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"I wanted to see if I could try to blurt something out, or make something completely immediate, that ends up fitting perfectly."
—Amy SillmanPainted in 2005, Amy Sillman’s Flower Giver is a large-scale abstraction that showcases her signature mode of painting, combining thick impasto clusters with sweeping gestural strokes in a pastel palette gone rogue. Amidst the dark streaks that slash across abstract forms, dainty flowers of bright pigment emerge at the right of the composition, weaving an optical tapestry of color and form.
[left] Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #23, 1955. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Artwork: © The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation [right] Gustav Klimt, Bauerngarten (Blumengarten), 1907. Private Collection "Color as object is earthly material stuff. Color as subject arches over everything like a rainbow, from cosmic rays to the minerals in the earth to what happens inside your eyes, from religious symbology to philosophical problems, from phenomena to noumena..."
—Amy SillmanThe heart of Sillman’s practice lies in the role of color. Often preferring jarring combinations that produce aesthetic tension, the artist employs color as the genre to survey the range of expressive possibilities in painting. For Sillman, color becomes the foreground as “her thick and intense layering of color balances spontaneity with struggle, intense form with loose improvisation, and childlike imagery with loaded psychological implications.”i In the artist’s own words, "I am more interested in color as an engine of ongoing change and metamorphosis than as a static theory....Color is a primary tool for negation in my work—colors that block each other out or contradict each other, and are mixed in an archeologico-dialectic of continual deconstruction and reconstruction."ii
Likened to the work of Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, and Philip Guston, Sillman’s paintings hover at the precipice of figuration and abstraction. The present work exemplifies how the artist “explores gesture and movement in the context of an ‘irrational landscape’, a space that may not make spatial sense but is defined by stacking, cutaways, and multi-tiered horizons.”iii As Max Henry observes, “Like a DJ sampling, she is cross-referencing as if she was a postmodern Fauve. Cézanne, Chagall, late Guston and Carroll Dunham are distilled in a lyrical remix hinting at landscapes and interiors derived from instant memory.”iv
Offering a refuge of known realities in the abyss of brazen abstraction, the flowers in the present work belie their naïve and terse appearance by “bear[ing] a concentrated psychological intensity that counterbalances the powerful abstract fields surrounding them.”v While flowers are a frequent motif in the artist’s oeuvre, Flower Giver signals a particular devotion to them as a subject per its title. Prefiguring her recent series of flower still lifes exhibited at the Gladstone Gallery in her 2020 solo show Twice Removed, “the flowers,” Hilton Als reveals, “are the visual manifestation of her blooming mind.”vi
Sillman’s recent flower still lifes installed at Amy Sillman: Twice Removed, Gladstone Gallery, New York, September 30 – November 14, 2020 Collector’s Digest
Concurrent Institutional Show:
• Since the first major institutional survey of Sillman’s work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 2013-2014, the artist has received critical acclaim and international recognition for her bold abstract paintings and has had institutional solo shows in Berlin, London, and Amsterdam.
• Among the artist’s top 3 records achieved within the last 5 years, Phillips holds the current world record for Sillman, set in December 2018 in New York when U reached over twice its high estimate at $855,000.
i “Amy Sillman: The Other One, April 2 – May 7, 2005” Vielmetter Los Angeles, press release, online.
ii Amy Sillman, quoted in Isabelle Graw and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, eds., Painting Beyond Itself: The Medium in the Postmedium Condition, New York, 2016, p. 115.
iii “Amy Sillman: The Other One, April 2 – May 7, 2005” Vielmetter Los Angeles, press release, online.
iv Max Henry, “The New Atlantis: Abstract America,” in Abstract America, exh. cat., Saatchi Gallery, London, 2008, p. 8.
v “Amy Sillman: The Other One, April 2 – May 7, 2005” Vielmetter Los Angeles, press release, online.
vi Hilton Als, “Goings On About Town: Amy SIllman” The New Yorker, October 2020.Provenance
Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005Exhibited
Los Angeles, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Amy Sillman: The Other One, April 2 – May 7, 2005
Property from an Important Private Collection, Florida
29
Flower Giver
oil on canvas
84 x 72 in. (213.4 x 182.9 cm)
Painted in 2005.
Estimate
$300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $598,500
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Auctions
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 23 June 2021
1
Cinga Samson
Two piece 1
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $378,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
Untitled
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $390,600
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3
Salman Toor
Fort Greene
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $478,800
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4
Avery Singer
Untitled
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $4,144,000
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5
Matthew Wong
The Reader
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $2,329,000
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6
Winston Churchill
The Moat, Breccles
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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7
Matthew Wong
Field in a Dream
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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8
Jean Dubuffet
L'homme à la toque
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,571,000
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9
Emily Mae Smith
Waiting Room
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $756,000
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10
Nicole Eisenman
Whatever Guy
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $840,700
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11
Norman Lewis
Abstract City
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,119,000
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12
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Bananas
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,300,000
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13
David Hockney
A Neat Lawn
Estimate $9,500,000 - 10,500,000
Sold for $11,000,000
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14
Vija Celmins
Untitled (Ocean)
Estimate $5,500,000 - 6,500,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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15
Carmen Herrera
Green and Orange
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,200,000
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16
This lot is no longer available.
17
Brice Marden
Elements III
Estimate $3,200,000 - 3,800,000
Sold for $5,233,000
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18
Amoako Boafo
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $655,200
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19
Titus Kaphar
Untitled III
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $1,058,500
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20
Amy Sherald
It Made Sense...Mostly In Her Mind
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $3,539,000
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21
Wayne Thiebaud
Winding River
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $9,809,000
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22
Mark Rothko
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,700,000
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23
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Batman
Estimate $1,600,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,800,000
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24
Keith Haring
Untitled (For John Sex)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $899,000
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25
Takashi Murakami
Red Demon and Blue Demon with 48 Arhats
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,080,000
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26
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (940-2)
Estimate $4,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for $5,112,000
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27
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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28
Willem de Kooning
East Hampton V
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $3,055,000
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29
Amy Sillman
Flower Giver
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $598,500
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30
Alexander Calder
Fourteen Black Leaves
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,300,000
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31
This lot is no longer available.
32
Julie Curtiss
Three Widows
Estimate $110,000 - 150,000
Sold for $466,200
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33
Norman Rockwell
My Mother (Soldier with French Woman)
Estimate $350,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
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34
Richard Prince
Nurses Dormitory #3
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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35
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Jessica
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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36
Andy Warhol
Mao
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,000,000
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37
Georg Baselitz
Drei Herzen (Three Hearts)
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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38
Carl Andre
36 Copper Square
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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39
Robert Rauschenberg
Untitled (Elemental Sculpture)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $315,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Musical Chair
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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41
David Hammons
It’s Not Necessary
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $5,475,000
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42
Andy Warhol
Shadow (Double)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $877,000
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43
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Quality Control
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $340,200
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44
Robert Colescott
Gift of the Sea
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Dana Schutz
Swiss Family Traveling
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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46
Banksy
Love Is In The Air
Estimate $1,000,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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47
Keith Haring
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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48
Louise Bourgeois
Labyrinthine Tower
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $756,000
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49
Paul McCarthy
White Snow Dwarf (Doc)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $403,200
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50No Reserve
Jeff Koons
Gazing Ball (Demeter)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000 •
Sold for $998,000
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