Heritage Auctions May 2nd Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Session catalog.
Highlights include works by Jeff Koons, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Keith Haring, Milton Avery and Andy Warhol.
Preview in New York April 29 - May 2, 2016. For more information visit www.ha.com/5258.
2. Front Cover: WILLEM DE KOONING, Lot 69217 (Detail)
Inside Front Cover: ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, Lot 69215
Inside Back Cover: ROBERT BECHTLE, Lot 69222 (Detail)
Back Cover: JEFF KOONS, Lot 69227
Opposite: HELEN FRANKENTHALER, Lot 69207
8. Consignment Directors: Frank Hettig, Leon Benrimon, Holly Sherratt
Cataloged by: Elizabeth Cassada, Taylor Curry
Research and Authentication: Mary Adair Dockery
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12. 10 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69200
KAWS (b. 1974)
Untitled (four works), 1999
Acrylic on canvas
16 x 16 inches (40.6 x 40.6 cm) (each)
Each signed and dated verso: KAWS 99
One inscribed verso: Buck [heart] Carney
PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Paris;
Private collection, New York.
Estimate: $80,000-$120,000
An influential member of a new generation of street artists, KAWS’ work is a powerful example of contemporary visual
culture. Growing up in Jersey City, Brian Donnelly began to graffiti on billboards and advertising posters in the late
1980’s. By 1995, at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he started combining street art and commercial design.
The KAWS has since gone on to produce limited edition toys and street wear, to great acclaim.
In the present work, KAWS captures his iconic Companion figures in full force: The artist’s playful repetition of the
Companion in four colors references the Pop sensibilities of Andy Warhol. Yet, the cartoonish imagery and surreal
depictions look to the illustrative work of Peter Saul, and the creations of H.C. Westermann. The crossed out “X” eyes,
considered to be the artist’s signature, add emotion (or lack thereof) to the work. Utilizing his signature motif, KAWS is
able to mutate and add feeling to the works. The humorous cartoon nature of the compositions is juxtaposed with the
more sinister skull shaped heads. Whether intentional or not, the contradictory effect asks the viewer to seek out and
answer question about life and death.
Some of the artist’s best-known works include his Companion figures of Mickey Mouse, Michelin Man, and Snoopy.
Bridging together Pop, Street and Comic art alongside his commercial merchandising, KAWS has become one of the art
world’s most influential brands.
14. 12 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69201
Keith Haring (1958-1990)
Untitled, 1981
Acrylic on canvasboard
11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Signed twice, inscribed, and dated verso: Keith Haring Kutztown 230 S.
Whiteoak, Dec. 29-81, K. Haring
PROVENANCE:
Christie’s, New York, First Open Post-War and Contemporary Art,
September 23, 2009, lot 26;
Guy Hepner, West Hollywood, California;
Private collection, United Kingdom;
Phillips de Pury, London, October 11, 2012, lot 156;
Private collection, New York.
Estimate: $80,000-$120,000
Keith Haring’s brief but illustrious career, which spanned the 1980s, began with a childhood interest in cartoon figures
lifted from Pop culture created by Dr. Seuss, Walt Disney, and other illustrators of the genre. As a young child his
father encouraged him to sketch characters from comic strips. Through these early learning experiences Haring was
able to create his own unique visual language. Drawing inspiration from Andy Warhol and his contemporary Jean-
Michel Basquiat, Haring believed that art constituted the ultimate expression of individuality. Haring’s works were
featured in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions, and he received tremendous press and media attention.
But not only is Haring a renowned artist, he is also remembered as an influential social activist who responded to
sexuality, death and war.
The present work employs Haring’s instantly recognizable, culturally pervasive pictorial language of bold contoured
lines, graphic figures and barking dogs. Completed a year before his now famous one man show at Tony Shafrazi
Gallery in 1982, this painting was made during a time of thriving alternative art communities that developed outside
the gallery and museum system. One of many themes apparent in Haring’s work is that of sexuality. In much of
Haring’s work he aimed to depict the stigma associated with homosexual relationships in an aesthetically interesting
and captivating manner. Seen in this respect the current work challenges the viewer’s own sensibilities and clearly
demonstrates both of Haring’s social and personal influences while using his innovative artistic language.
“I don’t think art is propaganda; it should be something that
liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages
people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of
manipulating it.”
– Keith Haring
16. 14 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69202 ◆
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)
(Anti) Product Postcards (set of 10), circa 1980
Postcard, ink, and color Xerox mounted on cardboard
5-1/2 x 4-1/4 inches (14 x 10.8 cm) (each)
Eight signed on the reverse
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Private collection, acquired directly from the above;
Sotheby’s New York, May 7, 1997, lot 195;
Private collection.
Estimate: $40,000-$60,000
Jean-Michel Basquiat produced annotated and collaged postcards at an early stage in his career, selling them on the
streets of lower New York. Although early in date, these postcards already attest to the artist’s hybrid language of
African-American culture, pop culture, and fine art.
In the present works, Basquiat associates textual elements and photocopied images in a manner that is uniquely his
own, described by the critic John Russell in 1984 as proceeding “by disjunction–that is, by making marks that seem
quite unrelated but turn out to get on very well together”.
Although Basquiat’s work is often described as Primitivist, these postcards demonstrate the artist’s refusal to identify
with this view. Expressions such as “stupid games” and “bad ideas” are combined with allusions to authenticity
tropes—a personal identification card, a barcode, and playful photographs—and to money and value—“only $1,” and
“negative surplus data”—as if to suggest their instability.
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20. 18 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69203
Keith Haring (1958-1990)
USA-1, 1984
Oil on burlap
24-1/2 x 21-1/2 inches (62.2 x 54.6 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated on the reverse: 84 April / 20 / Keith Haring / USA-1
PROVENANCE:
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York;
Private collection, acquired from the above;
Sotheby’s New York, November 14, 2012, lot 304;
Private collection.
Estimate: $100,000-$150,000
“It was the idea of making the movements I was doing into a
kind of choreography – a kind of dance. I was thinking that the
very act of painting placed you in an exhilarated state- it was a
sacred moment.”
– Keith Haring
USA-1 perfectly encapsulates Keith Haring’s imagery and mature style. The work features his simplistic graphic yet
expressive subject matter, which was inspired from personal experiences and cultural developments occurring in in
New York City. Music played an important role throughout Keith Haring’s public and private life and it became an
essential element in his creativity. Haring often worked to music and played hip-hop at full volume in his studio. He
was a passionate dancer, and visits to his favorite club, the Paradise Garage, were part of his weekend ritual. Having
personal friendships with people in the club scene and the recording industry, his desire for new music guaranteed him
constant sources of new inspiration. While traveling, he would carry a selection of tapes compiled by his friends and
DJs. In New York City, the 1980s saw the rise of the hip-hop culture and a new musical movement. Rappers released
songs detailing their lives and struggles of living in the inner city, break-dancers explored forms of movement. These
exposures became new forms of stimulation for Haring.
The figure in the present work exudes energy: the head has been replaced with a boom box, perhaps referencing
the effect that music can have on one’s body. The strong, bold line work around the figure’s hands and feet indicate
a sense of rhythm and drama. The minimalist technique of the work further emphasizes the rhythmic nature of the
subject. Haring’s figure seems to be in a state of flux, moving to the sound of music. USA-1 Haring at his best—a ‘flat’
painting is brought to life.
