Auction Preview: Contemporary Art, June 25 and 26, 2009 @Sotheby’s London

The London Contemporary Art sales kick into gear later this week, with Sotheby’s up first with Evening and Day sales. (Evening catalog cover at right.) Together, the sales have a total of 23 photography lots on offer, with a total high estimate of £1567000. Given the small number of lots, here is the complete list of photographers represented in the sales, with the number of works available in parentheses:

Angus Fairhurst (1)
Gilbert & George (1)
Andreas Gursky (2)
David LaChapelle (2)
Louise Lawler (1)
Sigmar Polke (1)
Richard Prince (3)
Rashid Rana (2)
Bettina Rheims (1)
Gerhard Richter (1)
Thomas Ruff (1)
Jenny Saville (1)
Thomas Struth (1)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (2)
Wolfgang Tillmans (2)
Massimo Vitali (1)
Here’s the breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 1
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £5000
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 13
Total Mid Estimate: £207000
Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 9
Total High Estimate: £1355000
The top lot by High estimate (across the two sales) is lot 10, Andreas Gursky, Dubai World II, at £400000-600000.
The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening) and here (Day). (Day catalog cover at right.)
June 25th
June 26th
34-35 New Bond Street
London W1A 2AA

Harlem: Photographs of Camilo José Vergara, 1970-2009 @NYHS

JTF (just the facts): A total of 100 color photographs, hung in a single gallery with multiple pillars/dividers, in blond wood frames with white mats, against butter yellow walls. The images were taken in the period between 1970 and 2009. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: I first became aware of the work of Camilo José Vergara when I saw a few of his images included in a group show at the Getty some years ago (linked below). On the way out, I purchased his book American Ruins in the bookshop and dove a bit deeper into his project to document urban life and architecture in some of America’s most troubled cities. It’s a terrific volume, full of not only imagery, but ideas and text, well worth inclusion in your library.
I recently visited the current show on at the NYHS which gathers together his street pictures of Harlem, spanning nearly 40 years. The exhibit is divided into a handful of sections, by subject matter:
  • Introduction (images from 1970)
  • Storefronts
  • Transformations
  • Religion
  • Landmarks & Benchmarks
  • Graphics (wall murals, street paintings etc.)
  • Obama
  • Sculpture
  • Heart of Harlem (portraits and images of people)
When we talk about the changes in a place over time, we often use the word evolution. But this word implies a linear narrative, all moving in one direction, onward and upward. Vergara’s images of Harlem portray the city as an ebb and flow of ocean tides or the swinging of a pendulum, constantly moving back and forth, exchanging optimism and pessimism as the dominant mood across the years. In a similar manner to William Christenberry’s images of the same buildings taken over decades in the rural South, Vergara has revisited similar storefronts and vacant lots from time to time, finding that what was once a smoke shop is now a record store or a hair salon. At one level, his documentation of the transformations going on is anthropological, a categorization of life in the micro neighborhoods of single city blocks. At another deeper level, I think these pictures capture the spirit of the inhabitants, a natural sense of reuse and recycling, of building on top of the old to discover and enable something new.
Indeed, this whole exhibit seems to center on the idea of constant replacement, of new graffiti painted over the old, of decaying buildings being torn down to make room for new ones, of spaces that were once used for one purpose now being used for another. In some ways, Vergara’s pictures document the deep roots of the community, the history of these places, the memories of what came before. Seeing a group of images of a single location over the years allows us to excavate the site, to see its changes, and step back in time over and over to get a feel for what life was like back then, so we can compare it to what has come since.
Vergara’s pictures of the people of Harlem (with a nod to Helen Levitt) portray a remarkably durable and resilient bunch, people who have seen it all (the good and the bad) in the past decades, who have celebrated small triumphs and experienced hard times, but are still around to laugh and cry about it. While many of Vergara’s pictures of other decaying cities have a despondent, bombed out, no solution mood, his Harlem images are full of life and activity, a sense that this place will always renew itself, drawing on its history from within, to make a path somewhere new.
Collector’s POV: Camilo José Vergara is represented by Rose Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, (here), but I couldn’t find any New York gallery representation for his work. (If he is represented in NY, please leave it in the comments.) There have been very few, if any, images by Vergara available in the secondary markets in the past few years, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail.
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To my eye, the time-lapse grids of changing storefronts are the most successful of the images in the show and the ones that would work best separated out from the larger narrative flow; there are quite a few pictures that really only work in the context of the exhibit and would be less successful if forced to stand alone. That said, I think the best format for this work would be the book form, where many more images could easily be sequenced to tell the more complex story of the neighborhood and its people that Vergara has so effectively captured.
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Invisible Cities (here)
  • Reviews: NY Times (here), Smithsonian magazine (here)
  • Storefront Churches exhibit at National Building Museum, 2009 (here)
  • Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection, Getty, 2007 (here)
  • American Ruins (here)
Through July 12th
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024

