Los Angeles Artists @ The Broad - Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog)

Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog)

The Broad, Los Angeles

November 18, 2023 – April 7, 2024

Patrick Martinez 

Weeping Warrior, 2022 

Stucco, neon, mean streak, ceramic, acrylic paint, spray paint, 

latex house paint, banner tarp, rope, stucco patch, ceramic tile, 

tile adhesive, engraved mirror, and LED signs on panel. 

The Broad Art Foundation 

© Patrick Martinez

The Broad presents Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog), an exhibition drawn entirely from the Broad collection, showcasing works by Los Angeles artists. Drawing its title from a piece by John Baldessari, the exhibition often oscillates between local takes on a city in flux and turmoil, and reflections outward to evolving issues of artmaking and global concerns. The exhibition includes the work of 21 artists across varying generations who were raised in the Los Angeles area, such as Doug Aitken and Lari Pittman, or relocated to the city, including Catherine Opie and Mike Kelley. 

With artworks by Doug Aitken, John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Robbie Conal, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jack Goldstein, Sayre Gomez, Mark Grotjahn, Elliott Hundley, Alex Israel, Mike Kelley, Toba Khedoori, Barbara Kruger, Sharon Lockhart, Patrick Martinez, Catherine Opie, Lari Pittman, Joe Ray, Ed Ruscha, Diana Thater, Jonas Wood.

“The Broad collection works selected for this show span five decades, and reflect Los Angeles’ growth as a nexus for artists and as a complex urban landscape to investigate,” said Joanne Heyler, Founding Director of The Broad. “The show traces the influence of earlier generations of LA-based artists on later generations and spotlights numerous artists who illuminate deep-seated social inequities and contradictions woven into our city and its myths.”

Originally the exhibition was a Spring 2020 show poised to open when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, leaving the project unrealized. Now re-envisioned, Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) mines the paradoxes captured in John Baldessari’s title through a more expansive, post-2020 lens featuring a wider spectrum of LA-based artists and practices in the evolving Broad collection. Including works made from 1969 to 2023 that span the mediums of abstract or photorealistic painting, photography, sculpture, and political signage, the exhibition contains fragments, attitudes, and everyday experiences absorbed and worked through in Los Angeles that reflect back on our collective present moment, and invoke alternate histories, states of mind, and futures.

The presentation highlights over 60 artworks–most of which are on view at the museum for the first time–exhibiting artists in the Broad collection whose work makes some of the city’s integral contributions to contemporary art internationally, and revealing dialogues between local artists of different generations. Even works not explicitly about Los Angeles reveal a gap between the allure and the reality of life in the city, where a sense of phantasmagoric projection contrasts against much harder, concrete realities.

The show’s title refers to John Baldessari’s monumental work Buildings=Guns=People: Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) (1985), where “smog” nods to the city’s notorious air quality, contrasting against familiar depictions of sunshine, beaches, Hollywood, and nature. This play between an idealized expectation of LA and its gritty reality is evident in the large-scale paintings and neons of Ed Ruscha, Mark Bradford, and Patrick Martinez whose intergenerational exchanges consider global and local societal issues through a shared home.

Hung alongside John Baldessari’s work are two pieces by Mike Kelley, notably including his six-part drawing Infinite Expansion (1984), which is connected with one of his earliest performance works exploring psychedelia at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Other featured artists include Barbara Kruger, who have a gallery dedicated to her work Untitled (I shop therefore I am) (1987-2019). On view at The Broad for the first time, this work uses the parlance of political signage to probe commerce and the formation of identity. Toba Khedoori presents large-scale paper works Untitled (park benches) (1997) and Untitled (Black fireplace) (2006), both of which depict scenes of quietude or isolation, experiences often associated with the sprawling geography of Los Angeles. In two works from 2022, Diamonds and Pearls and The Whole Wide World is a Haunted House, Sayre Gomez deploys a realist style using airbrushed paint. Both of his works take on the overlooked perspective of the pedestrian, where street-level views of an abandoned strip mall and nail salon signage unambiguously embrace the complex social arrangements of a shared, sweeping metropolis.

Furthermore, on view for free in The Broad’s third-floor galleries throughout the exhibition are works by additional Los Angeles artists in the Broad collection including Charles Ray, Henry Taylor, and Robert Therrien.

