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Curators' Picks: May 20 Prints & Multiples Showcase Auction
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Holly's Picks
Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art, West Coast
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Pablo Picasso’s Table des eaux-fortes created for Ambroise Vollard’s edition of Honoré de Balzac’s Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu,
serves as a visual index to the etchings accompanying the text. The composition is arranged in a grid of twelve compartments, each labeled with Roman numerals and containing a simplified line drawing that relates to the themes and imagery of the suite. Executed in Picasso’s spare, fluid linear style of the early 1930s, the sheet reflects the concerns of Balzac’s story, which follows the aging painter Frenhofer as he labors obsessively over a painting he believes will surpass all others. When he finally reveals it to two younger artists, they perceive only a mass of indistinct forms, aside from a single exquisitely rendered foot, leading to the realization that his pursuit of perfection has resulted in failure. Picasso’s imagery engages closely with this
narrative, emphasizing the relationship between artist and model, the act of creation, and the tension between representation and abstraction.
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William T. Wiley’s Ol’ Unkl Sam Wants You
(1988) is a lithograph that reflects his signature fusion of text and image, combining humor with pointed cultural critique. A leading figure in the Bay Area Funk movement, Wiley often employed puns, misspellings, and dense, improvisational compositions to question authority and American identity. Here, he reworks the iconic "Uncle Sam Wants You" poster, retaining its frontal figure and pointing gesture while transforming it into a layered, chaotic image filled with handwritten phrases and symbolic motifs. The composition was also used for a poster created in connection with the 1988 Chicago International Art Exposition, a reference echoed in the imagery itself. The print exemplifies Wiley’s practice of reinterpreting familiar symbols through satire.
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Desiree's Picks
Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples, Beverly Hills
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This print is one of my favorites because it is a vibrant example of Riley’s use of optical perception through color and rhythm. Departing from the stark black-and-white patterns of her early Op Art works, Riley uses vertical bands of bright colors to create a dynamic visual effect that seems to shimmer and shift before the viewer’s eyes. The title, meaning "celebration" in French, aptly reflects the work’s lively, almost musical composition, where color relationships play with both tension and harmony.
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Calder’s Madison Square Boys Club is a lively and playful print that reflects the artist’s signature visual language of bold line, simplified form, and kinetic energy. Created in support of the community organization, the composition features Calder’s characteristic use of primary colors and spontaneous, gestural shapes that evoke movement and joy. Though static on paper, the forms seem to dance across the surface, recalling the spirit of his mobiles. The work balances whimsy with purpose, embodying Calder’s belief that art should be both accessible and engaging, while also highlighting his involvement in philanthropic efforts and public life.
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Rebecca's Picks
Rebecca Lax | Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples, New York
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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (the map of the land of feeling) III
(2008–2011) is a large-scale, scroll-like print that transforms personal history into a layered cartographic narrative. Published and printed at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University, the work traces the artist’s global movements through reproduced passport pages, visas, maps, and time-zone diagrams. Focusing on the years 1988 to 1997, the composition constructs a subjective landscape shaped by travel, memory, and identity. Pigment prints of Tiravanija’s actual passport run horizontally across the center of the work, interspersed with silhouettes of cooking pots that reference his emphasis on community and shared experience. Beneath this band, excerpts from diary entries add a more intimate dimension.
By reframing the passport as a record of lived experience, Tiravanija transforms it from a document of navigation into one of reflection, capturing an expanded understanding of identity in an increasingly interconnected world.
This print may be installed directly on the wall using magnets (not included with the lot but available through Talas).
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A heavily worked, diagrammatic print by Terry Winters, the composition incorporates text and notations alongside the artist’s iconic line work and cell-like organic forms. Winters has remained committed to his distinctive mode of abstraction, establishing himself as one of the most prolific and recognizable painters of his generation. He is represented by his long-standing dealer, Matthew Marks, in New York.
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Taylor's Picks
Taylor Curry | Director, Modern & Contemporary Art, New York
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Binder of Women was conceptualized by artist Hilary Pecis as an independent platform for contemporary artists to share and sell their work. Taking its name from a viral moment in U.S. political discourse, the platform brings together female identifying artists to reflect on the representation and marginalization of women’s voices. We are pleased to offer the Binder of Women’s first collective portfolio from 2017. Centered by Congratulations, an acrylic on printed paper by Pecis, the portfolio presents the opportunity to support and discover established and emerging female artists.
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Ann Craven is an American contemporary painter best known for her luminous, emotionally resonant paintings of moons, birds, and flowers. Working in a highly personal and serial approach, she often revisits the same imagery over time, emphasizing memory, repetition, and the passage of time. In 1999, Craven lost almost all of her artwork in a studio fire. Since then, she has been repainting her earlier work in a process she calls "revisitation." The repetition creates an almost diaristic quality, allowing for an exploration of how perception changes over time.
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Hannah's Pick
Hannah Ziesmann | Cataloger and Associate Specialist, Fine Arts, Dallas
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There is a certain delicious irony in encountering Kerry James Marshall’s May 15, 2001 within the sale pages of an auction house like Heritage. Rendered like a stylized sale ledger, Marshall’s print catalogs the fever dream of the contemporary market – Koons, Warhol, Basquiat, Pollock – each paired with escalating prices that read less like scholarship and more like scoreboard. Marshall brilliantly mimics the visual language of the auction world while quietly skewering it, exposing the machinery that transforms artists into brands and value into spectacle. More than two decades later, the work feels almost uncomfortably current: a sharp, funny, and deeply self-aware reflection on the very ecosystem now offering it for sale once again.
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Find these and other outstanding modern and contemporary prints in Heritage's Prints & Multiples Showcase Auction. The auction's session is 1:00 PM Central Time, Wednesday, May 20.
Sincerely,
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Holly Sherratt
Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art,
West Coast
HollyS@HA.com
(415) 548-5921
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Desiree Pakravan
Consignment Director,
Prints & Multiples,
Beverly Hills
DesireeP@HA.com
(310) 492-8621
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Rebecca Lax
Consignment Director,
Prints & Multiples,
New York
BeckyL@HA.com
(212) 486-3736
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Taylor Curry
Director,
Modern & Contemporary Art,
New York
TaylorC@HA.com
(212) 486-3503
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Hannah Ziesmann
Cataloger and Associate Specialist,
Fine Arts, Dallas
HannahZ@HA.com
(214) 409-1162
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