Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
In Short
“This mirror idea allowed me to make an 'original' invention, but one that is bearable because it is so hackneyed” – Albert Oehlen
Mirror Paintings
Depicting a somber gallery wall, Im Museum II is an important early example from Albert Oehlen’s Mirror Paintings series, or “Spiegelbilder.” In these seminal works, completed between 1982 and 1990, the artist rendered rooms in a muted palette of earthy colors punctuated by actual fragments of mirrors collaged directly onto the canvas.
The Mirror Paintings constitute a pivotal series in Oehlen’s oeuvre, sitting between the Bad Paintings and raw figurative works of his early career and the “post-non-objective” paintings of the late 1980s and 1990s. Embodying an idiosyncratic approach to light, scale, and color, which would permeate his later series, these paintings solidified Oehlen’s reputation as a master subverter of painterly tradition. One of Oehlen’s earliest bodies of work, the Mirror Paintings are currently being reconsidered as a decisive moment in his career, and were the subject of exhibitions at Galerie Max Heltzer and Nahmad Contemporary last year.
In his 2020 essay, “Albert Oehlen’s Mirror Paintings, An Inescapable Contingency,” Raphael Rubinstein analyzes the series by what he considers to be the three defining characteristics of the works: that they are simultaneously “paintings with mirrors,” “paintings with things attached to them,” and “room paintings.”[i]
A Painting with Mirrors
Mirrors, of course, have been recurrent motifs in the history of art for centuries, featuring in the paintings of Diego Velázquez and Johannes Vermeer as well as in Japanese ukiyo-e. Actual mirrors, as opposed to images, have also had a prominent role in art at least since Enrico Baj’s mirror on brocade works from the 1950s; the following decade, mirrors began turning up continually, such as in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Quadri Specchianti, and Gerhard Richter’s 4 Panes of Glass, 1967, Herbert Foundation, Ghent.
A Painting with Things Attached to It
Through the 19th century, artists very rarely attached objects to the surface of any painted support. In this sense, Im Museum II positions itself within an art historical lineage of modernism begun by Pablo Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912. Subsequently, innumerable works—such as Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbild assemblages and Francis Picabia’s Portrait of Cézanne, 1920—further interrupted pictorial illusion with actual three-dimensionality. By gluing mirrors on his paintings, Oehlen thrust himself into two 20th century modes of art-making: “the mirror-work and the painting-with-object-attached.”[ii]
A Room Painting
“I only used mirrors in pictures depicting rooms, so that the viewer can place himself in the room. These rooms were chosen not on the basis of design, or architecture, or any other such criteria, but on the basis of their meaning, which I attribute to them in relation to society,” Oehlen elucidated. “Museum, apartment, Hitler’s headquarters, things like that: a summons to appear in the picture.”[iii] By placing the viewer—and ostensibly the room he or she is in—within the painting, Im Museum II reflects both the closeness and dissidence between the dark corners of the past and our present.
[i] Raphael Rubinstein, “Albert Oehlen’s Mirror Paintings, An Inescapable Contingency,” Albert Oehlen: Spiegelbilder / Mirror Paintings 1982-1990, Berlin, 2020, pp. 9-21.[ii] Raphael Rubinstein, “Albert Oehlen’s Mirror Paintings, An Inescapable Contingency,” Albert Oehlen: Spiegelbilder / Mirror Paintings 1982-1990, Berlin, 2020, p. 13.[iii] Albert Oehlen, quoted in Wilfred Dickhoff and Martin Prinzhorn, Kunst Heute, no. 7, 1990, p. 37.
Johannes Vermeer, The Music Lesson, circa 1662. Royal Collection, London, Photo credit: HIP / Art Resource, NY
Thomas Struth, Louvre III, 1989. Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Photo credit: Philippe Migeat © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Thomas StruthProvenance
Galerie Max Hetzler, Stuttgart
The Metzger Collection, Essen
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2004Exhibited
Stuttgart, Galerie Max Hetzler, Albert Oehlen: Montparnasse, da war das Leben klasse, September 3 – 30, 1982
Bologna, Galleria d’Arte Moderna; Essen, Museum Folkwang, La giovane pittura in Germania – Die junge Malerei in Deutschland, November 20, 1982 - January 10, 1983, p. 88 (illustrated)
Kunsthalle Budapest; Tampere, Sara Hildén Art Museum, German Expressionism in the Metzger Collection, January 24 – November 18, 1984, no. 110, p. 138 (illustrated, p. 6)
Berlin, Galerie Max Hetzler, Albert Oehlen: Gemälde Paintings 1980-1982, May 24 – June 22, 2002, p. 32 (illustrated, p. 33)
Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst, Obsessive Malerei: Ein Rückblick auf die Neuen Wilden Karlsruhe, September 27, 2003 - January 4, 2004, p. 15 (illustrated, p. 183)Literature
Albert Oehlen: Spiegelbilder / Mirror Paintings 1982-1990, exh. cat., Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, 2020, p. 17 (illustrated)
Property from an Important European Collection
18
Im Museum II
oil, lacquer and mirror on canvas
63 x 63 in. (160 x 160 cm)
Executed in 1982.
Estimate
$600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $560,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 2 July 2020
1
Titus Kaphar
Untitled (red thread lady)
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $187,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
2
Matthew Wong
Mood Room
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $848,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
3
Lucas Arruda
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $350,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
4
Helen Frankenthaler
Head of the Meadow
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $3,020,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
5
Joan Mitchell
Noël
Estimate $9,500,000 - 12,500,000
Sold for $11,062,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
6
Christina Quarles
Placed
Estimate $70,000 - 100,000
Sold for $400,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
7
Francis Picabia
Portrait de femme
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $350,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
8
KAWS
COMPANION (DETAIL OF CROWD SHOT)
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,380,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
9
Robert Nava
The Tunnel
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $162,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
10
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Victor 25448
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $9,250,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
11
George Condo
Stump Head
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,050,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
12
Banksy
Monkey Poison
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,000,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
13
Maxfield Parrish
Humpty Dumpty
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $740,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
14
Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe
Shade of Black
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $250,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
15
Charles White
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $800,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
16
Ali Banisadr
Motherboard
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $572,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
17
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (801-3)
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $3,680,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
18
Albert Oehlen
Im Museum II
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $560,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
19
Thomas Struth
Notre Dame, Paris
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $400,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
20
David Hammons
Hidden Drawing (Jordan begins 8th season as No. 1)
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $181,250
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
21
Julio González
L'arlequin / Pierrot ou Colombine
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $920,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
22
Amoako Boafo
Joy in Purple
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
Sold for $668,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
23
Fernando Botero
Woman
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,004,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
24
Donald Judd
Untitled
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $680,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
25
Sturtevant
Stella Gran Cairo
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $620,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.