Jeppe Curth: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge for Nordic Art Partners. In today's episode, we'll explore the career of Linda Benglis, a groundbreaking American sculptor known for her radical experimentation with materials and form. Joining me, as always, is our art expert, Nicholas Robinson, and I'm your host, Jeppe Curth. Let's get started.

Nicholas Robinson: 0:20

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: 1:25

Hi Nick.

Nicholas Robinson: 1:26

Hi Jeppe, how are you doing? Very well.

Jeppe Curth: 1:29

How are you today? I'm good, thank you, because today we're going to talk about Linda Benglis. Yes, we are the great Linda Benglis. Yes, indeed. So, as usual, can you give us a bit of background on her early days and how old she is and where she's from?

Nicholas Robinson: 1:47

Of course, certainly. She was born in 1941 in Lake Charles in Louisiana, making her 84 years old. Her father, I believe, was in business and she had a pretty comfortable middle class childhood, from what I can understand. But key to her childhood was her, or one of the keys to her childhood, or her formative years, was her relationship with her grandmother. Her family is of Greek extraction and her grandmother was widowed at a young age. Inheriting property which enabled her as a not a super young child, but maybe as a young teenager, enabled her to travel in Greece with her, which became very important for her to experience another culture, and she was also exposed to the classical antiquity all around traveling amongst the islands. So this is something that she remembers as a very sort of formative influence on her understanding of the world.

Nicholas Robinson: 2:51

She studied at McNeice State University in her hometown of Lake Charles and then went to do a BFA in 1964 at Tulane where she studied ceramics and painting, and her attitude towards painting was very typical of artists of the day in that they were very inspired, influenced by the dominant idiom of the post-war period, that being abstract expressionist painting. So she very much admired this style of an older generation of artists, but she was also very curious how she could not only adopt this but adapt it to develop it or push it in further directions. So, following her graduation in 1964, she spent a short time teaching young children. She spent a short time teaching young children and thereafter she moved to New York where she very quickly met many of the leading artists of the day, which would have been a very diverse and influential, powerful group of artists, numbering among them Warhol, judd Sol, lewitt, eva Hess, barnett, newman, all of whom she developed various relationships with. Also, there are some interesting anecdotes about her very opinionated attitude towards work by Dan Flavin, robert Ryman.

Nicholas Robinson: 4:26

So she's already, even as a young artist, moving to New York for the first time. She is fearlessly embracing the artists that formed the avant-garde community there. Uh, as a young, uh sort of professional person or or whatever, trying to make her way in the world, she, she actually took a job as an assistant at the Bicut gallery, working for Klaus Curtis. Um, we've covered the importance of his gallery in another, in another episode where we were discussing the career of Joan Snyder. In fact, um, subsequently, she I'm not sure if she worked at the Paula Cooper gallery or she had her first, um sort of representational relationship with them. But this was also a important step for her to be involved with this, which at this time was a sort of nascent gallery as well. So that's her early biography, I guess you could say.

Jeppe Curth: 5:16

Okay, Thank you, Nick. So tell us about her work. What makes it distinctive and how did she achieve this? Maybe her first breakthrough and recognition.

Nicholas Robinson: 5:27

Well, she. So we've given a little background about the various artists of this period. You have all of these, you know, slightly competing aesthetics, this sort of splintering of expression going in various directions. You've got, you know, you've still got this sort of powerful abstract expressionist trajectory that flows through painting. You've got pop art, which, of course, began at the beginning of the 1960s, and then you have various sort of minimalist trends as well, as epitomized mostly by Donald Judd, carl Andre, sol LeWitt, dan Flavin as well, of course, and also a man that she was in a relationship with, robert Morris.

