Live Impassioned and Graceful, with Beauty and Dignity

Dinner?

2012-01-28T17:05:00.000-08:00

And what are you having for dinner?

Brrr....

2011-12-20T03:30:00.000-08:00

Off to the east coast where the temperature is currently 50 degrees - man o man! There's going to be one temperature whilst I am on the east cold - cold, cold and cold - what's a native born San Diegan to do? Stay indoors and drink warm beverages? Enjoy the song for old Saint Nick. Happy Holidays, everyone!

This is for you, Keith

2011-12-19T22:49:00.000-08:00

I've kept myself busy intentionally this month so the memories don't flood back. However, as I leave for the east coast tomorrow to spend the holidays with my mom my thoughts and my heart draw to my brother. Keith died on the 17th of December last year and we had his funeral services on Christmas Eve day. We were two peas in a pod, there's not a day that goes by without me thinking of him and missing him. My heart just breaks and aches at his absence and whoever said things get better with time are full of shit - things don't get better, we just learn to adapt and live without the loved ones who go much too soon, as did my brother. The heart doesn't heal as there will always be a portion missing with the void. I don 't want, nor do I have the fortitude to get into a long blog about my brother. However, my brother was a great Dave Matthews Band fan - in fact, we had planned on seeing him in concert on the east coast but, alas, he was taken before we could go. Anyway, he liked all of Dave Matthews' work and particularily "Why I Am" and the Grux intro off Matthews' GooGrux King cd. So, Keith, here's a clip of the band playing "Why I Am" on the Letterman show as well as a studio track of "Grux". I miss you, I love you and I would change places with you in a heartbeat - I'm hope you and Dad are looking down on all of us who treasured our time with you.

The Nutcracker

2011-12-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

Saw The Nutcracker yesterday - one of my favorite holiday activities. Enjoy the clips below - they weren't from the production I saw yesterday (they're from the San Francisco Ballet's 2008 production, which I did see) but a)the russian dance is one of my favorite scenes and the included version is excellent, and was live when I saw it and b) the second clip is just so lovely (clip starts at the end of the Nutcracker/Toy Soldiers and Mice fight- you'll see the Mouse King slithering down a hole at the very beginning). Enlarge to fukll screen for best effect, enjoy and may visions of whatever dance in your head :-).

It's not Christmas until...

2011-12-18T23:52:00.000-08:00

It's not Christmas until, besides watching The Grinch Stole Christmas, one watches A Christmas Story. Below are three of my favorite scenes (with regard to the second scene - wait for the little 10ish second intro). Enjoy...and "don't shoot your eye out"

mindless factoid - the kid who gets his tongue stuck on the pole
grew up to do porn for a while.

Holiday Live Theatre - The Grinch

2011-12-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

Saw Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! at The Old Globe Friday eve - as usual, the production was fabulous (as was dinner at The Prado before the event and adults beverages after the event). Today it's The Nutcracker.

Enjoy the clip from the original animation ('tis better viewing if you enlarge the screen to full size).

The photos are from this year's production. Photography by Henry DiRocco.

'Tis the mad dash to finish grades

2011-12-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

About 250 final (and in cases of the slackers who turned in late work, multiple essays) papers to grade, final semester grades to compute and post before leaving for the holidays. The image below says it all - god, Starbucks loooooooooooooooves me... .

image from gosmellthecoffee

It truly was a magical day at Walt's place

2011-12-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

This was Snow White's castle tonight. Got to the park at 9:30 this morning and just got home about a half hour ago. Awesome day - small crowds, didn't have to wait in line for any rides due to a special pass - great Christmas themed parade - fabulous Christmas fireworks - "snow" falling this evening. Everyone should experience Disneyland during December - the whole park is decked out in Christmas finery - some of the rides (like the Haunted Mansion, It's a Small World are changed for the Christmas holiday). Must have walked about a jillion miles but it was totally worth it - just an awesome day all around.

Off to the land of Disney

2011-12-05T21:22:00.000-08:00

Off to Disneyland tomorrow - 'twill be my first time to experience a Christmas Disneyland - everyone who's been this time of year so it's quite groovy and magical. The weather is going to be cooooooooooooold but, hey it's "the happiest place on earth" so it should be a blast!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2011-11-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

May everyone have a day filled with blessings, thankfulness, love, joy, peace, friends and family...and fabulous food :-).

Off for R & R

2011-11-18T16:53:00.001-08:00

Off to the airport for a trip to Sedona to stay at L'Auberge until mid-next week - will be back in town the morning of Thanksgiving for Thanksgiving plans. I'm so beyond ready for this trip and I'm so glad my campuses get the week of Thanksgiving off - woo hoo! - I need it. Let's hope a fun time is had by all. Ah....

Thrilling come from behind

2011-10-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know - I don't bet the "chalk" (the favored horse) unless I absolutely have to in my exotic wagers but I love love love it when a gray wins, especially when overcoming traffic and coming from behind. Watch Winter Memories, she is the #4horse (look for the yellow) - she just rocks it when she comes blazing at the end.

See this

2011-10-07T01:11:00.001-07:00

Brad Pitt is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful - at the top of his game - like a fine wine he delivers. If he doesn't get nominated and awarded it'll be wrong on so many levels. A great film that's worth the price of admission and worth seeing more than once.

Scott Walker vs. education: An open letter to NBC News anchor Brian Williams

2011-09-24T17:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Williams,

I was shocked to learn that you are featuring Gov. Scott "Teachers Are Thugs" Walker on your program The State of Education, streaming online via the NBC News initiative Education Nation, at 1 p.m. on Monday, September 26.

Being familiar with some of your work on the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon, I'm aware you not only know that Scott Walker is an enemy of teachers, but have in fact slow-jammed that news yourself on at least one occasion.

Given your familiarity with Walker's attacks on educators and other public servants, you must be aware of his equally devastating attacks on public education itself in Wisconsin. But the fact that he has been invited to participate in this summit, and the eagerness with which he has already begun to reveal the lies he plans to further espouse on your show, compel me to provide you with a partial list of the many ways Scott Walker has waged war on public education in Wisconsin, and is shamefully ill-qualified to participate in a forum on education.

I hope you will use this information to expose him as the anti-education policy-pusher that he is, and use this opportunity to reveal the truth about his sinister plans to privatize public education rather than provide him with a platform to spout his usual lies about "reform" (which is his codeword for defunding public education).

1.Walker cut $1.6 billion from Wisconsin’s public education budget over the next two years, even as he passes out tax breaks like candy and increases public funding to private and charter schools. Most districts in the state had to deal with these cuts this year by forcing our top commodity, experienced teachers, into early retirement to get some short-term balance in hiring new, "less expensive" teachers.

Programming cuts are rampant all over the state. Districts are forced to raise taxes up to the existing levies, if they haven't already. Walker calls cuts "tools." Get ready to hear him say that word a lot on your show. He may also mention jobs, since he has a hard time not using "job" and "tool" in the same sentence, but don't fall for it. As the people of Wisconsin have been telling him since February, he needs to keep his brown bag full of "tools" away from our schools.

2.Walker is heavily funded by, and answers to, anti-public education privatization policy-pushers like the Koch brothers, the Walton family and Betsy DeVos' ironically named American Federation for Children, at whose annual event Walker was a keynote speaker last spring.

These groups have the admitted goal of privatizing public education and are using Wisconsin as a staging ground for advancing their political aims for our schools. They’re using the puppet Scott Walker, who is more than willing to sell out our kids to such high-rolling bidders. They have trained him to use words like "choice" and "merit" as codes for long-term agendas toward privatization and segregation of schools. His efforts to "reform" education in Wisconsin are little more than a financial venture.

3.Scott Walker is a proven and habitual liar. His biggest lie is that Wisconsin is "broke" and that we need his "reforms" to "balance the budget." The financial "crisis," which Walker manufactured in order to attempt to illegally push through his draconian budget, was the direct result of the tax cuts he distributed to his cronies in the weeks before declaring this phony state of fiscal emergency.

Further, Walker pushes a myth that the Wisconsin education system is in need of major reform, often blaming our excellent teachers for problems that do not exist. Wisconsin public schools are a national model in many areas, and we are number one in the nation in graduation rates, even as we spend less per pupil than most other states. With many of our schools already running on bare-bones budgets, Walker's cuts are devastating. Our kids are paying the price as Walker's funders cash in their checks.

4.The people of Wisconsin do not support Scott Walker. As soon as legally possible, recall efforts will begin full force and are in the planning stage as we speak. Educators throughout the state are near-universally opposed to his policies and further disgusted by his arrogant contempt for the welfare of our children and our education system. He has an approval rating around 40% and sinking. He is at the heart of an FBI "John Doe" investigation related to illegal campaigning. He engaged in campaign ethics violations at Marquette University, and he has made clear throughout his many campaigns that he did not value his own education; hardly the man we should trust to preserve and protect the education of our children.

Walker does not speak for the people of Wisconsin, who see his power grab for exactly what it was: a purely partisan bait-and-switch that led us down a path of abuses of power. It has produced painfully divisive policies that pit the erstwhile friendly and accommodating people of Wisconsin against each other.

When bragging about being part of your summit, Walker said, "I believe we have a great story to tell about our reforms and our bipartisan collaborations to further improve our schools." This from the man who famously said "There's nothing to negotiate" when revoking teachers' rights and lying about how doing so would help "balance the budget."

There has not been a single instance of bipartisan collaboration related to Walker's education agenda since he took office. And I've been paying attention. I watched live as citizen after citizen, teacher after teacher, expert after expert, testified in opposition to his budget, his education-gutting, his plans to expand charter schools at the expense of traditional public schools across the state. Walker shows open contempt for anyone who opposes him and refuses to even acknowledge citizens with whom he disagrees. (I myself have been writing to him regularly since February and have never received more than an automated email response).

Walker continues to this day to suggest that the educators who gathered by the thousands to protest his cuts to education and his abuse of power in taking away their rights were "a handful of out-of-state protesters." He is perhaps the most deceitful and divisive governor in America, and a staggering example of how to destroy public education. I trust you will expose him as such.

Yours sincerely,

Heather DuBois Bourenane
Wisconsin parent, educator, PTO member, state employee and public education advocate Saturday 09/24/2011 8:00 am

The Republicans' latest ploy to keep the economy lousy through election day

2011-09-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

Whatever shred of doubt you may have harbored about the determination of congressional Republicans to keep the economy in the dumps through Election Day should now be gone.

Today, in advance of a key meeting of the Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee to decide what to do about the continuing awful economy and high unemployment, top Republicans wrote a letter to Fed Chief Ben Bernanke.

They stated in no uncertain terms the Fed should take no further action to lower long-term interest rates and juice the economy. "We have serious concerns that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the US economy."

They didn't threaten to "treat him pretty ugly" - as Texas Governor Rick Perry told his supporters last month he'd deal with Bernanke if he "printed more money" between now and the election.

But the threat was there. "It is not clear that the recent round of quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve has facilitiated economic growth or reduced the unemployment rate."

Translated: You try this, and we rake you over the coals publicly, and make the Fed into an even bigger scapegoat than we've already made it.

Top Republicans believe they can block all or most of Obama's jobs bill. That leaves only the Fed as the last potential player to boost the economy. So the GOP will do what it can to stop the Fed.

After all, as Republican Senate head Mitch McConnell stated, their "number one" goal is to get Obama out of the White House. And that's more likely to happen if the economy sucks on Election Day.

To say it's unusual for a political party to try to influence the Fed is an understatement.

When I was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, it was considered a serious breach of etiquette - not to say potentially economically disastrous - even to comment publicly about the Fed. Everyone understood how important it is to shield the nation's central bank from politics.

If global investors suspect the Fed is responding to political pressure of any kind, investors will lose confidence in the independence of the Fed and its monetary policies. Even if the pressure is to tighten the money supply and keep interest rates high, it's still politics. And once politics intrudes, lenders of all stripes worry that it will continue to intrude in all sorts of ways. Lending to the United States becomes a tad riskier. As a result, lenders charge us more.

The Republican letter puts Bernanke and his colleagues in a bind. If they decide against another round of so-called "quantitative easing" to lower long-term rates and boost the economy, they may look like they're caving to congressional Republicans. If they decide to go ahead notwithstanding, they're bucking the Republicans and siding with Democrats. Either way, they're open to the charge they're playing politics.

Congressional Republicans evidently don't care. They want Obama out, whatever the cost. Besides, they've never met a government institution they don't mind trashing.

By Robert Reich, 21 September 2011

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

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes

Image is of the Federal Reserve building

Robbie Robertson

2011-09-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

New music from his How to Become Clairvoyant CD

Celebrating the true meaning of Labor Day

2011-09-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

As a Vice-President for the AFT - American Federation of Teachers Guild (hence the image above) - in my hometown I am proud to celebrate this day. For some this day has turned into just another day off for partying. For others it has come to symbolize the end of summer and wearing white. However, I think it's important that we remember what this day truly symbolizes and how important it remains for worker's rights to be protected. To that end I'd like to share two articles this Labor Day. The first article is a history of this day from the U.S. Department of Labor and the second piece was written this morning by Dr. Walter Brasch, Professor of Journalism at Bloomsburg University.

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers. Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold." But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883. In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement. The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television. The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.

Labor Day: The Unknown Holiday
by Walter Brasch

"It’s Labor Day, and that means millions of Americans are celebrating. Most Americans have no idea what Labor Day is, other than self-serving political speeches, hot dogs, burgers, a pool party, and the last day of a three-day holiday. Few even know that Labor Day exists to allow people to remember and honor the struggles for respect, dignity, and acceptable wages and working conditions for the rank-and-file employees.

We don’t know that the Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day in 1882 and that Congress made it a national holiday in 1894.

Almost none of us, including life-long union workers, know the personalities of the labor movement. About Mother Jones (1830-1930), the militant “angel of the coal fields” for more than six decades. About “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1928) who organized the Industrial Workers of the World, a universal coalition to fight for the rights of all labor. About cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), the first president of the American Federation of Labor, a job he held for 38 years.

We don’t know about Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) who led strikes in 1916 to reduce the work week to 48 hours, from the standard 54–60 hours, and then helped create the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) before becoming a major political force for workers during the labor-friendly Roosevelt administration.

Missing from our collective knowledge is the life of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), known as the “father of grassroots political campaigns” who worked alongside Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) who used Alinsky’s tactics to organize the United Farm Workers.

Most of us probably never heard about Eugene Debs (1855-1926), Joe Hill (1879-1915), and thousands of others who went to prison or were murdered defending the rights of the workers not only to organize, but to demand better working conditions. The names of Tompkins Square, Cripple Creek, Homestead, Lattimer, Lawrence, and dozens of other places where police forces massacred workers are unknown. We don’t know about the Avondale mine fire that killed 110, because of faulty construction of the colliery and a disregard for worker safety, or of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, where 148 women, some as young as 12, working under brutal sweat-shop conditions, died because a fire door was chained. We won’t become involved in the struggle, risk our jobs and futures. That’s someone else’s responsibility. We’ll just follow inane rules and complain privately.

Most Americans, and certainly most journalists, don’t know the story of Horace Greeley, a social activist and the nation’s most prominent ante-bellum publisher, who created The New York Typographical Union for his typesetters and printers because he believed they needed representation. Most journalists also don’t know about Heywood Broun (1888-1939), one of the nation’s best-paid columnists who risked his own financial stability to create The Newspaper Guild in 1935 to help those reporters making one-hundredth of his salary. Most media don’t even have local stories about Labor Day, preferring to run nationally-distributed stories and not “waste” any of the few reporters they have left.

The national syndicates and wire services, plus a few socially-conscious newspapers, may make the effort to find a current labor leader who will say organized labor is having a tough time but is still strong and vital, the only recourse against poor working conditions and unfair labor practices. The stories will tell us that about 12.4 percent of all workers are in unions, down from a peak of 35 percent in 1954, but the reporters don’t dig into myriad ways of intimidation by Management, or of the professionals who mistakenly believe because they are professionals and not workers they don’t need unions.

The reporters may interview the workers. An elderly man’s remembrance of his life in the coal mines or breakers, and what Black Lung did not only to his own health but to his family and friends. They might chat with an elderly woman who worked 12-hour days six days a week for $3–$4 a day in the heat and humidity of a garment factory. They may talk with a few current workers who tell us the Recession has cut deep into their lives, but they work hard and are pleased that they still have a job.

Some stories may even dryly point out statistics—that the unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is 9.7 percent, up from 4.8 percent when the Recession began in December 2007, that 14.9 million Americans are unemployed, up from 7.4 million. The stories might even note that 9.1 million Americans work part-time either because their hours and wages were “downsized” or because they couldn’t find full-time work. Another 2.3 million Americans are “marginally attached,” according to the BLS; these are unemployed Americans who aren’t listed as “unemployed” because they haven’t looked for work in four weeks; of these 2.3 million, about 760,000 are “discouraged”—their unemployment benefits have run out, they have tried to find work, but have given up.

Meanwhile, corporate executives are taking multi-million dollar bonuses for improving the “cash flow.” Even if executive management makes significant mistakes, and the “return on investment” isn’t what the Board of Directors expects, or the companies fail because of management incompetence and greed, almost all CEOs and their immediate underlings have the “golden parachute” that allows a soft drop from employment, yielding termination packages that amount to millions of dollars and considerable benefits and bonuses that no working class person will ever receive.

Business euphemistically claims because of “downsizing,” “rightsizing,” and “outsourcing,” mostly to foreign countries, the “bottom line” is improved; corporate investors are being “optimally compensated.” Since the recession began, more than a year before President George W. Bush left office, about 4.3 million Americans have been “downsized,” according to data compiled by Challenger, Gray and Christmas Inc. Data collected by NowPublic reveals that 2008 was “the worst year for layoffs and job losses in the United States since World War II.” Although terabytes of data reveal the Recession is slowing under the massive Obama stimulus package, another one million Americans will be laid off this year. Recent Department of Labor studies report that American workers are “the most productive” ever. That’s because not only are they are doing so much more to compensate for their fellow workers having been laid off, but because they live with the fear if they don’t work even harder they, too, may be laid off or lose promotions in an economy that went as far south as our manufacturing plants.

Of course, there are some industries that have gained in the past year’s plunging economy. Retail sales, which the Department of Labor reports as having the lowest average wages, is gaining workers. But, that’s because it’s just “good business sense” to hire 75 low-paid part-timers and save the cost of benefits than to hire 50 full-time clerks. Only about 16 percent of all retail workers even receive health care benefits, according to the BLS.

To the 50-year-old who worked hard for one company more than half of his life, showed up for work on time, left on time, and tolerated the company’s banal preaching about everyone is “part of our happy family,” and then is laid off as an “economy measure,” the numbers don’t matter. To the worker who put in 20 years in one job, and then is fired for reasons that would be questionable under any circumstance, the numbers don’t matter. To the $20,000-a-year worker who is told she won’t receive a raise because “we’re having a bad year,” but sees upper management not only get raises and more stock options, but also hire other managers, all of them making five times or more than her salary, the other numbers don’t matter.

But, millions of Americans will have their bar-b-ques and family reunions, they’ll splash in the ocean or hike mountain trails, and they will have no idea why the struggle for worker rights must be fought every day by every worker."

Have a wonderful Labor Day and please continue to support the tireless work done to ensure every worker's entitled rights. We continue on because the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.

I know where I'll be spending part of tomorrow...

2011-09-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

Monday Pick 6 Carryover at Del Mar $273,832 - woo hoo - here I come early bird betting windows (I don 't wanna deal with the big crowds tomorrow so I'll just go early, place my bets and then have the rest of the day to do Labor Day holiday stuff whilst awaiting race results).

Is this a beautiful image or what?

2011-08-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

Del Mar Margaritas - 'Nuff Said

2011-07-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

I have the perfect decanter...

2011-07-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

BEVERLY HILLS, CA.- A case of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982, Pauillac, brought $50,788 to lead the day in the joint Heritage Auctions and Greg Martin Auctions $2.7+ million June 16 Signature® Wine Auction, held at the company’s Beverly Hills offices and simulcast live to Hong Kong. “Good results across the board,” said Frank Martell, Heritage’s Director of Fine and Rare Wine. “Collectors responded to this wonderful grouping of wines and with enthusiastic bids on both sides of the Pacific.”

All told, more than 260 bidders vied for 768 total lots, translating into a 96% sell-through rate by total value.

Following the top lot was a fine 11-bottle lot of Chateau Petrus 2000, Pomerol, which showed considerable spirit at a $46,555 final price realized, while a case of late release Musigny 1949, Leroy , realized $35,850.

Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2000 , Pauillac saw an impressive run in the auction, providing fully four of the top 10 lots in the auction, starting with a case of the vintage that realized $31,070 with another two cases following that one at $29,875, respectively. The final Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2000 in the grouping was 24 half bottles, which realized $23,900.

'Tis that time again - the surf is meeting the turf as Del Mar's live racing meet started today and will continue through September 7th

2011-07-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Pinacotheque de Paris Announces Alberto Giacometti and the Etruscans Exhibition

2011-07-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

Figurine, 1958, bronze, 63 x 11,5 x 19,5 cm. Collection Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence. Photo: Claude Germain © Succession Giacometti / ADAGP, Paris 2011.

