Madonna

Details

Gary Hume (b. 1962)
Madonna
signed, titled and dated 'MADONNA 1994 Gary Hume' (on the reverse)
house hold gloss on MDF
60 x 48in. (152 x 122cm.)
Painted in 1994

Exhibited

Hayward Gallery, London, Unbound: Possibilities in Painting, 3 March - 30 May 1994, p.38 (illus). Galerie Gebauer and Thumm, Berlin, Gary Hume: Garden, 1996.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Sale room notice

Please note the following exhibition details:
Hayward Gallery, London, Unbound: Possibilities in Painting,
3 March - 30 May 1994, p.38 (illus).

Lot Essay

'Hume has said that he is an artist without ideas. (Not having ideas is, of course, itself and idea.) He painted a Madonna in 1993 "because she has been painted so beautifully" Because she has been painted so beautifully: this was the test. What could Hume do with the subject, avoiding sentimentality, avoiding a pastiche of all the paintings of the Madonna, avoiding invidious comparison? Hume's Madonna is disconcertingly featureless, as plain as the surface of one of his doors. Her head is an irregular black ovoid painted in high-gloss household paint, as is the head of the infant Jesus whom she cradles. The Madonna's hair flows through the painting in ropes of white. Hume liked the idea that viewers of the painting could see their own dim reflections in the faces of Mary and baby Jesus.'

A. Searle, Gary Hume, XLVIII Venice Biennale, The British Council, London, 1999.

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