Tamila Kerimova
\nSpecialist, Director, Head of Day Sale, 20th Century & Contemporary Art

\n\n

+ 44 20 7318 4065
\ntkerimova@phillips.com

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Overview

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Glenn Ligon’s towering Mirror #2 is an exceptional token of the artist’s capacity to express clear, uncluttered truths, rooted in the history of people and language. Achieved with accrued impressions of oil stick on canvas, forming letters which themselves form sentences, the present composition experiments with notions of appearance and disappearance — a dichotomy dear to Ligon’s investigation of texts relating to the history of black people and identity politics. Looking at James Baldwin’s seminal contributions specifically, Ligon argues that the materials he chooses — oil stick and coal dust — mimic the subject of marginality Baldwin delves into, and his ability to analyse the absence and presence of black entities in historical narratives. Coal dust is ‘leftover product from coal processing’, Ligon says, and ‘I am drawn to it because of all of the contradictory readings it engenders’.¹ With works like Mirror #2, Ligon’s monochrome canvas is transformed into a verbose story, a historic artifact, that twines physical matter with evocative, yet eluding linguistics. 'The text within its confines assumes an abstract physical form, one that ‘has real weight and force to it’.²

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'But I also grew up around appropriation and text. Why write your own when there are texts in the world? Appropriating text is a way of getting certain ideas into the work directly.' —Glenn Ligon

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Executed in 2006, Mirror #2 forms part of a collection of ten paintings Ligon made on the occasion of his 2006 monographic show at Yvon Lambert, Paris, entitled Glenn Ligon: We Had Everything Before Us – We Had Nothing Before Us. The paintings displayed in the exhibition were based on Ligon’s former work Mirror, 2002, which was one of eight coaldust text paintings he had included in Documenta XI, Kassel, that same year. The text reproduced in those works was culled from James Bladwin’s infamous 1953 essay Stranger in the Village, addressing subjects of immigration, assimilation and citizenship. As such, Mirror #2 exists alongside Ligon’s celebrated and eponymous series Stranger in the Village initiated in 1997 – a sequence of works of which a number of examples reside in prestigious institutions such as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.

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\"Jasper — Jasper Johns, *Sculpmetal Numbers*, 1963, sculp-metal on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Image: © 2021 The Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. © Jasper Johns/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2021.

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Though he commenced his career as an abstract painter, looking at such predecessors as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock for inspiration, Ligon began incorporating text into his work in the mid-1980s to better articulate his political concerns and ideas about racial identity and experience. As he embarked on this new trajectory, some painterly antecedents remained of particular importance in his apprehension of the medium, namely Jasper Johns and his stenciled letters or numbers, which posited as a stylistic groundwork from which to investigate new, personal truths. Through a unique intertextual approach, he began sampling writings from famed black writers including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison, attempting to materialise the plurality and complexity of black American experience as expressed in literature, through art. Whilst developing this artistic foundation, Ligon conceptualised the term ‘Post-Blackness’ alongside the curator Thelma Golden, describing ‘the liberating value in tossing off the immense burden of race-wide representation, the idea that everything they do must speak too for or about the entire race’.³

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Presence and Absence

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In his painterly practice, Ligon has come to express the complexity of black experience with the paradoxical notion of presence and absence. ‘Ligon's work (...) is about being seen and not seen at the same time’, explains Hilton Als. ‘The surfaces of the paintings, their layers upon layers of coal dust and handiwork, both draw you close and push you away (but where to?).’⁴ With Mirror #2, the text’s diminishing legibility, weaving in and out of the viewer’s grasp in an entrancing, blackening expanse, entails an enthralling experience of beauty and waste, mystery and reflection. The result is an illustration of Ligon's perceived negatives in a material that illuminates the viewer’s space, allowing for one’s own interpretation to exist between the lines.

