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Monday, 18 November 10:00am –4:00pm
\nTuesday, 19 November 10:00am – 12:00pm
\n
\nPlease note online bidding requires approval and may require additional documentation.
\n
\nIf you prefer to bid via absentee or telephone, please reach out to bidsnewyork@phillips.com for registration assistance

\n\n

\n","auctionDetailsSmall","New York Auction 20 November 2024","extraInfo","

Annie Dolan
\nNY Head of Auctions and Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
\n+1 212 940 1288
\nadolan@phillips.com

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John Githens and Ingeborg ten Haeff.

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The collection of John Githens and Ingeborg ten Haeff stands alone as one of the final vestiges of Golden Era Greenwich Village-bohemia. Assembled over a lifetime of remarkable social and cultural engagement, the works housed in the couple’s historic Washington Square Park residence attest to the power of taste and the possibilities generated by a personal aesthetic program. An idyll set in the heart of Manhattan, the apartment was home to ten Haeff and Githens for over half a century, playing host to their collecting fervor, artistic and scholarly curiosities, and a panoply of social events that situated the couple at the heart of New York’s artistic community.

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The couple in their Greenwich Village home, with Alfonso Ossorio’s Split, 1965. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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The German-born ten Haeff had previously fled to Brazil upon the outbreak of World War II where she married the eldest son of President Getulio Vargas. After the war, ten Haeff left Brazil and her marriage to move to New York, pursuing a degree in classical guitar at Juilliard and swiftly embracing the dynamic cultural scene in Gotham’s post-war milieu. Perhaps more profoundly, however, ten Haeff recalled the welcoming spirit of New York. Having experienced the rise of Fascism in Germany and a tumultuous end to her relationship with Vargas, she later reflected on being, “so astonished at the kindness, the openness of the people.”

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Joan Miró, Peinture, 1950. Estate of John Githens and Ingeborg ten Haeff. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Evening Sale.

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In 1948, ten Haeff married the noted architect, city planner, and furniture designer Paul Lester Wiener. Wiener, a fellow German émigré, was most renowned for his central role in laying out modern Havana and Bogota as well as winning the commission to plan a neighborhood development in Washington Square Park. Their relationship propelled ten Haeff, by this stage a talented musician in her own right, further into the fabric of New York bohemia. The sculptor Alexander Calder crafted a treasured brooch and earrings as a wedding present to the couple, whilst at this time they also started to develop their art collection in earnest. In 1951, Wiener and ten Haeff purchased Joan Miró’s Peinture, 1950 from Pierre Matisse Gallery; since, the work has remained continuously in their collection and unseen in public. Moreover, the couple collected artworks that were tied to their social and professional background, including examples by contemporaries Herbert Bayer, Kurt Seligmann, Le Corbusier, and Calder. It was at this time that ten Haeff herself began to seriously pursue painting, prodigiously executing works in an Abstract Expressionist idiom.

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Alexander Calder, Reclining Bride, 1948. Estate of John Githens and Ingeborg ten Haeff. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Evening Sale.

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Kurt Seligmann, Sur les Barricades, 1929. Estate of John Githens and Ingeborg ten Haeff. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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Githens, a noted Russophile and gifted linguist who held professorial positions at Vassar College and St. John's University, was introduced to ten Haeff by a mutual acquaintance from Vassar after Wiener's passing in 1967. Despite being twenty-two years younger than his future wife, they soon married — with Willem de Koening and Alfonso Ossorio attending their wedding — and became a fixture within the New York and East Hampton artist communities. The new couple would regularly throw lavish dinners and attended the city’s most glamorous parties and venues. Through their friendship with artists, ten Haeff and Githens’ collection grew through both gifts and acquisitions. Alongside a veritable archive of correspondence — in German, French, and Russian — their homes in Amagansett and Greenwich Village were filled with personally dedicated drawings by de Kooning, assemblages by Alfonso Ossorio, and important works by Richard Lindner, Hedda Sterne ad Xanti Schawinsky, each hung alongside ten Haeff’s own paintings.

