Explore a virtual reality walkthrough of our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale and Day Sale previews in New York.

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Travel through our galleries and browse our Evening Sale, featuring an exceptional group of masterworks by Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Fernando Botero, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, George Condo, Donald Judd and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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From the Morning Session of our Day Sale, view modern pieces by Fernand Léger, Alberto Giacometti and Max Ernst alongside contemporary stars KAWS, Yayoi Kusama, Jonas Wood, Shara Hughes, Titus Kaphar in the Afternoon Session.

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Our Evening Sale and the Morning and Afternoon Sessions of our Day Sale are on view through 16 May at 450 Park Avenue.

\n","publishDate","2018-05-10T16:24:42.000000Z","coverPosX","coverPosY","articleUrl","https://www.phillips.com/article/31947635/vr-walkthrough-20th-century-and-contemporary-art","auctionEditorialID",315,"editorialID",341,"flocklerID",31947635,{"_2770":2791,"_2772":231,"_2773":2792,"_2733":2793,"_2776":2794,"_2778":2795,"_2780":1538,"_2781":470,"_2782":2796,"_462":229,"_2784":2797,"_2786":2798,"_2788":2799},"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/33_004-5a37e5dc-e97c-4a17-b186-83d055b0df5f_s600x0.jpg","In conversation with Phillips' Patrizia Koenig, renowned curator and former President of the Chinati Foundation Rudi Fuchs speaks about the artist's unique approach to color.","Color as Material: Rudi Fuchs on Donald Judd's Multicolored Works","

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Art historian and curator Rudi Fuchs is one of the leading experts on Donald Judd works. In his accomplished career, he was Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and President of the Chinati Foundation, among other institutions. He is currently organizing a joint exhibition of printed works by Judd and Arnulf Rainer, which will open in June 2018 at the Arnulf-Rainer-Museum in Austria.

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On the occasion of the sale of Donald Judd's untitled from the collection of Diane Venet in our upcoming Evening Sale, Patrizia Koenig, Researcher & Writer for 20th Century & Contemporary Art at Phillips New York, speaks to Fuchs about Judd's approach to color within his practice.

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Patrizia Koenig: Rudi, thank you for sharing your unique insights on Donald Judd's multicolored pieces. These works seem to have cultivated new critical attention at the turn of the millennium, thanks in part to your fantastic essay discussing Judd's use of color in Tate Modern's 2004 retrospective catalogue. What is the larger significance of this series within Judd's oeuvre?

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Rudi Fuchs: Judd was a colorist at heart — he never could handle the term minimal art; he didn't like it very much, because in that sense he was never a minimalist. With those boxes of metal, which were made in Switzerland, he made volumes of shapes and gave them color. The shapes are simple because they are only meant to be carriers of color. They have to carry the color, to transport the color.

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His use of color became more complex because there simply was no reason to restrict color. He had no limits. There's no reason to restrict color like Mondrian did. Why should you do that? With Mondrian, it's maybe different, because he had a whole ideology of simplicity. And he was still making paintings, or compositions, as he called them. Mondrian was all about balance between one side and the other. With Judd, it's all very free. It's like a deck of cards. You see colors changing position all the time. It's always moving, it doesn't stop.

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Donald Judd Untitled, 1985. This work will be offered in our New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art on 17 May 2018.

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If you compare the different multi-colored versions, this one here, in particular, is a very bright one because there's light blue, gray, black, white, this very clear red, and then this Venetian red. The colors don't mingle. The blue and the gray are an especially good group; the blue is bright, the gray is softer, but they are still extremely separate. That's what they are — colors combined in shapes.

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PK: Can you elaborate on how Judd thought like a colorist? Which artistic predecessors do you feel he specifically looked to for the multicolored pieces?

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RF: Judd was without a doubt a first-rate colorist. In that sense, he is the right successor to Barnett Newman. And I also remember when Dan Flavin was on German television and he was asked about Donald Judd, who was a friend, Flavin said, "Judd is probably the best American artist. Probably better than Pollock." And I think he's right. The way he uses color in these rectangular shapes is very precise, very sharp. Right now I'm actually doing an exhibition of Judd's woodcuts…I think with the woodcuts and the multi-colored pieces — it's like Mozart playing the piano. Crystal clear, bright, clear, refined and there's no misunderstanding.

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Judd was without a doubt a first-rate colorist. In that sense, he is the right successor to Barnett Newman.
\n— Rudi Fuchs
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PK: You speak of precision and avoiding misunderstanding — what was the significance of this for Judd?

