Pol 1 (Smart Estrus)

Details

Michael Bauer (B. 1973)
Pol 1 (Smart Estrus)
signed, titled and dated 'M.Bauer 2005 Pol 1 (smart Estrus)' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
55 1/8 x 47 ¼in. (140 x 120cm.)
Painted in 2005

Provenance

Hotel Gallery, London.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005.

Literature

J. Cape & Saatchi Gallery (ed.), Germania, London 2008 (illustrated in colour, pp. 90-91).

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. VAT rate of 20% is payable on hammer price and buyer's premium All sold and unsold lots marked with a filled square in the catalogue that are not cleared from Christie’s by 5:00 pm on the day of the sale, and all sold and unsold lots not cleared from Christie’s by 5:00 pm on the fifth Friday following the sale, will be removed to the warehouse of ‘Cadogan Tate’. Please note that there will be no charge to purchasers who collect their lots within two weeks of this sale.

Lot Essay

With its biomorphic forms and distorted conglomeration of doodled elements, Pol 1 (Smart Esrus), 2005, bears witness to Michael Bauer’s play with the iconography of power. A male profile, framed by a decorative vignette, appears as a grotesque heraldic emblem, reminiscent of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s bizarre anthropomorphic portraits, his grey and muddy forms entangling like entrails. Lumpy scar tissue and decaying matter converge to form a forlorn memento mori. Bauer balances the obscene with the delicate, creating a fragile seduction within his barbarous image. Subtitled Smart Estrus, Bauer’s painting suggests lurid tales of patriarchal power and noble lineage.

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