Contemporary Art Part 1 New York

C O NTE M PO R A RY A R T MAY

CONTEMPORARY ART MAY 14 & 15 2009 N E W YO R K

Martin Kippengerger, New York zum Russisch Abbinden (NYZRA), 1985 Lot 6 (detail)

NY010209/NY010309

W W W. P H I L L I P S D E P U RY. C O M

14 & 15

2009

N EW YO R K

PART I CONTEMPORARY ART MAY

14

2009

7pm

NEW YORK

LOTS 1-43 Viewing Tuesday May 5 10am – 6pm Wednesday May 6 10am – 6pm Thursday May 7 10am – 6pm Friday May 8 10am – 6pm Saturday May 9 10am – 6pm Sunday May 10 12pm – 6pm Monday May 11 10am – 6pm Tuesday May 12 10am – 6pm Wednesday May 13 10am – 6pm Thursday May 14 10am – 12pm

1

SHERRIE LEVINE b. 1947 Black Newborn, 1994 Cast and sandblasted glass. 5 1/2 x 7 3/4 x 6 in. (14 x 19.7 x 15.2 cm). This work is from an edition of 12 plus three artist’s proofs.

Estimate $40,000-60,000 PROVENANCE Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles; Private collection, New York EXHIBITED Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Quartet: Barney, Gober, Levine,

Walker, April 17, 2005 – November 5, 2006 (another example exhibited); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Glass: Material Matters, April 30 – December 10, 2006 (another example exhibited)

The work of Sherrie Levine is rich in art historical reference with

Constanin Brancusi held a modernist belief that primal innocence

her use of image appropriation. By recycling imagery of another

and formal simplicity were linked. From 1909 until 1933 he employed

artist, Levine creates at once a work existing as an extension of

the oval form again and again, captivated by its cosmological flavor –

familial relationships and as a fresh, new piece in itself. Black

simultaneously suggesting the fragility of an egg and an infant’s

Newborn is a prime example with reference to Constantin

head. My favorite of these sculptures is Newborn, the image of a

Brancusi’s early twentieth century sculpture, Newborn, 1915,

bawling child, its mouth wide open, suggesting the shock of

made in white marble. As an authorized reproduction of the

birth…Speaking of my work, I often paraphrase the words of Roland

Brancusi work, Black Newborn critiques issues of artistic

Barthes: I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty.

authenticity and originality.

Which provokes answers but doesn’t give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which

Although immediately referencing Brancusi, Black Newborn

suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward

discusses the legacy of twentieth century French artist Marcel

interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine,

Duchamp. As originator of the readymade sculpture, Duchamp

beyond ideology, beyond authority.

declared pre-fabricated objects as works of art. Levine further

A. Temkin, Sherrie Levine Newborn, New York, 1993, pp. 7-9

develops the scope of Duchampian thought by limiting her readymade objects to those already existing within the realm of art.

By placing herself literally in Modern art, Levine’s works acknowledge themselves as products of the preceding course of history. As evidenced by the present lot, Black Newborn, Levine’s works act simultaneously as art and art critique. Levine addresses her use of Brancusi’s work:

2

AARON YOUNG b. 1972 Burn Out (California Is a Garden of Eden, A Paradise for You and Me, But Believe or Not), 2008 Burnt rubber and acrylic on aluminum panel in three parts.

96 x 48 in. (243.8 x 121.9 cm) each; 96 x 144 in. (243.8 x 365.7 cm) overall.

Estimate $35,000-45,000 PROVENANCE United Artists, Ltd., Marfa EXHIBITED Marfa, United Artists, Ltd., Nate Lowman, Agathe Snow, Aaron Young,

April 18 – August 31, 2008

Adam McEwan: That’s like art history. Steal it, reuse it, resell it. Next.

Aaron Young: Take control of all the materials that you have, set the boundaries, set the parameters, and make whatever you can out of it.

McEwan: Do you think a lot of art gets recycled?

Young: You’re talking about a word like reference, right? Some people use it as this crutch that forms the armature of their piece, as in, “This is a validated artwork that I am referencing. This makes it legit artwork because it’s referencing this brush-stroke or these colors.” You need to make up your own armature. Although I do think you need to nod at the past and wink at the future with everything that you do.

A. McEwan, “Aaron Young: Motorcycles are the Loudest Brushes He’s Used…,” Interview, October 2008

3

BANKS VIOLETTE b. 1973 Not Yet Titled (Microphone Stand), 2006 Cast patinated bronze and copper. Installation dimensions variable; stand: 19 1/2 x 68 1/2 x 33 in. (49.5 x 174 x 83.8 cm), microphone: 9 x 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 in.

(22.9 x 6.4 x 6.4 cm). This work is stamped with the date “06” on the top leg of the stand. This work is from an edition of three.

Estimate $40,000-60,000 PROVENANCE Team Gallery, New York

In a theatrical culmination of subculture and theater, Banks Violette transforms a microphone and stand reminiscent of a scene of Goth ridden teenage angst into an iconic sculpture. The microphone and stand are strewn on the floor in a gesture that calls to mind the violent climax of a rock show where the lead singer tosses the used goods to the ground, and the melancholy lingering after as the show has ended and the equipment is left there impotent.

The genesis of much of Banks Violette’s work “lies in the moments of a performance in which ‘an entire array of the mundane has a very real potential for altering its constitutive elements and becoming something else.’ For the artist, that process can result in two extremes: the event can be almost thaumaturgic, transfiguring the audience; or painfully ineffective, leaving the audience inert. In both instances there is an excess, in the former an excess of identification that exceeds the bounds of simple performance or fantasy, in the latter an excess of disappointment.”

(S. Momim, Banks Violette, New York, 2005, p. 14).

4

FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN b. 1973 Untitled, 2005 C-print in artist’s wooden frame. 72 1/4 x 95 in. (183 x 241 cm). Signed, dated, “Florian Maier-Aichen 2005” and numbered on a label adhered to the reverse.

This work is from an edition of six plus two artist’s proofs.

Estimate $80,000-100,000 PROVENANCE Blum & Poe, Los Angeles EXHIBITED Los Angeles, Blum & Poe, Florian Maier-Aichen, January 21 –

February 25, 2006 (another example exhibited); New York, 303 Gallery, Florian Maier-Aichen, January 14 – February 25, 2006 (another example exhibited); London, Royal Academy of Arts, USA Today, October 6 – November 4, 2006 (another example exhibited); New York, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, Hunter College, to:Night: Contemporary Representations of the Night, September 12 – December 6, 2008 (another example exhibited); Madrid, Museo ThyssenBornemisza, Photo España 08, June 3 – July 27, 2008 (another example exhibited)

A combination of traditional landscape and contemporary digital techniques creates the visual vocabulary for the photographs of Florian Maier-Aichen. As evidenced by the current lot, Untitled, 2005, Maier-Aichen’s compositions are often associated with a lineage of landscape artists including the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Maier-Aichen’s interpretation of a specific landscape coalesced with a digital interface results in a contemporary approach to a conventional subject. The nightscape Untitled, 2005 with its commercial lights shining in the valley, is a prime example of Florian Maier-Aichen’s contemporary take on a traditional genre.

Florian Maier-Aichen’s images reinterpret landscape photography for the twenty-first century. Supplanting the expanses of classical vistas with futuristic tableaux, Maier-Aichen recontextualizes the romantic sublime to reflect modern-day experience. Often shot at obscure angles or from aerial views, his estranged vantage points are both alien and familiar. Conceiving the representation of sites with a sense of dislocation, Maier-Aichen’s work addresses issues of globalization and virtual perception.

N. Rosenthal, USA Today, London, 2006, p.221

5

ROSEMARIE TROCKEL b. 1952 Ohne Titel, 1987 Wool stretched over canvas. 86 1/2 x 55 1/8 in. (219.7 x 140 cm). This work is from an edition of two.

Estimate $100,000-150,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Monika Spruth, Cologne; Donald Young Gallery, Chicago;

First Bank of Minneapolis Collection, Minneapolis; Private collection, Essen; Schönewald Fine Art, Fürstenberg EXHIBITED New York, Gagosian Gallery, Prefab, February 26 – May 17, 2008

Trockel’s knitting pictures, produced since the middle of the 80s,

The tactile and sensual medium of wool and the technique of

consist of lengths of machine-knitted, woolen material stretched

knitting, is different than traditional materials and techniques in

over canvas. In her large scale knitting images, Trockel incorporates

Art revealing a connotation to Feminism. Trockel tries to explore

culture and political symbols or logos, like the hammer and sickle or

whether the negative female cliché still exists when removing the

swastika, which appear as adornments in her compositions. These

craft from the process. Patterns are not painted on the canvas but

knitted artworks represent an ironic remark on traditional feminine

are rather elements of the works. Contrary to Sigmar Polke, who

work in a context of mechanization and mass production.

uses printed fabric as support structure, Trockel transfers and elevates the self designed carrier directly into a painting on canvas.

With Trockel’s geometric motifs, she deconstructs the meanings that everyday things hold for us and delves into things and thoughts

The repetitiveness in the present work, Ohne Titel, is continuing

until they form loosely connected series demonstrating its being as

eternally so that it seems this painting is a cutout from something

a matter of contingency. Serial nature disperses the authority of

much bigger and infinite. Her work is not just commenting on the

fixed thought patterns, and show the infiniteness in which the

female production of art but can also be interpreted as an

individual components can be reconnected with each other and ever

examination of Pop and Minimal Art.

creating new ways of thinking. Her process is going in various directions and is not a linear one; it crosses, intersects and forms Trockel’s own dynamic.

U.M. Schneede, Rosemarie Trockel Werkgruppen 1986-1998, Cologne, 1998, p 18-23

6

MARTIN KIPPENBERGER 1953-1997 New York zum Russisch Abbinden (NYZRA), 1985 Oil and silicone on canvas in four panels. 60 1/4 x 72 in. (153 x 183 cm) overall.

Estimate $400,000-500,000 PROVENANCE Galerie B채rbel Gr채sslin, Frankfurt; Private collection, Europe

Martin Kippenberger: But somehow one is sincere. One really wants

In his paintings of the mid-1980s, Kippenberger continued to explore

to tell just heart and blood, and about the gastric acid. One just tries

identity on a personal, regional and national level, dealing with

to do justice to everything. One wants to reach the people. In fact,

subjects such as Socialism, Communism and even Nazi history. In

one is a small priest, isn’t one? So, somehow, parson—parson?

the present lot, New York zum Russisch Abbinden (NYZRA), 1985, the

Pastor—I’m a pastor. And pastor means translated…

artist takes on the subject of the Cold War which had reached a critical moment in this time period. The painting contains the

Jutta Koether: Shepherd.

romantic image of the New York skyline split between four canvases joined together. The gaps between the canvas suggest that there is

Martin Kippenberger: Shepherd. Yeah. And somehow I have

something disjointed, fragile, or perhaps even corrupt within this

something like it, haven’t I? I’m the holy Saint Martin. There is the

symbol of Western capitalism and power.

half-half-half, isn’t it? Everybody should have it nice and warm in his corner. Yeah. In the calm corner [blows into the microphone]. We’re

In his typically antagonistic fashion, Kippenberger talks about the

all searching for it, and if you know where it is, then you may rent

United States:

it—at first [laughs]. That’s exciting. That’s dynamic. And that’s what I’ve already been when I was a kid, no matter whether it was with

Well, the one and only core of Americans’ identity was film and

alcoholism or with drugs or something else. I’ve always been

music, respectively—which, meanwhile, have been lost, been sold to

soooo…fast; always watched the sky too. Looked out the window at

Japan. The USA once again lost everything because they’ve always

school, so I wasn’t quite concentrated—though, of course, very

done everything wrong. First they got themselves the Bubus, then,

concentrated in other matters—watching!

destroyed the red Indians, lost a war here and there, fought against

J. Koether, ed. “One has to be able to take it! Excerpts from an

each other, lost again, hostage liberation: crashed into each other’s

interview with Martin Kippenberger by Jutta Koether, November

helicopters, and so on. Now they are hanging around in the Gulf in

1990 – May 1991,” Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective,

order to distract whoever. The only things which were left clean were

Cambridge, 2008, p. 320

football and the entertainment industries, only that these things are lame by now and Michael Jackson belongs to Japan. So they sold

In his short life, Martin Kippenberger created a unique, provocative

their whole identity. And in order to divert themselves, maybe to

body of work centered on the role of the artist in culture that has

come up with some “new” identity too, they just bought Jaguar, a

established him as one of the most significant and influential artists

British company, which indeed has no business being in America.

of his generation. In his diverse practice, the artist could be

The mere design is so very inappropriate for the USA. These are all

inspired by anything he encountered to create a work of art as a

interplays that don’t have anything to do with any tradition. There

painting, work on paper, sculpture, invitation or poster. Taking on

they are, celebrating independence from England, and, on exactly

the accepted high art of painting, Kippenberger found the perfect

that day, they buy Jaquar. It’s all rubbish, really, what they do. This is

self-reflective platform to question everything about what it means

another reason why I had to go [from New York] to L.A.: to check this

to be an artist and the creative act of making art itself. With his

out even more.

famously larger-than-life personality, he took on the role of

Ibid, p. 311

provocateur.

The boundaries between art and life, public and private, were not so much traversed in Kippenberger’s enterprise as they were destabilized through his embrace of their contradictions. That instability is fundamental to his challenge to the spectator. To encounter a work by Kippenberger is to experience the discomfort and embarrassment of getting too close, of knowing more than one would wish to know or admit, of confronting something that is banal and annoying, that dismisses received notions of right or wrong. His work is not simply about getting to the truth or unearthing dirty secrets, but about uncovering the mechanisms that produce meaning and the ways in which they define the role and position of the artist.

A. Goldstein, “The Problem Perspective,” Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, Cambridge, 2008, p. 40

7

DAN FLAVIN 1933-1996 Untitled (“Monument” for V. Tatlin) 22, 1964 Cool white fluorescent lights. 96 x 28 x 5 in. (243.8 x 71.7 x 12.7 cm).This work was executed in 1964 from an edition of five of which four were fabricated and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and post-dated 1967.

Estimate $400,000-600,000 PROVENANCE Donald Young Gallery, Chicago; Private Collection EXHIBITED Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; Washington, D.C.,

Corcoran Gallery of Art; Bordeaux, Musée d’Art Contermporain and Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, “monuments” for V. Tatlin from Dan Flavin, 19641983, April 1984-January 1986, no. 39 (another example exhibited). New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Group Exhibition, March-April, 1985 (another example exbibited). Antwerp, Galeries Ronny Van de Velde, The Future of the Object! A Selection of American Art: Minimalism and After, May-July 1990 (another example exhibited). New York, Mary Boone Gallery, Dan Flavin: Tatlin Monuments, March 1991 (another example exhibited); Moscow, Gagosian Gallery, For What You Are About To Receive, September 18 – October 25, 2008 LITERATURE J. Fox, “Curatorial Department, Acquisitions,” The One Hundred

Eleventh Annual Report of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1986-87, p. 47; D. Flavin, ed. “monuments” for V. Tatlin from Dan Flavin, Los Angeles, 1989, pl. 39 (another example illustrated); Galeries Ronny Van de Velde, ed., The Future of the Object! A Selection of American Art: Minimalism and After, Antwerp, 1990, p.

73 (another example illustrated); F. De Vuono, “Review: Dan Flavin, Mary Boone Gallery,” ArtNews 90, no. 7, September 1991, p. 127 (another example illustrated); M. Govan and T. Bell, Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961-1996, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 239, no. 65 (another example illustrated)

Flavin makes instant monuments; the ‘instant’ make’s Flavin’s work

never conceived, but the model for the work remains a defining

a part of time rather than space. Time becomes a place minus

expression of Constructivism. Flavin’s series, conceived in

motion…a million years contained in a second, yet we tend to forget

fluorescent lights, takes on the Russian artist’s work, not as an

the second as soon as it happens. Flavin’s destruction of classical

eternal celebration of a revolutionary culture likeTatlin’s aspired

time and space is based on an entirely new notion of the structure

to, but as a contemporary and temporal work. Flavin always

of matter.

references “monument” in quotes to emphasize that this is a

J. Flam, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Los Angeles,

slightly ironic take on the concept and that he feels that manmade

1996, p. 11

creations are inherently ephemeral. However, viewers of the present lot Untitled (“Monument” for V. Tatlin) 22, 1964 can’t help

Dan Flavin’s “Monuments” for V. Tatlin series was conceived in

but feel that they are in the presence of something timeless. With

1964 as a response to both the potential and the incompleteness in

it’s form echoingTatlin’s spiral tower, the cool white fluorescent

the Russian Constructivist VladimirTatlin’s revolutionary ideas,

lights of the present lot envelop the room in a tranquil

and in particular toTatlin’s sculpture Model of the Monument to

luminescence that creates impressions that “hover between

The Third International, 1920. VladimirTatlin created the sculpture

materiality/immateriality, between a physical presence/spiritual

as a model of a large spiraling tower intended to be built as a

presence, between lightness/figurativeness” (J. Moyne, Light

towering symbol of modernity in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg)

Pieces, Luxembourg, 2000, n.p.).

after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.This grand project was

8

ANDREAS GURSKY b. 1955 Untitled IX, 1998 C-print in artist’s wooden frame. 53 1/4 x 89 in. (135.3 x 226 cm). Signed, titled and dated “Andreas Gursky O.T. IX ‘98” and numbered of six on the reverse. This work is from an edition of six.

