This story begins where most people end. On April 16, 1828, Spanish artist Francisco de Goya died at the age of 82. It is often said that an artist’s work becomes more valuable in death than in life, as it occurs to potential buyers that scarcity is now a factor with no more works of art being created. Buyers of Goya prints need not worry, however, because many more of his drawings were produced after his death than before. All of the artist’s printing plates became the property of the Prado Museum in Madrid shortly after his death, and the museum regularly rented them out to various publishers to bring in funds.
These are works of art created after his death, and are certainly works by Goya, but they are not ones that the artist saw or agreed to sell. These works fall within the gray area of art commerce, and are not limited to Goya’s works alone. Graphic art prints, photographic prints, and cast sculptures are produced using plates, negatives, and molds that can be reused any number of times.
“Posthumous editions of works by both Diane Arbus and Peter Hujar have emerged to meet the demands of the gallery,” Christian Whitworth, director of the Frankel Gallery in San Francisco, told the Observer, noting that “private collectors and institutions alike collect both life and posthumous works.” In fact, most of Arbus’s works in institutional collections are posthumous prints, as she ended her life without worrying about future market interests. Whitworth emphasized that buyers pay more for lifetime prints, sometimes called “vintage” prints, although the price gap between work created when the artist was alive and after his death varies widely. “The price of Arbus’s lifetime prints is usually about 10 times higher than her posthumous prints;” The price difference between lifetime and posthumous prints of Al-Hajjar is not nearly that large.
Goya lived a much longer life than Arbus, but he supervised the creation of only one edition of the set of engravings of 80 works known as Whims in 1799. A second edition was issued posthumously in 1855. By 1937, when the definitive study of his graphic works was published, there were 12 editions. (There is no record of how many other editions have been created in the nearly 90 years since.) His most famous collection of images, the work of 82 images. Disasters of warIt was first published in 1863. By 1937, seven editions had been published.
In 2013, Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York presented an exhibition of newly created metal sculptures by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) that were produced from molds found in the artist’s studio. Kasmin represented Brancusi’s estate and was involved in the decision to create the pieces after his death, which fetched $4.5 million. There was some debate at the time about the sincerity of the artist’s intentions in these works created after his death, as Brancusi tended to labor over each cast piece – polishing here, roughening the surface there – to make each one unique, whereas these newer sculptures were all shiny and smooth. Hybrids? knockout? Posthumous is the only word that adequately describes them.
There are other examples. The U.S. Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale displayed an untitled sculpture by Felix González Torres, who died 11 years ago and left only rough sketches of what he envisioned the final artwork would look like. Guggenheim Museum curator Nancy Spector organized the creation of the work based on those sketches for the international exhibition. No one blamed Spector, but what the visitors encountered was essentially her best guess.
There is no expiration date for producing works after his death. “There are a number of artists whose markets you will find posthumous prints, specifically at Old Master Prints,” Monica Brown, managing director of fine art and head of prints and multiples at Freeman Auctions, told the Observer. “For example, since Rembrandt’s copperplates still exist, you will find a number of posthumous impressions over the many centuries since his death.” Life is short, but art goes on and on.
With Arbus, Hujar, Brancusi, Goya and Rembrandt, nothing illegal happens, and lower-priced but identical lifetime editions of artworks allow buyers with less money to acquire works of art with famous names attached. (More copies also allow more people to see these works of art in person.) Collectors at each level must learn enough about the market for posthumous works of art to know whether the piece is priced appropriately. Or in other words, knowing whether something is an investable work of art or a Goya-style souvenir.
A gray area in the art market
As mentioned, works of art produced after his death are generally less valuable than those produced during the artist’s lifetime. Christine Berlin, who is in charge of print sales and multiples at Eldred’s Auction House in East Dennis, Massachusetts, told the Observer about the sale of a print by Isabel Bishop titled East 14th Street. “We mis-cataloged it as a pre-issue print proof, meaning it was printed on its own press in small numbers and was rare and desirable. After being cataloged as such, it sold for $1,000. The buyer, upon examining the work out of the frame, saw the double S-shaped embossed cut mark by Stephen Scholinski, who was a printer hired by AAA in the 1980s to print issues of Bishop’s prints.” Given this information, the auctioneer is re-offering the print at a much lower estimate of $200-$300.
