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Phillips

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20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
6 October 2023

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale: Hong Kong October 2023 (phillips.com)

Total:
HKD 189,676,000
USD 24,221,999

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# Lots: 27
# Lots sold: 22
# Lots withdrawn: 4
Sell-Through Rate: 95.7%

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Above Estimates: 7 (30%)
Within Estimates: 11 (48%)
Below Estimates: 4 (17%)
Unsold: 1 (4%)

 

#1. Yoshitomo Nara

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 52,000,000 – 72,000,000
HKD 65,530,000 / USD 8,368,310

Yoshitomo Nara – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 8 October 2023 | Phillips

As Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara jotted down his dreamlike vision in the summer of the new millennium, the sensational artist broods on reinventing his synonymous oeuvre of the little girl that would soon launch his meteoric rise onto the international stage. Executed around this pivotal period, No Means No carves a milestone in his exhaustive perfection of a complex visual lexicon, marked by a young child who traverses between trepidation and bravery. An icon that appeared initially in the artist’s output in 1991, the young heroine spans almost two meters in height and suspends mysteriously before a void of pearly white, staring directly into the audience to absorb us into the very celestial universe conceptualized in Nara’s diary.

With a translucent opaqueness allegorically inviting introspection as windows do, the little star dweller’s intricately enlarged pupils consist of lustrously prismatic swathes, representing a sharp departure from the artist’s simple geometric execution of the eyes in the 1990s. An approach only realized a year prior to No Means No’s execution, the incandescent emerald irises are exclusively emphasized in contrast to the diminutive representation of her face. Citing the human eyes as ‘mirrors of the soul,’ Nara directs the viewer to encounter the girl’s gaze which has undertaken the purpose of a conduit. His little star dweller transports the audience into the milky way in his journal, away from the bad dreams and safely surrounded by the blinking stars inside the oculus. No Means No would launch Yoshitomo Nara’s most ambitious and career-defining project—a technical enquiry into how these very effervescent eyes arouse the most palpable universal emotions of tranquility, suspension, and connection, as manifested most recently in his Starry Eyes series of the 2010s.

#2. Nicolas Party

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 40,000,000
HKD 25,860,000 / USD 3,302,373

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 7 October 2023 | Phillips

Mesmerizing and visually evocative, Still Life with an Olive is an exquisite example of Nicolas Party’s captivating interpretation of everyday objects and scenes. Set against a background of blue and light grey, a floral vase and plump fruits inject the foreground with life despite the lack of movement, their geometric forms evoking both reality and the surreal. Showcasing Party’s dexterity in colour application and painterly precision whilst injecting a unique refreshing twist, his biomorphic shapes form a lusciously vibrant arrangement that alludes to traditional painting genres and influential figures within the canon of art history.

First unveiled at the artist’s 2013 solo show at The Modern Institute in Glasgow, Still Life with an Olive is one of a few oil works to ever be offered at auction, and one of Party’s few compositions to feature both fruits and flowers. Simultaneously embracing and moving away from the art historical canon, its harmonious balance between color, composition, abstraction, and figuration is akin to the artist’s long-standing exploration into the relationships between human perception, the familiar and the otherworldly. Establishing a dialogue between the timeless genre of the still life and his reimagination of the material world, it is a masterful amalgamation of nature and fantasy that seeks to challenge the conventions of representational painting.

Installation view of the current lot at Glasgow, The Modern Institute, Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours, 6 April – 8 May 2013

Known to favor soft pastel as a medium for the majority of his output, oil makes up a small yet greatly important portion of Party’s extensive oeuvre. Although the artist began his career in soft pastels, the present lot originates from an exceptionally rare group of works – it was one of seven pieces created for Still life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours, Party’s only exhibition to feature oil on canvas works. In contrast to the immediacy and responsiveness of pastel, oil’s slow-drying nature allows for prolonged manipulation of paint after application, an attribute that demonstrates pronounced refinedness. Concerned with the relationship between the materiality of oil and canvas, Party grounds his practice in the possibility of the medium itself.

Party’s Still Life with an Olive is anything but still, with the vibrantly-coloured pears, the yellow tulip in the glass vase, and the olive imbued with playful energy on this expansive canvas. Here, we see Party’s unique take on the still life subject, which, by definition, includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects such as cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, and wine. Throughout the discourse of art history, the still life first appeared in the Middle Ages and Greco-Roman art and was popularized in the 16^th century during the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance. One of his very few examples to include both flora and fruit, the present work adheres to the compositional conventions of the still life, forming a pictorial structure with meticulously arranged colors and a set path for the viewer’s eye. Party’s choice of objects seems deliberate – the pears intending to portray the transient nature of human life, representing fertility, youth, and abundance; the tulip, a flower that is often associated with the Netherlands, not only is a nod to Dutch paintings, but is also a symbol of new beginnings and hope; the olive, originating from an olive branch, represents reconciliation and healing. The combination of flora and fruits is particularly important as it is a subject that Party constantly returns to and revisits, as recent as in his works made in 2020, in which he investigates the sub-genre of still life painting, ‘sottobosco’, devoted to the botanical and zoological life in nature’s darker regions.

Whilst the traditional still-life painting is typically modest in size, Party enlarges his objects to imposing dimensions, breathing life into them as though they are figures. With little differentiation between inanimate and animate objects for him, the pieces of fruit, the tulip, and the olive here are filled with vivaciousness and are clearly alive, each imbued with individual personality. Rejecting the idea of inventing new subject matters, Party deliberately chooses to portray banal themes. As popular imagery depicted since the dawn of painting, fruits are especially present in his oeuvre due to their simplicity in form and meaning. Ready to be consumed with little effort, their appearance has remained constant throughout history. Recognizable by all audiences, his intuitive use of stable motifs allows for freedom to innovate whilst transcending time and space.

“If I paint an apple now, I know that the apple that Cézanne was painting was not the same one, but it didn’t change. It’s maybe a little bit more red now, but is more or less the same…But if you paint an iPhone and you’re the only one to do it, in 50 years, nobody will know what it is.”

Although Party’s work is unbeholden to time or place, stripped of background or additional detail, the titular objects in the present work exist purely in relation to their corporeal qualities and symbolism,. As a result, these pieces of fruit elicit a sense of timelessness – audiences in the past, present, and future can all understand their significance, albeit in accordance to differing contexts. By sacrificing originality, Party’s canvases pay homage to the enduring yet ever-changing appeal of what he represents; by painting with oil in lieu of ephemeral pastel, his subjects become immortalized for generations.

