I’m not sure I’ve seen the deep emotional resonance of an artist’s experience in the contemporary art world captured more fully in just two drawings, by two artists I’d never thought of together before until their appearance in an online Heritage Auction in Dallas opened my mind. Now I see they share an unflinching commitment to seeing and depicting the world unfolding around them:
This trompe l’oeil sheet of note paper, Possible Mean(ing)s is William Powhida at his crankiest, an exhausting and heartbreaking list of what an artist hears when they hear someone talking about their work: “I really liked your piece. (You’re in a horrible group show.)…You can’t control sales. (The collector is a scumbag Republican.)”
The work is being sold from the estate of Marlene Meyerson, a longtime arts patron and AMFAR fundraiser in Fort Worth who died in 2017, but it’s probably moving now because her husband Morton just died this year. Marlene’s first job out of college was working on the JFK campaign, so not a scumbag Republican. But maybe the next buyer is? Unless you bid to stop them?
Meanwhile, speaking of group shows, Hirshl Adler Gallery hosted a Skowhegan Celebration Exhibition in May 1984, a group show of 43 past Skowhegan Medal award winners, in lieu of the art school’s traditional award gala. And so the gathering at the Plaza on Tuesday May 1st was more of an opening dinner. Artists and guests enjoyed Skowhegan Chicken Pot Pie and Original Maine Blueberry Cobbler. And during the festivities Ellsworth Kelly drew a portrait of Robert Indiana, his fellow Skowhegan alum, medalist, and Coenties Slip-era boyfriend, who must have been sitting just to his right. Whatever it took to get through the evening. It’s being sold by whoever had the keys to Indiana’s place in Vinalhaven, I guess.