1999
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Brown Northern Europe Blue diamond African gems Watches II
See also : Brown Northern Europe Blue diamond African gems Watches II
1999 Millennium by De Beers
2016 SOLD for HK$ 250M by Sotheby's
De Beers exhibited their finest diamonds at the Millennium Dome in London throughout the year 2000. The Millennium Star is an astonishing white diamond weighing 203.04 carats. Facing it in the cabinet, eleven blue diamonds are totaling 118 carats. All these wonders had been extracted from the Cullinan mine.
One of these blue diamonds was oval cut. Weighing 10.10 carats, it is not the largest of the eleven but it is indeed the most spectacular. It was certified Fancy Vivid Blue Flawless in 1999 by GIA with the designation De Beers Millennium Jewel 4. Mounted on a ring in a surrounding of small white diamonds, it was sold for HK $ 250M by Sotheby's on April 5, 2016, lot 1843.
This unprecedented treasure insured altogether for £ 350M excited high appetites during the show at the Dome. On November 7, 2000, a commando of four equipped with a ten ton earth digger, sledgehammers, smoke bombs, gas masks and bulletproof vests come into the Dome, ready to celebrate the new millennium with the biggest heist ever.
The gang was under surveillance and 200 police officers had been mobilized. The head of the counter operation had decided to let the robbers go up to the showcase window for security reasons because arrests are easier in a closed room.
Please watch the short video shared by Sotheby's to announce the sale of Jewel 4.
One of these blue diamonds was oval cut. Weighing 10.10 carats, it is not the largest of the eleven but it is indeed the most spectacular. It was certified Fancy Vivid Blue Flawless in 1999 by GIA with the designation De Beers Millennium Jewel 4. Mounted on a ring in a surrounding of small white diamonds, it was sold for HK $ 250M by Sotheby's on April 5, 2016, lot 1843.
This unprecedented treasure insured altogether for £ 350M excited high appetites during the show at the Dome. On November 7, 2000, a commando of four equipped with a ten ton earth digger, sledgehammers, smoke bombs, gas masks and bulletproof vests come into the Dome, ready to celebrate the new millennium with the biggest heist ever.
The gang was under surveillance and 200 police officers had been mobilized. The head of the counter operation had decided to let the robbers go up to the showcase window for security reasons because arrests are easier in a closed room.
Please watch the short video shared by Sotheby's to announce the sale of Jewel 4.
1999 Balloon Flower (Blue) by Koons
2010 SOLD for $ 17M by Christie's
After exploiting the stupidity of the contemporary symbols conveyed by the popular imaging, Jeff Koons conceives in 1994 his great series of Celebrations.
Inspired by the preparation of a calendar, Jeff Koons designs in 1994 and 1995 monumental sculptures to be edited in five units of different colors, each version thus becoming unique. The sizes are monumental. The about 26 themes are simple and symbolic enough to be understood anywhere in the world regardless of the culture of the visitor.
Celebrations are made in chromium plated stainless steel covered with a transparent colored coating, a process specially developed to offer an intense reflectivity in a perfect smoothness of all the curves. This finish of pure color interacts with the exhibition environment through an intense mirror effect for which the artist seeks perfection.
The project requires technological developments and the delays accumulate, leading the workshop to the brink of bankruptcy.
The monochrome subjects, arguably less difficult to realize, were the first to be completed, in 1999 and 2000. They are the diamond, hanging heart, balloon flower and balloon dog.
The Balloon Flower and the Balloon Dog are constructed in rounded shapes that reflect their environment in all directions. Looking more like a toy than like its animal or vegetal model, it appears as a symbol of happy childhood. The bright orange specimen is joyful.
Koons also wanted this series to be a break from traditional art and designated his Balloon Dog as a Trojan horse. Almost twenty years later, the prestige of the series shows that he was right.
Five Balloon Flowers 340 x 285 x 260 cm were built from 1995 onwards, each one with another color, and completed before 2000.
One of the earliest completed Celebrations was the Balloon Flower (Blue), supplied as early as 1999 to an artistic foundation managed by Daimler. It was sold for $ 17M on November 10, 2010 by Christie's from a lower estimate of $ 12M.
