Disappointingly, I wasn’t won over by this record. Instead, I found it even more cloyingly campy and difficult to listen to than I anticipated. It seems I’m just not cut out to be one of Gaga’s Little Monsters.

In disproportion to my interest in her actual music, it is telling that I have now written three posts on Gaga. In fact, I have always admired Lady Gaga as an art director and performer. I think that she and her team come up with some of the catchiest, strangest, most referentially brilliant props and performance conceits in modern memory (her meat dress and cigarette sunglasses come to mind). Now, I don’t find the becycled cover of Born This Way to be brilliant, exactly, but I was pleased that it recalled one of my favorite old pinball machines, Centaur. Back when I first saw the straight-out-of-the-80s Centaur machine at a bar in Seattle, I remember thinking the concept of a centaur being half-man and half-motorcycle was funny but strangely compelling. Would this form factor be a gift or a curse? It’s difficult to tell…

…and now I’m thinking the cover just might be kinda brilliant — an aptly odd metaphor for the whole pop-machine Gaga identity whirlwind… Damn! She got me again!

Perhaps the only question that remains is: who wore it better?

Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Renoir — paintings by the world’s most famous artists are on the auction block, for sale to the highest bidder. How high will you bid before the tension and bluffing get to you? And how good’s your eye — can you spot a forgery when you buy one?

The MASTERPIECE game combines the excitement of a fast-paced board game with the glamour and sophistication of a game that deals with fine art. Some of the world’s greatest paintings, illustrated in full-color postcards, are an integral part of gameplay.

The high-stakes world of international art — and the power plays of an auction — will entertain and enlighten as you join a particularly eccentric group of collectors who’ve all come in search of a MASTERPIECE.

The version of the game that I played, the original, featured works from the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, including Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, and even relative newcomer Jackson Pollock’s Greyed Rainbow.

The game was designed for Parker Brothers by master toy design firm Marvin Glass Associates (in an office located, at the time, just a few blocks away from the Art Institute in downtown Chicago). The firm had recently created the classic bug flipping game Ants In The Pants and, with Masterpiece, someone at the firm apparently wanted to take things a few notches up the cultural ladder. You know, in order to teach young people about something culturally relevant… something like the concept of art as commodity.

The cast of characters that you play in the game are gross caricatures of the wealthy “art collecting class”. You’ve got shady Barons, huffy intellectuals, and plenty of inherited or stolen wealth. I imagine in 1970, after a Hippie youth uprising and in the midst of a distinctly anti-establishment movement throughout the country, I too would be tempted to turn a few screws into the elite class — snobbish, self-possessed pricks throwing their ill-gotten money away on a bunch of old paint and canvas. Also, the way that the value of the paintings in the game get assigned randomly according to chance presents a similarly jaded viewpoint, and helps to reinforce the silliness and greed of the collectors themselves.

It is in this same spirit that contemporary artists like Andy Warhol were managing to both make fun of the art market and also to prosper within it. By 1971, Warhol’s Factory was openly taking commissions for silk-screened portraits at a price of $25,000 apiece, milking dough from these same tasteless collectors by giving them what they really wanted: pictures of themselves.

Artists would soon attempt to opt out of this system of commodification completely. So called ‘conceptual art’ was popularized in the 1970s, led by artists such as Sol LeWitt, who didn’t sell objects, but instead sold sets of directions that allowed his ideas to be realized by others. Ideas became valuable, simultaneously owned by everyone and no one. On Kawara made simple paintings that depicted simply the date of the work’s creation in white text on a black ground. He and others produced ideas and objects easily copied by whomever found them appealing. This body of work was a cry for freedom from a much more elite world of painterly talent, schooling, and expensive materials. Anyone with a love for ideas could feel free to collect without worrying much about things like money or rarity. However, the irony of this populist subversion was, of course, that the collection and subsequent high market value of such ‘immaterial’ work has served perhaps to alienate the general public from the art world even more.

