Yet Another Envelope

The year is just about over and here comes Christmas, Chanukah and the New Year. What does everyone have on their mind, this is the U.S., so it’s money, of course. How many envelopes do you receive daily asking for funds for this or that cause, they probably outnumber the gift catalogs 3 to 1.

Sometimes you are thanked for a contribution over the year and an envelope is included for yet another contribution which really annoys me. Sometimes there is no acknowledgement of your contribution at all!

I have written about what to do with your collection and even your cold hard cash. But I thought this time I would look at it from a more personal point of view. So many not for profits are totally legitimate in their quest for funds. Can one put a limit on the money needed for cancer, Alzheimer’s or a myriad of other diseases that need endless resources to do the research.

My wife and I have had many discussions on this subject. I actually enjoy donating to worthy causes, but like most people, we have limits on what we believe we can give away. How does one make a decision on which nonprofits to contribute to? Like most people we give to those whose mission we believe in but we also take into account who is running the organization and where we can make a difference.

Our lives have been devoted to the arts. My wife was a curator, and I was an art dealer so our way of thinking is that art is important for everybody, and museums are the places that can introduce many of the arts to the public.

I remember that one of the founders of our art gallery said “Charity begins at home”. That can have many different meanings, and some might feel that means keep your money for your family but since we left New York I take it differently. While large museums such as the Metropolitan in New York and the Louvre in Paris might want to expand, hire another curator or enhance their collections no fewer people are going to visit if they do not do that.

In smaller towns they may need that work of art or additional space to fulfill their mission and attract more visitors and our contribution can make a real difference.

The southwest is Indian Country, Native American, if you like, and many of the pueblos and reservations are extremely poor. Poverty is a broad problem but it is easier to focus on one group than everywhere. I have written specifically about the Hoop Dancers several times. We give to the Lightning Boy Foundation not because we think everyone should learn hoop dancing but because it engages pueblo youngsters in a discipline that requires the ability to focus, care about improving, and working with others.

In New Mexico there is also a thriving branch of the National Dance Institute which goes into the schools and does the same thing for students of all denominations.

We also love theater and have watched the excitement of children when they see their first play, opera or concert. I have seen a 6 year old walk into a theater such as the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe for the first time and their eyes literally get wider and their jaw drops in wonder.

Our son who is today an actor, was from an early age a regular at performances of a young people’s theater in New York. He was so enthralled he would not leave before the stage set was struck. The other night at the Santa Fe Playhouse we watched a little girl try go up to the stage to high five an actor during the play. Her mother drew her back but during curtain calls the actor came to the edge of the stage to high five her. Those experiences are not forgotten.

If our donations can help institutions that engage people in the arts we love and value we are achieving our goal. What would yours might be?

Our Night Sky Is Disappearing

When we lived in New York City we did not think much about the night sky. Maybe, if we were near Central Park, we could get some idea of the night sky, but you were warned not to go through the park late at night. Walking through the city there are streetlamps everywhere and cars with bright lights.

When we moved to Santa Fe we marveled at the skies day & night, but after some years we realized we could enjoy the clouds during the day, but our night sky was disappearing very slowly but surely. We are destroying our enjoyment of the night sky. You don’t realize it at first, but it starts in your bedroom. The electric clock shines the TV or console or charging devise have a little colored light on them. It is however outdoor lights that are the issue.

We live on an arroyo where there are no streetlights but the Park Service, of all places, has bright lights over their parking lot long after office hours, presumably for security, if nothing else. There is also a glow from downtown Santa Fe but a much more wide-spread glow from Albuquerque 60 miles away. We have all read about the drones over New Jersey. No one knows what they are, but they give off light from time to time.

The Washington Post recently published an editorial on the subject of light pollution. It brought up something I had never thought about, astronomers are having a hard time finding places where night skies are dark enough to have effective observatories. Even in suitable locations, satellites can reflect the sun even after night fall and commercial communications satellites are multiplying.