The quality of finish, and therefore the uniformity of color and beauty of reflection, were essential to appreciate this work. Made in chromium plated stainless steel, the Balloon Flower is coated with a transparent layer that generates a mirror effect and an intense reflectivity in a perfect smoothness of all the curves.. The blue specimen, delivered in 1999 to an artistic foundation managed by Daimler, had for ten years reflected the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
In 2010, it could not be sold as is, according to the standards of Jeff Koons. It spent six months in its original workshop, the Arnold factory in Germany, for being reworked at the initiative of Christie's and under the supervision of the artist. We are told that it became more beautiful than before, thanks to technological advances.
Completed in 2000. Balloon Flower (Magenta) was sold by Christie's for £ 12.9M on June 30, 2008.
Inspired by the preparation of a calendar, Jeff Koons designs in 1994 and 1995 monumental sculptures to be edited in five units of different colors, each version thus becoming unique. The sizes are monumental. The about 26 themes are simple and symbolic enough to be understood anywhere in the world regardless of the culture of the visitor.
Celebrations are made in chromium plated stainless steel covered with a transparent colored coating, a process specially developed to offer an intense reflectivity in a perfect smoothness of all the curves. This finish of pure color interacts with the exhibition environment through an intense mirror effect for which the artist seeks perfection.
The project requires technological developments and the delays accumulate, leading the workshop to the brink of bankruptcy.
The monochrome subjects, arguably less difficult to realize, were the first to be completed, in 1999 and 2000. They are the diamond, hanging heart, balloon flower and balloon dog.
The Balloon Flower and the Balloon Dog are constructed in rounded shapes that reflect their environment in all directions. Looking more like a toy than like its animal or vegetal model, it appears as a symbol of happy childhood. The bright orange specimen is joyful.
Koons also wanted this series to be a break from traditional art and designated his Balloon Dog as a Trojan horse. Almost twenty years later, the prestige of the series shows that he was right.
Five Balloon Flowers 340 x 285 x 260 cm were built from 1995 onwards, each one with another color, and completed before 2000.
One of the earliest completed Celebrations was the Balloon Flower (Blue), supplied as early as 1999 to an artistic foundation managed by Daimler. It was sold for $ 17M on November 10, 2010 by Christie's from a lower estimate of $ 12M.
The quality of finish, and therefore the uniformity of color and beauty of reflection, were essential to appreciate this work. Made in chromium plated stainless steel, the Balloon Flower is coated with a transparent layer that generates a mirror effect and an intense reflectivity in a perfect smoothness of all the curves.. The blue specimen, delivered in 1999 to an artistic foundation managed by Daimler, had for ten years reflected the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
In 2010, it could not be sold as is, according to the standards of Jeff Koons. It spent six months in its original workshop, the Arnold factory in Germany, for being reworked at the initiative of Christie's and under the supervision of the artist. We are told that it became more beautiful than before, thanks to technological advances.
Completed in 2000. Balloon Flower (Magenta) was sold by Christie's for £ 12.9M on June 30, 2008.
1996-1999 The Attendant by Marden
2022 SOLD for $ 13.6M by Christie's
The Attendant is a series of six paintings begun by Brice Marden in 1996 and exhibited together in 2000-2001 at the Serpentine Gallery in London. It displays a synthesis of the major phases in Marden's art.
The background reminds the rich monochrome flats in the Post and lintel series of the early 1970s.
The title and subtitles refer to Chinese culture but not through calligraphy and poetry as in the Cold Mountain series of the later 1980s. It now refers to Han funerary earthenware figures placed in tombs to accompany the deceased on their journey to eternity. These fully abstract musicalist lines stage the eternal loop of time.
In that new phase the lines in bright pure colors are fully sinuous instead of angular. The composition may echo the simplified abstract works by de Kooning in the 1980s.
The first opus is The Attendee. This oil on canvas 208 x 145 cm dated 1996-1999 was sold for $ 11M from a lower estimate of $ 7M by Sotheby's on November 13, 2013, lot 12, and for $ 13.6M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 39. The lines intersect one another in a sequence of red over yellow over green over white against a grey background.
