Out of Nowhere | Reagan Upshaw Fine Art

At any time read of Lynne Drexler?  Up to a few of years ago, you may well be excused for not understanding of her.  Born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1928, Drexler moved to New York in the 1950’s and studied with pointed out modernists Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell.  She was a next-era participant in the Abstract Expressionist motion and had a solo clearly show in 1961 at Tanager Gallery, a nicely-regarded artists’ cooperative gallery which was component of the downtown scene.

Lynne Drexler, 1960

But that was pretty much it.  She married another artist, taught at various educational institutions all over the country, and moved again to New York in 1967, becoming just a further of the myriad artists functioning in the city without the need of representation by a respected commercial gallery.

Drexler and her spouse acquired a summer months area on Monhegan Island off the coastline of Maine in 1971, and by 1983 she was separated from him and residing on the island complete time.  She died there in 1999, leaving behind a studio comprehensive of paintings.  Her auction benefits in the 15 decades next her death have been really modest, a couple hundred to a handful of thousand dollars, promoting generally at New England auction homes.  Considering the fact that 2019, however, her industry has exploded. 

What’s going on?  I was conversing with a mate, an essential collector and a funds manager who delivers the identical finger-to-the-pulse awareness to the art industry that he brings to the stock current market.  He has the courage of his convictions: he purchased his Drexler portray privately in the low six figures a small in excess of a year back, paying above two times what the auction history for the artist was at the time.  Given that my pal acquired his function, Drexler’s paintings have begun marketing routinely at significant New York auction properties for rates effectively into six and even 7 figures.  The Concert, an oil on canvas measuring about 4-by-four ft, offered for $1,043,380 which includes premium at Sotheby’s Hong Kong before this month.

Lynne Drexler, The Live performance, 1959.  Photograph courtesy Sotheby’s.

Drexler’s perform is the matter of not just one but two shows at critical New York galleries at the second, Berry Campbell Gallery downtown, and Mnuchin Gallery on the Higher East Facet.  There was a short while ago a extended article on her and her do the job in the New York Periods.

How has a somewhat unknown artist gotten so scorching so rapidly?  Some of it may possibly be spelled out by savvy administration by Berry Campbell, which handles the estate and experienced a big group of paintings to function with.  Some of it is because of to the truth that performs by females artists are really hot proper now (as are all those by artists of coloration), as museums endeavor to make up for a record of neglect.  Some of it may well just be the consequence of publicity ordered by deep-pocketed sellers.

But why Drexler, rather of a number of other females artists of her technology who have been talented painters and who struggled in opposition to the very same male-dominated establishment?  Any warm current market raises question: is this a bubble which will burst, a market remaining manipulated by shadowy forces?  Or will Drexler be put firmly in the canon, as Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler have been, with her paintings continuing to offer for 7 figures as theirs do?  Time, as they say, will tell.

Again in the times of the Dot.com boom, a late mate of mine who had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange said to me, “Reagan, I don’t understand the valuations of most of these on the web organizations.  I’m hesitant to put a whole lot of funds into them.  But when a educate is barreling down the observe straight at you, it does not do to put your hand up and say, ‘Stop! You are not meant to be on this track’.”  He gambled a very little in the new market place, made a handful of bucks, and pulled out as the dot.com sector began to tank.

Of system, with Drexler, no subject what you paid out, you’ll have a attractive painting to cling on the wall.  No issue what her market does, if you appreciate the work, you are going to win.  But your get could not be a earn measurable in pounds and cents.

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