EVENING SALE
AUCTION
Tuesday 19 November 2024 at 7.00pm
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020
VIEWING
Saturday 9 November-Tuesday 19 November
Monday-Saturday 10.00am-5.00pm Sunday 1.00pm-5.00pm
AUCTION CODE AND NUMBER
In sending absentee bids or making enquiries, this sale should be referred to as TOPKAPI-23870
ABSENTEE AND TELEPHONE BIDS
Tel: +1 212 636 2437
HEAD OF SALE
Max Carter
Vice Chairman, 20/21 Americas +1 212 636 2091
mcarter@christies.com
JUNIOR SPECIALIST
Emma Boyd +1 212 636 2063 eboyd@christies.com
JUNIOR SPECIALIST
Rachel Ng +1 212 636 2538 rachelng@christies.com
CATALOGUER
Emory Conetta +1 212 636 2253 econetta@christies.com
SALE COORDINATOR
Nicholas Michael +1 917 521 9353 nmichael@christies.com
PAYMENT, SHIPPING AND COLLECTION
Tel: +1 212 636 2650
Fax: +1 212 636 4939
Email: PostSaleUS@christies.com
FURTHER INFORMATION
Christie’s has a direct financial interest in each lot of property listed in this catalogue. For certain lots, Christie’s may fund all of part of our interest with third party guarantors. These lots will be noted with symbols on the sale landing page on christies.com. The sale for each lot is subject to the Conditions of Sale, Important Notices and Explanations of Cataloguing Practice which are set out online, with other important sale information at christies.com and a copy of which can be found at the back of this catalogue.
FRITZ GLARNER, Relational Painting Tondo No. 26, 1953.
36
JEAN HELION, Bande verte, 1936.
38
FRITZ GLARNER, Relational Painting No. 76, 1955-1956. 44
DAVID HOCKNEY, Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural, 1970.
46
RENE MAGRITTE, La Mémoire, 1945.
58
ED RUSCHA, Marble Shatters Drinking Glass, 1968.
68
DAVID HOCKNEY, Still Life on a Glass Table, 1971.
76
HENRY MOORE, Reclining Figure, 1931.
98
RENE MAGRITTE, La cour d’amour, 1960.
106
ADOLPH GOTTLIEB, Petaloid #2, 1963. 118
MORRIS LOUIS, Hesperides, 1959-1960.
128
MAX ERNST, Sans titre (L’oiseau qui s’assoit et ne chante pas), 1926.
134
JOAN MIRO, Peinture (Amour), 1925.
142
DAVID SMITH, Tanktotem X, 1960. 154
LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY, Konstruktion B VI, 1922. 164
JEAN HELION, Figure volante, 1937-1938.
172
AMEDEE OZENFANT, La Source: Femme au broc, 1927. 178
PABLO PICASSO, Composition, 1933.
186
RENE MAGRITTE, L’empire des lumières, 1954.
192
CONDITIONS OF SALE 215
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For more than half a century, the inimitable Mica Ertegun— philanthropist, designer, fashion icon, and creative force—set a new benchmark for style and sophistication across three continents. The founder of MAC II Interior Design, Ertegun redefined contemporary elegance with her crisp, classical approach and effortless mix of simple and grand. Her own homes—in New York, Southampton, Paris, and Bodrum—represented a distillation of her taste and a testament to her profound appreciation for art and culture. The spare, subtle interiors provided the ideal backdrop for a carefully curated selection of furniture and objects from around the world and a sterling collection of Modern and Contemporary paintings—from Surrealist masterpieces by Magritte and Miró to radiant exemplars of Color Field painting—assembled over decades with a true connoisseur’s eye, and inspired by a passion that began in Mica’s youth.
During the final decades of her life, while continuing at the helm of MAC II, Mica Ertegun dedicated herself unreservedly to philanthropy as well. With visionary largesse, she transformed preeminent educational and cultural institutions from Oxford University to Jazz at Lincoln Center. Through her trailblazing involvement with the World Monuments Fund, she secured the preservation of treasured heritage sites worldwide, from Brancusi’s Endless Column in Romania to the Aedicule Shrine at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Mica Ertegun’s philanthropy was singular and personal, driven by deep conviction and an abiding belief in the life-changing power of the humanities. By creating spaces where people could come together to worship, study, hear music, and more, her expansive support of history, archaeology, architecture, and the arts served a profoundly unifying force—building bridges, healing divisions, and uplifting society.
Ioana Maria Banu, known by her childhood nickname of “Mica,” was born in 1926 into a prominent Romanian family, and spent her early years in the cultivated milieu of the royal court. In January 1948, following the Communist overthrow of the Romanian government, her family was forced to flee the country, escaping with the royal family and its entourage to Switzerland. After a short stay in Paris, where she found work as a model, she and her then-husband emigrated to Canada and purchased a chicken farm on Lake Ontario. She was undaunted by the grueling work, rising before dawn to collect, clean, and box the 5,000 birds’ eggs and then returning each evening to dress for elegant candlelit dinners. “We had to create a world,” she later recalled. “It was tough, but it was the best time of my life. When you are young, anything can be great.”
In 1958, Mica traveled to New York to meet with the Turkish Ambassador to the United Nations. Impressed by her poise and determination, the Ambassador invited her to a dinner party where she met Ahmet Ertegun, the son of a distinguished Turkish diplomat, and the co-founder of Atlantic Records. The pair felt an immediate connection— as their friend Lyor Cohen later reflected, they “combined substance and style like no one else.” On April 6, 1961, they were married in a small ceremony in Manhattan.
“I tend to tone down everything. It’s the way I like to live. I love my objects and I want them to stand out… If it’s too busy, you can’t see the art.”
– MICA ERTEGUN
Mica’s impeccable elegance and innate creativity shaped her new life in New York City. She discovered her talent for interior design while decorating her townhouse on East 81st Street and soon established her interior design studio, MAC II, with friend and Vogue editor Chessy Rayner. Mrs. Ertegun became widely known for the rigorous and sophisticated eye she brought to each project. “We do simple things without being minimalist,” she explained. Decorating some of the most prominent and architecturally important residences in New York City, the Hamptons, and Turkey, Mrs. Ertegun was not above sourcing materials for her projects in local flea markets and bazaars. Her aesthetic represented a departure from the fussy and heavily ornamented styles that then prevailed. “Mica’s look is austere and strict,” recalled her friend Louise Grunwald. “She is architectural in her dress, and in her interiors there is never any froufrou.” Annette de la Renta put it more simply: “Mica never puts a wrong foot forward. She has the most refined eye.”
Chic and worldly, Mica Ertegun quickly became celebrated as well for her glamorous dinners, which brought together guests from the worlds of art, music, theater, literature, and business. She was known as a flawless hostess, gracious and welcoming, with an exquisitely refined sensibility and a dry wit; her unique personal style blended the exotic and the austere. “She was impossibly spellbinding,” Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, and Nash remarked, “the most classically elegant woman I have ever had the good fortune to know. She [had] a way of making one stand a little straighter and mind one’s manners.”
Mrs. Ertegun’s own residences represented the purest embodiment of her singular taste and style. Designed for gracious entertaining as well as comfortable daily living, they pair clean lines and proportions with grand scale. Her home in Southampton, modeled on a neoclassical Russian dacha, has at its core a 40-foot square, two-story living room; at East 81st Street, three walls were removed to create a dramatic, loft-like drawing room that runs the length of the townhouse, overlooking a double-height dining room and conservatory on the floor below. The furnishings that Mica selected were an elegant mix of Russian, German, and French antiques; white and cream tones prevailed, giving the rooms a simple, contemporary feel. “My houses are very bare compared to most people’s,” she told an interviewer. “I tend to tone down everything. It’s the way I like to live. I love my objects and I want them to stand out…If it’s too busy, you can’t see the art.”
True to her word, Mica made the paintings in the Ertegun Collection the focal point and animating spirit of each impeccably curated room. In the dining room in New York, for example, Adolph Gottlieb’s abstract Petaloid #2—with its pairing of celestial and organic forms against a vivid green ground—echoed and responded to the view through the greenhouse-like rear wall onto the garden; the scale of the painting is immersive, thematizing the contrast between the intimacy of the interior and the expansiveness of the outdoors. Upstairs, Hockney’s magisterial
Still Life on a Glass Table anchored a seating area with Biedermeier sofas and an 18th century pedestal table, creating a dialogue with the furniture and objects in the room—a play among levels of reality. Showcasing Hockney’s keen interest in optics, perspective, and light, the various vases and vessels in the painting are at once literally rendered and psychologically charged, laid out on the table like sacred implements on an altar.
The underlying harmony of traditionally opposing elements provides the expressive power for the jewel of the Ertegun Collection—Magritte’s L’empire des lumières, a singular masterpiece from the artist’s iconic series on this theme. Depicting a nocturnal street scene beneath a bright blue sky, the painting reconciles darkness and light, dream and reality, the innermost self and the outside world—symbolic antipodes that lie at the very heart of the Surrealist ethos. Mica Ertegun hung this extraordinary canvas in the living room at East 81st Street, where it stood out against the surrounding spectrum of cool white tones, diffusing its mysterious radiance over the interior. A Georgian gilt mirror faced the canvas, reflecting and amplifying its revelatory contrasts. “In the world night always exists at the same time as day. (Just as sadness always exists in some people at the same time as happiness in others),” Magritte explained. “This evocation of day and night seems to me to have the power to surprise and enchant us. I call this power ‘poetry’.”
Having been surrounded by art and beauty throughout her life, Mica Ertegun was inspired as she grew older to generously support the arts and cultural heritage. Among her longest-standing leadership roles was as a Trustee of the World Monuments Fund, which embraces the potential of the past to create a more just and inclusive present. Beginning in 1996, Mica spearheaded the restoration of Brancusi’s Endless Column ensemble at Târgu Jiu, in her own and the sculptor’s native Romania. Considered one of the great works of 20th century outdoor sculpture, Endless Column commemorates the Romanian heroes of the First World War, its repeated rhomboidal modules symbolizing the concept of infinity and the infinite sacrifice of the fallen soldiers. Left to degrade during the period of Communist rule, the ensemble was restored through an innovative international partnership among the World Monuments Fund, the World Bank, and the Romanian Ministry of Culture. It now serves once again as a historic site in Romania—a locus of national identity—and a reminder of the famous sculptor’s formal and expressive genius.
In 2014, in recognition of her leadership in preservation and philanthropy, Mica Ertegun was awarded the World Monument Fund’s prestigious Hadrian Award, along with artist Ellsworth Kelly. The same year, in conjunction with the WMF, she established the Ertegun Fund for Religious Heritage, a global initiative to identify and preserve architecturally or culturally significant houses of worship. A flagship undertaking of the Fund has been the conservation of the Aedicule inside the 4th century Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which encloses the site identified by tradition as the tomb of Christ. This landmark project, previously stalled for over half a century, enabled individuals of all faiths once again to visit this site of exceptional spiritual importance, fostering mutual understanding among different religions and creeds. At a ceremony celebrating the restoration, His Beatitude Theophilos III named Mrs. Ertegun “Great Cross-Bearer”— the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem’s highest honor—and told her, “Mica, you made the impossible possible.”
In addition to the World Monuments Fund, another venerable institution that has benefited from Mica Ertegun’s munificence is Oxford University. In 2012, Mrs. Ertegun created the Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities at Oxford. The largest charitable gift for the humanities in the university’s 900-year history, this transformative program provides up to 35 annual scholarships in perpetuity for graduate and research degrees in a wide range of subjects. Based at Ertegun House, a Georgian-era townhouse in central Oxford that Mica helped to redesign, the program unites students from around the world and across academic disciplines in the humanities, breaking down barriers and fostering the exchange of ideas. In recognition of Mrs. Ertegun’s trailblazing philanthropic vision, Her Majesty The Queen appointed her an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, CBE, in 2017.
Mica Ertegun was also deeply involved with cultural institutions in her long-time home of New York. For decades, she was a staunch supporter of the New York Restoration Project, founded by Bette Midler with the goal of providing access to gardens and parks for every city dweller; in 2018, Ms. Midler presented her with the aptly named Wind Beneath My Wings Leadership Award. To honor her family’s shared love of music, she funded the Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Atrium at Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2015, working closely with the architects of the project to bring her vision to light. With its curving red oak walls, two-story glass windows and glass staircase, the redesigned space has a warmth and feeling that the original atrium lacked. “It’s elegant, it’s grand, and it has a type of relaxed formality,” said Wynton Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. “It’s a more welcoming atmosphere for the House of Swing.”
The philanthropic projects that Mica Ertegun undertook in her final decades represent the culmination of an exemplary life dedicated to arts, culture, and learning—pursuits that endure across time and place, that transcend differences and define the uniquely human within us. Embracing the identity of her adoptive home while never forgetting her past, Mica was drawn to a melding of cultures and a union of opposites: as a designer, a hostess, and a collector, her style was defined by harmonious contrasts and ambitious juxtapositions. With open arms and a charitable heart, she left the world a more civilized and compassionate place than she found it.
Ertegun House, Oxford, provides an important academic base for participants in the University’s Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities. Photo: Jill Walker, courtesy of the University of Oxford.
Together, the pair of paintings by Fritz Glarner in Mica Ertegun’s collection offer a powerful illustration of the artist’s unique approach to abstraction, their delicately balanced surfaces and carefully composed studies of space and color revealing the artist’s restrained, measured language of form. By the time Swiss-born Glarner arrived in New York in 1936, he had spent almost a decade living and working in Paris, absorbing the revolutionary ideas and visual styles championed by the city’s artistic avant-garde, from Futurism to Cubism, Purism to Surrealism. However, it was the language of De Stijl, and in particular the elegant purity of Piet Mondrian’s abstract paintings, which left an indelible mark on Glarner’s imagination. Though Glarner and Mondrian had met on occasion in Paris during the late 1920s and early 1930s, it was only after the Dutch artist’s arrival in New York in 1940 that their friendship truly blossomed. A rich exchange of ideas between the two émigrés ensued, with the pair meeting regularly both at Glarner's home and in Mondrian’s studio on 59th Street. While Glarner was still working towards his mature style at this time, constantly testing and refining his artistic theories as he hovered on the edge of a breakthrough, Mondrian had entered a period of intensive experimentation in his painting, influenced by the dynamic energy of the modern metropolis of New York.
Following Mondrian’s untimely death at the beginning of 1944, Glarner stepped away from painting for almost a year, focusing instead on drawing, as he sought to clarify his artistic ideas and assimilate all that he had learned from Mondrian during their time together. Through their lively conversations and exchanges, the two comrades had fueled one another’s artistic developments, leading Glarner to proclaim:
“[Mondrian] was my friend; he was my master” (quoted in J.R. Lane and S.C. Larsen, eds., Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America 1927-1944, exh. cat., Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, New York, 1983, p. 148). The canvases which emerged in the aftermath of this short break illustrate the originality and nuance with which Glarner approached the NeoPlastic aesthetic, while also revealing the primary artistic challenges that would occupy the painter for the rest of his career.
For Glarner, the careful ordering of form stood at the very core of his art, as he focused on the similarities and dissonances conjured between each geometric shape and its neighbor as they interacted with one another. Expanding upon the restricted vocabulary of forms and colors that had marked Mondrian’s canvases, the artist began to introduce diagonal lines to his work, creating acute and obtuse angles and converting rectangles into trapezoids which expand and recede in opposing directions, generating a lively pattern of overlapping forms. During a lecture in New York in February 1949, Glarner expressed how important this liberation from rectangularity had been to him: “The diagonal or the incline, which I have introduced into my paintings, creates a stronger dynamic movement. The diagonal establishes the structure, which determines the space and liberates the form” (quoted in Fritz Glarner, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Bern, 1972, n.p.). Indeed, due to the slant of their shared edges, these wedges appear to pulsate back and forth within his paintings, creating an intense rhythmic energy that seems to push against the very limits of the canvas. He also began to explore the possibilities of different shaped canvases, using unorthodox, circular tondo supports, superimposing the system of intersecting geometric forms on a round picture surface to achieve an effect he termed the “squaring of the circle.”
Piet Mondrian and Fritz Glarner at the opening of the exhibition “Masters of Abstract Art” at H. Rubenstein’s New Art Center, New York, 1 April 1942.
L-R: Burgoyne Diller, Fritz Glarner, Carl Holty, Piet Mondrian, and Charmion von Wiegand. Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. © The Lisette Model Foundation, Inc.
In contrast to Mondrian, whose classic grids and flat planes seem fixed in place, Glarner’s forms slip and shift, resulting in an effect which the artist called “pumping planes,” whereby shape and ground appear to alternate upon the canvas. This connection between form and space, foreground and background, is so intimate in his paintings that they become of equal importance within the compositional structure, blending and shifting before our eyes. “When the form area and the space area are of the same structure, a new aspect arises in which pure means can reveal their intrinsic expression,” the artist explained. “It is my belief that the truth will manifest itself more clearly through this new condition” (quoted in K.E. Willers, Between Mondrian and Minimalism, Neo-Plasticism in America, exh. cat., The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1991, n.p.). Color was an important tool in achieving this sensation, with the artist assigning each form a distinct hue from a strictly limited palette of primary colors and removing any demarcating lines between them, to allow a more direct interaction between each pigment. Whereas the shades of black, white, red, yellow and blue were all standardized within his compositions, gray appeared in a diversity of tones, subtly modulated to enhance or reduce the pictorial rhythm in different areas of the composition.
Through his painterly experiments, Glarner expanded the limits of the Neo-Plastic style in unexpected ways, developing an abstract language that would prove highly influential for generations of young American artists through the middle decades of the twentieth century. However, as with Mondrian’s compositions from the early 1940s, there is a dynamic spirit to Glarner’s work, suggesting an inspiration beyond just pure, abstract form. As Dorothy C. Miller explained: “His work is severely nonobjective but it always has its roots in nature, or, as he would say, life. This ‘life’ is that of the modern city, specifically the city of New York. It is a life perceived and felt, not filtered through subject matter, casual observation or conventional associations” (“Fritz Glarner,” in L. Goodrich, New Art in America: Fifty Painters of the 20th Century, Greenwich, 1957, p. 225).
Relational Painting Tondo No. 26
signed, dated and titled 'FRITZ GLARNER "RELATIONAL PAINTING 1953-TONDO #26" (on the reverse of the artist's frame) oil on Masonite in the artist's frame
Overall diameter: 13¿ in. (33.1 cm.)
Painted in 1953
$80,000-120,000
PROVENANCE:
Rose Fried Gallery (The Pinacotheca), New York. (possibly) Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Inc., Birmingham, Michigan. Acquired by the late owner, circa 1980s.
Bande verte (1936)
Dating from the height of his engagement with non-representational painting, Bande verte exemplifies Jean Hélion’s distinctive form of abstraction. At this time, Hélion was a key figure of the international avant-garde, his friends and acquaintances including a wide variety of artists, from Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson to Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder and Marcel Duchamp. Traveling between Paris and his newly established studio near his wife’s family in Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, this was a period of artistic exploration for Hélion as he continued to question and expand the possibilities of abstract painting.
Hélion’s mode of abstraction was born out of the prevailing artistic factions that formed the basis of the avant-garde in 1920s Europe. Seeking to challenge the hegemony of Surrealism at this time, towards the end of the decade an increasing number of artists turned to nonrepresentational painting, embracing objectivity in the face of the deeply personal language that their Surrealist contemporaries revered. This mounting interest in post-cubist, non-figurative painting was inspired particularly by the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. In 1930, Hélion—together with the De Stijl artist and theorist, Theo van Doesburg—organized a new group called Art Concret, in which they pursued a program derived from the latter’s rigorous form of NeoPlasticism. Named editor of the group’s magazine, Hélion emerged as a leading voice for abstraction. The following year, he and Van Doesburg co-founded the Abstraction-Création movement along with artists including Albert Gleizes, Auguste Herbin, František Kupka and Georges Vantongerloo. Their shared beliefs were, as the first editorial statement published in the periodical Cahier of 1932 stated, “non-figuration,
that’s to say a purely plastic culture which excludes every element of explication, anecdote, literature, naturalism…” (“Abstraction-Création” in Cahier, no. 1, 1932; quoted in C. Harrison and P. Wood, Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Oxford, 1997, p. 357).
Hélion’s painting flourished in this like-minded milieu. In his series of the early 1930s, his work embodied non-representation. In 1934, however, Hélion resigned from the group, opposed to the stringent rules enforced by Herbin. Pursuing a looser form of abstract painting, his work was increasingly removed from the rigid austerity of form and color dictated by the group, to instead embrace a greater sense of movement and vitality, ultimately resulting in the re-integration of nature itself into his painting. As Bande verte demonstrates, Hélion employed a combination of geometric and biomorphic forms in the composition, suggestive of floating shapes amid expansive planes of bold color. “My painting is in motion,” Hélion wrote in 1935. “Now I try to think simply and to allow to grow on the initial structures another structure, emotional, unconscious… Oppositions develop. The colors become more refined, the space becomes more flexible, but the further I go, the more the call of nature becomes evident. The space is temporarily, miraculously, filled with light, but the volumes will have to become complete; objects, bodies. Inevitably… we shall pass on to a new naturalist era” (A. MoeglinDelcroix, ed., Jean Hélion: Journal d’un peintre: Carnets, 1929-1984, Paris, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 55-56).
At the time that he painted Bande verte, Hélion was spending an increasing amount of time in the United States—indeed, as the present work demonstrates, he had begun the canvas in Paris and completed it in Virginia a few months later. His work was shown in galleries across the country throughout this period, including The Valentine Gallery, New York, and the Putzel Gallery, Los Angeles, where the present work was featured in an exhibition of 1937.
Bande verte
signed, dated twice and inscribed 'Hélion 36 Paris 19 Mai 36 Virginia 18 Octobre 1936' (on the reverse) oil on canvas
49¡ x 38¡ in. (129.4 x 97.5 cm.)
Painted 19 May-18 October 1936
$500,000-700,000
PROVENANCE:
Galerie Louis Carré, Paris. M. and Mme Abel Rambert, Paris (by 1964).
H. Frenkel, Paris (by 1980).
Anon. sale, Hôtel Drouot, Guy Loudmer, Paris, 10 June 1990, lot 266.
Anon. sale, Hôtel Drouot, Guy Loudmer, Paris, 17 November 1991, lot 16. Acquired at the above sale by the late owner.
EXHIBITED:
Los Angeles, Putzel Gallery, Jean Hélion, February 1937.
Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, Jean Hélion: Peintures 1929-1939, June-July 1962, no. 13.
New York, Willard Gallery, Jean Hélion, March-April 1967, no. 11.
Paris, Galeries nationales d'exposition du Grand Palais, Hélion: Cent tableaux, 1928-1970, December 1970-February 1971, p. 30 (illustrated in color; illustrated in situ in the artist's studio, Virginia, p. 93).
Beijing, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Shanghai, Musée des Beaux-Arts and Nanchang, Musée des Beaux Arts, Hélion: Peintures, September-November 1980, no. 9.
LITERATURE:
S.J. Woods, Transitions, London, 1937, no. 26.
H.-C. Cousseau, Hélion, Paris, 1992, p. 312 (illustrated with inverted image and incorrect dimensions).
J. Hélion and M. Vail, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint de Jean Hélion, www.associationjeanhelion.fr (accessed September 2024; illustrated with inverted image and incorrect dimensions).
Relational Painting No. 76
signed and titled 'F. GLARNER "RELATIONAL PAINTING No 76"' (on the reverse) oil on canvas in the artist's frame
Overall: 23¬ x 20º in. (60 x 51.4 cm.)
Painted circa 1955-1956
$150,000-250,000
PROVENANCE:
Graham Gallery, New York (probably acquired from the artist). Acquired from the above by the late owner, 5 November 1980.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Graham Gallery, In the Geometric Tradition, September-November 1980.
Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural (1970)
A poignant act of homage, and a luminous portrait of friendship, Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural is a landmark painting dating from an important moment in David Hockney’s practice. Executed in 1970, it is the first work in his oeuvre to make direct reference to Pablo Picasso: his great inspiration and idol. It depicts part of the latter’s mural at the Château de Castille in Provence, home of the eminent collector and art historian Douglas Cooper. Cooper was close to Picasso, and later became friends with Hockney, who stayed at the property on a number of occasions. These visits brought the artist within striking distance of his hero, though he and Picasso never met in person. Here, his mural looms large above three exquisitely painted chairs: defining motifs within Hockney’s own practice. Their forms glow with anthropomorphic intensity, as if awaiting the arrival of their unseen sitters. Upon Cooper’s sunlit stage, Hockney and Picasso pass through art history’s sliding doors: two masters half a century apart.
Included in Hockney’s major touring retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1988, the work occupies pivotal territory in his practice. As Picasso’s career came to an end—he died three years after the present work—Hockney’s was in its ascendancy. 1970 saw his first retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, which toured Europe to critical acclaim. This period of early professional triumph spawned some of his finest works, including his seminal “double portraits.” These extraordinary large-scale canvases marked the culmination of Hockney’s celebrated “naturalistic” phase, defined by the same crisp perspective, hyperreal clarity and sharp theatrical lighting that characterize the present work. Chairs featured prominently
“… there was constantly the thought of Picasso.”
