Komar and Melamid - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

  • Exhibited

    New York, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Komar & Melamid, 12 September  – 10 October, 1987; Brunswick, Maine, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Komar & Melamid, January 18 - March 5, 1989

  • Literature

    C. Ratcliff, Komar & Melamid, New York, 1989, p. 172 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Komar and Melamid, were both co-pioneers of the Sots Art movement in the late 1960s, a movement described as a unique version of Soviet Pop and Conceptual art, combining the principles of Dadaism and Socialist Realism. The artists of Sots Art were interested in ideology, mythology and political iconography; here we see Komar and Melamid drawing influences from Socialist Realism stereotypes and myths that heavily criticizes against the official Soviet rhetoric.
    The Anarchistic Synthesis series, painted in 1985 – 1986 were a deepening of Komar and Melamid’s work from 1984. Juxtaposing several panels in order to present different styles of painting from the East and West, the artists defined a new style in the satirical humor inherit to their work. (C. Ratcliff, In Our Art, There is Maybe Too Much, New York, 1988, p.156-157). Their core practice is to actively deconstruct historical and art historical categories by borrowing and combining sources across temporal and geographical boundaries, it is a conscious opposition to the local “unofficial” art practices that were relying heavily on twentieth-century Western movements for inspiration.
    Their work, including the present lot, invites the viewer’s active consideration of these narratives, which in combination with the artists’ biting parodies of their original sources, results in art that is both thought-provoking, entertaining, and at times discomforting.

344

Skyscraper

1986 - 1987
Oil paint on canvas and wooden panel in five parts parts.
273 x 121.9 cm. (107 1/2 x 48 in).

Estimate
£100,000 - 200,000 ‡♠

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London