Christie's Online Magazine No.299

From: Christie's - Saturday Mar 12, 2022 04:23 pm

Christie’s

Peter Blake’s wrestlers, A magnificent Persian manuscript, Paula Rego prints, Brett Whiteley, Chinese rank badges, Asian Art Week highlights, and more |

‘I loved the theatre, the fantasy’: how Peter Blake’s lifelong love of wrestling got a hold on his art

The pick of Asian Art Week: from dancing Krishnas to bold canvases and (very) ancient vases

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Aqa Mirak — ‘the genius of the age’ — and one of the world’s great illuminated manuscripts

‘The etching press was behind our kitchen. It all felt quite raw’: making prints with Paula Rego

‘As restless as a surfer on a wet day’ — was Brett Whiteley Australia’s greatest ever painter?

Chinese rank badges — why it was cooler to swan about with a crane on your chest than a quail

More stories

Editor’s picks

The artist Simon Patterson once noted that stops on the London Underground map ‘can be seen as stars in a constellation’. In his 1992 work The Great Bear, he relabelled the stations, naming a few after planets but most of them after ‘stars’ of cinema, sport, politics, comedy, music, engineering and philosophy

Estimate: £8,000-12,000
until 15 March, Online

L.S. Lowry’s best-known scenes teem with life, but he also painted many with no people at all. The Footbridge, from 1946, combines the artist’s compulsion to depict the streets, railway lines and viaducts of his home town, Salford, with his melancholic sense of isolation, creating an image of quiet poignancy

Estimate: £200,000-300,000
22 March, London

Maximalism on a plate, this 19th-century Viennese charger is a riot of decoration. Gilt-metal caryatid figures, arabesque strapwork, swans and masks frame painted enamel panels of busy mythological scenes, from the birth of Venus to the judgement of Paris, with a council of gods in the middle

Estimate: £15,000-25,000
until 17 March, Online

An Hermès classic gets a hint of rock chic in this limited-edition Ghillies Birkin 35 handbag. While the perforations in the trim, known as ‘broguing’, add a touch of formality, the use of denim and black leather subtly recalls the garb of teen rebels through the decades

Estimate: HK$42,000-60,000
until 15 March, Online

Peter Blake in 1992 with his favourite wrestler, Kendo Nagasaki, who is holding the artist’s portrait of him. Photo: Denzil McNeelance. The Times/News Licensing. Artwork: © Peter Blake. All rights reserved, DACS 2022 // Paula Rego (b. 1935), Jack and Jill, from: Nursery Rhymes. Estimate £2,500-3,500 / Paula Rego (b. 1935), How Many Miles to Babylon, from: Nursery Rhymes. Estimate £3,000-5,000. Offered in Prints and Multiples until 24 March 2022 at Christie’s Online // Brett Whiteley in his Surry Hills studio, 1985. Photo: Gerrit Fokkema / The Sydney Morning Herald. Artwork: © Brett Whiteley, DACS 2022

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Christie's Online Magazine No.299