NEW NOW [Newsletter]

T U E S D AY, S E P T E M B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 9 4 5 0 PA R K AV E N U E , N E W YO R K phillips.com

Highlights

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COVER: LOT 32 Katharina Grosse, Untitled.

Painted in 2012. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Property from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection

3 Revisiting Lynn Chadwick’s breakthrough Venice Biennale moment Portraiture in the Contemporary Age: Nicolas Party and Tomoo Gokita

4 Yinka Shonibare CBE Yayoi Kusama’s Early Explorations of the Natural World

5 Keith Haring: Art for the People

6&7 Delicacy & Strength: Louise Nevelson Through the Years with KAWS at Phillips

8 Light, Language & L.A.: Ed Ruscha Emerging Artists/Major Exhibitions

LOT 54 Frank Stella, Narowla II. Executed in 1971. © 2019 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

LOT 55 Sam Francis, E VIII. Painted in 1971. © 2019 Sam Francis Foundation, California/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Sam Francis’s EVIII, 1971, represents the artist’s love of color, light and travel. Francis renders spontaneous clouds of exquisite color to the corners of the work, reminiscent of a gentle Parisian atmosphere. In contrast, the vast negative space that spans across the largescale canvas, central to Francis’ style after the mid-1960s, embraces the sharp energy of New York Minimalism. The bursts of pigment that frame the work evokes an edgeless nature that pulls the dynamic abstraction off the canvas.

The Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection reads like a cross-continental survey of the 20th century’s most infuential artists. Born out of the seminal decade of the 1960s, the collection is not only a tribute to the dawning of a revolutionary cultural era but a witness to its making. To look at how Miles and Shirley Fiterman collected is to understand the importance of the collector at this crucial point in post-war history; when contemporary art solidifed its institutional recognition and found relevance with a wider public. The selection of artworks they assembled dance between abstraction and fguration and feature some of the most esteemed all-American artists, including Sam Francis, Frank Stella, Alexander Calder and John Chamberlain.

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Drawing from the history of the Nazi takeover during World War II, Frank Stella’s Narwola II, 1971, is a geometric interpretation of Polish synagogues and their distinct architecture.

Created with wood, brightly colored felt and canvas, this work is part of the Polish Village series prominent to Stella’s practice from 1971–1973. In this series, he appropriated graphic elements such as diagonally slanted roofs and wooden beams typical of Polish villages. Coupling these dynamic designs with Stella’s fattened perspective, this work speaks to the resulting demolition in post-war Poland.

This selection from the Fiterman Collection is a wonderful window into what made their collecting so seminal even in its own time— a great blend of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture of the two predominant movements from mid-century America, Pop and Abstract Expressionism.

Property from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection

Property from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection includes lots 43–58.

Revisiting Lynn Chadwick’s breakthrough Venice Biennale moment Having opened to great fanfare in May 2019, the 58th Venice Biennale is in full swing. Inaugurated in 1895, the Biennale has been crucial in promoting and propelling many emerging artists to critical acclaim. Indeed, the 1952 iteration was instrumental in rocketing Lynn Chadwick from relative obscurity to his now canonical status as one of the leading British sculptors of the post-war era.

Chadwick’s inclusion in the British Pavilion alongside sculptors such as Eduardo Palozzi and Kenneth Armitage was key in launching his career. Lauded by one critic as “one of the revelations of the Biennale”, Chadwick immediately became known for his distinct sculptural idiom that powerfully captured the existentialism of the time. Breaking with sculptural tradition, he created his angular sculptures by welding iron rods and casting the resulting fgures in bronze; Chadwick powerfully blurred fguration and abstraction in a manner that prompted British Pavilion curator Herbert Read to coin the phrase “the geometry of fear”. Only four years later, at the Venice Biennale in 1956, Chadwick was chosen as the sole sculptor for the British Pavilion and won the International Prize for Sculpture—notably besting the more established and celebrated Alberto Giacometti, an admirable runner-up.

Catapulted to international recognition, Chadwick continued to develop an infuential oeuvre in which Sitting Couple

on Base IV, 1974, fgures as a quintessential example. Depicting the recurring motif of a seated couple, this work shows Chadwick brilliantly harnessing form, line and balance to explore both the physical and psychological relationship between two fgures.

