John Chamberlain

Xavier Fourcade Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1987

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Five American Artists: Lynda Benglis, John Chamberlain, Joel Fisher, Mel Kendrick, Robert Therrein, January - April 1988
Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, After Construction: Works from the Collection, February - May 1994, n.p., illustrated in color
Lund, Konsthall, Magasin 3 besöker Lunds Konsthall (Magasin 3 Visits Lund Konsthall), July - August 1996
Malmö, Rooseum, A House is not a Home, October – December 1997
Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Something Turned Into a Thing, September 2012 - June 2013

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. The work is in two parts which hook together in the center. The scattered signs of wear, such as scratches and paint losses, are inherent to the nature of the found materials and the artist's process. All joins appear to be sound and secure. The work is slightly soiled from airborne dirt and dust, primarily in the deepest folds and crevices.
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.
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When observing John Chamberlain’s work, one cannot help but think of the word 'intersections.' In the literal sense, the experience of seeing massive pieces of deformed automobile parts intersecting each other, and imagining the sheer force that could cause such large pieces of scrap metal to intersect, is equally profound whether one is viewing his sculptures for the first time or the millionth. However, the idea of intersections goes beyond the simple creation of his work. John Chamberlain developed as a sculptor in the 1950s and 1960s, and his work appropriately exists at the crossroads between two of the period’s most prominent art movements, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. His sculptures combine the anti-figurative and subconscious creation of the former as well as the sense of order and space of the latter. If Jackson Pollock and Donald Judd had collaborated on a project, there is no doubt it would have looked like the relative of a Chamberlain. 

The title of the present work, The First Dance of Trees, highlights another intersection that permeates throughout his work: machine and nature. The former elements are immediately apparent in the artist’s employment of overtly industrial car parts and the use of welding to fuse such items together. The natural elements, while absent from the production of Chamberlain’s work, are quite evident in the final product. As art critic Thomas Crow astutely states, the act of exploring a Chamberlain is quite similar to “encountering an unknown archipelago of craggy islets, their cliff faces striated and buckled by forces of erosions and tectonics, overtopped in places by strangely twisted strata and subsiding flows of unstable matter.” In The First Dance of the Trees one witnesses a similar relationship to the natural world, but whereas Crow saw a cliff face in his Chamberlain, the artist presents the viewer with trees in this one. The sculpture’s wide base composed of multi-colored car parts serve as two sturdy trunks, each piece of metal adding a layer of bark-like texture. On top of the work lies a multitude of horizontal pieces of scrap metal that recall a canopy of leaves and, perhaps, are responsible for the work’s title.