Christopher Wool - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Galleria Gio Marconi, Milan

  • Catalogue Essay

    Rather than simply existing as a representational or conceptual piece, or as mere symbols on canvas, Untitled (P489) represents a highly systematic, intellectual challenge that lies at the core of Christopher Wool's artistic thinking and practice. His paintings are just as much about the process as they are about the finished work. Within Untitled (P489) lies a tension between creation and destruction in the building of a careful composition only for it to be wiped away. Layers of black and white tone are built up, with one style of brush stroke or spray gesture wiping out the last, the whole only to be silkscreened over once more and the process repeated. The deception of this process comes in the final appearance of the super-flat quality of his finished work: "Because Wool only makes a couple of passes at a painting, his surfaces are silky, only slightly raised, and never laboured" (Jerry Saltz, ‘Hard Attack', The Village Voice, 8 –14 December 2004, p. 78). The outcome, while seemingly a random amalgamation of line and tone quality, is in fact a highly methodical abstraction.

5

Untitled (P489)

2005
Silkscreen ink on linen.
264.2 × 198.1 cm (104 × 78 in).
Signed, titled and dated ‘Wool (P489) 2005' on the reverse and on the overlap.

Estimate
£150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for £331,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

13 October 2010
London