約翰·張伯倫

藝術家
瑪莎·傑克森畫廊，紐約（1960年購自藝術家）
亞倫·斯通，紐約（1963年與上述畫廊交換獲得）
紐約蘇富比，2011年5月9日，拍品編號9（由上述藏家委託）
現藏家購自上述拍賣

紐約，瑪莎·傑克森畫廊，〈新形態－新媒體I〉，1960年6月

紐約，瑪莎·傑克森畫廊，〈新形態－新媒體II〉，1960年9月-10月，頁碼不詳，載圖（瑪莎·傑克森畫廊展覽現場，1960年），品號14，載圖

紐約，亞倫·斯通畫廊，〈馬拉里、張伯倫、凱薩、安德森〉，1963年10月

克里夫蘭，克里夫蘭藝術博物館，〈約翰·張伯倫雕塑展〉，1967年1月

紐約，所羅門‧R‧古根海姆美術館，〈約翰·張伯倫回顧展〉，1971年12月-1972年2月，25頁，品號6，載圖

紐約，亞倫·斯通畫廊，〈約翰·張伯倫早期作品展〉，2003年10月-12月，2-3頁載圖（紐約亞倫·斯通畫廊展覽現場，1963年），40-41頁，品號20，載彩圖，封面載彩圖（局部）

教堂山，奧克蘭藝術博物館，北卡羅來納州大學教堂山分校，〈1958年前後：前所未見的美國藝術〉，2008年9月-2009年1月，31頁載彩圖

紐約，所羅門‧R‧古根海姆美術館；畢爾包，畢爾包古根海姆美術館，〈約翰·張伯倫：選擇〉，2012年2月-2013年9月，196頁載圖（紐約瑪莎·傑克森畫廊展覽現場，1960年）

紐約，穆欽畫廊，〈張伯倫／德庫寧〉，2016年11月-2017年1月，47頁載彩圖；60頁，品號10，載彩圖

約翰·D·摩斯，〈他回歸達達主義〉，《美國藝術》，第48期，品號3，1960年10月，76頁載圖

艾米莉·格瑙爾，〈藝術與藝術家〉，《紐約郵報》，1972年1月8日，載圖

歐文·桑德勒，《紐約畫派：五十年代的畫家與雕塑家》，紐約，1978年，155頁，品號114，載圖（局部）

朱莉·西爾維斯特，《約翰·張伯倫：雕塑專題目錄1954-1985年》，紐約，1986年，47頁，品號21，載圖

This sculpture is in very good condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at +1 (212) 606-7254 for the report prepared by Jackie Wilson of Wilson Conservation, LLC.
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Twisted, torqued and endlessly engaging, John Chamberlain’s Nutcracker from 1958 brings to life the spontaneous gesture that defined Abstract Expressionism in energetic, gravity-defying whirls of steel. Nutcracker is among Chamberlain’s earliest sculptures created from discarded car parts and has resided in only two private collections since its inception, including the distinguished collection of Allan Stone, one of Chamberlain’s greatest champions and supporters. The present work also bears an impressive exhibition history, having been included in significant shows at Martha Jackson Gallery, Allan Stone Gallery, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as both of the artist’s retrospectives at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York. Among the very first sculptures created from discarded car parts, Nutcracker is an elegant, complexly composed, and boldly multicolored example of Chamberlain’s artistic prowess.

Nutcracker twists upward in a complex configuration of distorted car parts, bent and curved in a tensile vortex of robin’s egg blue, cream, black and brick red. An old fender contorted into a deep V shape fences in the core of the work: shiny black crags cleaving a central ivory blade. A dark red swath cascades gently down, echoing the sharp acute angles of the sculpture’s circumscribing exoskeleton. The juxtaposition of curves and hard edges, solid metal facets and negative space, bold color and worn surface coalesce in a single dynamic gestalt. These concavities and crevices reveal the very signature of Chamberlain’s artistic process, indicative of the creative ingenuity behind this innovative approach to mark making. Chamberlain’s manipulation of an industrial and non-traditional material into an active and kinetic force characterizes the very best of the artist’s output, including the present work. Although initially perceived as haphazard and even violent, Nutcracker possesses a clear harmony and sensuality in the organic forms of the metal. In interviews with Julie Sylvester, Chamberlain commented: “I don’t know why people think that my work is about violence. [Claes Oldenburg] got it and they didn’t. He understood that there is a softness in the steel material, especially in the steel that covers a car.” (The artist, quoted in Julie Sylvester, John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954-1985, New York, 1986, p. 15)

Chamberlain was born in 1927 in Rochester, Indiana. In 1951, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; although Chamberlain would leave a year later, it was here that he first encountered a work by David Smith, an artist whose tendency toward abstract sculpture would open Chamberlain’s eyes to the possibilities of the medium. His enrollment at the avant-garde Black Mountain College, North Carolina in 1955 catalyzed his creative sculptural practice. Of this formative period in the artist’s career, Julie Sylvester writes: “Encouraged by [Charles] Olson’s emphasis on direct procedures, and fully sympathetic to his antipathy to the interference of the conceptual, Chamberlain began to make spontaneously calligraphic pen-and-ink drawings and abbreviated word-collages of nonsense – emphasizing the junction and disjunction of sounds more than Freudian word association. The poetics of structure were becoming sensate. Chamberlain’s drawn and written word-play is at least as significant as the [David] Smith-influenced sculptures he continued to construct at Black Mountain. The word collages presage the melodious non sequiturs that he often still uses in the titles of his sculptures to create verbal parallels to his images.” (Ibid., p. 28) Chamberlain moved to New York in 1957, the year before he created Nutcracker, which brilliantly exemplifies the poetic word-play in which he engaged at Black Mountain. Indeed, the lyrical title of the present work pops onomatopoetically, the “crack” of Nutcracker aurally echoing the fissures, ridges and creases inherent in the work.

In addition to his training at Black Mountain College, Chamberlain was heavily influenced by his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries. Nutcracker not only brings to the three-dimensional plane the gesture and action of his peers working with two dimensions, it also liberates sculpture from its traditional mold of carved stone or cast metal. Chamberlain’s initial use of color-coated steel was fortuitous, born out of his shortage of traditional material. Chamberlain noted: “I wasn’t interested in the car parts per se, I was interested in either the color or the shape or the amount. I didn’t want engine parts, I didn’t want wheels, upholstery, glass, oil, tires, rubber, lining, what somebody’d left in the car when they dumped it, dashboards, steering wheels, shafts, rear ends, muffler systems, transmissions, fly wheels, none of that. Just the sheet metal. It already had a coat of paint on it, and some of it was formed. You choose the material at a time when that’s the material you want to use, and then you develop your processes so that when you put things together it gives you a sense of satisfaction. It never occurred to me that sculptures shouldn’t be colored.” (Ibid., p. 15) Chamberlain manipulated different parts of cars and other machines in an additive process that resulted in a final thrust that is striking in its bold colors and jagged edges, elegant in its curvilinear form, and bears no resemblance to the original machine from which it came. Nutcracker is among Chamberlain’s initial pieces constructed from the metal as he found it and is characterized by its more muted color palette. For its velvety surface, swollen curves and ever-changing visual experience, Nutcracker’s stands as paradigm of Chamberlain’s early work and epitomizes the artist’s singular focus on form and composition.