What a big weekend for Art!
Not only did Andrew Wyeth die, but Leonard E. B. Andrews--Andrew Wyeth's biggest "buyer"--died as well. If the New York Times is to be believed (and why would they lie?) Mr. Andrews died first. While it is possible that Mr. Wyeth died upon hearing is biggest buyer died, the New York Times didn't make that connection.
Even if you hate everything about the New York Times as much and for the same reasons you hate Vanity Fair, you've got to admit their obituaries are a rollicking good times (just as Vanity Fair, though disgusting in every other way, really does have a great horiscope page).
The New York Time's Wyeth obituary brought up this point:
Because of his popularity, a bad sign to many art world insiders, Wyeth came to represent middle-class values and ideals that modernism claimed to reject, so that arguments about his work extended beyond painting to societal splits along class, geographical and educational lines. One art historian, in response to a 1977 survey in Art News magazine about the most underrated and overrated artists of the century, nominated Wyeth for both categories.
Most underrated and most overrated. Some guys have all the luck!
As for Mr. Andrews, the New York Times had this to say:
He made his fortune publishing expensive newsletters on subjects like bankruptcy, asbestos and Iranian assets. For seven years he wrote a daily column of inspirational thoughts for The Daily News called “Ponder This.”...
After working for a bank in Dallas, Mr. Andrews joined the Uni-Serv Corporation, an early credit-card company. When printers stuck New York City newspapers in 1962, he proposed soliciting advertising from Uni-Serv customers to publish a paper during the strike, according to Editor & Publisher.
The resulting paper, The New York Standard, with Mr. Andrews as associate publisher, was the largest of several such strike papers. It produced 67 issues with a peak circulation exceeding 400,000.
Does that make him a publishing scab?Even if it does,
...Mr. Andrews’s ...poured the money into the art program he had started to help municipal employees and other amateurs exhibit their art. It now has 85 shows in 44 states.
Which is as good a thing as any to do with the money that came gushing in after "he sold them at a profit of perhaps 600 percent." (an estimated $40 million)
The other big news in the art world this weekend was the incarceration of Boy George. Because we so love the red gold and green here at New Texture, we are often on the look out for "the hits" on youtube (what with blogs being the new TV guide and youtube being the new TV.)
In looking for the iconic Junior Murvin hit "Police and Thieves" I happend upon Boy George's "misreading"--and what a glorious misreading it is. You see, while everone else is focused on how close the arrow is to the bull's eye, we at New Texture are more focused (and clearly more tittilated) by how far the arrow is from the target all together, and by that we mean the further the better.
Speaking of Boy George and the red gold and green, the SUN reports that "They put him in a cell with a Rasta Guy to protect him."
Irie...
