Jeppe Curth: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge for Nordic Art Partners. In today's episode, we will explore the career and market of Joseph Albers, one of the most influenced abstract artists and color theorists of the 20th century. Joining me, as always, is our art expert, nicolas Robinson, and I'm your host, Jeppe Curth. Let's get started. It is with Alex Rotter at 400 million Selling here at Christie's.

Nichlas Robinson: 0:24

$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: 1:26

Hi Nick.

Nichlas Robinson: 1:27

Good morning.

Jeppe Curth: 1:29

Good morning. How are you doing Very well, thank you. How are you today? I'm good. I'm good and especially because we're going to talk about Joseph Albers.

Nichlas Robinson: 1:37

Yes, we have a lot to get through. He's obviously a towering figure.

Jeppe Curth: 1:41

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, nick, normally we usually talk about artists who are either rising or rediscovering, but Josef Albers is different. He feels different, right? Um? He's already in every museum, he's in every art history book, so why are we using our time and talking about him today?

Nichlas Robinson: 2:01

well, I think it's possible for an artist to have all of these credentials and yet somehow still be underrated, and we are going to talk about just why we think that that is the case. There's a lot of different kinds of works that he made and lots of different kinds of opportunities that it presents for people who are interested in collecting one of the unquestionably most significant figures in the history of modernism and 20th century art.

Jeppe Curth: 2:32

Yes, good, and also you probably need some deep pockets this time to get at Josep Albert. But let's get back to that. Well, we'll find out. Yeah, exactly as always. Let's start, how we usually do, by go backwards and and talk a little bit about his background?

Nichlas Robinson: 2:49

uh, certainly we can do that. Um, where to begin really? Uh, his entire uh had a very long life, um, spanning the bulk of the the 20th century, and I think you know we can. First of all, let's just sort of summarize him and what he's known for, I guess, is maybe a good place to start. The reason why we're talking about him today is that is that I think myself and many other people would consider him and his work to be the most significant bridge between European and American modernism In the 20th century. There was a sort of a leap, if you will, taking place in the post-war period, where New York assumed sort of primacy, taking over from Paris, which had been the sort of undisputed center of modern art practice, progressive art practice in the earlier part of the 20th century. And Albers is a very important figure who has a seminal role in sort of both of these environments. So that's the first thing and what he's known for. Well, he's known for spending really an entire career very focused into his sort of investigations into the perceptual properties of color. So it's a very narrow and disciplined approach that he has taken towards his view of art, his ideas about art, but we'll come on to that more in a bit.

Nichlas Robinson: 4:29

Um, so to begin, uh, we can rewind back to the very beginning. Uh, he was born in in 1888 in Prussia. Um, his, uh, his father was a general contractor and and very proficient in all manner of handiwork, uh things necessary to build, build uh, carpentry, plumbing. So when albus was was a very young boy and a young man, his father was very, um influential in that he trained joseph the young joseph in various materials and techniques, teaching him about their properties, how to use them, manipulate them. So a very, very important practical foundation that Albers always was to fall back on.

Nichlas Robinson: 5:19

From 1908 until 1913, he worked as a school teacher. 1908 until 1913, he worked as a school teacher. Initially he was teaching young children as a generalist. But he had a very kind of important sort of seismic event in his life, if you like. In 1908, he saw two paintings by Cézanne at the Volkwang Museum in Essen, and this was his first experience of really visiting art, but also, more notably, of being very viscerally moved by it, and he was always to recall this experience as one that really made him feel that somehow his life had changed forever with this experience.

Nichlas Robinson: 6:01

So at the end of this sort of mini period. In 1913, he gained a teaching qualification as an art teacher, and this is when he actually begins to start making art for the first time. In 1919, he enrolled in the Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and interestingly and this is a little bit why I refer to him as as has sort of spanning an entire century, because in Munich he was taught by Franz von Stuck. Now von Stuck was a leading figure in German art at the end of the 19th century and his style was very strongly associated with the sort of late romanticism and symbolism of that time. And he, as a teacher, was also to count Paul Klee and Vasily Kandinsky among his students. So this was Albers' first introduction to being taught art at a high level.

Jeppe Curth: 7:03

So Albers is now a teacher, and this will become a key part of his identity for many years to come.

