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Lot 2066
Richards Galloway (British). 'St Johns', 2004. Lincut print, 181.5 x 150.5 cm. Provenance: From a reputable private collection. Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2004. Literature: Saatchi Gallery Loan of Art, published by Saatchi Gallery, London, 2006 pp.98. From Saatchi Gallery Loan of Art, pp.99: A fair proportion of Galloway's university years must have been spent in the pub, if his large scale linocuts are anything to go by/ He graduated in printmaking from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2004, and many of his prints feature local East End boozers and the life that gathers there. They are teeming with incidental details, and offer a modern-day take on Hogarth's moralizing Gin Lane and Beers Street. Condition Report: Print direct on wood with outer frame surround but with no fixings to the back, floor standing.
Lot 2067
Richard Galloway (British). 'The Welly', 2004,. Linocut print, 181.5 x 150.5 cm. Provenance: From a reputable private collection. Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2004. Literature: Saatchi Gallery Loan of Art, published by Saatchi Gallery, London, 2006 pp.99. From Saatchi Gallery Loan of Art, pp.99: A fair proportion of Galloway's university years must have been spent in the pub, if his large scale linocuts are anything to go by/ He graduated in printmaking from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2004, and many of his prints feature local East End boozers and the life that gathers there. They are teeming with incidental details, and offer a modern-day take on Hogarth's moralizing Gin Lane and Beers Street. Condition Report: Unframed print direct on wood backing, floor standing, no fixing mounts behind.
Lot 153
A Nikon S2 'Black Dial' Rangefinder Camera, 1954-58, black, serial no. 6180885, with Nippon Kogaku Nikkor-H f/2 50mm lens, black, serial no. 755982, body, VG, shutter working, lens, G, some light cleaning marks and some internal marks, complete with maker's cap and maker's black caseNote: Very uncommon late 'black dial' example. Serial numbers over 6180000 had a black focusing scale rather than chrome.Provenance: The vendor reports this was owned by his uncle who worked for The Sunday Telegraph during the 1960s and 1970s.
Lot 434
A Leitz Petrological Microscope VI M, Slides & Books, A Collection of items belonging to Professor Sergei Ivanovich Tomkeieff; Petrological microscope signed to the front ‘ E. Leitz WetzlarNo. 190394 Armstrong College’, on cast iron black enamelled stand with plano-concave mirror, nickel plated polariser with condenser, body tube with slide in/out analyser, rotating stage with engraved scale, in case with lenses and accessories; a large card case containing geological and petrological microscope slides; with four books; Optical Mineralogy, Rogers & Kerr Printed 1942; Minerals and the microscope, H. G. Smith, printed 1919; Minerals and the microscope, H. G. Smith, printed 1933; The polarising Microscope, A. F. Hallimond, printed 1953 Professor Sergei Ivanovich Tomkeieff FRSE FGS (1892–1968) was a 20th-century Lithuanian geologist and petrologist. He was born on 20 October 1892 in Vilna the capital of Lithuania. He came to Britain either during or just after the First World War and began lecturing in Geology at Anderson College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1920. In 1948 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Arthur Holmes, James Ernest Richey, Sir Edward Battersby Bailey, Heslop Harrison, George Walter Tyrrell, John Weir, and H. B. Donald. In 1957 he became Professor of Petrology at the Anderson College.He was the author of many books including; The Tholeite Dyke at Cowgate (1953); Coals, Bitumens and other Related Fossil Carbonaceous Substances (1954); Isle of Arran (1961); The Economic Geology of Quarried Materials (1969) Dictionary of Petrology (1983) (posthumous).He was awarded the Geological Society's Lyell Medal in 1966. He died on 27 October 1968 in Newcastle aged 76
Lot 444
A Good Laboratory Dip Circle, English, c.1900, signed to the base 'W. Wilson 1 Belmont St, London N.W.', on three adjustable screw feet, base with silvered scale and single spirit level, vertical dial with scale to one side, removable glass window, with steel needle on agate knife rests, in original polished pine case, instrument height 24.5cm Note: Dip circles (sometimes referred to as dip needles) were used to measure the angle between the horizon and the Earth's magnetic field (the dip angle). They were used in surveying, mining and prospecting as well as for the demonstration and study of magnetism.
