Auctions: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, June 25 and 26, 2013 @Christie's London

As the heat descends on New York, the auction action moves to London, where Christie's starts off a pre-summer Contemporary Art run with its Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day sales later this week. Photography-wise, it's a pretty thin offering, with not much to distract collectors from the warm weather. Overall, there are 22 photography lots available across the two sales, with a Total High Estimate for photography of £1068000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 1
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £5000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 14
Total Mid Estimate: £218000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 7
Total High Estimate: £845000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 21, Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Our prices are insane!), 1997, at £200000-300000. (Image at right, top, via Christie's.)

Here is the very short list of photographers who are represented by two or more lots in the two sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Barbara Kruger (3)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (2)

Other lots of interest include lot 247, Matthew Day Jackson, Me, Dead at 35, 2009, at £18000-22000 (image at right, middle) and lot 348, Edward Burtynsky, Oil Spill No. 4, Oil Skimming Boat, Near Ground Zero, Gulf of Mexico, 2010, at £12000-18000 (image at right, bottom, both via Christie's.)

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction
June 25th

Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Auction
June 26th

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

Edward Burtynsky @Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in black and not matted, and hung in the entry area and the main gallery space. All of the works are chromogenic color prints, in one of four sizes: 24x28 (in editions of 15), 34x41 (in editions of 10), 39x52 (in editions of 9) or 48x60/48x64 (in editions of 6). The images were taken between 1985 and 2010. A second group of 8 works from Burtynsky's Pentimento portfolio are displayed in the book alcove, also framed in black and not matted. All of these works are chromogenic color prints, each 20x24, from a portfolio containing 10 prints, in an edition of 30. These images were taken in 2000. A concurrent show of Burtynsky's newest work is on view at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This is Edward Burtynsky's first show at Howard Greenberg Gallery since changing gallery representation, and while Burtynsky's most recent works adorn the large Chelsea walls of partner Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (review linked below), the Greenberg show is a mini-retrospective of sorts, offering a sampler from the Canadian photographer's entire career, displayed in smaller, more intimate print sizes. Perhaps another way to think about this show is that it provides a succinct introduction to Burtynsky for the vast Greenberg collector database, many of whom might be more accustomed to vintage work.

The selections on view and their sequencing provide a summary view of Burtynsky's fascination with the scale of industrial sites and their upstream and downstream impacts. There are immense Chinese factories, flanked by cargo containers and endless apartment complexes, quarries and mines near railway infrastructure cut directly through steep rocky mountainsides, and oil wells responding to staggering piles of discarded tires and concrete ribbons of intersecting freeway. New aerial images from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico track greasy brown and black oil slicks as they creep across pure expanses of blue and green. And the book alcove contains images from Burtynsky's series on tidal shipbreaking in Bangladesh; the prints are executed in contrasty black and white with rough edges and chance drips, connecting the steel carcasses and towering hull silhouettes to 19th century industrial photography.

Seeing these prints in the smaller sizes, I was reminded of just how powerful many of Burtynsky's works are when printed at more monumental scale; some of the staggering destructive scale of these places is somewhat lost when seen more up close. That said, I think this show does a respectable job of providing a taste of Burtynsky's visual ideas, thoughtfully packaged to fit the constraints of the available wall space and the expectations of the audience.
.

Collector's POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows: the 24x28 prints are $6200, the 34x41 prints are $10000, 39x52 prints are $16500, the 48x64 prints are $24000. Burtynsky's photographs have slowly become more available in the secondary markets over the past few years, with prices at auction ranging between roughly $5000 and $48000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• DLK COLLECTION review of concurrent Wolkowitz show (here)

Edward Burtynsky
Through December 10th

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Edward Burtynsky: Dryland Farming @Wolkowitz

