The Surreal deal
Christie’s recent sales brimmed with great works, whether striking tropical fish painted by the self-effacing Michael Andrews or a touching piece by Tracey Emin and, stealing the show, René Magritte’s L’ami intime
ON entering Christie’s to view the Modern and Surrealist sales, it was disconcerting to find the place heaving with people. Nowadays, there are many more rooms for viewing, including what used to be the offices of the chairman and senior directors, but all too often there is little to be seen and the spaces are empty. The buzz took me back many years, to times when there were often several sales each day during the season and a good many views would attract the crowds.
I was there on one of the final view days, so do not know how it had been earlier. There seemed to be an encouraging spread of ages, although some of the younger people were in groups being given tours, perhaps for art-history courses, and other people were apparently there more for social display than serious viewing, which would have been very familiar in Victorian times.
The word ‘Surrealism’ was coined by the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire in discussing a ballet produced by Diaghilev in 1917 and was given wider currency as a term for the art movement from 1924 when André Breton and Yvan Goll published their first Surrealist Manifestos. One of several surreal things about Apollinaire himself—full name Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki—is that, as well as Polish-lithuanian and probably Italian ancestry, he was a descendant of Harold II, Anglosaxon king of England.
Because of the manifestos, this year is being celebrated as Surrealism’s centenary, starting with the wonderful settings for the BRAFA fair in Brussels (Art Market, January 17) at the end of January. Belgium continues to celebrate with a particular enthusiasm suitable to the country’s character—which I mean as a compliment. Thus, it was fitting that several of the highlights of Christie’s Art of the Surreal evening sale should have been by René Magritte, the most consistently surreal of them all.
Heading the sale at £33,660,000, was the about 26in by 28½in L’ami intime (Fig 2) (Arts & Antiques, February 28), one of the major series he painted in the 1950s after reviving the bowler-hatted man seen from behind that he had first used 30 years earlier. In essence, this unmoving yet somehow vibrant figure represents thought, a contemplative pause between what has been and what might be, in this case the bread and water glass floating behind his back and the landscape, yet to be experienced, over which he looks. As the artist wrote: ‘For me, painting is a way of describing a thought that consists uniquely of the visible that the world offers.’
Another idea that Magritte played with over decades was the toile découpée, the cut-up canvas, where he painted five discrete female body parts, sometimes mounted together and on others close mounted on glass. The best-known fragment is the 1954 head, behind which he posed for a famous photograph, an illustration of his dictum that there must always be something behind the image. The whereabouts (or survival) of that version’s midriff is unknown; here, the knees, the 8in by 8¼in L’évidence éternelle: genoux (Fig 1), sold for £529,200.
The five modern and contemporary sales in this Christie’s series, including one online, raised a total of almost £230 million. Among the works on paper were two that would in the past have been classed as ‘smoking-room
drawings’. They were on the same theme, although the Picasso (£32,760) was coyly titled Les
Spectateurs, whereas the Dalí (£50,400) came out as Le Voyeur.
Two of my favourite painters who were included in these sales, Villhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916) and Michael Andrews (1928–95), have been described as shy and self-effacing—indeed, Sir John Rothenstein said that Andrews was ‘in danger of being taken for a rumour, rather than a person’. Hammershøi is best known for his cool, silent Copenhagen interiors, but he also made landscapes, such as this 17¾in by 22in work (Fig 3) (£2,339,000), which share the same characteristics. Although Andrews visited Australia, his four large ‘School’ paintings of tropical fish came earlier. Their colours and shoaling patterns interested him, as in the 60in by 84in Butterfly Fish and Damsel Fish (Fig 4) (£3,125,500). He used documentary film for reference, painted on the unprimed canvas-back and mixed aquarium gravel and sponges with his sprayed acrylic to give texture.
Far from shy and self-effacing, Tracey Emin can also work on a large scale. For her, handwriting and drawing are kin and, although I do not always like her neon sculptures, I found this 177in by 131¼in flaring pink Love Poem for CF (Fig 5) (the gallery-owner Carl Freedman), which made £233,100, decidedly moving.