Buying Democratic Art
Under the title "Fifty Are Better Than One" a total of 180 works from the personal collection of the German artist, gallery owner and designer Jörg Schellmann will be auctioned at the London auction house Phillips. The broad selection of works shows a cross-section of contemporary art and offers both iconic individual pieces and limited editions, including works by Andy Wahrhol, Keith Haring, Donald Judd and Joseph Beuys. Part of the auction are the two work groups "The Door Cycles" and "Wall Works". For "The Door Cycles", Jörg Schellmann asked artist friends to redesign a door as an object - inspiration came from the project of the same name by the Dutch painter Willem de Kooning, who created a series of female figures on wooden doors between 1964 and 1965 and thus declared a metaphorically charged everyday object a painting ground. The works created for Schellmann Art, formerly Edition Schellmann, were applied to hollow-core doors and range in their diversity from painting to silkscreen to sculpture. "The Wall Works", on the other hand, show site-specific wall paintings and installations that the artists have each designed with reference to the spatial concept that the work needs in order to have an optimal effect. For each work, the artist gives a specific description of the necessary dimensions of the surface as well as for the mounting of the respective wall object.
The commerciality and price range of the works offered reaches into both extremes - a decision with which the auction house underscores Schellmann's concern to democratize art by means of broad diversification and affordability. All proceeds from the public auction will go to the "Ars Publicata Project", a global online index with which Jörg Schellmann wants to offer easy access to authentic and up-to-date documentation on artist editions and their publishers.
"Fifty Are Better Than One"
Works from the Archives of Edition Schellmann
Phillips
30 Berkeley Square
Mayfair, London W1J 6EN
6. June 2019, from 16 o'clock
Free admission
