Jeff Wall - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, May 14, 2015 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Patrick Painter Editions, Hong Kong
    Starkmann Collection, London
    Zwirner & Wirth, New York
    Private Collection, Switzerland

    David Zwirner Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    Toronto, The Ydessa Gallery, Jeff Wall, December 13, 1986 – February 28, 1987 (another example exhibited)
    Cologne, Galerie Johnen & Schöttle, Jeff Wall, June 13 – August 1, 1987 (another example exhibited)
    New York, Christine Burgin Gallery, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Robert Smithson, Jeff Wall, October 8 – November 7, 1987 (another example exhibited)
    Villeurbanne, Le Nouveau Museé, Jeff Wall, March 5 – May 15, 1988, then traveled to Munster, Westfalischer Kunstverein (June 11 – August 7, 1988) (another example exhibited)
    Milan, Padiglione per l’Arte Contemporanea, Presi X Incantamento: L’immagine fotografica nelle nuove tendenze internazionali, June 7 – July 18, 1988 (another example exhibited)
    Sydney, Walsh Bay, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Pier 2/3, From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c. 1940-88, Australian Biennale, May 18 – July 3, 1988, then traveled to Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria (August 4 – September 18, 1988) (another example exhibited)
    La Roche-sur-Yon, Musée Municipal, Collection des oeuvres photographiques, November 15, 1990 – January 15, 1991 (another example exhibited)
    Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Lost Illusions: Recent Landscape Art, November 2 – December 29, 1991 (another example exhibited)
    La Roche-sur-Yon, Musée Municipal and Les Sables-D’Olonne, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Canada: une nouvelle génération, Fonds régional d’art comtemporain des Pays de la Loire, Gétigné-Clisson, April 17 – May 30, 1993, then traveled to Dole, Musée des beaux Arts et Fonds régional d’art contemporain Franche-Comté (June 18 – September 26, 1993) (another example exhibited)La Roche-sur-Yon, Musée Municipal, Collection photographique du musée, May – June, 1996 (another example exhibited)
    Wolfsburg, Kunstmusem Wolfsburg, Jeff Wall: landscapes and other pictures, May 25 – August 25, 1996 (another example exhibited)
    Brussels, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Tableaux de la Vie Moderne/Pictures of Modern Life, June 6 – August 31, 1996, then traveled to Tours Ecole des Beaux-Arts (October 22 – December 6, 1996) (another example exhibited)
    Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Jeff Wall, Landscapes, December 6 , 2002 – February 2, 2003, then traveled to Norwich, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery (February 17 – April 27, 2003) (another example exhibited)
    Vienna, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna, Jeff Wall, Photographs, March 22 – May 25, 2003 (another example exhibited)
    Basel, Schaulager, Jeff Wall – Photographs 1978 – 2004, April 30 – September 25, 2005, then traveled to London, Tate Modern (October 21, 2005 – January 8, 2006) (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    L. Beyer, “Jeff Wall,” Flash Art, Milan, No. 136, October 1987
    E. Barents, Jeff Wall: Transparencies, New York: Rizzoli, 1987, n.p. (illustrated)D. Ainardi, “Jeff Wall: chroniques du temps présent,” Halle Sud: Magazine d’art contemporain, Geneva, 2nd trimester, 1988, p. 11
    C. Francblin, “Jeff Wall, la pose et la vie,” Art Press, Paris, No. 123, March 1988, p. 26F. Migayrou, “Transfiguration des types,”
    Jeff Wall, exh. cat., Villeurbanne, Le Nouveau Museé, 1988, p. 13
    A. Moorhouse, “Jeff Wall,” Art, sight and language: a reading/writing of some contemporary Canadian art, Kapuskasing: Penumbra Press, 1989, pp. 117 G. Dufour, Jeff Wall, exh. cat., Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1990, p. 88 (illustrated)
    A. Dary, “Jeff Wall,” Collection des oeuvres photographiques, exh. cat., Musée Municipal, La Roche-sur-Yon, 1990, pp. 128-129
    J. Zaslove, “Faking nature and reading history: the mindfulness toward reality in the dialogical world of Jeff Wall’s pictures,” Vancouver/Toronto, 1990, pp. 83-98
    D. Oleksijczuk, “Nature in History: A Context for Landscape Art, “Lost Illusions: recent landscape art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1991, pp. 10-11
    C. Bedard, “Pour une approche excentrique de la question territorial dans l’art canadien contemporain: autour de quelques convergences indéterminantes,” Canada: une nouvelle génération, Musée Municipal, La Roche-sur-Yon, 1993, p. 17, p. 61
    D. Van den Boogerd, “Digitale allegorieë. Over de fotobeelden van Jeff Wall," Metropolis M, Amsterdam, no. 5, October 1994, p. 36
    J.F. Chevrier, "Jeu, drame, énigme,” Jeff Wall, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1995, p. 22
    F. Migayrou, Jeff Wall: Simple indication, Brussels: La Lettre volée, 1995, pp. 18-19 (illustrated)
    L. Baltz, “Jeff Wall, peinture de la vie modern,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Boulogne-sur-Sine, No. 305, June 1996, p. 13, p. 15
    T. de Duve, Jeff Wall, London: Phaidon, 1996, p. 143 (illustrated)
    C. van Winkel, “Figur im Grund versinkend = Figure goes to ground,” Wolfsburg, 1996, p. 15
    Jeff Wall interview by James Peto and Lecture by Jeff Wall, transcript (Dundee), Vol. 2, No. 3, 1997, p. 9
    Jeff Wall, exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1997, pp.66-67 (illustrated)
    R. Rochlitz, L’artau banc d’essai, Esthétique et critique, Paris: Gallimard, 1998, pp. 401 - 403
    T. De Duve, Jeff Wall, London: Phaidon, 2002, p. 143 (illustrated)
    C. Walter, “Jeff Wall: ‘Straight Photography along with Cinematography,” Bilder erzählen!: Positionen inszenierter Fotografie: Eileen Cowin, Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Anna Gaskell, Sharon Lockhart, Tracey Moffat, Sam Taylor-Wood, Weimar: VDG, 2002, p. 125
    D. Buchhard, “Jeff Wall Photographs,” Kunstforum International, No. 165, June – July 2003, p. 344
    T. Vischer, H. Naef, eds., Jeff Wall Catalogue Raisonné, 1978-2004, Basel, 2004, no. 8, p. 287, p. 49 (illustrated)J.F. Chevrier, Jeff Wall, Paris: Hazan, 2006, pp. 132-135 (illustrated)
    “At home and Elsewhere: A Dialogue in Brussels between Jeff Wall and Jean-François Chevrier,” Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007, p. 275 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “In a luminescent picture the source of the image is hidden …The site from which the image originates is always elsewhere…”
    Jeff Wall, 1984