The background reminds the rich monochrome flats in the Post and lintel series of the early 1970s.
The title and subtitles refer to Chinese culture but not through calligraphy and poetry as in the Cold Mountain series of the later 1980s. It now refers to Han funerary earthenware figures placed in tombs to accompany the deceased on their journey to eternity. These fully abstract musicalist lines stage the eternal loop of time.
In that new phase the lines in bright pure colors are fully sinuous instead of angular. The composition may echo the simplified abstract works by de Kooning in the 1980s.
The first opus is The Attendee. This oil on canvas 208 x 145 cm dated 1996-1999 was sold for $ 11M from a lower estimate of $ 7M by Sotheby's on November 13, 2013, lot 12, and for $ 13.6M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 39. The lines intersect one another in a sequence of red over yellow over green over white against a grey background.
1999 Nice 'n Easy by Currin
2016 SOLD for $ 12M by Christie's
John Currin loves working with images from the Renaissance masters to the point of replicating their errors in the proportions of the body. He assembles old heads on naked bodies. One of these postmenopausal and unfriendly women caught in back view, oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm painted in 1993, has enticed no buyer at Phillips de Pury on 13 November 2008.
It was beneficial for the artist and his work that he transferred his erotic impulses on a living muse. He falls in love in 1994 with the female sculptor Rachel Feinstein. Aged 23, she has a long body and small breasts like a Venus by Cranach and the wavy blonde hair of Botticelli's Venus. They marry in 1997.
Nice 'n Easy, oil on canvas 112 x 86 cm painted in 1999, was sold for $ 5.5M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2008 and for $ 12M by Christie's on November 15, 2016, lot 25 A.
Two women play a mannerist scene in full frontal nude. They have the same bodily features and the same porcelain skin but their attitude is opposed. The woman on the right is a day dreaming Rachel, her mouth gently opened and a hand on a breast in a gesture of trust. The other woman shows an exuberant joy and extends a hand over the belly of her fellow.
This quite mannerist gesture is a prediction of fertility to be compared with the hand of the duchesse de Villars on the nipple of Gabrielle d'Estrées in the famous painting of the Ecole de Fontainebleau. Nice 'n Easy is not a lesbian scene. It is the projection of a male artist who wanted to express with similar figures his erotic desire and its female incarnation.
The pearl effect of the skin is a reuse of the 17th century technique of underpainting. The elongated body reminds Parmigianino. Currin expresses his own virtuosity in tiny brush strokes. He does not paint from a live model, mingling instead the Renaissance ideals of beauty with the pin up girls of the 1940s.
It was beneficial for the artist and his work that he transferred his erotic impulses on a living muse. He falls in love in 1994 with the female sculptor Rachel Feinstein. Aged 23, she has a long body and small breasts like a Venus by Cranach and the wavy blonde hair of Botticelli's Venus. They marry in 1997.
Nice 'n Easy, oil on canvas 112 x 86 cm painted in 1999, was sold for $ 5.5M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2008 and for $ 12M by Christie's on November 15, 2016, lot 25 A.
Two women play a mannerist scene in full frontal nude. They have the same bodily features and the same porcelain skin but their attitude is opposed. The woman on the right is a day dreaming Rachel, her mouth gently opened and a hand on a breast in a gesture of trust. The other woman shows an exuberant joy and extends a hand over the belly of her fellow.
This quite mannerist gesture is a prediction of fertility to be compared with the hand of the duchesse de Villars on the nipple of Gabrielle d'Estrées in the famous painting of the Ecole de Fontainebleau. Nice 'n Easy is not a lesbian scene. It is the projection of a male artist who wanted to express with similar figures his erotic desire and its female incarnation.
The pearl effect of the skin is a reuse of the 17th century technique of underpainting. The elongated body reminds Parmigianino. Currin expresses his own virtuosity in tiny brush strokes. He does not paint from a live model, mingling instead the Renaissance ideals of beauty with the pin up girls of the 1940s.
