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Amy Sillman — Untitled (Purple Bottle)
Amy Sillman

Untitled (Purple Bottle)

2013

In "Untitled (Purple Bottle)," Amy Sillman deploys oil paint with a restless, probing intelligence, building up a composition in which a single vessel becomes the occasion for a much larger argument about form, color, and instability. The purple bottle at the work's center oscillates between representational legibility and pure painterly incident, its contours shifting as gestural marks accumulate and recede across the canvas. Sillman's characteristic layering is fully evident here, with passages of warm and cool tones pressing against one another, creating a surface that rewards sustained looking and resists easy resolution. Measuring roughly 129.5 by 73.7 centimeters, the canvas offers a generous vertical field in which the figure/ground relationship is continually renegotiated. The scale is intimate enough to feel personal yet substantial enough to assert a physical presence in a room, and the work's proportions seem calibrated to keep the eye moving rather than settling. Sillman's handling in this period reflected her ongoing engagement with the history of modernist painting, filtering influences from de Kooning to Guston through a sensibility that is distinctly contemporary and critically self-aware. Completed in 2013, a period when Sillman's critical and market profile was rising significantly, the work represents a mature and confident example of her practice. It has been held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, lending it a strong institutional provenance that underscores its place within a serious conversation about painting today. The signed canvas comes unframed, allowing the collector full discretion in presentation.

Medium
Oil on canvas
Overall
Signed
Yes
Location
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States

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About this work

Amy Sillman, Untitled (Purple Bottle), 2013

In "Untitled (Purple Bottle)," Amy Sillman deploys oil paint with a restless, probing intelligence, building up a composition in which a single vessel becomes the occasion for a much larger argument about form, color, and instability. The purple bottle at the work's center oscillates between representational legibility and pure painterly incident, its contours shifting as gestural marks accumulate and recede across the canvas. Sillman's characteristic layering is fully evident here, with passages of warm and cool tones pressing against one another, creating a surface that rewards sustained looking and resists easy resolution. Measuring roughly 129.5 by 73.7 centimeters, the canvas offers a generous vertical field in which the figure/ground relationship is continually renegotiated. The scale is intimate enough to feel personal yet substantial enough to assert a physical presence in a room, and the work's proportions seem calibrated to keep the eye moving rather than settling. Sillman's handling in this period reflected her ongoing engagement with the history of modernist painting, filtering influences from de Kooning to Guston through a sensibility that is distinctly contemporary and critically self-aware. Completed in 2013, a period when Sillman's critical and market profile was rising significantly, the work represents a mature and confident example of her practice. It has been held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, lending it a strong institutional provenance that underscores its place within a serious conversation about painting today. The signed canvas comes unframed, allowing the collector full discretion in presentation.

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 129.5 x 73.7 x 3.8 cm
Year
2013
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States

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