The article goes on to say that the sky has grown brighter by 10% annually over the last 10 years which means that a child born a decade ago by the time they are off to college will be able to see 2 to 3 times fewer stars from earth. The number of stars we can see at night become diminished by at least 45% which is the lowest percentage I found.

Artists have been interested in the night sky for thousands of years and we have examples over centuries. One of the artists I particularly admire is Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610). This is his painting of the “Flight into Egypt” from the year before his death. You will find the painting today in Munich at the Alte Pinakothek.

Though our first thought of a painting with stars in a night sky might be “The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh at MOMA, but a better example might be his “Starry Night Over the Rhone”, 1888, in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris‎. Here you can even see how the light from the houses can take away from the view of the stars so van Gogh accentuates the stars as brighter.

The other night I was looking at the full moon with the clouds. I didn’t catch the image with my camera, but art historian Antonia Bostrom did, and posted it on Facebook. Now is the photographer creating art or am I simply taken by the beauty of the subject? Well, I would not discard the photograph because it does remind us of the beauty we saw but it is not the original.

It also reminded me of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting in the Metropolitan Museum of “Two Men Contemplating the Moon” (1825-1830) which so effectively conveys the experience.

Maybe the best place to see a pure night sky is at sea and it is dramatically captured by J.M.W. Turner’s “Fishermen at Sea” (1796) in the Tate, London. In our technological age we forget that stars were essential guides to navigation on the ocean.

Death Valley in California is rated as one the best places on terra firma for star gazing. Far enough from the urban centers and their light pollution, it is debatedly as close as a mortal will get in the U.S. to a total view of the night sky. You might spend a night, but you can’t settle there!

Three Artists In Dialog

Last week I went to a talk at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. There were three Native Artists in dialog: a painter, Tony Abeyta (Navajo Diné); a Ceramicist, Diego Romero (Cochiti); and a Beader, Marcus Ammerman (Choctaw). The latter has an exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian that I wrote about earlier this year ...

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/search?q=amerman

Diego Romero I wrote about 8 years ago ...

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2016/09/diego-romero-1964.html

... and Tony Abeyta I have mentioned in miscellaneous Missives.

They have several things in common and the most important is that they are at the top of the chart in their fields of art. They have recognition from other artists as well as the collectors and museums that exhibit and acquire their work.

Something else they have in common is that they all attended The Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in the 1980’s and attribute much of their success to the school and the teachers who were seminal in their careers.

IAIA started out as a high school in 1962 and from 1975 offered college and post-graduate courses. In 1994 it was designated a land-grant college and by 2001 was fully accredited. Today 20% of the students art non-Native.

It could be compared to the French Royal Academy of the 18th century, the institution that oversaw the training of artists with hands on instruction by leading artists, lectures, access to prestigious commissions and opportunities to exhibit their work. All this is very similar to IAIA. However, instead of an annual Salon IAIA has a museum in the center of Santa Fe to exhibit the work of alumni and students.

The panelists talked about how IAIA also trained them in the business world and how to manage and sell their art, driving home that just saying you’re an artist does not put bread on the table.

All three of the panelists had degrees beyond their studies at IAIA. Diego Romero went to art school in Berkley before IAIA and then went on to Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles for his BFA and UCLA for a Masters Degree. Tony Abeyta received an Associate of Fine Arts degree from IAIA and later an honorary doctorate of humanities. He earned his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a MFA from New York University. Marcus Amerman earned his BFA at Whitman College in Walla Walla Washington.

Diego Romero had debated whether to concentrate on making jewelry or pots. However, Ottelie Loloma, ceramicist and wife of the most famous Hopi jeweler, Charles Loloma, was teaching at IAIA and convinced Romero to concentrate on his ceramic work. In fact, Ottelie influenced many Native American artists who went to IAIA and not necessarily directing them towards ceramics.

The artists agreed that art was part of a narrative ie telling a story. Here is a pot by Diego Romero in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City. The image depicts two soldiers, accompanied by a priest, executing a sentence imposed upon a number of Acoma men in 1599 in retaliation for the deaths of soldiers killed at the Pueblo months earlier.

