Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Joe depicts the majestic torqued spiral sculpture by Richard Serra of the same title. The sculpture is named after Joseph Pulitzer Jr., among the earliest of Serra’s patrons, and in fact, the first patron to commission a large scale outdoors piece, still exhibited at the courtyard of the Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts in St. Louis. Of that commission Serra has noted, “[it] was the first big landscape [piece] I built in my life. It was one of the most significant pieces I’ve ever made, still remains that for me, and it started me. I wouldn’t have made what I made without Joe.” For being the first in what became a series of revolutionary works, all overwhelming in their grandeur, elegance and understated grace, Joe has remained an iconic Post-Modernist portrait, and it is likewise befitting that Sugimoto devoted a whole series to the work in 2003.

As he had done in other architectural series, Sugimoto chose a soft focus to depict Serra’s Joe. By doing so, he removed the specificity of the work and reduced it to its most essential characteristics—line, scale and movement. Indeed, the view proffered by the current lot—two opposing sweeping curves engulfing the frame in its near entirety— is imperial and commanding, reflecting the experience yielded by directly interacting with the sculpture, and, as some would claim, of being in the presence of the late beloved patron of the arts.