Nicholas Robinson: 6:21

So she began her career in the midst of this post-minimal generation. Um, some of the work was of this generation was much more focused on, um, very sort of high-minded ideas, uh, conceptual ideas about what an artwork could be and should be, and some of it was much more rooted in, uh, the materiality and the process and the physicality. So she was focused on on sculpture, but she was focused on sculpture, uh, essentially with the attitude of a painter. Um, she actually considered herself a painter, uh, interested in painterly materials and where this idea of the gesture could take her. Um, and what she did is that she very clearly, as a pioneer, in this way she conflated both painting and sculpture, um, so that the examples of painting and the techniques and methodologies and even sort of the materials of painting were expanded into three dimensions and then sort of frozen in space. So it was a way of freezing the gesture, if you like.

Nicholas Robinson: 7:32

And common to all of her bodies of work is a purely abstract form, many of which are very typically inspired by natural or organic matter. Sometimes they have a very biomorphic feeling, but there's always a sense of movement in them, a sense of movement being arrested, a lot of sinuous forms that are frozen in their moment of creation. And then the other thing that she became very sort of noted for was an experimentation with materials. She was always very driven by a highly innovative approach to both the technical and the all kinds of materials not very commonly associated with fine art media, such as beeswax, latex, polyurethane, and then surface materials that were not really associated with fine art at all Glitter, sparkles, luminous paint which were often used to sort of, I suppose, add a certain decoration to the forms that she had created.

Jeppe Curth: 8:52

Okay, nick. So she came to prominence in the 1960s among a generation of artists who took various examples from abstract expressionism and minimalism. And try to develop this language right.

Nicholas Robinson: 9:06

Yes, absolutely. She definitely was absorbing all of these examples and kind of tried to encompass many different ways of considering them in her bodies of work. I mean, the first body of work she first became noted for was was very much developing this, this theme of the gesture. Um, and one of the things that she's gone on to do in in many of her bodies of work is is is kind of record the behavior of a fluid substance in action, or some kind of motion in action that is then frozen and arrested in a final form. She, alongside peers of hers like Eva Hess or Richard Serra, she's very key in that she allowed, often she allowed the process of making to dictate the shape of the finished works, the shape of the finished works, so this kind of wielding of a pliable or malleable matter that she describes as a material that can and will take its own form. So the first notable body of work that she made was in the late 1960s and it's the first time that she's used one of these sort of signature, viscous materials. She made a number of reliefs, often in a kind of a long totemic form mounted on the wall, and these are basically a sort of a masonite board as a means of support, with layers of molten beeswax with various sort of pigments embedded within them, layered on top, and this combination of materials would sort of harden into various ridges and furrows and make a kind of a topography of surface in a spectrum of largely pastel hues, after having shaped this surface with a blowtorch. So of course it's an unconventional approach. Also, you know, replacing a paintbrush essentially with an industrial tool. So you get these skin like layers of material which have a very kind of, you know, a very, very dramatic surface, especially when you see all the kind of colours marbling and melting together. And this was a precursor to the body of work that I suppose most quickly and emphatically made her reputation. And this is, this was a group of works called. This was a group of works called, or maybe subsequently coined, as the Pores and as a young artist in the turn of the 60s to the 70s, this really was the floor.

Nicholas Robinson: 12:13

You know, this is a very sort of performative thing as well, of course. But what she's doing is she is, you know, she's taking work off the stretcher. She's taking work off the stretcher, she's taking work off the wall, she's taking away the paintbrush, the palette knife. You know this is the material, is also the subject, and it's then poured directly onto the floor where it basically flows together with the other colored puddles that she has previously poured, with the other colored puddles that she has previously poured, and then they're moving and then just sort of freezing in form together when the motion stops. So this is, you know, a very particular attitude. You know, and key to this idea is that, again, the process of making dictates the shape of the completed work. The shape is something that happens when the motion stops and then the matter has hardened into its final form. But she should still consider this the act of a painter, even though it's now existing in three dimensions, she stated about this work. She said I wasn't breaking away from painting, but trying to redefine what it was. If you wish to look up a couple of examples, there's a work called Blatt at the Whitney, or Contraband at the MoMA, and both of these are very typical examples, both of which consist of sort of day glow swirls of frozen polyurethane, retaining a look of barely arrested motion, with all the colors swirled and gelled together into a kind of, you know, psychedelic blob on the floor.