– DAVID HOCKNEY
in these paintings—from the iconic pink sofa in Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969), to the sleek Marcel Breuer “Cesca” in Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-1971, Tate Gallery, London). Le Parc des Sources, Vichy (1970, Chatsworth House Trust), meanwhile, echoes the present work’s trilogy of chairs. Two are occupied by Hockney’s then lover Peter Schlesinger and his friend Ossie Clark; the other is left tantalizingly vacant, as if for the artist himself.
Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural confronts the viewer in a similar manner. Conceptually, it might be read as a double portrait of Cooper and Picasso, with Hockney triangulated between them. Alternatively, it might be seen as a virtual meeting between two artists, brokered by their mutual friendship with Cooper. As in Vincent van Gogh’s chair portraits, which Hockney deeply admired, presence is made all the more palpable by absence. The painting became the first in a long line of works in which Hockney paid explicit tribute to Picasso.
Following the latter’s death in 1973, he produced the etchings The Student: Homage to Picasso and Artist and Model, depicting himself in imaginary conversation with the Spaniard. In 1977 he made a further suite of etchings based on Wallace Stevens’ Picasso-inspired poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” That year, he also painted the extraordinary Self-Portrait with Blue Guitar (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna), featuring a bust of Dora Maar in the background, and another expectant empty chair opposite Hockney.
Hockney’s fascination with Picasso dates back to his student days at the Royal College of Art, when he had famously returned eight times to the artist’s 1960 retrospective at the Tate Gallery. The dazzling stylistic
“[Douglas Cooper] was quite a fascinating person … There was a mad side to him which I rather liked.”
– DAVID HOCKNEY
range of Picasso’s art had fueled his early practice, instilling in him a lifelong desire to avoid allegiance to any particular genre or medium. In 1980, another retrospective—this time at The Museum of Modern Art, New York—would spark a new wave of engagement with his work: “it’s like the National Gallery all painted by one man,” he enthused at the time. “Totally incredible” (letter to R.B. Kitaj, 20 May-19 August 1980). That year, he began working on the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Eric Satie’s Parade (1917), drawing heavily upon Picasso’s original set and costume designs. His portraits, landscapes and photocollages of this period, meanwhile, grappled with the teachings of Cubism, prompting critics to posit him as Picasso’s heir. Studying the artist’s cubist works showed Hockney that sight is not a linear experience, but rather a composite of multiple simultaneous viewpoints. This revelation would come to form the touchstone of his art, writing and research over the following decades.
Hockney’s friendship with Cooper also brought him ever-more deeply into Picasso’s world. A distinguished scholar of Cubism, Cooper had spent the 1930s amassing one of the largest collections dedicated to the movement, including works by Picasso as well as Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. In 1949 he had moved to France, where his collection was transplanted to the walls of the magnificent Château de Castille near Uzès. Cooper’s partner was Picasso’s biographer John Richardson, and the artist became a regular guest, even requesting to buy the property on several occasions. After Cooper expressed an interest in some of his engraved drawings in Barcelona, Picasso had reportedly exclaimed “Give me a wall!” The horse visible in Hockney’s painting was inspired by Jacques-Louis David’s The Intervention of the Sabine Women
“… on the plane of art, [Picasso] was an inventive genius—undoubtedly, the only true genius ... of the twentieth century.”
– DOUGLAS COOPER
(1799, Musée du Louvre, Paris), while other parts of the mural drew upon Edouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-1863, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). In 1962 Picasso’s images were etched into the wall of the château’s eastern veranda using the “Betograve” technique made famous by the Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar.
Hockney had first visited the Château de Castille five years later, during a summer tour of Europe at the height of his relationship with Schlesinger. He would return on a number of occasions over the years, notably immortalizing Cooper in an exquisite drawing of 1974. Hockney described him as “fascinating person,” with “a mad side to him which I rather liked” (quoted in conversation with C.S. Sykes, March 2011). Together, they spoke at length about art. Cooper, like Hockney, believed that Picasso was “an inventive genius—undoubtedly, the only true genius... of the twentieth century” (quoted in Douglas Cooper and the Masters of Modernism, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1986, p. 170). The two, however, were somewhat divided on the merits of his later work. Hockney painted the present canvas from a photograph of the mural taken in March 1970, eliminating part of the foreground as well as the crazy-paving pattern of the floor. He also produced a smaller-scale sister painting, Chair with a Horse Drawn by Picasso (1970).
While Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural serves as a record of Hockney’s friendship with Cooper, it also hints at a tale of bittersweet personal loss. By 1970, the artist’s romance with Schlesinger was becoming increasingly tense, and would eventually dissolve in an explosive row in Europe the following year. During this period, Hockney’s distress wrote itself into his art. Le Parc de Sources, Vichy,
Present work illustrated (detail).
with its single empty chair, was already infused with a sense of emotional estrangement. In the years that followed, the artist would produce a number of portraits of lonely objects—among them Still Life on a Glass Table (1971)—that seemed to capture the pain of his heartbreak. It was perhaps no coincidence that vacant chairs featured prominently in this body of work: from the mournful Chair and Shirt (1972), to Two Deck Chairs, Calvi (1972, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam), bathed in the glow of long lost summers. This trajectory would culminate in the poignant poolside masterpiece Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), set—like the present work—in the South of France.
Hockney was far from alone in the strength of his personal debt to Picasso. Francis Bacon had wrestled with the artist’s influence ever since he saw his Dinard beach scenes in 1920s Paris. Jean-Michel Basquiat had stood transfixed in front of his work as a boy, while Martin Kippenberger would paint himself in the guise of the artist’s widow Jaqueline Roque. For Hockney, however—a master of theater and illusion—the process of painting Picasso’s work into his own became more than just an act of tribute. Paintings within paintings, and pictures within pictures, would become central to his practice, each time foregrounding the mechanics through which we receive meaning from art. The present work, in this regard, shares much in common with the 1977 masterpiece Looking at Pictures on a Screen, depicting the curator Henry Geldzahler admiring reproductions of famous artworks. In both paintings, art becomes part of the theater of everyday life, contextualized by the quotidian props that surround it. The dialogue between artifice and reality had been central to Picasso’s own enquiries. Here, the stage is set for Hockney to make that investigation his own.
Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural signed, dated and titled 'Three chairs with a section of a Picasso mural David Hockney 1970' (on the reverse)
acrylic on canvas
48 x 60 in. (121.9 x 152.4 cm.)
Painted in 1970
$4,000,000-6,000,000
PROVENANCE:
Lewis M. Kaplan, London. Waddington Galleries, London (acquired from the above, 1975).
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 1975.
EXHIBITED:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and London, Tate Gallery, David Hockney: A Retrospective, February 1988-January 1989, pp. 40-41 and 165 (details illustrated in color, pp. 40- 41; illustrated in color, p. 165, pl. 42).
LITERATURE:
N. Stangos, ed., David Hockney by David Hockney, New York, 1976, pp. 16 and 232 (illustrated, p. 232, pl. 318).
P. Webb, Portrait of David Hockney, London, 1988, p. 110.
P. Melia and U. Luckhardt, David Hockney: Paintings, New York, 1994, p. 121.
D. Hockney, G. Evans and D. Graves, eds., Hockney’s Pictures: The Definitive Retrospective, New York, 2004, p. 10 (illustrated in color).
P. Melia and U. Luckhardt, David Hockney, Munich, 2007, p. 121.
M. Livingstone, David Hockney, London, 2017 (illustrated in color, pl. 108).
In a letter to Claude Spaak written during the opening days of 1941, René Magritte outlined the principle idea that had been driving his most recent work: “it is in short the ever more rigorous search for what, in my view, is the essential element in art: purity and precision in the image of mystery which becomes decisive through being shorn of everything incidental or accidental” (quoted in S. Whitfield, Magritte, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1992, no. 84). Created in 1945, shortly after the liberation of Brussels at the end of the Second World War, La Mémoire investigates this concept, exploring a theme which the artist found himself drawn back to on several occasions during the turbulent 1940s—the surprising appearance of a bleeding wound on the smooth, serene face of a plaster sculpture. Blurring the boundaries between inanimate object and living being, this simple intervention transformed the bust into a disquieting motif, infusing even the most banal, innocuous scene with a startling note of violence and the unexpected.
This life-like bust, with its elegant features and coiffed hairstyle, first appeared in Magritte’s painterly oeuvre in the 1941 composition Les eaux profondes (Sylvester, no. 491; Private collection). Sporting a stylish black coat and gloves, while an enormous bird of prey silently stares at its profile, the figure appeared to be a mysterious, ambiguous mix of statue and flesh. The sculptural element was directly modeled from a plaster cast of an unknown, Neo-Classical bust, several of which the artist purchased from the Maison Berger for his personal collection of objects. At some point in 1942, Magritte took one of these plasters and deliberately disturbed its pure white surface, adding a large, dramatic bloodstain to one side of the face. Originating from an invisible wound
“Charm and menace can reinforce, each other by their fusion.”
– RENE MAGRITTE
at the temple, the garish mark partially covered one eye and the majority of its cheek, dripping downwards in thick rivulets to the jawline. Known only from a photograph taken by Marcel Mariën in 1943, which he titled Au temps de la mémoire, this original altered plaster cast appears to have been lost or destroyed shortly after its creation, but may have provided the direct inspiration for the artist’s first painted versions of the bleeding bust, such as La Mémoire (Sylvester, no. 505; Private collection). The motif would become an important recurring subject in Magritte’s art over the ensuing years, appearing in various configurations and contexts, the shape and size of the bloodstain altering from one work to the next, while the rest of the face remained perfectly unblemished.
In an interview Magritte gave in 1962, he spoke at length about the relationship between the subjects and the titles of his works, making specific reference to the La Mémoire paintings: “The title is related to the painted figures in the same way that the figures are related to each other. The figures are brought together in an order that invokes mystery. The title is joined to the painted image according to the same order. For instance, the picture La Mémoire shows a plaster face with a bloodstain on it. When I gave the picture the title, I felt they went well together... when I painted the picture La Mémoire I wasn’t thinking about what I’m going to say now. I only thought about harmonizing the image and the title that names the image. Consequently, the picture is not the illustration of the following ideas. When we say the word ‘memory,’ we see that it corresponds to the image of a human head. If memory can take up space, it can only be inside the head. Then the bloodstain may suggest to us that the person whose face we can see is the victim of a fatal accident. Lastly, it’s a question of an event in the past that remains present in our minds thanks to the memory” (J. Walravens, “Ontmoeting met René Magritte,” in De Vlaamse Gids, Antwerp, November 1962; in K. Rooney and E. Platter, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, Richmond, 2016, p. 201).
René Magritte, La Mémoire, 1948. Ministère de la Communauté francaise, Belgium. © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
As so often in Magritte’s work, the most potent source of inspiration for the La Mémoire paintings lay in the work of Giorgio de Chirico and in particular, the Italian artist’s famous 1914 picture Le chant d’amour. It was this painting, with its strange juxtaposition of a marble bust, a ball and a surgeon’s glove set in an urban landscape, that had sparked an artistic epiphany for Magritte when he first encountered it in the summer of 1923. Describing the impact of De Chirico’s strange, uncanny worlds, he wrote: “This triumphant poetry replaced the stereotyped effects of traditional painting. It represented a complete break with the mental habits peculiar to artists who are prisoners of talent, virtuosity and all the little aesthetic specialties. It was a new vision through which the spectator might recognize his own isolation and hear the silence of the world” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, p. 71). Though it would take a full two years for the artist to process this revelatory experience, it fundamentally re-orientated Magritte’s painterly style, instilling his work with a feverish new energy that lead him to abandon the cubo-futurist vocabulary which had dominated his painting up to this point, and instead develop the disjointed and surreal visual world that would become his artistic trademark.
In La Mémoire, Magritte’s enduring fascination with De Chirico’s mysterious composition is clearly visible, memories of this revelatory work continuing to shape and inspire his mature Surrealist vision. Here, the artist explores a deceptively simple configuration of objects, positioning the injured sculpture alongside a glass of water and a single apple in a plain interior, the walls and table captured in subtle shades of cream, beige and gray. Rather than appearing as a simple still-life scene, however, Magritte imbues the composition with a heightened sense of the uncanny by allowing the sculpted head to appear weightless—this is the only iteration of the subject in which the bust is suspended in midair, floating above the table-top. As such, the painting appears to echo Le chant d’amour, in which the classical bust is placed half-way up a partition wall, anchored by an unknown force. In La Mémoire,
Present work illustrated (detail).
the lifelike appearance of the sculpture combined with its distinct three-dimensionality generates a strange, ghostly atmosphere, as if the disembodied head is an apparition that has suddenly infiltrated this mundane, everyday moment.
In December 1945, La Mémoire was reproduced on the front page of the Brussels communist weekly Clarté, with the caption “one of the superb pictures you can win in our great house tombola” (quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931- 1948, London, 1993, vol. II, p. 353). Magritte had formally joined the Belgian Communist Party in September of that year, embracing the revived spirit of political activity and freedom sweeping through Brussels following the end of the Second World War. As the artist explained: “Nougé and I thought we would be able, from within, to guide the artistic and cultural tendencies of the [Communist] Party in a direction more in keeping with our deep aspirations. We therefore attended the meetings of a section specializing in problems relating to the Fine Arts and Literature” (quoted in ibid., p. 113). Magritte donated La Mémoire to the tombola, or raffle, which had been organized to mark the exhibition Oeuvres offertes par l’Amicale des Arts plastiques, at the Galerie L’Ecrin d’art.
It is not known who the lucky winner in the tombola was—La Mémoire remained hidden in a private collection for more than twenty years following the raffle, until it resurfaced on the art market in 1968. However, Magritte’s affiliation with the Communist Party came to a swift end. “I was very quickly disillusioned…” he recalled. “We were talking to deaf ears. I was asked to submit one or two proposals for posters. They were all rejected. Conformism was as blatant in this milieu as in the most narrow-minded sections of the bourgeoisie. After a few months, I stopped attending and, from then on, I had no further relationship with the Party. There was no exclusion or break, but, on my side, total disaffection and permanent estrangement” (quoted in ibid., p. 116).
La Mémoire
signed 'Magritte' (upper right); dated, titled and numbered '“LA MÉMOIRE" (II) 1945' (on the reverse) oil on canvas
17Ω x 21Ω in. (45.1 x 54.3 cm.)
Painted in 1945
$3,000,000-5,000,000
PROVENANCE:
L'amicale des arts plastiques, Brussels (sold by tombola, 12 January 1946).
Gérard Gérain, Brussels.
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels (acquired from the above, 1968).
Private collection, Brussels (acquired from the above, circa 1980).
James Goodman Gallery, Inc., New York.
Galerie Brusberg, Berlin (acquired from the above, 1986).
Paint and Print Art Dealers, Basel (acquired from the above, 1989).
Anon. sale, Ader Tajan, Paris, 27 June 1994, lot 66.
Private collection, Switzerland.
Blondeau et Cie., Geneva.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 28 April 2000.
EXHIBITED:
Brussels, Galerie L'Ecrin d'art, Œuvres offertes par L'amicale des arts plastiques, January 1946.
Knokke, Galerie Isy Brachot, Magritte, March-April 1971, no. 2 (illustrated in color).
Ecaussines Lalaing, Château-fort, Hainaut, Terre de Surréalisme, July-September 1971, no. 17.
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Le hainaut: Terre de Surréalisme, October 1971, no. 63.
Lessines, Hôtel de Ville, Hommage de la ville de Lessines à René Magritte, May 1973, no. 8 (illustrated in color).
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Delvaux, Gnoli, Magritte, November-December 1974, no. 32 (illustrated; detail illustrated in color on the cover).
Centre d'arts plastiques contemporains de Bordeaux, Magritte, May-July 1977.
Paris, Galerie Isy Brachot, Magritte, January-March 1979, no. 11 (illustrated in color).
Paris, Didier Imbert Fine Art, Paris: Capitale des arts, April-July 1989, p. 56, no. 23 (illustrated in color, p. 57).
Vienna, BA-CA Kunstforum and Basel, Fondation Beyeler, René Magritte: Der Schlüssel der Träume, August-November 2005, pp. 122 and 200, no. 56 (illustrated in color, p. 122).
Clarté, Brussels, 23 December 1945, p. 1 (illustrated).
A. Negri, René Magritte: Il buon senso e il senso delle cose, Milan, 1984, p. 50, no. 7 (illustrated in color).
D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931-1948, London, 1993, vol. II, p. 353, no. 581 (illustrated).
J. Meuris, René Magritte, Cologne, 2004, p. 157 (illustrated in color).
Marble Shatters Drinking Glass (1968)
Painted during a pivotal year for the artist, a period during which he completed some of his most iconic works, Ed Ruscha’s Marble Shatters Drinking Glass represents the pinnacle of his enigmatic, surreal, and technically brilliant paintings of the 1960s. In the present work, the artist challenges the narrative foundations of art by assembling an array of objects—a shattered tumbler, shards of flying glass, and a multi-colored marble—in a manner that suggests a dramatic narrative, but—tantalizingly—without satisfying it. By painting in this manner, Ruscha directs attention towards the forms themselves, particularly their sculptural qualities, a quality that would become a central pillar of the artist’s oeuvre. Painted the same year he completed Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire (1965-1968, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.), Marble Shatters Drinking Glass takes its place amongst the pantheon of Ruscha’s work.
Set against one of the artist’s signature gradated backdrops, Ruscha paints a shattered glass tumbler and an errant marble. Seemingly captured the split second after contact between the two has resulted in shards of flying glass, this canvas successfully showcases not only the artist’s superlative technical skills as a painter, but also his lifelong interest in how we look at, and perceive, objects. The skill with which he renders not only the subject matter, but also the ambiguity of the events surrounding what is being depicted on the surface of the canvas,
Present work illustrated (detail).
is something which is unique to Ruscha during this period. “I like to give attention to the lonely paintbrush,” Ruscha once said, and it is with paintings such as the present work that his skills are on full display (quoted by A. Schwartz, “A History Without Words,” in J. Ellroy, ed., Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2010, p. 29).
Marble Shatters Drinking Glass was executed during a period when Ruscha spent much of his time perfecting his “word” paintings. Alongside these, Ruscha also began to investigate paintings without words; the result was a series of four works in which the subject was a glass in various stages of destruction. In a nod to nostalgia, some of the glasses contain milk, a throwback—like Andy Warhol’s cans of tomato soup—to a notion of American wholesomeness, something at odds with the destructive nature of the subject matter. Many of the objects came from his own studio, and were often chosen because of the challenges they presented to the artist as he sought to depict these static objects in a more dynamic way. While other artists of the 1960s, such as Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, sought to “flatten” the world as they saw it, Ruscha was relishing the challenges of representing the opposite point of view. “While Ruscha remained committed to two-dimensional media in his own practice, his tendency to imbue subjects with a convincing sense of volumetric dimensionality betrays a surprisingly sculptural approach” (A. Torok, “Torn, Poured, Discarded,” in C. Cherix, et. al. Ed Ruscha/Now Then, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2023, p. 102).
Drawing visual parallels to the bizarre floating objects of Surrealists like René Magritte and the metaphysical tableaus of Giorgio de Chirico, Ruscha’s object paintings are both similar and distinct from his textual pieces. The words that he uses come in a variety of typefaces, sizes, and styles, but the objects always allude to illusion and are expertly rendered. To him, words “exist in a world of no-size. Take a word like ‘smash’—we don’t know it by size. We see it on billboards, in four-point type and all stages in between. On the other hand, I found out that it is important for objects to be their actual size in my paintings. If I do a painting of a pencil or magazine or fly or pills, I feel some sort of responsibility to paint them natural size—I get out the ruler” (quoted in P. Failing, “Ruscha, Young Artist,” Art News, April 1982, vol. 81, no. 4, p. 78).
Ultimately, the juxtapositions in works such as Marble Shatters Drinking Glass serve to destabilize our expectations. His non sequitur motifs, unconventional use of color, and meticulous paint application technique seek to raise more questions than they answer. As such, the present work stands as an exemplar of Ruscha’s oeuvre. Its combination of formal elements depicted in informal ways, extends throughout his practice and creates a distinct visual language that informs the artist’s decidedly signature style. These premeditated compositions and juxtapositions of objects, subjects, and ideas are at the core of Ruscha’s practice. Talking about his process, the artist notes, “To generalize, [the Abstract Expressionists] approached their art with no preconceptions and with a certain instant explosiveness, whereas I found that my work had to be planned and preconceived, or rather wondered about, before being done. My subjects tend to be recognizable objects made up of stuff that is non-objective and abstract. I have always operated on a kind of waste-retrieval method. I retrieve and renew things that have been forgotten or wasted” (quoted in B. Brunon, “Interview with Edward Ruscha,” in Edward Ruscha, exh. cat., Musée Saint Pierre Art Contemporain, Lyon, 1985, p. 95).
Marble Shatters Drinking Glass
signed and dated twice and titled ‘"MARBLE SHATTERS DRINKING GLASS" 1968
Ed Ruscha Ed Ruscha 1968’ (on the stretcher) oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1968
$1,200,000-1,800,000
PROVENANCE:
Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. Acquired from the above by the late owner, by 1976.
EXHIBITED:
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Paintings, Drawings and Other Works by Edward Ruscha, June-July 1976, p. 35.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; British Columbia, Vancouver Art Gallery; Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Works of Edward Ruscha, March 1982-May 1983, p. 174, no. 23 (illustrated in color, p. 85, pl. 51).
London, Hayward Gallery; Munich, Haus der Kunst and Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Edward Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, October 2009-September 2010, pp. 99 and 185 (illustrated in color).
LITERATURE:
S. Laundauer, W.H. Gerdts and P. Trenton, The Not-So-Still Life: A Century of California Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat., San Jose Museum of Art, 2003, p. 123 (illustrated, p. 126, pl. 113).
R. Dean and P. Poncy, eds., Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, 1958-1970, New York, 2003, vol. 1, p. 258, no. P1968.02 (illustrated in color, p. 259).
Still Life on a Glass Table (1971)
A virtuosic observation of light, and a bittersweet portrait of loss, Still Life on a Glass Table stands among David Hockney’s most poignant paintings. Begun in September 1971, it takes its place within the extraordinary sequence of canvases that the artist produced following the devastating end of his romance with Peter Schlesinger. It is a dazzling examination of reflection, luminosity and transparency, shot through with the lessons of his swimming pool paintings and double portraits. At the same time, the work has come to be recognized as a deeply personal expression of heartbreak. Its nine sentinel objects—many associated with Schlesinger—are rendered with crystalline intimacy. Each quivers with anthropomorphic charge, electrified by the distance that holds them apart. Light, darkness, grief and longing refract across the surface. Setting the stage for Hockney’s landmark farewell to Schlesinger Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), its pristine depiction of glass upon glass simmers with tension. It is a radiant tribute to the beauty, pain and fragility of love.
With an outstanding exhibition history that includes major retrospectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1988) and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2017), Still Life on a Glass Table has been widely celebrated in scholarship. Christopher Simon Sykes labeled it a “masterpiece” (Hockney: The Biography, London, 2011, vol. I, p. 260). Marco Livingstone, meanwhile, described it as a “virtuoso display” of Hockney’s “perceptual conviction” (David Hockney, London, 1982, p. 147). Elsewhere, Henry Geldzahler—the legendary curator and critic—wrote that the work “has the emotional energy of a portrait.” Geldzahler himself had posed alongside the same table two years earlier
“I started painting very intensely that September … There was nothing else I wanted to do. It was a way of coping with life.”
– DAVID HOCKNEY
in Hockney’s seminal double portrait Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969), another image of emotional estrangement. “All the objects on it are things the artists lives with,” he explains, “… yet there is a poignancy in their separateness.” It is “as autobiographical,” he writes, as the works of this period “are permitted to get” (Making It New, New York, 1994, p. 144).
In the immediate aftermath of his break-up, Hockney confessed, he believed he was embarking upon a straightforward still life. However, he quickly came to realize the personal significance of the objects he had chosen. Apart from the flowers and the two straw water containers, he explained, the items were “not my loves but those of Peter,” many bought by him for their London home (David Hockney by David Hockney, London, 1976, p. 241). Here, Hockney depicts them with breath-taking clarity and near-human gravitas. The complex dance of light through multiple glass surfaces—lamp, vases, jug, water glass and ashtray—is captured with razor-sharp precision. Contrasting textures and contours are immaculately observed, every shadow, highlight, angle and curve rendered in crisp, hyper-real detail. Reflections pool in the table below, swimming with light and color. Despite their proximity, each object stands alone. The figure-shaped shadow under the table, many have suggested, serves as a painful reminder of Schlesinger’s absence. The tulips, meanwhile—Hockney’s favorite flowers, and a recurring motif in his work—seem to implicate the presence of the artist himself, lost in a sunlit chamber of memory.
“Still Life on a Glass Table has the emotional energy of a portrait.”
– HENRY GELDZAHLER
Hockney and Schlesinger had met in the summer of 1966. A young history student looking to forge a career as an artist, Schlesinger had attended a drawing class run by Hockney at the University of California, Los Angeles. “On the first day of class the professor walked in,” he recalls; “—he was a bleached blond; wearing a tomato-red suit, a green and white polka-dot tie with a matching hat, and round black cartoon glasses; and speaking with a Yorkshire accent… I was drawn to him because he was quite different.” Hockney immediately recognized a kindred spirit. “I could genuinely see he had talent, and on top of that he was a marvelous looking young man,” he remembers (quoted in op cit., 2011, pp. 180-181). After the course finished, the two struck up a friendship which quickly blossomed into a romance. It was Hockney’s first great love affair, immortalized in sensual early works including Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and The Room, Tarzana (1967).
