Auction Results: Photographs, October 15, 2009 @Phillips London

While the photography sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s seemed to achieve some stable equilibrium, the results from the Phillips sale in London popped that short-lived balloon. With a Buy-In rate near 50% and Total Sale Proceeds that missed the Low by £200000, it’s clear that we still have some choppy water to cross before we return to smooth sailing.

Once again, the top end was pretty soft; that’s three for three in the various owner sales this Fall. My conclusion from the data is that either 1.) caution is still the rule of the day and prices may still need to compress a bit further in the high end ranges to entice buyers back to the table or 2.) the quality of the material will need to meaningfully increase to match the prices, or both.

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

Total Lots: 180
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £897100
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1283600
Total Lots Sold: 93
Total Lots Bought In: 87
Buy In %: 48.33%
Total Sale Proceeds: £694626

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 87
Low Sold: 50
Low Bought In: 37
Buy In %: 42.53%
Total Low Estimate: £268600
Total Low Sold: £156001

Mid Total Lots: 86
Mid Sold: 40
Mid Bought In: 46
Buy In %: 53.49%
Total Mid Estimate: £715000
Total Mid Sold: £402375

High Total Lots: 7
High Sold: 3
High Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 57.14%
Total High Estimate: £300000
Total High Sold: £136250

91.40% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were a total of five surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 78 Miroslav Tichy, Untitled, 1950-1980, at £5000
Lot 88 Edward Burtynsky, Oxford Tire Pile #1, Westley, California, 1999, at £30000
Lot 95 Rene Burri, Ernesto Che Guevara, Havana, Cuba, 1963, at £5000
Lot 96 Andre Villers, Picasso drawing, 1960, at £5250
Lot 109 Rene Burri, Wilted Lotus Blossoms, former Summer Palace, Kunming Lake, Beijing, China, 1964, at £5000

The top lot by High estimate was lot 131, Irving Penn, Girl behind glass (Jean Pacthett), New York, 1949, at £50000-70000; it did not sell. The top outcome of the sale was a tie between lot 60, Peter Beard, Portraits London (F. Bacon)/Paris/Nairobi, Collected at Hog Ranch 1966-70, 1990, and lot 97, Richard Misrach, Untitled, 2003, both at £52500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Phillips De Pury & Company
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB

Auction Results: Photographs, October 9, 2009 @Sotheby’s

The results of the Sotheby’s various owner sale in many ways mirrored the results of the Christie’s various owner sale the day before: a Buy-In rate about 25%, Total Sale Proceeds that just covered the Total Low Estimate, a solid mid range with some general softness in the high end, and quite a few surprises. While two data points aren’t much of a trend, perhaps we should think of this as the new “Normal”.

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

Total Lots: 246
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $3532000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $5292000
Total Lots Sold: 182
Total Lots Bought In: 64
Buy In %: 26.02%
Total Sale Proceeds: $3751754

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 112
Low Sold: 78
Low Bought In: 34
Buy In %: 30.36%
Total Low Estimate: $893000
Total Low Sold: $708129

Mid Total Lots: 120
Mid Sold: 96
Mid Bought In: 24
Buy In %: 20.00%
Total Mid Estimate: $2809000
Total Mid Sold: $2333000

High Total Lots: 14
High Sold: 8
High Bought In: 6
Buy In %: 42.86%
Total High Estimate: $1590000
Total High Sold: $710625

81.87% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were a total of thirteen surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 16 Ansel Adams, Leaves, Mills College, Oakland, California, 1931/1958, at $80500
Lot 17 Ansel Adams, Oak Tree-Sun, 1962, at $25000
Lot 38 Walker Evans, Church Organ and Pews, 1936/1970s, at $16250
Lot 79 Carleton Watkins, Washington Column, 2082 ft, 1878, at $25000
Lot 52 Aaron Siskind, New York 1, 1951/1960s, at $21250
Lot 57 Paul Strand, Ragusa-Sicily, 1954, at $25000
Lot 74 Anonymous, The Gaucho, 1840s, at $62500
Lot 102 Paul Outerbridge, Still Life with Red and Blue Flowers, 1933, at $25000
Lot 109 Robert Doisneau, Le Baiser de L’Hotel de Ville, 1950/Later, at $21250
Lot 146 Robert Frank, McClellanville, SC (Barbershop Through Screen Door), 1955/1960 at $182500
Lot 147 Robert Frank, From the Funeral, Frogmore, SC, 1955/Later, at $25000
Lot 188 Irving Penn, Nadja Avermann B, 1994/1999, at $25000
Lot 228 David Levinthal, Barbie Millicent Roberts, 1997, at $56250

The top lot by High estimate was lot 196 Various Contemporary Photographers, The Master Collection, 1998-2009, at $200000-300000; it was also the top outcome in the sale at $218500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Sotheby’s
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Melanie Schiff: Mirror & Mastodon @Horton & Liu

JTF (just the facts): A total of 8 color images, framed in silver and matted, and hung in an intimate single room gallery space. All of the prints are c-prints, sized approximately 31×34 or reverse, made in 2009, and printed in editions of 5. This is Schiff’s first solo show in New York. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: In the past few years, in lock step with the withering of the economy, contemporary photography has been filled with pictures of failure, emptiness and ruins, and Melanie Schiff’s newest body of work falls into this broad category. Her images depict endless concrete drainage corridors and spillways covered in dense graffiti, dark tunnels, cracked cement walls, and rusted metal parts abandoned amidst overgrown greenery. Almost all of the pictures are built around simple found geometries: a square, a circle, or parallel lines converging to a vanishing point in the distance.

