Auction Results: Post-War and Contemporary Art, Evening, Morning, and Afternoon Sales, November 10 and 11, 2010 @Christie’s

It has to feel pretty good for the specialist team when the photography lots in a set of Contemporary Art auctions top their Total High Estimate by nearly $2 million dollars. This is exactly what occurred at the frothy sales at Christie’s last week, when more than 75% of the lots that sold came in above their estimate range. All 4 of the Cindy Sherman lots on offer more than doubled their high estimates, as did all 3 lots from Vik Muniz.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 35
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $2858000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $4030000
Total Lots Sold: 29
Total Lots Bought In: 6
Buy In %: 17.14%
Total Sale Proceeds: $5926500
Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 0
Low Sold: NA
Low Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total Low Estimate: $0
Total Low Sold: NA

Mid Total Lots: 17
Mid Sold: 13
Mid Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 23.53%
Total Mid Estimate: $540000
Total Mid Sold: $688500

High Total Lots: 18
High Sold: 16
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 11.11%
Total High Estimate: $3490000
Total High Sold: $5238000

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 58, Cindy Sherman, Untitled (#88), 1981, at $400000-600000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at $1426500.
96.55% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 10 surprises in these sales (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 58, Cindy Sherman, Untitled (#88), 1981, at $1426500
Lot 101, Man Ray, Le Violon d’Ingres (Kiki of Montparnasse), 1924/Later, at $128500
Lot 395, Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still (#32), 1979, at $722500 (image at right, top, via Christie’s)
Lot 398, Louise Lawler, Alligator, 1982, at $92500
Lot 399, Cindy Sherman, Untitled #98, 1982, at $602500 (image at right, middle, via Christie’s)
Lot 422, Vik Muniz, Waterlilies, After Monet (Pictures of Magazines), 2005, at $254500
Lot 423, Doug Aitken, West, 2008, at $326500
Lot 426, Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still (#17), 1978, at $218500 (image at right, bottom, via Christie’s)
Lot 455, Vik Muniz, Flag, After Jasper Johns (Pictures of Pigment), 2007, at $134500
Lot 459, Vik Muniz, Still, After Cindy Sherman (Pictures of Ink), 2000, at $56250

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Evening), here (Morning) and here (Afternoon).

20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Garry Fabian Miller @Danziger

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 color photographs, variously framed in black and white frames and unmatted, and hung in the single room gallery space and the display area facing the street. All of the works are unique cibachrome prints, made between 2007 and 2008. There are 13 single images and 2 diptychs; 5 of the images are part of a single group. No dimensions were given. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Garry Fabian Miller’s abstract camera-less photograms are like meditative exercises in color theory. Squares and rectangles in saturated primary colors float on backgrounds of pure black, buzzing with blurred energy at the edges.

I think it would be nearly impossible to see this show and not come up with connections to the disciplined, minimal forms of Josef Albers and Donald Judd. While there are plenty of familiar layered squares and ladders of rectangles, I think the difference lies within the intensity of the light that emanates from Miller’s richly colored prints. These are not flat studies in red versus yellow or blue versus pink; on the contrary, the perfect geometric shapes seem to vibrate, as though filled with electricity. The edges throb as purple and orange intersect and repel each other.
While some of the formal characteristics of these images have echoes in the realms of painting and sculpture, there are likely other tangents to follow (Dan Flavin, James Turrell) that consider the qualities of light itself. Miller has clearly immersed himself in light sensitivity, and in the particular way color is created and captured photographically. I think his work will be best understood not when it is lumped in with other photogram artists across the history of photography (which it often is), but when it is placed within the larger context of hard edged abstraction, regardless of medium.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The group of 5 prints on the first wall is being sold together as a group for $45000. The single images of roughly equivalent size near the reception desk are $9000 each. The largest vertical images are $35000 each, and the diptychs are $17500 as pairs. The medium sized prints in the window are $11500 each. Miller’s work has very little secondary market history. For the handful of lots that have sold at auction in recent years, prices have ranged between $1000 and $12000.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Review: Artinfo (here)
  • Exhibit: Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photograhy @V&A (here)
Through December 23rd

Danziger Projects
534 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Results: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales, November 9 and 10, 2010 @Sotheby’s

