Frances Stark Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Frances Stark Art Value Price Guide

Feb. 21, 2026
Frances Stark, California (b.1967), Imposing in the back of the border and incomparable as a cut flower, 2000, spray paint and carbon on paper, 50 1/2"H x 38 1/2"W(paper), 53 1/2"H x 41 1/4"W(frame)
Est: $1,000 - $2,000
Frances Stark California, (b.1967) Imposing in the back of the border and incomparable as a cut flower, 2000 spray paint and carbon on paper Exhibited CRG Gallery, NY. Biography from Whitney Museum of American Art: Since the 1960s many American artists have incorporated text into their work, but for Frances Stark language is not so much an aspect of her production as it is an essential and symbiotic other half: her earliest career intention was to become a writer, and she remains one as much as she is a visual artist. "There is a fight in my work," she notes, but this is a struggle that profits both sides. Her published writing, ranging from quasi-autobiographical narrative musings to aphoristic essays, is marked throughout by a keen visual acuity, while her art presses language into service as medium and subject. Perhaps not surprisingly, the recurrent motifs of Stark's work evoke writing and the activities that often accompany it—from cutting, copying, repeating, and citing to the quotidian realities of sitting at a desk and reading the mail—as do her materials: carbon paper and rice paper, ink, and linen tape. Fragments of language, from blocks of repeated typewritten letters to passages by writers including Emily Dickinson, Henry Miller, and Robert Musil, are arranged on white paper fields in both abstract patterns and recognizable forms including furniture, flowers, and animals. In and In (2005) features dozens of strips of junk mail spliced together and "stacked" in two zigzagging towers as if piled atop a desk: it is a conflation of art space and work space whose subtle allusion to the increasing corporatism of the art world is tempered by its intricate polychromatic delicacy. Stark draws on Conceptual art and Minimalism as key sources. Certain of her works recall the spare poetics of Carl Andre; one project, The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work of Art (1998-2002), engages a 1971 essay by Daniel Buren. While other a˜nities occasionally surface—to predecessors as diverse as concrete poet Tom Phillips and high-Cubist-era Pablo Picasso— the sociopolitical imperatives of the 1960s and 1970s underpin much of her work. Stark's birds and flowers are not simply signifiers of production and inspiration: they are traditional markers of the female. The projected PowerPoint work STRUCTURES THAT FIT MY OPENING AND OTHER PARTS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THEIR WHOLE (2006) similarly reveals her sensitivity to the exigencies of her position as a contemporary woman artist and writer. An epigrammatic collage of her own writings and excerpts from others, its dry boardroom format enlivened by intermittent bursts of sound, color photographs of her home, and images of her art, the work is a moving, personal rumination on "what kind of 'liberation' I—as a woman, artist, teacher, mother, ex-wife—am really after." LISA TURVEY
Ripley Auctions
May. 17, 2025
Frances Stark, California (b.1967), Imposing in the back of the border and incomparable as a cut flower, 2000, spray paint and carbon on paper, 50 1/2"H x 38 1/2"W(paper), 53 1/2"H x 41 1/4"W(frame)
Est: $1,000 - $2,000
Frances Stark California, (b.1967) Imposing in the back of the border and incomparable as a cut flower, 2000 spray paint and carbon on paper Exhibited CRG Gallery, NY. Biography from Whitney Museum of American Art: Since the 1960s many American artists have incorporated text into their work, but for Frances Stark language is not so much an aspect of her production as it is an essential and symbiotic other half: her earliest career intention was to become a writer, and she remains one as much as she is a visual artist. "There is a fight in my work," she notes, but this is a struggle that profits both sides. Her published writing, ranging from quasi-autobiographical narrative musings to aphoristic essays, is marked throughout by a keen visual acuity, while her art presses language into service as medium and