Auction Results: Photographs from the Teutloff Collection, May 24, 2013 @Lempertz

The results of the recent sale of photographs from the Teutloff Collection at Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne were decidedly flat. The overall Buy-In rate was nearly 50% and the Total Sale Proceeds came in well below the estimate target. Lempertz does not provide an estimate range in most cases, just a single estimate number, so this figure is used as the High estimate in the calculations.

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

Total Lots: 99
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: €436500
Total Lots Sold: 52
Total Lots Bought In: 57
Buy In %: 47.47%
Total Sale Proceeds: €297520

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

Low Total Lots: 82
Low Sold: 44
Low Bought In: 38
Buy In %: 46.34%
Total Low Estimate: €232500
Total Low Sold: €178570

Mid Total Lots: 17
Mid Sold: 8
Mid Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 52.94%
Total Mid Estimate: €204000
Total Mid Sold: €118950

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

The top lot by High estimate was lot 313, Hendrik Kerstens, Bag, 2007, estimated at €15000-20000; it sold for €19520. The top outcome of the sale was lot 343, Jürgen Klauke, Toter Photograph, estimated at €14000-18000, sold at €29280.

100.00% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate. There were a total of 9 surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 341, Dieter Appelt, Image de la Vie et de la Mort, 1979, estimated at €5000, sold at €10980 (image at right, middle, via Lempertz)
Lot 346, Stefan Moses, Jospeh Beuys, Munchen, 1968/later, estimated at €800, sold at €2070
Lot 348, Cindy Sherman, Ancestor, 1985, estimated at €1500-2000, sold at €4880
Lot 349, Joel-Peter Witkin, La Giovanissima, 2007, estimated at €2000, sold at €13420 (image at right, top, via Lempertz)
Lot 357, Mario Cravo Neto, O Deus da Cabeca, 1988, estimated at €1500, sold at €3900
Lot 358, Mario Cravo Neto, Voodoo Figure, 1988, estimate at €1500, sold at €3900
Lot 359, Adam Nadel, Ohne Titel, 2004, estimated at €2500, sold at €5120
Lot 361, Steve McCurry, India, Kerala, Hundus During Trichur Pooram, 1996, estimated at €1800, sold at €3900
Lot 392, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Aktion mit Seinem Eigenen Korper, 1966, estimated at €6000, sold at €12200 (image at right, bottom, via Lempertz)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Kunsthaus Lempertz
Neumarkt 3
D-50667 Köln

Miles Aldridge: I Only Want You to Love Me @Kasher

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the North and South gallery spaces and the side alcove. All of the works are c-prints, made between 2005 and 2012. Print sizes range from 14x14 to 56x75 (or reverse), in editions of 6 or 10. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Rizzoli (here) and is available from the gallery for $75. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Miles Aldridge's complex sense for brash stylized color sets his work apart from other contemporary fashion photographers. As seen in this retrospective show of work from roughly the past decade, his precisely staged images are over-the-top exercises in color theory, where every detail and prop is carefully orchestrated for maximum intensity. When added to satirical scenes of blanked eyed women in oddly glamorized domestic situations, his distinctive eye for color makes the photographs even more dynamic and vital.

In Aldridge's hands, female stereotypes are pushed beyond the edge of exaggeration into a surreal world of dark social commentary. A desperate red lipped homemaker stabs an imperfect birthday cake with a huge kitchen knife, a woman in plastic lingerie breaks down over a sliced half grapefruit, a deadpan woman in a tight green dress and red heels is stuffed into the under sink area normally reserved for rubber gloves and toilet cleaner, and a robotic mother in thigh high boots and a perfect black ensemble strides through a gaggle of soccer playing boys (a weird futuristic "soccer mom"). In nearly every situation, the subject has been pushed to an emotional extreme: either anesthetized like a mannequin or on the verge of losing control.

A scene of a smashed dinner tray, an overstuffed Cadillac full of shopping bags and packing trunks, or an overdone dinner party dripping in glamorous boredom all have their own sense of cliché, but Aldridge takes them somewhere new with his use of color. In nearly every image (even the most muted ones), it's as if he has consciously taken out the color wheel to target complementary pairs. A zoned out woman dries her hair in a bathroom full of acidic greens and orange pinks: green tile, red towel, green slip, pink slip, green curtains, orange hair dryer, plastic rings in both colors - it's a symphony in hot, matchy matchy contradiction. These kinds of opposites are everywhere in this show: a bright yellow and red checkerboard floor, blue water behind an orange bikini clad woman, orange soccer uniforms against electric green turf, a dramatic red dress against a green floral carpet; they all add visual tension to the already inflated scenes.