When Hockney returned to England, Schlesinger came too, a place at the Slade School of Art in London awaiting him. From the artist’s studio on Powis Terrace, the couple traveled widely, spending halcyon summer days with friends in Europe. The period brought great professional triumph for Hockney, who mounted his first retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1970. By January 1971, however, the relationship was beginning to show signs of strain. A trip to Morocco in February sought to rekindle it: Hockney’s heart-wrenching portrait Sur la Terrasse (1971), depicting Schlesinger on the balcony of their room at
the Hôtel de la Mamounia in Marrakesh, is an extraordinary precursor to the present work, every inch of it suffused with yearning. That summer, as Jack Hazan began filming his landmark documentary A Bigger Splash, the couple traveled to Spain and France. An explosive row in Cadaqués led Hockney to flee in anger, only to return almost immediately in a bid to make amends. For Schlesinger, however, the relationship was over. That August, Hockney returned to Powis Terrace alone.
As fall descended, the artist attempted to come to terms with his new reality. “It was very traumatic for me,” he recalls. “I’d never been through anything like that.” Deeply unhappy, Hockney threw himself into his work, seeking solace in art. “I started painting very intensely that September,” he explains. “… For about three months I was painting fourteen, fifteen hours a day. There was nothing else I wanted to do. It was a way of coping with life … I was incredibly lonely” (op. cit., 1976, p. 240). These feelings wrote themselves into his paintings: from the solitary Beach Umbrella (1971), casting its long shadows upon a deserted beach, to the vacant Chair and Shirt (1972), the elegiac Mount Fuji (1972, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Pool and Steps, Le Nid du Duc (1971), depicting Schlesinger’s discarded shirt and shoes. Several of these were unveiled alongside the present work in Hockney’s exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery, New York, in 1972. Also shown for the first time was Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) Here, Hockney dispensed with wistful signifiers: in their place was an image of Schlesinger himself, his gaze directed at another figure swimming underwater.
Present work illustrated (detail).
Still Life on a Glass Table is situated at the pinnacle of Hockney’s celebrated “naturalistic” phase, which dominated his practice from the late 1960s until the early 1970s. Defined by rigorous use of one-point perspective and meticulous command of light and space, this period saw the rise of the artist’s double portraits, which draw heavily upon the teachings of Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca. The present work inherits the incisive attentiveness that characterized these paintings, as well as their sense of simmering interpersonal drama. Its objects, like many of the double portraits’ subjects, are at once bound together and subtly disconnected: “they do not so much interweave as declare their identities,” wrote Geldzahler (op. cit., 1944, p. 144). It is perhaps no coincidence that tables, often laden with still-life arrangements, featured as key compositional devices throughout the series, gracing major works such as Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968) and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-1971, Tate, London). The present painting’s glass table, following its appearance in Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott, would also reappear in Hockney’s Portrait of Sir David Webster (1971), adorned with the same vase and bunch of tulips.
The swimming pool paintings, too, played a central role in Hockney’s pursuit of naturalism. In California, the play of West Coast light upon sparkling waters had fired his imagination, instilling in him a desire to understand how we truly experience complex visual phenomena.
From the stylized iconography of A Bigger Splash (Tate, London), painted in 1967, Hockney would branch into ever-more detailed studies of reflection and refraction, each time probing new truths about the workings of human sight. That year, he made his first depiction of the present work’s glass table: an ink sketch entitled A Glass Table with Glass Objects. Others would follow, including a drawing now held in Tate, London. “Water and glass are something that you cannot quite describe, they are transparent,” he explained. “…There’s a line of that mystical poet, George Herbert: ‘A man may look on glass, on it may stay his eye
or if he pleases through it pass, and there the heaven espy’. It’s a nice idea, that you can decide where your eye is going to rest” (quoted in M. Glazebrook, “David Hockney: an interview” in David Hockney: Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-70, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1970, p. 13).
Still Life on a Glass Table brings these interrogations to a climax. For all its emotional resonance, there is an elemental purity to Hockney’s glass matrix, its kaleidoscopic play of light distilled to quiet, clinical order. Its clean lines echo the aesthetics of East and West Coast Minimalism that emerged during this period, similarly fueled by a fascination with the mechanics of perception. The long tradition of stilllife painting, too, was rooted in the rigors of close observation. The genre, which flourished in the Dutch Golden Age, had been given new life by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso: all of whom were deeply admired by Hockney. Perhaps he also had in mind the work of Edouard Manet, whose 1882 painting Un bar aux Folies-Bergère (The Courtauld Gallery, London) offered one of art history’s most extraordinary studies of reflection. And while Hockney had arguably
“[Still Life on a Glass Table] is a masterpiece … all the objects on the table either belonged to or were particularly loved by Schlesinger, which led [Hockney] to question whether unconsciously he might have chosen them to reflect his emotional state.”
– CHRISTOPHER SIMON SYKES
outgrown his associations with American Pop Art by 1971, it was not lost on him that the still-life genre had also come under the microscope of Roy Lichtenstein: an artist for whom glass, mirrors and other reflective objects were of keen interest.
Hockney painted still lifes throughout his practice. His studies of refracted light would eventually lead him away from naturalism, giving rise to a stream of cubist inspired examples throughout the 1980s. They continued to punctuate his art during the 1990s, taking the form of poignant flower portraits that the artist frequently conceived as memorials for friends. Nowhere, however, did the genre find such potent expression as in Still Life on a Glass Table. In the spirit of “nature morte,” it offers a statement of life’s transience: a reminder that the objects and people we hold close cannot last forever. At the same time, however, it is a celebration—a tribute to art-making as a vehicle for clarity and catharsis. The process of intensive scrutiny, it proposes, can preserve the ineffable in paint. Light can be captured and sealed; feelings can be embalmed. In the present work, memories of lost love live on, reflected indefinitely in the glass table.
Still Life on a Glass Table
acrylic on canvas
72 x 108 in. (182.9 x 274.3 cm.)
Painted in 1971
$15,000,000-20,000,000
PROVENANCE:
André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York.
Christopher Selmes, London (acquired from the above, 1972).
Lewis M. Kaplan, London.
Waddington Galleries, London (acquired from the above, 1975).
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 1975.
EXHIBITED:
New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., David Hockney: Paintings and Drawings, May 1972 (illustrated; dated 1971-1972 and titled Still Life (Glass Table)).
Paris, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, La peinture anglaise aujourd’hui, February-March 1973, pp. 28-29 (illustrated in color, pp. 28-29, pl. 38; dated 1971-1972).
Paris, Musée des arts décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, David Hockney: Tableaux et dessins, October-December 1974, p. 39 (illustrated, pl. 19).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art; St. Louis Art Museum and Madison, University of Wisconsin, Elvehjem Art Center, European Painting in the Seventies: New Work by Sixteen Artists, September 1975-August 1976, p. 82, no. 40 (dated 1971-1972).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and London, Tate Gallery, David Hockney: A Retrospective, February 1988-January 1989, pp. 170-171 (illustrated in color, p. 170, fig. 47; detail illustrated in color, p. 171; dated 1971-1972).
Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, David Hockney: Exciting Times Are Ahead, June-September 2001, p. 114, no. 35 (illustrated in color, p. 115).
Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, David Hockney: Paintings 1960-2000, October 2001-January 2002, p. 41, no. 22 (illustrated in color; dated 1971-1972).
London, Tate Britain; Paris, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, David Hockney, February 2017-February 2018, pp. 170-171 (illustrated in color, pp. 170-171; dated 1971-1972).
J.R. Mellow, "Hockney: From Pop to Parody" in The New York Times, 29 May 1972, p. 17 (illustrated; dated 1971-1972 and titled Still Life (Glass Table)).
N. Stangos, ed., David Hockney by David Hockney, New York, 1977, pp. 19, 199 and 240-241 (illustrated in color, p. 199, pl. 256; dated 1971-1972).
M. Livingstone, David Hockney, London, 1981, pp. 147-149 (illustrated, p. 148, pl. 120; dated 1971-1972).
S.M.L. Aronson, "Classical Cool: Mica and Ahmet Ertegun's town house reflects a discerning couple's original taste" in House & Garden, March 1987, p. 218 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence, p. 105 and on the cover; titled as Still Life on Glass-Topped Table).
M. Livingstone, David Hockney, New York, 1988, pp. 147-149 (illustrated, p. 148, pl. 120; dated 1971-1972).
P. Webb, Portrait of David Hockney, London, 1988, pp. 120 and 125.
P.A. Caracciolo, "Ahmet y Mica Ertegun: La Fuerza y La Tersura" in Cases & Gente, vol. 7, no. 71, October 1992, p. 57 (titled as Still Life on Glass-Toped Table).
H. Geldzahler, Making It New: Essays, Interviews and Talks, New York, 1994, p. 144.
P. Melia and U. Luckhardt, David Hockney: Paintings, Munich and New York, 1994, pp. 92-94 (illustrated, p. 92, fig. 65; dated 1971-1972).
P. Clothier, Modern Masters: David Hockney, New York, 1995, pp. 44-45 and 50 (illustrated in color, p. 44, pl. 45; dated 1971-1972).
A. Tapert, "Mica Ertegun: Fine-Tuning an Enduring Arrangement in Manhattan" in Architectural Digest, vol. 54, no. 7, September 1997, p. 169 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence; dated 1971-1972 and titled Glass-Topped Table).
M. Livingstone and D. Ottinger, David Hockney: Espace/Paysage, exh. cat., Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1999, p. 68 (illustrated). M. Livingstone and K. Heymer, Hockney’s People, London, 2003, p. 119 (illustrated in color).
S. Howgate and B.S. Shapiro, David Hockney Portraits, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, London, 2006, p. 239.
P. Melia and U. Luckhardt, David Hockney, Munich, 2007, pp. 92-94 and 200 (illustrated, p. 92, pl. 65; dated 1971-1972).
C.S. Sykes, David Hockney: The Biography, 1937-1975: A Rake's Progress, London, 2011, pp. 260 and 272.
H.W. Holzwarth, ed., David Hockney: A Bigger Book, Cologne, 2016 (illustrated in color, pl. 106).
Reclining Figure (1931)
Henry Moore working in his studio, 1931. Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation. © The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024 / www.henry-moore.org.
Photo: © Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis via Getty Images.
Conceived in 1931, Reclining Figure marks an important turning point in the early career of Henry Moore. Inspired by the radical developments of his Surrealist contemporaries, Moore transformed the reclining figure into a daringly abstracted composition of solid and pierced forms. Curving, sinuous lines make up the structure of the figure, interspersed by linear rods that link the limbs together. This biomorphic fluidity was entirely novel in Moore’s work at this time, paving the way for many of the stylistic developments that would come to define his oeuvre.
Until this time, Moore had been primarily creating monumental, totemic sculptures. Volumetric and stylized, these works demonstrated Moore’s interest in Aztec and Mayan carvings. From the beginning of the 1930s however, his work became progressively distorted as he looked to the Surrealists, and in particular the work of Pablo Picasso. Stimulating artistic exchanges were occurring between artists of the Parisian avant-garde and their London counterparts at this time. Moore traveled to Paris where he met the self-styled Surrealist leader, André Breton, as well as Joan Miró, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti, who had become the leading Surrealist sculptor. He admired the creative liberation of these artists, regarding their art as the antidote to the pure abstraction that many of his British contemporaries were pursuing at this time. As he wrote in 1937, “I find myself lined up with the surrealists because Surrealism means freedom for the creative side of man, for surprise and discovery and life, for an opening out and widening of man’s consciousness, for changing life and against conserving worn out traditions, for variety and not a uniformity, for opening not closing—” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 123).
“The subject matter is given. It’s settled for you, and you know it and like it, so that within it, within the subject that you’ve done a dozen times before, you are free to invent a completely new form-idea.”
– HENRY MOORE
It was the biomorphic qualities of these artists’ work, particularly Picasso’s, that most inspired Moore at this time. In 1930 he had bought an edition of the Surrealist periodical, Documents, which was dedicated to Picasso’s recent work, including his abstracted scenes of bathers from 1929. In these works the female body is transformed into strange composites, the forms broken apart and reconstructed in surreal configurations. In the present sculpture, Moore similarly stretched, twisted and broke apart the human form, opening up the torso of the figure to expose what appears to be the rib cage. The pierced form would later become one of the defining features of Moore’s sculpture. As a result of this, space itself is engaged as an active part of the sculpture, as Christa Lichtenstern has described of the present work, “He shaped the space within the figures by articulating them as a loosely rhythmic alteration of tense, compact masses with relaxed, expansive ones, giving the interior a three-dimensional life of its own and granting it an emotional quality” (Henry Moore: Work, Theory, Impact, London, 2008, p. 67).
Moore cast Reclining Figure in lead, and chose to include this version in the landmark 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. There it was shown near to Miró’s La terre labourée and Salvador Dalí’s Le Rêve, entering into a dialogue with the dreamlike worlds these artists had created. “Moore’s figure also inhabits this domain, with its
biomorphic fluidity, its attenuated volumes and its rods subverting in a distinctly surrealist way the realism traditionally associated with sculpture,” Lichtenstern has written (ibid., p. 67).
Moore’s use of lead at this time was both practical and aesthetic. The daring formal construction of Reclining Figure could not have been achieved from carving stone, so Moore turned to this more malleable medium: “The lead figures came at a stage in my career when I wanted to experiment with thinner forms than stone could give and, of course, in metal you can have very thin forms. So this thinness that one could make and this desire for making space became something that I wanted to do. Yet I couldn’t afford in those days to make plasters and have them cast into bronze because I would have to send them and pay a huge fee to the bronze foundry. Whereas lead I could melt on the kitchen stove and pour into a mold myself. In fact I ruined my wife’s saucepans because the lead was so heavy that it bent the handles and the pans were sometimes put out of shape. But I could mold it myself and do the casting myself and it was soft enough when cast to work on it and give a refinement; I could cut it down thinner, and finish the surface, so for me lead was both economically possible and physically more reliable” (quoted in D. Mitchinson, Henry Moore Sculpture with Comments by the Artist, Barcelona, 1981, p. 75).
Installation view of the International Surrealist Exhibition held at the Burlington Galleries, London, 1936. Photograph by Roland Penrose. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2024. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
Reclining Figure
lead
Length: 16æ in. (42.6 cm.)
Conceived in 1931 and cast circa 1931; unique
$500,000-700,000
PROVENANCE:
Frederick and Dorothy Zimmerman, New York (by 1960).
The Waddington Galleries Ltd., London.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 16 March 1976.
EXHIBITED:
London, New Burlington Galleries, The International Surrealist Exhibition, June-July 1936, p. 23, no. 230.
Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Henry Moore: Sculptures et dessins, May-August 1977, pp. 18-19, 69 and 152, no. 10 (illustrated, pp. 19, 69 and 152).
London, Hayward Gallery, Dada and Surrealism Reviewed, January-March 1978, p. 362, no. 14.27.
LITERATURE:
H. Read, intro., Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1944, p. 270, no. 100 (illustrated).
W. Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 6 (illustrated, pl. 20).
H. Read, Henry Moore: A Study of his Life and Work, New York, 1967, p. 270, no. 63 (illustrated).
R. Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, 1921-1969, London, 1970, p. 341, no. 61 (illustrated).
D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture: With Comments by the Artist, London, 1981, pp. 52 and 309, no. 67 (bronze cast illustrated in color, p. 52).
H. Moore and J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore: My Ideas, Inspiration and Life as an Artist, San Francisco, 1986, pp.74-75 and 208 (bronze cast illustrated, pp. 74-75).
D. Sylvester, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, 1921-1948, London, 1988, vol. 1, p. 7, no. 101 (illustrated, p. 76).
D. Mitchinson, Celebrating Moore, London, 1998, p. 126, no. 56 (bronze cast illustrated in color, p. 125).
J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore: A Monumental Vision, Cologne, 2005, p. 200, no. 88 (bronze cast illustrated, p. 201).
La cour d’amour (1960)
In November 1964, at the opening of the exhibition Magritte: Le sens propre, René Magritte was asked by the journalist Pierre Mazars about the preponderance of curtains in his most recent works. The artist looked at the paintings hanging on the walls, and replied, in his quintessentially enigmatic manner, “Yes… We are surrounded by curtains” (P. Mazars, “Magritte et l’objet,” in Le Figaro Littéraire, 19 November 1964; quoted in K. Rooney and E. Platter, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, Richmond, 2018, p. 214). For Magritte, the curtain represented an intriguingly mysterious proposition, prized for its dual potential to reveal or conceal reality, to constrict our view, or open our eyes to hidden aspects of the world around us. Painted in 1960, La cour d’amour is one of a small series of paintings from the opening years of the decade in which the curtain plays a central role, allowing Magritte to investigate the poetic potential of this simple, familiar object, playing with the viewers’ perceptions and expectations in ever intriguing ways.
The curtain had been a perennial feature within Magritte’s art since his earliest Surrealist compositions from the mid-1920s, most often deployed as a framing device to the mysterious happenings and scenes that filled his canvases, or occasionally as a barrier or partition within the space. In many ways, these drapes had their roots in the traditions of art history, invoking the legendary competition between the Ancient Greek artists Zeuxis and Parrhasius, in which the latter’s superior skill was revealed through his realistic painting of a curtain that was so lifelike it fooled the other artist entirely. The legacy of this story continued to resonate with artists across the centuries, particularly through the Renaissance, with painters who sought to display their own mimetic
“Everything we see hides something else; we always want to see what is hidden by the thing we see. It is interesting to know what is hidden and what the visible does not show us.”
– RENE MAGRITTE
mastery through the addition of trompe-l’oeil drapery to their canvases. During the Dutch Golden Age, for example the inclusion of this motif also referenced the popular practice among art collectors and patrons of the period to cover their precious paintings with a curtain, protecting them from dust and bright light, while also making the viewing experience an event, concealing the painting before revealing it in a dramatic flourish.
While in Magritte’s compositions the presence of the curtain typically lent the scene a certain theatricality, as if the objects and figures were taking part in a drama on the stage, in 1926 he began to set them free from their position as a framing device, allowing them to instead become towering, autonomous objects within his paintings. In Le monde poétique (Sylvester, no. 107; Private collection), for example, a pair of bright pink drapes appear unsupported on either side of the platform, the ambiguous material adopting the familiar silhouette and rippling folds of its own accord. In his 1942 painting Les Misanthropes (Sylvester, no. 511; Private collection), meanwhile, a cluster of these curtains become a domineering presence within the desolate, mist-filled landscape, enlarged to giant proportions and transformed into uncanny characters through the simple act of dislocation. At the dawn of the 1960s, the curtain once again became an important leitmotif for Magritte, featuring in a diverse range of contexts and situations, from the enveloping, cylindrical curves of Les mémoires d’un saint (Sylvester, no. 909; The Menil Collection, Houston), to the configuration of three contrasting flat and threedimensional curtain forms, accompanied by a small grelot bell, in La Joconde (Sylvester, no. 922; Private collection).
In La cour d’amour, Magritte eschews any sense of the trompe-l’oeil effect, instead presenting us with two clearly flat panels cut into the distinctive shape of a draped curtain, which stand at the very center of the space. While one is filled with a realistic rendering of a rich red fabric, the folds following the contours of the panel as it is gathered together in a tie, the other presents an impossible view onto a cloud-filled, cerulean sky, as if the panel is in fact a window or a portal onto another landscape. Placed side by side, rather than as mirror opposites on either side of the space, Magritte accentuates the similarities and differences of the two panels, highlighting the manner in which they appear to have been created from the same schematic design, and yet transformed into two entirely different things by the artist’s hand. Playing with the viewer’s sense of depth, these two framed cut-outs introduce an intriguing impression of space within the scene, at once firmly rooted in the room, with its vivid, patterned wallpaper and wooden floor, and yet also suggesting another world beyond that which we can see.
Both panels are surrounded by chunky gold frames, recalling Magritte’s series of pictures from the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which small paintings were placed on the floor of an ordinary interior setting, conjuring unexpected visuals in the mind of the viewer through their combination or the artist’s playful use of language. For example, in Le palais de rideaux (Sylvester, no. 305; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) two matching heptagonal pictures are propped against the paneled wall of the artist’s Parisian apartment, each describing the essential beauty of the sky, one through soft blue tones, the other through the simple act of adding the word ciel to the panel in cursive script. In La cour d’amour, the framing of the curtains emphasizes their almost comical flatness as they stand, unsupported within the scene. Indeed,
Present work illustrated (detail).
they appear more like pieces of interchangeable stage scenery, which can be moved and repositioned as needed, while the small crevices visible at the base of the diamond-patterned backdrop create the impression that it, too, is an impermanent feature within the space, a fake wall or perhaps another curtain. These details lend the composition an inherent strangeness, suggesting that nothing is as it may seem at first glance, each element simply another layer in a carefully constructed tableau, which together can create an impression of another time, another place, another world.
For Magritte, it was this essential magic of such objects and their familiar presence in the world around us, combined with the fallibility and complexity of our perceptions, the gaps in our understanding and reading of reality, that provided the essential fuel for his imagination. “In the images I paint, there is no question of either dream, escape or symbolism,” he explained. “My images are not substitutes for either sleeping or waking dreams. They do not give us the illusion of escaping from reality… I conceive painting as the art of juxtaposing colors in such a way that their effective aspect disappears and allows a poetic image to become visible. This image is the total description of a thought that unites—in a poetic order—familiar figures of the visible: skies, people, trees, mountains, furniture, stars, solids, inscriptions, etc.” (quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 224).
La cour d'amour
signed 'Magritte' (lower right); dated and titled '"LA COUR D'AMOUR" 1960' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
31Ω x 39¡ in. (79.9 x 100 cm.)
Painted in 1960
$9,000,000-12,000,000
PROVENANCE:
Alexander Iolas, New York (acquired from the artist, January 1961).
Daniel Filipacchi, Paris (acquired from the above, circa 1964-1965).
Byron Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, circa 1968.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Alexander Iolas Gallery, René Magritte: Paintings, Gouaches, Collages, 1960-1961-1962, April-May 1962, no. 5.
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, The Vision of René Magritte, September-October 1962, no. 69.
Little Rock, Arkansas Art Center, Magritte, May-June 1964.
New York, Byron Gallery, René Magritte, November-December 1968, p. 58, no. 25 (illustrated, p. 59).
Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, Surrealism, February-March 1983, no. 55 (illustrated in color).
Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage, René Magritte, June-October 1987, pp. 146 and 203, no. 101 (illustrated in color, p. 146; illustrated again, p. 203).
Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, René Magritte, November 1987-February 1988, no. 113 (illustrated in color).
Vienna, BA-CA Kunstforum and Basel, Fondation Beyeler, René Magritte: Der Schlüssel der Träume, August-November 2005, pp. 162 and 201, no. 85 (illustrated in color, p. 162).
LITERATURE:
P. Devlin, "Space Venture: The Ahmet Ertegun Town House in New York, 'Why Imitate When Now is New'?" in Vogue, 15 August 1969, p. 131 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 116, no. 192 (illustrated).
D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes, 1949-1967, London, 1993, vol. III, p. 334, no. 920 (illustrated).
R.-M. Jongen, René Magritte ou la pensée imagée de l'invisible: Réflexions et recherches, Brussels, 1994, pp. 254 and 271, no. 79 (illustrated).
S. Gohr, Magritte: Attempting the Impossible, Paris, 2009, p. 308, no. 421 (illustrated in color).
E. Taylor, “'I Hate Clutter”: The Chic, Cultivated Interiors of Mica Ertegun, As Seen in Vogue" in Vogue, www.vogue.com, 6 December 2023 (accessed 9 October 2024; illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence, pl. 14).
Adolph Gottlieb in his Easthampton home, New York, circa mid-1960s (present work illustrated). Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Gottlieb Foundation. Artwork: © 2024 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Petaloid #2 (1963)
Towering more than two meters in height, Petaloid #2 (1963) is a spectacular large-scale example of Adolph Gottlieb’s “Burst” paintings. These radically simplified and potent compositions—defined by a softedged ovoid floating above a more explosive “burst” form on a vertical canvas—were Gottlieb’s crowning achievement, and are some of the most iconic paintings of the Abstract Expressionist era. Against Petaloid #2’s luminous green ground, an orb of emerald hovers over a starry bloom of deep red. The paired shapes, complementary in color, are evocative of fundamental dualities—order and chaos, id and ego, yin and yang, creation and destruction—without declaring any fixed reading. Gottlieb explored endless possibilities of scale, gesture, and color within this profound and elemental format, which occupied him from the late 1950s until his death in 1974. Petaloid #2 dates from an especially triumphant year for the artist. In 1963, he was honored with a major survey exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and became the first American to be awarded the Grande Prêmio of the Bienal de São Paulo.