Lot 446
A Late 19th Century Brass & Mahogany Helmholtz Tangent Galvanometer, English, late 19th Century, unsigned but identivle to examples made by Elliot Bros. London, with two parallel coils mounted on two upright circles, the centre with a brass cassed compas needle with silvered scale divided into four quadrants, raised from the base on a turned mahogany pillar, all mounted on a rotating limb with four brass screw contacts, the base with tree levelling feet, 40.5cm tall. Note: Helmholtz refined the tangent galvanometer in 1849 by adding a second outer coil in order to make the magnetic field between the coils, where the galvanometer needle sits, essentially uniform. When at rest, the galvanometer needle and coils are parallel to each other and to the Earth's magnetic field. When current flows, the needle deflects, and the amount of current flowing is exactly proportional to the trigonometric tangent of the angle through which the needle has turned.
Lot 453
A Substantial Laboratory Spectroscope, English, c.1950, on large cast-iron base with support to collimator, telescope on rotating arm with large counterweight, arm with two vernier scales to horizontal circle, prism table with engraved scale and two vernier scales, on a large polished mahogany base with mahogany case, instrument width 60cm
Lot 459
A Brass Sector by Bate, London, English, early 19th Century, signed in script 'Bate, London, with hinged strut, finely engraved with a full set of scales in the English pattern, engraved with trigonometrical and navigational scales, the addition of sundial-making scales to reverse, outer edge with 12" scale Note: Clifton gives Bate as working 1808 - 1847
Lot 476
A 1½ inch Scale Model of an Agricultural Traction Engine, with copper boiler with fitted pressure gauge, water sight glass, regulator, firebox door, 1 1/2in stroke and 1in bore (approx.) engine with open crank motion with Stephenson's reversing gear, ratchet oiler system, safety valve and brass oiler cups, eccentric driven water pump,Dimensions:Length - 45cmFlywheel - 11.5cm DiameterRear Wheel - 15.5cm DiamterNote: Will need rebuilding if the new owner has intentions of getting it back to steam. Copper boiler with basic fire tubes engine turns but stiff, wheels and gears turn but again stiff would benefit from minor general restoration, cleaning and repainting/lining out - Sold untested and therefore for display only.
Lot 443
A shipbuilders 1/300 scale model of the "Princimar Grace" a Samsung Heavy Industries crude oil tanker. Housed in a glazed display case with a specification plate and entitled "158,000 DWT CRUDE OIL TANKER" in applied gilt metal text. 117 cm long x 41.5 cm wide x 45 cm high.NB: This item is being sold to help raise funds for the RNLI, who will receive 100% of the hammer price. Note that the monies raised from selling this Lot will be put towards funding a brand new Tower Lifeboat Station on the River Thames - which is the busiest RNLI lifeboat station in the UK!Condition report: No apparent major defects
Lot 156
Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)Two Figures signed 'K.Vaughan.' (lower right)pen and ink, gouache and wash on paper10 x 13.5cm (3 15/16 x 5 5/16in).Executed in 1943Footnotes:ProvenanceWith Leicester Galleries, London, where acquired by the family of the present owner, 1 September 1971, and thence by descentPrivate Collection, U.K.ExhibitedLondon, Leicester Galleries, Summer Exhibition, 23 August-18 September 1971, no. 46Vaughan was stationed for much of the later war period at Eden Prisoner of War Camp in Yorkshire. He worked as a clerical assistant and his German was put to good use as a translator. Without access to a studio or an easel and unable to use oil paint, he began to work on paper. As often as possible he went off to draw in the landscape, carrying a few pots of gouache, pen and ink in his regulation knapsack. Inspired by Samuel Palmer's jewel-like paintings, he painted the local farmers, shepherds, sowers, fruit pickers and labourers.He filled his sketchbooks with small-scale, but carefully worked studies such as this, intending to work them up into paintings as soon as he was able. Here he depicts two workmen, chatting together. Blocks of limestone and a tangle of weeds – typical Neo-Romantic ingredients – surround them. We are grateful to Gerard Hastings, whose forthcoming book Keith Vaughan: The Graphic Art will soon be published by Pagham Press, for compiling this catalogue note.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Lot 161
Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975)Night Landscape oil on board24 x 35.5cm (9 7/16 x 14in).Footnotes:ProvenanceWith Matthiesen Gallery, London, where acquired by the family of the present owner, December 1962, and thence by descentPrivate Collection, U.K.Night Landscape is part of a series of works on this theme which Ayrton painted during the early 1960s, inspired by his visits to Greece and his developing exploration of the legendary flight of Daedalus and his son Icarus out of the Cretan labyrinth built by Daedalus to house the Minotaur. Icarus flew too close to the sun, which destroyed his wings so that he fell into the sea and drowned; Daedalus survived and landed at Cumae, near Naples. This legend, and the associated story of the Minotaur, obsessed Ayrton for almost twenty years, resulting in some of his most powerful works in sculpture and painting, as well as two novels and a full-scale labyrinth in America. At one level the Night paintings record his fascination with the Greek landscape itself, especially Delos and the Cycladic islands; they are also part of his developing vision of the reality of the flight, of which he wrote in his novel, The Maze Maker, a fictionalised autobiography of Daedalus himself. Daedalus recalls nightfall on the wing after their escape:'The night came up, dredged from the sea and filled with gathering cloud. I looked down and saw the sea scuffed with breakers, ruffled and leaden ... I knew and feared the trap and end of night [and] I felt it closing in on me ...Far below I saw the seal-backed shapes of islands sleeping under me. There will be nothing remarkable in this to you, but it was new to me ... I saw how islands chanced above the surface and where, but for a fathom or so, there would have been other islands and I recognised the disorder of the earth's surface poured on its core in a flow like bronze escaped from the kiln and spreading, cooled and wrinkled on the ground.'The colours of the landform in the present lot are very much those of liquid and cooling bronze, insofar as paint can render them, and the vastness of the night sky reflects the horror felt by Daedalus flying through the dark. The Night paintings were important to Ayrton, both as a celebration of his love of Greece and its spectacular interpenetration of land and sea and as a vital visual tool extending his understanding of this ancient myth in practical as well as legendary terms.We are grateful to Dr Justine Hopkins and the Ayrton Estate for their assistance in cataloguing this lot and for compiling this catalogue entry.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Lot 126
Art of the Americas Model of kayac, InuitAlaska / Greenland. . Cm 42,00 x 3,00 x 5,00. A small scale faithful replica of an Eskimo boat made of wood, bone and parchment.Provenance: This piece is part of Pietro Felter's private collection(Roè Volciano-bs 1856-Sabbio Chiese 1915), gold medal for military valor, explorer and diplomat, and who for a long time lived in Harar where he had numerous properties.
Lot 1
FLORA YUKHNOVICH (B. 1990)Untitled 2018 signed and dated 2018 on the reverseoil on paper21.1 by 15 cm.8 5/16 by 5 7/8 in.Footnotes:ProvenancePalazzo Monti, BresciaAcquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2018ExhibitedBrescia, Palazzo Monti, Kate Dunn, Antonia Showering, Flora Yukhnovich, 2018Conjuring the sensuality of the Rococo style and the painterly potency of her contemporaries such as Jenny Saville and Adrian Ghenie, Flora Yukhnovich has seen an impressive rise to the global stage, culminating in Victoria Miro announcing her representation in January 2021. Yukhnovich has opened dialogues with the masters of old, and her unique style is never more razor-sharp than in the present paintings on paper. Two elegant studies for her large-scale canvases that evoke the vaulted horizons of François Boucher and Tiepolo, these works demonstrate the dexterity of Yukhnovich's brushwork and her superlative sense of colour and space, making her one of the most exciting contemporary painters to emerge in recent years.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Lot 18
CARMEN HERRERA (B. 1915)Untitled 2013 signed and dated 2013 on the overlap; signed and dated 2013 on the stretcheracrylic on canvas50.9 by 50.9 by 6.2 cm.20 1/16 by 20 1/16 by 2 7/16 in.Footnotes:ProvenanceLisson Gallery, London (HERR130014)Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2015Carmen Herrera is one of the most significant and celebrated minimalist painters of the last sixty years. An artist who has been at the very heart of late modernist practice, and has remained fastidiously committed to her singular style over the course of her life, the canon of twentieth century art has been incomplete without her inclusion until her late-life, institutional reappraisal. Presented here, Herrera's Untitled painting from 2013 is a canvas of searing simplicity; a superlative example of the Cuban-American artist's characteristic compositions that intersect space with razor sharp bars of colour. In the present work, Herrera's lifelong engagement with the formal qualities of the canvas – its objecthood, its