Lot 163: RICHARD PHILLIPS

Double

84 x 62 in. (213.4 x 157.5 cm.)

Oil on linen.

1996-1997

J. Kutner, &#8220;Phillips&#8217; Painting Turn Heads,&#8221; <em>Dallas Morning News</em>, 24 February 1997, n.p. (illustrated); A. Heil and W. Schoppmann, eds., <em>Most Wanted</em>, Cologne, 2005, p. 131 (illustrated)

Turner &amp; Runyon Gallery, Dallas; Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; Private collection, Switzerland

<p>Richard Phillips paintings of the mid-nineties are perfectly of their time, a moment in the swirling vortex of art-world names and trends that very often recapitulated the cold fever and glamour of sixties Pop Art. His paintings looked insolently bland yet gorgeous, thematically provocative and trite at the same time. Were Phillips' images, mostly culled from old fashion and pornographic magazines of the sixties and seventies, symptomatic of a regression from policiticized content, moreover did they perhaps indulge a certain passive anti-feminism? Or were they sly descendants of the 'Pictures' and commodity-critique art of the late seventies and the eighties- a period that witnessed the seemingly effortless transition from 'resistant', theory-driven art practices to cunningly cynical, theory-driven art practices? Is Phillips a good boy or is he very bad, indeed? His paintings, with their impeccable but impermeable surfaces, are apt emblems of the fortunes of Pop Art as it continues emphatically to inform the overall context of contemporary art.

(D. Rimanelli, "Richard, Your Paintings are Lean, Mean, Ass-Kicking Machines!", <em>Richard Phillips</em>, Hamburg, 2002, pp. 93-94).</p>