What's In a Name?

I referenced last week a photography dealer, Lee Witkin, who fought against the concept that the name of the artist is what is important.  This is a concept that drives many dealers nuts because we all know works of art that are wonderful in their own right that are not by famous artists.

I am a photographer on the side and I have taken some pretty good photos myself and even entered them in exhibitions but my work has no intrinsic value.   The truth is that probably 99% of even those who consider themselves professional artists will have no resale value.  That does not mean that they may not produce some good works of art.

The truth is that there are a number of reasons that an artist rises to the top even though often they fall again at some time in history.   We judge an artist by many factors but most important is their entire body of work.  The name does not make the work of art though we may pay more attention to  it because of its familiarity but it’s the quality of the piece and whether it pleases us that is important.  Think of a political candidate with the name of Bush, Clinton or Kennedy.  The name catches your attention bur then you have to decide if you agree with their point of view and ability to do the job.

I learned some years ago that the name of an artist well known on the East Coast may not be known in the Midwest, nor are famous artists out here in the Southwest necessarily known by an East coast audience.

Time is also a factor.  My older kids were born in the late 1960’s and when I talked to them about Jack Kennedy when they were in their early teens they weren’t sure who he was!  I, of course, remember exactly where I was when the announcement that he was shot was broadcast.  An artist who is a household name during his lifetime may also be quickly forgotten   

It is a cautionary tale that one of the most famous and rarest old master artists today, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), disappeared totally from history for almost two centuries after his death and was resurrected by an art historian in the 19th century.  Only 35 paintings have been attributed to him but his reputation has grown and grown until today when exhibitions of his work draw blockbuster crowds.

Johannes Vermeer, “The Astronomer” The Louvre, Paris 

There are reasons other then scholarly that one might buy a work of art and sometimes they are very personal.  Every night before I went to sleep my father brought me a glass of himbeernsaft to put next to my bed.  Literally translated it means raspberry juice though it was actually raspberry syrup mixed with water.  When I found a photograph by a German artist, Otto Umbehr (1902-1980), known as Umbo, representing a cupboard with a bottle of himbernsaft I had to own it.  It came from the very famous collection of Julien Levy (1906-1981) who had a gallery that included photographs and much of his collection was bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago.  Years later I learned that this was a very rare print and it was requested for a travelling exhibition of Umbo’s work.  As an aside, it never made the catalog.  They managed to do two editions of the catalog and leave it out, but still we did not see the print for two years!  I only have a letter to prove it was in an important museum show in Germany.

"Laden Ecke" by Otto Umbehr (Umbo) 

Unfortunately, during the last generation art has become commoditized out of exploitation.  Several segments of the art community are responsible, most notably the auction houses.  When the British Railway Pension fund started to collect art as part of their pension portfolio, 1974-1981, it marked the official beginning of art as investment.  While none of the dealers or auction houses voiced any complaints at the time, in retrospect, I find it depressing.  Part of the fun is taken out of collecting if you are concerned only about its return should you decide to sell it.

I have found over the years that some of what we have collected personally such as Art Nouveau furniture and Jugendstil pewter has lost much of its value, while other collections such as our photographs and Native American Art have increased in value, sometimes significantly.  Interestingly enough the names have not necessarily helped if they were not in fashion at the time we sold.  We have, however, enjoyed it all and do not regre having lived with it.  To paraphrase a client of ours, where else can you own and enjoy something for decades and even have the opportunity of getting your money out of it again.  You can’t do that with your car or yacht particularly when you consider their upkeep while you owned them.

"Hopi Snake Dancer" by Roy Fredericks

There is no question that the name of a famous artist can add to the value of a work if the art is being sold where it is familiar to it’s audience.  That alone, however, will only add a certain amount and the rest will depend on the quality of the work itself.  If you learn the field that interests you as best you can, view as much as you can in that area narrowed down to a style and period you will probably do well financially more times than not by just buying what you like best.  

