{"id":2133,"date":"2024-05-13T21:52:07","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T13:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2024-05-13T21:52:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T13:52:07","slug":"an-under-recognized-72-year-old-painter-makes-waves-at-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/an-under-recognized-72-year-old-painter-makes-waves-at-auction\/","title":{"rendered":"An Under-Recognized 72-Year-Old Painter Makes Waves at Auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong>\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here<\/em>\u00a0to receive it every Wednesday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Before 2023, Takako Yamaguchi\u2019s work was little-known to market observers, selling mainly in smaller auction houses in the low five figures. But in the past year alone, the 72-year-old Los Angeles\u2013based, Japanese-born artist has seen several of her paintings appear in high-profile sales at bigger auction houses, one of them taking in more than $1 million.<\/p>\n

Next week, several of her works will go on the block in evening sales at Christie\u2019s and Sotheby\u2019s, alongside those by fast-rising emerging artists, showing that Yamaguchi\u2019s paintings, some of which are on view in the current\u00a0Whitney Biennial<\/a>, have become an unexpected market phenomenon.<\/p>\n

At Sotheby\u2019s, an untitled oil and metal-leaf painting from 1998 has an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. The luminescent dreamlike scene, featuring coral reefs, sea anemones, and pink lotus flowers, has a third-party guarantee.<\/p>\n

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Takako Yamaguchi,\u00a0Untitled,<\/em>\u00a01998. Courtesy of Sotheby\u2019s.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

At Christie\u2019s, Yamaguchi\u2019s oil and bronze-leaf painting\u00a0Sally and Miu-Miu\u00a0<\/em>(1994), showing a woman smoking alongside her cat, has an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. Christie\u2019s, which has never before auctioned a work by Yamaguchi, has featured the painting in advertisements for its 21st-century art evening sale.<\/p>\n

Things had been heating up for Yamaguchi\u2019s market for a few years before her inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. In 2019 she appeared in a Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles exhibition devoted to Pattern & Decoration, a 1970s art movement that drew craft techniques into painting, often as a feminist gesture. (Yamaguchi was among several artists in the show who were not directly tied to the movement.) Acclaimed exhibitions at galleries, including a\u00a0critically lauded solo show<\/a>\u00a0at New York\u2019s\u00a0Ortuzar Projects<\/a>\u00a0last year, followed. And then there\u2019s the current Whitney Biennial.<\/p>\n

Several dealers have been supporting Yamaguchi since well before the world\u2019s biggest auction houses sold her work. \u201cI knew from the first time I saw her work, that it would have this huge impact,\u201d Stars Gallery owner Christopher Schwartz told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>. Having done a show with her in 2021, he added, \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was going to happen so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave her her first show, I think, in \u201983,\u201d dealer Kathryn Markel told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cHer work was just beautiful, from Day One.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among these dealers, as well as critics and historians, Yamaguchi\u2019s paintings are prized for their precision. She\u2019s worked in a variety of different modes. In 2021 New York\u2019s\u00a0Ramiken\u00a0gallery mounted a show of her realistic close-ups of buttoned-up shirts. These look markedly different from the \u201cSmoking Women\u201d paintings, of which the Christie\u2019s\u00a0Sally and Miu-Miu<\/em>\u00a0is a part. Those canvases feature beautiful curves, elaborate garments, and geometric shapes, and incorporate Japanese printmaking techniques and clear references to Art Nouveau and Art Deco; they stand far apart from the sinuous abstractions Yamaguchi is showing at the Biennial.<\/p>\n

The \u201cSmoking Women\u201d works are Yamaguchi\u2019s most popular.\u00a0Fair Warning, an auction app run by former Christie\u2019s rainmaker Lo\u00efc Gouzer, listed one this past February with a $500,000\u2013$700,000 estimate. It ended up selling for more than $991,000.<\/p>\n

About a month later, Yamaguchi\u2019s auction record blasted past the $1 million mark when\u00a0Catherine and Midnight<\/em>\u00a0(1994) hit the block as Lot 1 during a Sotheby\u2019s London modern and contemporary art evening sale. The 80-inch-wide painting\u00a0drew a hammer price of approximately $874,000\u00a0($1.11 million with fees), on an estimate of $500,000 to $750,000. (Catherine and Midnight\u00a0<\/em>also had a third-party guarantee.)<\/p>\n

