Richard Pousette-Dart

Estate of the aritst
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York
Private Collection, Massachusetts (acquired from the above in 1998)
Christie's, New York, 14 May 2009, Lot 149
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

New York, Willard Gallery, Richard Pousette-Dart: Forms in Brass, October - November 1943
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Richard Pousette-Dart, April - May 1963, cat. no. 9, p. 23, illustrated
Fort Lauderdale, Museum of Art, Transcending Abstraction: Richard Pousette-Dart, Paintings 1939-1985, April - June 1986, pl. 29, cat. no. 8, pp. 13, 27 and 70, illustrated
Indianapolis Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Georgia, The Columbus Museum, Richard Pousette-Dart: A Retrospective, October 1990 - January 1992, cat. no. 46, p. 74, illustrated in color

Jack Kroll, "Richard Pousette-Dart: Transcendental Expressionist," ARTnews 60, No. 2, April 1961, p. 33, illustrated 
Charles Moritz, Ed., Current Biography Yearbook, New York 1976, p. 322
Exh. Cat., New York, Andrew Crispo Gallery (and traveling), Richard Pousette-Dart: Drawings, 1978, n.p.
Hilton Kramer, "Don't Blame Pousette-Dart For Twombly and Ryman," New York
Observer, 22 January 1996, p. 21
Sam Hunter and Joanne M. Kuebler, Eds., The New York School and Beyond, New York 2005, pl. 21, pp. 78-79, illustrated in color
Rachel Somerstein, "Artist Dossier: Richard Pousette-Dart," Art+Auction 35, No. 4, December 2011, pp. 104 and 106, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. Please contact the Contemporary Department at (212) 606-7254 for a professional condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

"One can only know a small bit of any artist—for the artist only shows, like an iceberg, but a small tip or particle of what he is and what he expresses...a work is an expression of joy for the great miracle and privilege of being alive and having the opportunity of being in tune with all the universe."

Richard Pousette-Dart

Richard Pousette-Dart’s majestic 1943 canvas Composition Number 1 is a summation of the artist’s clear vision of celestial transcendence. Architectural, black calligraphy outlines the composition, giving way to ovoid and spherical biomorphic forms that are punctuated with vivid color and pulsate with the artist’s fervent and immediate brushwork. As if he were commenting on the present work, Philip Rylands elaborates on Pousette-Dart’s inimitable technique: “Paint is smeared, squirted, dragged, smothered or scribbled with the hard brush or brush end. The grid becomes a breeding ground for vestigially geometric shapes—eyes, organs, symbols, ray bursts, mythic half-formed creatures. Curves bend out of shape, pulled and violated. Pure color struggles for survival, sometimes reappearing only when the artist scratches the surface, against the palette’s will-to-mud” (Philip Rylands, “Notes on Richard Pousette-Dart,” in Exh. Cat., Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection (and traveling), Richard Pousette-Dart, 2007, p. 13).

An artist with an insatiable thirst to learn and absorb, Pousette-Dart’s influences were vast yet monumental in importance. From Zen Buddhism, Taoism, T.S. Eliot, Friedrich Nietzsche, Native American Art, Cubism and of course, Surrealism, the artist sought to elevate the primacy of intuition by re-establishing communication with one’s own primordial unconscious being. Pousette-Dart, much like Jackson Pollock, gave ample credit to the critical influence of Surrealism and Cubism in his artistic development. Pousette-Dart’s own philiosophy is echoed in a text written by Pollock for the February 1944 issue of Arts & Architecure where he pays homage to those European artists: “They bring with them an understanding of the problem of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious” (Jackson Pollock, “Jackson Pollock: A Questionnaire,” Arts and Architecture 61, No. 2, February 1944, p. 14). Indeed, Composition Number 1 radiates with a mysticism that does not just utilize the unconscious as its source, but actively seems to reach and explore it on the canvas’s surface.

The early 1940s are of paramount significance to the artist’s oeuvre. In these seminal years, Pousette-Dart created some of the most groundbreaking works by any artist at this period, abandoning representative figuration for total abstraction. Just prior to this dramatic shift, he experimented with cutting simplified, amorphous shapes out of thick sheet metal that resembled the Pre-Columbian and Native American art and objects he had seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These brasses were first debuted at Willard Gallery in 1943 in a solo-exhibition of works by the artist entitled Forms in Brass. The exhibition, Pousette-Dart’s first with the gallery, also featured Composition Number 1 as the only painting in the show, further demonstrating how its biomorphic interpretations of teardrops, ellipses and totems seemed to be derived from these small sculptures. The inclusion of Composition Number 1 in the landmark 1943 Forms in Brass exhibition is a clear testament to the work’s importance as one of the first Abstract Expressionist paintings that featured an all-over composition and notions of the artist’s inner psyche. Paul Kruty elaborates: "As Pousette-Dart's ambition and accomplishment grew, so did the size of his canvases. The years 1942 and 1943 saw the creation of Composition Number 1 [the present work], Fugue Number 2 [Museum of Modern Art, New York] and Symphony Number 1, The Transcendental [The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]. The overpainting on these three has produced a crust of thick impasto. Edges are blurred. Colors, intense in places, recede between the dominant black and white. The thick black bars, spirals and curves of Composition Number 1 define a Tinguely-like cosmic machine, enriched with saturated blues and greens and sharp, red highlights. With its slowly moving great 'commas,' derived from the skull form; its myriad diamonds, spirals, beats and wings; and its intersecting grids and circles holding these elements fast—the whole overdrawn with shimmering white lines—[these paintings] seem to encompass the world" (Paul Kruty, "Richard Pousette-Dart, Paintings 1939-1985," in Exh. Cat., Fort Lauderdale, Museum of Art, Transcending Abstraction: Richard Pousette-Dart, Paintings 1939-1985, 1986, p. 27). A painter’s equivalent to a masterful symphony with bold, resplendent crescendos and introspective diminuendos, Composition Number 1 is a true artistic achievement with its dense, built-up surfaces of pigment and a graphic vibrancy that challenges the notions of its own two-dimensionality.