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"I paint the figure because I know the world through my body and I understand my desires and anxieties through my body, and the desires and anxieties of our culture."
—Nicole EisenmanExecuted in 2009, Nicole Eisenman’s Whatever Guy is a monumental collage painting depicting a colossal, bulbous-eyed figure from the artist's “Guy” portraits. One of the earliest iterations from this body of work, the series is characterized by the pasted cutouts of African masks floating across the surface and marks a contemporaneous shift in Eisenman's oeuvre from painting elaborate group scenes towards investigating portraiture. In 2014, the work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s first contemporary painting survey in 30 years, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, where Eisenman’s “monolithic faux-primitive heads…were among the standouts” of the show.i
The present work installed at The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, December 14, 2014 – April 5, 2015. Image: © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY, Photo: © John Wronn, Artwork: © Nicole Eisenman A New Kind of Guy
"I think the external world filters into my work, and all the themes are in there because I’m taking everything in: politics, history, my personal life, my feelings."
—Nicole EisenmanEisenman is best known for their distinctive style of bridging abstraction and figuration through humorous yet poignant narrative imagery that draws upon art history and contemporary issues of identity, sexuality, and politics. In the late 2000s, the artist became inspired by the depictions of alienation and despair captured by the German Expressionists and embodied this influence in a series of gender-neutral heads entitled “Guy” figures. First explored in 2009, Eisenman’s Guy paintings allude to the experience of isolation evoked in the artist’s well-known beer garden series that reimagine Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s bourgeois leisure scenes—yet, the singularization of these figures in portrait form seem to manifest a contemporary reinvigoration of Edvard Munch’s alienated figure in The Scream. At the same time, they ultimately reflect Eisenman’s thoughtful painterly deliberations. “For me,” Eisenman explained, “these portraits are about color, shape, balance, symmetry. It’s as close to pure formalism as I’m probably ever going to get.”iiEmbedding Art History
[left] Pablo Picasso, Bust of a Man, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Image source: Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [right] Henri Matisse, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1913. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Artwork: © 2021 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York "African masks, floating ominously in indeterminate space, swirl around the head in a subtle allusion to the relation between first- and third-world economies. The masks evoke the appropriation of African artifacts by Modernist painters and refer to Pablo Picasso...[and] recall the likeness of the young painter of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon."
—Aspara diQuinzio
On the collage elements, Eisenman explained, “They’re various ethnographic masks from all sorts of indigenous cultures cut out of books and glued onto the paintings so that they kind of float in front of the heads.”iii Laura Hoptman observes that by “using the formal languages of early twentieth-century abstraction and small, collaged images of the African objects that inspired such styles to depict witless, male faces, Eisenman wryly subverts the contemporary masculine archetype who is preoccupied with technology, money, and status.”iv Fusing the influences of art historical pantheons to communicate Eisenman's own unique mode of subversion, the present work embodies the appropriation of primitive masks by Henri Matisse, seen in Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1913, and Pablo Picasso, while also conjuring Tom Wesselmann and Philip Guston in the small appendage by the figure’s finger. In this loaded composition, Eisenman’s “masterful paint handling channels an incredible range of artists, from Goya to Picasso,” while the pasted masks encapsulate “embedded illusions to Primitivism, Cubism, and perhaps beyond art history.”v
Cut from the Archives
Collector’s Digest
Concurrent Institutional Show:
Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Nicole Eisenman: Giant without a Body, February 5 – August 29, 2021
• This year, Eisenman’s work has been receiving significant global consideration, from the largest solo exhibition on the artist in Europe to date at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, to Eisenman's nomination as one of the artists shortlisted for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth public art commission.
