An all-but invisible painting of a desert by the late Saskatchewan-born artist Agnes Martin failed to attract the anticipated interest at a major auction Wednesday in New York, where pre-sale estimates had raised the possibility that the 45-year-old canvas could become the most expensive artwork ever created by a Canadian painter.
Bidding for the abstract work, expected to sell for between $4 million and $6 million, did not reach the minimum price and was left unsold at Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art.
It was the second straight night for a major Canadian artwork to fall short of expectations. On Tuesday, a photograph of an artist sketching a cadaver’s arm by Vancouver artist Jeff Wall – pegged to sell for up to $1.2 million at a Christie’s modern art auction – also missed the minimum mark.
But another of Martin’s minimalist paintings, titled Kyrie, was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $2.2 million – about three times its pre-sale estimate of $600,000 to $800,000 U.S..
And at Tuesday’s Christie’s auction, the Martin canvas Untitled #13 sold for just over $2 million.
The record price for a Canadian painting is currently held by 19th-century artist Paul Kane’s Scene in the Northwest – Portrait, a wintry view of a man and dog team in pioneer-era Canada that sold for nearly $5.1 million at a 2002 auction in Toronto.
The Desert – an extremely faint grid of tightly spaced pencil lines set against a soft background of beige paint – had been hailed by Sotheby’s as a Martin "masterpiece" representing a key phase in her career.
"Like the sands in the desert landscape dissolving into a hazy horizon, the muted palette of the present work expands in front of the viewer," the auction catalogue stated. "The Desert offers rewards to the viewer who is able to quiet their mind and eliminate distraction; it embodies emotion in an abstract, timeless and unchanging realm."
Casual observers of contemporary art would be struck by the extreme sparseness of The Desert, and news of its potentially record-setting value had raised some eyebrows across Canada.
Critics contend that the powerful effect of Martin’s large-scale works can only really be appreciated in a gallery setting. And the huge prices her paintings have attracted in recent years, along with the frequency of museum exhibits honouring her work, attest to the strong international attraction to her abstract style.
The same painting that failed to sell Wednesday at Sotheby’s had been purchased at a Christie’s sale in May 2007 for $4.7 million.
There is some question about the degree to which Martin should be considered a Canadian artist. Born in Macklin, Sask., in 1912, she grew up mainly in Vancouver, where she won a provincial swimming title as a teenager before moving permanently to the U.S. in 1931.
She became a U.S. citizen in the 1950s, but both Saskatchewan and B.C. claim Martin as one of their most accomplished artists on the international stage.
Some expert observers of her work see the profound influence of the Prairie landscape of her youth. And in the late 1960s, Martin travelled across Canada in a successful effort to replenish her artistic creativity before settling permanently in New Mexico. She died there in 2004 at age 92.
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