Spring Auctions Looking Bright

Via Photograph Magazine
Posted April 12, 2011 by Jean Dykstra


The weather still felt a bit wintry, but the spring photography auctions suggested that a new season might be upon us. The sales had lower buy-in rates than we’ve been seeing (under 20 percent for most) and totals surpassing the firms' estimates. Sotheby’s kicked off the season on April 6 with a successful general-owners sale totaling $5,632,187, and a buy-in rate of 18.8 percent. Jaromir Funke’s abstract Composition, 1929, set a record for the artist at auction, selling for $350,500, far above the $70,000 high estimate. Mathew Brady’s portrait of politician John C. Calhoun, from 1849, sold for $338,500, also above the high estimate of $50,000. Two Man Ray images sold in the top ten: Untitled (Photomontage with Nude and Studio Lamp), 1933, was the top lot, bringing a whopping $410,500, and Solarized Male Torso, 1936, sold for $122,500.

On a side note, Sotheby's announced in February that it has made Paris its European center for photographs and decorative arts. Sotheby's won't hold photo sales in London, but the firm will hold bi-annual sales in Paris in May and in November, to coincide with Paris Photo and capitalize on the active market for photography in Paris. The department is headed by Simone Klein, who joined the firm in 2007.

Christie’s had three photography sales in April: Part I of the Consolidated Freightways collection, which focuses on American photography, was sold on April 7; 130 lots were offered, and the buy-in rate was 15 percent. The top lot was Robert Mapplethorpe’s Flag, 1987, which brought $158,500. That same day, a private collection went on the block, in a sale dubbed "The Feminine Ideal;" it brought a total of $942,125, with 18 percent of the 79 lots sold. Given that the sale focused on female beauty, it was no surprise that the top three lots were by Irving Penn, or that two of them should feature Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn. Balenciaga Mantle Coat, Paris, 1950, sold for $80,500, and Woman with Umbrella (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1950, brought $60,000. Penn’s photographs, reliable favorites in the marketplace, were also top sellers in the general-owners photographs sale on April 8, with Bee on Lips, New York, September 22, 1995, selling for $182,500. Twentieth-century masters such as Avedon, Eggleston, Penn, and Frank were well represented in the top lots, with Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, New York, May 6, 1957, bringing $482,500, and Eggleston’s iconic Memphis (Tricycle), c. 1969-1970, selling for $266,500

Robert Mapplethorpe, Flag. Courtesy Christie's New York

On April 9, Phillips de Pury and Company held its first photography sale in its new digs at 450 Park Avenue. The sale offered 260 lots, and totaled $5,802,250, with a slim 9.6 percent buy-in rate. Phillips’s chief auctioneer, Simon de Pury, held a Photographs Aficionado Class before the auction, and he conducted the sale as well. The top ten list included such contemporary works as Cindy Sherman’s Oriental-themed Untitled #278, which sold for $242,500. Dutch photographer Desiree Dolron’s Xteriors VI, referencing the history of Flemish portraiture, brought $194,500, well above its high estimate of $60,000. Peter Beard’s Tsavo North on the Athi Tiva, circa 150 lbs, - 160 lbs, side Bull Elephant, February, sold for $120,100. And Florian Maier-Aichen’s contemporary take on the Sublime, Untitled, 2005, brought $104,500.

Desiree Dolron, Xteriors VI. Courtesy Phillips de Pury and Company

Two weeks earlier, photobooks, photographic albums, and historical and 20th-century photographs sold well Swann Galleries on March 24. The total was $1,037,574, with a 20 percent buy-in rate. Adam Clark Vroman’s album Arizona and New Mexico, Volume II, with more than 165 platinum prints of Native Americans, from 1897, sold for $62,400, a record for the photographer at auction and Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Children at Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963, printed 1991, brought $48,000, the top price for an individual photograph at the sale.

Steve Schapiro: Memories


Via La Lettre de la Photographie

Steve Schapiro, the photographer of The Godfather and Taxi Driver, is in Paris for his exhibition at the A. Galerie. Christophe Lunn and Paul Barrois met with him for La Lettre in order to evoke some of his memories on the set of these epic movies.

"The Whisper"

Click here for interview.

http://www.a-galerie.fr/

Related: Steve Schapiro exhibition review in Summer 2010 issue of ARTnews.

WITH HEDDA STERNE'S RECENT PASSING, NINA LEEN'S "THE IRACSIBLES" PHOTOGRAPH IS BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT


Nina Leen: Life magazine’s portrait of the Abstract Expressionist artists known as ‘The Irascibles,’ 1951. Front row: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, and Mark Rothko; middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Bradley Walker Tomlin; back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne




Hedda Sterne, an artist whose association with the Abstract Expressionists became fixed forever when she appeared prominently in a now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the movement’s leading lights, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 100.

Read the full New York Times Obituary here.


