| susceptible to images a milwaukee art review |
On Collecting Art
By Peter Goldberg
I may say at once that I am no connoisseur in art, but simply a layman.
Nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me.
-- Sigmund Freud
What we call home is merely any place that succeeds in making more
consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world
ignores or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble
holding on to.
-- Alain De Botton
To my surprise and disbelief, I have recently been referred to as one of
Milwaukee’s noteworthy art collectors. The prominent American
contemporary collector Don Rubell has joked, “If you have one more
piece than the number of walls you have to put them on, you’re a
collector.” By that measure, I guess I am a collector, since at long last I
have run out of wall space and am trying to figure out how and where to
store my pieces, or am loaning them to friends for their walls.
For years now I have collected ethnic art and artifacts, some crafts
such as pottery, some photography and sculpture, and a fair number of
original paintings, prints and drawings mostly by Milwaukee or
Midwestern artists, or artists encountered during travel in the U.S and
abroad. The New York Times recently reviewed Art Basel-Miami, now
the most prominent international gallery show in the U.S., and
suggested that major collectors have become such a force in the art
world of late that they are effectively surpassing curators and critics as
the arbiters of good art. Let me assure you, I am hardly such a
collector. On a public defender’s salary, I do not have a collection of
any great value or including any famous works. But that fact itself may
make it worthwhile for me to comment on my reasons and thoughts on
collecting in order to encourage those of no great means to consider
the rewards of buying original art.
There are many reasons to buy art. The first and rather sound one,
though my artist friends will cringe to hear me say this, is frankly interior
decoration. Original art really lends an exciting, distinctive touch to one’
s home or office. (Hint: art does not have to coordinate with colors or
decor).
Many may think that a second reason is as an investment. I hear,
however, that, even for those who can afford the class of art which
might accrue in value, it is often not a very sound investment given the
whims of fashion and taste. For someone like me, I would be kidding
myself to think that my collection will increase significantly in value or
even be resalable. To the contrary, my expenditures on art have
probably been unwise, if one measures them by any calculus of
financial security. In fact, I’d say I have been downright spendthrift
about art, unless personal satisfaction outweighs frugality or is a virtue
in its own right.
There are other rather base reasons for collecting: prestige, pretension
and social-climbing, addiction and obsession, possessiveness and
materialism. And I have to concede that I have been prey to all these at
some time or another. The materialism of collecting actually troubles
me a great deal when I think of more socially critical uses to which I
could have put my money than feathering my nest. My artist friends
always point out, however, that supporting artists is a worthy cause
itself.
That brings me to the most important reason I collect art. It nourishes
me on almost a daily basis. Part of that is aesthetic. Works I have
bought often taught and continue to teach me something about design
and looking. Another aspect of the aesthetics is pure pleasure. But
most importantly, I virtually never buy a work of art that does not in
some way speak to my values, my self-image, my better self, or my
soul. I return to my art pieces often to reencounter the important ideas
and ideals I first saw in them, just as I return to favorite passages in
books for those reasons -- books and daily lattes are my other vices.
For instance, among recent purchases are some figurative works by
the former Milwaukeean and now Amsterdammer, Daniel Bodner. His
naked men set in spare landscapes or rooms, seem to represent
Mankind stripped to its existential self, very much as did those of
Giacometti. My favorite of these is of two men walking along at the
edge of land, sea and sky, one seeming to reach out with the most
incredible sense of humanity to comfort or confide in the other. Their
intimacy bespeaks the meaning to be found in the ethic of the “Other,”
so compelling to me in contemporary philosophy and so very much the
reason I can go each day to defend in court those whom people so
often dismiss as “those people.”
I found a similar powerful commentary on Man’s existential dilemma and
hence demands in a Mexican mask I bought years ago during a trip to
the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. A human face, poised between
his ‘nahual’ or animal counterpart soul and a death’s head of his
mortality, seems to confront the viewer with his plight and need. It
always reminds me of what I learned in a bush village of Senegal during
my Peace Corps days, the most visceral learning experience of my life,
that, though there are many other ways to view and live in the world,
there is beyond that a mysterious but compelling humanity we all share
and evoke in one another.