• In March 2021, the artist’s world record was achieved at $1,183,289. Among Eisenman's top 5 records, four were achieved since 2020 and one was set in 2017, when Phillips set the artist’s third highest price to date with Winter Solstice 2012 Dinner Party at $670,000—over six times the work’s low estimate.
i Diane Solway, “Nicole Eisenman Has Both Style and Substance,” W Magazine, April 21, 2016, online.
ii Nicole Eisenman, quoted in Fan Zhong, “Nicole Eisenman: Brushes with Greatness,” W Magazine, December 11, 2014.
iii Nicole Eisenman, “Visiting Artists Lecture Series: Nicole Eisenman,” Pratt Institute, New York, January 25, 2016.
iv Laura Hoptman, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014, p. 95.
v Lily Simonson, “Nicole Eisenman and Wynne Greenwood,” Art 21 Magazine, May 26, 2011, online.Provenance
Leo Koenig Inc., New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2010Exhibited
New York, Leo Koenig Inc., Nicole Eisenman, October 30 – December 23, 2009
Peekskill, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill Project V, September 29, 2012 – July 28, 2013
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, December 14, 2014 – April 5, 2015, pp. 95, 167 (illustrated, p. 99)Literature
Lloyd Wise, “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World," Artforum, March 2015
Property from an Esteemed Private Collection
10
Whatever Guy
signed with the artist's initials and dated "NE09" lower right
oil and collage on board
82 x 65 in. (208.3 x 165.1 cm)
Executed in 2009.
Estimate
$600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $840,700
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Auctions
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 23 June 2021
1
Cinga Samson
Two piece 1
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $378,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
Untitled
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $390,600
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3
Salman Toor
Fort Greene
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $478,800
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4
Avery Singer
Untitled
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $4,144,000
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5
Matthew Wong
The Reader
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $2,329,000
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6
Winston Churchill
The Moat, Breccles
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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7
Matthew Wong
Field in a Dream
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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8
Jean Dubuffet
L'homme à la toque
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,571,000
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9
Emily Mae Smith
Waiting Room
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $756,000
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10
Nicole Eisenman
Whatever Guy
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $840,700
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11
Norman Lewis
Abstract City
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,119,000
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12
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Bananas
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,300,000
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13
David Hockney
A Neat Lawn
Estimate $9,500,000 - 10,500,000
Sold for $11,000,000
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14
Vija Celmins
Untitled (Ocean)
Estimate $5,500,000 - 6,500,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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15
Carmen Herrera
Green and Orange
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,200,000
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16
This lot is no longer available.
17
Brice Marden
Elements III
Estimate $3,200,000 - 3,800,000
Sold for $5,233,000
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18
Amoako Boafo
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $655,200
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19
Titus Kaphar
Untitled III
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $1,058,500
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20
Amy Sherald
It Made Sense...Mostly In Her Mind
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $3,539,000
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21
Wayne Thiebaud
Winding River
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $9,809,000
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22
Mark Rothko
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,700,000
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23
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Batman
Estimate $1,600,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,800,000
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24
Keith Haring
Untitled (For John Sex)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $899,000
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25
Takashi Murakami
Red Demon and Blue Demon with 48 Arhats
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,080,000
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26
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (940-2)
Estimate $4,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for $5,112,000
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27
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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28
Willem de Kooning
East Hampton V
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $3,055,000
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29
Amy Sillman
Flower Giver
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $598,500
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30
Alexander Calder
Fourteen Black Leaves
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,300,000
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31
This lot is no longer available.
32
Julie Curtiss
Three Widows
Estimate $110,000 - 150,000
Sold for $466,200
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33
Norman Rockwell
My Mother (Soldier with French Woman)
Estimate $350,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
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34
Richard Prince
Nurses Dormitory #3
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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35
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Jessica
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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36
Andy Warhol
Mao
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,000,000
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37
Georg Baselitz
Drei Herzen (Three Hearts)
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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38
Carl Andre
36 Copper Square
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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39
Robert Rauschenberg
Untitled (Elemental Sculpture)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $315,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Musical Chair
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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41
David Hammons
It’s Not Necessary
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $5,475,000
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42
Andy Warhol
Shadow (Double)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $877,000
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43
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Quality Control
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $340,200
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44
Robert Colescott
Gift of the Sea
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Dana Schutz
Swiss Family Traveling
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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46
Banksy
Love Is In The Air
Estimate $1,000,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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47
Keith Haring
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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48
Louise Bourgeois
Labyrinthine Tower
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $756,000
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49
Paul McCarthy
White Snow Dwarf (Doc)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $403,200
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50No Reserve
Jeff Koons
Gazing Ball (Demeter)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000 •
Sold for $998,000
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