By Carter B. Horsley This evening auction May 13, 2003 of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's is highlighted by a nice work by Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), a beautiful Mark Rothko (1903-1970), an important "combine" by Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925), and a great Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899-1953). The Pollock, Lot 19, "Number 17, 1949," shown at the top of this article, is an enamel and aluminum paint on paper mounted on fiberboard, 22 ½ by 28 ½ inches. The 1949 work was included in the Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Gallery in London in 1998-99 and in several other exhibitions. The lot is the cover illustration of the auction's catalogue, which provides the following commentary: "Beginning in 1946-47, Pollock's technique of placing the painting on the floor in his Long Island barn, and working from all four sides to drip, puddle, and fling pigment from sticks and brushes, inaugurated a new era in abstract art. From 1947 to 1951, Pollock's brush seldom touched his paintings, but physicality abounds in his work through the dexterity of movement from wrist to arm to body, and Pollock painted with a sure confidence in the fluidity of the paint orchestrating its quantity, density, speed and rhythm into a completely cohesive unity of composition and expression. Number 17, 1949 is an exquisite example of Pollock's scintillating color, rhythmic energy and painterly improvisation during this vital period of invention." The lot has an estimate of $5,000,000 to $7,000,000. It sold to Larry Gagosian, the dealer, for $5,272,000 including the buyer's premium as do all results mentioned in this article. The Pollock was consigned by the AG Foundation established by Agnes Gund, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The sale was a bit weak with 84.78 percent of the offered lots selling for a total of $27,339,600 against a pre-sale low estimate of $33.7 million. After the auction, Tobias Meyer, the auctioneer commented that nine of the top lots were purchased by "private Americans" and noted that museums are now "building galleries" rather than making acquisitions a priority.
Mark Rothko is represented by two paintings in this auction, Lots 10 and 18. The former, shown above, is entitled "Grays in Yellow" and is an oil on paper mounted on canvas that measures 23 ¾ by 18 ¾ inches. Dated 1960, is one of his most beautiful works and has a conservative estimate of $450,000 to $550,000. It sold for $960,000. Lot 18 is a more conventional work that is entitled "White Over Orange." It is an oil on paper mounted on canvas that is dated 1959 and measures 29 5/8 by 21 5/8 inches. The handsome work has an estimate of $800,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $702,400.
Lot 27 is a major "combine" work, entitled "Minutiae," by Robert Raushenberg. The oil, paper, fabric, newsprint, wood, metal and plastic with mirror and string on wood construction "combine" was executed in 1954. It measures 84 ½ by 81 by 30 ½ inches and has an estimate of $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 and is the subject of a separate catalogue. It failed to sell and was passed at $4,700,000. After the auction, Laura Paulson, head of Contemporary Art for North and South America for Sotheby's, commented that the Rauschenberg was a work that "requires either an institutional buyer or an informed and sensitive collector who can handle a work that is devastingly beautiful yet complex." The work was created for a ballet of the same name by Merce Cunningham with music by John Cage that was first performed in 1954 at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts. The catalogue notes that the work "is one of the earliest and largest of Freestanding Combines Rauschenberg made," adding that the artist "created a structure that would be used, not so much as a set, but as an object in space which the dancers would communicate with on state." "Like all of Rauschenberg's Combines, Minutiae sings in its lavish, yet delicate presentation. The present work may be seen as a formal exercise in the elaborate arrangement of shape, color and texture. It may also be seen to contain a mysterious, idiosyncratic code; as if Rauschenberg has provided us with a riddle, and our task is to unravel its various meanings. Though his deliberate lack of order, achieving any sense of the whole seems a difficult, even futile exercise. Gaining a purchase of the `whole' must be a personal aesthetic pursuit, rewarded through the act of looking. However, where consciously or unconsciously, artists make choices, in terms of the associations inherent to their subject matter and in terms of their assemblage of that loaded material. When looking at Minutiae it is important to remember that this work was created at a time when television and the mass media began to become the influence it is today. In a sense, the random, non-hierarchial quality of Minutiae is analgous to the image-saturated culture we now inhabit. The present work dazzles in both the complexity and multiplicity of our experience of it. The viewer is presented with various patterns, fabrics, objects and printed materials that all come together to release a stream of meanings. One has to spend considerable time with a monumental work such as Minutiae to garner any sense of this.Rauschenberg's use of cartoons in the present work strikes a chord with both Warhol's and Lichtenstein's use of cartoons as source materials for their earliest Pop creations. Minutiae contains both Donald Duck and Little King cartoons, and Lichtenstein and Warhol would make paintings including the characters of Donald Duck and Little King paintings in 1961." While the Pollack and Rauschenberg lots have considerable historical interest, they pale in comparison with the lyrical beauty of Lot 11, "Number 15" by Bradley Walker Tomlin.
