DALLAS, TX.- Every year, November marks a high season for the modern and contemporary art market, and on Nov. 17 Heritage presents a lavish selection of works that tell the story of the art world’s favorite back-and-forth volley: figuration to abstraction and back again. And again. The art world demands both, often in fascinating cycles, because while figuration keeps us feeling grounded in the power of narrative and the familiar, non-figurative works take us into a realm of aesthetic purity and free-wheeling association.
Despite these notable cycles, we’re experiencing a moment of liberation from hard expectations or trends. These days, collectors who favor figuration find themselves perpetually in luck, and so do those who love the openness of abstraction. Often, of course, a single work embraces both. Heritage’s event reflects a bounty of abstraction, figuration and all the places in between. Collectors will be delighted by works by Alexander Calder, Fernand Léger, Bernard Buffet, Günther Förg, David Hockney and more.
“This event brings us modern and contemporary art history in a nutshell,” says Frank Hettig, Heritage’s Vice President of Modern & Contemporary Art. “For as long as artists have made art, they’ve both embraced and pushed back against concrete depictions of our physical world. Their inventions have expanded our definitions of art and our understanding of our own perceptions.”
On the abstraction front: Günther Förg leads the charge in this auction with an untitled 1990 acrylic on canvas that epitomizes the German artist’s color-laden middle period. Förg was recently the subject of a major retrospective Günther Förg: A Fragile Beauty, co-organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Dallas Museum of Art. “He was part of the German postwar generation of artists who questioned the idea of modernism with their utopian idea that the use of pure materials contributes to a better society,” says Hettig. “Yet Förg resisted being pigeonholed by this movement and challenged the utopians' strict definition of color, material and space. He intentionally blurred the boundaries between art disciplines and between figuration and abstraction. ‘Ambiguous’ would be an apt term for Förg's work, particularly his novel utilization of various materials.”
Moving outdoors and into three dimensions: Another enigmatic purveyor of abstraction in this auction is Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, whose work here, the stainless steel The Eighteen Levels, circa 1971-1972, springs from the optic-kinetic school, of which he was a founder. The part-geometric, part-organic line of vertical steel posts seems to shift time and fold space as the viewer moves around it.
Speaking of enigmatic: The multimedia William Anastasi (an undersung hero of conceptualism and a Dwan Gallery favorite) has five abstract works in this event, all made between 1988 and 1990. Two of the works in this auction come from his most famous long-running series Subway Drawings. The story of these paneled works on paper is part of New York art-world lore. Via the Foundation for Contemporary Arts: “In the late 1970s, Anastasi reinvestigated his Subway Drawings of the early 1960s while riding on the subway to and from daily chess games with FCA co-founder John Cage. In these drawings Anastasi surrendered to the movement of the train to transform lines onto paper. As Cage once said of Anastasi's work, ‘It's not psychological; it's physical.’” Two other Anastasi works here, this time on canvas, Untitled (Inarr) and Yankee Doodle, are awash in color and embrace Anastasi’s love affair with the role of chance in the act of creation.
Speaking of abstract works on paper: Alexander Calder’s Line of Seven from 1962 is included in this event. The gouache-and-ink composition has excellent provenance and exhibition history, and in two dimensions vibrates with Calder’s signature kinetic energy.
Works in this auction that hit the sweet spot between the abstract and the figurative encompass some of the giants of the modern and contemporary art world. Three works on paper by Fernand Léger are here, each one alive with the artist’s playful intersections between figures and their environments, including the charming Les six plongeurs, composition en largeur from 1941.
In 1982, the already-beloved painter David Hockney famously started experimenting with photo collage to great effect. These compositions have a distinct feel of Cubism and are amongst his most recognizable works. Here Heritage presents an especially dynamic Hockney photo collage from that seminal year: The Metropolitan Opera House #6. The photos, which layered together capture a faceted portrait of the famous venue, are in turn configured into the shape of a singer – perhaps a great tenor. The large work is signed, titled and dated, and in terms of Hockney’s work, it does not get any more charming than this.
The Los Angeles street artist-turned-commercial darling RETNA is represented by four works in this event – three on canvas and one three-dimensional work in bronze. His acrylic-on-canvas diptych from 2020, Brimstone, exemplifies the artist’s spirited secret language of geometric script.
Moving into the realm of more concrete figuration: Bernard Buffet is a real sleeper in this auction. The French painter, printmaker and sculptor has enjoyed intense renewed interest in recent years; his first major retrospective in France opened in 2016 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and since then collectors and institutions have come back around to this successor to Picasso. Patron--la salle de lecture from 1959 (oil, pencil, ink and crayon on paper) is a maquette for the stage set of the play Patron by Marcel Aymč for the Roland Petit Ballets.
Other greats who played with figuration to great effect are here, too. Niki de Saint Phalle, Matthew Barney, Yoshitomo Nara: Each of them has left an indelible mark on our understanding of artists’ take on the human body. To one degree or another, they also prove that blurring the lines between a more prosaic approach to the figure versus poetic manipulations of form has become a hallmark of the visual art of the last century. After all, when you look at a bronze sculpture by Tony Cragg, what do you see? A box? He’s playing with us. Our perceptions expand, ever outward, and thus so does our world.