Our Photo Collection, with a new view

Before we gave our photography collection to the New Mexico Art Museum on long term loan, we hung it on the walls wherever we were living at the time.  In one apartment it could hang on both sides of a long narrow hallway which had little light and, therefore, was a perfect venue.  People who came in would ask me, “Did you take all these pictures?” even though they spanned probably 75 years!  When we had a house we put it on the staircase between a couple of different floors in our private quarters.

Everywhere it went I would see it differently.  Now for the first time we are looking at it in a museum venue at The New Mexico Museum of Art .  The curator, Katherine Ware has made a selection from our collection and it has been installed to great advantage showing highlights and giving juxtapositions to the photographs that I had never thought of.

The show opens officially on September 19 but the exhibition is installed and I am giving you a preview. The show includes Kate’s selections from four different photography collections.  Many of the photos shown relate one way or another to works in a different collection on exhibit.

Margaret Bourke White, “Skouda Munitions Pilsen,
Shell Dept. Czachoslovakia”, 1937

Kate believes that one can learn about a person by seeing what and how they collect.  I had to think about that a moment then I realized that when I walk into a home first I see if there is any art around the house and then I look at the book shelves to see what might interest our host.  At the very least, it could give me a topic of conversation during dinner!

We all see ourselves in relation to others.  In the case of someone else’s collection it’s a question of, “does mine stand up to theirs”: depending on whether you are an optimist or pessimist you might ask, “Is their’s better than mine or is mine better”.  In art one is so often comparing apples and pears that the issue is not relevant.  In this show much of the work is contemporary while our photographs are generations old.  Still, there are works which are similar and sometimes by the same artist. They are just as “good” as ours but the other collector has used a different eye.  He or she sees the world differently.

One of our photos I could not remember why I bought.  It was an image by Carlotta Corpron, “Light Follows Form”, 1946 which we acquired at a photography auction and it is so totally out of our usual range of taste or so I thought.  When I saw how Kate had installed it with a Margaret Bourke White, “Skouda Munitions Pilsen, Shell Dept. Czachoslovakia”, 1937 and the Jerry Uelsman, “Equivalent”, I realized that we had an interest in abstract photography when it created a pleasing design.   I also think that it was because I liked  photographers like Man Ray and  Maholy Nagy who played with light and form and we certainly could not have afforded them.

The person who sold us much of our collection was one of the pioneers in the field, Lee Witkin.  Lee used to say that it was all about the image not the photographer or who printed it.  This was a dealer fighting against the usual syndrome of buying names.  He would advise buying an image by a lesser known photographer that was the artist’s best image as that is what is important.  It got me thinking, if Ansel Adams  had only taken one photograph, “Moon Rise”, would he be famous today?  Probably not, and it certainly would not be worth so much. By the way, we never bought a print of “Moon Rise”!  We also felt that the quality of the print and who actually printed it was important.  For instance as Bernice Abbot got older she had someone else print her works under her supervision and after she died there was a designated printer for a short time.  We always wanted the image, taken and printed by the artist.  But we always kept in mind what Lee said.

Bernice Abbot "Barber Shop"

I am happy to report that I felt, seeing our photographs installed, we managed to do both in terms of image and printing.  We did not just buy the biggest names though we did soon realize why certain names rise to the top due to their entire body of work.

If you want to learn more about what the psychosis is that forces one to collect come to the New Mexico Museum of Art on October 13 when I will speak in a dialog with Kate Ware on why and how we built our collection.

A Selection of Music from Santa Fe

All year round there are music programs in Santa Fe.  Concerts, chorale groups, ballet and opera.   Lately we have gone to a number of these.  As anyone who frequents arts events knows, you win some, you lose some.  Not every concert can be the best you have ever heard but you keep going and play the odds and every once in a while you hit pay dirt and are happy that you went.

The Santa Fe Concert Association is celebrating it’s 75th year of existence here and brings a lot of the music in its various forms to town.   Recently we attended both a classical ballet and a Wagner program from their offerings.

