"Beyond the work’s formal qualities, Gottlieb succeeds in uniting the two predominant divisions of Abstract Expressionism, placing them in dynamic coexistence within a single frame. The black form in the bottom is painted in a choppy, painterly manner reminiscent of the active gestural expressionism of Jackson Pollock or Franz Kline, while the circle on top calls to mind the Color Field painting of Helen Frankenthaler or Mark Rothko. While the two schools are often seen as mutually exclusive, Gottlieb combines them with masterful ease, playing them against each other to enhance the texture of the work.

"The Burst paintings are a series governed by, if not idolizing, duality and opposition. The stability and calm of the green only serves to emphasize and exaggerate the passion and energy of the lower form. The composition draws on the constant volatility and flux of nature and the pre-historic struggles between order and chaos, creation and destruction, earth and fire. However, despite these inherent contrasts, the masses are linked together, inextricably drawn to each other by an invisible force. In fact, it is this tension between the two forms that contributes to the work’s elegance and lends the piece its hypnotic allure.

"Drawing heavily on the philosophy of the time, Gottlieb was particularly influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. From Freud he drew on the idea of the division of the conscious and subconscious, always striving to create something that was true to his inner self. Painting became a means toward self-discovery: 'When I feel I am fully charged and ready to let go on the canvas, I’m not in a position to analyze and view myself in an objective way. I have to let my feelings go and it is only afterwards that I become aware of what my feelings really were. ... From Jung he further drew on the idea of the binary, internalizing his assertion that nothing can exist without its opposite – that a being without opposites is completely unthinkable.'"

The catalogue provides the following commentary:

"The original creative impulse for Untitled emerged from the profile of Ruscha’s 1939 Ford Sedan, whose outline reminded the artist of a lumbering elephant. Both the Ford and the elephant exhibit the same curvature along their backsides; the image of both automobile and animal struggling uphill bearing such a colossal weight appeared pleasingly poetic to Ruscha. This humorous transformation and distortion of a typical Pop, mass-produced object in the form of a car into an elephant holds many of Ruscha’s typical interests and yet extends his art into realms and imagery he had not previously explored....Smooth as a silver gelatin print and just out of focus, the enigmatic Untitled was also inspired by black and white photography and old celluloid film....With the elephant metonymically representing America, Ruscha portrays the country to be in a literal uphill struggle against the endangerment of its myth of greatness."

The catalogue notes that "In 2008, Anselm Kiefer unveiled a new cycle of works that focuses on the biblical figure of the Virgin Mary. The group of roughly thirty paintings and one sculpture was presented to the public in a highly-anticipated solo exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg titled Maria durch ein Dornwald ging [Maria walks amid the Thorn] – a German Advent and Christmas carol about the Virgin Mary which has been popular for over a century. Most paintings in this extensive group were fabricated in 2007/08, however the present piece is an immaculate exception in that it was started in the 1970s and completed over a number of months throughout the decades.

"In Maria durch ein Dornwald ging," the entry continues, "the focus of attention has been placed on the Christian religion and the iconography of the divine, a theme central to Anselm Kiefer’s philosophical concerns as well as artistic output for many years. In this body of works, elements that usually dominate the artist’s compositions such as landscapes and lakes are replaced with dramatic sites of mythological scenes including the assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary, the birth of Virgin Mary and the Holy House of Loreto, the invocation of the Virgin Mary through the Litany of Loreto and the Hail Mary prayer, and the appearance of God in the burning bush....the oversized composition is dominated by a set of majestic wings set against an abstract expanse of thick impasto. The astonishing layers of media and pigment, voluminous yet delicate, are iconic of the artist’s distinctive sedimenthing working method and a true testament of his artistic prowess. Kiefer’s approach is a fine balance between figuration and abstraction, and the result is a mesmerizing paradoxical canvas that hovers between emptiness and fullness. For over thirty years, Kiefer’s oeuvre has been characterized by a process of sedimentation, crossing, and reworking of themes, motifs and constellations that reappear time and again in very different media and formats."

It has an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000.  It sold for $790,000.