On one hand, these images are unsettling in their destitution, vacant of recent human interaction (the image of a gnarled tree trunk erupting from the ground is particularly disquieting); I was reminded of the surreal atmosphere of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But the bright lights in the distance (the “light at the end of the tunnel”) seem to give many of these images a small dose of optimism – there is a way out of this depressing world and it is almost within reach. Overall, this is a respectable first show, punctuated by several memorable images.

Collector’s POV: All of the prints in the show are priced at $4800. Schiff has very little auction track record, with only a few lots being sold in the past year or so, most for approximately $1000. While none of the works in this show is a direct fit for our specific collection, my particular favorite was Hell Room, 2009, the canal washed in muted red.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Whitney Biennial, 2008 (here)
  • Reviews: Modern Art Obsession (here), Art Talk Chicago (here), Artforum (here)

Melanie Schiff: Mirror & Mastodon
Through November 14th

Horton & Liu
504 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Is Florian Maier-Aichen Overrated?

The world of contemporary photography is filled with exciting artists pursuing a wide variety of picture making strategies and approaches. But once in a while a photographer comes along whose meteoric rise takes your breath away. Florian Maier–Aichen was a complete unknown to us until his work started to appear in the Contemporary Art auctions a year or so ago. With no auction history prior to 2008, his work was suddenly and routinely fetching six figures, a feat that rarely occurs in contemporary photography, much less with fresh names. Diving back into his bio, his work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and he is now represented by 303 Gallery in New York (here) and Blum & Poe in Los Angeles (here), with a recent show at Gagosian Gallery in London (here).

Maier–Aichen had a show at 303 last spring (review here), which was our first in-person experience of his work, and I have to say I was somewhat underwhelmed; the images didn’t seem to match the hype created by the PR machine. But we are always willing to admit our own ignorance, so I chalked it up to just not understanding the work well enough and somehow missing the artist’s hidden (at least to us) genius. So it was with some anticipation that I sat down recently to watch the segment on Maier–Aichen in the Art 21 series on PBS (here).

In the short documentary piece, Maier–Aichen talks through a few images that he has been working on, as well as his overall approach to picture making. As a refresher for those less familiar with his work, Maier–Aichen takes large format color images (many of them post card-like landscapes) and then does a significant amount of digital post processing on the computer to create his works: negatives are sandwiched to create color irregularities, new elements are drawn in by hand using a digital stylus, and other details are eliminated or made less distinct/realistic. All of this rework has the effect of making parts of the images look remarkably painterly and hand crafted, while others retain some of the documentary preciseness of the original photograph; the representational and the abstract have been mixed.

In the past decade or so, we have certainly seen a faction of photographers react against the cool and rigorous conceptual detachment of the Becher school and move back toward a more painterly style of photography using digital tools (or via a return to older techniques and processes), some overtly embracing a Neo–Pictorialist sensibility. Lynn Geesaman’s images of elaborate European gardens would be one accomplished example of this line of thinking.

Given what I saw in the Art 21 segment, Maier–Aichen doesn’t really fit into this category of artists and work, even though there are certainly some commonalities of thinking. He doesn’t appear to be trying to make his photographs look like paintings (or more “beautiful” in some traditional sense), but to be making his photographs look less like photographs, via introducing areas of hand crafted artistry (this may be splitting hairs I realize, but I think the distinction is real). His central idea seems to be the undermining of the precision of the photograph for a more open ended, less predetermined state, where realism (especially in the case of iconic views such as Half Dome in Yosemite or various night views of waterfront cities) has been transformed into something more fictional and unknown. For me, this feels like an elaborate conceptual construct – perhaps Maier–Aichen is the first of the Conceptual Pictorialists.

Intellectually, having seen this video, I think I can now resonate a bit more with what Maier–Aichen is aiming to do, and I will happily grant that he is both out there trying something that no one else is really doing (especially in the realm of the landscape as a subject) and likely building a bridge to a new kind of working style for hand edited digital photography that others may value and follow in time. I also think I can follow the story line of the German photographer going to UCLA, reconsidering the idea of the American frontier and bringing a less deterministic approach to views we have all seen before.

