May 2004 Archives

Documenta comes early! Oh, wait...

Apparently the oceans are turning to yogurt and the pigs are flying, because the (Washington) Citypaper has an interesting, newsy visual arts note. (Mind you, they buried it in a notebook, Carol Vogel-style, behind a totally non-newsworthy fluff note.)

According to the WCP, French historians Annette and Brooks Beaulieu have filed a copyright infringement (and more) suit against the NGA claiming that portions of the NGA's Edouard Vuillard catalogue (which, in addition to being a eight-pound tome about Vuillard, really should be featured taking on the Gugg's Matthew Barney catalogue in an edition of MTV's Celebrity Smackdown) was lifted from an unpublished manuscript by them. Interesting read...

To be updated throughout the day...

• Bloggy tips us off to a pension fund for artists;
• James Tata has a good reason for enjoying drawing;
• Work-safe Matisse and Moore (via Coudal); and
• Franklin Einspruch wants to stage a draw-in in Toronto.

From Los Angeles, some shows that I liked enough to mention (part one):

Julie Heffernan @ Paul Kopeikin: As we prepare for the next terrorist warning – oops, there it was yesterday – or the next news of torture from Iraq – oops, there it was yesterday – I've noticed a lot of fantasy art about. (Maybe artists are also responding to film, where fantasy reigned supreme at the Oscars and at the box office last year.) I saw several examples of fantasy art in LA, best among them Julie Heffernan’s paintings at Paul Kopeikin.

Heffernan's fantastical paintings are somewhat related to Amy Cutler’s fantastical drawings in the sense that there is a bit of figure-it-out-as-you-look-around narrative going on. Each of Heffernan’s paintings at Kopeikin feature a single woman surrounded by a fantastical world of flowers, interiors, and so on. As with Heffernan’s recent show at PPOW in Chelsea the interiors and forest fantasies are the strongest work. The underwater scenes that were a bit sappy, a bit too much of the painting equivalent of a Little Mermaid theme song. (This is the problem with fantasy art – it too easily falls back on syrupy visions and rarely pushes hard enough into the cereberally surreal. It is kind of the difference between watching a hockey game in HDTV and watching one in person. Watching the game in HDTV might be fun, but it’s just not as all-encompassing as being there in person.)

Clare Woods @ Karyn Lovegrove: Painters who pour are a bit like ladies who lunch: They're everywhere, there's something leisurely and seductive about what they do, and most of their output is pretty vapid. For her show at Lovegrove, Clare Woods poured enamel onto aluminum panels. The resulting objects resemble glossy camouflage.

The Washington Color School bunch were big pourers, exploring the formalism of their medium and methods. That's how Woods' work reads: like she's still figuring out what she can make with poured paint. The small works in this show feel like little studies, the large, three-panel work reads like a Bonnard-style screen for the Wired Magazine set. A week after seeing the work I remember that Woods poured and that the effect was camouflagy. Lovegrove's pours are seductive, but they don't close the deal - yet.

How many LACMA'ites does it take to change a light bulb? Apparently too many. When I was there last week, at least three or four works were in the dark because light bulbs had (presumably) burnt out. Most disappointing: LACMA owns a fantastic Diebenkorn abstracted landscape, 1957's Freeway and Aqueduct, painted just as Diebenkorn was moving from his first abstract period into his representational period. It is one of my favorite Diebenkorns and seeing it is always the highlight of my visit to LACMA. This time it was completely in the dark.

• In Toronto, the drama continues around the Art Gallery of Ontario's expansion. The trustee who quit the board in a snit is now back on (the) board... and he's in LA meeting with Frank Gehry.
• In The Guardian, Jonathan Jones says that the art lost in the Saatchi/Momart warehouse fire may not have been great but it was important. (He did not add that it was certainly greater and more important than any American art made now.)
• Will they rename it the Whitney Museum of American Art, Abroad?
• Updates throughout the day...

One of the delightful things about having a blog is the things I learn from reader mail. Yesterday I posted this in my Sontag post:

"If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree."

True. And how timely and hard-questions-provoking would it be if a major DC museum launched an exhibit of photographs such as those?

A reader from Detroit emailed to tell me about the forthcoming exhibit Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America at the Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for show info.) Read much more about the show in the Detroit Free Press.

