Auction Reviews: Photography

December 2007 Auction Reviews

Contemporary Art

Edward Weston Hiroshi Sugimoto Edward Steichen Robert Mapplethorpe Cindy Sherman Diane Arbus Aaron Siskind Barnett Newman

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

An astounding 6 of the top 10 lots at Sotheby’s various-owner sale, on October 15, were by Edward Weston, including two images of shells, three of sand dunes and one of the nude torso of Miriam Lerner, the photographer’s model and lover, consigned from several different sources. A 1927 version of Nautilus (est. $600–900,000), an intriguing study of curvilinear forms that was originally a gift from the artist to a close friend, set an auction record for Weston when it sold for $1,105,000 to New York’s Pace-MacGill Gallery. The second most successful lot by this photographer was one of his depictions of sand dunes from 1936 (est. $200–300,000), which a private collector bought for $373,000. The next day gallerist Peter MacGill proposed a simple reason for the Westons’ success: “They are beautiful photographs and beautiful prints.”

Another auction record set at Sotheby’s was for Imogen Cunningham, a contemporary of Georgia O’Keeffe’s best known for her 1920s botanical prints. Cunningham’s spectacular Tower of Jewels, from 1925 (est. $200–300,000), a close-up of the stamens and pistils of a magnolia blossom, brought $361,000.

On October 16, the firm held a single-owner sale of 72 photographs accumulated by collector Nancy Richardson, who has a taste for abstract imagery and bold designs, of which 63 sold for a total of $1,759,351. Ironwork, New York City (Single Vertical Bar), a cropped image of a gate taken in 1947 by Aaron Siskind, who shared the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic of his close friend Barnett Newman, set an auction record for the artist when a telephone bidder purchased it for $73,000 against an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. Frederic Sommer’s Livia (est. $40–70,000), a 1948 image of a little girl that is as unsettling as a Southern Gothic novel, also set a record, at $85,000.

At Christie’s October 17 auction of important photographs from a private American collection, Trolley, New Orleans (est. $150–200,000), a 1955 gelatin silver print by Robert Frank, was bought by Pace-MacGill Gallery for the record sum of $623,400. That same evening, the themed sale On Artists: Photographs from the Collection of Rex, Inc., a private equity firm based in Rhode Island, comprised 51 portraits and self-portraits of artists. The top seller was Cindy Sherman’s Untitled (Film Still #22), from 1978, which brought $205,000 against an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000.

The next day, at the house’s various-owner sale, prints by Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Edward Steichen and Carlton E. Watkins did well, as did works by their younger colleagues Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe. With a glut of 27 photographs by Penn, there were many passes, but his magnificent image Cuzco Children, from 1948 (printed in 1978), garnered $361,000 against an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.

Offering works by such contemporary talents as Hiroshi Sugimoto and Massimo Vitali along with lesser-quality prints by classic figures, Phillips geared its October 17 auction to a younger audience. Sale of Gold in the Last Days of Kuomintang, Shanghai, China, a crowd scene taken by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1949, reached $19,200, well above its estimate of $4,000 to $6,000 but below prices fetched by this photographer at the other houses. A print of Richard Avedon’s well-known 1987 photo of a nude Nastassja Kinski entwined with a serpent made $54,000 against an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 (a version in Christie’s various-owner sale, with the same estimate, sold for $55,000). Another standout at Phillips, Irving Penn’s The Hand of Miles Davis, from 1986 (est. $30–50,000), was purchased for $102,000 by a fashionable female bidder who was in the room for just three lots and left immediately after she won her quarry.

The strong market for early 20th-century American prints didn’t surprise Denise Bethel, director of Sotheby’s photographs department. The real question, she says, is, “Why have they been ignored for so long?”