September 24, 2025 • 38 mins
The boundaries between fine art and craft have blurred dramatically over recent decades, and few artists embody this shift more powerfully than Sheila Hicks. At 90 years old, this Nebraska-born, Paris-based artist has spent over six decades transforming how we understand textile as an artistic medium.
Stepping into Hicks' world means discovering an artist whose work combines modernist color theory (learned directly from Josef Albers at Yale in the 1950s) with techniques gleaned from indigenous weaving traditions across the globe. Generally speaking, her pieces hang on walls like paintings or sculptural reliefs, with color blocks that shimmer and transform as light plays across their textured surfaces. Some bulge with sculptural dimensionality; others form monumental columns that completely transform architectural spaces. What unites them all is an extraordinary sensitivity to color, material, and form that makes them immediately recognizable as her work.
What's particularly fascinating about Hicks' career is how she's consistently existed in multiple worlds simultaneously. From her earliest exhibitions in the 1960s, she moved fluidly between fine art museums and design contexts, never limiting herself to one category, seeking and finding opportunity in both. This boundary-crossing approach feels remarkably contemporary, yet she pioneered it decades before it became fashionable. Her works now reside in virtually every major museum collection worldwide—from MoMA and the Whitney to the Tate and Centre Pompidou—evidence of her profound influence.
For collectors, Hicks offers a rare opportunity: work by a historically significant artist whose prices (typically €100,000-300,000) remain reasonable compared to many contemporaries with far less impressive credentials. Whether you're drawn to her intimate "minime" pieces or larger tapestry works, collecting Hicks means acquiring something that transcends categories and speaks a truly universal visual language. Discover why museums, critics, and collectors worldwide are celebrating this extraordinary artist whose vision has permanently changed how we see textile in contemporary art.
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Episode Transcript
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Jeppe Curth (00:00):
Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge from Nordic
Art Partners.
In today's episode we willexplore the world of Sheila
Hicks, an artist who hastransformed the way we see
textile and fiber incontemporary art.
With me in the studio is ourart expert, nicholas Robinson.
I'm your host, Jeppe Curth.
Let's get started.
It is with Alex Rotter at 400million Selling here at
(00:24):
Christie's.
Nicholas Robinson (00:25):
$400 million is the bid and the piece is 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
and become a part of theexclusive club yourself, and how
do you get started whileavoiding buying the wrong things
(00:46):
?
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.
Whatever your objectives, it ispossible to put money into art
(01:10):
wisely, to be consideredthoughtful and well-informed in
your choices and actions.
Jeppe Curth (01:33):
Welcome to the art of collecting with an eye for
curated beauty and practicalvalue.
Curated beauty and practicalvalue.
Sheila Hicks today , and I'mlooking very much forward to it.
Could you start from thebeginning, as always, and tell
us a little bit about herbackground?
Nicholas Robinson (01:51):
Absolutely Before we do, though you say
you're looking forward to thisone.
What about?
How aware are you of SheilaHicks' work?
When did you first come acrossit?
This is maybe also interestingto, because I think that she's
an artist who's been you know, alot of the artists that we talk
(02:11):
about.
People will probably be alittle familiar with our, you
know our approach towardsartists that have had very long
and storied careers but areperhaps a little underrated or
underappreciated, and I thinkthat you know there's there's
probably no secret that thatsheila hicks probably comes into
that category, but is she anartist that you've been aware of
(02:33):
, that you've seen around, thatyou've started to see around in
a more sort of prevalent way towhat's your?
Well, when I started buying andcollecting was most danish
artist, and then we met a decadeago and we started looking
international.
But I didn't know, sheila,before you mentioned it, I guess
(02:55):
a year ago, okay a year agookay, yeah, when you mentioned
first time, I didn't know hername, I didn't notice her.
But also, maybe I have alwaysbeen most looking at paintings
and that is maybe the differencewith ashita's works is that
it's it's.
It's not a painting, but it's interesting
because I have a confession tomake.
(03:17):
I have also not known about herwork for a really long time.
I mean, I've you studied thisfor most of my sentient life in
one way or another, and it'svery vocational thing for me to
read about art, to look at art,to learn about art and the
artists that make it.
(03:37):
But when I grew up studying arthistory, you know she's a.
She's a figure that's been inand around all of the sort of
seminal artists of these variousmodernist generations and of
course we'll get into thebiographical details in a few
minutes.
But it's not a, she's not anartist who who has been very
(03:57):
much sort of up front and centeror even existed at all in many
of my learnings.
So it's a relatively new thingfor me also to come to her work,
to experience it, to learnabout it and to be inspired by
it.
Jeppe Curth (04:12):
Anyway, good.
Well then, I guess I'm not theonly one.
Nicholas Robinson (04:18):
But let's get into it to try and learn a
little bit about her.
She's an American woman, bornin 1934.
So she's 90, 91 years old atthis, at this point, and I guess
you know she's.
She's.
She's known mostly as a she wasshe's known as a textile artist
.
Her work is premised on textileand fabric and weaving and we
(04:42):
will get into that, but that's,that's what her reputation is
founded upon.
She was born in Nebraska in 1934, during the great depression,
and her, her earliest childhoodmemories were formed by a very
peripatetic life with her family, and by that I mean they moved
around a great deal during thedepression.
(05:03):
It was not uncommon for the manof the household to sort of
drag his family around thecountry, you know, looking for
this sort of economic sustenance.
But she's described it as afantastic migratory experience.
(05:35):
So for her it was.
It was an exciting time, herchildhood.
She has spoken quite vividly ofvery specific memories of
playing hide and seek in thecornfields as a child and having
somehow carried with her astrong awareness that she was
very affected by this closeproximity to nature and by her
(05:58):
experiences of it in a very sortof physical and visceral way In
the 1950s, from 1954 to 1959,she attended the Yale School of
Art in Connecticut, and this issort of an interesting time here
because this is the time wherethe faculty was headed up by
(06:19):
Joseph Albers.
Now, as we've learned in a priorepisode about Joseph Albers, he
was a sort of a seminal figurein modernist thinking but also
in modernist art education atthe midpoint of the 20th century
, coming from the Bauhaus toBlack Mountain, to Yale, where
he was a seminal figure in allof these institutions, all of
(06:47):
these institutions.
But other alumni from this timeat Yale included Eva Hess,
sylvia Plymouth Mangold, many ofwhom have had various responses
to Alba's seminal book, theInteraction of Colour, which at
the time was responsible forheralding dramatically new
approaches to colour as the maindevice of a composition, and it
left a lasting impression, adeep impression, on many
artists' work, but veryspecifically on Sheila Hicks'
(07:10):
work, another sort ofinteresting sort of aside to her
being taught mentored by Albers, he had had a long pedigree in
championing various art media.
His own art career beganworking in glass.
So he had a sort of highlyprogressive attitude toward all
(07:32):
kinds of media and not just sortof snobbishly prioritizing the
sort of hierarchy of art mediawith oil painting or bronze or
marble at the very top.
You know from his days as amaster at the Bauhaus, his
founding of the art school atBlack Mountain College, where
his students included.
You know Ruth Asawa, anothervery significant woman artist of
(07:55):
the 20th century whose workembraced sort of a crafting type
medium.
And of course Albers' wife,annie Albers, was also a very
renowned textile artist.
