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Keith Haring, Mike Kelley & More: 10 Works to Start Your Contemporary Art Collection

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Our Contemporary Art Online sale is currently open for bidding, offering a variety of works by some of the most sought after Contemporary Artists, such as Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Olafur Eliasson, and Anselm Kiefer. Paired with these contemporary heavyweights, the sale also offers a great selection of up-and-coming artists with estimates starting from just £500. Here we delve into a selection of 10 works, all with estimates below £10,000.

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Past Auction
Contemporary Art Online | London
14–21 November 2019 | 2:00 PM GMT | London

Keith Haring, Mike Kelley & More: 10 Works to Start Your Contemporary Art Collection

  • Olafur Eliasson, Bachs Pythagoraskrone, 2011
    Estimate £3,000-5,000
    Executed in an intimate scale, Olafur Eliasson’s Bachs Pythagoraskrone lays bear the artist’s fascination with colour theory and intricate geometry. In true Eliasson style, the work responds to it’s immediate environment, as the translucent coloured glass offer a variety of different tones depending on the work’s surroundings. Eliasson’s work has become more popular than ever before after his recent block buster exhibition In Real Life at London’s Tate Modern.
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  • Keith Haring, Untitled, 1982
    Estimate £8,000-12,000
    In the present work, Keith Haring’s iconic and unmistakable cartoon figures vibrate against the bright pink sheet. Untitled comes from one of the most important years of the artist’s tragically brief career. In 1982, the artist burst onto the New York Art scene with his debut solo exhibition at Tony Shafrazi Gallery. It was this exhibition that began the artist’s trajectory to international recognition and his status as one of the most important artists of his generation.
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  • Marcel Dzama, Untitled, 2004
    Estimate £2,000-3,000
    In Untitled Marcel Dzama rejects all the rules of traditional perspective, as the figures float on a cool blue veil of colour, presenting a dream-like, otherworldly scene. Dzama’s instantly recognisable, idiosyncratic visual language presents these highly stylised, surrealistic and fantastical worlds, in which the artist interrogates human action and relationships. Dzama masterfully weaves a broad range of disparate influences in his work, from traditional Art History, to contemporary culture, and the visual vernacular of folk cultures.
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  • Phoebe Unwin, View, 2006
    Estimate £2,000-3,000
    Inspired by the bright hues and tones which coloured her childhood growing up between California and Cambridge, Phoebe Unwin’s View presents the portrait of a figure conjured solely from the artist’s imagination. The energetic palette and soft-focus abstract forms of this work ebb and flow between precise focus and dream-like blur. In Unwin’s words “It’s not about any kind of personal storytelling, I’m hoping to get to something which is more of the essence of that thing. The universal, timeless quality” (Phoebe Unwin in conversation with Laura May Todd, Apollo magazine, March 2019, online).
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  • Walasse Ting, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, 1974
    Estimate £8,000-12,000
    Kiss Me, Kiss Me carries all the hallmark’s of Walasse Ting’s signature style, a reclining odalisque is rendered against a backdrop of frenetic drips and splashes of vibrant neon colour. Much of Ting’s early career was spent immersed in the New York art scene during the heydays of Abstract Expressionism, where he formed a close friendship with Sam Francis. This influence rings throughout Ting’s bold, gestural, brushstrokes, hurriedly dancing across the composition with a sense of great urgency. Ting marries this influence with significance reference to Chinese calligraphic techniques, resulting in an instantly recognisable, highly personal artistic handwriting.
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  • Mike Kelley, Untitled (Girl and Toy), 1974
    Estimate £8,000-12,000
    Executed in 1974, Untiled (Girl and Toy) is a superb, vibrant example of Mike Kelley’s early works on paper. Here, the artist grapples with the seismic cultural and political changes of the 1970s. By rejecting the monumental and apolitical abstract canvases of the previous generation in favour of a figurative approach full of references to mass media, the artist seeks to lay bare the mechanisms of mass society. The artist’s works on paper from this period have remained central to his practice, as the artist has continually revisited and exhibited these works in the decades since their inception.
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  • Anselm Kiefer, Untitled (Sol Invictus Helah-Gabal), 1983
    Estimate £7,000-10,000
    Anselm Kiefer’s poetic interrogations of historical symbolism, investigations of his personal biography, fascination with materiality and explorations of shared cultural reference have earned his position as one of the most important artists of his generation. The repeated rectangular forms across the present work reflect the imposing architectural forms found in National Socialist architecture, and ruminate on the complex cultural significance of this in German culture.
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  • Whitney Bedford, The Hurricane, 2005
    Estimate £700-1,000
    Deeply engaged with the historical trajectory of naval painting, Whitney Bedford’s practice seeks to repurpose this academic imagery and reposition it within a contemporary setting. The present work offers all the hallmarks of Bedford’s artistic handwriting, engaged with a traditionally romantic landscape scene, where the figure is surrounded by an atmosphere of chaos and turmoil at the hands of nature, all executed in the quick brushstrokes of a skilled draughtsman. In her own words, “today, paintings of shipwrecks and battles scenes have once again become an expression of both the importance of passion and despair as well as the passion of despair. They are connected to a hidden, or imagined, imagery of our time” (Whitney Bedford, cited in: ‘Whitney Bedford, Self-Portrait, in Tema celeste, May 2004, p. 84).
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  • Kaye Donachie, Squeaky (Eyes of a Dreamer), 2001
    Estimate £1,000-1,500
    In Squeaky (Eyes of a Dreamer), Kaye Donachie renders the sitter in sensitive, muted brushstrokes, veiling the canvas in cool earthy tones. The entrancing scene remains purposefully ambiguous, and challenges the viewer’s imagination, pushing us to form narrative from this portrait, divorced from any perceivable context. Donachie’s compositionally photographic paintings have been compared to Luc Tuymans, while her focus on figures, specifically women, has been compared to Karen Kilimnik. Her practice is largely dedicated to beautifully subdued portraits of female protagonists; “The women I paint appear as spectres, images conjured through art and writing. These female protagonists have a clear sense of their identity through self-representation and affective labour"
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  • Sean Scully Wall of Light Blue, 2000
    Estimate £3,000-4,000
    Sean Scully’s highly structured compositions draw from a wide range of references from American minimalism, to urban architecture, to the rhythms of Jazz music. The present work presents Scully’s instantly recognisable geometric compositions of soft earthy tones rendered on an intimate, domestic scale. Scully’s atmospheric use of colour is highly informed, not only drawing upon the post-Impressionist colour palette of the works of Pierre Bonnard, but also nodding to Mark Rothko’s all-encompassing monumental canvases.
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