For years I have wandered through the real estate listings on HAR.com looking for photos of people’s art collections. The listings on HAR give users written descriptions of the house or condo as well as physical attributes—the building size, the lot size, the number of bathrooms, etc. They also include a selection of photos of the property. If the building is “recent construction”, the photos are of empty rooms. (Likewise if the current owners have already moved out.) One might see a bunch of nice furniture and tasteful artworks that have been placed there by the real estate agent—these are staged to show us what the property might look like when you move in. And many houses show the property as it is, with the current residents’ stuff in the photos. Just straightened up a bit. When I look for people’s art collections in HAR listings, it is obviously this last type of listing I look at. I look at very expensive houses, since they are most likely to have been owned by art collectors, and I generally look at homes in modern architectural styles, because they seem slightly more likely to have contemporary art than modern mansions built in a faux-Georgian manner. Occasionally I stumble across a house like the one at 2409 Macoda Ln. which is absolutely packed with art.
The people who lived in this River Oaks palace were ready to have a large dinner party—that dining room table seats 12. The wall-sized painting to the left is intriguing. The painter has carefully created a kind of ersatz expressionism with big sweeping brush strokes. The disc hanging over the counters on the right appears to be made of some kind of highly polished stone. The red painting on the back wall seems like it could be a piece by Dorothy Hood. (As with all my real estate art posts, I ask readers to let me know if they recognize any of the artworks in these photos.)
From the opposite angle, we see a piece made of multicolored dots. I instantly thought of Damien Hirst’s spot paintings.
This view features two works of art. At first I just took the object on the left as just a mirror, but when I looked more closely, it has cames (the metal lines between pieces of glass in a stained glass window) and dark geometric shapes. The colorful piece on the right appears to be by Christian Eckart, who has made Houston his home since 2003 according to his gallery, McClain Gallery.
Behind their grand piano and zebra-skin (?) rug, there is what appears to be a shoji flattened and displayed as a wall decoration. You can also see the very bottom of the Eckert opposite the stairs.
The artworks in the bathroom and on the left of this bedroom photo appear to be cubist pastiches, which makes me think they could be by David Adickes, an elder statesman among Houston artists who just died a few days ago. At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, when I think of Adickes’ paintings, I think of weak, imitation cubist paintings like these. Also take note of the painting in the bedroom hung under a window. I can imagine placing a framed artwork in such an unusual space if I was literally out of space to hang it anywhere else, but there is a large blank wall over the bed. It is a weird decoration idea. I’m surprised that listing agent Charity Yarborough didn’t remove the oddly placed picture before taking the photo.
Here is another example of a piece of art being hung below a window, on the left. The image in the center of the photo appears to depict someone sitting with his legs crossed, and his chin resting against his left hand. The figure is white against a multicolored background.
The two display cabinets on either side of the fireplace contain fancy-looking hand crafted items with a somewhat native American look. The wood-toned abstraction in the center doesn’t do much for me, but what makes me really curious is the framed photograph in front of the fireplace. It is a weird place to put a piece of art, but displaying art in unlikely places seems like a thing the did in this house.
This house can be yours for a mere three million. But you’ll have to fill it with art yourself.
Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Trump must go.
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I believe the painting in the first photo with the "big sweeping brushstrokes" is by David Reed and the mirror-like object in the third photo is by Charles Pebworth.