So this is a sort of context inwhich Sheila Hicks is growing
up as a young artist.
In 1957, she had also beenstudying Andean textiles in one
(08:21):
of the classes at Yale and thisenabled her to get a Fulbright
grant to study this whilsttraveling in Chile, using the
funds to travel and explore andlearn.
So she sort of parlayed thislove of travel that she had sort
of had inculcated into her fromher childhood into her young
(08:42):
adulthood.
From 59 to 64, she resided inMexico where she was weaving and
painting and teaching thesethings at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico,where she also was introduced
to this sort of great Mexicanmodernist architect, luis
Barragan.
And since 1964, she has livedand worked in Paris and to this
(09:06):
day she is still based in Paris.
Jeppe Curth (09:09):
Thank you, Nick.
You said that she studied underJoseph Albers right, Correct.
What influence do you think hehad on her approach?
Nicholas Robinson (09:22):
Well, I think that's very clear.
I mean, albers' mainpreoccupation was with different
blocks of colour as the mainfoundational compositional
devices for making paintings.
His paintings were about colourand specifically the way
colours influence and affectother colours, most often in the
(09:47):
same tonal register next tothem, and her work clearly bears
the influence of his teachingson colour.
But her work is also very muchabout textile.
It's always been most closelyassociated with textile.
For her and this is a quotationtextile is a universal language
.
In all the cultures of theworld.
(10:08):
Textile is a crucial andessential component.
And her work also has shown herlove of travel.
A lot of her work is about notjust the differences but also
the commonality betweendifferent indigenous weaving
practices.
So from her travels, earlytravels in the Andean
(10:28):
communities, in Chile, mexico,france, she's traveled
extensively in Morocco, india,sweden, israel, saudi Arabia,
japan, south Africa, some ofwhich places she has established
workshops as well.
So she's always been mininglocal knowledge in order to
inform her own work and, I guess, to sort of even transcend
(10:49):
these, the sort of arbitrarynature of these geographic
boundaries.
So there's a sort of auniversality in her work, I
(11:16):
guess.
But if we return to the sort ofthe main themes of her work.
I mean, there's always been afocus on structure, form and
colour which I suppose, goingback to the influence of Albers,
really are the sort of herworks hang on the wall, like a
painting.
There are different sort ofcolours of fabric, yarn
stretched around a stretcher barwhich is the same kind of
framework that a canvas would bestretched on in the making of a
painting.
So these sort of hang on thewall and I suppose these works
(11:42):
could be argued to be a verypurest form of modernist
expression.
Now, if you think about apainting, a painting is quite
literally pigment or colourapplied on fabric, you know,
namely the canvas.
But her work is the fabric, sothe sort of materiality, the
support, the form is the color.
(12:05):
So the key to the physicalproperties of her work is that
color, form and texture are allinextricably linked.
And if we go back to her sortof place, her position within
her peers, her generationalpeers, we can sort of see that
maybe her works bear someaffinity with the colour field
painters.
Now, the colour field painters,most significantly Morris Lewis
(12:29):
, kenneth Noland.
One of the key precepts oftheir works was the fact that
surface and colour became moreclosely intertwined than ever
before.
For them it was important thatcolour was not applied to the
surface.
It was poured and stained andsoaked into the canvas so that
colour didn't became the surface.
(12:50):
So in a way, her work has someparallels with this idea.
Compositionally, a lot of herworks consist of sort of blocks
of colour, areas of colourcontiguous to other areas of
colour.
And another key concern ofmodernism, and perhaps sort of
(13:10):
geometric minimalist practiceswithin modernism more
specifically, is the grid.
Now, the grid has always beenconsidered as a sort of a
foundational system on which isbased, you know, the structures
of modern life.
We can look at the work ofDonald Judd or Carl Andre or Sol
LeWitt and we can see how thisidea, this idea of the grid and
(13:33):
the repetition of the grid,recurs frequently within their
works.
But so too with weaving.
I mean weaving is very clearlyphysically premised on the grid.
It's about the grid.
The methodology of weaving is,you know, it needs the grid.
So that's something.
So that's something that, that,that that Sheila Hicks has
(13:56):
recognized in her work.
But then then, one of thethings that she points to with
the, some of the compositionalor design choices she makes, I
mean, of course, if you'remaking a weaving, you can very
rigidly adhere to a certain kindof repetition, but if you want
to, you can make deviations.
You can miss a loop, you can doa twist, you can loop it over
(14:21):
another thread.
I mean, there's differentthings you can, different
choices you can consciously makein order to create these little
deviations.
And so, for her, thesedeviations are sort of inherent
to the organic nature of hermaterials, but they can also be
read as metaphors for people,for individuals who are sort of
asserting their individuality orpersonalities against the
(14:44):
rigidity of this sort ofunderlying systemic order
represented by the grid.
Jeppe Curth (14:50):
But, as we learned in former episode about Picasso,
ceramics, fiber art or textileart as she's practicing, has
long been considered as craftrather than fine art.
How did Sheila help change thisperception?
Nicholas Robinson (15:09):
Well, she's changed it because of her
persistence and her adherence toworking in this medium for such
a long period of time.
I mean, she has made multipleseries of works, all of which
have textile at their heart.
Some of them are very small,very intimate, and some of them
are enormously monumental inscale.
And so I guess her contributionreally to setting this example
(15:44):
about the importance of thismedium is really just comes from
the sort of free, experimentalnature of her practice, and
she's continually crossing overand blurring these boundaries
between tapestry, weaving,painting, sculpture, these sort
of notions of fine art and craft, and then he you know spilling
over into architecture, design,installation art and and.
And the fact that her work isfound internationally in both
art and design museums, showsthat she's, you know, increasing
(16:06):
, and of course you know she'sbeen doing this for 60, 60 odd
years.
So there's a, you know, a sortof a momentum that's slowly
built over time.
It's not she hasn't performedsome sort of transformative role
.
She is a seminal figure in theway we look at things today,
when we look back and when weunderstand that these very
(16:29):
arbitrary distinctions betweenmedia are no longer really a
necessary or relevant or helpfulway to look at people making
things, creating things.
Jeppe Curth (16:46):
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about her market.
She is represented by some toptier galleries.
Nicholas Robinson (16:53):
Maybe you could mention a few and also
what they have meant for hercareer and visibility sure, sure
, I mean her market is a I meanit's always a sort of a strange
thing to talk about because youknow her her market is, you know
, of course it's.
It's related to the way we lookat an artist and, of course,
(17:14):
some of the reasons why wechoose to get involved in an
artist, but for her, she hasconsistently been working and
showing since 1958.
She has, you know, I mentionedthe wall hung works that she
makes, the sort of painting typeformats that she makes which
(17:36):
she calls minims.
Some of them are very small andsome of them have other objects
sort of ensnared by the weave,sometimes clamshells, razors,
other small objects.
She makes wall hangings thathave a much more sort of relief,
base, relief kind of sculpturalproperty where there's sort of
bulbous twists around these kindof columnar weavings.
(18:00):
Some of them are these sort ofpiles of sculptural fibers, some
of them are sort of these bigpigmented bales of yarn and some
of them are more liketapestries, with these sort of
shimmering, elongated tubes ofyarn arrayed in a sort of long
horizontal format.