In any case, games such as Masterpiece certainly don’t help to re-frame a dismissive opinion of art and its buyers. As much as this game no doubt served to introduce many people to beautiful works by renowned artists, it also primed them to understand the world of fine art with a veneer of contempt. Unfortunately, the “masterpiece” of the game turns out to be whatever random work gets randomly assigned the game’s only million dollar price tag. It seems sad that a whole generation of kids grew up with this slanted notion of artistic value, when they probably should have been taught that it is possible to have a real relationship with art — a meaningful and ongoing conversation based on their own ideas, empathy for artists and their historical environments, and maybe even a little wonder thrown in for good measure.

Back at the cabin, my curiosity got the better of me, and we ended up playing a round of Masterpiece. I felt a rush of satisfaction as I snatched up Mary Cassatt’s gorgeous The Child’s Bath, only to be immediately crestfallen to see that I had apparently overpaid. In the end, I must report that the game really wasn’t very much fun. In a real auction, you get to assert your love for a work of art by bidding on it. The amount you’re willing to pay becomes what the work is worth to you — what the work is worth in the real world. In the game, you are often forced to acknowledge that your love was misguided when the work turns out to be worth half of what you paid for it. Your confidence in your own taste and in the artist is deflated, and you try to trick someone else into taking the ‘dud’ off your hands. This dynamic kinda sucks.

Everyone at the table agreed that the game was lackluster, but we also saw promise in the basic premise of an art collecting game. If I were to redesign the game, I might encourage players to defend or steal the works they love from other players, designate their own ‘masterpiece’ to pursue, or at least award a bonus to the biggest collection of art at the end of the game. Though the game would still be unavoidably focused on art as a commodity, at least it would also consider the artistic tastes of the players themselves and give a value to the art itself as something more than a stand-in for cash.

The thrill of the sale must never usurp the much more significant and meaningful thrill that accompanies an association with beauty, vision, and genius. That’s the real trip of the art collector.

Shortly after I published a previous article detailing the impact of my first visit to the sublime Bloedel Reserve, I received a lovely note from Ed Moydell, the reserve’s new Executive Director. It seems that he and I shared something in common — we were both deeply moved by our first impressions of Bloedel and we both wished that more people outside the gardening community knew about the place. In pursuit of the latter, Ed offered to take Sara and I on a behind the scenes tour of the grounds, where we took in the sights and smells of Fall as we discussed the past and, more importantly, the future of Bloedel Reserve.

Bloedel Reserve is luckier than most organizations and experiences that are vying for the attention of people these days in that not only is the place itself amazing, but it has an incredible history — a rich genesis story of family, love, art, forestry, and architecture that is fun to turn around in your head as you reflect on what the place means to you.

Narrative such as these offer an avenue for understanding and sympathy that, in turn, leads to deeply felt connection on a personal level. For instance, there’s a reason why a whole new crowd of people all of a sudden wanted to go see Prince live in concert after the semi-autobiographical film Purple Rain came out. The fact is, that once you give something a context — a framework for understanding — even the best experiences somehow seem better and more interesting. It’s a fact that concerts seem better when you know the words to the songs, but they seem doubly awesome when you feel like you know the performers themselves. More locally, one of the smallest, slowest towns around — Forks, WA — became a tourist destination just because it was the setting for vampire love in the Twilight book series. People naturally try to project a narrative onto everything they encounter, and they love it when that narrative already exists. Bloedel Reserve might not quite have vampires (or Prince), but the place does have a story to tell.

Bloedel does have challenges, though, as they try to start a conversation with a new group of would-be visitors. Even though they’ve got the charm and the pedigree, getting the word out to a new generation that may not exactly be open to hearing anything about a “garden” is a challenging project, to be sure. How do you make a place like Bloedel sound relevant to people before they experience it for themselves? How do you communicate the poignant environments, the history, the architecture, and the unmistakable feeling (energetically relaxed?) this place instills in you? Is this a brand you can deliver on with just history and a walk through the grounds, or do you have to add another layer or two to the experience? What are those other layers? Parties? Picnics? Concerts? Lectures? Interactive Video? How many layers can you add before you’re not telling the same story anymore?