Nicholas Robinson: 13:56

Now, this was, you know, a significant breakthrough that garnered her a lot of critical attention and made her reputation, and subsequent to this she wanted to try and explore what she could further do with this idea. So she started building up these kind of armatures with chicken wire. She would bend and shape the chicken wire into a shape, often in a right angle, in a corner, where two walls would meet, and then she would take the same kind of viscous polyurethane and she would pour it onto this frame so it would drip down and it would start to thicken and freeze, and then she would take other colors which she would then pour over the top. So you have this layering of matter and these blob-like forms that would evolve from the action, and then it would set in the various strata that these different colored latexes were applied. So that was a very key development too. That also developed the, the, the sort of very specific methodology of making that she was becoming known for, um, and thereafter she has experimented with lots of other kinds of materials. This, this notion of using the wire mesh, has become key to her practice.

Nicholas Robinson: 15:20

Now since mid seventies so for 50 years now she has shaped and pinched and pleated Um. Sometimes she has made these sort of silvered kind of uh strips or coils that that are then twisted and knotted. Um, some of these were covered in um cotton or handmade paper is another material that she's used. Plaster is another thing that she's used, and all of these works have various expressions of folding, pinching, pleating, pulling, knotting, and all of which show various sort of physical interventions frozen in the final form of the artwork.

Nicholas Robinson: 16:05

Throughout the 70s, many of these works were painted in different ways. Um, she was quite interested in the idea of creating a, a sort of a seductive finish to the surface, but also in this idea of a sort of a high low attitude, um, very high, high minded idea about form and the creation of form, and then and then a very lowbrow attitude towards the decoration of the surface, the, this sort of even kitsch um, whereby this sort of the pure abstraction of of the form is marred with these rather jarring materials like the sparkle and the glitter and the rather um dissonant colors that are, then that are painted on the surface thank you, nick.

Jeppe Curth: 16:49

Um, it seems that her visual language is a very physical one, based on movement, as you also just explained. Um, this was always a very male or even macho uh idea about making um, ever since I, I guess, the abstract expressionists. So how did this approach to making works fit into the feminist ideas of the early 1970s?

Nicholas Robinson: 17:16

Well, I think she was. You know, she's considered a key feminist artist of the period and we've talked about some of her peers in some other episodes and I think that in two key ways she has really explored the role of a woman artist in the context of the kinds of art that people make, but also in the context of the very specific dynamics of the art world that have been prevalent for a long time. So not only, not only does the some of the materiality that we've talked about have connotations of low, low brow, even sort of feminine craft projects. The one thing that has has very stridently um asserted her, her attitude in this, in this sort of um topic, were were her, her photography and video works, um, so she, she, she. So she deals a lot with her interest in gendered stereotypes. In some of her videos from the early 70s there's a work called Female Sensibility and another one called Now, and these play very freely with the idea of instruction, submission and various ideas about the role of the woman or the woman artist, which of course, as we've mentioned, is at the height now of this feminist movement. But more provocative than these videos were her photographic works.

Nicholas Robinson: 18:41

She made some incredible still photographs, black and white photographs that have become almost the biggest part of her, her legend, if you will, and, and, and. The first of these that I guess, uh or not the first, but the first truly noteworthy one, um was an image that she staged of herself, um, as a, as a sort of a you know, I don't know if there's an, a sort of a rock star attitude, a movie star attitude, but it's her wearing very masculine clothes, short hair, sort of slicked back, wearing, you know, aviator shades and leaning up against a Porsche. So there's a very specific attitude, and these are images that she would use, incidentally, for um gallery announcements. So, rather than having images of her work, she would instead have an image of her where her, her kind of attitudinal posture was part of the way that she, uh, promoted herself or asserted herself. But the, but, the, the, the, the main one of these images, that that, that that she made, that she's become extreme, that she became extremely famous for and has subsequently become very tired of talking about. She called these images, incidentally, she called them sexual mockeries, and the basic premise of them was to satirize this sort of art star system, the way and the way artists, you know, use themselves and their persona to sell their work. So so I guess there's a certain even, I guess it's something that that today we would be conscious of, um, as as, as uh, an idea around branding. But, of course, this kind of way of of presenting oneself for the purposes of controlling the way one is perceived is is not a new idea.