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\"Installation — Installation shot: Venice, Palazzo Fortuny, *Quand fondra la neige où ira le blanc*, 4 June - 10 October 2016. Wall: Glenn Ligon, *Mirror #2*. Floor: Robert Breer. Image: © Antonio Maniscalco

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In His Own Words

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¹ Glenn Ligon, quoted in Glenn Ligon: stranger, exh. cat., The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, 2001, n.p.

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² Roberta Smith, ‘Lack of Location Is My Location’, The New York Times, June 16, 1991, p. 27.

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³ Glenn Ligon, quoted in Darryl Pinckney, ‘Big Changes in Black America?’, NYBooks, 24 May 2012, online.

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⁴ Glenn Ligon, quoted in Hilton Als, ‘Strangers in the Village’, Glenn Ligon: America, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2011, p. 211.

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Virtual Viewing

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7-11 April 2021

\n\n

Public Viewing

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12-15 April 2021

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Monday - Wednesday, 10am-9pm

\n\n

Thursday, 10am-6pm

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Friday, 9am-5pm

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ALIGHIERO BOETTI Senza titolo (1977 per 1978), 1977-78

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ANSELM KIEFER Anthurie, 1987-91

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LOUISE LAWLER Collage Cartoon, 1990

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CARL ANDRE 45-Part Steel Cut, 1972

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JENNY HOLZER Arno, 1998

\n","1613680440",{"_579":1193,"_510":1194,"_1174":1195},"https://assets.phillips.com/auctions/UK010621/7a_hi.jpg","

ALIGHIERO BOETTI Aerei, 1983

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GLENN LIGON Mirror #2, 2006

\n","1617005113",{"_579":1201,"_510":1202,"_1174":1203},"https://assets.phillips.com/auctions/UK010621/8_hi.jpg","

DANIEL BUREN Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange, 1971

\n","1617005157",{"_579":1205,"_510":1206,"_1174":1207},"https://assets.phillips.com/auctions/UK010621/9_hi.jpg","

MALCOLM MORLEY The Boat, The Knight, The Tank, 1990

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ETEL ADNAN California #17, 2013

\n","1617166050",{"_106":1213},{"_108":109,"_110":111,"_112":113,"_114":90,"_115":116},"articles",[1216,1240],{"_1217":1218,"_1219":231,"_1220":1221,"_510":1222,"_1223":1224,"_1225":1226,"_1227":1228,"_1229":1230,"_1231":470,"_1232":1233,"_462":470,"_1234":1235,"_1236":1237,"_1238":1239},"coverUrl","https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/5_righi-14a481a4-99f1-429b-b47e-a6b001f4b43c_s600x0.jpg","section","summary","Senior specialist Carolina Lanfranchi joins Enea Righi in conversation about his vision, Alighiero Boetti, and the life cycle of a collection.","In Conversation with Collector Enea Righi ","body","

\n\n

\n\n

CAROLINA LANFRANCHI: Enea, thank you for being here with us. Let's start with the first question, can I ask you when and how did you start collecting?

\n\n

ENEA RIGHI: I started collecting about 35 years ago by chance; I began to develop the idea of collecting art, at the beginning, paintings. The first painting was a Schifano which I acquired from Emilio Mazzoli, mainly for the color which was interesting. Then slowly over the years, the collection has taken on a well-defined body of work, which has obviously changed over time but has passed from painting to photography, to sculpture, to large installations, including museum-type installations and therefore after 35 years we have made a very important journey.

\n\n

CL: Then you moved away from paintings as we’ve already discussed?

\n\n

ER: Yes! In truth I moved away from paintings a bit, even if lately I’ve been looking with a certain interest at the new painting, the new figuration, but in short, it’s not the main objective of the collection.

\n\n

I love photography very much, I love sculpture very much, I love installations very much, therefore, let's say that by changing the collection from painting to more conceptual minimal art, obviously the type of manufacturing technique of the works is different.

\n\n

So we went back to this type of collection, which then later ranged a bit on political art, on Eastern art which interested me very much for a while, on identity and on female art. We have always thought of setting up bodies of work. In fact, the most interesting thing is to set up bodies of work by artists who in my opinion have also grown with me.

