Jeppe Curth: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge for Nordic Art Partners. In today's episode, we will dive into the career of Miriam Cahn, an influential Swiss artist whose works has impacted the contemporary art scene. Joining me, as always, is our art expert, Nicholas Robinson, and I'm your host, Jeppe Curth. Let's get started.

Nicholas Robinson: 0:21

It is with Alex Rotter at $400 million Selling here at Christie's. $400 million is the bid and the piece is sold. We've all heard about it. Sometimes it's front page news Important works of art are being sold for incredible sums of money. But can you get involved and become a part of the exclusive club yourself, and how do you get started while avoiding buying the wrong things? That's exactly what this podcast is about. This is the Collector's Edge from Nordic Art Partners, A podcast for those of you interested in the mechanics of the art industry, want advice about putting money into art, or simply want to buy something for your walls, to beautify your surroundings. Whatever your objectives, it is possible to put money into art wisely, to be considered thoughtful and well informed in your choices and actions. Welcome to the art of collecting with an eye for curated beauty and practical value.

Jeppe Curth: 1:28

Hi Nick., hi Jeppe, how are you doing Very well, thank you you. Thank you, Nick, I'm doing well. So today's episode is about Miriam Kahn.

Nicholas Robinson: 1:37

Miriam Kahn. Yes, yes.

Jeppe Curth: 1:39

And, as always, can you take us through her early days in the art world. What key influence shaped her you can say raw expressive style, and how has it evolved over?

Nicholas Robinson: 1:50

time. Uh, by all means, yes, I mean I think that her work is obviously subject to the usual change, development, but but one thing that that I will say that her work has remained remarkably consistent and in some senses, certainly, relative to many artists whose work seems to go through many iterations, her work of today bears a very strong similarity to the works that she made 40 odd years ago. But that's, we'll get to that. We'll get to talking about her work and so on, in much more, much more depth. In terms of biographical information. There's not. There's not that much information about her. I mean, I'm sure if one were to delve very deeply here and there, one could drag up more information about her sort of formative years, but I think that's not that necessary.

Nicholas Robinson: 2:47

She was born in 1949 in Basel, in Switzerland. Her family, her father, was German but moved to Switzerland actually in 1948, so shortly before she was born 1848, so shortly before she was born. He was a very prominent classical archaeologist, a numismatist, antiquities dealer. So they lived in a very erudite and cultured household as she was growing up, amongst scholarship, interesting things etc. She was interested in art from a young age and she studied at the Schule for Gestaltung in Basel from 1968 until 1973, at which point, or perhaps during her studies, during her student years, she became very involved in lots of progressive political movements, especially feminism, anti-nuclear movements and so on and so forth. So this is a bit about her. And then, if we just give a very brief synopsis of her sort of attitudinal qualities as an artist, she's a very uncompromising artist who has applied a very stringent feminist perspective throughout her career.

Nicholas Robinson: 4:07

Now, her first works are from the late 1970s, um, but now she's known as a painter, um, and she's always sort of been been known as a painter, but from the late 1970s to the mid nineties she actually, she actually shunned painting. She rejected painting as a medium because she wanted to, to, to make an act of resistance, a feminist resistance against the Western art world's male, abstract, minimalist sort of zeitgeist, and, and, and, and. By refraining from painting she was objecting to the fact that this was the sort of zeitgeist, and and and, and. By refraining from painting, she was objecting to the fact that this was the sort of dominant medium practiced by men prevailing in the art world. Um, so she, she made video performances and numerous other things, but, but, but, like I said, rejected painting for a number of years, until the mid-1990s when, at the age of 45 or thereabouts, she picked up a brush again and has not stopped since.

Jeppe Curth: 5:10

Okay, if we then maybe look at the works as such. It often explores powerful themes around the human body, emotional and conflicts. What do you? What does these things? Why are these things compelling and what? What kind of themes are particularly compelling to, to you and other collectors?

Nicholas Robinson: 5:34

um. Well, I think there's two, two questions really in in in this idea of, of you know, this question of what, what you know, you know, what are, what are her paintings like, um, the, the? The first question is is what they look like, um, her aesthetic? And then the second question, which I guess we can get to in a moment, is really what they're about and why they look like this Um.

Nicholas Robinson: 5:59

But her work is, is based on images of the body. They are figurative works in varying scales, with a very sort of heavily expressionistic feel. They're very visceral, they're very raw. There's a very heightened emotional quality to the expression of the figures, of the subjects, displaying various kinds of psychological tension, psychodrama, you know. They're confrontational figures that themselves are confronting or contemplating or exhibiting the complexities of human existence.

