Friday 31 December 2010

Mike and Doug Starn - alleverythingthatisyou

20x200 is a great resource for cheap limited edition prints.  Typically one or two limited editions per week are released in a range of sizes, and there is a substantial back catalogue available.  The project has been running for several years, and the edition size and pricing model has evolved over that period.  At the start, each print had an edition of 200 small prints at $20 and an edition of 20 larger prints at $200 (hence the site name).


Nowadays, the edition sizes and prices vary; many editions still start at 20$, but some well-established artists may start with a base edition of 500 prints at $50,  going right up to 2 at $5000.  It’s well worth getting on the mailing list, as popular editions can sell out very quickly (especially at the bottom price point).


In the run up to Christmas, two snowflake prints by Mike and Doug Starn were released, part of their alleverythingthatisyou series.  The Starn twins are high profile and very successful artists, and the entry level prints were very quickly snapped (within a couple of hours).  The prints are unsigned, but each is accompanied by a numbered certificate signed by the two artists.  Certainly the cheapest way to own original art by the Starns at present, and characteristic of their work.  I will get mine framed in a single frame for display each Christmas.  

“For the Starns, the six-sided nature of snow crystals appears less important than the ways in which the flakes hover between one state and another. As they are being photographed they are in a process of alteration from solid to liquid, from organized form in space to aqueous blob on a surface, and thus suggest a transitiveness that photography, as a medium devoted to stilling the moment, would seem to contradict. Similarly, as was true of the pictures of leaf veins and tree branches, light seems not so much to shine on the snowflakes as it shines through them. Instead of appearing as specimens, in the manner of 19th century scientific observation, the snowflakes are objects of transformation.

Few of the Starns’ snowflakes are models of perfection, and in this they remind one of finding starfish and seashells scoured by the tides and left to dry on sandy beaches. Many have parts missing, or they have all their detailed armatures on one side but not the other. Here again, the Starns’ images exceed the aesthetic register of the catalog. Unlike industrial structures, or man-made devices, imperfection is an essential part of their beauty and poignancy…

Here is material evidence of the Starns' interest in the phenomenological character of the natural world, cast into being against the certitude of our own impermanence. The photographs speak of the fragile delicacy of our ever-warming world while being themselves a visual bulwark against despair, and they draw us, like moths to light, to the pleasures of sight that but for the camera would exceed the human eye."

Excerpt from Andy Grundberg’s introduction in alleverythingthatisyou (catalogue published by the Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden 2007)

Thursday 30 December 2010

An introduction

I like art and I like books, so this blog is intended as a companion to my well-established book collecting blog, Books to Furnish a Room.  Its title was derived from one of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time Novels, my favourite series of books and where I started off as a collector.  I have always been interested in Art (visually and historically), but I began to collect only a few years ago, mainly for display and pleasure but with one eye at least on investment value.  Like many collectors, I started with limited edition prints and then gradually moved into original works and other genres.  Now, I have more than I can display at any one time, but I roatate my collection and occasionally pieces leave so that others can come in.

This will be an occasional blog, intended to provide a record of my collection and other works I am interested in.  It is mainly for my own benefit, but might be of interest to others from time to time.  Art, like literature,can bring a smile or provoke serious thought.  The technical skill of the artist mirrors that of the writer: either can portray in a realistic way or provide an impression that goes beyond the superficial created image through skillful use of the medium of choice.  I suspect my first love will always be the written word, but art will always be important in my life.