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Detailed Table of Content

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PART I: SUMMARY

1. Timeline
2. Auction Statistics
3. Top 10 Lots
4. Top 10 Artists
5. Top 10 Performers

PART II: AUCTION RESULTS

6. The Now Evening Auction
7. Contemporary Evening Auction
8. Contemporary Day Auction
9. Modern Evening Auction
10. Modern Day Auction

11. The Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale
12. 21st Century Evening Sale
13. 20th Century Evening Sale
14. Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale
15. Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper and Day Sales

16. Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
17. Modern and Contemporary Art Day Sale

PART III: FOCUS

18. Focus: Ultra-Contemporary Art

1. Lucy Bull
2. Jadé Fadojutimi
3. Christina Quarles
4. Adrian Ghenie
5. Avery Singer
6. Rashid Johnson
7. Jonas Wood
8. Other Artists

19. Focus: Contemporary Art

1. Jean-Michel Basquiat
2. George Condo
3. Keith Haring
4. Cecily Brown
5. Yoshitomo Nara
6. Christopher Wool
7. Damien Hirst
8. Takashi Murakami
9. Other Artists

20. Focus: Post-War

1. Joan Mitchell
2. Any Warhol
3. David Hockney
4. Roy Lichtenstein
5. Yayoi Kusama
6. Fernando Botero
7. Gerhard Richter
8. Alex Katz
9. Other Artists

21. Focus: Impressionist and Modern Art

1. Claude Monet
2. Pablo Picasso
3. Rene Magritte
4. Other Artists

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PART I: SUMMARY

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Timeline

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1. The Now Evening Auction
13 May 2024

The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

2. Contemporary Evening Auction
13 May 2024

Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

3. Contemporary Day Auction
14 May 2024

Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

4. Modern Evening Auction
15 May 2024

Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

5. Modern Day Auction
16 May 2024

Modern Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

1. The Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale
14 May 2024

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale (christies.com)

2. 21st Century Evening Sale
14 May 2024

21st Century Evening Sale (christies.com)

3. 20th Century Evening Sale
16 May 2024

20th Century Evening Sale (christies.com)

4. Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale
17 May 2024

Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale (christies.com)

5. Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper and Day Sales
18 May 2024

Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper Sale (christies.com)

Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale (christies.com)

 

1. Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
14 May 2024

Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale: New York Auction May 2024 (phillips.com)

2. Modern and Contemporary Art Day Sale: Morning & Afternoon Sessions
15 May 2024

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session: New York May 2024 (phillips.com)

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Se… New York May 2024 (phillips.com)

 

Auction Statistics

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Total: USD 1,388,814,873
1,396 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 84.7%

In just one week, with Christie’s website down, and in the absence of any major private collection put up for sale, the three main auction houses realized a total cumulative turnover just short of USD 1.4 billion, through the sale of 1,396 lots spread across 7 evening sales, and 6 day sales.

This compares to USD 2,133,870,728 realized in November 2023 through the sale of 1,518 lots, with a sell-through rate of 83.1%. Two collections were sold in November 2023: the Emily Fisher Landau Collection at Sotheby’s and the Triton Collection at Phillips, contributing around USD 509 million to the total.

Despite the issues Christie’s encountered with its website, it emerges as the leading Auction House for this season with a turnover of USD 645,770,610 though 3 Evening Sales, and 2 Day Sales. It sold 592 lots, with a sell-through rate of 85.2%.

 

 

Sotheby’s generated a turnover of USD 633,377,652 though 3 Evening Sales, and 2 Day Sales. It sold 592 lots, with a sell-through rate of 85.2%.

 

This compares to USD 1,098,821 generated through the sale of 728 lots in November 2023. However, the sale of the Emily Fisher Landau Collection generated around USD 425 million in November 2023.

Price Segmentation

205 Lots sold over USD 1 million
Turnover: USD 1,137,150,800
81.9% of Total

This compares to 264 lots (USD 1.9 billion / 88.7% of total) in November 2023 and to 244 lots (USD 1.3 billion / 71.6% of total) in May 2023.

35 Lots sold over USD 10 million
Turnover: USD 660,117,950
47.5% of Total

This compares to 31 lots (USD 1.3 billion / 59.2% of total) in November 2023 and to 37 lots (USD 830 million / 45.2% of total) in May 2023.

1 Lot sold over USD 40 million
Turnover: USD 46,479,000
3.3% of Total

This compares to 8 lots (USD 484,313,500 / 22.7% of total) in November 2023, and 5 lots (USD 248 million / 13.8% of total) in May 2023.

 

 

 

Top 10 Lots

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The Top 10 Lots generated a cumulative turnover of USD 312,378,700.

With 2 works among the Top 10, Jean-Michel Basquiat brought USD 78,514,000, or 25% of the turnover generated by the Top 10 Lots. 2 women artists made it to the Top 10, Leonora Carrington and Joan Mitchell.

This compares to USD 562,649,000 generated by the Top 10 Lots in November 2023, led by Pablo Picasso’s Femme a la montre, that sold for USD 139,363,500.

 

 

#1. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
USD 46,479,000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Modern & Contempor… Lot 5 May 2024 | Phillips

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

#2. Andy Warhol

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 35,585,000

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), Flowers | Christie’s (christies.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Flowers, 1964
Acrylic, fluorescent paint and silkscreen ink on linen
82×82 inches (208.3 x 208.3 cm)
Signed twice and dated later ‘Andy Warhol Andy Warhol 65’ (on the overlap)

#3. Claude Monet

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimate on Request
USD 34,804,500

Meules à Giverny  | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

CLAUDE MONET (1840 – 1926)
Meules à Giverny, 1893
Oil on canvas
65.5 x 100.2 cm (25 7/8 x 39 1/2 inches)
Signed Claude Monet and dated 93 (lower right)

#4. Vincent van Gogh

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 33,185,000

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890), Coin de jardin avec papillons | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED / IRREVOCABLE BID

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Coin de jardin avec papillons, 1887
Oil on canvas
50.4 x 61.4 cm (19 3/4 x 24 1/4 inches)
Painted in May-July 1887

#5. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimate on Request
USD 32,035,000

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet | Christie’s (christies.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet, 1982
Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on canvas mounted on tied wood supports
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled and dated (on the reverse)

#6. David Hockney

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 25,000,000 – 35,000,000
USD 28,585,000

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937), A Lawn Being Sprinkled | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
A Lawn Being Sprinkled, 1967
Acrylic on canvas
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, inscribed, titled and dated ‘”Lawn being sprinkled” David Hockney Los Angeles 1967’ (on the reverse)

#7. Leonora Carrington

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 28,485,000
NEW WORLD RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
TOP PERFORMER

Les Distractions de Dagobert | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

LEONORA CARRINGTON (1917 – 2011)
Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945
Tempera on Masonite
29 3/4 x 34 1/4 inches (75.6 x 87 cm)
Signed Carrington and dated 1945, September (lower right)

#8. Francis Bacon

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000,000 – 50,000,000
USD 27,735,000

Portrait of George Dyer Crouching | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FRANCIS BACON (1909 – 1992)
Portrait of George Dyer Crouching, 1966
Oil on canvas
78 x 57 7/8 inches (198×147 cm)
Titled and dated 1966 (on the reverse)

#9. Lucio Fontana

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 22,969,800

Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCIO FONTANA (1899 – 1968)
Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio, 1964
Oil on canvas
177.8 x 123 cm (70 x 48 1/2 inches)
Signed (upper left); signed (on the reverse)

#10. Joan Mitchell

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
USD 22,615,400

Noon | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

JOAN MITCHELL (1925 – 1992)
Noon, circa 1969
Oil on canvas
102×79 inches (259.1 x 200.7 cm)
Signed (lower left); signed and titled (on the reverse)

Top 10 Artists

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Notable Artist’s Records and Top Performers

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Leonora Carrington

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 28,485,000
NEW WORLD RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
TOP PERFORMER

Les Distractions de Dagobert | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

LEONORA CARRINGTON (1917 – 2011)
Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945
Tempera on Masonite
29 3/4 x 34 1/4 inches (75.6 x 87 cm)
Signed Carrington and dated 1945, September (lower right)

 

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PART II: AUCTION RESULTS

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Sotheby’s: The Now Evening Auction

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Total: USD 32,673,750
16 sold Lots
Sell-Through rate: 94.1%

The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

With 16 lots sold, The Now Evening Auction totaled USD 32,673,750.

This compares to a total low estimate of USD 30,150,000, and high estimate of USD 42,600,000. With one lot failing to sail, and one withdrawn lot, the sell-through rate is 94.1%. The highest price of the sale was achieved by Vignette #6, a painting by Kerry James Marshall dated 2005 that sold for USD 7,482,500. A new auction record has been reached for Lucy Bull, with 16:10, a painting dated 2020, that sold for USD 1,814,500.

The Now Evening Sale Top 3 Lots

9 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 27,308,000, representing 83.6% of the total sale. 6 lots sold above estimates (35% of the total number of lots), 9 lots sold within estimates (53%).

#1. Kerry James Marshall

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 -10,000,000
USD 7,482,800

Vignette #6 | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

#3. Avery Singer

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,206,000

Happening | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

AVERY SINGER (b. 1987)
Happening, 2014
Acrylic on canvas
100×120 inches (254 x 304.8 cm)
Signed and incorrectly dated 2013 (on the stretcher)

#4. George Condo

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,144,500

Conversations | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957)
Conversations, 2012
Acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas
70×90 inches (177.8 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated 2012 (upper left)

#5. Adrian Ghenie

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 3,006,000

The Uncle | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ADRIAN GHENIE (b. 1977)
The Uncle, 2019
Oil on canvas
260.1 x 253.3 cm (102 3/8 x 99 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

#6. Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 1,996,000

Thread | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY (b. 1983)
Thread, 2012
Acrylic, charcoal, pastel, color pencil and Xerox transfers on paper
52×52 inches (132.1 x 132.1 cm)
Signed and dated 2012 (on the reverse)

#7. Toyin Ojih Odutola

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,996,000

Representatives of State | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

TOYIN OJIH ODUTOLA (b. 1985)
Representatives of State, 2016-2017
Pastel, charcoal and graphite on paper
72 7/8 x 50 3/4 inches (185.1 x 128 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 (on the reverse)

#8. Lucy Bull

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,814,500
NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
#2 Performer

16:10 | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCY BULL (b. 1990)
16:10, 2020
Oil on linen
93 1/8 x 53 7/8 inches (236.5 x 136.8 cm)
Signed and dated 2020 (on the reverse)

#9. Justin Caguiat

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 1,092,200
TOP PERFORMER

The saint is never busy | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JUSTIN CAGUIAT (b. 1989)
The saint is never busy, 2019
Oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
Framed: 87 1/2 x 114 inches (222.3 x 289.6 cm)

#10. Tracey Emin

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 1,000,000
USD 914,400

But you never wanted me | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

TRACEY EMIN (b. 1963)
But you never wanted me, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
71 3/4 x 71 3/4 inches (182.2 x 182.2 cm)
Signed (lower left); titled and dated 2018 (lower right)

#13. Christina Quarles

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 762,000

Cut to Ribbons | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

CHRISTINA QUARLES (b. 1985)
Cut to Ribbons, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
95×55 inches (243.8 x 139.7 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

#14. Jadé Fadojutimi

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 698,500

(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021
Oil, oilstick and acrylic on canvas
170×200 cm (66 7/8 x 78 5/8 inches)
Signed, dated March ’21 and variously inscribed (on the reverse)

Lots Withdrawn

Cecily Brown

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
WITHDRAWN

Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

CECILY BROWN (b. 1969)
Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band, 2016
Oil on canvas
97 1/8 x 150 3/4 inches (246.7 x 382.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2016 (on the reverse)

Sotheby’s: Contemporary Evening Auction

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Total: USD 234,578,050
32 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 91.4%

Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

With 32 lots, the Contemporary Evening Sale totaled USD 234,578,050.

Just ahead of the total low estimate of USD 217,600,000 (the high estimate was USD 315,800,000). With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 91.4%. The highest price was achieved by Francis Bacon’s Portrait of George Dyer Crouching, dated 1966, that sold for USD 27,735,000, well below its low estimate of USD 20 million.

The Contemporary Evening Auction Top 3 Lots

9 lots sold for more than USD 10 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 149,520,950, representing 63.7% of the total. All lots of the evening sold for more than USD 1 million. 8 lots sold above their estimates (23% of the total number of lots), 20 lots sold within their estimates (57%), and 4 lots sold below their estimates (11%).

#1. Francis Bacon

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000,000 – 50,000,000
USD 27,735,000

Portrait of George Dyer Crouching | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FRANCIS BACON (1909 – 1992)
Portrait of George Dyer Crouching, 1966
Oil on canvas
78 x 57 7/8 inches (198×147 cm)
Titled and dated 1966 (on the reverse)

#2. Lucio Fontana

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 22,969,800

Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCIO FONTANA (1899 – 1968)
Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio, 1964
Oil on canvas
177.8 x 123 cm (70 x 48 1/2 inches)
Signed (upper left); signed (on the reverse)

#3. Joan Mitchell

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
USD 22,615,400

Noon | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

JOAN MITCHELL (1925 – 1992)
Noon, circa 1969
Oil on canvas
102×79 inches (259.1 x 200.7 cm)
Signed (lower left); signed and titled (on the reverse)

#4. Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
USD 19,367,500

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL and JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1928 – 1987 and 1960 – 1988)
Untitled, 1984
Acrylic, oilstick and graphite on canvas
116 x 165 1/4 inches (294.6 x 419.7 cm)

#5. Frank Stella

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 14,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 15,280,250

Ifafa I | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FRANK STELLA (b. 1936)
Ifafa I, 1964
Metallic powder in polymer emulsion on canvas
77 1/2 x 135 inches (196.9 x 342.9 cm)

#6. Andy Warhol

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 11,250,000

Late Four-Foot Flowers | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Late Four-Foot Flowers, 1967
Acrylic, silkscreen ink and graphite on canvas
48×48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm)

#7. Joan Mitchell

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 10,101,000

Ground | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

JOAN MITCHELL (1925 – 1992)
Ground, 1989
Oil on canvas, in two parts
Overall: 220×395 cm (86 5/8 x 155 1/2 inches)
Signed (lower right)

#8. Joan Mitchell

#9. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
USD 10,101,000

Campaign | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960 – 1988)
Campaign, 1984
Acrylic, oilstick and silkscreen on canvas
85 7/8 x 68 1/8 inches (218×173 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 1984 (on the reverse)

#10. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 8,492,400

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960 – 1988)
Untitled, 1981
Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on paper
59×56 inches (149.9 x 142.2 cm)

#11. David Hockney

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 8,307,300

A Bigger Wave | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
A Bigger Wave, 1989
Oil on canvas, on four joined panels
60 x 72 1/4 inches (152.4 x 183.5 cm)
Signed, titled and dated March 1989 (on the reverse)

#12. Cy Twombly

CY TWOMBLY (1928 – 2011)
Untitled, 1959
Oil, oil based house paint and graphite on canvas
38 x 55 7/8 inches (96.5 x 142 cm)

#13. Andy Warhol

#14. Andy Warhol

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
USD 5,505,000

Carat | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Carat, 1961
Water-based paint on canvas
52 1/4 x 48 inches (132.7 x 121.9 cm)

#15. Lucio Fontana

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 5,263,000

Concetto spaziale, Attese | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCIO FONTANA (1899 – 1968)
Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1965
Waterpaint on canvas
100×81 cm (39 3/8 x 31 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled and variously inscribed (on the reverse)

#16. Gerhard Richter

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 4,658,000

Abstraktes Bild | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (b. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1990
Oil on wood
120×120 cm (47 1/4 x 47 1/4 inches)
Signed, dated 1990 and numbered 730-1 (on the reverse)

#17. Yayoi Kusama

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 4,658,000
#1 PERFORMER

The Pacific Ocean | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
The Pacific Ocean, 1958
Oil on canvas
122.9 x 175.9 cm (48 3/8 x 69 1/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 1958 (on the reverse)

#18. Keith Haring

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 4,470,000

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

REPEAT SALE

Sotheby’s New-York: 12 May 2021
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 5,779,200

Untitled | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

KEITH HARING (1958 – 1990)
Untitled, 1986
Acrylic on canvas
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed and dated JAN. 22 1986 (on the overlap)

#19. Roy Lichtenstein

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 3,000,000 – 4,000,000
USD 3,690,000

Purple Range | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Purple Range, 1966
Acrylic, oil and graphite on canvas
36×48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)
Signed and dated ’66 (on the reverse)

#25. Ed Ruscha

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 2,200,000

Christ Candle | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GUARANTEED

ED RUSCHA (b. 1937)
Christ Candle, 1987
Acrylic on canvas
71 3/4 x 72 inches (182.2 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated 1987 (on the reverse)

Passed Lots

Roy Lichtenstein

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
PASSED

Woman Reading | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Woman Reading, 1980
Oil and acrylic on canvas
54×70 inches (137.2 x 177.8 cm)
Signed and dated ’80 (on the reverse)

#1. Antony Gormley

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,266,500

Angel of the North | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANTONY GORMLEY (b. 1950)
Angel of the North, 1997
Bronze
39 x 103 1/4 x 7 7/8 inches (99 x 262.3 x 20 cm)
Incised with the artist’s initials, date 1997 and number 10/12 (on the underside)
This work is number 10 from an edition of 12 plus 1 artist’s proof

#2. Gerhard Richter

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,800,000 – 2,500,000
USD 2,056,500

Abstraktes Bild | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (b. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1983
Oil on canvas
100×70 cm (39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches)
Signed, dated 1983 and numbered 522-3 (on the reverse)

#3. Roy Lichtenstein

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 1,000,000
USD 1,996,000

Cubist Still Life | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Cubist Still Life, 1974
Acrylic, oil, sand and graphite on canvas
20×24 inches (51 x 61.1 cm)
Signed and dated ’74 (on the reverse)

#4. Alex Katz

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,875,000
TOP PERFORMER

May | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ALEX KATZ (b. 1927)
May, 1996
Oil on linen
120×240 inches (304.8 x 609.6 cm)

#5. Morris Louis

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,814,500

Split Spectrum | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MORRIS LOUIS (1912 – 1962)
Split Spectrum, 1961
Magna on canvas
81 1/2 x 48 inches (207 x 121.9 cm)
Signed, titled twice and dated ’61 (on the reverse)

#6. Gerhard Richter

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,754,000

Abstraktes Bild | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (b. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1993
Oil on canvas
24×28 inches (61 x 71.1 cm)
Signed, dated 1993 and numbered 800-5 (on the reverse)

#7. Helen Frankenthaler

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,754,000

Degas at 45 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

HELEN FRANKENTHALER (1928 – 2011)
Degas at 45, 1974
Acrylic on canvas
66 x 95 1/2 inches (167.6 x 242.6 cm)
Titled and dated Nov-74 (on the overlap)
Titled and dated Nov-74 (on the stretcher)

#8. Yoshitomo Nara

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,512,000

Ships in Girl | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YOSHITOMO NARA (b. 1959)
Ships in Girl, 1992
Acrylic on canvas
55×55 inches (139.7 x 139.7 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ’92 (on the reverse)

#9. Cy Twombly

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,512,000
TOP PERFORMER

Klu | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

#10. Joan Mitchell

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,451,500

La Plage | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JOAN MITCHELL (1925 – 1992)
La Plage, 1973
Oil on canvas, in 2 parts
Overall: 29 1/2 x 59 1/4 inches (74.9 x 150.5 cm)

Over 40 (How You Can), 1986

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 114,300

Over 40 (How You Can) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Over 40 (How You Can), 1986
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
20×16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Numbered PA 10.096 on the overlap

 

George Condo

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 139,700

Untitled | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957)
Untitled, 2017
Colored pencil on paper
30 1/4 x 22 3/4 inches (76.8 x 57.8 cm)
Signed and dated Sept 14, 2017 (upper left)

 

 

Sotheby’s: Modern Evening Auction

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Total: USD 235,053,650
48 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 96%

Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

With 48 sold lots, the Modern Evening Auction totaled USD 235,053,650.

This is just ahead of the pre-sale high estimate of USD 226,200,000 (which did not include any estimate for the top price of the night). With 2 withdrawn lots and 2 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 96%. The highest price of the evening was achieved by Meules a Giverny, a painting by Claude Monet dated 1893, that sold for USD 34,804,500 (Estimates on Request).

The Modern Evening Sale Top 3 Lots

8 lots sold for more than USD 10 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 144,003,000, representing 61.3% of the total for the night. 38 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 227,363,800, representing 96.7% of the total for the night.

#1. Claude Monet

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimate on Request
USD 34,804,500

Meules à Giverny  | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

CLAUDE MONET (1840 – 1926)
Meules à Giverny, 1893
Oil on canvas
65.5 x 100.2 cm (25 7/8 x 39 1/2 inches)
Signed Claude Monet and dated 93 (lower right)

#2. Leonora Carrington

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 28,485,000
NEW WORLD RECORD FOR THE ARTIST
TOP PERFORMER

Les Distractions de Dagobert | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

LEONORA CARRINGTON (1917 – 2011)
Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945
Tempera on Masonite
29 3/4 x 34 1/4 inches (75.6 x 87 cm)
Signed Carrington and dated 1945, September (lower right)

#3. Rene Magritte

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,0oo,000
USD 18,144,000

Le Banquet | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

RENE MAGRITTE  (1898 – 1967)
Le Banquet, circa 1955-57
Oil on canvas
29 3/4 x 47 5/8 inches (75.5 x 121 cm)
Signed Magritte (lower left); titled and dated 1955 (on the reverse)

#4. Alexander Calder

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,0oo,000
USD 14,352,300
GUARANTEED / IRREVOCABLE BIDS

Blue Moon | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ALEXANDER CALDER (1898 – 1976)
Blue Moon, 1962
Sheet metal, rod, wire and paint
60×300 inches (152.4 x 762 cm)
Incised with the artist’s monogram and dated 62 (on the red circular element)
Registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A13196

#5. Antibes vue de la Salis, 1888

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 14,122,500

Antibes vue de la Salis | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

CLAUDE MONET (1840 – 1926)
Antibes vue de la Salis, 1888
Oil on canvas
65.5 x 91 cm (25 3/4 x 35 7/8 inches)
Signed Claude Monet and dated 88 (lower right)

#6. Pablo Picasso

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
USD 12,743,700

Buste d’homme | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881 – 1973)
Buste d’homme, 1969
Oil and Ripolin on canvas
116.4 x 89.6 cm (45 7/8 x 35 1/4 inches)
Signed Picasso (lower left); dated 20.10.69. and numbered II (on the reverse)
Executed on 20 October 1969

#7. Mark Rothko

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 11,250,000

Untitled | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MARK ROTHKO (1903 – 1970)
Untitled, 1969
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
58×40 inches (147.3 x 102.9 cm)

#8. Édouard Manet

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 10,101,000
GUARANTEED LOT / IRREVOCABLE BIDS

Vase de fleurs, roses et lilas | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

EDOUARD MANET (1832 – 1883)
Vase de fleurs, roses et lilas, 1882
Oil on canvas
56 x 35.3 cm (22 x 13 7/8 inches)
Signed Manet (lower right)

Passed Lots

Pablo Picasso

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
PASSED

Femme au chapeau | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881 – 1973)
Femme au chapeau, 1941
Oil on canvas
61×38 cm (24×15 inches)
Signed Picasso and dated 13 juin 41 (center left)
Executed on 13 June 1941

Sotheby’s: Modern Day Auction

---

Total: USD 52,297,280
209 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 79.2%

Modern Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NOTA BENE: This sale is not followed by intelART

#1. Henri Matisse

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,500,000
USD 4,355,500

Jeune fille au chapeau de crin blanc | Modern Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

HENRI MATISSE (1869 – 1954)
Jeune fille au chapeau de crin blanc, 1923
Oil on canvas
47 x 39.1 cm (18 1/2 x 15 3/8 inches)
Signed Henri. Matisse (lower right)

 

 

Christie’s: The Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale

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Whether it was her Key Biscayne home or her 30,000-square-foot namesake exhibition space in Miami’s Design District, Rosa de la Cruz’s doors were always open. With a disposition as generous as her eye was radical, the late collector and philanthropist was at the core of Miami’s cultural scene for decades. Her numerous contributions, from opening free and public forums for contemporary art to funding scholarship programs for local arts students, helped shape the city into the thriving art capital it is today.

Around 200 works from her singular collection are coming to Christie’s, beginning with 20th and 21st Century Sale Week in New York this May. The collection is a testament to Mrs. de la Cruz’s astounding foresight and fearlessness. As Head of Rosa de la Cruz Collection Sale, Julian Ehrlich, notes, ‘Rosa may have lived in Miami, but this is far from a strictly Miami collection. She was a truly global collector.’

Total: USD 34,401,100
25 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 100%

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale (christies.com)

 

With 25 lots, the Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale totaled USD 34,401,100.

This was just below the pre-sale estimate of USD 37,920,000. All lots were guaranteed. 1 lot was withdrawn, with no lot failing to sell the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price was achieved by Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (America #3), dated 1992, that sold for USD 13,635,000.

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale Top 3 Lots

7 lots sold for more than USD 1 million generating a cumulative turnover of USD 24,900,700, representing 72.4% of the total for the night. 54% of the lots sold above their estimates (14 lots), 9 lots sold within their estimates (35%).

#1. Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
USD 13,635,000
NEW WORLD RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES (1957-1996), “Untitled” (America #3) | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES (1957-1996)
“Untitled” (America #3), 1992
42 light bulbs, porcelain light sockets and electrical cord
Overall dimensions vary with installation
Length: 504 inches (12.8 m)

#2. Peter Doig

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
USD 4,043,000

PETER DOIG (b. 1959), Rainbow Wheel | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

PETER DOIG (b. 1959)
Rainbow Wheel, 1999
Oil on canvas
78×73 inches (198.1 x 185.4 cm)
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘Peter Doig, ’98’-99′ “RAINBOW WHEEL”‘ (on the reverse)

#3. Mark Grotjahn

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,107,000

MARK GROTJAHN (B. 1968), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

MARK GROTJAHN (B. 1968)
Untitled, 2005
Oil on canvas
58×48 inches (147.3 x 121.9 cm)

#4. Peter Doig

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,320,500

PETER DOIG (B. 1959), Ski Jacket | Christie’s (christies.com)

PETER DOIG (B. 1959)
Ski Jacket, 1993
Oil on canvas
18×20 inches (45.7 x 50.8 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘SKI JACKET 93 Peter Doig’ (on the reverse)

#5. Christopher Wool

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,222,200

CHRISTOPHER WOOL (B. 1955), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

CHRISTOPHER WOOL (B. 1955)
Untitled, 2011
Silkscreen on linen
129×96 inches (304.8 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Wool 2011’ (on the overlap)
Signed and dated again ‘Wool (2011)’ (on the stretcher)

#6. Wade Guyton

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,071,000

WADE GUYTON (B. 1972), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)

WADE GUYTON (B. 1972)
Untitled, 2005
Inkjet on linen
60×38 inches (152.4 x 96.5 cm)

#11. Christina Quarles

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 655,200

CHRISTINA QUARLES (B.1985), Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

CHRISTINA QUARLES (B.1985)
Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World, 2020
Acrylic on canvas
77×96 inches (195.6 x 243.8 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Christina Quarles 2020 “Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World”‘ (on the reverse)

#13. Shara Hughes

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 567,000

SHARA HUGHES (B. 1981), No Way Out | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

SHARA HUGHES (B. 1981)
No Way Out, 2023
Oil and acrylic on canvas
68×60 inches (172.7 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated ‘SHARA HUGHES 2023 “NO WAY OUT”‘ (on the reverse)
Signed again ‘Shara’ (on the stretcher)

#21. Hernan Bas

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 70,000 – 100,000
USD 390,600

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978), Trying to fit in | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
Trying to fit in, 2004
Oil, acrylic and gouache on panel
31×24 inches (78.7 x 61 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated ‘HB 04 trying to fit in’ (on the reverse)

 

Lots Withdrawn

Martin Kippenberger

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
Withdrawn

MARTIN KIPPENBERGER (1953-1997), Untitled (from the series Hand Painted Pictures) | Christie’s (christies.com)

MARTIN KIPPENBERGER (1953-1997)
Untitled (from the series Hand Painted Pictures), 1992
Oil on canvas
71×59 inches (180×150 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials and dated ‘M. K. 92’ (on the reverse)

 

Christie’s: 21st Century Evening Sale

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Total: USD 80,258,980
30 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 93.8%

21st Century Evening Sale (christies.com)

The 21st Evening Sale totaled USD 80,258,980 with 30 lots sold.

This is just above the pre-sale low estimate of USD 74,080,000. 3 lots were withdrawn, and with 2 lots unsold, the sell-through rate is 93.8%. The sale was led by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet, dated 1982, that sold for USD 32,035,000.

21st Century Evening Sale Top 3 Lots

15 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 72,481,000, representing 90.3% of the total. Half of the lots sold above their estimates (17 lots or 49%), 10 lots sold within estimates (29%).

#1. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimate on Request
USD 32,035,000

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet | Christie’s (christies.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet, 1982
Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on canvas mounted on tied wood supports
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled and dated (on the reverse)

#2. Julie Mehretu

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
USD 5,858,000

JULIE MEHRETU (B. 1970)
Mumbaphilia (J.E.), 2018
Acrylic and ink on canvas
96×72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)

#3. Julie Mehretu

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 4,890,000

JULIE MEHRETU (B. 1970), Fever graph (algorithm for serendipity) | Christie’s (christies.com)

JULIE MEHRETU (B. 1970)
Fever graph (algorithm for serendipity), 2013
Acrylic, ink and graphite on canvas
96×120 inches (243.8 x 304.8 cm)

#4. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 4,406,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Enlightenment Means Living a Life Unconcernedly | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Enlightenment Means Living a Life Unconcernedly, 2008
Acrylic on canvas
194 x 259.1 cm (76 3/8 x 102 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and English, and dated (on the reverse)

#5. Bruce Nauman

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 4,043,000

BRUCE NAUMAN
Hanged Man, 1985
Neon tubing mounted on metal monolith
84 1/4 x 60 x 7 1/4 inches (214 x 152.4 x 18.4 cm)

#6. Vija Celmins

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,075,000

VIJA CELMINS
Web #10, 2006
Graphite and charcoal on acrylic ground paper
18 1/4 x 21 3/8 inches (46.4 x 54.3 cm)
Signed ‘Vija Celmins’ (lower right)

#7. Lynette Yiadom-Boake

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 2,954,000

LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE
Black Allegiance to the Cunning, 2018
Oil on linen
79×59 inches (200.7 x 149.9 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials
Titled and dated on the reverse

#8. Elisabeth Peyton

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,470,000

ELIZABETH PEYTON (B. 1965), Matthew | Christie’s (christies.com)

ELIZABETH PEYTON (B. 1965)
Matthew, 1997
Oil on canvas
39 x 27 3/4 inches (99×70 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Matthew, May 1997, Elizabeth Peyton’ (on the overlap)

#9. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,409,500

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), Chicken Wings Three | Christie’s (christies.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
Chicken Wings Three, 1983
Acrylic and Xerox collage on metal
35 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches (90.2 x 90.2 cm)

#10. Kerry James Marshall

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 2,228,000

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL
Lost Boys – AKA Black Tony, 1993
Acrylic and canvas collage mounted to board
27 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches (69.9 x 76.8 cm)
Signed and dated lower right

#11. Keith Haring

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 2,046,500

Keith Haring (1958-1990), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)

KEITH HARING (1958-1990)
Untitled, 1982
Sumi ink on paper
72 x 115 1/2 inches (182.9 x 293.4 cm)

#12. Jonas Wood

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,200,000 – 2,800,000
USD 1,744,000

JONAS WOOD (B. 1977), Landscape Pot 1 | Christie’s (christies.com)

GUARANTEED

JONAS WOOD (B. 1977)
Landscape Pot 1, 2014
Oil on canvas
118×93 inches (299.7 x 236.2 cm)
Signed twice with the artist’s initials, titled and dated ‘LANDSCAPE POT 1 JBRW 2014’ (on the reverse)

 

Lots Withdrawn

Brice Marden

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000,000 – 50,000,000
WITHDRAWN

BRICE MARDEN (1938-2023), Event | Christie’s (christies.com)

GUARANTEED

BRICE MARDEN (1938-2023)
Event, 2004-2007
Oil on linen, in two parts
Each: 72×48 inches (183×122 cm)
Overall: 72×96 inches (183×244 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘EVENT 2004-7 B. Marden’ (on the reverse of the left panel)
Titled and dated again ‘EVENT 2004-7’ (on the reverse of the right panel)

Nicolas Party

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
WITHDRAWN

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Grotto | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Grotto, 2019
Soft pastel on linen
190.5 x 160.1 cm (75 1/8 x 65 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2019’ (on the reverse)

Christie’s: 20th Century Evening Sale

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Total: USD 413,324,500
58 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 95.1%

20th Century Evening Sale (christies.com)

With 58 sold lots, the 20th Century Evening Sale totaled USD 413,324,500.

This is right in the middle of the pre-sale estimates range (USD 345-500 million). 2 lots were withdrawn (Andy Warhol’s Aretha Franklin and Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale). With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 95.1%. The top lot of the evening was Andy Warhol’s magnificent large-scale Flowers dated 1964, that sold for USD 35,585,000, just ahead from Vincent van Gogh’s Coin de jardin avec papillons that sold for USD 35,000.

20th Century Evening Sale Top 3 Lots

#1. Andy Warhol

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 35,585,000

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), Flowers | Christie’s (christies.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Flowers, 1964
Acrylic, fluorescent paint and silkscreen ink on linen
82×82 inches (208.3 x 208.3 cm)
Signed twice and dated later ‘Andy Warhol Andy Warhol 65’ (on the overlap)

#2. Vincent van Gogh

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 33,185,000

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890), Coin de jardin avec papillons | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED / IRREVOCABLE BID

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Coin de jardin avec papillons, 1887
Oil on canvas
50.4 x 61.4 cm (19 3/4 x 24 1/4 inches)
Painted in May-July 1887

#3. David Hockney

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 25,000,000 – 35,000,000
USD 28,585,000

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937), A Lawn Being Sprinkled | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
A Lawn Being Sprinkled, 1967
Acrylic on canvas
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, inscribed, titled and dated ‘”Lawn being sprinkled” David Hockney Los Angeles 1967’ (on the reverse)

#4. Alberto Giacometti

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 22,260,000

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI (1901-1966)
Femme Leoni, 1947
Bronze with brown patina
Height: 152 cm (59 3/4 inches)
Signed, numbered and stamped with foundry mark
‘Alberto Giacometti Susse Fondeur Paris 3/6’ on the lower left side

#5. Claude Monet

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 18,000,000 – 25,000,000
USD 21,685,000

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Moulin de Limetz | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Moulin de Limetz, 1888
Oil on canvas
92.5 x 72.8 cm (36 3/8 x 28 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 88’ (lower left)

#6. Pablo Picasso

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 19,960,000

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973), Femme au chapeau assise | Christie’s (christies.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Femme au chapeau assise, 1971
Oil and Ripolin on canvas
130 x 97.1 cm (51 1/8 x 38 1/4 inches)
Dated and numbered ‘28.7.71. II’ (on the reverse)
Painted in Mougins on 28 July 1971

#7. Giorgia O’Keeffe

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 16,510,000

GIORGIA O’KEEFFE (1887-1986)
Red Poppy, 1928
Oil on canvas
36 1/4 x 30 inches (92.1 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘G. O’Keeffe 1928’ on the stretcher

#8. Ed Ruscha

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 14,785,000

ED RUSCHA (B. 1937), Truth | Christie’s (christies.com)

ED RUSCHA (B. 1937)
Truth, 1973
Oil on canvas
54×60 inches (137.2 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, dedicated, inscribed and dated ‘For Merle and Pearl Edward Ruscha 1973 IT RHYMES WITH TOOTH’ (on the reverse)

#10. Joan Mitchell

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 13,060,000

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992), Chord X | Christie’s (christies.com)

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992)
Chord X, 1987
Oil on canvas
102 ½ x 78 5/8 inches (260.4 x 199.7 cm)
Signed ‘Joan Mitchell’ (lower right)

#12. Wayne Thiebaud

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 11,335,000
GUARANTEED LOT / IRREVOCABLE BID

WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920-2021)
Star Pinball, 1962
Oil on canvas
60 x 36 1/4 inches (152.4 x 92.1 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Thiebaud 62’ (lower right)

#13. Gerhard Richter

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 11,335,000

GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932), Abstraktes Bild | Christie’s (christies.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1988
Oil on canvas
200×180 cm (78 3/4 x 70 7/8 inches)
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘680-2 Richter 1988’ (on the reverse)

#19. Roy Lichtenstein

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
USD 7,310,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997), Modern Painting with Ionic Column | Christie’s (christies.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Modern Painting with Ionic Column, 1967
Acrylic, oil and graphite on canvas
62 x 82 1/8 inches (157.5 x 208.6 cm)
Signed and dated ‘rf Lichtenstein ‘67’ (on the reverse)

#23. Andy Warhol

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 5,616,000

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), Double Mona Lisa | Christie’s (christies.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Double Mona Lisa, 1963
Silkscreen ink on canvas
30 x 33 7/8 inches (76.2 x 86 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Andy Warhol 1963’ (on the overlap)

Roy Lichtenstein

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 2,349,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997), I Love Liberty (Study) | Christie’s (christies.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
I Love Liberty (Study), 1981
Painted and printed paper collage and graphite on paperboard
Image: 25 3/4 x 17 inches (65.4 x 43.2 cm)
Sheet: 34×25 inches (86.4 x 63.5 cm)
Signed and dated ‘rf Lichtenstein ’81’ (lower right)
Signed again and dated again ‘rf Lichtenstein ’81’ (on the reverse)

Christie’s: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale

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Total: USD 75,129,750
237 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 83.2%

Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale (christies.com)

With 237 lots sold, the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale totaled USD 75,129,750.

Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale Top 6 Lots

11 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 14,759,200, representing 19.6% of the total turnover. 71 lots sold above their pre-sale estimates (25% of lots), 97 lots sold within their pre-sale estimates (34% of lots), and 69 lots sold below their pre-sale estimates (24% of lots).

1. Top 10 Lots

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#1. Andy Warhol

#2. Mark Tansey

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,889,200

MARK TANSEY (B. 1949)
Archive, 1981
Oil on canvas
77 x 54 1/2 inches (195.6 x 138.4 cm)
Titled ‘Archive’ (lower left)

#3. Willem de Kooning

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,865,000

WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997)
Woman in a Rowboat, 1965
Oil and charcoal on paper mounted on Masonite
48 x 22 3/4 inches (122 x 56.6 cm)
Signed ‘de Kooning’ (lower left)

#4. Alma Thomas

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,623,000

ALMA THOMAS (1891-1978)
Tulips in Spring Sunshine, 1969
Acrylic on canvas
30×26 inches (76.2 x 66 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Tulips in Spring Sunshine ’69 Alma W. Thomas’ (on the reverse)

#5. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,320,500

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Dots Obsession (TBAOQ) | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Dots Obsession (TBAOQ), 2007
Acrylic on canvas
130.5 x 162.1 cm (51 3/8 x 63 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2007 Dots Obsession TBAOQ’ (on the reverse)

#6. Mark Grotjahn

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,320,500

MARK GROTJAHN (B. 1968)
Untitled (Blue Butterfly Light to Dark V 655), 2006
Oil on linen
77×51 inches (195.6 x 129.4 cm)

#7. George Condo

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,260,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), Shimmering Forms | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
Shimmering Forms, 2010
Acrylic, pastel and graphite on canvas
70×70 inches (177.8 x 177.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Condo 2010’ (upper left)

#8. Bob Thompson

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,260,000

BOB THOMPSON (1936-1966)
Music Lesson, 1962
Oil on canvas
47 1/2 x 47 1/2 inches (120.6 x 120.6 cm)
Signed and inscribed ‘BT Marcellus from Bob T. this is my man Bob T winter and summer together love you till the end’
(on the reverse)

#9. Roy Lichtenstein

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,197,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997), Painting: Silver Frame | Christie’s (christies.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Painting: Silver Frame, 1984
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
54×60 inches (137.2 x 152.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Lichtenstein ’84’ (on the reverse)

#10. Robert Indiana

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,197,000

ROBERT INDIANA (1928-2018)
LOVE (Red Faces Blue Sides), 1966-1999
Polychrome aluminum
96x96x48 inches (243.8 x 243.8 x 121.9 cm)
Stamped with the artist’s name, number, date and fabricator mark ‘© 1966-1999
R INDIANA 3/5’ (on the interior edge of the ‘E’)
Conceived in 1966 and executed in 1999
This work is number three from an edition of five plus two artist’s proofs

 

2. Andy Warhol

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Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn), 1967

Clockwork Panda Drummer (Toy Painting), 1983

Moon Explorer (Toy Painting), 1983

Ladies and Gentlemen, 1975

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 793,800

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
67×59 inches (170.2 x 149.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

Joan Mitchell

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 680,400

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992), Composition | Christie’s (christies.com)

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992)
Composition, circa 1970
Oil on canvas
13 3/4 x 10 1/2 inches (34.9 x 26.7 cm)
Signed and dedicated ‘To Bellum with all my love & deep thanks love Joan’ (on the stretcher)

Rashid Jonhson

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 604,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Escape Collage | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
72 1/4 x 96 1/2 inches (183.6 x 245 cm)

Gerhard Richter

The Collection of Senator Herb Kohl
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 604,800

GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1977
Oil on canvas
100×70 cm (39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches)
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘431/9 Richter 77’ (on the reverse)

David Hockney

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 554,400

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Flourish, 1989
Oil on canvas
12 x 24 1/8 inches (30.5 x 61.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Flourish 1989 David Hockney’ (on the reverse)

KAWS

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 554,400

KAWS (B. 1974), UNTITLED | Christie’s (christies.com)

KAWS (B. 1974)
UNTITLED, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
84×120 inches (213.4 x 304.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘KAWS..12’ (on the reverse)

KAWS

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 70,000 – 100,000
USD 94,500

KAWS (B. 1974), UNTITLED | Christie’s (christies.com)

KAWS (B. 1974)
UNTITLED, 2013
Acrylic on canvas
24×32 inches (61 x 81.3 cm)
Signed and dated ‘KAWS..13’ (on the reverse)

KAWS

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 63,000

KAWS (B. 1974), BORN TO BEND | Christie’s (christies.com)

KAWS (B. 1974)
BORN TO BEND, 2013
Painted bronze and painted steel base
16 1/2 x 10 3/4 x 6 inches (41.9 x 27.3 x 15.2 cm)
Signed, numbered and dated ‘KAWS..13 6/10’ (on the underside)
This work is number six from an edition of ten plus two artist’s proofs

Jade Fadojutimi

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 529,200

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019
Oil on canvas
160×220 cm (63 x 86 5/8 inches)
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘Dec ’19 ‘The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms Jadé Fadojutimi JF’ (on the reverse)

Gerhard Richter

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 504,000

GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932)
Grau (hinter Glas), 2002
Oil behind glass, in artist’s frame
120×90 cm (47 3/4 x 36 inches)
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘876-6 Richter 2002’ (on the reverse)
Signed again and dated again ‘Richter 2002’ (on a plastic label affixed to the upper side edge)

George Condo

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 504,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), The Apparition | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
The Apparition, 2009
Oil on canvas
40×36 inches (101.6 x 91.4 cm)

Jonas Wood

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 478,800

JONAS WOOD (B. 1977)
Untitled (Pollock with Night Bloom), 2012
Oil and acrylic on canvas
65×30 inches (165.1 x 76.2 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated ‘JBRW 2012 UNTITLED (POLLOCK WITH NIGHT BLOOM)’
(on the reverse)

Maria Berrio

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 450,000
USD 441,000

MARÍA BERRÍO (B. 1982)
La Cena, 2012
Wax crayon, graphite, fabric collage and Japanese rice paper collage on canvas
48×58 inches (121.9 x 147.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘”La Cena” Maria Berrio 2012’ (on the reverse)

Rashid Johnson

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 403,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

George Condo

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 252,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), The Maitre D | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
The Maitre D, 2007
Oil on canvas
24×18 inches (61 x 45.7 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Condo 07’ (on the reverse)

Kehinde Wiley

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 239,400

KEHINDE WILEY (B. 1977)
Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of Last Judgement, 2018
Oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
96×72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Kehinde Wiley 2018’ (on the reverse)

Hernan Bas

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 107,100

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978), The Paper Crown Prince | Christie’s (christies.com)

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
The Paper Crown Prince, 2005
Water-based oil on panel
11 7/8 x 10 inches (30.2 x 25.4 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials and dated ‘HB 05’ (lower right)

George Condo

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 94,500

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
Reclining Nude (II), 2010
Colored pencil on paper
22 1/4 x 30 inches (56.5 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Condo 2010’ (upper left)

 

 

 

 

Christie’s: Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper and Day Sales

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Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale

Total: USD 29,168,280
129 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 83.8%

Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale (christies.com)

Nota Bene: This sale is not followed by intelART

 

#1. Claude Monet

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,228,000

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Prairie à Giverny | Christie’s (christies.com)

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Prairie à Giverny, 1886
Oil on canvas
92.7 x 81.3 cm (36 1/2 x 32 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 86’ (lower left)

#2. Pablo Picasso

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,071,000

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973), Citrons et verre | Christie’s (christies.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Citrons et verre, 1944
Oil on canvas
26.7 x 41.3 cm (10 5/8 x 16 1/4 inches)
Signed ‘Picasso’ (upper left)
Dated ‘14.1.44.’ (on the reverse)
Painted on 14 January 1944

#3. Marc Chagall

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 982,800

MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985), Le Songe | Christie’s (christies.com)

MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985)
Le Songe, 1976
Oil and tempera on canvas
81 x 60.2 cm (31 7/8 x 23 3/4 inches)
Signed ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower right); signed again ‘Marc Chagall ‘ (on the reverse)

 

Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper Sale

Total: USD 13,488,000
86 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 84.3%

Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper Sale (christies.com)

Nota Bene: This sale is not followed by intelART

 

#1. Salvador Dali

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,744,000

SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989), Rhinocéros (recto); Etude pour Rhinocéros (verso) | Christie’s (christies.com)

SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989)
Rhinocéros (recto); Etude pour Rhinocéros (verso), 1959
Gouache, brush and black and India inks and ink wash over pencil on card (recto); pencil on card (verso)
90.7 x 65 cm (35 3/4 x 25 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated twice ‘Dalí 1959’ (lower right; recto) and inscribed (lower left; recto)
Signed again and inscribed ‘SIEKYRA-DALI PRESENTEN RHINOCEROS’ (verso)

#2. Pablo Picasso

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,184,400

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973), La Suite Vollard | Christie’s (christies.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
La Suite Vollard, 1930-1937
The rare complete set of one hundred etchings, aquatints and drypoints on Montval laid paper
Of which fifty signed ‘Picasso’ (lower right), all watermarked Picasso or Vollard
Each Sheet circa: 34 x 44.5 cm (13 3/8 x 17 1/2 inches)
This set is from the edition of 260 published by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, 1939

#3. Marc Chagall

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 705,600

MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985), Les Amoureux sous les palmiers à Antibes | Christie’s (christies.com)

MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985)
Les Amoureux sous les palmiers à Antibes, 1969
Gouache, watercolor, pastel and pen and colored inks over pencil on paper
76.5 x 57 cm (30 1/8 x 22 1/2 inches)
Stamped with signature ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower left)

With 24 lots sold, the Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled USD 86,022,800.

This is just below the USD 88,950,000 pre-sale estimate. 2 lots were withdrawn, including Picasso’s Buste de femme au chapeau that carried estimates of USD 12-18 million. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 85.7%. The sale was led by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR), a painting dated 1982, that sold for USD 46,479,000.

Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale Top 3 Lots

12 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 78,733,000 (91.5% of the total sale). 7 lots sold over their estimates (25%), 16 lots within their estimates (57%), only 1 lot sold below estimates.

#1. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
USD 46,479,000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Modern & Contempor… Lot 5 May 2024 | Phillips

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

#3. Donald Judd

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
USD 5,989,000

Donald Judd – Modern & Contemporary Art … Lot 12 May 2024 | Phillips

#4. Helen Frankenthaler

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,800,000 – 2,500,000
USD 3,690,000

Helen Frankenthaler – Modern & Contempora… Lot 7 May 2024 | Phillips

#5. Barkley L. Hendricks

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,206,000

Barkley L. Hendricks – Modern & Contempor… Lot 4 May 2024 | Phillips

#6. Donald Judd

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,722,000

Donald Judd – Modern & Contemporary Art E… Lot 9 May 2024 | Phillips

#7. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,996,000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Modern & Contempo… Lot 13 May 2024 | Phillips

#8. Yayoi Kusama

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,875,000

Yayoi Kusama – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 11 May 2024 | Phillips

GUARANTEED | IRREVOCABLE BID

#9. Rashid Johnson

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,391,000

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 14 May 2024 | Phillips

#10. George Condo

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,270,000

George Condo – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 15 May 2024 | Phillips

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,143,000

Andy Warhol – Modern & Contemporary Art … Lot 16 May 2024 | Phillips

#12. Jade Fadojutimi

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,079,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 8 May 2024 | Phillips

#13. Grace Hartigan

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 1,000,000
USD 927,100

Grace Hartigan – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 20 May 2024 | Phillips

#14. Derek Fordjour

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 889,000

Derek Fordjour – Modern & Contemporary Ar… Lot 2 May 2024 | Phillips

#15. Marc Chagall

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 863,600

Marc Chagall – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 23 May 2024 | Phillips

#17. George Condo

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 660,400

George Condo – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 26 May 2024 | Phillips

#22. Alex Katz

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 500,000
USD 381,000

Alex Katz – Modern & Contemporary Art Ev… Lot 22 May 2024 | Phillips

Passed Lots

Maria Berrio

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
PASSED

María Berrío – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 24 May 2024 | Phillips

Lots Withdrawn

Pablo Picasso

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
WITHDRAWN

Pablo Picasso – Modern & Contemporary Ar… Lot 17 May 2024 | Phillips

Phillips: Modern and Contemporary Art Day Sale

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Total: USD 23,642,811
215 Lots sold
Sell-Through Rate: 80.5%

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session: New York May 2024 (phillips.com)

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Se… New York May 2024 (phillips.com)

 

1. Top 10 Lots

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#1. Helen Frankenthaler

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,168,400

Helen Frankenthaler – Modern & Contempo… Lot 133 May 2024 | Phillips

#2. Robert Motherwell

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 698,500

Robert Motherwell – Modern & Contempora… Lot 134 May 2024 | Phillips

#3. Anish Kapoor

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 673,100

Anish Kapoor – Modern & Contemporary Ar… Lot 343 May 2024 | Phillips

#4. Aristide Maillol

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 635,000

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session: New York May 2024 (phillips.com)

#5. Joan Mitchell

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 550,000
USD 584,200

Joan Mitchell – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 138 May 2024 | Phillips

 

2. Other Highlights

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Salvo

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 254,000

Salvo – Modern & Contemporary Art Day S… Lot 306 May 2024 | Phillips

Keith Haring

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 152,400

Keith Haring – Modern & Contemporary Ar… Lot 147 May 2024 | Phillips

George Condo

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 50,000
USD 76,200

George Condo – Modern & Contemporary Ar… Lot 418 May 2024 | Phillips

Hernan Bas

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 90,000
USD 76,200

Hernan Bas – Modern & Contemporary Art … Lot 318 May 2024 | Phillips

 

 

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PART III: FOCUS

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Focus: Ultra-Contemporary

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1. Lucy Bull

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16:10, 2020

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,814,500
NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

16:10 | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCY BULL (b. 1990)
16:10, 2020
Oil on linen
93 1/8 x 53 7/8 inches (236.5 x 136.8 cm)
Signed and dated 2020 (on the reverse)

 

Crackling with dynamic energy, Lucy Bull’s 16:10 from 2020 fluctuates between a surrealist dreamscape, a synesthetic painterly composition, and a psychedelic experience. Rippling tessellations of brilliant vermillion, neon yellow, and fluorescent orange induce the viewer into a trance-like state, coalescing into a disorientating and meditative plane of experience. At nearly eight feet tall, the verticality of 16:10 engulfs the viewer, transporting one to a prismatic, otherworldly plane. In recent years, the young LA-based artist who is represented by David Kordansky Gallery has distinguished herself as a contemporary paragon of abstract art.

JASPER JOHNS, USUYUKI, 1979-1995. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK FOR $3.3 MILLION IN OCTOBER 2020. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © 2024 JASPER JOHNS / LICENSED BY VAGA AT ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NY

Bull’s approach to painting results from a careful mediation between precision and impulse. The artist builds on initial washes of loose brushwork in negotiation between association and abstraction: taking up to twenty layers of paint to create a work’s final surface, Bull meticulously builds up the layers and textures of a composition, then employs reductive techniques like scratching away to tease out fragments of forms. Bull’s painterly gravitas lies in her capacity to generate meaning via the mechanisms of shape, color, and texture alone. Speaking about her revelatory process, the artist has said, “Ultimately what I’m trying to do is get to the point where there is potential for new avenues of discovery. The scratching feels like excavation; older marks in the beginning layers get pulled to the foreground. It’s similar to Max Ernst’s technique of frottage. I relate to how he talks about being a spectator to the making of his own work. When things finally open up and click, it feels like magic.” (Lucy Bull, quoted in: “Getting Lost in the Brushstrokes: Lucy Bull Interviewed by John Garcia,” Bomb, 26 April 2021, online)

In the present work, bursts of electric yellow erupt from the center of the canvas, morphing into gauzy veils of scarlet, fuschia, and vermillion. The high-keyed palette is offset by wisps of cooler hues, producing a chemical transmutation of compelling psychological complexity. Bull’s gestural swaths of pigment are characterized by their delicate and scale-like textures, which stretch and contract against the bounds of the picture plane. These primordial contours inject 16:10 with a kinetic ebullience, drawing the eye to each swell and ripple. Within this nebulous interplay of form and color, Bull ignites associations with the organic and the cosmic, with fusion and rupture, as the painting unfurls before the viewer in all its impossible vitality.

Embodying the fundamental Surrealist interest in unlocking new subconscious potentialities, Lucy Buill’s ethereal works stimulate a delicate wavering between conscious and unconscious thought in the viewer. A kaleidoscopic maelstrom of chroma and texture, 16:10 exemplifies the mysticism of Lucy Bull’s enigmatic practice, engaging with the medium of painting as an experimentation with the ineffable possibilities of synesthetic perception.

Loving Tongue, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 450,000
USD 762,000

Loving Tongue | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCY BULL (b. 1990)
Loving Tongue, 2019
Oil on linen
50×30 inches (127 x 76.2 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ’19 (on the reverse)

“I want to titillate the senses. I want to draw people closer. I think people aren’t used to paying much prolonged attention to paintings on walls, and I want to allow people to have more of a sensory experience. I want to draw them in so that there is the opportunity for things to open up and for them to wander.”

MAX ERNST, THE EYE OF SILENCE, 1944. COLLECTION OF THE MILDRED LANE KEMPER ART MUSEUM, ST. LOUIS © 2022 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

2. Jadé Fadojutimi

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The Pour, 2022

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,079,500

Jadé Fadojutimi – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 8 May 2024 | Phillips

Jadé Fadojutimi’s The Pour, painted in 2022, is a glistening mosaic of gem-like hues: vivid magentas, coral reds, royal purples, and hints of turquoise that traverse the canvas in a richly choreographed dance. A central semicircle motif seems to evoke the “pouring” action that the title alludes to, while patterns reminiscent of leaves and greenery erupt in growth along the margins. Somewhere between figuration and abstraction, one can almost make out faces peeking through the frenetic brushstrokes and sunset-hued washes. Brimming with Fadojutimi’s characteristic vibrancy, The Pour envelopes its viewer into the artist’s exuberant and precious world. As the artist elucidates, through “form, color, or texture or pattern […] they become spaces for me to exist.”

Gustav Klimt, Bauerngarten, 1907. Private Collection.

The dynamism and sense of quick movement in The Pour is a result of Fadojutimi’s unique painting technique. The artist thins her paint with the quick drying agent Liquin, which dries fast and to a high gloss, giving the effect of a reflection on glass or water. In her more recent paintings, and in this work in particular, she draws directly onto the canvas with oil bar, a medium that accommodates both the speed and spontaneity of her painting process. The introduction of the oilstick to her practice represented a new relationship with drawing for the artist. While she previously described drawing as “an appetizer for painting,” the oilstick represents for her a hybrid between the two and is a testament to her dedication to fading the boundaries between painting and drawing. For Fadojutimi, it is important that her medium keep up with her fast-paced artistic process; having stated that she is most productive in the evening, Fadojutimi often completes her works in late-night bursts of creativity. Dancing and running about her studio, the artist will even pause to write in her diary; writing, for her, is as intrinsic to her practice as mark-making, which is reflected in her poetic and narrative titles. The Pour – both vague enough to be generative, and specific enough to find resonance in the visuals of the work – emblematizes her mastery of titling.

Lee Krasner, Desert Moon, 1955. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Image: © 2024 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Fadojutimi’s rich canvases draw inspiration from myriad sources, the country of Japan being paramount: Japanese artists such as Makiko Kudo and Yoshitomo Nara serve as great influences to her, as well as Japanese animation; she even completed a residency in Japan in 2016. As a reminder of her childhood, she will often put on anime or video game soundtracks as she works. In the Western art historical canon, Fadojutimi’s work has been compared to abstract expressionists such as Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner, whose energized, rhythmic marks and high impact color schemes seem to find a modern-day equivalent in the British artist’s practice. In response to Krasner’s 2019 exhibition Living Colour, the Fadojutimi admitted her envy of Krasner’s use of color, adding that, for herself, “Color is an invitation to someone’s eyes, and how they see life and pleasure or even the opposite of that.” For Fadojutimi, color always comes first. 2022, the year that The Pour was painted, was a notable year for the artist; new paintings by Fadojutimi were on display in the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, which followed her first US solo museum exhibition at ICA Miami, Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy. The Hepworth Wakefield also displayed a solo exhibition by the artist that year, titled Can We See the Colour Green Because We Have a Name for It? At age twenty-eight in 2018, Fadojutimi was the youngest artist to have her work collected by the Tate Modern, and since then her trajectory has been one to watch as she establishes herself as one of the most compelling new voices in abstract painting. Created at a high point of her continually ascending career, The Pour is a striking meditation on color, life and growth. Thrumming with energy, Fadojutimi pours herself into this work; as she has said, “a self-portrait is not always the depiction of a face.”

(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 698,500

(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JADE FADOJUTIMI (b. 1993)
(Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po), 2021
Oil, oilstick and acrylic on canvas
170×200 cm (66 7/8 x 78 5/8 inches)
Signed, dated March ’21 and variously inscribed (on the reverse)

Brimming with frenetic, lyrical energy and prismatic color, Jadé Fadojutimi’s (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) from 2021 evokes a powerful send of joy, situating itself prominently within the artist’s commanding oeuvre. Atop a base of thinly applied tangerine brush strokes, Fadojutimi engulfs her canvas with a plethora of abstract figures, incorporating undulating stripes, multicolored splotches, and piquantly scraped dots of different blues. Rounded forms of pink, yellow, and green confidently announce themselves within the unrestrained color field, recalling naturalistic tulip bulbs or plump summer fruit. With the dynamic energy of Action Painting, the present work presents a dynamic medley of oil, oil stick, and acrylic, recalling the renowned mark-making practices of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell as well as their propensity for working with large-scale canvases that defined their Abstract Expressionist vigor. Represented globally by Gagosian, Fadojutimi’s paintings were a highlight of The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2022. Most recently, Fadojutumi was the subject of an acclaimed solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield which closed in March 2023, while her paintings reside in several prestigious museum collections, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Tate, London.

DAVID HOCKNEY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE: THE ROAD TO THE STUDIO, 1980. IMAGE © LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. ART © 2024 DAVID HOCKNEY

While (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) has only shocks of green within its multichromatic make-up, it undeniably recalls a fluttering, effervescent garden. Flower petals appear to dance in the wind, leaves and blossoms interconnect, butterflies bring movement, and the enrapturing buzz of hummingbirds provides an ambiance of pristine, unchangeable serenity. The previous Edenic description is, of course, painted masterfully in complete abstraction – in (Hip) like a kaleidoscope (po) Fadojutimi quietly brings us into her world, then stupefies us with a sanguine intensity. As the artist describes, “Though they’re purely abstract landscapes, there’s a dialogue with figuration within that too. I like to think of them as being on the spectrum between abstraction and figuration. I’d like them to remain open for both myself and the viewers, who will have their own dialogue with them visually. This is when my title starts to play a role too.” (Jadé Fadojutimi quoted in: Nicholas Trembley, ‘Who is Jadé Fadojutimi, young painter already represented by mega-gallery Gagosian?’, Numéro, 2023, (online)) With the title as context for the present work, one can easily imagine this Arcadian garden as viewed through the lens of a variegated kaleidoscope.

The act of layering paint is a hallmark of Fadojutimi’s process: through poetic mark-making, the artist builds up coats of pigment with rhythmic caresses, before intuitively scraping and scratching the canvas’s exacting surface to reveal a myriad of undulating grooves and sweeping strokes. This process well encapsulates her lovingly befitting moniker for these paintings – “emotional landscapes.” As Fadjotumi explains, her paintings “question the existence of feelings and reactions to daily experiences. They question our perceptions and perspectives whilst manifesting struggles. They recognize a lack of self caused by automatically thinking that my identity is already defined, and also a frustration that paint can accept these characteristics better than myself.” (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture, 2020 (online)) Fadojutimi takes inspiration from both internal and external sources, melding her experiences together to create her strident, intrepid canvases.

“What I love about painting is that it’s a discussion with ourselves. When you see a work you’re drawn to, there’s always a moment where you want to leave but you can’t…I want my canvases to be spaces where people maybe recognize themselves and think, ‘I see this, and that’s okay, but why do I see this? And what does that mean to me?’” 

Much like her layered paintings, she builds upon her own past, as she draws from her upbringing in suburban London, her Nigerian family, her interest in Japanese culture and video games. The result is powerful works of art that reflect a precise moment in time, full of unique – but ultimately universal – emotions.  Fadojutimi exceeds her painterly goals – the vibrant work commands our attention, immersing us in a wholly abstract realm that speaks to the artist’s inimitable painterly process.

