Capacious New Galleries Invite Fresh Perspective On Art History Ahead Of Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art

Surrender to unhinged prestige, traversing the fervent brushstrokes of Francis Bacon’s eldritch, frantic Pope with Owls. Shift your gaze to Joan Mitchell’s monumental Untitled, a frenzied waltz of gestural eruption that culminates a daring career. Confront the hypocrisy of military life through a brazen exploration of color with Barkley L. Hendricks’s FTA. Ponder the intersection of faith and masculinity with Andy Warhol’s imposing, oppugnant The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body. Delve into the compositional and contextual complexity of Amy Sherald’s Welfare Queen. Marvel at the meticulous composition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s luxuriant, fastidious, divergent Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii.

Indulge in the vast array of genres, styles, and subjects, reawakening your exploration of 20th century and contemporary art with a curatorial perspective that supplants museum and gallery experiences. Sunlight poured into Phillips’ new 55,000-square-foot headquarters, where an elevator by the private viewing room within the galleries leads to the office space, facilitating interaction with the dynamic exhibitions. Unprecedented growth fueled the need for expansion.

If you’re in New York through November 18, you owe it yourself to devote a few hours to navigating 35,000 square feet of gallery space in the sunken mezzanine of the transformed Park Avenue Cube that underscores the flourish of Phillips in the global art auction world. 

The airiness of the exquisite exhibition space elegantly enhances the experience of witnessing art history evolve through the provocative display of 20th century masterpieces alongside groundbreaking works by contemporary artists who challenge our perception of fine art.

“We decided to do this radical move of completely demolishing the ground floor so that you see Park Avenue. By demolishing the most expensive part of real estate, and lowering it, we allow some of this transparency and view into the gallery space. And that was important to us (because) we feel that art needs be more accessible to the general public, and that you don’t feel like its not approachable,” Markus Dochantschi, founder of New York-based multidisciplinary architecture and design firm studioMDA,  said during an intimate tour of the galleries. “You want the quality, you want the lighting, you want the finishes, that you have in a museum, which is why we have a wood floor, we have a very sophisticated lighting system. The other thing that you need is to be able to change things every time.”

Aside from the formidable columns that erect the hulking structure, everything in the new space is customizable for myriad exhibitions and to transform it into the site of a live auction on November 18. All walls are movable, the back wall fully opens to enable swift passage of  vehicles or other large items, and even the original columns are designed to hang art. 

Stephen Brooks, who joined Phillips as Chief Executive Officer on September 1, flew in from London ahead of the sale and marveled at the “amazing flow of space.”

studioMDA created an audacious tiered display, hinting at a shrine, to magnify Pope with Owls (circa 1958), which has been in the same private collection for nearly four decades and is expected to fetch between $35 million and $45 million at the New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art. This eerie, atmospheric iteration of Bacon’s vast papal portrait series, references and subverts the canonical portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez, which inspired Bacon to examine flesh and psychological deconstruction between 1949 and 1971. 

The painting was executed while Bacon was in Tangier visiting his lover Peter Lacey, a former fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain. Cheyenne Westphal, Global Chairwoman of Pillips, said the anguish of their tumultuous love affair “inspired Francis to make some extremely strong work.”

“It’s so full of references and one of the amazing things for me is the face. You see that existential screen which embodies everything Francis Bacon was trying to do, and that is to express the violence and the horror of the 20th century. He is one of the artists that has come out of the war era with the need to describe that absolute violence he is witnessing across Europe and to bring it into painting,” Westphal said, explaining references to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Soviet silent drama film Battleship Potyomkin, which dramatizes the 1905 mutiny of the crew against the ship’s officers.

Mitchell’s Untitled (1992) was painted the year she died, a vibrant career triumph despite her struggles with anxiety, depression, and alcohol abuse. The sale of this masterwork, estimated at  between $4 million and $6 million, coincides with a retrospective on view at the San Francisco Museum of Art through January 17, 2022, and then traveling to the Baltimore Museum of Art and to Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.

The bust portrait of a U.S. Army soldier dressed in a drab OG-107 Vietnam War-era uniform commands our full attention, popping from the bold, nearly neon, green canvas. Hendricks modeled the Black subject after a fellow soldier, embellishing his helmet with a “L” for lieutenant, a rank rarely given to Black men. The title evokes the duality of the slogan “Fun, Travel and Adventure,” which anti-war activists subverted as “Fuck the Army.” The first public sale (estimate $4 million to $6 million) of this painting will benefit efforts to promote anti-racism.

Warhol’s Last Supper series reaches crescendo with the massive acrylic on canvas executed between 1985 and 1986, borrowing from DaVinci and pop culture to examine human frailty and brawn and our complex associations with faith, materialism, and physicality. The emblematic masterpiece is anticipated to sell for between $6 million and $8 million.

Sherald stumbled upon a happy accident when turpentine spilled on her canvas, creating a textured background. The rich red tapestry behind Welfare Queen punctuates the dignified portrait of a Black woman in a jeweled tiara, pearl drop earrings, pearl necklace, white gloves, and a royal blue dress with a purple sash. Sherald paints her sitters using grisaille to dispel myths of Black identity, and advance her narrative into social justice, racial equity, and representation. Welfare Queen (2012) is expected to fetch between $1.2 million and $1.8 million amid fierce interest in such rare works, which are extremely time consuming to paint.

Petite but powerful, O’Keeffe’s 1939 journey to Hawaii makes its auction debut, eyeing between $4 million and $6 million. Learn more about this exquisite work that demands a close view to reveal precise brushstrokes that hint at surrealism: Lush, Rare Georgia O’Keeffe Hawaii Painting Expected To Fetch Up To $6 Million Amid Fierce International Demand

The high ceilings enable a survey of art that tackles serious terrain, comprised of paths to joy and visceral experience. We wander into whimsey with studioMDA’s recreation of Ari’s Bar, aboard Aristotle Onassis’ 99.13-meter private motor yacht, Christina O. It was built to display the Greek shipping magnate’s The Moat, Breccles, which sold for $1.8 million on June 23, and has been retained to feature clever works by the Connor Brothers and a 72-inch Neon Rolling Stones Tongue by RISK, whose colossal Face Your Fears sold for $214,200 on June 23 at Phillips. RISK’s dialogue with Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) continues with another version of the shark, crafted with found metal objects that can be displayed in its metal frame or suspended from the ceiling, to be featured at November 18’s Afternoon Sale.