Auction Results: Photographs, April 3, 2013 @Phillips New York

Phillips' follow up various owner Photographs sale last week performed nearly as well its earlier single owner sale. The overall Buy-In rate was just over 15% and the Total Sale Proceeds once again came close to the High estimate.

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

Total Lots: 141
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $2411500
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $3527500
Total Lots Sold: 118
Total Lots Bought In: 23
Buy In %: 16.31%
Total Sale Proceeds: $3307375

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

Low Total Lots: 37
Low Sold: 28
Low Bought In: 9
Buy In %: 24.32%
Total Low Estimate: $244500
Total Low Sold: $230875

Mid Total Lots: 91
Mid Sold: 78
Mid Bought In: 13
Buy In %: 14.29%
Total Mid Estimate: $2073000
Total Mid Sold: $1847000

High Total Lots: 13
High Sold: 12
High Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 7.69%
Total High Estimate: $1210000
Total High Sold: $1229500

The top lot by High estimate was lot 177, Edward Steichen, Diagram of Doom - 2, c1922, estimated at $120000-180000; it sold for $122500. The top outcome of the sale was lot 291, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Joe #2134, 2004, estimated at $60000-80000, sold at $170500 (image at right, top, via Phillips).

97.46% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 6 surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 224, William Eggleston, East Memphis, 1972/1985, estimated at $8000-12000, sold at $30000
Lot 239, Helmut Newton, Shoe, Monte Carlo, 1983, estimated at $8000-12000, sold at $30000
Lot 246, Peter Beard, Cheetah cubs orphaned at Mweiga nr. Nyeri for The End of the Game, 1968/later, estimated at $10000-15000, sold at $32500
Lot 291, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Joe #2134, 2004, estimated at $60000-80000, sold at $170500
Lot 297, Gabriel Orozco, Shower Head, 2008, estimated at $7000-9000, sold at $25000 (image at right, middle, via Phillips)
Lot 306, Loretta Lux, Study of a Boy, 2002, estimated at $5000-7000, sold at $16250 (image at right, bottom, via Phillips)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Phillips
450 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Auction Results: Important Photographs from the Collection of Dr. Anthony Terrana, April 2 and 3, 2013 @Phillips New York

Phillips can certainly be pleased with the outcome of the Anthony Terrana single owner photographs sale. Interest was strong across all three price levels, the overall Buy-In rate hovered near 15%, and the Total Sale Proceeds nearly reached the High estimate, powered by a solid number of positive surprises.

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

Total Lots: 165
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $3718500
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $5400000
Total Lots Sold: 140
Total Lots Bought In: 25
Buy In %: 15.15%
Total Sale Proceeds: $5053750

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

Low Total Lots: 78
Low Sold: 72
Low Bought In: 6
Buy In %: 7.69%
Total Low Estimate: $533000
Total Low Sold: $677625

Mid Total Lots: 64
Mid Sold: 50
Mid Bought In: 14
Buy In %: 21.88%
Total Mid Estimate: $1452000
Total Mid Sold: $1348125

High Total Lots: 23
High Sold: 18
High Bought In: 5
Buy In %: 21.74%
Total High Estimate: $3415000
Total High Sold: $3028000

The top lot by High estimate was tied between lot 12, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1919 (image at right, top, via Phillips), and lot 19, Irving Penn, Harlequin Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), 1950, both estimated at $300000-500000. The Stieglitz sold for $302500 and the Penn sold for $290500. The top outcome of the sale was lot 28, Diane Arbus, Identical Twins Cathleen and Colleen, Roselle, NJ, 1967, estimated at $180000-220000, sold at $602500 (image at right, top, via Phillips).

