Your Monday Muse #2
“Supine Woman” by Wayne Thiebaud (1964)
I was so embarrassed! It was the first day of grad school and I totally bombed our first assignment.
We were expected to visit any gallery in New York and share our thoughts with the class. Since I’d been staying in an apartment close to Central Park on the Upper East Side, I walked to the nearest gallery listed at 980 Madison Avenue. Upon arrival, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place, because it was an opulent marble lobby with security desk and elevator (no art). Upon inquiry, the security guard vaguely waved me toward the elevator. As it arrived on the next floor, I felt almost too intimidated to step out, but did. The gallerista barely acknowledged my existence as I crossed the hardwood floor and looked past her podium. The lighting was dim. I still wasn’t sure I was in the right place, until I noticed a crushed ball of metal on the floor in the next room was spotlighted, with a gallery tag hung on the nearby wall. Despite there being a couple viewing rooms, there were only a handful of artworks on display: a few balls of crushed metal, a painting of a woman laying down, and a few other images on paper. I took some notes and quickly left.
On our first day of class, our initial introduction to our grad school professor and Sotheby’s cohort was to state our name and share our recent experience visiting a local gallery of our choice. We were enrolled to study Contemporary Art (my previous degree was in Art History with a focus on Italian Renaissance art, so this was all new to me). When it was my turn, I mispronounced the name of the gallery I had visited, as well as the name of the artists. When I was done, my professor looked incredulous as she announced to the class that I had “a lot to learn.”
Turns out, Gagosian is arguably the world’s largest and most prominent gallery with nineteen exhibition spaces (including the one I visited at 980 Madison Avenue). What’s even worse though, is one of the artists whose name I also mispronounced is actually a very big deal – get this – from my hometown! The painting I’d seen of a woman laying down was “Supine Woman” by Wayne Theibaud (not pronounced Tee-bod). Needless to say, my classmates and professor were not impressed, but my curiosity was piqued.
^^^ THAT was the rocky start of my lovership with Contemporary Art. By the time I graduated from Sotheby’s Institute of Art (New York), I had visited several of the world’s most prestigious public and private art collections, enjoyed behind-the-scenes access to extraordinary works of art, gained my understanding of art as a business, and developed my ongoing passion for the creative muse only a few are bold enough to channel into art.
