Sotheby's
by Tara Lisa Foley
acrylic and spray paint on 4 panels
60" x 70"
To start my research on Sotheby’s, I went to the LA public library downtown. With such a long detailed history, I felt overwhelmed with information. I was interested in thinking about ways to visualize Sotheby’s in a way that may be recognizable to someone who is familiar with the organization. I decided to do a Google earth search for visual references. There are hundreds of Sotheby’s organizations throughout the world. Looking at all of them, I felt as though I had gone on a long journey throughout much of the affluent world. I noted, the more remote the location (most the Asian countries), the less available an image was.
The montage of images that I painted are a result of the Google earth journey I went through to locate all the Sotheby’s throughout the world.
I also became very interested in the exactness and authority of the hand positions of the auctioneers. From this exploration, only one auctioneer is drawn. Perhaps someone who is familiar with Sotheby’s may recognize the abstracted face, bow tie, body and hands of a particular auctioneer I chose to depict.
I chose to divide the large work into four pieces so it can conform to new spaces and transform itself in time. In the future, it could possibly be distributed in four ways, or can be displayed in a different fashion depending on the space it is given. Each piece can stand alone, or it can function as one piece. I encourage anyone in the future to find different ways to display it.
The idea of using blue as a base color came from the blue vastness that was apparent from the image of the sea from the Google earth search. The idea of the blueprint came about due to the indelible mark that Sotheby’s has on the art market.