February 6, 2025 • 45 mins
Join us, Nordic Art Partners, as we discuss the compelling work and career of American painter Joan Snyder. Discover key biographical details of her formative years, the limited role of art in her upbringing and how her determined approach to evolving her own formal visual language shaped her artistic development. We discuss a wide array of her formative influences, ranging from Van Gogh, through German Expressionism to Jackson Pollock; antecedents that she recognises as helping her to develop her singular and celebrated aesthetic.
Against the vibrant backdrop of the 1970s women's art movement, where scrutiny of traditional gender roles and the early evolution of sexual politics facilitated burgeoning careers of Snyder and her many , accomplished peers. Through a daring blend of materiality and motif, learn how Snyder's work challenged the accepted conventions of abstract painting, championed a female sensibility and facilitated a meteoric rise in the reception and critical appreciation of her breakthrough.
As always, we seek to place her work and achievements in a context relevant to the market and her place, both perceived and actual, within it. Despite her groundbreaking contributions, her work remains undervalued when set against similarly lauded contemporaries. With new opportunities under her current representation, we consider the next steps for this vibrant and productive 84 year old titan of American painting, expecting increasing prominence within the art historical canon.
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Jeppe Curth (00:00):
Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge for Nordic
Art Partners.
In today's episode, we'llexplore the career of Joan
Snyder, a pioneer Americanpainter known for highly
expressive and textured worksthat challenge the boundaries of
abstraction.
Joining me, as always, is ourart expert, Nicholas Robinson.
I'm your host, Jeppe Curth.
(00:20):
Let's get started.
It is with Alex Rotter at 400million.
Nicholas Robinson (00:24):
Selling here at Christie's 400 million
dollars is the bid and the pieceis sold.
We've all heard about it.
Sometimes it's front page newsImportant works of art are being
sold for incredible sums ofmoney.
But can you get involved andbecome a part of the exclusive
club yourself, and how do youget started while avoiding
(00:47):
buying the wrong things?
That's exactly what thispodcast is about.
This is the Collector's Edgefrom Nordic Art Partners, a
podcast for those of youinterested in the mechanics of
the art industry, want adviceabout putting money into art, or
simply want to buy somethingfor your walls, to beautify your
surroundings.
(01:07):
Whatever your objectives, it ispossible to put money into art
wisely, to be considered,thoughtful and well informed in
your choices and actions.
Welcome to the art ofcollecting with an eye for
curated beauty and practicalvalue.
Jeppe Curth (01:28):
Hi Nick, hi Jeppe, how are you doing?
Nicholas Robinson (01:30):
Very well, thank you.
How are you today?
Jeppe Curth (01:32):
I'm good, I'm good.
So today, Joan Snyder.
And, as usual, let's beginfrom the beginning .
Can you tell us a little bitabout her background and early
years.
Nicholas Robinson (01:48):
Yes, I mean, let's just give a quick summary,
maybe, of what she's known for,what her reputation is founded
upon.
She is a painter who came toprominence at the beginning of
the 1970s, known for veryheavily process-driven abstract
canvases, focusing mostly on thesort of narrative, emotional
(02:12):
potential of abstraction, withparticular emphasis on what she
describes or what she callsfemale sensibility.
So she's considered a feministartist and a key protagonist of
the women's art movement thatdeveloped and gained momentum at
the beginning of the 1970s.
(02:38):
Yes sorry, of course we need tostart with who she is, but Park,
new Jersey.
So that makes her 84 going on,85, I guess, of German and
(03:04):
Russian Jewish extraction.
That's her ethnic heritage andpart of the family and community
that she grew up in.
She describes her childhood notenormously, in not enormously
fond terms.
She says that she was wrackedby anxiety.
Was wracked by anxiety.
(03:31):
She describes her parents.
I mean, she describes herparents in many ways, but she
characterizes her father as anice man or a warm man, but
largely absent, not by neglectbut really just due to the
traditional gender roles, inthat he was out working, he was
a toy salesman.
She's much more descriptiveabout her relationship with her
mother.
Her mother's father died whenshe was 13, and she was somewhat
(03:57):
mature and took on a lot ofresponsibility towards her
siblings.
So this resulted in her mother,as Joan describes her, as being
rather unhappy, embittered, andthis is something that she kind
of took out.
On the children, she describesherself as having a really hard
(04:18):
time with her mother Duringtheir childhood, which she would
say was working class or lowermiddle class perhaps.
They had no exposure to museums.
She had no exposure to art as achild and she considers her
childhood to have beenculturally deprived.
(04:40):
Those are her words.
So her recourse to culture, toerudition, was through books,
primarily biographies.
She recalls she enjoyed the ideaof painting as a child.
She experimented with it, sheset up a makeshift studio in the
cellar of their house and sheremembers copying magazine
(05:01):
covers and even a specificrecollection of copying a
Maurice Utrillo painting.
Uh, utrillo was a, uh, apainter of the school of Paris,
uh, one of the few artistsactually in Montmartre in the
early 20th century there'sactually from there and he
specialized in painting thesesort of impressionist,
post-impressionist street scenes.
(05:22):
Um, but she didn't pick up thehobby or the bug for painting
again until she was a senior incollege and when she went to
study she initially began herbachelor's degree in sociology
as a preparation for a career asshe understood it at that time,
(05:43):
for a job in social work.
But she did do an electivecourse in painting and she to
this day considers this paintingand the reaction to this
painting, which must have beendone in maybe 1962, 63.
It was a painting that she'dmade of her brother and
(06:05):
sister-in-law and this lookedvery much like a, an early 20th
century expressionist painting.
The, the, the, the there was asort of a post cubist feel to
the work.
The the male figure had a pipe.
The female figure next to themale was yeah, it was, it was
very much bore the hallmarks ofof this kind of style.
The male was yeah, it was, itwas very much bore the hallmarks
of of this kind of style.
(06:26):
And she showed it to the teacher, who immediately asked her oh,
what do you think of Jawlensky?
And she was surprised becauseshe had no idea, uh, what this
reference was.
She had never heard of uhJawlensky, who was a
expressionist artist in Germany,uh, some, at this point, artist
(06:49):
in Germany, at this point, some40 years prior to this.
So, anyway, this teacher showedher a book of Jawlensky and
various other Germanistexpressionist artists and this
was a real seminal moment forher, a light bulb, eureka moment
, which really made her realizethat this was something that was
tremendously vocationallyimportant to her, that this was
something that was tremendouslyvocationally important to her,
that it was something that shereally wanted to have brought
(07:09):
out of herself.
Um, the, the, the yawlenskyworks in particular, resonated
with her hugely because sherecognized the application of
paint, the particular choice ofcolors, quite vibrant colors in
fact it really meant a lot toher, also very specifically
because of her family's ethnicheritage as well.
(07:31):
So up to this point she had notbeen formally interested or
trained in any way, but reallyunderstood, began to understand
the potential of art as a modeof highly personal expression,
potential of art as a mode ofhighly personal expression.
And then, in the master'sdegree that she took, she went
(07:51):
to study at Rutgers, which is auniversity in New Jersey, and
she actually did some studyingunder the minimalist sculptor
Robert Morris, who at this timewas making these very sort of
hard edged gray boxesessentially.
But this highly reductivective,very sort of ascetic aesthetic
was not for her.
Um, she also felt quite somedegree of repudiation for color
(08:12):
field painting, abstractexpressionism and, of course,
the sort of prevailing sort ofminimalism that I had mentioned.
Um, she considered all of themsomewhat male dominated
disciplines that you you know,had come to define cultural
production.
But she really wanted to makepainting a very personal vehicle
for her own expressions.
(08:32):
As she said, I wanted more inpainting, not less.
And she describes herself ingraduate school sort of training
herself as an artist.
She said I remember givingmyself assignments Now you're
going to make a painting withone figure.
Now you're going to put twofigures in a painting.
I would give myself assignmentsand then I would do them.
Now you're going to forget allabout the figure stuff and just
(08:55):
think about color.
Now you're going to worry aboutthe drawing.
So this is what I did.
This wasn't coming from anyteacher.
I was just educating myself,since most of my colleagues or
fellow students had been to artschool.
So this was her very kind ofproactive attitude towards
learning the tools of painting,or at least taking the tools of
painting.
That could be meaningful, um,for her thank you, nick.
Jeppe Curth (09:21):
Um, you explain a little bit where she come from,
but could you try to explain alittle bit more about the
paintings, how they look likethat develop a notable career
they kind of hit upon something,an idea, a signature aesthetic,
(09:48):
some particular innovation thatdistinguishes them from other
artists.
Nicholas Robinson (09:53):
Um, and this is no different for her, she
started in the early 1960s.