Nicholas Robinson: 20:32

So this, this, to return to this, this sort of seminal photograph that she made in in in 1974, she took a self-portrait of herself naked, holding a dildo against her own crotch as if it were her own penis, wearing the same type of aviator sunglasses. So she is, you know, I mean, she's like, standing very, like, assertively very, you know, I mean, like a porn star, essentially. And so, you know, there was a big, a big sort of controversy about this, understandably, but, but but what I think people don't know is't know is that they just, you know, they look at the image in isolation and they don't know what it was made for. This originally was an image that she made of herself in order to accompany either an interview or a review in Artforum about her work, which, of course, the work itself would have looked very different to this portrait of her. But the editor of the magazine at this time was extremely resistant to publishing this photograph. He he found it, you know, not relevant to the work itself. He found it to be kind of combative and uh and too, too, too racy and controversial. So what she did instead, in order to basically guarantee that this image was published and disseminated, she actually paid for it to be used as an advertisement in the same magazine. So she was very clear that there was no way that this image would get buried and that she would find a way, a determined way, to ensure that it was shown publicly.

Nicholas Robinson: 22:12

So this of course is is, you know, an idea of her as a, as a personality, um, and and and and you know, of course it has a certain kind of mythology about her confidence, about her posturing, um, and this is also part of what has fed into the. You know the idea of her as a, as a tremendously fearless and progressive figure. But you know, there's actually another, another um kind of interesting thing, that that that took place in in the early days of her working life, that also speaks to this idea of that took place in the early days of her working life. That also speaks to this idea of you know, her relationship to the gender politics of the art world, um, her consciousness of you know how an artist is depicted and and how a male, life magazine, which sought to capture her in mid-paw, you know, lunging forward as she slings the pigmented latex straight from the can.

Nicholas Robinson: 23:22

And this footage is very interesting because the use of gravity in her body, in this action, it very strongly invoked, uh, the process of Jackson Pollock, and this uh is, is, is not just a um, a, a kind of um, a relational thing in terms of the method of making.

Nicholas Robinson: 23:43

It's also a relational thing in terms of the fact that this process was recorded in this way, because one of the one of the key things in the mythology of Jackson Pollock was the fact that in 1970, pollock was filmed doing his famed drip drip painting technique by a photographer called Hans Namuth.

Nicholas Robinson: 24:04

And what Namuth did was he actually laid down a piece of glass and he filmed underneath the glass so that you could see the glass functioning in lieu of the canvas that he would normally paint on, and Pollock would stand above and would flick and drip and pour the paint as if he were, you know, setting about making a painting. But because the camera was underneath the glass, it actually was able to observe this evolution of a painting, um, in action. And this is, you know, this is a a sort of a historic moment in, in, in, in media, in, in the art world, um, and this is a thing that influenced, you know, process-based artists, because they could see very clearly, witness very clearly, how a figure like Pollock was going about using his materials. But I think that the biggest lesson for Benglis was the fact that, you know, she was able to emulate the very kind of swaggering attitude that very clearly comes across in the Pollock films.

Jeppe Curth: 25:18

Okay, Nick, let's talk a bit about her market. What kind of career has she enjoyed? It seems that she has been very well regarded for most of her career.