But I’m afraid I have to admit that these works still don’t do much for me – while they might make me think a bit about what he is doing and saying (especially the idea of incorporating “drawing” in the digital sense), they don’t excite me or generate much emotion. As a collector, I continually come back to the opportunity cost of capital, and I can’t really understand the calculus of how I would come to the conclusion that spending $100K on a Maier–Aichen would make sense in the context of all that is available at that price point across the history of the medium. Which brings me back to the question in the title: is Maier–Aichen overrated? Has the buzz gotten ahead of the substance?

And so I open the floor to the rest of you, either to shout me down or voice your agreement. My goal here is not to drag Maier–Aichen down with zingers from the cheap seats; I’d like to have a thoughtful discussion of the merits of his work, which is what I have tried to provide above. What I would like most is to have someone out there deliver an impassioned, concise, and rational argument defending Maier–Aichen’s place in the contemporary photography hierarchy, as evidenced by his prices. Walk me through the logic of how you write the big check: I am eager to be educated.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil @Hasted Hunt Kraeutler

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 large color prints, framed in black and not matted, and hung in the entry area, three adjacent gallery spaces that wind around, and the back gallery space near the offices. All of the works are digital chromogenic prints, and were taken between 1999 and 2007. The images come in a dizzying array of sizes and editions; with some exceptions, the single images come in as many as four sizes (27×34, 40×50, 48×60, and 60×75, in editions of 10, 9, 6, and 3 respectively) while the diptychs appear to come in three sizes (36×78, 48×120/140, 60×180, sometimes framed as a single piece, other times as two images hung edge to edge, in editions of 5, 6, and 3 respectively). A monograph of the entire body of work has been published by Steidl (here) and is available from the gallery for $125. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Edward Burtynsky has made a career out of photographing the massive industrial landscapes that are often conveniently out of view, behind chain link fences or far away from everyday life. He has made images of huge factories, strip mines, quarries, ship yards and expansive industrial sites all over the world (we reviewed his book on China earlier this year here), making surprisingly beautiful images of sometimes ugly and forgotten places. Burtynsky’s work shows a mastery of scale quite unlike other photographers at work today; he takes on the biggest, most un–photographable locations, and consistently finds subtle geometries and semi abstractions that often become striking visual patterns. His pictures work on two levels: the staggering decorative quality of the images, and the much tougher underlying questions that quickly emerge, that force the viewer to consider the downstream consequences of the activity being documented.
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The enormous multi-national oil industry and its complex and fragile distribution chain is perhaps the perfect project for Burtynsky’s brand of photography: the sites for extraction and refinement are colossal, and the secondary and tertiary industries (shipping, cars/highways, military, etc.) are equally gargantuan. What’s a bit different here is that Burtynsky has stepped into a much hotter political fire with these pictures than in his previous work; given both the climate change issues as well as the intricate geopolitical ramifications of the future of petroleum, the oil industry and all its interconnections are subject to much broader scrutiny than ever before. (As an aside, two excellent books on this topic are Daniel Yergin’s The Prize and Matthew Simmons’ Twilight in the Desert.) In a sense then, Burtynsky’s timing with this exhibition (and the larger one at the Corcoran, linked below) is excellent; this is a topic that many people are intensely interested in, and his thoughtful juxtaposition of beauty and commentary will get people thinking.
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The images themselves cover the entire petroleum-based economy, from beginning to end. Several of the images in the show find repetitions in the endless acres of pumpjack wells of California and Azerbaijan (some now abandoned), black masses bobbing up and down, with adjacent towers and steeples, often artfully reflected in nearby pools of undisturbed water or sludge. Others follow the densely intertwined stainless steel pipes and tubes of refineries and chemical plants. A vast parking lot full of new cars at a VW plant in China and expansive ribbons of highway in Los Angeles show just how pervasive our car culture has become, and the array of moth-balled fighter jets in the Arizona desert is a not so subtle reminder of how strategic these fuels have become in our current world.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this show and feel like the content is both timely and important. My one knock on this exhibit is that I would have liked to have seen more of the images from this particular series; not every one on display hits the mark perfectly, and there are quite a few other works in the book that I would have enjoyed seeing in person. The back room of the show contains six of Burtynsky’s recent landscapes of Australian mines: open pits with stagnant pools of water at the bottom, chasms of rock, red and orange earth, dirt roads and salt flats. And while these are solid images as well, I think showing these was a mistake; I would have certainly preferred to see a deeper sample of the Oil project, so that more of Burtynsky’s comprehensive story could be told. The difference between 11 images here and 55 at the Corcoran is likely very significant in terms of the overall impact of the work.
Collector’s POV: With the closing of the Charles Cowles Gallery, Hasted Hunt Kraeutler has taken over as Burtynsky’s sole representative in the US. Given the complex bundle of sizes and editions, the price list for this show is equally detailed. For the single images, the prices start at $10000 for the smallest and rise through $16500 and $23000, finally reaching $30000 for the very largest works. For the diptychs, prices begin at $18000, and work their way up to $38000 and $51000 for the biggest sizes. There were lots of red dots and a few SOLD OUTs, just a week into the show.
Burtynsky’s work began to be available in the secondary markets in about 2005 and the number of prints for sale in any given year has slowly grown since that time. Prices have ranged between $5000 and $35000. Size is a problem for us with Burtynsky’s work (too big for our walls), but there are certainly a couple of striking images here that would provide an interesting contemporary foil for pictures of chemical plants and factories from between the wars that we already own.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Edward Burtynsky: Oil @Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2009 (here)
  • Reviews: Washington Post (here), DCist (here)
Through November 28th
537 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Results: Photographs, October 8, 2009 @Christie’s

