Charles Saxon: Losing His Cool

Today our friend David from Manhattan writes of an animated advertising campaign designed by New Yorker cartoonist Charles Saxon (1920-1988):

Charles Saxon, best known for his New Yorker cartoons and covers, displayed a bold, distinctive hand when writing out captions on finished drawings, or adding an inscription to one of his books. But on rare occasions this became a sly sans-serif style that added to the humor of his advertising artwork. Television commercials for the Los Angeles radio station KOST 103.5 FM feature a woman seated by her radio, assaulted by alarmist voices. 

In 2014 Heritage Auctions offered preliminary artwork and hand-painted production cels from this ad project. There were also drawings of a male radio listener, most notably a hand-colored, signed work with an interesting blast of r&b sounds: "Mama Love Ya... Yeah Mama...Hey Hey," etc., and was probably intended to run concurrently with his lady listener. 

An example of a production cel makes a similar point, though it seems far less effective. In addition, a group of 12 drawings and proofs of the same lady listener turned up later that year on eBay and sold for a reasonable $125. In conte crayon on tracing paper, they show the artist trying out various comic expressions.

 

But two drawings, both signed, display before & after reactions to the radio's voices, and like his r&b listener, are in stark contrast to Saxon's usual affluent men and women of the upper middle class who value calm and financial security, or as Edward Sorel put it when he eulogized Saxon in his 1997 essay for American Heritage, "It Was Nice": "His cool, carefully composed drawings never suggest outrage." 

There's also a proof of additional air quotes with an intriguing note by the artist: "'Newsed Out' Billboard," which suggest KOST may have had plans beyond TV ads and might explain an attractive hand-colored drawing from the Heritage offerings, with Saxon's woman no longer "newsed out"—perfect eye-candy for a billboard. 

"Newsed Out"

Described by the auction house as created in the late 70s or early 80s, do these television spots still exist somewhere? Were there ever any billboard displays?

Postscript:  In addition to his work for KOST, Saxon went all out with a full-page ad Christie's Auctions ran years ago in art journals and The New Yorker; I don't know if anyone at Christie's provided ideas, though a line about someone's great-grandfather being outbid by the Duke of Wellington and never forgiving him, would not have been out of place in a Saxon cartoon. But as the page is presented, we get a tour de force of overheard party chatter, mostly revolving around Christie's, with eleven upscale men and women, unaware they were being sketched and recorded by a master.

Christie's advertisement
Charles Saxon
The New Yorker

Note:  I for one could use a billboard to show my appreciation to David from Manhattan for sharing his insights into Charles Saxon with us here. This is, impressively, his sixty-eighth contribution to Attempted Bloggery and I am so grateful for the day off. 

Natually, I would hope to hear from anyone in possession of the Saxon video or print advertising campaign for KOST. Photos of billboards welcome.

04955

Jean-Jacques Sempé: L'ami Gustave

Jean-Jacques Sempé's watercolor L'ami Gustave was sold at auction at the end of 2017, the year in which it was painted. Gustav is depicted wearing drab 19th century dress with a drab 19th century expression standing amidst rolling hills with lush wildflowers.

Jean-Jacques Sempé
L'ami Gustave

Jean-Jacques Sempé
Christie's Paris

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/drawings-watercolors/sempe-lami-gustave-6116956-details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=6116956&sid=1822bb6e-a470-4b08-95a2-2691c88824ea

Note:  I really don't understand how the French go about capitalizing titles. Sempé penned his title as l'ami Gustave—clearly insufficient for my tastes—and Christie's published it as L'ami Gustave—maybe just slightly better. Despite my lack of credentials in high school French, I strongly want it to be L'Ami Gustave. I'd sit down and have a word with the Académie française, but then the organization can't even capitalize both ends of its own name. It all seems quite hopeless.

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Jean-Jacques Sempé

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03196

Saul Steinberg: Speech Table

The title gives it away. Those odd pointy paired shapes on Saul Steinberg's 1972 Speech Table are not protractors or compasses but abstract, mechanized renditions of speech balloons. The table surface that Steinberg constructed with these images represents a drafting table complete with pencils and rulers. The artist's drafting tools are frequently represented in his creation. In 2016 this construction sold for $23,750, more than double the low estimate.

