NEW YORK.- Sotheby’s sale of Contemporary Art on the evening of May 15 offers collectors a diverse selection of works, many of which come from important private collections including the Collection of Samuel and Luella Maslon and the Estate of Elaine Dannheisser. The auction features an impressive depth and breadth of important pieces by post-war masters including Warhol, Twombly, Rothko, Richter, Bacon, de Kooning and Ryman.
Highlights from Various Owners
Andy Warhol is well represented in this sale with a range of works dating from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. Among the earliest paintings included is Five Deaths from his Death and Disaster series. Perhaps his most challenging work, both in terms of the early experiments he made with the silkscreen technique and his choice of subject matter, Warhol’s Car Crashes comprise his most diverse and complete exploration into the accidentality and drama of life and death. Estimated to sell for $3/4 million, this work executed in 1963 from a newspaper clipping is one of only three canvases depicting this subject in a bright tangerine color and is the property of Jay Shriver, once an assistant of Warhol.
At the other end of the date range is Warhol’s last Self-Portrait, executed in 1986 (est. $1.5/2 million), which comes from the Collection of Stephan T. Edlis and was first exhibited at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London in July and August of 1986. Donning a ‘fright-wig’ and employing a bright lemon-yellow paint, Warhol’s face and hair burst out of the picturing plane, enabling the artist to achieve an electric image of himself. A much earlier self-portrait from 1966 is also included in this sale and is described below with the highlights of the Maslon Collection. Other important examples of Warhol’s work include Four Jackies from 1964 (est. $900/1.2 million), and Superman from the artist’s Myths series executed in 1981 (est. $1/1.5 million).
The sale also features two outstanding works by Gerhard Richter. The artist first experimented with color charts during 1965-66. In 1971 he created larger and more resolved canvases, and his last color charts were executed in 1973-74. The present work, 180 Farben executed in 1971, was one of a group of four identically sized works displaying different configurations of 180 colors. Estimated to sell for $2/3 million, this work resounds with the beauty and simplicity of pure color. Kerze, executed in 1982 and estimated to sell for $2.5/3.5 million, marked Richter’s return to his ‘photopaintings’ after spending much of the late 1970s engaged in abstract work. His series of Candles effortlessly reveals Richter’s continuing interest in a dialogue between painterly abstraction and romanticized realism that is anchored to photography. His genius here is to fix layers of graduated tone around the candle, while allowing its incandescence to dance across the canvas in the most sophisticated fashion. Its sense of painterly and compositional finish is mesmerizing.
Franz Kline is viewed as the master of black and white Abstract Expressionism, and Pennsylvania exemplifies the elegant and confident dynamism of Kline’s broad compositions of black and white horizontals and verticals. Executed in 1954 and estimated to sell for $1.2/1.5 million, the present work with is bucolic, lyrical sweep, evokes the coal country of the artist’s youth in eastern Pennsylvania.
Cy Twombly’s move from New York to Rome in the 1960s unleashed a wave of creativity, and during this period the artist immersed himself completely in the varied worlds of Ancient Mythology, creating a tiny universe that may be seen as a private Arcadia. In his work entitled Achilles Mourning the Death of Patroclus (Rome) and dated 1962, Twombly explores in a beautiful and sophisticated fashion the violence of Patroclus’ death, the heart-felt emotion of Achilles’ loss, and the emptiness of the barren Trojan landscape under the light of the Greek sky. This piece is estimated to sell for $2.5/3.5 million.
Robert Ryman’s brilliance is evidenced by a strong and meaningful painting entitled Uncle Up, also the title of a jazz song. In this work dated 1963, Ryman focuses on basic, material properties: paint, surface, application, scale and texture. With its square-within-a-square format and its various approaches to pigment, Uncle Up, estimated to sell for $2/3 million, is a superb example of Ryman’s empirical structure of painting.
Francis Bacon’s Study from the Human Body is a glorious example of the artist’s late work and is a wonderfully intelligent contemplation of the human body. Executed in 1981, this work insists on a stark, down-to-earth realism that is contained with a lightness of touch rare in Bacon’s oeuvre. Estimated at $2.5/3.5 million, this work powerfully exemplifies Bacon’s aesthetic ideal: one that he called ‘the brutality of fact.’
Rounding ouCt the sale are several works from the last decade including Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (Rossmore), and John Currin’s Entertaining Mr. Acker Bilk. Each is estimated to sell for $400/600,000.
Contemporary Highlights from the Samuel and Luella Maslon Collection
Laura Paulson, speaking of the Maslon Collection, said, “In the realm of Contemporary Art, the Maslons’ discerning eye spanned Abstract Expressionism, American Pop painting and Minimalist art. Their monumental works by Motherwell and Gottlieb, along with the range of classic Pop images by Warhol and Lichtenstein, enlivened the modern, open floor-plan of their home in Palm Springs.”
Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait from 1966 captures the artist’s most alluring and elusive star, himself. Painted at the height of his early fame, following the overwhelming success of the artist’s exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the present work marks the conjunction of Warhol’s subject matter and his personal fame – an ironic layering of subject and author. Estimated at $600/800,000, the lasting visual impact of the optically powerful red and blue Self-Portrait lies in the enigmatic identity of its subject, the bold directness of its surface allure, and its role as a mirror of its time.
If Roy Lichteinstein’s paintings playfully parodied the celebrated spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism, then his sculpture, such as Brushstroke from 1981, takes the artist ever further. As Frederic Tuten wrote in an exhibition catalog of the artist’s work: “Lichtenstein lifts the brushstroke from the canvas and thrusts it into space...[by] removing the brushstroke image so far from its original source, from a source already vitiated by convention and cliché and converts it into an icon set apart from its historical context, giving it an existence entirely its own.” Acquired by the Maslons in 1982, the work is estimated to sell for $150/200,000.
Also featured is Robert Motherwell’s monumental Iberia IV, 1958, from the artist’s famed Spanish Elegy Series. Estimated to sell for $300/400,000, this quintessential work refers to the impact the Spanish Civil War had on the artist. In this series, begun in 1949 and continued over three decades, Motherwell developed a limited repertory of simple, serene black forms that were applied to the picture plane in a way that created a sense of slow, solemn movement.
Another highlight, Adolph Gottlieb’s Dialogue II, from 1962, is a quintessential example of the artist’s dynamic combination of subject matter and form that would characterize his entire oeuvre. Mythic, archaic images and symbols arranged on a flat, arbitrary, yet consciously conceived ground are the epitome of Gottlieb’s style. Along with his friends and colleagues of the American vanguard of the 1940s and 50s, Gottlieb fashioned a personal style from the major strains of the modern tradition, Cubism and Surrealism that achieved their goal of “the simple expression of a complex thought.” Purchased from Sidney Janis in 1961, the present work is estimated to sell for $350/450,000.
From 1971 is a seminal work by Donald Judd. Untitled is from the landmark series known as the “bull-nose progression.” These sculptures hold a primary place of importance within Judd’s oeuvre as the earliest objects in which he achieved a geometrically and evenly determined organization of solids and voids. The present work, conceived in stainless steel and measuring 5 x 40 x 8 ½ ins. is estimated to sell for $350/450,000.
