Lou Reed (Transformer), 2000

by Russell Young

Print : Screen Print 98 x 75 x 3 cm

$5,138

One of the last works available by this artist

Make an offer

LOADING NOT DISPLAYED BLUR TEXT
Second NOT DISPLAYED BLUR TEXT
Have a question? Ask a specialist

Free returns within 14 days

Authenticity guaranteed

Learn more
Paypal American Express Visa Mastercard

Verified Reviews

9.6/10

About the artwork

Type

Unique work

Signature

Signed artwork

Authenticity

Sold with certificate of Authenticity from the gallery

Invoice from the gallery


Medium

Print: Screen Print

Dimensions cm inch

98 x 75 x 3 cm Height x Width x Depth

Framing

White aluminium frame with glass


Tags

Icons

Lou Reed

Pink

Artwork sold in perfect condition

Artwork location: France

Extremely rare silkscreen print of the Transformer album cover (Lou Reed). This serigraphy is unique, because it bears the double signature of Mick Rock, the photographer who created the album cover, and Russel Young who produced the serigraphy. The other serigraphs in this series of 125 bear only the signature of Russel Young. An exceptional testimony, hand-signed by the 2 artists. Excellent condition.
Read more

About the seller

Justine de Paris • France

Artsper seller since 2015

Vetted Seller


Collector’s Guide

Imagine it at home

Russell Young, Lou Reed (Transformer)
Russell Young

Russell Young

United Kingdom  • 1959

Masterpieces

Russell Young was born in 1959 to an unwed mother and into the cold, wet, isolation of Northern England. He spent his first months passed from foster care to a nunnery and at four months, was adopted by Ken and Lesley Young. The new family migrated across the north. From an early age Young felt an outsider in this dark world. He was powerfully drawn to the idealized drama and warm comfort of the American dream. Everything American he came in contact with represented freedom, possibility and sun. Young hated school and by the age of 14 often skipped out entirely. He escaped to the football terraces with his father. He loved the chants and tough terrace culture. As many northern youths, he was born ripe into the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, New Order and the northern soul of the Wigan Casino.

He began to take photographs. He landed at the Chester Art College where he studied photography, film and graphic design under Jack Straw, who shaped Young's early development, presenting a never imagined path forward. His parents divorced. He continued on to Exeter Art College and to London where he couldn't find a job. After months on the streets he began assisting photographer, Christos Raftopoulos. Raftopoulos, an aesthete, took him under his wing and taught him to see a new world of light and sharp detail. Raftopoulos pushed Young to take on projects of his own.

He started at the live club shows of Bauhaus, R.E.M. and the Smiths. The photographs were exquisite and he quickly picked up work for magazines and eventually began sessions for the record companies. In 1986, he shot the 'Faith' sleeve for George Michael, launching him towards America and opportunity. He did portraits of Morrissey, Bjork, Springsteen, Dylan, New Order, Diana Ross, Paul Newman and many other celebrities. He began to direct music videos; one hundred during the glory days of MTV.

In 1992, Young moved to Hollywood. He met Finola Hughes, they married and life took shape for him in America. His career as a photographer and music video director was flourishing. He carved out the time and began to paint seriously. Young and Hughes moved to New York. In September 2000, he'd grown frustrated by the limits of the photograph and the commercial world around it. Hughes was seven months pregnant with their first son. He felt frozen and dead as a creative person. He went to Tuscany and he sat on a hill above a farm to meditate on becoming an artist.

Young returned to New York and rented a studio in Brooklyn and began a series of experiments he called, 'Combine Paintings'. He also started what he believed were clearly extensions of photography. He begins his series of 'Pig Portraits'. Young had spent his photographic career doing portraits of celebrities. He never felt he'd captured his subject as true and as powerfully as these new works. The answers to the questions he had of himself were in fact playing out in the 'Pig Portraits'. They attacked the nature of photography, portraiture and prickly nature of celebrity itself.

In 2003 he showed his first series of 'Pig Portraits' in Los Angeles. He was now a painter, an artist. The family moved back to California and built a house on the coast, 80 miles north of Los Angeles. Young built a studio on the compound and began working alone, focusing on the development of ideas and flying east to New York to work with his master printer and team.

Young pressed himself into this new method of action by reflection, using its forced structure to allow the freedom to follow streams of thought that would normally be cast aside in haste. This lead to powerful new work, eclectic in scope, never afraid to turn on itself. In 2007, he showed his Fame + Shame paintings in London. They were an exorcism, a gritty, bare 'pop-art cocktail' of America, seen through the eyes of the young man from the north of England, leading one through the glamour and glory to brutal chaos and brooding. Crying out, “shelve your western plans."