This 46-by-76-inch oil on canvas was on the artist's easel when he died in 1953 and was once in the collection and Mr. and Mrs. Ben Heller of New York and has been widely exhibited. The catalogue provides the following commentary: "Although Tomlin was one of the eldest members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism and had been painting in realist and surrealist styles since the 1920s, his reputation is founded on his work from 1950-1953. Joining the Betty Parsons Gallery in the late 1940s, Tomlin was transformed by his encounter with the combination of order and spontaneity in the work of Pollock and others. From 1950 to his death in 1953, Tomlin painted approximately 25 oil paintings in his mature style, of which at least 18 are in museum collections. In these works, Tomlin's meticulous use of the painterly mark and rhythmic structure achieved the subtle alchemy of both freedom and control that mark his greatest paintings such as Number 15. With its thin, delicate tracery of black threading throughout the strokes of whites and filaments of shifting color forms, Number 15 is a fitting culmination of Tomlin's career.By inclination a superb colorist, Tomlin reduced his palette from 1945 to 1947, and focused first on the painterly mark, adapting a calligraphic technique within a vaguely Cubist structure of horizontals and verticals. While Tomlin's subtle use of a grid format is not as literal as that of his friend [Adolph] Gottlieb, Tomlin's meticulous nature required some sense of order in his art, revealing the contradictions that persisted in his art between order and spontaneity. His gestures now relied more upon the subconscious, but they were more akin to the linear `white writing' of Mark Tobey than the drips and flings of Jackson Pollock, incorporating symbols such as crosses and arrows. At the same time, the gestures were lyrical, and while they were inspired by automatism, it is perhaps more appropriate to say his gesture was revealing of his temperament and not his hidden psyche. Rather than the raw, naked anguish of Pollock, Gorky or even de Kooning, Tomlin's gesture conveys a more ethereal, musical and elegant content." This lot has a very conservative estimate of $350,000 to $450,000. It sold for $904,000 easily surpassing the artist's previous world auction record of $629,200.
Franz Kline (1910-1962) is represented in the auction with two works, Lots 25 and 20. The former is entitled "Sawyer" and is an 82-by-66-inch oil on canvas executed in 1959. Kline, the catalogue noted, "is viewed as the master of black and white Abstract Expressionism from the 1950s, using the two colors as counterpoints in his masterful compositions of gestural velocity and collision. Kline's reduction of palette was indeed instrumental in the development of his individual style among the Abstract Expressionists as it allowed him to more fully explore form through line and brushstroke, seeking to define space and movement in an abstract idiom. Yet, Kline never intended to permanently banish other colors from his palette and instead continuously explored how to incorporate color structurally into his self-sufficient compositions.The other colors in Sawyer encroached into the seemingly stark black verticals with feathered strokes. These softer strokes established a more atmospheric and recessive tone that was at once contradicted optically as the terracotta, sienna, ochre and gray tones served to push the black forms forward toward the picture's plane." The lot has an estimate of $1,200,000 to $1,800,000. It sold for $1,072,000. Lot 20, "Painting No. 1," is a more classic black-and-white abstract by Kline. An oil on canvas, it measures 28 by 20 inches and was executed in 1954. Once in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Heller of New York, it has an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. It sold for $736,000.
