American Male Artist

G.B. Trudeau

Doonesbury

Robert Motherwell

The Berggruen Series

Richard Prince

Through processes of appropriation, Richard Prince explores the distinctive iconography of modern America. Surveying the cultural landscape with a gaze that is both searching and oddly inscrutable, he draws influence from the worlds of entertainment, branding and advertising. From cowboys to motorcycles, he works with a readymade pictorial mythology, displaying an instinctive understanding of pop cultural and sub-cultural imagery.

KAWS

Brooklyn-based artist KAWS re-appropriates bits of popular culture and transforms them into eye catching iconic paintings. His cartoon-like characters, recognizable to the media savvy public, undergo a sardonic set of alterations. The present lot depicts the popular children’s cartoon character, SpongeBob SquarePants. KAWS explains, “I started doing SpongeBob paintings for Pharrell. Then I started doing smaller paintings, which got much more abstract. And SpongeBob was something I wanted to do because graphically I love the shapes.” (KAWS in conversation with Toby Maguire,