#3. Liu Ye

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 18,000,000 – 28,000,000
HKD 22,230,000 / USD 2,838,815

Liu Ye – 20th Century & Contemporary… Lot 10 October 2023 | Phillips

The image of a ship ablaze, with its billowing smoke piling into a sky dyed orange by flames against a setting sun engulfs us in Liu Ye’s monumental The End of Baroque. Its size is formidable and rare: less than 30 works of such height have come to auction, and none of this scale has been seen on the market this year. The potency of this lone ship at sea is instantly arresting and powerful and evokes scenes of Rembrandt’s (hitherto lost) depiction of Christ on a raft amid turbulent waters, various paintings of hulking Dutch warships, René Magritte’s elusive The Seducer floating among clouds, or indeed J. M. W. Turner’s vermilion canvases of explosions, fires, and battles all come to mind. The visual lexicon of this work is undeniably rich and layered, as with the rest of Liu’s creations. Inexplicably, the view is surrealistically framed by white windows that swing out towards the vista outside. To our bottom left is a solitary figure who looks on, unperturbed by this seascape, surreal and catastrophically beautiful. Painted in 1998, a few years after the artist’s return to his native China, and the same year in which Liu Ye spent time training at Amsterdam’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The End of Baroque signals the close of an era and the dawn of new beginnings.

#4. Gerhard Richter

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 7,500,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 11,340,000 / USD 1,448,140

Gerhard Richter – 20th Century & Con… Lot 11 October 2023 | Phillips

Technically brilliant and hailed as one of the greatest living artists in the 21st century, Gerhard Richter has remained a key figure in the redefinition of painting by blurring the lines between figuration and representation. Already well renowned for his photorealistic paintings and attention to detail, Richter began experimenting with abstraction in the 1970s and created the first Abstraktes Bild work in 1976. Painted just 4 years after the first in the series, Abstraktes Bild (456-2) is a relatively early example of Richter’s non-representational works. More importantly, the present piece immediately follows the artist’s first ever squeegee work, namely Abstraktes Bild 456-1 ⁱ, marking it as important and representational within Richter’s oeuvre. Marrying spontaneity with orchestration, it showcases the artist’s experimental approach to color and technique as well as the unbridled nature of his compositions, elements that have remained recurring motifs in his celebrated masterpieces. Notably, Abstraktes Bild (456-2) is the second proper squeegee painting ever produced by Richter. New and unfamiliar to him at the time, this method that allowed him to paint without a brush was also pioneered in 1980. The artist discovered that the scraping motion of a squeegee allowed him to replicate blown-up paint details found in his past works on a much smaller scale, an effect he first experimented with in Abstraktes Bild (456-1). A tool that has since become synonymous with the artist’s practice, the flat blade also became the catalyst for his move away from source imagery and photographic references to total abstraction.

#5. Hilary Pecis

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
HKD 6,985,000 / USD 891,998

Hilary Pecis – 20th Century & Contemp… Lot 4 October 2023 | Phillips

Vivid, eclectic, and warm, Californian artist Hilary Pecis’s intimate vignettes of interior spaces are celebrations of the sun-filled, laidback spaces of Los Angeles. Her canvases are joyful tapestries of color, filled patchworks of pattern that are effortless and free, whilst simultaneously maintaining a certain meticulousness and intention with each mark. Situated within the traditional genre of still life painting, Pecis’s distinct style of flat yet vibrant colors form an idiosyncratic visual lexicon that mimics the warmth and cosiness of afternoon sunlight, tapping into the local Southern Californian aesthetic. Fittingly, the present work was first unveiled in the artist’s solo exhibition, Warmly, with Rachel Uffner Gallery in 2022. In the present work, a salon-style hang of picture frames on the back wall features an array of animals and flora, echoing the main subject matter in the foreground. Characterized by the use of Fauvist hues and flat blocks of color, Hilary Pecis captures the laid-back mood of Californian life with a unique color palette that connects the natural movements of sunlight with shadow and reflection. Pecis’s unique depiction of objects such as glass vases demonstrates the artist’s technique prowess, whereby the nuances of light are carefully translated into smaller blocks of refracted color.

Rendered in bright yellow and orange, the tablecloth is a backdrop that vies for the viewer’s attention against the vases of freshly blooming flowers at the centre of the canvas. In a more conventional still life, the crowded gallery wall of picture frames would be blurry and muted; but in Pecis’s compositions, each element fights to be the centre of attention, seemingly clashing yet coexisting in complete harmony. This is achieved in part through a restricted colour palette: the blazing red is the same whether it colours a flower in the picture frame on the wall, the roses in the centre, or the ceramic vase to the right. The burnt ochre – one of Pecis’s most characteristic colours – is present not only on the tablecloth, but also on the flowers and in the background.

These careful, lush depictions of relatively inexpensive decor — exhibition posters, tablecloths, picture frames, stacks of art works, wallpaper, paintbrushes — capture interior lives and aspirations better, perhaps, than direct portraiture might. In other words, you may not get a person’s face, but you get a sense of who they are. Each artist, including Pecis, explores found arrangements in private spaces – each one a pocket of expression that is rich with clues about its inhibitor’s lifestyle and values.

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 2,794,000 / USD 356,799

Mr. – 20th Century & Contemporary Ar… Lot 26 October 2023 | Phillips

Reflecting a multilayered and heightened personal interest, Japanese artist Mr.’s large-scale paintings and sculptures immerse viewers within imaginary worlds of anime, manga and video games, bringing to life a kaleidoscopic world of cartoonish characters, emojis and internet slang. Positioning himself as a ‘translator’ of otaku culture, Mr. reinterprets this distinctive aesthetic for an international audience. His works are closely tied to his surroundings and environment, from his daily activities, to ‘all the logos and signs in the city, and all sorts of symbols—anything and everything’

First unveiled in 2006, “Penyo-Henyo” Pyopyo Edition “Good Morning, Good Morning” is one of the artist’s many bobblehead-looking sculptures that were on display at Mr’s 2006 exhibition, NIN -STEALTH-. The present lot depicts a little girl with an oversized head, dressed in a white skirt, red tank top and standing on a helipad atop a high-rise building, as small scenes, ranging from dinners to a plane crash and a burglar breaking in, are scattered across the detailed street architecture. Often conjuring a fantasy world that references the quotidian Japanese life, Mr.’s exhibition created an atmosphere akin to a child’s playground with the inclusion of paintings that mimic the illustrated comic styles of Japan alongside multiple large sculptures.

