Works from collection of Tommy Hilfiger to be offered at Phillips

PanARMENIAN.Net - Phillips announces that works from the private collection of Tommy Hilfiger will be featured in the Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Art Daily reports. Throughout his illustrious career in fashion, Tommy Hilfiger has been a passionate collector of contemporary art, assembling one of the most comprehensive collections in private hands. Five paintings from the iconic designer’s personal collection by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Jean Dubuffet, and Keith Haring will be offered during the auction on 16 November.

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to showcase works from Mr. Hilfiger’s extraordinary collection,” said JeanPaul Engelen, Phillips’ Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art. “These iconic works are truly a testament to his discerning eye, each of the highest quality and artistic importance. They have inspired him on his creative journey just as he has inspired pop culture over the past three decades.”

Tommy Hilfiger said, “Collecting pop and contemporary art has been one of my true passions in life. After meeting Andy Warhol in the ‘80s, I became inspired by the works created in the pop art era- from Warhol himself and also by visionaries including Basquiat, Dubuffet and Haring. I’m excited to be able to share these important works with others who can be inspired by their brilliance as I have for so many years.”

The Collector Since launching his namesake brand in 1985, Tommy Hilfiger has become globally renowned as the pioneer of “classic American cool” style, fusing East Coast Classics with a laidback West Coast twist. Inspired by iconic pop culture and Americana heritage, the designer and his brand are driven by an ever-optimistic vision to break conventions and celebrate individuality. Today, under Hilfiger’s guidance, vision and leadership as Principal Designer, Tommy Hilfiger is one of the world’s most recognized lifestyle brands that shares its inclusive and youthful spirit with consumers worldwide.

Hilfiger’s career in fashion began as a high school student in 1969 when he opened his first store, People’s Place, in his hometown of Elmira, New York. Ten years later, he moved to Manhattan to pursue a career in fashion design, and in 1985 his namesake brand launched with a single menswear collection. It has since grown to achieve over US $6.5 billion in global retail sales in 2015 and, as a true lifestyle brand encompasses a breadth of collections.

As he built his career, Hilfiger surrounded himself with creativity, in every sense. He ran in the same circles as Andy Warhol in the 1980s and began to educate himself on fine art. In the years since, he has built one of the most significant contemporary and pop art collections in the country. He and his wife Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger continue to expand and showcase their collection in their New York and Miami homes.

The Artworks Leading the collection is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled ( Devil’s h ead ), which was housed in Mr. Hilfiger’s New York apartment. Painted in 1987, just a year prior to his untimely death, this work exhibits Basquiat’s distinct aesthetic vision and characteristic subject matter: the skull. Here, Basquiat offers two mirrored skulls in black, white and blazing red, one echoing the other in asymmetric balance. In 1987, the artist had just witnessed the death of his dear friend and contemporary Andy Warhol, and was just a year from his own. The darkness in his life that prevailed might explain the meditative backgrounds of this late work, and the motifs of death and the devil. Aesthetically, the present lot reflects the artist’s two key influences present throughout his oeuvre. The skull harkens back to one of Basquiat’s first sources, a book on anatomy given to him by his mother in 1968. While abstract, Basquiat’s skulls are rendered with a semblance of scientific accuracy in their structure and emphasis on the individual parts that make up the body. Untitled (Devil’s head) also harkens back to the art historical canon with which Basquiat was so fascinated, not only in the tribal motifs of the skulls, but also in the metallic surface of the background, which recalls Renaissance compositions and Byzantine mosaics.

Damien Hirst’s Disintegration - The Crown of Life, which was executed in 2006, will also be offered from The Collection of Tommy Hilfiger. Inspired by the surface decoration on a Victorian tea tray, Hirst’s Ka leidoscope series began in 2001. The present work, which displays the mastery of the artist’s technique, is comprised of his most desired medium – butterflies. Appearing throughout his various bodies of work, butterflies have always fascinated Hirst because of their exquisite beauty, which remains even in death. Constructed in the shape of a classical stained-glass window of a church, the butterflies lie in a very precise pattern to mimic the illuminated colored glass. The spiritual nature of present lot is conveyed through not only the title, Disintegration - The Crown of Life , but also the symbolism of the butterfly. The Crown of Life refers directly to a line in the Bible and, in antiquity, the image of the butterfly emerging form the chrysalis stood for the soul leaving the body at death. Additionally, in Christian art the butterfly is a symbol of the resurrected human soul. Hirst has always strived artistically to find the beauty within the gruesome and this work beautifully conveys his obsession with color and light and the dichotomy of life and death.

Two works by Keith Haring from Mr. Hilfiger’s collection will be offered together as one lot – Snake and Man and Dogs and Men, both paintings executed on doors in 1983. These works represent perhaps one of the most personal works in the artist’s oeuvre, as he very rarely accepted private commissions. Featuring the familiar pop iconography pervasive within his diverse body of work, doors are one of the many found surfaces that Haring painted on throughout his career. He saw empty walls as opportunities for drawing and for performance, as evidenced by his famous subway drawings, which he completed in the early 1980s. The doors, opposed to the subway drawings, which were exhibited in public spaces, represent a uniquely intimate look at his practice, appreciated only by those privileged enough to pass through them. Inspired by the street art which surrounded him in 1980s New York, Haring employed the steadfast technique of graffiti in his contour illustrations of repeated lines and miscellaneous shapes. His motifs are simultaneously abstract and representational, scenes stripped of ornamentation down to their most elemental components. A contemporary manifestation of ancient imagery, Haring’s composition on doors spans the ages, bridging exterior and interior, and relates man to beast.

Andy Warhol’s iconic ten-print set of Cowboys and Indians from 1986 will also be offered from The Collection of Tommy Hilfiger, as well as Jean Dubuffet’s Le Gommeux. Executed in 1972, this work was prominently hung in the office of Mr. Hilfiger’s Miami home.