Landmarks of New York @NYHS

JTF (just the facts): A total of 80 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against orange walls and pillars in a single gallery space. 46 different photographers are represented in the show. Each of the images was taken at the time the specific building was designated a landmark, starting in the mid 1960s. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This exhibition was designed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the New York City Landmarks Law. Since 1965, over 1200 individual landmarks in all 5 boroughs have been designated, covering buildings constructed between 1640 and 1967. For each building in the show, a single photograph has been selected, and the wall text includes information about the building, its importance, the architect, and the photographer.

The exhibit is divided into six time periods. I’ve included some of the stand out buildings from each period as examples of what’s on view (there are many more beyond these in each section):

  • 1641-1848: City Hall
  • 1849-1889: Brooklyn Bridge, Metropolitan Museum, Statue of Liberty, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Central Park
  • 1889-1926: Carnegie Hall, New York Public Library, NY Stock Exchange, Flatiron Building, Grand Central, Woolworth Building, Plaza Hotel, NY Life Building
  • 1927-1937: Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center
  • 1939-1958: Parachute Jump, Seagram Building
  • 1958+: TWA Terminal, Four Seasons Restaurant, Guggenheim Museum

While I didn’t recognize any of the photographers who documented the buildings for the city, these images are surprisingly well made; they are strong architectural photographs, with meticulous attention to important historical details, not cheesy postcard shots of tourist spots. As such, I found this exhibit quite a bit more thought provoking than I had expected; it isn’t a tired rehashing of obvious buildings, but instead a carefully constructed historical timeline of New York’s architectural history, using singular images of the landmarks as reference points. Passing by the photographs of these buildings in roughly chronological order is like seeing a flip book history of the city, with each landmark an important piece of the much larger puzzle.

Collector’s POV: Since our collection is full of architectural photography and city scenes, this show was a good fit for us, especially given the generally high quality of the images on view. The exhibit was also a good reminder that these iconic buildings can still be fresh, when seen from unexpected and carefully composed angles. While the pictures here were made as historical documents, there is plenty of artistic vision embedded in them, both from the architects and the photographers. And while the Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building are already represented in our collection, I came away from the show with a short list of additional buildings that may be worth exploring as well.

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

Transit Hub:

  • NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (here)

Landmarks of New York
Through July 12th

New York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024

Napoleon III and Paris @Met

JTF (just the facts): A total of 39 photographs, 8 etchings/book prints/lithographs, 1 painting, and 1 sculpture, hung in three small rooms, with red and gray walls, on the second floor of the museum. The photographs are salt and albumen prints, from glass or paper negatives, taken between roughly 1850 and 1870, and framed in dark wood with antique white mats. (Installation shot at right. No photography is allowed in the exhibit, but I took this poor image before realizing that the prohibition was in effect.)

Here’s a list of the artists represented in the show (with the number of works in parentheses):
Olympe Aguado (2)
Edouard Baldus (4)
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1 sculpture)
Hippolyte-Auguste Collard (1)
Benjamin Delessert (1)
Andre-Adolphe-Eguene Disderi (2)
Louis-Emile Durandelle (1 photograph, 2 book prints in case)
Leopold Flameng (1 book print, in case)
Franck (2)
Maxime Lalanne (1)
Gustave Le Gray (4)
Alphonse Leon-Noel (2 etchings)
Alphonse Liebert (4)
Edouard Manet (1 lithograph)
Charles Marville (6)
Charles Meryon (4)
Auguste Mestral (1)
Aldolphe-Martial Potemont (1 etching, in case)
Pierre-Ambrose Richbourg (1)
Charles Soulier (2)
Charles Thurston Thompson (1)
Unknown (1 photograph, 2 stereographs in viewing cases, 1 lithograph)

Franz Xavier Winterhalter (1 painting)

Comments/Context: It’s easy to forget, given our fast paced contemporary lives, that at some point along the way, most of the world’s major cities had to transform themselves from gatherings of small medieval buildings with narrow alleyways and bad drainage into carefully designed urban areas with broader streets and larger, more ambitious (and often ostentatious) structures. Emperor Napoleon III spearheaded the reinvention of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s, and with the help of Baron Haussmann, created much of the underlying framework of the city we know today. This small but instructive exhibit at the Met tells the story of these changes, via photographs taken by some of the early masters of the medium.