Gottlieb’s “Burst” works were the climax of decades of curiosity, experimentation, and innovation. Born in New York in 1903, Gottlieb attended night classes at the Art Students League and Cooper Union as a teenager. When he was seventeen, he worked his passage to Europe on a freighter, spending six months in Paris—where he visited the Louvre daily—and a year in Germany. He returned to New York full of the lessons of Cubism, Renaissance painting, and tribal art that he had seen. In 1929 he met his contemporary Mark Rothko and the older artist Milton Avery. The three often worked together over the following years, attempting to escape what they saw as the reigning provincialism of
“The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images.”
– ADOLPH GOTTLIEB
American painting. After a spell in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona in 1937-1938, Gottlieb began to paint dreamlike still lifes of boxed objects, bringing together strains of Surrealism, Cubism, and Native American art. These led to his grid-based “Pictographs” (1941-1951), which—like Rothko’s works of the same period—explored mythic and Freudian themes using primal, archetypal symbols. As he abandoned the grid, these works gave way to the “Imaginary Landscapes” (1951- 1957), whose contemplative upper and active lower elements anticipated the distilled, culminating splendor of the “Bursts.”
In 1943, Rothko and Gottlieb sent a joint letter to Edward Alden Jewell, arts editor of the New York Times, who had written a nonplussed review of their work. The letter was the first formal statement from artists who would become associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, and remains an insightful summary of the men’s shared outlook. “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought,” they wrote. “We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth… There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art” (“A Letter from Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb to the Art Editor of the New York Times,” New York Times, 7 June, 1943, n.p.). Gottlieb would adhere to these ideas for the rest of his career. The statement’s reach for absolutes—the unequivocal, the simple, the true, the timeless—rings true in mature paintings like Petaloid #2
Present work illustrated (detail).
At the time of Jewell’s review, avant-garde abstraction was largely sidelined and misunderstood by the New York art establishment. Gottlieb was one of its most outspoken defenders. By the 1960s, thanks in part to the advocacy of critics such as Clement Greenberg and MoMA director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the art world looked very different. Abstract painters including Gottlieb, Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock were household names, their works acquired by museums and sought after by eminent collectors. Petaloid #2 plays a role in an anecdote that illustrates Gottlieb’s elevated cultural cachet at the time. Hans Namuth— the photographer who had famously captured Pollock making his “drip” paintings in 1950—let himself into Gottlieb’s East Hampton studio in 1963, and photographed a model on a ladder in front of several paintings, including Petaloid #2. The resulting image was printed in The New Yorker and New York Times Magazine as an advertisement for the highend coffee brand Medaglia d’Oro. Affronted at the unauthorized use of his artwork, Gottlieb reached a legal accommodation with Namuth and the brand: the picture could be reproduced with the caption “Paintings by, and photographed in the studio of, Adolph Gottlieb, winner of the grand prix at the 1963 São Paulo Bienal of Painting and Sculpture.”
Unlike his friend Rothko, Gottlieb was relatively untroubled by his rising success. With an assured reputation, financial security, and the latitude to grow and experiment within his chosen painterly format, he was at the height of his powers in the 1960s. The “Burst” works have often been described as integrating opposing poles of Abstract Expressionist painting: they combine the numinous color-fields of
Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, or Barnett Newman with the more dramatic, gestural strokes of de Kooning, Pollock, or Franz Kline. Their binary structure strikes a balance between the reductive language of those former painters and the action-filled, “all-over” canvases of the latter. Rather than simply reconciling these different approaches, however, Gottlieb variously held them in tension and harmony in his paintings, transcending his colleagues’ ideas in a unique idiom that proposed a new path for Abstract Expressionism.
With their “Bursts” and “Blasts,” Gottlieb’s works have been interpreted as abstractions of violence and cataclysm. The artist himself certainly did not exclude such readings: like many of his contemporaries, he sought to make art commensurate with the existential tumult of his time, from the tragedies of the Second World War to the development of the atomic bomb. Some critics saw in the soft nimbus above Gottlieb’s explosive “Bursts” the terrible calm of a nuclear mushroom cloud. The painter, however, felt that viewers were free to come to their own conclusions. Many “Burst” paintings, including the present, might equally be seen to offer a serene and restorative vision. Petaloid #2’s botanical title, in concert with its vivid green hues and blossoming red form, gestures toward the wonders of growth, renewal, and rebirth. “I try, through colors, forms and lines, to express intimate emotions,” Gottlieb said in São Paulo in 1963. “… My paintings can represent an atomic bomb, a sun, or something else altogether: depending on the thinking of whoever is looking at it” (quoted in “Gottlieb Pinta Explosoes,” Ultima Hora La, São Paulo, 27 September 1963).
Advertisement for Medaglia d’Oro coffee photographed in Adolph Gottlieb’s studio and published in The New Yorker, November 1963 (present work illustrated). Photograph by Hans Namuth. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate. Artwork: © 2024 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Image courtesy of Condé Nast Archive.
Petaloid #2
signed, dated and titled ‘Adolph Gottlieb "PETALOID #2" 1963’ (on the reverse) oil on canvas
90 x 84 in. (228.6 x 213.4 cm.)
Painted in 1963
$1,200,000-1,800,000
PROVENANCE:
The artist.
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York (by 1966).
Private collection (acquired from the above, 1969); sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 26 October 1972, lot 20.
Waddington Galleries, London (acquired at the above sale).
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 1973.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, 11 Abstract Expressionist Painters, OctoberNovember 1963, no. 7 (illustrated).
New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Adolph Gottlieb: Twelve Paintings, February-March 1966, no. 1 (illustrated).
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Kyoto, National Museum of Modern Art; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria; Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales and New Delhi, Lalit Kala Gallery, Two Decades of American Painting, October 1966-April 1967, p. 278 (illustrated in color, pl. 23; illustrated in situ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, p. 338, fig. 6; illustrated in situ at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, p. 346, fig. 14).
Southampton, Parrish Art Museum, Art from Southampton Collections, AugustSeptember 1973.
LITERATURE:
The New Yorker, 2 November 1963, p. 154 (illustrated in color in an advertisement).
The New Yorker, 30 November 1963, p. 177 (illustrated in color in an advertisement).
V. Mosco, ed., Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2010, p. 50 (illustrated in color in an advertisement, fig. 24).
Hesperides (1959–1960)
Hesperides from 1959-1960 is a triumphant proclamation of Morris Louis’s commitment to his artistic practice. This monumental canvas is part of his Veil series, characterized by large overlapping swaths of paint in varying colors. The present work ripples with light, and the viewer’s shifting gaze reveals new layers of semi-translucent color. Louis had an intense passion for painting and honed his craft daily, his dedication to the process is clearly seen through the sublime effects of texture he achieved.
The composition seems deceptively simple at first glance—a monumental tower of red pigment. Upon closer look, however, the viewer sees yellow, orange, and burgundy, all without a trace of the artist’s hand. Much of the texture and unique color layering in the present work owes itself to Louis’s medium of choice; Magna was a type of acrylic resin developed in the 1940s by paint manufacturer and friend of the artist Leonard Bocour. Louis became entranced by the medium and devoted his career to discovering its limits. Another source of inspiration for Louis’s techniques was fellow abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler. On a visit to New York in 1953, Louis visited Frankenthaler’s studio and saw some of her work. The vast canvas Mountain and Sea, specifically, impacted Louis profoundly. After this trip, he began experimenting with staining raw canvas with diluted paint.
Hesperides takes painting to its limits of possibility. Secluded in his tiny dining room seven days a week, Louis manipulated the medium to ethereal extremes. Saturated color and feather-light texture make the late Veil paintings so magnificent. Renowned art dealer and author Andre Emmerich said of the series: “The veils are, of course, totally romantic. God in a landscape. They are abstract versions of those grand 19th century landscapes” (quoted in R. Pierce, Morris Louis: the Life and Art of One of America’s Greatest Twentieth Century Abstract Artists, Robert Pierce Productions, Inc., 2002). Even the title evokes mythic grandeur. In Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs of the evening and the golden light of sunset. The present work seems to suggest the glowing heat of the setting sun, light flickering as it fades beneath the horizon.
The artist spent his career in Washington, D.C., where he painted daily and taught art at the Washington Workshop Center. Through the Workshop, Louis met fellow artist Kenneth Noland, with whom he would later establish the Washington Color School. This movement focused on the emotional capabilities of color and emphasized pure abstraction. Noland would introduce Louis to Clement Greenberg, the venerated essayist and art historian. This connection would catapult Louis into the New York art scene, slowly leading to more exhibitions, but unfortunately, he did not live to see his great success. The present work alone has featured in several important exhibitions in major cities, including Milan, Amsterdam, London, and New York.
Louis was an innovator. Through dedication to his art, he explored the limits of color and the two- dimensional plane. Hesperides is a prime example of one of his most iconic series. It is one puzzle piece in an oeuvre which gained him critical acclaim and a distinct place in the canon of Western art history. His dynamic work has left a legacy that extends far beyond his life.
Hesperides
Magna on canvas
104 x 84 in. (264.2 x 213.4 cm.)
Painted in 1959-1960
$1,200,000-1,800,000
PROVENANCE:
Park International, New York.
Kasmin Ltd., London.
Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, London (acquired from the above, by 1965).
Kasmin Ltd., London and Waddington Galleries, London (jointly acquired from the above).
Alistair McAlpine, London.
Waddington Galleries, London.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 1974.
EXHIBITED:
Milan, Galleria dell’Ariete, Morris Louis, November-December 1960, no. 5.
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle and London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Morris Louis, February-July 1965, no. 9 (illustrated with inverted image).
New York, Lawrence Rubin Gallery, Morris Louis: Veil Paintings 1954-59, May 1970.
Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Amerikansk kunst 1950–70, September-October 1971, p. 39, no. 40 (illustrated in color, p. 20).
Bentonville, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Celebrating the American Spirit, November 2011-May 2012.
LITERATURE:
M. Fried, Morris Louis, New York, 1970 (illustrated, pl. 69).
D. Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 151, no. 203 (illustrated in color).
A. Tapert, "Mica Ertegun: Fine-Tuning an Enduring Arrangement in Manhattan" in Architectural Digest, vol. 54, no. 7, September 1997, p. 171 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
Filled with a vivid sense of texture and form, Sans titre (L’oiseau qui s’assoit et ne chante pas) dates from an important period of experimentation and adventure in Max Ernst’s artistic career, as he boldly pushed the envelope in his compositions and explored new pathways towards spontaneous, unconscious painterly effects. In early 1925, Ernst had achieved a new level of financial stability, and for the first time in his life he was able to devote himself to his art full-time. Almost immediately, he reached a radical breakthrough in his practice, developing the semi-automatic technique of frottage while on holiday in the seaside town of Pornic, on the Atlantic coast of France.
Stuck in his hotel room one rainy afternoon that August, the artist became captivated by the rich and varied textures of the grooves in the wooden floorboards, their unique patterns of ripples and whorls evoking childhood memories of a wooden headboard that had suggested dreamlike images to his young mind as he drifted off to sleep. Laying sheets of paper at random across the floor, Ernst took pencil tracings of the wooden boards in his room, and in so doing created a series of unplanned images that fed his artistic imagination, their spontaneously generated marks becoming the foundation of his subsequent drawings. As he explained: “My curiosity awakened and astonished, I began to experiment indifferently and to question, utilizing the same means, all sorts of materials to be found in my visual field; leaves and their veins, the ragged edges of a bit of linen, the brushstrokes of a modern painting, the unwound thread of a spool, etc.” (“On Frottage,” 1936; quoted in H.B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Berkeley and London, 1968, p. 429).
“Just as a poet listens to his involuntary thought processes and notes them down, so a painter projects on paper or canvas what is suggested to him by his visual imagination.”
– MAX ERNST
Soon after, he found a way to adapt the frottage process to oil painting. Filling his canvases with thin, overlapping layers of pigment, he would then lay the picture over a textured surface and scrape or scratch the paint away to reveal rich, multi-colored patterns which both echo the material used in their creation and suggest entirely new forms. Referring to this unique approach as grattage (scraping in French), this technique would remain an integral aspect of Ernst’s creative process for decades, serving as the creative catalyst which allowed him to push past the fear he claimed to feel before the empty, blank surface of a page or canvas. Responding to the unexpected marks and shapes that emerged from the textured scrapings, Ernst worked back into the painting, creating fantastical forms and mysterious, otherworldly landscapes from the ethereal textures and patterns that emerged. As he later explained, these patterns offered endless stimulation: “There my eyes discovered human heads, animals, a battle that ended with a kiss (the bride of the wind), rocks, the sea and the rain, earthquakes, the sphinx in her stable, the little tables around the earth, the palette of Caesar, false positions, a shawl of frost flowers, the pampas…” (quoted in Max Ernst: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1975, p. 38).
Present work illustrated (detail).
In Sans titre (L’oiseau qui s’assoit et ne chante pas), Ernst uses these spontaneous patterns to conjure a pair of birds—one pale white, the other vibrant green—who appear to huddle together on the ground of this mysterious, alien landscape, while a strange solar disc hovers in the sky above. Birds had long exerted an important influence on Ernst’s imagination. Since childhood he had made an unconscious connection in his mind between these avian creatures and people, and would later develop a mysterious alter ego in his paintings, a hybrid being that was half bird, half man, which he called “Loplop.” While many of Ernst’s depictions of birds through the mid-1920s focused on a pair of songbirds trapped together in a cage, here the two appear free within the landscape, the wings of the white bird slowly stretching outwards from its body, unconfined by the surrounding space. However, rather than appearing in mid-flight, they remain unexpectedly tied to the earth, their bodies firmly rooted to the ground which stretches upwards towards the distant horizon line, filling almost the entire canvas with its ethereal patterns. As a result, there is a certain sense of melancholy to the scene, enhanced by the poetic subtitle the artist has added to the canvas—the birds do not revel in their boundless freedom, but remain locked together, silently watching and waiting for some unknown event to occur.
Sans titre (L'oiseau qui s'assoit et ne chante pas)
signed twice 'max ernst' (lower right) oil, sand and grattage on canvas 26¬ x 21º in. (68.3 x 54 cm.)
Painted in 1926
$500,000-700,000
PROVENANCE:
Paul Bianchini, New York. Acquired from the above by the late owner, 17 June 1968.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Byron Gallery, Max Ernst, October-December 1970, no. 5 (illustrated in color).
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Surrealism in Art, February-March 1975, pp. 26 and 61, no. 51 (illustrated, p. 26; titled Bird). Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, Surrealism, February-March 1983, no. 14 (illustrated in color).
LITERATURE:
W. Spies, S. and G. Metken, Max Ernst: Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1925-1929, Cologne, 1976, p. 129, no. 1041 (illustrated).
S.M.L. Aronson, "Classical Cool: Mica and Ahmet Ertegun's town house reflects a discerning couple's original taste" in House & Garden, March 1987, p. 218.
Peinture (Amour) (1925)
Charged with a heady atmosphere of romance and passion, Peinture (Amour) is a richly suggestive composition from Joan Miró’s acclaimed series of “oneiric” or “dream” paintings, a revolutionary group of works that occupied the artist intensely from 1925-1927. Instinctively rendered and filled with a mysterious play of lyrical forms that appear suspended upon brushed, monochromatic grounds, these paintings mark the artist’s first extended thematic cycle of pictures, and are widely regarded as among the most important and revolutionary of Miró’s career. Painted in 1925, at the very beginning of this ground-breaking burst of creativity, Peinture (Amour) holds an illustrious position as one of the earliest works in the artist’s oeuvre to focus on the interaction between two lovers, a theme that would come to dominate Miró’s painterly output over the ensuing years as he explored the powerful forces of love, attraction, sexuality and eroticism.
The dream paintings were the visionary product of a period of crisis in Miró’s art. In 1924, the painter found that he had exhausted the painstakingly rendered realism that characterized his densely constructed compositions from the early 1920s, such as La Ferme (Dupin, no. 81; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) or Le cheval, la pipe et la fleur rouge (Dupin, no. 76; The Philadelphia Museum of Art). Seeking to capture what he once described as “all the golden sparks of our souls,” Miró instead began to delve into his subconscious, drawing from its depths a series of cryptic signs and symbols, shapes and forms, which
“For me, a painting must give off sparks. It must dazzle like the beauty of a woman or a poem.”
– JOAN MIRO
he then translated on to his canvases (letter to J.F. Ràflos, 7 October 1923; in M. Rowell, ed., Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, London, 1987, p. 83). The deceptive simplicity of the resulting paintings shocked contemporary viewers, their austere aesthetic and enigmatic, elusive imagery securing Miró’s reputation as one of the most exciting artists within the bourgeoning Surrealist movement.
Miró’s first dream paintings had their roots in the intensely creative environment of the rue Blomet, in Paris’s 15th arrondissement, where the artist lived and worked during this formative period. Here, Miró was surrounded by a circle of pioneering artists and poets, including Michel Leiris, Robert Desnos, and André Masson, who had a studio right next door to his own. Immersing himself in their theories, he spent long hours reading the automatic poetry of his new acquaintances. “The rue Blomet was a decisive place, a decisive moment for me,” he later explained. “It was there that I discovered everything I am, everything I would become” (quoted in “Memories of the rue Blomet,” in ibid., p. 100). Under the influence of the group’s automatist techniques and the inspiration of his friends and neighbors, Miró’s canvases opened up, liberated from the extraordinary detail of his earlier work, to instead become “receptacles for dreams” (J Dupin, Joan Miró: Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 157).
“Painting and poetry are done in the same way you make love… – without caution, without any thoughts of protecting yourself.”
– JOAN MIRO
However, as he later recalled, the harsh realities of life as a young painter in Paris left an indelible mark on his work—Miró often existed in a state of extreme poverty, spending days on end without a full meal. Too proud to ask his artist friends for financial help, he survived on just a few sporadic dried figs. Speaking to Jacques Dupin, he explained: “I ate little and badly. I have already said that during this period hunger gave me hallucinations, and the hallucinations gave me ideas for paintings… It was a period of intense work. I filled my notebooks with drawings, and these served as the starting point for canvases” (quoted in “Memories of the rue Blomet,” in Rowell, op. cit., 1987, p. 103). While in this state, Miró would sit on the floor of his studio staring at the roughly textured walls of the sparsely decorated room, captivated by the meandering paths of cracks in the plaster and mysterious marks on the ceiling.
These shapes filled his imagination with their fleeting forms, traces of an unknowable universe which suddenly flashed into being before his eyes, which he then attempted to capture on paper or burlap before they shifted and changed. Following these spontaneous impulses of his unconscious, Miró started to paint with a new, unplanned and unconstrained abstract imagery composed of graphic-like signs and forms, inspired by the sketches he created in this semi-lucid state. “I painted without premeditation,” he described, “as if under the influence of a dream. I combined reality and mystery in a space that had been set free… I wanted my spots to seem to open to the magnetic appeal of the void. I was very interested in the void, in perfect emptiness. I put it into my pale and scumbled grounds, and my linear gestures on top were the signs of my dream progression” (interview with D. Chevalier, in Aujourd’hui: Art et Architecture, November 1962; quoted in ibid., p. 264).
Present work illustrated (detail).
In Peinture (Amour), two amorphous personnages occupy the center of the composition, their white bodies flowing and morphing into one conjoined entity, as a thin red line encircles them. While the composition contains echoes of the 1924 painting Le Baiser (Dupin, no. 96; Private collection) in both its color palette and the manner in which the two beings are connected, here Miró explores a more erotic moment, in which the couple appear locked in a passionate embrace. As such, Peinture (Amour) is one of a small group of works within the dream paintings from 1925 that openly invoke romantic, sexual subject matter (Dupin, nos. 128-132), each granted a subtitle that indicates their inherent eroticism, from Peinture (Coitus) to Peinture (Les amants— Adam and Eve).
In his early thirties and unmarried, Miró appears to have had romance very much on his mind at this time. Love and sexuality were central topics in the rue Blomet circle and Surrealism as a whole, and therefore unsurprisingly these themes came to pervade many of Miró’s dream paintings, themselves vehicles for the unimpeded, unmediated expressions of the artist’s innermost desires and primal impulses. As Jacques Dupin has noted: “All these oneiric paintings possess great erotic power. Connected with subjective obsessions and realized at the dictation of the unconscious, they simultaneously unmask and mask, set down and erase, the infinitely varied phantasms of the libido” (op. cit., 1962, pp. 164-166).
Peinture (Amour)
signed and dated 'Miró 1925.' (lower left) and titled 'Amour' (lower right); signed and dated again 'Joan Miró 1925.' (on the reverse) oil on canvas
28√ x 36º in. (73.5 x 92 cm.)
Painted in 1925
$4,000,000-6,000,000
PROVENANCE:
Galerie Surrealiste, Paris.
Ladislas Szecsi, New York (by 1939).
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. Harold X. Weinstein, Chicago. Perls Gallery, New York (by 1962).
Jane Wade, New York. Byron Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 20 November 1968.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Mercury Gallery, Visions of Other Worlds, January-February 1939, no. 6. New York, Byron Gallery, The Surrealists, November-December 1969, p. 110, no. 49 (illustrated, p. 111).
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Surrealism in Art, February-March 1975, pp. 48 and 63, no. 103 (illustrated, p. 48; titled Le baiser au l'amour). Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, Surrealism, February-March 1983, no. 66 (illustrated in color).
London, Tate Modern, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, September 2001-January 2002, no. 529 (illustrated in color). Vienna, BA-CA Kunstforum, Eros in der Kunst der Moderne, March-July 2007, pp. 94 and 216 (illustrated in color, p. 94).
LITERATURE:
R.G. Harris, "Also on the Calendar" in The New York Times, vol. LXXXVIII, no. 29,597, 5 February 1939, p. 10.
J. Dupin, Joan Miró: Life and Work, New York, 1962, p. 510, no. 116 (illustrated).
M. Tapié, Joan Miró, Milan, 1970, p. 19, no. 24 (illustrated in color).
S.M.L. Aronson, "Classical Cool: Mica and Ahmet Ertegun's town house reflects a discerning couple's original taste" in House & Garden, March 1987, p. 218. P. Gimferrer, The Roots of Miró, New York, 1993, pp. 344-345, no. 259 (illustrated, p. 344).
J. Dupin and A. Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró: Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings, 1908-1930, Paris, 1999, vol. I, pp. 114-115, no. 130 (illustrated, p. 114).
Tanktotem X (1960)
David Smith’s Tanktotem X belongs to one of the artist’s most important series, in which—over the course of a decade—he explored the boundaries between the human figure and abstract forms. Smith used works such as this to refine his unique concept of what he termed “drawing in space,” combining found materials with careful composition, to produce sculptures that came to exemplify his unique form of “action painting” in three-dimensional form. Tanktotem X is rare within Smith’s body of work in that it also incorporates the use of color as an important part of his composition. Consequently it has been exhibited in several of the artist’s most important exhibitions, including his 1969 Guggenheim retrospective, and the institution’s 2006 show that marked the artist’s centennial (and subsequently regarded as one of the most important exhibitions of his work in a generation). Other examples from the series are included in major international institutional collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Widely regarded as the foremost sculptor of Abstract Expressionism, David Smith possessed a unique ability to transform and coerce rough matter into bouts of lyrical energy, as can be seen in the present work.
Standing over five feet tall, Tanktotem X is a powerful assemblage of both physical and abstract forms. Using found materials, together with some specifically fashioned for this work, Smith carves out muscular forms in space. Supported by a vertical steel support, seemingly disparate elements are laid out on a horizontal plane. At one end, a large concave panel marks the beginning of a progression of forms, its curved silhouette reducing to a pair of narrowing protrusions that jut out into the
space beyond that is contained by the sculpture itself. Abutting this is a hemispherical shell—slightly elongated on the vertical axis—its compact form acting in an introspective manner as opposed to its extrovertly fashioned neighbor. At the other end of the composition, another disk acts as a counter balance, it solid shape adding weight and substance to the overall sculpture. In between, a progression of forms and voids acts a compositional bridge between the two elements.
One of the most remarkable qualities of this work, however, is Smith’s use of color, something which only rarely made an appearances in his sculpture. In a lecture the artist gave at Bennington College in May 1965, he described the effects of the surrounding landscape had on the chromatic palette of Tanktotem X: “I depended upon the flowers and the tomatoes to carry that one. But it’s a painted sculpture. I actually think that the garden had something to do with—you know, unconsciously—I wasn’t trying to use any colors that were in the garden, but I actually think that the colors I saw influenced the painting of the sculpture” (quoted in C. Lloyd, ed., David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932-1965, New Haven and London, 2021, p. 216).
Through the 1950s, Smith worked on a number of overlapping series. The Tanktotems, commenced in 1952, feature the incorporation of boiler tank tops as their binding motif. The works in this pivotal series broke new ground by abandoning the form of the pedestal. Each Tanktotem sculpture instead plants itself resolutely on the ground. In a nod to the resultant anthropomorphism, Smith fondly referred to his modern totems as “personages” and arranged them like watchmen on the grounds of his domicile in Bolton Landing, New York. The poet Frank O’Hara wrote that Smith’s “personages” reminded him of “people who are awaiting admittance to a formal reception and, while they wait, are thinking about their roles when they join the rest of the guests already in the meadow” (quoted in M. Perloff, Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters, Chicago, 1997, p. 24).