Hernan Bas

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 6,350,000 / USD 810,908

Hernan Bas – 20th Century & Contempo… Lot 21 October 2023 | Phillips

The enigmatic paintings of Hernan Bas offer a contemporary take on traditional portraiture, imbuing his adolescent subjects with a palpable psychological tension. Working in mixed media, Bas renders the faces and bodies of androgynous youths in minute detail, yet places them against flat, undefined backgrounds that create an intriguing sense of dislocation. Infused with ambiguous symbols and references, his works draw out timeless existential themes of youthful experience. The present lot, The dead line was exhibited at the artist’s landmark exhibitions, including Hernan Bas: The Perennial affairs at Galerie Peter Kilchmann in 2011 and his major 2012 retrospective, Hernan Bas: The Other Side, at the Kunstverein Hannover. Bas’ dreamlike composition draws viewers into a contemplation of their own inner psychological landscapes. He uses both natural and imagined landscapes to surround subjects with evocative environments that align with or counterpoint their inner states of mind and being. The settings become an important part of the overall narrative and symbolic meaning of his paintings. As exemplified in The dead line, the solitary figure walks precariously along a thin line, holding onto a bamboo stick as his point of balance. The figure appears languid and moody, yet the symbolic use of bamboo in this painting reflects the underlying metaphor of resilience and personal growth that emerges from the vulnerability of life and the inevitability of death.

 

20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale
7 October 2023

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale: Hong Kong October 2023 (phillips.com)

Total:
HKD 52,777,390
USD 6,739,777

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# Lots: 122
# Lots sold: 93
Sell-Through Rate: 76.2%

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Above Estimates: 16 (13%)
Within Estimates: 52 (42%)
Below Estimates: 25 (20%)
Unsold: 29 (23%)

#1. Yayoi Kusama

Phillips Hong-Kong: 7 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 4,445,000 / USD 567,635

Yayoi Kusama – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 138 October 2023 | Phillips

Yayoi Kusama is a name that is widely known to all and she has endured among the most emblematic and iconic artists of the late twentieth century and beyond. Throughout the course of her prolific career, Kusama has been associated with artistic movements such as Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art, and the ZERO group. Despite these attributions, Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice over the past decades has demonstrated that her creative output is not merely bound by a singular categorization but rather should be celebrated as an eclectic process. Intimate in scale yet visually complex, the present work reveals a combination of Kusama’s main pillars that define her praxis: polka dots, infinity nets, and the pumpkin. Rendered against a sprawling web of the artist’s most iconic black and yellow infinity nets, the artist has meticulously painted her fruits in bold colors with the use of striated dots. As a result, forming a hypotonic illusion whereby viewers are left in a trance between Kusama’s figurative and abstract representations.

Javier Calleja

Phillips Hong-Kong: 7 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 2,200,000 – 3,200,000
HKD 2,286,000 / USD 291,927

Javier Calleja – 20th Century & Con… Lot 136 October 2023 | Phillips

Imbued with tenderness and childhood naïveté, the wide-eyed protagonist of In This World encapsulates viewers in a world respite from the hectic flurry of everyday life. Eyes, in Calleja’s world, evoke the bittersweet transitory moments between sadness and relief, a result of his experiments in 2016 with beads of water. In the present lot, a pair of gradient emerald green eyes glimmer with awe, almost protruding from the otherwise flat pictorial composition.  The shape of the eyes harkens back to Calleja’s fascination with the character Rompetechos, created by cartoonist Francisco Ibáñez exclusively using circular shapes. Another motif key to the work is the little bumblebee interacting with the protagonist. Used ubiquitously in children’s media for its clumsy, animated flight, fuzzy fur and vivid stripes, the bumble bee heightens the overall charm of the work. The present lot prefigures the bees’ reappearance in Calleja’s most recent solo show, Still on Time. Oblivious to the potential harm of the bee, the boy gestures openly out to the insect with potential to sting, reverting us back to a time of innocence, yet to be burdened with anxieties of the real world.

Viñetas de Rompetechos (2003) by Francisco Ibáñez Talavera

Another signature of Calleja’s, a simple slogan, adorns the boy’s baby blue t-shirt. Perhaps as a playful reference to the lyrics of the top chart song As It Was by Harry Styles (2022), ‘In this world, its just us. You know it’s not the same as it was.’, or simply an extension of the boy’s imagination, ‘In this world’ blurs the elusive boundaries between reality and fantasy. The half-formed thought reads like fractured, hazy recollections of childhood, amalgamating childish speech with psychoanalytic frameworks of the subconscious. Directly contrasting the work’s unabashedly simplistic style, In this world is situated within a baroque-style custom wooden frame, its thickness an extension of Calleja’s continual experiments with proportion.

 

 

 

 

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Sotheby’s

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Contemporary Evening Auction
5 October 2023

Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

Total:
HKD 352,685,500
USD 45,038,634

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# Lots: 23
# Lots sold: 18
Sell-Through Rate: 78.3%

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Above Estimates: 6 (26%)
Within Estimates: 8 (35%)
Below Estimates: 4 (17%)
Unsold: 5 (22%)

#1. Gerhard Richter

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 70,000,000 – 100,000,000
HKD 84,469,000 / USD 10,786,858

GERHARD RICHTER (b. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1994
Oil on canvas
250×200 cm (98 3/8 x 78 3/4 inches)
Signed, dated 1994 and numbered 811-1 on the reverse

Shimmering with emerald greens, sapphire blues and piercing reds, Abstraktes Bild from 1994 is an iridescent masterwork from Gerhard Richter’s epic cycle of Abstraktes Bild paintings. A magnificent large-format work, Abstraktes Bild immediately recalls Monet’s ground-breaking Nymphéas, and derives from a crucial period of Richter’s long celebrated career. In the early 1990s, the artist had arguably mastered his abstract practice and had been honoured with a series of landmark exhibitions, including the seminal 1991 exhibition at Tate Gallery, London, and the major touring retrospective, Gerhard Richter: Malerei 1962-1993 in Bonn, 1993-1994. Indeed, this period was a time of great personal success and contentment for the artist, which many consider to be reflected in his works from this time such as Abstraktes Bild—its regal, jewel-tone palette; harmonious equilibrium of colour and line; and deft handling of paint which both soothes and excites. Significantly, the present work was included in the 1995 exhibition, Gerhard Richter: Painting in the Nineties, at Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London; a widely-acclaimed show which showcased works that now reside in important institutional collections around the world, including The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; the Artist Room Collection, Tate, London and National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Abstraktes Bild is an exquisite demonstration of Richter’s employment of the squeegee, which during the later 1980s became his principle and most highly valued tool with which to create abstract paintings. As the squeegee is dragged across an expanse of canvas, the pressure and speed of Richter’s application of paint ultimately surrenders to the unpredictability of chance in informing the composition. It is this separation of the artist from direct expression that bestows Richter’s paintings with their inherently natural look. The shimmering and harmoniously artful orchestration of paint within Abstraktes Bild oscillates between an act of intense evocation and a simultaneous effacement of painterly form: ingrained within the work’s destructive and unpredictable formation is a reflection of nature itself.