While at first glance it might be easy to mistake these fashion images for fun-loving visual camp, I like the way they grow darker and more depressing with more sustained looking. Everything is just so but blown to the point of parody, like scenes of zombies in overdone gilded prisons.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $5150 and $15500 (with many intermediate prices), generally based on size. Aldridge's work is not widely available in the secondary markets, although a handful of lots have come up for auction in recent years; prices for those lots ranged between roughly $6000 and $12000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here)

Miles Aldridge: I Only Want You to Love Me
Through June 8th

Steven Kasher Gallery
521 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

The Checklist: 5/30/13

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Travess Smalley: Higher Pictures: June 8: review
TWO STARS: Robert Mapplethorpe: Skarstedt: June 15: review
TWO STARS: William Eggleston: Met: July 28: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Alma Lavenson: Gitterman: June 1: review
ONE STAR: Charles Fréger: Gallery at Hermès: June 8: review
TWO STARS: Henry Wessel: Pace/MacGill: June 15: review
THREE STARS: Bill Brandt: MoMA: August 12: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Hannah Starkey: Tanya Bonakdar: June 8: review
ONE STAR: Sara VanDerBeek: Metro Pictures: June 8: review
ONE STAR: Ori Gersht: CRG: June 15: review
ONE STAR: Rodney Graham: 303: June 15: review
TWO STARS: Wolfgang Tillmans: Andrea Rosen: June 22: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Carey Denniston: KANSAS: June 22: review

Elsewhere Nearby

No reviews at this time.

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

June 5: Photography: Galerie Bassenge (Berlin): catalog
June 14: Photographs: Van Ham (Cologne): catalog

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portraits @Skarstedt

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against grey walls in the two second floor gallery spaces. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, made between 1980 and 1988. Physical dimensions range from roughly 15x15 to 24x20 and edition sizes are either 3, 10, or 15. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This small show of Robert Mapplethorpe's self portraits is a focused subset of the work he made in the last decade of the his life. It gathers together many of the self portraits he took in the 1980s, leaving out the early Polaroids and the bullwhip in the ass aggressively sexual pictures of the 1970s. What this edit gives up in inclusiveness and comprehensiveness, it gains in tight attention, as it allows us to see the small, evolving changes in his artistic approach, played out in a handful of important images.

In Mapplethorpe's early 1980s self portraits, he still has his swagger on, but his eye has turned to the nuances of gender roles. He casts himself as the effortlessly cool rebel with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, as an androgynous bare chested male in eye makeup, and as a diva in drag wrapped in a lush fur collar. The pared down classicism of his staging allows him to shift from persona or persona like a chameleon without losing a sense of control, trying on identities and challenging conventional attitudes within the confines of quiet formal elegance.

Just a year or two later finds Mapplethorpe exploring background geometries and more overt iconography. He stands in front of layered squares (the graphic design looking a bit dated now) and uses the triangulating lines of the back of his hair and the trim of his leather jacket to precisely echo a sharply angled striped backdrop. In another work, he tackles religion with a bold pentagram wall hanging, posing as an outlaw armed with a tommy gun. His self portrait with horns follows this thread, spookily lighting himself from below and casting himself as either a satyr or a devil.

The last self portraits, made in the years before he died, find him turning inward and looking at himself with more vulnerability. His many roles collapse into a blurred, shape shifting image of his face in motion, and a portrait in a tuxedo is somehow haunting rather than debonair, the last disguise in which we might expect to find him. By 1988, he stares at the camera with unvarnished openness, his face drawn and gaunt with disease, armed with a cane topped by an ebony skull. He seems to float out of the darkness, looking death straight in the eye, confronting himself as much as the camera.

Even in the span of the dozen pictures on view here, it is possible to see both continuity and change in Mapplethorpe's work. Even as the content of his self portraits began to evolve, his eye for classical harmony never faltered, his forms always clean and refined, regardless of his emotional intentions. There's underlying power in every one of these photographs, and together they pack a durably surprising wallop.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are for the most part on loan and therefore not for sale, although a few were apparently available at prices between $150000 and $200000. Mapplethorpe's prints are routinely available in the secondary markets, with dozens of images up for sale every year. Prices have generally ranged between a few thousand dollars for his lesser known works to more than $300000 for his most iconic images.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Mapplethorpe Foundation site (here)

 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portraits

Through June 15th

 

Skarstedt Gallery

20 East 79th Street

New York, NY 10075

Carey Denniston @KANSAS

JTF (just the facts): A total of 8 photographic works, framed in white in custom built wood frames, and hung against white walls in the entry, front main gallery space, and hallway. All of the works are c-prints in two part frames from the series To what degree a stone is a stranger/To what degree it is withdrawing, made in 2012 and 2013. Sizes range from 19x26 to 60x30 (or reverse); no edition information was provided on the checklist. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Carey Denniston's works upend our typical notion of how multi-panel photographs are supposed to function. Instead of shifting our attention from one panel to another, drawing out a narrative into a wider arc, or creating associations and juxtapositions between nearby images, she subverts those premises and uses one panel to obscure the other. It's an inversion that not only undermines our expectations, but interrupts the photographs in such a way that their ability to deliver a legible narrative is undermined.