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 large scale color photographs, framed in black and not matted, and hung in the entry area and the main gallery space in the back. All of the works are chromogenic color prints, taken in 2010. The images are shown in three different sizes (with a fourth smaller size not on display): 39x52 (in editions of 9), 48x64 (in editions of 6), and 60x80 (in editions of 3). There are 2 images in the 39x52 size, 6 images in the 48x64 size, and 4 images in the 60x80 size on view. A concurrent show of Burtynsky's earlier work is on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Edward Burtynsky's photographs have routinely posed nuanced questions about how certain human actions have potentially far reaching and often unseen implications for the planet. At massive industrial sites criss-crossing the globe, he has documented both the rigid order and the decaying chaos of open pit mines, Chinese factories, ship salvage yards, and stone quarries, finding abstract beauty amid the expansive work environments. In his previous project on the end-to-end influence of oil, he took a broader look at the upstream causes and downstream effects of the entire industry, connecting the dots to consequences that weren't immediately obvious. His most recent pictures are part of a new project on water, presumably investigating how the increasing scarcity of yet another vital resource is changing the way we live.

All of the photographs in this show were taken in the dusty hills of northern Spain, where water has been in short supply for generations. Looking down from a helicopter, Burtynsky has captured the endless stripes and striations carved into the dirty foothills, flattening out the landscape into an abstract puzzle of fingered, terraced fields. The visual patterns are a shocking echo of the dense paintings of Jean Dubuffet (an example, here), where the land has become a patchwork of squiggly quilted parcels, cross hatched by irrigation, mowing and thin, intervening roads. The undulating topography has been condensed into subtle geometries and graphic forms, the hand of man writ large on the rocky terrain.

There is virtually no green in the palette of these images (save a few olive trees as dots); instead, the land is painted in beige and rust, grey and black, with a dusting of drifted white snow. These subdued colors highlight the desolation and desperation in farming this country, accenting the sense of scratching an existence out of land that is indifferent and uncooperative. The pictures ask tough questions about how our agricultural needs will evolve as water sources become more and more depleted, and to what lengths we will be required to remake the land to adapt to this new reality. While there is an uncanny, frenetic elegance to these muted landscapes, their message is surprisingly dark and ominous.

In general, I think these images have moved Burtynsky back towards a more painterly kind of photography, where landscapes are transformed into expressive gestures. At the same time, I think his vision of how photography can influence the direction of the collective conversation is getting broader; with each successive project, he is taking on larger and more complicated issues. The worldwide water situation will only become more tense and strategic in the coming years, so Burtynsky's artistic exploration of this subject may well be an important starting point for raising the awareness of what we're up against.
 
Collector's POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows: the 39x52 prints are $16500, the 48x64 prints are $24000, and the 60x80 prints are $42000 (I didn't get the price for the smallest size not on view). Burtynsky's photographs have slowly become more available in the secondary markets over the past few years, with prices at auction ranging between roughly $5000 and $48000. 
 

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Article: NY Times (here)
• Reviews: Time LightBox (here)

Edward Burtynsky: Dryland Farming

Through December 10th

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
505 West 24th Street

New York, NY 10011

Edward Burtynsky: Oil @Hasted Hunt Kraeutler

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 large color prints, framed in black and not matted, and hung in the entry area, three adjacent gallery spaces that wind around, and the back gallery space near the offices. All of the works are digital chromogenic prints, and were taken between 1999 and 2007. The images come in a dizzying array of sizes and editions; with some exceptions, the single images come in as many as four sizes (27x34, 40x50, 48x60, and 60x75, in editions of 10, 9, 6, and 3 respectively) while the diptychs appear to come in three sizes (36x78, 48x120/140, 60x180, sometimes framed as a single piece, other times as two images hung edge to edge, in editions of 5, 6, and 3 respectively). A monograph of the entire body of work has been published by Steidl (here) and is available from the gallery for $125. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Edward Burtynsky has made a career out of photographing the massive industrial landscapes that are often conveniently out of view, behind chain link fences or far away from everyday life. He has made images of huge factories, strip mines, quarries, ship yards and expansive industrial sites all over the world (we reviewed his book on China earlier this year here), making surprisingly beautiful images of sometimes ugly and forgotten places. Burtynsky's work shows a mastery of scale quite unlike other photographers at work today; he takes on the biggest, most un-photographable locations, and consistently finds subtle geometries and semi abstractions that often become striking visual patterns. His pictures work on two levels: the staggering decorative quality of the images, and the much tougher underlying questions that quickly emerge, that force the viewer to consider the downstream consequences of the activity being documented.
.