#2. Julie Mehretu

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 60,000,000 – 80,000,000
HKD 72,979,000 / USD 9,319,562

Julie Mehretu 朱莉 · 梅赫雷圖 | Untitled 無題 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JULIE MEHRETU (b. 1970)
Untitled, 2001
Acrylic, ink and graphite on canvas, in 2 parts
Each: 76×92 inches (182.8 x 243.8 cm)
Overall: 72×192 inches (182.8 x 487.6 cm)

A cacophonous assemblage of the debris of ancient civilizations and futuristic empires, Julie Mehretu’s monumental masterpiece Untitled from 2001 is among the artist’s most important and most ambitious works. A palimpsest of frenzied marks that seem to emerge from unknown points within the composition only to dissolve into its totality, the sheer scale and depth of the multiple layers, fragile lines and optical coloured forms of the present work envelopes the viewer in a mesmerising synthesis of architecture, history and spatial experience. Both abstract and representational, these contoured forms at once advance and recede, with Untitled explosively synthesising abstract hieroglyphic symbolism and architectural visual vocabulary to produce a reimagining of public space. Committed to the politics of abstraction, Mehretu constructs an incendiary cartography that evokes atlas illustrations, architectonic assemblages, palatial balustrades and weather maps. These graphic explorations of space attempt to articulate the power structures and methods of mapping that define the contemporary urban landscape, as well as her own place within them. The gravitas of her conceptual ideology coupled with the skill and dexterity of her mark-making, as magnificently exemplified by the present work, have established Mehretu as a modern master and uniquely articulate voice of a socially, culturally, and politically wary generation.

Testifying to the calibre of this expansive work, Untitled was included in the 8th Baltic Triennial of International Art in 2002, as well as the Casino 2001: 1st Quadriennale voor Hedendaagse Kunst at Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in 2002. It was around the year 2000 that the sleek, brightly coloured shapes began to traverse and dominate what had until this time been Mehretu’s black-and-white picture planes. Widely considered amongst the most important artists of her generation, Mehretu’s works from 2001-2004 are now held in numerous preeminent institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Honoured as a recipient of the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts in 2015, the artist’s mid-career survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019 and The Whitney Museum of American Art in 2021 was the most comprehensive overview of her practice to date, exploring the possibilities and parameters of abstraction, architecture, landscape, scale embodied in her work.

#3. Willem de Kooning

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 50,000,000 – 70,000,000
HKD 39,170,000 / USD 

Willem de Kooning 威廉・德庫寧 | Souvenir of Toulouse 圖盧茲紀念品 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

WILLEM de KOONING (1904 – 1997)
Souvenir of Toulouse, 1958
Oil on canvas
160 x 125.7 cm (63 x 49 1/2 inches)

Having remained in the same private collection for almost 30 years, Souvenir of Toulouse (1958) is a rare and emblematic example of Willem de Kooning’s masterful painterly practice to be offered at auction in Asia. Executed during de Kooning’s critical years of 1957-1959, the present work derives from an important period of transition in the artist’s career during which de Kooning started to turn his focus away from New York City. In 1957, de Kooning began to frequently shuttle between New York City and Long Island, deriving inspiration from the motorways; his paintings of the late 1950s reflect the landscape as seen from a moving car, evoking the subjective vision of blurred horizons, fields, and roads. These works, which the critic Thomas B. Hess later described as the “abstract parkway landscapes”, were some of the most gesturally expressive paintings de Kooning had made to date, exuding a palpable velocity and demonstrating a strong new dependence on colour rather than his previous penchant for line. Indeed, Souvenir of Toulouse was bought by Thomas B. Hess—a highly influential figure in the art world who was an early and ardent champion of Abstract Expressionism; friend and proponent of de Kooning; author of numerous of the artist’s monographs; and the organizer of de Kooning’s landmark mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1969—and remained in his collection until after his death, testament to the importance of the present work as a signature example from this pivotal period in de Kooning’s inimitable career.

The “abstract parkway landscapes” were first exhibited at the artist’s third one-person show at Sidney Janis Gallery on 4 May 1959, showcasing 22 abstract works on paper and on canvas. The exhibition was an immediate and resounding hit with critics and collectors alike, with visitors lining up outside the door from 8:15am; 19 works sold by noon; and the three-remaining sold by the end of the week. At the debut of this series at Sidney Janis Gallery, Hess observed: “most of them are landscapes and highways and sensations of that, outside the city, with the feeling of coming to the city or coming from it… paintings, angles and sections from the breasts and elbows of [de Kooning’s] Women, from the windows that open to their landscapes, from their hands that had turned into meadows” (Thomas B. Hess cited in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: A Retrospective, 2011-2012, pp. 317-8). Today, not only do paintings on canvas from this series belong to such pre-eminent museum collections as the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but comparable works on paper from 1957-1958 are held in such esteemed collections as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

 

Yayoi Kusama

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 18,600,000 / USD 2,375,257

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Infinity-Nets (RAZX) 無限網（RAZX） | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Infinity-Nets (RAZX), 2011
Acrylic on canvas
162×162 cm (63 3/4 x 63 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled in English and Japanese and dated 2011 on the reverse

The stark monochrome gravity of the snow-white Infinity-Nets (RAZX) from 2011 evinces a singularly breath-taking visual and visceral dynamism – a quaking shudder that ripped through the New York and European art scenes when the artist’s white nets first appeared over five decades ago. A testament to Yayoi Kusama’s most celebrated corpus of paintings, the present work is captivating in its level of detail; an endless maze of oscillating, kaleidoscopic white lines floating atop a luminous grey-blue background.

While many of her later Infinity Nets paintings have taken on a change in colour palette, white is the ultimate emblem to signify Kusama’s original success. As the millennium embarked, Kusama would pay an increasingly large amount of time to installation and sculptural works, making the Infinity Nets fewer in numbers. Measuring around 160 by 160 centimetres, the square shaped Infinity-Nets (RAZX) is without a doubt a signatory work to evoke the spiritual presence of the original series. Filling up our entire field of vision, the apparent uniformity of the over-a-metre net belies minute differences in the size of the individual loops and the quantity of paint utilised in every stroke. Rendered in acrylic, the textural surface of the present work reflects an aesthetic refinement seen upon the artist’s move away from the use of oil paint upon her return to Japan in the 1980s.

Full of reflected light and the artist’s labyrinthine web of mesmeric pigment loops, Infinity Nets (RAZX) exudes an irrepressible and hypnotically irresistible force. Drawing the viewer towards the shimmering spaces contained within the tightly woven blanket of paint, the present work’s almost topographical surface meanders across the extent of the picture plane, mirroring the painterly process by which it was created. Kusama’s innumerable brushstrokes pile onto one another, culminating in some parts of the canvas in mounds of expressive impasto, and solidifying into radiating planes of white pigment in others. Each dab of paint is laid with a painstaking devotion to the act of mark-making, consuming the canvas in a field of texture.

