Photos 1970s 1980s
The date in the subtitles below is the date of the print when known.
See also : Photo Photos by women
Chronology : 1977 1979 1980
See also : Photo Photos by women
Chronology : 1977 1979 1980
1973 To Her Majesty by Gilbert and George
2008 SOLD for £ 1.9M including premium by Christie's
Students in sculpture, Gilbert and George observe other artists, who create when they are no longer drunk. It is fake art. To express real life, they imagine that the real work of art will be themselves. In 1972 they sing together on stage with an impassive face, without looking at each other, endless insipid songs with drunken lyrics. They are the Singing Sculptures of the music hall. Their repertoire is absurdity.
When they are being filmed, they waste less time than on stage. The video in which they glorify gin by singing Gordon's makes us very very drunk is a culmination of their new style of provocation.
It was at the same time and for the same reason that they tried photography, in the form of a series of installations titled Drinking Pieces or Drinking Sculptures. Among the blurry photos that evoke their visions of drunkards, appear their portraits in suits and ties, often duplicated in several places of the assembly.
The overall shape may evoke a silhouette but will soon become rectangular. To Her Majesty, produced in 1973, belongs to this period of transition. The work consists of 37 black and white photos in a symmetrical structure in five groups, for a total dimension of 145 x 350 cm. The title is a toast, of course. The skillfully distributed self-portraits have become the focal points. For the rest, the blur is replaced by insignificant details of their favorite pub.
To Her Majesty was sold on June 30, 2008 by Christie's for £ 1.9M including premium from a lower estimate of £ 400K, lot 27.
Gilbert and George found with the photo the ideal medium to propagate their message, which will become increasingly political. They refuse the standardization of society and the socialism. Before Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger, they were the pioneers of protest photography.
When they are being filmed, they waste less time than on stage. The video in which they glorify gin by singing Gordon's makes us very very drunk is a culmination of their new style of provocation.
It was at the same time and for the same reason that they tried photography, in the form of a series of installations titled Drinking Pieces or Drinking Sculptures. Among the blurry photos that evoke their visions of drunkards, appear their portraits in suits and ties, often duplicated in several places of the assembly.
The overall shape may evoke a silhouette but will soon become rectangular. To Her Majesty, produced in 1973, belongs to this period of transition. The work consists of 37 black and white photos in a symmetrical structure in five groups, for a total dimension of 145 x 350 cm. The title is a toast, of course. The skillfully distributed self-portraits have become the focal points. For the rest, the blur is replaced by insignificant details of their favorite pub.
To Her Majesty was sold on June 30, 2008 by Christie's for £ 1.9M including premium from a lower estimate of £ 400K, lot 27.
Gilbert and George found with the photo the ideal medium to propagate their message, which will become increasingly political. They refuse the standardization of society and the socialism. Before Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger, they were the pioneers of protest photography.
1977 Red Morning (Hate) by Gilbert and George
2013 SOLD for $ 1.8M including premium by Christie's
narrated in 2017 before the sale of another opus by Christie's (see below)
The almost single theme of the dual team Gilbert and George is the condition of life in London, not always easy in the East End where they live since 1968 in a house of the 18th century.
They are anti-conformists in all their actions. When they declare themselves royalists, it is because they perceive in the communism the threat of a social leveling. Their mural installations are assemblages of heteroclite photographs certainly inspired by their neighbors the punks.
In 1977 the socialists progress too much to their liking. They create a series of 17 prophetic works under the title Red Morning to predict by the subtitles all the coming disasters including Attack, Death, Dirt, Scandal.
Each opus is a regular rectangle of three to five elements in each row and column. The images are divided into three themes : the self-portrait of one or the other of the two artists standing in shirt-sleeves in a vulnerable attitude, large buildings in the City and the urban surrounding reflected in a puddle. Some elements are colored in dark red.
Hate is a 240 x 200 cm collage of sixteen elements 60 x 50 cm. The twelve photos of the perimeter are colored. This artwork was sold for $ 1.8M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2013, lot 24.
Hell was sold for £ 850K including premium by Christie's on October 3, 2017, lot 21.