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After ten Haeff’s passing in 2011, Githens returned full-time to the apartment in Greenwich Village and remained an engaged part of the city’s artistic scene. His devotion to his wife was unfailing — “there was nobody really like her” — and Githens continued to champion her painting until his death early this year aged eighty-seven. The pair nurtured a collection that reflected their inimitable worldly interests and experience, exemplifying a lifetime of engagement with the artist in the form of highly personal objects. Moreover, the collection is testament to ten Haeff and Githens’ mutual affection for New York. As Githens wrote days before his passing, “I love this constantly mutating place, and pray that heaven will be exactly like New York.”

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Ingeborg ten Haeff, Untitled, 1977. Estate of John Githens and Ingeborg ten Haeff. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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Discover More from Modern & Contemporary Art >

\n\n

\n","publishDate","2024-11-04T14:21:40.000000Z","authorCredit","Jesse Limbacher","coverPosX",50,"coverPosY",0,"articleUrl","https://www.phillips.com/article/151178780/estate-of-john-githens-and-ingeborg-ten-haeff-auction-new-york","displayOrder",2,"auctionEditorialID",2317,"editorialID",4750,"flocklerID",151178780,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/phillip-lim-lead-4d4f632f-78de-47b3-b0d8-53a583d9ef78_s600x0.jpg","The lauded designer talks to Phillips about how he collects and what he'd love to own from our upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art auctions in New York.","PERSPECTIVES: An Afternoon with Phillip Lim","

Fashion designer Phillip Lim with Cy Twombly’s Tulips I, no. 2–5, 1985. Image credit: Rasaan Wyzard.

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“My taste! I don’t even know what taste means. It’s all about the ongoing exploration, right?” begins Phillip Lim.

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His approachability defies the depth and spirituality of both his art collection and his own creative success. Earlier this month, we spent an afternoon in conversation with the fashion designer, inviting him to share some of his favorites from our upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art auctions in New York. He also invited us to glimpse his unique approach to collecting through the works he displays in his New York City home.

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“You have to live with it”

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To Lim, art’s ability to transport us to a divine dimension is his guiding light as a collector. He’s particularly excited about photographs from Cy Twombly’s Tulips series that he recently acquired, and they give him the freedom to unpack his approach.

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“What I love is high and low. What I love is sharp and imperfect. What I love is masculine and feminine,” Lim explains. “And these tulips, they remind me of just simple bodega flowers. But seen through the lens of Twombly’s genius, they become something almost static but also very ethereal.”

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When Phillip Lim first moved to New York, he loved art but hadn’t spent much time around the art scene, which can seem intimidating. Finding what resonated with him was a process of letting go of what he felt would be expected of a collector. Early on, he met the art advisor BJ Topol by chance in his New York boutique, and she gave him the liberty to find his voice as a collector. He tells us, “She’s the one who actually brought me into this world of looking at art and giving me the time, the space, and the guidance to really just trust my own taste.”

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Lim loves Cy Twombly and longs to own a painting by the artist one day. Knowing this, Topol pointed him in the direction of the Tulips series. “She’s like a muse to me,” Lim says of her.

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Cy Twombly, Crimes of Passion I, 1960. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Evening Sale.

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With several years of collecting now under his belt, Lim can sum up the approach he’s developed with Topol as his partner.

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“For me, the way I choose to collect is to ask myself, do I love to look at it every single day? Does it inspire me? Is it a vehicle that allows a more spiritual experience? With the artists I’m attracted to, what they put out there is a corridor so that I can connect with or go back to a time, a space, or a place that I want to arrive at.”

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How work is presented in his home is as important to Lim as the works he chooses. As tempting as it can be to buy everything he likes, he explains that a certain amount of space is required to give works the respect they deserve. “When I’m walking through galleries or auction previews with BJ, it’s like I want everything. I walk around like, ‘Oh my god, that’s a dream,’ or ‘That’s my vision board.’ But then you start to realize that if you take it out of that context and you don’t give it the space it requires to vibrate, it can become home decoration, and that’s what I try to avoid.”

