Free Gliblets, March 2023
Mar 4, 1886
Margrethe Mather, née Emma Caroline Youngreen born this date, in Salt Lake City, Utah. She moved west and met Edward Weston. They photographed in the Pictorialist style for a time, then moved toward the "f.64" style that would typify Weston. Finally he ran off with TIna Modotti.
Mar 7, 1765
Nicéphore Niépce born in France. An inventor of real ability, he developed in his 68 years several methods of photography as well as the first internal combustion engine (running on coal dust!) Niépce also partnered with Daguerre but died before the Daguerreotype was invented.
The earliest photographs which still survive were made by Niépce. The print of a man with a horse shown here is printed from a plate made by Niépce from a Flemish engraving using an essentially photographic process.
Mar 14, 2010
The Artist is Present, performance piece by Marina Abramovic, opened this date at the MoMA. In this performance, Abramovic simply sat across from a empty chair. Attendees were invited to sit and face her gaze, at length, under intense lighting.
The show also included a number of retrospective displays and re-stagings of earlier work, including a delightfully weird bit in which to get to the next room attendees had to pass a narrow gap between two performers who faced one another, and who were nude.
Abramovic specializes in performance art, usually involving endurance and exploration of the relationship between audience and artist.
Mar 19, 1997
Willem de Kooning died aged 92 in East Hampton, New York. de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist, in the same school as Jackson Pollock and a bunch of others. Primarily a painter, his work has sold for north of 9 figures, breaking records.
Mar 26, 2013
Picasso’s painting Le Rêve sells for $155M in a private sale, from Steve Wynn (a casino guy) to Stephen Cohen (hedge fund guy.) This despite the fact that Wynn managed to jam his elbow through it, costing him $90,000 in repairs and $54M in estimated loss in value.
Wynn (who originally paid $60M) tried to recover the notional $54M for his clumsiness from his insurance company, who understandably balked, so he sued them and got some kind of undisclosed settlement. It appears to be unrecorded what Lloyd’s of London thought about the later sale for $155M.
These are some pretty special dudes, no matter how you slice it!