Mass Confusion

I left the MassArt Benefit Auction on Saturday night a little bewildered. It wasn't because of the art, it was because of the attendees. Whatever I thought I knew about the market, went totally out the window. An unlimited edition by Julian Opie went for four times its price on Opie's webstore (to multiple high bidders!), while amazing pieces, like David Ording's portrait of Lady Agnew (shown here) went for almost half-price. There were no surprises with the usual crowd pleasers in the live auction- Laura McPhee, Abe Morrell, and Ambreen Butt, but downstairs was literally a bargain basement with the exception of a (very) few works that seemed to have been originally priced too low. These included a couple of interesting student works by Jonathan Lewis and Lisa Foti, which were both bought at 150% of suggested price through the "buy it now" option. Many really good pieces that should have easily sold closed without any bids. Some of us got great deals on specific pieces that we had targeted (like the Michael Mazur print I won), but the best strategy would have been to bought in volume, picking up all of the decent work that didn't have bids. How could the same audience overbid for an Opie wall sticker and not place any bids on paintings that could have been won for a fraction of those bids. Were they just unknowledgeable buyers? Is there some twist on charity that I am missing?

Artcetera 2008

For those who won't be at the IFPDA Print Fair in NYC on November 1st, that Saturday AIDS Action in Boston is presenting Artcetera 2008. The live and silent auctions at this event can be a good place to see and buy art made in Boston and beyond- sometimes with really good deals. Michael Mazur and Judith Larsen (both mentioned in this blog) have prints in the auctions. There is also a Laura McPhee benefit print (shown here) for Patrons at the $2,500 level and above. To view the available artwork and purchase tickets, click on the link below.

http://www.aac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=events_artcetera

Michael Mazur claims "I'm definitely not a purist"

Michael Mazur was a guest this evening of the MFA's Print and Drawing Club. Michael took the group of about 25 of us through a variety of print-making processes that he uses. He showed proofs along the way to making several prints. For one of the prints in his Dante's Inferno series, he had one of the original mylars that was used to make the metal plate, the copper plate itself, which had been reworked several times (but before the steel electroplated layer was added). For that work he also share a working proof, the B.A.T. (Bon a Tirer -- meaning "good to pull"), and final edition print.

He also walked us through a series of 5 proofs starting with the first flat produced with a "rainbow roll" (a method where one or more colors are literally rolled on the paper to create a colored stripe), new images were superimposed in additional colors and then finally a wood block was used to print a wood-grained texture onto the final image.

In another interesting example of using different printing techniques, Michael showed us to very different prints of the same image. One was made as an etching and the other produced with an inkjet printer. "No one should be frightened by injet prints" he advocates. After the lecture, I shared my skepticism of injet prints with Michael. Think about the image - don't worry about the process he said.

In Boston, you can find Michaels work at Barbara Krakow Gallery.