PAINTING "THE LADY IS NOT IN RED YET" by Benjamin SPARK (196 - Lot 266

PAINTING "THE LADY IS NOT IN RED YET" by Benjamin SPARK (1969) Mixed media on canvas, signed, dated "20/92026," and titled on the back. Dimensions: 100 x 70 cm Good condition In the beginning, then, was Benjamin Spark, the hidden son who bursts onto the scene, already an adult, his mind and brush in a frenzy, a complete stranger yet strangely familiar. “The great artist is the one who wasn’t on the program,” as the critic and novelist Guy Scarpetta likes to remind us. A son of Pop Art and Street Art, he embodies an unprecedented reconciliation between them—that of two cultures born of the street, one from the “high,” the other from the “low”—an improbable yet inevitable encounter between two movements driven by opposing forces. He is undeniably a genre painter, drawn to the picturesque aspects of everyday life, but viewed through the eyes of a very specific category of individuals: superheroes, of whom he adopts a thoroughly Warholian conception, viewing their supreme power as the ability to make a lasting impression and penetrate every layer of consciousness; Consequently, Superman is every bit as significant as Mao, the Chanel logo, or John Lennon, and Spark adds to this list the idols of his generation: Basquiat, Daft Punk, and SpongeBob. Spark admits: “Batman really moves me. He’s the only one without superpowers. To make up for that, he’s worked on his body and mind to achieve unity and harmony. And on top of that, he’s humble.” We can see the influence of Gudmundur ERRÓ, whom he met in 2011 at his Paris studio. Erro emphasizes: “Benjamin Spark is someone who really knows how to draw and who has also evolved a great deal. I’ve known him for only three years, but in my entire career—and I’m eighty-three years old!—he’s the only artist who’s come to my studio to explain to me how he works. Normally, painters keep their little secrets to themselves. But he explained everything to me—absolutely everything. The way he creates enlargements, the way he projects them like slides onto a screen—without hiding anything from me. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been able to get inside an artist’s mind in this way. He came with his computer, and I had a feeling he was giving me a little glimpse of what the next day would bring! We artists are always preoccupied with the future, with what comes next, but also with the idea that everything has already been done, that nothing more is possible—and so that future is uncertain."

Estimate:£423.61

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