Julie Blackmon: Day Tripping @Robert Mann

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 large scale color photographs, framed in white with no mats, and hung in the two room gallery space. All of the works are archival pigment prints made between 2010 and 2012. The images on view come in three sizes, with corresponding edition sizes. The smallest size ranges from 24×24 to 25×34 (or reverse) and is available in editions of 25. The medium size ranges 36×36 to 36×50 (or reverse) and is available in editions of 10. And the largest size ranges from 44×44 to 44×59 (or reverse) and is available in editions of 5; one image (Olive & Market Street) is also available in an extra large size of 60×80, also in an edition of 5. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Julie Blackmon’s newest photographs continue her exploration of the intersection of 21st century domestic life and the painterly nuances of the staged tableaux format. Mixing brightened, colorful, digitally-crisp hyper-reality and carefully choreographed scenes featuring families and children, her images have evolved an instantly recognizable signature look, placing the viewer in a stylized world that feels both obviously constructed and plausibly familiar. It’s as if the action has been frozen for just a split second, offering us a heightened sense of all the competing activity that is swirling around.
A handful of earlier photographs by Blackmon played with references to the chaotic interiors of the Dutch Renaissance painter Jan Steen, but aside from a sharpie incident on the living room couch and a mother’s book club (reading Fifty Shades of Grey), this group has generally moved outdoors. Most of the vignettes have multiple points of tension and compositions that draw the viewer’s eye around to interrelated details. A pack of boys in a grassy meadow shoots a shotgun at overhead birds while babies howl in the abandoned stroller and a picnic is left unattended. Mom lounges on the patio reading a magazine and eating from a giant bag of potato chips, while the baby wanders around and the barbecue fire flares up, rubber balls strewn all over, including on the roof. Prim girls in dresses tend babies near a nighttime fire, while rampaging young boys turn a hot dog on a stick into a flaming torch. And The Sound of Music playing on a makeshift backyard screen is the setting for various groups of popcorn eating kids and distracted babies on rumpled blankets.
Two of the newest images on display pay homage to the busy street scenes of Balthus, with multiple characters moving independently of each other. In Homegrown Food, a girl plays tennis against the wall with a red ball, a man smokes, and another carries a wooden plank, both the girl and the plank man echoes of figures in Balthus’ La Rue. In Olive & Market Street, a woman with a bag, a man walking away, a dog in the middle of the street, and even the closed in architecture of the surrounding buildings are all dead ringers for the setting in Balthus’ Le Passage du Commerce Saint-Andre. In both images, a composed painterly scene is transformed by Blackmon’s stylized photographic detail, melding manipulated “fact” and outright fiction with a nod to art history.
I think the best of Blackmon’s work combines this multiple points of entry, all-over composition style with an underlayer of wry wit and knowing parental humor. When you’re nodding your head in silent recognition at some exaggerated moment or arcane visual reference in her jarringly unreal world, you know she’s got you.
Collector’s POV: The works in the show are priced by size and place in the edition. The smallest works are priced at $3100 or $3500, the medium sized works are either $4500 or $5000, and the large works are either $7500 or $7900. The single extra large print is $12000, as are two medium sized AP prints from already sold out editions. Blackmon’s work has recently begun to enter the secondary markets, but not enough lots have sold to chart much of a pricing pattern. As such, gallery retail is still likely the best option for those collectors interested in following up.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here)

Julie Blackmon: Day Tripping
Through January 12th

Robert Mann Gallery
525 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Leon Levinstein @Steven Kasher

