Felix Gonzalez-Torres - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Wednesday, May 17, 2023 | Phillips
  • "Untitled" (March 5th) #2, 1991, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, consists of two lightbulbs hung from a wall at 113 inches, their white cords intertwined. Among its myriad allusions, the work remembers the artist’s partner, Ross Laycock, who lost his life to AIDS in January of that year. However, this reference is intentionally coded, perhaps to protect the work from an overly romantic connotation, or to encourage the varied evocations of the work's common materials. "Untitled" (March 5th) #2, which holds Laycock's birthday in its name, is a poignant work of love and loss; renewal and the promise of a kind of immortality. The work is an exploration, in rigorously formal terms, of the universality of partnership and community, and the boundaries of our public and private lives.

     

     “When I first made those two lightbulbs, I was in a total state of fear about losing my dialogue with Ross, of being just one.”
    — Felix Gonzalez-Torres

     

    The effect of "Untitled" (March 5th) #2 relies on both lightbulbs shining as one. Hanging so close together, the glow of each bulb fuses with the other, in one, unified light. The great tragedy of "Untitled" (March 5th) #2, then, comes in the viewer’s realization that one lightbulb, inevitably, will dim, and die out, before the other. But all is not lost—as with Gonzalez-Torres’ candy works, made of individually-wrapped sweets, the lightbulbs are replaced as soon as they burn out; the light is always replenished.

     

    Dan Flavin, Alternate Diagonals of March 2, 1964, 1964. Dallas Museum of Art. Image: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Janie C. Lee / Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © 2023 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

    "Untitled" (March 5th) #2 is Gonzalez-Torres’s first work to use lightbulbs, anticipating his “light strings” series of 1992-1994.i Works from the edition are represented in major museum collections, including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; and The Tate, London. The work draws on the formal minimalism of Dan Flavin’s fluorescent lights, and the perhaps phallic referent of Jasper Johns’ lead lightbulbs, as suggested by Robert Storr.ii Concurrent with other artists in his generation, coming of age in the 1980s, Gonzalez-Torres continued to expand the list of acceptable media for artwork—lightbulbs, stacks of paper, piles of candy—and as a conceptualist in the lineage of Joseph Kosuth, Gonzalez-Torres took “the jump from the ‘pure’ forms of the 1970s” to forms that showed a more human touch; more imperfection, more variety.iii The vulnerable intensity behind Gonzalez-Torres’s work is the key to this “jump,” as the simplicity of his forms creates space for an emotional resonance that all viewers can relate to.

     

     “In the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres beauty is also a life force, affirming the presence of intense intimacy, closeness, our capacity to know love, face death, and love with ongoing yet reconciled grief.”
    —bell hooks

     

    "Untitled" (March 5th) #2 strikes a balance between public and private, a line Gonzalez-Torres continuously presses throughout his work. While the artist’s love for Laycock is particular, the sensation of love, the emotional experience of intwining one’s life with another’s, is universal, as is the grief of that inevitable loss. Gonzalez-Torres relies on the audience to observe the light in "Untitled" (March 5th) #2, and empathize with its emotional themes. The work is both a record of Gonzalez-Torres and Laycock’s love, and a mirror for the audience’s own emotions.iv

     

    Gonzalez-Torres found the tension between public/private, and artist/audience essential, not only for himself, but for any artist working in America in the 1990s. “At this point in history,” he said in 1993, “how can we talk about private events? Or private moments? When we have television and phone sinside our homes, when our bodies have been legislated by the state?... our most private practices and desires are ruled by, affected by the public, by history.”v

      

    Gerhard Richter, Zwei Kerzen (Two Candles), 1982. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
    Gerhard Richter, Zwei Kerzen (Two Candles), 1982. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Image and Artwork: © Gerhard Richter 2023 (0091)

    This frustration with the false boundary between public and private likely held particular resonance for Gonzalez-Torres as a gay man, as government inaction, fueled by homophobia and stigma, exacerbated the toll of the AIDS epidemic on his community. For Gonzalez-Torres, for Ross Laycock, for the 29,850 Americans who died of AIDS in 1991—public discourse directly impacted personal lives, and ignoring lived reality through “the escape hatch of formalism” in art, to quote Robert Storr, was inconceivable.vi For Gonzalez-Torres, who himself passed away from AIDS in 1996, aged just 39, "Untitled" (March 5th) #2 was about confronting his own fears, and inviting the audience to confront them, with him.vii As author and activist bell hooks writes of his work, “[o]nce we embrace his vision of the collapse of public and private, the convergence of the individual and the collective, we open ourselves to the possibility of communion and community.”viii

     

    i The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, “Works: Light Strings,” accessed Apr. 2023, online.

    ii Robert Storr, “When This You See Remember Me,” in Julie Ault, ed., Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 2016, p. 25.

    iii Storr, 13.

    iv Storr, 9.

    v Felix Gonzalez-Torres, quoted in Ault, 358.

    vi Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Mortality Attributable to HIV Infection/AIDS Among Persons Aged 25-44 Years – United States, 1990, 1991,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Jul. 2, 1993, online; Storr, 12-13.

    vii Nancy Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1995, p. 183, 191.

    viii  Bell Hooks, “subversive beauty: new modes of contestation,” in Ault, 180.

