House For Sale

Augh. This is very sad.

It's a house for sale.

It's right in the center of East Hampton, a village way out near the Eastern tip of Long Island. As you might know, the farther out you go on Long Island, the more exclusive and the more expensive the real estate gets. It must be beautiful out there—I've never been—but it's still accessible from New York City. My brother, who lived in NYC when he was getting his Ph.D. at Columbia, said New York City was only really livable if you had a way to regularly get out of it.

Have you ever had an art-crush? Some artist/art combination you just kinda love without actually knowing knowing the artist or what kind of person he/she is? I think I kinda had an art-crush on Elliott Erwitt. I love the guy. To me he was both a master photographer and a great artist and a hero, but also a down-to-earth iconoclast who disliked BS and brooked no fools and took a dim view of puttin' on airs. He called photographs "snaps." He was a ninja as a snapper. Very talented eye. And fearless. He manifestly followed David Vestal's terse advice to photographers: "Do your work." I love paging through his books.

It's his house. An estate sale. Elliott died last November.

There was an open house at 1:00 p.m. yesterday. If you look through the real estate photos, you'll see the inside of his home studio, which is a treat...but sad. I guess I was affected by his death because I always wanted to meet him. Although I was kinda scared of that, too—it's a perilous business, meeting your heroes. You never know if they'll be jerks, or maybe just a jerk to you, and that can be hard if it's someone you admire. From what I hear, Elliott was gruff but personable, and funny, and relatable, but I don't know. Anyway, I always carried the idea around in my mind that I was going to meet him one day. Then it was too late for that. Now a stranger gets his house. It's the normal state of affairs; he was 95, and nobody can complain about that. And I have art-crushes on other people who are gone, like Guy de Maupassant and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Sorry. I'm maundering. The art is still there. Leaving a rich posterity is one advantage of success in the arts. Guess I'm sad about his passing because of that art-crush all those years. I'll go page through some of his snaps in my copy of Snaps. There is always something there to see with new eyes.

Mike
(Hat tip to Oren Grad)

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Featured Comments from:

John: "He probably bought it way before the Hamptons were the place to network for NYC’s power brokers. It’s sad to read that the listing basically suggests to tear the house down and built something new, but that’s the way to go in those areas. Sickening really."

Jeff Hartge: "Long Island...I grew up on the east end of Long Island (1970s and '80s). I left in the early '90s. During most of the time I lived on Long Island, the expensive parts were the parts closest to the ocean (southern shore of LI). Long Island is split in two (North Fork and South Fork) out at the east end by the Great Peconic Bay. The South Fork was basically 'The Hamptons.' That is where everyone with money lived. I lived on the North Fork. It was actually relatively cheap. It was potato farms and 'Long Island Duckling' farms. At the end of the time I was there, the vineyards started taking over the land on the North Fork. Further, the exurban living concept started really taking flight in the late '90s and people started to move out there and commute to the more urbanized west end of the island (Long Island is 120 miles long—long commutes if they worked in NYC!).

"Today, I can barely afford to visit. There exists no possibility of living there. My parents sold their Long Island home for $240k in 1999 (they bought the home for about $60k in 1973). A few years later (mid-2000s), that same home was $750k. It has since been rebuilt (not much larger though) and is well over $1 million!"

Steve Rosenblum: "From his obituary in The New York Times: 'In the 1970s, Mr. Erwitt was among the first to benefit from the art market’s interest in contemporary photographs as an investment. Brokers bought prints in bulk for tax shelters. "That windfall bought my house in East Hampton," he said.'"

Kirk: "My photographer friend Will Van Overbeek and I played host to Elliott Erwitt when he came in to town to give a presentation to the Austin Photo Society about ten years ago. We picked him up at his downtown hotel, the historic Driskill Hotel, and drove him to the Humanities Research Center on the UT campus, where we all ran into photographer Arthur Meyerson. The curators at the HRC were negotiating with Mr. Erwitt to acquire his archive. They eventually did. Then, since no one had made other plans, Will and I took him to our favorite 'dive' Mexican Restaurant over on the east side of town, El Azteca. He enjoyed the atmosphere and bought a handful of the classic Mexican calendars featuring half-naked female Aztec princess warriors. He thought they were nicely campy. We stopped at Progress Coffee to chill and people watch for a while. Then we all decided to go to the LBJ museum, where Mr. Erwitt delighted in photographing an LBJ animatronic. He also made some wry remarks about the replica of the Oval Office...having been to the real one more than a few times on assignment.