Estimate $200,000-300,000 PROVENANCE Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery, New York EXHIBITED Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the

Present, August 29 – October 18, 1998 (another example exhibited) LITERATURE M. Syring, ed., Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the

Present, New York/London, 1998, p. 37 (another example illustrated)

Andreas Gursky’s works from the 1990s, such as the present lot Untitled IX, 1998, attain a height of simple geometry and the purity of reduced form. The present lot is photographed in the contemporary setting of a Prada store, but it holds the history of Minimal Art within its fine forms. The clarity of the slender unbroken parallel rectangles of the store’s hanging racks seems to be an ode to Donald Judd while simultaneously being a send-up of commercial allure. The multicolor lingerie within the rectangles is reminiscent of Gerhard Richter’s color paintings begun in 1966 where he used color charts issued by paint manufacturers. Like Richter, Gursky uses items from commerce, an extension of the aesthetic of Pop, and turns it into a beautiful minimalist grid. With the rich aesthetic inheritance behind this photograph, Andreas Gursky turns a commercial setting into a realm of perfection.

9

SHERRIE LEVINE b. 1947 Buddha, 1996 Cast bronze. 12 1/4 x 17 x 16 in. (31 x 43.2 x 40.6 cm). Initialed “SL” and numbered of six on the bottom. This work is from an edition of six.

Estimate $150,000-200,000 PROVENANCE Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles EXHIBITED Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, Sherrie Levine, November 13 –

December 21, 1996; Osaka, The National Museum of Art Tokyo, Mirrorical Returns: Marcel Duchamp and The 20th Century Art, November 3 – December 19, 2004 (another example exhibited); Yokohama Museum of Art, Mirrorical Returns: Marcel Duchamp and The 20th Century Art, January 5 – March 21, 2005 (another example exhibited); London, Barbican Art Gallery, Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, March 6 – May 18, 2008 (another example exhibited) LITERATURE K. McKenna, “Sherrie Levine,” Los Angeles Times, November 17,

1996, p. 16 (illustrated); F. Naumann, Apropos of Marcel: the art of making art after Duchamp in the age of mechanical reproduction, New York, 1999, p. 28 (illustrated); M. Larking, “Art Stripped Bare by Mass Produced Ideas,” The Japan Times, Tokyo, December 8, 2004; J. Hammond, “Mirrorical Returns: Marcel Duchamp and the 20th Century Art,” Tokyo Metropolis, 2004; C. Darwent, “Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art,” The Independent, London March 16, 2008, n.p. (illustrated)

The present lot, Buddha, is Sherrie Levine’s homage to Marcel

The “new thought” that Levine creates for this particular object is

Duchamp’s most famous readymade, Fountain, a porcelain urinal he

strangely hostile. Suddenly glitzy, Levine’s tricked-out fetish

entered in an exhibition in 1917. Fountain is perhaps one of the most

militates against the whole concept of the anti-retinal. Slyly, it

seminal works in the 20th century, and a predecessor of Levine’s

insinuates its predecessor’s failure, for even in Duchamp’s own time,

oeuvre of appropriating existing artwork. However, Levine’s take on

against his protestations, aficionados admired the piece’s sinuous

the urinal is not a simple replica honoring Duchamp’s piece, but with

curves and uninflected surface. In the end, I think of the tradition of

its luscious shining surface it deliberately accentuates the sensual

bronzing a cherished pair of baby shoes. Levine gets to play Mommy,

qualities that Duchamp denied in his own work. The title, Buddha, is

and in the process, infantalize the man who, after all, was only too

itself a reference to the shape of a Buddha statue that the urinal

happy to show up in drag when the occasion warranted.

resembles, though Duchamp claims that any visual beauty or

S. Kandel, Sherrie Levine, Geneva, 1998, p. 47 – 51

figuration was not the point.

Indeed, the unabashed visual beauty in Sherrie Levine’s present lot has been interpreted as a feminist inroad to the male canon of art history. “In a number of interviews, Levine claimed that in arranging for the bronze surface of her urinals to be highly polished, she was making a conscious allusion to the sculpture of Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi. Others have claimed that this gesture results in a more pronounced feminist reading of the work. [Duchamp’s] allusions to masculine genitalia and bodily fluids are feminized by Levine, wrote one critic, as the ultra-reflectivity of the surface enhances the curvaceous ‘hips’ of the shape, which was interpreted as Levine’s boldest usurpation of the male artist’s position.”

(F. Naumann, Apropos of Marcel: the art of making art after Duchamp in the age of mechanical reproduction, New York, 1999, p. 30).

Marcel Duchamp Fountain; artwork, Marcel Duchamp: © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; photograph, Alfred Stieglitz: © 2009 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

10

ROBERT GOBER b. 1954 Untitled, 1993-1994 Wood, vinyl, and acrylic paint. 80 x 52 1/2 x 24 in. (203.2 x 133.4 x 61 cm).

Signed and dated “R. Gober 1993-4” on the reverse.

Estimate $2,500,000-3,500,000 PROVENANCE Paula Cooper Gallery, New York EXHIBITED New York, Paula Cooper Gallery, Robert Gober, April 30 – June 4, 1994;

Paris, The American Center, Miniatures and Monstrosities in Contemporary Art, March 10 – June 4, 1995; Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Miniatures and Monstrosities in Contemporary Art, July 18 – October 18, 1995; Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Robert Gober: Forskyvninger/Displacements, February 2 – April 21, 2003; Basel, Schaulager, Robert Gober: Work 1976-2007, May 12 – October 14, 2007 LITERATURE J. Saltz, “Robert Gober at Paula Cooper,” Art in America, New York,

November 1994, pp.133-134; H. Schwartz, “The Remorse of Conscience,” Flash Art, Summer 1994, p. 96 (illustrated); R. Flood, “The Law of Indirections,” Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 25; H. Molesworth, “Stops and Starts,” October, No. 92, Cambridge, 2000, p. 159; A. Thorkildsen, “Gober House,” Robert Gober: Forskyvninger/Displacements, Oslo, 2003, p. 76, & p. 57 (illustrated); B. Richardson & R. Gober, A Robert Gober Lexicon, London, 2005, p. 81 (illustrated); T. Vischer, ed. Robert Gober: Sculptures and Installations 1979 – 2007, Basel, 2007, p. 353 (illustrated); R. Smith, “Against Delusion: Robert Gober’s Nutsand-Bolts Americana,” The New York Times, August 23, 2007, p. E5

With great subtlety, Gober raises these seemingly common objects to another level. By detaching them from their iconographic context and manipulating them to the point of alienation, he changes their identities. They break out of their representative role. Abstraction (form) and metaphor (meaning) merge. Even if the objects look introvert, intimate and modest, they activate and create space in a dynamic manner.

K. Schampers, Robert Gober, Rotterdam, 1990, p. 33

Robert Gober’s sculptures and drawings that unsettle and intrigue, have established him as one of the most ambitious and compelling contemporary artists working today. Gober’s work deals with pressing universal themes of vulnerability, domesticity, isolation, childhood memories, religion, social justice and the body or everyday object on which all of these ideas are made physical.

Gober states, “Sometimes it seems we’re all victims of an incredible mystery. I try to express this.” (K. Schampers, Robert Gober, Rotterdam, 1990) Gober’s Untitled, 1993 – 1994, the present lot, stands out in his oeuvre as a unique and enigmatic piece while simultaneously dealing with the most central themes of his lifetime of work.

Untitled, 1993 – 1994, is a six foot eight inch version of a Farina Hot Wheat Cereal box, complete with hand painted smiling, blue-eyed, blond boy ready to take a bite. With the play in scale a nod to Surrealism, the Pop appropriation of a commercial item, and the simplicity reminiscent of minimalism, Gober infuses these old vocabularies with new meaning. This handmade version of an everyday item from childhood memory has both a humorous and unsettling quality.

This work can first appear to viewers as a benign joyous presence.

As Richard Flood describes his impression of the work: An enormous box of Farina with a deadpan re-creation of a smiling, spoon-fed moppet –offered a somewhat sunnier presence, with its benign promise of nurture. Given the right parental presentation, a box of Farina might well assume such formidable proportions to the obediently receptive child. With its Norman Rockwellesque little boy and comfortably recognizable logo, the Farina box was like a homely, antidotal beacon for those who had been previously exposed to the artist’s bags of kitty litter or containers of rat poison.

R. Flood, “The Law of Indirections,” Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 25 Cloaked in the guise of domesticity, Gober’s work is characterized by simple, reduced elements that recall Minimalism. The present lot in its singular powerful form is reminiscent of the wall mounted sculptures of Minimalist master Donald Judd. Robert Gober speaks about an element of these sculptures that intrigues him: While these sculptures appear to be completely forthright and just the form that you see, there is actually a tiny concealed space built into the sculpture, adjacent to the wall, where a hanging bar resides.

Although Judd hides it from view, because, I guess, he doesn’t want you to think about it, there is always this dark, weirdly undiscussed backstage space. Judd’s sculptures announce themselves as paradigms of clarity and forthrightness, yet achieve this goal through formal deception. There is a masculine bluff about these works that I find endearing, emotionally complex, and perhaps in their duplicity quintessentially American.

R. Gober, “Behind the Seams,” ArtForum, Summer 2004.

Gober’s thoughts on Judd’s work apply to the present lot as well.

This singular work seems to effortlessly float out from the wall, while it in fact is hanging from a brace concealed behind the work.

The undiscussed backstage space can serve as a metaphor for what other content is lurking behind the smiling face of the quintessentially American boy on the cover of the box; what is hidden and the image we are allowed to see.

However, Gober’s work differs significantly from the goals of Minimalism. “While referring to historical models, borrowing their form, so to speak, Gober at the same time invests them with a symbolic meaning which is completely at odds with their origins. He radically overturns the original intentions of his predecessors.

Where they adopt a detached, conceptual stance, Gober opts for a highly personal, emotional approach. He endows his objects with a human warmth which Duchamp or Minimal Art lack.” (K. Schampers, “Robert Gober,” Robert Gober, Rotterdam, 1990, p. 31) With minimalism, the concept of the work is present in the form, while with Gober the work is not alone but accompanied by all of the associations the viewer brings to it, so what you get is so much more than just what you see. In the present lot, the ideas we have about childhood, America, and food as it relates to the body are as much a part of the work as the actual formal characteristics. The formal qualities also have a subtle deviation from minimalism, as the work is hand wrought and meant to replicate the nature of an actual cardboard box of cereal, so its lines are not rigid and straight but have the slight slopes of an item with evidence of human use.

Untitled, 1993 – 1994, with its realistic rendering, is a perfect example of Robert Gober’s ability to take an everyday and ordinary object, such as a sink or a stick of butter, and move the viewer to take a look at it anew. The viewer is compelled to see the ordinary object in Gober’s extraordinary way. But this is not illusionism for its own sake, “Gober’s idolatry of the real unhinges rather than confirms our assumptions about the subjects he chooses. As his objects shed their cloaks of everyday associations they reveal themselves as brooding vessels, which many see in terms of the Freudian symbolism of sexuality, death, and mourning.” (T. Fairbrother, “We are only as sick as the secrets we keep,” Robert Gober, Rotterdam, 1990, p. 43) The meaning of the object is not a fixed prosaic thing, but something fluid and complex, with many layers of meaning, including the unpleasant and imperfect. The cereal box has been the ignored item on the table, always present in our daily life; the silent observer of our routine and interactions around the breakfast table. Gober brings to our attention that such everyday items are imbued with an aura, a mystery. He leads us to question what is around us.

Gober’s appropriation of an everyday commercial object may remind

Gober’s sculptures have a simplicity and lightness, and even some

viewers of Andy Warhol’s famous Brillo Boxes, his recreation of the

humor about them. Untitled, 1993-1994 does have a bit of camp

packaging for Brillo Box soap pads, or the more closely aligned

sensibility as there is something absurd about a cereal box with the

Kelloggs boxes of cereal created in the 1960s. However, Gober does

perfect little blond-haired blue-eyed boy blown up to comic

not seem to share this Pop interest in consumerism nor is he trying

proportions, but there is also a fragility to the piece that leads to the

to point out the emptiness of the world as Warhol’s empty box may

artist’s existential themes of vulnerability and mortality. “Some of

imply. Quite the opposite. Robert Gober’s Untitled, 1993 – 1994 is so

Gober’s objects are funny; and their humor is of a daily nature, the

intellectually and emotionally loaded that there is no trace of

perversion of the familiar. But Gober wouldn’t be as compelling an

emptiness. Though it at first look may appear to be just a blown up

artist as he is if humor were his only playground, and there is

version of a found object, this is not a readymade, a la Duchamp,

obviously also a disturbing quality to these enigmatic objects. It is

but a handcrafted work of art with subtle meaning. Gober is not

the very doubleness that is of interest: homey and unhomey,

questioning the status of art object, but creating something much

unsettling and humorous, shocking and banal,” (H. Molesworth,

more intensely personal.

“Stops and Starts,” October, No. 92, Cambridge, 2000, p. 159)

Robert Gober finds the universal within his own unique experience.

Robert Gober’s Untitled, 1993 – 1994 does have a Surreal playfulness

“He assigns an evident biographical quality to his work. Many of his

to it. Indeed, his work draws many comparisons to Renee Magritte.

objects deal with childhood recollections. ‘Most of my sculptures

The cereal box could also be a pipe. “Gober’s sculpture continues

have been memories remade, recombined and filtered through my

Magritte’s quest to explore the human condition by going beyond

current experiences’. The sinks, beds, chairs, urinals and playpens

conventional reality. What recalls Magritte in Gober’s work is not

which he calls ‘domestically, nondescript motifs’, form a kind of

just the juxtaposition of incongruous items, but also the obsessive

personal mythology, acting as metaphors for the world he grew up

attention to the aura surrounding everyday objects.” (P. Karmel,

in. And in a general sense they act as eloquent symbols of our

Magritte and Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2006, p. 163). Gober’s

existence, as an iconography of fundamental human experience.

Untitled, 1993- 1994 is more than just a surprise and an altered state

There is something touching, innocent, nostalgic, about his

of viewing. This work has a haunting quality that is both complex

domestic objects. They have a melancholy undertone without being

and beautiful, miraculously achieved through such a deceptively

sentimental.” (K. Schampers, “Robert Gober,” Robert Gober,

simple form.

Rotterdam, 1990, p. 33). With its particularly 1950s American imagery, the Farina box could be a relic from Gober’s own childhood. This could have been the cereal box that witnessed all of his mornings and earliest negotiations with the outside world. The artist notes: “When I was small I apparently had little interest in eating. My mother took me to the doctor who said that it was nothing to worry about, that I was healthy and would eat when I was hungry. Instead, she and my maternal grandmother used to force me to eat. I remember gagging to the point of vomit on fried eggs.”

(T. Vischer, ed., Robert Gober: Sculptures and Installations 19792007, Basel, 2007, p. 352).

The present lot in the artist’s studio, New York; photograph: Robert Gober Studio, courtesy of the artist

Robert Gober with the present lot; photograph: Robert Gober Studio, courtesy of the artist

11

MIKE KELLEY b. 1954 Estral Star, 1989 Handsewn found stuffed cloth animal with buttons. 24 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.

(62.2 x 19.1 x 9 cm). Signed “M. Kelley” on the reverse.

Estimate $50,000-70,000 PROVENANCE Private collection, New York; Galerie Oliver Schweden, Munich;

Private collection, Germany

If Duchamp once likened his method to ‘sketching on chance’ Kelley clearly draws on repression. The return, animation and imaginary cross-breeding of the repressed is stitched across the center of his defiantly heterogenous project. Whether it is noise repressed by music, craft by fine art, desire by conduct, or objects and ideas repressed by the codes of Minimalism and Conceptual Art, Kelley’s impulse is to liberate, then free-associate with their traces, and mongrelize their syntactical relation. It is in this sense that he looks to Hans Bellmer’s dolls for ‘the notion of the body as anagram: the body as a kind of sentence that can be scrambled again and again’.

Here, ‘the sentence of experience is recalled through the syntax of remembered moments.’

