The art of post-war America till modernity has always been full of intriguing developments and painters eager to add their mark to the illustrious artistic history of the country. Many of these artists developed their own styles or took part in larger trends that were influential during their active periods.
On 27 February, Christie’s New York will host an auction featuring just such an assortment of artists of the period, many of whom are from the US. All the top three most highly estimated lots of Christie’s Post-War to Present sale come from American artists: Ed Ruscha (b. 1937), Richard Estes (b. 1932), and Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011).
The top lot is Ruscha’s Pressures (1967), estimated to sell between US$1-1.5 million. As an aside, Ruscha’s painting Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1967) was the second most expensive that was auctioned across all of 2024, being sold for US$68.2 million by Christie’s New York on 19 November 2024.
Lot 123 | Ed Ruscha (b.1937) | Pressures, oil on canvas
Painted in 1967
50.8 x 64 cm
Provenance:
- Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1972
Estimate: US$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Born in 1937 Ed Ruscha is one of the most recognizable names in the Pop Art movement, arguably its main contributor in the Western US while Andy Warhol was more of a figure in the Eastern US. Ruscha had gotten his start in graphic arts and print media before being exposed to the work of Pop Art painters, who inspired him to shift to painting.
Ruscha’s early work was defined by his interest in Southern California, its landscapes, and its major residents like 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. All of this was done in a Pop Art style, which had expanded as an artistic force in the US during the 1950s.
Ed Ruscha in 2024
Ruscha’s work also kept up with the general trends in Pop Art, including the use of words in art, as seen in the work of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. This was partially influenced by the fact that all three of these artists had backgrounds in commercial artwork, and so, at least with Ruscha, this interested him in using typography in his paintings.
However, beyond the commercial background, Ruscha was more deeply influenced by a visit the artist went on to France and Spain in the summer of 1961. While there he saw these street signs, but because they were in a foreign language, that presumably he didn’t understand, they gave him this idea about the aesthetic properties of text once removed from their literal meaning.
Ruscha’s earliest word paintings incorporated only one-syllable words, such as HONK or OOF, all in uppercase. Displayed across solid backgrounds. Eventually, he developed his own font called “Boy Scout Utility Modern,” although he didn’t use it until 1985, almost two decades after this painting was created, the font used by Ruscha during this period is widely considered an expectation or precursor to his signature font.
Edward Ruscha | OOF (1962/Reworked in 1963) | Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Important to the story of Pressures is that it originates from this era of Ruscha’s work that is commonly regarded as seminal for the artist. The 1960s were the era where Ruscha began the usage of the aforementioned words in his art and a period where he was at his peak in terms of experimentation. Some of Ruscha’s other most famous works, including the Standard Oil Station series of paintings and OOF, come from this decade of innovation for Ruscha, especially in this field of visual language.
When tying Pressures in with Ruscha’s vision for his word paintings and their aesthetic possibilities, Ruscha takes the idea of separating the words from the meaning to its natural extreme. He separates every letter from one another, presenting a large gap between each character. This decision is meant to impact the audience, as it makes them not see the characters as components of a single word, but as separate characters distilled onto a painting dissociated from the meaning of the word.
For Ruscha, the characters from the words configured in this artistic fashion revealed the idea that once the purely symbolic nature of the characters is paired with art, the whole aesthetic is elevated as viewers dissect not just the meaning of the characters being assembled into a word, but also the appreciation for how ever single letter is painted onto the canvas as that assembling of the characters occurs in the viewer’s mind.
Ed Ruscha | Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) | Sold by Christie’s New York for over US$68.2 million on 19 November 2024 | The second most expensive painting sold in 2024 and the artist’s record-setting work
This painting can also be considered rather important within the overall scope of Ruscha’s work. In 1967, Pressures was only one of seven works that Ruscha painted that year. Pressures was also one of the paintings featured in Ruscha’s first traveling retrospective, The Works of Ed Ruscha.
Before its current sale Pressures was part of the collection of Mel & Martha Horowitz, a collection that began in the 1960s and gathered art from who were then young artists emerging during the post-war era. The couple gathered artwork from both coasts of the United States. The couple’s collection almost perfectly complemented the style of Ruscha, as they loved minimalism, the usage of striking bold colors, and above all, it was thoughtfully created with a keen eye given towards composition. The couple’s collection of art from both sides of the country, and their support for various museums and institutions, was groundbreaking at the time.
The opportunity to purchase Pressures marks the first time the painting has been made available for purchase in over five decades, having been acquired by the Horowitzes in 1972.
Lot 114 | Richard Estes (b.1932) | East River, Oil on canvas
Painted in 1994
109.2 x 188 cm
Provenance:
- Marlborough Galerie AG, Zürich
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1995
Estimate: US$500,000 - 700,000
Perhaps the only part of this painting that gives away that it isn’t a photo is the fact that New York City’s East River is so clean. The body of water that separates Long Island from the American mainland and Manhattan is the main focus of the painting. Created by the famed American photorealist painter Richard Estes, the painting depicts the river from the viewpoint of the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge on the far south of the river; it captures one of the most famous waterways in the country.