On Monday I posited that the Getty may have purchased a Watkins (for $310K) at the recent Sotheby's Watkins auction and then added it to their Photographers of Genius show. Word from LA: That's what happened.

I wrote about Edward Burtynsky in Black Book magazine (on newsstands now):

"Why would anyone want to spend so much time and energy around impending death? The workers we see on the Bangladeshi beach? If the PCBs in the oil don’t give them cancer that will eat away their innards and kill them, the persistent clouds of asbestos will. (Or have.) The Chinese in the photographs of Three Gorges Dam have been chased away from their homes by the coming dam. Their farms destroyed, many have been forced to approach China’s boom cities in search of work, with their donkey in tow. Inevitably they are turned away at the gates and sent back to live in cement shells with open coal fires on their living room floors (for both cooking and heat) and no bathrooms, victims of the progress that the dam is supposed to fuel."

As we point out with some regularity here at MAN, ArtsJournal flat-out rocks. For today's reason why, follow this link and read the rest of the top item. It starts with: "The latest threat to the art world appears to be art enthusiasts armed with sketch pads."

UPDATE: A reader reports that the Barnes doesn't allow sketching either.

My email is alive with people emailing in about the London art fire that appears to have burned some of Charles Saatchi's BritArt collection. So I thought I'd provide some links:

• The Guardian's story;
• The Beeb on the artists and their reaction;
• And my favorite: Social Scrutiny.

As I mentioned yesterday, Susan Sontag contributed an essay about the Abu Ghraib photographs to this past Sunday's NYT Magazine. Over at The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan focused on the political (subscribers only) and took issue with what Sontag wrote. I want to wander through Sontag not with a political ear, but with a visual arts ear. The quotes are from Sontag's essay (username: ajreader; password: access):

"The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one."

A clear reminder of how important the visual arts are and why the institutions that preserve them are critical.

Aside: The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of The Major Museums. So why isn't there a single contemporary art exhibit on their 2004-05 exhibition calendar (second item)? 

"What is illustrated by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality."

We don't get a lot of unapologetic brutality in the visual arts these days. When we do, it's in the cartoony vein, a la Barnaby Furnas. But shamelessness is the rage in visual art: witness the bestiality art that was everywhere at the NYC Scope. Just as bad: the work of Gillian Wearing, in which Wearing basks in the discomfort, awkwardness and shame of her subjects.

"If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree."

True. And how timely and hard-questions-provoking would it be if a major DC museum launched an exhibit of photographs such as those?

Some quick thoughts from around the Southland...

Best surprise: About a minute after a couple friends and I walked into Kontainer, Mihai Nicodim told us he had something new to show off. He reached back into his storage area and pulled out a few paintings and a couple of works on paper, all by British artist Tom Chamberlain. Each painting was monochromatic, but another color -– the sensation of another color anyway -- hovered above the surface of each painting. Put another way, most of the painted surface of the canvas holds light but parts of the surface bounces light back at the viewer. Chamberlain is the next show at Kontainer – be sure to see it.

Best show that isn’t a show: This is cheating a bit –- the Broad Art Foundation is only open to scholars, students, critics, and others by appointment. The highlight of the Broad installation is a Cindy Sherman retrospective that isn’t a retrospective. Sure, there are about 70 Shermans up and they span just all of Sherman’s career, but it’s not exactly a retrospective. The Broad installation also prompts the question: How did Sherman get from this work to the garish, cringe-inducing Sherman-as-clown photos on view now at Metro Pictures?

How to count UNLV: Does UNLV count as a Los Angeles art school? Sure, why not. At Mark Moore UNLV grad David Ryan opened over the weekend, his show the follow-up to UNLV grad Tim Bavington’s last show. At Western Project, UNLV grad Sush Machida Gaikotsu follows up a show by UNLV grad Yek. The Bavington show was the best of the bunch – I’m not sure I can name a colorist I enjoy more. Of the two pups, I preferred Ryan’s color-infused Arp-y shapes. (Ryan’s work was also on view at Scope LA)