Liu Ye

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 17,000,000 – 22,000,000
HKD 22,230,000 / USD 2,838,815

Liu Ye 劉野 | She and Mondrian 小女孩與蒙德里安 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LIU YE (b. 1964)
She and Mondrian, 2003
Acrylic on canvas
120×80 cm (47 1/4 x 31 1/2 inches)
signed in Chinese and Pinyin and dated 2003

triking in palette and captivating in composition, She and Mondrian (2003) is a quintessential and defining Liu Ye painting from the artist’s Golden Era – without question amongst the best of his prolific and accomplished practice. The painting features a plenitude of some of the most iconic visual traits and motifs that Liu Ye is celebrated for: the mysterious young girls, a recurring character in Liu Ye’s oeuvre; a work by the Dutch master Piet Mondrian placed within the composition; and finally the strong compositional framework which has come to define the artist’s most celebrated compositions. Painted in 2003, She and Mondrian belongs to a series of two works featuring the artist’s signature pictorial ode to the Dutch master Piet Mondrian, and a desk behind which sits the figure of a young child. An important source of inspiration to Liu Ye, the blue and yellow work inspired by Mondrian which spreads out across the long desk can be seen throughout the artist’s work, including the equally spellbinding Mondrian in the Morning (2000) which may have remained in the artist’s own private collection to this day. Housed as part of important international collections, She and Mondrian was, significantly, featured at Schoeni Art Gallery in Beijing and Hong Kong in 2003 and 2004. Combining in equal parts Western and Chinese influences, and striking a sublime balance between figure, foreground and background, She and Mondrian manifests the consummately unique surrealist whimsicality that so powerfully defines Liu Ye’s oeuvre.

“Everything I paint is someone or something I love. A lot of my sources come from the movies…Or my source might be another artwork, like Miffy or Mondrian’s work. Very few are from reality. Reality isn’t very interesting. I’m afraid of reality.”

Ranking among Liu Ye’s most important and enduring motifs, works by Mondrian have featured in the artist’s compositions since the early 1990s. Here, the powerful lines and strong, structural quality of Mondrian’s blue and yellow compositions are rendered on the hazy yellow desk, the boundary between compositions blurring. The young girl sits with colored pencils, implying the significance of Mondrian as a source of inspiration for the artist. Echoing the aesthetics of Mondrian, Liu Ye’s commitment to pure planes of color is in full display, the yellow imparting a warm glow against the rich blue of the background.

“Mondrian elevates art to a new level. Even though he advocated rationalism, to me, his paintings were very sensuous and spiritual.”

Enamoured by Mondrian, and in choosing a large scale canvas which he almost rarely uses for the present work, Liu emphasises the significance of this painting.

Carefully orchestrated to Mondrian’s aesthetic, the strong verticals of Liu Ye’s homage are offset by the horizontal of the desk, the powerful lines of blue and yellow mincing the structural qualities of the Dutch painter. This flatly painted expanse of the blue background heralds what the critic Zhu Zhu describes as the artist’s Golden Era of painting; “This simplified handling of background lies somewhere between Mondrian’s abstraction and the spatial composition of traditional Chinese painting” (Zhu Zhu, ‘An Aged Childhood’, in Liu Ye, Bern 2007, p. 72). Constructed within a simple two dimensional composition, a strong contrast between the serenity of the blue and vibrant yellow bring upon an intense stimuli, one that is reminiscent of the visual effects brought along by Mark Rothko’s pure-colour abstract paintings. As with many works by Liu Ye, She and Mondrian displays an irresolvable tension between an imagined and fantastical narrative, and the representation of allegorical objects consciously chosen by the artist, arranged in a compositional rigor that comprises of the arti’s transparent layers of soft colors found in his later works.

Lucy Bull

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 13,760,000 / USD 1,757,179

Lucy Bull 露西 · 布爾 | Flash Chamber | 雅室 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCY BULL (b. 1990)
Flash Chamber, 2020
Oil on canvas
201 x 162.5 cm (79 1/8 x 64 inches)
Signed and dated 2020 on the reverse

A kaleidoscopic maelstrom of chroma and texture, Lucy Bull’s Flash Chamber (2020) unravels in the transcendental finesse of the young artist’s painterly hand, presenting an indelibly visceral sight that fluctuates between a surrealist dream, a synesthetic painterly composition, and a psychedelic experience. Ripples of magenta, yellow, and green simultaneously coalesce and collapse into an atmospheric abyss of colour and form. This disorienting yet serene landscape seemingly dissolves time and space to offer a sublime meditation for the senses, a phenomenally immersive experience in a culture saturated with otherwise fleeting images and trends. Recently debuting with her first solo New York gallery exhibition in 2022 at David Kordansky, the young LA-based artist has distinguished herself as a contemporary paragon of abstract art, captivating audiences with a cosmic oeuvre of paintings, each of which crystallizes a new glimpse into the illusory and unconscious unknown.

Bull’s enigmatic paintings balance the chromatic vibrancy of colour field paintings by the likes of Alma Thomas, Helen Frankenthaler, or Sam Gilliam with gestural markings that recall the Surrealist landscapes of Max Ernst, who developed the technique of grattage to record the grain of textured objects between layers of paint. Embodying the fundamental Surrealist interest in unlocking new subconscious potentialities, Bull’s ethereal paintings stimulate a delicate wavering between conscious and unconscious thought in the viewer. This visceral experience offers a mirror into Bull’s own process, which balances both calculation and impulse as the artist works to tease out fragments of forms from the abstract layers of her loose brushwork. With its amorphous collision of colour and form, Flash Chamber brilliantly exemplifies the mysticism of Lucy Bull’s distinctly contemporary practice as it draws the viewer into a cosmic illusion of painterly transfiguration. Tessellations of scratched markings give way to underlying layers of paint, which Bull accumulates in daubed and gauzy veils; meanwhile, streaming gradations of colour seamlessly flow into each other, allowing pink and red smears to bleed into scattered yellow smudges. By harmoniously teetering between the material realities of its pigment and surface and the subjective experiences it elicits, Flash Chamber accesses the sensitive liminality between conscious and subconscious states of being.

George Condo

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 9,888,000 / USD 1,262,717

George Condo 喬治・康多 | Female Portrait with Blue Eyes 藍眼睛女士肖像 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957)
Female Portrait with Blue Eyes, 2013
Acrylic, charcoal and pastel on linen, in artist’s chosen frame
53×42 inches (134.6 x 106.7 cm)
Signed and dated 2013

Mr.