Smith drew inspiration from the iron sculptures of Pablo Picasso and Julio González, the former of which he came across in Cahiers d’art in 1929 and the latter of which he was introduced to by John Graham in 1932. Smith used the notion of “drawing in space” as a point of departure and pioneered a distinctly American form of the phenomenon using industrial materials. In fact, it is believed that Smith was the first in America to make welded metal sculptures. The art historical references in Tanktotem X do not end at Picasso. The work’s geometric forms have Modernist influences, their collation evocative of a cubist collage by Juan Gris; the brilliant simplicity of the sculpture’s construction also carries aesthetic links to Minimalism; and the totem referred to in the title—the Freudian object both desired and taboo—was a motif frequently employed by Surrealists such as Joan Miró. In the fabrication of this unique work, Smith was clearly drawing from a wealth of art historical knowledge.
“Smith’s great achievement was to have understood the sculptural possibilities of Cubism and to have developed them to an absolute limit, far beyond that reached by earlier cubist sculptors” (E. Fry, David Smith, New York, 1969, p. 14). Working to fully exploit the third dimension, the artist abandoned representation for emotionally explosive compositions that set up complex conversations between each disparate part of the whole. Critic Robert Hughes noted that, “[O]ne may say without exaggeration, Smith explored the possibilities of metal sculpture more fully than any artist before or since—more even, than Picasso or Julio González” (Nothing if Not Critical, London, 1987, p. 207). By starting with a historical base, Smith was able to learn from past ideas in an effort to take sculpture further into the unknown.
Tanktotem X
incised with the artist’s name, date and title ‘David Smith TNK X 11/60’ (on the base)
steel and paint
61æ x 45º x 24 in. (156.8 x 114.9 x 61 cm.)
Executed in 1960
$2,000,000-3,000,000
PROVENANCE:
Estate of the artist.
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York.
Dr. and Mrs. Friedrich Moeller, Paris (acquired from the above, 1969).
Achim F. Moeller, New York (by descent from the above, by 1973).
Waddington Galleries, London.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 1973.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Otto Gerson Gallery, David Smith: Recent Sculpture, October 1961, no. 4 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing).
New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum; Macon, Mercer University; Reno, University of Nevada; Tacoma Art League; Washington, D.C., Washington Gallery of Modern Art; Oswego, State University of New York; Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Academy of Art Galleries; Northfield, Carleton College; Cedar Rapids, Coe College and Claremont, Pomona College, The U.S. Government Art Projects: Some Distinguished Alumni, February 1963-February 1964.
Glens Falls, Hyde Collection, David Smith, June-July 1964, no. 20 (titled Tnk X).
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, David Smith, March-November 1969.
Bloomington, Indiana University Art Museum, Noguchi & Rickey & Smith, NovemberDecember 1970, pp. 37-38 (illustrated in situ in the exhibition, p. 42; illustrated in situ in the exhibition on the inside back cover).
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, David Smith: A Centennial, February-May 2006, p. 327 (illustrated in color, pl. 83; illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 449).
LITERATURE:
H. Kramer, “Rzezbiarstwo Davida Smitha [David Smith Sculpture]” in Ameryka, no. 42, 1960, p. 46 (illustrated).
F. O’Hara, “David Smith: The color of steel” in Art News, vol. 60, no. 8, December 1961, pp. 32 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing, pp. 33-34, fig. 4).
V. Raynor and S. Tillim, “In the Galleries” in Arts Magazine, vol. 36, no. 2, November 1961, p. 38 (titled No. 4).
L.J. Ahlander, “WPA Show Puts the Past in Focus” in The Washington Post, 14 July 1963, p. G8 (titled Tanktotem).
C. Gray, David Smith by David Smith, New York, 1964, p. 124 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing).
LITERATURE (CONTINUED):
J.H. Cone, David Smith, 1906-1965: A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1966, p. 78, no. 397.
G. McCoy, ed., David Smith, New York, 1973, pp. 33-34 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 33, pl. 1; illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 34, pl. 2).
B. Diamonstein, ed., The Art World: A Seventy-Five-Year Treasury of ARTnews, New York, 1977, p. 310 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing).
R. Krauss, The Sculpture of David Smith: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1977, p. 91, no. 497 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing, fig. 497).
E.A. Carmean, Jr., David Smith: Seven Major Themes, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1982, p. 49 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 55, fig. 27).
M.J. Bandler, ”Portfolio: David Smith” in Trends, October 1983, p. 63 (illustrated).
S.M.L. Aronson, "Classical Cool: Mica and Ahmet Ertegun's town house reflects a discerning couple's original taste" in House & Garden, March 1987, p.108 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
P.A. Caracciolo, "Ahmet y Mica Ertegun: La Fuerza y La Tersura" in Cases & Gente, vol. 7, no. 71, October 1992, pp. 49-50 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
A. Moeller, In Good Hands: 25 Years of Art in the Life of a Dealer, New York, 1997, pp. 64-65 and 95-96 (illustrated in color).
A. Tapert, "Mica Ertegun: Fine-Tuning an Enduring Arrangement in Manhattan" in Architectural Digest, vol. 54, no. 7, September 1997, pp. 170 and 173 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
David Smith, Sculptures 1933-1964, exh. cat., Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2006, pp. 56-57 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing).
G. Leinz, David Smith, Working Surface: Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, 1932-1963, exh. cat., Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Zentrum Internationaler Skulptur, Duisburg, 2009, p. 35 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing).
A. Lorscheider, “Stahlzeichnung” in Westfälische Anzeiger, 19 March 2009.
S. Hamill, David Smith: Works, Writings and Interview, Barcelona, 2011, p. 108 (illustrated in color, p. 109; illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 131).
R. Peabody, ed., Anglo-American Exchange in Postwar Sculpture: 1945-1975, Los Angeles, 2011, pp. 99 and 101 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 102, fig. 5).
S.B. Frank, David Smith Invents, exh. cat., Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2011, pp. 41 and 50-51 (illustrated in situ at Bolton Landing, p. 50).
J. Pachner, David Smith, London, 2013, p. 14 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, pl. 116).
S. Hamill, David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture, Oakland, 2015, pp. 20-21, 133-134, 136-137 and 140 (illustrated in color, pls. 30-35, 37 and 42).
P. Stevens, N.R. Wenman and M. White, David Smith: Form in Color, exh. cat., Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, 2016, pp. 23 and 124 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, pp. 23 and 124).
S.J. Cooke, ed., David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews, Oakland, 2018, p. 435 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, pl. 30).
J. Field, David Smith: Follow My Path, exh. cat., New York, Hauser & Wirth, 2021, p. 35 (illustrated in color in situ at Bolton Landing, fig. 29).
C. Lyon, ed., David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932-1965, Essays, Chronology, References, New Haven and London, 2021, vol. 1, p. 189, no. 565 (illustrated in color, p. 191).
C. Lyon, ed., David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932-1965, 1954-1965, New Haven and London, 2021, vol. 3, pp. 216-217, no. 565 (illustrated in color).
Konstruktion B VI (1922)
Painted in 1922, Konstruktion B VI emerged at a pivotal turning point in László Moholy-Nagy’s bourgeoning artistic career. When the young Hungarian-born artist had moved to Berlin two years prior, he was astounded by the exhilarating and stimulating environment of the city, and quickly immersed himself in the local avant-garde art scene. Profoundly influenced by the Berlin DADA movement, as well as his discovery of Russian Constructivism, Moholy-Nagy began to embrace new materials and techniques across his multi-faceted oeuvre, and was soon considered to be among the most innovative voices of his generation. Over the course of 1922 he reached the richly contemplative mature style that would sustain him throughout the rest of his life, as he adopted a purely abstract language of form and began to investigate the visual properties of light and space through his compositions.
During this period of innovation and exploration, painting remained at the core of Moholy-Nagy’s practice, the primary route through which he would first examine his ideas. As early as May 1919, he had professed: “I’m doing right to become a painter. It is my gift to project my vitality, my building power, through light, color, form. I can give life as a painter” (quoted in S. Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, p. 12). In particular, he was intrigued by the ways in which subtle shifts in the color or placement of the forms within a canvas might alter the balance of the composition, at once enhancing or destroying a particular effect. Discussing his work from this period more than two decades later, Moholy-Nagy explained the driving force behind their conception: “My transparent pictures around 1921 became completely freed from all elements reminiscent of nature.
“My belief is that mathematically harmonious shapes, executed precisely, are filled with emotional quality, and that they represent the perfect balance between feeling and intellect.”
– LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY
Their genesis was determined by a complete liberation from a necessity to record. I wanted to eliminate all factors, which might disturb their clarity—in contrast for instance with Kandinsky’s paintings, which reminded me of an undersea world. My desire was to work with nothing but the peculiar characteristics of colors, with their pure relationships. I chose simple geometric forms as a step toward such objectivity” (“Abstract of an Artist,” quoted in R. Motherwell, ed., The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist, New York, 1947, p. 75).
In works such as Konstruktion B VI, Moholy-Nagy’s new language came to the fore. Here, a series of geometric elements lock together in a tight configuration at the center of the canvas, overlapping one another in an ambiguous cascade, each shape precisely engineered and placed to create a harmonious unit of form, color and illusory space. Using gentle gradations of pastel tones within each shape, Moholy-Nagy suggests a degree of transparency in the colored planes, establishing not only their individuality but also a sense of space between them. As a result, each of these elements appears as an independent floating, crystalline plane, generating a mysterious sense of three-dimensionality within the picture. “I became interested in painting-with-light, not on the surface of the canvas, but directly in space,” Moholy-Nagy explained. “Painting transparencies was the start. I painted as if colored light was projected on a screen... I thought this effect could be enhanced by placing translucent screens of different shapes, one behind the other, projecting the colored lights over each unit...” (quoted in S. Moholy-Nagy, op. cit., 1969, p. 75).
In Konstruktion B VI, Moholy-Nagy sets these delicately layered planes of color and overlapping lines against a deep black ground, a choice driven by his growing interest in new industrial plastics and enamels. Many of these non-traditional materials, particularly plastics intended for use as highly resistant electrical sheeting or insulation, were darkly opaque and required a carefully considered process of construction and composition to achieve the effects the artist was searching for. As such, his paintings with inky-black grounds allowed him to explore different layering techniques, to play with the vibrancy of certain colors against powerfully dark surroundings, and examine the interaction between various shapes, before committing himself to a final composition within these unconventional materials.
Konstruktion B VI was among a series of these experimental paintings featured in an important solo-exhibition of Moholy-Nagy’s work at the Galerie Neue Kunst Fides in Dresden, in May 1926. Within the small suite of rooms, designed by the Bauhaus master Hinnerk Scheper, MoholyNagy grouped several of these dark ground paintings together along one wall, revealing the powerful effects that could be achieved through subtle shifts in the arrangement, color or treatment of certain shapes, using his simple, refined vocabulary of abstract geometric forms to conjure entire worlds beyond the picture plane.
Installation view, Moholy-Nagy, Galerie Neue Kunst Fides, Dresden, 1926 (present work visible on far right).
Photo: László Moholy-Nagy.
Konstruktion B VI
oil on canvas
29¡ x 17Ω in. (74.5 x 44.5 cm.)
Painted in 1922
$700,000-1,000,000
PROVENANCE:
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Chicago (until at least 1950). Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London. The Waddington Galleries, Ltd., London.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 16 March 1976.
EXHIBITED:
Dresden, Galerie Neue Kunst Fides, Moholy-Nagy, May 1926. Cambridge, Fogg Museum, Harvard University and Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Works of Art by Moholy-Nagy, February-May 1950.
LITERATURE:
J. Tsai, The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come, Santa Barbara, 2015, p. 31 (illustrated in situ in the 1926 exhibition at Galerie Neue Kunst Fides, fig. 11).
Hattula Moholy-Nagy has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Jean Hélion with other members of the Art Concret group in Léon Tutundjian’s studio in Paris, circa 1929. L-R: Mrs Hélion, Jean Hélion, Léon Tutundijan, Mrs Tutundijan, Theo van Doesburg, Nelly van Doesburg, Otto Carlsund, and Marcel Wantz.
Figure volante (1937–1938)
Painted in 1937-1938, Jean Hélion’s Figure volante dates from a critical period in the artist’s career during which he was moving from abstraction to figuration. Hélion had begun experimenting with non-representational art in 1929, inspired by Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement. It was this same year that Hélion, together with Theo van Doesburg, founded the artistic group, Art Concret, which, two years later expanded to become known as Abstraction-Création. Together with Auguste Herbin and Georges Vantongerloo, this expansive association also included Jean Arp, Albert Gleizes, František Kupka, Ben Nicholson, Wassily Kandinsky and many others. The aim of Abstraction-Création was to expound the artistic possibilities of non-representational art, purposely counteracting the Surrealists’ emphasis on figuration. By the middle of the 1930s, this group numbered more than four hundred members, each dedicated to pure abstraction.
By this time, however, Hélion had begun to move away from the rigidity and austerity of form that defined his earlier work, and instead embrace a softer, more amorphous type of abstraction. He crafted his own distinct artistic vocabulary, which was characterized by dramatically rounded forms and variations in color to create volumetric objects in space. Gradually this biomorphic language began to coalesce into recognizable, figurative forms. According to Hélion, “Mondrian, whom I always admired but could not agree with, based his expressions on a reduction of means and the elimination of particularized representation. He used to say to me, ‘We are not of the same tradition— you are a Naturalist.’ Even as early as 1935 he ‘accused’ me of belonging to the French naturalist tradition” (quoted in “Eleven Europeans in
“Art is a passionate avowal of faith. It is ground for fearless enthusiasm, not for prudence or prudery, cynicism or scepticism, or distinguished sophistication.”
– JEAN HELION
America” in The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, New York, 1946, vol. XIII, nos. 4-5, p. 29). In Figure volante, two figures, composed of geometric elements, are shown, one in the foreground, and a smaller one behind, floating amid a flat plane of dark turquoise. This exploration into pictorial scale defines Hélion’s work of this time. From the Second World War onwards, Hélion fully embraced figuration, leaving behind all traces of abstraction to paint from nature once more.
Throughout the 1930s, Hélion made a number of visits to America, during which he helped introduce European Modernism to American audiences. In 1936, the year before he began the present work, he relocated to New York, moving between the city and Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, where he also had a studio. Hélion was credited with influencing the work of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and other Abstract Expressionist artists through his painting. On the occasion of Hélion’s fourth New York exhibition in 1940, the critic Meyer Schapiro described him as “the outstanding abstract painter of the younger generation of American and European artists. Painters here follow his work as the most advanced and masterly of its kind” (quoted in Jean Hélion, exh. cat., National Academy Museum, New York, 2005, p. 47).
Jean Hélion, Figures jumelles, 1938. The Art Institute of Chicago. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Figure volante
signed, dated, numbered and inscribed 'Hélion (n. 150) (Va 38) commencé le 24 October 1937 Terminé le 26 sept. 1938' (on the reverse) oil on canvas
52º x 46º in. (132.7 x 117.4 cm.)
Painted 24 October 1937-26 September 1938
$500,000-700,000
PROVENANCE:
The artist (until at least 1971). Galerie de l'Ile de France, Paris. Acquired from the above by the late owner, circa 1979.
EXHIBITED:
Paris, Galeries nationales d'exposition du Grand Palais, Hélion: Cent tableaux, 1928-1970, December 1970-February 1971, p. 35 (illustrated).
LITERATURE:
H.-C. Cousseau, Hélion, Paris, 1992, p. 314 (illustrated; dated 1938).
J. Hélion and M. Vail, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint de Jean Hélion, www.associationjeanhelion.fr (illustrated; accessed September 2024).
La Source: Femme au broc (1927)
Imbued with a rich internal balance, La Source: Femme au broc is a pivotal work within Amédée Ozenfant’s oeuvre, created during an important moment of development and transition in his signature painterly style. Ozenfant had emerged as a pioneering artistic voice in the aftermath of the First World War—believing that a new art was needed in response to what he saw as the growing excess of Cubism, he championed the rappel à l’ordre (“return to order”) in painting, advocating for a rigorous, precise, pure art attuned to the science and industry that permeated modern life. His explorations into this topic were boosted by his friendship with a young Swiss artist and architect by the name of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, later known as Le Corbusier. The pair met in 1918 and within a year they had formulated a manifesto—Après le Cubsime—in which they boldly declared the end of Cubism and heralded the arrival of a new, dynamic style in its place, known as Purism. Through the early years of the 1920s, Ozenfant and Le Corbusier published the avant-garde journal L’Esprit Nouveau together, both contributing texts under various pseudonyms that emphasized rationality, logic and refinement as the central pillars of this new form of painting, concepts that proved highly influential among their artistic contemporaries.
By the mid-1920s, however, the collaboration between Ozenfant and Le Corbusier had begun to wane as their views on the direction and application of Purism diverged. Le Corbusier became increasingly focused on his architectural practice, while Ozenfant’s broad network of contacts among the European avant-garde—including artists and poets such as Jean (Hans) Arp, André Breton, Max Ernst, Piet Mondrian, Tristan Tzara, and Theo van Doesburg—expanded his artistic outlook,
encouraging him to work in intriguing new directions as he absorbed and assimilated the ideas of his colleagues. He was particularly close to Fernand Léger during these years and joined the faculty of the artist’s Académie Moderne in 1924, while his style began to lose some of its austere rigor as he began to deal with a wider variety of subjects. At the same time, Ozenfant became increasingly interested in reviving the art of large-scale mural painting through the Purist aesthetic, and the enormous bay windows at his new, purpose-built studio on avenue Reille in Paris’s 14th arrondissement allowed him to work on ever larger canvases.
Painted in 1927 and standing at over a meter high, La Source: Femme au broc is part of a series the artist created for a proposed mural of the same title. While the exact sequencing of the canvases remains unclear, together they reveal Ozenfant’s methodical, analytical process, as he explored and probed different compositional schemes and subtle variations in search of a definitive version of the image that occupied his imagination. Here, the artist creates a rich surface finish across the canvas, building his composition through a complex layering of oil paint and meticulously applied brushstrokes, to achieve an intriguing pattern of rhythmic ripples within each plane of color. As the eye moves across the canvas, these carefully delineated patterns shift from one form to the next, the lines changing direction or becoming more densely woven together, often mirroring the shapes of the forms they are describing. The result is a highly decorative effect, revealing Ozenfant’s increasingly experimental approach to painting during this period.
Present work illustrated (detail).
“Purist art should perceive, retain, and express what is invariable.”
– AMEDEE OZENFANT AND LE CORBUSIER
At the heart of the La Source: Femme au broc paintings stands the human figure, returning to Ozenfant’s work for the first time in over a decade, partially inspired by the artist’s recent visits to the prehistoric caves in Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of France. To the right of the canvas the curvaceous silhouette of a woman faces the viewer, a round vase and simple bucket clasped in her hands. To her left, a complex pattern of interlocking, semi-abstract forms depict a fountain of water as it springs from a large, organic rock formation, the stream executing a perfect arc before landing in another vase, carefully positioned beneath to catch the water.
In many ways, Ozenfant’s choice of subject matter can be seen as a direct reference to the art of the past, echoing the many permutations of the theme of a woman gathering water which had occupied artists through the centuries, from ancient Greece, through the Renaissance, to nineteenth century France. Here, Ozenfant presents a shockingly modern version of the theme, distilling the figure and the landscape down to a refined vocabulary of minimalist geometric forms and splitting the composition into two distinct halves so that at first glance the woman appears completely independent from her surroundings, floating within the empty white space. However, Ozenfant ensures she remains tethered to the earth through a series of dynamic visual rhythms that connect the smooth contours of her body with the flowing arabesques that delineate the edge of the rocks. Indeed, it is as if the woman can fit directly into the landscape, or perhaps has sprung from the formation itself, intrinsically linked to the natural world she inhabits.
La Source: Femme au broc
signed and dated 'ozenfant 1927' (lower left) oil on canvas
43Ω x 52æ in. (110.5 x 132 cm.)
Painted in 1927
$600,000-800,000
PROVENANCE:
Galerie de l'Effort Moderne (Léonce Rosenberg), Paris.
Dr. John Joseph Wardell Power, Paris and Jersey, Channel Islands; Estate sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 7 November 1962, lot 44.
Arthur Tooth & Sons, Ltd., London (acquired at the above sale).
The Waddington Galleries Ltd., London.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, November 1978.
LITERATURE:
P. and M. Guénégan, Amédée Ozenfant: Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, London, 2012, p. 104.
Composition (1933)
Pablo Picasso executed this fantastical surreal vision while staying in Cannes, set on the sun-drenched Côte d’Azur in the summer of 1933. Fusing many of the different themes, styles and motifs that the artist was exploring at this time, this is one of a series of around thirty works on paper that Picasso made during this sojourn. Mostly set on a beach, amid neo-classical structures and ruins, these works offer a fascinating glimpse into the artist’s psyche, marrying his fantasies with the aura of antiquity that often pervaded his work created in the south.
Picasso had arrived in Cannes with his wife, Olga and their son Paul at the beginning of July, while his lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter holidayed in Biarritz, likely staying in the villa of the artist’s friend, Eugenia Errázuriz. By this time, relations between husband and wife had broken down irreparably, with the artist still completely in the thrall of the youthful Marie-Thérèse. Perhaps as a way to free himself from his increasing martial tensions, Picasso immersed himself in his art, creating works such as Composition, which conjure an imaginary, escapist realm. These drawings and watercolors—Picasso worked only in these media this summer, turning away from oil paint entirely—often feature the form of Marie-Thérèse in various guises and poses, a clear sign of his longing for her, together with often disquieting, assemblagelike figures composed of everyday studio ephemera, household objects
“From [Picasso’s] open air laboratory, divinely unusual beings will continue to fly into the gathering night…”
– ANDRE BRETON
The surreal nature of Composition and the accompanying series of works on paper reflects Picasso’s involvement with the Surrealists at this time. Indeed, as John Richardson has written, “The drawings, watercolors and gouaches dating from this summer at Cannes are what Picasso had in mind when he claimed 1933 as the only time his work could be described as Surrealist, given their surrealist cadavre exquis technique” (A Life of Picasso, The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943, New York, 2021, vol. IV, p. 35). Having been associated with the group since its inception in 1924, Picasso had mindfully maintained his independence from André Breton’s coterie of artists. It was in 1933, however, that the artist came the closest to fully pledging his allegiance. He participated in the Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris and designed the cover for Breton’s new Surrealist periodical, Minotaure, and, as Composition demonstrates, he was increasingly channeling his fantasies and anxieties, his dreams and subconscious, into his art.
Pablo Picasso, Nu à la plage, 16 July 1933. Museum Ludwig, Cologne. © 2024 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv Cologne. or fragments of sculpture, which likely stand as the image of Olga. In the present work, one such figure appears to dominate the archway, its body constructed out of what appear to be pieces of rubble, with amorphously formed arms and legs hanging by strings, like deflated balloons. A pair of breasts seems to float on the other side of the composition, perhaps an otherworldly apparition of Marie-Thérèse as she drifted through Picasso’s thoughts.
Composition
signed, dated and inscribed 'Picasso Cannes 15 juillet XXXIII' (upper left); numbered 'III' (on the reverse)
watercolor, brush and pen and India ink and wash on paper 15√ x 19√ in. (40.3 x 50.6 cm.)
Executed in Cannes on 15 July 1933
$400,000-600,000
PROVENANCE:
Galerie Louise Leiris (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler), Paris. The Waddington Galleries, Ltd., London (acquired from the above). Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York (acquired from the above, 1970).
Acquired by the late owner, by 1997.
LITERATURE:
A. Tapert, "Mica Ertegun: Fine-Tuning an Enduring Arrangement in Manhattan" in Architectural Digest, vol. 54, no. 7, September 1997, p. 173 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
©
Filled with a rich sense of mystery that confounds and beguiles in equal measure, René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières of 1954 is a powerful example of the artist’s extraordinary, mature Surrealist vision. Focusing on the juxtaposition of a landscape bathed in deep shadows with the blue expanse of a day-lit sky above, this seemingly impossible collision of day and night in a single moment quickly became one of his most celebrated and iconic subjects. Between 1949 and 1964, the artist created a total of seventeen versions in oil, with several more iterations in gouache, on the theme of the L’empire des lumières. Each subtly different from the next, with intriguing variations and diversions from canvas to canvas, these paintings demonstrate Magritte’s endless spirit of invention, as he probed the rich poetic potential of his deceptively simple subjects.
As Magritte explained, the power of works such as L’empire des lumières lay in transforming the familiar, everyday world in unexpected ways: “For me it’s not a matter of painting ‘reality’ as though it were readily accessible to me and to others, but of depicting the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and presents itself with mystery” (quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 203).
Executed with a precision and attention to detail that only reinforces the uncanniness of the scene, the L’empire des lumières paintings offer an elegant summation of Magritte’s unique form of Surrealism, reveling in a game of unexpected contradictions, in which all is familiar and yet ultimately strange and the ordinary is rendered extraordinary.
“This intense personal interest in night and day is a feeling of admiration and astonishment.”
– RENE MAGRITTE
The idea behind the L’empire des lumières series appears to have been percolating in Magritte’s mind for several years prior to his first painting on the theme. While staying with the collector Edward James in London during the spring of 1937, Magritte gave a presentation at Roland Penrose’s London Gallery in which he discussed “certain features peculiar to words, images and real objects” (quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes, 1949-1967, London, 1993, vol. III, p. 53). In one example early in the discussion, the artist cited the opening line of André Breton’s poem L’Aigrette (from Terre de clair, 1923): “If only the sun would shine tonight” (ibid.). The following year, the artist created a gouache entitled Le Poison (Sylvester, no. 1142; Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) in which a row of buildings took on the appearance of the night sky, dotted with constellations of stars and a delicate crescent moon, transforming the bricks and mortar streetscape into an evocative, otherworldly vision of the cosmos.
