“Acquired on ebay (and from other surrogate sources)” Exhibition

“Acquired on ebay (and from other surrogate sources)” Exhibition

Mitchell Algus Gallery

This event has ended.

The Mitchell Algus Gallery presents an exhibition of work acquired on eBay (and from other surrogate sources)

Valentine Hugo, Karl Priebe, Elaine de Kooning, Beni E. Kosh, Thierry Cheverney, Aline Meyer Liebman, Steve Keister, George Platt Lynes, Leonid Berman, Carl Van Vechten, Darrel Austin, James Wilson Edwards, Philipp Weichberger, Morgan O’Hara, E’wao Kagoshima, Pavel Tchelitchew, Dan Burkhart, Charles Henri Ford, Hollis Frampton, Agustin Fernandez, Maurice Grosser, Mary Meigs, Raoul Ubac, Marie Laurencin, Gertrude Cato (Ford), Saul Steinberg, Paul Jenkins, Elie Lascaux, Stephen Kaltenbach, Magalie Comeau, Alvin Baltrop, Jindřich Štyrský, Eugene Berman, Bernard Perlin, Hans Bellmer, Neke Carson, Leonor Fini, David Von Schlegel, Nicholas Rule, Harold Stevenson, Alexander Brook, Ronald Mallory, Anonymous

The path to “Acquired on eBay (and from other surrogate sources)” began with the discovery of a tiny surrealist painting by James Wilson Edwards (1915-2004) at an antiques mall in Millerton, NY. Unknown to me, Edwards turned out to be an African-American artist who studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and was a member of the Princeton Colony of Black artists in the 1960s and 1970s. Interested in finding more work by this artist I searched eBay but found none. Further googling led to work by Edwards in the Petrucci Family Foundation (PFF) Collection of African American Art. This, in turn, resulted in a broader eBay search for artists represented in the PFF and the purchase of an odd fantasy landscape by Beni E. Kosh (1917–1993), a little-known artist from Cleveland, OH.

After this acquisition, I started to search for eBay for artists I have had a long-term interest in but lacked a direct source. I thereby obtained work by Darrel Austin and Karl Preibe, two artists who showed at Perls Gallery in New York in the 1940s through the 1970s. Spectacularly successful in their time with profiles in Life magazine – Austin outsold Alexander Calder and the major School of Paris painters that the gallery represented – and Priebe, a gay, white midwesterner was a close friend of Gertrude Abercrombie and, supported by Carl Van Vechten, was innvolved in the later stages of the Harlen Renaissance. Yet Priebe and Austin became victims of changing tastes and their work receded from art world conscience. The fortuitous Austin eBay purchase led to contacts with the Austin estate and the gallery is planning a show for next season.

Other artists whose work was acquired on eBay include the Surrealists Valentine Hugo (a fascinating artist, central in Surrealist circles, who was married to Victor Hugo’s great-granson and became a lover of Breton and Eluard), Jindřich Štyrský, as well as Elie Lascaux, an under known, painter who showed with the legendary dealer Daniel-Henry Khanweiler and later his daughter Louise Leiris in Paris. (I become aware of Lascaux from a discordant illustration in Georges Bataille’s dissident Surrealist journal, Documents.)

Edward Avedisisn’s 1963 painting, The Whole World Has Gone Surfing, in Amy Sillman’s Artist’s Choice currently at MoMA.
Avedisian traded this painting for a Warhol Double Elvis. Warhol, in turn, donated it to MoMA.

Searching for affordable work by Leonor Fini I came across 31 Women, an exhibition curated by Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim in 1943 for her Art of This Century gallery (at the characteristically contrarian suggestion of Marcel Duchamp). 31 Women may have been the first-ever exclusively female group show. Using the exhibition list to search eBay, I purchased Grey Day, an O’Keefe-ish 1927 gouache on board by Aline Meyer Liebman (1879-1966), a prominent New York patron of early modernism and an intimate of the circles surrounding Steichen and Stieglitz. In fact, this particular painting is mentioned by Steiglitz in Liebman’s biography, and served him as the starting point in arranging an exhibition of Liebman’s work. (Valentine Hugo was also included in 31 Women.)

At this point I decided I would do a show. But to deepen the well from which work could be drawn, I sent an email call (see below) asking for things acquired on eBay (and from other surrogate sources) by others. In addition, the parameters of selection were broadened to include work obtained in under-the-radar auctions, acquired as gifts or by trade, or harbored in usually secluded estates. As an exercise in cultural consumption, collecting and curation this exhibition, hopefully, provides some incentive to venture beyound the art world’s realms of concensus.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing
• Prints

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