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Lot Essay
Coventry's White abstracts at first sight appear to be just that, however on closer examination images of traditional British institutions appear, "White's Club", "St. James's", "Trooping the colour", and "Noël Coward".
Andrew Wilson writing in the 1994 Karsten Schubert catalogue says, "The issue- and one that is raised also by Coventry's paintings, hinges on a point of recognisability or, in a portrait, the achievment of a good likeness (one reason why Sutherland's portrait of Churchill (the subject of this work) was eventually destroyed by Churchill's widow)... by repainting Churchill's "monochrome" paintings as white abstracts while also recreating the destroyed Sutherland portrait of Churchill, Coventry is underlining the extent to which, behind the image, his paintings are not concerned with issues of representation so much as with how the meaning can be held and communicated- how the visual sign can be made more recognisable. (A.Wilson, op.cit. p.15).
Andrew Wilson writing in the 1994 Karsten Schubert catalogue says, "The issue- and one that is raised also by Coventry's paintings, hinges on a point of recognisability or, in a portrait, the achievment of a good likeness (one reason why Sutherland's portrait of Churchill (the subject of this work) was eventually destroyed by Churchill's widow)... by repainting Churchill's "monochrome" paintings as white abstracts while also recreating the destroyed Sutherland portrait of Churchill, Coventry is underlining the extent to which, behind the image, his paintings are not concerned with issues of representation so much as with how the meaning can be held and communicated- how the visual sign can be made more recognisable. (A.Wilson, op.cit. p.15).