Nichlas Robinson: 7:11

Well, yes, I mean, his entire life was spent as a teacher, as an educator, and the role he played in that part of his life is, of course, inseparable from the role he played developing his own work. His teaching was a sort of a vehicle for him to develop and evolve his theories, and then, of course, his own work was the means by which he performed these theories in a practical sense, performed these theories in a practical sense. So in 1920, this is a very key phase now for Albers in 1920, he joined the Weimar Bauhaus as a student. Now the Bauhaus had been founded one year previously by Walter Kropius, architect uh, a leading modernist architect, one of the very first architects practicing what we describe as the international style, also practiced by uh, most famously, le Corbusier uh in France. So he went to study at the Bauhaus um, and he was very interested in in working with glass. But there were a lot of. There was shortage of materials, there was very high inflation in Germany at the time, and so it was very difficult for him to get his hands on the kinds of things that he wanted to use to incorporate into his work. So he found himself making sort of assemblage type works from discarded materials, especially glass. He describes process whereby he's sort of breaking old bottles in order to get different colored and shaped shards that he can utilize to incorporate into his work. He also innovated a process of painting on glass that involved sandblasting. But such was his sort of innovative um kind of contribution to life in the Bauhaus that that he was invited to become a faculty member in 1922.

Nichlas Robinson: 9:15

Um, another key thing happened to him in 1922. He met his future wife, in fact, um, who was, whose name was shortened to Annie, but her name was annelise, annelise fleischman, uh, the daughter of a of a well-to-do furniture manufacturer. Um, she was actually initially turned down uh for entry, uh into the bauhaus, but joseph, her sort of helped her um sort of rework and prepare her, her approach, approach to the admission tests, and eventually she was admitted and she then went to conduct her studies in the weaving workshop. She would actually subsequently also come to direct the weaving workshop. So in due course she also followed the same path as Albus, her husband Joseph, whereby they began life as students and they were so sort of inextricably intertwined with the life of this place, this institution, that they also came to work there.

Nichlas Robinson: 10:17

In 1923, albus was invited by Korpius to teach the forecourse or the preliminary course, and this is an important sort of foundation course and the duties of which he shared with another incredibly important artist, laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Now some people mistakenly think of Albers as being one of the, as being a teaching uh, a sort of a painting teacher, but that's actually not the case. The painting masters at the bauhaus were kandinsky and clay. If you recall his um sort of erstwhile um. Other students from uh, the franz von, stuck years um, but these guys were teaching the painting course and Albers was teaching various other things. He, he, he taught design, he, he, he was involved in uh in in glass. He was involved in uh. He even designed um a chair, uh designed some type faces, so it was very much involved in graphic design sort of informal education under the tutelage of his father was very instrumental in his um very sort of practical approach to all of these different disciplines In uh.

Nichlas Robinson: 11:52

1925 was a was a key year uh in the Bauhaus. That is when the school moved into their uh buildings, the famous buildings designed by Korpiusius, moving from Weimar to Dessau. And in 1925, when this move took place, he was promoted to professor. He married Annie and the two of them lived in one of the master's residences Annie, continuing in the weaving workshop, and Joseph involved in, like I mentioned, carpentry, metalwork, glass, graphic design, very much an early proponent of very clean and effective design whereby form would follow function. In terms of his own work at this time he designed some large scale windows for a newly built museum, also tableware, in addition to some of the other things that I've already mentioned, um. So this was a real, possibly the most, um kind of influential generation of artist educators in the entire 20th century, other than another place which we will come on to shortly, which Albus was also involved in, but the faculty at the Bauhaus at this time included Paul Klee, kandinsky, as I mentioned, oskar Schlemmer, marholinage, marcel Breuer, johannes Itten, lionel Feininger, herbert Bayer and Marianne Brandt. So this is really a sort of a brain's trust of art and design in this early modern period.

Nichlas Robinson: 13:31

But this period, sadly, was not to last. We all know, unfortunately, what happened to Germany and what started to happen to Germany at this time. Well, in 1933, the, the national socialist government, came to power and the Bauhaus was very much under threat. It was, of course, a very progressive institution and things that were progressive at this time were considered uh, degenerate um by the Nazis. So the school was actually um uh, people think that it was it was shut down by the, the Nazis. It's actually not, strictly speaking, the case. Um, it was closed voluntarily by the faculty um really born from their refusal to comply with the educational dictates, uh, the staffing rules, et cetera, of of the Nazi regime.

