On a night when Christie’s broke the price record for a work of art sold at auction, with Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucien Freud fetching a hammer price of $127 million a short time ago ($142.4 million, with fees), I’m going in the opposite direction — to some low-priced works of art being showcased in an exhibition that opened today at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.
Fired Earth, Woven Bamboo features contemporary Japanese ceramics and basket. It’s a smallish show, one gallery with selections from a 90-piece collection given to the MFA by a couple named Snider.
But I love the baskets, in particular, partly because they are less well known than Japanese ceramics. So I managed to get a little space for short piece on them, an “Icon” item, for The Wall Street Journal Saturday’s paper. It was in last Saturday, headlined In Boston, Japanese Baskets Imitate Flames and Birds.  They sell for a couple of thousand each, and up, depending on their age and maker. They may rise, though. This past summer, when the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts exhibited contemporary Japanese bamboo baskets, the museum estimated that “there are now fewer than 100 working bamboo artists in Japan.”
Most are mini-sculptures, not really baskets at all. Here’s one, at right.
Back to Christie’s for a minute — tonight’s sale seems to be doing very well, as I watch online.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the MFA