Henry Taylor confronts the legacy of Gerhard Richter with a portrait that refuses the viewer’s access. Cassie Amoda replaces Betty not as a quotation, but as a reclamation. By withholding the face, Henry Taylor turns absence into power and rewrites one of the most iconic images in modern art history through an entirely different lens. A work that questions what a portrait can reveal, and what it chooses to refuse.
This Henry Taylor painting will be offered on 18 November in the NOW & Contemporary Evening Auction at Sotheby’s. A work loaded with art historical memory, but also a new cultural direction. The painting stands at the intersection of representation, authority, and who gets to define the canon. And when placed next to Richter’s own legacy, the implications become impossible to ignore.