And she's exhibited variouskinds of these works at
(18:24):
different junctures throughouther career.
I mean, her career and hermarket, you know, are perhaps
not quite the same thing, but Isuppose it's useful for us to
consider them in the same breath.
I mean, if you look at the, themarket for her work, in terms
of work occurring frequently atauction, that has not happened
so frequently.
(18:45):
I I mean her work has traded atauction in a sort of ad hoc way
for you know a long time, butyou can probably only go back to
maybe sort of 2009, 2010.
So 15, 16, 17 years where herwork has consistently been
(19:09):
traded on the secondary market,at auction and and it's over
this time that her galleryrepresentation has grown.
But just to rewind a little bitto talk about her career, her
first exhibition was in 1958.
And she's been showingconsistently in that time.
But one of the interestingthings that I noticed looking at
(19:29):
her exhibition biography In1963, for instance, she had an
exhibition called the TextStyles of Sheila Hicks at the
Art Institute of Chicago.
Now, of course, this is apreeminent fine art institution
in the US.
So this is an art show, a fineart show.
But in the same year she had anexhibition, some kind of
(19:52):
exposition, with knollassociates at the merchandise
mart in chicago.
Now this would have been atrade fair for what back then
was a leading modern furnitureand design company.
So even even then you knowshe's showing as an artist but
her expertise in textilesincidentally, the knoll the
(20:15):
Knoll company was founded by aman but really transformed and
developed into a designpowerhouse by Florence Knoll, so
also a very powerfulling boththe art world and the design
(20:35):
craft world, if you will,simultaneously throughout her
early working life, especiallywhen these sort of attitudes at
that time were a little bitdifferent towards these craft
media appearing in fine art.
But but some of the other sortof milestones we can speak of in
(20:55):
this last period I mentioned 16, 17 years.
In 2010, she had a retrospectiveat the Addison Gallery in
Andover, massachusetts, and thattraveled to the ICA in
Philadelphia and this would havehad a transformative effect on
her, on how widespread herreputation was to become amongst
the more sort of mainstreamfine art community.
(21:16):
The same year she was amedalist of the Smithsonian
Archives of American Art.
In 2013, she showed first withAlison Jake's Gallery in London
and that is a very fine gallerythat has specialized a lot in
sort of underappreciated womenartists, artists of different
ethnicity that are sort of notusually in the sort of pantheon
(21:40):
of the modernist canon.
In 2014, she had a work a majorwork that was included in the
Whitney Biennial, and this workwas called Pillar of Inquiry.
This consisted of a huge columnof twisted yarns kind of
thrusting out of the ground andrising upwards, causing the
viewer to rise upwards to lookat their culmination in the
(22:03):
ceiling.
Another major column work wasinstalled at the Sydney Biennial
2017, she participated in.
Venice Biennale 2018, more than100 works in a solo exhibition
at the Centre Pompidou in Parisher adopted country, of course.
(22:24):
2022, international SculptureCentre Lifetime Achievement
Award.
And 2025, american Academy ofArts and Letters inductee.
And 2025, also San FranciscoMoMA no-transcript.
(22:56):
To go back a little to that,alison Jakes, as I mentioned,
she has a very big, prominentgallery in New York Sycamore,
malloy Jenkins.
She has a very fine gallerywith two locations in Germany
Maya Riga, frank Elbaz in Paris,shows with Necht St Stéphane in
Vienna and shows with MassimoMenini in Brescia.
Now, all of these gallerieshave many significant artists in
(23:20):
their rosters.
What's interesting is that allof them are, you know, could
reasonably be considered sort ofmid-tier galleries, but each of
them has very, you know, closerelationships with its artists,
very nurturing relationshipswith its artists.
Often, a lot of them have quitea lot of esoteric artists,
maybe a bit more experimentalartists, and all of them have a
(23:43):
very strong grounding in a veryparticular geographic locale.
So, perhaps a little unusually,she has very many galleries all
of which presumably representher in a different territory.
Jeppe Curth (23:55):
Okay, good, Thanks.
A bit about her prices primary,secondary, where are we?
Nicholas Robinson (24:01):
Okay, Well for her prices.
If you want to get a, you know,a medium sized sort of painting
type work, that's maybe a meter20 or thereabouts, I mean
you're looking at around ahundred thousand euros for that.
If you want a very developedkind of sophisticated tapestry
(24:23):
work which has the sort oftubular sculptural elements that
I described, probably you knowlooking at 140, 150,000 euros,
and I've seen them up to 300,000euros dollars for larger ones,
typically her work at auctionhas sold very consistently and
readily in this sort of 60,000to 120,000 dollar range.
(24:46):
But interestingly, her recordauction price is a price that
was achieved at the Drouot theauction in Paris and that's a
very large five meter tapestryform, an early sort of seminal
one called Fugue, from 1969 to1970.
And that made almost 700,000euros in December 2022, which by
(25:08):
today's reckoning is quiteclose to a million dollars, in
fact, if you look at today'sexchange rates.
No-transcript.
Jeppe Curth (25:19):
Okay, thank you, nick Fiber.
And textile works can sometimes, for some collectors, be
challenging.
It's also not the first thingyou jump into, as I also haven't
jumped into when I startedbuilding my collection.
Do you think that influencedthe demand and price?
A little bit said, but it onlylast 20 years is had been liquid
(25:42):
in the secondary market.
What does this tell us?
Is this just a change of theway we look at things and her
market?
Nicholas Robinson (25:51):
I think so.
I mean, I think you can pointto an attitudinal shift.
I mean you see a lot ofcontemporary art now made of
ceramics.
Also, you know many, many otherartists make work that is
predominantly from textiles.
You see the work of I don'tknow even L Anatsui from from,
from Africa, making work frombottle caps, sort of stitched
(26:13):
together in this very sort ofmeticulous, crafted way.
So I just think, I think theyou know, the materiality of
fine art has the language, therepertoire has widened
extensively and of course, ifartists continue to do this and
to broaden the scope of theirmateriality, then inevitably
(26:35):
people will over time respond tothat and of course it's the
gallery's responsibility tocontinue to support this
expansion of ideas.
But in terms of people findingit to be a palatable thing to
live with, I mean these worksare exquisite.
I mean there's quite a lot ofworks these days that maybe you
(26:56):
could consider to embody ahybridity of form that are not
quite design, they're not quitepainting, they're not quite
sculpture, they're sort ofarchitectonic in some way.
They have a particular sort ofinfluence or relationship to
this sort of lived environmentthat they're installed in.
I mean, I mean her works verymuch sort of activate space in a
(27:20):
really nice way they.
But they do function for themost part like a painting on a
wall in the fact that they're,they're sort of, it's not
impractical really to to try andaccommodate them.
I mean, they're exquisitelymade.
And her, her approach to color,I mean it's it's, it's very,
very sophisticated, it's verybeautiful, it's very nuanced and
(27:41):
subtle.
And the way that color combineswith the materiality of the,
the yarns, oftentimes they sortof they shimmer like silk or
they have this, this incrediblematerial property, this is very
seductive when I look at herauction data for the last 15, 20
years the long she has beenselling at auction it had been
(28:02):
been growing year to year around8% to 9%.
Okay.
Jeppe Curth (28:05):
But it's also come from very low estimate in the
beginning to reasonable today,so the volatility is quite high.