Nicholas Robinson: 6:37

The figures themselves are characterized by a very vigorous drawing style, very strong line, and often the figures themselves are quite, quite simplified or a little reductive. You might call them sort of stylized, but not in a, in a sort of, in a typically sort of mannered way which one might often infer is used to create a certain sort of artificial gracefulness. These figures are not graceful. They are uncompromisingly raw in their physicality, in their appearance, sometimes even in their grotesqueness. The colors themselves are often very sort of vivid, sparkling, jewel-like, and the sort of garishness of these figures is complemented by often sort of blurred, distorted contours and features, and sometimes even sort of grotesquely exaggerated sexual organs. Um, the bodies themselves are often a little translucent in the way they're painted, a very fragmented or ghostly, um sort of evanescent and and you you might say they are. They're almost sort of fighting against their dissolution into abstraction or or even against their erasure. Um, the backgrounds of the, the, the paintings are often very simplified.

Nicholas Robinson: 8:05

There's a, uh, often a, a very kind of rudimentary, uh, landscape sort of schema behind the figure, um, which, which, well, which, which, what, it sort of intimates landscape, but it's not a, not a a very attractive landscape. It's not a, uh, not a, a very attractive landscape, it's not a very appealing landscape to inhabit. The bold colors are often very jarring and otherworldly, um, which is, which is, you know, creates a sensibility that is far from serene, but it's, but it's sometimes even a little hellish and maybe hostile and certainly, uh, at the very least unsettling. That's the sort of general feeling, the general tenor of the paintings. So that's what they look like and I guess, if we're going to delve into what they're about, why they look like this, we can describe these figures as sort of emblematic of her interest in exploring from a feminist perspective, where she believes to be this sort of treachery, brutality and beauty to some extent, but often quite sort of negative things that are inherent in the human condition.

Nicholas Robinson: 9:26

Often her work is made in response to current events, um, but the imagery sort of really subsumes the viewer into these dreamscapes that evoke violence, uh, and a very sort of jarring, um, lack of of calm. And this sensitivity, sensibility, is felt on a bodily level by the figures in the paintings and designed to show how we kind of experience this more generally on a human level as a result of global policy, war, oppression and these bodies. They wear this very heavily and especially from a woman's perspective, the figures are often wrought with anguish, perhaps even angry as well. There's a sort of simmering energy in how disturbed the figures are. So what we find are very challenging representations of women, forceful ways in which women and their bodies are shown to us. She herself has said I am angry, women still do not have the same rights as men, but it's not aggression. Anger is a very good motor to drive art. And this is what she's doing. She's using this feeling as a vehicle for these highly expressive figurative paintings where the bodies are not shy or demure or beautiful.

Nicholas Robinson: 11:17

Now the paintings themselves, I should say they are tremendously beautiful in the raw power, in the palette, in the execution, in the raw power, in the palette, in the execution. But the figures, the subjects, the women, they are not bashful, their gaze is not averted, the posture is full, frontal and confrontational. They're often hung at eye level, so the gaze of the viewer is very much sort of returned with interest by the painting, and this is designed to show a very serious intent. To well, she describes it as integrating the viewer, by which I believe she means to sort of confront the viewer.

Nicholas Robinson: 11:58

So this, these figures with their prominent, powerful sexuality, they give birth to children, they age, often in a somewhat unflattering way. They show the vicissitudes of life very plainly writ large upon them. Sometimes they're even a little primal, where this kind of maybe almost bestial nature is coming to the surface. . So her paintings are issues, you know, with the body, with sexual politics, power relations, anguish, conflict, fear, loss, vulnerability, and this is communicated with tremendous intimacy and tremendous honesty and candor. There's almost always an undercurrent or a subtext of some kind of violence, of confrontation. I think that probably sums it up.

Jeppe Curth: 13:14

So Mirin Khan in recent years seems to have gained some very notable attention. You can say that her subject matter is tough. Why do you think these painters resonate so strongly with today's collectors and institutes?

Nicholas Robinson: 13:24

Um, well it's. It's a little difficult to answer in one sense, uh, because you know these paintings, they're not beautiful in a conventional sense. They're actually rather harsh, and they can be, they can be quite difficult to look at, they can be upsetting, they can be disturbing, but this, of course, in a way speaks to their power, and, and so this probably goes some way to answering why they resonate so strongly with institutions, um, you know, and and of course, when, when museums find something to be very important, um, and they and they, you know, collectively create a consensus about something's importance, then oftentimes, you know, the, the sort of the collecting market invariably, invariably, follows. But I think that, um, you know, there's a few factors that perhaps we can point to for the rise in her popularity, uh, to to explain the rise in, um understanding of her work and acknowledgement of how powerful and important this, this work, is.

