Auction Results: Photographs, April 6, 2013 @Sotheby's New York

The results from Sotheby's various owner sale last Saturday might best be called workmanlike. A decent Buy-In rate (just under $24%), a few positive surprises, and Total Sale Proceeds that fell within the range (albeit on the low side) add up to an outcome that was solid, if uneventful.

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

Total Lots: 239
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $4546000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $6946000
Total Lots Sold: 182
Total Lots Bought In: 57
Buy In %: 23.85%
Total Sale Proceeds: $5061190

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

Low Total Lots: 97
Low Sold: 71
Low Bought In: 26
Buy In %: 26.80%
Total Low Estimate: $705000
Total Low Sold: $530315

Mid Total Lots: 117
Mid Sold: 94
Mid Bought In: 23
Buy In %: 19.66%
Total Mid Estimate: $2871000
Total Mid Sold: $2592625

High Total Lots: 25
High Sold: 17
High Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 32.00%
Total High Estimate: $3370000
Total High Sold: $1938250

The top lot by High estimate was lot 165, Man Ray, Calla Lilies, 1931, estimated at $300000-500000; it did not sell. The top outcome of the sale was lot 151, Robert Frank, New Orleans (Trolley), 1955/1972, estimated at $200000-250000, sold at $293000.

84.07% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 9 surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):
Lot 17, Anonymous American Photographer, Three Men Smoking, 1840s, estimated at $5000-10000, sold at $23750
Lot 36, Paul Strand, Photographs of Mexico, 1932-1933/1940, estimated at $10000-15000, sold at $37500
Lot 38, Laura Gilpin, Selected Studies, 1925-1937, estimated at $5000-7000, sold at $16250
Lot 72, Minor White, Selected Images, 1957-1960/1970, estimated at $3000-5000, sold at $10000
Lot 80, Various Photographers, Select Portraits and Landscapes, 1860-1930, estimated at $500-1000, sold at $3125
Lot 121, Robert Frank, Tesuque, NM (Santa Fe), 1955/later, estimated at $25000-35000, sold at $137000 (image at right, top, via Sotheby's)
Lot 173, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Untitled (Positive Photogram), 1925-1928, estimated at $30000-50000, sold at $185000(image at right, middle, via Sotheby's)
Lot 224, Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Self-Portrait, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976, estimated at $10000-15000, sold at $68750 (image at right, bottom, via Sotheby's)
Lot 225, Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976, estimated at $8000-12000, sold at $37500

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Auction Results: Photographs, April 5, 2013 @Christie's New York

Christie's various owner Photographs sale blew past its pre-sale aggregate High estimate, bringing in an extra $700K in proceeds for good measure. To complete the broad-based success, the overall Buy-In rate was low (just over 15%) and there were lots of positive surprises.

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

Total Lots: 204
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $4303000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $6512000
Total Lots Sold: 172
Total Lots Bought In: 32
Buy In %: 15.69%
Total Sale Proceeds: $7245375

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

Low Total Lots: 43
Low Sold: 35
Low Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 18.60%
Total Low Estimate: $333000
Total Low Sold: $343250


Mid Total Lots: 140
Mid Sold: 119
Mid Bought In: 21
Buy In %: 15.00%
Total Mid Estimate: $3169000
Total Mid Sold: $3094625

High Total Lots: 21
High Sold: 18
High Bought In: 3
Buy In %: 14.29%
Total High Estimate: $3010000
Total High Sold: $3807500

The top lot by High estimate was lot 251, Robert Frank, Trolley-New Orleans, 1955, estimated at $400000-600000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at $663750