I was surprised when Tony Abeyta talked about his education including travels to the South of France and to Florence. Abroad he learned from the work of Old Masters and contemporary European artists but did not try to copy them. He said of himself that, aside from being an artist, he is a collector and a curator and wants to understand the art of all cultures. Here is Abeyta at work painting a mural at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona to complement the exhibit,"Over the Edge: Fred Harvey and the Grand Canyon."

There were humorous moments in their presentations. When Romero said he looked at the work of Dan Namingha (Hopi Tewa) renowned painter and an IAIA student some years earlier, Marcus countered, that he too looked at the work of earlier artists, but in order to do something different!

Amerman also said something interesting that I did not think much about until I read my own notes. He said that Indian (Native American) artists get others to join their own cultures and not adopt that of others. That is probably one of the reasons that they are just recently joining the mainstream of the Eurocentric art world and are only now being incorporated in contemporary art collections. Amerman did this beaded work, “The Gathering” for the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. These Native American riders are represented against the Portland cityscape with Mount Hood in the background. It was inspired by a photograph of Nez Perce Chiefs of the Umatilla reservation in Oregon.

In the Q and A session one of the members in the audience asked, “How do you become an artist” and Tony Abeyta responded, “First you fill out the application ... ”

Hard To Believe

As I have said many times things always change and as communication becomes faster so does everything else. For centuries enormous effort was expended by artists on reproducing as accurately as possible the visible world. One radical change came when J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the Romantic painter known as the “master of light” which soon led to Impressionism. Then came Cubism and right on its heals Abstract Expressionism. Each change in style brought on scorn and criticism. When Abstract Expressionism came around, I too thought: What talent does that take? To me it often just looked like scribbling. I like the comment I heard in a recent television interview, “You can’t change the conversation without ticking a few people off". So here we go again ...

Maurizio Cattelan (1960- ) is an Italian Conceptual artist. Known primarily for his hyperrealism in sculptures and installations, Cattelan also is a curator and publisher. His satirical approach to art has resulted in him being frequently labelled the “jester of the art world.” He has had no formal artistic training and calls himself an “art worker” not an artist.

As you probably know by now a work of his has sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s. The original 2019 edition sold at Art Basel Miami Beach, for between $120,000 and $150,000.

In 2024 this is the entry from Sotheby’s catalog:

*****
Comedian
banana and duct tape
7 ⅞ by 7 ⅞ by 2 in.
20 by 20 by 5 cm.
(installation dimensions variable)

Executed in 2019, this work is number 2 from an edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Provenance:
Perrotin, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2019)
White Cube
Acquired from the above by the present owner
*****

Continuing with more than 25 bibliographic citations, the entry sounds to me like a send-up.

It’s not the Mona Lisa!

Prior to the sale, Sotheby's confirmed to CNN that neither the tape nor, thankfully, the banana are the originals. “'Comedian' is a conceptual artwork, and the actual physical materials are replaced with every installation,” an auction spokesperson said via email at the time.

Who would spend that kind of money on an ephemeral work? The answer turned out to be Justin Sun, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur who founded the block chain TRON. At a news conference in Hong Kong he followed in the “jester” mode and ate the banana. The “original” banana cost just 35 cents.

Defending his acquisition Sun said, “This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history.” I would think that is a bit optimistic but, by its nature, we cannot predict the future of art.

Sun added, “To thank Mr. Shah Alam, I’ve decided to buy 100,000 bananas from his stand on New York's Upper East Side. These bananas will be distributed free worldwide through his stand. Show a valid ID to claim one banana, while supplies last.” Here is a recap of what I and dozens of others have written about.

