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Lot Essay
Richard Estes' cinematic portrayal of Antarctica in Antarctica VI is one of the largest and grandest of the Antarctica series. Antarctica VI introduces Estes as an extremely accomplished painter of landscape, in this instance Estes' focus is on a desolate and transient arctic ice-shelf, ever shifting in form while adrift at sea. The subject of this painting is most curious as it appears to deviate quite strongly from the work that we are used to seeing by the artist, compressed city scapes shattered by impossibly complex mirror, glass and enamel reflections. Madeleine Deschamps-Huppert has termed Estes' metropolitan pictures as "'Capitalist Realism' characterized by an accepted industrialized uniformity, and by a 'mass media knowledge, purely visual', in which counts only the appearance, apparently with 'an impartiality' which is relative, being that of 'the camera eye', which does not require a 'sensorial knowledge'" (exh. cat, Richard Estes, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2007, p. 78). This is an apt description of these pictures and places them in a significant context and framework that assists in unraveling the dialectic of Estes' works, they are striking, perhaps deceptively simple but full of information and content; visual and conceptual.
Antarctica VI is incredibly effective in its well-considered format and composition. Estes places the viewer in his shoes, in the moment, as an explorer recording a remote and hostile environment with a handheld camera. We can deduce that the camera is being held out at arm's length to best capture the landscape yet still including a sliver of the passenger boat at far right so as to keep us grounded and in "the moment", not one of complete transcendence, he gets us close but ultimately holds back from the idealized pastiche of 19th century landscape painting.
Estes' work recalls the recent work of other fellow contemporary artist's such as Ed Ruscha. Ruscha's exultant 'Mountain Pictures' employ devices that have been common to Estes' vocabulary for decades, albeit in a slightly different manner-Ruscha uses photographic representation to produce a seductive illusion of majestic mountain tops that often mirror to right and left around a central vertical axis. All of Estes' paintings employ reflections which by nature provide alternate views of the same subject, in Antarctica VI the symmetry and reflection occurs within the tide of the ocean. Furthermore, Ruscha often includes palindromes within these works; words that by nature are read the same forwards and backwards as in "Lion in Oil", the words themselves act as another layer of bilateral symmetry in the composition.
Antarctica VI is an incredible landscape of our time, a world presently at the brink of environmental crisis, a warming planet that threatens the polar ice caps that are the central subject of this work. The painting is a powerhouse of pictorial ability but equally interesting is the hidden world beneath the icebergs surface, a time capsule that protects secrets of the earth's beginnings and perhaps even secrets to its survival. The painting may not be an all-out cry for environmentalism but it does assist in raising our consciousness and interest in the beauty of a place that is rarely seen or experienced firsthand-it brings us closer than any photograph ever could.
Antarctica VI is incredibly effective in its well-considered format and composition. Estes places the viewer in his shoes, in the moment, as an explorer recording a remote and hostile environment with a handheld camera. We can deduce that the camera is being held out at arm's length to best capture the landscape yet still including a sliver of the passenger boat at far right so as to keep us grounded and in "the moment", not one of complete transcendence, he gets us close but ultimately holds back from the idealized pastiche of 19th century landscape painting.
Estes' work recalls the recent work of other fellow contemporary artist's such as Ed Ruscha. Ruscha's exultant 'Mountain Pictures' employ devices that have been common to Estes' vocabulary for decades, albeit in a slightly different manner-Ruscha uses photographic representation to produce a seductive illusion of majestic mountain tops that often mirror to right and left around a central vertical axis. All of Estes' paintings employ reflections which by nature provide alternate views of the same subject, in Antarctica VI the symmetry and reflection occurs within the tide of the ocean. Furthermore, Ruscha often includes palindromes within these works; words that by nature are read the same forwards and backwards as in "Lion in Oil", the words themselves act as another layer of bilateral symmetry in the composition.
Antarctica VI is an incredible landscape of our time, a world presently at the brink of environmental crisis, a warming planet that threatens the polar ice caps that are the central subject of this work. The painting is a powerhouse of pictorial ability but equally interesting is the hidden world beneath the icebergs surface, a time capsule that protects secrets of the earth's beginnings and perhaps even secrets to its survival. The painting may not be an all-out cry for environmentalism but it does assist in raising our consciousness and interest in the beauty of a place that is rarely seen or experienced firsthand-it brings us closer than any photograph ever could.