Jackson Hole Art Blog

(Picasso!)  Pablo Picasso’s ”Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” which had a pre-sale estimate of between $70 million and $90 million, sold the evening of May 4 for  $106.5 million, a new world record for any artwork sold at auction.  New York Auction house Christie’s hammered the sale to an as yet unidentified buyer.   Christie’s auction house on Tuesday evening to an unidentified telephone bidder.

The Washington Post reports that “There were nine minutes of bidding involving eight clients in the sale room and on the phone, Christie’s said. At $88 million, two bidders remained. The final bid was $95 million, but the buyer’s premium took the sale price to $106.5 million.

Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie’s New York, said he was “ecstatic with the results.”

“Tonight’s spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works,” he said.

The striking work of Picasso’s muse and mistress Marie-Therese Walter has been exhibited in the United States only once, in 1961 in Los Angeles to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Picasso’s birth. The painting, which measures more than 5 feet by 4 feet, shows a reclining nude figure with an image of Picasso in the background looking over her.”

This is really special. Writer/Conservationist/Activist/Friend Cate Cabot has sent word that world renowned biologist artist Patricia Johanson will speak at the Jackson Hole Community School on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 5:30 pm.    The event is free and open to the public.

This is a talk everyone who feels the Town of Jackson should evolve with consideration to new urbanism, and as a sustainable and cultural reflection of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, need attend.   These are the ideas and concepts crucial to how Jackson, now an urban entity, can become a model of sustainable, artful urban existence in the midst of protected land.  Jackson leaders mandate must be  this: to consider all indigenous and cultural qualities of our region in their civic planning.

A wonderful story:  Johanson used her time with her young children wandering the woods and open spaces.  As her children explored, she created biological, artful field sketches of the places they visited.   According to Cabot,  Johnson’s “small artistically stunning studies became what her earlier vision had anticipated, massive functional interactive installations which incorporate sculpture with local natural history and the cultural story line of an area with the intent to resolve a problem…”

A problem, in Johanson’s case, is defined as  polluted water and heavily polluted land sites.   Johanson has worked to design passive natural filters for dirtied waters, and restore it as potable.  She also creates systems that reclaim crucial habitat shared by mankind and myriad species.

“Her work is jaw dropping in scale, composition, effectiveness, beauty and comprehensive synthesis,” says Cabot.  “These installations have regenerated environments all over the world with many works completed, many more under development. I think of Thomas Berry’s perspective, that “we humans are genetically coded for beauty” when I consider Patricia Johanson’s work.”

Descriptions of Johanson’s book, Art and Survival: Patricia Johanson’s Environmental Projects , published in association with the Islands Institute, praise her environmental solutions expanding, healing and softening sites ranging from congested waterfronts to urban wastelands.  Johanson’s designs are accepted as important new models for the reclamation of gardens and parks eroded by neglect, lighting the way for new sustainable, integrative landscapes.

Johanson’s book is available at the Teton County Library.

For more information about May 4th’s event, contact Sarah Drake at 307.733.5427.

To read other posts relating to landscape and planning, an invitation is extended to search this site using any of these key words: Urban Planning, Landscape, Placemaking or Walter Hood.

Item #2:

The Jackson Hole Art Auction is back, returning to the J.H. Center for the Arts Theater, on Saturday, September 18, 2010.   I believe the Auction is still open for consignments–last year’s cut off date was June 1.    The Jackson Hole Art Auction is its own entity and is produced by the partnership of Trailside and Gerald Peters Galleries. It is a pinnacle event of the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival.

As anyone who has attended this auction knows, it is the real thing.  The Auction features “Past and Present Masters of the American West,” focusing on historically recognized artists, according to the Auction’s Emma Zanetti.   Lots auctioned in past sales include works by the Taos Society of Artists, and deceased Masters.  Artists you may recognize include, but are not limited to  C.M. Russell, Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Charlie Dye, Frederic Remington, John Clymer, Bob Kuhn, Carl Rungius, Donald Teague, Olaf Wieghorst, and more. Top contemporary artists include William Acheff, Clyde Aspevig, Ken Carlson, Martin Grelle, Clark Hulings, Z.S. Liang, Bill Owen, Jim Norton, Kenneth Riley, Mian Situ, Howard Terpning, Jie Wei Zhou and others.