Best new neighborhood: The Culver City project continues, with no fewer than six galleries open right around La Cienega and Washington Road: Vielmetter, Western Project, Blum & Poe, Sandroni Rey, Lizabeth Oliveria, and Anna Helwing are all there and buzz is three more are on the way. Now if only they had a local Starbucks…

Where’s they get that: In the Getty’s pull-you-by-the-nose-through-the-history-of-photography-because-it’s-good-for-you-dammit show, titled Photographers of Genius, Carleton Watkins’ Agassiz Rock and Yosemite Falls looks mighty good on the wall. And it’s a 2004 acquisition. In a related story, AR&YF was the highest-priced Watkins at the recent Watkins auction at Sotheby's…

Biggest non-event: Scope LA. Thinner than gruel. Discussed at art.blogging.la.

Because the Grand Avenue area of downtown LA has so many cultural institutions, I've spent a good bit of time discussing the redevelopment of the area.

(If you don't remember, Grand Avenue is home to both the new Gehry-designed Disney Hall and to MOCA. LAT architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has been especially strong in discussing what should happen around Grand Avenue and how Eli Broad and his cronies have hijacked the area. I'd link to it... but the LAT doesn't think you should be allowed to read it.)

Today the LA Times reports that Eli Broad's redevelopment committee has told the design team headed by Frank Gehry to take a hike. Short summary: Thanks for Disney Hall, Frank. Now leave us alone.

A couple of quick notes from Stephen Shore's talk at the Hammer Museum last night (The occasion was a new publication of Shore's book, Uncommon Places):

• Shore hung out at The Factory a lot as a teenager. The most valuable part of the experience? "I got to see an artist making decisions," he said. Shore returned to the concept of decision-making repeatedly throughout the evening. In the end he said that after taking thousands upon thousands of photographs, decision-making had become kind of like muscle memory. As with an athlete, practice leads to instinct.
• Shore's defense of big color photography: It captures how the world looks as viewed with a heightened state of awareness.
• Shore repeatedly went out of his way to avoid calling himself a "documentary" photographer, all the while describing himself in terms of something that sure sounded to me like documentary photography.
• Shore's newest (unseen) work: street photography and artist's books made using Apple's iPhoto software.
• A slight stretch, but a fun thought of the day: Consider Christenberry, Shore, Eggleston, etc., as color updating of Walker Evans.

Jonathan Jones is not a particular fan of America. Last August he infamously dismissed all current American art and said that American art is, simply, over. He's back with this:

"Americans have never looked as lonely as they do now - except in the paintings of Edward Hopper. America has never seemed as baffling and alien as it does at this moment - except through the eyes of Hopper."

Apparently Edward Hopper is painting from the grave.

Some short thoughts on the National WW II Memorial.

And as a Washington resident, an addendum: Fortunately there are other places in the Washington area where we can go to acknowledge the World War II generation. World War II is frequently the subject of exhibits at the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum. Lesser-known spaces, such as the National Cryptologic Museum at the National Security Agency also celebrate the heroism and ingenuity of WW II vets. I feel fortunate that I can go to those places to be reminded of the World War II generation.

The Chuck Close prints show is at the Miami Art Museum and Miami Art Exchange has a fine discussion of a lecture Close gave in conjunction with the show. Among the good bits: Close is now making only three paintings a year.

From a three-day weekend in NYC:

Most inconsistent (tie): Two of the shows I most looked forward were the weekend's two streakiest shows. When Elizabeth Peyton (Gavin Brown's Enterprise) and Anish Kapoor (Barbara Gladstone) were on, their works were as good as anything I saw all weekend. Kapoor's white rectangular cube was both smart and difficult. Peyton's personal, context-filled paintings ambitiously aim to recall late-Matisse blends of line and color. But both shows were filled out with work that seemed perfunctory. Kapoor's reflective pieces felt tentative, as if Kapoor hasn't figured out what to do with reflective materials. Peyton's paintings of rock stars come off as lazy, I'm-so-hip starfucking.

First overpriced, now right-priced: When first I saw the Gugg's don't-call-it-minimalism show, the catalog was $45, a price tag that was absurd for a dinky little book. The Gugg has dropped the price to $22.50, where it should have been all along. At that price, it's a fine buy. (By comparison, it's $31 at Amazon.)