Um, she, in the early sixtiesshe made some, some farm and
landscape paintings and somestill lives that she, you know,
found somewhat technically um,uh, proficient but unremarkable,
uh, in, in, in, in most ways,uh.
(10:13):
But then, come the latersixties, she began to make
paintings that were formulatedmuch more sort of conceptually
by these notions of femalesensibility.
The female body and the femalefigure became much more a sort
of a central focus of thesepaintings.
And she will say that it tookher six years to make what she
(10:38):
would describe as a goodpainting.
So she was practicing from theearly 60s to the late 60s until
she developed what sheconsidered a certain level of
competence in her work.
But the thing that most sort ofmade her reputation in the very
beginning of the 1970s andshe'd been sort of working on
these paintings and evolvingthem since perhaps 1969, but in
(11:02):
1970, 71, these paintings calledthe Stroke Paintings really
brought her quite a meteoricsuccess.
She garnered a lot of attentionfor these works and became very
in demand as an artist quitequickly as a result of them and
these paintings I suppose Isuppose you could say that they
(11:22):
are they're paintings that madethe process of painting and
paint itself as a subject andprocess became a very important
thing.
In the 1970s there was a wholemovement, if you will, that came
to be known as process art, andthis is highly relevant to
(11:44):
understanding her work.
And by process art I mean theprocess of making a painting,
the sequence of events that goesinto making a picture, and that
would be the gathering, thesorting of all of the different
constituent parts that go into apainting, the different actions
(12:08):
and proceedings making thedrawing, layering it.
It all became very much part ofa work, how a work was
perceived and understood, andprocess artists very much
consider the sequence ofactivities to make a painting or
a work of art as integral tothat expression.
(12:30):
So, basically, the idea is thatprocess art defends the idea
that the process of creating thework of art is an art piece all
by itself, irrespective of thefinal outcome.
Almost so she would alsodescribe herself as a process
artist.
She says I was interested inprocess and I wanted to show the
(12:52):
raw canvas, I wanted to showthe gesso, I wanted to show
lines, I wanted to show thefirst layer of paint.
I wanted to be able to see allthose things in one painting so
somebody could look at apainting and you could actually
see the anatomy of that painting, of how it evolved.
And that's really key to herthe anatomy of a painting, which
is all the different parts thatbecome assembled and layered to
(13:15):
make that painting.
So this is a key part of theseStrogg paintings that made her
reputation.
These paintings were founded onthe grid, the grid, of course,
being a key modernist constructand a legacy of the development
of geometric abstraction fromthe middle of the century.
These stroke paintings becamepart of her interpretation of
(13:40):
abstraction.
Of course, not being especiallypartial to colour-field
painting or abstractexpressionist paintings, her
paintings evolved so that shecould abandon those kinds of
structures for making a painting.
So these paintings, they have asemblance of a sort of a grid,
a layout, a skeleton frameworkfor the painting that is set
(14:03):
onto the canvas surface.
And then there are these brightbars of color arranged in
somewhat ordered sequences onthe surface, and when you look
at these brushstrokes and yousee the sort of attention that
is in these individual strokesyou can see that they kind of
relate to some of her interestin some of the other artists
(14:25):
that influenced her.
She was interested in the workof Van Gogh, particularly by his
palette and his brushstrokes,and she has spoken of even
consciously trying to break downhis work and then sort of
recreate it in her own way.
Also the work of Cezanne.
For the same reasons she willreference Pollock.
Pollock not in a formal sensebut in a sense that he kind of
(14:50):
set an example as to what it wasto free oneself of all the
preceding rules or conventionsof making a painting.
(15:23):
Hans Hoffman, who was a Europeanemigre in the US in the 1940s.
He was a very important artteacher and a sort of a key
conduit for the sort of switchfrom kind of European modernism
to New York becoming the centerof modernism at this time.
So she was taking all of theseinfluences and she was very
deliberately trying to inventher own language.
It was an abstract language forherself, which became a
vocabulary of color, of line, ofthe shape of these brushstrokes
and then of the sort of impastoand various encrustations,
(15:48):
various binding materials oraggregates that she put into the
paint in order to make thesekind of accumulated textures on
the surface, so that of coursedescribes a bit what they look
like.
So when she developed thesepaintings she had many
sketchbooks.
She's always been a very avidsketcher, keeping these little
(16:09):
notebooks where she makesdrawings, where she annotates
these drawings as furtherthoughts come to her, notes
about other parts that she,other things she can add to the
painting, notes about the color,the specific meanings of color,
and she would describe herdrawings as being the the really
the foundation of her practice.
She will make lots of drawingsand then she will kind of
(16:33):
revisit them and as the drawingshave developed and her comfort
with these drawings has alsodeveloped, when she feels that
she fully understands what thedrawing is and what it can be,
then she's ready to maybe make apainting from is and what it
can be, then she's ready tomaybe make a painting from that.
And this could be you know,this could take a year until she
she actually makes a paintingthat is extrapolated from from
(16:54):
from these sketchbooks.
Jeppe Curth (16:56):
Okay.
So it seems to me that her workcannot be read properly unless
we understand the conceptualinfo, and her views on feminism
and female sensibility are takeninto account.
Would you say that?
Nicholas Robinson (17:09):
I mean it's a key.
It's a key, a key part of ofher work and it's a key part of
how she understands her work andit's a key part of how she
describes her work and how herword is is read.
Her work is read um.
In the early 1970s there was abig sort of development in sort
(17:30):
of a women's art movement.
I mean, there are quite a lotof other important feminist
artists of the period JudyChicago, linda Benglis, pat
Steer, louise Fishman, harrietCorman there's many all of whom
have achieved quite significantreputations, even artists like
(17:51):
Anna Mendieta, whose worksincorporate the body and ideas
of the body related to the earthin certain ways.
So there's lots of strands ofthis type of thinking that
became prevalent at this timeand as she developed, her works
(18:14):
became more and more explicitlyreferential to what she
described as the femalesensibility.
So, after she had made thestroke paintings, the later part
of the 70s experienced a muchmore complex development of
symbols, of the written word, oflanguage incorporated into the
to the paintings, and all ofthese elements were part of her
(18:38):
idea of expressing feminism, offemale sensibility, and a lot of
the materials also had specificconnotations that would.
That would contribute to this,to this sense, and this
materiality actually is is keyto this sense, and this
materiality actually is is key.
Um, we've obviously talkedabout the uh, about what they
(18:59):
look like and a bit about howthey're made, the relationship
to process, the use of drawingthe grid, the way she builds
them up, um.
But.
But what's also important is iswhat they're actually made of.
Um, and many of the materialsthat she would utilize are
materials that she consideredalso had specific feminist
(19:22):
connotations.
So, even though she had beenbuilding up the surface even
from the late 1960s, as thepaintings became more evolved
and developed, the accumulatedmatter on the surface also
became more sophisticated, asshe utilised more and more
(19:44):
diverse materials to communicatethese kinds of things, and she
was adding things to the surface, mixing in with the paint,
adhering with the paint, uh,things like wallpaper, scraps of
fabric, rayon, plastic, flowers, glitter, sparkles, um lentil,
seeds, um other form of organicmatter, um straw, and a lot of
(20:09):
this stuff was sort of heldtogether, uh, or had the
appearance of being heldtogether by thread, um molding
paste, gel, various other mediato sort of held together, or had
the appearance of being heldtogether by thread, molding
paste, gel, various other mediato sort of bind it all together.
So she was, as the paintingsdeveloped through the 70s, and
she was creating this moredeveloped language of motifs,
(20:32):
more about which we can say morein a moment.
She was.
She was also using thematerials that she felt were
very relevant to um to depictthese, these, these motifs, um.
So so this is a key way ofunderstanding her perception,
her understanding of a femalesensibility and a feminist art.
(20:56):
In fact, there was a veryimportant curator and critic
called Lucy Lippard, and in 1976, she posed a question to a
number of artists participatingin a key exhibition called what
is Feminist Art, a keyexhibition called what is
(21:17):
Feminist Art, and Snyderactually replied with a long
list about what femalesensibility consisted of, and
she said that it is layers,words, membranes, cotton, cloth,
rope, repetition, bodies, wet,opening, closing lists, life
stories, grids, destroying grids, houses, intimacy, doorways,
breasts, vaginas, flow, strongbuilding, putting together many
(21:40):
elements red, pink, black, earth, feeling in the colors, the sun
, the moon, roots, skins, walls,streams, puzzles, questions,
questions.
So, of course, this gives a veryfree form, stream of
consciousness, answer to how sheconsidered a female sensibility
(22:02):
.
So the motifs then that shewould depict, with all of these
diverse materials alsosubstantiated this idea?
