Strongly Worded Letter

The Naked City (NSFW, Sort Of)

I have been reading through the excellent Lonely Planet travel book on Finland this week in preparation for my trip Friday. Mostly, I will be winging it out on the highway but it will be nice to know something about the nearby towns to help me decide which road to take sometimes.

The internets have been helpful too and I came across an interesting page that only briefly mentions Helsinki. It is a picture page of some of the curious public art photos of Spencer Tunick.

I didn't know his name but have certainly heard about the man who has been traveling the world for more than twenty years taking pictures of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of nude people.

Here are just a few of them, starting with Santiago, Chile.

Now London, England, not that you can tell.

Melbourne, Australia.

And Central Park, New York City, USA.

I like boobies as much as the next guy - more, if the next guy is Ryan Seacrest -  but these photos do not particularly speak to me at all. They are sort of interesting I guess but not really seem to be more effort than they are worth.

Here is the link to see more and some final thoughts from Mr. Tunick.

""A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it - if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.”

NSFW: Warning! Female Nudity In Today's Post*

If you thought yesterday's post about a guy selling chainsaws one day and singing on tour with Boston was hard to believe, your head is going to explode today.

Here is a 1995 painting entitled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by an artist named Lucian Freud. If you are a modern art aficionado then perhaps you are familiar with his work. I was not until yesterday.

That was when StronglyWordedLetter.com reader Rob sent me the story of  Mr. Freud's painting being sold at Christie's auction house in New York. Before I tell you for how much, gaze again at the beauty above (of then-38-year-old Sue Tilley who was, yes, a benefits supervisor) and fix a number in your mind that you would consider a fair price for the work.

The painting actually set a record for the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. It went for $33.64 million dollars. **

Maybe the buyer just loves, er, larger women. Wouldn't a newsstand copy of Udders magazine be cheaper?

As an investment it sure seems like a risky bet to me but then no one liked Andy Warhol's celebrity silkscreens back when he made them and one of them from 1966, seen here, just sold at this same auction for $32.5 million.      

* I apologize to the 85% of you who saw the heading of today's post and had higher hopes. I know that particular nudity was not what you were breathlessly anticipating.

** Not a misprint. Thirty three million, six hundred forty thousand dollars, plus commission. 

 

Viva La Vida

I was just lucky that day back in December of 2006 when I stopped by to visit my friend Randy who works as one of Seattle's best picture framers. He was getting set to work on a painting by a friend of his and I just fell in love with it on first look. "Is there any way it is for sale?" I asked. "I'll call my friend and see," he told me.

After a brief phone call, Randy relayed some good news and some bad news. Yes, his friend would be willing to sell it to me but I should know it would not be available for some time as it was being prepped for shipping to Washington D.C. where it would hang in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.

Randy's friend was well-known painter Mexican artist Alfredo Arreguin and the work I saw that day was his 1998 portrait of fellow painters Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera. Here is the jpeg Alfredo sent me after my check cleared. :)  Until yesterday it was all I had to remember the piece by.

Frida Y Diego hung in the National Portrait Gallery from May 2007  until February of this year and last month finally made its way back home to Seattle where Mr. Arreguin lives with his lovely wife Susie, also a very accomplished artist. I had the pleasure of visiting their home yesterday to pick up the painting and hear a little of their 35 year love story.

Like everyone, I enjoy beautiful things around me, but I will treasure my new acquisition even more having stood with the artist on the spot where it was created. In case you are wondering, as I was, it took Alfredo just nine weeks to paint it, despite the painstakingly detailed mosaic and the very large canvas. I waited a year and a half to get it home and hung and here's what it looks like above the doorway to my living room.....

For my Western Washington readers, the Linda Hodges Gallery on First Avenue in Seattle is showing some of Alfredo's work through the month of May. Click here to see some images.

Good Idea!!

Every generation gets the luxury of living in the Golden Age of Inventions.  In my life as an adult I have seen everything from microwave ovens to telephone answering machines to bank ATMs to the internet to TIVO to hundreds of other useful ideas made real that Americans use all the time. 

Imagine being one of those guys - still alive today -who made such an impact.

Les Paul: "Yeah, I invented the electric guitar." 

Peter Dunn and Albert Wood: "Right, we invented Viagra. I know. It's funny my name is 'Wood.' I get that a lot."

Scott Olsen: "Do I know what rollerblades are? I invented them."

I bring up the topic after receiving an email from blog reader Niki about the man who invented the record album cover.   

Alex Steinweiss is eighty years old now but was just 23 in 1939 when he suggested to Columbia records that they were missing a marketing opportunity by selling their records in plain paper sleeves.

His first cover, for a collection of Rodgers & Hart songs, sold so well that he was instructed to design covers for all of the label's new releases and eventually created artwork for over 850 albums for artists like Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.

Interested in finding out more? A biography called, For The Record: The Life And Work of  Alex Steinweiss, Inventor Of The Album Cover came out in 2000 and is available here.

And if you are in southern California between now and 12 February, check out the exhibit of Steinweiss's original album covers, paintings, and collages at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica.

 

Art For Art's Sake

Friday night was the opening of a new exhibit at my very favorite art gallery, Seattle's Roq La Rue. Owners Kirstin and Kenny are stand up folks, dear friends of ours, and thanks to their good taste we have many beautiful things to look at when we are home.

The new November show is typical of so many at the gallery: three enormously talented artists offering fantastic art for sale at a fair price.  This show we were so happy to buy two of our friend Brian Despain's latest works.

We were also happy to meet Ryan Heshka, from Vancouver, B.C. and now own this piece from him.  The acrylics really pop in person.

I couldn't swipe an image to share the third artist, Scott Musgrove's work but he is equally talented. See more from all three men at Kirstin's gallery site and when in Seattle be sure to stop by down on Second Avenue just a block from the Crocodile Cafe.