PRESS RELEASE
Phillips Announces Highlights from the
May Auctions of 20th Century & Contemporary Art
Basquiat, Motherwell, and Warhol to Lead Evening Sale on 17 May
Day Sale on 16 May to Include Works by Chamberlain, Haring, Condo, & KAWS
NEW YORK – 25 APRIL 2018 – Phillips is pleased to announce highlights from the upcoming auctions of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in New York. With the Day Sale on 16 May and the Evening Sale on 17 May, Phillips will offer over 280 lots that span nearly nine decades, presenting the very best of the last century’s artistic output. Comprised of 38 lots, the Evening Sale is expected to realize in excess of $117 million and will be led by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Flexible. Phillips’ Day Sale will offer over 240 lots with a presale estimate in excess of $18 million, featuring works by John Chamberlain, Keith Haring, George Condo, and Stanley Whitney, among others.
Jean-Paul Engelen and Robert Manley, Worldwide Co-Heads of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “Following Phillips’ most successful auction ever in March, we are delighted to bring such a strong group of works to the public again this May in New York. With such a breadth of material, from Modern to Post-War to Contemporary, along with a selection of Latin American works, we are confident that the momentum we’ve seen earlier this year will continue through the spring season. We are honored to have the opportunity to work with such a significant group of consignors again this season, as well, including the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, James Warhola, Holly Hunt, The Berezdivin Collection, The Martin Z. Margulies Foundation, and Maurizio Cattelan, who has personally donated a work to benefit the Brooklyn Museum.”
The Evening Sale | 17 May, 5pm
Leading the Evening Sale is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Flexible, which is being offered for sale for the first time, having been consigned directly from the artist’s estate. Standing eight and a half feet tall and estimated to sell in excess of $20 million, this is the highest-value and largest work to ever have been offered from the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Painted in 1984, this panel painting was executed in Los Angeles and is among the first works where he used wood slats as his material. For more information on Flexible, please click here for the dedicated press release.
Robert Motherwell’s At Five in the Afternoon, 1971, is a masterpiece from the artist’s celebrated Elegies to the Spanish Republic series. Having resided in the distinguished collection of Holly Hunt, this exceptional painting is a monumental version of the very eponymous work that initiated his famed Elegy series in 1948. Motherwell executed the work in 1971 following his divorce from Helen Frankenthaler, who kept the smaller version in her collection. The present work was shortly thereafter selected for inclusion in the Walker Art Center’s major Motherwell exhibition in 1972 and the Museo de Arte Moderno’s retrospective exhibition in Mexico City in 1975. As the first work of this caliber and unique art historical importance to come to auction, At Five in the Afternoon is poised to break the auction record for Robert Motherwell.
On the heels of Phillips’ new world auction record for Mark Bradford with Helter Skelter I, the Evening Sale presents Black Venus. Created in 2005, Black Venus belongs to handful of paintings Bradford created in the mid-2000s, including Los Moscos, 2004, Tate Modern, London, and Scorched Earth, 2006, Broad Museum, Los Angeles. Indicating a major shift in Bradford’s practice, the series marked the beginning of the artist’s now signature process of using printed detritus salvaged from the streets of Los Angeles to construct densely layered compositions. Residing for over a decade in the esteemed Berezdivin Collection, Black Venus evokes the irregular urban sprawl of Bradford’s native Los Angeles. In 2010, the work was selected for inclusion in Bradford’s first major travelling exhibition organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus.
A leading contemporary work of the sale is Sigmar Polke’s Stadtbild II, 1968, which belongs to the artist’s great pantheon of paintings from the late 1960s that deal with the lure of faraway places. While related paintings deal directly with the motif of the exotic, the present work and its sister painting Stadtbild I, 1969, Neue Galerie, Kassel, explore the aspirational promises of the utopian modern city. Taking the viewer on a fantastical journey into the artist’s imagination, in the present work Polke captures the New York City skyline – a sight the artist would not experience until his first trip in 1973. The freneticism of the city is captured in Polke’s immediate square-edged, white brushstrokes that demarcate the architectural skyline while undulating lines sweep diagonally across the lower third of the composition to convey an onward rush of traffic or the churning ripples of a waterfront. In his gestural arcs of paint, Polke assuredly brings forth the iconic and awe-inspiring forms of the Empire State and Chrysler Building, their radiating glow underscoring New York’s reputation as “The City That Never Sleeps.”
Three works by Andy Warhol will be featured in the Evening Sale. Executed in 1986, Last Supper belongs to the final epic series that Andy Warhol executed before his untimely death. The present work belongs to a group of fewer than 25 known silkscreen paintings based on a black and white printed reproduction of The Last Supper that the artist cropped, stacked, overlaid and rotated in his silkscreen reinterpretations. In this handful of iterations, which were conceived on a 40x40 inch scale, the iconic image doubled and stacked in yellow, pink, green, blue or camouflage. The bright yellow uniquely doubles as a light source, imbuing Last Supper with a halo effect reminiscent of a religious icon, while also giving the effect of a flickering scene on a television screen – hinting at a movement, but frozen in time as a static image. As LA-based curator Douglas Fogle said in conversation with Francesco Bonami, “If you think about the Last Supper paintings, they're very much – and I'm not the first to say this – they are the first and the last Disaster paintings. …the Last Supper – it’s the greatest story ever told.” In addition to Last Supper, the Evening Sale will also include Two Marilyns from the Warhola Family Collection and 16 Flowers, which was formerly in the collection of Ileana Sonnabend.
