces everything, sites, figures and houses, to geometric schemas and cubes.”

The term Cubism, quickly gained  use, although the two creators of the new style, Braque and Picasso, did not initially adopt it.

Corey Helford Gallery

Chloe Early: Paradise Lost oil on aluminium 60"X 80"

Speaking of affordable contemporary art at prices you can afford truck on down Robert Crumb style to the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver city Los Angeles and check out the work of innovative contemporary artist Chloe Early. Her show opens Saturday October, 10 @ 7pm. Chloe’s current show represents a voluptuous fusion of modern figurative and abstract dynamics that will complement any serious collectors wall. Prices are around the $2000-$10,000 price point. Corey Helford Gallery is a one stop shop for cutting edge contemporary artists  frequently hosting shows  by such notables as Coop, Pizz, and Kukula

The great Art Exodus

Basquait: it’s worth how much?

Time line Los Angeles 2010 and three great art collectors are dead. Actor Dennis Hopper, gallery director Robert Shapazian and computer pioneer Max Palevsky. The result a multi million dollar art sale bonanza at Christie’s, where paintings by Basquait, Lichtenstein, Warhol and host of other famous names will re-enter the art market. The ensuing greed fest has caused much wringing of hands amongst West coast art lovers, who are looking on teary eyed at the inevitable dispersal of these great artists works to private collections throughout the world. If only these paintings could remain in LA…

Why? 

Would the people of LA want to spend $28million for Jasper Johns (iconic though it may be) American flag? Would they want to spend $106.5 million on yet another Picasso? No. And quite right too.

Basquait, Lichtenstein, and Warhol are all as East coast as it is possible to be, what do they have to do with Los Angeles? Who cares if Palevsky’s collection of Roman artifacts goes to the four corners of the world? He has already donated over 500 objects d’art to LACMA in the past 20 years. Isn’t that enough?

Art collectors, public galleries and museums are the same the world over. They worry when big ticket masterpieces are sold outside their artistic jurisdiction. Such ‘losses’ as they are often called, are frequently interpreted as an economic and cultural snub by the forces of international fine art capitalism. Fighting the tide of fine art economics will always be a loosing battle for cultural institutions. For every overpriced work of art that is ‘saved’ for cultural posterity, dozens will be lost to the bank vault obscurity of art investors and billionaire dilettantes.

Far better for cultural institutions to buy work of cultural importance when prices are still sensible. Why no Rbt Williams at the LACMA? Why no Rick Griffin? Why no Mouse & Kelly? All artists with a world wide cultural impact. All artists that define the very essence of Californian culture and the West coast dream. Why are they not represented? Is it because art institutions cannot realize arts true value until they cannot afford it?

The Barnes Foundation

Henri Matisse, Le bonheur de vivre -the joy of life (1906)

The Who? Quite. And that, is part of the problem. The Barnes Foundation is an art institution based in the boondocks suburb of Merrion a charming residential neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The institution languishes several miles outside the part of town where anything of note ever happens. Why you may ask should things concern the average juiceling?

The answer is an art collection that is estimated by some to be worth more than $25 Billion. The foundation owns 2500 works of art including 800 major paintings: 181 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 69 by Paul Cézanne, 59 by Henri Matisse, 46 by Pablo Picasso, 21 by Chaim Soutine, 18 by Henri Rousseau, 16 by Amedeo Modigliani, 11 by Edgar Degas, 7 by Vincent Van Gogh, 6 by Georges Seurat, as well as numerous other masterpieces by Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Gauguin, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet, Jean Hugo, Claude Monet, Maurice Utrillo, William Glackens, Charles Demuth and Maurice Prendergast. The statistics are frankly staggering.

Relocation for the collection to a more well trodden part of town has been planned for some years. This is perhaps not surprising. What is puzzling is the enormous brouhaha boiling up in cultural quarters. Critics, pressure groups and even architect Robert Venturi have been puffing and panting about the move for some time. There has been much incredulity that in these perilous economic times, the city of Philadelphia should spend $200million on a new art gallery, when the thoroughly charming building in which the collection now resides could be revamped for a much more modest fee. Concerns have been raised about the suitability of the new gallery to house such a prestigious collection. And much amusement has also been created by New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and their absurd statement that they want their new building to represent the architectural equivalent of a “Philly cheesesteak”. Tasteful.

