Musings from the God of Cities

i recently saw a ton of kickass art at three of the best, new yorkiest places at which to do so: sotheby's auction house, the metropolitan museum of art, and the museum of modern art.

my first stop was the modern and impressionist art auction at sotheby's auction house. what a lot of people don't know or think about is that auctions such as the ones that sotheby's are free and open to the public. you can go see museum-quality paintings and sculptures that very few people have ever seen and will ever see again. in fact, that's where i saw picasso's 'boy with pipe' which wound up becoming the world's most expensive painting.

anywho, let's pop a cork in the chatter and look at some art from sotheby's...


ernst barlach's der sinnende ii (the thinker ii)


giorgio de chirico's ettore e andromaca


giacomo manzu's madre con bambino (mother with child)


fernand leger's oiseau dans le paysage (which, if i remember my high school french correctly means birds in the coutryside) this piece reminded me of an episode of 'just say julie' where julie brown has a model, lake arrowhead, on the show. julie asks lake what she learned in modeling school. lake tells julie about how she learned to tell if something was a painting or a sculpture. julie shows lake a painting with sculptural elements (which is to say, tons of crap) prodtruding from it and asks her what it is. lake is confused because, "it's flat like a painting, but sticks out... like a sculpture!" she keeps repeating this, getting increasingly flustered until her pea-sized brain explodes out of her head. ah, they just don't make t.v. like that anymore.
end: interlude.


picasso's painting of his wife, olga kokhlova. i a little bit love this excerpt from the catalogue: "This picture is one of the most serene renderings of Olga from this period, and it captures the relative peace that defined her life with the artist in the months after the birth of their son, Paulo, earlier in 1921. In the year that followed the completion of this painting, Olga's preference for a stable domestic life began to conflict with her husband's more social predilections, and by the end of 1922 Picasso's depictions of Olga lost their tenderness and serenity. Those characteristics, however, are epitomized and preserved in this picture."


conrad felixmuller's clemens braun


victor brauner's dancing girl


portrait de femme by henri matisse


bernard buffet's autoportrait


tsuguharu foujita's la religieuse


nu adosse ii by tamara de lempicka


jean-pierre cassigneul's la robe grise


renoir's le dejeuner a berneval

some warhols:






a basquiat:


my favorite pieces were (from least to most favorite):


richard prince's mountain nurse


tamara de lempicka's suzanne au bain

and my absolute favorite,

damian hirst's the most beautiful thing in the world, which was made with the wings of like a quadrillion real butterfly wings. from the catalogue: "Composed of butterfly wings and self-proclaiming its superlative beauty, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World recalls the ever revolving cycle of life and death. Each earthly wing is an individually chosen portion of the artist's design, and an image of heavenly beauty results along with a lasting impression of symphonic awe." nice.

stay tuned for posts with pictures from the MET and MOMA.