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Viewing
\n17 June – 23 June
\nMonday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm
\nSunday, 12-6pm

\n\n

To receive updates regarding our sales, please set up an account here.

\n\n

International Global Highlights Tour

\n\n

London: 7-11 April (Virtual Viewing)
\n12-15 April (Public Viewing)

\n\n

Manhattan: 3 - 12 May
\n
\nSouthampton: 15 - 31 May
\n
\nBeijing: 3 - 4 May

\n\n

Shanghai: 8 - 9 May

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Shenzhen: 22-23 May
\n

\n\n

Hong Kong: 4 - 8 June

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Our live auctions continue to operate virtually. All bidding is conducted by telephone, online, or via our iOS or Google Play app.

\n","auctionDetailsSmall","New York Auction 23 June 2021","extraInfo","

Amanda Lo Iacono
\nHead of Auctions
\nNew York
\n+1 212 940 1278

\n\n

aloiacono@phillips.com

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Jean Dubuffet, L'homme à la toque, 1956. Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000.

\n\n

Written by Hugues Joffre

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A firm believer that art does not belong to the elite, Jean Dubuffet spent forty years relentlessly attempting to destroy conformist culture in painting. His interest in Art Brut reinforced his belief that, to be an artist, academic training was unnecessary. When Dubuffet began his Paris Circus paintings in 1961, he stated ‘‘[I have] decided to start all over again from the beginning.’’ This declaration aptly sums up his ever-evolving practice, which is simultaneously rudimentary, extraordinary, and extremely provocative. With more than thirty series comprising his œuvre, each is a unique exploration of new techniques aimed at affecting the mind, not the eye, through an alchemical process.

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The Alchemy

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For his Messages, 1944, he explored the existential fragility of materials. Rather than using traditional oil paint and canvas, he turned to real newspapers which physically deteriorate and become obsolete almost immediately. Having soaked the newspapers in water, Dubuffet further defaced them by scrawling fragmented messages across the pages.

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In his Corps de dames, 1950, Dubuffet started with a paste of zinc oxide and varnish to ‘‘prime’’ the canvases. Before the paste could dry, traditional oil paint was applied in thin layers causing the oil to immediately be repelled, thus creating an uncontrollable and entirely spontaneous effect of human flesh.

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In his La vie précaire series, 1954, haunting images of ghosts emerge across the canvases. To achieve such a result, Dubuffet swiftly applied thin layers of quick-drying enamel paints mixed with traditional oil paints. Since the two mediums have differing drying times, his alchemy enabled the materials to create, on their own, fantastical marbled effects for his bewildering figures.

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For his Texturologies, 1957-1959, Dubuffet brilliantly borrowed the technique of Tyrolean stone masons to celebrate the earth. One could easily imagine him painting each speck of dust, grain of sand, or clump of earth, but no, instead, Dubuffet used a paint-soaked branch. By shaking it over the canvas, Dubuffet was able to scatter paint droplets to convey the appearance of soil, while simultaneously creating a texture evocative of the galaxy.

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\n
Giving life to living creatures and landscapes by arranging cut-out bits of painted canvases must have felt like the god-like act of giving life from raw matter.
\n

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Similarly, for his Tableaux d’assemblages series, 1955-1957, to which the present work belongs, Dubuffet embarked on another spontaneous material experimentation. With impulsive gestures he painted unstretched canvases with random shapes, marks, and textures using colours found in nature. Dubuffet then randomly cut organic shapes from the abstract canvases and arranged them to compose figures, plants, animals, and elements of landscapes. Derived from the Assemblages d’empreintes series and the butterfly-wings collages, Dubuffet duly remarked later that, “this new technique of assemblage gave [him], as soon as [he] started on it, the impression of lending itself perfectly to treating the subjects that had been so much in [his] mind… the roadbed, the grasses and little plants pushing through along the sides, the foot of a wall…” Giving life to living creatures and landscapes by arranging cut-out bits of painted canvases must have felt like the god-like act of giving life from raw matter.

\n\n

During his 1951 lecture at The Arts Club of Chicago, Dubuffet famously declared, “I have a great interest in madness, and I am convinced art has much to do with madness.’’ L'homme à la toque translates literally as ‘‘The man with a cap,’’ but bearing in mind Dubuffet’s affinity for words and their duality, the title could easily be interpreted as a double entendre, referring to the French slang l'homme toqué (the crazy man). With this reading, given that Dubuffet executed portraits of his brother Georges Dubuffet au jardin (December 1955) and his wife, Madame au jardin (September 1956), one could even postulate that ‘‘the crazy man’’ in this picture is Dubuffet himself.

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In his later series L’hourloupe, 1962-1966 and Coucou Bazar, 1971-1973, Dubuffet continued his investigations into disrupting conformist culture by transforming his sculptures into living paintings. Revolutionizing a painting’s potential, Dubuffet embarked on several monumental projects. For example, Coucou Bazar used performers to animate sculptures while Closerie Falbala, 1971-1976 and his Cabinet logologique, 1967-1969 became three-dimensional paintings that one can walk through and inhabit when visiting the Fondation Dubuffet in Périgny.

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Keith Haring, Untitled (For John Sex), 1982. Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000.

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The Art

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Unlike Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and the other giants who emerged from the twentieth century, the œuvre of Jean Dubuffet is more relevant today than ever. He is an essential ancestor to the graffiti and street artists of the 1980s as well as an energizing force propelling younger generations of artists forward, with his fearless revolt against what it means to be a painter

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Just as Dubuffet aspired to bring paintings to life with the Coucou Bazar series, Keith Haring sought to create movement with his celebrated dancing figures and body paintings. During the late 1970s, Keith Haring delved into art historical research in order to inform his work, ‘‘I felt this strong need to get to know what other artists had done,’’ he explained, ‘‘I spent a lot of time at the library and came across Dubuffet. I was startled at how similar Dubuffet’s images were to mine, because I was making these little abstract shapes that were interconnected.’’ Haring gained rapid fame when his stylised drawings of figures and dogs were found in the New York subways. With quick, confident lines Haring infuses his iconography with social and political themes—Apartheid, AIDS, environmentalism, capitalism, inequality— while also believing that the performance of painting is as important as the resultant painting. Believing that any surface could be used for art, Haring made his work accessible to the masses through his Pop Shop while simultaneously using his imagery and public works to draw attention to important socio-political causes.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Batman, 1983. Estimate $1,600,000 - 2,000,000.

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And of course, let’s not forget Jean-Michel Basquiat, who has often been described as Jean Dubuffet’s child. Basquiat began engaging with Dubuffet’s Art Brut concept during the 1970s after seeing works from Dubuffet’s Théâtres de mémoire series at the Pace Gallery in New York. Clearly, Dubuffet’s legacy flows through Basquiat’s appropriation of words, fascination with the streets of New York and figuration, and his non-traditional approaches to art making. Just as Dubuffet had decades earlier, Basquiat began his own experimentations with collage by creating his own elements, cutting them up, pasting them onto canvas, and partly covering them with acrylic, spray paints and oil stick.

\n\n

Was Dubuffet:
\nan Alchemist?
\nan Artist?
\nan Artist and an Alchemist?

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Personally, I would affirm that Dubuffet was a great artist and a crafted alchemist!

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art >

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\n\n

Global Gallery Tour 20th Century & Contemporary Art

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Join us on a virtual global gallery tour of Phillips’ upcoming 20th Century and Contemporary Art auction being held in our brand new, state-of-the-art gallery at 432 Park Avenue in the heart of New York City. This sale features masterpieces by David Hockney, Wayne Thiebaud, Vija Celmins, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko and many more.