PARIS.- It is the most eventful exhibition of the fall, an exhibition that the specialists and art lovers of Giacometti, have been expecting for over fifty years. Giacometti’s attraction to the primitive figure was present very early on in the artist’s oeuvre. Etruscan art, which he first of all discovered in the Louvre, in the archeological department, where he went regularly, then during the exhibition on the Etruscans in 1955 in Paris, was, however, to produce in the artist a very meaningful turmoil, and made up one of the essential keys to the understanding of his best known and most powerful form of creation. The exhibition will be on view from September 16, 2011 through January 8, 2012 at the Pinacothèque de Paris.

No exhibition on the Etruscans has been shown in Paris since 1955. But it was precisely that show which enabled Giacometti to discover that extraordinary civilization, based on the economy of a seafaring people; a people of pirates according to the Greeks who regarded them as their chief rivals. That still strange and mysterious civilization was one of the most brilliant before Rome.

The Etruscans devised an outstanding art form, exceptional in its quality, richness and beauty, chiefly made up sculpted sarcophagi and of powerful warrior figures. They also developed a kind of very slender sculpted figure. It was such a shock for Giacometti that he wanted to go further in his quest and in his understanding of that people and its art.

For Giacometti the next step was to go to the Etruscans’ own land, in Tuscany. The journey to the centre of that world seems to have led him to Florence, to the archeological Museum, and then later on, to Vol¬terra, a city in Etruria, close to Pisa. There he discovered the emblematic figure of the Etruscan world, L’Ombre du soir (The Evening’s shadow). That work – that had not travelled to Paris in 1955 and which has never left Italy – is the Etruscans’ Mona Lisa. There exists a less striking version in the Louvre, that Giacometti already knew about for several years, but the one in Volterra provided a real shock for him.

A willowy figure, fine, powerful, mysterious, sensual, soulful and with an outstanding magnetic force, the Ombre du soir was a revelation. The artist was left speechless before that unique piece.

His work was totally overwhelmed: in order to prolong that discovery, Giacometti drew, painted and sculpted with reference to the Ombre du soir. None of the artist’s most famous figures, from the series of Femme de Venise to that of the Homme qui marche can be imagined, conceived without reference to the Ombre du soir.

It is that outstanding confrontation – which provides a new reading of Giacometti’s oeuvre – that the Pinacothèque de Paris is showing for the first time in Paris. The Ombre du soir shall be accompanied by more than one hundred and fifty Etruscan objects, exhibited alongside a unique group of about thirty sculptures, among the most famous by Giacometti.

The Collections of the Pinacothèque de Paris
« The Museum must not become a graveyard. » That sentence by Malraux is important because it expresses a fear which, unfortunately, has not been disavowed for years all over the world and not just in France.

Through that quote there exists a basic question, that of the work’s future once it has left the collector’s walls to enter the museum. Personally, for years now, I have never ceased to question myself as to the reason why the work of art dies, loses its life as soon as it is sanctuarized. Being lucky enough to see them in the collectors’ homes and being amazed by their splendor, I can never understand how, the moment I come across them years later in museums, they have lost that magic, that aura we find in the homes of those who loved them for so many years. Is that the fear Malraux wished to express, he who – an enlightened art lover – knew the collectors so well and was for a long time at the head of the French museums as Minister for Culture?

If we go back to the beginning, to the very essence of the work, to its initial function, we inevitably return to what the museum was in the very beginning: the curiosity cabinet. The place where the collected objects were stored and exhibited, i.e. the private museum put at the disposal of a chosen un public.

The idea was to renew to-day with everything the museum has lost of its essence and of its meaning, but this time by offering the secrets of the art lover’s cabinet to all our visitors. Transversality, as I often describe it, allows us to explain that all the artists from all times, of every culture and of all origins, make up a community out of the ordinary, but whose methods of thinking, of reflection and of approach are the same. The museum-sanctuary seems to have forgotten, by its ency¬clopedic approach, its chief role: to bring the works to life, gathered together and exchange a dialogue beyond the frontiers and periods, because, finally, they are all saying the same thing. They speak of beauty, of references, of convergences and of histories, and, above all, they summon up everything we hold in common. Thus you will notice that Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Reynolds or Bonnard represent the “worthies” in the same manner, be he French in the 19th century, Italian in the 16th, Flemish in the 17th or English in the 18th centuries. You will also note that Van Gogh painted interiors in the same fashion as Peter de Hooch or Delvaux, that Léger thought about and composed his still-lives in the same way that Heda painted a Vanity, that Brueghel, Daumier or Teniers had the same approach to popular festivities, and that landscapes by Hobbema or Courbet are constructed along the same lines. That Primitivism and the central placing of the body is the same from Rembrandt until Duchamp.

Marc Restellini, director of the Pinacothèque de Paris, provides us with his reflections on the part the museum must play at the heart of the city and of its period. Les Collections in the Pinacothèque are proof of his conclusions : about one hundred works, from the Primal Arts to the Moderns, gaze at each other, have a dialogue and query the pertinence of classification, of schools and of chapels, grouped together in thematic rooms: still-lives, Nativities, landscapes. The visitor is free to think about art in his own way: at the entrance to each room, a quote attracts his attention: « The private or religious feast, on the village square or in front of the cathedral; community living has always fascinated artists throughout the ages»; then it is up to the visitor to discover the correspondence between Utrillo’s La Cathédrale de Reims, La Danse de Mariage by Brueghel and Modigliani’s Hancka Zborowska . These paintings have come from all over the world, and they take over the spaces for various lengths of time; because Les Collections are not fixed, the deposit will increase and will live in accordance with the various and unusual hangings.

Crater with little columns. End 4th– early 3d century BC, terra cotta. Volterra, Etruscan museum Guarnacci © Photo : Arrigo Coppitz.

John Lennon/Bob Dylan Owned and Played Gibson Guitar Expected to Bring $200,000+

2011-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

A 1967 Gibson J-160E Sunburst acoustic-electric guitar bought by John Lennon and later gifted by Lennon to Bob Dylan is expected to bring $200,000+ as the undisputed centerpiece of Heritage Auctions July 29 Signature® Music & Entertainment Auction.

Lennon played and wrote songs on this beautiful Gibson during the period of the famous Beatles retreat with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India, possibly even taking this guitar with him on the journey - one of the most tumultuous and creative periods in the band's history, which resulted in 1968's The White Album, one of the greatest albums ever made. Lennon later gave to Bob Dylan, who wrote, recorded and toured with the guitar himself.

"It's a cliché to say it, of course, but if this amazing guitar could only talk," said Margaret Barrett, Director of Music & Entertainment Auctions at Heritage. "What an incredible amount of Rock n' Roll history it has witnessed, having been owned, played and beloved by, arguably, the two most important rock musicians of the 20th century."

Lennon bought this instrument new in 1967, a model he was particularly fond of, in the months before the untimely overdose death of original Beatles manager Brian Epstein. The spring of 1968 found the Beatles - and possibly this guitar - in Rishikesh, India taking a transcendental meditation course from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. For John, it was a way to "get away from everything." Though they were supposed to spend most of their time in meditation, John and Paul spent many of their afternoons writing songs.

"Regardless of what I was supposed to be doing," Lennon would recall, "I did write some of my best songs there."

This new music became the nucleus of one of the greatest albums of all time, The Beatles, better known as The White Album, released in late November, 1968.

A month or so later, around Christmas, Lennon gifted this J-160E to one of his musical idols, Bob Dylan, who took over stewardship of it for a number of years, keeping it at his New York home, writing songs on it, touring with it and using it in the recording studio during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was the period in which Dylan released such major works as Nashville Skyline, Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks, making it easy to assume that this guitar figured prominently in the Dylan's writing process of those seminal recordings.

"A few years after Lennon's tragic death in 1980," said Barrett, "Dylan's superstitions about owning this guitar led him to gift it to his friend, famed guitarist and guitar technician César Diáz, a legend in his own right. To the best of our knowledge, it's never been offered before at public auction."

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Presents George Herms: Xenophilia

2011-07-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

George Herms, Xenophilia, 2011, collage, 22 x 28 in., courtesy of the artist, © George Herms. Photo: Brian Forrest.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown) presents the work of legendary West Coast assemblage artist George Herms alongside the work of a younger generation of Los Angeles and New York artists, which is bringing new energy to the assemblage tradition. The exhibition features works from a circle of friends Herms found in Florence, as well as artists introduced to him by the exhibition curator, Neville Wakefield, including Rita Ackermann, Kathryn Andrews, Lizzi Bougatsos, Robert Branaman, Dan Colen, Leo Fitzpatrick, Elliott Hundley, Hanna Liden, Nate Lowman, Ari Marcopoulos, Ryan McGinley, Melodie Mousset, Jack Pierson, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Agathe Snow, Ryan Trecartin, Kaari Upson, and Aaron Young. The exhibition is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) from July 10th through October 2nd, 2011.

Ever since he first started exhibiting in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, George Herms has been a central figure in the development of so-called West Coast aesthetic. Influenced by a beat generation more attuned to the musical nuance of the everyday than the modernist requiem to order, Herms's commitment to counterculture is expressed through his use of impoverished materials and his rejection of compositional devices in favor of loose associations of materials and ideas. The resulting assemblages blur the boundaries between art and life to make of each the other. Herms salvages elements from the trash heap of popular culture, combining them with words and phrases to create final entities that are neither pure thought, nor pure object—they are both prop and proposition. At times, Herms has been associated with landmarks of the developing L.A. art scene—Wallace Berman and Semina, Walter Hopps and the Ferus Gallery, Dennis Hopper and the film culture of Easy Rider—but his art has refused any singular identification. An advocate of all things free—spirit, material, and love—Herms is the spiritual godfather to an art of the unknown, forging something out of nothing, which continues to be a driving compulsion of artists today.

In 2008, Herms was invited to Florence by designer Adam Kimmel who was being celebrated by the fashion event organizer Pitti Imagine. It was there that he got to know and hang out with a generation of New York–based artists, including Lizzi Bougatsos, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, Ryan McGinley, and Rita Ackermann, along with artists from a somewhat older generation, namely Ari Marcopoulos, and Jack Pierson. Herms’s predilection for privileging the found over the made and for using the raw materials around him as the stuff of his art immediately dovetailed with the raw, unfiltered, and anti-art-establishment tendencies of a group that came of age when ever-higher production values corresponded with auction records and spiritual bankruptcy. Like the open dialogue that fueled the Semina collaborations of Berman, Herms, Hopper, Edward Kienholz, and others, this is a group for whom the free trade of ideas and art blurs the boundaries, not just of authorship, but also of distinctions between art and the everyday.

George Herms: Xenophilia: (Love of the Unknown) embraces these tendencies. Exploring the notion of assemblage from both material and conceptual viewpoints, the exhibition displays Herms’s signature junk art of the past six decades and recent collages alongside the work of a group of much younger artists from both coasts. The presentation merges the New York School, which emerged out of the first decade of this century, with artists from a similar generation who are living and working in Herms’s hometown of Los Angeles. The opportunity to reconsider not just the centrality of Herms's role but also the spiritual and material legacy of his improvisational aesthetic is offered out of the chaos.

Norton Simon Museum Presents Vermeer's "Woman with a Lute," on Loan from the Metropolitan

2011-07-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–75), Woman with a Lute, ca. 1662–63. Oil on canvas.

PASADENA, CA.- The Norton Simon Museum presents the rare loan of Johannes Vermeer’s “Woman with a Lute,” ca. 1662–63, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One of about 36 known works by the Dutch master, five of which make their home at the Metropolitan Museum, the painting will be on view from July 8 through Sept. 26, 2011, providing audiences with the extraordinary opportunity to see a work by Vermeer on the West Coast. Its presentation at the Norton Simon Museum marks the painting’s first appearance in California.

The loan of “Woman with a Lute” comes as part of an agreement with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which borrowed the Simon’s Raphael painting “Madonna and Child with Book,” 1502–03, for the 2006 exhibition “Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece.” In return, the Norton Simon Museum was given the opportunity to host this remarkable painting.

“We are delighted to welcome Vermeer’s ‘Woman with a Lute’ to Southern California,” says Norton Simon Museum President Walter W. Timoshuk. “Vermeer’s works are housed in museums in Europe and the Northeastern United States exclusively, thus the painting’s installation at the Norton Simon Museum presents a unique and riveting art-viewing experience to our visitors.”

“Woman with a Lute” will be installed in the Norton Simon Museum’s 17th-century Dutch gallery, alongside the Museum’s significant collection of Rembrandt portraits and other genre paintings. During the three-month installation, the Museum will present a series of free public programs centered on the special loan. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The Painting
Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675) is one of the world’s most venerated artists, yet he left behind only a few dozen paintings and no drawings or prints. One of Vermeer’s beloved “Pearl Pictures,” “Woman with a Lute” evokes expectation, longing, and perhaps even mindful restraint or temperance, all in a mere 20 x 18 inches. Objects familiar to viewers of Vermeer’s work, such as the remarkable pearl drop earring that catches the sunlight, the chair with lion-headed finials, the map of Europe and the yellow jacket trimmed in ermine, are carefully and precisely staged in this quiet interior scene. There is no doubt that the musician is the focal point here, and the large map, the imposing profiles of the lions’ heads and the signature-blue curtains on the leaded window all frame her face, and especially her eyes. Vermeer’s muted tones and gauze-like shadows capture a moment where we can imagine the music stopping long enough for this young woman to tune her instrument and perhaps catch the first glimpse of the object of her desire. The sheet music and the viola da gamba in the middle foreground hint at a pending duet, as does her look of longing and desire. The map of Europe, however, studded with sailing ships, may be a subtle suggestion that her wait, and the duet itself, may be somewhat delayed.

“Woman with a Lute” was in the collection of railroad developer Collis Potter Huntington, who bequeathed it and numerous other paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His second wife, Arabella, and her son, Archer, were both given life interest in the painting, but it was passed to the Metropolitan Museum in 1925, the year after Arabella’s death. Other paintings from a collection that she herself assembled now reside at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, which was erected by Arabella’s later husband, Henry Huntington, the nephew of Collis Potter.

San Diego Museum of Art Presents Great Spanish Masters from the Pérez Simón Collection

2011-07-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

Salvador Dalí, The Ascension of Christ, 1958. Oil on canvas. Pérez Simón Collection.

SAN DIEGO, CA.- The San Diego Museum of Art is the only U.S. museum to show From El Greco to Dalí: Great Spanish Masters from the Pérez Simón Collection. This spectacular survey of Spanish art from the 16th century to the 1970s features 64 works drawn from one of the world’s finest private collections, on view from July 9 to November 6, 2011. From the golden age of Charles V and on through the modern period, this exhibition showcases such acclaimed masters of the Spanish school as El Greco, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Sorolla, Picasso, Dalí and Miró.

Spanning five centuries, this selection of works by some of the world’s most celebrated artists illustrates a splendid chapter in the history of Spanish art. Visitors to the exhibition are also invited to discover dazzling artists little-known in the U.S., such as the Romantic Manuel Barrón y Carrillo, or the Modernist Romero de Torres.

This exhibition proposes new perspectives on the story of Spanish art, considered both thematically and historically. An outstanding selection of old master paintings underscore the importance of religious piety and royal patronage from the 16th to the 18th century, including Jusepe de Ribera’s sensational Saint Jerome, Bartolomé Murillo’s sublime Immaculate Conception, and Francisco de Goya’s masterful Doña María Teresa de Vallabriga y Rozas. The struggle between tradition and modernity is considered from the late-18th to the 20th century, featuring six works by Salvador Dalí, among them his monumental Ascension of Christ, and the diptych Gala’s Christ, painted for his wife and muse in 1978. Monuments of painting, the masterpieces assembled for this exhibition are also a testament to a preeminent collector’s enduring passion.

A native of Asturias, Spain, Juan Antonio Pérez Simón has made Mexico City his home. It is also home to his collection, begun in the 1970s, which now ranks among the greatest in the world. From El Greco to Dalí: Great Spanish Masters from the Pérez Simón Collection, a choice selection from the outstanding works that comprise this stellar collection,premiered in Paris, at the Musée Jacquemart-André, before traveling to the Musée national des beaux-arts in Québec City.

Exhibition of Photographs from the Legendary Mexican Suitcase at Les Rencontres d'Arles

2011-07-06T17:24:00.000-07:00

Robert Capa, (Exiled Republicans being marched down the beach to an internment camp, Le Barcarès, France), March 1939. Negative. © International Center of Photography / Magnum. Collection International Center of Photography.

ARLES.- The legendary Mexican Suitcase containing Robert Capa’s Spanish Civil War negatives, considered lost since 1939, has recently been rediscovered and is exhibited here for the first time. The Suitcase is in fact three small boxes containing nearly 4,500 negatives, not only by Capa but also by his fellow photojournalists Chim (David Seymour) and Gerda Taro. These negatives span the course of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), through Chim’s in-depth coverage in 1936-37, Taro’s intrepid documentation until her death in battle in July 1937, and Capa’s incisive reportage until the last months of the conflict. Additionally, there are several rolls of film by Fred Stein showing mainly portraits of Taro, which after her death became inextricably linked to images of the war itself. Between 1936 and 1940, the negatives were passed from hand to hand for safekeeping, and ended up in Mexico City, where they resurfaced in 2007.

The Spanish Civil War broke out on July 19, 1936. In the broadest terms, the war was a military coup, led by General Francisco Franco and instigated to overthrow the democratically elected government of the Spanish Republic, a coalition of leftists and centrists. From its inception, the civil war aroused the passions of those who saw Franco’s actions as the front line of a rising tide of fascism across Europe, as he received material support from Germany and Italy. Many leftist intellectuals and artists were committed to the antifascist struggle, and they provided vivid images and texts in support of the Republican cause for the international press.

The Mexican Suitcase negatives constitute an extraordinary window onto the vast output of these three photographers during this period: portraits, battle sequences, and the harrowing effects of the war on civilians. While some of this work was known through vintage prints and reproductions, the Mexican Suitcase negatives, seen here as enlarged modern contact sheets, show us for the first time the order in which the images were shot, as well as images that have never been seen before. This material not only provides a uniquely rich view of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that changed the course of European history, but also demonstrates how the work of three photojournalists laid the foundation for modern war photography.

Gerda Taro, (Crowd at the gate of the morgue after the air raid, Valencia), May 1937. Negative. © International Center of Photography. Collection International Center of Photography.

Luc Tuymans

2011-06-27T00:18:00.000-07:00

Luc Tuymans Exhibits for the First Time in Spain at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Málaga

MALAGA.- “Art is not derived from art. Art derives from reality.” Tuymans’s words constitute a statement of intent and a clear explanation of the nature of his work in which he aims to evoke and insinuate but in which it is the viewer’s responsibility to fill in the gaps that have been deliberately left there and to construct his or her own narrative. Tuymans is a committed artist and his work engages with events that have marked contemporary society despite the existence of a collective desire for amnesia that aims to forget or to distort these events within the context of a society that at times seems closer to the deceptive reality presented by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.

The CAC Málaga is presenting Retratos y vegetación, the first exhibition devoted to Luc Tuymans in Spain. It comprises a selection of 16 oil paintings of different sizes that reveal the technique that has made Tuymans a key reference point for a new generation of figurative artists for whom painting is the optimum means of expression, contrary to those who still consider it a conservative one that contradicts the heterogeneous nature of contemporary art. Fluid brushstrokes (Soldier, 1999), diffused lines (The Rumour, 2001) and muted colours (Singing Flowers, 2008) are used to envelop the figures in a tense silence in the manner of a metaphor for the fog that seems to shroud historical and collective memory on occasions.

Tuymans has focused on painting in his work since the mid-1980s. However, he abandoned this medium for a period in order to focus entirely on filmmaking. That passing phase left its mark on his subsequent output, which he has meticulously created through preparatory drawings, photographs, slides, stills from films and a wide range of techniques that have functioned to enrich his compositions.

For Fernando Francés, director of the CAC Málaga: “Many people have described Tuymans’s painting as pessimistic, perhaps due to the violent, crude force behind it, which he uses as a vehicle to dissect reality in a manner devoid of grandiloquence and moralising intent. It is clear that we are in the presence of one of the figures most admired by both established artists such as Alex Katz and by younger ones for whom Tuymans is now one of the legendary names of international painting.”

In Tuymans’s paintings ideas are not explicitly revealed but rather emerge through concealed allusions and indirect references. He offers us apparently innocuous images but ones charged with intensity, as a result of which they generate disquiet and disturb the viewer. Thus behind the imperturbable gaze of the figure in Secrets (1990) lies Albert Speer, architect of the Third Reich and armaments minister under the Nazi regime. The restrained way that Tuymans depicts Speer, with his eyes closed, encourages us to find out the secrets referred to in the title. Evidence (2005) depicts the unidentified victim of a Russian serial killer. The diffused brushwork and almost unrecognisable face reveal Tuymans’s aims of insinuating rather than showing and of referring to memory. Portrait (2000) refers to the photographs of dead people that are used to announce funerals in Belgium.

