MASTERWORKS: Mrs. Paul Mellon

Rarely does an auction attract the attention of so many as does the upcoming Sotheby's sale of the late Bunny Mellon's collections. It's an unprecedented sale where her exquisite taste, and her unerring eye is evident in every object.

She saw what is beautiful-not most costly, but what is pleasing & fine regardless of price.

 The Mellon Living Room at Oak Spring

Her ability to place those objects and works of art together is recounted in the three voluminous catalogs for the sale-the first on November 10th. Mrs. Mellon's collection of Masterworks includes Diebenkorns, Rothkos, alongside works of Dutch masters, and Camille Pissaro.

To imagine eying just one of these paintings each day is impossible, but all? An intensely private person, the world Bunny Mellon created at Oak Spring Farm, and her other homes,included intimates the likes of Joseph Cornell, Gwen John and Georgia O'Keefe. It must have been company enough, and why not?

A painting of Dorelia McNeill, "Dorelia by Lamplight, at Toulouse" painted by Gwen John hangs alongside a hurricane globe & smoke bell in Mrs. Mellon's Oak Spring Farm dining room. It's enough that the provenance of this painting would lure me, once owned by painter Augustus John, a gift from his sister Gwen, it depicts Dorelia, his common law wife reading. Dorelia is best known in Augustus John's own paintings-part gypsy-part domestic, she was his great muse and responsible for his best works devoted to bohemianism. Cecil Beaton lauds Dorelia in his book The Glass of Fashion as having been unequaled in "developing a more perfect visual expression of the art of living." The same can be said of Bunny Mellon.

 Lot 40

In Mellon's painting by Gwen John, Dorelia perhaps revealed more of her true self-as she is said to have been a quiet, esoteric. Gwen and Dorelia traveled together on foot through France in 1903, stopping in Toulouse, where she painted Dorelia.
 

Two works that seem to have been separated at birth-but born of two quite different mothers are by Georgia O'Keeffe and Nicolas de Stael.  They are representative, too, of Mrs. Mellon's impeccable eye-one that could roam from an O'Keeffe to de Stael and rest on the beauty of both.

Georgia O'Keeffe's White Barn

Lot 16

Nicolas de Stael

Mediterranee

Lot 21

Another de Stael painting in the collection:

Cap Blanc Nez

Lot 17

The Mellons commissioned three works from Diego Giacometti in the early 1970's. All three support Mrs. Mellon's devotion to nature & purity. My favorite is a pair of chenets in painted bronze, "Chenets Aux Oiseaux."

Lot 22

"Table Au Dragon A L'Oiseau"

Diego Giacometti

Lot 5

There are 43 Masterworks in this, one of the three sales Sotheby's is conducting in November with over 2500 lots included from Mrs Mellon's collections. 

Pieces from her Collection of Interiors will be sold commencing November 21st, more from Me on that just before the sale.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Sotheby's, online catalog here

The catalogs are available from the Sotheby's website and highly desirable to any student of design

A discussion of the Masterworks here
On the Sotheby's site, Charlotte Moss talks about Bunny Mellon, a must see, here

 more about Augustus John, and Dorelia here , and here

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an O' Keeffe Life

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photograph fromThe MOMENT NY Times magazine-

HER world at Abiquiu was beautiful. Abiquiu-Ghost Ranch must have possessed Georgia O'Keeffe. I can see how that could happen. The stillness. The wide horizon. The landscape- it seduces. It took O'Keeffe as its lover and never relinquished its hold on her.

Stieiglitz

AT the time of her first 1929 visit- She was a New Yorker, was already established as an artist, was married to a major photographer, was beautiful. Yes, looking at O'Keeffe- she appears today- the photographs of her are totally modern- a page from one of Ralph Lauren's dreamy lifestyle advertisements.

Stieglitz

THE one thing She didn't have was- A place of her own, A place to paint, A place for silence. Albiququ fulfilled those desires- She maintained her marriage,traveling to NY to meet her photographer husband- He never came to Her World. O'Keeffe found herself amongst the ancients: the austere Abiquiu was Beauty, Inspiration, and she remained Faithful to it until her death in 1986 at the age of 98.

"I wish I had kept a diary,
I think I know now that my life is never going to look right."

O'Keeffe by Yousuf Karsh

Ghost Ranch

ALONG with purchasing Ghost Ranch in 1940, she rented it until then, O'Keeffe purchased another house in 1945 and its restoration was completed in 1949. She lived there and at Ghost Ranch as well. The Abiquiu house was a 5,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial 18ty century compound in Abiquiu and was in ruins. Male villagers of Abiquiu made the adobe brick and the woman of the village-the most skilled in plastering- worked the earth's mud into refined thin walls. Here- her staff took care of the house and property- while she painted. A studio was built beyond the house and a vegetable garden was planted.