1990-1999 Vertige Neigeux by Chu Teh-Chun
2016 SOLD for HK$ 92M by Christie's
The art of Chu Teh-Chun is devoted to the beauty and poetry of nature which he expresses in the form of abstract landscapes. He has retained both the subtlety of the brushes and wash of the Song artists and the sensory memory of Nicolas de Staël.
From a trip to the Alps in 1965, Chu sometimes introduces snow into his views. In December 1985 his train crosses a snow storm. Highly inspired by this unforeseen experience, he explores until 1990 the theme of the white winter.
Despite their geographical separation Chu had remained in close relationship with Wu Guanzhong whom he had known for nearly half a century. Wu is the great experimenter of the artistic synthesis between East and West. In 1983 he used the point and the line to construct a landscape.
Chu does the same to express the unlimited variety of snow. It is light or dense and floats in sunlight, and becomes mist or frost. It is the main actor of the scenery by masking the features of the landscape. The artist prepares the canvas with a bright wash that will provide an overall impression. If the effect of this texture pleases him, he paints his points and lines, more or less large and more or less dense.
He also appreciates the advantage of very large formats to express his poetic emotion but the lift of his building in the suburbs of Paris is too small to carry large canvases. For this reason his widest snow scenes are made as diptychs. Inspiration Hivernale, 195 x 260 cm, finished in 1990, was sold for HK $ 28.7M by Sotheby's on April 4, 2011.
Vertige Neigeux, 200 x 400 cm, is the ultimate achievement of this series. From 1990 to 1999 Chu meticulously modifies this painting until obtaining a perfect satisfaction. It was sold by Christie's for HK $ 45.5M on November 29, 2009 and for HK $ 92M on November 26, 2016, lot 2508.
From a trip to the Alps in 1965, Chu sometimes introduces snow into his views. In December 1985 his train crosses a snow storm. Highly inspired by this unforeseen experience, he explores until 1990 the theme of the white winter.
Despite their geographical separation Chu had remained in close relationship with Wu Guanzhong whom he had known for nearly half a century. Wu is the great experimenter of the artistic synthesis between East and West. In 1983 he used the point and the line to construct a landscape.
Chu does the same to express the unlimited variety of snow. It is light or dense and floats in sunlight, and becomes mist or frost. It is the main actor of the scenery by masking the features of the landscape. The artist prepares the canvas with a bright wash that will provide an overall impression. If the effect of this texture pleases him, he paints his points and lines, more or less large and more or less dense.
He also appreciates the advantage of very large formats to express his poetic emotion but the lift of his building in the suburbs of Paris is too small to carry large canvases. For this reason his widest snow scenes are made as diptychs. Inspiration Hivernale, 195 x 260 cm, finished in 1990, was sold for HK $ 28.7M by Sotheby's on April 4, 2011.
Vertige Neigeux, 200 x 400 cm, is the ultimate achievement of this series. From 1990 to 1999 Chu meticulously modifies this painting until obtaining a perfect satisfaction. It was sold by Christie's for HK $ 45.5M on November 29, 2009 and for HK $ 92M on November 26, 2016, lot 2508.
1999 Country Rock by Doig
2014 SOLD for £ 8.5M by Sotheby's
Peter Doig's pictures deal with the issues in the relationship between humans and their planet. His urban subjects show the time limited nature of constructions.
A parallel between some of his work and the art of Hopper may be considered despite more than a half-century between them. Both artists question the ephemeral architecture. They work in the studio, Hopper from sketches of abandoned houses made during his car trips between New York and Cape Cod, and Doig with specially collected images.
Doig is after Diebenkorn one of the artists who took advantage of abstract expressionism for a return to figurative. His impeccable control in mixing liquid colors made him the best landscape painter of our time.
Despite this success, the themes of landscape and architecture do not adequately express modern life. In the late 1990s, Doig discovers how the geometry is an inevitable component in the vision of the contemporary world.
His series of Country rocks, around 1999, is the expression of new contrasts : between the linear structure of the highway and the amorphous look of the suburbs ; between the greyness of the surroundings and the rainbow of the memorial tunnel.
The highway has become an inevitable part in our civilization. A surprisingly surrealist painting made by Hopper in 1939 shows three horse riders rushing at full speed into a tunnel in an uninteresting suburb. It was sold for $ 10.4M by Sotheby's on May 17, 2012.
