Friday, August 14, 2009

My Biennial #1


Forrest Bess
The Greek
14 x 14"
Oil on Canvas
1953

5 comments:

Candler Arts said...

Thanks for introducing me to a painter I knew nothing about. I went to the Bess Web site. Is that painting yours, Joey?

Dull Tool Dim Bulb said...

I've always been a big fan of these little paintings. thanks joey

Joey said...

Oh jeez, I wish it were mine!

No, despite not too many people knowing about Forrest Bess, he does have a small but knowledgeable and ardent following and there was a retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum almost 30 years ago. The essay by Barbara Haskell on the site details the impetus to a lot of the imagery of the work, motivated by a theory of androgeny that led him to a series of operations.

Not sure how much this painting would bring at auction, but I would think at least $15-20k. We get to have small web images at least :)

sroden said...

he's one of my top 5 painters of all time. i have an amazing documentary on him on vhs, if you haven't seen it you should look for it. these paintings totally kick my butt...great great great...

Joey said...

I had no idea there was a documentary. I'm definitely going to look it up! Thanks Steve!