The Transformative Value of Fine Art

This post is about the financial aspect of fine art and its non-financial effects on mankind.

Americans are passionately, stupefyingly, electrifyingly in love with the rags-to-riches story. It speaks of limitless opportunity, the nobility of the downtrodden and of the inextinguishable hope we harbor for a better tomorrow. We crave these ideas, devour them like ice cream or buttered beets. They represent the apogee of American idealism and are the sine qua non of America’s implicit promise: all your hard work will be rewarded.

Born in 1883, Chester Dale was the son of a Manhattan department store salesman. A contumacious, red-headed boy, he could not be constrained. His father sent him to Peekskill Military Academy for some structure but Chester spent most of his time and all his allowance at the nearby horse track. At the age of fourteen he decided Peekskill wasn’t for him and made his way to New York City where he got a job on Wall Street as a runner.

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t Look at Me

This post is about the many different forms art can take and about forgiving ourselves.

My earliest memory is of visiting my great-grandmother. She lived in a trailer on my grandfather’s farm in Cheboygan, Michigan. It sat behind his house where the grass grew waist high until the stalks bent under their own weight. Their dark green length appeared to be bowing in deference to the silver, egg-like throne around which they gathered. Her home was a remnant of a travel trailer she shared with a long-haired white lap dog who had a hard time keeping her hair.

The air inside was stale and pungent, the unventilated accumulation of lost dreams and sorrow. Though it was the middle of the day she was lying in her bed at the rear of her home.

“Come here,” she said. Her voice raspy and quavering.

Read the rest of this entry »