You can’t shout a bedtime story, but there’s always a way to get more people to hear you without sacrificing the effect of what you’re saying. In today’s hyper-connected world, people are learning that they don’t necessarily have to talk louder to spread a story. Instead, they try to get the community to retell the story amongst themselves. Going viral is the new network TV. Fortunately for Bloedel, a good story is first ingredient in this elusive recipe.

Anyway, this challenge — of perception, appeal, and publicity — is one of the many things we discussed with Ed while we were on our walk. We also talked a lot about the recent improvements and future plans for the grounds at Bloedel.

A big draw of the Bloedel experience is the way that you almost feel like you’ve got the place to yourself as you explore its vast acreage. In order to increase the amount of visitors to the Reserve — and still retain this feeling of solitude — the park is on a trajectory to add even more pathways and open up more areas of the grounds to the public. One of the most exciting is called Fern Hill.

Fern Hill is on the eastern side of the grounds down the hill from the main house and close to the water. Once it is open, you will be able to enjoy numerous vistas overlooking Puget Sound as you wind your way through the ferns and giant trees of the forest. Adding more opportunities for ocean views highlights another unique and very ‘Northwestern’ aspect of Bloedel Reserve. When I think of this part of the country, the combination of water with lush green forests is very much at the front of my mind. This is a tiny slice of Puget Sound in its most elemental state.

At the end of our tour, Ed brought Sara and I into the guest house in the middle of the Japanese garden. A building tailor-made for hosting, this low-slung retreat is a nexus of glass, wood, and paper. If Mad Men’s Bert Cooper was looking for a vacation home on Bainbridge Island, this building would certainly do the trick. The place, designed by architect Paul Hayden Kirk, is amazing — possessing of a feeling of structure and openness that stems from the fact that none of the interior rooms are completely walled off. The open floor plan coupled with the 360 degree wrap-around porch makes this house the ultimate place to throw a soiree.

Outside, a zen rock garden calms the spot where the swimming pool used to be. Family friend and Pulitzer prize winning poet Theodore Roethke drowned here in 1963, the victim of a heart attack. The family ordered the pool filled in the very next day. There is no plaque, but the mysterious power of this hidden history lends this part of the garden a dark but redemptive essence.

In fact, it is easy to imagine that you are being accompanied by various spirits as you walk the grounds of the reserve. This is a place where people lived, and in many ways it feels occupied still. Perhaps Ed should set up a summer movie night where everyone can sit on the lawn and watch My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki’s lively ode to forest spirits, friendship, and family. This might be a fun way to introduce a whole new generation to the wonder and the magic that the natural world communicates to those that take the time to listen.

Bloedel Reserve is a truly a place for wonder and magic. Go Listen.

Recently at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC was an exhibition of hundreds of works by Picasso from the museum’s permanent collection. Curator Gary Tinterow talks with Charlie Rose in a revealing, warm, and varied discussion of Picasso, the Met’s checkered history toward the artist, and the discoveries they made while putting together the exhibition. It’s quite long (it is an episode of Charlie Rose, after all) but you’ll be rewarded with a candid history and an in depth look at several of the more significant works from the show, such as Seated Harlequin from 1901.

In the 80′s, Prentice and Virginia Bloedel opened their former home to the public as a collection of gardens. Like all gardens, it is a curated, supernatural experience of nature. As if listening to a ‘greatest hits’ record of natural beauty, walking the grounds was an inspired dialogue  for someone left, too often, without the time or patience to seek out these sublime combinations in the wilderness. Unlike most other gardens, however, Bloedel Reserve is big enough to come across like the real thing. It is at once both wild and tamed — anarchic and groomed. It manages to be represent both inspiration and artwork all rolled into one.

One has the suspicion that the unique flavor of Bloedel Reserve has its roots in the union of personalities that birthed it. Prentice and Virginia were possessed of two very different sensibilities when it came to the things they fancied. Prentice was part of the Bloedel family — owners of a far reaching timber empire. He was Yale educated and, as a young man, desired to teach, but he was lured back into the family business. The way that he took to the industry, however, suggests that it may have the been the job he was born to do. He pioneered the economical practice of using sawdust and other mill “wastes” as fuel as well as the practice of reforestation of lands that were logged by planting saplings as the land was cleared. Overall, one gets the impression that he loved nature, the woods, and promoted man’s responsible and economical use of natural resources. He was attracted to the grounds that became the reserve because of its large acreage and rugged beauty.

