The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation @Lehman Loeb Art Center/Vassar

JTF (just the facts): A group show of 41 artists/photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in a series of four dimly lit rooms on the first floor of the museum and in one small gallery on the second floor. The works use a variety of Polaroid processes and were made between 1969 and 2013; nearly all of the works on view are unique. Physical sizes range from roughly 4x3 to 77x62 (multiple images). A catalog of the exhibit was recently published by Delmonico Books/Prestel (here) and is available in the bookshop for $50. (Installation shots at right.)

The following artists/photographers have been included in the show, with numbers of works on view, print details and dates as reference:

• Ansel Adams: 4 SX-70 prints, 1972
• Jack Butler: 5 SX-70 prints, 1978
• Ellen Carey: 1 set of 6 Polacolor Type 108 prints with nail polish, 1977, 1 large format Polaroid ER print, 1994, 1 large format Polaroid print, 2003
• Carter: 8 Polaroid prints (4 diptychs), 1970-2007, 2 Polaroid prints, 2005 (in glass case)
• Bruce Charlesworth: 6 SX-70 prints with acrylic paint (1 triptych, 1 diptych, 1 single image), 1977-1980
• Chuck Close: 1 set of large format Polacolor prints, 1979, 1 set of 9 dye diffusion transfer prints, 1979, 1 large format Polacolor print, 1980
• Anne Collier: 5 Polaroid prints, 2004
• Laura Cooper/Nick Taggart: 1 set of 120 Polaroid Type 667 prints, 1993-2013
• John Coplans: 1 three paneled frieze of 9 Type 55 prints, 1997, 1 set of 5 dye diffusion transfer prints, 1986
• Marie Cosindas: 2 dye diffusion transfer prints, 1966
• Philip-Lorca diCorcia: 9 Polaroids, n.d.
• Charles and Ray Eames: 1 color film, 1972
• Walker Evans: 8 SX-70 prints, 1973/1974 (in glass case), 1 SX-70 camera (in glass case)
• Bryan Graf: 9 Polaroid Type 600 prints, 2008-2013, 1 Polaroid print and 1 black and white Fiber print, 2010
• Richard Hamilton: 4 artist's books with Polaroid plates, 1968-2001 (in glass case)
• Robert Heinecken: 8 SX-70 prints with offset lithography, 1979 (in glass case), 5 large format Polacolor prints, 1983
• David Hockney: 2 composites of SX-70 prints, 1982
• Barabara Kasten: 1 large format Polacolor print, 1982
• Andre Kertesz: 4 SX-70 prints, 1979/1984
• Les Krims: 3 archival pigment prints from SX-70 prints, 1974/later
• David Levinthal: 1 large format Polacolor ER Land print, 1990, 4 SX-70 prints, 1983-1985
• Miranda Lichtenstein: 5 Polaroid prints, 2002-2005
• John Maggiotto: 8 SX-70 prints, 1983
• Andreas Mahl: 1 SX-70 emulsion transfers with hand coloring, 1981/1984
• Robert Mapplethorpe: 4 Polaroid prints (1 diptych, 2 single images), 1972-1974
• Joyce Niemanas: 4 SX-70 prints with paint, 1979-1980, 1 montage of SX-70 prints, 1981
• Catherine Opie: 14 Type 600 prints (1 set of 9, 1 set of 4, 1 single image), 2004
• Lisa Oppenheim: 5 c-prints, 2008
• Beatrice Pediconi: 6 Polaroid prints, 2009-2011
• Victor Raphael: 1 Polaroid 600 print with acrylic, 1985, 3 Polaroid Spectra prints with metal leaf, 1990-1997
• John Reuter: 4 SX-70 prints with acrylic paint, 1978
• Lucas Samaras: 7 SX-70 prints, 1973/1974, 3 dye diffusion transfer prints with applied color, 1970/1971, 1 collage of Polaroid type 808 prints, 1984
• Dash Snow: 2 Polaroid prints with masking tape and paint, n.d., 11 SX-70 Prints, n.d. (in glass case)
• Paul Thek: 3 Polacolor prints, 1969 (in glass case)
• Mungo Thomson: 10 Polaroid Type 600 prints, and 1 cartridge card, 2009
• Andy Warhol: 3 Polacolor Type 108 prints, 1977, 3 Polacolor 2 prints, 1981, 2 Polacolor prints, 1981-1982/1986
• William Wegman: 2 large format Polacolor prints, 2005
• James Welling: 4 chromogenic prints from original Polaroids, 1975/1976
• Grant Worth: 4 Polaroid Type 600 prints, 2006
• Grant Worth/Micki Pellerano: 2 Impossible Project Fade to Black prints, 2010
• Grant Worth/Mark Spalding: 4 Type 600 Wild Sides prints, 2005 (in glass case)