Last year’s solid auction sales totaled just under $6 million.   To talk with the Auction about consignments, stop by Trailside Galleries in Jackson (130 East Broadway) or email Emma Zanetti at registrar@jacksonholeartauction.com.

“Years later I’m going back and looking at the projects we did.  My critique is, they are pastiche.  They are cardboard facades.  The real town is a block behind them, and it’s still awful, in trouble. So we didn’t help the people who live there, the thing that was supposed to be helped.” – Walter Hood

Finding what is particular and special to a community is part of what urban landscape designer Walter Hood does; over the years it has become clearer to Hood that urban centers require different formulas for renewal, depending on relevant measurable goals.

Pittsburgh, with its steel industry history, at one time existed for opposite reasons than Jackson exists.  But, says Hood, Pittsburgh  (sort of a sister city for me, and a great example in urban renewal) has found itself again. Like other mid-west industrial towns Pittsburgh fell on hard times; hard enough that a few decades ago many were giving it up for lost.  Jobs disappeared, people left in droves, and the city was gritty and depressed.

Jackson and Pittsburgh have traditionally relied on single industries. Jackson’s magnificent beauty and location have made it an economy inflated by landscape;  Pittsburgh’s economy relied on steel.

Now Pittsburgh’s economy is strong; it has weathered this recession relatively well, in large part because the city has taken pains to attract diverse market sectors.  Healthcare, education, technology, financial jobs play a large role. City parks are being restored. Abandoned spaces are recycled into new housing and businesses.

Hood opines that whatever direction Jackson takes in shaping its future, keeping traffic in check is crucial.   Open space cannot be fully protected unless we control congestion and emissions.

“I think where we are as Americans, things are hitting the fan.  We will have to make some really serious decisions about the land.  I have a lot of projects where people are investing in alternative transportation modes; they are starting to say “we don’t need that much parking.”  They are beginning to say we want to be greener—it will force them to act differently.”

Its community locking horns over a new Comprehensive Plan, Jackson’s town and county officials are attempting to correctly address a demand for affordable housing.  The risk of over development is very real.  To date, officials are treating mass transit as a finishing touch for building more units;  most urban planning takes the opposite approach.

Whenever I return to Jackson from the east coast, my immediate sense is Jackson’s traffic is under control.  Then summer arrives.

“In the winter it is really fantastic to be here—you could drive and everything goes back to scale,” says Hood.  “When spring comes the scale gets smaller but it is still big.  You see more in Jackson.  It’s sensory overload.”

A national park’s purpose is defeated, says Hood, when 4,000,000 tourists a year jam the roads and the scenery is…”unseeable.” If you want to reduce traffic, and impact, you make roads smaller and narrower. Cars then have to get smaller.  Discourage, don’t encourage, more traffic.

We agree that the town of Jackson should be about this place.  That gentler transitions from park to town are optimal, but not planned.  Approaching downtown Jackson, there is a sense that our open spaces are chopped off at the knees.  It’s good, we conclude, that the National Museum of Wildlife Art is one of the first things you see.   But many buildings and landscapings closer to town are visually harsh.  Lots of aging concrete, signage, little shoulder softening, no real thought to the landscape.

And simply as a marketing concept, in addition to the conservation benefits, planning should accentuate sensitivity to place.

But what about helping a community through recession?  Hood may not have Jackson’s specific economic remedy, but he does have experience with plans that didn’t work.

Hood says that collectively, we often make big mistakes when trying to “save” community.

“There are some amazing places, but the way we act in those landscapes is still the freakin’ same way,” he notes.  “I worked for a firm in the 90’s that would go to lots of small towns, particularly in Washington state. There was, at the time, the whole notion that you can go to these communities and save them by design.  A lot of them have lost their industries; they were river towns and people logged, or fished…those economies died.

The community then dies.

So we’re in this amazing valley or setting and what do we do?  Tourism. Immediately the main street programs help fortify the preservation of these towns—and I was into it.  At the time it seemed like the right thing to do.

Years later I’m going back and looking at the projects we did.  My critique is, they are pastiche.  They are cardboard facades.  The real town is a block behind them, and it’s still awful, in trouble.   So we didn’t help the people who live there, the thing that was supposed to be helped.”

