Design Masterworks 
17 November 2016
Design Masterworks 
18

Bernar Venet

Two Arcs of 213.5°

France, 1987
rolled steel 83½ h × 78½ w × 20 d in (212 × 199 × 51 cm)
estimate: $120,000–160,000
result: $149,000
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Impressed to side of each arc: [213.5°].
provenance: Lemberg Gallery, Birmingham, MI | Private Collection, Michigan | Wright, Important Design, 18 May 2008, Lot 543 | John R. Eckel, Jr., Houston | Wright, The Collection of John R. Eckel, Jr., 28 June 2011, Lot 127 | Private Collection, London

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Bernar Venet

b. 1941

A master of many materials and mediums, Bernar Venet is among the foremost French conceptual artists. Venet was born in Chateau-Arnoux, France, in 1941. As a child, Venet loved to draw and paint. Venet went to college at the Ecole Libre and Groupe Scolaire Paul Lapie, and later completed a year of formal training at Municipal Art School of Nice. After graduating, he was hired as the set designer of the Opera de Nice. This was the beginning of Venet’s lifelong interest in music and dance, and he would later compose, choreograph, and design the costumes for the ballet Graduation.

Initially, Venet worked in the unique mediums of tar and coal starting in 1961. For his Fetishist series, Venet smeared tar expressively across a canvas and created loose mounds of coal. Transitioning from natural materials to man-made assemblages, Venet sculpted relief pieces using cardboard. In 1967, Venet moved to New York and collaborated with scientists at Columbia University to fashion precise blueprints and theoretical drawings as art. Inspired by the Minimalist movement, in 1979, Venet began to craft monumental works in industrial materials. These seductive works have a clear antecedent in the sculptures of Tony Smith, Donald Judd, and Richard Serra. For his illustrious career in art, Venet has been awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur award, the Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris, and most recently, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in February of 2016. His sculptures have been exhibited at the Chateau de Versailles, the Venice Biennale, and Documenta in Kassel.

My sculpture is based on concepts that appear to be divergent, but which in the context of my activity organize themselves in a complementary manner: order and disorder, the determinate and indeterminate. 

—Bernar Venet

Bernar Venet b. 1941

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Conceptual artist Bernar Venet was raised in the Provence region of France and studied at La Villa Thiole in Nice for a year before embarking on a career as an artist. Venet moved to New York in 1967 and attended classes at the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University, which would go on to influence the future of his work by helping him tie his artistic practice to the disciplines of math and science. He first gained recognition in the 1960s for his Tar paintings, Cardboard reliefs, and his iconic and pioneering sculpture Pile of Coal, a Minimalist piece (and, quite literally, a pile of coal) with no discernable or predetermined shape.

Venet began producing what would become his most iconic series in the early 1980s: dubbed Arcs, Straight Lines, and Indeterminate Lines, these series consist of monumental linear improvisations in steel that express his interests in the mathematics of order versus chaos and are described by the artist as “a test of strength—a battle between myself and the piece of metal.” Although he is most famous for his larger-than-life steel sculptures, Venet is also lauded for his versatility, and works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, installations, stage design, poetry, photography, and musical composition.

He is the recipient of many awards including the Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris (2013), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center (2016), and the title of Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (2005), France's highest honor. In 2014 he founded the Venet Foundation to exhibit and archive his and numerous other artists' works (among them Arman, Donald Judd, and Jean Tinguely), and in 2020, he was admitted to the Royal Society of Sculptors in London. Venet’s work has been exhibited extensively around the world in both solo and museum shows, and he has countless monumental works permanently installed in cities including Austin, Berlin, Denver, Geneva, Paris, and Tokyo, in addition to being included in over sixty of the world's leading art collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Auction Results Bernar Venet

Bernar Venet

Three Indeterminate Lines

estimate: $250,000–350,000

result: $378,000

Bernar Venet

Indeterminate Line

estimate: $125,000–175,000

result: $167,000

Bernar Venet

221.5° Arc x 5

estimate: $50,000–70,000

result: $158,500

Bernar Venet

Position of Two Arcs of 213.5° Each

estimate: $100,000–150,000

result: $156,000

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