Each work is made up of a single photograph in white frame partially obscured by a blank white panel, like an opaque Japanese screen or a sliding door. These sculptural panels frustrate our ability to draw out a story, reducing the works to mysterious formal exercises. An image of a round plastic ball is cut in half, while another is narrowed down to the slats of an outdoor table and the boards of a wooden deck. In other works, the fragments of visual textures are more mysteriously edited, leaving behind small snippets of geometric tile flooring, a lumpy blue tarp, a rock wall with flecks of straw, and a woven white fabric. I was ever so tempted to push the white panel back to see more of what was going on, or to peek on the back side to see if there was any image hiding there; the eclipsed images give little clue to a larger purpose. But this dissonant set-up is what gives the works their friction - it's disciplined, rational, and rigidly controlled, all in direct convention of what we're used to.

Denniston's works point to a heightened sense of the duality of photography, of a picture's ability to be both a recognizable story and a set of abstract lines and forms at the same time. Her panels break up this effect, reducing a functioning photograph to a hint of its former self, stripping away our ability to easily interpret a narrative or context and leaving us with more questions than answers. Her works are like puzzles that can't be figured out, momentarily annoying but seductively challenging. Unlike many contemporary photographs which shout from the walls to get our attention, these works actively hold back, in quiet, defiant resistance.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $2200 and $4500 based on size. Denniston got her MFA from Hunter College in 2012, so it isn't particularly surprising that her work has no secondary market history at this point. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for those collectors interested in following up.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)

 

Carey Denniston
Through June 22nd

KANSAS
59 Franklin Street
New York, NY 10013

Auction: Photographies, May 29, 2013 @Sotheby's Paris

Sotheby's Paris has a various owner photographs sale scheduled for next week, led by two sets of works from private collections, set off in colored pages in the printed catalog. Overall, there are a total of 221 lots on offer, with a Total High Estimate of €2399800.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including €7500): 103
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): €541800

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between €7500 and €35000): 111
Total Mid Estimate: €1488000

Total High Lots (high estimate above €35000): 7
Total High Estimate: €370000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 172, Helmut Newton, Naomi, Cap D'Antibes, 1998, estimated at €80000-120000 (image at right, top, via Sotheby's.).

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

Helmut Newton (12)
Eugène Atget (8)
Herb Ritts (8)
Charles Clifford (6)
Laure Albin-Guillot (5)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (5)
Charles-Isidore Choiselat & Stanislas Ratel (5)
Horst P. Horst (4)
Man Ray (4)
Andres Serrano (4)
Albert Sands Southworth & Josiah Johnson Hawes (4)
William Eggleston (3)
Nan Goldin (3)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (3)

Other lots of interest include lot 29, Julia Margaret Cameron, Beatrice, 1870, estimated at €8000-12000 (image at right, middle, via Sotheby's) and lot 93, Hans  Bellmer, Poupee Reversible en Repos, 1936, estimated at €12000-15000 (image at right, bottom, via Sotheby's)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographies
May 29th

Sotheby's
76, Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
75008 Paris

Auction: Photographie, May 29, 2013 @Villa Grisebach

Villa Grisebach has its Spring various owner photographs sale in Berlin next week, with a diverse selection of lower priced vintage and contemporary material on offer, led by a dozen prints by Aenne Biermann. Overall, there are a total of 161 lots available, with a Total High Estimate of €654400.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including €7500): 141
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): €416400

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between €7500 and €35000): 20
Total Mid Estimate: €238000

Total High Lots (high estimate above €35000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 2086, Martin Munkacsi, Brasilien erstickt im Kaffee, 1932, estimated at €15000-20000 (image at right, top, via Villa Grisebach).

Here is the complete list of photographers with three or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Aenne Biermann (12)
Peter Lindbergh (6 )
Albert Renger-Patzsch (6)
Thomas Struth (5)
Berenice Abbott (3)
Ilse Bing (3)
Andreas Feininger (3)
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (3)
Saul Leiter (3)
Herbert Matter (3)
Tom Wood (3)

Other lots of interest include lot 2030, Erwin Blumenfeld, Solarized nude, 1943, estimated at €10000-12000 (image at right, middle, via Villa Grisebach) and lot 2143, Ulrike Rosenbach, Art is a criminal action II, 1969/2008, estimated at €10000-15000 (image at right, bottom, via Villa Grisebach).