The small exhibit is loosely divided into four sections: The Imperial Family, Old Paris, New Paris, and The Ruins of Paris. The first room is devoted to a generally forgettable group of portraits of Napoleon III and his family, in various mediums. While there are a couple of solid images by Gustave Le Gray here, this area can be mostly thought of as historical stage setting for the show that really begins in the next room.
Old Paris can be found to the right in the next gallery, documented primarily by Charles Marville among others. Empty alleys and waterways flanked by squat buildings and narrow cobblestone streets with neighborhood shops are all captured with luscious, deep tonality; these are truly beautiful photographs, regardless of the apparent simplicity of the subject matter.
Napoleon III’s efforts to recreate the city were indeed thorough: they included new sewers and railways, new housing, new canals and bridges, new parks and widened thoroughfares. The images in the New Paris section along the next walls document all of these changes, with special attention to the New Opera and New Louvre. These are mostly architectural scenes, with some close ups of the underlying infrastructure (girders and the like) and the decorative details.
The Franco-Prussian War brought its share of destruction to Paris, and the last part of the exhibition chronicles these demolitions. Rubble piles that were once the Hotel De Ville or the French Ministry give a sense for the scope of the damage.
Overall, this is an effective exhibit that shows how a wide variety of talented artists, using the cumbersome technologies of the early days of photography, were taking note of the changing world around them, leaving us a valuable historic and artistic record of these amazing transformations.
Collector’s POV: Much of this show was drawn from the Met’s Gilman Collection (acquired in 2005) which has significant depth in early French photography. For our particular collection, one of the Marville images of old Paris (either a street scene or a lamp post) would likely fit best; several of the architectural works by Edouard Baldus would also potentially mix in quite well.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Reviews of the show: NY Times (here) WSJ Speakeasy (here) Art & Artworks (here)
Napoleon III and Paris
Through September 7th
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028

Nobuyoshi Araki, A/Film @Yoshii

JTF (just the facts): A single large work, made up of 1050 transparent color positives, each approximately 2×3 inches with black borders, displayed together edge to edge in a large 2 panel array, between two panes of glass and framed in stainless steel. The work was made in 2007. The array is displayed in a very small, windowless, single room gallery. While I didn’t get exact dimensions, the piece is approximately 6×10 feet, and viewable from both sides. (Installation shot below.)

Comments/Context: Nobuyoshi Araki is undoubtedly one of the most prolific photographers in the history of the medium. Given his propensity to expose roll after roll, it is perhaps not unexpected that at some point he would move beyond the single picture and explore new ways to display multiple images simultaneously. Rather than composite them digitally, Araki has used a decidedly old school approach: take the color positives themselves and sandwich them between glass.
The individual images themselves span the range of Araki’s signature subjects: nudes, geishas, bondage scenes, flowers, and lizards, mixed together with Tokyo city scenes, nights of karaoke, and cloud filled skies. The effect of seeing all of these pictures crammed together is to conclude that Araki’s approach borders on the manic, an endless repetition of similar ideas coursing through his head. The sequencing creates waves and rhythms, where the dozen or so subject matter types cycle past over and over, all in vivid color.
Overall, this work left me conflicted. On one hand, Araki’s artistic vision is so unique and unusual, this kind of object could not possibly be made by anyone else. It is provocative and challenging and often beautiful. On the other hand, I had the uneasy feeling that Araki has fallen into a rut, taking the same pictures he’s been taking for years now, without many new explorations or innovations. We’ve seen this Araki before, only now it’s been multiplied by 1000.
One practical problem with this work is that, as installed, the images at ankle level and below are nearly impossible to see without sitting down on the floor (which I eventually did). Similarly, if one were to suspend it in the air so the lower images were more visible, the higher images would then be out of reach. Since the work doesn’t resolve into anything but a mosaic of pixels at any kind of distance, one needs to get up close to inspect the individual images, but somehow the sizing isn’t quite right to make that easy.
One additional side note: the Yoshii Gallery website has no mention of this exhibit (and seems dated/unmaintained), but don’t be confused by this. The work is indeed on display, even if it is poorly advertised.