Comments/Context: The long sweep of photographic history can in many ways be boiled down to a never ending series of experiments with processes and materials for image making; technology has never been very far from the center of the medium. From the daguerreotype to the digital file, artists have continually embraced new technical innovations, only to immediately try to break them, defining their strengths and weaknesses and testing their limits. In each case, the question of "what is it good for" has been explored with relentless imagination. This show follows the winding path of Polaroid, from its hand held SX-70 instant camera to its massive large format cameras and films, tracing singular experiments by a variety of artists across nearly four decades. The exhibit doesn't try to be a comprehensive history of the company, its inventions, or the best artworks made by its many users, but instead offers a tight sampler of how artists' have pushed and pulled at the constraints of the Polaroid technologies and exploited the specific properties of its many photographic processes.

 

Starting in the early 1970s, he develop before your eyes process of the SX-70 was a major source of creative destruction for a wide range of artists. After the prints were ejected from the camera, they were subjected to a dizzying array of manipulations, breaking down the chemistries in unintended ways to create expressionistic gestures and chance-driven alterations. Lucas Samaras transformed nude self-portraits into swirling, melting body parts, while John Reuter cooked his prints and then split them apart to add paint inside the sandwich. Les Krims poked and prodded, while Bruce Charlesworth erased and over painted; Victor Raphael added metal leaf, while Dash Snow experimented with burning - the SX-70 encouraged a flourishing of active modification, both in the past and more recently. 

 

The immediacy of the small square format image of SX-70 was also a compositional challenge for many photographers. Recognized masters like Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, and Andre Kertesz, embraced the SX-70 and found ways to make pictures in their own styles within its limitations. Others (like Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Andy Warhol) used the camera for test shots and intermediate images that later became the raw material for finished artworks. David Hockney and Joyce Neimanas took hundreds of prints and collaged them into jittering, multi-perspective mosaics. And both Robert Heinecken and Catherine Opie pointed the camera at the television, fitting fragments of the screen into the tiny frame.

 

At the other end of the size spectrum, Polaroid's large format cameras opened up new avenues for experimentation with photographic scale. Chuck Close's massive self portraits are perhaps the most well known example of this explosion in size (and there are several big faces on view here), but many other artists also embraced the precision of the 24x20 camera. Solid examples from David Levinthal, William Wegman, and Barbara Kasten point to a diversity of styles and approaches, and Ellen Carey took the issue to its extreme with her Pull series, where monumental 40x80 emulsions are stretched and elongated into surfboard like abstract forms.

 

Interspersed among these larger themes are surprising one-offs and unexpected twists: frozen prints, photographs of photographs, sexy bodies and porn, overpainted nail polish, silky emulsion transfers, experiment after experiment. While not every work in this show is entirely memorable, there is something invigorating about such a blossoming of trial and error. Artists of all shapes and sizes took the Polaroid processes through their paces and did things the inventors would never have dreamed were possible. The show is an insightful reminder that deliberately exceeding the posted limits and purposely getting it exactly wrong can often be the road to something new and original.