J. Welchman, “The Art of Repression,” Mike Kelley, London, 1999, p. 57

12

JOHN BALDESSARI b. 1931 Person with Pillow: Desire/Lust/Fate, 1991 Acrylic paint on black and white and color photographs in three parts.

104 1/2 x 91 in. (265.4 x 231.1 cm).

Estimate $300,000-400,000 PROVENANCE Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers,

Munich; Goff + Rosenthal, New York LITERATURE J. Baldessari, ed., John Baldessari, Milan, 2000, p. 91 (illustrated)

Great art is essentially work that has proven inexhaustible in terms

With its provocative title and all-too familiar positioning of the

of the value it gives to those who chose to pay attention to it.

female subject, it is tempting to read the two upper elements of

R. Storr, as quoted by S. Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World,

Person with Pillow: Desire/Lust/Fate as thought bubbles, à la comic

New York, 2008, p. 228

illustration, but a metaphorical manifestation of her emotional state is also plausible, and her empty flesh-toned visage leaves it to us to

The voids of John Baldessari’s painted photographs are

decide the tenor implied, in either case. The volcano has two

simultaneously positive and negative spaces, equally charged

primary classical attributions—passion and anger, both

addition and subtraction. The absence of significant pictorial

encompassed by Baldessari’s title here, and the duo of bandleaders,

elements—most iconically, and in the case of the present lot, the

conducting, while the flat ovals of red and green obscuring their

subjects’ facial features—refocuses our attention, and these

faces make it unclear whether in concert or competition. One man

painted-out expanses become active and intriguing. Humanity’s

stop, and one man go, or perhaps marine navigational beacons—

general fascination with partial obscurity is expressed again and

keep the red on your right, right? The stolid body of calming blue in

again, from the use of masks in theatrical tradition the world over

the central panel is at odds with the violence of the scene behind it,

to sheer clothing for our persons, curtains for our homes, and

echoing a pillow-shape even more closely than the white void

packaging for our possessions, leaving ‘something to the

below... one could go on. Far from being overwhelmed by vigorous

imagination’ in every case. The blanks become expanses for each

thematic speculation, however, this masterful composition bears up

viewer to move imaginatively within and populate idiosyncratically,

beautifully, with its grace and deft proportion tireless.

and this room—and the engagement it makes possible—keeps us coming back.

13

JOHN McCRACKEN b. 1934 Untitled (Blue Wedge), 1968 Fiberglass and natural cellulose lacquer on plywood. 96 1/4 x 24 1/4 x 48 in.

(245.7 x 62.2 x 121.9 cm). Signed and dated “McCracken 1968” on the interior.

Estimate $150,000-200,000 PROVENANCE Griffin, Santa Monica EXHIBITED Santa Monica, Griffin, Sculpture, January 1 – March 24, 2007

What I try to do is to make forms that are singular and indivisible, yet which at the same time may be seen as composed of varying elements. They consist of particular forms, colors, surfaces, but then added to these are surrounding conditions—light, color, reflected images—which also become the ‘materials’ of the works. What they are actually made of is a wide variable spectrum of materials and phenomena. My work is obviously related to monuments of the past such as Stonehenge, and Egyptian architecture and sculpture, but it has nothing directly to do with them. It’s more a matter of finding and inventing the forms that seem expressive of a high level of consciousness and concern. My sculptures are, for one thing, images of man. It is relevant that all of man’s constructions—tools, buildings, clothes, etc.—are as much images of himself as the physical body is, or as portraits are.

John McCracken taken from L. Bovier and M. Perret, eds., Timewave Zero/A Psychedelic Reader, Graz, 2001, p. 31

14

ED RUSCHA b. 1937 Portland to Memphis, 2000 Acrylic on canvas. 42 x 84 in. (106.7 x 213.4 cm). Signed and dated “Ed Ruscha 2000” on the reverse; signed and titled “Ed Ruscha Portland to Memphis” on the stretcher.

Estimate $500,000-700,000 PROVENANCE Sprüth Magers Lee, London EXHIBITED Munich, Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, Ed Ruscha: With and

Without Words, September 13 – October 19, 2002

This work will be included in a forthcoming volume of Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, edited by Robert Dean and Lisa Turvey Letters, signs, maps, and symbols are among the most prominent themes in Ed Ruscha’s work. The quintessential American artist creates seemingly simplistic works that are supercharged with meaning and have a certain poetic message. In the present lot, the artist has the American cities Memphis, Cheyenne, and Portland written on the canvas in minimalist, slanting letters. Beyond this clean and somewhat somber composition, Portland to Memphis recalls the romantic and American ideals of road tripping, an idea coined by the Beat poets and most famously by Jack Kerouc in On the Road. The painting is grey and varies in its degrees of light and dark, therefore appearing as if it was done by pencil in the stippling technique. The style and technique of the painting alludes to a barren futuristic landscape. Ruscha comments, “The idea of seeing something from the air…something from an angle. It’s something that moves me as an artist…So it was kind of a natural thing that I began to gravitate toward, and then finally make these paintings.

They almost look like what these streets might look like in the year 5000.” (Ed Ruscha taken from A. Schwartz, “Conversation with Edward Ruscha in his Studio, Venice California, October 29, 1999,” Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, Cambridge, 2002, p. 375).

15

MARK GROTJAHN b. 1968 Untitled (White Butterfly, Blue MG), 2001 Oil on canvas. 72 x 26 in. (183 x 66 cm). Initialed “M” lower left and “G” lower right.

Estimate $200,000-300,000 PROVENANCE Blum & Poe, Santa Monica LITERATURE Royal Academy Publications, ed., USA Today, London, 2006,

p. 157 (illustrated)

While at first glance Grotjahn’s oeuvre seems bound to purely aesthetic issues in modernist discourse, references to nature and movement are plentiful. His butterfly motif, one of several recurring connections to the natural world, along with flowers and water, has yielded extensive possibilities in both drawing and painting.

Resembling abstract butterfly wings, the works call to mind the butterfly effect, introduced by a mathematician and meteorologist in the 1960s, and maintains that the subtlest movement of a butterfly’s wings could eventually cause a tornado to appear—a ready analogy, perhaps, to Grotjahn’s quietly provocative experiments within the history of abstraction. (Press release from Dancing Black Butterflies, Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2008) The present lot exemplifies how Mark Grotjahn gracefully merges the Renaissance convention of perspectivalism with contemporary nature and culture to build a sensory world full of raw energy, weightlessness and luminosity. The butterfly series, born out of the artist’s three tiered perspective paintings turned on their sides, forcibly warped the experience of observation and rendered a wholly unique pictorial plane. Characterized by radiating angular patterns stemming from a spine-like vertical axis, butterfly paintings such as Untitled (White Butterfly Blue MG), 2001, hold the viewer captive and force one to absorb the rich surfaces, thick layers of impasto and dizzying bands irregularly situated within the canvas to create a distorting vision that flirts with the eye and tricks the mind. Grotjahn’s complex and highly stylized imaginative gestures in the butterfly paintings successfully straddle the polarities of artifice and nature and elegantly harness the mysticism of nature through aesthetic formality.

16

ANISH KAPOOR b. 1954 Untitled, 2005 Painted aluminum. 86 1/2 in. (220 cm) diameter; 18 1/4 in. (46.4 cm) depth.

Signed and dated “Anish Kapoor 2005” on the reverse.

Estimate $800,000-1,200,000 PROVENANCE Regen Projects, Los Angeles EXHIBITED Los Angeles, Regen Projects, Anish Kapoor, February 24 – April 1, 2006

Exploring the fine line between subject matter and content, Anish

into our spatial and spiritual existence visually, palpably and audibly

Kapoor marries simple, elemental materials such as marble,

shaping our experience of the work. The illusion is enhanced by the

aluminum, petroleum jelly, and pigment with geometric forms to

choice of a pearlescent white as the color of this work. The disc

create his spiritually transcendent paintings and sculptures. An

seems to bleed into the walls of the gallery and the white on white

exercise in stylistic understatement, his work has become

juxtaposition draws attention to the gleaming surface work’s. The

universally recognized for its use of saturated organic colors,

work’s milky facade confronts the impenetrable darkness of his

sensuously refined surfaces and skins, and its powerful simplicity

earlier void series which created black, cave-like vacancies in

of form, often resulting in elegant optical illusions. Anish Kapoor’s

various spaces.

content is enigmatic, simultaneously using the languages of Formalism and Minimalism while evading their art historical

Kapoor’s geometric forms are not without their real-world

connotations and critiques entirely. In his words “content arises out

archetypes and the circle, omnipresent in his oeuvre, suggests the

of certain seemingly formal considerations, considerations…about

important Hindu iconography of the Bindu, interpreted as zero, drop

form, about material, about context -and that when that subject

or seed. The Bindu, or circle, is a central point representing

matter is sufficiently far away, something else occurs-maybe it’s the

concentrated energy and is seen as the point or genesis of creation

role of the artist then, as I see it, to pursue, and that’s something

as well as a focal point for meditation, immortalized in age old

that one might call content.” (BBC Radio3 interview with John Tusa)

South Asian meditative aids such as yantras or mandalas. Kapoor, born in Mumbai, often incorporates ideas of non-being and non-

In the mid-1990s, Kapoor became increasingly fascinated with the

duality common to both Hindu and Buddhist spiritual traditions

notion of the void or concavity, playing with the powerful tension

found throughout India and Asia. In this work, the hi-gloss reflective

between positive and negative space. Many of his sculptures since

surface of the lens both absorbs and reflects light, capturing and

seem to recede into the distance, disappear into the ground or

distorting the reality around it. In this way, the viewer’s eye is drawn

distort the space around them. Speaking on the subject, Kapoor

into and held by the work becoming a contemporary version of

suggests that “the void is not silent. I have always thought of it more

these ancient meditative aids.

and more as a transitional space, an in between space. It’s very much to do with time. It’s a space of becoming something that

“Personally,” the artists states that “I have always been drawn to a

dwells in the presence of the work that allows it, or forces it, not to

notion of fear, towards a sensation of vertigo, of falling, of being

be what it states in the first instance.” (Anish Kapoor in: Anish

pulled inwards. This is a notion of the sublime which reverses the

Kapoor, London Hayward Gallery, 1998 pp. 35-36).

picture of union with light. This is an inversion, a sort of turning inside-out. This is a vision of darkness.” (Anish Kapoor quoted in

Frequently, it is the presence of this absence or void which acts as

Cleant, Anish Kapoor, Milan 1998, p. 35) Through his sparse and

the transformative element in his work, converting the medium of

codified language, Kapoor seeks to understand and communicate

stone, aluminum, glass or plaster into a work of art. Often these

ideas on the human condition. The artist successfully draws

voids manifest themselves in the shape of circular, elliptical or

attention to our own humanity by creating works which play with

hemispheric concavities. In Untitled, 2005, Kapoor successfully

the viewer’s sense of space, time and other physical realities.

manipulates space using only the simplest designs to confuse our senses through its reflective and playful relationship with light. The work does not end at its rounded edges but instead extends beyond

17

DONALD JUDD 1928-1994 Untitled 88-27, 1988 Anodized aluminum. 5 x 69 x 9 in. (12.7 x 175.3 x 22.9 cm). Stamped “JUDD Bernstein Bros. Inc. JO 88 -27” on the reverse.

Estimate $500,000-700,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist; Private collection, New York

As both a sculptor and a theorist, Donald Judd is one of the most

This untitled sculpture embodies the veneration of abstract

significant figures in the 1960s’ artistic revolt against the

principles and extreme precision that define Donald Judd’s oeuvre.

dominance of modernism. Judd helped establish the legitimacy of

The work is comprised of repeating quadrangular units that grow

art forms that departed from the Abstract Expressionist painting

progressively larger or smaller as viewer ‘reads’ the work from left

canonized by Clement Greenberg. In a 1965 essay entitled “Specific

to right. In early sculptures similar to this one, Judd used bare

Objects,” Judd helped define the principles behind Minimalism’s

galvanized iron to emphasize the neutrality of the form.

defiance of the traditional categories of painting and sculpture: “A

Progressively, he began to use color, and the work here

work can be as powerful as it can be thought to be. Actual space is

demonstrates how color and texture serve to emphasize movement

intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface

and repetition: textural differences between background and

…A work need only be interesting.” Judd vigorously believed that

foreground elements enhance a sense of progression along

Minimalist sculpture consisted of wholly different concepts from

proportional adjustments of semicircular protrusions and flat

earlier Constructivism or rectilinear abstract painting. For him, the

rectangular planes. The use of high color deepens the audience’s

significance of a work of art lay not in its status as member of a

sense of movement through space and of the work’s strict internal

certain genre; the locus of its significance was rooted instead in

logic; were the work in all white, the textural contrast between its

the creative process and lay in the attitude with which the ‘specific

sculptural elements would have been lessened and the sense of its

object’ was made.

left-to-right progression undermined. By eschewing representative forms, Judd eradicates any sense of self-expression in favor of abstraction through geometric principles. In doing so, he situates his oeuvre in harmony with Classical and later Renaissance ideals of balance and proportion.

18

ANSELM REYLE b. 1970 Untitled, 2005 PVC foil and acrylic paint on canvas in artist’s acrylic glass box.

118 1/8 x 78 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (300 x 200 x 20 cm).

Estimate $100,000-150,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin EXHIBITED Zurich, Kunsthalle Zurich, Anselm Reyle: ARS NOVA, January 21 –

March 26, 2006 LITERATURE B. Ruf, Anselm Reyle: ARS NOVA, Zurich, 2006, p. 107 (illustrated)

Berlin based artist Anselm Reyle masters the art of simultaneously blurring the boundaries of high and low art while exploring the possibilities of Modernism and abstraction in freshly relevant ways.

The present lot, comprised of readily available and cheap tinted foil arranged to form an abstract relief placed behind an acrylic glass box, freely samples art historical motifs such as minimalism, arte povera, neo-geo, and collage yet manages to uniquely cement the impersonal ideas of commodifcation of culture within a contemporary context. The artist aims to reclaim kitsch and the cliché to create his own brand of authenticity and does so with a less is more philosophy. With his foil paintings, Reyle successfully demonstrates how few changes it takes to make an object or an idea function in new ways. …Reyle combines colored mylar with matching or contrasting background colors, sometimes even adding spatters of gravitydefying paint. The shrill materials and hues, along with their often large scale, marks a radical shift from any high-art precedents these works may have- particularly the soft white Achromes of Piero Manzoni or the furrowed burlap of Alberto Burri- drawing them closer to low art. For example, the stark contrasts and high-sheen metallics, not to mention their protective Plexi boxes, vaguely hint at slick 1970s decorative schemes. Reyle welcomes such aesthetic impunity and has said that he is perhaps even more interested in subcultural uses of abstraction.

M. Darling, Painting in Tongues, 2006, Los Angeles, pp. 90-91

19

ADRIANA VAREJÃO b. 1964 Linha Equinoctial III (Equatorial Line III), 1999 Oil on canvas, colored strings and porcelain. Installation dimensions variable; 142 3/4 x 272 x 127 in. (362.6 x 691 x 322.6 cm) as illustrated.

Estimate $60,000-80,000 PROVENANCE Lehmann Maupin, New York EXHIBITED New York, Lehmann Maupin, Adriana Varejão, January 7 – February 12, 2000

Incorporating both popular and historical imagery in her paintings, sculptures, and installations, Rio-born Adriana Varejão constructs visually striking artworks that allude to the roots of Brazil’s colonized history. As evidenced in Linha Equinoctial III Varejão sets up a complex dialogue using broken pieces of blue and white porcelain, painted renderings of the ocean, and colored string to create a dynamic installation that draws on the history of Portugal’s colonization of Brazil; and the bringing of Chinese porcelain across the ocean to South America. Macau, the former Portuguese colony off the coast of China, was the cultural epicenter of what later became Brazil’s thriving tradition of decorative tiling. In the present lot, Varejão poignantly recalls this influence and produces a work that is not only visually arresting, but also loaded with cultural significance.

Adriana Varejão’s work almost invariably evokes a sense of continuous passage, a journey among divergent images, cultures, times and spaces. It alludes to the notion of the universe in constant expansion and transformation, of an imagery infinitely projected onto the other. It follows an intricate and paradoxical path toward the baroque, an empowering poetic strategy designed to address the complexities of cultural constructions, influences and exchanges by examining, appropriating and remapping the vast body of images, forms and ideas disseminated by the Europeans during the colonization of Brazil.

R. Carvajal, “Travel Chronicles: The Work of Adriana Varejão,” New Histories, Boston, 1996, p. 168-169.

Linha Equinoctial III is a worthy example of Varejão’s creative process. The work’s tactile quality recalls one of the artist’s main sources of inspiration—the Italian Transvanguardia, whose goal was to make sensual experience the main objective of painting. In Linha Equinoctial III, Varejão uses this avant garde concept of the 1980s as a springboard, and takes it to the next level to create a work that is visually baroque and poetic in significance.