The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 529,200

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993), The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms | Christie’s (christies.com)

JADÉ FADOJUTIMI (B. 1993)
The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms, 2019
Oil on canvas
160×220 cm (63 x 86 5/8 inches)
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘Dec ’19 ‘The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms Jadé Fadojutimi JF’ (on the reverse)

For Fadojutimi, painting is intense, both physically and emotionally. Her studio environment – which sometimes includes her childhood soft toys – is arranged so that she can get into the deep state of introspection she needs to paint, thinking about her school and early life, history, or how she feels about what’s happening in the world. Then she dances and runs at the canvas, scales ladders, cries, and sometimes breaks off to write in her diary. The title of the work will often come to her halfway through. She works on her own, through the night, with her favourite soundtracks blasting out, and sometimes she can finish a painting in a single night if she feels gripped. “It becomes a force that just takes over,” she says. “I always want to call it witchcraft.” Then, in the morning, she goes home to bed and her assistants come to get the studio ready so she can start again.

Joan Mitchell, City Landscape, 1955. Art Institute of Chicago. © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

 

3. Christina Quarles

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Cut to Ribbons, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 762,000

Cut to Ribbons | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

CHRISTINA QUARLES (b. 1985)
Cut to Ribbons, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
95×55 inches (243.8 x 139.7 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

Entrancing in vivid color and visceral form, Cut to Ribbons from 2019 is a stunning example of Christina Quarles’ unparalleled exploration of figurative abstraction. Fragmented and intertwined, the corporeal figures in Cut to Ribbons navigate between virtual and physical realms, denying rigid classifications of gender, race, and sexuality and imparting profound insight into the complexities of inhabiting a human body in the twenty-first century. Cut to Ribbons was notably executed for the exhibition Christina Quarles: In Likeness at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2019-2020, the first solo exhibition by the artist in a European museum. The present work reflects the profound influence that David Hockney’s early paintings have had on artist, a selection of which were on view in the adjoining gallery at The Hepworth Wakefield during her exhibition. Indeed, Quarles’ illustration of water in the lower register, use of unprimed canvas, and abrupt shift of perspectives draw directly from Hockney’s iconic 1960s swimming pool paintings. As in the best of her paintings, the present work exemplifies Quarles’ experimental and expressive brushwork, which captures both a sense of motion and the beauty of ambiguity. Quarles’s gestural lines and technique allow the painting’s forms to flow, contort, and evolve with the viewer. Alluringly depicting a disorganized body in a state of excess, Cut to Ribbons confronts the viewer with a disjunct experience of human embodiment, revealing the triumphant apogee of Quarles’ painterly dexterity and innovation.

In Cut to Ribbons, brilliant hues give shape to two entwined figures contoured by sharp markings and washy, diaphanous brushstrokes. The two figures twist together and overlap across the expanse of the canvas, unraveling into intersecting layers of harlequin checkerboard patterns in yellows, and greens, and pinks. Gestural lines allow the forms to flow, contort, and evolve with the viewer. The bodies are simultaneously weighty and buoyant, bobbing against the serene picture planes while simultaneously stretched and pulled by the downward momentum of attenuated limbs. Entangled feet rest on a bar of brilliant azure and appendages cascade downwards to the bottom of the canvas.

LEFT: SALVADOR DALÍ, THE ROTTING DONKEY, 1928. CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS. ART © 2024 SALVADOR DALÍ, FUNDACIÓ GALA-SALVADOR DALÍ, ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY. RIGHT: LOUISE BOURGEOIS, THE ARCH OF HYSTERIA, 1993. PRIVATE COLLECTION, SOLD FOR $5.6 MILLION AT SOTHEBY’S NEW YORK, 2019. ART © 2024 THE EASTON FOUNDATION / LICENSED BY VAGA AT ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NY

In line with the most consummate examples of the artist’s abstract figuration, Cut to Ribbons stratifies the material terrain of the canvas into digitally drafted planes of patterned wallpaper and soft brush strokes which are then displaced by bodily contours. The tripartite division of the canvas blurs the line between medium and picture plane, echoing the floating registers of Mark Rothko’s meditative Color Field paintings, while the patterned swirls of blue and white at the bottom of the canvas superbly evoke David Hockney’s luscious swimming pools, whose expressive use of color and form was a profound influence on Quarles as a child growing up in Los Angeles. The resulting intersection of high-key color, texture, and form in Cut to Ribbons deftly hybridizes physical and digital space, providing a compelling arena for the anonymous figures who are abstracted to almost bare parts to expose the nuances of bodies.

THE PRESENT WORK INSTALLED IN THE ARTIST’S STUDIO. ART © 2024 CHRISTINA QUARLES

Experimental and expressive brushwork radically fragments corporeal form, expressing the inner complexities of identity and countering fixed identifications of race, gender, and sexuality. “I often say that my paintings are portraits of living within a body, rather than portraits of looking onto a body” says the artist. (Christina Quarles in conversation with David Getsy, in Exh. Cat. The Hepworth Wakefield, Christina Quarles: In Likeness, 2019) “What interests me are themes of the sort of fragmentation that happens of yourself when you are in your body and really at a disadvantage in the way of knowing yourself because you know all [your] contradictions, all the ways you exceed or don’t quite fit into these certain categories of identity that we’re placed in.” (Christina Quarles quoted in: Claire Selvin “Christina Quarles on the Intricacies of Figuration and Selfhood” ARTNews, 15 April 2021 (online)) Cut to Ribbons alluringly explores the dichotomies of the self to illuminate the intersection of gender, sexuality and race while underscoring the diversity and complexity of the universal experience.

Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 655,200

CHRISTINA QUARLES (B.1985), Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World | Christie’s (christies.com)

CHRISTINA QUARLES (B.1985)
Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World, 2020
Acrylic on canvas
77×96 inches (195.6 x 243.8 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Christina Quarles 2020 “Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World”‘ (on the reverse)

Nude bodies grasp and tangle with one another in Christina Quarles’ Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World, a vibrant, animated canvas from 2020. Drawing on her own experience as a queer, multi-racial woman, Quarles paints the ways in which identity is always shifting and evolving. In the present work, limbs beget limbs, bodies beget bodies. The figures are composed primarily of delicate washes of prismatic pigment, and streaks of purple, pink, and bright yellow suggest muscle and blood. This cacophony of movement is framed by two ornate windows, each outfitted with crisp, curlicue tracery that Quarles has rendered using vinyl stencils. Although ostensibly decipherable, paintings such as Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World refuse clear conclusions and instead open themselves up to manifold, layered readings.

Although their surface may be two-dimensional, Quarles’ paintings are haptic experiences; they demand to be touched and propose an almost tangible sense of physicality. As the artist has noted, “I use the figure as a way of describing an experience of embodiment” (C. Quarles, quoted in E. McDermott, “All eyes on Christina Quarles, the painter inventing a new figurative language”, Wallpaper, 6 May 2023, online). Under Quarles’ handling, the body is fragmented and ever metamorphosizing; such an approach to representations of existence has its foundations in her undergraduate studies in philosophy. The figures in her paintings are meant to evoke the experience of living inside of a body rather than how it feels to be looked at or to look. “Bodies are occupied by space and patterns in my paintings,” she has said, “collapsing and expanding as they run into shifting contexts” (C. Quarles, quoted in P. Bradford, “Christina Quarles’ Shape-Shifting Figures at Pilar Corrias”, Ocula, 12 October 2023, online).

Salvador Dali, The Great Masturbator, 1929. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. © 2024 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí  / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Alinari Archives / Art Resource, NY. 

Indeed, by through the use of mutation and transformation, Quarles’ paintings suggest that the body can be a site of radical change. Far from fixed or even discernible, these figures are muscular; they swell, warp, and revel in physical and fleshy pleasures. Accordingly, they cannot be contained, and instead are able to rebel against expectation and tradition. This revolt is underscored by the painting’s own materialist, which contains both passages of high finish alongside drips and splatters, clarity and chaos. The doubling and repetition—evidenced in both the image and the title of the present work—is a reminder that art is as vast and undefinable as the lived experienced. Don’t They Know? It’s the End of tha World encourages new visions and new frameworks; it courts unruliness and defiance. It is, unto itself, a defiant image.

4. Adrian Ghenie

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The Uncle, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 3,006,000

The Uncle | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ADRIAN GHENIE (b. 1977)
The Uncle, 2019
Oil on canvas
260.1 x 253.3 cm (102 3/8 x 99 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

Phantasmagoric smears of ultramarine, crimson, and white obliterate the visage of a fugitive Nazi officer in Adrian Ghenie’s The Uncle of 2019, which sees Ghenie’s deft facture and psychological intensity at their very best. At once melding the squeegee scrape of Gerhard Richter’s post-photographic abstraction with the corporeal deformity of a Francis Bacon portrait, The Uncle extends Ghenie’s career-long interrogation of the twentieth century’s most deplorable characters, many of whom were the focus of the artist’s lauded exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. As figure and environment implode into one another, this nightmarish vignette of European dictatorship and its atrocities uncovers palimpsestic allusions to an artistic and historical past in Ghenie’s decisive synthesis of personal and collective memory.

Here, Ghenie surrounds the officer with the detritus of a fallen world: a plastic chair and waste caked in dirt litter the ground, the sky simmers behind him with apocalyptic potency, and behind him lies a fallen structure, perhaps a monument or commemorative statue. Ghenie casts the scene in cold, cruel light, and magmic drags of paint, fashioned at the command of his palette knife, close in on the canvas as if suffocating its subject. The Uncle showcases Ghenie’s technical virtuosity and compositional ingenuity at their irrefutable height, bearing striking chromatic and narrative resemblances to his operatic The Alpine Retreat at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Depicting Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s wife, at their residence in the Bavarian mountains, The Alpine Retreat similarly mars Braun’s face and body with decadent brushwork, blinding them in glaring, accusatory light. Ghenie’s marriage of gesture and journalistic material create a composite of remarkable pictorial cogency: toggling between the representational and the abstract, the tempest of gesture and figuration evince Ghenie’s compositional process, in which he collages sources from photography to silent comedy films before obscuring any immediate legibility of the contents with his pastose brushwork.

SALVADOR DALÍ, SWANS REFLECTING ELEPHANTS, 1937. PRIVATE COLLECTION. PHOTO © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 SALVADOR DALÍ, GALA-SALVADOR DALÍ FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Reflecting Ghenie’s technical virtuosity, aesthetic complexity, and the historic gravity of his subject matter, The Uncle conjures the achievements of his vanguard predecessors and poses a fundamental threat to the kind of dictatorships under which the artist was raised. There is a poignant, powerful catharsis achieved in his brand of hallucinatory portraiture, and from Ghenie’s deconstruction of the image emerges a rebuilt understanding: his paintings narrate his personal grapplings with tyrannical horror, and today stand as historiographic interventions.

Untitled, 2009

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 558,800

Untitled | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ADRIAN GHENIE (b. 1977)
Untitled, 2009
Acrylic on canvas
50 x 59.9 cm (19 5/8 x 23 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2009 (on the reverse)

Thick swaths of pink, mauve and burgundy coalesce with accents of yellow and orange to form an enigmatic protagonist in Adrian Ghenie’s Untitled. Executed in 2009, the work embodies the balance between abstraction and representation, history and myth, atrocity and humor that characterizes Ghenie’s Pie Fight painting series. From 2008 to 2009, he sought to convey the “darker currents of modern history,” while exploring the psychology of the immediate postwar era – “the trauma and the complexity of select sensitive moments” – and the nature of image-construction in a media-saturated society, (Exh. Cat., Adrian Ghenie: New Paintings, Pace, 2013, p. 5). Ghenie loosely depicts infamous figures of twentieth-century history, but obfuscates their faces in the remnants of a custard pie that call to mind the slapstick comedy of Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy from that same era. The cinematographic quality of these paintings, however, is heavily influenced by filmmaker David Lynch; Ghenie seeks to “consciously and unconsciously […] master in painting what Lynch has done in cinema,” (Adrian Ghenie, quoted in Andy Battaglia, ‘“Every Painting is Abstract”: Adrian Ghenie on His Recent Work and Evolving Sense of Self’, Artnews, 17 February, 2017, online). It is this conflation of codes that marks the Pie Fight series as one of Ghenie’s most important bodies of painting. Untitled from the series showcases Ghenie’s technical prowess as he manipulates the rich impasto with a dynamic sense of energy to a subject that is at once comical and oddly disquieting.

Ghenie mined archival materials for source materials, and by using historical figures omnipresent in the media and heavily associated with a time of war, Ghenie uses images that “go straight to your brain, which you can’t help but submit to,”(Adrian Ghenie in conversation with Stephen Riolo, ‘Adrian Ghenie, Pie Eater,’ Art in America Magazine, October 2010, online). He then complicates the reading and adds psychological complexity by rendering the subject anonymous under congealed peaks of whipped cream impasto. Ghenie looks to his artistic forefathers to imitate this technique, “in the 20th century, the people who did really radically were Picasso and Bacon. They took elements of the face and rearranged it,” in order to access a deeper, more complex emotional portrait. In emulating this technique of identity erasure, Untitled and other works from the series capture a sense of physiological Cubism, conveying a multitude of layered emotions in one frame, some of which are the artist’s own projection. In conversation with Stephen Riolo from Art In America Magazine, Ghenie explains “if you try to recreate an object from memory you wind up projecting yourself into the work; it becomes very personal, a self-portrait based on your subjectivity (Ibid.)

PABLO PICASSO, WEEPING WOMAN, 1937 / TATE MUSEUM, LONDON © SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS 2024
FRANCIS BACON, SELF‐PORTRAIT, 1969 / PRIVATE COLLECTION © 2022 ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACON/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/DACS, LONDON

Ghenie’s association with dictatorship spans beyond the historic facts of the Second World War and to the personal horrors of his own country’s totalitarian regime under Nicolae Ceausescu from 1967 to 1989. Born in 1977, Ghenie experienced first hand the debasement of a population under repression. He projects his own feelings in Untitled and in doing so, masterfully captures the nature of collective memory. Like Gerhard Richter whose formative years were spent under the Nazi regime, Ghenie smears, scrapes, and blurs the photographic evidence to create paintings that conceptually and physically confront the “texture” of history. Through erasure, effacing and overpainting, Ghenie’s work indicates subtle slippages between comedy and tragedy, reminding us that the profound trauma and humiliation of recent history lingers in the space between reality and personal memory, fact and fiction.

5. Avery Singer

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Happening, 2014

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,206,000

Happening | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

AVERY SINGER (b. 1987)
Happening, 2014
Acrylic on canvas
100×120 inches (254 x 304.8 cm)
Signed and incorrectly dated 2013 (on the stretcher)

Suffused with fabricated romanticism, the heightened tableau of Happening by Avery Singer is an exemplary testament to the artist’s tongue-in-cheek digital idiom, which takes cues from both past and future to achieve a sense of monumentality and an acute psychological presence. Executed in 2014, the present work belongs to a seminal series of grisaille paintings that introduced Singer’s radically inventive visual vernacular, featuring prominently in Avery Singer: Pictures Punish Words, the artist’s 2014-2015 solo exhibition held at Kunsthalle Zürich. Singer combines computer technologies with modernist legacies to generate ersatz compositions of half-cyborg, half-human figures enacting enduring art world clichés. Standing at an immense scale, Happening echoes the larger-than-life bravado of the art historical tropes that it quotes, hinting at the unrealized narratives that lie just beyond the canvas’s frame and inviting the viewer to step into the surreal worlds Singer creates. With humorous vitality and technical virtuosity, Happening articulates Avery Singer’s highly original, avant-garde mode – a zeitgeist-defining contemporary sensibility that blurs the boundaries between painting and technology; digital and analog; reality and perception.

PABLO PICASSO, LAS MENINAS, NO.1, 1957. MUSEO PICASSO, BARCELONA. IMAGE © SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS, LONDON 2024 / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Produced following her training at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Singer’s Happening in part mocks the process of critiquing and creating art in all its earnestness. In Happening, four nude women – wearing only high heels and rendered in a blocky, simplistic style – peer at an empty easel, while a fifth lies on the studio floor beneath them. Satirizing the esoteric pomp and circumstance of creative expression, Happening exists in the same fictional realm as art historical mythologies of the Old Master’s studio or the Renaissance workshop. This impulse of Singer’s is not without art historical context of its own, as the title Happening itself shares a name with the antinarrative performance pieces staged by the avant-garde artists of the Fluxus movement, such as Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, and Yoko Ono. These Happenings, which took cues from Surrealism and Dada, explored the objectification of mundane movements and play-related activities, and the depersonalization of their participants. Here, the dynamic and gestural nature of the figures’ posturing injects an absurdly theatrical playfulness into the atemporal mise-en-scène, belying Singer’s sophisticated conceptual considerations. As curator Beatriz Ruf notes, “The insignias of ‘fine arts’ collide with avant-garde tropes, and parodic autobiographical motifs constantly allude to cliches of the art world. Adopting a humorous tone, Avery Singer demonstrates rituals and social patterns and presents stereotypes of the artist, collector, and writer. In this context, she adopts the historical loci of artistic production…where the myth of the artist and cult of genius are fostered. How are artists made?” (Beatriz Ruf cited in: Exh. Cat., Kunsthalle Zürich (and travelling), Avery Singer: Pictures Punish Words, 2015, p. 5)

AVERY SINGER PHOTOGRAPHED IN HER NEW YORK STUDIO, 2021.  IMAGE © SUSAN MEISELAS/MAGNUM PHOTOS

Invoking the geometric forms of Constructivism, Futurism, and Cubism, Happening extends Avery Singer’s abstract and figurative sensibilities with its painterly mimicry of Internet-based aesthetics and digital imaging processes. Initial drafts of Singer’s scenes are conceived using SketchUp, a 3D modeling program, then projected onto a canvas and painstakingly rendered using masking tape and an airbrush in a meticulous process that serves to remove all traces of the artist’s hand. The fantastical composition of Happening is rendered in grisaille, and is further abstracted by the projected shadows that rake over every plane in order to emphasize the staged layers of illusion and reality that Singer constructs in her self-conscious parody of artistic production. Through this dimensional tension, paintings such as Happening open fictional realms that exist at the surreal interstice between the digital and material worlds, offering both an uncanny escape from contemporary quotidian reality and a humorous parody of it. Within the illusionistic precariousness of her paintings, Singer suggests the fallibility of not only the assumed and glorified power that art holds, but also the nature of metaphysical reality itself. Her prescient exploration of computer-generated realities collapses analog understandings of figuration, while expanding on modernist and surrealist notions of spatial logic. In artist Sven Loven’s exegesis on Singer’s beguiling visual vocabulary, he observes, “Through the lies of illusionism, the deceit of simulacra (depth of field, picture-in-picture, soft focus), [Singer’s images] seek to assure us of the validity of our own confusion in the face of cacophony. It is in this assurance that we can find comfort and peace, ground to stand on.” (Sven Loven, “The Cold Standard of Drifting Worlds” in: Exh. Cat., Zurich, Kunstalle Zurich (and travelling), Avery Singer: Pictures Punish Words, 2015, p. 5)

LEFT: FRANCIS PICABIA, PARADE AMOUREUSE, 1917. PRIVATE COLLECTION. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS. RIGHT: FERNAND LÉGER, THE BUILDERS, 1920. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NY. ART © 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

The earnest grandeur of artistic parade performed by Singer’s computer-age figures is undercut by the blatant surrealism of Singer’s abstract visual language, which conjures mimetic falsities while cutting to a cynical societal truth. By seamlessly synthesizing automated technologies and traditional painting techniques, Happening extends Singer’s singular aesthetic lexicon and subverts visual affectations to reinvent the enshrined genre of the painter’s studio scene. The fantastical atmosphere in Happening captures this absurdism within Avery Singer’s oeuvre and evinces the very best of her conceptual painterly practice, which posits a new place for the traditional medium with a technological dexterity and satirical wit, tailored for the Internet age.

Untitled, 2016

“Singer’s large paintings are densely crowded with quotations from avant-garde art history: Naum Gabo’s ‘Heads’ (1915–67), Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2) (1912), various constructivist works. Singer combines references with the frivolity of a dada collagist. There are cubo-futurist echoes in her attempts to represent multiple per­spectives, while a cold, elegant art deco aesthetic lends her paintings a seductive charm.”

6. Rashid Johnson

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Anxious Red Painting September 24th, 2020

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,391,000

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 14 May 2024 | Phillips

Executed in 2020, Rashid Johnson’s Anxious Red Painting September 24th emanates a raw, visceral intensity that offers a poignant reflection of our uncertain era. Distressed and agitated, the artist’s scrawled faces emerge from a thick web of brilliant red impasto. The present work is from a discrete body of work that served as Johnson’s visual exploration of communal apprehension, reflecting the shared experiences of individuals amidst the upheaval of 2020. While these deeply personal images originate from the artist’s experience during the turmoil of the year, the array of faces give tangible form to the collective sentiments that are felt concurrently among humanity. The profound resonance of Anxious Red Painting September 24th is underscored by the inclusion of a similar work in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, speaking to this series’ significance within Johnson’s oeuvre. Working in the midst of great social instability, Johnson has imbued this painting with a negotiation of the complex interplays between subjectivity and universality, figuration and abstraction.

Jean Dubuffet, Dhôtel shaded with apricot (Dhôtel nuancé d’abricot), July-August, 1947. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Image: © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
Artwork: © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

A strikingly poignant relic from a period of global disquiet, Anxious Red Painting September 24th encapsulates the isolation, fear, and frustration the world collectively experienced during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. Employing one of Johnson’s most enduring pictorial tropes—wincing, nervous faces—the present work represents a progression from Johnson’s acclaimed Anxious Men series (2015–2017) intensified by a new medium: a singular shade of red paint (aptly titled “Anxious Red”). This bespoke hue, custom-produced to match the emotional distress caused by a global pandemic, replaced his previous black and white palette with a visceral crimson. “These new works are pared down, and I like the spartan quality of them…,” Johnson recalled. I associate [the vivid red] with urgency, blood, and alarm. I spent time quickly conjuring images that had a relationship to earlier works but are fresh and new because of the circumstances in which they were made. I needed a cathartic release, a way to describe my emotional state… This was something that I felt needed to happen quickly.” This body of work captured the tumultuous emotions of a world in turmoil, executed with an amplified urgency reflecting the severity of contemporary events.

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2005. Private Collection. Sold for $41,640,000 USD through Phillips, New York, November 2022. Artwork: © Cy Twombly Foundation.

Arranged in a gridded structure, twenty-eight abstracted visages meet the eyes of the viewer. Rendered with dynamic red gestures against a white background, Johnson’s ensemble of characters coalesces the cartoon-esque whimsy of Keith Haring with the expressive fervor of Cy Twombly’s approach. Each blocked head is comprised of a pair of protruding eyes and a series of energetic lines forming clenched teeth or tightly pressed lips, depending on the application of the strokes. Enclosed within squares, the heads appear agitated, as though striving to escape their boundaries and enter physical reality.  Despite the sinuous smoothness of the strokes, they adhere to a consistent thickness, furthering the claustrophobic nature of the composition. Resisting a singular interpretation, Anxious Red Painting September 24th embodies the collective tumultuous energy that was catalyzed by the pandemic’s profound disruption to our daily existence. Reflecting on this body of work, Johnson said, “I think that they’ve always had so much opportunity to explore themes that were related to the times which they were made.” Viewing his work as a point of reference for the current moment, the artist perceives the whole of society in these contorted faces. “[T]he characters have more or less graduated into really being deconstructed in a way where they’re just losing their minds, more or less. I think with what we’ve been facing around quarantine, in particular, the absurdity of being removed from our society and the complexity of that has definitely evolved how the characters are able to speak.”

Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 403,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

“Anxiety is part of my life. It’s something that people of color don’t really discuss as often as we should. It’s part of my being and how I relate to the world, and being honest with that struggle has been rewarding for me. It has led to the kind of self-exploration that produces fertile ground for my output as an artist.”

Untitled Escape Collage, 2018

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 604,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Escape Collage | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
72 1/4 x 96 1/2 inches (183.6 x 245 cm)

7. Jonas Wood

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Landscape Pot 1, 2014

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,200,000 – 2,800,000
USD 1,744,000

JONAS WOOD (B. 1977), Landscape Pot 1 | Christie’s (christies.com)

JONAS WOOD (B. 1977)
Landscape Pot 1, 2014
Oil on canvas
118×93 inches (299.7 x 236.2 cm)
Signed twice with the artist’s initials, titled and dated ‘LANDSCAPE POT 1 JBRW 2014’ (on the reverse)

Jonas Wood’s monumental Landscape Pot 1 is an extraordinary painting within a painting, an example of the artist’s unparalleled, signature ability to deftly merge the two traditional genres of still life and landscape within his own renowned contemporary style. Standing nearly ten feet tall it is larger than life, and yet it is also an intimate canvas that offers up a personal reflection on the modern human condition. A meticulously rendered sculptural houseplant emerges from a pot emblazoned with a quotidian scene: a hill populated by cell phone or electrical towers, the kinds one might see during a hike in Los Angeles, or indeed, in Tokyo. It is an unexpected subject, one that emits an alluring beauty as we wonder where this place could be, and why it is important. Blueish-gray clouds preside over the scene while taking shape across the circumference of the vessel. As Wood often isolates his pots and their landscapes against a uniform background, we can linger on and appreciate the details that he includes. Delicate features emerge, like the bands of green and brown on the plant’s stem that, like the rings of a tree, mark the passage of time. Notably in this particular composition, the pot sits off center, expanding our perception of the space and allowing for the possibility of growth. In a similar vein, the direction of the plant mirrors the slope of the landscape, both inviting us in.

Wood is known for including everyday objects from his studio in his paintings and making them monumental objects of desire. Landscape Pot 1 is the outcome of a longstanding dialogue between the artist, and his wife, the ceramic artist Shio Kusaka. Wood says, “When I met [her], 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” (J. Wood, quoted in J. Samet, “Beer with a Painter, LA Edition: Jonas Wood,” Hyperallergic, September 12, 2015). In Wood’s and Kusaka’s respective practices, their individual forms, subjects, and motifs make their way back and forth organically. They have been compared to some of art history’s most famous artist couples, like  “Surrealists Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, modern masters Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe and abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner” (K. Crow, “Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Each Other’s Artistic Muses,” Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2015).

Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka at Gagosian Gallery, Central, 2015 (present lot illustrated). Photo: Dickson Lee / South China Morning Post via Getty Images. Artwork: © Jonas Wood; © Shio Kusaka.

In addition to Kusaka, Wood cites David Hockney, Alex Katz, Pierre Bonnard, and Henri Matisse as inspirations. Matisse even makes his way as a direct appropriation in Wood’s work in paintings like Matisse Pot 7 (2016). In a review of Jonas Wood & Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder exhibition where Landscape Pot 1 was first exhibited, Artforum observed, “More than the sum of their parts, Wood’s paintings of sunny interiors with plants in turn echo his wife’s ceramics while serving as an homage to Matisse’s Moorish interiors or David Hockney’s leafy palettes” (C. Sanchez-Kozyreva, “Critics’ Picks: Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood,” Artforum, 2015). Like the great modernists, Wood’s oeuvre is self-referential as he constantly reuses imagery to new ends. He says, “I wanted to paint the landscape pots so they were intentionally unrealistic. They were all filtered into an even looser organization of information that would represent this landscape pot as opposed to trying to paint the perfect landscape on a pot. Because I was recycling the imagery from previous works, it was like painting a painting in a painting” (J. Wood, quoted in B. Sharp, Jonas Wood: Paintings and Drawings, exh. cat., David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2015, p. 8).

Shio Kusaka, (dinosaur 24), 2014. © Shio Kusaka

One of the artist’s most striking paintings from his ongoing examination of potted plants, Landscape Pot 1 epitomizes Wood’s unmistakable style while continuing to push his work in novel directions. It towers above us, and yet is not removed from us, since we might imagine what daily memories we too would memorialize in paint. As critic Helen Molesworth writes, “A ‘classic’ Jonas Wood painting invariably contains pots… Sometimes it’s lots of pots, casually arranged on shelves, some empty and others housing a variety of succulents; or there are individual pots where the scale of the vessel is enlarged to such a degree that their surfaces can display the enormity of a landscape or the reproduction of another artwork. Wood’s fondness – we might even say his tender love – for pots is part and parcel of his work’s magic” (H. Molesworth, quoted in Phaidon Editors, “Picturing Jonas Wood—Ceramics,” Phaidon, December 11, 2019). We can feel that love in Landscape Pot 1 with Wood’s tender application of paint, as well as his evocation of a memory all his own.

Untitled (Pollock with Night Bloom), 2012

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 478,800

JONAS WOOD (B. 1977)
Untitled (Pollock with Night Bloom), 2012
Oil and acrylic on canvas
65×30 inches (165.1 x 76.2 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated ‘JBRW 2012 UNTITLED (POLLOCK WITH NIGHT BLOOM)’
(on the reverse)

8. Other Artists

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Hernan Bas

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 70,000 – 100,000
USD 390,600

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978), Trying to fit in | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
Trying to fit in, 2004
Oil, acrylic and gouache on panel
31×24 inches (78.7 x 61 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated ‘HB 04 trying to fit in’ (on the reverse)

Painted in 2004, contemporaneous to the artist’s inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, trying to fit in is a masterful example of Hernan Bas’ painterly vision of a queer sublime. Rendered in evocative brushstrokes, the painting depicts a flock of vivid flamingos and a single, elegant boy who apes their pose. All appear relaxed despite a darkening sky whose blue-slate tones are mirrored in the water beneath. Drawing on photographic fashion campaigns by the likes of Bruce Weber as well as the Floridian landscape of his youth, Bas’s paintings of this period are at once serene yet charged; they seem to exist on a precipice of sorts. In trying to fit in, his languid, handsome protagonist occupies an evanescent world outside reality, where man and nature commune in tranquility even as storms crackle overhead.

Born in Miami where he still lives, Bas has long been influenced by the excess and nihilism of the late eighteenth century’s Romantic period. In pellucid washes, he paints candy-colored pinks, tropical greens, aching blues, and formally, his canvases call to mind those of Elizabeth Peyton. Like Peyton, his figures, too, are willowy, waif-like, and introspective. Whereas Peyton’s visual iconography is tied to an urban milieu, Bas, however, locates his men within a sublime nature.

Claude Monet, Water Lillies, 1916. National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

To create his paintings, Bas pulls from a variety of reference points, from nineteenth-century caricatures and classic films to Andy Warhol, Andy Goldsworthy, and the artist’s own memories. In his earliest days, he looked to the decorative paintings of the French Impressionists, particularly those of Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, whose flat, rich colors echo those in the present work.

Hernan Bas

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 107,100

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978), The Paper Crown Prince | Christie’s (christies.com)

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
The Paper Crown Prince, 2005
Water-based oil on panel
11 7/8 x 10 inches (30.2 x 25.4 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials and dated ‘HB 05’ (lower right)

Hernan Bas

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 90,000
USD 76,200

Hernan Bas – Modern & Contemporary Art … Lot 318 May 2024 | Phillips

Maria Berrio

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 450,000
USD 441,000

MARÍA BERRÍO (B. 1982)
La Cena, 2012
Wax crayon, graphite, fabric collage and Japanese rice paper collage on canvas
48×58 inches (121.9 x 147.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘”La Cena” Maria Berrio 2012’ (on the reverse)

Executed in 2012, La Cena emerges as one of the most successful examples of María Berrío’s surrealist visions, epitomizing her distinct and widely celebrated artistic style. Inspired by the infamous Italian Renaissance narrative of Leonardo’s The Last Supper, this work reflects the artist’s meticulous craftsmanship and unwavering dedication to her practice. With painstaking precision, Berrío intricately layers ethereal Japanese rice paper and fabric in a multitude of equally dynamic patterns and vibrant colors. Through this alchemical process, she produces a mesmerizing canvas, in which the sublime forms of femininity converge with allegorical themes. La Cena transcends mere representation, offering a sanctuary where the feminine spirit finds solace amidst the tumult of existence.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1452-1519. Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

The present lot encapsulates Berrío’s career-defining capability to reimagine the boundaries of contemporary art. Inspired by surrealism, folklore, and classical painting, her dreamlike compositions synthesize exacting history and mythological imagination. Raised on a farm in Colombia, the artist’s earliest inspirations were animals and plant life, a theme which still characterizes her work today. In the present lot, birds, elephants, owls, and fish dance across the canvas, conjuring the magical realism which defines many of the most celebrated Latin American literary works. The harmonization of humanity and nature pays homage to the surrealist compositions of Leonora Carrington, which depict women in dialogue with animals and mythological creatures. Berrío is particularly interested in the interconnectedness of the universe, especially the relationship between women and animals. In La Cena, one of the central figures clutches a bird, a motif used in her work to suggest the promise of redemption.

Leonora Carrington, And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, 1953. Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Leonora Carrington / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The multilayered and tactile nature of the composition alludes to Byzantine mosaics, while the intense amalgamation of patterns allude to Gustav Klimt’s ornamental paintings. Regarding the blend of many different inspirations in her work, the artist remarked, “Myths, folklore and legends, historical events, poetry, contemporary events: I see no reason to separate these if I’m making a painting. All of these things influence me, so why box them into separate categories? Why not include them all? They may confuse or cancel or contradict each other, but what of it?” (María Berrío quoted in “María Berrío Infuses the Ordinary with the Mythic, A. Huff, Whitewall, September 2023)

Left: Byzantine mosaic of the Court of Empress Theodora, 547 CE (detail). S. Vitale, Ravenna. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY.
Right: Gustav Klimt, Lady with a Fan, 1917.

A blend of biographical memory and contemporary influences, La Cena captures the overwhelming sense of femininity and womanhood that has captivated Berrío since she first moved to New York at the age of eighteen. The artist once described the ethereal women that populate her compositions as “the embodied ideals of femininity.” In La Cena, the pale and fragile skin of the women are placed into the charged biblical theme of  The Last Supper, suggesting that the delicacy of femininity does not bar women from assuming positions of power and strength. Speaking on the strong women in her work, Berrío remarked, “They combine the elements of women who are typically thought of as powerful—the captains of industry, resolute politicians, fiery activists—with the traits of those who are not usually thought of as such, thereby underlining the common force found in all women. The female soldier fighting on the front lines is of interest, but so too is the mother who finds a way to feed her children and sing them to sleep amid bombing campaigns and in the ruins of cities. To truly ennoble womanhood, we must discover and appreciate the beauty in every action, big or small.” (María Berrío quoted in “As Complicated and Elusive as Reality: María Berrio’s Many-Layered Collages (with an interview by C. J. Bartunek),” The Georgia Review, Spring 2019.

In a harmonious fusion of mythology, masterful artistry, and cultural richness, La Cena serves as a testament to Berrío’s pioneering methodology. Within its loaded composition, the artist unveils an imaginative realm where charged themes and subjects are colored by heavenly interpretations. Regarded as one of the most promising and innovative artists of today, she has been the subject of major solo exhibitions across the country, including her most recent 2023 show at the ICA Boston entitled Maria Berrío: The Children’s Crusade. Berrío’s work is also held in highly regarded permanent collections, including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Nicolas Party

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 793,800

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
67×59 inches (170.2 x 149.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

“The portrait is probably the most produced image on earth. People take pictures of themselves or other people’s faces because at the end of the day, thank God, we still have an interest in other people. The face is a fascinating thing to look at.”

Frida Kahlo, Me and My Parrots, 1941. © 2024 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Fine Art Images / Bridgeman Images.

Shara Hughes

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 567,000

SHARA HUGHES (B. 1981), No Way Out | Christie’s (christies.com)

SHARA HUGHES (B. 1981)
No Way Out, 2023
Oil and acrylic on canvas
68×60 inches (172.7 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated ‘SHARA HUGHES 2023 “NO WAY OUT”‘ (on the reverse)
Signed again ‘Shara’ (on the stretcher)

A leading figure among a new generation of figurative painters, Shara Hughes’ depicts the world even as her landscapes border on abstraction. In warm tones, the artist has captured a rocky expanse that fills the life-sized No Way Out. In the foreground bloom verdant trees, each leaf a glossy green. The day is warm, the light heavy with summer’s heat. Above, the sky shimmers. Thick, expressive brushwork combines with staccato, confetti stippling, and the whole painting is tactile, sensual.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Hughes received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, before studying at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She rose to acclaim for a series of contemplative domestic scenes – moody, charged rooms that underscored her interests in art history. Eventually, seeking to eliminate the symbolism and narrative that infused her work, however, Hughes turned to the landscape, a genre she initially believed to be more “open-ended” and “so seemingly simple.” That the genre was weighted with an entire history of associations also appealed to the artist, and Huges hoped that she would be able to take in the traditions while simultaneously making the landscape her own. Accordingly, Hughes shifted her gaze towards the external world, producing vivid vistas of rocky outcroppings and lush greenery that recall post-Impressionist canvases. Indeed, these paintings have been likened to Gustav Klimt’s plein air decorative depictions—an apt comparison particularly in the patterning of the sky in the present work—and Henri Matisse’s Fauvist landscapes. Certainly, the geometry of No Way Out recalls that of Paul Cezanne’s lengthy meditations on the environment surrounding Aix-en-Provence. Like Cezanne, Hughes, too, has employed flat blocks of color to build up the mountainous terrain. Unlike her modernist predecessor, however, Hughes does not set up her easel outside, and she has no interest in capturing a specific site. “No, I don’t paint from life at all, ever,” she has said. “My works are more about painting than about nature or something in the real world. They always start from playing around with color and shape and texture. The landscape becomes an access point for the viewer, a lot of times” (quoted in I. Alteveer, “Shara Hughes in Conversation”, in Shara Hughes/Landscapes, exh. cat., Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, 2019, p. 15).

Georgia O’Keeffe, Red Hills and Bones, 1941. Philadelphia Museum of Art. © 2024 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 / Bridgeman Images.

Although of the colors of No Way Out may be Matisse-esque, they have been refracted through the postwar era, channeling the canvases of David Hockney and Helen Frankenthaler alike. Indeed, Hughes purposefully and adeptly draws attention to chromatic relationships. Balance, tone, and hue are all key considerations for the artist in conjuring an atmosphere, a temperament. This is further emphasized by the title of the present work, and No Way Out seems to suggest a hermetically sealed experience. Yet far from airless, this is Edenic land, and in rich brushwork, Hughes has captured the bliss and beauty of the natural world.

Kehinde Wiley

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 239,400

KEHINDE WILEY (B. 1977), Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of Last Judgement | Christie’s (christies.com)

KEHINDE WILEY (B. 1977)
Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of Last Judgement, 2018
Oil on canvas, in artist’s frame
96×72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Kehinde Wiley 2018’ (on the reverse)

Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of the Last Judgment, 1921. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Kehinde Wiley

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 152,400

Kehinde Wiley – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 307 May 2024 | Phillips

A rare example by Kehinde Wiley to come to auction, After Memling’s Portrait of Jacob Obrecht is one of only eight intimately-scaled wood panel portraits comprising the artist’s acclaimed Memling series. Executed in 2013, it was among the works unveiled at the Phoenix Art Museum that same year and has since been exhibited across the globe, notably at The National Gallery in London in 2021-22. Wiley’s meticulously painted portraits draw inspiration from the 15^th century Flemish painter Hans Memling, who was among the first to paint portraits of the merchant class and not of royalty or clergy. Subverting the Northern Renaissance triptych structure, Wiley replaces the historic sitters with young men of color dressed in contemporary attire–here paying homage to Jacob Obrecht, the most famous musician of his day. The series takes a key place within Wiley’s oeuvre, representing a distinct departure from the characteristically monumental scale of his paintings. It also importantly marks the first time Wiley included his sitters’ names within the paintings (here, subtly inscribed in the dark wood doors). Taking Memling’s formal structure as a point of departure, Wiley imparts his subjects with a sense of agency absent from his art historical forebears’ portraits: as evidenced in After Memling’s Portrait of Jacob Obrecht, the young man returns the viewer’s gaze.

Withdrawn and Passed Lots

Nicolas Party

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
WITHDRAWN

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Grotto | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Grotto, 2019
Soft pastel on linen
190.5 x 160.1 cm (75 1/8 x 65 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2019’ (on the reverse)

Nicolas Party’s Grotto is a monumental, virtuosic work in pastel with deep art historical roots. Evoking the sublime blue of Giotto’s fresco for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Grotto is an engrossing canvas that appears to exist outside of time. Millennia old stalagmites and stalactites connect to form a mysterious space, rich in detail but also containing a dark foreboding core. Rendered in the artist’s signature pastel, the surface becomes a textured, luxurious surface, at once inviting, yet at the same time precious and off limits. Grotto is part of a series of just three works executed in red, green, and blue, colors which come together to form the RGB color model, the basis for the display of digital images. In this way, Party considers the contemporary as much as he is honoring the past.

Always thinking about art history, Party had specific references for Grotto. Firstly, he calls back to Renaissance and early modern paintings of hermits, such as Hieronymus Bosch’s The Hermit Saints (c. 1493), Gerrit Dou’s The Hermit (1670), and Willem van Mieris’s Hermit Praying in the Wilderness (1707). Such paintings often contained a memento mori, which reminded viewers of the inevitability of death, and insisted that lonely reflection was a sure path to salvation. As Party muses, “Nature always reminds us that our body will disappear soon; that life is a very brief moment” (N. Party, quoted in R. Vitorelli, “Interview Nicolas Party,” Spike Art Magazine, Summer 2015).

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks, circa 1495-1508. National Gallery, London

Party also cites Gustave Courbet’s The Source of the Loue (1864), which depicts a river that runs through his hometown of Ornans, France. In both Courbet’s work and Party’s, beauty emerges from darkness, and the skilled touch of the artist engenders a scene that we feel we might be able to step into ourselves. Finally, Party refers most directly to the Belgian artist William Degouve de Nuncques’s The Grotto of Manacor, Mallorca (c. 1901). Party explains, “He is quite renowned [in Belgium], but not very well known internationally…He painted the coves of Marseille. It’s quite magnificent” (N. Party, quoted in E. Troncu, “Nicolas Party in Conversation with Eric Troncu,” Artsy, December 10, 2019). The Grotto of Manacor, Mallorca is also a blue monochrome, elements of which Party translates into his signature style. Grotto is an opportunity to deepen our understanding of Party’s love for art history and pastel. Though his references are varied, the resulting work is unmistakably his. It is like a fairy tale, both inviting and foreboding, with its fantastical shapes and promise of adventure. What lies in the darkness, just beyond these mysterious forms? It is as if we are looking at the Lascaux caves, where animal drawings from 17,000 years ago cover the walls.

Maria Berrio

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
PASSED

María Berrío – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 24 May 2024 | Phillips

Colombian artist María Berrío is a storyteller whose intricate and large-scale collage paintings unfold layers of narrative through lush, fantastical landscapes populated by enigmatic female figures. Executed in 2015, The Lovers 2 encapsulates this distinctive style, melding influences from magical realism and her own lived experience into a deeply introspective artwork that engages on multiple sensory and emotional levels. A patchwork of diversely sourced decorative papers, rhinestone elements and a delicate veneer of watercolor, The Lovers 2 interprets a Surrealist dreamscape that blurs Berrío’s biographical memory with South American mythology. Here, she explores themes spanning from beauty and the divine feminine, to intercultural connectivity and humankind’s relationship to nature. Berrío, originally from Colombia and now based in New York, crafts a vibrant and tactile tapestry of cross-cultural history in her work, offering a personal perspective. Berrío utilizes a variety of materials, primarily Japanese print paper, which she collages across the surface of the canvas, forming textured, dimensional portraits that confuse and delight the eye. This technique not only encourages close looking but also enriches the narrative, imbuing each constructed image with a tangible sense of time and place. The works become self-contained vessels that reflect not only the stories they tell, but the stories of their creation.

Anne Boleyn, by Unknown English artist, late 16^th century, based on a work of circa 1533-1536. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Image: Shawshots / Alamy Stock Photo

In The Lovers 2, this synthesis is evident in the intricate materiality of the expansive canvas. Berrío initiates each collage with a sketch, a blueprint that she says “inevitably changes” while making the piece. This fluidity allows her to weave together a narrative that transcends borders and cultures, echoing the diverse origins of materials sourced from a wide range of craft traditions.

“I use handmade and machine-made paper produced almost exclusively in countries of the global south: Nepal, India, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil. I gravitate toward paper with natural motifs such as floral, plant, and animal patterns, as well as solid colors that evoke [nature].”

On top of this she adds areas of watercolor and, in the present work, individually applied Swarovski rhinestones which add touches of fluorescence, amplifying an otherworldliness and creating a picture of varying depths and frequencies. Berrío describes the process of working with collage as one filled with sensory delights—”Working with collage there is such a marvelous diversity of textures,” she enthuses. “Different sounds made as they are torn… I love the spreading of glue with sticky fingers, the stretching, the cutting. These collages are built layer by layer forming the topographical features upon the canvas.” These physical sensations manifest in the pictorial and emotional attributes of her work, as The Lovers 2 beckons not just a visual but also a tactile experience of viewing.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907. Neue Galerie, New York. Image: Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman Images

Discussing the women in her pictures, the artist says, “They are embodied ideals of femininity. The ghostly pallor of their skin suggests an otherworldliness; they appear to be more spirit that flesh. These are the women I want to be: strong, vulnerable, compassionate, courageous, and in harmony with themselves and nature.” In The Lovers 2, Berrío’s heroine is at once central and elusive. She transcends traditional space, enshrined in a protective tableau of flowers that evokes a sense of suspended time. The indeterminate setting and the figure’s interaction with symbolic elements like the bird and veil underscore a timeless narrative rooted in the feminine experience, one that floats between reality and myth. Berrío’s collage portraits are characterized both by the enigmatic women who inhabit them and the colorful, richly decorated clothing they wear. In The Lovers 2, this costuming is taken to new heights. Berrío’s subject is clothed in a multi-textured shawl and ornate, bejeweled headpiece, complete with a transparent veil. In the figure’s finery and positioning against a lush crimson backdrop, there is an evocation of the aesthetic and symbolic richness of Tudor and Elizabethan portraits from the late fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. Both styles utilize elaborate regalia and intricate details to convey power and status, yet Berrío modernizes this concept by infusing her work with contemporary cultural and fantastical elements. Like the jewel-encrusted sitters of royal portraits past, Berrío’s figure is similarly crowned and pallid. Her powdery complexion recalls the lead-whitened skin fashionable among high-ranking women of the period and even the presence of a bird motif is reminiscent of the pelican broach that Queen Elizabeth I was known to wear as a symbol of Christian sacrifice.

Berrío’s collage paintings are steeped in magical realism. They sit at a crossroads of visual and literary traditions, highlighting a continuum of artists who blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy. The present work, with its contrast of traditional modes of portraiture executed in an incongruous and highly non-traditional manner, interlaces the familiar and the bizarre in a manner reminiscent of Latin American Surrealist pioneer Frida Kahlo’s deeply personal and symbolic portraits that blend elements of her Mexican heritage with surreal and mythic motifs. Similarly, Berrío’s use of embellishment and elaborate floral dreamscapes draws parallels to Austrian Secession leader Gustav Klimt’s luxurious, gilt accents, jewel-toned flower fields, and intricate patterns imbued with symbolism and psychological resonance. In the literary realm, Berrío’s narrative approach reflects the complex, labyrinthine universes of Jorge Luis Borges and the poignant, interwoven realities characterized by Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism.

Leonora Carrington, Self-Portrait, c. 1937-1938. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2024 Estate of Leonora Carrington / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

Berrío draws on South American folklore and personal memories, such as those from her childhood in rural Colombia and urban Bogotá. The Lovers 2 features a towering woman, her presence and that of the flamingo alongside her, invoking figures like Madremonte, or “Mother Mountain,” the mythical protector of forests from Colombian lore.^v These elements symbolize the integration of Berrío’s cultural heritage with her artistic expression, using animals to represent the deeper aspects of the human spirit, a theme originating from her childhood connection to the natural world. Birds specifically recur throughout her oeuvre, including in her 2023 solo presentation, The Spirit in the Land, staged at the Nasher Museum at Duke University in North Carolina, which focused entirely on a series of hummingbird-themed works inspired by the Mojave peoples’ belief that the birds were pathfinders who lead the way from darkness into the light. In the context of The Lovers 2, the flamingo is not just a companion but a part of the woman’s identity. The pastel-pink feathers of the bird blend seamlessly with her pale, tattooed arms and shimmering veil, creating a visual continuity that makes it difficult to discern where the woman ends, and the flamingo begins. This blending is further emphasized by the bird’s neck contorting behind the woman’s head, its feathers merging into the fabric of her dress. Such imagery suggests a symbiotic relationship between the two, highlighting themes of unity and the merging of separate entities into a single, harmonious whole. Through this interplay of human and animal elements, Berrío not only explores the aesthetic dimensions of her subjects but also delves into deeper themes of identity, coexistence, and the intrinsic ties that bind us to the natural world.

Focus: Contemporary Art

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1. Jean-Michel Basquiat

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#1. Untitled (ELMAR), 1982

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
USD 46,479,000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Modern & Contempor… Lot 5 May 2024 | Phillips

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s monumental painting, Untitled (ELMAR), created in 1982, is a paradigmatic representation of the artist’s genius, making its auction debut after remaining in private hands for four decades. At nearly eight feet wide, this tour-de-force is a cornerstone of Basquiat’s golden year, during which he transitioned from street art to gallery success. Emblematic of Basquiat’s best works, Untitled (ELMAR) is rich with historic and mythical iconography, intertwined with the artist’s invented symbols and graphic marks that accentuate the physical, gestural nature of his creative process. Boasting an equally impressive provenance and exhibition history, the present work was exhibited at Gagosian Los Angeles in 1998, as part of a memorial exhibition commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the artist’s death. Untitled (ELMAR) was notably featured on the cover of the accompanying catalogue. More recently, the work was prominently exhibited in the artist’s historical 2018 retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. This sale marks the first time that this important work is being offered publicly.

Formerly part of the original collection of Francesco Pellizzi, the present work was acquired by the renowned historian and collector from Annina Nosei in 1984, just two years after its creation, and remained in his collection for decades. An inspired collector and friend of the artist, Mr. Pellizzi acquired timeless works that underscore Basquiat’s enduring significance and artistic vision, as they continue to inspire and provoke thought forty years later. Reflecting on his 40-year friendship with Francesco and the acuity of his perceptiveness, American painter David Salle remarked, “Francesco [was] always full of vitality and interests and witty observations and warmth and engagement, the same sense of deep inquiry, and also imagination.[…] And there was something else too: a quality I can only call wisdom, a macro way of seeing things at the same time as the tiniest detail… he had the close-up view and the overview, he saw the particulate and the flow. He could combine ‘like with like’, and also ‘like with not-quite-like’, which is more rare, and all the more so when done seemingly without effort.”

Francesco Clemente, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Pellizzi residence in New York, NY, 1984. Photo by Francesco Pellizzi. Image: © Francesco Pellizzi

In 1982, often hailed as Basquiat’s “Golden Year,” the 22-year-old artist produced approximately 200 significant works on canvas. Untitled (ELMAR), stands out for its raw, colorful, and direct style, epitomizing the lauded traits of this prolific period in Basquiat’s career. Characteristic of the work produced at this moment, the present painting constitutes a more confident prelude to the meticulous curation and self-consciousness of Basquiat’s later compositions, instead exuding an air of daring openness. Significantly, Untitled (ELMAR) was executed in the same year Basquiat was first introduced to Andy Warhol, a paramount encounter that would later lead to collaboration between the two artists. 1982 also marked Basquiat’s transition from “SAMO©”—the pseudonym under which he operated as a street poet and tagger, to an influential figure in the art world. Indeed, we see the influence of Warhol in Basquiat’s canvases from this year, the present work included.  In contrast to the pictorial abundance of many of his earlier compositions, in Untitled (ELMAR), Basquiat allows ample breathing room in which the implied connections between his signs and symbols can be lucidly drawn. This sense of spaciousness engenders an ambiguity within the painting that lends it a distinctly Warholian effect in that, despite his use of bold colors, frenetic brushwork, and dense layers of imagery, there is often an openness and expansiveness to Basquiat’s presentation. Untitled (ELMAR) incorporates space in unconventional ways, with areas of intense activity punctuated by less vigorously worked areas and even glimpses of raw canvas that can appear spare in comparison but are by no means passive. Basquiat orchestrates a dynamic tension that allows viewers to navigate through the artwork and interpret its various elements at their own pace. In doing so, he provides a space for pausing and, in turn, for emphasis.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, 1982. Private Collection. Formerly in the collection of The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut. Image: Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo, Artwork: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

In Untitled (ELMAR), Basquiat’s visual cadence akin to instinctive and visceral melodies, combined with his incorporation of handwritten text elements, is also evocative of Cy Twombly’s poetic incorporation of handwritten script and calligraphic marks. In its shared engagement with classical antiquity, Greek and Roman mythology, and the malleability of language, the present work exhibits intriguing parallels with a series Twombly produced in the 1960s featuring titles indicative of famous mythological couples. Here, Basquiat infuses urban culture with references to iconic figures and symbols of ancient lore, such as Icarus and possibly Apollo, the ancient Greek god of archery, weaving a cautionary tale that illustrates a similar fascination with the intersection of ancient myth and contemporary expression. Basquiat further blurs the boundaries between text and image, creating a richly layered work that evokes emotion, memory, and the timeless resonance of classical literature and history.

From a technical standpoint, Untitled (ELMAR) is an incredible example of Basquiat’s early style that incorporated visible pentimenti. Traditionally, a pentimento is a moment within a painting in which a previous compositional choice or image can be seen through the top paint layer.  Basquiat utilized this concept to his advantage, frequently painting with a mixture of thick and thin layers that intentionally revealed the underlying strata. This is particularly evident in the anatomy of the warrior figure, where the body is composed of overlapping swathes of red and white paint, black oilstick, and gold spray paint. The expansive blue sea also provides hints of what lies beneath its surface, with indiscernible gestures peeking through. Moreover, Basquiat asserts his process and presence by incorporating visible footprints that metaphorically ground his artistic expression. He often worked his canvases horizontally on the floor, reminiscent of New York’s earlier Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler.

In Untitled (ELMAR), Basquiat conjures a large-scale warrior figure, using vigorous brushstrokes in the style of Jean Dubuffet’s art Brut and subtly exposing its skeletal structure in a nod to his own enduring fascination with anatomy. Constructed with a mix of red flesh and oilstick bone, reinforced by metallic gold spray paint, Basquiat’s creation resembles a modern-day Frankensteinian fighter, assembled with unmistakable strength. The figure is enveloped in a haloed aura (coming from the Latin “aurea” for “golden”), a vivid burst of yellow forming something loosely akin to a mandorla—an almond-shaped motif often associated with Christian iconography depicting scenes from the life of Christ—or an aureole. Adding to the sense of sanctity, Basquiat’s use of gold embellishments and a haloed figure set against a bright background mirrors the shimmering gold accents often found in similar scenes, as illustrated in Medieval illuminated manuscripts.

[Left] Rock art at Wadi Abu Wasil, Eastern Desert of Egypt, prior to 3000 BC.
[Right] Unknown artist/maker, The Crucifixion, begun after 1234–completed before 1262, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 

Extending from the warrior’s raised arms are a flurry of arrows and a bow, complemented by a crown of thorns atop his head, establishing a delicate equilibrium between European monarchical and African tribal power symbols. Basquiat’s inspiration here likely draws from Burchard Brentjes’ 1969 text, African Rock Art, a volume he was known to keep in his studio. The rich array of photographs and diagrams therein appealed to Basquiat for their cultural significance, aligning with his preference for a raw and unschooled style of drawing, as well as his affinity for graffiti, with cave art arguably serving as its earliest manifestation.

In a similar fashion to other large-scale single figure paintings from the period, such as Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, 1982, formerly in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Untitled (ELMAR) Basquiat conveys his warrior’s strength anatomically. Curator and art historian Richard Marshall suggests that Basquiat may have been influenced to incorporate such boldness and aggression into his canvases upon encountering Picasso’s “Avignon” paintings, displayed at the Pace Gallery in New York in the winter of 1981. In the works on view, Picasso returned to drawing anatomically graphic and distorted figures in bold colors, an expressive style Basquiat undoubtedly felt an affinity for, given his lifelong admiration of the Spanish artist. Reflecting on his early exposure to Picasso’s work, Basquiat once stated that, “seeing Guernica was my favorite thing as a kid.”^ix Indeed, a parallel can easily be drawn between the figure at the far right of Guernica, crying out to the heavens with arms raised, illuminated by the jagged light of a burning house behind them—along with the faded dove, a symbol of peace obscured amidst the unfolding violence—and the heroic figure in the present work, confronting their winged target.

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid. Image: Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

In the present work, a “fallen angel” figure at left, birdlike and adorned with the recurring crown-of-thorns motif—which doubles as a halo—hovers above a luminous blue sea of scribbled waves and the text “ELMAR”, suggesting a modern-day Icarus on the verge of descent. Through this lens, Basquiat’s archetypal warrior at right takes on an additional layer of meaning, signaling the angel’s imminent downfall. Basquiat often used variations of the fallen angel motif in his art to delve into themes of identity, power dynamics, and societal alienation. Throughout art history, artists have employed this image, notably seen in Alexandre Cabanel’s eponymous painting, The Fallen Angel, 1847, at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, to depict a majestic yet sorrowful figure symbolizing rebellion, spiritual downfall, and the eternal struggle between divine and mortal realms. In Untitled (ELMAR), Basquiat continues this tradition, portraying the figure caught between heaven and earth, poised for a fall. This concept reflects his own experiences as a Black artist navigating a white-dominated art world, where he felt a perpetual sense of alienation and a fear of losing relevance.

The winged figure in Untitled (ELMAR) also resonates with Basquiat’s recurring bird motif, notably observed in his monumental painting created the same year, Untitled (LA Painting), 1982. Basquiat’s birds embody bravery and freedom, doubling as messengers from celestial realms. They evoke symbolism akin to ancient Roman culture where open-winged birds represented power and divine communication, their movements believed to reflect the will of the gods. Additionally, the bird figure may be a veiled reference to one of Basquiat’s heroes, the prominent American jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Parker, nicknamed “Bird”, was a leading figure in the development of bebop, whose improvised style greatly influenced Basquiat.^x The artist was known to listen to Parker’s music in the studio.

One of the key motifs in the present painting is a depiction of a skull or human head, which originates from an important oilstick on paper drawing entitled Untitled (Indian Head). Now in the collection of Museo Jumex in Mexico City, this image later became a recurring feature in several of Basquiat’s major works. In his poem titled J.M.B.’s Dehistories, Trinidadian-Bahamian poet Christian Campbell provides insightful interpretations of recurring visual motifs, such as the skulls and human heads that inhabit Basquiat’s oeuvre. He asserts that, “Basquiat’s heads are cartooned, spooked, fried, shocked, damaged. Strange as it may seem, I hear these heads laughing.” He describes them as if cackling in a mad chorus but concludes that, “They see us to the bone, just as we see them. They are witnesses. They are messengers. They have something true to tell us.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Indian Head), 1981, Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico. Artwork: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

In Untitled (ELMAR), Basquiat’s replacement of the painted head with an intricate, additive rendering marks a stark complexity compared to the gestural lines created through painting, spraying, and drawing. Alongside his use of fragmented written language, inspired by William Burroughs’ cut-up technique, Basquiat employed collage elements to counteract both formally and materially with his intense painterly work. This integration of collage evokes parallels with the Constructivist and Cubist movements, particularly in the way Picasso and others utilized fragmented imagery to challenge traditional notions of representation. Similarly, Basquiat’s approach resonates with Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, where disparate elements are amalgamated to blur the lines between painting and sculpture. By incorporating collage into his oeuvre, Basquiat not only expands upon the rich legacy of assemblage but also engages in a broader artistic dialogue that spans across movements and generations. In Untitled (ELMAR), a torrent of imagery—ranging from symbols and diagrams to words—dances across the canvas against a backdrop of boundless blue and electric yellow. This chaotic yet controlled display manifests Basquiat’s recurring themes of identity, existentialism, and societal disillusionment. It synthesizes life, death, history, and mythology into a vibrant tapestry, where Basquiat’s insatiable hunger for knowledge and boundless creativity blur the lines between street art and the established norms of the traditional art world.

Central to Basquiat’s practice was representing seemingly conflicting aspects of human experience within a single work. Whether contrasting opposing colors, depicting scales of justice, or exploring themes like “God and Law,” the artist was consistently concerned with duality and reconciling opposing forces. In Untitled (ELMAR), Basquiat portrays the duality of the hunter and the hunted, alongside the notion of ascent followed by inevitable decline, echoing his own rise in the art world. Basquiat’s fascination with stardom and “burnout” becomes apparent in references to artists like Charlie Parker. Caught between a desire for fame and a fear of being consumed or exploited, the present work captures Basquiat’s apprehension of flying too close to the sun, symbolized by the pregnant moment before the hero’s downfall. Here, the winged figure soars like Icarus toward the heavens, defying limitations in pursuit of freedom. “Only one thing worries me,”

#2. The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet, 1982

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimate on Request
USD 32,035,000

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet | Christie’s (christies.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet, 1982
Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on canvas mounted on tied wood supports
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled and dated (on the reverse)

The finest example of his iconic stretcher-bar paintings, The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet provides ample evidence of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s creative genius and visual dexterity. These unique paintings are perhaps the pinnacle of the artist’s attempts to upend centuries of painterly tradition by establishing new creative forms which adopted the sights, sounds, and raw materials of the urban landscape. Painted when Basquiat was just 21 years old, across this distinctive support he portrays his world through an encyclopedic display of signature motifs: crowns, anatomy, expressive marks, plus his distinctive lexicon of enigmatic words and phrases are used in the service of creating this epic composition. In addition to being an exemplar of the artist’s mark-making, The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet also establishes Basquiat’s ambition to introduce his personal heroes—Black sportsmen, musicians, and figures from the civil rights movement—into the canon of American art. In the present work, he harnesses the sport of boxing (one of the first sports where Black sportsmen prevailed) as the vehicle with which to achieve these goals. The artist’s boxing paintings have become some of his most sought-after works, as they are regarded as sitting at the very top of his extensive oeuvre. Exhibited in the artist’s seminal retrospective at the Whitney in 1992, this painting has not been seen in public for nearly 20 years.

Left: Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669. National Gallery, London.
Right: Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. Courtauld Gallery, London. Photo: © Courtauld Gallery / Bridgeman Images.

The composition is dominated by two figures, one almost complete body on the right, and a bust on the left. The latter figure is realized by the artist applying layer upon layer of painterly marks to build up the requisite facial features such as the skin, eyes, nose, and ears. This labor-intensive technique results in a richly detailed rendering showing each of the constituent parts of the face and how they work together to form the familiar features we are used to. In contrast, to the right is a large black figure, adorned with a wide variety of powerful words and motifs. ‘Bracco di Ferro’ is scrawled across his chest, while the words ‘HOO, HOO, HOO, HOOVES’ tumbles down his body. A discombobulated arm lays over the top, alongside a series of cryptic numbers and fractions.