Nicholas Robinson: 25:30

She is a very significant figure and at no point in her career as an artist has she been without attention or without the ability to exhibit or expose her work. She, you know, she, made various evolutions of her ideas around sculpture and painting throughout the 70s and 80s. In fact, there's a body of work that we have not talked about yet. At the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, she started making works that were related to the folded the, the folded works, um from the mid seventies, Um, but these started to. They also related to the, the, the, the sort of built up um, totemic polyurethane works. These also were built up with chicken wire and she would fold and pinch and pleat these, also knotting them, and then, and then she would, you know, pull the forms in in various directions. So there was this sort of sense of uh energy that was contained, uh, in the middle of the work. And then there was this kind of sense of energy, uh, radiating out in in various directions. Um, she, she actually just described them by saying a knot can be an implosion or the beginning of an explosion of energy. And these, these metallic works, she would sometimes that they have, they had plaster on them, um, but she also uh utilized the kind of vaporized metallic spray where she would make the form in chicken wire and then she would spray so that this paint or this, this, this metallic substance, this liquid metallic substance, would then coat the armature that she had formed and then so you would have a. You would have a surface um without the holes, and then it would be sort of a little polished or burnished in places, just to, you know, create different um effects on the surface Um, so so, so, so. So this is a, is a body of work that she there's probably almost she's most known for today, because it's, it's a, it's a, it's a body of work that she has pursued with various variations on a theme now for a long time.

Nicholas Robinson: 27:41

But her, her career uh began with these wax works and her reputation, even institutionally already, was formed when she started making the paws. In fact, most of these paws are in institutions because a lot of them were in fact made for institutions. There's also a lot of work from the 60s and 70s coming out of this sort of post-minimal and conceptual approach to art. You have things called happenings, and of course this is also the beginning of of performance art as well. So so this was very, a very kind of voguish way to make art, the fact that it had this performative element.

Nicholas Robinson: 28:24

So she was invited by museums up and down the USA to go and perform these works for the price of the materials and the cost of a ticket. She would go and people would come and gather and she would, you know, fling the paint or the polyurethane directly from the can and form these works. So you know, people were present witnessing the works being created and then, when this motion was frozen, there was a finished artwork as a result that ultimately would be absorbed into the collection of whatever institution had paid for her expenses. But subsequent to that, she has had multiple solo shows in every year of her working life, Um. So I think even since 1969, um 55 years, she has, um, she has exhibited somewhere in the world, um, with a solo show of her exhibition. And if you look at her list of institutional collectors or the museums in which her work is part of a permanent collection, I mean the list is in the hundreds. I mean there's literally no museum of repute anywhere in the world that does not have work by Linda Benglis.

Jeppe Curth: 29:43

Thanks, Nick. So let's focus a little bit about the primary market. Which galleries are representing Linda and what is her prices?

Nicholas Robinson: 29:53

Well, her prices vary because there's still quite a variety in scale and materiality around her work. So there's a show not too many years ago at Hufkins in Brussels, uh, huffman's in in in Brussels. Now there were some of these uh, chicken wire armature works with a sort of a handmade paper draped around the frame, around the form, and painted, and there was also monumental bronze works which are very typical of works that she's exhibited um in the recent past with pace gallery. Now, the uh, the prices for the paperworks they're not super expensive, but the prices for the very big bronzes, I mean, are in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars because these are, you know, massive, expensively produced, lost wax bronze casts that are, you know, very large and unwieldy and monumental in form Um. So of course she's able to sort of leverage her market and reputational potency in order to be able to make these very ambitious grand uh gestures, uh in sculptural form Um. But she has.

Nicholas Robinson: 31:03

She has shown since the early 1970s with Paula Cooper um uh, a gallery with whom she has a long standing and I think I'm correct in saying pretty much uninterrupted relationship.

Nicholas Robinson: 31:18

But she, you know, she was, I mean, I'm sure that she's been successful by pretty much any reasonable metric for the most of her working life, but, but, but I think for a long time she wasn't really a, you know, considered a star Um, but this began to change, perhaps 20 years ago, maybe she started showing um with Chime and Read, which was a very powerful gallery at the time.

Nicholas Robinson: 31:43

Also, in terms of reviving interest, uh, in important historical figures that perhaps were a little bit underrated. They showed the work of, uh, louise Bourgeois, they showed the work of Louise Fishman, um, and, you know, really committed that, joan Mitchell. So they showed they committed to the work of really great women artists who had perhaps not been quite so well regarded as their work had deserved for them to be. So Chyman Reed did a great job and there was a director, a partner of Chyman Reed, adam Sheffer is his name. He left excuse me, he leftim and reed and went to work at pace and he took linda with him. He was the, the chairman of the art dealers association for some years. So he was a prominent figure in the industry in new york and she's been able to to to really have the attention of powerful market making figures in the industry, who, who, you know, who really got got behind her work.