On a six-lane highway near Toronto, a teenager girl died in a car crash in 1972. In memoriam her 16 year old boyfriend painted in the vicinity a rainbow around an insignificant tunnel passing under a railway. This signal for road safety will be acknowledged much later as a work of art, repainted in 2012 from a grant by the City of Toronto..
Doig painted this scenery around 1999 in a group of three paintings titled Country Rock. In his strictly horizontal composition, an ugly white security barrier separates the banal road from the unpleasant suburb. In the center, partly hidden behind the barrier, the rainbow borders the black hole of the tunnel.
One of these three paintings adds to the mystery an element that Hopper would have liked : the wing mirror, only visible piece of a vehicle passing in front of the tunnel at full speed and in total indifference. This oil on canvas 195 x 270 cm painted in 1999 was sold by Sotheby's for £ 8.5M on June 30, 2014, lot 27, and for HK $ 75M on October 7, 2022, lot 1214. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's in 2014.
On October 16, 2014, Christie's sold for £ 4.6M The Heart of Old San Juan, oil on canvas 250 x 195 cm painted in 1999, lot 58. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The inspiration for this painting may be compared with the Country rocks. Localized this time in Puerto Rico, its main element is a basketball court which offers its abstract geometry of lines, circles and panels in a rigorous bird-view perspective. The setting sun is an excuse for bringing a shimmering dimension to the green shades of the field.
Man is absent but his industry globally changed the scenery everywhere, including in the tropics. The refusal of the anecdotes does not prevent the immersion of the artist in this world where aesthetic shapes have been cleared by utilitarianism.
A parallel between some of his work and the art of Hopper may be considered despite more than a half-century between them. Both artists question the ephemeral architecture. They work in the studio, Hopper from sketches of abandoned houses made during his car trips between New York and Cape Cod, and Doig with specially collected images.
Doig is after Diebenkorn one of the artists who took advantage of abstract expressionism for a return to figurative. His impeccable control in mixing liquid colors made him the best landscape painter of our time.
Despite this success, the themes of landscape and architecture do not adequately express modern life. In the late 1990s, Doig discovers how the geometry is an inevitable component in the vision of the contemporary world.
His series of Country rocks, around 1999, is the expression of new contrasts : between the linear structure of the highway and the amorphous look of the suburbs ; between the greyness of the surroundings and the rainbow of the memorial tunnel.
The highway has become an inevitable part in our civilization. A surprisingly surrealist painting made by Hopper in 1939 shows three horse riders rushing at full speed into a tunnel in an uninteresting suburb. It was sold for $ 10.4M by Sotheby's on May 17, 2012.
On a six-lane highway near Toronto, a teenager girl died in a car crash in 1972. In memoriam her 16 year old boyfriend painted in the vicinity a rainbow around an insignificant tunnel passing under a railway. This signal for road safety will be acknowledged much later as a work of art, repainted in 2012 from a grant by the City of Toronto..
Doig painted this scenery around 1999 in a group of three paintings titled Country Rock. In his strictly horizontal composition, an ugly white security barrier separates the banal road from the unpleasant suburb. In the center, partly hidden behind the barrier, the rainbow borders the black hole of the tunnel.
One of these three paintings adds to the mystery an element that Hopper would have liked : the wing mirror, only visible piece of a vehicle passing in front of the tunnel at full speed and in total indifference. This oil on canvas 195 x 270 cm painted in 1999 was sold by Sotheby's for £ 8.5M on June 30, 2014, lot 27, and for HK $ 75M on October 7, 2022, lot 1214. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's in 2014.
On October 16, 2014, Christie's sold for £ 4.6M The Heart of Old San Juan, oil on canvas 250 x 195 cm painted in 1999, lot 58. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The inspiration for this painting may be compared with the Country rocks. Localized this time in Puerto Rico, its main element is a basketball court which offers its abstract geometry of lines, circles and panels in a rigorous bird-view perspective. The setting sun is an excuse for bringing a shimmering dimension to the green shades of the field.
