Christie's Photo Auction Wrap-Up

Going into last night’s auction of Horst images at Christie’s, there was some question about whether collectors would pony up significant wads of cash for what were, essentially, modern prints.

The answer came midway through the auction, when a print of Horst’s famed “Mainbocher Corset, Paris, 1939” (left) sold for $240,000. When Philippe Garner, Christie’s International Director of Photography and 20th Century Arts, brought his gavel down to mark the sale, the entire room exhaled a pent-up tension.

Like most of the work in the sale, all from the collection of Gert Elfering, the print was dated 1985–1995. Horst made the platinum-palladium print on canvas as an ultimate expression of his vision. The ten such canvas prints included in the auction brought some of yesterday's highest prices: "Classic Still Life, 1937," which was estimated at $60,000–$80,000, sold for $120,000; "Lisa with Harp, 1940," estimated at $80,000–$120,000, sold for $140,000. Unlike 16 of the 54 Horst lots that sold below their low estimate, every canvas print made at least its low estimate and six surpassed their high estimates.

According to our own notes (we'll have final numbers from Christie's when they are released later today go here for final numbers from Christie's), the total for the Horst auction was $2,146,000 for 54 lots, representing what we can only assume is a strong showing for this single-collector/single-photographer auction (reactions from Christie's are also on the way, so stay tuned see above link to update).

A breath-holding bidding war also broke out over the last lot of the second collector's auction, "Modernist Photographs from a European Collection." In a last minute flurry of activity among five or six bidders, Robert Frank's "Paris, 1950," a snowy scene of a horse-drawn wagon estimated at $25,000–$35,000, sold for an even $100K. The modernist collection's hottest item was one of Moholy-Nagy's disorienting aerial street scenes, "Rothenburg, 1926–28," that was estimated at $80,000–$120,000 and sold for $220,000. Unofficially, the modernist collection pulled in $1,312,800 total on 30 lots.

Tonight’s auction at Phillips de Pury & Company (7:00 pm, at 450 West 15th Street in Manhattan) focuses on  27 classic and contemporary photographs by 22 artists, including Harry Callahan, John Baldessari, and Edward Weston. According to Rick Wester, Director and Worldwide Head of Photographs at Phillips, the auction is a kind of express lane for high-end collectors who don’t want to waste their time on anything but the finest material.

—David Schonauer and Miki Johnson

(Photo: © Horst P. Horst, "Mainbocher Corset, Paris, 1939"/Courtesy Christie's)