The N
from the latter half of the 20th century through to the present in a unified platform.
The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction will feature works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and more.
Lee Krasner, ‘August Petals’
A captivating tour-de-force teeming with explosive gestures, vivid hues and emotional intent, Lee Krasner’s August Petals epitomizes the artistic revelation that overtook Krasner following a period of extraordinary hardship. Painted in 1963 – directly preceded by Krasner’s groundbreaking Umber paintings, a series fraught with emotional turmoil following the sudden loss of her husband, Jackson Pollock, and her mother – the present work marked a pivotal turning point, both personal and artistic, during which she embarked on a series with the same intense psychic intensity but liberated from the underlying trauma which infused them. August Petals is among a limited suite of 11 paintings that Krasner produced that reveal the renewed inspiration she found in nature during this emotionally trying period.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, ‘Untitled’
Unlock the Mythology Hidden in Basquiat’s 'Untitled' (1981)
An incendiary image of warrior, deity, artist, and hero erupts in technicolor in Untitled, in which Jean-Michel Basquiat prophetically manifests the invention, innovation and staggering appetite for creation that would drive the rest of his career. Executed in 1981, the critical year which heralded his ascent from SAMO, the street provocateur, to the prodigy of the mainstream art world – during which time he also began producing artworks under his own name – Untitled powerfully asserts the clairvoyant vision of a figure predicting their own victory: aflame, unblinking and crowned with a triumphal laurel wreath.
Ed Ruscha, ‘That Was Then This Is Now’
Radiating above a celestial yet portent cloudy sky, Ed Ruscha’s iconic and enigmatic text “THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW” thunders across the canvas, evoking the cinematic climax of the transient instance between past and present. In an arresting theatrical crescendo, Ruscha masterfully elicits a moment of revolution: glowing white sunlight emanates from behind clusters of stormy clouds, dramatically illuminating an ethereal promise of hope and transformation. Ruscha’s titular phrase epitomizes a central conceptual concern of the artist’s practice: the enduring friction between nostalgia and reality, before and after, past and present. Executed in 1989, That Was Then This Is Now belongs to a seminal and limited group of sfumato skies painted between 1988-90, including Hell Heaven and Do Az I Do, which provide a conceptual counterpart to the artist’s earlier burning sunrise-sunset paintings of the 70s and 80s.
Adrian Ghenie, ‘Alpine Retreat 2’
Haunted by the surreal presence of a monumental head lurking above, the protagonist of Adrian Ghenie’s Alpine Retreat 2 lies in repose, only to be obliterated by his signature drags of cerulean, white and scarlet paint. Executed in 2017, the present work is the sister painting to The Alpine Retreat, which dates to the year prior and today resides in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Together, these works see the artist’s facture, psychological inquiry and revisionist reconsiderations reach their apogee, representing the apex of Ghenie’s uncompromising subversions of 20th-century history painting – a subject that served as the focus of the artist’s critically acclaimed presentation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The present work depicts an anachronistically pregnant Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s mistress, at their Bavarian mountain chalet.
Michael Armitage, ‘Mpeketoni’
Coruscating, jewel-toned passages of crimson, violet and turquoise pool together to form the figures and foliage of Michael Armitage’s verdant junglescape, Mpeketoni. With its title referencing the name of a town in his native Kenya, Mpeketoni advances Armitage’s layered assessments of localized violence, contemporary experience, the art historical canon and East African culture. Showcasing Armitage’s signature use of Lubugo cloth and his nuanced facture and modulations of color, Mpeketoni probes the nature of tragedy and art’s ability to engender a site for healing. His courage, candor and incontestable technical proficiency have earned Armitage fierce institutional interest and several important traveling mid-career surveys, most notably his 2020 exhibition “Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Haus der Kunst, Munich as well has his 2022 exhibition “You, Who Are Still Alive” at the Kunsthalle Basel.
