$200 Art Collecting

200 One Dollar Bills, of Course

In his book, “Wall and Piece,” Banksy writes, “I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said ‘that’s clever, it’s an anagram of art’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.”

I had a similar experience shortly after I started this blog. A curator asked, “The blog, was it named after the Warhol painting?”

Really, I wish I was that smart. But while Andy Warhol’s “200 One Dollar Bills” did not cross my mind — and clearly does not slot into any search for $200 art — it fits within my broader ambition for this blog, which is to create a discussion on the value of art. The Warhol painting, which sold for $43.7 million last year at Sotheby’s, should get that conversation started.

We are in the midst of a much-publicized Warhol bubble. Another Warhol, “Men in Her Life,” sold at Phillips de Pury for $63 million a few weeks ago. That was followed by yet another, of a Coke bottle, going for $35 million at Sotheby’s.

Christie’s also had a major Warhol for sale that week, “Big Campbell’s Soup Can With Can Opener (Vegetable).” I was there a few nights before the auction. The Warhol was estimated to go for between $30 - $50 million. A Lichtenstein was estimated at $40 million. And there were several other Pop Art paintings going for seven figures. Walking among these multi-million dollar paintings, I couldn’t help but think about their value, and that if I accidentally tripped and launched the contents of my wine glass into any nearby object, my daughter could be paying for the damages for the rest of her life. (In some masochistic way, it was also a tempting thought, kind of like how whenever I pass a policeman, a small part of my brain wants to go for his gun, but everyone thinks about that. Right?)

The proximity of these Pop Art paintings to a gallery of Modern paintings, including those by Jean Dubuffet and Marcel Duchamps that were estimated at around $150,000, made me think about just how abstract the idea of real value is — even after you factor in the wealthy Chinese and Russians, skewing (and skewering) the market. The value discussion is an exhausting one, probably second to “What is art?” — which, regardless of its distinction as a cultural cliche, is brought up in a serious context far more than I would have ever imagined (the great Arthur Danto has a great essay that sideswipes the question en route to addressing the post-history of Modernism).

Instead, I tried to consider which paintings will have more of a lasting impact in 100 or 200 years. Shouldn’t that serve as a responsible metric for determining a painting’s importance as an artistic milestone? And shouldn’t it follow: the larger the milestone the higher its intrinsic value, and therefore monetary value?

I didn’t get far with that internal debate, either, because it, too, required a bit of mental exploration, the kind for which I’m ill-equiped. No, I preferred to doubt the masses. And does anyone know much of anything right now? Consider again the estimate for the big soup can: $30 - $50 million. That’s quite a range, $20 million, and one that did not prove wide enough — on the low end. It eventually sold for a meager $23.8 million.

Interview: RJ Rushmore of Vandalog

I’ve been following Vandalog, a blog started by RJ Rushmore, for a while now. So when he forwarded me snaps of his latest project, a line of T-shirts by three artists — the shirts shown above, from left to right, are by Gaia, Other and Faro — I took the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions about collecting art for $200.

What have you seen that you’ve liked?

I was lucky enough to be in London for the Moniker Art Fair last month. That was a crazy fair. I think my favorite thing outside of the fair was a wall that Boxi painted, and indoors it was probably one of Brian Adam Douglas’s collage/sketch pieces. Also, I’m taking some students from my college on a bit of a field trip to see Jordan Seiler’s solo show at Vincent Michael Gallery in Philadelphia this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to that. The other thing I’m looking forward to seeing is whatever Armsrock has in the upcoming group show at Black Rat Projects. He can be brilliant and is super affordable.

Have you bought art pieces for $200 and under?

I’m a student at Haverford College and I’ve got a student budget for things right now, so I’ve definitely bought art for under $200. I have one of Escif’s posters from Pictures on Walls, a couple of toys by Tristan Eaton, a special edition of Very Nearly Almost with a screenprinted cover by Eine and a few other things. Maybe the best piece of affordable art that I have though is from The Dufala Brothers. I work at my college’s art gallery, and they recently had a show there. One work that they put in a lot of their shows is the “Free Wall,” where they cover a cork board in photocopies of drawings. Visitors are all invited to take a drawing of two home with them for free. So I took a sketch of a baseball player (with a huge and bat-shaped penis) masturbating.

Great tips, RJ! Now everyone, go buy a T-shirt.

(Above: Escif, “Red Carpet,” five color silkscreen print, ed. 100.)

A $200 Andreas Gursky at Art+Culture Editions

Yes, you read that right. Art+Culture Editions, one of many searchable art shop sites that are cropping up, is selling this photograph, “Atlanta,” produced by Andreas Gursky in 1996. Of course, it’s an unusually large edition — Art+Culture says it’s “exclusively available” through them — coming in four different sizes, from 8” x 10” (which is an edition of 1,000 and sells for $50) to 20” x 24” (an edition of 100 that sells for $750).

For $200, you can buy the 12” x 17” print, an edition of 500. Not really exclusive, but you can say you have a Gursky.

The search function on Art+Culture is a little more refined than some of the others I’ve come across. In addition to selecting a price range and medium, you can also choose the subject matter and theme (from “playful” and “funny” to “gritty” and “religious”). Very much like the site 20x200, the works here have been blessed by the Art+Culture staff or guest curators, so you don’t have to slog through thousands of pages of randomness.

The site does offer about a dozen or so paintings and mixed media pieces for people with deeper pockets — a large painting by Barry McGee from 1992 is going for $15,000 — but most of the content stays within the message of the site’s name. I love the above print, “Untitled” by Clare Rojas. It is being sold in the same manner as the Gursky photograph and starts at $100 for a 12” x 17” print edition (limited to 250).

