Lot 32 AProperty from an Esteemed Private Collection
JULIE MEHRETU (B. 1970)
Mumbaphilia (J.E.)
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USD 5,000,000–7,000,000
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Over the past two decades, Julie Mehretu’s supreme gift has been her ability to create what artist Glenn Ligon has called “social abstraction,” making her exceptional body of work a testimony to the power of art in an ever-changing and increasingly volatile world. Mehretu’s abstract vernacular has proven itself to be an ever-flowing font of creativity, renewal and change. Her recent paintings—created within the past five years—double down on the singular power of abstraction, in which a buzzing cloud of abstract cyphers and glyphs collide, sometimes with explosive force, in colorful, expressive canvases. Painted in 2018, Mumbaphilia (J.E.) belongs to this recent, critically acclaimed body of work. Titled after a song by the pioneering musician Julius Eastman, and inspired by contemporary photographs of political events, the painting is a profound visual demonstration of the artist’s ongoing commitment to abstract painting as a space of new possibilities and unwavering resistance.
The present work belongs to a series of paintings that are based on photographs from recent news events from around the world. The source image for the present work derives from the violent white supremacist rally and counter-rally in the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred on August 12, 2018. At that time, violence erupted after hundreds of white nationalists and their supporters gathered in a nearby park, where local officials had planned to remove a Confederate statue. The confrontation became aggressive when a car rammed into the protestors, injuring at least twelve people and killing one woman, Heather Heyer, as a result. Although its imagery has been digitally manipulated and nearly entirely blurred out, the painting demonstrates Mehretu’s ongoing use of news media photographs as a visual and conceptual leitmotif in her work.
A towering, powerful painting, Mumbaphilia (J.E.) is rife with a dizzying array of abstract marks. Soaring to eight feet tall, the painting depicts a torrent of black cyphers that swirl around the canvas in a whirlwind of activity. Some are more prominent than others, asserting themselves by coming into being to suggest fragments of humanity that are obscured by violence, with the imagery asserting themselves in some areas, but sinking back into the murky gray ether of the painting’s background in others. Touches of blurred black paint linger like hazy smoke clouds over the scene, whilst elsewhere a beautiful rainbow array of colors in fiery red, orange, pale blue, green and yellow bear witness to the artist's triumphant embrace of color in recent years. According to the artist, “The color in these paintings really came out of blurred photographs that were embedded inside of the underpaintings. The sirens and the flames of race riots were a way to embed the paintings with DNA so that I could respond from a deeper place” (J. Mehretu, quoted in “Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes,” Art21 television series, Episode 252, September 13, 2017, online).
As part of her working process, Mehretu begins by selecting, and then digitally manipulating, a photograph from recent events. Over the course of several hours, she begins to distort the imagery so that only a blurred pattern of abstract colors is left behind. These blurred-out photographs are then transferred onto canvas using an airbrush. Although the original imagery is lost, their subject matter is nonetheless “embedded” inside the paintings, becoming what Mehretu described as their “DNA.” As the art critic Alina Cohen has explained, “As the artist works and reworks, and erases and reconsiders her marks, she—like all painters—records her own labors on canvas. Through a series of aesthetic decisions, she wrestles the chaos of current events within a fixed space. With each glimpse, the works reveal subtle new details and encourage the viewer to reconsider her perceptions—of politics, bodies, art, images—anew” (A. Cohen, “Julie Mehretu Paints to Make Sense of a Violent and Chaotic World,” Artsy, August 31, 2018, online).
In September of 2018, Mumbaphilia (J.E.) debuted at White Cube, London as part of the exhibit Julie Mehretu: Sextant. The title derives from the navigational instrument that sailors of ancient vessels used to determine the location of their ship in relation to the stars, and indicates a kind of guiding force, or intuitive kind of navigation, in the series. The painting then traveled to Venice for the Biennale the following year. It’s title and corresponding initials, Mumbaphilia (J.E.), refers to a song by the pioneering composer, musician and dancer Julius Eastman, who was revered in the 1970s and early ‘80s for his experimental blend of minimalist, pop and fusion that he called “organic music.” He composed Mumbaphilia in 1972. When connected to the source imagery that inspired the painting, the reference to Eastman’s experimental music—and the creative resistance of his identity as an openly gay Black composer who ultimately died penniless in 1990—add yet another meaningful layer to Mehretu’s already multitudinous layering of meaning. Mumbaphilia (J.E.) therefore presents not a world in crisis and hate, but one in which creativity and harmony are infinitely possible.