Luc Tuymans (born Mortsel, Belgium, 1958) is heir to the extensive northern European pictorial tradition and Jan van Eyck is one of the artists whom he most admires. Other artists particularly esteemed by Tuymans include Velázquez, El Greco and Zurbarán and their influence is evident in many of his works. Tuymans’s paintings have been exhibited in leading museums and art centres such as the MoMA, New York, Tate Modern, London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Artwork shown: Secrets, 1990. Oil on canvas, 52×37cm; Within,
2001. Oil on Canvas, 223 x 243cm

Mayan

2011-06-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

MEXICO CITY (AP).- A small, remote-controlled camera lowered into an early Mayan tomb in southern Mexico has revealed an apparently intact funeral chamber with offerings and red-painted wall murals, researchers said Thursday.

Footage of the approximately 1,500-year-old tomb at the Palenque archaeological site showed a series of nine figures depicted in black on a vivid, blood-red background. Archaeologists say the images from one of the earliest ruler's tombs found at Palenque will shed new light on the early years of the once-great city state.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History said archaeologists have known about the tomb since 1999, but have been unable to enter it because the pyramid standing above it is unstable and breaking into the chamber could damage the murals.

It said the floor appears to be covered with detritus and it is not immediately evident in the footage if the tomb contains recognizable remains. But archaeologist Martha Cuevas said the jade and shell fragments seen on the video are "part of a funerary costume."

The chamber was found in a heavily deteriorated pyramid complex known as the Southern Acropolis, in a jungle-covered area of Palenque not far from the Temple of Inscriptions, where the tomb of a later ruler, Pakal, was found in the 1950s.

While Pakal's tomb featured a famous and heavily carved sarcophagus, no such structure is seen in the footage of the tomb released Thursday. The institute said in a statement that "it is very probable that the fragmented bones are lying directly on the stones of the floor."

But Cuevas said the discovery shed new light on early rulers, and its proximity to other burial sites suggested the tomb may be part of a funerary complex.

"All this leads us to consider that the Southern Acropolis was used as a royal necropolis during that period," Cuevas said.

Susan Gillespie, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida who was not involved in the project, said "this is an important find for Palenque and for understanding Early Classic Maya history and politics," in part because the later rulers who made the city-state larger tended to build atop their predecessors' temples and tombs, making it hard to get at them.

"Palenque was a relatively important western Maya capital in the Early Classic, but with the buildup during the time of Pakal and some of his successors, those accomplishments were buried and thus difficult to assess, buried literally by Late Classic structures atop Early Classic ones," Gillespie wrote.

The later rulers wrote almost obsessively about Palenque's history in long stone inscriptions, but Gillespie noted that "finding archaeological confirmation of the earlier kings has been extremely difficult."

The tomb's floor occupies about 5 square meters (yards), with a low, Mayan-arch roof of overlapping stones. Experts say it probably dates to between 431 and 550 A.D., and could contain the remains of K'uk' Bahlam I, the first ruler of the city-state.

The tomb's existence was revealed by a shaft found near the top of the ruined pyramid, leading downward. But it was too narrow to provide any kind of view of the chamber. In late April, researchers lowered the tiny two-inch-long camera into the tomb using the six-inch (15-cm) wide shaft.

While the general public had not seen images of the interior of the tomb, video of it was made after the chamber was detected in 1999, noted David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy.

The images had circulated among researchers and been posted on the internet, and Stuart said that some evidence suggests the tomb "is the burial of a noted female ruler of Palenque named Ix Yohl Ik'nal, based on the date and on the identities of ancestral figures painted on the walls."

"The female ruler is mentioned in a number of the historical texts of the site," Stuart wrote.

It would not be the first tomb of a female noble found at Palenque; in 1994 archaeologists found the tomb of a woman dubbed The Red Queen because of the red pigment covering her tomb. But it has never been established that she was a ruler of Palenque, and her tomb dates from a later period, between 600 and 700 A.D.

The Queen has arrived

2010-11-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

Zenyatta is now in Kentucky awaiting her Saturday race in The Breeder's Cup Classic. Never losing a race in her career, she is currently 19 for 19. Staurday is the last race of her career and I hope the racing gods help her spread wings and run a monster race on Saturday so she can win the race and retire with a perfect 20 for 20. Zenyatta is an astounding work of art - she is absolutely amazing. I saw her in person at DelMar this summer and she is more magnificent than any work of art. If you don't recognize her brilliance you are a dullard, have no soul or no clue as to what art truly is - you are but a clueless and superficial dilettante.

2010-10-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

No more bullshit.

Aunt Jane

2010-08-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Jane was found dead yesterday. She was in her seventies, had COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and emphysema. Her grandson,who had been staying with her, found her on the floor, at the foot of her bed, with her inhaler in her hand. Unlike some people who have nothing but selfish bones in their bodies, Aunt Jane had not one selfish bone in her entire body. She was one of the kindest people in the world and was always thinking of and doing for others. She was married to my mother's brother (Herbert, nicknamed "Blue", died many years ago). She was also the mother of my cousin Carla who was found dead at age 40 at the end of January of this year. My cousins Butch (actually he's Herbert II) and Todd now have to bury another family member (Aunt Jane was in the hospital in January with COPD issues when Carla was found dead and was not able to attend the funeral services) within 7 months. The services are the later part of this week.

On A Day Like Today...

2010-08-15T21:55:00.001-07:00

August 15, 1967.- René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist died today. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images.

His intended goal for his work was to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality and force viewers to become hypersensitive to their surroundings.

The Magritte Museum is the first museum dedicated to Belgian painter Rene Magritte, best known for his surrealism.

Images Shown;
The False Mirror
The Son of Man
This is Not a Pipe

I Saw Perfection Today

2010-08-07T22:03:00.001-07:00

My comments about the race to come - I'm still digesting them

(Each summer, Del Mar hires a Press Box Steward, the young guy or gal who does the nitty-gritty things to make sure the track's Media contingent has what they need in order to do their jobs. The roster of individuals who have served in that role is long and varied, ranging from racing veterans to first-time starters at the track. This year our guy is Jeff Newton, freshly graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Communications and a writing resume that includes television and on-line. He's a big sports fan, but a rookie at the racing game (though he's picking it up fast). Here's his take on an event that stirred his sporting blood -- Zenyatta's run in Saturday's Clement L. Hirsch.)

Zenyatta, the Champion,Works the Crowd Just Like One
Throngs of exuberant racing fans poured in shortly after 11:30 Saturday morning, almost seven hours before super mare Zenyatta made her way onto the track at Del Mar. The turnstiles finally stopped spinning after she had captured her third consecutive Grade I Clement Hirsch Stakes in front of 32,536 mesmerized onlookers.

Much as gallery members at a PGA event inch and elbow their way to get a good look at Tiger Woods in the flesh, Zenyatta lovers made it their mission to steal more than a quick glance at the undefeated star. On a typical San Diego afternoon, marked by sunny skies and a cool ocean breeze, the massive crowd chose to spend its day on a race that lasted 1:45:03, not even two minutes, about the time it takes to brush your teeth in the morning.

Zenyatta's fans still wouldn't have changed a thing.

The mare enjoys a type of hero worship often reserved for sporting legends like Armstrong, Phelps and Ali at every turn. At Del Mar, her supporters created a buzz similar to what you might feel just before kickoff at an NFL playoff game. Their exuberance lasted throughout the afternoon and well into the early evening, as they soaked in every piece of the scenery.

It was a landmark event for both Del Mar and Thoroughbred racing in general. Outsiders unfamiliar with the regular track scene could still sense the energy and atmosphere behind a unique, momentous occasion.

Zenyatta is loved by all, and even the veteran horsemen and beat reporters who meticulously follow the mare's daily activities are among her biggest supporters.

Want to see a blue collar, grizzled, "all that is man" trainer or clocker go weak at the knees? Ask them to describe Zenyatta's influence and see how many superlatives they can string together. Keep a mental count of the "amazings," "incredibles" and "spectaculars" these lifers toss around without a hint of sarcasm. Better yet, intermittently check your watch to chronicle how their brief statements evolve into 10 minute monologues.

As crazy as it may sound, Zenyatta's superb qualities (see, the hyperboles have a way of catching on) justify all the heartfelt compliments.

She's the type of horse you build a meet around, let alone a day or a week. Whether she's galloping, trotting or posturing in the paddock, Zenyatta carries herself with pitch perfect grace, athleticism and personality. Her "it factor" immediately comes across to race rats and first-time patrons alike. The gazes and whispers aren't lost on Zenyatta. She senses her profound impact and relishes every second as a crowd pleaser.

Her confidence is easily detectable and you quickly grasp that she doesn't accept failure or embarrassment.

That's how I knew the Hirsch was over the moment Zenyatta crossed into the paddock at about 6:15. On a day that essentially became an ode to her remarkable career, what with the posters, T-shirts and pint glass giveaways with her face emblazoned across the surface, the great performer refused to let her audience down.

She went off at 1-9, but the tote board could have easily read 1-100 as she strutted towards the starting gate.

You don't know what this horse means until the show begins and the Zenyatta army kicks into full gear. Spectators go between 15 and 20 deep all the way down the stretch, with at least one small child perched atop their dad's shoulders every five feet or so.

The diva enters to a frenzy of screams and shouts that seem both genuine and spontaneous. You won't find any "Damn Yankees" mentality, where a few bad apples root against a proven winner just to appear edgy.No, Del Mar only had eyes for Zenyatta.

The rest of the pre-race festivities played out like a hall-of-fame induction ceremony, where the infield video monitor revisited some of Zenyatta's greatest performances as track announcer Trevor Denman articulately gushed over the prized animal.

While jockey Mike Smith and his wonderful ride weren't alone on the track, the other five jockeys and horses were little more than background props. Not to worry, though, they were too busy smiling along with everyone else. You almost forgot there was a race after all the hoopla.

Once the gates finally swung open, Zenyatta made winning by a neck look downright simple. (My note - Zenyatta had to go 4 wide in the race so, if you make all things equal when it comes to distance, she actually won by 6 1/2 lengths rather than a neck. This kid who wrote this article still has a lot to learn about horse racing)Although she didn't leave her competition in the dust , Zenyatta skillfully balanced a relaxed attitude with her fiery competitive streak. Smith kept Jerry and Ann Moss' wonder horse in the right spots and, like she always does, the golden girl passed a game Rinterval through the final furlong. Zenyatta wasn't on cruise control; it just appeared she was. Besides, she had to save her energy for the victory lap.

Over the top doesn't begin to describe the mare's salute to the fans, where the smiles, hugs and howls reach a wild crescendo. It's an adrenaline rush you can't even fathom. And that's where Zenyatta's true impact becomes perfectly clear.

Thoroughbred racing needs Zenyatta as an undefeated poster child. Tracks make their mark on big tickets nowadays, and they don't come any bigger than the Mosses' "miracle horse." Her presence brought some much needed romance to the sport of horse racing. Allowance races and maiden claimers have their place, sure, but it takes a winner like Zenyatta to capture the public's attention.

Her supporters, her peers and the game she dominates so consistently are all personally invested in the mare's success. She's a legend in her own right, a special talent worth the cost of admission and a full afternoon at the races.

Zenyatta's an easy sell and everything you'd ever want in a world class performer. She came to Del Mar with a sea of fans and left the track with the racing community wrapped around her hoof. She personifies all that is right in the sport.

Zenyatta led us all on a spectacular ride at Del Mar; Mike Smith just had the best seat.

14 Hands of Love on 17 Hands of Power

2010-08-06T21:29:00.001-07:00

Jerry Moss, the show business star maker, business executive, member of the California Horse Racing Board, racehorse owner and breeder, and longtime racing fan, has seen his green and pink silks fly for the past four years on one of the most electrifying horses in the history of Thoroughbred sport, the undefeated champion Zenyatta.

This Saturday the massive mare -- who stands better than 17 hands and weighs more than 1,200 pounds -- will try for her 18th consecutive victory when she runs in Del Mar's Grade I, $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes, a race she has won the past two years.

Almost two months ago -- on June 9, 2010 to be exact -- Moss sat in his Beverly Hills office and spoke about his once-in-a-lifetime horse and what it means to him and others to have her be part of their lives. He spoke about her 'retirement,' and the subsequent process to return her to racing. The conversation took place just four days before Zenyatta would add a 17th victory to her ledger with a thrilling run through the Hollywood Park stretch to capture the Vanity Handicap.

Q -- You've talked about the "magic" of owning a horse; especially a horse like Zenyatta. You've said you wish you could share that "magic" with others. Can you? Can you speak to what it means to have Zenyatta in your life?

Moss -- "She is perfection in a very important way. She didn't just happen to show up in the barn and then all of a sudden start winning all these races all in a row; it took a tremendous effort by a great group of people headed by (trainer) John Shirreffs. There are 14 different people that touch her every day*. It is quite amazing. And they're all just great to her and they all deserve a large part of this.
(*Stable manager Dottie Ingordo provided the list of 14 people who touch Zenyatta each day and it appears at the end of this piece.)

"I think it's everyone's dream that if people do their part, then you get brilliance from all that. You know, that if people work together something incredible happens and it is magic. It's sort of a harmonic convergence, if you will ... where everyone's working in the same direction and everyone gets a reward for being touched by this magnificent animal. So we're thrilled to be a part of it. I mean I've felt this happen sometimes in the record business where the campaign is just incredible, but yet the music is so touching and people reach out for it and it inspires so many people. So I'm used to having those other forces, if you will, inspire a willing audience. And this is what Zenyatta means to me -- she's been a great symbol for that.

"And to win 16 races is not an easy thing; every different track we ran on -- every different track has its conditions, everybody we ran against has their talent and, as you know, on any given day a horse can not have a great day. But she gets so much room from John -- room to improve, room to not, perhaps, do her best work on a certain day. But nothing is serious around her; everybody is having a good time with her, there's no nervousness, and there's no pressure. And it's up to her to do this performance, as long as she's having fun we'll continue doing this. She is one professional racehorse; she steps up, it seems, whenever she should.

"For me, it's a meaning of life in a way. People working together to make something great happen."

Q -- What was the decision process for you? She ran her magnificent race in the Breeders' Cup; she reached the mountaintop. And you said, 'OK, guys, that's it, we're going to shut it down.' But then, there was a change.

Moss -- "Well, I made an emotional decision because I was so taken by that race. I said, my god, how can I ask her to do anything else? And, of course, I didn't get a chance to talk to my wife about that; I didn't get a chance to talk to my trainer; I didn't talk to my racing manager (Dottie Ingordo, who also is married to John Shirreffs) -- who were a bit grumpy with me at the end of this thing, saying: 'We're Team Zenyatta and you made a decision.' Well, I said I feel strongly about that because what else can we ask her to do? And they all agreed with me on that -- what else can we ask her to do? She won an historic race in an historic fashion. Trevor Denman said it was the greatest race he's ever seen and he's called like 60,000 of them, or seen 60,000 of them.

================================================================

Zenyatta: A Maker Of Memories To Cherish For All Time

Do you remember where you were when ... ???

It's always been a popular pastime for Americans in recalling momentous occasions, and in Thoroughbred racing where wagering is a major factor, jockey Mike Smith is betting he can place thousands, maybe millions, where they were and what they were doing on Saturday, November 7, 2009.

That's when Zenyatta, who seeks her 18th consecutive victory in Saturday's Clement L. Hirsch Stakes and third straight in the race, wrote history by becoming the first female to win the Breeders' Cup Classic. The thousands at Santa Anita that day and, doubtless, the millions watching on television surely would testify to Smith's belief.

Remembering how the Santa Anita crowd responded to the majestic Zenyatta, Smith could only say, "I think people realized that they had just seen something that they will never forget." And he counts himself among them, though he was involved far more than any other fan, being up close and personal as Zenyatta's rider.

"I've never seen a crowd react to a horse like that," Smith continued. "When I rode Holy Bull, the crowds -- especially those in Florida -- were impressed, but I've never seen a whole crowd stand on its feet like that for what seemed like 20 minutes. It just went on and on, and I started looking at the crowd and there were people crying [for joy]."

Looking back over his 14 races as regular jockey of the two-time Eclipse Award champion older female, Smith recalled that she wasn't always the picture of the perfect lady. "When we started," he said, "she was still pretty nervous and she didn't know exactly what was going on. But she was a quick study and it didn't take her long to figure it out.

"Not only did she figure it out," he continued, "she took it to levels I had never seen before. It's become a big show to her. Every time she gets ready to run, she plays, she strikes a pose, she does a dance, and sometimes stands up and towers over the field.

"You can almost imagine her saying, 'This place is mine,'" said the ebullient Smith.

"It's just amazing how she grew into this," he added. "If she was a country music star, she could be Entertainer of the Year."

Her special dance that charms paddock fans began to develop, Smith recalls, shortly after his second time aboard, at the same time Team Zenyatta, headed by trainer John Shirreffs, chose not to put her through normal pre-race warm-ups. Instead, she was allowed to just do what made her feel best, hence the dance -- basically, a strut that features a head bob and legs thrust forward in the manner of a Russian dancer.

"She used to get a little hot when she'd warm up," Smith remembers. "So we just walked her and that's when she decided she'd just do this dance. Then when she realized the people liked it, she just started doing it more. She's really just a ham at heart."

That doesn't mean she's not focused on her job -- to win races. When she reaches the gate, Smith says, she's all business -- but in a laid-back way. "She just settles down and waits for the gate to open. Then she watches them go out and goes out behind them."

As for getting home first, Smith said, "It's like she knows where the wire is anymore. She makes it a little closer than we all like sometimes. But I think we're the only ones that are worried.

"She's definitely a gift from God. She makes you think that if God wanted to get into this game, he would send her. She's not from here."

Zenyatta's presence has reached far and wide, conjuring wonderful visions of her other-worldly being, not the least of which was produced rhapsodically by free-lance writer Ellen Parker following Zenyatta's record-setting 17th consecutive victory in Hollywood Park's Grade I Vanity Handicap.

Here's her take on the majestic mare: "Zenyatta's dramatic charge in the Vanity brought to mind the words of respected journalist Kent Hollingsworth, who once wrote of 1971 European Horse of the Year Mill Reef: 'His races were not marked by sudden acceleration, just with relentless, increasing power.'

"Great horses have much in common. They stir the spirit of crowds ... They energize a sport ..."
=================================

Zenyatta and Sailing - Part Deux

2010-08-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

Thoughts to come

Following is her mind blowing 2009 Breeder's Cup Classic

Zenyatta and Sailing - Part Une

2010-08-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know, there are no images of Zenyatta - but I'll get to that in a minute.

I received a really cool invite this morning to go sailing Thursday and Friday afternoon. And I.A.M.G.O.I.N.G.!!! I used to sail a lot when I was younger but I haven't done so in years and years and years and (well, you get the picture...). I absolutely love being out by or in the water as I was the complete water baby growing up. There is such a peacefulness and joy that comes over me when I'm with the water - whether it's looking at waves as they do their healing ebb and flow, swimming and getting into the rhythmic sync of my stroke and the water's response or sailing on her waters as she welcomes with her zen-ness.

So, come Thursday and Friday afternoon this lass will be getting her Zen on with the water whilst sailing for two afternoons of nirvana. Oh, and the part about Zenyatta? Well, she is shipping down from Inglewood to Del Mar tomorrow and will be schooled Thursday and Friday morning to see if she likes DelMar's Polytrack in determination of whether or not she'll race in Saturday's Hirsch Stakes. So, I'm going to go out to the track both mornings and watch The Lady, The Queen, run just to run and then go sailing both afternoons. What an absolutely delightful two days to come!

Above is a very cool video with Christopher Cross' "Sailing". If you've never had the chance to sail on board the tall ships and you get the chance, do it - they are magnificent. Also, lyrically, the song sums up my feelings about sailing and being on the water. In any event, enjoy the video and tomorrow I'll have some video to get you charged up about Zenyatta.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

2010-08-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

This film will be screening in San Diego on September 10th and I can't wait to see the documentary. The documentary is based on footage not seen in 20 years and, from all reviews, it's fabulous and provides insight into this oft misunderstood artist. If you ever seen the film Basquiat this new piece should serve as a wonderful bookend. Anyway, I've already marked my calendar for the 10th.

Elvis May Have Left The Building But His Piano Hasn't - It's Just Looking For Someone With a Cool Million +

2010-07-31T02:38:00.000-07:00

MEMPHIS, TN.- Elvis Presley's beloved White Knabe Grand Piano, as featured in his music room at Graceland from 1957 to 1969, is expected to bring $1,000,000+ as the centerpiece of Heritage Auctions' Signature® Elvis Memorabilia Auction, Aug. 14, in Memphis, TN.

“This elegant musical instrument, so well-loved and played by Elvis, is presented with wonderful provenance back to the 1930s,” said Doug Norwine, Director of Music & Entertainment Auctions at Heritage, “not to mention that it was an emotionally-charged prized possession of the King himself.”

The Knabe piano, besides being owned by Elvis for more than a decade, is a storied set of keys that occupied the position as the house piano in Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, TN from the early 1930s through 1957, when Elvis himself bought it and had it refurbished in white. Not only is it an instrument that Elvis loved to play in his own home, it is also the very piano played by his favorite gospel performers at revivals that Elvis attended as a boy, during which, as an enthralled member of the audience, he surely must have dreamed of his own future stardom.

