On 25 November, Paris' Tajan auction house will honour contemporary art and its greatest representatives with a selection of 48 exceptional lots. The auction follows a modern art session on 24 November, and is a part of Tajan’s annual 'Prestige' sales that end each year in style.
"Adrian Ghenie's interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's remarkable poem The Raven is composed of a group of unique collages that reflect his extraordinary genius, emotional strength and brutal energy," says Tajan President Rodica Seward. Seward is full of praise for the Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie, whose Nevermore collage series is the undisputed flagship lot in the auction.
Born in Romania in 1977, Adrian Ghenie first captivated the contemporary scene in the 2000s with his portraits, his paintings worked with a palette knife and his photo-collages. With a pictorial style compared to that of Francis Bacon, he has been featured in numerous international exhibitions and represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
The series of six collages presented here is a visual reinterpretation Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The Raven. Ghenie approaches the subject through representations of the bird and the author, as well as of Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire, who translated the text into French, and Fernando Pessoa, who translated The Raven into Portugese. The title, Nevermore, echoes what the bird croaks as a response to questions posed by the narrator throughout the poem. With this series of collages, Ghenie explores the idea of translating the untranslatable, appropriating the imagery of the raven as he shifts from one author to another.
Nevermore, an ambitious visual representation of a complex and codified literary text, comes from a private European collection and will be presented with an estimate of €300,000 to €500,000 (£270,000 to £450,000).
The Pont Neuf, Wrapped, arguably the most famous project of the duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was imagined to honour the city that welcomed Christo in 1958 after he fled his native communist Bulgaria. While some preparatory drawings for the work were executed as early as 1975 and the couple provided total funding, they fought for ten years to obtain permission from the city. Despite the reluctance of some politicians, the ephemeral installation was inaugurated on 22 September 1985 and was an immediate success with three million visitors.
Pont Neuf, built in 1578, is the oldest bridge in Paris and inspired many artists including Renoir, Turner and Picasso. The contemporary approach of Christo and Jeanne-Claude turned the landmark into a modern and aerodynamic structure. Today, an exceptional sketch of the work that transformed the history of one of the most precious monuments in Paris arrives on the market. Signed, titled and dated, the mixed media work on cardboard has had only two previous owners and has not appeared on the market since 1988.
An important figure in the New York scene of the 1970s and 1980s, the neo-expressionist artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel was extremely successful on the art market for his paintings. The appearance of Jean-Michel Basquiat, 15 years his junior, eclipsed Schnabel’s popularity and compromised his artistic career. However, the event inspired him to make the biographical film Basquiat in 1996, marking the beginning of his career as a director. Schnabel combines his cinematographic and artistic projects, as evidenced by the 1998 oil and resin on canvas entitled Lores, executed between the release of Basquiat and his second film, Before the Night.
In the summer of 1964 Warhol set to work on his 'Flowers' series, which became the focus of his first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli's. Warhol chose a square canvas to allow different hanging options, developing different techniques from the geometric base. Rather than drawing inspiration from nature itself, Warhol used a photograph of hibiscus flowers found in Modern Photography magazine.
The version presented here is a 1964 acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas in monochrome tones with no apparent connection to popular culture, but is still unmistakably iconic and timeless.
Besides these few lots, Tajan’s selection includes other leading names in contemporary art such as Pierre Alechinsky, the founder of CoBrA; Igor Mitoraj, the sculptor of the fragility of the human body; and Pier Paolo Calzolari, representative of Arte Povera.
The auction will not be open to the public due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the full catalogue is available online and bids may be placed by telephone or live on Tajan’s website until 7pm on 25 November.