Beschreibung:

Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Untitled” (Portrait of Marcel Brient) Executed in 1992 Candies, individually wrapped in light-blue cellophane (endless supply). Ideal weight: 198.5 lbs (90 kg); dimensions vary with installation. This work is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by the artist.
Provenance Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris Exhibited Musee d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, Passions privées: Collections particulières d’art moderne et contemporain en France, December 16, 1995 – March 24, 1996, p. 663 (illustrated) Literature F. Gonzalez-Torres and R. Nickas, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres. All the Time in the World” (interview), in Flash Art, November/ December 1991, cover (detail illustrated); J. Avgikos, S. Cahan, and T. Rollins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres A.R.T. Press, Los Angeles 1993, p. 81 (detail illustrated); E. Troncy, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Placebo,” in Art Press, June 1993, pp. 3 and 34 (illustrated); N. Spector, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres,” in Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition catalogue, Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York 1995, pp. 146 – 48 (detail illustrated) F. Gonzalez-Torres and T. Rollins, interview in Between Artists, Los Angeles 1996, p. 79 (illustrated) S. Maniero Montiel, “La Huella como Metaforo. Felix Gonzalez- Torres 1957–996,” in Estilo, April/May 1996, p. 50 (illustrated) “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Album”, in Blocnotes, September/ October 1996, p. 87 (detail illustrated) D. Elger, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern- Ruit 1997, p. 100, no. 189 (illustrated) J. Ault, Felix Gonzalez-Torres New York 2006, p. 99 (detail illustrated) Catalogue Essay Felix gonzalez-Torres “Untitled” (Portrait of Marcel Brient) The candy pieces are the most celebrated and iconic series by Felix Gonzalez-Torres Made in a short span of just three years, between 1990 and 1993, the candy pieces are works of great physical beauty and immediacy of physical appeal: shimmering masses of edible color spilled across the floor or piled in the corner of a room. The candy pieces are remarkable, too, for their combination of the private and the public. They are works of real intimacy, charged with associations whose meanings were fully known only by the artist; yet these works are meant to be shared in the most direct and unstinting way with the viewers, who are welcome to take pieces from the pile, and eat them. Works of visual art are usually meant to please only one of the senses, but the candy pieces stimulate all the senses, not only sight, but touch, hearing, smell and taste too as the viewer handles, unwraps and consumes the candy. Furthermore, paintings and sculptures are usually fixed in their dimensions, but Felix gave only ideal weights and/or dimensions for the candy pieces, permitting them to change in the future according to the installation, and the wishes of the owner. The works are thus inherently dynamic, mutable, and renewable. Immediate but profound, beautiful though conceptual, private yet generous: the candy pieces perfectly embody some of the outstanding characteristics of Felix Gonzalex-Torres’s art. “Untitled” (Portrait of Marcel Brient) is an especially important example in the series. It is one of only two such works all in blue — a color especially beloved by the artist; it is the only one in the series to bear a word on the original wrapper that represents an aspect of character or of a psychological or moral state — PASSION; and it is seemingly the only portrait among the candy pieces to represent another living person. Of Gonzalez-Torres’s nineteen candy pieces, only six, by their parenthetical titles and ideal weights, can be readily interpreted as portraits. Of these two are double portraits of the artist and his lover, Ross Laycock; two are portraits of Ross alone; one is a portrait of Felix’s recently deceased father; and the present work is a portrait of the artist’s close friend, the important French collector, Marcel Brient. The other candy portraits have an element of elegy and lamentation mixed in with the beauty, while the present work instead seems to focus more exclusively on joy and celebration. Gonzalez-Torres and Brient had first met in Paris in the spring of 1992 and soon became very close. Brient was a prescient and active collector of pie