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 5,715,000 / USD 729,817
MR. | Untitled 無題 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MR. (b. 1969)
Untitled, 2018
Acrylic and silkscreen print on canvas mounted on wood panel
235×285 cm (92 1/2 x 112 1/4 inches)
Signed and dated 2018 on the overlap

 

 

Contemporary Day Auction
6 October 2023

Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

Total:
HKD 352,685,500
USD 45,038,634

———

# Lots: 23
# Lots sold: 18
Sell-Through Rate: 78.3%

———

Above Estimates: 6 (26%)
Within Estimates: 8 (35%)
Below Estimates: 4 (17%)
Unsold: 5 (22%)

Nicolas Party

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 4,445,000 / USD 729,817

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Pastel on canvas
150×140 cm (59 x 55 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse

Yayoi Kusama

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 1,500,000 – 3,200,000
HKD 1,905,000 / USD 243,245

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Nets 34 網34號 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Nets 34, 1998
Acrylic on canvas
38 x 45.5 cm (15 x 17 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 1998 on the reverse

Javier Calleja

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 4,826,000 / USD 616,221

Javier Calleja 哈維爾 · 卡勒加 | Have A Nice Day! 祝你有個美好的一天！ | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JAVIER CALLEJA (b. 1978)
Have A Nice Day!, 2020
Acrylic on canvas, in artist’s frame
Canvas: 161×131 cm (63 3/8 x 51 5/8 inches)
Overall: 222×190 cm (87 3/8 x 74 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2020 on the overlap

KAWS

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 

KAWS | CONTROL 控制 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

KAWS (b. 1974)
CONTROL, 2013
Acrylic on canvas, mounted on wood panel
60×77 inches (152.2 x 196.5 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 13 on the reverse

Damien Hirst

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
HKD 1,651,000 / USD 210,812

Damien Hirst 達米恩 · 赫斯特 | Love to You 對你的愛 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

DAMIEN HIRST (b. 1965)
Love to You, 2007
Butterflies and household gloss on canvas
Diameter: 54 inches (137.2 cm)
Signed and titled on the stretcher

 

A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection

5 October 2023

A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

#1. Amedeo Modigliani

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimate Upon Request
HKD 272,905,000 / USD 

Amedeo Modigliani 亞美迪歐・莫迪里安尼 | Paulette Jourdain 寶麗特・茹丹肖像 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884 – 1920)
Paulette Jourdain, circa 1919
Oil on canvas
100.3 x 65.4 cm (39 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches)
Signed Modigliani lower right

Amedeo Modigliani is a legend in 20th century art history. An embodiment of a brilliant yet tragic artist, he passed away at a young age of thirty-five, leaving behind only a lifetime creation of around 350 pieces of artwork, with many now belonging to important museum collections. Among the last and largest paintings created by Modigliani before his death on 24 January 1920, the portrait of Paulette Jourdain is an exceptional example of the artist’s mature work. Due to the rarity of Modigliani’s oeuvre, such works are extremely difficult to come by. In terms of size, composition, theme and style, the present work bears great similarities with Modigliani’s female portraits in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Washington National Gallery of Art, London Tate Modern, Hakone Pola Museum of Art, to name but a few. With a known identity of the sitter, Paulette Jourdain presents an undeniably charming countenance in a delicate way of execution, making it directly competing with some of the finest museum collections for its one-of-a-kind quality.

The only extant painting ever created of the sitter, the present work features Pauline “Paulette” Jourdain, the housemaid, assistant and later lover of Modigliani’s dealer, Léopold Zborowski. Zborowski was the organizer of Modigliani’s only solo show during his lifetime in 1917, a significant exhibition that was ‘notorious’ yet game-changing in the modern art history for its sensational public reception and avant-gardism. Though Paulette was a witness to Modigliani’s ill health and poor nutritional habits over the months, his death in January 1920 came as a tragic shock. Along with Zborowski, Paulette was instrumental in making the arrangements for the artist’s funeral, while also trying to console a terribly distraught Jeanne Hébuterne.

In the years after Modigliani’s death, Paulette began posing for other artists in their circle including Chaïm Soutine and Moïse Kisling. Both her affiliation with Zborowski and her dedication to his artists continued in the years that followed. Paulette continued to help manage Zborowski’s business affairs and gallery until his death in 1932, after which time she forged her own path as a gallerist. As Modigliani’s only known painting of Paulette, the present work was cherished in the sitter’s memory for decades after its execution—for years, a large reproduction of the work hung altar-like in her home.

Characteristic of Modigliani’s greatest works from the period, the rich palette, warm light and dynamic surface of the present work solidify its status as a masterwork and one of the finest examples of the artist’s oeuvre. This deep palette exudes the charm and beauty of classical painting. Modigliani once remarked to Paulette that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was his favorite painting at the Louvre, an institution he often frequented. As with the Renaissance masterpiece, Paulette Jourdain takes a three-quarter-length format with the sitter’s hands clasped gently by her lap and an enigmatic and impenetrable expression on her face. The same composition is also present in Modigliani’s other portraits in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington and Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art, Kyoto.

Created slightly before the 1920s, the present work manifests multiple inspirations that artists from the School of Paris were at that time experimenting with, including primitive art, sculptures, and Cubism. The influence of African masks is particularly evident in the present work, as exemplified by the ovoid shape of Paulette’s head, her blank eyes and tapered nose. Her elongated form and frontal pose give her the hieratic presence of a totem, in the vein of ceremonial and reliquary statuary.

#2. Rene Magritte

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 70,000,000 – 95,000,000
HKD 77,575,000 / USD 

René Magritte 雷內・馬格利特 | Le miroir universel 萬向鏡 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RENE MAGRITTE (1898 – 1967)
Le miroir universel, 1938-1939
Oil on canvas
116×89 cm (45 5/8 x 35 inches)
Signed Magritte lower left
Signed Magritte, dated 1939 and titled “LE MIROIR UNIVERSEL” on the reverse

Surrealist master René Magritte is famed for his intriguing images that combine everyday objects in whimsical and thought-provoking contexts. In a world of paradoxes, Magritte seeks to question the experience of perception within painting. Le miroir universel belongs to a celebrated body of works Magritte executed during the mid-1930s and 1940s on the subject of a female nude in an unidentified landscape. Over a metre in height, Le miroir universel is the largest of the early representations of this theme and dates from the most important period in the Surrealist movement, and arguably one of the most visually arresting examples from the series.

The women of these paintings – which often carried the alternative title of ‘magie noire’ or black magic – are some of Magritte’s most beguiling creations, and her breathtaking silhouette appeared in a number of oils and works on paper. He varied the position of the nude, depicting her frontally or in profile, sometimes holding a rose, or with a dove resting on her shoulder, and almost always with one hand resting on a block of stone. The subject has became one of Magritte’s favourite images from the mid-1930s onwards, with La magie noire (collection of Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) being a prominent example. Hailing from an earlier period, Le miroir universel directly rivals the museum collection for its scale and superior quality.