Is that because it's textile oris it because it's undervalued
artist?
Nicholas Robinson (28:19):
I don't really know the answer.
I mean a lot of the stuff thatwe think about.
Of course it's a certain kindof, you know, response to the
changing field of ideas.
It's a certain sort ofexperience of looking and
learning, a certain kind ofpracticed eye and
connoisseurship, which of coursecreates its own sense of
(28:40):
instinct about things.
And then of course it is thefact that you know the market is
more obviously embracing thesethings.
But of course, if you startfrom a low base and your prices
go up year to year, then you canof course point to significant
financial appreciation.
But I think that I do think thatshe's underappreciated.
(29:01):
I think that there are thesesort of titans of modernism that
have never really been sort ofacknowledged or recognized as
such, and I think thatabsolutely she has to be
considered that when you look atthe extent of her CV, you look
at how compelling her, you know,her sort of museum collection.
(29:22):
I mean, she's in, she's inevery significant museum around
the world from, you know, theArt Institute of Chicago that I
mentioned, the Centre Pompidou.
She's in every significantprovincial city museum in the US
Cleveland Museum of Art, inBoston, in Charlotte, in the
Wadsworth Athenium, inPhiladelphia, national Gallery
(29:43):
of Art in Washington, but she'salso, she's also in in, in, in
in MoMA, she's also in the Tate,she's also in the Stedelijk,
she's also in the NationalMuseum of Modern Art in Kyoto.
I mean, this is a very, this isan artist whose reach has
permeated far and wide.
So so, of course, when you,when you, when you see, when you
(30:05):
see the, the, the sort ofvolatility of the contemporary
art market, and you see youngartists who, who, whose price
becomes meteoric so quickly inthat you see the influence of,
of, of, you know Instagram, yousee the influence of of kind of
social media hype related tothese artists.
You see highly speculativeprices at auction and you see
(30:28):
artists whose work maybe costs40, $50,000 selling at auction
for $300,000.
And, honestly, it feels absurd,it feels grotesque.
And then, if you look to anartist like Sheila Hicks, who
has earned her stripes with adedicated, you know, incredible
integrity of, of practice andcommitment to that over such a
(30:48):
long time, and you can buysomething incredible by her for
probably less than $100,000,then you have to question the
sort of prevailing system andyou have to try and find some
kind of common sense to cutthrough some of the nonsense
that takes place these days.
Jeppe Curth (31:13):
So for a collector entering the market and looking
for Sheila Hicks, what shouldthey be looking for?
What?
Nicholas Robinson (31:21):
kind of work should they be looking for?
Jeppe Curth (31:22):
Yeah, and what kind of work, monumental
installation, is it provenance?
Nicholas Robinson (31:29):
It's not possible for most people to
accommodate some of thesemonumental works.
Of course they are best suitedto institutional installations
or museum permanent collections.
You see some very grandioseworks in that context in MoMA in
the Whitney.
There was a significantinstallation at the Haywood
Gallery, the Sydney that Imentioned.
Jeppe Curth (31:52):
But do you see the works as primarily institutional
or is this also a strongprivate collection base?
Nicholas Robinson (31:58):
Well, of course there's strong private
collection base, because herwork operates on many different
scales and and and varies inform depending on the type
typology that she's involved inmaking.
There's the minims, the smallpaintings.
There's the, the slightlylarger painting format works,
and by painting I refer to thestretcher bars around which the
(32:19):
yarns are stretched.
They have an object quality,but they, from a distance, they
they function somewhat like apainting.
And then there are the, thewall hangings, the tapestries,
that have a much more sort ofbase, relief, sculptural quality
, even though they also do hang.
I'm sure it's possible to get a, a big column work if you have
an enormous home and you wish tohave some spectacular
(32:42):
insulation in your atrium.
But but, but most commonly, ofcourse, these more modest
formats are very easy forsomebody to accommodate in their
home as a collector, as a loverof fine art.
And where can they find these?
They can find them in in this,this wide array of galleries
that I mentioned.
I mean one of the one of thethings that brought her work to
(33:04):
you know my consciousness.
I mean we spend a lot of timetraveling to various art fairs
around the world.
You know, I just sort ofstarted noticing that wherever I
would go, I would see a verybeautiful sort of textile work
and you know, I would sort of,you know, look at the label or
ask questions, and I just seenthese recurring increasingly
(33:26):
much across the world andeverywhere I go, you know, oh,
there's another Sheila Hicks.
And of course, when somethingbecomes, you know, sort of
visually prevalent in that way,there's a reason for it it's
because it's becoming adopted,it's becoming popular, it's
becoming, you know, it's turninginto a thing that's developing
its own particular momentum, andit doesn't occur in these
(33:48):
contexts unless it is alsodeveloping momentum in a market
context.
Jeppe Curth (33:53):
Correct.
So how do you think collectorsshould think about textile art
with a broader collectionstrategy?
Nicholas Robinson (33:59):
But I don't think that they should think
about textile art per se.
I think they should think aboutthe art of the individual who's
making it, and I think thatit's not relevant to think of
what it's made of.
It's relevant to think of assomething that's good or
interesting or original orunique or special or all of
(34:20):
these sorts of, you know,shamanistic, magical properties
that the best art has.
And Sheila Hicks' work isabsolutely of that ilk, just
like somebody else who's greatat making paintings, or just
like Picasso, who turned hiswizardry to pottery as well as
all of the other things that hewas working in.
So it's not a case of assessingit as a textile work of art.
(34:42):
It's a case of assessing it asa work of art on its own merits,
irrespective of the fact thatit is made from textile.
Jeppe Curth (34:50):
That's a great point.
So is Sheila Hicks undervaluedtoday, and what's the long-term
outlook for her market, do youthink?
Nicholas Robinson (34:57):
I think that she's undervalued, just because
I've seen how expensive thingsare generally Great things from
today that become, as I'vementioned, absurdly expensive.
Great things from the late 19thcentury, the 19-teens, the 20s,
(35:18):
40s, 60s, 80s, whatever itmight be.
There are always great thingsthat somehow, through whatever
accident of history orprevailing attitudes, have
become a little bit neglected,and I think that you know.
You look to the longevity ofher contribution and the
significance of her contributionand I think you know, you see
that you know to be crude aboutit.
You see the price tag attachedto these objects in the
(35:40):
galleries or in the art fairs.
They are reasonably priced.
Now, that's not to say they'renot significant sums of money,
but relative to other thingsthat inhabit the same
marketplace, they are reasonablypriced.
Jeppe Curth (35:58):
So I guess I think that was it for today.
Do you have anything we aremissing out of?
Nicholas Robinson (36:06):
I don't think so.
Anything to add.
No, I think that we've coveredeverything.
I mean, I think it's clear thatshe's a really significant
artist who's and you know herwork has been in many also
corporate collections.
It's been used in atria ofoffice buildings, in conference
(36:27):
facilities, in in big kind ofcorporate.
I mean, you know, it's not likeshe's just suddenly come from
nowhere and and and you can seefrom her CV that she's been very
busy for a long period of time,also with a wide, you know,
exposure and appreciation.
But I think that I think thatyou know, you know historic
(36:47):
women, artists, this more sortof marginalized medium, all of
these other things areboundaries that used to exist
and be a little bit of a sort ofa glass ceiling for an artist.