\n\n

All this art, this 90s current which in my opinion was a very interesting art and still continues to be a very interesting art.

\n\n

CL: One thing I noticed both looking at the collection as a whole, and looking at the core collection that we will present in our auction, can Alighiero Boetti be an artist who represents the common ground that recalls the entire collection?

\n\n

ER: Alighiero Boetti is the true link between modern and contemporary, he’s an artist that I adored and adore so much. I can say that you convinced me to put some of Boetti’s work up for auction. For me it's like mutilating myself and chopping off a few pieces of my body. There are many pieces left in the collection besides those that are up for auction. But for me he’s the real artist, he’s the artist who represented the real turning point of the collection.

\n\n

CL: In fact, we can say that works that we present in our auction are an Enea Righi mini collection.

\n\n

ER: Please consider that the collection today is a collection that includes about a thousand works, a few hundred are in the museums as a long term loans, because there has always been this desire to help museums in Italy, they suffer very badly, they’ve always been in a crisis, not only now due to the lockdown or Covid.

\n\n

Unfortunately, I have a house where...I don't really like having houses full of art pieces. The works must breathe so they must find their own setting in the house: every now and then they are changed, this is a new space that we have created now. This is the first piece that is installed, this beautiful Spalletti.

\n\n

But the works must breathe, they should have their own setting and communicate with each other and therefore the museum is a good escape route to be able to lend these works, just to sum it up.

\n\n

CL: Why are you selling, why in an auction, and why Philips?

\n\n

ER: The name of the auction, “Out of the Blue” has precisely this meaning, namely that beyond the literal translation, outside the blue color, which already means being outside an aesthetic dimension in some respects, it’s precisely the idea of improvisation, of the improvisation of choice. It was like that; it was a sudden choice and so we did it because we said: well, now there are very important works in this auction of the collection, very important, which I was very fond of.

\n\n

Not only Boetti but I also remember Malcolm Morley’s piece which is an extraordinary, exceptional work, Ian Wallace, Glenn Ligon ... they are all truly beautiful works. But in reality we said to ourselves: The collection has to continue, needs to continue and progress and therefore the money that is collected from the auction will be invested completely in the collection, which will have an increasingly contemporary focus and consequently this is the real nature of the auction.

\n\n

Then the collector's real problem is, what will become of the collection? Because in reality even in the last exhibition we did, which Lorenzo Paini and Rick Mezil did at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, had a significant name which is translated from French “when the snow melts what will remain of the white?” translated it means: when you are at the end of your life what will remain of you or of the collection? When you no longer exist what will become of the collection? This is the great theme of the great collections.

\n\n

So why Philips? Philips seemed to me very smart, very fast, very interesting, I need to give credit to Carolina who was very good from this point of view and above all I like the more contemporary approach that Philips has compared to its competitors and therefore the choice was that, it was not an economic choice but it was a choice of affinity.

\n\n

CL: As a matter of fact we too wanted to keep the collecting aspect, respecting the collector, we chose this approach that is a single owner sale. Therefore an auction dedicated entirely to the collection, respecting and also in wanting to give something to the community as you did in your collection. Let's say a vision that is not purely commercial but also aesthetic and sharing certain ideals and canons of collecting. It seemed like a very important thing to do especially in the current times.

\n\n

ER: Thank you, I really appreciated that! Really a lot. The collection is known for being very unconventional that is, it is not a collection that follows the trends of the period, it’s very focused on important themes, also intellectually important, conceptually important, and outside the classic schemes of collecting.

\n\n

I’ve always bought artists I liked who for me were a physical, psychological need, a real and personal need to own that type of works which, however, were not very often sought after by the market.