Young began to use diamond dust in 2007, pressing the crystals into the enamel of the paintings. He was drawn to the opulence of the light, shimmering off the multi-faceted glass. He hung the paintings from the trees of his California garden. At night the moon shone blue on the crystals. The images were lost in the abstract flicker of light only to once again, reclaim their place. In the monochrome paintings we recognize Marilyn Crying and Kurt Cobain. Then the light falls on the diamonds and the choir sings. He called them “Dirty Pretty Things" and seemed to assault the idea of even looking at pictures, turning the experience into chewing bubble gum.

In 2009 he began the “American Envy" paintings, revisiting some of his most iconic social signifiers, but going deeper into the eye of the storm, brilliantly walking us down the spiraling vortex of rebellion, hope, violence and madness towards the collision of dream and sacrifice. Elvis, JFK and Charles Manson are the chaperons.

In February 2010, Young was admitted to the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California and diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, the Swine Flu. Young endured an 8-day induced coma with doctors and loved ones skeptical of recovery. After a lengthy stay in hospital, Young emerged from his near-death experience with severe memory loss and an incredibly weak body. Little by little, he built back his strength and began examining his life and his surroundings in a whole new way. He says, “I left the hospital and I had to learn to breath, write, draw, think, and walk for the second time in my life."

During this process of recovery, Young began to explore the nature of trauma and its effect on both the individual and cultural psyche. Embracing and utilizing a new more visceral and animalistic process he attacks and dissects the imagery within the canvas. 2011 forced a seminal shift in his work. He began to work free from the domestication of art, like a feral boy, filled with a new, rough energy of violence, sex and power. First, in his magnificent, “Helter Skelter" paintings he danced with this energy. He cast away a century of 'modern pictures' and produced a stunning series, where we don't look from afar but are surrounded in chaos and mayhem. These are not pictures of the murder of Meredith Hunter at Altamont; they used the picture as the brush to paint the 'Helter Skelter'.

With his next series, “Isolation", Young forced shift again, harder. In an act of Burroughs, he 'cuts up' the glossy files of bound women and forces them onto large, unimaginable orgies of claustrophobic assemblage. With enormous screens, he prints each into her place; episode in multitude, again and again. The sultry, luscious black enamel is made rough and dirty by the act. The room has gotten smaller; we are surrounded by hard, dark, unapologetic fantasy. The women ask if they are art. The room fills with the symphonic screams of pleasure both beautiful and brutal. The paintings are named for the council flats of Northern England; Nant Peris, The Gorbals, Thorntree. Their names twist the paintings from sex to the screams of children, fighting for a way out of the dark. Akin to Joy Division, a name taken from the nazi camp whorehouse, where the officers found pleasure in their prize.

Young continues to challenge and reinvent himself using bold, forceful checks and assaults on his own systems to find new ways of expression. He uses themes, still with him from boyhood, to express feelings of isolation, alienation, entrapment and the marginalized dreams of an outsider fighting for a way into the light and expression. His work has been shown in London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Singapore, New York, Detroit, Miami and Los Angeles.

Russell Young lives and works on the California coast and in Brooklyn, New York.

MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS


2018-2019

RUSSELL YOUNG – SUPERSTAR

Modern Art Museum, Shanghai


2015

FOREVER YOUNG: A Retrospective

Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL


2012

RUSSELL YOUNG: A Retrospective

Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas


COLLECTIONS

Albertina Museum, Vienna

Carlo Ancelotti, Madrid

Jennifer Aniston, Los Angeles

Kate Beckinsale, Los Angeles

The Benetton Foundation, Treviso, Italy

David Bowie, New York

The Core Club, New York

Cornell Art Museum, Florida

Beth DeWoody, New York

Drake, Hidden Hills, California

Kirsten Dunst, Los Angeles

The Getty Collection, Los Angeles

Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas

Laurence Graff, New York

David Hockney, Los Angeles

Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul

Marc Jacobs, New York

Kris Jenner, Los Angeles

Angelina Jolie, Los Angeles

Khloe Kardashian, Los Angeles

Floyd Mayweather, Las Vegas

The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina

Mohammed VI of Morocco, Rabat

The Estate of Marilyn Monroe, New York

Kate Moss, London

Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow

Elon Musk, Los Angeles

Mark Zuckerberg, Palo Alto

Sharon Osbourne, Los Angeles

John Paulson, New York

Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece, Athens

Joaquin Phoenix, Los Angeles

Brad Pitt, Los Angeles

The Polk Museum of Art, Florida

The Qatari Royal Family, Doha

Lou Reed, New York

Aby Rosen, New York

The Saatchi Collection, London

Paul Smith, London

Daisy Soros, New York

Elizabeth Taylor, Los Angeles

Kanye West, Los Angeles

White House Collection, Washington, DC


Read more
Need help?

How does Artsper protect you?

