Thomas Ruff, Selected Porträts (Portraits), 1984–1988. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $3,000–5,000.
Throughout the Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation Online Auction, we find lots with attractive estimates by iconic artists with well-established markets. These works offer an opportunity to either begin building a collection or add to a growing one. What’s more, with such exceptional provenance, the works offer collectors a chance to add their own story to the history of these prints.
Here, we highlight six artists in the sale whose works catch our eyes. Throughout them, we find explorations of the human condition and the built environment — themes that we have explored throughout our offerings of this collection this year.
Thomas Ruff
Thomas Ruff, h.l.k. 05, 2000. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $1,500–2,500.
The conceptual works of Thomas Ruff defy easy categorization, but their arresting allure is instantly recognizable. Ruff rose to fame in the late 1980s as a member of the Düsseldorf School, a group of young photographers who had studied with Bern and Hilla Becher and were known for their ability to apply the evolving capabilities of the medium to the expansion of the Becher’s conceptual ideas. Ruff works almost obsessively within distinct series, and his portraits and photographs of German architecture and interiors are among his most lauded. Works representing each of these series are on offer in this sale, from the deadpan honesty of earlier works within the Porträts series to the raw, everyday reality of h.l.k. 05 and his late 1980s explorations of German residential architecture (Häuser). Across all three works, his talent for showcasing banal oddities emerges. As he once explained to The New York Times, “What I do is react. I think, ‘Oops, this is strange, I have to make an investigation.’”
William Eggleston
William Eggleston, Dandridge, Tennessee, 1988. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $3,000–5,000.
Influenced by luminaries such as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eggleston added to their approach and eventually broke away from traditional black-and-white photography to experiment with color in the late 1960s. These experiments were highly influential on how photography was considered in the fine art context, and his works on offer in the auction showcase this development within his practice. The 1988 work Dandridge, Tennessee holds much of what is considered emblematic of the artist. Its beautifully framed composition highlights the vivid hues of the chair, foliage, and flora, the interplay of the vertical lines of the columns and chains against the linearity of the wood planks, and its southern American setting. Devoid of figures, the image shows the traces of American life and captures in vivid detail and color the modest beauty within the everyday.
Richard Misrach
Richard Misrach, Abandoned Trailer Home, Mississippi River, near Dow Chemical Plant, Plaqueville, Louisiana, 1998. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $3,000–5,000.
Within this image of blighted and crumbling structures, we find great beauty, the morning haze of mist rising off the Mississippi River, shrouding the image in an attractive haze of earth tones and offering a seemingly endless horizon. But in considering the realities of the image and the title, we’re confronted with the harsh aspects of human waste and abandonment, forced to question why this place was left behind and what societal conditions led to such decisions. Perhaps the work’s allure comes from this sense of nature reclaiming space from the untended architecture. But then again, we must ask if this is the cool dampness of the morning mist or the effects of pollution from the nearby chemical plant. Indeed, for Misrach — an artist lauded for his ethereal depictions of the vulnerability and precariousness of American life — such a subject proves endlessly captivating.
Pieter Hugo
Pieter Hugo, John Dollar Emeka, Enugu, Nigeria from Nollywood, 2008. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $5,000–7,000.
South African photographer Pieter Hugo began working in the film industry in Cape Town before rising to art-world prominence through his compelling photographs that challenge the definitions of studio portraiture, documentary photography, and staged scenes. His approach is confrontational, piercing, and ever-evolving, presenting his subjects starkly and directly. This work comes from his Nollywood series, named after Nigeria’s film production machine, which turns out thousands of movies each year, all typically conceived, written, and shot within just a few days before being screened in ramshackle cinemas throughout the African continent. This work presents the Nollywood actor John Dollar Emeka directly confronting the camera in a military costume with a slung arm. Like much of Hugo’s work, including his more political series, this staged scene questions photography’s ability to present the truth, or rather, to distort the truth — seen clearly in the believability of this image before one knows the full story behind it.
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 1997. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $3,000–5,000.
Gregory Crewdson’s unmistakable images powerfully express uncanny moments in American life, leaving viewers in a state of mysterious suspense. He carefully orchestrates his scenes, which typically depict people experiencing some sort of personal or community emergency. Though the imagery is direct, one can’t fully piece together the story, and we wonder if what is really being presented is more than simply what we see. This particular image is highly characteristic of the artist’s works, depicting a community confronting the challenges of remote living, with the nosy neighbors all looking in against their own good sense of safety, and set in a broadly familiar topology that is devoid of any true markers of time or place. Call it the dark underbelly of American life or call it the allure of mystery — however you see it, you can’t look away, can you?
John Baldessari
John Baldessari, Foot and Stocking (With Big Toe Exposed): Brienne, Fran, Io, Phil, Shelly, 2010. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation: Online Auction. Estimate: $10,000–15,000.
John Baldessari’s witty works have firmly cemented his reputation as one of the most notable figures of West Coast conceptual art. His work often questions the boundaries between mediums and notions of authority and authorship, playfully conceived here in a series of multi-media works depicting his studio members’ big toes. To create these works, Baldessari photographed each of their big toes, assigning each their own color scheme and collaging laser-cut black fabric onto the surface to represent socks. With many of his works frequently fetching high sums at auction, these works offer an opportunity to incorporate some of the defining ideas of the conceptual master into your own collection.
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