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Recommended Reading

\n\n

The Prompt: A Neat Lawn by David Hockney >

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Whose Histories Should Be Commemorated? >

\n\n

\n","publishDate","2021-06-09T20:51:30.000000Z","authorCredit","Sarah Bochicchio","coverPosX",50,"coverPosY",0,"articleUrl","https://www.phillips.com/article/77457285/jean-dubuffet-an-artist-and-an-alchemist","displayOrder",9,"auctionEditorialID",1296,"editorialID",3570,"flocklerID",77457285,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/felix-salmon-lost-masterpieces-norman-rockwell-country-2-e942b1de-fd09-46a7-99e4-91051c30a218_s600x0.jpg","Three paintings in our upcoming New York auctions show off Rockwell's incomparable storytelling abilities—and bring to light a cross-generational dialogue between three great American narrators. ","Norman Rockwell: Titan of American Storytelling","

Norman Rockwell. Photograph by Underwood Archives / Getty

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The heartening narrative behind My Mother (Soldier with French Woman) upholds Norman Rockwell’s reputation as the quintessential storyteller of 20th century American life. The painting features a rosy-cheeked infantryman proudly presenting an image of his mother to a French woman, as she kindly looks on–knitting needles in hand. Thematically, the work exemplifies the wholesome simplicity of Rockwell’s imagined world, while the painter’s unyielding attention to detail allows the scene to effortlessly unfold before our eyes.

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Norman Rockwell, My Mother (Soldier with French Woman), 1918. Estimate $300,000 - 500,000. 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, New York.

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Featured on the December 19, 1918 issue of Life magazine, Norman Rockwell’s My Mother (Soldier with French Woman) captures the zeitgeist of a victorious nation still in the emotional throes of war. Undertaken when Rockwell’s prominence was on the rise with his popular Post covers from 1916, the present work demonstrates the more expressive and painterly execution that characterizes his works through the 1930s, before he incorporated photography into his technical process. Published two weeks after President Woodrow Wilson departed for the Paris Peace Conference, My Mother (Soldier with French Woman) captures the tensions still felt by a nation whose boys were not yet home. Of the period, Rockwell remarked “everyone in the country is thinking along the same lines, the war penetrates into everyone's life…in 1917 I couldn't read a newspaper without finding an idea for a cover.”

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Vacation! (Country Gentleman) in the August 25, 1917 issue of Country Gentleman. My Mother (Soldier with French Woman) on the cover of Life, December 19, 1918.

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Executed when Norman Rockwell was just 25 years old, Vacation! (Country Gentleman) is emblematic of the light-hearted charm of the artist’s early work. While the painter graced the covers of publications like Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post throughout his career, Rockwell only produced paintings for Country Gentleman between 1917 to 1922. These playful covers were centered around the adventures of Chuck Peterskin, the sprightly Doolittle brothers and their bookish, metropolitan cousin, Reginald Claude Fitzhugh–all of whom were first introduced in the August 25, 1917 issue of the magazine. In Vacation!, Tubby Doolittle buoyantly leads the way, Rusty Doolittle tipping his hat with an impish grin on his face, while cousin Reginald moodily trails behind. Though Rockwell explored weightier themes in his late career—particularly during the 1960s—this piece is representative of his early works depicting children: adventurous, hopeful, and up to no good. The nuance and detail with which Rockwell renders the three boys–from Reginald’s immaculate hat to the small but conspicuous hole in Tubby’s pocket—Rockwell captures the varied glory of America’s youth in Vacation!.

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Norman Rockwell, Vacation! (Country Gentleman), 1919. Estimate $250,000 - 450,000. 20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session, New York.

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Both images, as well as The Young Graduate (Big Day) and The Young Graduate, come to auction from the formidable collection of storied television producers Thomas Miller and Robert Boyett, who found an affinity with Rockwell’s visual narrative. The legendary couple behind Miller-Boyett Productions developed some of the most influential and iconic sitcoms in television history—from Happy Days to Laverne & Shirley to Full House.

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"In each episode of our television shows, we made sure to have characters make some form of human connection. Rockwell did the very same." —Robert Boyett
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The Peephole, which sold for $2,087,000 in Phillips' December 2020 New York Evening Sale, likewise came from the couple's collection—and like this season's offerings, first appeared in periodical form. It graced the cover of the August 30, 1958 issue of The Saturday Evening Post and was gifted from the artist to the publication's editor Peter Elliott Schruth. The painting’s subject of a pitcher winding up is shown from the unconventional vantage point of a knothole in a wooden fence, positioning the viewer as an eager child covertly watching a baseball game.The Rockwell pictures that Mr. Boyett and Mr. Miller, who died in 2020, collected offer a compelling dialogue between three great American storytellers.

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Norman Rockwell, The Young Graduate (Big Day) and The Young Graduate: Two works, 1959. Estimate $50,000 - 70,000. 20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session, New York.

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Discover More from 20th Century and Contemporary Art >

\n\n

\n\n

Recommended Reading

\n\n

The Statesman, the Magnate, and the Original 'Superyacht' >

\n\n

Jean Dubuffet: An Artist and an Alchemist >

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\n","2020-12-02T19:55:40.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/67337548/norman-rockwell-twentieth-century-contemporary-art-new-york-auction",8,1306,3333,67337548,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/wayne-thiebaud-winding-river-2749c5da-ec25-4c96-a7cd-be2cc74-7388662d-55e5-49e6-9bd2-dabf2d1141a3_s600x0.jpg","Inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's 'Winding River', writer Hannah Lott-Schwartz rounds up five art-centric regions defined by their waterways.","The Art Lover's Guide to River Towns","

Wayne Thiebaud, Winding River, 2002. Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Written by Hannah Lott-Schwartz

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Known for his thickly painted pie and cake still-lifes of the 1960s, Wayne Thiebaud created rich depictions of what he loved most, including the landscape of the Sacramento River Delta that continues to inspire him to this day. The intersecting rivers that feed the area’s fertile soil fascinated Thiebaud, and in the mid-1990s, the artist embarked on a series that captured his captivation, producing Winding River in 2002. Here we explore five destinations around the world whose identities were formed by the undulating waterways that cradle them.

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Florence, Italy

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The Ponte alla Carraia spanning the River Arno in Florence, Italy.

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The Renaissance flowed along the Arno’s banks, transforming Florence from a medieval city into a thriving metropolis from which some of the world’s most coveted artists and their masterpieces were born. So much of that gilded, glitzy, glorious history remains on display, from the pink-, green-, and white-hued marble walls of Duomo Cathedral (touched by countless masters during its centuries-long construction) to Michelangelo’s famed 13-foot-high David, barely a five-minute walk away. Ten minutes toward the water in the other direction, the riverfront Uffizi Gallery—where recent renovations uncovered two Renaissance-era frescoes, which will join the likes of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in the gallery—sits flanked by two bridges: Ponte Vecchio, characterized by the gold market that runs its length, and Ponte alle Grazie, where panoramic city views are best had with a drippy gelato in hand. Elevating contemporary artists in exhibitions around the world, Studio Abba has its flagship gallery in the heart of the city's historic center, bringing a modern gaze to its 16th century palazzo residency.

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Chicago, Illinois

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Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, Illinois.

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The Windy City grew to prominence as the third largest in the US (behind New York City and Los Angeles) thanks to the Chicago River snaking through its puzzle of iconic architecture, carving natural transportation routes that assured the city’s strategic importance. A hub of creativity and design, the downtown area—locally known as the Loop—serves as a highlight reel of Chicago’s artscape. In Millennium Park alone, Anish Kapoor’s grand sculpture Cloud Gate keeps good company in the Frank Gehry–designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a Deconstructivist display with free cultural programming, and the works in residence at the Art Institute of the Chicago (think Grant Wood’s hay-fork wielding couple in American Gothic, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks diner scene, and Georges Seurat’s pointillism masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon). For a taste of Chicago’s living art scene, the city’s South Side neighborhood Pilsen touts dozens of artist-run galleries at 18th and Halsted, where gallery walks take place on second Fridays.

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Loire Valley, Central France

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Châteaux de Chambord situated along the Loire River in central France.