Worst sentence about an artist with a show in NYC: "The creative force of eros has merged with the flux of a shapeless magma of light and unbound matter drifting towards congealment into form," wrote John Mekert about Willem de Kooning. (via Robert Hughes in The Guardian on the occasion of a de Kooning semi-survey at Gagosian) Verdict: One great room, several average ones.

How'd he do that: The Andy Goldsworthy installation on the roof of the Met. Goldsworthy built two wooden structures with piles of stones inside. (The Met has a nice page of photos here.) I saw the installation after a pounding, noisy thunderstorm... and couldn't figure out how the tiny stone at the top of each rock pile stayed there. Does Goldsworthy use krazy glue?

Common materials: Speaking of stones, both Brice Marden and Michal Rovner use them in shows up right now. Rovner's use of stones (IMHO the least interesting works in Rovner's show were the smaller stones pieces) was discussed in Sunday's NYT.

Least favorite show: Peter Halley at Mary Boone. The same as every other Peter Halley show only with different colors. Or maybe they were the same.

Favorite sight-'em: Walking through West Chelsea on Friday, a friend of mine and I spotted DC gallerist Annie Gawlak. Much to our, er, amazement, Annie's underclothes appeared to be on the outside of her clothing. In fact, I was downright timid about shouting a jaunty, "Hullo," over in Annie's direction. I mean, how exactly do you tell someone that their underwear isn't meant to be worn on the outside? But "hullo," I offered anyway, and when Annie walked across the street, the underwear situation became clear: Annie was wearing a brand-new, very hip, Comme des Garcons shirt designed to make it look like your underwear was over your outerwear. My.

Best use of a Friday evening: Hanging out with bloggy, jameswagner.com, and Art Addict.

• Greg Allen is a semi-fan of the new WPS1 internet radio station.
• AJmate Terry Teachout visited the Met's new exhibit from the Pierre & Gaetana Matisse collection and was as unimpressed as I was. Aside from a couple of strong Henri Matisses (of course), the show was a weak step-sister to a Pierre Matisse archives show that was at the Morgan Library a few years back. This exhibit should also raise questions about the Met's willingness to display collections as collections (see the Lehman collection or the Gelman collection). Lots of the works don't merit it, and it can be difficult tracking down all the post-impressionism scattered throughout the museum.
• Ionarts is the place to read about all things Milton Avery, particularly about the just-closed Avery show at the Phillips Collection.
• art.blogging.la seizes on a NYT story to remind us that LA is a emerging as a significant challenger to NYC when it comes to new art.
• In London, Cathy Lomax talks about art a good bit. (Thanks Molly Springfield.)
• Dangerous Chunky is your blog-HQ for news, thoughts and links about the new Koolhaas Seattle library.

Edward Sozanski, the Philadelphia Inquirer's art critic, says that the Barnes hasn't made the case for a move. (Username: ajreader@artsjournal.com, password: access.)

Also: NYC weekend update coming up tonight. The day job is a little overwhelming at the moment...

It's been way too long since we did this:

• Artblog.net notes that Art Miami, the poor stepchild of Art Basel Miami Beach, has been sold.
• At Art Addict, Paige West wanders through some gallery backrooms.
• On MoMA's sale of a Jackson Pollock, at Felix Salmon's MemeFirst. Having done some investigating and talked with some MoMA managers, I think MoMA's clean on the selling art/diverting funds from acquisitions to pay for the building. In today's WSJ, Lee Rosenbaum discusses MoMA's deaccessioning -- it's an absolute must-read. MAN excloo: In the fiscal year that will end on June 30, 2004, MoMA will spend over $30M on acquisitions, up from just over $6M in each of the preceding two years.
• Iconoduel with the skinny on Art Chicago here and here (wow).
• Anna Conti tells us about two new James Turrells coming to San Francisco.

The New York Times has decided that its culture editor doesn't need to know anything about culture. Would they make this same decision in assigning a food editor or a Washington bureau chief or a science editor? Uh, no. From the NYT memo:

"I'm delighted to inform you that Jon Landman has agreed to take on the responsibilities of the culture editor for a year or so. Jon will be the first to tell you that he does not bring to the job a thick portfolio of cultural expertise, but he more than compensates for that with a deep and wide-ranging curiosity, a gift for managing big undertakings..."