Nichlas Robinson: 14:24

So at this key time the Albers were now unemployed and also very much aware of the uncertainty and the problematic implications of Annie being Jewish. So this brings us to a very pivotal moment in their life. So in 1933, annie, annie um met, coincidentally, the young American architect Philip Johnson. She ran into him in Berlin Uh, they had previously met at the Bauhaus Um, but they were looking at some uh design work that the that Annie was showing him in hers and Joseph's house, and he asked her if she wanted to go to America. She talked to Joseph. She determined that, yes, they wanted to go to America, but emigration was potentially complicated at this time.

Nichlas Robinson: 15:21

But the Albers' reputation as important art theorists and also Annie's friendship with Philip Johnson were to prove instrumental. This was a sort of a key factor in their ability to transition from Europe to the United States. Also, behind the scenes there were some highly influential patrons making arrangements. Johnson himself was extremely well connected, um, and probably through him there came associations with um john d rockefeller ii and his wife and edward warburg. Uh, collectively they uh lobbied for their immigration permissions, also paying a first class steamship fare for them.

Nichlas Robinson: 16:06

But the reason that they went to America wasn't just to speculatively, you know, escape from the tumult of Europe. It was because they had a specific thing to go to and that was to be the founding professors of Black Mountain College. So Black Mountain College was founded in 1933. And it was a liberal arts college in North Carolina that was unique for its educational approach, where an emphasis on art and creativity was the core discipline for all students. And the interesting thing about Black Mountain, which I suppose is a little bit of an analogue to the Bauhaus, is that it has developed some of the most seminal and influential American artists of the 20th century, really those who shaped the entire cultural life of the second half of the century across numerous disciplines.

Nichlas Robinson: 17:11

So you had Joseph and Annie and their colleagues, the other professors, including the experimental composer John Cage, whose first musical happening took place at Black Mountain, the inventor, the architect, theorist, buckminster Fuller, who was responsible for building the first geodesic dome. He was on the faculty there. Einstein was a guest lecturer there too, and some of the other members of the faculty, either permanent or visiting the other members of the faculty either permanent or visiting Elaine and Willem de Kooning, franz Klein, aaron Siskind the leading photographer was a student initially and then a professor. Robert Motherwell, merce Cunningham he formed his dance company there, and then some of the students that Albers was responsible for teaching include some of the most notable artists from the United States, including Robert Rauschenberg, cy Twombly, ruth Asawa. So anyway, this is a little bit of an overview of of of Albers as a teacher, and I know it seems like a lot of information, but we can't really overstate how, how, how instrumental he was in in communicating, you know, his, his ideas. We're going to, we're going to come on to what those ideas consist of Um, but there's a, there's a lot of anecdotal information about his time at Black Mountain, um.

Nichlas Robinson: 18:44

He was very, you know, deeply admired and loved as a, as a, as a professor, um. His English initially was extremely limited and to begin with Annie performed uh, translating juices for him, um, but because his grasp of English was, was, was, small, um, his seminars were highly visual and he was very uh. You know he was very um, you know he was very gesticulatory and highly encouraging of students to express themselves. So a funny sort of story. Dating back to this time, his first ever statement as a teacher in English was most likely dictated by his limited grasp of the language. So he was asked what his overriding philosophy or what his, I guess, didactic approach was to the course that he would teach, and he replied very simply to open eyes. So from 33 to 49, he was a teacher at Black Mountain.

Nichlas Robinson: 19:52

But by 1949, there were various internal divisions as to the direction of the college. It was becoming a little bit riven with friction and conflict. So that prompted the Albers to leave and move to New York. And that same year, in 49, annie was the first woman and the first textile artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. So that goes to show you, even though they are teachers and educators, that goes to show you the standing that they had.

Nichlas Robinson: 20:26

And yes, this, this, this, this pod, is about Joseph Albers. But but I think that we can't, that we can't speak about one without the other. They were extremely important, symbiotically to each other, professionally and personally, and they both, you know, kind of developed alongside each other, encouraged each other, supported each other, supported each other. But in 1949, they left, and then in 1950, joseph was appointed the head of the newly formed Department of Design at Yale University. So even here he was not a painting professor but a professor in the Department of Design, and 1950 is a key year because this is the year that he begins making his homage to the square paintings.

