The Great Bear

Details

Simon Patterson (b. 1967)
The Great Bear
signed, dated and numbered 33/50 in pencil (lower right)
lithograph in colours, framed in aluminium London Underground frame (as published)
43 1/8 x 52¾ in. (134 x 109.5 cm.)
Executed in 1992, this work is one of fifty impressions, printed by London Underground printers and published by the artist and Milch Gallery

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.

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Lot Essay

This print replicates the iconic map of the London Underground created by Henry C. Beck in 1931. But the station names have been replaced by names of philosophers, Italian artists, musicians, film starts and other names of well known people from different fields of activity.

Simon Patterson conceives the underground map as 'an abstraction of the urban landscape...the tube stops...can be seen as stars in a constellation, where you imagine the lines to connect the dots'(Quoted in Greenberg, 'The Word According to Simon Patterson, Tate: The Art Magazine, issue 4, winter 1994, p.47). In that respect, the work's title refers to the astronomical constellation of the same name.

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