surface, its composition – crystalises in a painting of lucid boldness. Elegant in its scale and ablaze with cobalt blue abutted by weightless solids of seething Indian yellow that fluoresce and glow over their respective corners, Untitled wonderfully demonstrates the visual poetics of Herrera's minimalist workings. Painted on the overlap and not hindered by any ornament framing, the present work gives an intensity and mass to the colours and lines that are essential to experiencing her work to its fullest.Born in Cuba in 1915, Herrera's astonishing life and career as an artist in Post-War Europe and America beckons from one of the most abundantly creative periods drifting out of living memory. Having left a politically turbulent Cuba for New York, cutting short her architectural studies to marry an American, Jesse Loewenthal, in 1939, Herrera had found her calling as an artist. They moved to Paris, residing in the city between 1948 and 1953 – a period that would be so influential and formative to her blossoming practice. In Herrera's early work, her astute sense of colour and form was evident and palpable. Akin to the blockish, tonal compositions of Paul Klee, taking cues from the work of Kazimir Malevich and Russian Suprematism, it was in Paris that Herrera would begin to refine her style and hone her rigorous relationship to colour and line. Working and exhibiting in company that included Piet Mondrian and Max Bill at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles – where she would show five times during her stay in France – Herrera's practice was not only on the pulse of the painterly discourse of its day, but she superseded many of her male counterparts in their experimentations that deconstructed and fragmented the singular plane of the canvas; the arena of contestation that would become so significant for contemporary painting of the 1950s.Post-War Paris was a hotbed of artists and intellectuals. It was a place and time without equal, from which flourished much of the philosophy, art, and literature that would be exported to New York in the following decades. Herrera's circles testify to her place in history and the respect she earned from those at the centre of cultural discourse in period: she was close friends with Jean Genet, Yves Klein and his family, sat across from Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Café de Flore, dined with Barnett Newman on regular weekends, and was an audience member in the first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot. On her return to New York in the 1950s, Herrera pared back her work to the harsh minimalist guise she is so fondly revered for, one of the earliest adopters of this newfound style. Her paintings now featured typically only two colours; angular lines became singular arcs; the plane of the canvas delineated into expansive, independent forms. Her fascination with line and form became her signature, famously stating 'I never met a straight line I did not like' (the artist in an interview with Simon Hattenstone, 'Carmen Herrera: 'Men controlled everything, not just art'', Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian, 31 December 2016, online). Undoubtedly, much has been said of the dialogue between her paintings and those of Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and a generation of minimalist artists who formally emerged in the 1960s, years after Herrera had arrived on the New York scene with her vivid, breakthrough style. In spite of her being overlooked by galleries and museums alike, her place at the forefront of contemporary painting since the 1950s is now regarded as hugely significant and enduring. Her unrelenting commitment to her own practice continues to be deeply engaged with the surface and object-oriented experience of painting – resolving her canvases in the simplest, discrete, pictorial frames she can achieve.Major reassessments of artist's careers are rare, and still more during the artist's lifetime. But no one has drawn quite such praise or unanimous admiration for their late-life success as Herrera. As it was in the 2000s, institutional recognition for the artist began to gain traction, and her first retrospective exhibition in Europe took place at the IKON Gallery in Birmingham, U.K., in 2009. It was her large-scale retrospective Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum of American Art, however, that reestablished the history of Minimalism with Herrera in full view, exhibiting over fifty works from 1948-1978. As her career will continue to be evaluated and celebrated, Untitled stands as one of a limited number of paintings as yet to come to market. Now in global museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Tate Collection, U.K., and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20), Düsseldorf, her legacy as an artist in the realms of Kelly and Stella is assured. An exceptional late painting by one of the most underappreciated artists of the modern era, Untitled is an exquisite example of Carmen Herrera's characteristic style. In spite of her setbacks and discounts, her fortitude in the face of adversity is testament to her rightful place in the canon, and the present work boldly displays the prowess and mastery of craft of a truly historical talent.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ** VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Lot 20