While not born in New York, Estes was from rural Illinois, and he considered the Big Apple to be his adopted city. As such, this painting reveals his technical skill as a painter but also his ability to weave composition and his understanding of the city together. It also points to his usage of photography and his ability to not merely transfer a photo into a painting but also make additions and input his artistic skills to enhance what the camera lens captured through elements such as adjusting lighting.
It also displays his artistic influences with other realist painters, such as Edward Hopper, a desire to display how dynamic the city could be and its urban nature. However, unlike Hopper, who focused on the minutiae or the detailed parts of life, Estes seeks to capture the grandeur of the city’s skyline.
A look at Estes’ painting of the Manhattan skyline with such sights as the United Nations Headquarters, the Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building
As stated before, Estes frequently played around with how photos were lit, adjusting the lighting in his paintings to match his vision for the work. He does so in this painting by exaggerating the clarity and focus of the image and how well-lit and clear we can see the entire skyline of Manhattan, which is at the far side of the Williamsburg Bridge.
Sites that would be hazy or difficult to make out on a camera from 1994 such as the United Nations Headquarters which is in relative terms far up the river from the bridge, are seen almost with crystal clear clarity, with its distinctive all-glass facade visible. This also pays homage to Estes’ early work where he painted realistic glass-windowed during the 1960s, before these more grand paintings of skylines.
The Domino Sugar Refinery seen on the Brooklyn side of East River
Another thing that this painting does is capture a city in time, not to purposely date itself, but almost as a poetic to all that New York had and has to offer. While the grand skyscrapers and corporate offices of Manhattan take center stage on the Brooklyn side of the painting, to the right, the old industry of the city can be seen, including cargo ships and the Domino Sugar Refinery, one of the largest sugar factories in the country.
The factory would by this point have been near the end of its life, but its inclusion serves to tell a story about the ever-changing city that is New York, the true subject of East River, and an homage to it through its architecture. Estes illustrates New York as the subject of his work through the showcasing of its iconic and recognizable buildings and landmarks, but also by doing this he displays how multifaceted and ever-changing the nature of his adopted city is.
Richard Estes in 1978
Lot 119 | Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) | Concerto, Acrylic on canvas
Painted in 1982
134.6 x 99.7 cm
Provenance:
- John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1983
Estimate: US$500,000-700,000
A New York City native born in 1928, her family’s wealth, power, and prestige afforded her a privileged upbringing and education. One of her earliest exposures to the study of art was when she attended the Dalton School, a private school where she studied under the famous Mexican Modernist painter Rufino Tamayo. She would eventually also study under numerous other major painters of the period as she developed her style early in her life.
This array of influences she had in her formative era could have possibly been a major reason why Frankenthaler was part of various ever-shifting artistic movements over the decades. She started primarily with abstract expressionism, due to her early focus on nature and the geometry and shapes one could naturally find in it.
Over the years, Frankenthaler’s style would shift and transform into something referred to as color field painting, which is what Concerto is painted in the style. Color field painting was directly inspired by Modernism and can be seen as an outgrowth of abstract expressionism, with the name of the style directly referencing the usage of large fields of color with similar hues and simplistic shapes.
In Concerto this style is best exemplified, along with Franenthaler’s style of using various bright and warm blue hues, which when tied into her earlier interest in nature resembles the sky. Additionally, how Frankenthaler sought to paint by treating the painting like poetry, the flow of the brush is the rhythm of the piece. The strategically placed dots across the painting are meant to be breaks or caesura, in the overall art piece that serve to divide up the rhythm and serve as a core that the rest of the painting orbits around.
Helen Frankenthaler
Other Highlighted Lots:
Lot 121 | Diane Arbus (1923-1971) | Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1966, Gelatin silver print
Printed between 1966-1969
Image: 39.1 x 37.1 cm
Sheet: 50.5 x 40.3 cm
Provenance:
- Gifted from the artist to Ruth Ansel, 1970
Estimate: US$500,000-700,000
Lot 226 | Mark Grotjahn (b. 1968) | Untitled (Big Red Butterfly with Three Blue Eyes 856), Oil and colored pencil on paper
Executed in 2010
216.9 x 121.3 cm
Provenance:
- Anton Kern Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2010
Estimate: US$500,000-700,000
Lot 110 | Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) | Untitled (Ocean Park), Acrylic, gouache, charcoal, ink and paper collage on paper
Painted in 1979
68.4 x 49.5 cm
Provenance:
- M. Knoedler & Co., New York
- Acquired from the above by the late owner, 1979
Estimate: US$400,000-600,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Christie's New York
Sale: Post-War to Present
Date: 27 February 2025 | 10:00 & 14:00 (New York Local Time)
Number of Lots: 216