The Pricey Photo Opportunity : Photography: The four-day take for a New York City auction series is expected to total more than $7 million.
You can still buy a photograph for $1,000 at auction, but if you plan to compete for the work of well known artists, you need at least $10,000. If you want to take your pick of the top lots, you’d better be prepared to spend up to $100,000. That’s the bottom line of a four-day round of photography auctions this week that is expected to total more than $7 million in sales.
The buying fest got off to a solid start on Monday night with a $1.3-million sale of “photographic masterworks” at Christie’s, followed by a $1.4-million auction of lower-priced photographs on Tuesday. The crowd of photography aficionados moved across town on to Sotheby’s on Wednesday for a highly publicized auction of the Graham Nash collection.
Those who haven’t already depleted their bank accounts will have another chance today, when the series of auctions winds up with Sotheby’s sale of about 500 photographs. The selection ranges from a daguerreotype of Henry Clay (circa 1850), valued at $15,000 to $20,000, to David Hockney’s 1982 photo collage of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley, which is expected to command $12,000 to $18,000.
Among works by about 200 artists are such historical gems as Henri le Secq’s mid 19th-Century album of 60 photographs of French churches ($60,000 to $90,000) and such curiosities as a “Victorian Family Photograph Album” that includes 125 erotic pictures ($4,000 to $6,000). The priciest items, running in the high five figures, include experimental works by Man Ray, Edward Weston’s classic images and a 1907 nude by Clarence H. White and Alfred Stieglitz.
If today’s sale follows the pattern established earlier this week, members of the audience and telephone bidders will cheerfully part with more money as they build gallery inventories and enhance personal collections.
“You only live once,” said a San Francisco collector who declined to give his name after paying $66,000 for “Dunes, Oceano,” Edward Weston’s 1936 photograph of elegantly rippled sand dunes, on Monday night at Christie’s.
He wasn’t alone. Another unidentified man paid $66,000 for Alvin Langdon Coburn’s 1905 platinum and gum print, “The White Bridge, Venice.” The top lot in the sale, an album of 51 prints of Yosemite Valley by Carleton E. Watkins, brought $71,500, well above its high pre-sale estimate of $60,000.
Inch for inch, the most expensive item at Christie’s was a 3 1/2x2 1/4-inch carte-de-visite made for Abraham Lincoln by Mathew Brady. The tiny calling card had been estimated at $15,000 to $20,000, but a telephone bidder finally snagged it for $49,500.
“People aren’t afraid to spend money on photographs any more,” said Los Angeles dealer Stephen White, who recently sold his collection of 15,000 photographs, albums, books and related materials to the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo for an undisclosed sum in the low millions.
Chicago dealer Ed Houk was among the most notably fearless earlier this week as he snapped up Lewis Hine’s 1931 “New York City From the Empire State Building” for $35,200, Margaret Bourke-White’s “Plow Blades” for $14,300 and Paul Outerbridge’s “An Abstraction in Angles” for $30,800.
Some dealers came to New York with lengthy shopping lists and catalogues bristling with page markers. Los Angeles dealer G. Ray Hawkins, for example, said he had $300,000 of orders from clients. Among his successful bids were $33,000 for a 1939 photogram by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and $19,800 for a playful photograph of cut-out paper figures by Alexander Rodchenko.
Christie’s auctions on Monday and Tuesday indicated a healthy market inclined to soar out of sight for star lots but just as likely to let less desirable pieces go begging. The totals of both sales hit the middle range predicted by the auction house, but 15% of works offered in each session failed to sell. Records were set for more than a dozen artists, but some works sold for less than their low estimates. Hine’s “Empire State Building,” for example, was valued at up to $60,000, but it brought only $35,200.
Christie’s auctions also asked serious questions about the market for Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. Just last November, shortly after his death, prices for his photographs rose rapidly to a record $38,500 for a single image (“Self-Portrait With Gun and Star”) and $60,500 for a trio of floral still lifes, produced in an edition of 15.
On Monday night, however, a set of the same flower photographs sold for $55,000, and two of the four Mapplethorpes offered failed to sell. Tuesday’s sale included 18 Mapplethorpes, five of which didn’t find buyers.
Is the market for Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic art drying up? Does he only appeal to a small group of collectors who already have the works they want? Have his photographs been vastly over valued? Or were the rejected pieces inferior examples of his work?
Conflicting answers echoed through Christie’s sale room this week. About the only point of agreement was that Sotheby’s auction today may provide a more accurate test. The sale will close with a stronger group of 35 works by Mapplethorpe that are valued as high as $50,000.
* GRAHAM NASH AUCTION
Paul Outerbridge’s self-portrait goes for $99,000 at sale of pop star’s photo collection. Section A
