LLYN FOULKES (B. 1934)
Custer's Last Stand (Picture of Harry), 1973

signed, titled, inscribed and dated 'L. FOULKES 1973 RX3 S/AS' (along the lower edge of the frame); signed again, titled and dated again ''Custer's Last Stand' LLYN FOULKES 1973' (on tape attached to the reverse)
oil over photographic reproduction on panel with nails and glass in artist's frame

39 3/4 x 32 7/8 in.
101.4 x 83.5 cm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris
Private Collection (acquired directly from the above)
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, 15 March 2006, lot 78
Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owner

Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Darthea Speyer, Llyn Foulkes, 1975
Los Angeles, The Hammer Museum, Llyn Foulkes, 3 February-19 May 2013, p. 74, 190 illustrated, traveled to New York, New Museum, June-September 2013; Kleve, Germany, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, November 2013-March 2014

A seminal work by Llyn Foulkes, the present lot, Custer's Last Stand (Picture of Harry), is a masterpiece by one of Post-War & Contemporary Art's most important West Coast voices. Part of the artist's critically acclaimed Bloody Head series, Foulkes' challenging subject matter and biting commentary are on full display in this museum-quality painting, in which the portrait of an anonymous man, presumably 'Harry', is shown bloody and adorned in a partially painted found wood frame. This assemblage of paint, wood, nails, and glass, together creates a surreal portrait; a Frankenstein's monster symbolic of so many of contemporary society's grievous ills.

Born in Yakima, Washington in 1934, on the precipice of World War II, Foulkes was raised by his single mother after his father left their family for the promises of Hollywood. In 1954, shortly after completing high school, Foulkes was drafted into the army where he served in Germany and not only bore witness to the horrors and havoc wreaked by the war, but also began what would become a lifelong suspicion of those in power and their oftentimes shocking intentions and influence.

While in Europe, Foulkes traveled often to visit museums and was deeply inspired by Old Masters. After his time in the military ended, Foulkes enrolled in the Chouinard Institute where he studied painting under teachers such as Emerson Woelffer and Richards Ruben and alongside peers like Larry Bell and Ed Ruscha.

With his inaugural solo exhibition at the esteemed Ferus Gallery in 1961, Foulkes quickly established himself as a quintessential member of the Los Angeles art world. Respect and admiration for the artist's work increased exponentially with a solo exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum that same year. Custer's Last Stand (Picture of Harry), was exhibited in the second exhibition of bloody head portraits in an influential show at Galerie Darthea Speyer in Paris in 1974, where, like the present lot, the works were framed in rugged and worn wood, with glass and nails, assembled in an intentionally crude way. Bringing evolution to the great California tradition of Assemblage Art, Foulkes distinguished himself by considering the painting as a construction, creating a new take on the relationship between painting and sculptural assemblage.

In Custer's Last Stand (Picture of Harry), Foulkes paints over a photographic reproduction of a man (presumably named Harry), whose blood-covered head and dismembered lip represent revulsion on many levels. Recalling Francis Bacon's 1953 Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, in which Bacon repeatedly painted over textbook reproductions of Velázquez's revered portrait before painting his own version. Bacon obscures the pope's eyes but leaves his mouth ajar in a ceaseless scream of terror. Similarly, in the present lot, Foulkes leaves the viewer ill at ease; Harry, a poised man, cannot rid himself of the trauma he carries, rather he is stained by the pain that has incessantly altered how he will see the world around him. By 1973, the year in which the present lot was executed, Foulkes had been seeing a professional therapist for a year. As Ali Subotnick writes, 'masking the eyes forces the viewer to contemplate the painting itself rather than the person depicted in the portrait. Clearly therapy and the attendant self-analysis has begun to color the work' (Llyn Foulkes, Hammer Museum, Delmonico Books; Prestel, 2013, p. 88).

Many of Foulkes' peers, like John Baldessari, also considered the impact of removing a figure's face as the central facet of a composition. As Michael Govan articulates, Foulkes, like Baldessari, took 'away the thing that's most obvious in the center of your vision, [forcing] you to look at everything else, almost for the first time, to make new sense of what you're seeing' (Susan Stamberg, For John Baldessari, Conceptual Art Means Serious Mischief, National Public Radio, 2013). The 'everyman' that is created when an individual face is obscured comes into play in the works of both artists. Foulkes' visual language is a brutal commentary on contemporary society – the violence, consumerism, brainwashing, and acceptance of these circumstances by this 'everyman' – feeding the visual vocabulary in which his message is sent.

Foulkes' work is often concerned with what is not there. For the artist, the sense of loss in an empty space is often emphasized by the obstruction of a particular person and their identity as a means of commenting on some of the most poignant histories of our time, whose resonance have shaped the American psyche. As Foulkes articulates, 'the thing that drove my early work was anger of a very personal sort. I look around and sees a world completely shaped by corporate greed, and the thing that amazes me the most is that everybody isn't as angry as I am.' He goes on to ask, 'why aren't people demanding a better world?'

Foulkes continues to ask this question today while making music and art in his Los Angeles studio. An antihero of his own making, Foulkes' resume is impressive, and he is gaining long-overdue recognition. Foulkes was the subject of a major traveling retrospective which began at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2013 and has been honored with over thirty-five solo exhibitions in addition to countless awards. In 2011, Foulkes was included in the Venice Biennale. The artist's work can be found in permanent collections of major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, amongst many more.