Auction: Contemporary Art, March 7, 2013 @Sotheby's New York

Sotheby's is up first in this week's Armory friendly sales, with its Contemporary Art sale on Thursday. Photography-wise, the sale is light on headliner images, but there are a handful of solid images that could potentially siphon off some fair-directed cash. All in, there are a total of 32 lots of photography on offer, with a total High estimate for photography of $704000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 8
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $59000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 22
Total Mid Estimate: $505000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $140000

The top photography lot by High estimate is lot 137, Mike Kelley and Bob Flanagan, More Love Than Can Ever Be Repaid, 1990, estimated at $60000-80000.

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

Gregory Crewdson (4)
Philip-Lorca DiCorcia (2)
David LaChapelle (2)
Julian Opie (2)
Richard Prince (2)

Other photographs of interest include lot 101, Walead Beshty, Three Sided Picture, 2007, estimated at $25000-35000 (image at right, top), lot 207, Pieter Hugo, Jatto with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria, 2007, estimated at $25000-35000 (image at right, middle), and lot 219, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Hong Kong, 1996, estimated at $12000-18000 (image at right, bottom, all via Sotheby's.)

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here.

Contemporary Art
March 7th

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Reinstallation of the Permanent Collection of Photography, 2011 @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of a total of 214 black and white and color photographs from 141 different photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against grey and white walls in a series of 6 connecting rooms on the third floor of the museum. The works on view span the entire history of the medium, ranging from 1841 to the present, and are arranged roughly chronologically. This reinstallation of the permanent collection of photography was curated by Sarah Meister.

The following photographers are included in the show, with the number of works and dates in parentheses. The names have been listed in their order of appearance around the galleries.

Room 1

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (1, 1841-1848)
John B. Greene (1, 1855-1856)
William Henry Fox Talbot (1, 1844)
Bisson Freres (1, 1841-1846)
Felice Beato (1, 1860)
Samuel Bourne (1, 1864)
Robert Hewlett (1, 1857)
Carleton Watkins (1, 1889)
Gertrude Kasebier (1, 1907)
Robert Demachy (1, 1910)
Frederick Evans (1, 1903)
Edward Steichen (1, 1900)
Jules Janssen (2, 1885)
Adam Clark Vroman (1, 1902)
Jacob Riis (1, 1890)
Radio Corporation of America (1, 1926)
E.J. Bellocq (1, 1912)
Eugene Atget (1, 1899)
Unknown (2, 1923 and 1933)
Underwood and Underwood (1, 1910)
Automatic Camera/Photomaton (1, 1928)
Arthur Bedou (1, 1915)
Dornac (1, 1892)
Lewis Hine (1, 1908)
Seeberger Freres (1, 1912)
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1, 1917)

Room 2
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Alfred Stieglitz (1, 1922)
Jospeh Cornell (1, 1933)
Imogen Cunningham (1, 1931)
Hugo Erfurth (1, 1926)
Edward Weston (1, 1925)
Alexander Rodchenko (2, 1924 and 1932)
Stanislaw Witkiewicz (1, 1911)
Edmund Kesting (1, 1928)
Man Ray (1, 1930)
Laszlo Mohloy-Nagy (1, 1923)
Tina Modotti (1, 1924)
Umbo (1, 1930)
Walker Evans (2, 1935 and 1936)
Ben Shahn (1, 1935)
Dorothea Lange (1, 1937)
Jack Delano (1, 1940)
Marian Post Wolcott (1, 1938)
John Vachon (1, 1938)
August Sander (2, 1927 and 1929)
Eugene Atget (2, 1921 and 1925)
Brassai (1, 1932)
Ilse Bing (1, 1932)
Bill Brandt (1, 1936)
Helen Levitt (1, 1941)
Antonio Reynoso (1, 1944)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1, 1934)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1, 1934)
Paul Strand (1, 1920)
Ralph Steiner (1, 1929)
Berenice Abbott (1, 1936)
Lewis Hine (1, 1930)
Arkadii Shaikhet (1, 1930)

Room 3
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Barbara Morgan (1, 1943)
Weegee (2, 1942 and 1950)
Emmy Andriesse (1, 1945)
Ernst Haas (1, 1947)
US Army Signal Corps (4, 1944 and 1945)
Dmitri Baltermans (1, 1942)
Times World Wide Photos (1, 1941)
Unknown (1, 1953)
Neal Boenzi/New York Times (1, 1956)
Meyer Liebowitz/New York Times (1, 1957)
Unknown (14 panels of vernacular families)
Robert Rauschenberg (1, 1949)
Geraldo de Barros (1, 1949)
Aaron Siskind (1, 1949)
Minor White (1, 1964)
Frederick Sommer (1, 1961)
Guy Bourdin (1, 1956)
Clarence John Laughlin (1, 1941)
Josef Sudek (1, 1954)
Ansel Adams (1, 1932)
Eugen Wiskovsky (1, 1946)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1, 1952)
Robert Doisneau (1, 1956)
Leonard Freed (1, 1954)
Lisette Model (1, 1942)
Roy DeCarava (1, 1952)

