Since the beginning, Gornik says, each has been a great influence on the other. Still, she laughs, “it’s always been competitive. No matter how much success we’ve had and attention we’ve gotten, we’re both the sort of people who feel insecure and easily flustered by lack of attention. I can still get very jealous of him, and he of me.”

What about prices? After all, her record at auction is $29,900, while Fischl’s is $1.92 million. In the primary market, according to dealer Renato Danese, her large-scale paintings sell for $150,000 to $175,000 while his can command upwards of $500,000. “I rarely think of that,” Gornik says. “Pricing art is such a peculiar activity. It’s just too weird a thing to figure out.” "[Husbands and] Wives" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.