Basquiat fills the remaining surface area of his canvas with a litany of his enigmatic mark-making. His signature three-point crown is included multiple times, his © copyright symbol (asserting his ownership as the artist, something that was denied to generations of Black artists previously), the word ‘BOXEO’ (Spanish for ‘boxing’), the phrases ‘VERSUS PORK’ and ‘100% PERCENT,’ the outline of the skelly court (a street game popular in Black neighborhoods and a motif that particularly appealed to Basquiat because of its childlike qualities and graffiti-like origins), sit alongside a visual cacophony of more ambiguous words and numbers.

The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet is also radical within Basquiat’s career. It is a racially subversive homage to popular boxers of the time, many of whom were also personal heroes to the artist. The composition contains multiple references to the sport; in addition to the aforementioned BOXEO, ‘BRACCO DI FERRO’ can be translated into English as ‘at arm’s length,’ a primary objective of any boxer in this intensely physical sport. The ‘FOUR BIG’ that is written along the upper edge could be a reference to the four governing bodies of world boxing (the WBA, WBC, IBF, and the WBO) and the organizations whose championship belts are the much-coveted prizes sought by the world’s top boxers. The phrase ‘BUM EAR’ (lower left) could describe one of the physical effects of constantly being hit around the head, and the reference to Popeye in the title is an acknowledgment of the fact that the sport was a recurrent theme in the original cartoon, as the title character often had to undertake a boxing match to prove his spinach induced strength.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Boxer), 1982. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Within Basquiat’s pantheon of personal heroes, the boxer stands supreme. Either posing triumphantly with his arms raised—as in Untitled (Boxer) (1982, Private Collection)—or stoically with arms firmly placed by his side bracing for a fight, the boxer is the subject of some of the artist’s most triumphal paintings. For Basquiat, a champion such as Sugar Ray Robinson represented the striking dichotomy of being a Black man in America. Despite being regarded as the greatest boxer of all time, and one of the most famous African Americans of his generation, Robinson would have suffered the indignity of not being allowed into venues due to the pernicious evils of segregation that were still widespread in the United States during the boxer’s reign. This duality was reflected directly in 1983 (the year after the present work was painted) when asked by the legendary curator Henry Geldzahler what the subject of his paintings were, Basquiat replied bluntly, “Royalty, heroism and the streets” (J. Basquiat, quoted by H. Geldzahler, ‘Art: From the Subways to Soho—Jean-Michel Basquiat,” Interview, January, 1983).

Jean-Michel Basquiat, New-York, 1981-1980, Downtown 1981

However, as with many of Basquiat’s pre-eminent paintings, The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet is a multi-layered work which rewards the viewer by slowly revealing its complex narrative through prolonged looking. For example, in addition to the boxing reference, the term BRACCO is indirectly quoted from Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘braccio’ drawings. In Basquiat’s bastardized Italian BRACCO DI FERRO recalls da Vinci’s textual labels, which the Renaissance artist added to his anatomical figures. In Basquiat’s terms, these references signify a deep aspiration to become like the great Italian; as Robert Farris Thompson has said “the texts in his [Basquiat’s] paintings are, among many things, brave essays in cultural self-definition. They reflect not only the books he read and the worlds he lived in… more critically, they reflect how he made sense of all those realms” (R. Farris Thompson, ‘Royalty, Heroism, and the Streets: The Art of Jean-Michael Basquiat,’ in Jean-Micheal Basquiat, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1992, p. 28).

Text played a vital role in Basquiat’s emergence as an artist as, after he dropped out of school, he became a street artist and began spray-painting pithy, often poetic, texts all over New York City, often using the tag SAMO. However, these texts were not random musings of a disgruntled teenager, they were strategically placed at calculated locations in Soho and the East Village, sometimes even outside art openings all with the intention of getting influential people to see and take notice. There were not merely social texts, they were—as Thompson has noted—in essence adverts for Basquiat himself. Thus, in the case of the present work, the words—however mysterious they might at first seem—are deliberately chosen for their visual, aural, or metaphorical associations, all part of Basquiat’s rich and powerful lexicon.

Left: Muscle in the left hand, illustration from Gray’s Anatomy, 1974.
Right: Present lot illustrated.

Anatomical depictions too played a central role in the artist’s vocabulary. Basquiat was a veracious reader, something which his parents encouraged. When he was struck by a car while playing softball in the street as a child, to keep him occupied while he was laid up in hospital, his mother gave him a copy of the medical reference book, Gray’s Anatomy. What at first might seem an odd choice to give an eight-year-old child in fact played to his insatiable desire for knowledge, and also fueled his artistic endeavors as his mother knew that Michelangelo and all the great painters had studied anatomy.

The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet belongs to a distinguished group of works in which the artist constructed his own stretchers from objects he found on the street. By the time of his exhibition at the Fun Gallery in New York’s Lower East Side in November 1982, Basquiat had clearly begun working with unconventional supports. In doing so, Basquiat transformed the traditional notion of a support as a mere ‘surface’ into the basis of a three-dimensional object. Subsequently, these ‘stretcher bar’ canvases, as they have become known, have become some of the most celebrated and sought-after works of his career, with examples in major museum collections including A Next Loin and/or (1982, The Menil Collection, Houston), A Panel of Experts (1982, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), and LNAPRK (1982, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).

Jean-Michel Basquiat, A Next Loin And/Or, 1982. Menil Collection, Houston. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, NY
Jean-Michel Basquiat, A Panel of Experts, 1982. Montreal Museum of Art. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, NY
Jean-Michel Basquiat, LNAPRK, 1982. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, NY

Painted in 1982, the present work was executed at a pivotal period in the artist’s career. Basquiat had recently undertaken two trips to Italy, where he spent time in Modena. He was initially invited to Europe by Emilio Mazzoli to participate in what would be the artist’s first-ever one-man show after the dealer saw the artist’s work in the legendary New York/New Wave show at New York’s P.S. 1. After the initial trip in May 1981, Basquiat returned the following March and it was during this stay that he painted several of his most respected paintings including Profit 1. It may have been during these stays that Basquiat came across the Italian version of Popeye that is referenced in the present work’s title. The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet is a seminal painting that combines many of the artist’s most important tropes. Painted at the height of his career, it represents the complex and insightful thinking of this gifted young painter. Almost always autobiographical in some way, Basquiat’s paintings are pervaded with the sense that the artist was talking to himself, exorcising demons, exposing uncomfortable truths and trying to explain the way of things to himself—an effort that became increasingly pronounced at this time.

#3. Campaign, 1984

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
USD 10,101,000

Campaign | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960 – 1988)
Campaign, 1984
Acrylic, oilstick and silkscreen on canvas
85 7/8 x 68 1/8 inches (218×173 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 1984 (on the reverse)

Thundering with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s interpretation of Black history, Campaign testifies to the artist’s revolutionary impact within the art historical canon by forging a uniquely vehement artistic vernacular. Campaign was executed in 1984, heralding Basquiat’s arrival as an emphatic artistic force during the thrilling apex of his creative furor. By this stage in his career, Basquiat was confidently empowered: no longer the precocious street artist threatening establishment norms, he rose with acclaim as an acknowledged art world prodigy, capable of producing devastatingly striking artworks that perfectly distilled the zeitgeist of 1980s downtown New York. Belonging to Basquiat’s investigation into racial identity, Campaign belongs to a cycle of paintings from 1984 that incorporate the logo of Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes – an emblem that Basquiat appropriates and repurposes here, replacing its jaunty blonde mascot with the portrait of an African slave to signify the transatlantic slave trade. Towering at over seven feet, Campaign is a formidable reinvention of epic history painting in both scale and conceptual ambition. Here, galvanized by his own Black identity, Basquiat conjures an arresting meditation of African American history and European oppression in his inimitable painterly bravado.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT ON THE SET OF DOWNTOWN 81. PHOTO © EDO BERTOGLIO

In Campaign, thematic intensity is underscored by Basquiat’s mastery of compositional magnitude and stylistic gravitas. Paired with contrasting passages of black and white, the bold color palette of saturated primary hues imbues the work with palpable dynamism. Deep aqua blue, opaque emulsion white, and thin translucent red electrify the composition, animating the surface in narrow streaks of intuitive fluency. A resplendent field of pure azure serves as the surreal and beguiling stage for a cacophony of Basquiat’s signature emblems: the spiky three-pointed crown; totemic skull-like idols; and textural scrawls, all of which echo the grit of the artist’s cultural environs in downtown Manhattan. An inflammatory declaration of painterly mastery dating from the pinnacle of Basquiat’s artistic development, Campaign bears a sheer intensity that powerfully embodies the artist’s undying legacy.

In the true Expressionist vein of artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Arshile Gorky, and Franz Kline, Basquiat harnesses pigment and iconography for his own means, charging Campaign with acerbic social commentary. In the upper left corner of the canvas, Basquiat appropriates and transforms the logo of a popular cigarette brand, Player’s Navy Cut, into a symbol through which he directly reckons with the historical legacy of colonial trade. Replacing the company logo’s trademark jaunty blonde and bearded sailor, however, Basquiat depicts a manacled slave in unmistakably African tribal dress, with traditional necklaces and piercings. The brand’s name in the logo, too, is replaced by the word “tobacco,” referencing the agricultural commodity associated with plantation slavery. The naval ships that typically flank sailors now adopt a more sinister meaning, referencing the transatlantic slave trade and the menacing specter of European colonial rule. Basquiat heightens the dramatic tension of Campaign by contrasting this satirical imagery with the phantom-like figures in uniform below, whose symbolic gestures harken back to archaic ritualistic iconography.

LEFT: ARSHILE GORKY, AFTER KHORKUM,1940-42. IMAGE © THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 THE ARSHILE GORKY FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. RIGHT: FRANZ KLINE, BLUEBERRY EYES, 1959-1960. IMAGE © SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 THE FRANZ KLINE ESTATE / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

In Basquiat’s barrage of textual and visual motifs, his torrential stream of consciousness becomes the conceptual network for the commentary that he unabashedly sets forth. In the words of prominent dealer and curator, Jeffrey Deitch, “Basquiat’s canvases are aesthetic dropcloths that catch the leaks from a whirring mind. He vacuums up cultural fall-out and spits it out on stretched canvas, disturbingly transformed” (Jeffrey Deitch quoted in: Larry Warsh, Ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Notebooks, New York 1993, p. 13). It is precisely this reliance on eclectic source material that created the waterfall of diverse imagery and alphanumeric mark-making apparent in Campaign. While it resists a facile interpretation, this cluster of motifs in Campaign provides further insight into Basquiat’s working method: more than an illustrative self-portrait that provides a simple likeness, it provides an instinctive regurgitation of the artist’s stimulus – a glimpse into the machinations of his inner cogitation, with its intensity laid fully bare.

20-PACK OF PLAYER’S NAVY CUT CIGARETTES, 1940S

Born to Puerto Rican and Haitian parents in Brooklyn, Basquiat drew from his ethnic background and racial identity to forge a body of work acutely conscious of his place within white Western art history. Unequivocally inspired by the fractured nature of Picasso’s Cubism, Basquiat also looked back to the Spanish master’s interest in African art and primitivism. Basquiat, however, harnesses the aesthetic language of primitivism further, manipulating it to expound upon his own version of history painting, a genre that traditionally lauded the triumphs and glories of Western empire. In Campaign, Basquiat takes on a didactic role by shifting focus to the labor of African subjects that enabled such abundance in Western society. By reappropriating these hallmarks of art history into his unique language and style, Basquiat maintains an ideological opposition to the oppressive systems and demands of that same tradition. “There was a kind of deliberate roughness to his paintings, as if to say: I remain a warrior of the streets; behold the world as seen through vernacular eyes,” writes critic Robert Farris Thompson. (Robert Farris Thompson, op. cit., pp. 31-32) Appropriating aesthetic references to African folk art to visualize his critique on Western history, Basquiat again underlines his position as the prodigious revolutionary, disrupts the predominantly white canon of art, and claims his rightful place as a prophetic voice for our modern age.

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER, SELF PORTRAIT OF A SOLDIER, 1915. IMAGE © ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM / CHARLES F. OLNEY FUND / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Paralleling the momentum of his meteoric rise, every expressive mark and form of Campaign from 1984 is imbued with Basquiat’s impassioned, almost compulsive declaration of edifying artistic intent. A maelstrom of text and images unfurls as a tongue-in-cheek redux of history painting with unbridled bravado: here, the individual elements of the present work are intricately laden with meaning, introducing themes of race, art history, and expressionistic gestural power to the canvas. Replete with the signature iconography, vibrant color, and urban vivacity that are synonymous with Basquiat’s immortal oeuvre, Campaign is a complex and neologistic refashioning of Black history. Pulsating with creative furor, every twisting application of line and stuttering dynamism of form in Campaign profoundly invokes the riotous triumph of Basquiat’s artistic vision.

#4. Untitled, 1981

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 8,492,400

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960 – 1988)
Untitled, 1981
Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on paper
59×56 inches (149.9 x 142.2 cm)

In Untitled, the tumult of pure color and line that distinguish its dynamic composition parallels Jean-Michel Basquiat’s profound aesthetic historiography of the United States: in a phantom white abstraction, the geographical contours of the country’s map emerge here, marked by gestural inscriptions like “SUGAR” and “TOBACCO” that denote the agricultural commodities and labor outputs historically associated with distinct American regions. Executed in 1981, Untitled synthesizes the vigorous markmaking, calligraphic signs, and sociopolitical commentary that propelled Basquiat’s meteoric ascent from his street art origins to international stardom. Blazing hues of red, orange, and yellow electrify the dark pictorial surface, where the tactile qualities of his collage and paintwork – at times scrawled, at others dripping or smudged – retain and exalt the vital immediacy of his foundational practice. Testifying to its significance within Basquiat’s prolific output, Untitled bears an extensive exhibition history, including the critically acclaimed 2010-11 retrospective Jean-Michel Basquiat held at Fondation Beyeler, Basel and Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the 2017-18 exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: Boom for Real held at Barbican Center, London and Schirn Kunsthalle Museum, Frankfurt. Untitled is further distinguished by its exceptional provenance, having first been acquired from Anina Nosei Gallery, Basquiat’s first art dealer in the 1980s, by prominent contemporary art collector Edward R. Downe. A consummate and searing example of Basquiat’s early works on paper, Untitled embodies the artist’s innate ability to distill angst into visual dynamism and his newfound maturity as a deftly skilled draftsman.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT IN HIS STUDIO, NEW YORK, 1982. PHOTO © GIANFRANCO GORGONI; © MAYA GORGONI. ARTWORK © ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK

Dominating the center of the composition in Untitled, Basquiat abstracts the geography of the United States of America into an amorphous form of ghostly white segmented by key symbols and inscriptions. His loose painterly map associates American regions with the natural resources that have historically contributed to their economic development: “SUGAR” and “TOBACCO” repeat throughout the South to reference the agricultural economy of the Antebellum Era, while the West Coast is coated in dense scrawls of golden yellow, reminiscent of the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. Emerging respectively from swathes of blood red and ghostly white, two of Basquiat’s signature black skull-like heads stare outward with harrowing eyes and clenched teeth, as if to assert the primacy of the Black figure within the history of the United States. As Jackie Wullschlager astutely notes about the present work, “A sense of events as circular, a doomed cycle of violence and oppression — same old — dominates Basquiat’s take on history painting. Untitled is a loosely painted map of the US dotted with black masks and the words “Sugar” and “Tobacco” scrawled across the southern states.” (Jackie Wullschlager, “The off-the-wall brilliance of Jean-Michel Basquiat,” The Financial Times, 29 September 2017 (online))

LEFT: THE PRESENT WORK INSTALLED IN JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT & MANUEL OCAMPO AT HENRY ART GALLERY, SEATTLE, 1994. PHOTO © RICHARD NICOL. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK. RIGHT: THE PRESENT WORK INSTALLED IN BASQUIAT AT MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS, OCTOBER 2010 – JANUARY 2011. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK

With characteristic semiotic flair, Basquiat powerfully introduces central themes of race and capitalism into Untitled by way of this cartographic interpretation. Under Basquiat’s hand, commodities such as sugar, tobacco, and gold become allegorical motifs for a fraught economic history intertwined with colonialism, the slave trade, and plantation labor, revealing the complex and politicized relationship between modern society and natural resources. As curator Richard Marshall has observed, “These frequent references… reveal Basquiat’s interest in aspects of commerce – trading, selling and buying. Basquiat is scrutinizing man’s seizure and monopolization of the earth’s animal and material resources, and questioning why and how these resources, that are ideally owned by all of the world’s inhabitants, have become objects of manipulation, power, and wealth at the expense of the well being of all mankind” (Richard Marshall, “Jean-Michel Basquiat and his Subjects” in Enrico Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris 2000, p. 43).

The criticality behind Basquiat’s Untitled is commensurate with his searing painterly bravura seen in full display here, which reinvigorated the vocabulary of modern art with an unprecedented aesthetic intensity. Ever the iconographic alchemist, Basquiat did not merely appropriate or create pastiches of the styles, references, and traditions he accessed, he instead commanded these sources into a unique contemporary narrative. In Untitled, the depthless expanse of jet-black and stark strokes of white is especially redolent of Franz Kline; the rough eschewal of formal perspective invokes the Art Brut sensibility of Jean Dubuffet; and the abstracted blocks of red, orange, blue, and yellow recall the color fields paintings of Mark Rothko or Clyfford Still. Meanwhile, the two disembodied heads in the present work reference African reliquary masks not only in form but also in recalling an almost spiritual presence. Basquiat, like his hero Picasso before him, assessed African sculpture to interpret contemporary visual culture from a completely new perspective. While for Picasso, primitivism was an antidote to the conservatism of the academies, for Basquiat it was a means to critique the Western history of art, expressing a distinctly contemporary angst tied to prevalent social issues concerning race and ethnicity.

LEFT: ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, CANYON, 1959. IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION. RIGHT: CY TWOMBLY, SUMMER MADNESS, 1990. IMAGE © BPK BILDAGENTUR / MUSEUM BRANDHORST, BAYERISCHE STAATSGEMÄLDESAMMLUNGEN / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © CY TWOMBLY FOUNDATION

Also exemplified in Untitled, Basquiat’s dynamic union of image and work is a signature component within his pioneering technique that asserts his painterly force with unabashed grit and subversion. For Basquiat, words are as potent as his graphic symbols, and his inclusion of text in his artworks is indebted to his street art days in the 1970s as part of the duo SAMO©. Initially, Basquiat first made waves on the burgeoning downtown New York art scene in 1978 when he teamed up with his classmate Al Diaz to paint enigmatic slogans across the walls of corporate or public buildings, in highly visible spaces all over the city. More than just a street art tag, however, these slogans, executed under the aegis of SAMO©, were poetic, syncopated literary maxims aimed at critiquing both the predominantly white art world and American culture at large. Taking the essence of the streets to the studio, Basquiat would later paint with voracious energy on anything he could get his hands on, from walls and discarded pieces of cardboard to old television sets and refrigerators, elevating the quotidian to ever-new heights. It is perhaps Basquiat’s works on paper like Untitled, however, which reveal some of the most striking displays of the undying expressive urgency for which the artist is acclaimed. A self-taught artist, Basquiat’s genius lies in his instinctual understanding of composition, and the immediacy of paper as a medium provided the perfect vehicle for his vigorous technique. Ritualistically layering symbols and marks, Basquiat constricts the combustive color of his American map in Untitled within a thrumming web of white oil stick, alluding to a deeper economic and labor history as dynamically textured and complex as the picture plane. Translated into a sheer visual voltage onto the paper surface, themes of history and capitalism that manifest here in Untitled reveal the impassioned intensity and critical perspective that Basquiat maintained throughout his larger practice. As curator Okwui Enwezor observes, “Even at the young age… with limited formal education in the practice of art, Basquiat was gifted with an ebullient self-confidence, and sought nothing less than to disrupt the restricted equipoise by which the conventional Western art system had governed the public understanding of art.” (Okwui Enwezor, “El Gran Espectáculo: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Modernity, Modernism,” in: Exh. Cat., Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2018, p. 39)

#5. Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer), 1981

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,500,000 – 8,500,000
USD 7,892,500

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Modern & Contempor… Lot 6 May 2024 | Phillips

In Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer), Jean-Michel Basquiat delves into “America’s Favorite Pastime,” juxtaposing symbols of the quintessentially all-American sport with his depiction of a central Black figure, as well as his iconic text and crown motifs. Created during a transformative period for Basquiat, marked by his increasing visibility in the art world, this painting epitomizes the essential traits of his early canvases; it blends the immediacy and gestural freedom of graffiti writing with fine art traditions to explore themes of race, selfhood, and national identity through the lens of the artist’s signature iconography. The work was showcased in historic exhibitions such as Annina Nosei’s Jean-Michel Basquiat Memorial Exhibition, which opened in December 1988 shortly after the artist’s passing and coinciding with what would have been his 28th birthday. Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer) was formerly in the collection of the renowned historian and collector Francesco Pellizzi, who acquired it in the early 1980s directly from Nosei, Basquiat’s primary dealer at the time. Having remained in the same collection for decades, this significant work will now be offered publicly for the first time.

Jean-Michel Basquiat Wearing an American Football Helmet, 1981 by Edo Bertoglio. Image: © Edo Bertoglio, Courtesy of Maripol, Artwork: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

One of Basquiat’s earliest and only paintings to feature the culturally loaded phrase “Famous Negro Athletes” (with “Negro Athletes” notably crossed out), Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer) serves as a potent commentary on race, identity, and representation. It also reflects Basquiat’s own experience as a Black artist navigating a predominantly white art world. Through the intentional crossing out of text, Basquiat underscores the theme of exclusion while drawing attention to the obscured words beneath. Basquiat’s use of written language, both legible and obfuscated, serves as a reflection of his inner dialogue and becomes a vehicle for conveying multiple layers of meaning. Through this juxtaposition of words and imagery, Basquiat engages viewers in a complex interplay of language, identity, and societal critique, inviting interpretation and challenging traditional notions of communication and expression. In Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer), Basquiat inscribes one of his soon-to-be-signature slogans—”FAMOUS NEGRO ATHLETES”—yet, while the word “FAMOUS” remains legible, the rest of the expression is intentionally concealed by a thick stripe of black spray paint. The act of crossing out text underscores the theme of exclusion, paradoxically drawing attention to the words beneath while suggesting their suppression.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Famous Negro Athletes, 1981. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Formerly in the collection of Glenn O’Brien. Image: Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Nelly Bly, B.A. 1994 and Michael Arougheti, B.A. 1993, Artwork: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Basquiat’s inclusion of his signature crown motif above the floating heads and oversized baseballs in Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer) speaks to the majesty of these groundbreaking athletes as kings of their craft. Simultaneously, he reveals his admiration for the lone figure, the unsung hero at the center, whose crown is notably absent. In its place, Basquiat renders the head of his “FAMOUS NEGRO ATHLETE” in metallic gold, visually asserting the subject’s divinity and enduring significance, while evoking the grandeur of Byzantine icons portraying saints and religious figures adorned in gold leaf. In religious icons of Christian art history, gold was frequently used to symbolize transcendent, divine light embodying the invisible, spiritual world, and could be found in the background of icons, mosaics, panel paintings, and architectural settings. Basquiat plays with this visual history, using gold in the present work not only to pay homage to the athlete’s unparalleled skill but also to suggest a spiritual reverence for their contribution to the cultural landscape, where great human achievements are still most often rewarded with gold, in the form of gold statues and other decorations, and sportsmen are usually awarded gold medals or trophies to signify their victories.

 

Icon of the archangel Michael, Constantinople, first half of 14th century. Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens.
Image: The History Collection / Alamy Stock Photo 

Moreover, by choosing not to name a specific “Ballplayer”, Basquiat elevates them to the status of a symbol, an archetype rather than an individual. Echoing Andy Warhol’s iconic Gold Marilyn Monroe from 1962, in Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer), Basquiat further underscores the transformative power of celebrity and the intersection between art and popular culture. Through these symbolic elements, Basquiat invites viewers to contemplate the intersection of fame, race, and iconography, challenging conventional notions of heroism and idolization. Basquiat ennobled his heroes, using his crowns like the royal titles that famous African American musicians have sometimes adopted or the nicknames of sporting greats—such as Duke Ellington or Muhammed Ali, interchangeably known as “The Greatest,” “The Louisville Lip,” and “The Champ”—to create a court including renowned jazz musicians and celebrated athletes. In Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer), he establishes himself in that pantheon of Black heroes, employing his distinctive crowns as symbols of his induction and investiture into the overarching storyline of art history. Basquiat’s inclusion of baseball imagery reflects both his racial heritage as a Puerto Rican/Haitian American and the duality of exploitation and aspiration, mirroring his own ascendancy within the predominantly white art establishment, akin to the extraordinary success of these athletes.

 

[Left] Willie Mays with the New York Mets, c. 1972-73. Image: National Baseball Hall of Fame Library
[Right] Willie Mays, New York Mets Collectible Card, 1973. Image: Q20 / Alamy Stock Photo  

In Untitled (Portrait of Famous Ballplayer), Basquiat invites viewers to determine the identity of the protagonist. Could this ‘Famous Ballplayer’ be Jackie Robinson, the pioneering Black baseball player who broke the color barrier in the American major leagues during the 20th century? Basquiat saw in Jackie Robinson a resilient hero and an enduring symbol of self-made success, triumphing over the pervasive racial prejudices of the 1950s. Alternatively, it could be Hank Aaron, the inaugural figure in Basquiat’s pantheon of revered Black dignitaries. A childhood hero to Basquiat, renowned for his achievements rivaling those of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron’s influence is palpable throughout Basquiat’s earliest works. Or perhaps, the enigmatic figure is Willie Mays, the legendary outfielder whose sensational over-the-shoulder catch—famously known as “The Catch” and considered by many to be one of the greatest defensive plays in history—during the 1954 World Series remains one of baseball’s most iconic moments.

#6. Chicken Wings Three, 1983

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,409,500

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), Chicken Wings Three | Christie’s (christies.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
Chicken Wings Three, 1983
Acrylic and Xerox collage on metal
35 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches (90.2 x 90.2 cm)

Containing the raw energy of street art with a nuanced approach to art history, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s unprecedented oeuvre set the stage for a new understanding of art at the end of the twentieth century. Chicken Wings Three, realized during a key point in Basquiat’s regrettably short career, is a prime example of the young artist’s ability to create dynamic compositions densely packed with visual information. It was executed in 1983, the same year that he was included in the Whitney Biennial, as the youngest artist to ever participate in the exhibition at the age of 22. It was also during this time that he joined the group of artists at Mary Boone’s gallery and became better acquainted with Andy Warhol. He had been introduced to the Pop artist the year before by dealer Bruno Bischofberger, and the ensuring friendship had an immense effect on both artists. Though Basquiat was not aligned officially with the tenets of American Pop, his use of Xerox machines and image manipulation in conjunction with expressive abstraction helped to cement his larger practice within the annals of art history.

Collaged onto a metal backing, a variety of Xerox copies are arranged in a raucous manner. Diagrams, drawings, and text in multiple languages cover the surface while creating radical juxtapositions of disparate subjects and ideas. Printed with black ink on white paper, the lines are clear and precise while also exhibiting Basquiat’s trademark knack for enlivening even the most simple mark with an inherent vitality. Human heads, cars, globes, tools, and a Godzilla-like creature are dispersed over the work’s surface alongside lists of minerals, diagrams, and references to currency and alchemy. The apparent disorder and chaos of these competing ideas somehow coalesce into a discrete image that illustrates Basquiat’s thought process and insatiable curiosity about the world around him. “There is the sense that what Basquiat presents results from a mind less dependent upon hierarchical and declarative judgment,” mused art historian and curator Fred Hoffman. “In presenting all that he portrayed as being of equal value, Basquiat presented himself as that non-judgmental observer who approached his subjects with a certain detachment, without an agenda, a need to separate out, to choose or select” (F. Hoffman, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Drawing, exh. cat., Acquavella, New York, 2014, p. 39). The overwhelming nature of daily life made its way readily into works like Chicken Wings Three where competing points of interest jockey for the viewer’s attention. Over the top of this visual array, the artist has added a layer of translucent color. At times, the pages are obscured by dark areas of paint or thicker applications of acrylic, but the overriding hue of the work is a deep vermilion that spreads from edge to edge in an expanse of ruby tint. Where the collage is most difficult to see, the painterly application of color results in thick, visible brushstrokes that contrast with the linear quality of the Xeroxes and the mechanical nature of their replication.

Drawings from Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook, early 16th century. British Library, London.
Photo: British Library / The Art Archive at Art Resource, New York. 

Chicken Wings Three is a poignant example of Basquiat’s lifelong love affair with the act and art of drawing. Doodles, drafts, and sketches were the basis for his practice as he worked out ideas and crafted a discrete visual vocabulary on sheets of copier paper before committing them to canvas. Often, using mechanical means, he would duplicate, enlarge, and edit his originals to create a new amalgam that opened up a doorway to further information. “Drawing, for [Basquiat], was something you did rather than something done, an activity rather than a medium,” explained Robert Storr. “The seemingly throw-away sheets that carpeted his studio might appear little more than warm-ups for painting, except that the artist, a shrewd connoisseur of his own off-hand and underfoot inventions, did not in fact throw them away, but instead kept the best for constant reference and re-use.  By repurposing sketches and studies, Basquiat was able to create a cohesive collection of images that connected through various media. Symbols, motifs, and specific phrases often found their way into disparate formats and established a potent sense of the artist and his worldview throughout his oeuvre.

#7. Untitled (Grain Alcohol), 1983

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,996,000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Modern & Contempo… Lot 13 May 2024 | Phillips

Arriving to auction for the first time in nearly four decades, Untitled (Grain Alcohol) exemplifies the gestural prowess and distinctive iconography that denoted the peak of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career. Executed in 1983, soon after his meteoric rise to fame, the work features the same interrogation of “high” and “low” culture that would typify the rest of his too-brief oeuvre. In its hieroglyphic composition, crudely-rendered pictograms, and textual acronyms, the work stylistically harkens back to Basquiat’s past as a graffiti artist in the late 1970s. It also represents many of Basquiat’s pictorial interests at the time, such as crowns, superhero imagery, and jazz musicians, specifically referencing Bud Powell, Charles Mingus (CHRLES MNGS), Miles Davis (MLSDVS), Dizzy Gillespie (DZYGLPSE), Charlie Parker (C PRKR), and Max Roach (MX RCH). These citations not only showcase Basquiat’s deep appreciation for jazz music and its cultural significance but also highlight his penchant for incorporating a range of influences into his work, creating a rich tapestry of diverse visual and thematic elements. Bringing together motifs drawn street art, music, and pop culture, Untitled serves as a vibrant testament to Basquiat’s extraordinary vision.

Jean-Michel Basquiat DJing at Area, New York, 1985. Photograph by Ben Buchanon.
Image: © Ben Buchanan. All rights reserved 2024 / Bridgeman Images

Jazz music, and specifically bebop, was an enduring source of inspiration for the artist, resurfacing time and time again in over thirty of his famous paintings, such as Horn Players, 1983, The Broad, Los Angeles. Basquiat’s fascination with the genre stemmed from his upbringing in New York City, where he was exposed to the vibrant jazz scene of the 1960s and 1970s. This early exposure was later evoked in the artist’s studio practice and epitomized in Untitled, which mirrors the spontaneity and improvisation of jazz music through its rhythmic composition and swiftly drawn oilstick lines. As a musician himself, Basquiat ardently admired and identified with many of these figures—a sentiment visible in the pantheon of bebop luminaries that occupies the lower half of the image. In Untitled, Basquiat’s reverence for the genre is palpable, as he pays homage to these legendary musicians while also infusing the painting with his own distinctive visual language.

 Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players, 1983. The Broad, Los Angeles. Artwork: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Central to Basquiat’s practice was a sanctification of notable African American figures, which Basquiat used as an iconographic device to coalesce art history, pop culture, and the Black experience. As an answer to the lack of Afro-diasporic representation he witnessed during his frequent visits to the Brooklyn Museum during his youth, the artist began to anoint cultural icons in his own distinctive form of royal portraiture, just as Western art history valorized saints and kings for millennia. In the present work, these pioneering jazz figures—as well as heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott—are surrounded by superhero references, which were also found in his painting Charles the First (1982). At the top of Untitled are two Superman shields; just below is a human figure labelled twice as Thor, the Germanic pagan god who holds a hammer and was appropriated as a Marvel comic in the 1960s. Thor’s signature thunderbolt is repeated across the center of the image, elevating Basquiat’s subjects to a superheroic status. Crowns, one of the artist’s quintessential pictorial tropes, coronate Walcott and Roach and reinforce Basquiat’s exaltation of these figures. These symbols have a double meaning of “kingship,” serving as a nod both to Basquiat’s past as a street artist and to jazz culture. This history also resonates with jazz notions of “royalty,” in which musicians were granted informal honorific titles, such as the “Prince of Darkness” (Miles Davis) or Nat “King” Cole. Embodying both of these traditions, Untitled presents these figures as reigning figures within their respective realms.

Portrait of Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, and Max Roach, Three Deuces, New York, N.Y., ca. Aug. 1947.
Image: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., William P. Gottlieb Collection

While the present work renders Basquiat’s superheroes at the height of their talents, it can also be interpreted as documenting their shared hardships. The scrawl “BENZEDREX INHALERS SOAKED IN WINE” refers to an over-the-counter nasal decongestant containing amphetamine, which was often abused by many jazz musicians—most notoriously Parker. The inhalers were typically broken apart to reveal a piece of cotton soaked in the drug, which would then be dipped in alcohol or coffee. Underscored by the work’s subtitle, Grain Alcohol, this reference foreshadowed Basquiat’s own addiction and premature death just five years after the execution of Untitled. In this way, the work serves as a poignant reminder of Basquiat’s kinship with his idols—illustrating how they were united by both their artistic brilliance as well as their struggles. Weaving together personal experience, popular culture, graffiti, and music, Untitled symbolizes Basquiat’s defiance against social and artistic hierarchies.

Famous Negro Athletes, 1981

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 907,200

22978 Basquiat, Famous Negro Athletes (shorthandstories.com)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
Famous Negro Athletes, 1981
Oilstick and wax crayon on brown paper
17 3/4 x 23 7/8 inches (45.1 x 60.7 cm)

Held in the collection of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s friend and fellow artist Brett De Palma since 1981, Famous Negro Athletes is a formative drawing that incorporates several of Basquiat’s iconic and resounding visual motifs. The artwork depicts an anonymous athlete surrounded by symbols: church to the left, home to the right, a crown above, and a baseball below. Frantic at first glance, the composition is in fact a delicate formal balance between two city buildings, with each cryptic symbol offsetting the position of another. Whether this is the athlete in the city, or an advertisement of the athlete flyposted on a city wall, the athlete is central to the psyche of the viewer and artist. As Thelma Golden aptly wrote, “Basquiat identified with these athletes, their prowess, and their stardom, which seems so analogous to his own.” In his own words, Basquiat’s description of his artwork’s subject matter could easily be a description of the present work: “royalty, heroism and the streets.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Orange Sports Figure), 1982. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

The phrase “Famous Negro Athletes” is one of Basquiat’s most recognizable. It is a verbal trademark of the artist, comparable in importance and frequency to “Origin of Cotton,” “Tar Town,” and “Flats Fix.” The phrase appears in no less than five works from 1981-82, including a large work with the same title formerly in the collection of Glenn O’Brien, and an important Untitled 1981 suite of fourteen drawings. At face value, the titular phrase is merely descriptive –the figure is an athlete, and a famous one at that – and calls to mind great athletes such as Satchel Page, Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron. Aaron figures prominently in many of Basquiat’s works, and Basquiat’s frequent cryptic use of the letter ‘A’ and the name ‘Aaron’ are generally taken to be references to the famous ball player, who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, and received frequent death threats during his chase of the record. In the present work, the letter A in the upper right may signify such.

Basquiat’s art is most trenchant when it is socially critical. He often used art to comment on colonialism, racism, and classicism, and a deeper reading of the phrase “Famous Negro Athletes” reveals a similar commentary here – one that relates to Basquiat as a Black artist breaking into the ostensibly white New York art world. Basquiat’s insecurity and frustration at being perceived and written about in the press as a ‘Black’ artist, rather than simply an ‘artist,’ is echoed by the frustrations Black athletes felt during the segregation era of baseball, when Black and white players were made to play in separate leagues. The racist distinction of ‘Negro athletes’ and ‘white athletes’ is analogous to the racist distinction Basquiat must have felt, even at that early point in his career, when distinguished a ‘Black’ painter.

Though the recurring theme of baseball in Basquiat’s art has yet to be fully explored, we know as a child he often attended minor league baseball games with his father in Brooklyn, and later in life he related how much he enjoyed the process of filling out the scorecard in the game’s program. The visual and alphabetical influence of baseball scorecards on Basquiat’s work is apparent in the X’s and O’s, K’s, and arcane lists of numbers that populate his paintings and drawings.

Left: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Brett De Palma, New York, circa 1982. Photographer unknown.
Right: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Brett as Negro, 1982. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

The present work is also symbolic of the creative exchange between two important Lower East Side artists – Basquiat and Brett De Palma. Recalling his first meeting with Basquiat, De Palma recounted, “Diego [Cortez] introduced me to Jean-Michel at the opening of New York/New Wave, which I was in… Both Keith [Haring] and Jean gifted so many of us with their work. Keith painted a crib for our son when he was born and Jean left me a portrait [Brett as a Negro, 1982] that he did in Annina Nosei’s basement. I was working at a gallery in Soho when Jean first got his studio there and I would go over and hang out with him, and later at Crosby Street, but everybody came to that basement” (De Palma quoted in D. Buchhart, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art and Objecthood, Berlin, 2022, p. 119). Both artists had solo exhibitions in 1982 with Emilio Mazzoli Gallery in Modena, Italy, and they exchanged a number of works with each other in the early 1980s, including the present lot. De Palma, In recalling when Basquiat drew the present work, remembered how the artist was drawn to the brown paper De Palma had available in his home, and how the roman numerals in the lower right came close to representing the date of execution. De Palma has owned this work since the day it was created, and he exhibited the piece at the 2018 exhibition, Zeitgeist: The Art Scene of Teenage Basquiat, curated by Sara Driver, Carlo McCormick, Mary-Ann Monforton and Howl! Happening, at the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College.

Untitled, 1984

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
USD 19,367,500
AUCTION RECORD FOR THE COLLABORATION

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL and JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1928 – 1987 and 1960 – 1988)
Untitled, 1984
Acrylic, oilstick and graphite on canvas
116 x 165 1/4 inches (294.6 x 419.7 cm)

 

A supreme superimposition whereby the detached consumer symbols of Pop meet a streetwise sensibility, Untitled from 1984 resounds with the epic collision and collaboration between two of the most legendary forces of twentieth-century art history: Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. First facilitated by Zurich-based dealer Bruno Bischofberger, this iconic collaboration united two artists from different generations and backgrounds at the zenith of the downtown New York art scene in 1982: Warhol, the revolutionary progenitor of Pop Art working out of The Factory, and Basquiat, the newly rising enfant terrible recognized for his street art in the downtown crucible of New York. Extending the Surrealist methodology of “exquisite corpse” in which various artists collectively assemble a composition by individually adding illustrations in sequence, each artist accumulated image atop image in their signature medium – acrylic for Warhol, oilstick for Basquiat – to result in celebrated corpus of Collaboration paintings, of which the present work is among the fullest and most accomplished.

Untitled is distinguished by its remarkable marriage of Basquiat’s trademark skull-like heads with Warhol’s iconographic commercial symbols, resulting in a composition of brilliant reds, greens, and blues that is made still more remarkable by its monumental scale. Since its initial debut at the seminal exhibition of the Collaborations series at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York in 1985, Untitled has also been exhibited at Basquiat x Warhol: Painting Four Hands at Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris in 2023 as well as BASQUIAT X WARHOL at The Brant Foundation, New York in 2023-2024, two recent and critically acclaimed exhibitions dedicated to the artists’ relationship. Borne from the creative spontaneity that electrified this partnership, the explosive yet harmonious kaleidoscope of quotidian symbols, gestural scrawlings, and talismanic heads in Untitled exhibits a riveting visual and semantic exchange between two of art history’s most inventive minds.

When the two were first introduced to one another in 1982 by Bruno Bischofberger, Basquiat was a young street artist who had only just emerged to mainstream legitimacy while Warhol had reigned the New York avant garde for two decades. “Down to meet Bruno Bischofberger (cab $7.50). He brought Jean-Michel Basquiat with him,” documents Warhol in one diary entry from October 1982 about their initial meeting. “He’s the kid who used the name ‘Samo’ when he used to sit on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village and paint T-shirts…he was just one of those kids who drove me crazy…And so had lunch for them and then I took a Polaroid and he went home and within two hours a painting was back, still wet, of him and me together.” (Andy Warhol quoted in: Pat Hackett, ed., The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 462) Schooled by the gritty aesthetics of his native-New York streets rather than the academy, Basquiat offered a fresh and contrarian perspective that reinvigorated Warhol, even inspiring him to once again use the paintbrush, while the well-established Warhol plugged Basquiat into a vast network that cemented his critical ascendancy. As fellow Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone recalled, “Their relationship was symbiotic. Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy’s fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel’s new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again.” (Ronnie Cutrone cited in: Victor Bockris, Warhol: The Biography, Cambridge 2003, pp. 461-62)

Each already prodigious and radically inventive, Basquiat and Warhol’s distinctive artistic styles rivaled each in many ways, as evinced by the dizzying medley of image and color seen in Untitled. Here, the ready-made iconography of Warhol’s screen printing process finds an immediate intervention in the striking, urban attack of Basquiat’s gestural brushwork. Warhol first laid down his images in Untitled by crisply emblazoning graphic imagery – baseball mitts, tennis rackets, sneakers, numbers, and the bright red Zenith electronics logo – to which Basquiat responded by filling in other parts of the canvas with impulsive bravado. Basquiat’s painterly swathes of blue and ivory, freehand childlike scrawls, and skeletal heads dominate the negative space around Warhol’s interspersed images, only to be quickly overlaid again by new barrages of Warhollian illustrations. Warhol’s “½” looms large on the canvas, iterated three times in three different sizes. Reading this fraction as a literal expression of a division between Warhol and Basquiat here would be misleading, however, because the painting is nothing if not shared. Describing their wholly synergetic back-and-forth, Basquiat once recalled, “[Warhol] would put something very concrete or recognizable, like a newspaper headline or a product logo, and then I would try and deface it, and then I would try and get him to work some more on it.” (Jean-Michel Basquiat cited in: Exh. Cat., Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Basquiat, 2010, p. 47)

LEFT: ANDY WARHOL, SELF-PORTRAIT, 1986. IMAGE © TATE, LONDON / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. RIGHT: JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, FLEXIBLE, 1984. PRIVATE COLLECTION. IMAGE © PHILLIPS. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK

Both artists, though so strikingly different, shared a critical disposition as outsiders within the art world – Warhol was a wounded celebrity who preferred to affect the pose of an enigmatic voyeur, and Basquiat was a young African-American prodigy with a growing reputation, but no formal art training. Both artists also looked to popular culture for imagery – Warhol to advertising, newspapers and Hollywood stars; Basquiat to jazz musicians and professional athletes. The dialogue shared between the two artists powerfully manifests across the sweeping surface of Untitled, which embeds fragments of the daring zeitgeist of 1980s America that they respectively defined: the cult of athletic celebrity, the allure of consumer culture, the specter of urban decay. Basquiat’s signature totemic figures, rendered with primal energy and gestural immediacy, confront the viewer with their unvarnished presence, while Warhol’s graphic imagery recalls his earlier portraiture cycle of famed athletes and serves as a prism through which to interrogate the nature of commercial and sports iconography. Ultimately, this remarkable cacophony of image and color in Untitled encapsulates the accelerated energy and cultural milieu of the city that both artists called home, while the monumental, mural-like scale of the canvas testifies to their larger-than-life personas within it.

Pulsating with creative furor, overflowing with wild imagination, Untitled blurs the boundaries between commercial art and street art to perfectly synthesize Warhol’s and Basquiat’s respective artistic legacies. Speaking to the superlative caliber of the present work, curator Dieter Buchhart writes, “Basquiat and Warhol attained the highest complexity and synthesis of their two positions in works such as China Paramount, Untitled, and 6.99. In Untitled, Warhol created a network of athletic goods, including a catcher’s glove and a tennis racket, and loafers. A dialogue in contradictions, this develops into a web of symbols, numbers, signs, objects, heads and surfaces in light blue and ivory, like one of Basquiat’s spaces of knowledge in which the artist combines everything that surrounds him and what he gathers around him.” (Dieter Buchhart, “Basquiat x Warhol: A Dialogue in Contradictions,” in: Exh. Cat., Paris, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Basquiat x Warhol: Painting Four Hands, 2023, p. 24) Such synergy between two divergent visual languages upon a singular canvas testifies to the profoundly symbiotic relationship that the two artists shared. “Each one inspired the other to out-do the next,” Keith Haring observed during one of his visits to the studios of Warhol and Basquiat. “The collaborations were seemingly effortless. It was a physical conversation happening in paint instead of words. The sense of humor, the snide remarks, the profound realizations, the simple chit-chat all happened with paint and brushes.” (Keith Haring, “Painting the Third Mind,” in Exh. Cat., Paris, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Basquiat x Warhol: Painting Four Hands, 2023, pp. 110-111)

 

2. Keith Haring

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Untitled, 1986

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 4,470,000

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

REPEAT SALE

Sotheby’s New-York: 12 May 2021
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 5,779,200

Untitled | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

KEITH HARING (1958 – 1990)
Untitled, 1986
Acrylic on canvas
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed and dated JAN. 22 1986 (on the overlap)

Captivating in its impactful scale and black-white-red chromatic simplicity, Untitled from 1986 is a vivacious testament to Keith Haring’s distinct pop vernacular and his career-long interest in political activism. Sprawling across the canvas, Haring depicts a stunning array of figures in a moment of spectacular activity, encased within a stark red border, rendered in the bold, stark palette for which he is best known. Untitled is a seminal example of the artist’s distinct visual language and his determination to celebrate music, dance, and an interconnected human spirit through his art despite the overwhelming sociopolitical challenges of the 1980s. In its astonishingly assured compositional structure and maze-like complex arrangement of figures, Untitled embodies Haring’s highly acclaimed oeuvre, capturing the vivacious energy that characterized the New York cultural scene.

Like his contemporaries, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, Keith Haring was driven by a deep-rooted personal desire to serve as a narrator of the modern age. Arriving in New York City in 1978, Haring was immediately drawn to the urban music and graffiti scene. Music and the urban culture surrounding it proved to be a major source of inspiration for the artist early on: “All kinds of new things were starting. In music, it was the punk and New Wave scenes… And there was the club scene – the Mudd Club and Club 57, at St. Mark’s Place, in the basement of a Polish church, which became our hangout, a clubhouse, where we could do whatever we wanted.” (the artist quoted in: David Sheff, Rolling Stone, August 1989, n.p.) The extraordinary sensation of rhythm that pervades Untitled, and other works from this year, can be connected to the artist’s deep understanding and love of the alternative and highly original music scene of the New York scene at the time. Untitled demonstrates the ways in which Haring’s work developed in expressive scope from the first half of the 1980s, indicating a new aesthetic maturity and creative profundity that signify the work of an artist at the height of his powers.

THE CLOSING PARTY OF PARADISE GARAGE, 1987. PHOTO © TINA PAUL. ART © 2024 THE KEITH HARING FOUNDATION

Haring’s deceptively simple outlined figures represent an incisive cultural commentary on the issues facing the United States in the mid-1980s, including AIDS, drug addiction, racism, and economic inequality. Through his bold lines and contoured forms, which are simultaneously self-contained and balanced against each other, Haring offers a new meaning to figurative painting, one that would become a defining icon of the generation. Even in the face of AIDS, a disease to which Haring himself succumbed in 1990, the present work retains the artist’s distinct positive energy; rather than devolving into injury, misery, or anxiety, Untitled illustrates Haring’s unique appreciation of human relationships and intense, receptive embrace of all walks of life. Untitled epitomizes Haring’s inimitable aptitude for conveying pulsating movement through forms distilled to their most basic, essential components. Haring’s confident hand draws bold, self-assured strokes, eschewing a pre-meditated schematic plan for spontaneous genius. The bold chromatic choice of color and the figures’ nearly grid-like formation are at once lyrical and balanced, conveying a potent energy that enlivens the picture with strong emotive power. For Haring, dance was a symbol of life and coexistence.

Untitled, 1982

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 2,046,500

Keith Haring (1958-1990), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)

KEITH HARING (1958-1990)
Untitled, 1982
Sumi ink on paper
72 x 115 1/2 inches (182.9 x 293.4 cm)

Untitled brings us Keith Haring at the absolute pinnacle of his creative prowess. Painted in 1982, the artist’s annus mirabilis, this is a monumental self-portrait teeming with the artistic attributes that bought Haring both critical and commercial revere. Humorous in nature and executed with exquisite draftsmanship, we see the artist’s ability to synthesize historical inspiration while seemingly predicting the future of cultural discourse. Held in a single private collection since it was acquired from the artist’s estate, this is an exceedingly rare opportunity to acquire a work so central to the artist’s oeuvre. Sumi ink works on paper are held in the permanent collections of The Met, the Museum of Modern Art, Buffalo AKG, and the Brooklyn Museum, among many others.

Coming to renown in the early 1980s by swiftly executing satirical drawings on blank poster sites in New York City’s subway system, Haring’s constant battle to evade law enforcement is the subject matter for the present work. In an almost uniquely autobiographical narrative, we see the artist himself ecstatically running away from a recently completed subway drawing, most likely from an ‘off-scene’ cop. Within the inset painting, we see the artist’s full visual lexicon. The central ‘X’ man is a common indicator of self-portraiture. Serpentine squiggly lines hark to Haring’s studies of Aboriginal and native art as well as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Dogs had first appeared in Haring’s subway drawings; he brilliantly subverted their historical associations with obedience into an emblem of rebellion with their fierce, annotated barks. The inclusion of two in the present work is perhaps an additional slight to the incoming police. Finally, crowing the scene, is exactly what this unwelcome enforcement is trying to abolish – flying and dancing figures showcase the euphoria of New York’s gay scene of the late 70s and early 80s.

Away from the painting-within-a-painting, we are then enthralled to see the artist himself triumphantly fleeing. With his hands over his eyes—a recurring theme in Haring’s depictions of himself—he escapes the scene excitedly. Animated lines around his face and limbs allude to his joyful, swift exit. Intentional drip marks emphasize the still-drying masterpiece in which he successfully left his mark on the city for all to see. In fact, our escaping protagonist is seemingly leaping out of the entire picture plane. Looking back to his past with reverie, this poignant composition is Haring’s remembrance of a liberated youth. It causes us to question how we reflect upon our own origins and our creative pursuits. Having recently debuted at Tony Shafrazi Gallery with resounding admiration, Haring’s star was quickly rising. Following his creative beginnings executing artworks swiftly in public, drawing was always Haring’s primary intention. Works such as Untitled were not created in precedent to a canvas. Rather, large-scale works on paper, as with the subway drawings, were executed with considerable performative power and in conceptual recognition of his humble beginnings. They presented a considerable challenge, both physically and conceptually. One can follow the exceptional command of line for which Haring became so admired; like a late Picasso drawing, his brush seems to hardly lift off the page, even on this monumental sheet.

Keith Haring, Untitled, 1982. Museum of Modern Art, New York. © The Keith Haring Foundation. Photo: © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Paper was also important to Haring as it maintained sincerity with his earlier practice. In the wake of his success, he came under pressure from gallerists to conform to more commercially viable mediums. Sticking with paper allowed him to remain resolute with street art – much the same reason he often opted for vinyl tarp and metal panels rather than linen canvases.  In addition to his phenomenal technical prowess, Haring was a also master of subject and humor. This is what allowed his works to so eloquently synthesize the past, while remaining relevant far into the future. Untitled is first and foremost a monument to Contemporary Street art, however, through its intentional flatness of plane and satirical tone, we see much conceptual common ground with Pop. Haring’s abilities were in fact greatly appreciated by his forebears, including the master, Roy Lichtenstein. Moving to the future, the humor present in such a work, particularly within its graphic content, is what cemented Haring’s ongoing cultural relevance. Keith’s picture-word system has acted as predecessor to today’s pictographic and emoji-driven lexicon. Smiley faces, hands over eyes, dogs, hearts, globes and other ideograms ring surprisingly familiar to the miniature graphics that we send on our smartphones today. After all, the desire for a universal system of communication is something that our digital age, Keith Haring’s ideograms, and ancient hieroglyphics all have in common. By making reference to historical communication and influencing the next generation’s, Haring has taken us full circle.

3. George Condo

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#1. Conversations, 2012

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,145,500

Conversations | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957)
Conversations, 2012
Acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas
70×90 inches (177.8 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated 2012 (upper left)

A sublime synthesis of art historical tropes and contemporary aesthetics, Conversations epitomizes the exceptional virtuosity, psychic intensity and fragmented perspectives that distinguish George Condo’s remarkable oeuvre. Executed in 2012, the present work was produced shortly following George Condo’s major mid-career retrospective George Condo: Mental States at the New Museum, New York; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hayward Gallery, London; and Schirn Kunsthalle. The formal constituents of this exceptional canvas—its confidently contoured figures, vibrant palette, and richly textured surface—reveal a brilliant fusion of many of the artists’ most significant motifs. Anchored by a central figure reminiscent of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the confluence of idiosyncratic figures in the present work is emblematic of Condo’s signature mode of ‘psychological cubism,” in which he ruptures the picture plane to reveal the complexities and multifaceted nature of human emotion. Incorporating Abstract Expressionist action painting, the formality of Old Master portraiture and the wry humor of pop art, Condo’s Conversations employs ostensibly contradictory elements of canonical art history to both challenge and collapse traditional conceptions of genre.

LEFT: PABLO PICASSO, LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON, 1907. IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. RIGHT: WILLEM DE KOONING, WOMAN VI, 1953. IMAGE © CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART, PITTSBURGH, PA / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 THE WILLEM DE KOONING FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

A striking coalescence of color and form, Conversations evocatively recalls Pablo Picasso’s masterful Cubist facture; yet, where Picasso radically shattered the picture plane to explore multiple viewpoints in the same moment, Condo here ruptures his compositions to explore the complexities of the psyche. Embodying the artist’s career-long interrogation of representations of the figure throughout art history, George Condo’s Conversations examines the aesthetic legacies of Cubism within his surreal figures, both appropriatings and recontextualizings the traditions of portraiture. Following a nine-month stint as the diamond duster in Andy Warhol’s Factory, Condo emerged onto the 1980s New York art scene alongside seminal figures like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Like his peers, Condo was critically engaged throughout the eighties in bringing to life a new form of figurative painting that stylistically blended the representational and the abstract. Condo coined the terms ‘artificial realism’ and ‘psychological Cubism’ to define his lexicon of amusing caricatures, profound and intimate portraits, and grotesque abstractions. In Conversations, Condo inverts and inserts art historical tropes, paying homage to Pablo Picasso’s protagonist, Matisse’s fluid and organic figures, Lichtenstein’s archetypal blonde heroines, among others in a playful and absurd new context that simultaneously revives, and humorously undermines, the integrity of portraiture.

Dominated by rose-colored hues punctuated by bright blue, red, pinks and yellows, Condo’s lines and color fields teeter on the periphery of representation and abstraction; as Condo describes, “There was a time when I realized that the central focal point of portraiture did not have to be representational in any way.” (the artist quoted in: Anney Bonney, “George Condo,” BOMB Magazine, Summer 1992) Like Matisse’s figures, rendered in simplified shapes and liberated contours, Condo’s characters break free from strict representational conventions, continuing a Modernist experimentation with the human form that Matisse set forth. Here, Condo’s figures—each set in conversation, each positioned in a different perspective and each boldly contoured—collapse the traditional delineations between not only painting and drawing, but also the beautiful and the grotesque, the comic and tragic. As Holland Cotter noted in his review of George Condo: Mental States at the New Museum in 2011: “Mr. Condo is not a producer of single precious items consistent in style and long in the making… He’s an artist of variety, plentitude and multiformity. He needs to be seen in an environment that presents him not as a virtuoso soloist but as the master of the massed chorale.” (Holland Carter, “A Mind Where Picasso Meets Looney Tunes,” The New York Times, 27 January 2011 (online)). Conversations, from 2012, is a quintessential embodiment of the fantastical, pictorial landscapes rife with hedonistic entropy that typify Condo’s genius. Within the fractured realm of the canvas, abstraction and figuration collide with a ferocious velocity; while clearly discernible, the silhouette of each figure evades clear delineation, as Condo deftly manipulates our ability to interpret the tableau before us, toying with the boundaries of non-representational and figurative paintings. Painted with broad, gestural brushstrokes that convey the fleeting and fluid nature of conversation, the present work is encapsulates Condo’s inimitable ability to reflect and synthesize the human experience.

#2. Focusing on Space, 2016

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,270,000

George Condo – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 15 May 2024 | Phillips

As is evident in Focusing on Space, Condo assiduously borrowed from a range of 20^th century artistic sources, the rapid exchanges energizing Abstract Expressionist canvases and Cubism’s sharp dissections, spatial logic, and emphasis on simultaneity allowing him to articulate multiple emotional and psychological states concurrently. Questions of space had preoccupied Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, at once reducing distinctions between figure and ground, and exploring innovative new methods of presenting multiple viewpoints simultaneously; a technique that for Picasso would find new emotional intensity in his monumental Guernica and related Weeping Woman series. Similarly, in its compositional verve and complex internal rhythms, Focusing on Space recalls the muscular mark-making of Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, notably in works such as Pink Angels, where charcoal and paint work together to create a frenetic network of lines and interpenetrating forms. As our eye travels across the expanse of the canvas here, compositional stability seems to break down and reinforce itself by turns as the arched, loosened ribbons of paint are met and countered with corpulent, jagged brushstrokes, all threatening to expand well beyond the picture’s surface.

Music, like sensation, informs Condo’s practice, discernable here in the paintings syncopated rhythms and counterpointed motifs. At the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, alongside art history, Condo majored in music theory, studying the classical guitar and then the lute. His subsequent participation in the punk band called “The Girls” led Condo to meet fellow artist-musician Jean Michel-Basquiat during the band’s performance in Tribeca, New York—a friendship that would persuade Condo to move to the city and pursue art full time at twenty-three years old. A rhythm, or rather, improvision remains central to Condo’s mark-making, staccato impastos fearlessly liberated across the surface. In Focusing on Space, Condo weaves an intricate arrangement of line and texture, where oil and pigment stick blur indistinguishably—much like the faces and bodies of his characters—melding into a raw, graffiti-like scrawl and sinuous graphic simplicity that knits the foreground and background into cohesive alignment.

#3. Female Portrait, 2008

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,206,500

Female Portrait | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957)
Female Portrait, 2008
Oil on canvas
72×60 inches (183 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 08 (on the reverse)

Searing with psychological depth, George Condo’s Female Portrait Composition from 2008, represents the paradigm of the artist’s radical approach to contemporary portraiture that unpacks the complexity of subject-hood. Overwhelming with an immediacy of pathos, eccentricity and satire, Female Portrait Composition evinces Condo’s innovatory aesthetic mode of painting, that harnesses the traditions of European portraiture to employ an ingenious articulation of Contemporary figuration, infused with a Surrealist and Pop twist. Striking and dazzling, the female figure gazes are the viewer with an astounding intensity, her single cerulean blue eye quietly reflecting the light across the surface of the immense canvas. In the present work, the cyclopean stare acts as centrifugal force that is framed by a dizzying lock of sculpted hair, zany button nose, rosy cheek and cocked eyebrow, to convey a spry and daring demeanor of the subject. The facial vocabulary in Female Portrait Composition is elevated further with the comedic elongation of the neck, megawatt smile, the cupids bow punctuated with garish red lipstick and goofy, deciduous teeth that offset the angularity of the oversized jaw. The outrageously impossible anatomical proportions in Female Portrait Composition serve as direct counterpoints to the technical mastery of the painted surface.

PABLO PICASSO, DORA MAAR IN AN ARMCHAIR, 1939. © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.

Condo’s intricate brushwork captures the dignified and majestic posturing of the female subject in Female Portrait Composition. This period of production in Condo’s practice is distinguished by his employment of the concept of artificial realism: the strategy of taking a real subject and making it artificial. The sharp triangulation of the torso creates extraordinary dimension and structure to this profoundly analytical Cubist composition, that discreetly engages with the tension between the painted surface and the psychological depth of portraiture. Overtly saturated, the bubblegum pink of the figure is sliced by the searing yellow, royal purple and dazzling black that comprises the stark chest of the female figure, the multi-triangulation of her figure creates a complex and spellbinding impact for the viewer. This extraordinary compositional architecture is further echoed by the black triangle situated above the shoulder, which creates balance between the absurdity of the length of the neck and the truncation of the arm.

GEORGES BRAQUE, WOMAN SEATED AT AN EASEL, 1936. © 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.

Female Portrait Composition successfully engages the visual language of Cubism and propels it further via the vehicle of artificial realism. The Cubist notion of reducing the image to a limited number of geometric shapes was the very genesis of the Cubist quest for compositional simplification and dynamism. For Condo, the present work is the very prism of his fragmented reconstructions, typical of only his most superlative paintings from the mid-2000s, in which the very nature of the identity of the subject is a construction only he can contort, obfuscate and translate into an energizing reimagination of contemporary figuration. The refinement and technical skill deployed in Female Portrait Composition is not only demonstrated by the hilarious anatomical improbability of the singular eye, offset nose, lips and triangulated torso, but is equally seen in the splendid cross-hatching of the rich charcoal and midnight blue, which creates an almost atmospheric quality that pays homage to the influence on Baroque and modern masters in Condo’s groundbreaking practice.

Beyond standing as a superlative example of the very mechanics of Condo’s language of painting, Female Portrait Composition is fresh to the market, having remained in the same private collection for nearly a decade and having previously been owned by the esteemed collectors, Steven and Ann Ames. The selection of Female Portrait Composition by the Ames family further demonstrates the undeniable quality of the present work as a standout example from one of Condo’s most celebrated periods of production.

