Lot 19
Cyprien Gaillard(B. 1980)Not Yet Titled, 2010
15 February 2020, 12:00 PST
Los AngelesSold for US$36,325 inc. premium
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Cyprien Gaillard (B. 1980)
Not Yet Titled, 2010
oil and screenprint on canvas
25 5/8 x 33 7/8 in.
65 x 86 cm.
oil and screenprint on canvas
25 5/8 x 33 7/8 in.
65 x 86 cm.
Footnotes
This lot is offered without a reserve.
Provenance
Sprueth Magers, Berlin, acquired directly from the artist
Private collection
Private collection
Cyprien Gaillard was born in Paris in 1980 and raised in both France and the United States. Gaillard's work, ranging from filmmaking to sculpture, painting, photography and large-scale installations, moves seamlessly between myth and history, man and nature, minimalism and romanticism.
Gaillard gained international attention early in his career with the appropriation of the Cleveland Indians' controversial logo, Chief Wahoo, the cartoon figure who is featured in Not Yet Titled. The Cleveland Indians' baseball team used the logo from 1947 until officially starting the process of removing Chief Wahoo in 2014, after a long public outcry. American Post-War Art contains a rich visual history of American cultural symbols incorporated by artists in their practice. Often, these symbols are used largely for their benign, graphic, mass appeal. Here, Gaillard consciously displays the loaded meanings behind this character, and to highlight this message, the artist places the character on a landscape. More than a derogatory depiction of Native Americans, the cartoon, which is now a part of the collection at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, is also a "red Sambo" reflecting directly on the attitudes of the Jim Crow era in which the symbol was born.
Gaillard's use of the logo points at the bitter irony of the Cleveland Indians' adoption of Native American's names and mascots, irrespective of the country's near destruction of its indigenous people, and theft of their land. Gaillard is interested in how such loaded symbols live on in marketing and mass culture, how what is 'out of time' continues to exist. Gaillard was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2010. He has had over 100 group and solo exhibitions internationally. Gaillard lives and works in New York and Berlin.