Room 4
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Rudy Burckhardt (4, 1940)
Philip Elliott (3, 1950)
Lola Alvarez Bravo (1, 1958)
Louis Faurer (1, 1949)
Leon Levinstein (1, 1952)
Robert Frank (1, 1956)
Garry Winogrand (1, 1962)
Christian Stromholm (1, 1959)
Paolo Gasparini (1, 1968)
Diane Arbus (1, 1965)
Unknown (1, 1957)
Lee Friedlander (1, 1970)
Jerry Schatzberg (1, 1964)
Arnold Newman (1, 1955)
Richard Avedon (1, 1965)
Irving Penn (1, 1979)
Harry Callahan (2, 1957)
Zeke Berman (1, 1979)
Kenneth Josephson (1, 1967)
Martus Granirer (1, 1964)
Otto Piene (1, 1964)
Shomei Tomatsu (1, 1960)
Daido Moriyama (1, 1970)
Miyako Ishiuchi (1, 1977)
Kohei Yoshiyuki (1, 1973)

Room 5
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Joseph Dankowski (20, 1970)
David Goldblatt (1, 1967)
Ernest Cole (1, 1960-1963)
Jeane Moutoussamy-Ashe (1, 1977)
Frank Stewart (1, 1981)
Geoff Winningham (1, 1971)
Candice Lenney (1, 1977)
William Gedney (1, 1975)
Martine Barrat (1, 1984)
Stephen Shore (1, 1973)
Frank Gohlke (1, 1973-1974)
Robert Adams (1, 1974)
Lewis Baltz (1, 1974)
Joel Sternfeld (1, 1979)
Nicholas Nixon (1, 1973)
Bill Owens (1, 1972)
Tod Papageorge (1, 1969)
Henry Wessell (1, 1972)
William Eggleston (1, 1980)
Sheron Rupp (1, 1984)

Room 6
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Jan Groover (1, 2006)
Michael Spano (1, 2003)
Bernd and Hilla Becher (18, 1959-1973)
Hai Bo (2, 1999)
Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1, 1981)
Vik Muniz (1, 2003)
Tina Barney (1, 1998)
William Christenberry (1, 2004)
Brian Rose (1, 2006)
Nicholas Faure (1, 1997)
Guy Tillim (2, 2008)
Leandro Katz (6 panels, 1978-1979)
Jiro Takamatsu (1, 1973)

Comments/Context: In between the special exhibitions and annual features like the New Photography series that usually populate the photography calendar at the MoMA, the curatorial team reinstalls the permanent collection of photography in the main series of galleries on the third floor. While this isn't a press release type event (or one that generally gets written about at all), it does offer an opportunity to peer into the minds of the organizers, mostly to see how new acquisitions are filling holes and to consider how the implied narrative arc of the history of photography is slowly evolving.

This is now my fourth year of covering the rehanging of the collection, and it's instructive to go back and remember what has been done in recent years (all the reviews are linked below). Three years ago, a grouping mechanism was used, where half a dozen images or so by a single photographer (from a related series) were chosen and hung in clusters, allowing a deeper dive into a smaller number of master photographers. Two years ago, the show was dominated by recent acquisitions (particularly 19th century) and peppered with lesser known works and artists, making the story more diffuse and harder to follow. Last year, the history of photography was seen through the prism of female photographers (known and unknown), providing a surprisingly different set of anchor points and references.

In prior years, these rehangings were "unsigned", in that they were tacitly meant to represent an institutional point of view rather than an individual one; therefore we could arguably read them as a monolithic perspective, an orthodoxy as to the "right" (or at least most recent) history of photography. What's different now is that MoMA has moved away from this approach and has begun to "sign" the reinstallations; this one was curated by Sarah Meister, and presumably the task (or opportunity) will rotate to someone else in the future. But make no mistake, this is now a new world, where a large number of alternate histories of photography are suddenly both acceptable and encouraged, and the process of identifying any one individual slice through the central mass of the collection could produce an unexpected and insightful outcome.

