Nov 26, 2024 - Sale 2688

Sale 2688 - Lot 65

Price Realized: $ 50,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 50,000 - $ 80,000
RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER (1923 - 2013)
Prototype for Pregunta II.

Acrylic painted wood in two parts, 1983. Top: 560x285x35 mm; 22x11¼x1⅜ inches. Bottom: 165x35 mm; 6½x1⅜ inches (diameter). Each part signed and dated in felt-tip pen, verso.

Provenance
Gift from the artist to current owner, New Milford, Connecticut.

Additional Details

A unique prototype for Richard Artschwager's multiple Pregunta II, which was issued as an edition of 6 (see Brooke Alexander, Richard Artschwager, Complete Multiples, 1969-1991, number 8).

For his 1991 Complete Multiples exhibition at Brooke Alexander Editions, New York, Artschwager and Brooke Alexander discussed his punctuation pieces, which "inflect objects and spaces the way written punctuation inflects the objects and spaces of written language." According to Artschwager, "The question mark sits tight in a tight spot, but it bleeds out to make the interrogative mode. Why have three or more than one? Because the thing talks to you but it has different modulations and nuances." The artist created three different Pregunta multiples in 1983; all of painted wood and published by Multiples, Inc., New York, but differing in emphasis on the question mark's components. These differences, including I with emphasis on the mark's upper curve, and III which enlarges the lower dot, illustrate the nuances and changing nature of the punctuation mark's meaning.