Tom Jimmerson, director of Los Angeles gallery as-is.la, and Yamaguchi\u2019s longtime husband, said that, \u201cfrom the market point of view,\u201d the \u201cSmoking Women\u201d paintings are \u201coutliers.\u201d \u201cFor reasons that might remain mysterious,\u201d he said, \u201cthey generate more desire of ownership, and more excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Takako Yamaguchi,\u00a0Sally and Miu-Miu<\/em>, 1994.
\nCHRISTIE\u2019S IMAGES LTD. 2024<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Jimmerson told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>\u00a0that almost all the collectors who bought Yamaguchi\u2019s work as recently as a decade ago were people who knew her personally. While they were not amateurs, they were not people who bid at auctions either.<\/p>\n

Her prices were not high at the time. And up to the time of her recent auction records, they remained that way. Markel said that when she sold Yamaguchi\u2019s work to potential buyers in 2009, the price range was $12,000 to $14,000. During the exhibition at Stars Gallery in 2021, that range rose to $20,000 to $30,000\u2014including the untitled painting since consigned to Sotheby\u2019s. \u201cWe felt like the market had no idea \u2026 what was coming,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n

Past appearances of Yamaguchi\u2019s works at auction bear out that evidence. According to the\u00a0Artnet<\/em>\u00a0price database, Yamaguchi\u2019s serigraphs\u00a0Quaretto III<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Quaretto IV<\/em>\u00a0together sold for $1,500 in February 2013, at Weschler\u2019s Auctioneers & Appraisers in Rockville, Maryland. The consigner was the global law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, which imploded and had to\u00a0sell off its extensive collection of artworks\u00a0by figures such as Christopher Wool, Frank Stella, and Sol LeWitt.<\/p>\n

Just under a decade later, in December 2022, Palm Beach Modern Auctions sold Yamaguchi\u2019s four-foot-wide painting\u00a0French Curve 26, #8<\/em>\u00a0for $10,000 on a $3,000\u2013$5,000 estimate, consigned in that case by the Tupperware Brands Corporate Collection in Orlando, Florida, whose holdings totaled\u00a0more than 800 artworks<\/a>. (Tupperware acquired the painting in 1980.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a fraction of the prices Yamaguchi\u2019s work now command on the block. When her painting\u00a0The Fire Next Time<\/em>\u00a0(2004) appeared at Sotheby\u2019s Hong Kong last month, it sold for $260,000 (2 million HKD), on an estimate of approximately $200,000 to $320,000 (1.6 million HKD to 2.5 million HKD).<\/p>\n

The Biennial aside, Yamaguchi is still awaiting greater attention from institutions. (Though the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and other museums now own her works, she has never had a major retrospective.) This may soon change. Yamaguchi is currently represented in New York by Ortuzar Projects, whose clients are\u00a0predominantly established collectors\u00a0and museums. \u201cI would think that the support of Ortuzar Projects makes Takako\u2019s work look more serious to buyers than it might have looked otherwise,\u201d Jimmerson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe really needs a museum retrospective to kind of put all these pieces together,\u201d Mike Egan, Ramiken\u2019s founder, told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>. He estimated that the public had only seen 10 percent of her work. \u201cShe\u2019s got 40 years of art \u2026 really waiting to be discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance,\u00a0the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here\u00a0to receive it every Wednesday. Before 2023, Takako Yamaguchi\u2019s work was little-known to market observers, selling mainly in smaller auction houses in the low five figures. But in the past year alone, the 72-year-old Los Angeles\u2013based, Japanese-born artist has seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artist","category-auction","category-events","category-gallery","category-latest-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Under-Recognized 72-Year-Old Painter Makes Waves at Auction - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance,\u00a0the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here\u00a0to receive it every Wednesday.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/an-under-recognized-72-year-old-painter-makes-waves-at-auction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Under-Recognized 72-Year-Old Painter Makes Waves at Auction - 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