They are anti-conformists in all their actions. When they declare themselves royalists, it is because they perceive in the communism the threat of a social leveling. Their mural installations are assemblages of heteroclite photographs certainly inspired by their neighbors the punks.
In 1977 the socialists progress too much to their liking. They create a series of 17 prophetic works under the title Red Morning to predict by the subtitles all the coming disasters including Attack, Death, Dirt, Scandal.
Each opus is a regular rectangle of three to five elements in each row and column. The images are divided into three themes : the self-portrait of one or the other of the two artists standing in shirt-sleeves in a vulnerable attitude, large buildings in the City and the urban surrounding reflected in a puddle. Some elements are colored in dark red.
Hate is a 240 x 200 cm collage of sixteen elements 60 x 50 cm. The twelve photos of the perimeter are colored. This artwork was sold for $ 1.8M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2013, lot 24.
Hell was sold for £ 850K including premium by Christie's on October 3, 2017, lot 21.
1977-1980 Twenty One Lies of a Young Woman
2014 SOLD for $ 6.8M including premium
Photography and cinema are lies. Cindy Sherman began her series of Untitled Film Stills in 1977, aged 23. She is not an actress and her photos are not linked to any movie. However, she is directly inspired by European cinema: Hitchcock, Bardot, Loren.
Her only theme is herself in ever changing situations that are not related to her real life. After the first group of views, she changes her face, her hair, her age. On each image, she is alone. The gaze is more or less in complicity with the voyeur. When she closes the series in 1980, she had achieved a remarkable overview of the life of any modern young woman.
The edition of the Untitled Film Stills is in black and white 25 x 20 cm with a maximum of ten prints per view. Twenty one photos from a collection are for sale in one lot at Christie's in New York on November 12, lot 13 estimated $ 6M. Curiously, this lot includes only views from those printed in ten copies, raising hopes that rarest photos will appear in other sales.
This group ranges from number 2 to 83, providing an excellent demonstration of the variety in the series: private interiors of 1977, New York, holidays, as well as funny or tragic images such as with the diving mask or the swollen eye. View 48 shows the hitchhiker of which another copy was sold for $ 1,56M including premium at Christie's on November 12, 2013.
Nobody can better comment on the creative work of Cindy Sherman than the artist herself. I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's.
Her only theme is herself in ever changing situations that are not related to her real life. After the first group of views, she changes her face, her hair, her age. On each image, she is alone. The gaze is more or less in complicity with the voyeur. When she closes the series in 1980, she had achieved a remarkable overview of the life of any modern young woman.
The edition of the Untitled Film Stills is in black and white 25 x 20 cm with a maximum of ten prints per view. Twenty one photos from a collection are for sale in one lot at Christie's in New York on November 12, lot 13 estimated $ 6M. Curiously, this lot includes only views from those printed in ten copies, raising hopes that rarest photos will appear in other sales.
This group ranges from number 2 to 83, providing an excellent demonstration of the variety in the series: private interiors of 1977, New York, holidays, as well as funny or tragic images such as with the diving mask or the swollen eye. View 48 shows the hitchhiker of which another copy was sold for $ 1,56M including premium at Christie's on November 12, 2013.
Nobody can better comment on the creative work of Cindy Sherman than the artist herself. I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's.
1979 Woman on the Road
2015 SOLD for $ 2.96M including premium
The series Untitled Film Stills by Cindy Sherman offers the game of the young woman, director and sole subject of this set in a full range of attitudes. The picture numbered 48, however, is different.
The photo nicknamed The hitchhiker by her author was taken in 1979 during a holiday in Arizona. It impresses in its mystery. The woman is alone on a road in the countryside. Who is she? Why is she at this place? Where would she like to go?
She has turned for watching the empty horizon with her trunk behind her for a long time. Her long skirt and flat shoes are outdated. The black and white increases the drama, like in Hitchcock: is her hair blond or white?
Under the thick clouds, shadows invade the valley of an unidentified river. If it is dawn, there is hope. If it is twilight, what can happen to this solitary woman? Cindy understands the role of the subconscious in her creative act. Inspired by cinema, she knows that she reconstructs the tragic fate of fragile women who are watched, followed and threatened.