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographie
May 269th

Villa Grisebach Auktionen
Fasanenstraße 25
D-10719 Berlin

Garrett Pruter, Interiors @Bank

JTF (just the facts): A total of 25 photographic works, either framed in white and unmatted or unframed, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the entry area. 10 of the works (9 single images and 1 diptych) are unique photographic collages, ranging in size from 18x24 to 30x40 (or reverse). 9 of the works are paintings made from mixtures of photographic pigment, turpenoid, aluminum, and linseed oil on canvas, ranging in size from 40x30 to 72x60. 4 of the works are made from bleach applied to archival inkjet prints, each 30x40. And the show also includes 1 video, available in an edition of 3+1AP, and 1 graphite drawing, sized 31x45. All of the works were made in 2013. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Garrett Pruter's newest works use vernacular photography as a starting point for physical explorations of surface, color, and process, breaking down found images using a variety of gestural, hand-crafted methods. He brings fresh approaches to collage, bleaching, and ultimately to painting, iteratively deconstructing images of floral bouquets, cats, and birthday cakes until all that remains is a wash of diluted, residual pigment. It's an exercise in repeated subtraction, beginning with something vaguely familiar and ending up somewhere entirely new.

 

Pruter's approach to collage is the exact opposite of the usual dense agglomeration of layered images. It is instead an excising, a cutting away of central focal points. Tiny cut marks and edges shows us where a cat once sat, where a leg once draped over a purple couch, or where an amaryllis in a pot once stood. In each image, Pruter has multiplied the image, placing a misaligned copy of the original image underneath the cut out area, shifting it left or right to keep the continuity of the colors but to upend the visibility of what we're supposed to be looking at. In other collages, he has matched his cutouts to the character of the imagery: a smear across a birthday cake or small dots that echo the baby's breath in a flower arrangement. In these works, his see-through background is now shiny mylar, creating a silvery mirrored effect. In still others, the found imagery is jumbled together - the black cat from one collage has now become the surprise underneath the removed rose blooms in the bouquet of another. Seen together, the collages feel like a progression of experimental ideas.

 

Pruter's investigation of erasure continues in both his bleached images and his video. Starting once again with found imagery, Pruter has painted bleach across the images in gestural washes, turning the outline of a house into ghostly white emptiness. Like Curtis Mann, he is using the whiteness to obscure and remove, leaving behind clues and faded memories. The floral bouquet is repeatedly dissected, leaving a splatter of bleach spotted flowers or just a single red bloom amid the white spots of the baby's breath. The video explores similar territory, but with much more deliberateness. At first glance, the video looks to be a still image of the same rose bouquet, and after a minute or two of nothing happening, I gave up and moved on. When I circled back, one of the blooms had disappeared, and again later, another vanished. Slowly and carefully, all of the blooms were removed, Pruter's methodical process of reduction spread out over time.

 

The most surprising works in the show are Pruter's abstract "paintings", where his disassembly of the found imagery is taken to its ultimate limit. Gathering up all the scraps and leftover bits from his collages, he has mixed the fragments in with solvent and oil, dissolving them into a slurry of photographic pigment which he has then smeared and spread in vertical swaths across canvas. From afar, the results run the gamut from soft pastel pink to reddish brown. Up close, the works are often dotted with tiny flecks of multicolored emulsion, sometimes thin and transparent like cherry skins, other times more congealed and coagulated like dried syrup. I liked both their textural drips and the underlying conceptual idea of the photographs reduced to their elemental chemical colors.

 

In general, I think Pruter's line of thinking is intriguing. He has opted to explore the boundaries of photography via reduction and removal, playing both with representational recognition and process-driven abstraction. In an age of adding, tuning, and manipulating, I was reminded that taking away can be just as powerful and innovative.

 

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The collages range from $1000 to $2400 based on size. The paintings range from $2800 to $8000, again based on size. The bleached prints are $2400 each, the graphite drawing is $2400, and the video is $2000. Pruter's work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the still the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here)

 

Garrett Pruter, Interiors

Through May 26th

 

Charles Bank Gallery

196 Bowery

New York, NY 10012

The Checklist: 5/23/13

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Chuck Close: Eykyn Maclean: May 24: review
ONE STAR: After Photoshop: Met: May 27: review
ONE STAR: Travess Smalley: Higher Pictures: June 1: review
TWO STARS: William Eggleston: Met: July 28: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Karine Laval: Bonni Benrubi: May 24: review
ONE STAR: Toshio Shibata/Toeko Tatsuno: Laurence Miller: May 25: review
ONE STAR: Alma Lavenson: Gitterman: June 1: review
ONE STAR: Charles Fréger: Gallery at Hermès: June 8: review
TWO STARS: Henry Wessel: Pace/MacGill: June 15: review
THREE STARS: Bill Brandt: MoMA: August 12: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Hannah Starkey: Tanya Bonakdar: June 8: review
ONE STAR: Sara VanDerBeek: Metro Pictures: June 8: review
ONE STAR: Ori Gersht: CRG: June 15: review
ONE STAR: Rodney Graham: 303: June 15: review
TWO STARS: Wolfgang Tillmans: Andrea Rosen: June 22: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

No reviews at this time.

