From October 26 to November 9, Christie’s will present its online Photographs sale, featuring over 130 prints by major artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Peter Beard, William Klein, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Man Ray and Constantin Brancusi. The first part of Lothar Schirmer’s Glamour Collection sale (82 lots) will be devoted to the famous art publisher’s collection. The overall estimate for the sale is between 1.7 and 2.3 million euros.
With over 1,500 publications devoted to art and photography, including 386 books still available, Schirmer / Mosel Editions needs no introduction. But behind this name lies its founder, who continues to run this famous publishing house with the same passion, and who has just published Lothar Schirmer’s Glamour Collection, devoted to part of his personal collection. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of his publishing house (April 2024), and as he approaches his 80th birthday, Lothar Schirmer realizes that his collection, which illustrates the zeitgeist of his youth, is now complete.
The second part of the sale will feature a group of iconic photographs, with Helmut Newton’s portfolios Private Property, Suites I, II & III (1975-1983) as the highlight, estimated at €300,000-500,000. Helmut Newton has put together an anthology of 45 images from the previous ten years, presented in three suites of fifteen. Each suite includes iconic photographs by this brilliant photographer, who combined the disciplines of fashion, portraiture and eroticism, as in Portrait of Elsa Peretti as a Bunny, Woman into Man, Tied-up torso and Sie Kommen, to name but a few.
Another highlight of the sale was Robert Mapplethorpe’s Man in Polyester Suit (1980), estimated at €200,000-€300,000, is one of the photographer’s best-known and most controversial images. This photograph powerfully conveys Mapplethorpe’s erotic attachment to the anatomy of the model, his lover, it has above all a provocative intent and shock effect that make it, according to Randy Kennedy of the New York Times (October 1, 2015), Mapplethorpe’s “most slyly powerful work, a deadpan commentary on race, stereotypes and the slippery nature of photography itself, that continues to rattle nerves.”
Halfway between still life and fashion photography, Irving Penn’s Man Lighting Girl’s Cigarette (1949) (estimated at €70,000-90,000), features the elegant and graceful American model Jean Patchett. The play of transparency and contrasts creates a superb dialogue between foreground and background. The Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York has a print in its collection.
Christie’s will also present two photographs by Constantin Brancusi, La Négresse blanche de trois-quarts vue de nuit and Le poisson, (estimated at €30,000-50,000 and €20,000-30,000 respectively), which reflect the artist’s own view of his work. Considered one of the founding fathers of modern sculpture, Brancusi turned to photography, particularly after his meeting with Man Ray in 1914, as a privileged means of looking at his work. Light, framing and the setting up of each piece in the studio were all essential elements to which Brancusi attached the utmost importance, the latter sometimes betrayed by the presence of a reflection, as here with Fish, in which the artist’s tripod and camera can be seen in the polished bronze of the fish reduced to a simple ellipsoidal shape.
Online sale from October 26 to November 9, 2023
Exhibition from November 4 to 9, 2023, free admission
CHRISTIE’S
9 Avenue Matignon
75008 Paris
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Christie's
9 Avenue Matignon 75008 Paris
October 26, 2023 to November 09, 2023