 

Shimmering Forms, 2010

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,260,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), Shimmering Forms | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
Shimmering Forms, 2010
Acrylic, pastel and graphite on canvas
70×70 inches (177.8 x 177.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Condo 2010’ (upper left)

It has been suggested that to view even one of George Condo’s momentous paintings is to consider an entire world, defined by its range of subjects, styles and art historical influences. The prolific artist arrived in New York in 1980, upon which he was quickly embraced by the downtown art scene. Working closely with the likes of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the artist forged his own unique style, deploying the time-honored techniques of the old masters to bring his uncanny visions to life. Over the course of his decades-long career, Condo has amassed an enormous repertoire of art historical references, which he synthesizes through his own pictorial language. His works seem to float above time, lacking any individual features that tether them to specific moments in history. Instead, what remains is a picture of eerie familiarity and psychological closeness. In Shimmering Forms, 2010, Condo shuffles the deck of art history, fusing abstraction and figuration, the tangible and the imagined, the beautiful and the grotesque. The crowded composition presents the viewer with Condo’s most storied and desirable motifs, showcasing the power of Condo’s singular visual lexicon alongside his masterful draftsmanship and energetic painterly sensibilities. Forged from the wealth of art history, George Condo’s Shimmering Forms captures the artist’s ability to blend different styles and mediums, establishing his own pictorial language while traversing the waters of the human psyche.

George Condo, New York, 2011. Photo: Mike McGregor / Contour by Getty Images.  Artwork: © 2024 George Condo / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Part of the artist’s “Drawing Paintings” series, the blend of various media and styles at play in Shimmering Forms bloom into an expressionistic and surrealist landscape. Drawing from elements of cubism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism, the work is significant not for its focus on any one element, but rather the narrative that emerges from the confluence of these many different styles. The delineated forms, melded together with a symphonic clash, pay homage to the competing visual rhythms of cubism, while Condo’s gestural lines give way to fragmented, sliding planes, echoing the distinctive energy and organization of abstract expressionism. The alluring, sinuous female figures recall the powerful and sensuous women of Ruben’s baroque masterpieces. The flattened plane is reminiscent of Cezanne’s radical perspective, as the figures seem to float in space, tethered by only their relation to one another. However, Condo’s approach to his practice is not one of emulation or appropriation; instead, he maintains that great art is characterized by its ability to repurpose and reinvent existing styles. Though at first glance viewers recognize the familiar canonical motifs such as the reclining nude and the decisive lines which define the canvas’s architecture, the rich deposits of Condo’s fabricated characters imbue the work with modern eclecticism. The soft, languid composition of Condo’s nude women are contrasted with the frenetic energy of his cartoonish characters. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of representational forms mirror the very act of Condo’s artistic process. In producing the “Drawing Painting” series, Condo desired to assert the equality of drawing and painting, combating the traditionally-held view of painting as a superior medium. Known for innovatively blending the most established art historical motifs with cartoon-like figures, the work collapses centuries of art’s most defining symbols and debates into one canvas.

The monumental cloud-blue canvas is peppered with stark, black outlines, depicting the most iconic symbols of Condo’s oeuvre. Condo asserts that caricatures and cartoons, specifically those inspired by everyday citizens, are an indispensable part of his practice.

“The cartoon is a very bizarre weapon against the sort of intellectual concept of what our supposedly high-art culture is all about… I think the interest is that it’s a sort of entry into a certain kind of serious component of the human psyche.” 

Shimmering Forms is rich with several of Condo’s celebrated characters. Rodrigo, who Condo has described as a “kind of lowlife” and is recognizable by his elongated neck, bulbous nose and neck tie, is depicted several times throughout the canvas. The Cocktail Drinker’s wife, shown in fishnet tights and holding a cocktail glass, is reproduced in the far right corner. Indeed, the canvas is filled with Condo’s signature characters and recurring motifs, such as ballooning cheeks and enlarged eyes, reminiscent of the artist’s highly celebrated portraits. The soft, Grecian female forms populating the lower register are juxtaposed with the tightly arranged, grotesque and cartoonish portraits of the upper register. Instead of radicalizing any one style or motif, the collaging of a diverse range of symbols and characters suggests the traces of an other-worldly narrative.

Willem de Kooning, Excavation, 1950. Art Institute of Chicago. © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Blurring the line between abstraction and figuration, the meandering and vivacious canvas offers a view into Condo’s unfiltered psyche. The composition is dynamic, undulating between areas of meticulously detailed sketching and uninterrupted pools of white and blue. The artist has described the process of producing abstract art as automatic, saying that his abstract works are “detailed descriptions of undefinable thoughts.” As opposed to his portraits, which offer intensive studies into the artist’s fabricated characters, paintings such as Shimmering Forms display the relationship of his thoughts and characters to one another. Presented as a culmination of Condo’s life-long fascinations, the painting’s rich amalgamation of imagined characters and quasi-figurative forms converge into a chaotic, cubist landscape, offering a coup d’œil into the artist’s fantastical universe.

The Young Sailor, 2012

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 882,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), The Young Sailor | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
The Young Sailor, 2012
Oil on canvas
40 1/4 x 32 1/4 inches (102.2 x 81.9 cm)
Incised with the artist’s signature and date ‘Condo 2012’ (upper left)

Pablo Picasso, Le Marin, 1943. © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Rodrigo and His Mistress, 2007

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 660,400

George Condo – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 26 May 2024 | Phillips

William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853. Tate Gallery, London

On his strategy of ‘Psychological Cubism,’ Condo explains: “Picasso painted a violin from four different perspectives at one moment. I do the same with psychological states. Four of them can occur simultaneously. Like glimpsing a bus with one passenger howling over a joke they’re hearing down the phone, someone else asleep, someone else crying – I’ll put them all in one face.” In this way, the grinning couple is both seemingly inviting us to watch their indecency and seething that they’ve been caught. The blend of seduction and repulsion is like watching a train wreck from which we can’t look away. Knowing that the extramarital exploit can’t end well for Rodrigo, we view them with wry amusement.

Antipodal Dream, 1996

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 596,900

Antipodal Dream | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957)
Antipodal Dream, 1996
Oil on canvas
72×60 inches (183 x 152.4 cm)
Signed and dated 1996 (on the reverse)

Powerful in its ambient ethereality, George Condo’s Antipodal Dream is a definitive example of the artist’s stylistic construct of artificial realism, through which he has expanded the traditional realm of figurative painting to portray the often-humorous idiosyncrasies of contemporary life. As part of Condo’s experimental series known as “Antipodal portraits,” the present work is an outstanding example of the synthesis of Condo’s unique visual language and the art historical concerns that fascinated him throughout his career. Known for his unique and sometimes humorous repurposing of classical subjects, Condo draws from influences as varied as the Old Masters and Picasso’s Cubist language to construct worlds and characters that toe the line between fantasy and reality. His “antipodal portraits” exist in this liminal space, presenting psychologically complex figures on the “outskirts of society” in indeterminate settings with absurdly juxtaposed features. They often include recurring symbols, such as bubbles, wine glasses, and cigarettes. In an interview with the Hong Kong art magazine Ran Dian, Condo describes these antipodal figures as “humanoid” that “live independent of our existence… and they don’t necessarily want you to know that they’re in there. They are living in the periphery to a certain degree.. and they are… putting your molecules in place and you, as an artist, are able to tap into that depth of your psyche and see these characters.” Condo compares his search for these “antipodal beings” as similar to Da Vinci’s intensive study of anatomy, which ultimately allowed him to better understand the external world and develop his remarkable naturalism.

PORTRAIT OF A GIRL IN A BLUE DRESS WITH A PARROT IN A PALATIAL GARDEN, WILLEM VERELST (ACTIVE C. 1734-C. 1752, PERA MUSEUM, ISTANBUL.

Antipodal Dream is a portrait of a standing figure in formal clothes from a bygone era, whose unique form borders between the human and the animalistic. In contrast to the figure’s stark presence, an ominous cloud looms in the upper left corner painted with gentle gestural brushstrokes, evoking a dreamscape and further unsettling the composition as perspective and depth are warped. The figure us positioned against a sea of gray-blue and black, demonstrating Condo’s mastery of the eighteenth-century Baroque depictions of portraiture as well over the pictorial plane. Condo embodies the dichotomy between past and present by frequently incorporating stylistic influences and formal qualities used by Old Master painters into his own work.

“That’s a sleepwalker I was thinking of. Somebody that was walking in their sleep so they’ve got dressed up and walked out of their dream. That’s framed, in a strange way, like a classical portrait of this imaginary figure.”

JAMES ENSOR, SQUELETTE ARRÊTANT MASQUES, 1991. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S PARIS, 2016 FOR $8.1 MILLION. ART © 2023 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / SABAM, BRUSSELS

While the work’s subject matter probes the boundaries of reality, Condo approaches the work with a naturalism inspired by the Dutch Old Masters. Condo describes the framing of light in this portrait as inspired by Rembrandt and Frans Hals, who developed a technique in which the background of the figure corresponds uniquely to the lighting of its face, with the dark background echoed on the opposite side of the face. This creates, according to Condo, a “constellation of human psychology,” one of the artist’s primary fascinations. In the present work, the dark, swirling brushstrokes of the background suggest a storm cloud emanating from the figure, while the green clown nose and stretched necklace convey a satirical, humorous quality to her attire and presence. The figure’s features are instantly recognizable as Condo’s exceptional visual language, with its large ears, bulbous cheeks, and mismatched eyes (COMP). The figure’s hairy arms, green nose, and wide neck contrasts with her formal dress and delicate pearls, uniting the grotesque and the beautiful to confront the viewer with the unresolveable contradictions of the human psyche. Building upon years of refining and maturing an iconic figurative style, Condo’s Antipodal Dream is a work of dramatic intensity, at once utterly uninhibited and full of instinctive acumen.

The Apparition, 2009

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 504,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), The Apparition | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
The Apparition, 2009
Oil on canvas
40×36 inches (101.6 x 91.4 cm)

The Maitre D, 2007

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 252,000

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957), The Maitre D | Christie’s (christies.com)

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
The Maitre D, 2007
Oil on canvas
24×18 inches (61 x 45.7 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Condo 07’ (on the reverse)

4. Cecily Brown

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Functor Hideaway, 2008

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,569,000

Functor Hideaway | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

CECILY BROWN (b. 1969)
Functor Hideaway, 2008
Oil on canvas
77×55 inches (195.6 x 139.7 cm)
Signed and dated 2008 (on the reverse)

Abounding with vitality and striking color, Functor Hideaway from 2008 exhibits Cecily Brown’s revered synthesis of gestural abstraction and immanent figuration. In the present composition, Cecily Brown prioritizes ambiguity over narrative as bold thrashes of color manipulate seemingly anthropomorphic forms into a subliminal image, challenging the viewer to derive meaning from its frenzied yet meticulously constructed network of painterly swathes. Upon relocating to New York from London, Brown established herself amongst a cadre of New York painters revitalizing the figure in avant-garde art and, engaging in a dialogue with art historical antecedents, Brown helped to usher in a new era for figurative painting alongside artists such as John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage. Acquired shortly after it was executed in August 2008, Functor Hideaway has remained in the same private collection ever since.

LEFT: LUCIAN FREUD, STANDING BY THE RAGS, 1988-89. TATE MODERN, LONDON. IMAGE © THE LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2024 / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 LUCIAN FREUD. RIGHT: JOAN MITCHELL, PAINTING, 1956-1957. MUSÉE NATIONAL D’ART MODERNE, CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU, PARIS. IMAGE © CNAC/MNAM, DIST. RMN-GRAND PALAIS / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © ESTATE OF JOAN MITCHELL

Within the present composition, verdant greens, fleshy pinks, and icy blues oscillate between controlled precision and spontaneous freedom. Bolts of crimson galvanize Brown’s fluxing landscape as expressive marks carve and collide across the canvas. Riotous strokes of green rendered in varying hues suggest a forested landscape; coalescing amongst expressive bursts of fleshy paints, splinters of the human form melt into swirls of color. In an almost generative nature, the painting gives birth to new forms through an endless cycle of evolution. Describing her medium, the artist expounded, “It’s sensual, it moves, it catches the light, it’s great for skin and flesh and heft and meat.” (the artist quoted in: Derek Peck, “New York Minute: Cecily Brown,” Another, 14 September 2012) Indeed, the weather in Brown’s arcadia is equal parts cool and dewy like an early morning, and hot and humid like midsummer noon.

Readily discernable in the present work is a deep resonance with a seemingly endless array of art historical references, suggesting Édouard Manet and Paul Cezanne’s luminous rendering of the body and organization of space. Undoubtedly influenced by the brash mark-making of the Abstract Expressionist movement, her visual language and gestural approach to painting are also indebted to the expressive, abstracted qualities of Joan Mitchell or Willem de Kooning. Looking closely, a small, white skull emerges from the lower right quadrant of the painting, a critical vanitas motif in not only the artist’s oeuvre, but also throughout the lineage of Western art history. Functor Hideaway melts the representational into an abstracted frenzy while simultaneously celebrating the nude form. Indeed, rather than objectifying the nude, the artist’s intense and unapologetic gaze celebrates its abstraction. The artist explains, “You’ve got the same old materials—just oils and a canvas—and you’re trying to do something that’s been done for centuries…I have always wanted to make paintings that are impossible to walk past, paintings that grab and hold your attention.” (Cecily Brown quoted in: ‘Cecily Brown: I take things too far when painting’, The Guardian, 20 September 2009, online)

HIERONYMUS BOSCH, THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS, 1490-1500. PRADO, MADRID. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Recently celebrated with a significant career survey at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid, Cecily Brown is undoubtedly one of the most successful contemporary painters working today. Brown’s inclusion in the following collections, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Whitney Museum, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Broad, Los Angeles, further underscores the artist’s influence and importance. As Functor Hideaway navigates between chaos and control, a frenetic energy emerges yet somehow Brown maintains a sense of harmonious composition within the work. The painting stands as a powerful testament to the artist’s mastery, showcasing her ability to provoke deep contemplation and elicit profound emotions from viewers.

Mesmerizing and immersive, Brown’s choreography of painterly gestures in Functor Hideaway engulfs the viewer into a phantasmagorical realm, akin to a woodland pathway through the frenzied woods. Here, we see Brown break free from traditional narrative conventions as she blends centuries of artistic styles and techniques, putting forth a distinctive artistic voice that has emerged as the natural successor in the lineage of Western art history. With the full gravitas of Brown’s accomplished painterly bravado, Functor Hideaway envelops the viewer in an all-engulfing textural and chromatic world, offering, as its title suggests, a retreat into the sensorial and the imaginative.

Untitled, 2006

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 571,500

Untitled | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

CECILY BROWN (b. 1969)
Untitled, 2006
Oil on canvas
17 x 12 1/2 inches (43.2 x 31.8 cm)
Signed and dated 05.06 (on the reverse)

Though incredibly abstract, Cecily Brown’s Untitled is a tantalizing example of her immense capacity to combine materiality with imagination. Brown’s distinctive and hypnotic style, a fluid approach that blurs the definition of figuration, shines through in this 2006 piece. The pops of seafoam green at the center set amongst a cacophony of light blue and salmon-pink brushstrokes leave the viewer in a teeming landscape of rich textures and sensory experiences.

“I’m trying to be in a space between abstraction and figuration… The place I’m interested in is where my mind goes when it’s trying to make up for what isn’t there. When something is just suggested.”

A master of color, Brown herself has affirmed her desire to create works that you “[can’t] tear your eyes away from.” (Cecily Brown, in D. Peck, “New York Minute: Cecily Brown,” Another, September 14, 2012). Not only does her work exist as a decadent example of the richness of oil paint, rather, her oeuvre is a perfectly harmonic blend of bold experimentation and rich art historical precedent. While Brown has certainly referenced both Willem de Kooning’s fleshy paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Lucian Freud’s melting, carnal forms, Brown’s handling of figuration and abstraction in Untitled cleverly pays homage to the radiating and vibrating still life paintings of Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and Jean Siméon Chardin. By adding her own distinctive mark to art’s love affair with oil paint, Brown forges a line from the past to the present in this powerful work. Swirling and dripping with the past and the present, Untitled is a visceral embodiment of Brown’s capacity to maintain a robust multiplicity of meaning without a single wasted drip of paint.

Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
WITHDRAWN

Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band | The Now Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

CECILY BROWN (b. 1969)
Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band, 2016
Oil on canvas
97 1/8 x 150 3/4 inches (246.7 x 382.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2016 (on the reverse)

Currents of cobalt, cerulean, and lapis blue eddy and whirl across the expansive canvas of Cecily Brown’s Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band, forming a maelstrom of pigment that is emblematic of the artist’s prodigious mastery of painterly abstraction. Executed in 2016, Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band represents Brown’s theatrical rendition of a seascape, recounting an art historically recursive narrative with contemporary resonance. The present work is one in a cycle of five paintings based on 19^th century Romantic landscape painting, namely Eugène Delacroix’s The Shipwreck of Don Juan and Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, all of which were unveiled in an exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery in 2017. Standing at a panoramic scale, Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band submerges the viewer in its oceanic depths, demanding a durational process of looking that rewards the viewer with an intrinsic quietude that belies Brown’s frenetic brushwork. Recently honored with a major career survey Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Brown’s commitment to wrestling her subjects free from their conventional contexts results in paintings that fluctuate between perceptible and imperceptible form.

Replete with lush impasto and sumptuous chromatic passages, the present work sees Brown’s virtuosic command of paint on full display. Amidst a tidal vortex of rich blues and creamy whites, ribbon-like strokes of green, coral, and eggshell yellow evoke the ripples and refractions of water, while gusts of murkier charcoal frame the composition. The converging momentum and direction of Brown’s brushstrokes bestow Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band with a gravitational centrality. Brown’s loose gestures coalesce into new forms, distorting spatial depth and suggesting fragments of figurative representation in an endless churning of organic matter. “I think that painting is a kind of alchemy,” says Brown, “the paint is transformed into image, and paint and image transform themselves into a third and new thing.” (the artist quoted in: Klaus Kertess, Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p.16)

LEFT: THÉODORE GÉRICAULT, THE RAFT OF MEDUSA, 1819. LOUVRE, PARIS. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. RIGHT: FERDINAND VICTOR EUGENE DELACROIX, THE SHIPWRECK OF DON JUAN, 1840. LOUVRE, PARIS. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Within the present composition, glimpses of flesh toned paint echo the bathing nudes of classical tradition, a subject that is also alluded to in the present work’s title. Built up with layers of sumptuous oil paint, the surface of Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band is replete with all the sensuality of the human figure, which remains at the core of Brown’s iterative process. Echoing Géricault’s rhythmic system of triangles, Brown’s robust gestures obscure and deconstruct a singular reading as bodies and forms break down into restless, sinuous and elusive activity. In an impossible feat of aesthetic sorcery, Brown manages to retain all the overindulgence of the Rococo style, the grandeur of the Old Masters, and the airy lightness of the Impressionists, while opening new pathways to representation. Unabashedly engaging with the medium’s material presence and the ambiguity of present narrative, Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band appeals directly to the senses, eliciting pleasure and awe in equal measure.

In Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band, Cecily Brown presents an allegorical and turbulent vision that synthesizes all the lush and dramatic suspense of her Romantic source material, while melding the representational into an abstracted plane. Freeing subject matter to transcend classical narrative by synthesizing practices from centuries of artistic practice, Brown’s practice emerges as a triumphant summation of Western art history and a unique new voice of aesthetic prowess and wit. In doing so, Brown achieves a novel alchemy within her paintings that distinguishes her as a contemporary master of the painterly medium.

5. Yoshitomo Nara

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Ships in Girl, 1992

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,512,000

Ships in Girl | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YOSHITOMO NARA (b. 1959)
Ships in Girl, 1992
Acrylic on canvas
55×55 inches (139.7 x 139.7 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ’92 (on the reverse)

Vivid and charming, with a rebellious air, Ships in Girl is the epitome of the stylistic motifs and emotional resonance that have positioned Yoshitomo Nara as one of the most internationally acclaimed living artists of our time. Painted in 1992, Ships in GIrl emerges from the artist’s time at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie in Germany, a seminal period during which Nara developed his most iconic visual and conceptual motifs. Demonstrating the classic vernacular of the so called “Nara Girl”, the lone, childlike figure whose demure exterior often gives way to intense emotion, Ships in Girl encapsulates the principal investigations of Yoshitmo Nara’s oeuvre– childhood, innocence, loneliness, rebellion, and the complexity of memory and emotion– all delivered with a graphic punch. Testament to the importance of the works from the early 1990s, paintings from this period reside in esteemed institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Art, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, while the sister work to this piece currently resides in the collection of the artist.

In Ships in Girl, a large, geometric head floats in a flat blue expanse. Her features are simplified and charming, outlined in dark black strokes. With the large exaggerated eyes and graphic outline, the present work bears clear stylistic affinities to both Pop Art and Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts, illustrating the seamless unification of Eastern and Western themes and motifs that characterizes Nara’s revolutionary oeuvre. In lieu of a direct portrait, Nara uses Ships in Girl as a sort of character study, reflecting the viewer’s own perceptions back upon themselves. A masterful fusion of incorruptible youth and punk attitude, the present work combines mischief and innocence to convey a beguiling charm that gives way to a darker angst. At first glance, her expression seems slightly awed or surprised, but upon further inspection her gaze is concentrated and direct, her curved, open mouth almost pouty and the eyes set in a determined glare. Rather than outwardly violent or destructive, the set of the eyes and the burning flame feel almost critical, a rebellious defiance of the surrounding world.

YOSHITOMO NARA, SHIPS IN GIRL, 1992, ACRYLIC AND COLORED PENCIL ON PAPER 28 × 34 CM, COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST. © YOSHITOMO NARA, PHOTO: YOSHITOMO NARA

In the early 1990s, Nara’s compositions became more stark and forthright in their graphic sensibility, which allowed that artist to expand the cultural and psychological subtext in his work. From 1988 to 1994, Nara studied at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie in Germany. Far from his native Japan, Nara reacted to the isolation and vulnerability imposed by the language barrier by way of the childlike characters that would become part of his signature artistic vocabulary .In the present work, the youthful figure is detached from any discernible setting. Adorning her hair are miniature ships on the verge of sailing off into the sprawling ocean of blue, relating to Nara’s own isolation and distance from his home. ”When I went to the school in Germany, I found myself again feeling alone, facing my canvas. Again, the inadequacy of the outer world enriched my inner world,” (Yoshitomo Nara in conversation with Aimee Lin, “How Yoshitomo Nara’s Manga-Inspired Paintings Tap Into Universal Feelings of Anxiety”, Art Review, 2015) Stripped of superfluous detail, Ships in Girl elucidates the emotive potential of the lone figure

TŌSHŪSAI SHARAKU, THE ACTOR OTANI ONIJI III AS EDOBEI IN THE KABUKI PLAY KOI NYOBO SOMEWAKE TAZUNA (THE BELOVED WIFE’S PARTICOLORED REINS), 1794, THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.

“The time when I was depicting children in a lot of my works was probably a period when I was trying to regain something childlike.” explains Nara, “… I still do depict children, but the images that people generally associate with me are from that time when I was trying to take back my childhood” (Yoshitomo Narat quoted in: Melissa Chiu, “A Conversation with the Artist”, Exh. Cat., Asia Society Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool, 2010). In Ships in Girl, Nara toys with innocence and rebellion as childlike expressions simultaneously resonate with adult emotions. Nara’s solitary children are often lauded as “symbolic representation of the dominant feelings of Japanese youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, characterised by a sense of uncertainty about the future, vulnerability, and a yearning for the innocence preserved in the inner child” (Matsui Midori. “Art for Myself and Others: Yoshitomo Nara’s Popular Imagination”, in Exh, Cat., Asia Society Museum, Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool, 2010, p. 13).

Ships in Girl evinces Nara’s revolutionary painterly practice, creating a fusion of “high, low and kitsch; East and West; grown-up, adolescent and infantile; and so seamless as to render such distinctions almost moot” (Barbara Smith, “Cuddling With Little Girls, Dogs and Music”, The New York Times, 2010) “There is solitude and sadness, and sometimes a bit of rage” describes critic Marco Meneguzzo, “a small iniquity expressed perhaps to demonstrate one’s existence (Marco Meneguzzo, “Yoshitomo Nara”, Artforum (online)). Tapping directly into the emotional center of not only disaffection and anxiety but also the spiritual core at the foundation of hope and renewal, Ships in Girl is a powerful stand-in for a generation of young people at the dawn of the twenty-first century and beyond.

The Night, 2003

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 698,500

The Night | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YOSHITOMO NARA (b. 1959)
The Night, 2003
Acrylic and colored pencil on paper
72.4 x 51.4 cm (28 1/2 x 20 1/4 inches)
Signed with the artist’s initials and dated 2003 (on the verso)

Yoshitomo Nara’s The Night from 2003 captures the artist’s signature arresting visual power that harnesses the transcendent dynamism of the innocent, serene and doe-eyed gaze of the girl as its subject. Simultaneously rebellious and reflective. the child’s olive eyes narrow into a menacing glare and her lips tighten in a singular red line, yet her cheeks remain rosy and the lids of her eyes lined with an angelic baby blue. The child’s hair crowns her head in a fiery halo, tempered by the milky-white of her sweater. The effect is dazzling as defiance is softened with youthful naiveté. A testament to its significance within the artist’s broader oeuvre, The Night was included in the artist’s major travelling exhibition Yoshitomo Nara: Nothing Ever Happens from 2003 – 2005 which travelled around the US. The Night has remained in the same private collection for over two decades since it was acquired in 2003 from Blum & Poe in Los Angeles the same year it was executed.

YOSHITOMO NARA IN HIS STUDIO. NICK MARINO, “TRUE BELIEVERS: YOSHITOMO NARA PAINTS WHAT HE HEARS,” NEW YORK TIMES, 24 JULY 2020

Nara’s “big-headed girls”, a term coined by Yeewan Koon in her book, Yoshitomo Nara, have cemented themselves within contemporary art’s cultural lexicon. These girls persist as the artist’s most recognizable and distinct motifs, revisited time and again throughout Nara’s oeuvre. The cherubic figures are frequently employed as allegories for revolution. The present figure’s assertive expression disarms the viewer, asking Nara’s audience to wonder at what the child could be protesting. The combination of youthful features with complex emotional expression culminates in a sense of unease: the young girl conveys a wisdom that should be beyond her grasp. Art historian Kristin Chambers observes that, through his portraits of children, “Nara captures the tension between innocence and experience, physical isolation and mental freedom, containment and independence. [He] embraces the whole of the human condition and recognizes that, in fact, evil is an essential part of innocence.” By embracing seemingly paradoxical elements, Nara captures the nuance of human experience in the many faceted expressions of his subject.

YOSHITOMO NARA, DRAWING ROOM BETWEEN THE CONCORD AND THE MARRIMACK, 2010

A twenty year long fascination for Nara, the small girl in the present work is the utter embodiment of the artist’s endless pursuit and exploration of themes of solitary, rebellion and innocence that define the very essence of childhood. Nara characterizes his own childhood in the rural community of Aomori Prefecture as a lonely period during which he turned to music as a form of companionship. The artist was drawn to American rock music, particularly the alternative rock and punk music of the 1970s and 1980s. Nara’s favorite musicians include bands such as The Ramones and Nirvana as well as the singular artist Patti Smith. This attraction to counterculture and rebellion would manifest itself years later in the disaffected expressions of Nara’s intimidating protagonists.

Following Nara’s relocation from Germany’s Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1988 and homecoming to Japan in 2000, The Night represents a profoundly subtle tonal shift in his artistic practice. The geometric forms, such as the child’s pear-shaped head, oval eyes, linear mouth, and cylindrical neck, rendered in acrylic and colored pencil, recall Japanese anime and manga cartoons. Nara’s forms were also inspired by ukiyo-e woodblock prints, reflective of an appreciation for historical Japanese art as well as contemporary styles. In this way, the present work reads as a marriage between two cultural heritages that were formative to Nara. In fact, the artist continues to maintain studios in both countries, honoring the nations that shaped his artistic growth. In The Night, Nara’s subject serves as a confrontational talisman for disgruntled youth. This iconic imagery that embodies the rebellious spirit of rock music and the loneliness that defined the artist’s childhood captures the artist at his best. Nara’s fiercely expressive character leaves the viewer a feeling haunted and considering how innocence can be exploited as an illusion. In his depictions of girls, Nara captures a universal revolutionary spirit that resonates on a truly global scale.

6. Christopher Wool

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Untitled (TRBL), 1990

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,500,000
USD 2,310,600

Untitled (TRBL) | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

CHRISTOPHER WOOL (b. 1955)
Untitled (TRBL), 1990
Enamel on paper
36×24 inches (91.4 by 61 cm)
Signed and dated 1990 (on the reverse)

An iconic and visionary masterwork, Untitled (TRBL) epitomizes the disruptive spirit and striking visual impact of Christopher Wool’s painterly practice. It is one of the most significant examples of Wool’s Word Paintings – uniquely combining the sequential enamel layers, anarchic drips, and defiant and timeless message that defines the best of Wool’s oeuvre. We see the word TRBL doubled and inverted, first painted in a deep blue, with the T starting in the lower right, then overpainted with white enamel, flipped upside down, then with TRBL superimposed over the top in Wool’s iconic, glossy black. We see the trace of the blue underpainting in the ghostly forms behind the white, and through the letter R, where Wool has left a skip through which the viewer can peer to see the underlayer. The shiny, painterly quality of the present work’s surface makes it particularly compelling: articulated through strokes of richly built-up enamel paint, the structure enforced by Wool’s stencil is subverted by drips of paint that disrupt the composition, introducing the presence of the artist’s hand. Executed in 1990, a pivotal year in which the best of Wool’s Word Paintings were executed, Untitled (TRBL) stands as one of the most iconic of Wool’s four-letter paintings; by removing the vowels from TROUBLE Wool breaks the word, changing its significance and making it a new signifier. Untitled (TRBL) also bears remarkable provenance, having been held in the same private collection for over twenty years and once belonging in the collection of Tom Patchett, who was key in shaping the Los Angeles art scene of the 1990s with his gallery Track 16.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, PEGASUS, 1987. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK

Untitled (TRBL) is exemplary of Wool’s four-letter Word Paintings, which he began painting in 1989 using a standard sans-serif capitalized font commonly used by the American military to create imposing and confrontational artworks. Running the letters together with no spaces in between to reduce quick legibility, these text paintings elide linguistic and visual aesthetics in a manner that is confusingly humorous yet deadly serious. Here, Wool has truncated the word “trouble” by eliminating its vowels; thus, “TRBL” opens itself to possibilities of new vowels and new forms of interpretation. Further hinting to additional pathways of meaning, the ghostly suggestion of the same letters hang upside down and in reverse beneath the inked “TRBL,” casting the entire orientation of the picture plane into question. Painted over, yet still visible, these enigmatic shadows reveal arresting glitches of process – the rich incidents of skipping and distortion that corrupt our reading of the words as text becomes a visual rather than purely linguistic device. With drips of white and black paint, Wool centers our attention toward the material application of enamel, harnessing the pictorial qualities of his stenciled letters to accentuate their status as shapes and de-naturalize their communicative utility. Speaking to the paradoxical nature of Wool’s Word Paintings, Bruce Ferguson writes, “Some gestalt, visual or cultural, is inevitable given the geometric order that prevails, but it is not a happy or a complete one, grammatically assured and visually complete. Rather, the Word Paintings signal the desire for completion, the desire for a viewer to be complicit with meaning and a desire for an anarchistic pulse beyond language to be maintained as well. If painting can still forcefully offer the idea of such freedom and such bonding, despite how complicated its strategies and procedures have, of necessity, become, then Wool’s work strongly points to the relevance of its raptures today in ways that are both critical and compliant, both estranging and strange.” (Bruce W. Ferguson, “Patterns of Intent,” Artforum, September 1991, p. 98)

Though the exact source of Untitled (TRBL)’s linguistic readymade is not confirmed, two potential origins surface: the first being the 1988 film noir Trouble in Angel City, told from the perspective of novelist Raymond Chandler, and the second being the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues guitarist and front man of the band Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, who tragically died in a helicopter accident the year of the present work’s execution. Irrespective of his exact source, Wool, in his use of stencils as a form of mechanical reproduction, as well as his appropriation of ‘low-brow’ phrasing and profanity, confuses the traditional boundaries of textual and artistic language – this is a subversive conceit familiar from the Pop Art of Warhol or Lichtenstein, all the way to the readymade aesthetic of Duchamp. As explained by Katherine Brinson: “Wool was less concerned with language as a means to transcend image, or with the problematic conjunction of text and image, than with text as image. He has long been fascinated by the way words function when removed from the quiet authority of the page and exposed to the cacophony of the city, whether through the blaring incantations of billboards and commercial signage or the illicit interventions of graffiti artists. But with their velvety white grounds and stylized letters rendered in dense, sign painter’s enamel that pooled and dripped within the stencils, the Word Paintings have a resolute material presence that transcends the graphic.” (Katherine Brinson in: Exh. Cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (and traveling), Christopher Wool, 2013, p. 40)

 

Untitled, 2011

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,222,200

CHRISTOPHER WOOL (B. 1955), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

CHRISTOPHER WOOL (B. 1955)
Untitled, 2011
Silkscreen on linen
129×96 inches (304.8 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Wool 2011’ (on the overlap)
Signed and dated again ‘Wool (2011)’ (on the stretcher)

Untitled is one of just eight iconic paintings Christopher Wool exhibited at the 2011 Venice Biennale, each featuring one of the artist’s abstract forms. Over ten feet tall, the field of deep burgundy that inhabits the surface of Untitled dissolves into earthy colors. Hazy lines like television static divide the canvas roughly into quadrants. Biomorphic shapes emerge, made even more bodily by the blood-red pigment. As if we are looking into a microscope, two small forms in the upper right of the canvas appear to be in the process of dividing like cells. Also exhibited in the artist’s acclaimed 2013-2014 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the present work is a monumental, rigorous, and engrossing painting that challenges and seduces by equal measure.

Untitled is the result of a multifaceted process involving several media. Wool began by taking photographs of old drawings and enlarging them up to a huge scale, thereby reducing them to individual dots, and transferring them to linen via silkscreen. The blown-up images were painted, re-photographed, and altered again using Photoshop. C Yet it is impossible to exactly trace Wool’s steps. Though Wool is perhaps best known for his text-based paintings, Untitled proves his ongoing investigation of abstraction as well. In the early 1990s, the artist began to silkscreen using flower motifs, and in the mid-1990s, he painted over reproductions of these paintings with bright colors. Around 2000, he began his Grey Paintings, which use an allover grey field. The Venice Biennale paintings represent a turning point with their complexity, corporeality, and understated beauty. They call to mind the quasi-abstract paintings of Surrealist Joan Miró, who likewise used the medium to create a phantasmagoria of organic shapes, as in Femme et oiseaux dans la nuit (Woman and Birds in the Night) (1945). Untitled also clearly wrestles with the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. Interestingly, Wool cites Jackson Pollock’s late black paintings as his favorite by the artist. Executed in the early 1950s, these black paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction and allow organic forms to emerge. Untitled also calls to mind the staining technique of Helen Frankenthaler, and she was also known to use rusty-red hues in paintings like Pink Lady (1963) and Gulf Stream (1963).

7. Damien Hirst

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Ocean Spray, 2016

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 550,000
USD 882,000

23171 Hirst, Ocean Spray (shorthandstories.com)

DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Ocean Spray, 2016
Household gloss on canvas
67×79 inches (170×200 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘2016 ‘Ocean Spray’ Damien Hirst’ (on the reverse)
Signed again ‘Damien Hirst’ (on the stretcher)

Across a dazzling expansive surface, Ocean Spray presents a vast sea of Technicolor dots. Impasto daubs of red, pale blue, lilac and bubble-gum pink paint seem to flutter like confetti over the white ground of the canvas. The work is one of Damien Hirst’s Color Space paintings—a series from 2016 that represents an evolution from his seminal series of Spot paintings begun thirty years earlier. Launched in the same year as his acclaimed Veil paintings, the vibrant Color Space works mark the artist’s enduring obsessions with chromatic maximalism, formal deconstruction, and art history.

Where Hirst’s Spot paintings can be distinguished by their hard-edge Minimalist sensibility—flat circles of color were rendered with the mathematical precision of a machine in neat, parallel rows—his Colour Space paintings relish in a new-found painterly expression. Sterile grids give way to loose and unbridled gesture, and indeed, Ocean Spray is enriched by traces of human touch. The colorful, imperfect discs of paint seem to dance across the canvas, skimming like stones and leaving accidental splatters and drips. The surface pulsates with movement, denoting an improvised and spontaneous creation that nods to the all-over canvases of Abstract Expressionist titan Jackson Pollock. Though some of the formal rules upheld by the Spots remain—no same color is repeated, and each dot is consistently sized—here, beyond an exercise in pictorial deconstruction, Hirst harnesses abstraction for its emotive capacity.

Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950 (nga.gov)

Standing before Ocean Spray and its expansive field of twinkling dots, one is reminded of late-nineteenth-century Impressionist and Post-Impressionist techniques, of warm Pointillist seascapes in Southern France by Signac and Seurat, or Monet’s dappled water garden at Giverny. Painting directly from nature—en plein air—these artists broke new ground by responding to the ever-changing effects of natural light and atmosphere. Organic daubs of color squeezed straight from the tube fractured the environment to its smallest constituent particles.

Here, as is consistent across his maverick practice, Hirst too considers the very nature of perception and representation. The titles selected for the Colour Space paintings have their own double-edged significance. Terms like Ocean Spray, Reed, Morning Dew, and Black Thistle imply a poetic, figurative quality, yet are in fact derived from the generic color names for domestic house paints. Executed over a century after the French Impressionists rose to fame, in an age of digital screens and pixelated surfaces, the present work upholds the dot as “the most basic unit of creativity” (B. Gopnik, “Damien Hirst: Colour Space Paintings”, Gagosian Quarterly, 22 June 2020).

Visionary, 2008

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 571,500

Visionary | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

DAMIEN HIRST (b. 1965)
Visionary, 2008
Butterflies and household gloss on canvas, in artist’s chosen frame
Diameter: 60 inches (152.4 cm)
Titled and dated 2008 (on the reverse); signed (on the stretcher)

Lumichrome, 2005

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 406,400

Lumichrome | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

DAMIEN HIRST (b. 1965)
Lumichrome, 2005
Household gloss on canvas (2-inch spot)
34×34 inches (86.3 x 86.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2005 (on the reverse); signed (on the stretcher)

8. Takashi Murakami

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FLOWER MATANGO (A), 2001-2006

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,143,000

Flower Matango (A) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

TAKASHI MURAKAMI (b. 1962)
FLOWER MATANGO (A), 2001-2006
Oil, acrylic, fiberglass and iron
550x300x250 cm (216 1/2 x 118 1/8 x 98 1/2 inches)
This work is a unique variant

Grandiose yet garish, elegant yet powerful, Flower Matango (A) stands as a masterpiece of visual splendor, epitomizing Takashi Murakami’s era-defining practice. Situated at the core of the sculpture is Murakami’s iconic flower ball, replete with smiling psychedelic daisies rendered in intricate 3D relief, each flower distinguished by a candy-colored hue assigned through a unique serial number. Sprouting from the top of the sphere is an elaborate configuration of nimbly and intricately intertwining vines and tendrils whose paths – in adherence to Bézier curves – were generated by advanced computer graphic software, epitomizing the high level of craftsmanship in Murakami’s practice and his tenacious commitment to engineering precision.

Visually associative of referents as diverse as Ikebana flower arrangements and baby crib mobiles, the whimsical monstrosity of Flower Matango (A) takes direct titular reference from the 1963 Japanese horror film Matango, which featured monsters with mushroom-shaped heads in reference to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A testament to the power of Murakami’s irreverently provocative oeuvre that merges high and low art and culture. another version of Flower Mantango was exhibited within the gilded halls of the Palace of Versailles in Paris in 2009. By engaging in socio-cultural scrutiny via a signature kawaii aesthetic, Flower Matango (A) is positioned at the very apex of Murakami’s practice and iconography.

JEFF KOONS, LARGE VASE OF FLOWERS, 1991. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © JEFF KOONS STUDIO
VAN GOGH, SUNFLOWERS, 1889. VAN GOGH MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM. ART © VAN GOGH MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM 

One of the most renowned artists of his generation, Murakami is widely acclaimed for orchestrating an artistic empire descended from the Warholian art-business model. In a complex negotiation between the mass market, Japanese historical tradition and the avant-garde of the contemporary art world, Murakami’s work is subtly yet acutely politically oriented. Cloaked beneath the signature barrage of beaming faces, a studied cultural project is at work that merges pre-modern Japanese tradition with the contemporary sub-culture of otaku, eroding cultural hierarchies and binary divisions in the wake of Japan’s post-war cultural identity. In forging an aesthetic grounded in the special effects of animé and manga, Murakami presents a vision of the culturally dislocated Japanese generation nurtured by the political custody of the US after World War II. Exposed to the American capitalist model, the resulting economic prosperity was considered to have cultured a ‘limited freedom’ of postwar Japanese democracy. In turn, this fostered a culture seen to lack self-reflective tradition or spiritual depth – the ultimate embodiment of which is the indigenous comic book sub-culture of otaku. Emblematically present within the excessive and almost fetishistic detail and childlike appeal of Murakami’s open-mouthed flowers is the very quintessence of the artist’s response to such cultural conditions, conceptually unified under the umbrella term ‘Superflat’.

Reflective of the flattened social structure and erasure of political identity in the nuclear fall-out of the atomic bomb, Murakami’s otaku inspired art takes on infantile cultural conditions as the vehicle to develop and globally proliferate a new and manifestly Japanese art. In orchestrating a multivalent commercialized artistic venture which has famously entailed teaming up with Louis Vuitton and celebrities such as Kanye West, Murakami wields the mainstream corporate brand as a megaphone to establish and legitimate his otaku inspired practice. Moreover, by taking on aspects of Surrealism, evocative of the Kitsch aesthetic of Jeff Koons, Murakami’s practice is firmly rooted within the contemporary canon of Western art. However, within this stream of referents that constitute the artist’s search for a cultural voice, Murakami masterfully bridges the gulf between the new representational aesthetics and the greater pre-modern classical tradition indigenous to Japan.

CIRCLE OF KANO MITSUNOBU, FLOWERS AND GRASSES OF THE FOUR SEASONS, LATE 16TH CENTURY
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

Smiling flowers are uniquely emblematic within Murakami’s globalised artistic mission and mature visual lexicon; as a photograph of the artist dressed as one of his smiling flowers for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York substantiates, the cutesy animé inspired floral motif denotes a trademark of Murakami’s public persona. With Murakami’s emblematic flowers featured prominently in recent solo exhibitions, including Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017-18), the present work is exemplary of the artist’s graphically dynamic oeuvre. According to Murakami, the employment of flowers as an endlessly repeated motif stems from a period of intense daily study of the flower itself.

“I spent nine years working in a preparatory school, where I taught the students to draw flowers… At the beginning, to be frank, I didn’t like flowers, but as I continued teaching in the school, my feelings changed: their smell, their shape – it all made me feel almost physically sick, and at the same time I found them very ‘cute’. Each one seemed to have its own feelings, its own personality. My dominant feeling was one of unease, but I liked that sensation. And these days, now that I draw flowers rather frequently, that sensation has come back very vividly. I find them just as pretty, just as disturbing… So I thought that if the opportunity arose, I would very much like to make a work in which I would represent them as if in a ‘crowd scene’.” 

While the proliferation of cheerful, polychromatic faces in Flower Matango (A) evokes the experience of psychedelia, the flowers’ anthropoid eyes furthermore generate the uncanny illusion of being watched from within. Regarding the propagation of multiple eyes in his works, Murakami states: “In the case of my works, these eyes that are looking at them [the viewers] from multiple angles also refuse to determine a focal point.” The artist continues: “I realized that by lining up a multitude of eyes you can create a very simple code that means the spectator really does feel he is being watched […] Compared to the classical technique of representation using ‘one-point’ perspective, my Superflat idea does not really correspond to traditional Western perspective, but to the introduction of a ‘multiplicity of points’. By [depicting] a large number of eyes I disturb the perspective, or rather, I diversify it’” (the artist cited in: Ibid., p. 81-83). Anointed the “Emperor of Signs” by Alison Gingeras, Murakami’s fanatical repetition and attention to detail is symptomatic of a tautological necessity to at once secure and deny significatory meaning. Infused with an abundance of referents, Murakami’s trademark smiling flowers lie at the heart of an agenda of Japanese identity politics. Herein lies the cultural strategy of Murakami’s artistic project of postcolonial re-territorialisation: by forging a dialectic between mass and sub culture, cultural alterity and westernized dominance, orient and occident, Murakami’s hybridized art not only put Japanese otaku on the map of the contemporary world but used it to reference and embody the overwhelming phenomenon of cultural collisions occurring all over the world.

TAKASHI MURAKAMI (b. 1962)
In Death, Life. The Mountains and Rivers Remain.,2015
Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas
141×120 cm (55 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 (on the overlap); variously inscribed (on the stretcher)

 

9. Other Artists

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Peter Doig

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000

PETER DOIG (b. 1959), Rainbow Wheel | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

PETER DOIG (b. 1959)
Rainbow Wheel, 1999
Oil on canvas
78×73 inches (198.1 x 185.4 cm)
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘Peter Doig, ’98’-99′ “RAINBOW WHEEL”‘ (on the reverse)

Measuring over six feet in height, Rainbow Wheel plunges its viewer into an ethereal landscape of Peter Doig’s making. At the center of this monumental and dreamlike composition stands a vibrant-yellow Ferris wheel, the spokes of which radiate like the sunbeams. At its base, crowds gather to ride the magnificent rotating wonder or gape at the old-fashioned bumper cars. Shades of pink, lavender, and seafoam define much of the fairground against which bright pops of red and green glow brightly. Rainbow Wheel sumptuously captures summertime wonder, cotton candy, thrill, and possibility.

Painted in 1999 and acquired for the de la Cruz collection that same year, Rainbow Wheel marks an important moment in Doig’s career, during which he moved away from the thick handling of paint that had the far characterized his canvases. In works from this new period—including Figure in Mountain Landscape II, held in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art—Doig’s treatment of paint is lighter, more translucent. Color teems. Lines are delicate, gossamer. Light seems to originate from somewhere internal. The airiness and sense of marvel imbue his canvasses with, as Nicholas Serota described, “a kind of mythic quality that’s both ancient and very, very modern” (N. Serota quoted in C. Tomkins, ‘The Mythical Stories in Peter Doig’s Paintings’, The New Yorker, December 11, 2017).

Given their traditional techniques, it is a wonder that paintings such as Rainbow Wheel were executed during the decade that saw the rise of the Young British Artists. For his contemporaries, who were also working in London, shock and nerve were frequent gestures. The art was boisterous and rowdy—replete with images and materials that seemed to have been harvested directly from their urban worlds—and Doig’s quieter paintings offer a bold counterpoint to the bravado that so dominated the art world during these years. Indeed, in contrast with the Young British Artists, Doig allows for and encourages reverie. The oversized presence of the Ferris wheel adds to the romance and frivolity of Rainbow Wheel; what could embody pure joy more than a machine whose sole aim was to show its riders the majesty of the world? The amusement park ride was dreamt up for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where organizers hoped to rival Gustave Eiffel’s eponymous tower that had so wowed the crowds at the Exposition Universelle in Paris four years earlier.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES (1957-1996), “Untitled” (America #3) | Christie’s (christies.com)

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES (1957-1996)
“Untitled” (America #3), 1992
42 light bulbs, porcelain light sockets and electrical cord
Overall dimensions vary with installation
Length: 504 inches (12.8 m)

In 1991, Felix Gonzalez-Torres suspended two lightbulbs from entwined electrical cords. He named the work “Untitled” (March 5th) #2; the purposely parenthetical portion of the title is likely in reference to the birthday of his partner, Ross Laycock, who had recently passed away from an AIDS-related illness. The paired lightbulbs, which will likely burn out at different intervals, capture the poignant realities of life and relationships. “When I first made those two light bulbs,” Gonzalez-Torres said, “I was in a total state of fear about losing my dialogue with Ross, of being just one” (F. Gonzalez-Torres, quoted in N. Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1995, p. 183). Yet by making the work officially “Untitled” and formatting the rest of the title as a coded reference in parentheses, Gonzalez-Torres complicates this neat narrative.

“Untitled” (March 5th) #2 gave rise to Gonzalez-Torres’ series of lightbulb installations, which are known as “the light string works” and are clearly among the most iconic and affecting works of his oeuvre. Before decisions are made for each installation, the majority of these works purposefully appear to be identical; they are made from standard lightbulbs (most often 42) in standard porcelain light sockets, attached to a length of cord. Yet these light string works are startlingly profound and awe-inspiringly beautiful. Gonzalez Torres was deeply interested in questioning our perceptions of uniqueness as well as addressing the critical and integral role of ownership. The configuration of each of these sculptures is entirely up to its owner (or authorized exhibitor) each time the work is installed, always having the potential for change, and always in dialogue with its context – dangling, draping, cascading or hanging… While all of the light string works are “Untitled”, each also has a parenthetical portion of its title, further setting the works apart from one another but also binding them together, perhaps as a sort of abstract conceptual portrait. Some of the content in these parenthetical portions of the titles may obliquely refer to places or events in Gonzalez-Torres’s life, while some, like the present work, “Untitled” (America #3), are expansive, explicitly allowing a viewer room to cultivate their own associations and connotations. A guiding strategy within Gonzalez-Torres’ practice was collaboration: sometimes with the public, but always with the works’ owners. By setting up certain core parameters that are often open for interpretation and incorporate other individuals’ engagement, the artist encourages the work’s horizon to remain perpetually in the now.

When “Untitled” (America #3) is displayed, light bulbs cast a glow, together radiating a tangible warmth; the work was included in the artist’s seminal solo exhibition held, in 1995, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. As with any light bulb, the bulbs used to install this work too have finite lives, though the rate at which they expire varies – and Gonzalez-Torres intended for bulbs to be immediately replaced when they burn out, also addressing a sense of immortality. By dint of their material, the light string works are unassuming, yet they establish an intense and palpable sense of presence and emotion. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s art purposefully drew from and subverted both Minimalism and post-Minimalism. Gonzalez-Torres’s use of commonplace materials like light bulbs and electrical cords has its roots in Minimalism, the 1960s art movement that championed industrial materials, such as concrete, aluminum, and plastic, and an almost literalist approach to the art object. Reacting to the emotion and excess associated with Abstract Expressionism, artists believed that an artwork should only reference itself. Donald Judd, one of Minimalism’s principal voices, explained in his 1964 treatise “Specific Objects”, “The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting”: “Materials,” wrote Judd, “vary greatly and are simply materials. They are specific. If they are used directly, they are more specific” (“Specific Objects”, 1964, republished by The Judd Foundation, online).

Untitled, 2005

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000

MARK GROTJAHN (B. 1968), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)

MARK GROTJAHN (B. 1968)
Untitled, 2005
Oil on canvas
58×48 inches (147.3 x 121.9 cm)

A raucous panorama of color and line, Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled brims with insatiable, ecstatic power. Part of the artist’s acclaimed Face Paintings series, the work is a burst, a prismatic explosion – color and experience melded together. Into a kaleidoscopic ground, Grotjahn has rendered a mask-like face whose angularity recalls Pablo Picasso or Henri Matisse. Yet far from simply aping art historical motifs, the artist has instead breathed new life into the past even as he remains wholly contemporary. Executed in 2006, Untitled is a tour de force, created contemporaneously to Grotjahn’s solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the work was exhibited that same year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

After applying bright swathes of color, Grotjahn scrapes, peels, rakes, and incises the surface of a canvas, leaving behind every trace of his hand’s determination. Shapes emerge out of the impasto pigment, a vortex of activity and animation. Reds, greens, pinks, and blues all combine and meld with one another to suggest skin and flesh. Deceptively simple, each Face Painting announces the methods of its creation. Paint itself is as much the subject of Untitled as the image on the canvas. As Roberta Smith wrote of these works: “They emphasize painting as a psychic and bodily process fueled in part by the devouring and digesting of previous art to formulate a new synthesis” (R. Smith, “Mark Grothjahn; ‘Nine Faces’”, The New York Times, 12 May 2011, online).

Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait, 1907. Narodni Galerie, Prague. © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

With their emphatic embrace of an elementary aesthetic, Grotjahn’s Face Paintings can be placed in dialogue with works by the European Modernists, who found themselves inspired by African and Oceanic art. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, thousands of African and Oceanic sculptures were shipped back to Europe, the result of colonial expeditions and conquests. Treated as artefacts, these were exhibited at ethnographic museums throughout the continent’s major capitals. Young artists in particular flocked to these exhibitions and began to incorporate into their art new ways of depicting the human figure based upon what they saw. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Matisse’s La Raie Verte, and Amedeo Modigliani’s sculptures, among countless others, all showed the influencing role of what was seen to be exotic and other.

When conceiving of his Face Paintings, however, Grotjahn chose not to engage with indigenous art himself, but rather to look at the art created by these Modernist predecessors. He thought back to his first encounters with Picasso, whose work he saw as a young child illustrated in books owned by his grandfather. years later, Grotjahn decided to make the master of Modernism a springboard for his new artistic interpretations. Accordingly, Grotjahn’s Face Paintings offer new modes of seeing the past.

Julie Mehretu

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000

JULIE MEHRETU (B. 1970), Fever graph (algorithm for serendipity) | Christie’s (christies.com)

JULIE MEHRETU (B. 1970)
Fever graph (algorithm for serendipity), 2013
Acrylic, ink and graphite on canvas
96×120 inches (243.8 x 304.8 cm)

A majestic painting brimming with the inscrutable yet mesmerizing mark-making for which she is best known, Julie Mehretu’s Fever Graph (Algorithm for Serendipity) is nothing short of incredible, a fever dream of the wondrous capacity for experimentation and renewal that exists in contemporary painting today.

A panoramic work evoking a fairy tale landscape that’s marked by areas of inky blurs and ghostly lines, the present work presents a fictional realm whose very depiction defies legibility and interpretation. Scattered bits of letters and words coexist alongside vector lines forming “x”-marks and crosses, while a pale yellow moon presides over a dreamy mountain-scape that seems to melt into oblivion. Faintly discernible beneath the chaotic markings of its surface imagery lies the urban plans for Tahrir Square, the symbolic and literal site of the 2011 uprisings in Cairo, part of what became known as the Arab Spring. Born in Addis Ababa in 1970, Mehretu was personally impacted by the geopolitical turbulence in North Africa, and these important paintings have come to symbolize an imagined realm where the capacity for change, renewal and resilience is infinitely possible. As such, they continue Mehretu’s ongoing pursuit of the symbolic and expressive capacity of abstract painting to symbolize larger human emotions and themes.

Jackson Pollock, No. 1A, 1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Boltin Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.

Painted in 2013, Fever Graph (Algorithm for Serendipity) is a monumental painting inflected with beautiful passages of luminous color and the artist’s signature mark-making. The artist draws the eye deep into the recessional space of the painting by positioning two perspectival lines along the lower edge that direct the eye into the center of the canvas, where most of the pictorial activity is located. In the upper register, smoky gray marks seem to delineate a series of faraway mountain peaks, which at times appear to be given three-dimensional modeling and depth by pale washes of luminous color. Along the right edge, a two-story house with a gabled roof seems to be nestled into the landscape, while nearby a series of telephone poles recede into the distance. Mehretu’s work is often deliberately inscrutable, and it is not surprising to find that her imagery flickers back and forth between all-out abstraction and hints of realism.

Drawing from a rich visual tradition inspired by both Eastern and Western cultures, Julie Mehretu’s visual inspiration has included architectural blueprints, Baroque engravings, Japanese calligraphy, comic book motifs and graffiti. With the improvisatory flair of a jazz musician, Mehretu riffs off these diverse sources to create beautiful and seductive large-scale paintings that lure the viewer in with their mind-boggling array of countless, swirling marks. As part of her research, the artist often searches for source material online, and she became increasingly interested in search engine algorithms around the time that the present work was created. In fact, Fever Graph (Algorithm for Serendipity) takes its name from these search engine algorithms, particularly the technology’s ability to intuit and predict human behavior.

Alighiero Boetti, Mappa, 1990, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome. © Alighiero Boetti, DACS 2024. Photo © Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images.

This important cycle of paintings is also marked by an expressive use of color and a freer, more gestural style of mark-making, which critics were quick to point out, when the paintings debuted at Marian Goodman Gallery in May of 2013.  In Fever Graph (Algorithm for Serendipity) and the related painting Cairo (2013; The Broad, Los Angeles), the artist has incorporated architectural renderings of Cairo’s Tahrir Square to reference the populist uprisings of the first months of 2011. This important body of work speaks specifically to the civic and bureaucratic ineptitude of the Hosni Mubarak regime; by underpinning her paintings with the faint schematic renderings of the buildings in Tahrir Square, Mehretu draws attention to the outsized bureaucratic role of Mubarak’s government and its chronic inefficiency. Her epic four-part painting Mogamma (first exhibited at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, in 2012) was inspired by the 14-story bureaucratic monolith of the same name, which presides over Tahrir Square. In the present painting and throughout the series, Mehretu was able to “translate the violent elements of revolt into a powerful visual analogue” (T.J. Demos, “Painting and Uprising: Julie Mehretu’s Third Space,” in Julie Mehretu: Liminal Space, exh. cat., White Cube, London, 2013, p. 55).

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for The Adoration of the Magi, circa 1480. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Also present in this body of work was a particular new kind of mark that found its way into Mehretu’s work around this time. Particularly in the upper register and along the periphery, Mehretu depicted a kind of smudged mark that is a cross between an emphatic gesture and all-out erasure. These faint marks linger like the silent “ghosts” of previous marks, almost like the faded cyphers on a stone tablet that has faded over time to become an illegible palimpsest. Mehretu was also interested in the idea of in-between spaces, calling her 2013 exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery “Liminal Squared.” In her marks which are not fully marks but also not quite erased, she has found a half-way “liminal” entity that is both things at once. So, too, do her paintings exist as the “in-between” spaces where opposing forces can coexist side by side.

Richard Prince

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,270,000

Untitled (Cowboy) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RICHARD PRINCE (b. 1949)
Untitled (Cowboy), 2012
Acrylic and inkjet on canvas
66 3/4 x 40 inches (169.5 x 101.6 cm)
Signed and dated 2012 (on the overlap)

Emerging from a dusty background, the eponymous protagonist of Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy) proffers the resounding mythos of the American cowboy as one of persistent endurance, resolute control and heroic capability in the face of an expansive unknown. Executed in 2012, Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy) stands as the culmination of the artist’s contemplation on the aesthetic mythology surrounding cowboys—a testament to his ongoing exploration of this emblematic American figure, which initially thrust him into the spotlight during the seventies and eighties. With a vibrant palette and layers of thickly textured paint, Prince offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the portrayal of the stoic ranch hand, orienting the viewer in vertical alignment with the solitary cowboy. Charging forth with a gun in one hand and reins in the other, this cowboy is in control.

Few subjects have captivated Prince’s imagination as fervently as the cowboy, whose solitary existence amid harsh landscapes resonates with a collective longing for an American hero. Elevated from humble Southern origins and transformed into an emblem of rugged individualism by Hollywood’s imagination and the charismatic performances of icons like Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, the cowboy embodies a nostalgic yearning for a bygone era of American masculinity. Through his iconic Cowboy series, Prince innovatively dissects and reconstructs the underlying mechanisms that underpin the cowboy’s mythical stature, while simultaneously presenting his subject in compelling scenes of endurance and fortitude. In doing so, Prince has crafted some of the most recognizable and thought-provoking works of the late 20th and 21st centuries.

J. M. W. TURNER, RAIN, STEAM, AND SPEED – THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, 1844. NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.

Prince’s own fascination with cowboy iconology began in the Time Life building, where he worked one night a week for the magazine by clipping editorials to support his artistic career. He found himself captivated by the authorless advertisements and the conversancy of their repetitive iconography, keeping various clippings for himself as he worked. He was particularly drawn to the image of the cowboy in Marlboro’s advertisements. Acknowledging the enduring symbolism of the cowboy as the archetype of masculine heroism, the cigarette company’s marketing executives launched a highly successful campaign for their filtered cigarettes, disseminating cinematic imagery of the cowboy’s stoic heroism across newspapers, billboards, and televised advertisements across the United States. Prince began repurposing these images by rephotographing them, removing all references to branding so that the standalone images might be scrutinized for their readily identifiable motifs that pervasively supplied themselves as the underpinnings for American culture. As he progressed in the rephotographing and recasting of the quixotic cowboy, his work unfolded in four distinct phases. In the earliest phase, Prince’s works were characterized for their grainy close-ups of ranchers printed in a standard format. By the second stage, improved laboratory techniques allowed him to substantially increase the scale and intensity of the final reproduction. In the third phase, he worked from high quality images, which imbued the photographs with a newfound crispness and clarity that surpassed even the original advertisement. And finally, in the fourth stage, Prince turned to painting as a means of infusing his photographic work not only with a vibrant refinement, but with a shrewd commentary that would undercut the propagation of machismo sensibility that had been widely disseminated in American mass media.

Unlike earlier iterations of the cowboy, Prince completely abandoned the Marlboro advertisement as his source material in the fourth phase. Instead, he sourced online for vintage Western paperbacks – often hundreds at a time – whose covers of cowboys would be scanned, enlarged, cropped, printed onto canvas, and then adorned with vivid, brilliant strokes of paint. He had found extensive inspiration from the covers of “dime-store” novellas when he embarked on his equally seminal series of Nurse Paintings, from which he drew upon the uniformly melodramatic, artificial female protagonists who were often tawdrily cast on troves of pulp fiction paperback covers. As with the Nurse Paintings series, Prince almost entirely effaces all traces of the paperback cover in the present work, employing bold swathes of vibrant yellows, blues, and greens that merely hint at the source material. Prince casts the lone star against a pulsating saffron backdrop evocative of the untamed expanses of the Wild West. This stark contrast to his surroundings accentuates the cowboy, depicted in richly textured strokes of walnut, scarlet, and white, who forges ahead, leaving behind any vestiges of his past in the dust-filled terrain. Positioned just above the horizon of the picture plane, he meets the gaze of the viewer head-on, cutting through the barrier of a fourth wall that permeates the work with a unique uncanniness characteristic of Prince’s approach.

Isolated under the expressionist layering of paint, the association with vintage Western novels and the Marlboro brand in Untitled (Cowboy) begins to fade as the pure image of a cowboy emerges; Prince invites the viewer to truly see and feel the power of the icon behind the image. His cowboy series is an undeniable practice of his acute awareness of the underpinnings of American mass culture that percolate in the subconscious. Splendidly manifested in Untitled (Cowboy), Prince’s reproduction of the familiar visual world brings to light the mechanisms that administer its proliferation as mythology. The result of this critical re-photographing practice is a conceptually innovative, breath-taking, enigmatic image that is endowed with a history of the artist’s continued practice and mastery.

