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'Everyone knows what a landscape looks like—there is an entire tradition of painting that informs our expectations. I wondered how I could take something that is seemingly so known and make it mine, while still getting all the satisfaction of painting, and the history of painting, in one’ —Shara HughesUnfolding in a dizzying play of colour and pattern, Wavy Navy balances pictorial complexity with a striking simplicity and immediacy that has become a hallmark of American artist Shara Hughes’ vibrantly imaginative landscapes. Included in her 2015 exhibition Far Out at the American Contemporary in New York, the present work represents a pivotal moment in her practice as she shifted her focus from interior subjects to the expansive, otherworldly landscapes which garnered her immediate critical acclaim. Rhythmic and mesmerising, Hughes structures her composition here through a series of sharply juxtaposed passages of energetically rendered pattern executed in jewel-like hues of cobalt blue, turquoise, and Verdigris green offset by splashes of magenta and golden yellow. Creating a powerful sense of fluidity and motion, Hughes’ shifting perspectives and confident jumps between tighter rounded curves and longer, snaking lines speak more directly to the sensation of rushing water rather than to its visual depiction alone.
Entirely imaginative creations, Hughes’ riotous landscapes incorporate natural and recognisable motifs alongside less immediately legible elements, deftly balancing an oppositional pull between representation and abstraction that reflects our more complex and ineffable psychological landscapes. As the artist explains: ‘I think that nature reflects emotions in so many ways. Beauty, pain, peace, sadness can all be seen in one day with the passing of time or with a weather pattern. Nature is constantly changing, you will never see the same flower twice in the exact same way.’ii
Detail of the present world Hughes and the Modernist Landscape
Demonstrating a robust engagement with early modernist aesthetics, Hughes’ kaleidoscopic landscapes have drawn favourable comparison to the intensely saturated hues and gestural application that characterised the Fauvist landscapes of André Derain, Henri Matisse, and Maurice de Vlaminck, infused with the darker psychological elements evident in key examples of German Expressionism. Primarily interested in capturing the emotional response to a landscape rather than an accurate depiction of observable reality, the intensely dynamic canvases of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner offer a particularly compelling art historical precedent for Hughes’s project here, especially evident in his vertiginous and highly saturated mountain scenes. Nevertheless, as critic Roberta Smith has been quick to point out, Hughes does not simply apply these art historical lessons in her canvases, but generates a vital contribution to contemporary art as she ‘combines these historical traditions with current ones […] There are plenty of nods to historical precedents, and yet Ms. Hughes’s paintings look spontaneous and unaffected, as if, paradoxically, she has done no homework at all'.iii
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, The Waterfall, 1919, Private Collection. Image: Heritage Images / Fine Art Images / akg-images Operating like a window onto an imaginary, open world, the surface of Wavy Navy is alive with its wonderfully ambiguous shifting forms and textures stacked tightly against the picture plane. Inventive and intuitive, Hughes works quickly in bursts of inspiration, using pure, unmodulated colour in a range of mediums including oil, enamel, acrylic, and spray paint as a means of bringing ‘the viewer into the painting, not just through images, but by mark-making and different types of materials.’iv In her wonderfully agile treatment of line, saturated palette, and flattening of form, Hughes creates a sense of the transparency and luminosity that we might associate with stained glass – a form fittingly taken up by a range of modern masters including Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, and, more recently, David Hockney. In discussing her practice, and especially in her approach to landscape, Hughes draws a similar comparison herself: ‘Back to the window-into-a-world thing, I like the viewer to be aware of where the edges are. I’m conscious of letting you know where you should step in and where you should stop […] as though you are walking through a door or a big window.’ Rather than asking us to look passively through the window, Hughes asks that we cross the threshold with her, into worlds of pure colour and light.
Marc Chagall, Central window from American Windows, 1966, Art Institute of Chicago. Image: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY / Scala, Florence, Artwork: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022 Collector’s Digest
• Well-established through a series of smaller exhibitions with galleries on both sides of the Atlantic, it was her inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial that garnered Hughes major international attention.
