This Friday and Saturday explore the Design Zone and Penn Avenue during Art Squared , a weekend of art featuring new art exhibits and studio tours on August 3 and 4.

The weekend of art kicks off on Friday evening, August 3, with Unblurred: First Fridays on Penn. Various galleries in the Penn Avenue Arts District (4800-5500 Penn Avenue) will open their doors and showcase a variety of artwork and performances.

The celebration of art continues in Lawrenceville on Saturday, August 4 from Noon to 5 p.m. with the Lawrenceville Artists’ Studio Tour. Visit the working studios of 12 artists to see how local art is made. Meet Design Zone artists who produce a wide range of art, including scuplture, drawing, metalwork, painting, fine furniture making, photography, and stained glass. Maps will be available at coffee shops along Butler Street.

In the upcoming auction by Barridoff, one of Gastave Courbet's landscape works is estimated between $30,000 to $50,000. Thus another painting offered on ebay which is attributed to him draws my attention.

It does bear a signature, which looks like Courbet. Unfortunately, that's all it appears to share with other Courbet works.

The seller copied the biography information from Wikipedia, yet didn't even tell who attributed the work, which was done by palette knife in an impressionistic manner. Well, if it is by the seller, then why didn't he read his own description that stated that Courbet painted in a realistic style? Plus the back of the canvas shows that the age of the painting that does not appear to show more than 100 years of age. (The seller dated the work in 1870's.)

Even worse, this is from a dealer who has more than 2700 feedback score and has sold many art works from Denmark. It may be carelessness on the part of the seller, but it would seem suspect that such a name could be added to a listing purely by accident. Like the not so old antique placed in a dusty corner, it looks like this attribution could be here to insure such a work will be “discovered.”

After all it is the name of the attribution which is too "sensational" to miss!

Attributions are, in the nature of the case, only offered for artworks whose authorship is not otherwise already clearly marked or signed. A signed painting is never "attributed", it is either considered genuine, or it is not. The signature itself forms the "attribution". And in the case of an artwork bearing what appears to be the artist's signature, only two judgments are possible: 1) that the signed artwork is genuine and therefore cannot be attributed, or 2) that the signed artwork is a fake and therefore cannot be attributed to the artist whose name it bears.

More can be read at here.

There were more young visitors in Andy Warhol museum than Carnegie Museum of Art on Friday night, possibly due to the fact that going through exhibitions sprawled on seven floors may kill someone old, possibly due to the wine tasting party which was hosted in the lobby.

On one hand, there are a lot to explore in the museum ranging from oil painting, photographs to films and Warhol’s own collections; on the other hand, the first floor, with walls of biography in words and pictures but few art work, is enough for a lot of visitors, including me.

More than 20 years have passed after Warhol’s death, his fame hasn’t faded. What he has drawn bring colossal sum of money from auction houses; but what he has said and the impact of his words cannot be simplified to the number of digits behind the dollar bill sign.

I am no high-brow art critics, but neither in his works nor from his minds can I find things that are of beauty or moving. Warhol prefers talkers to beauty, as he claims “one’s company, two’s a crowd and three’s a party”; but not every talk can be meaningful especially if one cannot keep his mouth shut. Warhol asked people only to look at the surface of his works, which bear his glamour like shimmering silver. But I probe no further, because the surface provides few clues about what it is. After all, among the three most influential American post-war artists, Hopper is reflective, Pollock is primal, yet Warhol refuses any summarization.

In a recently published book (“The most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth Century Media Culture” by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu), Gustave Courbet was described as the first artist who realized to win publicity is more important than to win jury prize in modern era; if so, Andy Warhol is then the consummate icon and true master of art publicity. Courbet allowed anyone to caricature him publicly while Warhol, even though saying too much, never precisely explained what he thought of his works, thus what we perceive him today has been metamorphosed and transfigured through media reviews. The media, naturally chose the most accessible and tangible perspective -- the artists, his words, his behaviors and even his life, but NOT his works.