 

Collector's POV: Given this is both a diverse group show with many artists' work on view and an exhibit taking place in a museum venue (thereby no posted prices), a discussion of specific prices and secondary market history will be omitted for this review.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: New York Times (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Economist (here), PetaPixel (here)

The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation

Through June 30th

 

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Vassar College
124 Raymond Avenue

Poughkeepsie, NY 12604

Lucas Samaras: XYZ @Pace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 large scale color photographs, mounted and unframed, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the smaller front room. All of the works are pure pigment on paper mounted on Dibond, made in 2012. Each print is sized 35x62 and is unique. The works come from four separate series: Flea (6 works), Pixel Cock & Bull (3 works), Chinoiserie (2 works), and Razor Cut (6 works). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Given Lucas Samaras' history as a consistently innovative photographic manipulator and his repeated use of chaotic distortions and bright psychedelic colors, it seems only natural that he would eventually fully embrace the power offered by the digital realm. His newest works show his gradual conversion to the religion of Photoshop, starting with relatively tame and simple effects and quickly progressing to wilder and more outlandish all-digital flights of fancy. Like Gerhard Richter (here) and Alfred Leslie (here), Samaras is yet another well established artist extending his aesthetic into computer-based imagery.

The works in the front gallery still have some ties to a real world camera. Starting with photographs taken at flea markets, Samaras has used mirroring and partial pixelization to deform the existing images. Army coats, colorful fabrics and leather boots are broken up into small tiles, almost like irregular painted mosaics or armadillo skin. Sophisticated Photoshop jockeys will likely be underwhelmed by these transformations.

Samaras has completely abandoned his camera in the works in the main gallery, diving into the uncharted depths of in situ digital creation. In the Pixel Cock & Bull series, a radiant rainbow of colored squares is twisted and squished into a dense kaleidoscope of graphics. The same pattern is wrapped around an orb, wallpapered down a perspective driven hall, and mirrored into slashing Xes. In the Chinoiserie series, multiple layers of undulating lines are woven into monochome grids and plaids, which are then punctuated by beaming blobs of psychedelic brightness. Samaras takes these ideas even further in the Razor Cut works, where vaguely human forms have been built out of abstract graphics and gradients. Is that a pirate with dreadlocks standing on a flat line beach? Or a feathered Native American dancing like a digital Kachina doll? Are those other "bodies" insectile aliens with long fingers? The graphics explode with unreal neon craziness, the hint of a face traced onto a spinning cluster of flashy lines. He takes the most risks with these images, and the best ones get beyond winking, paint program trickiness to something more fast and furious.

One of the challenges I think a lot of artists are facing when using Photoshop and other digital manipulation tools is that the resulting pictures become tool-driven rather than artist-driven. What I mean is that the artist is so excited and energized by what the software engineers have developed that they fail to really make the tools their own. The danger is work that ends up looking like a great example of how the tool can be used rather than something personal and durably original. With the benefit of hindsight in a few years, I think we will see these particular works by Samaras as a transition point, caught between the old and the new and not yet fully realized in terms of a true and radical Samaras vision of digital composition. But as signposts pointing to the future, I think we can now expect something appropriately remarkable yet to come.

Collector's POV: Each of the works in this show is priced at $38000. Samaras' work has only been sporadically available in the secondary markets in recent years. Aside from the Polaroid sale a few years ago, where a new record was set for his work ($194500) and many of his other vintage images sold for five figure prices, Samaras' work has been relatively affordable, with most lots selling at auction for under $10000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews/Features: W (here), Garage (here)

Lucas Samaras: XYZ
Through October 27th

Pace Gallery
508 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Lucas Samaras: Poses/Born Actors @Pace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 118 color photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against grey walls in a winding series of connected spaces. All of the works are pure pigment on paper, each sized 32x18 and printed in editions of 3. The images were made in 2009 and 2010. A catalogue of the exhibition is available from the gallery for $40. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Lucas Samaras has made a career out of transforming portraiture, extending its boundaries in new and unexpected directions. Long before the advent of Photoshop, he was playing with ways to alter reality, from distorted manipulated emulsions to wild colored stage lighting. His newest works continue to upend conventions, taking the standard beauty of the headshot portrait and digitally recasting it as a buoyantly ghoulish riff.

