H.2.N.Y. Tinguely Machine Erases its own Construction in 27 Minutes

Details

Michael Landy (B. 1953)
H.2.N.Y. Tinguely Machine Erases its own Construction in 27 Minutes
oilstick on paper
overall: 60 x 95 5/8in. (152.5 x 243cm.)
Executed in 2007

Provenance

Donated by the Artist, Courtesy of Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Theater of Junk, 2009.
Nîmes, Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain de Nîmes, Projections, 2009-2010 (illustrated in colour, pp. 76-77).

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.

Further details

STUDENT AT GOLDSMITHS: 1985-1988

Brought to you by

Amanda Lo Iacono

aloiacono@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 5207

Lot Essay

‘The object of Landy’s obsession was and is Jean Tinguely’s machine Homage to New York, which destroyed itself in 27 minutes before an invited audience in the Museum of Modern Art garden in Manhattan on 17 March 1960. Anaïs Nin watched the machine’s demise: “the entire structure went into a spasm which opened the boxes of chemicals, and they exploded into coloured smoke which filled the balloon with air, set the roll of pare unrolling and the brush paintings erratically … The piano started to burn slowly, and as it burned the notes played wistfully, out of tune, unreal, like a pianola’’’
(J. Cooper, Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50, London 2012, pp. 108-109).

H.2.N.Y. Tinguely Machine Erases its own Construction in 27 Minutes

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Lot Essay

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