\n\n

Earlier you were talking about Boetti, I bought Boetti when nobody wanted him and therefore Boetti's work was a flash of inspiration for us, but at the same time, in that period, I remember perfectly well that no one was really considering Boetti that much. So it was an important and interesting acceleration and this is also our strategy and my way of collecting in short.

\n\n

CL: Will there be one piece that you will miss more than the others?

\n\n

ER: Yes, by Boetti [laughs]…all of them!

\n\n

There are really important works by Boetti in the auction, I call it the Cross. However it’s a piece, I believe Boetti's first tapestry work with this motif of the cross which is in fact photographed full page in the catalogue raisonné of Boetti. The piece which I call "Film camera" but in any case it is a work from 1965 I think, which is a truly extraordinary and very interesting historical piece, the so-called faccine (small faces), which is his first work with this theme, in addition to those works from the following years that were made in a serial way, but it is Boetti's first true work about the small faces.

\n\n

CL: Surely you'll be able to buy something you'll like the same way?

\n\n

ER: I’ve already started to see a series of works by very young English, American, and also French artists: we have already identified a series of extremely interesting artists, extremely close to our taste. So Boetti will be replaced by other young artists who in my opinion will have Boetti's future.

\n\n

CL: Thank you so much Enea!

\n\n

ER: Thank you Carolina and thank you Phillips for the opportunity that was given to me.

\n\n

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In Conversation with Yinka Shonibare >

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\n","publishDate","2021-02-11T22:14:49.000000Z","authorCredit","Sarah Bochicchio","coverPosX",50,"coverPosY","articleUrl","https://www.phillips.com/article/70323922/enea-righi-twentieth-century-contemporary-art-day-sale","auctionEditorialID",1159,"editorialID",3392,"flocklerID",70323922,{"_1217":1241,"_1219":231,"_1220":1242,"_510":1243,"_1223":1244,"_1225":1245,"_1227":1228,"_1229":1230,"_1231":470,"_1232":1246,"_462":229,"_1234":1247,"_1236":1248,"_1238":1249},"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/boetti-phillips-4ed31d70-cc12-4bf9-9835-552339e78a14_s600x0.jpg","Once defined by Hans Ubrich Olbrist as the European Andy Warhol, Alighiero Boetti was one of the most influential international artists of his generation. Take a closer look at some highlights from the artist in our upcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale in London. ","Mettere al Mondo il Mondo","

Alighiero Boetti, Aerei, 1983.

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Once defined by Hans Ubrich Olbrist as the European Andy Warhol, Alighiero Boetti, born in 1940 in the Italian city of Turin, was one of the most influential international artists of his generation. His first sculptural works from the late 1960s are associated with the Arte Povera movement, with whom he shared a preference for basic matter and anti-classical style. However, being more interested in concepts than materials, he soon deviated from it. Until his premature death in 1994, he went on to create a unique artistic narrative through play, poetry, measure, numbers, order and disorder, that he combined with material diversity and conceptual complexity, always expressed with extraordinary visual beauty. The artist did not follow a linear evolution in his practice, but rather focused on several threads that kept recurring throughout his life. The present seminal works exemplify five of them and take the viewer in a unique experience of what was both Boetti’s passion and biggest artistic achievement, the ability to travel in space and time.

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Alighiero Boetti, Senza titolo (1977 per 1978), 1977-78.

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The first work made by Boetti representing a cross, Senza titolo (1977 per 1978) is a mesmerising large-scale early example of the artist’s celebrated tapestries, the Arazzi. The artist’s textile works began in the 1970s, when he traveled to Afghanistan and started to collaborate with local embroiderers, first in Kabul and, after the Soviet invasion in 1979, in Peshawar, Pakistan. Merging linguistic and numeric systems into a glimmering play of colour and pattern, the present work is constituted by individual letters arranged in an order that seems random. This chaos is only apparent and hides a highly logical premise, only revealed to those able to find harmony in dissonance. The four black and white squares, read from top to bottom in sequential vertical columns for the two on the left and in horizontal rows for the two on the right, spell out the date of its creation, "millenovecentosettantotto," 1978 in Italian. This was a seminal year in the artist’s life, with his first retrospective curated by Jean-Christophe Amman taking place at the Kunsthalle in Basel and his participation at the Venice Biennale. The central bright-coloured cross reads "per nuove autonomie," for new independences, "felici coincidenze," happy coincidences, "nuovi desideri," new desires, "felici alternanze," happy variations, "a KL," to Kabul, an homage to the city that he deeply loved, and "A E B," both his signature and double identity -Alighiero, the private person, and Boetti, the public one, shaman and showman at once. This work profoundly emblematises all the main elements of the artist’s vision, conveyed with full force.