Collector’s POV: The work on display in this show is priced at $450000. A similar though smaller work from the same series, A/Film #2, 2006, sold at Phillips London in 2008 for £90500.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Review of this show: ArtSlant (here)
  • NY Times T Magazine video interview with Araki (here)
  • 2009 show at Anton Kern, review by DLK COLLECTION (here)
Nobuyoshi Araki, A/Film
Through June 26th

Yoshii Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Helen Levitt, A Memorial Tribute @Laurence Miller

JTF (just the facts): A total of 80 photographs (both black and white and color) and 1 video, hung in the entry, and two gallery spaces. Amidst a handful of vintage prints, there are three enlarged images of graffiti (48×38), from 1939 and printed in 2000, and a poster from an earlier exhibit in the entry area. The 1944 silent black and white video In the Street, made by Levitt, James Loeb, and James Agee, runs in a continuous loop in this area as well.

Most of the vintage black and white prints are from the period of 1939 to 1942, though there are a few prints from the mid 1980s as well. These prints are generally 11×14 or 8×10 (or reverse), and are variously framed and matted, primarily shown in the main gallery space, with a few hung in the entry. The 5 color dye transfers are 18×22, and were made between 1971 and 1980, and are intermingled with the black and white work.

The 30 black and white contact prints in the “First Proofs” area are of varying sizes, and were made circa 1940; they are framed in brown wood and matted, and displayed against bright yellow walls in a separate room. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: When New York street photographer Helen Levitt passed away at the age of 95 earlier this March, I was surprised by the number of tributes and obituaries written by working photographers that were posted into the blogosphere. Given both the sheer number and the sincerity of these eulogies, Levitt’s work has clearly made an impression on the generation of photographers active today, especially those based in New York.

This “memorial” exhibit does a fine job of covering the high points of Levitt’s long career, as well as digging deeper into her process as an artist. Of course, the show is anchored by a variety of vintage prints of Levitt’s signature subjects: children and old folks, playing in the streets and watching from stoops and staircases. In some ways, these images have become a reminder of authentic New York life, of running and laughing and blowing bubbles, of bringing a chair right out onto the sidewalk and sitting down to watch the show and visit with neighbors. The joy she found in the streets was genuine, without a trace of mocking, even when the scenes have their own warmth and irony.

When you visit the show, be sure to take a few minutes to sit down and watch the silent movie In the Streets. It is full of faces, grubby kids eating, dogs and cats, and Levitt’s own poetry of everyday life, in full motion. There are two scenes worth looking out for: one where kids push a barrel over an open fire hydrant, creating a geyser of water spewing high into the sky, and another where a woman is seen from behind, walking along carrying a mop and swinging her hips in time. Both are classic Levitt.

The smaller prints entitled “First Proofs” are also worth a longer look, since they provide a glimpse into Levitt’s process of refining her compositions and editing her images. The typical Levitt subject matter can be found in these works (people, store windows, etc.), but they are seen in variations and alternate views, as she experimented to capture just the right interaction of the figures.

What I like about this show is that it strikes a good balance between greatest hits and lesser known images, providing a sampler of a wide variety of her work, while at the same time offering new angles for understanding her artistic approach. It’s a show worth catching before it closes.

Collector’s POV: Many of the images in this show are courtesy of the estate, and as such, are not for sale. In general, the vintage works that are available are priced between $7500 and $15000, with a few of the more famous outliers at $25000, $60000, and $98000 respectively. The color dye transfers from the 1970s are priced at $15000, and the larger modern prints are $7500 each. The “First Proof” contact prints are priced between $2500 and $15000.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Short reviews of this show: NY Times (here), Wall Street Journal (here)
  • Slide Show, review by DLK COLLECTION (here)
Through June 26th

20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
UPDATE: There is also a small tribute now on vew at the Met in the second floor hallway (which you walk past on the way to the Photography galleries). Though not exactly a full exhibit, it does contain 13 well selected vintage images by Levitt.

Zoe Leonard, Analogue

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2007 by the Wexner Center for the Arts and the MIT Press. 192 pages, with 83 images (a mix of black and white and color, all square format with black borders). Includes a foreword by Sherri Geldin and an essay by the artist composed of excerpts and quotations. The images shown were taken between 1998 and 2007. (Cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Zoe Leonard’s Analogue is a book about the slow transformation and eventual extinction of a certain kind of neighborhood life from the streets of New York, and about the rebirth of some of its cast off parts in down-the-food chain locations around the world.

