Thinking Aloud In The Museum of Modern Art
Thinking Aloud In The Museum of Modern Art
Signed Print
Howard Hodgkin
£4,400-£6,500Value Indicator
$9,000-$13,000 Value Indicator
$8,000-$12,000 Value Indicator
¥40,000-¥60,000 Value Indicator
€5,500-€8,000 Value Indicator
$45,000-$60,000 Value Indicator
¥830,000-¥1,230,000 Value Indicator
$5,500-$8,500 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
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Medium: Etching
Edition size: 100
Year: 1979
Size: H 76cm x W 99cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2014 | Bonhams Knightsbridge | United Kingdom | |||
| March 2008 | Lyon & Turnbull Edinburgh | United Kingdom | |||
| June 1999 | Christie's London | United Kingdom | |||
| November 1993 | Christie's New York | United States | |||
| May 1993 | Christie's New York | United States |
Meaning & Analysis
This signed etching from 1979 is a limited edition of 100 from Howard Hodgkin’s In the Museum Of Modern Art series. The horizontal print presents to the viewer an intricate abstract scene, where rushed, almost pencil-like black brushstrokes vehemently erupt on a white paper surface.
Remarkably lighter in tone when compared to its sister prints, this work is dominated, perhaps more than any other, by the fingerprints of the artist, which punctuate the white background in an ordered, vertical pattern. More distinctively than any other artist working on paper, Hodgkin loved to interfere with the mechanical process of printmaking. Painting directly on the printing plates with energetic and dynamic brushstrokes, Hodgkin believed in endowing his prints with a painterly feeling, so that his prints would resemble closely his paintings. In Thinking Aloud In The Museum Of Modern Art, the artist’s fingerprints not only join this dynamic interplay of hand and machine but also render the print unique. Through this interference, Hodgkin managed to make each work of the series, produced from the same printing plates, entirely distinct and different.
While Hodgkin notoriously disclosed very little about his works, the title of the series gestures to the time Hodgkin spent in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) of New York, when, then still a child, he took refuge from World War II in New York. If we believe Hodgkin when he said that he painted “representational pictures of emotional states”, then this print acquires the poignantly intimate and emotional quality of a painful memory, evoking through its dark tones and chaotic brushstrokes the confusion pervading the young artist at the time.
British artist Howard Hodgkin was a luminary of abstraction. Representing Britain at the 1984 Venice Biennale, winning the Turner Prize in 1985, and knighted in 1992, Hodgkin established a legacy by pushing the boundaries of convention. Indian culture and painting heavily influenced the artist's work, infiltrating it most obviously in his bold colour choices. Evoking the bliss of exotic travels and past memories, Hodgkin's abstract representations provide an intimate insight into his world. The vibrancy of his palette and expression of the brushstrokes distinguished the artist from his contemporaries, seeing him gain international recognition.
