From Haring to Hockney: Contemporary Art Day Auction Highlights

From Haring to Hockney: Contemporary Art Day Auction Highlights

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  David Hockney, Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966.
  Estimate £100,000–150,000.

  Executed during the artist’s first and most crucial visit to California, Beverly Hills Housewife demonstrates Hockney’s transition from the expressionistic style of his London studies to a hybrid of Realism and Pop. The current work depicts Betty Freeman, a patron of music and art, and is a study for a larger painting of the same name which is considered one of Hockney’s best known masterpieces.
  
  

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  Keith Haring, Untitled, 1985.
  Estimate £100,000–150,000.

  The bold simplicity of Untitled exemplifies Haring’s stylistic use of repetition to create his signature leitmotifs. Executed in the midst of the 1980s when Haring’s international recognition was flourishing, this work generates both a playful yet striking composition.
  
  

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  Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1983.
  Estimate £600,000–800,000.

  A dynamic synthesis of graffiti culture and hybrid fine art, Untitled , was completed at the apex of the artist’s career in 1983 when he was just 23 years old. This work substitutes perspectival accuracy and spatial recession for a pronounced flatness and a distinct emphasis upon bold colour and expression. It is a work that exemplifies Basquiat’s youthful, raw energy and is representative of his entire artistic practice.
  
  

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  Günther Uecker, Untitled, 1971.
  Estimate £200,000–300,000.

  A stunning and optically challenging work, Untitled , is characteristic of the artist’s adherence to minimal colouration that enhances the visual appeal of his use of nails. The nail became the central element in Uecker’s work from 1957 onwards and acts to transform the monochromatic painted surface into a palpable field of energy.
  
  

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  Kazuo Shiraga, Untitled, circa 1975.
  Estimate £100,000–150,000.

  Untitled by Kazuo Shiraga is charged with the action and spiritual energy that manifested itself within the Japanese avant-garde in the post-war era. It is a stylistically distinctive work featuring a highly abstracted composition with a simple palette of swirling reds, browns and a hint of blue. In this work Shiraga emphasises the unity of the mind and the body, interweaving philosophical and conceptual elements in his highly raw and corporeal painting.
  
  

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  Anselm Kiefer, Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, 2000.
  Estimate £150,000–200,000.

  Inspired by photographs Anselm Kiefer took of Mao statues on a trip to China in 1993, Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom poetically synthesises the artist’s own background with references to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In this series Kiefer continues to explore the grand themes of history and myth, conflating an envisioned world with the brutal reality of the past.
  
  

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  George Condo, The Rock, 2010.
  Estimate £250,000–350,000.

  George Condo’s practice draws from vastly diverse painting practices – from Ingres and Velázquez to Picasso, Matisse and Warhol – whilst simultaneously incorporating references from popular culture. The Rock epitomises Condo’s unique ability to create unedited accounts of the paradoxes and complexities of human nature, producing a work which is both bitingly satirical and curiously poignant.
  
  

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  Günther Förg, Untitled, 1995.
  Estimate £200,000–300,000.

  Untitled is an impressive example from Gunther Forg’s series of lead paintings; geometric abstractions made with acrylic paint on lead sheeting, rolled or wrapped around a wooden panel or frame. Forg approaches colour intuitively and through employing minimal and elemental compositional devices he reduces paintings such as Untitled down to their purest essence.
  
  

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  Jean Dubuffet, Site Avec 5 Personnages, 1981.
  Estimate £140,000–180,000.

  Site Avec 5 Personnages reveals the conclusive shift in style and technique that occurred during Dubuffet’s final years, where he reverted to strong colours and basic imagery, depicting figures and spaces with no identifying features. Well known for founding Art Brut, throughout his life Dubuffet championed the need to constantly question the generally accepted conditions of art, culture and society and for this reason his work continues to remain contemporary and relevant.
  
  

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  Ed Ruscha, The End #46, 2004.
  Estimate £180,000–250,000.

  Ed Ruscha’s The End #46 is an enigmatic work which translates topography into landscape. Evoking a distinct Hollywood nostalgia the present work is one in an exceptional series of compositions that take the phraseology “The End” as both the subject and titles of the works. Works from this series can be found in significant international collections such as Tate in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
  
  

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• • 

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    Landmark Basquiat Leads London Contemporary Highlights
  • 

    Type: video

    Category: Contemporary Art

    Georg Baselitz, “The Greatest Living Painter,” with Sir Norman Rosenthal
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    Type: story

    Category: Contemporary Art

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    Type: slideshow

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    Type: story

    Category: Impressionist & Modern Art

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