    Through his illuminated transparencies, photographer Jeff Wall sets forth an impressive and seductive pictorial landscape. His large format scenes encompass the theatricality and compositional power of a classical history painting set amidst a suburban environment. Wall's carefully crafted photographic tableaux represents a contemporary scene of American life filled with suburban homes and towering smokestacks, a scene which many years from now will be studied as a visual cross section of where industry meets urbanization.

    As a leading figure in the early 1970’s in Vancouver, his early photographs captured a diverse series of settings, from un-embellished realisms to flamboyant fantasies. Wall has chartered ambitious territory in his pursuit to capture this imposing world through a maze of resources: Conceptual Art, Neorealist cinema, philosophy, literature, critical theory, modernist photography, and even the tradition of European painting. Creating fewer than five works each year on average, Wall conceives and presents each picture as an isolated and singular statement. The concept for these self-contained illuminations were gleaned from the prosaic, as the artist explains: “I just kept seeing these things at the bus terminals and it just clicked that those backlit pictures might be a way of doing photography that would somehow connect those elements of scale and the body that were important to Donald Judd and Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock, as well as Velázquez, Goya, Titian or Manet.” (Jeff Wall quoted in: Craig Burnett, Jeff Wall, London 2005, p. 9)

    The panoramic The Bridge, 1980 illustrates a sprawling, anonymous suburban housing development. Pitched roof houses, towering smoke chimneys, perfectly manicured lawns, and demure strolling neighbors comprise the picture-perfect world before us. This vivid and illuminated utopia is accessed by a mammoth bridge, connecting one world to another. The carefully cropped and expansive panoramic scene leads the viewer to believe we stand at the edge of this suburban paradise, peering into this tableau from a darker more wild side. The Bridge is a member of what Wall refers to as his near documentary pictures. “The pictures I made between 1978 and about 1982 showed me some paths I could take…showed me how I could work in real places on themes derived from the most part my own experience, remembered and reconstructed. I guess that was the start of what I came to call my ‘near documentary’ pictures.” (Jeff Wall in “James Rondeau in dialogue with Jeff Wall,” Jeff Wall, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007, p. 152)

    The Bridge, 1980 acts as a documentary study, surveying the formation of modern residences. The transparency, glowing from an evenly lit light box emits a bluish hue, as though the image we are seeing is a paused scene from a film while the mundane composition keeps the image simultaneously rooted in reality, for Jeff Wall “this experience of two places, two worlds, in one moment is a central form of the experience of modernity. It’s an experience of dissociation, of alienation.” (Jeff Wall, 1984)

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION

Ο◆28

The Bridge

1980
cibachrome transparency in fluorescent lightbox
image 23 7/8 x 90 in. (60.6 x 228.6 cm)
box 29 x 97 x 8 in. (73.7 x 246.4 x 20.3 cm)

Signed twice "WALL" on the reverse. Printed in 1985. This work is number 3 from an edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof.

Estimate
$500,000 - 700,000 

Sold for $485,000

Contact Specialist
Amanda Stoffel
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+ 1 212 940 1261

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Evening Sale 14 May 2015 7pm