    • Provenance

      Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Brussels, Galerie Xavier Hufkens, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Michael Jenkins, March 20– April 20, 1991 (another example exhibited)
      Glens Falls, The Hyde Collection, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, September 7–November 17, 1991, pp. 13, 20 (another example exhibited)
      Tokyo, Wacoal Art Center of Spiral Garden, Three or More- Multiplied art from Duchamp to the present, October 1–24, 1992, p. 82 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
      Glasgow, Tramway, Read My Lips: New York AIDS Polemics, October 26–December 1, 1992 (another example exhibited)
      New York, Fischbach Gallery, Absence, Activism and the Body Politic, June 9–25, 1994 (another example exhibited)
      Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Smithsonian Institution, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Traveling, June 16–September 11, 1994 (another example exhibited)
      New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (pp. 183, 221; another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 182); then traveled as, Santiago de Compostela, Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporánea, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (A Possible Landscape); then traveled as, Paris, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Girlfriend in a Coma) (pp. 183, 222; another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 182), May 10, 1995–June 16, 1996
      Miami Art Museum, Dream Collection Gifts and just a few Hidden Desires...part one, October 29, 1996–April 27, 1997 (another example exhibited)
      New York, Greene Naftali Gallery, Broken Home, May 3–June 7, 1997 (another example exhibited)
      Hannover, Sprengel Museum; Kunstverein St. Gallen; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, June 1, 1997–November 1, 1998, no. 118, vol. I, pp. 40, 56-57; vol. II, p. 163 (another example exhibited and illustrated, vol. II, p. 69)
      Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, Lux/Lumen, June 19–September 7, 1997, pp. 11, 35, 55, 59, 70, 78, 85, 93 (another example exhibited; installation view illustrated, p. 34)
      Harrisburg, Susquehanna Art Museum, I'm Not Here: Constructing Identity at the Turn of the Century, December 2, 1999–February 24, 2000 (another example exhibited)
      St. Gallen, Sammlung Hauser und Wirth, The Oldest Possible Memory, May 14–October 15, 2000, p. 84 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 81)
      Albuquerque, National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico, La Luz: Contemporary Latino Art in the United States, October 21, 2000–May 27, 2001, n.p. (another example exhibited and illustrated on the cover)
      Avignon, Collection Lambert Musée d’art contemporain, Coollustre, May 24–September 28, 2003, p. 186 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 187)
      Paris, Jeu de Paume, éblouissement, June 24–September 12, 2004, p. 93 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
      New York, Lehmann Maupin, L'Art de Vivre, April 15–May 14, 2005 (another example exhibited)
      Waltham, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Broken Home: 1997/2007, January 23–April 13, 2008 (another example exhibited)
      Kansas City, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative, May 3–July 20, 2008, pp. 54-55, 80 (another example exhibited and illustrated, pp. 7, 81)
      Clermont-Ferrand, L’Espace d’Art Contemporain La Tôlerie, La Foule (Zéro – Infini): Chapitre 1 (unite – dualité – la meute – la masse), May 6–July 15, 2008 (another example exhibited)
      Paris, Passage du Retz, Insomniac Promenades: Dreaming/Sleeping in Contemporary Art; then traveled as, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Insomnia, July 11, 2008–March 7, 2009, pp. 57, 83 (illustrated, p. 23)
      Clermont-Ferrand, L’Espace d’Art Contemporain, La Foule (Zéro – Infini): Chapitre 2 (chaos – contrôle), October 10–November 30, 2008 (another example exhibited)
      Brussels, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre; Basel, Fondation Beyeler; Frankfurt, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form, January 16, 2010–April 25, 2011, p. 651 (another example exhibited and illustrated, pp. 536-539; Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Basel, installation view illustrated, p. 61; Fondation Beyeler, Basel, installation view illustrated, p. 123; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, installation view illustrated, pp. 251, 377)
      Miami Art Museum, Between Here and There: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection, February 27, 2010–April 30, 2013 (another example exhibited)
