Auctions held at American Art Museum of New York City

There is no other place like Sotheby and Christie’s gallery to get diversified American art. You can easily find out several masterpieces at the Christies American art sale’s season. In both galleries, art of Maxfield Parrish, Georgia O’Keeffe and George Inness has been sold with tremendous vibe amongst participants. At the sales of American art of Sotheby and Christies from New York have been amazing, and the most anticipated part of such sales is the 20^th century paintings. Christie was managed to sell out the entire lot (100 lots) by a week which estimated about 28 million USD along with premium. The premium offerings are such like Henry Lane’s Prosaic Fitz (Massachussets harbor scene), couple of bulls in 1849, Cubo-stained glass of Oscar Bluemner which was painted with a view of Staten Island, and Rockwell magazine of Corny Normal portrait in 1927, and the painting was grafted with a cowboy by a Victrola from old time. All these paintings had a estimated amount of 2-3 Million USD but it was only Rockwell which was sold with a price of 2.3 Million USD.      
                                                                                                                                                                                                         

It was the second highest price for the entire lot of Christie. The most featured painting was holding a cat by a woman, and the painting was done by Mary Cassatt. It was painted when her age was mid 60s, and the painted was done in 1907 to 1908. It had earned such applause from the visitors as the painter was suffering from cataracts and arthritis when she completed the entire painting. The painting was taken with a staggering amount 2.6 million USD, and the pre-sale rate was near about half of the selling rate. In the last century, we have seen several paintings were copied or made posters out of them, and most of them are wide available as the commercial prints. One of such copy was sold by the assistance of Hirschl, Knoedler and Adler. The last auction for this painting was held at the beginning of 2000s. The selling amount was not that high (8, 30,750 USD). Other paintings that earned the top listings included Deer Horns of 36 inch by Georgia O’ Keffe (the selling price was 1.9 million USD) , Frieseke’s a lady having a pink parasol in the blue Foxgloves garden in 1912 ( the painting was sold with a price of 2.2 million USD).  Few days earlier, another painting from Georgia O’ Keffee named as “Lake George in Woods” was sold with a hefty price (9 million USD).

Click on this video to see an interesting video about American art.

Jasper Johns – A Classic Contemporary Painter

 Jasper Johns emerged as a talented contemporary artist who liked to work with an innovative form of printmaking and especially painting. This great painter cum printmaker was born in Georgia.  Hi spent his early stage of childhood in South Carolina, Allendale with grandparents after the marriage of his parents failed. He lived almost a year with his mother in South Carolina, and several years with aunt, Gladys in the same city.

 He graduated from a school from Sumter where he used to live with his mother again.  In a biography, he mentioned that, there was nothing about the art or artist in his childhood’s place, and he didn’t even know about anything related with art. He just knew that, it would be a situation which would be completely different from things he was living with. He started drawing at the age of just three, and continued the journey of turning himself as a legendry painter. (Similar masterpieces can also be found in New York by Thomas Kinkade).

Johns completed his university studies in 1948 from South Carolina. Then, he went to New York City, and got into another art school “The Parsons School of Design” in 1949. From 1952-1953, Johns stayed for a year during the famous “Korean War”. Johns is still recognized for his special Flag painting which he did in between 1954 to 1955. The masterpiece was made after having a dream related with the country’s flag. He was also known with a nick called “Neo Dadaist” as he didn’t follow the traditional pop art. Johns although used subjective matters where objects and images were included in his master art. However, there are still speculations about the compilations about the pop art where Jasper was named as the classic exam of Iconography. During his early period of painting, Jasper used some common schemes like maps, flags, letters, targets, and numerical icons.  The painter is also famous due to his incorporations of media like plaster relief and encaustic in some of the paintings. Johns always played with the paradoxes, contradictions, opposites, and some classic ironies of life.

 Some says, it was like Marcel Duchamp (he was also been part of Dada Movement).  Johns then produced sculptures, intaglio, and lithographs with those motifs. John’s limelight approach was to add popular iconographic objects into painting. It helped his vision over particular matters or his associations over those incidences. Some of the abstract expressionists still don’t believe in such concept but many of them did realize that, he changed the scenario of using subjects towards the abstract painting.

If you like to watch a small biography of Jasper Johns, then look out here in this video.

Robert Rauschenberg- a famous painter and graphic artist

Robert Rauschenberg, a legendary painter from New York whose initial works anticipated during the movement of pop art.  Rauschenberg became famous for his legendary work “Combines” in the mid 1950s. During the exhibition, the artist used non-traditional objects and materials, and it was such an innovative artistic composition during those years. The artist was not a famous painter but also a great sculptor. His amazing project “Combines” was the great combination of both sculpture and paintings (Like Thomas Kinkade New York painting). However, the artist had also worked as printmaker, photographer, performance and papermaker. Robert Rauschenberg got his achievement award from the National Medal of Arts during 1993. 

The full name of Rauschenberg is Milton Ernest Rauschenberg, and he was born in Texas. He is the son of Ernest R. Rauschenberg and Dora Carolina. His mother was “Anglo-Saxon” descent and his father was “German ancestry”. Rauschenberg’s parents used to be fundamentalist Christians. 

Rauschenberg completed his pre-college from the Academia Julian and Kansas City Art Institute in France. He went to Black Mountain College in 1948 to complete the graduation. Josef Albers, who was the mentor of Rauschenberg when he studied in Black Mountain College and Josef, was also the founder of Bauhaus.  Josef tried to influence Rauschenberg not to work on any uninfluenced experimentation during the early period of his art college. Rauschenberg told about the Josef as the main man to do him to reverse the entire concept.  Rauschenberg also studied with Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytlacil when he was in “Art Students League” in New York.  At times, Rauschenberg’s attitude used to signify as Neo Dadaist, a unique label that he used to share with another painter named “Jasper Johns”. Once the artist said that, he preferred working in a time between the life and art. It does suggest his thinking towards the daily life objects and art objects. Such approach was also initiated by Dada, Fountain, and Marcel Duchamp. Rauschenberg decided to reverse such conception of Championing art in 1961. He wanted to make a significant turnover over the meaning of creator in Neutral art. Rauschenberg once invited to get participated in “Galerie Iris Clert” where all the artists had to make and show a special portrait of gallery owner. Rauschenberg made a great announcement at UN to open a special Interchange program called as “ROCI- Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange”. This program was held with a sever year schedule, and visit almost ten countries promoting the significance of world peace and harmony.

You can watch a great interview of Robert Rauschenberg here in this Video.