Thaddaeus Ropac

Thaddaeus Ropac has what he believes to be the only Robert Rauschenberg combine work available on the art market priced at $8.5m, the assemblage was on loan to a major German museum for many years prior to this. In addition, Ropac will bring a Georg Baselitz work, A Fractured Dog, Upwards, with an asking price of $3.5m, as well as, Robert Longo’s Death Star II priced at $1.5m. Here are Ropac’s descriptions of the works:

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is proud to present at this year’s Art Basel a rare work from Robert Rauschenberg’sradically inventive and much sought-after Combine series (1954-64), in which his compositions are a synthesis of sculpture and painting. ‘Slug’ of 1961, from this celebrated series, was previously on loan for four decades at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Germany.

Alongside new works by Georg Baselitz, a historic painting from the artist’s seminal Fracture series will feature. Ein zerrissener Hund, aufwärts [A Fractured Dog, Upwards], painted in the revolutionary year 1968, exemplifies the series that heralded the artist’s typical inversion of the motif.

Marking a rare appearance for works by Joseph Beuys at Art Basel, the artist’s early sculpture Junges Pferdchen [Young Horse](1955/86) comes directly from the artist’s estate and has only recently been exhibited for the first time as part of our London gallery’s current show Joseph Beuys: Utopia at The Stag Monuments. The wax figure of a horse in one half of an opened plaster cast was completed by Beuys shortly before his death.

From a news series of works by American artist Elizabeth Peyton, her painting Hanyu (Yuzuru Hanyu) will debut at Art Basel. Her portrait of the Japanese figure skater captures the perceptible intimacy with which she depicts individuals to whom she is particularly drawn, whether friends and acquaintances, individuals she finds interesting, or historical figures who have made a strong impression on her.

Robert Longo is represented with a powerful new work Death Star II (2017/18), his large-scale planet-like sculpture consisting of 40,000 glinting bullet-cartridge cases – the number of deaths by shooting in the USA over the last year. The statistic assumes a poignant form, addressing the crucial debate about gun violence today. With Death Star II Longo takes a position both as an artist and a citizen, pledging to give 20 per cent of the sales of this work to the movement to end gun violence Everytown for Gun Safety.

German artist Wolfgang Laib presents a site-specific installation of his work. You will go somewhere else (1997/2005). Seven enigmatic wax boat-like forms, perched on wooden battens, almost as out of reach seem to file through the space. Reflecting Laib’s temporal exploration of how the present holds the future, his vessels float in the air and invite the viewer to detach themself from earthly preoccupations and to meditate on the voyage to unknown destinations.

Artsy’s Anny Shaw has a funny piece stirring the pot on the issue of flipping. Ostensibly, the article is a follow-up to the attention Thaddaeus Ropac received in his Talking Galleries (above) presentation and discussion where he made a comment about blacklisting some buyers who were too quick to flip works. (The comments start around 42:00.) Somehow this got blown out of proportion into a call for a “new” blacklist. Ropac explains what his pressures are and admits that he doesn’t know the right answers.

Shaw responds by speaking to art advisor Todd Levin and dealer Ed Winkelman who both put the concept of flipping into a slightly different context. A select few artists with strong demand and highly controlled markets have seen their work perform extraordinarily well at auction recently. But the overall trend toward flipping new works has largely dried up.

A look at the upcoming auctions suggests the public market is moving toward ‘quality’ expressed in works by artists with lasting reputations. That doesn’t mean art collectors no longer flip. They’re just doing it privately. Which they have always done.

Here’s what Shaw got out of Winkelman and Levin:

“If you read the way that some collector-dealers work […] it does seem there is still a fair bit of what one could call ‘flipping’ happening privately,” says the New York dealer Ed Winkleman. […]

“The velocity and ferocity of flipping increased exponentially between 2010 and 2015 and created instability in the market, particularly for younger artists,” Levin says. “Many younger artists’ careers were severely damaged.” […]

“In some cases major collectors have enough power in the market so that galleries can’t afford to blacklist them—for instance, if a collector is a significant trustee at an important museum,” he says.

This is all fine and good. Winkleman points out that dealers are agents for the artists and must work in the best interests. It might take a dissertation to define what that means in terms of balancing a young artist’s financial and reputational/career interests, however. But there’s another layer to this that Shaw hints at by speaking to Stefan Simchowitz who points out that the so-called speculators are a gallery’s best customers.

What this raises is a matter that goes beyond Simchowitz. The ranks of collectors who buy and sell a great deal of art is one of the central transformations of the art market over the last 15 years. (The rest of this analysis is for AMMpro subscribers.)Continue Reading

Ropac Brings Rauschenberg Combine to Art Basel

Flipping On The Private Market Isn’t a Bug—It’s a Feature of How the Art Market Adds Value

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