22. 20 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69204
David Bates (b. 1952)
Still Life - Winter, 2010-2011
Oil on panel
80 x 48 inches (203.2 x 121.9 cm)
Signed lower left: Bates
Signed, titled, and dated verso: Bates / Still Life - / Winter / 2010 - / 2011
PROVENANCE:
Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, Texas (label verso);
Private collection.
EXHIBITED:
Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, Texas, “Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture,” October 27-December 15, 2012;
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, “David Bates,” February 9, 2014-May 11, 2014.
LITERATURE:
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Nasher Sculpture Center, David Bates, exhibition catalogue, 2014,
p. 148, illus.
Estimate: $60,000-$80,000
Still Life - Winter draws inspiration from landscapes and traditions of the American South and Southwest, whose
elements Bates appropriates and combines using a visual vocabulary reminiscent of Cubism, African art and the
Hispanic folk tradition. In the present work, Bates renders a tridimensional space, juxtaposed with the flat surface of
the vase, heightened by grays that surround and inhabit the branches and leaves. The result is a tribal-inspired still
life, evocative of a post-industrial landscape. The Cubist aesthetic, which is also evident in paintings such as Magnolia
in a Vase II (2009), is here permeated by non-pretentious patterning and by flatly painted blocks of color that are
reminiscent of American Folk Art.
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24. 22 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69205
David Bates (b. 1952)
Vine, 2012
Bronze with white paint and patina
48-1/2 x 9-1/2 x 15-1/2 inches (123.2 x 24.1 x 39.4 cm)
Signed and dated on the underside: Bates 2012
PROVENANCE:
Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, Texas;
Private collection.
EXHIBITED:
Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, Texas, “Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture,”
October 27-December 15, 2012;
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, “David Bates,” February 9, 2014-
May11, 2014.
LITERATURE:
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Nasher Sculpture Center,
David Bates, exhibition catalogue, 2014, p. 168, illus.
Estimate: $40,000-$60,000
Although David Bates is best known for his paintings, a vital component within his oeuvre is his
assemblages of wood, cardboard and other materials, often cast into bronze – particularly since
1992, when he started visiting the Walla Walla Foundry in rural Washington. Depicting a frail
vine tree, Vine from 2012 illustrates the artist’s fascination with the contradictions of vitality and
decrepitude, abstraction and representation—both significant themes within Bates’ body of work.
The lines and forms of the leaves in Vine suggest a close relation between Bates’ painting and
sculpture, while also attesting to his strong Cubist influence. Vine evokes a pre-modern world: plants,
animals, lakes, land. But rather than mere nostalgia for a pre-urban past or a melancholic description
of what the South could have been, the present work celebrates the South as it is. As such, it
relates to Bates’ series from 2007, created in response to the mediated images of New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina (see The Deluge IV, 2007 or the series Katrina Portraits, 2006-07).
26. 24 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69206
John Chamberlain (1927-2011)
Untitled, from the Foil series, circa 1972
Aluminum foil with acrylic lacquer and polyester resin
5 x 4-1/4 x 5-1/4 inches (12.7 x 10.8 x 13.3 cm)
PROVENANCE:
Stanley Marsh 3, Amarillo, Texas;
Private collection, Austin, Texas.
Estimate: $30,000-$50,000
“I wasn’t interested in car parts per se, I was interested in either
the color or the shape or the amount… Just the sheet metal. It
already had a coat of paint on it. And some of it was formed…
I believe that common materials are the best materials.”
– John Chamberlain
30. 28 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69207
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)
Tantric, 1977
Acrylic on canvas
69-1/4 x 67-1/2 inches (175.9 x 171.5 cm)
Signed upper right: Frankenthaler
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York;
Private collection, Dallas, Texas, acquired from the above, 1977;
Private collection, Florida, 1999.
EXHIBITED:
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, “Helen Frankenthaler: New Paintings,”
November 19-December 8, 1977.
Knoedler & Company, New York, “Frankenthaler: East and Beyond,” January
8-March 11, 2011.
LITERATURE:
Andre Emmerich Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: New Paintings, New York,
1977, n.p., illustrated in color;
John Elderfield, Helen Frankenthaler, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1989,
p. 282, illustrated in color;
Knoedler & Company, Frankenthaler: East and Beyond, New York, 2011,
exhibition catalogue, p. 32, illustrated in color.
Estimate: $500,000-$700,000
32. 30 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
The name Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) immediately conjures up images of radiant hues disposed in voluptuous,
liquid flows – that is to say, she is usually thought of, not without reason, as a lyrical painter who uses thin color with
extraordinary inventiveness. Many of the early paintings that first established Frankenthaler’s reputation in the 1950s
could, in fact, be accurately described this way, as could many of the subsequent works that sustained that reputation,
made over the half century of her long and productive life. But just as Frankenthaler continuously experimented with
different disciplines and mediums – painting on canvas and paper, an enormous variety of printmaking techniques,
sculpture, ceramics, and sets and costumes for a ballet, among other ventures – she never settled for the familiar or
the comfortable and never made only one kind of picture. Throughout her working life, she explored a wide variety
of conceptions of what a painting could be, challenging her own assumptions and striving to surprise herself. Her
earliest works bear witness to an ardent young woman newly graduated from Bennington, armed with a thorough
understanding of Cubist structure, eagerly testing herself against the most adventurous art being shown in New York
at the time. We can follow her exploring the implications of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Joan Miró, Wassily
Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock, sometimes all in the same painting, and in doing so, discovering her own originality.
At a time when most ambitious painters of Frankenthaler’s generation were in de Kooning’s thrall, she famously
concluded that “You could become a de Kooning disciple or satellite or mirror, but you could depart from Pollock…”
As her point of departure, Frankenthaler used Pollock’s radically unconventional method of working on unstretched,
unprimed canvas placed on the floor, approaching the painting from all sides, and responding to whatever emerged
in the course of making, rather than deciding on an orientation or an image before beginning to paint. She rejected
Pollock’s poured and dripped of skeins of paint, however, employing a wide range of tools, rags, and her hands,
among other things, to manipulate – or encourage – thinned-out paint to flow across the canvas, drawing and
painting simultaneously. At times, it seems as if the fluid configurations she achieved through these means had been
willed into being, rather than created by direct paint handling. The resulting works were at once bold and intimate,
distinguished by their uninhibited drawing and by their disembodied, transparent sweeps of color. Frankenthaler’s early
paintings had the large scale and authority that characterized the work of her immediate predecessors, the Abstract
Expressionists, but they also had the immediacy and luminosity of watercolors. In contrast to the layered, wet-into-
wet, surfaces of gestural Abstract Expressionism, her stains of diluted paint, soaked into the unprimed canvas, revealed
few traces of the history of their application. Color and pigment seemed weightless, transparent, and disembodied, as
if these pictures had come about through the sheer force of Frankenthaler’s personality.