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RF: Judd was an extreme abstractionist but also an extreme humanist. He hated when people lied. The truth was what it was all about. In correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, they discuss language at some point, and they say it's necessary to be very precise in the formulation of language of words because, otherwise, people misunderstand them. As long as words are ambiguous, communication is very difficult. Misunderstanding would be a failure.

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Judd had the same idea about shapes — shapes that would be very simple, very precise, very unambiguous. There can't be any misunderstanding about their meaning. They are what they are and that's very important. They don't suggest things that you don't know and that you have to find out.

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PK: Nevertheless, people often approach Judd's works wanting to discover some underlying system or a broader mathematical equation. To what extent was there an underlying system and an interest in measuring things out? What concerns drove Judd in choosing color combinations?

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RF: It makes no sense to go in to find out if there's a system in the arrangement. It's instinct. Any system would be a limitation. Judd had little shapes of color, made from plexi-glass and other materials, and he worked very instinctively. He would have made a decision to use black, white, red, blue, gray, white...and then he would use pieces of paper and lay them out on a table of what it looks like. That's how he worked, very physical, very straightforward.

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Lehni AG Switzerland, RAL numbers and metals used in works. Image Judd Foundation Archives

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People thought they were too simple. They wanted them to be more complex, some sort of story that would make them more interesting. But what people have to understand, and that's what Judd was very convinced about — it's about what you see. And maybe what you see is something you have to get used to, maybe you don't understand it. And the only way you can see it is by looking at it. One thing that people also don't understand or forget — all this art is not invented, it's all real, it's all physically made.

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Does it mean this or that? He hated that. I remember when I was President of the Chinati Foundation, I was in Judd's office and he was giving an interview for German television. As they always do, they asked what his work meant. They never ask you what you make, but what it means. And of course, he had no idea, like Barnett Newman had no idea what that means. In my position, I would often have to give speeches, which necessitated giving some kind of narrative. So I always told them that the pride of Marfa was utopian. That's what people understand. Because that's what America is. When Judd, in that interview, was asked what his work means, he said, “well, Rudi thinks it’s utopian, but for me it’s just real.” And that difference between utopia and reality makes his art an abstract realism in a very extreme sense. It's completely new. Nobody did it before. He made something completely new in terms of color.

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Judd is probably the best American artist. Probably better than Pollock.
\n— Dan Flavin
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PK: Lastly, can you share what Judd's works mean to you personally?

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RF: I like Judd's work because of its clarity; it's concrete and it's real and it is extremely exciting art. It's also very rich. I mean so many things happen. Just sit in front of the piece and sit in front of it for half an hour — it continues to unfold itself. The longer you look at it...you can only compare it to the melody of the flute on the horizon, somewhere…I must be careful of becoming too romantic about these things.

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Judd was a good friend. I mean, I think of him every day — because he is a moral authority in a sense. He makes art moral in a very straightforward way. People should not accept shit. That's why he makes art. And the thing should be as beautiful and precise as possible.

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Donald Judd Untitled, 1989. This work will be offered in our New York Day Sale Morning Session of 20th Century & Contemporary Art on 16 May 2018.

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\n","2018-05-01T22:09:26.000000Z","https://www.phillips.com/article/31660477/color-as-material-rudi-fuchs-on-donald-judd",301,327,31660477,{"_2770":2801,"_2772":231,"_2773":2802,"_2733":2803,"_2776":2804,"_2778":2805,"_2780":1521,"_2781":2165,"_2782":2806,"_462":385,"_2784":2807,"_2786":2808,"_2788":2809},"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/carolrama_comp-6898d63d-1448-4bcc-8e0e-767d61e78a3b_s600x0.jpg","Working outside the confines of any one artistic movement, Carol Rama was a self-taught artist who is featured in our spring season of modern and contemporary art in New York.","Carol Rama: \"Eternally Contemporary\"","

Portrait of the artist

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I only feel safe when I am standing in front of a blank sheet. It is the only thing that relieves my fears. Painting is my transgression.
\n— Carol Rama
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This spring in New York, we are thrilled to be offering two masterworks by Carol Rama: Senza titolo from 1963 and Luogo e segni from 1976. Born in Turin in 1918, Rama lived and practiced there until her death in 2015. Completely self-taught, Rama has only recently begun to receive the critical, international acclaim that she deserves. With a renewed interest in her diverse and prolific oeuvre over the past four years, the breadth of Rama's work has been showcased at the New Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and other institutions around the world.