Nichlas Robinson: 21:15

But anyway, we will return to this group of works shortly. But again, we cannot overstate his influence, even whilst at Yale there are numerous important alumni that came through the college under his tutelage, including Eva Hess, richard Anuskovich, neil Welliver a real who's who of late 20th century, important artists working in a variety of styles, but all of whom came into contact with him and were deeply touched by his approach to teaching. I'm just going to say one more thing about his teaching. Philosophy is a nice quotation that I found. He said I have not taught painting because it cannot be taught. I have taught seeing. What I taught was philosophy of form, the philosophy of lines, the philosophy of colors.

Jeppe Curth: 22:11

Thank you, nick. So you have covered his ideas about teaching art. Um, I think we should talk a little bit about making art. Um, what kind of work did he made and can you give us an overview, maybe also timeline, and even a description of his painting, maybe his key body of works?

Nichlas Robinson: 22:33

yes, of course um. So, as I alluded to at the beginning, the key, the key theme of his entire working life and teaching life was was color the way color, the way color is perceived and the way chromatic um contrasts are perceived and the way chromatic um contrasts are perceived and the way color reacts when, when um when placed adjacent to other colors, and how the colors can essentially activate each other in different ways. But his own work, um, as I've mentioned, he made his glass works at the Bauhaus. His first key works in colour were actually made out of glass. He was always very fascinated by the properties of glass, how essentially light could react with and activate the color in glass. And he made some very important gridded works whilst at the Bauhaus, whereby squares of colored glass were arranged in a grid with a sort of soldered metal frame holding these small tiles, rather like a sort of a mosaic. Almost In 1934 was when he really started to sort of paint in oil. So of course he'd been working as an artist prior to this, but he had been making a lot of um sort of object based based works. Um, he and he and he started traveling a little bit, uh, and in 34, he actually exhibited um some woodcut works in Havana um 1936, 37. Throughout the 1940s Um, he started painting on Masonite um, which was a key material for him throughout his working life, and these works, you know, show a sort of inexorable development towards the homage to the square works that we shall come on to um, showing different ways that line and color can react together in these very um sort of disciplined um compositional forms there's. There are some sort of reminiscences of other practitioners from this time, maybe ben nicholson naombo, some other artists whose work you can sort of see a little bit in his early paintings.

Nichlas Robinson: 25:20

In the late 1940s he and Annie were to travel to Mexico, which became a very significant place for them. He developed a body of works that immediately preceded the Homage to the Square works, and these are sort of colloquially known as his Adobe works. He was very interested in the architectural vernacular of Mexico, the way that the forms were constructed, the way that the forms were constructed, the fenestration of the buildings, the repetition of these forms. He actually took huge amounts of photographs of these buildings too, and he started making paintings that were a sort of reductive interpretation of these forms, always in these very sort of flat blocks of color showing the interplay of color and form. I think I read somewhere they went maybe 13 times by the late 1960s. So anyway, this is this. This Adobe series that he began in 47 on one of their journeys to Mexico was actually during a sabbatical from teaching at Black Mountain.

Nichlas Robinson: 26:41

He has a sort of quote about this which is very sort of germane to his homage series. He said all variants are built on an underlying checkerboard like structure. This provides a definite relationship of all parts and therefore a unification of form In each painting. The areas of the various colors are in most cases equal. I have deprived myself of great light contrasts. All colors remain on a medium level of intensity. There is no modulation. All color areas are flat and have definite shapes joining along the contours tightly. By that he means these sort of hard-edged blocks of color butting up against each other. So this is a range of effects, if you like, that he's started to develop that are quite limited in their scope and allow for a certain repetition. And this format excited him and he actually continued to paint these Adobe works until 1966, at which point his focus to the homage to the square took over completely.

Jeppe Curth: 27:54

Okay, thank you, nick. So homage to the square works. It seems impossible to look past these big crowning achievements. Tell us about them, and maybe also what they mean.

Nichlas Robinson: 28:06

Well, the homage to the square became his. You know his sort of defining life's work, if you will. You know his sort of defining life's work, if you will. Um, he first started making them in 1950 when he took up the teaching position at Yale. Um, and he made them until the end of his life in 1976. So this is a format, uh, that he worked on obsessively and, as I mentioned, exclusively after 1966, um, and, if you like, uh was was recognized at the time as the most sort of exhaustive, rigorous study of color in art at this time.

