1996
See also : Lichtenstein Doig Current art by women New Chinese painting Modern India Self portrait II
1996 A Nice Blonde with the Old Roy
2013 SOLD 31.5 M$ including premium
In 1993, when Roy Lichtenstein focuses on the female nude, he actually starts two different lines of images. In one of them, the woman is nude in her apartment, busy in her daily activities. The other set shows her in bust, centered in a bold close-up composition where the frame is cutting hair, arms and lower breast.
Same as Munch, Lichtenstein is a great picture maker who prepares prints. Prints from his later career, after almost twenty years, regularly appear on the market. A printed copy of the 1994 nude with blue hair, 130 x 80 cm, was sold for $ 320K including premium by Christie's on October 30, 2013.
The paintings on this theme are still rare at auction. A Seductive Girl painted on canvas in 1996, 127 x 183 cm, is estimated $ 22M , for sale by Christie's in New York on November 12.
This pretty blonde on her bed is a sister of the young women painted by Roy thirty years earlier after copying images in the comic books. Her texture is also composed of colored dots more or less densely arranged for bringing the perspective.
Unlike her former friends, she is naked. As usual with Roy, this modern young woman establishes a communication with the viewer, but for once she is not troubled but troubling. She gently seduces the old Roy.
This creative impulse was unfortunately stopped in the following year by the sudden death of Roy, aged 74.
POST SALE COMMENT
This great example of creativity at the end of Lichtenstein's career was sold for $ 31.5 million including premium.
Same as Munch, Lichtenstein is a great picture maker who prepares prints. Prints from his later career, after almost twenty years, regularly appear on the market. A printed copy of the 1994 nude with blue hair, 130 x 80 cm, was sold for $ 320K including premium by Christie's on October 30, 2013.
The paintings on this theme are still rare at auction. A Seductive Girl painted on canvas in 1996, 127 x 183 cm, is estimated $ 22M , for sale by Christie's in New York on November 12.
This pretty blonde on her bed is a sister of the young women painted by Roy thirty years earlier after copying images in the comic books. Her texture is also composed of colored dots more or less densely arranged for bringing the perspective.
Unlike her former friends, she is naked. As usual with Roy, this modern young woman establishes a communication with the viewer, but for once she is not troubled but troubling. She gently seduces the old Roy.
This creative impulse was unfortunately stopped in the following year by the sudden death of Roy, aged 74.
POST SALE COMMENT
This great example of creativity at the end of Lichtenstein's career was sold for $ 31.5 million including premium.
1996 The Dreamlike Cabin
2017 SOLD for £ 15.4M including premium
The landscapes painted by Peter Doig are very accurate, benefiting from his mastery of detail, perspective, color, atmosphere and reinforcing the realism of the work by skillful variations in the thickness of the paint.
Yet his landscapes are not real. Doig transfers on the canvas the scenery of his imagination. He admits that he does not know to paint a landscape from outdoor. He eagerly searches for images that best match the visual memories of his childhood in Canada, far beyond the possibilities of a verbal expression.
In the 1990s some themes come regularly such as the reflection of the scene in the calm water of a pond in a dreamlike effect that is indeed duplicated. His parallel universe is not completely wild. There must be a dwelling even if it is close to ruin. A barely sketched human figure sometimes appears.
On October 6 in London, Christie's sells an oil on canvas 170 x 170 cm painted in 1996 which offers all these characteristics. It is titled Camp Forestia by reference to the clubhouse on a lakeshore in Seattle of which an old photograph had been accepted within his mental paradise.
Camp Forestia is estimated £ 14M, lot 19. Please watch the video shared by Christie's. The image below under copyright of the artist is shared "for fair use" by Wikiart.
Yet his landscapes are not real. Doig transfers on the canvas the scenery of his imagination. He admits that he does not know to paint a landscape from outdoor. He eagerly searches for images that best match the visual memories of his childhood in Canada, far beyond the possibilities of a verbal expression.
In the 1990s some themes come regularly such as the reflection of the scene in the calm water of a pond in a dreamlike effect that is indeed duplicated. His parallel universe is not completely wild. There must be a dwelling even if it is close to ruin. A barely sketched human figure sometimes appears.