The positive run for contemporary photography continued at Sotheby’s last week, with another set of sales results that topped their Total High Estimate. An Andreas Gursky print crossed the $2 million dollar threshold once again, for the second time this year. With an overall buy-in rate under 18% and more than two thirds of the photo lots that sold selling above their range, it was an excellent outcome all around, even with two out of the top three photo lots failing to find buyers.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 39
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $2999000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $4351000
Total Lots Sold: 32
Total Lots Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 17.95%
Total Sale Proceeds: $4412875

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):
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Low Total Lots: 0
Low Sold: NA
Low Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total Low Estimate: $0
Total Low Sold: NA

Mid Total Lots: 21
Mid Sold: 18
Mid Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 14.29%
Total Mid Estimate: $641000
Total Mid Sold: $713750

High Total Lots: 18
High Sold: 14
High Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 22.22%
Total High Estimate: $3710000
Total High Sold: $3699125

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 8, Andreas Gursky, Frankfurt, 2007, at $1200000-1800000; it was also the top outcome of the two sales at $2098500. (Image at right, top, via Sotheby’s.)

93.75% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 2 surprises in these sales (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 417, Marilyn Minter, Twins, 2006, at $74500
Lot 419, Sharon Core, Cakes, 2004, at $80500

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Sotheby’s
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Collier Schorr, Journals & Notebooks @303

JTF (just the facts): A total of 16 works in a mixture of media, variously framed and matted, and hung in the single room gallery space, which is divided by a three-sided video display area. The show includes 10 photographs (both black and white and color), 2 videos, 1 banner, 1 painting, 1 drawing, and 1 photograph with additional collage elements. The majority of the photographs are archival pigment prints, in editions of 5, made between 2005 and 2008. Physical dimensions of the photographs range between 12×16 and 72×54. The other works were made between 2007 and 2010. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: As you enter the gallery space at 303, a small white banner hangs limply from the cavernous ceiling, stating that “This War Is Over”. What might have been an emphatic, decisive or impassioned shout in a different context comes off as tired and a bit pathetic in this big space, its obvious weariness undermining its own potential power. Maybe the war isn’t really over, whatever the sign says.
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This unsettling undercurrent pervades all of the work in Collier Schorr’s new show. I can’t remember a show that made me feel as stifled and claustrophobic as this one did. Whether it was the expanse of identical empty seats in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, the shelves full of war books and catalogues from the 1972 Olympics, the historian carrying a chair and box strapped to his back (the “weight of history”), or the young girl arranging flowers, there is a palpable sense of being trapped and hemmed in by the past, where nostalgia fights with facts better left behind. Schorr’s floral still lifes, tied together by wires and string, unnaturally suspended in mid-air, seem equally torn between being passive and aggressive.

The most startling piece in the show is a short voyeuristic video of a fragile-looking teenage boy waking up amidst the crowd at the park. As he gazes around, disoriented and trying to get a grip on his surroundings, he looks alternately fearful and stupefied, in a kind of dazed reverie, with his knees pulled up to protect himself. He is confused and uncertain, agitated but also surprisingly deadened. In the context of the rest of the works on display, the boy becomes a symbol of a national identity that has been thrown off balance and is struggling to regain its footing.

While I can’t say I exactly “enjoyed” the strange juxtapositions of this show, it was absolutely successful in both creating a mood and getting me to think more deeply about how traumatic history informs the present. The work delivers its unsettling jolt with subtlety, leaving behind a haunting that isn’t spooky, but more like a chronic ache.
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Collector’s POV: While there are artworks in a variety of media in this show, I only gathered price information on the photographs. Those prices are generally set by physical size, with the smallest images between $10000 and $15000, the medium sized images at $18000, and the largest images at $24000. Schorr’s photographic work has only recently begun to enter the secondary markets, with prices ranging at auction between $4000 and $10000.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Yale faculty page (here)
  • Book: Blumen (DLK COLLECTION review here)

Collier Schorr, Journals & Notebooks
Through December 4th

303 Gallery
547 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: Avedon: Photographies provenant de la Fondation Richard Avedon, November 20, 2010 @Christie’s Paris

