2117 Elmen St B

Compared to the absolutely huge mansions that I often write about in my real estate art posts, the townhouse at 2117 Elmen looks quite modest from the outside. But inside it is quite mod and stylish, feeling a little like a 80s or 90s era bachelor pad. If is is a bachelor pad, the impression given by the photos on display is that it was the home of a gay bachelor.

This photo from 2117 Elmen St B’s HAR listing has 18 framed photographs on three shelves hanging next to a wall sculpture that looks like a scaled up piece of crumpled aluminum foil. That piece reminds me a little of a William Cannings, except that all the Cannings sculptures I’ve seen recreate plastic inflatable toys in highly polished metal. Similar to the piece here, but distinct. The photos are varied, but three are of naked male torsos.

Next to the crumpled metal wall sculpture is a painting whose subject matter is difficult to pin down. It looks as if a three legged monster is carrying a smaller person in shallow blue water, conceivably the seashore. As usual, I request that any readers who recognize the art in 2117 Elmen St B to please let me know!

Every time I look at an interesting real estate listing in HAR, I always have to ask whether the art was staged by the real estate agent or is the actual art collection of the people trying to sell their house. In this case, that is hard to determine because some of the artwork on display is definitely fake.

This is not a real Jean-Michel Basquiat hanging over their fireplace—it is a reproduction of Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump which was purchased by a man named Ken Griffin for more that $100 million from a man named Peter Brant. (I don’t know anything about these two men, but Griffin was mentioned 36 times in the Epstein files, while Brant was mentioned fewer than 10 times.) Is this a decoration by a Basquiat fanboy, or was it installed by listing agent William Finnorn? On the top shelf just to the right of the Basquiat print is a Jeff Koons balloon dog.

This office contains two Abstract Expressionist paintings that seem to be a matched pair—the simple color scheme and style of applying paint to the canvas are identical in both. The style seems like a pastiche of Clyfford Still, but with unpainted sections of canvas that remind me of Franz Kline. The main thing they communicate to me is a profoundly inauthentic vibe. Bad paintings express dumb things, but inauthentic paintings like this seek to fool the viewer into mistaking them for paintings that are expressing actual ideas and emotions.

Like most of the rooms in this house, the library is very dark. There are two notable artworks, a large stylized fable-like painting and monochrome yellow rectangle that appears slightly warped in space. But the central table dominates the room with its two fur-covered chairs. The two Where the Wild Things Are-chairs combined the zebra-skin rug (hopefully faux-zebra-skin) on the floor create a mildly uncivilized environment, contrasting with the hyper-uncivilized setting of a library.

Two rooms have very dramatic wallpaper. On the left is a gym with mirrors on two of the walls and a very energetic, high contrast black-and-white wallpaper on the other two walls. In an alcove just off the fuzzy chair meeting room is a kitchenette with wallpaper that is a repeating image of a drawn snarling cat head facing the viewer head-on (continuing the wild animal theme of the fuzzy chair meeting room). Some but not all of the feline eyes are colored yellow and the tongues colored bright red.

Thus far all the artworks on display in 2117 Elmen’s real estate photos look like decorations that an ambitious real estate agent could use to stage the property for sale. I make this judgment because none of the art on display here seems particularly personal. Nothing here says anything about the taste of the collector. But this hall of curiously decorated plates feels eccentric enough to be someone’s prize plate collection. It bugs me that I can’t detect a human personality behind this disparate collection of objects. It feels less like a collection than a simulacrum of a collection. (The fact that I couldn’t identify a single piece in this collection also bothered me, but less so for the seemingly alien character of the collection than because I felt I was failing in my art spotting abilities. That said, can any of my readers identify any of these artworks? Please answer in the comments!)

[UPDATE: A reader chided me for being too lazy to plug this address into HCAD, the Harris County Appraisal District, which list the property owners for every taxable piece of land, including viby Montrose townhouses. This house is owned George Lancaster, whom Paper City calls a “man-about-town” and whose home they describe as a “posh bachelor pad. That all tracks. This correspondent also identified Lancaster’s plates.

An Italian designer named Piero Fornasetti became obsessed with an early 20th century opera singer, Lina Cavalieri. To be precise, he became obsessed with a particular engraving of her face. He designed over 400 plates depicting variations on the single Lina Cavalieri engraving. Fornasetti plates seem like the artsy collectible that a Montrose “man-about-town” might collect.]

Furthermore, I am of the opinion that for the good of America, Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend Donald Trump must release everything related to the Epstein case (unredacted), disband ICE, and resign!

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