Lot 31: Richard Phillips

NEW MUSEUM

84 1/2 x 63 in. (214.6 x 160 cm).

Oil on canvas.

2009

New York, Gagosian Gallery, Richard Phillips New Museum, March 14 – May 2, 2009

B. Funcke, “They Like to Look at Pictures,” Richard Phillips New Museum, New York, 2009, pp. 7 and 16-17 (illustrated in color; the drawing for this painting is illustrated on the cover); A. Baremboym and K. Llanes, “Politics of Painting, An Interview with Richard Phillips,” artnet Magazine, 2009 (illustrated on www.artnet.com); “Richard Phillips exhibition, New York,” Wallpaper, March 10, 2009 (illustrated on www.wallpaper.com)

Gagosian Gallery, New York

In the painting NEW MUSEUM (2009), two middle-aged men, apparently “bums,” are hunched on the sidewalk in front of a brick wall with a bottle of schnaps, lighting cigarettes.  The particular unease in the painting might stem from the possibly fashionable appearance of these men: we cannot be sure if this represents a photograph of men down on their luck or of highly styled actors posing for a shoot.  This confusion, this advanced sense of aestheticization of all parts of life, fed in New York by the city’s staggering economic growth over the last fifteen years and the legacy of mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, is symbolized by the gentrification of the Bowery, a process itself highlighted by the relocation there of the New Museum.  Phillips’ painting is in fact based on an image from a 1973 Hustler Magazine article called “Hustler’s Biased Guide to Very Cheap Wines.”  The location of the men in the painting, directly next to the Bowery Mission, is the new site of the New Museum.
 
(B. Funcke, “They Like to Look at Pictures,” Richard Phillips New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 7)