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"The subject is not the artist himself, but the bipolar state of the subject of painting. To look at these self-portraits as a departure from Stingel’s earlier work is a mistake. This new work is one of the many parallel paths of his continuation of the autobiography of painting."
—Francesco BonamiPainted in 2007, Rudolf Stingel’s Untitled belongs to his highly acclaimed series of photorealistic self-portraits that reflect the artist’s explorations on the possibilities of painting. From reinventing floors and walls as picture planes, to recasting antiquated wallpaper as painted surfaces, Stingel’s investigations and self-reflexive practice evolved in 2005, when he began to incorporate photorealistic portraiture into his practice. Often using his own likeness, Stingel positions these portraits at the interstices of painting and photography, moving between original and reproduction, subject and creator, reality and illusion. Based on a photograph taken around the time of the artist’s 50th birthday, Untitled comprises a significant chapter in a narrative autobiography of existential disquiet.
Gerhard Richter, Selbstportrait (Self-Portrait), 1996. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Image and Artwork: © 2021 Gerhard Richter (0220)Stingel’s photo-based portraiture has occupied an important place in his conceptually loaded painterly practice since its beginnings. Conceived at the height of the artist’s career, the series comprises paintings based on various photographs by Sam Samore and Roland Bolego that portray Stingel both brooding over and celebrating his half-century birthday in a nondescript luxury hotel room. Offering a poignant vignette of the ambivalent ruminations that often accompany this significant milestone of life, the present work depicts the artist looking directly at the camera with his hand resting on his cheek. Despite his sharp attire embodying sophistication and worldly accomplishment, his heavy eyes and deep gaze exude a sense of melancholy, reflection, and realization as he crosses the threshold of midlife, perhaps staring into a past of memories or a future inching closer to mortality.
Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2005-2006. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Artwork: © Rudolf Stingel. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New YorkIn Untitled, Stingel’s transposition of the photograph onto the canvas is at once faithful and transformative. The granularity of the photographic still is transposed under the artist’s painterly hand through dabs of impasto in varying grayscale tones. He renders the distinguished tussles of his silvery hair and his salt-and-pepper beard through touches of white pigment, which he also employs with remarkable veracity to denote light against shadow in every detail, including his glistening eyes and the sparkling ring. Here, the artist offers us a seemingly reliable glimpse of the photograph, whilst intervening our perceptual grasp with the notable painterly qualities of the composition that alert to its artificiality—leaving the viewer’s encounter of the original image just out of reach in a painterly haze.
Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait with Skull, 1978. Artwork: © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by ARS, NY"[Stingel] is equally part of a tradition of European... painters who have continued to explore the possibilities of painting in a way that is neither nostalgic nor reactionary. Stingel adds to this tradition in that all of his work speaks about the passage of time, moving from the photographic to the cinematic."
—Gary Carrion MurayariStingel’s mediation establishes a visual and conceptual distance between the viewer and his source image, a fundamental element of his practice. In addition to detaching the work from its source, this separation is further aggravated by the artist’s use of a borrowed, rather than self-taken, photograph for the painting, thereby destabilizing the authenticity of authorship that ostensibly characterizes self-portraiture. “The element of painting that Stingel keeps most estranged from the viewer is the presence and the value of the artist as a unique individual...Stingel only allows his own [labor] into the work in an indexical manner,” Gary Carrion-Murayari articulated. “[His] use of photography as the basis for these works removes the possibility of insight into the artist’s psyche.”i
Film still of Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, 1963The authorial elusiveness of Stingel’s practice as demonstrated in Untitled further rises to the surface in relation to autobiography. Despite its seemingly autobiographical presentation, the scene in the original photograph itself is entirely staged. The artist’s heavy-handed depiction of midlife contemplation and angst is a kind of histrionic enactment as Stingel—like Federico Fellini in his seminal film 8 ½—depicts himself in the oxymoron of an invented autobiography, offering the viewer with an imagined experience of reality. Playing himself in the story of his life, Stingel creates a “fictional documentary,” in Francesco Bonami’s words, that inhabits the liminal spaces between the real, the true, and the fictional.ii
i Gary Carrion-Murayari, “Untitled,” in Rudolf Stingel, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2007, p. 112.
