Yayoi Kusama, Fruit Basket (4), 1999, screenprint with lamé. Hong Kong Editions.
The culminating momentum in the market for multiples — especially among millennials — has played out around the world in recent years. Collectors worldwide have looked to the East for generations, mindful that the fine art of printmaking began in Asia centuries ago. Now, as Phillips celebrate our 10th anniversary in Asia — and following the success of the category in our Hong Kong Editions, Design, and Photographs Auctions of 2024 — we are thrilled to launch our first auction here dedicated exclusively to these works. Our Hong Kong Editions Sale on 28 March rises to the occasion with a spectacular array of multiples by many of the most in-demand artists from both East and West. Below, we highlight seven especially notable lots that speak to the quality and depth of this offering.
Works by Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, born 1929), who celebrated her 96th birthday on 22 March, are among the most coveted in the world. The screenprint pictured above features both of her prized signature motifs — her dots and her infinity net matrix. The subject of fruits is especially dear to her heart because, in her childhood, her parents were seed sellers. It is from a series of four works featuring the same image in different colours. The glittery texture of the green lamé renders the image both ethereal and majestic.
David Hockney, My Window: No. 281, 23rd July 2010, 2012/2019, iPad drawing. Hong Kong Editions.
From 2009 to 2012, in his monumental My Window series, the legendary David Hockney (English, born 1937) documented the ever-changing life, nature, and colour he observed through and around the bedroom window in his Yorkshire home. An innovator to the core, the artist embraced the newly released iPad to achieve unprecedented immediacy by drawing quickly and intensely building up layers with a highly saturated palette and wide variety of painterly effects.
This sense of spontaneity, combined with his ongoing fascination with colour and form, makes My Window: No. 281, 23rd July 2010 a remarkable illustration of David Hockney's most representative themes and techniques. Since the 1960s, flowers have been a recurring motif in his work. The iPad drawing on offer presents a striking red flower in full bloom, reaching toward the viewer as a vivid symbol of summer’s triumph. Sunlight pours through the open green shutters, illuminating a glass vase that reflects the season’s brightness. The dark yellow windowsill, intersected by vivid red lines, further reinforces the sense of warmth and vitality that infuses bright summer days.
Damien Hirst, The Virtues (H9), 2021, the complete series of eight laminated giclée prints. Hong Kong Editions.
Damien Hist (English, born 1965) was inspired to create his eight-part series The Virtues by Bushidō, the Japanese samurai code of ethics. In 1900, Nitobe Inazō explained the practice of Bushidō to Western audiences in his book Bushidō: The Soul of Japan. The author translates the term to mean “Military-Knight-Ways" and describes a code of conduct expected of Japanese nobles in their daily lives based on eight virtues: Justice, Courage, Mercy, Politeness, Honesty, Honour, Loyalty, and Control. Together, they have influenced customs like the tea ceremony and fostered key attitudes such as tranquility in the face of danger. While Hirst’s series is rich with art historical references from Van Gogh to Abstract Expressionism, it fundamentally maintains the serenity of Japanese cherry blossoms and the sincerity of the Bushidō tradtition.
Cherry Blossoms are about beauty and life and death. They’re extreme – there’s something hopeful yet hopeless about them. They’re art but taken from nature.... Blossoms are optimistic and bright yet fragile, just like we are.
— Damien Hirst
Zao Wou-Ki, Untitled (Å. 237), 1973, lithograph. Hong Kong Editions.
Zao Wou-Ki (Chinese-French, 1920–2013) epitomizes the harmonious synthesis of Esatern and Western artistic traditions. The present lithograph, from a group of works by the artist in this sale from a single private collector, characteristically employs abstracted colours and lines in layered textures to evoke a fantastical landscape — a style for which he achieved wide acclaim. The M+ museum has announced a major exhibition of the artist’s works in December.
Salvador Dalí, Le profil de temps (Profile of Time), 1977/1984, bronze sculpture with gold, green, and brown patina. Hong Kong Editions.
The best-known artist of the Surrealist movement, Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989) created some of the 20th Century’s most iconic images — and none more so than his famous melting watch, which first featured in his most celebrated painting, The Persistence of Memory, 1931. A distinct echo of that work, the dynamic bronze on offer in this sale extends Dali’s dialogue between the condition of man and the passing of time into his mature years. The limp form of the timepiece collapses over the tree, taking on the shape of a human silhouette that may be Dalí’s own profile. The two adjoining hands allude to his famed moustache. The bare tree symbolizes the tyrannical passing of time. And a human tear drips from its bottom edge, perhaps mourning the journey through life that all must endure.
Man cannot change or escape his time. The eye sees the present and the future.
— Salvador Dalí
Pablo Picasso, Portrait de Jacqueline au fauteuil (Portrait of Jacqueline in an Armchair), 1958, linocut. Hong Kong Editions.
In Portrait de Jacqueline au fauteuil, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) depicts his muse Jaqueline Roque (1926–1986) — his second wife and partner in the final decades of his life. Picasso met her after moving to Vallauris in the South of France to work at the Madoura Pottery studio, where she was employed — and became immediately infatuated. He sent her a rose every day until she agreed to be his companion. Over the course of their relationship, Roque’s striking features would feature in Picasso’s work over 400 times, with her likeness becoming the most featured face of his oeuvre.
In this linocut, the rhythmic overlapping planes and doubled eyes present a rich synthesis of multiple simultaneous viewpoints. The artist’s supreme command of the linocut medium is evident in his robust carving of her features and the contrast between black and warm tones, which heightens the sense of depth and disorientation to make Jaqueline appear both sculptural and flattened. One feels that it is the beating heart of Picasso's passion for Jaqueline that animates the compistion.
Love is the greatest refreshment in life.
— Pablo Picasso
KAWS, The News, 2017, complete set of nine screenprints. Hong Kong Editions.
In this dazzling set of screenprints, KAWS (American, born 1974) draws inspiration from Pop Art predecessors including Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat to distort his signature vividly-coloured cartoon characters to the point of abstraction. The circular format of the works in this series — which is unusual for KAWS — sets the powerfully immediate impact of the colour and fluid shapes into motion to launch a dynamically exuberant experience.