Elizabeth Peyton

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 752,000

Christmas (Tony) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ELIZABETH PEYTON (b. 1965)
Christmas (Tony), 2000
Oil on panel
12 x 9 1/8 inches (30.5 x 23.2 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2000 (on the reverse)

Intimately scaled and rendered in lush, sensual brushstrokes, Christmas (Tony) from 2000 exquisitely depicts Elizabeth Peyton’s fellow artist and longtime lover Tony Just. Wearing an exquisite royal blue pinstriped suit and porting a wide-brimmed hat that mysteriously obscures the figure’s eyes, the present work is suffused with a cool seductiveness, which manifests everywhere from Peyton’s attention to her subject’s tousled hair and ruby lips, to her delicate, dreamlike palette of soft purples and browns. Like much of Peyton’s oeuvre, Christmas (Tony) is striking in its simplicity of style and subject matter; as in her numerous other portraits of friends and loved ones, she paints with broad strokes and spare details that make the scene at hand seem both mundane yet hazy, to create a powerfully atmosphere impact for the viewer.

Christmas (Tony) is a classic example of Peyton’s endless fascination with the feminine and androgynous male forms, a subject she began exploring at the start of her career through portraits of a fresh-faced Napoleon Bonaparte inspired by the 19th-century paintings of Jacques-Louis David and Antoine-Jean Gros. It was this same aesthetic impulse that drew Peyton to Tony when they first met at a party in the 1990s. As she once recalled, “He was magnetic. I wanted to look at him all the time.” (Elizabeth Peyton, quoted in Steve Lafreniere, “A Conversation with the Artist” in Matthew Higgs, et. al., Elizabeth Peyton, New York, 2005, p. 252) The present work seamlessly weaves together all of these characteristic elements of Peyton’s practice into a single painting. She depicts Tony—whose appearance she has often compared to that of a youthful Napoleon—in a paparazzi- like image of him in his finest clothing. Slipping deftly between signifiers of gender, culture, and history, Peyton’s portrait is a charming token of love that simultaneously casts an insightful eye on ideas of masculine perception and identity in modern society.

Martin Wong

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 952,500

Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MARTIN WONG (1946 – 1999)
Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing, 1989
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 59 1/2 inches (121.9 x 151.1 cm)

Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing from 1989 is testament to Martin Wong’s ability to revel in his lived experience to create powerfully enduring works of art. In the present work, Wong showcases a characteristically poignant and deeply introspective rendition of the Statue of Liberty, one of the most iconic symbols of American democracy. Exuding a state of palpable mourning and sadness, Lady Liberty’s posture is one of incredible sorrow, her head in her hands, contrary to her usual proud stance. To her left, the pergolas of Beijing’s cityscape frame the pictureplane, signaling a deeper underlying significance to the iconic statue’s state of dismay. By presenting Lady Liberty in tears, Wong directly references the government suppressed student-led democracy movement in China, which culminated on June 4, 1989 following the incredibly tragic June Fourth Incident. Wong, as a son of Chinese immigrants, was incredibly impacted by this horrific act of violence and subsequently realized three portraits of the Statue of Liberty in mourning. A masterful example of the most consistent theme within his storied practice, Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing was created in the same year as this historic event in Chinese history, and was subsequently exhibited at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in June of 1990.

LEFT: MARTIN WONG’, LIBERTY MOURNING THE DEATH OF HER SISTER – BEIJING, 1989 , THE ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY, BUFFALO / RIGHT: MARTIN WONG, UNTITLED (STATUE OF LIBERTY), 1990, PRIVATE COLLECTION

The figure depicted in the present work grieves over the events of June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government suppressed the student democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. The ‘sister’ referenced in the work’s title is taken from the ‘Goddess of Democracy’ statue that students of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing erected in Tiananmen Square directly facing off against the giant portrait of Chairman Mao that hangs on the Gate of Heavenly Peace. As a child of Chinese immigrants who fled communist China in search of the opportunities promised in the United States, Wong felt deeply empathetic for the plight of the Chinese youth who were fighting for their own freedom. This momentous portrait of Lady Liberty serves as an enduring symbol for the American desire for widespread democracy and the continuous pursuit of justice in the face of political and socioeconomic adversity.

In the present work, Wong carefully painted Lady Liberty’s face with hundreds of small bricks, each containing a brilliant depth of color and shading, a marked departure from the green oxidized copper original statue. Indeed, Wong’s fascination with bricks within his practice carries through his most recognizable works. For Wong, bricks are a metaphor for the New York City’s urban landscape, which to him, often felt deeply confining. As openly-gay Chinese-American man, Wong experienced the isolating feeling of being different and considered an outcast by wider society. Moreover, in 1978, Wong purchased a toy train station lined with small-scale bricks, which sparked his obsession with the medium. Wong’s employment of bricks within his paintings also pays homage to his background as a sculptor, having studied ceramics at Humboldt State University as a young artist. Indeed, the act of painting each brick with great details mirrors the labor-intensive process of creating physical bricks themselves. By changing the material of Lady Liberty from copper to brick, Wong also pays homage to the immigrant workers that built many of the buildings in New York City. Underscoring Wong’s unique ability to find beauty and signficance in the mundane, his employment of bricks can also be seen as his attempt to rebuild his idealized peaceful world by way of the image. Throughout his career, Wong’s work highlighted those who were subjugated or experienced violence at the hands of the state. Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing reigns as an impactful portrait of the Statue of Liberty in mourning, and within Wong’s entire body of work, stands out as one of the most iconic and moving tableaus. A portrait that is as telling about its subject matter as it is about its creator, Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing endures as Wong’s touching tribute to an unspeakable tragedy of democracy, underscoring his autobiographical approach to social realism and his insurmountable empathy for his fellow man.

Jeff Koons

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 550,000
USD 819,000

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6482494

JEFF KOONS (B. 1955)
Snorkel Vest, 1985
Bronze
21x18x6 inches (53.3 x 45.7 x 15.2 cm)
This work is number three from an edition of three plus one artist’s proof

A significant forerunner to the artist’s use of fabricated inflatables, Jeff Koons’s Snorkel Vest is an important bronze from his iconic Equilibrium series. Departing from the readymade sculptures of his earlier work, the cast bronze sculptures of the Equilibrium series anticipated Koons’s later use of inflatables—most notably in the Celebration and Popeye series.

“Inflatables, of course, are metaphors for people, and they are metaphors of life and optimism for me. The most deathlike image I know is of an inflatable that has collapsed.”

Snorkel Vest, of course, will never collapse. This iconic sculpture exists in a state of preservation and equilibrium; a flotation device permanently inflated but prepared to sink anyone who might try and wear it; a deep meditation in bronze on the perils of salvation. At once aesthetically alluring and meticulously fabricated, this sculpture speaks to the very heart of Koons’s relationship with inflatables—lacing them with a dark commentary on the notion of salvation. Worn on the chest and strapped at the back, inflated and deflated through an oral inflation tube, this type of flotation vest is most popular among recreational snorkelers. The dark commentary on dysfunction is apparent in Snorkel Vest when considering that the flotation device, cast in bronze, no longer floats. In fact, the allure of sculpture resides in its juxtaposition of material and form, and the result of this juxtaposition is an extremely tactile work of art that almost begs to be touched. With its attractive folds of vinyl and nylon cast in bronze, one cannot help but wonder whether the vest is in fact solid or soft. The apparent contradiction of a bronze inflatable leads then to the startling realization that Koons has created a work of art that is the functional opposite of its archetype. The buoyant life preserver now sinks, and we are left to understand that the devices meant to save us may in fact drown us.

Impossibility and unsustainability are essential themes in the artist’s Equilibrium series, and Snorkel Vest embodies these themes with undeniable sprezzatura. The meticulous cast and the rich color of bronze arouse our curiosity and create a unique viewing sensation that is simultaneously solemn and buoyant, exciting and somber. At the same time, Snorkel Vest operates intellectually by allowing us to question, through the medium of sculpture, the act of preservation, as well as the heavy ideals preserved in monuments. Koons’s various attempts at preservation (in bronze, behind glass or in tanks of water) render all of the objects in his Equilibrium series useless. The basketball can no longer be dribbled, the bronze lifeboat cannot float, but by rendering these objects physically immutable, they are kept from decomposing and deflating. This is the state of equilibrium or balance toward which the entire Equilibrium series aspires, as the artwork is harmonized for the present, existing in stasis, almost inaccessible.

BLUD ‘N TAR, 2024

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 189,000

KENNY SCHARF (B. 1958), BLUD ‘N TAR | Christie’s (christies.com)

Focus: Post-War

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1. Joan Mitchell

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Sotheby’s to Offer Four Masterworks by Joan Mitchell Spanning Nearly Half a Century

Noon, circa 1969

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
USD 22,615,400

Noon | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

JOAN MITCHELL (1925 – 1992)
Noon, circa 1969
Oil on canvas
102×79 inches (259.1 x 200.7 cm)
Signed (lower left); signed and titled (on the reverse)

Thick rectangles of marigold, violet, and verdant green join feathery, impastoed daubs of paint in Joan Mitchell’s Noon, a masterpiece which triumphantly announces the artist’s full confidence in the medium. Executed circa 1969, Noon emerges from the year after she relocated to Vétheuil, a town in the French countryside once home to Claude Monet. This move would mark a decisive turn in her career, as her canvases became larger and the stimulation afforded by the bucolic splendors of her surroundings proved immensely generative. Shifting away from the academic concerns of her earlier output, by the late 1960s, Mitchell had entered a new era, one which sees her brushwork at its most diverse and self-assured.

JOAN MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHED IN VÉTHEUIL, FRANCE, 1972. PHOTO © NANCY CRAMPTON

Towering at over eight feet tall, Noon’s surface absorbs its viewer into its poetic translation of the landscape into bursting, uncompromising color and form. This is a painting that reveals a mature artist at her absolute height: in 1972, the Everson Museum in Syracuse would organize the first major solo survey of Mitchell’s work – in which the present work was notably exhibited – and just two years later, she would be honored with a monumental retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Undoubtedly among the best examples from this celebrated period, Noon testifies to the profundity of Mitchell’s encounter with the natural world: its wealth of color, space, and light find home on Mitchell’s early Vétheuil canvases with exacting specificity, vestiges of a life shaped by place, directed by gesture, and documented by brush.

LEFT: SAM FRANCIS, UNTITLED, 1958. IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA / ART RESOURCE, NY. © 2024 SAM FRANCIS FOUNDATION, CALIFORNIA / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. RIGHT: CLAUDE MONET, WATERLILIES, 1916-1919.
MUSÉE MARMOTTAN-CLAUDE MONET, PARIS, FRANCE.
IMAGE © ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY

In 1968, Mitchell permanently settled on a sprawling rural estate in Vétheuil. There, secluded from the dominant narrative of Abstract Expressionism, her paintings begin to exhibit the same sumptuousness of palette and acute sensitivity to light articulated in the captivating plein air paintings of Claude Monet, who painted the landscapes of Vétheuil years before. In her work, she accepted all of Vétheuil’s offerings: her palette took on the region’s ultramarines, sunny yellows, and tangerines, all of which would comprise her signature palette until her death. Opening like portals into the expansive world around her, doused in rich, exuberant light, her paintings communicated a brightness not unlike Henri Matisse’s Open Window, Collioure, which extends the chromatic vivacity of the outdoors beyond the representational and into the experiential. Likewise, her canvases continued to stretch outwards, reaching out to meet the vaulted ceilings of her studio.

The paintings that poured out of her initial years in France revealed not only Mitchell’s full chromatic expression but also her rich personal associations with the land and the artists it has inspired. As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she reveled in the magisterial canvases by Monet and van Gogh housed at the Art Institute’s galleries, artists whom she’d venerated in youth and would go on to establish a kinship through place.

LEFT: VINCENT VAN GOGH, ROAD TO SAINT-REMY, 1890.
PRIVATE COLLECTION, LUGANO, SWITZERLAND
 IMAGE © ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY. RIGHT: CHAIM SOUTINE, LANDSCAPE, 1919. PRIVATE COLLECTION. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

Her evocations of the world around, however, do not merely situate Mitchell in a lineage of artists in the same pursuit: unlike Mondrian, whose grids systematically distilled the natural world, or Kandinsky, whose resplendent geometries found their inspiration in music, Mitchell concerned herself – or submitted herself, rather – to affect. Dancing between deliberation and immediacy, abstraction and allusionism, her definitively nonrepresentational vocabulary remains encoded with figurative, illusory vestiges charged with feeling. The present work’s title speaks to this – Mitchell, who rose at midday and worked late into the evenings, titled Noon after the earliest, hottest point in her day. At noon, the light is its clearest and most direct, and, befittingly, Noon sees the artist utterly lucid, triumphant in the apex of her creative powers.

“I would rather leave Nature to itself. It is quite beautiful enough as it is.
I don’t want to improve it…I certainly never mirror it.
I would like more to paint what it leaves me with.” 

Cacophonous yet sonorous, Mitchell exercises the whole of her technical proficiency and derives inspiration from the place she loved most. Noon suffuses its viewer in aqueous, animated glory, and the painterly force contained therein would direct the tenor and cadence of the rest of her prolific years in Vétheuil.

Ground, 1989

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
USD 10,101,000

Ground | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

JOAN MITCHELL (1925 – 1992)
Ground, 1989
Oil on canvas, in two parts
Overall: 220×395 cm (86 5/8 x 155 1/2 inches)
Signed (lower right)

Ebullient, calligraphic ribbons of rose, cerulean, orange and emerald pirouette across the monumental surface of Joan Mitchell’s Ground, an exemplar of Mitchell’s last mature body of work. Executed in 1989, in the final years of her career, Ground sees Mitchell triumph over her ailing health, once again calling upon the diptych format to produce a composition so saturated, expansive, and self-assured that it marks the utter apex of her technical and creative powers. Muscular yet balletic, Mitchell’s late works from the 1980s remain perhaps her most powerful and affecting abstractions of the French countryside, dappling resplendent showers of light and color into a gestural vocabulary unmistakably her own.

Testament to the significance of her late diptychs in the artist’s prodigious oeuvre, other large-scale examples are held in such esteemed international institutional collections as Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, among others. A confident ode to Mitchell’s resilient physicality and propulsive dedication to her medium of oil paint, Ground represents the apotheosis of the abstract vernacular she developed so tirelessly.

CLAUDE MONET, LE BASSIN AUX NYMPHÉAS, 1917-19. PRIVATE COLLECTION. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK FOR $70.3 MILLION IN MAY 2021

Ground summons a prismatic range of colors, exhibiting a more open construct: the alabaster field acts as equal partner to lilac, apricot, and shots of dark wine, all riotously tangled at the command of Mitchell’s broad brush. The frenetic, dense composition reveals the artist’s affinity for the American action painters, among whom she lived and worked in the initial decade of her mature career; as one of the few women to garner significant critical acclaim within the early days of the predominantly male Abstract Expressionist movement.

Across the face of Ground’s two canvases, Mitchell’s unencumbered hand leaves marks redolent of the animation and tactility that defied her age: Mitchell’s canvas ceases to be merely a surface, transforming instead into a performative arena in which she choreographs the ever-shifting light, colors, movements, and textures of Vétheuil. “She would open up the tenuous space of her compositions and dance ribbons of color and gesture across the surface,” Richard D. Marshall observed, “or construct compartmentalized passages of form and color that would coalesce into energized physical expressions. With apparent abandon, she threw, splashed, or forced paint onto the canvas in her distinctive colors and gestures: the paintings display her fondness for a palette of blue, green, orange, black, and white, together with her personal vocabulary of choppy vertical smears, washes of pastel hues, slashed aggressive hues, loops of joyful color, definite drips, thick globs of paint, and eccentric composition.” (Richard D. Marshall quoted in: Exh. Cat., New York, Cheim & Read, The Last Paintings, 2011, n.p.)

HENRI MATISSE, LA PERRUCHE ET LA SIRÈNE, 1952. IMAGE © PICTORIGHT AMSTERDAM/STEDELIJK MUSEUM AMSTERDAM. ART © 2024 SUCCESSION H. MATISSE / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Though the gestural style of her American contemporaries – storied artists such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning – shaped her abstract painterly idiom, Mitchell’s profound appreciation for the beauty of the natural world fostered a strong connection to the French Impressionists and European Post-Impressionists. For instance, Ground’s concentrated bulbs of pigment recall Henri Matisse’s iconic cutouts, such as in La perruche et la sirène from 1952, which forgoes perspectival order in favor of emphasizing the interplay between organic form and the negative space of the canvas.

LEFT: WILLEM DE KOONING, UNTITLED V, 1982. IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2023 THE WILLEM DE KOONING FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. RIGHT: VINCENT VAN GOGH, IRISES, 1889. IMAGE © THE GETTY, LOS ANGELES

Through her last works, the transformative effects of that initial move to Vétheuil in 1968 stayed with Mitchell; there, she found the conceptual freedom to create a highly idiosyncratic painterly style which marries the ethereal with the physical, the felt with the seen. Sumptuously layered and smeared upon the soaring canvas, each coruscating stroke invokes a lush density reminiscent of Monet’s late renderings of his rose garden at Giverny. As Mitchell and Monet entered the final years of their careers, both produced canvases of startling energy that defy time and age, miraculously capturing the impermanence of light suspended in decentralized space, resulting in Ground’s concentrated bulbs of pigment. The radical experimentation that transpired every decade of Mitchell’s working life culminates in Ground: ceaseless, repeated investigations of line, color and form embody the visceral interplay between strength and sensuality, delicacy and mass, marrying the explosive freedom of her final diptychs with the disciplined compositional infrastructure of her early abstractions.

Chord X, 1987

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992), Chord X | Christie’s (christies.com)

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992)
Chord X, 1987
Oil on canvas
102 ½ x 78 5/8 inches (260.4 x 199.7 cm)
Signed ‘Joan Mitchell’ (lower right)

Painted in 1987, Joan Mitchell’s Chord X is a dazzling late career masterpiece in which a soaring cluster of beautiful, jewel-like colors provides the vehicle for the artist’s bravado brushwork. Mitchell’s Chord paintings were created in the years directly following her Grande Vallée paintings, after the artist had recovered from serious health issues and the loss of family and friends. They begin to announce a new clarity of vision that emerges in her late work, in which airy passages of white paint allow the colors in her arsenal to truly sing. Named after musical chords, in which three or more tones played together yield a more complex and sonorous sound, Mitchell’s Chord paintings also testify to her long abiding love of music, particularly Bach’s cantatas, which she listened to obsessively at this time.

In the last five years of her life, Mitchell, like fellow Abstract Expressionist, de Kooning, pared down her visual vernacular to its true essence, embracing pure colors like cobalt blue, emerald green, yellow, violet and crimson, which—in the present work—she used in a direct alla prima technique. “Mitchell lets fly with color,” the art critic Bill Berkson observed, upon viewing her 1988 retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.,” writing: “You can watch her arranging, supervising, making the strokes and drips go securely where she wants” (B. Berkson, “In Living Chaos: Joan Mitchell,” Artforum, September 1988, p. 97).

Indeed, Mitchell has masterfully orchestrated these effects in Chord X, often pairing opposite colors side-by-side, such as green with red, or yellow with blue. Elsewhere, she pairs analogous colors like green and blue, blue and. purple, or yellow and green, which act as secondary “notes” to be played with their contrasting neighbor, yielding new tonal variations that evoke the musical “chord” that the title describes. The intensely tangled and knotted brushstrokes in Chord X can be seen as a continuation of the tightly interwoven but nevertheless lyrical and arcing brushwork of the Grande Vallée paintings. Using the full reach of her arms and legs, Mitchell used a wide brush to create the vigorous back-and-forth and up-and-down movements, adding touches of black to deepen the color relationships. The colorful, tangled and hovering cloud in Chord X is nevertheless inflected with sparkling passages of bright white, lending an airy atmosphere that evokes the fluttering, wriggling aliveness of the natural world, particularly her home in the pastoral French countryside of Vétheuil.

Henri Matisse, Dance I, 1909. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.  Photo: © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Chord X also testifies to the artist’s life-long passion for the great French Modernists, notably Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet. Mitchell communed with the French Masters on a daily basis at her home at La Tour, which afforded her a distant view of Monet’s cottage. Particularly in the last years of her life, she seemed to draw them in closer around her, as if she finally allowed herself the freedom to join them in their perennial quest to capture the effects of nature and the “impression” it left her with. Particularly in Chord X, Mitchell’s clever arrangement of opposing colors demonstrates what van Gogh called “the mysterious vibration of kindred tones” (V. van Gogh, quoted in P. Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, A Life, New York, 2011, p. 391), and what is often referred to as “broken color” in Impressionist paintings describing the juxtaposition of two or more colors in a single passage.

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition Number 8, 1923. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

The allegorical title of the Chord series corresponds to a moment in Mitchell’s life when music proved to be both an inspirational and restorative force. A longtime music lover, whose obsession had begun in childhood, Mitchell would often accompany her father to concerts in Chicago, and her mother, a poet, invited musicians to their home. Indeed, during the mid-1980s, music was a rallying call-to-arms, spurring her on to climb the stairs to her studio and get on with the business of painting. Her favorites at the time included Bach’s Cantata 78, along with Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. She also returned to Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute again and again.

Untitled, circa 1955

Lush torrents of jewel-toned pigment burst from the canvas in Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, producing a symphony of fuschia, violet, and cobalt that coalesces with the artist’s quintessential vision. Executed circa 1955, the onset of the most formative and celebrated period of Mitchell’s career, Untitled initiates a nuanced dialogue between representation and abstraction; memory and emotion; gesture and color with its unrestrained painterly vocabulary. Comparable masterworks that Mitchell produced in the 1950s are today regarded as her first mature body of work, with many belonging to some of the world’s most renowned institutions including City Landscape, 1955 in the Art Institute of Chicago, which bears a similar handling of paint and palette as the present work. Untitled emerges from a critical time in Mitchell’s career: following a trip to Paris in 1955 – around the time she executed the present work – Mitchell continued to return from New York, eventually moving there outright in 1959, drawn to the landscapes that would foster within her endless inspiration. Across the monumental expanse of Untitled, Mitchell expresses her distinct Abstract Expressionist voice with resplendent lyricism: the immense scale, dynamic clusters of feathery brushstrokes, and modulating intensity of paint distinguish Untitled as a paragon not only of Mitchell’s prolific career, but also of the heroic sensibilities inherent to Abstract Expressionism.

WALTER SILVER, JOAN MITCHELL, C. 1958. THE WALTER SILVER COLLECTION, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. IMAGE © COPYRIGHT NY PUBLIC LIBRARY

 

Speaking to the kinship Mitchell felt with the French Impressionists, La Plage is executed in a palette suggesting the juxtaposition of land and water. As Rosalind Krauss describes: “In this painting one finds a small-scale and tender evocation of those feelings about both landscape and painting that were the combined discoveries of Impressionism. Which is to say that there is a rehearsal of those feelings of the magical that are elicited by the paintmark’s capacity to declare and then transcend its own inert physicality. The daub of burnt umber that can be seen transforming itself into a patch of shadow or a rough outcropping of stone has about it an almost endless power to astonish us with its continual performance of metamorphosis. This quality of magic is at the same time daunted by a recognition that nature totally outdistances one’s capacities to describe or imitate it: the scale and luminosity of nature being essentially inimitable. This series of recognitions, promoted by the best of landscape painting, leaves one both trapped in and consoled by an apprehension of the limitations of consciousness.” (Rosalind Krauss, “Painting Becomes Cyclorama,” Artforum, vol. 12, issue 10, June 1974, pp. 50 – 52)

LEFT: CLAUDE MONET, ÉTRETAT: THE BEACH AND THE FALAISE D’AMONT, 1885. ART INSTUTE OF CHICAGO.
RIGHT: MAURICE PREDERGAST, BEACH SCENE, C. 1910-1913. BARNES FOUNDATION, PHILADELPHIA.

Though geographically distant from her New York contemporaries and even the Parisian art scene, Mitchell’s work always stood in vivid dialogue with the artistic cutting edge. Her familiarity with the work of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston is apparent in her bold brushwork while her compositional rigor echoes Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic. In the present work, an embrace of the white void paired with deliberately erratic and geometric forms is particularly redolent of Cy Twombly: Mitchell’s own command of rectangles and trapezoid-like shapes echoes Twombly’s use of similar forms. As the embodiment of beauty and of the psyche, these forms exude an extremely reduced architectural language that is not grounded in the materiality of form but in psychological potential. Similar to Twombly, who himself had emigrated away from New York to seek refuge in the by-gone antique opulence of Rome, Mitchell developed a strong predilection towards landscape. Rather than expressing her emotions in figurative forms, Mitchell’s embrace of the void and whiteness echoes the dictum of French avant-garde poet Stéphane Mallarmé: “To paint, not the thing, but the effect it provides” (Georges Jean-Aubry and Henri Mondor, Eds., Stéphane Mallarmé – Œuvres completes, Paris 1945, p. 307). Just as Twombly had embraced a visual kind of Mallarméan silence, Mitchell started to engage with the white ground in a similarly evocative way. Superseding mere background, whiteness in the present work becomes an intensely enlivened part of the composition and acts as a powerful contrast to the brilliance and forcefulness of Mitchell’s use of color.

As with the most quintessential examples of Mitchell’s celebrated corpus, La Plage possesses a visual authority that summons the viewer to imagine the physicality of Mitchell’s creative process while experiencing the intoxicating expressiveness of its outcome. Consistent with Mitchell’s most celebrated work of the 1970s, the mesmerizing mixture of thin, emotive swathes of paint and thicker, more spontaneous brushstrokes exhibited in the present work suggests a corresponding progression towards greater emotional depth on the part of the artist. It is in the mesmerizing coalescence of these diverse applications that La Plage derives its ultimate painterly presence.

Crow Hill, 1966

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
PASSED

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992), Crow Hill | Christie’s (christies.com)

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992)
Crow Hill, 1966
Oil on canvas
76 3/4 x 51 inches (195 x 129.5 cm)
Signed ‘Mitchell’ (on the reverse)

Joan Mitchell’s Crow Hill is a virtuoso painting that showcases the artist’s unique ability to choreograph lavish applications of paint in the service of evoking the most powerful human emotions. Painted in 1966, a period regarded as being one of the most seminal for the artist, the painting showcases Mitchell’s contribution to the post-war canon: combining her highly skillful brushwork, her advanced use of color, and her unrivalled understanding of compositional space. Evoking feelings of both love and empathy, Crow Hill expresses the sense of liberation that she felt in her new home in France, but also the crushing sense of loss following the death of two people close to her. These competing emotions would lay the groundwork for some of her most important paintings of the next two decades, as she began to move away from the aggressively Abstract Expressionist brushwork that dominated her canvases of the 1950s and began to evolve a wider range of more sophisticated gestures that allowed her work to develop a distinctive lyrical quality.

The surface of Crow Hill sets out a highly sophisticated arrangement of gestural elements, thick slabs of impasto, delicate trails of thinned pigment, dense pools of color, and pockets of white space all tussle for attention. The upper half of the composition is comprised of a complex lattice of interwoven painterly elements. This muscular patchwork of azure, cobalt, and Persian blues interspersed with myrtle and forest greens, and adorned with flashes of royal purple and ruby red, displays Mitchell’s skills as one of Abstract Expressionism’s pre-eminent colorists. Never overwhelming, yet always deliberate, her painterly energy manifests itself superbly across the surface of the large-scale canvas. As the eye explores, the density of the composition begins to loosen and areas of white pigment punctuate and open up the surface. The abundant brushstrokes that dominate the upper portion of the canvas become more articulated, their weighty volume dissolving into elegant lines of effervescent drips, surrounded by swathes of powdery white pigment.

Vincent Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Photo: Art Resource, New York.

Mitchell is well-known for adopting enigmatic titles for her paintings and Crow Hill is no exception. While no direct meaning has been recorded, inferences have been drawn to the symbolic meaning of the eponymous bird in the painting’s title. In van Gogh’s famous Wheatfield with Crows (1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) the artist’s vigorous brushwork depicts a murder of crows, often regarded as a harbinger of death, shown as a series of black forms sent against an ominous dark blue sky. Yet, although Mitchell was hugely inspired by natural forms, she was quick to remind people that she was resolutely not a referential painter.

“I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me, and [from] remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I would rather leave nature to itself. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with.”

Joan Mitchell in her studio, 1962. Photo: BIOT Jean-Pierre / Paris Match via Getty Images. Artwork: © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

2. Andy Warhol

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2.1. Flowers

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Late Four-Foot Flowers, 1967

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 11,250,000

Late Four-Foot Flowers | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Late Four-Foot Flowers, 1967
Acrylic, silkscreen ink and graphite on canvas
48×48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm)

Four hibiscus in fluorescent shades of pink, orange, and violet bloom across the emerald surface of Late Four-Foot Flowers, in which Andy Warhol imposes his Pop idiom on one of the most storied genres in art history: the floral still life. The present work, executed in 1967, emerges from Warhol’s revisitation and expansion of the flower motif, during which time he diversified the palette, scale, and screens of the image he first debuted three years earlier, which today has become synonymous with American Pop.

ANDY WARHOL, PHILIP FAGAN AND GERARD MALANGA, NEW YORK, 1964. PHOTO UGO MULAS © UGO MULAS HEIRS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ART © 2024 ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Warhol’s shrewd recontextualization of a photograph published in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography evinces a nascent interest in a more abstract, philosophical vernacular, one preceded by his Death and Disaster series and extended through the skulls, shadows, and religious iconography of his mature corpus. The flower motif’s resounding significance in the history of art, from the Dutch Vanitas to Claude Monet’s water lilies to Van Gogh’s sunflowers, also proved a fitting, intellectual subject for the Pop idiom he had explosively introduced earlier that decade. Warhol also borrows from the Modernist innovations of Henri Matisse, who in La Gerbe considered the floral subject as a vehicle for chromatic exploration and formal abstraction. Despite its vital, decadently saturated palette and ostensibly decorative aesthetic, which undoubtedly appealed to Warhol in his program of developing a truly popular art form, this is a motif laced with a preoccupation with mortality that permeates Warhol’s entire oeuvre, all the way through to his final self portraits. Late Four-Foot Flowers summarizes Warhol’s greatest contribution to twentieth century artmaking—the balance between appropriation and ingenuity—and endures today as a vibrant moniker for the artist, one that epitomizes the fragility of life and intangible transience of fame.

LEFT; HENRI MATISSE, LA GERBE, 1953. LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. IMAGE © 2024 MUSEUM ASSOCIATES / LACMA. LICENSED BY ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 SUCCESSION H. MATISSE / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. RIGHT: ROY LICHTENSTEIN, BLACK FLOWERS, 1961. IMAGE © 2024 THE BROAD, LOS ANGELES. ART © ESTATE OF ROY LICHTENSTEIN

Warhol first approached the flowers at the suggestion of the legendary Henry Geldzahler, then assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who encouraged the artist to engage directly in the art historical tradition of still-life painting. The subsequent flowers Warhol created in summer 1964 would be the paintings he chose to exhibit in his inaugural show with Leo Castelli, a shift in representation that cemented his place at the artistic fore of his generation. Over the next few years, Warhol would return to the subject, such as in his solo installation at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris in 1965 and again in the present work. The source image for the Flowers originated in a series of color photographs of seven hibiscus blossoms printed in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography, taken by editor Patricia Caulfield to demonstrate the varying visual effects of different exposure times and filter settings. The seriality of the images in Modern Photography undoubtedly appealed to Warhol’s acute sensitivity to repetition and mechanization, though rather than transfer the entire page of the magazine with four rectangular images of flowers, he isolated and cropped a square composition that included four flowers from one of the reproduced photos. This crop was then transferred onto acetate and its tonal range polarized to increase sharpness and provide the optimum template for the silkscreen mechanical to be made. Warhol chose the square format because of the four possible orientations available.

LEFT: GUSTAV KLIMT, BAUERNGARTEN (BLUMENGARTEN), 1907. PRIVATE COLLECTION. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, LONDON FOR £48 MILLION IN MARCH 2017. RIGHT: LUCIAN FREUD, DAFFODILS AND CELERY, 1947-48. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S LONDON FOR £1.2 MILLION IN FEBRUARY 2006. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © 2024 LUCIAN FREUD

Warhol’s updated interpretation of this age-old motif, however, is consciously unimpassioned: he first rejected the hierarchical compositions of the grand tradition of still-life painting in Western art history in favor of an overhead perspective, which banishes the horizon and flattens and distorts the shape of each petal. Further, subtle modulations in light, shadow, and hue are eschewed in favor of planar zones of flat pigment, rendered in artificial Day-Glo and fluorescent ink and acrylic. After the Death and Disasters series of 1962-1963, which depicted sensational images of electric chairs, atomic bombs, and car crashes, the motif of four brightly blooming hibiscus flowers was almost anodyne, a palliative to the horror and violence of his previous imagery. However innocuous the Flowers seem, however, Warhol inescapably inherits historic concerns around time and temporality presented by the floral still life. Mortality would remain an obsessive, constant theme throughout the artist’s life, and his canvases—though they have succeeded in concretizing his artistic legacy in collective consciousness—betray his desperation to render the ephemeral permanent, frozen at moments of optimal beauty, even when undercut by terror.

The Flowers create “a virtual, painful stillness,” notes Heiner Bastian. “Since they seemingly only live on the surface, in the stasis of their coloration, they also initiate only the one metamorphosis which is a fundamental tenet of Warhol’s work: moments in a notion of transience. The flower pictures were for Everyman, they embodied Warhol’s power of concretization, the shortest possible route to stylization, both open to psychological interpretation and an ephemeral symbol. But the flowers…were also to be read as metaphors for the flowers of death. Warhol’s Flowers resist every philosophical transfiguration as effectively as the pictures of disasters and catastrophes which they now seem ever closer to.” (Heiner Bastian cited in: Exh. Cat., Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Andy Warhol: Retrospective, 2002, p. 33) Exuberant now, but soon to perish, the Flowers are Warhol’s confrontation of the art historical lineage he so tirelessly worked to become a part of, and Late Four-Foot Flowers serves as a metaphor for the fleeting transience of everything Warhol loved: beauty, greatness, and celebrity.

Andy Warhol

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 35,485,000

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), Flowers | Christie’s (christies.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Flowers, 1964
Acrylic, fluorescent paint and silkscreen ink on linen
82×82 inches (208.3 x 208.3 cm)
Signed twice and dated later ‘Andy Warhol Andy Warhol 65’ (on the overlap)

A towering achievement of Pop Art, Andy Warhol’s Flowers epitomizes the seismic effects of the twentieth-century’s most significant art movement. Bringing together the essential elements of Warhol’s oeuvre, this monumental painting displays the artist’s bold aesthetic vision alongside his deeply considered conceptual rigor. Measuring 82” square, this is among Warhol’s largest canvases and was one of just three Flowers of this size to be included in the seminal exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery which unveiled this body of work to an astonished public. “[The Flowers] are so goddamn beautiful,” wrote the critic Peter Schjeldahl. “And so simple. And their glamour was so intense … That’s why we reach for the word ‘genius’” (P. Schjeldahl, quoted in T. Scherman and D. Dalton, Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, New York, 2009, pp. 236-237). Later selected for inclusion in the 2020 Warhol retrospective at Tate Modern, Warhol’s Flowers marks a pivotal point in the artist’s career, as he shifted from his powerful Death and Disaster series into a more seemingly palatable subject, but one that nonetheless retained the ability to rock the art world.

From a series of nine 82 inch Flowers painted in 1964, all set against lush green backgrounds, the present work is undoubtably one of the most striking. It boasts three dazzling Indo-orange blooms and a fourth rendered in a fiery cadmium red, all set against a verdant green ground, and all rendered in Day-Glo paint. The present work is the only 82” Flowers in which all the flowers and the foliage are painted with Day-Glo pigments. All of these oscillate against one another in natural light, but the effect is magnified when viewed under ultra-violet light. The hand-painted petals are the result of Warhol projecting an image of the flowers onto the canvas using a acetate sheet and then tracing their outlines in pencil before applying their vivid colors by hand. Though later works would see the artist eschewing this ‘handmade’ quality in favor of full mechanical reproduction, the present work is still adorned by his brush, however imperceptibly. By reducing the entire composition down to a few choice colors, Warhol creates a graphic intensity that has more in common with mass media billboards and printed periodicals than the subtle beauty of the source photograph.

The early 1960s was a time of dramatic innovation and veracious production for Warhol. In 1964 alone, he moved into a studio that would become his first ‘factory’, at 231 E 47th Street in Manhattan, he also exhibited his Death and Disaster series at Ileana Sonnabend’s gallery in Paris to rave reviews. In the spring and summer, he filled the Stable gallery in New York with Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans and also completed his now-iconic film Empire. The juxtaposition of the everyday objects en masse in the former, and the intense—almost meditative observation—of the latter, highlighted the fact that Warhol was not merely a superficial purveyor of popular imagery but had actually tapped into the deeper concepts surrounding our relationship with commercialism as a society. By carefully and methodically choosing his subjects, the artist was able to create a personal treatise on human existence from seemingly anonymous reproductions, mass media techniques, and the appropriation of images and styles from design and advertising.

At the same time that he was creating dramatic compositions of soup, soap, and celebrities, Warhol was also looking at the darker side of American life with his images of electric chairs, race riots, and other scenes of calamity. During this time, the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Henry Geldzahler, purportedly suggested that the artist create something with a less morbid theme. When Warhol asked him what he meant, Geldzahler remembers offering up the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography magazine opened to a page displaying a repeated color photograph of seven hibiscus flowers. The image, taken by the magazine’s editor Patricia Caulfield as an illustration for a new Kodak color processor, was repeated four times in a block with different tonal variations and seemed “ripe for Warholian plucking” (M. Lobel, “In Transition: Warhol’s Flowers,” in Andy Warhol Flowers, exh. cat., Eykyn Maclean, New York, 2012, n.p.). The artist seized upon the image as a catalyst for a new creative direction and reduced Caulfield’s original image to emphasize the four flowers on the right-hand side, while at the same time shifting the position of one of the blooms in order to more aesthetically fill the square shape of his intended composition. Next, Warhol rotated the scene and rearranged the floral centers to his liking. Lastly, in order to prepare it for the screen printing process, Warhol directed his assistant Billy Name “to run the photo repeatedly through the Factory’s new photostat machine—‘a dozen times, at least,’ said Billy, to flatten out the blossoms, removing their definition, the shadow that lent the photo its illusion of three-dimensionality. ‘He didn’t want it to look like a photo at all. He just wanted the shape, the basic outline, of the flowers’” (T. Scherman and D. Dalton, op. cit., p. 247). By altering the original in such a way, the artist converted a seemingly generic photograph into an iconic image. Through manipulation and repetition, he was able to separate the end result from its origin and create a more universal symbol.

Installation view, Andy Warhol, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1964(present lot illustrated). Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS).

The ubiquitous nature of Warhol’s floral arrangements is what makes the present work such an insightful interrogation of the way in which we consume mass media. The Flowers exist perfectly within the divide between journalistic depictions of the real world and stylized images used in logos, cartoons, and advertisements. They are both real and constructed at the same time. Warhol’s genius lies in his ability to bridge the expanse between the realm of fine art and one of deeper conceptual thought. By creating works that occupy multiple spaces at once, he problematized our relationship to images and questioned how we exist as fragile human beings in an increasingly prescribed world.

As a series, the Flowers represent a peak Warholian moment. The artist often highlighted the glamor of consumer culture, celebrity, and fame that were part and parcel of the glittering, shiny subjects favored by Pop artists. However, an ever-present darkness ran throughout Warhol’s oeuvre and often emerged in his images of skulls, celebrities, and series like his Death and Disaster paintings. While the idea of the memento mori, and a deeper conversation about human mortality is somewhat easier to pull from pieces like the Car Crashes or Skulls, it is somewhat surprising that the Flowers paintings are where Warhol actually reaches a poignant duality. “What is incredible about the best of the flower paintings,” wrote the critic John Coplans, “is that they present a distillation of much of the strength of Warhol’s art—the flash of beauty that suddenly becomes tragic under the viewer’s gaze” (J. Coplans, Andy Warhol, Pasadena, 1970, p. 52). Extensively quoted and well-known for his views on the fleeting nature of fame and its correlation to life, Warhol was fascinated by the razor edge that separates both renown and obscurity as well as life and death. Like the still-lifes of the Dutch Golden Age, the blooming Flowers represent a perfect illustration of the apex of beauty and life caught in the dazzling moment before they are doomed to fade and wither.

William John Kennedy, Andy Warhol with Flower and His Flowers Canvas, 1964. © William John Kennedy; Courtesy of KIWI Arts Group. Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS).

Though many of his canvases deal with more universal subjects, it is also worth noting a deeply personal side to Warhol’s investigation into human fragility. After an attempt on his life in 1968, the already shy artist became more reclusive and his themes turned inward even more. His self-portraits, done at various times throughout his career, are markers of the artist’s identity as he merged with a constructed persona and the very media he used in his work. The icons he created, whether Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans, skulls, or Marilyn Monroe’s beaming face, will last for eternity, and the insertion of his own visage into the mix can be seen as an attempt at establishing a legacy. In his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, the artist spoke about death, saying: “I don’t believe in it, because you’re not around to know that it’s happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it” (A. Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), Orlando, 1975, p. 123). The Flowers are a telling representation of Warhol’s two sides, and they show an unexpected kinship with his more macabre images of disaster. They typify both the ornamental beauty and glamour of twentieth-century consumerism while also connecting directly to a universal human need to be remembered after we fade away.

Rachel Ruysch, Flowers in a Glass Vase, 1704. Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo: © Detroit Institute of Arts / Bridgeman Images.

Flowers, 1964

Flowers, 1964

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Flowers, 1965
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
5×5 inches (12.7 x 12.7 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)
Stamped by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board
Numbered A102.104 and C100.032 on the reverse.

2.2. Early Works

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Carat, 1961

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
USD 5,505,000

Carat | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Carat, 1961
Water-based paint on canvas
52 1/4 x 48 inches (132.7 x 121.9 cm)

In the grisaille glimmer of the diamond ring in Carat, romantic fantasies of love intermingle with mass consumption and mechanical reproduction – two of the most defining motifs in Andy Warhol’s legendary career. A rare, early precursor for his later paintings based on newspaper images, including the Death and Disaster series, Carat dates to a seminal moment in Warhol’s career when he was still painting by hand in 1961, only one year before he transitioned to the revolutionary silkscreen methodology that would fully depersonalize his production. Phantom washes of white paint permeate the composition in Carat, forming the underlayers onto which Warhol registers the shimmering commodity in crisp yet irregular black ink lamina, like the ephemera of newsprint imagery. Here, Warhol appropriates the timeless opulence and ecstasy behind the symbol of the diamond ring in an image that ingeniously belies its quotidian source: a jewelry advertisement that targets working-class consumer audiences.

Carving out the nascent origins of the Pop Art era, with Carat Warhol revealed the vicissitudes of modern American society by using iconography that he appropriated directly from the heart of consumer imagery: the newspaper advertisement. By dislocating a Daily News advertisement for a diamond ring from its broader contextual and commercial framework, Warhol ingeniously removed the frame from its relation to the rest of the story. The allure of luxury and the glamor of romance, mesmerizing at first glance, altogether dissolve into a banal reality upon our recognition of the image’s advertorial source. “And yet, even here, in a seemingly universal or even bourgeois symbol like the diamond ring, closer attention to Warhol’s source material reveals another story,” writes Anthony Grudin. “The ring advertisements that Warhol copied were printed on a regular basis in working-class tabloids like the New York Daily News… It was available on credit for $2.75 down, $2.00 weekly.” (Anthony Grudin, Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art (and traveling), Warhol Headlines, 2011-2013, pp. 46-47)  

With his daring response to post-war American modernity’s media and consumerist saturation, Warhol sought a form of art that would reflect the same alienation he witnessed burgeoning in society around him. While Warhol discovered a radical means to remove the hand of the artist with his signature silkscreen technique in 1962, Carat is a seminal and rare painting in Warhol’s conceptual development, witnessing the artist during the nascent stages of his career when he still painted by hand. Using a projector to enlarge his source imagery onto a canvas mounted on a wall, in such early paintings from 1960-61 as Carat, Warhol applied liquid casein to render the motif freehand. As such, “dripping paint and splotches of nonchalant brushwork undermined the signal-life display of the motif,” writes curator George Frei. “The disrupted lettering also produced a language with neither syntax nor meaning. This experimental painting – defined by a spontaneous brushstroke and transformative intent – would remain the exception.” (Exh. Cat., Zurich, Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Andy Warhol. Black & White + Silver, 2019, p. 16) Omitting the second “s” in the word “happiness” that is engraved onto the ring (and never fully depicting the two dollar price tag in the lower right corner), Carat maintains a ghostly, unresolved quality, which sees Warhol reveling in the dialectic between mechanical reproduction and manual craft, with its unavoidable capacity for human error.

GIANCARLO GIAMETTI AND AUDREY HEPBURN WITH CARAT. PHOTO © GIANCARLO GIAMMETTI. ART © 2024 ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

With Carat, Warhol incisively exploits a defining stereotype of our modern culture: the moment of engagement as the ultimate expression of true love. His distortion and magnification of the image in scale here elevate this idealized event and the classical symbolism of the ring to the ultimate status of signifier, effectively triggering universal connotations of love, happiness, and ritual – all without the aid of any surrounding narrative structure. By intentionally appropriating such a symbolic and recognizable commodity from a consumerist context, Warhol astutely focuses on the very mechanisms by which modern capitalism operates: desire, fantasy, and their affiliate emotions.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN, THE RING (ENGAGEMENT), 1962. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK FOR $41.7 MILLION IN MAY 2015. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © ESTATE OF ROY LICHTENSTEIN

Warhol was no stranger to the worlds of advertising and print, beginning his career as a commercial artist in New York in 1949 with advertisements and illustrations for various magazines, department stores and record companies. He instinctively understood the phenomenal potential of popular imagery, and, more than any artist of his generation, he realigned the cipher of that imagery to critically address the ever-proliferating pictorial panorama of culture in 1960s America. Carat oscillates between the emotional content of its rhapsodic imagery and the detached, readymade nature of its advertisement source, succinctly crystalizing the style and themes that preoccupied Warhol for the rest of his life. Like the iconic Coca-Cola bottles in others of his early black-and-white Pop paintings, the advertised engagement ring here represents a perfect symbol for Warhol – ordinary, yet pervasive as a mass-produced object, all while remaining a provocative symbol of American capitalism and desire. “My image is a statement of the symbols of the harsh, impersonal products and brash materialistic objects on which America is built today,” Warhol said in 1961. “It is a projection of everything that can be bought and sold, the practical but impermanent symbols that sustain us.” (The artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., Zurich, Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Andy Warhol. Black & White + Silver, 2019, p. 16) Isolated from the context of the newspaper advertisement, the engagement ring in Carat twinkles with the hopeful ecstasy of promised love and commitment, the spectacular appeal that Warhol saw underlie the machinations of everyday consumer culture.

Double Mona Lisa, 1963

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 5,616,000

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), Double Mona Lisa | Christie’s (christies.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Double Mona Lisa, 1963
Silkscreen ink on canvas
30 x 33 7/8 inches (76.2 x 86 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Andy Warhol 1963’ (on the overlap)

Andy Warhol’s Double Mona Lisa is an early work which brings together two of art history’s greatest icons. Painted in 1963, shortly after Warhol had shocked the art world with his painting of one hundred Campbell’s Soup cans, it was partly inspired by the phenomenal American tour of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa organized by the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. After witnessing the crowds who flocked to see the famous painting (including Warhol himself), the artist painted a series of seven canvases featuring the Mona Lisa. One of only two black-and-white double Mona Lisa’s from the 1960s (the other example is in the Menil Collection, Houston), another example (Four Mona Lisa’s) is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Painted shortly after his Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York), and only within a few months of his Silver Liz canvases of 1963, Double Mona Lisa joins the pantheon of cultural icons that came to define the artist’s career.

As the name suggests, Double Mona Lisa presents two screens of da Vinci’s masterpiece side by side in striking black-and-white monochrome. The left-hand screen displays a slightly cropped version of the original, showing Mona Lisa’s visage against a backdrop of Renaissance Italy. The clarity of this particular screen renders the lush vegetation and meandering rivers of da Vinci’s original in remarkable clarity, even the narrow stone bridge is visible over Mona Lisa’s right shoulder. This clarity continues with the right screen, which presents a close-up of the Mona Lisa’s face, together with her enigmatic smile. This close-up view offers a delicate framing of the face, complete with the diaphanous veil (believed to be a guarnello, worn by Renaissance women while pregnant), and the gold embroidery around the neck of her dark silk dress.

Cover of LIFE Magazine, January 4, 1963.

At the time Warhol painted Double Mona Lisa, the painting had recently completed a highly successful U.S. tour. The journey of the world’s most famous work of art from the Louvre in Paris to the United States began almost six months earlier when, during a visit to Washington, the French Minister of Culture André Malraux whispered to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy that he would be able to grant her wish that the Mona Lisa travel to the United States. When the painting was finally unveiled to the public in January of 1963, there was an outpouring of interest in both the painting and in art in general that kick-started America’s love affair with art, marking the beginning of the age of the blockbuster exhibition. “The visit of the Mona Lisa produced the greatest outpouring of appreciation for a single work of art in American history and pioneered the phenomenon of the blockbuster museum show,” said one commentator. “It was one of the most darling, elaborate art exhibitions ever staged, and the painting’s unlikely, romantic journey to America captured the imagination of the world” (M. L. Davis, Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation, New York, 2008, p. ix). That this event captured Warhol’s imagination should not be a surprise, as it conjured up everything Warhol was fascinated by: fame, beauty and a modicum of art history.

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Photo: © CNAC /MNAM / Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

One of the earliest works in which Warhol employed the silkscreen technique, Double Mona Lisa represents an artist on the cutting edge of his primary mode of expression. In 1962, he adopted the printing process to efficiently duplicate preexisting source material in a stylized aesthetic that has become synonymous with Warhol’s name. In Double Mona Lisa, he delights in the act of appropriation and repetition while masterfully subverting conventional ideas of artistic innovation. The Mona Lisa’s appearance in the United States coincided perfectly with the flourishing of Pop, even acting as a catalyst for Warhol’s inevitable fascination with celebrity and popular culture. Like Robert Rauschenberg, who began silkscreening paintings after visiting Warhol’s studio, Warhol embraced the innovative silkscreen technique as it perfectly suited the new direction of his art, allowing for objectivity and seriality. By representing this icon of high art and culture via the silkscreen process, which was previously employed for commercial and industrial endeavors, Warhol mires the boundaries between high and low in classic Warholian fashion.

Warhol was not the first artist to appropriate Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece in a more contemporary manner. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of Warhol’s greatest influences, famously adorned a postcard-sized reproduction of her famous visage with a mustache and goatee. While Duchamp was attempting to subvert the pretenses of museum and high-art culture, Warhol takes Leonardo’s subject as a readymade icon, the ultimate celebrity of art history, or a brand as famous as Campbell’s Soup. By repeating, cropping, and manipulating the original image, he draws attention to its ubiquity and mass-appeal. Indeed, in 1963, the painting was particularly well-suited for Warhol since, to celebrate the Mona Lisa‘s arrival in New York, museum vendors and tourist shops sold endless reproductions on coffee cups and tote bags. In fact, the artist’s source image for this painting was taken from mass produced Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition brochure.

Tunafish Disaster, 1963

Sotheby’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 482,600

Tunafish Disaster | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Tunafish Disaster, 1963
Silkscreen ink and silver paint on canvas
41×22 inches (104.1 x 55.9 cm)
Stamped twice by the Estate of Andy Warhol and by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Numbered PA57.016 on the overlap

Hailling from Andy Warhol’s legendary Death and Disaster series from 1962, Tunafish Disaster is a work of power, beauty and tragedy. This silver canvas brilliantly illuminates how the agents of mass media – replication and multiplication — both undermine and anesthetize the significance of their subjects, here emblematized as a quotidian catastrophe. The subject of this canvas reveals Warhol’s pre-occupation with the contradictions inherent in public and private despair. Having both tragically died from food poisoning after eating contaminated tuna, the previously anonymous Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Brown were thrown into the public spotlight, providing Warhol with the perfect subject to critique the relationship between death and celebrity with his infamous silkscreen. “Death can really make you look like a star,” Warhol said of this disturbing relationship. (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Gidal, Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings, New York, 1971, p. 38). The source for the Tunafish Disaster series came from a page of the April 1, 1963 edition of Newsweek, which detailed the epitome of what Walter Hopps called the “unpredictable choreography of death” amongst the “banality of everyday disasters.” (Walter Hopps in Exh. Cat., Houston, The Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: ‘Death and Disasters’, 1988, p. 9).

ANDY WARHOL PHOTOGRAPHED IN 1965 BY JOHN D. (PH) SHIFF. IMAGE © LEO BAECK INSTITUTE

Executed in 1963, the present work is uniquely representative of the bridge between Warhol’s fascination with the decade’s consumerist objects, such as the Campbell Soup Cans and Coca Cola Bottle, and his most renowned Death and Disaster Series, which ripped headlines and images from American newspapers of everyday tragedies. Whereas Warhol had satirically glorified the soup can, Coca Cola and coffee products as champions of consumerist advertising, here the tins of tuna are grotesquely transformed from trophies of branding to the carriers of death and, in a bizarre turn of fate, the facilitators of celebrity. The present work features both the fatal tuna can and the smiling faces of its victims, presenting a haunting composite of a contemporary narrative. Using his newly developed photographic silkscreen process in which he combined hand paint with photographic silkscreen printed images, Warhol created only eleven Tunafish Disaster works that vary on this newspaper clipping.

The Tunafish Disaster works are distinguished among the entire Death and Disaster corpus by being silkscreened exclusively on silver backgrounds. Georg Frei and Neil Printz have signaled the importance of this inaugural focus on a single metallic color: “The Tunafish Disasters…are the first in which the silver color is material to the subject” (Georg Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. I, Paintings and Sculptures 1961-1963, New York 2002, p. 342). Tunafish Disaster is the direct descendent of a group of four Silver Disaster Electric Chair paintings, and the direct predecessor to Warhol’s first silver portraits, Silver Marlon and Silver Liz as Cleopatra. The present work thereby establishes a crucial emphasis on the silver color that would define Warhol’s output for the rest of his career. Unlike the preceding Electric Chairs, however, which carry clear shadows of brushstrokes, the silver paint here was applied by hand to be solid and opaque, eradicating the remnants of authorship and moving closer to Warhol’s impersonal mechanical ideal. Warhol’s pioneering method divests the work of any authorial voice and desensitizes the subject by evoking the mass production of newsprint photojournalism. By developing this technique and by faithfully reproducing the alien aesthetic of a found image, Warhol recruits the technical process to interrogate ideas of authorship and authenticity. Tunafish Disaster in this way has a unique relationship to its reproduction, making it one of Warhol’s most striking efforts to understand the relationship between the victims of these tragedies, the mass media, and the public.

PABLO PICASSO, GUERNICA, 1937. MUSEO REINA SOFÍA, MADRID, SPAIN. IMAGE © SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS, LONDON 2024 / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

In keeping with his most iconic work, celebrity, tragedy and the spectre of death are center stage for this work. By reproducing a mass-produced subject and using the silver color of the tunafish can, Warhol exhibits the playful irony between form and subject that is characteristic of so many of his works and serves as a critique of the paradoxical nature of American consumer culture. Scrutinizing the public face of a private disaster, Tunafish Disaster questions how anonymous victims are elevated to notoriety via the exceptional conditions of their demise, or as Crow describes, “the repetition of the crude images does draw attention to the awful banality of the accident and to the tawdry exploitation by which we come to know the misfortunes of strangers” (Ibid). The faces of ordinary women become at once serialized and memorialized, denoting both their banality and their individual humanity. The uncertain interplay between anonymous suffering and the broadcast exposure of loss is here locked into the lamina of silkscreen ink. Tunafish Disaster continues to stand as a testament to Warhol’s powerful integration of aesthetic experimentation and the central thematic concerns of his career, remaining part of one of the most important body of works of the twentieth century.

2.3. Late Works

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The Last Supper, 1986

Aretha Franklin, circa 1986

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Aretha Franklin, circa 1986
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
40×40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 cm)
Stamped with the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. stamps
Numbered ‘PO50.009’ (on the overlap)

multi-faceted portrait featuring the artist’s iconic silkscreen technique accentuated with colorful line drawings and an electric Pop palette, Aretha Franklin is an innovative and fitting tribute to the singer known as the Queen of Soul. This intimate yet grand portrait depicts Aretha as proud and beautiful, a musician at the top of her game whose femininity was an essential element of her power. One of the last paintings that Warhol completed before his death the following year, Aretha Franklin belongs to the small group of paintings that artist made in conjunction with her pop-crossover album Aretha, for which he designed the cover.

Placing the artist against a sultry blue backdrop, and shading half of her face in a wash of transparent blue, Warhol accentuates Aretha’s identity as a soulful singer of “the Blues.” He created a silkscreen of the singer’s face, which is turned slightly toward the viewer with a proud and knowing gaze. Her chin is upturned to confront the viewer head-on. A single, diamond-shaped earring dangles from her ear, which Warhol has rendered pale pink. The bright yellow silhouette around her hair evokes a regal appearance, with the yellow acting as a crown or halo. A thin, vertical strip of color along the extreme right edge acts like a shaft of light, which seems to bathe the singer in a wonderful, soft glow. This was Warhol’s clever use of the portrait’s underlayer, which adds yet another dynamic element to the already fascinating composition.

Although he burst onto the art scene in the 1960s, Warhol’s work of the 1980s is widely regarded to be some of his most innovative and thought-provoking work. These paintings include the Rorschachs, Last Supper, and Fright Wig self-portraits. A growing awareness of the work of younger artists also spurred the artist on to work harder and better, as his friendship with the legendary artist Jean-Michel Basquiat attest. Aretha Franklin therefore demonstrates this renewed commitment to his art, at a time when he would paint some of his very last works.

Left: Workshop of Thutmosis, Model Bust of Nefertiti, circa 1350 BCE. Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung/Staatliche Museen / Sandra Steiß / Art Resource, NY.
Right: Johannes Vermeer, Girl with the Pearl Earing, 1665. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

In Aretha Franklin, we encounter a woman whose confidence and fame is not to be outmatched by even Warhol himself. As befitting her stature as the Queen of Soul, he portrays her with simplicity, elegance and grace. Despite its surface flatness, the portrait is a rich tapestry of artistic influences. Her regal profile view and brightly-delineated eyes and lips recall the ancient Egyptian busts of Queen Nefertiti, and the diamond-shaped earring she wears seems to be stylized in the manner of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Over a career spanning six decades, Aretha Franklin went from singing gospel in her father’s Detroit church to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where—in 1987—she was the first female performer to be inducted. She sold over seventy-five million records worldwide, recording some of her greatest hits, such as “Respect” and Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” at the height of both the Civil Rights Era and the feminist movement. By the time Warhol painted her portrait in 1986, Aretha had already been photographed by some of the greatest artists of the postwar era, including Lee Friedlander and Richard Avedon.

Aretha Franklin, 1971. Photo: Anthony Barboza / Getty Images.

Warhol famously designed some of the most iconic and well-known album covers of all time, including the Velvet Underground’s debut album, “Velvet Underground & Nico,” which featured a bright yellow banana on a white background. Released in March of 1967, early copies of the album had a sticker that cheekily revealed a flesh-colored banana underneath. Warhol also did the album design for the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album in 1971 and Silk Electric for Diana Ross in 1982. The present painting of Aretha relates to the album cover that Warhol created for her self-titled album, Aretha, that debuted in October of 1986.

Album cover, Aretha Franklin with Andy Warhol, Aretha, 1986. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS). Photo: © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Warhol’s Aretha Franklin is an exceptional portrait that has traveled the globe, having featured in many exhibitions of the artist’s work including a 1993 exhibition of Warhol’s portraits in Sydney, Australia, and his big Japanese retrospective in 2001. Most recently, Aretha Franklin appeared in “Warhol Women” at New York’s Lévy-Gorvy Gallery, where it was illustrated in a lavish catalogue, in which the authors declared: “Warhol believed in women, and he knew how to make them beautiful and strong. […] The women who captured the artist’s imagination were glamorous, vital, extraordinary–he had a thirst for life, and surrounded himself with women who felt the same way. His silkscreen portraits shimmer with their vivacity, their sophistication, their sheer presence–they’re alive even today” (Warhol Women, exh. cat., Lévy-Gorvy Gallery, New York, 2019, pp. 7-8).

Statue of Liberty, 1986

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,143,000

Andy Warhol – Modern & Contemporary Art … Lot 16 May 2024 | Phillips

Painted in the last year of Andy Warhol’s life, Statue of Liberty, 1986, serves as the artist’s clever meditation of one of the most recognizable symbols in the United States. The work belongs to a discrete body of paintings Warhol executed which portrays a close-up view of Lady Liberty’s resolute countenance and sharp-edged crown. The present example is notable for its pale green palette evoking the statue’s copper oxidation, a faithful rendition of this civic allegorical figure. As the decade progressed, Warhol’s imagery began to include ambiguous political and religious motifs, which have been interpreted as both earnest and critical. Depicting an iconic American emblem of opportunity and unity, this significant body of paintings have been read as a reflection of the prevailing concerns of this era, such as the burgeoning AIDS crisis and tensions of the Cold War. These nuanced responses have led this image to be celebrated as a prime exemplar of Warhol’s late career, represented by the holding of similar works from the series in major institutional collections, such as The Broad, Los Angeles.

Andy Warhol, Statue of Liberty, 1962. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

The Statue of Liberty featured prominently in media coverage in 1986, making it an ideal subject for Warhol—always an astute observer of contemporary culture. That year marked the centenary of its unveiling in New York in 1886, after the monumental statute designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel, was presented as a gift as a symbolic celebration of American democracy. A century later, during the Fourth of July weekend in 1986, the United States marked this centennial anniversary with a dramatic reveal of the newly restored statue, following an expensive and ambitious two-year restoration. Amidst the media frenzy that preceded this highly-televised event, the icon of American culture saturated the publications and images of everyday life—extensively covered not only in newspapers and magazines, but also on commemorative trinkets such as keychains and coins. Warhol, intrigued by this overwhelming media exposure, culled the image of the Statue of Liberty depicted in the present work from a celebratory cookie tin lid. Even the original logo of the container is kept intact in the lower left corner of Statue of Liberty, featuring both the French and American flags and the inscription “Les bons biscuits Fabis.” Akin to his treatment of Coca-Cola and Campbell’s Soup, the present work represents the banal objects that characterize post-war consumerism, but it also takes this branding one step further to reflect how an American symbol of democracy and opportunity had become an icon of popular culture itself.

Cookie Tin produced by the French cookie company, “Les Bons Biscuits Fabis.”

