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Lot Essay
A striking example of the artist’s ongoing interrogation of abstract painting, Christopher Wool’s Untitled from 2002 is a work of great resolve from the varied oeuvre of a postmodern American master. Combining dynamic, gestural brushwork with a restrained color palette and a subdued backdrop, Wool draws the viewer’s attention to his bold, painterly gestures. Turbulent smears of black enamel paint stand out against a spare, muted gray background, while subtle tonal gradations suggest depth and lend an atmospheric quality. Diffuse clouds of spray paint punctuate the composition and hint at a tension between the precise and the uncontrolled—a tension that is further underscored by the inky black drips peppering the canvas. The painting appears before its viewers almost as an apparition; the transparent brushstrokes traversing across a fog of spray paint appear fleeting, almost as if they could evaporate off the canvas at any moment. Impressive in both scale and impact, Untitled is a compelling postmodern triumph and a testament to Christopher Wool's provocative and boundary-pushing practice.
Though Wool’s energetic brushstrokes seem to reflect the spontaneous gestures typical of Abstract Expressionist painters, the hazy backdrop of Untitled, created with spray paint, introduces a distinct contrast and departure. The incorporation of spray paint alongside abstract shapes and strong brushstrokes recalls the burgeoning downtown graffiti scene that inspired Wool’s iconic “word paintings” in the 1980s. Indeed, Wool first came to the attention of the American public in the late 80’s through text-based word paintings featuring letters stenciled in black onto white metal panels. Drawing phrases from film, television, and mass advertising, Wool transformed aggressive, edgy statements into painted images, challenging the relationship between text and meaning. This sense of recontextualization, both in terms of his text paintings and his abstract paintings, is in many ways rooted in concepts embraced and explored by the Pictures Generation before him.
Beginning in the late 1970s, artists such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Laurie Simmons shifted the tone of contemporary art by creating work that utilized appropriation and montage to reveal the constructed nature of images, which consequently brought the process of art-making, itself, into sharp focus. While painting was largely out of vogue within the Pictures Generation, Christopher Wool once again radically advanced contemporary art by bringing painting back into the discourse. In his words, "I came from the Studio School in New York, a more traditional, painting-oriented background. A lot of Pictures Generation artists rejected painting. I think I was just young enough—I was a year or two younger—that by the time the idea of rejecting painting had settled in, I didn't need to. I could learn from them, the issues they brought up were important, but it didn't stop me from painting" (C. Wool, quoted in N. Trembley, "Meet Artist Christopher Wool, the master who creates tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal," Numéro, 2 November 2022).
Thus, beginning in the 1990s, Wool turned his conceptual approach to abstract painting, combining disparate mediums and techniques to create a body of work wholly his own. His paintings defy easy categorization, sometimes featuring prints of photographs of his earlier paintings, a self-referential process that places Wool’s painterly hand at a mechanical remove. His process involves the accumulation of multiple layers of paint and printing techniques, resulting in ghostly collages that blend his own work with external influences. His use of visual concealment and obscuration serves to decontextualize the source material, generating new meanings and connotations from echoes of cultural and artistic references. Rather than conform to a single genre, Wool’s paintings highlight both abstract concepts and raw materiality, embodying and negating their own complex web of meaning simultaneously.
“Wool’s work locks itself in only to deftly escape through sleight of hand.” Jeff Koons
Wool’s abstract paintings bravely reject modernism’s grand narratives of artistic direction. His canvases often seem partially erased or slightly decayed, as if trying to negate or destroy themselves. This uncertainty is refreshingly genuine and updates the tradition of abstract painting for a new century. In the press release he wrote for one of Wool’s first public exhibitions in 1986, fellow artist Jeff Koons argued that “Wool’s work contains continual internal/external debate within itself. At one moment his work will display self-denial, at the next moment solipsism. Shifting psychological states, false fronts, shadows of themselves, justify their own existence... Wool’s work locks itself in only to deftly escape through sleight of hand.” (Jeff Koons, press release for Christopher Wool, Cable Gallery, New York, 1986) Here, Koons identifies the central conceit of Wool’s paintings, and the central conceit of Untitled—as soon as Wool takes on or embodies a specific style, whether it be Abstract Expressionism, graffiti art, or a word painting, he nullifies or retracts his statement, taking steps to subvert it, distort it, or even efface it.
Wool challenges our assumptions about both l'art pour l'art and the postmodern—both cultural approaches to artmaking in the post-Pop era. Untitled’s use of expressive action painting techniques is subverted by its steely, monochromatic palette and employment of spray paint, evoking the gritty industrial environments of downtown New York City and Wool’s native Chicago. A sense of urban decay is present in Untitled, and the painting’s ghostly atmosphere gives it an almost elegiac quality. Wool’s use of enamel paint, a medium commonly used in industrial settings, further links his work to themes of mass production and serves to update the abstract painting tradition to the 21st century. “Post-modernism is not [about] making masterpieces, but making paintings that are interesting on a different level,” Wool says. “In [American art critic] Clement Greenberg’s idea of Modernism, there was a model of what you were supposed to follow. I think its proven to be much more open and interesting than that.” (A. Sansom, “‘It Allowed Me to Work Quietly’: Christopher Wool on How Two Years in Relative Isolation Changed the Course of His Art,” Artnet, June 2022).