THE BROAD

221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.thebroad.org

20th Century & Contemporary Art Sales @ Phillips, New York & Online

20th Century & Contemporary Art Sales
Phillips, New York
July 2, 2020

JOAN MITCHELL

Noël, 1961-1962

Estimate: $9,500,000 – 12,500,000

© The Estate of Joan Mitchell, Courtesy of Phillips

Phillips announces its forthcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City via livestream to bidders worldwide on July 2, 2020 at 5pm EDT. The sale will debut an enriched digital experience on Phillips.com, including augmented multimedia content, enhanced visuals, and art historical and market analysis that will allow for deep viewer engagement. A dynamic live auction streamed on their online platform will bring the live auction experience to collectors and viewers around the world using a virtual international bidding room of Phillips specialists.

“Phillips has been at the forefront of identifying the future of the bidding and buying experience online with the ability to bid on our app along with live streaming for nearly half a decade. We’re thrilled to bring our marquee Evening Sale to collectors worldwide in a format that will capture the intimacy and excitement of being in the room,” states Jean-Paul Engelen, Phillips Deputy Chairman and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art.

Featuring more than 20 lots, the sale includes works by artists highly sought after in today’s market including Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Matthew Wong, David Hammons, Amoako Boafo, Albert Oehlen, Lucas Arruda, Christina Quarles, Charles White, Banksy, KAWS and others.

“The works presented in our 20th Century & Contemporary Sale mark the bellwether of the art market today, featuring artists who have demonstrated collector demand across the globe with a focus on African American, female, and cutting-edge contemporary artists,” states Robert Manley, Phillips Deputy Chairman and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Victor 25448, 1987

Valued at $10 million

© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Courtesy of Phillips

Evening Sale Highlights

Two superlative works by artists of the 20th century include Joan Mitchell’s Noël and Helen Frankenthaler’s Head of the Meadow. An exceptional 1994 painting by Gerhard Richter hails from the height of his abstract period coincides with the highly regarded retrospective currently at the Met Breuer, Gerhard Richter: Painting After All.

Following the house’s stellar result for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Flexible, which sold for more than $43 million in 2018 more than doubling the pre-sale low estimate of $20 million, Phillips will offer an impressive work executed in 1987, just one year before his untimely death. Last offered publicly more than a decade ago, Victor 25448 captures the singular coalescence of text and imagery that is a hallmark of the artist’s celebrated practice.

An Old Master replica tagged with a stenciled monkey guzzling gasoline from a child’s juice box represents a significant work by master-interventionist Banksy to come to auction this season from his Crude Oil series. Fellow disruptor KAWS is represented with a large-scale early Companion painting from 2000.

BANSKY

Monkey Poison, 2004

Estimate: $1,800,000 – 2,500,000

© Bansky, Courtesy of Phillips

On the heels of Phillips’ strong debut offering of American art in the 20th Century & Contemporary Sales with Norman Rockwell’s Before the Shot in November 2019, marking the first time the artist was ever included in a 20th Century and Contemporary Evening Sale and achieving a price of $4.7 million, this sale will offer a rare, never publicly-seen painting by Maxfield Parrish. Humpty Dumpty, 1921, hailing from The du Pont Family, captures the technical prowess and imagery which hovers between popular kitsch and surreal that has cemented the artist’s position as the “Grand Pop” of American Pop Art by Time magazine.

MAXFIELD PARRISH

Humpty Dumpty, 1921

Estimate: $400,000 – 600,000

© The Estate of Maxfield Parrish, Courtesy of Phillips

Phillips continues to debut artists with significant primary market following to auction. This season the sale will feature a painting by Matthew Wong, the self-taught artist known for this interior scenes and landscape depictions, marking one of the first paintings by Matthew Wong offered in an Evening Sale context. Other contemporary artists debuting this season include Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe and Robert Nava.

MATTHEW WONG

Mood Room, 2018

Estimate: $60,000 – 80,000

© Matthew Wong, Courtesy of Phillips 

CHARLES WHITE

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, 1958

Estimate: $700,000 – 1,000,000

© The Estate of Charles White, Courtesy of Phillips 

Charles White’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child from 1958, painted shortly after the artist moved to Los Angeles where he became an important teacher and mentor for African American artists at Otis College of Art and Design. Taking its title from an African American spiritual, which regained popularity in the civil rights movement, the work is a significant example of his signature draftsmanship utilizing ink wash in color. With an estimate of $700,000 – $1,000,000, the work is poised to make a world record for the artist in this medium. David Hammons’ Untitled (Jordan begins his 8th season as no. 1) from 1991 transforms a copy of the Amsterdam News from November 2, 1991 into a work of contemporary realism.