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World class wine, magnificent châteaux and castles, and idyllic vistas characterize France’s Loire Valley, so named for the river that runs through this 310-square-mile region, making it so verdant. The lavish sunflower-covered countryside is only an hour from Paris by train and has been a holiday favorite for French aristocracy and royalty for centuries. At the request of King Francis I, who had multiple estates in the valley, Leonardo da Vinci spent his final years innovating on the Loire’s riverbanks—remnants of which are on display at his residence at Château d'Amboise—and is suspected to have contributed to the famed Châteaux de Chambord, a waterfront castle that rivals the majesty of Versailles. Fondation du Doute, a contemporary gallery celebrating the weird and wonderful with permanent exhibits featuring Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux, Yoko Ono, and others in Blois, gleefully juxtaposes its ego-rich backdrop of castle-laden hills.

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Kyoto, Japan

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The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK).

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From the Kamo River to manicured palace ponds and spring-fed basins at shrine entrances, the abundance of water has long-informed Kyoto’s cultural fabric, woven of Buddhist temples and UNESCO World Heritage sites and steeped in tradition. The former capital of Japan is still considered its cultural epicenter, where visitors can escape the dazzle of Tokyo’s high-rise neighborhoods and opt instead for a stay populated by traditional ryokans (an inn with matted floors and sliding doors), onsen culture (communal bathing rituals in hot mineral baths), and fresh fare prepared the same as it has been for centuries. Among perfected ancient traditions, the city's contemporary creators have carved space for themselves at Gallery Morning Kyoto (mixed-media representations from emerging artists) and En Arts (a visual arts gallery dedicated to celebrating local, regional, and international works), among others.

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Cambridge, England

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Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

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Arts and academia meet along the River Cam in Cambridge, where the former medieval transportation thoroughfare serves as an al fresco hallway connecting a web of Cambridge University’s colleges, their immaculate greens extending to the banks of the river. Long, low boats known as “punts” dot the waterway, casting a romantic shadow on the otherwise Old World visions of academia that color the British city, down to some of its greatest attractions, including the art and antiquities showcase at university-owned Fitzwilliam Museum and the school’s revered Botanic Garden. The university, a massively powerful institution in the city, has a dedicated relationship to the arts both past and present, the latter of which can be seen at Kettle's Yard, a display of 20th century works that originally served as a space for students to connect with art free from the stiffness of museums.

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Hannah Lott-Schwartz is a San Diego–based lifestyle and travel journalist telling stories for National Geographic Traveler, Fortune, TIME, and others. Catch her if you can at @itsaseahorse.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art >

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The Prompt: A Neat Lawn by David Hockney >

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Whose Histories Should Be Commemorated? >

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\n","2021-06-14T15:54:03.000000Z","Phillip Crook","https://www.phillips.com/article/77798437/river-towns-travel-guide",7,1301,3574,77798437,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/david-hockney-a-neat-lawn-phillips-04080270-1541-4e21-852d-82fb77d70792_s600x0.jpg","For this installment of our creative writing platform, \"The Prompt,\" Beth Lisick imagines an awkward-but-wholesome dinner party within the apartments overlooking David Hockney's neat lawn. ","The Prompt: David Hockney ","

David Hockney, A Neat Lawn, 1967. Sold for $11,000,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale.

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In 1967, David Hockney depicted a residential building on South Bedford Street, in sunny Los Angeles. The painting reflects the artist's enthusiastic, stylized documentation of West Coast modernism, as well as his loving skewering of its potential superficiality. In this installment of our creative writing platform, "The Prompt," Beth Lisick imagines a dinner party within the neat apartments at the end of the neat lawn, capturing all the awkwardness—and joy—of being neighborly.

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Team Building

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Written by Beth Lisick

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\nTim opened the oven and lifted the lid off the brick-red casserole dish, peered inside. It was something with beans and all the old parmesan rinds that had been making the fridge smell like a foot. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Coke Shorts is waiting.”

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Coke Shorts is what we called our downstairs neighbor because one time I found a pair of shorts behind the washer in the laundry room and the front pocket was full of white powder that I’m absolutely positive was not at all cocaine. Tim gave me shit for checking the pockets before I threw them in the Lost and Found and wanted to know if I’d found money or a Rolex, would I have returned it? And how did I even know whose shorts they were? I didn’t answer the first question, let him wonder, but my process of elimination went like this:

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You think Koren downstairs wears giant white fleece shorts?
Geoffrey the tiny fashion plate in #4
His girlfriend Gabriella the stony goth?

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Ergo, they were obviously Coke Shorts’ shorts.

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The casserole was for the progressive dinner Tim planned. I registered my dissent. Why does everything have to be this way now? Political, I meant. He let his eyes gently drift to an imaginary spot on the wall before he spoke, which is how he won one Employee of the Month plaque after another at the copy shop. The patience.

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“It’s cocktails in one apartment, appetizers in another, dinner in the next, and dessert in the last one. You progress.”

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Start in your own backyard. Only we didn’t have a backyard, just a parking lot, and the front was full of fresh sod so we weren’t allowed to step on it.
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These ‘70s California things really made him erect. Hot tubs, misshapen earthenware bowls. They allowed him to do what he called “analog time travel.” He also was hoping a dinner like this would increase morale in the building. God knows we’d spent enough time wigged out, sanitizing the mail etc., so this was a chance to start fresh with each other. That’s what an inspirational podcast he listens to said to do. Start in your own backyard. Only we didn’t have a backyard, just a parking lot, and the front was full of fresh sod so we weren’t allowed to step on it.

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We turned the oven way down and walked into the party about ten minutes late, if indeed the party had started at six. I say that because when we pushed the door open with a hello hello it felt like everyone had been there for hours and were drunk already and we were some kind of party crashers. (Later, Tim said he hadn’t noticed any of that.) I filled up a glass with weird orangey punch and while I was making small talk with Geoffrey (“cool boots”), Coke Shorts’ phone honked. He waved it around the room and said, “I’m getting a FaceTime from my mom. Does anyone mind? She’s lonely.”

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We all sort of shrugged and next thing you know she was there with us too. A tiny brown head and big glasses beaming in from her condo.

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“We do this sometimes,” he said. “Just let her hang out.”

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Soon enough the mom was getting passed around the room and when it got to Tim he goes guten tag wie geht’s even though she didn’t seem German. I asked her her name and all she said was, “I saw lilacs by the propane tank today.”

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For most of the night she rode along in a pocket. She actually made the whole night more relaxed because when things got awkward, someone would ask Coke Shorts how his mom was and he’d whip her out for a while and show her what we were doing. It was funny. Like a running joke. In our apartment she took a gander at the casserole dish and said she used to have the same one in yellow which she pronounced yella.

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Tim was drunk but when we went to bed, I told him I thought he did a good thing, coming up with that dinner idea. He asked me if I knew Coke Shorts’ real name was Ches short for Chester and of course I did. I’d always known.

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The next morning I’m making coffee and I hear this whistle, like a P.E. teacher saying it’s time to line up for calisthenics. It keeps blowing and blowing. I look out the window, nothing. I check in on Tim, but he’s still asleep. I walk into the living room and that’s when I see her in the sofa crack. Ches’s mom. Blowing a silver whistle to get my attention. She’d been there all night! I pick her up and tell her I can’t believe she’s still on the line and you know what she says? No one mentioned it all night. There used to be a time when everyone noticed the spring.

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Beth Lisick is a writer and actor from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently living in the Hudson Valley. She is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody Into the Pool, and co-founder of the Porchlight Storytelling Series. Beth is also the esteemed host of the Phillips podcast, Verso.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York >

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David Hockney 'A Neat Lawn'

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David Hockney’s 'A Neat Lawn' is a seminal example of the artist’s California Dreaming paintings belonging to a series of monumental canvases painted in 1967. This masterpiece demonstrates one of Hockney’s first sustained experimentations on the dynamics of light and water.