20

JAMES ROSENQUIST b. 1933 Untitled #1 (Neiman Marcus), 2002 Oil on linen laid on board. 70 x 65 in. (177.8 x 165.1 cm). Signed and dated “James Rosenquist 2002” on the reverse.

Estimate $250,000-350,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist

After moving to New York City from Minneapolis in 1957 at just 21 years of age, James Rosenquist worked as a large scale commercial billboard painter. The painterly technique he mastered and the wide range of source material he encountered would prove crucial to his development into a gallery artist. In the early 60s, alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenberg, James Rosenquist exploded unto the Pop Art scene with a body of work which adapted the visual language of advertising and popular culture to the context of fine art. His colorful and monumental canvases of disoriented yet poetic images employ flat commercial painterly techniques to explore the abstracting possibilities of scale and perspective.

The present work, Untitled #1 (Neiman Marcus), 2002, belongs to a recent series, “The Speed of Light,” where Rosenquist captures the essence of abstraction through the representation of reflected light and fragmented movement. The gestural brushstrokes of vivid colors define biomorphic forms that hint at a possible narrative, as Rosenquist points out: “something that may look like a shiny cylinder disintegrates into something that’s not a cylinder while you are looking at it.” (B. Schwabsky, “James Rosenquist,” ArtForum, September, 2001)

21

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN b. 1927 Mayonnaise Voice, 2007 Painted and chromed steel. 23 1/4 x 21 x 29 in. (59 x 53.3 x 73.7 cm).

Estimate $250,000-350,000 PROVENANCE Danese Gallery, New York

John Chamberlain is best known as an icon of 20th century

The present lot is comprised of an amalgamation of delicately

American sculpture who redefined the notions of modeling, casting

crushed of car parts and scrap metal which have been doused in

and volume. He brought to life a combination of organic notions of

hard, shiny Pop-like colors and fused together to create a

composition, a focus on the incorporation of large scale painterly

voluminous tension that is seamless in energy but not in surface.

shapes and aggressive manipulations of raw materials that resulted

The composition is formed by chance, a randomly compatible fit of

in visually stunning three dimensional artworks directly descendant

individually created components. These casual junctions allow for

from the visual idioms embraced by Abstract Expressionist artists

multiple viewpoints that give way to various interpretations of the

Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Chamberlain’s talent lies in

work’s formal definition. The colors are automatically integrated

creating formally challenging sculptures from the long discarded

into the work to give clear visual evidence of each part’s interaction

detritus of American consumerism, automobiles, into raggedly

with the others. This work perfectly exemplifies the artist’s

amorphous artworks that viscerally incorporate the act of

masterful success in “altering Marcel Duchamp’s notion of the

destruction as a pre-requisite to the act of creation.

ready-made, and using the car as both medium and tool. In them, Chamberlain incorporated euphoric spontaneity, destruction, and chance and gave body to modernism’s developing belief that the subject of art be its own making. These very strategies were then made to breathe new life into the volume modernism had deflated, and to revive the techniques of modeling and casting modernism had declared obsolete.” (K. Kertess, “Color in the Round and Then Some: John Chamberlain’s work, 1954-1985” in John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Sculpture 1954-1985, p. 29).

Alternate View

22

PHILIP GUSTON 1913-1980 Anxiety, 1975 Oil on canvas. 57 1/2 x 80 1/4 in. (146 x 203.8 cm). Signed “Philip Guston” lower right; signed, titled, and dated “Philip Guston ‘Anxiety’ 1975” on the reverse.

Estimate $1,000,000-1,500,000 PROVENANCE Estate of the artist; McKee Gallery, New York EXHIBITED Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, September 20 – November 20,

1983; Buffalo, Albright Knox Gallery, December 10, 1983 – January 15, 1984; Columbus Museum of Art, April 7 – May 20, 1984; Purchase, Neuberger Museum, June 7 – September 15, 1984 and Portland Art Museum, American Still Life: 1945 – 1983, October 9 – December 9, 1984; Bologna, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, La Natura della Natura Morta, December 1, 2001 – February 24, 2002; New York, McKee Gallery, Philip Guston: Mind and Matter, November 11, 2003 – January 10, 2004; New York, Edward Tyler Nahem, Summer Selections, June 2 – August 30, 2008 LITERATURE L. Cathcart, American Still Life 1945-1983, Houston, 1983, p. 68

(illustrated); J. Buckley, ed., Philip Guston: The Late Works, Melbourne, 1984, pp. 56 – 57; K. de Barañano, Philip Guston: La Raiz del Dibujo, Bilbao, 1993, p. 33 (illustrated); McKee Gallery, ed., Philip Guston: Mind and Matter, New York, 2004, pp. 7, 13 & 40 (illustrated); Timothy Taylor Gallery, ed., Philip Guston, London, 2004, pp. 31 – 32

In the last decade of his life, Philip Guston created the most

of portraiture, like a fingerprint” (Ibid p. 41). The seductiveness of

celebrated works of his long career in a courageous shift towards

Guston’s paint handling and elegance of his mark making developed

representational imagery; the present lot, Anxiety, 1975, is one of the

in his abstract period remained a critical component of his later

strongest works of this period. In his later works, Guston focused

works as evidenced in the present lot.

on simple imagery with profound meanings embedded in them, as the telephone and egg sandwich in the present lot have a

In 1967, Guston left New York to break free of the mob-mentality of

particularly personal connection to the artist, and can even be read

the art world and to move away from his abstract paintings which

as self-portraiture via still-life.

had been so well received there. The artists spoke of this need for change, “This disenchantment grew. I knew that I would need to

Guston was first an acclaimed star of the Abstract Expressionists

test painting all over again in order to appease my desires for the

alongside Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. Guston made

clear and sharper enigma of solid forms in an imagined space, a

abstract paintings for approximately sixteen years, before he

world of tangible things, images, subjects, stories, like the way art

transitioned into his later figurative period. It was during this time

always has” (R. McKee, ed. “Philip Guston Talking,” Philip Guston,

that Guston developed his signature brushstrokes, which retained

London, 2004, p. 23). He moved to Woodstock where he worked on

prime importance in his later work. Guston’s friend Morton Feldman

the paintings for his first exhibition of his new figurative works at

remembers this time in the fifties as “[Guston] and [studio mate,

Marlborough Gallery in New York in 1970 and continued to work for

artist Bradley Walker] Tomlin could talk for hours, I mean hours,

the rest of his life. When the show opened, the New York art world

on what a single brushstroke meant—what was its character and

did not know how to process this radical change and short-sighted

where was it going” (M. Auping, “Impure Thoughts,” Philip Guston

critics reviewed it negatively. However, these works, that were later

Retrospective, Fort Worth, 2003, p. 39). For Guston, the brushstroke

to become some of the artists most celebrated paintings, were

was the essential element of painting and he focused on this

immediately well received by fellow painter Willem de Kooning.

fundamental act of making marks. He worked on paintings in very

At the opening, de Kooning embraced Guston and told him that he

close proximity to the canvas, scrutinizing each stroke. “Guston

admired the new paintings’ celebration of freedom. “That Guston

laid claim to a special immediacy and intimacy related to ‘touch.’

had the courage to make this radical departure is astonishing. The

The paintbrush was like a sacred tool to Guston. The nine-inch-long

freedom he carved for himself, to break away and paint what he

wooden shaft and the flattened horsehairs that protruded from its

wanted to rather than what others expected, is a testament to his

end were like an extension of his fingers. Guston had his pigments

authenticity as a person” (J. Weber, “Philip Guston and Soren

ground to create a particularly creamy consistency, and like thick

Kierkegaard: Facing the Despairing Self,” Philip Guston, A New

butter applied to a hard surface, each stroke subtly squeezed

Alphabet: The Late Transition, New Haven, 2000, p. 7).

out at its edges, creating a micro-sculptural effect. Guston envisioned the art of applying paint, whether employed in abstract

This new move to the representational brought forth a world of

or representational painting, as an innate and fundamental form

objects filled with meaning. The artists said, “What I am getting at is that I find more and more that what I like is what has a feeling of poetry and is the expression which is of a time and place and region.

It is saturated with particularity” (P. Guston, “On Cave Art, Church Art, Ethnic Art, and Art,” ArtNews, December 1974). In an eloquent lecture Philp Guston delivered at the University of Minnesota in March 1978, Guston chose to speak about the present lot:

I have a horror of telephones. I have a gadget so that you can turn it

The present lot, Anxiety, 1975 is a poetic self-portrait of the

off, so that I can call out but nobody can call me. It’s a very selfish

reflective artist. “The courage, honesty, and discipline to be

thing to do, but I indulge myself in the luxury. And there’s a

authentic and to come clean unites Guston, the man, to the late

luncheonette not far away, and they have the most marvelous bacon

works. In them he attacks broad questions about the human

and egg sandwich. That’s what this is. I was painting the hated object

condition, not with words or philosophical treaties, but with paint.

and the desired object. There was a lot of bacon sticking out and it

Like Old Testament prophecies, his paintings trumpet impending

started looking like a body. When you paint things they change into

doom, urge self-examination, and demand a shaking free from the

something else, something totally unpredictable. The telephone

mob mentality: Do not be passive. Act. He painted strong, almost

looked terrible. I started to scrape it out and it began to look o.k. The

cartoonlike, images to make his point, to himself, of what can

black was scraped out with a knife and it looked like the effect you

happen when humans live unchecked lives and hide from their own

get when you are a kid and you put paper over a coin and rub…So

despair—what Kierkegaard called ‘inauthentic despair.’ For Guston,

then I thought, I should make a painting of it, put something

a person who does not engage in self-reflection, who has no

between those objects. I didn’t know what to do, so I made them into

concern for the well-being of others, or who is without an

two pictures, one a picture of a telephone and the other a picture of

existentialist framework for ethical and fair living is inauthentic.

the sandwich and that seemed o.k.

As a participant in the human journey, Guston was compelled to

Philip Guston in R. McKee, ed., “Philip Guston Talking: A Lecture

create paintings that were deeply personal confessions. He

Given in March 1978,” Philip Guston, London, 2004, pp. 31 -32

reflected on his surrounding culture and its ugliness, placing himself in it, in humility. It is as if he sought redemption through

The telephone and sandwich are potent symbols for the artist that

painting” (J. Weber, “Philip Guston and Soren Kierkegaard: Facing

take on a self-portrait quality. The artist’s own tension between

the Despairing Self,” Philip Guston: A New Alphabet, The Late

conflicting desires to hide from and embrace the pleasures of the

Transition, New Haven, 2000, p. 7).

world are embodied in the painting. During his time in Woodstock, Guston was particularly reclusive, liking to live in the world of his paintings and his family. He preferred to have studio visits with a few close friends who were writers, rather than engage in the social gatherings of the art scene. His friends were all aware of his telephone device and how it allowed Guston to cut off the world.

They also fondly remembered his love of great food. In his memoir on the artist, friend William Corbett said, “Guston ate with a dainty ferocity. He was a good cook with a remarkable memory for meals he had eaten and the gift to make talked about food mouthwatering.

I can hear him beginning the account of a meal: ‘You know when you’re hungry? I mean you just want some food, a piece of fresh fish, almost anything will do…’ At his funeral his dealer David McKee remembered Guston’s late-night cravings for shrimp or chocolate pinwheels and off they went to find them” (W. Corbett, Philip Guston’s Late Work: A Memoir, Cambridge, 1994, p. 49).

23

YUE MINJUN b. 1962 Backyard Garden, 2005 Oil on canvas. 110 1/4 x 157 1/2 in. (280 x 400 cm). Signed and dated “Yue Minjun 2005” lower left; signed, titled and dated “Yue Minjun Backyard Garden [in Chinese] 2005” on the reverse.

Estimate $500,000-600,000 PROVENANCE Fortune Cookie Projects, Singapore EXHIBITED Shenzhen, He Xiangning Art Museum, Reproduction Icons:

Yue Minjun Works: 2004-2006, June 3 – June 11, 2006 LITERATURE He Xiangning Art Museum, ed., Reproduction Icons: Yue Minjun

Works: 2004-2006, Shenzhen, 2006, pp. 78-79 (illustrated); U. Grosenick and C. Schübbe, eds., China Art Book, Cologne, 2007, p. 566 (illustrated); Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, ed., From Heaven to Earth: Chinese Contemporary Painting, Bologne, 2008, p. 189 (illustrated)

The spiritual essence of the silly man is originated from the philosophy of Lao Zhuang [Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi are two ancient

As with many cartoon characters, the expression changes very little.

Chinese philosophers]. When scholars from historic periods

The power and the charm of what cartoon characters are able to

confronted social problems, they often displayed a sense of

express is the essence human nature. Where these characters are

helplessness. Many chose to give up altogether. I feel that the act of

evoked in simple, stylized forms, the ways in which their creators

giving up is a condition of humanity; it prevents confrontation with

make them interact with the worlds becomes paramount. The

the society and maintains an inner peace. Letting go of everything

situations in which they are placed, and the nature of the stories

allows one to be indifferent and detached. Any problem can be solved

they act out, have to reinforce the attitude we understand them to

at heart, and subsequently turned to emptiness. This is how one may

encapsulate.

attain peacefulness with oneself.

B. Feng, Reproduction Icons: Yue Minjun Works, 2004-2006,

Yue Minjun taken from H. Lee and L. Weng, eds., Beyond

Shenzhen, 2006, p. 8

Boundaries, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, 2004, p. 180 The present lot, Backyard Garden, 2005 depicts Yue’s signature Yue Minjun is one of the most important contemporary Chinese

laughing characters tangling in between the artificial rocks in a

painters of Cynical Realism. In the early 90s, when he was still

traditional Chinese backyard garden. Along with the amplified

living in the painter’s village in Old Summer Palace, his works

laughing gesture, the characters are bending their bodies in a

started to reflect the thoughts of uniform culture and

grotesque manner that resembles a type of Chinese Kung fu. The

monochromatic lifestyles. Borrowing from Chinese folk art, he

word Kung fu originally means “classical gymnastic ballet,” it was

employed the most vibrant colors and achieved high acceptance

invented

and wide recognition. For Yue, the goal of his painting is to address

not to harm, but to defend. It has nothing to do with war or battle,

a series of complex problems with a simple and pretty answer. In a

but rather, it is an athletic dance. Many moves are derived from

sense, Yue’s painting is a self-portrait; by duplicating the figure he is

the observation of birds and animals, for which these skills are

inventing new icons similarly to the way new icons are created by

performed for the purpose of self-sustaining, not conscious

repeated exposure on television or in film. Today, the cartooned

aggression. As Yue summarized himself, “I decided to make a

laughing pink faces have already established themselves as icons;

parody of the animal and bird postures that originally inspired the

they now have life forces and intangible charisma like Coca-Cola or

“dance.” The contortions to which I subject the figures highlight

even, Marilyn Monroe.

how far the art has come from the innocence of its roots.” (Ibid, p. 22)

While the branded icons perpetually extend through Yue’s artistic theme, the backgrounds they inhabit are constantly changing. From the earliest works of figures standing in Tiananmen Square to the more recent work of figures floating in outer space, the facial expressions of the figures remain the same. The variety of circumstances that the figure is in suggests heavily and carefully towards the dark age of Chinese politics. The enthusiastic laugh directs to the most fundamental survival instinct under political oblivion; causing them to question the meaning of existence.

Having his parents’ generation survive World War II followed by the extreme political regime of the Cultural Revolution, then to the semi-capitalist markets I the 90s, Yue’s figures define a genereation of self-exile, solidifying today’s laughing icon from bliss, agony and self ridicule.

24

CECILY BROWN b. 1969 Suddenly Last Summer, 1999 Oil on linen. 100 x 110 1/4 in. (254 x 280 cm). Signed and dated “Cecily Brown 1999” on the reverse.

Estimate $600,000-800,000 PROVENANCE Gagosian Gallery, New York EXHIBITED New York, Gagosian Gallery, Cecily Brown, January 14 – February 19,

2000; Des Moines Art Center, Cecily Brown, August 4 – October 1, 2006; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Cecily Brown, October 18, 2006 – January 15, 2007 LITERATURE E. Wingate, ed., Cecily Brown: Paintings 1998-2000, New York, 2000,

pl. 23 (illustrated); R. Smith, “Art in Review: Cecily Brown,” The New York Times, New York, January 20, 2000, p.E.2:42; D. Hunt, “Going for Baroque,” Time Out New York, New York, 2000, p. 57 (illustrated); J. Fleming, Cecily Brown, Des Moines, 2006, p. 17 (illustrated); E. Wingate, ed., Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p. 95 (illustrated)

Sensual intelligence, a richly eclectic awareness of visual references, a vivid painterly imagination, and a terrific force of generative energy are all strikingly present in Cecily Brown’s work.

