donderdag 10 april 2008

the Photobook Photography Auction April 2008 Christie's Sotheby's

Top 10 Sotheby's :

1. $1,609,000 / $600,000 - 900,000 Pace MacGill Gallery Edward Weston, Nude, 1925 *RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*

2. $645,800 / $600,000 - 900,000 Pace MacGill Galelry Paul Strand, Rebecca, 1923 *RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*

This exceptionally open, intimate portrait of Rebecca Strand is one of more than a hundred that Paul Strand made of his wife between 1920 and 1932. The series was so strongly influenced by Alfred Stieglitz's celebrated extended portrait of his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, that Strand's parallel project, pursued in close contact with his friend and mentor, may be considered an implicit act of homage.

Strand's long artistic apprenticeship to Stieglitz, begun through visits to Stieglitz's gallery in 1913, came to an end with the suite of portraits he took of Rebecca in 1922–23. Whereas his earlier attempts appear strained because their long exposures required a headrest—the "iron virgin" of the studio practice—in 1922 Strand photographed his wife in bed. The removal of the former constraint and the new, supine position allowed Strand to reject the upright format of traditional portraiture and to frame boldly, solely to the dictates of his desire. The artist's freedom and his model's relaxation, intensified by their deep emotional bond, resulted in a portrait of extraordinary sensitivity and immediacy—a fresh but assured response to svelte formal elegance.

3. $493,000 / $150,000 - 250,000 Anonymous August Sander, Werkstudenten, 1926 *RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*

4. $457,000 / $70,000 - 100,000 Anonymous Richard Avedon, Marilyn Monroe, May 6, 1957, New York City *RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*
By Laurie Boeder :
It's not sexy. Not nude. Not glamorous, flirtatious, outrageous, audacious, or playful.
It's just sad. Lovely and sad.
Richard Avedon's indelible portrait of an actress whose public persona has slipped in a weary moment provides a glimpse of what it cost Marilyn Monroe to be Marilyn Monroe. The pretty shoulders are slumped, yet still tense. The light and the energy have gone out of her. She stares at something invisible and inevitable in the middle distance. She seems both resigned and apprehensive, as if she sees her own future.
The heartbreaking photo, "Marilyn Monroe, May 6, 1957" sold in a Sotheby's auction in New York this week for $457,000, far above the pre-auction estimate of $70,000. It was taken at the end of a long shoot in which the actress smiled, flirted and posed in her usual sex-kitten persona (although the shots, some of which are seen in
this montage, have a whiff of desperation about them.)
Then Avedon pointed the camera at her one last time. Maybe she was just tired. But because we know the tragedy to come, the portrait takes on power. It remains one of the most famous Hollywood portraits of all time.
5. $325,000 / $200,000 - 300,000 American Private Hans Bellmer, La Poupée (The Doll), circa 1935 *RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*


6. $313,000 / $60,000 - 90,000 Pace MacGill Gallery Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #53, 1980

7. $301,000 / $150,000 - 250,000 Anonymous László Moholy-Nagy, Photogram, 1920s *RECORD FOR A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*

8. $289,000 / $50,000 - 70,000 American Private Dorothea Lange, San Francisco Waterfront, 1933

One of the 20th century's most gifted photographers, Dorothea Lange's documentary activity began in the early 1930s, when she gave up commercial portrait photography and went into the streets to record labor unrest and the effects of unemployment during the Great Depression. Her best known work was done during a five-year period from 1935-39, when she worked for the Resettlement Administration (later Farm Security Administration), portraying hungry migrant workers, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers without jobs and homes. In this portrayal of striking laborers, Lange concentrated on gesture and expression to convey the disillusionment of the time.

9. $265,000 / $50,000 - 70,000 Anonymous Bill Brandt, Van Gogh's Room in the Asylum of St. Paul-de-Mausole (St. Rémy), 1950 *RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION*
10 $265,000 / $150,000 - 250,000 American Private Carleton E. Watkins, Tasayac, Half Dome from Glacier Point, Yosemite, 1865-66



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