She would.
I mean, there's many differentrecurring motifs in her
paintings, some of which arevery common ones include roses,
(22:26):
breasts and other women's bodiesor parts of women's bodies
ponds, oceans, blossoms, songs,cherry trees, moons, pumpkins.
So she's pushing the formalpossibilities of painting by
(22:46):
kind of breaking down andreconstituting abstraction, but
she's also developing a kind ofa complex materiality through
this additive process of collagematerials, and then she's got
this very personal vocabulary ofall of these motifs.
So the kind of the holisticresult is really a very rigorous
(23:08):
sort of interrogation ofabstraction, abstract painting,
but it's very specificallyunderpinned by this feminist
outlook.
She's sort of centering thesethings on the essence of
feelings, of a female body, tocarve out a new terrain in
painting, and this terrainconsists of this highly poetic
(23:29):
body of work that is reallytrying above all to assert the
place of feeling and femalesubjectivity in abstraction.
Jeppe Curth (23:46):
Okay, nick, thank you.
Let's talk a little bit abouther market.
Let's start by looking a littlebit about her profile and, as
an artist, um, what kind ofprofile does she have in the art
market?
Nicholas Robinson (24:01):
or well, she has a, she has a significant
standing, um, because she's apioneer, because she's, you know
, had a significant career basedon, and there are several other
bodies of work.
I mean, she made these strokepaintings, but by perhaps 74, 75
, she was becoming, she wasbecoming bored with these
(24:22):
paintings.
They came very easily to her,she felt that she was, they were
becoming sort of repetitious toher.
They were, you know, they werelike each painting was like a
sort of improvised jazz tune andshe wanted something that would
take her focus.
It would take her much longerto make a painting, something
that she could really developover an extended period.
(24:44):
So she made a group ofpaintings that consisted of
square blocks, of colour for themost part, whereby the coloured
squares were sort of filling inthe grid.
She made a group of paintingscalled the Symphony Paintings.
Now, this speaks to her.
I didn't mention it before, butanother key element of her
(25:04):
painting, of her paintingpractice, is the influence of
music.
The Symphony Paintings, ofcourse, somewhat self-explicably
, assert this fundamentalinfluence of music.
She's constantly playing music.
It could be early 1970s, um, uh, philip Glass, now, of course,
(25:39):
the eminent composer he was, uh,he was getting by by working as
a plumber, and he was actuallya plumber in her apartment on
one occasion.
Um, anyway, um.
So music is, is, is a constantpart of her, her, her part of
her working practice.
The emotions in the melodies,the sort of evocations of the
titles Sometimes titles ofpieces of music become titles of
(26:02):
her paintings the feeling ofmusic, the narrative of music,
the manner in which the feelingunfolds in a piece of music.
Also, the music's ability toencapsulate joy, sorrow, comedy.
The music's ability toencapsulate joy, sorrow, comedy,
you know, the resolution of astory that she's very, you know,
um, very clear about, as, asalso being, being being
important to her in her, in herpainting.
(26:23):
Um, so she, she will also makesome of these symphony paintings
whereby you can almost readthem like a musical score.
The brush strokes go veryclearly from left to right.
You know, there's a certainrhythmic melody in paint that is
inscribed on the surface, thattravels from the upper left of
the painting to the upper rightof the painting, which contains
(26:45):
the sort of, you know, theconclusion, or the coda, or
whatever she would describe itas.
So then, that's another body ofwork.
She started to find all theattention.
You ask about her sort of placein the market.
She, she, she.
She started to, to, to become abit overwhelmed by the amount
of attention that she receivedand in the mid 70s she sort of
(27:08):
she didn't check out, but sheneeded to get some space.
She moved to the the country,to a farm in Pennsylvania.
She then started making whatare now described as the field
paintings, which are sort oflandscapes, some sort of barns,
houses.
You know there's a lot of worksthat look rather different to
these other bodies of works thatI've described, but this is a
very sort of a discrete set ofworks within her overall output.
(27:33):
And she was achieving tremendousrecognition during this entire
period.
She was included in the WhitneyBiennials of 1973 and 1981.
She participated in theCorcoran Biennial of 1975.
During the course of herworking life she's been a
(27:54):
MacArthur Fellow, she's been aGuggenheim Fellow and she's been
a National Endowment for theArts Fellow, pretty much all of
the public prizes, the eminentprizes that it is possible to be
awarded as an artist in theUnited States.
So she's had a successful andlong career, but not at the very
(28:16):
sort of.
I mean, the gallery worldnowadays is very different to
the, to the gallery world thatit used to be, the gallery world
consisted of much smaller, uhsort of entities that weren't
very corporate, the.
They were founded and run byfigures that were, you know,
(28:37):
they weren't money people somuch, they were more avant-garde
people.
They were really sort ofartist-led artist run, certainly
informed by an artisticsensibility, and her first
gallery in the 70s was wasshowing at the bike at gallery,
and this was founded by klauskurtis, who's a sort of a
legendary figure in the new yorkart world, and this gallery
actually itself occupied theformer space of the of the green
(28:57):
gallery.
So you know this was a veryiconic venue for, for, for
people to see and to buy art.
And in this period this galleryshowed Bryce Marden, chuck
Close, dorothea Rockburn, davidnovoross, paul mohenson, um
(29:17):
linda benglis actually workedthere as a secretary.
Um mary boone worked there as asecretary before launching her
own successful gallery a fewyears later that decade.
Um, so this was her firstgallery in in new york.
That really helped to set thefoundation for her career
amongst highly respected peersand, of course, somewhere that
(29:39):
the collecting community werewell-versed in visiting to sort
of identify what was new andexciting in artistic output that
she showed with Paley and LoweGallery.
That was one of the founders.
There was Jeffrey Paley, theson of William Paley, who was
the founder of CBS and alegendary collector, along with
(30:00):
his wife, babe Paley, in the 60sthey had 60s and 70s they had
one of the greatest artcollections of the 20th century.
She went on to show withHamilton Gallery, which was a
very nice gallery on 57th Streetand one of the first to show
Louise Bourgeois in earnest.
She showed with Herschel andAdler, which of course has been
(30:27):
a very venerable New Yorkgallery for many years.
So she's, you know, she has ahistory of this high level of
representation.
She's never really had a like ablue chip gallery, and by that
I mean, you know, like a reallyabsolute top elite echelon
gallery, you know, everyoneknows the Gagosians, the Hauser
(30:48):
and Wurst, the Zwirners of thisworld, but now, by today's Ropak
, he represents her work inEurope and Asia and shares the
representation of her in NorthAmerica, I guess, with Canada as
a collaborative relationshipwhich is a pretty nice, a nice
gallery.
So so she's been a figure whoeveryone has known a lot about.
(31:15):
In fact, prior to this, thisrelationship with Ropak, she
showed with Franklin Parrish,who is a tremendous gallerist in
New York city with a sort of avery discerning and unerring eye
for interesting things.
So, anyway, she's, she's, she'snever been far from.
(31:38):
You know the sort of artisticpublic consciousness and her,
you know her work is in everymuseum of standing going.
I mean it's in the ArtInstitute of Chicago, brooklyn,
dallas, museum of Art,guggenheim, you know the Met,
the Met Museum of Fine Arts,boston, moma, new York.
I mean there's not a singlemuseum that's worth its salt
that does not have her work SanFrancisco, moma, the Tate, you
(32:02):
know the list is the Whitney, ofcourse, the list is endless.
So her achievements, heraccomplishments are completely
unimpeachable.
Accomplishments are completelyunimpeachable.
Um, but now, because she hasthese achievements and because
she has a gallery that has, well, that has the sort of power,
the market power, the and thesort of taste arbitration that
(32:26):
they can leverage, uh, it looksvery much like, and you might
say is expected, that her statusand and and you can use that
word in all kinds of contextsreputational status, market
status, likely, all of the aboveum will, will, will be on the
rise and in fact has beennoticeably for the last 12 to 18
(32:47):
months already thanks, nick.
Jeppe Curth (32:50):
Um, my next question was which kind of
gallery is representing her?
But but I guess you alreadytold us there was Rope Hack and
Canada, correct?
Yes, that is correct.
What is her primary prices?
Nicholas Robinson (33:01):
I mean, we could talk a little bit about
that and then also afterwardslook into her auctions Her large
paintings, and by that I meantwo and a half, three metres, 10
, 12 feet across, I believe andthis has been subject to some
(33:22):
change in the recent past around$250,000.
But it's not very long ago thatyou could get the same thing
for $140,000, $150,000.
And it used to be that youcould buy a more modest size
painting, let's say a meter,meter, 20, whatever, for 60, 70,
maybe 80 thousand dollars.