      Mexico City, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Somewhere/Nowhere, February 27–May 23, 2010, no. 16, pp. 21, 91 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 64)
      The Art Institute of Chicago, Contemporary Collecting: The Judith Neisser Collection, February 13– May 22, 2011, pp. 58, 156 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 59)
      New York, Pace Gallery, Burning, Bright: A Short History of the Lightbulb, October 28–November 26, 2011 (another example exhibited)
      Paris, La Galerie des Galeries, In a Sentimental Mood, May 28–August 24, 2013, pp. 9, 14-15, 25, 31 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 8)
      Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel; Lisbon, Culturgest, Tell it to My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault; then traveled as, New York, Artists Space, Macho Man, Tell it to My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault, February 2, 2013–February 23, 2014, vol. I, p. 55; vol. II, p. 115 (another example exhibited and illustrated, vol. II, p. 33)
      Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, DIRGE: Reflections on [Life and] Death, March 7–June 8, 2014, p. 19 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 18)
      Centre Pompidou-Metz, 1984 -1999. La Décennie, May 24, 2014–March 2, 2015 (another example exhibited)
      London, Phillips, A Very Brief History of Contemporary Sculpture, October 6–31, 2014, n.p. (another example exhibited and illustrated)
      Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tongues Untied, June 6–September 13, 2015 (another example exhibited)
      Avignon, Collection Lambert Musée d’art contemporain, Patrice Chéreau, un musée imaginaire, July 11–October 19, 2015, p. 369 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 164)
      Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, What We Call Love - From Surrealism to Now, September 12, 2015–February 7, 2016, pp. 9, 61, 101 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 60)
      Modena, Manifattura Tabacchi, The Mannequin of History: Art after Fabrications of Critique and Culture, September 18, 2015–January 31, 2016, no. 45, pp. 74, 333 (another example exhibited and illustrated, n.p.)
      Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Permanent Collection Installation, September 22, 2015–2020 (another example exhibited)
      Tate Liverpool; Frankfurt, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst; Centre Pompidou-Metz, An Imagined Museum: Works from the Centre Pompidou, the Tate and the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, November 20, 2015–March 27, 2017 (another example exhibited)
      Paris, Passage de Retz, Représenter l'Irreprésentable?, December 5, 2015–January 15, 2016 (another example exhibited)
      London, Hauser & Wirth; New York, Andrea Rosen Gallery; Milan, Massimo De Carlo, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, May 27–July 30, 2016 (another example exhibited)
      Reading Prison, Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison, September 4–December 4, 2016, pp. 18, 166, 177 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 167)
      Cleveland Museum of Art, Permanent Collection Installation, February 2017–2021 (another example exhibited)
      North Adams, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, The Half-Life of Love, May 6, 2017–March 25, 2018 (another example exhibited)
      Geneva, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Cady Noland, Laurie Parsons, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, May 31–September 10, 2017 (another example exhibited)
      Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Give and Take: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, March 4–September 3, 2018 (another example exhibited)
      Milan, Massimo De Carlo, MCMXXXIV, March 8–July 13, 2019 (another example exhibited)
      Montpellier Contemporain, Intimate Distance. Masterpieces from the Ishikawa Collection, June 29–September 29, 2019, p. 98 (illustrated, p. 99)
      Hong Kong, David Zwirner, Singing the Body Electric, July 11–August 10, 2019 (another example exhibited)
      New York, Off Paradise, Maximilian Schubert: Doubles, February 27–July 20, 2020 (another example exhibited)
      Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Oh, Honey...A Queer Reading of UMMA’S Collection, August 21, 2021–ongoing (another example exhibited)
      Sint-Martens-Latem, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Blindsight – Manon de Boer in dialogue with Latifa Laâbissi and Laszlo Umbreit, February 13–May 22, 2022 (another example exhibited)
      Kyoto, Hongwanji Dendoin, Flowers of Time, November 10–20, 2022 (another example exhibited)