There are several works by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) in the auction, most notably Lot 13A, "Little Electric Chair (Orange)," an acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas that measures 22 by 28 inches. Dated in 1964, it has an estimate of $1,800,000 to $2,200,000. It failed to sell and was passed at $1,400,000. There are several other conventional Warhols. Lot 29 is a four-foot-square acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas by Warhol appropriately called "Four Foot Flowers." It has an estimate of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. It sold for $2,136,000. Lot 31, "Colored Campbell's Soup Can," is a 36-by-24-inch acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas that was executed by Warhol in 1965. It has an estimate of $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. It failed to sell and was passed at $750,000. Lot 39, "4 Reversal Marilyns," is a 36-by-28-inch acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas by Warhol. Executed in 1979-86, it has an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. It sold for $433,600.
Laura Paulson remarked after the sale that the Warhols offered "were excellent works, vintage and fresh" and suggested that in the future estimates may be "slightly more conservative." Willem de Kooning is represented in the auction by Lot 21, "Untitled V," a 69 ¾-by-79 ¾-inch oil on canvas. Executed in 1978, it has an estimate of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. Its brushwork though not stellar is vigorous. It sold for $1,912,000. Lot 16, "Reflections on Jessica Helms," is a 62-by-48 ½ inch oil and magna on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). Dated in 1990, it has an estimate of $800,000 to $1,200,000. It sold for $1,352,000. It was another lot consigned by the AG Foundation. "The figure of Jessica Helms," the catalogue notes, "is a fictitious one, but her surname is the same as that of the conservative Senator, Jesse Helms. Mr. Helms was a well-known supporter of censorship in the arts and was a leading protagonist in the so-called Culture Wars. Lichtenstein therefore makes a wry comment on issues of morality and censorship in this painting. The figure here is nude, yet her nudity is denied through these bars of reflections.Amusingly, this disembodied, incomplete yet suggestive female figure must be seen as some kind of `portrait' of Mr. Helms, here feminized, stripped and placed on view for all to see."
Another interesting Lichtenstein is Lot 38, "Landscape with Seated Figure," a 70-by-105-inch oil and magna on canvas. Executed in 1996, it is part of the artist's series of landscapes in "the Chinese style," and has an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. It sold for $792,000. Larry Rivers (1923-2002) is represented in this auction by "Dutchmasters II," Lot 14, a 42-by-50-inch oil on canvas. Executed in 1963, it has an estimate of $300,000 to $400,000. It sold for $254,400. The artist, according to the catalogue, incorporated "within his individual styles both the gestural application of Abstract Expressionism and the subject matter of the new Pop culture. Not for Rivers, the cool detached and mechanical style of advertising or newspaper graphics or silk-screened images; he preferred the tactile pleasures of paint. He also did not adopt the detached posture of Pop artists toward their chosen imagery. Rivers' work often comments on his subject with an ironic or mocking stance.In an art historical context, one would at first assume that Dutchmasters II was based on the Old Master's [Rembrandt's] famous Syndics of the Draper's Guild (1662). Yet the most immediate source for Rivers' painting is the more contemporary use of Rembrandt's image in the commercial sale of cigars."
Lot 34 is a very cool and very elegant concentric square painting by Frank Stella (b. 1936). Executed in 1974, it measures 129 ½ inches square and has a modest estimate of $300,000 to $400,000. It sold for $624,000. Lot 8, "Davos S.," is a 27 5/8-by-39 ½-inch oil on canvas by Gerhard Richter (b. 1932). Painted in 1981, it is a mist-shrouded scene of a snow-capped mountain. It has an estimate of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. It sold for $2,024,000.
Lot 12, "Structure (Vertical Construction)," is a very handsome painted steel and wire sculpture by David Smith (1906-1965). The 22 5/8-inch high work was executed in 1938 and has an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. It sold for $568,000.
An auction record of $545,600 was set for Vija Celmins (b. 1939), breaking the previous record of $487,356. Lot 5, "Untitled (Ocean), the oil on linen measured 15 1/8 by 15 5/8 inches and was executed in 1990-5.