Sterne's passing has resulted in Nina Leen's photograph being published in numerous articles and obituaries about Sterne. In December, 2010 The New York Review of Books had this long essay by Sarah Boxer explaining her life, art and why she did not have the same career as the others in this famous photograph.


Opening May 6, Monroe Gallery of Photography presents "Composing The Artist". This exhibition of classic photographs portrays iconic Artists and Writer, and will include Nina Leen's historic photograph.

APRIL 12, 1945: FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT DIED

Ida Wyman: Men of the Garment District Read of President Roosevelt's Death, NYC, 1945

On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom. The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive  cerebral hemmorrhage. At 3:35 pm that day, Roosevelt died.

Ed Clark: Navy CPO Graham Jackson Playing "Going Home" as President Roosevelt's Body is Carried, Warm Springs, GA, April 13, 1945

On the morning of April 13, Roosevelt's body was placed in a flag-draped coffin and loaded onto the presidential train. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt was transported back to Hyde Park by train, guarded by four servicemen from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of the Sprinwood Estate, the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park on April 15.

Roosevelt's death was met with shock and grief across the U.S. and around the world. His declining health had not been known to the general public. Roosevelt had been president for more than 12 years, longer than any other person, and had led the country through some of its greatest crises to the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and to within sight of the defeat of Japan as well.


Less than a month after his death, on May 8, came the moment Roosevelt fought for: V-E Day.

An editorial by The New York Times declared, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House."

thewhitehouse.gov: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Preview: Richard C. Miller, Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Via BWGallerist : Black and White Fine Art Photography
April 11, 2011


Preview: Richard C. Miller, Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Richard C. Miller: ”James Dean at Juke Box during the filming of ‘Giant’”

One of the best galleries to find a combination of Black and White masterworks and photographs with a human focus is The Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Currently they are featuring the work of Richard C. Miller :

From 1955 to 1962, Miller was on retainer at Globe Photos, covering the entertainment industry and more than seventy films. After this stint he returned to freelance and became friends with celebrities such as James Dean. Never one for self-promotion, Miller rarely exhibited his work; the work, he figured, should speak for itself. In the spring of 2009, Richard C. Miller’s photographic career was given long overdue recognition with an exhibition at the Getty Museum.

Feb 11 through April 24, 2011

For more information: Monroe Gallery of Photography

APRIL IN HISTORY: THE LIBERATION OF BUCHENWALD

Margaret Bourke-White: Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945 (©Time Inc.)

A detachment of troops belonging to the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, 6th Armored Division of the US Third Army, arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 under the leadership of Captain Frederic Keffer.

Impending victory was sobered by the grim facts of the atrocities which allied troops were uncovering all over Germany. Margaret Bourke-White was with General Patton's third army when they reached Buchenwald on the outskirts of Weimar. Patton was so incensed by what he saw that he ordered his police to get a thousand civilians to make them see with their own eyes what their leaders had done. The MPs were so enraged they brought back 2,000. Bourke-White said, "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons who would die the next day... and tattooed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." LIFE published in their May 7, 1945 issue many photographs of these atrocities, saying, "Dead men will have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them."

Margaret Bourke-White prepares to take a photo of corpses, April 16, 1945

Photo Credit: USHMM

 The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation

SOTHEBY'S PHOTO AUCTION UPDATE

Via I Like To Watch

Auction Hero: Calhoun Daguerreotype Sells for $338,500

John C. Calhoun by Mathew Brady, 1849

 

I don't get to do much breaking news here, but this morning I attended the morning session of Sotheby's spring photography auction in New York, where a 1849 daguerreotype of the great American politician John C. Calhoun sold for $338,000.


If you believe--as I sort of do--that art sales results reflect the overall state of the economy, then the morning session today indicates that we are well underway with recovery from the financial perils of 2008. Buyers seem to be sticking with the classics, though, just in case the rug gets pulled out again: A circa-1960s print of Ansel Adams's "Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, From Manzanar, California," sold for $182,500, and Edward Weston's "Dunes, Oceano," shot in 1936 and printed in the 1940s, went for $158,500.

"Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, From Manzanar, California," by Ansel Adams

"Dunes, Oceano," by Edward Weston

As is typical these days, the auction gallery at Sotheby's was sparsely populated--perhaps 50 to 75 bidders on hand. (My friend Stephen Perloff, who edits The Photograph Collector newsletter, likens auctions these days to a Mets game in September.) But there was plenty--plenty--of auction action phone bidders. Denise Bethel, head of Sotheby's photography department, handled it all with aplomb from her podium, her voice sometimes sounding like one of those police dispatchers in old movies (Lot 41...Timothy O'Sullivan...Canyon de Chelle...thank you...over and out...").

The big dag of the day was made by Mathew Brady in 1849. The image became one of his most famous portraits, noted for the way it captured Calhoun's penetrating gaze (or as my son Henry would say, his "crazy-ass eyes.") It was widely printed and was used as the basis of a painting by Henry Darby that is now owned by the U.S. Senate. The actual object for sale here--the daguerreotype--was only recently rediscovered, according to Sotheby's.

