Art Impressions

Art Basel is in Miami right now.

The event is headline news here, but it's not about the art. The news is about the money. Art galleries and art collectors from around the world are meeting up in this time and place to exchange some very big bucks. The champagne is flowing and folks are spending freely. There is no recession going on for this bunch!

Art Basel is  one of the biggest art fairs in the world, filling several large venues, indoors and out.

I'm not going this year, so I've culled some photos from the Internet, to illustrate the variety. For example, this quiet figure. I feel drawn to her, like, she could sunbathe in my back yard maybe?

I am impressed by this, and maybe if I saw it up close I would understand it?

And this, to me, is too beautiful to describe. I remember a similar painting by the same artist, which I did see at Art Basel a few years ago:

I went to Art Basel the first year it was here and was thrilled when I found, in a quiet corner in the back, an original Andy Worhol can of soup. For such a famous painting, it seemed quite insignificant, but I was surprised to see:

• The high security - three nervous guards watching over this one painting, and
• The size of the picture. It was much smaller than I expected.

It's only 20 inches high by 16 inches wide.

I have since learned that the picture I saw is only one of a set that was created to be viewed together:
 

The work was produced in 1962 and consists of 32 canvases each 20" x 16," and each depicting a different variety of Campbell's soup. According to Wikipedia, "The individual paintings were produced with a semi-mechanized silkscreen process, using a non-painterly style." Now, what does that say about art! Well, you say, Andy Worhol!

Well, if Andy can do it, so can I. And Campbell's soup can't outdo Walmart. My pop art creation was produced with a semi-mechanized copy machine process, using a Crayola markers kind of style:

This product should help with the "two dog nights" you folks up north have been having lately. Here in Florida we had a "one little dog night" last night. Odie crawled under the covers and kept my back nice and warm. Good dog, Odie!