Jeppe Curth: 32:47

Thank you, nick. Okay, so she's represented by Pace, one of the four maker galleries in the world Are there? You mentioned Paula Cooper. You mentioned Hufkins. Is there any other galleries? Because it's still a very growing market, right?

Nicholas Robinson: 33:01

Yes, I mean there are other other smaller galleries around the world that she has a relationship with. I I confess I don't know what they all are. I know that she shows works with um uh thomas brambia in italy. I know that she shows works with uh morton alskarl here in copenhagen, um and and I'm sure that there are probably many other places in paris, zurich or Berlin or wherever that have arranged to have exhibitions of her work, if not to represent her per se.

Jeppe Curth: 33:33

Okay, thanks, Nick. Let's talk about her secondary market. Her auction record was in 2022, a bit over a million dollars for work, yeah a million and 71, I think. Correct bit over a million dollars for work. Yeah, a million and 71, I think. Uh, correct, yeah, um, what can you tell?

Nicholas Robinson: 33:51

us about her secondary market and how has it evolved? Well, it's, it's interesting, her secondary market, and, of course, this is the, always the barometer for significant um, historic artists to understand the, their market profile and the. You know the, the, the various circumstances in context that that make them an exciting and a good idea, um, to acquire works by from a, you know, from a, from an acquisition perspective. I mean, the works are amazing, they're spectacular, but of course, as we've spoken about at length, when, when we buy things, we, we, we do so not only because we, you know, feel the incredible potency of the work, passion, we're very passionate about it, but we also, we also like to exercise, you know, a very rational brain as well, um, but you know, we can't buy everything. So we like to make smart choices, but the, but the work that you cite is one of these metallic pleated works from the eighties, and these are the works that characteristically always achieve the highest prices. So that was a million and 70. And then the next price after that was in the 800s 850, I think, and then a 600 and change, and then quite a number in the four to 500, in the half half million dollar range. So, so, so almost all of the top prices are for these types of works, which, of course, shows us that this is the most desirable category of her work for collectors. It's the one that you see in important historic surveys, it's the one you see in all the, the type you see in all the promotional materials for important museum exhibitions, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, so, so, if, if, if we, if we look solely at the data, we can see that the top 20 results for her at auction are all achieved in the last five years, even with the majority of those top 20 results happening since 2023.

Nicholas Robinson: 35:59

So in 2010, the highest price was 167,000. That was the record price for Benglis in 2010. And in 2020, which, of course, a decade later and only five years ago, highest price for her work at auction and this, of course, is not taking into consideration sales that have been conducted privately, where we are not privy to the prices achieved but the highest price in 2020 was 212,000. So that's not a huge difference. Over a decade 167K to 212K Um. And from 2010 to 2021, and from 2010 to 2021, the highest price was still only 245,000. So in the last four years, the record price has gone from 245,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Nicholas Robinson: 37:07

So that, of course, shows us that her market, in this sense and specifically for these kinds of works, has momentum. Now what we usually extrapolate from that is you know, if the opportunity to buy something from this body of work for a good price would arise, then that would be, you know, generally speaking, a no-brainer type thing to do. But if you see, you know top examples of other bodies of work that she has performed especially or created especially from other historic bodies of work, be it the earlier totemic works, beeswax works, the folded works, the knotted works, anything from those body of works would be because these are also lesser priced than this, you know, than the metallic works that I've mentioned. So yeah, she has a very dramatically changing secondary market. That has accelerated in the last, well, in the last two years especially, but we can also say over the last four to five years.

Jeppe Curth: 38:03

Even though it's works that are quite expensive for most of us, and we have been buying and recommending linda bingley's for quite some time now could you maybe put some words on why we still believe it's a bit underappreciated by the market, why we still believe there's a case there to be made?