Robust in scale and subject matter, these works flicker at the hallucinatory edge between figural representation and gestural abstraction. A subtle quality of ambivalence animates the surface of these paintings, serving as a ground of emergence, a field of potentialities for awakening perception. Brown’s painterly imagination works between facture and figure. She suffuses her marks with associative suggestivity. The boundary-loosening condition of arousal charges the atmosphere of her canvases so that limb and lip and tongue and hip, swatch and patch, stroke and line move into and out of each other, interpenetrating space and substance. The paintings sustain a condition of indeterminate specificity, a state of prolonged tension on the edge of final definition, deferring closure.

J. Drucker, “Erotic Method,” Cecily Brown: Paintings 2003-2006, New York, 2006, p. 5

25

ZENG FANZHI b. 1964 Little Boy, 2006 Oil on canvas. 70 3/4 x 110 1/4 in. (180 x 280 cm). Signed and dated “Zeng Fanzhi [in Chinese and English] 2006” lower right.

Estimate $250,000-300,000 PROVENANCE Wedel Fine Art, London EXHIBITED

London, Wedel Fine Art, Zeng Fanzhi: Painting, October 10 –

November 10, 2006 LITERATURE Wedel Fine Art, ed., Zeng Fanzhi: Painting, London, 2006,

p. 25 (illustrated)

From the recent abstract landscapes series of Zeng Fanzhi, the present lot is a massive saga, elaborating in visual details, repeating the familiar and unfamiliar. It tells stories, reveals the unexpected and reports the unforeseen; and all of these are realized during the creation of this painting. It does not tell a story that already exists, but rather, this painting is merely a beginning of endless possibilities. Hence it does not have any intrinsic boundaries of storylines; it can be unfolded in whichever way that you would like to interpret the painting, just like the ambiguous ending of a magnificent movie.

In this state of ephemerality, of fluidity, of unconcludedness, lies, perhaps, one of the most important and most specific elements of his art. Just as the swirling brush strokes, through their division and separation, concentration and diffusion, accompanies by dramaticemotional, connotative-narrative light and shadow effects, freely, inexorably and unceasingly bring new formations into being, introduce new stories and create landscape visions, human bodies or portraits out of the paint he puts on canvas, only to melt them down and transform them again, so, too, do Zeng Fanzhi’s pictorial situations evolve, as if a large-scale visual epos with many parallel strands were unfolding, continually weaving new subplots into the central story line and incorporating new particulars and new details into an opulent, all-encompassing whole.

L. Hegyi, “The Visual Epos of Zeng Fanzhi,” China’s Neo Painting, A Triumph Over Image: 2007, Nanjing, 2007

26

MATTHEW BARNEY b. 1967 Cremaster 5: The Queen’s Menagerie, 1997 C-print in artist’s acrylic frame. 52 3/4 x 42 1/4 in. (134 x 107.3 cm). Signed and dated “Matthew Barney ‘97” on the reverse. This work is from an edition of six plus one artist’s proof.

Estimate $80,000-120,000 PROVENANCE Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Private collection, New York EXHIBITED New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Eye Candy, August 15 –

October 31, 2004 (another example exhibited) LITERATURE M. Barney, Cremaster 5, New York, 1997, n.p. (detail illustrated);

N. Spector, The Cremaster Cycle, New York, 2002, p. 513

Cremaster 5: The Queen’s Menagerie, 1997 depicts the fleet of Jacobin pigeons symbolic for the tragic love story of the Cremaster cycle. Matthew Barney’s Cremaster series of films metaphorically chronicles the biological development of the human life cycle.

Cremaster 5, realized as a lyric opera, is set in late-nineteenthcentury Budapest. The film presents the climax of the complete Cremaster Cycle. The Queen of Chains of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 5 is served by three men: her Diva, Musician, and Giant.

The present lot, Cremaster 5: The Queen’s Menagerie is a visually elegant and pleasing composition of the Queen’s Jacobin pigeons and flowers. Ultimately, the Jacobin pigeons fail to save the Queen and her lover, the Giant, from tragedy. The Cremaster cycle draws no concrete conclusions; the viewer is left to decide whether Barney presents a final death or a rebirth and return to Cremaster 1.

27

JOHANNES KAHRS b. 1965 Silent Depression, 1999 Oil on canvas in artist’s frame. 66 7/8 x 86 3/8 in. (170 x 219.5 cm). Signed and dated “J Kahrs 1999” twice on the reverse.

Estimate $100,000-150,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

People sometimes say the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in real life, that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really happen to you, it’s like watching television—you don’t feel anything.

Andy Warhol quoted in J. Kahrs, Why don’t you paint my portrait?, Bremen, 1999, p. 41 Johannes Kahrs’ powerful paintings take images culled from photography and film stills as their starting point. He chooses fragments of images and further removes them from their source by shifting tones and leaving contours blurred to create a mysterious new reality. He does not let us forget that this is, however, an image and not a reality you can enter. He frames his works behind glass as if we are still separated from the inner world of the painting by the medium of a television screen. The present lot, Silent Depression, 1999, portrays a dark moment with the central figure screaming in pain, terror, or explosive anger. Framed by the rounded black corners of the composition into the shape of a television screen, with the Richter-esque blur of a paused video, this image seems like it could be taken from a horror movie. Kahrs uses the fictional reality of a horror movie still to express the inner pain of a psychological state. “So I think that if Johannes is involved, or interested, in those uncanny and dark and terrible areas, then it is because they are areas of the human mind, rather than of actual reality.” (U. Loock, Johannes Kahrs, Images in Painting, Porto, 2005, p. 161).

28

TRACEY EMIN b. 1963 When I Think about Sex …, 2005 Neon. 8 1/4 x 97 in. (21 x 246.4 cm).This work is from an edition of three.

Estimate $50,000-70,000 PROVENANCE White Cube, London EXHIBITED London, White Cube, When I Think about Sex …, May 27 – June 25, 2005

The present lot, When I Think About Sex …, exemplifies British

because it’s moving constantly and like drawing.The chemicals

artistTracey Emin’s intense desire to express her thoughts, ideals

going through the neon really turns me on. It’s sexy.” (R. Pierce,

and life experiences through her art. Emin, one of the most

“A conversation withTracey Emin” in Sculpture, November 2002,

groundbreaking and prolific artists to rise to fame as part of the

p. 40).This particular work, constructed in a white-hot fluorescent

conceptual Young British Artists group, intertwines life and art so

color, draws its viewers even more deeply into Emin’s sexual

tightly that they cannot be separated and un-ironically invites the

world. It is noted that “White is perfect for Emin. Perhaps the

viewer into her thoughtful and brash world of love, pain, sex, and

most paradoxical of colors, it is best associated in the West with

confession resulting in an audaciously honest display of her life

brides and purity, yet it is also the color of sexual fluids, blank

as public spectacle.

canvases, cocaine, fluorescent office lighting, cigarette paper, and hospital sheets—and in many Eastern cultures, it is the color of

Emin’s neon, fabricated in the style of her own handwriting, is

mourning. Its versatility is especially well-suited to Emin’s art,

simultaneously seedy yet bright and appealing.The work alludes

which is equally paradoxical—vulgar and vulnerable, mercenary

to the artist’s sex-fueled teenage years in the seaside English

and honest, brash and generous.” (A. F. Honigman, “Pure

town of Margate. Emin, who worked in Margate’s fairground café

Traceyland,” Whitewall Magazine, Issue 3, pp. 72-79.)

and later on, in a sex shop there has commented that “I like neon,

29

RICHARD PHILLIPS b. 1962 Fighter (After Rene Moncada), 2005 Oil on linen. 86 1/2 x 64 in. (219.7 x 162.6 cm). Signed and dated “Richard Phillips ‘05” on the overlap.

Estimate $100,000-150,000 PROVENANCE Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; Private collection, New York EXHIBITED New York, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Richard Phillips: Law, Sex &

Christian Society, May 12 – June 18, 2005 LITERATURE M. Bracewell, Richard Phillips, London/New York, 2005, n.p.

(illustrated); Friedrich Petzel Gallery and M. Fried, eds., Law, Sex & Christian Society, New York, 2006, n.p. (illustrated)

Richard Phillips’ paintings evoke the pictorial style of popular culture as well as magazines from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Phillips’ strong infatuation with the protagonists of his paintings translates into strong yet elegant imagery. Focusing on contemporary issues and politics, as evidenced by the present lot, Fighter (After Rene Moncada), 2005 as well as women of the fashion and soft pornography industries, the paintings are realized in a stylized manner. In an interview Richard Phillips states: In the late eighties and early nineties, appropriation in art often sought to critique society and culture by turning the images of power directly against their source, in an effort to expose the corrupt agendas of larger political entities. There was a decisive separation of the depicted subject from its form in the service of a directed message that, while devaluing the image, attempted to usher in superior ideals. At this stage painting was generally relegated to entertainment/media status, where representations of once expressive styles were seen as a conceptual social critique. The socalled painting emergency sought nothing other than the perpetuation of itself as a still-born medium trading on sympathies of initiated well-wishers. Painting as a medium was seen as an illustrative form, which sacrificed its physical and visual power to an idealistic end. Yet it is precisely the texture of these commingled relationships between times, efforts, irreconcilable differences, and hypocrisies which painting now has the power to meditate on and possess, unleashing new gestures from a position where these delusions can be seen as a control in our present social experiment, where power infused into the visual and physical reality of painting can reflect this, our alienated and fallible state of humanity.

Y. Dziewior, ed., Richard Phillips, Hamburg, 2002, n.p.

30

RUDOLF STINGEL b. 1956 Untitled, 2007 Oil on canvas. 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm).

Estimate $150,000-200,000 PROVENANCE Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Stingel’s absorption of the vocabulary of baroque arguably articulates baroque’s tendency toward instability. Quoting Heinrich Wolfflin’s observation that all the most prominent Baroque artists suffered from headaches [and] there were also cases of melancholia, Anthony Vidler cites Jacques Lacan’s definition of the baroque as the regulation of the soul by the scopic regulation of the body. Stingel’s elaborately carved black lacquered works clearly have more in common with his melancholic self-portraits than might be immediately evident. As contemplations on the problems of the modern, they echo Friedrich Nietzsche’s understanding of baroque as intrinsically decadent; it appears whenever a great age of art enters a decline…[its appearance is to be] greeted with great sadness—because it heralds nightfall.

Nietzsche’s pronouncement seems unduly pessimistic; yet the contemporary art world, and the world at large, are in a period of profound transition, in which the future seems far from certain.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Stingel’s complex work is the demonstration of painting’s continued power to articulate the trauma of modernity, through its perpetually evolving relationship to three-dimensional space. This knowledge only serves to confirm Yve-Alain Bois’ observation that the pictorial field is an antagonistic field where nothing is ever decided once and for all.

C. Iles, “Surface Tension,” Rudolf Stingel, New Haven, 2007, p. 29

31

PAUL McCARTHY b. 1945 Green Grey Michael Jackson 1, 2003 C-print in multiple parts face-mounted to Plexiglas on wood and Styrofoam support. 102 1/2 x 52 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. (260.4 x 133.4 x 12 cm). Signed and dated “Paul McCarthy 2003” on the reverse. This work is unique and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Estimate $80,000-120,000 PROVENANCE Hauser & Wirth, Zurich

Highly influential artist Paul McCarthy challenges the conventions of art making with a commentary on a combination of pop culture clichés, social taboos, and historical references. Evidenced by the current lot, Green Grey Michael Jackson 1, is the artist’s inspiration from pop imagery. A 1988 sculpture by Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, depicting Jackson and the professional chimpanzee and companion, Bubbles, served as the initial source for McCarthy’s exploration of Michael Jackson as subject. With the Koons work as the starting point, McCarthy embarked on a full series of works utilizing the recognizable image of the fallen King of Pop, exaggerated to grotesque effect in a consideration of the role of celebrity in current culture.

With gigantic blocky masses for heads that look unstable in proportion to their damaged bodies—forever monstrous and mute— they were the perfect doppelgangers for a distressed father-and-son duo. The dice are always loaded for the patriarchal pairs who populate McCarthy‘s work and who evince a strained camaraderie in which simmering brutality is sublimated as melodramatic kitsch.

J. Augikos, “Paul McCarthy—Reviews: New York,” ArtForum, January 2003

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

32

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG 1925-2008 Wooden Rays (Galvanic Suite), 1989 Acrylic on galvanized aluminum. 48 3/4 x 36 3/4 in. (123.8 x 93.3 cm). This work is signed and dated “Rauschenberg ‘89” lower left; numbered “89.68” on the reverse.

Estimate $200,000-300,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from artist; Dr. Mark Vechsler, New York

Robert Rauschenberg frequently stated that he desired to work “in the gap between art & life.” This mantra grew to encompass even the materials that constructed his artworks and the distinctions between objects traditionally considered to be fine art and those of every day life were eradicated. He combined paintings and photographs with found images such as metals, tires, shoes, and stuffed animals generating his most famous series he called Combines. This unique appropriation of various different mediums in the same work of art solidified his place in art history.

In 1986, Rauschenberg began to revisit the technique of silkscreening for the first time since 1964. Wooden Rays is part of Rauschenberg’s Galvanic Suite series which he created from 19881991. During this series he silk-screened found images and his own photographs directly onto the surface of galvanized metals, providing a magnetic relationship between the work of art and the viewer.

33

ANSELM KIEFER b. 1945 Schweres Wasser (Heavy Water), 1985-1987 Two black and white photographs on acid treated lead with clay wash on singed canvas mounted on board in artist’s steel frame. 67 1/2 x 51 3/4 in.

(171.5 x 131.4 cm).

Estimate $250,000-350,000 PROVENANCE Jan Eric von Löwenadler, New York.

Arguably one of the most important German artists after World War II, Anselm Kiefer is most easily recognized by his large work, which meditate on themes of mythology, literature, architecture, cosmology, and nature. As seen in the present lot, titled Schweres Wasser (Heavy Water), his works are vast in scale and abstract in quality, recalling close connections with the Abstract Expressionist movement, which was of definite inspiration to Kiefer. The art historian, Mark Rosenthal speaks of an inherent tension that exists in his works beginning with “the attempt to unite the scale and visual richness of Abstract Expressionism with meaningful subject matter; in other words, to unite the poles of form and content, the concrete and the ideal, and art and life. The best of Kiefer’s paintings are epic elegies to the human condition, which pulsate with profoundly felt emotions, complex thematic subtlety, and extraordinary surface excitement” (M. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987, p. 155).

The deep meaning of Kiefer’s work is more often than not, a deliberate attempt at commenting on German history and society.

Schweres Wasser (Heavy Water) falls into a category of work from the mid-1980s by the artist that served as “an indirect response to the controversy in West Germany…about NATO’s stationing of tactical nuclear missiles on German soil and the placement of nuclear fuel processing facilities,” The work’s title is a scientific term suggestive of the dangerous nuclear reactions that took place right at those stations. While the present lot abstractly recalls a bleak reality, Kiefer maintains the high quality of his aesthetic with natural materials and earthy tones therefore marrying form and content within the canvas.

34

SOL LEWITT 1928-2007 Wall Drawing #41, 1970 A wall divided into four parts based on architectural points, each part with lines in three directions and three colors. Installation dimensions variable. To be installed by the LeWitt Studio.

Estimate $200,000-300,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist; John Weber Gallery; Private

collection, Italy EXHIBITED Hartford, Wadsworth Athenium, Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings 1968 – 1981,

December 1, 1981 – January 31, 1982; Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings, March 2 – April 23, 1984 LITERATURE S. Singer, ed., Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, Amsterdam, 1984,

pl. 41 (illustrated); S. LeWitt, Sol LeWitt in Italia, Perugia, 1998, p. 84 (illustrated)

Sol LeWitt’s ability to combine philosophical discourse with artistic

LeWitt wrote in 1970, “The wall drawing is a permanent installation,

creation helped pave the way for the advent of Conceptual art in the

until destroyed,” yet he knew that while instances of his drawing

late 1960s. In fact, he was one of the first artists to use the

might be perishable, his ideas were not. Much of what he designed

Conceptual label, and pronounced that it is the idea that is the heart

consisted of specific ideas or instructions to be contemplated, or of

of his work while the visual manifestation is incidental. Many of

plans for drawings to be carried out. LeWitt’s wall drawings include

LeWitt’s wall drawings were done by groups of art students whom

instructions for their re-creation, with allowances made for the

he supervised in a manner reminiscent of Renaissance

variety of prospective settings. His visual language, as this work

apprenticeships: the master artist provided the concept and

demonstrates, is an accessible one composed of straight lines,

apprentices gave it visual form and, in doing so, aided their own

three colors, and a flat surface. Wall drawings, which are key to

intellectual and creative development. His wall drawings’ transitory

LeWitt’s reputation as one of the fathers of Conceptual art, provoke

nature plays down notions of permanence and personal genius—

associations between human kind’s ancient tradition of drawing or

historically important values in Western art—in favor of co-

painting on walls—from cave paintings to Roman and Renaissance

operative ventures and works that exist first and last as ideas.

frescoes—and make it relevant to a post-modern ethos.

