Framed instyle!

Lionel WIJESIRI

PRICEY ART: Two large reproductions dominate my doctor’s waiting room. Their triple mats and four-inch gold frames exclaim: “Look at this expensive art!” Yet, none of the patients even glance at the reproductions of a cityscape and a still life. There’s nothing wrong with buying a poster of art that touches you. Who can afford a Van Gogh?

I’ve asked myself why such decorative reproductions are the rule and original art the exception in homes and businesses? Do buyers trust the taste of publishing companies over their own? Few months ago, at a local Display Gallery, 40 large paintings by local artists were auctioned off at an average of Rs. 15,000 each.

If you care to stroll near the Art Gallery at Green Path, you will see how talented artists sell their work at exceedingly modest prices.

So it’s not just a question of price. If my doctor were to hang paintings by local artists in his waiting room, their originality might entrance the captive patient audience and even calm their anxieties.

This article talks about original paintings: about the most expensive paintings ever sold.

No. 5, 1948

No. 5, 1948 is an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock who died in 1956. At the time of death he was 44 years old. He was an American painter known for his contributions to the abstract expressionist movement.

This painting was done on 8 x 4 feet sheet of fibreboard, with thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of it, forming a nest-like appearance.

According to a report in the New York Times, on November 2, 2006, the painting was bought by David Martinez in a private sale for a record price of US $140 million.

Time magazine dubbed Pollock “Jack the Dripper” as a result of his unique painting style. Pollock said, “My painting does not

 come from the easel. I prefer to tack the un-stretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor.

I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter’s tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added”.

Adele Bloch-Bauer

The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is a painting by Gustav Klimt completed in 1907. According to press reports it was sold for US$ 135 million to Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie in New York City in June 2006.

Klimt took three years to complete the painting. It measures 138 x 138 cm and is made of oil and gold on canvas, showing elaborate and complex ornamentation as seen in the Jugendstil style.

Mixing Japanese lacquer and the Byzantine mosaics he has applied generous expanses of gold and silver leaf directly onto the canvas. The result is that Adele’s head and hands seem to float in an entirely artificial world.

The luxury effect is enhanced by exotic symbols and swirls that Klimt has borrowed from Egyptian and Mycenaean art and woven into the gilded fabric of Adele’s cascading dress.

Boy with a Pipe

Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe) is a painting by Pablo Picasso. He painted it when he was 24. It is 100 x 81 cm, oil on canvas and was sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s in New York for US $ 104 million.

The Picasso depicts an adolescent boy known as “P’tit Louis,” who hung around the artist’s studio in Paris, holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland of roses on his head.

In the background are two large bouquets. Some art historians believe Picasso added the garland toward the end of the painting, transforming the boy from a moody teenager in blue overalls to a haunting, deity like figure.

Dora Maar with Cat

Dora Maar au Chat (Dora Maar with Cat) is another painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts Dora Maar, the painter’s Croatian mistress, seated on a chair with a small cat perched on her shoulders.

The painting is also remarkable for its brilliance of colour and the complex and dense patterning of the model’s dress.

The powerful figure is set in a dramatic, yet simple setting composed of a vertiginously inclined plane of wooden floorboards and shallow interior space that is arranged in a manner reminiscent of Picasso’s earliest manipulations of space in a cubist manner.

An anonymous Russian bidder present at the New York auction won the work with a final bid of US$ 95 million. Will more paintings sell for US$ 100 million-plus?

Almost certainly. There is tremendous wealth concentrated in the hands of the richest (who are the heaviest buyers right now), and few iconic works of impressionist and modern art remain in private hands.

“We’re probably going to see a lot more of these sales over the next few years,” predicts New York gallery owner Ronald Feldman. “It’s a matter of supply and demand. These works are disappearing from the market, and everybody knows it.”

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