The Polaroid Auction: A Not So Instant History (Part 4 of 5)
by Stephen Perloff
[Editor’s Note: The previous three sections of Perloff’s report comprise his detailed account of the June 21-22 auction of selections from the Polaroid Collection at Sotheby’s in New York, plus his exploration of the backstory and ramifications of the auction. In this and the subsequent section of his report, he continues his analysis. Perloff has published substantial coverage of the pre-auction controversy in The Photograph Collector, which he edits. — A.D.C.]
The Ansel Adams Murals
Ansel Adams, "Moonrise over Hernandez," unique "dartboard" mural
Adams murals have come up before at auction, though certainly not nearly so many. The esthetic quality of these prints generates truly mixed opinions. Any number of collectors and dealers I’ve spoken with aren’t impressed by them, while others, like Adams specialist Jim Alinder, defend them. No doubt they are rare. To me they just don’t have that Barthesian “aura” of the 16×20- or 20×24-inch prints. They don’t glow. The mural paper that was available has a much different surface, and perhaps, according to some, didn’t have as much silver in it. That said, some are clearly more pleasing to the eye, as noted in part above. Jim Alinder argues that from six feet away they look just as good as the smaller prints. Most of us look better from six feet away after the age of 40, but we’d be missing out on a lot of pleasure if that’s the closest we got to anyone.
Ansel Adams, "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," 1938
I recently spoke with Robert Lyons, the conservator who worked on the mural of Moonrise. He gave up conservation some years ago and has since become a well-known photographer. His memory is slightly hazy on some of the details, but he did remember other things quite clearly. He worked on a number of the Adams murals. When Adams made and mounted the murals, ideas of conservation were in their infancy. Lyons says that the murals were problematic for several reasons. The biggest problems were the glues used to adhere the prints to their backings and the use of Masonite for some of the backing boards. Masonite expands and contracts and thus can stress the print and lead to wrinkling. Lyons remembers Adams telling him that he sometimes used Picture Framers of America in San Francisco to do the mounting.
As some of the murals were hung in corridors and the cafeteria, some had various marks (one could see small gouges on at least a couple of the murals in Sotheby’s preview) and Lyons remembers doing surface cleaning to remove food from some. But perhaps the most egregious damage was done when cutouts were made in some to make room for electric outlet boxes! At least Polaroid saved the cutout pieces and Lyons was able to replace them. I don’t know if any of those murals were among the ones offered in the sale, but it’s possible.
Condition Problems
Robert Mapplethorpe, "Patti Smith," diptych, ca. 1979
All color materials are inherently unstable. Proper storage and proper exhibition conditions are essential for any color photograph. Some prints looked remarkably vibrant and unchanged. Others exhibited fading, especially towards the blue part of the spectrum. In a very few cases it was not obvious whether the prints had faded or the artist was using a more delicate palette unique to the Polaroid materials. I asked Kevin Moore about the Mapplethorpes of Patti Smith. He wrote, “Yes, I bought the Mapplethorpe for a client but no, I don’t think it was faded — just an image with a delicate palette. There were certainly other images in the sale, namely certain Wegmans, that were visibly faded, but not the Mapplethorpe.”
Helmut Newton, "Nude in Pumps," ca. 1975
Also the emulsion on some SX-70s was clearly cracked. You might have had to put on your glasses and gotten up close to have seen it in the preview. But it was clearly visible in the catalogue and certainly visible in the enlarged image on the screen that Sotheby’s projected during the evening session. One dealer sitting behind me was bidding on a Samaras Photo-Transformation, but lost out to a phone bidder. When I asked him if he had noticed how cracked the emulsion was, he said, no, he was bidding for a client and hadn’t examined it — and guessed that his client hadn’t either! These kind of condition problems did not seem to deter many people. But who knows if they were even aware of them.
Analyzing the Sale
Following the upswing in prices at the April auctions, most people were happy to see that the photography market seemed to be back and thriving. But some, like Kevin Moore, were more cautious. Moore wrote, “The sale really commanded higher prices than were warranted. I know a lot of people felt like it was a batch of special, ‘historical’ material, and that it should have been preserved as a collection, but I didn’t feel that way. That said, there were a few great, rare pieces — namely, the [Robert] Heinecken Lessons, which we were the underbidders on — but most of it was just mediocre and in many instances not the artist’s real art, i.e., it often represented a stage in the process toward something more worthy. Sotheby’s did a good job marketing.
David Levinthal, "Female in Bondage (Face Down on Floor) with Dominatrix," 1990-91
“I don’t know anything about L0153 but, based on what they bought and at what level, I would say they (or their advisor) were overly impressed by the quality of the artists and works sold. I mean, [David] Levinthal’s a good artist but at those price levels you could own work by a great artist, such as [James] Welling.”
Like Sheikh Al Thani, who made a name for himself at the first Jammes sale, a single bidder can have a huge effect. Bidder number 158 bought 22 lots totaling $290,625. And L0153 bought 23 of 100 lots in the evening sale for $2,781,000 and another 24 lots the next day totaling $842,563, for a grand total of 47 lots and $3,623,563, 29% of the sale by dollar.
This is not the first time recently that one bidder dominated a sale. Number 1822 claimed nine of the top ten lots and 13 lots overall at Christie’s Irving Penn sale in April for a whopping $1,702,750, fully 44% of the sale total. And the next day at Christie’s Various Owners Sale, bidder 1861 spent $1,454,750, or 36% of the sale total. Was this three different bidders, or two, or one? Is this passion investing, where the ultra-rich who are leery of the stock market place part of their funds in art? There are rumors of a new photography collector who can make the Sheikh look like small potatoes. It could be a myth, but just the fact that it has been repeated means it has at least a vague plausibility — or at least an affect on people’s psyches. But it doesn’t take much to make a splash in the photography market. For the price of one $40 million Warhol you could buy every picture in every New York photo auction so far this year.
Still, one 800-pound gorilla is not necessarily good for the market in the long term. As seen on lot 100, without L0153, the price may have been about two-thirds of the total. If a passionate investor had discovered Pop Art or Bugattis instead, it could have been a $9 or $10 million sale.
(To be continued.)
Part 4 of 5 : 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5
•
Stephen Perloff, by Judith Harold-Steinhauser
Stephen Perloff is the founder and editor of The Photo Review, a critical journal of international scope publishing since 1976, and editor of The Photograph Collector, the leading source of information on the photography art market. He has taught photography and the history of photography at numerous Philadelphia-area colleges and universities and has been the recipient of two grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for arts criticism. He was the recipient of the Sol Mednick Award for 2000 from the Mid-Atlantic region of the Society for Photographic Education and the first annual Vanguard Award from the Philadelphia Center for the Photographic Image in 2007.
Text copyright © 2010 by Stephen Perloff. All rights reserved. Published by permission of the author. To contact Stephen Perloff, email him at info [AT] photoreview [DOT] org.
Leave a Comment