In this way, Le Poison was a continuation of Magritte’s different translations and juxtapositions of the sky, which was a recurring character in his work, its familiarity allowing him to investigate the world of appearances, and question our understanding of its properties. While paintings such as Les muscles célestes (Sylvester, no. 166; Private collection) explored the physicality and presence of the sky, and L’ombre céleste (Sylvester, no. 168; Private collection) transformed it into a flat piece of stage scenery, it most frequently appeared as a framed picture within Magritte’s oeuvre. In these works, a little segment of the vast blue expanse, dotted with clouds, has been magically captured and condensed into a small, portable object, as in Les perfections célestes (Sylvester, no. 329; Private collection), Le Salon de Monsieur Goulden (Sylvester, no. 300; Private collection) and Le palais de rideaux (Sylvester, no. 305; The Museum of Modern Art, New York). In other works, Magritte used the
Present work illustrated (detail).
ubiquitous sight to generate impossible scenarios, as in his famed oiseau de ciel, a magical bird, captured mid-flight, which appears to be cut from the sky itself, its body filled with a pale blue sky and soft, fluffy clouds.
In the L’empire des lumières paintings, the sky is once again an essential tool in Magritte’s elegant disruption of our understanding of the world around us. With these works he adopts a subtle evocation of the dichotomy of night and day, simplifying the concept explored in Le Poison to create a composition that is all the more unsettling for its quiet strangeness. The first work in the series to be completed (Sylvester, no. 709; Private collection) depicts a quiet, suburban street scene with eerily shuttered houses, some curtained windows faintly lit from within, and a single lamppost, shining forth like a beacon, the sole illumination along this darkened length of avenue. Above, the sky remains in its natural position, untouched by unexpected cracks or objects, but rather than a scattering of stars, broad daylight and white clouds fill the pale blue expanse. While at first glance the painting appears to simply present the crepuscular light of dusk, on further inspection the deep shadows and soft glow of the streetlamp suggests the sky exists in an alternate timeline to the rest of the scene. In this way, the painting pivots on the construction of a somewhat familiar, yet impossible scenario that forces us, the viewer, to examine and question our own expectations.
While the painting was quickly purchased by Nelson A. Rockefeller in New York, the image lived on in Magritte’s imagination, and had a profound impact on his own conception of reality: “After I had painted L’empire des lumières,” the artist explained in 1966, “I got the idea that night and day exist together, that they are one. This is reasonable, or at the very least it’s in keeping with our knowledge: in the world night always exists at the same time as day. (Just as sadness always exists in some people at the same time as happiness in others). But such ideas are not poetic. What is poetic is the visible image of the picture” (quoted in S. Whitfield, Magritte, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1992, no. 111).
The artist’s friend Paul Nougé, the leader of the Brussels Surrealist group, is reported to have provided the title for the motif, for which the most appropriate English translation is “The Dominion of Light.” “English, Flemish, and German translators take [dominion] in the sense of ‘territory’,” Nougé noted, “whereas the fundamental meaning is obviously ‘power’, ‘dominance’” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. III, p. 145). Nougé was undoubtedly sensitive to Magritte’s conviction that his paintings never expressed a singular idea, but rather were a form of stimulus that created new thoughts in the mind of the viewer. “Titles play an important part in Magritte’s paintings,” stated the poet, “but it is not the part one might be tempted to imagine. The title isn’t a program to be carried out. It comes after the picture. It’s as if it were its confirmation, and it often constitutes an exemplary manifestation of the efficacy of the image. This is why it doesn’t matter whether the title occurs to the painter himself afterwards, or is found by someone else who has an understanding of his painting. I am quite well placed to know that it is almost never Magritte who invents the titles of his pictures. His paintings could do without titles, and that is why it has sometimes been said that on the whole the title is no more than a conversational gambit” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1992, p. 39).
Magritte discussed the idea behind his L’empire des lumières paintings in a commentary written for a 1956 television program, later published in the exhibition catalogue Peintres belges de l’imaginaire, in 1972: “For me, the conception of a picture is an idea of one thing or of several things which can be realized visually in my painting. Obviously, all ideas are not ideas for paintings. Naturally, an idea must be sufficiently stimulating for me to get down to painting the thing or things that inspired the idea. The conception of a painting, that is, the idea, is not visible in the painting: an idea cannot be seen by the eyes. What is depicted in the painting is what is visible to the eye, the thing or things that had to inspire the idea. So, in the painting L’empire des lumières are things I had an idea about—to be precise, a nocturnal landscape and a sky above in broad daylight. The landscape evokes night and the sky evokes day. This evocation of day and night seems to me to have the power to surprise and enchant us. I call this power ‘poetry.’ I believe this evocation has such a ‘poetic’ power because, among other reasons, I have always been keenly interested in night and
“If I believe this evocation has such poetic power, it is because, among other reasons, I have always felt the greatest interest in night and day, yet without ever having preferred one or the other.”
– RENE MAGRITTE
in day, although I’ve never had a preference for one or the other. This intense personal interest in night and day is a feeling of admiration and astonishment” (quoted in K. Rooney and E. Plattner, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, trans. J. Levy, Richmond, 2016, p. 167).
To this day, L’empire des lumières serves as a powerful illustration of his extraordinary ability to deploy symbols of a normal, ordinary, conventional life to contradictory ends: to surprise, unsettle and reconfigure the viewer’s expectations and thus, their experience of everyday reality. It was an aspect of the L’empire des lumières series that André Breton recognized as inherently Surrealist in spirit, stating: “To [Magritte], inevitably, fell the task of separating the ‘subtle’ from the ‘dense,’ without which effort no transmutation is possible. To attack this problem called for all his audacity—to extract simultaneously what is light from the shadow and what is shadow from the light (l’empire des lumières). In this work the violence done to accepted ideas and conventions is such (I have this from Magritte) that most of those who go by quickly think they saw the stars in the daytime sky. In Magritte’s entire performance there is present to a high degree what Apollinaire called ‘genuine good sense, which is, of course, that of the great poets’” (“The Breadth of Rene Magritte,” in Magritte, exh. cat., Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, 1964, n.p.).
The idea proved incredibly popular with the artist’s collectors, leading to a number of direct commissions for new versions. However, Magritte was adamant that each work should evolve naturally from his own artistic pondering, writing to his dealer Alexander Iolas “I have to find a way of justifying the replica in my own mind” (quoted in C. Greenberg
René Magritte, L’empire des lumières, 1950. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.
Present work illustrated (detail).
and D. Pih, eds., Magritte A-Z, London, 2011, p. 49). As a result, Magritte actively sought alterations between each variation, in nuance and motif, which allowed him to expand and enhance the poetic effect of the scene. Similarly, changes to the size of the canvases, alternating as well between horizontal and vertical formats, enabled the viewer to experience the impact of the juxtaposition in different ways. As Siegfried Gohr has highlighted, by repeating and reinterpreting the theme, Magritte was “arranging and rearranging visual elements until they produced a shock like a blow from a boxer’s glove—whose force, however, remained purely visual and mental” (in Magritte, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000, p. 17).
The second version of the L’empire des lumières theme (Sylvester, no. 723; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) was painted in June 1950, on a larger sized canvas, allowing a broader array of building façades to populate the scene. Though Magritte told Iolas he had “revealed the full strength of the idea” in this composition, he continued to revisit the L’empire des lumières motif multiple times over the course of the following fifteen years, in what may be considered Magritte’s only exploration of working in series (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. III, p. 157). In each iteration he made subtle alterations, experimenting with the particulars of the scene, amplifying different aspects of the landscape, subtly adjusting the colors of the sky or the density of the clouds, even expanding the sense of space and recession within the picture. Different architectural styles were portrayed in some versions, providing unexpected hints as to the location of the setting, or the socioeconomic status of the residents, while the towering trees that surround the building began to take on a distinct sense of individuality and character from one canvas to the next. However, it was the extraordinary duality of night and day that remained at the heart of the L’empire des lumières paintings, a phenomenon to which the viewer appears to be the only witness.
Magritte created the present L’empire des lumières under unusual circumstances, driven in part by his growing renown and public appeal. On 19 June 1954, the Venice Biennale opened to the public. Discussing his visit to the event, Douglas Cooper explained the central organizing principle that lay behind the grand exhibition: “For the first time,
the secretary-general had attempted to give the Biennale a certain coherence; having decided that the Presidenza would undertake special exhibitions of Arp, Ernst and Miró, he asked his committee of experts to persuade the national commissaries to take ‘Fantastic Art’ as a theme for their pavilions” (D. Cooper, “Reflections on the Venice Biennale” in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 96, no. 619, October 1954, p. 318). While this dedicated showcase was intended to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Surrealism, in reality the selection of artists across the Biennale was much more diverse than just those directly associated with the movement, and included works by Henri Matisse, Kees van Dongen, Paul Klee, Edvard Munch, Lucio Fontana and Nicolas De Staël.
In the Belgian Pavilion, the organizers took the decision to showcase the many different explorations of the fantastic theme across several centuries, featuring paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Huys alongside those of James Ensor and Paul Delvaux. The centerpiece of their exhibition was a mini-retrospective of Magritte’s work, featuring twenty-four paintings, ranging from his earliest engagements with the Parisian Surrealists in 1926, right up to his most recent work from the opening months of 1954. The display was in fact a condensed version of the large Magritte exhibition staged at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in May of the same year, which had featured a carefully selected array of the artist’s most important and recognizable works. Among the most popular pieces on view at the Biennale was the enormous L’empire des lumières (Sylvester, no. 804; The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice), which was matched in its scale by only two other works in the Venice show—L’assassin menacé (Sylvester, no. 137; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Le monde invisible (Sylvester, no. 805; The Menil Collection, Houston). The painting caught the eye of the illustrious collector Peggy Guggenheim, who began to make inquiries about the possibility of purchasing L’empire des lumières.
However, the painting had already been promised to three other interested parties, and suddenly Magritte found himself with the unprecedented dilemma of having sold the same painting multiple times over. In a letter to Jan-Albert Goris from mid-July, the artist explained the predicament: “It is quite complicated from certain points of view: two big pictures on show at the Venice Biennale, and one of which was
von Sydow on the set of the 1973 film The Exorcist, based on the novel by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin. Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures / Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images.
“I think as though no one had ever thought before me.”
– RENE MAGRITTE
‘reserved’ by a collector here and by the [Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels]. I have just heard that the Museum has made up its mind (too late, unfortunately), and wants to buy ‘The Dominion of Light.’ As I was in a state of uncertainty, and as I hadn’t committed myself to refuse sales of pictures about which there had already been some financial discussion, and as, in addition, [Alexander] Iolas paid me a flying visit late at night, it was difficult for me to please everybody…” (letter to Goris, 21 July 1954; quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. III, p. 55). In the end, Guggenheim proved to be the lucky bidder, securing the large canvas for her esteemed collection.
As a result, Magritte arranged to create three more versions of the L’empire des lumières subject for each of the disappointed parties, all of which were completed by the end of the year. While the painting intended for Iolas (Sylvester, no. 814; The Menil Collection, Houston) was created on a canvas 130 x 95 cm, the other two from this group— the present work, made for the Belgian collector Willy van Hove, and the example for the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels—were executed on a slightly larger scale, both standing at 146 x 114 cm (Sylvester, nos. 809 and 810). With these works, Magritte began to expand upon the mysterious, uncanny atmosphere of the scene, adding the shimmering surface of a canal or riverway to the foreground. This marked the first time that the artist had introduced a body of water to the scene, and the rippling reflections lend a new dimension to the imagery, the points of light within the nocturnal scene suddenly doubled. In the present example, the glow from the singular lamppost is softened, granting the composition a greater sense of warmth, which is echoed in the subtle illumination from the windows in the upper story of the house. As a result, the reflections in the water are more clearly discernible to the viewer, the outlines of the lamppost and the windows crisper as they appear mirrored in the canal’s surface, creating the impression that perhaps another world hovers on the very edge of our own.
L'empire des lumières
signed 'Magritte' (lower right); signed again, dated and titled '"L'Empire des Lumières" Magritte 1954' (on the reverse) oil on canvas
57Ω x 44√ in. (146 x 114 cm.)
Painted in 1954
Estimate on Request
PROVENANCE:
Willy Van Hove, Brussels (acquired from the artist, 1954, until at least 1964).
Byron Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, 8 June 1968.
EXHIBITED:
Mons, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Hainaut cinq, March 1964, no. 19 (with inverted dimensions).
New York, Byron Gallery, René Magritte, November-December 1968, p. 26, no. 16 (illustrated in color, p. 27).
Southampton, The Parrish Art Museum, René Magritte: Poetic Images, August-September 1979, no. 25. Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, Surrealism, February-March 1983, no. 51 (illustrated in color; detail illustrated in color on the cover).
Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage and Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, René Magritte, June 1987-February 1988, p. 200, no. 89 (illustrated, p. 200; illustrated again in color, p. 134).
The Montréal Museum of Fine Art, Magritte, June-October 1996, pp. 50 and 167, no. 84 (illustrated, p. 50; illustrated again in color, p. 167).
Paris, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Magritte, February-June 2003, p. 185 (illustrated in color, p. 184).
Vienna, BA-CA Kunstforum and Basel, Fondation Beyeler, René Magritte: Der Schlüssel der Träume, August-November 2005, pp. 150-151 and 200, no. 77 (illustrated in color, p. 151).
New York, Blain Di Donna, René Magritte: Dangerous Liaisons, October-December 2011, pp. 32 and 73 (illustrated in color, p. 33; detail illustrated in color on the cover).
LITERATURE:
P. Devlin, "Space Venture: The Ahmet Ertegun Town House in New York, 'Why Imitate When Now is New'?" in Vogue, 15 August 1969, p. 129 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
S.M.L. Aronson, "Classical Cool: Mica and Ahmet Ertegun's town house reflects a discerning couple's original taste" in House & Garden, March 1987, pp. 100 and 218 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence, p. 101).
P.A. Caracciolo, "Ahmet y Mica Ertegun: La Fuerza y La Tersura" in Cases & Gente, vol. 7, no. 71, October 1992, p. 57 (illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence).
D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes, 1949-1967, London, 1993, vol. III, p. 233, no. 809 (illustrated).
G. Ollinger-Zinque, Magritte in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Brussels, 2005, p. 64 (illustrated in color).
S. Gohr, Magritte: Attempting the Impossible, Paris, 2009, p. 223, no. 300 (illustrated in color, p. 222).
C. Haskell, ed., René Magritte: The Fifth Season, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018, p. 44 (illustrated in color, fig. 2).
E. Taylor, “'I Hate Clutter': The Chic, Cultivated Interiors of Mica Ertegun, As Seen in Vogue" in Vogue, www.vogue.com, 6 December 2023 (accessed 9 October 2024; illustrated in color in situ at the Ertegun Manhattan residence, pl. 10).
CONDITIONS OF SALE
These Conditions of Sale and the Important Notices and Explanation of Cataloguing Practice set out the terms on which we offer the lots listed in this catalogue for sale. By registering to bid and/or by bidding at auction you agree to these terms, so you should read them carefully before doing so. You will find a glossary at the end explaining the meaning of the words and expressions coloured in bold. As well as these Conditions of Sale, lots in which we offer Non-Fungible Tokens are governed by the Additional Conditions of Sale – Non-Fungible Tokens, which are available in Appendix A herein. For the sale of Non-Fungible Tokens, to the extent there is a conflict between the “New York Conditions of Sale Buying at Christie’s” and “Additional Conditions of Sale – Non-Fungible Tokens”, the latter controls. Unless we own a lot in whole or in part (Δ symbol), Christie’s acts as agent for the seller.
A BEFORE THE SALE
1 DESCRIPTION OF LOTS
(a)Certain words used in the catalogue description have special meanings. You can find details of these on the page headed “Important Notices and Explanation of Cataloguing Practice” which forms part of these terms. You can find a key to the Symbols found next to certain catalogue entries under the section of the catalogue called “Symbols Used in this Catalogue”.
(b)Our description of any lot in the catalogue, any condition report and any other statement made by us (whether orally or in writing) about any lot, including about its nature or condition, artist, period, materials, approximate dimensions, or provenance are our opinion and not to be relied upon as a statement of fact. We do not carry out in-depth research of the sort carried out by professional historians and scholars. All dimensions and weights are approximate only.
2 OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR DESCRIPTION OF LOTS
We do not provide any guarantee in relation to the nature of a lot apart from our authenticity warranty contained in paragraph E2 and to the extent provided in paragraph I below.
3 CONDITION
(a)The condition of lots sold in our auctions can vary widely due to factors such as age, previous damage, restoration, repair and wear and tear. Their nature means that they will rarely be in perfect condition Lots are sold “as is,” in the condition they are in at the time of the sale, without any representation or warranty or assumption of liability of any kind as to condition by Christie’s or by the seller.
(b)Any reference to condition in a catalogue entry or in a condition report will not amount to a full description of condition, and images may not show a lot clearly. Colours and shades may look different in print or on screen to how they look on physical inspection. Condition reports may be available to help you evaluate the condition of a lot Condition reports are provided free of charge as a convenience to our buyers and are for guidance only. They offer our opinion but they may not refer to all faults, inherent defects, restoration, alteration or adaptation because our staff are not professional restorers or conservators. For that reason condition reports are not an alternative to examining a lot in person or seeking your own professional advice. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have requested, received and considered any condition report.
4 VIEWING LOTS PRE-AUCTION
(a)If you are planning to bid on a lot, you should inspect it personally or through a knowledgeable representative before you make a bid to make sure that you accept the description and its condition. We recommend you get your own advice from a restorer or other professional adviser.
(b)Pre-auction viewings are open to the public free of charge. Our specialists may be available to answer questions at preauction viewings or by appointment.
5 ESTIMATES
Estimates are based on the condition, rarity, quality and provenance of the lots and on prices recently paid at auction for similar property. Estimates can change. Neither you, nor anyone else, may rely on any estimates as a prediction or guarantee of the actual selling price of a lot or its value for any other purpose. Estimates do not include the buyer’s premium or any applicable taxes.
6 WITHDRAWAL
Christie’s may, at its option, withdraw any lot from auction at any time prior to or during the sale of the lot. Christie’s has no liability to you for any decision to withdraw.
(a)Coloured gemstones (such as rubies, sapphires and emeralds) may have been treated to improve their look, through methods such as heating and oiling. These methods are accepted by the international jewellery trade but may make the gemstone less strong and/or require special care over time.
(b)It will not be apparent to us whether a diamond is naturally or synthetically formed unless it has been tested by a gemmological laboratory. Where the diamond has been tested, a gemmological report will be available.
(c) All types of gemstones may have been improved by some method. You may request a gemmological report for any item which does not have a report if the request is made to us at least three weeks before the date of the auction and you pay the fee for the report.
(d)Certain weights in the catalogue description are provided for guidance purposes only as they have been estimated through measurement and, as such, should not be relied upon as exact.
(e) We do not obtain a gemmological report for every gemstone sold in our auctions. Where we do get gemmological reports from internationally accepted gemmological laboratories, such reports will be described in the catalogue. Reports from American gemmological laboratories will describe any improvement or treatment to the gemstone. Reports from European gemmological laboratories will describe any improvement or treatment only if we request that they do so, but will confirm when no improvement or treatment has been made. Because of differences in approach and technology, laboratories may not agree whether a particular gemstone has been treated, the amount of treatment, or whether treatment is permanent. The gemmological laboratories will only report on the improvements or treatments known to the laboratories at the date of the report. We do not guarantee nor are we responsible for any report or certificate from a gemmological laboratory that may accompany a lot
(f)For jewellery sales, estimates are based on the information in any gemmological report, or if no report is available, assume that the gemstones may have been treated or enhanced.
8 WATCHES & CLOCKS
(a)Almost all clocks and watches are repaired in their lifetime and may include parts which are not original. We do not give a warranty that any individual component part of any watch is authentic. Watchbands described as “associated” are not part of the original watch and may not be authentic. Clocks may be sold without pendulums, weights or keys.
(b)As collectors’ watches often have very fine and complex mechanisms, you are responsible for any general service, change of battery, or further repair work that may be necessary. We do not give a warranty that any watch is in good working order. Certificates are not available unless described in the catalogue.
(c)Most wristwatches have been opened to find out the type and quality of movement. For that reason, wristwatches with water resistant cases may not be waterproof and we recommend you have them checked by a competent watchmaker before use.
Important information about the sale, transport and shipping of watches and watchbands can be found in paragraph H2(f).
1
(a)If this is your first time bidding at Christie’s or you are a returning bidder who has not bought anything from any of our salerooms within the last two years you must register at least 48 hours before an auction begins to give us enough time to process and approve your registration. We may, at our option, decline to permit you to register as a bidder. You will be asked for the following:
(i)for individuals: Photo identification (driver’s licence, national identity card, or passport) and, if not shown on the ID document, proof of your current address (for example, a current utility bill or bank statement);
(ii)for corporate clients: Your Certificate of Incorporation or equivalent document(s) showing your name and registered address together with documentary proof of directors and beneficial owners; and
(iii)for trusts, partnerships, offshore companies and other business structures, please contact us in advance to discuss our requirements.
(b)We may also ask you to give us a financial reference and/or a deposit as a condition of allowing you to bid. For help, please contact our Client Services Department at +1 212-636-2000.
2 RETURNING BIDDERS
As described in paragraph B(1) above, we may at our option ask you for current identification, a financial reference, or a deposit as a condition of allowing you to bid. If you have not bought anything from any of our salerooms within the last two years or if you want to spend more than on previous occasions, please contact our Client Services Department at +1 212-636-2000.
3 IF YOU FAIL TO PROVIDE THE RIGHT DOCUMENTS
If in our opinion you do not satisfy our bidder identification and registration procedures including, but not limited to completing any anti-money laundering and/or anti-terrorism financing checks we may require to our satisfaction, we may refuse to register you to bid, and if you make a successful bid, we may cancel the contract for sale between you and the seller.
4 BIDDING ON BEHALF OF ANOTHER PERSON
If you are bidding on behalf of another person, that person will need to complete the registration requirements above before you can bid, and supply a signed letter authorising you to bid for him/ her. A bidder accepts personal liability to pay the purchase price and all other sums due unless it has been agreed in writing with Christie’s, before commencement of the auction, that the bidder is acting as an agent on behalf of a named third party acceptable to Christie’s and that Christie’s will only seek payment from the named third party.
5 BIDDING IN PERSON
If you wish to bid in the saleroom you must register for a numbered bidding paddle at least 30 minutes before the auction. You may register online at www.christies.com or in person. For help, please contact the Client Service Department on +1 212-636-2000.
6 BIDDING SERVICES
The bidding services described below are a free service offered as a convenience to our clients and Christie’s is not responsible for any error (human or otherwise), omission, or breakdown in providing these services.
(a) Phone Bids
Your request for this service must be made no later than 24 hours prior to the auction. We will accept bids by telephone for lots only if our staff are available to take the bids. If you need to bid in a language other than in English, you must arrange this well before the auction. We may record telephone bids. By bidding on the telephone, you are agreeing to us recording your conversations. You also agree that your telephone bids are governed by these Conditions of Sale.
(b) Internet Bids on Christie’s LIVE™
For certain auctions we will accept bids over the Internet. For more information, please visit https://www.christies.com/ buying-services/buying-guide/register-and-bid/. As well as these Conditions of Sale, internet bids are governed by the Christie’s LIVE™ Terms of Use which are available at https:// www.christies.com/LiveBidding/OnlineTermsOfUse.aspx
(c) Written Bids
You can find a Written Bid Form at any Christie’s office, or by choosing the sale and viewing the lots online at www. christies.com. We must receive your completed Written Bid at least 24 hours before the auction. Bids must be placed in the currency of the saleroom. The auctioneer will take reasonable steps to carry out written bids at the lowest possible price, taking into account the reserve. If you make a written bid on a lot which does not have a reserve and there is no higher bid than yours, we will bid on your behalf at around 50% of the low estimate or, if lower, the amount of your bid. If we receive written bids on a lot for identical amounts, and at the auction these are the highest bids on the lot, we will sell the lot to the bidder whose written bid we received first.
C CONDUCTING THE SALE
1 WHO CAN ENTER THE AUCTION
We may, at our option, refuse admission to our premises or decline to permit participation in any auction or to reject any bid.
