Van Gogh Loses Value

Whenever I’m at the Getty Museum, which is frequently, I swing by the room where van Gogh’s “Irises” is on view. In the art market, it is worth tens of millions of dollars. Yet for me, it has become worth almost nothing. There is little value yet to be extracted from it, and moving on to other visual experiences is more valuable by far.

This also brings into question part of the art market. If people can get tired of almost anything, why would they pay so much for them? I guess part of the answer is the art market is more about collecting than looking and experiencing. It’s more like collecting antique furniture or stamps. The thrill is in the hunt, not the art. I’m more about the thrill being in the visuals.

Rubens & Brueghel at the Getty

Saw the new “Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship” show at the Getty Museum yesterday. It’s really quite extraordinary. I kept thinking of the ways in which these artists were to their world, like filmmakers are to our world. They were at the top of the heap in terms of image-making skills and techniques, through which they probably influenced people as well.

Being someone who loves most kinds of line work, I almost liked the Getty’s concurrent “Rubens and His Printmakers” show better. The artists who made the etching plates for Rubens must have been both young and possessed of incredible eyesight. Work like that is really a lost art, and probably quite rightly so. We now focus more on ideas, insights, possibilities, ambiguity, and interpretation. And looking at the people in these images is fascinating. Personality itself is probably a different thing now. You rarely see people today who can be “read” like that. People who project and embody such pure perspectives as a sense of longing, heroism, mischievieousness or even a sense of fully occupying a role. People may have watched so much TV, they become afraid of being caught in any sort of mockable pose. Or since actors act, we feel we shouldn’t or can’t. But it’s probably more that we’re just more complex now.

New to LA

I recently moved to Los Angeles. Quite a contrast from the mountains of Colorado. However, some things are still the same. I live in a loft in downtown LA, and I’m still not very near a grocery store. However, some amazing food shopping is not too far away, which is better. The large northeast-facing windows in my studio provide great light, in addition to the silver roof outside bouncing sun in. I’d love to have some art-loving visitors to the studio.