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Contemporary art may have been on sale at Sotheby’s last night. But the scene was more befitting a surrealist. Just hours before financial markets had one of their worst days in months. Embattled Italy threatened to destabilize the underpinnings of the global economy. Hundreds of protesters clamored outside the famed art house, alongside the buyers’ limousines, for greater income equality. Inside, the ultra-rich splashed out over $300 million in what connoisseurs called an epic auction.
One modern interpretation suggests art has become more of an investment refuge for the plutocracy, like gold bars that go on your wall. It’s certainly one way to explain the eyebrow-raising prices for abstracts from the relative unknown Clyfford Still. The evening’s sensation was his “1949-A-No. 1.” A bidding war on the red-and-black painting drove the price up to nearly $62 million, more than twice the high-end estimate and a record for the artist. Gerhard Richter’s works a
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Atmospheric fields of luminous color emanating from rectangular panels that appear to be torn paintings. Little tabletop stage sets for enigmatic dramas, enacted by doll-like figures and encased in plexiglass boxes. Life-size sculptures of classical figures and architectural elements in disarray. Lush, floral bouquets painted in bright, eccentric colors hot pink sunflowers, watery blue lily pads.
Roland Reiss cut a wide swath in his art over his long life, moving between painting and sculpture, abstraction and figuration, as his interests shifted over a 60-year career. If there was a through-line in such a diverse array of work, it was a simple commitment to engaging a viewer in the adventures of exploratory perception.
Artist and educator Roland Reiss dies at age 91
Roland Reiss, Human Nature, 2012, Oil, acrylic, and vinyl on canvas.
LOS ANGELES, CA
.- We are saddened to announce the death of Roland Reiss, artist and educator, loving husband, father, and grandfather, who passed away on Sunday, December 13, of natural causes in Los Angeles, at his home and studio at The Brewery Artist Lofts. He was 91.
Reiss is widely known for his miniatures but is foremost a painter. An influential and beloved voice in the Los Angeles and Southern California art scene, Reiss exhibited widely throughout his sixty-year career. He was included in the 1975 Whitney Biennial, documenta 7 (1982), and received fourteen solo museum exhibitions, including The Dancing Lessons: 12 Sculptures (1977) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A retrospective at the Begovich Gallery at Cal State Fullerton (2014) highlighted his career of continual self-reinvention, which led to a groundbreaking body of work.