Plan for Wall Drawing Photograph by Karry Ryan McFate, courtesy of the Estate of Sol LeWitt and PaceWildenstein

Certificate for present lot

35

WANG GUANGYI b. 1957 Porsche, 2005 Oil on canvas. 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in. (200x 200 cm). Signed and dated “Wang Guangyi [in English and Chinese] 2005” on the reverse.

Estimate $200,000-300,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist LITERATURE U. Grosenick and C. Schübbe, eds., China Art Book, Cologne, 2007,

p. 420 (illustrated)

As with the Post-Classical and Mao Zedong series, in Great Criticism Wang Guangyi was once again painting his pictures with a borrowed brush. But the painters he borrowed from here did not have the consummate skills of the old masters; neither were the cameras that stayed absolutely true to their subjects. Rather they were a group of very ordinary artists, namely the authors of the mass criticism posters that were widely circulated during the Cultural Revolution. Just like the designers who created logos for the famous brands that can now be seen everywhere, the names of these artists are unknown (although they would be easier to trace than the craftsman who carved the numerical stamps that Wang Guangyi also makes use of it the Great Criticism paintings). But the symbols they created have greatly altered the living environments of countless people. These symbols have real shock value, like that of the swastika symbol, and their diverse forms and rich content exert an immense psychological pull on people. Once these symbols had separated off from specific cultural circumstances, they became a new vocabulary of meaningless and perplexing words. Yet for Chinese people today they are vivid images, firmly embedded in the context of their lives.

Y. Shanchun, “Art and Social Reality,” Wang Guangyi: The Legend of Heroism, Hong Kong / Paris, 2004, p.19

36

FENG ZHENGJIE b. 1968 Chinese Portrait L Series 2006 No.10, 2006 Oil on canvas. 82 3/4 x 118 in. (210 x 300 cm). Signed and dated “Feng Zhengjie [in Chinese and English] 2006” lower left.

Estimate $70,000-90,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist

A female face with the irises located at the extremities can almost be regarded as a trademark of Feng Zhengjie’s paintings. We feel, of course, something strange when facing these paintings: we can’t understand what she is looking at, or what she is thinking. We say, in Japanese, that “the eyes tell more than the mouth” which means that the expression of the eyes is decisive. The artist, first hid their eyes’ expression by using sunglasses, then he found that he could do it, more effectively, by locating the irises at the extremity of the eyes.

This is a discovery and a surprise. Moreover, this solution gives us a bizarre impression as if the girls have no eyes, although their eyes are actually depicted.

On the other hand, the lips are painted vivid rouge. The color seems even gaudy to some people. If you look at these lips closely, you will find that they are all individual with different shapes and expressions.

They are all charming and attractive, more or less, appear from the gaudiness of the color. Their lips make a remarkable contrast with the dehumanized look in their eyes.

C. Shigeo, “These Girls Are Looking At? Feng Zhengjie’s Paintings,” Feng Zhengjie, Italy, 2004, pp.108-109

37

SUHASINI KEJRIWAL b. 1973 Untitled 05, 2008 Oil and acrylic on canvas. 92 x 58 in. (233.7 x 147.3 cm).

Estimate $30,000-40,000 PROVENANCE Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai EXHIBITED Mumbai, Chemould Prescott Road Contemporary Art Gallery,

An Advertisement for Heaven or Hell: An Exhibtion of Recent Paintings and Installations by Suhasini Kejriwal, February – March 2008

Suhasini Kejriwal creates her surreal and highly detailed portraits of the natural world through densely layered and meticulously rendered painterly collage. Meant to be both luscious and macabre, the artist manipulates scale and orientation to create dream-like landscapes both terrifying and enticing.

Kejriwal subverts perspective and representation for the sake of linear movement in her works and her compositions find their archetypes in traditional South Asian pattern designs which lack ground line in place of abundant surface decoration. She also finds inspiration in the paisley swirls of Mendhi painting traditionally decorating the hands and feet of Indian brides. Kejriwal has previously resorted to using actual collage and embroidery to generate her lush and detailed surfaces. Her dark yet playful sense of humor pervades the subject matter where rats and insects inhabit a world of exotic tropical plants and a tenuous architecture.

38

MARK TANSEY b. 1949 Reader, 1990 Oil on canvas. 77 x 49 3/4 in. (195.6 x 126.4 cm). Signed, titled and dated “Tansey ‘READER’ 1990” on the reverse.

Estimate $500,000-700,000 PROVENANCE Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris EXHIBITED New York, Josh Baer Gallery, The Library, May 24 – June 29, 1991 LITERATURE D. Blau, The Library, New York, 1991, n.p. (illustrated); A. Danto,

Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions, New York, 1992, p. 119 (illustrated); G. Stewart, The Look of Reading: Book, Painting, Text, Chicago, pp. 365-369 (illustrated)

Mark Tansey’s predominately monochromatic canvases are concerned with the role of signs in modern communication.

Heavily influenced by Structuralist thought, Tansey draws upon phrases by well-known philosophers to further explore the visual properties of language. In Reader, Tansey quotes the French postmodern thinker Jacques Derrida, who explained the world as a totality of meanings. “Tansey takes [the meaning of language], as the French expression goes, au pied de la lettre, and cleverly uses stenciled text, overprinted and made obscure, to create the textures of his landscapes,” (Danto, p. 28).

Tansey avoids simple visual methods, opting instead for a more sophisticated and subtle approach to constructing meaning from his subjects. The late 1980s, for Tansey, was, “a period of deep preoccupation with the relationship between image and meaning, between perception and interpretation, a thorough process which ultimately led to the incorporation of letters of the alphabet,” (G. Werd, I. Dressler and H. Christ, Mark Tansey, Kleve, 2005, p. 7).

Within the narrative character, Tansey retains photorealistic details, which create complex, conceptual arrangements that attempt to redefine the task of representation.

39

ELIZABETH PEYTON b. 1965 Genuina y Pura, 1990 Oil on linen. 40 x 30 in. (101.7 x 76.2 cm). Signed and dated “Elizabeth Peyton June 1, 1990” on the overlap.

Estimate $300,000-400,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist; Private collection, Texas

It is a source of wonder and of joy that looking at Elizabeth Peyton’s work now does not make us nostalgic for the time that created them, but affects us in a way that can still make us lose our breath and perhaps lose ourselves, propelling us into a deathless, but utterly pleasurable state L. Hoptman, Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, New York, 2008, p. 231 Elizabeth Peyton’s quiet oil portraits reveal intimate moments in the lives of her subjects. Always encapsulating a tinge of melancholy, her portraits portray her subjects in moments of contemplation and self-reflection. In the present lot, titled Genuina y Pura, a man and woman, established art collectors and close friend’s of Peyton’s, appear as if posing for a photograph. They sit pensively facing opposite directions, creating an “X” shaped composition, which is enhanced by their long and slender limbs. The dominating, vertical red and white stripes of the backdrop and the rich yellow foreground create a charming setting for the two figures. In Genuina y Pura, the viewer is instantly enchanted by Peyton’s characteristic style and technique—energetic and angular lines, bold and sumptuous colors, slippery brushstrokes, and tightly cropped compositions. Peyton’s lively mark-making also reveals an underlying romantic quality, which is visible in the elegant and classical setting of the interior, as well as the beautiful and graceful rendering of her subject’s” faces. Peyton alternates her painting style between loose application and miniature detail.

In Genuina y Pura, the close and deliberate, small strokes of the faces contrast with the washy yellow strokes of the ground. At the bottom of the painting, the words “genuine and pure” are inscribed in cursive Spanish suggesting the cool attitude and posture of the subjects. This painting is a notable example of Peyton’s successful variation of style and elegant portraiture.

40

GEORGE CONDO b. 1957 Large Reclining Smoker, 2005 Oil on canvas. 65 x 60 in. (165.1 x 152.4 cm). Signed and dated “Condo 05” upper left; signed, titled, and dated “Condo 05 Large Reclining Smoker” on the reverse.

Estimate $150,000-200,000 PROVENANCE Xavier Hufkens, Brussels EXHIBITED Brussels, Xavier Hufkens, George Condo: Existential Portraits, June 26 –

March 4, 2006 LITERATURE G. Condo, ed., George Condo: Existential Portraits, Berlin, 2006,

p. 85 (illustrated)

Known for his rich and varied body of work, George Condo deepened his exploration into the psychology of the portrait in the present lot, part of the Existential Portraits series. The theatrical and comic Large Reclining Smoker, 2005 embodies the contradictions of this series, being both aggressive and luscious. The figure in the painting is terrifying, yet still seems exposed and perhaps even vulnerable.

Speaking of this group of work, George Condo said: “I wanted to capture the characters in these paintings at the extreme height of whatever moment they’re in—in that static moment of chaos, and to picture them as abstract compositions that are set in destitute places and isolated rooms. Everything takes place in a relatively impoverished kind of situation. In that sense I thought a little about Hopper capturing the despair of loneliness. Hopper always uses a surprising color here and there in his painting and the sorrow is suspended with a touch of light.

Luhring Augustine, ed., George Condo: Existential Portraits, Berlin, 2006, p. 8

41

RICHARD PRINCE

b.1949

Untitled (Check Painting) # 6, 2004 Acrylic and paper collage on screenprinting frame. 49 7/8 x 44 7/8 in.

(126.7 x 114 cm).

Estimate

$150,000-200,000

PROVENANCE Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles EXHIBITED Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, Richard Prince: Check Paintings,

February 25 – April 9, 2005 LITERATURE Gagosian Gallery, ed., Richard Prince: Check Paintings, Montreal,

2005, pp. 36-37 (illustrated)

Have you ever found a canceled check on the street? (Usually

The present lot, Untitled (Check Painting) #6, is a prime example of

stapled to a creepy frisson: a naked, trivial, damaged thing that

Richard Prince’s Check Paintings series. The artist has inserted his

doesn’t belong.) Battered effluvia. Classic detritus—though

own checks, with his printed name and address, for various bills

uncomfortably incongruous in a special way excluding typical urban

into the painting. In a voyeuristic ecstasy the viewer can see what

discard. One steps over a canceled check the way one avoids turning

Richard Prince owed Con Edison. On the reverse of the painting is

over a Polaroid flipped onto its white back like a 2-D turtle. You don’t

another delightful inclusion: a joke painting with three jokes in neon

really want to know the details. Do you? A dirty check on the street is

yellow and hot pink including his famous use of, “I never had a

maimed, gangbanged, alternately dead and living and desecrated, a

penny to my name, so I changed my name.”

dazed, unconscious whore. You’re the John or the Richard or the Bruce who doesn’t know who to call. Richard Prince writes Checks To Self then disinters, sheathes, and reconstructs.

B. Wagner, Richard Prince, Montreal, 2005

Reverse of present lot

42

JYOTHI BASU b. 1960 Order Breaks from Within, 2005 Oil on canvas. 72 x 84 1/4 in. (183 x 214 cm).

Estimate $70,000-90,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai EXHIBITED New York, Thomas Erben Gallery, Jyothi Basu: Landscapes Towards

a Supreme Fiction, April – May 2006 LITERATURE Thomas Erben Gallery, ed., Jyothi Basu: Landscapes Towards a

Supreme Fiction, New York, 2006, n.p. (illustrated)

Living and working in Mumbai, Jyothi Basu’s canvases reflect the dense and frenetic qualities of life in a city of 13 million people. He builds his futurist landscapes from the stuff of science fiction novels, melding bits of utopian idealism to machine entrails and characters from an invented lexicon. Unlike the organic and tangled architecture of Mumbai, his frenzied and codified canvases posses an inherent rectilinear logic, reminiscent of the crosshatchings of electronic circuitry. In spite of their teeming and color saturated compositions, the works maintain a static and quiet electricity, articulated by their lack of human presence an element in stark contrast to his populous home.

In spite of their size, Basu’s canvases have an intricacy which mirrors the meticulous South Asian tradition of miniature painting and the artist’s gem-toned palette simultaneously quotes from this practice. His works seem to exist simultaneously in the realm of the future and of the past. Traces of decay are allowed to seep into his gleaming structures ageing them in spite of their ultramodern design suggesting the omnipresence of our history in our present and future.

43

KEHINDE WILEY b. 1977 Female Prophet Anne, Samuel’s Mother, 2003 Oil on canvas in artist’s wooden frame. 82 1/4 x 71 3/4 in. (208.3 x 182.2 cm).

Signed and dated “Kehinde Wiley 03” on the reverse.

Estimate $40,000-60,000 PROVENANCE Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles EXHIBITED

Los Angeles, Roberts & Tilton, Kehinde Wiley, October 11 –

November 8, 2003 LITERATURE E. Wood, “Acerbic Beauty,” Artnet Magazine, October, 2003; H. Myers,

“Scenes far, far out of Tiepolo,” The Los Angeles Times, November 7, 2003, p. E21

There is a multiplicity of any number of periods, artists, ideas, any number of political and moral allegiances in my work, and that’s the point. I think it’s always important not to shut the work down to any sense of high-art audience versus black-people-in-the-street audience. I’m not interested in having to choose between being real and being heady. I’m trying to be true to an essence of urgency, to replicate sensations and ideas visually, to bring to the table not only my own desires but things that point to the larger evolution of culture, art, and art history.

C. Kim “Faux Real: Interview with Kehinde Wiley,” Black Romantic, New York, 2002, p. 54.

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by $50s by $100s by $200s by $200s, 500, 800 (i.e. $4,200, 4,500, 4,800) by $500s by $1,000s by $2,000s by $2,000s, 5,000, 8,000 by $5,000s by $10,000s auctioneer’s discretion

The auctioneer may vary the increments during the course of the auction at his or her own discretion.

M AG N I F I C E N T J E W E L S AUCTION

12 MAY 2009 4pm

GENEVA

Viewing 8 – 12 May

Exhibition & Sale Location Hôtel de la Paix 11, quai du Mont-Blanc, 1211 Genève Phillips de Pury & Company 23 quai des Bergues, 1201 Genève Catalogues & Enquiries +41 22 906 80 00 / +1 212 940 1283 www.phillipsdepury.com

A Jade and Gem-set ‘Maltese’ Cuff Bracelet VERDURA Estimate 18,000-22,000 CHF

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P H OTO G R A P H S AUCTION

16 MAY 2009 3pm

LONDON

Viewing 9 – 16 May

Phillips de Pury & Company Howick Place London SW1P 1BB Enquiries +44 20 7318 4092 Catalogues +44 20 7318 4039 / +1 212 940 1240 www.phillipsdepury.com

OLAFUR ELIASSON Untitled (Iceland Series), 2006 Estimate £50,000-70,000

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1 Introduction Each lot in this catalogue is offered for sale and sold subject to: (a) the Conditions of Sale and Authorship Warranty; (b) additional notices and terms printed in other places in this catalogue, including the Guide for Prospective Buyers, and (c) supplements to this catalogue or other written material posted by Phillips de Pury & Company in the saleroom, in each case as amended by any addendum or announcement by the auctioneer prior to the auction By bidding at the auction, whether in person, through an agent, by written bid, by telephone bid or other means, bidders and buyers agree to be bound by these Conditions of Sale, as so changed or supplemented, and Authorship Warranty.