From my perch as a collector, the results of the Christie’s various owner photographs sale sent me an altogether different message than those of the Miller-Plummer sale the same day. My takeaway from the Miller-Plummer auction was that there is indeed some hidden demand for unusual pictures of high quality.

My takeaway from the various owner sale is somewhat contradictory: many of the big ticket lots failed to sell, and the ones that did sell brought in quite a bit less than I might have expected. The platinum De Meyer is the most puzzling to me; given its rarity, I would have expected it to be solidly bid-up; instead, someone got a bit of a bargain (from my perspective). Beyond this, the Curtis set, the Alvarez-Bravo, the Strand, the Arbus, and the Kertesz all failed to find buyers; either the reserves were too high or the demand was too soft (or both) – this would indicate that prices still need to come down further to reach equilibrium.

The overall and somewhat disappointing result was that the Total Sale Proceeds missed the Total Low Estimate by about $600K, even though the rest of the sale was about normal. The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 139
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $3260000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $4740000
Total Lots Sold: 101
Total Lots Bought In: 38
Buy In %: 27.34%
Total Sale Proceeds: $2664225

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 46
Low Sold: 30
Low Bought In: 16
Buy In %: 34.78%
Total Low Estimate: $350000
Total Low Sold: $240125

Mid Total Lots: 76
Mid Sold: 61
Mid Bought In: 15
Buy In %: 19.74%
Total Mid Estimate: $1640000
Total Mid Sold: $1465600

High Total Lots: 17
High Sold: 10
High Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 41.18%
Total High Estimate: $2750000
Total High Sold: $958500

85.15% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were a total of five surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 725 Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, 1932/Later, at $21250
Lot 732 Irving Penn, Cuzco Newsboy, 1948, at $72100
Lot 767 Edward Curtis, Before the Storm, Apache, 1906, at $43750
Lot 768 Edward Curtis, The Vanishing Race, 1904, at $47500
Lot 794 David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood talking to Bob Holman, Los Angeles, March 14th, 1983, at $37500

The top lot by High estimate was lot 719, Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian, complete set of Portfolios 1-20 and Text Volumes 1-20, 1907-1930, at $700000-900000; it did not sell (UPDATE: actually it did sell, only after the auction finished; see the comments below). The top outcome of the sale was a tie between Lot 781, Robert Frank, Fish Kill, New York, 1955/1969, and Lot 819, Baron Adolph De Meyer, Water Lilies, 1906, both at $170500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

So back to the conundrum I began above: if you had a superlative piece to consign for April, how would you read the results of these two sales? Evidence of optimism for top tier material, against the backdrop of possibly improving macro conditions? Or evidence of continued cautiousness on the part of most buyers, and the need for further price compression? Sure seems like a mixed message to me; if you think you know the answer, by all means, put it in the comments.

Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Auction Results: The Miller-Plummer Collection of Photographs, October 8, 2009 @Christie’s

It didn’t really dawn on me until after the auction that my visit to the preview for the Miller-Plummer sale at Christie’s should have been a more obvious sign for how the sale would perform. Unlike the normal sparse smattering of visitors that seem to be around when we tour a sale, the Miller-Plummer preview was like old home week: the viewing tables were thick with gallery owners, private dealers and collectors, and there was a lively banter as greetings were exchanged and opinions on the condition of this or that lot were given; the Christie’s specialists and staff were swamped taking images out of frames, and there were plenty of folks circling around the 19th century cases. It was as busy a preview as I can remember; the material was beyond the routine fare of most auctions, and the interest level was accordingly high. I should have known what that would mean.

The sale of Miller-Plummer collection delivered Total Sale Proceeds over the Total High Estimate for the first time in all of the photography sales thus far in 2009. While the buy-in rate wasn’t particularly low (just over 25%), it was the many surprises and unexpected price run-ups that drove this sale.