As Lynn Chadwick’s Sitting Couple on Base IV comes up as a highlight of the New Now sale, we look back to how he launched his extraordinary career at the Venice Biennale more than 60 years ago.

“It’s a notion of what a sculpture should be.

Even if it’s only a few inches high, one should be able to see it as a hundred feet high.”

Claes Oldenburg , lot 45, Geometric Mouse, Scale C, 1971 & lot46, Geometric Mouse, Scale A (maquette), circa 1970.

LOT 64 Lynn Chadwick, R.A., Sitting Couple on Base IV. Executed in 1974. © The Estate of Lynn Chadwick

Portraiture in the Contemporary Age

Fast-rising art stars, Nicolas Party and Tomoo Gokita are taking grand strides to re-invigorate the millennia-old tradition of portraiture. From the ancient Egyptians to the Roman Caesars, the Renaissance elite to the political and royal families of Europe, portraiture has traditionally been an historical record of one’s wealth, power and beauty. This treasured art form has persisted through numerous stylistic iterations by the most important artists of each generation.

Following in these radical footsteps, Party and Gokita are leaders among the most contemporary practitioners. Sharing a background in graphic design, both artists fnd themselves with increasingly celebrated oeuvres, most fttingly classifed as PostConceptual. Their work focuses almost exclusively on the aesthetic importance of representing their subjects without providing a narrative to signify social signifcance.

Once the central purpose of traditional portraiture, the theme of specifc personal identity is starkly absent from contemporary examples Portrait and Mexican Duchamp.

Notably inspired by the idealism of Classical Greek sculpture, Nicolas Party’s androgynous subject in Portrait dons powder blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick.

Highlighted by these superbly unexpected accents, the fgure’s bulbous features evoke little more than a hollow shell, intentionally lacking individualistic characteristics and contextual social status. Rather, the fgure serves as an ambiguous idol of physical appearance. Likewise, eschewing the conventional priorities of glorifying the sitters’ facial features, Gokita’s Mexican Duchamp purposely obfuscates its subjects’ appearances. Inspired by Playboy magazines and working in his signature greyscale palette, Gokita celebrates the same de-contextualizing motifs evident in Party’s work. With deliberate smudges across his subjects’ guise, Gokita alternately masks their identities and obstructs the spectator’s gaze. Elusively illustrating a particularly mature couple outftted in elegant evening attire, the artist begs the viewer to bear further witness to their implied extravagant livelihood, to no avail.

With no underlying symbolic representation, the focus of these works lies primarily in the materiality of the artists’ hand. While Gokita portrays his erotic imagery with an angular line and Party favors playful subjects rendered with fuid contours, both artists execute with an energizing looseness that contradicts the stagnant principles of traditional portraitpainting techniques. Despite their impulsive execution, each work exhibits sharp clean strokes paired with layers of luxurious media that emphasize the seductive otherworldliness of its subjects. Customarily painted in oil, portraits typically manifested a highlyrefned permanence that is disregarded in these contemporary renditions executed in gouache and pastel. Composed uniquely in the celebrated styles of these cutting-edge artists, each of these works exhibits portraiture’s latest avant-garde venture that perpetuates the ever-lasting appeal of this art form.

The uniformly monochrome backdrop in both Portrait and Mexican Duchamp strips the sitters of any discernable narrative or social position, conversely creating a fattened and ambiguous surrealist fantasy. Once featuring beloved belongings of the sitter(s) and expressly denoting a specifc personal surrounding, portraiture sought to elevate the elaborate routine of one’s life and style.

Cleverly neglecting these themes, these two artists abandon symbolic connotation to instead develop innovative narratives of mystery and intrigue.

LOT 61 Nicolas Party, Portrait.

Executed in 2014.

LOT 5 Tomoo Gokita, Mexican Duchamp. Executed in 2016.

© Nicolas Party

© Tomoo Gokita

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“Origin means from where someone comes from and it has never been a singular notion for me.”

“Origin for the post colonial generation could have a number of meanings, like the profusion of colours in the feathers of a peacock or like the rich colour display in a kaleidoscope. I use African fabric in my work because of its complex origin. When I was at Art School in London, there was constant pressure on me to produce traditional African art, but for someone with a multiplicity of cultural experiences, the idea of a pure notion of “African-ness” didn’t make sense to me.”