JTF (just the facts): A total of 49 black and white photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the North and South gallery spaces. All of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints, made between 1950 and 1975. The prints are sized between 11×11 and 13×17, with most roughly 11×14 or reverse. No edition information was provided on the checklist. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Following on the heels of 2010 exhibits at the Met and Howard Greenberg (reviews of both linked below), this show continues the methodical reemergence and reconsideration of the work of Leon Levinstein. At this point, Levinstein’s talent for capturing the funky diversity of 1960s and 1970s New York street life is decently well known, so what we have here is more of a deepening of this now familiar story, via another selection of energetic sidewalk pictures.
Levinstein is perhaps best known for his undeniably keen eye for the quirks of personal fashion, and this show has plenty of gems from this genre, covering the spectrum from a sleek white blazer to dirty work coveralls. Women in patterned dresses strut down the street like it was a catwalk, and men unabashedly turn to check out the action. Skew camera angles freeze effusive hand gestures mid motion, whether from suit wearing businessmen or a screaming woman in front of a pizza joint. A trio of pictures focus on the angles of men’s feet: perched on a fire hydrant, pulled up on a lamp post, or crossed leaning against a railing. And a group of stately women’s faces recall Lisette Modell, with fur coats, dark hats, and veils (and even one chihuahua), framing stoic upper class wrinkles.
This particular edit also brings in a broader sample of local neighborhoods, getting beyond the swagger and grit of Times Square: couples lounging on the beach at Coney Island, serious nuns from the Lower East Side, grim faced workers from Harlem, and wide eyed street boys from Brooklyn. It also discovers plenty of unlikely city moments: a man with a pack of stray cats, a girl in a tutu following a nun, two older ladies talking though a window with Jesus underneath, a smiling family posing in front of a wall of psychedelic op art posters, and men slumbering in the shade under a scrawl of Fuck the Pigs.
All in, this is a solid sampler of Levinstein’s street photography; not perhaps his most notable or recognizable images, but a worthwhile extension and addition to the larger ongoing education process surrounding his rightful place in photographic history.
Collector’s POV: The prints in the show range in price from $6000 to $11000. In recent years, Levinstein’s work has only been sporadically available in the secondary markets, with prices ranging
between roughly $1000 and $9000.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: NY Times Lens (here), Wall Street Journal (here), New Yorker (here), Elle (here)
  • DLK COLLECTION reviews of 2010 exhibits: Met (here), Howard Greenberg (here)
Through December 22nd

Steven Kasher Gallery

521 West 23rd Street

New York, NY 10011

Gail Albert Halaban: Hopper Redux @Houk

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 color photographs, generally framed in white and unmatted, and hung against light peach colored walls in the main gallery space and the smaller side room. 9 of the works are archival pigment prints mounted to plexi, made between 2010 and 2012. Physical dimensions range from roughly 33×42 to 34×45 and the prints are available in editions of 5. The other two works on display archival pigment prints on film, fitted into custom LED lightboxes, made in 2011 and 2012. Physical dimensions of these works are roughly 25×31 and the works come in editions of 10. (Installation shots at right.)
Comments/Context: In Gail Albert Halaban’s previous series, Out My Window, her photographs of buildings in New York drew an implicit parallel with Edward Hopper’s urban street scene paintings, sharing a sense of dark moodiness and making common use of isolated figures looking out windows. In her newest body of work, Halaban has made this artistic connection to Hopper more explicit, tracking down the houses in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that were the subjects of his early watercolors, and making recreations in her own style from the exact same vantage points.
Hopper’s watercolor portraits of seaside houses, with their Victorian details, mansard roofs, and New England unpretentiousness, shimmer in bright sunlight, giving them an unexpected energy and vitality. The world has of course changed in the roughly ninety intervening years between these two projects, and the front yard trees are now larger, the telephone wires and satellite dishes are more intrusive, and the details of the houses (awnings, paint color, other architectural decorations) are more reflective of modern tastes. While Halaban has taken great pains to echo Hopper’s compositions, she has entirely reconsidered the light, often capturing the houses at twilight, when the streetlights have just begun to come on, the sky is a soft purple, and the windows glow from the inside. Nearly every picture includes a person posed in a window, both visible from the street and obliquely looking outward, seen and seeing at the same time. These Hitchkockian characters add the potential for mysterious lonely narratives to the now vaguely spooky houses. Even a house draped in friendly icicle lights has a faintly sinister cast.
In updating these architectural portraits, Halaban has transformed their overall temperament. Their spirit is now more separate and guarded; the light in the windows isn’t entirely welcoming and beds of flowers and overturned bikes can look a little imposing. The images have been infused with both crisp photographic detail and a modern sense of isolation, at once concealed and visible, reclusive and longing for connection.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The large prints are $12000 each and the smaller lightboxes are $8500. Halaban’s photographs have very little secondary market history, so gallery retail remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), Guardian (here)