Man is absent but his industry globally changed the scenery everywhere, including in the tropics. The refusal of the anecdotes does not prevent the immersion of the artist in this world where aesthetic shapes have been cleared by utilitarianism.
1999 Typewriter Eraser by Oldenburg and van Bruggen
2022 SOLD for $ 8.4M by Christie's
In the best tradition of pop art, the Swedish born Claes Oldenburg makes monumental enlargements of familiar objects for shop windows from 1961 and for public outdoor installations from 1964. He works from 1977 in co-operation with the Dutch sculptor Coosje van Bruggen whom he marries in 1979.
The now obsolete typewriter eraser had been an effective small and humble instrument that remained in Oldenburg's memory from his boyhood playing in father's office.
The number 3/3 eraser from a 1976 edition in painted aluminum, stainless steel, ferroconcrete and bronze 227 x 203 x 178 cm was sold for $ 2.2M by Christie's on May 13, 2009, lot 10. The giant disk-shaped eraser has just reached the ground, the bristles of its brush turned upwards.
The number 3/3 from a 1999 Scale X edition by Oldenburg and van Bruggen in stainless steel, fiberglass and acrylic polyurethane paint 59 x 36 x 36 cm was sold for $ 8.4M from a lower estimate of $ 5M by Christie's on November 10, 2022, lot 124 in the day sale of the Paul G. Allen collection.
The now obsolete typewriter eraser had been an effective small and humble instrument that remained in Oldenburg's memory from his boyhood playing in father's office.
The number 3/3 eraser from a 1976 edition in painted aluminum, stainless steel, ferroconcrete and bronze 227 x 203 x 178 cm was sold for $ 2.2M by Christie's on May 13, 2009, lot 10. The giant disk-shaped eraser has just reached the ground, the bristles of its brush turned upwards.
The number 3/3 from a 1999 Scale X edition by Oldenburg and van Bruggen in stainless steel, fiberglass and acrylic polyurethane paint 59 x 36 x 36 cm was sold for $ 8.4M from a lower estimate of $ 5M by Christie's on November 10, 2022, lot 124 in the day sale of the Paul G. Allen collection.
1999 Cecily BROWN
1
Suddenly Last Summer
2018 SOLD for $ 6.8M by Sotheby's
Cecily Brown is the daughter of David Sylvester, the British art critic who promoted Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. She moves permanently to New York in 1994.
Her artistic target is unprecedented but quite logical : the viewer must be fascinated by the art to the point of not being able to turn his gaze away. A painting makes a relationship between the artist and the voyeur. The artist is a storyteller, a stage designer. The viewer only expects to be captivated or titillated.
She builds her recipe with simple elements : large size, impasto, shameless sex. She associates the thick naked flesh by Lucian Freud with the torments of Francis Bacon in a boundary between expressionism and abstraction. She gets her first successes by introducing group exhibitionism into her abstractions.
Her paintings are a mingle of colors in heavy layers. The flesh is recognizable by its color but mostly hidden in the folds of the impasto. The viewer cannot perceive from a single angle all the secrets of the composition and stays in front of the canvas until he believes having elucidated its mystery.
The sceneries take place within an intensely colorful fragmented background that reminds the enigmatic abstract landscapes painted by de Kooning in Long Island. She undoubtedly applies de Kooning's famous statement : "Flesh is the reason (why) oil paint was invented".
The early titles are often taken from musical films. They play a major role in the magic of the image, inviting the viewer to discover in the rest of the scene some pornographic or orgiastic details which are or are not therein.
The tangle of colors is such that an overall interpretation is impossible regardless of the time spent by the observer in his contemplation. This subtle game between the fantasy and the perceived goes beyond the figures covered by Pollock and Klein. Cecily Brown is the first artist to have brought a feminine sensibility to abstract expressionism.
Aged 28 in 1997, Cecily Brown demonstrated her unprecedented themes and style in her first solo exhibition in Deitch gallery in New York.
Painted in 1998, The Girl who had everything gathers all the elements of Brown's style. This oil on linen was sold for £ 4.4M by Christie's on March 1, 2022, lot 50.