Nicholas Robinson: 14:31

You know, the way women and the female nude have been depicted has been a strong theme throughout art history, but in recent years there's been a strong interest in sort of subverting this tendency, and by that I mean challenging the fact that this is most often the male gaze looking at women, and often women, in fact painted by men. So the nude woman being depicted through that very specific lens where the woman is sort of sexualized, she's an object, where the woman is sort of sexualized, she is an object. But Kahn's work does completely the opposite to this. So you could say that she has very strongly rejected these unrealistic goals of beauty that art history has sort of set for us to try and take for granted. They refute this kind of idealization, idealization Um so so. In one way she's extremely topical, um, for the art world today, because she is reclaiming the female body, uh, from all of this uh preceding baggage and existing connotation baggage and existing connotation. Um so so.

Nicholas Robinson: 15:55

Of course, part of that is that women artists are now being celebrated um, much more for their, for their work, and deservedly so, which hitherto was often not the case. She, she herself has acknowledged that this is a big part of her objective. She said, she has said, half of art history doesn't exist because we weren't part of it, we being women. Now women artists have to make up for that missing half of culture. So you know her very strident position as a sort of a cultural warrior and a and a political warrior, um is, is, is very much of of the time.

Nicholas Robinson: 16:28

Um, I think that there are, you know, numerous artists, uh, female artists, who have been, you know, celebrated and because she's been working for a long time, for you know, 45 years or so Um, it's been a long time that that it's taken the the, the art world to sort of recognize that. But where they've cottoned onto artists like, as an example, like Marlene Duma, whose work has become very successful and has been for 25 years now. You know, miriam Khan is is a very obvious contemporary and peer of Marlene Duma, and yet it's only in the recent past that she has been recognized as such and there's still some way to go, you might say, in that regard as well.

Jeppe Curth: 17:18

Thanks, nick. Where can collectors find Kahn's works featured prominently in galleries and museums, and what are some of the recent exhibitions that had maybe boosted her profile?

Nicholas Robinson: 17:29

um, well, she's always been very well regarded by institutions. I mean, she started working in the late 1970s with charcoal works and then made some paintings before she had this painting hiatus that I mentioned, um, but her video work and her performance work was always popular with institutions. In 1981, the very highly renowned art historian and museum curator, jean-christophe Armand. He invited her to take part in a group show at the Kunsthalle in Basel and that was the beginning. In 1982, she was included in Documenta, but actually this may have worked to her advantage. There was a little bit of a controversy with her participation in Documenta in 82.

Nicholas Robinson: 18:21

Oftentimes, institutional installations of her work consist of many paintings sort of shoehorned into a relatively small space, hung quite close together, high and low, uh in a, in a quite intense sort of salon style hanging where where there's a, a, a very large array of figures, all of which are, you know, sort of uh, confronting the viewer in the space simultaneously. So this intentionality is very much part of how she likes to install these and in 82, some of these paintings were taken down without her permission, as she tells it, in order to make space for other artists, and she, as a result, reacted by withdrawing all of her work from this and I'm sure there was a controversy of sorts that perhaps even fueled her reputation. It certainly didn't harm it because in 84, she represented switzerland at the venice biennale. Her work is in moma, tate, reina, sofia, I mean it's, it's everywhere that she has many works in the in the pinot collection, um. But in recent years, um, she has had highly important museum exhibitions pretty much every year. For the last sort of five or six years, she showed at the Charlottenburg Kunsthal in Copenhagen, with a solo show in 2021. She was involved in the Venice Biennale in 2022, a solo show in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, 2023. She currently has a show at the Stedelijk Amsterdam until the end of January next year.

Nicholas Robinson: 20:09

In 2022, she was in a group exhibition at the Albertina, which was the premise of the show was modern painters in dialogue with the work of Edvard Munch. She was included alongside Marlene Dumas, who I mentioned, georg Baselitz, andy Warhol, peter Doig, jasper Johns uh, tracy Emin uh and Miriam Kahn, so seven artists um, all of whom are extremely eminent uh, and one of which was her Um. So you know she's, she's really highly regarded. She was in had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in 2019, at Haus der Kunst Munich, kunsthaus Bregenz Reina Sophia Kunstmuseum Bern. She's been involved in Documenta in Kassel and in Athens 2017, sydney Biennial 2018, and a group show in the Centre Pompidou 2016. I mean, this is going back eight years. Where she is, you know. I mean she's having significant exposure in the world's leading museums, everywhere around the world. Um so, so that obviously is indicative that you know there's a, there's a very strong awareness of what an important painter she, she, really is, awareness of what an important painter she, she really is.

