Can You Believe This?

James Howard

Charles Saatchi recently purchased an entire exhibition from an art student. "James Howard, a student at the Royal Academy Schools, was shocked to discover yesterday that Britain’s most influential collector of contemporary art wanted 46 of his – an entire graduation show. Howard, 26, one of 19 students who have just completed the RA Schools’ postgraduate course, was fast asleep when Mr Saatchi popped into the academy last week.

The young artist found out later that his digital prints – each one a collage of photographic images made up to look like a typical internet advertisement – had caught the collector’s eye."

I have more than a sneaking feeling that as Clement Greenberg helped define the modern era through his writing and collecting, so Charles Saatchi will help define the post-modern era through his collecting of art. Wait and see. Indeed, he already is.

Charles Saatchi

Link to the Saatchi Gallery

Crystal Bridges Secures an Eakins Anyway

Article.

Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand, 1874

After the battle over Eakins' The Gross Clinic, Alice Walton has purchased a different Eakins painting for the Crystal Bridges American Art Museum. The subject, "Dr. Rand, who once taught Eakins anatomy, donated his portrait to the university when he retired in 1877. Proceeds from the sale, which experts familiar with the deal put at about $20 million, will go toward the expansion of its educational and research programs and development of its 13-acre Center City campus." (1)

Rand family profile.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Another Thomas Eakins painting, The Cello Player sold last week in a secret deal after Alice Walton and the National Gallery lost their bid to purchase his painting, The Gross Clinic. Some are calling it a "tradeoff," though they insist they don't know the buyer of The Cello Player. Hmmmmm.

Eakins' Painting to Stay in Philly After All

Looks like Crystal Bridges won't get to house the famous painting. I, for one, am very disappointed.

Kevin Bacon Wants The Gross Clinicto Stay in Philly???

Now there's one degree of separation between Bacon and Thomas Eakins' famous painting. I'm glad he's an art lover, but dang, what's up with people not wanting art to go to Arkansas???

Possible New Crystal Bridges Museum AcquisitionGenerates Controversy Once More

Last time, New York didn't want to give up Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits painting to the new (will be completed in 2009) Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Check out the articles on Philadelphia not wanting to give up Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic. What do you think? Is it just me, or do the writers have something against sending art/culture to Arkansas?

The painting in question....