93.02% 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 104, Hiroshi Sugimoto, UA Playhouse, Great Neck, NY, 1978, estimated at $20000-30000, sold at $62500
Lot 105, Lewis Baltz, Corona del Mar, 1971, estimated at $10000-15000, sold at $30000
Lot 113, Peter Beard, Orphaned Cheetahs, Kenya, from The End of the Game, 1968/later, estimated at $40000-60000, sold at $183750
Lot 114, Irving Penn, Ginko Leaves, New York, 1990/1992, estimated at $80000-120000, sold at $363750 (image at right, middle, via Christie's)
Lot 115, Ansel Adams, Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958/1958-1962, estimated at $100000-150000, sold at $423750 (image at right, top, via Christie's)
Lot 126, William Klein, Atom Bomb Sky, New York, 1955/later, estimated at $7000-9000, sold at $20000
Lot 133, Steve McCurry, Afghan Girl, 1984/later, estimated at $4000-6000, sold at $17500
Lot 136, Erwin Blumenfeld, Dictator, Paris, 1937/1940s, estimated at $30000-50000, sold at $111750
Lot 157, Minor White, Two Barns, Dansville, New York, 1955, estimated at $8000-12000, sold at $25000
Lot 165, Edward Weston, Mexico (Tina on the Azotea), 1924, estimated at $100000-150000, sold at $363750
Lot 175, Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Rome, 1977-1978, estimated at $15000-25000, sold at $117750 (image at right, bottom, via Christie's)
Lot 176, Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, RI, 1975-1978, estimated at $20000-30000, sold at $105750
Lot 191, Helmut Newton, Charlotte Rampling, Portrait, Arles, France, 1973/1982, estimated at $20000-30000, sold at $68750
Lot 209, Edward Weston, Charis, 1934, estimated at $8000-12000, sold at $27500
Lot 229, W. Tom Young, Bill with Camera, New Orleans, 1987, estimated at $3000-5000, sold at $12500
Lot 247, William Eggleston, Untitled (Memphis), 1971/1999, estimated at $80000-120000, sold at $279750
Lot 268, Nan Goldin, Cookie at Tin Pan Alley, NYC, 1983, estimated at $4000-6000, sold at $22500
Lot 303, Ansel Adams, Ice on Ellery Lake, Sierra Nevada, California, 1959/1979, estimated at $7000-9000, sold at $25000

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie's
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Every Booth at the 2013 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 3 of 6

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

Alan Klotz Gallery (here): Josef Sudek, $14000. Not every Sudek table top still life is as active as this one with its shuddering multiplied egg reflection.

Michael Shapiro Photographs (here): Lewis Baltz, $28000. Prices for vintage Baltz prints have sure come up quite a bit in recent years, but this image is the kind I appreciate most. I love the circles on the left as an addition to the rectangular geometries, all executed in middle grey with a dash to dark black at the bottom.

Photo Gallery International (here): Yasuhiro Ishimoto, $7400. This fiery Ishimoto abstraction reminded me of a Morris Louis Color Field painting.

Galerie f5,6 (here): Anne Schwalbe, $2500. Each of the Schwalbe images on display was dominated by a single subtle color hue. This pink wall was quietly refined.

Peter Fetterman Gallery (here): Sebastiao Salgado, $50000. This huge print was shown on the exterior wall, the river at the bottom of the mountain valley shining like a white line.

James Hyman Gallery (here): Gustave Le Gray, $35000. I didn't realize Le Gray had made images in Egypt, so this stone gate was an unexpected surprise.

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Francesca Woodman, $55000. This elegant image is actually a video still from one of Woodman's film projects. I like the mix of torn paper and revealed body.

Bonni Benrubi Gallery (here): Stephane Couturier, 11000€. The immediately identifiable architecture of Brasilia, reconsidered via interlocked image fragment puzzle pieces.

Barry Singer Gallery (here): Lotte Jacobi, $6500. A hallmark of high contrast, unbalanced composition, the big black circle offsetting the oval face and its defined lips.

Hyperion Press Limited (here): Man Ray, NFS. A tiny print, but still impressive.

Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd. (here): Walter Chappell, $3000. Carrot tops that seem to glow with internal light.

Steven Kasher Gallery (here): Irving Penn, $75000. There were plenty of Penns at AIPAD, but this one was my favorite. I like the twisted silhouettes passing through the glass and wine bottle.

Robert Burge/20th Century Photographs (here): D.W. Mellor, $3500 each. A theme and variation sonata of ovals and waved forms in this grid of abstractions.

Continue to Part 4 here.

Francesca Woodman @Guggenheim

JTF (just the facts): A total of 125 photographic works, variously framed and matted, and hung in a winding series of rooms in the 4th floor annex galleries. The majority of the prints are vintage gelatin silver prints, made between 1975 and 1981. Physical dimensions range from roughly 3x3 to 40x40; the diazotype (blueprint) works are much larger, some as large as 37x92. Additional videos and artist's books are also on view. The show was curated by Corey Keller of SFMOMA. A hardback exhibition catalogue is available for $50 (here). (Installation views of  Francesca Woodman, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, March 16–June 13, 2012 courtesy of David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation)

The exhibition is divided into four chronological groups. For each section, I have listed the title and the number of works included:

Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1978
58 gelatin silver prints
1 video screen (11 minutes of selected videos)

Italy, 1977-1978
31 gelatin silver prints
1 case (1 artist's book, 5 pages displayed)

MacDowell Colony, Peterborough County, NH, 1980
8 gelatin silver prints
1 diptych
1 triptych