HER INTERIORS at ABIQUIU:

Tables of plain pieces of wood on stands, bare bulbs, sticks, Muslin cloth bed covers, white sheeting,an elk horn rack, horns, skulls, large rocks, river rocks & pebbles, Japanese lanterns, & an Alexander Calder mobile, Plywood tabletops, Bancos-rounded adobe ledges at the base of the adobe walls-for sitting.

Chestnut Tree

O'Keeffe

"I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."

photograph by Stieglitz,1918

Things you might not know about Georgia O'Keeffe:


William Merritt Chase was her mentor.

Her aesthetic included Chinese and Japanese Art and her work- upon examination- reflects that.

One of her favorite books was The Book of Tea, 1906 Okakura Kakuzo. "The similarities between her own life and the Japanese tea ceremony were obvious- her constant manner, her humility, her exactness, her utterly respectful exactness." ( Christine Taylor Patten from the O'Keeffe At Abiquiu book)

"In 1906 in turn-of-the century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty-and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's the Book of Tea is still beloved the world over. Interwoven with a rich history of tea and its place in Japanese society is poignant commentary on Eastern culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. the Book of Tea is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time" (text from here)

" Turn to the pages about flowers. He understands about flowers. You know, he says that a butterfly is a flower with wings. Don't you think that is a fine idea?" G. O'Keeffe

the Pansy,1926

"Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. " Georgia O'Keeffe

Oriental Poppies, 1928

Georgia O'Keeffe has a place at the table of artist Judy Chicag's Dinner Party .The O'Keeffe setting is the last at the Chicago table. Chicago acknowledged the influence O'Keefe on future feminist artists, pronouncing her work as "pivotal in the development of an authentically female iconography" (Judy Chicago)

More about Women of the Southwest in future posts- Millicent Rogers especially, along with Ima Hogg, Mabel Dodge- maybe someday Me.

more on O'Keeffe:

Lifetime Movie Sept 19, Saturday Georgia O'Keeffe, Joan Allen, Jeremy Irons

little augury

the O'Keeffe Museum

Her Houses

at the Whitney Georgia O'Keefffe Abstraction Sept 17 ,2009- Jan 17,2010

from Art In the Picture

from the blog Sexuality in Art: O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams


interior images from O'Keeffe At Abiquiu, text by Christine Taylor Patten, photographs by Myron Wood

FOUND- bag, swag and a dandelion

I am enjoying this new neighborhood-the blog world- It is a fascinating community and holds so much talent. I am sure every blogger voraciously reads other blogs and thinks- I wished I'd "said" that.

A recent blog by Haskell Harris at Belle Decor led me to a smart site with authentic looking travel bags. BillyKirk Leathergoods has captured the look of a bag that is timeless. Isn't it time we stop LOGOing everything- One of these bags-I think maybe the green- I plan to have. There is a good looking Day Bag, but I prefer the larger Overnite Bag. It will serve as handbag, work bag, overnite bag- but, mostly for work- transporting rooms by way of fabric samples, trims.. pictures of what might be.



the great "Overnite Bag"


That find was good enough- But after an inquiry- Chris Bray of the same- has shared two great artists to take a look at. Here they are-

Heirantiques makes a strong statement in bronze with a swag door decoration. It is cast from a French carved wood architectural detail. The swag's scale is monumental for its use, about 16 1/2". A stark contrast to a minimalist single hook. Nice- but I prefer Form, Function and Decoration. This design provides it all.


Doing botanicals as artists might become an obsession. I can imagine the artist obsessing over every flower they see, stopping by the wayside to pinch a flower- do they do that? Thumbing through specimen classifications? Looking for something that makes what they do NEW? Artist Agnes de Bethune looks at things this way, "I often enjoy the abstract qualities of so-called realistic painting and the illusionistic moments in work that is intended to be abstract. But I have never been one to look up and see images in the clouds; to me they are just clouds. What I look for is the calligraphy in the brushwork. Ultimately it boils down to my love for the gesture made by a human hand." Her work is far less botanical and more pure flower power. I find the size of her work to be one of the most compelling things about them.

Agnes de Bethune with some of her flowers


This photograph I used in a recent topic prompted Chris Bray to comment that it reminded him of Agnes' paintings. The painting Little Pink Rose by the artist put me in mind of the photograph. The Little Pink is less realistic than some of her works.

photograph of ROSA WOODSII


Agnes de Bethune's painting Little Pink Rose(9 x12)


Here are some of my favorite paintings in her most recent work- One would be striking in itself. A trio even better. Go to her site-What is your favorite?


Dandelion (30 x 30) by Agnes de Bethune



Wild Blue Chicory (30x 30) Agnes de Bethune



Red Poppy (30 x 30) Agnes de Bethune