Swann Vice President and Director of Photographs & Photobooks, Daile Kaplan, will be a panelist at the American Photography Archives Group (APAG)'s seminar on September 5 and 6.
APAG is an organization founded and run by Mary Engel--daughter of photographers and filmmakers Ruth Orkin and Morris Engel--whose primary mission is to offer a forum for living artists and guardians of archives to discuss and learn about all aspects of archive management.
The seminar in September will include sessions on:
• Organizing an archive from A (archival boxes) to Z (zip lock bags)• Conservation/Preservation issues and solutions• Legal Issues, including copyright and intellectual property discussions• Marketing, including social media and website design• How an archive gets valued and when and why valuations are necessary• How to secure placement in an institution
Daile will join other photography experts to discuss appraisals and insuring of photographic collections, addressing the various types of appraisals, who needs one and for what purpose.
For more information on this event, which takes place at the International Center of Photography in New York City, visit the APAG website.
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| Alphonse Mucha's Art Nouveau advertisement for JOB rolling papers was the top lot in our August 6 auction |
Coming on the heels of tremendous media coverage (see: The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, Luxury Travel Magazine, Robb Report and Slate), Swann's August 6 auction of Vintage Posters grossed more than any previous August posters sale, bringing in more than $790,000.![]() |
| H.R. Hopps's chilling propaganda poster was the highest priced WWI image in the sale |
Among the top lots were highlights from a collection of tennis posters, which was larger and more important than any tennis poster collection to appear at auction before, World War I & II images, scarce Buffalo Bill posters, Geo Ham's Grand Prix advertisements and summer and beach resort promos by celebrated artists.![]() |
| WWII was also represented, with the now well-known British poster, Keep Calm and Carry On |
A selection of Art Nouveau beauties by the master of that medium, Alphonse Mucha, also helped the sale's bottom line, with his JOB, 1896--the auction's top lot--achieving $21,250. Also by Mucha were an alternate JOB poster at $9,375 and The Seasons, a group of four decorative panels at $11,250.![]() |
| Tops among the tennis posters was Roger Broders's design for Monte-Carlo |
Among the World War One highlights were H.R. Hopps's Destroy this Mad Brute / Enlist, circa 1917, which brought $18,750; and two record-setting items: James Montgomery Flagg's Wake Up America Day, which appeared on the front of the auction catalogue, 1917, $8,750 and Howard Chandler Christy's If you Want to Fight! / Join the Marines, 1915, $7,680.
From World War Two was the often parodied Keep Calm and Carry On by an unknown designer, 1939, which rarely appears at auction, $17,500.![]() |
| Geo Ham's dynamic car-racing posters are always popular |
Tops among the tennis images were Ludwig Hohlwein's stylish Kaffee Hag, 1913, $15,000 and Roger Broders's Monte-Carlo, circa 1930, $16,250.
Sporting images from that same region included a pair of Geo Ham's car racing posters: Monaco / 5ÈME Grand Prix Automobile, 1933, $13,750 and Monaco, 1936, $11,875.![]() |
| This poster depicting a young Buffalo Bill on horseback, based on artwork by Paul Frenzeny, set a new auction record |
Posters for Buffalo Bill, that grand showman of the American West, also performed well, with Paul Frenzeny's The Scout / Buffalo Bill, 1888, setting an auction record at $7,500, while Col. W.F. Cody / “Buffalo Bill,”1908 and W.F. Cody / Buffalo Bill, circa 1905--both by unknown designers--bringing $15,000 and $14,080 respectively.
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August 19, 2014, 11:25 am
Our auction rooms may be dark until September, but that doesn't mean our specialists aren't busy these days. In addition to combing through consignments and cataloguing lots for our Fall 2014 auctions, Swann staffers are traveling and lending their expertise in many ways.
For the first time, our African-American Fine Art specialist Nigel Freeman is serving as an appraiser with the long-running PBS series Antiques Roadshow. Nigel has even taped a few segments, and we'll see if they make it to air. In the meantime, check out this photo of him appraising a group of M.C. Escher holiday cards:
Of course, Swann President and Poster Specialist Nicholas Lowry continues his participation with the Roadshow as well. No doubt due to his distinctive voice and suit choices, he's become one of the more recognizable appraisers on the show, and even made it into this amazing flipbook animation video that also features the Keno brothers and Noel Barrett:
Daile Kaplan, our Photographs & Photobooks specialist is also a fixture on the Roadshow, and this summer she also traveled to France, bringing her singular collection of objects made from or decorated with photographs, dubbed Pop Photographica, to the Les Rencontres d'Arles show. She also launched her own Instagram at @popdaile and can also be found using the hashtag #daileytravels.