Nichlas Robinson: 29:01

And in 1971, this series of paintings, they were the subject, actually, of the first ever solo show devoted to a living artist at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. So, anyway, this homage to the square, what are they? Well, each is on Masonite, which is a kind of a sort of composite wooden board, and it's it's just painted on the rough side of the material. Each consists of three or four squares. Now, sometimes people say that they are squares within squares, or nested squares. So you basically have three or four squares set on top of each other but instead of being arranged centrally, every single one of these paintings is square as well. The Masonite board is square and the painted squares, the center of the painted squares, is actually moved down, so that the spaces between the squares are much sort of tighter at the bottom than they are at the top. So this gives them a kind of a little bit of a feeling of movement, so that the squares are sort of activated or the color becomes sort of animated or maybe not so static in some way. So anyway, you have three or four squares.

Nichlas Robinson: 30:36

Each of the squares is painted in a different color, and the way he painted was with a palette knife. He always used a palette knife to apply the color, and the reason he used Masonite actually is because he was sort of spreading with this knife. It was the firmness of the Masonite surface provided a better resistance for the application than a canvas would, which of course is more springy, I guess. So these panels, prior to his painting the colors, they were always covered with at least six coats of white primer. Um and Albers also changed and manipulated the lighting in the studio, um, and, and he arranged these above his work table and would sort of modify them to create different patterns of light, temperature, to try and replicate different times of day or whatever else. So then the process of painting itself.

Nichlas Robinson: 31:36

Well, as I said, he used the palette knife and he would use, uh, the oil paint that he would squeeze onto the board straight out of the tube, um, and he would then work from the center outwards, where he would. There's footage of him very meticulously using the sort of side blade of this palette knife up against these lines and then sort of slowly, sort of spreading it out, almost as if he's spreading butter on bread. He used more than 600 varieties of color in these series of paintings, and over the course of this time from 1950 to 1976, he made more than a thousand paintings. So the board was laid flat on the table, the lines were drawn, the light was modulated and then the paint was applied In a single layer, free hand, moving definitely outwards from the centre. And this actually was, I should say, a very practical way of working, and this is again something that he learned from his father. His father taught him as a youngster of working, um, and this is again something that he learned from his father Um, his father, uh, taught him as a youngster not to, um, not to carry wet paint over already painted areas in case of dripping or splashing. So he's sort of moving outwards, um, so he's not kind of bringing paint over already completed areas, um. But these, these lines that he made are from a distance they kind of appear quite perfect, um, almost machine made, but then when you look at them close up you can see that they're, you know they're, they're actually not perfect. There's a very clearly the hand of the artist in their making and they have beautiful, smooth surfaces.

Nichlas Robinson: 33:40

The other, let's see what are the other distinguishing characteristics of these paintings. He was very obsessive about it, so I guess I feel I should be very clear and accurate. Accurate about what, what properties they consist of. Each painting, or more or less each painting, actually lists the materials on the back. So there are descriptions on the back of every panel with the names of the colors that he uses. So this is a very sort of instructive, historic document, also for scholars. And so that's what they are. But what were they intending to be? What did they mean?

Nichlas Robinson: 34:27

Well, for Albus, he felt very strongly that color was the sort of defining thing in our experience of art, that art was um really defined by, by color, and and for him every color has the power to change every other color. So it was really a sort of a search to explore the limitless permutations of how color reacts and activates other colors, and how colors can change depending on which colors you put next to them. You have warmth, you have coldness, you have different emotional or spiritual evocations. He even equated color with different kinds of moralities. Um, so for him, color was very much a living, breathing thing.

Nichlas Robinson: 35:21

Um, and the thing about the arrangement, you know, the, the, the, the squares, I mean the squares, to Albers, were sort of there's a sort of paradox about them.

Nichlas Robinson: 35:35

They were essential, but they, to him, they were also somehow unimportant, because the squares was not, was not a design unto itself, but but really a vehicle to enable to see the color and to see the colors in this way adjacent to each other.