In the first set of images, straight-on shots of small storefronts, graffiti covered local mom-and-pop shops selling a wide variety of everyday merchandise via hand lettered signs begin the narrative of change. There are windows filled with roll after roll of fabric, with plastic covered furniture, and with obsolete electronics, and more than a few of these businesses are long gone, the security grill rolled down for good. The story transitions via a group of pictures of huge bundles of clothing, packed and ready for shipment via the global rag trade. Leonard then follows these discarded and recycled objects to far flung locations: Warsaw and Budapest, Ramallah and East Jerusalem, Kampala and Mexico City. Here these items look for new buyers, hung in rickety roadside stands or laid out on the ground on top of colorful plastic tarps. The stores are chaotic jumbles of merchandise, often with a poignant array of mismatched shoes or plastic brooms.

If this sounds like a warmed over cliche, the “what has happened to our world” story told once more, think again. Leonard’s pictures are surprisingly unsentimental or nostalgic. As she documents these disappearing New York stores, she seems less to be looking back wistfully at “better” times, but more to be asking pointed questions about how changes ripple through our lives (the analog to digital metaphor) and how they manifest themselves in unexpected ways in unexpected places. Sure, there are a few sad window displays and some lonely weather beaten chairs, but these seem more in the spirit of endangered and valued vernacular traditions (a la Walker Evans) than overt romanticism. There is certainly an echo of Atget’s documentation of the old sections of Paris in Leonard’s views of these New York streets.

I think the images in the various other countries have an even stronger sense of time in them, of a slowing or stopping of time, as tired clothes and shoes from decades past search for new lives. It’s as if the small shops that failed in the hectic tumult of New York have found reduced expectations and more modest realities in the slower moving cities and towns of less developed nations, where change comes quite a bit more gradually.

In general, I think many of these images work well as stand alone pictures, while others would perhaps resonate better in a grid of multiple views of a similar part of the story. Either way, this is a compelling project that raises questions about the nature of change in our everyday lives, and how those changes ripple into the world that surrounds us.

Collector’s POV: Zoe Leonard is represented by Yvon Lambert in Paris and New York (here). Not much of her work has appeared in the secondary markets in the past few years; the works that have sold were priced between $2000 and $20000. In the context of our personal collection, Leonard’s New York storefronts would mix well with many different kinds of work from our city/industrial genre. They would also be an interesting contrast to Brian Ulrich’s recent images of empty malls and thrift stores.

Transit Hub:

  • Wexner Center exhibition, 2007 (here)
  • Foto8 review, 2008 (here)
  • NY Times review, 2009 (here)
  • Pinakothek Der Moderne retrospective, 2009 (here)

Anthony Hernandez, Waiting for Los Angeles

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2002 by Nazraeli Press (here). 92 pages, with 46 color images. Includes an essay by Allan Sekula. The images were taken between 1996 and 1998, and are printed 40×40. (Cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Last week, I posted an opinion piece on the idea of “local” or regional photography, of photographers turning back to their own communities for inspiration, rather than repeating the same themes drawn from bland globalism. Los Angeles based photographer Anthony Hernandez is an excellent example of staying rooted in a single environment, and over time, uncovering its subtleties and nuances. He has, of course, made pictures in other cities and locales, but it is his Los Angeles works that have the most resonance for me.

Collectors will likely be most familiar with Hernandez’ 1970s and 1980s black and white work depicting the gritty streets of LA, bus stops and body shops, vacant lots and urban waterways, later contrasted with the shoppers on the sidewalks of Beverly Hills. More recently, Hernandez has moved to a square format, using color and close up framing to create more abstract images with all over patterns.

The fragments Hernandez has selected all relate to the idea of waiting: welfare offices and other public spaces, thick with the air of bureaucratic indifference. There are tile walls and corrugated concrete, loudspeakers and barriers, official notices and torn telephone books. There are also the less obvious signs of human habitation: cigarette butts and orange peels, stains, scrapes and smeared hand prints.

These isolated fractions and remnants work on two levels: on the abstracted plane of line, form, and color, interacting to create striking geometric designs and motifs, and deeper down, at the personal level, depicting the often dispiriting touch points of a world we don’t often see or have failed to notice.

