Jake and Dinos Chapman - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 16, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    White Cube, London

  • Catalogue Essay

    Jake and Dinos Chapman’s grotesque, gruesome tableau, The same thing only smaller, or the same size but a long way away, realistically depicts the macabre scene of rotting skeletons hanging from a tree, the decomposed bodies picked clean by swarming flies, maggots, and worms. As suggested in its descriptive title, the present lot is a reduced version of a previous Chapman work, Sex, the bronze centerpiece of their 2003 Turner Prize display at London’s Tate Britain, Constantly appropriating and reworking their own work as well as the oeuvre of past masters, Sex was itself based on Great Deeds Against the Dead, a 1994 sculpture which took as its inspiration a Francisco de Goya etching from his epic masterpiece the Disasters of War. Throughout their artistic career, the Chapman brothers have compulsively and controversially returned to Goya’s subversive commentary on the effects of war, creating a body of work, sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints, which poignantly critiques the state of our contemporary society. Their fantastically graphic imaginary is so morbid that it acquires a certain aloofness, an irreverence towards the history of art and contemporary art world that is typical of the oeuvre and mentality of the YBAs.

14

The same thing only smaller, or the same size but a long way away

2005-2006
Painted resin.
45.1 x 42.5 x 21.6 cm. (17 3/4 x 16 3/4 x 8 1/2 in).
Signed, inscribed, dated 'Jake and Dinos Chapman did this ok? XXX 2006' and numbered of twelve on the underside. This work is from an edition of twelve.

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 Ω♠

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

17 Oct 2009
London