# 48 was edited in 1979 in 10 copies in format 20 x 25 cm. The number 5/10 was sold for $ 1,56M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2013. The number 2/10 was a highlight within the lot of 21 Untitled Film Stills that sold for $ 6.8 million including premium on 12 November 2014, also at Christie's.
In the same year, 1979, it was also edited in 3 large format copies 76 x 102 cm (30 x 40 inches). The number 1/3 is estimated $ 2.5M for sale by Christie's in New York on May 13, lot 64B.
The photo nicknamed The hitchhiker by her author was taken in 1979 during a holiday in Arizona. It impresses in its mystery. The woman is alone on a road in the countryside. Who is she? Why is she at this place? Where would she like to go?
She has turned for watching the empty horizon with her trunk behind her for a long time. Her long skirt and flat shoes are outdated. The black and white increases the drama, like in Hitchcock: is her hair blond or white?
Under the thick clouds, shadows invade the valley of an unidentified river. If it is dawn, there is hope. If it is twilight, what can happen to this solitary woman? Cindy understands the role of the subconscious in her creative act. Inspired by cinema, she knows that she reconstructs the tragic fate of fragile women who are watched, followed and threatened.
# 48 was edited in 1979 in 10 copies in format 20 x 25 cm. The number 5/10 was sold for $ 1,56M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2013. The number 2/10 was a highlight within the lot of 21 Untitled Film Stills that sold for $ 6.8 million including premium on 12 November 2014, also at Christie's.
In the same year, 1979, it was also edited in 3 large format copies 76 x 102 cm (30 x 40 inches). The number 1/3 is estimated $ 2.5M for sale by Christie's in New York on May 13, lot 64B.
1979 Dovima with Elephants by Avedon
2020 SOLD for $ 1.8M including premium by Christie's
narrated in 2018 before the sale of another print by Sotheby's (see below)
The public has always been passionate about fashion. The evolution of techniques facilitates the dissemination of information by the specialized magazines. Harper's Bazaar and Vogue were the leaders in this market sector in the 1930s when it became necessary to replace drawings with photographs.
After the war the phenomenon is accentuated. A couture designer will have no success if he does not seduce the editors of the magazines. In 1947 Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, assures the glory of Christian Dior by expressing her enthusiasm with exuberance. It was she and no one else who triggered the instant success of this fashion that she named the New Look.
Carmel Snow comes twice a year in Paris to visit the couturiers before the launch of the collections. In 1955 Richard Avedon feels that he has a role to play. He obtains the mission of the photographic coverage of Carmel Snow's report for the fall-winter collection.
This new trend just created a new job, the supermodel, as Lisa Fonssagrives who will marry Irving Penn. The girls are beautiful but static and the photographers pay full attention to the garment.
Richard Avedon offers a more dynamic vision. To show Dior's evening dresses, he designs a staging with Dovima, one of the most popular supermodels of the period. At that moment Carol Reed is shooting a movie at the Cirque d'Hiver under the large glass canopy that allows the same brightness as outside. Avedon places Dovima in the middle of a row of elephants.
The September 1955 edition of Harper's Bazaar includes fifteen photos from Avedon's Parisian report. Dovima with her elephants appears once in a white dress and once in a black dress, both by Dior.
The black dress, more precisely a white satin drape in a black velvet girdle, is a conception by Yves Saint-Laurent in his very first participation for Dior. Dovima's theatrical attitude stretching an arm towards each beast created a masterpiece of fashion photography.
In 1962 Avedon prepares two 124 x 100 cm prints for an exhibition at the Smithsonian, all the more rare in such size that the original use had been exclusively for the magazine. One of them mounted on masonite passed at Sotheby's on November 9, 2018, lot 57.
Editions and large prints were made later after retouching the negative. A 217 x 167 cm print prepared in 1978 for a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was sold for € 840K including premium by Christie's on November 20, 2010.
A 1979 print 203 x 161 cm from an edition of 10 was sold for $ 1.8M including premium by Christie's on July 10, 2020, lot 81.