In the last decade of his career, Warhol turned to his own corpus for source material. Beginning with his Retrospectives series in 1979, he returned to the very images that had solidified his position within modern art history. Warhol’s first depictions of the Statue of Liberty trace back to 1962, when he executed two paintings of the structure based on a postcard image of the New York harbor. The artist returned to the subject nearly twenty-five years later, during a period in his practice that was characterized by both introspective reflection and abundant creativity. He captured the Statue of Liberty under scaffolding for the cover of his 1985 photobook, America, before employing it in the present series of paintings and portraying it in a variety of hues. Towards the end of Warhol’s life, as his position was solidified as one of the most influential post-war artists, not even his own practice remained safe from his unceasing appropriation. In Statue of Liberty, Warhol applied his fundamental principle of reproduction to an image that had already been subject to persistent reproduction itself—on the front pages of newspapers, television, biscuit tins, and even in his own previous works. The ironically gestural, schematic approach manifest in the present work, intended to produce the appearance of brushstrokes, extends his characteristically deadpan wit. As one of the most famous structures in the world, the Statue of Liberty offered Warhol the opportunity for both self-reflection and societal reflection: probing the depths of American identity, freedom, and postmodern replication, it encapsulated the core themes that wove together Warhol’s oeuvre.

 

2.4. Toy Paintings

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Terrier, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 304,800

Terrier | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Terrier, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

In 1983, Zürich-based art dealer Bruno Bischofberger commissioned Andy Warhol to create a series of paintings for children that later became his instantly recognizable Toy Painting series. Inspired by 1960s wound-up and battery-free toys, which at the time were still sold in Germany, Japan, China and Russia, this series of silkscreened canvases depict some of the artist’s most beloved collection of baubles. When unveiled at Bischofberger’s gallery in 1983, the paintings transformed the space into a playful realm. The works hung at a height conducive to a toddler’s view, inviting young eyes to explore, while accompanying adults were required to stoop or sit to fully appreciate the artworks.

ANDY WARHOL’S TOY PAINTINGS EXHIBITION AT GALERIE BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER, ZURICH, 1983. ©2024 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC. / LICENSED BY ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Completely fascinated by the universality of children’s toys and their deeply nostalgic qualities, Warhol remarked, ”Lots of international toys [were] included because a lot of them are the cutest of any I’ve seen” (Andy Warhol, quoted in Seth S. King, “Art: An Andy Warhol Show, For Children’s Eyes”, The New York Times, August 25, 1985, p. 70). Silkscreened onto energetic bright colors, each Toy Painting underscores Warhol’s distinct ability to render the elegant and graphical simplicity of each design.

ANDY WARHOL’S TOY PAINTINGS EXHIBITION AT GALERIE BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER, ZURICH, 1983. ©2024 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC. / LICENSED BY ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

In this series, Warhol elevates children’s toys, an emblem of consumerism, to the realm of high art and in doing so, exposes the artistry and power of the carefully crafted symbols themselves. In his use of recognizable graphics, Warhol transmutes cultural signifiers for his own aesthetic ends. Imbued with an inherent dynamism, the intimately scaled paintings in particular celebrate the infectious spirit of childhood curiosity and creativity.

“In 1982 I asked him to create a group of small works for children. Andy responded with the Toy paintings, which I showed in my gallery in Zurich in 1983. Warhol designed wallpaper of Silver fish swimming on a blue background which made the gallery look like an aquarium, and the paintings were hung at eye level for three- to five-year-old children. Adults had to squat to examine the paintings closely, the opposite of me having to lift up my little children when looking at paintings in museums. We even went so far as to charge an entry fee for adults not accompanied by children under six, the proceeds being donated to a Swiss children’s charity.”

EXCERPT FROM BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER, “A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH ANDY WARHOL”, MAY 2001, IN BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER, VISUAL MEMORY, EDITION BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER,ZURICH, 2001; MAGNUS BISCHOFBERGER, PREHISTORY TO THE FUTURE – HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BISCHOFBERGER COLLECTION, ELECTA, MILAN, 2008

Panda Bear, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 355,600

Panda Bear | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Panda Bear, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Parrot, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 241,300

Parrot | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Parrot, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Choo-Choo Train, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 228,600

Choo-Choo Train | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Choo-Choo Train, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Space Ship, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 292,100

Space Ship | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Space Ship, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Mouse, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 177,800

Mouse | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Mouse, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Monkey, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 241,300

Monkey | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Monkey, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
11×14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Police Car, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 254,000

Police Car | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Police Car, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)
Stamped twice by the Estate of Andy Warhol
Stamped twice by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Numbered PA 20.177 on the overlap and on the stretcher

Aeroplane, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 266,700

Aeroplane | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Aeroplane, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Mouse, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 228,600

Mouse | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Mouse, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Roli Zoli, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 215,900

Roli Zoli | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Roli Zoli, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
11×14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Emergency (Helicopter), 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 215,900

Emergency (Helicopter) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Emergency (Helicopter), 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)
Stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol
Stamped twice by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Numbered PA20.156 on the stretcher and on the overlap

Ship, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 317,500

Ship | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Ship, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
14×11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

Monkey, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 241,300

Monkey | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
Monkey, 1983
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
11×14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Signed and dated 83 (on the overlap)

 

Karen Lerner

stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York and numbered “PO50.601” on the overlap
silkscreen ink on linen
30 x 27 7/8 in. (76.2 x 70.8 cm)
Executed in 1972.

 

 

3. David Hockney

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A Lawn Being Sprinkled, 1967

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 25,000,000 – 35,000,000
USD 28,585,000

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937), A Lawn Being Sprinkled | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
A Lawn Being Sprinkled, 1967
Acrylic on canvas
60×60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, inscribed, titled and dated ‘”Lawn being sprinkled” David Hockney Los Angeles 1967’ (on the reverse)

During the course of his long life, the award-winning writer-producer Norman Lear – along with his wife Lyn Davis Lear – assembled an art collection that championed and celebrated the creative community of Los Angeles. Like David Hockney, Lear moved to Los Angeles as a young man, drawn by the unique opportunities of the California.

A centrepiece of Norman and Lyn Lear’s collection for almost half a century, A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967) is a masterwork dating from one of David Hockney’s most important years. Aglow with the light and color of California, its extraordinary representation of vaporized water forms a thrilling counterpart to the artist’s iconic A Bigger Splash (Tate, London), completed the same year. Hung side by side in Hockney’s major retrospective at Tate Britain, London in 2017, which later travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the two paintings represent the culmination of the artist’s formative years in Los Angeles. The city’s bright blue skies, idyllic homes and immaculate gardens had inspired a string of early masterpieces, dramatizing Hockney’s perceptual response to this sun-drenched world. With its staggering, near-abstract surface detail and complex spatial theatre, A Lawn Being Sprinkled is among the most virtuosic of these canvases, alive with the teachings of art history and sparkling with the lessons of his swimming pool paintings.

Hockney had first arrived in Los Angeles in January 1964, aged just twenty six. Growing up in the North of England during the country’s bleak post-war years, he had long dreamt of America’s West Coast. The novels of John Rechy, and the pages of the fitness magazine Physique Pictorial, had fuelled his youthful imagination, painting a vivid picture of a liberated, sun-soaked paradise. Hockney leapt at the chance to visit after a trip to New York in late 1963, and as he flew in over San Bernardino, he recalls being “more thrilled than I’ve ever been arriving at any other city” (D. Hockney, quoted in conversation with M. Glazebrook, David Hockney: Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-1970, exh. cat., Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1970, p. 11). Turquoise pools shimmered in the heat; huge new freeways rose up from the ground. Hockney realized that this shining utopia, so full of promise and possibility, had never been depicted in art. “I suddenly thought: ‘My God, this place needs its Piranesi,’” he recalls. “‘Los Angeles could have a Piranesi, so here I am!’” (D. Hockney, quoted in conversation with M. Bragg, The Listener, London, May 22, 1975, p. 673).

David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967. Tate, London. © David Hockney. Photo: © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY

Over the next four years, Hockney settled happily into L.A. life. The city quickly surpassed his greatest fantasies, and he became ensconced in a lively creative circle that included the writer Christopher Isherwood, the artist Don Bachardy and the dealer Nick Wilder. By 1966, Hockney had met his first true love: a Californian art student named Peter Schlesinger. That summer, the two moved in together in a tiny house on Pico Boulevard, where they remained for a year. It was, Hockney recalls, “the happiest year I spent in California”: a quiet period of rose-tinted seclusion, in which the artist threw himself into vivid depictions of the people and places around him (D. Hockney, quoted in N. Stangos (ed.), David Hockney by David Hockney, New York, 1976, p. 151). Masterworks such as Sunbather (1966, Museum Ludwig, Cologne), Portrait of Nick Wilder (1966), Beverly Hills Housewife (1966-1967) and The Room, Tarzana (1967) tumbled in quick succession. In 1967, Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966) won Hockney first prize at the prestigious John Moores Exhibition in Liverpool, and was subsequently acquired by the city’s Walker Art Gallery. “The paintings of these years were his best to date,” wrote the critic and curator Henry Geldzahler; “… all breathe a clarity of light, perception and realized intention that mark Hockney’s new and greater ambition to paint the world of today dead-on” (H. Geldzahler, quoted ibid., p. 16).

David Hockney, Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966-1967. Private Collection. © David Hockney

At the centre of this body of work were two closely-related trios: three “splash” paintings—A Little Splash, The Splash and A Bigger Splash—and three “sprinkler” paintings—A Neat Lawn, A Lawn Sprinkler (Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo) and the present work. Chris Stephens, curator of Hockney’s 2017 Tate retrospective, wrote that these works represent “the high point” of his attempts to depict water (C. Stephens, David Hockney, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2017, p. 68). Since 1964, Hockney’s pool paintings had grappled with the challenge of capturing its mercurial, translucent properties: “it is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything,” he explained (D. Hockney, quoted ibid., p. 48). In both the “splashes” and the “sprinklers”, Hockney shifted away from painting shimmering liquid surfaces, instead capturing single moments of eruption and diffusion with almost photographic clarity and bravura. “I loved the idea … of painting like Leonardo, all his studies of water,” he explained. “And I loved the idea of painting this thing that lasts for two seconds” (D. Hockney, quoted in N. Stangos, ibid., p. 126).

Left: David Hockney, A Lawn Sprinkler, 1967. Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. © David Hockney.
Right: David Hockney with A Neat Lawn (1967) in his North Kensington studio, 1968. Photo: Jorge Lewinski. © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth. All Rights Reserved 2024 / Bridgeman Images. Artwork: © David Hockney.

Based on a drawing that Hockney made the previous year, A Lawn Being Sprinkled plays eloquently with this sense of compressed time. Comparing the painting directly to A Bigger Splash, the artist’s biographer Marco Livingstone hails his “wit in devising new signs for representing water, the strong sense of design and boldness of color, and the playful way in which an observed scene has been used to construct an almost abstract painting.” It is, however—he writes—“the stillness of [both] images that lingers longest in the mind” (M. Livingstone, David Hockney, London, 2017, p. 109). The work is arrested by a near-Minimalist sense of serial repetition: from the neat rows of roof tiles, to the planar divisions of grass, fence and sky, to the rhythmic wooden slats and the ordered arrangement of the sprinklers themselves. Within this rigorous framework, all sense of movement seems halted: the droplets of water are permanently suspended in mid-air, while the lawn—each blade individually combed—confronts the viewer like television static, its ripples and undulations frozen in an abstract jigsaw. The house, meanwhile, looms like a lonely Edward Hopper mansion, silent, still and quivering with anthropomorphic charge.

Edward Hopper, High Noon, 1949. Dayton Art Institute. © 2024 Heirs of Josephine Hopper / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: © Dayton Art Institute / Gift of Mr and Mrs Anthony Haswell / Bridgeman Images.

These effects are heightened by Hockney’s masterful manipulation of geometric space. On one hand, his work during this period was deeply influenced by artists such as Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca, whose interrogations of perspective provided him with a vital springboard for his own explorations of human sight and vision. Yet while certain elements of the painting obey these laws—the receding height of the sprinklers, for example, or the shrinking blades of grass—Hockney ultimately disrupts all sense of linear depth. Paul Melia and Ulrich Luckhardt note that “the lawn does not become appreciably lighter in tone as it moves into the middle distance; the lines formed by the tiles on the roof would never converge on a vanishing point; the sprays of water do not possess volume. Our attention thus constantly returns to the literal surface of the canvas” (P. Melia and U. Luckhardt, David Hockney, Munich, 2007, p. 82). Hockney’s plants and palm trees hover like Matisse cut-outs, seemingly out of joint with the rest of the image. The painting remains in a perpetual state of disoriented tension, refusing to resolve. Ultimately, then, A Lawn Being Sprinkled sits at a critical juncture in Hockney’s practice. On one hand, it marks the zenith of his halcyon years in California, offering a quintessential image of the neighborhoods and lifestyle with which he had fallen so deeply in love. On the other hand, it is a technical tour de force, capturing the sophisticated handing of space, perspective and surface detail that would fan the flame of his practice over the coming decades. It is a portrait of LA, but also a portrait of Hockney himself, every inch of its surface dedicated to dissecting the workings of his own vision. It looks back to the lessons of the Italian Renaissance while teetering on the brink of total abstraction. It is perfect marriage of order and chaos, the fleeting, ephemeral formations of the sprinkler frozen in geometric perfection. In the balmy heat, time seems to stand still, framed forever in crystalline splendor.

A Bigger Wave, 1989

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
USD 8,307,300

A Bigger Wave | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
A Bigger Wave, 1989
Oil on canvas, on four joined panels
60 x 72 1/4 inches (152.4 x 183.5 cm)
Signed, titled and dated March 1989 (on the reverse)

Thin, diaphanous washes of ochre and teal collide with the sculptural white impasto of David Hockney’s A Bigger Wave, which sees the artist at a heightened spatial and sensorial sensitivity as he indulges the newfound splendors of the California coast. Here, Hockney takes on what he has described as “the largest swimming pool in the world,” the sea, and deploys the titular device of “A Bigger…,” bestowed upon his expansions of his most significant subjects, such as the Grand Canyon, his studio interiors, through to the iconic pool seen in A Bigger Splash. (the artist quoted in: “Chronology: 1988,” The David Hockney Foundation (online)) A Bigger Wave, executed in 1989, takes inspiration from his move to Malibu from the Hollywood Hills the year prior, during which time he was the subject of a critically acclaimed retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, his first in the United States. A Bigger Wave, which ranks among the largest in Hockney’s limited group of paintings featuring the wave motif, shows Hockney stirred by his proximity to the sea in a heady rediscovery of his adopted hometown.

LEFT: KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, UNDER THE WAVE OF KANAGAWA FROM THE SERIES 36 VIEWS OF MT.FUJI, C.1830-31. IMAGE © TOKYO FUJI ART MUSEUM / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. RIGHT: ROY LICHTENSTEIN, WHITE BRUSHSTROKE I, 1965. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK FOR $25.4 MILLION IN JUNE, 2020. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © ESTATE OF ROY LICHTENSTEIN

In the present work, the ocean swells over the shore in hyperbolic shades of emerald, cerulean, and ultramarine. As spume collides with sand, forming a rich fringe of white froth, the waves of the background coalesce into weighty, near-cylindrical cones, accumulating with a density that belies their natural transience. Marrying a saturated Fauve palette with a Cubist reconfiguration of space and depth, Hockney takes the centuries-long art historical tradition and amalgamates the works of his predecessors to present a scene unmistakably his. A Bigger Wave casts aside the Academic obsession with perspectival accuracy and the terror-laced awe of Romanticism; Hockney riffs on Botticelli, whose stylized ripples birthed Venus, on Courbet and Homer, who a century earlier wrestled with the ocean’s violent sprays of mist and its tempestuous undulations, and on the ubiquity of Hokusai’s image of Kanagawa. His meditation on the theme, however, offers a delightfully benign alternative: the water is active yet undoubtedly warm, the picture graced by the suggestion of an impossibly blue sky overhead.

DAVID HOCKNEY AT HIS BEACH HOUSE IN MALIBU, CALIFORNIA, 1991. PHOTO © PAUL HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES

In 1988 Hockney purchased a residence and studio in Malibu. His commute to and from his former home on Mulholland Drive became the Pacific Coast Highway, the flat grids of the San Fernando Valley seen from the hills giving way to stretches of unending coastline. As Hockney acclimated to Malibu’s palisade-lined beaches, the coexistence of mountain and sea manifested itself in the paintings to follow. The monumentality and volumetric playfulness in Hockney’s treatment of water in A Bigger Wave are thus legible as a shrewd conflation of Malibu’s topography, which would further evolve into his geometric V.N. (Very New) abstractions of the 1990s. From his new dining room, encased in floor-to-ceiling windows, Hockney was suffused by panoramic views of the Pacific, and in his studio he began to experiment with a fax machine, which he used to collage massive arrangements of sheets into singular, composite images. Hockney’s proximity to the ocean—in all its enormity—proved so generative that it prompted a physical expansion in the size of his work.

WILLEM DE KOONING, UNTITLED, 1979. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK FOR $34.8 MILLION IN NOVEMBER 2022. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © 2024 THE WILLEM DE KOONING FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

The ecstasy Hockney found in adjusting to life in Malibu mirrors his first revelatory encounters with Los Angeles, when he arrived in the city nearly three decades earlier. The epic three-part crescendo of the Splash paintings find their mature counterpart in A Bigger Wave, as the ocean provided uncontrollable, immeasurably constant movement and splashes to capture on canvas. Hockney’s repeated and resolutely enthusiastic approach to discovering and rediscovering the cities of southern California infuses his paintings with the spirit of the state’s Bacchanalian arcadia of social liberation, sexual freedom, and wealth of leisure. Ultimately, A Bigger Wave testifies to Hockney’s belief in repetition—that a place or subject can become more miraculous the longer one looks—and offers a euphoric impression of his visual appetite, a curiosity sated only by creation.

SURFRIDER BEACH IN MALIBU, 2014. PHOTO © BY TED SOQUI/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

“With their high horizon lines (or even lack of horizon),” Andrew Wilson observed, “what the Malibu paintings of this period addressed was an immersive looking into deep space, a slowness, a drawing out of time.” (Andrew Wilson quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Tate Britain (and travelling), David Hockney, 2017, p. 146) The work to come from this period of Hockney’s career would shape the trajectory of the rest of his prolific, celebrated career. Innocuous yet formidable, sun-soaked and sublime, A Bigger Wave represents the apex of his exploration with the ephemeral and exemplifies Hockney’s deeply personal and idealistic vision of life in Los Angeles.

 

4. Roy Lichtenstein

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Purple Range, 1966

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 3,000,000 – 4,000,000
USD 3,690,000

Purple Range | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Purple Range, 1966
Acrylic, oil and graphite on canvas
36×48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)
Signed and dated ’66 (on the reverse)

Roy Lichtenstein’s Purple Range is a highly sophisticated example of the Landscape series that was pivotal in defining the artist’s signature Pop idiom. Executed in 1966, Purple Range dates to the first decade of Lichtenstein’s mature output, during which he pioneered his signature Pop aesthetic, appropriating comic books and the language of mass printing. Only a few years prior, Lichtenstein’s paintings of blonde comic-inspired bombshells launched the artist into international acclaim; the present work sees Lichtenstein take the same language of commercial imagery and apply it to landscape. One of Lichtenstein’s earliest and most revisited subject matters that would form the foundation of his Pop vision, the landscape signified the sentiment of a mythical American ideal, as embodied by the saturated, cinematic atmosphere in Purple Range. Testifying to the significance of his landscapes, other examples are held in prestigious international museums, such as Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, including Purple Range’s sister work, Yellow Sky from 1966, held in the collection of Museum Ulm in Germany. With its keyed-up primary hues, elegantly bolded lines, and trademark Ben-Day dots, Purple Range encapsulates the enduring potency of Lichtenstein’s signature Pop aesthetic and visual language, whilst showcasing the inventive mind of an artist at the zenith of his extraordinary career.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN AND LEO CASTELLI, C. 1960S. PHOTO UGO MULAS © UGO MULAS HEIRS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ART © ESTATE OF ROY LICHTENSTEIN

Purple Range’s illusory depth is both inventively sleek and deeply moving: the regimented execution of Ben-Day recalls techniques of mechanical reproduction, while the expansive sky evokes a sense of imposing grandeur. In the pointillist tradition of Seurat, Lichtenstein conjures an elegantly articulated purple strip spanning across the bottom quarter of the canvas, which serves as a source of gravity for the ephemeral vastness evoked by the undulating yellow sky above, which is punctuated by dots of red. By employing the dot patterning commonly used in printing imagery, known as Ben-Day dots, Lichtenstein emphasizes the industrial mode through which his pop culture icons are transmuted. Demonstrating Lichtenstein’s interest in the mechanics of Ben-Day dots to produce nuanced hues of color from the primary shades, the purple we see in the present work is constructed of blue and red points. Lichtenstein alternates the dots such that they create an optical illusion and read to the viewer as purple; closer inspection reveals the artifice inherent to its production as the purple breaks down into its primary components of blue and red.

Drawing inspiration from concurrent, increasingly predominant Minimalist tastes in New York City, Purple Range offers a graphic reduction of familiar architectonic landscapes: the rolling hills and expanse of sky, with all its permutations of light and dark, shadow and reflection, become a flat amalgam of lines, shapes and color. Meanwhile, its nuanced organic forms become rigid and geometric, as if nature’s disorder is ironed out to become a highly composed arrangement. In doing so, Purple Range exemplifies one of the most important innovations of Lichtenstein’s career: the creation of a wholly original visual lexicon, befitting the consumerist modern era of the late 20th century by drawing from a rich compendium of art historical references and ultimately culminates in a captivating homage to the past.

Nostalgic and filmic, the topography of Purple Range elicits lost vistas of the Western epic, of lone rangers and pioneering adventurers, while retaining its formal sophistication. As a landscape, Purple Range presents a moment of quiet and contemplation, yet it nonetheless speaks strongly to his interest in popular culture as a meditation on art production as it is inflected by mass consumption. In 1966, the same year as the present work, Lichtenstein asserted his conviction that “almost all of the landscape, all of our environment seems to be made, partially, of a desire to sell products. This is the landscape that I am interested in portraying” (the artist in conversation with Alan Solomon quoted in: Graham Bader, “Emptied Gesture: Roy Lichtenstein’s “Brushstrokes,” Artforum, Summer 2011 (online)).

As evidence of his intention to “make a beautiful sky that would stop your eye as you went by a store,” Purple Range depicts a clichéd image that verges on the kitsch (Ibid). Purple Range is not an actual landscape, but rather the stereotype of a fictive landscape – one that is quintessentially optimistic and American. It draws on images on the providential abundance of the American frontier and the American dream, indelibly ingrained into a shared public consciousness. By reducing all extraneous pictorial detail and traces of narrative to an absolute minimum, Lichtenstein bestows on Purple Range an emblematic fixity that transcends the here and now to create a monolithic image of monumental and enduring presence. Through Lichtenstein’s process of manipulation and reframing, his image of the lone mountain ridge comes closer to the Platonic ideal of comic book style than the comic book source itself. Purple Range is an exemplar of Roy Lichtenstein’s 1960s praxis: a bold, graphic depiction of an instantly recognizable subject, executed in the chromatic saturation of popular comic books.

Modern Painting with Ionic Column, 1967

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997), Modern Painting with Ionic Column | Christie’s (christies.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Modern Painting with Ionic Column, 1967
Acrylic, oil and graphite on canvas
62 x 82 1/8 inches (157.5 x 208.6 cm)
Signed and dated ‘rf Lichtenstein ‘67’ (on the reverse)

A heroic painting from the 1960s, whose visual inventiveness rivals his best work, Roy Lichtenstein’s Modern Painting with Ionic Column is a Pop Art work of genius where the history of Western art collides with the Art Deco motifs of an Industrial Age and the Classical architecture of Ancient Greece. In 1967, Lichtenstein expanded the parameters of his Pop Art vernacular to come face-to-face with the illustrious history of modern art. Broadening both his scope and ambition, the celebrated Pop artist now tackled the great “isms” of the Western canon. He called this series “Modern Paintings.” In the present example,, Lichtenstein references Art Deco, Greek Architecture, Cubism, Futurism and Purism, proving that, as critic Dave Hickey explained, “art history flows any way it wants to: forward, backward, or to the side” (D. Hickey, Roy Lichtenstein: Modern Paintings, exh. cat., Richard Gray Gallery, New York, 2010, p. 12). These beloved paintings proved to be some of his most radical and groundbreaking to date, with examples now found in prestigious museum collections around the world, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

A ceaseless innovator whose work continues to represent the very pinnacle of American Pop Art painting, Roy Lichtenstein, in the mid-to-late 1960s, expanded his visual repertoire beyond comic-book heroines to enter into the realm of High Art. With the improvisational flair of a jazz musician, Lichtenstein riffs off Western culture in the present work. Proceeding from left to right, he begins with the Ancient Greeks and their eternal quest for balance and harmony, which is represented by an Ionic column and artist’s palette. In the center panel, we encounter the fractured pictorial planes of Cubism, with a red circle and a field of benday dots possibly representing Picasso’s guitar. Three puffy clouds in the upper register evoke a blue sky, but these are now flattened into geometric shapes and “shaded” with benday dots. Along the right edge we find the Art Deco style of the Industrial Age, where the stylized depiction of a mighty steam ship sets a course for an epic collision between past, present and future.

Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait du Suzy Solidor, 1933. Château Musée, Cagnes-sur-mer. © 2024 Tamara Art Heritage / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, NY
Fernand Léger, Woman Holding a Vase (definitive state), 1927. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY.

As the art critic Lawrence Alloway noted, Lichtenstein’s work at this time “can do two things – it can switch a comic book into fine art, or it can switch fine art into comic style” (L. Alloway, “On Style: An Examination of Roy Lichtenstein’s Development Despite a New Monograph on the Artist,” Artforum, March 1972, p. 54). Indeed, for Lichtenstein, the Western art historical canon was not meant to be opined over or lauded. Instead, it’s simply grist for the mill. This proved to be a rewarding and fertile enterprise for the artist, as the subject of “Art History” would continue to fascinate him well into the 1970s and ‘80s. During that time, Lichtenstein created thought-provoking and original paintings using just a modicum of means, typically limiting his palette–as he does in the present work–to primary colors, benday dots and raking diagonal lines. In his paintings that referenced Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and Still Life painting, Lichtenstein reminds us that “Pop art [is], by and large, an art of quotations, translations, imitations, double takes” (L. Alloway, Ibid., pp. 54-55).

Roy Lichtenstein, Modern Painting with Clef, 1967. Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

The impetus for the Modern Paintings dates to the summer of 1966, when Lichtenstein was asked to design a poster for Lincoln Center. He took as his inspiration the Art Deco architecture of 1920s and ‘30s New York, which he simplified and exaggerated, limiting his palette to primary colors, Ben-Day dots and featuring the same comic-book style of the earlier ‘60s. The artist perceived the many layers of reference already encoded in the Art Deco style, which he humorously referred to as “Cubism for the Home.” The clean, sleek look of Art Deco came to symbolize New York as a modern metropolis, characterized by stylized zigzags, chevrons and geometric shapes. 

“The sensibility that I’m trying to bring is apparent anti-sensibility. I think that’s the important part of it! It’s a modern sensibility. Instead of…the European sensibility, I’m using flat areas of color opposed to dotted areas, which imitate Benday dots in printing and become industrialized textures…but it’s a modern industrial texture and it’s not one that is nostalgic or refers back to European painting… It has its own mode, its own sensibility.” 

Robert Rauschenberg, Persimmon, 1964. © 2024 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

These epic and masterful “Modern” paintings reward the spectator’s time in close looking, often revealing Lichtenstein’s sly and clever sleight of hand. Particularly in the present work, Lichtenstein uses a variety of artistic shorthand devices. His dots lend a three-dimensional modeling and roundness to the things they depict, but they are also used arbitrarily, as in the artist’s palette at left, which thereby flips the relationship between the foreground and background into a flickering back-and-forth where none of the imagery is what it seems. The canvas is divided into five relatively equal diagonal segments, with the black and white diagonals representing shafts of light, the fretboard of a guitar, or the upper deck of a steamship.  The Modern Paintings corresponded to a period of increasing international acclaim. In 1966, Lichtenstein was selected as one of five artists chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. The following year, he was given his first European retrospective, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. He was also included in the 1967 “Whitney Annual” (now known as the Whitney Biennial), where Modern Painting with Ionic Column debuted to the art-going public in December of 1967. 

Roy Lichtenstein in his studio, Bowery Street, New York, 1964. Photo: Ugo Mulas © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved. Artwork: © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein often worked from reproductions and photographs that would have appeared in newspapers and magazines. He sampled freely from all areas of art history, and his deliberately flat style calls to mind the inherent flatness of the pictorial plane, and the fact that all representative art is in fact a false presentation meant to mimic the look of the real thing. He also understood the way in which the most radical and progressive artistic movements ultimately became co-opted, a watered-down pastiche of the real thing. Indeed, Lichtenstein seems to remind us, time and again, that his ultimate subject matter was not the comic book or Janson’s “History of Art.” Rather, it was the very act of artmaking itself, and he therefore–with characteristic tongue-in-cheek glee–inserted himself into the very canon that he once sought to disrupt. 

Yellow Abstraction, 1968

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,016,000

Yellow Abstraction | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Yellow Abstraction, 1968
Acrylic and oil on canvas with brass, in 4 joined parts
Overall: 48 1/4 x 131 3/4 inches (122.6 x 334.6 cm)
Signed and dated ’68 (on the reverse)

Roy Lichtenstein’s Yellow Abstraction exemplifies the artist’s profound engagement and conceptual exploration of the painted medium, capturing his innovative approach to combining materials within the context of his iconic and immediately recognizable style. Executed during a period of deep introspection, this artwork showcases Lichtenstein’s enduring interest in redefining conventional artistic boundaries. During the late 1960’s, Lichtenstein’s vision underwent a transformative phase marked by a fusion of graphic elements, bold colors, and a playful yet calculated deconstruction of traditional artistic forms.

Yellow Abstraction, with its acrylic and oil on canvas presented in four parts, reflects Lichtenstein’s keen sense of composition and materiality. The incorporation of brass and wood into the canvas underscores Lichtenstein’s willingness to challenge artistic norms and venture into multidimensional artistic expressions. The artwork is characterized by a meticulous arrangement of angular and rectilinear forms. The yellow tones, with their myriad gradients, and thick black outlines, load the piece with a particular luminous and radiant element, making it vibrate, exerting a restless energy to the viewer observing the piece.

In 1960’s, Lichtenstein’s work demonstrated a nuanced balance between representation and abstraction. While rooted in his comic-inspired style, this period saw Lichtenstein exploring new ways of rendering subjects through simplified forms and vivid colors. Yellow Abstraction, with its title suggestive of a departure from literal representation towards a more interpretative realm, invites viewers to engage with the artwork on multiple levels.

The piece pushes against the traditional boundaries of canvas and composition as its patterns reach out as if to escape the confines of their two-dimensional world. The artwork rejects symmetry, inviting the viewer’s gaze to wander through its layered labyrinths. At such an impressive scale, the lack of focal point creates a mesmerizing and almost emotive experience for the viewer. Its commanding presence does not create dismay, but rather invites viewers to get closer and question the significance of the artist’s interplay between its color and form.

Crucially, Yellow Abstraction is not a singular, uninterrupted canvas but an assemblage of four distinct parts, each a fragment that contributes to a coherent whole. This format allows the work to inhabit space in a modular fashion, suggesting a versatility and adaptability in how it might be perceived.

The interplay of straight edges and sharp corners conjures a sense of geometric rigor. Coupled with a playful monochromatic color scheme, this work of art is a vivid exploration of visual harmony and contrast. It skillfully balances the austerity of its form with a lively, engaging simplicity that invites the viewer to consider the subtle complexities hidden within its stark palette. Yellow Abstraction challenges viewers to explore the boundaries between abstraction and representation, solidifying Lichtenstein’s enduring impact on modern art.

 

 

 

Woman Reading, 1980

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000

Woman Reading | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Woman Reading, 1980
Oil and acrylic on canvas
54×70 inches (137.2 x 177.8 cm)
Signed and dated ’80 (on the reverse)

A striking composition of bold color and masterful compositional deployment of line, Woman Reading is an extraordinary example of Roy Lichtenstein’s visualization and reimagination of the most notable art historic motifs and movements in his iconic Pop aesthetic. After two decades of exploring the design elements of Art Deco Modernism, Cubist and Fauvist-inspired still life tableaus and his reinvigoration of Surrealist imagery through the late 70s, Lichtenstein arrived at German Expressionism’s in 1979, starting a series based upon the Twentieth Century masters. Lichtenstein was moved by the bright colors, anxious black lines and the economy of positive and negative space communicated by the paintings and woodblock prints of artists including Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Beckmann and sought to mirror them in his own work. In an interview conducted with Hans Ulrich Obrist on the occasion of Lichtenstein Expressionism at Gagosian Paris in 2013, he recollected the potential impetus for Lichtenstein’s Expressionist investigation: “Roy visited the famous Rifkind Collection in Los Angeles in 1978, his interest surely had something to do with the sense of flatness in the German Expressionist prints he saw there…In all of Lichtenstein’s work there is a flatness.” (Hans Ulrich Obrist in: Exh. Cat., Paris, Gagosian Gallery, Lichtenstein Expressionism, 2013, p. 28) This sense of flatness in Woman Reading is exemplary of Lichtenstein’s adept articulation of the movement’s stylistic hallmarks and reveals the artist’s ever-expanding visual lexicon through the absorption of watershed moments in art history into his own work, painting himself into art history through his appropriation.

In tandem with his stylistic dialogue with the masters who preceded him, Lichtenstein was adept in subverting the most notable tropes explored throughout history. In Woman Reading, Lichtenstein coopted the depiction of a female figure reading. This is a subject that has been revisited by many—from Vermeer to Corot, Fragonard to Manet, Matisse to Hopper—and Lichtenstein in turn depicts a highly abstracted figure reclining forward engrossed in an open book, her gendered identity barely discernable through the artist’s meandering graphic line contrasted strict diagonals denotating her form. Lichtenstein’s chromaticity reveals the influence of Matisse’s Fauvist voice: similar to Matisse’s masterpiece The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room), Lichtenstein uses red to flatten and vitalize a domestic scene, in which a female figure is raptured in repose before an open window in the upper left. Through a comparison of the 1980 painting to the artist’s preparatory study on paper, the woman’s color-blocked coiffure can be identified a towel piled high upon her head and connotates the intended, intimate image of a figure in repose.

LEFT: DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ, THE TOILET OF VENUS (‘THE ROKEBY VENUS’), 1947-51. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. RIGHT: PABLO PICASSO, WOMAN LYING ON A COUCH, 1939. PRIVATE COLLECTION. IMAGE © SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS, LONDON 2024 / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

In consideration of the woman reading as a historic motif, in this moment captured by Lichtenstein the male gaze is highly abstracted—a nuance that cannot be overlooked. Although often a moment of intimate innocence, this pose was occasionally one of the most empowering modes of portrayal in which women were cast by male artists historically, the subtext colored significantly by the contemporary societal acceptance or displeasure in women indulging in the expansion of their education through reading. From paintings depicting the Virgin Mary with a book in scenes of the Annunciation, to Renaissance portraits of distinguished women of nobility, literacy has historically been an attribute of class or referenced a specific literary narrative. The genre of female figures reading evolved through the prism of societal approval and was directly informed by the perception of female literacy as a sometimes-threatening reference to independence, pleasure and agency. Lichtenstein’s Woman Reading acknowledges the important historicity of the formal trope and through his idiosyncratic abstraction, diffuses the gaze and relates the necessity of reevaluation of history through contemporary means.

Formidable in the scope of its referential vernacular, Woman Reading presents Lichtenstein’s deep fascination and leverage of art historical references, culminating in a captivating homage to the past. Executed on an impressive scale and peppered with yellows and blues which punctuate its deep red palette, in its sophisticated and layered contextual association Woman Reading epitomizes Lichtenstein’s timeless oeuvre rich with material nuance, and his evolution through adaptation to the defining style which places him among one of the most celebrated artists of the 20^th century.

Painting: Silver Frame, 1984

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997), Painting: Silver Frame | Christie’s (christies.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Painting: Silver Frame, 1984
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
54×60 inches (137.2 x 152.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Lichtenstein ’84’ (on the reverse)

Lichtenstein’s Painting: Silver Frame speaks to the artist’s inherent interest in the history of art and painting. Executed at his East 29^th Street New York studio, the present work was painted at the apex of Lichtenstein’s trailblazing and continually inventive career, and brilliantly exemplifies the artist’s satirical character. The emotive immediacy of the Abstract-Expressionism stroke and the carefully flattened coolness of Pop are pitted against each other in a balanced composition stemming from the artist’s acclaimed Brushstroke series. Held in the same private collection since 1987, this exemplary composition surfaces to the public eye for the first time in nearly four decades.

Photography: Roy Liechtenstein‘s Studio, circa 1984. (present lot Illustrated). Photo: Hans Namuth. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate. Artwork: © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

Painting: Silver Frame was prominently displayed at Castelli Gallery as part of the pioneering 1987 exhibition, Art Against AIDS. This monumental event united renowned galleries in a citywide showcase lasting six months, featuring masterpieces by iconic artists like Picasso, Giacometti, Pollock, de Kooning, Nevelson, and Hockney. Over 600 artists, along with dealers and collectors, joined forces to raise vital funds in support of combating the critical AIDS crisis. After this exhibition, the painting was acquired by esteemed collectors, Mary and John Pappajohn. The Pappajohns were extremely generous philanthropists, with their most culturally significant gift being the world-class public sculpture park in West Des Moines.

Although regarded as one of the founders of Pop Art, over the course of his career, Lichtenstein examined the formal language of many art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. In Painting: Silver Frame, the cartoonish rendering of the signature of Abstract Expressionism – the dripping, expressive bravura brushstroke – served as a parody of the omnipresent style of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s and 1960s and objectively frames it within the Pop idiom.

Source imagery for the brushstrokes, from “The Painting” by Dick Giordano, Strange Suspense Stories, No. 72, October 1964, Charlton Comics.

In 1965, Lichtenstein started developing a motif that would remain as one of his favorites throughout his career: the brushstroke. Although the Brushstroke paintings were informed by Abstract Expressionism, their sources are more varied. They are more than superficial parodies of abstract paintings; they are about issues in Lichtenstein’s art. The starting point was a comic strip; one of the artist’s first paintings from the series from the 1960s was a direct reference to a frame from the comic book which included a story titled “The Painting,” a horror story from Charlton Comics’ Strange Suspense Stories, no. 72 (October 1964). Here, the cartoonist shows an oversized brush and two large overlapping strokes of paint; it is from this particular comic strip image that Lichtenstein developed the ideas for the celebrated series.

The composition is structured around fluid, undulating, vertical stripes interlaced with sinuous black lines that command presence. Ethereal hues of yellow, blue, and red, are occasionally intersected by somber blacks, greys, and deep blues with a subtle touch of pink. Unmistakably, one can note the corners of a silver frame along the left and top edges, intriguingly missing from the rest of the surface. This disappearance hints that the viewer glimpses only a fraction of the concealed whole, imbuing the scene with an air of enigma. By inserting a painting in a painting in a nod to Velazquez Las Meninas, Lichtenstein reinvigorates the classic mise-en-abyme technique, propelling it forward to his time. During the Pop Art era, the towering influence of Abstract Expressionism commanded both admiration and a sense of constraint. Artists like Lichtenstein grappled with the weight of this predominant style, recognizing its revered status while also challenging its prominence. His innovative use of a stylized “brushstroke” imagery served as a deliberate departure from the heroic brushwork of Abstract Expressionists, daring their once avant-garde allure. By the 1960s, abstraction had become ingrained in the public consciousness, paralleling the pervasive presence of consumer mass media. While Lichtenstein’s Painting: Silver Frame acknowledges the groundbreaking achievements of Abstract Expressionism, it also subverts its splendor by presenting an ironic interpretation of its revered status. Through his signature style of incorporating comic book aesthetics and mechanical reproduction techniques, Lichtenstein challenges the notion of high art and invites viewers to reconsider the boundaries between fine art and popular culture. Central to this subversion is Lichtenstein’s choice of the brushstroke as his subject matter, a conscious nod to the heroic allover brushwork of Abstract Expressionism.

Diego Rodriguez Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

“Visible brushstrokes in a painting convey a sense of grand gesture. But, in my hands, the brushstroke becomes a depiction of the grand gesture. So the contradiction between what I’m portraying and how I’m portraying it is sharp. The brushstroke became very important for my work.”

Throughout the decades, Lichtenstein looked at every corner of art history. He pioneered his enduring style, while embracing the movements that resulted in postwar and contemporary art. Painting: Silver Frame is the result of his relationship between the choice of subject matter and how it is depicted and challenges the authority of such inimitable gestures. A painting can be reduced to a sign and a brushstroke can be the means by which we recognize not only style, but content. Across this large-scale canvas, Lichtenstein takes the essence of twentieth-century art and frames it within the Pop idiom.

Cubist Still Life, 1974

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 1,000,000

Cubist Still Life | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Cubist Still Life, 1974
Acrylic, oil, sand and graphite on canvas
20×24 inches (51 x 61.1 cm)
Signed and dated ’74 (on the reverse)

A striking kaleidoscope of intersecting colors, forms and patterns, Cubist Still Life from 1974 showcases Roy Lichtenstein’s mastery in engaging with and subverting the tenets and tropes of the twentieth century to synthesize his unique brand of Pop Art. The present work addresses the Cubist movement of the early 1900s head on, taking its distinct planes and abstracted forms and reconfiguring them into a radically innovative still life. The characteristic depiction of a table laden with plateware and fruit is made new and deftly rearticulated through Lichtenstein’s signature pictorial devices. Lichtenstein executed eleven paintings titled Cubist Still Life from 1973 to 1975, of which this is the third; at least four are in preeminent museum collections, underscoring the rarity and significance of the present work.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN, Cubist Still Life, 1974, National Gallery of Art
Cubist Still Life (nga.gov)

Initially focused on the consumer culture of postwar America in the early 1960s – its commercialism, abundance, and entertainment – Lichtenstein morphed this source material into his pioneering Pop iconography. The late 1960s and 1970s marked an undaunted departure from this subject; he turned his attention to Art History itself. Beginning with the Art Deco movement in 1966, Lichtenstein created the Modern Paintings and Sculptures series. In 1968, he moved to Impressionism with numerous iterations of haystacks and cathedrals that recall Claude Monet’s own. In 1973, he confronted Cubism with the Cubist Still Life series within which the present work belongs. Though he continues to apply art history throughout his illustrious career, Lichtenstein eventually concluded this investigation into the twentieth-century’s great movements with his Purist series in 1975.

PABLO PICASSO, STILL LIFE WITH COMPOTE AND GLASS, 1914-1915
COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

In the Cubist series, Lichtenstein once again reinterprets an iconic movement through his unique lens of Pop. By emulating Cubism, Lichtenstein delves into the rich still-life traditions of the past, exploring the ways the genre confronts the societal and artistic concerns of its time. The genre first gained prominence in the Netherlands during the early 1600s with Vanitas or memento mori paintings, which depicted food, objects and treasures as symbols for the transience of life and the vanity of earthly pursuits. Cubism in turn illustrated these objects alongside found materials, such as wallpaper and newspapers to collapse the distance between the painting and the two-dimensional surface. Lichtenstein employs his unique pictorial vocabulary of Ben-Day dots which are derived from modern day-printing techniques, to imitate this subject and create “copies,” which highlight the omnipresence of reproduction in contemporary society. Applying his hallmark limited palette, bold outlines, flat planes, and Ben-Day dots to the Cubist techniques of shallow relief like space and geometric layering, Lichtenstein succeeds in conveying the “idea” of Cubism in a contemporary language.

The vivid surface of red, yellow, black, blue, and green in Cubist Still Life may not mimic the tonality of Cubism, but the cropped perspective, juxtaposed textures and lush fruits certainly embody and pay homage to the movement and its authors – George Braque, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso in particular. Lichtenstein acknowledges the profound influence of Picasso on his own artistic development.

“Picasso always had an influence on me, together with Matisse, he is the enormous influence on twentieth-century art. When you think about Cubism, you think about Picasso…”

This influence is evident in Lichtenstein’s oeuvre as early as 1963 with Woman with Flowered Hat and 1964 with Still Life After Picasso, but it is further exhibited in Lichtenstein’s mélange of high and low art. As Picasso and his fellow Cubist artists integrated mass-produced media into their fine artworks to create Synthetic Cubism, Lichtenstein borrowed techniques from “lowbrow” comics to create his own style of Pop Art. Both Synthetic Cubism and Pop elevate the low and relegate the high, effectively blurring the traditional boundary between the two. By emulating comics, which present narratives and dialogue from various perspectives, Lichtenstein reveals yet another parallel to Cubism, a movement founded on synthesizing multiple viewpoints within a single composition. By fragmenting a single perspective and collapsing it across a composition, the resulting artwork emphasizes the two-dimensional flatness of the canvas support. This two dimensionality is enhanced by the Cubists’ illusionistic rendering of textures and collage. Lichtenstein captures the Cubist’s fondness for faux bois by meticulously replicating the pattern in thick, crips lines. These illusionistic techniques create a trompe l’oeil effect, drawing attention to the inherent visual deception and flatness of the picture plane.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN, STILL LIFE AFTER PICASSO, 1964
ART © 2024 ESTATE OF ROY LICHTENSTEIN, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The tension between representation and the inherent two-dimensional nature of art is a fundamental principle of twentieth-century Modernism, one that Lichtenstein engages with in his Cubist series. However, as Lichtenstein himself explains, “I am nominally copying, but I am really restating the copied thing in other terms. In doing that, the original acquires a totally different texture,” (Roy Lichtenstein quoted in Lawrence Alloway, Roy Lichtenstein, New York 1983, p. 106). In an era where images are paraphrased, condensed, and reproduced for widespread consumption, Lichtenstein understands and applies this process to Cubism, thus “Popifying” still life and ushering it into the new age.

Brushstroke Head II, 1987

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000

Brushstroke Head II | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Brushstroke Head II, 1987
Painted bronze
29x17x14 inches (74 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm)
Incised with the artist’s signature, date ’87 and number 5/6 (on the base)

Brushstroke Head II, 1987 encapsulates the thematic and artistic impact of Roy Lichtenstein illustrious career—from his ground-breaking pop art in the 1960s through the final days of his career in his exploration of sculpture. Brushstroke Head II directly harkens back to his renowned Brushstroke series initiated in the mid-1960s, fusing elements of his early canvases with a three-dimensional form that challenges and redefines traditional sculpture. Integrating abstract brushstrokes with recognizable features—a nod to both Abstract Expressionism and his love of comic book art, particularly the depiction of a femme fatale heroine—Brushstroke Head II oscillates between abstraction and representation. As one moves around the sculpture, deconstructed elements of a female face emerge, where swooping brushstrokes transform into detailed eyelashes, an elongated nose, and pouting lips. This sculptural play employs Lichtenstein’s trademark Ben-Day dots, not merely as a stylistic echo of mass-produced media but as a sophisticated commentary on visual perception and art’s reproducibility.

This artwork marks a significant point in Lichtenstein’s exploration of sculpture, much like Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head), which was one of the final forms developed for his Barcelona commission. Here, Lichtenstein is not only revisiting but also expanding upon his earlier investigations into the brushstroke motif that began in 1981 with Brushstroke Sculpture. This continuity and evolution highlight a dynamic interrogation of his own artistic methodologies and the conventions of Pop Art. The evolution from his earlier Brushstroke Paintings to sculptures like Brushstroke Head II illustrates Lichtenstein’s enduring fascination with Abstract Expressionism. His sculptures cleverly subvert the subjectivity and spontaneity of gestural painting through a calculated replication of action painting’s most expressive elements, instead using the industrial techniques of Ben-Day dots. Brushstroke Head II becomes a witty and critical reflection on the art historical dominance of Abstract Expressionism during the 1960s, juxtaposing Pop and Abstract elements creating an entirely new style. Lichtenstein’s integration of a traditional female bust with abstract, cartoonish elements represents a sophisticated collision of art historical genres and styles—continuously pushing the boundaries between what is considered high art and popular imagery.

In Brushstroke Head II, Lichtenstein offers a masterful commentary on the process of artistic creation and its reception, making the sculpture not only a hallmark of his career but also a profound exploration of the intersections and tensions within modern art. The sculpture exemplifies how Lichtenstein, even in his later years, remained at the forefront of challenging and expanding the possibilities of pop art, ensuring his legacy as an innovator who consistently reimagined the potential of his medium.

I Love Liberty (Study), 1981

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997), I Love Liberty (Study) | Christie’s (christies.com)

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
I Love Liberty (Study), 1981
Painted and printed paper collage and graphite on paperboard
Image: 25 3/4 x 17 inches (65.4 x 43.2 cm)
Sheet: 34×25 inches (86.4 x 63.5 cm)
Signed and dated ‘rf Lichtenstein ’81’ (lower right)
Signed again and dated again ‘rf Lichtenstein ’81’ (on the reverse)

Undoubtedly one of the most recognizable names in American Pop, Roy Lichtenstein’s seemingly autonomous style reframed commercial imagery and print media in an effort to fully entwine the aesthetics of popular culture with the formalist concerns of mid-century Modernism. I Love Liberty (Study) is a key illustration of Lichtenstein’s ability to vacillate between traditional techniques and mechanical methods as he leverages his own visual vocabulary.

“My use of evenly repeated dots and diagonal lines and uninflected color areas suggest that my work is right where it is, right on the canvas, definitely not a window into the world.”

Bringing attention to the surface of the work and the abstract qualities of simplified shading and pattern, he narrowed the divide between print media and the annals of art history.

Rendered in a vertical orientation, I Love Liberty (Study) features a close crop of America’s most patriotic figure: the Statue of Liberty. Featuring a side profile of the crowned woman, a glimpse of her left hand and tablet, and part of her right hand holding the iconic flaming torch, Lichtenstein’s subject is immediately apparent. Set against an even, ordered background of diagonal blue and white stripes, the artist has simplified the scene down to blocks of black, white, and yellow with a touch of red in the torch’s fire. The sharp edges of the cut paper and Lichtenstein’s own bold painting style line up perfectly so that the entire composition exudes a dynamic, optically imposing air. By doing so, he separates the subject matter from reality and pushes it toward the realm of symbolism.

Roy Lichtenstein, Painting with Statue of Liberty, 1983. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Photo: National Gallery of Art.

The present example is a rare look into Lichtenstein’s meticulous working process. Though his finished compositions were sharp, clean, and had all the finish of a mechanically printed page, the artist often carefully hand-cut and rendered his works to mimic the precision of commercial processes, and I Love Liberty (Study) is made up of various collaged paper elements. Executed by the artist for Norman Lear’s I Love Liberty TV special in 1982 (produced to mark George Washington’s 250^th birthday) the sharpness and vivid presence of Lady Liberty is thanks to Lichtenstein’s painstaking preparatory work.

Promotional poster for “I Love Liberty,” ABC TV, 1982

I Love Liberty (Study) is a poignant addition to Lichtenstein’s oeuvre as it takes a familiar image and reframes it in his own signature manner. “I don’t think the importance of the art has anything to do with the importance of the subject matter,” the artist once noted. “I think importance resides more in the unity of the composition and in the inventiveness of perception” (Ibid., p. 128). Recasting Lady Liberty in blocks of color against a striped background that vibrates in our vision, the artist asks for a reconsideration of the American symbol and forces us to reexamine something we might think we already know.

 

5. Yayoi Kusama

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Enlightenment Means Living a Life Unconcernedly, 2008

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 4,406,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Enlightenment Means Living a Life Unconcernedly | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Enlightenment Means Living a Life Unconcernedly, 2008
Acrylic on canvas
194 x 259.1 cm (76 3/8 x 102 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and English, and dated (on the reverse)

Enlightenment Means Living a Life Unconcernedly is a prime example of Yayoi Kusama’s continuing investigation of her signature ‘infinity nets’ as it returns to the monochromatic palette of her first forays into the series in the late 1950s. The endless loops and swirls of paint that cover the surface from edge to edge evoke a hallucinatory experience that Kusama has lived with since childhood in which she and her surroundings become inundated with dots, nets, and other visual stimuli within her field of view. Often painting endlessly for hours at a time, the artist sees these intricate compositions as materializations of her time spent working as well as a means to deal with a very personal affliction. “Unable to sleep, I would get out of bed and paint,” she once described. “…I would cover a canvas with nets, then continue painting them on the table, on the floor, and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room…” (Y. Kusama, trans. R. Mccarthy, Infinity Net: The Autobiography Of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, pp. 17-20). Knowing the complex impetus behind works like the present example helps to illuminate the personal stake the artist had in such paintings and makes it clear that Kusama’s experience of the world has always been a driving force behind her revolutionary oeuvre.

Composed on the horizontal, the present work is a densely packed field of undulating loops that seem to present as knurled fingers protruding from the picture plane like a field of living coral, a rippling storm system, or some sort of expansive lifeform viewed under a microscope. Bucking traditional methods and drawing connections to Jackson Pollock’s process, Kusama paints with the canvas spread flat on the ground or a working surface. However, unlike her predecessor, the artist takes a more intimate tact and deploys her brush at close quarters instead of in violent gestures from overhead. Writing about this poignant difference, art historian Mignon Nixon explains that Kusama set out to “replace the expressive gesture with an exhaustive one, pushing painting to its limits of spatial extent and ‘monotony;’ and to obliterate the self, reconceiving contemporary painting from a subjective statement of individual consciousness to ‘nothingness’ on an epic scale” (M. Nixon, “Infinity Politics,” in Yayoi Kusama, exh. cat., London, Tate Modern, 2012, p. 180). Because of her proximity to the surface, she is unable to see the entire work as she paints, so the final image is more a result of a continued absorption in the process and its ability to overtake her consciousness than any preconceived notion about composition.

Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. © 2024 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA / Bridgeman Images.

Coming of age in Japan in the wake of World War II, Kusama turned to art as a means of nurturing a more humanistic outlook on the world. Beginning art classes at the age of thirteen, she had six solo exhibitions before 1955, and it was then that she contacted the artists Kenneth Callahan and Georgia O’Keeffe in the United States. Because of this correspondence, Kusama was able to move to the United States where Callahan arranged for her first American exhibition in Seattle in 1957. After that, the artist felt the pull of New York and its hotbed of artistic innovation where the Abstract Expressionists and their acolytes were still driving aesthetic tastes. She arrived in the city in 1958 and, inspired by the seething energy she found there, created her first Infinity Nets the following year. “In the bustle of a competitive and hectic New York,” she mused, “at the bottom of light and shadow of a contemporary civilization that moves forward with creaking noises, in the midst of this metropolis which symbolizes American pragmatism […] This is a form of my resistance…This infinitely repeatable rhythm and monochrome surface constitute a new painting, through an unusual ‘light’…I have long wanted to release this ‘unknowable something’ from me, release it from the muddy lake of emotion into the spiritual yonder of eternity” (Y. Kusama, quoted in “Onna Hitori Kokusai Gadan O Yuku,” Geijutsu Shincho, May 1961, pp. 127-128). Her first infinity nets caught the eye of artists like Donald Judd and Frank Stella, and as her work continued to break new boundaries in a path tangential to the prevailing trends, she paved the way for future generations of the avant-garde.

Nets in the Night (TPXZZOT), 2007

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,875,000

Yayoi Kusama – Modern & Contemporary Art… Lot 11 May 2024 | Phillips

Evoking a cosmic sense of boundlessness, Nets in the Night (TPXZZOT) radiates as a celestial marvel from Yayoi Kusama’s iconic series. This vast canvas employs the artist’s signature visual idiom of endlessly repeating dots and is exemplary of the Infinity Nets in its expansive scale, impasto brushwork, and varying density of knots. At the same time, however, the painting is distinguished from this body of work by its subdued palette and considered marks. While many of the Infinity Nets feature vibrant colors and looser brushwork, Nets in the Night features a shimmering expanse of velvety black circles which have been painstakingly painted in a dense mesh across a moon-white ground. It transforms the confines of the square canvas into an exercise in obliteration: pulsating rhythms draw in the viewer’s gaze, which traces fugitive connections between one patch of darkness to another. Kusama has infused the present work with a compelling vitality, reflecting her persistent preoccupation with accumulation, seriality, and the infinite—an ethos that defines her artistic practice.

In Nets in the Night, the artist’s notion of “infinity” is extended beyond a mere association with the repetition of visual forms to take on a more directly cosmological significance. The surface evokes an astronomical panorama of a radiant night sky ablaze with stars, each dot gleaming through Kusama’s loops like a distant ray in a vast cosmic expanse. Becoming celestial bodies that form twinkling constellations, these hints of light invite contemplation of our place within the cosmos. “My desire [with the Infinity Nets] was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it, with dots—an accumulation of particles forming the negative spaces in the net,” Kusama elucidated. “How deep was the mystery? Did infinite infinities exist beyond our universe?”ⁱ Both pictorially and conceptually, Nets in the Night is a manifestation of the artist’s pursuit to express the expansiveness of the universe.

Frank Stella, Jill, 1959. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York. Image: Buffalo AKG Art Museum / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2024 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Infinity Nets constitute the artist’s most ambitious and significant engagement with the medium of painting, one which has persisted since the late 1950s. Travelling to the United States from Japan to pursue a career as an artist in 1957, Kusama gazed out of the airplane window the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, captivated by the softly undulating surface of the water. This oceanic infinitude would provide the conceptual basis for the series, which she began not long after her arrival in New York. Within the context of post-war American abstraction, these intricate networks of painted loops established an important bridge between the gestural energies of Abstract Expressionism and the formal economy of Minimalism. Over the next six decades, Kusama continuously revisited and refined the Infinity Nets, experimenting with different color palettes, brushwork techniques, and scales; with time, the execution of the series became a serial act itself. Each painting, such as Nets in the Night, therefore constitutes a unique exploration of texture, rhythm, and space. This tension between infinity and individuality lies at the heart of Kusama’s oeuvre, and the personal significance of these works was underscored by her decision to name her autobiography Infinity Net (2023).

Lee Krasner, Untitled (Little Image Painting), 1947-48. Munson Museum, Utica, New York. Image: Munson Museum, Utica, NY / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Coalescing the obsessional, repetitive, and immersive qualities for which she is best known, the visual language of Nets in the Night constitutes a distillation of the main themes of her life and career. Indeed, the densely dotted “infinity net” motif is one that is deeply rooted in the artist’s own biography. Growing up on her family’s seed farm in the mountain town of Matsumoto in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, the young Kusama began to experience the profound visual and auditory hallucinations that continue to guide discussions of her practice. Against the backdrop of a strained childhood marked by trauma and violence, Kusama has poignantly recounted these early episodes when “after gazing at a pattern of red flowers on the tablecloth, I looked up… I saw the entire room, my entire body, and the entire universe covered with red flowers, and in that instant my soul was obliterated and I was restored, returned to infinity, to eternal time and absolute space.”ⁱⁱ These highly personal dot patterns not only characterize her Infinity Net canvases, but also thread together much of her output, from her soft sculptural “accumulations” and provocative 1960s Happenings, to her pumpkin images and Infinity Rooms.

Oscillating between the microbial and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite, the expanse of Nets in the Night is emblematic of Kusama’s landmark series and cornerstone of her practice. The cosmological, all-over composition of the painting may be interpreted as a reference to exterior world—specifically, the night sky and universe that engulfs us—but simultaneously reflects the artist’s interiority. Its self-obliterating loops and dots, an enduring reference point in her artistic journey, are a striking testament to the alluring and disorienting spatial complexity that has defined Kusama’s corpus for decades. In this way, the work emphasizes the close conceptual connections between her painting practice and her installation and performance work, positioning it at the center of her seventy-year career.

The Pacific Ocean, 1958

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 4,658,000
TOP PERFORMER

The Pacific Ocean | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
The Pacific Ocean, 1958
Oil on canvas
122.9 x 175.9 cm (48 3/8 x 69 1/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 1958 (on the reverse)

A labyrinthine network of pebble-like black forms swarm the surface of Yayoi Kusama’s The Pacific Ocean from 1958, which ranks among the earliest, most significant examples of her Pacific Ocean works. Executed the year Kusama emigrated from Japan to New York, the present work unifies the dot and loop motifs which have since consumed her practice for more than six decades, presaging the signature vernacular of her Infinity Nets. Inspired by the aerial view of the rippling sea from her plane window, The Pacific Ocean embodies Kusama’s nascent ingenuity at a moment of extraordinary vulnerability: the genesis of a life-long exploration of the minute and expansive, the personal and universal. Further testifying to the significance of the present work, The Pacific Ocean was acquired directly from the artist by Alice Denney, a collector and advocate of her work during Kusama’s initial years in the United States, and other early paintings are held in such esteemed institutional collections as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

KUSAMA IN HER NEW YORK STUDIO, CA. 1958–59. PHOTO © YAYOI KUSAMA. ART © 2024 YAYOI KUSAMA

Through her miniscule, amorphous bulbs, mere specks in a swirling sea, Kusama is able to tap into the beginnings of life itself – from the molecular and microscopic to the immeasurably vast. Applied with punctilious care, dots swell across the present work’s silvery gray field in resplendent, mesmeric droves, evoking not only the undulations of the sea but the molecular and the photonic. Veils of misty white envelop over the lace-like web, echoing the damp imprints of the sea lapping over the shore. The delicate skeins of paint begin to dilate and pulsate, assuming a transcendent sense of movement: reflecting both the cresting sea and the artist’s displacement from her home country. Kusama’s devotion to dots, seen in the present work in its burgeoning state but extending through to her most recent works, is a coping mechanism for the artist, in response to her vivid hallucinations of oscillating, kaleidoscopic patterns. Here, Kusama’s process represents the inverse of her technique with the Infinity Nets, in which her loops are laid over a colored ground. The Pacific Ocean finds its origin in a suite of watercolors of the same title, which Kusama revealed were inspired by the volumes of “shallow space” contained within the wavelets seen from her plane seat. (the artist quoted in: Midori Yamamura, “Kusama Yayoi’s Early Years in New York: A Critical Biography,” Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York, New Haven, 2007, p. 57)

VIJA CELMINS, OCEAN, 1975. IMAGE © TATE, LONDON / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 VIJA CELMINS

The conceptual underpinnings of The Pacific Ocean – of immigration, neurosis, childhood trauma – paints a delicate, sober portrait of Kusama’s mind. “I was always standing at the centre of the obsession,” Kusama recalled, “over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me.” (The artist quoted in: Laura Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama, London, 2000, p. 103) Her earliest advocates upon her arrival embraced her vision wholeheartedly, from her paintings to her performance art. One such supporter was Alice Denney, who even participated in the Happening Kusama staged as part of her show Aggregation: One Thousand Boats from December 1963 – January 1964 at Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York. One of the first founding members of the Jefferson Place Gallery, a collective founded in 1957 for local artists in Washington, D.C., Denney was acutely attuned to the postwar avant-garde alongside D.C.-based gallerist Beatrice Perry, who mounted Kusama’s first show of Infinity Nets at Gres Gallery in 1960. Denney’s curatorial influence was far-reaching and her approach experimental, organizing Popular Image in 1963 at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, the museum she co-founded in Washington, D. C. in 1962. Popular Image was one of the earliest exhibitions of Pop Art in the United States, and Denney also organized a Pop Art festival concurrent to the show, including Claes Oldenburg’s Stars Happening. She recommended Alan Solomon to curate the 32nd Venice Biennale in 1964, and together with legendary dealer Leo Castelli set their intentions on securing the Grand Prize for Robert Rauschenberg. That The Pacific Ocean has resided in her preeminent collection for over sixty years further testifies to its seminal importance in Kusama’s oeuvre, and the radicality of its creation.