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The Prompt: A Short Fiction Series for Authors Inspired by Artists >

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The Prompt: Julian Opie >

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\n","2021-06-08T18:16:35.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/77378922/the-prompt-team-building-by-beth-lisick-twentieth-century-contemporary-art-new-york-david-hockney",6,1295,3564,77378922,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/gettyimages-80690149-bd7b0797-e85e-4f0d-99c7-7d5e9b7b3927_s600x0.jpg","Inside Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis' famed “superyacht” the Christina—and the story of its most esteemed artwork, a newly rediscovered painting by Sir Winston Churchill.","The Statesman, the Magnate, and the Original 'Superyacht'","

Aristotle Onassis' yacht, the Christina. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

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Written by Andrew Paine Bradbury

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With news breaking this spring that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is commissioning a $500 million, 417-ft superyacht—and that it won’t even be the largest in the world—it’s safe to say we’ve passed the golden age of yachting and have firmly entered the Baroque period. And though Bezos’s behemoth will surely have every bell and whistle a modern billionaire could ask for, it’s doubtful it will ever attain the style, the star-wattage or the place in the popular imagination held by the world’s first superyacht, Aristotle Onassis’ Christina. As a boat, the 325-ft Christina was never lacking in size. But as a symbol of a more glamorous and halcyon era, it looms much larger. This month, one of the Christina’s greatest treasures—an original oil painting by Sir Winston Churchill—will hit the auction block at Phillips.

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The Moat, Breccles, which Churchill gifted to the Greek shipping magnate around the summer of 1961, was thought to have been lost. Recently discovered by the Onassis family, the impressionistic landscape will be auctioned in New York on June 23 as part of Phillips’ 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. “It’s an exceptional painting,” says Jean-Paul Engelen, Phillips’ Deputy Chairman and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, “that comes with an exceptional story, and celebrates an exceptional friendship. We are all inspired by world history and art history, but it’s only on rare occasions that these two things come together so spectacularly in one painting.” Previously, the only way to have seen the painting was to have been one of the lucky guests aboard Onassis’ famed Christina.

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The most beautiful structure I have seen afloat. —Sir Winston Churchill, in a letter to his wife Clementine, February, 1956
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Originally the HMCS Stormont, a Canadian, WWII-era anti-submarine frigate that aided the Allies during the Normandy landing, the vessel was purchased by Onassis for the scrap value of $34,000. After a $4 million renovation, it was rechristened the Christina, in honor of Onassis’ daughter. Aboard the yacht, Onassis entertained countless luminaries and dignitaries from the worlds of politics, business, and the arts, including Franklin Roosevelt, John and Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Ava Gardner, J. Paul Getty, Eva Perón, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and many more. “I don’t think there is a man or woman on earth who would not be seduced by the pure narcissism shamelessly flaunted on this boat,” Burton said, obviously one of the seduced. Ironically, one might say that the seafaring Christina symbolized “the jet set” far more than any actual plane.

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It was a heart-stoppingly glamorous affair, boasting a Minotaur-themed mosaic swimming pool that could be drained and turned into a raised dance floor at the touch of a button, a dazzling blue lapis lazuli wood-burning fireplace in one of the indoor lounges, a children’s dining room hand-painted by Madeline illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans, frescoes by Marcel Vertes, an office with a Louis XV desk, marble bathtubs, an elevator, 42 telephone lines, and a landing pad for Onassis’ Piaggio seaplane.

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A spiral staircase connected the various decks that were flush with indoor and outdoor areas to relax and entertain. There were ten impeccably appointed staterooms (not counting Onassis’ lavish suite), a library, a salon, a plush den and the intimate Ari’s Bar, which at that time was probably the most exclusive boîte in the world. The staff was roughly the size of an army battalion and equally well-trained. Someone had to empty all those gold and silver ashtrays.

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Aristotle Onassis at the circular counter of "Ari's Bar" aboard his yacht, the Christina. Montecarlo (Principality of Monaco), June 1961. (Photo by Carlo Bavagnoli/Mondadori via Getty Images)

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Jamie Niven, a senior advisor to the CEO of Phillips and the son of the Academy Award-winning British actor David Niven, bore witness to the luxury of the Christina when he was a teenager living in the south of France. “Until he and [Prince] Ranier had a falling out, the Christina was always in the Monaco harbor,” Niven says. “It was by far the biggest boat.” As a friend of Onassis’ son Alexander, Niven was invited aboard on multiple occasions and saw firsthand the transformation of the pool into a dancefloor. “These sailors would rush out with rags and mop the surface of the pool,” he says, “and so you’re dancing on the surface of the pool. It was all looking great: the furniture, the waiters running around. It was very glam, and very impressive to an 18-year-old, I can tell you that.”

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The yacht was a total reflection of Onassis’s personality: the strive for perfection, the unabashed pleasure-seeking, and his notorious ribald streak. Indeed, the most infamous feature of the Christina were the barstools in Ari’s Bar that were upholstered with the foreskins of minke whales. And though it was called “the height of opulence” by no less than the former King Farouk of Egypt, there was one detail of the Christina that Onassis was most proud to show off to his guests—an oil painting by Sir Winston Churchill, gifted by the man himself as a token of appreciation for time spent cruising the Medditerranean and Carribean seas.

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As always, I greatly enjoyed your company and your hospitality. —Sir Winston Churchill, in a letter to Aristotle Onassis, May, 1962
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Churchill and Onassis struck up a fast friendship, having met at the famed La Pausa villa in the south of France. (Originally designed and built by Coco Chanel, La Pausa was bought by Churchill’s publisher, the Hungarian emigré Emery Reves). The two titans shared a love for the finer things in life and the mechanizations of global power; it was on these two points their mutually beneficial relationship was founded. Onassis had the honor of hosting the elder statesman of European liberal democracy and Churchill—who could never be called destitute, but whose appetite for the good life always tested the limits of his own finances—got to enjoy the lifestyle of the .0001%.

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Winston Churchill and Aristotle Onassis arriving on the Christina. (Getty Images)

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“There were all these photographs of Churchill sitting on the stern, with a cigar,” Niven says. “They were published all over the world. Onassis must’ve loved the fact that he had Churchill on his boat. It was a statement. It’s no different than today. People try to invite famous people on their yacht. [Onassis’ rival and fellow Greek shipping tycoon Stavros] Niarchos didn’t have Churchill on his boat.”

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But despite this seemingly symbiotic nature, the two men, by all accounts, genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, and their correspondence reveals great warmth and affection between them.

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Onassis went above and beyond to ensure that Churchill—who was in his 80s during the eight cruises he took aboard the Christina from 1958 to 1963—was comfortable during their voyages. He would give up his own suite for Churchill to stay in while he was aboard, a luxury that was afforded to no other guest. And of course there was the limitless supply of champagne, caviar, martinis, brandy, and cigars for Churchill to enjoy. And by all accounts, he enjoyed them with his typical gusto.

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Churchill, in turn, was grateful for the hospitality. A letter from Churchill to Onassis from December, 1960 reads: “My dear Ari, I am most grateful to you for sending the beautiful cigar case and for the trouble you have taken with the inscription. I admire it greatly, and it reminds me of that wonderful and sunny cruise to the West Indies. You have done so much to make my travels abroad happy and enjoyable and I am indeed indebted to you. I shall think of you whenever I take a cigar from the case. Yours, WSC”.

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He showed Onassis his gratitude with a gift of his own—an original artwork. An avid painter for the last 50 years of his life, Churchill produced some 500 canvases in his lifetime and began gifting them after 1950 as a sign of particularly close friendship and admiration to the likes of Queen Elizabeth II, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and others. Prior to that Churchill had said of works that “they are too bad to sell and too dear to me to give.” Despite the self-effacing estimate, they really were dear to Churchill, and to be the recipient of one was the sign that you meant a great deal to him. Besides, what else could one gift a man like Onassis, who had, as the saying goes, everything.

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Just to paint is great fun. —Sir Winston Churchill, “Painting as a Pastime”
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The painting in question is an evocative landscape that depicts a wooded area bisected by the moat that borders the eastern edge of the south lawn at Breccles Hall, a 16th-century Elizabethan manor house located in Norfolk, England and the 20th-century home of Venetia Montagu, the cousin of Churchill’s wife, Clementine. The Moat, Breccles was originally painted in 1921 and was prominently featured in Churchill’s personal essay “Painting as a Pastime” that was published in the December 1921 issue of The Strand magazine. (A pretty stellar issue if you can get your hands on it, featuring original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and PG Wodehouse, as well as a companion essay to Churchill’s titled “Singing as a Profession” by the great Enrico Caruso).