Elsewhere Nearby

No reviews at this time.

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

May 24: Photographie: Kunsthaus Lempertz (Cologne): catalog
May 24: Photographs from the Teutloff Collection: Kunsthaus Lempertz (Cologne): catalog
May 24: 8th Photo Auction: WestLicht (Vienna): catalog
May 29: Photographies: Sotheby's (Paris): catalog
May 29: Photographs: Villa Grisebach (Berlin): catalog
June 5: Photography: Galerie Bassenge (Berlin): catalog
June 14: Photographs: Van Ham (Cologne): catalog

Auction Results: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales, May 16 and 17, 2013 @Phillips New York

The photography buried in Phillips' two Contemporary Art sales last week provided ample proof that if the available works are well edited and the Buy-In rate can be kept low, the overall results are usually plenty successful. In this case, less than 9% of the photographs on offer failed to find buyers, driving the Total Sale Proceeds over the top of aggregate pre-sale high estimate.

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

Total Lots: 34
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $2680000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $3980000
Total Lots Sold: 31
Total Lots Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 8.82%
Total Sale Proceeds: $4073250

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: 19
Mid Sold: 18
Mid Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 5.26%
Total Mid Estimate: $480000
Total Mid Sold: $568750

High Total Lots: 15
High Sold: 13
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 13.33%
Total High Estimate: $3500000
Total High Sold: $3504500

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 7, Andreas Gursky, Rhein, 1996, estimated at $1000000-1500000; it was also the top outcome of the sales at 1925000

82.35% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range, and there were a total of 3 surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 194, Andreas Gursky, Untitled 1 (Carpet), 1993, estimated at $60000-80000, sold at $173000 (image at right, top, via Phillips)
Lot 210, Vik Muniz, Valentine, The Fastest from The Sugar Children, 1996, estimated at $20000-25000, sold at $81250 (image at right, middle, via Phillips)
Lot 252, Ruud van Empel, World #16, 2006, estimated at $12000-18000, sold at $43750 (image at right, bottom, via Phillips)

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

Phillips
450 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Auction Results: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening, Morning, and Afternoon Sales, May 15 and 16, 2013 @Christie's New York

While Christie's was busy setting auction records and selling nearly half a billion dollars worth of Contemporary Art in the evening sale alone last week, the photography buried in its three sales didn't offer any particular lightning strikes or frothy exuberance. Of the just under $600 million in sales across the three sessions, a little less than $6.5 million came from photography, or a fraction more than 1% of the total proceeds. From the vantage point of the photography on offer, the overall Buy-In rate was just under 30% and the Total Sale Proceeds fell in the middle of the range, a generally predictable result all things considered.

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

Total Lots: 57
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $5178000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $7340000
Total Lots Sold: 40
Total Lots Bought In: 17
Buy In %: 29.82%
Total Sale Proceeds: $6440750

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: 28
Mid Sold: 20
Mid Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 28.57%
Total Mid Estimate: $900000
Total Mid Sold: $730000

High Total Lots: 29
High Sold: 20
High Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 31.03%
Total High Estimate: $6440000
Total High Sold: $5710750

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 3, Andreas Gursky, Klitschko, 1999, estimated at $800000-1000000; it was also the top outcome of the sales at $1323750.

90.00% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range and there were a total of only two surprises (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 424, Rodney Graham, Can of Worms, 2000, estimated at $15000-20000, sold at $47500 (image at right, bottom, via Christie's)
Lot 487, Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #54, 1980, estimated at $250000-350000, sold at $723750 (image at right, top, via Christie's)

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

Christie's
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Wolfgang Tillmans, from Neue Welt @Rosen

JTF (just the facts): A total of 25 large scale color photographs, variously framed and displayed, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space, the connecting hallway, the back gallery, and the office area. Most of the works are inkjet prints on paper, some mounted on aluminum and framed in white, others unframed and clipped directly to the wall. These prints range in size from roughly 31x25 to 95x63 (or reverse) and are available in editions of 3+1AP or 1+1AP depending on size. 3 of the works are c-prints mounted on dibond and framed in white; they are each sized 93x71 (or reverse) and are available in editions of 1+1AP. The exhibit also includes a grid of 128 offset prints. All of the works were made between 2009 and 2012. Monographs of Neue Welt and Fruit Logistica were recently published by Taschen (here) and Walther König (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In his most recent work, Wolfgang Tillmans has set himself an audacious goal - to capture the astonishingly diverse spirit of our sprawling, global, hyper-connected, 21st century world. Bouncing from continent to continent over the past few years, he has made pictures in countless locations, from Jeddah to Buenos Aires, Shanghai to Addis Ababa, and Los Angeles to Munuwata, selecting moments that have the first glance look of random snapshots, but soon coalesce into a deeper set of underlying patterns and rhythms. In his hands, our complex world resolves itself into set of contradictions, finding an uneasy balance between confusingly interwoven and juxtaposed realities.

