Malcontents

oUr AMErICA from facing page

TV personality Regis Philbin, who died last year, wrote of his feelings of “sorrow, doubt, and fear” after seeing the planes go into the World Trade Center.

“We have survived the most savage attack on our nation in modern times and have answered it swiftly and bravely,” he wrote. “I used to wonder if we had the guts and character of our predecessors. I don’t anymore.”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, upon visiting Ground Zero, recalled the words of President Abraham Lincoln.

When Lincoln dedicated a portion of the Gettysburg battlefield for use as a cemetery, he said it was the duty of the living “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they … have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Bloomberg noted that “the same spirit that guided the soldiers at Gettysburg flowed through the rescuers of Sept. 11.”

Hugh Downs did a great job editing My America. In these pages, readers will find encouragement for 2021 and beyond.

James E. Patterson is a writer and speaker based in Washington, D.C.

Lori Verderame

Art & Antiques by Dr. Lori Donated David Bowie painting Sells for Big Bucks

A circa 1995–97 oil-on-canvas portrait painting by the late music icon David Bowie sold at auction for $108,120 Canadian recently. That statement in and of itself is not all that groundbreaking until the rest of the story is told.

The painting was purchased for $5 Canadian at a thrift store or donation center in northern Ontario.

David Robert Jones is the given name for the music legend David Bowie (1947–2016), who is best known, not for his fine art, but instead for his music.

His final album, Blackstar, was an international hit. Many of his albums entered the Billboard 200, including The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Hunky Dory, Let’s Dance, Aladdin Sane, Low, and The Next Day.

Compilation albums like Best of Bowie are established hits. Bowie had the most albums in the Top 40 at one time with 12, along with the likes of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.

David Bowie died in Manhattan, New York, in 2016 after suffering from liver cancer for more than a year.

Early in his life, Bowie studied art and design as a young man, and throughout his life, he collected fine art of the 20th century, including pieces by the German Expressionists, Francis Bacon, and many British painters.

The painting that sold for $108,120 Canadian recently at Cowley Abbott auctioneers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was entitled DHead XLVI. An abstract portrait head in a turquoise, white, and red palette, DHead XLVI was part of a series of paintings dating to the mid-1990s.

The painting was discovered in the summer of 2020, when many people were donating objects galore as a result of the widespread home and storage cleaning sparked by lockdown time at home. According to the auction house, which worked to authenticate the painting, DHead XLVI was purchased by an American collector for more than 10 times the pre-auction estimate. Of course, the auction sales price sets a new record for a painting by David Bowie; a similar work from the series sold shortly after the musician’s death in 2016 for $39,000 Canadian in the United Kingdom. It is not unusual to see active bidding when a celebrity name is attached to a work of art that is up for bid at auction. This painting was rare because not only did the piece come from a famous collection, but the artist had star power as well. Even more interesting was the situation surrounding the discovery of the painting: at a Canadian donation center for a David Bowie on stage few dollars. during the 1983 Such finds have been much more commonplace in the wake Serious Moonlight tour of the global COVID pandemic and resulting home cleanouts, with increased donations of unwanted vintage art and antiques. Dr. Lori Verderame is the award-winning Ph.D. antiques appraiser on History channel’s The Curse of Oak Island. Dr. Lori offers free information about antiques appraisals and selling at drloriv.com and youtube.com/drloriv.

Puzzle Solutions

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