Jeppe Curth: 21:27

Okay, let's. Let's talk a little bit about prices. Um, her auction record was made in 2023 and was $700,000. It was 170 by 80. Yeah, what can you tell us about her prices? I, I think it's both primary and secondary and and how has it developed?

Nicholas Robinson: 21:47

Um, well, the prices, the prices have gone up in the last few years in relation to this shift in the market. You know, this record price that you mentioned, that's is a big price. Of course it's not an insane price and you might say that it's about time that her work starts to get the recognition in a market sense that it deserves. But that price is a little bit of an outlier because the next record price, after that 700, is in the 300s. So half of that, and there are several around that level, but no others in between that even closely approach the top price. So that's the, that's the and.

Nicholas Robinson: 22:31

And just to reference Marlene Duma, again, um, since this is a, you know, a key contextual thing in, in my opinion, in our opinion, um, her record price at auction is more than $6 million. So that's gives a little bit of contextual information. Um, and if you look at the top prices in the secondary market and of course, like, like always, we rely on data that's in the public domain, in the various auction price uh databases that that we utilize routinely, um, the top 70 results for her, the top 70 price results have been uh, since when, would you say if you were to guess based on what I've said.

Jeppe Curth: 23:17

Well, I know that her first auction was in 2004.

Nicholas Robinson: 23:20

Okay, but I'm talking about the top 70 prices.

Jeppe Curth: 23:25

Well, I would say since 2018.

Nicholas Robinson: 23:29

No, it's not the worst guess, given the institutional stuff that I mentioned beginning around then, but the top 70 results have all taken place since 2023. So it's very so. It is quite a recent phenomenon that her work is consistently selling for high prices in the marquee auctions around the world. So that's the secondary market, now the primary market. Her work is represented by Maya Rigger and Jocelyn Wolfe. Maya Rigger is a German gallery with some other branches and Jocelyn Wolfe is based in Paris and she is very loyal to these two galleries who have developed her career over many years.

Nicholas Robinson: 24:14

And her, I mean, uh, her primary market prices. You can still buy paintings, um, for 80, a hundred, 120,000. There's quite a few different price, uh, different sizes that she makes. So obviously there's a sliding scale of prices. Um, I actually don't know what the cheapest primary market price would be. My guess is that it's probably around $60,000 euros, but I would need to actually qualify that. We've bought primary market paintings by her from these galleries a number of years ago and subsequently some paintings on the secondary market. But, yeah, the secondary market prices are outstripping the primary market prices, I think, probably by a factor of two to one, more or less.

Jeppe Curth: 25:03

Okay, good Thanks, Nick. I also have a number for you. The compound annual growth rate going from 2004, where she had the first one per square centimeters, has been almost 24% a year.

Nicholas Robinson: 25:22

Yeah, how does this sound Well? I mean, I think her paintings probably cost very little in 2004. You probably buy a painting for $10,000. So obviously, when you extrapolate from that, you're going to have you know what appear to be attractive financial numbers. If you've been acquiring her work, you know in the past when, when they, when they cost a lot less. I think you know, I think in a, in the case of of someone like Miriam Khan, the paintings are so astonishingly vivid. I guess you could say and, and, and. I've taken a long time to come around to them. You know it's taken me, you know, quite some work to sort of be able to, to, to, to really look at them, to be able to really appreciate them. There's a harshness in them that is. That is really uncomfortable.

Nicholas Robinson: 26:11

I had that feeling sometimes, yeah, and I, and I'm sure that collectors that have slowly and steadily embraced them have have felt the same thing. Now, some people overcome that by challenging themselves and feeling like they have to acquire really important work. And some people, honestly let's not be disingenuous Some people buy them because they understand that she's a really major painter and it's, you know, the, the, the, the industry markers are indicative of, of somebody who's, of somebody whose value is really going to go up or continue to go up. And you know they buy them in spite of their appearance, just because they understand that this is, you know, something that can represent a really substantial asset. But I think there's also another.