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

Total Lots: 118
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1185500
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $1746200
Total Lots Sold: 88
Total Lots Bought In: 30
Buy In %: 25.42%
Total Sale Proceeds: $1832625

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 74
Low Sold: 59
Low Bought In: 15
Buy In %: 20.27%
Total Low Estimate: $444200
Total Low Sold: $481500

Mid Total Lots: 35
Mid Sold: 22
Mid Bought In: 13
Buy In %: 37.14%
Total Mid Estimate: $672000
Total Mid Sold: $873875

High Total Lots: 9
High Sold: 7
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 22.22%
Total High Estimate: $630000
Total High Sold: $477250

An unexpected 50% of the lots that sold had proceeds above their estimate, and there were an astounding seventeen surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate). The Irving Penn prints clearly got a meaningful bump from the announcement of his death, but it was the strength of the 19th century images that was the real news from this sale:

Lot 516 Edward Weston, Johnny, 1944, at $23750
Lot 523 Marcus Aurelius Root, Albert Pritchard Root Asleep by the Flag, 1850, at $74500
Lot 529 Irving Penn, Cigarette No. 86, New York, 1972, at $37500
Lot 532 William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, 1844, at $30000
Lot 533 William Henry Fox Talbot, Sun Pictures in Scotland, 1845, at $62500
Lot 534, Marcus Aurelius Root, Anthony Pritchard, 1850, at $350500
Lot 535, Matthew Brady, Samuel Morse with His Recorder, 1857, at $37500
Lot 538 Victor Prevost, Columbia College, 1855, at $23750
Lot 541 American Daguerreotypist Unknown, Buildings in Rural Setting, 1860, at $12500
Lot 548 Consuela Kanaga, Untitled (Girl’s profile), 1948, at $16250
Lot 550 Frederick and William Langenheim, Cast-Iron Lighthouse under Construction, Carysfort Reef, Florida, August 2, 1849, at $20000
Lot 593 Robert Heinecken, TV Dinner, 1971, at $10000
Lot 598 Irving Penn, Chimney Sweep, London, 1950/1976, at $74500
Lot 602 Frederick Debourg Richards, Self Portrait, Anglesea, New Jersey, 1880, at $3750
Lot 604 Frederick Evans, Sea and Sky and Sand, 1899, at $21250
Lot 617 Lewis Carroll, ‘Xie‘ Kitchen, 1870, at $8125
Lot 618 Joel-Peter Witkin, Le Baiser, N.M., 1983, at $50000

The top lot by High estimate was lot 547, a complete set of Camera Work, Numbers 1-49/50, 1903-1917, at $90000-120000; it sold for $80500. The top outcome of the sale was lot 534, Marcus Aurelius Root, Anthony Pritchard, 1850, at $350500 (more than 10X its high estimate).

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Justine Kurland, This Train is Bound for Glory @Mitchell-Innes & Nash

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 color images, framed in white with no mat, and hung in the entry and the large main gallery space. The works are c-prints, in editions of 6, made between 2007 and 2009. The prints range in size from 11×14 to 40×50, with a few intermediate sizes in between. A monograph of this body of work is being published by Ecstatic Peace Library. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Unlike most of the contemporary photography shows on view this Fall, Justine Kurland’s recent body of work doesn’t follow the usual theme and variation project formula, but instead brings together a group of pictures that seem to illustrate a single all-encompassing atmospheric narrative; it’s as if these pictures were taken from an illustrated novel, each one depicting a particular moment in the adventure story.

The recent tough economic times have brought a nearly endless set of comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Kurland’s subject matter is a portrait of the “neo-hobo” lifestyle, a 21st century version of the Great Depression wanderer: down on his luck, homeless, off in the wilderness, riding the rails to get from place to place. This old time, folk song narrative is infused with a more contemporary “off the grid” environmental sentiment; perhaps these people are living this life because of economic hardships or maybe they have simply chosen to get away from society and try to find some meaning out in the woods.

The sequencing of the images in the show brings several motifs back again and again:

  • boxcars, hopper cars, tracks through the mountains, bridges, tunnels, the long S-shaped lines of distant freight trains off in the distance
  • scratched out campgrounds, lean-tos, temporary structures of sticks and plastic tarps, shelters made of cardboard and plastic milk crates
  • old men (vagrants, ramblers, travelers, mountain men) with scruffy beards and grubby clothing, naked children, sleeping in the back of a van or roaming in the weeds, bohemian backpackers communing with nature

Many of Kurland’s images have the carefully composed quality of 19th century genre paintings, where the characters have been placed in the environment (along a riverside, perched on a fallen log, etc.) in such a way as to enhance the mood or to be representative of a larger allegorical idea/lifestyle. Unlike the documentary reality of the FSA pictures of the 1930s, Kurland’s works have a romantic, utopian feel to them, a nostalgic back-to-the-land wildness and freedom, out on the frontier. And while there are fringe elements in all cultures, these pictures seem especially American to me, with a Huck Finn sensibility of self reliance and exploration, even if the times are hard.