High prices at auction often simply reflect the competition between two motivated bidders, and that seemed to be the case with this lot. But objects like this, in their rarity, have intrinsic historical value. Calhoun was a giant of American politics, a cngressman, senator, secretary of war under James Madison and vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Adams's archrival Andrew Jackson. He was a great orator in an era of oratorical greatness, parrying with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. He was a champion for his state, South Carolina, which at the time was pushing the idea of nullification--whereby states could ignore federal laws they didn't like. Jackson killed that effort, saving the union for another 30 or so years.

All in all, an interesting morning.

WSJ: A Star-Filled Spring of Photo Auctions

The Wall Street Journal

Auctions at three major New York houses next week are headlining some of photography's stellar names—as well as a collection that once decorated the walls of a giant trucking company.


The wealth of offerings follows the recent rebound of other parts of the art market from the 2008 recession, with potential sellers now sensing that they can get top dollar, says Sarah Hasted, co-owner of photography specialist Hasted Kraeutler Gallery.

The auctions, at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips de Pury & Co., feature landmark works from Robert Frank, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Ansel Adams and Robert Mapplethorpe. These auctions generally occur every spring and fall.

On the front and back of its 173-work catalog for its April 6 auction, Sotheby's has put two Man Ray photos from the 1930s noted for their abstract, contemporary feel. "Photomontage with Nude and Studio Light," using two negatives sandwiched together, is a classical study of a female torso combined with a distorted image of Man Ray's studio. One can see his camera, a naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling, and even the slippered feet of the artist, an American who spent most of his career in Paris. Sotheby's expects the photo to sell for at least $100,000.

Man Ray's "Solarized Male Torso" uses a method known as solarization, introducing light as part of the developing process, and is projected to bring at least $70,000.

Overall, Sotheby's expects to take in between $2.8 million and $4.3 million. These photos are open for public viewing starting Saturday.

At Christie's, a highlight is the 130-image Consolidated Freightways collection, put together in the 1980s by the trucking company now known as Con-way Inc.


The theme is America's love affair with the highway, photos that could have been taken from the cab of a truck, and it includes such classics as Ansel Adams's 1953 "Coastal Road," showing a lonely stretch of highway with hills in the distance, and Robert Frank's "U.S. 285, New Mexico," a 1956 photo focusing on the center strip of a highway at what appears to be dusk.

"This was the corporate collection, hanging on the walls of the company's offices," says Laura Paterson, a Christie's photography specialist. Christie's is selling the collection as individual photos and expects it to bring at least $975,000.

The Phillips sale includes some classic photos, such as the 1987 "Flag" by controversial artist Robert Mapplethorpe, known for his frank nudes, flower still lifes and celebrity portraits.

Another Phillips photo is "A Jewish Giant at Home With His Parents in the Bronx," a 1970 photo by Diane Arbus, who specialized in the abnormal. This one shows a mother and father looking up at their giant son, whose head almost reaches the ceiling of the room.




What is expected to be one of the highest-priced photos of the week, selling for at least $200,000, is Cindy Sherman's 1993 "Untitled #278," showing a dissolute-looking woman sitting in a leopard-skin chair, interpreted as a critique of the fashion industry. Ms. Sherman, as usual, posed for it herself.

Cindy Sherman's 1993 'Untitled #278' is expected to sell for at least $200,000.

Photos are proving increasingly attractive to collectors, Christie's Ms. Paterson says. "As the price of paintings have become incredibly expensive," she added, "a lot of people have moved into photography as something that's affordable and still decorative."


Click here for the article with video link:  John Arena, senior vice president at U.S. Trust, explains how ultra-high-net-worth investors can leverage their existing art collection to raise cash. Dow Jones Wealth Adviser's Veronica Dagher reports.

APRIL 4, 1968: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSINATED

Joseph Louw:  Dr. Martin Luther King assassination, Memphis,Tenn., April 4, 1968

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King Jr's Motel Room Hours After He Was Shot, Memphis, Tennessee 1968

Established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, The King Center is the official, living memorial dedicated to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

PEOPLE MAGAZINE ELIZABETH TAYLOR SPECIAL ISSUE CORRECTION!

The special issue of People magazine dedicated to Elizabeth Taylor had a wealth of great photographs of the iconic star, including this classic by Richard C. Miller:

James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor take a weekend break in Houston from filming "Giant", 1955

Unfortunately, as many of our friends have pointed out, much of the caption information in the special issue was wrong. Eagle-eyed readers noted that People was off on a few details -  it was not Dallas, it was Houston. It was not the set, since the set of Giant was in Marfa. It was at a friend's home in Houston.

This photograph is included in the current exhibition "Richard C. Miller: 1912 - 2010" through April 24. Come see it!