Lot 419
  • 419

Tony Cragg

Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 GBP
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Description

  • Tony Cragg
  • Wirbelsäule
  • fibreglass
  • 320 by 130 by 130cm.; 126 by 51 1/4 by 51 1/4 in.
  • Executed in 1996.

Provenance

Lisson Gallery, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1999

Exhibited

Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Tony Cragg: Signs of Life, 2003, p. 498, no. 450, illustrated in colour

Condition

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer and deeper in the original. The catalogue illustration also fails to convey the impressive scale of the sculpture. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Please contact the Contemporary Department for further details.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Magnificently imposing it is larger-than-life scale yet subtle in its carefully balanced composition, Tony Cragg’s Wirbelsäule is an original expression of the artist’s highly innovative exploration of forms and materials. Reminiscent of the cairns that demarcate mountain tops all over the world, the sculpture at once represents a stack of stones in an impossibly delicate balance, and the human spinal column after which it is named. In this inventive fusion of the natural and the man-made, Wirbelsäule is an outstanding and iconic example of Tony Cragg’s influential work.

Having previously worked as a lab technician on rubber research, Cragg turned to art in the late 1970s and initially explored a formal language that was influenced by Arte Povera and Land Art. Over the following decades, his sculptural language would gradually resolve these two interests in a practice that is sculptural at heart, but which makes full use of scientific discoveries and the potential of new materials. As poignantly embodied in Wirbelsäule, Cragg developed a formal vocabulary that was made possible by his exploration of unorthodox materials, arriving at shapes that were foreign to our existing visual vocabulary. As the artist explains: “the objects of our industrial society as yet have very little information attached to them, so even if something like plastic has been accepted as a valid material for use in art, it still remains relatively unoccupied. It would be a lot of work to actually give poetic meaning or to make a mythology for this material, over and above its extremely practical and utilitarian value” (Tony Cragg quoted in: Patrick Elliott, Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings, Hew Haven 2011, p. 109).

The unequal distribution of mass in Wirbelsäule would indeed have been impossible had the sculpture been made of rock, but the artist’s use of fibreglass circumvents the limitations of natural materials and allows for a more poetic exploration of form. The sculpture therefore epitomises Tony Cragg’s discovery of a formal vocabulary that gives life to intriguing biomorphic shapes, and continually challenges the viewer to reimage the virtually endless possibilities enabled by new technologies.