Protect your purchase

We’re here to help you collect art securely. When you browse and buy on Artsper, you benefit from our guaranteed protections.

Buy works from the best galleries

We partner with the best art galleries. All sellers on Artsper have been carefully reviewed and approved by our team. All of our partner galleries respect our code of ethics.

Know what you’re getting

Each work on Artsper is studied and validated by our team before appearing online. Get personalized support Contemporary art specialists are available by phone and email to answer all of your questions about our works of art. Get personalized advice and curated suggestions for your collection.

Resell your artworks

As a private individual, you have the possibility to resell on Artsper your works acquired on Artsper. For more information click here.

 

Make an offer with Artsper

Negotiate prices

Price negotiation is possible. Like in a gallery, this allows you to open a discussion and purchase your works at your preferred price.

Get our help negotiating

Let our team handle the negotiations and get back to you once the best deal is made.

 

Order safely

Artsper’s satisfaction guarantee

With Artsper, you have the opportunity to return a work free of charge within 14 days of receipt if it does not suit you, for whatever reason. You will then receive a full refund for your order.

Protect your purchase with Artsper’s payment partners

All credit card payments are processed by Paybox, the trusted leader in payment processing for international businesses. Paybox ensures the highest level of security.

Get specialized support from Artsper in the event of a problem

On the rare occasion that a work of art arrives in a different condition than described, we will work to administer a return, refund, restoration or exchange for you. Our team will always keep you informed on the progress of your request and will go above and beyond to offer you personalized solutions.

To benefit from Artsper’s protections you must:

  • Place your order using one of Artsper's payment methods.

  • Report any issues to Artsper within one week of receiving your work.

  • Provide all requested photographic evidence of the problem (including the original artwork and packaging).

Artsper’s guarantee covers the following problems:

  • You receive a work that’s missing a described characteristic (such as a signature or a frame)

  • You receive a work with different characteristics than those described at the time of purchase

  • You receive a damaged piece of work

  • Your purchase is declared lost or damaged during transit

  • You receive a work that is a different in color than what you ordered

  • Your purchase is delayed

Why buy on Artsper?

Artsper gives you access to the largest catalog of contemporary artworks, from the best galleries (200,000 works, 25,000 artists, 2,000 partner galleries).

We select the galleries with which we collaborate. This demanding selection, operated by our team of experts, offers you several guarantees:

  • Double expertise regarding the quality and originality of the works. On the one hand by professional galleries that select their artists and works. On the other hand by Artsper which selects its partner galleries according to the quality of their catalog and their reputation.
  • Access to the entire catalog of works from our partner galleries, sold at the same price as in the gallery.
  • The possibility of returning purchased works (within 14 days) if they do not suit you, wherever you are in the world. Which is not the case outside Artsper.
  • The possibility of easily reselling the work you purchased on Artsper.

We also facilitate the search for works according to your preferences thanks to our intelligent features such as:

Or simply thanks to our filters on the catalog allowing you to refine your searches.

Our customer service is also at your service and responds within the shortest time!

Can I negotiate the price of an artwork?

For some artworks, you can negotiate the price. If the price of the work is negotiable, you have a “Make an offer” button under the “Buy this work” one.

To submit your offer, you must make a payment of the desired amount. Your offer will then be forwarded to the gallery, which reserves the right to accept or reject it. If your offer is accepted, it means that your order is confirmed by the gallery and they will prepare the artwork for shipment. If your offer is rejected, you will be refunded the total amount paid automatically. The gallery can also propose a counter-offer for the acquisition of the artwork.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us: [email protected].

Where can I have my order delivered?

Artsper delivers worldwide!

However, please note that once your order reaches its destination, it may be subject to VAT or other customs fees. These charges are beyond our control and you will be responsible for paying them (this is indicated at the ‘checkout’ first step).

Select the delivery address of your choice. Please make sure that someone is present to receive your order.

If your billing address is different to your delivery address you can specify this at the checkout.

 

Why do I have to pay customs fees?

Return and cancellation

You can return the artwork without needing to provide a reason or pay a penalty fee up to 14 days after receiving your order.

In the case that the right of withdrawal is exercised in the aforementioned time frame, the price of the artwork(s) purchased and the shipping costs will be reimbursed by us as soon as the gallery has received the artwork and notified us.

Artsper will manage the return of the work and will bear the cost of returns (which will either be paid by you and refunded by Artsper or directly paid by Artsper).

The artwork must be returned in perfect condition and in its original packaging (or equivalent).

The buyer exercises his right of withdrawal directly from MUMART, by sending an email to the address: [email protected].

How can I best showcase my work?

If you have bought a painting, a sculpture or a work on paper, find expert advice on its conservation and how to best enhace it:

Go to the orders tab in my purchases to benefit from the exceptional discounts negotiated for you with our framing, pedestal and lighting partners...