{"id":3639,"date":"2010-06-29T23:19:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T03:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=3639"},"modified":"2010-06-29T23:19:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T03:19:09","slug":"polaroid-collection-update-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2010\/06\/29\/polaroid-collection-update-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Polaroid Collection: Update 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hammer Comes Down, Part<\/strong> 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Continued from Part 1<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I arrived at Sotheby’s\u00a07th-floor auction space, where the Polaroid Collection would get sold, about half an hour before the scheduled 5 p.m. start of the first of its four sessions.\u00a0In the lobby outside the main room, slowly filling up, Peter MacGill of Pace\/MacGill Gallery approached me. “Sad,” the adjective on the lips of many that day, was one of the first words he spoke also. We chatted for a few minutes; his gallery represents a number of people with work in the collection, and in the auction. I went in to secure a seat, finding one next to Stephen Perloff, who will provide Photocritic International<\/em> with a detailed account of the auction next week.<\/p>\n

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Andy Warhol, “Self Portrait (Eyes Closed),” 1979<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Perloff showed me the most recent issue of The Photograph Collector<\/em>, which he edits, from June 10, 2010. In its “Auction Preview” section he’d written at length about the Polaroid extravaganza. An extract:<\/p>\n

“[M]any or most of the images acquired as part of the Artist Support Program were subject to agreements that neither bankruptcy court seems to have been aware of. These agreements did not pass ownership of the works to Polaroid; rather they authorized Polaroid to use them for educational purposes, but left their makers with rights to borrow them for exhibitions and similar uses, which clearly they would not be able to do if their work was sold. There is no doubt that the letter of the law was not followed in these bankruptcy hearings. Polaroid, by oversight or by conscious omission, did not inform the court of the nature of its agreements with the photographers. Thus those photographers, stakeholders in the bankruptcy, were not directly informed as they should have been about the proceedings and the possible loss of their rights.<\/em>” (Emphasis added.)<\/p>\n

Two former curators of the collection were in attendance: Linda Benedict-Jones, who worked with the U.S. collection, and Manfred Heiting, who masterminded the European collection. We commiserated among ourselves as the bidders and gawkers filled up the chairs; I got them, and Perloff, to autograph my copy of the catalogue.<\/p>\n

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Robert Frank, “New York.” 1972<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Then the auction kicked off. At her elevated podium, Sotheby’s photo auctioneer, Denise Bethel, announced, without elaborating, that several lots had been withdrawn and would be so indicated as she moved along. (See Part 1<\/a> for an explanation of this.) The first lot, William Wegman’s “Avalanche,” appeared on a padded, revolving display stand in the center of the stage. Simultaneously, on huge screens flanking the stage at ceiling height, digital representations of the work appeared, along with the bids in half a dozen currencies \u2014 USD, euros, yen, etc. \u2015 updating as rapidly as Bethel called them.<\/p>\n

Standing just below her, on the floor, Christopher Mahoney, her second-in-command in Sotheby’s Photographs division, served as spotter for floor bids. Other Sotheby’s spotters, dotted around the room, added their eyes to the process. Two banks of Sotheby’s employees, some twenty of them, sitting behind elevated counters, handled phone bids, calling them out steadily.<\/p>\n

And the merchandise jumped off the shelves. Nothing got bought in, or sold for less than its low estimate. Almost everything went for multiples of the high estimates, sometimes staggering multiples. Clearly the auction was going to do very well indeed.<\/p>\n

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Ansel Adams, “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park,” 1938<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

I stayed for the first 55 lots, about half the first session’s offerings. Then \u2014 as they began knocking down some 50 Ansel Adams works, the first batch of the 400-some Adams prints in the sale \u2014 I left in search of some dinner before my trip home. I didn’t return the next day, for the remaining three sessions of the sale. Not my dish of tea, as I said. I didn’t even follow it online, although you could, lot by lot. Instead, I took care of other business, waiting to see the total.<\/p>\n

There it was, at Sotheby’s website on the evening of the 22nd: $12,467,634 USD, exceeding pre-sale estimates of between $6.9 million and $10.7 million by almost 20 percent. And that’s with roughly 10 percent bought in, plus\u00a0something like $350k worth of work withdrawn as a result of negotiations with photographers who objected to the sale. (I base this conservative estimate on the prices achieved by other works in the sale.) See Part 1<\/a> of this report for an account of those objections, and the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Some conclusions:<\/p>\n