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Left: Senza titolo, 1963; Right: Luogo e segni, 1976

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Rama's most recent show, Antibodies, held at the New Museum in 2017, was the artist's first solo museum show in New York and the largest presentation of her work in the United States to date. According to Jason Fargo of The New York Times, "This is a show that will take you to the edge of madness and will force you to acknowledge the fine line between genius and lunacy. It will also force you to reckon with the artistic significance of gender and to consider just how much Rama's womanhood informed the frenzy that fired her art" (Jason Fargo, "The Psychosexual World of Carol Rama Still Shocks", The New York Times, May 11, 2017). As part of the exhibition catalogue for the 2015 show of Rama's work at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Anne Dressen wrote, "Expressionist, Surrealist, Pop, Minimalist: Rama is all those things, and sometimes even appears anachronistic, knowingly outside the big identified movements and, for that very reason, eternally contemporary."

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Indeed these shows came at a time when museums have begun to give more attention to female artists, paying homage to their importance within the trajectory of art history.

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Installation view of Carol Rama: Antibodies, 2017. New Museum, New York. Photo: Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio

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We all have our own tropical disease within us, for which we seek a remedy. My remedy is painting.
\n— Carol Rama
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On the heels of this celebrated exhibition, the two works from our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale Morning Session are being offered at the height of a newfound appreciation for Rama. Senza titolo is characterized by organic forms and abstract applications of media, while Luogo e segni emphasizes her use of unconventional art materials including rubber and leather. Together, these works exemplify the diversity found in Carol Rama's practice.

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Read here to learn more about these works, which are now on view at 450 Park Avenue ahead of our auction at 10am EDT on 16 May.

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On the left, Quipus 31TL-1, 1966-1971, by Jorge Eielson highlights our exhibition of works from the 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale in New York

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While still underrepresented in institutions and private collections worldwide, the appreciation of Latin American Art has begun to crescendo in recent years. In 2017 alone, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA brought some 70 exhibitions to Southern California, the Met Breuer staged the first major retrospective of Lygia Pape in the United States and Carmen Herrera's work was showcased in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, thereby duly concretizing her contributions to American Art.

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Latin American Art is not only being celebrated in museums. We are also seeing unprecedented numbers of artists from Latin America exhibited at both blue-chip and emerging galleries worldwide. Here at Phillips, we have long-acknowledged the importance of contextualizing artists from Latin America alongside their international peers. In addition to museum tours and panel discussions, we have sold record-breaking works by Carmen Herrera, Mira Schendel and Helio Oiticica alongside artists such as Pablo Picasso, Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd and Jeff Koons in our Evening & Day Sales in New York, London and Hong Kong.

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Here, enjoy a selection of modern and contemporary Latin highlights—spanning seven decades—from this week's sales in New York.

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Fernando Botero

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Fernando Botero Yellow Niña, 1962

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From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Julian J. Aberbach, Fernando Botero's Yellow Niña presents a monumental homage to the Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velázquez. Executed in 1962, Yellow Niña is among the earliest portraits Botero painted. In this striking work, all the key hallmarks that would go on to define Botero's signature figurative style are present. Reinterpreting the sitter from such masterpieces as Velázquez' 1656 paintings Las Meninas and La Infanta Margarita, Botero puts forward a tightly-cropped portrait of a young girl — exaggerating the volume of her figure in such a way that she appears to push the very physical confines of the monumental canvas while rendering the sculptural voluminosity of the figure with short, almost impressionistic, brushstrokes of luminous color. Uniquely situated at one of the most pivotal crossroads in Botero's practice, Yellow Niña represents the culmination of the artist's early phase of experimentation at the same time as it anticipates the mature style that would catapult him to international fame in the mid-1960s through multiple solo exhibitions in Germany and the United States.

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Yellow Niña articulates the approach of "post-abstract portraiture" that Botero began to develop in his early career, which, as he explains, "means that sometimes the space is used subjectively, over and above any respect for proportions. The monumentality of the figures and elements that compose my paintings does not follow the rules of perspectives, but simply helps me to create a general harmony…I am entirely unfettered in my use of form and color. In this sense, my vision is an abstract one." By the time Botero created Yellow Niña in 1962, at age 30, this distinct style of figurative painting had gained him critical attention: he had been included in the Venice Biennial and the Guggenheim International Award exhibition and gained institutional recognition through the Museum of Modern Art's acquisition of Mona Lisa, Age Twelve, 1959, in 1961.

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Firmly positioned within the artist's great pantheon of paintings, Yellow Niña will be offered in our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 17 May in New York.