With Paris Photo now upon us, Christie’s has scheduled a landmark single photographer sale to take advantage of the crowds of collectors in Paris for the show. The auction contains a selection of works by Richard Avedon, taken directly from the holdings of the estate and with the purpose of establishing an endowment for the Richard Avedon Foundation. The sale mixes fashion photography, celebrity portraits, and other subjects, with a wide variety of the artist’s best known images and portfolios on offer. Overall, there are a total of 65 lots up for sale, with a Total High Estimate of 3395000€. While selling this many images at once will test the depth and strength of the market for Avedon’s work, I think there are better than even odds that the sale will perform extremely well.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 6
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 35000€
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 40
Total Mid Estimate: 880000€
Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 19
Total High Estimate: 2480000€

The top lot by High estimate is lot 16, Richard Avedon, Dovima with elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque D’Hiver, Paris, August 1955, 1955/1978, at 400000-600000€. (Image at right, top, via Christie’s.) The next highest lot is lot 11, Richard Avedon, The Beatles Portfolio, London, England, 8-11-67, 1967/1990, at 250000-350000€. (Image at right, bottom, via Christie’s.)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The eCatalogue is located here.

November 20th
Christie’s
9 Avenue Matignon
75008 Paris

James Casebere, House @Sean Kelly

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 black and white and color works, variously framed and matted, and hung in the main gallery space, two smaller side rooms, and the office area. The works in the main gallery are large scale digital chromogenic prints mounted to Dibond and framed in black with no mat. There are 6 prints in this room, ranging in size from 70×86 to 70×106, each in editions of 5+2, from 2009/2010. The works in the other spaces are vintage black and white works from earlier in Casebere’s career. 13 of the works are single image gelatin silver prints and 1 is a photo-lithograph diptych. Physical dimensions range from 14×11 to 28×38, and the prints come in multiple edition sizes (7+2, 10+1, 10+2, 24+3, 60). The black and white works were made between 1978 and 1994. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: James Casebere’s new large scale color works are bigger and bolder than ever before. His purpose-built architectural models have now grown to include an entire subdivision of fabricated houses, executed in painstaking, abstracted detail. Displayed in conjunction with a group of earlier, more pared down black and white works, these images show Casebere extending and evolving his artistic approach, adding in additional layers of stylized realism and complexity to tell broader stories.
The new pictures document an imaginary community of homes in Dutchess County, New York, where large multi-story houses painted in pastel colors are clustered closely together over rolling hills. Freshly mown grass stripes the front lawns, while lakes, roads, and specimen trees (in fall colors) separate the landscape. Play structures, above ground pools, satellite dishes, and barbecues dot the backyards. It has the air of a perfect planned community, complete with wind farm on the brow of the hill (clean energy!) and a rainbow overhead.
What makes these photographs successful is their subtle, almost effortless irony. The abstracted nature of the model makes this community a kind of “everywhere”, where the American dream of owning a home has happily come true. But it is this undercurrent of the surreal, the mythical, and the hoped for that smacks head on with the reality of the recent housing bubble and foreclosure crisis, making this cozy little community look entirely insane.
Casebere’s earlier black and white works hung in the adjacent rooms have a more sinister, haunted quality. In these works, Casebere has constructed and photographed a single home or building, highlighting the contrast of bright white materials and shadowy dark lighting. Row houses, tenement buildings, prisons, factories, and even suburban ranch houses (complete with constructed cacti) have become quiet phantoms, with black square windows and simple boxy geometries. These pictures are more elemental and moody, filled with viewer-supplied memories and anxieties.In all of these photographs, Casebere is uncovering our complicated relationships with common places. The new pictures dig into questions of what we think (or remember) we want, what has been built to fulfill our supposed desires, how we feel when we see these dreams come true, and the unreality underneath the surface of that cleaned-up sunny life. His light touch makes the satire earlier to swallow, making the images less overtly critical and all the more thought-provoking.
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Collector’s POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows. The large color works are generally $70000 each, although one of the images that was included in the Whitney Biennial is marked “price on request”. The older black and white images generally range from $16000 to $30000 based on size (with many intermediate prices), with the smallest image (from a large edition) priced at $1800. Casebere’s work has become consistently available in the secondary markets in recent years, with a handful of lots available every year for almost a decade. Prices at auction have ranged between $1000 and $60000.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Review: NY Times (here)
  • Interview BOMB (here)
Through December 4th
528 West 29th Street
New York, NY 10001

Auction Results: Carte Blanche and Contemporary Art, Parts I and II, November 8 and 9, 2010 @Phillips