Tillmans has always thought deeply about editing and image sequencing, and this exhibit is no exception. It moves back and forth with directed purpose, mixing emblems of old and new in a point-counterpoint dialogue, the visual conversation interrupted occasionally by an elegant abstraction to turn the viewer back inward for just a moment. The broadness of the starry night sky over Kilimanjaro is matched by computerized laser astronomy tools, improvised markets of crouching women and outstretched tarps are offset by the perfect displays at a futuristic food tradeshow, and the natural, earthy growth of mushroom spores on a tree trunk is set against the sleek, engineered headlights of high tech cars at an auto show. His eye pushes us to see the simultaneity of disparity and difference all around us. The hopelessly poor streets of Addis Ababa clash with the shiny escalators of a Jeddah shopping mall, the soot encrusted roof of a Masai hut fights with the mundane sterility of a hotel room, and the timeless games on the nighttime streets of Shanghai disregard the modern metal buildings of Los Angeles. We are at once pushing forward with energy and innovation and dragged back to the roots of our existence.

Given the complexity of Tillmans' overall argument, it might be reasonable to assume that the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts here, but there are more standout single images in this show than I can ever remember seeing in a Tillmans show. The car headlights are aggressively streamlined and technical, the fly perched on a mass of crab legs is bold and compositionally dense, and the water flowing out of a plastic pipe into the gutter is gracefully dirty. In this particular edit, his eye for color and detail is very strong, especially when he moves in close.

Trying to document the global zeitgeist is a perilous challenge, but Tillmans has found a way to represent the complexity of our age with remarkable coherence and legibility. His works capture both our lofty aspirations and our crude realities, without a sense of omniscient pretense or judgment. In these diverse photographs, he shows us all our glorious incongruity and discord, singling out its extremities with perceptive interest.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The inkjet prints range from $28000 to $68000 based on size, while the large c-prints from the Silver series are $90000 each. Tillmans' work is generally available in the secondary markets, with a handful of images on offer in most auction seasons. Recent prices have generally ranged between $2000 and $90000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: New York Times (here), New Yorker (here)

Wolfgang Tillmans, from Neue Welt
Through June 22nd

Andrea Rosen Gallery
525 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Auctions: Photography and Contemporary Art, May 24, 2013 @Lempertz

Kunsthaus Lempertz has both a various owner Photography sale and a Contemporary Art sale this Friday in Cologne. The photo auction is headlined by a series of mushroom cloud images from the atomic bomb tests in the Bikini Islands in 1946, but together the two sales cover a wide range of styles and periods. Overall, there are a total of 227 lots of photography on offer, with a Total High Estimate of €556200.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including €7500): 214
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): €389200

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between €7500 and €35000): 13
Total Mid Estimate: €167000

Total High Lots (high estimate above €35000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is tied between two lots: lot 22, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Portrait Ellen Frank, 1929, and lot 560, Thomas Ruff, Ohne Titel (B. Junger), 1985 (image at right, top, via Lempertz), both estimated at €20000-25000.

Here's the list of photographers who are represented by three or more lots in the sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Joint Army Task Force One (12)
Thomas Struth (5)
Max Baur (4)
Bernd and Hilla Becher (4)
Gisele Freund (4)
Jörg Sasse (4)
Jan Saudek (4)
Ilse Bing (3)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (3)
William Klein (3)
Heinrich Kühn (3)
David LaChapelle (3)
Joel Meyerowitz (3)
Thomas Ruff (3)
Toni Schneiders (3)
Wolfgang Tillmans (3)
Weegee (3)

Other works of interest include lot 110, Jaroslav Rössler, Reflexionswinkel, 1960, estimated at €1500-2000 (image at right, middle, via Lempertz) and lot 196, Jörg Sasse, S-89-07-01. Giessen, 1989, estimated at €1200 (image at right, bottom, via Lempertz).

The complete lot by lot online catalogs can be found here (Photography) and here (Contemporary Art).

Photography
May 24th

Contemporary Art
May 24th

Kunsthaus Lempertz
Neumarkt 3
D-50667 Köln

Auction: Photographs from the Teutloff Collection, May 24, 2013 @Lempertz

In addition to its usual various owner sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz has a single owner photography sale later this week in Cologne drawn from the collection of Dr. H.C. Lutz Teutloff. It's a challenging, risk taking collection, the works connected by the common theme of the human body. The catalog is loosely divided into sections including nudes, tattooed bodies, religion, and various other portraits and collections of bodies, many closer to experimental than classic. Overall, there are a total of 99 lots of photography on offer, with a Total High Estimate of €436500.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including €7500): 82
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): €232500

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between €7500 and €35000): 17
Total Mid Estimate: €204000

Total High Lots (high estimate above €35000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 313, Hendrik Kerstens, Bag, 2007, estimated at €15000-20000 (image at right, top, via Lempertz).