But that glass ceiling has been, you know, broken through
nowadays and you know, artist,but that glass ceiling has been,
you know, broken throughnowadays and and you know it's
(37:09):
interesting to look at theartists that I guess there have
been the agents of that changeand I think clearly she is one
such artist and that's why, youknow, as a pioneer, as a also as
a sort of, you know, elderStates person, you know she is,
is is really is really excitingand really nice to see the the
way that her work is beinglauded these days.
Jeppe Curth (37:25):
Thank you, nick.
Thank you once again for let mepick your brain, yeah thanks
yeah, that was it for thisepisode of the collector's edge.
If you are looking for expertinsights, want to make informed
decision and would like advicefrom independent advisors, send
us an email or maybe just callus.
(37:46):
You can find all the info onour website nordicartpartnerscom
.
Thank you for listening and wehope to have you back for
another episode.
Bye.
Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge from Nordic
Art Partners.
In today's episode we willexplore the world of Sheila
Hicks, an artist who hastransformed the way we see
textile and fiber incontemporary art.
With me in the studio is ourart expert, nicholas Robinson.
I'm your host, Jeppe Curth.
Let's get started.
It is with Alex Rotter at 400million Selling here at
(00:24):
Christie's.
Nicholas Robinson (00:25):
$400 million is the bid and the piece is 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
and become a part of theexclusive club yourself, and how
do you get started whileavoiding buying the wrong things
(00:46):
?
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.
Whatever your objectives, it ispossible to put money into art
(01:10):
wisely, to be consideredthoughtful and well-informed in
your choices and actions.
Jeppe Curth (01:33):
Welcome to the art of collecting with an eye for
curated beauty and practicalvalue.
Curated beauty and practicalvalue.
Sheila Hicks today , and I'mlooking very much forward to it.
Could you start from thebeginning, as always, and tell
us a little bit about herbackground?
Nicholas Robinson (01:51):
Absolutely Before we do, though you say
you're looking forward to thisone.
What about?
How aware are you of SheilaHicks' work?
When did you first come acrossit?
This is maybe also interestingto, because I think that she's
an artist who's been you know, alot of the artists that we talk
(02:11):
about.
People will probably be alittle familiar with our, you
know our approach towardsartists that have had very long
and storied careers but areperhaps a little underrated or
underappreciated, and I thinkthat you know there's there's
probably no secret that thatsheila hicks probably comes into
that category, but is she anartist that you've been aware of
(02:33):
, that you've seen around, thatyou've started to see around in
a more sort of prevalent way towhat's your?
Well, when I started buying andcollecting was most danish
artist, and then we met a decadeago and we started looking
international.
But I didn't know, sheila,before you mentioned it, I guess
(02:55):
a year ago, okay a year agookay, yeah, when you mentioned
first time, I didn't know hername, I didn't notice her.
But also, maybe I have alwaysbeen most looking at paintings
and that is maybe the differencewith ashita's works is that
it's it's.
It's not a painting, but it's interesting
because I have a confession tomake.
(03:17):
I have also not known about herwork for a really long time.
I mean, I've you studied thisfor most of my sentient life in
one way or another, and it'svery vocational thing for me to
read about art, to look at art,to learn about art and the
artists that make it.
(03:37):
But when I grew up studying arthistory, you know she's a.
She's a figure that's been inand around all of the sort of
seminal artists of these variousmodernist generations and of
course we'll get into thebiographical details in a few
minutes.
But it's not a, she's not anartist who who has been very
(03:57):
much sort of up front and centeror even existed at all in many
of my learnings.
So it's a relatively new thingfor me also to come to her work,
to experience it, to learnabout it and to be inspired by
it.
Jeppe Curth (04:12):
Anyway, good.
Well then, I guess I'm not theonly one.
Nicholas Robinson (04:18):
But let's get into it to try and learn a
little bit about her.
She's an American woman, bornin 1934.
So she's 90, 91 years old atthis, at this point, and I guess
you know she's.
She's.
She's known mostly as a she wasshe's known as a textile artist
.
Her work is premised on textileand fabric and weaving and we
(04:42):
will get into that, but that's,that's what her reputation is
founded upon.
She was born in Nebraska in 1934, during the great depression,
and her, her earliest childhoodmemories were formed by a very
peripatetic life with her family, and by that I mean they moved
around a great deal during thedepression.
(05:03):
It was not uncommon for the manof the household to sort of
drag his family around thecountry, you know, looking for
this sort of economic sustenance.
But she's described it as afantastic migratory experience.
(05:35):
So for her it was.
It was an exciting time, herchildhood.
She has spoken quite vividly ofvery specific memories of
playing hide and seek in thecornfields as a child and having
somehow carried with her astrong awareness that she was
very affected by this closeproximity to nature and by her
(05:58):
experiences of it in a very sortof physical and visceral way In
the 1950s, from 1954 to 1959,she attended the Yale School of
Art in Connecticut, and this issort of an interesting time here
because this is the time wherethe faculty was headed up by
(06:19):
Joseph Albers.
Now, as we've learned in a priorepisode about Joseph Albers, he
was a sort of a seminal figurein modernist thinking but also
in modernist art education atthe midpoint of the 20th century
, coming from the Bauhaus toBlack Mountain, to Yale, where
he was a seminal figure in allof these institutions, all of
(06:47):
these institutions.
But other alumni from this timeat Yale included Eva Hess,
sylvia Plymouth Mangold, many ofwhom have had various responses
to Alba's seminal book, theInteraction of Colour, which at
the time was responsible forheralding dramatically new
approaches to colour as the maindevice of a composition, and it
left a lasting impression, adeep impression, on many
artists' work, but veryspecifically on Sheila Hicks'
(07:10):
work, another sort ofinteresting sort of aside to her
being taught mentored by Albers, he had had a long pedigree in
championing various art media.
His own art career beganworking in glass.
So he had a sort of highlyprogressive attitude toward all
(07:32):
kinds of media and not just sortof snobbishly prioritizing the
sort of hierarchy of art mediawith oil painting or bronze or
marble at the very top.
You know from his days as amaster at the Bauhaus, his
founding of the art school atBlack Mountain College, where
his students included.
You know Ruth Asawa, anothervery significant woman artist of
(07:55):
the 20th century whose workembraced sort of a crafting type
medium.
And of course Albers' wife,annie Albers, was also a very
renowned textile artist.
So this is a sort of context inwhich Sheila Hicks is growing
up as a young artist.
In 1957, she had also beenstudying Andean textiles in one
(08:21):
of the classes at Yale and thisenabled her to get a Fulbright
grant to study this whilsttraveling in Chile, using the
funds to travel and explore andlearn.
So she sort of parlayed thislove of travel that she had sort
of had inculcated into her fromher childhood into her young
(08:42):
adulthood.
From 59 to 64, she resided inMexico where she was weaving and
painting and teaching thesethings at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico,where she also was introduced
to this sort of great Mexicanmodernist architect, luis
Barragan.
And since 1964, she has livedand worked in Paris and to this
(09:06):
day she is still based in Paris.
Jeppe Curth (09:09):
Thank you, Nick.
You said that she studied underJoseph Albers right, Correct.
What influence do you think hehad on her approach?
Nicholas Robinson (09:22):
Well, I think that's very clear.