While she was still in her twenties, these remarkable canvases established Frankenthaler as a painter to be
taken seriously and watched with great attention – an extraordinarily young age for this kind of recognition, in
an era when artists were supposed to spend years maturing, before presenting their efforts to the public. Even
more surprising, in 1960 – she was thirty one – she had a survey exhibition at the Jewish Museum, a significant
achievement for any artist, but especially noteworthy for a young woman in an art world dominated by seasoned,
intense men who thrived on debate and argument. Yet probably because Frankenthaler was a young woman, critics
wrote about the delicacy and tender color of her work, praising its “femininity.” The exhibition certainly included
paintings that could be characterized as delicate and tender (“feminine” is more questionable) but there were others
that might have been better termed “muscular” or “vigorous” or just plain “tough.” One writer, however, fully
understood the complexity of the artist’s accomplishment: the poet and curator, Frank O’Hara, the author of the
exhibition’s perceptive catalogue essay.
“Frankenthaler is a daring painter,” O’Hara wrote. “She is willing to risk the big gesture, to employ huge formats so
that her essentially intimate revelations may be more fully explored and delineated, appear in the hot light of day.
34. 32 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
much maligned notion, beauty, but as her notion of the beautiful was not limited to the lyrical mode for which she
was best known. Many of her most potent, memorable works, particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, were
celebrations of what she called her “darker palette:” resonant, deep-hue, often dramatically lit paintings, such as
Tantric, 1977. In them, transparent swipes of pale hues and zones of magical radiance seem to emerge from pools
of darkness. In contrast to the often biomorphic or organic shapes of the color stains in her preceding paintings,
Frankenthaler’s works of the late 1970s subtly emphasize geometry, loosely reiterating the vertical and horizontal axes
implied by the edges of the rectangular canvas. Because of the combination of this disciplined, lucid approach to
composition and dark, often somber hues, paintings such as Tantric seem to propose a new kind of classicism within
Frankenthaler’s oeuvre, perhaps even a new kind of reference to the art of the past.
If Frankethaler’s exuberant orchestrations of chromatic color bear witness to her admiration for modern masters such
as Henri Matisse or Pierre Bonnard, the resonant hues and expressive chiaroscuro of works such as Tantric seem
to pay homage to the old masters. Starting in the 1950s and continuing until the last years of her life, Frankenthaler
frequently used paintings she was engaged by as the basis for her own work, responding freely not only to works by
Matisse, but also by Titian, Jacopo Bassano, Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard
Manet, and her friend David Smith, among many others. Sometimes, as the titles can reveal, her starting point was
a specific work that she knew well and found compelling; sometimes it was a more general impression of an artist.
Whatever the stimulus, the result was never literal but rather, even in paintings based on specific sources, a kind of
uninhibited, free-wheeling improvisation that distilled her accumulated experience of other works of art into her own
distinctive visual language. While it is not possible to correlate Tantric with any particular source work, it is tempting
to see the painting’s rich play of dark and light as an expression of Frankenthaler’s often expressed love of Rembrandt.
(The connection is reinforced by her having made several similarly dramatic works within a few years of Tantric,
Helmet, 1978, and Portrait of Margaretha Trip, 1980, pictures that, as their titles suggest, are overt homages to specific
paintings by Rembrandt.) Certainly, works such as Lucretia, 1666, (Fig. 2) or Man Seated Reading at a Table in a Lofty
Room, 1628-30, (Fig. 1 formerly attributed to Rembrandt, National Gallery, London), with their enveloping darkness
and geometric zones of light, suggest affinities with the overall structure and luminous planes of Tantric.
The association of Tantric with works by Rembrandt cannot be proven, but the visual evidence suggests that the
connection is plausible, perhaps more so, despite the painting’s title, than with images associated with Tantric yoga.
We might speculate that the composition, with its centralized salmon pink element, could be a response to the
symmetry and centrally placed geometric motifs of Tantric paintings, but Frankenthaler’s interest in works of that type
seems to have been casual, at best, and her titles always came after the fact, provoked by the completed painting itself
rather than vice versa. Of course, we cannot rule out the effect of a chance encounter – a postcard sent by a friend or
a gift of a book of reproductions, both of which have triggered “source paintings.” Ultimately, it hardly needs noting,
the power of Tantric rests not in its possible ties to other works of art, but in Frankenthaler’s ability to transform a flood
of bottomless black-brown, some oversized strokes of luminous rose-taupe and suave orangey-pink, a few delicate
lines of chalky blue, and a scattering of intimate deep red finger marks into a new mysterious, allusive whole.
It is worth noting, however, that no matter how much we probe Frankenthaler’s motivations and intentions, seeking
clues within her work, she herself insisted that she had no preconceptions, but instead strove always to remain open to
all possibilities. Her conversation, like her paintings, reveals an almost mystical sense of submission to the demands of
the emerging picture, a willingness to trust her accumulated experience of picture-making and jettison all comforting,
previously established ideas in order to respond to the unlooked-for suggestions that arose in the course of working.
Many artists refer to this state as “getting out of one’s own way,” a necessary condition, they feel – as Frankenthaler
35. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 33
did – to achieving anything personal or significant. It’s a kind of aesthetic high wire walking. There is always risk of
complete failure, but as assured paintings such as Tantric attest, there can be great rewards, upon reaching the other
side of the chasm.
Frankenthaler eloquently described this intuitive process in the early 1980s: “The only rule is that there are no rules.
Anything is possible – metallic paint or something ugly or pouring a huge quantity of paint on thin paper. It’s all about
risks, deliberate risks. The picture unfolds, leads, unravels as I push ahead. Watching it develop, I seize it. More and
more I feel led into the manifestation of how it must look. Despite the fact that it exists because I am the insistent
developer of how it will look, it must appear as it does. As always, from the 1950s on, I must be ready to work with
what is insisting on emerging and use it and take it from there.”
Karen Wilkin
New York, March 2016
Fig. 2
CourtseyofTheWilliamHoodDunwoodyFund
36. 34 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69208
Sam Francis (1923-1994)
Untitled (Abstract #15), 1979
Acrylic on paper
19-1/4 x 13-3/4 inches (48.9 x 34.9 cm)
PROVENANCE:
Adams-Middleton Gallery, Dallas, Texas;
Private collection.
EXHIBITED:
Adams-Middleton Gallery, Dallas, Texas, “Recent Abstract Painting,”
September 12-October 12, 1985 (label verso).
NOTE:
This work is registered in the Sam Francis Archives under number SF #79-
262.
Estimate: $18,000-$25,000
“Color is born of the interpenetration of light and dark.”
– Sam Francis
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38. 36 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69209
Mary Corse (b. 1945)
Untitled (White Knight), 1986
Glass microspheres in acrylic on canvas
81 x 81 inches (205.7 x 205.7 cm)
PROVENANCE:
Adams-Middleton Gallery, Dallas, Texas (label verso);
Private collection.
Estimate: $50,000-$65,000
The combination of a minimalist aesthetic with an attention to subjectivity is central to the work of Mary Corse. The
result is reminiscent of the Light and Space movement, popularized by James Turrell and Robert Irwin. Untitled (White
Knight) exemplifies Corse’s technique: her use of glass microspheres transforms a minimalist canvas into a surface on
which blocks of light appear and disappear as the lighting changes and the viewer shifts perspective. This incorporation
of chance and instability places the spectator’s perception at the center of the aesthetic experience. And yet, the artist’s
gestures are also evident on the canvas. In this way, Untitled (White Knight) articulates unity and multiplicity among the
elements of space, light, the viewer, and the artist’s desire “to put the actual light in the painting.”