New York, 1979-1981
17 gelatin silver prints
4 blue diazotypes
3 brown diazotypes
2 chromogenic prints
1 case (1 artist's book, 10 pages displayed)

Comments/Context: Early on in this comprehensive retrospective of Francesca Woodman, there is an image of the artist from 1975, standing in an abandoned room with two doors, wearing a flowered frock with a petticoat underneath, her arms and hands angled like she is casting a spell. My reaction to this picture was like a lightning strike: my God, I thought, look at how young she is. At this point, she is 17, in her freshman year at RISD. This show covers the next six years of her life: her years at school, her junior year abroad in Rome, a summer in New Hampshire, and her first few years trying to make it as an artist in New York, before she kills herself at the age of 22. Everything happens so fast, and suddenly she's gone.

The mythology that has grown up around Francesca Woodman since her death is as dense as a thicket. She has been adopted by an entire spectrum of academics and scholars, who have found nuggets of what they wanted to find in her many enigmatic pictures. She has been labeled a feminist, a Surrealist, a narcissist, a child prodigy, a Victorian Goth girl, a spiritualist, and a mature and gifted artist born fully formed. Having spent some time parsing a selection of these essays and thinking more carefully about the works on view, my conclusion is that she belongs in a Stieg Larsson title: The Girl Who Was Hijacked By Critics. The visual and subject matter seeds of these various theories are all there, it's the vehemence of the competiting and often contradictory arguments that seems over-reaching to me, given her short period of art making.

Corey Keller from SFMOMA has done a fantastic job of editing the work down into a clear and concise chronological summary, with well defined periods and coherent transitions. Her lucid catalog essay doesn't take sides, but offers a valuable sense of historical context. I resonated strongly with her connection to the 1978 MoMA show Mirrors and Windows, and placing Woodman in a line of psychological self expressionists going back to Minor White. I also found Rosalind Krauss' original analysis of the 1986 Wellesley/Hunter show to still be right on the mark. Her thesis is that Woodman's experimentation with space, with serial imagery, with formal elements and symbolic items, and with herself as a gestural nude model are all byproducts of the student problem sets she was doing (both assigned for class and self imposed).

As I traveled through the chopped up galleries, which do more to confuse the flow of the show than to support it by the way, I could see Woodman taking an idea and pushing at it, making it more personal, testing its edges. She climbs into glass cases, plays with plastic wrap and taxidermy, disappears into scraps of flaking wallpaper, and flits in and out of shadows like a blur. She casts herself as angels and demons, re-envisions empty space, and uses mirrors as both a space modifier and an introspective vehicle. More importantly, I had the strong impression that she didn't have it all figured out - she was searching and experimenting, and doing so with a level of youthful intensity, vulnerability and openness that makes her work refreshing. I was fascinated by her performative interactions with fly traps, eels, and splashes of black paint, and by her odd birch bark arm coverings from the summer interlude.

But let's be clear, she wasn't an artistic genius in college. She was undeniably talented, but still raw and unfinished (which is part of her allure). This is what makes her later work (just a few years later mind you) so achingly sad. In those final years, she was exploring a number of truly interesting directions. Her artist's book with rough shapes inserted into an Italian geometry text (an almost square, the curve of a chair) have the feel of a more cerebral Conceptual path. The large diazoptye collages of bridges/tiaras or zig zag arms seem to follow toward Rauschenberg (albeit in a personal, not obviously postmodern, way). Her two small color photographs buried on a side wall are much more mature in terms of her use of layers of angled space and striping; perhaps she might of had a career headed toward formal abstraction. And her experiments with lingerie, furs, and jewelry might have led her to a more aggressive feminism. I really was left with a sense of wow, given more time, she might have taken any or all of these roads to go somewhere strikingly new. She had all the raw material, but the story is incomplete.

In the end, I came away with a clearer conclusion about the messiness of Woodman's short artistic career. While this sounds contradictory, I found her both less impressive and more impressive than I had previously given her credit for. Less, in that I think the mania/cult of personality around her has clouded our judgment about her student work, and more, in that her best works are evidence of the beginning of something that might have been transformative. Of course, the story has no ending, except for the one we imagine, so there is no way to say whether she would have flown high or flamed out. So the debate will continue, with its extreme allusions and scholarly arguments, none of which can ever be proven wrong. It is my hope however that the crisp, even handedness of this well-constructed show will remind us that Francesca Woodman was a talented young woman with an entire artistic career ahead of her, and what we have as souvenirs of her life are small, preliminary fragments of what might have been.

