Flash News: New York – Joan Jonas – Jean Tinguely – MoMA – Jackson Pollock

[27 Nov 2015]

 

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news: New York – Joan Jonas – Jean Tinguely – MoMA – Jackson Pollock

Joan Jonas, from Venice to Montréal, by way of Sotheby’s New York
Joan JONAS, American pioneer in performance and video art, represented the United States in the Venice Biennale 2015 (she already exhibited here in 2009). At 78 years of age, she triumphed with her immersive work They Come to Us Without a Word, a work which will also be included in her huge retrospective at DHC/ART in Montreal, in spring 2016.
Considered one of the most influential video artists of the last 50 years, still active in the cultural scene, rewarded on numerous occasions (Anonymous Was A Woman 1998; Rockefeller Foundation 1990; American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for Video 1989; Guggenheim Foundation 1976; National Endowment for the Arts 1974), included in essential collections (including those of MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York), Joan Jonas is nonetheless nearly absent from the auction world (four pieces up for auction in the last10 years). Critical and institutional recognition has not yet been enough to energize the shadowiness of a market not particularly attractive (no diversified offer), to the extent that the only one of her pieces put up for auction this year was withdrawn despite the current news and the artist’s aura (the work in question is the photograph Iceland Photo for “Volcano Saga” #3, ed. 2 of 5, estimated at USD 10,000-15,000, withdrawn on 12 November 2015 at Sotheby’s New York).

Jean Tinguely in New York
Swiss artist Jean TINGUELY made a name for himself in New York with his monumental self-destructive sculpture titled Hommage à New York (Homage to New York), presented on 17 March 1960 in the MoMA sculpture garden, where it was destroyed in 28 minutes before a crowd of guests… Seven months later, a small group of artists founded Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) in Paris. Niki de Saint Phalle, Tinguely’s partner, was an early member of the group.

Within the Nouveaux Réalistes, Jean Tinguely was the most “engineer” of all, with a poetry and humour which appealed to numerous international institutions, including MoMA, but also Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the London’s Institute of Contemporary Art and the Haus Lange museum in Krefeld, among others. This year, Tinguely’s works are again in New York, not for a museum retrospective, but for a vast exhibit at one of the most prestigious galleries: the Gladstone gallery (through 19 December 2015). The exhibit features work created from 1954–1991. Why precisely 1954? Because during that year, Tinguely started creating his Méta-Matics or Méta-mechanics, robotic sculptures, at times conceived as drawing machines. Rare and expensive, the inventive mechanic of these machines can make the prices soar above the million-dollar mark, but interest in Jean Tinguely also entails plentiful production, including unique, original works, still affordable for most. We note his small drawings in felt-tip pen created by the machines themselves, works that can be had for a few hundred euros, that are particularly found in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France.

MoMA offers a reinterpretation of the work of Pollock
MoMA is conducting an investigation of its own collection. Subject: the evolution of the work of Jackson POLLOCK from the 1930s until his death in 1954, through 50 pieces selected from his collections (Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934–1954, 22 November 2015-13 March 2016). MoMA also wants to represent each phase of Pollock’s career, through each material and technique used, up to the full maturity of his work (from 1948 onward), that of Dripping, the artist who best transforms chance and accidents into creative energy. The market makes no mistake about it: between the youthful works and the rest, the gap is significant, in the order of several millions of dollars for canvases of the same size. The work of Pollock, one of America’s favourite artists, is still far from being exhausted.