2 RESERVES
Unless otherwise indicated, all lots are subject to a reserve. We identify lots that are offered without a reserve with the symbol • next to the lot number. The reserve cannot be more than the lot’s low estimate, unless the lot is subject to a third party guarantee and the irrevocable bid exceeds the printed low estimate. In that case, the reserve will be set at the amount of the irrevocable bid. Lots which are subject to a third party guarantee arrangement are identified in the catalogue with the symbol °◆
The auctioneer can at his or her sole option:
(a)refuse any bid;
(b)move the bidding backwards or forwards in any way he or she may decide, or change the order of the lots;
(c)withdraw any lot;
(d)divide any lot or combine any two or more lots;
(e)reopen or continue the bidding even after the hammer has fallen; and
(f)in the case of error or dispute related to bidding and whether during or after the auction, continue the bidding, determine the successful bidder, cancel the sale of the lot, or reoffer and resell any lot. If you believe that the auctioneer has accepted the successful bid in error, you must provide a written notice detailing your claim within 3 business days of the date of the auction. The auctioneer will consider such claim in good faith. If the auctioneer, in the exercise of his or her discretion under this paragraph, decides after the auction is complete, to cancel the sale of a lot, or reoffer and resell a lot, he or she will notify the successful bidder no later than by the end of the 7th calendar day following the date of the auction. The auctioneer’s decision in exercise of this discretion is final. This paragraph does not in any way prejudice Christie’s ability to cancel the sale of a lot under any other applicable provision of these Conditions of Sale, including the rights of cancellation set forth in sections B(3), E(2)(i), F(4), and J(1).
3
The auctioneer accepts bids from:
(a)bidders in the saleroom;
(b)telephone bidders;
(c)internet bidders through Christie’s LIVE™ (as shown above in paragraph B6); and (d)written bids (also known as absentee bids or commission bids) left with us by a bidder before the auction.
4
The auctioneer may, at his or her sole option, bid on behalf of the seller up to but not including the amount of the reserve either by making consecutive bids or by making bids in response to other bidders. The auctioneer will not identify these as bids made on behalf of the seller and will not make any bid on behalf of the seller at or above the reserve. If lots are offered without reserve, the auctioneer will generally decide to open the bidding at 50% of the low estimate for the lot. If no bid is made at that level, the auctioneer may decide to go backwards at his or her sole option until a bid is made, and then continue up from that amount. In the event that there are no bids on a lot, the auctioneer may deem such lot unsold.
5 BID INCREMENTS
Bidding generally starts below the low estimate and increases in steps (bid increments). The auctioneer will decide at his or her sole option where the bidding should start and the bid increments.
6 CURRENCY CONVERTER
The saleroom video screens (and Christies LIVE™) may show bids in some other major currencies as well as US dollars. Any conversion is for guidance only and we cannot be bound by any rate of exchange used. Christie’s is not responsible for any error (human or otherwise), omission or breakdown in providing these services.
7 SUCCESSFUL BIDS
Unless the auctioneer decides to use his or her discretion as set out in paragraph C3 above, when the auctioneer’s hammer strikes, we have accepted the last bid. This means a contract for sale has been formed between the seller and the successful bidder. We will issue an invoice only to the registered bidder who made the successful bid. While we send out invoices by mail and/ or email after the auction, we do not accept responsibility for telling you whether or not your bid was successful. If you have bid by written bid, you should contact us by telephone or in person as soon as possible after the auction to get details of the outcome of your bid to avoid having to pay unnecessary storage charges.
8 LOCAL BIDDING LAWS
You agree that when bidding in any of our sales that you will strictly comply with all local laws and regulations in force at the time of the sale for the relevant sale site.
D THE BUYER’S PREMIUM AND TAXES
1 THE BUYER’S PREMIUM
In addition to the hammer price, the successful bidder agrees to pay us a buyer’s premium on the hammer price of each lot sold. On all lots we charge 26% of the hammer price up to and including US$1,000,000, 21.0% on that part of the hammer price over US$1,000,000 and up to and including US$6,000,000, and 15.0% of that part of the hammer price above US$6,000,000.
The successful bidder is responsible for any applicable taxes including any sales or use tax or equivalent tax wherever such taxes may arise on the hammer price, the buyer’s premium, and/ or any other charges related to the lot
For lots Christie’s ships to or within the United States, a sales or use tax may be due on the hammer price, buyer’s premium, and/or any other charges related to the lot, regardless of the nationality or citizenship of the successful bidder. Christie’s will collect sales tax where legally required. The applicable sales tax rate will be determined based upon the state, county, or locale to which the lot will be shipped. Christie’s shall collect New York sales tax at a rate of 8.875% for any lot collected from Christie’s in New York.
In accordance with New York law, if Christie’s arranges the shipment of a lot out of New York State, New York sales tax does not apply, although sales tax or other applicable taxes for other states may apply. If you hire a shipper (other than a common carrier authorized by Christie’s), to collect the lot from a Christie’s New York location, Christie’s must collect New York sales tax on the lot at a rate of 8.875% regardless of the ultimate destination of the lot
If Christie’s delivers the lot to, or the lot is collected by, any framer, restorer or other similar service provider in New York that you have hired, New York law considers the lot delivered to the successful bidder in New York and New York sales tax must be imposed regardless of the ultimate destination of the lot. In this circumstance, New York sales tax will apply to the lot even if Christie’s or a common carrier (authorized by Christie’s that you hire) subsequently delivers the lot outside New York.
Successful bidders claiming an exemption from sales tax must provide appropriate documentation to Christie’s prior to the release of the lot or within 90 days after the sale, whichever is earlier. For shipments to those states for which Christie’s is not required to collect sales tax, a successful bidder may have a use or similar tax obligation. It is the successful bidder’s responsibility to pay all taxes due. Christie’s recommends you consult your own independent tax advisor with any questions.
1
For each lot, the seller gives a warranty that the seller:
(a)is the owner of the lot or a joint owner of the lot acting with the permission of the other co-owners or, if the seller is not the owner or a joint owner of the lot, has the permission of the owner to sell the lot, or the right to do so in law; and (b)has the right to transfer ownership of the lot to the buyer without any restrictions or claims by anyone else.
(c)If either of the above warranties are incorrect, the seller shall not have to pay more than the purchase price (as defined in paragraph F1(a) below) paid by you to us. The seller will not be responsible to you for any reason for loss of profits or business, expected savings, loss of opportunity or interest, costs, damages, other damages or expenses. The seller gives no warranty in relation to any lot other than as set out above and, as far as the seller is allowed by law, all warranties from the seller to you, and all other obligations upon the seller which may be added to this agreement by law, are excluded.
2 OUR AUTHENTICITY WARRANTY
We warrant, subject to the terms below, that the lots in our sales are authentic (our “authenticity warranty”). If, within 5 years of the date of the auction, you give notice to us that your lot is not authentic, subject to the terms below, we will refund the purchase price paid by you. The meaning of authentic can be found in the glossary at the end of these Conditions of Sale. The terms of the authenticity warranty are as follows:
(a)It will be honored for claims notified within a period of 5 years from the date of the auction. After such time, we will not be obligated to honor the authenticity warranty
(b)It is given only for information shown in UPPERCASE type in the first line of the catalogue description (the “Heading”). It does not apply to any information other than in the Heading even if shown in UPPERCASE type
(c)The authenticity warranty does not apply to any Heading or part of a Heading which is qualified Qualified means limited by a clarification in a lot’s catalogue description or by the use in a Heading of one of the terms listed in the section titled Qualified Headings on the page of the catalogue headed “Important Notices and Explanation of Cataloguing Practice”. For example, use of the term “ATTRIBUTED TO…” in a Heading means that the lot is in Christie’s opinion probably a work by the named artist but no warranty is provided that the lot is the work of the named artist. Please read the full list of Qualified Headings and a lot’s full catalogue description before bidding.
(d)The authenticity warranty applies to the Heading as amended by any Saleroom notice
(e)The authenticity warranty does not apply where scholarship
has developed since the auction leading to a change in generally accepted opinion. Further, it does not apply if the Heading either matched the generally accepted opinion of experts at the date of the auction or drew attention to any conflict of opinion.
(f)The authenticity warranty does not apply if the lot can only be shown not to be authentic by a scientific process which, on the date we published the catalogue, was not available or generally accepted for use, or which was unreasonably expensive or impractical, or which was likely to have damaged the lot
(g)The benefit of the authenticity warranty is only available to the original buyer shown on the invoice for the lot issued at the time of the sale and only if on the date of the notice of claim, the original buyer is the full owner of the lot and the lot is free from any claim, interest or restriction by anyone else. The benefit of this authenticity warranty may not be transferred to anyone else.
(h)In order to claim under the authenticity warranty you must:
(i)give us written notice of your claim within 5 years of the date of the auction. We may require full details and supporting evidence of any such claim;
(ii)at Christie’s option, we may require you to provide the written opinions of two recognised experts in the field of the lot mutually agreed by you and us in advance confirming that the lot is not authentic. If we have any doubts, we reserve the right to obtain additional opinions at our expense; and
(iii) return the lot at your expense to the saleroom from which you bought it in the condition it was in at the time of sale.
(i)Your only right under this authenticity warranty is to cancel the sale and receive a refund of the purchase price paid by you to us. We will not, under any circumstances, be required to pay you more than the purchase price nor will we be liable for any loss of profits or business, loss of opportunity or value, expected savings or interest, costs, damages, other damages or expenses.
(j) Books. Where the lot is a book, we give an additional warranty for 21 days from the date of the auction that if any lot is defective in text or illustration, we will refund your purchase price, subject to the following terms:
(a) This additional warranty does not apply to:
(i)the absence of blanks, half titles, tissue guards or advertisements, damage in respect of bindings, stains, spotting, marginal tears or other defects not affecting completeness of the text or illustration;
(ii)drawings, autographs, letters or manuscripts, signed photographs, music, atlases, maps or periodicals;
(iii)books not identified by title;
(iv) lots sold without a printed estimate;
(v)books which are described in the catalogue as sold not subject to return; or
(vi)defects stated in any condition report or announced at the time of sale.
(b) To make a claim under this paragraph you must give written details of the defect and return the lot to the sale room at which you bought it in the same condition as at the time of sale, within 21 days of the date of the sale.
(k) South East Asian Modern and Contemporary Art and Chinese Calligraphy and Painting.
In these categories, the authenticity warranty does not apply because current scholarship does not permit the making of definitive statements. Christie’s does, however, agree to cancel a sale in either of these two categories of art where it has been proven the lot is a forgery. Christie’s will refund to the original buyer the purchase price in accordance with the terms of Christie’s Authenticity warranty, provided that the original buyer notifies us with full supporting evidence documenting the forgery claim within twelve (12) months of the date of the auction. Such evidence must be satisfactory to us that the property is a forgery in accordance with paragraph E2(h)(ii) above and the property must be returned to us in accordance with E2h(iii) above. Paragraphs E2(b), (c), (d), (e), (f) and (g) and (i) also apply to a claim under these categories. (l) Chinese, Japanese and Korean artefacts (excluding Chinese, Japanese and Korean calligraphy, paintings, prints, drawings and jewellery).
In these categories, paragraph E2 (b) – (e) above shall be amended so that where no maker or artist is identified, the authenticity warranty is given not only for the Heading but also for information regarding date or period shown in UPPERCASE type in the second line of the catalogue description (the “Subheading”). Accordingly, all references to the Heading in paragraph E2 (b) – (e) above shall be read as references to both the Heading and the Subheading
3 NO IMPLIED WARRANTIES
EXCEPT AS SET FORTH IN PARAGRAPHS E1 AND E2 ABOVE, NEITHER THE SELLER NOR THE CHRISTIE’S GROUP MAKE
ANY OTHER WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ORAL OR WRITTEN, WITH RESPECT TO THE LOT, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, EACH OF WHICH IS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMED.
4 YOUR WARRANTIES
(a)You warrant that the funds used for settlement are not connected with any criminal activity, including tax evasion, and you are neither under investigation, nor have you been charged with or convicted of money laundering, terrorist activities or other crimes.
(b)Where you are bidding on behalf of another person, you warrant that:
(i)you have conducted appropriate customer due diligence on the ultimate buyer(s) of the lot(s) in accordance with all applicable anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, consent to us relying on this due diligence, and you will retain for a period of not less than 5 years the documentation evidencing the due diligence. You will make such documentation promptly available for immediate inspection by an independent third-party auditor upon our written request to do so;
(ii)the arrangements between you and the ultimate buyer(s) in relation to the lot or otherwise do not, in whole or in part, facilitate tax crimes;
(iii)you do not know, and have no reason to suspect, that the funds used for settlement are connected with, the proceeds of any criminal activity, including tax evasion, or that the ultimate buyer(s) are under investigation, or have been charged with or convicted of money laundering, terrorist activities or other crimes.
(a)Immediately following the auction, you must pay the purchase price being:
(i)the hammer price; and
(ii)the buyer’s premium; and
(iii)any applicable duties, goods, sales, use, compensating or service tax, or VAT.
Payment is due no later than by the end of the 7th calendar day following the date of the auction (the “due date”).
(b)We will only accept payment from the registered bidder. Once issued, we cannot change the buyer’s name on an invoice or re-issue the invoice in a different name. You must pay immediately even if you want to export the lot and you need an export licence.
(c)You must pay for lots bought at Christie’s in the United States in the currency stated on the invoice in one of the following ways:
(i) Wire transfer
JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., 270 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017; ABA# 021000021; FBO: Christie’s Inc.; Account # 957-107978, for international transfers, SWIFT: CHASUS33.
(ii) Credit Card
We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and China Union Pay. Credit card payments at the New York premises will only be accepted for New York sales. Christie’s will not accept credit card payments for purchases in any other sale site.
(iii) Cash
We accept cash payments (including money orders and traveller’s checks) subject to a maximum global aggregate of US$7,500 per buyer.
(iv) Bank Checks
You must make these payable to Christie’s Inc. and there may be conditions. Once we have deposited your check, property cannot be released until five business days have passed.
(v) Checks
You must make checks payable to Christie’s Inc. and they must be drawn from US dollar accounts from a US bank.
(vi) Cryptocurrency
With the exception of clients resident in Mainland China, payment for a lot marked with the symbol ❖ may be made in a cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies of our choosing. Such cryptocurrency payments must be made in accordance with the Additional Conditions of Sale - Nonfungible Tokens set out at Appendix A to these Conditions of Sale.
(d)You must quote the sale number, your invoice number and client number when making a payment. All payments sent by post must be sent to:
Christie’s Inc. Post-Sale Services, 20 Rockefeller Center, New York, NY 10020.
(e)For more information please contact our Post-Sale Services
by phone at +1 212 636 2650 or fax at +1 212 636 4939 or email PostSaleUS@christies.com.
2 TRANSFERRING OWNERSHIP TO YOU
You will not own the lot and ownership of the lot will not pass to you until we have received full and clear payment of the purchase price, even in circumstances where we have released the lot to you.
3 TRANSFERRING RISK TO YOU
The risk in and responsibility for the lot will transfer to you from whichever is the earlier of the following:
(a)When you collect the lot; or
(b)At the end of the 30th day following the date of the auction or, if earlier, the date the lot is taken into care by a third party warehouse as set out on the page headed ‘Storage and Collection’, unless we have agreed otherwise with you.
4 WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO NOT PAY
(a)If you fail to pay us the purchase price in full by the due date, we will be entitled to do one or more of the following (as well as enforce our rights under paragraph F5 and any other rights or remedies we have by law):
(i)we can charge interest from the due date at a rate of up to 1.34% per month on the unpaid amount due;
(ii)we can cancel the sale of the lot. If we do this, we may sell the lot again, publically or privately on such terms we shall think necessary or appropriate, in which case you must pay us any shortfall between the purchase price and the proceeds from the resale. You must also pay all costs, expenses, losses, damages and legal fees we have to pay or may suffer and any shortfall in the seller’s commission on the resale;
(iii)we can pay the seller an amount up to the net proceeds payable in respect of the amount bid by your default in which case you acknowledge and understand that Christie’s will have all of the rights of the seller to pursue you for such amounts;
(iv)we can hold you legally responsible for the purchase price and may begin legal proceedings to recover it together with other losses, interest, legal fees and costs as far as we are allowed by law;
(v)we can take what you owe us from any amounts which we or any company in the Christie’s Group may owe you (including any deposit or other part-payment which you have paid to us);
(vi)we can, at our option, reveal your identity and contact details to the seller;
(vii)we can reject at any future auction any bids made by or on behalf of the buyer or to obtain a deposit from the buyer before accepting any bids;
(viii)we can exercise all the rights and remedies of a person holding security over any property in our possession owned by you, whether by way of pledge, security interest or in any other way as permitted by the law of the place where such property is located. You will be deemed to have granted such security to us and we may retain such property as collateral security for your obligations to us; and
(ix)we can take any other action we see necessary or appropriate.
(b)If you owe money to us or to another Christie’s Group company, we can use any amount you do pay, including any deposit or other part-payment you have made to us, or which we owe you, to pay off any amount you owe to us or another Christie’s Group company for any transaction.
5 KEEPING YOUR PROPERTY
If you owe money to us or to another Christie’s Group company, as well as the rights set out in F4 above, we can use or deal with any of your property we hold or which is held by another Christie’s Group company in any way we are allowed to by law. We will only release your property to you after you pay us or the relevant Christie’s Group company in full for what you owe. However, if we choose, we can also sell your property in any way we think appropriate. We will use the proceeds of the sale against any amounts you owe us and we will pay any amount left from that sale to you. If there is a shortfall, you must pay us any difference between the amount we have received from the sale and the amount you owe us.
(a)You must collect purchased lots within seven days from the auction (but note that lots will not be released to you until you have made full and clear payment of all amounts due to us).
(b)Information on collecting lots is set out on the storage and collection page and on an information sheet which you can get from the bidder registration staff or Christie’s Post-Sale Services Department on +1 212 636 2650.
(c)If you do not collect any lot within thirty days following the
auction we may, at our option
(i)charge you storage costs at the rates set out at www. christies.com/storage
(ii)move the lot to another Christie’s location or an affiliate or third party warehouse and charge you transport costs and administration fees for doing so and you will be subject to the third party storage warehouse’s standard terms and to pay for their standard fees and costs.
(iii)sell the lot in any commercially reasonable way we think appropriate.
(d)The Storage conditions which can be found at www.christies. com/storage will apply.
(e)In accordance with New York law, if you have paid for the lot in full but you do not collect the lot within 180 calendar days of payment, we may charge you New York sales tax for the lot
(f)Nothing in this paragraph is intended to limit our rights under paragraph F4.
We would be happy to assist in making shipping arrangements on request. You must make all transport and shipping arrangements. However, we can arrange to pack, transport, and ship your property if you ask us to and pay the costs of doing so. We recommend that you ask us for an estimate, especially for any large items or items of high value that need professional packing. We may also suggest other handlers, packers, transporters, or experts if you ask us to do so. For more information, please contact Christie’s Post-Sale Services at +1 212 636 2650. See the information set out at https://www.christies.com/buyingservices/buying-guide/ship/ or contact us at PostSaleUS@ christies.com. We will take reasonable care when we are handling, packing, transporting, and shipping. However, if we recommend another company for any of these purposes, we are not responsible for their acts, failure to act, or neglect.
Any lot sold at auction may be affected by laws on exports from the country in which it is sold and the import restrictions of other countries. Many countries require a declaration of export for property leaving the country and/or an import declaration on entry of property into the country. Local laws may prevent you from importing a lot or may prevent you selling a lot in the country you import it into.
(a)You alone are responsible for getting advice about and meeting the requirements of any laws or regulations which apply to exporting or importing any lot prior to bidding. If you are refused a licence or there is a delay in getting one, you must still pay us in full for the lot. We may be able to help you apply for the appropriate licences if you ask us to and pay our fee for doing so. However, we cannot guarantee that you will get one. For more information, please contact Christie’s Post-Sale Services Department at +1 212 636 2650 and PostSaleUS@christies.com.
See the information set out at https://www.christies. com/buying-services/buying-guide/ship/ or contact us at PostSaleUS@christies.com.
(b)You alone are responsible for any applicable taxes, tariffs or other government-imposed charges relating to the export or import of the lot. If Christie’s exports or imports the lot on your behalf, and if Christie’s pays these applicable taxes, tariffs or other government-imposed charges, you agree to refund that amount to Christie’s.
(c) Endangered and protected species
Lots made of or including (regardless of the percentage) endangered and other protected species of wildlife are marked with the symbol in the catalogue. This material includes, among other things, ivory, tortoiseshell, whalebone, certain species of coral, Brazilian rosewood, crocodile, alligator and ostrich skins. You should check the relevant customs laws and regulations before bidding on any lot containing wildlife material if you plan to export the lot from the country in which the lot is sold and import it into another country as a licence may be required. In some cases, the lot can only be shipped with an independent scientific confirmation of species and/or age and you will need to obtain these at your own cost. Several countries have imposed restrictions on dealing in elephant ivory, ranging from a total ban on importing African elephant ivory in the United States to importing, exporting and selling under strict measures in other countries. Handbags containing endangered or protected species material are marked with the symbol ≈ and further information can be found in paragraph H2(h) below. We will not be obliged to cancel your purchase and refund the purchase price if your lot may not be exported, imported or it is seized for any reason by a government authority. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations relating to the export or import of property containing such protected or regulated material.
(d) Lots containing Ivory or materials resembling ivory
If a lot contains elephant ivory, or any other wildlife material that could be confused with elephant ivory (for example, mammoth ivory, walrus ivory, helmeted hornbill ivory) you may be prevented from exporting the lot from the US or shipping it between US States without first confirming its species by way of a rigorous scientific test acceptable to the applicable Fish and Wildlife authorities. You will buy that lot at your own risk and be responsible for any scientific test or other reports required for export from the USA or between US States at your own cost. We will not be obliged to cancel your purchase and refund the purchase price if your lot may not be exported, imported or shipped between US States, or it is seized for any reason by a government authority. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations relating to interstate shipping, export or import of property containing such protected or regulated material.
(e) Lots of Iranian origin
Some countries prohibit or restrict the purchase, export and/or import of Iranian-origin “works of conventional craftsmanship” (works that are not by a recognized artist and/ or that have a function, (for example: carpets, bowls, ewers, tiles, ornamental boxes). For example, the USA prohibits the import and export of this type of property without a license issued by the US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control. Other countries, such as Canada, only permit the import of this property in certain circumstances. As a convenience to buyers, Christie’s indicates under the title of a lot if the lot originates from Iran (Persia). It is your responsibility to ensure you do not bid on or import a lot in contravention of the sanctions or trade embargoes that apply to you.
(f) Gold
Gold of less than 18ct does not qualify in all countries as ‘gold’ and may be refused import into those countries as ‘gold’.
(g) Watches
Many of the watches offered for sale in this catalogue are pictured with straps made of endangered or protected animal materials such as alligator or crocodile. These lots are marked with the symbol Ψ in the catalogue. These endangered species straps are shown for display purposes only and are not for sale. Christie’s will remove and retain the strap prior to shipment from the sale site. At some sale sites, Christie’s may, at its discretion, make the displayed endangered species strap available to the buyer of the lot free of charge if collected in person from the sale site within 1 year of the date of the auction. Please check with the department for details on a particular lot
(h)Handbags
A lot marked with the symbol ≈ next to the lot number includes endangered or protected species material and is subject to CITES regulations. This lot may only be shipped to an address within the country of the sale site or personally picked up from our saleroom. Please note, Christie’s cannot facilitate the shipment of any lot containing python, alligator or crocodile into the State of California.
The term “hardware” refers to the metallic parts of the handbag, such as the buckle hardware, base studs, lock and keys and/or strap, which are plated with a coloured finish (e.g. gold, silver, palladium). The terms “Gold Hardware”, “Silver Hardware”, “Palladium Hardware”, etc. refer to the tone or colour of the hardware and not the actual material used. If the handbag incorporates solid metal hardware, this will be referenced in the catalogue description
For all symbols and other markings referred to in paragraph H2, please note that lots are marked as a convenience to you, but we do not accept liability for errors or for failing to mark lots
I OUR LIABILITY TO YOU
(a)We give no warranty in relation to any statement made, or information given, by us or our representatives or employees, about any lot other than as set out in the authenticity warranty and, as far as we are allowed by law, all warranties and other terms which may be added to this agreement by law are excluded. The seller’s warranties contained in paragraph E1 are their own and we do not have any liability to you in relation to those warranties.
(b)(i) We are not responsible to you for any reason (whether for breaking this agreement or any other matter relating to your purchase of, or bid for, any lot) other than in the event of fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation by us or other than as expressly set out in these conditions of sale; and (ii) we do not give any representation, warranty or guarantee or assume any liability of any kind in respect of any lot with regard to merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, description, size, quality, condition, attribution, authenticity, rarity, importance, medium, provenance, exhibition history, literature, or historical relevance. Except as required by local law, any warranty of any kind is excluded by this paragraph.
(c)In particular, please be aware that our written and telephone
bidding services, Christie’s LIVE™, condition reports, currency converter and saleroom video screens are free services and we are not responsible to you for any error (human or otherwise), omission or breakdown in these services.
(d)We have no responsibility to any person other than a buyer in connection with the purchase of any lot
(e)If, in spite of the terms in paragraphs I(a) to (d) or E2(i) above, we are found to be liable to you for any reason, we shall not have to pay more than the purchase price paid by you to us. We will not be responsible to you for any reason for loss of profits or business, loss of opportunity or value, expected savings or interest, costs, other damages, or expenses.
1
In addition to the other rights of cancellation contained in this agreement, we can cancel a sale of a lot if : (i) any of your warranties in paragraph E4 are not correct; (ii) we reasonably believe that completing the transaction is, or may be, unlawful; or (iii) we reasonably believe that the sale places us or the seller under any liability to anyone else or may damage our reputation.