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As an example, he turns our attention toward a work by Hiroshi Sugimoto displayed in his dining room, explaining, “We eat and everyone gets to see it. It’s the backdrop and it’s a bit nonchalant, but at the same time, I allow it the space that it deserves.”

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Hiroshi Sugimoto’s, Joe 2065, 2005–2006, hangs in the dining room of Phillip Lim’s New York City home. Image credit: Phillip Lim.

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As he explored the art world, Lim was drawn to works by Richard Serra, which led Topol to suggest this Sugimoto photograph that depicts Serra’s sculpture Joe. “I was like, ‘I have got to have this. I have to have this,’” Lim recounts. “It’s two of my favorite artists coming together.”

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The Sugimoto expresses much of what Lim loves about art. He explains, “The art in my collection, there’s always a void, or a personal memory attached to it, or the physical bodily gesture of the artist, because I’m a maker too, so I appreciate that.”

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Lim also chooses to live with art that allows for a kind of participation as a viewer: “There’s always an unfinished sentence that we as viewers must inject into it. That’s the collaboration, I think, between the artist and the viewer.”

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These ideas of personal memories and transcendence lead us to Lim’s Helmut Lang sculpture. “Helmut Lang is a fashion hero to me. In my first years in the fashion industry, Helmut Lang was the designer, and when he transformed himself into an artist, I stumbled upon this at a gallery on the Bowery,” he notes.

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Helmut Lang’s Untitled, 2010–2013, rests against the wall in Phillip Lim’s home in conversation with the Buddha statue and the work by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Image credit: Phillip Lim.

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Of his first encounter with the Lang work, Lim recalls, “When you walked into the gallery, you saw all the colors, but they were reimagining sculptural forms, and what we’re looking at here is a nod to his good friend Louise Bourgeois — because that’s the pink of hers. It’s that beautiful pink that, in fashion, we always call ‘sickly pink.’”

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Lim is quick to point out that there is more than initially meets the eye in this work: “You can see that he took his archives and melted them down with resin. So, in these polls exist the last remnants of his archives. To me, it is a metamorphosis from a former life, and I fell in love right away.”

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He goes on, “It’s so inspiring to see someone have the courage to transform and find a new life, to have a ceremonial process that’s so personal to take that former life and transform it as the materials for the new life.”

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At a certain point, there is art that you love immediately, and then there’s art that you invest in — that you love no matter what. It’s not about the trend, it’s about what resonates with you, what moves you, because at the end of the day, you have to live with it.
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—Phillip Lim
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In the gallery at Phillips

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Turning our attention to the works on view at Phillips, Lim shares that he loves to browse auction previews, taking in all there is to see in New York this time of year.

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“God, I mean there are so many beautiful pieces, but I love this Isamu. Talk about goals, right?” Lim says with a hopeful smile.

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Isamu Noguchi, To Split and Carve, 1979. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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It makes sense that Noguchi’s work would resonate so strongly with a fashion designer like Lim. He sees a kindred spirit in it, comparing the work to his own creative approach.

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“It’s just so beautiful, and what I love about this is the contradiction, the rough texture on the outside and the smooth inside. To the eye, it’s just like, ‘What is this? Two pieces of broken rock or something?’ But I love the tension. I love that there is another meaning to what you see. This relates to what I do, bringing very contrasting textures into fashion, building collections out of that through materiality and polishing or tailoring something that might be so rough.”

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He pauses for a moment, looking at the work. “I feel that here. I feel his hand.”

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Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1966. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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Lim is similarly struck by a personal connection to works on view by Agnes Martin.

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“It’s the meditative quality here,” he explains. “For me, art is the spiritual experience, and seeing this brings me back to my childhood, my upbringing. In grade school, we learn this double idea that’s especially strong with the political climate right now. We’re taught to stay within the lines, we’re taught to be so careful, and to not be bolder than who we are. But growing up in America, you realize that’s not always the path you take, because at a certain point you rebel,” he says. “You end up in this state where you find that balance between who you really are, but at the same time, how much you stay in the lines.”

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“I know that’s such a weird resonance on me, but that’s my story in this piece,” says Lim.