Within the rarified group of Kusama’s early paintings featuring the net motif, The Pacific Ocean is distinguished as one of the most personalized, explicit revelations of the iconic series’ origin. As atomic specks of paint suffuse the viewer, The Pacific Ocean reveals Kusama as the visionary she has continuously proven herself to be, inviting us into her mind and ushering us toward infinity.

Dots Obsession (TBAOQ), 2007

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Dots Obsession (TBAOQ) | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Dots Obsession (TBAOQ), 2007
Acrylic on canvas
130.5 x 162.1 cm (51 3/8 x 63 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2007 Dots Obsession TBAOQ’ (on the reverse)

Yayoi Kusama’s Dots Obsession (TBAOQ) offers a captivating glimpse into the artist’s lifelong exploration of the infinite depths within her own psyche. Swirling white dots, seemingly boundless, extend beyond the confines of the canvas, inviting viewers into a mesmerizing world that transcends both physical and psychological boundaries. Against a darkened backdrop, Kusama’s luminous dots serve as irresistible guides in a mysterious realm. Indeed, in the present lot, Kusama showcases her meticulous and ritualistic approach, seamlessly blending technical mastery with the expansive landscape of her subconscious mind.

Vincent Van Gogh, La nuit étoilée, 1888. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo: © Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, New York.

Kusama’s paintings resonate with an arresting blend of physical presence and emotional depth, and the present lot is no exception. Employing a meticulous yet impassioned approach, she orchestrates a symphony of controlled brushstrokes, weaving intricate webs of silvery, atomized spheres that captivate the viewer’s imagination. In Dots Obsession (TBAOQ), the meticulous craftsmanship paradoxically yields forms imbued with a sense of organic vitality, reminiscent of the awe-inspiring beauty found in nature’s own miracles, be it the twinkling of stars or the delicate intricacy of snowflakes. In Kusama’s own words, “Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment, I become part of the eternal, and we obliterate ourselves in love.”  This concept of ‘self-obliteration’ extends beyond mere abstraction; it encompasses a profound dissolution of boundaries, including the artist’s own corporeal presence. Such transcendence is palpable in the vertiginous allure of the present lot, where every brushstroke hints at the profound mysteries of unity and boundless potential.

Beneath the mesmerizing whirl of circular motifs of Dots Obsession (TBAOQ), Kusama meticulously layers a brooding gradient of stormy tones, shifting between peaks of luminosity and depths of shadow across the canvas. It’s as though we witness supernovas blazing with brilliance in some areas, while the early formations of void-driven black holes emerge in others. Just as galaxies perpetually alter the fabric of our universe, Kusama’s infinity appears to be in constant flux. Enrapturing in scale and form, Yayoi Kusama’s Dots Obsession (TBAOQ) exudes a mesmerizing celestial beauty, testament to its meticulous execution and captivating allure.

6. Ed Ruscha

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Christ Candle, 1987

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 2,200,000

Christ Candle | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ED RUSCHA (b. 1937)
Christ Candle, 1987
Acrylic on canvas
71 3/4 x 72 inches (182.2 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated 1987 (on the reverse)

Juxtaposed against a grid of urban lights, Ed Ruscha’s crisp handwriting outlines the striking phrase “Christ Candle”, enticing the viewer with its captivating cinematic intensity. Shimmering starkly against the hypnotic grid, “Christ Candle” refers to the name of a candle company whose sign Ruscha glimpsed in passing driving down Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. Within Ruscha’s acclaimed series of City Lights paintings, a body of work that was innovative and transitional for the artist in terms of subject matter and technique, the present work is distinguished by its direct inclusion of the artist’s hand. Christ Candle is one of only two examples Ruscha produced using stencils to approximate his own handwriting, the other of which is Love Chief, which is notably held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand. Bearing exceptional provenance, Christ Candle was acquired by Emily Fisher Landau from Leo Castelli Gallery shortly after its execution in February 1988. Remaining in Landau’s collection for over three decades, the present work was notably included in Ed Ruscha’s 1989-1991 traveling retrospective at the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris; Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Centre Cultural de la Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona; Serpentine Gallery, London and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; as well as numerous exhibitions at the Fisher Landau Center for Art. Christ Candle is a paragon of Ed Ruscha’s canonical art historical legacy, embodying his unique capacity to evocatively portray desire and its pervasive manifestations within American popular culture.

ED RUSCHA UNFOLDING EVERY BUILDING ON THE SUNSET STRIP BY JERRY MCMILLAN, 1967. PHOTO © COURTESY THE CRAIG KRULL GALLERY, SANTA MONICA. ART © 2023 EDWARD RUSCHA

Affording the present work a heightened sense of intimacy, Ruscha employs his own handwriting in the text, recalling the fleeting moments taken to scroll the name he glanced at while driving down Venice Boulevard. In doing so, Ruscha encapsulates the feeling of desire associated with glimpsing a roadside billboard designed to capture the viewer’s attention in one compelling instant. To render the text, Ruscha drew large stencils and then used a reverse stenciling technique on white gessoed canvas. Working on a larger scale than before and introducing for the first time the airbrush technique to achieve the softly diffused, hazy white of urban lights, Ruscha’s City Lights paintings reverberate with an atmospheric luminosity that ignites the otherwise impenetrable nocturne sky. Attesting to the importance of Ruscha’s City Lights series more broadly, other examples are held in numerous prestigious public and private collections, including that of the Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. An especially captivating painting from this series, the titular text of Christ Candle, draws parallels between the flickering lights of a cityscape and rows of votive candles, perhaps even offering a wry commentary on the commercialization of faith. Here, the grid of city lights is mapped onto the idea of rows of votive candles, symbolizing the idealization of Los Angeles, the city of angels, in popular culture. Ruscha’s sprawling lines of text create a vertiginous effect, implying a speed and motion that corresponds to the passing of the flickering lights into the distance in a shimmering cinematic allure. In Christ Candle, Ruscha captures the city of Los Angeles from an aerial perspective as if glimpsed from the vantage of a landing airplane.

PHOTOGRAPH OF THE LOS ANGELES SKYLINE AT NIGHT. PHOTO © JUSTIN TIERNEY / EYEEM / GETTY IMAGES

Los Angeles here dissolves into a reductive grid, illuminated by the ethereal white glow of streetlights and traffic concentrated in bright clusters at joint-like intersections. To achieve this hazy smolder of light that brilliantly punctuates the surface and diffuses at different scales of intensity, Ruscha utilized the airbrush, a technique that he has continued to explore ever since. Capitalizing on the dissipated softness and subtle translucence that result, Christ Candle dutifully records contrasting patterns of light through variously dense hues of white paint. Like constellations in the night sky, the luminous Los Angeles cityscape invites spectacular associations with the enduring magnetism and glamour of Hollywood’s silver screen. Through both image and text, Christ Candle is cryptic and enigmatic, evading specific association and reveling in a state of ambiguity that lacks clear resolution. “The City Lights paintings could be said to articulate a noir-ish version of the sublime: they trigger fascination tinged with doubt and uncertainty.” (Ralph Rugoff quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Hayward Gallery (and travelling), Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, 2010, p. 21)

LEFT: FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES, “UNTITLED” (TORONTO), 1992. IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA / ART RESOURCE, NY ART © 2024 THE FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES FOUNDATION, COURTESY ANDREA ROSEN GALLERY, NEW YORK. RIGHT: GERHARD RICHTER, KERZE, 1983. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, LONDON FOR £8 MILLION IN FEBRUARY 2008. PRIVATE COLLECTION. ART © 2024 GERHARD RICHTER

The near monochromatic palette and reductive composition of the City Lights paintings present a significant departure from Ruscha’s earlier sunset paintings of the 1970s and early 1980s, which featured highly saturated, candy-colored skies painted in vibrant reds, pinks, and oranges. Indeed, while up until this point, much of Ruscha’s work had centered around the automobile and the road as a focal point, looking at the landscape as seen through the window of a car, with the present series, Ruscha expands his field of vision. Abstracting the map of Los Angeles, Ruscha reduces the landscape to its most minimal framework, distilling the hallmarks of urbanization down to mere pinpricks of fluorescent lights in a loosely rendered grid that collectively reveal activity on a greater scale. Indeed, insofar as these paintings chronicle and record space, they do so not through the literal map of the city grid that they purportedly lay out but rather through the varying densities of light that pool and ebb along the grid’s scaffolding framework, indicating greater concentrations of light and activity and thus recording patterns of urbanization and inhabitation. In his monograph on the artist, scholar Richard Marshall suggested that Ruscha developed his idea for these paintings during his many trips flying between Miami and Los Angeles in early 1985 while working on his commission for the Miami-Dade Public Library. His first large-scale public commission, Ruscha created an eight-panel rotunda painting for the library. To accommodate the physical size of this commission, Ruscha also moved into a bigger studio in Venice, California, during this time, and the larger studio space allowed him to increase his scale moving forward.

If cinema parallels the projection of the mind’s eye, Ruscha’s handwritten text clings to the viewer’s stream of consciousness, exposing deeply held desires. Christ Candle embodies Ruscha’s career-long investigation of text and image through the lens of Los Angeles and Hollywood as cultural symbols. Drawing the viewer into its indeterminate geography in which time and memory are destabilized, Ruscha’s Christ Candle enthralls viewers, enchanting them with its compositional complexity and its instantaneous visual appeal.

Truth, 1973

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000

ED RUSCHA (B. 1937), Truth | Christie’s (christies.com)

ED RUSCHA (B. 1937)
Truth, 1973
Oil on canvas
54×60 inches (137.2 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, dedicated, inscribed and dated ‘For Merle and Pearl Edward Ruscha 1973 IT RHYMES WITH TOOTH’ (on the reverse)

Painted amidst the Vietnam War in 1973, Ed Ruscha’s expansive and arresting work glorifies the imaginative and progressive spirit that not only is synonymous with post-war Los Angeles but also embodies the ethos of the collection of Norman and Lyn Lear. As one of the most beloved and influential figures in entertainment and television, Norman Lear challenged Americans to engage with the most pressing issues of the day with heart and humor—valuing truth above all. Acquired in 1980, TRUTH acted as a hallmark of the collection for over four decades. Connoting the power of truth itself to cut through all kinds of pretense or falsehood, it is a painting that finds harmony in the truth-telling honesty of Norman Lear’s sitcoms, as well as his life-long commitment to activist causes.

Painted in 1973, Ed Ruscha’s Truth is one of the artist’s signature paintings in which he turns a seemingly simple singular word into a powerful and enigmatic motif. No other artist has lent such illustrative intrigue to minimal text and phrases, a feat which has cemented his place as a visionary within the history of American art. Truth is a particularly compelling canvas that marries Ruscha’s forthright delivery with painterly finesse. In the artist’s hands, the moral imperative is transformed into an image, an object, and a physical presence while still retaining all the cultural connotations connected to its broad, philosophical meaning. This work is the definitive rendering of the painter’s mindset when he noted, “Words have temperatures to me. When they have reached a certain point and become hot words they appeal to me… sometimes I have a dream that if a word gets too hot and too appealing, it will boil apart, and I won’t be able to read or think of it” (E. Ruscha, “Repainting, redrawing and rephotographing Los Angeles”, Art Newspaper, December 19, 2012). The combination of textual immediacy, the use of a volcanic color palette, and the sheer size of the canvas lend Truth a roiling, explosive presence that seems to muscle its way off the wall and into the world.

The Lear family with Ed Ruscha’s Truth (1979). Courtesy of the Lear Family Archives. Artwork: © Ed Ruscha.

Set within a dichromatic earthy space, the word ‘TRUTH’ in all capitals cuts into our field of view. Rendered in a fiery gradient that resembles burning embers or a California sunrise, the letters stretch horizontally across the five-foot canvas as their serifs threaten to expand beyond the confines of the picture plane. Ruscha’s choice to use deep red at the upper extremities of the lettering gradually shifts into orange and lemon yellow makes the text heavier at the top and establishes an imposing air for the entire work. The backdrop is painted with wide, visible strokes of burnt ochre that segue into a warm earthy expanse of organic hues at the top. Where these two fields meet, a hazy line of diaphanous color acts almost as an illusionistic groundline for the titular word. This smoky air is at odds with the sharpness of Ruscha’s text, a juxtaposition possible through his use of reverse stenciling techniques which allow each letter to act as a window into another layer or neatly separate from the background as a discrete object depending on how the viewer experiences the work. “Usually in my paintings, I’m creating some sort of disorder between the different elements”, Ruscha has explained “and avoiding the recognizable aspect of living things by painting words. I like the feeling of an enormous pressure in a painting” (E. Ruscha, quoted in R. Marshall, Ed Ruscha, New York 2003, p. 241). By creating this optical complexity within a seemingly simple composition, the artist provokes a stronger response and lends an intense gravity to what amounts to a single word hovering in space.

Ed Ruscha, Gospel, 1972, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. © Ed Ruscha.
Ed Ruscha, Faith, 1972. © Ed Ruscha.
Ed Ruscha, Hope, 1972. © Ed Ruscha.

Truth is a member of a discrete series that the artist started in 1972 as a visualization of the moral tenets of Ruscha’s Catholic upbringing. Included in the grouping are paintings such as Gospel (1972, Art Gallery of New South Wales), Mercy (1972), Purity (1972), Faith (1972), and one of several versions of Hope including a 1998 work on paper in the collection of Tate Modern, London). Each word is rendered in italic Bodoni Ultra Bold, a favorite font of Ruscha that he used in other canvases to give material substance to a word, something which is on full display in the present example.

Ed Ruscha, Truth, 1972. © Ed Ruscha.
Ed Ruscha, Purity, 1972. © Ed Ruscha.
Ed Ruscha, Mercy, 1972. © Ed Ruscha.

Truth’s genesis can be found in the legendary figure of Irving Blum, the director of the L.A. based Ferus Gallery. Ruscha was introduced by Blum to Merle and Pearl Glick, the first owners of the painting; Merle was a dentist and Pearl was Blum’s cousin, and both had an insatiable appetite for collecting art. Their tastes veered strongly toward the burgeoning Pop Art scene thanks to Hopps and Blum, and it was because of this that they struck up a lasting relationship with Ruscha and the other artists who populated the Ferus stable. In 1970, Ruscha created a painting titled Tooth for Merle, a nod towards the collector’s profession. Three years later, the artist made a wry allusion to this previous painting and its rhyming title when he painted the present work for the couple’s collection. Truth is remarkable for both its smoldering intensity as well as Ruscha’s ability to coax the feeling of dimensional space out of a single word on an abstract colorfield. Landscape painting, though perhaps not immediately apparent, has been a source of much inspiration for Ruscha even as works like the present example seem to depict a non-place or some hazy abstraction. The present example is reminiscent of a desert at dusk or an aerial view of dusty fields against a darkening sky. The letters themselves could be hovering in the immediate foreground or resting upon the floor; Ruscha’s close crop and tight composition create a visual ambiguity that confuses our understanding of the scene as it moves from the picture plane to the illusionistic depth of an imagined beyond.

You Cannot Be Serious, 2008

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 450,000 – 650,000
USD 790,500
Proceeds to Benefit the John and Patty McEnroe Foundation 

You Cannot Be Serious | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ED RUSCHA (b. 1937)
You Cannot Be Serious, 2008
Acrylic on museum board
24 x 27 7/8 inches (61 x 70.8 cm)
Signed and dated 2008 (lower right)

7. Fernando Botero

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#1. The Street, 2010

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,111,250

The Street | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
The Street, 2010
Oil on canvas
185×140 cm (72 3/4 x 55 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 10 (lower right)

“His artistic universe is constructed with memories of his childhood, and as a young man…The families in the provincial towns in Latin America lived their lives with strict rules: the men were well groomed, they wore a suit, a tie, and a hat when outdoors, and the women also were ladylike, with gloves, handbags, and flowery dresses. The children were well behaved and disciplined. The pleasures of daily life were—and are—predictable: an outing in the country with a picnic basket, a visit to a bullfight, a walk through the narrow streets with colorful houses in colonial style, or a romantic night of ballroom dancing…. It means working hard to keep up appearances in a society where even vice has a certain conformity.”

THE PRESENT WORK IN BOTERO’S PARIS STUDIO CIRCA 2010

#2. Man on Horseback, 1985

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 1,016,000

Man on Horseback | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Man on Horseback, 1985
Bronze
42x20x32 inches (106.7 x 50.8 x 81.3 cm)
Incised with the artist’s signature and number 5/6 and stamped with the foundry mark (on the rear hoof)

“Botero has always loved animals and infuses his paintings and sculptures of them with great life and personality. A special place in his menagerie seems to be reserved for horses, which he has enjoyed since his earliest years. As we have seen, his father traveled throughout Antioquia on horseback, and Fernando also saw horses at bullfights as well as in many other contexts. The early sculpture, The Horse, full of humor and affection foreshadows the horses of his later oeuvre, such as those ridden by his son Pedro in Pedro on a Horse or in the Man on Horseback.”

BOTERO WITH PLASTER CAST OF MAN ON HORSEBACK, 1985

#3. Pedro with Monkey, 1972

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 698,500

Pedro with Monkey | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Pedro with Monkey, 1972
Pastel on paper
156.8 x 117.2 cm (62 3/4 x 46 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 72 (lower right)

Tender and ethereal, Pedro with Monkey is an exquisite pastel of Fernando Botero’s son, depicted here at the age of two. Executed in 1972, two short years before a catastrophic car accident that led to Pedro’s untimely and devastating death, the present work is a seminal example of Botero’s pivotal portraiture completed between 1970-1974 featuring his beloved son and muse. Pedrito (as he was affectionately known) is rendered here with boyish charm, sporting red overalls and a white collared shirt. He looks out to us sweetly from behind a toy monkey, which he hugs tightly to his chest. There are toys scattered around the boy’s white tennis-shoed feet indicating his preference for the monkey, which is known to have been his favorite. Thick as thieves, the monkey raises his left arm as though taking responsibility for the chaos, while Pedro, with his angelic disposition, tenderly embraces his accomplice; the duo is caught in the act of playtime havoc.

Imposing in scale, and rendered in Botero’s signature style of volumetric figuration, here bright hues of scarlet and white are set against a black background; they dominate the foreground of the picture and underscore Pedrito’s importance and centrality within it. Rare within Botero’s oeuvre, the present work stands out for his earnest and detailed treatment of Pedrito’s face, which he imbues with a superlative element of realism. A prolonged gaze at the young boy’s cherubic face reveals the accentuation of two lines at either side of his mouth, and protruding rosy cheeks, as though at any given moment, “the solemn-faced comedian,” will break character with a burst of laughter. (Germán Arciniegas, Fernando Botero, New York, 1977, p. 48)

Botero has long demonstrated a passion for the Masters of the Western canon, revisiting and re-articulating masterworks through a technically rigorous and uniquely personal approach in his own work. Pedro with Monkey is no exception having much in common with Goya’s Red Boy (officially titled: Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga (1784–1792)) (see Fig. 1). Notably, both Pedrito (age 2) and Manuel (age 3-4) are about the same age at the time each portrait was executed and they are both depicted in red outfits, though Pedrito’s receives a period-appropriate update. There is a soft sheen to Manuel’s satin cummerbund and matching small white shoes, which Botero deftly adds to Pedrito’s silky brown hair and echoes in the careful highlighting of the collar of his creased white shirt and more contemporary footwear. Like Manuel, Pedrito faces the viewer, but where by Manuel’s feet there is a menagerie of curious animals, by Pedrito’s there are three wooden toys, and critically one monkey, viscerally realistic, that he holds in his two little arms. A testament to the wealth and power of his family, Manuel is depicted with the extravagant trappings of great privilege – as Goya is exceedingly known to do in nearly all period portraits of his royal patrons’ offspring. Botero thoughtfully replaces these baubles and exotic pets with humble wooden toys save for one animal, albeit also toy, in a gesture that ennobles his sweet son and asserts his place in the Western canon alongside little Manuel.

LEFT: THE PRESENT WORK; RIGHT: FIG. 1. GOYA (FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES), MANUEL OSORIO MANRIQUE DE ZUÑIGA (1784–1792), 1787–88, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

The dialogue between these works can be seen to continue through Botero’s treatment of light and shadow. Incandescent Pedro benefits from generous and ample light, whereas Goya’s Manuel seems to linger in the liminal space between shadowy background and meagerly lit middle ground, sparse slivers of soft light grazing just his face, feet and the upper of his small body. Botero rejects Goya’s gloomy background with gusto in favor of one that is noticeably more dramatic and black. He achieves this through deft use of chiaroscuro that he modulates with sfumato, softening his transition from light to dark as evidenced in the blended edges of Pedrito’s form. In doing so, Botero summons Vermeer and his masterful use of these canonical modes in works like Girl with a Pearl Earring (see Fig. 2); he further emphasizes Pedro’s significance within the portrait and simultaneously endows it with a sense of depth. With these brazen acts of defiance, Botero’s technical prowess is on full display. Successfully evoking Red Boy, the best of Goya’s portraiture of royal youth, Botero re-envision elements of the seminal composition with virtuoso in pastel.

Unbeknownst to Botero in 1972 when Pedro with Monkey was completed, is that these two works, and their boys dressed in red, would soon come to have a profound commonality of unmediated salience that transcends the parameters of time and place. Like Manuel, who died four years after Goya finished his painting, Pedrito would not survive this portrait by much time, passing just two years later.

1971 BOTERO FAMILY CHRISTMAS CARD

A further testament to this work’s importance, it has remained with the Aberbach family since it was gifted it to Julian J. Aberbach in 1972 by Botero. Best known as Elvis Presley’s music publisher, Julian and his wife Anne Marie amassed a remarkable collection of modern art, including works by European and Latin American masters. As the founder of music publisher Hill and Range, Julian and his brother Jean catapulted the careers of such esteemed musical icons as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Edith Piaf. The son of a successful jeweler in Vienna, Julian spent time in Europe during the 1930s, where he became familiar with the international contemporary art scene and would come to meet his wife Anne Marie after the war on one of his many visits. Beginning in the 1950s, Julian and Anne Marie began collecting art, often acquiring works directly from artists or galleries during their trips to Europe. Fernando Botero was one such artist and also among those who would become friends with Julian and Anne Marie. Botero’s gifting of the present work to Julian speaks its quality and the nature of their friendship. The fact that this work remained in Julian’s collection and with the Aberbach family since 1972 is evidence of the esteem in which this portrait has been held by its previous owners.

From the day he was born on January 19, 1970, Pedro Botero could not have met more loving parents than Fernando Botero and Cecilia Zambrano, whose 1971 Christmas card notably featured a reproduction of a pastel by Botero where Pedrito is depicted on horseback. The apple of his father’s eye, Pedrito entered Botero’s life at a critical moment when, as Germán Arciniegas puts it, “everything was so perfect” (Ibid., p. 47). And in most ways, everything was so perfect; in the years leading up to Pedrito’s birth Botero experienced joyous personal milestones, including his marriage to his second wife, Cecilia in 1964, and an unprecedented level of international recognition and commercial success. By 1970, the artist had sold a painting to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, held exhibitions throughout the Americas and Europe, and been the subject of a successful monograph; by 1972, he divided his time between Paris, New York and Medellín. A beacon of light and bursting with life, Pedro Botero is immortalized in portrait — Pedro with Monkey being a triumphant example among those Botero completed during the euphoric period that constituted Pedrito’s lifetime, as well as the ones executed in his loving memory in the wake of his anguishing death. Pedrito’s likeness bears witness to the profound joy he embodied and inspired in the lives of those lucky enough to have known him, and for those of us, among the less fortunate, a monumental and radiant reminder.

#4. Standing Woman with Fruit, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 900,000
USD 698,500

Standing Woman with Fruit | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Standing Woman with Fruit, 2018
Bronze
56 x 21 x 19 1/2 inches (142.2 x 53.3 x 49.5 cm)
Incised with the artist’s signature and number 1/6 and stamped with foundry mark (on the base)

“In the history of sculpture, eighty percent of the subject matter has been a woman, either reclining standing or seated. It is a great tribute paid to the most beautiful form of nature. The interesting thing is that in returning to the same subject, you always say something different. This is one of the charms, one of the limitations and one of the difficulties that I describe in being a sculptor. You have to truly be original each time.”

 

BOTERO WORKING IN STUDIO

#5. Pedro on a Horse, 1977

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 571,500

Pedro on a Horse | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Pedro on a Horse, 1977
Painted epoxy and resin with synthetic hair and leather
153x90x80 cm (60 1/4 x 35 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature and number 2/6 (on the rear hoof)

Executed in 1977, the present work is the most important early sculpture by Fernando Botero. Honoring his recently deceased son, Pedro, the work is emblematic of the Colombian artist’s oeuvre. Perched upon his stoic steed, Pedro adopts the role of a gallant soldier, clutching crimson leather reins in one hand while wielding a bright yellow sword in the other. The application of color infuses the scene with vitality, amplifying the whimsical allure inherent in Botero’s figures. While light and playful as is typical of Botero’s work, Pedro on a Horse, also holds profound significance in its meaningful portrayal of Botero’s son Pedro.

Created in Botero’s Paris studio in which he was working at the time, Pedro on a Horse subtly recalls the work of the French Impressionists, specifically that of Edgar Degas. Recognized for his innovative approach to sculpture, Degas often integrated unconventional materials such as real hair, fabric, and wire into his wax representations of horses and dancers. Botero’s thorough examination of diverse artistic influences suggests his familiarity with Degas’s avant-garde sculptural techniques. The incorporation of non-traditional elements like the leather strap and synthetic hair adorning the horse’s mane and tail could be seen as a tribute to the enduring impact of the French master on Botero’s artistic evolution.

In 1974, Botero and his four-year-old son Pedro were in a tragic car accident in Spain. Although Botero survived with sustained injuries, his son was killed which left an unforgettable mark on his life and artwork. Botero first explored the subject of his son, three years before the present sculpture in the painting Pedro on Horseback. Similar to the sculpture, the work features the central figure of Pedro wearing a policeman’s uniform and riding a hobby horse inside the child’s playroom. While taking inspiration from the painting, Pedro on a Horse creates new imagery of Botero’s son, focusing specifically on the boy and his humble steed. Pedro’s beaming, cherubic face, stands in stark contrast to the simplicity of the hobby horse he rides. His rosy cheeks reflect his horse’s mouth and his flushed hands. Pedro holds a pair of bright red reins that mirror the wheels of his horse, the hue of his hat’s brim, and his pursed lips. Renowned for his vibrant palette, even in his sculptural works, Botero exercises restraint in color usage here. The small splashes of color bring a subtle life into the figures. Furthermore, Pedro’s eyes, though devoid of expression—a hallmark of Botero’s style—infuse a touch of humanity into an otherwise aloof figure.

However, Pedro on a Horse, transcends a father’s personal and loving portrayal of his son. In this piece, Botero, calling upon art historical sculpture, gives his own take on the age-old tradition of commemorating influential figures through equestrian monuments. From the iconic Marcus Aurelius statue on the Capitoline Hill in Rome to Charles IV’s likeness in Mexico City and the revered liberator of Latin America, Simon Bolívar, leaders both military and political have been immortalized in bronze and stone throughout the annals of time. Mirroring the stoic demeanor of these historical figures, Botero portrays Pedro solemnly charging ahead, sword aloft, thus elevating his son to the childlike equivalent of Aurelius or Bolívar.

LEFT: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF MARCUS AURELIUS, 13.9 FEET, CIRCA 175 AD, CAPITOLINE MUSEUMS
RIGHT: SIMÓN BOLÍVAR, SOUTH AMERICAN LIBERATOR, 24 BY 12 FT, EXECUTED IN 1959, SIMON BOLIVAR PARK, DC

Pedro on a Horse thus exemplifies Botero’s ability to weave complex layers of meaning into a tender and enchanting image. The work transcends its status as a mere sculpture and becomes a testament to love, loss, and the enduring power of art to capture the essence of the human experience. Through Botero’s skillful craftsmanship and profound emotion, this work stands as a timeless tribute to a beloved son and a monumental sculpture in its own right.

#6. Hombre y caballo, 1997

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 508,000

Hombre y caballo | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Hombre y caballo, 1997
Oil on canvas
61.3 x 48.9 cm (24 1/8 x 19 1/4 inches)
Signed and dated 97 (lower right)

#7. Obispo perdido en el bosque, 1970

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 508,000

Obispo perdido en el bosque | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Obispo perdido en el bosque, 1970
Oil on canvas
119.8 x 91.8 cm (47 1/8 x 36 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 70 (lower right); signed and titled (on the reverse)

#8. Gato, 1999

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 482,600

Gato | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Gato, 1999
Bronze
54x31x33 cm (21 1/4 x 14 x 13 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature and number 5/6 (on the base)

“The animals created in sculpture by Botero are among his most appealing works…Botero’s horses, dogs, cats, birds, and snakes are part of his own highly inventive world of fantasy and play. They embody the same principles as his sculptures of the human form, investigating the potentials of roundness, pliability, and texture…Perhaps Botero, by isolating and enlarging this cat, conceives of them as the singular inhabitants of his own Garden of Eden or as representatives from a Noah’s Ark dreamt up by the artist in reverie of creation.”

CAT STATUETTE INTENDED TO CONTAIN A MUMMIFIED CAT, LEADED BRONZE, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, EGYPT, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART PERMANENT COLLECTION

#9. Colombiana comiendo banana, 1982

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 450,000
USD 444,500

Colombiana comiendo banana | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Colombiana comiendo banana, 1982
Oil on canvas
110.2 x 79.1 cm (43 3/8 x 31 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 82 (lower right)

“Artists of all kinds have to say things that everybody would like to say but cannot express. I have the capacity to paint pictures, so it’s up to me to say those things, and not to copy the Americans or the French to produce fake American or French paintings. I must paint Colombian pictures. And the strange thing is that these impress people in France, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. In a sense, the more parochial you are, the more universal you can become. Art has always been parochial in origin…Many artists fancy that universal art is produced by copying universally. I don’t believe that. You must be true to your roots; only then can you reach people all over the world”

BOTERO PICTURED WITH THE PRESENT WORK IN HIS STUDIO CIRCA 1982 IMAGES PRESS/GETTY IMAGES

#10. La costurera, 1997

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 444,500

La costurera | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
La costurera, 1997
Oil on canvas
117.2 x 98.1 cm (46 1/8 x 38 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated 97 (lower right)

#11. Donna sul letto, 1998

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 381,000

Donna sul letto | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Donna sul letto, 1998
Bronze
33 x 62.2 x 30.5 cm (13 x 24 1/2 x 12 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature and number E.A. 1/2 and stamped with the foundry mark (on the base)
This work is number 1 of 2 artist’s proofs from an edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs

#12. Woman, 1993

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 266,700

Woman | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Woman, 1993
Charcoal, graphite and pastel on canvas
122.2 x 105 cm (48 1/8 x 41 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated 93 (lower right)

Leda and the Swan, 2006

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
PASSED

Leda and the Swan | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Leda and the Swan, 2006
Bronze
73.7 x 123.2 x 50.8 cm (29 x 48 1/2 x 20 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature and number EA 2/2 and the foundry mark (on the base)
This work is number 2 of 2 artist’s proofs from an edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs

When Botero traveled to Europe in the early 1950s as an up-and-coming artist, he found himself captivated by the timeless masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Between 1953 and 1955, he delved into the study of art history and fresco techniques in Florence, embarking on pilgrimages to Europe’s renowned museums. It was during this formative period that Botero meticulously analyzed and absorbed the compositional tactics and color strategies employed by Italian, Dutch, and Spanish master painters. These foundational studies not only enriched Botero’s painting practice, providing him with enduring themes to explore throughout his career, but also laid the groundwork for his venture into sculpture, which began around 1963.

In his work Leda and the Swan, Botero enters into a dialogue with the vast expanse of Western art history, consciously appropriating the ideological framework that prioritizes the primacy of the idea over the physical manifestation of the artwork. By doing so, Botero not only engages with the enduring themes and motifs of classical art but also challenges and reinterprets them through his distinctive artistic lens.

LEFT:AFTER MICHELANGELO, LEDA AND THE SWAN, AFTER 1530, OIL ON CANVAS, THE NATIONAL GALLERY PERMANENT COLLECTION, LONDON
RIGHT: STATUE OF LEDA AND THE SWAN, MARBLE, 1ST CENTURY A.D., VILLA MAGNANI, ROME, ITALY, THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, VILLA COLLECTION

Throughout Europe’s Early Modern period, the theme of Leda and the Swan remained a popular subject among artists, providing an avenue for exploring eroticism that occasionally evaded the scrutiny of the Church due to its mythological origins. Botero’s interpretation appears to draw inspiration from a lost painting by Michelangelo in its composition; however, whereas Michelangelo’s intertwined figures appear intimate and active, their gazes locked in intense engagement, Botero’s rendition presents a striking contrast with its serene stillness. In Botero’s portrayal, the figures seem to pause, with Leda’s head turned away from the Swan and toward the viewer. Unlike traditional depictions that offer a voyeuristic glimpse into a scene of private passion and violence, Botero subverts this dynamic, integrating the viewer’s gaze into the artwork itself. In his characteristic style, Botero offers a playful critique of the image as well as artists of the Italian Renaissance’s interpretation of mythical stories. Imbued with characteristic Boterian subversive practice and humor, this Leda and the Swan is an iconic example of the artist’s mature sculptural practice.

Perro, 1989

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 450,000
WITHDRAWN

Perro | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FERNANDO BOTERO (1932 – 2023)
Perro, 1989
Marble
19 x 15 x 8 3/4 inches (48.3 x 38.1 x 22.2 cm)
Incised with the artist’s signature (on the base)

8. Gerhard Richter

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Abstraktes Bild, 1988

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 11,335,000

GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932), Abstraktes Bild | Christie’s (christies.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1988
Oil on canvas
200×180 cm (78 3/4 x 70 7/8 inches)
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘680-2 Richter 1988’ (on the reverse)

Forging a singular path through the artistic developments of post-war and contemporary art, Gerhard Richter expanded the idea of what painting could be when he chose it as his primary medium in 1962. Studying in post-World War II Germany, an introduction to American abstraction and British Pop had a profound effect on the artist as he sought to push beyond traditional modes and establish a more investigative practice that questioned medium, process, subject, and objecthood. Abstraktes Bild is a dazzling example of what has become his iconic practice of surface handling and represents Richter’s ability to explore issues of chance and the legacy of Abstract Expressionism within an entirely new framework. Hailing from the innovative series of the same name begun in the 1980s, the present work represents an absolutely new type of non-representational canvas that was born out of the artist’s early experiments with abstract landscapes and color studies. Equating abstraction not to any emotional outburst or action, he remarked, “With abstract painting we create a better means of approaching what can neither be seen nor understood because abstract painting illustrates with the greatest clarity, that is to say, with all the means at the disposal of art, ‘nothing’ … we allow ourselves to see the unseeable, that which has never before been seen and indeed is not visible” (G. Richter, quoted in Gerhard Richter: Paintings, Minnesota, 1988, p. 107). Relinquishing the control that brushes afford, his highly manipulative approach to these dynamic canvases established an intimate dialogue between the artist and the materials themselves.

Rendered in smokey silver tones with an underlying layer of riotous color, Abstraktes Bild is like a geode waiting to be cracked open. The strong downward pull of Richter’s squeegee drags the paint in lines against itself and the stretched canvas beneath, thereby creating an intense verticality that sets the entire composition in motion. Working with a multitude of painterly applications, the artist applies pigment after pigment to the work so that he can establish a thick, complex strata that is representative of his time spent. This accumulation of layers makes itself known as Richter excavates and obscures with his tools. Areas of pewter begin to appear as the dark blue, black, and gray overpainting comes away. Exploring further, orange, red, and yellow patches shine through like the glowing embers hidden in a charred tree. While the choice of tones and the layering order is firmly Richter’s decision, the ways in which they interact throughout the process and in the final work are not. By using the squeegee, a device that allows for little more than directional control by the artist, Richter leaves the results up to chance as areas combine, pull away, stretch, and peel. “If the execution works,” he once explained, “this is only because I partly destroy it, or because it works in spite of everything…I often find this intolerable and even impossible to accept, because, as a thinking, planning human being, it humiliates me to find out that I am so powerless…My only consolation is to tell myself that I did actually make the pictures – even though they treat me any way they like and somehow just take shape. Because it’s still up to me to determine the point at which they are finished (picture-making consists of a multitude of Yes/No decisions with a Yes to end it all)” (G. Richter, quoted in A. Borchardt-Hume, “‘Dreh Dich Nicht Um’: Don’t Turn Around: Richter’s Paintings of the Late 1980s” in Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 172). Allowing the tools and materials to essentially dictate his process, Richter removes much of the artist’s hand in favor of a tenuous authorial control over turbulent encounters.

Abstraktes Bild, 1990

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 4,658,000

Abstraktes Bild | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (b. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1990
Oil on wood
120×120 cm (47 1/4 x 47 1/4 inches)
Signed, dated 1990 and numbered 730-1 (on the reverse)

Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild is a paragon of the artist’s treatise on the aesthetic and conceptual capacities of painting. Executed in 1990, the present work emerges from the apex of Richter’s legendary career and is a resplendent exemplar of the artist’s epoch defining Abstrakte Bilder, a series of paintings widely recognized as the preeminent venture in abstract art of the last fifty years. Abstraktes Bild was notably exhibited in Richter’s acclaimed presentation, Gerhard Richter: Mirrors at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London (1991); acquired directly from Anthony d’Offay Gallery following its debut exhibition, present work has been held in the same prestigious private European collection for over three decades.

WILLEM DE KOONING, ASHEVILLE, 1948. IMAGE © THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION, WASHINGTON, USA / ACQUIRED 1952 / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. ART © 2024 THE WILLEM DE KOONING FOUNDATION / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Emanating a shimmering fluidity that evokes a landscape refracted through water, swathes of gunmetal, crimson, and chartreuse in Abstraktes Bild give way to fissures of onyx and burgundy beneath. Here, we see Richter revel in the chance slippages of his signature squeegee tool, which the artist uses to simultaneously build and erode his mesmerizing surface, superbly exhibiting Richter’s command of medium, entirely innovative technique, and his unprecedented mastery of color. Sonorous and seductive, Abstraktes Bild exemplifies Richter’s arrival at a greater suppleness and fluency, honing in the momentum and tension of his painterly hand to a pitch-perfect degree.

Richter often included remnants of his past works in new compositions – Abstraktes Bild is no exception. The chromatic permutation of the present work can be seen in the subsequent painting Richter produced following Abstraktes Bild, Wald (1) from 1990, as if it extends from the surface of the present work. Thus, Abstraktes Bild exemplifies a sense of continuity in Richter’s abstraction and exhibits the ultimate painterly palimpsest: the exuberant strata of paint bear the ghosts of previous accretions, of color juxtapositions obsessively applied, erased, remade, and obliterated over again, only to beget fresh cogitations of its own.

In Abstraktes Bild, Richter’s odyssey into the realm of pure abstraction is his most extreme engagement with the medium – a raw examination of the very nature of paint itself, as a physical substance in both original and manipulated forms. Embracing an element of automatism, Richter harnesses the full force of kinetic energy into the painterly surface of Abstraktes Bild as he draws his far-reaching squeegee across the grain of his wood panel surface, layer after layer. Alternating in direction, density of paint, viscosity of the dragged movements, and the drying times between each wipe, Richter indulges in an infinite and unknowable number of permutations borne out of the interaction between oil pigments.

CLAUDE MONET, STACK OF WHEAT (THAW, SUNSET), 1890-91. IMAGE © THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / ART RESOURCE, NY

While Richter’s earlier Photo Paintings fall away into abstraction, the Abstrakte Bilder series sees the artist launch a critical breakthrough in his oeuvre as he returns to a suggestion of referentiality. Evoking a blurred image from the nebulous recesses of memory and demanding the same cognitive viewing experience as his photo works, the coagulation of endlessly scraped pigment counters the canon of abstraction by privileging the photographic, the mechanical, and the aleatory. Thrumming with a galvanic, distortive energy redolent within pearlescent smears of color, Abstraktes Bild‘s abstract field of chromatic variegation unmistakably bears the mark of a postmodern digital glow. A glimmering blizzard of kaleidoscopic hues and surging power, Abstraktes Bild represents the epic crescendo of Gerhard Richter’s tireless aesthetic project at its most refined. With the repeated synthesis of chance being a defining trait of its execution, the acts of premeditated chaos that make up the surface of Abstraktes Bild evoke something not quite of this realm, something that is both unfathomable and phenomenal – ultimately encapsulating the paradigm of Gerhard Richter’s mature artistic and philosophical achievement.

Abstraktes Bild, 1983

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,800,000 – 2,500,000
USD 2,056,500

Abstraktes Bild | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

GERHARD RICHTER (b. 1932)
Abstraktes Bild, 1983
Oil on canvas
100×70 cm (39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches)
Signed, dated 1983 and numbered 522-3 (on the reverse)

Chance, layering, erasure, chromatic power and compositional counterpoint are wielded to sublime effect in Abstrakes Bild from 1983. Following a corpus of nascent abstractions executed between the years of 1980-85, the present work hails from a period of profound exploration into a language of abstraction. In fact, Richter called these works executed in the early 1980s ‘free abstracts’, a name aptly conveying an open embrace of movement and irregularity. As laid down in the present work across layers of saturated and vibrant underpainting, Richter holds in tension the dominance of the squeegee over the brush. Horizontal veils of stuttering paint present a riposte to the vertical drag of wide brush-strokes, both of which are punctuated by finer and more angular accents. The result is a mesmerizing field in which painterly elements both spar against and complement each other while the paint’s chromatic value injects this piece with an undisputed brilliance. Broadcasting deepest green through to acidic yellow and shocking reds, along with all the possible permutations that exist in between these primary values, Abstraktes Bild imparts glorious light effects that verge on the experiential. In the left of the composition, stuttering verdant greens interrupt a stream of luminous color, reminiscent of light flooding through stained glass, or the colors of a sunset coursing through a soft miasma of clouds. Indeed, the balance between hard and soft, structural solidity and phosphorescence, photographic and the abstract, finds an apogee in this profound yet domestically scaled work.

Texture, color and structure are deployed in Abstraktes Bild with spectacular force and sensitivity to engender a seductive painterly synthesis visually aligned to an exquisite and strikingly atmospheric evocation: structural strips and impastoed ridges of thick oil paint delineate a schema of painterly revelations and under layers of diaphanous blue, green and red that are punctuated with sunset flashes of yellow, orange and pink. The present work draws a uniquely evocative dialogue with late nineteenth-century landscape painting from a distinctly contemporary perspective. Indeed, Richter’s breathtaking Abstraktes Bild captures an atmosphere akin to a post impressionistic translation of landscape scenery.

 

9. Alex Katz

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May, 1996

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 1,875,000
TOP PERFORMER

May | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ALEX KATZ (b. 1927)
May, 1996
Oil on linen
120×240 inches (304.8 x 609.6 cm)

Executed in 1996, Alex Katz’s atmospheric May is a poignant example of the artist’s profound connection to nature. Towering in scale and speckled with leaves and flowers, Katz renders his rhythmic springtime vision with a lyrical application of paint, skillfully instilling a sense of movement and energy within the flatness of the picture plane. The bending and arching brushstrokes of the branches are imbued with speed and whimsy, blurring with each other as they cross. This inherent dynamism within the present work is mirrored in the bright, energetic tones of the color palette. Lively greens and white streaks dominate, and serve to highlight the exuberant atmosphere of the piece. Katz played with the edges of forms and embraced the hand of the artist; building, as he himself described, “a landscape that was different from a traditional landscape. I wanted to make an environmental landscape, where you were in it” (Alex Katz quoted in: Irving Sandler, Alex Katz: A Retrospective, New York 1998, p. 120).

CLAUDE MONET, SPRING IN GIVERNY, 1890, CLARK ART INSTITUTE, WILLIAMSTOWN

Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Katz grew up as an artist during the heyday of Modernism. Rebelling against the push toward nonrepresentational abstraction and gestural vigor, the painter forged his own path that paid tribute to artists like Matisse. He was also intrigued by the graphic work of Pop artists who toyed with the consumer and advertisement images of the new modern age, something that can be felt in the confident and authoritative gestures of May. In the late 1980s, Katz shifted his attention away from portraiture to explore the plentiful possibilities of landscape painting. While in Maine, Katz developed a passion for the light and scenery of the area as he was encouraged to compose landscape works.

“At Skowhegan I tried plein air painting and found my subject matter and a reason to devote my life to painting. The sensation of painting from the back of my head was a high that I followed until the present.”

The sensation-driven nature of painting continued to inspire Katz, an approach felt in the way that his works experiment with movement, energy, and tone.

Maria, 1997

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 444,500

Maria | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

ALEX KATZ (b. 1927)
Maria, 1997
Oil on linen
72×42 inches  (182.9 x 106.7 cm)
Signed and dated 97 (on the overlap); signed (on the stretcher)

Monumental in scale and striking for its pure figuration and signature flatness, Alex Katz’s 1996 portrait Maria is emblematic of the artist’s renowned idiosyncratic aesthetic that redefined contemporary portraiture in the twentieth century. Set against a vague backdrop of dark with visible misty strokes and rendered in Katz’s impossibly cool, reductive style, the present work is an instantly recognizable example of the artist’s iconic portraiture. The seemingly shallow spatial plane and sharp cropping device paired with the sheer size of the canvas owe much to the crisp manner of commercial art and illustration with further inspiration drawn from film, advertising and fashion.

“I like to make an image that is so simple you can’t avoid it, and so complicated you can’t figure it out.”

ALEX KATZ, PURPLE WIND, 1995, OIL ON BOARD, 29.7 BY 22.9 CM.

atz treats the subject with his notable style, eliminating the work of any context and superfluous details. While the artist strived to paint with the energy of the abstract expressionist artists, he achieved this energy through its monumental scale, while maintaining his processes. Katz works to fashion his works through its technicality, often preparing sketches and prints of his subject prior to rendering his oil paintings. Maria is also a unique portrait in that it is reflective of his night paintings series that began in the 1980s. These works, unlike many of his vibrantly colored works, are propelled into darkness with streaks of light that evoke a feeling of loneliness. Landscapes encompass the majority of this series of works; however, the present work merges his two most notable styles with his figure. The visually arresting red band of pigment at the lower edge of the canvas crops the subject and places further emphasis on his attempt at true two-dimensionality. All elements converging to allow for pure figuration and abstraction to reign supreme.

Ada with Mirror, 1969

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 450,000 – 650,000
USD 819,000

ALEX KATZ (B. 1927)
Ada with Mirror, 1969
Oil on linen
32×48 inches (81.3 x 121.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Alex Katz 69’ (lower right)

Katz’s portraits are true to the way we experience others, […] They eloquently convey the tension between the determinate outer appearance and the indeterminate inner reality of someone known only from the outside. Katz seems to make the shell of a person’s outer reality his or her complete substance, as though the person had no inner substance. Yet the quirkiness of Katz’s appearances alludes to that inner substance […] For all their everydayness, Katz’s figures have an air of transient strangeness to them, suggesting the mystery of their inner existence, perhaps even to themselves.

 

Installation view, Alex Katz: Gathering, October 21, 2022 – February 20, 2023, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (present lot illustrated). Photo: Ariel Ione Williams and Midge Wattles / The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY. Artwork: © 2024 Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

 

Martha, 1981

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 500,000
USD 381,000

Alex Katz – Modern & Contemporary Art Ev… Lot 22 May 2024 | Phillips

Painted in 1981, Alex Katz’s Martha is at once intimate and monumental, capturing the very essence of the artist’s decades long investigation into the genre of portraiture. Executed larger than life, the titular subject Martha is likely the artist’s friend and fellow painter Martha Diamond, who is also depicted in Katz’s February 5:30pm, executed nearly a decade prior in 1972. Featured as the leftmost figure in a row of six, it is as though Katz has cropped Martha from the larger scene and given her own canvas. She is shown in the same turquoise polo shirt, against what appears to be the same windowpane. The resulting single portrait otherwise eliminates all specific background references to focus on what is most essential: Martha herself. Katz routinely painted the same subject time and time again throughout his career, and Martha exquisitely demonstrates Katz’s keen and careful observation of the defining features of his sitters. Here, Martha’s features are even more refined than in his 1972 painting, as if he spent more time on each strand of hair to get it just right. The tendrils of Martha’s brown, straight hair, which frame her face, blow in an unseen breeze, adding a sense of motion to the otherwise still, serene scene. Her warm, almond-shaped eyes gaze off into the distance, placing the viewer within her peripheral vision, while the soft light peering in at right highlights the subtleties of her nose, lips and planes of her face.

Alex Katz, February 5:30 P.M., 1972. Artwork: © 2024 Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Katz’s paintings became increasingly larger in size. Throughout those decades, Katz’s figures also became increasingly and often dramatically more cropped, culminating in the zoomed-in compositions of the 2010s. As compared to her scale in February 5:30 PM, here Katz paints Martha’s portrait on a canvas measuring exactly five-feet-tall. By cropping and enlarging Martha’s profile in the present composition, Katz elevates his subject to even greater importance. In removing all recognizable surroundings less the suggestion of a window, Katz strips Martha from her narrative context, and instead promotes a sense of anonymity. Here, Martha could be in any place at any given time. The resulting portrait is timeless, transcending eras, as Martha could just as easily be from 1981 as from 2024.

 

 

Focus: Impressionist and Modern Art

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1. Claude Monet

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Meules à Giverny, 1893

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimate on Request
USD 34,804,500

Meules à Giverny  | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
GUARANTEED

CLAUDE MONET (1840 – 1926)
Meules à Giverny, 1893
Oil on canvas
65.5 x 100.2 cm (25 7/8 x 39 1/2 inches)
Signed Claude Monet and dated 93 (lower right)

In 1893, at the height of the hay-making season, Claude Monet set up his easel in the meadow just to the south of the site of his future water-lily pond and painted Meules à Giverny. Infused with light, shadow, color and movement, this oil exemplifies the best of Monet’s bucolic Impressionism, taking as its subject one of the artist’s most beloved—that of the haystack. Unlike any paintings on this subject he had executed before, the present work and two directly related compositions (W. 1363 and W. 1364) make full use of the revelations in surface handling that Monet discovered in his series focused on Rouen Cathedral, which he began in 1892 and finished in 1894. During the associated painting campaigns in Rouen the artist, rather unsurprisingly, reflected in his letters to his wife that he was not a city person: “… it is decidedly not my business to be in cities.” According to Paul Hayes Tucker, “he also spoke of how he missed Giverny and how he wanted to paint in the spring. He made these same statements during his second campaign in Rouen. ‘This Cathedral is admirable,’ he admitted to Alice in March of 1893, ‘but it is terribly dry and hard to do; it will be a delight for me after this to paint en plein air.’ ‘Giverny must be so beautiful that I dare not even think about it’” (Exh. Cat., Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Monet in the ‘90s, The Series Paintings, 1989-90, p. 165). It was with this desire that Monet set out to paint Meules à Giverny and it is this deep sense of fulfilled longing and homecoming that suffuses every brushstroke of the present work.

Monet found his inspiration in the fields adjacent to his home in Giverny; taking the principal imagery of the monolithic grainstacks which dominate the harvested fields from the high spring onward. Commonly known as his Haystacks, these canvases are anchored by gigantic conical structures, composed of wheat or grain, stacked in such a way as to allow the stalks to dry and prevent mold prior to the grain’s separation from the stalk by a threshing machine. Each village did not possess its own thresher, and the wait for one of these traveling machines to reach a specific location often took months—grain cut in the summer might sit in its neat and careful stack until January or February of the following year. These stacks were over ten feet in height, sometimes reaching over twenty feet, their shape varying by region.

The subject of the haystack (or grainstack in some cases) had appeared in Monet’s canvases as early as the mid-1880s (see carousel below). In 1884, haystacks (composed of hay) sit in front of a row of poplars (W. 900-902); while in 1885, the stacks are leaned against by young figures dressed for a summer day (W. 993-95), and, in 1886, they form a small part of a broader and more expansive view of the surrounding countryside (Wildenstein 1073-74). It was not until two years later in 1888 that Monet began to place these grainstacks as the central motif of a composition (W. 1213-17) and then in 1890-91 Monet completed was is commonly viewed as his first series, some twenty-five canvases in which the Meules are depicted in a variety of light and weather effects (W. 1266-90). Meules à Giverny, along with two other works (W. 1363 and W. 1364), was completed in the midst of his Cathedral paintings in 1893. This was the last moment Monet fully engaged with the subject of the large haystacks (three oils completed the following year depict the very different shape of meulettes, a preparatory stage in the storing process (W. 1383-85)).

In choosing these powerful grainstacks as his subject, Monet continued a long tradition of depicting the French countryside and its abundant riches as seen in the paintings of such artists as Millet and the Barbizon school. Monet’s fellow Impressionists, most notably Camille Pissarro, had also included imagery of haystacks in their work. As early as 1873, Pissarro places a haystack front and center, its roughly triangular form breaking the horizon line and dominating the field and figures that surround it. Almost twenty years later his haystacks appear smaller in size, tucked between trees and pathways near his home in Éragny. However, Monet updated and adapted this tradition to striking effect: his grainstacks series contain virtually no anecdotal detail; no dogs or laborers, no figures walking through the fields or birds flying in the sky. The artist pares down his vision to focus solely on the grainstacks themselves, on the play of light or night on them, on the sky and the horizon. In this reduction of motif, Monet echoes the purity of line and form evident in Japanese colored woodblock prints by such masters as Hokusai that began to be seen in the West in the mid-nineteenth century, and also demonstrates a divergence of approach from contemporary artists such as Vincent van Gogh, who treated the same subject in Arles during 1890 with very different aims, imbuing his subject with a wealth of details that Monet chose to exclude from his painting.

LEFT: CAMILLE PISSARRO, PAYSANS ET MEULES DE FOIN DANS UN CHAMP, 1878, PRIVATE COLLECTION
TOP RIGHT: KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, SOUTH WIND AND CLEARING WEATHER THIRTY-SIX VIEWS OF MT. FUJI, CIRCA 1831, YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY, NEW HAVEN
BOTTOM RIGHT: VINCENT VAN GOGH, STACKS OF WHEAT BY A FARM, JUNE 1888, RIJKSMUSEUM KRÖLLER-MÜLLER, OTTERLO

While van Gogh’s stacks, situated by a farmhouse, portray a scene of continuing work and human interaction, Paul Gauguin portrays them mid-construction, where local women manipulate the interior of the stack while thronged by chickens. This context underscores the separation from Pissarro and Millet’s imagery, showing the stacks primarily as temporary architectural constructions in the landscape. A step even further removed can be found in Degas’ Quatre danseuses, where ballerina’s print and spin in front of an ideal pastoral backdrop featuring several towering grainstacks.

LEFT: PAUL GAUGUIN, LES MEULES JAUNES (LE MOISSON BLONDE), 1889, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS
RIGHT: EDGAR DEGAS, QUATRE DANSEUSES, CIRCA 1899, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The theme of the harvest, as an essential cyclical human activity which indicated success or failure, feast or famine and ensured the passage of time, has a storied presence in artistic imagery since ancient times. From a wall painting from the Ramesside period of ancient Egypt circa 13th-11th centuries B.C. to an idealized image of medieval peasant life for the month of June in the Très riches heures of the Duke de Berry, executed by the Limbourg brothers in the early 1400s to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Harvesters, the growth and collection of grain is depicted as integral to human life and development and can be conflated with the rise of human civilization (see figs. 8-10).

TOP: HARVEST SCENE ON THE EAST WALL OF THE TOMB OF SENNEDJEM, DEIR EL-MEDINA, 13TH-11TH CENTURIES B.C.
BOTTOM LEFT: LIMBOURG BROTHERS, LES TRÈS RICHES HEURES DU DUC DE BERRY, JUIN, CIRCA 1412-16, MUSÉE CONDÉ, CHANTILLY
BOTTOM RIGHT: PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, THE HARVESTERS, 1565, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

Though the new modern behemoth, the railroad, wended its way across France by 1893, the importance of the harvest for the countryside, town and state was still paramount. In the careful preparation, harvest and storage methods exhibited by each grainstack, the economic health of the countryside was demonstrated. A good harvest and correct farming methods ensured the prosperity of the farmer and town, and by extension the city and state. The notion of the stacks carrying the wealth of their owners finds a resonance in Monet’s depiction of their surfaces and the volumetric play of their shapes. The primary stack in the present composition and those that populate the more distant background are broad, full structures that suggest the great fertility and bountifulness of the Normandy landscape. Their surfaces are gilded and burnished with the light of the sun, and the whole scene is infused with a sense of well-being, vitality and the harmony of nature.

THE PRESENT WORK INSTALLED IN THE 1905 MONET EXHIBITION AT COPLEY HALL, BOSTON

Meules à Giverny has a storied provenance. Just two years after it was painted, the present work was acquired by the artist Dwight Blaney on a trip to Paris. Bringing Meules à Giverny back to the United States, Blaney lent the painting almost immediately to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He continued to lend the painting, including to the 1905 Monet exhibition at the Copley Society in Boston where it hung alongside dozens of other works by the artist and adjacent to works by Rodin (see fig. 11). Blaney’s summer home on Ironbound Island in Maine’s Frenchman’s Bay was a magnet for artists of the time including his close friend John Singer Sargent, who painted Blaney on a number of occasions (see fig. 12). Coincidentally, Sargent was the first owner of Claude Monet’s Bennecourt, also coming to auction from the same collection as the present work (see lot 13). Blaney kept Meules à Giverny throughout his life. Shortly after his death in 1944, John Hay Whitney acquired this painting for his tremendous collection. For the past twenty years Meules à Giverny has been held in a private collection and has rarely been shown publicly.

Moulin de Limetz, 1888

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 18,000,000 – 25,000,000
USD 21,685,000

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Moulin de Limetz | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Moulin de Limetz, 1888
Oil on canvas
92.5 x 72.8 cm (36 3/8 x 28 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 88’ (lower left)

Ater a spring painting campaign in the south of France, Claude Monet traveled back to his beloved home in Giverny at the end of April 1888. On his return, he devoted himself once more to depicting the idyllic rural landscape of this area, finding a wealth of inspiration in the verdant meadows and marshes, the tranquil waters of the river Epte and Seine, and, as the farmers began their harvest, the grainstacks that appeared in the fields near his house. Moulin de Limetz is one of two canvases in which Monet pictured the mill at Limetz-Villez, a village just over a mile south of Giverny, with a branch of the Epte, the so-called Bras de Limetz, flowing gently past.

Though the seeming protagonist of this large canvas is the mill, this was for Monet simply a pretext for capturing the striking, sun-dappled foliage of the tree that covers over half of the composition, together with the shimmering reflections on the river that stretches towards the bridge in the distance. While the pendant picture (Wildenstein, no. 1210a; Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam) presents the same scene in cool shadow, in the present work, Monet has conveyed the rich, warm light of a summer’s day. Though green tones appear on first glance to preside, the canvas is composed of a dazzling array of colors, from inky blues, violet and flashes of emerald green, to soft, pastel pinks and creams, applied with a thick impasto. The surface is richly textured, a tapestry of luminous tones that appears almost abstract in places. The flurry of strokes that represent the fluttering leaves on the branches both frame and obstruct the view of the mill beyond—a radical type of repoussoir that overturns conventional notions of landscape painting. In contrast to the dancing strokes of color that constitute the leaves in the foreground, the water is rendered with an exquisite delicacy. The reflections, a symphonic combination of blues, greens, whites and pinks, sweep across the width of the canvas in soft vertical stripes, mirroring the tangible elements of the scene, as well as the small glimpse of blue sky above. Light and air therefore become subjects in themselves, masterfully distilled by Monet into painterly form.

With its bold brushwork and emphatic focus on the varying qualities and effects of light, Moulin de Limetz is a defiantly Impressionist work, painted at a time when this movement was moving into new directions. The final Impressionist exhibition had been held two years earlier, in the spring of 1886. From the start of this decade, many of the leading proponents of Impressionism had begun to pursue different artistic ideas. Pierre-Auguste Renoir had gone to Italy in 1881 to study Classicism and the Renaissance, Edgar Degas had refused to exhibit in the Impressionist exhibition in 1882, Camille Pissarro had fallen under the spell of the Neo-Impressionists in 1885, introducing more studied, careful brushstrokes into his painting. In 1888, Pissarro invited the Neo-Impressionist leader, Georges Seurat, to join that year’s Impressionist exhibition—a decision that had caused Monet, Renoir, and Alfred Sisley to abstain from participating. There, Seurat debuted his pointillist masterpiece, Un dimanche d’été à l’Ile de La Grande Jatte (The Art Institute of Chicago), “nothing less than a direct assault on the style and subjects of his Impressionist forbears,” Paul Hayes Tucker has written (op. cit., 1995, p. 126).

Moulin de Limetz remained in Monet’s collection until 1891, when Durand-Ruel acquired it. It was bought not long after by the collector, Lucien Sauphar, with whom it remained until 1936. Acquired from Sauphar’s estate sale jointly by Durand-Ruel and M. Knoedler & Co., New York, the painting crossed the Atlantic, where, a few years later, in 1941, it was bought by Joseph S. and Ethel B. Atha, of Kansas City. It remained in their collection until Ethel died in 1986. At her bequest, it was gifted partially to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Upon the death of Ethel’s daughter, Ethelyn Atha Chase, in September 2023, who held a life interest in part of the painting, the work will now be sold. Proceeds from the sale will be used to support future art acquisitions for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Prairie à Giverny, 1886

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,228,000

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Prairie à Giverny | Christie’s (christies.com)

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Prairie à Giverny, 1886
Oil on canvas
92.7 x 81.3 cm (36 1/2 x 32 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 86’ (lower left)

This luminous depiction of a picturesque meadow was painted by Monet at his beloved home of Giverny. The artist had moved to this rural village, set on the confluence of the Seine and the Epte, some fifty miles northwest of Paris, in April 1883. He rented a pink stucco house, called Le Pressoir, which, over the years that followed, he turned into a horticultural oasis. Together with the idyllic surrounding landscape, his home would offer endless artistic inspiration for the rest of his life.