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

Robert Doisneau (3)
Jürgen Klauke (3)
Dieter Appelt (2)
Roger Ballen (2)
Christian Boltanski (2)
Lucien Clergue (2)
Nan Goldin (2)
Bill Henson (2)
Eikoh Hosoe (2)
Yousuf Karsh (2)
Robert Lebeck (2)
Stefan Moses (2)
Mario Cravo Neto (2)
Eva Schlegel (2)
Valie Export (2)

Other works of interest include lot 343, Jürgen Klauke, Toter Photograph, 1988, estimated at €14000-18000 (image at right, bottom, via Lempertz) and lot 366, Roger Ballen, Puppy Between Feet, 1999, estimated at €2000-3000 (image at right, middle, via Lempertz).

The complete lot by lot online catalog can be found here.

Photographs from the Teutloff Collection
May 24th

Kunsthaus Lempertz
Neumarkt 3
D-50667 Köln

Ori Gersht: Cells @CRG

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 large scale color photographs and 1 video installation, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the front, middle, and side galleries, with a curtained off viewing room in the back for the video. All of the photographs are c-prints mounted on dibond, made in 2013. Sizes range from 48x47 to 60x68 (or reverse) and all of the prints are available in editions of 8+2AP. The video is a three screen HD video projection with media players, made in 2012, also available in an edition of 8+2AP. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Following up on his recent series of energetic exploding flowers, this show of new work finds Ori Gersht moving in several different directions simultaneously. It mixes almost scientific abstraction with more traditional images of the geometric space of bull pens, paired with a three channel video installation that traces the methodical preparations and movements of a Spanish bullfighter. Thematically, they all fit together into one interconnected impression, but individually, they are quite visually and emotionally distinct.

The best works in the show are the red circular abstractions made by adding drops of red blood to pools of white milk. Up close, the splashes of red are fascinatingly veined and organic, slowly turning from almost black in the center to filigrees of disappearing pink at the edges; they wave and stretch and dissolve with thick pulsating richness. When placed in the context of Jewish traditions and the prohibition against mixing these two, the works take on an overtly transgressive, almost creepy, tone. They're stop motion Harold Edgerton meets taboo testing Andres Serrano, with compositional help from Ken Noland.

The second series of photographs on view documents the interior spaces of the empty holding pens at the bull ring. The rough wood doors are scarred and scraped and the white cells are muddied by hoof prints and dirty brushing flanks. The photographs are rigidly geometric, turning doorways into flat rectangles (almost like Sean Scully paintings) and cells into corner bisected triangles. They balance absent violence with aesthetic simplicity, the spaces steeped in their function even when quiet and empty. The video amplifies this meditative quality, following the matador as he slowly and deliberately dons his grandly embroidered costume, elegantly meets the bull in the dusty cloud of the ring, and then returns to undress with the same reverence and grace. Flanked by slow moving fragments of royal portrait paintings on the side screens, the video emphasizes the thoughtfulness of the ritual, and its measured, respectful application.

When seen in the company of these reverential views of bullfighting, the milk and blood abstractions seem even more profane and unexpected; they bring us back to the gore that is left out of Gersht's gestural dance in the ring. In many ways, the cell pictures and matador video are a well matched supporting cast to drive home the surprising vulgarity of the abstract blood drops. Without their context, we might just see bright red swirling vortex circles, and miss the underlying ceremony of blood letting.

Collector's POV: The prints in the show are priced at either $20000 (Love Me Love Me Not blood series) or $22000 (Cells series). Gersht's work has only been intermittently available in the secondary markets in recent years. Prices for the few lots that have sold at auction have ranged between $3000 and $20000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Exhibit: Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 2012 (here)

Ori Gersht: Cells

Through June 15th

CRG Gallery
548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Results: Contemporary Art, Evening and Day Sales, May 14 and 15, 2013 @Sotheby's New York

When Andreas Gursky's Rhein II sold for just over $4.3 million dollars in 2011, setting the record for the top price ever paid at auction for a photograph, the result created a flood of commentary in the popular press. Some writers took the approach of considering the sale of the Gursky as a signpost for the ever increasing value of contemporary photography in comparison to other types of contemporary art, while others opted for the snarkier "would you pay that kind of money for a boring river landscape?" kind of hatchet job. In both cases, there was plenty of hue and cry over a photograph garnering such astronomical sums and plenty of speculation about what it all might mean.

