{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":33130,"auction_id":41,"set_id":66,"lot_number":"49","artist":"Ang Kiukok (1931-2005)","title":"Lovers","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1985 (upper left)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"36” x 36” (91 cm x 91 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Provenance:  Private Collection, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"With “Lovers”, Ang Kiukok sets aside the angst and adds to the  long tradition of depicting love, which stretches simultaneously  with the history of mankind. L’amour is perhaps the most intimate  and appealing theme that speaks to us across the centuries, even  millennial. A slate sculpture of a standing couple — the woman  with her right arm around her man’s waist, her left hand on his left  arm, — was fashioned in Egypt 4,500 years ago, but is so  timeless in concept, it could have been created yesterday. When  celebrating love, many artists may have had their sights to Rodin’s  great monument to sensual love. Many artists of the 20th century  portrayed love by conjuring the primal, the elementary. Picasso, for  instance, drew inspiration from the exaggerated forms in primitive  art. In the brush of Picasso, an amorous embrace turns into a lethal  duel between two combatants who seek to devour each other.  In 1933, Picasso even filled a sketchbook with drawings of figures  coupling. Some sculptors, like Brancusi, pursued the simplest  possible imagery, achieving drama with an economy of means.  His “The Kiss”, is a rectangular granite slab with hardly any carving,  is a precursor of minimal art.  This version of Ang Kiukok’s “Lovers”, while not in three  dimensions, are also depicted with a similar economy of means.  The series of “The Lovers”, are consistent with Ang’s aesthetics,  although they have undergone change through the years. In the late 1970s they were skeletal in austere achromatic tones, but in  the 1990s Ang aimed for a recognizable representation of the figures,  he moved away from conventionally posed figures to a more robust  form; they become notably fleshy, taking on the hues of life and  displaying the greater articulation of physical details, as in the  grasping hands and fingers, for instance.  Ang Kiukok’s Lovers represent the opportunity to create both a deeply  personal narrative and an objective study of the complexity of human  relationships. The figures in sexual embrace are stylized, with elongated  limbs and smooth oval heads lending them a slightly grotesque and  alienating air which produces viewer identification with them while  inviting the voyeuristic gaze. The eroticism of the lovers is thus muted  by a sense of “defamiliarization” and distancing.  Kiukok’s approach to paintings is cerebral. Despite their apparent social  statement. His compositions are elegant and detached. In this relaxed,  angst free work, Kiukok’s tendency towards cubism is still noticeable.  The well-known Ang Kiukok temperament takes a backseat as the artist  delineates the masses of human form with bold expression. Ang Kiukok  strove for an expressive delineation on in his work, achieving abstraction  through the simplicity of the form and line. Love is sensitively expressed,  what with Ang Kiukok capturing gesture, attitude and movement in his  forms","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":7000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":7000000,"userBid":5927,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":8176000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":31089,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/41/66/lot/49.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":48,"next":50,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}