40. 38 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69210
Charles Arthur Arnoldi (b. 1946)
Frostbite, 2005
Oil on canvas
78 x 68 inches (198.1 x 172.7 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated on verso: Frostbite Arnoldi 2005
PROVENANCE:
Modernism, San Francisco, California;
Private collection, Houston, Texas, acquired from the above.
EXHIBITED:
Modernism, San Francisco, California, “Charles Arnoldi: New Work,”
September 8-October 29, 2005.
Estimate: $20,000-$30,000
“Ultimately, what I would really love to do is make good
enough paintings that other people who want to make
paintings would say ‘God I wish I made those paintings.’ To
me that’s the ultimate thing, that if another person who feels
the way I do about painting says, ‘I wish I could do that!’
That’s it.”
– Charles Arnoldi
42. 40 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69211
Mary Corse (b. 1945)
Untitled (white inner band), 2001
Glass microspheres in acrylic on canvas
42 x 42 inches (106.7 x 106.7 cm)
Signed and dated verso: Mary Corse / 2001
PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Estimate: $40,000-$60,000
Mary Corse’s body of work is strongly influenced by her studies in psychology, her interest in quantum physics, and by
the work of Op artist Josef Albers. Utilizing paint and reflective microspheres, a technique that she developed during
years of experimentation, Corse overcomes what was often perceived as mutually exclusive: the Minimalist aesthetic—
monochromatic, seemingly fixed and flat—and the principles behind Abstract Expressionism, particularly its focus on
chance and on the artist’s intention. Untitled (white inner band) from 2001 responds to changes in the position of the
viewer and to the lighting conditions of its environment. However, like the White Light Grid Series of 1969, the central
band of white produces a light effect that seems to pervade the work itself–corresponding to the artist’s statement that
the painting “exists in an abstract perceptual reality”.
44. 42 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69212 ●
Caio Fonseca (b. 1959)
Fifth Street Painting Co2.1, 2002
Mixed media on canvas
49-1/2 x 64 inches (125.7 x 162.6 cm)
Signed lower right: Caio
Signed, titled, dated, and inscribed verso: Caio Fonseca / Fifth Street Painting
Co2.1 / mixed media on canvas 2002 / Caio Fonseca / 2002
PROVENANCE:
Terry K. Watanabe, acquired directly from the artist;
TKW Charitable Trust, Las Vegas, Nevada, donated from the above.
Estimate: $10,000-$15,000
“So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts,
but my work is not in that category.”
– Caio Fonseca
46. 44 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69213
Josh Smith (b. 1976)
Untitled, 2013
Oil on panel
63 x 48 inches (160 x 121.9cm)
PROVENANCE
Luhring Augustine, New York (label verso);
Standard Oslo, Oslo, Norway (label verso);
Private collection, New York.
Estimate: $40,000-$60,000
John Smith’s brightly colored, quasi-abstract paintings are based on appropriated imagery and may be grouped
stylistically with Expressionist Pop artists Martin Kippenberger and Christopher Wool. Seemingly unplanned, his
paintings—including Untitled from 2013—are carefully orchestrated using a selection of sources and a systematic
process of repetition, which can be explained by Smith’s background in printmaking. Like prints and multiples, Smith’s
works are often identical in size and motif, including his name, a leaf, and a fish, a witty way to suggest the functioning
role of the artist rather than visual appeal.
Smith looks for objects that one can strip of meaning. In the present work, the artist paints a common palm tree set
against a nondescript tropical sky of pinks, purples and oranges, revealing his interest not in representation or in
signification but, rather, on the process of painting itself. In Untitled, Smith presents a common subject, and the artist
and the viewer work together to create something interesting.
47.
48. 46 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69214 ●
Friedel Dzubas (1915-1994)
Northern Cool, 1975
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 cm)
Signed, titled, dated, and inscribed verso: Dzubas / 1975 /
“Northern Cool” / Acrylic (Magna) on canvas / 40 x 40
PROVENANCE:
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Houston, Texas (label verso);
Private collection, Houston, Texas, acquired from the above, 1975.
Estimate: $15,000-$20,000
“In clearing the canvas of all-unessential, I was more and more
reduced to a few, simple, meaningful forms and these forms
were the content of my message. Color came more and more
into play, and I discovered that what I can reach emotionally
and express by color is infinite.”
– Friedel Dzubas
50. 48 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69215
Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)
Untitled, 1985
Acrylic, collage and pencil on fabric-laminated paper
64-3/8 x 48 inches (163.5 x 121.9 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: Rauschenberg 85
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Knoedler & Company, New York;
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above, 1989.
EXHIBITED:
FreedmanArt, New York, “Art in the Making,” October 30, 2014-April 18, 2015.
NOTE:
This work is numbered 85.039 in the archives of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
Estimate: $300,000-$500,000
54. 52 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69216
Sigmar Polke (1941-2010)
Untitled, 1997
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
27-1/2 x 39-1/2 inches (69.9 x 100.3 cm) (sheet)
Signed and dated lower left: Sigmar Polke 1997
PROVENANCE:
Artax Kunsthandel KG, Düsseldorf;
Private collection, California, acquired from the above, March 2000.
Estimate: $120,000-$180,000
Untitled (1997) illustrates Sigmar Polke’s highly original Pop Art aesthetic shaped by his post-War life in Germany. In
1945, Polke’s family fled present-day Poland for East Germany, and after the Soviet occupation of this country, they
escaped to West Germany, where the artist grew up. Responding to the divisive political climate in Germany, Polke
and a small group of artists launched “Capitalist Realism” in 1963. Polke used unconventional techniques in a broad
range of media to depict ordinary items from mass culture, such as Schokoladenbild (Chocolate Painting) from 1964.
The art historian Kathrin Rottmann underscores, “Polke’s layering and overlapping of borrowed images, so that their
meanings come unfixed and enter a state of flux, have been described as ‘postmodern play’” (“Polke in Context: A
Chronology,” in Alibis, 2014, p. 41). In fact, “he was widely viewed as a contrarian without a recognizable style, and
he liked that” (Ibid., p. 66). Both his position vis-à-vis the art world and his interest in experimentation are crucial to
understanding Untitled.
Additionally, Polke’s use of hallucinogenic drugs during the 1970s raised his interest in color as a mind-altering medium.
Untitled, combining several media in “unstable” layers of brown, green, pink, blue and purple, simulates a psychedelic
trip. These blurred color effects also appear in his more conventional paintings of the 1980s and 1990s. In particular,
Untitled is reminiscent of Polke’s seventeen-part contribution to the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s weekly magazine in 1995.
In Bulletproof Holidays (Kugelsichere Ferien), “enlarged raster dots and circles begin to blur…. He employed colored
pencils and felt markers to apply to these photocopies glowing neon colors that the magazine’s printers were unable to
reproduce. The dots in this work recall the raster paintings (Rasterbilder) based on illustrations in newspapers that Polke
made in the 1960s, such as Doughnuts/Berliner (Bäckerblume, 1965)” (Ibid., p. 53).