Through December 22nd

Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151

Marc Asnin: Uncle Charlie @Steven Kasher

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 black and white photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the side alcove and the back viewing room. All of the works are modern gelatin silver prints, made between 1981 and 2010. The prints are sized either 16×20 or 20×24 and are available in editions of 9. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Contrasto (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Rarely has a long term family portrait been as brutally conflicted as Marc Asnin’s unflinching documentation of the life of his Uncle Charlie. In shadowy black and white photographs spanning more than thirty years, Asnin cuts to the raw bone of Charlie’s existence, exposing a dark, downward spiral of poverty, violence, depression, loss, and isolation. But even as the crushing weight of bad choices, delusions, and madness piles up, Asnin’s tenderness and affection for Charlie never falters. As sideline viewers, we continue to somehow root for Charlie’s success, even when it is altogether clear that the deluge of personal tragedies is going to win.

With the benefit of the context of the entire project, Asnin’s early pictures from the 1980s feel pregnant with clues to the impending disasters to come. Charlie humps his wife in the kitchen with a crazed look in his eye, and lies like a corpse in his convertible bed in the living room. Images of his five young children hint at disquiet and unrest: a lonely look through a scratched glass door, a triangle of boys with resigned stares, and a daughter flash lit and haunted. The penetrating photograph of Charlie sitting naked in the dark, holding a gun and smoking a cigarette, looking out the bright window is surely evidence that his struggles were already starting to overwhelm him.

By the 1990s, the cycle of destruction engulfing Charlie had clearly intensified. His kids begin to rebel with more harshness and venom; Brian gives his dad the finger while Jamie talks trash on the front stoop. Family celebrations like birthdays and baptisms are hollowed out pantomimes, and his new young girlfriend openly smokes crack in the living room. Charlie is now mostly seen resting, lost in a decline of frail depression. The death of his son to AIDS in 1996 seems to have been the last straw; his face hardens into a deranged mask, and he sits curled up in a chair, the picture of utter despondency.

The most recent images in the series plumb the depths of sadness and despair in ever more punishing ways. Charlie scrawls sorrowful messages in chalk on his walls, trudges by his son’s grave site in the snow, and sits alone in his empty apartment on moving day. A close up picture of his now older and weathered face is heartbreaking, a diary of best intentions, broken dreams, and dreary outcomes.

Even as his life crashes down around him, Charlie remains surprisingly sympathetic as a subject. While many of his injuries may have been self inflicted and the larger cycle of life had him trapped, we’re still left hoping for an unlikely, snatched from the jaws of defeat happy ending which doesn’t of course come. All in, Asnin’s family portrait is undeniably woeful and distressing, but it’s cracklingly and memorably alive with the genuine emotions of his one of a kind uncle.

Collector’s POV: The prints in the show are priced based on size; the 16×20 prints are $1800 and the 20×24 prints are $2500. Asnin’s work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Independent (here), Photo Eye (here), New Yorker (here)
Through December 22nd
521 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Cy Twombly: A Survey of Photographs 1954-2011 @Gagosian

JTF (just the facts): A total of 102 color photographs, framed in brown and matted, and hung against white walls in a single room on the 5th floor of the gallery. Additionally, 2 portfolios (several images on view for each) are displayed in wood/glass cases in the center of the space. All of the works are color dry-ink prints (some mounted on cardboard), made between 1951 and 2011. Physical dimensions of the prints range from roughly 8×17 to 28×25 and editions range in size from 3+2AP to 10+2AP. A catalog of the exhibit is available from the gallery for $80 (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Gathered together in conjunction with an exhibit of Cy Twombly’s exuberantly gestural last paintings, this show provides a retrospective look at the artist’s lesser known efforts with a camera. Starting with a few Morandi-like glass bottle still lifes from his time at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s and continuing all the way through recent floral images from a cemetery in St. Barths in 2011, the survey offers an inside look at Twombly’s approach to photographic problem solving and aesthetic experimentation. It’s a mixed bag full of thoughtful trial and error, and a surprisingly intimate and personal sampler of visual tests and memories.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Twombly’s photographs is their unexpected texture. Taken as Polaroids and then printed using the relatively arcane color dry print (AKA Fresson) process, the prints have a luscious tactile quality, almost like washed out watercolors. Regardless of subject matter, the inks float over the paper, the colors becoming ephemerally soft and blurred. The effect is a mix of Pictorialism in color and outright romance.

