20th Century Art 
30 October 2024
20th Century Art 
127

Christian Marclay b.1955

Untitled (from the Abstract Music series)

1989
cardboard album cover collage 12½ h × 12⅜ w in (32 × 31 cm)
estimate: $8,000–12,000
result: $8,820
follow artist
own a similar item?
free evaluation

In the present work, Christian Marclay altered an iconic Andy Williams double album (with photograph by Frank Bez).
Signed and dated to verso ‘Christian Marclay 1989’.
provenance: Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York | Acquired from the previous in 1989 by the present owner

This work will ship from Los Angeles, California.

print

In the 1989–90 series “Abstract Music,” Marclay exposed the absurdity of such [high art/low art] classifications (and attempts to circumvent them) by painting over the mostly Abstract Expressionist paintings reproduced on a group of record covers, by this act transmuting them into “real” artworks, and, not incidentally, obliterating any information about the record—the music—that the jacket might be expected to provide.

Sabine Vogel, Artforum

127