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Lot Essay
Francis Newton Souza moved from London to New York in September 1967, bringing to a close nearly two decades in the United Kingdom. 1968, the artist’s first full year in America, marked one of the most turbulent periods in the nation’s postwar history: the escalating conflict in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, widespread civil unrest, and, in New York, the occupation of Columbia University. Although the present lot, Untitled (Bust of a Man), which Souza painted this year, cannot be read as an illustration of or direct reaction to these events, they charged and informed the context in which he began his life and career in the United States.
During Souza’s time in the United States, his experimentation resulted in several innovations in his practice, ranging from the use paint squeezed directly from the tube and sprayed from aerosol cans to his alterations of printed magazine pages using chemical solvents. Untitled (Bust of a Man) is a large, vibrant painting that belongs to a small and tightly concentrated group of works from 1968 which marks a decisive shift in Souza’s practice. Combining oil with spray paint, these works pushed the boundaries of his practice in novel, exciting ways.
Although Souza began to work with a distilled style and new materials in New York, his subjects remained largely unchanged. While he retained a fidelity to figuration, however, in this painting, the artist’s subject defined with his pronounced black outlines recedes to the extreme lower foreground of the composition. The abstracted portrait bust, silhouetted against an arresting color field of bright yellow spray paint, signals a dramatic shift from the more central and formalized figuration of his earlier work. The color field here has few parallels in Souza’s oeuvre. Its radical, almost sulfurous intensity dominates the square composition. Variations in the sprayed layers give the yellow a mottled, granular density, so that it appears to possess its own physicality. More than mere background, it acts almost as a sentient protagonist, pressing forward toward the viewer and enveloping the diminutive figure at its lower margin. Color is no longer employed merely to describe a setting; it has acquired weight, atmosphere and material presence. In Untitled (Bust of a Man), the background is no longer decorative or subordinate to the figure, and has become an active physical entity in its own right.
Souza’s use of spray paint is particularly significant within the context of New York in the late 1960s. Although aerosol paint itself was not new, its migration from industrial and commercial use into the visual language of the city’s emerging graffiti subculture was still new. By 1968, names and signatures were beginning to appear across the city’s walls and other public surfaces, anticipating the explosion of New York graffiti during the following decade. Souza’s adoption of spray paint was therefore strikingly attuned to a material language just beginning to emerge within the subculture of his new home. Although he had used spray paint before, in the rare works from 1968 like the present lot, it is no longer employed to create a subsidiary effect. As the vivid yellow background of Untitled (Bust of a Man) demonstrates, it becomes a dominant, even defining component of the pictorial space.
The material characteristics of spray paint would have required Souza to adjust his painting technique, moving away from compulsive, deliberate and aggressive brushstrokes towards a less controlled, point-and-shoot process. Although with systematic misting the use of spray paint could result in an even application of pigment, it also possessed the possibility of surprise. In the moments between the release of vaporized particles from the nozzle of the aerosol can and their settling on the painting’s surface, the artist’s control of the material is temporarily suspended, subject less to his will and more to the laws of gravity and propulsion. Souza’s adept navigation between control and these ‘suspended’ moments confirms his acknowledgement of automatism, a notion at the core of Abstract Expressionism, without ever entirely relinquishing direction of his composition. This experimentation was characteristic of Souza’s practice, in which he would test the possibilities and potential of various media. His use of oil and spray paint in the present lot anticipates the chemical paintings he began working on the next year. In both instances, the artist introduced an unconventional material process that allowed for an element of transformation and chance while continuing to exert control over the final image.
The bust in this painting, constructed with Souza’s familiar black lines is speckled with irregular passages of green, pink, white and gray. These jewel-like compartments suggest fragments of stained-glass windows, recalling the Catholic architecture that informed so much of Souza’s oeuvre. The figure’s disproportion, with an unusually elongated head and neck, recalls Giacometti’s sculptural busts, in which scale and form are distorted to create an almost prehistoric man. With a thin neck set on broad shoulders, jet black hair and a long beard, the figure also suggests the priests that the artist frequently portrayed in an effort to comment on imbalances of power in religion and society.