KAWS (B. 1974)UNTITLED (US) 1997 signed and dated 97; signed on the backing paperacrylic on existing advertising poster127 by 66.3 cm.50 by 26 1/8 in.Footnotes:ProvenanceAcquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1998ExhibitedNew York, bOb Bar, KAWS: Me vs Them, 1998Witty, provocative, and sophisticatedly playful, the bold and brash imagery of international contemporary artist KAWS (the nom de guerre of Brian Donnelly) is undeniably iconic and instantly recognisable. From the cartoon-like figures with X-ed out eyes through to the appropriation of such recognisable cultural icons including the Simpsons, the Michelin Man and Elmo, to name but a few, KAWS has created a body of work that is comparable to the likes of Jeff Koons, Takeshi Murakami, or Damien Hirst – period-defining superstars whose work has spanned an enormous breadth of media and captivated audiences around the world. A street artist who has risen to become one of the most celebrated contemporary artists of his day, KAWS' indoctrination into the fold of blue-chip artists has reached a new high, currently honoured with a mid-career retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. Beginning his career as an illustrator and street artist in the early 1990s, roving the busy streets of New Jersey and Manhattan in his youth, Donnelly graffiti-bombed buildings and trains with his notorious KAWS tag. Like many street artists who have graduated to the realm of contemporary art, including Banksy, STIK, and Blek Le Rat, his pseudonym has become inseparably tethered to the aesthetic and motifs of his practice – becoming a fully-formed identity that is impactful and unique. Tagging the urban landscape, however, was not enough for the young artist who soon began to apply his iconography to street-furniture and bus-shelter advertisements. This diversion from the street-art norm was a catalyst for the artist, engaging in a dialogue with the brand names and faces of fashion and photography that plastered the trendy streets of Manhattan. Working quickly and effectively, the artist removed the original posters and replaced them with the versions that featured his now iconic cartoon-like figures, drastically altering the message and aesthetic of the existing adverts. Archival footage exists of KAWS appending his banners to shopfront displays in mere seconds, before disappearing into the crowd. In the teeming streets of a bustling metropolis like New York City, his imagery reached an enormous audience; and yet the vast majority of the public were unaware of any difference to these mass-produced adverts that lined the streets. KAWS' pictures infiltrated and fed stealthily into the landscape of the city, becoming part of the genetic code of the urban sprawl. The artist's quiet rebellion has exploded to become a global phenomenon in little more than a decade, from these pivotal beginnings, rearranging the characters of adverts, to floating a monumental, inflatable 'companion' in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour in 2019. Untitled from 1997 is a superb example of one of KAWS' early 'subvertising' works. In the present painting, American actor Ellen Barkin is featured on the cover of US Weekly magazine, a source of celebrity gossip and entertainment. Scantily clad with her arms crossed over her chest, Barkin is a symbol of popular culture – the glamourised queen of public interest. Here, KAWS obscures the figure's face in his trademark skull and bones, the serpentine body wrapping around Barkin's torso in a seemingly loving embrace. Somewhat uniquely in such a work, we see the fastidious sculpting of paint here, building a gorgeously three-dimensional sense of one of his 'companion' creatures that are so often rendered in a flat cartoonish style. Rather than viewing it as a defacement of these advertisements, KAWS' imposed collaborations with the original photographers – many of whom he admired – should be viewed as a type of cumulative cultural interface; what is the product of high fashion and low tabloid fodder alike, becomes the artistic underpinnings for the street artist. In this vein, the artist elaborates: 'When I started painting on advertisements, it occurred to me that the ad really set the work in a specific time. You could look at a dozen