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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mar 12, 2021 | Sotheby's | New York | Contemporary Curated | 133 | $****** - ****** | Two Cells with Circulating Conduit | |||
Nov 10, 1993 | Sotheby's | New York | Contemporary Art - Part I | 59 | Estimates not disclosed | Two cells with circulating conduit |
paintings
162.6 x 264.2 cm (64 x 104 in)
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, Flashe, and Roll-a-Tex on two adjoined canvases
International with Monument, New YorkSusan and Richard Katcher, New YorkSotheby's, New York, 10 November 1993, Lot 59
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
New York, International With Monument Gallery, Peter Halley, April 1986 New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987 Biennial Exhibition, March - June 1987, p. 59, illustrated in color Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Horn of Plenty, January - February 1989, p. 99, illustrated in color
Cara Jordan and Clément Dirié, Eds., Peter Halley: Paintings of the 1980s, The Catalog Raisonné, Zurich 2019, p. 101, illustrated in color Jerry Saltz, Ed., Beyond Boundaries: New York's New Art, New York 1986, p. 28, illustrated in colorHal Foster, “Signs Taken for Wonders,” Art in America 74, June 1986, p. 87, illustrated in color (incorrectly illustrated) Joshua Decter, “Peter Halley”, Arts Magazine, Summer 1986, p. 110, illustrated in color Eleanor Heartney, “Neo-Geo Storms New York,” New Art Examiner, September 14, 1986, p. 28, illustrated Susan Kandel, "The Non-Site of Theory," Frieze, May 1995, p. 30, illustrated in color Cory Reynolds, Ed., Peter Halley: Maintain Speed, New York 2000, pp.118, 197, 199 and 201, illustrated in color Amy Brandt, Interplay: Neoconceptual Art of the 1980s, Cambridge 2014, pp. 36 and 145, illustrated in color HH Arnason, History of Modern Art, Boston 2013, p. 683, illustrated in color Joshua Decter, Art Is a Problem, Zurich 2014, p. 108, illustrated Richard Milazzo, Skewed: Ruminations on the Writings and Works of Peter Halley, Modena 2016, p. 59, illustrated in color
Catalogue Note
Two Cells With Circulating Conduit is part of a pivotal series created between 1985-87. In 1980, Halley abandoned the use of the human figure in his work and began to depict brick walls reminiscent of the confining view from the window of his childhood home in New York City. Halley also sought a radical means of producing these new images: “I was interested in an act of making, rather than painting. So I got all the idea of using Roll-A-Tex, a material that I had seen all over in the suburban part of New Orleans. In the first paintings, the whole surface was covered with Roll-A-Tex, with a window with bars in the middle. So the painting became a prison. Then I began to think about taking that object and putting a space around it, as Jasper Johns had some with his flag paintings. The cell went from being a painting to being an object in the painting. It did feel liberating to say that a square isn’t just a square, it can be a prison (the artist in interview with Kathryn Hixson in Peter Halley, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux 1991, pp. 15-16).
Throughout the early 1980s, Halley continued to develop his imagery: “I was working alone at home listening to the radio, turning on electrical lights, being able to turn on the faucet, flush the toilet, talk on the telephone… I began to become obsessed with the idea that all these natural things- air, light, noise or speech were being piped in. I began to think about conduits. By the time I had codified that system of imagery - of cells and conduits - I began to feel that I had come up with a kind of paradigm, or model, or representation of a very basic kind of space and special experience in our society”
In 1985-86, “the transition between Prison and Cells with Smokestack and Conduits and Two Cells with Circulating Conduit was crucial for me. Psychologically, it was about a sense of movement. It also allowed me to represent pictorially the sense of closure and self-referentiality that I was ascribing to late 20th century culture in general. Two Conduits with Circulating Conduit led to another series of paintings of ’86 with s shaped conduits” (the artist cited in: Ibid, pp. 17-18).