It is clear these pundits are missing the point. Plans for the relocation obviously lack vision, and for the solution the Barnes foundation should look to the world of sports. If you want your team to succeed and cannot get enough support at home, just up and move town. Like the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now I am sure the denizens of Philly and the poobahs at the Barnes Foundation would find this suggestion shocking. But if you have one of the best artistic teams in the world do you let it play little league ball in boondocks Merrion for the rest of it’s life, or do you do you place it at the very forefront of the artistic major league where it belongs?

$25 Billion? You can buy a lot of Philly cheesesteak for that.

Beauty & the Beast By Tony Bulmer

Beauty and the Beast, but which is which in the world of allegory? 36"X36" Acrylic on Canvas. The latest cheeky painting by Tony Bulmer.

Footsie with Flora by Tony Bulmer

 A new painting by Tony Bulmer  Tamara De Lempica  meets Bill Ward, No not the drummer from Black Sabbath Dummy, The other Bill Ward, the one that people in sandals fear and loathe! 36"X 36" Acrylic on Canvas.

LACMA loans Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Sebastia Juñer Vidal, 1903, oil on canvas, David E. Bright Bequest,
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Pablo Picasso, Harlequin, 1917, oil on canvas, Museu Picasso, Barcelona,
 © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

LACMA recently loaned its prized  portrait of Sebastia Juñer Vidal(1903) by Pablo Picasso to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona for their exhibition Picasso Looks at Degas. Not wanting the galleries to be without an example of Picasso’s figural portraiture, the curators have arranged for the Museu Picasso’s Harlequin (1917) to be on view in LACMA’s modern art galleries through the end of January 2011. This painting demonstrates Picasso’s return to  neoclassical style after his earlier cubist experiments.

The Portrait of Sebastia Juñer Vidal is from the Picasso’s famed Blue Period, where his blue palette and his portraits of tragic outcasts display the palpable loneliness often present in his work.

Visit Picasso In Vienna

Picasso: Peace and Freedom an exhibhition from  England’s Tate Liverpool, has gone on display at the Albertina gallery in Vienna this week.

The critically acclaimed exhibition, which drew almost 100,000 visitors to Tate Liverpool over 14 weeks this summer, is now drawing Austrian gallery goers to view the vast collection of Picasso’s paintings, prints, sculptures, drawings and ceramics. The exhibition, which attracted over two thousand five hundred visitors in the opening three days, continues until 16 January, before travelling to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark where it will be displayed from 11 February to 29 May 2011.

EXPLOSION OF LILLIES (Detail)

Girl with an explosion of Lillies (Made for Mischief)

Girl with an explosion of Lillies. (Made for Mischief) Acrylic on Canvas 24"X48"

Modern Art in Dallas Fort Worth

The Artist visited MOMA at Dallas Fort Worth recently. Designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the building is a triumph of high minded modernity, Part Neo Stalinist concrete bunker, part green-house water feature. This unlikely melange of austere modernist vision creates a restful and strangely calming space. The museum contains a number of important works by such artists as Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Hockney. Particular highlights include a stunning example of Twenty-Five Colored Marylins (1962) by Warhol and a 1938 painting entitled Masqued Image by Jackson Pollock, a painting that for me reveals a missing-link connection between the figurative modernity of Picasso and the worlds most famous abstract expressionist. Whilest the permanent collection is a minor if visitable gathering of the usual artistic suspects upstairs in the museum, the yawnsome art school conceptualism of Vernon Fisher is perhaps best avoided. Obsessive and self indulgent, there is not a single stand out piece that as an art collector I would want to own. Is this the standard by which contemporary art should be judged? Or is the intellectual journey writ large on the gallery wall justification enough for such arts existence? Vernon Is a Fort Worth Artist made good, for this I give him and the gallery credit. Galleries should push local talent, but is this the best that Texas in general and Fort Worth in particular has to offer? I think not.

Ambroise Vollard and the Vault of Fauve

Sotheby's holding selling a long-lost treasure trove of paintings, prints, books and drawings by key avant-garde artists of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The works belonged to Ambroise Vollard, the legendary Parisian art dealer who played a pivotal role in the development of the Impressionist and Modern Art market: the artists he represented ranged from Renoir and Van Gogh to Cézanne, Picasso and the Fauves. Vollard’s contribution to the development of Modern art is perhaps unparalleled, as he created the market for Impressionist  & Modern art . 

