拍品 51 AAbstract Masterworks from a Distinguished Private Collection
VIJA CELMINS (B. 1939)
Web #10
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估價
USD 2,500,000–3,500,000
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專家說明
“I gave up painting. In my quest for clarity, I decided that I was going to do everything with a pencil.” Vija Celmins
Known for her absorbing drawings of expansive oceans and the celestial bodies that inhabit the night sky, in the late 1990s Vija Celmins began a series of works on paper inspired by another wonder of nature: the spider’s web. In meticulous and exquisite detail, the artist renders each individual silk filament with such clarity that the viewer becomes—metaphorically at least—ensnared by the physical beauty of its form. Celmins' process is a reductive one, starting with an entire sheet of charcoal, the image is delicately excavated from the surface. "I work the sheet with my hand, putting on charcoal in layers, and then I start taking it off with my hand, with my breath, and then with various kinds of erasers." (S. Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, New York, 2002, p.28.) Eschewing the complexity of much of the history of twentieth-century painting, Celmins sought to restore an elemental force to an artwork, saying “Drawing is like thinking. It’s very basic” (V. Celmins, quoted by M.A. Brown, ‘Vija Celmins: In the Artist’s Words,’ in G. Garrels (ed.), Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018, p. 233). Exhibited in the artist’s major 2006 drawings retrospective organized by the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Web #10 has resided in the same private collection for nearly two decades.
“A universal model for the interconnectedness of all things is also a spider's web, which started appearing in Celmins' art in 1998... In each subsequent work, Celmins presents a different feeling and a different image, as if each web were a new galaxy.” E. Ansone. Vija Celmins Double Reality, Latvian National Museum for Art, 2014, p. 13.
Often working from photographs, Celmins is at pains to point out that, despite their detail, she is not merely replicating the image she sees before her. “Sometimes people think I just sit down and copy the photograph,” she says. “It is precisely that I reinvent it in other terms that gives it another quality. It is the opposite of being mechanical. It is not image-oriented. The image is one of the elements to work with. It is neutral but spatial, the graphite is neutral but physical…I’m not an assembler in the usual sense. The work is self-contained, unified but made up of tiny parts” (V. Celmins, quoted by M.A. Brown, ‘Vija Cemins: In the Artist’s Words,’ ibid., p. 232).
Although Celmins has spent much of her career working in divergent media—including oils, sculpture, and found objects—her use of graphite on paper is something that she has returned to again and again. For her, drawing is an intensely personal process, a medium in which she feels the greatest connection between her thoughts and the physical manifestation of her ideas. Indeed, for the artist the word ‘drawing’ with its connotations of speed, superficiality, and its preparatory nature throughout much of art history, is something of a misnomer. “You call them drawings… I don’t even call them drawings. I don’t even call them things. They are like areas that are made—concentrated on—thoroughly considered” (V. Celmins, quoted by M.A. Brown, ‘Vija Cemins: In the Artist’s Words,’ in G. Garrels (ed.), Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018, p. 231).
Among the most celebrated works in her oeuvre, examples of Celmins Webs reside in many important institutional collections including Untitled (Web #1) (1998, Tate Modern, London), Untitled (Web #2) (1999, promised gift to Blanton Museum of Art, Austin), Web #3 (2000-2002, Museum of Modern Art, New York). The attention to detail in the artist's process of recreating the delicate beauty of the spider’s web creates an effect as profound as looking at the night sky or an endless ocean vista. Through sensuous tactility and a keen sense of mimesis, Web #10 draws the viewer in and in so doing conflates not only the near and far, the hand-wrought and mechanical, but also the profane and sublime.
Known for her absorbing drawings of expansive oceans and the celestial bodies that inhabit the night sky, in the late 1990s Vija Celmins began a series of works on paper inspired by another wonder of nature: the spider’s web. In meticulous and exquisite detail, the artist renders each individual silk filament with such clarity that the viewer becomes—metaphorically at least—ensnared by the physical beauty of its form. Celmins' process is a reductive one, starting with an entire sheet of charcoal, the image is delicately excavated from the surface. "I work the sheet with my hand, putting on charcoal in layers, and then I start taking it off with my hand, with my breath, and then with various kinds of erasers." (S. Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, New York, 2002, p.28.) Eschewing the complexity of much of the history of twentieth-century painting, Celmins sought to restore an elemental force to an artwork, saying “Drawing is like thinking. It’s very basic” (V. Celmins, quoted by M.A. Brown, ‘Vija Celmins: In the Artist’s Words,’ in G. Garrels (ed.), Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018, p. 233). Exhibited in the artist’s major 2006 drawings retrospective organized by the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Web #10 has resided in the same private collection for nearly two decades.
“A universal model for the interconnectedness of all things is also a spider's web, which started appearing in Celmins' art in 1998... In each subsequent work, Celmins presents a different feeling and a different image, as if each web were a new galaxy.” E. Ansone. Vija Celmins Double Reality, Latvian National Museum for Art, 2014, p. 13.
Often working from photographs, Celmins is at pains to point out that, despite their detail, she is not merely replicating the image she sees before her. “Sometimes people think I just sit down and copy the photograph,” she says. “It is precisely that I reinvent it in other terms that gives it another quality. It is the opposite of being mechanical. It is not image-oriented. The image is one of the elements to work with. It is neutral but spatial, the graphite is neutral but physical…I’m not an assembler in the usual sense. The work is self-contained, unified but made up of tiny parts” (V. Celmins, quoted by M.A. Brown, ‘Vija Cemins: In the Artist’s Words,’ ibid., p. 232).
Although Celmins has spent much of her career working in divergent media—including oils, sculpture, and found objects—her use of graphite on paper is something that she has returned to again and again. For her, drawing is an intensely personal process, a medium in which she feels the greatest connection between her thoughts and the physical manifestation of her ideas. Indeed, for the artist the word ‘drawing’ with its connotations of speed, superficiality, and its preparatory nature throughout much of art history, is something of a misnomer. “You call them drawings… I don’t even call them drawings. I don’t even call them things. They are like areas that are made—concentrated on—thoroughly considered” (V. Celmins, quoted by M.A. Brown, ‘Vija Cemins: In the Artist’s Words,’ in G. Garrels (ed.), Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018, p. 231).
Among the most celebrated works in her oeuvre, examples of Celmins Webs reside in many important institutional collections including Untitled (Web #1) (1998, Tate Modern, London), Untitled (Web #2) (1999, promised gift to Blanton Museum of Art, Austin), Web #3 (2000-2002, Museum of Modern Art, New York). The attention to detail in the artist's process of recreating the delicate beauty of the spider’s web creates an effect as profound as looking at the night sky or an endless ocean vista. Through sensuous tactility and a keen sense of mimesis, Web #10 draws the viewer in and in so doing conflates not only the near and far, the hand-wrought and mechanical, but also the profane and sublime.