Although works like this one are evocative of the sublime color field paintings of Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, Souza never relinquished the constitution of his paintings to total abstraction. Even here, the figure literally anchors the composition. Unlike Rothko and the Abstract Expressionists, Souza felt no need to 'abstract' his subjects; his mastery of figuration was so complete that he could use it for whatever he needed.
During Souza’s time in the United States, his experimentation resulted in several innovations in his practice, ranging from the use paint squeezed directly from the tube and sprayed from aerosol cans to his alterations of printed magazine pages using chemical solvents. Untitled (Bust of a Man) is a large, vibrant painting that belongs to a small and tightly concentrated group of works from 1968 which marks a decisive shift in Souza’s practice. Combining oil with spray paint, these works pushed the boundaries of his practice in novel, exciting ways.
Although Souza began to work with a distilled style and new materials in New York, his subjects remained largely unchanged. While he retained a fidelity to figuration, however, in this painting, the artist’s subject defined with his pronounced black outlines recedes to the extreme lower foreground of the composition. The abstracted portrait bust, silhouetted against an arresting color field of bright yellow spray paint, signals a dramatic shift from the more central and formalized figuration of his earlier work. The color field here has few parallels in Souza’s oeuvre. Its radical, almost sulfurous intensity dominates the square composition. Variations in the sprayed layers give the yellow a mottled, granular density, so that it appears to possess its own physicality. More than mere background, it acts almost as a sentient protagonist, pressing forward toward the viewer and enveloping the diminutive figure at its lower margin. Color is no longer employed merely to describe a setting; it has acquired weight, atmosphere and material presence. In Untitled (Bust of a Man), the background is no longer decorative or subordinate to the figure, and has become an active physical entity in its own right.
Souza’s use of spray paint is particularly significant within the context of New York in the late 1960s. Although aerosol paint itself was not new, its migration from industrial and commercial use into the visual language of the city’s emerging graffiti subculture was still new. By 1968, names and signatures were beginning to appear across the city’s walls and other public surfaces, anticipating the explosion of New York graffiti during the following decade. Souza’s adoption of spray paint was therefore strikingly attuned to a material language just beginning to emerge within the subculture of his new home. Although he had used spray paint before, in the rare works from 1968 like the present lot, it is no longer employed to create a subsidiary effect. As the vivid yellow background of Untitled (Bust of a Man) demonstrates, it becomes a dominant, even defining component of the pictorial space.
The material characteristics of spray paint would have required Souza to adjust his painting technique, moving away from compulsive, deliberate and aggressive brushstrokes towards a less controlled, point-and-shoot process. Although with systematic misting the use of spray paint could result in an even application of pigment, it also possessed the possibility of surprise. In the moments between the release of vaporized particles from the nozzle of the aerosol can and their settling on the painting’s surface, the artist’s control of the material is temporarily suspended, subject less to his will and more to the laws of gravity and propulsion. Souza’s adept navigation between control and these ‘suspended’ moments confirms his acknowledgement of automatism, a notion at the core of Abstract Expressionism, without ever entirely relinquishing direction of his composition. This experimentation was characteristic of Souza’s practice, in which he would test the possibilities and potential of various media. His use of oil and spray paint in the present lot anticipates the chemical paintings he began working on the next year. In both instances, the artist introduced an unconventional material process that allowed for an element of transformation and chance while continuing to exert control over the final image.
The bust in this painting, constructed with Souza’s familiar black lines is speckled with irregular passages of green, pink, white and gray. These jewel-like compartments suggest fragments of stained-glass windows, recalling the Catholic architecture that informed so much of Souza’s oeuvre. The figure’s disproportion, with an unusually elongated head and neck, recalls Giacometti’s sculptural busts, in which scale and form are distorted to create an almost prehistoric man. With a thin neck set on broad shoulders, jet black hair and a long beard, the figure also suggests the priests that the artist frequently portrayed in an effort to comment on imbalances of power in religion and society.
Although works like this one are evocative of the sublime color field paintings of Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, Souza never relinquished the constitution of his paintings to total abstraction. Even here, the figure literally anchors the composition. Unlike Rothko and the Abstract Expressionists, Souza felt no need to 'abstract' his subjects; his mastery of figuration was so complete that he could use it for whatever he needed.