This selection of works sprinkles in a few more recognizable icons than the effort two years ago, and as a result, feels a bit more comfortably tied to a known line of thinking. The first room does a whirlwind tour of the 19th century (travel, scientific experimentation etc.), starting with the early masters and crossing over into Pictorialism, mixing artful images and vernacular shots with equal aplomb. The recently acquired Watkins still life of a box of peaches is the single best work in the entire exhibit; it is mind blowingly modern and lusciously crisp. It's the kind of picture that forces you to reevaluate everything you think you know about 19th century photography. (Carleton Watkins, Late George Cling Peaches, 1889, at right, top.)

The second room is the standard "between the wars" room, with bunches of European avant-garde and Surrealism, North American modernism, and FSA documentary reportage. To my eye, this group felt a little like "one of each", since there's one Brandt, one Brassai, one Weston, one Strand, one Man Ray etc., although never one of the better known images of the master identified on the wall label, presumably to keep things fresh. (Man Ray, Untitled, 1930, and Edward Weston, Nude, Mexico, 1926, at right, second and third from top.)

The next room follows chronologically into the 1940s and 1950s, bringing together a selection of professional press and vernacular photography with images from those working in a more fine art context where introspection, expressionism, and abstraction were taking hold(Siskind, Sommer, Sudek, Minor White et al.). The styles and approaches could hardly be more different, but their juxtaposition offers the first glimpses of multiple paths forward, of combination, dialogue, and confrontation. (Barbara Morgan, Use Litter Basket, 1943 and Aaron Siskind, Palm Springs, 1949, at right, fourth and fifth from the top.)

The fourth room continues a broad expansion of photographic paths forward, with 1950s hand held camera work (Frank, Winogrand, Levinstein, Faurer etc.), large format portraiture (Penn, Avedon, Newman), various forms of conceptual photography, and the arrival of the Japanese avant-garde (Tomatsu, Moriyama) in the 1970s. (Paolo Gasparini, Bello Monte, Caracas, 1968, and Zeke Berman, Still Life with Necker Cube, 1979, at right, sixth and seventh from top.)

Continuing into the other half of the divided space (which I have named the fifth room), the South Africans are added to the mix, along with the New Topographics photographers and the arrival of 1970s color. Again, many of the names will be familiar, but the specific image choices will keep you guessing. (Joel Sternfeld, Solar Pool Petals, Tuscon, Arizona, 1979, and William Eggleston, Untitled from Troubled Waters portfolio, 1980, at right, eight and ninth from top.)

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The last room in the show runs from roughly 1980 to the present, and it's here where I think the exhibit loses momentum a bit. Maybe a different way to say the same thing is that I was looking for a more definitive point of view on the current state of the world, and felt like I didn't get as sharp an opinion as I might have liked. The challenge is of course to make sense of the chaos, to follow both "contemporary art" and purely "photographic" progressions and to bushwhack a path through the thicket of competing aesthetics and mind sets, which is tough to do in a single room filled with a relatively small number of large pictures. That said, I did enjoy the Barney, the Tillim diptych, the Christenberry mess of kudzu and the multi-layered diCorcia. Perhaps a better way to look at this last room is to see it as simply a collection of new acquisitions that can tell us something about what the museum is interested in and continuing to follow closely, even if the thematic patterns are hard to discern. (William Christenberry, Kudzu Devouring Building, Near Greensboro, Alabama, 2004, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Catherine, 1981, at right, tenth and eleventh from top.)

In the end, I think this reinstallation of the permanent collection of photography makes a case for three distinct periods: the early period, from inception to roughly 1950, where the influence of vernacular photography and "history" is more pronounced and instructive, the middle period, from roughly Frank to Eggleston, where there is a flowering of bold experimentation in multiple directions, but mostly still connected to the existing photographic traditions, and the current period, where photography is stretching beyond its usual borders, crossing over into the context of contemporary art. In this realm, we're opening a dialogue beyond the confines of looking inward at photographic history and instead playing on a grander stage. While I'm sure this is an oversimplification of the nuanced ideas of the curators, I think this general framework has merit, especially if it can help to make the underlying forces tugging at contemporary photography more legible.

Collector's POV: Since this is a permanent collection exhibition, it seems only fitting to forego the prices and secondary market discussion that usually fills this section.