 

Last week, the Jeff Koons photograph shown above, The New Jeff Koons, from 1980, sold for $9405000 and hardly a peep was heard from either the photography press or the mainstream art media. For the record, the work is a Duratrans transparency displayed on a lightbox (the power cord is just visible in the lower left). Duratrans is a color transparency material developed by Kodak in the late 1970s that is generally used for backlit photographic signage, tradeshow booths, and TV studio displays. So apart from the technical hairsplitters who will want to consider the printing differences between this process and that used by Jeff Wall for his color transparencies, I think we are safe in calling this work a "photograph", especially given the way the work is presented and Koons' options in 1980 when he made the work. In an age when the definition of "photograph" has been extended in so many different ways, I don't think I'm out on a limb in any way in including this particular image under the larger umbrella of the medium. So shouldn't we be having an overheated debate about the merits of Koons' early image, where it fits in his artistic development, where it belongs in the history of photographic portraiture, and whether its recent price is in any way correlated its overall importance? Didn't we just more than double the top price ever paid for a photograph?

In the context of the photography buried in Sotheby's pair of Contemporary Art sales last week, there's nothing like a work estimated at $2.5-3.5M selling for $9.4M to pump up the results numbers. More generally, the overall Buy-In rate was up over 35% and there were hardly any positive surprises beyond the Koons, so while we might have predicted a less than stellar overall outcome, the astonishing success of the Koons drowns out any other statistical analysis we might normally make.

As usual, the summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Photography Lots: 53
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $7086000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $10018000
Total Lots Sold: 33
Total Lots Bought In: 20
Buy In %: 37.74%
Total Sale Proceeds: $13291625

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: 22
Mid Sold: 15
Mid Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 31.82%
Total Mid Estimate: $618000
Total Mid Sold: $485000

High Total Lots: 31
High Sold: 18
High Bought In: 13
Buy In %: 41.94%
Total High Estimate: $9400000
Total High Sold: $12806625

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 9, Jeff Koons, The New Jeff Koons, 1980, estimated at $2500000-3500000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at $9405000 (image at top, via Sotheby's).

93.94% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were only two surprises in these sales (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 9, Jeff Koons, The New Jeff Koons, 1980, estimated at $2500000-3500000, sold at $9405000
(image at right, top, via Sotheby's)
Lot 604, Ashley Bickerton, The Expats, 2004, estimated at $30000-50000, sold at $100000 (image at right, bottom, via Sotheby's)

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

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Auction Results: Photographs, May 15, 2013 @Christie's London

The parade of Peter Beard prints in Christie's recent various owner Photographs sale in London held up well, pushing the Total Sale Proceeds for the auction solidly into the middle of the pre-sale estimate range. With an overall Buy-In rate under 30% and a number of positive surprises, the sale easily met expectations.

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

Total Lots: 108
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £1159000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1678000
Total Lots Sold: 76
Total Lots Bought In: 32
Buy In %: 29.63%
Total Sale Proceeds: £1485375

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

Low Total Lots: 13
Low Sold: 11
Low Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 15.38%
Total Low Estimate: £51000
Total Low Sold: £65125

Mid Total Lots: 75
Mid Sold: 52
Mid Bought In: 23
Buy In %: 30.67%
Total Mid Estimate: £827000
Total Mid Sold: £722900

High Total Lots: 20
High Sold: 13
High Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 35.00%
Total High Estimate: £800000
Total High Sold: £697350

The top lot by High estimate was lot 19, Peter Beard, Giraffes in mirage on the Taru Desert, Kenya for the End of the Game, June 1960, 1960/1997, at £50000-70000; it sold for £85875. The top outcome of the sale was lot 25, Peter Beard, Tsavo National Park, founded April Fool's Day, 1948, 1968/1997, estimated at £40000-60000, sold at £103875.

97.37% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There were a total of nine surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):
Lot 1, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Nude on beach, California, 1948/1988, estimated at £5000-7000, sold at £16250
Lot 2, Javier Vallhonrat, Inner edge, the Possessed Space, 1991, estimated at £2000-3000, sold at £10000
Lot 8, Helmut Newton, Henrietta, beginning of the Big Nudes, Vogue Studio, Paris, 1981, estimated at £6000-8000, sold at £22500
Lot 15, Horst P. Horst, Narcissus, O.B., N.Y., 1992, estimated at £8000-12000, sold at £27500
Lot 30, Andy Warhol, Self-portrait, 1986, estimated at £10000-15000, sold at £30000 (image at right, bottom, via Christie's)
Lot 43, Josef Koudelka, Spain, 1979/later, estimated at £4000-6000, sold at £14375 (image at right, middle, via Christie's)
Lot 78, Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1977/2008, estimated at £3000-5000, sold at £13750
Lot 89, Nick Brandt, Elephant group on bare earth, Amboseli, 2008, estimated at £15000-20000, sold at £55875
Lot 93, Marcus Lyon, Exodus VI, West Lamma Channel, South China Sea, 2011, estimated at £5000-7000, sold at 5£2275 (image at right, top, via Christie's)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie's
8 King Street, St. James's
London SW1Y 6QT