BUT IS IT ART?
Jean-Michel Basquiat
The Ring
Signed, partially titled and dated “Jean Michel Basquiat “RING” 1981” on the reverse
Acrylic and oilstick on canvas
60 x 48 in. (152.4 x 121.9 cm.)
Executed in 1981, this work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Authentication Committee of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Jeff Koons
Hulk (Friends)
polychromed bronze
71 1/4 x 48 1/2 x 26 in. (181 x 123.2 x 66 cm.)
Executed in 2004-2012, this work is number 1 from an edition of 3 plus 1 artist’s proof.
“They’re there as protectors… but at the same time they can become very, very violent… . The Hulks are like that—they’re really high-testosterone symbols” – Jeff Koons
Antoni Tapies (1923 — 2012)
Oil on canvas signed
30 in x19 in
medium: oil – canvas
Spanish painter, Antonio Tapies, studied law from 1943-1946 at the University of Barcelona before taking up painting. He was largely self-taught and his early works had surrealist tendencies, resembling the styles of both Joan Miro and Paul Klee. During the mid 1950’s, Tàpies’ work shifted toward abstraction and he started implementing mixed media into his work. It was with these pieces that he gained notoriety. Tàpies started adding clay and marble dust into his paints and moved on to include scraps of paper, strings, and then more substantial objects like pieces of furniture. He put to words his feelings regarding the commonplace of materials and their value to artwork in his 1970 essay, “Nothing is Mean.”
Antoni Tàpies
Mestres Catalunya, 1974
Lithograph on paper
Collection of Glenbow
© Comissió Tàpies, VEGAP, SOCAN, Montreal, 2018
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Four Big, 1982
Courtesy of Christie’s
George Condo
The Girl from Ipanema
Signed and dated ‘Condo 8/00’ on the reverse
Oil on canvas
91.6 x 91.4 cm (36 1/8 x 35 7/8 in.)
Painted in 2000
An archetypal example of George Condo’s acclaimed singular and iconic approach that challenges and re-defines the conventional notion of figurative portraiture, The Girl from Ipanema belongs to a series of paintings by the artist that tackle the grand tradition of the nude. Taking its subject and title from the well-loved song by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Condo skews our preconceived visual depiction with his challenging portrayal. Looking up at the figure, with her long dark hair flowing against a wonderful blue sky scattered with romanticised fluffy clouds, the image of idealised perfection is disrupted by Condo’s typically distorted facial features. Painting exclusively from his imagination and art historical knowledge, Condo fuses influences from Old Master painting to Cubism with an awareness of popular culture, to create a character that is simultaneously ‘seductive and repulsive’, and ‘frightening and appealing’ (Ralph Rugoff, ‘The Enigma of Jean Louis: Interview 14 March 2006’, in George Condo: Existential Portraits: Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings 2005/2006, exh. cat., Luhring Augustine, New York, 2006, pp. 8-9).
Characteristic of Condo’s partiality for amplification and distortion, the girl’s face has been transformed into a warped contradiction featuring enormous ears and bulging features that meets our scrutiny with a cocked confrontational gaze. Picasso’s considerable influence on the artist is evident in Condo’s exploration into the re-invention of the facial features. Despite their distorted grotesque changes of form, Ralph Rugoff notes that Condo also instils his subjects with a sense of indefinable pathos: ‘Unlike in caricature… the preposterous features of these figures are in fact rendered with great sympathy. Drawing on the traditional rhetoric of portraiture, Condo imbues his invented subjects with a compelling psychological presence’ (Ralph Rugoff, ‘The Mental States of America’, George Condo: Mental States, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2011, p. 16).
Condo’s masterful painterly technique and strong characterisation of the figure set against an enduring backdrop, creates an effect that is both stylistically elegant and disturbing, repulsive and sympathetically engaging. The artist’s vision, embodied in the present work, uniquely and imaginatively re-examines the canon of the female nude in art history.