However, the price an artwork commands does not always depend on whether the artist was alive when it was made. The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation has permitted the creation of editions of the artist’s photographs (1946-1989), generally in larger sizes (49 x 60 inches or 60 x 60 inches) than those created during Mapplethorpe’s lifetime, and whose prices range “from the low to mid-six figures,” according to the foundation’s managing director, Jori Adelman, who told the Observer that the average price for prints in an artist’s lifetime—the largest size being 16 x 20 inches or 20 x 24 inches – $25,000-30,000. On the other hand, Davy Weston, owner of Weston Gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., said “rare and iconic works” by her grandfather Edward Weston sold for more than $1 million, while those printed by photographer Cole’s younger son from Edward Weston’s original negatives after the artist’s death in 1958 cost $10,000 to $15,000 “in today’s market.” Brett Weston, Cole’s older brother, also made prints of his father’s works under his father’s supervision when he was no longer able to make his own prints due to Parkinson’s disease, and they sell for prices closer to those made by Edward Weston himself, but not as much.
Somewhat more anomalous, one can purchase a “wall painting” by Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), which will be executed by specially trained assistants in charge of his estate, for a price no lower than when the artist was still alive. In fact, LeWitt never executed any of his murals himself during his lifetime, always Leave the task to the assistants.
In some cases, the market is filled with sculptural prints and castings produced years after the artists’ deaths, resulting in works of questionable quality and causing confusion among buyers. The painter and printmaker William Hogarth died in 1764, but editions of his engravings continued to be produced until 1850 by his widow and later her cousin, and then by a series of publishers who purchased printing plates from whom he owned.
It is generally acknowledged that the worst example of a work of art produced after his death is the bronze statue of Frederick Remington (1861-1909). Alice Duncan, director of the Gerald Peters Gallery in New York City, referred to some of Remington’s castings as “a whole can of worms.” After the artist’s death in 1909, the editions were issued under the auspices of his estate and his widow, Eva. After her death in 1918, editions were produced without any license at all, which Duncan called “midnight casts.”
“One assumes they were either cast from other bronzes” — which are referred to in the field of sculpture as “surmoulage” — “or from molds that were not visible in the foundry when the estate attorneys requested that all the molds be destroyed,” she said. Editions continue to be produced to this day, for example, by the Frederick Remington Museum of Art in Ogdensburg, New York, which earns a third of its annual revenue through replicas. You can also call them souvenirs or decor, but they are definitely not investment businesses. “In our showroom, we call them boat anchors or doorstops,” Duncan said, adding that one often sees Remingtons of this type on eBay. The Gerald Peters Gallery will only accept Remington sculptures that can be shown to have been produced during the artist’s lifetime or to have been produced on commission by his widow.
An ounce of prevention
Buyers looking at works of art created after her death should do their own investigation or hire a consultant—preferably a dealer familiar with this material—to determine when and by whom a particular work was produced. One of the first sources experts turn to is the catalog raisonné (the annotated published list of all known works by an artist), such as that of Thomas Harris Goya prints Or Michael D. Greenbaum Icons of the West: Sculpture by Frederick Remington. These provide verifiable illustrations of the artwork one is looking to purchase, indicating when particular editions were produced, the number of copies made (if such information is available), the printing publisher or foundry that made the edition, the changes made to the images and the quality of the impressions. Greenbaum went further by testing the metals used in different editions, and found that the Remington 1905 Estate Edition Rattlesnakeproduced on May 31, 1918, contains a greater amount of tin and lead than that produced in a posthumous casting in 1920. (Metal testing is not an uncommon tool in verifying the authenticity of a sculpture.)
Joe Stanfield, director of fine art at Wright Auctions, recommends that potential buyers request a printout of the artwork’s provenance—its ownership history—which will ideally reveal an uninterrupted chain of custody, as well as where and when the artwork was first purchased. This information may be less available for much older works, such as a Rembrandt, than for a Remington, but it may still be intact for a Hogarth or a Goya. But he added that it helps to work with an expert. “I may not be able to pinpoint when the work was created, but there are scholars who know what to look for, and they can save you a lot of money and heartbreak,” he said.
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