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

• Previous installations of the permanent collection of photography: 2010 (here), 2009 (here), 2008 (here)

Permanent Collection of Photography
Through March 2012
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Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ELEVEN @Zwirner

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 color works, framed in white with no mats, and hung in large divided gallery space. All of the works are archival pigment prints, made between 1997 and 2008. Physical dimensions range between 32x40 and 32x50, and each image is printed in an edition of 15+2AP. The photographs were made on assignment for W magazine, in Paris, New York, Cairo, Havana, Los Angeles, Bangkok, and Sao Paulo. A monograph of all 11 commissions has recently been published by Freedman Damiani (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Coming into this show, I will freely admit that I brought along a healthy dose of blunt skepticism. The fashion photographs on display were made by diCorcia over the past decade on commission for W magazine, and having not seen them before (I'm not a W subscriber), I assumed they would be the normal kind of sell-out we often see, where commerce trumps art and the results are less than inspiring. In a photographic year that has so far been generally unremarkable, I am happy to report that these pictures entirely undermined my expectations. I think this is the first photography show of the year that is truly worth a special trip to see, if only because it so consistently defies the standard fashion photography framework.

DiCorcia's careful staging of seemingly authentic scenes is by now entirely familiar to most collectors I would guess. What is different here is that he has broken down the walls of the fashion genre and mashed up his uncertain atmospheric narratives with traditional clothing-centric sales shots. In his pictures, the fashions have been placed in the context of a specific moment or life; they no longer stick out front-and-center to be pawed and gawked at - instead they have been muted, as though just one minor detail in the setting of a larger story (often in some exotic locale). As such, these photographs look like "diCorcias" rather than ads; sure, there are some stylish people here and there, but they are incidental to the larger theater taking place.

What I found most engrossing about these images is how uncertain they are. Nearly every work is a multiplicity of situations and perspectives in one frame, as though the complex action was paused for just a second. Gestures, stances, and glances give us clues to the relationships, but the layers are ultimately disconnected and unknowable, and we are left to fill in the gaps with our own conjectures. A naked man stands in a glass shower stall on display in the middle of a fancy New York apartment, a young woman poses ringside watching a kickboxing match in Bangkok, a headscarfed young woman in Cairo looks at a natural history exhibit of flamingos while a nearby man looks away, a bride stands on a ladder adjusting the elaborate light fixtures in an otherwise nondescript ballroom, a young woman sits in a chair while three chorus girls with chandelier headdresses stand nearby. What is going on in these pictures? Every single image in this show has this uneasy ambiguity, a light touch of sophistication and glamour mixed into silent cinematic stills. Again and again, we see women standing powerfully, while men, children, and other random people provide a carefully orchestrated backdrop open to interpretation. But diCorica has avoided the wild flights of fancy and crazy over-the-top scenes that have become a fashion photography cliche; his staged situations stand right on the edge of seeming truth and something slightly off kilter.

I guess what impressed and surprised me most about this body of work is how stubbornly diCorcia retained his own artistic voice in these commissions. The works on view consistently bear his hallmarks, and quite a few are strong, memorable compositions that will stand well with the best of his many other projects and series from his long career. All in, these pictures were FAR better and more nuanced than I expected they would be, and as such, they kicked me out of a deep rut of thinking that normally undervalues commissioned work.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced at $30000 each. DiCorcia's work is widely available at auction, with recent secondary market prices ranging between $5000 and $72000, with a sweet spot between $10000 and $25000.

While I can say that I liked quite a few images in this show, my favorite was W, September 1997, #5, 1997; while it's not easy to see, it's the image in the center of the top installation shot. I like the way the red brick wall bisects the picture plane, with one story (a guy washing his car with a power sprayer) on one side and another (a young woman dressed in black on the street near a pawn shop) on the other. The two stories are unrelated, but somehow ambiguously connected.

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: Daily Beast (here), T Magazine blog (here), La Lettre de la Photographie (here)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ELEVEN
Through March 5th

David Zwirner
525 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011

Photography at the 2010 Armory, Part 2 of 6

Part 1 of this multi-part Armory review post can be found here. This post refers to the first section of the longest hall of Pier 94.

Lisson Gallery (here): Rodney Graham (1 lightbox)

Victoria Miro (here): Isaac Julien (1 diptych), Francesca Woodman (2), Idris Khan (1), Thomas Demand (1)

David Zwirner (here): The entire David Zwirner booth is dedicated to the work of Philip-Lorca DiCorcia. There are 8 large images on the exterior of the booth, 7 more images in the back room, and 100 small Polaroids resting on a metal ledge surrounding the interior of the main space. These are different works from images of a similar size and display (Thousand) shown at David Zwirner previously. Unlike that body of work (available only as one set), these images are being sold individually for $4000 each. The larger works are a selection of well known work (strippers, heads, interior portraits etc.), with some newer larger landscapes with small figures.