92.14% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 18 surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 3, Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1978, estimated at $25000-35000, sold at $86500
Lot 7, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lyon Stadium, 1929. estimated at $90000-120000, sold at $278500
Lot 18, Herb Ritts, Versace Dress, Back View, El Mirage, 1990, estimated at $20000-30000, sold at $68500
Lot 20, Robert Polidori, Galerie Basse, Chateau de Versailles, 1985, estimated at $18000-22000, sold at $45000
Lot 28, Diane Arbus, Identical Twins Cathleen and Colleen, Roselle, NJ, 1967, estimated at $180000-220000, sold at $602500
Lot 29, Angela Strassheim, Untitled (Father & Son), 2004, estimated at $10000-15000, sold at $35000
Lot 137, Pieter Hugo, Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainsara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria, from Gadawan Kura, The Hyena Men II, 2007, estimated at $10000-15000, sold at $40000
Lot 41, Martine Franck, Children's Library Built by the Atelier Montrouge, Clamart, France, 1965/later, estimated at $2000-3000, sold at $6875
Lot 45, Lewis Hine, Tenement Product, Chicago, 1907/1920s, estimated at $6000-8000, sold at $52500 (image at right, middle, via Phillips)
Lot 67, Edward Steichen, The Flatiron Evening, 1905, estimated at $5000-7000, sold at $23750
Lot 98, Masao Yamamoto, Selected images from A Box of Ku and Nakazora, 1990-2002, estimated at $6000-8000, sold at $18750
Lot 101, Lynn Davis, Red Pyramid, Dashur, Cairo, Egypt, 1997, estimated at $7000-9000, sold at $20000
Lot 108, Nobuyoshi Araki, Untitled, 1990-2000, estimated at $3000-4000, sold at $11250
Lot 114, Sally Mann, Untitled from Deep South, 1998, estimated at $7000-9000, sold at $26250
Lot 130, Ryan McGinley, Whirlwind, 2003, estimated at $5000-7000, sold at $15000
Lot 140, Mickalene Thomas, Afro Goddess Lover's Friend, 2006, estimated at $8000-10000, sold at $23750
Lot 158, Alex Prager, Annie, 2007, estimated at $5000-7000, sold at $30000 (image at right, bottom, via Phillips)
Lot 159, Alex Prager, Wendy from Week-End, 2009, estimated at $7000-9000, sold at $21875

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Phillips
450 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Luigi Ghirri, Kodachrome @Marks

 JTF (just the facts): A total of 25 color photographs, framed in silver and matted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are either vintage c-prints or vintage cibachrome prints, taken between 1971 and 1977. Physical dimensions range from roughly 4x6 to 18x12 (or reverse); no edition information was available. MACK Books published a second edition of Ghirri's 1978 monograph Kodachrome in 2012 (here). The show is sequenced to match the order in the book. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In the years that have followed the recent rediscovery of the work of Luigi Ghirri, there has been a strong tendency to try to understand him in the context of Eggleston, Sternfeld, and Shore and 1970s American color. His work was made in color (check), his work was made in the 1970s (check), at first glance, his work has the appearance of a snapshot aesthetic (check), therefore, he's the "Italian Eggleston". But having spent time with this exhibit and the associated reissued monograph, I've come to the conclusion that such a categorization is both overly easy and ultimately misguided. As we see and digest more of his work, his vision seems increasingly innovative and original, with more logical ties to European Surrealism than to anything happening in American photography.

 

The works in this exhibit come from Ghirri's first self published book, and the photographs are full of visual dislocation and wry disorientation. Compositions are often interrupted, with a vertical board bisecting a beach view, a cross shaped window pane quartering the gardens at Versailles, and a dark shadow falling directly across a framed picture. Other works play with subtle optical illusions and the flattening of perspective, almost with conceptual glee: a perfectly straight contrail in the sky connecting the two sides of a mountain valley, the curve of a man's face echoed by the arc of a souvenir Eiffel Tower, and two men sitting on the corner of a gravel roof, its dark edges receding with mirrored precision. Many images have a constructed, collage-like aesthetic, combining painted murals and found cut outs with tourists walking by and bored couples, creating juxtapositions that are unexpected and often absurd or mysterious. While a few images are inherently about photographic color (the blown pink beach umbrella, the glow of foggy red traffic lights, the wall painted half yellow half blue), most of Ghirri's pictures seem less about color itself and more about a specific way of seeing. Time and again, he confounds your expectations (using his own understated brand of Dada), making photographs of the frames not the paintings, or the postcards not the sunset itself.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Ghirri's sense of visual wit, his images carefully composed to make everyday Italian reality seem altogether more surreal and odd. He never crosses the line into heavy handed trickery, staying instead within the confines of the quietly poetic and the unassumingly puzzling. In the end, his pictures are consistently smart, comforting us with their familiar subject matter and then upending our sense of balance with their deft surprises.