This is a body of work that I think will be most successful in book form. While there are a few images that can easily stand on their own, the entire set of pictures is an evocative mood piece, where smaller pictures and train landscapes help fill in the gaps and details of the broader and larger narrative line; the best pictures benefit from being surrounded by the others. Overall, the images grew on me as I wandered through the gallery, and I left with the feeling of having been spun a yarn by an accomplished story teller.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show range in price between $2500 and $12000, based on size, with the middle range sizes priced at $6500, $7500 or $8500. Kurland’s work has a very limited track record at auction – a handful of prints, in a range between $3000 and $6000, but not really enough sales to definitively chart a price trend. While these pictures don’t fit into our collecting scheme in any way, I think they would be a solid fit for collectors interested in tableau-style work (the Crewdson/Yale school). As an aside, these works also reminded me of Alec Soth’s recent body of work from the South (here); check them both out for a comparison of approaches to similar subject matter.

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

Transit Hub:

  • NY Times feature, 2007 (here)
  • Reviews: NY Times, 2004 (here), Art in America, 2004 (here), ArtForum, 2002 (here)
Mitchell-Innes & Nash
534 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection @Met

JTF (just the facts): A total of 50 works, in mixed frames and mats, hung in a single divided gallery on the 2nd floor of the museum. This group show includes images from 27 photographers, ranging from 1843 to 2008, all drawn from the permanent collection of the museum. (Marginal installation shots at right.)

The following photographers have been included in the exhibit, with the number of works on view in parentheses:

Anna Atkins (1 book, in case)
Marco Breuer (1)
Andrew Bush (17, in single case)
Miles Coolidge (1)
Tim Davis (1)
Robert Demachy (1, in case)
Walker Evans (1, in case)
Roger Fenton (1, in case)
Lee Friedlander (1)
Tom Friedman (1)
Adam Fuss (1)
Ann Hamilton (1 video)
Pertti Kekarainen (1)
Anselm Kiefer (1)
Jungjin Lee (1)
Christian Marclay (1)
Chris McCaw (1)
Daido Moriyama (1)
Vik Muniz (1)
Giuseppe Penone (7)
Eileen Quinlan (1)
Gerhard Richter (2)
Miguel Rio Branco (1)
Lucas Samaras (1)
Aaron Siskind (1, in case)
Frederick Sommer (1)
Wolfgang Tillmans (1)

Comments/Context: The group show now in view in the contemporary photography gallery at the Met is yet another in a string of thematic “idea” shows that began when the galleries were first opened a few years ago. Drawn from the permanent collection, this effort gathers together a wide range of works that touch on the concept of the surface of a photograph, and the inherent contradictions of capturing optical depth in a two dimensional medium. It also explores all kinds of surface manipulations, and the various process techniques used across the ages to create images on photosensitive paper.

While this subject has already received plenty of attention (and is a continuing area of exploration and experimentation for many photographers), this is a solid, if less than memorable show, with plenty of excellent unexpected examples and a good mix of the abstract and semi abstract. I particularly enjoyed Christian Marclay’s massive cyanotype of unspooled cassette tape, Tom Friedman’s horizontally stretched stripes, Andrew Bush’s trompe l’oeil envelopes in frames, and Adam Fuss’ photogram of squiggling snakes.

I guess my sense of unease with this show comes not from the show itself (which is generally well crafted), but from the feeling of the missed opportunity it represents. These thematic shows are altogether too safe; while they bring together some worthwhile contemporary work and educate viewers about current areas of activity in the medium, none of the exhibits has really taken a stand or shown us something wildly new – they are always appropriately diverse and inclusive. What I’d really like to see in this contemporary photography space is a series of more relevant solo shows that highlight the work of mid career contemporary photographers who matter. While I realize the hallowed halls of the Met are not the place for extreme risk taking, I think there are plenty of contemporary photographers who have earned a small show at the Met, and this space is the perfect venue for highlighting some rising stars.

Collector’s POV: For our particular collection, the Anna Atkins book of algae cyanotypes from the 1840s would be the best fit; we continue to chase Atkins images whenever they surface, but haven’t caught one just yet for some reason. Both the Marclay and the Fuss are superb, but neither really matches our existing genres.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Christian Marclay: White Cube site (here)
  • Andrew Bush, Envelopes (here)
Through May 16th

1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan @Asia Society

JTF (just the facts): A total of 55 works by 15 artists, made between 1991 and 2009, and hung in the second floor galleries – one small room and a second larger space that winds around on itself. (No photography is allowed at the Asia Society, so unfortunately, there are no installation photos of this show.) Three photographers have been included in the exhibit: Rashid Rana, Arif Mahmood, and Adeela Suleman. Details on each, below:

  • Rashid Rana: 2 large color works (approximately 95×135), c-prints/Diasec, unframed, in editions of 5, from 2007/2008.
  • Arif Mahmood: 6 black and white gelatin silver prints, approximately 16×20 or reverse, framed in black and matted, taken between 1998 and 2007.
  • Adeela Suleman: 5 color works, c-prints, approximately 20×16, framed in black and matted, all from 2009. 3 actual helmets/sculptures are shown nearby in glass cases.
Comments/Context: The current exhibit on view at the Asia Society is the first major roundup of Pakistani contemporary art to be shown by an American museum; as such, and given the current importance of Pakistan in global politics, the show has received a larger dose of press coverage than normal. Most of the articles have eventually come around to asking the central question: how does this new art reflect on the current status of Islamist repression and violence?
As I wandered through this rather small show, I came to the conclusion that this isn’t perhaps the right question to be asking, or at least, most of the artists don’t seem to be asking themselves this question with the kind of righteous ardor that we (as Americans) might expect. There are no outraged shouts or vicious attacks coming from these walls; nearly all of the works come at the questions of what is going on in their society with much more nuance and subtlety; the critiques are more oblique and from within, often laced with a light dose of satire.
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I will freely admit that this show was my first update on art from this country/region since the Mughal miniatures of the 16th century, and my knowledge of the recent photography from Pakistan prior to this exhibit was virtually nil. The three photographers on view therefore represent a tiny sampler of what is likely out there, but I came away impressed with what I saw.
Rashid Rana is Pakistan’s answer to the white hot contemporary artist out of nowhere; his works had no auction record at all until 2008, when they routinely began to jump into six figures. Having now seen Rana’s Red Carpet 1, 2007, up close in this show, I absolutely understand why. (Image at right, top, via Asia Society website.) From ten feet, Rana’s work looks like an intricate Persian carpet, albeit rigid and glossy up on the wall. But as you move inward, the carpet dissolves away, and it becomes clear that the work is made up of hundreds of smaller images carefully placed in a digital mosaic. As you get right up close, the subject of the tiny pictures becomes clear: the bloody killing floor of a slaughterhouse, with dismembered goats strewn in all directions. (Image at right, bottom, via Asia Society website.) The effect is jolting; the contrast between the lush carpet and the gory scene is a harsh reminder that things aren’t always what they seem. And while we have seen plenty of works across the history of photography that have sewn together small objects or fragments to make larger pictures (Vik Muniz comes to mind), Rana seems to have found some specific motifs that deepen the impact of the practice; it comes off not as sly digital trickery, but as an insightful commentary on the culture around him.
Arif Mahmood’s black and white photographs of the streets of Karachi come squarely out of the documentary tradition; these are well crafted images that capture the hidden moments of life in the city: a painted mermaid, a chalk ladder on the pavement, a boy with a toy gun on the seashore. Adeela Suleman’s head shot portraits come at the realities of life with a healthy dollop of irony: the women in her images are all wearing elaborate motorcycle helmets (sculptures really) crafted out of found tea kettles and kitchen gadgets, elaborately painted in bright colors and adorned with peacock feathers and intricate floral borders. The works touch on a variety of women’s issues embedded in the society, simply by recontextualizing the everyday objects found all around.
An interesting idea to consider is how these Pakistani photographers are grappling with the combination of their own culture and the artistic traditions of the West, and how their approach is similar to or different from that of the Chinese contemporary photographers that have gotten so much attention of late. To my eye, the Pakistani artists have found ways to make art that resonates with their own cultural issues without resorting to the overt Western cliches that have dominated recent Chinese photography. While it is dangerous (and perhaps foolhardy) to draw sweeping conclusions from such a small sample of artwork, it appears that many of the Pakistanis are critiquing their society from within, and largely for themselves, while many of the Chinese have been looking at their world from the outside, with the eyes of the foreigners.
Collector’s POV: Rashid Rana is represented in New York by Bose Pacia (here); Adeela Suleman is represented by Aicon Gallery in New York (here); I was unable to locate gallery representation for Arif Mahmood. As I mentioned above, Rana is the only one of the three photographers on view that has any kind of secondary market track record, and his is quite short.
The three bodies of work in this show will appeal to three different kinds of collectors: Rana for the high end contemporary art collector, Mahmood for the intimate, black and white documentary collector, and Suleman for the portrait/sculpture collector and/or those with particular interest in women’s issues.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Exhibition website (here)
  • NY Times preview (here) and review (here)
  • More reviews: WSJ (here), FT (here)
725 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Auction Results: Photographs and Photographic Editions, October 6, 2009 @Bloomsbury

Regular readers here will hopefully realize that we do our best to provide honest critical thinking as applied to the world of fine art photography, but we generally refrain from overly harsh slicing and dicing; it’s hard enough being an artist without having slings and arrows being thrown from collectors as well. When we come across an exhibit or show that doesn’t interest us or meet our standards, we simply omit it from the editorial calendar. Auctions are, on the other hand, a slightly more objective experience; they are the unadorned matching of buyers and sellers, finding equilibrium prices via the invisible hand of the market. As such, we tend to report even the less than positive outcomes that occur from time to time at auction, as these seem to us to be mostly a retelling of the facts, rather than any imparting of opinion or critique.