Compositionally, Twombly seemed to be drawn again and again to changes in scale to create abstraction. Whether looking a vase of tulips, an ancient sculpture in shadows, or up at the silhouette of trees in the sky, he produced sets of images that move in and out, allowing blurring, distortion, and edge cropping to happen naturally. His three portfolios of striped pink tulips are the strongest and most original works in the show. Twombly gets right up close, turning clusters of petals into blasts of fiery yellow, creamy pink, and rich red. Graininess turns into subtle Pointilism, and flowers break down into component parts of curving fuzzy color. The permutations are seemingly endless, especially as the shapes become more indistinct and illegible. Separate groups of white peonies and yellow tulips get the same treatment, although to slightly less boldly abstract ends.

Twombly tries his fragmented vision on serious bits of ancient stone sculpture as well, but these images seem much fussier, like he was trying to hard too be artistic. Aside from a wonderfully blended swirl of paint brushes in a can, his studio interiors and outdoor landscapes are generally forgettable, and Twombly’s seascapes are equally boring, except for a dark whorled sunset bleeding orange, ochre, and yellow. Other later images of lemons, glossy green leaves, and other table top remains are more successful, bathing in a warm golden glow and exploring more complex spatial relationships. His last images start with white crosses and tombstones and periscope into overexposed piles of lush lilies, daisies, and roses, becoming more and more expressive with each dissolving step forward.

Seen as an entire career-length body of work, Twombly’s photographs are decidedly uneven. But at their best, his images are effusively inventive, hypnotizing in their diffusing abstraction, and warmly nostalgic in their sumptuous, lavish, painterly color.

Collector’s POV: The individual prints and portfolios in this show are priced between $30000 and $80000 each. Twombly’s photographs are not readily available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Feature/Review: NY Times (here)

Cy Twombly: A Survey of Photographs 1954-2011
Through December 22nd

Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life @ICP

JTF (just the facts): A large group show containing more than 500 photographs/artworks by roughly 70 photographers/artists, variously framed and matted, and hung against white, grey, and dark grey walls throughout both floors of the museum. By my likely inaccurate count, there were 509 individual photographs/artworks, 53 books/magazines/other ephemera in glass cases, 19 videos/films/slideshows, and 5 touch screens for further study. For those familiar with the layout of the museum, many of the rooms have been broken up by interior wall dividers, effectively doubling the available display space. The show generally covers the period from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, with a small amount of older material as introductory background. The exhibit was curated by Okwui Enwezor and Rory Bester. (Installation shots at right © International Center of Photography, 2012. Photographs by John Berens and Benjamin Jarosch.)

The following photographers/artists have been included in the exhibit. The size and scope of this exhibit made tracking the size, date, process and other details of every print prohibitively time consuming. But the list itself is still noteworthy as reference:

Paul Alberts
Jane Alexander
Joe Alfers
Omar Badsha
Roger Ballen
Jodi Bieber
Robert Botha
Margaret Bourke-White
Geoff Bridgett
Andrew Browns
Kevin Carter
Ernest Cole
A.M. Duggan-Cronin
Jillian Edelstein
Christian Gbagbo
David Goldblatt
Bob Gosani
Paul Grendon
Hans Haacke
George Hallett
Gavin Jantjes
Tim Jarvis
Tim Jervis
Fanie Jason
Ranjith Kally
William Kentridge
Alf Khumalo
Tom Killoran
Lesley Lawson
Chris Ledochowski
Leon Levson
John Liebenberg
Rashid Lombard
Peter Magubane
Greg Marinovich
Peter McKenzie
Gideon Mendel
Sabelo Mlangeni
Santu Mofokeng
Billy Monk
Zwelethu Mthethwa
G.R. Naidoo
Gopal Naransamy
Themba Nkosi
Jerry Ntsipe
Cedric Nunn
Sam Nzima
Ken Oosterbrook
Adrian Piper
Douglas Pithey
Jeeva Rajgopaul
Jo Ratcliffe
Catherine Ross
Robyn Ross
Arishad Satter
Jurge Schadeberg
Wendy Schwegmann
Thabiso Sekgala
Joao Silva
Guy Tillim
Unidentified
Gille de Vlieg
Noel Watson
Eli Weinberg
Paul Weinberg
Dan Weiner
Graeme Williams