Painted in 2014, Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Blanket Couple) belongs to his seminal body of work depicting quotidian moments of recreation, which has received international acclaim. Demonstrating his characteristic formal prowess and painterly virtuosity, Marshall builds a brilliantly colored pastoral scene of romantic quietude – one that is reminiscent of Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1862-1863, but is firmly situated within the contemporary here and now. Conceived on an epic scale, Untitled (Blanket Couple) speaks to Marshall’s self-identification as a history painter that transforms the seemingly straightforward scene of a couple taking a moment of respite from a bike ride into a larger examination of the idea and history of representation. Marshall has depicted a black couple in a state of recreation, romantic infatuation and leisure as way to subtly reclaim their marginalized position within art history and the public consciousness. Taking a key position in the Marshall’s iconoclastic practice, Untitled (Blanket Couple) announces itself with an undeniable objective physicality and monumentality that confidently claims its place in the pantheon of art history.
The Day Sale – Morning Session | 16 May, 10am
Leading the Morning Session of the Day Sale is John Chamberlain’s large-scale, wall-bound sculpture Chamooda, a stellar example of the artist’s signature practice that was executed in 1975 at the height of his career. The sculptures from this decade were characterized by an ambitious use of color, achieved by both scraping away existing pigments on the car parts and also adding new hues with active, abstract brushstrokes. Chamooda is a vibrant relief sculpture, which was shown alongside five other works from the same period in Chamberlain’s seventh solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, the year after its execution in 1976. All but one of these sculptures are oriented at a 45 degree angle, a new format for the artist’s wall-bound reliefs. In 1983, Chamooda was exhibited for a second time at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in his new hometown of Sarasota, marking the artist’s second major American museum exhibition since the 1971 retrospective at the Guggenheim. Over five feet in height, the present lot is an important work from a pivotal moment in Chamberlain’s prolific career, beautifully showcasing the aesthetic qualities most important to the sculptor.
An untitled Keith Haring work from 1983 will also highlight the Morning Session of the Day Sale. Haring created Untitled for his solo show at Tony Shafrazi’s Lower East Side gallery, an important moment for the artist. Curated by the Haring himself, the presentation featured a series of wall reliefs shaped in the artist’s iconic, cartoon-like figures, carved and painted with Day-Glo into raw wood. Haring then used a carpenter’s router tool like a pencil to draw his characteristic graphics and through active line-work, he filled the contours of the man with outstretched arms and legs in the present lot with his unique visual language. Following the success of the exhibition at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Haring received immediate international acclaim, being invited to Australia by both the National Gallery of Victoria and Gallery of New South Wales for major, site-specific murals. These projects would spearhead an onslaught of commissions and steady, increasing fame for Haring in the art world at large.
The Day Sale – Afternoon Session | 16 May, 2pm
George Condo’s dynamic portrait of American fashion icon Marc Jacobs will lead the Afternoon Session of the Day Sale, which takes place on 16 May at 2pm. Painted in 2007, George Condo captures a climactic period of the designer’s creativity that mirrored the artist’s own. In the months immediately preceding and during the year 2007, Jacobs’ force in fashion had never been more publically palpable. George Condo’s choice to depict Marc Jacobs in at this time reflected the artist’s newfound goals in painting. Critics coined Condo’s mid-2000s practices with phrases such as “artificial realism” and “figurative abstraction”, while the artist himself described his process in portraiture as aiming to break into “everyday consciousness,” and imbue his subjects with intense emotional presence by way of dramatic abstraction. This work brilliantly epitomizes these objectives with bold color and form. In its composition, Condo applies techniques storied in the art historical tradition like analytical cubism to present Jacobs with beaming psychological power.
Serving as the cover lot for the Afternoon Session is Stanley Whitney’s Manet’s Light. Stanley Whitney’s color grids, recently the subject of the artist’s renowned solo exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2015 called Dance the Orange and at Documenta in Kassel in 2017, are both arresting and comforting in their subtleties. The present lot, painted in 2007, engulfs the viewer in a sea of geometric pigments, each border hand-drawn with unpredictable juxtaposition of color. Whitney's expert application of color in his paintings is informed by his appreciation for the artists who came before him and specifically, how painting has evolved over time, as made evident by the present lot's title, Manet's Light, named after the Impressionist master Édouard Manet. After moving to New York from Philadelphia at the age of 22, Whitney aligned himself with the Color Field painters, yet sat largely in the background of his contemporaries including Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland. Throughout the decades that followed, however, the artist soon established himself as a key player in 20th century abstraction and at age 72, Whitney is receiving critical acclaim he has long deserved.
Auction:
Day Sale | Morning Session – Wednesday, 16 May 2018, 10 am
Day Sale | Afternoon Session – Wednesday, 16 May 2018, 2pm
Evening Sale – Thursday, 17 May 2018, 5pm
Auction viewing:
Day Sale – 4-15 May
Evening Sale – 4-6 May
Location: 450 Park Avenue, New York
Click here for more information on the Day Sale Morning Session and Afternoon Session.
Click here for more information on the Evening Sale.
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*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium; prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.
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