Arts Council England & Its Own Art Scheme

I’m back! I know, I have a little explaining to do. Firstly — man, doing a blog is haaard work. And it’s more guilt-inducing than a pile of dirty laundry, though, truth be told, at least laundry can be hidden from plain view in a hamper in the corner of the bedroom, covered by shams (or is that just in our house?).

There’s another reason: Our daughter, Emerson, arrived a bit early (38 weeks) and kind of threw our lives for a loop. I’m not going to say much about babydom because pretty much everything has already been said elsewhere and ad nauseum maximum. Except this: No one has ever told me about the long parade of strange hospital personnel that enters the room post-delivery. We saw a battery of nurses enter our room, nurses of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and nationalities, including a Russian nurse dressed in black who appeared at around midnight while we were sleeping to say our baby had to be taken away at that very moment to be tested for jaundice. It felt like being in a David Lynch movie. The next day there were more nurses — never the same one twice, and this held true for all other personnel — pediatricians, an anastetheologist, and an Italian cardiologist with a magnificent bald dome, wire rim glasses and a serious disposition, who spoke in a thick accent that made even his good news sound dour and morose. Needless to say at the end of the second day my wife and I were ready to go back through the tollbooth into our regular lives.

Anyway, I haven’t had time to explore much of anything the past few weeks (other than the porous borders of my own sanity). But the little girl is growing up so fast and I don’t want to miss much of these early days and weeks (while she still listens to me), and so I missed several cool events, including the Affordable Art Fair.

But what I have been doing is combing the Web more than usual, which is quite a bit. And via the very cool Renee Riccardo, I found Own Art, a credit service from Arts Council England that provides no interest loans to buy art. Pretty amazing, right? This is from the Own Art site:

You can apply for as little as £100 or as much as £2,000 for the purchase of original works of art by living artists in any media including paintings, sculpture, photography, ceramics, glassware, and artist made jewellery and furniture.

Loans are repayable in 10 monthly instalments, completely interest free – so you’ll never be paying more than the advertised price.

There are loads of participating galleries — including Whitechapel and Serpentine in London — which means I spent hours checking them all out. (On a side note, I wish more galleries created Web sites like Serpentine and TAG Fine Art, also in London, whose sites go beyond the simple standard service jobs. Instead, the overall vision is right there on the home page. Really gives one the feeling that there’s something to investigate and makes one want to stay a while.)

I wish there were something like Own Art in this country. Spending roughly $650 on a screenprint of Peter Davies’s “The Fun One Hundred” is more palatable when divided into 10 small chunks — and each is less than half my monthly iPhone bill. 

Graphite. Art Space

Lots have happened since my first post two weeks ago, which actually, couldn’t have been more ill-timed. I’m in the midst of closing two deadlines, one of which is a pretty long feature with heavy reporting — talking to police detectives, special agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and some people who don’t necessarily want to talk to me, and sifting through legal documents. So that’s taking a long time. I’m pretty much done now, but I’m sure there will be edits. There are always edits.

Anyway, something strange happened on the way to the Joshua Liner Gallery’s Summer Group Exhibition opening in Chelsea two Saturdays ago. I ended up in Williamsburg.

I had been planning on going to the show for the entire week because my friend Matsu is in it and I’m a big fan of several of the other artists. But perhaps most of all, whenever Josh has a group show, many of the artists come out and the opening turns into a big reunion. And as the years pass and we all get busier and more self-absorbed — or is that just me? — occasions to get the band together become more rare. So I was looking forward to seeing everyone. Most of the time the opening party is only the beginning of a memorable night.

But as I was walking out the door I remembered this blog and something Eric Shiner, curator of fine art at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, had recommended in Williamsburg. It’s called graphite. (the lower-case g and the period are part of its name). It was created by Shinya Nakamura, an independent curator who doesn’t describe graphite. as a gallery, but more of as an art space. Saturday night was the opening for its first exhibition: Hiroki Otsuka, a former professional manga artist, who has collaborated quite a bit with the Japan Society. I really respect Eric’s opinion, and that’s how I ended up at graphite.

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Why This Blog Exists

It all started with running.

I began running last year because I realized that I needed some form of exercise in my life. When I lived in Los Angeles, I played tennis. Playing tennis is virtually impossible in New York City, unless 1) you have lots of time to kill waiting for a court and 2) you don’t mind playing for hour-long intervals, which are really 45 minutes after the stretching (I’m old) and warm-ups.

So I started running. Now I run about 3.5 miles every other day, and it really makes me feel great. No matter how dismal work is going, if I run a lap around Prospect Park then I feel like I’ve accomplished something with my day.

Anyway, a byproduct of my bi-daily run is that immediately after it, as I walk home from the park, I’m hit with a nearly fully formed idea, as if my brain suddenly assimilates a variety of disparate thoughts into a cohesive structure, like a reverse explosion. Many of the ideas are for screenplays, for example, here’s one: a young man, a nice guy but also a pushover (I imagine Michael Cera), starts receiving text messages from his dead father. At first he thinks it’s a prank from friends. But then he starts to believe that it’s actually his father, giving him life lessons from the afterlife. So one part of the story follows the Michael Cera character’s path from awkward, unassertive guy to someone who takes charge of his own life. The other part of the story is a guessing game as to who’s really behind the texts because there’s ample proof on both sides — that they’re a prank or they’re really from a dead person. The best part of the idea, I think, is the title: “Text in Peace.” (I never said the ideas were great, but they blitz my consciousness from seemingly nowhere, though clearly each idea has been informed by what I’ve recently read, seen or experienced.)

Finally getting to the point: After a run last week I decided that I would buy one piece of art — see how random these ideas can be — every other month with the only proviso being that each piece will cost $200 or less.

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