Post War & Contemporary Art 
22 May 2024
Post War & Contemporary Art 
178

Richard Artschwager 1923–2013

T.W.M.D.R.B. (Smouldering)

1988
acrylic on Celotex in artist's frame 48 h × 49 w in (122 × 124 cm)
estimate: $30,000–50,000
result: $32,760
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Signed, titled and dated to verso ‘T.W.M.D.R.B. (Smoldering) 1988 Artschwager’.
provenance: Leo Castelli Gallery, New York | Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London | Christie's, New York, Contemporary Art, 23 February 1994, Lot 95 | Private Collection
exhibited: Richard Artschwager: Selected Works 1964-1988, June - September 1988, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London
literature: Richard Artschwager: Selected Works 1964-1988, Nicola Jacobs Gallery exhibition catalog, no. 18

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The House Is On Fire

Richard Artschwager’s ‘T.W.M.D.R.B. (Smoldering)’

In 1974, Richard Artschwager started the series Basket Table Door Window Mirror Rug, a group of drawings that features various configurations of the titular domestic objects. Artschwager completed the present work, T.W.M.D.R.B. (Smoldering), in 1988; the work depicts the six objects ablaze at the center of the composition in a gesture that simultaneously represents destruction and renewal. “The question of the object,” reads the intro to the artist's book Basket Table Door Window Mirror Rug, “...is filled with pitfalls for the unwary. What, after all, is the edifice which we call (variously) culture, history or art but an elaborate superstructure which we build over these pitfalls in an attempt to bring us into a tenuous relationship with the potentially external?” 

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