Find Lots

• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Australian Art Collection of Sandra Powell & Andrew King
• Sale Date:
  19 Mar 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  27
• Lot Description:
  Ivan John Durrant
  (Born 1947)
  Three Fur Hats, 1975
  acrylic on composition board
  80 x 121.5cm
  signed and dated '75 lower right
• Provenance:
  Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Mr Mike Martorana collection; Leonard Joel, Australian and European Paintings, 20 & 21 April 1999, lot 306 'On the Bench'
• Exhibited:
  The Great Fancy Dress Ball, Race Crowds: Ivan Durrant; Recent Paintings, Tolarno, Melbourne, 22 March - 3 April 1975; Survey 8: Ivan Durant, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 12 May - 17 June 1979, cat. 33
• References:
  Survey 8: Ivan Durant, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, pp. 2-3 (illustrated); Gary Catalano, 'Crazy Bugger', The Bulletin, 25 October 1975 (illustrated)
• Notes:
  This is a finely painted work by Ivan Durrant produced in the year the artist rose to prominence in response to the presentation of his best known work, Beverly the Amazing Cow (The Slaughtered Cow), 1975. In this macabre happening the artist placed a freshly slaughtered cow in front of the National Gallery of Victoria. For, however much shock value and bad publicity the artist gained from the exercise, in hindsight we can value the act for its noble, socio-political and avant-garde qualities. Another aspect which was not as appreciated at the time was Durrant's incredible skill as a painter and that he practiced this concurrently with his more public and sensational installations. His photorealist paintings were a more gentile and palatable form of his art practice, but they nevertheless address similar concerns to his more sensational pieces. The scenes of horseracing punters can at first appear to be prosaic, banal and quotidian snapshots of the affairs around the field. However, the titles ascribed to these works betray any neutrality perceived and often point to his animal rights activist nature. Three Fur Hats1 1975, closely related to The Lady in the Leopard Skin (1976, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), shows the artist at his painterly best. Rodney James, on the occasion of the artist's recent exhibition at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery noted how Durrant 'was one of the first Australian artists to really explore the possibilities of photorealism; he went to New York in the 70s and met a lot of the artists there that were working in that particular way'2. Gary Catalano's contemporary review of the 1975 Tolarno exhibition also pointed to these 'cool, intelligent paintings of people at the races É but Durrant is not your usual kind of photo-realist. None of his figures stare out glumly at the viewer, as people in photo-realist paintings often do; nor do they feign [a] frigid awareness'3. 1 The painting was incorrectly titled 'On the Bench' and catalogued as 'gouache' in the 1999 Leonard Joel auction. The literature noted above has confirmed the painting's original title. 2 Landscapes and Horses: Ivan Durrant, Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery, 15 February - 26 April 2011; See Art Nation: Ivan Durrant, ABC [online video]: http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s3180052.htm 3 Gary Catalano, 'Crazy Bugger', The Bulletin, 25 October
• Estimate:
  A$8,000 - 12,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

  Can't see the realised price? Upgrade your subscription now!

• Category:
  Art

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