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Alighiero Boetti,Vedere i Laterali, circa 1977.

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The Biro series started in the 1970s, when Boetti used a ball point pen, a common, quintessentially inexpensive object, to fill entire sheets of paper with ink, that later were green, red and black too. This early work from 1977, titled Vedere i Laterali, "Viewing the Sides," is a triptych of three sheets of paper covered in ballpoint. The biro creates a cryptic message through the space of the alphabet on the left hand and the seemingly arbitrary arrangement of white commas throughout the three panels, that, when read from sequentially from left to right, spell out the title itself.

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‘In his universe of meaning, ballpoint pens also served to dispel better the distinctive, unique, and inimitable act in the sea of collective and anonymous signs that is the basic intention of Boetti’s art, these works’ surfaces appear indented by commas, small white zones, each of which correspond to one of the letters of the alphabet, it is connecting comma and letter that the phrase the work conceals finally emerges. The simple mechanism of deconstructing language actually causes the rebirth of all languages, words, signs, painting and so on.’ Each biro work contains panels that were done by different people, often students, and most times a man and a woman. In the eclectic portfolio of works by Alighiero Boetti, the biro can easily be compared to the equally important and parallel tapestries. Indeed, what the embroidery represents for an Afghan is what the ballpoint pen constitutes for a Westerner -both are the media that the entire community uses to speak, the expression of a collective memory.

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Alighiero Boetti, Aerei, 1983.

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The current work is an example of the Aerei, “airplanes,” series that began in 1977 when Boetti started collaborating with the illustrator Guido Fuga. Here the ballpoint pen symbolizes the air in which fly dozens of different airplanes, temporary and transient objects that may suddenly disappear beyond the frame, lost like Boetti in infinite possible journeys. The repetitiveness of the Aerei embodies the beauty of the compositional variety and its limitless possibilities, so important to the artist’s research. In line with the rest of his work, indeed, they may appear as disoriented and chaotic, yet are classifying and reasoned. The theme of time is also present, as the airplanes represent a meditation on the concept of movement and stillness through the human body and mind.

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Alighiero Boetti, Senza titolo, 1965.

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Senza titolo is an iconic example of a series of around fifty drawings that Boetti made with India ink in 1965 to represent industrial tools, such as combs, tumblers and bottles, desk lamps, microphones or cameras. The execution is strongly bidimensional and the objects, meticulously realized by the hand of artist, convey a feeling of a metaphysical restlessness and estrangement. The film camera in the present works seems to go beyond the pictorial plane and to involve the viewer in another world, parallel and maybe more authentic than the real one.

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Alighiero Boetti, Faccine, 1977.

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The need of Boetti for a collective participation to his work was also pursued with the Faccine, a series of offset prints that he gave to the public, sometimes children in schools, to paint as they liked. The present example belongs to the first edition from 1977, bigger than the later ones and, unlike them, stamped on the front. It was probably colored by its initial owner, with an act of mutual creation that embodies the essence of Boetti’s vision of the world, that will eternally benefit from his art and go on also without him.

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Recommended Reading

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A Tale of Three Artists: Gentileschi, Kollwitz, Emin >

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In Conversation with Collector Enea Righi >

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111

Glenn Ligon

Mirror #2

Further Details

Full-Cataloguing

Glenn Ligon