You Can Hire an Artist

Half-Naked Thursday: Lucian Freud

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Oct 15, 2009

I’ve been painting specifically for a gallery show coming up in December here in Yonkers.   The Blue Door Gallery show’s theme is Small Gems: Arts For Giving and is promoted as an “affordable” holiday sale.   The gallery’s commission is to be 30% and so I must consider the price of the works with that in mind as well.  And when settling on prices, the question is not only the value of the work but what patrons might be willing to pay for the art, especially in these economically challenging times.   When calculating the value of the art I consider the cost of  materials, my time spent making it, the previous price for similar works, a bit of a profit (if possible), and additionally then gallery commission is tacked on (when not sold directly through this website).  Lately, in order not not price myself out of a sale, those calculations rarely involve profit and even a lowering of the rate for my time.

Musing about the value of art got me to thinking about the value of art for artists with worldwide reputations.  I wondered what fluctuations the values of their works  have endured in a world recession.  It was widely publicized that in May of 2008 Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold at Christie’s in Manhattan for $33,640,000 to Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire living in the UK.  This was a record for the sale of a living artist’s work.   At that time I’m sure some indicators of a severe economic downturn were already visible, as even the reports of the sale included the word “recession”.   Around that time President Bush was sending Americans an economic stimulus check for $600 with the hopes of avoiding a greater downturn.  (I wonder how much of that money was spent on art?   I bought Santa Clara pottery in Taos, New Mexico, and felt rather patriotic in doing so.)

By October 2008 a further slowing of the market was apparent; only 58% of lots were being sold at the big art auction houses.  Freud’s Portrait of Francis Bacon sold at Christie’s in London  for a mere  £5,417,250 ($9,404,346).  The sale was considered a blessing for the auction house even though the estimates hoped for as much as £7 million.  

In the spring of this year several works of art owned by the victims of Bernie Madoff  were sold on the auction block at Christie’s.  Even with the “conspicuous consumption”  label daunting buyers, the prices achieved were more than adequate in my view.  When a late Picasso, Musketeer With a Pipe, 1968, sold for $14.6 million I thought the economy just can’t be as bad as they say.  (Do you know Christie’s only charges a 25% commission for the first $50,000?   Then the percentage rate actually goes down.  Many galleries charge as much as 50% commission.)   

I must say my opinion of Lucian Freud’s later painting is much more positive than my view of late Picasso’s.  I think I’ve been aware of Freud’s work since my college days, when his early work was included in contemporary art survey courses.  Then his portraits were much more stylized, simplified and flat, and always a bit odd-looking as portraits go (every subject had the same eyes).  As Freud has matured his eye for detail and individuality has become more keen and his paint application has become heavier and more textural.  The more true-to-life his portraits have become, the more impressive to me.  Freud’s  unvarnished honesty regarding his subject is facinating, whether we recognize the sitter or not.  John Singer Sargent once said “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”  Sargent’s respectable portraits have nothing on Lucian Freud’s.  One must be very comfortable in one’s own skin to sit for Lucian Freud.

Time marches on and the world’s economic status seems to be improving a bit.  Lucian Frued is doing well and so are the owners of Picassos (even when your money’s been stolen you can always sell your art).  I would like to think that with yesterday’s close of the New York Stock Exchange ending with the Dow Jones Industrial Average over 10,000 as a bellwether for the economy.  Let’s hope that there are also better times ahead  for art collecting  and  a generous holiday season as well.  Let’s hope that trend finds it way to Yonkers.  Still, what price art? 

 Kathleen Benton
 

PS – It’s Half-Naked Thursday and therefore I’m including this clip of Lucian Freud talking to Omnibus director Jake Auerbach in 1988.    Freud seems very uncomfortable having to express himself verbally, perhaps as self-conscious as being half-naked (Perhaps that’s not a good analogy.  Freud is rumored to have fathered over 50 children).  It’s one of five segments all available on YouTube.

(Click on images to enlarge and read details.  Click again to return to page.)

Lucian Freud (British, b. Germany, 1922), Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, Oil on canvas, 59 5/8 x 86¼ in., Private collection

Half-Naked Thursday: Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Oct 1, 2009

Let them eat cheesecake!

Queen Marie-Antoinette had King Louis XVI pull some strings to get her favorite portrait painter, Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, admitted to France’s Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as a painter of historical allegory.  Rules at the Academy barred the few women that were admitted from life drawing classes attended by the men.  But that apparently didn’t stop Élizabeth-Louise from learning her anatomy lessons.  Soon everyone who was anyone sat for Vigée-Lebrun, including 30 portraits of Maire Antoinette.

Vigée-Lebrun became one of the most popular artists of her day.  She survived the French Revolution, fleeing to the courts of Italy, Austria, and Russia.  In Rome she was elected to the Roman Accademia di San Luca.  While in Russia she painted numerous members of Catherine the Great’s family. Vigée-Lebrun was made a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg as well.  She was able to return to France during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I, but much in demand by aristocrats and notables she also traveled to England and Switzerland on commissions.  In Switzerland she was made an honorary member of the Societe pour l’Avancement des Beaux-Arts of Geneva.  She published her memoirs in 1835 and 1837 giving us a glimspe of the artist’s training methods of the time.  Over her lifetime Vigée-Lebrun painted 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.  Not bad for a girl in the 18th century.  Funny no one ever  mentioned her in school.

