JASPER JOHNS’S FLAGS
The November auction will offer two works depicting Jasper Johns’s iconic flag motif. Held in the same highly distinguished American collection since acquired from Leo Castelli shortly after it was painted, Flag from 1994 stands among the most elegantly-resolved embodiments of the artist’s fascination with sign and meaning (estimate $12/18 million). First rendered in the customary red, white and blue of the familiar American emblem, then veiled by the ethereal monochrome of Johns’s most favored grayscale palette, the nuanced coloration and multidimensional complexity of the present Flag is – even within this revered series –among the most exquisite and virtuosic embodiments of Johns’s iconic motif.

Distinguished by its pristine provenance, Flags is an impressive watercolor acquired directly from Johns in 1971 by Betty Asher – the noted collector, contemporary art advocate and gallerist (estimate $4.5/6.5 million). The work then descended to her son Michael Asher, the Los Angeles-based artist, and was subsequently left to his namesake Foundation. Established in 2013, The Michael Asher Foundation is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to oversee, support, maintain and protect the historical accuracy and authenticity of Michael Asher’s work. Full proceeds from Flags will benefit the Foundation’s activities.

Flags is one of only a very small number of large-scale works on paper in which Johns, depicting this theme, painted in the critical early period of the 1960s. Bearing a nearly identical compositional format to the renowned painting Flags from 1965, which resides in the collection of the artist and has been on long-term loan to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1988, the present watercolor actually postdates the larger oil paint on canvas composition – rendering it the ultimate realization and crystallization of one of the most iconic art historical motifs of the 20th century.

THE FIRST WORKS BY GEORGIA O’KEEFFE IN A CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING AUCTION
Four years following our sale of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, Sotheby’s is honored to announce that we will again offer important works by the artist from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico to benefit its Acquisitions Fund.

The 14 November sale will mark the first time that works by O’Keeffe will be presented in a Contemporary Art Evening Auction. Painted in 1926, A Street is one of the most physically imposing and psychologically penetrating works from the distinguished series of New York cityscapes that Georgia O’Keeffe created between 1925 and 1929 (pictured left, estimate $12/18 million). Critics now regard this small but powerful series of some 20 works as standing among the most satisfying, painterly, and memorable of her career. Calla Lilies on Red from 1928 is a vibrant depiction of the flower with which O’Keeffe would become synonymous (estimate $8/12 million). Between 1918 and 1932, Georgia O’Keeffe created more than 200 flower paintings. But it was arguably in the calla lily that the artist found her ideal motif – one that provided the perfect synthesis of subject and form that now defines her most celebrated work. Separate release available

MASTERWORKS BY CHRISTOPHER WOOL
FROM THE COLLECTION OF NORAH AND NORMAN STONE
The evening auction features two works that represent the very best of Christopher Wool’s text and abstract flower paintings, and which are emerging after decades in the private Bay Area collection of Norah and Norman Stone:

At once viscerally charged and aesthetically elusive, FUCKEM is the embodiment of Wool’s anarchic painterly enterprise (pictured right, estimate $6/8 million). Executed in 1992, the rebelliously-dismissive edict emblazoned upon the present work serves as an explosive statement of intent for Wool’s critically acclaimed artistic project, successfully disrupting and manipulating art historical precedent with exhilarating nonchalance. Monumentally scaled and intricately layered, Feet Don’t Fail Me Now from 1995 is a key touchstone of Wool’s revolutionary investigation into the genre of painting, which reverberates with the energy and dynamism of downtown counterculture in 1980s and 90s New York City (estimate $8/12 million). The work was notably included in the artist’s first major survey in the United States, Christopher Wool, which travelled to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsbugh in 1998-1999.

DAVID HOCKNEY’S LOS ANGELES INTERIOR
David Hockney painted Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs in 1988 – the same year as the artist’s first, critically acclaimed U.S. retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (estimate $9/12 million). Lit with the bright glow of California sunshine, the canvas captures a room within Hockney’s Montcalm Avenue home in Los Angeles, which he purchased in the summer of 1979. This home went on to inspire a number of the artist’s most iconic paintings of the late-1980s – including the sister painting to the present work, Large Interior, Los Angeles, which has been held in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1989. Montcalm Interior with 2 Dogs is on offer from the collection of television producer and writer Steven Bochco, having been purchased by the entertainment legend in 1997. Separate release available