An Infuriated Aretha Franklin Writes to Gossip Columnist Liz Smith

In 1993, at New York City’s Nederlander Theatre, Aretha Franklin joined the likes of Elton John, Gloria Estefan, and Smokey Robinson for an AIDS benefit concert titled “Aretha Franklin: Duets.”

Reviews of the performances were glowing. But in her column, Liz Smith decided to critique Franklin’s attire instead, noting that she “must know she’s too bosomy to wear such clothing, but she just doesn’t care what we think, and that attitude is what separates mere stars from true divas.”

Franklin’s response:

How dare you be so presumptuous as to presume you could know my attitudes with respect to anything other than music. Obviously I have enough of what it takes to wear a bustier and I haven’t had any complaints, I’m sure if you could you would. When you get to be a noted and respected fashion editor please let us all know.

Aretha Franklin

P.S. You are hardly in any position to determine what separates stars from divas since you are neither one or an authority on either.

(Source: Letters of Note)

Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” sold in four minutes earlier this month for $195 million, an all-time high for an American work. Despite a foundering stock market, 2022 continues to be a big year for art. Why? It could be that 2021 was also a great year for art. And that, with stocks tumbling, people are moving their money into what they see as a safer, inflation-resistant asset class.

Click here.

On May 16, Sotheby’s wrapped up its sale of an art collection that was put together by Harry and Linda Macklowe over the course of their 60-year marriage.

The total take: $922.2 million. That made it, in absolute terms, the most valuable collection ever sold at auction, topping the Rockefeller Collection that sold four years ago at Christie’s for $835.1 million. But what I like best about it is the fact that this amazing collection was put together over many decades by two people that, whatever else their differences, found a lasting and valuable marital bond in collecting art!

Half of the pieces on the auction block that night sold for more than their high estimate. The top lot was a late Mark Rothko work, Untitled (1960), which sold for $48 million.

(Source: the Robb Report)

Que Pasa en el Cajon, 1994

By Ignacio Iturria

36” x 30”

Mixed media on canvas

I’m nuts over Ignacio Iturria. He’s probably the best-known Uruguayan painter of his generation. And yet his paintings are amazingly inexpensive. Que Pasa en el Cajon (above) is the first of his works that I purchased many years ago. Its retail value was maybe $18,000 to $20,000, but Suzanne managed to buy it from a financially distressed private collector for less than half that. I wouldn’t sell it for $30,000 today.

Since then, I’ve purchased five more of Iturria’s works. One thing that bodes well for the future of his pricing: He has a large North American fan base. In fact, more than 50% of his sales are in the USA.

About Ignacio Iturria

Born on April 1, 1949 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Ignacio Iturria studied commercial art and graphic design before dedicating himself to painting. He traced his roots to the Basque region of Spain, and in an effort to connect to his Spanish heritage, spent several years in a small seaside town near Barcelona. But upon returning to Uruguay, he embraced the landscape of his birthplace, especially the murky Río de la Plata, a visually dominant feature of Montevideo’s landscape.

Iturria works with thick paint and sometimes collaged textures with muddy-brown colors, often including toy-like figures in box-like enclosures. “People say I paint the human condition,” he has said. “But what I paint is a place’s psychological state, and that’s why I need to be here.”

In the 1980s, when old-fashioned fan clubs were all the rage, a 14-year-old “Monty Python” devotee named Matt Hyde wrote to John Cleese and asked whether such a club existed in his name. Thankfully, the answer was no, as Cleese’s reply was far more valuable and entertaining than a simple yes could ever have been. (Source: Letters of Note)

From John Cleese to a 14-year-old fan:

“Dear Matthew

“I am afraid I’m much too important to write notes to people like you.

“Please remember that I am very very very very very very
important.

“However, there is no John Cleese fan club (despite my importance) because they were all murdered in 1983 by Michael Palins’ fan club.

“I enclose a photograph to remind you of my importance.

“Yours sincerely

“JOHN CLEESE”

People used to be more civilized than they are now. At least the actors were. Here’s an example – a short, elegant farewell letter from Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor, written just after she told him she was divorcing him. (Source: Letters of Note)

How to Say Adieu: Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor, June 25, 1973 

“So My Lumps,

“You’re off, by God!