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Louise Fishman, Kaddish, 1988. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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Throughout our conversation, it becomes clear that themes of transcendence abound in Lim’s collection, and to that end, Louise Fishman’s Kaddish catches his eye.

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“I like it because it’s a black void, and it’s subliminal,” he says. “You see what you see, and I think over time, this type of art actually becomes more powerful when you live with it. It’s just like a spiritual experience.”

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Then, as they tend to do, a work by Yoshitomo Nara stops us.

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Yoshitomo Nara, My Life, 2006. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Afternoon Session.

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“I wouldn’t mind this Nara either,” Lim jokes. “And basically, it is a perfect summation of what’s happening right now. That’s the thing about art and artists, they have this superpower of just encapsulating the zeitgeist in their work. And right now, it’s like my life is being crushed,” he says, now laughing.

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On building relationships and community

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Lim also enjoys collecting for the relationships that can form with artists. As he’s drawn to artists whose works have a throughline over time, a style you can recognize but that isn’t static, he appreciates collecting multiple works from living artists to see their approach evolve. He’s particularly fond of the American artist N. Dash.

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“I met N. Dash through BJ — my friend, my muse,” he recalls. “She brought me to her studio when she was at Columbia. I walked in and met this powerhouse of a woman. She has a tiny, petite stature, but her spirit is so powerful. I saw these two nude photographs on the wall behind her in the dark room, and I immediately asked to buy them.”

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As the years have passed, Lim has collected works from her various exhibitions, forming a personal collection that showcases her development, hoping one day to loan works from his collection to a retrospective exhibition of Dash’s work.

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He explains, “In her work, there’s a throughline with the materials used, the narration, the tactility, and the methodology, and it always comes back to her using art as a way to manage her anxiety. And I love that because I can relate to that and it’s such an impressive body of work. To me, she’s a true artist. She embodies what an artist is.”

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Another artist Lim has come to know well is Bill Jacobson. He tells us it is “one of those fortunate relationships where I started collecting his work, and then I had the privilege to meet him. We collaborated on a book project when we opened the store on Great Jones. He documented the building of it through his lens and his genius, and it really goes back to this idea of just impermanence and that void.”

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Phillip Lim at home with Bill Jacobson’s New Year’s Day #5801, 2003. Image credit: Ark Journal.

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Lim has also supported female artists and makers from the AAPI community, and we ask him how this influences his approach to collecting and his creative work.

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“I think for so long, Asian female artists haven’t been seen. They’re not heard. You don’t even know who exists. And there are so many talented ones!” he says. “Supporting this group is a fun way to engage and build community because, at the end of the day, art, fashion, film, media, it’s all related. So, we’re always asking how we can champion each other and how do we celebrate each other?”

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In terms of how this might impact his own creative vision, Lim’s answer is nuanced: “When people ask me this question of how my heritage influences my work, it is a difficult one,” he says. “Asian culture is not a showy, in-your-face, obvious thing. It inherently goes back to the value of integrity, the grit of establishing and appreciating beauty in all forms. So, in my work, I always say to people that you’ll never see my Asianness — you’ll just feel it.”

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We point out that these themes are also felt when viewing his collection. Though you may not necessarily see overt Eastern aesthetics in the works, you can feel his profound personal reverence, respect, and intention flowing through the collection.

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“Yes, that’s it, there you go. End of the interview!” he replies with a knowing grin.

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Discover More from Modern & Contemporary Art >

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Recommended Reading

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Artists to Watch: New York >

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How to Build a World >

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NOW AND THEN: Cecily Brown, Sahara Longe, and Edgar Degas >

\n","2024-11-11T14:25:11.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/151456301/perspectives-an-afternoon-with-phillip-lim-art-collecting-new-york",2325,4758,151456301,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/li-hei-di-83707cc9-f59c-4b27-8fb0-effbae4bbb7f_s600x0.jpg","The rising stars and rediscoveries that catch our eyes this November.","Artists to Watch: New York","

Li Hei Di, Unfolding a flood, 2022. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Evening Sale.