Virginia Bloedel, however, fell in love with the French-style main house that occupied the plot (the Bloedels purchased the land and main house in the early 1950′s). She was lover of beauty and order. She filled the house with art and Louis XVI style furniture. She passed her love of art on to her daughter (also named Virginia), who ended up collecting (with her husband Bagley Wright) the bulk of what is now the Modern collection of the Seattle Art Museum. All the parts of the estate that seem to have an ordered class and an European beauty I attribute to Ma Bloedel.

There is a reflecting pool (pictured top) in the center of the grounds. It was the Bloedel’s favorite place to hang out in the garden. A single bench sits at one end of the pool, and a vase of bright flowers sits at the other. It’s a surprising venue for quiet contemplation.

The large shallow pool was built with the guidance of landscape designer Thomas Church and was later reworked by Richard Haag, who added a tall rectangular hedge around the whole thing. In a way, this place encapsulates the spirit of the entire Reserve — the surprising presence of man’s mind and hand in the middle of wild forest.

I’ve got a thing for prankster sculpture.

Jeff Koons, Mike Kelley, and the granddaddy of all art bad boys, Marcel Duchamp, have always proven adept at injecting sly humor into otherwise valid objects of cultural and emotional interest. That is to say, they are known for work that strives to be part of the critical conversation, but that also reserves the right to mock the self-importance of these same institutions. You might call their approach ‘ironic’ if the results weren’t often so poignant and genuinely engaging.

Maurizio Cattelan (whose sculpture/installation ‘untitled’ is pictured above) isn’t always as libidinal as the other artists I mentioned, but — like the others — his sculptures and performances have always been humorous, concerned with art history and how it relates to contemporary culture, and are oftentimes shocking or disturbing. I like the work above because it seems a little more subtle than, say, his suicidal squirrel or squashed Pope, but just as devious, somehow. This piece quotes Richard Serra’s corner prop series of sculptures and also traffics in the classic artistic pursuit of drapery found in everything from the Nike of Samothrace to works by Da Vinci, Caravaggio and beyond. It also, of course, pokes fun at all these things — a janitor’s broom sent to sweep away our tendencies towards preciousness and reverence in the museum. The fact that Cattelan’s pieces are usually meant to inhabit spaces in the museum or gallery that are occupied with artwork that is firmly part of the canon just ups the volume of his idiosyncratic message.

For those of you near Houston, check out the piece above — and many other of Cattelan’s works — dispersed throughout the Menil through August 15th. I wish I could see it! All we’ve got in Seattle is this little dog…

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with my lady exploring Seward Park. We heard some tap-tapping towards the end of our walk that, upon further inspection, turned out to be this guy. Pileated Woodpeckers are surprisingly big — the size of a crow — and they really do have the classic ‘Woody Woodpecker’ shock of red plumage on their heads. For a North American bird, he looks almost tropical.

As I approached, this nervous fellow went hopping up the tree, keeping an eye on me the whole time. After I backed off, though, he descended once again to resume the excavation he had started below.

The documentary, simply titled Joy Division, features the story of the band as told by the members themselves. It’s fairly non-sensationalized, letting the music be the spectacle rather than Curtis’ suicide. Definitely worth a look and certainly worth a listen. See the film here, while it’s still available to watch online.

For you graphic design fans, Peter Saville is also featured in the film. He talks about his work designing the covers for the Unknown Pleasures and Closer with the band. Saville designed nearly all the Joy Division and New Order covers, who would later go on to make classic record covers for David Byrne/Brian Eno and Roxy Music, to name a few.

I especially love his design for New Order’s Power, Corruption, and Lies (below top right). I saw a show at the MCA in Chicago a few years ago called Sympathy For the Devil: Art and Rock & Roll since 1967 that featured a lot of the drawings and collages that Saville made in preparation for this classic cover. It was really interesting to see how he’d devised a color system for codifying the song titles into the design itself.