Speech Table, 1972
Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg
First Open / Post-War and Contemporary Art
Sale 12123, Lot 156
Christie's New York 28 September 2016

https://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectId=6023605

Note:  For further reading, see "The Art of Speech Balloons" on David Apatoff's Illustration Art blog. Word.


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Saul Steinberg

Attempted Bloggery's Wordy Index

02889

Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi

Art is a commodity. I know I don't usually describe it that way here. Typically I'll look at a specific work of, say, illustration art and describe as best I can what attributes make it unique. Now if every work, low or high, is so unique, what value is there in suggesting that art is just another commodity? Well, rare and highly sought-after art by an undisputed genius is a valuable commodity indeed. I don't think there's a better way to understand how a painting like Leonardo's Salvator Mundi could sell for $450,000,000, now the world record price for a work of art. It's not that it's "the male Mona Lisa"—it isn't, although calling it that is great marketing. It's not that it's Leonardo's most compelling work; I'd argue that it falls on the opposite end of that spectrum. What it is, simply, is Leonardo's only painting in private hands. If you had the resources and wanted to own a Leonardo painting, this was your only chance.

It you didn't win the auction, you can console yourself that the work is not in the best condition, that the face of Jesus was overaggressively cleaned in the past and now appears somewhat ghostly and distant from the better-preserved hands or the clothing. You can tell yourself that the composition appears very static and overly symmetrical compared with other works by the artist.

But if you did win the auction, you can tell yourself that you own a Leonardo.

Leonardo da Vinci
Salvator Mundi

Leonardo da Vinci
Christie's New York, November 15, 2017

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/leonardo-da-vinci-salvator-mundi-6110563-details.aspx?from=salesummery&intobjectid=6110563&sid=8174d46e-582f-45f6-b119-bb2e8d3c0814

Leonardo da Vinci
Salvator Mundi

Note:  Leonardo has never appeared on this blog before, but his reputation seems to be holding up just fine.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Christmas

Attempted Bloggery's Worldly Index

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02405

Charles Addams for Christie's

In a 1978 print advertisement for Christie's auction house, cartoonist Charles Addams takes us to the home of a wealthy art collector who has just been murdered. The murder weapon is still visible, but planning for the future is already underway. So how soon is too soon to cash in?

"Perkins, you call my lawyer, and I'll call Christie's."
Charles Addams
Print advertisement for Christie's, 1978

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1978-Charles-Addams-Rich-Widow-Cartoon-Christies-Auctioneers-promo-print-ad-/391222572941?hash=item5b16aeb78d

August 16, 2015 Update:  One more:

"We're on our way to Christie's,
they're auctioning off the family estate in the afternoon."
Charles Addams
Print advertisement for Christie's, 1978

Image added August 16, 2015

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1978-Charles-Addams-graveyard-ghosts-cartoon-Christies-vintage-print-ad-/361365633613?hash=item542311fa4d

Note:  The great Charles Addams has inspired many a blog post around these parts.

Some really cool advertising has been collected on this blog as well and most of it has nothing to do with cold-blooded murder. Take a look!

01603

Barking Over Sendak's Sleeping Dog

I really don't understand Bonhams auction house and the recent revamping of its website. One thing collectors really need in order to decide whether they wish to place a bid for an item at auction is a decent image. Well, this is the best image I could get from the Bonhams website of a Maurice Sendak drawing from 1971 that probably is quite charming. As you can see, it's little more than a thumbnail!

Maurice Sendak, Sleeping Dog
in Pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1971

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19992/lot/7135/

There is a zoom function on the Bonhams website that I bet they're needlessly proud of, but it only lets you view details within a tiny box rather than enlarging the full image. Auction houses no doubt spend a fortune to maintain their websites, so I wonder why their efforts are so ill-conceived. 

Let me give a visual example. Here is an image from my very first blog post of some really spectacular Sendak artwork that was offered for sale at Bonhams last year. While it's not as large an image as I'd desire, it's acceptable enough for my blogging purposes and I was delighted to be able to share it.

http://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2011/06/unsold-sendak.html

And here is how the archived image appears on the Bonhams website today. As you can see, it's about the same size and resolution as the sleeping dog. This leads me to believe that all images on the Bonhams site are now going to be low-resolution.