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Li Hei Di

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Chinese-born, London-based artist Li Hei Di has quickly established themselves as a compelling voice in contemporary art, known for exploring identity, desire, and transformation. Painted in 2022, Unfolding a flood powerfully demonstrates Li’s ability to merge personal experience with broader cultural narratives. The painting’s vibrant energy and emotional depth exemplify Li’s skill in navigating the space between abstraction and figuration, creating work that is both intimate and universally resonant. Through their innovative use of color, form, and narrative, Li captures a journey of becoming and creating — carving out space in a world that often seeks to constrain or define. The ghost-like figures and shifting structures in Unfolding a flood reveal the fractal, nonlinear process of self-discovery, where everything remains possible and undefined.

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Born in 1997, Li became the youngest artist on the roster of Pace Gallery just this September. Their first solo exhibition was held at Linseed Projects, Shanghai (2022), with subsequent solo exhibitions at Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2023), and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2024). Li’s work is held in the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Long Museum, Shanghai; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Yageo Foundation, Taipei, and others.

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Antonio Obá

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Antonio Obá, Cura, 2020. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Afternoon Session.

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Antonio Obá’s works probe the ambiguity and history that define contemporary Brazilian cultural identity, often exploring the confluence between his figure’s bodies and their surrounding landscape. To see this, look no further than his glowing 2020 work Cura, which draws our eye to a lone male figure holding a lit candle in a rural grove. The work expresses the artist’s meditative state when painting, an act that follows multiple lines of inquiry while immersed in solitude and the metaphysical experience of the Brazilian sertão, or backcountry. As the artist has explained, “I elaborate upon memories, fears, solitude — questions that are relevant to every human being. For me, it is about that: attempting to converse through experiences that are mine but that also resonate with those from others.”

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Born in 1983 in Ceilândia, Brazil, he currently lives and works in Brasília, where he engages in his multi-faceted practice through painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Obá’s work has been celebrated in recent solo exhibitions at Mendes Wood DM, New York (2023); Pina Contemporânea, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2022); and X Museum, Beijing, China (2022). His works are also included in several important collections, including the Tate Modern, the Pinault Collection, and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

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Joseph Yaeger

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Joseph Yaeger, We are constantly on trial, 2020. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Afternoon Session.

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As much as Joseph Yaeger’s works give us the space to imagine what’s beyond the canvas’ borders, what lingers in our memory is his ability to focus our vision on an unexpected detail within the frame. For the artist, this is intentional, as the function of memory is a key theme in his works. This is seen clearly in We are constantly on trial, with its watercolor paint seeming to swim across the gessoed linen surface, echoing the feeling of grasping for a fleeting memory. Cinematic and whimsical, the work expresses the sensation of the event it depicts but with a sense of distance akin to the hazy recollection of a dream.

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A few moments of contemplation before this work makes it clear why the young artist has caught the attention of art lovers around the globe. His 2021 work Sphinx without a secret achieved a resounding success at Phillips last month, achieving more than 10 times its low estimate. Born in 1986, the American artist is now based in London, where he completed his MFA at the Royal College of Art in 2019, just one year before executing this work. Yager’s work has been presented in numerous acclaimed solo and group exhibitions, including at Hauser & Wirth, The Perimeter in London, and Antenna Space in Shanghai. He is represented globally by Modern Art, London, and Gladstone Gallery notably announced their US representation of the artist this past October.

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Yuan Fang

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Yuan Fang, Tickling II, 2023. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Afternoon Session.

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Enter a room where a work by Yuan Fang is hung, and you’ll be instantly drawn to its slithering pulse. Her works present a visual enigma — we can sense linearity, but our eyes can’t trace where any one line begins or ends. They resonate with a psychological interiority and physicality that’s reminiscent of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner but further evoke a feminine sense of resilience with soft lyricism that expresses the conflicts of selfhood. Fang was first drawn to image-making as a young adult while battling a depressive episode, and she took to drawing in sketchbooks to escape reality. This habit evolved into a painting practice that has caught eyes around the globe, and the monumental Tickling II is emblematic of why — its articulate sense of motion imparts a visceral reaction when standing before it.