CHRISTINA QUARLES

Placed, 2017

Estimate: $70,000 – 100,000

© Christina Quarles, Courtesy of Phillips 

Phillips continues to bring to market works by artists for which we have achieved world record results across our sales globally. The sale includes a painting Lucas Arruda whose world record was achieved at Phillips London in February 2020, realizing a price of £300,000, as well as a painting by Christina Quarles for whom we achieved the world record this past November 2019, $275,000, more than five times the low estimate of $50,000, after debuting the artist in a Phillips’ Day Sale New York November 2018. In addition, the sale will feature a work by Amoako Boafo, whose world record was achieved at Phillips London in February 2020 with his auction debut The Lemon Bathing Suit, which achieved a price of £675,000 more than twenty times its low estimate of £30,000.

Francis Picabia’s 1941-42 Portrait de Femme hails from a late period in the artist’s career devoted to painting pin-ups, which have gone on to have a significant influence on contemporary artists working today including John Currin and David Salle.

Julio González’s bronze sculpture, L’arlequin / Pierrot ou Colombine represents his pioneering practice in light of his collaborative work with Pablo Picasso.

Day Sale Highlights 

Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale will be livestreamed to bidders worldwide on July 2 across two sessions, starting at 11am EDT and later at 2pm EDT. The sale will champion numerous artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, featuring more than 170 lots across both sessions. 

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

Pure Drop, 1983

Estimate: $600,000 – 800,000

© The Estate of John Chamberlain, Courtesy of Phillips

Leading the Morning Session is John Chamberlain’s monumental Pure Drop, 1983, from the artist's Giraffe series. Pure Drop exemplifies Chamberlain's novel sandblasting technique, which began to define his oeuvre after his move to Florida in the early 1980s. Also featured in the sale is a remarkable landscape painting from 1995 by Cuban artist Tomas Sánchez, Meditador, its title referring to Tomas Sánchez’s conception of landscape playing a meditative role between man and nature. Another top lot is Kenneth Noland’s Resect, 1979, one of the artist’s renowned asymmetrically shaped canvases. Other notable works include sculptures by Anne Truitt and Joseph Cornell, and two works by Henri Laurens, culminating the selection of works from the Collection of Florence Knoll Bassett, which have been offered across Phillips’ 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Sales over the past year.

NOAH DAVIS

100 Years of Entertainment 1-5, 2008

Estimate: $120,000 – 180,000

© The Estate of Noah Davis, Courtesy of Phillips

The Afternoon Session will feature works by important contemporary artists, including Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Matthew Wong, Amoako Boafo and Noah Davis—notably Noah Davis’s 100 Years of Entertainment 1-5, 2008, which exemplifies the abstracted figuration for which the artist is known. This comes to auction on the heels of a new world auction record for the artist, set this past March at Phillips, with a painting selling for $400,000, over six times its low estimate. Another highlight will be Vivian Springford’s Untitled (Tanzania Series), 1972, the first work by the artist to be offered at Phillips. While an active figure in the New York art scene from the 1950s to the 1970s, Vivian Springford withdrew from the public eye until her work was rediscovered in the late 1990s just before her death, and more recently shown at Almine Rech Gallery in New York in 2018. 

VIVIAN SPRINGFORD

Untitled (Tanzania Series), 1972

Estimate: $60,000 – 80,000 

© The Estate of Vivian Springford, Courtesy of Phillips

JOHN BALDESSARI

Double Bill (Part 2): ...and Ernst, 2012

Estimate: $200,000 – 300,000

© The Estate of John Baldessari, Courtesy of Phillips

The sale will also include John Baldessari’s Double Bill (Part 2): …and Ernst, 2012—a quintessential example of John Baldessari’s unmistakable semiotic wordplay—from the Collection of Blake Byrne, Los Angeles.

