Robert Mangold - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Peter Freeman Inc., New York

  • Catalogue Essay


    The stunning scrolling curves that Robert Mangold designates “curled figures” exist on a heroic scale by comparison with Matisses’s leaves, which were drawn on a pad of paper he could easily hold with one hand, while he drew with the other. Mangold’s curled figures, by contrast, span large, multipaneled canvases, and seem to imply the coordination of the artist’s whole body in a feat sf strength and virtuosity, executing what appears at a normal distance from the canvas to be a perfect arabesque in a single draftsmanly act. The curled figures are compound spirals, which we read as unwinding from left to right, and we naturally infer that they must have been drawn from left to right as well, since we write in the same direction that we read. I want to describe the spirals somewhat closely, and in relationship to the space in which they are sited, since the points through which they unfurl have been plotted with the precision of a master shot in billiards.
    A. C. Danto, “The Art of the Curve,” Robert Mangold: Curled Figure and Column Paintings, New York, 2003, p. 6

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN COLLECTION

129

Curled Figure XXI Study

2002

Oil on canvas.

30 x 39 3/4 in. (76 x 101 cm).
Signed, titled and dated "R Mangold 2002 Curled Figure XXI Study" on the reverse.
 

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $116,500

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York