Overall, the work is this book is consistently excellent, and I think this comes as a result of both keen attention to craft, as well as from the careful eye of an artist probing a subject he already knows well.

Collector’s POV: Anthony Hernandez is represented by Christopher Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica (here) and Galerie Polaris in Paris (here). I couldn’t find any New York representation for his work, so please add it in the comments if someone has further information. There have been very few Hernandez works sold at auction in the past few years, mostly prints from the Pictures of Rome series; in general, prices have varied between $1000 and $7000. For our collection, the images from this book would fit extremely well in our city/industrial genre, but at 40×40, they’re unfortunately once again too big.

Transit Hub:

  • Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition, 2009 (here)
  • Getty Museum collection (here)
  • American Suburb X review (here)

Auction Results: Photographie, June 8, 2009 @Van Ham

The results of Van Ham’s photography sale in Cologne last week were near the bottom of the range of outcomes we have seen this season: a buy-in rate above 60% and proceeds significantly below the estimate range. This was also among the largest of the sales this year, with lots of low end material, so perhaps the conclusion is that demand at the lower end of the market remains quite soft.

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

Total Lots: 376
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: 526750€

Total Lots Sold: 138
Total Lots Bought In: 238
Buy In %: 63.30%
Total Sale Proceeds: 225131€

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

Low Total Lots: 370
Low Sold: 135
Low Bought In: 235
Buy In %: 63.51%
Total Low Estimate: 456750€
Total Low Sold: 178881€

Mid Total Lots: 6
Mid Sold: 3
Mid Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 50.00%
Total Mid Estimate: 70000€
Total Mid Sold: 46250€

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

63.04% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of five surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 614, Tim Gidal, TV Face, 1930/1972, at 688€
Lot 628, Philippe Halsman, Marilyn Monroe, 1952, at 7500€
Lot 700, Erich Kukies, Der Sinn des Lebens – Spuren hinterlassen, 2006/2008, at 1375€
Lot 713, Georges Leuzinger, Rio de Janeiro, 1865, at 1625€
Lot 748, Albert Renger–Patzsch, Das Baumchen, 1929, at 32500€

Complete lot by lot results can be found here. I have grossed up the results in this post to reflect the addition of the buyer’s premium.

Van Ham Kunstauctionen
Schönhauser Straße 10-16
50968 Köln

Auction Results: Photographie, June 4, 2009 @Grisebach

The results of the recent photography sale at Villa Grisebach in Berlin were at the top end of what has become the standard outcome range for sales this season; in this case, the buy-in rate was in the low thirties and the total proceeds were just a hair under the pre sale total Low estimate, an overall result better than most this spring. The Mies van der Rohe lots were a mixed bag, with a few terrific results (the cover lot in particular) balanced by a few passes and sales below the the Low estimate. I think we can also say now that pretty much any image of French First Lady and former model Carla Bruni will sell over its estimate (lot 1369 as the most recent piece of evidence of this pattern).

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

Total Lots: 192
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: 399400€
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: 543100€

Total Lots Sold: 129
Total Lots Bought In: 63
Buy In %: 32.81%
Total Sale Proceeds: 387942€

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

Low Total Lots: 173
Low Sold: 119
Low Bought In: 54
Buy In %: 31.21%
Total Low Estimate: 326100€
Total Low Sold: 223722€

Mid Total Lots: 19
Mid Sold: 10
Mid Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 47.37%
Total Mid Estimate: 217000€
Total Mid Sold: 164220€

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

79.84% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of eleven surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 1231, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Marilyn Monroe, 1953/1960s, at 24395€
Lot 1253, Nikolai Kossikoff, Ohne Titel (Seehafen Gent), 1930s, at 1785€
Lot 1268, Charlotte March, Gil Latour fur “Twen“, 1963, at 952€
Lot 1269, Herbert Matter, Alberto Giacometti, 1960, at 2499€
Lot 1270, Herbert Matter, Skulptur im Altelier von Alberto Giacometti, 1960, at 2737€
Lot 1303, Charlotte Rudolph, Die Tanzerin Gret Palucca, 1924, at 499€
Lot 1340, Curt Rehbein, Mies van der Rohe, Glaserner Wolkenkratzer, 1922, at 47005€
Lot 1341, Curt Rehbein, Mies van der Rohe, Glaserner Wolkenkratzer, 1922, at 4403€
Lot 1342, Curt Rehbein, Mies van der Rohe, Glaserner Wolkenkratzer, 1922, at 5950€
Lot 1369, Pamela Hanson, Carla Bruni in Bed, 1994, at 13090€
Lot 1376, Joel Meyerowitz, Porch Series, Provincetown, 1977/1986, at 5950€