Interestingly, the scattered dots in Untitled form a pattern that lacks precision; indeed, they seem to slide. Together
with the mixed media, this dot patterning emphasizes Polke’s interest in the derangement of the senses. Examining
his biography offers a potential explanation for this concern: growing up in a period when many Germans deflected
blame for the atrocities of the Nazis by feigning ignorance, Polke was fascinated by the malleability of vision. At the
same time, his work defied the principles of modernism identified by Clement Greenberg. In fact, the art critic David
Campbell writes that the “unruly diversity of Polke’s art is in marked contrast to the modernist drive for purity and
order…; his aesthetic is capricious, his ‘methods’ impure, and he courts ambiguity and iconic corruption” (“Plotting
Polke,” in Sigmar Polke: Back to Postmodernity, 1996, p. 19). Rejecting the comprehensible in favor of the elusive,
Polke’s work is in permanent flux between strangeness and beauty.
55.
56.
57.
58. 56 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69217 ■ ▲
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)
East Hampton II, 1968
Oil on paper laid on canvas
41-3/4 x 30 inches (106 x 76.2 cm)
Signed upper right: de Kooning
PROVENANCE:
Collection of the artist;
Galerie Ressle, Stockholm, acquired from the above;
Private collection, acquired from the above, 1985;
Sotheby’s London, February 15, 2011, lot 49;
Private collection, New York.
EXHIBITED:
Knoedler Gallery, New York, “De Kooning: January 1968-March 1969,” March 4-March 22, 1969;
[The above exhibition also traveled to] Powerhouse Gallery, University of California, Berkeley, California,
August 12-September 13, 1969;
Pollock Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, “De Kooning: Major Paintings and Sculpture,” 1974;
Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, “De Kooning: Late Paintings and Drawings,” 1980.
LITERATURE:
Gabriella Drudi, Willem de Kooning, Milan 1972, n.p., no. 149, illustrated in color.
Estimate: $600,000-$800,000
59.
60. 58 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
East Hampton II (1968) not only
exemplifies Willem de Kooning’s
fascination with the female
figure, but also brings to light
critical discussions regarding his
representation of women. Here,
a female figure emerges from an
amalgam of sweeping brushstrokes
in red, orange, yellow and blue.
Subtle outlines distinguish her legs
and body from her surroundings.
The movement of the woman’s
body – her lifted legs and skirt
– hints at sexual pleasure. De
Kooning painted the work in his
longtime studio in East Hampton,
where he focused on landscapes
during his later years.
East Hampton II points to the
critical discourse centered
around the gender revolution of the 1960s. De Kooning’s paintings of women from the 1950s, such as his famous
Woman I (1950-52), were controversial for many reasons. Indeed, after years of working in pure abstraction, de
Kooning reintroduced figuration in Woman I; some critics like Clement Greenberg considered these paintings a step
backward, especially when contrasted with Jackson Pollock’s non-representational drip paintings. Woman I and
related female paintings also subjected de Kooning to accusations of misogyny. Responding to Thomas Hess’ popular
article “Willem de Kooning Paints a Picture” (1953), which describes the rough physicality of de Kooning’s painting
process, critic Emily Genauer commented that de Kooning “flays [the women], beats them, stretches them on racks,
draws and quarters them” (1969). Similarly, the critic Carol Duncan wrote at the time that de Kooning’s female figure
“fully reveals itself in Woman I as a big, bad mama – vulgar, sexual, and dangerous… The suggestive pose is just a
knee movement away from… the self-exposing gesture of mainstream pornography” (“MOMA’s Hot Mamas,” 1989,
p. 173). Furthermore, Duncan argued that “de Kooning knowingly and assertively exercises his patriarchal privilege
of objectifying male sexual fantasy as high culture” (Ibid., p. 175). Similarly, Lise Vogel offered that de Kooning’s
Woman I “reveals the anxieties inside” men vis-à-vis increasingly powerful women (“Fine Arts and Feminism: The
Awakening Consciousness,” 1974, p. 19). One should mention, however, that comparable criticisms were directed
at other Abstract Expressionists. In fact, Ann Eden Gibson recently proposed that “Abstract Expressionism’s model
for supposedly ‘universal’ subjectivity was actually white, heterosexual, and male” (“Abstract Expressionism: Other
Politics,” 1997, in E. Lendau, “Review of Abstract Expressionism and Other Politics,” 1999, pp. 59-60).
CourtesyofJackdeNijs,1968
61. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 59
However, Woman I and East Hampton II can be viewed in a more positive light. The blending of gestural abstraction
and figuration is not specific to de Kooning’s paintings of women. Earlier in his career, he also depicted men, whose
figures he distorted and reassembled over flattened planes. Paintings like The Glazier (1940) reveal his struggle
portraying hair and hands – leading to his habit of reworking certain areas of his paintings to make them look
unfinished. Indeed, both the subject matter and techniques of Woman I grew from his earlier experimentation with the
male figure.
One can also read Woman I and East Hampton II as reacting to the canonical representation of the female figure in
art history. In fact, de Kooning was particularly inspired by the work of the Old Masters, such as Ingres’ Odalisque
(1814). But one can go even further and argue that his art reflected the zeitgeist, namely changing gender relations. For
example, poststructuralist art historians like Fiona Barber and Judith Butler have revised the misogynistic interpretations
of de Kooning’s women and investigated “the increasing instability of the notion of ‘woman’ as a category …. The
relationship between gender and identity is something that is…both variable and historically contingent” (F. Barber,
“The Politics of Feminist Spectatorship and the Disruptive Body: De Kooning’s Woman I Reconsidered,” in A. Jones
and A. Stephenson, Performing the Body/Performing the Text, 1999, p. 132).
Crucially, Barber describes how de Kooning’s representation of the male body and of the female body have shifting,
sometimes contradictory meanings. She notes that in Seated Figure (Classic Male) (1940), “de Kooning uses a charcoal
line to define a solid muscularity contained with an ordered format reminiscent of the protecting armature of a
breastplate…; the same line…also sweeps upwards to pick out delicate facial features more easily legible as signifiers
of femininity” (Ibid., p. 133). Her reading suggests that definitions of “woman” and “man” – or gender – are unstable.
In fact, she proposes viewing “Woman I as a body…that departs from more normative representations of femininity”
(Ibid., p. 134).
East Hampton II demonstrates Kooning’s lifelong exploration of the relationship between figure and ground. As in
Woman I, the painter blends the woman’s flesh into the background, reflecting the influence of Cubism, particularly
Picasso. However, 15 years later than Picasso’s portraits, East Hampton II is a “freer” composition – which can be
explained both by “the increased liquidity and slipperiness of de Kooning’s medium” (J. Elderfield, de Kooning: A
Retrospective, 2011, p. 364) and by the painter’s (as well as society’s) increasing openness to the representation of
female pleasure. As such, in East Hampton II, one can also see “a range of disjunctures that add up to the sense of a
body incapable of being regulated within more restrictive representations: formal structure and expressive handling of
paint, order and disorder, masculine and feminine…. No longer contained within the existing terms, she has become
a disorderly woman behaving badly in public, but with full knowledge of her right to occupy that space” (F. Barber,
ibid., pp. 133-134).
62. 60 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69218 ●
Romare Howard Bearden (1911-1988)
Untitled (a double-sided work)
Ink and watercolor on paper
24-1/4 x 18-1/4 inches (61.6 x 46.4 cm) (sight)
Signed lower right: Bearden
PROVENANCE:
Peg Alston Fine Arts, New York;
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above, 2008.
Estimate: $10,000-$15,000
“If you’re any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you
come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where
you were.”