I mean, albers' mainpreoccupation was with different
blocks of colour as the mainfoundational compositional
devices for making paintings.
His paintings were about colourand specifically the way
colours influence and affectother colours, most often in the
(09:47):
same tonal register next tothem, and her work clearly bears
the influence of his teachingson colour.
But her work is also very muchabout textile.
It's always been most closelyassociated with textile.
For her and this is a quotationtextile is a universal language
.
In all the cultures of theworld.
(10:08):
Textile is a crucial andessential component.
And her work also has shown herlove of travel.
A lot of her work is about notjust the differences but also
the commonality betweendifferent indigenous weaving
practices.
So from her travels, earlytravels in the Andean
(10:28):
communities, in Chile, mexico,france, she's traveled
extensively in Morocco, india,sweden, israel, saudi Arabia,
japan, south Africa, some ofwhich places she has established
workshops as well.
So she's always been mininglocal knowledge in order to
inform her own work and, I guess, to sort of even transcend
(10:49):
these, the sort of arbitrarynature of these geographic
boundaries.
So there's a sort of auniversality in her work, I
(11:16):
guess.
But if we return to the sort ofthe main themes of her work.
I mean, there's always been afocus on structure, form and
colour which I suppose, goingback to the influence of Albers,
really are the sort of herworks hang on the wall, like a
painting.
There are different sort ofcolours of fabric, yarn
stretched around a stretcher barwhich is the same kind of
framework that a canvas would bestretched on in the making of a
painting.
So these sort of hang on thewall and I suppose these works
(11:42):
could be argued to be a verypurest form of modernist
expression.
Now, if you think about apainting, a painting is quite
literally pigment or colourapplied on fabric, you know,
namely the canvas.
But her work is the fabric, sothe sort of materiality, the
support, the form is the color.
(12:05):
So the key to the physicalproperties of her work is that
color, form and texture are allinextricably linked.
And if we go back to her sortof place, her position within
her peers, her generationalpeers, we can sort of see that
maybe her works bear someaffinity with the colour field
painters.
Now, the colour field painters,most significantly Morris Lewis
(12:29):
, kenneth Noland.
One of the key precepts oftheir works was the fact that
surface and colour became moreclosely intertwined than ever
before.
For them it was important thatcolour was not applied to the
surface.
It was poured and stained andsoaked into the canvas so that
colour didn't became the surface.
(12:50):
So in a way, her work has someparallels with this idea.
Compositionally, a lot of herworks consist of sort of blocks
of colour, areas of colourcontiguous to other areas of
colour.
And another key concern ofmodernism, and perhaps sort of
(13:10):
geometric minimalist practiceswithin modernism more
specifically, is the grid.
Now, the grid has always beenconsidered as a sort of a
foundational system on which isbased, you know, the structures
of modern life.
We can look at the work ofDonald Judd or Carl Andre or Sol
LeWitt and we can see how thisidea, this idea of the grid and
(13:33):
the repetition of the grid,recurs frequently within their
works.
But so too with weaving.
I mean weaving is very clearlyphysically premised on the grid.
It's about the grid.
The methodology of weaving is,you know, it needs the grid.
So that's something.
So that's something that, that,that that Sheila Hicks has
(13:56):
recognized in her work.
But then then, one of thethings that she points to with
the, some of the compositionalor design choices she makes, I
mean, of course, if you'remaking a weaving, you can very
rigidly adhere to a certain kindof repetition, but if you want
to, you can make deviations.
You can miss a loop, you can doa twist, you can loop it over
(14:21):
another thread.
I mean, there's differentthings you can, different
choices you can consciously makein order to create these little
deviations.
And so, for her, thesedeviations are sort of inherent
to the organic nature of hermaterials, but they can also be
read as metaphors for people,for individuals who are sort of
asserting their individuality orpersonalities against the
(14:44):
rigidity of this sort ofunderlying systemic order
represented by the grid.
Jeppe Curth (14:50):
But, as we learned in former episode about Picasso,
ceramics, fiber art or textileart as she's practicing, has
long been considered as craftrather than fine art.
How did Sheila help change thisperception?
Nicholas Robinson (15:09):
Well, she's changed it because of her
persistence and her adherence toworking in this medium for such
a long period of time.
I mean, she has made multipleseries of works, all of which
have textile at their heart.
Some of them are very small,very intimate, and some of them
are enormously monumental inscale.
And so I guess her contributionreally to setting this example
(15:44):
about the importance of thismedium is really just comes from
the sort of free, experimentalnature of her practice, and
she's continually crossing overand blurring these boundaries
between tapestry, weaving,painting, sculpture, these sort
of notions of fine art and craft, and then he you know spilling
over into architecture, design,installation art and and.
And the fact that her work isfound internationally in both
art and design museums, showsthat she's, you know, increasing
(16:06):
, and of course you know she'sbeen doing this for 60, 60 odd
years.
So there's a, you know, a sortof a momentum that's slowly
built over time.
It's not she hasn't performedsome sort of transformative role
.
She is a seminal figure in theway we look at things today,
when we look back and when weunderstand that these very
(16:29):
arbitrary distinctions betweenmedia are no longer really a
necessary or relevant or helpfulway to look at people making
things, creating things.
Jeppe Curth (16:46):
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about her market.
She is represented by some toptier galleries.
Nicholas Robinson (16:53):
Maybe you could mention a few and also
what they have meant for hercareer and visibility sure, sure
, I mean her market is a I meanit's always a sort of a strange
thing to talk about because youknow her her market is, you know
, of course it's.
It's related to the way we lookat an artist and, of course,
(17:14):
some of the reasons why wechoose to get involved in an
artist, but for her, she hasconsistently been working and
showing since 1958.
She has, you know, I mentionedthe wall hung works that she
makes, the sort of painting typeformats that she makes which
(17:36):
she calls minims.
Some of them are very small andsome of them have other objects
sort of ensnared by the weave,sometimes clamshells, razors,
other small objects.
She makes wall hangings thathave a much more sort of relief,
base, relief kind of sculpturalproperty where there's sort of
bulbous twists around these kindof columnar weavings.
(18:00):
Some of them are these sort ofpiles of sculptural fibers, some
of them are sort of these bigpigmented bales of yarn and some
of them are more liketapestries, with these sort of
shimmering, elongated tubes ofyarn arrayed in a sort of long
horizontal format.
And she's exhibited variouskinds of these works at
(18:24):
different junctures throughouther career.
I mean, her career and hermarket, you know, are perhaps
not quite the same thing, but Isuppose it's useful for us to
consider them in the same breath.
I mean, if you look at the, themarket for her work, in terms
of work occurring frequently atauction, that has not happened
so frequently.
(18:45):
I I mean her work has traded atauction in a sort of ad hoc way
for you know a long time, butyou can probably only go back to
maybe sort of 2009, 2010.
So 15, 16, 17 years where herwork has consistently been
(19:09):
traded on the secondary market,at auction and and it's over
this time that her galleryrepresentation has grown.
But just to rewind a little bitto talk about her career, her
first exhibition was in 1958.
And she's been showingconsistently in that time.
But one of the interestingthings that I noticed looking at
(19:29):
her exhibition biography In1963, for instance, she had an
exhibition called the TextStyles of Sheila Hicks at the
Art Institute of Chicago.
