.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘It seems to me that, as a painter, you can treat the work as a Window, as an Object, or as a Wall’ (Robert Mangold)
Acquired by the Crex Collection in 1986—the year after it was made—the present work is a large and important example of Robert Mangold’s Color Frame Paintings. Illustrated on the cover of The Paris Review in 1989, it consists of four coloured strips of canvas, joined together like a frame around an empty rectangular space. A hand drawn ellipse runs across the panels, binding them into a single expression. Towering two and a half metres in height, the work takes its place within one of the artist’s most ambitious series. It is one of seventeen Four Color Frame Paintings that Mangold completed between 1983 and 1985: other examples reside in institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The painting was shown in the artist’s retrospective at the Hallen für neue Kunst, Schaffhausen in 1987, and later in dialogue with the work of Robert Ryman and Richard Long at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich in 2004.
Mangold had laid the foundations for the Color Frame Paintings in his two Untitled Frame Sets of 1970, consisting of wooden painted frames with irregular rectangular openings in the centre. The Color Frame Paintings extended the language of these early creations, opening up the dialogue between artwork and wall. It was a conversation that lay at the heart of his oeuvre. In Mangold’s inaugural series of Walls, begun in 1964, his paintings had assumed the quality of architecture. Now, two decades on, architecture instead became part of the painting. These works were also notable for their sophisticated approach to colour. Following on from his x and + Paintings, which were the first in his oeuvre to use more than one hue, Mangold began work with increasingly bold chromatic combinations, using brighter colours than ever before. He made a total of 34 Color Frame Paintings, working on a range of scales and with varying numbers of coloured segments. Other notable examples include Two Color Frame Painting (1984, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Five Color Frame Painting (1985, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.).
Mangold’s exploration of art’s objecthood has often led him to be associated with Minimalism. The present work, indeed, shares much in common with the works of artists such as Dan Flavin and Frank Stella, playfully subverting the age-old notion of art as a window onto the world. Unlike many of his generation, however, Mangold was still fundamentally interested in properties of the picture plane, citing Abstract Expressionists such as Barnett Newman as a key influence upon his practice. Beginning in the 1970s, his nesting of hand-drawn geometric shapes within larger shaped canvases interrogated the illusionistic relationship between line, form and surface. His quivering ellipses have prompted comparison with Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man; elsewhere, he has spoken of his interest in cave paintings and Renaissance frescoes. By actively inviting the wall into the space of these investigations, Mangold tapped into questions that have underpinned art-making for millennia, asking how images exist in relation to our world, and how we inhabit the reality they prescribe.
Works from the Crex Art Collection
Christie’s is delighted to present an outstanding group of seven works from the prestigious Crex Art Collection. Spread across the 20th/21st Century London Evening Sale and the Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale this October, these works capture the pioneering spirit of one of Europe’s finest collections of Minimalist and Conceptual art.
Begun in Zurich in the early 1970s, the Crex Collection was distinguished by its revolutionary focus on the art of its day. In 1978, it showcased its holdings in a major touring exhibition that travelled to institutions including the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Already the collection included works by artists including Robert Mangold, Sol LeWitt, Blinky Palermo and Donald Judd, as well as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Neo-Expressionist painters such as Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz. Writing in the catalogue, Rudi Fuchs wrote that ‘It was not primarily the desire to own art, it seems, which prompted this collection; there was also the profound wish to support art, contemporary art, in a country with many collections of classic art but with only little activity in the field of really contemporary art’ (R. Fuchs, quoted in Werke aus der Sammlung Crex, Zurich 1978, p. 129).
During the early 1980s, the collection took up residence in the Hallen für neue Kunst in Schaffhausen: a former textile factory. It was one of the first exhibition spaces to make use of an industrial building in this way, and mounted a series of major shows until 2014. Its celebration of both European and American artists, and its dedication to their public display, transformed the landscape for contemporary art in Switzerland and beyond.
All acquired shortly after their creation, the present selection of works demonstrates the sharp connoisseurly vision of the Crex Collection. Highlights include a rare and unique example of Blinky Palermo’s Stoffbilder (Fabric Pictures), distinguished by its vertical rather than horizontal seam. Gerhard Richter’s Grau is one of the landmark group of Grey Paintings that the artist unveiled at the Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach in 1974. Brown Wall (1964) is one of the very first works in Robert Mangold’s seminal Walls series, while his Four Color Frame Painting #16 (1985) featured on the cover of The Paris Review in 1989. Completing the selection are works by Markus Lüpertz, Sol LeWitt and Richard Long, rounding out a tightly-curated snapshot of one of the twentieth century’s richest art-historical periods.