*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium; prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session
Auction: 2 July 2020, 10am EDT
Location: 450 Park Avenue, New York
Click here for more information: https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY010420

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
Auction: 2 July 2020, 2pm EDT
Location: 450 Park Avenue, New York
Click here for more information: https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY010520

20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
Auction: 2 July 2020, 5pm EDT
Location: 450 Park Avenue, New York
Click here for more information: https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY010320

PHILLIPS
www.phillips.com

This Is Not a Love Song at La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

This Is Not a Love Song
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
22 May - 13 October 2013

La Virreina Image Centre presents This Is Not a Love Song, an exhibition that sets out to trace the genealogy of the relations between pop music and video-creation from the 1960s to today, with the emphasis on those moments in which there was feedback between the two manifestations as they explored the field of experiment, utopia and political incorrectness.

Since the 1960s, various generations of avant-garde artists have integrated into their production processes elements that are related with the attitudes and imaginaries of pop music. Artists of the calibre of Andy Warhol, Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, John Baldessari, Rodney Graham, Tony Oursler, Christian Marclay, Mike Kelley, Douglas Gordon, Jeremy Deller or Damien Hirst, and many more, down to today, have approached this genre in some of their most outstanding works, sometimes even collaborating with different rock bands or recording their own albums. Similarly, leading musicians such as John Lennon, David Bowie, Pete Townshend, Syd Barret, Brian Eno, Alan Vega, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and members of essential bands of the last two decades, like Sonic Youth, REM, Blur, or Franz Ferdinand all trained at art school before becoming professional musicians.

From this approach and bearing in mind that the origins of video-art run almost parallel to those of pop music, the project is divided into two sections:

1- Pop and video-creation. Shared genealogies

This section includes more than 30 significant works in the history of video art and experimental film from the 1960s to 2013 that are formally and conceptually related to the iconographies of pop and rock, with works by Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Yayoi Kusama. Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Christian Marclay, Douglas Gordon, Candice Breitz, Jeremy Deller, Mark Leckey, Jon Mikel Euba, Largen & Bread and others.

2- Music for your eyes. Visual arts and the aesthetics of the videoclip

This section is a journey through the history of the musical videoclip to review the careers of the most important authors of the last 40 years and their connections with contemporary visual arts and cinema and includes a programme of music videos by artists like Andy Warhol, Tony Oursler, Judith Barry, Robert Longo, Joan Morey, Damien Hirst, Ana Laura Aláez, Carles Congost, Pipilotti Rist, Dara Birnbaum, Joseph Beuys, Adel Abidin, Hugo Alonso, Charles Atlas, Marc Bijl, Olaf Breuning, Charley Case, Cheryl Donegan, Jorge Galindo i Santiago Sierra, Jesús Hernández, Bjørn Melhus, César Pesquera, John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald (Antarctica), etc.

Curator: F. Javier Panera

 This is Not a Love Song: Interfaces between Visual Arts and Pop Music

Exhibition Catalogue

Exhibition co-produced by Screen Projects / La Virreina Centre de la Imatge / Primavera Sound

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99 - 08002 Barcelona
http://lavirreina.bcn.cat/

John Baldessari at Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles - New Work

John Baldessari: New Work

Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

19 April – 24 May 1997

Margo Leavin Gallery presents an exhibition of new large-scale works on canvas by John Baldessari. 

A leading and highly influential conceptual artist, John Baldessari has produced work incorporating photographic images and, on occasion, text since 1960s. Through a careful process of editing, selection, repetition, and re-combination of images, John Baldessari creates works that are at once narrative, wry, provocative and poignant.

In contrast to much of his recent work, which has used images appropriated from film stills and popular media, the works in this exhibition use images taken from photographs by the artist. These works re-introduce John Baldessari’s examination of the dialogue between imagery and text which he first explored in his seminal works on canvas made in National City, California, during the first years of the 1960s. Reductive in palette and uniform in scale, each of the works in this exhibition (which also reflect the artist’s return to working on canvas) consists of a single photographic image, often juxtaposed with titles derived from Francisco Goya’s ground-breaking 19th century etching series, Los Caprichos (The Caprices).

John Baldessari’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including major recent shows at the Serpentine Gallery, London, the Kunstverein, Stuttgart, and the Cornerhouse, Manchester, England. The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, presented John Baldessari’s early works on canvas from National City in an exhibition during the summer of 1996, and in 1990-92 a retrospective of the artist’s work was seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. This is the artist’s seventh one-person exhibition at Margo Leavin Gallery.

MARGO LEAVIN GALLERY

812 North Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069