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Born in 1996 in Shenzhen, China, Fang eventually settled in New York, where she earned degrees at the School of Visual Arts under the mentorship of James Siena and Marilyn Minter. Her work is already held in prominent collections around the globe, including the ICA, Miami; FLAG Art Foundation, New York; and The Long Museum, Shanghai. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Prince & Wooster, New York; Bill Brady Gallery, Los Angeles; ARM Gallery, New York; and more. In 2024, she was included in Forbes Asia’s 30-under-30 list.

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Robert Zehnder

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Robert Zehnder, Mineral Stop Light, 2022. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Afternoon Session.

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Drawing on his childhood experience in suburban New Jersey, Robert Zehnder’s paintings seem to imagine a world in which the earth looked at suburbia and decided to fight back. Tellingly, his landscapes remove all human presence, suggesting a natural state of adaptation and rehabilitation in the face of ecological and societal anxieties. His 2022 work Mineral Stop Light showcases the artist’s distinctive halo-like coloration of bulbous natural forms that seem to shift beneath a swirling, ominous sky. The work draws comparisons between the built environment and the natural one through its quilt-like composition, calling attention to the scene’s constructed nature and presenting the natural world in a manner almost as constructed as suburbia itself.

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Currently based in Brooklyn, Zehnder earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 and has worked as a studio assistant to the Swiss artist Nicolas Party. Since then, Zehnder’s works have been included in lauded exhibitions throughout the Midwest, New York, and Los Angeles. His works are in the permanent collections of the ICA Miami, The Mint Museum in North Carolina, the Aishti Foundation, and the Morgan Stanley Art Collection, among others.

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Lawrence Calcagno

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Lawrence Calcagno, Untitled Landscape, 1983. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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The full scope of Lawrence Calcagno’s (1913–1993) legacy is only beginning to come into full focus. He’s typically described as a San Francisco School Abstract Expressionist, but this does little to convey the pioneering nature of his practice. His works combine influences from his teachers, including Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, and Clyfford Still, with a psychological approach to landscape. Whereas the expressive potential of the prevailing Abstract Expressionist movement was drawn from subconscious expressivity, Calcagno curiously applies a similar approach to the landscape’s astonishing breadth and power, drawing from the imprints left on his subconscious by the Pacific Coast’s horizon lines. This approach is seen in this 1983 work’s horizontal bands of purple, pink, and blue that confront us like a foggy memory of a quintessentially Californian vision.

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Following his training at the California School of Fine Arts, Calcagno took to Europe, perhaps motivated by the region’s more tolerant view of homosexuality at the time. He studied in Paris at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière, befriending the painter Beauford Delaney, who became his lover and lifelong friend. The complexity of Calcagno’s approach and way of life may have proved too difficult for the prevailing culture to grasp during his lifetime. We can only imagine that the vestiges of this complexity could cause such a visionary American artist — who was featured in the Whitney Biennial no less than nine times — to be overlooked. Today, 31 years after his passing, his work deserves another look.

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Sonia Gechtoff

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Sonia Gechtoff, In the Red, 2016. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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The unique and personal approach to abstraction cultivated by Sonia Gechtoff over nearly six decades of practice is on full display in In the Red, executed just two years before the artist’s passing in 2018. The work immerses viewers in a swirl of flame-like abstractions that play out across a carefully controlled composition. These two visual forces — combined with Gechtoff’s distinctive use of the palette knife and graphite cross-hatching — explore the boundaries between the geometric and the gestural, as well as between painting and drawing. All told, it’s a captivating image that explores how expressive freedom can rest on top of a more rigid structure, akin to a complex trumpet solo heard over a repetitive harmonic progression in the kind of jazz music Gechtoff would have heard when she moved to San Francisco in the 1950s.

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The daughter of a painter and a gallery owner, Sonia Gechtoff was born in Philadelphia in 1926 and enjoyed a successful career. Her work was included in a group show of young painters at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1954, where it was seen alongside such giants as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock. By 1957, she was the subject of two west-coast solo exhibitions at San Francisco’s de Young Museum and the Los Angeles’ Ferus Gallery. Her works are in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Denver Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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Maija Peeples-Bright

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Maija Peeples-Bright, Goose Grand with Geraniums, circa 1970s. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Morning Session.