Acquired by the Crex Collection in 1986—the year after it was made—the present work is a large and important example of Robert Mangold’s Color Frame Paintings. Illustrated on the cover of The Paris Review in 1989, it consists of four coloured strips of canvas, joined together like a frame around an empty rectangular space. A hand drawn ellipse runs across the panels, binding them into a single expression. Towering two and a half metres in height, the work takes its place within one of the artist’s most ambitious series. It is one of seventeen Four Color Frame Paintings that Mangold completed between 1983 and 1985: other examples reside in institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The painting was shown in the artist’s retrospective at the Hallen für neue Kunst, Schaffhausen in 1987, and later in dialogue with the work of Robert Ryman and Richard Long at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich in 2004.
Mangold had laid the foundations for the Color Frame Paintings in his two Untitled Frame Sets of 1970, consisting of wooden painted frames with irregular rectangular openings in the centre. The Color Frame Paintings extended the language of these early creations, opening up the dialogue between artwork and wall. It was a conversation that lay at the heart of his oeuvre. In Mangold’s inaugural series of Walls, begun in 1964, his paintings had assumed the quality of architecture. Now, two decades on, architecture instead became part of the painting. These works were also notable for their sophisticated approach to colour. Following on from his x and + Paintings, which were the first in his oeuvre to use more than one hue, Mangold began work with increasingly bold chromatic combinations, using brighter colours than ever before. He made a total of 34 Color Frame Paintings, working on a range of scales and with varying numbers of coloured segments. Other notable examples include Two Color Frame Painting (1984, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Five Color Frame Painting (1985, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.).
Mangold’s exploration of art’s objecthood has often led him to be associated with Minimalism. The present work, indeed, shares much in common with the works of artists such as Dan Flavin and Frank Stella, playfully subverting the age-old notion of art as a window onto the world. Unlike many of his generation, however, Mangold was still fundamentally interested in properties of the picture plane, citing Abstract Expressionists such as Barnett Newman as a key influence upon his practice. Beginning in the 1970s, his nesting of hand-drawn geometric shapes within larger shaped canvases interrogated the illusionistic relationship between line, form and surface. His quivering ellipses have prompted comparison with Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man; elsewhere, he has spoken of his interest in cave paintings and Renaissance frescoes. By actively inviting the wall into the space of these investigations, Mangold tapped into questions that have underpinned art-making for millennia, asking how images exist in relation to our world, and how we inhabit the reality they prescribe.
Works from the Crex Art Collection
Christie’s is delighted to present an outstanding group of seven works from the prestigious Crex Art Collection. Spread across the 20th/21st Century London Evening Sale and the Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale this October, these works capture the pioneering spirit of one of Europe’s finest collections of Minimalist and Conceptual art.
Begun in Zurich in the early 1970s, the Crex Collection was distinguished by its revolutionary focus on the art of its day. In 1978, it showcased its holdings in a major touring exhibition that travelled to institutions including the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Already the collection included works by artists including Robert Mangold, Sol LeWitt, Blinky Palermo and Donald Judd, as well as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Neo-Expressionist painters such as Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz. Writing in the catalogue, Rudi Fuchs wrote that ‘It was not primarily the desire to own art, it seems, which prompted this collection; there was also the profound wish to support art, contemporary art, in a country with many collections of classic art but with only little activity in the field of really contemporary art’ (R. Fuchs, quoted in Werke aus der Sammlung Crex, Zurich 1978, p. 129).
During the early 1980s, the collection took up residence in the Hallen für neue Kunst in Schaffhausen: a former textile factory. It was one of the first exhibition spaces to make use of an industrial building in this way, and mounted a series of major shows until 2014. Its celebration of both European and American artists, and its dedication to their public display, transformed the landscape for contemporary art in Switzerland and beyond.
All acquired shortly after their creation, the present selection of works demonstrates the sharp connoisseurly vision of the Crex Collection. Highlights include a rare and unique example of Blinky Palermo’s Stoffbilder (Fabric Pictures), distinguished by its vertical rather than horizontal seam. Gerhard Richter’s Grau is one of the landmark group of Grey Paintings that the artist unveiled at the Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach in 1974. Brown Wall (1964) is one of the very first works in Robert Mangold’s seminal Walls series, while his Four Color Frame Painting #16 (1985) featured on the cover of The Paris Review in 1989. Completing the selection are works by Markus Lüpertz, Sol LeWitt and Richard Long, rounding out a tightly-curated snapshot of one of the twentieth century’s richest art-historical periods.