rubell family collection
When traveling to a new city to view art it is always a safe bet to first look into a contemporary museum and then travel to the gallery district. I found that miami offered a third alternative that proved to be a highlight of the trip! Miami is turning into a place of new money and also a big hot spot for the arts, especially in the last four years. I think with the December and January shows of Art Miami and Art Basel, miami is making a name for itself and quickly loosing its reputation as the home of the retirees and spring-breakers!
Now this brings me to the Rubell Family Collection. The collection also like moca warehouse is off the beaten trail and sits in a desolate warehouse/storage distict scattered with small lower income housing. Right next to the spacious musuem is a new contemporary, luxury house that I assume is just one of the homes of the Rubells - you can see a lap pool and tennis court from the second floor of the gallery. Not only does the collection speak for itself but there is an interesting story with the family and how they began collecting. Check out this story for the full details on the family's collection. Here are just a couple points from the story:
"It's very easy to buy Impressionist paintings," says Don Rubell, a 61-year-old, Brooklyn-born former obstetrician who met his future wife in the library of Brooklyn College in 1962. Soon thereafter, the couple began collecting art with a $50 investment in a piece found during a European summer vacation. After that, they established a $25 a month budget for collecting original art. Ten years later, they crossed an important benchmark as serious collectors when they invested in a painting by young Italian artist Francesco Clemente...
Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), says the Rubell collection has had a major impact on Miami as an art destination. "I have been working with a lot of young artists in Miami," she says. "And a lot of them have pointed to the fact that it's important to them to have the Rubell collection here."
Wouldn't it be wonderful if more detroit collectors opened their houses up to local artists and art enthusiasts? I know of quite a few collectors who live in metro detroit that have huge collections that have been named in Artnews for top collections in the country!
mark handforth
zhang huan
jim lambie
charles ray
jeff koons (two above)
andy warhol
kara walker
the museum went on...and on...and on....this wing was called "Poles Apart: contemporary polish art"
zbigniew libera
andrea lahmann (she is one to look up...her works in person were very lovely and had many layers to them)
andrea lehmann
damien hirst
damien hirst
norbert sehwontkowski (two above)
basquiat
keith haring
franz ackermann
christopher wool
cady noland
andro wekua
posted by art blogs are fun at 12:00 AM
10 Comments:
Safe Collection. Saw the write-up in a recent (perhaps a year or two ago...) Flash Art. Cady noland is seminal, but haven't we seen enough "impressive" collections?
the problem is that we haven't seen enough of anything.
thats why mocad coming is so important....
i wouldnt mind if some of the important collectors around here shared their work like this
i never know why people say "safe" collection, that staement bothers me, also will people please identify themselves in some way.
Important to whom?...and why.
One of the best people to ever teach at CCS in my opinion was Nancy Jowski (sp?)...(now/still at Wayne?...) once said "I'm really not interested in how clever people can be..."
HELL YES NANCY!!!!
Hello Matt, long time no see.
I think by safe people mean that there work will never vary by more than 5%, and therefore they offer a 'Safe' and consistent product for consumers...
people find their 95%, stick with it, and have a 95% better chance of "making it."...and a 95% better chance of $$making it $$.
In effect, if people cannot say "Oh, That's a BLANK painting, or "thats BLANK'S newest piece of shit," then you're sunk commercially.
People can have a steady voice/hand/mode while still wiggling around a little....but you'll never see their work in "so-and-so's" collection...
steve , how's it going good luck in berkeley, you know i hitchiked to cali before and i lved in berkeley homeless for two months, you should go find the hate man in sproul plaza (not sure if thats how you spell it). also I meant safe collection, not safe work even though both laws apply, it tends to only be the artists that can't sell that complain about this. what is your website again steve?
Matt,
it's down to just contact info right now. I am in a transitional faze and it's not where my focus is...sooner or later I'll get back to it.
i didn't know you went out there...but i've been gone. Are you in Saginaw now?
I saw your paintings at the BBAC show and I still respond to the aggresiveness and ballsy local colors....but I was concerned that the medium scale you used there (maybe you work bigger too i don;t know) brought them too tightly together. could you commment on the proportion of mark/stroke size to color intensity to canvas size? I'm interested to know more...
be well.
right now we're in saginaw, but we're trying to move to Portland, or. Yeah I hitchiked there when I was 19, it was crazy.
You know I did a whole series of paintings that were 4'x8' and two that were 8'x12', those felt good those were the right size for the stroke. I feel that all the paintings in all their sizes use the approppraite size mark even my smaller 4"x 4" pieces. I do think you picked up on something though and some of those pieces really don't vary enough in terms of the size of the mark. In terms of basically room to breathe i always try to keep everything simple, and these paintings are the result.
They always are going to reflect a state of mind, and sometimes the paintins will do what they want, which is good.
I just had a show at andrews gallery and was lucky enough to sell 5 paintings, so I was happy about that. I think if you saw those paintings you would be able to see some of those issues addressed. Ann has a posting from that show , i think in march, that shows some images
take care, ill try to get you're email from ann
i don't know if i answered your questions, i would be happy to answer anymore.
matt,
that's great! I appreciate the response and the candor. My 2d work has been so rooted in drawing and a sort of avoidance of the overt mark that it's great to talk to someone who's work is based entirely in the 'wet mark.' I tend toward either a very very dry drawing quality, or an extremely wet acrylic-bastardized watercolor- 'technique.'
have you heard of Sean O'dell? he showed at SFMOMA and I was blown away....twop years after grad. from Stanford. anyway...his enormous works on paper were refreshing..I had become so used to being discouraged from working on paper I had really lost touch. In a way, painters have an easier job of communicating through the 'mode' than do draughtsmen, because there's an assumption that it isn;t as free...you know what I mean. anyway I have been fully immersed in paper for some time now and cannot see going back to canvas. it's tempting commercially and cheaper than matted framing, but...i just can;t stop with the paper!!!
general question: when you see work on paper -not prints, and I mean good work of course- do you think your response is tilted one way or another simply because of what it is? sometimes when I see direct drwaing techniques on canvas I get the impression people think they are expected to work on canvas
peace
why don't brown and lewis get a room? Apparently size does matter.
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