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Latvian-born artist Maija Peeples-Bright lovingly depicts various animal figures that she fondly calls “beasties.” In Goose Grand with Geraniums, we sense the joy Peeples-Bright feels for nature across each side of the four panels. Associated with both the Funk Art and Nut Art movements, her works reveal a jubilant reverence for figuration and embrace the phantasmagorical. This approach is immediately striking in this work, where a menagerie of birds and giraffes smiles back at us through the depths of the picture planes, surrounded by uplifting flora and peaceful blue skies.

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At 82 years old, Maija Peeples-Bright is still on a hot streak. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Parker Gallery in Los Angeles and Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco, in addition to inclusions in group exhibitions at Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles, Museum of Art and Design in New York. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, California; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; and the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio.

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George Rouy

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George Rouy, Through the Window, 2018. Modern & Contemporary Art New York Day Sale, Afternoon Session.

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George Rouy’s amorphous figures exist in a world where references to Old Master allegorical paintings meet the dreamlike visual aesthetic of contemporary digital life. In Through the Window, we spy two figures in an embrace, their gender identity obscured, and their pose suggestive of both ardent passion and the poses of 15th-century lamentation scenes. It’s a characteristic way of presenting imagery for Rouy, who draws as much influence from Jean Fouquet and Rogier van der Weyden as he does from soft-focus camera lenses, digital glitches, and Instagram filters. His works investigate today’s crises of isolation and identity while referencing the very imagery from the past that laid the foundations for Western aesthetics.

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Living and working in Kent, England, Rouy received his BFA from Camberwell College of Arts in London in 2015. Since then, his works have been seen in lauded solo exhibitions, including Endless Song at Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2023); Body Suit at Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2023); George Rouy: Belly ache at Almine Reich, Paris (2022) and Maelstrom at Peres Projects, Berlin (2020). He is currently the youngest artist on Hauser & Wirth’s roster.

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Discover More from Modern & Contemporary Art >

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Recommended Reading

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PERSPECTIVES: An Afternoon with Phillip Lim >

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How to Build a World >

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NOW AND THEN: Cecily Brown, Sahara Longe, and Edgar Degas >

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“Not to be shocking means to agree to be furniture”
\n —Peter Saul, 1967

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White Boy Learns a Lesson, 1967 is a significant work within Peter Saul’s acclaimed Vietnam series (circa 1965-1970), a collection of paintings and drawings that vividly captures the horrors of the Vietnam War and its broader implications on American society. Among the most impactful of Saul's career, many of these works are now housed in the permanent collections of major public institutions, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole. Recognized as critical examples of Saul’s ability to confront the most pressing issues of his time, the Vietnam paintings use a visual language that is both disturbing and darkly humorous. White Boy Learns a Lesson stands alongside these works as a powerful example of Saul’s unapologetically confrontational style, blending satire, phantasmagoria, and pop culture aesthetics to critique the harsh realities of war and the uncompromising nature of American politics and culture.

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“The Vietnam paintings were of such a convulsive beauty that they burned instantly into your subconscious, the most impolite art imaginable.”
\n—Jim ShawWhite Boy Learns a Lesson offers a psychedelic critique of the political turbulence of the 1960s. At its center, bloody drips and a splash of red personify America's fear of communism’s spread. The central figure, a soldier bound between two palm trees, is depicted as both a victim of the military-industrial complex and an enforcer of capitalist greed. Stripped from the waist down, he is pulled apart in pursuit of money and resources, with his excrement forming a dollar sign behind him. A gold necklace and phallic symbol hang from his wrists, symbolizing the spoils of war and aggression. The Day-Glo palette, energetic composition, and disproportioned figure might initially seem whimsical, but the painting delivers a sharp critique of American policies during the Vietnam War. Channeling the distinctive and comical style of MAD magazine, Saul uses grotesque caricatures to express his disdain for Cold War propaganda and the rise of militarization. The chaotic scene, set in a barren, war-torn landscape, portrays greed and retribution, with the soldier depicted as a nightmarish fusion of body parts, fluids, and feces—both an instrument and a victim of the cycle of violence and destruction. In this context, Saul’s use of a graphic and cartoonish style, with its associations with entertainment and childhood innocence, creates a disturbing contrast with the brutal subject matter, underscoring the moral dissonance of the war. In the lower left corner, stylized “chop suey lettering”ⁱ—an Orientalist mimicry typeface with a visual style intended to communicate “Asianness” through its fluid brush movements resembling traditional Chinese calligraphy—spell out “White Boy Learns a Lesson,” highlighting Saul’s critique of the war’s hypocrisies through the appropriation of misinterpreted aesthetics.

