Ross Bleckner - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 16, 2006 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Mary Boone Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Image of Abstraction, July 10 – October 9, 1988
    Donaueschingen, Fürstenberg Sammlungen, ahead of the 21st Century—The Pisces Collection, June 2002 – October 2004, no. 7, p. 35 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “All that remains is light - light created out of a dialectic between opposites, between black and white, between optical and painterly. Light is created out of "bad art," out of an adolescent remembrance of Op Art, of Cape Canaveral, of the New York World's Fair, of America's Golden Age. The thoughts spiral endlessly backwards and forwards. And the light repulses. The eyes cannot focus on the blurred, wavering bands. Then, the light metamorphoses into the bars that block the way into the painting. But Bleckner's paintings do not remain simply a critique of postwar American culture, for Bleckner has recovered another important key: the knowledge that inherent in Op, inherent in the abstract, pulsating cosmos that it suggests, is the psychadelic and the transcendent. In fact the '60's exploited this potential fully. The syntax of Op Art, the light and dark undulating bands, was dislocated from its technocratic context and adopted as a symbol for the psychadelic, the visionary quest of the post-industrial age.” (Peter Halley, taken from “Ross Bleckner: Painting at the End of History”, Arts Magazine, New York, Vol. 56, No. 9, May 1981)

  • Artist Biography

    Ross Bleckner

    American • 1949

    Ross Bleckner's large-scale, almost-cosmic abstract paintings came to define a certain aesthetic era in New York in the 1980s and '90s. As much known for his celebrity friendships and Sex and the City references to his long-time relationship with gallerist Mary Boone, Bleckner is somewhat of a star, especially as the youngest artist to receive a solo retrospective at the Guggenheim at the age of 46. 

    His circular dot paintings, which serve as both activism and tribute to the disastrous impact of the AIDS empidemic on New York's gay community, are some of his most buzzed-about and recognizable works still today. However, his heydey was hardly just the '90s—with international gallery exhibitions yearly and a steady, accessible market that has held its value; in 2016, Artnet described Bleckner as an "'80s Art World 'It' Boy Having a New York Moment" when he had six shows running concurrently.

    View More Works

44

Fallen Sky

1981
Oil on canvas.
108 x 78 in. (274.3 x 198.1 cm).
Signed, titled and dated “Ross Bleckner ‘Fallen Sky’ 1985 – 1981 o/c” on the reverse.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $96,000

Contemporary Art Part I

16 Nov 2006, 7pm
New York