Sue Williamson
Gisele Wolfson
Comments/Context: So I was roughly two hours into my visit of the densely engrossing and thoroughly captivating Rise and Fall of Apartheid exhibit when it finally dawned on me: I was still winding my way through the main floor and the show continued down the stairs and throughout the lower level. Oh no. There was no possible way I could absorb that much more material in one go without turning into a glassy eyed zombie. Worn out already, I reluctantly gave in and went home gloriously and unceremoniously defeated. Committed to vanquishing this unruly beast of a show, I returned to the museum a few weeks later with fresher legs and more available hours to finish it off. I tell you this cautionary tale not to scare you away, but to set your expectations for what you’re getting yourself into when you visit this tremendous exhibit. You are either superhuman or delusional if you think you can see it all in one swing through the galleries. My advice is don’t even try; tear it off in smaller chunks and pace yourself so you can follow the complex threads and ideas that are so smartly woven together.
At the highest level, this is a chronologically organized history lesson in pictures, starting in 1948 with the election of the National Party and the installation of the apartheid regime and ending in the 1990s with the termination of those same policies, the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the election of a new democratically-formed government. It’s a wide ranging story of politics and race, resistance and struggle, crowded trials and peaceful protests, angry riots and brutal violence, told almost entirely through photographic imagery. While the historical flashpoints might be familiar to many (the Treason trial, the Freedom Charter, the Sharpeville shootings, the Soweto uprising, the Biko funeral, the Mandela release, the 1994 elections), what is new here is an examination of the image making that surrounded these events and an investigation of how that imagery evolved over time. It’s possible to simultaneously read the exhibit as straight history, and to go down a level and consider the different approaches, styles and artistic interests of the various individual photographers.
Most of what is on view here might fall under the heading of traditional photojournalism or documentary photography, albeit perhaps with a modifier like concerned, engaged, or social to precede and amplify it. Curators Okwui Enwezor and Rory Bester have taken the best of this genre (much of it made by talented South African photographers who were first hand witnesses to the events) and mixed it together with relevant commercial and magazine imagery, photo essays, and fine art photographs of the same decade-long periods, bringing it all together in a rich, multi-layered portrait of both the relevant clashes and the changing underlying social fabric.
Much of the imagery from the 1950s is centered on nonviolent protest: Nelson Mandela in traditional beads, Mandela sparring to burn off energy from sitting in court all day, wide shots of crowds and onlookers, the sober protests (carrying signs, holding candles) of the Black Sash women. By the 1960s, the apartheid policies had become more entrenched and the visual evidence of the separation of races had become more stark. Black culture found outlets in dance clubs, Drum magazine, pinup girls, and the songs of Miriam Makeba, but Ernest Cole’s images of blacks being searched, fingerprinted, and handcuffed are a grim reminder of the perils of everyday life at that time; a grid of his images of segregated facilities at dry cleaners, bank tellers, rest rooms and delivery entrances shows just how pervasive the divide was. Alf Khumalo’s image of white men riding around in a pickup truck with an ample supply of guns and growling German Shepherds is particularly nasty, while Peter Magubane’s endless line of coffins at the Sharpeville funeral foreshadows the escalating human costs to more militant struggle. The juxtaposition of Billy Monk’s leering white clubgoers at the Catacombs and Magubane’s lineup of black men enduring a group medical exam is harshly vivid.
The section on the 1970s is dominated by images of the Soweto uprising. Police cars shoot at passersby, young men throw stones and use trash can lids as makeshift shields, rioters and police face off, and corpses start to pile up. Sam Nzima’s photographs of a bloody child being carried and loaded into a car are both tragic and incendiary. Themba Nkosi captures bored police officers on a smoke break after another round of evictions, an overlooked dead body lying in the dust nearby. And Noel Watson documents police dogs angrily barking at a young man singled out of a crowd, his fingers held up in peace signs.
As the exhibit moves downstairs and the calendar moves to the 1980s, the story gets more complex, less linear, and more diffuse. Hans Haacke mixes Steve Biko’s dead body into a series of mock opera posters sponsored by Alcan. Guy Tillim watches the burning black smoke of ruined settlements and the clashes of axe wielding crowds. Cedric Nunn follows mourning, from a bride and groom at graveside to a mother covered in a blanket. David Goldblatt tracks long distance commuters, waiting at stops in the darkness and sleeping on overcrowded buses. University students are organized, fists are raised at funerals, prayer meetings are held, bodies are grimly dumped into mass graves, white settlers reenact the Great Trek, and black nannies tend white children. And it all takes place to the endlessly repeated refrain of Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City (that MTV staple from the mid 1980s) playing in the background. The tiny back room is the venue for the 1990s end of the story, where Mandela’s triumphant return is flanked by political opponents knifing each other, red smears on the sidewalk, and a nurse lying in a bloody pool outside a chicken shack. Famed photojournalist James Nachtwey ducks for cover in a street battle, crowds gather with hatchets raised, and cars are riddled with bullets. Ruthless intensity seems to have been turned up a notch with the struggle for political control more fluid and wide open.
On the whole, I think the exhibit can be evaluated on at least two levels: how it does as history and how it does as art. On the history front, it is undeniably sweeping, evocative, enthralling, and decently comprehensive; personally, I could have used a bit more explanatory wall text to give further context to the key players and events and to connect the dots between the decades, but this may be somewhat due to the wide gaps in my own historical knowledge. My other minor criticism is that the nuanced social backstory gets a bit crowded out by the drama of the resistance footage; while I’m not sure I am advocating an even larger exhibit exactly, I do feel like this angle gets less of a thesis than it deserves. On the question of art quality, my headline takeaway is just how full of superlative imagery this exhibit is; there are literally dozens of compelling, challenging, and memorable images on display here taken by photographers who will be entirely unknown to most viewers. It’s an inclusive, broad-based show, and that diversity is one of its strengths. But in the end, it’s a parade of searing, unflinching, sometimes painful photographs that will leave you suffocated and overwhelmed. So take my advice, plan your visit thoughtfully and allow enough time for a second or third trip; that way you will be undeniably foot weary, visually overloaded and soul wrenched, but at least you won’t have to give up midstream.
Collector’s POV: Since this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Given the wide range of artists on view, many of which are generally unknown outside South Africa, I’m going to dispense with the usual collector-driven secondary market analysis.
Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: John Edwin Mason (here), NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), Guardian (here), Daily Beast (here), ARTNews (here), Artforum (here)
Through January 6th
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

