Ninth Street Women is comprehensive in the care given to include everyone who had a connection with the subjects of the book, and to name particular break-through paintings. Hence, constantly having to google people or pictures, but almost always to be disappointed by what they were producing. Until this evening. Looking up Mike Goldberg, who a newly married Joan Mitchell was smitten by when she segued her way into the scene of beautiful losers in the Village, was different.
While the book makes clear he was a high-risk reprobate for everyone who met him, but a charming one, it was a revelation to find online that he was the real thing, a great artist. Unexpectedly, many of his pictures go to auction today with guide prices in the low thousands, which seems a bit suspect. It made much more sense to me to see this large painting, in May 2025, sell for a more comprehensible, (but still seemingly modest), $239,400. It's fabulous, but I guess by 1958, abstract expressionism had seen its tenure pass and presumably he has been filed away as a derivative also-ran.
