The chairman of Christian Aid also appeared to blame the ongoing debate over Europe on a growing
sense of nationalism in the UK, he said: «With the Scottish independence agitation and all the questions about a federal UK quite a lot of people feel we need to affirm now what we are, what we distinctively are as English even
more than British and that imperceptibly I think strengthens some of this unease about that
mysterious entity called Europe which is over there.»
«If you look at brain signaling on the level of individual neurons, it looks very
mysterious, but if you take a step back and observe the activity of a population of hundreds of neurons instead, you might see simpler, clearer patterns that intuitively make
more sense.»
Another New Years Day (oil on canvas), by contrast, maintains a similar cinematic atmosphere, but here the
mysterious sense of malevolent augury is even
more palpably present and distinctly disquieting.
Other highlights of this auction include Lot 20, «Duridium,» a 26 - by - 36 inch magna on canvas, dated 1964, by Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997), estimated at $ 600,000 to $ 800,000, which sold for $ 607,500; Lot 21, «Ileana Sonnabend,» a 1963 metallic paint on canvas, 77 3/4 - by -128-inch work by Frank Stella (b. 1936) that has a high estimate of $ 600,000, and which sold for $ 684,500; Lot 29,» Evening in the Studio,» a monumental painting that out - Rubens Rubens by Lucian Freud and has an ambitious high estimate of $ 3,500,000, and which sold for only $ 2,422,500; Lot 30, «Lying Figure,» a large, interesting composition by Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) that has an ambitious high estimate of $ 2,500,000 and is starker than his
more painterly small works, and which was passed at $ 1,600,000; Lot 35, «Bedouin (Personage Gris et Rougeatre),» a great Jean Dubuffet (1901 - 1985) painting that is conservatively estimated at $ 700,000 to $ 900,000 and which sold for $ 992,500; and Lot 46, «Aux Bons Principes,» a
more colorful but not as strong Dubuffet that has an ambitious high estimate of $ 3,000,000, and which sold for $ 2,202,500; and Lot 63, an untitled, large painting by Sigmar Polke (b. 1941) that has a
mysterious, luminous and mystical
sense of a great mountainscape by the Sung Dynasty masters of China and has a conservative high estimate of $ 300,000, and which was passed at $ 150,000.