ABOUT THE 'MICHELLE'

WOW! As with the large ‘Cleo’, this one was one we always loved bringing into a viewing room and putting on a dark wall with dim spots on it -- it just made customers gasp when we dimmed the lights down.

A spectacular Nagel, the Michelle is known the world over as the Classic Nagel, ‘lady of the 80’s’ -- bold , confident, with that ‘come hither’ look, while at the same time appearing completely unattainable.

This same composition was also used for the Galerie Michael poster, the gallery where Todd worked the year this came out, 1982.

Consider the size of the sheet and the small edition size. This is a true ‘investment-worthy’ Nagel serigraph.

ABOUT THE MARKET

We have recently sold several rare Nagel serigraphs in four figures. It appears as though with the Nagel documentary about to be released (see below) and the Nagel Retrospective Exhibition in California opening in California this last September, things are beginning to heat up. Don't be mislead: the market will only heat up on those 'lifetime' Nagel serigraphs. Now is a good time to be a buyer.

ABOUT JEFF WASSERMAN:

Wasserman Silkscreen Co., the first serigrapher to pull Nagel's hand made silkscreens, was a small shop next door to Nagel's pubisher, Mirage Editions, in Southern California and was commissioned to do the first of the Nagel posters and limited editions in the late '70's, early '80's.

Jeff Wasserman had left the esteemed fine art printmakers, Gemini GEL, where he had headed up the silkscreen division of Gemini (which was otherwise known for its lithography) to open his own serigraphy shop. Jeff is still in business and although he parted with Mirage in 1979, he is still highly regarded in the fine art community, having printed limited editions for many of the more notable artists in Contempoary Art—among them Dill, Dine, Stella, Judd to name a few.

ABOUT THE NAGEL LIMITED EDITIONS

The limited edition graphics, only 20 titles in all, were created in extremely small editions sizes. The amounts varied with each image but averaged around 100 s/n prints, plus proofs. There were never any unsigned states or iterations and the printer's proofs and artist proofs were jealously guarded.

In the world of rare posters, these would be considered posters "Without Letters". While that's not exactly applicable to these since the term normally refers to an exact same poster printed before the type was printed on; these, instead were deliberately designed without typography. Some of the images were also used for the smaller lifetime posters. Confusing? You bet...

For more, visit our Nagel site by clicking here.

ABOUT PATRICK NAGEL (1945 - 1984): For every decade since the development of color, planographic art (the mid-19th Century) there has been an artist whose work was instrumental in reflecting and, in some cases defining, the era in which they lived. For the1980's, it was Patrick Nagel. Nagel was a phenomenon, much like those great painter/illustrators to precede him -- Jules Cheret, A.M. Cassandre, Leyendecker, Holwein, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rockwell, to name only a few. • At the end of his short life, Playboy magazine was accepting illustrations from Nagel sight-unseen to run in the magazine and his fame and fortune had reached staggering heights in the fine art world. Because of his untimely demise, Patrick's "lifetime" body of work is (comparatively) very small. But it was important work. The Nagel 'renaissance' has already begun—the work is being revisited by scholars and collectors alike.