Now the same thing is more like140, 50 thousand dollars.
(33:43):
So they've gone up a lot in therecent past in terms of the
primary market prices thatgalleries are are saying this is
, this is, this is what thisshould cost.
Now there is a.
It would cost a lot more to buya, a sort of a seminal, iconic
stroke painting from the early1970s, um, but I don't know of
(34:05):
any such works that you knowwould be available, um, many of
them are in institutions, um, sothat's the sort of range for
her prices.
I mean, there are some works onpaper.
There are some sort of printsthat she makes she's a very
prolific printmaker some ofwhich are quite unique, with
sort of accretions of pulpedpaper and so on, very much again
(34:26):
linked to this sort ofmateriality.
So there's a few differentaccess points, but that's the
basic price structure for herprimary market.
Jeppe Curth (34:37):
Okay, could you maybe explain a little bit how
such a radical change can insuch a short time in her prices?
Nicholas Robinson (34:45):
Well, I think it's a few things you know.
I mean, the market is alwayslooking for new and interesting
things, and when you look at theprice habitually, as we do, as
many people in the industry do,you understand that you know
(35:06):
there's a sliding scale, aspectrum of prices that one can
find things for.
And these days, you know itused to be that, you know
something sort of entry levelwas like four or $5,000 and
something expensive was ahundred thousand dollars.
Now an entry level was likefour or $5,000 and something
expensive was a hundred thousanddollars.
Now an entry level thing ismore like $25,000 and something
you know getting there is like$800,000.
(35:30):
Um, anyway, what happens is thatis that the industry generally
is always looking for new things, and and and it's looking for
new things in two ways it'slooking for emerging things that
are exciting, and new andoriginal things that are
developments in art that peoplehave not seen before, and it's
also looking to promote andrediscover interesting, iconic,
(35:54):
seminal things that areunderappreciated.
And when you look at majorpaintings by an artist with the
credentials that Joan Snyder has, then it's not too much of a
stretch to say, you know,$100,000 for this, $120,000 for
this is not a lot of money.
Now, of course it is a lot ofmoney, but relative to what you
(36:16):
could buy with that moneyelsewhere in the market, you can
see quite easily that it'swell-priced, it's competitive,
it's affordable.
It has, you know, a compellingnarrative in terms of its
contribution to art history.
It has, you know, unbelievablelike quality.
(36:36):
It has all kinds of innovative,radical components.
They they're beautiful, they'resumptuous paintings.
I mean, they're not toeveryone's taste, but they're
important milestones, they'reimportant documents, and so, of
course, when people understandthis and it's not difficult to
understand in the case of jonesnider then of course they people
(36:56):
also understand there'sopportunity there as well.
Jeppe Curth (36:58):
And of course, people also understand there's
an opportunity there as well.
Thanks, Nick.
Her auction record was set inNovember 2023 at $498,000.
It was a large-scale work.
I think it was 153 by 293centimeters right.
Yeah, what is your take on?
Nicholas Robinson (37:16):
that.
I think it's indicative ofeverything that we've been
describing on that.
I think it's indicative ofeverything that we've been
describing Painting.
Had it been sold perhaps 18months prior to that, privately
and not with a big sort offanfare of auction, but just
within the sort of normalgallery ecosystem, it perhaps
would have sold for $180,000,$200,000.
(37:40):
You can rewind back a littlebit further three, five years
prior to that and perhaps it wasmaybe $120,000, $150,000
painting.
It's an important historicpainting by an important artist,
but that was the price pointbecause it was in a sort of a
(38:01):
certain stasis in the marketrather than achieving the
attention that this auction andother things that were happening
were bringing.
Now, obviously that's a prettyhealthy sum of money.
It's quite a lot of money, butin the context of important
artists of that generation whoachieved important things, it
(38:22):
could be argued that it is not alarge sum of money.
As an example, the record pricefor a work by Linda Benglis is
a million dollars.
One could also arguably saythat that is not as high as
perhaps it could be given hercontribution.
That's a discussion for anotherday.
Perhaps it could be given hercontribution, that's a
discussion for another day.
(38:42):
But other artists of hergeneration with probably,
objectively speaking, no bettercredentials, have also achieved
prices that far outstrip herrecord price.
A record for Susan Rothenberg'spaintings is $2 million.
The record price for a PatSteer painting is $2.3 million.
(39:07):
Even the record for an AnnaMendieta work is is $800,000.
So you can see that JoanSnyder's record price, whilst it
constitutes a lot of money,it's perhaps not a lot of money
when viewed through the lens ofall the other things that one
could buy by other artists thatare comparable.
I mean, she's 84 years old,she's still working.
(39:29):
You know when artists have beendoing, you know, variations on
a theme for many years and ofcourse they would argue that
their work evolves andeverything else.
But when you you see a JoanSnyder painting, you recognize
it as a Jones Snyder painting.
It's of course.
You know there's someconsistency there.
You know there's a very obvioustendency for the market, for
the world, to sort of start totake this for granted a bit and
(39:50):
look to the next sort of brightnew thing.
Um, people are revisiting thatidea now and seeing value where
previously they did notrecognize as such.
Jeppe Curth (40:05):
Was it 84, right 84 ?
Nicholas Robinson (40:06):
years old.
She was born in 1940.
So, yeah, she'll be 85 thisyear at some point, 85 this year
.
I don't know when her birthdayis, that's okay.
Jeppe Curth (40:17):
But how do you see the future for her?
Nicholas Robinson (40:19):
Well, I think that the future is bringing a
level of recognition that has alittle bit been taken for
granted, as I say to me having,you know, call me a sort of a
(40:40):
cynical old soul in thisindustry.
You know, you think of certainartists and of course every
generation, every movement isdefined by a certain group of
artists that were responsiblefor shaping that period and
defining what that period becameknown for.
Those are the artists thatwrite the books.
Those are the books.
You know.
(41:01):
Those are the artists that havethe chapters in the books, that
make the headlines.
You know, joan Snyder is one of.
The is one of these artists.
And these artists, you know,you can go through every decade
and look at every movement andthe top protagonists of each of
these.
You know they're million dollaror multi-million dollar artists
, I mean you know.
(41:21):
So from that you can draw yourown conclusion.
So my feeling is, if you have aclear understanding of the art
history and you kind of drawfrom that, you can identify
pretty much all the artists whohave not achieved that price
point that the way the marketfunctions, they will achieve
that price point.
That the way the marketfunctions, they will achieve
that price point.
So to me the future is okay.
(41:43):
The record for her now is like$478,000, whatever it is.
But what will happen now isthat somebody who has, you know,
a painting from 1974 or 1972,you know they will understand,
probably, that you know there'sa certain opportunity in that
the auction houses willunderstand that it's in their
interests to find such a thing,put it into the first 10 lots of
(42:06):
an evening sale, if they cansource such an item.
Um, and you know, instead ofmaking 478 000, it will make you
know, 1.2 million dollars andthen, or whatever, and then
you'll have this sort of filterdown effect for all the
different periods of her work,all the different types of her
work, and there'll become ahierarchy within that that is,
you know, has different pricesattached to it.
(42:27):
So that's the future.
That is the future.
Well, maybe that's the future.
That typically is what thefuture looks like for this kind
of situation um nick for anybodylooking to delve more into her
(42:48):
works and career.
Jeppe Curth (42:49):
Um.
What would you recommend themto do?
Nicholas Robinson (42:53):
there's a.
There's some great resources.
I mean she's such a sort of a,a darling of the new york and
north American kind of museumand intelligentsia world.
So there's a lot of reallyinteresting material you can
find.
You just have to sort of huntaround.
There's many lectures she was aprolific lecturer.
Quite a few of these.
(43:14):
You can find archival footageof where she's speaking about
her own work, her owndevelopment.
Her own website is tremendousin that it has a completely
comprehensive catalog ofeverything pretty much that
she's ever made.
So you can go through the menuand see these different blocks
(43:38):
of years and you can go intothose years and you can see
sequentially the work that she'smade.
So there's an incredible visualresource to sort of understand
the progression of her work andher, her various sort of
iterations of her styles.
That's fantastic.
Um Ropak's website is great.
(43:58):
Um has a nice interview with herbrief sort of.
There's a show that thatactually they have now a very
comprehensive exhibition attheir London gallery which is a
fantastic survey show of herwork going even from the 1960s
all the way to the present day.
So that's very comprehensive.
Um.
There's a a really wonderfulinterview with her Um.
(44:22):
You can listen to a snippet ofit, but the transcript is is
available, uh, the archives ofAmerican arts online, um, which
is which is part of theSmithsonian Um.