Closer to home is Swann's Art Books and Illustration Art Specialist Christine von der Linn, who is also an expert in the fields of health-supportive cooking and food sustainability. She's lending her time to the Metuchen, NJ Farmers Market in a series called Vegging Out, with topics including "Kale: Still Hip, but Check out its Cruciferous Companion" and "Underground Movements: Roots, Tubers and Cold Weather Edibles." More information is available here.
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August 21, 2014, 12:56 pm
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| A plate from Allatini's Sur Talons Rouges, illustrated by Gerda Wegener. |
Many of the biggest names in Hollywood have been rumored to be part of an upcoming film based on the David Ebershoff novel The Danish Girl, which was inspired by the true story of artists Gerda and Einar Wegener. ![]() |
| Original drawings by Wegener in our upcoming auction include this pen and ink of a happily inebriated women in revealingly loose dress tipping the last drops of elixir from her glass. |
While Gerda became well known--and faced criticism at times--for her erotic illustrations filled with lesbian themes, her husband Einar, who came out as a transsexual named Lili Elbe, underwent the first known sex reassignment surgery in history in 1930. ![]() |
| A watercolor, pen and ink of a female harlequin lounging on a divan while maidens drop roses upon her employs many of the artist's recurring motifs. |
Gerda often left her signature off of her highly erotic drawings and instead included a domino mask symbol in the lower right or left of each image.![]() |
| The artist's trademark mask appears at the bottom of this image from Vérineau's Douze Sonnets, which also features--what else?--a swan. |
There are many fine examples of Gerda's works in Swann's upcoming auction of Art, Press & Illustrated Books on October 1, including her most desirable illustrated books, such as Eric Allatini's Sur Talons Rouges, as well as some original illustration art.
The sale also features curiosa by other artists and authors.
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August 29, 2014, 10:38 am
The delicate condition of the natural world is vividly brought to life by Nick Brandt, who organized the Big Life Foundation to protect wild animals in East Africa. This British photographer employs a combination of documentary style with classical fine-art aesthetics to depict disappearing populations.![]() |
Nick Brandt, Elephant with Half-Ear, Amboseli (July 2010), Killed by Poachers (August 2010),
from the series Across the Ravaged Land, archival pigment print, 2010. |
Brandt, who has been working in Africa for nearly 10 years, was inspired to change careers after directing Michael Jackson's Earth Song music video, in Tanzania. Since that time, he has created a series of stunning studies of endangered species in the Amboseli National Park, which was formerly a game reserve in Kenya.
Members of the animal kingdom--an appropriate association for these majestic creatures--are quickly being decimated by local hunters. Brandt's very large print of an elephant with half an ear (photographed in July of 2010), underscores the fragility of native populations: the animal was poached the following month.![]() |
| Nick Brandt, Lion Before the Storm I, archival pigment print, 2006. |
Today, most photographers are willing to use whatever tools are at their disposal to get the shot. Interestingly, Brandt is old school in this regard: "If you are patient enough, what nature eventually gives you is way better and more surprising than what you might have manufactured in Photoshop. So, I stick with nature."
Swann will offer two Brandt prints in our October 17th auction, the elephant mentioned above and Lion Before the Storm I, 2006.
Thanks to Swann Vice President and Director of Photographs, Daile Kaplan, for this post!
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September 3, 2014, 9:53 am
Swann's upcoming September 23 auction featuring American Prints & Drawings includes Blanche Lazzell's Tulips, color woodcut on Japan paper, 1920, created by the artist in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1920.
Lazzell (1878-1956) was an American modernist printmaker and a member of the pioneering woodblock print society--the first of its kind in America--known as the Provincetown Printers. This small group of printmakers came together in 1915 in the artistic community of Provincetown on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, which had become a destination for avante-garde American artists and European artists fleeing the turmoil of World War I. The group remains most noteworthy for having innovated the white-line woodcut print, known as "the Provincetown Print."
Inspired by 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts, these artists carved their designs onto a single block, rather than the western tradition of using multiple blocks, and inked each section with a different color. The small grooves between each segment create distinctive white lines. Bror J.O. Nordfeldt, also a member of the Provincetown Printers, developed the technique, but Lazzell is considered to be the master of the white-line woodcut.
