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"I’m most proud of my choice to move away from figurative work, to integrate text and make my vulnerability visible to my audience."
—Michaela Yearwood-DanCombining text and gestural mark-making in exuberant and expressive passages of vibrant colour Coping Mechanisms is a work of high intensity by young British artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Diaristic and deeply personal, Yearwood-Dan’s paintings record her observations on the key social issues of the day, prompted by her reflections on race, class, gender, and environmentalism. Focusing on tensions between nature and culture, her paintings and sculptures incorporate botanical motifs and forms in the creation of lush, all-over environments that are as contemplative as they are visually compelling.Lyrical Abstraction
In her elegant combinations of painterly gesture and poetic fragment, Yearwood-Dan’s large-scale canvases nod to the all-over compositions of Cy Twombly, although where Twombly’s references looked back to a classical past, Yearwood-Dan’s are rooted firmly in the present moment, incorporating song lyrics, drafted notes of text messages never sent and her ‘conversations’ with Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri. More than reflection on her technological present, Yearwood-Dan also responds to the socio-cultural experience of being a Black British woman. Faced with certain micro-aggressions as a student and in the art world more broadly, the artist was galvanised to start incorporating these experiences into her work, poignantly expressed here with the prominent line of text along the right hand edge a reminder to ‘Be assertive, bold, and fearless’.
Left: Cy Twombly, The Four Seasons: Spring, 1993-94, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image: The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence, Artwork: © Cy Twombly Foundation
Right: Detail of the present workBorrowing certain cultural signifiers of contemporary Black Britishness including carnival culture, acrylic nails, and hooped earrings, Yearwood-Dan avoids trite stereotype or reductive cliché by inflecting this collective visual language with her own, lived experience. Even the incorporation of botanical forms has its roots in the artist’s own life, houseplants especially resonant of her mother’s reputation as ‘the queen of clippings’ and the leafy cemetery near her childhood home in South London, as well as drawing on deeper family connections to the Caribbean, where both of her parents are from. Here figuring in the repeating motif of the teardrop-shaped leaves of the ‘weeping fig’ houseplant adds a personal and highly relatable dimension to the Coping Mechanisms addressed by the title.
Believing firmly in art’s inclusivity, Yearwood-Dan’s compositions create inviting worlds that are spatially organised to make room for her viewers, eloquently realised in the billowing, cumulous passage at the centre of the present work. Recalling devotional ceiling frescos that carry the eye up, through flying putti and celestial visions to the heavens beyond, these portal-like passages retain a sense of the transportive and ecstatic, carrying viewers with them to the centre of the work. Methodically working from the centre of her canvas outwards, the spatial logic of Yearwood-Dan’s paintings are perhaps best contextualised in relation to her recent site-specific installation for Queercircle in London. Invited to contribute to their inaugural exhibition, Yearwood-Dan created a monumental wrap-around mural with purpose built seating set inside its curve, creating an immersive sanctuary for visitors to sit and reflect within. Making direct connections between this installation and her canvases, Yearwood-Dan explained ‘Curating and creating a space with my work, both physically and metaphorically, is something I’ve always been really conscious of.’i
Michela Yearwood-Dan discusses her practice and site-specific installation with Queercircle, London. Filmed by Winsor & Newton.
Finding solace in words in a time of emotional turbulence, Yearwood-Dan first began incorporating snatches of text and phrases alongside her thick impasto layers of paint in 2018 in the wake of a breakup. Demanding a slower kind of looking, words weave in and out of dynamic passages of paint. As the artist explains: ‘I want people to spend time with my work, so some pieces of text are visible and others are not. I’ve intentionally made it so you can’t read everything.’ii
Collector’s Digest
• Interested in the intersections of society and the self, Yearwood-Dan’s work moves between the personal and the political, combining reflections on class, race, and gender politics with more personal feelings related to loss and love.
