Alone together: Alone (Facing East), alone (Facing West), 2000
96,5 x 77,5 cm / 38 x 30 1/2 inches
screenprints, enamel ink, glitter, 2 parts
edition 100 + 8 AP + 2 PP, here nr 38/100
published by The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA
mint
€ 4.000,- excluding transport / insurance
sold

This portfolio is the eighteenth edition in The New Museum’s Limited Edition Program, and was produced by Donald Sheridan, the printmaker responsible for Andy Warhol’s diamond dust prints. It depicts two glittery pandas that are mirror images of each other. Placed back to back, the pandas form ‘Together Alone’, and appear as if in an argument. Facing one another, the pandas form ‘Together’, and the bamboo stalks in their paws unite to create a heart.

In the late 1980s Rob Pruitt was, along with Jack Early, part of the collaborative art team Pruitt-Early, a duo that was instantly touted as a pair of intrepid, iconoclastic new­comers—that is, until a 1992 show at Leo Castelli Gallery, where the two artists paid tribute to black culture by splashing paint on foil, shrink-wrapping posters of famous African Americans, and supplying their own rap soundtrack. Today that kind of show wouldn’t read as much of a shock, let alone a scandal, but in the early ’90s, the culture was still fully entrenched in the dicta of political correctness. Protests ensued, their work was accused of being racist, and, soon after, the pair disbanded.

Alone (Facing East) and Alone (Facing West) are the first limited edition prints ever produced by Rob Pruitt.

History of prices
Phillips, New York October 2012 € 6.696,- (hammer price) 28 October 2014
Ketterer Kunst estimate: € 3.800-€ 4.500 7 juni 2014
Auction Sotheby’s, London, England € 3.206,- / USD 3,836 (excl. 25% Buyer’s premium)
Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam February 2016 € 4.000,- (edition nr 38/100) purchased by Kevin Brewer, London, England
Artspace, New York, USA October 26 October 2016 US$ 7,500.- (edition nr 38/100) provenance: (flip-) art collector Kevin Brewer, London, England