Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art and South African Fine Wine
Live Virtual Auction, 26 - 28 July 2020
Monday Evening Sale
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
About this Item
signed, dated 2020 and inscribed with 'Picasso' on the reverse
Notes
In this work, the artist refers to Pablo Picasso's famous painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), which is widely regarded as having changed the course of art practice and ushered in the possibility of total abstraction. The large oil on canvas is now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and has been more studied, more emulated and more derided than almost any other work in art history.
This series of works is a celebration rather than a statement of the fact that there is ‘nothing new’ to be made art-wise. Falling squarely into the modernist revival, these paintings test already used images in another painted setting. The works function in an idiom of painting that has been re-hashed before, and certainly will be again.
The artist attempts homage to modernist abstract painting and appropriates well-known art work titles, giving the series of works a certain ‘back to school’ flavour. Out-of-place-objects are introduced into ‘painted out-of-place’ landscapes: sometimes the landscape is completely eliminated to make way for expressions of pure form and colour. Colour use and a sense of 'automatic' composition are at the forefront.1
1. Adapted from the artist’s statement, 2020.