.

Gathering his subjects from the art world, Samaras has amplified the photographic drama by lighting the faces from below, creating weird shadows and exaggerated highlights. Many of his sitters have agreed to wear glasses, either normally or perched lower on their noses, adding another layer of reflection and refraction, often drawing angled shadows like horns or wings across their faces. While these effects might be enough to add an element of theatrical performance, it is Samaras' splashes of outrageous color that create the eye-popping oddities. In otherwise normal black and white images, metallic, opalescent color is selectively introduced, making irises bright yellow or lime green, the edge of a shirt neon blue or hot pink, the shadow under a chin a psychedelic rainbow of heat. Swirling oil slicks of color are poured into neutral backgrounds and shimmering streaks are applied to powerful, wrinkled faces like crazy eye makeup or lipstick. Normal faces become diabolical and demonic, surreal in their hidden malevolence. In one startling distorted portrait, a man's neon yellow face peels away to reveal another layer underneath, his eyes blue in one layer and green in the next.

Samaras' approach has been applied to a parade of famous artists, collectors, curators, writers, gallery owners, and museum trustees, creating a gallery of well known faces, from Jasper Johns, Chuck Close and Cindy Sherman, to Leonard Lauder, Agnes Gund and Glenn Lowry, seen not with perfect respect, but with a tinge of playful malignancy. It's a thoroughly entertaining approach, for those both known and unknown, as the series of everyday faces becomes something altogether more alien and sinister. The show is certainly one of the most gleefully mischievous exhibits I've been to in quite a while, showing once again that Samaras has a nearly endless reserve of ways to undermine traditional portraiture.

Collector's POV: All of the works in this show are priced at $16000 each. Samaras' work has not been widely available in the secondary markets in recent years, with only a few lots coming up for sale here and there. Aside from the recent Polaroid sale, where a new record was set for his work ($194500) and many of his other vintage images sold for five figure prices, Samaras' work has been relatively affordable, with most lots selling at auction for under $10000.

In my view, these Samaras portraits have the potential to be the next hot commission, the must have of the moment for many collectors. I suppose that for those that take themselves too seriously, there is the potential to hate these pictures. But for others with a more playful sense of humor, a portrait in this freakish style could become an amazingly fun family heirloom.

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews/Features: Artinfo (here), Daily Beast (here), Vanity Fair (here), Interview (here), W (here)

Lucas Samaras: Poses/Born ActorsThrough December 24th

The Pace Gallery

534 West 25th Street

New York, NY 10001

Auction Results: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, June 21 and 22, 2010 @Sotheby's

The Polaroid sale earlier this week at Sotheby's turned out to be the feeding frenzy we all imagined it might be. In the evening portion of the sale, all 99 lots sold in a perfect "white glove" outing. The following day, the momentum continued through three more sessions, with an overall Buy-In rate just over a paltry 10% and Total Sale Proceeds that topped the estimate range by a wide margin. New auction records were set for both Ansel Adams ($722500) and Lucas Samaras ($194500).

Nine lots were withdrawn prior to the beginning of the sale, and so I have stripped them out of the analysis, as though they had never been offered. The revised summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 473
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $6974800

Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $10661200
Total Lots Sold: 420
Total Lots Bought In: 53
Buy In %: 11.21%
Total Sale Proceeds: $12467622

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here). As you can see, the sale was strong across all price points:

Low Total Lots: 288
Low Sold: 256
Low Bought In: 32
Buy In %: 11.11%
Total Low Estimate: $1930700

Total Low Sold: $2422372

Mid Total Lots: 158
Mid Sold: 138

Mid Bought In: 20
Buy In %: 12.66%
Total Mid Estimate: $3890000
Total Mid Sold: $4610250

High Total Lots: 27
High Sold: 26
High Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 3.70%
Total High Estimate: $4840500
Total High Sold: $5435000

.