The size, 254 x 280 cm, is monumental. The title is taken from a 1953 romance film starring Elizabeth Taylor. The flesh color is dominant and some erotic forms are clearly visible, including a pair of buttocks in the foreground. The style is mingling Bacon's obsession of flesh with de Kooning's hiding of carnal elements within an overall abstraction.
The title girl appears at bust length at the lower right corner. She has a white gown and a hat. The elusive erotic rest of the composition is her hidden frenzy punctuated with flaming red areas..
From Cecily Brown's early series with romance film titles, Suddenly Last Summer refers to a 1959 hit directed by Mankiewicz, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.
Within a mingle of fleshy pinks, verdant greens, bright reds, and deep blues and purples, specialists catch famous paintings of the nude : the Judgement of Paris by Rubens, the Grandes Baigneuses by Cézanne and the Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet.
This oil on canvas 254 x 280 cm painted in 1999 was sold for $ 6.8M from a lower estimate of $ 1.8M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2018, lot 43.
Her artistic target is unprecedented but quite logical : the viewer must be fascinated by the art to the point of not being able to turn his gaze away. A painting makes a relationship between the artist and the voyeur. The artist is a storyteller, a stage designer. The viewer only expects to be captivated or titillated.
She builds her recipe with simple elements : large size, impasto, shameless sex. She associates the thick naked flesh by Lucian Freud with the torments of Francis Bacon in a boundary between expressionism and abstraction. She gets her first successes by introducing group exhibitionism into her abstractions.
Her paintings are a mingle of colors in heavy layers. The flesh is recognizable by its color but mostly hidden in the folds of the impasto. The viewer cannot perceive from a single angle all the secrets of the composition and stays in front of the canvas until he believes having elucidated its mystery.
The sceneries take place within an intensely colorful fragmented background that reminds the enigmatic abstract landscapes painted by de Kooning in Long Island. She undoubtedly applies de Kooning's famous statement : "Flesh is the reason (why) oil paint was invented".
The early titles are often taken from musical films. They play a major role in the magic of the image, inviting the viewer to discover in the rest of the scene some pornographic or orgiastic details which are or are not therein.
The tangle of colors is such that an overall interpretation is impossible regardless of the time spent by the observer in his contemplation. This subtle game between the fantasy and the perceived goes beyond the figures covered by Pollock and Klein. Cecily Brown is the first artist to have brought a feminine sensibility to abstract expressionism.
Aged 28 in 1997, Cecily Brown demonstrated her unprecedented themes and style in her first solo exhibition in Deitch gallery in New York.
Painted in 1998, The Girl who had everything gathers all the elements of Brown's style. This oil on linen was sold for £ 4.4M by Christie's on March 1, 2022, lot 50.
The size, 254 x 280 cm, is monumental. The title is taken from a 1953 romance film starring Elizabeth Taylor. The flesh color is dominant and some erotic forms are clearly visible, including a pair of buttocks in the foreground. The style is mingling Bacon's obsession of flesh with de Kooning's hiding of carnal elements within an overall abstraction.
The title girl appears at bust length at the lower right corner. She has a white gown and a hat. The elusive erotic rest of the composition is her hidden frenzy punctuated with flaming red areas..
From Cecily Brown's early series with romance film titles, Suddenly Last Summer refers to a 1959 hit directed by Mankiewicz, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.
Within a mingle of fleshy pinks, verdant greens, bright reds, and deep blues and purples, specialists catch famous paintings of the nude : the Judgement of Paris by Rubens, the Grandes Baigneuses by Cézanne and the Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet.
This oil on canvas 254 x 280 cm painted in 1999 was sold for $ 6.8M from a lower estimate of $ 1.8M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2018, lot 43.
2
Spree
2021 SOLD for $ 6.6M by Sotheby's
From the same series as the example above, Spree refers to a 1967 film. That title is pleasurable. The movie itself was not significant but it was released one week before the death in a car accident of its star actress Jayne Mansfield. A blonde sex symbol in the 1950s, Jayne had been in 1963 the first major US movie actress of the post silent era to perform in the nude.
