JONATHAN MONK

With the written confirmation of authenticity by the artist.

Provenance:
- Gallery Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen (verso with the label).
- Purchased from the above by the present owner, since then privately owned Italy.

The British artist Jonathan Monk, born in 1969, takes on the Conceptual art and Minimalism of the 1960s and, with great humour and subtle wit, analyses the artworks of Sol Lewitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and also Andy Warhol.

One way of achieving this, which he employed already as a student, is through Appropriation Art. This artistic trend which emerged in the 1960s, makes use of existing masterpieces, which are copied by the artist, using a process of copying which is quite unambiguous and thereby becomes the artistic process itself. Probably the most famous work is Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased De Kooning drawing”. Artists such as Sherrie Levine and Elaine Sturtevant have dedicated their entire artistic production around Appropriation Art. A crucial aspect of this, is that the work being copied is widely known, that the process of copying is entirely recognisable, and that small but decisive alterations are always made. As in the case of Rauschenberg’s work, this is often ensured through the title.

“Andy Warhol’s Chairman Mao hand made in The Peoples Republic of China” by Jonathan Monk is a wonderful example of the use of the title. In fact, Monk has had Andy Warhol’s famous portrait of Mao copied in a workshop in China. The actual work is immediately recognisable, yet Monk has left his own mark, in that this is an oil painting and not a silkscreen. The idea of not doing the work himself but giving it to a workshop, where artworks are copied every day, is also reminiscent of Warhol, who had the best part of his works produced in the “Factory”. As with him, the idea for the work comes from the artist, but Monk delegates its implementation.
The present three works (following lots 3541 and 3542) create an impact with their different colouring, which we can recognise from the originals. Monk deals with the classic works of art history using humour and subtle irony. In doing so he does not limit himself to the artwork alone, but at the same time he comments on the approach of his fellow artists.

Jonathan Monk completed his Bachelor of Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic in 1988 and in his Master of Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art in 1991. Alongside numerous gallery exhibitions, he has had solo shows at venues including the Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Palais de Tokyo, Paris and the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. He took part in the Whitney Biennale in 2006, the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2009 and the Berlin Biennale in 2001. In 2012 Jonathan Monk was awarded the Prix du Quartier Des Bains in Geneva.