2 RECORDINGS
We may videotape and record proceedings at any auction. We will keep any personal information confidential, except to the extent disclosure is required by law. However, we may, through this process, use or share these recordings with another Christie’s Group company and marketing partners to analyse our customers and to help us to tailor our services for buyers. If you do not want to be videotaped, you may make arrangements to make a telephone or written bid or bid on Christie’s LIVE™ instead. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, you may not videotape or record proceedings at any auction.
3 COPYRIGHT
We own the copyright in all images, illustrations and written material produced by or for us relating to a lot (including the contents of our catalogues unless otherwise noted in the catalogue). You cannot use them without our prior written permission. We do not offer any guarantee that you will gain any copyright or other reproduction rights to the lot
4 ENFORCING THIS AGREEMENT
If a court finds that any part of this agreement is not valid or is illegal or impossible to enforce, that part of the agreement will be treated as being deleted and the rest of this agreement will not be affected.
5 TRANSFERRING YOUR RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
You may not grant a security over or transfer your rights or responsibilities under these terms on the contract of sale with the buyer unless we have given our written permission. This agreement will be binding on your successors or estate and anyone who takes over your rights and responsibilities.
6 TRANSLATIONS
If we have provided a translation of this agreement, we will use this original version in deciding any issues or disputes which arise under this agreement.
7 PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will hold and process your personal information and may pass it to another Christie’s Group company for use as described in, and in line with, our privacy notice at www.christies.com/aboutus/contact/privacy and if you are a resident of California you can see a copy of our California Consumer Privacy Act statement at https://www.christies.com/about-us/contact/ccpa
8 WAIVER
No failure or delay to exercise any right or remedy provided under these Conditions of Sale shall constitute a waiver of that or any other right or remedy, nor shall it prevent or restrict the further exercise of that or any other right or remedy. No single or partial exercise of such right or remedy shall prevent or restrict the further exercise of that or any other right or remedy.
9 LAW AND DISPUTES
This agreement, and any non-contractual obligations arising out of or in connection with this agreement, or any other rights you may have relating to the purchase of a lot (the “Dispute”) will be governed by the laws of New York. Before we or you start any court proceedings (except in the limited circumstances where the dispute, controversy or claim is related to proceedings brought by someone else and this dispute could be joined to those proceedings), we agree we will each try to settle the Dispute by mediation submitted to JAMS, or its successor, for mediation in New York. If the Dispute is not settled by mediation within 60 days from the date when mediation is initiated, then the Dispute shall be submitted to JAMS, or its successor, for final and binding arbitration in accordance with its Comprehensive Arbitration Rules and Procedures or, if the Dispute involves a non-U.S. party, the JAMS International Arbitration Rules. The seat of the arbitration shall be New York and the arbitration shall be conducted by one arbitrator, who shall be appointed within
30 days after the initiation of the arbitration. The language used in the arbitral proceedings shall be English. The arbitrator shall order the production of documents only upon a showing that such documents are relevant and material to the outcome of the Dispute. The arbitration shall be confidential, except to the extent necessary to enforce a judgment or where disclosure is required by law. The arbitration award shall be final and binding on all parties involved. Judgment upon the award may be entered by any court having jurisdiction thereof or having jurisdiction over the relevant party or its assets. This arbitration and any proceedings conducted hereunder shall be governed by Title 9 (Arbitration) of the United States Code and by the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of June 10, 1958.
10 REPORTING ON WWW.CHRISTIES.COM
Details of all lots sold by us, including catalogue descriptions and prices, may be reported on www.christies.com. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer’s premium and do not reflect costs, financing fees, or application of buyer’s or seller’s credits. We regret that we cannot agree to requests to remove these details from www.christies.com
K GLOSSARY
auctioneer: the individual auctioneer and/or Christie’s. authentic: a genuine example, rather than a copy or forgery of:
(i) the work of a particular artist, author or manufacturer, if the lot is described in the Heading as the work of that artist, author or manufacturer;
(ii) a work created within a particular period or culture, if the lot is described in the Heading as a work created during that period or culture;
(iii) a work for a particular origin source if the lot is described in the Heading as being of that origin or source; or
(iv) in the case of gems, a work which is made of a particular material, if the lot is described in the Heading as being made of that material.
authenticity warranty: the guarantee we give in this agreement that a lot is authentic as set out in paragraph E2 of this agreement.
buyer’s premium: the charge the buyer pays us along with the hammer price
catalogue description: the description of a lot in the catalogue for the auction, as amended by any saleroom notice
Christie’s Group: Christie’s International Plc, its subsidiaries and other companies within its corporate group.
condition: the physical condition of a lot
due date: has the meaning given to it paragraph F1(a).
estimate: the price range included in the catalogue or any saleroom notice within which we believe a lot may sell. Low estimate means the lower figure in the range and high estimate means the higher figure. The mid estimate is the midpoint between the two.
hammer price: the amount of the highest bid the auctioneer accepts for the sale of a lot
Heading: has the meaning given to it in paragraph E2.
lot: an item to be offered at auction (or two or more items to be offered at auction as a group).
other damages: any special, consequential, incidental or indirect damages of any kind or any damages which fall within the meaning of ‘special’, ‘incidental’ or ‘consequential’ under local law.
purchase price: has the meaning given to it in paragraph F1(a).
provenance: the ownership history of a lot
qualified: has the meaning given to it in paragraph E2 and Qualified Headings means the paragraph headed Qualified Headings on the page of the catalogue headed ‘Important Notices and Explanation of Cataloguing Practice’.
reserve: the confidential amount below which we will not sell a lot
saleroom notice: a written notice posted next to the lot in the saleroom and on www.christies.com, which is also read to prospective telephone bidders and notified to clients who have left commission bids, or an announcement made by the auctioneer either at the beginning of the sale, or before a particular lot is auctioned.
subheading: has the meaning given to it in paragraph E2.
UPPER CASE type: means having all capital letters.
warranty: a statement or representation in which the person making it guarantees that the facts set out in it are correct.
19/10/2023
IMPORTANT NOTICES
∆ Property in which Christie’s has an ownership or financial interest
From time to time, Christie’s may offer a lot in which Christie’s has an ownership interest or a financial interest. Such lot is identified in the catalogue with the symbol ∆ next to its lot number. Where Christie’s has an ownership or financial interest in every lot in the catalogue, Christie’s will not designate each lot with a symbol, but will state its interest in the front of the catalogue.
º Minimum Price Guarantees
On occasion, Christie’s has a direct financial interest in the outcome of the sale of certain lots consigned for sale. This will usually be where it has guaranteed to the Seller that whatever the outcome of the auction, the Seller will receive a minimum sale price for the lot. This is known as a minimum price guarantee. Where Christie’s holds such financial interest we identify such lots with the symbol º next to the lot number.
º ♦ Third Party Guarantees/Irrevocable bids
Where Christie’s has provided a Minimum Price Guarantee, it is at risk of making a loss, which can be significant if the lot fails to sell. Christie’s sometimes chooses to share that risk with a third party who agrees prior to the auction to place an irrevocable written bid on the lot. If there are no other higher bids, the third party commits to buy the lot at the level of their irrevocable written bid. In doing so, the third party takes on all or part of the risk of the lot not being sold. Lots which are subject to a third party guarantee arrangement are identified in the catalogue with the symbol º ♦
In most cases, Christie’s compensates the third party in exchange for accepting this risk. Where the third party is the successful bidder, the third party’s remuneration is based on a fixed financing fee. If the third party is not the successful bidder, the remuneration may either be based on a fixed fee or an amount calculated against the final hammer price. The third party may continue to bid for the lot above the irrevocable written bid. Third party guarantors are required by us to disclose to anyone they are advising their financial interest in any lots they are guaranteeing. However, for the avoidance of any doubt, if you are advised by or bidding through an agent on a lot identified as being subject to a third party guarantee you should always ask your agent to confirm whether or not he or she has a financial interest in relation to the lot
∆ ♦ Property in which Christie’s has an interest and Third Party Guarantee/Irrevocable bid
Where Christie’s has a financial interest in a lot and the lot fails to sell, Christie’s is at risk of making a loss. As such, Christie’s may choose to share that risk with a third party whereby the third party contractually agrees, prior to the auction, to place an irrevocable written bid on the lot. Such lot is identified with the symbol ∆ ♦ next to the lot number.
Where the third party is the successful bidder on the lot, he or she will not receive compensation in exchange for accepting this risk. If the third party is not the successful bidder, Christie’s may compensate the third party. The third party is required by us to disclose to anyone he or she is advising of his or her financial interest in any lot in which Christie’s has a financial interest. If you are advised by or bidding through an agent on a lot in which Christie’s has a financial interest that is subject to a contractual written bid, you should always ask your agent to confirm whether or not he or she has a financial interest in relation to the lot
¤ Bidding by interested parties
When a party with a direct or indirect interest in the lot who may have knowledge of the lot’s reserve or other material information may be bidding on the lot, we will mark the lot with this symbol ¤. This interest can include beneficiaries of an estate that consigned the lot or a joint owner of a lot. Any interested party that successfully bids on a lot must comply with Christie’s Conditions of Sale, including paying the lot’s full buyer’s premium plus applicable taxes.
Post-catalogue notifications
If Christie’s enters into an arrangement or becomes aware of bidding that would have required a catalogue symbol, we will notify you by updating christies.com with the relevant information (time permitting) or otherwise by a pre-sale or prelot announcement.
Christie’s may enter into other arrangements not involving bids. These include arrangements where Christie’s has advanced money to consignors or prospective purchasers or where Christie’s has shared the risk of a guarantee with a partner without the partner being required to place an irrevocable written bid or otherwise participating in the bidding on the lot. Because such arrangements are unrelated to the bidding process they are not marked with a symbol in the catalogue.
Terms used in a catalogue or lot description have the meanings ascribed to them below. Please note that all statements in a catalogue or lot description as to authorship are made subject to the provisions of the Conditions of Sale, including the authenticity warranty. Our use of these expressions does not take account of the condition of the lot or of the extent of any restoration. Written condition reports are usually available on request.
A term and its definition listed under ‘Qualified Headings’ is a qualified statement as to authorship. While the use of this term is based upon careful study and represents the opinion of specialists, Christie’s and the consignor assume no risk, liability and responsibility for the authenticity of authorship of any lot in this catalogue described by this term, and the authenticity warranty shall not be available with respect to lots described using this term.
PICTURES, DRAWINGS, PRINTS AND MINIATURES
Name(s) or Recognised Designation of an artist without any qualification: in Christie’s opinion a work by the artist.
QUALIFIED HEADINGS
“Attributed to …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion probably a work by the artist in whole or in part.
“Studio of …”/“Workshop of …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work executed in the studio or workshop of the artist, possibly under his supervision.
“Circle of …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work of the period of the artist and showing his influence.
“Follower of… ”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work executed in the artist’s style but not necessarily by a pupil.
“Manner of… ”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work executed in the artist’s style but of a later date.
“After …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a copy (of any date) of a work of the artist.
“Signed …”/“Dated …”/ “Inscribed …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion the work has been signed/dated/inscribed by the artist.
“With signature …”/“With date …”/ “With inscription …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion the signature/ date/inscription appears to be by a hand other than that of the artist.
The date given for Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints is the date (or approximate date when prefixed with ‘circa’) on which the matrix was worked and not necessarily the date when the impression was printed or published.
CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART
When a piece is, in Christie’s opinion, of a certain period, reign or dynasty, its attribution appears in uppercase letters directly below the Heading of the description of the lot
e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL 18TH CENTURY
If the date, period or reign mark mentioned in uppercase letters after the bold type first line states that the mark is of the period, then in Christie’s opinion, the piece is of the date, period or reign of the mark.
e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL
KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD (1662-1722)
If no date, period or reign mark is mentioned in uppercase letters after the bold description, in Christie’s opinion it is of uncertain date or late manufacture.
e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL
QUALIFIED HEADINGS
When a piece is, in Christie’s opinion, not of the period to which it would normally be attributed on stylistic grounds, this will be incorporated into the first line or the body of the text of the description.
e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE MING-STYLE BOWL; or
The Ming-style bowl is decorated with lotus scrolls…
In Christie’s qualified opinion this object most probably dates from Kangxi period but there remains the possibility that it may be dated differently.
e.g. KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND PROBABLY OF THE PERIOD
In Christie’s qualified opinion, this object could be dated to the Kangxi period but there is a strong element of doubt.
e.g. KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND POSSIBLY OF THE PERIOD
JEWELLERY
“Boucheron”: when maker’s name appears in the title, in Christie’s opinion it is by that maker.
“Mounted by Boucheron”: in Christie’s opinion the setting has been created by the jeweller using stones originally supplied by the jeweller’s client.
QUALIFIED HEADINGS
“Attributed to”: in Christie’s qualified opinion is probably a work by the jeweller/maker but no warranty is provided that the lot is the work of the named jeweller/maker.
Other information included in the catalogue description
“Signed Boucheron / Signature Boucheron”: in Christie’s qualified opinion has a signature by the jeweller.
“With maker’s mark for Boucheron”: in Christie’s qualified opinion has a mark denoting the maker.
Periods
Art Nouveau 1895-1910
Belle Epoque 1895-1914
Art Deco 1915-1935
Retro 1940s
WATCHES
Removal of Watch Batteries
A lot marked with the symbol ⊕ next to the lot number incorporates batteries which may be designated as “dangerous goods” under international laws and regulations governing the transport of goods by air freight. If a buyer requests shipment of the lot to a destination outside of the country in which the saleroom is located, the batteries will be removed and retained by us prior to shipment. If the lot is collected from the saleroom, the batteries will be made available for collection free of charge.
FABERGÉ
QUALIFIED HEADINGS
“Marked Fabergé, Workmaster …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work of the master’s workshop inscribed with his name or initials and his workmaster’s initials.
“By Fabergé …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion, a work of the master’s workshop, but without his mark.
“In the style of …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work of the period of the master and closely related to his style.
“Bearing marks …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion not a work of the master’s workshop and bearing later marks.
HANDBAGS
Condition Reports
The condition of lots sold in our auctions can vary widely due to factors such as age, previous damage, restoration, repair and wear and tear. Condition reports and grades are provided free of charge as a courtesy and convenience to our buyers and are for guidance only. They offer our honest opinion but they may not refer to all faults, restoration, alteration or adaptation. They are not an alternative to examining a lot in person or taking your own professional advice. Lots are sold “as is,” in the condition they are in at the time of the sale, without any representation or warranty as to condition by Christie’s or by the seller.
Grades in Condition Reports
We provide a general, numeric condition grade to help with overall condition guidance. Please review the specific condition report and extra images for each lot before bidding.
Grade 1: this item exhibits no signs of use or wear and could be considered as new. There are no flaws. Original packaging and protective plastic are likely intact as noted in the lot description.
Grade 2: this item exhibits minor flaws and could be considered nearly brand new. It may never have been used, or may have been used a few times. There are only minor condition notes, which can be found in the specific condition report.
Grade 3: this item exhibits visible signs of use. Any signs of use or wear are minor. This item is in good condition.
Grade 4: this item exhibits wear from frequent use. This item either has light overall wear or small areas of heavy wear. The item is considered to be in fair condition.
Grade 5: this item exhibits normal wear and tear from regular or heavy use. The item is in good, usable condition but it does have condition notes.
Grade 6: this item is damaged and requires repair. It is considered in fair condition.
Any reference to condition in a catalogue entry will not amount to a full description of condition, and images may not show the condition of a lot clearly. Colours and shades may look different in print or on screen to how they look in real life. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have received and considered any condition report and grading.
References to “HARDWARE”
Where used in this catalogue the term “hardware” refers to the metallic parts of the bag, such as the buckle hardware, base studs, lock and keys and /or strap, which are plated with a coloured finish (e.g. gold, silver, palladium). The terms “Gold Hardware”, “Silver Hardware”, “Palladium Hardware” etc. refer to
the tone or colour of the hardware and not the actual material used. If the bag incorporates solid metal hardware this will be referenced in the lot description.
All items of post-1950 furniture included in this sale are items either not originally supplied for use in a private home or sold as collector’s items. These items may not comply with the provisions of the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 (as amended in 1989, 1993 and 2010, the “Regulations”). Accordingly, these items should not be used as furniture in your home in their current condition. If you do intend to use such items for this purpose, you must first ensure that they are reupholstered, restuffed and/or recovered (as appropriate) in order that they comply with the provisions of the Regulations.
The meaning of words coloured in bold in this section can be found in paragraph K, Glossary, of the section of the catalogue headed ‘Conditions of Sale’. Please note that lots are marked as a convenience to you and we shall not be liable for any errors in, or failure to, mark a lot.
º
Christie’s has a direct financial interest in the lot. See Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information.
º
Christie’s has provided a minimum price guarantee and has a direct financial interest in this lot. Christie’s has financed all or a part of such interest through a third party. Such third parties generally benefit financially if a guaranteed lot is sold. See the Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information.
∆
Christie’s has a financial interest in the lot. See Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information..
∆
Christie’s has a financial interest in this lot and has financed all or a part of such interest through a third party. Such third parties generally benefit financially if a guaranteed lot is sold. See the Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information. `
¤ A party with a direct or indirect interest in the lot who may have knowledge of the lot’s reserve or other material information may be bidding on the lot
• Lot offered without reserve
Lot incorporates material from endangered species which could result in export restrictions. See Section H2(c) of the Conditions of Sale for further information.
≈
Handbag lot incorporates material from endangered species. International shipping restrictions apply. See paragraph H2 of the Conditions of Sale for further information.
∝
Lot incorporates elephant ivory material. See paragraph H2 of the Conditions of Sale for further information.
Ψ
Lot incorporates material from endangered species which is shown for display purposes only and is not for sale. See Section H2(h) of the Conditions of Sale for further information.
➤
Lot is a Non Fungible Token (NFT). Please see Appendix A – Additional Conditions of Sale – Non- Fungible Tokens in the Conditions of Sale for further information.
◗
Lot contains both a Non Fungible Token (NFT) and a physical work of art. Please see Appendix A –Additional Conditions of Sale – Non-Fungible Tokens in the Conditions of Sale for further information.
■
See Storage and Collection pages in the catalogue.
With the exception of clients resident in Mainland China, you may elect to make payment of the purchase price for the lot via a digital wallet in the name of the registered bidder, which must be maintained with one of the following: Coinbase Custody Trust; Coinbase, Inc.; Fidelity Digital Assets Services, LLC; Gemini Trust Company, LLC; or Paxos Trust Company, LLC. Please see the lot notice and Appendix B – Terms for Payment by Buyers in Cryptocurrency in the Conditions of Sale for further requirements and information
φ
Please note that this lot is subject to an import tariff. The amount of the import tariff due is a percentage of the final hammer price plus buyer’s premium. The buyer should contact Post Sale Services prior to the sale to determine the estimated amount of this import tariff. If the buyer instructs Christie’s to arrange shipping of the lot to a foreign address, the buyer will not be required to pay an import tariff, but the shipment may be delayed while awaiting approval to export from the local government. If the buyer instructs Christie’s to arrange the shipment of the lot to a domestic address, if the buyer collects the property in person, or if the buyer arranges their own shipping (whether domestically or internationally), the buyer will be required to pay the import tariff. For the purpose of calculating sales tax, if applicable, the import tariff will be added to the final hammer price plus buyer’s premium and sales tax will be collected as per The Buyer’s Premium and Taxes section of the Conditions of Sale.
Specified lots (sold and unsold) marked with a filled square (■) not collected from Christie’s by 5.00pm on the day of the sale will, at our option, be removed to Christie’s Fine Art Storage Services (CFASS in Red Hook, Brooklyn). Christie’s will inform you if the lot has been sent offsite.
If the lot is transferred to Christie’s Fine Art Storage Services, it will be available for collection after the third business day following the sale.
Please contact Christie’s Post-Sale Service 24 hours in advance to book a collection time at Christie’s Fine Art Services. All collections from Christie’s Fine Art Services will be by pre-booked appointment only.
Please be advised that after 50 days from the auction date property may be moved at Christie’s discretion. Please contact Post-Sale Services to confirm the location of your property prior to collection.
Tel: +1 212 636 2650
Email: PostSaleUS@christies.com
Operation hours for both Christie’s Rockefeller and Christie’s Fine Art Storage are from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm, Monday – Friday.
COLLECTION AND CONTACT DETAILS
Lots will only be released on payment of all charges due and on production of a Collection Form from Christie’s. Charges may be paid in advance or at the time of collection. We may charge fees for storage if your lot is not collected within thirty days from the sale. Please see paragraph G of the Conditions of Sale for further detail.
Tel: +1 212 636 2650
Email: PostSaleUS@christies.com
02/08/19
SHIPPING AND DELIVERY
Christie’s Post-Sale Service can organize domestic deliveries or international freight. Please contact them on +1 212 636 2650 or PostSaleUS@christies.com.
Long-term storage solutions are also available per client request. CFASS is a separate subsidiary of Christie’s and clients enjoy complete confidentiality. Please contact CFASS New York for details and rates: +1 212 636 2070 or storage@cfass.com
CHRISTIE’S ROCKEFELLER CENTER
20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 10020
Tel: +1 212 636 2000
PostSaleUS@christies.com
Main Entrance on 49th Street
Receiving/Shipping Entrance on 48th Street
Hours: 9.30 AM - 5.00 PM
Monday-Friday except Public Holidays
CHRISTIE’S FINE ART STORAGE SERVICES (CFASS)
62-100 Imlay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Tel: +1 212 974 4500
PostSaleUS@christies.com
Main Entrance on Corner of Imlay and Bowne St
Hours: 9.30 AM - 5.00 PM
Monday-Friday except Public Holidays
Anti-money laundering regulations require Christie’s and other art businesses to verify the identity of all clients. To register as a new client, you will need to provide the following documents, or if you are an existing client, you will be prompted to provide any outstanding documents the next time you transact.
• A copy of your passport or other government-issued photo ID.
• Proof of your residential address (such as a bank statement or utility bill) dated within the last three months.
Please upload your documents through your christies.com account: click ‘My Account’ followed by ‘Complete Profle’. You can also email your documents to info@christies.com or provide them in person.
• Formal documents showing the company’s incorporation, its registered office and business address, and its officers, members and ultimate beneficial owners
• A passport or other governmentissued photo ID for each beneficial owner and authorised user.
Please email your documents to info@christies.com or provide them in person.
Wednesday 20 November 2024 at 10.00am
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020
VIEWING
Saturday 9 November – Wednesday 20 November
Monday – Saturday 10.00am-5.00pm Sunday 1.00pm-5.00pm
AUCTION CODE AND NUMBER
In sending absentee bids or making enquiries, this sale should be referred to as TUBE-23871
ABSENTEE AND TELEPHONE BIDS
Tel: +1 212 636 2437
Friday 13 December 2024 at 10.00am
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020
VIEWING
Friday 6 December – Thursday 12 December Monday – Sunday 10.00am-5.00pm
AUCTION CODE AND NUMBER
In sending absentee bids or making enquiries, this sale should be referred to as JOY-23872
ABSENTEE AND TELEPHONE BIDS
Tel: +1 212 636 2437
DESIGN
Kent Albin
COPYRIGHT COORDINATION AND PICTURE RESEARCH
Anne Homans and Sebastien Grimbaum
ESSAYS
Anna Campbell
Jennifer Duignam
Billy Jobling
Stephen Jones
Annabel Matterson
Laura Phillips
SPECIAL THANKS
Nicole Arnot
Viviana Barberi
Charlie Capstick-Dale
Quinn Carlisle
Charlie Cator
Lee Cohen
Melanie Davroux
Sheri Farber
Johanna Flaum
Vanessa Fusco
Ava Galeva
Vlad Golanov
Maggie Hoag
Emily Kaplan
Imogen Kerr
David Kleiweg de Zwaan
Kate Lawlor
Gin Lin
Cyrus Marenzi
Anita Martignetti
Matthew Masin
Rita Nakouzi
Kelsy O’Shea
Marc Porter
Cover – Lot 7A, David Hockney, Still Life on a Glass Table, 1971. © David Hockney.
Joseph Quigley
Jonathan Rendell
Rusty Riker
Rebecca Roundtree
Stacey Sayer
Sarah Silverstein
George Sutton
Erica Thorpe
Anndrew Vacca
Cara Walsh
Maria Wilson
Page 1 – Photograph by Nina Slavcheva. Artwork: © 2024 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Pages 2-3 – Photograph by Dan Osborne at VHT Studios. Artwork: © David Hockney.
Page 4 – Photograph by Nina Slavcheva. Artwork: © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Page 6-7 – Photograph by Nina Slavcheva. Artwork: © David Hockney / © 2024 Kunsthaus Zürich, The Estate of Fritz Glarner. All rights reserved.
Page 8, 214 – René Magritte, La cour d’amour, 1960 (detail). © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Page 222 – Joan Miró, Peinture (Amour), 1925 (detail).
Page 223 – René Magritte, L’empire des lumières, 1954 (detail). © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Page 224 – Photograph by Nina Slavcheva.
Page 226 – Photograph by Nina Slavcheva. Artwork: © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Page 229 – Adolph Gottlieb, Petaloid #2, 1963 (detail). © 2024 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Page 230-231 – David Hockney, Still Life on a Glass Table, 1971 (detail). © David Hockney.
EVENING SALE