 

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $12000 and $20000, based on size. Ghirri's prints have only been sporadically available in the secondary markets in recent years, with prices ranging from roughly $1000 to $34000.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: American Suburb X (here), LPV Magazine (here), New Yorker (here), NY Times (here), Gallerist NY (here)

Luigi Ghirri, Kodachrome

Through April 20th

 

Matthew Marks Gallery

526 West 22nd Street

New York, NY 10011

Every Booth at the 2013 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 6 of 6

Start here for Part 1 of this series. It provides some background and explanation for what's going on in these lists.

Andrea Meislin Gallery (here): Angela Strassheim, $12000. Strassheim has recently joined the stable at the gallery. This image of a young girl cocooned in her interior lit blanket fort is wonderfully protected and vulnerable.

Vision Neil Folberg Gallery (here): Georg Kuettinger, $11000. A massive broad landscape of stitched together tire swipes.

Richard Moore Photographs (here): Johan Hagemeyer, $12000. Another lesser known but worthy Modernist, represented by a well crafted image of city buildings.

Keith De Lellis Gallery (here): Margaret Bourke-White, $18000. I think of 1930 as near the beginning of Bourke-White's professional career, so it was exciting to see this early shimmering airplane hangar study from that year.

Joel Soroka Gallery (here): Gyorgy Kepes, $8000. I had no idea Gyorgy Kepes made any works past the late 1940s, so it is was a total shock to see a group of large scale 1980s Polaroid still life constructions (in color no less) in this booth.

Halsted Gallery (here): Julia Margaret Cameron, $11500. Another ethereal Cameron portrait, very reasonably priced given its quality (refreshingly the norm with the friendly Halsteds).

PPOW (here): David Wojnarowicz, $25000. Vintage prints from Wojnarowicz' Arthur Rimbaud in New York series are pretty rare, so this gem is worth seeking out.

Higher Pictures (here): K8 Hardy, $8000. This booth was a solo show of Hardy's Position series, mixing photograms and self-portraits into arresting hybrids. I was able to flip through the full body of work (in a box on the table) and I came away extremely impressed by Hardy's originality and range. This particular image reminded me of Claude Cahun, but in a harsher and distinctly modern guise.

Stephen Daiter Gallery (here): Harry Callahan, $60000. This image just left me shaking my head in awe. What an astounding, astonishing photograph. Stunning is an overused word in art writing, but this one left me slack-jawed and truly stunned by its brilliance.

Nailya Alexander Gallery (here): Pentti Sammallahti, $1100. I liked the gentle, natural balance in this image, the cross of the broken tree limb and the flanking silhouettes of small birds.

Danziger Gallery (here): Susan Derges, $15000. I've always been a fan of Susan Derges' River Taw photograms, so I'm intrigued to see her returning to similar subject matter, albeit now using digital technologies.

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): Jaromir Funke, $175000. This was one of the most impressive prints I saw in the entire fair. Cut paper folds intertwined like staircases, a symphony in subtle white.

Hans P. Kraus Jr. Inc. (here): William Henry Fox Talbot, POR. What better way to end this summary than by going back to the beginning with a lovely plant photogram by William Henry Fox Talbot. Even when we bustle and rush to find the next new thing in photography, it's important to be reminded that the very old still has the power to take our breath away.

Every Booth at the 2013 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 5 of 6

Start here for Part 1 of this series. It provides some background and explanation for what's going on in these lists.

798 Photo Gallery (here): Liu Xiaofang, $3900. A mysterious lightbulb on a long cord dangling down from the sky toward Liu's signature little girl.

Gallery 339 (here): William Larson, $4000. I've always thought that the panoramic motion series nudes by Larson were smart, so it was nice to see a few hung together for intimate viewing.

Throckmorton Fine Art (here): Edward Weston, $45000. This woven palm from his time in Mexico is a great example of the artist paring back to the simplicity of form.

Klompching Gallery (here): Helen Sear, $3500. This image combines the back of a woman's head with an effervescent explosion of cherry blossoms. What's hard to see unless you get up close is that the two are overlaid together using striated hand drawn lines and erasures which allow the bottom image to show through the top one. I like its effort to bring the hand of the artist into the practice of digital picture making.

Fifty One Fine Art Photography (here): Malick Sidibé, $20000. This cardboard display page brings together a group of Sidibé's party pictures and portraits, ready for easy choosing by customers.