Nicholas Robinson: 26:56

Really well, I don't know if it's a reason why her, her, her sort of market is, is spiked, but I think that you know any, any good art, any great art, obviously, is often great because of its relevance to contemporary culture, because of the way perhaps it, it sort of recognizes or holds a mirror up to things that are happening, that are topical, and and her works have become, you know, more successful since the sort of advent of the, the me too movement. In fact, you know, she, she, she is overtly addressed this notion, she's actually said that her works have become more sexual even since, um, since the me, the advent of the me too movement. So I also think that that just this, you know, this sort of heightened awareness of these kinds of sexual politics that we see, you know, across all strata of society, we see this, this kind of we see this, these, these ideas inflecting people's attitudes, behavior in the workplace and in all facets of the way they live their lives. And, of course, if the art world is going to be relevant, if it's going to reflect the times in which we live and in the times in which the work is made, then of course it has to recognize such things and she, above anyone, is, is perhaps super adept at doing this. So, in the light of this, this, this me too sensibility, um, uh, which I which I actually do think is is quite relevant to her popularity today, or her, or the acknowledgement of her significance as an artist, you know, this feminist voice that she has, which which very clearly explores, uh, what it means to be a woman, or the physicality of that, um, you know, inherent to this, uh, sort of investigation which I think is the most topical part is, you know, these questions about the body, who controls the body? You know who. Her body, or women's bodies in a general sense, um, and, and you know she's, she's very, um, well, she's very interested in, in, in, in sort of transforming uh, uh, this, and there's a quote that that she has, that he she has said, which I think is very instructive about this.

Nicholas Robinson: 29:19

She said my work has a lot to do with the complexities of the whole thing between sex power, aggression. I'm 70 now. This was a few years ago. I'm 70 now and we have all the constitutions in democratic countries where men and women are the same, but they're not. Why doesn't it work? Women have to be more like warriors and fight for it. I am a fighter. I hope so. She has always been like this, but of course the potency of her work is partly contingent on the preparedness of people and audience generally to listen an audience generally to listen.

Jeppe Curth: 30:02

Okay, so for a collector who is new to her works, what elements should they look for to appreciate her unique style and where can they find her works? Well, her works.

Nicholas Robinson: 30:14

Are, you know, to appreciate her work, or to get something that one is, you know, considers to be are. Are you know, to appreciate her, her work, or to get something that one is, you know, considers to be a? You know a really um, stellar example of of what she does? You know you want a, you want a figure, and that could be either a smaller painting, which probably would consist of just a sort of a bust head um with you, whatever kind of expression uh, that faces is, is, is exhibiting um, or a larger painting. You know would often have one or more figures in it, set in this kind of strangely um, dissonant landscape that I described earlier. Um, now, of course there's. You know, if you're going to sort of assess them qualitatively, you're going to look at, you know, the quality of the painting, the, how expressive, communicative the figure is or the face is. You know any painting has a better or worse demonstration of how these elements sort of cohere together in a compositional sense, in a, in a palette sense, and you know some of her paintings, I suppose by these subjective criteria, are better than others, um, but but you know this is what you would look for in in her work. It would need to contain these basic elements in order to be, you know, a signature thing, a signature painting by her.

Nicholas Robinson: 31:40

And then if you wish to study more, then, you know, you just have to resort to, you know, looking online. There's nice information about her work on the two gallery websites I mentioned, maya Riga and Jocelyn Wolfe. But if you, if you, you know, look a little more deeply, you can find some interesting interviews with little more deeply, you can find some interesting interviews with her on YouTube. You can find a really nice uh interview with her on the Cura magazine website, which is uh, uh, you know, sort of curatorial um website. There's a great interview, uh, with Hans Ulrich Obrist uh website. And just by, you know, taking the very basic effort to look around, you can come across lots of information where you really understand what she's about, and you can, of course, see plenty of examples of her painting where these themes, these ideas, are sort of fully executed and obvious.

Jeppe Curth: 32:37

Great, nick. Well, I think we covered most anything we forgot, no, I don't think so.

Nicholas Robinson: 32:44

I think that her work is, you know, I mean we I can sit here and answer sort of questions all day but it's the kind of thing that it's the kind of painting that is so visceral and so raw that you really just have to look at a couple of them, and they're so communicative that it's very easy to sort of kind of instinctively feel where they're coming from, just from the most sort of cursory observation of them. So I urge people just to do that and then you know, they will see that. You know, this is a very rare kind of painting that very much comes from this, this, this trajectory of Munch, uh, that I mentioned earlier, um, where she's really sort of channeling this very raw psychological power and and absolutely distilling it and communicating it as economically and powerfully as as it's possible to do in a painting.

Jeppe Curth: 33:36

Thank you, Nick. Well, I guess that is all for this time. I just wanted to once again say thank you, Nick.

Nicholas Robinson: 33:43

Thank you so?

Jeppe Curth: 33:43

much For letting me pick your brain. Yeah good and thank you to all our listeners. I think this will be the last episode for this year.

Nicholas Robinson: 33:53

Yes.

Jeppe Curth: 33:54

I guess it will, yeah, so all that remains is for me to wish you all a happy holidays, and I hope you all get a nice break and enjoy the end of the season, and we are looking forward to having you back with us early next year bye.