New All-Time Record Set for a Photograph

There's a new "most expensive photograph ever sold," for the first time in 11 years. Like eight of the top ten most expensive photographs, it was sold by Christie's, the auction house founded in 1766.

The original of Man Ray's much-reproduced Le Violon d'Ingres sold for $12.4 million last Saturday in New York in its first-ever appearance at auction. The pre-auction estimate of five to seven million was more than the previous high record for a photograph, the $4.3 million set by Andreas Gursky's Photoshopped riverscape Rhein II in 2011.

The Man Ray was the top offering from the collection of Melvin and Rosalind Gersten Jacobs, art collectors who had connections to the surrealists. They bought the work directly from Man Ray himself in 1962. Melvin was a former CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue. After his death in 1967, Rosalind, who had been an executive at Macy's, continued the collection.

Man Ray has a strong auction record and an obvious appeal to major collectors, having sold several other works for multi-million dollar prices. (Elton John, who paid the then-world-record price for a Man Ray in 1993, says "If I'm going to die, I'll be killed by a falling Man Ray," because the picture hangs above the headboard in his bedroom.) Wikipedia tells us that "le violon d'Ingres" is a French expression for a hobby or pastime; apparently the French neoclassical painter Ingres (roughly pronounced, according to Jeff in the Comments, "ANG-ruh") played the violin when he wasn't working on his art. And as James Sinks pointed out in the Comments, "The title and the image itself also reference 'The Valpinçon Bather,' one of Ingres' most famous paintings," Valpinçon having been the name of one of the painting's owners.

The auction battle was between two anonymous bidders on the phone, one represented by Christie’s New-York-based photographs specialist Darius Himes, and the other by its Paris-based photographs specialist Elodie Morel-Bazin. Her bidder won, but it hasn't been announced who either of them are.

The artwork was first published in the French surrealist magazine Littérature in June, 1924. The model was Alice Prin, a.k.a. Kiki de Montparnasse, an artist's model and libertine who became a celebrity of the Années folles (crazy years) of Jazz Age Paris. She and Man Ray had a tempestuous eight-year affair, and he took hundreds of pictures of her. "It bothered me a little to take off my clothes," she wrote in her memoirs, "but it was the custom." Le Violon d'Ingres, whether or not it was intended as a sort of sneering dirty joke (play her like a fiddle, or, perhaps, she's my hobby), or merely a comment on the similarity in form between a stringed instrument and a woman's body, is one of the best-known works of surrealist photography, and a symbol of the movement.

Mike
(Thanks to James Sinks)

Book o' the Week

It's Not About the F-Stop by Jay Maisel. Jay was suggested by Moose and this book was suggested by Albert Smith—it's actually my favorite too (I got mixed up before). I got to meet Jay Maisel once. Everybody should meet him in his books, if they haven't already. Might help; cannot hurt. Jay's is some of the most positive, hopeful, and generous picture-taking advice you'll find.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

B&H has this!

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Neils: "There are a couple of interesting TATE-produced videos of Elton John's photography collection on YouTube. One scene that stuck to my mind was the one where he proudly points to a Man Ray photo for which he paid a world record price in 1993. His response to the question of why he paid a record price was (besides 'I love it') that it was with this purchase he realised he was a serious collector (at 2:15).

"I first thought it strange to see his pride in having paid a record price—after all, how hard is it to place the highest bid if you have a lot of money? Upon reflection, my most expensive book purchase two years ago, was a special edition of Elliott Erwitt's 'Pittsburgh 1950' signed with a signed silver gelatine print for GBP 750. A significant amount of money for me and probably, in retrospect, also a time when I had to accept I was not just a collector of random photo books any more.

"Elton John's comment above makes it clear that nothing in collecting is logical and value is only relative to what you have available. Another good video of EJ's collection."

Mike replies: The top item on my admittedly very short bucket list—I'll never see Patagonia—would be to visit Elton's photograph collection. I'll never get to, but I sure would like to.