Spree, oil on canvas 190 x 190 cm painted in 1999 by Cecily Brown, was sold for $ 6.6M from a lower estimate of $ 3M by Sotheby's on November 19, 2021, lot 112.
The pink anthropomorphic hues are mingled with yellows and greens plus dark abstract recesses in the signature thick impasto of the artist. The joyful painting style may have been inspired from Arshile Gorky's floating masses.
Again in the series of paintings supported by a film, Eyes wide shut refers to Kubrick' s masterpiece released in 1999. Painted by Cecily Brown in 2001, the oil on canvas 203 x 203 cm was sold for $ 4.5M by Sotheby's on November 17, 2022, lot 11.
Spree, oil on canvas 190 x 190 cm painted in 1999 by Cecily Brown, was sold for $ 6.6M from a lower estimate of $ 3M by Sotheby's on November 19, 2021, lot 112.
The pink anthropomorphic hues are mingled with yellows and greens plus dark abstract recesses in the signature thick impasto of the artist. The joyful painting style may have been inspired from Arshile Gorky's floating masses.
Again in the series of paintings supported by a film, Eyes wide shut refers to Kubrick' s masterpiece released in 1999. Painted by Cecily Brown in 2001, the oil on canvas 203 x 203 cm was sold for $ 4.5M by Sotheby's on November 17, 2022, lot 11.
1999 Eclipse by Zao Wou-Ki
2023 SOLD for HK$ 49M by Sotheby's
Zao Wou-Ki had a lifelong quest for infinity represented by the asters in the sky. Pierre Matisse, his New York dealer and agent in the 1980s, managed to inspire him also from his figurative predecessors at the border of abstraction.
While his own work remained abstract, he introduced arched framings in front of his unlimited brawls of elements. In 1986 an Hommage à Henri Matisse is more precisely inspired from La Fenêtre Ouverte à Collioure. Henri Matisse was Pierre's father. His art also became brighter after he met Zhang Daqian in Taipei in 1983.
Then went Monet, both for his impressionist touch and for his theme of La Porte d'Aval in Etretat, the spectacular rocky arch that frames the view onto the Aiguille. 29.02.88, oil on canvas 162 x 130 cm, is such an acbstract arch and sky composition. It was sold for HK $ 50M by Sotheby's on July 8, 2020, lot 1016. The monumental triptych Hommage à Claude Monet, 194 x 480 cm painted in 1991, is the culmination of that trend.
11.08.99, subtitled Eclipse, was painted in 1999 after the return of sunlight from behind the moon in a total solar eclipse, interpreting the special light of that astronomical event in a pointillist application of bluish purple on pale green. The left part of the arch is prolongated by pseudo-calligraphic figures.
This monumental oil on canvas 250 x 200 cm was sold for HK $ 49M from a lower estimate of HK $ 30M by Sotheby's on April 5, 2023, lot 1024. Please watch the video shared by the auction house, also introducing a slightly earlier painting.
While his own work remained abstract, he introduced arched framings in front of his unlimited brawls of elements. In 1986 an Hommage à Henri Matisse is more precisely inspired from La Fenêtre Ouverte à Collioure. Henri Matisse was Pierre's father. His art also became brighter after he met Zhang Daqian in Taipei in 1983.
Then went Monet, both for his impressionist touch and for his theme of La Porte d'Aval in Etretat, the spectacular rocky arch that frames the view onto the Aiguille. 29.02.88, oil on canvas 162 x 130 cm, is such an acbstract arch and sky composition. It was sold for HK $ 50M by Sotheby's on July 8, 2020, lot 1016. The monumental triptych Hommage à Claude Monet, 194 x 480 cm painted in 1991, is the culmination of that trend.
11.08.99, subtitled Eclipse, was painted in 1999 after the return of sunlight from behind the moon in a total solar eclipse, interpreting the special light of that astronomical event in a pointillist application of bluish purple on pale green. The left part of the arch is prolongated by pseudo-calligraphic figures.
This monumental oil on canvas 250 x 200 cm was sold for HK $ 49M from a lower estimate of HK $ 30M by Sotheby's on April 5, 2023, lot 1024. Please watch the video shared by the auction house, also introducing a slightly earlier painting.
