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Lot Essay
“Painting, for me, is often a struggle between the planned and the unforeseen. The best paintings are the ones that you could not have imagined before you began…” Christopher Wool (C. Wool quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, Ed., Christopher Wool, New York 2008, p. 266).
Emblazoned with floral motifs executed in bold red pigment, Christopher Wool’s Untitled bridges the gap between the visual and the intellectual, and between the art of the street and Post-Modern inquiries into the nature of painting. By combining the quasi-mechanical process of stenciling with hand-applied sprayed paint, Wool sets up a visual dichotomy that is both controlled and chaotic. “Painting, for me, is often a struggle between the planned and the unforeseen,” he notes. “The best paintings are the ones that you could not have imagined before you began…” (C. Wool quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, Ed., Christopher Wool, New York 2008, p. 266). Early works such as Untitled are especially notable for their ability to lay bare the artist’s process as he wrestles with non-traditional methods and materials.
Untitled is characterized by rich compositional depth and a marked attention to repetitive motifs. Here, the artist applies consecutive layers of enamel onto an aluminum support, one on top of another to create a visual record of his process. In the upper layer, repeated applications of blazing red foliage overlap in an amalgam of petals, leaves, and thorny stems. Below this, a sprayed white midground covers the bottom layer of black stenciling with a gauzy veil of pigment that separates the two opposing elements. Only discernible on the edges of the composition, the black paint peers out from below and serves as both a framing element as well as a visual record of Wool’s creative actions. “I often want a painting to feel like it is the result of a certain process….a process that was not simply the painting/picturing process of putting together a formalistically successful painting. I’ve made paintings that were ‘pictures’ created merely by the act/process of painting over a previous image” (Ibid., p. 160). The struggle between the painting’s strata infuses it with a palpable energy. Each element adds something to the whole so that disparate, unstable parts evolve into a poignant, harmonious arrangement.
Stenciling and repetitive processes have been a major part of Wool’s practice since the 1980s. He uses letters, images, and reproductions to investigate visual language and the process of painting. In the 1990s, Wool began a series of works that used figurated rollers he acquired at hardware stores. The resulting ‘readymade pattern’ paintings looked critically at the divide between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, an investigation that was amplified when Wool began utilizing silkscreened floral motifs in later works. The present example hails from this pivotal early series and pushes the source material to its limits. Drawing visual corollaries to printed compositions used in wallpaper and other decorative arts, paintings like Untitled disintegrate the orderly nature of those techniques and bring them into conversation with the streets of Manhattan. “New York was, especially back then, just a gritty, gritty place, and I was interested visually in all of it,” he explained (C. Wool, quoted in R. Kennedy, “Christopher Wool on What Brought a ‘Sunday Painter’ Back to Life,” The New York Times, May 31, 2022). Seeking to translate the electric atmosphere of the city into dynamic compositions, Wool pulled from his experiences on the street and infused them with critical discourse. While visually they may seem to have more in common with peeling wheatpaste posters on the walls of dilapidated buildings than the intensely rendered designs of William Morris, pieces like Untitled question the divide between fine art and design, the juxtaposition of street art and the white cube gallery, and the role of the urban experience in the history of painting.
Emblazoned with floral motifs executed in bold red pigment, Christopher Wool’s Untitled bridges the gap between the visual and the intellectual, and between the art of the street and Post-Modern inquiries into the nature of painting. By combining the quasi-mechanical process of stenciling with hand-applied sprayed paint, Wool sets up a visual dichotomy that is both controlled and chaotic. “Painting, for me, is often a struggle between the planned and the unforeseen,” he notes. “The best paintings are the ones that you could not have imagined before you began…” (C. Wool quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, Ed., Christopher Wool, New York 2008, p. 266). Early works such as Untitled are especially notable for their ability to lay bare the artist’s process as he wrestles with non-traditional methods and materials.
Untitled is characterized by rich compositional depth and a marked attention to repetitive motifs. Here, the artist applies consecutive layers of enamel onto an aluminum support, one on top of another to create a visual record of his process. In the upper layer, repeated applications of blazing red foliage overlap in an amalgam of petals, leaves, and thorny stems. Below this, a sprayed white midground covers the bottom layer of black stenciling with a gauzy veil of pigment that separates the two opposing elements. Only discernible on the edges of the composition, the black paint peers out from below and serves as both a framing element as well as a visual record of Wool’s creative actions. “I often want a painting to feel like it is the result of a certain process….a process that was not simply the painting/picturing process of putting together a formalistically successful painting. I’ve made paintings that were ‘pictures’ created merely by the act/process of painting over a previous image” (Ibid., p. 160). The struggle between the painting’s strata infuses it with a palpable energy. Each element adds something to the whole so that disparate, unstable parts evolve into a poignant, harmonious arrangement.
Stenciling and repetitive processes have been a major part of Wool’s practice since the 1980s. He uses letters, images, and reproductions to investigate visual language and the process of painting. In the 1990s, Wool began a series of works that used figurated rollers he acquired at hardware stores. The resulting ‘readymade pattern’ paintings looked critically at the divide between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, an investigation that was amplified when Wool began utilizing silkscreened floral motifs in later works. The present example hails from this pivotal early series and pushes the source material to its limits. Drawing visual corollaries to printed compositions used in wallpaper and other decorative arts, paintings like Untitled disintegrate the orderly nature of those techniques and bring them into conversation with the streets of Manhattan. “New York was, especially back then, just a gritty, gritty place, and I was interested visually in all of it,” he explained (C. Wool, quoted in R. Kennedy, “Christopher Wool on What Brought a ‘Sunday Painter’ Back to Life,” The New York Times, May 31, 2022). Seeking to translate the electric atmosphere of the city into dynamic compositions, Wool pulled from his experiences on the street and infused them with critical discourse. While visually they may seem to have more in common with peeling wheatpaste posters on the walls of dilapidated buildings than the intensely rendered designs of William Morris, pieces like Untitled question the divide between fine art and design, the juxtaposition of street art and the white cube gallery, and the role of the urban experience in the history of painting.