Yinka Shonibare CBE, lot 63, Dressing Down, 1997. © Yinka Shonibare CBE 2019.

Image courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York

Yayoi Kusama’s Early Explorations of the Natural World explained by Rachel Taylor, a curator at the Tate Modern, “Kusama’s family made their living by cultivating plant seeds and she grew up surrounded by felds full of fowers.

This formative environment has been a touchstone for the artist throughout her life.”

Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York in 1957 with her collection of small still lifes, portraits and natural scenes, all of which incorporated what would develop into her iconic, uniquely personal artistic idiom.

Her spectacular early works on paper, including Butterfy and Embryo each from 1953 reference her academic training in Japanese nihonga painting, which utilized a water-based medium applied in layered washes to create a dynamic composition, placing great emphasis on the depiction of the natural world. Butterfy and Embryo mark an interesting transition between her earlier, traditional Japanese artistic conventions and her exploratory attempts to manifest the infnitude of the unbounded universe.

Kusama’s interest in the natural world was directly infuenced by her upbringing, as 4

Kusama fnds the process of mark-making to be very healing, allowing her delicate handwork to soothe and de-clutter her mind. The resulting whimsical and colorful compositions in turn represent her own obsession to assert authority over her swirling thoughts. Butterfy and Embryo recall the complexity of organic patterns that can be found within the human body and the natural world; seemingly delicate and transient, the compositions form a web in their detailed patterning, a forceful artistic net built of strength and endurance. She skillfully touches on themes that defne all of our lives—fragility, strength, impermanence and resilience—while attempting to fnd balance in her own thoughts.

LOT 29 Yayoi Kusama, Butterfy.

Executed in 1953. © 2019 Yayoi Kusama

LOT 28 Yayoi Kusama, Embryo.

Executed in 1953. © 2019 Yayoi Kusama

The surreal-like dreamscapes of Kusama’s early works on paper are comprised of layers of watery hued gouaches and give the illusion that she is capturing a feeting moment. Whether an embryo in the process of development or a butterfy fapping its wings as it prepares to take fight, Kusama emphasizes that nothing is ever really still—our thoughts, the inner workings of the body, the natural world.

Capturing this in two-dimensional form is her attempt to fnd equilibrium and assert control. Kusama’s early works on paper are a prelude to what would become the pursuit of her artistic practice, to fnd peace between her two eternal and contradictory attitudes, the controlling aspect of repetition and the liberating effects of losing control.

Keith Haring Art for the People

Beginning with his earliest graffti and through to the end of his tragically short but meteoric career, Keith Haring sought to connect with the general public and modernize the accessibility of art. Haring’s career was defned in equal measure by the democratized nature of its expression and also by his determined political and community oriented themes, touching upon the most impactful topics of the day, notably the AIDS crisis. Executed in 1989, just one year before his own tragic AIDSrelated death, Untitled (Tree Dancing Figures), Version A embodies the energy of an era heavily infuenced by the activism for gay-rights and by the invigorated artistic community that was Keith Haring’s orbit.

his sketches were peeled off the page and expressed in a (barely) three-dimensional space. Garnering inspiration from breakdance culture and electronic music, Haring appreciated the coordination required by dancers who weave between and around one another with swift, animated movements.

Turning this motion into sculpture and representing the energized culture of New York City, Haring intended for these largescale works to be accessible and readily discernible depictions of bubbling vivacity to all who encounter them.

Although his time spent among the creative crowd of downtown New York was abbreviated, Haring’s outsized persona made an everlasting impression on the city and those around him. Known for his compassion, belief in equality, and innate ability to communicate across various cultural and economic backgrounds, Haring frequented Club 57, a local church basement hang where the New York counterculture came to dance, perform, and exchange ideas.

After hosting an underground exhibition at the club in 1981, Haring was “discovered”

by Andy Warhol and Tony Shafrazi who took his drawings from the subway and the street to the gallery. Here, Haring curated a community that refected and supported his ideals and endeavors in art.

Representative of this close-knit diverse community, Untitled (Tree Dancing Figures), Version A shows a group of uniquely hued, faceless fgures circled in energetic movement.

