DALLAS, TX.- In person, these gumball machines are 5 feet tall, imposing and statuesque. But it is not just their oversized scale that makes them so. Charles Bell loved to paint monumental images of vintage toys and pinball machines, but his lifelong fascination with everyday objects of pleasure and memory found its clearest expression in his paintings of gumball machines, where he used texture, exaggerated scale, and meticulous detail to transform a familiar childhood object into something majestic. Bell was an untrained painter of astonishing technical brilliance who mastered—and then surpassed—the photorealistic style of the 1970s and 80s. His stunning Gum Ball I (1971) transforms the humble penny machine into a monument of Americana and an object of genuine reverence.

The painting is one highlight of Heritage’s Nov. 19 Modern and Contemporary Art Signature® Auction, which culminates the year with an outstanding selection of works in a range of media.

“Charles Bell had an uncanny ability to elevate the familiar into the extraordinary,” says Frank Hettig, Heritage’s Senior Vice President of Modern & Contemporary Art. “His Gum Ball I doesn’t just depict a machine; it captures the optimism of Postwar America through precision. This auction reflects that same spirit of discovery, bringing together artists who redefined how we see and experience the modern world.”

Pop Art and Surrealism

Beautiful and earnest, while also gently ironic, are Ed Ruscha’s Blue Hollywood and Hollywood Sunset (both 1983), a pair of drawings on paper unseen on the market until now. These works, a thank-you gift presented to restaurateur Patricia Casado, depict the Hollywood sign—the mythic landmark the artist could see from his window and a motif he revisited repeatedly, like a West Coast Monet. In their widescreen, cinematic proportions, Ruscha transforms the Hollywood sign—which sits mid-slope, is never silhouetted, and is never lit from behind—into an emblem of America’s dream factory, fusing irony and nostalgia into something iconic. Their sale directly supports the revival of Lucy’s El Adobe, an iconic Hollywood restaurant.

Salvador Dalí’s Lady Godiva with Butterflies (1976) reimagines the medieval legend through the refined, luminous style of the Surrealist’s late career, combining delicate watercolor with collaged butterfly elements. Dalí reframes the lady’s historic act of sacrifice as one of spiritual metamorphosis, when she literally sheds the trappings of wealth in a moment of vulnerability and moral awakening. The work unites several of his signature motifs in an imaginative composition of earnest beauty.

Three-Dimensional Works

This auction includes an unusual number of outstanding sculptures. Lynda Benglis, known for her sensuous materials and experimentation, is represented by the five-piece Kutumb (1981-1982), a work from a pivotal moment when she transformed her earlier gold torsos into increasingly lyrical, weightless forms that were inspired in part by her exposure to Aegean art. The elegant work evokes wings, shells, flowers and shrouds held in a moment of suspended movement.

John Chamberlain made a name for himself in the 1960s using crushed cars as his art supplies to create massive, balled-up sculptures. In the early 1980s, Chamberlain acquired the contents and scrap parts from an abandoned Tonka Toy factory. From these iconic toy trucks, he constructed a new body of small, compact sculptures. Tonk #2-86 (1986) comes to the market for the first time since its original purchase by a Dallas collector. Just 11 inches tall, the assemblage retains Chamberlain’s signature tension and precision at a tabletop scale.

The title of Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach 2 (1990), from her Story Quilt series, refers to the rooftops where families in Harlem without access to yards gather together. Here, Ringgold transforms the modest rooftop into sacred space: part sanctuary, part stage, part ladder to the sky. Personal and intimate, the fabric panel recalls the traditions of Black American quilting as both a communal act and a radical archive.

For decades, the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has critiqued sociopolitical realities in China while engaging with Western modernism, specifically Dada in the case of his pivotal work Table with Three Legs (2006). Here, Ai transforms Qing-dynasty wood into a functionally useless table using traditional mortise-and-tenon joinery. Both subversive and reverent, the work is a metaphor for contemporary China, where traditional culture is mutating in an unstable world, moving, as Ai says, “at a rapid pace.”

In Standing Mother and Child (1975), Henry Moore distills the maternal motif into a compact, almost totemic form. The two figures are merged into a unified silhouette, their forms inseparable yet distinct, embodying the emotional and physical bond that defines the subject.

Other sculptures of note include the elegant Maquette for Portal, 2013, a model for a monumental work by Roxy Paine; Alison Saar’s paired figures Max Schmeling and Joe Louis, (1982), which commemorates the boxing matches of the 1930s between two legendary rivals; and Isamu Noguchi’s Sharpshooter (Homage to Martin Luther King) (1967), a poignant tribute in the designer’s refined, minimalist style.

Notable Abstraction

“Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos,” Grace Hartigan once explained. After studying mechanical draftsmanship during WWII, Hartigan settled in New York’s Lower East Side and quickly immersed herself in the milieu of Pollock and de Kooning. She was selected by Clement Greenberg for the seminal New Talent exhibition in 1950. Her Guinness (1959), on the market for the first time in 30 years, is a strong, square composition in greens, reds and grays.

Ron Gorchov's Agron (2012) is a curved canvas that exemplifies the artist's lifelong pursuit of painting as a living structure, liberated from the picture plane and operating in dimensional space. Against a field of velvety black, two blue biomorphic forms hover in quiet suspension. A late, confident work, Agron achieves a quiet grandeur, a culmination of Gorchov's inquiry and a testament to painting's capacity to transcend its frame.

Another notable abstraction, Blue & Red (Noon Reflection) (1958) captures George Morrison’s lyrical approach to abstraction at a formative moment in his career. The surface pulses with layered colors rendered in organic brushwork that suggests an almost geological rhythm. A member of the Chippewa (Ojibwe) Nation, Morrison often described his abstractions as “landscapes of the mind.”

Other Highlights

The legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis began drawing and painting in earnest in his mid-50s, creating sharp, bold works. His untitled ink-and-marker drawing depicts spindly figures in wild gestural dace poses; likewise, Ernie Barnes’ Bluebird (1982) shows a dancing figure in the artist’s signature elongated style.