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"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 BrinsonFormerly a gift from the artist to the late famed writer Glenn O’Brien, Blue Fool is a singular example of Christopher Wool’s highly coveted body of Word paintings created between 1987 and 1992. Executed in 1990, the present work depicts one of the artist’s signature slogans in an intimately sized composition. Encapsulating Wool’s masterful ability to coalesce the language of graffiti with the concerns of conceptual art, Blue Fool oscillates between textuality and visuality to exemplify the deeper, complex modes of communication, representation, and meaning that dominate the core of the artist’s renowned practice.
Bruce Nauman, None Sing Neon Sign, 1970. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Image: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkThe artist’s word paintings situate Wool within a lineage of artists who have employed textual codes in their imagery to engage semiotics through compositional presentation, from René Magritte and Marcel Duchamp to his contemporaries including Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer. Reflecting Wool’s emergence against the backdrop of the 1980s New York art scene, the present work embodies how amidst the Conceptualists’ use of language, “Wool made it new,” as Peter Schjeldahl observed. “He merged the anonymous aggression of graffiti with the stateliness of formal abstract painting.”i Blue Fool perfectly encapsulates this painterly quality about Wool’s signature style, as the enamel oozes beyond the precise borders of the stenciled letters.
Wool, like his contemporary Jean-Michel Basquiat, drew inspiration from New York’s graffitied streets. One of the earlier advocates and collectors of the artist’s work, Glenn O’Brien—an icon of New York’s cultural fabric in the 1970s and 1980s who frequently collaborated with Andy Warhol, Madonna, Basquiat, and Wool, among other critical figures—articulated this comparison. “Jean-Michel Basquiat loved the do-it-yourself bilingual bricolage esthetic of Alphabet City, the district of improvisational bootstrap enterprise. Wool, another far-Eastsider, has a similar romance with fringe New York, the no man’s land, the interzone, the DMZ, and the ruins of concrete jungle. Where Basquiat gleaned pop cues from that world, Wool finds an alphabet of symbolic abstractions. Here is the action painting of the unconscious—accidental splashes and streaks that mark fields of blighted architecture.”ii
"Through process, technique, scale, composition, and imagery, Wool’s work accentuates the tensions and contradictions between the act of painting, the construction of a picture, its physical attributes, the visual experience of looking at it, and the possibilities of playing with and pushing open the thresholds of its meanings. They are defined by what they’re not—and what they hold back."
—Ann Goldstein
René Magritte, La clef des songes (The Key to Dreams), 1927. Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich, Image: Banque d'Images, ADAGP / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkWool’s word paintings were conceived out of an iconic moment during the artist’s early career in a now-legendary account. While living in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1987, Wool serendipitously encountered a new white truck with the words “SEX LUV” graffitied on its surface. Moved by the striking simplicity of the image and its ability to convey visual force, he appropriated the phrase for his own work, laying the foundation for what would become his trademark technique—large dark letters stenciled upon a stark white background. Manifesting an exceptional example of the artist’s rare employment of color in his practice, the dark blue rendering of the bold block lettering starkly contrasts with the white ground to connote urban grit and iconicity.
Belonging to Wool’s first body of word paintings, the work depicts each letter of the word “FOOL” segmented into a four-part grid. By deconstructing the word and isolating its individual components, Wool compels the viewer to focus on the letters as purely visual elements. Seen through this lens, the shapes operating on the surface ironically conjure his own name—and deliberately so, as the artist has acknowledged that his rendering of the word functions in part as a self-portrait.iii In such compositions, Wool at once destabilizes words of their communicative utility and allows for a multiplicity of meanings to rise from the surface, through the literal and conceptual spaces in between. In the words of O’Brien, “Slowly and surely Christopher Wool has reinvented abstraction and devised a radical new way of working that partakes in the clarity and the heroism, but in a way that is shockingly novel and perhaps heretically casual.”iv
i Peter Schjeldahl, “Writing on the Wall,” The New Yorker, November 4, 2013, online.
ii Glenn O’Brien, “Apocalypse and Wallpaper” in Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Christopher Wool, Cologne, 2008, p. 13.
iii Katherine Brinson, Christopher Wool, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2013, p. 41.
iv Glenn O’Brien, “Apocalypse and Wallpaper” in Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Christopher Wool, Cologne, 2008, p. 10.
Provenance
Glenn O’Brien (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired from the above by the present owner via Richard Gray Gallery, ChicagoExhibited
London, Simon Lee Gallery, Family Guy (curated by Kenny Schachter), October 3-20, 2018
34
Blue Fool
signed, titled, dedicated and dated "BLUE FOOL FOR GLEN WOOL 1990" on the reverse
enamel on aluminum
12 x 7 7/8 in. (30.5 x 20 cm)
Executed in 1990.
Estimate
$800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
Amanda Lo Iacono
New York Head of Department & Head of Auctions
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 17 November 2021
1
Shara Hughes
Inside Outside
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $877,000
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3
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Girl in Blue
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $730,800
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4
Kwesi Botchway
Green Sofa
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $214,200
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5
Titus Kaphar
Fade With Time
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $816,500
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6
David Hammons
Puzzling Times
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $877,000
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7
Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Let him come...)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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8
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $11,870,000
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9
Georgia O'Keeffe
Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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10
Alexander Calder
White Moon
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,628,000
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11
Cecily Brown
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
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12
Willem de Kooning
Composition
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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13
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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14
This lot is no longer available.
15
Amy Sherald
Welfare Queen
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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16
Francis Bacon
'Pope with Owls'
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $33,000,000
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17
Luc Tuymans
Wallpaper
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,250,000
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18
Pierre Bonnard
Panier de fruit
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $4,991,000
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19
Honor Titus
Linden Blvd Jazz Radio
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $163,800
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20
Matthew Wong
Time After Time
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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21
Avery Singer
European Ego Ideal
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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22
Mark Tansey
Garden
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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23
KAWS
THE WAY HE KNOWS
Estimate $850,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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24
Wassily Kandinsky
Fliessend
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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25
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (from Famous Negro Athlete Series)
Estimate $750,000 - 1,100,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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26
Peter Saul
Ice Box #3
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $441,000
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27
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (The Door)
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $8,549,500
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28
Emily Mae Smith
Feast and Famine
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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29
Gerhard Richter
Weiß (White)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,717,000
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30
Robert Ryman
Series #25 (White)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,421,500
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31
Frank Stella
Double Concentric Square
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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32
Carmen Herrera
Amarillo y Negro
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $630,000
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33
Andy Warhol
The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,806,000
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34
Christopher Wool
Blue Fool
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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35
This lot is no longer available.
36
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Six PM, Malaga
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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37
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah #5
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $504,000
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38
Mike Kelley
Memory Ware Flat #3
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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39
George Condo
Collision Course
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Untitled (from Fifteen Pairs of Hands)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $983,000
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41
David Hammons
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,660,000
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42
Nicolas Party
Houses
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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43
Hurvin Anderson
Country Club—Mixed Doubles
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $604,800
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44
Max Ernst
Ohne Titel (les hommes ne le sauront jamais)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Max Ernst
Kachina, le chien de Peggy Guggenheim
Estimate $280,000 - 350,000
Sold for $277,200
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46
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
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47
Reggie Burrows Hodges
On the Verge: Green
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $567,000
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48
Max Ernst
Portrait de Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $176,400
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