The show also featured classic photos of Ian Curtis on stage — in addition to non-Joy Division-related work by artists such as Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Christian Marclay, and Robert Longo. This exhibition, combined with the Kurt Cobain-themed show currently on display at the Seattle Art Museum, forces one to acknowledge at least one of the following two things:

- Pop music is finally being seen as an art form of critical cultural importance now that the Baby-Boomers and their kids are the ones shelling out big dough for contemporary art

- Pop-culture shows are good for ticket sales at museums.

Perhaps it’s a bit of both. That would explain those record sleeve sized picture frames that Urban Outfitters sells.

In light of this outpouring of negativity, let’s take a look at some of the other Picasso works that have made their way onto the list of the top one hundred most expensive paintings of all time. Is the painting really that atypical? Does it hold the same mystical allure?

One of the most striking things about this list of price busting paintings is how many Picassos there are on it. The man represents with 10 paintings — the most of any artist (second and third place, respectively, go to Van Gogh with 7 and Warhol with 3). Another striking thing is that almost all of these paintings were made in the last 150 years, with the bulk being from the 20th century. This type of collector confidence in Modern art – and particularly in Picasso himself – is the prime reason people are willing to pay so much money to have a good Picasso in their collection. Owning a work by the artist has become practically a requirement in keeping up with the Geffens.

The list below depicts the top five of these paintings starting from the most expensive (in 2010 dollars, to make their relative purchase cost more apparent).

Garçon à la Pipe – $119.9M

This painting, which sold for $104.2M in 2004, is an early Picasso. It was painted over the course of a couple months in 1905 when he was in his rose period. The model is some kid from the neighborhood that used to hang around the studio. The work is another that is considered pleasant but of minor importance. This painting, too, was bought at auction by a mysterious bidder (rumored to be Russian).

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust – $106.5M

This painting, which sold for $106.5M just a few weeks ago, depicts a 23-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter, the mistress of a then 51-year-old Picasso. When this painting was made in 1932, the two were already six years into their illicit relationship. In another few years, Marie would give birth to Picasso’s daughter (boldly named María de la Concepción). The pregnancy would shine light on Picasso’s infidelities, causing his wife Olga (a ballerina) to leave him. To say that there is some drama behind the scenes in this painting is an understatement.

This sizable (64″ x 51″) painting was made in a single day, and Picasso really went for it on this one. He threw some Cezanne in there, some Classical bust action, some Matisse-ish plants, a lurking Picasso behind the curtain. All this in service to a the pink blobby Marie laying naked in the foreground, cradled ominously by shadows.

Dora Maar au Chat – $102.3M

This painting, which sold for $95.2M in 2006 to an anonymous Russian bidder, is another that depicts one of Picasso’s lovers – in this case, the 34-year-old photographer/poet Dora Maar. Picasso was 60 by the time he made this in 1941, but that didn’t stop him from seeing both Maar and the above-mentioned Marie-Thérèse Walter after divorcing his wife (you got that?). Maar sounds like kind of an intense woman. She suffered from sterility, cut herself, and was really into art, politics and intellectualism. This painting reflects a lot of that intensity and complexity with its multiple fractured planes, bold colors and patterns, and, of course, a little black kitty.

Les Noces de Pierrette – $85.3M

This painting, which sold for $49.3M in 1989 was created in 1905 during Picasso’s blue period (so named because of the blue colors often used in paintings from this time, and also because Picasso was depressed following the suicide of one of his friends). Paintings from this period, such as the famously torn work The Actor, are generally considered the most valuable, beautiful, and recognizable of all Picasso’s works.

After changing hands many times – from Picasso’s friend to Picasso’s son, from a Swiss banker to the French government – it was finally purchased for the aforementioned huge pile of cash by a Japanese real-estate developer. After his company went south, he was forced to give the painting as debt collateral to a construction company who then had to give it to a loan company. Currently, it rests unseen and unenjoyed – crated up in a bank vault somewhere in Japan. Unfortunately, a bunch of paintings have disappeared this way when Japan’s economy tanked in the 90′s. Mwah mwah….

