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Lot Essay
Drawn in 2003, Untitled (Brown and Black), is a captivating and highly meditative example of Mark Grotjahn’s celebrated Butterfly series. This famed body of work is centered around the artist’s iconic radiant motif of brilliantly diverging lines. Fusing past and present through his conflation of off-kilter Renaissance perspective and hard-edged modernism, he evokes a spiritual response from the viewer. Grotjahn straddles the polarities of artifice and nature in this seminal work through his reference to the butterflies we know from nature, and through artificial straight lines, which, in this particular work, are punctuated with intentional human imperfections that reveal a complex working process.
Two vertical bands stand tall as central axes within the present picture plane; slightly uneven vortexes of lines emerge from their outer limits toward the very bounds of the composition. They seem to take the form of propeller-like blades, radiating outward, and bringing to mind notions of light, space and religious transcendence. The skewed geometry subverts the stark precision of modernism, alluding to multiple narratives throughout the art historical canon, from Kazimir Malevich’s white on white compositions to Barnett Newman’s monumental stripes. Robert Storr has noted: “Grotjahn is not an artist obsessed with positing a wholly unprecedented ‘concept’ of art, but rather is concerned with teasing nuanced experience out of existing concepts or constructs according to the opportunities presented by a specific, well-calculated conceit” (R. Storr, ‘LA Push-Pull Po-Mo-Stop-Go,’ Mark Grotjahn, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, p. 6).
The exquisite beveled lines of the present Untitled (Brown and Black) create an almost planar composition, endowing the work with the sublime diversity of hue, texture, and tone. In spite of the minimalist palette, the meticulously hand-crafted theatrical dark lines vibrate and oscillate, offering further comparison with the heroic work of Barnett Newman. The viewer, in front of this awe-inspiring example by Grotjahn, becomes instantly, and pleasantly, enveloped by the vortex of mysticism that enshrouds this work.
Two vertical bands stand tall as central axes within the present picture plane; slightly uneven vortexes of lines emerge from their outer limits toward the very bounds of the composition. They seem to take the form of propeller-like blades, radiating outward, and bringing to mind notions of light, space and religious transcendence. The skewed geometry subverts the stark precision of modernism, alluding to multiple narratives throughout the art historical canon, from Kazimir Malevich’s white on white compositions to Barnett Newman’s monumental stripes. Robert Storr has noted: “Grotjahn is not an artist obsessed with positing a wholly unprecedented ‘concept’ of art, but rather is concerned with teasing nuanced experience out of existing concepts or constructs according to the opportunities presented by a specific, well-calculated conceit” (R. Storr, ‘LA Push-Pull Po-Mo-Stop-Go,’ Mark Grotjahn, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, p. 6).
The exquisite beveled lines of the present Untitled (Brown and Black) create an almost planar composition, endowing the work with the sublime diversity of hue, texture, and tone. In spite of the minimalist palette, the meticulously hand-crafted theatrical dark lines vibrate and oscillate, offering further comparison with the heroic work of Barnett Newman. The viewer, in front of this awe-inspiring example by Grotjahn, becomes instantly, and pleasantly, enveloped by the vortex of mysticism that enshrouds this work.