So there's, you know, yeah, asmuch information as one could
possibly digest, um, if digest,if you look for it.
Jeppe Curth (44:43):
Thank you, Nick.
I think I don't have morequestions.
Do you have anything to add?
Nicholas Robinson (44:49):
I think that covers it all as far as I'm
concerned, at least as far asthe objectives for this podcast
are concerned.
Jeppe Curth (44:57):
Thank you, so thank you, nick.
Thank you very much.
Podcast are concerned, thankyou.
So thank you, nick, thank youvery much.
If you have any questions to us, please contact us at info at
nordicartpartnerscom, and hopeto see you back or have you back
for the next episode.
Bye.
Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge for Nordic
Art Partners.
In today's episode, we'llexplore the career of Joan
Snyder, a pioneer Americanpainter known for highly
expressive and textured worksthat challenge the boundaries of
abstraction.
Joining me, as always, is ourart expert, Nicholas Robinson.
I'm your host, Jeppe Curth.
(00:20):
Let's get started.
It is with Alex Rotter at 400million.
Nicholas Robinson (00:24):
Selling here at Christie's 400 million
dollars is the bid and the pieceis sold.
We've all heard about it.
Sometimes it's front page newsImportant works of art are being
sold for incredible sums ofmoney.
But can you get involved andbecome a part of the exclusive
club yourself, and how do youget started while avoiding
(00:47):
buying the wrong things?
That's exactly what thispodcast is about.
This is the Collector's Edgefrom Nordic Art Partners, a
podcast for those of youinterested in the mechanics of
the art industry, want adviceabout putting money into art, or
simply want to buy somethingfor your walls, to beautify your
surroundings.
(01:07):
Whatever your objectives, it ispossible to put money into art
wisely, to be considered,thoughtful and well informed in
your choices and actions.
Welcome to the art ofcollecting with an eye for
curated beauty and practicalvalue.
Jeppe Curth (01:28):
Hi Nick, hi Jeppe, how are you doing?
Nicholas Robinson (01:30):
Very well, thank you.
How are you today?
Jeppe Curth (01:32):
I'm good, I'm good.
So today, Joan Snyder.
And, as usual, let's beginfrom the beginning .
Can you tell us a little bitabout her background and early
years.
Nicholas Robinson (01:48):
Yes, I mean, let's just give a quick summary,
maybe, of what she's known for,what her reputation is founded
upon.
She is a painter who came toprominence at the beginning of
the 1970s, known for veryheavily process-driven abstract
canvases, focusing mostly on thesort of narrative, emotional
(02:12):
potential of abstraction, withparticular emphasis on what she
describes or what she callsfemale sensibility.
So she's considered a feministartist and a key protagonist of
the women's art movement thatdeveloped and gained momentum at
the beginning of the 1970s.
(02:38):
Yes sorry, of course we need tostart with who she is, but Park,
new Jersey.
So that makes her 84 going on,85, I guess, of German and
(03:04):
Russian Jewish extraction.
That's her ethnic heritage andpart of the family and community
that she grew up in.
She describes her childhood notenormously, in not enormously
fond terms.
She says that she was wrackedby anxiety.
Was wracked by anxiety.
(03:31):
She describes her parents.
I mean, she describes herparents in many ways, but she
characterizes her father as anice man or a warm man, but
largely absent, not by neglectbut really just due to the
traditional gender roles, inthat he was out working, he was
a toy salesman.
She's much more descriptiveabout her relationship with her
mother.
Her mother's father died whenshe was 13, and she was somewhat
(03:57):
mature and took on a lot ofresponsibility towards her
siblings.
So this resulted in her mother,as Joan describes her, as being
rather unhappy, embittered, andthis is something that she kind
of took out.
On the children, she describesherself as having a really hard
(04:18):
time with her mother Duringtheir childhood, which she would
say was working class or lowermiddle class perhaps.
They had no exposure to museums.
She had no exposure to art as achild and she considers her
childhood to have beenculturally deprived.
(04:40):
Those are her words.
So her recourse to culture, toerudition, was through books,
primarily biographies.
She recalls she enjoyed the ideaof painting as a child.
She experimented with it, sheset up a makeshift studio in the
cellar of their house and sheremembers copying magazine
(05:01):
covers and even a specificrecollection of copying a
Maurice Utrillo painting.
Uh, utrillo was a, uh, apainter of the school of Paris,
uh, one of the few artistsactually in Montmartre in the
early 20th century there'sactually from there and he
specialized in painting thesesort of impressionist,
post-impressionist street scenes.
(05:22):
Um, but she didn't pick up thehobby or the bug for painting
again until she was a senior incollege and when she went to
study she initially began herbachelor's degree in sociology
as a preparation for a career asshe understood it at that time,
(05:43):
for a job in social work.
But she did do an electivecourse in painting and she to
this day considers this paintingand the reaction to this
painting, which must have beendone in maybe 1962, 63.
It was a painting that she'dmade of her brother and
(06:05):
sister-in-law and this lookedvery much like a, an early 20th
century expressionist painting.
The, the, the, the there was asort of a post cubist feel to
the work.
The the male figure had a pipe.
The female figure next to themale was yeah, it was, it was
very much bore the hallmarks ofof this kind of style.
The male was yeah, it was, itwas very much bore the hallmarks
of of this kind of style.
(06:26):
And she showed it to the teacher, who immediately asked her oh,
what do you think of Jawlensky?
And she was surprised becauseshe had no idea, uh, what this
reference was.
She had never heard of uhJawlensky, who was a
expressionist artist in Germany,uh, some, at this point, artist
(06:49):
in Germany, at this point, some40 years prior to this.
So, anyway, this teacher showedher a book of Jawlensky and
various other Germanistexpressionist artists and this
was a real seminal moment forher, a light bulb, eureka moment
, which really made her realizethat this was something that was
tremendously vocationallyimportant to her, that this was
something that was tremendouslyvocationally important to her,
that it was something that shereally wanted to have brought
(07:09):
out of herself.
Um, the, the, the yawlenskyworks in particular, resonated
with her hugely because sherecognized the application of
paint, the particular choice ofcolors, quite vibrant colors in
fact it really meant a lot toher, also very specifically
because of her family's ethnicheritage as well.
(07:31):
So up to this point she had notbeen formally interested or
trained in any way, but reallyunderstood, began to understand
the potential of art as a modeof highly personal expression,
potential of art as a mode ofhighly personal expression.
And then, in the master'sdegree that she took, she went
(07:51):
to study at Rutgers, which is auniversity in New Jersey, and
she actually did some studyingunder the minimalist sculptor
Robert Morris, who at this timewas making these very sort of
hard edged gray boxesessentially.
But this highly reductivective,very sort of ascetic aesthetic
was not for her.
Um, she also felt quite somedegree of repudiation for color
(08:12):
field painting, abstractexpressionism and, of course,
the sort of prevailing sort ofminimalism that I had mentioned.
Um, she considered all of themsomewhat male dominated
disciplines that you you know,had come to define cultural
production.
But she really wanted to makepainting a very personal vehicle
for her own expressions.
(08:32):
As she said, I wanted more inpainting, not less.
And she describes herself ingraduate school sort of training
herself as an artist.
She said I remember givingmyself assignments Now you're
going to make a painting withone figure.
Now you're going to put twofigures in a painting.
I would give myself assignmentsand then I would do them.
Now you're going to forget allabout the figure stuff and just
(08:55):
think about color.
Now you're going to worry aboutthe drawing.
So this is what I did.
This wasn't coming from anyteacher.
I was just educating myself,since most of my colleagues or
fellow students had been to artschool.
So this was her very kind ofproactive attitude towards
learning the tools of painting,or at least taking the tools of
painting.
That could be meaningful, um,for her thank you, nick.
Jeppe Curth (09:21):
Um, you explain a little bit where she come from,
but could you try to explain alittle bit more about the
paintings, how they look likethat develop a notable career
they kind of hit upon something,an idea, a signature aesthetic,
(09:48):
some particular innovation thatdistinguishes them from other
artists.
Nicholas Robinson (09:53):
Um, and this is no different for her, she
started in the early 1960s.
Um, she, in the early sixtiesshe made some, some farm and
landscape paintings and somestill lives that she, you know,
found somewhat technically um,uh, proficient but unremarkable,
uh, in, in, in, in most ways,uh.
(10:13):
But then, come the latersixties, she began to make
paintings that were formulatedmuch more sort of conceptually
by these notions of femalesensibility.
The female body and the femalefigure became much more a sort
of a central focus of thesepaintings.
And she will say that it tookher six years to make what she
(10:38):
would describe as a goodpainting.
So she was practicing from theearly 60s to the late 60s until
she developed what sheconsidered a certain level of
competence in her work.