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In the essay, Churchill relates how painting came into his life at one of his darkest moments. In 1915, he was ousted from his post as Lord of the Admiralty (the political head of the Royal Navy) following the disastrous Gallipoli campaign and given a token bureaucratic job as the Chancellor of Lanchester, an awful blow to a man of Churchill’s talents and bluster. Despondent, he found the surrounding gloom lifted when his sister-in-law suggested he join her painting in the garden. “And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue — out of charity and out of chivalry,” he wrote. He went on to extoll the benefits of having a creative hobby and how far they outweigh the pleasures one might find in traditional pursuits such as hunting, billiards or golf. “There will be sunshine there even in the winter-time,” he wrote, “and cool shade, and the play of shadow on the path in the shining days of June.”

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Property from the Onassis Family Collection, Sir Winston L.S. Churchill, The Moat, Breccles, circa August 1921. Estimate: $1,500,000-2,000,000. 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale.

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Though he never advanced beyond amateur status as a painter, his work could hardly be called middling. Inspired by Impressionists like Monet and Cézanne, he possessed a keen sense of color and a strong sense of place. Surveying Churchill’s work in 1982, the president of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Hugh Casson, called him, “an amateur of considerable natural ability who, had he had the time [to study and practice] could have held his own with most professionals … especially as a colourist.” Of course, winning a World War tends to limit one’s time for study and practice.

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In recent years, the value of these works has increased greatly—multiple paintings, including “The Goldfish Pond at Chartwell” have fetched seven figures at auction—and interest in his art has never been greater. The popularity of Netflix’s The Crown, which featured several scenes of John Lithgow’s Churchill, besmocked with brush in hard, has played no small part. And while Churchill’s artistic endeavors will never outshine his political accomplishments and legendary oratories, they provide key insight into one of the most towering figures of the 20th century.

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“I think this heightened sense of observation of Nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint,” Churchill wrote, and it is with that heightened sense that he painted The Moat, Breccles. From his eyes to his hand and his brush and then onto the canvas, before traveling through the pages of the Strand all the way to the walls of the salon aboard the grandest yacht in the world, trailing with it a history that spanned from the bloody aftermath of WWI to the go-go optimism of the jet-set ‘60s.

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After Aristotle Onassis’ death in 1975, his daughter Christina inherited the namesake yacht and later gave it to the Greek government to use as a presidential yacht before her own untimely death. The yacht fell into disrepair and could have easily met a scrapyard fate. However it was rescued and (quite extensively, as well as expensively) refurbished to its former glory by Onassis family friend and fellow shipping magnate John Paul Papanicolaou in 2011. The minotaur-themed swimming pool still turns into a dancefloor, and it’s currently available to charter for the handsome sum of about $650,000 per week.

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Original Churchill landscape not included.

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Andrew Paine Bradbury is a writer and musician based in New York City.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art >

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Out at Sea: The Playlist

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Inspired by Sir Winston Churchill's painting The Moat, Breccles, discover the music from Ari’s Bar aboard the yacht Christina in celebration of our New York 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale.
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Recommended Reading

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The Prompt: A Neat Lawn by David Hockney >

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Whose Histories Should Be Commemorated? >

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\n","2021-06-10T18:17:00.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/77449232/winston-churchill-aristotle-onassis-christina-superyacht",5,1297,3569,77449232,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/david-hammons-50850b4b-8169-4f75-bf15-5ea3beba7a28_s600x0.jpg","Marianne Hoet, Deputy Chairwoman, Europe and Senior Specialist, 20th Century and Contemporary Art, reflects on her father's deep friendship with David Hammons. ","The Gift of Memory ","

David Hammons, It’s Not Necessary (detail), 1990. Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Written by Marianne Hoet

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It’s not necessary is a work from 1989. At that time, David Hammons had his studio in Harlem and it was just before he participated in documenta IX in Kassel in 1992.

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It is a masterpiece in a very clear language about human fragility that reminds me, of course, of my visit at the end of the eighties to his studio in Harlem. I went together with my father Jan Hoet, who was preparing the documenta in Kassel.

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It was my first visit to New York and having the opportunity to meet with an intriguing artist, one of the most important artists of the last 50 years, was a gift.

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At the studio, we were able to touch objects and works, without being sure if it was an object or already an artwork. At that time, David always gathered objects and found inspiration in the streets. As an outsider in the contemporary scene, he was able to transform material into experience, which also alludes to an African-American tradition of creating art from found objects.

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Spending a day with the artist gave me the best explanation of the two different worlds in one society.

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David Hammons, It’s Not Necessary, 1990. Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Inviting us in his studio and showing us around the neighborhood, David showed us his street, his restaurant. I learned how important it can be to understand the environment and background of an artist. In his work, David explains in a very suggestive way the human history and fragility of society. He provokes in a very subtle way. For the documenta itself, he made one of his best-known sculptures: a construction of castoff materials overcoated with dreadlocks. I remember the moments when he was installing it in Kassel, twisting the hair in poetic silence. The work was later purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

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Chasing the blue train, another very important work, was bought by the SMAK in Ghent in 1991. It is a huge installation referring to a metro line that connects Brooklyn to Harlem. It also refers to the 1920-30 crisis in which thousands of Black Americans traversed the US to work in coal mines.

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It’s Not Necessary, which we have in our sale, is a masterpiece.

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We had the opportunity to live with this work for a while, later it was sold to a family friend and great collector who, unfortunately, passed away this year. The texture of the blanket can refer to the blankets used by the homeless, but now it has been transformed and has the appearance of something elegant, silky, and even fragile. The contrast between rough and refined, clear and dirty can refer to different worlds in society.

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We see elements of Black culture, such as the music sheets which allude to the rhythm of the Harlem Renaissance and his own love of jazz music.

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Most important was to understand and feel the deep friendship between David and my father. It was a friendship as we remember from our childhood, soulmates as outsiders. Always playing games together, for example, my father dressing up as a geisha and David taking pictures.

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Those photos are still hanging in David’s studio and were on view at Mnuchin gallery but never for sale. David came unannounced to my father’s funeral in 2014 and spoke a few words in church: “thank God for the gift.”

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A great honor and gift for us.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York >

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Recommended Reading

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If Artists Were Verbs >

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The Statesman, the Magnate, and the Original 'Superyacht' >

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\n","2021-06-21T22:08:31.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/78385620/the-gift-of-memory-david-hammons",4,3583,78385620,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/salman-toor-edie-campbell-7615add6-e75a-4216-8cf0-3a6c9d36c5c7_s600x0.jpg","As model Edie Campbell auctions off a treasured work by Salman Toor, we sat down with her to learn more about her collection, influences, and her very modern initial discovery of the artist's work. ","In Conversation with Edie Campbell ","

Salman Toor, Fort Greene, 2018. Estimate $100,000 - 150,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Edie Campbell began modeling while she was studying art history at The Courtauld. Rather than identifying with the models and muses of the masterworks she studied, she says her art historical background influenced her own approach to composition—and how to elicit feeling. Her relationship to the art she collects very much resides in this mutual exchange, feeling moved by and loving the works she collects.

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As Campbell parts ways with Fort Greene by Salman Toor, we sat down with her to learn more about her collection, influences, and her very modern initial discovery of the artist's work.

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PHILLIPS: To start, I was wondering if you could tell me about your collection. When and how did you get started?

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EDIE CAMPBELL: I wanted to buy things that I love to live with, rather than collecting for any kind of bigger or more ambitious reason. I just love to live with art that has been made from a process or background that I find inspiring or interesting. It’s all young artists, most of them British or Britain-based.

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P: What was the very first work that you collected with intent?

