So totally not the highest bidder

Magnet #980 - Matisse, Polynesia, the Sky

I honestly can't remember where I bought this, but it's so very pretty, and I know I haven't seen it in person before. Maybe in a sale pile at the MoMA store in Soho, I think. Great store, by the way. Dangerous, because of all the stuff I could buy in there.

Unlike all the stuff I could never buy at Sotheby's or Christie's auction houses. The New York Times did a great article yesterday about how one of the best things to do in the city, is to visit the auction previews at both houses.

I've visited Sotheby's a few times before, but not really for art, usually it's for the arts and entertainment auctions - like Grace Kelly's auction a few years ago, and a film one a few years before that. But, both Sotheby's and Christie's are doing Impressionists and Modern Art auctions next week. In anticipation, they put all the lots on view, so that people can visit them and figure out what they want to bid on. It's open to the public at this time as well. I mean, the "richy-richy people" (/tm my mom) have other private opportunities to view the art, but a lot of them come back to look, even if it means viewing with the hoi polloi like me.

Dudes. Today, I stood in front of a twenty million dollar painting today. By Monet. Unfinished. I could feel myself slowly backing away. Obviously, if I broke it, I wouldn't be able to afford it.

But, my heavens, it was amazing walking through gallery after gallery of paintings and sculptures and drawings. Masters of every kind were there. Just hanging out, with auction price tags on the placards. Holy smokes. The amounts on each tag could feed a small country, or ten. I can't wait to see what the results are next week!

Even more cool? Watching all the Sotheby's and Christie's employees walking wealthy patrons around to different works, as they scribbled on small notes of paper...you know, notes to say bid on this lot or that lot. You know, where in my little world, I mull over whether or not to buy this book, or that pretty paper, for a few bucks, these patrons are bidding millions. Millions!

Also? They can touch the art!!!! I nearly had a heart attack when I saw these two people touching a Rodin. Touching! It's like the number 1 rule in a museum, don't touch! And here these people were, running their hands over the smooth bronze surface...crazy. In another room, two men, were closely examining the Faberges - as if they were in a jewelry shop somewhere, "I'd like to see that (sixty thousand dollar) tea caddy, please." But I guess you can do that, if you're intent on buying it. Sheesh.

I won't lie, I saw so many Matisses, Picassos, Monets, Vuillards, Bonnards, Rodins, Faberges, Lichtensteins, Warhols and what nots that my eyes fairly glazed over by the end of my visits. The fantastic part was that they also included contemporary pieces from the period. The ones who aren't necessarily as well known, but have important work as well. The ones that aren't sitting over at the Met on Fifth, or the MoMA in midtown. Of course, I ended up buying a couple of the catalogues - I figure if I can't afford the art, at least I can buy the books.

There's a really big part of me that wants to go back to both places before the big auctions take place on Monday. Just to see the art before they go to their new owners.

One thing's for sure, there's a whole hidden world of private art collecting that I'm sure I've only scratched the surface of today.

Also for sure? These artists produced a helluva lot more than what's on our public museum walls.

After next week, they're going to be sitting in private art collections or residences. There's a part of me thinks that's a shame, that the world doesn't get to enjoy this art, but for these few preview days.

Then there's the other part of me wants to find these people and visit their houses so I can see what else is on their walls!

Creativity takes courage

Magnet #744 - Creativity, Matisse

Indeed, it does.

Yesterday on our Tampa Museum of Art break, we dropped by the Gasparilla Festival of Arts Festival, where at least a hundred artists were exhibits and perhaps selling their wares. From blown glass to metal to paintings and jewelry. It was fun trying to fly through there to get to the museum, where I eventually bought this Pomegranate magnet.

But, Matisse was right. Being creative does take courage to execute. It's taking what's in your heart and soul and putting it out there in some sort of canvas for all the world to see.

Whether it's brainstorming ideas for a golf event, concepting advertising on TV to sell something to people who don't want it, a painting for a gallery or just drawing with crayons, it's art without a safety net.

My friend says sometimes the courage is in taking something you've created and calling it art.

I think it doesn't matter how good or bad it is. Share it. Get it out on the canvas, because if it stays in your heart and soul, what's the point?

With open galleries

Magnet #743 - Alexander Calder, National Gallery

We've established over and over that I love art, and art museums. That it's not even like I'm particularly well-versed in any genre or any artist, that I just love looking at the stuff in whatever museum I visit.