Hood says the reasons people do choose to live in Jackson Hole are clear.  Safety is big, he says, and that feeling of safety springs in large part from how we control growth.

“It is a gift to have the ability to just walk around without fear and collision.  Last night I saw a woman running in the near dark, without street lights, without fear.  Wow.  She’s safe, there’s no traffic, the landscape is still visible, and she wants to be there.

I could not do this where I live.  Those are the kind of experiences to save.   The ability to navigate the landscape at night!  But more people, more traffic—more security and more lights come in. Success breeds more demand. It’s a circle.   I asked for a room on the upper floors of my hotel, facing the mountains, so I could take that in.  That’s the experience!  I know why people live here.”

To find out more about Walter J. Hood and his work, log onto his website here.

Post Script:  The Jackson Hole Art Blog is VERY happy to hear of Blaize Oswald’s encouraging progress as he recovers from a bad fall from a ski chairlift.   Our prayers and best wishes go out to the Oswald Family.

(This is the first of a two-part story.)

San Francisco landscape architecture Professor (U.C. Berkeley) Walter Hood has been hailed by  KQED San Francisco Public Television and Public Radio as a leader in urban refurbishment.  His resuscitation of local parks in Oakland and San Francisco, has “….integrated architectural features such as playgrounds, plazas and squares into city sites whose pasts are vibrant but forgotten. By reflecting the shifting cultural composition and respecting the evolving nature of neighborhoods….,[Hood] has created an oasis in these areas, and through his close involvement with the local communities, he developed tailored solutions for Bay Area based parks while retaining a cohesive artistic vision.”

Hood is principal of Hood Design; his reputation and projects span the globe.  He’s at work on a new book, “Urban Landscapes: American Landscape Typologies.”

Last summer I had the pleasure of sitting down with Hood, and I asked him his impressions of Jackson’s landscapes–natural and man-made.

The first thing he told me was that green community plans are a relatively new thing.

Some years ago Hood met with Center for the Arts staff and officials to propose a project around the Center; that project didn’t happen, but Hood has had multiple chances to observe our town’s practices and choices about public art and landscaping.

“It was a great experience to come here… because I met so many people and I love this landscape. As a place, it is unique….I am much more interested in the landscape here and how we can live in a place and somehow bring the accoutrements from other places…. I was just out in Teton Village, and you could be anywhere! I could be in some California town, some hillside town,” says Hood.

Hood imagines a trail system connecting all valley communities; on the flip side, he’s surprised to find that, in a place as unique as this, people are living much like people do in most other places: with a car out front, standard roofs, excessive traffic.  In a place like Jackson, we should be forcing ourselves to change the footprint we leave upon the earth.

In a place like Jackson, public spaces should be about scaling and shifting the existing landscape, to enmesh people in a landscape experience so that art and landscape are “legible.”

Pointing to a cluster of aspens and evergreens on a Jackson street corner, Hood says he’d never plant such species on that spot.

“With Snow King there–it’s all about Snow King.  The trees block it.  If I am working in a neighborhood of small scale, that’s one thing.  But this is huge, the glacier on that mountain is EVIDENT.”

Indeed, when I retrieve my mail on Pearl Avenue, cross over to Betty Rock, and look up, I now see big, bulky condos.  Snow King is wiped from view.  As Franz Camenzind has said, if people look up and can’t see the mountains, how can they be connected to the space?  The rim is gone.  Landscape lost.

The only people who will be able to see the mountain from that vantage point are the new condo owners.

“How can you not work in another way?” asks Hood. “I’m being completely conceptual, I know. But that’s one of the things that’s really important. Every time we do a drawing, we always show Snow King in the background. Because everything you do is in reference to this thing. How you make decisions. Take this corner of town we’re talking about, with the trees, along this major street, Pearl Avenue, it would not be a hard thing to protect that view. You need to say that when you are on this street that ridge line view should be protected.”

Hood notes that our process is typical of what rural communities started doing in the 70’s.

“Before you know it, what you value is gone. You forget the place because you are so immersed in it. When you live there. It happens to a lot of communities over time because you stop seeing it. It becomes so familiar. Then one day you look around and wonder what happened. How did we get this way?”