Bernice Bing, the long-overlooked artist born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1936, has had a cult following largely focused on the West Coast for many years. Whereas Bing’s contemporaries within the Bay Space artwork scene included artists like Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, Bing’s artwork profession by no means took off in the identical method throughout her lifetime. On Thursday (12 September), Bing’s first solo present in New York opened at Berry Campbell, the Chelsea gallery based by Christine A. Berry and and Martha Campbell in 2013.
Bernice Bing: BINGO (till 12 October) spotlights Bing’s work from 1961 till her demise from most cancers at age 62 in 1996, practically the complete span of her profession. Bing’s market is stronger now than it ever was when she was alive. It’s a part of a broader demand for work by the ladies related to Summary Expressionism, like Lynne Drexler and Grace Hartigan, themselves lengthy written off because the wives and mates of extra high-profile artists. The marketplace for Drexler’s work particularly skyrocketed in 2022, with seven-figure outcomes at public sale.
“I really feel like Bernice Bing is sort of the following Lynne Drexler,” Berry says. “For some time, no one knew who (Drexler) was. We have been promoting these work for little or no cash. After which her market exploded.” Berry Campbell introduced the gallery’s illustration of the Bing property in April.
Bernice Bing, Velasquez Household No. II, 1961 Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.
Being Asian American and a lesbian who grew up in foster care, Bing “didn’t match the mould of what, at the moment, you anticipated a well-known, profitable artist to be, and I am positive that was tough”, Berry says. “What strikes me is that not solely did she keep the course as a painter, however she discovered herself and her Chinese language identification in her work.”
In the course of the roughly three a long time Bing labored as an artist, her model shifted dramatically as she explored totally different influences and elements of her identification. Her early works share traits together with her Summary Expressionist contemporaries on the West Coast. However Bing struggled to afford to reside within the metropolis, and in 1963 left the Bay Space artwork scene for 3 years to turn into the caretaker of a winery close to the Mayacamas mountains in Napa Valley, the place her work usually took on parts of the panorama and nature scenes.
In a 1963 journal entry, Bing wrote: “I, being a lady, Asian and lesbian in a white male system—The place do I begin to get better my actuality?” In 1984, Bing launched into a visit to Korea, Japan and China, the place she studied conventional Chinese language calligraphy that she usually included into her observe, melded with abstraction. She was a training Buddhist by 1985, in accordance with Berry Campbell.
“We actually wished to hit the excessive factors of every interval of her work, as a result of her model adjustments,” Berry says of the brand new present. “When artists aren’t exhibiting commercially on a regular basis, they are not certain to at least one model.”
Placing collectively a survey of Bing’s profession was difficult and took a number of years as a result of her work has been so dispersed since her demise, Berry provides. Partly as a result of Bing was not married, when she died there was no streamlined “basic legacy of her property going to an inheritor” like with different artists who had spouses or youngsters, the seller says.
“It’s exhausting to make artwork and retailer artwork, it’s an costly undertaking, and she or he by no means actually had some huge cash,” Berry says. “In direction of the top of her life, she was additionally sick and gave work to mates, to mortgage or to carry on to for her.”
Members of the Queer Cultural Heart and the Asian American Ladies Artists Affiliation in San Francisco banded collectively to protect her legacy after her demise, calling themselves “Group Bingo” after Bing’s childhood nickname. They discovered her will, and an outdated pal named Alexa Younger inherited the property.
Bernice Bing, Burney Falls, 1980 Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York
Since then, demand for Bing’s work was pushed largely by collectors all in favour of Summary Expressionism and primarily based on the West Coast, the place her work is best identified. Within the mid-2010s, sellers there have been promoting her work for between $25,000 and $35,000, in accordance with Berry Campbell. Bing’s market actually started to take off after 2016, thanks partially to her inclusion in main museum exhibitions.
Whereas her work wasn’t included within the present, she had a devoted entry within the catalogue for the watershed Ladies of Summary Expressionism exhibition on the Denver Artwork Museum that yr, inserting her amongst her contemporaries. (That present can be broadly credited with electrifying the market of artists like Drexler and Hartigan). The Sonoma Valley Museum of Artwork staged Bing’s first retrospective in 2019, and three years later in 2022, the Asian Artwork Museum in San Francisco put her work, drawings and journals on show for the exhibition Into View: Bernice Bing. The museum had acquired 24 works from the Bing property, some gifted and a few bought.
Bing’s public sale file was set in March, when an untitled work from 1961 bought for $102,100 with charges at Bonhams Los Angeles’s post-war and modern artwork sale, doubling the portray’s excessive estimate of $50,000. The work had been acquired immediately from the artist by a San Fransisco collector after which handed down by descent till it was consigned, in accordance with the public sale home. However a few of Bing’s main works have fetched low- to mid-six determine costs on the personal marketplace for a number of years.
Berenice Bing. Courtesy the Bing property
“You are not going to seek out her work simply wherever. They don’t seem to be popping up at public sale each different sale. They’re simply very tough to seek out. And what has come up has been kind of minor, all of it,” Berry says.
Worth factors for Bing’s main works on the Berry Campbell exhibition vary from $300,000 as much as $850,000, the seller says. Burney Falls (1980) is probably going one of many largest work Bing ever made, Berry provides, and as soon as hung in Bing’s workplace on the South of Market Cultural Heart, the place she labored because the group’s government director. It’s priced at $850,000.
Velasquez Household No. II (1961) is one among Bing’s earlier works and a part of a collection of work impressed by Baroque artist Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) that Bing accomplished for a solo present on the Batman Gallery, another artwork house in San Francisco that was in operation for less than about 5 years. It’s a “museum-quality” work priced at $700,000, Berry says. The present additionally features a collection of works on paper ranging in value from $16,000 to $35,000, principally landscapes from Bing’s time within the winery.
Berry Campbell has launched an 80-page catalogue for the present, after initially aiming to supply one solely half that dimension. Throughout analysis, the gallery discovered there was extra info they wished guests to find out about Bing and her life.
“We all know that Bernice Bing is essential, and now we now have to share that with the world,” Berry says. “Folks must know that she was on the scene portray. She was actively a part of the San Francisco Bay Space painters, and she or he deserved to have a present in New York then. And so if not then, then we’ll do it now.”
