Auction Results: First Open, March 8, 2013 @Christie's New York

The photography in Christie's First Open Armory week sale performed solidly. The overall Buy-In rate for the photographs on offer was less than 20% and the Total Sale Proceeds for photography fell in the middle of the range.

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

Total Lots: 48
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $1011500
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $1438500
Total Lots Sold: 40
Total Lots Bought In: 8
Buy In %:16.67%
Total Sale Proceeds: $1154375

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

Low Total Lots: 15
Low Sold: 14
Low Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 6.67%
Total Low Estimate: $103500
Total Low Sold: $151750

Mid Total Lots: 26
Mid Sold: 21
Mid Bought In: 5
Buy In %: 19.23%
Total Mid Estimate: $595000
Total Mid Sold: $473125

High Total Lots: 7
High Sold: 5
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 28.57%
Total High Estimate: $740000
Total High Sold: $529500

The top photography lot by High estimate was lot 90, Andreas Gursky, Atlanta, 1996, estimated at $250000-350000; it was also the top photography outcome of the sale at $314500.

97.50% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range and there were a total of four surprises (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 78, Laurie Simmons, Untitled (Woman's Head), 1976, estimated at $5000-7000, sold at $18750 (image at right, middle, via Christie's)
Lot 80, Sturtevant, Duchamp Man Ray Portrait, 1966, estimated at $4000-6000, sold at $18750
Lot 258, Vik Muniz, Scissors (The Sarcezo Drawings), 2002, estimated at $8000-12000, sold at $30000 (image at right, bottom, via Christie's)
Lot 264, Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy series (Veiled Women in Three Arches), 1999, estimated at $6000-8000, sold at $21250 (image at right, top, via Christie's)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie's
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Auction: First Open, March 8, 2013 @Christie's New York

Christie's has the final chance for the auction houses to separate Armory week collectors from their savings with its First Open sale coming up on Friday. Led by six works from Cindy Sherman, it's a mid range assortment with plenty of well known names. Overall, there are a total of 48 lots of photography available in the sale, with a total High estimate for photography of $1438500.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 15
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $103500

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 26
Total Mid Estimate: $595000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 7
Total High Estimate: $740000

The top photography lot by High estimate is lot 90, Andreas Gursky, Atlanta, 1996, estimated at $250000-350000 (image at right, top.)

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

Cindy Sherman (6)
Vik Muniz (5)
Nan Goldin (4)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (3)
Laurie Simmons (2)
Thomas Struth (2)
Sturtevant (2)
Zhang Huan (2)

Other lots of interest include lot 169, Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2010-2012, estimated at $50000-70000 (image at right, middle) and lot 79, Laurie Simmons, Red Library II, 1983, estimated at $5000-7000 (image at right, bottom, all via Christie's.)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

First Open
March 8th

Christie's
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll: Days 1 through 30 @Salon 94 Bowery

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the upstairs entry and the main gallery downstairs. All of the works are Fuji Matte prints, made in 2010-2011. Physical dimensions range from 70x47 to 70x53 or reverse. All of the images are available in editions of 5. A multi-panel video runs in the window facing the street. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Laurie Simmons' new photographs are her latest step in a logical progression in scale that began on a table top decades ago and has now reached full-sized. With the help of a highly realistic, human-scaled sex doll (actually two), she has evolved away from the sparkling irony and wit of the miniatures, ventriloquist's dolls, objects on legs, and deftly arranged color-coordinated rooms of her earlier projects, moving closer to "reality" than ever before.
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What is altogether surprising about this body of work is how the doll itself seems to have become an emotional collaborator in the pictures, with actual mood swings and personal interactions. When seen in chronological progression, the pictures make it appear like Simmons has recently adopted a daughter or welcomed an exchange student, and the development of the relationship between the two of them can easily be followed. Early pictures in the series have the doll looking wistful and melancholy, lying in bed or lounging pensively in the sun. Soon the doll starts to exert her own rebellious personality, with smudged makeup and a tangled mass of plastic necklaces, or jumping from the edge of high stone wall. The arrival of a second doll introduces a new set of interpersonal dynamics, and the story ends just as the scenes are getting more complex and tense.

