Abstract Expressionism, perhaps the most influential American art movement, cast a long shadow over the 20th century—one that artists could not ignore. Works throughout Art Basel in Miami Beach reveal the different ways artists contend with its legacy.
Jean-Michel Sanejouand
Planche à repasser avec lacet (1966)
Art: Concept (J13)
This work by Jean-Michel Sanejouand (b. 1934) tackles both the history of the readymade object as well as Abstract Expressionism. When he made this work, mostly from fabric stretched across a store-bought ironing board, “he wanted to realise art with things you could get from a hardware store,” says the gallery’s founder Olivier Antoine. But it is also an homage to Barnett Newman’s zip pictures, which similarly feature vertical stripes. This work by Sanejouand is priced at $40,000.
Robert Rauschenberg
Divot (1979)
Luisa Strina (K15)
Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) spent the early part of his career confronting Abstract Expressionism, most famously when he erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning in 1953. This work from 1979 is evidence of another approach: the solvent transfer technique, which allowed him to reproduce images from mass media. “At this point, Rauschenberg was interested in the body as a machine,” says the Luisa Strina gallery director María Quiroga. It is priced at $250,000.
Sean Scully
Yellow Junction (1992)
Galerie Lelong (G1)
As a young artist in London, Sean Scully (b. 1945) worked in a rigidly Minimalist style, creating grid paintings with sharp edges. But after his move to New York in 1975, his pictures became looser, partly as a reaction against Minimalism and partly as a way to digest Abstract Expressionism more fully. This work shows how he walked a line between the two movements. “This painting is all about confrontation, about balance, order and disorder,” says the dealer Jean Frémon of Galerie Lelong. It is priced at $1.2m.
Robert Motherwell
Open no. 2: in Ochre and Grey (1967, reworked around 1971)
Ameringer McEnery Yohe (K6)
Robert Motherwell (1915-91) is a “titan” of Abstract Expressionism, says the dealer Miles McEnery because “he enjoyed a long career and managed to stay relevant throughout”. This picture, an early iteration of his Open series of works featuring three-sided rectangles, which Motherwell began in 1967, is an example of how he simplified his painting technique in response to later movements like Minimalism and Hard Edge abstraction, which both emphasised clean lines. The picture is priced at $1.65m.
Robert Mangold
Plane/Figure Series A (Double Panel) (1993)
Elvira González (D12)
Although the painter Robert Mangold (b. 1937) is mostly associated with Minimalism (he was included in the landmark 1966 exhibition Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York along with Donald Judd and Dan Flavin), he acknowledged certain predecessors. “The Abstract Expressionists didn’t make sketches or studies. They didn’t believe in it. So [my process] had to be very different,” Mangold said in an interview with Bomb magazine in 2001. Prices for the 13 paintings in the booth range from $300,000 to $1m.