Neal Auction Company to offer two extraordinary examples of New Orleans retro-chic
Sept. 26, 2007
New Orleans, Louisiana —Two massive wall murals by local artist James Fischer will hit the auction block at Neal Auction Company Oct. 7. For some thirty five years, “De Soto Discovering the Mississippi” and “The Life and Travels of Magellan,” graced the walls of the celebrated revolving lounge, Top of the Mart, on the 33rd Floor of the World Trade Center at the foot of Canal Street. Both murals, in addition to the remainder of the catalog, may be bid on at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
From 1967 until its closing in August 2001, Top of the Mart acted as a local landmark attraction – drawing celebrities, politicians, tourists, and locals alike. The bar, with its unique revolving lounge, offered spectacular views of the Crescent City, from the French Quarter to the Mississippi River. The interior, lavishly decorated with stained glass and crushed red velvet (which covered almost everything, including the cocktail waitresses), featured monumental, fifteen foot wide murals by artist, sign maker and local personality, James Fischer.
The lounge itself was not just a lounge; never re-decorated, Top of the Mart became a beloved time capsule to many New Orleaneans and non-New Orleaneans alike. Neal Auction Company is pleased to offer two very exceptional examples of recent New Orleans history in the forthcoming annual Louisiana Purchase Auction™. The murals, “De Soto Discovering the Mississippi” and “The Life and Travels of Magellan,” will be offered as lots 769 and 770 respectively Oct. 7. Each painting is expected to fare well, with local attention expected to be focused on the “De Soto” mural.
Born in Oklahoma, James Fischer graduated from high school and moved to New Orleans around 1935. After a period in the Coast Guard, Fischer settled in the Crescent City where he studied art under John Clemmer and Paul Ninas at the Arts and Crafts Club School in the French Quarter. Fischer soon became a legendary figure. Not only did his wood-fashioned signs grace French Quarter businesses and his famous murals adorn the Top of the Mart, Fischer was well known as a local personality. According to the December 22, 1973 States-Item (now Times-Picayune) a year earlier, James Fischer “disappeared eastward…to Japan… where he helped establish a wax museum… got friendly with a Japanese named Takauso Naukura [sic]… and brought him back [to New Orleans] as a visiting artist.”
A near recreation of the 19th century Alexandre Alaux* (French/New Orleans 1851-1932) masterpiece, which now graces the halls of the Mississippi Capitol, Fischer’s “De Soto Discovering the Mississippi” depicts the same historic moment when, on May 8, 1541, the first European ever, Hernando De Soto, glimpsed the mighty Mississippi. Though archaeologists, historians and politicians have never been able to agree on the exact location of that historic moment, a 1941 Congressional study tentatively concluded that Clarksdale, Mississippi was the likely site of De Soto’s famous discovery. De Soto and his men were both the first and the last Europeans to experience the Mississippi as it was 450 years ago. With the De Soto excursion came fundamental changes to the social structures of the populations at the time—the introduction of Mustang horses and swine for pork, as well as devastating battles and diseases which depopulated entire populations of natives. Vengeance, ironically, would be delivered by the mighty Mississippi herself. On May 21, 1542, De Soto died of a fever. Though his Will stipulated that he be interred along with his family members in the town of his birth, Jerez de los Caballerros, Spain, De Soto’s corpse was surreptitiously concealed in blankets, weighted and, without ceremony, tossed into the Mississippi River in the middle of the night. As a ploy to gain the submission of local natives without conflict, De Soto announced himself an immortal sun god; his men, fearing native retribution upon his demise, were forced to take great pains in order to conceal his death. De Soto’s body was swallowed by the river he “discovered” and whose native population he so dramatically changed.
Juan Ponce de Leon, discoverer of North America, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, discoverer of the Pacific, and Ferdinand Magellan, the first to sail that ocean to Asia were known to have profoundly influenced Hernando De Soto’s ambitions. It is fitting that James Fischer’s mural of De Soto’s discovery should be accompanied by one devoted entirely to a man whose voyages and discoveries he so admired.
To view the fully-illustrated catalog, and leave absentee or live bids, visit www.LiveAuctioneers.com