– Romare Bearden
Verso of the present lot
63.
64. 62 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69219
Milton Avery (1885-1965)
Bather, 1961
Oil on canvasboard
30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Milton Avery 1961
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Milton Avery Trust;
Knoedler & Company, New York;
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above, 2002.
EXHIBITED:
Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania, “Paintings by Milton
Avery and His Family,” September 4-26, 1971;
Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, “Milton Avery: My Wife Sally, My
Daughter March,” January 4-31, 1989.
LITERATURE:
Allentown Art Museum, Paintings by Milton Avery and His Family,
exhibition catalogue, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1971, no. 42;
Grace Borgenicht Gallery, Milton Avery: My Wife Sally, My Daughter
March, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1989, n.p., illus.
Estimate: $300,000-$500,000
68. 66 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69220
Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920)
Silver Landscape (Study #1), 1971
Pencil on paper
11-1/2 x 17-1/2 inches (29.2 x 44.5 cm) (sheet)
Signed and dated lower right: Thiebaud 1971
PROVENANCE:
Foster Goldstrom Gallery, Dallas, Texas (label verso);
Private collection, acquired from the above, 1985.
Estimate: $15,000-$20,000
“I’m not just interested in the pictorial aspects of the landscape
– see a pretty place and try to paint it – but in some way to
manage it, manipulate it, or see what I can turn it into.”
– Wayne Thiebaud
69221 No Lot
CourtesyofAkronArtMuseum
70. 68 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69222
Robert Bechtle (b. 1932)
At The Golden Nugget, 1972
Oil on canvas
44-7/8 x 64 inches (114 x 162.6 cm)
Initialed lower right: RB
PROVENANCE:
Galerie des 4 Mouvements, Paris;
Private collection, Paris, acquired from the above;
By descent to the present owner, November 1973.
EXHIBITED:
Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, “Amerikanischer Fotorealismus,” 1972;
[The above exhibition also traveled to] Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt and Kunst-und Museumsverein, Wuppertal, 1972;
Galerie des 4 Mouvements, Paris, “Grands Maitres Hyperréalistes Américains,” May-June 1973;
Palais de l’Europe, Menton, France, “Dixième Biennale International d’’Art de Menton,” July-September 1974.
LITERATURE:
Württembergischer Kunstverein, Amerikanischer Fotorealismus, Stuttgart, 1972, cat. no. 3;
Galerie des 4 Mouvements, Grands Maitres Hyperréalistes Américains, Paris, 1973, n.p., cat. no. 2, illus.;
Palais de l’Europe, Dixième Biennale International d’Art de Menton, Menton, 1974, n.p., cat. no. 80;
Louis K. Meisel, Photorealism, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1980, p. 37, pl. 31, illustrated in color.
Estimate: $80,000-$120,000
Robert Bechtle’s powerful At The Golden Nugget epitomizes California scene painting from the 1970s. The painting exhibits the dual
influences of photography – the snapshot-like cropping – and of cinema – the narrative of a middle-class woman dressed in late 1960s-
era fashion getting up from her chair in a room suffused with sunlight. Indeed, time is a central subject of Bechtle’s work. As the artist
notes, “a photograph often gives the feeling of a particular moment in time, and you get the sense of how that is bracketed in with the
before and the after.” This said, Bechtle is not interested in strict representational verisimilitude like the Photorealists, as evidenced here
in the painterly depiction of the woman’s face.
Interestingly, most critics in the 1970s considered Bechtle’s work as Photorealist and therefore regressive, arguing that it was a retreat
into nostalgia. Nonetheless, a recent reevaluation of the relevance of Photorealism in the 1960s and 1970s interprets it as exploring
the increasingly mediated nature of vision. For example, the art historian David Lubin writes that Photorealism “was the art form that
perhaps best posed the question only then emerging in media studies and information theory… Do mechanical devices of transcription
and reproduction bring us closer to reality or ultimately make it more remote? (“Blank Art Deadpan Realism in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,” in Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s, 2009, p. 55). Other critics highlight instead Bechtle’s desire to represent
the “essence of American experience” (for example, J. Bishop and M. Auping in Roberth Bechtle: A Retrospective, 2005).
Both analyses help us understand At The Golden Nugget. The painting reflects the carefulness of Bechtle’s method (which, according
to Lubin, examines the increasing presence of images in American culture) and the slow rhythm of California life. Oppositely, At The
Golden Nugget portrays a world of increasing consumption and industrialization. As the critic Dieter Roelstraete writes, ”we are left
with the intriguing paradox of Photorealism’s definite investment in notions of craft and the artisanal production of images, on the one
hand, and its move to chronicle precisely those early years of postmanual… post-Fordist post-production on the other… It painted an
accurate portrait… of the very processes through which this world was evaporating” (“Modernism, Postmodernism and Gleam: On the
Photorealist Work Ethic,” 2010).
72. 70 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69223
Charles Bell (American, 1935-1995)
Study for Ta-Daa, 1985
Colored pencil on board
39 x 59 inches (99.1 x 149.9 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right: Charles Bell ‘85
PROVENANCE:
Louise K. Meisel Gallery, New York (label verso);
Private collection, Connecticut.
LITERATURE:
Louis K. Meisel, Photorealism Since 1980, Harry N. Abrams, New York,
1993, p.61, illustrated in color.
Henry Geldzahler, Charles Bell: The Complete Works: 1970-1990, Harry
N. Abrams, 1991, p. 102, illustrated in color.
Estimate: $40,000-$60,000
Charles Bell is primarily known for his large-scale Photorealistic depictions of children’s toys, gumball machines, action
figures and similar imagery, arranged in classical poses, assembled in his New York Studio. The significant scale of
his work, combined with his use of bright colors and his rendering of glass-like surfaces and textures, elevate these
everyday objects to the level of the traditional still life. In #4620 Study, Bell’s use of established techniques and media
distinguishes him from other Photorealist artists. Additionally, the positioning of the various toys—directly regarding
and engaging the viewer—encapsulates the centrality of spectacle in the American way of life. As Bell affirmed: “my
paintings look real, but it’s a subjective reality.”
CourtesyofLouisK.MeiselGallery
74. 72 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69224
Robert Longo (b. 1953)
Untitled (Pillow from Consulting Room Couch, 1938), from the Freud
Drawings series, 2001
Charcoal on mounted paper
48 x 50-3/8 inches (121.9 x 128 cm)
PROVENANCE:
Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf;
Sotheby’s London, March 11, 2015, lot 145;
Private collection, London.
Estimate: $40,000-$60,000
Untitled (2001), part of Robert Longo’s famed Freud Drawings series, reflects the artist’s fascination with power,
beauty, and horror, conjured in his portrayal of seemingly benign objects or events. In 1938, days before fleeing Nazi
prosecution to relocate to London, Sigmund Freud and his family invited Edmund Engelman to photograph their home
as well as Freud’s office and consulting rooms at Berggasse 19, in Vienna. The resulting catalog became the catalyst
for Longo’s series. These thirty large-scale charcoal drawings either recreate individual photographs, or magnify key
objects, reaffirming the historical significance of the images. In this case, rather than sketching Freud’s consulting couch
in its entirety, Longo highlights a single square pillow. Encapsulated in almost complete darkness, the white pillow
emerges as a remnant of Freud’s pioneering work. Velvety and intimate, the drawing points to an impending absence –
the impending exile and the horror caused by the Nazis. In Longo’s words, the Freud photographs “enabled me to […]
become the patient […]. I felt as if I had arrived for an appointment to find the premises deserted, but undisturbed – left
for me to explore in solitude.”
