Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
"When I draw the skin of my subjects, I really want people to travel throughout them. The surface isn’t something I trifle with. In the making of the work, skin is the geography I travel in order to discover each individual and his/her story. With every line I mark up, I map out the territory of their realities."
—Toyin Ojih Odutola
Thomas Eakins, Thomas Eakins and John Laurie Wallace on a Beach, ca. 1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art An exquisite drawing presenting an intimate portrait of two nude figures in posterior view, Quality Control is a breathtaking example of Toyin Ojih Odutola’s critically acclaimed oeuvre. Celebrated for her reinterpretation and reinvention of traditional portraiture and narrative figuration, Ojih Odutola is best known for her works on paper that that explore the topography of skin through a range of materials such as markers, pencils, pens, and charcoal. Through the artist’s meticulous attention to line, palette, form, these figures—likely adapted from a photograph by Thomas Eakins—transform into a kaleidoscopic study of the relationship between context and perception, mark-making and material. Executed in 2015, the present work was exhibited in Ojih Odutola’s solo show, Of Context and Without, at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, in 2016.
"The act of drawing for me is a cultivating act…Each drawing I create is my way of crafting a home for myself."
—Toyin Ojih Odutola
[left] Pablo Picasso, The Embrace, 1903. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, Image: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [right] Pippo Rizzo, Adam and Eve, 1932. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Image: © Alinari Archives / Art Resource, NY Influenced by a vast range of artists including Lucian Freud, John Singer Sargent, Wangechi Mutu, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ojin Odutola’s work is also informed by her personal history. Born in Ife, Nigeria, in 1985, and raised in Alabama, Ojih Odutola developed a view of the self as inherently multivalent. Investigating the malleability of identity and perception as a recurring theme in her oeuvre, she employs the skin as her vehicle of exploration. On her body of drawings including the present work, the artist explained, “[It] is a play on perception with mark-making, or the “line,” as an agent of identification, and how our attempts at demarcation create more obfuscation than clarity. The central component is the marks that are made to delineate and create singularities within an image...How far could I push it to create something “Other” that felt simultaneously familiar?”i In the present work, the skin of figures are rendered in varying tones of gray, at once evoking unveiled flesh and a topographic map. “In Quality Control,” Ian Bourland observes, “musculature is rendered gelid and orphic, as luminescent washes of cool blues and purples. Race seems suspended here, but that may be incidental—Ojih Odutola’s stunning formalism transports the viewer to invisible somatic topographies beneath and beyond the flesh.”ii
"The style I employ for the skin is riddled with tensions inherent in the mark-making, and I always like to tease those tensions out slightly, playing with the planes and crevices of the skin’s form—for the skin is a bit of a puzzle I’m trying to solve."
—Toyin Ojih Odutola
Michelangelo, Male Nude Seen From the Back With a Flag Staff, ca. 1504. The Albertina Museum, Vienna Pushing the possibilities of line and form, Quality Control exemplifies how Ojih Odutola investigates the self through skin while reflexively discovering the skin through her complex mark-making and engagement of materials. “The marks aren’t placed automatically, nor repetitively; they only seem to be,” she elucidates. “When I am drawing the skin, I am mapping out a territory, which seems familiar to me but is always strange and foreign whenever I engage with it. So, I am discovering it as I am drawing out the figure. The tensions that arise and reveal themselves become so in the process of the making.”iii Here, the modulations of tone from the tensional pressure of the marker themselves render the striations of the musculature, while the artist’s attentive touches in graphite render the hair of the figures. Showcasing Ojih Odutola’s remarkable fluidity with the economy of line to realize lavishly detailed form, the present work exposes the layers under the surface of the skin to capture a tender picture of humanity.
i Toyin Ojih Odutola, quoted in Emory Lopiccolo, “Toyin Ojih Odutola’s ‘Of Context and Without’ at Jack Shainman,” Whitewall, January 26, 2016, online.
ii Ian Bourland, “Critics’ Picks: Toyin Ojih Odutola,” Artforum, 2016, online.
iii Toyin Ojih Odutola quoted in Kristin Farr, “Toyin Ojih Odutola: Infinite Possibility,” Juxtapoz Magazine, November 2017, online.
