John Chamberlain

Acquired directly from the artist in April 1981

New York, Dia Art Foundation, John Chamberlain Sculpture: An Extended Exhibition, March - November 1982
Houston, The Menil Collection, John Chamberlain: Sculpture 1970s & 1980s, June 1987 - April 1988
Houston, The Menil Collection, John Chamberlain Sculpture: Selections from The Menil Collection and the Dia Art Foundation, March - April 2000

Julie Sylvester, ed., John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954 - 1985, New York, 1986, cat. no. 614, p. 167, illustrated in color

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. There are extensive surface scratches and paint loss throughout, which are inherent to the artist's choice of found medium and to the artist's working method. There is some evidence of rust in the crevices, which also appears to be inherent to the medium. There is some hairline craquelure visible under close inspection on the center black element. *Please note the auction begins at 9:30 am on November 14th.*
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In a career that spanned almost half a century, John Chamberlain created a prodigious corpus of work by coaxing poetically complex and intertwined forms out of his chosen materials. Through his persistent investigation into fashioning crushed and discarded auto body parts into artistic objects, Chamberlain experimented with pushing the boundaries of sculpture. John Chamberlain solidified his crucial place in the annals of twentieth-century art by tenaciously evolving his aesthetic practice whilst remaining true to his art’s conceptual foundations. The following six sculptures from Dia Art Foundation, in conjunction with five works being offered in the Contemporary Art Evening Sale, chronicle twenty years of Chamberlain’s renowned career, superbly featuring some of his most critical techniques and artistic practices.

Chamberlain first encountered what he described as the powerful aura of sculpture as a student in the early 1950s at the Art Institute of Chicago. He recounted repeatedly visiting the Art Institute to see Willem de Kooning’s Excavation as well as an early David Smith sculpture. While on each successive visit Chamberlain felt that the “presence” of de Kooning’s painting diminished, he had the opposite response to recurrently viewing Smith’s sculpture. Struck and intrigued by the physicality of the viewing experience, Chamberlain described encountering Smith’s sculpture as if he were “meeting another person.” It was this sensation of a corporeal exchange between viewer and work that inspired Chamberlain to make sculpture his chosen pursuit. As his theoretical practice evolved, he came to believe that sculpture should be regarded as having “its own life and its own qualities.”

Upon travelling to Black Mountain College in 1955 Chamberlain found a cohort of sympathizers for his unconventional views on sculpture. Surrounded not by visual artists but by poets, Chamberlain was introduced to the endlessly illustrative power of words. The words held aesthetic value for him, and he picked them based on how they looked. Two words that looked complimentary would then be placed together to form an illogical image. As he explained: “I remember one line I wrote in which I put together two words: blonde day. I’d never thought of a day being blonde. I still haven’t, but I liked the way that the connection functioned, and it’s a very good example of how I work…You can do the same thing with words or with metal.” The pleasure Chamberlain derived from uniting two disparate words perfectly describes the concept of the “fit” – arguably the driving force in his sculptural approach.

The introduction of word play and linguistic experimentation into the visual arts has a strong precedence in the Twentieth Century. Marcel Duchamp – in many ways John Chamberlain’s conceptual antecedent – explained: “If you introduce a familiar word into an alien atmosphere, you have something comparable to distortion in painting, something surprising and new…[one discovers] unexpected meanings attached to the interrelationships of disparate words.” (Duchamp in Katherine Kuh, “Marcel Duchamp,” The Artist’s Voice: Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists, Cambridge, 2000, p. 89) Duchamp’s process of linguistic displacement and distortion directly relates to his practice of detaching common objects – his “ready-mades” – from their intended function and placing them in a seemingly nonsensical context. There exists a deep affinity between Duchamp’s ready-mades and Chamberlain’s chosen common materials – one which is founded equally on artistic innovation and thought provoking poetics.

Chamberlain’s crushed metal pieces are often interpreted as the first successful attempt to translate the immediacy and passion of Abstract Expressionism into sculptural form. Chamberlain’s works certainly share an affinity with the art of renowned Abstract Expressionist Cy Twombly: the swirling steel strips that adorn the surface of his automobile part assemblages provide almost a three-dimensional parallel to Twombly’s aggressively emotional graphic scrawls. Likewise, as much as chance and gravity influenced the trajectory of Jackson Pollock’s drips, fortune and instinct presented Chamberlain with the ultimate shaping of common objects that comprise his sculptures. Chamberlain’s dedicated stylistic exploration and evolution, however, prevent a strict categorization of his work as the sculptural manifestation of Abstract Expressionism. Like Duchamp before him, Chamberlain’s work eludes any attempts to singularly or definitively classify it: it is not solely Abstract Expressionist, Pop, or Minimalist but incorporates elements from each of those pivotal genres, ultimately existing in a realm of its own.