Lot 82: Anne Madden (b.1932) Antigone & Polynices Oil and

Anne Madden (b.1932) Antigone & Polynices Oil and graphite on paper mounted on canvas, 220 x 150cm (86.25 x 58.75'') Exhibited: ''Anne Madden - Recent Works'' Exhibition, July 1987, Catalogue No. 4 where purchased by current owner. In the introduction in the catalogue, Madden talks of her inspiration for the current work: ''These paintings evolved from the 'Megalith' series through the introduction of a horizontal onto the vertical form, thus making an 'opening'-an opening for me in my work as well as a way out of the vertical paintings. An 'opening' as a metaphor for interior/exterior space; a reconciliation of opposites: light/dark, life/death, day/night, male/female. I see these openings as thresholds, windows of the mind, metaphors of the artist's vision. Openings into a possible space, both psychic and physical, of the mind and of matter.'' ''I am very aware of the contradictory nature of things, that everything is itself and its opposite: the void and fullness, absence and appearance, existence and non-existence, of the hair-line between them on which we balance: that Art itself is contradictory, its history both a continuum and a series of ruptures with the reappearance of ancient art forms occurring in the cracks of rupture. There is a recurring reference to the past in painting whereby it works itself through its own history, looks back at itself to go forward''. ''A fusion of inner and outer worlds, the figure of Antigone burying Polynices appears in my latest paintings (inspired by a 5th century b.c. Greek pietà). Perhaps she is a metaphor of the creative process. She gathers the fragmented body to make it whole, to bury and thus ensure its rebirth. As Nietzsche said, ''There is no burial without resurrection''. In the back of my mind there is her relationship with Power and Death. Totalitarian power claims rights over the body, alive or dead. Antigone stood against the repressive edicts of Creon and the City, against old men who send youth to be slaughtered. She stands as a figure of human justice outside the law. There are many Antigones in our world. For me she is essentially a means to bring about a painting, which in turn is the only way I can ask myself the question 'What is painting'?''