Now, of course, this is apreeminent fine art institution
in the US.
So this is an art show, a fineart show.
But in the same year she had anexhibition, some kind of
(19:52):
exposition, with knollassociates at the merchandise
mart in chicago.
Now this would have been atrade fair for what back then
was a leading modern furnitureand design company.
So even even then you knowshe's showing as an artist but
her expertise in textilesincidentally, the knoll the
(20:15):
Knoll company was founded by aman but really transformed and
developed into a designpowerhouse by Florence Knoll, so
also a very powerfulling boththe art world and the design
(20:35):
craft world, if you will,simultaneously throughout her
early working life, especiallywhen these sort of attitudes at
that time were a little bitdifferent towards these craft
media appearing in fine art.
But but some of the other sortof milestones we can speak of in
(20:55):
this last period I mentioned 16, 17 years.
In 2010, she had a retrospectiveat the Addison Gallery in
Andover, massachusetts, and thattraveled to the ICA in
Philadelphia and this would havehad a transformative effect on
her, on how widespread herreputation was to become amongst
the more sort of mainstreamfine art community.
(21:16):
The same year she was amedalist of the Smithsonian
Archives of American Art.
In 2013, she showed first withAlison Jake's Gallery in London
and that is a very fine gallerythat has specialized a lot in
sort of underappreciated womenartists, artists of different
ethnicity that are sort of notusually in the sort of pantheon
(21:40):
of the modernist canon.
In 2014, she had a work a majorwork that was included in the
Whitney Biennial, and this workwas called Pillar of Inquiry.
This consisted of a huge columnof twisted yarns kind of
thrusting out of the ground andrising upwards, causing the
viewer to rise upwards to lookat their culmination in the
(22:03):
ceiling.
Another major column work wasinstalled at the Sydney Biennial
2017, she participated in.
Venice Biennale 2018, more than100 works in a solo exhibition
at the Centre Pompidou in Parisher adopted country, of course.
(22:24):
2022, international SculptureCentre Lifetime Achievement
Award.
And 2025, american Academy ofArts and Letters inductee.
And 2025, also San FranciscoMoMA no-transcript.
(22:56):
To go back a little to that,alison Jakes, as I mentioned,
she has a very big, prominentgallery in New York Sycamore,
malloy Jenkins.
She has a very fine gallerywith two locations in Germany
Maya Riga, frank Elbaz in Paris,shows with Necht St Stéphane in
Vienna and shows with MassimoMenini in Brescia.
Now, all of these gallerieshave many significant artists in
(23:20):
their rosters.
What's interesting is that allof them are, you know, could
reasonably be considered sort ofmid-tier galleries, but each of
them has very, you know, closerelationships with its artists,
very nurturing relationshipswith its artists.
Often, a lot of them have quitea lot of esoteric artists,
maybe a bit more experimentalartists, and all of them have a
(23:43):
very strong grounding in a veryparticular geographic locale.
So, perhaps a little unusually,she has very many galleries all
of which presumably representher in a different territory.
Jeppe Curth (23:55):
Okay, good, Thanks.
A bit about her prices primary,secondary, where are we?
Nicholas Robinson (24:01):
Okay, Well for her prices.
If you want to get a, you know,a medium sized sort of painting
type work, that's maybe a meter20 or thereabouts, I mean
you're looking at around ahundred thousand euros for that.
If you want a very developedkind of sophisticated tapestry
(24:23):
work which has the sort oftubular sculptural elements that
I described, probably you knowlooking at 140, 150,000 euros,
and I've seen them up to 300,000euros dollars for larger ones,
typically her work at auctionhas sold very consistently and
readily in this sort of 60,000to 120,000 dollar range.
(24:46):
But interestingly, her recordauction price is a price that
was achieved at the Drouot theauction in Paris and that's a
very large five meter tapestryform, an early sort of seminal
one called Fugue, from 1969 to1970.
And that made almost 700,000euros in December 2022, which by
(25:08):
today's reckoning is quiteclose to a million dollars, in
fact, if you look at today'sexchange rates.
No-transcript.
Jeppe Curth (25:19):
Okay, thank you, nick Fiber.
And textile works can sometimes, for some collectors, be
challenging.
It's also not the first thingyou jump into, as I also haven't
jumped into when I startedbuilding my collection.
Do you think that influencedthe demand and price?
A little bit said, but it onlylast 20 years is had been liquid
(25:42):
in the secondary market.
What does this tell us?
Is this just a change of theway we look at things and her
market?
Nicholas Robinson (25:51):
I think so.
I mean, I think you can pointto an attitudinal shift.
I mean you see a lot ofcontemporary art now made of
ceramics.
Also, you know many, many otherartists make work that is
predominantly from textiles.
You see the work of I don'tknow even L Anatsui from from,
from Africa, making work frombottle caps, sort of stitched
(26:13):
together in this very sort ofmeticulous, crafted way.
So I just think, I think theyou know, the materiality of
fine art has the language, therepertoire has widened
extensively and of course, ifartists continue to do this and
to broaden the scope of theirmateriality, then inevitably
(26:35):
people will over time respond tothat and of course it's the
gallery's responsibility tocontinue to support this
expansion of ideas.
But in terms of people findingit to be a palatable thing to
live with, I mean these worksare exquisite.
I mean there's quite a lot ofworks these days that maybe you
(26:56):
could consider to embody ahybridity of form that are not
quite design, they're not quitepainting, they're not quite
sculpture, they're sort ofarchitectonic in some way.
They have a particular sort ofinfluence or relationship to
this sort of lived environmentthat they're installed in.
I mean, I mean her works verymuch sort of activate space in a
(27:20):
really nice way they.
But they do function for themost part like a painting on a
wall in the fact that they're,they're sort of, it's not
impractical really to to try andaccommodate them.
I mean, they're exquisitelymade.
And her, her approach to color,I mean it's it's, it's very,
very sophisticated, it's verybeautiful, it's very nuanced and
(27:41):
subtle.
And the way that color combineswith the materiality of the,
the yarns, oftentimes they sortof they shimmer like silk or
they have this, this incrediblematerial property, this is very
seductive when I look at herauction data for the last 15, 20
years the long she has beenselling at auction it had been
(28:02):
been growing year to year around8% to 9%.
Okay.
Jeppe Curth (28:05):
But it's also come from very low estimate in the
beginning to reasonable today,so the volatility is quite high.
Is that because it's textile oris it because it's undervalued
artist?
Nicholas Robinson (28:19):
I don't really know the answer.
I mean a lot of the stuff thatwe think about.
Of course it's a certain kindof, you know, response to the
changing field of ideas.
It's a certain sort ofexperience of looking and
learning, a certain kind ofpracticed eye and
connoisseurship, which of coursecreates its own sense of
(28:40):
instinct about things.
And then of course it is thefact that you know the market is
more obviously embracing thesethings.
But of course, if you startfrom a low base and your prices
go up year to year, then you canof course point to significant
financial appreciation.
But I think that I do think thatshe's underappreciated.
(29:01):
I think that there are thesesort of titans of modernism that
have never really been sort ofacknowledged or recognized as
such, and I think thatabsolutely she has to be
considered that when you look atthe extent of her CV, you look
at how compelling her, you know,her sort of museum collection.
