Last Father’s Day I ventured out to
an art auction at Material Culture, a large enterprise that sells ersatz
antiques, furnishings and decorative arts for appointing houses with an exotic touch.
I call it Freak-Chic. You can buy a cast bronze Buddha, Persian rugs or a weathered
wardrobe once-owned by a Pasha. Everything is high priced so I wasn’t hopeful
I’d be picking up any bargains for my skinny art collection. Had I known how
good the quality and how inexpensive the art, I would have brought a checkbook.
There was a mix of unknown modernists (long dead) and lots of curious outsider
art. This made for interesting pickings for the audience of amateur collectors.
The small paintings of the ‘unknown’ Javior Mayoral were particularly fetching.
Some were bid up on-line to a couple hundred dollars but several were left
unsold around fifty dollars. I kicked myself! They resembled mini-Magritte or pre-pin-up
Picabia. Definetly like Philly’s, Jim Houser. Mayoral’s work was well painted
full of semi-surreal and comic sayings. My Googlie research could not turn up
much on the artist except that he’s Latino and lives in Miami! I imagine him to
be fairly young, judging from the low price points. Had he applied, he would
have been accepted into the Woodmere Museum’s Open Show up at the moment,
creatively curated by our own Dufala brothers. That is another story.
There were more authentic outsider
artists like Jim Bloom (not Jim Nutt) that could pass for low quality Basquiat.
They looked swell on the Power Point display but were lacking a little
something up close on actual walls. These seemed to some stir interest in the
crowd. I almost bought one accidently when I scratched my right ear. Tabletops
and glass cabinets featured packs of drawings and watercolors of all sorts, all
inexpensive. There were even a few Japanese 100 year old prints for a snip. I
always wanted a real Japanese print especially a scene depicting the Battle of
Tsushima, 1905! As for current neo-Outsiders; in decades past, I used to deride them
as mere skateboard painters. That was snobbish! Next time I‘m bringing some
cash.
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