Sasha Wolf Gallery (here): Christine Osinski, $1500. This image has an easy going 1980s feel, with boys too young to drive hanging out in a funky car.

Eric Franck Fine Art (here): Tom Wood, $8000. The series of Wood's bar scenes on the outside wall of Eric Franck's booth were my favorite new discovery of the fair. Nearly every image collapses two or three vignettes into a single frame. Funny, poignant, and a little bit too real for comfort.

Picture Photo Space (here): Eikoh Hosoe, $8000. Excellent images from Hosoe's Embrace aren't easy to come by, but this is one of them. The kind folks from the gallery also unwrapped a first edition of the book which was hiding under the table, adding to my general enjoyment of their booth.

Rick Wester Fine Art (here): Duane Michals, $8000. A classic, scale demolishing Michals series.

Henry Feldstein (no website): Weegee, $15000. Four top hatted gentlemen, seen with Weegee's glaring flash.

Julie Saul Gallery (here): Alejandra Laviada, $3600. I like the two dimensionality of this sculptural construction; its depth is removed entirely, leaving blocks of color, almost like a Sean Scully painting.

Catherine Couturier Gallery (here): Peter Keetman, $6000. There was very little 1950s German photography at this year's fair. This linear Keetman of frozen crisscrossed electric wires was one exception.

Kopeikin Gallery (here): Alejandro Cartagena, $2100 each. While a typology of pickup trucks has probably been done many times before, one looking straight down at sleeping construction and landscape workers in the beds is certainly a different take on the genre. Each bed is like a Joseph Cornell box of bodies and gear.

William L. Schaeffer/Photographs (no website): William Bell, $2500. The front and back of a gunshot wound, seen with the help of a mirror.

Continue to Part 6 here.

Every Booth at the 2013 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 4 of 6

Start here for Part 1 of this series. It provides some background and explanation for what's going on in these lists.

Weinstein Gallery (here): Vera Lutter, $12000. This image (and the others in the series on the wall nearby) has some visual kinship with Kertész' famous picture, but introduces Lutter's own signature reversed out aesthetic to the composition.

David Zwirner (here): James Welling, $20000. Welling was fortunate to receive a solo show in such a prominently placed booth, right in front of the fair entrance. A pair of these stark black and white abstractions (that look almost like industrial girders) hung on the outside wall.

Catherine Edelman Gallery (here): Keliy Anderson-Staley, $1000-4400 each. This installation of modern tintype portraits was striking and personal. Proof that the use of an antique process need not seem old timey or preciously retro.

Weston Gallery (here): Paul Strand, $65000. Down in the weeds Strand is always worth a deliberate inspection.

 

Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc. (here): Julia Margaret Cameron, POR. An iconic portrait, one of the true greats in the history of the medium. Rich, haunting, and penetrating. I didn't need to ask the price.

Laurence Miller Gallery (here): Ray K. Metzker, $125000. While nearly all of Metzker's composites are astonishing, this car and lamp image layers light and shadow into a gentle rhythm.

Gallery 19/21 (here): Mario Giacomelli, $9000. This looking straight down image by Giacomelli recalls Moholy-Nagy, with buildings flattened into tiny squares.

Paul M. Hertzmann Inc. (here): Imogen Cunningham, $150000. This was the best Cunningham floral at the fair. Irises aren't always exciting, but this one has a richness and luminosity that is extraordinary.

Staley-Wise Gallery (here): Richard Avedon, $30000. How to add motion to an otherwise static composition - the lively poof of Jean Shrimpton's hair.

Contemporary Works/Vintage Works (here): Raoul Ubac, POR. I haven't seen many Ubac prints so it was a treat to see this clashing, overlapped, solarized nude, the bodies seemingly all cut up and smashed together in a chaotic muddle.

Stephen Bulger Gallery (here): André Kertész, $4800, $35000, and $4800. An important reminder to keep those artist greeting cards.

Brancolini Grimaldi (here): Heidi Specker, £10000. Rough rock walls, flattened into texture and edges, or a hint of Siskind in a modern form.

ClampArt (here): Mark Morrisroe, $27500. Morrisroe's sandwich negative tribute to Diane Arbus, a lonely bird in a murky fog.

Robert Mann Gallery (here): Mike Mandel, $4000 each. A fun series of car window portraits, full of goofy faces and genuine warmth.

Continue to Part 5 here.