ART MARKET REACTS TO FLAVIN RETROSPECTIVE

For some artists, a retrospective can be a life-saver, an essential means of bringing a neglected œuvre to light and an opportunity to correct misconceptions about the life and the work, Mark Irving writes in the Art Newspaper. The current retrospective of the work of American Minimalist artist Dan Flavin—which opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and now moves to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and then the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago—is an intriguing case in point. The Flavin show is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in his native US, a fact that seems all the more surprising considering his established and growing reputation as a pioneering figure in late 20th-century art. The sale at Christie’s, New York, last November of untitled (“monument” for V. Tatlin), a work produced between 1964-65, for $735,500, a sum far above the $400-600,000 estimate and an auction record for the artist, raises the intriguing question of how much the retrospective in Washington, DC, which had opened a month before the auction, played a part in raising Flavin’s profile and his prices.