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Prospective buyers acknowledge this fact and accept responsibility for carrying out inspections and investigations to satisfy themselves as to the lots in which they may be interested. Notwithstanding the foregoing, we shall exercise such reasonable care when making express statements in catalogue descriptions or condition reports as is consistent with our role as auctioneer of lots in this sale and in light of (i) the information provided to us by the seller, (ii) scholarship and technical knowledge and (iii) the generally accepted opinions of relevant experts, in each case at the time any such express statement is made. (b) Each lot offered for sale at Phillips de Pury & Company is available for inspection by prospective buyers prior to the auction. Phillips de Pury & Company accepts bids on lots on the basis that bidders (and independent experts on their behalf, to the extent appropriate given the nature and value of the lot and the bidder’s own expertise) have fully inspected the lot prior to bidding and have satisfied themselves as to both the condition of the lot and the accuracy of its description. . (c) Prospective buyers acknowledge that many lots are of an age and type which means that they are not in perfect condition. As a courtesy to clients, Phillips de Pury & Company may prepare and provide condition reports to assist prospective buyers when they are inspecting lots. Catalogue descriptions and condition reports may make reference to particular imperfections of a lot, but bidders should note that lots may have other faults not expressly referred to in the catalogue or condition report. All dimensions are approximate. Illustrations are for identification purposes only and cannot be used as precise indications of size or to convey full information as to the actual condition of lots. (d) Information provided to prospective buyers in respect of any lot, including any pre-sale estimate, whether written or oral, and information in any catalogue, condition or other report, commentary or valuation, is not a representation of fact but rather a statement of opinion held by Phillips de Pury & Company. Any pre-sale estimate may not be relied on as a prediction of the selling price or value of the lot and may be revised from time to time by Phillips de Pury & Company in our absolute discretion. Neither Phillips de Pury & Company nor any of our affiliated companies shall be liable for any difference between the pre-sale estimates for any lot and the actual price achieved at auction or upon resale.

4 Bidding at Auction (a) Phillips de Pury & Company has absolute discretion to refuse admission to the auction or participation in the sale. All bidders must register for a paddle prior to bidding, supplying such information and references as required by Phillips de Pury & Company. (b) As a convenience to bidders who cannot attend the auction in person, Phillips de Pury & Company may, if so instructed by the bidder, execute written absentee bids on a bidder’s behalf. Absentee bidders are required to submit bids on the “Absentee Bid Form,” a copy of which is printed in this catalogue or otherwise available from

Phillips de Pury & Company. Bids must be placed in the currency of the sale.The bidder must clearly indicate the maximum amount he or she intends to bid, excluding the buyer’s premium and any applicable sales or use taxes.The auctioneer will not accept an instruction to execute an absentee bid which does not indicate such maximum bid. Our staff will attempt to execute an absentee bid at the lowest possible price taking into account the reserve and other bidders. Any absentee bid must be received at least 24 hours in advance of the sale. In the event of identical bids, the earliest bid received will take precedence. (c)Telephone bidders are required to submit bids on the “Telephone Bid Form,” a copy of which is printed in this catalogue or otherwise available from Phillips de Pury & Company.Telephone bidding is available for lots whose low pre-sale estimate is at least $1000. Phillips de Pury & Company reserves the right to require written confirmation of a successful bid from a telephone bidder by fax or otherwise immediately after such bid is accepted by the auctioneer.Telephone bids may be recorded and, by bidding on the telephone, a bidder consents to the recording of the conversation. (d) When making a bid, whether in person, by absentee bid or on the telephone, a bidder accepts personal liability to pay the purchase price, as described more fully in Paragraph 6 (a) below, plus all other applicable charges unless it has been explicitly agreed in writing with Phillips de Pury & Company before the commencement of the auction that the bidder is acting as agent on behalf of an identified third party acceptable to Phillips de Pury & Company and that we will only look to the principal for such payment. (e) Arranging absentee and telephone bids is a free service provided by Phillips de Pury & Company to prospective buyers. While we undertake to exercise reasonable care in undertaking such activity, we cannot accept liability for failure to execute such bids except where such failure is caused by our willful misconduct. (f) Employees of Phillips de Pury & Company and our affiliated companies, including the auctioneer, may bid at the auction by placing absentee bids so long as they do not know the reserve when submitting their absentee bids and otherwise comply with our employee bidding procedures.

5 Conduct of the Auction (a) Unless otherwise indicated by the symbol each lot is offered subject to a reserve, which is the confidential minimum selling price agreed by Phillips de Pury & Company with the seller.The reserve will not exceed the low pre-sale estimate at the time of the auction.

•

(b)The auctioneer has discretion at any time to refuse any bid, withdraw any lot, reoffer a lot for sale (including after the fall of the hammer) if he or she believes there may be error or dispute and take such other action as he or she deems reasonably appropriate. (c)The auctioneer will commence and advance the bidding at levels and in increments he or she considers appropriate. In order to protect the reserve on any lot, the auctioneer may place one or more bids on behalf of the seller up to the reserve without indicating he or she is doing so, either by placing consecutive bids or bids in response to other bidders. (d)The sale will be conducted in US dollars and payment is due in US dollars. For the benefit of international clients, pre-sale estimates in the auction catalogue may be shown in pounds sterling and/or euros and, if so, will reflect approximate exchange rates. Accordingly, estimates in pounds sterling or euros should be treated only as a guide. (e) Subject to the auctioneer’s reasonable discretion, the highest bidder accepted by the auctioneer will be the buyer and the striking of the hammer marks the acceptance of the highest bid and the conclusion of a contract for sale between the seller and the buyer. Risk and responsibility for the lot passes to the buyer as set forth in Paragraph 7 below. (f) If a lot is not sold, the auctioneer will announce that it has been “passed,” “withdrawn,” “returned to owner” or “bought-in.” (g) Any post-auction sale of lots offered at auction shall incorporate these Conditions of Sale and Authorship Warranty as if sold in the auction.

6 Purchase Price and Payment (a)The buyer agrees to pay us, in addition to the hammer price of the lot, the buyer’s premium and any applicable sales tax (the “Purchase Price”).The buyer’s premium is 25% of the hammer price up to and including $50,000, 20% of the portion of the hammer price above $50,000 up to and including $1,000,000 and 12% of the portion of the hammer price above $1,000,000. (b) Sales tax, use tax and excise and other taxes are payable in accordance with applicable law. All prices, fees, charges and expenses set out in these Conditions of Sale are quoted exclusive of applicable taxes. Phillips de Pury & Company will only accept valid resale certificates from US dealers as proof of exemption from sales tax. All foreign buyers should contact the Client Accounting Department about tax matters.

www.phillipsdepury.com

www.phillipsar texper t.com

(c) Unless otherwise agreed, a buyer is required to pay for a purchased lot immediately following the auction regardless of any intention to obtain an export or import license or other permit for such lot. Payments must be made by the invoiced party in US dollars either by cash, check drawn on a US bank or wire transfer, as follows: (i) Phillips de Pury & Company will accept payment in cash provided that the total amount paid in cash or cash equivalents does not exceed US$10,000.

Buyers paying in cash should do so in person at our Client Accounting Desk at 450 West 15th Street,Third Floor, during regular weekday business hours. (ii) Personal checks and banker’s drafts are accepted if drawn on a US bank and the buyer provides to us acceptable government issued identification. Checks and banker’s drafts should be made payable to “Phillips de Pury & Company LLC.” If payment is sent by mail, please send the check or banker’s draft to the attention of the Client Accounting Department at 450 West 15th Street, New York, NY 10011 and make sure that the sale and lot number is written on the check. Checks or banker’s drafts drawn by third parties will not be accepted. (iii) Payment by wire transfer may be sent directly to Phillips de Pury & Company. Bank transfer details: Citibank 322 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011 SWIFT Code: CITIUS33 ABA Routing: 021 000 089 For the account of Phillips de Pury & Company LLC Account no.: 58347736 Please reference the relevant sale and lot number. (d)Title in a purchased lot will not pass until Phillips de Pury & Company has received the Purchase Price for that lot in cleared funds. Phillips de Pury & Company is not obliged to release a lot to the buyer until title in the lot has passed and appropriate identification has been provided, and any earlier release does not affect the passing of title or the buyer’s unconditional obligation to pay the Purchase Price.

7 Collection of Property (a) Phillips de Pury & Company will not release a lot to the buyer until we have received payment of its Purchase Price in full in cleared funds, the buyer has paid all outstanding amounts due to Phillips de Pury & Company or any of our affiliated companies, including any charges payable pursuant to Paragraph 8 (a) below, and the buyer has satisfied such other terms as we in our sole discretion shall require, including completing any anti-money laundering or anti-terrorism financing checks.

As soon as a buyer has satisfied all of the foregoing conditions, he or she should contact our Shipping Department at +1 212 940 1372 or +1 212 940 1373 to arrange for collection of purchased property. (b)The buyer must arrange for collection of a purchased lot within five days of the date of the auction. Promptly after the auction, we will transfer all lots to our warehouse located at 29-09 37th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, New York. All purchased lots should be collected at this location during our regular weekday business hours. As a courtesy to clients, Phillips de Pury & Company will upon request transfer on a bi-weekly basis purchased lots suitable for hand carry back to our premises at 450 West 15th Street, New York, New York for collection within 30 days following the date of the auction. Purchased lots are at the buyer’s risk, including the responsibility for insurance, from the earlier to occur of (i) the date of collection or (ii) five days after the auction. Until risk passes, Phillips de Pury & Company will compensate the buyer for any loss or damage to a purchased lot up to a maximum of the Purchase Price paid, subject to our usual exclusions for loss or damage to property. (c) As a courtesy to clients, Phillips de Pury & Company will, without charge, wrap purchased lots for hand carry only. We will, at the buyer’s expense, either provide packing, handling, insurance and shipping services or coordinate with shipping agents instructed by the buyer in order to facilitate such services for property bought at Phillips de Pury & Company. Any such instruction, whether or not made at our recommendation, is entirely at the buyer’s risk and responsibility, and we will not be liable for acts or omissions of third party packers or shippers.Third party shippers should contact us by telephone at +1 212 940 1376 or by fax at +1 212 924 6477 at least 24 hours in advance of collection in order to schedule pickup. (d) Phillips de Pury & Company will require presentation of government issued identification prior to release of a lot to the buyer or the buyer’s authorized representative.

8 Failure to Collect Purchases (a) If the buyer pays the Purchase Price but fails to collect a purchased lot within 30 days of the auction, the buyer will incur a late collection fee of $35, storage charges of $5 per day and pro rated insurance charges of .1% of the Purchase Price per month on each uncollected lot. (b) If a purchased lot is paid for but not collected within six months of the auction, the buyer authorizes Phillips de Pury & Company, upon notice, to arrange a resale of the item by auction or private sale, with estimates and a reserve set at Phillips de

Pury & Company’s reasonable discretion.The proceeds of such sale will be applied to pay for storage charges and any other outstanding costs and expenses owed by the buyer to Phillips de Pury & Company or our affiliated companies and the remainder will be forfeited unless collected by the buyer within two years of the original auction.

9 Remedies for Non-Payment (a) Without prejudice to any rights the seller may have, if the buyer without prior agreement fails to make payment of the Purchase Price for a lot in cleared funds within five days of the auction, Phillips de Pury & Company may in our sole discretion exercise one or more of the following remedies: (i) store the lot at Phillips de Pury & Company’s premises or elsewhere at the buyer’s sole risk and expense at the same rates as set forth in Paragraph 8 (a) above; (ii) cancel the sale of the lot, retaining any partial payment of the Purchase Price as liquidated damages; (iii) reject future bids from the buyer or render such bids subject to payment of a deposit; (iv) charge interest at 12% per annum from the date payment became due until the date the Purchase Price is received in cleared funds; (v) subject to notification of the buyer, exercise a lien over any of the buyer’s property which is in the possession of Phillips de Pury & Company and instruct our affiliated companies to exercise a lien over any of the buyer’s property which is in their possession and, in each case, no earlier than 30 days from the date of such notice, arrange the sale of such property and apply the proceeds to the amount owed to Phillips de Pury & Company or any of our affiliated companies after the deduction from sale proceeds of our standard vendor’s commission and all sale-related expenses; (vi) resell the lot by auction or private sale, with estimates and a reserve set at Phillips de Pury & Company’s reasonable discretion, it being understood that in the event such resale is for less than the original hammer price and buyer’s premium for that lot, the buyer will remain liable for the shortfall together with all costs incurred in such resale; (vii) commence legal proceedings to recover the hammer price and buyer’s premium for that lot, together with interest and the costs of such proceedings; or (viii) release the name and address of the buyer to the seller to enable the seller to commence legal proceedings to recover the amounts due and legal costs. (b) As security to us for full payment by the buyer of all outstanding amounts due to Phillips de Pury & Company and our affiliated companies, Phillips de Pury & Company retains, and the buyer grants to us, a security interest in each lot purchased at auction by the buyer and in any other property or money of the buyer in, or coming into, our possession or the possession of one of our affiliated companies.

We may apply such money or deal with such property as the Uniform Commercial Code or other applicable law permits a secured creditor to do. In the event that we exercise a lien over property in our possession because the buyer is in default to one of our affiliated companies, we will so notify the buyer. Our security interest in any individual lot will terminate upon actual delivery of the lot to the buyer or the buyer’s agent. (c) In the event the buyer is in default of payment to any of our affiliated companies, the buyer also irrevocably authorizes Phillips de Pury & Company to pledge the buyer’s property in our possession by actual or constructive delivery to our affiliated company as security for the payment of any outstanding amount due. Phillips de Pury & Company will notify the buyer if the buyer’s property has been delivered to an affiliated company by way of pledge.

10 Rescission by Phillips de Pury & Company Phillips de Pury & Company shall have the right, but not the obligation, to rescind a sale without notice to the buyer if we reasonably believe that there is a material breach of the seller’s representations and warranties or the Authorship Warranty or an adverse claim is made by a third party. Upon notice of Phillips de Pury & Company’s election to rescind the sale, the buyer will promptly return the lot to Phillips de Pury & Company, and we will then refund the Purchase Price paid to us.

As described more fully in Paragraph 13 below, the refund shall constitute the sole remedy and recourse of the buyer against Phillips de Pury & Company and the seller with respect to such rescinded sale..

11 Export, Import and Endangered Species Licenses and Permits Before bidding for any property, prospective buyers are advised to make their own inquiries as to whether a license is required to export a lot from the United States or to import it into another country. Prospective buyers are advised that some countries prohibit the import of property made of or incorporating plant or animal material, such as coral, crocodile, ivory, whalebone, rhinoceros horn or tortoiseshell, irrespective of age, percentage or value. Accordingly, prior to bidding, prospective buyers considering export of purchased lots should familiarize themselves with relevant export and import regulations of the countries concerned. It is solely the buyer’s responsibility to comply with these laws and to obtain any necessary export, import and endangered species licenses or permits. Failure to obtain a license or permit or delay in so doing will not justify the cancellation of the sale or any delay in making full payment for the lot.

12 Client Information In connection with the management and operation of our business and the marketing and supply of auction related services, or as required by law, we may ask clients to provide personal information about themselves or obtain information about clients from third parties (e.g., credit information). If clients provide us with information that is defined by law as "sensitive," they agree that Phillips de Pury & Company and our affiliated companies may use it for the above purposes. Phillips de Pury & Company and our affiliated companies will not use or process sensitive information for any other purpose without the client's express consent. If you would

DESIG N AUCTION

3 JUNE 2009 11am

NEW YORK

Viewing 27 May – 2 June

Phillips de Pury & Company 450 West 15 Street New York Enquiries +1 212 940 1268 Catalogues +1 212 940 1240 / +44 20 7318 4039 www.phillipsdepury.com

LUCIE RIE Sgraffito and inlay bowl, ca. 1965 Estimate $12,000-18,000

like further information on our policies on personal data or wish to make corrections to your information, please contact us at +1 212 940 1228. If you would prefer not to receive details of future events please call the above number.

13 Limitation of Liability (a) Subject to subparagraph (e) below, the total liability of Phillips de Pury & Company, our affiliated companies and the seller to the buyer in connection with the sale of a lot shall be limited to the Purchase Price actually paid by the buyer for the lot. (b) Except as otherwise provided in this Paragraph 13, none of Phillips de Pury & Company, any of our affiliated companies or the seller (i) is liable for any errors or omissions, whether orally or in writing, in information provided to prospective buyers by Phillips de Pury & Company or any of our affiliated companies or (ii) accepts responsibility to any bidder in respect of acts or omissions, whether negligent or otherwise, by Phillips de Pury & Company or any of our affiliated companies in connection with the conduct of the auction or for any other matter relating to the sale of any lot. (c) All warranties other than the Authorship Warranty, express or implied, including any warranty of satisfactory quality and fitness for purpose, are specifically excluded by Phillips de Pury & Company, our affiliated companies and the seller to the fullest extent permitted by law. (d) Subject to subparagraph (e) below, none of Phillips de Pury & Company, any of our affiliated companies or the seller shall be liable to the buyer for any loss or damage beyond the refund of the Purchase Price referred to in subparagraph (a) above, whether such loss or damage is characterized as direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential, or for the payment of interest on the Purchase Price to the fullest extent permitted by law. (e) No provision in these Conditions of Sale shall be deemed to exclude or limit the liability of Phillips de Pury & Company or any of our affiliated companies to the buyer in respect of any fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation made by any of us or in respect of death or personal injury caused by our negligent acts or omissions.