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EC: It was probably a painting by a young British artist called Faye Wei Wei. I had a big wall in the flat I was living in, and I wanted something for it. It’s this big painting, and it has a lot of symbolic imagery. There will be a floating hand with a ring on it and then a giant horse. Her painting is very gestural too, and I love living with that. It’s big, bold, quite romantic. That was the first thing that I bought, and I’ve had it for a couple of years.

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Edie Campbell.

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P: Does your collection seem to have a cohesive aesthetic narrative in addition to being mainly emerging British artists?

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EC: I tend to like quite gestural work, and I have bought mostly paintings. It’s interesting because my mum has collected a lot of art over her lifetime, so I grew up in a house with a lot of more macho work; she bought the YBAs. There was a lot of quite mature Damien Hirst and then, well, Gary Hume’s works are not that macho, but she liked the slightly chunkier work, the work that demands attention and space.

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A lot of the work I have bought has been quiet and, in a way, more sentimental, more narrative-based. So I would say that I lean towards work that has feeling.

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P: In terms of Salman Toor, could you tell me the story behind collecting this particular work, Fort Greene?

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EC: Yeah, I mean, it's a really modern story. I saw his work on Instagram, and I thought, “wow, these paintings are so beautiful.” It was around the time that he had a show at Aicon Gallery, and it popped up in my feed. I contacted the gallery and found out what was available, and I didn’t even see it before I bought it, I just loved the story. I loved all the paintings I was sent that were available, and I struggled to choose. I find his work very moving.

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And it falls into the art history that I studied. The canon of turn-of-the-century artists, the Monets and Renoirs. It's a real snapshot of modern life and in a very gentle narrative way. And his paintings are just full of feeling. I actually had it next to my big Faye Wei Wei for a while, which was very sweet.

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I love imagining what the two men are saying to each other on the steps. It’s such a New York painting to me, as well, that red brick Brooklyn townhouse. Then I love the woman leaning out the windows smoking a fag and eavesdropping because I feel a litle bit like that’s what I’m doing when I’m looking at the picture. So I think that there’s a real crackle of energy to it. Despite it being unassuming, it still really draws your attention.

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Salman Toor's Fort Greene with table by James Shaw and light fitting by Christabel MacGreevy.

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P: As a young creative person yourself who participates in the creation of narratives and imagery, do you identify with the makers or subjects of the paintings at all?

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EC: It's funny, because when I first started modeling, I was at university and so I was studying why pictures work the way they do. Why certain graphic forms or shapes make you feel a certain way, and it really made me confident in my work as a model because suddenly I understood how pictures worked. So it was actually a reverse influence. I have always been fascinated in why pictures work, why a gesture or a color communicates something and if it was slightly different, it would communicate something else entirely. It’s a very visual world I live in.

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P: Along those lines, I wondered if the person that you see in the finished product feels like the person you are in real life?

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EC: Absolutely no. No. Totally different, whole other person. It’s a portrait of me portraying someone that I was for a moment.

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P: Your relationship to that must be quite uncanny?

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EC: It’s kind of magic, and I feel very fortunate to be able to do that and to be different people. To be challenged in that way and to try and communicate something in a world that can be quite transactional. It’s a commercial industry, but to communicate something very separate from commerce is a real privilege.

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P: Where do you see yourself as a participant in the visual language of right now? You don’t collect trends, but certainly you are a trend-maker in certain ways.

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EC: I don’t want to buy art that is trendy in a moment because I think then you’re chasing something elusive. Taste is a funny thing. It’s unexpected to me that Salman’s work is very sought-after now, that was never my intention. When I bought it, it was because it was beautiful, and I wanted to live with work that I loved. I wouldn’t discourage people from following trends, but I like to buy things I love, and I love being part of the story of that painting.

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Edie Campbell.

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P: The work that you grew up around, was there anything that was very influential on you?

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EC: Yeah, my mum bought a lot of the YBAs and a lot of the quite big, bold pieces of work. We had a big Richard Long painting on the wall. I think what kind of really resonated with me as a child is that my mom always just said, "well isn't that just beautiful? Isn't it just the most beautiful thing?" She loved the way things were made because she's an architect and a designer. She loves the making of things whereas I love the finished thing.

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But I think what was very inspiring was that she just kind of followed her gut and bought things that she loved and wanted to live with and wanted to be around and bought from people from artists that she found to be very inspiring. So when she went to that first YBA show and she bought work there, she was just like there's an incredible energy to this group of artists and to what they're doing, and I think that's a lovely thing as well: buying from people who you think are really inspiring and have an incredible energy and incredible belief in their own process. That I can get behind.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art >

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Global Gallery Tour 20th Century & Contemporary Art

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Recommended Reading

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Whose Histories Should Be Commemorated? >

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If Artists Were Recipes >

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\n","2021-06-16T21:32:36.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/77965549/edie-campbell-salmon-toor-twentieth-century-contemporary-art-new-york",3,1304,3576,77965549,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/screen-shot-2021-06-18-at-10-40-54-am-9a130e81-ab7a-43d6-b555-0db881b69574_s600x0.png","Artists, they're just like us! 'New Yorker' cartoonist Sofia Warren visually conjugates 20th Century & Contemporary artists, imagining what it would mean \"To Basquiat,\" \"To Bourgeois,\" and more.","If Artists Were Verbs","

By Sofia Warren

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Great art affects how we see ourselves and each other and, occassionally, can infiltrate our behvaiors too. Inspired by the artists in our upcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales, cartoonist Sofia Warren imagines Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Keith Haring, Alexander Calder, and Barbara Hepworth as verbs. In other words: what it might mean "To Basquiat" or "To Bourgeois" in our daily lives. The resulting definitions are everyday conjugations...but perhaps not recommended for everyday use.

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Discover More from Keith Haring:

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Keith Haring, Untitled (For John Sex), 1982. Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000 >
\nKeith Haring, Writing Table, 1990. Estimate $400,000 - 600,000 >
\nKeith Haring, Untitled, 1985. Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000 >
\nKeith Haring, Pyramid, 1989. Estimate $175,000 - 225,000 >
\nKeith Haring, Untitled, 1982. Estimate $100,000 - 150,000 >

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Discover More from Alexander Calder:
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\nAlexander Calder, Fourteen Black Leaves, 1961. Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000 >
\nAlexander Calder, Bubbles on Orange, 1971. Estimate $30,000 - 50,000 >
\nAlexander Calder, Six, Five, Nine, 1971. Estimate $30,000 - 50,000 >
\nAlexander Calder, Aerialist, circa 1926-31. Estimate $200,000 - 300,000 >
\nAlexander Calder, Tray, 1948. Estimate $18,000 - 25,000 >
\nAlexander Calder, Fly Choker, 1929. Estimate $40,000 - 60,000 >
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Discover More from Barbara Hepworth:
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\nBarbara Hepworth, Maquette, Three Forms in Echelon, 1965. Estimate $200,000 - 300,000 >

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Discover More from Jean-Michel Basquait:
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\nJean-Michel Basquiat, Batman, 1983. Estimate $1,600,000 - 2,000,000 >
\nJean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Starvation), 1981. Estimate $250,000 - 350,000 >
\nJean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (The Athlete), 1981. Estimate $200,000 - 300,000 >

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Discover More from Louise Bourgeois:

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Louise Bourgeois, Labyrinthine Tower, 1967. Estimate $550,000 - 750,000 >

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Sofia Warren is a cartoonist and animator living in Brooklyn. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and her work has also appeared in Narrative, MoMA Magazine, Catapult, and elsewhere. Her first book is forthcoming from Top Shelf Publications in summer 2022.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art >

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Global Gallery Tour 20th Century & Contemporary Art

\n\n

Recommended Reading

\n\n

Whose Histories Should Be Commemorated? >

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If Artists Were Recipes >

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\n","2021-06-10T14:43:03.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/77508616/if-artists-were-verbs",2,1305,3572,77508616,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/emily-mae-smith-6593fd17-d665-4758-a7a8-0d0f394259f6_s600x0.jpg","Exploring new insights from our favorite artworks. ","If Artists Were Tarot Cards","

Emily Mae Smith, Waiting Room, 2015. Estimate $40,000 - 60,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Louise Bourgeois and the Tower

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Louise Bourgeois, Labyrinthine Tower, 1967. Estimate $550,000 - 750,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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In Tarot, there lies the possibility of dual or multiple meanings, opposing or reinforcing outcomes depending on the reader’s circumstances. In Louise Bourgeois’ Labyrinthine Tower, are the artist’s gyrating shapes slowly slithering upward or gradually melting? The Tower card asks the reader to consider: Could you be building something up or is something in your life about to suddenly crumble? Ultimately, the card represents change or a dynamic shift in structure, just as Bourgeois’ Labyrinthine Tower appears to be going through its own metamorphosis.

