Lawrence Weiner valuation

Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021) was born in Manhattan, grew up in the Bronx, where his parents ran a candy store, and left Hunter College after less than a year. In the 1960s he made two series of paintings, the Propeller Paintings and the Removal Paintings, shown with the dealer Seth Siegelaub. In 1968 he turned to language. Statements, a small book of twenty-four works published that December, describes processes and materials rather than presenting objects, and his Declaration of Intent of the same year set the terms for everything after: the artist may construct the piece; the piece may be fabricated; the piece need not be built. His works are phrases about materials and actions, set in plain capital letters on walls, floors, buildings, posters, books and manhole covers, and the person who acquires one decides whether and how it is realised. From 1970 he lived partly on a boat in Amsterdam and divided his time between Europe and New York. He was in documenta four times, in 1972, 1977, 1982 and 2012, and the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective in 2007.

A Weiner wall work is the language, not the painted letters on a particular wall, so what changes hands is the work's documentation: the text, its catalogue reference and the signed papers that record it. Without them a wall installation is only lettering. Drawings, the early paintings, artist's books, posters and editions come up far more often than the language works themselves, and many posters and books were printed in large numbers, so the edition, the signature and the condition of the paper decide their value. Leo Castelli, Marian Goodman, Lisson and Thaddaeus Ropac all showed him.