(29:22):
I mean, she's in, she's inevery significant museum around
the world from, you know, theArt Institute of Chicago that I
mentioned, the Centre Pompidou.
She's in every significantprovincial city museum in the US
Cleveland Museum of Art, inBoston, in Charlotte, in the
Wadsworth Athenium, inPhiladelphia, national Gallery
(29:43):
of Art in Washington, but she'salso, she's also in in, in, in
in MoMA, she's also in the Tate,she's also in the Stedelijk,
she's also in the NationalMuseum of Modern Art in Kyoto.
I mean, this is a very, this isan artist whose reach has
permeated far and wide.
So so, of course, when you,when you, when you see, when you
(30:05):
see the, the, the sort ofvolatility of the contemporary
art market, and you see youngartists who, who, whose price
becomes meteoric so quickly inthat you see the influence of,
of, of, you know Instagram, yousee the influence of of kind of
social media hype related tothese artists.
You see highly speculativeprices at auction and you see
(30:28):
artists whose work maybe costs40, $50,000 selling at auction
for $300,000.
And, honestly, it feels absurd,it feels grotesque.
And then, if you look to anartist like Sheila Hicks, who
has earned her stripes with adedicated, you know, incredible
integrity of, of practice andcommitment to that over such a
(30:48):
long time, and you can buysomething incredible by her for
probably less than $100,000,then you have to question the
sort of prevailing system andyou have to try and find some
kind of common sense to cutthrough some of the nonsense
that takes place these days.
Jeppe Curth (31:13):
So for a collector entering the market and looking
for Sheila Hicks, what shouldthey be looking for?
What?
Nicholas Robinson (31:21):
kind of work should they be looking for?
Jeppe Curth (31:22):
Yeah, and what kind of work, monumental
installation, is it provenance?
Nicholas Robinson (31:29):
It's not possible for most people to
accommodate some of thesemonumental works.
Of course they are best suitedto institutional installations
or museum permanent collections.
You see some very grandioseworks in that context in MoMA in
the Whitney.
There was a significantinstallation at the Haywood
Gallery, the Sydney that Imentioned.
Jeppe Curth (31:52):
But do you see the works as primarily institutional
or is this also a strongprivate collection base?
Nicholas Robinson (31:58):
Well, of course there's strong private
collection base, because herwork operates on many different
scales and and and varies inform depending on the type
typology that she's involved inmaking.
There's the minims, the smallpaintings.
There's the, the slightlylarger painting format works,
and by painting I refer to thestretcher bars around which the
(32:19):
yarns are stretched.
They have an object quality,but they, from a distance, they
they function somewhat like apainting.
And then there are the, thewall hangings, the tapestries,
that have a much more sort ofbase, relief, sculptural quality
, even though they also do hang.
I'm sure it's possible to get a, a big column work if you have
an enormous home and you wish tohave some spectacular
(32:42):
insulation in your atrium.
But but, but most commonly, ofcourse, these more modest
formats are very easy forsomebody to accommodate in their
home as a collector, as a loverof fine art.
And where can they find these?
They can find them in in this,this wide array of galleries
that I mentioned.
I mean one of the one of thethings that brought her work to
(33:04):
you know my consciousness.
I mean we spend a lot of timetraveling to various art fairs
around the world.
You know, I just sort ofstarted noticing that wherever I
would go, I would see a verybeautiful sort of textile work
and you know, I would sort of,you know, look at the label or
ask questions, and I just seenthese recurring increasingly
(33:26):
much across the world andeverywhere I go, you know, oh,
there's another Sheila Hicks.
And of course, when somethingbecomes, you know, sort of
visually prevalent in that way,there's a reason for it it's
because it's becoming adopted,it's becoming popular, it's
becoming, you know, it's turninginto a thing that's developing
its own particular momentum, andit doesn't occur in these
(33:48):
contexts unless it is alsodeveloping momentum in a market
context.
Jeppe Curth (33:53):
Correct.
So how do you think collectorsshould think about textile art
with a broader collectionstrategy?
Nicholas Robinson (33:59):
But I don't think that they should think
about textile art per se.
I think they should think aboutthe art of the individual who's
making it, and I think thatit's not relevant to think of
what it's made of.
It's relevant to think of assomething that's good or
interesting or original orunique or special or all of
(34:20):
these sorts of, you know,shamanistic, magical properties
that the best art has.
And Sheila Hicks' work isabsolutely of that ilk, just
like somebody else who's greatat making paintings, or just
like Picasso, who turned hiswizardry to pottery as well as
all of the other things that hewas working in.
So it's not a case of assessingit as a textile work of art.
(34:42):
It's a case of assessing it asa work of art on its own merits,
irrespective of the fact thatit is made from textile.
Jeppe Curth (34:50):
That's a great point.
So is Sheila Hicks undervaluedtoday, and what's the long-term
outlook for her market, do youthink?
Nicholas Robinson (34:57):
I think that she's undervalued, just because
I've seen how expensive thingsare generally Great things from
today that become, as I'vementioned, absurdly expensive.
Great things from the late 19thcentury, the 19-teens, the 20s,
(35:18):
40s, 60s, 80s, whatever itmight be.
There are always great thingsthat somehow, through whatever
accident of history orprevailing attitudes, have
become a little bit neglected,and I think that you know.
You look to the longevity ofher contribution and the
significance of her contributionand I think you know, you see
that you know to be crude aboutit.
You see the price tag attachedto these objects in the
(35:40):
galleries or in the art fairs.
They are reasonably priced.
Now, that's not to say they'renot significant sums of money,
but relative to other thingsthat inhabit the same
marketplace, they are reasonablypriced.
Jeppe Curth (35:58):
So I guess I think that was it for today.
Do you have anything we aremissing out of?
Nicholas Robinson (36:06):
I don't think so.
Anything to add.
No, I think that we've coveredeverything.
I mean, I think it's clear thatshe's a really significant
artist who's and you know herwork has been in many also
corporate collections.
It's been used in atria ofoffice buildings, in conference
(36:27):
facilities, in in big kind ofcorporate.
I mean, you know, it's not likeshe's just suddenly come from
nowhere and and and you can seefrom her CV that she's been very
busy for a long period of time,also with a wide, you know,
exposure and appreciation.
But I think that I think thatyou know, you know historic
(36:47):
women, artists, this more sortof marginalized medium, all of
these other things areboundaries that used to exist
and be a little bit of a sort ofa glass ceiling for an artist.
But that glass ceiling has been, you know, broken through
nowadays and you know, artist,but that glass ceiling has been,
you know, broken throughnowadays and and you know it's
(37:09):
interesting to look at theartists that I guess there have
been the agents of that changeand I think clearly she is one
such artist and that's why, youknow, as a pioneer, as a also as
a sort of, you know, elderStates person, you know she is,
is is really is really excitingand really nice to see the the
way that her work is beinglauded these days.
Jeppe Curth (37:25):
Thank you, nick.
Thank you once again for let mepick your brain, yeah thanks
yeah, that was it for thisepisode of the collector's edge.
If you are looking for expertinsights, want to make informed
decision and would like advicefrom independent advisors, send
us an email or maybe just callus.
(37:46):
You can find all the info onour website nordicartpartnerscom
.
Thank you for listening and wehope to have you back for
another episode.
Bye.
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