Suzanne walking in leather skirt. 4

A walk reduced to a few lines

Suzanne walking in leather skirt. 4. is a single frozen step from one of Julian Opie's best-known subjects: a woman named Suzanne, drawn in heavy black outline and flat color, caught mid-stride. The figure has no facial features and almost no detail, yet the posture, the swing of the arms and the cut of the skirt make her read as a particular person rather than a generic sign.

Opie has described how this kind of figure begins. In a 2004 interview he said he had been 'drawing some full-length figures, based on photographs of people—my assistant, my wife, anyone who was around, really,' and then drawing over them. 'I use a pen and a graphics tablet,' he explained. 'You plot a series of points, and then you pull the line between them.' The challenge, he said, is to use 'as few vector points as possible' while keeping the likeness.

Museums that own Opie's moving versions of Suzanne describe the source in more detail. For the animation Julian and Suzanne Walking, both the Phoenix Art Museum and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum say Opie filmed short videos of himself and another model walking on treadmills at varying speeds, then imported the footage into software, edited it, drew over it and reanimated it. The Buffalo label notes that 'Suzanne's sexy and empowered stride humorously offsets her male companion's cumbersome gait.' The sources reviewed do not say whether the 2008 still images were drawn from the same footage.

The artist

Julian Opie was born in London in 1958 and raised in Oxford. He graduated from Goldsmiths in London in 1982, where he was taught by the conceptual artist Michael Craig-Martin, and had his first solo exhibition in London the following year. Vienna's MAK museum describes how he first came to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of the 'New British Sculpture,' with painted metal sculptures of ordinary objects, before moving across painting, sculpture and moving images on LCD and LED screens.

His walking figures and pared-down portraits became his signature. In 2000 he designed the album cover for Blur: The Best Of, and his portraits of the band's four members are in the National Portrait Gallery in London. He has made public projects in cities from Tokyo and New York to Prague, Phoenix and Dublin. Not every critic is persuaded: the Australian critic Christopher Allen has called his work 'slight and ultimately commercial.'

Opie has said that watching his walking figures still surprises him. 'When I made these works of people walking, I recall when I watched the end result, that it kind of made me laugh,' he told an interviewer, comparing the effect to seeing someone's shadow: 'the presence of the person is now there.'

Suzanne everywhere, 2005 to 2008

By the time this canvas was made, Suzanne had already walked in public. In October 2005 the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston unveiled two walking portraits by Opie, Julian Walking and Suzanne Walking, on the Northern Avenue Bridge, where they served as unofficial 'ambassadors' for the museum's new building nearby. The ICA owns Suzanne Walking in Leather Skirt, a 2006 continuous computer animation on a 46-inch LCD screen, edition 1 of 4. The artist's own catalogue lists that animation as an edition of 4 plus 1 artist's proof, measuring 110 x 66 x 12 cm.

In Phoenix, the animated LED work Julian and Suzanne Walking went up on the outside of the Phoenix Art Museum. The museum dates the work to 2006 and says it was first presented that year; a 2008 London gallery announcement lists it as a permanent installation from 2007. In Dublin, the Hugh Lane Gallery bought a double-sided outdoor LED version of Suzanne Walking in Leather Skirt (2006, 186 x 86 x 26 cm) in 2008, and it stands on the gallery's forecourt on Parnell Square.

2008 was a busy year for the artist in Vienna, the city where this work's first buyer acquired it. The MAK museum there held Julian Opie: Recent Works from June 11 to September 21, 2008. That autumn, from October 15 to November 15, a London gallery showed some forty recent works, including the LED animation Ann Dancing and the landscape animations Eight Views of Japan. The sources reviewed do not say whether this canvas appeared in either exhibition.

How to know it

Opie's online catalogue lists four 2008 works titled Suzanne walking in leather skirt, numbered 1 to 4, each showing a different moment of the stride. Each pose is listed in two formats: a large version in vinyl on a wooden stretcher, 222 x 110.3 cm, and a smaller silkscreen on painted wooden board, 88.8 x 44.1 x 3 cm. This entry is the large vinyl version of number 4. In the artist's catalogue the entry that follows it is a related work, Suzanne walking in red skirt.

