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Lot Essay
John Chamberlain’s Tomago is a large-scale work that celebrates the emotive power of color. Initially the artist incorporated “found” color that was already present in the discarded automobile parts he used, but as his career progressed he began to include his own added color into his works. Chamberlain had a particular skill for successfully blending these found colors with his added ones to produce an almost seamless continuum, as can be seen here in Tomago with the splash of red at the bottom left of the vertical element, the range of green and yellow tonalities, the bronze shadings, and the flat, gunmetal gray unpainted surfaces. Chamberlain’s sculpture has been likened to Abstract Expressionist painting, but rendered in three-dimensions. In addition, his early sculptures created during the first years of the 1960s introduced color to the medium in an era where few sculptures were then being rendered in colors; the artist’s work was a jolt of excitement for viewers used to seeing sculptures without rich chromatic surfaces.
Tomago is strongly vertical in orientation, with its powerful central axis reaching upward, supporting a contrasting horizontal element positioned at the top of the piece. It is a substantial-sized work—over seven feet in height—but Chamberlain was always more interested in proportion than sheer size, seeking ways to fit the disparate elements together in a harmonious way, indeed the word “fit” being central to his very concept of sculpture. Chamberlain would speak of the importance of “choice” and “fit” in regard to his working method. Curators think of him as a collagist for his ability to define a complete work from what had previously been scattered, disparate elements. “Chamberlain’s work presents shifts in scale, materials, and methods informed by the assemblage process that has been central to his working method. ‘I’m basically a collagist. I put one thing together with another thing. I sort of invented my own art supplies’” (J. Chamberlain and S. Davidson, John Chamberlain: Choices, New York, 2012, p. 27).
His choice of material led Chamberlain to be associated early in his career in the 1960s with the strategies of Pop, with its interests in consumer objects and consumer culture. But Chamberlain had his own unique voice and style and his instantly recognizable work can truly be considered sui generis, in a class by itself. Never interested in referring to automobiles, as such, as the explicit subject of his work, his real interest was in re-using and ultimately transforming everyday materials through his art practice, and this was consistent with the Assemblage Art aesthetic with which he was sometimes associated (He was included in the 1961 group exhibition "Art of Assemblage," a landmark group show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York).
Chamberlain worked with other resonant and unconventional materials (plexiglass, galvanized steel, foam rubber) but he always returned to the automotive steel, relishing the range of colors and shapes to be found in the scrap metal, and the possibilities these offered. His art was part of a quest that a number of artists (Claes Oldenburg, Lee Bontecou, Robert Morris, to name a few) pursued during the 1960s, with the goal of redefining sculpture through the use of unconventional materials and methods of display.
He spoke of "‘the idea of the squeeze and the compression and the fit.’ The realization of a sculpture depended upon the successful interlocking of scrap metals” (quoted in D. Waldman, John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition. New York, 1971, p. 7). He strove to build sculptural objects and find expressive possibilities through the diverse ways that his materials yielded to or resisted the forces of compression. By squeezing, joining and compressing the individual pieces Chamberlain achieves an organic feeling in Tomago, as if the sculpture grew this way instead of being shaped from outside.
Tomago is strongly vertical in orientation, with its powerful central axis reaching upward, supporting a contrasting horizontal element positioned at the top of the piece. It is a substantial-sized work—over seven feet in height—but Chamberlain was always more interested in proportion than sheer size, seeking ways to fit the disparate elements together in a harmonious way, indeed the word “fit” being central to his very concept of sculpture. Chamberlain would speak of the importance of “choice” and “fit” in regard to his working method. Curators think of him as a collagist for his ability to define a complete work from what had previously been scattered, disparate elements. “Chamberlain’s work presents shifts in scale, materials, and methods informed by the assemblage process that has been central to his working method. ‘I’m basically a collagist. I put one thing together with another thing. I sort of invented my own art supplies’” (J. Chamberlain and S. Davidson, John Chamberlain: Choices, New York, 2012, p. 27).
His choice of material led Chamberlain to be associated early in his career in the 1960s with the strategies of Pop, with its interests in consumer objects and consumer culture. But Chamberlain had his own unique voice and style and his instantly recognizable work can truly be considered sui generis, in a class by itself. Never interested in referring to automobiles, as such, as the explicit subject of his work, his real interest was in re-using and ultimately transforming everyday materials through his art practice, and this was consistent with the Assemblage Art aesthetic with which he was sometimes associated (He was included in the 1961 group exhibition "Art of Assemblage," a landmark group show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York).
Chamberlain worked with other resonant and unconventional materials (plexiglass, galvanized steel, foam rubber) but he always returned to the automotive steel, relishing the range of colors and shapes to be found in the scrap metal, and the possibilities these offered. His art was part of a quest that a number of artists (Claes Oldenburg, Lee Bontecou, Robert Morris, to name a few) pursued during the 1960s, with the goal of redefining sculpture through the use of unconventional materials and methods of display.
He spoke of "‘the idea of the squeeze and the compression and the fit.’ The realization of a sculpture depended upon the successful interlocking of scrap metals” (quoted in D. Waldman, John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition. New York, 1971, p. 7). He strove to build sculptural objects and find expressive possibilities through the diverse ways that his materials yielded to or resisted the forces of compression. By squeezing, joining and compressing the individual pieces Chamberlain achieves an organic feeling in Tomago, as if the sculpture grew this way instead of being shaped from outside.