On October 6 in London, Christie's sells an oil on canvas 170 x 170 cm painted in 1996 which offers all these characteristics. It is titled Camp Forestia by reference to the clubhouse on a lakeshore in Seattle of which an old photograph had been accepted within his mental paradise.
Camp Forestia is estimated £ 14M, lot 19. Please watch the video shared by Christie's. The image below under copyright of the artist is shared "for fair use" by Wikiart.
1996 Group with the Red Scarf
2017 SOLD for HK$ 105M including premium
In his early series on Hospitals and Meats, Zeng Fanzhi brings a cruel vision of the relationship between suffering and indifference, and between human beings and flesh. A native of Wuhan, Zeng moved to Beijing in 1993. Like Kirchner in Berlin in 1911, he did not succeed in establishing in the big city a network of social relations that met his emotional need.
He then begins his series of the Masks showing the dissimulation of people behind social conventions applicable to all, erasing the originality of each personality. At the same time Zhang Xiaogang's Big Family expresses a similar discomfort of identifying the personality but in an opposite way : individuals are all physically different but their bleak lives are interchangeable.
The red scarf of the Young Pioneers is a rallying symbol of Zeng's masked characters. It also expresses the pride and unease of his own difference. This recruitment is offered to almost all schoolchildren as an incentive to enter the party line but the young Zeng, too bad a pupil or perhaps too emotional or undisciplined, never got it.
It is usually difficult to decide in a Zeng Mask image whether or not we see the real face of a character. This rule has two rare exceptions: self-portraits without the artificial smile and groups where the repetition of the same lines on all the figures reveals the presence of the masks.
Mask 1996 No. 6 is an oil on canvas in diptych for a 200 x 360 cm total size. Eight young Chinese people with the same smiling face, differentiated by their height and their hairstyle, are lined up like for a group photography, with hands on the shoulders of others to simulate their comradeship. Everyone has the red scarf confirming their lack of freedom.
Sold for HK $ 75M including premium by Christie's on May 24, 2008 from a lower estimate of HK $ 15M, No. 6 suddenly attracted the attention of the art market on the young painters of the Chinese social mockery, Zeng, Zhang and Yue Minjun, obscuring for a few years the variety of Chinese painting subsequent to the events of Tiananmen Square. No. 6 is back, to be sold on April 3 by Poly in Hong Kong, lot 173.
He then begins his series of the Masks showing the dissimulation of people behind social conventions applicable to all, erasing the originality of each personality. At the same time Zhang Xiaogang's Big Family expresses a similar discomfort of identifying the personality but in an opposite way : individuals are all physically different but their bleak lives are interchangeable.
The red scarf of the Young Pioneers is a rallying symbol of Zeng's masked characters. It also expresses the pride and unease of his own difference. This recruitment is offered to almost all schoolchildren as an incentive to enter the party line but the young Zeng, too bad a pupil or perhaps too emotional or undisciplined, never got it.
It is usually difficult to decide in a Zeng Mask image whether or not we see the real face of a character. This rule has two rare exceptions: self-portraits without the artificial smile and groups where the repetition of the same lines on all the figures reveals the presence of the masks.
Mask 1996 No. 6 is an oil on canvas in diptych for a 200 x 360 cm total size. Eight young Chinese people with the same smiling face, differentiated by their height and their hairstyle, are lined up like for a group photography, with hands on the shoulders of others to simulate their comradeship. Everyone has the red scarf confirming their lack of freedom.
Sold for HK $ 75M including premium by Christie's on May 24, 2008 from a lower estimate of HK $ 15M, No. 6 suddenly attracted the attention of the art market on the young painters of the Chinese social mockery, Zeng, Zhang and Yue Minjun, obscuring for a few years the variety of Chinese painting subsequent to the events of Tiananmen Square. No. 6 is back, to be sold on April 3 by Poly in Hong Kong, lot 173.
1996 The Final Drift of Kippenberger
2018 SOLD for £ 8.4M including premium
Martin Kippenberger has always questioned civilization. His offbeat art centered on repulsive self-portraits assesses that he cannot get an answer. Society does not prevent disasters. Sometimes it provokes them, causing scandals.
In 1996 he exhibited in Copenhagen his installation entitled The Happy End of Franz Kafka's Amerika. Beside his own work he sees The Raft of the Medusa.