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Villa Grisebach
Fasanenstrasse 25
D-10719 Berlin

August Sander: Selections @Richardson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 gelatin silver prints, with white metal frames and antique white mats, hung in the Project Gallery in back. Most of the prints are approximately 10×8, and were printed in editions of 12. The negatives were taken by August Sander in the period between 1914 and 1931, and the prints were made posthumously by his grandson, Gerd Sander, in the 1990s. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: The small group of August Sander portraits hung in the back room at Yancey Richardson provides some important historical context for the works by Hiroh Kikai which are concurrently hung in the main gallery space in front. Sander’s exhaustive effort to document the German people is one of the keystone projects in the history of the medium, and Sander’s straightforward frontal style, used to capture a broad taxonomy of people, has influenced generations of photographers since. It would not be an overstatement to say that nearly all of photographic portraiture after Sander has been in some way influenced by his approach.

The selections on view are posthumous prints of some of Sander’s best known images, intermingled with some lesser known but equally captivating portraits. It’s a tiny sample of Sander’s monumental project, but the works provide resonance and contrast with Kikai’s images of contemporary Japanese citizens. While both take a head on view of the subject, Sander often placed his full frame subjects in some kind of environmental context, while Kikai’s 3/4 torso images have a repeated, non-descript background. Walking back and forth between the two rooms offers some compelling juxtapositions and echoes of style.

Collector’s POV: The images in this small show are priced between $3800 and $5200, including the frame. There are three sets of Sander images floating around in the market at this point: scarce vintage or early August Sander prints, the first round of posthumous prints made by Gunther Sander in the 1970s and 1980s, and the most recent round of posthumous prints made by Gerd Sander in the 1990s. Prices for vintage images range from approximately $5000 to $100000 at auction, being highly dependent on the image itself (famous versus unknown). The posthumous prints by either son or grandson tend to range between $2000 and $8000. While the prints in this show were made recently, they are well crafted images, with subtle tonal ranges and delicate black borders. While they weren’t made by the hand of the master himself, they offer a surprisingly good substitute for those who fall in love with a Sander image that is otherwise unavailable.

Rating: * (1 star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • People of the Twentieth Century exhibit @Met 2004 (here)
  • Art in America review, 2004, via American Suburb X (here)
  • Sander’s Children at Danziger Projects, 2008 (here)

August Sander: Selections
Through July 2nd

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

Hiroh Kikai: Persona @Richardson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 gelatin silver prints, framed in black and matted, and hung in the main gallery space. All of the images are 14×14 and have been printed in editions of 20. These are recent prints from negatives taken between 1974 and 2003. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Several months ago, we talked in depth about Hiroh Kikai’s excellent monograph, Asakusa Portraits (review here). Rather than cover all of the background to this series once again, I’d suggest that interested readers should go back at the original review for additional context on this work and its display in book form.

This particular show has selected a representative sample of Kikai’s portraits from the early 1970s to the present, showing the subtle refinement and evolution of his visual approach over the years, culminating in the framework that he is now using in all of the works. In person, the portraits are well crafted, engaging, humble and memorable, and I continue to think Kikai is an under appreciated photographer.

That said, I think a chance was missed to create an installation with a little more visual excitement. While the row of eye level portraits widely spaced throughout the gallery is a safe choice, given the consistent square format of the prints, I think tighter grids or pairs or even double rows of images might have worked better, while also allowing for the display of more images. Part of the success of the monograph is found in the ability to see many of these images one after another, highlighting the eccentricities of the sitters. Another angle might have been to place the understated titles on the wall somehow; again, these snippets of text, often laced with wry humor, are part of the charm of these portraits – this is missed when the titles are only found buried in the price list.
So while I certainly enjoyed seeing portraits from this series once again, I came away with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, wishing there had been more.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced at either $3900 or $4900, including the frame. To date, there is no secondary market in Kikai’s work. While we are not portrait collectors, we still appreciate Kikai’s work and think the best of his images would hold the wall well with other portraits from across the history of the medium.
Rating: * (1 star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Interview with Marc Feustel @Lens Culture, 2008 (here)
  • Asakusa Portraits (here)
Hiroh Kikai: Persona
Through July 2nd
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

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