The enormous multi-national oil industry and its complex and fragile distribution chain is perhaps the perfect project for Burtynsky's brand of photography: the sites for extraction and refinement are colossal, and the secondary and tertiary industries (shipping, cars/highways, military, etc.) are equally gargantuan. What's a bit different here is that Burtynsky has stepped into a much hotter political fire with these pictures than in his previous work; given both the climate change issues as well as the intricate geopolitical ramifications of the future of petroleum, the oil industry and all its interconnections are subject to much broader scrutiny than ever before. (As an aside, two excellent books on this topic are Daniel Yergin's The Prize and Matthew Simmons' Twilight in the Desert.) In a sense then, Burtynsky's timing with this exhibition (and the larger one at the Corcoran, linked below) is excellent; this is a topic that many people are intensely interested in, and his thoughtful juxtaposition of beauty and commentary will get people thinking.
.

The images themselves cover the entire petroleum-based economy, from beginning to end. Several of the images in the show find repetitions in the endless acres of pumpjack wells of California and Azerbaijan (some now abandoned), black masses bobbing up and down, with adjacent towers and steeples, often artfully reflected in nearby pools of undisturbed water or sludge. Others follow the densely intertwined stainless steel pipes and tubes of refineries and chemical plants. A vast parking lot full of new cars at a VW plant in China and expansive ribbons of highway in Los Angeles show just how pervasive our car culture has become, and the array of moth-balled fighter jets in the Arizona desert is a not so subtle reminder of how strategic these fuels have become in our current world.

.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this show and feel like the content is both timely and important. My one knock on this exhibit is that I would have liked to have seen more of the images from this particular series; not every one on display hits the mark perfectly, and there are quite a few other works in the book that I would have enjoyed seeing in person. The back room of the show contains six of Burtynsky's recent landscapes of Australian mines: open pits with stagnant pools of water at the bottom, chasms of rock, red and orange earth, dirt roads and salt flats. And while these are solid images as well, I think showing these was a mistake; I would have certainly preferred to see a deeper sample of the Oil project, so that more of Burtynsky's comprehensive story could be told. The difference between 11 images here and 55 at the Corcoran is likely very significant in terms of the overall impact of the work.

Collector's POV: With the closing of the Charles Cowles Gallery, Hasted Hunt Kraeutler has taken over as Burtynsky's sole representative in the US. Given the complex bundle of sizes and editions, the price list for this show is equally detailed. For the single images, the prices start at $10000 for the smallest and rise through $16500 and $23000, finally reaching $30000 for the very largest works. For the diptychs, prices begin at $18000, and work their way up to $38000 and $51000 for the biggest sizes. There were lots of red dots and a few SOLD OUTs, just a week into the show.

.

Burtynsky's work began to be available in the secondary markets in about 2005 and the number of prints for sale in any given year has slowly grown since that time. Prices have ranged between $5000 and $35000. Size is a problem for us with Burtynsky's work (too big for our walls), but there are certainly a couple of striking images here that would provide an interesting contemporary foil for pictures of chemical plants and factories from between the wars that we already own.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Edward Burtynsky: Oil @Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2009 (here)
• Reviews: Washington Post (here), DCist (here)

Edward Burtynsky: Oil

Through November 28th

.

Hasted Hunt Kraeutler

537 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Hasted Hunt Changes

Lots of action over at Hasted Hunt (here) these days:

• New space: taking over the Charles Cowles Gallery space at 537 West 24th Street (ground floor)
• New artist: taking over representation of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky (from Cowles)
• New show: images from Burtynsky's Oil series, opening October 6 in the new space
• New partner: Joseph Kraeutler, formerly of Phillips De Pury & Company
• New name: Hasted Hunt Kraeutler

Wow!