Phillips opened the Fall Contemporary Art season in New York last week with a photographic bang, selling Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #153 for $2770500, a new record for the artist and the highest price achieved for a photograph at auction so far in 2010. A second Sherman more than doubled its high estimate to add fuel to the fire. Add a few more positive surprises, and the Total Sale Proceeds for photography covered the high estimate with room to spare.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):
Total Lots: 88
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $5344500
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $7804500
Total Lots Sold: 61
Total Lots Bought In: 27
Buy In %: 30.68%
Total Sale Proceeds: $7939875
Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):
Low Total Lots: 29
Low Sold: 20
Low Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 31.03%
Total Low Estimate: $194500
Total Low Sold: $164500
Mid Total Lots: 46
Mid Sold: 30
Mid Bought In: 16
Buy In %: 34.78%
Total Mid Estimate: $1100000
Total Mid Sold: $640625
High Total Lots: 13
High Sold: 11
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 15.38%
Total High Estimate: $6510000
Total High Sold: $7134750
The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 14, Cindy Sherman, Untitled #153, 1985, at $2000000-3000000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at $2770500. (Image at right, top, via Phillips.)
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88.52% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 7 surprises in these sales (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):
Lot 17, Thomas Schütte, Old Friends, 1993, at $962500 (image at right, middle, via Phillips)
Lot 19, Cindy Sherman, Untitled #420, 2004, at $1426500
Lot 33, Matthew Day Jackson, The Lower 48, 2006, at $410500
Lot 275, Roe Ethridge, Cove Corners, Wellfleet, MA, 2005, at $20000
Lot 276, Sharon Core, Boston Creams, 2004, at $16250 (image at right, bottom, via Phillips)
Lot 445, Dash Snow, Untitled (Why Grow Old), 2007, at $16875
Lot 523, Frank Thiel, Stadt 10/04 (Berlin), 2000, at $35000
Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Carte Blanche), here (Part I) and here (Part II).
450 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022
and
450 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011

Youssef Nabil @Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 16 color photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung in the main gallery space and back alcove. All of the works are hand colored gelatin silver prints, made between 1993 and 2010. Sizes range from roughly 15×10 (in editions of 10+2AP), to 20×29 (in editions of 5+1AP), and finally to 45×30 (in editions of 3+1AP). This is Nabil’s first solo show in New York. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In a time when many contemporary photographs are starting to look strangely alike in their perfect color sharpness, Youssef Nabil’s images have a signature aesthetic that is unmistakably original. His black and white pictures have been tinted and cleaned up, hand colored in soft pastel tones that create an idealized air of mystery and nostalgia.
The largest images in this show echo decades old Egyptian movie posters, where glamorous men and women lounge in exotic cinematic elegance. Women with marbled hair and red lips play cards and drink cocktails, a man in fez holds a rose, and a woman lies on the floor next to a ceramic cheetah. The scenes are both dreamily lethargic and highly charged. Amani by Window is a beguiling portrait of a young woman in a sparkling red wrap staged against a light blue background, and was my favorite image in the exhibit.
Nabil has also applied this hand crafted mix of photography and painting to head shot portraits of celebrities and artists (like Catherine Deneuve and Rossy de Palma) and to self portraits. Seen from behind as only a bare torso and head, Nabil places himself in front of a pyramid, the beach in Rio, the Hollywood sign, and the sunny shores of Istanbul. These pictures mix an old-fashioned aesthetic with a modern looking man, playing with a sense of romantic, unreal, post-card timelessness.
What I like best here is that Nabil has mixed a discarded process with unexpected subject matter and thereby created something entirely fresh and distinctive. With the renewed interest in artistic voices from the Middle East, Nabil seems well positioned to take us somewhere new.
Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The smaller 15×10 prints start at $5400 and extend all the way up to $40400. The 20×29 and 45×30 prints are $32000 each. Nabil’s work as begun to enter the secondary markets in recent years, both in Photographs auctions as well as in sales of Contemporary Arab Art. Prices have ranged between roughly $5000 and $30000.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Feature: Photo Booth (here)
  • Book: I Won’t Let You Die, published by Hatje Cantz (here)
Through December 23rd
525 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers @Sonnabend

