Phillips Announces Highlights from the New York Photographs Auction

Sale on 6 April to Feature Works by Cindy Sherman, Robert Frank,

Irving Penn, and Robert Mapplethorpe

New York State of Mind, Companion Online-Only Auction,

to Open for Bidding on 30 March

NEW YORK – 23 MARCH 2022 – Phillips’ upcoming Photographs auction on 6 April in New York features nearly 300 lots spanning the 20th and 21st centuries. The sale is led by a selection of career-defining works from Cindy Sherman and will also include important photographs by Robert Frank, Irving Penn, and Robert Mapplethorpe, among others. Within the live sale, Brazen Beauty: Photographs from a Private Collection offers a mischievous take on fashion photography, and Property from a Private West Coast Collection includes a seminal Mapplethorpe Self-Portrait from 1980. Alongside the live auction, Phillips will host a companion online-only sale, New York State of Mind in partnership with gallerist Peter Fetterman, which will be open for bidding from 30 March – 7 April.

Sarah Krueger, Phillips’ Head of Photographs, New York, said, “Our April auctions feature some of the very best photographs that the category has to offer, with works that have shaped the career trajectory of the photographers – from Cindy Sherman’s Murder Mystery, which predates her iconic Untitled Film Stills, to Robert Frank’s London, which foreshadowed The Americans. It is also a privilege to reunite with Peter Fetterman in presenting the online-only sale, New York State of Mind, which evokes the rhythm, sounds, and emotion of the urban landscape. We look forward to presenting both sales to our international community of collectors.”

Inspired by Hollywood stars of the 1920s, Untitled #580 leads the auction and hails from Cindy Sherman’s 2016 body of work, in which she embodied the personas of fading screen stars captured in publicity-like photos. Untitled #580 is perhaps the most traditionally alluring, in the Hollywood sense, including all the hallmarks of a leading lady of Hollywood’s golden age. This work is about the actress behind the archetype or, more accurately, the actresses no longer given star treatment.

Also by Sherman is a sequence of three unique photo collages that are rare primary documents from the early phase of her career. Each image constitutes a story from her extended pictorial narrative entitled Murder Mystery, in which a cast of 13 characters, all played by Sherman, enact the plot through 80 scenes, each a collage of multiple photographs meticulously cut and seamlessly combined. In planning and execution, Murder Mystery is masterfully realized. The sequence of three scenes offered here, Scenes 8, 10 and 11, include two of the most significant characters—the self-important Director, and the femme fatale Actress – as well as three members of the Press. The themes that Sherman would continue to explore in subsequent decades are present within Murder Mystery. The series, and these three images from it, are brilliant in every respect.

Robert Frank’s London is a rare, possibly unique, image from his seminal series made in London between 1951 and 1953. Focusing primarily on bankers within the urban environment of London’s ‘City,’ this body of work marked a progression in Frank’s approach to his subject matter and was a definitive step toward the extended narrative structure that he would employ in coming years in The Americans. This print was included in London/Wales, the definitive exhibition of Frank’s early 1950s work in Great Britain at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. D. C., in 2003. Since that time, no other prints of the image have been located.

Created only a few years after London is Frank’s Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey, the first plate in Frank’s landmark book The Americans. This, along with Political Rally – Chicago and Canal Street, New Orleans rounds out a selection of central images from The Americans and show the complexities of a country experiencing a post-war boom but also divided by race and class. These images illustrate some key themes from Frank’s 1950s work, including his fascination with the American flag and the pageantry of politics.  Late work by Frank, including Look Out For Hope, Mabou and New York City, show how his work became increasing personal.  

Joining the lineup of classic black-and-white images is Irving Penn’s platinum-palladium print of Woman in Chicken Hat (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) (A), New York. An exemplary illustration of the delicacy and expressive breadth of platinum printing, this work showcases Penn’s unparalleled mastery of the process.  Like all of Penn’s work in the medium, it is an entirely handmade object and is deliberately unique in its tonality and interpretation of the source image. In addition to this work, Penn’s Two Miyake Warriors (B), New York, June 3 is being seen for the first time at auction and features sculptural garments from Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

Highlights from Brazen Beauty: Photographs from a Private Collection include Ellen von Unwerth’s cheeky Double Trouble, New York and Lillian Bassman’s Barbara Mullen aboard Le Bateau-Mouche, Chanel Advertising Campaign, Paris.

The April auction showcases a robust selection of classic photographs by 20th century masters including Margaret Bourke-White’s modernist study of The George Washington Bridge, and work by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, and Eugène Atget.  Contemporary highlights include a signed early print of Diane Arbus’s Barefoot child jumping rope, N.Y.C., and work by Peter Hujar, Mickalene Thomas, Hannah Wilke, Carrie Mae Weems, and Vik Muniz, among many others.  In all, the sale presents an eloquent illustration of the expressive potential of the photographic medium. 

Auction: 6 April 2022

Auction viewing: 30 March - 6 April

Location: 432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

Click here for more information: https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY040122