subject. Perhaps not surprisingly, the recurrent motifs of Stark's work evoke writing and the activities that often accompany it—from cutting, copying, repeating, and citing to the quotidian realities of sitting at a desk and reading the mail—as do her materials: carbon paper and rice paper, ink, and linen tape. Fragments of language, from blocks of repeated typewritten letters to passages by writers including Emily Dickinson, Henry Miller, and Robert Musil, are arranged on white paper fields in both abstract patterns and recognizable forms including furniture, flowers, and animals. In and In (2005) features dozens of strips of junk mail spliced together and "stacked" in two zigzagging towers as if piled atop a desk: it is a conflation of art space and work space whose subtle allusion to the increasing corporatism of the art world is tempered by its intricate polychromatic delicacy. Stark draws on Conceptual art and Minimalism as key sources. Certain of her works recall the spare poetics of Carl Andre; one project, The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work of Art (1998-2002), engages a 1971 essay by Daniel Buren. While other a˜nities occasionally surface—to predecessors as diverse as concrete poet Tom Phillips and high-Cubist-era Pablo Picasso— the sociopolitical imperatives of the 1960s and 1970s underpin much of her work. Stark's birds and flowers are not simply signifiers of production and inspiration: they are traditional markers of the female. The projected PowerPoint work STRUCTURES THAT FIT MY OPENING AND OTHER PARTS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THEIR WHOLE (2006) similarly reveals her sensitivity to the exigencies of her position as a contemporary woman artist and writer. An epigrammatic collage of her own writings and excerpts from others, its dry boardroom format enlivened by intermittent bursts of sound, color photographs of her home, and images of her art, the work is a moving, personal rumination on "what kind of 'liberation' I—as a woman, artist, teacher, mother, ex-wife—am really after." LISA TURVEY
Ripley Auctions
Apr. 26, 2025
Frances Stark, California (b.1967), Imposing in the back of the border and incomparable as a cut flower, 2000, spray paint and carbon on paper, 50 1/2"H x 38 1/2"W(paper), 53 1/2"H x 41 1/4"W(frame)
Est: $2,000 - $3,000
Frances Stark California, (b.1967) Imposing in the back of the border and incomparable as a cut flower, 2000 spray paint and carbon on paper Exhibited CRG Gallery, NY. Biography from Whitney Museum of American Art: Since the 1960s many American artists have incorporated text into their work, but for Frances Stark language is not so much an aspect of her production as it is an essential and symbiotic other half: her earliest career intention was to become a writer, and she remains one as much as she is a visual artist. "There is a fight in my work," she notes, but this is a struggle that profits both sides. Her published writing, ranging from quasi-autobiographical narrative musings to aphoristic essays, is marked throughout by a keen visual acuity, while her art presses language into service as medium and subject. Perhaps not surprisingly, the recurrent motifs of Stark's work evoke writing and the activities that often accompany it—from cutting, copying, repeating, and citing to the quotidian realities of sitting at a desk and reading the mail—as do her materials: carbon paper and rice paper, ink, and linen tape. Fragments of language, from blocks of repeated typewritten letters to passages by writers including Emily Dickinson, Henry Miller, and Robert Musil, are arranged on white paper fields in both abstract patterns and recognizable forms including furniture, flowers, and animals. In and In (2005) features dozens of strips of junk mail spliced together and "stacked" in two zigzagging towers as if piled atop a desk: it is a conflation of art space and work space whose subtle allusion to the increasing corporatism of the art world is tempered by its intricate polychromatic delicacy. Stark draws on Conceptual art and Minimalism as key sources. Certain of her works recall the spare poetics of Carl Andre; one project, The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work of Art (1998-2002), engages a 1971 essay by Daniel Buren. While