76. 74 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69225
Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974)
Open Forms, 1956
Gouache and ink on paper
22-1/8 x 30-3/4 inches (56.2 x 78.1 cm) (sheet)
Signed in ink lower center: Adolph Gottlieb
Inscribed in pencil on the reverse: G #6
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1959;
Swann Galleries, New York, November 9, 2004, lot 55;
Private collection, Los Angeles, California.
NOTE:
This lot is accompanied by a photocopied letter of authenticity from the
Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, New York, dated April 15, 1994.
Estimate: $30,000-$40,000
“When I work, I’m thinking in terms of purely visual effects and
relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes
afterwards. But it’s inconceivable to me that I could experience
things and not have them enter into my painting.”
– Adolf Gottlieb
78. 76 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69226 ●
George Segal (1924-2000)
Maquette for Immigrants, 1986
Plaster, painted wood, and metal
39 x 24 x 19-3/4 inches (99.1 x 61 x 50 cm)
PROVENANCE:
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York;
Edward Totah Gallery, London;
Private collection;
Christie’s Paris, December 3, 2014, lot 215.
Estimate: $20,000-$30,000
“Even though the museums guarding their
precious property fence everything off, in
my own studio, I made them so you and
I could walk in and around, and among
these sculptures.”
– George Segal
79. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 77
Photo Credit: Richard Greenhouse
Property from
The Estate of Anita Reiner
Anita Reiner continued a long tradition of support for contemporary art, one that was especially
compelling here in the United States. Anita is best remembered as a collector, but she was also
an advisor, an educator, and a patron. And in all of these roles, she was first and foremost a
passionate advocate for the new. A woman with boundless energy and enthusiasm, she had a
formidable eye and a finger directly on the pulse of what was good, valuable and important, in
the growing field of contemporary art.
According to Renée Reiner, Anita’s youngest child: “Anita purchased her first piece of art in
1967. It came from Leo Castelli and cost $540. (She asked for, and received, a 10% discount off
of the $600 price.) It was Andy Warhol’s black-on-black Self-Portrait. Other artists that became
part of Anita’s early collection included Larry Bell, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, John Salt,
Don Eddy, Claes Oldenburg, Duane Hansen, Kenneth Noland and Ralph Golings….Anita was
an avid collector of contemporary art for close to 50 years. She was smart, focused and intense
about this pursuit. And, at the same time, she was also fast. Mom would walk into a gallery,
move through once quickly, and home in on ‘best in show’ before I could park the car and join
her inside.”
Through Anita’s fierce passion for collecting, combined with her intellect, tenacity, and
adventurous spirit, she built a remarkable art collection. We hope that you will be inspired by
our offerings from the Estate of Anita Reiner, and equally inspired by the passion and intelligence
that brought these works together.
80. 78 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69227
Jeff Koons (b. 1954)
Ice Bucket, 1986
Cast stainless steel
9-1/4 x 7 x 12 inches (23.5 x 17.8 x 30.5 cm)
Ed. 1/3
PROPERTY FROM THE ANITA REINER COLLECTION
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, California;
Anita Reiner, acquired from the above, 1986;
Estate of the above, 2013.
EXHIBITED:
Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, California, “Luxury and Degradation,” July 19-August 16, 1986 (this example exhibited);
[The above exhibition also traveled to] International With Monument Gallery, New York, October, 1986 (this example exhibited);
Faggionato Fine Arts, London, “Object/Sculpture/Object,” October 9-November 24, 2000 (another example exhibited);
Gimpel Fils, London,”The (Ideal) Home Show,” July 11-September 8, 2001, (another example exhibited);
Dickinson Roundell Inc., New York, “Aftershock: The Legacy of the Readymade in Post-War and Contemporary American Art,” May 5-June 20, 2003,
(another example exhibited);
Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway, “Jeff Koons: Retrospective,” April 9, 2004-December 12, 2004, (another example exhibited);
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, “Jeff Koons: A Retrospective,” June 27-October 19, 2014 (this example exhibited);
Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York, “Meet Me Halfway: Selections from the Anita Reiner Collection,” February 26-April 4, 2015 (this example exhibited).
LITERATURE:
A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 77, no. 14;
R. Rosenblum, ed., The Jeff Koons Handbook, London/New York, 1992, p. 157;
Dickinson Roundell, Inc., ed., Aftershock: The Legacy of the Readymade in Post-War and Contemporary American Art, New York, 2003, p. 87, no. 37,
another example illustrated;
Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Jeff Koons: Retrospective, Oslo, 2004, p. 41, another example illustrated;
Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Madrid, 2009, pp. 198 and 207, another example illustrated;
Whitney Museum of American Art, Scott Rothkopf, Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, New York, 2014, p.79, pl. 37.
NOTE:
This work comes with a certificate of authenticity from the artist’s studio.
Estimate: $300,000-$500,000
82. 80 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
Ice Bucket (1986) embodies key themes that characterize the work of Jeff Koons, from luxury and consumption to culture
and sexuality. Part of Koons’s Luxury and Degradation series, Ice Bucket centers around the consumption of alcohol. This
series also includes models of a travel bar and of pick-up trucks and barrel cars used to transport bourbon, as well as oil
paintings reproducing advertisements of liquor brands. In theory, the stainless steel sculpture could function as a literal
ice bucket; as such, it alludes to Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades and the absence of a distinction between art and non-
art. However, if Ice Bucket only operated on this level, it would cease being an artwork. Compared to Duchamp, Koons
“uses objects that are already a little closer to art, or at least to design, and that are defined not as much by their function
as by their audience, their market…. They are highly charged and meant to fulfill emotional and psychological needs” (J.
Caldwell, “Jeff Koons: The Way We Live Now,” in Jeff Koons, 1992, p.10).
Clearly, Ice Bucket confirms Koons’s interest in luxury. Appropriating a subject from popular American culture, Ice
Bucket explores the ways in which objects both signify specific lifestyles and reproduce their appeal. Koons employs
the polished stainless steel material of Ice Bucket throughout the whole series, and he describes this medium as “fake
luxury” and “the material of the proletariat” (Koons quoted in ibid., p.65). Using stainless steel in combination with
advertisements communicates a fascination with “the ambition of upward mobility…. Luxury and Degradation reflects
harshly on the pretensions of the middle classes” (J. Lewis, “A Modest Proposal,” in Jeff Koons, 1992, p. 19).
Like Andy Warhol, Koons here effects an intricate relation between consumer culture and the art world. Luxury and
Degradation immediately followed the series The New and Equilibrium, for which he appropriated vacuum cleaners and
basketballs, sometimes placing the latter within half-filled water banks in a clear reference to conceptual art. “Luxury and
Degradation…both evokes and frustrates this liquid desire…; rather than displaying their contents, [these works] closely
reflect us and our desires” (J. Caldwell, op. cit., pp. 11-12).