After the war the phenomenon is accentuated. A couture designer will have no success if he does not seduce the editors of the magazines. In 1947 Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, assures the glory of Christian Dior by expressing her enthusiasm with exuberance. It was she and no one else who triggered the instant success of this fashion that she named the New Look.
Carmel Snow comes twice a year in Paris to visit the couturiers before the launch of the collections. In 1955 Richard Avedon feels that he has a role to play. He obtains the mission of the photographic coverage of Carmel Snow's report for the fall-winter collection.
This new trend just created a new job, the supermodel, as Lisa Fonssagrives who will marry Irving Penn. The girls are beautiful but static and the photographers pay full attention to the garment.
Richard Avedon offers a more dynamic vision. To show Dior's evening dresses, he designs a staging with Dovima, one of the most popular supermodels of the period. At that moment Carol Reed is shooting a movie at the Cirque d'Hiver under the large glass canopy that allows the same brightness as outside. Avedon places Dovima in the middle of a row of elephants.
The September 1955 edition of Harper's Bazaar includes fifteen photos from Avedon's Parisian report. Dovima with her elephants appears once in a white dress and once in a black dress, both by Dior.
The black dress, more precisely a white satin drape in a black velvet girdle, is a conception by Yves Saint-Laurent in his very first participation for Dior. Dovima's theatrical attitude stretching an arm towards each beast created a masterpiece of fashion photography.
In 1962 Avedon prepares two 124 x 100 cm prints for an exhibition at the Smithsonian, all the more rare in such size that the original use had been exclusively for the magazine. One of them mounted on masonite passed at Sotheby's on November 9, 2018, lot 57.
Editions and large prints were made later after retouching the negative. A 217 x 167 cm print prepared in 1978 for a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was sold for € 840K including premium by Christie's on November 20, 2010.
A 1979 print 203 x 161 cm from an edition of 10 was sold for $ 1.8M including premium by Christie's on July 10, 2020, lot 81.
1980 The New Jeff Koons
2013 SOLD for $ 9.4M including premium by Sotheby's
narrated in 2020
Jeff Koons' first solo exhibition, titled The New, took place in May and June 1980 in New York at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It consists of Hoover and Shelton vacuum cleaners and household items installed individually in plexiglass display cases, with fluorescent lighting by spotlights and through the rear.
Another step is immediately taken. If a vacuum cleaner is a work of art, the artist himself is also worthy to be admired.
Under the title The New Jeff Koons, he introduces in his series The New a photographic portrait of himself at the age of 4, which he assembles in a fluorescent light box 103 x 78 x 20 cm. This piece will remain unique in its kind, as if it were a prototype intended to explore new avenues of creativity.
Koons is ambitious. The image he displays of himself is a model of kindness devoid of shyness : calm, smiling amiably, dressed and combed neatly. The felt-tip pens symbolize the birth of his artistic genius.
The New Jeff Koons was sold for $ 9.4M including premium by Sotheby's on May 13, 2013 from a lower estimate of $ 2.5M, lot 9. It is the most expensive photo in auction history, $ 5 million more than Gursky's monumental Rhein II.
Another step is immediately taken. If a vacuum cleaner is a work of art, the artist himself is also worthy to be admired.
Under the title The New Jeff Koons, he introduces in his series The New a photographic portrait of himself at the age of 4, which he assembles in a fluorescent light box 103 x 78 x 20 cm. This piece will remain unique in its kind, as if it were a prototype intended to explore new avenues of creativity.
Koons is ambitious. The image he displays of himself is a model of kindness devoid of shyness : calm, smiling amiably, dressed and combed neatly. The felt-tip pens symbolize the birth of his artistic genius.
The New Jeff Koons was sold for $ 9.4M including premium by Sotheby's on May 13, 2013 from a lower estimate of $ 2.5M, lot 9. It is the most expensive photo in auction history, $ 5 million more than Gursky's monumental Rhein II.
1981 Cindy Sherman in Centerfold
2011 SOLD 3.9 M$ including premium
Cindy Sherman is the only subject of her art, yet she deals with the modern woman in her entirety. Her photos can be grouped in series, but they are all different, for clothing, makeup, location, action, psychology, design.
