Auction houses like Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Phillips and others offer free admission to selling exhibitions for a few days before each auction. From time to time I will select notable auction lots to bring to your attention. This blog feature is not endorsed by the auction house nor written by any kind of art expert. Just idle musings that I hope encourages you to visit an auction house yourself to see what’s on view and available in New York City.

In the later nineties I first spied a work by Tom Wesselmann.  Like today’s selected lot it was a depiction of flowers.  Simple, yes?  But this was a piece of this steel, laser cut to exacting specifications and hung on the white wall with a simple brad, it seemed sharper and yet more ethereal than any other work of art I had seen.  The picture below does not do it justice, you must see it in person at Christie’s show room in Rockefeller Center between April 14 and 18 and selling on April 20 in the afternoon.

I did some research on Mr. Wesselmann and was delighted to learn that he was born in Cincinnati and that he mostly did female nudes in various pop art milieus.  Oops, more delighted by the former than the latter.  Ahem.  Anyway, his laser cut steel versions of flowers still enchant me and you should take a look at one at Christie’s.

As always you can find more at http://www.walterthinnes.com and on Twitter @walterthinnes

TOMORROW: A tasty (and sophisticated) national day