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Musicians - and others - who are bi-artal

David Ayers

By David Ayers
in Miscellaneous Music

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Mark Stryker Collaborator

Mark Stryker

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Posted (edited)

Re: Larry Rivers and Freelancer's comment above:

Rivers is one of those artists whose best work inhabits such a different world than his worst, and there was so much of the latter, that it's easy to forget how good he could actually be. We had an art theft in Detroit last year that included a Rivers drawing. The theft got a lot of ginned-up media coverage, so in response I wrote the following piece that includes my take on Rivers. The link is dead so I'm copying it here in full. The stolen drawing that I write about is here -- it's No. 23 of 23 in the slide how, so you have to scroll to get to it. If you click on left button at the scroll, you'll go right to it. : http://www.tibordenagy.com/exhibitions/larry-rivers/ Also, he really could play -- not A or B list but competent, like a middle-pack "local" musician.

-------------

Money doesn't just talk in America, it screams. That's a problem when it comes to art. The noisy gawking at price tags too often drowns out an honest dialogue about, you know, actual art.

Money buys art, but it doesn't validate it. Quality, emotional resonance, innovation, historical importance, influence and the test of time are the true bellwethers, not the market. Too many people -- from the news media to the general public to an alarming number of collectors and art-world insiders -- confuse the issue. The reaction to last week's news of an art heist in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood offers another example.

When the FBI reported the missing stash of 19 pieces, print and broadcast media, buying the feds' spin, hyperventilated that the art was worth millions. Because he was the only artist with a recognizable name, the press especially trumpeted an Andy Warhol silkscreen apparatus used to produce one of his famous "Flowers" paintings or prints. Art prices can sometimes seem to be based partly on empirical evidence and partly on voodoo, so this is slippery terrain. Auction records and interviews with dealers say a more reasonable estimate for the missing works we know about is roughly $200,000. The FBI didn't release details of all 19 pieces, and it's possible they're keeping mum about more expensive works as a gumshoe tactic. But it's also true that if they didn't float a value of at least $1 million, it's doubtful anyone would have paid attention.

Art is big business too, and money is clearly a valid measure of newsworthiness. Yet so bedazzled was nearly everyone by the sheen of cash that only the Free Press bothered with routine fact-checking. The Warhol, as it turned out, wasn't even an actual piece of art but rather a studio tool with a market value of maybe a couple thousand dollars.

But the key metric is not price; it's quality. Briefly: The stolen works include lesser pieces by a number of notable contemporary artists: Drawings and prints by Larry Rivers, Rene Ricard, Francesco Clemente, Terry Winters and Matthew Day Jackson; a photograph by Andres Serrano; a painting by Peter Schuyff; a cartoon by Rube Goldberg, and unidentified works by Philip Taaffe and Joseph Beuys. (The FBI didn't disclose the collector or the business where the works were being stored.)

The collector has some taste but not a killer eye. But there is one real knockout: a 1954 drawing by Larry Rivers depicting a nude Frank O'Hara, one of America's most celebrated post-war poets. The drawing is a study for River's iconic monumental painting "O'Hara Nude with Boots." The black-and-white pencil sketch, 25 inches tall, shows O'Hara full-frontal, naked but for combat boots, and frankly tumescent. There are two sets of arms, one folded in front of his chest in a standoffish manner, the other raised behind his head in a more revealing, self-confident pose. You sense Rivers mulling his options; the arms are raised in the finished painting.

The drawing carries an electric charge sparked by Rivers' authoritative draftsmanship; his animated line breathes life into the figure. The homoeroticism is blatant, but there is a sly wit, and Rivers manages to wink at the French romantic tradition without mortgaging his modernist edge. Rivers, who died in 2002 at 78, could be exasperating and tasteless, especially later in his career, when a more-is-more attitude overwhelmed his virtues and his reputation fell considerably. But, man, could he draw.

His sweet spot was from 1953 to about 1967. He was an important transitional figure, helping art move from high-minded abstract expressionism in the '50s to the knowing irony and figuration of pop art in the '60s. He was part of a group of figurative expressionists, who kept painting the human form but favored loose, gestural brushwork pushing toward ambiguity and abstraction.

Rivers was a quintessential bohemian, a part-time jazz saxophonist and a hedonist with voracious sexual appetites that took in women and men. He and O'Hara were close friends, sometime lovers and occasional collaborators. One of the most captivating things about the study is how it opens an evocative window on a magical nicotine-stained era of New York cultural life -- when innovative artists, poets and jazz musicians were all part of the same hip scene, all mad to live, busting open the button-downed conformity of the Eisenhower '50s.

A Rivers work on paper can sell for anywhere from a few thousand to more than $50,000 depending on size, quality and medium. His reputation has risen in recent years, and the historical significance of this study combined with O'Hara's allure could push its price into high five figures. But that's not why I hope the collector recovers his treasure. I hope the drawing turns up because, even in reproduction, it fires the imagination and reminds you just how good Rivers was at his best. That's what makes it valuable, not its price tag.