Nichlas Robinson: 35:56

So the format really enabled him to continue doing this limitlessly and forever, without ever repeating himself. So the concentric squares were really the ultimate vessel to explore his key objective, and he described it thus thus when I achieved that, I made you do creative seeing of colors, and this is my real aim, not the paintings. So this repetition, this is, this is really related to his key idea that there is no end to color. Um, the device, the compositional device, he actually described as a prison um in which he put the colors. So really the colors have nowhere to go other than um react with each other, come sort of, sometimes oscillate a little bit. His work was very influential in terms of the op art movement of the 1960s and sometimes the colors show that they maybe either sort of recede or they come forwards, depending on these relational qualities between the colors.

Jeppe Curth: 37:13

Okay, nick. So why should a collector consider adding Albert's work to their collection? I mean, of course it makes sense if one is interested in acquiring an important piece of modernist art, but these are hardly a secret, and the fact that Albert's foundation has been represented by David Schwerner for almost a decade suggests that they are probably quite expensive. Is there value here for a collector looking to buy something important that still has potential to grow?

Nichlas Robinson: 37:46

Well, I think so, and that's, of course, why we've arrived at this point, and maybe it seems like a long preamble to discuss his market, but I think that the purpose of describing his working life the way I have done is to really try at least to demonstrate that he is kind of at the epicenter of so many of the key turning points in the 20th century how modernism developed, how ideas about painting became increasingly um, reductivist, paired back Um. You know, of course, we know the term minimalism very well, but you know this, this came from um the ideas that people like Albers had, and one of the key people, stripping away, stripping away, stripping away to get to the most elemental components of painting in order for painting to somehow not only justify itself but fulfill its true purpose, true purpose. So, anyway, when we think about Albers in the market, the key thing about his, his, his market is that there are, there are lots of these um homage to the square paintings he, as I said, he made. He made more than a thousand Um, so there are always opportunities to acquire them. But the good thing about any evolving market is that, of course, they, they ultimately they do get scarcer over time as more and more disappear into collections, where they tend to to become very, very cherished. And because there's such a milestone of 20th century art, their importance is likely to be increasingly understood rather than become less respected.

Nichlas Robinson: 39:27

So my feeling about this body of work is that history will be more and more kind to it, which will tend to, of course, well, that's value in one sense, but then that tends to sort of parlay into value, uh, market value in another sense, um. So if we, if we look into the, the some of the key um sort of data points of, of his points, of his market, and actually what I should say, before I get into that, is that there are many different uh sizes of homage to the square paintings. The smallest is 16 by 16 inches um, which is uh more or less 40 or 41 square centimeters, and then the largest is 48 inches square, which is 1.22 meters square, and there's lots of different incremental sizes in between. So you know, it's obviously possible to maybe as we can look into in a moment maybe buy a smaller one representing very good value. So anyway, the overview of his market is not only that, this is a seminal art, historical thing.

Nichlas Robinson: 40:46

There are numerous opportunities to buy, often at auction. 54 examples of homage to the square paintings have been sold at auction since 2022. Um, the lowest price for which was $230,000 for an 18 by 18 inch. That's a 46 square centimeter painting.

Nichlas Robinson: 41:08

Um there's a global reach um the U S, germany, uk and Switzerland are the leading uh venues or nations for transaction volume and of course, that gives us a really good snapshot of where the key power in the art market lies. These are the four biggest or most major centers um but distributed um worldwide. Um of course, he has unimpeachable institutional validation Um he's represented in every major museum collection anywhere ever. Um and there's also a very strong foundation, the Joseph and Annie Albers foundation in Connecticut. Um are very powerful custodians of the work and, in tandem with the, the uh sort of partnership with David's Werner since 2016, they have a very uh controlled uh development of of the market.

Nichlas Robinson: 42:13

I guess another useful overview or way to sort of summarize um uh his his appeal Um. He has an 83, 3% sell through rate at auction Um and probably even some of the failures are down to a condition. So almost always sell and in recent years, over 70% of the auction results have exceeded the high estimate. So this is a very high performing thing that continues to go from strength to strength.

Jeppe Curth: 42:50

Good Thanks, Nick. Do you know how many Elvis works sales at auction every year?

Nichlas Robinson: 42:56

um, well, I I don't know you're probably going to give me a number that maybe is not reflective of only the homage of the square paintings. No, because there are also prints. Yes, there are wood blocks, there are other types of paintings and things. I mean there is a large I mean he's a he was an old man when he died and working consistently since 1920. So it was more than half a century of production.