    • Literature

      Nina Menocal, 15 Artistas Cubanos, Mexico City, 1991, p. 36 (another example illustrated)
      Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, exh. cat., Sammlung Goetz, Munich, 1995, pp. 10, 12, 17, 20
      Propositions, exh. cat., Musée Departmental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart, Rochechouart, 1996, p. 84
      Christopher Chapman, “Personal Effects: on aspects of work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres,” Contemporary Visual Arts + Culture Broadsheet 25.3, Spring 1996, p. 16 (another example illustrated)
      Dietmar Elger, ed., Felix Gonzalez-Torres, exh. cat. and catalogue raisonné, Ostfildern, 1997, no. 118, vol. I, pp. 40, 56-57; vol. II, p. 163 (another example exhibited and illustrated, vol. II, p. 69)
      Jean-Francois Poirier, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres,” Encyclopaedia Universalis, Paris, 1997, p. 478
      James Rondeau, Modern and Contemporary Art: The Lannan Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1999, p. 84
      Felix Gonzalez-Torres, exh. cat., Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, 2000, n.p. (illustrated)
      Tom Sine, "A New View," The Dallas Morning News, November 5, 2000, p. 70
      Antonio López, "La Luz: Illuminating U.S. Latino Art," Pasatiempo, March 2, 2001
      Comer o no Comer, exh. cat., Centro de Arte de Salamanca, Salamanca, 2002, pp. 450, 522
      Julie Ault, ed., Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gottingen, 2006, no. 2, pp. 373, 410 (Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1997, installation view of another example illustrated, p. 360; Myriam and Jacques Salomon, Paris, 2004, installation view illustrated, p. 89)
      Felix Gonzalez-Torres, exh. cat., Neue Gessellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2006, no. 2, pp. 32, 50, 177 (Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1997, installation view of another example illustrated, p. 164)
      Carol Mavor, Reading Boyishly: Roland Barthes, J.M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D.W. Winnicott, Durham and London, 2007, pp. 161, 444 (another example illustrated, p. 160)
      Joan Gibbons, Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance, London, 2007, p. 27
      Alice Thorson, "ART: There's always a little sense of danger," Kansas City Star, April 1, 2007, p. G8
      Tanya Barson, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 1991,” American Patrons of Tate Annual Report, New York, 2008, pp. 11, 23 (another example illustrated, p. 10)
      Reality Check, exh. cat., Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 2008, p. 90
      Las Implicaciones de la imagen, exh. cat., Museo de Arte de Sinaloa, Culiacán, 2008, p. 234 (another example illustrated, p. 193)
      Transformed, exh. cat., Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, 2008, p. 9
      Nicolas Bourriaud, “Paradigmas de la cohabitación,” Página 12, September 9, 2008, online
      Frederic Montornes, “Dos simples bombillas,” Erratum: zeitgeist, variations & repetitions, Barcelona, 2010, p. 29
      Dawn Ades, Tate Latin American Acquisitions Committee: Celebrating 10 Years, New York, 2011, p. 35
      Piotr Kosiewski, "Chłopiec z cukierkami," Art eon [Poland], April 1, 2011, p. 8
      Isabelle Loring Wallace and Jennie Hirsh, eds., Contemporary Art and Classical Myth, Surrey, 2011, p. 141
      More Love: Art Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s, exh. cat., Ackland Art Museum, Univerity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2013, p. 29
      Alice Thorson, “QUEER: ‘Inclusive and possibly more provocative’,” Kansas City Star, July 14, 2013, p. D2
      Jordan Riefe, “Tongues Untied: rarely seen works chart a city’s response to the Aids crisis,” The Guardian, June 19, 2015, online
      Aaron Horst, “Tongues Untied at MOCA Pacific Design Center,” Carla, August 9, 2015, online
      Adrian Searle, "Felix Gonzalez-Torres review - holding a mirror up to love and loss," The Guardian, May 27, 2016, online (another example illustrated)
      Matthew McLean, "Felix Gonzalez-Torres," frieze, no. 181, September 2016, p. 169
      Adair Rounthwaite, Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York, Minneapolis, 2017, p. 242, no. 4
      Phillip Griffith, "Felix Gonzalez-Torres," The Brooklyn Rail, June 1, 2017, online
      Joshua Chambers-Letson, After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life, New York, 2018, pp. 161, 162, 290 (another example illustrated, p. 163)
      Joan Kee, Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America, Oakland, 2019, pp. 210, 296 (another example illustrated, p. 211)
      Vivian Cheng, “Maximiliam Schubert’s Doubles,” office magazine, April 6, 2020, online
      Rema Hort, “Reflecting on Felix Gonzalez-Torres During COVID-19,” White Wall Magazine, April 20, 2020, online
      Tom Eccles and Amy Zion, eds., Hessel Collection, Annandale-On-Hudson, 2021, p. 360
      Sean Kramer, “Is Queer Art with the Word ‘F*g’ In It Still Worth Celebrating?” Pride Source, September 2, 2021, online
      Cecilia Duran, “Oh, honey... A delicately curated glimpse into UMMA’s collection of Queer Art,” The Michigan Daily, September 6, 2021, online
      Elizabeth Smith, “At Odds: “Oh, Honey... A Queer Reading of UMMA’s Collection” Imagines a Place where LGBTQ+ Art can Thrive,” Pulp, October 25, 2021, online

Property from an Esteemed Collection

40

“Untitled” (March 5th) #2

2 light bulbs, extension cords and porcelain light sockets
113 in. (287 cm) height
overall installation dimensions variable

Executed in 1991, this work is number 14 from an edition of 20 plus 2 artist’s proofs and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Other examples from the edition are housed in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; Tate, London.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$500,000 - 700,000 

Sold for $635,000

Contact Specialist

Carolyn Mayer
Associate Specialist, Head of Evening Sale, New York
+1 212 940 1206
CMayer@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 17 May 2023