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Passionate Journey
Serendipity is the word that comes to mind when I think of my pattern of collecting. I grew up in Indiana, in an environment that wasn’t particularly artistic, and I spent my first decade after college playing the double bass. It wasn’t until I studied arts policy in London in the late 1980s that I became aware of the art-collecting world, and only after working at Bonhams for a few years did I begin to occasionally acquire a painting, sculpture or tribal piece.
In a Nutshell: Worth Their Weight
It was with good reason that the Portuguese, who in 1471 began trading with the Akan-speaking people of West Africa, gave the name “the Gold Coast” to the region today known as Ghana. Gold was both the spiritual and material foundation of the region, where vast quantities of the precious metals were mined from the rich forest soil between the Volta and Ankobra rivers.
From the Editor: Instant Art
“Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away,” sang Paul Simon back in 1973. Thirty-six years later, in the midst of a digital revolution, Kodachrome is still with us—barely—but lovers of Polaroid are crooning a similar tune. The iconic instant film went out of production in 2008, and remaining supplies are dwindling fast.
Collecting: Drawn to it
Hand-drawn pictures and plans of a suburban Prairie Style residence by Frank Lloyd Wright. An extremely rare sketch of signature Louis Sullivan foliage. A portfolio of a turn-of-the-20th-century modern house by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Books: Dear Diary
An elaborately staged re-creation of Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, with a little sexual mischief added. A lovely female centaur listening contemplatively as an equally lovely woman (the same woman?) plays the piano. A bare-breasted, though otherwise fully clad woman holding a palette and painting an Old Master-style portrait.
Design: Labor of Love
Intrigued by the idea of transforming inexpensive materials into original and highly decorative artworks, the Swiss Art Deco artist Jean Dunand mastered the painstakingly meticulous technique of dinanderie. This method of hammering forms out of a sheet of metal such as brass or copper, which was then laid over a shaped mold, became the foundation for Dunand’s early creations.
Market: Fair Minded
By: Sallie Brady With the cancellations of the 12-year-old International Asian Art Fair, which was once was the centerpiece of New York’s March Asia Week, and the 5-year-old Moscow World Fine Art Fair, which was rescheduled for September from May, collectors are wondering which fair will go next. Factor in the closing of three of…
Market: Fully Booked
By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley One of the joys of attending a fair is encountering treasures you’ve never seen before, or items that reach the market only once in a lifetime. The 49th annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which takes place April 2–5 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan and features 205 exhibitors, should…
Market: Wright Angle
By: Christy Grosz With an angular roof that pitches dramatically toward the blue sky above it, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.’s 1965 Bowler residence in Palos Verdes, Calif., represents the distinctive style the architect carefully developed outside his father’s shadow. Taking père’s penchant for angles and use of inexpensive materials like concrete and corrugated fiberglass, Wright,…
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