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Reflecting on his use of text to enhance the visual impact of his paintings from this period, Saul explains, “The real purpose of my words and images was to be un-cool, to be a sweaty maniac of art, opposed to Kenneth Noland and Andy Warhol, the fashionable artists of that time.ⁱⁱHe continues, “The relationship between words and images is that I want the words to help the images—to be more easily understood, more insolent, funnier; whatever help the image might need.”ⁱⁱⁱ In the present work, the text and title hint at a narrative of awakening or reckoning, a recurring theme in Saul’s work from this period.

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“My pictures always give me a hard time psychologically, [they] are meant as a kind of ‘cold shower’ for other people, to make them aware of their own feelings, or ‘social skin.’”
\n —Peter SaulThrough powerful antiwar paintings like the present work, characterized by angry, hectic scenes, Saul positioned himself against the cool detachment of Pop Art and Minimalism, aligning instead with the irreverent attitude of the Chicago-based Hairy Who collective and the colorful, unbridled work of artists like Jim Nutt. Saul's output from this period is marked by exaggerated, cartoon-like forms that underscore the absurdity and cruelty of the war, delivering what Saul likens to a "cold shower" meant to shake viewers out of their complacency.^iv In White Boy Learns a Lesson, a rubberized human figure twists and stretches in the style of figura serpentinata—a term from 16th-century Mannerist art describing a human figure spiraling around a central axis in a contorted pose. This formal elegance momentarily captivates the viewer, but it's the content that delivers the impact. Saul’s goal is to intrigue or confound: “If my painting doesn’t leap off the wall,” he says, “I get mad at it.”^v

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\"\" — [Left] After a model by Giambologna, *Bathing Venus,* early 17^th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Ogden Mills, 1924
\n[Right] Salvador Dalí, *Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)*, 1936. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-41, Artwork: © 2024 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Artwork: © 2024 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Historically, White Boy Learns a Lesson connects to a broader tradition of satirical and political art, inviting comparisons to Francisco Goya’s 1810-1820 series The Disasters of War and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Saul’s work is also forward-looking, influencing later generations of artists, particularly those associated with Pop Surrealism, Neo-Expressionism, and contemporary figurative painting. Demonstrated in seminal works like White Boy Learns a Lesson, Saul’s bold use of color, inflated forms, and satirical social commentary on mass culture can be seen in the radical accessibility Keith Haring, whose artist-activist work addressed the intersecting crises of HIV/AIDS, racism, and homophobia in the 1980s, as well as in the work of contemporary artists such as Katherine Bernhardt, Dana Schutz, and Carroll Dunham, who continue to push the boundaries of traditional painting by blending high and low culture in provocative ways.

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“If a picture isn’t troubling, why even think about it?”
\n—Peter Saul

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ⁱPaul Shaw, “Stereo Types,” Print Magazine, June 17, 2009, online.

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ⁱⁱ Peter Saul, quoted in “Peter Saul on The Spot,” Peter Saul, exh. cat., Les Sables d’Olonne, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, 1999, p. 60.

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ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid.

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^iv Peter Saul, quoted in “Letters to His Dealer,” Peter Saul, exh. cat., New York, Allan Frumkin Gallery, 1986, unpaginated.

\n\n

^v Peter Saul, quoted in Scott Indrisek, “Peter Saul Paints the Carnage,” GQ Style, February 27, 2020, online.

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140

Peter Saul

White Boy Learns a Lesson

Further Details

Full-Cataloguing

Peter Saul