Louise Lawler valuation

Louise Lawler was born in Bronxville, New York, in 1947 and graduated from Cornell University in 1969. She is one of the Pictures Generation, and since the end of the 1970s she has used photography to examine how the ways art is exhibited, received and circulated shape what it means. Her best-known pictures show other artists' works where they are displayed or kept, on museum walls, in galleries and storage rooms and in collectors' homes, as in her 1984 photographs of Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine's collection. Later series include the digitally stretched pictures titled adjusted to fit or distorted for the times, and the Tracings, black-and-white colouring-book outlines made as wall works. She has also made Birdcalls, a sound piece in which the names of mostly male artists become birdsong, and ephemera such as matchbooks, postcards and paperweights. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2013) and the Museum of Modern Art (WHY PICTURES NOW, 2017), and took part in documenta 12 and 13 and the 2022 Venice Biennale. Sprüth Magers has worked with her since 1987. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Most of Lawler's works are photographs, produced in editions, alongside wall works, paperweights and other small editioned objects. A buyer will want the title, date and edition number confirmed, so keep the gallery invoice and any label or certificate that came with the work. Photographic surfaces scratch easily and fade in strong light, so framing and storage matter.