Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999 Page: 15
60 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Collecting:
A Personal
View
by Kerry Inman
Growing up with an artist mother, my brothers and sister
and I were always encouraged to paint and draw. We had art
hanging in every room of the house, but it was always family
art. We didn't collect art - we made it ourselves.
It was a long time before I was exposed to the concept
of collecting art. My grandmother collected antiques. She
was very knowledgeable, and visited several stores regularly
and I would sometimes go along, picking out items,
learning about the history of the objects. But I never trans-
lated those enjoyable activities from collecting
antiques into collecting art.
In our strict family, dating was out, but taking
the train to New York with friends to visit the
museums was allowed. I remember many a
Saturday running through the Impressionist
galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
testing each others' knowledge (ok, so I was an art
nerd). Still, collecting wasn't part of the conversa-
tion-art was for looking at in a museum, or
making yourself.
When I got my first real job, just out of grad-
uate school, I began looking at art in the galleries
where I was living, San Francisco. I remember
finding a Robert Motherwell print, a beautiful,
sensual piece, entitled Mexican Nights. It was
$3,500, which to me might as well have been
$35,000, which was the price that I saw the same
print advertised for in a Sotheby's catalogue about
six years later. I bought a poster of the same piece
instead, and enjoyed it for years. I still have that
poster in my garage!
My official art schooling had ended with
Rauschenberg and Johns, and we had studied the
Abstract Expressionists extensively, so I was
attracted to the work of these artists. It was a revelation that
this work COULD be owned, but because of the prices it
was still completely out of reach for me. I didn't know much
about artists making new work of the time, so I really didn't
know to look for them, an option obviously much more
suited to my pocketbook.
So, it wasn't until I moved to Houston in 1986, and
began to know some of the local galleries, that I finally
bought my first piece of art. I was introduced to Betty
Moody and began frequenting her gallery on Saturdays.
Very soon, in one of Betty's flat files, I found a small litho-
graph, dated 1977 and titled Jugete, by Houston artist Lucas
Johnson. Simple, graphic, playful, and a bit mysterious, I
loved it immediately. Betty had it framed beautifully, and
she let me pay off the piece over time.
That purchase was the beginning of an amazing loveLucas Johnson
Jugete, 1977
Lithograph, ed. 15ARTLIES SUMMER 1999 15
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Lightman, Victoria H. Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999, periodical, 1999; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228053/m1/17/?q=%22Bryant%2C+John%22: accessed May 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .