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拍品專文
‘Everything is language, and every word or object is ambiguous in meaning depending on its arrangement’ (Sarah Lucas)
Thrust into perpetual entanglement, the biomorphic forms of Sarah Lucas’s Nud Cycladic 15 (2010) rise and twist to suggest folding human limbs. Made from stuffed, knotted and folded tights atop a concrete and MDF pedestal, the sculpture is one of sixteen that Lucas created for her 2010 exhibition in the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, which placed her work in dialogue with the institution’s permanent collection. Flourishing in the Aegean Islands from around 3300 to 1100 BCE, the Cycladic civilisation produced some of art history’s most iconic female forms. Their marble idols, with crossed arms and elegant, schematic features, had a profound influence upon twentieth-century Modernist sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși. With their corporeal contortions echoing these ancient figures, Lucas’s Nud Cycladic works furthered her career-long engagement with ideas of sexuality and gendered depictions of the body. Other works from the series are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Arts Council and the British Council (London), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Tate (London), and Christchurch Art Gallery (Christchurch, New Zealand).
Lucas’s Nud Cycladic sculptures belong to the artist’s ongoing series of Nuds, begun in 2009, which are characterised by a central knot of kapok-filled tights atop a cement block on a wooden plinth. These in turn developed out of her Bunny series—which she has been making since 1997—where tights are used to form human-sized sculptures of women’s legs, breasts and genitalia sprawled on chairs in sexually suggestive poses. Lucas became known for her use of innuendos drawn from tabloids and explicit magazines during the 1990s as a member of the Young British Artists generation. Later series such as the Nud Cycladic works have expanded from these confrontations with stereotyping and fetish to explore more formal concerns. Unlike the Bunny works, their undefined anatomy enters the territory of archetype and abstraction. The tights are manipulated into an ambivalent, protean suggestion of human form which draws upon the primal power of the Cycladic figurines.
Whereas sofas, beds, chairs, wardrobes, and bathtubs accompany many of Lucas’s works—anchoring them firmly within the domestic sphere—the present work’s pedestal deliberately evokes the modes of display seen in exhibitions of antique objects. At the same time, the industrial breeze-blocks and MDF act to deconstruct this museological motif. With their smooth contours and opaque, off-white colour, the stuffed tights themselves might at first glance appear to be made of the same carved marble as an ancient idol: on close inspection, the soft, swelling fabric has a disarmingly organic quality. Lucas uses form and material to subvert our expectations. In her hands, the stylised female figure is no longer a fixed entity but mercurial and protean, constantly shifting shape into something new.
For Art’s Sake: Selected Works by Tiqui Atencio and Ago Demirdjian
‘I wanted to understand what it meant to spend one’s life surrounded by and devoted to art’ (Tiqui Atencio)
For Tiqui Atencio and Ago Demirdjian, art functions as a catalyst for conversation: between an artist and the world, and between the public and the society they inhabit. ‘[Artists] are the antennas of the world,’ Tiqui says, ‘picking up on the energy and transforming it into their own vocabulary for us to appreciate, to see, to feel.’ For the Venezuelan-born collector and tastemaker, those conversations began in her early 20s, when her beloved aunt and uncle started taking her to galleries and museums all over the world. Enthralled by the works of art that she saw, Tiqui set out to learn as much as she could, sparking what would become a lifetime endeavour.
The product of these visits, along with countless other conversations, is a dynamic collection that encapsulates the artistic zeitgeist of the past few decades. Following the sale of selected works in New York, Paris and London earlier this year, Christie’s is delighted to present a large and outstanding group from the collection in London this October. Spread across the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale and Post-War & Contemporary Art Day and Online Sales, these works capture Tiqui’s immersion in the British art scene at the turn of the millennium. Among them are exceptional works by Damien Hirst, including Never Mind (1990-1991)—one of the artist’s earliest Medicine Cabinets—and the rare parallelogram-shaped Pharmaceutical Painting Nalorphine (1995). Works by Antony Gormley, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and others are brought into dialogue with international artists including Franz West, Fischli & Weiss and Sarah Morris. The group also pays tribute to Tiqui’s love of Latin American art, with works by artists such as Carlos Garaicoa, Oscar Murillo and Ernesto Neto.
Tiqui’s highly refined eye has led her to become a sought-after advisor to museums around the world. Together she and Ago have served on influential committees including the International Council of the Tate Gallery in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. Tiqui’s passion to communicate the joys she has found in art has also resulted in several critically acclaimed books, including Could Have, Would Have, Should Have (Art/Books, 2016), For Art’s Sake: Inside the Homes of Art Dealers (Rizzoli, 2020), and Inside the Homes of Artists: For Art’s Sake (Rizzoli, 2024).