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Richard Prince and the High Priestess

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Richard Prince, Nurses Dormitory #3, 2003. Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Sometimes, when you pull a card can be just as important as what the card actually depicts. Richard Prince often uses borrowed imagery to critique American iconography, symbols, and ideas. By remixing, recontextualizing and reconsidering his appropriated images, his works offer up new meaning or critique depending on when and where we look at them. In Nurses Dormitory #3, Prince shows us a pulp romance nurse from 1962 in this work from 2003. Our nurse has time traveled, and so, her role shifts in the public’s subconscious. Today, in 2021, Prince’s nurse melds with the images of the nurses around the world who continue to save the planet from Covid-19. Nurses Dormitory #3 is our High Priestess, the female guardian of Tarot. She is powerful, graceful, calm and unquavering in her role. She is there to protect. Could you use protection or might you be the force in someone else’s life to offer help?

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Emily Mae Smith and the Wheel of Fortune

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Emily Mae Smith, Waiting Room, 2015. Estimate $40,000 - 60,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Emily Mae Smith’s iconic broom figures always seem to be frozen or suspended in time. Never sweeping, they are often depicted lounging, looking, or in our painting, Waiting Room, waiting. Often depicted without a human figure focal point, The Wheel of Fortune card depicts a wheel spinning up above in the cosmos. Smith’s clocks and the card’s wheel both ask the viewer to consider the concept of time, motion, and fate out of our hands. In readings, The Wheel of Fortune card may be interpreted to mean pulling back, being still and trusting destiny. In Smith’s painting, we also have no choice but to be still and wait it out, no matter how hard we stare at the clock.

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Toyin Ojih Odutola and the World

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Toyin Ojih Odutola, Quality Control, 2015. Estimate $150,000 - 200,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Toyin Ojih Odutola’s works exist in a liminal space, while also marking out distinct realities in each nook and cranny of texture, light, and color. "When I draw the skin of my subjects, I really want people to travel throughout them. The surface isn’t something I trifle with,” the artist has said, embodying the ephemeral balance of The World. Simultaneously ever-changing and static, the World represents a kind of enlightenment, a peacemaking and wholeness that comes with accepting transience.

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Titus Kaphar and Strength

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Titus Kaphar, Untitled III (detail), 2015. Estimate $300,000 - 400,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Is it presence or absence? As a painter, Titus Kaphar reconfigures classical representation to challenge what we think we know about history (and, of course, the history of art). By placing Black figures in poses and contexts in which they have traditionally been sidelined, Kaphar forces us to ask whether what we’re seeing is a re-inscription, blankness, or correction—what does it mean to be visible?

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Jeff Koons and the Hermit

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Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Demeter), 2014. Estimate $400,000 - 600,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Usually depicted lighting their path with a lantern, the hermit is a wanderer in search of enlightenment and true self-knowledge. Likewise, Jeff Koons’ Gazing Ball series, for all its art historical allusion, is genuine; the series refuses to take itself too seriously as it skewers an ambiguous space between popular artifacts and high art. The participatory element of Koons’ work—the requisite questioning of the viewer’s role in the gazing ball—embodies the soul-searching that comes from removing oneself from society. Who are you within the gazing ball?

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Andy Warhol and the Moon

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Andy Warhol, Shadow (Double), 1978. Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York.

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Oh, Andy Warhol, forever the purveyor of enigma, always emphatically subversive. Shadow (Double) luxuriates in reversal; the shadows are primary subjects rather than secondary. The Moon card too can bring you clarity and understanding, but it is just as likely that it may deceive you, hold secrets, or push you towards uncertainty. The Moon, like Warhol, forces you to question your own distinctions—and how you may be undermining yourself with your attachment to an artificial reality.

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Discover More from 20th Century & Contemporary Art >

\n\n

\n\n

Global Gallery Tour 20th Century & Contemporary Art

\n\n

Recommended Reading

\n\n

Whose Histories Should Be Commemorated? >

\n\n

If Artists Were Recipes >

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\n","2021-06-16T21:45:13.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/77966135/tarot-twentieth-century-and-contemporary-art-new-york",1303,3578,77966135,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/2021_ny_sp_tca_install-068-dacefea3-6e08-4044-a372-7c75d06945f2_s600x0.jpg","Join us for a virtual walkthrough of our inaugural 432 Park Avenue viewing, featuring 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales. On view: David Hockney, Matthew Wong, Kehinde Wiley, Andy Warhol, Carmen Herrera, and more. ","VR Walkthrough: 20th Century & Contemporary Art | Auction, 23-24 June","

Travel through our new state-of-the-art galleries at 432 Park Avenue and browse our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales.

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Featuring leading works from the most sought-after artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, our Evening Sale is comprised of an exceptional group of works from Mark Rothko, Jean Dubuffet, Andy Warhol, Amoako Boafo, Carmen Herrera, Amy Sherald, David Hockney, and more.

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Our Day Sale, Morning Session features masterworks from Barbara Hepworth, Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, Norman Rockwell, and more. Additionally, our Day Sale, Afternoon Session includes works by Wonder Buhle Mbambo, Jammie Holmes, Genieve Figgis, Kehinde Wiley, Banksy, and more.

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Visit our 432 Park Avenue galleries 17-22 June to preview our New York 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales ahead of the 23-24 June auctions.

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\n","2021-06-22T19:09:13.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/78379710/vr-walkthrough-20th-century-and-contemporary-art-auction-23-24-june",1313,3584,78379710,{"_160":161,"_162":163,"_164":165,"_166":49,"_167":168,"_169":170},{"_354":410,"_356":357},{"_354":409,"_356":357},{"_354":408,"_356":357},{"_354":407,"_356":357},{"_354":406,"_356":357},{"_354":405,"_356":357},{"_354":404,"_356":357},{"_354":403,"_356":357},{"_354":402,"_356":357},{"_354":399,"_356":357,"_394":400,"_396":401},{"_354":58,"_356":357,"_394":398,"_396":76},{"_354":393,"_356":357,"_394":395,"_396":397},{"_354":392,"_356":357},{"_354":391,"_356":357},{"_354":390,"_356":357},{"_354":389,"_356":357},{"_354":388,"_356":357},{"_354":387,"_356":357},{"_354":386,"_356":357},{"_354":385,"_356":357},{"_354":384,"_356":357},{"_354":383,"_356":357},{"_354":382,"_356":357},{"_354":381,"_356":357},{"_354":380,"_356":357},{"_354":379,"_356":357},{"_354":378,"_356":357},{"_354":377,"_356":357},{"_354":376,"_356":357},{"_354":375,"_356":357},{"_354":374,"_356":357},{"_354":373,"_356":357},{"_354":372,"_356":357},{"_354":371,"_356":357},{"_354":370,"_356":357},{"_354":369,"_356":357},{"_354":368,"_356":357},{"_354":367,"_356":357},{"_354":366,"_356":357},{"_354":365,"_356":357},{"_354":364,"_356":357},{"_354":363,"_356":357},{"_354":362,"_356":357},{"_354":361,"_356":357},{"_354":360,"_356":357},{"_354":359,"_356":357},{"_354":358,"_356":357},{"_354":355,"_356":357},"objectNumber","155486","lotType","AuctionLot","156105","154834","156030","155894","156657","154104","156350","151192","155993","155629","154462","155224","155335","155338","154989","153512","156593","154105","154000","150651","154969","154395","154831","156610","152413","155672","156088","156892","151037","152683","154978","152241","151211","151112","155966","156089","lotNumberFull","12","makerName","Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat","11","154146","10","Nicole Eisenman","154651","155596","154581","156235","154463","154010","156577","153443","155360","lotNumber",11,"estimate",{"_477":478,"_479":480},"detailLink","lotStatus","Sold","parentAuctionStatus","parentAuctionType","auctionMobilityLotRowId","1-4P5DQU","makerId",16859,"executedBidCount","currentlyEligibleForBids","priorityBiddingEnabled","reserveMet","startBidAmount",560000,"soldPrice",1119000,"isNoReserve","is360View","isNoLot","showSoldLabel","isPremiumLot","artistInscription","signed “NORMAN LEWIS” lower right","dimensions","60 1/4 x 30 in. (153 x 76.2 cm)","medium","oil on canvas","sigEdtMan","Painted circa 1950.","provenance","Sacks Fine Art, New York\r\nDon Cornelius, Los Angeles (acquired from the above circa 1991)\r\nAcquired from the above by the present owner","mainImagePath","https://dist.phillips.com/auction-assets/NY010321/11_001.jpg","additionalImagePaths",[476],"enhancedLotComponents",[454,455],{"_171":72,"_172":173},{"_456":127,"_457":458,"_459":470,"_16":471,"_462":472},{"_456":127,"_457":458,"_459":460,"_16":461,"_462":463},"isActive","componentType","RichText","componentId",4167,"DETAIL-HEADER-DISABLED 76288","componentItems",[464],{"_456":127,"_465":466,"_467":468,"_469":-7},"componentItemId",6593,"htmlCaption","