The present work belongs to a series of paintings that are based on photographs from recent news events from around the world. The source image for the present work derives from the violent white supremacist rally and counter-rally in the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred on August 12, 2018. At that time, violence erupted after hundreds of white nationalists and their supporters gathered in a nearby park, where local officials had planned to remove a Confederate statue. The confrontation became aggressive when a car rammed into the protestors, injuring at least twelve people and killing one woman, Heather Heyer, as a result. Although its imagery has been digitally manipulated and nearly entirely blurred out, the painting demonstrates Mehretu’s ongoing use of news media photographs as a visual and conceptual leitmotif in her work.
A towering, powerful painting, Mumbaphilia (J.E.) is rife with a dizzying array of abstract marks. Soaring to eight feet tall, the painting depicts a torrent of black cyphers that swirl around the canvas in a whirlwind of activity. Some are more prominent than others, asserting themselves by coming into being to suggest fragments of humanity that are obscured by violence, with the imagery asserting themselves in some areas, but sinking back into the murky gray ether of the painting’s background in others. Touches of blurred black paint linger like hazy smoke clouds over the scene, whilst elsewhere a beautiful rainbow array of colors in fiery red, orange, pale blue, green and yellow bear witness to the artist's triumphant embrace of color in recent years. According to the artist, “The color in these paintings really came out of blurred photographs that were embedded inside of the underpaintings. The sirens and the flames of race riots were a way to embed the paintings with DNA so that I could respond from a deeper place” (J. Mehretu, quoted in “Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes,” Art21 television series, Episode 252, September 13, 2017, online).
As part of her working process, Mehretu begins by selecting, and then digitally manipulating, a photograph from recent events. Over the course of several hours, she begins to distort the imagery so that only a blurred pattern of abstract colors is left behind. These blurred-out photographs are then transferred onto canvas using an airbrush. Although the original imagery is lost, their subject matter is nonetheless “embedded” inside the paintings, becoming what Mehretu described as their “DNA.” As the art critic Alina Cohen has explained, “As the artist works and reworks, and erases and reconsiders her marks, she—like all painters—records her own labors on canvas. Through a series of aesthetic decisions, she wrestles the chaos of current events within a fixed space. With each glimpse, the works reveal subtle new details and encourage the viewer to reconsider her perceptions—of politics, bodies, art, images—anew” (A. Cohen, “Julie Mehretu Paints to Make Sense of a Violent and Chaotic World,” Artsy, August 31, 2018, online).
In September of 2018, Mumbaphilia (J.E.) debuted at White Cube, London as part of the exhibit Julie Mehretu: Sextant. The title derives from the navigational instrument that sailors of ancient vessels used to determine the location of their ship in relation to the stars, and indicates a kind of guiding force, or intuitive kind of navigation, in the series. The painting then traveled to Venice for the Biennale the following year. It’s title and corresponding initials, Mumbaphilia (J.E.), refers to a song by the pioneering composer, musician and dancer Julius Eastman, who was revered in the 1970s and early ‘80s for his experimental blend of minimalist, pop and fusion that he called “organic music.” He composed Mumbaphilia in 1972. When connected to the source imagery that inspired the painting, the reference to Eastman’s experimental music—and the creative resistance of his identity as an openly gay Black composer who ultimately died penniless in 1990—add yet another meaningful layer to Mehretu’s already multitudinous layering of meaning. Mumbaphilia (J.E.) therefore presents not a world in crisis and hate, but one in which creativity and harmony are infinitely possible.