Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
"When I start drawing or painting, time vanishes […] It’s almost like meditation. I’ve always noticed that my mind can wander extremely freely, and that great ideas about the world that surround me come to me while I am drawing and painting."
—Harold AncartVividly rendered in a psychedelic palette of sharply contrasted and saturated colour, Untitled from 2017 is a vivid expression of the Belgian-born artist’s confident handling of oil stick, and his uncanny ability to abstract reality in his invention of ‘Natural subjects in unnatural colours’.i Possessing a remarkable tactility and exuberance, the present work opens a window onto a strange otherworldly scene, at once familiar and strange as recognisable natural forms are reduced to their rudimentary elements of line, colour, and shape. Scudded with soft clouds in shocking shades of blue and yellow, an infinite pink horizon stretches out beyond a flat, black sea, its surface ruptured by abstract, jagged forms in intensely contrasted blue and red hues.
Contemplative and serene, the vertical format of the present work draws on a Surrealist tradition epitomised by Yves Tanguy’s illusionist landscapes of windswept beaches, vast horizons, and saturated gradients, giving eerie form to Ancart’s own suggestion that ‘without a horizon line, one gets lost and eventually dies.’ii Like his French predecessor, Ancart’s fictive landscapes are utterly absorbing and transportive, deftly blending the Surreal with the Sublime as their ‘ambiguity encourages the eye to make its own travels.’iii
Yves Tanguy, Time and Time Again, 1942, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Image: © NPL - DeA Picture Library / Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022 Surrealism and the Sublime
Executed in 2017 following an instructive trip to Iceland's volcanic landscape, the present work introduces compositional elements that Ancart would go on to formalise in his Iceberg paintings the following year. Introduced in Freeze, his first solo exhibition in London with David Zwirner Gallery, these Iceberg paintings share in the same distinctive compositional arrangement used by the artist in the present work and associated volcano paintings from this period, a sharp horizon line dividing the painting into simplified zones of sea, sky, foreground, and background, anchored by a central motif and focal point for the viewer to orient themselves against.
Fracturing a more figurative whole into its abstract components in this manner, Ancart radically updates a 19th century pictorial tradition of the American Sublime developed in the deep horizons and dramatic landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church and his contemporaries. Travelling through much of the same scenery himself in a 2014 road trip across the United States, Ancart was so inspired that he turned the boot of his jeep into a mobile studio of sorts, painting in laybys as he traversed the vast landscape.
Frederic Edwin Church, Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford. Image: akg-images Developing poet and critic Charles Baudelaire’s 19th notion of the flâneur as ‘one who walks around and tries to isolate poetic moments out of the everyday urban landscape,’ Ancart has created a specific visual language that is at once familiar and jarringly surreal.iv Slightly distorted shapes, manipulated horizon lines, and inverted colour schemes challenge viewers to examine the world in new and unexpected ways. Operating within what critic Chinnie Ding has described as a ‘planet of painting’, Ancart’s sense of space is purely pictorial, and the art historical references absorbed into his work remaining ‘like chromosomal traces enrich[ing] such dimensional unknowns.’v
Collector’s Digest
• Born in Belgium in 1980, the New York-based Harold Ancart uses a vast array of media in creating complex pictorial worlds and sculptural installations.
• Ancart has already succeeded in carving out a role for himself in the contemporary art world; examples of his work belong to esteemed museum collections worldwide including The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Menil Collection in Houston, the Musée National d’Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, among others.• Ancart has been the subject of several important exhibitions, including Harold Ancart: Untitled (there is no there there), held at The Menil Collection, Houston, in 2016. After his major 2020 presentation with David Zwirner held across both of their New York galleries, his most recent solo exhibition with the gallery La Grande Profondeur opened in 2021, marking his first show in Paris.
i ‘Artist to Watch: PRIME FOCUS - Harold Ancart’, Artspace, 1 May 2022, online.
ii Harold Ancart, quoted in Naomi Rea, ‘How the Self-Depreciating Belgian Painter Harold Ancart Charmed the Art World’, Artnet News, 10 September 2018, online.