But the thing that most sort ofmade her reputation in the very
beginning of the 1970s andshe'd been sort of working on
these paintings and evolvingthem since perhaps 1969, but in
(11:02):
1970, 71, these paintings calledthe Stroke Paintings really
brought her quite a meteoricsuccess.
She garnered a lot of attentionfor these works and became very
in demand as an artist quitequickly as a result of them and
these paintings I suppose Isuppose you could say that they
(11:22):
are they're paintings that madethe process of painting and
paint itself as a subject andprocess became a very important
thing.
In the 1970s there was a wholemovement, if you will, that came
to be known as process art, andthis is highly relevant to
(11:44):
understanding her work.
And by process art I mean theprocess of making a painting,
the sequence of events that goesinto making a picture, and that
would be the gathering, thesorting of all of the different
constituent parts that go into apainting, the different actions
(12:08):
and proceedings making thedrawing, layering it.
It all became very much part ofa work, how a work was
perceived and understood, andprocess artists very much
consider the sequence ofactivities to make a painting or
a work of art as integral tothat expression.
(12:30):
So, basically, the idea is thatprocess art defends the idea
that the process of creating thework of art is an art piece all
by itself, irrespective of thefinal outcome.
Almost so she would alsodescribe herself as a process
artist.
She says I was interested inprocess and I wanted to show the
(12:52):
raw canvas, I wanted to showthe gesso, I wanted to show
lines, I wanted to show thefirst layer of paint.
I wanted to be able to see allthose things in one painting so
somebody could look at apainting and you could actually
see the anatomy of that painting, of how it evolved.
And that's really key to herthe anatomy of a painting, which
is all the different parts thatbecome assembled and layered to
(13:15):
make that painting.
So this is a key part of theseStrogg paintings that made her
reputation.
These paintings were founded onthe grid, the grid, of course,
being a key modernist constructand a legacy of the development
of geometric abstraction fromthe middle of the century.
These stroke paintings becamepart of her interpretation of
(13:40):
abstraction.
Of course, not being especiallypartial to colour-field
painting or abstractexpressionist paintings, her
paintings evolved so that shecould abandon those kinds of
structures for making a painting.
So these paintings, they have asemblance of a sort of a grid,
a layout, a skeleton frameworkfor the painting that is set
(14:03):
onto the canvas surface.
And then there are these brightbars of color arranged in
somewhat ordered sequences onthe surface, and when you look
at these brushstrokes and yousee the sort of attention that
is in these individual strokesyou can see that they kind of
relate to some of her interestin some of the other artists
(14:25):
that influenced her.
She was interested in the workof Van Gogh, particularly by his
palette and his brushstrokes,and she has spoken of even
consciously trying to break downhis work and then sort of
recreate it in her own way.
Also the work of Cezanne.
For the same reasons she willreference Pollock.
Pollock not in a formal sensebut in a sense that he kind of
(14:50):
set an example as to what it wasto free oneself of all the
preceding rules or conventionsof making a painting.
(15:23):
Hans Hoffman, who was a Europeanemigre in the US in the 1940s.
He was a very important artteacher and a sort of a key
conduit for the sort of switchfrom kind of European modernism
to New York becoming the centerof modernism at this time.
So she was taking all of theseinfluences and she was very
deliberately trying to inventher own language.
It was an abstract language forherself, which became a
vocabulary of color, of line, ofthe shape of these brushstrokes
and then of the sort of impastoand various encrustations,
(15:48):
various binding materials oraggregates that she put into the
paint in order to make thesekind of accumulated textures on
the surface, so that of coursedescribes a bit what they look
like.
So when she developed thesepaintings she had many
sketchbooks.
She's always been a very avidsketcher, keeping these little
(16:09):
notebooks where she makesdrawings, where she annotates
these drawings as furtherthoughts come to her, notes
about other parts that she,other things she can add to the
painting, notes about the color,the specific meanings of color,
and she would describe herdrawings as being the the really
the foundation of her practice.
She will make lots of drawingsand then she will kind of
(16:33):
revisit them and as the drawingshave developed and her comfort
with these drawings has alsodeveloped, when she feels that
she fully understands what thedrawing is and what it can be,
then she's ready to maybe make apainting from is and what it
can be, then she's ready tomaybe make a painting from that.
And this could be you know,this could take a year until she
she actually makes a paintingthat is extrapolated from from
(16:54):
from these sketchbooks.
Jeppe Curth (16:56):
Okay.
So it seems to me that her workcannot be read properly unless
we understand the conceptualinfo, and her views on feminism
and female sensibility are takeninto account.
Would you say that?
Nicholas Robinson (17:09):
I mean it's a key.
It's a key, a key part of ofher work and it's a key part of
how she understands her work andit's a key part of how she
describes her work and how herword is is read.
Her work is read um.
In the early 1970s there was abig sort of development in sort
(17:30):
of a women's art movement.
I mean, there are quite a lotof other important feminist
artists of the period JudyChicago, linda Benglis, pat
Steer, louise Fishman, harrietCorman there's many all of whom
have achieved quite significantreputations, even artists like
(17:51):
Anna Mendieta, whose worksincorporate the body and ideas
of the body related to the earthin certain ways.
So there's lots of strands ofthis type of thinking that
became prevalent at this timeand as she developed, her works
(18:14):
became more and more explicitlyreferential to what she
described as the femalesensibility.
So, after she had made thestroke paintings, the later part
of the 70s experienced a muchmore complex development of
symbols, of the written word, oflanguage incorporated into the
to the paintings, and all ofthese elements were part of her
(18:38):
idea of expressing feminism, offemale sensibility, and a lot of
the materials also had specificconnotations that would.
That would contribute to this,to this sense, and this
materiality actually is is keyto this sense, and this
materiality actually is is key.
Um, we've obviously talkedabout the uh, about what they
(18:59):
look like and a bit about howthey're made, the relationship
to process, the use of drawingthe grid, the way she builds
them up, um.
But.
But what's also important is iswhat they're actually made of.
Um, and many of the materialsthat she would utilize are
materials that she consideredalso had specific feminist
(19:22):
connotations.
So, even though she had beenbuilding up the surface even
from the late 1960s, as thepaintings became more evolved
and developed, the accumulatedmatter on the surface also
became more sophisticated, asshe utilised more and more
(19:44):
diverse materials to communicatethese kinds of things, and she
was adding things to the surface, mixing in with the paint,
adhering with the paint, uh,things like wallpaper, scraps of
fabric, rayon, plastic, flowers, glitter, sparkles, um lentil,
seeds, um other form of organicmatter, um straw, and a lot of
(20:09):
this stuff was sort of heldtogether, uh, or had the
appearance of being heldtogether by thread, um molding
paste, gel, various other mediato sort of held together, or had
the appearance of being heldtogether by thread, molding
paste, gel, various other mediato sort of bind it all together.
So she was, as the paintingsdeveloped through the 70s, and
she was creating this moredeveloped language of motifs,
(20:32):
more about which we can say morein a moment.
She was.
She was also using thematerials that she felt were
very relevant to um to depictthese, these, these motifs, um.
So so this is a key way ofunderstanding her perception,
her understanding of a femalesensibility and a feminist art.
(20:56):
In fact, there was a veryimportant curator and critic
called Lucy Lippard, and in 1976, she posed a question to a
number of artists participatingin a key exhibition called what
is Feminist Art, a keyexhibition called what is
(21:17):
Feminist Art, and Snyderactually replied with a long
list about what femalesensibility consisted of, and
she said that it is layers,words, membranes, cotton, cloth,
rope, repetition, bodies, wet,opening, closing lists, life
stories, grids, destroying grids, houses, intimacy, doorways,
breasts, vaginas, flow, strongbuilding, putting together many
(21:40):
elements red, pink, black, earth, feeling in the colors, the sun
, the moon, roots, skins, walls,streams, puzzles, questions,
questions.
So, of course, this gives a veryfree form, stream of
consciousness, answer to how sheconsidered a female sensibility
(22:02):
.
So the motifs then that shewould depict, with all of these
diverse materials alsosubstantiated this idea?
She would.
I mean, there's many differentrecurring motifs in her
paintings, some of which arevery common ones include roses,
(22:26):
breasts and other women's bodiesor parts of women's bodies
ponds, oceans, blossoms, songs,cherry trees, moons, pumpkins.
So she's pushing the formalpossibilities of painting by
(22:46):
kind of breaking down andreconstituting abstraction, but
she's also developing a kind ofa complex materiality through
this additive process of collagematerials, and then she's got
this very personal vocabulary ofall of these motifs.