Lynne Cohen, Occupied Territory 1971-1988 @Higher Pictures

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 black and white photographs, framed in original marbled frames and matted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are vintage/early gelatin silver prints made between 1975 and 1982. 12 of the prints are 8×10 contact prints; the other 2 are sized 30×40 and have titles printed directly on the mats. No edition information was available on the checklist. The 1987 monograph of this body of work was recently reissued by Aperture (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If Lynne Cohen’s images of interiors were made today, we might easily mistake them for stage sets or ironic art installations. Their kitschy, dated unreality and odd, empty formality make them seem quietly preposterous, perfect for some arch conceptual twist or sideways social commentary. But the fact is these images were made more than three decades ago and depict actual found environments rather than mysterious constructed fictions. These offices, showrooms, and public spaces were indeed real places, making their blend of seriousness and unintentional absurdity all the more head-shakingly amusing.
As I circled the gallery, I found myself thinking that these pictures had a strong underlying kinship with Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan’s Evidence series. There is something perplexing and unknowable about why a recording studio would be outfitted to look like an undersea world (complete with stuffed and mounted swordfish and tuna) or who would decorate an ordinary office with a dense flock of duck stencils, a tower of birdfeeders, and a few twisted tree branches on the floor. Cohen’s interiors have an elaborateness to them, a controlled attention to detail that from a distance seems downright laughably puzzling. Why the taxidermied animal heads in the tiled stairwell? Or the woodland scene pinned up behind the badminton court? Or the floor-to-ceiling cloud wall in the drab office? I thoroughly enjoyed the orderly tile/brick/siding showroom, with its display of suitcase style arrays hung neatly on the peg board wall – it’s just the kind of lonely weirdo salesroom I imagine to be inside one of Lewis Baltz’ flat roofed industrial park office buildings.
Cohen brings a straightforward deadpan eye to these almost perfect simulations and oddball assemblages, bridging between late 1970s witty conceptualism and the New Topographics photographers’ interest in the suburban built environment. Her pictures feel both steeped in the artistic issues of that particular moment and simultaneously remarkably fresh and smart. This is a body of work that has aged well, still as crisp, biting, and subtly hilarious as ever.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 8×10 prints range from $6000 to $8000 each, while the 30×40 prints are $15000 each. Cohen’s work has very little secondary market history, with only a handful of lots coming up for sale in the past decade. Those prints found buyers at prices ranging between $2000 and $5000.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Video interview (here)
  • Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here), Daily Beast (here)
Through December 8th
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Auction Preview: A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl, December 12 and 13, 2012 @Sotheby’s