Self Portrait: Yo Picas-so – $84.1M

This painting, which sold for $47.85M in 1989, is a blue-period self portrait made in 1901. It was purchased by the president of a hospital management company – someone who probably wouldn’t want to be flaunting his millions these days. It doesn’t seem like a particularly revealing portrait, but I like that it looks like he fell against his palette, staining his cravat orange. Not a bad look for a passionate artist. For a guy that painted so many self portraits, and included himself in so many paintings, it makes sense that one of them would have made this list. In my opinion, though, I like the ones where he appears as a minotaur better.

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So the myth of Picasso endures, seemingly growing larger and larger as time passes – making his work all the more coveted. Even if a particular work isn’t his best or his most interesting – everyone wants a piece of the man. I think Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers put it best…

My girlfriend bought me this plant, a striking Calathea Lancifolia, from the Volunteer Park Conservatory here in Seattle. If you live in Seattle and haven’t been, the Conservatory is a classic paradise well worth an hour of your afternoon. They have a few of these little guys integrated into their tropical exhibit, and it is perhaps my favorite species in a room filled to the brim with incredibly beautiful and curious flora.

Why do I like this little plant so much? Several reasons should be fairly obvious from the photos above. Besides the fact that it is simply a visually stunning plant — with contrasting green variegation, a gradient green, gently waved edge, and a bold purple underside — my favorite aspect is how the markings on the top of the leaf appear as if the silhouette of a different sort of plant has been imprinted over top. It makes me think of a plant wearing a plant suit, which amuses my easy-to-amuse mind to no end.

Speaking of plant-within-a-plant, the notion of self-reflexivity is also at the heart of this particular fancy. Within the realm of the arts, the aspect of High Modernism that I always respected was how closely form and philosophy are married. If you were in art grad school in the 60′s, you probably would have been evangelized to the notion that a piece of artwork is most true to itself — most correct — when all of its visual, objective qualities reflect both the reason for and action of its creation. This notion began with abstract artists like Josef Albers (below left) who was interested in light and color and whose painted forms echoed the shape of the canvas they were painted on. This idea reached it’s apex with artists like Jackson Pollock and Frank Stella (below right). Stella made works where each mark was the width of the brush he painted it with, and whose canvases where sized to efficiently house the number of marks needed to complete the composition. Pollock’s work looks crazier, but his dynamic sloshing of paint is just as much an overt index of the painting process. They are very simply paintings about the act of making a painting.

So, while it might be tempting to see Calathea Lancifolia as a particularly Modernist plant because of the way that its appearance echoes its meta reality as a plant, it turns out that there something hindering this interpretation. There is an alternate way of spinning the appearance of plant-like markings on Calathea Lancifolia’s foliage. They can be seen not as a self reflection, but instead as a mask. While there is a certain self-consciousness — a redundancy of selves — to the wearing of a mask, any deeper reality must acknowledge the falseness of a second face. Once the train of thought turns towards the issue of costume, we enter into the realm of the Post-Modernists.

Starting with Marcel Duchamp, whose Rrose Selavy and Monte Carlo Bond characters set his reputation as the early father of Post-Modernism, and finding it’s full concentration within the work of Cindy Sherman (above), using disguise became a means of subverting the rules and exposing the artifice of Modernist ideals. It’s fun to think of Sherman as the anti-Stella, as her work exposed photography not as a reflector of any sort of truth, but as an agent for boundless uncertainty.

So, at the the end of the day, I think that within my little Calathea Lancifolia, I get both a modernist masterpiece and a post-modernist schizophrenic. Either that, or its just a really cool looking plant. Only time will tell how this little plant is to positioned by art historians within the hallowed canon of fine art.

(plant photos courtesy of Sara Lawrence at Soft Dimension, Albers and Stella images courtesy the unexpectedly excellent Saint Louis Art Museum, and Cindy Sherman images courtesy the Internets)