(via Lindsay Pollock here)

Book: Edward Burtynsky - China

JTF (just the facts): Published by Steidl in 2005. 148 pages, including 81 color plates and essays by Edward Burtynsky, Marc Mayer, Ted Fishman, and Mark Kingwell. (Cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Coming to grips with the prevailing view of industrialization, particularly in the developed West, has been an ever shifting and evolving topic for photographers of all kinds, for at least the past century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries (right up through the 1930s or so), the exploits of man, in the form of skyscrapers, factories, railroads, dams, and steel mills, were bathed in a romantic glow, as we stood in awe and pride at our accomplishments, as the molten steel poured from the furnaces and the smokestacks rose into the sky. Many great American photographers, including Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Charles Sheeler, and even Edward Weston made inspiring images of our new industrial power. (EO Hoppe didn't call his 1920's book of photographs from across the country Romantic America by accident.)

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, this glow was beginning to fade, and the secondary and tertiary impacts of our industrialization (on our society and on our environment) began to become more apparent. Photographers like Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz were starting to ask hard questions about how our never ending consumption and growth were affecting the world around us, and the answers weren't romantic or beautiful, they were harsh and dispiriting. At the same time in Germany, Bernd and Hilla Becher were taking a different approach to this industrialization, carefully and systematically capturing the seemingly endless variety of industrial structures that we as humans had built. And while there was beauty to be found lurking in these buildings, it was cool and disaffected, in a clinical and anthropological way. Recently, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has continued this wave of more intense scrutiny of the realities of industrialization, making pictures that ask penetrating and complicated questions about the impact of our manipulation and destruction of the environment around us.

While Burtynsky has taken surprisingly beautiful photographs of industrial sites and wastelands all over the world, this group of pictures from China is particularly arresting, in that we are able to see the same movie we saw during our own industrialization over the past century, played again in fast forward and at a larger scale. Some have called what has gone on in China since 1949 "hypercapitalism", but even this world fails to truly describe the staggering pace and scope of the industrial transformation that has gone on across China in the past few decades. To become the place where nearly everything the world needs is made, the very fabric of the nation has been (and continues to be) torn and rewoven.

The book itself is divided into separate sections based on the specific industrial activity being photographed (Three Gorges Dam, Steel and Coal, Old Industry, Shipyards, Recycling, Manufacturing, and Urban Renewal), and together, they create a compelling and interrelated portrait of just what is going on. Massive new industrial and manufacturing facilities are being built to meet world demand, causing new trickle down requirements, particularly for energy and labor. Literally millions of (anonymous) people have left the hinterlands and migrated to the coast to work in these factories, triggering a host of new pressures on the already overrun urban areas, including housing and waste disposal.

Burtynsky's pictures are meticulously composed to highlight patterns of color and line that are found in these man-made environments. The images are taken with a large format camera, and as a result, are filled with exquisite detail. The result is an unsettling contrast between the singular beauty of the compositions and the underlying dysfunction that we all know is just beneath the surface. This tension between the technical quality and the ominous (and sometimes awe inspiring) undercurrent of the subject matter make the pictures work, especially when they are printed large (often 40x50). And even though the reproductions found in the book are relatively small, they are successful in giving the reader a sense for the craftsmanship of Burtynsky's prints.

The artist's website can be found here.

Collector's POV: In the past few years, Burtynsky's work has become more available in the secondary market, fetching between approximately $5000 and $35000, depending on the image and its size. Burtynsky is represented in New York by Charles Cowles (site here). While we can imagine adding a Burtynsky image to our collection, our challenge is that the work wants to be large and we generally prefer (and need) the prints to be small. We'll just have to keep looking for just the right piece.

UPDATE: More Burtynsky at MAO, here.