Hamilton-Selway Fine Art

When Robert Rauschenberg died on May 12th, he left behind an enormous legacy of graphic work. Richard H. Axsom, who has been asked to pen the catalogue raisonne for the prints has counted nearly 1000 editions, produced over sixty years.

Notoriously difficult to buttonhole, Rauschenberg has been described by New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman as someone who “…defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.”

It was, after all Rauschenberg who famously quipped, “The second half of the 20th century is no time to start drawing on rocks,” when asked why he had abandoned traditional lithography for photography. Over the decades, Rauschenberg worked with numerous publishers (ULAE; Graphicstudio USF; Gemini and Styria Studio to name the primary ones) as well as scores of benefit prints for non-profit organizations.

Trips to other foreign climes have always inspired the artist and his discoveries were often incorporated in this prints. He spontaneously collage indigenous fabrics and local odds and ends (Rauschenberg was not above picking up debris on the street), as well as photos into his prints. Axsom remembers that Rauschenberg’s famous sculptural “Cardbird” pieces created in the 1970s and published by Gemini were the result of the artist’s move to the remote island of Captiva. He was removed from an urban setting to a pristine island and found, to his chagrin, that there was no detritus to inspire him. So he ended up using his own personal garbage - his moving boxes - to make into art!

Although exhilarating, the sifting and sleuthing for Rauschenberg prints can be daunting. The sheer magnitude of his graphic oeuvre has been a boon for collectors, who have been acquiring inexpensive prints for decades due to the ample supply. “When you think of the art historical importance of Rauschenberg, it is hard to believe his prices are so reasonable,” reports collector Ryan Van der Wielen, a Saint Louis native who has started buying the prints. But prices could be going up now that the artist has died. The question is: when, and how much?

Despite the few auctions remaining in the season after May 12th, there were indications that the market was shifting. A work incorrectly catalogued as “Untitled,” 1968 (it is actually called “Love Zone” and is from the “Reels” series) appeared in an obscure Los Angeles auction house in a design sale on June 29th, fetching a surprising $7,200 with premium, far above its estimate of $1,000-1,500. Curiously, another print from the same series entitled “Flower Re-Run” offered at the French auction house Christophe Joron-Derem on June 18th did less well, fetching only [Euro]1,700 ($2,645), well within the [Euro] 1,500-2,000 estimate. Some insiders have concluded that the price increases at this early stage may be solely an American phenomenon.

Despite such mixed signals, a recent surge of interest in one print is quite clear. “Signs,” 1970, was originally created as an illustration for a Time magazine cover that would herald the 1970s. Rauschenberg felt, however, that the 1970s was really a continuation of the 1960s and inserted images of Janis Joplin, Martin Luther King, the moon landing, and the Kennedy Assassination. The cover was rejected by the Time Magazine editors who wanted to look forward to hopefully better times than the tumultuous 60s. Leo Castelli (Rauschenberg¹s dealer at the time) stepped in and published a photosilkscreen edition of the collage.

With a large edition size of 250, the work has never shown much price movement until now. On May 2nd, just days before the artists death, the print fetched $13,750 at Sothebys. When it appeared two weeks later in the newly formed print department at Phillips de Pury (headed by former Christies print specialists Cary Leibowitz and Kelly Troester) it set a new world record at $27,400.

Continued…

Before the skulls, Hirst stated painting spots, which he purposely created as a way to brand himself. Of his spot paintings, Hirst claims, “I only painted the first five and I was like, ‘f#!* this’, I hated it. As soon as I sold one, I used the money to pay people to make them. They were better at it than me. I get bored.” One such assistant asked if she could have a spot painting when she left the workshop. Hirst said she could make one of her own, perceptively quipping, “The only difference between one painted by you and one of mine is the money.” (Hirst quoted in David Cohen, ‘Inside the factory that is making Damien Hirst the world’s richest artist’, Evening Standard, 30 August 2007)

Hirst is keenly aware of the value inherent within his signature. His spot paintings and prints are in the artist’s words, “almost like a logo of an idea of myself as an artist. Some sort of sculptural consumerist idea.” As a logo, the spots can conjure a range of associations with Hirst—namely hip, edgy, cool youth culture. Because the spots are so easily reproducible and adaptable, they are able to attach to a multitude of hosts, embedding themselves in cultural space and promoting the Hirst brand. They appear on the Tate shuttle boat, adorning a singer on “Top of the Pops”, and even a Mini.

About the only work Hirst does on his spots is name them. The colors are picked at random by his assistants and arranged in a grid pattern. The negative space equals the diameter of the spots, imposing order on the random choice of colors. The artist explains the source of inspiration for his series of spot paintings: “The aim is to set up a kind of visual humming… they represent the ultimate variety of life… and are random attempts to communicate within a rigid system.” He has also said the spots were inspired by commercial drug firm catalogues. Hirst gives these pharmaceutical names like Apotryptophanase, connecting them with one of Hirst’s most famous installations, Pharmacy. Hirst has long held an interest in medicine – his company is called Science and he opened a restaurant in Notting Hill called Pharmacy. For Hirst medicine is much like art in that it provides a belief system which is just as seductive as it is futile. In the end, we all end up dead.

It has been said that Damien Hirst is the Andy Warhol of our generation. As the celebrated bad-boy artist of our time, Hirst carries on the legacy of Warhol with sensation-seeking, factory-made work that is as much about the marketing as it is about content.

Certainly last year’s exhibition at the White Cube gallery in London, Beyond Belief caused international headlines with the sale of the artist’s most notorious work - a glittering pave diamond skull aptly titled, For the Love of God (2007) that fetched a staggering £50 million (over $100 million), the most expensive piece of art ever made! An interesting sidebar – the reported cost of making the piece (executed by London Jewelers Bently and Skinner) out of 8,500 flawless diamonds encrusted into a platinum cast of a human skull was apparently around $20 million. What makes up the difference is the premium brand name of the artist and the idea.

The idea of the juxtaposing diamonds – exemplifying permanence (”diamonds are forever”) and a skull – a traditional momento mori (“Remember that you will die”) puts a new “luxury goods spin” on the old-fashioned still life painting style called Vanitas, made popular by Baroque artists of the 16^th century! Vanitas, Latin for “emptiness” refers to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the futility of pleasure. In traditional Vanitas paintings, skulls were used along with a sumptuous arrangement of fruit and flowers and occasionally an assortment of dead game animals. Look closely and you see that some of the luscious fruits are rotting, and flies are crawling on the table.

When we recall an early work of Hirst that initially brought him to the attention of the public and power collector Charles Saatchi – a dead shark floating in a tank of formaldehyde (now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) – it is apparent that Hirst has been brilliant in finding a strategy of reinvigorating thread-bare ideas of art-making (with a dash of irony) for some time. But not only does Hirst reinvent old ideas - like Warhol, he replicates them, creating a signature or “brand.”

Hirst’s latest “branded” idea – diamond skull silkscreens – recall Warhol’s diamond dust shoe paintings and prints as well as Warhol’s skulls. Warhol’s shoe becomes Hirst’s skull, floating across a celestial void of sparkling black background. Hirst’s diamond skull silkscreens, in editions of 250, were selling at a fast clip at the Miami-Basel art fair for £10,000 ($20,000) each!

Hirst is laughing all the way to the bank. A few years ago, he starting buying up fake Picasso prints on ebay and signing them, thus making them into real Hirsts with monetary value just by virtue of his signature. A parallel could be drawn with Warhol, who started “making money” literally – by painting dollar signs on canvases and prints which he sold for money!

To be continued…