Beschreibung:

JULIAN OPIE (B. 1958)Wooden Painting 16 2006 signed on the reverse enamel on wood 90 by 61.2 cm. 35 7/16 by 24 1/8 in. This work was executed in 2006. FootnotesProvenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2007 Contemporary British artist Julian Opie is widely recognised for his distinctive depictions of figures, portraits, and landscapes. Born in London in 1958, Opie graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1982, studying under Michael-Craig Martin, and was quickly associated with the New British Sculpture movement. From the 1980s into 1990s he transitioned from painted steel sculptures inspired by Pop Art and Minimalism into a simpler graphic style, which he employs across a diverse range of media, from paintings to animation, continually pushing the boundaries of traditional artistic practice. Opie plays with ways of seeing through reinterpreting the vocabulary of everyday life; his reductive style evokes both a visual and spatial experience of the world around us. Alongside his clear influence in Pop aesthetics, particularly the work of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein Opie draws further inspiration from classical portraiture, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek mythology, Japanese woodblock prints, as well as public signage, information boards, traffic signs and even the Tintin cartoons by Hergé. Through connecting the clean visual language of modern life with the fundamentals of art history, Opie has produced a distinctive and unique style in his body of work which have appeared in cities and sculpture parks around the world. Perhaps more widely recognised for his portraits and figurative studies, Opie reduces his subjects to essential lines created by thick black outlines and filled in with solid areas of flat, vibrant colour. His figurative subjects are de-personalised; he either chooses to render a featureless face using just a blank circle, or otherwise only depicts very basic facial features using dots and lines in the simplest expression of form. He chooses to differentiate his figures through colour of backgrounds, hairstyles, position of head, light reflected in the eyes and accessories. This depersonalised style creates an ambiguous sense of subjectivity in the sitter and provokes the viewer to question what makes a portrait of a person distinct and how they can relate to it. Bonhams are delighted to be offering three works by Julian Opie - two figurative pieces and a dynamic digital landscape of Lake Kawaguchi in Japan. Aniela 2, executed in 2011, is a portrait of the artist's wife. Set against a vibrant red background, Aniela is not submitting to the viewer; she appears to us in the nude, loosely holding a piece of drapery, captured in a private moment. Aniela was a regular sitter for the Opie and resulted in a series inspired by Renaissance and neoclassical paintings of Greek goddesses such as Aphrodite. In this series, Opie portrayed his wife in the nude occasionally wrapped in drapery which has been reduced to its most essential elements or holding a Grecian urn. Indeed, in this present work we can draw parallels to classicism and his interest in interpreting Greek mythology. Julian Opie's style increased in popularity after he designed the cover of English Britpop band Blur's best of album which was released in 2000.The four-part portrait is not only one of the most famous album covers to be produced but is considered as an iconic artwork. The portraits of the four band members of Blur were bought by the Art Fund in 2001 and now reside in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Today, Julian Opie is considered one of the leading contemporary artists in the world and his work is exhibited extensively in galleries and museums around the world, including in the Essl Collection, Vienna, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Japan, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, among many others.