Where Does It All End?

Details

Sarah Lucas (b. 1962)
Where Does It All End?
wax and cigarette butt
2½ x 3¾ x 2½in. (6.4 x 9.5 x 6.4cm.)
Executed in 1994, this work is number four from an edition of ten plus two artist's proofs

Provenance

Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature

J. van Adrichem, 'Where Does It All End?' in: Parkett, No. 45, 1995 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 86)
Brilliant! New Art from London, exh. cat., Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1996 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 64).
Sarah Lucas, exh. cat., Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 1996 (another from the edition illustrated, pp. 13 and 47).
Sarah Lucas, exh. cat., Frankfurt, Portikus, 1996 (another from the edition illustrated, front cover and p. 17).
Minky Manky, exh. cat., London, South London Gallery, 1997 (another from the edition illustrated, unpaged).
Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, exh. cat., London, Royal Academy of Art, 1997 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 117). This exhibition later travelled to Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof and New York, Brooklyn Museum of Art.
B. Riemschneider and U. Grosenick (eds.), Art at the Turn of the Millennium, Cologne 1999, no. 2 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 327).
J. Barnbrook and J. Beard, Young British Art: The Saatchi Decade, London 1999 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 209).
M. Collings, Sarah Lucas, London 2002 (another from the edition illustrated, pp. 90-91).
R. Stange, 'Objects of Desire' in Women Artists in the 20th and 21st Century, Cologne 2001 (illustrated in colour, p. 334).
M. Karabelnik (ed.), Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art, London 2004 (another from the edition illustrated in colour, p. 236).
Y. Dziewior and B. Ruf (eds.), Sarah Lucas Catalogue Raisonné 1989-2005, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005 (another from the edition illustrated, pp. 97 and 126).

Exhibited

New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Supersensible, 1995.

Special Notice

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Lot Essay

Where does it all end? is an example of Lucas's self-portraiture where she presents herself as alternatively crude, laid-back and defiant. The work is a play on the visual and linguistic expressions of anger and aggression. The colour of the wax has a certain degree of naturalism, but it also represents hostility. It appears like a face without skin. The expression is not necessarily one of anger, but a threatening grimace that is naked and raw. The exasperated title is not a hopeful one and evokes an expression of resigned despair: "I don't make things which are really preciously made. I don't have the patience to be whittling away at something forever. I make things how I am, in the way I'd naturally do something." (The artist quoted in C. Freedman, 'Bollocks', in: Parkett, no. 45, 1995, p. 109.)
However, there is dexterity and control in her work. Lucas has pared down, edited out the unnecessary, to create an independent concise form. Lucas's interest in the material condition of the artwork, her use of casts and the reference to her own physique and person suggest an affinity with the work of Jasper Johns Target with Plaster Casts 1955, Bruce Nauman From Hand to Mouth 1967, and Robert Gober Untitled Leg 1989-90.

Where Does It All End?

Lot Essay

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