Beschreibung:

Property from an Esteemed East Coast Collection7Dana SchutzTrump Descending an Escalatorsigned and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2017’ on the reverse oil on canvas 223.5 x 190.5 cm (88 x 75 in.) Painted in 2017. Full CataloguingEstimate £380,000 - 580,000 ‡ Place Advance BidContact Specialist Kate Bryan Specialist, Head of Evening Sale +44 20 7318 4026 kbryan@phillips.com
OverviewReplete with pictorial intricacies and conceptual paradoxes, Dana Schutz’s paintings are a snapshot of contemporary life. They are at once evident and enigmatic – containing all the power of painterly evocation, whilst at the same time engaging with real life events. Devised in larger-than-life dimensions and immersed in a kaleidoscopic array of colour, Trump Descending an Escalator embodies such stylistic ingenuity. On the one hand, the eponymous protagonist is bestowed with instantly recognisable traits; on the other, the background against which he is set recedes into lush abstraction, emanating flurries of blue, purple and green strokes, dotted with round patches of white paint. Painted in 2016, the same year Donald Trump assumed office as President of the United States, the composition motions back to the decisive instant that presaged the politician’s meteoric rise to power in America and beyond. As elucidated by the work’s title, the scene specifically portrays Trump’s descent from his titular Tower on the day he first announced his presidential campaign. Though at the time this moment seemed to carry only moderate importance, the event subsequently became anchored in history, pinpointing the exact moment when Trump – a then famous actor, reality TV presentor and realtor – stepped into the world of politics. 'To make a painting with people and things is not just ‘subjective whatever-ness.’ It’s who we are and where we come from and can parallel the world, not just in a fictional or allegorical way, but also structurally. And paintings and images can feel so real! They can act as agents in the world.' —Dana SchutzFollowing from Schutz’s idiosyncratic tendency to address historical and, at times, provocative subject matters, Trump Descending an Escalator forms part of an extensive art-historical tradition of political portraiture that includes Andy Warhol Robert Rauschenberg and Kehinde Wiley’s instantly iconic representations of Chairman Mao, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. With its distinct subject matter, Trump Descending an Escalator moreover heralds a symbol that marries the solemnity of American politics with the gloss and energy of the country’s cultural arena, epitomising Schutz’s fascination with the ambivalent phenomenon of fame, which she had previously explored in painterly renditions of Michael Jackson and George W. Bush. Testament to her cornerstone status within the canon of contemporary art, Schutz is currently having her first-ever solo exhibition in London at Thomas Dane Gallery, which will run from 16 September to 19 December 2020. Robert Rauschenberg Retroactive II, 1963, oil, silkscreen, and ink on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020. Image: © MCA Chicago. Andy Warhol Mao Tse-Tung, 1972, screenprint, Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London. Image: 2020, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. Political Portraiture in Contemporary Art Kehinde Wiley President Barack Obama, 2018, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. © 2020 Kehinde Wiley Image: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Schutz’s ‘Very True’ Paintings Though the first presentation of Schutz’s work occurred whilst she was studying at Columbia University, and the curator Klaus Biesenbach included one of her painted portraits in a group show at MoMA PS1 in 2001, the artist’s creative sensibility can be traced back to her adolescence, when, at the age of seventeen, her mother gave her access to the basement of their home, and taught her how to stretch a canvas. ‘It was like turning a switch’, Schutz’s mother recalled. ‘She would be down in the basement for hours and hours, sometimes through the night’.i As she grew into her craft, Schutz’s foremost inspirations became artists s