"I helped him set up his Mac laptop for his speech at the Blanton Museum auditorium, and then Will and I sat back in the packed audience and enjoyed the evening. Mr. Erwitt was 84 at the time and still very spry and totally brilliant. Quiet but brilliant. For the entire time we were with him, right up until his lecture, he wore his personalized (by Leica) Leica M7 rangefinder equipped with a 50mm Summicron over his shoulder. His signature engraved on the top plate. A wonderful, old-world-style gentleman who seemed to enjoy every second of his trip to Austin. And I became a permanent Elliott Erwitt fanboy. It was such an unexpected privilege to spend a day with one of my all-time photographic heroes. I'd love to buy his house but I'd hate to live in New York. Too cold too often.

"At 84 he never stopped moving. He was a 'high energy' photographer. And he was completely attentive to everything around him; always looking for the next photo."

Comments

[Stelios]

When I grow up I want to be like Elliott Erwitt.

[Sal Santamaura]

Even if I'd recently won a Powerball jackpot, this wouldn't have attracted me. Equable climate only half each year, and I've no interest in photographing dogs. Now Ansel's Carmel Highlands house, with its darkroom, that would be a different story.

[ASW]

Looks like a tasteful, light-filled home. If we could somehow sell our home and small property 12-13 times, and if I didn't mind being trapped between the ocean and NYC, it wouldn't be a bad place to hang out.

My default is to assume that pretty much no one who can afford a $4 million dollar property would be caught dead in a house that looked like it cost less than $10 million to build, or didn't look exactly like all the surrounding houses but bigger!.

[Albert Smith]

Probably based on my internet history, the story of Erwitt's home being up for sale was posted from multiple sources into my newsfeeds, some with nice interior photos.

With his age coming up on the century mark, hopefully he was able to buy in at a low price that would seem impossible today. I also hope that this home will be bought by someone with a sense of history (Erwitt's history) and they won't renovate to something that destroys the past.

[james wilson]

I enjoyed the the perspective distortion where the couches look 10 feet long in one photo and 5 feet long in the next; probably 14mm. A good reminder of what you can believe about a photo.

[Nikojorj]

Just went to his retrospective in Lyon (at La Sucrière, near the Confluences) on Saturday, and that was a real treat too.
Cheers to a great artist! If you're near Lyon, France until March the 17th, don't hesitate to go there.
https://expo-elliotterwitt.com/

[Patrick Dodds]

Guy de Maupassant and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. What fantastic art crushes. Anyone else?

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

This is the real estate listing. Is there also an estate sale? Quite a treasure of prints hanging in that house!!

[Dierk]

A few years ago this was for sale, too: Brett Weston‘s Carmel Valley Home: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Carmel-Valley-CA/19375855_zpid/51274_rid/any_days/36.702558,-121.091309,36.095718,-122.205048_rect/9_zm/?3col=true - Wonder if the chamber near the pool from which he shot his Underwater Nudes is still accessible…

[Rob L.]

I've always loved Erwitt's work, and he came across as a great guy - but what a gift, that he was able to enjoy his work being recognized while he was alive - lucky man.

[Lars Jansen]

Too bad indeed that probably the house will be demolished for something more fancy and expensive looking. I really like this type of houses and wouldn't mind living there.

A nice studio too, and with two Brompton's as well! I would not expect those foldable bicycles in an American house, although the neighbourhood does not look that bicycle friendly.

[Timothy Auger]

The house looks nice. Hard to heat. I obsess over practical details - like the madness of white, or off-white, covers on couches, sending out powerful but invisible beams inviting splashes of red wine ...

Would the furniture have been generic stuff installed there by the agents for the purposes of sale? Props, basically. Too bland for my taste.

[Jh]

When we moved to CA in 2003, we had an opportunity to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis-Brown house where we met FLW's grandson and Julius Schulman, famous for his photographs of the iconic Midcentury Modern houses in SoCal.

In 2010, on an architectural house tour, we visited Schulman's house not long after he died and before anything had been changed. Here are some photos:
https://jimhayes.com/architecture/MAK_Tour_LA/index.html
Go to page 3, 4 rows down for the Schulman house.

Here is what happened to it:
https://www.dezeen.com/2015/10/15/loha-home-architectural-photographer-julius-shulman-restoration-los-angeles-usa/

Draw your own conclusions!

[robert e]

Mr. Erwitt's co-op apartment and his studio are also for sale, in the same building on Central Park West (he had an eight floor commute). The apartment's worth three times more than the house!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/realestate/elliott-erwitt-nyc-apartment-sale.html

[RIchard Sloves]

Elliott Erwitt’s Co-op and Photo Studio Are Listed on Central Park West. The New York Times 2/22/2024.https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/realestate/elliott-erwitt-nyc-apartment-sale.html