In the International Herald Tribune, Souren Melikian says this about auctions:

"A connoisseur's eye can only be trained through repeated exposure to works for sale - particularly at auction where quick decisions are needed. These sharpen the mind in a way that detached contemplation in a museum can never match."

So only connoisseurs who can look at paintings and make snap million-dollar decisions have minds sufficiently sharpened to appreciate fine art? Puh-leeze. That some chump paid $104M for an average (at best) Picasso seems to directly dispel that theory.

An update on three pieces at Christie's evening contemporary paddlefest (Ed: watch it!). No images because Sotheby's is about the numbers, not the art, I guess. These are the pieces I linked to a couple weeks ago:

• Vija Celmins: $310K on a $250K high-end estimate.
• Jeff Koons: $545K on a $300K high-end estimate.
• Morris Louis: $850K on a $600K high-end estimate.

Back in February of 2003, WP critic Blake Gopnik saw this fault in MoMA's Matisse Picasso show:

"If known contacts between the two artists don't always show up clearly on the surface of their works, how can anybody hope to pair up pictures that there aren't records for?"

(I discussed Gopnik's thesis in a MAN post on 2/25/03. You'll have to scroll down a screen or two to read it.)

So when I read Gopnik's take on the $104M Picasso sale, this passage caught my eye:

"Picasso expert Pepe Karmel, reached in New York the morning after the sale, was waxing wroth about the whole affair. 'I'm stunned,' he said, 'that a pleasant, minor painting could command a price appropriate to a real masterwork by Picasso. This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art.'"

If Picasso had died after making this picture, his name would barely register among today's art connoisseurs. As Karmel likes to say, if Picasso had been hit by a bus in 1905, he'd be lucky to be rated as an interesting if sentimental follower of Odilon Redon."

He would? Setting aside the complete lack of buses in Paris in 1905, I can find no evidence that Picasso ever 'recorded' his interest in Redon. No letters, no writings, no nothing. So how is it that we can associate Redon with Picasso again?

(To be fair, I have a modest Picasso library -- perhaps 20 books -- and I didn't make an appointment at the NGA to go through their Picasso stacks or anything of the sort. But no one is as thorough on early Picasso as John Richardson and Richardson mentions Redon twice, and only extremely tangentially, when he discusses pre-1907 Picasso.)

(Sorry about the quietness today -- MAN HQ is having some internet issues.)

Today in a Washington Post's web-chat, Tony Gittens, the executive director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities said this about the Commission's paint-the-panda project: "The quality of the art is very high." If the head of our commission on the arts thinks this, he should be canned. Immediately. If he wants to do tourist projects, fine, let him do it from some tourism commission.

Dear Ethicist,

I am the former vice-chairman of a major investment bank that recently went public and I am the president of a major New York City museum board. The NYT just reported that I avoided paying at least $2M in taxes by (cleverly) shipping some art I purchased to a place obtusely known as the Centennial State, and then I flew it back into New York on my private jet. (Doesn't The Man like to look at art on His GS5 too?) A friend, board colleague, and neighbor of mine was recently prosecuted by The Man for the same type of behavior. Is it appropriate for me to maintain my position at that major NYC museum given that my friend was prosecuted and I got off scot-free? Should major museum board presidents continue in that role even after such indiscretions?

-- R.H., New York City.

As a former I-banker and as the head of a museum board, surely you already know the answer to this question. In Manhattan, money talks. As far as that major museum goes, there may be a few awkward moments, but if you offer to pay for a new addition to the museum all those awkward moments will go away and you'll be embraced. Never forget, ethics are for the middle classes!

The Brits are all a tizzy about the opening of a new, big Gagosian space in London. (Well, at least The Guardian is and the people that Charlotte Higgins talked with are tizzi-fied.) Here's some Wonkette-style translation of Higgins piece:

"Charles Saatchi says it is "magnificent and beautiful", and it could change the way the London art world operates for ever." Translation: I'm expecting big discounts, Larry.

"Larry Gagosian is perhaps New York's most exotic and most talked about art dealer." Translation: The IRS has set up a West Chelsea regional office just to make sure that Gagosian remains "talked about" in the neighborhood.

