FIGURATIVE ∙ STILL-LIFE ∙ OBJECTIVITY demonstrates how modern and contemporary artists use different mediums to express creativity and expression. Tom Wesselmann and Keith Haring demonstrate the use of steel and color, while Kenny Scharf utilized a found object, for example, an old lamp, with canvas and color. KAWS and Takashi Murakami presents vibrant color and hardline to evoke emotion. While Javier Calleja, George Condo, Jean Dubuffet, and Jean-Michel Basquiat create figurative child-like people in a more traditional medium. We’re excited to exhibit a wide range of established artists tying in the past to the present while showcasing different mediums.
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community of his time, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism. Basquiat's visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.
Since his death at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose in 1988, his work has steadily increased in value. At a Sotheby's auction in May 2017, Untitled, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and yellow rivulets, sold for $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased. It also set a new record high for an American artist at auction.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled, circa 1981
Marker on paper
16 x 13 ¼ in
JAVIER CALLEJA
Málaga, 1971 Acid and optimist, big and small, obvious or cryptic, infantile or adult, the work of Javier Calleja develops from contrasts, which are copulative and disjunctive, and not completely resolved. The artist from Malaga has developed a creative project where the distortions of scale, the mixture of supports (mainly sculpture, drawing and painting), and site-specific work are combined in a particular world indebted to the child reader of comics that survives in it. In addition to the comics, pop art and a surrealism of Magritte origin both influence the work of Javier Calleja. Author of installations and mural paintings in which he plays with the idea of artwork within the artwork, the artist invites the viewer to form part of playful scenes, to relate to his cubic-headed characters and to interact by participating in his ironies or by reacting to the disproportionate sizes that evoke the worlds of Alice.
JAVIER CALLEJA
Up to you, 2020
mixed media screenprint with lithography
38 5/8 x 26 in
JAVIER CALLEJA
I can not promise you, 2018
pencil and colored pencil on paper
8 3/4 x 12 1/2 in.
JEAN DUBUFFET
JEAN DUBUFFET (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement Art Brut, and for the collection of works—Collection de l'art brut—that this movement spawned.
JEAN DUBUFFET
Le rendez-vous, 1982
Acrylic and collage on paper mounted on canvas
26 3/4 x 41.5 in.
JEAN DUBUFFET
Dessin Bonpiet Beau Neuille, 1982
Ink on paper with collage
10 x 6 3/4 in
JEAN DUBUFFET
Site avec 3 personnages, 1981
Acrylic on paper laid to canvas
19 ¾ X 13 ½
Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was raised in nearby Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He developed a love for drawing at a very early age, learning basic cartooning skills from his father and from the popular culture around him, such as Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney.
In New York, Haring found a thriving alternative art community that was developing outside the gallery and museum system, in the downtown streets, the subways and spaces in clubs and former dance halls. Here he became friends with fellow artists Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the musicians, performance artists and graffiti writers that comprised the burgeoning art community.
KEITH HARING
Untitled
Executed in 1987-1988
lacquered steel
57 ½ x 51 x 50 ⅛ in.
KEITH HARING
Untitled, 1984
Acrylic on canvas
31 3/4 x 59 1/2 in
KEITH HARING
Busted Head, 1984
Sumi ink on paper
22 7/8 x 28 ¾in
JOAN MIRO
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981.
MIRO
Fantôme de l'Atelier, 1981
Gouache, watercolor, brush and ink, collage and pencil on paper
35 3/8 x 24 3/4 in.
KAWS
KAWS
Untitled, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
20” diameter
Brian Donnelly (born November 4, 1974), known professionally as Kaws is an American artist and designer. Brian Donnelly and his art work Kaw have influenced the entire art world, and Art View has introduced his art history. His work includes repeated use of a cast of figurative characters and motifs, some dating back to the beginning of his career in the 1990s, initially painted in 2D and later realised in 3D. Some of his characters are his own creations while others are reworked versions of existing icons.
TAKASHI MURAKAMI
Takashi Murakami (村上 隆, Murakami Takashi, born February 1, 1962) is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts media (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial media (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts. He coined the term "superflat", which describes both the aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition and the nature of postwar Japanese culture and society, and is also used for Murakami's artistic style and other Japanese artists he has influenced.
TAKASHI MURAKAMI
Jellyfish Eyes (Black I), 2004
Acrylic on Canvas
47 3/8 x 47 3/8
RICHARD PRINCE
Richard Prince (born 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. He began copying other photographers' work in 1977. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a rephotographing of a photograph by Sam Abell and appropriated from a cigarette advertisement, was the first rephotograph to be sold for more than $1 million at auction at Christie's New York in 2005. He is regarded as "one of the most revered artists of his generation" according to the New York Times.
RICHARD PRINCE
Untitled, 1999
Marker on paper
11 by 8 1/2 in.
RICHARD PRINCE
Untitled, 1984-90
silkscreen, graphite, and spray paint on paper
37 1/4 x 24 3/4 in
KENNY SCHARF
Kenny Scharf (born November 23, 1958) is an American painter who lives in Los Angeles, California. Known for his participation in New York City's interdisciplinary East Village art scene during the 1980s, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Scharf's do-it-yourself practice spanned painting, sculpture, fashion, video, performance art, and street art. Growing up in post-World War II Southern California, Scharf was fascinated by television and the futuristic promise of modern design. His works often includes pop culture icons, such as the Flintstones and the Jetsons, or caricatures of middle-class Americans in an apocalyptic science fiction setting
KENNY SCHARF
Comic, 1983
Dedicated, dated and signed ‘To Hans 83 Kenny Scharf' on the reverse
Spray paint on canvas
35 ½ x 23 ½
KENNY SCHARF
Yellow, 2012
Oil & Acrylic on Canvas w/ powder coated aluminum frame
60 x 72 in
KENNY SCHARF
Untitled, 1985.
felt-tip pen on paper
10 by 7⅝ in.
KENNY SCHARF
Lamp, c. 1980
Acrylic, tinsel and plastic toys on lamp
37 x 13 x 13 inches
KENNY SCHARF
Zipzamball, 2000
Bronze
33 x 21 x 8 inches
3 of 4
TOM WESSELMANN
Tom Wesselmann (1931–2004) was one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s. Departing from Abstract Expressionism, he explored classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape, while incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera.
TOM WESSELMANN
Wildflower Bouquet (One-Handled Vase), 1988
Oil on laser-cut steel
61 x 86 in