From 1977 to 1980, the thread was the Film Still as a parody of movie photos in black and white.
Working in color in 1981, she created the Centerfolds series for a project of Artforum magazine. This set of twelve images is inspired by the photographs published in the center pages of magazines of fashion or charm, like in Playboy.
The examples I have seen in the databases of the auction houses were printed in ten copies in 60 x 120 cm. The best results were obtained by Christie's on # 92, $ 2.1 million including premium on May 16, 2007, and on # 88, $ 1.4 million including premium on November 9, 2010.
A copy of # 96 is for sale by Christie's in New York on May 11. Lying on her back, the young woman daydreams, crumpling a newspaper of classifieds. She is dressed like a wise teenager, but the makeup reveals that she thinks about her future.
This image is both simple and strong and deserves an estimate of $ 1.5 M. Considering that the greatest artists are those who best express the universe in which we live, Cindy Sherman is one of them. Unquestionably.
(References marked with # above are those of Metro Pictures archive).
POST SALE COMMENT
This is perhaps the most extraordinary result of this session of sales of postwar and contemporary art in New York: $ 3.9 million including premium. The best photos, when they are signed Sherman or Gursky, are major art works in their own right.
This photo is illustrated on the post sale article shared by Art Market Monitor.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
From 1977 to 1980, the thread was the Film Still as a parody of movie photos in black and white.
Working in color in 1981, she created the Centerfolds series for a project of Artforum magazine. This set of twelve images is inspired by the photographs published in the center pages of magazines of fashion or charm, like in Playboy.
The examples I have seen in the databases of the auction houses were printed in ten copies in 60 x 120 cm. The best results were obtained by Christie's on # 92, $ 2.1 million including premium on May 16, 2007, and on # 88, $ 1.4 million including premium on November 9, 2010.
A copy of # 96 is for sale by Christie's in New York on May 11. Lying on her back, the young woman daydreams, crumpling a newspaper of classifieds. She is dressed like a wise teenager, but the makeup reveals that she thinks about her future.
This image is both simple and strong and deserves an estimate of $ 1.5 M. Considering that the greatest artists are those who best express the universe in which we live, Cindy Sherman is one of them. Unquestionably.
(References marked with # above are those of Metro Pictures archive).
POST SALE COMMENT
This is perhaps the most extraordinary result of this session of sales of postwar and contemporary art in New York: $ 3.9 million including premium. The best photos, when they are signed Sherman or Gursky, are major art works in their own right.
This photo is illustrated on the post sale article shared by Art Market Monitor.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
1981 Revealed Women
2019 SOLD for $ 1.82M including premium
Helmut Newton is a fashion photographer, close to Yves Saint-Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. Working for Vogue, Playboy, Spiegel and Stern, he looks for eroticism beyond charm. He publishes his first two books in New York. White Women, in 1976, confronts the nude and the dressed. Sleepless nights, in 1978, partly photographed in the streets of Paris, adds the mystery of wax mannequins and is in colors.
A further step is reached from 1980 with the appreciation by the artist of the expressive force of very large formats applied in black and white to standing female nudes with sculptural bodies. The high-heeled shoes worn by naked women bring an effect of power and dominance that demonstrates the completion of the sexual revolution. The third book of the artist, Big Nudes, published in Paris in 1981, is a collection of these images.
Big Nudes includes a diptych titled Sie kommen. In the studio without decoration, four women walk forward as in a fashion show. They have the same full frontal position and the same attitude on both photos. On the left they are elegantly dressed. On the right they are naked on their high heels.
In the largest format on which the four women are life-size, each photo of the diptych is separated into two elements. A set of four 193 x 99 cm exhibition panels, each numbered II/III and annotated in 1995 for the Venice Biennal, was sold for $ 660K including premium by Christie's on December 16, 2008.
In a similar format, a group of four unmounted prints numbered 1/3 is estimated $ 600K for sale by Phillips in New York on April 4, lot 85.
A Sie kommen diptych in two elements 106 x 106 cm without the central separation of each image was sold for $ 670K including premium by Sotheby's on April 3, 2016.