With as many as 15 grueling days ahead of us, we took a bit of a break and went to the new Tampa Museum of Art. A very cool building of pierced aluminum (900,000 holes!!!) nestled along the waterfront park, and designed by Stanley Saitowitz, an SF-based architect with several structures to his name.

So then we walk in - free, by the way, because of the Gasparilla Festival of Arts - and have lunch at the still getting its bearings in a big way Sono Cafe, and take a gander at some art.

The funny thing was that you walk into this giant open space, and you see this staircase that leads you up to the collections. Then, you turn around, and as you start to go up the stairs, you look up, and bam!, you see a giant multistory Calder mobile, much like the one in this magnet from DC's National Gallery. And while I'd seen the pictures of the Calder on their site, I was still awed by it as I looked up into the atrium of a zillion holes. Very cool.

The whole visit (save for Sono) was very cool. Very small. I think we may have missed a few collections, because we did only see one floor full of galleries that intentionally flow into each other to show the openness of art.

But that's the thing now...instead of having wings devoted to one particularly course of art, the rooms and exhibitions all just flow into each other. While on the one hand, this openness explores how art is interrelated, and pushes you to figure out how they are connected, it also doesn't visually define what you're looking at.

In other words, one minute, you're looking at a nude Matisse, you cross an entryway, and all of a sudden, you're looking at a Greek Black-Figure Amphora, circa 510 B.C., and then into a set of black and white Garry Winogrand Women are Beautiful photographs. And left to draw conclusions as to how they're brought together under one roof.

In the end, we did the Matisse side and the Winogrand side, and I'll give it to the TMA curator, that was a good job of tying the two exhibitions together. The sketches, drawings and paintings of various women by Matisse during the early 1900s was a great juxtaposition and comparison against the black and white photography of the women that Winogrand captured in the later 1900s.

It's kind of what the curator of the Accademia in Florence was going for, when he combo'd an exhibition of Mapplethorpe imagery of the human form and...Michelangelo sculptures. Mind you...that one blew my mind completely. Mostly because I couldn't believe it had been done.

Yeah, that's a whole nother magnet.

eta:
After being open a month, their little gallery was stocked full of the easily orderable Matisse magnets from Pomegranate (my faves, as you know), but low on the actual museum logo magnets themselves. Probably good because besides the Sono beef, my other issue with them is their logo. But, I can't wait to come back and see how that museum magnet collection grows. I'm hoping they do an atrium shot like this one here.

Putting colors together*

Magnet#512 - Matisse's Nuit de Noël, 1952

I bought this magnet from my second favorite magnet vendor here in town. She has a great little stand just down the block from the Met, and I can never resist buying a magnet or two (or three) from here.

When I started writing this post, I couldn't remember who she said painted it, so I started searching the interwebs.

...almost two hours later...

At first, I thought it was Chagall. But, I got distracted by the awesome body of Chagall's work. I honestly couldn't tell you if I've ever seen a Chagall window. Now, I totally want to go see Chagall's 12 Tribes of Israel windows in Jerusalem.

They're absolutely beautiful. And, after this post, I'm totally gonna go look up where his closest windows are here in town.

My next thought was Picasso, but, it really didn't look a thing like his work.

But, as you look at it, you slowly realize whose work it is. Matisse, because the stars and the squiggles do kinda look Matisse-y. In the end, I was right, thanks to this person's Reverse Engineering Matisse blogpost.

And here's where burned most of the last hour...I started to hunt the painting down, to see whose wall it's hanging on and in what country. From what I've pieced together, Nuit de Noël is apparently a design that he did, supposedly a study for a stained-glass window that he designed in the Hotel Regina in Nice-Cimiez, in France, where Matisse lived/worked for a while.

Nice-Cimiez is also home to the Matisse Museum. But, a quick spin through its collection didn't yield this piece. Sigh. And, looks like Hotel Regina is now a residential building, so who knows where this piece (or the window) is now.

No, seriously.

Who knows?

I would love to hear from anyone about this Matisse piece....

*“When I put colors together, they have to join a living chord, like a musical chord or harmony.”

- Matisse

eta, a week later:
So I stumbled upon the nearest Chagall here in town! It's this window at the United Nations, dedicated to Dag Hammarskjold. Random. But, awesome.