The latest painting of Amy Crehore is called “Deja Vu Waltz” and it was featured on Boing Boing today. 

Amy Crehore – “Deja Vu Waltz” (oil on stretched linen, 24″x24″, 2007)

I feel a lot going on in “Deja Vu Waltz“, many levels – an evolution in her own language of expression.  I like how Amy unveiled her latest work section by section – yesterday she showed a Detail of Girl From “Deja Vu Waltz“  and the Birdbath shortly before.  Each section is it’s own painting, like the Cat, Monkey, Devil and Clown.  

The Deja Vu Waltz imagery reminds me of a deck of Tarot Cards, and I’m wishing that Amy Crehore would illustrate and publish a Tarot Deck of her own.

I’ll offer my own interpretation of “Deja Vu Waltz”.  

The Devil is contained, bound to a cherry tree, wings are shown on the Devil because he’s a fallen angel.   The Goddess Diana is taking a bath, but it’s a bird bath while a Pomegranate Tree temps a Black Cat, that’s somewhat ambivalent about stretching to get something to eat (is it worth the effort?).

Meanwhile, the Clown is enraptured by the singing muse with the guitar (a Girl Guitar?) and nude singing muse is one of the most powerful figures Amy Crehore has painted; incredible energy and concentration were put into the girl singer who radiates energy, even as she has her eyes closed, as if she’s singing and playing while in a dreamlike or meditative state.

The Monkey is amused, enjoying the music and eating a banana (notice that Amy uses her familiar motif, arms and legs that morph from animal to human – and are also needed for the composition to work – thereby linking images with two dimensional composition and design).

There’s hope, because a flower springs up from the feet of the nude girl singer.

In Amy’s art, I interpret nudity as purity and while there is some eroticism, the woman figures are more evocative of a refined femininity, a purity with power.

I think Deja Vu Waltz was a difficult painting for Amy Crehore to paint - there’s so much in her paintings.   It’s been said that Painting takes effort to understand – a painting unfolds over time, at least, it should.   

When I look at a painting, often I imagine I’ve painted it and what it felt like – what does the painting feel like?  What would it have felt like to paint the singing nude? Look at the toes, all the attention paid to her toes and the feelings within.  Also, there’s a warmth that comes out at me, from the painting.

If you look at any part of Deja Vu Waltz, and spend some time with it, I think you’ll find the painting unfolds and holds inner meanings.

Edward Winkleman mentioned that “…Sotheby’s stock plunged something like 28% because of a lackluster sale of Impressionist and Modern art. ”

“….The speculation this morning is more furious than the bidding was last night, obviously, but it’s foolhardy to place too much importance on the outcome of one auction (especially in light of how well Christie’s had done the day before). The Dow Jones Industrial Average tank yesterday, oil is so close to $100/barrel we might as well call it that, and the dollar may very well replace firewood for a heating source in certain regions this winter. All of this very likely soured the mood in the room before the first lot was revealed. Once the Van Gogh was bought in, it snowballed from there.”

I’m thinking the real issue is a lack of liquidity in the Financial Markets right now – it may be that borrowing money to buy art is getting harder to do (using leveraged assets, etc .. not that I know much or anything about this subject).

I think Art reflects life, but not just the Art itself, but even the Art Market could be said, in Sotheby’s case, to reflect general market conditions. 

I am Invited to cover LeWeb3 07 in Paris next month and now working on the logistics of how to pay for getting and staying there (I’m covering the conference as a blogger – while I’m sure I could speak there as well – I didn’t ask for that).

As I mentioned in my Webmetricsguru.com post – I find myself dreaming up all kinds of things – and they often come to pass – though I can’t usually control the the timing and circumstances.

Wish me good fortune in my dreaming.

The New York times writes about Germany’s Black Years Seen From the Inside a show that’s now in Paris at the Musée Maillol in Paris through Feb.  The show examines German Verisit Art, yet its title, “Allemagne, les Années Noires,” or “Germany: The Black Years.”  

I wrote about Verism – German Portraits from the 1920s @ Metropolitan Museum of Art last year, actually, almost a full year ago – and it was one of the best shows at the Metropolitan I’d seen.

It seems like a lot of overlap between both shows though the Paris exhibition might focus also on paintings in the 1910-1920 date range while the New York show, didn’t.

There is also a significant number of Otto Dix’s work in both shows:

“…But perhaps a more persuasive explanation is simply that Germany lost the war. And in reality, more than the drawings produced by Dix, Grosz, Beckmann and others during the war, it was their caustic postwar take on the conflict that would prove memorable.

Annette Vogel and Bertrand Lorquin, the organizers of the exhibition, have addressed this by dividing the show into the war years, 1914 to 1918, and the postwar years of the Weimar Republic, leading to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. In other words, for them the apocalypse continued through the 1920s, with artists drawing an unbroken line between defeat, decadence and fascism.

Of these, Dix was the most interesting. Like Grosz and Beckmann, he volunteered to join the German Army. But unlike Grosz and Beckmann, who were demobilized on medical grounds after barely a year, Dix fought to the end. And fight he did: he commanded a unit of machine-gunners and, as such, was engaged in the mass killings that he would later denounce.”

Were I in Paris now, I’d definitely go see “Allemagne, les Années Noires,” or “Germany: The Black Years.”