Kathleen Benton

All art work featured in the slideshow by Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842)

Bacchante, 1785, Oil on panel, 109 x 78 cm, Museum Nissim de Comondo, Paris  France.  This painting was commissioned by Count de Vaudreuil, in addition to a portrait of himself.

Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, 1785, Oil on canvas, 28 7/8 x 23 3/8 in, Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA

Bacchus and Ariadne ?, Oil on canvas, 1782, unlocated

Allegory of Poetry, 1774, Oval, 24 x 30 in, unlocated

American Woman, 1803, Oil on canvas, unlocated

Young Woman in Love -?, Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm, unlocated

Portrait of a Young Lady as Flora, 1811, Oval, 72 x 60 cm, National Museum of Stockholm, Sweden

There are many sites the feature the art and career of Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun.  The one I’ve found with the most information and art examples is at http://www.batguano.com/vigee.html

 

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: Fashionable Feminist Forerunners

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Sep 30, 2009

I am fortunate that I live in the age of the Internet.  The Internet allows easy access to information that before was very limited.  With the availability of the Internet I learn something new every day.  Writing about art as I do here requires a good deal of research.  By using the Internet that research often brings me a wealth of new knowledge I wasn’t even looking for.  Questions that I might have formerly left unanswered – because I didn’t have the right book or couldn’t make it to the library – can now be obtained instantly.  Sometimes these answers lead to further questions such as, “Why wasn’t this information a part of my education?”

It was through this ability to learn about things I wasn’t even looking for that my subject matter for this post, female artists from the Renaissance and Baroque Periods, was inspired.   I’m sure the art and history of  of these artists have been documented for many years. So it was quite a revelation when recently I came upon some web sites devoted to women artists that I had never known.  The artists included at these web sites were not mentioned in any of the art history classes I attended.  I’ll admit that until two weeks ago I had never been aware of any of the artists that I am featuring in this post.

Suddenly I feel a bit cheated by my educators.  I have to wonder why none of these artists were mentioned in my classes.  Although I do not consider myself a scholar I’ve had a bit more that the average education in art history.  Many of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque period classes that I attended were on the graduate level.  So I think I could reasonably expect that such in-depth studies might include the fact that women were making names for themselves right alongside men.  I now realize that my entire education was edited by historians and professors who were themselves not aware of or chose to ignore the participation and achievements of so many female artists.

What I’ve discovered is that the documented contributions of women artists date back for centuries. But  I knew nothing of the work, education, and success that these women artist attained.  I thought Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot were our early heroines, because those two ladies were the first female artists I recall being mentioned in my classes.  It seems I’ve missed out on about eight hundred years worth of artistic achievements made by women.

Unfortunately I cannot  highlight every one of those woman in a single post.  And of those I do feature here, I do not feel qualified to discuss their work and activity in great detail since I’ve still so much to learn.   At least, if I didn’t know of these women before, because of the Internet I do now and can explore their work further.  So with this introduction let us reflect on the difficulties they must have endured and the frustrations they must have felt.

 Their lives could not have been easy.  (How did these ladies paint in those clothes? Judith Leyster’s collar would make a convenient palette.) Here were women who most likely had their roles assigned to them by society, yet they were able to develop their creativity and reputations as well.  They were educated, attended universities, and were employed in activites and positions usually reserved for men.  And it seems they did it all while remaining fashionably in vogue and in the vanguard so that we might now have the many choices we can take for granted today.

Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details. Click again to return to page.)

Sonfonisba Anguissola (Italian, 1532-1625), Self-portrait at the Easel, 1556, Oil on canvas, Muzeum-Zamek, Lańcut, Poland

Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1652), Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638-39, Oil on canvas, 38 x 29 inches), The Royal Collection © 2008, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Clara Peeters (Flemish, 1594?-c1657), Self-Portrait with Still Life, Oil on panel, 14 x 19 inches, London, Hallsborough Gallery

Judith Leyster (Dutch, 1609-1660), Self-Portrait, c. 1632-1633, Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 25 5/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA

Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian. (I can find no information on this painting.  Please contact me if you can help.)

Maria Sibyllan Merian (German,1647-1717),  Branch of guava tree with leafcutter ants, army ants, pink-toed tarantulas, huntsman spiders, and ruby topaz hummingbird, c.1701-05, Watercolour on vellum, 39 x 32.3 cm, The Royal Collection © 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.   The 95 watercolours contained in Metamorphosis in the Royal Collection were bought in 1755 by George III, when Prince of Wales.

Adélaïde Labille Guiard (French, 1749–1803), Self Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785, Oil on canvas, 83 x 59 1/2 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842), Self -portrait, 1790, Oil on canvas, 39.37  x 31.89 inches, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

If you would like to find more information on women artists, here’s a list at wendy.com to get you started.