Jonas Wood

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 9,500,000 – 14,000,000
HKD 15,575,000 / USD 

Jonas Wood 喬納斯・伍德 | M.S.F. Fish Pot #4 M.S.F. 魚紋罐 #4 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JONAS WOOD (b. 1977)
M.S.F. Fish Pot #4, 2014
Oil and acrylic on canvas
65×65 inches (165.1 x 165.1 cm)
Titled and signed on the reverse

Amongst the most recognisable paintings in contemporary art today, Jonas Wood’s monumental canvases depicting colourful ceramic pots invoke the trailblazing compositions of David Hockney and Henri Matisse in their striking chromatic brilliance and stylistic figuration. With works from this series now residing within esteemed institutions including The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others, M.S.F. Fish Pot #4 belongs to a highly sought after and regarded series by the artist. Executed in 2014 and exhibited at the artist’s Gagosian Hong Kong exhibition Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder, the present work is a masterful fusion of artistic influence and personal significance, transforming the humble pot into a riff on the traditional idea of the painting-as-window. Reprising the popular fish motif that has inspired artists for centuries, M.S.F. Fish Pot #4 takes inspiration from Wood’s own extensive collection of ceramic art, as well as his own working relationship with his wife, and ceramicist, Shio Kusaka.

A RARE WUCAI ‘FISH’ JAR MARK AND PERIOD OF JIAJING

Intimate yet expansive, familiar yet foreign, Wood’s M.S.F. Fish Pot #4 is large in scale and theatrical in scope. Taking a three-dimensional pot as his subject before flattening it to accommodate for the two-dimensional oil painting medium, Wood accentuates his collage-like style and propensity for spatial distortion. Sharing a studio with Kusaka, ceramic vessels are often showcased in Wood’s oeuvre. “When I met my wife, Shio Kusaka, who is a ceramicist, I started looking at vessels. I became interested in the Greek pots. Like basketball cards, they have a shape and a form, and they have images that are very flat, graphic, and simple. Basically, there are cartoons on the sides of the pots that tell stories” (Jonas Wood, quoted in Jennifer Samet, “Beer with a Painter, LA Edition: Jonas Wood,” Hyperallergic, 12 September 2015). M.S.F. Fish Pot #4 is a testament to their artistic processes, siffusing references from Wood’s family, memories and personal art collection.

Adorned with fish and various aquatic motifs, M.S.F. Fish Pot #4 presents a fantastical tableau rendered with graphic detail and vibrant colour. Set against a pale grey background, Koi fish illustrate the round ceramic vessel, a window into the underwater world of a fish pond which abruptly ends at the extremities of the pot. Toying with the perception of space, volume, flatness, and depth, Wood creates a precarious dichotomy between the flatness of the image and the imagined dimensionality of a real ceramic pot. As Robert Smith has described of Wood’s work, “More than ever his works negotiate an uneasy truce among the abstract, the representational, the photographic and the just plain weird. They achieve this with a dour yet lavish palette, tactile but implacably workmanlike surfaces and a subtly perturbed sense of space in which seemingly flattened planes and shapes undergo shifts in tone and angle that continually declare their constructed, considered, carefully wrought artifice” (Roberta Smith, “Art in Review: Jonas Wood,” The New York Times, 18 March 2011).

Matthew Wong

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 14,000,000 – 22,000,000
HKD 12,550,000 / USD 

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Golden Age 黃金時代 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Golden Age, 2018
Oil on canvas
80×65 inches (203.2 x 165.1 cm)
Initialed, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

Intricately realized and majestic in its luminosity, The Golden Age is a masterful work by the critically acclaimed, self-taught artist Matthew Wong. A centre-piece of Wong’s first solo exhibition at Karma in 2018, The Golden Age is the first monochromatic golden-yellow work by the artist to ever come to auction. Weaving together a rhapsody of amber colour into a tranquil expanse seen through the space between two cavernous walls, motionless save a single figure, the present work is mystical in its vibrant imaginary landscape. Summoning art historical precedents such as the sweeping brushstrokes of the Impressionists and the intuitive mark-making of Abstract Expressionism, the present work is a mesmerizing harmony of stylistic grace, tonal vibrancy, and raw sentiment. Inspiring an intense and fleeting perceptual sensation before the field of yellow color, The Golden Age is an extraordinary consolidation and extension of traditional landscape painting, expressing its vivacity by immersing the viewer in the artist’s uniquely poignant imagination.

Making use of the tactile medium of oil, Wong makes myriad lines, dots, daubs, and short, lush brushstrokes, eventually arriving at a mystical, post-Impressionist landscape. Working from raw tubes of paint, Wong allows his painterly impulses to carry his hand, drawing arabesques in varying strokes and daubs, eliciting myriad sensations of presence and movement across the canvas. The bespeckled skyline is lifted by a golden horizon, pulled across the distant plane in striking impastos of yellow.  A painterly cartographer, Wong literally feels his way across the landscape, dot by dot, paint stroke by paint stroke, each movement of an instinctual accumulation of colour filling the entirety of the yellow landscape. Made using only one colour distributed in different values and shades, Wong is able to shift our attention between the dreamlike landscape being depicted and the singular brushstrokes that amass across the canvas. The cobbled brushstrokes and saturated colour forms Pointillist patterns on the ground and sky in shades gleamed from the Fauvists between two miraculous swathes of yellow which form the crevice through which this scene is framed.

Nicolas Party

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 24,045,000 / USD 3,070,449

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Still Life 靜物 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
170×180 cm (67×71 inches)

Among the largest compositions by the artist to come to auction, the expansive Still Life is a captivating example of Nicolas Party’s masterful investigation of color, material and art history. Spanning almost two-metres across, Still Life invigorates the traditional still life genre with its neo-surrealist depiction of six, stalked organic forms. Shaded into an enticing sculptural presence with the artist’s acclaimed use of pastel, these stylized forms and plump, curvaceous shapes radiate in shades of orange, purple, pink, green, yellow and red. Directing his idiosyncratic choice of medium towards these otherworldly depictions, the rhythmic, conical and curvilinear shapes of Still Life are almost anthropomorphic in their staging atop a pale grey surface and deep, chocolatey background. Weaving together art-historical references, from the allegorical intensity of 16th and 17th century vanitas painting to the austerity of Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, with a playful use of color and subject matter to produce works that are at once deeply mysterious, yet instantly recognizable.

