Maker to Market: Ruth Asawa Reappraised

Abstract

This essay considers the recent emergence of sculptor Ruth Asawa as a posthumous star on the secondary art market, and the attendant efforts by Christie’s to portray her as a bohemian gamine. Although Asawa was best known towards the end of her life as a public artist in San Francisco and an activist whose work on behalf of the visual arts in public school was partly fueled by her devotion to her own children, her earlier works were discrete sculptural objects, and thus have access to second lives as collector’s items. This essay makes the case that it was not only the “hobbyist” associations with Asawa’s chosen material and technique of crocheting wire that prevented her from wider acclaim in contemporary art circles during her lifetime, but also the public and collectivist nature of both her teaching and commissioned artworks.