Derainged

Today:  Some straight-up art history.

Tweeting:  "Beale Street Blues,"  Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, Back to Back.

Oh, we're going to be so sick of these two pages!

Someone this week said I looked as if I were going to a gallery opening after work, which was a nice compliment.  Then my one of my shoes fell apart as I crossed the atrium on the way to a sandwich.  Only time I ever saw the lead security person crack a smile and I no longer looked as if I were headed to a gallery.  Nice while it lasted!

In 1959, I could have been heading to New Art Center to snap up Andre Derain's "Head of a Child" for $300 ($2,400).      Blurbage:  "This tender sketch is by the notable French painter and sculptor who, with Matisse and Viaminck, formed the heart of the Fauve exhibit in Paris in 1905 and who died in 1954."

Thank you, Vogue, for the tiny art history lesson!  Here is Derain's Charing Cross Bridge, from the Musee D'Orsay.

In trying to figure this out, I came across a very interesting account of an auction of French art in 1922. Several of Derain's works were sold, among works by Picasso, Matisse, Courbet and the American artist Arthur B. Davies (never heard of him).   The article noted that many of the works were bought by other artists; one of them was the photographer Arnold Genthe, famous for his photos of San Francisco's Chinatown.   All had been owned by Dikran Khan Kelekian, a mysterious collector of Islamic art, who apparently scooped up several stacks of paintings, drawings and sketches in Paris at the turn of the century.  Also a mysterious death:  fell from the 21st floor of a hotel in New York in 1951.

Dikran Khan Kelekian, stolen from Flickr

(Speaking only monetarily, works that went for $100 in 1922 would have sold for $172 in 1959:  yet $100 in 1959 became $800 this year.)

I don't think I would have paid $300 for that drawing and I would have been a total idiot because here is a page from his sketch book that a Russian dealer is selling for $5,000.00:

This March, at the same time a Jackson Pollock painting was in the news, this painting by Derain was offered by Christies.  Having never heard of Derain, this made no impression - or post impression - on me at all.

This was supposed to go for $15 million dollars, but no one wanted it.  Must have been ind of awkward!  But, still, whoever was smart enough to buy the little sketch probably did very well indeed.

Andre Derain, self portrait

Next:  Number Three in the Art Roadshow.