One of the first pieces I bought from a Milwaukee gallery, an early Fred
Stonehouse called Voices, represents another riff on such a theme
about essential humanity. In that painting, what an uncomprehending
friend used to mock as a cow in underpants enters a strange abstract
construct only he can probably envision. The creature states “sirens”
and the heading asserts, “Not even legend can describe them.” I take
from this a reminder that the essence of our humanity, moving us
beyond the animal, is our venturing after our visions and our courage
to create.
A piece I bought at the Navy Pier international art expo in Chicago is by
a California environmental lawyer, Erin Noel. Commuting regularly by
air between San Francisco and Mexico, she noticed the differing
geometries of the industrial and regularized farms and cities of America
and the compact checkerboards of more traditional Mexican farms and
cities. Her “map” of a Mexican city in a painting called El Pollo de
Muerte (The Chicken of Death), filled with the imagery of traditional
festivities and religion, speaks to me of how my collection of ethnic and
figurative art informs my law practice in harkening to the most basic and
hoary aspects of being human.
In a similar vein, a painting by Milwaukee artist and friend, Tom
Hoffman, The Pronouncement of the King, almost operatically reminds
me, a former actor wannabe, of the surreal cruelty and callousness of
the powerful, the oppression of the downtrodden, the horror of the
tyrannized, and the servility of the faceless factotums, all of which I
fancy I have dedicated my work life to confront. In allegorical style, a
king, enthroned on the back of a suffering man, issues a command
which sends a woman reeling back to cover her face in grief or horror,
while a pawn-like figure stands to the side as if awaiting its command to
move. All this is set against a deceptively calm dreamscape with a
palm, the fronds of which seem hand-like to be reaching out to grasp, a
bird of prey-like cloud about to engorge a blood red planet, and omen-
like multiple moons all belying the apparent the peace. A drawing by the
outsider artist Reg K. Gee, entitled The Two Counts of Behemoth,
similarly reminds me from another perspective of the cruel indifferences
all too common to our world both of modern science facing into the
miasma of a dis-enchanted universe or of racial advantage and
superiority taken for granted by the currently dominant powers.
The themes in my collection are not all so philosophical, didactic, or
remonstrative either. Some are just plain joyful like abstractions by
Milwaukee’s Michael Davidson’s Ant Farm and Chicago’s Anna Kunz’s
Monday or the Haitian La Bal de la Sirene by Gerard Paul and the
dancing Tulips by John Baker; they give me uplift each day when I so
much as glance at them in passing. (This is not to say that sensual
pleasure is all these latter works are about either. For instance, I have
learned much about painting technique, its surfaces and depths, from
Davidson’s Ant Farm; and his work generally with its discomfiting
discontinuities and imbalances has challenged and stretched my
aesthetic preconceptions). But these are examples of how the things I
collect speak to me on a daily basis.
And then there is the final great plus in collecting, that one can make
great friends of the artists and their circles. I now count as friends
many of the local artists, critics, gallery and museum folk whom I have
gotten to know by hanging around the art world. They are really quite
approachable and often great fun. They certainly have great parties. In
some ways that is a good reason to collect equal to the others, except
that, truth to tell, one doesn’t have to buy from them so much as show
an interest in their work to get to know them.
So if you are reading Susceptible to Images and are not an artist or art
world professional, consider buying some, or even collecting much art.
It will prove worth your while and valuable in your quest for meaning
and satisfaction -- even if not being so for your retirement account.
Peter Goldberg, Milwaukee born and bred, is a veteran member of the
state Public Defender’s staff, providing criminal defense for indigent
clients. He serves on the City of Milwaukee Arts Board and has been
active in political, social justice and arts organizations for years. He
served in the Peace Corps in a rural development program in Senegal
and has a penchant to travel and hit the bricks and back roads of any
city or country. He is a self-taught dilettante and keeps trying to write
passable poetry primarily for himself.
Comments? Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com
<<<<<Back to contents page
Copyright 2007 Art History Chicks LLC
By Peter Goldberg
I may say at once that I am no connoisseur in art, but simply a layman.
Nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me.
-- Sigmund Freud
What we call home is merely any place that succeeds in making more
consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world
ignores or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble
holding on to.
-- Alain De Botton
To my surprise and disbelief, I have recently been referred to as one of
Milwaukee’s noteworthy art collectors. The prominent American
contemporary collector Don Rubell has joked, “If you have one more
piece than the number of walls you have to put them on, you’re a
collector.” By that measure, I guess I am a collector, since at long last I
have run out of wall space and am trying to figure out how and where to
store my pieces, or am loaning them to friends for their walls.
For years now I have collected ethnic art and artifacts, some crafts
such as pottery, some photography and sculpture, and a fair number of
original paintings, prints and drawings mostly by Milwaukee or
Midwestern artists, or artists encountered during travel in the U.S and
abroad. The New York Times recently reviewed Art Basel-Miami, now
the most prominent international gallery show in the U.S., and
suggested that major collectors have become such a force in the art
world of late that they are effectively surpassing curators and critics as
the arbiters of good art. Let me assure you, I am hardly such a
collector. On a public defender’s salary, I do not have a collection of
any great value or including any famous works. But that fact itself may
make it worthwhile for me to comment on my reasons and thoughts on
collecting in order to encourage those of no great means to consider
the rewards of buying original art.
There are many reasons to buy art. The first and rather sound one,
though my artist friends will cringe to hear me say this, is frankly interior
decoration. Original art really lends an exciting, distinctive touch to one’
s home or office. (Hint: art does not have to coordinate with colors or
decor).
Many may think that a second reason is as an investment. I hear,
however, that, even for those who can afford the class of art which
might accrue in value, it is often not a very sound investment given the
whims of fashion and taste. For someone like me, I would be kidding
myself to think that my collection will increase significantly in value or
even be resalable. To the contrary, my expenditures on art have
probably been unwise, if one measures them by any calculus of
financial security. In fact, I’d say I have been downright spendthrift
about art, unless personal satisfaction outweighs frugality or is a virtue
in its own right.
There are other rather base reasons for collecting: prestige, pretension
and social-climbing, addiction and obsession, possessiveness and
materialism. And I have to concede that I have been prey to all these at
some time or another. The materialism of collecting actually troubles
me a great deal when I think of more socially critical uses to which I
could have put my money than feathering my nest. My artist friends
always point out, however, that supporting artists is a worthy cause
itself.
That brings me to the most important reason I collect art. It nourishes
me on almost a daily basis. Part of that is aesthetic. Works I have
bought often taught and continue to teach me something about design
and looking. Another aspect of the aesthetics is pure pleasure. But
most importantly, I virtually never buy a work of art that does not in
some way speak to my values, my self-image, my better self, or my
soul. I return to my art pieces often to reencounter the important ideas
and ideals I first saw in them, just as I return to favorite passages in
books for those reasons -- books and daily lattes are my other vices.
For instance, among recent purchases are some figurative works by
the former Milwaukeean and now Amsterdammer, Daniel Bodner. His
naked men set in spare landscapes or rooms, seem to represent
Mankind stripped to its existential self, very much as did those of
Giacometti. My favorite of these is of two men walking along at the
edge of land, sea and sky, one seeming to reach out with the most
incredible sense of humanity to comfort or confide in the other. Their
intimacy bespeaks the meaning to be found in the ethic of the “Other,”
so compelling to me in contemporary philosophy and so very much the
reason I can go each day to defend in court those whom people so
often dismiss as “those people.”
I found a similar powerful commentary on Man’s existential dilemma and
hence demands in a Mexican mask I bought years ago during a trip to
the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. A human face, poised between
his ‘nahual’ or animal counterpart soul and a death’s head of his
mortality, seems to confront the viewer with his plight and need. It
always reminds me of what I learned in a bush village of Senegal during
my Peace Corps days, the most visceral learning experience of my life,
that, though there are many other ways to view and live in the world,
there is beyond that a mysterious but compelling humanity we all share
and evoke in one another.
