Nate Lowman - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Monday, November 11, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Maccarone Gallery, New York
    Private Collection

  • Exhibited

    New York, Maccarone Gallery and Gavin Brown's enterprise, Trash Landing, May 7 – June 18, 2011

  • Catalogue Essay

    "I don't have a connoisseur's interest [in Marilyn Monroe] and the only films I saw of hers were The Misfits and her singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President.” I'm more interested in other peoples’ interest in [her]."

    - Nate Lowman

    Juxtaposing the raw appeal of familiar cultural debris and an energetic re-examination of Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, Nate Lowman’s Trash Landing Marilyn #12 is a concise, pulsating summation of decidedly Twenty-first Century sensibilities. From the Marilyn series, Trash Landing Marilyn #12 demonstrates Lowman’s ability to tap into a collective creative consciousness and emerge with an entirely new and fresh synthesis of its influences. Here he has mined the American cultural lexicon for the image of Marilyn Monroe. Lowman has chosen as his source Willem de Kooning’s depiction of the actress, Marilyn Monroe of 1954, which came shortly after the artist’s groundbreaking Woman series, which created an uproar when first exhibited at Sidney Janis’s gallery due to its figurative depiction of the violently attended-to woman. To this, Lowman combines a sensibility shared with Andy Warhol, who also addressed the same subject throughout his career.

    Utilising “80s surfboard hues” of oil paint overlaid with a screenprint pattern of glossy alkyd, suggesting Xerox-copy distortion, Lowman transposes a quintessential work of Abstract Expressionist gesturalism into a ghostly figure transported to the present day. Lowman’s focus on contemporary “trash” culture and urban wastefulness is represented here in the graffiti-like nature of his treatment of the non-screened aspects of the composition. Blending high and low, Trash Landing Marilyn #12 thus combines multiple languages—that of graffiti, DIY culture (in the Xerox quality of the screenprint), Abstract Expressionism, and soft, kitschy 1980s hues—to arrive at an utterly unique recombination all his own.

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Ο2

Trash Landing Marilyn #12

2011
oil and alkyd on linen
65 3/4 x 46 3/4 in. (167 x 118.7 cm.)
Signed and dated "Nate Lowman 2011" along the overlap.

Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000 

Sold for $725,000

Contact Specialist
Zach Miner
Head of Evening Sale
zminer@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1256

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York 11 November 2013 7PM