Sale 218 Lot 372A

ARTHUR COTTON MOORE
American, 1935-2022
East Meets Canal: A Chinatown Palazzo
Mixed media on canvas panels.
Large-scale, three-panel dimensional wall sculpture that fuses Venetian palazzo architecture with layered Chinese and Chinatown signage and imagery, creating a playful cultural mash-up in mixed media. Each panel presents a trompe-l'oeil building facade, complete with arched windows, balconies, and classical stonework reminiscent of Venice's canal-side palazzi while the rooflines are crowned with freestanding cut-out elements that rise above the architecture in true bas-relief: a pagoda-topped sign reading "YING LEE," a laughing Budai figure, vintage-style advertisement cards ("CHANG CO.," a geisha illustration), a coiled golden dragon, and a bottle and photo still life beside a blue "PLEASURE RESTAURANT" marquee. Bold typographic elements anchor the lower registers, while Chinese characters, red lanterns, and a small carved lion figure populate the shadowed archways below.

$5,000-7,000

ARTIST PROFILE: Arthur Cotton Moore (1935–2022) was a sixth-generation Washingtonian and one of the capital's most influential architects, celebrated for pioneering the adaptive-reuse and historic preservation movement in the United States. He began his professional practice in 1965 and was best known for expanding the reach of the country's nascent preservation movement, taking it from restoring historic manor houses to repurposing urban industrial structures, with his first project, Canal Square in Georgetown, recognized as an early landmark in combining old mercantile buildings with major new construction. He went on to lead the transformative redevelopment of Washington Harbour and major renovations of the Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson and John Adams Buildings, as well as the Old Post Office and the historic Cairo Hotel. Beyond preservation work, his style was often described as "Modernism with Baroque sensibilities," reflecting his interest in curves and ornament as a counterpoint to rigid modernist design. A prolific figure recognized internationally, his work appeared in over 2,700 articles worldwide and was included since 1980 in every edition of the British compilation "Contemporary Architects," while his buildings were shown in group exhibitions at institutions including the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Columbia University's Avery Library. Moore was also a painter, furniture designer, and writer — his first book was *The Powers of Preservation: New Life for Urban Historic Places*, and he won an Architectural Record award for furniture design — and since 1990 held solo painting exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Paris, a multidisciplinary practice reflected in works like the mixed-media architectural piece above.