People, especially young generation have always something to say about Warhol. For them, the wine tasting party at Warhol Museum is essentially Warholian-spirited; and going through the seven floors of works after half-drunk is only icing on the cake. The same group who can talk about Warhol for hours may stumble when the subject changes to Pollock or Rothko because the latter represent what the majority of artists are: inaccessible except through their artworks.

Wandering back to the museum lobby, I sneaked into the quiet basement, where I took some B&W photos from a self-served photo booth. The pictures have washed-out effect as if from the 50’s. In them, I have four different facial expressions. There were no motives behind them, just four different expressions, at the surface.

The antique shopping trip to Canonsburg was on a warm winter Sunday afternoon. We’ve stopped at almost every antique store there and decided to finish the last one which was in the same block with the other two we’d just visited. The scale of antique stores in Canonsburg outweighs the size of the town because “it is cheaper to open a store here.”

The store looked tasteless with a special bargain room open on Sunday. The owner, a typical suburban American woman in her middle age greeted us from her chair surrounded by all different stuff.

It almost turned out to be another futile excursion (we hadn’t got anything except tired legs) before I spotted a Chinese paining of plum.

It was damaged: The right corner of the scroll was broken and that was the first thing I noticed. Being an impatient non-serious antique shopper, I usually only show my interest in those “intact”. But after Eric joined me, I was attracted by the poem:

寒依疏影萧萧竹， 春掩残香漠漠苔。

I didn’t know who wrote the poem and I was not sure whether I read it correctly from the handwriting. Actually even worse, I haven’t read any poem or book in Chinese since I came to US. But the subtlety and delicacy of the Chinese words brought out my memory of the happy time spent in reading poems of Tang Dynasty. Those words by being seen and being pronounced, suddenly became magic and I even thought I could smell the subdued fragrance from plum.

“It was a 1950’s work and that’s all I know about it.” The owner told me. Then I volunteered to translate the poem into English, which I definitely don’t have the skill but luckily am better than anyone else in the room.

“Winter accompanies your lonely shadow echoing the shuddering bamboos, spring tries in vain to hide the remains of your light fragrant.”

After carefully examining the scroll, I noticed that there was some note written on the back of the bottom scroll. It read “To Du Mei at the 1960’s QingBei Medical School’s class reunion party on April 7, 1975”. Well, it was not a 1950’s work, but definitely older than I!

The painting features plum in the top half part and a rooster at the bottom. Eric pointed out there was such a discrepancy between the two parts that he felt it was like painted by two different people. I was still fascinated by the fact that my aweful translation skill had been appreciated by an unknown antique store owner, but tried to agree with him to make the conservation going.

“It was dedicated to a girl called Du Mei. And in Chinese, Mei has the same pronunciation of plum. Maybe there is something here.”

I told Eric.Eric was curious too about the painter’s dedication note and decided to give an offer. The owner, who appreciated my effort of translation and my correction on the date, accepted the low offer (only half of the original price) immediately and that made our day!

When we got home, Eric immediately fixed the broken scroll at the bottom and hung it on the wall where no cat can touch.

Later, I found out that Qing Bei Medical School is not in China, but in South Korea. No wonder that the scroll material has Korean words on it.

How did a painting by a Chinese medical school student in South Korea finally find its home in Pittsburgh? No one could explain. And is Du Mei a Korean girl or Chinese? Is there any love story behind it? Is there a happy ending? I sent an email to that medical school and didn’t get any reply. I guess it is weird for the school staff to read an email from someone who wants to know the love story of an International student 40 years ago. Probably I can never answer those questions. But the painting hangs there with its decency and respect, enjoying my crutiny and scorning my effort to discover its own story.

The top 200 art collectors can be found here.

If you count how many are pursuing contemporary and modern art, you won't be surprised to see new records in the upcoming corresponding auctions.