So the kind of the holisticresult is really a very rigorous
(23:08):
sort of interrogation ofabstraction, abstract painting,
but it's very specificallyunderpinned by this feminist
outlook.
She's sort of centering thesethings on the essence of
feelings, of a female body, tocarve out a new terrain in
painting, and this terrainconsists of this highly poetic
(23:29):
body of work that is reallytrying above all to assert the
place of feeling and femalesubjectivity in abstraction.
Jeppe Curth (23:46):
Okay, nick, thank you.
Let's talk a little bit abouther market.
Let's start by looking a littlebit about her profile and, as
an artist, um, what kind ofprofile does she have in the art
market?
Nicholas Robinson (24:01):
or well, she has a, she has a significant
standing, um, because she's apioneer, because she's, you know
, had a significant career basedon, and there are several other
bodies of work.
I mean, she made these strokepaintings, but by perhaps 74, 75
, she was becoming, she wasbecoming bored with these
(24:22):
paintings.
They came very easily to her,she felt that she was, they were
becoming sort of repetitious toher.
They were, you know, they werelike each painting was like a
sort of improvised jazz tune andshe wanted something that would
take her focus.
It would take her much longerto make a painting, something
that she could really developover an extended period.
(24:44):
So she made a group ofpaintings that consisted of
square blocks, of colour for themost part, whereby the coloured
squares were sort of filling inthe grid.
She made a group of paintingscalled the Symphony Paintings.
Now, this speaks to her.
I didn't mention it before, butanother key element of her
(25:04):
painting, of her paintingpractice, is the influence of
music.
The Symphony Paintings, ofcourse, somewhat self-explicably
, assert this fundamentalinfluence of music.
She's constantly playing music.
It could be early 1970s, um, uh, philip Glass, now, of course,
(25:39):
the eminent composer he was, uh,he was getting by by working as
a plumber, and he was actuallya plumber in her apartment on
one occasion.
Um, anyway, um.
So music is, is, is a constantpart of her, her, her part of
her working practice.
The emotions in the melodies,the sort of evocations of the
titles Sometimes titles ofpieces of music become titles of
(26:02):
her paintings the feeling ofmusic, the narrative of music,
the manner in which the feelingunfolds in a piece of music.
Also, the music's ability toencapsulate joy, sorrow, comedy.
The music's ability toencapsulate joy, sorrow, comedy,
you know, the resolution of astory that she's very, you know,
um, very clear about, as, asalso being, being being
important to her in her, in herpainting.
(26:23):
Um, so she, she will also makesome of these symphony paintings
whereby you can almost readthem like a musical score.
The brush strokes go veryclearly from left to right.
You know, there's a certainrhythmic melody in paint that is
inscribed on the surface, thattravels from the upper left of
the painting to the upper rightof the painting, which contains
(26:45):
the sort of, you know, theconclusion, or the coda, or
whatever she would describe itas.
So then, that's another body ofwork.
She started to find all theattention.
You ask about her sort of placein the market.
She, she, she.
She started to, to, to become abit overwhelmed by the amount
of attention that she receivedand in the mid 70s she sort of
(27:08):
she didn't check out, but sheneeded to get some space.
She moved to the the country,to a farm in Pennsylvania.
She then started making whatare now described as the field
paintings, which are sort oflandscapes, some sort of barns,
houses.
You know there's a lot of worksthat look rather different to
these other bodies of works thatI've described, but this is a
very sort of a discrete set ofworks within her overall output.
(27:33):
And she was achieving tremendousrecognition during this entire
period.
She was included in the WhitneyBiennials of 1973 and 1981.
She participated in theCorcoran Biennial of 1975.
During the course of herworking life she's been a
(27:54):
MacArthur Fellow, she's been aGuggenheim Fellow and she's been
a National Endowment for theArts Fellow, pretty much all of
the public prizes, the eminentprizes that it is possible to be
awarded as an artist in theUnited States.
So she's had a successful andlong career, but not at the very
(28:16):
sort of.
I mean, the gallery worldnowadays is very different to
the, to the gallery world thatit used to be, the gallery world
consisted of much smaller, uhsort of entities that weren't
very corporate, the.
They were founded and run byfigures that were, you know,
(28:37):
they weren't money people somuch, they were more avant-garde
people.
They were really sort ofartist-led artist run, certainly
informed by an artisticsensibility, and her first
gallery in the 70s was wasshowing at the bike at gallery,
and this was founded by klauskurtis, who's a sort of a
legendary figure in the new yorkart world, and this gallery
actually itself occupied theformer space of the of the green
(28:57):
gallery.
So you know this was a veryiconic venue for, for, for
people to see and to buy art.
And in this period this galleryshowed Bryce Marden, chuck
Close, dorothea Rockburn, davidnovoross, paul mohenson, um
(29:17):
linda benglis actually workedthere as a secretary.
Um mary boone worked there as asecretary before launching her
own successful gallery a fewyears later that decade.
Um, so this was her firstgallery in in new york.
That really helped to set thefoundation for her career
amongst highly respected peersand, of course, somewhere that
(29:39):
the collecting community werewell-versed in visiting to sort
of identify what was new andexciting in artistic output that
she showed with Paley and LoweGallery.
That was one of the founders.
There was Jeffrey Paley, theson of William Paley, who was
the founder of CBS and alegendary collector, along with
(30:00):
his wife, babe Paley, in the 60sthey had 60s and 70s they had
one of the greatest artcollections of the 20th century.
She went on to show withHamilton Gallery, which was a
very nice gallery on 57th Streetand one of the first to show
Louise Bourgeois in earnest.
She showed with Herschel andAdler, which of course has been
(30:27):
a very venerable New Yorkgallery for many years.
So she's, you know, she has ahistory of this high level of
representation.
She's never really had a like ablue chip gallery, and by that
I mean, you know, like a reallyabsolute top elite echelon
gallery, you know, everyoneknows the Gagosians, the Hauser
(30:48):
and Wurst, the Zwirners of thisworld, but now, by today's Ropak
, he represents her work inEurope and Asia and shares the
representation of her in NorthAmerica, I guess, with Canada as
a collaborative relationshipwhich is a pretty nice, a nice
gallery.
So so she's been a figure whoeveryone has known a lot about.
(31:15):
In fact, prior to this, thisrelationship with Ropak, she
showed with Franklin Parrish,who is a tremendous gallerist in
New York city with a sort of avery discerning and unerring eye
for interesting things.
So, anyway, she's, she's, she'snever been far from.
(31:38):
You know the sort of artisticpublic consciousness and her,
you know her work is in everymuseum of standing going.
I mean it's in the ArtInstitute of Chicago, brooklyn,
dallas, museum of Art,guggenheim, you know the Met,
the Met Museum of Fine Arts,boston, moma, new York.
I mean there's not a singlemuseum that's worth its salt
that does not have her work SanFrancisco, moma, the Tate, you
(32:02):
know the list is the Whitney, ofcourse, the list is endless.
So her achievements, heraccomplishments are completely
unimpeachable.
Accomplishments are completelyunimpeachable.
Um, but now, because she hasthese achievements and because
she has a gallery that has, well, that has the sort of power,
the market power, the and thesort of taste arbitration that
(32:26):
they can leverage, uh, it looksvery much like, and you might
say is expected, that her statusand and and you can use that
word in all kinds of contextsreputational status, market
status, likely, all of the aboveum will, will, will be on the
rise and in fact has beennoticeably for the last 12 to 18
(32:47):
months already thanks, nick.
Jeppe Curth (32:50):
Um, my next question was which kind of
gallery is representing her?
But but I guess you alreadytold us there was Rope Hack and
Canada, correct?
Yes, that is correct.
What is her primary prices?
Nicholas Robinson (33:01):
I mean, we could talk a little bit about
that and then also afterwardslook into her auctions Her large
paintings, and by that I meantwo and a half, three metres, 10
, 12 feet across, I believe andthis has been subject to some
(33:22):
change in the recent past around$250,000.
But it's not very long ago thatyou could get the same thing
for $140,000, $150,000.
And it used to be that youcould buy a more modest size
painting, let's say a meter,meter, 20, whatever, for 60, 70,
maybe 80 thousand dollars.
Now the same thing is more like140, 50 thousand dollars.
(33:43):
So they've gone up a lot in therecent past in terms of the
primary market prices thatgalleries are are saying this is
, this is, this is what thisshould cost.
Now there is a.
It would cost a lot more to buya, a sort of a seminal, iconic
stroke painting from the early1970s, um, but I don't know of
(34:05):
any such works that you knowwould be available, um, many of
them are in institutions, um, sothat's the sort of range for
her prices.
I mean, there are some works onpaper.