The extraordinary trove of art treasures were discovered in 1979 in a bank vault at the Société Générale in Paris. The works were deposited there in 1939, soon after Vollard's death, by Erich Slomovic, a young Yugoslav associate of Vollard to whom the dealer had consigned the works. Soon after, Slomovic fled to Yugoslavia where he died in 1942 at the hands of the Nazis. The contents of the vault remained untouched for 40 years. On 21st March 1979, the bank was permitted under French law to open the vault and to sell any contents of value in order to recoup some 40 years of unpaid storage fees. As a result, the collection was consigned for a sale to be held at Hotel Drouot in Paris in March 1981. The announcement of the sale however, was swiftly followed by legal challenges, as a result of which the sale was cancelled. Those challenges now finally resolved, and the works are to be sold by agreement among the legal beneficiaries of the Vollard Estate. 

A second sale at Sotheby's in Paris reveals the broad range of Vollard’s enthusiasms. Highlights  include an early portrait by Cézanne of his childhood friend, the great novelist Emile Zola as well as risqué monotypes by Degas including the celebrated La Fête de la patronne. The sale also showcases a striking example of Gauguin's rare and inventive monotypes, or transfer drawings, that he made with Vollard's encouragement and such important early prints by Picasso as Le Repas frugal, 1904 from the artist's Blue Period and Les Saltimbanques, 1905 from the slightly later Rose Period. There is also a very touching self portrait by Renoir dedicated to Ambroise Vollard, as well as a striking colour lithograph of Le Chapeau Epinglé, one of the most popular printed works by the artist. Alongside these remarkable pieces, collectors will find smaller gems such as an anonymous photograph showing Vollard at a dinner table surrounded by his artist friends, and handwritten pages penned by Chagall recounting his first arrival in Paris.

http://www.sothebys.com/

André Derain everyones favourite Fauve?

André Derain’s Arbres à Collioure has sold  at Sotheby’s London for a record £16.3 million ($24 million). It doubled the previous record for the artist set at Sotheby’s in November last year, when Guy Bennet bought Barques Au Port de Collioure for $14.1 million. The sale also established the highest price ever paid for any Fauve painting.

Derain’s Fauvist works are more desirable than his rather more accomplished, if generic later paintings. Juicelings should check these out, and judge for themselves. I find it interesting that Matisse, who coached Derain extensively, sold an equivelant painting Odalisques Jouant aux Dames at the same Sotheby’s auction for £11.8 million. Matisse famously  visited Derain’s doubtful parents, to persuade them their son should become a painter rather than an Engineer .

Arbres à Collioure is  the kind of painting that has every art philistines blood boiling, ‘My twelve year old daughter could have done that,’ they will invariably moan. What a hundred years ago? Before color magazines, films, and television, when the world was still dominated by monoprint engravings, linocuts and black and white Victorians? I think it is about time you increased that child’s pocket money, about sixteen million should cover it.

www.artmarketinsight.com/wallet/amidetails/showweb/158

Los Angeles Art Festival 2012

The Hammer Museum has teamed up with non profit gallery LAX Art to organise a biennial Art festival in 2012 that will span the city of Los Angeles. Exhibitions will take place at a variety of public sites and feature artists from the LA Area. Plans for the biennial grew out of conversations between Ann Philbin Director of Hammer Museum and Lauri Firstenberg the founder of LAX Art. Hammer curator Ali Subotnick has previously co-organized an edition of the Berlin biennial and Deputy Director Douglas Fogle has previously organized the Carnegie International. LAX art regularly introduces the work of New LA based Artists. The 2010 biennial opens at the  Orange County Museum of Art on October 24.

Creating Sky and the Sea

As the sky meets the horizon it becomes lighter. So flat color blue just doesn’t cut it if you are heading for a realistic effect. Conversely the sea gets darker as it meets the horizon so take this into account when you are balancing the colours within your composition.

Contrast makes your work more realistic

A common mistake that artists make is the failure to consider contrast within their work. Contrast could be described as the difference between the black point and the white point within a composition. All points between are shades of grey. Therefore the ultimate contrast is between black and white. This idea will be common to those of you who have ever used Photoshop. But in terms of your paintings there are strict visual rules you need to follow if you want your work to appear more realistic and natural. Foreground elements must always display the most contrast, strong highlights and dark areas of shade. As the composition recedes into the distance (in a landscape for example) the contrast, colour and focus becomes less pronounced. This creates the illusion of depth