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19514/lot/212/

Now, to be sure, Bonhams has always decreased the resolution of its archived items, no doubt a gesture to the bean counters, so I'm exaggerating the actual decrease in resolution for this particular image by showing more or less what it may have looked like before the auction. Nevertheless, unless they fix their website quickly, it's going to be difficult to get decent images of any lot from Bonhams even before an auction takes place. This is unconscionable and it's bad for business. The decision-making that underlies this is an enigma to me. But sadly few of the auction houses get web presentation right, even though it should be their lifeblood.

Christie's is another example of an auction house that sabotaged its own online images. Many older items on the website from prior to 2008 can be enlarged a bit with one click. More recent items have a zoom function that takes you into flash player, a place you don't want to be, or at least I don't. The resulting zoom function features a much bigger window than Bonhams, but even this zoom function generally again won't let you see the entire image unobstructed. It is an enlarged view of the whole work that I would value. The zoom widget is very good, I concede, at showing fine details of a small section of the image. Christie's does a better job than most at archiving, but all unsold items disappear from the site quickly as if they had never been put up on the auction block.

Sotheby's website frustrated me for a long time with its reliance on slow-loading pdf files. I am forced to concede, though, that one can obtain here a very large high resolution image, and I am quite fond of these in the main. Sotheby's archiving, on the other hand, is pretty horrendous. One can argue, I suppose, that there's no profit in maintaining a good online archive, and that my needs as an image-hungry blogger should have no bearing on what a for-profit auction house does with its sales archive. But if I were consigning an item to an auction house, I would like at least to be able to look up on my own how they presented similar items in the past.

Heritage Auctions boasts that it is the world's third largest auction house. Right now, I'd say they represent the gold standard in offering high-resolution images and later in archiving them. One has to register with the site to get access to the archives and the high-res images, but I can live with this. At least the information is not hiding behind a third-party paywall. I really dislike Heritage's search function though. It still doesn't seem to be integrated over the whole website.

Swann Galleries, which I am fond of using for this blog, also does a very good job with archiving. It's images are good but often not large enough, and there is absolutely no zoom function for details. I think the size of their image files may be due for an upgrade.

Illustration House has generally better and larger images though again with no zoom. Their archiving is a disgrace.

Skinner emblazons watermarks on its images. Need I say more?

EBay is a treasure trove of information, some of which is even reliable. The site has images of erratic quality based on the skills and efforts of individual sellers. EBay is not an auction house and unfortunately does not consider archiving to be a part of its mission. It does keep old auctions on the site for three months up to a year, but sellers may remove images from their independent hosting services before this time. Also, eBay's archive search, such as it is, is not very helpful. Over the years, a rich history of sales on eBay has been lost, and most of the information is probably not recoverable.

These are the auction sites I rely on the most in writing this blog. Collectively, they are a huge source of frustration to me. In the long run, I think their efforts, when shoddy, erode the confidence of the online bidding community. Your results may vary.

Maurice Sendak, Sleeping Dog
in Pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1971

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19992/lot/7135/

Pictures by Maurice Sendak. New York: 1971

29 Apr 2012 10 a.m. California, Los AngelesBooks and Manuscripts

Auction 19992

7135

SIGNED BY SENDAK.

SENDAK, MAURICE. Pictures by Maurice Sendak. New York: 1971. 9 folders containing 20 illustrations of various sizes, loosely inserted in folio box as issued, text sheet, upper cover of box starting. LIMITED EDITION, No 391 of 500 copies with an illustration SIGNED in pencil by Sendak

Estimate:

US $800 - 1,200

£500 - 760

€610 - 910

April 29, 2012:  Sold for US $500 including premium.  A steal!

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19992/lot/7135/

June 10, 2012 Update:  Bonhams has fixed their online images and full-size pictures are now available! Take a look!

