Art: What's a Bargain?

In Texas and Illinois last week, art lovers set out to bring good paintings and lithographs within reach of the average family's pocketbook, but their ideas of a bargain were as different as a ten-gallon hat and a tapered fedora.

¶In Chicago, the Renaissance Society took over a hall at the University of Chicago, filled it with 439 works by such recognized artists as Rainey Bennett, Abraham Rattner and Milton Avery—everything from bold abstract posters to realistic etchings, watercolor landscapes, and oil paintings. Within the week, 1,000 students, teachers and young married couples, some from as far as 50 miles away, had come to browse around, gone home with 61 first-rate works of art tucked under their arms. Chicago's fedora prices: from $1.50 for a small drawing to $50 for a large work by Yves Tanguy.

¶In Dallas, a group calling themselves Young Collections borrowed a gallery in the city's Museum of Fine Arts, opened it to a list of 300 Dallasites who looked like potential customers. On view were 56 paintings by such contemporary artists as Hazel Janicki, John Marin, Ben Shahn. Within an hour of the opening, eight paintings were sold. Texas' ten-gallon prices: from $50 for Woman Setting Table by Jenne Magafan to $500 for Lyonel Feininger's Village in Thuringia.

Hearing the prices paid by Dallas' young collectors, Chicago Art Professor Ulrich Middeldorf cracked: "It is better to be young in Illinois. In Texas, everything is so big."