{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":61660,"auction_id":209,"set_id":242,"lot_number":"82","artist":"Alfonso Ossorio (1916 - 1990)","title":"Sidrach, Misach, Abendnego","starting_price":6000000,"signed_dated":"dated 1962/1963","medium":"plastic and various materials on wood","size":"25 1/2\" x 38\" (65 cm x 97 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE OSSORIO FAMILY COLLECTION","coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":"Cordier & Ekstrom, Alfonso Ossorio: Drawings and Sculpture, New York, October - November 1963","literature":"Friedman, B.H. Alfonso Ossorio. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1972. Black-and-white illustration, plate no. 122.","write_up":"The 1960s were a frenzied period for Alfonso Ossorio, marked by a surge of energy in his artistic career. Participating in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1960 “The Art of Assemblage,” Ossorio soon found himself in the depths of his “Congregations.” He had returned to his surrealist roots, assembling a variety of “sought” objects with which his mixed media pieces would later thrive.<br/><br/> Like many of his works, Ossorio’s Congregations contain religious connotations. Having spent the majority of his educational years at Catholic boarding schools since the age of ten, Catholic iconography is rife within his oeuvre, from his early years at Harvard to the Filipino folk references in his St. Joseph the Workers mural. His 1960s Congregations, therefore, are logical evolutions of this idea, made three-dimensional through his usage of various media.<br/><br/> His Sidrach, Misach, Abendnego echoes Ossorio’s Congregations in their entirety. “I have taken to calling them congregations simply because they all work together and the parts are unified to a final end, working for one final effect,” he had said in a 19 November 1968 interview with Forrest Selvig for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.</br><br/> Indeed, this piece, separated into three equal parts, is an amalgamation of several “sought” objects. In Christian iconography, Sidrach, Misach, and Abednego are figures from the book of Daniel known for their refusal to bow to the image of King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. As punishment, Nebuchadnezzar had them thrown into a fiery furnace, but miraculously, the three young men survived unscathed. Even more astonishingly, a fourth figure appeared with them in the flames, called “like a son of the gods.” Many Christians believe this to be a preincarnate appearance of Christ before the New Testament.<br/><br/> Ossorio’s Sidrach, Misach, Abendnego is rife with eyelike objects. “Over and over again in paintings I’ve used concentric circles,” he said in the same interview. “[Ralph Waldo Emerson said] that the eye is the first circle. But certainly it has emotional overtones too.”<br/><br/> These emotional overtones are evident in Sidrach, Misach, Abendnego. Over and over again, these eye-like objects appear multiple times all over the canvas, making the viewers feel acutely watched. It is hard not to draw similarities between the series title “Congregations” and its religious connotation — to congregate is to gather with fellow believers, multiple eyes set heavenward in worship.<br/><br/> Ossorio’s horror vacui is at its greatest intensity in the 1960s, and thus is displayed at full volume in Sidrach, Misach, Abendnego. Every inch of the composition is fully inhabited, and it is made even fuller due to its threedimensional quality. It crosses boundaries between pictorial assemblages and sculptural reliefs, blended into a unified whole.<br/><br/> The magical, the ritualistic, and the bejeweled of Ossorio’s oeuvre are manifested perfectly in Sidrach, Misach, Abendnego. As Kent Minturn has said about these congregations: “Ossorio’s mode of presentation is ‘everything all at once.’ Paradoxically, however, it is impossible for the viewer to perceive them in one fell swoop, to see a work entirely in one single glance. Each time the viewer confronts a congregation and tries to unravel its meaning, the work tells a new story.” (Hannah Andrea Valiente)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":11000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":11000000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":25123,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":13217600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":68559,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/82.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":68856,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/82a.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":68855,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/82b.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":81,"next":83,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}