Lot 318: Commune, 2005

Commune, 2005
Oil on linen.  219.1 x 162.6 cm. (86 1/4 x 64 in).   Signed and dated 'Richard Phillips '05' on the overlap.

  New York, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Law, Sex & Christian Society, 12 May - 18 June, 2005; Milan, La Triennale di Milano, Timer: Intimita'/Intimacy Contemporary Art After 9/11, 30 March - 10 June, 2007  

 T. Rüther, Eventuell bin ich Tom Cruise in Monopol, October/November, 2005, pp. 54-63 (illustrated); M. Bracewell, Richard Phillips: Michael Fried, London, 2006 (illustrated) 

  Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; Private Collection, New York

"My aim is to use art to contest the validity, sanctity, and acceptance of images as conveyors of meaning stripped of consequence – propaganda, in other words." (Richard Phillips, Taken from www.petzel.com) Over the last decade, artist Richard Phillips has developed a striking signature style that derives its tension from his selective use of popular and rather lurid images that he subjects to the technical refinements of academic painting. Phillips consciously utilizes postmodernist appropriation strategies by incorporating images taken from a range of cultural sources, from porn, advertising and fashion spreads from the 1950s -1970s. The present lot is an example from this series of paintings coloured in warm rich sensuous tones, the artist working almost diligently from a palette of glamour photography. The result is slick and highly stylised; a variation on photo-realism, albeit one with a softer less critical texture. The image content is specific, blatant and vivid; a personal commentary on the broader context of contemporary society and culture which is saturated without cause by the endless production of commercial, pasteurized sexually charged imagery.