American modernism is still serving up surprises

From the May 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.

In 1905, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, pioneers of American Pictorial photography, opened an exhibition space in New York. Little Galleries of the PhotoSecession, soon known as 291, its address on Fifth Avenue, at first championed fine art photography. But in 1907 Steichen left for Paris and began sending home examples of the radical art emerging there: prints by Matisse, drawings by Rodin, paintings by Picasso and art by Americans in Europe influenced by cubism, Fauvism or Expressionism. Over the next 10 years, 291 became the launch pad for a group of American artists – John Marin, Arthur Dove, Alfred Maurer, Max Weber, Marsden Hartley, the German immigrant Oscar Bluemner and others – inspired to bring about a similar artistic revolution in their home country, but one in tune with the distinct energies evident in the aspiring architecture of New York, with the United States’ thriving industrial economy and its vast and varied landscapes. In 1912 Stieglitz announced the ‘Arthur G. Dove First Exhibition Anywhere’, which was not Dove’s first exhibition but included his first abstractions – a series of pastels, some later titled by Stieglitz Nature Symbolised. These were the first abstract works by an American artist to be shown publicly, experiments contemporaneous with those of Picabia, Kandinsky and Delaunay in Europe.

The Armory Show in 1913 introduced these artists to the wider public, displaying some 1,400 paintings, sculptures and decorative works by avant-garde European and American artists. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (1912) sparked a scandal in the press, but this landmark exhibition brought modernism into the public arena, ultimately encouraging an embrace of modernist art that in 1929 resulted in the founding of MoMA.

Untitled (Landscape) (1914), John Marin. Schoelkopf Gallery (price on application). Photo: Tom Morrill; courtesy Schoelkopf Gallery; © 2024 Estate of John Marin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Stieglitz closed 291 in 1917, but in exhibitions at Anderson Galleries, the Intimate Gallery and An American Place he continued to champion his stable of ‘Seven Americans’: two photographers – himself and Paul Strand – and the painters Hartley, Marin, Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Demuth. Through the 1920s and ’30s these artists developed separate strands of modernism, helped by engaged critics, institutional support, motivated collectors and Stieglitz’s enthusiasm. He first showed O’Keeffe’s work in 1917, and in 1924 they married. He managed her reputation and encouraged her bold paintings of flowers, buildings and, increasingly, the desert landscape of New Mexico. In 1946, O’Keeffe was the first woman artist honoured with a retrospective at MoMA. Meanwhile Marin was hailed for his watercolours and his experimental abstractions in oil; in 1948 the critic Clement Greenberg wrote that ‘if it is not beyond all doubt that he is the best painter alive in America at this moment, he assuredly has to be taken into consideration.’ In 1950, his 80th year, a retrospective of Marin’s work dominated the United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale. But the Biennale also included works by young artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. The explosive arrival of post-war American art all but obliterated the international profile of the earlier American modernists.

In the United States, however, while other modernists fared less well, the Stieglitz artists continued to be revered, exhibited and collected. But according to the New York-based gallerist Phil Alexandre, who has dealt in the field since the early 1990s, ‘The general market for historic American modernism has declined over the past 10 years, with the exception of O’Keeffe and of those rare singularly great works which can still be sold at a premium or record prices.’ He identifies a decline in the number of collectors, and the scarcity of good examples in the marketplace alongside ‘a relative abundance of examples of lesser quality’ as factors. Another has been ‘the sudden shift beginning about 10 years ago in institutional collecting to previously overlooked artists – African Americans, women and other under-represented artists’. Alexandre adds: ‘We are reselling works that sold publicly at auction several years ago for at least 25 per cent less privately.’ All the same, there have been recent record auction prices at Christie’s New York for Hartley, whose Abstraction (1912–13) sold in 2019 for $6.7m; Arthur Dove, whose visionary Sunset (1935) sold in 2021 for $7.8m, almost three times more than the top estimate; and John Marin, whose Lobster Boat (1938) fetched $1.9m in 2023 against an estimate of less than half that.

Two Brown Trees (1993), Arthur Dove. Christie’s New York (estimate: $2–$3m). Courtesy Christies Images Ltd. 2025

Christie’s confidence in this market is reflected in the third iteration of the annual Modern American Art sale, which took place last month. This included several works by O’Keeffe and a painting by Dove, Two Brown Trees (1933), from his later, highly valued period, estimated at $2m–$3m. Christie’s head of sale Quincie Dixon says that a move from ‘encyclopaedic collecting’ to a focus on individual works has made provenance – and the story that can be told around a particular work – more important. She points to O’Keeffe’s Autumn Leaf II, which sold for $4.3m when it first came to market in 2012; in the Paul Allen sale exactly 10 years later, it made $15.3m – ‘an extraordinary jump in price over a 10-year period, in large part due to its extraordinary provenance’. The auction record for O’Keeffe was set in 2014 when Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), which during George W. Bush’s presidency hung in the White House dining room, was chased to $44.4m (estimate $10m–$15m) at Sotheby’s New York. Morgan Martin, head of American Art at Bonhams New York, credits the current strength of the market to scholars such as Barbara Haskell. Among important shows of the last decade, he cites ‘American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe’ at MoMA in 2013 and ‘At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism’ at the Whitney in 2022. This year ‘Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts’ is on at the New Mexico Museum of Art (until 20 July) and ‘American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection’ will open at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, in September. Recent strong performances include, last May, Hartley’s New Mexico Recollection No. 8 (1923), which flew past a $400,000–$600,000 estimate to sell for $1.1 million.

A Sugar Bowl and Three Croissants (c. 1908), Alfred Maurer. JC Gallery, London (price on application). Courtesy JC Gallery, London

Andrew Schoelkopf, whose gallery specialises in 19th- and 20th-century American art, sees a surge of interest in the lead-up to next year’s American semiquincentennial. He notes, ‘At the high end, this is an international market.’ He too thinks that the current rekindling owes a great deal to recent scholarship, as well as to the opening up of archives. He says: ‘Collectors are so much more capable – better resourced both financially and intellectually.’ Since moving to Tribeca in 2023, his gallery has launched a series of scholarly publications that place these American artists – Dove, Bluemner, Marin and so on – in context. James Ward’s JC Gallery in London shares Schoelkopf ’s belief in the power of storytelling to raise this market. He is supporting his exhibitions – for many of these artists, the first outside the United States – with explanatory wall texts, gallery talks and thoughtful publications: ‘American modernism has such a rich history and is so vibrant. These works reflect the intellectual glamour of the era.’ The current show, ‘Through the Harrowed Land: Alfred Maurer and Modernism’ (until 30 May), focuses on Maurer’s formative Paris years, before 1914. European indifference and the scarcity of great works on the market present challenges. He is hopeful, however: ‘We are passionate about this period. It was formative for American history, a great time of change, which was met with excitement from artists and musicians.’

From the May 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.