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 single image black and white photographs and 6 black and white typologies, individually framed in white and matted, and hung in the entry gallery and two of the rooms in the rear. All of the single image works are gelatin silver prints in editions of 5, made between 1978 and 1995 in New York city (while no dimensions were given, I believe these works are roughly 24×20). There are five 9-image typologies and one 15-image typology, again consisting of gelatin silver prints, made between 1972 and 2009 (the individual prints in these works appear to be roughly 20×16); the combinations in the typologies are never repeated, so they are all unique works. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Grids of water towers by the Bechers have become so common that it’s pretty hard to visit a major contemporary art museum and not bump into one. With such universal acclaim and ubiquitous display, it seems altogether possible that these works would somehow become overexposed, losing their visual power due to sheer repetition. And yet, their cool conceptualism and crisp execution keep them startlingly fresh; they never fail to stand out in a crowd.

My first reaction when I heard about this show was: what more can Sonnabend have to say about the revolutionary Becher water towers? Haven’t they been completely covered already? And one of the back rooms of the show does provide a sampler of familiar typologies, the kind of work we have come to know and love: groups of bulb towers, concrete cylinders, towers with geometric bases or ones that open upward like funnels, some striped with vertical lines, all arrayed in rigid grids to highlight their architectural variations.

But what is both surprising and exciting are the other images that make up most of the show: iconic New York rooftop water tanks. I had never seen these pictures before; it’s like the Bechers have made a conceptual valentine to the city. In each image, a single cone-topped wood barrel tank sits centered on some kind of iron mounting or platform. The cylindrical banded barrels are generally the same, except for the finials on the top that distinguish the two main manufacturers. But the Bechers theme and variation style finds hundreds of small details worth noting: tubes that run down the sides or from the bottom, arched ladders, brick backgrounds, sculptural frameworks of girders that hold the tanks in the air, patterns and geometries in the angles of bases. In nearly every picture, the dark black form of the tank looms against the white sky of the city, often with a contextual frame of surrounding buildings.

For the Bechers, these tanks are likely just another piece of vernacular industrial architecture to be codified and preserved, another form to be documented and explored. But I think local New Yorkers will find much more to connect with in these pictures. They combine both the exacting standards of the Bechers artistic vision with a tiny twinge of nostalgia for something authentic and original to this city, overlooked subject matter that is deep in the fabric of this particular, crazy place.

Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The single image water towers from New York are $25000 each. The 9-image typologies are $117000 and the 15-image typology is $195000. The Bechers‘ work is consistently available at auction, with prices for single images ranging from $3000 to $34000 in recent years; typologies (including diptychs of two images as well as much larger groups) have ranged between $23000 to $176000. We continue to covet images by the Bechers for the city/industrial genre of our collection; what we’d really like to find is one of the smaller, earlier diptychs (with one large image on one side and a grid of nine smaller images as one on the other), but both locating such a piece and then having it be the right price (for us) have so far been elusive. But we keep looking.
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

  • Museum Collections: Met (here), Getty (here), Guggenheim (here), Walker (here)
  • Feature: Tate (here)
  • Interview: Art in Amercia, 2002 (here)
Through December

Sonnabend Gallery (artnet page here)
536 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: Photographies, November 19, 2010 @Sotheby’s Paris

Sotheby’s Paris has put together a strong various owner photographs sale to coincide with this year’s Paris Photo. The auction of primarily vintage material is anchored by a deep selection of works by Edward Weston and Tina Modotti from their years in Mexico. (The prints come from the collection of Anita Brenner, who sat for the stunning nudes on offer.) There are also solid groups of images by Eugène Atget and Heinz Hajek–Halke, as well as standout vintage prints by Gustave Le Gray, Richard Avedon, and Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Overall, there are a total of 152 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of 3228300€.

Here’s the breakdown:
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Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including 7500€): 39
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): 223300€

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between 7500€ and 35000€): 98
Total Mid Estimate: 1605000€

Total High Lots (high estimate above 35000€): 15
Total High Estimate: 1400000€
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The top lot by High estimate is lot 41, Edward Weston, Nu (Anita Brenner), 1925, at 150000-200000€. (Image at right, top, via Sotheby’s.)