“During the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, the stage at Ellis Auditorium was graced by the greatest local and national touring musical acts of the period including W. C. Handy, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and certainly many, many others,” said Norwine. “In 1957, this Knabe grand piano was sold during a remodeling project at the Ellis. He could have afforded any piano on the planet, but when Elvis heard this one was for sale, he didn’t hesitate.”

The piano is the emotional centerpiece of an auction that features a number of truly spectacular pieces of Elvis memorabilia, more than 270 in all, that reads like nothing less than a Pop Culture survey of the mid-Twentieth Century, when Elvis was ubiquitous and easily one of the greatest stars on the planet.

Among these important pieces, it is hard to imagine one that had a greater impact on the direction of both Pop Culture and Rock and Roll than Elvis’ legendary 1955 original personal services contract with RCA Records, signed at Sun Records on Nov. 21 by Elvis, his father, Colonel Tom Parker and an RCA Executive. It is estimated at $150,000+.

“This was the deal that led to the transformation of a 20 year-old Memphis boy from a popular Southern act recording on the regional Sun Records label,” said Norwine, “into an international superstar with the full power of the large and prestigious RCA label behind him. This astonishing document is considered by many to be the most desirable, important, and valuable recording contract ever signed. There is not an Elvis fan anywhere that is not familiar with this document; there is not an Elvis fan anywhere that wouldn't want to add it to his or her collection.”

There can be almost no mention made of The King without mentioning his famous Memphis mansion Graceland, and this auction features a key piece of Graceland memorabilia: the Elvis Presley and parents signed Graceland Sales Contract, a three-page real estate purchase agreement for Graceland, dated March 26, 1957. It carries an estimate of $35,000+.

Another one of the truly premier lots of the auction, and certainly the most personal, is an Elvis handwritten and signed four-page letter written to his then-girlfriend Anita Wood in 1958, just after Elvis entered the army, estimated at $75,000+.

“This letter was penned just six weeks after Private Presley arrived in Germany,” said Norwine. “Elvis reveals himself to be more the typical lonely soldier missing his girlfriend back home than the nation's number one entertainment attraction.”

When Elvis wrote he usually kept it short, rarely using more than one page. This is not only one of the longest letters by Elvis known to exist, it is also among the most emotional. The complete text of this fascinating letter is found in Elvis - Word for Word (Osborne Enterprises, 1999), but only the actual handwritten letter can convey the heartfelt outpouring of raw emotion that Anita Wood read as Christmas approached in 1958: "It sure is going to be a blue Christmas this year. But in 15 short months it'll be over and as General MacArthur said, 'I shall return.'"

The 1976 Triumph TR-6 Convertible that Elvis gifted to Ginger Alden, his main lady at the time of his death, is included in the auction, looks as fresh today as it did when Elvis presented it to Alden, and is estimated at $70,000+. A pair Elvis' custom gold-framed sunglasses, made in West Germany by Neostyle, with tinted lenses and 14k gold "TCB" lightning bolt logos at the temples, customized for Presley by his personal optician, Dennis Roberts, during the early 1970s, is expected to bring $20,000+, while Elvis’ .22 Harrington & Richardson Revolver, purchased by him at Tiny's Gun Shop in Palm Springs, CA, serial number 466218, is estimated at $8,000+, and Elvis’ personal address/phone book dating from the mid-‘50s to the early ‘60s – something Elvis kept close to him at all times, loaded with the address and phone number of many big Hollywood stars, plus personal notes (want to know what kind of cigars Colonel Tom Parker preferred?) – is estimated at $3,500+.

Further highlights include, but are not limited to:

Elvis' Opal Ring (Lowell Hays, 1970s): Quite possibly the most beautiful personal effect of Elvis offered in the auction. This stunning opal ring was one of Elvis' favorites, sold to him by famed Memphis jeweler Lowell Hays in the 1970s. The impressive opal is approximately 24 x 20 mm and is surrounded by 34 full cut diamonds with a total weight of 1.45 carats. The ring is 14k gold, with the top an antique broach that's been soldered to the shank. Estimate: $50,000+.

Elvis Presley's Cherub Lamps from His Beverly Hills Home: This striking pair of lamps was imported from Italy by Elvis to add just the right touch to his bedroom suite in Beverly Hills, California. The lamps' bases are gold-painted cherubs holding floral vines leading into four-bulb candelabras. Estimate: $35,000+.

Stay Away Joe - Special Location Radio Program LP (1967): All evidence indicates RCA needed only one copy of this LP -- and made only one copy. That makes it the most sought-after, most valuable Elvis record on the planet. It was made for a one-time broadcast by only one radio station -- KVIO, a Cottonwood, Arizona station that served the Sedona area (where Stay Away, Joe was filmed). Estimate: $30,000+.

Elvis Worn Belt with Photos and Rare Interview Acetate (circa 1956): Elvis must have loved this slim-style belt a lot, as he's wearing it in a lot of photos. The belt appears to be a custom-made item, with no size or any other markings. Included are eight photo prints of Elvis, five prominently featuring the belt (two in color), plus a 1978 issue of Parade Magazine with vintage photos of Elvis (one wearing the belt), and a laminated page from the St. Petersburg Times for Sunday, September 16, 1956, with a photo of Carmelita DeGormar being presented with the belt as winner of a radio contest. Included with the belt is a 12" acetate recording featuring a five-plus minute interview with Elvis that was also presented to Miss DeGormar, as shown in the photo. Estimate: $20,000+.

Elvis Presley's Show Jumpsuit by Nudie Cohn: This pink jumpsuit with hand-sewn jewels and rhinestones was custom-made for Elvis by legendary tailor Nudie Cohn. A rare and fantastic piece of Presleyana. Accompanied by a letter of authenticity from Nudie Cohn. Estimate: $8,000+.

Elvis Presley's Loving You Slacks: This pair of maroon Western-style slacks with white piping was a back-up pair made by legendary tailor Nudie Cohn for Elvis during production of his second feature film (and his first Technicolor appearance) in 1957. Nudie's personal label is sewn onto the waistband, and a second Nudie label with Presley's name and a Paramount studio stamp are on the outside lining of one of the back pockets. Estimate: $4,000+.

Images Shown:
Elvis Presley's white grand piano which is going up for auction in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, on 14 August 2010, expected to fetch more than 1 million dollars (767,000 Euros) auctioneers have said. The white Knabe piano was owned and played by Presley for a decade. The singer bought it in 1957 from the Ellis auditorium in Memphis where it had been played by visiting gospel performers for more than 20 years. The piano was placed in Graceland's music room until 1969.

Let's Hope The Lady Comes to Town - I've Already Bought My Tickets Just in Case...

2010-07-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A decision on whether Zenyatta will start in the $300,000 Clement Hirsch Stakes at Del Mar on Aug. 7 will be made before entries are due on Wednesday, and indications are that the undefeated two-time champion will start in that Grade 1 race.

Friday at Hollywood Park, Zenyatta worked six furlongs in 1:13.60 under jockey Mike Smith, a workout designed to have her ready for the Clement Hirsch, which is run over 1 1/16 miles. Furthermore, trainer John Shirreffs said there are few other races in the near future that are suitable for Zenyatta’s 18th career start.

“My only influence is that we want to run her a couple of times in preparation for the Breeders’ Cup,” Shirreffs said after the workout. “The options aren’t that many.”

Shirreffs said the decision on whether Zenyatta will start will be made in consultation with owners Jerry and Ann Moss. Jerry Moss attended Friday’s workout at Hollywood Park.

Shirreffs said that how his horses perform on the Del Mar Polytrack in the next few days will influence whether Zenyatta runs in the Hirsch. On Sunday, Shirreffs starts Breakmark in a maiden claimer and Scenic Blast in the Grade 1 Bing Crosby Stakes.

“Everybody has to feel good about it,” Shirreffs said of running Zenyatta in the Hirsch.

Shirreffs said the Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 29 is not being considered for Zenyatta, but that the $350,000 Beldame Stakes at Belmont Park on Oct. 2 is a “possibility.” Zenyatta has not started since she won the Grade 1 Vanity Handicap at Hollywood Park on June 13.

If Zenyatta starts in the Clement Hirsch, she will spend the first half of the week training at Hollywood Park, where she is based year-round, and be sent to Del Mar most likely on Wednesday. “I’ll take her down as late as I possibly can,” Shirreffs said. “I would want to school her one day.”

Zenyatta has won the last two runnings of the Clement Hirsch and appears to be approaching the race this year in peak form. Friday, she worked in company with Galayo, a 4-year-old maiden half-brother to 2005 Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo and the 2007 Santa Anita Derby winner Tiago. Galayo has not started since December 2008.

When the workout began, Zenyatta was in front for a few strides, but was quickly passed by Galayo, who led by four lengths on the turn. Zenyatta caught her stablemate in early stretch, drawing off to finish about six lengths in front. Sherriffs timed Zenyatta galloping out seven furlongs in 1:27.19. Galayo was timed in 1:15.40.

“I thought that was a really good work,” Shirreffs said. “She does it so easily. She was really relaxed today.”

-steve anderson-

Ohio's Butler Museum to Host Exhibition by Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood

2010-07-28T16:38:00.001-07:00

YOUNGSTOWN,OHIO - The Butler Institute of American Art, The Butler Institute of American Art, located at 524 Wick Avenue in Youngstown, will present Ronnie Wood: Paintings, Drawings and Prints beginning September 21st, 2010. This exhibition, accompanied by a full-color catalogue, will continue through November 21st.

Ronnie Wood is both a musician and an artist. His work as singer, guitarist and songwriter with The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and The Faces is well-known. Lesser-known is his ability as a visual artist. Wood has been painting and drawing since age twelve, even longer than he has been playing guitar. According to Butler Director, Dr. Louis Zona, “Ronnie Wood is a most accomplished painter whose work demonstrates a wonderful knowledge of the medium, outstanding technical abilities and an extraordinarily creative mind. The Butler is honored to host the artist’s first major American museum exhibition to showcase this remarkable talent.”

Ronnie Wood was born in Middlesex, England, and is from a musical and artistic family. Before beginning his musical career, he received formal art training at Ealing College of Art in London. As his musical career progressed, Wood continued painting and drawing. Throughout his dual-career he has also depicted the musicians with whom he plays, documented his world tours, and portrayed his recording sessions in vibrant action portraits. He also uses family and close friends, as well as the landscape, as subjects in his art work.

Over the years Wood’s work has been widely exhibited. In 1996, he had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has had numerous solo shows in North and South America, in the Far East, and throughout Europe. Included in this Ronnie Wood exhibition, the first to be held at a US museum of art, are 30 paintings, 22 pen/pencil drawings, and 7 mixed media works. The show was organized by the Butler with assistance from Daniel Crosby and Danny Stern (SPS Lime Light Agency, Los Angeles and San Francisco) and Bernard Pratt (Pratt Studios, London),

The exhibition catalogue writers are Butler Director and Chief Curator Dr. Louis A. Zona, and David Shirey, Dean of the Graduate Program at Manhattan’s the School of Visual Arts, and former art critic for The New York Times. This exhibition by a well-known British artist is presented as a part of the Butler’s ongoing Influence on America Program, which features exhibitions of work by historic and contemporary artists who have been inspired by or whose work has been informed by American art.

Negatives Verified by Team of Experts as Ansel Adams' Work

2010-07-27T21:58:00.001-07:00

A trove of old glass negatives bought at a garage sale for $45 have been authenticated as the lost work of famed nature photographer Ansel Adams and are worth at least $200 million, an attorney for the owner said Tuesday.

A team of experts concluded after an exhaustive, six-month examination that the 65 negatives are Adams' early work, which were believed to have been destroyed in a 1937 fire at his Yosemite National Park studio, Arnold Peter said.

"These photographs are really the missing link," he said. "They really fill the void in Ansel Adams' early career."

Adams is best known for his striking black-and-white photographs, mainly landscapes, of the American West. He died in 1984 at 82.

Rick Norsigian, a construction worker and painter, said he bought the negatives 10 years ago at a Fresno garage sale after bargaining down the seller to $45.

"When I heard that $200 million (figure), I got a little weak," he told a news conference.

Norsigian said he bought the negatives because they contained views of Yosemite but never suspected they might be from Adams, whose images of the Sierra Nevada national park are world famous.

"It took a while, close to two years," before his suspicions were aroused, Norsigian said.

He stored the negatives in a bank vault and hired Peter three years ago to authenticate them.

Peter said two handwriting experts concluded that writing on manila envelopes holding the negatives was that of Adams' wife, Virginia.

He also said a meteorologist studied the cloud formation, snowdrift and shadows on one image and compared it with a similar photograph by Adams, concluding they were taken at the same location on the same day.

The 8½-by-6½-inch negatives are the size that Adams used in the 1920s and 1930s when the photographs appear to have been taken, Peter said, and they are of locations he was known to have snapped, including Yosemite, Carmel and San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf and Baker Beach.

Adams' early negatives were believed to have been lost in the 1937 fire and several of the garage sale negatives appeared to be charred around the edges, Peter said.
Experts surmise they survived the fire and Adams brought them with him when he went to Pasadena in 1941 to teach photography, Peter said.

Norsigian said the man who sold him the negatives said he bought them in the 1940s from a salvage warehouse in Los Angeles.

Art appraiser David W. Streets said he conservatively estimated the negatives' value at $200 million, based on current sales of Adams' prints and the potential for selling reproductions.

Norsigian said he tried to contact the original purchaser after learning of the negatives' true value but has had no success.

"This has been such a long journey. I thought I'd never get to the end," Norsigian said. "It kind of proves a construction worker-painter can be right."

An exhibition of 17 of the photographs is planned for October at Fresno State University, and a documentary is planned on the negatives' sale and authentication, Peter said.

Image Shown:
Rick Norsigian holds up a photograph made from a glass negative shot by the late photographer Ansel Adams during a news conference in Beverly Hills, on Tuesday July 27,2010. A lawyer says the trove of old glass negatives found in a garage sale for 45 dollars by Norsigian a painter from Fresno, Calif. has been authenticated as the work of photographer Ansel Adams and are worth at least $200 million. AP Photo/Nick Ut.

On a Day Like Today, The First Stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct was Laid

2010-07-25T21:17:00.001-07:00

July 25, 1795.- The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is a navigable aqueduct that carries the Llangollen Canal over the valley of the River Dee, between the villages of Trevor and Froncysyllte, in Wrexham in north east Wales. Completed in 1805, it is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain, a Grade I Listed Building and a World Heritage Site. The name is in the Welsh Language and means junction or link bridge. For most of its existence it was known as Pont y Cysyllte ("Bridge of the Junction").

2010-07-24T01:47:00.001-07:00

Now, that's some cold whiskey!

2010-07-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

A crate of Scotch whisky that has been frozen in Antarctic ice for more than a century is being slowly thawed by New Zealand museum officials — for analysis, not to be tasted.

The crate of whisky was recovered earlier this year — along with four other crates containing whisky and brandy — beneath the floor of a hut built by British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during his 1908 Antarctic expedition.

Four of the crates were left in the ice, but one labeled Mackinlay's whisky was brought to the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island, where officials said Wednesday it was being thawed in a controlled environment.

Nigel Watson, executive director of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, said the whisky might still be liquid.

"When the guys were lifting it, they reported the sound of sloshing and there was a smell of whisky in the freezer, so it is all boding pretty well," he said.

An Antarctic Heritage Trust team that was restoring the explorer's hut found the crates in 2006 but couldn't immediately dislodge them because they were too deeply embedded in the ice.

Drinks group Whyte & Mackay, the Scottish distillery that now owns the Mackinlay's brand, launched the bid to recover the whisky for samples to test and potentially use to relaunch the defunct Scotch.

Watson said the whisky may still be drinkable but would probably not be tasted.

"This was a blend so they are hopeful if there is enough alcohol left and it is in good condition they may be able to analyze and hopefully replicate the liquid so in fact everyone could partake in this," he said.

"It has been put on ice for 100 years so I don't think it is too unromantic a suggestion. The reality is that it is very limited quantities and our focus is on the conservation and not the drinking."

Shackleton's expedition ran short of supplies on its long ski trek to the South Pole from the northern Antarctic coast in 1907-1909 and turned back about 100 miles (160 kilometers) short of its goal.

The expedition sailed away in 1909 as winter ice formed, leaving behind supplies — including the whisky and brandy.

Yea and Hurray!!! The Turf is Meeting the Surf - Del Mar Live Meet Started Yesterday and Will Continue Through September 8th

2010-07-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

The City by the Bay

2010-07-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

I had a f.a.b.u.l.o.u.s trip to San Francisco last weekend. I flew up early afternoon Friday and stayed until Sunday late. Monday was a blur because by the time I returned home and went to bed it was practically time to get up for class. If I could have I would've cancelled class and stayed in bed for more sleep. However, this is the last week of the summer session so alas (and alack) I couldn't "play hooky". Anyway,what a f.a.b.u.l.o.u.s trip! The weather was considerably cooler which was a blessing in itself. Visited college friends who have been living in Russian Hill for the last few years since inheriting property and who had invited me a while back to come see the current exhibitions at the deYoung and MOMA. I do so enjoy San Fransisco and seeing Ella and Stefan and go when I can (not as often as I'd like as this is my first and, in all probability, only trip this year) and this trip date was planned to coincide with reservations at The French Laundry (which take, on average, a couple of months to procure). Some of the same places are always on the "to-do" list but, since my trips up north are so so infrequent, we always try to go somewhere new each time I visit. The deYoung is always on the list as is the Japanese tea garden. Didn't have time for Chinatown,Fisherman's Wharf or City Lights Bookstore this trip because but the time we got back to the city (see TFL below), went to the Japanese tea garden and had a early dinner it was time to head to the airport. The "new" experience this trip was dining at The French Laundry. Oh.My.God!!! What an over-the-moon experience TFL was - the food was almost as good as an orgasm. Then again, 'twas a culinary orgasm so... . The French Laundry was, without a doubt, the finest dining experience I have ever had in my entire life. Astronomical prices so it was fortunate that the eve was "comped" by monied parents. Just unbelievable! And because it takes a long while to truly savor a 9-course meal and there were quite a bit of "adult beverages" consumed we stayed the night in Yountville (where TFL is located). Just an overall amazing weekend. Images shown were not taken by me.

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at the deYoung.

Calder to Warhol:Introducing the Fisher Collection
at MOMA

The French Laundry

Japanese Tea Garden

Images Shown:
San Francisco Cable Car
deYoung Art Museum
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The French Laundry
Japanese Tea Garden

Hmmm.....

2010-07-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

Wonder if this would help recalcitrant student brains get the message that this summer session wasn't an online course and that they can't submit the entire 6 weeks worth of assignments on the last day of class. Yes, there are three more days, counting today, of summer session and some slacker/slackerettes in class are still lobbying for turning in the entire 6 weeks of assigned work on the last day of class. Or maybe it would help me since it says it cures headaches and they're certainly giving me one with all of their whining.

Summer Session Student Sniveling

2010-07-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Next week is the last week of the 6-week summer session I've been teaching. Students who, for the last 5 weeks, have been slackers and not submitted ANY work (but haven't had any absences so they couldn't be dropped) are suddenly serious about the class. For the past 2 days I've been barraged with emails and in-person excuses as to why they've not submitted work and why I should let them submit an entire semester's worth of work this weekend and next week. Mind you, these are students who took spots in the class that could have been given to others that actually care about their education. With all the budget cuts that have resulted in class cuts (we had to reduce summer offerings by 50 percent and there were over 4,000 students on waitlists for the summer session) it is more than frustrating to have a student take a spot in the class and then proceed to not participate in said class. I am so glad I'm turning off the computer (and, by extension, student email reading) and flying to San Francisco in a few hours for 2 1/2 days in "the city by the bay". In any event, the art piece above reflects what my brain has been hearing.

Image Shown:
Blah, Blah, Blah, Mel Bochner, 2010, oil on velvet, 63 x 57 x 1.8 inches

Happy Bastille Day!

2010-07-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

Images Shown:
Claude Monet - Rue Montorgueil, Paris
Veuve Clicquot for celebratory toasting of Bastille Day
Eiffel Tower Fireworks Celebrating Bastille Day

First Comprehensive U.S. Museum Survey of Dennis Hopper Opens at MOCA

2010-07-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Dennis Hopper Double Standard, the first comprehensive survey exhibition of Dennis Hopper’s artistic career to be mounted by a North American museum, July 11 through September 26, 2010, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Best known for his work in film, Hopper produced an oeuvre of remarkable breadth that blurs the boundaries between art, film, and popular culture. The exhibition will trace the evolution of Hopper’s artistic output and feature more than 200 works spanning his prolific 60-year career in a range of media, including an early painting from 1955; photographs, sculpture, and assemblages from the 1960s; paintings from the 1980s and ’90s; graffiti-inspired wall constructions and large-scale billboard paintings from the 2000s; his most recent sculptures; and film installations. The title of the exhibition is taken from Hopper’s iconic 1961 photograph of the two Standard Oil signs seen through an automobile windshield at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, and North Doheny Drive on historic Route 66 in Los Angeles. The image was reproduced on the invitation for Ed Ruscha’s second solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery in 1964. Dennis Hopper Double Standard is curated by Julian Schnabel, whose work has been inspired by Hopper’s fusion of art and film.