iii Kat Herriman, ‘Back and Forth with Artist Harold Ancart,’ Cultured, 29 April 2019, online.
iv Harold Ancart, quoted in Julia Felsenthal, ‘Harold Ancart Brings His Kaleidoscopic Trees to Chelsea’, T Magazine, 8 September 2020, online.
v Chinnie Ding, ‘Critics' Picks: Harold Ancart’, Artforum, 18 June 2015, online.Provenance
David Kordansky, Los Angeles
Private Collection, USA
Acquired from the above by the present owner
31
Untitled
oil stick and pencil on canvas, in artist's frame
215.9 x 175.3 cm (85 x 69 in.)
Executed in 2017.
Estimate
£200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £239,400
Rosanna Widén
Senior Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+44 20 7318 4060
rwiden@phillips.com
Olivia Thornton
Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Europe
+44 20 7318 4099
othornton@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
London Auction 14 October 2022
1
Julian Pace
Kanye
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ‡♠
Sold for £113,400
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
2
Michaela Yearwood-Dan
Coping Mechanisms
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ♠
Sold for £239,400
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
3
Rebecca Ness
Pencil Flipper
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡
Sold for £119,700
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
4
Robert Nava
Before Minotaur
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £639,600
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
5
Emily Mae Smith
Raft on Siren Sea
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
6
Caroline Walker
Night Scenes
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £516,600
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
7
Issy Wood
The butter
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡♠
Sold for £277,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
8
Anna Weyant
Cynthia
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £302,400
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
9
Elizabeth Peyton
Evan at the Reading Festival 1993
Estimate £480,000 - 650,000 ‡
Sold for £567,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
10
Doron Langberg
Nir and Zach
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡
Sold for £378,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
11
This lot is no longer available.
12
Reggie Burrows Hodges
First Serve
Estimate £220,000 - 280,000 ‡
Sold for £591,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
13
This lot is no longer available.
14
Alberto Burri
Sacco e Rosso
Estimate £3,000,000 - 4,000,000 ‡♠
Sold for £3,047,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
15
Salvatore Scarpitta
Red Freight
Estimate £900,000 - 1,200,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,111,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
16
Yayoi Kusama
Pumpkin
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡
Sold for £1,135,700
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
17
Mark Bradford
Nodding Gunpowder
Estimate £2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
18
Yayoi Kusama
INFINITY-NETS (UAFE)
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡
Sold for £990,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
19
Mickalene Thomas
As If You Read My Mind
Estimate £200,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £504,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
20
Tschabalala Self
Daydream
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £176,400
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
21
Banksy
Sorry The Lifestyle You Ordered Is Currently Out Of Stock
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,800,000 ♠
Sold for £1,837,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
22
Ayako Rokkaku
Untitled
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £296,100
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
23
This lot is no longer available.
24
Rafa Macarrón
Un Día en la Playa
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠
Sold for £138,600
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
25
Banksy
Laugh Now But One Day We'll Be In Charge
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ♠
Sold for £1,172,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
26
Damien Hirst
Biotin Hydrazide
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £700,100
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
27
Austyn Weiner
Working Through Not Knowing A Damn Thing About Any Thing
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
28
Andy Warhol
Dollar Sign
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £603,300
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
29
Marc Chagall
Deux profils verts au cirque
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
Sold for £340,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
30
Damien Hirst
Omnipotence
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ♠
Sold for £796,900
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
31
Harold Ancart
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £239,400
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
32
This lot is no longer available.
33
Georg Baselitz
Dr. Dumouchel (Remix)
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £615,400
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
34
Luc Tuymans
Lantern
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £226,800
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
35
John Baldessari
Female and Male Faces (With Notations) with Black and White Commentary
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
36
Takashi Murakami
Sage
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £478,800
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
37
Cory Arcangel
Photoshop CS: 60 by 60 inches, RGB, square pixels, default gradient "Grey Value Shapes", mousedown y=17960 x=620, mouseup y=20 x=0; photoshop tool "Wand", click= y=500 x=1940, tolerance=50; default gradient "Grey Value Shapes", mousedown y=120 x=5040
Estimate £70,000 - 100,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.