Publisher’s Letter

In this issue, I would like to share my journey to my love of art. Growing up in Nashville in the sixties and seventies, there were few opportunities to see or learn about fine art. When I started at Duke, I became best friends with George Brady from Chevy Chase, Maryland, outside of Washington, DC. George’s father was an avid art collector and gave George lithographs of boxers by George Bellows that he hung in his dorm room. George inherited his father’s appreciation for fine art and greatly influenced me. In February 1979, George and I made a weekend road trip to DC. On that trip, we went to the National Gallery of Art, the first world-class art museum I had ever visited. That opened a whole wonderful new world to me that day. After touring the museum, we went across the mall to the Hirschhorn, where I was in awe of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais.

In my senior year, I enrolled in an Art 101 class that covered art from the Renaissance through the 1960s. I loved it as I developed a further appreciation and basic knowledge of the piece of art I was viewing and what made it special. Returning to the National Gallery in May 1981 after completing Art 101 was an enhanced experience. There, I would play a game with myself and try to guess the artist before getting close enough to read the artist’s name (I still do this). From then on, whenever I traveled somewhere, if there was a first-class art museum there, I would try to visit.

Fast forward to January 1992 in New York City, when I went on my first date with Melissa. At the time, she worked for Larry Gagosian, a major contemporary art dealer. On our first date, we went to a contemporary art exhibit curated by Terry Myers, one of Melissa’s friends. I thought the art was very cool, but I was most impressed by the appearance of Fred Schneider of the B-52s, who were riding high on the music charts in 1992.

Through Melissa’s gallery work, I was exposed to the latest and greatest in contemporary art. Gerhard Richter, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few. As I mentioned, my Art 101 class only got to the 1960s, so I knew nothing about these artists until I met Melissa. There were several Gagosian events I remember fondly. First, I met Roy Lichtenstein, a favorite of the Mahanes family, at a retrospective of his work at the Guggenheim as Melissa was working on his catalogue raisonné. Then there was Damien Hirst’s first exhibition in the United States that Melissa worked on at Gagosian’s downtown gallery on Wooster Street in Soho. I was blown away. Spin art paintings, a bisected cow in vast tanks of formaldehyde, and an eight-foot diameter ashtray full of ashes and cigarette butts collected from Manhattan’s sleaziest bars and strip clubs (and added to on-site as they installed the show). The invitation-only opening was wall-to-wall people and chock-full of celebrities. I could not believe when in walked David Bowie and Iman. I was truly star-struck, but I never got close enough through the sea of people to get closer to them.

Thanks to Melissa’s career at Gagosian and subsequently with Anthony d’Offay, a British contemporary art dealer, we have a small collection of contemporary art, especially pop art which is our favorite genre.

Returning to Nashville in 2002, I have been thrilled with the opportunities to enjoy fine art, principally through The Frist Art Museum and Cheekwood. Some of my favorite art exhibits in Nashville have been the Chihuly installation and In a New Light: American Impressionism 1870-1940 at Cheekwood, as well as Picasso, Warhol, and Light, Space, Surface: Works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at the Frist. Nashville also has quite a great local art scene. We have loved getting to know and writing about artists Michael Shane Neal (September/October 2021), Eric Skoldberg (May/June 2022), and Luftwerk (July/August 2022).

Recently, Melissa and I went to a wedding in St. Louis. We visited the St. Louis Art Museum, which had an impressive collection you could tour in about an hour and a half. We saw Gerhardt Richter’s Betty, a painting of which we have a print hanging in the hall of our home. Seeing a famous work of art is like meeting a celebrity. I took a photo of the original and texted it to George Brady, as it is also one of his favorite paintings. Thanks George—and Melissa!

Dave Mahanes, Publisher dave@slmag.net