Though Wool’s energetic brushstrokes seem to reflect the spontaneous gestures typical of Abstract Expressionist painters, the hazy backdrop of Untitled, created with spray paint, introduces a distinct contrast and departure. The incorporation of spray paint alongside abstract shapes and strong brushstrokes recalls the burgeoning downtown graffiti scene that inspired Wool’s iconic “word paintings” in the 1980s. Indeed, Wool first came to the attention of the American public in the late 80’s through text-based word paintings featuring letters stenciled in black onto white metal panels. Drawing phrases from film, television, and mass advertising, Wool transformed aggressive, edgy statements into painted images, challenging the relationship between text and meaning. This sense of recontextualization, both in terms of his text paintings and his abstract paintings, is in many ways rooted in concepts embraced and explored by the Pictures Generation before him.
Beginning in the late 1970s, artists such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Laurie Simmons shifted the tone of contemporary art by creating work that utilized appropriation and montage to reveal the constructed nature of images, which consequently brought the process of art-making, itself, into sharp focus. While painting was largely out of vogue within the Pictures Generation, Christopher Wool once again radically advanced contemporary art by bringing painting back into the discourse. In his words, "I came from the Studio School in New York, a more traditional, painting-oriented background. A lot of Pictures Generation artists rejected painting. I think I was just young enough—I was a year or two younger—that by the time the idea of rejecting painting had settled in, I didn't need to. I could learn from them, the issues they brought up were important, but it didn't stop me from painting" (C. Wool, quoted in N. Trembley, "Meet Artist Christopher Wool, the master who creates tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal," Numéro, 2 November 2022).
Thus, beginning in the 1990s, Wool turned his conceptual approach to abstract painting, combining disparate mediums and techniques to create a body of work wholly his own. His paintings defy easy categorization, sometimes featuring prints of photographs of his earlier paintings, a self-referential process that places Wool’s painterly hand at a mechanical remove. His process involves the accumulation of multiple layers of paint and printing techniques, resulting in ghostly collages that blend his own work with external influences. His use of visual concealment and obscuration serves to decontextualize the source material, generating new meanings and connotations from echoes of cultural and artistic references. Rather than conform to a single genre, Wool’s paintings highlight both abstract concepts and raw materiality, embodying and negating their own complex web of meaning simultaneously.
“Wool’s work locks itself in only to deftly escape through sleight of hand.” Jeff Koons
Wool’s abstract paintings bravely reject modernism’s grand narratives of artistic direction. His canvases often seem partially erased or slightly decayed, as if trying to negate or destroy themselves. This uncertainty is refreshingly genuine and updates the tradition of abstract painting for a new century. In the press release he wrote for one of Wool’s first public exhibitions in 1986, fellow artist Jeff Koons argued that “Wool’s work contains continual internal/external debate within itself. At one moment his work will display self-denial, at the next moment solipsism. Shifting psychological states, false fronts, shadows of themselves, justify their own existence... Wool’s work locks itself in only to deftly escape through sleight of hand.” (Jeff Koons, press release for Christopher Wool, Cable Gallery, New York, 1986) Here, Koons identifies the central conceit of Wool’s paintings, and the central conceit of Untitled—as soon as Wool takes on or embodies a specific style, whether it be Abstract Expressionism, graffiti art, or a word painting, he nullifies or retracts his statement, taking steps to subvert it, distort it, or even efface it.
Wool challenges our assumptions about both l'art pour l'art and the postmodern—both cultural approaches to artmaking in the post-Pop era. Untitled’s use of expressive action painting techniques is subverted by its steely, monochromatic palette and employment of spray paint, evoking the gritty industrial environments of downtown New York City and Wool’s native Chicago. A sense of urban decay is present in Untitled, and the painting’s ghostly atmosphere gives it an almost elegiac quality. Wool’s use of enamel paint, a medium commonly used in industrial settings, further links his work to themes of mass production and serves to update the abstract painting tradition to the 21st century. “Post-modernism is not [about] making masterpieces, but making paintings that are interesting on a different level,” Wool says. “In [American art critic] Clement Greenberg’s idea of Modernism, there was a model of what you were supposed to follow. I think its proven to be much more open and interesting than that.” (A. Sansom, “‘It Allowed Me to Work Quietly’: Christopher Wool on How Two Years in Relative Isolation Changed the Course of His Art,” Artnet, June 2022).