Provenance
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
New York, Jack Shainman Gallery, Off Context and Without, December 11, 2015 – January 30, 2016
Toronto, MCA Gallery, The Mecca, April 1 - May 1, 2016
Property from an East Coast Collection
43
Quality Control
signed, titled and dated “Toyin Odutola 2015 QUALITY CONTROL” on the reverse
marker and pencil on paper
64 3/4 x 42 in. (164.5 x 106.7 cm)
Executed in 2015.
Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $340,200
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Auctions
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 23 June 2021
1
Cinga Samson
Two piece 1
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $378,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
2
Jadé Fadojutimi
Untitled
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $390,600
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
3
Salman Toor
Fort Greene
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $478,800
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
4
Avery Singer
Untitled
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $4,144,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
5
Matthew Wong
The Reader
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $2,329,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
6
Winston Churchill
The Moat, Breccles
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,845,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
7
Matthew Wong
Field in a Dream
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
8
Jean Dubuffet
L'homme à la toque
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,571,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
9
Emily Mae Smith
Waiting Room
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $756,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
10
Nicole Eisenman
Whatever Guy
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $840,700
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
11
Norman Lewis
Abstract City
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,119,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
12
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Bananas
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,300,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
13
David Hockney
A Neat Lawn
Estimate $9,500,000 - 10,500,000
Sold for $11,000,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
14
Vija Celmins
Untitled (Ocean)
Estimate $5,500,000 - 6,500,000
Sold for $7,748,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
15
Carmen Herrera
Green and Orange
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,200,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
16
This lot is no longer available.
17
Brice Marden
Elements III
Estimate $3,200,000 - 3,800,000
Sold for $5,233,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
18
Amoako Boafo
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $655,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
19
Titus Kaphar
Untitled III
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $1,058,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
20
Amy Sherald
It Made Sense...Mostly In Her Mind
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $3,539,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
21
Wayne Thiebaud
Winding River
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $9,809,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
22
Mark Rothko
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,700,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
23
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Batman
Estimate $1,600,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,800,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
24
Keith Haring
Untitled (For John Sex)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $899,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
25
Takashi Murakami
Red Demon and Blue Demon with 48 Arhats
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,080,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
26
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (940-2)
Estimate $4,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for $5,112,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
27
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,902,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
28
Willem de Kooning
East Hampton V
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $3,055,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
29
Amy Sillman
Flower Giver
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $598,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
30
Alexander Calder
Fourteen Black Leaves
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,300,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
31
This lot is no longer available.
32
Julie Curtiss
Three Widows
Estimate $110,000 - 150,000
Sold for $466,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
33
Norman Rockwell
My Mother (Soldier with French Woman)
Estimate $350,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
34
Richard Prince
Nurses Dormitory #3
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
35
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Jessica
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,542,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
36
Andy Warhol
Mao
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,000,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
37
Georg Baselitz
Drei Herzen (Three Hearts)
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
38
Carl Andre
36 Copper Square
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
39
Robert Rauschenberg
Untitled (Elemental Sculpture)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $315,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
40
Bruce Nauman
Musical Chair
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
41
David Hammons
It’s Not Necessary
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $5,475,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
42
Andy Warhol
Shadow (Double)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $877,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
43
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Quality Control
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $340,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
44
Robert Colescott
Gift of the Sea
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
45
Dana Schutz
Swiss Family Traveling
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,482,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
46
Banksy
Love Is In The Air
Estimate $1,000,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,179,500
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
47
Keith Haring
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
48
Louise Bourgeois
Labyrinthine Tower
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $756,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
49
Paul McCarthy
White Snow Dwarf (Doc)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $403,200
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.
50No Reserve
Jeff Koons
Gazing Ball (Demeter)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000 •
Sold for $998,000
Create your first list.
Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.