“Dennis Hopper’s work has been a springboard for the work of many artists and filmmakers of a younger generation,” comments MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch. “His fusion of artistic media has become an inspiration for the new artistic generation who often draw on performance and film as well as painting, sculpture, and photography in the creation of their work.”

Julian Schnabel calls Hopper, “a painter without a brush,” articulating a visual statement that is “beyond language.” Schnabel speaks about how Hopper “made film into art,” and describes how he “takes the viewer on a high risk journey with him, working without a safety net.”

Hopper prefigured the union of art, life, and popular culture that characterizes much of the art of the 21st century. He was a creative connector, introducing and collaborating with artists, actors, writers, and musicians for nearly six decades. His works made in the 1960s capture the quintessential pop imagery that symbolizes Los Angeles during that time. “L.A was Pop,” Hopper recalled, talking about that period, “L.A. was the billboards. L.A. was the automobile culture. L.A. was the movie stars and L.A. was the whole idea of what ‘Pop’ was about.” Ahead of his time in bringing the art of the street into the gallery, Hopper’s work also constructs a dialogue between abstract expressionist painting and graffiti and gang signs from Los Angeles street culture.

Dennis Hopper Double Standard assembles key selections and bodies of work examining the artist’s creative development with a focus on artworks made between 1961 and present day, as many of Hopper’s earlier paintings were destroyed in his studio by the 1961 Bel Air fire. The exhibition will be organized in several sections reflecting the cyclical and serial nature of the artist’s work. The layout will bring together various groupings of work emphasizing Hopper’s interest in Duchampian appropriation of common objects and the dialogue between pop and progressive culture. It will also highlight the ways in which Hopper has utilized a range of styles—from abstraction, the ready-made, and pop art to conceptual and performance art—to further his investigation into the “return to the real.”

The first portion of the exhibition will include a comprehensive selection of sculpture and assemblages as well as photographs documenting the progressive, changing culture of the time and the pop-art scene in both Los Angeles and New York from the 1960s. The second section will feature a series of paintings from the 1980s and ’90s inspired by graffiti-covered walls and the urban Los Angeles landscape. This segment also incorporates Hopper’s set-like wall constructions. Hopper’s monumental billboard paintings from the 2000s, which borrow images from his earlier life and work, and more recent series of abstract landscape photographs will also be included in the exhibition. In the final section, a series of film installations highlighting Hopper’s career as a director and actor will be presented.

Fred Hoffman, who has a long association with Dennis Hopper, is the curatorial consultant for Dennis Hopper Double Standard. The museum thanks Tony Shafrazi and Tony Shafrazi Gallery for their dedicated collaboration in realizing the exhibition.

For nearly six decades, Dennis Hopper (b. 1936, Dodge City, Kansas; d. 2010, Los Angeles) was at the center of the Los Angeles creative community. He had a prolific career working in film, photography, as a painter, and as a sculptor. He directed numerous films including Easy Rider (1969), The Last Movie (1971), and Colors (1988), and acted in many more including Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Apocalypse Now (1979), Blue Velvet (1986), Speed (1994), and Basquiat (1996).

Hopper has been celebrated in monographic and group exhibitions around the world including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; MAK Vienna: Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and most recently the Cinémathèque Française, Paris, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne.

An Intimate Look Into the Most Controversial Band in Rock History

2010-07-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

To coincide with the theatrical release of When You're Strange, Idea Generation Gallery has an intimate look into one of the most controversial rock bands in music history.

The Doors: When You’re Strange showcases one of the most contentious rock bands to exist. The exhibition will offer an intimate account of The Doors from their rise to fame to their breakthrough on the music scene in 1965.

The Doors’ arrival not only marked a string of hit singles but was the start of a new counterculture scene in the 1960’s.The exhibition will reveal intimate portraits of Jim Morrison and how he became one of the most charismatic lead singers with The Doors becoming one of the most controversial rock bands to exist. After Morrison’s death in 1971, The Doors disbanded, with their active career finishing shortly after his death, but their popularity persisted selling over 75 million albums worldwide.

To celebrate the success of the band, in conjunction with Morrison Hotel Gallery, Idea Generation Gallery will showcase the photography of Henry Diltz, Joel Brodsky, Bobby Klein and Ken Regan, who all documented the bands time together. Alongside their most celebrated works, When You’re Strange brings together the lesser known archives and previously unseen contact sheets of photography taken over the decade the band were together. Both Diltz and Brodsky captured The Doors at their most private moments at home and on tour and this exhibition provides one of the most comprehensive and intimate views into their exclusive world.

Although The Doors’ active career ended in 1973, their popularity persisted, selling over 75 million albums worldwide. In 1991 Oliver Stone added to this popularity by directing The Doors, a highly successful biopic of Jim Morrison’s colourful life.

Photographers Include:

Henry Diltz
A founding member of the Modern folk Quartet, Diltz captured intimate photography of bands on tour. Considered as a visual historian of the last four decades of popular music his shots convey a rare feeling of trust and intimacy with his subjects.

For Diltz, his pictures began with a $20 second – hand Japanese camera purchased on tour with the Modern Folk Quartet. When they disbanded, Diltz embarked on his photographic career with the album cover for The Lovin’ Spoonful. Despite his lack of formal training, Diltz submerged himself in the world of music.

For over 40 years his work has featured on many album covers, books, magazines and newspapers. His style has produced powerful photographic essays of Woodstock, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. He continues an established career, generating new and vibrant photographs being a partner in, and exclusively published and represented by The Morrison Hotel Gallery.

Joel Brodsky
Responsible for shaping the iconography of the psychedelic era, capturing landmark acts including The Doors.

Despite having a keen interest in photography as a teen, he graduated to serve in the US Army. As a favour to a friend Brodsky agreed to shoot the cover of Eric Andersen’s sophomore Vanguard release “ Bout Changes and Things”, quickly emerging as the label’s go to photographer. Electra Records signed The Doors and Brodsky was assigned to shoot the photos for their forthcoming debut LP. While his group photography was outstanding including the image that became the band’s first advertising Billboard, it was his solo shots of frontman Jim Morrison that proved the most iconic. The session in which he captured “Young Lions” photos would later become the enduring cult following and mass merchandising that mushroomed around the singer in the wake of his 1971 death.

Bobby Klein
Bobby Klein entered the field of visual arts, as a teenager, in the early 1960’s when he was a co-producer of numerous live ‘dance party’ television shows being broadcast from Los Angeles. During that time he purchased his first camera and shot pictures around Los Angeles. His long time love affair with the camera began in this way. He put together a book of his photos and made the rounds of the record companies he had visited when he was a personal manager for a number of musical personalities of the day.

He became the west coast photographer for Colombia (CS) records and other smaller labels. He was the Doors and Jim Morrison’s first professionally hired photographer and went on to photograph music and film personalities including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Dennis Hopper, classical composer Igor Stravinsky and, the then stand-up comedian, Steve Martin.

His photographs of the Doors and Morrison are still published in many books about the history of Rock and Roll.

Bobby Klein presently lives in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles where he practices as an intuitive psychotherapist and spiritual teacher. He is also working on a documentary of his photographic work through the late 60’s and 70’s.

Ken Regan
Born and raised in the Bronx, Ken Regan studied journalism at Columbia and attended New York University’s Film School. Initially forging a career photographing major sporting events, Ken went on to work as a photojournalist covering many topical issues including the riots and demonstrations in the United States surrounding the Vietnam War, and was in the Persian Gulf and Bosnia.

Changing paths once again, Ken covered many political assignments and worked exclusively with the Kennedy family, photographing everything from campaigns and conventions to annual family gatherings.

The mid 70s saw Ken touring with some of the most renowned musicians in Rock N Roll history including Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones also covering Amnesty International and Live Aid.

By the late Eighties, Ken had over 200 magazine covers to his credit, as well as numerous awards from the Missouri School of Journalism and World Press Photo to the New York Newspaper Guild.

Princeton Museum Announces Gauguin Woodblock Prints Exhibition

2010-07-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

The Princeton University Art Museum will launch its fall 2010 season with an exhibition it is originating, Gauguin's Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints (September 25, 2010—January 2, 2011), the first comprehensive look at this pivotal woodcut series.

Gauguin's Paradise Remembered posits a new way of understanding a key body of work within the artist's career, and by extension a new way of understanding this vital post-Impressionist artist. The exhibition presents 32 works that concentrate on the pivotal series of 10 revolutionary woodcuts produced by Paul Gauguin (1848—1903) in Paris during the winter and spring of 1894, following his first voyage to Tahiti, where he hoped to live simply and draw inspiration from what he saw as the island's exotic native culture. Although the artist was disappointed by the rapidly Westernizing community he encountered, his works from this period nonetheless celebrate the myth of an untainted Polynesian idyll. Gauguin had originally intended his woodcuts to be illustrations for a manuscript he had written in the form of a largely fictionalized journal entitled Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent). Based on his idealized experiences in the South Seas, the book traced his self-styled transformation from a civilized European into one deeply immersed in the ancient spiritual life of Oceania. Self-consciously primitive in style, printed and colored by hand, Gauguin's Noa Noa woodcuts crystallize important themes and compositions from his Tahitian works, enjoying a widespread notoriety in Gauguin's lifetime and surviving today as both his printmaking masterpiece and as one of the most innovative print series produced in the 19th century.

In Gauguin's time, the Noa Noa woodcuts were celebrated as a true combination of printmaking, drawing and sculpture. Gauguin's Paradise Remembered explores the full range of inventive techniques of these prints through a selection of works from a number of prestigious American museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jointly organized by Calvin Brown, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, and Alastair Wright, university lecturer in the history of art at St. John's College, Oxford, the exhibition was inspired by the Art Museum's recent purchase of an early proof of L'Univers est créé (The Universe Is Created), one of the most enigmatic of the Noa Noa woodcuts. Central to the exhibition are an investigation of Gauguin's artistic process, a rare presentation of all 10 Noa Noa woodcuts, as printed and hand colored by Gauguin, and a broader contextualization of Gauguin's work that reveals how the artist's experimental printmaking became central to his unique artistic vision. Gauguin's Paradise Remembered addresses both the artist's representation of Tahiti in the woodcut medium and the impact these evocative works had on his artistic practice, to illustrate how the woodcut form offered Gauguin the ideal medium to depict a paradise whose real attraction lay in its remaining always unattainable, never quite within reach.

Images Shown:
Eve ("The Nightmare"), 1899–1900. Recto: Traced monotype transfer drawing in black printer's ink, ochre ink, and liquid solvent on cream wove paper, 64.2 x 48.9 cm.

Auti te pape (Women at the River) from the Noa Noa suite, 1894. Woodcut printed from one block in orange and black, respectively, over yellow, pink, orange, blue, and green on laminated cream Japanese paper, sheet trimmed to block: 20.3 x 35.3 cm.

Happy Birthday America!!!

2010-07-04T01:57:00.000-07:00

Klee at SFMOMA

2010-07-01T07:51:00.001-07:00

From August 7, 2010, through January 16, 2011, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will showcase the exhibition Prints by Paul Klee (1946). Organized by John Zarobell, SFMOMA assistant curator, collections, exhibitions, and commissions, the exhibition features 21 works.

SFMOMA has had a longstanding commitment to the art of Paul Klee over its 75-year history. This exhibition re-creates a show of prints by the Swiss-born modernist held at the museum in 1946. At that time, Klee's work was little known outside of Europe; the exhibition was perceived as highly original, and the works seem no less fresh or innovative more than six decades later. The prints demonstrate how Klee, like many German Expressionist artists of the early 20th century, experimented with etching, drypoint, and lithography techniques in order to advance his exploration of pictorial symbolism.

Klee (1879–1940), born in Münchenbuchsee, just north of Bern, Switzerland's capital, grew up in a musical family and was himself a violinist. Ultimately he opted to study art and in 1900 trained with neoclassicist Franz von Stuck at the Munich Academy, where he first met painter Vasily Kandinsky. As was standard academic practice, his training included anatomy lessons and life drawing from the nude; he later spent seven months touring Italy, where he was exposed to early Christian and Byzantine art. In 1906 he married pianist Lili Stumpf and settled in Munich, then an important center for avant-garde art; their only child, Felix, was born there the following year. Klee's friendship with Kandinsky prompted him to join Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), an expressionist group pivotal to the development of abstract art. Later, at the invitation of founder Walter Gropius, Klee taught at the esteemed Bauhaus from 1920 to 1931; in 1931 he accepted a position at the Dusseldorf Academy, but was soon dismissed by the Nazis, who included 17 of his works in their infamous exhibition of "degenerate art," Entartete Kunst, in 1937. After a move to Switzerland in 1933, Klee developed the crippling collagen disease scleroderma, marked by a pathological thickening and hardening of the skin; he died from its complications in 1940.

Images Shown:

A Spirit Serves a Small Breakfast, Angel Brings the Desired, 1920; lithograph with watercolor.

Der Verliebte (Man in Love), 1923; print; color lithograph, 10 13/16 x 7 1/2 inches

How I Feel...

2010-06-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

My body feels like the surfer's in the image above. For over 3 weeks I've had major calf cramps - you know the kind that wakes you out of a dead sleep and feels like the cramped area and pain is going to literally kill you. Every single day, for over 3 weeks, cramps 24/7. I've tried everything - hot packs, cold packs, rubbing the calf and leg, raising up and down on my toes, muscle lubricant, muscle relaxants, pain pills, bananas for potassium, all to no avail. I'm still residing in MAJOR PainLand and feel like I'm dying - I just want the pain to go away. Some commiseration would be nice. I may not know what a torn ACL feels like (well, actually I do) or passing a stone, as in kidney, feels like (hmm, again, yes I do) or a gall bladder attack (damn, again, been there- done that- had the bugger surgically removed), what a groin injury or a blinding migraine may feel like I can still be humane and human enough to offer commiseration and compassion. Whilst resolution of this malady that convinces me death would be a sweet relief from the pain may not be available it would be amazing to have some reassurance through love, commiseration and compassion that the rest of my days won't be filled with crushing, crippling, incapacitating, all-encompassing pain (either that or surgical extraction but since I'm grown accustomed to and am fond of having my limbs that's not an option).

Getty Museum Explores the Tradition of Socially Concerned Reportage

2010-06-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

In the decades following World War II, an independently minded and critically engaged form of photography began to gather momentum. Situated between journalism and art, its practitioners created extended photographic essays that delved deeply into topics of social concern and presented distinct personal visions of the world. On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, June 29 – November 14, 2010, Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties looks in depth at projects by a selection of the most vital photographers who have contributed to the development of this documentary approach. Passionately committed to their subjects, these photographers have captured both meditative and searing images, from the deep south in the civil rights era to the war in Iraq in 2006. Their powerful visual reports, often published extensively as books, explore aspects of life that are sometimes difficult and troubling but are worthy of attention.

“This exhibition focuses on the tradition of socially engaged photographic essays since the 1960s,” explains Brett Abbott, associate curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. “Working beyond traditional media outlets, these photographers have authored evocative bodies of work that transcend the realm of traditional photojournalism.”

Engaged Observers is structured around suites of photographs from the following projects: “Girl Culture” by Lauren Greenfield, “The Mennonites” by Larry Towell, “Streetwise” by Mary Ellen Mark, “Black in White America” by Leonard Freed, “Nicaragua, June 1978-July 1979” by Susan Meiselas, “Vietnam Inc.” by Philip Jones Griffiths, “The Sacrifice” by James Nachtwey, “Migrations: Humanity in Transition” by Sebastião Salgado, and “Minamata” by W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith.

Although one does not always associate style with photojournalism, where objectivity and neutrality are traditionally valued, aesthetics have been an important consideration for all of the photographers represented in the exhibition. One of the strengths of this tradition has been its ability to harness artistic decisions in reporting on the world. Meiselas chose color film for her Nicaragua project because she felt it better conveyed the spirit of the revolution as she experienced it. Salgado noted that the solemn beauty so characteristic of his approach is important in conjuring a persistent grace among his migrant subjects, allowing him to present them in a dignified way while calling attention to their plight. Nachtwey used tight framing of messy conglomerations of tubes, instruments, and arms in The Sacrifice as a way of conjuring the atmosphere of controlled chaos that he experienced in trauma centers in Iraq. In this kind of work, subject and style, message and delivery, are deliberately intertwined.

All of the photographers in this exhibition use a series of images to address conceptual issues. For instance, Freed was concerned with bridging cultural divides to engender support of basic civil rights, while Griffiths denounced violent commercialization; Salgado pointed to the effects of globalization, while the Smiths addressed the related issue of industrial pollution; Meiselas engaged and countered the fragmented process by which we receive news and understand history, while Towell challenged the meaning of “newsworthy” and explored, as did Greenfield, how cultural values affect life; Nachtwey found the human toll of war unacceptable, and Mark, the idea of homeless street kids in one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

Many of the photographers have published books to further convey their socially engaged messages. Books allow for a greater depth of reporting than magazine articles since their length can be tailored to the needs of a particular project. And because they can be read in private, books are conducive to extended contemplation and the slow absorption of ideas, both of which are important to understanding projects that are broad in scope and have layers of meaning that, in many cases, were developed over the course of years. Moreover, they provide photographers authorial control over the presentation of their work. Each artist has the ability to decide how pictures are captioned and with what information.

A final section of the exhibition is devoted to tracing the origins of the documentary photography tradition, touching on American Civil War photographs by Alexander Gardner, turn-of-the-century activism by Lewis Hine, Depression-era photography, and photojournalism in pre-World War II picture magazines. This section also looks closely at the formation of Magnum Photos. Founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Besson, and several other photographers, Magnum provided a new platform for an independent documentary approach to photojournalism and became one of the world’s most prestigious photographic organizations. Magnum was structured to allow its members to pursue stories of their own choosing, spend as much time as they wanted on a particular topic, and be as involved as they desired in the editing, captioning, and publication of their work. The organization was meant to harness commercial assignments as a base from which to pursue independent work, and the concept has given rise to generations of independent photographers, including many of those in Engaged Observers.

Image Shown:
Leonard Freed, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1965. Gelatin silver print, 34.8 x 26.1 cm

LACMA Presents John Baldessari

2010-06-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, the most extensive retrospective to date of Los Angeles-based artist John Baldessari (b. 1931), on view June 27 to September 12, 2010.

Organized by LACMA in association with Tate Modern, the exhibition will bring together more than 150 works and examine the principal concerns of Baldessari, who is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today. LACMA’s presentation will be the only West Coast showing and feature the greatest number of works of any venue on the show’s major international tour.

“Pure Beauty will be a revelation to many, even those who are familiar with Baldessari, as it features many of the artist’s lesser-known works,” says Leslie Jones, LACMA associate curator of prints and drawings. “The exhibition will explore Baldessari’s lifelong interest in language and mass media culture, which seems increasingly relevant—-even imperative-—in an era of information and image proliferation.”

Based in Los Angeles since 1970, Baldessari is one of the most influential artists of his generation. His text and image paintings from the mid-1960s are widely recognized as among the earliest examples of conceptual art, while his 1980s photo compositions derived from film stills rank as pivotal to the development of appropriation art and other practices that address the social and cultural impact of mass culture. His continuing interest in language, both written and visual, has been at the forefront of both his work and teaching, through which, for more than thirty years, he has nurtured and influenced succeeding generations of artists, including David Salle, Cindy Sherman, and Barbara Kruger among others.

With humor and irony, Baldessari dissects the ideas underlying artistic practice and questions the historically accepted rules of how to make art. The combination of photography, painting, and references to film has become one of the key elements in his work.

Beginning with his little-known paintings from the early 1960s, the exhibition features the landmark photo and text works from 1966-68, photocompositions derived from films stills of the 1980s, irregularly shaped and over-painted works of the 1990s, as well as video and artist books. The show concludes with his most recent work, which includes a special multimedia installation conceived for the retrospective.

In the 1960s, Baldessari notably painted statements derived from contemporary art theory and instructional manuals onto canvas. These early major works, such as Wrong (1966–68, LACMA) and Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell (1966–68), will be on view.

In 1970 Baldessari cremated nearly all the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966. Cremation Project was both a public renunciation of painting and the beginning of Baldessari’s more documentary, hands-off approach to art making, in which he used photography and video to record acts and events. His strategies embraced chance and accident, and included gameplaying, as in Choosing (A Game for Two Players): Carrots (1971), or seemingly pointless tasks, as in The Artist Hitting Various Objects with a Golf Club (1972–73). During the ‘70s, Baldessari also began to use cinematic tools of the script and storyboard as means to restructure conventional notions of narrative.

Beginning in the early 1980s, cinematic references become even more apparent with the artist’s use of found film stills that he cropped and enlarged to create photo-compositions. Abandoning the standard rectangular canvas or photographic format, Baldessari constructs irregularly shaped compositions from film stills, creating provocative juxtapositions. According to the artist: “I think of the images that I use as units, like words might be units, and I construct similarly to a good poet, where I’m trying to get a certain kind of syntax, a certain explosion, a meaning when these units collage, building up an architecture of meaning, so to speak.”