Thrust into perpetual entanglement, the biomorphic forms of Sarah Lucas’s Nud Cycladic 15 (2010) rise and twist to suggest folding human limbs. Made from stuffed, knotted and folded tights atop a concrete and MDF pedestal, the sculpture is one of sixteen that Lucas created for her 2010 exhibition in the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, which placed her work in dialogue with the institution’s permanent collection. Flourishing in the Aegean Islands from around 3300 to 1100 BCE, the Cycladic civilisation produced some of art history’s most iconic female forms. Their marble idols, with crossed arms and elegant, schematic features, had a profound influence upon twentieth-century Modernist sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși. With their corporeal contortions echoing these ancient figures, Lucas’s Nud Cycladic works furthered her career-long engagement with ideas of sexuality and gendered depictions of the body. Other works from the series are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Arts Council and the British Council (London), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Tate (London), and Christchurch Art Gallery (Christchurch, New Zealand).
Lucas’s Nud Cycladic sculptures belong to the artist’s ongoing series of Nuds, begun in 2009, which are characterised by a central knot of kapok-filled tights atop a cement block on a wooden plinth. These in turn developed out of her Bunny series—which she has been making since 1997—where tights are used to form human-sized sculptures of women’s legs, breasts and genitalia sprawled on chairs in sexually suggestive poses. Lucas became known for her use of innuendos drawn from tabloids and explicit magazines during the 1990s as a member of the Young British Artists generation. Later series such as the Nud Cycladic works have expanded from these confrontations with stereotyping and fetish to explore more formal concerns. Unlike the Bunny works, their undefined anatomy enters the territory of archetype and abstraction. The tights are manipulated into an ambivalent, protean suggestion of human form which draws upon the primal power of the Cycladic figurines.
Whereas sofas, beds, chairs, wardrobes, and bathtubs accompany many of Lucas’s works—anchoring them firmly within the domestic sphere—the present work’s pedestal deliberately evokes the modes of display seen in exhibitions of antique objects. At the same time, the industrial breeze-blocks and MDF act to deconstruct this museological motif. With their smooth contours and opaque, off-white colour, the stuffed tights themselves might at first glance appear to be made of the same carved marble as an ancient idol: on close inspection, the soft, swelling fabric has a disarmingly organic quality. Lucas uses form and material to subvert our expectations. In her hands, the stylised female figure is no longer a fixed entity but mercurial and protean, constantly shifting shape into something new.
For Art’s Sake: Selected Works by Tiqui Atencio and Ago Demirdjian
‘I wanted to understand what it meant to spend one’s life surrounded by and devoted to art’ (Tiqui Atencio)
For Tiqui Atencio and Ago Demirdjian, art functions as a catalyst for conversation: between an artist and the world, and between the public and the society they inhabit. ‘[Artists] are the antennas of the world,’ Tiqui says, ‘picking up on the energy and transforming it into their own vocabulary for us to appreciate, to see, to feel.’ For the Venezuelan-born collector and tastemaker, those conversations began in her early 20s, when her beloved aunt and uncle started taking her to galleries and museums all over the world. Enthralled by the works of art that she saw, Tiqui set out to learn as much as she could, sparking what would become a lifetime endeavour.
The product of these visits, along with countless other conversations, is a dynamic collection that encapsulates the artistic zeitgeist of the past few decades. Following the sale of selected works in New York, Paris and London earlier this year, Christie’s is delighted to present a large and outstanding group from the collection in London this October. Spread across the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale and Post-War & Contemporary Art Day and Online Sales, these works capture Tiqui’s immersion in the British art scene at the turn of the millennium. Among them are exceptional works by Damien Hirst, including Never Mind (1990-1991)—one of the artist’s earliest Medicine Cabinets—and the rare parallelogram-shaped Pharmaceutical Painting Nalorphine (1995). Works by Antony Gormley, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and others are brought into dialogue with international artists including Franz West, Fischli & Weiss and Sarah Morris. The group also pays tribute to Tiqui’s love of Latin American art, with works by artists such as Carlos Garaicoa, Oscar Murillo and Ernesto Neto.
Tiqui’s highly refined eye has led her to become a sought-after advisor to museums around the world. Together she and Ago have served on influential committees including the International Council of the Tate Gallery in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. Tiqui’s passion to communicate the joys she has found in art has also resulted in several critically acclaimed books, including Could Have, Would Have, Should Have (Art/Books, 2016), For Art’s Sake: Inside the Homes of Art Dealers (Rizzoli, 2020), and Inside the Homes of Artists: For Art’s Sake (Rizzoli, 2024).