{"id":1719,"date":"2025-03-15T08:54:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T08:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/sukanya-rajaratnam-on-how-the-art-world-rediscovered-lynne-drexler\/"},"modified":"2025-03-15T08:55:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T08:55:00","slug":"sukanya-rajaratnam-on-how-the-art-world-rediscovered-lynne-drexler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/sukanya-rajaratnam-on-how-the-art-world-rediscovered-lynne-drexler\/","title":{"rendered":"Sukanya Rajaratnam On How the Art World Rediscovered Lynne Drexler"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lynne Drexler, Burst Blossom<\/em>, 1971; oil on canvas, 59 \u00bd x 48 in. (151.1 x 121.9 cm.). \u00a9 The Lynne Drexler Archive. Photo \u00a9 White Cube (Frankie Tyska)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With her dazzling and gleaming abstractions, Ab-Ex artist Lynne Drexler<\/a> has recently attracted much-deserved attention both institutionally and in the art market<\/a>, following a long-derailed career and a challenging life journey that ultimately led her to live as a \u201chermit\u201d on an island. Art dealer Sukanya Rajaratnam<\/a>, who was instrumental in the rediscovery of her art, can pinpoint exactly when everything started: on March 10, 2022, a Christie\u2019s sale highlighted a large Drexler abstraction, which ultimately sold for $1.2 million\u2014far exceeding its $60,000 high estimate. \u201cI think many people woke up and said, \u2018Who is Lynne Drexler?\u2019\u201d Rajaratnam told Observer. She had recently discovered the artist\u2019s work when she decided to walk to Christie\u2019s after work to check out the mid-season sales. \u201cI was just whizzing through and saw this massive Lynne Drexler painting above the phone banks.\u201d She recalls asking Julian Ehrlich<\/a> who Drexler was, and in answering, he called the artist \u2018a forgotten abstract expressionist from Maine.\u2019 That\u2019s how Drexler was described in most circles\u2014until a group of women came together to champion her work and completely rewrite her posthumous trajectory.<\/p>\n

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A partner at the historic New York gallery Mnuchin at the time, Rajaratnam had made her name unearthing the work of artists of color and women long overlooked by the canon. She remembers beginning her research into Drexler that same night, and the following day, she called Robert Mnuchin to tell him about her discovery. \u201c\u2018Look, I don\u2019t have much information, but there\u2019s a painting coming up, and I want to see how it does,\u2019 I told him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the aforementioned stellar auction result, all eyes turned to the Ab-Ex artist. And yet, as nothing comes from nothing in the art market, it was clear the moment had long before been set in motion\u2014likely orchestrated by a group of collectors who had been acquiring Drexler\u2019s work and were now seeking to relaunch her market presence. Rajaratnam was characteristically proactive and immediately tracked down the estate\u2014or rather, as they refer to it, her archive\u2014and discovered they were already in conversation with the pair of powerhouse dealers behind Berry Campbell Gallery<\/a>, known for their role in reviving market and institutional interest in historically overshadowed women abstractionists.<\/p>\n

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Sukanya Rajaratnam, White Cube\u2019s global director of strategic market initiatives. Photo by Weston Wells<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Instead of competing, Rajaratnam proposed collaborating to promote Drexler\u2019s work, and all parties agreed to structure that promotion strategically to support lasting recognition and avoid the pitfalls of a fast-bursting, speculation-led market bubble. The result of the partnership was a two-part exhibition shown across both galleries, uptown and downtown, divided chronologically: Mnuchin Gallery, at its uptown location, presented paintings from 1959 to 1964, while Berry Campbell in Chelsea featured a series of works from 1965 to 1969. Accompanying both shows was a jointly produced catalog, created to ground the initiative in serious scholarship and provide context through essays supporting Drexler\u2019s reintroduction to international collectors. \u201cThat was the winning strategy,\u201d according to Rajaratnam.<\/p>\n

When Rajaratnam left Mnuchin in January 2023, the archive asked her to stay on as its main advisor. After fifteen years at the gallery, she wasn\u2019t looking to immediately join another one, hoping instead to focus on philanthropic initiatives in art and education. At the time, Artnet reported that she planned to establish a scholarship fund at Cambridge University for women from Sri Lanka, aiming to sponsor at least one woman through undergraduate studies each year. Rajaratnam set up the scholarship last year, supporting the first student, a Ukrainian woman who wanted to study Architecture at Cambridge, received a conditional offer (based on her A-Level results).<\/p>\n