There are some sort of printsthat she makes she's a very
prolific printmaker some ofwhich are quite unique, with
sort of accretions of pulpedpaper and so on, very much again
(34:26):
linked to this sort ofmateriality.
So there's a few differentaccess points, but that's the
basic price structure for herprimary market.
Jeppe Curth (34:37):
Okay, could you maybe explain a little bit how
such a radical change can insuch a short time in her prices?
Nicholas Robinson (34:45):
Well, I think it's a few things you know.
I mean, the market is alwayslooking for new and interesting
things, and when you look at theprice habitually, as we do, as
many people in the industry do,you understand that you know
(35:06):
there's a sliding scale, aspectrum of prices that one can
find things for.
And these days, you know itused to be that, you know
something sort of entry levelwas like four or $5,000 and
something expensive was ahundred thousand dollars.
Now an entry level was likefour or $5,000 and something
expensive was a hundred thousanddollars.
Now an entry level thing ismore like $25,000 and something
you know getting there is like$800,000.
(35:30):
Um, anyway, what happens is thatis that the industry generally
is always looking for new things, and and and it's looking for
new things in two ways it'slooking for emerging things that
are exciting, and new andoriginal things that are
developments in art that peoplehave not seen before, and it's
also looking to promote andrediscover interesting, iconic,
(35:54):
seminal things that areunderappreciated.
And when you look at majorpaintings by an artist with the
credentials that Joan Snyder has, then it's not too much of a
stretch to say, you know,$100,000 for this, $120,000 for
this is not a lot of money.
Now, of course it is a lot ofmoney, but relative to what you
(36:16):
could buy with that moneyelsewhere in the market, you can
see quite easily that it'swell-priced, it's competitive,
it's affordable.
It has, you know, a compellingnarrative in terms of its
contribution to art history.
It has, you know, unbelievablelike quality.
(36:36):
It has all kinds of innovative,radical components.
They they're beautiful, they'resumptuous paintings.
I mean, they're not toeveryone's taste, but they're
important milestones, they'reimportant documents, and so, of
course, when people understandthis and it's not difficult to
understand in the case of jonesnider then of course they people
(36:56):
also understand there'sopportunity there as well.
Jeppe Curth (36:58):
And of course, people also understand there's
an opportunity there as well.
Thanks, Nick.
Her auction record was set inNovember 2023 at $498,000.
It was a large-scale work.
I think it was 153 by 293centimeters right.
Yeah, what is your take on?
Nicholas Robinson (37:16):
that.
I think it's indicative ofeverything that we've been
describing on that.
I think it's indicative ofeverything that we've been
describing Painting.
Had it been sold perhaps 18months prior to that, privately
and not with a big sort offanfare of auction, but just
within the sort of normalgallery ecosystem, it perhaps
would have sold for $180,000,$200,000.
(37:40):
You can rewind back a littlebit further three, five years
prior to that and perhaps it wasmaybe $120,000, $150,000
painting.
It's an important historicpainting by an important artist,
but that was the price pointbecause it was in a sort of a
(38:01):
certain stasis in the marketrather than achieving the
attention that this auction andother things that were happening
were bringing.
Now, obviously that's a prettyhealthy sum of money.
It's quite a lot of money, butin the context of important
artists of that generation whoachieved important things, it
(38:22):
could be argued that it is not alarge sum of money.
As an example, the record pricefor a work by Linda Benglis is
a million dollars.
One could also arguably saythat that is not as high as
perhaps it could be given hercontribution.
That's a discussion for anotherday.
Perhaps it could be given hercontribution, that's a
discussion for another day.
(38:42):
But other artists of hergeneration with probably,
objectively speaking, no bettercredentials, have also achieved
prices that far outstrip herrecord price.
A record for Susan Rothenberg'spaintings is $2 million.
The record price for a PatSteer painting is $2.3 million.
(39:07):
Even the record for an AnnaMendieta work is is $800,000.
So you can see that JoanSnyder's record price, whilst it
constitutes a lot of money,it's perhaps not a lot of money
when viewed through the lens ofall the other things that one
could buy by other artists thatare comparable.
I mean, she's 84 years old,she's still working.
(39:29):
You know when artists have beendoing, you know, variations on
a theme for many years and ofcourse they would argue that
their work evolves andeverything else.
But when you you see a JoanSnyder painting, you recognize
it as a Jones Snyder painting.
It's of course.
You know there's someconsistency there.
You know there's a very obvioustendency for the market, for
the world, to sort of start totake this for granted a bit and
(39:50):
look to the next sort of brightnew thing.
Um, people are revisiting thatidea now and seeing value where
previously they did notrecognize as such.
Jeppe Curth (40:05):
Was it 84, right 84 ?
Nicholas Robinson (40:06):
years old.
She was born in 1940.
So, yeah, she'll be 85 thisyear at some point, 85 this year
.
I don't know when her birthdayis, that's okay.
Jeppe Curth (40:17):
But how do you see the future for her?
Nicholas Robinson (40:19):
Well, I think that the future is bringing a
level of recognition that has alittle bit been taken for
granted, as I say to me having,you know, call me a sort of a
(40:40):
cynical old soul in thisindustry.
You know, you think of certainartists and of course every
generation, every movement isdefined by a certain group of
artists that were responsiblefor shaping that period and
defining what that period becameknown for.
Those are the artists thatwrite the books.
Those are the books.
You know.
(41:01):
Those are the artists that havethe chapters in the books, that
make the headlines.
You know, joan Snyder is one of.
The is one of these artists.
And these artists, you know,you can go through every decade
and look at every movement andthe top protagonists of each of
these.
You know they're million dollaror multi-million dollar artists
, I mean you know.
(41:21):
So from that you can draw yourown conclusion.
So my feeling is, if you have aclear understanding of the art
history and you kind of drawfrom that, you can identify
pretty much all the artists whohave not achieved that price
point that the way the marketfunctions, they will achieve
that price point.
That the way the marketfunctions, they will achieve
that price point.
So to me the future is okay.
(41:43):
The record for her now is like$478,000, whatever it is.
But what will happen now isthat somebody who has, you know,
a painting from 1974 or 1972,you know they will understand,
probably, that you know there'sa certain opportunity in that
the auction houses willunderstand that it's in their
interests to find such a thing,put it into the first 10 lots of
(42:06):
an evening sale, if they cansource such an item.
Um, and you know, instead ofmaking 478 000, it will make you
know, 1.2 million dollars andthen, or whatever, and then
you'll have this sort of filterdown effect for all the
different periods of her work,all the different types of her
work, and there'll become ahierarchy within that that is,
you know, has different pricesattached to it.
(42:27):
So that's the future.
That is the future.
Well, maybe that's the future.
That typically is what thefuture looks like for this kind
of situation um nick for anybodylooking to delve more into her
(42:48):
works and career.
Jeppe Curth (42:49):
Um.
What would you recommend themto do?
Nicholas Robinson (42:53):
there's a.
There's some great resources.
I mean she's such a sort of a,a darling of the new york and
north American kind of museumand intelligentsia world.
So there's a lot of reallyinteresting material you can
find.
You just have to sort of huntaround.
There's many lectures she was aprolific lecturer.
Quite a few of these.
(43:14):
You can find archival footageof where she's speaking about
her own work, her owndevelopment.
Her own website is tremendousin that it has a completely
comprehensive catalog ofeverything pretty much that
she's ever made.
So you can go through the menuand see these different blocks
(43:38):
of years and you can go intothose years and you can see
sequentially the work that she'smade.
So there's an incredible visualresource to sort of understand
the progression of her work andher, her various sort of
iterations of her styles.
That's fantastic.
Um Ropak's website is great.
(43:58):
Um has a nice interview with herbrief sort of.
There's a show that thatactually they have now a very
comprehensive exhibition attheir London gallery which is a
fantastic survey show of herwork going even from the 1960s
all the way to the present day.
So that's very comprehensive.
Um.
There's a a really wonderfulinterview with her Um.
(44:22):
You can listen to a snippet ofit, but the transcript is is
available, uh, the archives ofAmerican arts online, um, which
is which is part of theSmithsonian Um.
So there's, you know, yeah, asmuch information as one could
possibly digest, um, if digest,if you look for it.
Jeppe Curth (44:43):
Thank you, Nick.
I think I don't have morequestions.
Do you have anything to add?
Nicholas Robinson (44:49):
I think that covers it all as far as I'm
concerned, at least as far asthe objectives for this podcast
are concerned.
Jeppe Curth (44:57):
Thank you, so thank you, nick.
Thank you very much.
Podcast are concerned, thankyou.
So thank you, nick, thank youvery much.
If you have any questions to us, please contact us at info at
nordicartpartnerscom, and hopeto see you back or have you back
for the next episode.
Bye.
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