Maurice Sendak, Sleeping Dog

in Pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1971

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19992/lot/7135/

Pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1971

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19992/lot/7135/

310

Saul Steinberg's View of Florida

Christie's New York is offering two works by Saul Steinberg in its October 4-5 sale. The first, View of Florida, is the one I'll discuss:

Saul Steinberg (AMERICAN, 1914-1999) 

View of Florida

There, do you see Florida? This collage shows a nondescript nighttime landscape with the white lines of a road, a lone hill or mountain, and clouds.  It could be Florida, I guess, but it could just as easily be the American West. There is an art deco phonograph record on the upper left and a disembodied record label on the lower right. The record's label has the words "Rainbow and Pyramid" and both labels have a picture of each.

The drawing is dated October 23, 1965. Steinberg may have used black backgrounds in other Florida compositions around this time. Here's a witty New Yorker cover from January with a dark background and an unambiguous depiction of Florida:

Saul Steinberg, The New Yorker, January 16, 1965

Now that's definitely Florida! Steinberg was including phonograph records in other works this year as well.  Here's another New Yorker cover from 1965 with the record album motif. Note that the record label here, like View of Florida, has a drawing of a pyramid:

Saul Steinberg, The New Yorker, March 20, 1965

For me, then, the problem with View of Florida is that Steinberg in October of 1965 had already made and published works about the Florida landscape and about phonograph records, and they were overall far more interesting than this particular composition. In fact, looking again at View of Florida after these two excellent magazine covers, I feel a little sensory-deprivation!

Here are the two auction listings:

Saul Steinberg (AMERICAN, 1914-1999) 

View of Florida

Sale 2469 Lot 100
Christie's Interiors 
4 - 5 October 2011
New York, Rockefeller Plaza 

Estimate $5,000 - $7,000

October 4, 2011: Price Realized: $18,750

signed and dated 'New York Steinberg 1965 October 23' (upper left)
collage--ink, pastel, watercolor and paper on paper
22¾ x 29¼ in. (57.8 x 74.3 cm.)
Executed in 1965. 

Provenance

with Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
with Galería Ynquanzo, Madrid. 

Saleroom Notice

Please note this lot will now be offered not subject to a reserve.


Please note that the following additional exhibition information to the printed catalogue: New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Saul Steinberg. An exhibition of recent work, 29 November-24 December 1966, cat.no. 63.
Brussels, Musée de l'Art Moderne and Rotterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, 1967. 

Pre-Lot Text

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF ERNST BEYELER SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITION AND EXHIBITION PROGRAMME OF THE FOUNDATION BEYELER

Exhibited

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, A decade of American drawings 1955-1965, 1965, cat.no. 94.
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Saul Steinberg: An Exhibition of Recent Work, 29 November-24 December 1966, cat.no. 63.
Brussels, Musée de l'Art Moderne, Steinberg: 'Les Américains' Aquarelles, Dessins et Collages 1955-1967, 1967, cat.no. 14. This exhibition travelled to Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen.
Saint-Paul de Vence, Fondation Maeght,l'Art vivant aux Etats-Unis, 1970.
London, Crane Kalman Gallery, Essence of Humour, October-November 1997. 

Saul Steinberg (AMERICAN, 1914-1999)

Le Lloyd's Still Life 

Sale 2469 Lot 101
Christie's Interiors 
4 - 5 October 2011
New York, Rockefeller Plaza 

Estimate $3,000 - $5,000
October 4, 2011:  Price Realized: $8,750

signed and dated 'Steinberg 1966' (lower right) 

collage--pencil, ink, paper labels and colored crayon on paper
19½ x 25½ in. (49.6 x 64.8 cm.)
Executed in 1966. 

Provenance

with Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
with David Settles Gallery, Houston. 

Saleroom Notice

Please note this lot will now be offered not subject to a reserve. 

Pre-Lot Text

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF ERNST BEYELER SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITION AND EXHIBITION PROGRAMME OF THE FOUNDATION BEYELER

Exhibited

Cologne, Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1974-75, cat.no. 22 (travelling exhibition to Stuttgart, Hannover and Graz).
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Stilleben im 20. Jahrhundert, October 1978-February 1979, cat.no. 102. 

Note:  My most recent post on Saul Steinberg is  here.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/saul-steinberg-view-of-florida/5481852/lot/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&pos=2&intObjectID=5481852&sid=9ec0874e-5a90-4d2b-b81c-e58929a2a240&page=1

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