Art Glut

So Laura called Monday and said she had sold three of my paintings - two framed and one matted to three different people - one new and two who had bought art last summer from the gallery. Very exciting especially since it happened in the first few days the show was up.

I've been in DC for six days and am thoroughly saturated with art - post-war american art - which is all I'm really interested in these days. Two visits to the National Gallery, the Hirshorn, the Phillips Collection and the botanical garden and Museum of the American Indian and the Building Museum have left me dazed and confused but content.

I did see some kick ass art though and much of it was new to me. Many of the paintings owned by especially the Phillips Collection have never been licensed for reproduction (I'm guessing here) not because they are lesser works but because they don't seem to need the extra money. It's so refreshing to see "new" work that hasn't been diminished by over exposure. Who ever thought Van Gogh's sunflowers would grace refrigerator magnets and lunch boxes?

This tempera and oil on canvas called Le Tournesol )The Sunflower), c. 1920 is surprisingly by Edward Steichen who was both a photographer and painter although he threw away most of his paintings when he decided to devote himself full-time to photography.

It was the brightest thing in it's room at the East Gallery and, again, I had never seen it before.

I also saw the seminal painting by Helen Frankenthaler  Mountains and Sea which was the first painting to use thinned oil paints on unprimed canvas (soak stain) and paved the way for other artists like Pollack, Morris Lewis and Kenneth Noland. I love her work and the changes she has made over a long career but as many times as I have seen this painting reproduced, to see it in person  only  confirmed what I had already felt - I don't like it all that much. It's kind of watery and blobby. I don't get it. But she represented the second wave of color field painting and opened up a whole new way to do things differently even if it meant using a technique that is bound to keep art restorers in business for a long time. Luckily, she didn't like the halo effect the oil paints created and soon switched to acrylic which probably won't eat into the canvas as readily as oil paint.

I'll try to add a link to that image but have to end now as my brain is foggier than the Chesapeake Bay.

Holly