Edited by Mark Stryker
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robertoart Newbie

robertoart

Posted
Posted

Re: Larry Rivers and Freelancer's comment above:

Rivers is one of those artists whose best work inhabits such a different world than his worst, and there was so much of the latter, that it's easy to forget how good he could actually be. We had an art theft in Detroit last year that included a Rivers drawing. The theft got a lot of ginned-up media coverage, so in response I wrote the following piece that includes my take on Rivers. The link is dead so I'm copying it here in full. The stolen drawing that I write about is here -- it's No. 23 of 23 in the slide how, so you have to scroll to get to it. If you click on left button at the scroll, you'll go right to it. : http://www.tibordenagy.com/exhibitions/larry-rivers/ Also, he really could play -- not A or B list but competent, like a middle-pack "local" musician.

-------------

Money doesn't just talk in America, it screams. That's a problem when it comes to art. The noisy gawking at price tags too often drowns out an honest dialogue about, you know, actual art.

Money buys art, but it doesn't validate it. Quality, emotional resonance, innovation, historical importance, influence and the test of time are the true bellwethers, not the market. Too many people -- from the news media to the general public to an alarming number of collectors and art-world insiders -- confuse the issue. The reaction to last week's news of an art heist in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood offers another example.

When the FBI reported the missing stash of 19 pieces, print and broadcast media, buying the feds' spin, hyperventilated that the art was worth millions. Because he was the only artist with a recognizable name, the press especially trumpeted an Andy Warhol silkscreen apparatus used to produce one of his famous "Flowers" paintings or prints. Art prices can sometimes seem to be based partly on empirical evidence and partly on voodoo, so this is slippery terrain. Auction records and interviews with dealers say a more reasonable estimate for the missing works we know about is roughly $200,000. The FBI didn't release details of all 19 pieces, and it's possible they're keeping mum about more expensive works as a gumshoe tactic. But it's also true that if they didn't float a value of at least $1 million, it's doubtful anyone would have paid attention.

Art is big business too, and money is clearly a valid measure of newsworthiness. Yet so bedazzled was nearly everyone by the sheen of cash that only the Free Press bothered with routine fact-checking. The Warhol, as it turned out, wasn't even an actual piece of art but rather a studio tool with a market value of maybe a couple thousand dollars.

But the key metric is not price; it's quality. Briefly: The stolen works include lesser pieces by a number of notable contemporary artists: Drawings and prints by Larry Rivers, Rene Ricard, Francesco Clemente, Terry Winters and Matthew Day Jackson; a photograph by Andres Serrano; a painting by Peter Schuyff; a cartoon by Rube Goldberg, and unidentified works by Philip Taaffe and Joseph Beuys. (The FBI didn't disclose the collector or the business where the works were being stored.)

The collector has some taste but not a killer eye. But there is one real knockout: a 1954 drawing by Larry Rivers depicting a nude Frank O'Hara, one of America's most celebrated post-war poets. The drawing is a study for River's iconic monumental painting "O'Hara Nude with Boots." The black-and-white pencil sketch, 25 inches tall, shows O'Hara full-frontal, naked but for combat boots, and frankly tumescent. There are two sets of arms, one folded in front of his chest in a standoffish manner, the other raised behind his head in a more revealing, self-confident pose. You sense Rivers mulling his options; the arms are raised in the finished painting.

The drawing carries an electric charge sparked by Rivers' authoritative draftsmanship; his animated line breathes life into the figure. The homoeroticism is blatant, but there is a sly wit, and Rivers manages to wink at the French romantic tradition without mortgaging his modernist edge. Rivers, who died in 2002 at 78, could be exasperating and tasteless, especially later in his career, when a more-is-more attitude overwhelmed his virtues and his reputation fell considerably. But, man, could he draw.

His sweet spot was from 1953 to about 1967. He was an important transitional figure, helping art move from high-minded abstract expressionism in the '50s to the knowing irony and figuration of pop art in the '60s. He was part of a group of figurative expressionists, who kept painting the human form but favored loose, gestural brushwork pushing toward ambiguity and abstraction.

Rivers was a quintessential bohemian, a part-time jazz saxophonist and a hedonist with voracious sexual appetites that took in women and men. He and O'Hara were close friends, sometime lovers and occasional collaborators. One of the most captivating things about the study is how it opens an evocative window on a magical nicotine-stained era of New York cultural life -- when innovative artists, poets and jazz musicians were all part of the same hip scene, all mad to live, busting open the button-downed conformity of the Eisenhower '50s.

A Rivers work on paper can sell for anywhere from a few thousand to more than $50,000 depending on size, quality and medium. His reputation has risen in recent years, and the historical significance of this study combined with O'Hara's allure could push its price into high five figures. But that's not why I hope the collector recovers his treasure. I hope the drawing turns up because, even in reproduction, it fires the imagination and reminds you just how good Rivers was at his best. That's what makes it valuable, not its price tag.

Yes, Rivers at his best is a very substantial painting figure no doubt. My comments were more about how to a young painting student from my time, his work was stylistically too 'cool' to be attractive in the rush of German Neo-Expressionism or Post Painterly Abstraction of someone like John Walker who lived in my home town at the time, and cast a long shadow over local painting there. My painting lecturer did turn me onto the underrated British painter David Bomberg. And he also loved El Greco.

Your very fine earlier post about Rivers friend who died young also reminded me of memories of Art School and Larry Rivers.

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