One of the first pieces I bought from a Milwaukee gallery, an early Fred
Stonehouse called Voices, represents another riff on such a theme
about essential humanity. In that painting, what an uncomprehending
friend used to mock as a cow in underpants enters a strange abstract
construct only he can probably envision. The creature states “sirens”
and the heading asserts, “Not even legend can describe them.” I take
from this a reminder that the essence of our humanity, moving us
beyond the animal, is our venturing after our visions and our courage
to create.
A piece I bought at the Navy Pier international art expo in Chicago is by
a California environmental lawyer, Erin Noel. Commuting regularly by
air between San Francisco and Mexico, she noticed the differing
geometries of the industrial and regularized farms and cities of America
and the compact checkerboards of more traditional Mexican farms and
cities. Her “map” of a Mexican city in a painting called El Pollo de
Muerte (The Chicken of Death), filled with the imagery of traditional
festivities and religion, speaks to me of how my collection of ethnic and
figurative art informs my law practice in harkening to the most basic and
hoary aspects of being human.
In a similar vein, a painting by Milwaukee artist and friend, Tom
Hoffman, The Pronouncement of the King, almost operatically reminds
me, a former actor wannabe, of the surreal cruelty and callousness of
the powerful, the oppression of the downtrodden, the horror of the
tyrannized, and the servility of the faceless factotums, all of which I
fancy I have dedicated my work life to confront. In allegorical style, a
king, enthroned on the back of a suffering man, issues a command
which sends a woman reeling back to cover her face in grief or horror,
while a pawn-like figure stands to the side as if awaiting its command to
move. All this is set against a deceptively calm dreamscape with a
palm, the fronds of which seem hand-like to be reaching out to grasp, a
bird of prey-like cloud about to engorge a blood red planet, and omen-
like multiple moons all belying the apparent the peace. A drawing by the
outsider artist Reg K. Gee, entitled The Two Counts of Behemoth,
similarly reminds me from another perspective of the cruel indifferences
all too common to our world both of modern science facing into the
miasma of a dis-enchanted universe or of racial advantage and
superiority taken for granted by the currently dominant powers.
The themes in my collection are not all so philosophical, didactic, or
remonstrative either. Some are just plain joyful like abstractions by
Milwaukee’s Michael Davidson’s Ant Farm and Chicago’s Anna Kunz’s
Monday or the Haitian La Bal de la Sirene by Gerard Paul and the
dancing Tulips by John Baker; they give me uplift each day when I so
much as glance at them in passing. (This is not to say that sensual
pleasure is all these latter works are about either. For instance, I have
learned much about painting technique, its surfaces and depths, from
Davidson’s Ant Farm; and his work generally with its discomfiting
discontinuities and imbalances has challenged and stretched my
aesthetic preconceptions). But these are examples of how the things I
collect speak to me on a daily basis.
And then there is the final great plus in collecting, that one can make
great friends of the artists and their circles. I now count as friends
many of the local artists, critics, gallery and museum folk whom I have
gotten to know by hanging around the art world. They are really quite
approachable and often great fun. They certainly have great parties. In
some ways that is a good reason to collect equal to the others, except
that, truth to tell, one doesn’t have to buy from them so much as show
an interest in their work to get to know them.
So if you are reading Susceptible to Images and are not an artist or art
world professional, consider buying some, or even collecting much art.
It will prove worth your while and valuable in your quest for meaning
and satisfaction -- even if not being so for your retirement account.
Peter Goldberg, Milwaukee born and bred, is a veteran member of the
state Public Defender’s staff, providing criminal defense for indigent
clients. He serves on the City of Milwaukee Arts Board and has been
active in political, social justice and arts organizations for years. He
served in the Peace Corps in a rural development program in Senegal
and has a penchant to travel and hit the bricks and back roads of any
city or country. He is a self-taught dilettante and keeps trying to write
passable poetry primarily for himself.
Comments? Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com
<<<<<Back to contents page
Copyright 2007 Art History Chicks LLC
| Peter Goldberg in his living room. |
| Painting by Daniel Bodner. |
| Masks from Chiapas. |
| Michael Davidson, Ant Farm |
| Tom Hoffman, The Pronouncement of the King |