walls and an untrained eye might not be able to distinguish the difference between the 80s and 90s. When you paint over ads, it clicks especially with the phone booths I was doing. There was these Calvin Klein ads of Kate Moss or Christy Turlington. I think that is when I realized it was more about communication. There was a dialogue to it' (the artist in: Tobey Maguire, 'KAWS', Interview Magazine, 27 April 2010, online).One of the most significant artists to inherit the mantle of Pop Art, the artist's use of pop culture icons, the slick surfaces of advertising and editorial material, as well as his own collaborative work with fashion houses, has constructed a bold but subtle critique of consumerism. KAWS collaborative work began with the Japanese company Bounty Hunger, creating his first toy, a vinyl figure of Mickey Mouse with his famed X-ed out eyes. KAWS has since produced a large variation of toys and figurines with his graphic motifs. Immensely popular, transcending the world of traditional fine arts, these mass-produced pieces have a flavour of Andy Warhol's factory to them, producing works on the scale of a commercial enterprise of mass production. A superlative, unique work, originally exhibited in one of KAWS' earliest exhibitions at bOb Bar on the Lower East Side in 1998, this Untitled painting comes to market as one of the artist's early and important 'subvertising' works; such examples are incredibly rare and highly sought-after by collectors. Acquired directly from the artist at this underground exhibition, it has remained in the same private collection ever since and is a supremely significant work by one of the most influential and recognisable contemporary artists of his generation.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ** VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Lot 8
ALBERT OEHLEN (B. 1954)Untitled (Baum 18) 2014 signed, titled and dated 2014 on the reverseoil on Dibond375 by 250 cm.147 5/8 by 98 7/16 in.Footnotes:ProvenanceGagosian Gallery, New YorkPrivate Collection, TurkeyAcquired directly from the above by the present ownerExhibitedZürich, Kunsthalle Zürich, Albert Oehlen: An Old Painting In Spirit, 2015Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Albert Oehlen: Woods near Oehle, 2016, no. 22, p. 57, illustrated in colourAn artist of uncompromising versatility whose punkish resolve has consistently challenged the prevailing painterly mores of his day, one cannot consider the arc of contemporary painting without placing Albert Oehlen at the apex of its developments since the 1980s. Presented here, from one of his most accomplished and novel series, the Baumbilder (tree paintings), Untitled (Baum 18) is a monumental example of Oehlen's bombastic style at its most distilled, harmonious, and complete. A painting included in prestigious institutional solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Zürich (An Old Painting In Spirit, 2015) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (Woods near Oehle, 2016), such museum-quality, exhibited examples from this series are rare to market. Capturing the mature style of an artist whose legacy is cemented in the academic and commercial annals of the art world, the short yet illustrious history of Untitled (Baum 18) is testament to its importance as one of the most prodigious works by Oehlen in recent decades. Oehlen's career has been defined by his brazen and anarchic attitude towards painting. Establishing himself in earnest in the early 1980s, Oehlen emerged as a young maverick associated with the European arm of Neo-Expressionism; a group dominated by his compatriots Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Georg Baselitz. Despite owing much to this generation of painters who had synthesised a renewed form of gestural, figurative painting, and sought to revive the medium from its critical diminution in Minimalism, Nouveau réalisme and Conceptualism, it was with his close friends Martin Kippenberger and Werner Büttner that Oehlen rejected the old hat 'expressionism' of the prevailing ideology. Oehlen's resistance was pointed, witty, and unpredictable, resolving to upend the solemn ground of the artist's canvas by employing humour and parody as equally as criticism. A central protagonist of the Junge Wilde – the 'young wild ones': a group of German, predominantly Berlin-based, artists in the 1980s – Oehlen produced work that at once cited and sabotaged artistic traditions; calling painting into question to create new perspectives.He collided styles, colours, surfaces, and subjects, producing what he termed 'bad paintings' towards the end of the 1980s; disorganised, layered canvases that sought to subvert the academic narrative that upheld the sincerity of figurative, expressive painting. Oehlen engaged the medium itself, using the plastic syntax of the surface