• Since her first solo show in 2007 at Rivington Arms, New York, Hughes has been showing steadily in galleries across the US and Europe for nearly 15 years. Already this year Hughes has been the subject of solo exhibitions at FLAG Art Foundation, New York and Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland. In 2021 she exhibited internationally, with shows at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Garden Museum, London; Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado; and Le Consortium, Dijon, France.• Her works are included in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of fine Art, the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Denver Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
i Shara Hughes, quoted in Katie White, ‘Landscapes opened a whole new world for me’, Artnet News, 17 August 2020, online.
ii Shara Hughes quoted in: Emily Steer, ‘Shara Hughes Uses Painting to Reflect the Turbulent Human Mind’, Elephant, 16 March 2020, online.
iii Roberta Smith, ‘What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week: Shara Hughes’, New York Times, 15 June 2017, online.
iv Shara Hughes, quoted in Gesine Borcherdt and Barry Scwabsk, Shara Hughes, Berlin, 2022, p. 113.Provenance
Grieder Contemporary, Küsnacht
Private Collection, Austria (acquired from the above)Exhibited
New York, American Contemporary, Shara Hughes: Far Out, 26 March – 26 April 2015 (titled as Navy Wavy)
Küsnacht, Grieder Contemporary, Abstract Horizons, 29 August – 17 October 2015Artist Biography
Shara Hughes
Shara Hughes (b. 1981) earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
The artist is best known for her colorful landscapes which bridge a gap between the real and the imagined, and the beautiful and the chaotic. Working intuitively, the artist does not typically pre-plan her canvases. Rather her process involves giving form and shape to her previously applied brushstrokes and reacting to her last applications of paint and color through more painting.
Hughes has participated in numerous group exhibitions, at venues such as FLAG Art Foundation, NY (2023); ICA Miami (2022); De la Cruz Collection (2022); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2021); Dallas Art Museum, Dallas (2019); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2018); and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2015). The artist was also included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Hughes’ work belongs to many prominent museum collections including the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; the Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Jorge M. Perez Collection, Miami, FL; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA; the M Woods Museum, Beijing, China; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX; the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; the Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing, China; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY; among others. Hughes lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
2
Wavy Navy
signed, titled, inscribed and dated '56 x 48 "Wavy Navy" 2015 SHARA HUGHES NYC' on the reverse
oil, acrylic and enamel on canvas
142.2 x 121.9 cm (56 x 48 in.)
Executed in 2015.
Estimate
£250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
Kate Bryan
Head of Evening Sale
+44 7391 402741
kbryan@phillips.com
Olivia Thornton
Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Europe
+44 20 7318 4099
othornton@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
London Auction 30 June 2022
1
Antonia Showering
We Stray
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ‡♠
Sold for £239,400
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2
Shara Hughes
Wavy Navy
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
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3
Lauren Quin
Numbness
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ‡
Sold for £201,600
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4
Caroline Walker
Afters
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠
Sold for £315,000
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5
Tschabalala Self
Carma
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
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6
María Berrío
The Riders II
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ‡
Sold for £809,000
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7
Flora Yukhnovich
Moi aussi je déborde
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £1,716,500
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8
Simone Leigh
Clarendon
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡
Sold for £869,500
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9
Louise Bourgeois
Couple
Estimate £450,000 - 550,000 ‡♠
Sold for £869,500
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10
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Ragazza in minigonna / Ragazza seduta per terra
Estimate £1,800,000 - 2,200,000 ‡♠
Sold for £2,000,000
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11
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate £3,000,000 - 4,000,000 ‡
Sold for £2,684,500
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12
Nicolas de Staël
Marine
Estimate £1,700,000 - 2,200,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,293,000
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13
This lot is no longer available.
14
Stanley Whitney
May Day
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £627,500
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15
Ouattara Watts
№ 1 For Miles
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £113,400
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16
This lot is no longer available.
17
George Condo
Black Jack Sally
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡
Sold for £809,000
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18
John Chamberlain
Ramwater Sweets
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ‡
Sold for £258,300
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19
Katharina Grosse
Ohne Titel
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
Sold for £176,400
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20
Philippe Parreno
Untitled (Interior Cartoons)
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
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21
Günther Förg
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £189,000
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22
Damien Hirst
Furfuryl Mercaptan
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £491,400
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23
Damien Hirst
Untitled AAAAA
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
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24
Andy Warhol
Electric Chairs
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £201,600
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25
Robert Nava
Maybe Metatron
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
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26
Rafa Macarrón
Machaquito
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £327,600
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27
Damien Hirst
Beautiful Tropical, Jungle Painting (with pink snot)
Estimate £270,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £378,000
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28
Carmen Herrera
Stanzas
Estimate £280,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £315,000
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29
Luc Tuymans
Candy Container
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡♠
Sold for £352,800
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30
Salman Toor
Three Men with Trays
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £315,000
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31
Issy Wood
Not Turned On
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £151,200
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32
Anna Weyant
Bath Time
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
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33
Amoako Boafo
Bailike
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡
Sold for £403,200
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34
Emmanuel Taku
My Brother's Keeper
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡
Sold for £78,120
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35
Asprey Bugatti
La Voiture Noire
Estimate On Request
Sold for £378,000
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