A further step is reached from 1980 with the appreciation by the artist of the expressive force of very large formats applied in black and white to standing female nudes with sculptural bodies. The high-heeled shoes worn by naked women bring an effect of power and dominance that demonstrates the completion of the sexual revolution. The third book of the artist, Big Nudes, published in Paris in 1981, is a collection of these images.
Big Nudes includes a diptych titled Sie kommen. In the studio without decoration, four women walk forward as in a fashion show. They have the same full frontal position and the same attitude on both photos. On the left they are elegantly dressed. On the right they are naked on their high heels.
In the largest format on which the four women are life-size, each photo of the diptych is separated into two elements. A set of four 193 x 99 cm exhibition panels, each numbered II/III and annotated in 1995 for the Venice Biennal, was sold for $ 660K including premium by Christie's on December 16, 2008.
In a similar format, a group of four unmounted prints numbered 1/3 is estimated $ 600K for sale by Phillips in New York on April 4, lot 85.
A Sie kommen diptych in two elements 106 x 106 cm without the central separation of each image was sold for $ 670K including premium by Sotheby's on April 3, 2016.
1982 Richard Prince, Plagiarist of Fashion
2016 SOLD for $ 2.85M including premium
It is not always easy to extract the truth from the statements of a plagiarist. Richard Prince is undoubtedly ambitious and certainly an asocial who admired Pollock and wanted to construct and express his own vision of the world. We trust him when he says that he has no photographic talent. He will become the flagship of appropriation art. He is also a provoking character.
Artists are appealed by recuperation around 1980. Before the digital age, the world is already flooded with the lying photographs of the consumerism. The bypassing of these images, while challenging the copyright laws, becomes a new art that expresses the profound reality of the contemporary world. A rule made in 2013 is now case law : Prince does not copy the images, he transforms them.
He got a job wonderfully adapted to his desire : employee in the tear sheet department of Time magazine, he was paid to cut the pages for sending to the customer the legal evidence of the actual publication of the advertisement. The pitch is quickly taken : he will shear the magazines for his own art.
Prince does not know to photograph from nature but is skilled to copy documents from which he has carefully removed the texts. The result is weird : stripped of its wording, an ordinary picture becomes surrealist and expresses the profound imbalance in a society driven by the marketing.
From 1982 to 1984, Prince realizes his series Untitled (Fashion) with images of young women whose eyes were clogged in the original advertisement for whatever a fool idea of a marketing agent. The black and white prints are re-photographed by Prince on color film. The artist has already appreciated the incentive of large size and scarcity, and his editions are made from that early time in very small quantities.
The sale by Christie's in New York on May 10 includes two examples from this rare series.
Lot 3 B estimated $ 1.5M, Ektacolor 102 x 71 cm dated 1982 by the artist, is the artist's proof from an edition of only one other copy. Lot 4 B estimated $ 1 million is a unique Ektacolor 152 x 102 cm dated 1982-1984 and numbered 1/1 by the artist; this photo was sold for £ 740K including premium by Christie's on 30 June 2008.
RESULTS INCLUDING PREMIUM :
Lot 3 B : $ 2.85M ; Lot 4 B : $ 2.4M
Artists are appealed by recuperation around 1980. Before the digital age, the world is already flooded with the lying photographs of the consumerism. The bypassing of these images, while challenging the copyright laws, becomes a new art that expresses the profound reality of the contemporary world. A rule made in 2013 is now case law : Prince does not copy the images, he transforms them.
He got a job wonderfully adapted to his desire : employee in the tear sheet department of Time magazine, he was paid to cut the pages for sending to the customer the legal evidence of the actual publication of the advertisement. The pitch is quickly taken : he will shear the magazines for his own art.
Prince does not know to photograph from nature but is skilled to copy documents from which he has carefully removed the texts. The result is weird : stripped of its wording, an ordinary picture becomes surrealist and expresses the profound imbalance in a society driven by the marketing.
