Richard Avedon

Avedon's Dovima Goes To Dior

That massive image of model Dovima posing with an elephant that sold at the Richard Avedon auction at Christie's Paris last weekend found a fitting home. Avedon's 1955 photo "Dovima With Elephants" was bought by the Christian Dior fashion house. Dovima is wearing a Dior evening gown in the fashionable photo. The seven-foot tall print was made for the tour of Avedon's 1978 Metropolitan Museum of Art fashion retrospective. After the tour it stood near the entrance to Avedon's New York studio for 25 years. Since 2005, it has been installed inside the entrance to the offices of The Richard Avedon Foundation. The print sold for 841,000 euros, approximately $1.1 million, in the sale which made a total of $7.5 million.

http://www.elleuk.com/news/fashion-news/dovima-finds-a-new-home-at-dior/(gid)/698788

Tags: art, christian dior, christies, photography, richard avedon

Avedon Prints Sell For $7.5 Million

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

A sale of prints by the late photographer Richard Avedon sold strongly at auction this week at Christie's Paris. The sale brought in 5.5 million euros (approximately $7.5 million). The top seller at the sale was a huge print of a photograph taken in 1955 of the model Dovima posing with elephants at a circus (it sold for $1.15 million). Other top sellers including multi-colored Beatles shot from 1967 which sold for $608,000 and the third highest seller,a semi-nude photograph of model Stephanie Seymour. The sale also featured images of Marilyn Monroe and Rudolf Nureyev among others. The auction raised money for the Richard Avedon Foundation.

Tags: christies paris, photography, richard avedon

Avedon Nude of Stephanie Seymour Expected to Fetch $210,000

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

A racy nude portrait of supermodel Stephanie Seymour (detail above) taken by the late, great Richard Avedon in 1992 is expected to fetch up to $210,000 at Sotheby's' Photographies sale in Paris on November 19. Part of a private European collection, the image will bolster the strength of the photography market if it achieves its price. Though most of the lots date from the early 1900s, the stunning sale also includes an Albert Watson portrait of Naomi Campbell from 1989 and a David LaChapelle portait of Andy Warhol from 1987 taken shortly before the artist's death, both estimated at up to $21,000; and a Herb Ritts portrait of Madonna from 1986, expected to fetch up to $10,000. Notable works by Irving Penn, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and more round out the offerings.

Tags: Albert Watson, Andy Warhol, auction, David LaChapelle, Irving Penn, Madonna, Naomi Campbell, nude, Paris, Phtography, Richard Avedon, Sothebys, Stephanie Seymour, supermodel

Avedon's Photographs Head To Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

A collection of the photographs of legendary master Richard Avedon will head to auction November 20 at Christie's in Paris. The Avedon Foundation is selling photographs from its archive to raise money to create an endowment to promote the work and legacy of the photographer. The image shown above, "Dovima with Elephants," an over seven-foot-tall image that graced Avedon's New York City Studio, is estimated to sell for $500,000 to $700,000. The total of over 60 photographs is hoped to bring in between $3.7 million and $6 million.

Avedon, who died in 2004 was famous for both his glamorous fashion work starring models like Jean Shrimpton, Veruschka and Twiggy in the 1960s and 1970s as well as for later images of stark portraiture. He was on assignment for the New Yorker when he died at the age of 81. This auction will be the largest auction of Avedon's images. His personal belongings were auctioned off in 2005 around the time his house was sold.

Tags: AvedaBlackMalvaShampoo, christies, Christies Auction House, ChristiesAuctionHouse, photograph, photographer, photographs, photography, richard avedon

Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Mario Testino & More in London Photo Sale

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

World class works including nudes and celebrity portraits by Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Mario Testino, Albert Watson and more are on offer at Christie's Photographs sale in London on May 21. Among the top-priced lots is Albert Watson's greatly enlarged contact sheet of a nude Kate Moss, taken in 1993, estimated at $29,000 - $44,000; his portrait of Uma Thurman meanwhile, also taken in '93, is estimated at $9,000 - $12,000. Mario Testino's iconic 1997 portrait of Princess Di is also expected to do well with an estimate of $26,000 - $32,000. Richard Avedon's portrait of artist Francis Bacon from 1979 is estimated at $18,000 - $26,000. Among the Helmut Newton offerings is 1976's famous Saddle, I (above) and 1980's Tied-up Torso, Ramatuelle, both estimated at $10,000 - $15,000. And Robert Mapplethorpe's nude Sonia Resika, 1988 is estimated at $4,000 - $7,000.