to create arrangements that were intensely abstract and kaleidoscopic, yet operatic, sonorous, and grand in their ambition. This musicality prevails across Oehlen's oeuvre. His intense working relationship with free-form jazz and electronica has informed the artist's technique from the earliest days of his career, working through organisation and improvisation to address the constraints of his chosen medium with absolute freedom. In this vein, 'Oehlen tries to do with painting what others (Coltrane, Zappa) have attempted in jazz or rock: to immerse the listener in a burst of overlapping, saturated and expansive strata, getting rid of any story-line. [...] Oehlen's painting-machine is a mixer that flings objects, images and traces into outer space' (Pierre Sterckx, 'Albert Oehlen: Junk Screens', Albert Oehlen, France 2005, n.p.).The oscillation between spontaneity and composition, abstraction and figuration, culture and counter-culture, underpins Oehlen's practice. 'I am convinced that I cannot achieve beauty via a direct route,' the artist declares: 'that means working with something where your predecessors would have said, 'You can't do that'. First you take a step toward ugliness and then, somehow or other, you wind up where it's beautiful' (the artist in: Stephan Berg Ed., Albert Oehlen, Bonn 2012, p. 71). Consistently pushing the boundaries of painterly practice, using the latest technologies, supports and mediums to assemble his pictures, Untitled (Baum 18) – itself one of the most commanding paintings by the artist on aluminium Dibond – translates as a guitar solo in paint; combining passages of sharps and flats, tempo and fermata, Oehlen achieves a contained symphony that is perfectly pitched and magnificent to behold. Approaching his practice with such a variety of impulses, constraints, and source material, Oehlen's intuitive and restless spirit shares much with the Post-Conceptualism of American painters Christopher Wool, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, and Barbara Kruger. Whilst the strictly American branch of contemporary painting has its genealogy in Pop Art, unpacking and deconstructing the aspirational, glamourised image of late capitalism to reveal the Nietzschean tragedy at its core, the intensity with which these artists have rebuked the status quo, reclaimed cultural archetypes and inverted their creative medium is absolutely in step with Oehlen and the contrarianism of the Junge Wilde that broke with the stalwart expressionism of the 1970s and 80s. Oehlen, alongside Kippenberger, Büttner, Jörg Immendorff, and A.R. Penck, remains the principal catalyst and origin of a new wave of painting that continues today in the work of Adam Pendleton, Joe Bradley, and Josh Smith. In Untitled (Baum 18), the virtuoso hand and command of his medium is patently clear; no one element is overweight, misplaced, or imbalanced. It is a work of astonishing clarity. Imposing in scale, yet contemplative and austere, Oehlen's compositional mastery plays out across the present work in discrete passages of variegated paint folded over one another, teetering between figuration, landscape, and abstraction. Capsizing the figure-ground relationship, Oehlen achieves an almost ethereal quality here. Rendering the painting a stark white, with glimmers of an underpainting reaching through, the crisp arpeggio of blue translates as a window onto a paling horizon, over which the systematic arms of the artist's tree is suspended.For Oehlen, the tree is as much an abstraction of its constituent parts as his given subject matter, once referring to the tree as a 'program' for his paintings, not just a motif: 'In the beginning, when I first had the tree in the painting, I needed some motif. I thought, the tree, ah! [...] Then I started thinking, what makes it a tree? I can go here, I can go there, and whatever I do, it is still a tree as long as there's something in the middle rather thicker to the outside' (the artist in: Nate Freeman, ''I Just Enjoy Making a Big Mess,': Albert Oehlen on His Deconstructed Tree Paintings at Gagosian', ARTnews, 14 April 2017, online). The tree as both an image and as a formulaic approach to picture-makin... This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * AR TP* VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium.AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.TP Lot will be moved to an offsite storage location (Cadogan Tate, Auction House Services, 241 Acton Lane, London NW10 7NP, UK) and will only be available for collection from this location at the date stated in the catalogue. Please note transfer and storage charges will apply to any lots not collected after 14 calendar days from the auction date.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
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186097 item(s)/page