Artistic Alchemy Draw like Da Vinci

Classical rules of composition are not magic. Just maths! Almost every artist, sculptor, architect and musician you liked - used or uses these rules. The Golden Mean, Divine Proportion, The Golden ratio, the Divine Section all describe the same thing, a mathematical technique to divide a canvas, marble block or musical stave into aesthetically pleasing compositional divisions. At the heart of this principle is a series of numbers called the Fibonacci series. The Fibonacci numbers can be used to describe harmonious spatial relationships found in nature including leaves, flowers, shells and human anatomy. The closer images adhere to the Fibonacci series the more natural and pleasing the relationships appear to the human eye. Spatial relationships that do not adhere to the series register as dissonant to the human mind. As an artist who  you can exploit these principals to your advantage. People see harmony within your work, but often they will be unable to describe why the work appeals to them so strongly. There are many websites dedicated to Fibonacci and the Divine Proportion, check them out then get drawing. Also check out other artists and the proportion of everyday items in your home. See how many of them conform to the Artistic Alchemy. Like a Dan Brown novel but with real treasure at the end!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fib.html

In the diagrams the xpoints within the circle show the ideal point of compositional focus. You can also have secondary points of focus and subdivide areas into further golden boxes within boxes. Enjoy!

Don’t be discouraged

So you have been working on a painting for months, maybe it is your first or second painting, and nothing seems to be going right. You feel there is a gap between what you are communicating and what you want to communicate, what do you do? Stop and assess the situation. There are a number of things that may be going wrong.

• Is the basic premise correct? Plans are important. The validity of the original idea has to be strong! Make sure the composition, proportion, anatomy and perspective is working from the outset.
• Are you attempting to paint beyond your ability? Practice. Sketch. work out colours. You cannot be Leonardo in a day! Find a way that works for you. 
• Is the composition sound? Do you know the rules of composition? Find out and apply them!
• Is there too much detail? This distracts the eye and can lose the artist and the viewer in a morass of irrelevant information, diluting the impact of your work. Keep it simple.
• Is colour theory working for you? Too many colours? Are they fighting with each other? Do you even know what that means? Find a colour wheel and study colour relationships
• Keep moving. If you are stuck with a painting start a new one. Plan carefully, work quickly. Do not be scared of perceived weaknesses in your technique, polish them with practice.

Gertrude Stein Art Collector

I often hear people say that they cannot afford to collect art. This always reminds me of the story of Gertrude Stein. From 1904 to 1913 Ms Stein gathered the first great collection of modern art in her apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris France. The collection included Gauguin’s sunflowers and  three of his Tahitian paintings. a number of Cézanne’s including ‘the bathers’, Delacroix’s Perseus & Andromeda, Matisse’s Woman with a hat, various Picasso’s including a portrait of Ms Stein that now hangs in the Metropolitan museum of art in New York.  Other artists she collected include: Toulouse Lautrec, Henri Manguin, Pierre Bonnard and Honoré Daumier. 

Gertrude also hosted saturday evening art soirées in her apartment where such notables as  Henri Rousseau, Georges Braque, Andre Derain, Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and Ernest Hemingway could be found.

For a riotous an opinionated account of Ms Steins time in Paris before the first world war I would recommend the book she wrote in the guise of her lover: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. I would recommend also Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast.’  The moral of this tale is simple, you can afford to buy art, just buy what you like at the price you can afford. Buy now, what are you waiting for? www.artbytonybulmer.com

Steve Wynn’s pointed elbow

Picasso painted four major pictures of Marie-Thérèse Walter. Le Rêve (the Dream) 1932, Nude, Green Leaves & Bust 1932, Nude in a Black Armchair 1932 and Woman in Hat & Fur Collar 1937. Billionaire Las Vegas hotel magnate Steve Wynn, a man of taste and discernment, is the famous owner of Le Rêve. He loves the painting so much he planned to build a hotel named after it (Subsequently he named it after himself). But oh dear, just as Wynn clinched a $139 million deal to sell the painting to hedge funder Steve Cohen the hyperactive hotelier poked his big pointy elbow right through the canvas, in what has been described as, ‘an over enthusiastic gesturing incident’. Wynn, who has little to no peripheral vision due to an eye condition known as retinitis pigmentosa was reportedly flinging his arms around windmill style, while he bragged about the painting to party guests who incuded Barbera Walters and art dealer Serge Sorokko. Perhaps he was explaining the weirdly phallic devision of the Marie-Thérèse’s head, clearly visible in the painting?
On 20 October 1977, four years after Picasso's death, Marie-Thérèse committed suicide by hanging herself in her garage at Juan-les-Pins, South of France. Steve Wynn repaired the painting and decided he couldn’t live without it. His Hotels remain the best in the world.

