{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":38511,"auction_id":52,"set_id":80,"lot_number":"114","artist":"Alfonso Ossorio (1916-1990)","title":"The Mushroom","starting_price":1600000,"signed_dated":null,"medium":"ink, wax, gouache, watercolor on paper","size":"25” x 19 1/4” (64 cm x 49 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"The work was donated to the Foundation of Contemporary Arts (FCA) in 1963 for the FCAs very first benefit exhibition, which spawned its 53-year history of grants to artists.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"About the Foundation of Contemporary Arts (FCA)\nIn 1962 Jasper Johns, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and other painters and sculptors came together to help Merce Cunningham and his dance company finance a proposed season on Broadway by arranging for a sale of their artworks. Their fund-raising efforts were so successful that there was money to spare, and when they asked Cunningham what he thought they should do with it, he replied, “We're all in the same boat--why don't you give it to other performing artists?\"\nThus in 1963, Jasper Johns and John Cage established the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts based on the belief that visual artists – painters and sculptors – were sufficiently concerned about the state of the performance arts – dance, theatre and music – enough so to donate artwork to benefit performing artists. \nAlfonso Ossorio — alongside such luminaries as Willem de Kooning, Marcel Duchamp,  Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, Elaine and Andy Warhol  — was among the sixty-seven artists who contributed to the Foundation's historic first benefit exhibition—the first fund-raiser of this kind. Proceeds from sales enabled the Foundation to launch a significant program of assistance to performing artists who were engaged in work of a contemporary nature — The FCA Website.\nJohn Cage, an experimental music artist who was also Cunningham’s partner, was renowned for his obsession with mushrooms. The life of a mushroom was  to him a metaphor for the world’s typically ignored sounds — the stuff of which Cage liked to incorporate in his avant-garde works. Cage was a serious, if self-taught, student of the mushroom. He would, however, lecture, write “The Mushroom Book” and found the New York Mycological Society.\nAlfonso Ossorio — a well-known denizen of the New York arts scene  — would have crossed paths with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, not least of all because his brother Robert was the founder of the  Manhattan Festival Ballet.\nThe New York Times obit for Robert Ossorio, in fact, noted, “In addition to its classical repertory, the dance company was a repository for new choreography by artists ranging from well-known ballet dancers …  to leading modern-dance choreographers like Merce Cunningham.”\nAlfonso’s choice of “The Mushroom” is a delightful private joke,  a nod to Cage’s singular fascination with the fungus — and  a testimony of how closely interconnected both Ossorios were  to the American culturati.   \nIn 1963, Alfonso Ossorio was firmly established in the Ab Ex scene, and would have successive shows at the Cordier-Ekstrom gallery on Madison Avenue beginning in that year.\n“The Mushroom” demonstrates Ossorio’s technique of combining watercolor and wax, which he pioneered while in Manila to create the “Angry Christ” mural in Victorias, Negros. The mushroom’s stalk and cap are apparent amid a maelstrom of black and gold shapes, eyes and balletic limbs.\nCordier-Ekstrom was established by Arne Ekstrom in partnership with Daniel Cordier of Paris. (Cordier would organize the farewell exhibit of Jean Dubuffet’s works that were housed in Ossorio’s estate “The Creeks” in 1962.)\nThanks to the markings on the back of this work, it can be deduced  that “The Mushroom” was exhibited in 1963 at Ossorio’s first exhibition at that New York gallery.\n-Lisa Guerrero Nakpil","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Alfonso Ossorio</strong> (1916-1990)<br /><em>The Mushroom</em><br />1963<br />ink, wax, gouache, watercolor on paper<br />25&rdquo; x 19 1/4&rdquo; (64 cm x 49 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":null,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":null,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"UNSOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":null,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":36747,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/52/80/lot/114.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":113,"next":115,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}