Nicholas Robinson: 38:19

well, I think, I think, when you've been looking at and buying art for a long time, you, you, you know, you, you have an instinct for you know names that are talked about that are, you know, they're not just in the history books, their, their names are, are the headings of chapters in history books. And I think, I think Linda Benglis, in this kind of pivot from painting to sculpture and this pivot from minimalism to to sort of post minimalist conceptual work and performance work, this kind of hybridity between painting and sculpture, I mean she, she is, her, her, you know incredible sensitivity and satirization of gender politics, categorization of gender politics, I mean she, she really just ticks every conceivable box for somebody who's like alertness and prescience and sort of agility as a thinker and a maker is is very striking. You know she, she's, she has broad and deep appeal. Her works are beautiful. So you know they're, they're often, often, you know, often, with interesting historic artists, if the work that they make is very, you know, it's very weird, or it's very aesthetically challenging or it's very unwieldy and difficult to accommodate, then obviously you can have challenges in, you know, in people wanting to acquire those things. That's not the case for for benglis's sculptures. They are exquisite objects that you know can, can be readily put into any, any environment to enjoy.

Nicholas Robinson: 39:52

So this, this sort of broad and deep appeal is, is key. She, you know, has the momentum, the market momentum that we've spoken about. Um, she's, you know, she's a she's a trailblazer and a torchbearer, but she has, you know, an important legacy of both practice and process and gender politics. Um, so she's inserted herself powerfully into all of these dialogues.

Nicholas Robinson: 40:26

Art forum ad that I referenced, has been key to this, which, incidentally, the New York Times I think in 2019, cited as one of the 25 works of art that has defined the contemporary age. Now, if you think about all the artists and all the artworks that have been made, yes, this article had to be written by someone with their own subjective opinion, but that's a significant accolade, considering it as one of the 25 works of art that has defined the contemporary era. So, so, so, so. So I think of Benglis as, as still, as a sort of a sleeper, because to me she's an art history star and perhaps the market hasn't quite yet recognized it, but, but, but. What's more intriguing to me is that is that an artist is able to be simultaneously an art history star and yet also still somehow a real cult figure and a real artist's artist as well.

Jeppe Curth: 41:13

You are listening to the Collector's Edge, brought to you by Nordic Art Partners. As professional art dealers and advisors, we help our clients build meaningful, valuable collections through experience, insight, knowledge and access with confidence. Whether you are looking to build a valuable in a collection, seek expert guidance or establish art as a diversified assets, we are here. To help. To learn more, you can go to our website nordicaartpartnerscom. So here in the end, nick, for a collector new to Linda Benley's works, what should they look for when considering an acquisition? Where should they look for to get more information?

Nicholas Robinson: 42:00

Well, I think I mean, there's no harm to looking and learning. I would advocate that anyone do that for any artists they're interested in. And it's not difficult to find information on Linda Benglis's work. One only has to jump online and you can find great information about her work on important museum websites like MoMA's website. Pace Gallery of a has a great website, as you would expect. Hufkins Um, but also there's some very interesting uh interviews with her that you can find online. You can put her name into YouTube and you can hear her talk about her work and her experiences in her own words, um, and then you know. Then, of course, and her experiences in her own words, and then you know. Then, of course, you know, it's not that difficult to look into. You know, acquiring work. I mean, there's an easy way to search for things.

Jeppe Curth: 42:58

Yeah, that's it Good, thank you. Anything else to add here in the end?

Nicholas Robinson: 43:04

No, I don't think so. I mean, I think we've pretty much covered all there is to cover, certainly for the purposes of what we're here to talk about. So yeah, thank you for today.

Jeppe Curth: 43:17

Yeah, thank you very much. That was it for this episode of the Collector's Edge. If you are looking for expert insights, what to make informed decision and would like advice from independent advisors, send us an email or maybe just call us. You can find all the info on our website, nordicartpartnerscom. Thank you for listening and we hope to have you back for another episode. Bye.