Letter to June Carter from Johnny Cash, June 23, 1994: 

“We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each other’s minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much.” (Source: Letters of Note)

We just purchased this 20×24 painting by the surrealist Salvadoran artist Benjamin Cañas (1933-1987). “The War Lord” was commissioned by clients for their Japanese style home. It spurred Cañas to study Japanese history – and in the late 1970s, he made several paintings in this series.

It is the 15th work of his that we have in our Central American Art collection.

This painting of a stolen kiss between the most famous star-crossed lovers of them all was voted the “most romantic artwork in Britain” by readers of London’s The Daily Mail.

It was painted in oil by Frank Bernard Dicksee in 1884. Art critic Godfrey Barker said: “It creates the impression death is close but love will never die. Romance is a dream that still lives in the hearts of millions.”

Who was Dorothea Lange?

The famous photo at the top of this issue – “Migrant Mother” – was taken by Dorothea Lange during The Great Depression. She began her career by doing photographic portraits. After the stock market crash of 1929, she and her husband, an economist, began a project to document the effect of The Great Depression on migrant workers in California. About “Migrant Mother,” she said:

“I was following instinct, not reason; I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon. I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction.”

Here are some more of her images of the migrant workers:

Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of my favorite American poets. I was both amused and bemused to discover that she didn’t like writing letters:

Edna St. Vincent Millay to Witter Bynner, May 2, 1935 

“I simply can’t write letters. I have made a name for the disease from which I suffer: I have named it EPISTOPHOBIA. I haven’t written a letter all winter. I wish it were socially impossible to write a letter. I wish there were no post-office, no stamps, no facilities whatever for expediting the smug, intrusive, tedious letters that people write.” (Source: Letters of Note)

George Bernard Shaw wrote more than 60 plays, but he also wrote a lot of personal letters. I read once that he sent somewhere in the region of 250,000 letters and postcards during his lifetime, the majority in response to strangers seeking either advice, money, a photograph, an autograph, or Shaw’s presence at an event. Here are three of his replies:

Letter to the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, 1928 

“I am fully conscious of the honor done me by the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in asking me to lecture; but the condition that my subject should be non-controversial makes it impossible for me to accept the invitation. I never speak in public except on violently controversial subjects in a violently controversial way.”

Letter to the Hull Conference of Crematorium Authorities, 1926 

“A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds and fish! Thank you for nothing. Blood sacrifices are not in my line.”

 Letter to the Southwick Cricket Club, 1938 

“Too old. Loathe cricket. No connection with Southwick; don’t even know where it is.”

After Spike Milligan published “Monty,” the third installment of his memoirs, a reader wrote to praise the book, but added that he was bothered by a reference Milligan made about “cowardice in the face of the enemy.” 

Milligan’s Reply:

“Well, the point is, I suffered from cowardice in the face of the enemy throughout the war – in the face of the enemy, also in the legs, the elbows, and the wrists; in fact, after two years in the front line a mortar bomb exploded by my head (or was it my head exploded by a mortar bomb), and it so frightened me, I put on a tremendous act of stammering, stuttering, and shivering. This mixed with cries of ‘mother’ and a free flow of dysentery enabled me to be taken out of the line and down-graded to B2. But for that brilliant performance, this letter would be coming to you from a grave in Italy.

“Any more questions from you and our friendship is at an end.

 (Source: Letters of Note)

Suzanne and I recently bought a treasure trove of Central American works for my collection from the Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles. Here’s one I particularly like, a large piece called El Cadejo Negro by the great Panamanian modernist Guillermo Trujillo.

“Tailleur pour dames” (1957) by Remedios Varo 

After a decades-long fascination with abstract geometrics, the art world is, once again, warming up to Surrealism. 

Last week, for example, two important museums, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, acquired works by the great Mexican surrealist Remedios Varo.

Surrealism is one of my favorite genres because it offers the aesthetic pleasures of representational art along with thought-provoking inconsistencies. The above image is a good example. It depicts a tailor’s showroom, where four women are outfitted in garments that appear to be in a state of transformation. A dress converts into a boa. A scarf becomes a sea. A purple cape floats into the air…

Christie’s started off the spring auction season strongly with a three-part auction in London and Shanghai, racking up $334 million in works from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Die Fucshe (“The Foxes”), a 1913 painting by Franz Marc, fetched the highest price of $57 million. (This was a restitution piece stolen by the Nazis during WWII.)

And an untitled triptych by Francis Bacon – that I would have bought if I were 100 times richer – went to a lone phone bidder for $47.6 million.