How much is it worth?

That is the other question they all want to know. How much? Art reduced to a commodity like pork bellies or snake oil trading certificates. But in the case of Picasso’s fabulous painting Nude, Green Leaves & Bust, the ‘how much’ turned out to be rather more than anyone expected $106.5 million in fact. The painting depicts Picasso’s  teenage mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter recumbent amongst shamrock foliage. It is a nice painting, but if you had a choice between that and a new hospital wing… I guess it all depends if you are in the need of a new hospital wing, or the kind of living room artwork that will send your household insurance premiums stratospheric (You could always sell the picture and move into your new hospital…)
Interestingly the painting was bought as recently as 1951 for the bargain price of $20,000 By advertising heiress Frances Lasker Brody and her husband Sidney. Ms Brody’s impressive collection of Modern Art, which includes many important works by Picasso, Matisse and others has recently been gifted to the Huntington Library in Los Angeles. Watch this space for show dates.

What are your influences?

Gimme a break, I like lotsa things, Eclectic is the name of the game, just like Picasso. Pablo liked Velazquez, Delacroix, Manet he also liked African Art (yawn) though I am sure it was Modigliani and Pablo’s trips to the Louvre’s African collection (Oops, slipped into my pocket honest officer!) that proved more influential. It has been said that Picasso turned Cezanne’s uniquely angular style of painting into fully fledged Cubist movement along with his Montmatre drinking buddy and partner in crime Georges Braque. Allegedly it was Matisse’s sniffy observations of the new ‘movement’ that helped coin the term ‘Cubist’
Picture the scene: our three hero’s staggering up Rue Ravigan ripped to the gills on cheap wine and Absinthe. Braque and Picasso (together) “We have evolved a new creative movement based on the artistic interpretation of the world in geometic form” Matisse (Pausing to light a Gitane and hoik in the gutter) “Sounds like a load of Cubist merde to me boys, now how about those chorus girls you were talking about?”

So I started painting

Yeah, you knew this was coming right? I needed an antidote to the virtual world so bad that the only thing I could do was to pick up a paintbrush. Soon as I did I unleashed a torrent of angst ridden catharsis. I worked fast, filled a sketch book with ideas, then threw the best ideas on canvas. Artists are often asked where they get ideas. The answer is complex. It may be through observation like Matisse or Cezanne it may be from imagination or the influence of dreams like Picasso or Salvador Dali. Technique and an understanding of technique is all important. Self confidence is important, so is knowledge: Composition, color, texture, rhythm, balance, movement, contrast and a whole host of other factors. But hold up, art is supposed to be FUN in big shouting capitals, forgot about that one didn’t cha? Not to worry most of the modern art establishment has forgotten that too and that is why I will be using the Creative Juicings blog to encourage artists of all descriptions and deliver clownish kick in the pants to the where the modern arts establishment needs it most. What are you waiting for? GET PAINTING!

Photoshop the new fantasy art?

Yes, I love Photoshop juicelings, but give me a break, when was the last time you actually drew anything, or…painted something? (That home decorating project in the back bedroom and the the xmas/birthday card you made last year don’t count.) Life like art, is about being willing and able to be wrong so that you can progress, make something new and tangible. You do not get multiple undo levels in life. You don’t get to ‘touch out’ the imperfections. Fantasy illustration was the big artistic thing back in the seventies and eighties. They were halcyon days when the airbrush and masking film ruled the world. Now they are memories in the Photoshop tool palette. Today we hear the pejorative ‘airbrushed’ whenever some Photoshop happy junior (or not so junior-ha-ha) has run their ham fisted pinkies over the voluptuous curves of the latest celebutant/media hag. Isn’t it time you all got your fingers inky? Picked up a paintbrush? or at least used that pencil for something other than… What do you use your pencil for juicelings?

Why should I get juiced?

As a graphic designer I have spent the best part of the last two and a half decades creating magazines and advertising. I surfed the tsunami wave of hi technology publishing, riding its peak as it roared to the virtual shore line of imags, Linden lives and electronic blah. So as the seas of gizmoization gently lap at your island of artistic integrity, I offer you ‘creative juicings,’ small palm fronded snipits of creative cool that will allow you to sit back in your sun lounger stirring the parasol around your cocktail and remember why you liked art in the first place.