• Yearwood-Dan has been celebrated with several solo exhibitions between New York and London. This year, Tiwani Contemporary celebrated the artist with a solo exhibition The Sweetest Taboo following their 2019 show, After Euphoria. In 2021 she was the subject of a solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery and in 2019 at The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation.
• Most recently, Yearwood-Dan created a site-specific installation for Queercirle, a dedicated safe space for LGBTQ+ communities to gather. Earlier this year Yearwood-Dan was featured in the third annual Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti.
i Michaela Yearwood-Dan, quoted in Davy Pittoors, ‘Michaela Yearwood-Dan ‘holds the community’ at Queercircle, London’s new LGBTQ+ art hub’. Wallpaper, 14 Jun 2022, online.
ii Emily Tobin, ‘Michaela Yearwood-Dan In her Studio’, House and Garden, 18 November 2020, online
Provenance
Galerie Maria Bernheim, London
Private Collection, Europe
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
London and Zurich, Galerie Maria Bernheim, Images: Ghost Painterly Abstraction, 2 September – 23 October 2021
2
Coping Mechanisms
signed, titled and dated ‘“Coping Mechanisms” 2021 Michaela Yearwood-Dan’ on the reverse
oil and acrylic on canvas
170 x 120 cm (66 7/8 x 47 1/4 in.)
Painted in 2021.
Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 ♠
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
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2
Michaela Yearwood-Dan
Coping Mechanisms
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ♠
Sold for £239,400
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3
Rebecca Ness
Pencil Flipper
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡
Sold for £119,700
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4
Robert Nava
Before Minotaur
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £639,600
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5
Emily Mae Smith
Raft on Siren Sea
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
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6
Caroline Walker
Night Scenes
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £516,600
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7
Issy Wood
The butter
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡♠
Sold for £277,200
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8
Anna Weyant
Cynthia
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £302,400
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9
Elizabeth Peyton
Evan at the Reading Festival 1993
Estimate £480,000 - 650,000 ‡
Sold for £567,000
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10
Doron Langberg
Nir and Zach
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡
Sold for £378,000
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11
This lot is no longer available.
12
Reggie Burrows Hodges
First Serve
Estimate £220,000 - 280,000 ‡
Sold for £591,200
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13
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14
Alberto Burri
Sacco e Rosso
Estimate £3,000,000 - 4,000,000 ‡♠
Sold for £3,047,500
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15
Salvatore Scarpitta
Red Freight
Estimate £900,000 - 1,200,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,111,500
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16
Yayoi Kusama
Pumpkin
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡
Sold for £1,135,700
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17
Mark Bradford
Nodding Gunpowder
Estimate £2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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18
Yayoi Kusama
INFINITY-NETS (UAFE)
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡
Sold for £990,500
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19
Mickalene Thomas
As If You Read My Mind
Estimate £200,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £504,000
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20
Tschabalala Self
Daydream
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £176,400
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21
Banksy
Sorry The Lifestyle You Ordered Is Currently Out Of Stock
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,800,000 ♠
Sold for £1,837,500
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22
Ayako Rokkaku
Untitled
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £296,100
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23
This lot is no longer available.
24
Rafa Macarrón
Un Día en la Playa
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠
Sold for £138,600
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25
Banksy
Laugh Now But One Day We'll Be In Charge
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ♠
Sold for £1,172,000
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26
Damien Hirst
Biotin Hydrazide
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £700,100
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27
Austyn Weiner
Working Through Not Knowing A Damn Thing About Any Thing
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
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28
Andy Warhol
Dollar Sign
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £603,300
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29
Marc Chagall
Deux profils verts au cirque
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
Sold for £340,200
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30
Damien Hirst
Omnipotence
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ♠
Sold for £796,900
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31
Harold Ancart
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £239,400
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32
This lot is no longer available.
33
Georg Baselitz
Dr. Dumouchel (Remix)
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £615,400
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34
Luc Tuymans
Lantern
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £226,800
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35
John Baldessari
Female and Male Faces (With Notations) with Black and White Commentary
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
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36
Takashi Murakami
Sage
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £478,800
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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
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