?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
SAM MIDDLETON (1927 - 2015) Million Dollar Ideas.
Collage of various printed papers, gouache and ink on wood panel, 1969. 780x2140 mm; 30 3/4x84 1/4 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Netherlands (1991); private collection, Netherlands.
Million Dollar Ideas is a significant artwork by Sam Middleton, a tour-de-force of his improvisational technique, combining Abstract Expressionist painting with densely collaged surfaces of various found papers from billboards, magazines and newspapers. It is a summation of a modernist approach that reflected not only in his artistic practice, but his expatriate life and great interest in jazz music. Middleton once described, "the artist is, like a human mirror, reflecting ideas, images, feelings and the impressions of his environment as he sees and feels them. In this sense collage is a chain of connecting ideas and expressions like fragments of that broken mirror, gathered and mended". This 7-foot long monumental work by Middleton is the largest work of the artist to appear at auction.