While I haven’t posted many auction previews/results in recent months, I think the upcoming single owner Buhl sale at Sotheby’s is worth following. Henry Buhl’s extensive collection of photographic hands (over 1000 images I’m told) is somewhat legendary among collectors. Shown at the Guggenheim in 2004, it’s an obsessive, expansive, single subject matter private collection that spans the entire history of the medium, from Fox Talbot and early daguerreotypes to Wall, Baldessari and Sherman. It includes photograms, Surrealism, FSA imagery, a wide range of portraits, photojournalism, advertising, scientific photographs, basically any and every type of photograph ever made with a hand in it in some fashion. As subject matter driven collectors ourselves, I am fascinated by what he has unearthed and gathered together, and how compellingly it can tell the story of photography through a single narrow slice. Most every major photographic name is represented here, sometimes by an iconic show stopper (like the ones illustrated at right), but often by an image that is much less well known. I think this is the genius and joy of the collection – going off in a direction no one else is interested in and uncovering countless gems that have been overlooked and underappreciated. The sale itself includes a total of 432 lots across two days, with a total High estimate of $12157500. The preview will certainly be worth a visit, for collectors and casual gallery goers alike.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 270
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $1560500

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 116
Total Mid Estimate: $2387000

Total High Lots (high estimate $50000 and above): 46
Total High Estimate: $8210000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 33, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe – Hands and Thimble, 1919, at $800000-1200000. (Image at right, top, via Sotheby’s.)

Here’s the list of photographers represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Man Ray (7)
Ruth Bernhard (4)
Imogen Cunningham (4)
Adam Fuss (4)
Ralph Gibson (4)
Robert Mapplethorpe (4)
Edward Weston (4)

(Lot 12, Herbert Bayer, Lonely Metropolitan, 1932, at $300000-500000, image at right, middle, and lot 20, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Fotogramm, 1925, at $300000-500000, image at right, bottom, both via Sotheby’s.)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl
December 12th and 13th

Sotheby’s
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Jitka Hanzlová: There is something I don’t know @Yancey Richardson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space. All of the works are archival pigment prints made between 2000 and 2011. The prints range in size from 14×11 to 25×18 and are available in editions of 8. A retrospective survey of the artist’s work was recently published by Kehrer (here) and is available from the gallery for $67. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Jitka Hanzlová’s portraits from the last decade look back to Renaissance painting for their compositional structure and style. While the images capture contemporary sitters of all ages, their poses are nothing if not traditional: full profile, three quarter, and torso only views, tightly framed in natural light with generally nondescript colored backgrounds. The works have the look and feel of the old, with a dash of crisp freshness provided by the new.

The best of the images on view here find a subject who seems caught between the two worlds, where a hairstyle, the curve of a nose, or a piece of clothing hearkens back to another age. Suddenly a silk wrap, a wide-necked dress, some black beads, or the direct stare of a dark haired woman seem to seamlessly connect the past and present. Other works feel slightly more dissonant, as if the modern sitter has been trapped in an uncomfortably formal pose or a frame that is too small. Each photograph plays with a changing sense of time, highlighting tiny similarities and differences between what we expect from art history and what we are now.

Hanzlová’s casually intimate portraits are subtle and require close observation not to be quickly overlooked. A quick fly by of this exhibit might leave you underwhelmed, so opt for a slower pace to encourage the quiet nuances of the pictures to come forth.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced at between $7700 and $8500 each. Hanzlová’s work has become more available in the secondary markets in recent years. This has been particularly true in Europe, where prices have generally ranged between $1000 and $3000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Feature/Review: New Yorker (here)
  • Exhibit: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2012 (here)
Jitka Hanzlová: There is something I don’t know
Through December 22nd

Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Lee Friedlander: Nudes @Pace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 74 black and white photographs, framed in white/black and matted, and hung against white and grey walls in the large two room gallery space. The 56 prints by Lee Friedlander are all modern gelatin silver prints, taken between 1977 and 1991. The works are sized either 11×14 or 16×20 and are uneditioned. The 9 works by Bill Brandt are vintage gelatin silver prints, each sized roughly 9×8, and taken between 1947 and 1959. The 9 works by Edward Weston are vintage gelatin silver prints, sized either 4×5 or 8×10, and taken between 1933 and 1936. (Installation shots at right. There is no photography allowed in the gallery, so the images are courtesy of the Pace/MacGill website.)
Comments/Context: For many years after first seeing Lee Friedlander’s nudes, I had a hard time enjoying them. As I look back now, I’m not sure I ever really even saw them in some sense. They were just too hairy, too confrontationally real in a way that I found unsettling, and as a result, I didn’t engage them enough. It wasn’t that they were excessively aggressive or explicit exactly, but more that they seemed to fly in the face of everything I thought I knew (and valued) about the elegant photographic nude. That joltingly contrarian book (Lee Friedlander Nudes) sitting on our shelves was somehow radioactive, bursting with an energy that was too far out of control for me. I would take it down and look at it from time to time with the trepidation of handling a ticking time bomb, quickly flipping through it and putting it back before it could explode.
This show brings together a selection of these challenging Friedlander nudes and places them on equal footing with works by the two most important and influential photographers of the nude from the 20th century, Edward Weston and Bill Brandt. A side room plays host to this brilliant juxtaposition, teasing out the visual ideas and motifs that tie Friedlander to his predecessors. Weston’s nudes turn on close in framing to create unexpected body abstractions and employ plenty of elongated lounging forms (on the famous sand) built on sinuous lines. Brandt’s early pictures use shadowy interiors to host mysterious models in chairs, while later images create their magic with the bold, fragmented distortion of curves and overexposed whites. With these two sets of images as a historical backdrop and artistic foil, it’s possible to carefully follow the aesthetic connections and pathways between the photographers and to pinpoint Friedlander’s new and original innovations.
While the often disorienting twisting and turning of bodies in Friedlander’s nudes certainly has parallels in both Weston and Brandt, Friedlander’s approach is neither sculpted perfection nor full force abstraction. His pictures are rooted in the mundane and the everyday, in real individuals rather than dreamy ideals. Young bodies sprawl on couches and chairs with effortless ease, spread across messy beds and bent over crumpled blankets, not far from cluttered coffee tables filled with cosmetics and ashtrays. The camera spins and looms, often lingering from above or cropping out the head. His flash creates brash highlights that bounce off up-close hips, breasts and flanks, with dark hairy armpits and crotches offset by the dated patterns of woven upholstery and fringed pillows. Just when you’ve been distracted by the intrusion of a clip-on lamp, the interruption of a protruding window frame, or the swirl of a floral patterned bedsheet, Friedlander delivers an unexpectedly graceful curve or arched arm that takes your breath away; his nudes move back and forth between direct, honest, small apartment realism and compositionally complex formal exercises. In every picture, the casual and ordinary have been transformed into something striking, a jumble of overlapping female limbs, crowded and serenely chaotic rather than merely pared down.
What’s most important about this exhibit is how it so successfully shows both Friedlander’s respect for the past and his own one-of-a-kind rule breaking vision. There are obvious echoes of Weston and Brandt here, but those influences have been thoroughly digested, incorporated by Friedlander and then evolved in his own direction for several more iterative generations. The result is a body of work that is at once familiar and foreign, reverent and shockingly irreverent. All in, this is a show worth making a detour for. It finally led me to get over my own preconceived notions and prejudices about what the photographic nude is supposed to be, and to embrace Friedlander’s nudes for the genius that they are.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are generally priced based on size, with the 11×14 prints at $6800 each and the 16×20 prints at $8500 each. Outliers from this overall price pattern include the 11×14 image from the cover of the original Lee Friedlander Nudes book (at $7400) and the 16×20 images of Madonna (at $9500). Friedlander’s work is routinely available in the secondary markets, with recent prices at auction ranging from roughly $2000 on the low end to as much as $80000 for his most iconic vintage prints. The Brandts (from David Dechman’s collection) and Westons (from MoMA) are not for sale.
Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: Daily Beast (here), NY Photo Review (here)

Lee Friedlander: Nudes
Through December 22nd

Pace Gallery
32 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

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