What Recession? YSL's Eileen Gray Collection Crushes Auction Records  

Betty Joel's stuff is cool too
I don't know but I've always been impressed with 1920's and early 1930's designers whose stuff looks fresh and modern even today...and certainly Eileen Gray's stuff fits that description. She's quite like Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto.
While on the other hand, most of what I've seen of Paul Frankel, Frank Lloyd Wright (furniture) and Gilbert Rohde, as well as Robesjohn-Gibbins looks too 'Deco' and antiquey to me. Nice classic modern, but not the kind of timeless stuff I prefer.

I guess I can admit here...
I guess I can admit here among friends that I was the lucky losing co-bidder on the swell Dragon chair. Depending on how far the Dow has fallen today, I've got a couple thousand dollars left in my 401K, give or take a few bucks, so imagine how I felt as the bid crept into the twenty millions ...
Just kidding, of course. As auctions go, this particular one is probably not the best barometer with regard to the reality of the recession.

Whenever I go to museums
I like to choose the one object I'd most like to own, (regardless of resale value/ mercenary motives), and I ask that my museum companion do the same. Usually, we do it on a room by room basis-- less daunting. (An old habit from childhood, when I used to pore through catalogs, numbering objects from "favorite" to "least favorite".)
From the YSL/ Berge collection, I'd choose this Picasso roast-chicken painting, below... maybe I just need lunch.
Anybody else wanna play? (Link to Christies site below)
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22294#ac...

!
ALEXANDER CALDER
Dancers and Sphere

Awww...yes...
I do love me a Picasso, but I have my heart set on the Matisse. Since I'm making such lavish purchases I think I'll take the Calder piece also.

I have not seen the
full auction catalogue but from what I have seen, I am still the most impressed by the Mondriaans and the Brancusi...not to forget the one of the best James Ensor paintings around the "despair of Pierrot" Before editing this I made a comment on the Chinese bronzes that questioned the authenticity. I obviously made a mistake. There is nothing un-authentic about them other than that they were made after drawings made by Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit priest, and in that sense they are not very Chinese, other than being cast for the summer palace of Chinese emperor Qianlong. Again, I would prefer a real Brancusi...I actually have a spot for it that has proven to be unsuitable for anything else but a real Brancusi!

Am I the only person here who thinks...
THAT IS PERHAPS THE UGLIEST FUCKING CHAIR EVER MADE?!

The only positive thing I can about...
the Eileen Gray chair is that if she had done one more like that, nobody would remember the name Eileen Gray...at least not in connection with design. It is such an ugly barbarian object that one has to wonder how confused she was early in her career, landing in Paris, unfamiliar with furniture design but asked to do the interior decoration of Suzanne Talbot's appartment based on her earlier decoratif panels in lacque, a technique she studied and mastered very well. It is fortunate for us that after a while she found the right people in Paris and adopted a new direction.

The Eileen Gray chair is fugly,
but it sure has presence!

I agree this chair is terrify...
I agree this chair is terrifying.

But
it be fine art, it is. Lots of fine art is grotesque.
I don't think she ever intended this chair to be in the foyer of every dentist's office in Paris.
If what it is and when it was made, it's okey dokey by me...just not in my house.