29 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Carroll Dunham Time Storm Three (Tree of Life) 2005-09 acrylic, pencil on canvas 107 3/4 x 118 1/4 in. (273.7 x 300.4 cm) Initialed and dated "C.D. 2005-09" lower left.
Provenance Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Exhibited Los Angeles, Blum & Poe, CARROLL DUNHAM April 9 - May 15, 2010 Catalogue Essay “The only way I can find my paintings is in my paintings.” Carroll Dunham 2007 Carroll Dunham’s expansive body of work dwells in the land of painting, teetering between the abstract and the figurative. Over the past three decades Dunham’s artistic creations have touched on the colorful, the absurd and the unpredictable. Describing his artistic forms as part of his “homeless vocabulary” Dunham remains loyal to what he refers to as “structural archetypes that are kind of locked in.” (Painting Process/Process Painting, Museum of Modern Art Lecture by Carroll Dunham September 2007) Ranging from his earlier male protagonists with phallic noses to his female bathers to what we see in the present lot: a windblown tree, his reoccurring formal elements act as his jumping points into the canvases, describing them as his “private lexicon, I call them shapes. They probably have aspects of them that are like characters. They certainly have approached having some kind of personality at times. But they are first and foremost shapes in a figure ground relationship.”(Carroll Dunham B. Sussler, BOMB – Artists in Conversation, Winter 1990) Dunham has repeatedly emphasized that his wild forms have their roots in abstracted composition, explaining: “I think it’s very different to make pictures of things coming out of abstraction than it is to make abstractions of things coming out the visible world.” (Painting Process/Process Painting, Museum of Modern Art Lecture by Carroll Dunham September 2007) The present lot, Time Storm Three (Tree of Life), 2005-09 is first and foremost an abstraction that has taken the form of a green and luscious tree. The tree, which resembles a human figure with branch like limbs, appears to have been tossed about by the harsh environment. The tree has lost its organic form, leaves drop to the ground while a noose rope hangs from the tree’s one limb, these ominous components stand in direct opposition to the whimsical purple tulip in the foreground and the deep red flowers that thrive amid the tree’s crown. This “tree of life” – a historical departure from the artists usual human forms— despite its classical rendition, seems to hold on to the human form in its rendering, the possibility of successful growth and the promise of death allows this painting to be the visual epitome of what the artist defines as painting: “a perfect storm of the crass the sacred and the intimately personal.” (Painting Process/Process Painting, Museum of Modern Art Lecture by Carroll Dunham September 2007) Read More
29 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Carroll Dunham Time Storm Three (Tree of Life) 2005-09 acrylic, pencil on canvas 107 3/4 x 118 1/4 in. (273.7 x 300.4 cm) Initialed and dated "C.D. 2005-09" lower left.
Provenance Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Exhibited Los Angeles, Blum & Poe, CARROLL DUNHAM April 9 - May 15, 2010 Catalogue Essay “The only way I can find my paintings is in my paintings.” Carroll Dunham 2007 Carroll Dunham’s expansive body of work dwells in the land of painting, teetering between the abstract and the figurative. Over the past three decades Dunham’s artistic creations have touched on the colorful, the absurd and the unpredictable. Describing his artistic forms as part of his “homeless vocabulary” Dunham remains loyal to what he refers to as “structural archetypes that are kind of locked in.” (Painting Process/Process Painting, Museum of Modern Art Lecture by Carroll Dunham September 2007) Ranging from his earlier male protagonists with phallic noses to his female bathers to what we see in the present lot: a windblown tree, his reoccurring formal elements act as his jumping points into the canvases, describing them as his “private lexicon, I call them shapes. They probably have aspects of them that are like characters. They certainly have approached having some kind of personality at times. But they are first and foremost shapes in a figure ground relationship.”(Carroll Dunham B. Sussler, BOMB – Artists in Conversation, Winter 1990) Dunham has repeatedly emphasized that his wild forms have their roots in abstracted composition, explaining: “I think it’s very different to make pictures of things coming out of abstraction than it is to make abstractions of things coming out the visible world.” (Painting Process/Process Painting, Museum of Modern Art Lecture by Carroll Dunham September 2007) The present lot, Time Storm Three (Tree of Life), 2005-09 is first and foremost an abstraction that has taken the form of a green and luscious tree. The tree, which resembles a human figure with branch like limbs, appears to have been tossed about by the harsh environment. The tree has lost its organic form, leaves drop to the ground while a noose rope hangs from the tree’s one limb, these ominous components stand in direct opposition to the whimsical purple tulip in the foreground and the deep red flowers that thrive amid the tree’s crown. This “tree of life” – a historical departure from the artists usual human forms— despite its classical rendition, seems to hold on to the human form in its rendering, the possibility of successful growth and the promise of death allows this painting to be the visual epitome of what the artist defines as painting: “a perfect storm of the crass the sacred and the intimately personal.” (Painting Process/Process Painting, Museum of Modern Art Lecture by Carroll Dunham September 2007) Read More
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