NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips’ June Edition Auction in New York will feature over 130 lots with a mixture of modern and contemporary works, rounding out the Editions season for the department. The public exhibition will take place at 432 Park Avenue starting 15 June, with the live auction commencing at 10am on 21 June. Highlights of the sale include a selection of 25 prints by Alexander Calder and contemporary works from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Serra, Vija Celmins, Faith Ringgold, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and more.
Kelly Troester and Cary Leibowitz, Deputy Chairmen and Co-Heads of Editions, said, “We are delighted to close out the Spring season at Phillips, one of our most successful to date, with such a wonderful summertime selection in our June auction. From Henri Matisse’s Nude Sitting in a Floral Decorated Armchair of 1924 to the After Jean-Michel Basquiat Flexible from 2016, the sale offers a breadth of prints and multiples for collectors of all levels and interests, bringing together exceptional examples that span a century of artistic output.”
Known for his use of vibrant primary color and geometric compositions, Alexander Calder shows his depth of printmaking through the prints on offer in the June Auction. The selection of 25 prints from private collections opens the sale, beginning with rare, early lithographs from the 1960s and etchings spanning to 1975. These prints draw on the formal elements familiar to Calder’s oeuvre whose dynamism delights the eye. Not just limited to abstracted forms, Calder shows his sense of whimsy with animals moving across the picture plane, along with his collaboration with contemporary creatives and politicians.
Following the recent passing of Françoise Gilot, Phillips is honored to offer Young Girl and Pelican, 1987. A print rich in color and texture, it hails from the collection of William (Bill) Snyder, a friend of the French painter and her husband at the time, Dr. Jonas Salk. After marrying in 1970, Salk and Gilot eventually settled in the same idyllic seaside neighborhood as Synder, and the three became good friends. It was through this friendship with Salk and Gilot that Snyder acquired paintings and works on paper by the artist. This monotype with extensive hand-coloring perfectly encapsulates the windswept beaches of La Jolla, California where Gilot worked at the time.
The sale brings a wide variety of contemporary artists to the forefront with works such as Robert Longo’s bold, black and white Tiger, Jim Dine’s monumental woodcut with acrylic hand color and footprint The White Foot, as well as works by Tom Wesselmann and an After Jean-Michel Basquiat leading the group. Country Bouquet continues to invoke Wesselmann’s playful approach to artmaking and innovation within the multiples field, translating his lyrical and organic linework in steel to create a delicate and striking work of art. As an artist always seeking to surprise and inspire the viewer through the quotidian subject matter, the bright, multicolored flowers of this humble country bouquet are not only beautiful, but also signify a radically new exploration of draftsmanship. This laser-cut steel sculpture calls for a bespoke categorization, wherein the two and three- dimensional spatial planes converge, providing a new tactile quality to the familiar artist's sketch.
Published by Pace Prints and the Estate of Jean- Michel Basquiat in 2016, Flexible is a 24-color screenprint of the late artist’s wood-panel painting of 1984. Encapsulating his central themes, this piece celebrates Basquiat’s cultural legacy and reflects his lifelong exploration of African American and Caribbean traditions. Here, the figure depicted is a griot: a member of the poet-musician, storyteller class called to preserve a tradition of oral history in West African culture. Seeking to canonize the Black male figure, noticeably absent from the history of Western painting, Basquiat visualizes this act of divination, negotiating ethnicity alongside questions of prestige and status. Simultaneously, he incorporates an x-ray vision of the body, as the griot’s lungs, bones, and cranium overlay the skin’s surface in white; thus, these internal structures also act as maps of interior consciousness, negotiating the public and private spheres of identity.
