Painted in 2014
100 x 100 cm
Provenance:

• Victoria Miro, London
• Private collection (acquired from the above)
• Acquired from the above by the present owner

Estimate: HK$25,000,000-35,000,000 (around US$3.2-4.5 million)

Christie’s is offering a Kusama painting that brings together her three most recognizable motifs: pumpkins, polka dots, and infinity nets. These three have become the most defining parts of her artwork and stem from her own experiences growing up in Japan, as well as being someone who struggles with mental health issues. Works that combine these elements have gone on to dominate the auction scene, and her mass appeal as an artist has only continued to grow.

Pumpkins have been an object that has continued to persist as a key theme in Kusama’s work, having first seen one as a child. Kusama once stated regarding the pumpkin, “Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood. They speak to me of the joy of living. They are humble and amusing at the same time, and I have and always will celebrate them in my art.” They first appeared in her art in 1946 during an exhibition she held in Japan and have become the main vehicle to display her other motifs.

While Kusama first saw Pumpkins as a child with her grandmother and became instantly interested in them, the polka dots predate them as something Kusama incorporated into her art, having first been seen in a sketch she made of, presumably, her mother in 1939. To her, dots were something that she saw in her hallucinations in her youth, and they managed to “obliterate” her anxieties. To Kusama, once the dots are on something, that thing proceeds to lose all meaning and sense of self.

This theme of “obliteration” extends to Kusama’s third motif, the one that surrounds the pumpkin with polka dots, the infinity nets. This web of nets and lines carries on Kusama’s idea of “self-obliteration,” as anything that is covered by the nets becomes part of a greater whole, losing its individuality. They are an extension of the polka dots, but they explore Kusama’s ideas about the universe and how these nets help us return to nothingness.

This painting was first owned by Victoria Miro, one of the UK’s most famous and influential art dealers and gallery owners. Kusama has made various works for Miro, including installations that spanned entire rooms, unique sculptures, and numerous exhibitions at Miro’s galleries.

• Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, acquired directly from the artist on 9 November 1892
• Galerie Durand-Ruel, New York, transferred from the above in 1897
• Ralph M. Coe, Cleveland, acquired from the above on 20 January 1920
• Knoedler & Co., New York, acquired from the above on 30 December 1938
• Sibyl Young Clark, Ohio, acquired from the above on 21 November 1939
• Knoedler & Co., New York, acquired from the above on 4 January 1947
• Ward Eggleston Galleries, New York, acquired from the above on 13 December 1950
• Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation, New York; sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, 25 February 1970, lot 41
• Milena Jurzykowski, New York, acquired at the above sale
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bequest from the above in 1971; sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 14 May 2019, lot 53
• Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Estimate: HK$18,000,000-28,000,000 (around US$2.3-3.6 million)

In 1892, Renoir entered what would be the twilight of his career following a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis that very year. This did not, however, deter his work, and that same year he produced this very lot. La Promenade au bord de la mer, or A Walk by the Sea in English, embodies Renoir’s Impressionist and romanticized view of the north French coastline.

Paintings of this location were created during an 1892 tour Renior did of northwestern France, including a summer stay in the resort town of Pornic and a lush island with crystal-clear waters called Noirmoutier, which was the inspiration for this painting.

Renoir was captivated by the place and sought to capture it using a wet-on-wet technique to create a softer background. This is contrasted by the strong sunlight portrayed in the painting, which filters through the branches and casts shadows while shining on the figures in the center of the painting. At a point, the whole thing blends together smoothly in a sort of haze that covers everything.

This softer form of painting was born from a period of introspection for Renoir that arose from various travels across the Mediterranean. There was an increased focus on idealizing nature in his work and focusing on creating harmony through carefully crafting the elements of the painting rather than utilizing spontaneity, as he did in the past.

Renoir was perhaps better known for his paintings of figures; however, these landscapes have also become renowned, especially as they have garnered more appreciation over the years. In 2007 the National Gallery of London, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art held an exhibition titled Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883. Many of the works in this exhibition were rich with life and color, many of which had inspiration that could be traced to Noirmoutier.

• ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
• Private collection, Asia
• Acquired from the above by the present owner

Estimate: HK$18,000,000-28,000,000 (around US$2.3-3.6 million)

Born in Baicheng City, Jilin province, in northeastern China, Zhang Enli graduated from the Arts & Design Institute of Wuxi Technical University in Jiangsu in 1989 and is now a teacher at the Arts and Design Institute at Donghua University in Shanghai. Throughout his work, Zhang seems to adopt unusual perspectives and viewpoints that make it seem like one is viewing a scene through a camera lens. 

However, Zhang usually focuses on smaller objects that have a sort of universal feel to them, such as ashtrays, tins, or cardboard. This alternative large-scale focus on a swath of 57 figures across three different canvases is from a different period that Zhang had in the late 1990s and early 2000s, where he made these rare-to-find and large-scale works, which had segments that could be interpreted differently.

One of the theories rests on the social conditions within China at the time of this painting’s creation. The theme of the panel on the left is dancing, part of a wider Dancing series Zhang made between 1995 and 2000. At the time, ballroom dancing was all the craze in China, with various public spaces being devoted to dancing. At a time when there was much social change, poverty, and uncertainty about the future, dancing was a popular pastime that took people’s minds off of daily life.

The panel on the right’s theme is the kissing theme. Zhang’s Kissing series depicted the act less as one of tenderness and more as rash violence, where the different subjects gnaw and wrestle with one another. Zhang further represents this aggression through color by painting the faces of these subjects flush red. At the time, through commercials and media, the act of kissing became sanitized with this work displaying a more carnal interpretation of the act that Zhang may have felt was missing from art.

One of the aspects that covers the entire painting is these “leaky roof stains” that manifest as grey splotches across the work. While not a technique unique to Zhang, he uses it in two ways. The first is to trace movements. Applied in thin layers, these drips fill small spaces such as the space between strands of hair or the shape of hands, giving a sense of depth. Secondly, there is a textural component to the dripping that Zhang explored, an outgrowth of how traditional Chinese landscape ink art uses dripping.

• Margaret Krebs, Brussels
• Brigitte Friedlender-Salik and Veronique Dwek-Salik, Brussels, acquired from the above circa 1965; sale,
• Christie's London, 4 February 2015, lot 121
• Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Estimate: HK$15,000,000-25,000,000 (around US$1.9-3.2 million)

• Private collection, France
• Private collection, Taiwan
• Acquired from the above by the present owner

Estimate: HK$13,800,000-18,800,000 (around US$1.7-2.4 million)