"'I would buy prints for $2-$3, put them in aluminium frames and sell them for $15,' [Gagosian] has said." Translation: If Gagosian offers to frame your new purchase for you, run, run like the wind.

"'Something felt tentative about Heddon Street,' said the artist Michael Craig-Martin. 'It seemed as though they were feeling out the situation.' It appears that Mr Gagosian liked what he felt." Translation: Gagosian wants to feel more.

"As Stefan Rattibor, a co-director of the gallery, put it: 'It's an exciting regenerative area. The dodgy elements have gone, but it still has an edge to it. If you get in cab at Claridges it's 10 minutes away.'" Translation: For the love of god, queen and country, do not walk here. We will not be liable if you get mugged or killed.

"Although London's galleries are traditionally more widely sprinkled around the city than New York's, whose art deal ers cluster in Madison Avenue, SoHo and Chelsea, it is likely that other dealers will want to move to King's Cross." Translation: I haven't been to New York since 1993.

The National Gallery just received a gift of 50ish works of 18th to early 20th century art. When pressed by Reuters to put a price tag on the donation, the NGA said fuhgeddaboutit:

"It's very significant," Franklin Kelly, the gallery's curator of American and British painting said of the donation.

He declined to estimate the value of the paintings, but compared them to gifts over the years from the museum's founding benefactor Paul Mellon. "In some ways this is of that stature in terms of the American collection," Kelly added.

Good for Kelly. One of my arts journalism pet peeves is how (lazy) journos decide to assess value simply through dollar signs. This is ubiquitious in Barnes Foundation reporting, where the Barnes' '$X billion collection of French masterpieces,' etc. seems to surface in nearly every story.

Just because it's fun, I'm going to start a thread/post of speculation about who might have bought the Picasso. (You know which one. The behind-the-scenes story behind the painting is here.) I'll add to it tonight and over the weekend.

• From the BBC.
• From Carol Vogel/NYT.
• From The Telegraph (UK).
• From Simon Houpt in the Globe and Mail (well, no speculation, just some fun play-by-play... plus you can find out which of your favorite journos has a pink Prada bag).

A MANpal emails to ask: If a mediocre Picasso pulled in $104M, what would a really good one draw?

Because hypotheticals are fun, let's consider. First, not only is Boy with a Pipe not a great Picasso, it's a tiny one (just 100 X 81 cm) and big paintings usually pull bigger numbers at auction. In his first volume on Picasso's life, biographer John Richardson (aside: Would someone in the biz drop me a note and let me know when Volume Three will be out?) doesn't consider Boy with a Pipe such a big deal. It merits a paragraph on page 340. And that's it.

The two last great pre-cubist paintings are in Philadelphia. One is Picasso's 1906 self-portrait, one of my favorite self-portraits. The other is the Barnes' The Blind Flower Seller. (Richardson doesn't like this painting, calling it "flimsy.") I don't like putting price tags on paintings in museums so I won't. But I'll offer up the links in an effort to put the greatness of Boy with a Pipe in the context of some other work Picasso did in 1905-06.

(If readers want to suggest other fine 1905-06 paintings, send some links along. I just picked two because, well, becuase this is a blog and not a scholarly article.)

The Picasso did it: $104.1 million. (No, I was not the buyer.)

To put that in context, it is not only the most expensive painting ever sold at auction, it bested the old mark (Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet) by over $21M, about 25 percent.

Perhaps even more amazing, Boy with a Pipe came close to doubling the previous record for a Picasso, his Blue Period's Woman with Arms Folded for $55M. (That old news story here.) Ultimately, $104M is,er, not bad for a mediocre painting. Heck, it's enough to get my mind off of that awful LACMA logo. (Much more on the Picasso here.)

Oh, and this just in: a Manet pulled in $26.3M. Who cares, right?

In a semi-related story -- if you think provenance doesn't matter, just flip through the Whitney auction and change your mind. Estimates blown away left and right before the room apparently ran out of steam halfway through the auction. After the halfway point, only a Picasso still-life ($6.8M) and a Munnings (don't ask, I don't know: $7.9M) really lit up the room late in the evening.

Also: Much more on Tuesday's auctions at Christie's on Artnet.

UPDATE: Christie's seems to have taken the images off of their site (everything else remains). This is terribly unsporting of them.

