Picasso at your neighborhood Costco
dinn...@webtv.net
Price Was Right
Want a Picasso? Shop at Costco!
BY TERRY TEACHOUT
As of yesterday, "Atelier de Cannes," a 1958 crayon drawing by Pablo
Picasso, was still on sale at www.costco.com. Price: $129,999.99. You'll
find it listed under "Gadgets, Gifts & Art," along with art prints by
the likes of Chagall, Dufy, Miró, Modigliani and, er, Peter Max. The
quality of these latter works is fairly modest (the Picasso isn't very
good, either), but the fact that you can buy them on the Web has brought
the warehouse chain reams of free publicity. Yet no one seems to
remember that what Costco is doing is nothing new. Forty years ago,
Sears, Roebuck & Co. was selling Picassos and Chagalls, not to mention
Rembrandts, Dürers, Goyas, Whistlers, Mondrians and Wyeths, all of
them bearing the imprimatur of a celebrated connoisseur who was better
known for making such grisly movies as "The Fly" and "House of Wax."
Vincent Price is now best remembered for his supporting role in the
classic 1944 film noir "Laura," but in the '60s he was a full-fledged
movie star, albeit one who never got the girl--at least not while she
was still alive. An elegantly campy gent who in his later years
specialized in playing pardon-me-sir-while-I-cut-off-your-head
psychopaths, Price was also one of Hollywood's most passionate art
collectors, a former student at the Courtauld Institute of Art who had
been well on his way to becoming an art historian when he abruptly
changed course, went on the London and Broadway stages and became an
overnight success.
In 1962 Price was approached by George Struthers, Sears's vice president
of merchandising, who believed his company could sell fine art to the
American public the same way it sold lawn mowers and ladies' underwear.
Price agreed to pick the pieces and serve as spokesman, and the Vincent
Price Collection of Fine Art was off and running, first in Sears's
Denver store, then in other stores across the country, with a mail-order
line added the following year. Not surprisingly, much fun was poked at
the idea of Sears going into the fine-art business. The New Yorker even
ran a cartoon about it ("It's not generally known, but we picked up this
little Rembrandt etching at Sears, Roebuck"). But the company had the
last laugh: During Sears's nine years in the art trade, it sold some
50,000 works at prices ranging from $30 to $3,000, many of them bought
on installment plans that made it possible to purchase certain works for
as little as $5 down and $5 a month. The prices were affordable, too,
with Picasso's lithograph "Frederic Joliet Curie" going for $300, the
equivalent of $1,850 in today's dollars--just about what the same print
costs now.
Unlikely as all this sounds, it made perfect sense in 1962. Those were
the palmy days of middlebrow culture, the era when CBS devoted large
chunks of its prime-time schedule to Vladimir Horowitz and "Mark Twain
Tonight!" and Time magazine put John Updike and the Joffrey Ballet on
its covers. It was widely taken for granted that given the opportunity,
anyone could enjoy fine art--so why shouldn't ordinary folks own a piece
of it?
"I felt that here at last was a chance to expose the U.S. public to fine
art at reasonable prices," Price explained. "The average housewife
doesn't realize that she can buy an original work of art for very little
money." Critics may have winced at the effusive catalog copy ("A Picasso
can turn your dull den into a spicy fiesta!"), but there was nothing
unserious about the works themselves, all of which were originals or
limited-edition multiples, not cheap reproductions.
Today, of course, the Sears catalog itself is as much a nostalgic,
fast-fading memory as the Vincent Price Collection. As for Costco, I
suspect that its tentative venture into the mass marketing of art will
more than likely remain just that. Anyone who wants to purchase art by
mail, after all, need only pay a visit to www.eBay.com, where auction
houses, galleries and private individuals from all over the country buy
and sell the same kinds of low-to-medium-priced lithographs, etchings
and other prints that Sears used to sell.
Still, you can't help but be touched by the faith in middlebrow taste
that once inspired the executives of America's best-loved mail-order
store to try selling Picassos to their customers, assisted by a genial
horror-movie star who shared their belief that art was for everyone.
"It's just endless what you can learn from a single work of art," Price
once said. "You can fill up the crevices of your life, the cracks of
your life, the places where the mortar comes out and falls away--you can
fill it up with the love of art." Who's telling us that now?
Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, blogs about theater and the
other arts at www.terryteachout.com
Ginger (LOL at pardon-me-while-I-cut-off-your-head-psychopath)
Salamander
So would throwing guacamole and salsa on the walls but I'm not likely to go
in for that, either.
OverRatedCubistCrapMander....:)
dinn...@webtv.net
>either.
LOL. In the Odd Couple which one would you be, Felix or that other dude?
I would be the one who threw the pasta at the wall.
Ginger (my husband is the Jack Lemmon character and I'm the Walter
Matthau one)
Jackie
home late. I missed and it hit the wall. We were in a rented apartment with
this horrible, tacky wallpaper in the kitchen. The marinara stains actually
improved the look.
<don't call him late for dinner does not apply>
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dinn...@webtv.net
Ginger (I get frissons)
Jackie
Of course, we were very young (in our 20's) and I had spent more on the food
budget that week, just for the damn veal and told him what we would be
having for dinner and of course, he came home close to 10. He was working
in construction then and it must have been a prerequisite of the job that
one must stop for a few beers every single cotton-picking night.
He asked me if I would heat it up and I did...no microwaves in those days,
BTW. Then he came out of the shower with one of those seemingly innocent
questions: What did you do all day?
After I proceeded to tell him, he had the audacity to tell me that the veal
wasn't heated all the way through. I very sweetly said, "Let me take care
of that for you." I took the plate, reared back and he jumped out of the
way just in time.
I can laugh at it now...if he doesn't come home when dinner is ready, he
heats it up in the micro or has nothing, but back then...hooo! I don't
think I spoke to him for 3 days. Left the plate and food dripping all over
the wall and floor and went to bed. Shocked the hell out of him...LOL!
FrissonlessThatNightBabe!
<dinn...@webtv.net> wrote in message
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Salamander
He got a steaming hot plate of turkey and rice square in the chest.
[and yeah, he most definitely deserved it]
A former fiance' managed to duck a side-armed glass of OJ...just barely.
Unfortunately for him, the shattering glass and OJ riccocheted off of the
wall behind him onto him.
[not that I have bad temper or anything]
Years of playing backyard baseball with my older male cousin payed off
rather well.
ABitchOfAWickedPitcherMander
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dinn...@webtv.net
Ginger (it's common sense)
Salamander
individually.....;)
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