In Still Life, Party situates the composition in a typically enigmatic milieu – the various shaped objects sit against an entirely flat background, completely devoid of any context, depth, or perspective. Drawing the viewer into this ambiguous space, Party’s choice of subject imbues the work with an enigmatic and symbolic resonance. The pear, the orange and the candle, with their historic connotations, are the perfect subject for the artist. The pear, symbolising immortality to the Chinese, abundance to the Greeks and Roman, and Christ’s love in Renaissance religious paintings, was a motif frequently used by Flemish vanitas painters of the Renaissance. Similarly, the orange traditionally symbolises wealth and prosperity within the painterly tradition, with Mandarin oranges considered as a traditional symbol of good fortune to the Chinese. The orange hue of the fruit also bears connotations with gold, with Party’s rich application of pastel pigment exaggerating the sumptuous quality of this prestigious fruit. Finally, the candle, abstract versions of which appear throughout the artist’s compositions, represents the inevitability of the passing of time, a memento mori within the still life genre. While still-life paintings are typically modest in size, Party enlarges his painting to imposing dimensions. On this expansive scale, these objects are magnified and human-like in scale, with Party imbuing each with an animated sense of individual vitality.

GEORGIO MORANDI, STILL LIFE, 1941
COLLEZIONI COMUNALI D’ARTE, BOLOGNA © DEAGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/SCALA, FLORENCE/ 2023 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / SIAE, ROME

Rendered in fantastical jewel tones, the provocative postures of the six stylized objects are exaggerated by the artist’s use of shade and volume, accentuating their sensuous lines. Favoring pastel for its immediacy and spontaneity, Party employs the medium as a painter as opposed to a draughtsman, massaging the notoriously volatile and challenging pigment between his fingers to model forms into three-dimensional relief.

“I love pastels so much. I came to them because at one point I was doing oils, and my main problem was that I couldn’t stop editing the painting. Oils allow you to endlessly retouch.”

The ambitious scale of the present work is a testament to Party’s virtuoso use of pastel, his saturated use of color and theatrical application producing an effect that feels vividly contemporary. Often associated with softness and femininity, pastel has traditionally been used to conjure evanescent, saturated effects of light and color: take Degas’ ballet dancers or the floral displays of Odilon Redon. In Party’s hands, the medium becomes graphic, well-defined and sculptural.  Capturing a sense of artificiality and captivating illusion distilled from the genre of still life, the theatrical stillness of the present work stands outside of time and space. Engaging in a riveting dialogue with art history, Still Life is at once vividly rendered and deeply mysterious, distilling the suspense and contradiction embedded in the genre in capturing on canvas that which cannot be still.

Rashid Johnson

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 3,456,000 / USD 

Rashid Johnson 拉希德・約翰遜 | Untitled Escape Collage 無題 逃脫拼貼 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1971)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2020
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax
185.4 x 247 x 5.7 cm (73 x 97 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches)

Renowned for his multifaceted approach and embodiment of the uncertainty of our time, Rashid Johnson speaks to a world filled with impulse and overstimulation while also reflecting on his personal journey. Working with diverse and numerous media forms, Johnson uses the physicality of his chosen materials to investigate the construction of identity – both visual and conceptual. Many of the materials used reference his own childhood as well as African American history and cultural identity, and in doing so Johnson simultaneously creates both a deeply personal and broader cultural narrative.

Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Escape Collage from 2020 belongs to a group of large-scale paintings of kaleidoscopic colour and ephemeral collage that incorporate the vestiges of the artist’s life in America, as well as symbols of the contemporary African-American experience, to create his layered, complex symphony of materials. Within this series, Johnson constructs multiple facets of his own personal identity through assemblages of wallpaper patterning created from stock photographs of tropicalia. These are collaged over ceramic tiles that have been splattered and marked with colour spray paint and swathed in black soap, which the artist has also utilised in his portraiture, and wax. Weaving in photographic images of indigenous masks, Johnson’s combination of abstraction and figuration produces a narrative of the African American experience replete with imagery. Across its highly active surface, critic Roberta Smith has observed that Johnson’s assemblages “create an Edenic mood…The works are completed (or elegantly defaced) with spray paint, scratchy daubs of black soap and big, velvety pours of the melted soap mixture” (R. Smith, “In ‘Fly Away,’ Rashid Johnson Keeps the Focus on Race,” The New York Times, 15 September, 2016).

Although these compositions could appear suggestive of black culture, in general, certain elements point directly towards Johnson’s more personal experiences. Replete with emotional symbolism, the present work embodies an act of longing and optimism on the part of the artist. Recalling the image of palm trees as a child in Chicago, tropical vegetation has come to stand for whimsical dreaming for Johnson; “As a kid I remember thinking that if you could actually live in a place with palm trees, if you could get away from the city and the cold, that meant you’d definitely made it” (the artist, quoted in “Among The Palm Trees: Rashid Johnson at the Milwaukee Art Museum”, Chicago Gallery News, 23 May 2017). Gathering together disparate elements of personal and parasocial history, Untitled Escape Collage revels in juxtaposition – between material and paraphernalia – yet is brought together by Johnson’s use of paint. Replete with shades of green, yellow and red, the chromatic vibrancy of the present work is in stark contrast to the typical sparse compositions of Johnson’s previous series. Offering a landscape of flora and fauna to explore, the present work is a testament to Johnson’s ability to redefine the narrative surrounding art made by black artists, while creating meaningful, impactful, and beautiful works in the process.

Javier Calleja

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 2,800,000 – 3,500,000
HKD 2,794,000 / USD 356,782

Javier Calleja 哈維爾・卡勒加 | It won’t be easy 這並不容易 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JAVIER CALLEJA (b. 1978)
It won’t be easy, 2020
Acrylic on canvas
162×130 cm (63 3/4 x 51 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2020 on the bottom turnover edge; titled on the overlap

Javier Calleja

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 4,826,000 / USD 616,221

Javier Calleja 哈維爾 · 卡勒加 | Have A Nice Day! 祝你有個美好的一天！ | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JAVIER CALLEJA (b. 1978)
Have A Nice Day!, 2020
Acrylic on canvas, in artist’s frame
Canvas: 161×131 cm (63 3/8 x 51 5/8 inches)
Overall: 222×190 cm (87 3/8 x 74 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2020 on the overlap

 

 

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Christie’s

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1. 20th/21st Century Art Sale, Hong-Kong
24 September 2023

20th/21st Century Art Sale (christies.com)

Total:
HKD 86,987,300
USD 45,038,634

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# Lots: 23
# Lots sold: 18
Sell-Through Rate: 78.3%

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Above Estimates: 6 (26%)
Within Estimates: 8 (35%)
Below Estimates: 4 (17%)
Unsold: 5 (22%)

Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 24 September 2023
Estimated: HKD 13,800,000 – 18,800,000
HKD 16,710,000 / USD 2,136,746

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
INFINITY NETS (GGF), 2017
Acrylic on canvas
146.2 x 112 cm (57 1/2 x 44 1/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2017 INFINITY NETS GGF’ (on the reverse)