Oscillating between figuration and abstraction — Lot 1 of the 21st Century Evening Sale is a vivid example of the new portraiture taking the art world by storm

The opening lot of the 21st Century Evening Sale at Christie’s shines a spotlight on an emerging artist rapidly gaining momentum in the art world, one whom collectors would be wise to pay attention to. Prior seasons have proven it to be a star-making moment: May’s opening lot, Robin F. Williams’ Ice Queen, soared past its high estimate of $150,000, selling for $428,400, whilst the previous season’s pick — Anna Weyant’s Summertime — sold for $1,500,000.

On 7 November, a new name — that of Berlin-based painter Stefanie Heinze — will be announced from the rostrum to mark her Christie’s debut and open the sale in New York. Her painting Third Date, which stretches over 6 feet high, is a sensual display of blue, green and peach tones oozing into lava-lamp-like forms that oscillate between figuration and abstraction.

The composition’s colours and shapes evoke El Greco’s The Adoration of the Shepherds or Gauguin’s Green Christ, but there is an overarching surrealism and a humorous evocation of the human body that is markedly of-the-moment. Critic Alina Cohen likens Heinze’s work to ‘Disney on acid’, referring to the ‘abstracted cartoonish forms that float on backgrounds rendered in mostly bright or pastel hues.’

‘My aim for our lot 1 was to select an artist that represents our current psyche and the world around us,’ says Kathryn Widing, Head of the 21st Century Evening Sale at Christie’s. This 21st Century Sale spans from some of the most famous 20th century artists, like Cy Twombly and Brice Marden, to contemporary art made by South American, African American, and Asian artists. As Widing puts it, ‘Heinze is Berlin-based but she has international reach. She grapples with both personal struggles as well as power structures and hierarchies. I find it poignant how universal her work is.’

Following the success of Heinze’s debut solo show at the Petzel Gallery in 2020, Stefanie Heinze: Frail Juice, demand for her paintings has climbed rapidly. Hot off a strong showing at London Auction Week in October, her appearance at the forefront of the upcoming sale at Christie’s New York will, Widing notes, ‘solidify her status as an international artist.’

When asked about her favourite painting from the show, Heinze answered, ‘If I have to choose one it would be Third Date’. She painted it in 2020, and she has said the pandemic influenced her style by forcing her to delve inwards for inspiration and turn to dreams as a subject matter. ‘This psychological component of the painting fascinates me, given we all can relate to how our mindsets shifted during the lockdown,’ says Widing.

Whilst Heinze also takes inspiration from the natural world, her works are intentionally ambiguous. It is unclear what exactly you are looking at, and yet the composition’s separate parts appear recognisable and human.

A sense of surrealism prevails, accentuated here by the floating entities. Like Salvador Dalí and Niki de Saint Phalle, she has a command of painterly space which she uses to create depth and tactility.

Heinze is part of a strong contingent of exciting contemporary artists marking out new territory in the tradition of portraiture by merging figuration with abstraction.

Cecily Brown, who currently has a solo exhibition at the Met, is a figurehead of this ‘new portraiture’. In Figures in a Garden, it is unclear where exactly the nude figures end and the pastoral landscape begins, creating a dreamlike and sensual atmosphere.

In Persephone, Jenny Saville has rubbed and distorted pastel and acrylic paint to present a figure in multiple perspectives that shift and collide in a complex, layered effect. This interplay between figuration and abstraction not only invokes the myth of Persephone, who lived between two worlds — it acknowledges the fluidity of identity.

The dissolution of the figure into abstraction is taken to another extreme in George Condo’s Monumental Abstract Self-Portrait, which we can understand in terms of his treatise on painting: ‘There was a time when I realized that the central focal point of portraiture did not have to be representational in any way. You don’t need to paint the body to show the truth about a character. All you need is the head and the hands’. Here, the head is broken into abstracted fragments, whilst the artist’s hands make themselves known in the painting’s sweeping brushstrokes.

There is another layer to this ‘new portraiture’ beyond the merging of figuration and abstraction: humour. Irony in portraiture reverberates throughout the sale — such as in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Reclining Nude, which plays upon Edouard Manet’s Olympia, and in John Currin’s Nice ’n Easy, which fuses the anatomically impossible and idealised beauty of the Renaissance painting tradition with contemporary advertising images.

Heinze invokes a humorous twist in Third Date. Her depiction of flesh and bodily forms are at once awkwardly grotesque and — with the sly wink of the title and the cartoonish, colour palettes — a light-hearted satire.

This sale is an expression of new portraiture, the art of our moment and the contemporary psyche behind it — and Stefanie Heinze is leading the charge.