The main events of the spring auction season began last night at Christie's, where prices were weak and the bidding slow to come. Carol Vogel has the best rundown. Some notes:

MoMA's de Chirico pulled $7.1M, within $100K of its low estimate. This is the painting that MoMA should not have sold. It is important both historically and art historically, a strong de Chirico and AAMD has guidelines against such things. Of course, deaccessioning is a grey area in which institutions receive much leeway. Too much.

Other MoMA paintings: This Picasso, estimated at $400-600K earned $770K, a ~$600-800K Leger brought in $1.5M, a dull little ~$200-300K Masson brought in $250K, this Magritte hit the high end of its estimate at $1.2M, and a ~$1.4-1.8M Chagall sold for $1.2M.

A Vuillard panel of which I was particularly fond gaveled at only $900K, just off its low estimate. In my estimable wisdom (ahem), I had wondered if it might blow past its $1.2M high-end. This proves I know nothing about auction prices. 

In one of the surprises of the night, this rather lovely late Matisse earned not a single bid, not even at $2.7M.

This was my Christie's post from a week or so ago. Much of their interesting stuff is up at their day sale today. I'll have a post on it after they post the results.

That there on the left is LACMA's new logo. (Click here to see the bigger version on LACMA's web page.) No, I'm not making this up. And do not correct your screen -- it really is that orange.

I can't confirm this, but the scuttlebutt is that LACMA has merged with LA's municipal bus service. That may not be accurate, but I'd believe it after seeing the logo. Wear a shirt with that thing on it and people will ask you if you drive the 32L to North Hollywood. And if that logo is on Renzo Piano's fabric screens, real estate valuations around Wilshire will plummet.

Hilarity aside, here's the straight-up skinny: The logo is based on Eli Broad's birthmark.

"The song ‘Listen Up’ by Oasis goes great with Dutch landscapes, but I was an idiot a month ago and wouldn’t have guessed."

I could not listen to music while wandering through a museum, but then again I find audio guides distracting.

Oh, come on! Get real! Game Six of the NHL's best playoff series, Detroit/Calgary, got started last night at 10 ET, ended at 1:30 in the morning, and you're expecting a MAN post first thing in the morning? Pshaw!

OK, maybe a mini-post: Memefirst is discussing MoMA's deaccessioning here and here. Some thoughtful comments, some not. Cronaca is also interested in MoMA's practices. I promise that this will not be the last you hear about MoMA's week at the auctions (Andrew?)...

Just in time for the biggest auction week in years, Artnet has a fine rundown of last week's photography auctions. Much more thorough (of course!) than what we did here -- a must-read even if prices bore you. (One of the interesting things about photography auctions is seeing images that are in the collections of your local museums also being offered up at auction. I'm not sure why that's interesting, it just is. To me anyway. Ed.: Apparently this is the quality of thought we get when Tyler is up until 2 am watching playoff hockey.)

The University of California at San Francisco -- a medical school, not an undergraduate institution -- has commissioned a Richard Serra. It will be the first Serra on public display in San Francisco. UCSF isn't showing anyone what it will look like because it's worried about opposition to the sculpture. To find out why, read the story... (The UCSF press release is here.)

A few weeks ago we told you about Michael Heizer's opposition to a rail line in Lincoln County, Nevada. The rail line would carry nuclear waste within three miles of City, Heizer's massive, not-yet-finished, art installation. The Las Vegas Review-Journal picks up on the Heizer angle in a small way and includes a picture of the farmer/artist.

And, of course, it's auction week. Toronto's Globe and Mail has the most probing auction preview I've read so far. The auctions are from May 4-6, with the main event (the Picasso) coming on May 5.

This morning I mentioned a new Richard Serra public sculpture that has been commissioned in San Francisco. Reading about Ess Eff's Serra reminded me about another major public sculpture that's being built: a $10 million Anish Kapoor that will debut in Chicago later this year. (An unrelated Kapoor show opens at Barbara Gladstone on Saturday.)

Chicago Tribune writer Alan Artner tells us how Kapoor was selected, how Jeff Koons was dismissed, and how the piece is being built. There's also a slide show of the building of the as-yet-untitled work. (Username: ajreader; Password: access)