Mark Sampson: "When I worked as a museum assistant at the Phillips Collection a few years ago, they held a major Man Ray retrospective. As my job required me to stand all day in the galleries, I became very familiar with a great deal of his work (including 'Le Violon d'Ingres'). I'll admit that I didn't spend any time wondering about the sale value of any of his works, but I did (and still do) wonder if the print on the walls at the Phillips was the only example ever made. Given the astronomical price it sold for, it might very well be. If not...."

Dogman: "Whoa! Big money for the Man. I downloaded a low-res JPEG of this photo back in February—actually on my birthday. Maybe I'll print it and proclaim myself as the winner of the bidding as a birthday gift to myself. I think Man Ray would appreciate the gesture."

Comments

[Sven W]

The recent photo from Dorothea Lange is something I would hang on my wall. This image by Man Ray might do for a bookmark.

[Jerker Andersson]

Well, wasn´t surrealism pretty much an excuse for male artists to look at and show women in the nude? I mean, just look at the pictures.

[Patrick Dodds]

The term "won" when applied to auctions seems wrong. It is the practice to do so of course, but it implies luck, passion or skill, or a combination of these, when in fact buying an item this way is mostly just shopping.

[James Sinks]

The title and the image itself also reference the Valpincon bather, one of Ingres' most famous paintings

[olivier]

Ingres pronounced "ong", really? Well not in French!

[But about as close as English-speakers can come. By the same token, French people have such problems pronouncing "Johnston," my last name, that when my father traveled in France (which he did often) he went by the pseudonym "Monsieur Post." --Mike]

[Ilkka]

There is a coffee table book about Elton John’s photograph collection. It seems to cover all rooms in his home, so maybe a bit difficult to visit. The book is named something like ‘pictures from the Elton John collection’.

[Jeff]

Much closer to ‘ang-ruh’ (as in bang)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T0ZmqhGNUB8

Many Americans drop the ‘ruh’

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UsM_nCwlEcs

[Zyni Moë]

As woman, find it sad but inevitable that most expensive photograph ever is of unclothed woman and has title which may be (which means it almost certainly is) offensive joke about that woman.

And in my field government adviser says in public that girls are put off physics because they do not like 'hard maths' (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61247374). Because obviously my weak girl brain (and worse am not even really white girl, brain must be just mush) cannot cope with hard sums.

None of this your fault of course. Oh well.

[John Ironside]

The Elton John exhibition was at Tate Modern (London) for a few months from November 2016.
I went and was very impressed but didn't buy the printed catalogue: 'The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection', Shoair Mavlian (ed), Tate Publishing, 2016. I'm not sure why not; I bought the Salgado 'Genesis' catalogue, despite disliking something about the tonality of the prints exhibited.
Copies still seem to be available.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

There are all sorts of common usages where one "wins" some sort of conflict, contest, or competition by expending more money. The most directly applicable usage is "bidding war", of course (this can happen in an actual art auction, like the recent art auction the Man Ray photo was sold in, but also just when two companies are both interested in buying a 3rd, or when multiple publishers are interested in a new book by some author).

Regardless of these related usages, "winning" an auction is simply the conventional expression for having made the highest bid in it.

[Torsten Walter]

As a true feminist and #MeToo-adherent I am deeply shocked that this softcore pornographic picture is a record breaker in terms of auction prices. I mean: who can seriously approve this depicting of a naked back of a beautiful women, including the ass crack? This objecifies women! We still have a long way to go in wokeness.

[Torsten Walter]

I wanted to be ironic. But now that I peruse the other comments, I am afraid the irony could have been missed. :-(
Prudishness has come a long way.

[Everyone's response to art is valid for them. --Mike]

[scott kirkpatrick]

Among surrealist masterpieces, I think I prefer "le Violon" to Mr. R. Mutt's 1917 "Fountain."