(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Abstract expressionist John Chamberlain took the gestural force of Jackson Pollock’s paintings and rendered it in three dimensions. His most famous sculptures—mammoth car doors and hoods bent and crushed into submission—are almost by definition grandiose and heroic: the artist inflicting his physicality on inanimate objects. So it may come as a surprise that in the late 1980s Chamberlain made smaller sculptures, some no bigger than a foot tall, as part of a series he called “Baby Tycoons.” In pieces such as Winter Philodendron from 1992 ($650,000), the gesture of the artist’s hand in miniature becomes something more delicate and engrossing.
The Field
• Alexander Calder’s tabletop sculptures regularly come to auction with estimates of as low as $300,000.
• Mark di Suvero has a thriving practice of making more manageable objects than his towering I-beam structures often seen in corporate plazas. A 31-inch-high steel sculpture from 1991 sold at Christie’s New York for $62,500 in 2017.
• A 30-inch-high 1959 work by David Smith sold at Christie’s New York in May for $615,000.
The Case
Winter Philodendron is made from painted and chromium-plated steel. The piece has never been exhibited or sold. In May, Hauser & Wirth announced it would represent Chamberlain’s estate; this exhibition of “Baby Tycoons,” which opened on Sept. 5 at the gallery’s East 69th Street space in New York, is a prelude to a bigger show next year. $650,000; hauserwirth.com
To contact the author of this story: James Tarmy in New York at jtarmy@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gaddy at jgaddy@bloomberg.net
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