Tags: Albert Watson, celebrity, Francis Bacon, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Kate Moss, London, Mario Testino, nude, photography, Princess Dianna, Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, supermodels, Uma Thurman

Nude Supermodels and More in Sotheby's Sale

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

On October 9th in New York, Sotheby's will stage a stunning sale of photographs including several nude portraits of supermodels, with work from the likes of Chuck Close, Peter Beard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton and more. One of the top lots is a series of six full frontal nudes of Kate Moss by Chuck Close taken in 2003, estimated at $100,000 - $150,000. Another high-priced draw is a portfolio of 12 semi-nude images of Marilyn Monroe taken in 1962 by Lawrence Schiller, estimated at $50,000 - $70,000. Two Peter Lindbergh portraits of Mick Jagger taken in 1995 are estimated at $30,000 - $50,000. And a nude of Stephanie Seymour by Richard Avedon taken in 1992 is estimated at $20,000 - $30,000, while this relatively tame image of Nadja Auermann by Irving Penn from 1994 is also a relative bargain at $6,000 - $9,000.

Tags: celebrity, Chuck Close, ChuckClose, Helmut Newton, HelmutNewton, Irving Penn, IrvingPenn, Kate Moss, KateMoss, Marilyn Monroe, MarilynMonroe, Mick Jagger, MickJagger, New York, NewYork, nude, Peter Beard, PeterBeard, photographs, photography, Richard Avedon, RichardAvedon, Sothebys, Stephanie Seymour, StephanieSeymour, supermodels

Auction Houses Test Photo Market ... and Fail

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury & Company felt out the fine art photography market at the beginning of the month. With the broader industry in turmoil, the auctions held from March 30 to April 2 were to show just how well one of the art market's most profitable sectors would fare.

At auctions in New York, Sotheby's pulled in $200,000 for a portrait by László Moholy-Nagy that was shot in 1920 ... good enough to be in the top 10 for photos by this artist. But, in better times, the piece probably would have gone for the $300,000 price estimate that Sotheby's put on it. Christie's moved an artist's proof by Richard Avedon for $95,000, and Phillips de Pury & Company's best result was a portfolio of 11 photos by Avedon, which sold for its low estimate of $100,000.

In general, ArtPrice referred to the results as "frankly disappointing." This is a stark change from 2008, in which more than 11,000 photographs moved at auction for a total of $158 million. By January of this year, the ArtPrice Fine Art Photograph index had plunged to its 2004 level.

Source

Tags: art auction, art auctions, ArtAuction, ArtAuctions, auction, auction-house, auctions, christies, phillips de pury, PhillipsDePury, richard avedon, RichardAvedon, sotheby, sothebys, sothebys international realty, SothebysInternationalRealty

The Most Brilliant British Fashion Photographer
You've Never Heard Of

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Books

We look at lots of photo books in this line of work, but we've rarely been as impressed by one as much as teNeues' massive new Tim Walker monograph. The fact that the Brit fashion photographer's name is not as well known as that of some lesser talents must surely be corrected by the barrage of surreal, sublime images in Tim Walker: Pictures. A former assistant of Richard Avedon's, the 38-year-old obviously learned from the master, but he could hardly be called an Avedon imitator with his flair for elaborate, dreamlike tableaux. An exhibit of Walker's work opened in London last month, but for the $125 this vibrant volume costs you can be transported much further afield. No expense was spared for the extravagant British Vogue holiday shoot pictured above; the magazine even bought the vintage Rolls-Royce in case Walker had to destroy it in order to get the photo just right, as he never uses digital manipulation in his work. See the gallery for more.

[via Men.Style]

Gallery: Tim Walker's Wonderland

Tags: British Vogue, BritishVogue, Fashion, Fashion photography, FashionPhotography, Models, Richard Avedon, RichardAvedon, Rolls-Royce, teNeues, Tim Walker, TimWalker

More Nude Supermodels on the Auction Block

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

Following Christie's' successful photo auction earlier this month where a nude of First Lady of France Carla Bruni fetched $91,000, the auction house is staging another sale of stunning images in a couple of weeks. The eye-popping event, taking place in London on May 15, features another photo by Michel Comte, who took the Bruni pic. The new one is of Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen from 1999, and carries an estimate of $12,000 - $16,000.

Also included is an Albert Watson portrait of Kate Moss from 1993 (pictured here, est. $16,000 - $20,000), a Peter Beard photo of Salvador Dali in 1963 (est. $24,000 - $35,000), Richard Avedon's iconic 1981 image of Nastassja Kinski and a friendly boa constrictor (est. $30,000 - $40,000), and Lewis Morley's famous 1963 shot of Christine Keeler (est. $8,000 - $12,000), the model who was at the crux of a famous British government scandal in the '60s.

In addition, there are works by Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, and William Eggleston on offer. The 115-lot auction is expected to bring in over $3 million.

[via Men.Style]

Gallery: London Photo Auction