The child-like fatness of the fgures is as if

“I think public sculpture should aggressively alter our perception of the environment in a positive way”

Compelled to produce a high volume of work within a short period of time, Haring wished for his legacy to live on within people long after he was gone. His main support and focus was always on the various communities within which he participated— the gay community, the arts community, the downtown scene, and beyond. Now, on this 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with many of the themes and problems that Haring addressed in his art still so prevalent nearly two decades into the 21st century, one can clearly recognize the lasting impact he has had, and will continue to have, on our culture for years to come.

Keith Haring sitting atop one of his sculptures, 1986.

Photo by Nick Elgar/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images, Artwork © The Keith Haring Foundation

LOT 70 Keith Haring, Untitled (Three Dancing Figures), Version A. Executed in 1989. © The Keith Haring Foundation

“I’m not going to give you one story, because I’m more than one thing.”

Nina Chanel Abney, lot 7, Untitled, 2016.

© Nina Chanel Abney

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Delicacy & Strength Louise Nevelson dreamt of building her own empire, glamorously imposing in its presence.

Her unwavering confdence of this pursuit resulted in exuberant sculptures symbolic of her personality—bold and dramatic in presence, yet delicate and feminine in theme.

Coated in the artist’s preferred color, a rich black pigment, Frozen Laces–Two, 1976–1980 and Mirror-Shadow I, 1985 strikingly embody the themes of architectural fragmentation that defne Nevelson’s oeuvre. Cloaked in her trademark hue, the works’ intricate details

meld beautifully into grand installations; sharply opposing elements of delicate details and arresting strength are harmoniously interlocked within these works’ smooth solidifed pigment to present something elegantly extravagant.

Frozen Laces–Two is composed of several slim metal elements that, in their totality, project an immediate vitality. Permitting her work to speak for itself, Nevelson proclaimed “I want to be a sculptor, I don’t want color to

“My work is delicate; it may look strong, but it is delicate. True strength is delicate. My whole life is in it, and my whole life is feminine, and I work from an entirely diferent point of view.”

Louise Nevelson in front of City on the High Mountain (1983) at the Storm King Art Center 1984 opening of Louise Nevelson: Outdoor Sculptures, 1971–1983.

Frozen Laces–Two was featured in this same exhibition. © Storm King Art Center Archives; © Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York; © 2019 Estate of Louise Nevelson/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

help me” (Louise Nevelson, quoted in Louise Nevelson: Black and White, exh. cat., Pace Gallery, New York, 2018, p. 4). The fervor in her relinquishment of color is expertly evoked through the authority asserted by this tower as it stands confdently erect. However, once discerning the careful lattice work, one experiences the subtle uniqueness of its intricate curves and arches at every angle.

Made salient by the uniform color, the piece communicates a more complex narrative.

Uniquely appreciative of art in urban spaces and everyday objects, Nevelson compiled found fragments of moldings, dowels, chair parts and architectural ornamentation in

2001–08 KAWS Gains Popularity with Star Pop-Culture Icons Celebrated collaborations with Nigo, Kanye West and John Mayer

2008/09 COMPANIONS KAWS made his name with coveted collectables Phillips sold the frst set of all 6 COMPANIONS as part of the Katayama Collection in Fall 2017 We are currently ofering FOUR FOOT DISSECTED COMPANION (BLACK), 2009, lot 67.

2000 1999 Interventions

all artwork © KAWS

Some of the earliest extant examples of KAWS’s now iconic motifs. Phillips was the frst major auction house to sell one of these unique ads in 2014

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Blister Packages A series of works that were featured in KAWS’s breakout exhibition at Parco Gallery in 2001 We are currently ofering UNTITLED (SM7), 2000, lot 68.

“When you work with any material, the material is leading. It is the artist’s mission or role to take out the vitality and show it to the people.”

Mirror-Shadow I. When pieced together as a puzzle of wooden components, there is a beautiful intricacy of each element’s inconsistencies that would expectedly create diverse shapes and shadows. Defying this assumption, Nevelson again encapsulates the fragmented assemblage in a monochromatic black that morphs the tangle of objects into a robust, unifed object.

Guiseppe Penone , lot 40, Pelle di Marmo e Spine d’Acacia – Lucrezia, 2003.

LOT 41 Louise Nevelson, Mirror-Shadow I. Executed in 1985.