other a˜nities occasionally surface—to predecessors as diverse as concrete poet Tom Phillips and high-Cubist-era Pablo Picasso— the sociopolitical imperatives of the 1960s and 1970s underpin much of her work. Stark's birds and flowers are not simply signifiers of production and inspiration: they are traditional markers of the female. The projected PowerPoint work STRUCTURES THAT FIT MY OPENING AND OTHER PARTS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THEIR WHOLE (2006) similarly reveals her sensitivity to the exigencies of her position as a contemporary woman artist and writer. An epigrammatic collage of her own writings and excerpts from others, its dry boardroom format enlivened by intermittent bursts of sound, color photographs of her home, and images of her art, the work is a moving, personal rumination on "what kind of 'liberation' I—as a woman, artist, teacher, mother, ex-wife—am really after." LISA TURVEY
Ripley Auctions
Feb. 14, 2025
Frances Stark, c-print, 2014
Est: $100 - $150
Frances Stark (American, b 1967), "From therealstarkiller #711", no visible signature, gallery label verso, framed under acrylic, 7"squ (frame)
Millea Bros Ltd
Oct. 31, 2023
Dishonest but Appealing (for Parkett 93)
Est: €300 - €500
STARK, FRANCES 1967 NEWPORT BEACH/KALIFORNIEN Title: Dishonest but Appealing (for Parkett 93). Date: 2013. Technique: Book with secret compartment and blank pages, hand-bound, hardcover with embossing. Measurement: 28,5 x 21,5 x 6cm. Notation: Signed and numbered (on one page in the front section). Publisher: Parkett-Verlag, Zurich (publisher). Number: XI/XX. Condition: At the bottom of the secret compartment, the sides are loosening minimally at the lower corner. Otherwise very good condition. Outside the edition of 35 arabic numbered copies. With Parkett magazine. "While she no longer writes today in the same ways, her whole project remains devoted to testing out different supports for writing and figuring out how they support her - how they affect, impact, and feedback onto her person." Alex Kitnick, Parkett no. 93, 2013. Article on the work and artist from Parkett edition no. 93. Explanations to the Catalogue
Van Ham Kunstauktionen
Jul. 02, 2021
FRANCES STARK (B. 1967) - Image Proof
Est: £10,000 - £15,000
FRANCES STARK (B. 1967) Image Proof mixed media on wood overall: 93 x 72 x 1 ¾in. (236.2 x 182.9 x 4.5cm.) Executed in 2007
Christie's
Oct. 10, 2020
Frances Stark Westward Snail, 2006 m/m collage
Est: $6,000 - $8,000
Stark, Frances (American, b. 1967), Westward Snail, 2006, collage, silk and linen tape on rice paper, 38.5 x 70.5 inches, signed and dated lower right, framed in a maple frame measuring 42 x 74.75 inches; Provenance: CRG Gallery, NY; A Western PA Corporation
Concept Art Gallery
Oct. 17, 2019
Frances Stark, A Picture of Onion
Est: $500 - $800
Frances Stark A Picture of Onion 1999 polaroid mounted on paper, blue text print, mixed media on paper 11 h × 14 w in (28 × 36 cm) Mixed media on paper measures: 22.5 h x 17.5 w inches. Text sheet measures: 11 h x 8.5 w inches. Signed to verso ‘Frances Stark'. Provenance: CRG Gallery, New York | Collection of Martina Yamin condition: Unframed. Good condition.
Wright
Sep. 15, 2017
FRANCES STARK (B. 1967) Flat Figurine in the round, so to speak found an
Est: £1,500 - £2,000
FRANCES STARK (B. 1967) Flat Figurine in the round, so to speak found and metallic paper collage on paper 31¿ x 18vin. (79 x 48cm.) Executed in 2008
Christie's
Mar. 16, 2011
Frances Stark (American, born 1967) 'The Dense Jungle of the Monotonous Seperate (sic) Parts', 2004
Est: £600 - £800
'The Dense Jungle of the Monotonous Seperate (sic) Parts', 2004 carbon transfer, ink, laser and inkjet on paper 28 x 21.5cm (11 x 8 7/16in).
Bonhams
Apr. 02, 2008
Frances Stark , b. 1967 F is for Frances ink on vellum with linen tapes
Est: $6,000 - $8,000
ink on vellum with linen tapes
Sotheby's
May. 20, 2007
Frances Stark (American, b. 1967) Snow (study), 1996; Carbon on rice paper with linen tape (framed); 28" x 21" (sheet); Provenance: Marc Foxx, Los Angeles; Private Collection
Est: $1,000 - $1,500
Frances Stark (American, b. 1967) Snow (study), 1996; Carbon on rice paper with linen tape (framed); 28" x 21" (sheet); Provenance: Marc Foxx, Los Angeles; Private Collection
Rago Arts and Auction Center