Art Talk

These have been heady days. And I'm not even talking about politics. Only a few weeks ago the art market reached a seemingly insane high with the sale by David Geffen of two post-World War II paintings: the de Kooning for $63.5 million and the Jasper Johns for $80 million. But if you think that that's a lot of dough, how about the $140 million that Mexican financier, David Martinez, handed to David Geffen for an iconic drip-painting by Jackson Pollock, the costliest art sale ever made. So, let's do the numbers. In one month Mr. Geffen sold three paintings from his collection for $283.5 million. Considering that his net worth is estimated to be $4.6 billion and his passion for art collecting has never been in doubt, the question arises: why is he parting with such stellar examples from his collection?...

Right now, there are two exhibitions in Southern California--one in San Diego and the other in Los Angeles--both speaking volumes about the ways savvy museum directors and curators develop relationships with private collectors. In building their art collections, American museums have always depended on the "kindness of strangers" or, to put it more precisely, on the generosity of private collectors, while their European counterparts could count on royal patronage or government support...

Being an art critic means being open to an endless stream of visual information.  I guess it's a professional hazard to respond to every picture, to every image -- the good, the great, and the ugly -- and to judge it in terms of its aesthetics.  While reading this morning's L.A. Times dance review, I was struck by the ugliest possible photograph of classical ballet dancers -- undeniably God's most graceful creatures --captured in a performance of "Swan Lake" by the Kirov Ballet.  While the dance critic raves about the beauty and elegance of their performance, the accompanying photograph tells a totally different story, reducing this timeless classic to an unappealing, difficult-to-read image of swans with drooping necks and broken wings.  I wonder whether the editor is aesthetically challenged or just fell asleep at the wheel?...

By my nature I'm not a pessimist but last week, reading about the sale of mid-century paintings--one by Jasper Johns and the other by Willem de Kooning--for $143.5 million made me rather sad; not for David Geffen who sold them for an astonishing profit and definitely not for the two hedge fund billionaires who bought them. It made me sad because of the insanity of this whole transaction...

Since World War II the number of new museums in the United States and Europe has multiplied and it seems that no museum--either old or new--is safe from the seemingly never-ending expansion with the name of a famous architect attached to the project. If you believe that with tens of thousands of artists being churned out of art schools every year there should be enough good art to fill all of these museums, in that case, you have no reason to be skeptical. For myself, I believe that no matter how many schools and museums we have, the number of great artists is limited. Gods and muses are very undemocratic in distributing talent among mortals. ..

After an unprecedented fourteen month investigation by the California Attorney General's office, here comes the conclusion that surprises no one: the trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, one of the richest non-profit foundations in the world, slept at the wheel for almost a decade, while Barry Munitz, its former chief executive, was left to do as he pleased...

Little did I know what might happen when I agreed to participate in a special event at the Getty Museum last spring, introducing the screening of the Russian Ark, a whimsical movie shot entirely inside the Hermitage Museum...

There are some situations when it's difficult to decide whether the news is good or bad. A month ago, I read in the LA Times that the sixty-five foot tall sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and, his wife and collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen could not be installed as planned in front of the Disney Concert Hall. The sculpture--in the shape of a giant bowtie and collar-- had already cost the Music Center about $4 million and now, because the metal and fiberglass sculpture had developed dangerous cracks compromising its structure, and therefore its safety, the future of the whole project is uncertain.  It's estimated that fixing the problem will cost another $3 million. At this point, there are no funds to cover the additional cost. To add insult to injury, the artists made a statement blaming the engineers for the structural problems and accepting no responsibility for this situation. To be completely honest, I don't find this development all that upsetting. After all, I have said before that Frank Gehry's Disney Hall

Many years ago, a great American performance artist, Laurie Anderson, famously said that talking about art is like dancing about architecture.  The way I interpret her witty words is that unless one tries to experience a work of art first-hand, be it let's say a painting or a building, then forget about it. I believe that words, even at their most eloquent, can only try to convey the physical appearance of the work of art, the artist's intention and the context in which the artwork or building can be experienced and understood. When I talk about art on this program I try to minimize the physical description of a work of art and instead try to elaborate on the emotional impact it had on me and any thoughts and ideas triggered by the encounter. What would it be like, I wondered, to be able to show images "on the air?"...