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Joaquín Torres-García

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Joaquín Torres-García Untitled, 1930

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Joaquín Torres-García, considered the father of Latin American Constructivism, lived in Europe and the United States for almost 40 years before returning permanently to Uruguay. These travels exposed him to different modernist movements including Constructivism, Cubism and Neo-Plasticism, while he was living in Paris and New York. The period between 1926 and 1933 in Paris was Torres-García's most mature, punctuated by his co-founding (with Michel Seuphor) of the renowned Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) movement, which presented the international art scene with an alternative to the Parisian Surrealists. This resulted in the seminal 1930 exhibition of Constructivist artists, including Torres-García, at the legendary Galerie 23 in Paris.
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\nUntitled, 1930, introduces the structures of thick, black orthogonal lines creating a Neo-Plastic grid that organizes Torres-García's compositions into geometric compartments, reminiscent of Piet Mondrian. Inside these windowed façades, Torres-García includes quotidian symbols—bottles, a pot, an abstract figure and a key—to depict a schematic urban scene from his own imagination. At the same time, the perfectly balanced geometrical plane and earth-toned palette are inspired by Pre-Columbian art, which he considered to be "the perfect synthesis of structure and figuration." The artist's Constructive Universalism vision was recently reflected in his 2015 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern.

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Lygia Pape

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Lygia Pape Olhando Miró, 2000 (left) and Untitled, circa 1964 (right)

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Lygia Pape's contributions to Brazilian modern art cannot be underestimated. Most famously recognized for her achievements in the realm of Neoconcretism, a movement that fused geometric abstraction with everyday life, Pape was also an accomplished filmmaker, graphic designer, ballet choreographer and printmaker. In a 1997 interview, Pape stated, "Everything I observe can nourish me and even serve to subsidize some manifestation or invention I'm going to make, but not in the idealistic sense of considering art as something vague and simply beautiful. I think it's more incisive. It's a language. It's my way of knowing the world."

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Born in the state of Rio de Janeiro in 1927, Lygia Pape had no classical academic training in fine art. However, in the early 1950s, she became acquainted with the artistic circles in Rio surrounding the master Ivan Serpa, who by this time had begun giving classes at the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM-RJ). During this period after World War II, Brazil was booming with industrialization, which materialized in the transformation of major cities, including the development of Brasilia, the nation's new capital. This modernization carried over into the art world with the opening of three major museums from 1947 to 1948 and the inauguration of the Bienal de São Paulo in 1951. These venues provided Brazilian artists like Pape with major exhibition opportunities as well as unfettered access to international modern artists like Kazimir Malevich, Theo can Doesburg and Max Bill, leading to the birth of Concrete Art in Brazil in the form of Grupo Ruptura in São Paulo 1952 and Grupo Frente in Rio in 1954.

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As a member of Grupo Frente, along with artists like Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Pape employs in her early work a universal language consisting of simplified forms in primary colors. These works eliminate the artist's hand, appearing machine-made and featuring small squares that radically burst beyond the two-dimensional picture plane, thereby becoming part of the viewer's space. Yet, it was with the invention of her Tecelares, black and white woodcuts on rice paper, that Pape brought Brazil back into her art practice. Nodding to the country's extensive tradition of woodcut prints, typically associated with craft, Pape transformed the medium into something entirely modern by using it to produce simple geometric shapes that dissolved the boundaries between foreground and background. These works epitomize the birth of Neoconcretism in which popular culture and life experience become crucial components of art. Untitled, 1961 demonstrates a strong relationship with Pape's earlier Tecelares while foreshadowing her later Ttéias, in which she filled entire rooms with glimmering golden columns made of delicate threads through which participants traversed—begging viewers to immerse themselves wholly in an unadulterated experience of light and physical sensation.

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Olga de Amaral

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Olga de Amaral Alquímia 80, 1989

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Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Olga de Amaral studied fabric design at the prestigious Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. Her in-depth knowledge of textiles and weaving techniques from around the world provided a foundation for her complex artistic practice that transcends fixed genres and artistic discipline. In this ravishing work, Alquímia 80, 1989, not only is de Amaral's manual dexterity with conventional weaving techniques apparent, but the work is also a powerful example of her mastery of fine art principles like formalism and abstraction.
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\nDe Amaral's distinctive sculptural textiles, like the one in the present lot, feature a meticulous layering of textured linen, coated with paint and gold leaf, resulting in intricate geometric compositions. While the arduous nature of her process is evident throughout, her chosen method of display—hanging these panels with separation from the wall—imparts movement and emphasizes the impact of light, instilling the works with an otherworldly quality.

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Discover more Latin American works in our 20th Century & Contemporary Day Sale Morning Session and Afternoon Session.

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160

Richard Serra

Videy Drawing XV

Full-Cataloguing

Richard Serra