They often have collections of dolls at the auction house (which is one weekend a month). (Maybe I should make a tag and go back and tag all the dolls I have taken pictures of?) This group, and several other shelves of dolls will be auctioned on Monday afternoon, probably for a very small amount - all the low price stuff is on Monday. My friend Diana has an absentee bid on a small Persian carpet and a small fu lion picture/embroidery on the Monday auction, We figure she might get both for only $40 (plus tax and commission). The little rug is a beauty.
Going to the auction house is like going to a museum. Lots of the stuff is junk, but there are interesting things sprinkled all over the place that you might only rarely see anywhere else. There are lots of paintings and prints, many junky, but some very fine ones - like maybe out of 500 paintings, there might be 25 that are exceptional, and out of those, a few that are affordable bargains. You never know what you will see, and what will happen.
(When I saw these dolls, I thought about that club in Orlando, the way the dolls were all dressed up and happy, and then, BANG, laying on top of each other. What a horrible thing to happen. It takes a while to clear the thoughts of the sadness and badness. Then, I thought about the later pictures and prints of Goya; it seems he must have had trouble getting the thoughts of the Napoleonic wars in Spain and those horrors out of his thoughts too.)
Goya is one of my favorite artists. He comes out of the tradition of Titian and later Velazquez, and leads right into Manet, Degas, and Sargent. They all were "painter's painters" with their bravura, suggestive brushwork and, starting with Velazquez, their interest in the real life around us.
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Date: 2016-06-18 07:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-18 08:05 pm (UTC)Going to the auction house is like going to a museum. Lots of the stuff is junk, but there are interesting things sprinkled all over the place that you might only rarely see anywhere else. There are lots of paintings and prints, many junky, but some very fine ones - like maybe out of 500 paintings, there might be 25 that are exceptional, and out of those, a few that are affordable bargains. You never know what you will see, and what will happen.
(When I saw these dolls, I thought about that club in Orlando, the way the dolls were all dressed up and happy, and then, BANG, laying on top of each other. What a horrible thing to happen. It takes a while to clear the thoughts of the sadness and badness. Then, I thought about the later pictures and prints of Goya; it seems he must have had trouble getting the thoughts of the Napoleonic wars in Spain and those horrors out of his thoughts too.)
Goya is one of my favorite artists. He comes out of the tradition of Titian and later Velazquez, and leads right into Manet, Degas, and Sargent. They all were "painter's painters" with their bravura, suggestive brushwork and, starting with Velazquez, their interest in the real life around us.