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I think it is a mistake to get caught up in the lurid sex doll aspect of this work, or to get distracted by the pathetic-ness that such an object implies. While Simmons has always been a talented director and scene setter, I think there is an entirely different emotional resonance in these new images. By using the sex doll as a prop, her work has been reenvisioned on a human scale, with a corresponding increase in realistic detail. Her own house has become a doll house, where the artfulness of the stage has become less important and the interaction of the actors has come to the forefront. The magic comes when the setting seems to inject the doll with personality and the photographs become portraits; we've moved beyond clever retro dress-up, and are now in some other emotional landscape, complete with a nuanced set of feelings and modern behaviors. If you've seen the movie Lars and the Real Girl, you can see where this line of thinking eventually goes - the doll reflects attributes applied to it by the people around it, miraculously becoming part of the community.

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Stylistically, every single one of the images in this show is masterfully constructed, mixing artifice and reality to generate tenderness and ambiguity. Sure, there is an inherent creepiness to this whole endeavor, but if you can get beyond that initial weirdness (the second doll still in the packing box is the most sad I think), these images offer a more complicated commentary on relationships, roles, and internal emotions than Simmons has ever taken on before. If you're in town for the art fairs this week, this is one show to make a special trip to see.
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Collector's POV: All of the works in this show are priced at $35000 each. Simmons' photographs have become more readily available at auction in recent years. Prices have ranged between $1000 and nearly $100000, with a consistently rising sweet spot between $8000 and $15000.

While I liked many of the images in this show, my favorite was The Love Doll/Day 6 (Winter), 2010; it's on the far right in the top installation shot. I found it particularly engrossing because Simmons has got the "suburban/country young mom at school pick-up" look spot on, right down to the knee high muck boots and the long, form fitting down coat; that "stylish but down to earth" combination is like a winter uniform where we live (although the coat is often brown or black), and Simmons' recreation is pitch perfect. The fact that her subject is a doll makes the realism that much more unnerving.

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Reviews/Features: New York (here), NY Times T (here), Artnet (here), Wall Street Journal (here)

Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll: Days 1 through 30
Through March 26th

Salon 94 Bowery
243 Bowery
New York, NY 10002

Book: Laurie Simmons, Color Coordinated Interiors 1983

JTF (just the facts): Published in conjunction with a 2007 exhibition by Skarstedt Gallery (here) and Sperone Westwater (here). 56 pages, with a total of 21 color images. Includes an artist interview conducted by James Welling. All of the works in this volume are chromogenic c-prints, roughly sized between 25x25 to 60x45 or reverse, and were made between 1982 and 1983. (Cover shot at right, via Amazon.)

Comments/Context: I recently came across this thin catalog from a Laurie Simmons gallery exhibition that I missed a few years ago. The book documents one of her earlier, lesser known projects, where plastic dolls (from Japan, known as the "Teenettes") have been placed in front of various interiors scenes, which have been projected from behind. In each staged setting, the color of the dolls matches the colors of the room with a level of perfection that is altogether unnerving.

While the premise here is pretty straightforward, I found the resulting images to be both witty and powerful, with a Stepford Wives kind of satirical creepiness. Each room has an exacting perfection, an obsessive desire for things to be "just right", with strong ties to hard questions about traditional women's roles and ideals. Many of the rooms have a sterile, dated quality, a feeling that time has passed these people by, even though they are trying so hard to be current and beautiful. The gestures of the dolls made me want to invent some kind of back story or narrative for each picture, where the dining room or the kitchen is the setting for some small but unknown human drama. (Yellow Dining Room, 1983, at right, via the artist's website.)

In general, while Simmons' more recent images of houses, cakes, cameras and guns walking on doll legs might be more familiar to many collectors, I think these earlier works deserve attention as well, especially for their sly reflections on an impossibly controlled life that is both a paradise and a prison.

Collector’s POV: Laurie Simmons is represented by Skarstedt Gallery (here) and Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art (here) in New York. Her photographs have become more readily available in the secondary markets in recent years. Prices have ranged between $1000 and $96000, with a sweet spot between $8000 and $15000, consistently rising over time. (Blue Den, 1983, at right, via the artist's website.)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Review: NY Times, 2007 (here, scroll down)