"Art is to me the expression of unconscious experiences common to all men, which have been strained through the artist’s own peculiar associations and use of his medium. In this sense, it becomes an activity of discovery, emotional, intellectual and technical, not only for the artist but those who view his work."
\n—Norman Lewis, ca. 1950

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A spectacular example of Norman Lewis’ black paintings, Abstract City manifests the artist’s acclaimed standing among the pantheon of Abstract Expressionist masters. A colleague of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, Lewis was a crucial member of the seminal first generation of the New York School. The sole African-American artist of his circle, he exhibited at the historic symposium at Studio 35 in New York in 1950, the event after which the term “Abstract Expressionism” was coined.

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\"\" — Artists’ meeting at Studio 35, New York, organized by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, April 1950. Image: Aaron Siskind, Courtesy the Ad Reinhardt Foundation.
\n
\nLeft to right: Seymour Lipton, Norman Lewis, Jimmy Ernst, Peter Grippe, Adolf Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Alfred Barr, Robert Motherwell, Richard Lippold, Willem de Kooning, Ibram Lassaw, James Brooks, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Poussette-Dart

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Painted around the same year of the groundbreaking event, the present work is historically underscored by its storied provenance, having long remained in the notable collection of Don Cornelius. As the creator of “Soul Train,” the renowned television host played a pivotal role in disseminating Black music throughout America and the world, providing exposure to epochal musicians including James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson in the 1970s and 1980s. An aspiring cartoonist in his youth, Cornelius maintained an avid interest in art and became a substantial supporter of African-American art during his lifetime, collecting the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Richmond Barthé, Beauford Delaney, and Elizabeth Catlett. Abstract City is now arriving to auction on the heels of Lewis’ long overdue recognition marked by the artist’s major retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Chicago Cultural Center from 2016 to 2017 and his recent feature in the lauded 2021 HBO documentary, Black Art: In the Absence of Light.

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"Black is a color, better still, a light; its soft and diffuse radiance dissolves our habitual patterns…"
\n—Jean-Paul Sartre, Black Orpheus, 1948

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\"\" — [left] Norman Lewis, *City Night*, 1949. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Image: © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY [right] Frank Stella, *Seven Steps*, 1959. Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Image: bpk Bildagentur / Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne / Sabrina Walz / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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By the mid-1940s, Lewis abandoned the Social Realist style in favor of abstraction, which he found artistically liberating to distance himself from the stereotype of a racially dominated painterly vocabulary. His use of the color black as part of this shift is a distinguishing marker of his work and a prominent feature throughout his entire career. The color fascinated Lewis not only in its relational dynamic to other colors and to the effect of luminosity, but also, in his words, to use “color in such a way that it could become other things.”ⁱ As Ann Eden Gibson observed, “From the mid-1940s until his death, Lewis in fact painted black, or darkened versions of nearly every subject he treated...Lewis’s interest in blackness in painting went beyond its usefulness to his undeniably modernist ambitions.”ⁱⁱ

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$\"\"$

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Predating one of the artist’s closest associates, Ad Reinhardt, in his use of black, Lewis’ black paintings also recall those of his younger contemporaries including Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg while embodying a striking figurative quality channeled through his own unique sensibility. “For Lewis,” Gibson explained, “black painting provided an entry to a cosmos, as his contemporary Charles Davis so memorably put it, in which modernism and African-American identity can coexist. Like Davis, he wanted to place the art of African Americans in what we would now call its intercultural visual milieu.”ⁱⁱⁱ

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"The artist has a great responsibility not only to use himself honestly and know his medium profoundly, but to realize that he must communicate unique experiences so that they become unquestionably possible for the viewer, which are not dependent upon inappropriate rationales, but emerge in symbols clearly of his own time, and basic to the aesthetics of future times."
\n—Norman Lewis, ca. 1950

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\"\" — [left] Clyfford Still, *PH-28*, 1956. Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. Artwork: © City and County of Denver / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [right] Georgia O’Keeffe, *Red and Orange Streak*, 1919. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Image: The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY

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Abstract City showcases Lewis’ signature mode of black that set him apart from contemporaries like Reinhardt—black does not overcome the composition but presents a sharp contrast to the bold colors. Here, the complex array of brightly colored forms echoes the glimmering lights of New York City emerging from the night’s darkness, reflecting the artist’s explorations of black to conjure pictures of his favorite time of day. Joan Murray Weissman, who lived with Lewis between 1946 and 1952, recalled, “He really loved night: he loved going out at night, and he loved walking at night, and he loved the sky with stars in it, and he loved lights. He was a night kind of guy.”^iv

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The present work showcases Lewis’ calligraphic form of abstraction that straddles the line towards figuration. Despite the rich variety of bright colors, Lewis achieves a softness to their application that lends the work its atmospheric glow. By manipulating the pigments through a uniquely devised technique of smudging that he had perfected by the late 1940s, Lewis creates a figure-ground relationship between the shimmering lights and the black background. In doing so, the center of the two-dimensional canvas appears magnified and infused with a vibrant energy that exudes from and subverts the flatness of the picture plane. Presenting a lyrical, nocturnal cityscape in his signature vertical format, Abstract City encapsulates Lewis’ luminous abstraction that not only reflects his virtuosic control over the painterly medium and his interest in the interplay between light and dark, but also manifests his ultimate vision on the power of abstraction. “The goal of the artist must be inherently aesthetic development and, in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture.”^v

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\"\" — Artists’ meeting at Studio 35, New York, organized by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, April 1950. Image: Aaron Siskind, Courtesy the Ad Reinhardt Foundation.
\n
\nLeft to right: David Smith, Seymour Lipton, Norman Lewis, Jimmy Erns

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\nⁱ Norman Lewis, quoted in Ann Eden Gibson, “Black is a Color: Norman Lewis and Modernism in New York,” Norman Lewis: Black Paintings, 1946-1977, exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 1998, p. 11.
\nⁱⁱ Ann Eden Gibson, ibid.
\nⁱⁱⁱ Ibid.
\n^iv Joan Murray Weissman, quoted in William Zimmer, “The Color Black: On the Painter’s Canvas and in the World,” The New York Times, May 30, 1999, online.
\n^v Norman Lewis, quoted in Norman Lewis: From the Harlem Renaissance to Abstraction, exh. cat., Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, 1989, p. 65.

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11

Norman Lewis

Abstract City

Further Details

Full-Cataloguing

Norman Lewis