From 1982 to 1984, Prince realizes his series Untitled (Fashion) with images of young women whose eyes were clogged in the original advertisement for whatever a fool idea of a marketing agent. The black and white prints are re-photographed by Prince on color film. The artist has already appreciated the incentive of large size and scarcity, and his editions are made from that early time in very small quantities.
The sale by Christie's in New York on May 10 includes two examples from this rare series.
Lot 3 B estimated $ 1.5M, Ektacolor 102 x 71 cm dated 1982 by the artist, is the artist's proof from an edition of only one other copy. Lot 4 B estimated $ 1 million is a unique Ektacolor 152 x 102 cm dated 1982-1984 and numbered 1/1 by the artist; this photo was sold for £ 740K including premium by Christie's on 30 June 2008.
RESULTS INCLUDING PREMIUM :
Lot 3 B : $ 2.85M ; Lot 4 B : $ 2.4M
1982-1984 Fashion by Richard Prince
2016 SOLD for $ 2.4M including premium by Christie's
Narrated and linked above.
1983 Spiritual America by Richard Prince
2014 SOLD for $ 4M including premium by Christie's
narrated in 2021
Richard Prince is not a creator, he reappropriates the work of others. In 1983 a legal battle between Teri Shields, mother of Brooke Shields, and Gary Gross, a photographer for glamor magazines, brings Prince the opportunity for a conceptual provocation, questionable both in terms of copyright and on mores.
Teri ever knew that her daughter was pretty. Brooke began her career as a model at the age of 11 months. She reached fame at the age of 13, in 1978, with the role of the child prostitute in Pretty Baby. Her career continues in a similar style and Brooke becomes a symbol of sexual permissiveness in that period between birth control pill and AIDS.
The mother wants to recover the rights to photos taken in 1976, collected at the time by Gross in a self-published booklet. The court rules in favor of the photographer. Prince manages to get hold of a copy of Gross's booklet. He is captivated by the ambiguity of an image of the ten-year-old future star standing in a tub full of foam, with her soap covered naked body and her adult makeup.
For his reappropriation of this image, Prince chooses the title of a photo by Stieglitz, Spiritual America. This title openly castigates the excesses of the well-thinking bourgeoisie, which is also the clientele of Pretty Baby's brothel. Prince does not care about Gross, who does not enter a new trial, and the temporarily disowned Shields can no longer intervene.
Prince succeeds in that spectacular demonstration of the lie of images. Very skillfully, he does not appear during the exhibition and does not take a position. The title speaks for itself and visitors must be made to feel guilty : they came on purpose to see a sulphurous photo. His career is launched. He will always keep it on the verge of scandal.
Spiritual America has been edited in ten units plus two artist's proofs in Ektacolor 60 x 50 cm. The copy 10/10 was sold for $ 4M including premium by Christie's on May 12, 2014, lot 19.
Teri ever knew that her daughter was pretty. Brooke began her career as a model at the age of 11 months. She reached fame at the age of 13, in 1978, with the role of the child prostitute in Pretty Baby. Her career continues in a similar style and Brooke becomes a symbol of sexual permissiveness in that period between birth control pill and AIDS.
The mother wants to recover the rights to photos taken in 1976, collected at the time by Gross in a self-published booklet. The court rules in favor of the photographer. Prince manages to get hold of a copy of Gross's booklet. He is captivated by the ambiguity of an image of the ten-year-old future star standing in a tub full of foam, with her soap covered naked body and her adult makeup.
For his reappropriation of this image, Prince chooses the title of a photo by Stieglitz, Spiritual America. This title openly castigates the excesses of the well-thinking bourgeoisie, which is also the clientele of Pretty Baby's brothel. Prince does not care about Gross, who does not enter a new trial, and the temporarily disowned Shields can no longer intervene.
Prince succeeds in that spectacular demonstration of the lie of images. Very skillfully, he does not appear during the exhibition and does not take a position. The title speaks for itself and visitors must be made to feel guilty : they came on purpose to see a sulphurous photo. His career is launched. He will always keep it on the verge of scandal.
Spiritual America has been edited in ten units plus two artist's proofs in Ektacolor 60 x 50 cm. The copy 10/10 was sold for $ 4M including premium by Christie's on May 12, 2014, lot 19.