Then, White Cube opened in New York and Rajaratnam accepted a role as global director of strategic market initiatives\u2014a fitting title for someone who has consistently shifted attention toward historically marginalized Black and women artists, including Sam Gilliam, Ed Clark, Alma Thomas and Mary Lovelace O\u2019Neal.<\/p>\n

Upon joining White Cube, Rajaratnam also brought Drexler\u2019s archive with her. \u201cI thought the gallery was the perfect fit for the archive, and the collaboration with Berry Campbell could still work,\u201d she said. \u201cWe decided that Berry Campbell would manage her market in the U.S., and White Cube would handle the market outside of the U.S. with its global presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cLynne Drexler: The Sixties\u201d at White Cube in London. \u00a9 The Lynne Drexler Archive. Photo \u00a9 White Cube (Theo Christelis)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following a debut exhibition at White Cube London last year\u2014\u201cLynne Drexler: The Sixties,\u201d which closed in January and marked the artist\u2019s major introduction to audiences in the U.K. and Europe, the gallery is now ready to bring Drexler\u2019s work to the Asian market during Art Basel Hong Kong. Asian buyers, however, are not entirely unfamiliar with the artist. Rajaratnam clarified that some of the works in Mnuchin\u2019s first show had already sold in the region. \u201cThere is already some knowledge of Drexler\u2019s work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drexler\u2019s work revolved around investigations of color, space and form, resulting in a highly personal synthesis of Post-Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism. Her work, Rajaratnam said, diverges sharply from the more spontaneous, heroic gestural modes of her male counterparts and aligns only partially with the lyricism that defines the abstractions of other women of her time\u2014or the generation before\u2014such as Joan Mitchell<\/a>, Grace Hartigan<\/a>, Helen Frankenthaler<\/a> or Elaine de Kooning. Her approach to abstraction and painting is distinctly meditative and calculated, informed by a deep awareness of the entire history of painting. References to Van Gogh, Seurat and the mosaic-like intricacies of Klimt\u2019s compositions appear throughout her vibrant, densely patterned canvases, built up through tessellated yet thickly material brushstrokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the staying power of her work and the reason why there is such a wide there\u2019s a broad spectrum of collectors\u2014impressionist collectors buy her job, but also contemporary collectors like her work\u2014is that she was able to marry post-impressionism with abstract expressionism,\u201d Rajaratnam said.<\/p>\n

More specifically, inspired by the \u201cpush-pull\u201d theory of Hans Hofmann (whom she studied under, as she did with Robert Motherwell<\/a>), Drexler made dynamic relationships of color the core of her abstraction\u2014creating depth through chromatic interplay while embracing the same tactile, physically immersive method as Pollock. She danced with color across the canvas, painting on the floor to create nonhierarchical compositions. Yet despite these clear influences, Drexler steadily developed her own visual language, with a signature brushwork made up of swatch-like strokes clustered densely to animate the surface of the canvas. Working through contrasts and juxtapositions of warm and cool tones and shifting gradients, her bright and dynamic chromatic fields captivate the viewer with lyrical and joyful synesthesias of color and light.<\/p>\n

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Lynne Drexler, Enraged Ocean<\/em>, 1971; oil on canvas, 59 7\/8 x 42 5\/8 in. (152.1 x 108.3 cm.). \u00a9 The Lynne Drexler Archive. Photo \u00a9 White Cube (Frankie Tyska)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This meditative aspect of her practice\u2014the calculated gestures aimed at translating both the psychical reality and its accompanying sensations atmospherically and plastically\u2014resonates with certain Eastern aesthetic principles, a connection that may explain why Asian buyers are particularly receptive to and understanding of her work.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, while previous exhibitions have centered on Drexler\u2019s work from the 1960s, the Hong Kong presentation will mark the first time her paintings from the 1970s are shown, featuring boldly colored canvases and works on paper created between 1970 and 1978. This marks a deliberate strategy to build and sustain awareness and appreciation of the artist\u2019s full and varied body of work across time. \u201cI think that\u2019s significant as we build out her legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, Drexler explored an even more nuanced interplay of gradients and contrasts\u2014balancing more saturated tones with darker passages, as if subtly shifting the compositional rhythm to reflect a different moment in her life.<\/p>\n