In addition, the concept of desire gives form to Ice Bucket. The sculpture not only suggests upward mobility, but also
male power by hinting at the idealized figure of the successful professional who consumes bourbon. In Koons’s work,
this figure of success (which he personifies) is accompanied by a submissive woman; for example, in the explicit series
Made in Heaven, 1989-1991, he represents himself having sex with his future wife, porn star Ilona Staller. Koons has
stated that his goal is to show viewers that “they don’t have to live with unfulfilled desire” (J. Bankowsky, ”Pop Life,”
in Pop Life: Art in a Material World, 2009, p.27). And yet one can read his work precisely as revealing his permanently
unfulfilled desire for “mainstream relevance” (ibid., p. 25) – a yearning expressed in the series of “advertisements for his
1988 show Banality, [which] promoted the artist himself as a new kind of celebrity” (S. Rothkopf, “Made in Heaven: Jeff
Koons and the Invention of the Art Star,” in Pop Life: Art in a Material World, 2009, p. 39).
Desire is, in fact, the central theme of Koons’s work. Ice Bucket embodies a Duchampian paradox: it is and always will
be empty. Too, it foregrounds the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “objet petit a,” or an unattainable
object of desire (whose unfulfillable quest guides our actions). Like the erotic Made in Heaven sculptures, Ice Bucket
“shows us is the moment when the fantasies fall away” (J. Caldwell, “Jeff Koons: The Way We Live Now,” in Jeff Koons,
1992, p.14). The art historian Andreas Beyer, underscoring Koons’s obsession with desire, suggests that “what comes
about repeatedly in all of [his] works…is the looking for the one and only work, the work in which all art is contained
and preserved” (“All in One – Jeff Koons and the Sum of Art,” in Jeff Koons: The Sculptor, 2012, p.24).
Ultimately, Ice Bucket exposes the interdependence between artworks and commodities, which further reiterates the
validity of a psychoanalytic interpretation. Indeed, Brian Wallis discusses Koons’s work as fetishistic in its exaggeration
83. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 81
of the work of art to the expense of “the object’s use value” and in its revealing of the “intense incompatibility of the
rare bourgeois art object and mass-produced consumer goods” (“We Don’t Need Another Hero: Aspects of the Critical
Reception of the Work of Jeff Koons,” in Jeff Koons, 1992, p. 29). Reminding “us of art’s (and our own) ambivalent but
deeply embedded relation to the market” (ibid.), Koons’s work functions “as a grand ‘readymade’…, producing a meta-
level of awareness about [the] machinations and effects [of the late capitalist economy]” (C. Wood, “Capitalist Realness,”
in Pop Life: Art in a Material World, 2009, p.62).
84. 82 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69228
Louise Lawler (b. 1947)
Woman (statue) from above, 1985
Dye destruction
30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Ed. 1/5
Signed and dated in pencil, with the artist’s ink stamp on the reverse
PROVENANCE:
The Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri (label verso).
Estimate: $20,000-$30,000
“I don’t exactly think I am a photographer… I’m just trying to
point things out, I never feel like I am answering anything”
– Louise Lawler
86. 84 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69229
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Ethel Scull, 1963
Synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas
19-3/4 x 16 inches (50.2 x 40.6 cm)
Estate of Andy Warhol stamp verso
PROVENANCE:
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York;
Private collection, California, acquired directly from the above, October 2000.
LITERATURE:
N. Printz and G. Frei, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné. Volume 1: Paintings and Sculpture,
1961-1963, Phaidon, New York and London, 2002, no. 473, p. 417, illustrated in color.
NOTE:
This lot is registered at the Andy Warhol Estate under number P060.035. This lot is accompanied
by a certificate of authenticity from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., signed
and dated January 29, 2001.
Estimate: $200,000-$300,000
89. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 87
69230 ●
Victor Vasarely (1906-1997)
Neff, 1980
Oil on panel
23-1/2 x 11-3/4 inches (59.7 x 29.8 cm)
Signed lower right: Vasarely
Signed, titled, dated, and inscribed verso: 3.084 Vasarely / “Neff” / 59 x 30
/ 1980 / Victor Vasarely
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF MR. AND MRS. HENRY R.
HOFFMAN, DALLAS
PROVENANCE:
Kenneth G. Hatfield Fine Art Inc, Vancouver, British Columbia;
Private collection, Dallas, Texas, acquired from the above, April 21, 1981.
Estimate: $25,000-$35,000
90. 88 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
69231
Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz (b. 1930)
Violet, Green and Blue Knot, 1987
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 36 inches (76.2 x 91.4 cm)
Signed, dated, and inscribed verso: Richard Anuszkiewicz 1987 820
PROVENANCE:
ACA Galleries, New York (label verso);
Hokin Gallery, Inc., Palm Beach, Florida (label verso);
Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida (label verso);
Private collection.
Estimate: $20,000-$30,000
“My work is of an experimental nature and has centered on
an investigation into the effects of complementary colors of
full intensity when juxtaposed and the optical changes that
occur as a result, and a study of the dynamic effect of the
whole under changing conditions of light, and the effect of
light on color.”
– Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz
End of Auction
92. 90 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
PRINTS & MULTIPLES
MAY 24, 2016 | LIVE & ONLINE | HA.COM/5267
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
$ (9), 1982
Estimate: $80,000 - $120,000
93. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 91
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
PRINTS & MULTIPLES
MAY 24, 2016 | LIVE & ONLINE | HA.COM/5267
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
$ (Quadrant), 1982
Estimate: $60,000 - $80,000
94. 92 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
PRINTS & MULTIPLES
MAY 24, 2016 | LIVE & ONLINE | HA.COM/5267
Chuck Close (b. 1940)
Self-Portrait, 2000
Estimate: $60,000 - $80,000
95. Evening Session, Auction #5258 | Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:00 PM ET 93
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
PRINTS & MULTIPLES
MAY 24, 2016 | LIVE & ONLINE | HA.COM/5267
KAWS (b. 1974)
Ups and Downs, 2013
Estimate: $25,000-$35,000
96. 94 To view full descriptions, enlargeable images and bid online, visit HA.com/5258
AMERICAN ART
MAY 7, 2016 | LIVE & ONLINE | HA.COM/5251
William Robinson Leigh (American, 1866-1955)
Indian Rider, 1918
Estimate: $400,000-$600,000
97. INDEX
ANUSZKIEWICZ, RICHARD JOSEPH 69231
ARNOLDI, CHARLES ARTHUR 69210
AVERY, MILTON 69219, 69221
BASQUIAT, JEAN-MICHEL 69202
BATES, DAVID 69205
BEARDEN, ROMARE HOWARD 69218
BECHTLE, ROBERT 69222
BELL, CHARLES 69223
CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN 69206
CORSE, MARY 69209, 69211
DAVID BATES 69204
DE KOONING, WILLEM 69217
DZUBAS, FRIEDEL 69214
FONSECA, CAIO 69212
FRANCIS, SAM 69208
FRANKENTHALER, HELEN 69207
GOTTLIEB, ADOLPH 69225
HARING, KEITH 69201, 69203
KAWS 69200
KOONS, JEFF 69227
LAWLER, LOUISE 69228
LONGO, ROBERT 69224
POLKE, SIGMAR 69216
RAUSCHENBERG, ROBERT 69215
SEGAL, GEORGE 69226
SMITH, JOSH 69213
THIEBAUD, WAYNE 69220
VASARELY, VICTOR 69230
WARHOL, ANDY 69229