Now Ballet is not my favorite of the arts but I can appreciate it.  After all, my first wife was a balletomane and my wife for the last 38 years spent her youth as a dancer spending several years with the School for American Ballet.  I was, however, spoiled early on by seeing the likes of Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn as an early introduction to this art, little reaches that height for me! For the past few years dancers from the New York City Ballet have come to town once a year and this time they brought members of the American Ballet Theater as well.  They were certainly more enjoyable than our usual  contemporary fare from the Aspen/Santa Fe Ballet.  Dancers like Daniel Ulbricht are a delight to watch, but still it did not make my day, so to speak.

Maybe, because of my German Jewish parents’ prejudice against Richard Wagner or the fact that I never care for opera if it is either too long or too heavy I have not attended much Wagner in my life.  I thought it was about time I expand my musical horizons so we attended a concert that was mercifully short and just gave a taste from some of his operas. The Santa Fe Symphony produced stirring renderings of the overtures to “The Flying Dutchman” and “Lohengrin”.  Yes, the small town of Santa Fe, New Mexico has its own orchestra.  Though we have a proportionately older population here the musicians seemed to range from the very young to older, i.e. a perfectly normal range.  I must say the sound they created was impressive.  I was not transported, however, by the imported singers in the segments of “Tannhuaser and “Die Walküre: Heidi Melton who is famous for her Wagnerian voice and Brandon Javanovich whom I liked better.  I am, however, no specialist in Wagner and should not be a judge either.

The artistic director of the Concert Association, Joseph Illick, also acts as conductor and he is a wonderful story teller who brings the performances to life before they start through his introductions.

Every year many thousands of visitors come to Santa Fe to hear the world famous Santa Fe Opera which is in its wonderful outdoor theater which only recently had its roof closed to protect the audience from the normal evening rains in July and August.  Before only the veterans knew where to sit for their protection.  We went to see three operas this year.

The first was the “Grand Duchess of Gerolstein”.  I was anxious to see it because I love Offenbach’s comedic operas such as “La Périchole” and “La Belle Hélène”.  This one, however, was a huge disappointment. The new production was created for the New Mexico-born, but internationally renowned, mezzo soprano, Susan Graham, but the opera really isn’t worthy of her.  It is somewhat reminiscent of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta but does not reach either that level of lyrics or music.  As I said, you can’t win them all.

The next one was the talk of all the opera news this summer, “Oscar”, depicting the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde.  It was the first opera by Theodore Morrison and it was written for the countertenor from Spartanburg, South Carolina, David Daniels.  The countertenor is the modern version of the castrati of yore.  I did not feel that this opera showed off his talents very well.  From what I gathered from the general feedback people liked the countertenor but not the opera.  I was not a fan of the either and was happy that it was mercifully short. I was, however, grateful to our houseguest who had come to hear the opera and invited us so I got to see and hear what was the season’s  main topic of conversation that I would have otherwise passed on.

For me the highlight of the musical summer was a tried and true opera, Verdi’s “La Traviata”.  We had not gotten tickets right away but then everyone was saying the voices were wonderful but the production was so bad.   It was a very contemporary set using platforms that could rise in various ways with no normal scenery.  From what I gathered the critics were purists who wanted things as they originally were.  The biggest criticism was that Violetta, the heroine, sung by Brenda Rae was played more as a harlot than a courtesan.  Maybe my problem is that I do not object to a bit of sex being introduced into an opera but then I would have forgiven anything to hear Ms. Rae sing. This was the return to the U.S. of the lythe young soprano from Appleton Wisconsin  who is a member of the Frankfurt Opera company. For once I could agree with the NYTImes reviewer that she “soared beautifully in the early going, but it was in her pianissimo singing that she really shone” and her acting was “ineffably touching”. Her death scene brought me close to tears! I enjoyed all the voices, Michael Fabiano as her lover and Alfredo Germont and his father in the opera, Giorgio Germont, played by Roland Wood.

David Gregson's "Opera West"

This opera, where I did not expect any fireworks, made the season for me and any “suffering” I may have had, worthwhile.