Not long after Monet and his family moved to Giverny, the artist wrote his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, “Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces, because I like the countryside very much” (quoted in P.H. Tucker, Monet in the ‘90s: The Series Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, pp. 14-15). He began exploring the surrounding terrain with a renewed sense of creativity. He set out with his canvases each day at dawn, walking over hills and through valleys, in marshes and meadows, among streams and poplars. He painted along the banks of the Seine, winding country roads and houses nestled into the rolling hills, as well as expansive fields. “This was the landscape he came to know most intimately,” James Wood has written, “and its accessibility made possible the extended serial treatment that is the underlying structure for the work of the entire Giverny period” (Monet’s Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978, p. 11).

Claude Monet, Pré à Giverny, 1885. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Digital image: © 2024 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rights reserved / Bridgeman Images.

The artist’s decision to settle at Giverny was propitious and would shape the direction of his career for the decades that followed. Not only was the ever encroaching modernization of Paris still a distant concern, this rural farming village untouched and as bucolic as it had been for centuries, but, as Daniel Wildenstein has pointed out, throughout the day, the sun’s path followed the line of hills around Giverny. As a result, in order “to paint what was reflected in the water, the movement of leaves before the light, the mist veiling the sun, a sunset or sunrise, Monet had only to follow the natural slope of the land from his house to the fields and meadows laced by water and trees. There the landscape, shimmering in the iridescent light, was constantly changing, and the hills—depending on the weather—seemed alternately purple and blue, close and far away. It was Impressionism at its purest, registered instantaneously in a natural setting that was always new and endlessly absorbing” (quoted in ibid., p. 15).

Claude Monet, Prairie à Giverny, effet d’automne, 1886. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Digital image: © 2024 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rights reserved / Bridgeman Images.

The year 1886 was particularly busy for Monet. He spent the first months of the year on the Normandy coast, in Etretat, and returned to Giverny in March. He did not stay long, however, continuing to travel both near and far, spending time in Holland, Paris, and Brittany, where he remained for three months, from June to August. Prairie à Giverny belongs to a group of works from the late summer when Monet, at home for a time, was clearly both reinvigorated and comforted by the vistas of his home. With these works, he captured the effects of light and the charm of the surrounding countryside. The present work was painted not far from the river Epte, its wooded bank seen in the background of the composition. This painting is one of three works that depict this quiet corner of rural Giverny, one of which is now housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Wildenstein, nos. 1081-1083). With this trio of paintings, Monet captured the nuances of the gradually shifting seasons, as summer gave way gradually to fall. In Prairie à Giverny, the scene is infused by a golden light that throws the bordering trees into shadow, suggesting that he painted it at the end of the day. Monet depicted some of these statuesque trees with rich tones of crimson and deep pink, masterfully capturing the leaves on the brink of turning. Together, the pastel-hued dusky sky, the bank of cool trees, and the radiant green plane of the field in the foreground exist in perfect harmony, as Monet turned this quiet, quotidian scene into a timeless, radiant image.

View of Giverny, circa 1933. Country Life Magazine, London. Photo: A. E. Henson / © Country Life.

Soon after he painted Prairie à Giverny, Monet set off on his travels once more. On 15 September he went to Belle-Île, where he stayed until the end of November. This rugged, dramatic coastline offered him a starkly contrasting range of motifs compared to his beloved Giverny. With the infamous debut of Georges Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece, Un dimanche d’été à l’Ile de La Grande Jatte (The Art Institute of Chicago) in the final Impressionist exhibition held earlier in the year, Monet must have felt at this time more dedicated than ever to pushing forward his distinctive form of Impressionism. Though he had refused to participate in the exhibition, “I am still an Impressionist,” he had declared, “and will always remain one” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1989, p. 20). Turning from the sun-dappled quiet of a picturesque corner of the countryside to the storm-swept, uninhabitable coastline of Brittany, Monet was masterfully demonstrating, whether consciously or not, his indomitable ability to distill the essence of a landscape.

2. Pablo Picasso

---

Femme au chapeau assise, 1971

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
USD 19,960,000

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973), Femme au chapeau assise | Christie’s (christies.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Femme au chapeau assise, 1971
Oil and Ripolin on canvas
130 x 97,1 cm (51 1/8 x 38 1/4 inches
Dated and numbered ‘28.7.71. II’ (on the reverse)
Painted in Mougins on 28 July 1971

In 1973, the stately Palais des Papes in Avignon was filled with Pablo Picasso’s latest work. His favored characters from this period—toreadors, lovers, musketeers and more—had all been captured by Picasso in paintings executed during the final years of his life and chosen by the artist himself for the exhibition. The only figure missing was Picasso, who had passed away just one month before its opening on 23 May. Resplendent among the canvases that filled the space was Femme au chapeau assise, painted two years prior, depicting a seated woman sporting a wide-brimmed hat. Formerly in the collection of Picasso’s daughter, Paloma, and latterly owned by the American film and television producer, David L. Wolper and his wife, Gloria, this painting has since remained in the same private collection for over two decades.

Throughout this period of his life, Picasso most frequently depicted his wife, Jacqueline in his painting. Though she did not sit for him, it was her image that permeated all of the artist’s depictions of women in various guises or settings. With her powerful, dark-eyed gaze, the sitter of the present work shares similarities with his final great love, companion and constant muse. Enthroned in a chair, with her legs crossed and hands clasped, she appears seigniorial, the undisputed mistress of Notre-Dame-de-Vie, the spacious, secluded farmhouse set on the hillside of Mougins where the couple had moved in June 1961, three months after their wedding. This would be Picasso and Jacqueline’s home for the rest of the artist’s life, as well as the backdrop for the incredible explosion of creativity that distinguishes the final two decades of his prodigious career.

The present lot pictured on the far right in Picasso: 1970-1972, 201 peintures, Palais de Papes, Avignon, May-September 1973. Photo reproduction: Adrien Didierjean. Artwork: © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

The motif of a woman seated in an armchair was one of the artist’s preferred subjects, appearing time and time again throughout the artist’s career. From the masterful cubist Femme en chemise (Zervos, vol. 2, no. 522) to the sensual depictions of his golden haired muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, and the highly wrought images of Dora Maar, Picasso constantly returned to this format, the abiding pictorial idiom defined primarily by the associated iconography of his lover at the time.

Jacqueline Roque wearing a Stetson hat, La Californie, 1957. Photograph by David Douglas Duncan. Photography collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Digital Image: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

In addition, Picasso frequently portrayed his sitters sporting hats, which he often altered to best suit their personality. In the present work, the yellow-colored hat that the protagonist is wearing is reminiscent of the straw hat that Vincent van Gogh painted himself wearing. Picasso had long admired the Dutch artist and was said to have felt a strong affiliation with him in later life. It is said that he used to project one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits onto his studio walls. Unlike the other artists to whom Picasso looked to in his late career—Eugène Delacroix, Edouard Manet, Diego Velázquez and Rembrandt van Rijn, among others—his artistic dialogue with Van Gogh went beyond the appropriation of compositions or themes, manifesting itself as a deep spiritual identification with the artist. Using the same vigorous, expressive and instinctive brushwork, Picasso, like Van Gogh, frequently painted his own image, and at times those around him, creating powerful works that proudly declare, affirm and celebrate his life-long identity as an artist.

Vincent van Gogh, Jeune paysanne avec chapeau de paille, 1890. Private collection. Digital Image: Bridgeman Images.

“I have less and less time, and I have more and more to say. I want to say the nude. I don’t want to make a nude like a nude. I only want to say breast, say foot, say hand, belly. If I can find the way to say it, that’s enough. I don’t want to paint the nude from head to foot, but just be able to say it. That’s what I want. When we’re talking about it, a single word is enough. Here, one single look and the nude tells you what it is, without a word.”

This sense of urgency defines the artist’s late work, as he painted with an increased sense of vigor, directness and spontaneity. The vitality of his art in his final years were due, in part, to his adoption of a system of codified signs that allowed him to summarize his subjects. Femme au chapeau assise demonstrates this bold artistic approach. The verdant, exterior setting in which the sitter is posed is described with emphatic strokes of color and a series of short, diagonal lines. The figure’s body is likewise denoted with a series of rapid black outlines, as the artist has painted the essential elements of her image in a succinct, impactful way.

Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-1952. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image: © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Large-scale canvases as exemplified by Femme au chapeau assise are filled with vitality and life, as the artist applied gestural strokes of boldly colored oil paint, and in the present work, Ripolin, an industrial type of enamel paint favored by Picasso at this time. As a result, he created a style of painting which, against a backdrop of Minimalism and Conceptualism, defied convention once more, allowing him to remain at the forefront of contemporary art.

Buste d’homme, 1969

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
USD 12,743,700

Buste d’homme | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881 – 1973)
Buste d’homme, 1969
Oil and Ripolin on canvas
116.4 x 89.6 cm (45 7/8 x 35 1/4 inches)
Signed Picasso (lower left); dated 20.10.69. and numbered II (on the reverse)
Executed on 20 October 1969

Buste d’homme, painted on 20 October 1969, is a stunning oil that epitomizes the best of Pablo Picasso’s late period, often dubbed “the Heroic Years” Painted a little more than a week before his 88th birthday, Buste d’homme was first exhibited in a one-man show that Picasso planned in the hallowed halls of the Palais des Papes in Avignon. Each work displayed in this exhibition was hand selected by Picasso for inclusion. Its grand scale, sweeping Gothic arches and quatrefoil windows were ideally suited to the monumental scale and tone of Picasso’s paintings, many of which, including the present work, were thinly-veiled depictions of himself. This self-referential exhibition at the former seat of the Papacy was the ultimate act of self-canonization for the artist, who was already considered a god in the world of art. This would be the first of two spectacular showings of Picasso’s late works in Avignon, but the only one held during the artist’s lifetime. Buste d’homme, which featured prominently on the great stone walls of the Chapel of Clement VI, is a stunning example of the magisterial works on view.

PALAIS DES PAPES, AVIGNON

The present work is a remarkable example of Picasso’s mature style; brimming with painterly verve and stylish invention. The artist’s astonishing capacity for handling paint is wonderfully present in Buste d’homme. Lustrous passages of color cover the whole canvas endowing the figure with a startlingly vivid presence. Throughout his oeuvre, Picasso’s images of the male figure embody masculine power, and are rendered with a bravuric intensity “I have less and less time and I have more and more to say” commented Picasso in his last decade (quoted in K. Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, Lausanne & Paris, 1971, p. 166), and the freedom and spontaneity of his mature work, together with the recourse to archetypal figures and symbols is visual evidence of this.

LEFT: FIG. 2 PABLO PICASSO, TÊTE D’HOMME, 1969, SOLD: SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK, 16 MAY 2017, LOT 14 FOR $10,925,000 © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
RIGHT: FIG. 3 PABLO PICASSO, BUSTE D’HOMME, 1969, SOLD: SOTHEBY’S, HONG KONG, 18 JUNE 2021, LOT 12 FOR $14,031,406 © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

The seemingly limitless energy that characterizes so much of his work is extant in this final burst of creativity, as well as a conscious decision to allow himself total liberty with both style and subject matter. Having gone through so many phases of stylistic and technical experimentation, Picasso now pared down his style in order to paint monumental works in quick, spontaneous brushstrokes. Rather than ponder the details of human anatomy and perspective, the artist isolated those elements of his subject that fascinated and preoccupied him, and depicted them with an extraordinary sense of wit entirely of his own. This work and eight other canvases (Zervos vol. XXXI, nos. 464-71; see figs. 2 and 3) were painted in a burst of focused activity from 15 October to 20 October, 1969. These referential figures—self-portraits in truth—are posed in half length, seated and sporting a hat. The background colors are bright, the faces painted in strong, assured swirls and strokes of the brush.

ANDRÉ VILLIERS, PABLO PICASSO WITH A COWBOY HAT GIVEN TO HIM BY GARY COOPER, LA CALIFORNIE, CANNES, 1958, PHOTOGRAPH, MUSÉE RÈATU, ARLES

The last decade of Picasso’s production has historically been the least understood amongst critics and scholars. Painting in a representational style he went against the grain of pure abstraction. The year 1969 would mark a culminating point in the career of the twentieth-century’s arguably greatest artist. The few self-portraits of the period represent a psychological projection of a complex and multifaceted identity, illustrating the unruly amalgam of influences and contrary personas that made up the mental backdrop of this protean artist. As Susan Galassi commented in 2009: “With this last chapter he closes the circle of his art and at the same time opens the way for a younger generation of artists, those who followed the abstract expressionists and reacted against their dogmatic cult of originality. For the 1960s pop artists and the succeeding generations of post modernists Picasso’s variations entered into the mainstream of iconic masterpieces and served themselves as source for re-creation” (Picasso: Challenging the Past, op.cit., p. 117). It was not just Picasso’s last years that proved so inspirational to the new generation of artists. His immediacy and constant regeneration across his storied career affected all who came in contact.

Christie’s New-York: 18 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Citrons et verre, 1944
Oil on canvas
26.7 x 41.3 cm (10 5/8 x 16 1/4 inches)
Signed ‘Picasso’ (upper left)
Dated ‘14.1.44.’ (on the reverse)
Painted on 14 January 1944

Painted on 14 January 1944, the present Citrons et verre belongs to a series of still lifes Picasso created during World War II. Here, a lemon cut open in two and a glass are presented on a table, a simple yet commanding composition where the brightness of the fruit contrasts with the commanding black brushstrokes that outline the objects and highlight their geometrical forms. It belongs to a series of of five works begun on 10 January, and culminating in three close composition painted four days later (Zervos, vol. 13, nos. 223-225, 227 and 228).

Paul Cezanne, Nature morte, pot à lait et fruits sur une table, circa 1890. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo. Digital image: Bridgeman Images.

The still life dominated Picasso’s wartime work. Deemed a ‘degenerate’ artist by the Nazis, and choosing to remain in occupied Paris, the artist was forced to retreat to his studio during this time, entertaining friends and visitors there, and withdrawing from the café culture that had been so present in his life the years prior. Picasso, with characteristic zeal, threw himself wholeheartedly into his art. Turning to his immediate surroundings, he made the cups, pots, and quotidian trappings of his rooms his subject matter. Although resources were limited, Picasso nevertheless imbued these canvases with a profound pathos; the paintings not only serves as a record of life in the occupied city but also as an allegory of human suffering. ‘It was,’ he later reflected, ‘not a time for the creative man to fail, to shrink, to stop working. There was nothing else to do but work seriously and devotedly, struggle for food, see friends quietly, and look forward to freedom’ (P. Picasso, quoted in M. McCully, ed., A Picasso Anthology: Documents, Criticism, Reminiscences, Princeton, 1981, p. 224).

In the present work, the lemon presents a beacon of light during a dark and cold time—perhaps a gift from someone returning from the Midi, or a black market purchase. Simple items such as fruits had become a rare delicacy in occupied Paris, particularly in the middle of the winter, when everything was in short supply. The lemon therefore presents not only as a found object for a still life, but also as an insight into war-time living, a glimpse of hope in a long winter. Picasso’s interest in the works of Vincent van Gogh, the leading name on the Nazis’ list of proscribed degenerate artists, is manifest here as well, especially in the use of directional strokes of color to create a woven effect in the paint’s surface. While in some of the still-life paintings objects take on the memento mori role one would expect in wartime, for the most part, the elements Picasso has chosen to paint here express a quiet and plainly stated joy in the fact of their mere existence, in a time when survivability was not to be taken for granted.

Vincent van Gogh, Plats avec agrumes, 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

A few months prior, in May of 1943, Picasso met Françoise Gilot at Le Catalan, a restaurant close by to his studio. Describing her first encounter with the artist, Gilot explained that she had been dining with her school friend Geneviève Aliquot and the actor Alain Cuny when she noticed Picasso glancing their way: ‘Finally, he got up and came over to our table. He brought with him a bowl of cherries and offered some to all of us, in his strong Spanish accent, calling them cerisses, with a soft, double-s sound’ (F. Gilot and C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 14). The meeting lead to an invitation to Picasso’s studio, and after weeks of courtship, the two artists embarked upon a romantic partnership that lasted almost a decade and produced two children. This new love interest amidst war time provided a new escape, a new hope, visible in the present work from the artist’s use of vivacious yellow, electric greens and vivid streaks of red. Citron et verre once belonged to the poet Pierre Reverdy—the two artists became friends in the early 1910s, and collaborated on Le chant des morts, a book of poems written by Reverdy and illustrated by Picasso, published shortly after the war. The present painting has remained in the same private New York collection since 1987.

Lots Withdrawn

Buste de femme au chapeau, 1939

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
WITHDRAWN

Pablo Picasso – Modern & Contemporary Ar… Lot 17 May 2024 | Phillips

Painted on June 9, 1939, Buste de femme au chapeau is an elegant and enigmatic portrait of Pablo Picasso’s lover and muse Dora Maar. Renowned for her striking beauty and intense personality, Maar’s presence in Picasso’s life, from their first meeting in 1935 to the dissolution of their relationship around 1945, had a deep and far-reaching impact on both the artist and his work. Her visage became a recurring motif in his work, with each seated portrait exploring varied psychological nuances through distortions and abstractions. Buste de femme au chapeau remained in Picasso’s personal collection throughout his life, one of the so-called ‘Picasso’s Picassos’ first recorded by David Douglas Duncan in 1961. Following the artist’s death in 1973, the portrait passed into the esteemed collection of the Galerie Beyeler, where it resided alongside other noteworthy paintings of the period, including other works from the Femmes au chapeau series. Featuring the bold, serpentine line of her hair offset by the jaunty angles of the titular hat, this work incorporates key elements of Picasso’s paintings of Maar, including his distinctive rendering of her eyes, strong line of her nose, and radical combinations of frontal and profile views that recall his earlier Cubistic investigations into the simultaneous representation of multiple perspectives on a single picture plane.

Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme au chapeau rayé, June 3, 1939. Musée Picasso, Paris.
Image: © Photo Josse, Artwork: © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

Confidently balancing precise geometric angularity with a more open, sensual voluptuousness, Buste de femme au chapeau is a complex and captivating portrait of Maar, the innovative Surrealist photographer who became Pablo Picasso’s primary muse and paramour during the turbulent years surrounding the Second World War. With her dramatic good looks and quick-witted intelligence, Maar had immediately captured Picasso’s attention after their first meeting towards the end of 1935. The new, novel challenge of her features, combined with his own intensifying feelings around the Spanish Civil War, ushered in profound shifts in the older artist’s painterly style that are now recognized as representing one of the most radical and significantly productive periods of his career. Painted in 1939, as Europe teetered on the cusp of war once again, Buste de femme au chapeau belongs to this intensely creative period, with Picasso turning increasingly to the objects and faces that he shared his immediate surroundings with. Although throughout these years the focus of his painterly attentions oscillated between Maar and his other major muse and mistress of the decade, Marie-Thérèse Walter, by the June of 1939 he was nearly completely absorbed by the beguiling Maar. With almost unmatched energy and focus, he worked and reworked her distinctive features, completing over fifteen portraits of his lover in this month alone.

[Left] Rene Magritte, The Son of Man (Le fils de l’homme), 1964. Private Collection. Image: © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
[Right] Rene Magritte, The Great War (La Grande Guerre), 1964. Artwork: © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In its palette of dominant purple and deeper blue tones and in the stylized and organic rendering of Maar’s hat, Buste de femme au chapeau recalls Duncan’s memorable description of Maar as “effervescent as plums in champagne”, a force of nature who “swirled into Picasso’s life” and pushed the painter into new, revolutionary territory.^[vi] The depiction of the “chapeau” in this instance extends beyond mere aesthetic appeal; it serves as a complex nod to Picasso’s intimate and professional relationship with Maar. Herself a Surrealist artist, Maar famously donned a hat in her 1936-1937 photomontage, Double Portrait with Hat, where she sandwiched two negatives of the same image together to create an image where the hat of the woman disintegrates into double vision. In the present painting, the arabesque quality of the hat’s design—fluid, dynamic, and organic— further evoke James Duncan’s description of Maar. Through this interplay of form and metaphor, the hat transcends its role as part of the attire, becoming a complex symbol of Maar’s artistic and emotional entanglement with Picasso, weaving together personal narrative and artistic innovation in a portrait rich with historical and emotional depth.

Femme au chapeau, 1941

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000

Femme au chapeau | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

PABLO PICASSO (1881 – 1973)
Femme au chapeau, 1941
Oil on canvas
61×38 cm (24×15 inches)
Signed Picasso and dated 13 juin 41 (center left)
Executed on 13 June 1941

The trailblazing stylistic developments that Picasso made during the Second World War can be charted across the many portraits of his muse and fellow artist Dora Maar. In Picasso’s most memorable portraits of Maar, her strong features are warped and manipulated, ultimately creating some of the most radical breakthroughs in portraiture of the twentieth century.

MAN RAY, DORA MAAR, 1936, GELATIN SILVER PRINT, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ARCHIVES, NEW YORK © 2024 MAN RAY TRUST / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

Femme au chapeau was painted in 1941 at the apex of one of Picasso’s most productive periods, invigorated in large part by his turbulent relationship with Maar. As contempt grew between the two lovers, Picasso’s flattering early depictions of Maar gave way to unsettling visions of the weeping woman, transcending Maar’s image into the mater dolorosa, a universal icon of pain and suffering. Charged with an unparalleled emotional intensity, representations of Maar such as Femme au chapeau give form to the anxiety and despair looming within the public consciousness during the Second World War.

BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO, OUR LADY OF SORROWS, CIRCA 1660, MUSEO DE BELLAS ARTES, SEVILLE

Femme au chapeau is just one of two paintings of Dora Maar painted on 13 of June 1941. Femme au chapeau vert et à la broche and the present work both depict Maar dressed in a regal purple and blue frock adorned with decorative brooches and with her head crowned by a stylish green hat. Well-known for being fashionable, Maar was frequently depicted by Picasso wearing one of her many hats, an accessory that, like the glove, was fetishized by the Surrealists.

By looking at these works together, one can see the rigor and intensity of Picasso’s exercises in abstraction. Picasso made great strides in the genre of still life during his Cubist period by presenting multiple perspectives of an object in a single image, and Picasso’s great advances in portraiture in the late 1930s and early 1940s can be considered a return to the Cubist interest in simultaneity. Much like a photograph that has been twice exposed or manipulated with photomontage, a technique that Maar herself exploited to great success, Maar is represented in these works with a double profile. While the angular forms of Maar’s profile in Femme au chapeau vert et la broche have a distinctly sculptural articulation, the level of abstraction in Femme au chapeau is taken one step further. Eliminating illusionistic volume altogether, Picasso flattens the image, reducing Maar’s double profile to be articulated by a thick dark line, large swaths of pink, and areas of heavy impasto.

DORA MAAR, DOUBLE PORTRAIT WITH HAT, CIRCA 1936–37, GELATIN SILVER PRINT, MONTAGE WITH HANDWORK ON NEGATIVE, THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART © 2024 DORA MAAR ESTATE/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/ADAGP, PARIS

Maar was a strong-willed, intelligent, stylish, thoroughly modern woman who spent her childhood between Paris and Argentina. Once finally settled in Paris, Maar studied as an artist, photographer, and graphic designer. In the 1930s, she became involved with the Surrealists and was immersed in Parisian café circles frequented by the leading artists and intelligentsia of the age. During this time, Maar’s practice shifted almost entirely to photography, and her command of this medium led to great commercial success in advertising and editorial work. Fluidly moving between her commercial commissions and personally motivated avant-garde projects, Maar’s radical experiments resulted in striking images that were immediately regarded as iconic works of Surrealism.

Picasso met Maar in 1936 when his marriage with ballerina Olga Khokhlova had broken down yet was not formally resolved. The dissolution of their marriage was fueled by Olga’s discovery of Picasso’s liaison with his young mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter who had recently given birth to Picasso’s daughter Maya in 1935. Picasso’s relationship with Maar was predicated on their shared intellectual concerns, such as politics and art. This relationship of intellectual exchange contrasted Picasso’s rapport with Walter that has been widely characterized as being driven by sensuality and emotion. In his paintings, Picasso expressed the opposite natures of the two women formally, representing Maar’s likeness with sharp, angular lines and lurid colors, features that contrast the languid curves and sensuous pastel palette associated with Walter.

PABLO PICASSO, WEEPING WOMAN, 1937, TATE MODERN, LONDON © 2024 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

As one of Picasso’s famous muses, Maar is perhaps best known as the Weeping Woman, and she was often hostilely depicted in moments of despair. In the present work, the heavy impasto applied below her eye and nose evokes tears streaming down the face, the coarse paint swirling in turbulent pools. Famously, Picasso has been quoted in Francoise Gilot’s Life with Picasso as saying, “For me [Maar] is the weeping woman. For years I’ve painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one” (Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 122).

The distress that Maar experienced during her relationship with Picasso was influenced by the specific circumstances of their turbulent relationship and the anxieties of war. Deeply concerned by the rise of fascism and subsequent outbreaks of war, Maar was weighed down by the despair and anguish that affects many in the face of impending disaster. Maar was immersed in the news cycle, constantly reading the papers that delivered the latest information on the tragedies transpiring daily across Europe and the rest of the world. Picasso’s evolution of Maar’s image, while a reflection of her own reaction to the war, must also be seen as a mirror for his own psychological anguish.

3. Rene Magritte

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Le Banquet, circa 1955-57

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 15,000,000 – 20,0oo,000
USD 18,144,000

Le Banquet | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RENE MAGRITTE  (1898 – 1967)
Le Banquet, circa 1955-57
Oil on canvas
29 3/4 x 47 5/8 inches (75.5 x 121 cm)
Signed Magritte (lower left); titled and dated 1955 (on the reverse)

Executed circa 1955-57, Le Banquet is an exquisite example of René Magritte’s altogether singular ability to give shape to the space between vision and our visual experience of the world. Rendered with Magritte’s characteristically restrained realism, reduced to the most scrupulous depiction of appearances, Le Banquet stands as a masterpiece of the Surrealist image. Of the four oils Magritte completed on the present motif, none are rendered with so disarming a visual confrontation as is enacted in the present iteration. Here Magritte omits the stone baluster which in other versions frames the central image (see fig. 1). Without the intrusion of a man-made structure, the panoramic landscape, described in Magritte’s characteristically careful and matter-of-fact style, is at first glance rendered entirely unassuming. The quiet lake and dusky haze, descending through the tree cover onto the grass below, exudes an almost sublime tranquility that belies any aberration. It is precisely on account of this compositional simplicity that the discovery of the transposition at center—the displacement of the vermilion sun setting in front of, rather than behind, the largest tree—bears so great a pictorial impact.

RENÉ MAGRITTE, LE BANQUET, 1958, ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
© 2024 C. HERSCOVICI, BRUSSELS / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

The Banquet | The Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu)

Questions of vision and perception were central to the Surrealists’ theoretical and visual lexicon. André Breton’s founding notion of a “surreality,” what he conceived of as the resolution between the contradictory conditions of dream and reality, was predicated on the disentanglement of vision from rational perception. The surreal object—comprised of combinations that challenged logical reason and thus awakened subconscious associations—was meant to aid in that project. Man Ray, for example, betrays perception through his subversion of the presumed objectivity of the photograph. With his “rayographs,” produced by placing ordinary objects on photosensitized paper and exposing them to light, he enacts a literal inversion of optical processing. Objects that we perceive as occupying positive space are here rendered in the negative, and are made all the more strange through the erasure of their descriptive details.

MAX ERNST, LA FORÊT, 1927, ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO © 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS
MAN RAY, UNTITLED, 1922, ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO © 2024 MAN RAY TRUST / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

Executed using his unique process of frottage (contact rubbing) and grattage (scraping), Max Ernst’s La Forêt likewise manipulates medium in a rouse of optical illusion. The suggestion of the sun at center reveals itself to be a void, and the halo of light around it a grattage extraction from the painted ground. Ernst’s attitude toward the forest as the sublime embodiment of both enchantment and terror bears a particular resonance with Magritte’s depiction in Le Banquet. In his elaboration on the subject, Ernst deftly touches upon Magritte’s notion of “mystery” as it exists in the nexus between the visible and invisible. Magritte’s subversion of the fundamental properties of nature were an extension of his fascination with “Objective Stimulus,” a term he applied to those instances in which he replaced an object familiar to a particular context with one related to it, but out of place. The shock of dissonance where one expects there to be consonance, Magritte realized, was all the more unsettling than the reverse. The work was thus a departure of sorts from the prevailing Surrealist preoccupation with the revelatory potential held within the combination of disparate objects. With it, however, Magritte opened a trove of new pictorial and conceptual possibility. In Le Banquet, Magritte continues with this new paradigm. He begins with two objects or motifs that are seemingly congruent—the dark silhouette of a tree, and the setting sun—and shows their incongruity within our perception by inverting our normative association of the pairing.

RENÉ MAGRITTE, LE SEIZE SEPTEMBRE, CIRCA 1956-58, THE MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ART © 2024 C. HERSCOVICI, BRUSSELS / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

At the heart of his ideation around Le Banquet is the fraught but interrelated tension between the visible and the invisible.

“There is the visible we see: the apple in front of the face in ‘La grande guerre’ (The Great War), and the hidden visible: the face hidden by the visible apple. In Le banquet (The Banquet) the sun hidden by the row of trees is invisible, etc. Mystery is invisible.
It (like nothingness) is important not because it is invisible, but because it is absolutely necessary”

With Le Banquet, Magritte makes succinct what he here describes in rather obtuse terms: that which we cannot see is of vital importance to understanding that which we can. In Le Banquet, as in its nocturnal counterpart, Le Seize septembre, Magritte enacts an inversion—the object that would have been hidden is brought forward and as a result, obscures the very part of the object that would have originally hidden it. The once serene landscape in Le Banquet is thus wrought with a tantalizing visual conundrum. In making visible what we expect to be invisible, Magritte upsets our preconceived understanding of the appearance of a landscape and makes explicit the way in which our familiarity with an image fails us when that image turns out to be altered. It is precisely the shock of this unraveling that awakens the viewer to the fallibility of their own perception.

4. Other Artists

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Lucio Fontana

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000

Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

LUCIO FONTANA (1899 – 1968)
Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio, 1964
Oil on canvas
177.8 x 123 cm (70 x 48 1/2 inches)
Signed (upper left); signed (on the reverse)

In its profound, unrestrained articulation of gesture and color, Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio from 1964 is a commanding embodiment of Lucio Fontana’s most iconic and revered body of work. Just as the atomic bomb radically transformed the definition of painting for Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, the dawn of the Space Age, ushered in by Yuri Gagarin’s flight in 1961, became the catalyst for Fontana’s La fine di Dio, a series which opened a new dimension of painting and drastically altered the canon of twentieth-century art. Of the thirty-eight canvases in this seminal series, the present work is one of only four rare examples in yellow. Distinguished by its captivating hue which recalls the sun itself, and the densely pierced constellation of variated punctures cascading across the surface around which thickly built-up layers of impasto coalesce, Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio is the ultimate testament to Fontana’s fascination with light and space.

Bearing remarkable provenance, Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio emerges from the esteemed Rachofsky Collection — passionate collectors, visionaries and philanthropists, whose invaluable support has completely transformed the artistic landscape of their hometown of Dallas — where is has resided for over two decades. A highlight of the artist’s recent retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold in 2019, the present work is among the most iconic and recognizable examples of this series, having been selected for inclusion in many major exhibitions of Lucio Fontana’s work, alongside numerous exhibitions at The Warehouse in Dallas.

In 1949, Lucio Fontana first punctured the canvas, striking an otherwise uninterrupted monochromatic surface in one of the most radical artistic acts of the Post-War era. Fontana sought to deconstruct the sacrality of the unbroken canvas surface to explore space as both a physical and psychological concept. Representing the pinnacle manifestation of Fontana’s pierced canvas, his lacerated oval-shaped Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio (Spatial Concepts, The End of God) – which he produced between 1963 and 1964 – came to embody this redefinition of painting and his life’s work. In his own words, they represented “the infinite, the inconceivable chaos, the end of figuration, nothingness,” (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., London, Hayward Gallery, Lucio Fontana, 1999, p. 198) an expression of the dimensionless void of space that is beyond the intellectual capacity of man to understand and therefore beyond his notion of God. Today, the Fine di Dio paintings have come to embody not only Fontana’s oeuvre, but also the Spatialism movement at large, of which Fontana was both founder and figurehead. Befitting their importance, other works from the series are held in such prestigious museum collections as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Pierced by violent lacerations, Fontana’s oval here recalls the violence of creation and the mythic Orphic Egg, from which Phanes, the mystic primeval deity of procreation and the generation of new life, burst forth. Many critics have also drawn a parallel between Fontana’s bodily punctures and the stigmata wounds of Christ, in their symbolism of man’s spiritual release from matter. This reading of the holes as a visual metaphor for the liberation of man from materiality is supported by the artist’s own words: “Man must free himself completely from the earth, only then will the direction that he will take in the future become clear. I believe in man’s intelligence – it is the only thing in which I believe, more so than in God, for me God is man’s intelligence – I am convinced that the man of the future will have a completely new world” (Lucio Fontana in conversation with Tommaso Trini, 19 June 1968, in: Exh. Cat., London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Lucio Fontana, 1988, p. 36). By transgressing the bounds of Earth, man burst through its earthy limitations,, By rupturing the canvas, Fontana achieves the infinite, a space is beyond the intellectual capacity of man to understand and therefore beyond man’s notion of God.

LEFT: ORAZIO GENTILESCHI, DANAË AND THE SHOWER OF GOLD, 1621-23. J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA. IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. RIGHT: PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, THE MADONNA OF MERCY, CENTRAL PANEL FROM THE MISERICORDIA ALTARPIECE, 1445. PINACOTECA, SANSEPOLCRO, ITALY. IMAGE © RAFFAELLO BENCINI / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

The surface of the present work is heavily perforated, with thick accumulations of impasto amassing around each rupture; the lusciously applied, pristine yellow palette is ferociously interrupted by the vivacious materiality of its punctured surface. A brilliant dichotomy to the delicately incised ovular borderline and fine lines of the artist’s signature, the myriad of varying punctures dance across the surface evince Fontana’s unique ability to create a palpable tension. The sun-like brilliance of the yellow emits a reassuring tranquility that is dynamically contrasted with the raw and expressive surface. These pierce not only the canvas itself, but the traditional boundary between painting and sculpture, establishing an utterly new dimension in artmaking. Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio thus articulates the genesis of a new form of artistic expression and offers a reflection on ushering in of a new age.

THE PRESENT WORK INSTALLED IN LUCIO FONTANA: ON THE THRESHOLD, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, 2019. IMAGE © THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. IMAGE SOURCE: ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 FONDATION LUCIO FONTANA

Fontana’s La Fine di Dio (The End of God) were executed alongside three critical exhibitions of the artist’s work in Zurich, Milan and Paris. Originally exhibited at the Galleria dell’Arte in Milan in 1963 under the title Le Ova (“the eggs”) and at a 1964 exhibition in Paris at the Galerie Iris Clert under the title Les Oeufs célestes (“the celestial eggs”), Fontana’s subsequently changed title to La fine di Dio. Fontana’s ‘eggs’ recall and recontextualize the egg’s historical association with fertility and life. As the universal visual referent of birth and creation, the egg clearly has a longstanding history as a potent symbol in the iconographical lexicon of human history. For millennia the egg has acted as a sign of fertility and hope, representing the cycle of regeneration and new life. From the graphic sign of femininity in Egyptian hieroglyphs to its symbolic depiction by canonical artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, Piero della Francesca, Diego Velázquez, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, and Constantin Brancusi, imagery of the ovum has long delivered variously esoteric semiotic interpretations associated with the origin of the world.

LEFT: ALBERTO BURRI, ROSSO PLASTICA 5, 1962. PRIVATE COLLECTION. SOLD AT SOTHEBY’S, LONDON FOR £4.7 MILLION IN OCTOBER 2016. RIGHT: YVES KLEIN, EPONGE, 1961. LWL-MUSEUM FÜR KUNST UND KULTUR, MÜNSTER, GERMANY. PHOTO © BPK BILDAGENTUR / LWL-MUSEUM FÜR KUNST UND KULTUR/FOUNDATION CREMER COLLECTION / HANNA NEANDER / ART RESOURCE, NY. ART © 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

Lucio Fontana’s La Fine di Dio represent a defining icon of a generation on the cusp of stellar technological advancement, the yellow palette of the present work symbolizing the dawn of a bright new future for man. In its dichotomous sculptural materiality and painterly essence, the boldness of its composition, in tandem with its yellow hue, instills a sense of awe. Differentiated by the all-over density of its punctures, which – unlike in the majority works from the series – delicately fill to the edge of Fontana’s incised border that internally frames his mark making, Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio is remarkable in its topography, which like the face of the moon, is ravaged yet ebullient in its organic beauty. More than any other series, La fine di Dio epitomize Fontana’s fascination with the cosmic universe and form a potent representation of evocative dichotomies: condensed within the cratered topography of this painting’s monochrome surface resides “the infinity, the inconceivable thing, the end of figuration, the beginning of the void.” (The artist quoted in: Enrico Crispolti, ed., Fontana, Catalogo generale, vol. I, Milan, 1986, p. 73)

Vincent van Gogh

Christie’s New-York: 16 May 2024
Estimated: USD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890), Coin de jardin avec papillons | Christie’s (christies.com)
GUARANTEED / IRREVOCABLE BID

 

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Coin de jardin avec papillons, 1887
Oil on canvas
50.4 x 61.4 cm (19 3/4 x 24 1/4 inches)
Painted in May-July 1887

Determined to leave Antwerp, where he had been living and working as an art student since November of the previous year, Van Gogh arrived in the city ready “to produce and to be something.” Dazzled by the latest artistic developments of the Parisian avant-garde, most notably the radical brushwork and light-filled canvases of the Impressionists and the precise techniques of Pointillism advocated by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Van Gogh entered a period of intensive experimentation that would ultimately transform his painterly style. Leaving behind the dark, earthy tones of his realist paintings, he embraced a brighter palette and his handling lightened, becoming more refined and delicate. Nature and the landscape became a central focus, preempting the scenes that would come to the fore when he moved to Arles two years later.

Painted in the second year of Van Gogh’s Paris stay, Coin de jardin avec papillons is a luminous depiction of a flower bed in the public gardens at Asnières, a suburban town on the Seine to the northwest of Paris. In this painting, a small flower bed becomes a brilliant world teeming with life and color. Thick grasses and delicate flowers gently swirl and sway in a summer breeze, while butterflies flit in and out amid the greenery. Throughout his life, Van Gogh captured both expansive landscape vistas as well as close up visions of nature, a reflection of his lifelong interest and deep love of the natural world. “I myself,” he would tell his sister, Willemien later, in 1889, “am always obliged to go and gaze at a blade of grass, a pine-tree branch, an ear of wheat, to calm myself” (Letter 785, ibid., vol. 4, p. 54). Both Jacob Baart de la Faille and Jan Hulsker in their catalogues dated Coin de jardin avec papillons to Arles, during the spring of 1889. Most recently, however, as Cornelia Homburg has stated, “careful investigation by the Van Gogh Museum into the artist’s use of materials suggests that the painting’s technique could date the work to 1887, Van Gogh’s second year in Paris.” Van Gogh painstakingly limned each blade of grass, each petal of a flower, the wings and body of each butterfly with individual strokes of paint. “There are no other fully fledged works from Paris,” Homburg pointed out, “that show a similarly concentrated focus and attention to detail as in this extraordinary canvas” (Van Gogh and Japan, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2018, pp. 103-104).

Gustav Klimt, Italienische Gartenlandschaft, 1913. Kunsthaus Zug, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm.

Van Gogh likely came across the particular spot depicted in Coin de jardin in the Parc Voyer d’Argenson, near the center of Asnières, overlooking the Seine. During the spring and summer of 1887, it is thought that he painted a number of other canvases at this location (for discussion on the identification of these works see E. Hendricks and L. van Tilborgh, op. cit., 2011, vol. 2, p. 366). While working in Asnières, Van Gogh became friendly with two Parisian women who owned a summer villa there, the elderly Countess de la Boissière and her middle-aged daughter. They may be the female figures who appear in two of Van Gogh’s Paris period garden scenes (Faille, nos. 305 and 368). Van Gogh may have felt a romantic inclination toward the daughter, who was around his age. In a letter he wrote in Arles on or around 20 May 1888, he suggested to Theo that he deliver two small paintings that he wished to give the Countess and her daughter—“I can’t help thinking of them, and perhaps it will be a pleasure for them and for you, too, if you meet them” (Letter 611, op. cit., p. 87).

Coin de jardin displays a remarkably unity in its conception. The myriad strands of paint that cover the surface of the canvas derive from a single motif—a sole, individual blade of grass—which Van Gogh replicated and multiplied countless times. The artist was, in effect, “drawing with color,” as he had recommended in his letter to Livens. Van Gogh laid down each stroke rapidly, inflected with a quick, gestural flick of the wrist, varying his application slightly to describe the particular garden motif in its intrinsic shape. The result is a rippling, sparkling surface of colors suffused with light, every stroke a wave in a sea of paint. Van Gogh organized the clumps of grass and flowering plants to form rhythmical patterns, sufficiently differentiated one from another, to suggest to the viewer a perception of palpable physical texture and the illusion on the flat canvas of receding, three-dimensional space.

Promenade aux bords de la Seine à Asnières, postcard, circa 1905. Digital Image: akg-images.

Van Gogh’s depiction of the subject within the picture plane suggests a stylized, abstract approach to landscape composition, moving beyond the naturalist parameters of Impressionist painting into the more synthetic domain of Post-Impressionist art, toward the kind of painting that Bernard and Gauguin had begun to advocate. Van Gogh’s affection for the small butterfly, repeated in later paintings, suggests a special empathy for this fragile flying creature, which typically possesses a life span of only two to six weeks. The flight of the butterfly is an apt symbol for the transience of worldly existence, all the more compelling when one realizes that, after completing Coin de jardin, Van Gogh lived to experience only two more summers, and half of a third, before he tragically died on 29 July 1889. Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism opened the door for Van Gogh to express his own feelings at being face to face with nature and conveying this on canvas. This essential tenet would underpin his art for the rest of his short life, taking flight when he moved to Arles, in early 1888. By this time, Paris had left him tired and disillusioned, but his years in the city had transformed him, as well as his art, paving the way for his future in the south.

Mark Rothko

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 11,250,000

Untitled | Modern Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MARK ROTHKO (1903 – 1970)
Untitled, 1969
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
58×40 inches (147.3 x 102.9 cm)

A bewitching and brilliant reflection of Rothko’s career-long pursuit of painting as a manifestation of philosophical ideals, Untitled 1969 is a luminous capsule of the last year of Rothko’s life and the best of his paintings on paper. Following the artist’s jarring aneurysm in the spring of 1968, Rothko turned almost exclusively to paintings on paper, a medium he had revisited throughout his career, as his primary output at the insistence of his doctor to refrain from the physical labor of painting larger canvases. Throughout 1969 and until the artist’s tragic death the following year, Rothko’s practice evolved continuously and his magnified introspection only produced more raw and profound compositions in deepening hues. With the same profound radiance commuted to his most successful canvases, Rothko continued to pursue the seemingly limitless possibilities of color in his paintings on paper and in Untitled left his final incomparable translations of those possibilities as his infinite legacy beyond the finitude of his life and transcendent career.

In Untitled, two dark, hovering forms coexist in a spectral stasis against the glowing blue, at once emerging from the ground in their complex opacity, yet simultaneously intonating a galactic, perpetual expansion in their relative darkness. Within the blurred comingling of the two masses is a vivid blue horizon where the dark forms barely meeting like the last, whispering quietude of daylight before nightfall. In an expression of his fascination with the possibilities of twilight, Rothko once stated to David Sylvester, “Often towards nightfall, there’s a feeling in the air of mystery, threat, frustration—all of these at once. I would like my painting to have the quality of such moments” (the artist cited in David Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 73). Layered in inky tones imbued with deep green in the upper form and burgundy in the lower, Untitled demonstrates Rothko’s ability to conjure a dynamic optical experience resulting in a brooding, hallucinatory vision. Although markedly different in their approach to painting and treatment of surface, Rothko’s final era of paintings on canvas and paper, and particularly Untitled’s distinct layering of green, red and blue edging towards blackness, is reminiscent of Reinhardt’s singular exploration of the nuanced capacity of black through its barely perceptible comingling with color. Equally, the present work bears affinity with the enveloping sublimity of Barnett Newman’s storied “zip” works (see figs. 1 and 2).

AD REINHARDT, ABSTRACT PAINTING, 1960. SOLD SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 2023, LOT 124 FOR $3.6 MILLION. ART © 2024 ESTATE OF AD REINHARDT / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
BARNETT NEWMAN, ONEMENT VI, 1953. SOLD SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK, MAY 2013, LOT 17 FOR $43.8 MILLION. © 2024 BARNETT NEWMAN / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NY

In a conference address Rothko delivered at Pratt Institute in November 1958, eleven years prior to the completion of Untitled, Rothko described the preoccupations which fueled his artistic practice and shunned the idea of his art as ‘self-expression.’ Rothko argued: “I have never thought that painting a picture has anything to do with self-expression. It is a communication about the world to someone else. After the world is convinced about this communication it changes. The world was never the same after Picasso or Miró. Theirs was a view of the world which transformed the vision of things” (the artist quoted in: Miguel Lopez-Remiro, Ed., Writings on Art: Mark Rothko, New Haven and London, 2006, p. 125). In the name of transmuting his vision of the world in deftly layered swaths of color, Rothko’s oceanic ground in Untitled amalgamated the history of blue itself and its significations. Channeling the prolific visual power of blue across centuries—from its divine implications in Giotto’s Scrovegni chapel to the doleful, modulated blues of Picasso’s Blue Period—Rothko captured the hue’s boundless essence in the same manner in which the Romantics harnessed the sublime in their depiction of nature. Appearing brilliantly illuminated from within, a vessel of pure hue and light, the present work achieves an incandescent dimensionality. Through its vibrating forms of layered color and consequential perception of light, Untitled captures Rothko’s unrivaled mastery of color in the last highly prolific year of his life.

GIOTTO, SCROVEGNI CHAPEL, PADUA (DETAIL), CIRCA 1305

While the artistic ethos of the 1960s rocketed into the sphere of Pop and shorn the once revered ingenuity and gesture of Abstract Expressionism, Rothko’s painterly vision embraced the evolving world from a divergent perspective. In an equal and opposite reaction to the way in which Pop Art mirrored the cultural anxiety as a response to art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Rothko’s compositions evolved in their own ontology and translated the whirling coexistence of the angst and expansion, tragedy and humanity of the moment through pure color and form. Exceptional for utterly enveloping scale as a work of this medium, Untitled elicits a sensation of deep somatic absorption and contemplation archetypal of Rothko’s most monumental canvases.

Francis Bacon

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000,000 – 50,000,000
USD 27,735,000

Portrait of George Dyer Crouching | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

FRANCIS BACON (1909 – 1992)
Portrait of George Dyer Crouching, 1966
Oil on canvas
78 x 57 7/8 inches (198×147 cm)
Titled and dated 1966 (on the reverse)

If Francis Bacon’s art was defined by “the brutality of fact,” the attempt to get to the essence of human existence in all its forms, it was his portrayal of his lived experience through those closest to him which defined his finest work. George Dyer, Bacon’s greatest love and muse, provided some of the highest highs and lowest lows. It is his cycle of ten single-panel paintings executed during their dramatic, intertwined life together and the seminal Black Triptychs following his tragic early death which, in many ways, define Bacon’s vision. The very first painting in this cycle, Portrait of George Dyer Crouching, was executed in 1966 at the peak of their passion for each other. It inaugurates a critical cycle of ten monumental portraits that Bacon painted between 1966 and 1968, which sees George Dyer as a conduit of the full range of human drama that defined their love affair – vulnerable and brooding; romantic; heroic and tortured – and ultimately results in, for Martin Harrison, “one of the most unflinching, even harrowing serial portrayals in art history.” (Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, Volume III, 1958-71, London, 2016, p. 794)

GEORGE DYER AND FRANCIS BACON IN SOHO IN THE 1950S. PHOTO © JOHN DEAKIN, COLLECTION: DUBLIN CITY GALLERY THE HUGH LANE.

Coiled with unbridled energy and perched at the brink, Francis Bacon’s most iconic muse peers at his discarded shirt as if to stare at his own reflection. Afflicted with the awareness of self, his ever-shifting head turns towards us, threatening to fade into total oblivion before a mystical, textured, ivory background. The central focus of the painting is the astonishing head at its heart. With his unwinking eye at its central axis, George Dyer’s head flickers in a tripartite movement: in simultaneity, he turns into the left, twists outward towards the right, and even merges with Bacon’s own face at the center. The eye, we realize, is Bacon’s own. Executed with a technical mastery of paint virtually unmatched in history, Bacon takes Cubist Picasso into a vastly more complex material realm, overlaying sequential images which become almost filmic, eruptive brushstrokes, dabbing his corduroy jacket full of paint to create a material texture, and throwing paint at the canvas with an extraordinary control and mastery which evoked that of his relationship with Dyer. It is arguably one of his greatest portrayals of not only the human head, but also the human condition.

Testifying to the supreme rarity and quality of this suite of portraits that Bacon created of George Dyer, three are now held in international museum collections, including Foundation Beyeler, Riehen; Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere; and Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid. Tragically one of the paintings was destroyed in a fire, which leaves just six left in private hands. Debuting at Bacon’s seminal 1966 solo exhibition at Galerie Maeght, Paris, Portrait of George Dyer Crouching has since been shown in some of the artist’s most significant exhibitions, including his 1971 retrospective held at the Grand Palais, Paris – the scene of Dyer’s final tragedy – and, most recently, the 2022 exhibition Man and Beast at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

 

As the first monumental single portrait that Bacon executed of Dyer, Portrait of George Dyer Crouching bears a visual intensity that is commensurate with the level of passion shared between the two. Bacon expresses their romantic entanglement most literally in Dyer’s head, which vigorously amalgamates with his own at its center. A flurry of scumbled painterly marks spirals into Bacon’s singular eye, which directly confronts the viewer as it is superimposed onto Dyer’s head. Partially obliterated, partially fused with Bacon’s own face, Dyer’s head then mutates in three distinct yet overlaid phases that together evoke the brusque velocity of a man eyeing his surroundings relentlessly. Dyer’s visage emerges from the projectile paint that Bacon has daringly launched onto the canvas, reminiscent of his instinctive techniques that define such later paintings as Study for Bullfight No.2 from 1969, where the artist exercises painterly risks upon the surface to capture the spontaneity of sudden movement. As Andrew Forge observes of Dyer’s physicality here, “At once, the figure and head emerge from formlessness and fall into detailed organization. The weight and thickness of the thighs, the downward stretch of the arm, the massive crest of muscle across the shoulders, the motionless concentration of the lowered head, all seem to leap out of the paint, triggered by the hard saurian eye which, as with some fantastic knobbly lizards, seems to be embedded like a living jewel in material that follows another order of form.” (Andrew Forge, Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery, Francis Bacon, May – August 1985, p. 29)

LEFT: CHAIM SOUTINE, CARCASS OF BEEF, 1926. IMAGE © MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ART / GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. DONALD WINSTON AND AN ANONYMOUS DONOR / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. RIGHT: MARK ROTHKO, NO. 9 (WHITE AND BLACK ON WINE), 1958. IMAGE © GLENSTONE, POTOMAC, MARYLAND. ART © 1998 KATE ROTHKO PRIZEL & CHRISTOPHER ROTHKO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Like cages in Bacon’s paintings, the spatial organization in Portrait of George Dyer Crouching encloses the carnal specimen of Dyer squarely within the composition and sharpens his animalistic energy into greater focus. Divided into lateral sections throughout the canvas, the compositional structure recalls the aesthetic influence of Abstract Expressionism, which Bacon interpreted with resolute realism. At the center left edge, Bacon reinterprets a coffee table as the diving board on which Dyer crouches by carving this out with a section of raw canvas left unprimed and unpainted. Meanwhile, the threefold distortion of Dyer, chromatic palette of lavish beige and brown, and circular construction in the present work finds its foundations in Bacon’s earlier 1964 triptych Three Figures in a Room – his first ever depiction of Dyer, wherein “the outer panels depict George Dyer, sexualized in the first flush of Bacon’s relationship with him,” according to Martin Harrison, “while in the center panel Dyer’s portrait is morphing with Bacon’s,” (Harrison, Op. Cit., p. 760). The elliptical floor extending across this triptych warps into a similarly surreal banquette below Dyer in the present work, which, according to scholar John Russell, is “a sofa of modish design – salvaged, conceivably, from one of Bacon’s forays into the furniture-shops. But as treated by him, it turns into a blocked-up well: a well-upholstered point of no return.” (Russell, Op. Cit., p. 62) This rusty-colored cylindrical structure is replete with additional art historical references: it is reminiscent of Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope; the tubs found in Degas’s paintings of bathing women; the photographs of operating theaters illustrated in medical books by which Bacon was fascinated; or, according to art historian Margarita Cappock, the baptismal baths found in the center of the Temple of Jupiter, an archaeological complex located in present-day Rome.

Willem de Kooning

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,865,000

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6482364

WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997)
Woman in a Rowboat, 1965
Oil and charcoal on paper mounted on Masonite
48 x 22 3/4 inches (122 x 56.6 cm)
Signed ‘de Kooning’ (lower left)

Woman in a Rowboat from 1965 is a triumphant example of Willem de Kooning’s lush and distinctive visual lexicon, representing not only a pivotal moment in the artist’s prodigious career, but a defining stage in American art. As a radiant embodiment of de Kooning’s Women, this work grapples with centuries of art historical influence while nodding to contemporary debates and subject matter.

Once a part of Martha Jackson’s prestigious collection, Woman on a Rowboat was exhibited in venues worldwide, speaking to its critical acclaim and enduring relevance. Within the composition, the artist’s luscious swaths of radiant pigment generate kaleidoscopic impressions of light, landscape and the undulations of the human form, demonstrating the raw power of each brushstroke.

Installation view, Willem de Kooning, March 6 – April 27, 1969, Museum of Art, New York (present lot illustrated). Photo: © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Artwork: © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The lusciously applied daubs, streaks, smears and splotches of paint work together to suggest a woman reclining backwards into a bright yellow rowboat. Her feet stretch towards the bottom right corner of the canvas, while her hands reach up towards her head, injecting a renewed primal vitality of the female form within the embrace of the visceral plasticity of paint. She lies on a sea of pinks, oranges, yellows and greens, floating in and out of the canvas. The subject of women, and de Kooning’s relationship to them, preoccupied the artist for the entirety of his career, giving way to his most celebrated works. Indeed, Woman on a Rowboat embodies the artist’s enduring ability to explore the boundaries of form and content. By applying movement with each brushstroke across the painting’s surface, de Kooning imbues the figure with a magnetic vitality.

Willem de Kooning at Montauk Point, 1968. Photograph by Dan Budnik. © Dan Budnik.

During the early 1960s, de Kooning left the city and relocated to the bucolic village of Springs in the East End of Long Island. Obscured from the city’s chaos, the artist adopted a lighter touch and a progressively softer palette. As exemplified in Woman on a Rowboat, these cool hues present a strong departure from the distinctly disquieting figures in dark palettes which defined the previous decade of de Kooning’s oeuvre. In Woman in a Rowboat, the muted pink form of the woman’s body is surrounded with wavy strokes of pink and orange, enhancing the pastoral, playful nature of the work while also infusing the painting with an atmospheric lightness. Indeed, a sense of weightlessness captures the viewer as one observes the central figure simultaneously emerging from and dissolving into the composition.

Luminous white infuses the canvas with an ethereal, rococo-like quality. Slippery forms oscillate between figuration and abstraction, realizing a new sense of kinetic freedom as luscious drips and washes hover, suspended in motion as an indexical sign of the artist’s working process. Perhaps the most striking innovation during this period is the artist’s practice of infusing safflower oil into his paints, allowing the surface to stay wet for longer, resulting in a convergence of colors, tangling together while retaining and accentuating the artist’s touch. As the paint dries, it preserves a glossy quality, illuminating the gestural brushstrokes in the eyes of the viewer.

Gustave Caillebotte, Rower in a Top Hat, circa 1877-1878. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

Reflecting on his time in East Hampton in the 1960s, de Kooning revealed “when I came [to the Springs] I made the color of the sand…As if I picked up sand and mixed it. And the grey-green grass, the beach grass… When the light hits the ocean there is kind of a grey light on the water… I had three pots of different lights… Indescribable tones, almost. I started working with them and insisted that they would give me the kind of light I wanted. One was lighting up the grass. That became that kind of green. One was lighting up the water. That became that grey. Then I got a few more colors, because someone might be there, or a rowboat, or something happening. I did very well with that. I got into painting in the atmosphere I wanted to be in. It was like the reflection of light. I reflected upon the reflections on the water, like the fisherman do” (Willem de Kooning, quoted in Harold Rosenberg, “Interview with Willem de Kooning,” Art News 71 (September 1972): 54-59).

Peter Paul Rubens, The Hermit and the Sleeping Angelica, 1626-1628. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

de Kooning’s loyalty to experimentation and exploration led the artist to return to the same subject many times over decades. His paintings of women surfaced in the early 1950s, collaging gestural brushstrokes with inchoate and delineated symbols to suggest the figure. This early series sprung the artist to prominence and exemplified the dramatic and agitated nature of his brushwork. Drawing from pop culture references and ancient sources such as Mesopotamian dolls, these early works also speak to the artist’s ability to synthesize and integrate decades of history into a single work. While the 1950s Women paintings are typified by their mangled expressions and violent brushwork, the paintings of the 1960s took on a much softer and fluid nature. Inspired by Old Masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, de Kooning said about these works “The figures are floating, like reflection in the water. The color is influenced by the natural light. That’s what is so good here. Yes, maybe they do look like Rubens… Yes, Rubens – with all those dimples.” (Willem de Kooning, quoted in C. Willard, “In the Art Galleries,” New York Post, 23 August 1964, p. 44).

 

Woman in a Rowboat’s outstanding exhibition history and provenance further cements the painting’s significance in the art historical canon. Displayed globally and across the United States, it long formed a part of Martha Jackson’s private collection. Jackson, a pioneering New York gallerist and collector, was known for her influential role in promoting avant-garde artists during the mid-20th century such as Sam Francis, Morris Louis, Barbara Hepworth and Paul Jenkins. Speaking about her first encounter with the artist’s Women Jackson remarked, “Hans Hofmann took me to see Bill’s Women paintings, and they shocked me. I just couldn’t get over it. These were the first women paintings that were shown at the Janis Gallery.” (Martha Jackson, quoted in Wild and Brilliant: The Martha Jackson Gallery and Post War Art, New York, 2021, p. 16). While under her care, the present lot was displayed alongside works by Richard Diebenkorn, Hans Hoffman, Arshile Gorky and Lucio Fontana. A constant patron and friend to the artist, Jackson’s loyalty to de Kooning’s works speaks to the critical significance of Woman on a Rowboat.

Martha Jackson and Willem de Kooning, Opening of the New Martha Jackson Gallery, January 1956. Photographer unknown.

A painter’s painter, de Kooning looked to both modern and historical masters such as Ingres, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Gorky, Matisse and Picasso to push his artistic practice forward. Their influence is evident in Woman on a Rowboat: the complex interaction between figure and ground alludes to Picasso, the dynamic and fluid amalgamations of color conjure memories of Gorky’s abstractions, and the eruptions of color around the woman’s body are reminiscent of Delacroix’s poetic brushwork. While fearlessly pioneering his own style, de Kooning incorporates the great works of the past to draft a modern masterpiece.

Willem de Kooning

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 1,000,000
USD 781,200

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6482368

WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997)
The Artist in His Studio (Self-Portrait), 1966
Oil, vellum and paper collage mounted on Masonite
23 5/8 x 41 3/4 inches (59.7 x 104.9 cm)
Signed ‘de Kooning’ (lower right)

A sublime testament to Willem de Kooning’s inimitable painterly bravura, The Artist in His Studio (Self-Portrait) provides a glimpse into the artist’s inner perception of himself in a profoundly known environment such as his studio. Painted in 1966, just a few years after his move to East Hampton, The Artist in His Studio (Self-Portrait) envelops the revelations that this move unveiled in his creative output. The lush pigment conveys the artist’s hallmark figural motifs, which are both transformed and accentuated within the dynamic landscape of the coastal environment. This setting is subtly suggested through the incorporation of blue and green hues within the composition.

Sublimely wrapping the viewer in a riot of brilliant strokes, the present work, that was notably held in the collection of John and Kimiko Powers, from the year of its creation for over thirty years, testifies the unequivocal painterly supremacy of de Kooning at the absolute apex of his aesthetic ability.

Francis Bacon, One of two Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1970. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved / DACS, London / ARS, New York 2024.

This radiant work employs the vitality and gestural freedom of de Kooning’s abstract works from the 1960s but expressively retains elements of his celebrated 1950s figuration. While at once drawing upon syllabary of his famed figurative vernacular, de Kooning was certainly influenced by his new environment that provided lush greenery, bright blue skies, and calming waters as inspiration. Describing the profound impulse he found in the pastoral landscape of his East Hampton surroundings, de Kooning revealed:

“I wanted to get in touch with nature. Not painting scenes from nature, but to get a feeling of that light that was very appealing to me, here particularly… I got into painting in the atmosphere I wanted to be in” 

Pablo Picasso, The painter and model in the studio, 1963. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

In The Artist in His Studio (Self-Portrait), de Kooning’s slippery, limpid forms rendered in his soft, manipulable pigment oscillate between abstraction and figuration, the composed and the agitated, all with the artist’s unmistakable dynamic color palette and brushwork. With its landscape format, de Kooning allows himself the freedom to create an enlarged perspective; every gesture and splatter is laid bare as colors, lines, and forms elide into one another.

Beaming with an emotional sentiment that upholds de Kooning’s deep connection to the vital moment represented in the composition, the present work richly captures the atmospheric serenity of the artist’s seaside surroundings while juxtaposing the inner frenzy that the artists experienced in his studio. The Artist in His Studio (Self-Portrait) is a testament to de Kooning’s career-long ability to negotiate the boundaries between figure and ground, through which the artist is able to create an ecstatic vision of natural splendor and personal feeling: an encapsulation of emotive memory.