Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
Executed at the onset of her promising career, Self Portrait, 2012 comes to auction concurrent with Jordan Casteel’s first major institutional show at the Denver Art Museum. The artist has contributed to the redefinition of contemporary portraiture taking place by a school of artists reinvigorating figurative painting in the 21st century including Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman and others. Embodying the vibrant, tactile and painterly aesthetic that her portraits have become known for, the present work depicts herself staring directly at the viewer, inhabiting an intimate composition, which offers a glimpse into the early stages of her practice, and more uniquely, her own persona.

In Self Portrait, Casteel sits casually in a white t-shirt, wearing a necklace with a butterfly pendant and square-framed glasses. She looks ahead at us with raised eyebrows, surrounded by collaged sketches and letters written by her students from her time as a special education teacher in Denver prior to attending the Yale School of Art. The notes provide an intimate look at Casteel’s previous life before beginning her career as an artist, some containing colorful block letters spelling out “CASTEEL”, identifying the sitter. She is seated with an IV in her left arm, a reference to her daily routine spent managing lupus, the autoimmune disease she was diagnosed with during her first year of college. Throughout her development as an artist, Casteel acknowledges the profound effect that the disease has had, making her someone, as she describes, who “really desires authenticity, because everything else feels so fleeting” (Jordan Casteel, quoted in Julia Felsenthal, “Jordan Casteel is Making You Look”, Vogue, February 27, 2018, online). By alluding to an aspect of her own private life, Self Portrait uniquely encompasses the authentic nature of her practice, perhaps even more so than her recent portraits of fellow New Yorkers painted over the past five years.

In the present work, the artist utilized a varied color palette, mixing warm yellows with fiery reds, juxtaposed with cooler violets found within the shadows, all layered on top of each other in heavy impasto. For each of her portraits, Casteel begins with a single activating color, which she then builds an entire palette around. She explains, “I consider myself a painter in the most technical way. I spend probably the majority of my time thinking about the nuance of color and composition” (Jordan Casteel, quoted in Julia Felsenthal, “Jordan Casteel is Making You Look”, Vogue, February 27, 2018, online). While recognizably dark, Casteel’s skin tone in Self Portrait is not composed of a single black hue. “I'm interested in pushing the dialogue of blackness. Within my own family, the scope of what blackness looks like is really vast…you literally have a whole scope and range of literal color, and representing that in my paintings is important to me. I just allow myself to play, as it relates to each painting individually” (Jordan Casteel, quoted in Jason Parham, “This Artist Wants You To See The Fullness Of Black Men’s Lives”, The Fader, August 10, 2016, online).

Born and raised in Denver, Casteel received a Masters of Fine Arts in painting from Yale in 2014. After graduation, Casteel moved to New York and was quickly catapulted to fame a year later when she was offered the renowned artist’s residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It was here that she shifted her focus to people she encountered in her new neighborhood, mostly men. Beginning with nude figures in domestic interiors and later depicting them in their outdoor, urban surroundings, Casteel’s sitters are at once specific and representative of a broader human experience. Working from photos that she stages herself, she often surrounds her subjects with their own ephemera to create a personal narrative. After amassing over 100 photos, she then returns to her studio and begins rendering her subjects in vibrant swathes of paint that have little basis in reality.

By painting black subjects from her everyday life, Casteel re-contextualizes traditional portraiture of the past, which so often favored white subjects. In so doing she belongs to a specific lineage of black artists like Marshall and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, both of whom are also focusing on previously underrepresented sitters. On these artists’ collective efforts, Dushko Petrovich explains, “there is an institutional urgency to speak to a more diverse audience with painting…to attract the various people who had been excluded from the museum by remaking the history of figurative painting, this time with color” (Dushko Petrovich, “The New Face of Portrait Painting”, The New York Times Style Magazine, February 12, 2018, online). Marshall does this by referencing the rewriting of art history, while Yiadom-Boakye imagines her ethereal subjects entirely. In contrast, Casteel paints people found within her day-to-day surroundings, bearing an equal resemblance to portraitists such as Alice Neel, and even 19th century masters like Édouard Manet.

Of the timeless nature of her work, she explains, “I have to trust that the paintings’ integrity will allow them to hold space wherever they go and encourage conversation and thoughtfulness that might not have been there otherwise. I won’t always be there to speak on the painting’s behalf—its success lies in its ability to speak for itself” (Jordan Casteel, quoted in “Jordan Casteel: In Conversation with Nicole Kaack”, NYAQ, Issue 6, November-February 2016/2017, p. 14).

18

Jordan Casteel

Self Portrait

signed "CASTEEL" lower right
oil and paper collage (with ink, graphite and colored pencil) on canvas
55 7/8 x 43 7/8 in. (141.9 x 111.4 cm.)
Executed in 2012.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000

Sold for $237,500

Contact Specialist
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 16 May | On View at 432 and 450 Park Avenue

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Donald Judd
Untitled
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Roy Lichtenstein
Small Wall Explosion
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David Hockney
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Andy Warhol
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Roy Lichtenstein
Modern Painting
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Robert Motherwell
Open No. 119: In Blue with Charcoal Line
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Roy Lichtenstein
Horse and Rider
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8
Andy Warhol
Roy Lichtenstein
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Andy Warhol
9 Flowers
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10
Fernando Botero
The Lovers
Estimate $450,000 - 550,000
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11
Alexander Calder
Black Gamma
Estimate $5,000,000 - 7,000,000
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12
David Hockney
Study from Parade Triple Bill
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
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13
Andy Warhol
Soup Can
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14
Joan Miró
Conque
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15
Alexander Calder
White Versus Yellow
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
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16
Nicolas Party
Landscape
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
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17
KAWS
THE WALK HOME
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
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18
Jordan Casteel
Self Portrait
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $237,500
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19
KAWS
UNTITLED (MBFU9)
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $1,340,000
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20
Tomoo Gokita
Be Just Like Family
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
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21
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Robot Man
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
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22
Yayoi Kusama
Accumulation by Space (No.62.CO.)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $2,060,000
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23
Eva Hesse
No title
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24
Mark Bradford
Helter Skelter II
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
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25
Richard Diebenkorn
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,220,000
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26
Frank Stella
Scramble: Descending Blue Values/Ascending Spectrum
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27
Willem de Kooning
Untitled XVI
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $10,268,000
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28
David Hockney
Iris with Evian Bottle
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29
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Self Portrait
Estimate $9,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $9,500,000
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30
Keith Haring and LA II (Angel Ortiz)
Untitled (Two-Panel Mural)
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Donald Judd
Untitled
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32
Robert Motherwell
Untitled (Elegy)
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33
Pat Steir
Monk Tuyu Meditating Waterfall
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34
Dana Schutz
Signing
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35
Robert Colescott
Knowledge of the Past is the Key to the Future: The Original
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36
This lot is no longer available.
37
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Piss Piss Piss Piss)
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $620,000
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38
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,700,000
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39
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Mark Tansey
View from Mt. Hermeneut
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
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Christopher Wool
Untitled
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42
Jean Dubuffet
Ciboulot Pistolet
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43
El Anatsui
Alter Ego
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44
Anish Kapoor
Untitled
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45
Chris Ofili
The Naked Spirit of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $475,000
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 16 May | On View at 432 and 450 Park Avenue

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Provenance

Catalogue Essay

18

Jordan Casteel

Self Portrait

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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