Baldessari’s work of the past two decades has continued to explore the relationship between imagery and language, as in the Goya Series (1997), as well as the social and cultural impact of mass media imagery, through his ongoing use of altered film stills and other photographic imagery.

Recently the artist has added dimension to his works, employing raised and recessed surfaces, as well as more color, which enhances the allusion to painting. Of particular note is Brain-Cloud (2009)—made specially for the exhibition—a multimedia installation involving photography, cast sculpture, and video that occupies an entire gallery and concludes the show.

John Baldessari: Pure Beauty is curated by Leslie Jones, associate curator of prints and drawings, LACMA, and Jessica Morgan, curator of contemporary art, Tate Modern, and assisted by Kerryn Greenberg, assistant curator, Tate Modern. Prior to LACMA’s presentation, the exhibition was on view at Tate Modern (October 13, 2009–January 20, 2010) and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (February 11–April 25, 2010). Following its showing at LACMA, Pure Beauty will conclude its tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (October 20, 2010–January 9, 2011). The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with essays by major writers, curators, art historians, and former students of Baldessari.

Born in National City, California, in 1931, John Baldessari is undoubtedly one of the most influential artists of our time. His long-term exploration of language and image coupled with his inquisitive approach to art-making has expanded the parameters of what we consider art.

In 1966 he began taking photos in a working class suburb of his hometown, National City. The pictures were intentionally non-spectacular and mundane. As an antithesis to Pop art, Baldessari adopted an anti-heroic attitude by documenting ingenious actions instead of monumentalising his subjects. The photos were enlarged and transferred onto canvas, and then commercial sign painters painted equally prosaic texts identifying each site. These photo and text pieces created new meanings and tensions between images and words and marked a pivotal turning point in Baldessari's artistic trajectory.

He later went one step further by dropping imagery all together from his canvases, leaving only texts appropriated from varied sources, which he sometimes manipulated. 'I sought to use language not as a visual element but something to read. That is, a notebook entry about painting could replace the painting... I was attempting to make something that didn't emanate art signals.' The concept of authorship was further addressed in the Commissioned Paintings (1969) series in which Baldessari hired amateur artists to produce paintings of photographs of a hand pointing at something ordinary. The inspiration for the series came from a criticism that said that Conceptual art was nothing more than pointing.

Teaching has always been a significant and integral part of Baldessari's life. In 1970 he was offered a position at the renowned California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) where he taught alongside influential contemporaries such as John Cage and Nam June Paik. Being exposed to their work and their respective mediums, music and video, made a significant impression on Baldessari. Music brought about the notion of temporality, which is reflected in his work through the use of multiple photos in a time sequence manner, as in Artist Hitting Various Objects with Golf Club (1972–73). With the introduction of the Sony Portapak, Baldessari naturally experimented with the new medium. Initially made for his students, such videos as I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) and I Am Making Art (1971) have become some of the artist's most iconic video pieces.

Having moved to Los Angeles, the proximity of Hollywood also found its way into Baldessari's work. He adopted the work processes of the film-making industry as themes in works such as Story with 24 Versions (1974) and Scenario: Story Board (1972–73) where plots are sketched out scene by scene. Baldessari also appropriated imagery from film stills, which he found in local shops and meticulously categorised by content for inspiration and use in his works. Simultaneously, the pieces he created began to take on a larger scale, using the photographs as building blocks to suggest narratives. In Kiss/Panic (1984) there is a provocative juxtaposition of a couple kissing, with a seemingly chaotic crowd scene below, surrounded by photos of pointing guns.

By the mid-1980s coloured dots began appearing on the faces of the characters in the found photographs. Baldessari discovered that obliterating the face gave even more anonymity to the subjects and therefore forced the viewer to focus on other aspects of the image to make sense of the scene. Bloody Sundae (1987) consists of two distinct scenes with the subjects composed in the form of an ice-cream dessert. On top, two men attack a third beside a stack of paintings, while beneath them a couple lounge decadently on a bed. All five faces are covered with coloured circles. The violence of the upper image coupled with the suggestive title, hints at a pending raid on the couple's room.

In later works the signature coloured dots usurp the rest of the person, flattening the image and creating an abstraction of the human form. The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building/Person on Ledge of Tall Building/Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building (2003) has three such figures in compromising situations; however the filled-in silhouettes somehow attribute humour to what would be a dangerous scene.

Baldessari revisits his ongoing interests in the parts of the body that identify visual sensitivity in the series Noses and Ears (2006–7) and Arms and Legs (2007–8), in which these parts are isolated while other details of the body and environment are coloured in or omitted, leaving viewers the bare minimum to interpret the work. In his most recent series Furrowed Eyebrows and Raised Foreheads (2009), the artist continues his exploration of human expression through fragmentations.

“Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection” at SFMOMA

2010-06-25T17:08:00.001-07:00

The first public presentation of the celebrated Fisher Collection, one of the world's foremostprivate collections of contemporary art, will be presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from June 25 through September 19, 2010. SFMOMA recently announced an unprecedented partnership with Doris and the late Donald Fisher, founders of the Gap, to provide a home at the museum for their outstanding collection of more than 1,100 works, most of which have never been displayed publicly. This sweeping exhibition, entitled Calder to Warhol: Introducing The Fisher Collection, will offer an extraordinary preview of the depth, breadth, and quality of the Fisher holdings, with iconic works by Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Sam Francis, Philip Guston, Anselm Kiefer, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Wayne Thiebaud, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and many others. It will also serve as the centerpiece of SFMOMA's yearlong 75th anniversary celebration and exhibition series in 2010, entitled 75 Years of Looking Forward.

Organized by Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA, Calder to Warhol: Introducing The Fisher Collection will provide a window into the vast collection assembled by the Fishers over more than four decades. The entire fourth and fifth floors of the museum, including the Rooftop Garden, will showcase approximately 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, and video—a distillation of the Fisher Collection that aims to reveal not only its scope but also its core attributes. The collection is particularly distinguished for its concentration of works by Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Philip Guston, Ellsworth Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol. Unlike most private collections, it includes extensive groupings of seminal pieces by these 20th-century masters and traces their creative evolution through entire bodies of work.

"At this momentous time in SFMOMA's history, we are not only celebrating 75 years of accomplishments and innovation, we're also looking forward to a new era of growth and community service that will be greatly enhanced by the museum's presentation of these outstanding works of art from the Fisher Collection," said SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra. "Our collaboration with the Fisher family will give visitors access to some of the finest modern and contemporary masterpieces, placing SFMOMA among the greatest museums for contemporary art and elevating the cultural profile of the city as a whole. As the first unveiling of Doris and Don's incredible gift to the city of San Francisco, this exhibition will introduce the public to an incomparable group of iconic works that will inspire and educate generations of visitors in the years to come."

"Since the 1980s, the Fishers have helped shape San Francisco into a national center for forward-thinking art collecting," says Garrels. "It is an honor to tell the personal story of their collection through this tremendous body of art, which was assembled with love and determination over more than 40 years. I'm thrilled to see how this work complements SFMOMA's own holdings."

The exhibition will be organized in sections, alternating concentrations of works from a single artist and groupings of works by others with shared perspectives. The presentation will also lend insight to the Fishers' collecting methodology, emphasizing the collection's unifying threads: its richness in American abstract art, its strengths in contemporary German painting and photography, its deep concentrations of work by the artists they most admired, and a marked commitment to representing, whenever possible, the growth of each artist's work over time with key examples from every phase of their careers. This exhibition will be the first to convey these affinities and correspondences.

In the fifth-floor galleries, the presentation explores in-depth holdings of five artists in particular—Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, and Richard Serra, with large galleries devoted to numerous works by each. The Overlook Gallery will be devoted to minimalist art with works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd.

Half of the fourth-floor galleries will highlight the collection's esteemed holdings of abstract art, beginning with gestural paintings by Sam Francis, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell. Early sculptures by Mark di Suvero and John Chamberlain will serve as counterpoints. Single galleries will be devoted to the paintings of Agnes Martin, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly, as well as the later works of Philip Guston. Other galleries here will include paintings by Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Brice Marden, Robert Therrien, and sculptures by Martin Puryear.

The other half of the fourth floor will center on Pop and figurative art. Major groupings of Pop works by Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg will share a large gallery. Emphasizing a particular strength of the collection, two galleries feature the early and late paintings of Andy Warhol, with iconic pieces such as Triple Elvis (1962) and Silver Marlon (1963), and key works from the artist's Most Wanted Men series and later self-portraits.

In addition, two galleries will be dedicated to the work of Chuck Close, showcasing four of the artist's monumental portraits of other artists. Figurative works by David Hockney and Wayne Thiebaud will be shown together, as will groupings of photo-based works by John Baldessari, Sophie Calle, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, and Jeff Wall. Paintings by Richard Artschwager will be juxtaposed with Sigmar Polke, while the media arts galleries will present video installations by William Kentridge and Shirin Neshat. A final gallery features the paintings of Georg Baselitz, whose work the Fishers collected with great passion.

In the first completely new installation since the opening of SFMOMA's Rooftop Garden in May 2009, the outdoor space will display the Fisher Collection's strengths in large-scale sculpture, with works by Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, Beverly Pepper, and Isamu Noguchi. Key pieces by British artists Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Barry Flanagan, Antony Gormley, and Richard Long will also be on view.

In conjunction with the exhibition, SFMOMA will publish a richly illustrated catalogue presenting highlights from the Fisher Collection. The book will also include an introductory essay by Gary Garrels and excerpts from a 2006 interview in which Don and Doris discuss their collection with Neal Benezra.

Upon completing an expansion of SFMOMA's facilities, the Fisher Collection will be presented in a dedicated new wing and will also be interwoven with works from SFMOMA's modern and contemporary holdings, enhancing SFMOMA's capacity to develop exhibitions and public programs in all areas of its collections—painting and sculpture, photography, architecture and design, and media arts.

Doris and Donald Fisher Collection
The Fishers started collecting art more than 40 years ago, aided early on only by Doris Fisher's college roommate, Peggy Walker, and their keen instincts. Their very first purchases included prints—often acquiring whole suites—which were used to furnish the walls of an office building for Gap, the retail company they cofounded in 1969. Soon, their passion grew and they began adding paintings, sculpture, drawings, photographs, and other media. The Fishers have never hired a curator or broker to procure pieces for their collection; rather, they prefer the excitement of discovering each piece themselves.

During the last four decades, the Fishers amassed a museum-quality collection. It includes more than 1,100 works by 185 artists created from 1928 to the present. The collection features work by American and European masters from movements including Pop art, figurative Art, Minimalism, abstraction, conceptualism, Photorealism, and Color-field painting.

The Fishers collected work in depth by significant artists with the aim of representing the entire span of their careers. The collection includes concentrations of work by Alexander Calder (45 works), Ellsworth Kelly (41 works), Roy Lichtenstein (24 works), Chuck Close (23 works), Gerhard Richter (23 works), Andy Warhol (21 works), Anselm Kiefer (16 works), Richard Serra (14 works), and Agnes Martin (11 works), to name a few.

Doris and Don Fisher
Don Fisher, who passed away in September of 2009, was one of SFMOMA's most ardent and generous supporters. He was a member of the SFMOMA Board of Trustees from 1983 to 2009 and served on several Board committees, most recently as Secretary/Treasurer. Doris Fisher has served for many years on SFMOMA's Education Committee. At the National Gallery in Washington D.C., she is a member of the Trustee Council and has served as co-chair of the Collector's Committee for ten years.

Images Shown (please note that some pieces may not be included with this exhibition):
Alexander Calder; Double Gong, 1953; painted metal and brass; 60 x 132 inches
Alexander Calder; Eighteen Numbered Black;1953; painted metal and brass; 110 by 140 by 110 inches
Dan Flavin;
Dan Flavin;
Gerhard Richter; Seestücke (Seascape), 1998; oil on canvas; 114 1/8 x 114 1/8 inches
Sam Francis; Middle Blue III, 1959; oil on canvas; 72 x 96 inches
Andy Warhol; Nine Multicolored Marilyns (Reversal Series), 1976-1986; acrylic and silkscreen on canvas; 54 x 41 3/8 inches
Gerhard Richter; Janus, 1983; oil on canvas; 98 1/2 x 118 1/4 inches
Phillip Guston; As It Goes, 1978; oil on canvas; 76 x 102 inches
Roy Lichtenstein; Reflections: Whaam!, 1990
Georg Baselitz; Akt Elke 2 (Nude Elke 2), 1976; oil on canvas;78 3/4 x 63 3/4 inches
Georg Baselitz; Male Nude (Self-Portrait),1973/74; oil on canvas; 78 3/4 x 66 9/16 inches
Anselm Keifer;
Ed Ruscha, Hollywood-is-a-Verb,1983; Dry pigment on paper, 29 x 23"Georg Baselitz; George Baselitz; Volk Ding Zero (Folk Art Zero), 2009; bronze patinated, oil; 119.3 x 46.1 x 47.2 inches
Tony Cragg; Bent of Mind,
Ed Ruscha; Standard Station,1966; Print, Screenprint, Sheet: 26 1/4 x 40 1/4 inches
Isamu Noguchi;

Most significant collection of René Magritte letters to appear at auction in over 20 years sells for over $218,000

2010-06-23T21:47:00.001-07:00

Last Friday, Sotheby's New York sold the most significant group of Magritte correspondence to appear at auction in more than 20 years for the sum of $218,500 (£147,356), against a pre-sale estimate of $200,000-400,000. The collection was acquired by an American institution.

The cache of over forty highly important letters and postcards from Surrealist master René Magritte to poet Paul Colinet forms an extraordinary record of the artist’s creative process in addition to revealing the literary and artistic influences on his work during the most productive period of his career. Complete with whimsical drawings and sketches, many of which are variations on the artist’s well-known canvases. No other significant group of Magritte letters has appeared on the market since Sotheby’s 1987 sale in London, where the group was offered in an auction of artifacts from the artist’s studio consigned by his widow.

Senior Specialist in Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department, Marsha Malinowski, said: “We are extremely pleased with the price that this historically significant group of letters achieved today and we are particularly thrilled that this highly important correspondence was acquired by an American institution, where it will be preserved for future generations to enjoy.”

In 1933, Magritte met the Belgian Surrealist poet Paul Colinet, and the two became close friends rapidly. At the time, Magritte’s personal connections with Surrealism were strained – he had left Paris in disgust and returned home to Brussels – although ironically his artwork remained clearly Surrealist in style. The collection of letters cover a wide range of topics – artistic, literary and surreal – and reveals a remarkable influence Colinet wielded on Magritte and his oeuvre. A peek inside the mind of the Surrealist genius is presented by a letter in which Magritte digressed on the significance of the number 9 and his prose becomes a bit surreal: “vous avez déjà remarqué que le chiffre 18 compose de 1 et de 8, soit 1 + 8 =9 . . . le chiffre 9, multiplié par lui-même donc 81, soit 8 = 1 = 9 . . .”

Sale Update:
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles announced it has acquired an important group of letters and postcards from the Belgian surrealist René Magritte.

The group of over forty autograph letters and postcards to the Belgian Surrealist poet Paul Colinet documents Magritte’s life and career from 1934, about the time the two Surrealists met, to 1957, when Colinet passed away. They number about fifty pages, and also include a telegram, a typescript copy of a letter, and eight letters and postcards from Colinet, all contained in a brown morocco binder.

The correspondence was auctioned at Sotheby’s on June 18 by a collector who acquired the group of letters in London in 1987, following the death of Georgette Magritte, the artist’s widow. They have been in the collector’s possession in the United States since then.

The collection of letters adds to the already impressive archival holdings on Magritte at the GRI, to be found in correspondence with Guy Rosey, Noël Arnaud, and Marcel Lecomte, and the papers of E.L.T. Mesens and James Thrall Soby, among others. Together, these holdings offer a valuable glimpse of Magritte within the context of both his personal life and career and Surrealism’s spread into Belgium and beyond. This is especially true because although the famed artist was an unusually voluble correspondent with a large number of artists, writers, collectors, and dealers, his correspondence and papers are dispersed, with significant material in Belgium and at the Menil Collection, and smaller quantities of letters at Yale, the Ransom Center, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Until their acquisition by the GRI, the Colinet letters appeared to be one of the last remaining intact caches of Magritte letters that remained both unpublished and not yet placed with a public institution.

“This addition will be sure to stimulate renewed attention to the Magritte letters at the GRI as a research resource for studies of not only Magritte, but also Surrealism, in which the GRI has particularly strong holdings, and in aesthetics more broadly,” said GRI director Thomas Gaehtgens. “Already, the theorist Thierry de Duve, having become familiar with the letters to Marcel Lecomte during his time here as a Getty Scholar, has written an essay on a most extraordinary illustrated example, in which the artist elaborately presents his understanding of Edouard Manet's famous Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).”

The GRI has a particularly strong collection of artists’ original letters, many of which have not been published. “Even when correspondence has been transcribed in publications, it’s important to have the originals in order to view their formats, the paper, and adjacencies of text and image,” said GRI chief curator Marcia Reed. “About a quarter of these letters are illustrated with small vignettes by Magritte, and they’re quite legible, reminiscent of his paintings, such as The Treachery of Images (1929), in which he places the image of a pipe with the caption ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe.’ [‘This is not a pipe.’]”

René Magritte
The artist who, arguably more than any other, embodies visual Surrealism in the popular imagination was born René-François Ghislain Magritte on Nov. 21, 1898, in Lessines, Belgium. In the fall of 1916, he enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, but also began working as a commercial artist, an endeavor that intermittently afforded him financial stability for the next few decades. By 1920, Magritte had made contact with Marinetti and the Futurists, and become fully involved in the Belgian avant-garde.

In 1922, he married Georgette Berger, and the following year he saw a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Le chant d’amour (1914), which triggered Magritte’s shift away from Cubism, though his first full-blown Surrealist paintings do not appear before 1925.

Together with E. L. T. Mesens, Marcel Lecomte, Paul Nougé, and a few others, Magritte was one of the key members of Belgian Surrealism, which distinguished itself from the Parisian group by its more social, less doctrinaire, character.

Magritte’s first one-person show took place in 1927, and he would go on to countless other solo and group exhibitions. Among the most prominent from his lifetime are perhaps his first show with Alexander Iolas (who became his lifelong dealer) in 1947; “Word vs. Image,” an exhibition of his early Surrealist word paintings at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1954; and retrospectives of his work at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, in 1954; and at MoMA, New York, in 1965, organized by James Thrall Soby. More recently, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)’s Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images, which featured illustrated letters from the GRI Special Collections, has encouraged a reconsideration of Magritte's legacy by highlighting his importance to later artists.

Lennon sells for $1.2 Million

2010-06-21T22:15:00.001-07:00

John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to the final song on the classic Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" were purchased by an American collector on Friday, June 18th for $1.2 million.

The winning bid for "A Day in the Life" was placed by phone at Sotheby's New York auction house, which declined to identify the collector further.

The price exceeded the pre-sale estimate of $500,000 and $800,000.

The double-sided sheet of paper features Lennon's edits and corrections in his own hand — in black felt marker and blue ball point pen, with a few annotations in red ink.

Rolling Stone magazine listed "A Day in the Life" at No. 26 in its compilation of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and "Sgt. Pepper" won four Grammy awards in 1968.

The lyrics, which begin with "I read the news today, oh boy," stirred controversy when the Beatles released the album in 1967. The song was banned by the BBC because it twice features the line, "I'd love to turn you on," which was interpreted as supporting illegal drug use. The song was also left off copies of "Sgt. Pepper's" sold in several Asian countries for the same reason.

The album's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was alleged to have glorified the use of the hallucinogenic LSD, a claim that bandmembers denied.

In addition, "A Day in the Life" features the lyric "he blew his mind out in a car," which Beatles aficionados claim is a reference to the accidental death of Tara Browne, the Guinness heir and close friend of both Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The lyrics appear on both sides of the single sheet. One side has Lennon's original first draft, written in a hurried cursive script. The other side is written almost entirely in capital letters and incorporates the corrections from the first draft and adds the words, "I'd love to turn you on."

Sotheby's said Friday's price came close to the $1.25 million paid in 2005 for the Beatles lyrics "All You Need is Love." It sold to an anonymous bidder at the British auction house Cooper Owen.

Images shown of handwritten lyrics for "A Day in the Life"
Original first draft (top image)
Revised draft (bottom image)

Twain and Fitzgerald sell at Sotheby's

2010-06-20T17:45:00.001-07:00

On Friday, June 18th Sotheby New York's second offering of rare books and manuscripts including the Mark Twain Collection was conducted. Led by Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ unpublished autobiographical manuscript A Family Sketch, which achieved $242,500, a world auction record for an autograph manuscript by Twain** (est. $120/160,000*) the collection brought $936,012.