Jeppe Curth: 43:20

But it's over 200 works. Yeah, okay, which also is quite a liquid market in terms of that. Yeah, look into it. So what kind of Elvis works would you suggest present the best opportunity for collectors?

Nichlas Robinson: 43:35

Well, I've alluded to the fact that there are different sizes 16 by 16, 18 by 18, 24 inch, 28 inch square, 30 by 30, 32, 40 by 40, 48 inch. Now, if we look at the bigger sizes, um, now, if we look at the bigger sizes, we can see that the prices are typically quite high. Anything from sort of 76 centimeters square above tends to achieve a pretty high price. Um, so the record price, just as a instructive note, the record price for a 30 by 30 inch painting is $2 million. The record price for a 32 by 32 inch painting is which is the overall record price at auction, incidentally, $3 million, 40 by 40, 2.95, and there was a 48 inch square painting sold quite some time ago for 2.2 million. I'm sure it would fetch enormously more than that today. So these are all between two and $3 million, 30 by 30 inches and above. But if we look at the record price for a 16 by 16 or an 18 by 18, the record price of these two respectively is 850K and 762K is 850K and 762K. So there's an enormous discrepancy between the prices that the smaller paintings achieve and the larger paintings achieve. And yet the actual sort of presence of these paintings is not so different and the kind of experience that they provide is not so different. So my suggestion is that there's a lot of value in the smaller size paintings and if we break that down even further, we can say that four squares are generally more desirable than three.

Nichlas Robinson: 45:27

Some of the paintings, as I mentioned, have three nested squares, some four. So four, of course, course, means one extra color and all of the sort of extra experiential qualities that you get from four colors reacting alongside each other than three. Some of them have slight variations on the simplicity of the format, where there's some uh, sort of canted corners or some extra lines, where there's a sort of a slight change in the formula, if you will. Um, uh, the simplest format is the best, where none of these sort of extra modifications have been have been implemented. Um, and then I would say tonality, and by that I mean works that uh, uh, executed in more or less the same color family, tend to have a certain sort of uh. The record painting was actually for a, um, a painting that that that consisted of very warm reds, so it had an incredible, um, sort of pulsating beauty to it. Um, similarly very, you know, golden yellows or, um, yeah, very, very rich blues. I mean all of these kinds of ones would be very, very highly prized.

Nichlas Robinson: 46:58

Some of the works have very strange dissonant color combinations and I think there's actually an interesting opportunity in these works. These are more sort of radical essays in how colors react. For example, there's some that have sort of blues and greens with a sort of strange brown or browny yellow. These are his experiments whereby, you know, the color itself might be yellow, but the presence of the yellow makes the colors alongside it look either blue or green, and so these are also have sometimes a tonality that looks very much of the period. The sort of colors you associate with, I don't know. I'm going to be very crass here and say you know, bathroom tiles from the sixties or the seventies. So so maybe they have a sort of, uh, slightly dated or vintage quality because the palette is redolent of a certain period. Now, I think these are great because you know they actually feel very much like they are of their time. Um, maybe the more expensive ones have a certain universal quality, but maybe these have a certain sort of like period document quality, um, and I think there's an opportunity in those.

Nichlas Robinson: 48:26

Anyway, if we cut to the, you know we've given a sort of overview of the record prices, but for all the formats, I'm going to go from the 16 by 16, the lowest price in the last three years 250,. 18 by 18,. Lowest price last three years 230,. 30 by 30, lowest 411,. 32 by 32, 220. Now don't forget that the 30 by 32, 32 by 32 format, the record price is $3 million, yet the lowest price in the last three years is 220K. Now, these are all. These are all things that come up at auction and maybe you know there's a bad economy or maybe there's just, you know, a simple a fact as just sort of falling through the gaps in terms of public consciousness. Maybe it's a small provincial auction house somewhere.

Nichlas Robinson: 49:17

There are opportunities, but there are also pitfalls and the things to look out for. Of course, you know the typical things that I've mentioned in terms of the qualitative aspects, artistically, but then when you have the, the same tonal family, it's important that there's a clear distinction between the squares so you see a clear reaction in the different blocks of color. A good provenance is nice. Of course, the, the, the comprehensive annotations on the back are also desirable, but a key thing is condition. Now, some of them have a problematic condition.