This drifting Radeau painted by Géricault in 1818-1819 ensured the transition between classicism and romanticism, between official obsequious art and political protest. The monumental size of the original, 491 x 716 cm, makes it the equivalent of a modern installation. This painting based on a real fact intertwines the living, the dying and the corpses. Unlike classical painting there is no hero but the lookout sailor who dominates this terrible scene is a black man.
Kippenberger is sick. Cancer attacks his liver and pancreas and he refuses the healing. He is at the age at which Mapplethorpe had died, 43 years old. His wife Elfie photographed him in the positions of Géricault's characters. He produced a large series of paintings, drawings and lithographs on the theme of the Raft, centered on a rug displaying the empty flat raft.
On June 27 in London, Phillips sells as lot 8 an oil on canvas 150 x 180 cm painted in 1996. This self-portrait is staged in the position of the corpse close to falling into the sea at the bottom right of Géricault's raft. The dark blue stripe shading the left side of the image accentuates the idea that death is inescapable, somehow like Barnett Newman's sinister abstract Black Fire.
In 1996 he exhibited in Copenhagen his installation entitled The Happy End of Franz Kafka's Amerika. Beside his own work he sees The Raft of the Medusa.
This drifting Radeau painted by Géricault in 1818-1819 ensured the transition between classicism and romanticism, between official obsequious art and political protest. The monumental size of the original, 491 x 716 cm, makes it the equivalent of a modern installation. This painting based on a real fact intertwines the living, the dying and the corpses. Unlike classical painting there is no hero but the lookout sailor who dominates this terrible scene is a black man.
Kippenberger is sick. Cancer attacks his liver and pancreas and he refuses the healing. He is at the age at which Mapplethorpe had died, 43 years old. His wife Elfie photographed him in the positions of Géricault's characters. He produced a large series of paintings, drawings and lithographs on the theme of the Raft, centered on a rug displaying the empty flat raft.
On June 27 in London, Phillips sells as lot 8 an oil on canvas 150 x 180 cm painted in 1996. This self-portrait is staged in the position of the corpse close to falling into the sea at the bottom right of Géricault's raft. The dark blue stripe shading the left side of the image accentuates the idea that death is inescapable, somehow like Barnett Newman's sinister abstract Black Fire.
1996 Mother and Spider
2011 SOLD 10.7 M$ including premium
The spider does not look like us, yet we share the planet with it. Good worker, it tirelessly endeavours to create its web. It disturbs us and has no face, and we interpret it as a threat.
Louise Bourgeois was not an artist of animal themes when she reached fame in an age when her contemporaries have retired. She thereafter devoted to what she felt as the most intimate, and carved giant spiders.
For Louise, the spider symbolizes her mother whom she had adored. The high legs provide a shelter. Their slimness is a technical achievement, like the thread of the spider which is of extreme strength considering its size.
She created several models of all dimensions. The largest, 9 meters high, are entitled Maman.
A single piece in stainless steel was sold € 2.9 million including premium by Christie's in Paris on May 27, 2008. Made in 2003, 1.12 m tall, it has a dressed body, once again recalling the memory of the mother whose job was to repair tapestries.
A large model made in bronze in 1996 is for sale on November 8 at Christie's in New York. Its huge surface of 6.68 x 6.33 m for only 3.38 m high is providing a decidedly protective attitude. This artwork is estimated $ 4M.
POST SALE COMMENT
The spider by Louise Bourgeois sits firmly among the major works of contemporary art. This specimen was sold for $ 10.7 million including premium.
Louise Bourgeois was not an artist of animal themes when she reached fame in an age when her contemporaries have retired. She thereafter devoted to what she felt as the most intimate, and carved giant spiders.
For Louise, the spider symbolizes her mother whom she had adored. The high legs provide a shelter. Their slimness is a technical achievement, like the thread of the spider which is of extreme strength considering its size.
She created several models of all dimensions. The largest, 9 meters high, are entitled Maman.
A single piece in stainless steel was sold € 2.9 million including premium by Christie's in Paris on May 27, 2008. Made in 2003, 1.12 m tall, it has a dressed body, once again recalling the memory of the mother whose job was to repair tapestries.
A large model made in bronze in 1996 is for sale on November 8 at Christie's in New York. Its huge surface of 6.68 x 6.33 m for only 3.38 m high is providing a decidedly protective attitude. This artwork is estimated $ 4M.
