Another key highlight of the sale is Jack Whitten’s 1974 painting Special Checking (estimate $300/500,000). Starting in the early 1970s in New York, Whitten engineered new extrapolations on Abstract Expressionism. The elusiveness of paint drove Whitten to create the instrument he called the “developer,” a proprietary floor-based tool, he used to quickly spread a layer of acrylic paint onto a canvas in a single gesture.

This tool led to the creation of his signature Slab paintings. For this series, Whitten utilized an unconventional process for which he would lay the canvas on the floor, drag a squeegee across to mix his color, and then let the paint dry. Paint was piled on as much as a quarter-inch thick in many of them, and all of the tones Whitten chose were left visible. With their warped, colorful forms and their unclear geometries, they resemble long-exposure photographs of things in motion. Slab works were featured at the artist’s 1974 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Special Checking was featured as the cover of the exhibition catalogue. Indisputably the strongest example to ever appear at auction by the artist, the work is entirely fresh to market and the very first Slab painting to appear at auction after the artist’s death. Following his death in 2018, there has been a widespread outpouring of zeal for the artist, including important commemorative surveys such as a major show, Odyssey, at the Met Breuer in the fall of 2018 and Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Paintings, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Executed shortly after the artist lost the support of the Works Progress Administration for her involvement with the Communist Party, Connie from 1945 is an early work that reveals Alice Neel at a point of flux and transition, referencing myriad art historical sources and crafting a composition that, despite its multiple references, is unique (estimate $300/500,000).

The dynamics of the relationship between Neel and her sitter are made more ambiguous by the artist’s use of art historical allusion, placing her subject in a lineage of female portraiture and more general depictions of the female form. Connie's elegant and attenuated hand is a visual quotation of the similarly elongated features of Bronzino's sitters and the aristocratic portraiture of Van Dyck, while her body is positioned to mimic Titian's Venus of Urbino. The sitter’s loud and vibrant dress recalls Matisse's Woman in a Purple Coat, a masterwork executed just a decade prior that helped bring bold pattern and color into the vernacular of European Modernism. While both paintings share many similarities, the present work differs in that Connie dominates its environment rather than being subsumed by it, becoming unplaceable. Using this lack of contextual information to focus attention on the sitter, the present work becomes timeless, taking contemporary and historical references and mixing them to infuse the grandeur and staidness of art historical lineage with the sensation of lived experience. Acquired directly from the artist the same year that it was created, Connie exemplifies Neel’s ability to visually depict the sensation of interpersonal intimacy.

Another highlight of the sale is Jacob Lawrence’s Menagerie from 1964 — an energetic work on paper emblematic of the artist’s unique stylistic combinations, functioning as both a reflection and commentary on the artist’s world (estimate $180/250,000). One of the preeminent social chroniclers of the 20th Century, Lawrence painted the present work in the year he and his wife traveled to Nigeria, reveling in the cultural sights and street life there.  In Menagerie, the artist depicts a brutal event: two figures preside over a fowl slaughter, grimacing as caged animals look on from afar. Appearing at auction for the first time in nearly two decades, the present work comes to market on the heels of Sotheby’s strong result for another work by the artist: in November 2018, Lawrence’s The Businessmen shattered its $2 million high estimate to achieve $6.2 million, establishing a new auction benchmark for the artist.

CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE & THE FORM OF IDEAS
Open for Bidding from 22 February – 8 March

Sotheby’s auctions of Contemporary Art continue this week with Contemporary Art Online (22 February – 7 March) and a dedicated online-only sale, The Form of Ideas (22 February – 8 March).

Featuring 250+ lots, this season’s Contemporary Art Online sale is distinguished by the 17 works on offer to benefit Miss Porter’s School, as well as an impressive ensemble of pieces from the collections of celebrated patrons Judith Neisser and David Teiger, among others. The auction also includes works by renowned artists such as Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Lee Krasner, Alex Katz, John Wesley, Sam Gilliam, Marlene Dumas, Laura Owens and Richard Hambleton, and offers both new and established collectors with the opportunity to acquire works at accessible price points below $100,000.