The top photography lot by High estimate was tied between three lots, all by Ansel Adams: lot 94, Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, Mexico, 1941/1950s or 1960s, lot 97, Ansel Adams, Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, From Lone Pine, California, 1944/1950s or 1960s, and lot 100, Ansel Adams, Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1938/1950s or 1960s, each at $300000-500000. The top outcome of the sale was the Clearing Winter Storm mural at $722500 (image at right, bottom, via Sotheby's); the Moonrise mural went for $518500 and the Winter Sunrise mural brought in $482500.

Interestingly, only 67.62% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range, so there were clearly plenty of lesser known lots that didn't exactly fly off the shelves. Particularly for Adams, we may have seen the market struggle a bit to absorb all the work being offered. On the flip side, there were an astounding 77 "surprises" in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate), with 35 of these bringing in more than triple the high estimate. These explosive lots are listed below:
.

Lot 1, William Wegman, Avalanche, 1982, at $30000

Lot 2, Lucas Samaras, Untitled (Self-Portrait with Hands), 1990, at $56250

Lot 3, Chuck Close, 9 Part Self-Portrait, 1987, at $290500 (image at right, middle, via Sotheby's)

Lot 5, Robert Rauschenberg, Japanese Sky I (from the Bleachers series), 1988, at $242500

Lot 6, David Hockney, Imogen+Hermiane, Pembroke Studios, London, 30th July, 1982, at $194500

Lot 13, Robert Frank, New York, 1972, at $46875

Lot 24, Lucas Samaras, Ultra-Large (Hands), 1983, at $194500 (image at right, top, via Sotheby's)

Lot 25, Lucas Samaras, Ultra-Large (Self-Portrait), 1983, at $122500

Lot 29, David Levinthal, Selected studies from Modern Romance, 1983-1985, at $23750

Lot 31, Lucas Samaras, Panorama, 1983-1986, at $62500

Lot 33, Robert Heinecken, Lessons in Posing Subjects, 1981-1982, at $98500

Lot 49, Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, 1979, at $25000

Lot 51, Andy Warhol, Farrah Fawcett, 1979, at $43750

Lot 52, Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (Grimace), 1979, at $146500

Lot 53, Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed), 1979, at $254500

Lot 76, Imogen Cunningham, Unmade Bed, 1957/1960, at $146500

Lot 78, Minor White, Barns (Two Barns, Dansville, New York), 1954/1957, at $53125

Lot 83, William Garnett, Plowed Field, Arvin, Calif (Vertical Aerial 500 ft.), 1952/1957, at $50000

Lot 84, William Garnett, Nude Dune, Death Valley, Calif (Vertical Aerial about 500 ft.) (Sand Dune #1), 1953/1957, at $37500

Lot 115, Peter Beard, Selected Images, 1988/1993, at $31250

Lot 124, Lucas Samaras, Photo-Transformation, 1973, at $31250

Lot 130, Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled (Spanish Woman), early 1970s, $12500

Lot 134, Joyce Tenneson, Suzanne (In Chair), 1986, at $28125

Lot 141, David Levinthal, Selected images from American Beauties, 1989, at $16250

Lot 173, Lucas Samaras, Selected Still Life Studies, 1978-1979, at $31250

Lot 177, David Levinthal, Selected images from Wild West, 1986-1987, at $17500

Lot 185, David Levinthal, Selected images from American Beauties, 1989-1990, at $34375

Lot 195, Robert Rauschenberg, North Carolina (from the Bleachers series), 1991, at $116500

Lot 210, Luigi Ghirri, From Still Life (3-D Glasses), 1980, at $34375

Lot 292, Various Photographers, Selected Portraits of Ansel Adams, 1960s, at $20000

Lot 336, Ansel Adams, Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958, at $46875

Lot 366, Laura Gilpin, The Rio Grande Yields its Surplus to the Sea, 1947/1957, at $28125

Lot 390, Minor White, Peeled Paint, Rochester, New York, 1959, at $43750
Lot 457, Walker Evans, Junked Cars, Connecticut, 1973-1974, at $6875

Lot 485, Ansel Adams, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite, 1981, at $31250

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021