Christie's Online Magazine No.256

From: Christie's - Saturday Feb 27, 2021 11:44 am

Christie’s

Game-changing still lifes, Jean Dubuffet, Exploring Blackness, Russian masterpieces, Patrick Heron, Frames through the centuries, and more |

Still lifes that moved the art world: 500 years of flowers, fruit, coffee pots — and a grasshopper

From the archive: Katharine Heron on her father Patrick and the St Ives School artists

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‘I am going to tell you who we are’: how artist Alexis McGrigg explores ideas of Blackness

Andrew Graham-Dixon looks at frames, ‘the places where works of art begin and end’

From Fabergé to Falk: the Russian art that inspires our specialist Izabela Grocholski

One you may have missed: the ‘anti-individualistic’ art of Jean Dubuffet, the father of Art Brut

More stories

Editor’s picks

In René Magritte’s Journal intime, two urban gentlemen, in an incongruous mountain setting, appear to have turned to stone. The ambiguity of their relationship adds to the sense of mystery. Is one man removing a stray eyelash from the other’s face, or is he perhaps sculpting him out of clay?

Estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000
1 March, New York

In 1983, Christo and Jeanne-Claude surrounded 11 uninhabited islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay with floating pink fabric. This preparatory drawing, on a photograph taken by Wolfgang Volz, includes a sample of the woven polypropylene sheeting, 6.5 million square feet of which was used in the four-year project

Estimate: $40,000-60,000
9 March, New York

Born in 1928, the American painter Ralph Goings decided early in his career that Abstract Expressionism was not for him. ‘It occurred to me,’ he later recalled, ‘that I should go as far to the opposite as I could.’ Glazed (2010) is a fine example of his photorealistic style

Estimate: $10,000-15,000
until 11 March, Online

The artist KAWS launched BFF, a fluffy character with gloved hands and crossed-out eyes, five years ago and has produced many versions since — but none as suave as this Dior-suited plush toy. Number 312 of an edition of 500, it was made in collaboration with the fashion brand in 2019

Estimate: $10,000-15,000
10 March, New York

Fede Galizia (1578-1630), A glass compote with peaches, jasmine flowers, quinces and a grasshopper, circa 1600. Sold for $1,640,000 on 6 April 2006 at Christie’s in New York / Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), Autumn Bouquet, 1912. Estimate: £25,000-35,000. Offered in the Modern British Art Day Sale on 2 March 2021 at Christie’s in London / Juan Gris (1887-1927), Nature morte à la nappe à carreaux, 1915. Sold for £34,802,500 on 4 February 2014 at Christie's in London // Patrick Heron, 1954 (detail). Photographed by Ida Kar. Photo © Tate // Howard Hodgkin, Keith and Kathy Sachs, 1988-1991. © The Estate of Howard Hodgkin, courtesy Gagosian // Jean Dubuffet in his studio at Vence, South of France, in 1966. Photo: Edward Quinn, © edwardquinn.com. Artwork: © Jean Dubuffet, DACS 2021

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Christie's Online Magazine No.256