POST SALE COMMENT
The spider by Louise Bourgeois sits firmly among the major works of contemporary art. This specimen was sold for $ 10.7 million including premium.
1996 The Far Side of the Blonde
2017 SOLD for $ 10.3M including premium
Unlike Warhol, Lichtenstein does not multiply images for flooding the world under his own vision. He is instead an explorer of the language and techniques of art and his main guideline seems mostly to have rejected the preconceived ideas.
Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight is a flat bust in painted bronze 104 cm high edited in 1996 in six copies and an artist proof. Playing with the dualities of painting or sculpture, of flat or three-dimensional, of positive or negative image, of metal and hole, this figure does not resemble either a bust or a bronze.
He reuses the picture of the young blonde who was the main female character of the Secret Heart comic book and of his masterpieces of the 1960s. This larger-than-life sculpture is cut out around the woman's head simulating on each side the same image from a magazine with clearly visible benday dots. The expression of expectation is the same, with closed eyes and half open red mouth.
However the two heads look very different. The Sun side carries the usual yellow hair and red dots. The Moon side appears darker with its blue hair and dots.
The artist's proof was offered in 2014 by the artist's deceased estate to the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation which now offers it to the benefit of the projects of its study center. It will be sold by Phillips in New York on May 18, lot 6. The April 26 press release announces an estimate in excess of $ 10M.
Please watch the video shared by Phillips.
Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight is a flat bust in painted bronze 104 cm high edited in 1996 in six copies and an artist proof. Playing with the dualities of painting or sculpture, of flat or three-dimensional, of positive or negative image, of metal and hole, this figure does not resemble either a bust or a bronze.
He reuses the picture of the young blonde who was the main female character of the Secret Heart comic book and of his masterpieces of the 1960s. This larger-than-life sculpture is cut out around the woman's head simulating on each side the same image from a magazine with clearly visible benday dots. The expression of expectation is the same, with closed eyes and half open red mouth.
However the two heads look very different. The Sun side carries the usual yellow hair and red dots. The Moon side appears darker with its blue hair and dots.
The artist's proof was offered in 2014 by the artist's deceased estate to the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation which now offers it to the benefit of the projects of its study center. It will be sold by Phillips in New York on May 18, lot 6. The April 26 press release announces an estimate in excess of $ 10M.
Please watch the video shared by Phillips.
1996 Migrants, Pigs and Gas Cans
2014 SOLD for HK$ 66M including premium
The artists of the new Chinese painting were troubled by overpopulation and its effects on individuality. In their social criticism, they often tried to find moral values in the family, such as Zhang Xiaogang and Fang Lijun.
Liu Xiaodong observes the people of the poorer classes. As ugly as the characters of Otto Dix, they illustrate the same message about the futility of their life.
Liu works from his own photographs or sketch drawings. In 1996, he saw two trucks, one carrying emigrant workers, the other leading pigs to the slaughterhouse. In both cases, the individual is contained in a small space and resolutely ignores his or its fate.
Titled Disobeying the rules, the oil on canvas 180 x 230 cm painted in 1996 is for sale at Sotheby's in Hong Kong on October 5, lot 1046.
On the platform of the truck, 17 migrants of all ages are naked. They smile stupidly without taking attention to the gas cylinders, in an involuntarily remake of the Wages of fear. The title is contemptuous : in their China that becomes wealthy, the individuality of the poor is no more than a trivial nothingness.
Later, Liu will also show the gloomy atmosphere of sexually engaged people such as transsexuals and prostitutes, accentuating the similarity of his artistic approach with the German expressionist including Beckmann.
I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's, showing the extraordinary speed of the brush of the artist.
Liu Xiaodong observes the people of the poorer classes. As ugly as the characters of Otto Dix, they illustrate the same message about the futility of their life.
Liu works from his own photographs or sketch drawings. In 1996, he saw two trucks, one carrying emigrant workers, the other leading pigs to the slaughterhouse. In both cases, the individual is contained in a small space and resolutely ignores his or its fate.
Titled Disobeying the rules, the oil on canvas 180 x 230 cm painted in 1996 is for sale at Sotheby's in Hong Kong on October 5, lot 1046.
