Fine Art Connoisseur

“What art do you recommend buying today, Eric?” This is a question I hear often. First, I never offer investment advice, as it’s a great way to lose friends and get sued. Besides, I don’t buy art for investment, though if choosing between two artworks I love equally, I’ll always buy the one more likely to yield a higher return down the road. Buy what you love — whatever speaks to your heart and has special meaning. If you buy purely for investment, you may get stuck with something expensive that you simply don’t enjoy. A reader of this magazine once showed me his collection of 1970s modern art, in which he had invested millions, and which today is worthless. He no longer loves these works, yet they still hang throughout his…

One thing that continues to mystify me about American art museums is the absence of a single forum where institutions can apprise each other of traveling exhibitions to be shared. Say, for example, that you are a museum curator in Missouri with a unique opportunity to organize a retrospective of a local landscape painter now in her 60s. This landscapist is collected nationally but has never had a major museum show before, let alone one that travels to three or four museums nationwide. The costs of gathering her works will be comparatively low because the insurance values are reasonable, and because all artworks can be shipped easily from locations around the U.S. mainland. Securing the loans will be no problem, as most works are owned by individuals who are only too…

Wu Han used to suffer from stage fright — but only when performing a certain piece of music. Although she is an accomplished pianist and one of the most engaging onstage presences in classical music, she still must steel herself when sitting down at her Steinway piano to play Winterreise, the cycle of 24 songs (lieder) by the Austrian composer Franz Schubert. “I have to fight back tears when I’m performing those pieces,” Wu Han says. “I’ve taught myself not to become personally involved with them, but to remain rather cold-hearted.” The Winterreise cycle, composed in 1827, is based on poems by Wilhelm Müller that recount a young man’s unrequited love and his self-imposed exile into an actual and metaphorical winter landscape that mirrors his despair. “I am so moved by…

Welcome! Highlighting the tremendous quality of sculpture being made today is something that we at Fine Art Connoisseur always look forward to with enthusiasm. Illustrated here is an array of three-dimensional artworks that remind us how endlessly inventive our sculptor colleagues can be. As they all can attest, making sculpture is often slow, expensive, and even dangerous, so we heartily congratulate all of the sculptors represented in this issue, and we encourage our readers to seriously consider acquiring a sculpture soon. MAIDY MORHOUS San Diego, CA Don’t kill the goose! 12 x 7 x 6 in., Bronze Available through artist Maidy@MaidyMorhous.com | www.maidymorhous.com Represented by Gefen Fine Art, San Francisco, CA; Sparks Gallery, San Diego, CA; Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA GEORGENE MCGONAGLE Denver, CO High Hopes, 21 x 14.4 x 7.75 in., Bronze gmcgonaglestudio.com…

CAROLINE WALKER (b. 1982) is a Scottish painter currently residing in London. The subjects she explores in her theme-based series resonate with women around the world for the way they shine light on long-held assumptions related to female roles, in particular domestic duties and service work, as well as the sacrifices associated with stay-at-home motherhood. “My parents took very traditional gendered roles,” Walker shared in a recent interview with ART UK. “My Dad went out to work and then spent the weekends doing building projects on the house, while my Mum took the role of the homemaker — cooking, cleaning, and looking after me and my brother. I was both delighted to have my Mum at home all the time and quite adamant that that wasn’t what I would do when…

Los Angeles’s fiery poet of paint, Carl Dobsky (b. 1972), has ignited controversy with his shocking new picture of a man setting his feet alight. Wrapped in a blanket, a balding, burly man sits on one of the pink granite stars that punctuate the mile-long Walk of Fame stretching down Hollywood Boulevard, where sightseers mill. Those stars adorn the sidewalks long after the tourist traps have yielded to parking lots, strip malls, and warehouses. Eventually, neither the sparkly veneer of show business nor the security guards can hide the army of the drugged, drunk, and deranged who have made this broken boulevard their home — living on the street in squalid rows of shacks. Dobsky’s barefoot man is either so desperate or so crazy that his self-immolation seems like a reasonable…