Helen Van der Meij, Amsterdam
Mary Boone Gallery New York
Acqui♍red directly from the above by the present owner around 19🅠80

Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Upon close inspection there are some minor hairline cracks in the light grey painted areas. There is one small spot of paint loss of approximately 1 cm. width and 2 mm. high in the center of the work situated at the right of the first black swan's nose. In the upper right quarter of the painting three thin hairline cracks are visible upon close examination.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Dutch artist Renee Daniels gained attention in 1977 with a number of solo shows, first in the Netherlands, later in Germany and throughout Europe; including Documenta VII. His humorous and cynical exploration of the role of the artist in the Post-Modern climate hit the right cord with many in the art world during the years of conceptual and performing art. Time spent in NY along with a show at Metro Pictures in the early 1980s also established Daniels name in the US and beyond.

Late in 1987, at the age of thirty-seven, the artist suffered a stroke, so has sadly not been able to paint in any conductive way since.

It is in referring to Baudelaire's infamous poem La Muse Vénale (1857) that Daniels illustrates his strong feelings in what he sees as the need for artists to corrupt themselves in order to attain a level of recognition and success. Such is their attempt to sustain themselves in the present art world. The final fragment of the poem in particular reveals the reason Daniels uses the Baudelaire reference.

"Or, a starving rip-off artist, selling your charm
And your laughter shades the tears so no one sees the harm
In bringing to bloom an ordinary rat, a vulgar thief." 
(Charles Baudelaire; The Venal Muse, from; Flowers of Evil Translated by William A. Sigler)

Robert Simon expands on this issue in Artforum, December 1999;

"Daniels situated himself along a Dutch-Belgian-French axis, an axis comprising Duchamp, Picabia, Magritte, and Broodthaers. In 1983, he spoke admiringly of Duchamp's "struggle" against art commerce and located his own practice in the "former no-man's-land between literature, the visual arts and life." In earlier remarks he had singled out a few paintings as "important steps" in his development: a dense, exuberantly painted 1977 image of a phonograph record and a paintbrush, which is linked to later pictures of such reproductive media and everyday objects as movie cameras, books, and skateboards; and a painting of mussels and one of swans from 1979, both works tided La Muse Venale after Baudelaire's poetic evocation of the corrupt entanglements, commercial and otherwise, of artistic inspiration. If the title imparts a cynical dimension to the darkly coloured and somewhat sinister scene of swans, the image of mussels and an eel on a bright beach points fairly specifically toward Broodthaers's mussel assemblages and, we might suppose, toward the model of Broodthaers as both a self-professed "fraud" and demystifier of artistic "sincerity." A particul🌄arly rebarbative model, but not one Daniels really attempts to emulate: There seems to be, across his work, an insistence, "sincere" if divided by doubt, on the value and viability of the singular image, the auratic object, the enterprise of the Artist".