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Lot Essay
‘In New York at that time there was such an enormous tendency toward the minimal, the non-emotional, the anti-emotional even, that I wanted to say something again about emotion, about the ugly side of things. I wanted to return the raw human fleshy characteristics to the art’ – P. Thek
Paul Thek first came to prominence in 1960s New York. His visceral practice encompassed a wide range of media; today, after his death in 1988 from complications related to AIDS, he is perhaps best known for his ‘meat pieces,’ startlingly realistic chunks of flesh sculpted in wax and encased in reliquary Perspex vitrines. Long thought of as an ‘artist’s artist’ – the meat pieces were a great inspiration to Damien Hirst in the 1990s – interest in Thek’s boundary-pushing work has recently revived following a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2010-11. In Untitled, Thek brings his talent as a painter to bear on similarly fleshy subject matter. From a distance, the lyrical flowering of faceted pink, white and yellow hues looks like a delicate abstract pattern. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that what we are seeing are in fact fibres and cells of muscle and fat, blown up as if viewed under a microscope slide. Thek has painted the texture and tone of these tissues with extraordinary care, conveying caverns and fissures in crystalline detail – the left-hand side of the composition looks almost like a topographical map. Some areas are highlighted in metallic gold, lending the composition an aura of near-sacred significance. Thek deliberately leaves a large expanse of the picture empty, however, with only pencil outlines to indicate the territory, and also frames the image with blank rectilinear zones as if to underline its careful creation: this is no Abstract Expressionist effusion, but a meticulous record of physical life. Thek conjures painterly splendour from an anatomical gaze, finding a microcosmic world of exquisite beauty inside the body itself.
Paul Thek first came to prominence in 1960s New York. His visceral practice encompassed a wide range of media; today, after his death in 1988 from complications related to AIDS, he is perhaps best known for his ‘meat pieces,’ startlingly realistic chunks of flesh sculpted in wax and encased in reliquary Perspex vitrines. Long thought of as an ‘artist’s artist’ – the meat pieces were a great inspiration to Damien Hirst in the 1990s – interest in Thek’s boundary-pushing work has recently revived following a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2010-11. In Untitled, Thek brings his talent as a painter to bear on similarly fleshy subject matter. From a distance, the lyrical flowering of faceted pink, white and yellow hues looks like a delicate abstract pattern. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that what we are seeing are in fact fibres and cells of muscle and fat, blown up as if viewed under a microscope slide. Thek has painted the texture and tone of these tissues with extraordinary care, conveying caverns and fissures in crystalline detail – the left-hand side of the composition looks almost like a topographical map. Some areas are highlighted in metallic gold, lending the composition an aura of near-sacred significance. Thek deliberately leaves a large expanse of the picture empty, however, with only pencil outlines to indicate the territory, and also frames the image with blank rectilinear zones as if to underline its careful creation: this is no Abstract Expressionist effusion, but a meticulous record of physical life. Thek conjures painterly splendour from an anatomical gaze, finding a microcosmic world of exquisite beauty inside the body itself.