ii Francesco Bonami, “Paintings of Painting for Paintings: The Kairology and Kronology of Rudolf Stingel,” The Painting Factory, May 26, 2016.Provenance
The artist
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2015)
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
Riehen, Fondation Beyeler, Rudolf Stingel, May 26 - October 6, 2019, p. 7 (illustrated)
Artist Biography
Rudolf Stingel
Italian • 1956
Rudolf Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s for his insistence on the conceptual act of painting in a context in which it had been famously declared dead. Despite the prevailing minimalist and conceptual narrative of the time, the Italian-born artist sought to confront the fundamental aspirations and failures of Modernist painting through the very medium of painting itself. While his works do not always conform to the traditional definitions of painting, their attention to surface, space, color and image provide new and expanded ways of thinking about the process and "idea" of painting. Central to his multifarious and prolific oeuvre is an examination of the passage of time and the probing of the fundamental questions of authenticity, meaning, hierarchy, authorship and context by dislocating painting both internally and in time and space. Stingel is best known for his wall-to-wall installations, constructed of fabric or malleable Celotex sheets, as well as his seemingly more traditional oil-on-canvas paintings.
Property from a European Collection
13
Untitled
signed and dated "Stingel 2007" on the reverse
oil on linen
15 x 20 1/2 in. (38.1 x 52.1 cm)
Painted in 2007.
Estimate
$1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
New York Head of Department & Head of Auctions
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 17 November 2021
1
Shara Hughes
Inside Outside
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $877,000
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3
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Girl in Blue
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $730,800
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4
Kwesi Botchway
Green Sofa
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $214,200
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5
Titus Kaphar
Fade With Time
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $816,500
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6
David Hammons
Puzzling Times
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $877,000
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7
Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Let him come...)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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8
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $11,870,000
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9
Georgia O'Keeffe
Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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10
Alexander Calder
White Moon
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,628,000
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11
Cecily Brown
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
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12
Willem de Kooning
Composition
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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13
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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14
This lot is no longer available.
15
Amy Sherald
Welfare Queen
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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16
Francis Bacon
'Pope with Owls'
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $33,000,000
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17
Luc Tuymans
Wallpaper
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,250,000
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18
Pierre Bonnard
Panier de fruit
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $4,991,000
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19
Honor Titus
Linden Blvd Jazz Radio
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $163,800
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20
Matthew Wong
Time After Time
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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21
Avery Singer
European Ego Ideal
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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22
Mark Tansey
Garden
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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23
KAWS
THE WAY HE KNOWS
Estimate $850,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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24
Wassily Kandinsky
Fliessend
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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25
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (from Famous Negro Athlete Series)
Estimate $750,000 - 1,100,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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26
Peter Saul
Ice Box #3
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $441,000
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27
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (The Door)
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $8,549,500
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28
Emily Mae Smith
Feast and Famine
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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29
Gerhard Richter
Weiß (White)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,717,000
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30
Robert Ryman
Series #25 (White)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,421,500
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31
Frank Stella
Double Concentric Square
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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32
Carmen Herrera
Amarillo y Negro
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $630,000
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33
Andy Warhol
The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,806,000
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34
Christopher Wool
Blue Fool
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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35
This lot is no longer available.
36
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Six PM, Malaga
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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37
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah #5
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $504,000
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38
Mike Kelley
Memory Ware Flat #3
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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39
George Condo
Collision Course
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Untitled (from Fifteen Pairs of Hands)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $983,000
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41
David Hammons
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,660,000
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42
Nicolas Party
Houses
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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43
Hurvin Anderson
Country Club—Mixed Doubles
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $604,800
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44
Max Ernst
Ohne Titel (les hommes ne le sauront jamais)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Max Ernst
Kachina, le chien de Peggy Guggenheim
Estimate $280,000 - 350,000
Sold for $277,200
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46
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
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47
Reggie Burrows Hodges
On the Verge: Green
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $567,000
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48
Max Ernst
Portrait de Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $176,400
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