On the platform of the truck, 17 migrants of all ages are naked. They smile stupidly without taking attention to the gas cylinders, in an involuntarily remake of the Wages of fear. The title is contemptuous : in their China that becomes wealthy, the individuality of the poor is no more than a trivial nothingness.
Later, Liu will also show the gloomy atmosphere of sexually engaged people such as transsexuals and prostitutes, accentuating the similarity of his artistic approach with the German expressionist including Beckmann.
I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's, showing the extraordinary speed of the brush of the artist.
1996 Self Portrait amidst Watermelons
2011 SOLD 37.6 MHK$ including premium
2016 SOLD for £ 2.05M including premium
PRE 2016 SALE DISCUSSION
The enthusiasm of the Chinese art market for Zeng Fanzhi reached a peak from 2008 to 2013. A self portrait was sold for HK$ 37.6M including premium at Christie's on May 28, 2011, lot 1024, but did not reach its reserve price at Sotheby's in October 2015 with a lower estimate at HK$ 25M.
It is now estimated £ 1,5M for sale by Sotheby's in London on June 28, lot 45, the last but one lot of the evening sale. I paste below my 2011 discussion slightly increased in 2015.
The series of the Masks by Zeng Fanzhi, begun in 1994, are constituting a favorite set within the contemporary Chinese painting. His characters hide their personality for reasons that are probably their own. Relations between humans are artificial.
In 1996, at the time of the full development of his Masks, Zeng painted a life size self portrait, oil on canvas 200 x 169 cm.
Zeng provides an image of himself without a mask. He is a young artist of 32 whose face is too serious, whose hands are too large and jacket too narrow. He is dressed cool but in western fashion, and for sure he questions if such a modernism betrays the Chinese tradition. The wall behind him is covered with some unreadable calligraphy.
The catalogues by Sotheby's include an interesting comment on a possible influence of Max Beckmann's self portraits on Zeng. The scattered watermelons may be a symbol for the commonplace garbage in Western and Eastern modern life.
On May 24, 2008, Christie's had sold for HK $ 75M including premium a Mask of the same year, 1996, 200 x 360 cm, on which eight aligned characters smile without reason, like for a family or team sport photo.
The enthusiasm of the Chinese art market for Zeng Fanzhi reached a peak from 2008 to 2013. A self portrait was sold for HK$ 37.6M including premium at Christie's on May 28, 2011, lot 1024, but did not reach its reserve price at Sotheby's in October 2015 with a lower estimate at HK$ 25M.
It is now estimated £ 1,5M for sale by Sotheby's in London on June 28, lot 45, the last but one lot of the evening sale. I paste below my 2011 discussion slightly increased in 2015.
The series of the Masks by Zeng Fanzhi, begun in 1994, are constituting a favorite set within the contemporary Chinese painting. His characters hide their personality for reasons that are probably their own. Relations between humans are artificial.
In 1996, at the time of the full development of his Masks, Zeng painted a life size self portrait, oil on canvas 200 x 169 cm.
Zeng provides an image of himself without a mask. He is a young artist of 32 whose face is too serious, whose hands are too large and jacket too narrow. He is dressed cool but in western fashion, and for sure he questions if such a modernism betrays the Chinese tradition. The wall behind him is covered with some unreadable calligraphy.
The catalogues by Sotheby's include an interesting comment on a possible influence of Max Beckmann's self portraits on Zeng. The scattered watermelons may be a symbol for the commonplace garbage in Western and Eastern modern life.
On May 24, 2008, Christie's had sold for HK $ 75M including premium a Mask of the same year, 1996, 200 x 360 cm, on which eight aligned characters smile without reason, like for a family or team sport photo.
1996 The Ultimate Embers of V.S. Gaitonde
2017 SOLD for $ 4.1M including premium
The art of V.S. Gaitonde is a hyperbolic approach to his passion. Like Zao Wou-Ki and Matta he went to use the abstraction to express his feeling of the sublime. The forms play over colors like the music over silence.
The oil on canvas is his unique technique throughout this course of almost half a century. Over time his mastery of texture and light becomes total. The artworks have no title because the psychology of each person is unique. Gaitonde does not try to be understood or to train disciples but those who will imitate him will certainly reach a nirvana.
