Article | The Editions Odyssey London Auction September 2026

The Odyssey. A story of adventure, perseverance, loyalty and courage — all of which you’ll need to make it through Nolan’s recent adaptation. The Odyssey has been passed down through generations from bard, to audience, to film — and now to print. Endlessly reimagined, it’s time to witness the Editions team’s most imaginative retelling of the ancient Greek poem. Don’t worry if we stray to far from the source material (I mean come on, was Homer even a real person?) — we have a thrilling selection of works to illustrate the story. Why would Hollywood spend hundreds of millions of dollars to bring Matt Damon home (The Martian, Interstellar, Saving Private Ryan — okay, you get the picture) when our phalanx of fabulous fabrications can do just that? We invite you to embark upon a journey of a lifetime across not one, not two, not three but FOUR action-packed Editions sales this September. Grab your popcorn, pick your fighter: it’s going to be epic.

Cyclops, Sirens and sea creatures — oh my! These Modern masters depart from reality and journey into the most psychologically heightened caverns of the human experience. Exploring existentialism and carnality, Francis Bacon’s contorted creature is a raw depiction of the primal instinct supressed in all human nature. Isolated and contained within a vacuous orange cage, the Polyphemus-esque creature writhes with a violent torsion, eerily similar to the human body — yet something is terribly monstrous. Bacon’s portraits of the time were often indistinguishable from his sinewy depictions of flayed meat and dead animals; Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (Q9) similarly portrays animalistic emotion, finding a complex beauty in the most tortured and taboo of experiences. By contrast, Marc Chagall’s whimsical Sirène au poète is seductively hypnotic. Having witnessed the destruction of his Jewish homeland under communist rule and the terror of Nazi-occupied France, Chagall uses joy as a form of resistance. Suspending reality with his alluring female figures, often bearing resemblance to his late wife Bella Rosenfeld, Sirène au poète evokes a dream-like quality: but don’t get too close — and remember to cover your ears, lads!

With a palette of deep sky blue, luscious forest green, wispy pale grey and sandy beige, Pablo Picasso creates an image evocative of the Grecian Mediterranean, both in colour palette and subject. Faunes et chèvre (Fauns and Goat) is one in a series of linocuts dedicated to the theme of the Bacchanale — famous for its drunken revelry, frenzied dancing and carnal indulgence — traits that no doubt appealed to the artist’s own lustful desires. The artist was well versed with classical material, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to ancient amphorae. Fauns and satyrs dance across Picasso’s ceramic surfaces and printed sheets with a playfulness and wit that reveals his electric sense of humour. With his innovative reductive process — printing and cutting away different layers one on top of the other — Picasso’s evocation of a bygone era recalls the revelry of Odysseus’ men on the island of Circe. Let’s hope these goats don’t turn into pigs.

Back in Ithaca, loyal Penelope weaves a web of deception: the burial shroud is cleverly wound and undone, keeping the impatient suitors at bay (cue you, Robert Pattinson). Kiki Smith’s elegant arachnid can help Penelope unravel the shroud at night, sharing her wicked cunning while Odysseus is lost at sea. The delicately etched lines add to the spidery senses and give dimension to the looping octopus tentacles that recall the ferocious feelers of the terrible Scylla.

Meanwhile, David Hockney’s empty armchairs use absence to explore companionship, balancing the transience of a moment with the longevity of memory. The upholstered chairs, almost anthropomorphic in their qualities, are surrogate portraits of the absent sitters. The worn, indented cushions bear the physical imprint of repeated use, turning the furniture into a tangible record of long-term companionship and shared history — a queen waiting for her king to return home.

A powerful evocation of ecstasy and deification, Edvard Munch’s Madonna is an image of the divine feminine — a temptress equal to that of Calypso. The lithograph depicts a woman from the perspective of her lover at the exact moment of conception, the sinuous waves of energy that emanate from her nude body are radiant and pulsating. The seductive nude engages with the common fin-de-siècle theme of woman as temptress, seducer, and betrayer of men. Simultaneously, she is also emblematic of the haunting and melancholic sensibilities that pervade Munch’s oeuvre, germinating from the artist’s own tortured entrapment with the women that defined his life.

Odysseus has returned to Ithaca, but all is not well. Having won Penelope’s contest, he must now fend off the suitors with the aid of Telemechus and his heavy bow. Crash! Bang! Wallop! Roy Lichtenstein’s Reflections of Crash is action-packed and large-scale. Referencing his earlier comic book works, jaggered bolts of solid colour slice vertically through the image of a pilot mid plane-crash, with other fighter jets visible in the distance as though camouflaged by the medley of navy Ben-day dots. Just as Odysseus disguised himself as a beggar, Lichtenstein’s work is cunningly deceptive — the harsh lines severing the pictorial plane suggest the subject is viewed through glass. A reflection on Lichtenstein’s previous source material — and a literal reflection of the glass itself — the work explores new avenues of conventional abstraction and challenge traditional conceptions of representation; both in the picture plane and beyond.

At last! Peace has been restored, Penelope and Odysseus are reunited; the baton has been passed to the Phillips’ Editions team to carry on the action. Don’t miss out on the legendary marquee season this September, where classic imagery awaits (with a couple of surprises in the mix, too!)

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