YOU GOTTA’ HAVE ART

I can picture our very early foremothers and fathers picking up a piece of charcoal (this is after they found fire of course) and thinking “Ugh…what do to cave walls?” I can picture them trying to describe their journey’s circuitous path by drawing a map in the dirt with a stick. I can picture them drawing what looked like a rudimentary tent for a mountain, delighted with the ability of others to instantly understand that one tent meant that mountain and two tents meant the one with two summits.

At some point, we humans began drawing even more intricate figures. We drew figures of pregnant goddesses, lightning bolts, stick figures that may have been ‘aliens’ or indigenous peoples. By the time of the Pharaohs, our ability to depict our reality had become incredibly intricate and we used a vast array of materials. At some point, drawing for recordation or clarification morphed into our need to adorn ourselves and our walls with figures and pigments that were purely ornamental. And we called this ‘art’.

I do not have a creative bone in my body. I’m pretty sure I was reading a book somewhere and forgot to show up when God allotted the creative gene. Nonetheless, I love all kinds of visual art. I take photos in order to capture my memories and sometimes I even frame them. But generally, I am relegated to admiring, and sometimes purchasing, art from others.

I started collecting art even in college. I bought a watercolor from one roommate and a hand-woven basket from another. I lived with a photographer for a time. His beautiful black and white ‘available light’ photographs filled my apartment walls – until I found out he felt his nude models would be more comfortable if he were nude, too.

As a young adult, my then husband and I started going to ‘free dinner’ art sales held by Park West, a gallery in Michigan with an aggressive marketing strategy. My husband and I were pretty broke but we managed to buy a few serigraphs and lithographs for our walls by people we had never heard of but whose images we fell in love with.  It made us feel sophisticated and besides, we just liked the art.

Over the years, my artistic tastes and knowledge matured as did Park West’s marketing strategies. As they built a solid clientele, they made their events more exclusive and even halted their ‘land auctions’ completely for a time as they opened satellite galleries and moved their collecting events to the  cruise ships. With the business generated by the cruise ships and with their enormous ‘mother’ gallery in Southfield Michigan, Park West is now the largest gallery in the world.

I no longer attend free dinners to buy art. As one of their long-standing collectors, every six months or so I am invited to an entire weekend of art collecting in some flash Arizona location that provides ample opportunity for relaxing and enjoying the company of other art collectors.  I can’t always go, but when I do, I get to talk and learn about art and artists from other collectors.  But the main attractions of these weekend events is getting to meet the very artists whose work I already or will collect. Last weekend I attended one of these collecting events at the historical, gorgeous and luxurious Wigwam Resort near Goodyear, Arizona.

‘Provenance”, or the history of a thing whether it is wine or artifacts or art, provides the ‘story’ of the piece. Of course with art it is helpful to know where it was purchased, how the art came to that gallery or seller and approximately the date the art was completed. But honestly, there is no better provenance than all those things and the story of its creation directly from the artist who created it.

Imagine Picasso sharing with you over dinner how he eventually sank into depression after his friend Casagemas committed suicide, settling into his rather morose “Blue Period’, painting an entire series of monochromatic blue and green canvases with dark subjects like prostitutes and beggars. Imagine Vermeer relating the story of how his painting the innocent Dutch girl with the pearl earring came to be. Stories are important. But stories directly from the artists? That would be Provenance on steroids.

This past weekend, my friend  Margaret and I met three internationally regarded artists. All three, joyous and fun for the most part, had their own stories to tell about the original pieces that were available to us that weekend.

Peter Max, an immigrant from Berlin and undoubtedly the most well-known pop artist in the world, related his need to reach out to his community of friends to save Lady Liberty from her structural deterioration and to the families of the first responders of 9/11. He told of the constancy of yoga in his life and its impact on his art. He talked about his association with the Beatles and told stories of his long friendship with Andy Warhol.

Marcus Glenn, showing musicians in a way that virtually flows across the canvas and an artist I have collected for several years, shared his joy and astonishment at being selected the Grammy Artist for 2014. He spoke of his amazement at being gathered into the fold of the enormously famous and talented musicians at the Grammies.  He reminded us he couldn’t get very uppity about that because his wife Yolanda would be quick to remind him that he was still just Marcus Glenn, a working-class kid from Detroit.

Victor Spahn, a Russian immigrant now living in Paris, whose art depicts movement in sports and dance in ways no other artist has accomplished, shared a clip he filmed on his phone camera of his friend, a world famous opera singer, as she played and sang on the piano in his living room. He spoke of his painting technique which gives impression of movement on a flat canvas. He shared his love of cars and his enchantment at being allowed to be the official painter for various car manufacturers including Lexus. He confessed he loved American cars and told us he had a Smart Car for driving around in Paris.

Living room talk. Kitchen table conversations. Bar confessions. Meeting and learning about your artists has a lasting impression on the way you view the art hanging in your home. I can hear that smoky note of the blues singer in Glenn’s work, the pound of the hooves of the horse in Spahn's horse race. I can feel my heart quicken as I glance at the image of the Statue of Liberty and know that Max actually made it possible for my children and grandchildren to see that very Lady in person.

Before they leave, you get to stand next to these great artists to have your picture taken with them, giving you time to tell Max you love the joy in his work and you now understand, because you are also a devotee of yoga, how it came to be there; to get a ‘snog’ by Marcus Glenn who you have told with shining eyes that his work moves the music within you; and to get a warm hug from the boyish Spahn who has appreciated your interest in how he has been able to get the mud from the track up into the canvas.

Provenance my friends. Can’t get better than that.