Yellow is powerful and dazzling. A gold and ochre composition 140 x 102 cm inhabited by geometric shapes without apparent meaning was sold on December 15, 2015 by Christie's for INR 29.3 crores including premium worth US $ 4.4M. Painted in 1995 it is an example of the perfectionist creativity of his later career.
On September 13 in New York, Christie's sells an oil on canvas of the same size painted in 1996 which is perhaps the ultimate masterpiece by Gaitonde, finally releasing his inner incandescence patiently retained by his Zen.
This composition appears as a continuation to the 1995 painting. The vermilion background reveals the inner fire and the geometric forms arise like yellow and orange embers. It is estimated $ 2,8M, lot 414.
The oil on canvas is his unique technique throughout this course of almost half a century. Over time his mastery of texture and light becomes total. The artworks have no title because the psychology of each person is unique. Gaitonde does not try to be understood or to train disciples but those who will imitate him will certainly reach a nirvana.
Yellow is powerful and dazzling. A gold and ochre composition 140 x 102 cm inhabited by geometric shapes without apparent meaning was sold on December 15, 2015 by Christie's for INR 29.3 crores including premium worth US $ 4.4M. Painted in 1995 it is an example of the perfectionist creativity of his later career.
On September 13 in New York, Christie's sells an oil on canvas of the same size painted in 1996 which is perhaps the ultimate masterpiece by Gaitonde, finally releasing his inner incandescence patiently retained by his Zen.
This composition appears as a continuation to the 1995 painting. The vermilion background reveals the inner fire and the geometric forms arise like yellow and orange embers. It is estimated $ 2,8M, lot 414.
1996 The Black Madonna of the Suburbs
2015 SOLD for £ 2.9M including premium
The globalization brings a new culture linked to the meeting of the races. Gauguin in Tahiti was one hundred years ahead.
Chris Ofili is British of Nigerian origin. His Christian education mad him question the dogma of the Virgin Mary to which he observes the erotic features in some old pictorial figures. He will be the hip-hop artist of the African woman in a schematic style which is also a continuation of Basquiat by his racial activism.
On June 30 in London, Christie's sells The Holy Virgin Mary, lot 37 estimated £ 1.4M.
This artwork 243 x 182 cm was realized in 1996 with a mixed technique used to obtain a brilliant effect: acrylic, oil, resin, phosphorescent paper, pins and elephant dung.
The black woman is seated, in front view. Her long and slightly transparent dress releases a breast made in elephant dung. The psychedelic orange background is gorgeous, with a slightly lighter halo composed of radiating lines around the head.
This recuperation of the Marian theme with a black character outraged the Christians of New York in 1999, up to a lawsuit brought against the Brooklyn museum by the mayor of New York City on a charge of sacrilege scarce in a country so proud of its First Amendment.
This reaction appears to be quite excessive as The Holy Virgin Mary belongs to the theme of the glorification of the African woman and of her fertility. Orgena (A Negro), realized in 1998 in a similar technique without religious attributes, was sold for £ 1.9 million including premium by Christie's on 30 June 2010.
Chris Ofili is British of Nigerian origin. His Christian education mad him question the dogma of the Virgin Mary to which he observes the erotic features in some old pictorial figures. He will be the hip-hop artist of the African woman in a schematic style which is also a continuation of Basquiat by his racial activism.
On June 30 in London, Christie's sells The Holy Virgin Mary, lot 37 estimated £ 1.4M.
This artwork 243 x 182 cm was realized in 1996 with a mixed technique used to obtain a brilliant effect: acrylic, oil, resin, phosphorescent paper, pins and elephant dung.
The black woman is seated, in front view. Her long and slightly transparent dress releases a breast made in elephant dung. The psychedelic orange background is gorgeous, with a slightly lighter halo composed of radiating lines around the head.
This recuperation of the Marian theme with a black character outraged the Christians of New York in 1999, up to a lawsuit brought against the Brooklyn museum by the mayor of New York City on a charge of sacrilege scarce in a country so proud of its First Amendment.
This reaction appears to be quite excessive as The Holy Virgin Mary belongs to the theme of the glorification of the African woman and of her fertility. Orgena (A Negro), realized in 1998 in a similar technique without religious attributes, was sold for £ 1.9 million including premium by Christie's on 30 June 2010.
