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2Salman ToorAashiana (Hearth and Home)signed and dated 'Salman Toor '12' on the reverse oil on canvas 101.6 x 111.8 cm (40 x 44 in.) Painted in 2012. Full CataloguingEstimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡ Place Advance BidContact Specialist Kate Bryan Specialist, Head of Evening Sale +44 20 7318 4026 kbryan@phillips.com
Overview'I think of the pictures as short stories where the emphasis falls on unexpected places, seemingly mundane situations become illuminating or interesting ones. It’s a way of dealing in clichés and daring to do them well.'— Salman Toor Currently the subject of significant critical and institutional praise – most compellingly materialised by a major solo exhibition slated to take place at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York – the Pakistani-born artist Salman Toor explores subjects of intimacy and togetherness, specifically in the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men residing between the city of New York and South Asia. Combining academic technique and a quick, sketch-like style, Toor’s Aashiana (Hearth and Home) depicts a mother lovingly embracing her two young daughters whilst glancing at an open book. At the lower centre of the composition, obfuscating the lain book and turning his back to the viewer, a miniature man – perhaps the real protagonist of the picture – looks onto the scene, shadowed to the right by a group of seated witnesses. Behind the woman and children, a lush background takes shape combining real elements (a sky, a bushy forest, a car) and quasi-fantastical components (a gingerbread house, cartoonishly colourful trees). The three layers with which Toor composes the overall image seem progressional: the first, depicting the seemingly impoverished minuscule figures, point and lead to the second, featuring an ostensibly Westernised mother with her daughters, finally culminating in a busy, colourful backdrop, emblematic of modern Western culture. As such, Aashiana (Hearth and Home) captures the artist’s ability to portray people ‘who stand at the crux of two societies: one being developing countries; and the other, the 'developed' West’.i Academic Undertones Drawing from his education in academic painting, Toor confessed, ‘I definitely look at the world through an art historical lens, always finding it everywhere’.ii During his studies at Ohio Wesleyan University, followed by his MFA at Pratt Institute, from 2006 to 2009, the artist spent countless hours poring over the works of Rococo, Baroque, and Neoclassical-era masters including Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jean-Antoine Watteau Over the course of his growing up in Lahore, Pakistan, he also became deeply knowledgeable about the works of modern Pakistani and Indian painters such as Colin David Bhupen Khakhar and Amrita Sher-Gil comprising their idiosyncratic modes of portraiture within his own painterly representations. In Aashiana (Hearth and Home), the layered image’s multifarious themes blend categories of old and new, where inspiration from Old Master painting techniques meld seamlessly with imagery from South Asian mass-media and popular culture. The family scene dominating the centre of the composition bears conspicuous affinities with the biblical tableaux highlighting the relationship between Mary and her son Jesus – notably Rubens’s tender formulation of the subject, residing at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Peter Paul Rubens, Virgin with Child, circa 16th century, oil on canvas, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Image: Bridgeman Images. Modernising the familial theme and bringing light to current issues, Aashiana (Hearth and Home) presages Toor’s more recent works, of which the atmospheric feel presents a unique vision of the complexities and exchanges between South Asian popular culture and the art historical traditions of Western idealisation. It specifically echoes the artist’s 9PM, The News, currently residing in the Tate, London, which similarly depicts a family sitting around a table, following their evening meal. Salman Toor, 9PM, the News, 2015, oil on canvas, Tate Collection, London. © Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Image: Tate, London. Between East and West Much of Toor’s early source material also came from Pakistani advertisements, as well as S