Murray Guy (here): Moyra Davey (11), Barbara Probst (4)

Galleria Raffaella Cortese (here): Anna Maria Maiolino (2), Marcelllo Maloberti (2)

Alison Jacques Gallery (here): Hannah Wilke (4), Ana Mendieta (1)

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (here): Olafur Eliasson (1 group of 12 prints), Tomas Saraceno (1 group of 6 prints)

Andréhn-Schiptjenko (here): Anna Kleberg (1 group of 9 images)

Carolina Nitsch (here): Alyson Shotz (1 set of 6 prints). These works were constructed by taking a group of metallic silver balls of different sizes (the same ones used in Shotz' sculptures), laying them on a film of mylar, and using a strong magnet to draw the metal balls to the center. The result is a collection of reflective objects on a puckered surface, full of abstract refractions and reflections. The group of prints is priced together at $9000.

Rhona Hoffman Gallery (here): Luis Gispert (1)

Galerie Krinzinger (here): Frank Thiel (1), Chris Burden (1), Rudolf Schwartzkogler (2), Hans Op de Beek (2 lightboxes)

White Cube (here): Gilbert & George (1 multipanel work), Darren Almond (2)

Lehmann Maupin (here): Mickalene Thomas (1 image, 1 montage with layers of frames)

Kukje Gallery (here): Hein-Kuhn Oh (2), Yeondoo Jung (1), Kira Kim (1)

Galleria Lia Rumma (here): Thomas Ruff (3), Mimmo Jodice (1), Vanessa Beecroft (5), Marina Abramovic (1), Alfredo Jaar (1). The image at right is from Thomas Ruff's JPEG series. I enjoyed seeing this up close, as the pixelization is more layered than I imagined; large boxes dissolve into grids of smaller boxes. This is particularly noticeable in this image, given its sharp areas of black and white. The print is priced at 85000€.

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (6 Lisa Lyon images), Terrence Koh (2)

Galleria Continua (here): Carlos Garaicoa (1 triptych), Shilpa Gupta (3)

Boers-Li Gallery (here): Liang Yuanwei (6 groups of images)

Continue to Part 3 here.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Thousand @Zwirner

JTF (just the facts): 1000 Polaroid images, mostly color and mostly 3 1/2 x 4 1/2, each mounted to aluminum (not matted or framed) and displayed edge to edge on a small silver shelf hung at eye level around the perimeter of the gallery. The architecture of the gallery folds in on itself like a shell, creating a narrowing blocky maze. The images span approximately 25 years of the DiCorcia's career. There are also 4 large DiCorcia images, made recently, in a side gallery. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Since we are used to standing back to see Philip-Lorca DiCorcia's normally wall sized images, this installation of 1000 (yes, one thousand, a staggeringly large number) pictures as tiny prints was a mind bending change in our perceptions. The prints literally force you to get your face within a few inches to see them well, and to take in the entire show, you must slowly meander along the monorail attached to the wall to see each and every picture. The prints wind around and around and finally spit you back out at the entrance, having traveled far further than a simple four wall walk around.
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Along the way, many of DiCorcia's best and most memorable images can be found, representatives from all of his famous bodies of work (staged street scenes, hustlers, strippers, heads etc.) mixed into a chaotic brew of test shots, exposure mistakes, random still lifes, and seemingly ordinary family snapshots. There are clocks and flowers and skulls, people at home and people on the street.

The first effect of this display is that is exhausting. There are simply so many good images that require such intimate attention that they all fall into a blur quite quickly, with the repetitions and allusions of the sequencing coming to the forefront, rather than any one outstanding shot. The second effect for me was to turn the whole enterprise on its head; the exhibit seemed to become more about the process of editing than it did about individual frames. Why were these specific images chosen out of all those taken? What was it about this particular snapshot that resonated for the artist? How and why did he make the choices that he did? What is the larger narrative at work here?

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The final effect of this smorgasbord of imagery was to see a single overall emotional state that seems to pervade all of DiCorcia's work, which I wasn't particularly aware of until I saw all of the images together. Regardless of the subject matter, there is very little joy in the world he has captured. There is plenty of isolation, and shadowy loneliness, and deadpan boredom, regardless of whether it was staged or captured live. I must admit that this mood (when I recognized it) dampened my enjoyment of the many treasures to be found in the mixed bag along the aluminum rail.

As a generally unrelated adjunct, there is a small room containing four new DiCorcia pictures, printed in their normal large size, just off the main gallery space.

Collector's POV: The thousand images in this exhibit are not for sale individually, but are being sold as one installation (I didn't ask the price). DiCorcia's work is widely available at auction, typically selling in the range between $10000 and $50000, with an outlier here and there.

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

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Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Thousand

Through March 28th

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David Zwirner

525 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011

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Roberta Smith's short review of this exhibit in the NYTimes is here. A review by Horses Think is here.