This leaves the question of why would an individual, some people would say, waste their money this way. Mr. Sun’s net worth is estimated at 1.4 billion dollars, certainly more than one would need to live a good life. Including what the 100,000 bananas would cost him the total he spent on his project was $6,235,000. Please correct me if my math is wrong but I believe that it is the same as if someone had $100,000 spent about $445 or just under 1/2% of their money. For Mr. Sun it seems cheap for the kind of advertising he got for his company. Was he just trying to make himself seem important? Then again maybe he just found it fun to continue the “jester” meme.

It could be a bit of all these and more. Maybe you can think of other possibilities?

The Speed of Mail

We recently received a printed mailer from the United States Postal Service (USPS) touting its devotion to exceptional service and warning of the December 18 deadline for holiday mailing. The online USPS Postal Facts states their mandate “to bind the nation together”.

Our mail service does indeed have a long history beginning in 1775 with its establishment by the Second Continental Congress with Benjamin Franklin as postmaster general. In 1787 the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to establish Post Offices and Post Roads, and the Post Office Act of 1792 made the postal services an official part of the Federal Government. I remember that my father driving on the Boston Post road a mail route from New York City to Boston. It evolved into a major highway system now with names like Route 1.

The Pony Express was established in 1860 and started in St. Joseph, Missouri and could reach Sacramento, California, covering nearly 2,000 miles using a relay system of riders and horses in approximately 10 days. Wells Fargo managed the Pony Express for just 6 months during 1861 and issued their own postage stamp. Celebrating the Centennial of the Pony Express the USPS issued a 4¢ stamp that is in the same spirit.

Things change for better and for worse. According to the USPS in 2024 it takes 2.5 days for mail to arrive from one destination to another across this country. That has not been our experience. Last year we ordered tickets to a show in Santa Fe. They were mailed a week before the show, a distance of 2.2 miles, and arrived a week after the performance. Happily, the theater had a record of the tickets, and we did not miss it.

More than once, I have said to my wife that I remember when we got two mail deliveries a day in New York. I was a little boy then who was so excited to run to the door at 9 am and 4 pm every day in our apartment building to pick up the mail in front of the door. This was in the second half of the 1940s. At that time if you mailed a letter on one day in a city it arrived across the city by the next day. In 1950 the USPS eliminated two mail deliveries a day, so it depended on what time of day you mailed your letter. Since email started the contents of our mailbox is a good deal less exciting as they are most often advertising catalogs or solicitations for donations!

Rate increases are so frequent that the Forever stamp has become popular. It was only in 1959 that the cost of first-class mail within the U.S. began to climb from the 3 cents rate established in 1932. A 3¢ stamp with 4 different images of Washington D.C. was issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Washington, D.C. as the capital of the United States.

Even though the U.S. transatlantic airmail service began in 1939, we tend to forget that most mail from the U.S. to Europe was still carried by boat. When I started flying to Europe in the mid to late 1950’s I remember the prop airplane had to take on fuel twice, in Shannon, Ireland and Gander, Newfoundland before reaching London. Of course, then it was more expensive to send a letter by air and it depended on the weight of the envelope as well. It was quite expensive to send mail by air early in the twentieth century and costs rose depending on the distance.

A British General Douglas Gumbley who was the director of Posts and Telegraphs in Mesopotamia (Iraq) is credited with introducing the concept of the single sheet “air letter” also known as an Aerogram in 1933. The USPS introduced them in 1947. They confused me probably until my early teenage years because I could not figure out how to fold them and lick the sides to close them or open them without cutting the writing in half! In 1955 it only cost 10¢ to mail an Aerogram to Europe while a letter in an envelope cost 15¢. The service was quick, however, because in the mid-1960’s I remember mailing on a Monday and actually getting a reply from either London or Paris by Friday. No, that was not usual, but the fact that it could happen was quite startling.

My wife recalls during her research of Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764)the thrill of finding at the Morgan Library letters Pompadour sent to her brother during his travels in Italy. The missives were limited to one side of a single sheet which was then folded and addressed like an Aerogram and the enthusiastic sister continued writing up the margins to finish her thoughts.

The delivery of mail, postage stamps and their history around the world is a fascinating subject that I have barely touched upon.