Here is a short list of the photographers who are represented by five or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Edward Weston (23)

Eugène Atget (15)
Heinz Hajek–Halke (12)
Irving Penn (8)
Tina Modotti (7)
Josef Sudek (7)
André Kertész (5)
Heinrich Kühn (5)
Since we are flower collectors, we are particularly interested by lot 63, Karl Blossfeldt, Bullota Ruperstris, c1920 (image at right, bottom, via Sotheby’s). While we already own one image by Blossfeldt, his work does not come up at auction very often, so we are always keen to check out those prints that do surface from time to time.
The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.
November 19th
76, Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
75008 Paris

Auction Preview: Photographs, November 16, 2010 @Bonhams London

Following up on its New York Photographs sale last week, Bonhams has another Photographs auction scheduled for London next week. The sale includes mostly lower end material, with a solid helping of British photography. Overall, there are a total of 150 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of £477000.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 130
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £285000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 19
Total Mid Estimate: £162000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 1
Total High Estimate: £30000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 43, Frantisek Drtikol, Nude Study, 1927, at £25000-30000. (Image at right, top, via Bonhams.)

Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by four or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Willy Ronis (15)

Brassaï (6)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (6)
Peter Henry Emerson (5)
Wolfgang Suschitzky (5)
Mario Giacomelli (4)
Horst P. Horst (4)
Angus McBean (4)
Sebastião Salgado (4)
Jürgen Schadenberg (4)
Jock Sturges (4)
André Villers (4)
Since we have a collection of vintage Brandt nudes, we would likely be interested in lot 77, Bill Brandt, St. John’s Wood, London, 1958. (Image at right, bottom, via Bonhams.)
The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.
Photographs
November 16th
101 New Bond Street
London W1S 1SR

Marco Breuer, Nature of the Pencil @Von Lintel

JTF (just the facts): A total of 16 works, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the single room gallery. The gallery space has been painted with a thick band of dark grey chalkboard paint. The prints have been hung against this background, and Breuer has added (and subsequently erased in some cases) various notations in chalk. A pair of photocopied images have also been taped to the wall. The unique chromogenic prints come in various sizes, from roughly 9×7 to 24×20, and were all made in 2009 or 2010. (Installation shots at right, via Von Lintel.)
Comments/Context: Marco Breuer’s last show at Von Lintel (roughly a year and a half ago, here) was hung in a generally conventional manner: framed images were placed at eye level against the white walls of the gallery. The installation focused the viewer’s attention on the finished product, object quality of the artworks, and on the underlying physical processes that were used to create their abstract colors and patterns.
Fast forward to Breuer’s newest show, and something altogether different is going on. The artist is still hard at work in the darkroom, taking light sensitive papers and experimenting with a dizzying array of loosely controlled scrapes, scratches, and cuts, searching for new visual outcomes. What’s new this time around is that Breuer has installed the recent pictures in a way that invites us into his brain, to watch as he improvises and iterates on ideas. In many ways, it is almost an exhibition of the remnants of a cerebral performance piece more than it is an exhibition of photographs.
Each image or set of images has a series of cryptic annotations written in chalk near the framed works. The analytical, puzzle solver in me felt challenged to figure out what each one meant. Were they dimensions? Or commentary? Or symbolic references? 4.6.6 is scrawled above one of the pastel, geometric abstractions. I stood for a few moments before I figured it out: 4 lines, 6 colors, 6 shapes. Under a spider web of scratchings are images of a light bulbs with strike through slashes. Aha, these works were made by scratching the paper with a piece of glass, trying to find the approximate center of the paper, completely in the dark. As you walk around the room, there is a distinct sense of intellectual art in progress, of process being figured out along the way, with a little help from both chance and craft.
I found the images of vibrant blue and yellow, almost like folded, interrupted waves across the surface of the paper, to be the most visually compelling; they really stick out from far away. The others require a more intimate look: tiny lines that shuttle and wiggle across the image as though they were raked by an array of manic seismograph needles. What I liked best, however, was the exposition of Breuer’s thoughts, the ability to see how he makes aesthetic connections. The unconventional installation gives the artworks a more personal grounding and backstory, opening up an unusual opportunity for the viewer to appreciate the thinking that has gone on.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced between $5900 and $12500, based on size. (In fact, I was told that there is a mathematical equation for pricing, based on a price per square inch.) Breuer’s work has very little secondary market history, gallery retail remains the best option for collectors interested in following up.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Review: New Yorker (here)
  • Upcoming Talk @SVA, November 16th (here)
  • Exhibition: New Pictures 2 @Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2010 (here)
Marco Breuer, Nature of the Pencil
Through December 4th
Von Lintel Gallery
520 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

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