14 Copyright The copyright in all images, illustrations and written materials produced by or for Phillips de Pury & Company relating to a lot, including the contents of this catalogue, is and shall remain at all times the property of Phillips de Pury & Company and such images and materials may not be used by the buyer or any other party without our prior written consent. Phillips de Pury & Company and the seller make no representations or warranties that the buyer of a lot will acquire any copyright or other reproduction rights in it.

15 General (a)These Conditions of Sale, as changed or supplemented as provided in Paragraph 1 above, and Authorship Warranty set out the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the transactions contemplated herein and supersede all prior and contemporaneous written, oral or implied understandings, representations and agreements. (b) Notices to Phillips de Pury & Company shall be in writing and addressed to the department in charge of the sale, quoting the reference number specified at the beginning of the sale catalogue. Notices to clients shall be addressed to the last address notified by them in writing to Phillips de Pury & Company. (c)These Conditions of Sale are not assignable by any buyer without our prior written consent but are binding on the buyer’s successors, assigns and representatives. (d) Should any provision of these Conditions of Sale be held void, invalid or unenforceable for any reason, the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect. No failure by any party to exercise, nor any delay in exercising, any right or remedy under these Conditions of Sale shall act as a waiver or release thereof in whole or in part.

16 Law and Jurisdiction (a)ThThe rights and obligations of the parties with respect to these Conditions of Sale and Authorship Warranty, the conduct of the auction and any matters related to any of the foregoing shall be governed by and interpreted in accordance with laws of the State of New York, excluding its conflicts of law rules. (b) Phillips de Pury & Company, all bidders and all sellers agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the (i) state courts of the State of New York located in New York City and (ii) the federal courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York to settle all disputes arising in connection with all aspects of all matters or transactions to which these Conditions of Sale and Authorship Warranty relate or apply. (c) All bidders and sellers irrevocably consent to service of process or any other documents in connection with proceedings in any court by facsimile transmission, personal service, delivery by mail or in any other manner permitted by New York law or the law of the place of service, at the last address of the bidder or seller known to Phillips de Pury & Company.

AUTHORSHIP WARRANTY Phillips de Pury & Company warrants the authorship of property in this auction catalogue for a period of five years from date of sale by Phillips de Pury & Company, subject to the exclusions and limitations set forth below. (a) Phillips de Pury & Company gives this Authorship Warranty only to the original buyer of record (i.e., the registered successful bidder) of any lot.This Authorship Warranty does not extend to (i) subsequent owners of the property, including purchasers or recipients by way of gift from the original buyer, heirs, successors, beneficiaries and assigns; (ii) property created prior to 1870, unless the property is determined to be counterfeit (defined as a forgery made less than 50 years ago with an intent to deceive) and has a value at the date of the claim under this warranty which is materially less than the Purchase Price paid; (iii) property where the description in the catalogue states that there is a conflict of opinion on the authorship of the property; (iv) property where our attribution of authorship was on the date of sale consistent with the generally accepted opinions of specialists, scholars or other experts; or (v) property whose description or dating is proved inaccurate by means of scientific methods or tests not generally accepted for use at the time of the publication of the catalogue or which were at such time deemed unreasonably expensive or impractical to use. (b) In any claim for breach of the Authorship Warranty, Phillips de Pury & Company reserves the right, as a condition to rescinding any sale under this warranty, to require the buyer to provide to us at the buyer’s expense the written opinions of two recognized experts approved in advance by Phillips de Pury & Company. We shall not be bound by any expert report produced by the buyer and reserve the right to consult our own experts at our expense. If Phillips de Pury & Company agrees to rescind a sale under the Authorship Warranty, we shall refund to the buyer the reasonable costs charged by the experts commissioned by the buyer and approved in advance by us. (c) Subject to the exclusions set forth in subparagraph (a) above, the buyer may bring a claim for breach of the Authorship Warranty provided that (i) he or she has notified Phillips de Pury & Company in writing within three months of receiving any information which causes the buyer to question the authorship of the lot, specifying the auction in which the property was included, the lot number in the auction catalogue and the reasons why the authorship of the lot is being questioned and (ii) the buyer returns the lot to Phillips de Pury & Company in the same condition as at the time of its auction and is able to transfer good and marketable title in the lot free from any third party claim arising after the date of the auction. (d)The buyer understands and agrees that the exclusive remedy for any breach of the Authorship Warranty shall be rescission of the sale and refund of the original Purchase Price paid.This remedy shall constitute the sole remedy and recourse of the buyer against Phillips de Pury & Company, any of our affiliated companies and the seller and is in lieu of any other remedy available as a matter of law.This means that none of Phillips de Pury & Company, any of our affiliated companies or the seller shall be liable for loss or damage beyond the remedy expressly provided in this Authorship Warranty, whether such loss or damage is characterized as direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential, or for the payment of interest on the original Purchase Price.

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY EDITIONS AUCTION

2 JUNE 2009 2pm

NEW YORK

Viewing 27 May – 1 June

Phillips de Pury & Company 450 West 15 Street New York Enquiries +1 212 940 1220 Catalogues +1 212 940 1240 / +44 20 7318 4039 www.phillipsdepury.com

JASPER JOHNS The Seasons, 1989 Etching and aquatint. Estimate $20,000-30,000; DONALD JUDD Untitled (New Museum Multiple),1986 Folded aluminum and black Plexiglas multiple. Estimate $25,000-35,000; CHUCK CLOSE Self Portrait, 2007 Screenprint. Estimate $50,000-70,000; CLAES OLDENBURG The Store (Poster), 1961 Letterpress in red and black. Estimate $1,200-1,800; BRUCE NAUMAN DEAD, 1975 Lithograph. Estimate $7,000-9,000

SPECIALIST & SERVICE DEPARTMENTS

Contemporary Art

Modern and Contemporary Editions

Michael McGinnis Worldwide Director +44 20 7318 4091

Kelly Troester Worldwide Co-Director +1 212 940 1221

Aileen Agopian Director New York +1 212 940 1255

Cary Leibowitz Worldwide Co-Director +1 212 940 1222

Jean-Michel Placent New York +1 212 940 1263

Jannah Greenblatt New York +1 212 940 1332

Timothy Malyk Head of Under the Influence New York +1 212 940 1258

Joy Deibert New York +1 212 940 1333

Chin-Chin Yap New York +1 212 940 1250 Christina Floyd New York +1 212 940 1340

Saturday@Phillips

Veronica Collins New York +1 212 940 1252

Tobias Sirtl Director +44 20 7318 4095

Sarah Mudge Head of Part II New York +1 212 940 1259

Alex W. Smith New York +1 212 940 1276

Roxana Bruno New York +1 212 940 1229

Anne Huntington New York +1 212 940 1210

Sara Davidson New York +1 212 940 1262

Arianna Jacobs London + 44 20 7318 4054

Derrick Mead New York +1 212 940 1272

George O’Dell London +44 20 7318 4040

Maria Bueno New York +1 212 940 1261

Steve Agin (Consultant) +1 908 475 1796

Peter Flores New York +1 212 940 1223

Balthasar de Pury (Consultant) Geneva +41 79 250 86 81

(Uli) Zhiheng Huang New York +1 212 940 1288 Eugenia Ballvé New York +1 212 940 1303

Chairman London

Anthony McNerney Head of Evening Sale London +44 20 7318 4067

Rodman Primack London +44 20 7318 4017

Peter Sumner Head of Day Sale London +44 20 7318 4063 Laetitia Catoir London + 44 20 7318 4064

Managing Directors

SilkeTaprogge London +44 20 7318 4012

Finn Dombernowsky London +44 20 7318 4034

Ivgenia Naiman London +44 20 7318 4071

Charlie Horne New York +1 212 940 1292

Fiona Biberstein London +44 20 7318 4013 Siobhan O’Connor London +44 20 7318 4093

Business Development

Catherine Higgs London +44 20 7318 4089

Alexander Gilkes New York +1 212 940 1398

Raphael Lepine London +44 20 7318 4078 TanyaTikhnenko London +44 20 7318 4065

Executive Assistant to Simon de Pury

Sarah Buchwald London +44 20 7318 4085

Helen Rohwedder London +44 20 7318 4042

Phillippa Willison London +44 20 7318 4070 Executive Assistant to Bernd Runge Jewelry

Johanna Frydman London +44 20 7318 4024

Nazgol Jahan Worldwide Director +1 212 940 1283 Carolin Bulgari Geneva +41 22 906 80 00

Private Sales

Carmela Manoli New York +1 212 940 1302

Christina Scheublein New York +1 212 940 1248

Heather Zises New York +1 212 940 1290 Lane Mclean London +44 20 7318 4032

Press and Public Relations

Veronica Lota Geneva +41 22 906 80 05

Ariel Childs Head London +44 20 7318 4028 Cécile Demtchenko Paris +33 1 42 78 67 77

Contemporary Jewelry Alia Varsano Worldwide Director +1 212 940 1293

Exhibitions

Rachel Mattes New York +1 212 940 1285

London +44 20 7318 4023 New York +1 212 940 1301

Photographs

International Specialists and Representatives

Charlie Scheips Worldwide Director +1 212 940 1244

Dr. Michaela Neumeister Munich +49 89 238 88 48 10

Vanessa Kramer New York +1 212 940 1243

Olivier Vrankenne Brussels & Paris +32 486 43 43 44

Caroline Shea New York +1 212 940 1247

Leonie Moschner Paris +33 6 85 53 92 03

Sarah Krueger New York +1 212 940 1245

Tamara Corm Paris & London +33 6 75 07 04 71

Kelly Padden London +44 20 7318 4018

Ivgenia Naiman London +44 20 7318 4071

Ben Adams London +44 20 7318 4077

Brooke de Ocampo London +44 777 551 7060

Alexandra Bibby London +44 20 7318 4087

Laura Garbarino Milan +39 339 478 9671

Helen Hayman London +44 20 7318 4092

Eugenia Bertele Milan +39 02 3669 5895 Nadia Breuer Sopher New York & Australia +1 917 319 4741

Design

Mimi Won Techentin Los Angeles +1 310 600 9192

Alexander Payne Worldwide Director +44 20 7318 4052

Maya McLaughlin Los Angeles +1 323 791 1771

Marcus Tremonto New York +1 212 940 1268

Tatiana Beliaeva Moscow +7 985 969 9292

Alex Heminway Director New York +1 212 940 1269

Jeremy Wingfield Shanghai/Beijing +86 135 0118 2804

Tara DeWitt New York +1 212 940 1265

Lulu Al-Sabah Dubai +44 77 9518 8878

Meaghan Roddy New York +1 212 940 1266

Lydia Limmerick Dubai +44 79 2048 1110

Stephanie Abraitis New York +1 212 940 1268 Ben Williams London +44 20 7318 4027 Domenico Raimondo London +44 20 7318 4016 Ellen Stelter London +44 20 7318 4021 Marcus McDonald London +44 20 7318 4014

SALE INFORMATION

CONTEMPORY ART

Auctions

Worldwide Director

Part I Sale,Thursday May 14 2009 at 7pm

Michael McGinnis +44 20 7318 4091

Part II Sale, Friday May 15 2009 at 10am Admission to this sale is by ticket only

Director, New York

Please call +212 940 1236

Aileen Agopian +1 212 940 1255

Viewing & Auction Locations

Specialists

450 West 15 Street New York NY 10011

Jean-Michel Placent New York +1 212 940 1263 Timothy Malyk Head of Under the Influence New York +1 212 940 1258

Viewing

Chin-Chin Yap New York +1 212 940 1250

Tuesday May 5 10am – 6pm

Christina Floyd New York +1 212 940 1340

Wednesday May 6 10am – 6pm

Veronica Collins New York +1 212 940 1252

Thursday May 7 10am – 6pm

Sarah Mudge Head of Part II +1 212 940 1259

Friday May 8 10am – 6pm

Dr. Michaela Neumeister Munich +49 89 238 88 48 10

Saturday May 9 10am – 6pm

Olivier Vrankenne Brussels & Paris +32 486 43 43 44

Sunday May 10 12pm – 6pm

Laura Garbarino Milan +39 339 478 9671

Monday May 11 10am – 6pm

Leonie Moschner Paris +33 6 85 53 92 03

Tuesday May 12 10am – 6pm

Tamara Corm Paris & London +33 6 75 07 04 71

Wednesday May 13 10am – 6pm

Brooke de Ocampo London +44 777 551 7060

Thursday May 14 10am – 12pm

Anthony McNerney London +44 20 7318 4067 Peter Sumner London +44 20 7318 4063

Sale Designation

Laetitia Catoir London + 44 20 7318 4064

In sending written bids or making inquiries please refer to this sale as

Silke Taprogge London +44 20 7318 4012

NY010209 or Contemporary Art Part I Sale and NY010309 or Contemporary Art

Rodman Primack London +44 20 7318 4017

Part II Sale.

Ivgenia Naiman London +44 20 7318 4071 Fiona Biberstein London +44 20 7318 4013

Catalogues $60 at the Gallery / £30

Nadia Breuer Sopher New York & Australia +1 917 319 4741 Mimi Won Techentin Los Angeles +1 310 600 9192

Catalogue Subscriptions

Maya McLaughlin Los Angeles +1 323 791 1771

Allyson Melchor +1 212 940 1240 +44 20 7318 4039

Jeremy Wingfield Shanghai/Beijing +86 135 0118 2804

catalogues@phillipsdepury.com Business Manager Client Services +1 212 940 1200

Roxana Bruno +1 212 940 1229

Principal Auctioneer

Cataloguer Part I

Simon de Pury 0874341

Sara Davidson +1 212 940 1262

Auctioneers

Cataloguer Part II

Aileen Agopian 1199037

Derrick Mead +1 212 940 1272

Christina L. Floyd 1238278 Sarah Mudge 1301805

Administrator Part I

Alexander Gilkes 1308958

Maria Bueno +1 212 940 1261

Ellen Stelter UK Rodman Primack UK

Administrator Part II Peter Flores +1 212 940 1223

E-mail Addresses All Phillips de Pury & Company e-mails are

Administrators

first initial and last name @phillipsdepury.com

Eugenia Ballve +1 212 940 1303

(e.g., mmcginnis@phillipsdepury.com)

(Uli) Zhiheng Huang +1 212 940 1288

www.phillipsdepury.com

Property Managers Jeffrey Rausch +1 212 940 1367

Front Cover Sherrie Levine, Buddha, 1996, Lot 9

Barrett Langlinais +1 212 940 1362

Back Cover Martin Kippenberger, New York Zum Russisch Abbinden (NYZRA), 1985, Lot 6 (detail)

Photography

Inside Front Cover Florian Maier-Aichen, Untitled, 2005, Lot 4 (detail)

Kent Pell

Title Page Anish Kapoor, Untitled, 2005, Lot 16

Morten Smidt

Inside Back Cover Ed Ruscha, Portland to Memphis, 2000, Lot 14 (detail)

PHILLIPS de PURY & COMPANY CONTACTS

Chairman

Advisory Board

Simon de Pury

Maria Bell Janna Bullock

Chief Executive Officer

Lisa Eisner

Bernd Runge

Lapo Elkann Ben Elliot

Senior Partners

Lady Elena Foster

Michael McGinnis

H.I.H. Francesca von Habsburg

Dr. Michaela Neumeister

Marc Jacobs Malcolm McLaren

Partners

Ernest Mourmans

Aileen Agopian

Aby Rosen

Sean Cleary

Christiane zu Salm

Alexander Payne

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis

Rodman Primack

Jean Michel Wilmotte

Olivier Vrankenne

Anita Zabludowicz

Tiffany Wood

WORLDWIDE OFFICES

NEW YORK

MUNICH

450 West 15 Street New York NY 10011 USA

Maximiliansplatz 12a 80333 Munich Germany

+1 212 940 1200 +1 212 924 5403 fax

Shirin Kranz +49 89 238 88 48 0 +49 89 238 88 48 15 fax

LONDON

BERLIN

Howick Place London SW1P 1BB United Kingdom

Auguststrasse 19 10117 Berlin Germany

+44 20 7318 4010 +44 20 7318 4011 fax

Rolf Moritz Estermann Natalia Kazmierczak +49 30 880 018 42 +49 30 880 018 43 fax

PARIS 28, rue Michel Le Comte 75003 Paris France

GENEVA

CĂŠcile Demtchenko +33 1 42 78 67 77 +33 1 42 78 23 07 fax

23, quai des Bergues 1201 Geneva Switzerland Carolin Bulgari +41 22 906 80 00 +41 22 906 80 01 fax

C O NTE M PO R A RY A R T MAY

CONTEMPORARY ART MAY 14 & 15 2009 N E W YO R K

Martin Kippengerger, New York zum Russisch Abbinden (NYZRA), 1985 Lot 6 (detail)

NY010209/NY010309

W W W. P H I L L I P S D E P U RY. C O M

14 & 15

2009

N EW YO R K