THE COLLECTOR: Peter Beard’s Diary

PETER BEARD: DIARY (FROM A DEAD MAN’S WALLET: CONFESSIONS OF A BOOKMAKER)
Peter Beard & Kotaro Iizawa
Designed by Tsuguya Inoue
Tokyo: Libro Port Publishing Co., Limited First Edition (1993)

During my recent visit to the Palm Springs Photo Festival, I had the pleasure of meeting Joshua Simpson. He’s the Gallery Associate at LeadApron, a Los Angeles creative agency that supports and promotes an extraordinary roster of past and present artists. Joshua invited me to view their collection of rare photography art books, and it was truly one of the most amazing collections I’ve ever seen.

One book in particular just about leaped into my hands. It was profusely illustrated in color and black-and-white, and full to bursting of hand-written notes, photographs, sketches, found items, and more. I was thrilled to find out that it was Peter Beard’s diary.

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THE COLLECTOR: Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí
Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (Rhinoceros Dressed In Lace) (1956)
Bronze cast

Sometimes, fiction really is stranger than truth.

The story goes something like this… It was the year 1515, and Pope Leo X had been sent a very unusual gift by Manuel I, then King of Portugal—a pet rhinoceros. Unfortunately, the ship carrying his present sank before it reached him in Florence, and so the rhino went down with it. But before it sank to the bottom of the ocean, the rhino had the honor of being the first ever seen on European soil, where it was sketched during a brief pit stop in Lisbon.

As it was a largely unknown creature, Europeans at the time had little information beyond their imaginations as to what a rhinoceros actually looked like. What they did know was what the ancient Roman Pliny had written about it—that it was a fierce creature and a mortal enemy of the elephant.

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THE COLLECTOR: Melodie Provenzano

I have always had a keen appreciation for fine art, from the work of known masters to the edgier underground names that skirt the edge of the mainstream art world. Photography and art have a long and intertwined history, and I avidly collect works from both mediums. In my blog series THE COLLECTOR, I will be featuring several pieces that I have collected, or pieces that I simply appreciate for their meaning and aesthetic beauty.

Melodie Provenzano
Bunny Ride, 2008
Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 48 by 48 inches

The iconography of the figurines in Bunny Ride was what grabbed me immediately—this naive ceramic bunny sitting on top of such a menacing menagerie. The warty toad and tusked boar are reminiscent of creatures from a Miyazaki Anime film (especially Princess Mononoke) and the razor-toothed shark is an exact likeness of a bathtub toy I had when I was young. The stage seems set for a drama about to unfold, one full of ominous and foreboding danger….

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