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There are works that stand out for me, it isn’t limited to a style, a genre, or perhaps it is, The genre of Zoot.

Bonhams is auctioning in New York this fall:
Fracesco Clemente Hermaphrodite 1985

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE (B. 1952) Hermaphrodite, 1985 gouache on handmade Pondicherry paper 94 x 130in. (238.8 x 330.2cm)

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE

  • “I believe there is such a thing as an imagination shared by the different contemplative traditions. My goal is to collect images and references from these traditions and connect them with the emotions from the present-day, and common experiences.”1
    Francesco Clemente

  • “I believe in this movement of generating and dissolving, and regenerating and dissolving again — this is a technique for the mind to become and remain awake.1. C. Xin, “Spiritual Portraits: Q + A with Francesco Clemente,” in Art in America, 5 June 2012.
    2. Francesco Clemente: Encampment, exh. cat., North Adams, Massachusetts, MASS MoCA, 13 June 2015-26 January 2016 (unpaged).
FRANZ KLINE (1910-1962) Untitled, circa 1950-1952 signed 'KLINE' (lower left) ink on telephone book page laid down on board 11 1/2 x 9 1/2in. (29.2 x 24.2cm)

FRANZ KLINE (1910-1962)
Untitled, circa 1950-1952
signed ‘KLINE’ (lower left)
ink on telephone book page laid down on board
11 1/2 x 9 1/2in. (29.2 x 24.2cm)

FRANZ KLINE – Pure Energy

  • “You don’t paint the way someone, by observing your life, thinks you have to paint, you paint the way you have to in order to give, that’s life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. The question about knowing will naturally be wrong. When you’ve finished giving, the look surprises you as well as anyone else.”1
    Franz Kline

    Robert Motherwell describes Kline’s work: “who could not be moved by his sense of push and thrust? Kline’s great black bars have the tension of a taut bow, or a ready catapult. And his sense of scale, that sine qua non of good painting, is marvelously precise. His big paintings can be as good as his small ones, a rare mastery in this period concerned with the power of magnitude.”2“When I look out my window – I’ve always lived in the city – I don’t see trees in bloom or mountain laurel. What I do see – or rather, not what I see but the feelings aroused in me by that looking- is what I paint.”3 – Franz Kline

    In 2012 San Francisco financier George R. Roberts sold a nearly ten-foot wide, untitled black-and-white work from 1957 at Christie’s, New York. The painting went to a telephone bidder for $36 million, or $40.4 million with fees a record price for the artist at auction and more than six times the previous record, which was set in 2005 when Christie’s sold Crow Dancer (1958) for $6.4 million.

  • 1. Franz Kline: Art and the Structure of Identity, exh. cat., London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1994, p. 157.
    2. R. Motherwell, “Homage to Franz Kline” 17 August 1962, in Franz Kline: The Color Abstractions, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection (and traveling), 1979, p. 43.
    3. Ibid. p. 16.
    4. Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., Gallery of Modern Art, 1962, p. 16.

And finally a charming video from Bonhams with a great look at a wonderful Alexander Calder push toy.

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