Collector's POV: Given this is a museum retrospective, there are of course no posted prices. Woodman's work has been intermittently available in the secondary markets for more than a decade, with a handful of lots coming up for sale each year. Vintage gelatin silver prints have ranged from roughly $5000 to $45000 in recent years. I could only find one public diazotype sale in the last decade, at $52000. Collectors should also be aware of posthumous prints made in 1999, in editions of 40. Woodman is represented in New York by Marian Goodman Gallery (here), who has a small show of her diazotypes on view in the gallery's 3rd floor project space. In the recent run of art fairs, vintage Woodman GSPs seemed to be consistently retailing in the mid 30s. Also, Woodman's massive (and spectacular) Temple diazotype collage is on view in the Spies in the House of Art show at the Met (here).

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

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Transit Hub:

• Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), Slate (here)
• Exhibit: SFMOMA, 2011 (here)

Francesca Woodman
Through June 13th

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10128

Photography at the 2012 ADAA Art Show

The more art fairs I go to, the more I am coming around to measuring their "success" on just how many times I see something surprising or unexpected, rather than the usual mind numbing parade of work I've seen elsewhere. My overall impression of this year's ADAA Art Show is that there was more interesting/new photography to see than in past years. As usual, the booths were either solo shows or thematic groups of work, displayed with careful editing and meticulous attention to detail.

My notes from the fair are below, arranged alphabetically by gallery name. For each booth, a list of photographers has been provided, with the number of works on display in parentheses. Additional commentary, prices, and pictures of the installation are also included as appropriate.

Cheim & Read (here): Adam Fuss (4). These brand new works are much larger than Fuss' last series of entrail photograms and the colors are much brighter and more psychedelic (generally pink and purple). They're eye poppingly gestural and swirly. (priced at $65000 each).

James Cohan Gallery (here): Yinka Shonibare (1)

CRG Gallery (here): Ori Gersht (7). These exploding florals are huge and enveloping. Apparently, the bouquets are flash frozen so the petals shatter when they are detonated. There were 4 large prints (97x73) and 3 smaller prints (16x12) on view; the large prints were $50000 and the small ones were $8500.

Crown Point Press (here): Darren Almond (5)

Tibor de Nagy Gallery (here): Rudy Burckhardt (27, plus 3 sets of 4 and 1 video showing 8 films). This was an entire booth of Burckhardt's work. One wall was covered with portraits of painters in their studios (De Kooning, Pollock, Mitchell etc.). I enjoyed these two prints best - the starburst dress ($7000) and the dress with circles echoing the circles on the sidewalk ($6000).

Fraenkel Gallery (here): Lee Friedlander (8), paired with paintings by Mel Bochner. I didn't find this pairing to be particularly compelling.

Marian Goodman Gallery (here): Francesca Woodman (20 gelatin silver prints, 2 diazotypes). The Francesca Woodman frenzy has begun, with the Guggenheim retrospective opening up later this week. I'm fascinated by these large diazotype prints (images printed on blueprint paper) which have started to surface; I think their texture and soft tonality make them something special. This print was priced at $200000, but already sold; the standard gelatin silver prints were $32000 each.

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (here): Xaviera Simmons (3). I really liked these bodies covered in pictures, fabrics, and all kinds of thematically arranged collaged items; they were both sculptural and rebus-like. (priced at $12000 each).

Michael Kohn Gallery (here): Bruce Conner (1), Charles Brittin (1)

L&M Arts (here): John Baldessari (1 diptych, 1 set of 10, 1 set of 6, 1 set of 8, 1 set of 22). This entire booth was full of mid 1970s Baldessari conceptual works. In the image below, figures walking in various directions are led by overpainted red arrows indicating which way they are going. I thought it was fantastic. (priced at $725000).

Margo Leavin Gallery (here): William Leavitt (2 triptychs)

Lehmann Maupin (here): Mickalene Thomas (12 collaged photos)

Galerie Lelong (here): Catherine Yass (1), Rosemary Laing (1), Ana Mendieta (1 set of 6)

Jeffrey H. Loria & Co. (no website): Robert Mapplethorpe (1)

Luhring Augustine (here): Elad Lassry (5, plus 1 set of 3 and 1 sculpture)

McKee Gallery (here): Richard Learoyd (1)

Metro Pictures (here): Cindy Sherman (8 sets of 3, 1 set of 4, 2 sets of 6). This booth was entitled Cindy Sherman's Murder Mystery and gathered together a series of early cut-out collaged works. This was the kind of work I wanted to see more of in the MoMA retrospective. The little interconnected vignettes are quirky and melodramatic, with Sherman playing all the parts. (the sets of 3, 4, or 6 prints priced between $200000 and $400000).