Encompassing almost two hundred original letters, manuscripts and photographs, The Mark Twain Collection shed light on the wit, pathos, and tragedy of the acclaimed author of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The top lot of the collection was Clemens’ unpublished manuscript, “A Family Sketch,” his most intimate and introspective memoir of his family and his own boyhood days and the missing chapter of his autobiography. The manuscript sold to a member of the trade bidding in the saleroom for $242,500 after competition from at least four collectors, setting a world auction record for an autograph manuscript by Mark Twain at auction (est. $120/160,000*). Clemens’ notion of autobiography took a discursive approach, with his recollections of his youth, sketches of people he had met, and essays on various subjects cobbled together in rambling fashion. What initially began as a tribute to his late – and undisputed favorite – daughter Susy thus devolved into a narrative that encompasses the whole of this family and friends as well as glimpses of incidents of his own childhood.

Other highlights of The Mark Twain Collection included the Clemens’ autograph manuscript of Chapter 8 from The Gilded Age, which achieved $68,500 (est. $30/50,000) and an original manuscript chapter from A Tramp Abroad, which sold for $59,375 (est. $30/50,000).

Friday's offerings also included an autograph transcription of the final two paragraphs from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, including the iconic concluding sentence, ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,’ which sold for $98,500, far exceeding presale expectations of $25/35,000.

Images shown (in order of appearance):
Clemens, Samuel L. Autograph manuscript of the Unpublished “Family Sketch" ca 1896-97. Estimate $120,000 - 160,000. Sold for: $242,500 (£165,348)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Literary Portrait and autograph manuscript of the final four sentences of The Great Gatsby, late 1920’s. Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000. Sold for: $98,500 (£67,162).

*estimates do not include buyer’s premium **The previous record was set by Sotheby’s New York on June 18, 1987, when lot 27, the autograph manuscript story, ‘The $30,000 Bequest’, 1903, sold for $110,000.

Musing, Pondering, Ruminating...

2010-06-17T08:10:00.001-07:00

Why can't

summer session

be more like

instead of

Fundraising Exhibition of Louisiana Artists Responding to the Gulf Oil Spill

2010-06-16T17:13:00.001-07:00

GULF AID ART: ARTISTS IN ACTION, A Fundraising Exhibition of Louisiana Artists Responding to the Gulf Oil Spill.

The benefit exhibition will take place from June 17-19th at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in located in the New Orleans Arts District. The exhibition will feature new works by over 25 well-known Louisiana artists reacting to the greatest environmental disaster in US history. Gallery owner Jonathan Ferrara and artist Dan Tague, both arts activists , conceived of the exhibition as a way for the visual arts community of New Orleans to respond to the disaster.

The exhibition will open on Thursday June 17th at 11am, with an artist reception from 6-9pm that night and will run for through Saturday June 19th at 5pm and continue online throughout the summer.

As this crisis has unfolded, citizens across the state have felt helpless in being able to respond the disaster.

What action can I take?
What can I do?
What is happening?
What is our future?
How can we help our fellow Louisianans who are being directly affected right now?

Inspired by actions taken by the musical community in organizing the recent Gulf Aid concert that featured musicians like Lenny Kravitz and Preservation Hall Jazz Band, visual artists are banding together to offer their creative talents in response to this disaster.

"Musicians have done their part and now visual artists are going to do their part as well to respond to this terrible disaster. We all are terrified, upset, anxious and damn mad about what has transpired and we have to use our creativity to speak up, comment, criticize and make our voices heard. We are all in this together and artists must take action!" - Jonathan Ferrara

Both Tague and Ferrara have a history of responding to disasters via artistic endeavors. In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, Ferrara created New Orleans Artists In Exile, a travelling exhibition of artists affected by the hurricane. In 2006-7, Ferrara was instrumental in distributing over $40,000 in direct grants to artists in need recovering from Katrina. And in 2010, artist Dan Tague created a limited edition print (100), United For Haiti, which sold out in a week and immediately raised over $7500 for victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Those funds were donated to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

For GULF AID ART, each artist was challenged to create a new print edition with the only criteria that they respond / react to the current crisis affecting their home, health, happiness and economic futures. Each artist has created a limited edition print of 10 that will be sold both in the gallery during the limited run exhibition and online via the gallery's website. In an effort to make the work accessible to the general public and raise as much money as possible, the prices of the works will range between $100 and $500 with the potential to raise $80,000.

For this fundraiser, Ferrara will take down his current exhibition and install the 25+ works in the galley for a three-day fundraising exhibition. A to Z Framing of New Orleans, who is generously donating the framing, will frame the works in the exhibition.

In addition to the works in the gallery , British photojournalist Charlie Varley will exhibit a slide show of his photographs taken since the April 20th explosion documenting the spill and its aftermath. Varley's photos are regularly published around the world in Time magazine, Newsweek, The Times, The Wall Street Journal among others.

The exhibition will open on Thursday June 17th at 11am, with an artist reception from 6-9pm that night and it will run through Saturday June 19th at 5pm. Online sales continue through July 28th.

Image Shown:
Ron Bechet's Consequence of Choice. Serigraph with ink and motor oil, 14 x 17 inches.
"...We have been given the ability to make choices. In our current crisis, choices based on our greed and not necessarily our need, have changed the environment in which all living things exist. Making better choices in the future give hope for rebirth. Nature may adjust to our poor choices. The question is - will we?..."

25 years later the attack on Rembrandt’s Danaë is still grievous

2010-06-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

June 15, 1985.- Danaë is Rembrandt's painting from the collection of Pierre Crozat which from the 18th century resides in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Rembrandt's painting was attacked by a man later judged insane; he threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with his knife. The entire central part of the composition was turned into a mixture of spots with a conglomerate of splashes and areas of dripping paint.

The lady is still perfect - 17 for 17

2010-06-14T19:41:00.001-07:00

17 for 17. - the Queen is still undefeated in her career.

The Mighty "Z" has now passed the likes of the legendary Cigar in terms of consecutive wins. And some are still stupid enough to think that Rachel Alexandra should be mentioned in the same breath as Zenyatta. RA is not a champion - Zenyatta is the epitome of a champion. Watching this beautiful thoroughbred run reduces me to tears. She is truly an artist, as much as any painting hanging in a museum or gallery. She is soul, beauty and elegance personified. I have tickets to Del Mar to watch her this summer should she come to defend her title in the Hirsch Stakes which she's won the last two years.

For those of you watching this clip please note that "Z" is a come-from-behinder. She always starts at the back - that's her running style. Then when Mike Smith starts to manuever her into place and aske her for that amazing kick she has Miss "Z" turns it on and all that's left to do is celebrate yet another victory from this magnificent and beautiful athlete.

Below is another view of her Breeder's Cup Classic race last year when she bested the boys. The Breeder's Cup is the World Championship of Thoroughbred racing and the best horses in the world come to compete for 2 days in a variety of races (notice I said "the best in the world" - another reason Rachel Alexandria didn't participate - Jess Jackson knew his horse couldn't compete and win and that the world would see her for what she truly is so he ducked yet another race). The Classic is the "Big Kahuna" of the Breeder's Cup Championships - the "main event" and centerpiece - the most prestigious race to win in the Breeder's cup and the Zen Master is the first female to EVER win this race.

There's also some fun videos of her that show her prancing and dancing. The pre-race moves she does would be disconcerting when watching most horses as those moves might indicate something is amis. But that's not the case with Z - she's just strutting, prancing and dancing. Same with her post race moves - she's a ham :-). While you're watching the videos also remember just what a big girl she is - she's 17 hands high

When I get the time I think I'll enter a blog with video of all 17 of her wins - that will truly be a treat to watch.

Sunday in the Park

2010-06-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

Arrrrgh!!

2010-06-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

A reflection of my response to having 93 students enrolled and waitlisted for my advanced writing and critical thinking class that caps at 35 and has a room capacity of 49.

Summer session starts Monday and 'twill be an "interesting" day, to say the least...

Image shown: Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet's "Self-Portrait"

Happy Birthday Keith!!!

2010-06-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today is my big brother's 61st birthday.

Fifty Works for the First State: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection at the Delaware Art Museum

2010-06-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Four Gates for the Good Sea - Lucio Pozzi (Drawing: graphite, crayon and gouache on paper)

Fifty Works for First State: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, on view from June 19 – August 29, 2010, celebrates a recent gift of art from the renowned collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Starting in the 1960s, the couple amassed an outstanding collection of more than 4,000 works, staying within a modest budget (he was a postal clerk and she was a librarian) and extraordinary space constraints (a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan). While they are particularly known for collecting the minimal and conceptual art of Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Robert Barry, the Vogels also collected a wide range of post-minimal, figurative, and expressionist work produced between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Untitled: Part 1 - Loren Calaway (Sculpture: wood, brass, cotton cloth and felt)

As part of the Fifty Works for Fifty States program, the Delaware Art Museum received drawings, paintings, sculptures, and collages by 23 artists: Stephen Antonakos, Will Barnett, Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Loren Calaway, Michael Vinson Clark (Clark V. Fox), Charles Clough, Kathleen Cooke, Richard Francisco, Don Hazlitt, Stewart Hitch, Tom Holland, Martin Johnson, Ronnie Landfield, Robert Mangold, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Judy Rifka, Pat Steir, Donald Sultan, Daryl Trivieri, Richard Tuttle, and Joe Zucker.

Untitled: Study for Mother and Child Reading - Will Barnet (Drawing: charcoal on parchment paper)

Fifty Works for Fifty States was launched by the Vogels and the National Gallery of Art, with support the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This program is distributing 2,500 works from the Vogels’ collection of contemporary art throughout the nation, with 50 works going to a selected institution in each of the 50 states.

Hats - Donald Sultan (Relief Sculpture: graphite, vinyl asbestos tile on wood)

Happy Birthday FLW

2010-06-08T11:07:00.001-07:00

Born June 8, 1867 Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works. Wright promoted organic architecture (exemplified by Fallingwater and Graycliff), was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture (exemplified by the Robie House, the Westcott House, and the Darwin D. Martin House), and developed the concept of the Usonian home (exemplified by the Rosenbaum House). His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also often designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. In the first image above: The Walter Gale House (1893) is Queen Anne in style yet features window bands and a cantilevered porch roof which hint at Wright's developing aesthetics.

Fallingwater

Graycliff

Robie House

Westcott House

All the prime players aim for Travers

2010-06-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine a race with all three Triple Crown race winners -- Super Saver, Lookin At Lucky, and Drosselmeyer. Throw in the second-place finishers from the Kentucky Derby (Ice Box), Preakness (First Dude), and Belmont (Fly Down), and add a late-developing horse such as Trappe Shot, too. What do you have? Quite possibly the Travers Stakes.

This year's Triple Crown series ended on Saturday with no clear-cut leader among the nation's 3-year-old males, a position that was abdicated when Eskendereya, the winner of the Wood Memorial and Fountain of Youth Stakes, was injured prior to the Kentucky Derby and subsequently retired. No one has stepped into fill the void. As of now, though, all the remaining prominent horses in the division are pointing for the Travers on Aug. 28 at Saratoga, making that race, long known as the Mid-Summer Derby, the next best chance for a leader to emerge.

Drosselmeyer, the Belmont winner, and Super Saver, who won the Derby, will both point for the Travers, according to Elliott Walden, the racing manager for Bill Casner and Kenny Troutt's WinStar Farm, which owns both colts. Each horse will have one prep before then.

"We hope one of them ends up being the 3-year-old champion," Walden said. "We've put ourselves in that position going into the second half of the year. We will probably split them for their next race, then get them back together for the Travers and see what happens."

Walden said the obvious Travers preps for both are the Jim Dandy at Saratoga on July 31, and the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth on Aug. 1. Both of those races are at 1 1/8 miles. The Travers is 1 1/4 miles.

Walden called the win by Drosselmeyer, who is trained by Bill Mott, "very satisfying."

"We've had a lot of hopes for him," Walden said. "You get tired of making excuses. He had a great four weeks after the Dwyer. It was the perfect set-up race. He had a big work on Monday. We were hopefully optimistic. We felt like he had it in him. It was nice to see him do it. And it was nice for Billy."

Mott, a Hall of Famer, got his first Triple Crown race win with Drosselmeyer, who gave jockey Mike Smith his first win in the Belmont.

Super Saver, trained by Todd Pletcher, has resumed regular training at Belmont Park. He was kept out of the Belmont after running poorly in the Preakness.

"He's putting weight back on," Walden said. "I think the three races in five weeks got him."

Super Saver was second in the Arkansas Derby in his final prep for the Kentucky Derby.

Walden said that if Super Saver had won the Preakness and been shooting for the Triple Crown in the Belmont, he would have lobbied for WinStar to run Drosselmeyer, too.

"It would have been an interesting debate," Walden said.

WinStar's feat of winning two-thirds of the Triple Crown with different horses was last achieved by W.T. Young's Overbrook Farm in 1996, when Grindstone won the Derby and Editor's Note the Belmont.

As for Lookin At Lucky, he returned to Southern California following the Preakness. His trainer, Bob Baffert, has said that the Haskell is his most likely next start.

As with WinStar, trainer Nick Zito is desirous of splitting up his two colts -- Fly Down and Ice Box -- for their preps for the Travers. Zito on Monday said he believes Ice Box is better suited to the track layout at Monmouth, which is a one-mile oval, like Churchill Downs.

"With him, the Haskell is a good spot. I know Bob," Zito said, referring to owner Robert La Penta, "would like to win the Travers. And our main goal at the end of the year is the Breeders' Cup Classic."

Zito said he would prefer to run Fly Down in the Jim Dandy, but first needed to consult with owner Richard Pell.

"I'd like to go that way," Zito said. "We'll find races. You're not going to run out of good races for good horses."

Zito said Ice Box, who ran poorly as the favorite in the Belmont, displaced his palate while not adjusting to the warm, humid conditions.

"The heat got to him," Zito said. "It was all anxiety. If you can't breathe completely going a mile and a half, you're not going to run. He came back sound."

Zito had a frustrating Triple Crown. In addition to finishing second in the Derby and Belmont, he was third in the Preakness with Jackson Bend.

"With a little bit of luck, we might have won the whole Triple Crown," he said. "But you've got to be happy you have those kinds of horses to run in these types of races."

Another potential starter in the Haskell or Jim Dandy is Trappe Shot, who was an impressive winner of an allowance race on Saturday's undercard. His trainer, Kiaran McLaughlin, said Trappe Shot would run in the Long Branch at Monmouth on July 10 "to see if he can go two turns."

If he can, the Travers would be the goal, McLaughlin said. If not, the seven-furlong King's Bishop would be targeted. Both are Grade 1 races on the same day at Saratoga.

"Our ultimate goal is Aug. 28 at Saratoga," McLaughlin said. "He can run in the Travers or the King's Bishop. Backing up from there, he could run in the Jim Dandy or the Haskell, or the Amsterdam. The Long Branch will tell us if he can't go long. If he can't, we'll back up and point for the King's Bishop, maybe by sprinting in the Amsterdam. He's a very talented horse." JPrivman

Image shown: Saratoga Race Course entrance

And the race unfolds...

2010-06-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Payoffs (based on $2 bets)
Board Bets
7 (Post Position) Drosselmeyer: $28.99 (Win) $11.60 (Place) $7.70 (Show)
5 (Post Position) Fly Down: $6.80 (Place) $5.10 (Show)
11 (Post Position) First Dude: $4.90 (Show)
Exacta
7/5 Drosselmeyer/Fly Down: $144.50
Trifecta
7/5/11 Drosselmeyer/Fly Down/First Dude: $766.00
Superfecta
7/5/11/8 Drosselmeyer/Fly Down/First Dude/Game On Dude: $10,658.00

Order of Finish (Finish - Horse - Post Position - Jockey - Trainer - M/L* - C/L*)
1. Drosselmeyer - 7 - Mike Smith - Bill Mott - 12/1 - 13/1
2. Fly Down - 5 - John Velazquez - Nick Zito - 9/2 - 5/1
3. First Dude - 11 - Ramon Dominguez - Dale Romans - 7/2 - 5/1
4. Game on Dude - 8 - Martin Garcia - Bob Baffert - 10/1 - 17/1
5. Stay Put - 10 - Jamie Theriot - Steve Margolis - 20/1 - 26/1
6. Interactif - 12 - Javier Castellano - Todd Pletcher - 12/1 - 19/1
7. Stately Victor - 9 - Alan Garcia - Mike Maker - 15/1 - 14/1
8. Ice Box - 6 - Jose Lezcano - Nick Zito - 3/1 - 1/2
9. Make Music for Me - 4 - Joel Rosario - Alexis Barba - 10/1 - 12/1
10. Dave in Dixie - 1 - Calvin Borel - John Sadler - 20/1 - 14/1
11. Spangled Star - 2 - Garrett Gomez - Richard Dutrow, Jr. - 20/1 - 23/1
12. Uptowncharlybrown -3 - Rajiv Maragh - Kiaran McLaughlin - 10/1 - 10/1 (actually placed 5th but was DQ'd (disqualified) and placed last by the stewards because he lost his weight pad at the 7/8ths pole)

*M/L = Morning Line Odds
C/L = Closing Line Odds (the horse's betting odds when the race actually started)

A Belmont Breeze salute to the longshots who've won the Belmont Stakes

2010-06-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

Let's hope today's Belmont Stakes (otherwise known as "The Test of Champions") winner joins the ranks of the longshot winners below. If the Thoroughbred Racing Gods allow it and it's meant to be it will happen - if not, it won't...

Sarava: 70-1 (2002)

Da'Tara:38-1 (2008)

Birdstone: 36-1 (2004)

Lemon Drop Kid: 29-1 (1999)

Other Notable Longshot Winners - Sherlock: 65-1 (1961); Temperance: 53-1 (1980)

By the by, I got every one of these longshots except Sherlock (I was not betting the Throughbreds in 1961)

The Belmont in Elmont

2010-06-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

When most people think of New York they think "The Big Apple".

At the beginning of June this is what I think when I think of New York - the Belmont Stakes in Elmont. On the morrow the last leg of the Triple Crown will be run. With a Belmont Breeze in hand I shall be imploring the Thoroughbred gods to allow the second longest shot on the board to capture the place position and to bring the longest shot on the board to the winner's circle to wear the blanket of white carnations.

Sound, Fury, Post Time

2010-06-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

In 1955 William Faulkner (and I'm going to assume that anyone reading this blog is educated enough to know this Nobel Prize-winning novelist and has read at least one of his novels or short stories - if not, for God's sake take an English class, read a book) wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated entitled "Kentucky: May: Saturday." Whilst the piece was about the Kentucky Derby it is applicable to not only the Triple Crown (The Kentucky Derby being the first leg, the Preakness being the second leg and the Belmont Stakes, the third leg) but to thoroughbred racing in general. Below is part of Falkner's piece:

"Once the horse moved man's physical body and his household goods and his articles of commerce from one place to another. Nowadays all it moves is a part or the whole of his bank account, either through betting on it or trying to keep owning and feeding it.

So, in a way, unlike the other animals which he has domesticated--cows and sheep and hogs and chickens and dogs (I don't include cats; man has never tamed cats)--the horse is economically obsolete. Yet it still endures and probably will continue to as long as man himself does, long after the cows and sheep and hogs and chickens, and the dogs which control and protect them, are extinct. Because the other beasts and their guardians merely supply man with food, and someday science will feed him by means of synthetic gases and so eliminate the economic need which they fill. While what the horse supplies to man is something deep and profound in his emotional nature and need.

It will endure and survive until man's own nature changes. Because you can almost count on your thumbs the types and classes of human beings in whose lives and memories and experience and glandular discharge the horse has no place. These will be the ones who don't like to bet on anything which involves the element of chance or skill or the unforeseen. They will be the ones who don't like to watch something in motion, either big or going fast, no matter what it is. They will be the ones who don't like to watch something alive and bigger and stronger than man, under the control of puny man's will doing something which man himself is too weak or too inferior in sight or hearing or speed to do

These will have to exclude even the ones who don't like horses--the ones who would not touch a horse or go near it, who have never mounted one nor ever intend to; who can and do and will risk and lose their shirts on a horse they have never seen.

So some people can bet on a horse without ever seeing one outside a Central Park fiacre or a peddler's van. And perhaps nobody can watch horses running forever, with a mutuel window convenient, without making a bet. But it is possible that some people can and do do this.

So it is not just betting, the chance to prove with money your luck or what you call your judgment, that draws people to horse races. It is much deeper than that. It is a sublimination, a transference: man, with his admiration for speed and strength, physical power far beyond what he himself is capable of, projects his own desire for physical supremacy, victory, onto the agent--the baseball or football team, the prize fighter. Only the horse race is more universal because the brutality of the prize fight is absent, as well as the attenuation of football or baseball--the long time needed for the orgasm of victory to occur, where in the horse race it is a matter of minutes, never over two or three, repeated six or eight or 10 times in one afternoon."

If you want to read the entire piece (and it's worth reading) you can find it online.

Belmont Stakes Post Positions drawn and Morning Line Odds assigned

2010-06-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

The final leg (and the longest race at 1 1/2 miles) of the Triple Crown will be run this Saturday. Many feel this is a trainer's race due to the length of said race and the need for the horses to be well conditioned as this will be the only time in their lives they run a race of this length. Let us pray to the racing gods for longshots to come 1-2.

