Part 2: Bad Art for Sale

[Edit]: I misidentified the Tomato man sculpture below. It's called Tomato Head (green) by Paul McCarthy. The estimate was $1,000,000-1,500,000. It sold last night for $4,562,500. My feelings about the piece have not changed. I've added the prices realized. Prices include buyer's premium.

Last week's Impressionist auction at Christie's met with limited success. Degas' Little Dancer failed to sell. The experts feel the $25 million estimate was too aggressive. Many of the lots didn't sell. It's the economy, stupid!

So we move from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Contemporary Art auctions will be held this week. There are a few interesting lots but I have chosen to focus on the pieces that I simply don't understand. They strike me as preposterous and the estimates make me dizzy.

It's the old kitchen sink argument I can do that myself. It's a silly thing to say. One can retort well, then, why don't you? But logic has never been welcome on this blog and I'm not about to start now. So take a walk with me. This is the kind of self-indulgent junk that makes people dismiss art and shun museums.

This is Driftwood by Richard Long. It's 48 pieces of driftwood laid out just so on the floor. That's it. Chunks of wood on the floor. If I brought 5-Year Old Daughter to this, she'd immediately start picking them up and stacking them, thereby ruining the aesthetic of the piece. Estimate: $100,000-150,000. Did not sell.

Here's a doozy. This is Untitled (Into a Greater World) by Jim Hodges. It's a statue of a guy with a gigantic tomato head, a block of wood for a penis and a carrot stuck up his ass, surrounded by gardening tools and blocks of wood. Where would you display something like this? No corporation is going to put this in their lobby. I hope.


Is this supposed to be playful? Because I would argue that any playfulness is negated by the carrot sodomy. Even the title reeks of pretense. Untitled, but then, a title. Oy. Estimate: $500,000-700,000. Yeah. I'd be willing to drop half a million on this.

I'm probably going to catch some hell for this. This is Untitled by Jean-Michel Basquiat who I cannot stand. This is a terrible piece. It's infantile scribbling. Basquiat helped legitimize graffiti as an art form. The people who deemed graffiti "art" lived uptown and didn't have to look at it every day while walking to the corner bodega for a quart of milk. It got old. Take my word for it. And stupidly throwing your successful life/career away on a heroin overdose is inexcusable. Estimate: $900,000-1,200,000. Sold for $2,546,500.


This is 6765 by Mario Merz. 85 stacks of aging newspapers with glass plates and neon tubes. Actually, I saw something just like this last weekend at the town recycling center. Estimate: $750,000-950,000. Sold for $1,426,500.

Flowers, Mary's Table by de Kooning. I don't like ANYTHING de Kooning did. It's noise. This piece gave me a headache just by walking past it. Ready for this? Estimate: $8,000,000-12,000,000. Totally worth it. Did not sell.


Another head-scratcher. One and Three Coats by Joseph Kosuth is a photograph of a leather coat, the leather coat and the definition of coat. Again, I ask, where is the artistic merit in this? And where would you proudly display it? Estimate: $140,000-180,000. Sold for $146,500.

I LIKE THIS ONE

Finally, a Jeff Koons I can appreciate. Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J. Silver Series, Wilson Aggressor). Two basketballs suspended in sodium chloride reagent and distilled water. You'd have to see this in person to really appreciate it. It's bright and clean with sharp edges and it's funny. I love it. But not for $2,000,000-3,000,000. Sold for $4,226,500.