On May 15, an auction dedicated to the visionary dealer Barbara Gladstone
will feature works by Richard Prince, Rudolf Stingel, Mike Kelley
and more from her cherished personal collection.
Barbara Gladstone was trusted steward of a new international artistic vanguard,
and her enduring legacy remains as multifaceted and far-reaching as the artists
she represented as a gallerist. Selections from The Collection of Barbara Gladstone
encapsulates her visionary spirit and profound impact on the creative output of our time.
Richard Prince, ‘Man Crazy Nurse’
Set against a flaming vermilion background, emblazoned with gestural strokes of yellow and gushing drips of white pigment, Richard Prince’s Man Crazy Nurse is a seminal example of the artist’s celebrated body of Nurse paintings. Prince’s female protagonist, screenprinted from the cover art of a midcentury pulp fiction romance novella, explores and exploits the melodramatic femme-fatale stereotype, encapsulating the audacious subversion of authorship, identity and authenticity at the heart of Prince’s practice. The series marks a climax in the narrative arc of Prince’s conceptual program, which begins with his iconic Cowboys in the 1980s, through which the artist contends with notions of originality through appropriation and witty interrogations of mythical cultural archetypes.
Andy Warhol, ‘Flowers’
Andy Warhol’s Flowers rank among the artist’s most significant and recognizable motifs, created during the first decade of the artist’s production. The coloration of the present work makes it a particularly rare and desirable example; it is one of only four recorded examples featuring black flowers on a green ground. Testament to the motif’s centrality within the artist’s practice, Warhol chose this subject to represent his debut exhibition with Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964, which was a landmark, sell-out show that was legendary in the history of American Pop Art. Flowers extends a storied art historical lineage from Dutch still lifes to Claude Monet’s waterlilies to Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Richard Prince, ‘Are You Kidding?’
Are You Kidding? is a paradigmatic example of the deadpan, candid satire that defines Richard Prince’s iconic Joke paintings. Yellow sans-serif text stretches edge to edge across the canvas, situating a blunt joke in a cobalt monochrome expanse. Prince began his Joke series in 1985 during a five-month stay in Los Angeles. The artist soon moved from the handwritten reproductions of jokes from his earlier works to silkscreen paintings on canvas, wryly asserting “low” culture into the “high art” backdrop and expanding his exploration of the categorically quotidian subject on the proverbial canvas.
Rudolf Stingel, ‘Untitled (Bolego)’
Intimate in scale, Untitled (Bolego) from 2006 is an exceptional example of Rudolf Stingel’s conceptual rigor and technical mastery. The present work is part of one of the artist’s most iconic series of self-portraits, a suite of monochromatic, photorealistic paintings based on photographs taken by Stingel’s friend Roland Bolego. Meticulously reworking Bolego’s photographs in oil paint, Stingel interrogates the historically intertwined relationship between photography and painting, introducing a contemporary perspective on the art historical tradition of self-portraiture, while also furthering his career-long exploration of authorship and artmaking.
Elizabeth Peyton, ‘What Wondrous Thing Do I See…’
What Wondrous Thing Do I See… (Lohengrin, Jonas Kaufmann) is a luminous portrayal of a scene from Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. One of the most influential figurative artists working today, Peyton is celebrated for her paintings of cultural icons and close friends that have been lauded for reinvigorating the genre of portraiture. The present work’s tender and observant gaze underscores the artist’s dedication to unearthing the profound essence that lies behind her often famous subjects. Closing in on the two sitters, cropping out their surroundings, and focusing on the moment they meet for a kiss, Peyton distills emotive potential into the 9-by-11-inch picture frame, urging us to gaze into a moment of love forever frozen in time.
