Flash News: Bruce Nauman – Doris Salcedo – Markus Lüpertz

[19/02/2015]

 

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news: Bruce Nauman in Paris – Big year forecast for Doris Salcedo – Markus Lüpertz Retrospective in Paris

Bruce Nauman in Paris

A large exhibit on American artist Bruce NAUMAN will open very soon at Fondation Cartier de Paris (13 March–21 June 2015). This is the first exhibit of this scale orchestrated in the French capital, Paris, since the retrospective organized by Centre Pompidou in 1997. Ceramicist, performer and videographer, Bruce Nauman is officially a jack of all trades. His range of media goes from sculpture to bronze, neon light works, holography and using his own body, transformed, for example, into a musical instrument. He develops works like situations, to explore the absurdity of things, difficulties of communication, tensions, and complex situations in human relations.The retrospective at Fondation Cartier presents this diversity, through a selection of recent works presented for the first time in France, and some older pieces. Bruce Nauman keeps a low profile in the auction world. Few works come up for auction, which prevents his popularity from being shown.
Last year, two new bids in the millions added weight to his list of hits, bringing the number of his works sold for more than a million dollars to 12. Notably, 12 November 2014, a sculpture-fountain titled Fish Fountain was sold. This spirited work created in 2003 sold for USD 1.2 m (or USD 1.8 m including fees) at Christie’s New York. Let us make clear that Fish Fountain had profoundly marked the audience during a spectacular exhibit organised by the Gagosian Gallery of New York in 2012: the artist transformed the gallery space into an immersive work, where 97 bronze fish were suspended in the space, pouring water, inside the gallery.

Big year forecast for Doris Salcedo

Colombian artist Doris SALCEDO (born in 1958 in Bogota) is especially influenced by the wilfulness of the impact in Bruce Nauman’s works, but not just this. Salcedo is always interested in how her work is received, because it’s up to the spectator to analyse the paths she provides in her works, to put the pieces back together and interpret things. The artist is profoundly engaged in reality.

She has drawn attention through strong actions, such as the edification of a memorial with 5,000 roses in 1999 in the centre of Bogotá, following the assassination of humourist Jaime Garzón and, more recently, with a gigantic installation of 1,600 chairs between two buildings in Istanbul, to bear witness to the absence of Greek and Jewish residents forced to leave the city centre during World War II (installation in 2003, during the 8th Biennale in Istanbul). Reflection on concentration camps, the war, manipulation, violence, desertion, the history of the cities and the times, Doris Salcedo can spend several years on the same work, whose conception always begins with laborious research and contemplation of records.
Salcedo’s big year involves retrospectives organised in some of the world’s most important museums: Chicago Contemporary Museum of Art and the Guggenheim in New York, with her most emblematic creations. At auction, her rare sculptures have sold for more than USD 100,000 since 2005, peaking at USD 410,000 for an untitled mixed media sold on 9 November 2005 at Christie’s New York. Her presence at auction houses is rare but her already solid popularity is bolstered by these ambitious exhibitions.

Markus Lüpertz Retrospective in Paris

Le Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (National Museum of Modern Art in Paris) is presenting the first French retrospective dedicated to German painter Markus LÜPERTZ (exhibit from 17 April–19 July 2015). Markus Lüpertz is, along with Georg Baselitz, one of the most important artists from the German painting revival. Incidentally, he is honorary doctor and rector for the Düsseldorf Art Academy. This “prince of painters” (his nickname) is as extravagant in public as in his work. He began to be known in the 60s in Berlin with his “dithyrambic paintings,” then through various series, whose sources of inspiration are drawn from throughout art history since ancient times.
While keeping a low profile at auction, Markus Lüpertz nevertheless achieved a new record recently, in May 2014, with a bronze polychrome sculpture created in the mid-90s and released in six copies. Titled Pietrasanta Bronzen, the most costly work by Lüpertz reached EUR 240,000, or more than USD 326,000 (sold at Lempertz in Cologne, 31 May 2014). With 45 % of his works accessible for less than USD 5,000, this artist essential to the 20th century European scene remains protected from speculation.