“I can barely believe it since I am so unaccustomed to anybody leaving me. But reflectively I wonder why nobody did so before. All I care about – honest to God – is that you are happy and I don’t much care who you’ll find happiness with. I mean as long as he’s a friendly bloke and treats you nice and kind. If he doesn’t I’ll come at him with a hammer and clinker. God’s eye may be on the sparrow but my eye will always be on you. Never forget your strange virtues. Never forget that underneath that veneer of raucous language is a remarkable and puritanical LADY. I am a smashing bore and why you’ve stuck by me so long is an indication of your loyalty. I shall miss you with passion and wild regret.

“You may rest assured that I will not have affairs with any other female. I shall gloom a lot and stare morosely into unimaginable distances and act a bit – probably on the stage – to keep me in booze and butter, but chiefly and above all I shall write. Not about you, I hasten to add. No Millerinski Me, with a double M. There are many other and ludicrous and human comedies to constitute my shroud.

“I’ll leave it to you to announce the parting of the ways while I shall never say or write one word except this valedictory note to you. Try and look after yourself. Much love. Don’t forget that you are probably the greatest actress in the world. I wish I could borrow a minute portion of your passion and commitment, but there you are – cold is cold as ice is ice.”

Title: “Mother and Child”

Medium: Oil on Board

Dimensions: 23″ x 18″

Francisco Amighetti is one of the six Costa Rican artists that Suzanne Snider and I included as a major modern master in our book Central American Modernism. We did so because of his established reputation as the innovator of xylography. His woodcuts eventually brought him international attention and praise, with exhibits in Paris, Tokyo, and other major cities. Thanks to his legacy, Costa Rica still leads the Central American nations in printmaking.

We bought this painting in 2015. Its value has already doubled, but I wouldn’t sell it for twice that. Our bet is that prices for his work will mount considerably as the art world becomes more aware of the quality of Central American Modernist art.

Francisco Amighetti was born June 1, 1907, in San José, Costa Rica. In 1926, he entered Costa Rica’s Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA). He was at the ENBA for only one year. An avid reader, he learned much more from magazines and books and from his artist friends. His interest in Japanese art, in particular, was sparked by a book he came upon at the Biblioteca Nacional. (Japanese art would influence his work for the rest of his life.)

Amighetti began exploring printmaking techniques and produced a portfolio of xylography by Costa Rican artists, the first of its kind, in 1934. He became a professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica in 1944. For the next 20 years, he taught art history, printmaking, and painting.

He continued to work until his death in 1998.

“Francisco Amighetti was a great artist. He portrayed a true picture of his country’s culture and times through an innovative medium… then influenced future generations to explore and express their art through printmaking.” – Suzanne Brooks Snider

Right Now, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection –

“Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity”

Salvador Dali, “Uranium and Atomica Melancholica Idyll” (1945)

I mentioned in a previous post that Surrealism is making a comeback. The current exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is not an exception.

“Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity” includes many of the biggest names and well-known pieces, along with many works that, according to Sarah Douglas, editor and chief of ArtNews, have rarely been on public view.

From Douglas: “Occasionally an exhibition comes along to remind us that we don’t in fact know it as well as we think we do, and, serendipitously, such an exhibition happens to be on view right now at Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection, less than a mile down the Grand Canal from the Biennale.”

“Invisible Art” Goes for $1 Million at Auction 

Click here.

Shirley Jackson Strikes Back 

If you are a Boomer, you probably remember Shirley Jackson. She was the author of six novels and hundreds of short stories, including “The Lottery,” the fictional tale of an annual ritual that takes place in an American town.

The story was published by The New Yorker in 1948. It became an instant classic, anthologized widely, including in many high school texts. According to Letters of Note, “It generated more hate mail and controversy than anything ever printed in the magazine.”

Five years later, Jackson published her memoir, Life Among the Savages, a comical account of family life. It was generally warmly received. But not by all. One reader, a Mrs. White from North Bennington, VT, sent Jackson a long critique, complaining that she had wasted her time and money on the book. Jackson’s reply was short and to the point:

Dear Mrs. White,

If you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.

Sincerely,
Shirley Jackson