Nichlas Robinson: 49:59

Albers would paint these paintings and then sometimes he would varnish them because he would want to see the color before and after varnishing. That would change the way the light hit the surface. It would change the tonality of the color that was underneath the varnish. And this was not a very wise archival choice. This was a choice that he made to see them sort of in the moment, without thinking about the sort of longevity of them as objects. So then he would sometimes even paint over the top of the varnish which you get. Some of them you have really bad cracking and peeling and it's very important to ensure that that that there hasn't been a lot of restoration or that it is in, you know, a sound condition that will stay sound.

Jeppe Curth: 50:52

Okay, Nick. So just to be clear, why do we believe it's still underappreciated by the market relative to its high price and cultural importance?

Nichlas Robinson: 51:01

Well, because there are enough of them that you can still snaffle them up for inexpensive prices.

Nichlas Robinson: 51:05

I've just given you an overview of the low prices for various size formats in the last three years 250, 230, 220, but various size formats in the last three years 250, 230, 220, you know, almost irrespective of size, you can find these paintings and you know these are paintings that their sort of brethren fetch $3 million.

Nichlas Robinson: 51:26

It's not such a stretch to feel like, as his market continues to sort of grow and it's a market that, incidentally, has just grown steadily over time, over easily 20 years where, or more where, it's been firmly accepted as a, as part of this sort of pantheon of great art making of the 20th century. So you know they're not ever going to be less than that. And as everything else becomes more expensive, maybe these won't radically appreciate. But if you wish to have a very sort of solid blue chip holding, you know you could reasonably expect that if you get one of these, if you have a $200,000 painting, you'll end up with a $400,000 painting. If you get a $400,000 painting, the least you can reasonably expect is that you'll have a $600,000 painting. Maybe it will take a few years, but it's a very safe, solid, risk-averse thing to put money into and a very iconic thing to enjoy as you do so.

Jeppe Curth: 52:23

Yes, and we have also been buying, offering, advising clients with private works from Joseph Elvis that have never been on auctions.

Nichlas Robinson: 52:32

Yes, that's true, I mean they can be found, you know, and the thing too I guess is key is that the auction market and the private market also represents an opportunity relative to the works that Zwirner has, either from the foundation or works that he sources. I mean he will sell a 76 square centimetre painting, you know, for more than a million dollars. I'm 1.2, 1.4 million dollars, I mean, are some recent prices that I've seen with works by him, and I've seen similar works that have been possible to acquire on the private market for 8, 9, 950, less than a million.

Jeppe Curth: 53:14

So, you know's, it's doable so, nigga, this has been a quite a long episode, but I also think we made a deep dive into his life, which was quite important to understand how important culture he uh figure, he is. Um, any final thoughts? Anything you uh think?

Nichlas Robinson: 53:39

is um worth mentioning.

Nichlas Robinson: 53:40

Yeah, I mean you know there's. There's a lot of information about Albus. Um, they have a very nice the. The found the Albus foundation has a really nice website which gives so much information on the, which gives so much information on the um sort of adds vitality to, to, to the information, if you like, where you can see a lot of timelines and archival information in, in, in in the life of the Albers it's. It's really really beautiful Um.

Nichlas Robinson: 54:06

But the conclusion generally is is, is that? Um? Well, I guess the market narrative is that it's a. It's a very stable market. It's not a speculative market. It's highly suited to a sort of strategic holding. So it's ideal for very committed long-term collectors, people that want to see their art as a very solid repository of cash, of liquidity. Solid repository of cash, of liquidity, um, obviously something that you can put money into. That has um incredible cultural depth, um and resonance for the entire sort of history of 20th century art production. Um, and very strong financial fundamentals underpinning um the kind of commitment to these works. So it's very relevant for those who want to allocate some capital towards um, this sort of legacy modernism that will never lose its high status within the art world.

Jeppe Curth: 55:09

Um, yeah, so if anybody want to acquire, they can look at auction. They can of course write David Schwerner, they can call us as well yes, yeah, there's lots of thank you, thank you, yeah, and I guess that's all for us this time yeah, I think we've, we've done as much as we can good bye, bye, bye that was it for this episode of the Collector's Edge.

Jeppe Curth: 55:37

If you are looking for expert insights, want to make informed decisions 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 nordegardpartnerscom. Thank you for listening and we hope to have you back for another episode. Bye.