Table of Contents
Last week, Christie’s New York announced it would present a outstanding Guy Ray photograph from the estate of New York manner executives Melvin Jacobs and Rosalind Gersten Jacobs in a stay, one-operator sale in Might.
The photograph is a seductive image of a nude Kiki de Montparnasse, the French bohemian design whose hourglass determine Person Ray adorned with f-markings, like a violin. The work’s naughty title, which interprets to “Ingres’s Violin,” is a French expression indicating “hobby”: a reference both equally to neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s penchant for the string instrument, and the simple fact that Montparnasse (who was Ray’s mistress) was a similar pastime for him.
The headline-building news is the work’s estimate. At a whopping $5 million to $7 million, it is the highest ever selling price expected for a single photograph at auction. If obtained, it will shatter the standing auction history for a photograph, which was established at Christie’s in 2011 when a 1999 river perspective by Andreas Gursky sold for $4.3 million.
Will everyone be eager to pony up for the Dadaist masterpiece? We took a journey into our have dim room—Artnet’s Price Database—to look at out what is been creating in the surrealist artist’s market of late.
The Context
Auction document: $5.9 million, established at Sotheby’s New York in November 2013
Person Ray’s Performance in 2021
Loads marketed: 394
Purchased in: 85
Provide-by charge: 82.2 p.c
Average sale selling price: $25,629
Signify estimate: $11,049
Full sales: $10,097,858
Leading portray cost: $197,116
Least expensive portray price tag: $13,200
Most affordable overall value: $88 for a sculptural version of his legendary readymade operate The Gift, portion of an version of 5,000
© 2022 Artnet Throughout the world Corporation.
- Crash Course. Person Ray’s auction record was set in 2013, when an oil portray entitled Promenade marketed for $5.9 million. The adhering to 12 months, a record 525 plenty had been available for sale, but 34 percent failed to discover consumers. Full profits peaked in 2017 at $14.6 million (with $11.5 million accounted for by the best 10 lots). In 2018, profits plummeted additional than 70 percent, and have been bit by bit recovering considering that. By 2021, the current market was approaching heights past viewed in 2012.
- Need for Painting. Though Guy Ray is best identified for his revolutionary experiments with images, his optimum costs have historically been accomplished for paintings. When 14 of his works have marketed for far more than $1 million, just a few of these had been accomplished by photographs. Barring one particular sculptural assemblage, the rest were being paintings.
- Most Seductive Loads. The major cost for a Gentleman Ray photograph was accomplished at Christie’s Paris in 2017, when a gelatin silver print of a person of Male Ray’s most effective identified pictures from 1926 fetched $3.1 million. The iconic Noire et Blanche depicted Kiki de Montparnasse posed with an African mask. Developments amid his other prime-carrying out pictures include things like in the same way seductive designs from the bohemian established, solitary editions, or all those with special interventions this kind of as hand coloring.
- Declining fascination. Fascination in Male Ray has been on the drop in the latest yrs, with just 3,688 buyers looking for the artist by means of Artnet’s Cost Databases in 2021, marking a 44.7 p.c fall off because 2019.
- Place for shock. Inspite of this, Gentleman Ray’s second-optimum end result at auction was accomplished in 2020, when $5.8 million was invested on a 1915 oil painting titled Black Widow (Nativity). Details also suggests the market place was fairly undervalued in 2021, with 69 percent of loads offering for more than their significant estimate. Interestingly, the market’s effectiveness in 2021 was pushed more by volume than an availability of trophy loads. Contrary to in past current market booms for Male Ray, the top rated 10 plenty accounted for just 24.9 per cent of overall income.
Bottom Line
Le Violon d’Ingres is one particular of the Surrealist’s ideal-known photographs, and has been reproduced in printed editions, some of which are on look at in the Centre Pompidou and the Getty in Los Angeles. One particular of them (component of an version of eight) bought at Christie’s New York in April 2021 for $475,000.
But this unique photograph has a large amount going for it to justify the high presale estimate. Initially, it has great provenance, acquiring been in the same selection considering the fact that the artist marketed it to Jacobs in 1962. Secondly, in preserving with the greatest-executing pictures, this graphic was taken care of by the artist, who added the violin’s f-markings manually in the dim space. At last, the art world’s increasing urge for food for Surrealism—with a blockbuster present at the Achieved and Tate Modern-day this 12 months, and a surrealist bent to Cecilia Aleman’s 2022 Venice Biennale—could make the fantastic established up for records to slide this spring.
Stick to Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to continue to be forward of the art world? Subscribe to our e-newsletter to get the breaking information, eye-opening interviews, and incisive vital can take that drive the discussion ahead.