LOT 42 Louise Nevelson, Frozen Laces–Two. Executed in 1976-1980.

© 2019 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

© 2019 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

2012 Paintings The Long Walk Home, 2012, achieves the second highest record for KAWS at auction, sold by Phillips in spring 2019 We are currently ofering UNTITLED, 2012, lot 69.

COMPANION balloon featured in the Macy’s Day Parade

2017 PINOCCHIO We are currently ofering PINOCCHIO, 2017, lot 66.

First time a wooden PINOCCHIO is being ofered at a major auction house

2019 Craze at UNIQLO KAWS’s collaboration with fashion retailer caused a stampede of buyers in China Floating 121 foot COMPANION in the Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong

Through the Years with KAWS at Phillips 7

© Genieve Figgis

Light, Language & L.A.

Emerging Artists Featured in New Now

Julie Curtiss

LOT 1

Artist to watch as cited in W mag in 2019, sold out show at Anton Kern this past spring

“Sometimes I wonder whether I’m painting pictures of words or painting pictures with words.”

Leidy Churchman LOT 15 Sadie Benning LOT 104 Sarah Cain LOT 152 Artists’ frst time at auction

Genieve Figgis While cruising down the Pacifc Coast Highway, Ed Ruscha encountered the nature of mid-20th Century American culture through the view from his car window.

Quintessentially Californian in method, Ruscha’s refections on the simplicity of life are encompassed in the artist’s iconic wittiness and surrealist depictions of light. Escaping the bounds of a traditional narrative, Ruscha’s High-Speed Gardening, 1989 fuses the seemingly disparate themes of fxed language and abstracted light.

Commenting on the under-represented aspects of everyday life, Ruscha utilizes surrealist visual themes to tie together the relevance of language and light in Los Angeles living. The artist grasps inspiration from the simplest happenings of life—his gratitude for refected light, the daily use of language, and how they each bring personal associations to the surface, all exquisitely represented in High-Speed Gardening.

LOT 71 Ed Ruscha. High-Speed Gardening.

Executed in 1989. © Ed Ruscha Ed Ruscha with a Joshua tree in the desert, California, June 1985. Photo by Evelyn Hofer/ Getty Images.

First discovered by Richard Prince via Twitter, will be included in a major group show at Gagosian Fall 2019

Gina Beavers

LOT 3

First solo museum exhibition at MoMA PS1 this past spring

Brian Belott

LOT 181

2019 Whitney Biennial

Cyprien Gaillard

LOT 19

2019 Venice Biennale

Ad Minoliti

LOT 16

2019 Venice Biennale

Thomas Saraceno

LOT 140

2019 Venice Biennale

Stan Douglas

LOT 133

2019 Venice Biennale

Bernar Venet

LOT 38

Kasmin Gallery Upcoming September 2019

Sterling Ruby

LOT 33

ICA Miami/ICA Boston Upcoming November 2019

© 2019 Bernar Venet/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Moving from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in the late 1950s, Ruscha worked temporarily as a commercial sign-painter. Inspired by his previous occupation, the artist found particular interest in the use of words, the infniteness to them and their unique ability to construct and confound meaning.

Ruscha’s use of language is poetically paradoxical and playfully random. The salience of the de-contextualized phrase “High-Speed Gardening” is a visual enigma for the viewers—surprisingly absent of an underlying message. His words are actually a humorous dichotomy that encapsulates a typical Los Angeles lifestyle; simultaneously bustling and tranquil. Subverting the narrative of painting, Ruscha plays with the viewers’ expectations, much like the clear L.A. light that both illuminates and exists purely on the surface of things.

Composed of a velvety yellow-green color gradient, the background is seamlessly interjected by the cast shadow of a windowpane. As with the use of language, these beams of light obviate a clear source.

A reoccurring motif in Ruscha’s oeuvre from the mid to late 1980s, the window (or suggestion of it) proposes “an idea about light” allowing the viewer to peer into a world far beyond the surface. (Ed Ruscha quoted in Kristine McKenna, “Lightening Up the Getty”, Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1998, online). There is something particularly uncanny about the imagery’s cool subtlety that belies any tangible narrative.

LOT 4

New Now Artists Featured in Important Exhibitions 8