At the time, she had just returned to New York after a difficult period as a wife, though she quickly became the caretaker of her partner and husband, the painter John Hultberg. It was a relationship that for Drexler proved tiring, complex and often strained\u2014shaped by the inequalities of their artistic trajectories and the personal turbulence that followed. Hultberg, as a man, was able to achieve success with relative ease but soon succumbed to the collateral effects of that success: alcoholism and numerous extramarital affairs. \u201cHe was getting artists residencies and teaching positions nationwide, and she would just follow him. He was a very heavy drinker, having multiple affairs, including with his dealer, Martha Jackson,\u201d Rajaratnam said. \u201cAs a young woman, Drexler didn\u2019t know what she was walking into when they married, and she essentially became his caretaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: How Sculptor David Altmejd Taps into the Collective Unconscious Through Material <\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This intense period of emotional stress and psychological strain may have contributed to a temporary episode of color blindness that Drexler suffered\u2014an experience that likely influenced this particular body of work, according to Rajaratnam. \u201cYou can see in these works this gradation of the same color. However, we are hypothesizing because no one was here to interview her then. Still, we suspect it\u2019s because of the color blindness that she went in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

More crucially, in 1970, Drexler was hospitalized for a breakdown, from which she began to recover by attending matinee performances at the Metropolitan Opera\u2014drawing what she saw and spontaneously translating the music through visual rhythm. \u201cThat\u2019s probably why some of the paintings in the 70s also have a very tonal quality,\u201d Rajaratnam suggested. In this extremely delicate period of offuscated sensations, Drexler seems to have pushed her abstraction even further into the non-representational realm, producing paintings that feel fully detached from the natural references still present in her earlier works\u2014which, though abstract, retained lush, almost floral or landscape-like sensibilities.<\/p>\n

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Lynne Drexler, Foam<\/em>, 1971; oil on canvas, 50 x 30 in. (127.0 x 76.2 cm.). \u00a9 The Lynne Drexler Archive. Photo \u00a9 White Cube (Frankie Tyska)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 1970s marked a significant shift in the world of painting, as artists moved further away from representational forms and embraced a purely abstract visual language\u2014even as Drexler\u2019s works from the decade retained poetic titles anchored in nature. Her paintings from this period are defined by their focus on juxtaposed colors, contrasting tones and the rhythmic application of brushstrokes, often evoking the dynamic tensions within a musical composition\u2014where high and low notes, pauses and climactic moments combine to create an immersive sensorial experience. In exploring the purely visual and emotional potential of painting, these abstractions\u2014already untethered from the constraints of representation\u2014likely became, for Drexler, a vehicle of liberation from the constraints of her oppressive personal reality. In them, the artist seems to have tuned herself to a more sublime, universal rhythm of the natural world around her\u2014its eternal cycles and the perpetual flow of energy and matter\u2014suggesting a state of ongoing transformation.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 1983 that Drexler finally separated from Hultberg and left their toxic relationship behind, settling permanently on Monhegan Island. There, her work began to absorb and reflect the rugged coastal scenery around her. Though still largely undiscovered by the broader art world, Drexler became locally known during the final two decades of her life, exhibiting in galleries on the island and nearby mainland. Her later works marked a return to representational imagery, with still lifes and interiors replacing the earlier abstractions. \u201cWhen you look at her work from the \u201880s and \u201890s, she does these still lifes and interiors. And if you put that next to a Matthew Wong<\/a>, it is unbelievably similar,\u201d Rajaratnam said.<\/p>\n

This first Asian exhibition aims to deepen collectors\u2019 understanding and appreciation of the many facets of Drexler\u2019s diverse and vibrant oeuvre. \u201cShe has four and a half decades of production, and the world only knows the \u201860s because that\u2019s what the first shows were built on, and that\u2019s what people have seen so far at auction. People don\u2019t know the \u201870s, \u201880s and \u201890s. As the advisor of the archive, now I want to make sure those decades are covered,\u201d Rajaratnam concluded. \u201cI think that, in that sense, she connects from the late 19th Century to the early 21st Century. This is something quite unique and makes her much more than an Ab-Ex artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLynne Drexler: The Seventies<\/a>\u201d opens at White Cube Hong Kong on\u00a0March 26 and runs through May 17, 2025.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Image\"Image
Lynne Drexler, Twilight Revisited<\/em>, 1971; oil on canvas, 59 5\/8 x 48 in. (151.5 x 121.2 cm.). \u00a9 The Lynne Drexler Archive. Photo \u00a9 White Cube (Frankie Tyska)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Sukanya<\/p><\/div>\n