Laurence Miller Gallery (here): Ray Metzker (15 composites). This booth was filled with an excellent range of Metzker composites (nudes, city/street scenes, abstractions, in various sizes). The image below is from a recent (2007) photogram series of florals, which I had never seen before, using interlocked strips; it was priced at $35000.

PPOW (here): David Wojnarowicz (1 set of 44, plus 3 on the outer wall)

Pace/MacGill Gallery (here): Robert Adams (1), Richard Misrach (2), Diane Arbus (1), Lee Friedlander (2), Paul Graham (1), William Eggleston (1), Alfred Stieglitz (3), Henry Wessel (2), Harry Callahan (1), Susan Paulsen (1), JoAnn Verburg (1). This booth was an ode to clouds.

Regen Projects (here): Elliott Hundley (8)

Skarstedt Gallery (here): Cindy Sherman (2)

Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects (here): Laurel Nakadate (1), Agnes Denes (1 group of 28 mounted together), Kunie Sugiura (1)

Donald Young Gallery (here): Rodney Graham (1), Moyra Davey (4)

Spies in the House of Art: Photography, Film and Video @Met

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of 14 photographic works (loosely defined) and 3 films/videos from 17 different photographers/artists. The works are variously framed and matted, and hung in a single room gallery space with a main dividing wall, with 1 video on display in a darkened curtained off area of the space and another shown in a nearby paintings gallery. The exhibit was curated by Douglas Eklund. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers/artists have been included in the exhibit, with the number of images on view and details in parentheses:

Diane Arbus (1 gelatin silver print, 1956)
Lutz Bacher (1 single channel video, 2002)
Lothar Baumgarten (1 chromogenic print, 1969/1985)
Sophie Calle ( 1 work comprised of 1 gelatin silver print, 2 chromogenic prints and text, 1986)
Joseph Cornell (1 box, 1950)
Tim Davis (1 chromogenic print, 2003)
Andrea Fraser (1 video, 1989)
Candida Höfer (1 chromogenic print, 1988)
Laura Larson (1 gelatin silver print, 1998)
Louise Lawler (1 silver dye bleach print, 1997)
Peter Nagy (1 laminated photocopy, 1985)
Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer (1 color film, 2006)
John Pilson (1 archival pigment print, 2007)
Cindy Sherman (1 chromogenic print, 1989)
Lorna Simpson (1 screen print on felt, with text, 1998)
Thomas Struth (1 chromogenic print, 1988)
Francesca Woodman (1 diazo collage, 1980)

Comments/Context: The latest thematic installation in the Met's contemporary photography gallery is narrower and more self-reflective than nearly all of the shows that have come before it in this same space. This particular gathering revolves around the relationship between artists and museums, running the gamut from inspiration and investigation to critique and deconstruction. It's a relatively small idea, but there are enough well-selected pictures here to examine the concept from plenty of competing angles.

I don't think it's at all surprising that Struth, Höfer, Sherman, and Lawler are part of this show; they seem like relatively obvious foundation inclusions. The real jaw dropper for me was the incredibly huge Francesca Woodman mural made of photographs on blueprint paper (in the top installation shot). In it, Woodman includes five versions of herself as caryatids, holding up the roof of a collaged together temple; it has much the same intimacy as her diminutive photographs, but on a grand, billowy scale. Nashashibi and Skaer's film Flash in the Metropolitan (found in the darkened portion of the room) is also a standout. Taken in the halls of the museum at night, a strobe light bathes the cases and statues in momentary flashes of brightness, an ancient head or obscure object emerging from the darkness to be recognizable for just a moment before disappearing once again. It's a spooky inversion of the museum going experience, ghostly and fleeting rather than timeless and enduring. And John Pilson's photograph of a stylish 1920s period room interrupted by an anachronistic camera and microphone is a lesser known but smart choice, quietly witty in its upending of the controlled environment of the museum exhibit.
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This is a tighter, less sprawling selection of works than previous thematic incarnations, and I think it holds together as a complete thought much better as a result. There are artworks and patrons as reusable subject matter (in a Sophie Calle multi-part work, a Rodin sculpture is thought to have "a terrific ass"), juxtapositions and relationships created by the museum setting (Laura Larson's unexpected alignment of wallpaper, settee, and carpet), and riffs on looking and seeing (one of Tim Davis' faces in paintings obscured by glare images). All in, this is a neat little package, perhaps not groundbreaking, but certainly thoughtful and well-edited.

Collector's POV: Given this is a museum show, there are obviously no posted prices for the works on display.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Review: NY Times (here)

Spies in the House of Art: Photography, Film and Video

Through August 26th

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028