Memorial Day 2010

2010-05-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

*The following was first posted 5/31/2009

Today is Memorial Day and I'm thinking of my father. Dad served in both the Korean War and World War II. During his time in the service he not only survived the sinking of a ship, he survived when a gun mount he was in blew up - in fact, of all the men that were in the gun mount at the time only my father and 1 other man survived. When his ship was sinking, after he made sure all his men were safely aboard the life boats Dad went, against everyone's wishes, back onto the sinking ship so that he could retrieve a photograph of my mother as he was determined that said photo would not sink with the ship. Dad was a Navy man and retired as a high ranking Naval officer when I was in the first grade, having served 20 years active duty. He then spent another 5 years in the reserves. After that he had a full civilian career from which he retired.

My father and I were always on different sides of the political fence but I still respect how he served his country. One doesn't have to support a war but one can support the men and women who put their lives on the line for their country. I put my life on the picket lines and carry those scars while my dad put his on the battlefield and carried his scars.

My father was proud of his time in the service and, as he neared his death, he shared with me stories that were beyond the pale. When I was young he told me stories but they were stories that were innocuous. Hearing the more damaged situations broke my heart, knowing that he carried those experiences deep within him. Knowing the horrific experiences he endured gave me some insight into why he had certain outlooks. We can never know what a person truly is until we walk a mile in their moccasins. My father had an extremely difficult life growing up - his mother was not a nurturing person and he suffered the effects of her "issues". He also had some adventures though - he actually ran away to join the circus when he was young and he also played minor league baseball - in fact, he was due to be called up to the "majors" when he joined the Navy.

My father died in late February of 2003. On March 3, 2003 I gave a eulogy at his funeral. My eulogy is shared below:

"(name deleted for privacy) was my father and I loved him. When I think of Dad a myriad of thoughts come to mind and I'd like to share just a few. He played semi-pro baseball as a young man. He had quite a varied life and he was a survivor. He survived a ship that was torpedoed, a gun mount explosion and 2 open-heart surgeries.

Dad was a collector of watches. He had more than 15 and wanted each one of us to have one - as if he knew the importance of marking the time we have on earth and how truly short life is.

Memories of Dad - waking up to the smell of a freshly cut lawn on a summer morning. The smell of chlorine and the sound of water as Dad filled the swimming pool for the first time each summer. Sitting on an old-fashioned ice-cream maker while Dad made ice cream (he always got the "paddle" in the middle with the most concentration of the ice cream because "he did all the work"). How when Dad made pancakes on Saturday mornings he always gave the first one to our dog "Laddie". How he was so sentimental and always cried at television shows like Bonanza and at weddings when Mom would sing. How he always wanted to make sure there was plenty of food for the ducks, geese, squirrels and birds at his and Mom's home. How he liked to decorate the front yard at Christmastime with Christmas lights. How he made several trips to the desert in El Centro to retrieve the Pegasus Horse wood sculpture you've all seen in Mom and Dad's front yard (by the way, he was so concerned about it not incurring any damage during the trip from the West Coast to the East Coast that it was placed in its own crate, wrapped by more packing that any piece of artwork hanging in the Louvre, when he and Mom moved back here to Delaware). Dad wasn't perfect - none of us are - we're all human - but he had his ways and he had a big heart. Above all, he was always worried about the safety of his family.

Those are just some of my memories of Dad. There are so many more I could share but time doesn't allow and my heart needs to keep those memories private. I'd now like to share a poem that I think is germane to this occasion. It's called "The Dash" and reads as follows:

I read of a reverend who stood to speak at the funeral of his friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning...to the end. He noted that first came the date of his birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said that what mattered most of all was the dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time that he spent alive on earth...and now only those who loved him know what that little line is worth. For it matters not how much we own; the cars...the house...the cash. What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash. So think about this long and hard...are there things you'd like to change? For you never know how much time is left. (You could be at "dash mid-range"). If we could just slow down enough to consider what's true and real and always try to understand how other people feel. And be less quick to anger and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we've never loved before. If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile, remembering that this special "dash" might only last a little while. So when your eulogy is being read with your life's actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say when people recall how you spent your "dash"?

I hope you all know how truly big Dad's life was. He was so very excited every time he spoke of his grandchildren Paul, Christine, Alexander, Channing, Chandler and Dylan. His eyes shone with the love that only comes from a grandfather when he talks about the "babies". Randall and Keith, Dad loved each of us very much and was proud of us. He took joy in the beautiful and gracious adults we've become. Mom, what can I say? You were the love of Dad's life. He was always concerned for your well being and was looking forward to spending many more years with you. You were always in his thoughts.

The best way everyone here today can honor Dad is to live life to the fullest, love to our heart's capacity, and laugh - laugh often.

As for me, I'd like to leave you, the audience, as well as Mom, Randall, Keith, Paul and, most importantly, my father with the following thought. In Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", Horatio, after his friend Hamlet has died, bids him adieu with the following epitaph:
"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest".

So, Dad, though your physical body "cracked", I too bid you farewell and good night. May flights of angels also sing you to your rest."

Happy Memorial Day, Dad - I love you.

Alexis at the 2010 flag placing ceremony at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

On a Day like Today, Westminster's Big Ben Rang for the First Time in London

2010-05-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

LONDON.- May 30, 1859.- Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, and is often extended to refer to the clock or the clock tower as well. Big Ben is the largest four-faced chiming clock and the third-tallest free-standing clock tower in the world. It celebrated its 150th anniversary in May 2009 (the clock itself first ticking on 31 May 1859).

Long-Unseen Painting by Frida Kahlo Tops Latin America Art Auction

2010-05-29T10:27:00.002-07:00

A Frida Kahlo portrait of a pre-Hispanic warrior was the top selling work in a sale of Latin American art, which also set five auction records, including one for Mexican artist Jose Clemente Orozco.

The evening auction at Christie's on Wednesday fetched $16.8 million, its strongest Latin American sale in two years.

"It was a sale full of excitement and surprises with world auction records for key Latin American modern and contemporary artists," said Christie's Latin America art chief.

"We were delighted with the runaway success of Frida Kahlo's "Survivor," which fetched $1.1 million against a pre-sale estimate of $100,000-150,000."

He added that the Kahlo work drew bids from as far afield as Europe and Asia.
Orozco's "The City" also sold for $1.1 million. Both artists' work is scarce in international markets since Mexico bars their export under cultural heritage laws.

An added novelty was that "Survivor" disappeared from public view for 72 years before it was put up for sale this year.

The bidding excitement for the Kahlo recalled Christie's May 2008 auction, when the Latin American art market was at its height. At a rapid-fire pace, "Survivor" drew nearly 50 offers, sparking murmurs of amazement among the well-heeled audience.

The palm-sized "Survivor," which has a standing warrior figure at its center, is a rare Kahlo portrait of a pre-Hispanic idol. It shows an abandoned house on a ridge under a sky which churns with blacks, blues, grays and yellows.

Framed as a religious votive offering, "Survivor" symbolizes Kahlo's gratitude for surviving a suicide attempt, according to Christie's. Kahlo had separated from painter husband Diego Rivera after discovering his affair with her sister.

Like Rivera, Orozco was a monumental muralist, who lived in New York during the Depression. "The City" juxtaposes a towering rust-red shell building with portraits of dejected hard-hat workers. They are separated by a suspicious blue-eyed man, portrayed in sharper detail. Typical of the era's affluent, he wears a top hat.

"Un Trou Sur l'Orange," by Venezuelan Jesus Rafael Soto, whose sculptures embed optical illusions to render vibrations, sold for $758,500, also an auction record.

The 1970 work is a web of nylon and metal set in low relief against an orange wood panel with an oval void at its center. The sculpture produces vibrations and dancing patters for viewers walking past.

The sale also set a world record for Mexican Alfonso Michel, whose oil on masonite, "Naturaleza Muerta" (Still Life), fetched $218,500, nearly quadruple the pre-sale estimate.

Another world record was set when Brazilian Beatriz Milhazes's 2001 "O Beijo" or The Kiss, sold for a top price for her work on paper at $110,500.

Chilean Alfredo Jaar's "The More Things Change" also set an auction record for his 1990 work which fetched $60,000. It consists of three double-sided light boxes with color transparencies displaying surf and sky. Each is topped by a mirror in a gilded frame.

Artwork shown (in order of appearance):
Frida Kahlo - "Survivor"
Jose Clemente Orozco - "The City"
Jesus Rafael Soto - "Un Trou Sur l'Orange"
Alfonso Michel - "Naturaleza Muerta"
Beatriz Milhazes - "O Beijo"
Alfredo Jaar - "The More Things Change"

100 Years After Henri Rousseau's Death, the Guggenheim Devotes First In-Depth Exhibition

2010-05-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

BILBAO.- One hundred years after the death of the French artist Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is devoting an exhibition to this pioneer of Modernism—the first occasion that Rousseau has been seen in depth in Spain. The exhibition, coinciding with the centenary of the French artist's death in 1910 shows Rousseau's influence on subsequent modernist and avant-garde movements.

Organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in co-operation with the Fondation Beyeler, Henri Rousseau presents a selection of approximately thirty masterpieces that provide a concise overview of the development and diversity of his oeuvre. From his famous jungle paintings in the later stages of his career, to the views of Paris and its environs, figures, portraits, allegories, and genre paintings, the exhibition gives a unique insight into the essential visual world of Rousseau.

A customs official by vocation, Rousseau initially took up painting in his free time and received no formal art training. Many years passed before his art, not academic and long considered naive, found recognition in the Paris art salons.

His importance within art history lies in his groundbreaking compositional mechanisms and painstaking technique, which greatly influenced younger generations of artists. Along with Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, Rousseau’s visual inventions paved the way for the twentieth-century’s nascent Modernist movement.

A new visual idiom
For his works, which combined highly diverse themes of urbanity and the natural world adapted to his own visual conception, Rousseau mined resources beyond the academic tradition, relying heavily on postcards, photographs, and popular journals. His imaginary dreamlike jungle landscapes also took their inspiration directly from books on botany and his visits to gardens, woods and zoos.

The works included in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao reveal his unique working method of transferring individual motifs such as leaves and trees, figures, and entire compositional schemes from picture to picture, and combining them to create new visual compositions, painted with a painstaking, naturally refined technique.

Rousseau redefined the picture space by staggering pictorial elements from background to foreground, a method that would later be adopted by the Cubists. This built-up pictorial structure, in the form of painted collage, anticipated the autonomy of the picture plane that would become characteristic of Modernism. Younger artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger, both of whom admired and collected his work, were captivated by his technique.

A tour of the exhibition
Initially, Rousseau painted mostly small-format pictures depicting the French suburbs and the surrounding countryside of his immediate environment. In these landscapes, wilderness is represented by dense wooded areas on the background that the artist used to separate the visual realm by means of either a fence or behind a fortification wall, as in House on the Outskirts of Paris (Maison de la banlieue de Paris, ca. 1905, Carnegie Museum of Art). Gradually, he moved away from this rationally organized civilization toward an unorganized, wild depiction of nature. This passage from the well ordered and familiar to the unknown and alien defined his later work as can be seen in Landscape (Paysage, 1905–10, Philadelphia Museum of Art).

In his famous jungle paintings, Rousseau, who never actually set foot in a jungle, finally succeeded in leaving the sphere of domestication behind for his imaginary wilderness. Now working in a significantly larger format, Rousseau lent these invented landscapes a compelling visual reality. The culmination of the exhibition is formed by a significant assembly of Rousseau’s famous jungle pictures. Of special mention is the monumental painting The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope (Le lion, ayant faim, se jette sur l’antilope , 1895/1905, Fondation Beyeler) included on the occasion of Rousseau’s first appearance at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1905. In March 1906, art dealer and collector Ambroise Vollard acquired the sensational painting—the first Rousseau ever to enter the art trade—in which the artist’s talent for creating an imaginary new world comprised of various figures set against a stage like environment are shown.

In addition, the exhibition illustrates Rousseau’s well-documented interest in photography for source material. A few of his compositions, such as Old Junier’s cart (La carriole du père Junier , 1908, Musée l’Orangerie) were definitively based on photographs. In the course of transferring the photographic image to the canvas, he created an entirely new visual world, arranging its elements into another image layer by layer in front of his imaginary camera lens.

Yet for all his reliance on photographic realism, Rousseau always strove to keep the depicted world at a distance. This is especially seen in The Wedding (La noce, 1904–05, Musée l’Orangerie), a large-format painting whose distortions of scale and proportions with respect to the original model are immediately obvious. Indeed, the simultaneity of character and dream in Rousseau’s paintings, the flatness and lack of perspective, and his peculiar manner of lighting the picture plane, with both brilliant sun and shadowless figures, all combine to give his images a highly tuned Surrealist quality.

After the Impressionist painters and the succeeding generation created a new way to look at the visible, Rousseau introduced into his paintings a new approach to imaginative vision. His perception of reality was based primarily on observation, imitation and transformation of the visible. In this way, he taught modern artists how the unknown could be constructed using the building blocks of the known. He established a new logic and mechanics of compositional structure that profoundly affected subsequent generations of artists, most notably the Surrealists Max Ernst and René Magritte.

Many renowned museums and collections in Europe and America have contributed to the success of the exhibition by their generous provision of loans. These include the Musée national de l’Orangerie, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris; The Mayor Gallery, London; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; the Nahmad Collection, Switzerland; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Kunsthaus Zürich; and a number of private collections.

The first image shown is Maison de la banlieue de Paris (House on the Outskirts of Paris). The second image is Paysage exotique (Exotic Landscape). The last image is Les joueurs de football (The Football Players).

Sotheby's to Sell Rare Inscribed Copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Debut Novel

2010-05-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

LONDON.- In July, Sotheby’s London will auction one of the rarest books of modern times: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, which debuts the most celebrated literary character of all time – Sherlock Holmes. Published in 1887 and written in under three weeks, this work to be offered is one of only two inscribed copies known to be in existence. Undoubtedly the most important book Conan Doyle ever wrote, A Study in Scarlet gave birth to Sherlock Holmes, explained how he and Dr. Watson came to be together and set in motion one of the most highly successful characters - and indeed the first major serial character - in English literature, a forerunner of everyone from Hercule Poirot to James Bond. The novel will be offered on 15th July as part of an English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations sale, and is estimated to fetch £250,000-400,000.

Conan Doyle began writing A Study in Scarlet on 8th March, 1886: despite being an instant success on publication, the work was initially rejected by a succession of publishers, and it wasn’t until November 1887 that it appeared in print, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual – a miscellany published annually since 1867. The issue sold out in fourteen days and was later republished - although Conan Doyle never received a penny more for the work, having given up all the rights to his publisher for the sum of £25.

Speaking of the sale, Peter Selley, Senior Specialist in Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department, said: “Holmes is a character so compelling and complex that many were to believe that he was a real person – even as late as the 1950s the English Post Office was still receiving many letters personally addressed to the detective – no such fictional character had ever become so widely known in such a short space of time. With only 31 copies recorded in the most recent census, the Beeton’s A Study in Scarlet has always been regarded as extremely rare and valuable: the last copy made over $150,000 at auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 2007. But no signed or inscribed copy has ever been offered for sale at auction since it was published in 1887, and it is highly unlikely that such a copy will ever become available again. The sale represents an opportunity to acquire the finest copy of the most important cornerstone of any collection of detective literature in the world”.

A Study in Scarlet features Holmes’ classic first remark - uttered on meeting Dr. Watson: “How are you? You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive…”, as well as Watson’s insightful description of Holmes, written on their first meeting: “His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch...”. The author’s inscription reads: ‘This is the first independent book of mine which ever was published, Arthur Conan Doyle’. It is fitting that this copy of A Study in Scarlet was inscribed - on 9th January, 1914 - at just the time Conan Doyle was composing his fourth and final long Sherlock Holmes adventure The Sign of Four, twenty-six years later.

Over the next forty years after the publication of A Study in Scarlet a total of sixty Holmes stories were to appear, all eagerly awaited by worldwide readership - in fact, Holmes grew so popular, that Conan Doyle feared he would never be known for anything else.

Ocean Soul

2010-05-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

An amazing piece showing the world's best tow-in/big wave surfer becoming one with the ocean. Watching the grace, beauty and soul of the waves is inspiring and brings tears to my eyes whilst enveloping my entire being. If you have any heart and any soul at all you see how this experience helped Laird "soften some hard corners in his life". We all need to soften our own hard corners and find our peace and who better to help than Mother Nature? We can't all surf those big waves but we can all sit at the ocean's shore and allow those waves to meld into our souls. We can all be peaceful. We can all be gentle whilst walking gently on this planet. We can all be appreciative of what we have. We can all allow our hearts to speak. We can all realize that we deserve to be loved and have the love we give mean something. We can all be human. We can all eliminate the b.s. and just "be".

The clip is from the film Riding Giants.

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay Opens at the de Young Museum

2010-05-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco welcomes the United States debut of Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay on view at the de Young Museum May 22 to September 6, 2010. The exhibition includes approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection and highlights the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, among others. The Musée d’Orsay is lending their most beloved paintings while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the museum’s 25th anniversary in 2011. Birth of Impressionism will be followed in the fall of 2010 by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Beyond: Post–Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. The de Young will be the only museum in the world to host both exhibitions. Tickets go on sale April 6, 2010.

“Each of these two shows brings together masterpieces that, once they return to the Musée d’Orsay, will never again be loaned out for exhibition as a group,” says Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the French Republic. “I hope they will excite the interest of the American public in order to strengthen further the links between our two countries.”

“These two exhibitions present a rare and unique opportunity for Americans to see the evolution and incubation of the Impressionist style from the collection of the most important repository of French 19th- and early 20th-century art––the Musée d’Orsay,” says John E. Buchanan, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “These exhibitions give us the chance to share with visitors some of the most seminal works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art that they would only be able to see in Paris or in an art history book.”

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay presents works by the famous masters who called France their home during the mid- to late-19th century and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognizable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. The exhibition begins with paintings by the great academic artist Bouguereau and the arch-Realist Courbet, and includes American expatriate Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as “Whistler’s Mother.” Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley are showcased with works dating from the 1860s through 1880s, along with a selection of Degas’ paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack, and life in the Belle Époque.

“Does Impressionism still have something to teach us about its sources, its beginnings, its transformations, and its links with the period of its first flowering?” Musée d’Orsay curator Stéphane Guégan asks. “This is the challenge taken up by this exhibition which attempts to decompartmentalize the movement by comparing it with art in the 1870s in general.” Notable works in this exhibition include:

• The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866)
• Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866–1868)
• Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867)
• The Magpie by Claude Monet (1868)
• The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872)
• The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873–1876)
• The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
• The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
• Red Roofs, Corner of the Village, Winter Effect by Camille Pissarro (1877)
• Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877)
• Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet (1878)
• Snow at Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley (1878)
• L’Estaque by Paul Cézanne (1878–1879)
• Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878–1879)
• The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)

The image above shows workers hanging American artist James McNeill Whistler's painting titled "Whistler's Mother".

Picasso: Peace and Freedom

2010-05-20T21:40:00.001-07:00

LONDON.- A major exhibition bringing together over 150 works by Picasso from across the world will be presented at Tate Liverpool from 21 May to 30 August 2010. Picasso: Peace and Freedom will reveal a fascinating new insight into the artist’s life as a tireless political activist and campaigner for peace, challenging the widely-held view of the artist as creative genius, playboy and compulsive extrovert.

This is the first exhibition to explore the post-War period of the artist’s life in depth, and will reflect a new Picasso for a new time. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the exhibition provides a timely look at Picasso’s work in the Cold War era and how the artist transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West.

The exhibition will bring together key paintings and drawings related to war and peace from 1944-1973, alongside a wide range of contextual materials and ephemera. The centrepiece will be the artist’s masterpiece, The Charnel House 1944-45, marking 50 years since it was last seen in the UK. This remarkable work was Picasso’s most explicitly political painting since Guernica 1937. Monument to the Spaniards who Died for France late 1945 to 31 January 1947 will also feature in the exhibition along with The Rape of the Sabine Women 1962, painted at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the verge of Third World War.

Picasso's Dove of Peace became the emblem for the Peace Movement and universal symbol of hope during the Cold War. Picasso’s lithograph of the fan-tailed pigeon, given to him by Matisse in 1948, was selected for the poster of the First International Peace Congress held in Paris in 1949. Picasso later provided variations on the dove for the Peace Congresses in Wroclaw, Stockholm, Sheffield, Vienna, Rome and Moscow. The dove also had a highly personal significance for Picasso going back to childhood memories of his father painting doves kept in the family home. In 1949 Picasso named his daughter ‘Paloma’ – Spanish for ‘dove’ – born in the same month as the Peace Congress in Paris.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was arguably the most influential and prolific artist of the 20th century. After 1944 Picasso, the greatest living artist, became a figurehead of left wing causes. He joined the Communist party in 1944 and it was during this period that the political content of his work came to the fore. His paintings frequently reference and comment upon key historical moments, chronicling human conflict and war, but also a desire for peace.

The exhibition is organised by Tate Liverpool in collaboration with the Albertina, Vienna where it will be shown following its presentation in Liverpool. Vienna hosted the World Peace Congress in 1952, promoted by a poster featuring Picasso’s drawing of a dove surrounded by a circle of interlocking hands.