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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  The Warwick & Kitty Brown Collection
• Sale Date:
  17 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
  18 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  24
• Lot Description:
  Tony Fomison
  Lucifer Evil Flower
  oil on jute canvas on board, 1979 - 1980
  775mm x 910mm
  signed and dated Fomison 1979 - 1980 and inscribed Lucifer Evil Flower in brushpoint centre right and Lucifer in pencil, top right, verso; original Fomison What Shall We Tell Them? City Gallery touring exhibition label affixed verso, inscribed No. 60 Crate No. 2 EXHIBITED: Fomison: What Shall We Tell Them?, a touring exhibition; City Gallery, Wellington, 13 February - 22 May 1994; Robert McDougall Art Gallery, now Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwhetu, Christchurch, 29 July - 11 September 1994; Waikato Museum Te Whare Taongo O Waikato, October 1994 - January 1995; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, March - April 1995; Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, May - July 1995. Family Reunion: Selected works from the Warwick and Kitty Brown collection, NORTHART, Auckland, 19 February to 12 March 2017.
• Provenance:
  Purchased Denis Cohn Gallery, Auckland 1980.
• References:
  The Dominion Sunday Times, 10/5/1987, p. 19, Fomison stands alone, Warwick Brown; ILLUSTRATED: Fomison - What shall we tell them? City Gallery, Wellington, 1994, p. 119.
• Notes:
  Accompanied by original loan agreement letter to Warwick Brown from Ian Wedde, Guest Curator, Fomison: What Shall We Tell Them?, City Gallery, Wellington, dated 13/8/1993. Requested for loan for future exhibition Dark Arts, City Gallery Wellington, 12 August until 9 November 2017. The new owner may decide if they wish to place the work into this exhibition. ESSAY: Much has been written about Tony Fomison's cryptic, allegorical oeuvre.The more he withheld information from his audience, the greater the desire became to understand his imagery. In Lucifer, evil flower, as it is with much of his imagery, meaning is hard to pin down; it resists easy explanation. With the distinct air of gothic melodrama, Lucifer's large glowing head emerges from parting sheaths of the same sienna-brown tone and gazes unsteadily to the right. The petals of this 'evil flower' suggestively form a high-backed collar but alsoan unfurling palm. That to the right echoes the recesses and volume of the cave structures in the epic Not Just a Picnic [Auckland Art Gallery, 1980-81]. Linda Tyler sees within it the undulations of an anamorphic skull; readings need not be mutually exclusive. A line of hessian across the forehead seems to hold the head in suspension. White pigment signals light hitting 'flesh' or, in full-blown melodrama, the heat of hell but also, confoundingly, more ethereal qualities. Fomison conjures atmospheric luminosity and chiaroscuro through his distinctive tonal vocabulary in which the texture of rough support is a key player. The figure is contrasted with a surrounding hue of milky sea-green; it alerts us to Fomison's new colouristic enquiry. Lucifer's features are broadly similar to those of many of Fomison's Māori and Polynesian subjects. The set of his mouth above a curiously long chin might suggest a "sneer", as Warwick Brown suggests, grim resolve, the pleasure of a private joke or a shifting sense of all of these. The biblical 'Lucifer' is variously understood as 'Satan', 'fallen angel' and 'shining one, light-bearer', and is embodied in the story of the King of Tyre, who was felled by his own ego. The year Lucifer was begun, a major survey exhibition of Fomison's work showed at the The Dowse Art Museum and later in Auckland.The artist had earned significant public recognition. Born in Christchurch in 1939, the solitary youth and student of archaeology was intensely drawn to the early cave sites and history of Kāi Tahu. He meditated on themes of life and death, birth and regression, good and evil, 'outsider-ness', Māori history and myths, and environmental issues. His recurring iconography included: Christ, St Anthony, jesters and clowns, prophets, prison cells, caves, nocturnes and crypts.The bookish, resolutely working-class artist drew on 'low' and 'high' visual culture, turning more to the imagination by 1980. After his move to Auckland in 1973, his keen interest in Samoan life led to his painful, ceremonial pe'a (male tattoo) by friend Sulu'ape Paulo II - this was the year that Lucifer was begun.Ian Wedde summarises of Fomison: "These were his needs: genealogy, transgression, forgiveness, adoption, initiation". In 1979, Fomison also painted a small crouching figure in Narcissus, referencing the Greek allegory of overweening vanity that would ultimately transform the subject into the narcissus flower.Is Lucifer, the 'flower', implied by the theme of Narcissus? Fomison's "sly gurgling sense of humour", remembered by John Summer, can be considered along with a range of possible connotations. Kyla MacKenzie
• Estimate:
  NZ$120,000 - 150,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.