Richard Tuttle valuation
Makes very small, very slight things out of wire, cloth and paper, and insists on where they go.
Richard Tuttle was born in New Jersey in 1941 and has spent sixty years making work at a scale and with a slightness that has repeatedly divided critics — a 1975 Whitney exhibition of wire pieces and dyed cloth octagonals was attacked so severely that the curator lost her job, and is now regarded as a landmark.
What a work by Richard Tuttle is worth
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Bio
Richard Tuttle was born in New Jersey in 1941 and has spent sixty years making work at a scale and with a slightness that has repeatedly divided critics — a 1975 Whitney exhibition of wire pieces and dyed cloth octagonals was attacked so severely that the curator lost her job, and is now regarded as a landmark. The works are made from wire, string, plywood, cardboard, cloth, floor paint and paper, frequently placed close to the wall or the floor, and their exact position, height and lighting are specified because they are half the piece.
Installation instructions are part of the work and a piece without them is materially compromised — this is the central practical point in the market. The materials are humble and genuinely fragile: dyed cloth fades, wire distorts, cardboard and paper cockle, and none of it was made to be robust. Condition and documentation therefore matter more than scale or subject. The early wire and cloth pieces lead the market. Tuttle has also made a large number of artist's books and print editions, which are the accessible part of the output.
Trinity College, Betty Parsons and the Turbine Hall
Tuttle studied art, philosophy and literature at Trinity College in Hartford from 1959 to 1963, spent a semester at the Cooper Union and a short time in the US Air Force, and then worked at the Betty Parsons Gallery, which gave him his first solo show. His first works were small monochrome reliefs. During a residency at the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia in 1978 he made Shirts, and Pants the following year.
He has shown at the Venice Biennale in 1976, 1997 and 2001, and in 2014 I Don't Know, or The Weave of Textile Language, his largest work, nearly forty feet long, was made for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. He is represented by Pace in New York and Modern Art in London, and is married to the poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.
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