With that preamble, it gives me no pleasure to report the results from Bloomsbury’s sale last week. As I gathered up the statistics for this post, I can say that this outcome is the single most dispiriting set of auction results that I can remember in a decade of collecting photography; what it must have been like to be in the room as the lots went by makes me shudder in sympathy, especially for the set of Weegees that went 5 for 50. This sale had two parts (photography and photographic literature) and we’ll discuss each in turn below; continue to read, if you dare.

The summary statistics for the photography lots are as follows (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 197
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $660000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $1000000
Total Lots Sold: 35
Total Lots Bought In: 162
Buy In %: 82.23%
Total Sale Proceeds: $154994

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 192
Low Sold: 33
Low Bought In: 159
Buy In %: 82.81%
Total Low Estimate: $911000
Total Low Sold: $124494

Mid Total Lots: 5
Mid Sold: 2
Mid Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 60.00%
Total Mid Estimate: $89000
Total Mid Sold: $30500

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

Of the lots that did sell, 37.14% sold below the low estimate. There were no surprises in the photo portion of the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate).

The top photo lot by High estimate was lot 19 Richard Avedon, Cyd Charisse, Evening Dress by Macrini, 1961/1981, at $20000-30000; it was the top outcome in the sale at $21960.

The photographic literature performed better in comparison, but the total proceeds were still quite low. The summary statistics for the books are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 95
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $124800
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $185800
Total Lots Sold: 60
Total Lots Bought In: 35
Buy In %: 36.84%
Total Sale Proceeds: $76770

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 94
Low Sold: 60
Low Bought In: 34
Buy In %: 36.17%
Total Low Estimate: $170800
Total Low Sold: $76770

Mid Total Lots: 1
Mid Sold: 0
Mid Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 100.00%
Total Mid Estimate: $15000
Total Mid Sold: $0

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

Of the lots that did sell, 41.67% sold below the low estimate. Again, there were no surprises (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate) in this portion of the sale.

The top book lot by High estimate was lot 219 Alexander Rodchenko and Volya Lyakhov, Poet Vladamir Mayakovsky, 1924; Soviet Advertising Posters 1917-1932, at $10000-15000; it did not sell. The top outcome in the book portion of the sale was lot 229 William Klein, Life Is Good & Good For You In New York, 1956, at $7930.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here. The silver lining for collectors in all of this is that perhaps there are some after sale bargains available.

Bloomsbury Auctions
6 West 48th Street
New York, NY 10036

Auction Results: The American Landscape: Color Photographs from the Collection of Bruce and Nancy Berman, October 7, 2009 @Christie’s

The Berman sale at Christie’s last week was proof of the consistent demand in the secondary markets for classic American color photography: the buy-in rate was very low (just over 12%) and the Total Sale Proceeds fell near the top of the estimate range, at just over $1500000. The Mid range lots were especially strong, outperforming the estimate range by almost 26%. A terrific result all around.

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

Total Lots: 189
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1120000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $1679000
Total Lots Sold: 166
Total Lots Bought In: 23
Buy In %: 12.17%
Total Sale Proceeds: $1544625

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 160
Low Sold: 140
Low Bought In: 20
Buy In %: 12.50%
Total Low Estimate: $955000
Total Low Sold: $839000

Mid Total Lots: 27
Mid Sold: 24
Mid Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 11.11%
Total Mid Estimate: $414000
Total Mid Sold: $521625

High Total Lots: 2
High Sold: 2
High Bought In: 0
Buy In %: 0.00%
Total High Estimate: $310000
Total High Sold: $184000

This sale didn’t exactly go as planned, at least according to the estimates in the catalog – 31.93% of the lots that sold had proceeds below their estimate, while 37.95% pushed above their estimate; it looks like the estimates were set in the middle and collectors decided which lots were of interest (and which weren’t) and bid accordingly. There were eleven surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 9 Erwin Olaf, The Hallway, 2005, at $25000
Lot 40 Chris Jordan, Container Yard #1, Seattle, 2003, at $20000
Lot 47 Mitch Epstein, Dad’s Briefcase, Holyoke, MA, 2000, at $10625
Lot 48 Mitch Epstein, Office Door (private sign), Holyoke, MA, 2000, at $10000
Lot 50 Mitch Epstein, Flag, Holyoke, MA, 2000, at $15000
Lot 80 William Eggleston, Untitled, Paducah, Kentucky, 1996, at $18750
Lot 108 Adam Bartos, Blue Mustang, 1978, at $10625
Lot 121 William Eggleston, Untitled, Berlin, 1982, at $27500
Lot 122 William Eggleston, Untitled, Memphis, 1972, at $20000
Lot 134 Robert Polidori, 2732 Orleans Avenue, New Orleans, LA, 2005, at $47500
Lot 166 William Eggleston, Near Greenwood, Mississippi, 1979, at $37500

The top lot by High estimate was lot 151, Bruce Davidson, Subway portfolio, 1980, at $150000-250000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at $146500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

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