Last week, I was invited to spend a couple of days in San Diego as a guest of the Museum of Contemporary Art and that turned into a big adventure. The Museum has two facilities, one in La Jolla and the other in downtown San Diego. In a few months, the Museum is expanding into an impressive historic structure, a former Santa Fe depot baggage building. It's located directly across from the Museum's existing building in downtown San Diego. The renovation of this 1915 building by the architect Richard Gluckman is almost finished and the resulting galleries with their abundance of space and daylight are nothing short of inspiring. As luck would have it, a day or two prior to my visit, the Museum had completed the truly heroic labors of installing Richard Serra's monumental sculpture consisting of six blocks forged out of steel: each standing about five feet high, each weighing about 22 tons. The brutality of its geometry creates a good contrast with the gentle arches of the outdoor loggia where the sculpture is pl

When a museum's name is in the news, it usually spells trouble for the institution. And there's been plenty of it lately. There was a theft at my beloved Hermitage in St. Petersburg: 221 pieces of Russian silver were missing from the museum storage room. When this was discovered, museum officials had the smarts to immediately go public about the theft. As a result, dealers and collectors who had unsuspectingly acquired some of the stolen silver have already returned a few of the missing items. And here's a Hollywood-worthy plot twist: suspicion initially fell on the Museum curator who died last year, and now Russian authorities have announced the arrest of her husband and son, implicating them in the theft. The Director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, called the crime "a stab in the back" and promptly acknowledged a deficiency in the Museum's security...

I can suggest a number of reasons one might want to stop by the Gagosian Gallery when in Beverly Hills. It's always intriguing to see what's happening in one of the outposts of his art empire. In addition to this local site built for him by star architect, Richard Meier, Mr. Gagosian has two galleries in New York, two in London and one is planned to open in Rome...

I wonder, what is your way of keeping cool during the crazy, heat wave that has kept us prisoners these past couple of weeks. Movie theaters? Shopping malls? My secret is museum galleries. On Sunday, when the temperature hit 100 degrees and the humidity, I swear, approached 150% I escaped to the Hammer Museum. It was heaven to spend a couple of hours walking through ---The Soci--t-- Anonyme---, the coolest show in town, telling the story of modernism in America. Besides, the Hammer announced that during the whole summer admission to the Museum is free. How cool is that?..

There are two ways of traveling in search of art: one is go to far away places and another, perhaps even more challenging, is to turn a fresh eye on things that are there, right under your nose. After all the traveling that I've done in the recent months, last Saturday spent in LA turned out to be especially full of surprises. I promised to take a group of aspiring collectors on a tour of galleries, artist studios and collectors' homes and, literally, until the last moment I was still rearranging the schedule. It takes some friendly arm-twisting to persuade a collector to open their home to, basically, a bunch of strangers. And artists feel protective of their studios as well; they want people to see their art but prefer to let the art speak for itself and if asked to talk about it they often feel nervous.

As they say, there is no rest for the wicked. On the Fourth of July, when everyone else was doing as little as possible, I found myself working up a sweat at 6000 feet altitude. Almost a mile high above Palm Springs, there is a small town of alpine beauty called Idyllwild which, in spite of its popularity with tourists, still manages to maintain a leisurely pace and bohemian spirit. Every summer the town fills with poets, musicians and painters who come to participate in an intense two-week workshop. I was invited to be part of the "Painting's Edge" program where well-known painters and critics were giving lectures and spending time with the participating artists by reviewing their portfolios and discussing their work.

One of the lingering memories of my recent trip to Israel is of walls; famous ones, like the Wailing Wall, and miles upon miles of inescapable eyesores that make up the Separation Wall. What I didn't expect was to pay any attention to the mundane walls along the freeways. Instead of the monotonous barriers that traditionally protect houses and people living in close proximity to freeways, Israelis excel in making these boring structures into surprisingly attractive components of the city fabric...

The front-page news about the sale of Gustav Klimt's famous, shimmering gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer for an unconfirmed $135 million made me surprisingly happy. To be completely honest, my proprietary instinct would rather have all five Klimt paintings stay here in LA, yet I have to admit that this iconic painting is ideally suited for the focused collection and exquisite environment of the Neue Galerie in New York. After hearing this news, I jumped into the car and hurried over to LACMA to say goodbye to the five canvases which after June 30 will leave LA for the Neue Galerie, where they are going to be on view for a few months. The fate of the other four paintings is still uncertain but let's hope that at least one of them--another mesmerizing full-length portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer--will be acquired by a public museum as well.

Last week, I got high: not once, not twice but more or less all week long. Traveling to Israel with a delegation of art patrons organized by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime. It's less than twenty-four hours since I returned from my first trip there and my head is still spinning from encounters with fascinating people, ancient and contemporary art, and landscapes of unsurpassed beauty. Landing in Israel at midnight, I was welcomed by two gorgeous ancient Roman mosaics installed above the gateway to the impressive, ultra-modern Ben Gurion International Airport. This was the perfect metaphor for things to come.