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Henri Matisse: “Flowers and Ceramic Plate” (oil on canvas, 1913)

Dear to the heart and collection of Frankfurt, Germany’s Städel Museum, Henri Matisse painted “Flowers and Ceramic Plate” (“Blumen und Keramik”) using oil on canvas in 1913.

While lovely to our eyes now, Matisse was then not only enjoying color but also experimenting with radically new, in the European aesthetic, perspectives, some well-practiced and well-received in other parts of the world, such as Africa and Japan, and making their way into Europe via trade.

Like Picasso and Braque and their contemporaneous alignment of reduced objects into a shallow space using multiple vantage points (“cubism”), Matisse renders objects placed in close proximity to each other from different vantage points and perspectives.

The flowers are painted as viewed from a side perspective. The ceramic plate is painted as viewed from above.

As the Städel Museum points out:

“This new form of beauty gives preference to the surface over spatial depth and was highly controversial at the time.

“That means the end of the spatial illusionism European painters had worked so hard to perfect over many centuries.”

 

See: “Henri Matisse: Flowers and Ceramic Plate,” 1913 (oil on canvas), Städel Museum

 

 

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Zao Wou-ki’s “29.01.64” (oil on canvas, 1964)

abstraction | a kind of inner imaginary landscape

The grand and bold “29.01.64” (the date of its completion; oil on canvas) sold at Christie’s Hong Kong in May 2017 for $19.7 million, then an auction record for the artist, “to bidders who clearly wanted this picture.”

Zao Wou-ki (1920-2013) moved to Paris from Beijing, where he was born, in 1948, began working with New York dealer Samuel Koontz (who encouraged him to experiment with larger formats) in 1956, and took a larger studio in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris in 1961.

Christie’s Paris’ specialist Clara Rivollet highlights the very complex composition:

“There’s actually a structure of very deep, black brushstrokes an then you can see around a kind of dilute-ink-wash-like oil around it and then on top of it he adds a whole network of intricate lines.

“You have very controlled sinuous lines that remind us of Chinese calligraphy. But also this very kind of loose movement in white paint is very inspired by Jackson Pollock’s painting.

“The painting could be a Western painting because it’s abstract. But actually in its essence it remains very Chinese because for Zao Wou-ki abstraction always represents a kind of inner imaginary landscape like the Chinese literati painting would do.”

“29.09.64”, at 230 x 345 cm. (90 1/2 x 135 7/8 in.), is one of the two largest that Zao painted in the 1960s.

It was purchased directly from the artist in 1969 by a French architect who built hospitals, research centers, and administrative buildings throughout France and Algeria in the years of rapid modernization following World War II.

“29.09.64” remained in the family’s collection for 48 years. The original owner’s son consigned the painting to Christie’s.

In an early 2017 exhibition, New York gallery Lévy Gorvy paired the works of Willem de Kooning and Zao Wou-ki. A little boost to the market?

 

See:

  1. “An inner, imaginary landscape: Zao Wou-ki’s ‘29.09.64,” Christie’s
  2. “Contemporaries: Voices from East & West / Asian 20th C. and Contemporary Art,” lot 4, Christie’s HK, 27 May 2017;
  3. “Zao Wou-ki’s 29.09.64 Sets Record in Hong Kong with $19.7m Sale,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 29 May 2017.

 

 

#art #artmarket #zaowouki #arthistory #contemporaryart #postwarart #paris #france #newyork #abstraction #abstractexpressionism #jacksonpollock #literatipainting #songdynasty #oiloncanvas #inkonpaper #calligraphy #hongkong #beijing #berlin #vienna #milan #dubai #algeria #africa #realestatedevelopment #architecture #design #luxury #christie’s #LévyGorvy

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“Suprematist Composition” (Kazimir Malevich, 1916) to be sold in May

Loïc Gouzer, Christie’s Co-Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, has announced that he will be selling the painting “Suprematist Composition” (Kazimir Malevich, oil on canvas, 1916) in May. Estimate: $70 million.

“Suprematist Composition” was last sold at Sotheby’s on 3 November 2008 by the heirs of the artist (after being in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for several decades). Art dealer David Nahmad purchased the painting for US $60,002,500.

Mr. Gouzer is confident of the art historic, and current market, value of this work. “‘A work like this one should be the corner stone of every major collection or museum and if the market was indexed to the art historical importance of works, then this should be a billion $ painting (although we as specialists have to sadly take into account the laws of gravity and the estimate will be in the region of $70m).'”

Sixth sense matters. “’I relate it a lot to my spearfishing—you don’t know why, but you know that if you dive now the big fish is going to come. When you’re at the surface, you don’t see anything, but you just have this instinct that it is going to happen. In art, it is the same thing—this instinct sometimes that I know a painting is going to move.’”

Company matters too. “’If you start putting works around another work, they give each other meaning. Each of the works are in dialogue, and they help each other.'”

 

See:

“Loïc Gouzer’s $70m Malevich for May,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 10 April 2018

“The Daredevil of the Auction World,” Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 4 July 2016

Sotheby’s “Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale,” Lot No. 6, Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematist Composition,” 3 November 2008, New York

 

#art #artmarket #kazimirmalevich #christie’s #loïcgouzer #russia #suprematism #suprematistcomposition #modernism #abstraction #geneva #switzerland #vienna #austria #brittany #france #sothebys #davidnahmad #luxury #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #taipei #seoul #jakarta #singapore