Merry Christmas Everyone

Now, I ask you, is there a better Santa than the Coca-Cola Santa? I don't think so. Take care and I'll see you in 2010.

I'm In Nagel Heaven

Collector's Gallery serigraph 60 x 29"

Patrick Nagel has been my favorite contemporary artist since around the time I was in high school. While I was in art school in New York City I pretty much wanted to BE him, as he was at the top of his game and the very definition of the art world celebrity-of-the-moment. His style perfectly captured the way I liked to draw, and I even practiced duplicating his technique using french curves and india ink technical pens. I'd pencil my design on tracing paper, transfer it to illustration board, fill in the color areas with acrylic or gouache, then lay in the black lines with the ink pen or rapidograph. Eyes were always the most difficult. Trying to get them both to look in the same direction often gave me fits.

Yes, Mr. Nagel was my superstar art idol because he was the master of the clean and precise line, and he painted nothing but fantastically beautiful women - what could be better? I met him once at the opening of his solo show at the Dyansen Gallery in SoHo in '83. As a starving art school student, I couldn't afford to buy a print and have him sign it, but I had brought one of his post cards with me and had him autograph it. He was very friendly and gracious and chatted with me for a few minutes, though I'm sure I came off as somewhat star struck.

The next year he died of a heart attack. He was only 38.

Drawing for Collector's Gallery on the left. Nagel used photocopied enlargements of his pencil roughs to transfer the images to illustration board for final inking. Click images for a larger view.

Over the years I've built a small collection of a dozen or so Nagel prints, and still regularly keep my eye on eBay to see what's for sale and what its going for. A few weeks ago I spotted a print for sale from a guy I had bought one from some years back - in '01 I think. He turned out to be fairly local, so we met at a Starbucks in Huntington Beach to do the exchange, where we sat and talked Nagel stuff for a while. Turns out this guy - Julian was his name - was part of the whole Mirage gallery organization in Santa Monica (Nagel's official publisher) back in the day and said he had a large collection of Nagel's work - signed and unsigned prints from official editions, some one-off prints (directly from Wasserman and Samper in Los Angeles, the silkscreeners who made Nagel's serigraphs) and even some of Nagel's original artwork. I didn't have much money to spend at the time but bought a small printer's proof serigraph - one of only two in existence, he says - from him, and before he had to go he suggested I come down to Carlsbad sometime to view the rest of his collection. Unfortunately that never happened.

The guy could draw.

Back to 2009. After seeing Julian's new eBay auction I decided to email him to say hello. I reminded him of our previous meeting and in his reply he said he remembered me. Turns out he's now living in Reno, working up in Tahoe, and was down in Carlsbad to pack up all his artwork and move it up north. Once again he invites me down to look at his Nagel archive, as he knows how much of a slobbering Nagel fan I am. Not wanting to miss the opportunity again, I arranged to meet him at his storage facility the very next weekend.

Pencil study for the San Francisco Art Expo poster and the final image. On the right, one of Nagel's rare male figures.

So Saturday afternoon rolls around and I take a spin down the 5 to Carlsbad. It's only about 60 Miles from HB. Julian, a tall, wiry guy, looks virtually unchanged since our last meeting years ago, though the foot-long pony tail he used to sport has been updated to a more contemporary spec, now cut short and skillfully unkempt. He meets me at the gate, buzzes me in and we ride the elevator up to the second floor. His storage unit turns out to be a 10'x10' crammed with tons of framed artwork, piles of large folders, cases filled with prints and one very large metal flat-file with about ten drawers full of hidden treasure. He also collects Warhol prints and has quite a few. After 15 minutes or so of sifting through various piles and drawers, he finally finds what he's looking for and pulls out a large folder containing what I've really come down to see: some of Nagel's preliminary sketches - photocopied enlargements of final pencil drawings - and some original ink-on-board drawings by Nagel himself.

Original ink on board for 'Lori' and the final serigraph for comparison.

I am just in heaven looking at this stuff! I've always wanted to take a peek behind the curtain and see Nagel's process - the work he did BEFORE he got to the final image - and now here was some of it - fantastic! Julian let me take some pictures with my iPhone - the quality is crap but at least I've got something. Nagel's pencil drawings are amazing - I think I almost like some of them more than the final prints that were ultimately made from them!

Pencils of two images I've never seen before. Apologies for the rather poor image quality, these were shot with my iPhone in a dim hallway of a storage facility!

Then Julian rummages in a dark corner and pulls out a large, loosely rolled up print, titled 'Collectors Gallery', that's always been one of my top two or three favorite Nagel images (in fact the small (24" wide) print I previously bought from Julian is the same). But this one is a HUGE 60" wide and is absolutely stunning! It's in rather rough shape though: There's one area of one color where some ink bled out a little during the screening process, it has a long scrape across the upper left area and there are several smudgy and dirty areas on it that hopefully will clean up - I haven't attempted anything yet. Because of the bleeding, it was a rejected print from the original edition of only 90 signed and numbered prints done in 1982 - thankfully someone decided not to destroy it. And it is also untrimmed - it still has the registration marks visible outside the image area - I think I'm going to leave it like that. It's my little piece of Nagel history.