Steven Parrino

Estate of the artist

Sale: Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Carte Blanche, 8 November 2010, Lot 28

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection of the left canvas reveals very minor handling marks to the extreme top edge. Close inspection of the right canvas reveals a small number of hairline cracks with associated specks of paint loss to the most protruding canvas folds: two spots to the far left vertical fold, two specks to the centre of the bottom edge and a small network towards the centre of the composition, some of these have been inpainted and fluoresce darker under ultraviolet light.
"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."

Schism’s Kiss from 2002 utterly epitomises Steven Parrino’s subversive painterly dialectic: a creative language that shatters traditional artistic boundaries through its re-interpretation of the practice of painting. Marc-Olivier Wahler has noted Parrino’s diverse influences as well as his ability to bridge the dichotomous boundaries between late twentieth-century popular culture, philosophy and music: “Steven Parrino made the apparently inconceivable junction between Pop culture and Greenbergian modernism. He brought together the aesthetics of Hell’s Angels and Minimal Art… Parrino was the Dr. Frankenstein of painting. A witness to the death of painting, he unremittingly brought it back to life by replacing each and every piece of its corpse” (Marc-Olivier Wahler quoted in: La Marque Noir: Steven Parrino Retrospective, Prospective, 2007, online resource). Embodying one of the most monumental works ever produced by the artist, Schism’s Kiss reveals this concept of bringing painting ‘back to life’ with its combination of complex contortion and minimal smoothness on opposite panels: whilst the right hand side of the diptych confronts the viewer with a distorted, twisted aspect, the left side of this dual-natured work presents a totally different complexion, one of formal repose. The contrast between the two sections is strikingly asserted through the powerful sculptural quality of the draped half of the work. Parrino’s distinctive choice of title serves to further reconcile these dichotomous halves into an elegantly harmonious whole, with the divide, or ‘schism’ healed by the ‘kiss’ of the two disparate segments.

Throughout his career, Parrino intelligently re-invigorated painterly practice through interrogating a Minimalist aesthetic, transcending the boundaries of accepted painterly form and purpose in the manner of Donald Judd’s re-interpretation of sculpture by using industrial materials. Parrino’s solution of contorting and twisting the canvas ground renewed an investigation into the potentials of a medium considered moribund by many artists of the time. In subverting the purism of Minimalism for the post-modern age, Parrino effectively appropriates the ideals of the movement for his own creative ends. Fabrice Stroun argues that “In [Parrino’s] hands, appropriationist strategies became a kind of black ops technique, a means to convulsively incarnate the historical breakdown of avant-garde narratives” (Fabrice Stroun quoted in: ibid.).

Parrino began to create his extraordinary three-dimensional works on canvas during the 1980s, a decade in which conventional painting was considered a retrograde medium amongst younger artists captivated by the potential of more experimental forms of creative expression. Jerry Saltz argues that, despite their radical form, Parrino’s misshapen canvases should be seen as a development of a modernist interrogation of the two dimensional work of art and quotes the artist’s own views on the subject: “[Parrino] was radically dedicated to his narrow idea of what painting could be… Parrino didn’t want to annihilate painting. He came of age, he said, when ‘the word on painting was ‘Painting is Dead.’ I saw this as an interesting place for painting… and this death painting thing led to a sex and death painting thing… that became an existence thing…’ [Parrino] vividly demonstrates that no matter what you do to a canvas – slash, gouge, twist or mutilate it – you can’t actually kill it” (Jerry Saltz, ‘The Wild One’, New York Magazine, 28 October 2007, online resource).