The example sold in 2024 was cataloged as vinyl on wooden stretcher, 222 x 110.3 cm (87 3/8 x 43 7/16 in.), executed in 2008 and signed 'Julian Opie' on the overlap. The sources reviewed do not state how many examples of the vinyl format of each pose exist, so this page does not describe the work as unique.

Opie's Suzanne is easy to confuse with her moving relatives. The LCD animation (2006), the outdoor LED (2006) and the Julian and Suzanne Walking animations (2006 and 2007) are screen-based works with editions or installations of their own. This work is a still image, and its cataloged title ends with the pose number: Suzanne walking in leather skirt. 4.

From a Vienna gallery to auction

According to the 2024 sale catalog, the work came from a gallery in Vienna and was acquired from the gallery by its owner in 2008, the year it was made. It stayed in that collection for about sixteen years.

It was offered as lot 10 in an online sale of modern and contemporary art based in London, with bidding from November 4 to 14, 2024. It sold for £38,400 including the buyer's premium, and the lot was marked as subject to the Artist's Resale Right, the royalty paid to living artists on resales in the UK. The sale catalog states the price in pounds only, so no dollar figure is given here.

The numbers

Medium

Vinyl on wooden stretcher

Dimensions

222 x 110.3 cm (87 3/8 x 43 7/16 in.)

Catalogue

Artist's online catalogue, Painting, 2008: Suzanne walking in leather skirt. 4.

Collection

Private; sold at auction in November 2024

Timeline

1. 1958

   Julian Opie is born in London.

2. 1982

   Opie graduates from Goldsmiths in London.

3. 1983

   Opie has his first solo exhibition, in London.

4. 2000

   Opie designs the cover of Blur: The Best Of.

5. 2004

   In a magazine interview, Opie describes drawing full-length figures from photographs of his wife, his assistant and 'anyone who was around.'

6. Oct 2005

   Julian Walking and Suzanne Walking are unveiled on the Northern Avenue Bridge in Boston.

7. 2006

   Opie makes Suzanne walking in leather skirt as a computer animation on an LCD screen, in an edition of 4 plus 1 artist's proof.

8. 2006

   Julian and Suzanne Walking, an animated LED display, is first presented at the Phoenix Art Museum.

9. 2008

   The Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin buys an outdoor LED Suzanne Walking in Leather Skirt (2006).

10. Jun 11, 2008

    Julian Opie: Recent Works opens at the MAK in Vienna; it runs to September 21.

11. 2008

    Opie makes four numbered poses of Suzanne walking in leather skirt, in vinyl on wooden stretcher and in silkscreen on painted board; number 4 is this work.

12. 2008

    The work is bought from a Vienna gallery by the collector who would sell it in 2024.

13. Oct 15, 2008

    A London gallery opens a show of about forty recent works by Opie; it runs to November 15.

14. 2019

    Phoenix takes Julian and Suzanne Walking off view after heat and monsoons wear down its aging LED technology.

15. Feb 26, 2023

    The restored Julian and Suzanne Walking returns to the Phoenix Art Museum's facade.

16. Nov 14, 2024

    Bidding closes on this work in an online sale based in London; it sells for £38,400 including premium.

The world in 2008

• Jul 10, 2008

  Apple launches the App Store with 500 apps.

• Aug 8, 2008

  The Summer Olympics open in Beijing.

• Sep 10, 2008

  A proton beam circulates for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva.

• Sep 15, 2008

  Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy as the financial crisis deepens.

• Nov 1, 2008

  Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the Bitcoin white paper.

• Nov 4, 2008

  Barack Obama is elected president of the United States.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Suzanne walking in leather skirt. 4 is number 58 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (55 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Opie says he tries to draw his figures with 'as few vector points as possible' while still capturing the person.
• In Boston, Opie's walking Julian and Suzanne were installed on a bridge in 2005 as unofficial 'ambassadors' for a museum building that was about to open nearby.
• Phoenix's Julian and Suzanne Walking was built from single-strand LED strips that had to be replaced individually and by hand; desert heat and monsoons kept it off view from 2019 until 2023.
• Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery owns an outdoor, double-sided LED Suzanne that walks on its forecourt.
• The same 2008 pose exists in Opie's catalogue at two very different sizes: over two meters tall in vinyl, and under 90 cm in silkscreen on painted board.
• Opie has said that watching his walking figures 'kind of made me laugh,' because the person suddenly seems present, like a shadow.