Renowned for her devotion to the technique and for the influence of abstraction and Cubism in her work, Lazzell gained popularity not only in America but also in Europe, where she first exhibited in 1923 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
In September 2013, Swann established a new print record for Lazzell, when her 1933 color woodcut The Flaming Bush (above) made its auction debut and realized $87,500.
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September 4, 2014, 9:55 am
In honor of the 75th anniversary of everyone's favorite French schoolgirl, Swann's Art Books specialist Christine von der Linn submitted this post.
This Saturday, September 6, marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. Her birthday is being celebrated around the world, but especially here in New York City, where Bemelmans made his home. The New-York Historical Society has a show up through October 19 celebrating Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans.The famous opening lines of the book--and the following books in the series--that introduced the world to the beloved boarding school student began:In an old house in ParisThat was covered in vinesLived twelve little girls in two straight lines.Nearly everyone who read and adored the books can recite the rhyme from memory. An appreciation of the fearless and intrepid little redhead and the impression she left on her readers is what drives people to collect the first editions of the Madeline books and examples of original artwork from them.
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| Madeline fans will recall the well known line, "To the Tiger in the Zoo, Madeline Just Said, 'Pooh-pooh." A signed lithograph from the book sold for $5,040 in 2008. |
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| This signed lithograph, "They Went Looking High [and Low]," is from Madeline's Rescue, in which our plucky heroine adopts a dog. It brought $5,280 in April 2008. |
"The purpose of art," Bemelmans wrote, "is to console and amuse - myself, and, I hope, others."
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September 5, 2014, 1:19 pm
One of the most common questions we get asked at Swann is what it means when a lot is catalogued with the word "after" in parenthesis following an artist's name. To answer, it helps to take a look at a Marc Chagall lithograph in our upcoming auction of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings. And, if you want to hear our Prints & Drawings specialist Todd Weyman elaborate on the subject, check out this video from an appearance of his on the Antiques Roadshow.
Chagall's exceptional career as a lithographer was greatly facilitated by his ongoing artistic collaboration with master-printer Charles Sorlier of the Atelier Mourlot, Paris. After creating a composition, Chagall trusted Sorlier to touch-up his lithographic stones and provide approval of quality. Sorlier became so familiar with Chagall's work--and Chagall relied on Sorlier's judgment to such an extent--that Sorlier created a number of prints in a style "after" Chagall, i.e. interpretive designs of Chagall's original paintings and gouaches.Many other artists produced "after" prints in this fashion as well, issuing works that were made by the same professional printmakers that they worked with to produce their "original" editions. In other cases, the "after" prints were created by well-known artists. Jacques Villon, for instance, made many prints after artists such as Matisse and Picasso.
After prints were also created under the auspices of artists' publishers. Georges Braque worked with Parisian publisher Maeght to create graphics made "after" his watercolors and paintings. The printers whom he regularly worked with on his "original" graphics headed these projects. Like Chagall, Braque assisted the printers closely throughout the entire process; he chose each image and which technique to use, directed the lithographer or engraver, and corrected and approved the proofs. He authorized production of the work by hand-signing the edition.
These "after" prints reproduced prominent, large color paintings from earlier in the artists' careers--created before they had begun to utilize color printmaking techniques, and generally, from the mid-20th century on--and were championed by print publishers as a means of extending the artists' commercial output.
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September 10, 2014, 1:48 pm
Swann's September 23-24 auction contains nearly 800 lots, including an impressive selection of Modern European Prints and Drawings. Among these, works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse stand out, and one of the most alluring prints is Picasso's La Femme à la Résille (Femme aux Cheveux verts), which could almost be called a collaboration between the two masters.![]() |
Pablo Picasso, La Femme à la Résille (Femme aux Cheveux verts), color lithograph, 1949.
Estimate $80,000 to $120,000. |
The impetus for this portrait of Françoise Gilot, Picasso's lover and muse from 1944 to 1953, was a visit to Matisse's studio in February 1946. When Matisse saw Gilot for the first time, he stated that if he ever made a portrait of Gilot, he would paint her hair green. Three years later, inspired by these words and in hommage to Matisse, Picasso created this lithograph. The print went through more than a dozen states over a period of three months from March to May of 1949, and was ultimately printed in an edition of 50. The print in Swann's September 24 sale is an artist's proof of the 13th and final state.
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September 16, 2014, 12:29 pm
Last week, From the Margins: Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis opened at the Jewish Museum. The exhibition combines the works of an unlikely pair: Lee Krasner, a female Jewish artist well known for being the wife of Jackson Pollock, and Norman Lewis, an African American artist. Both artists were too often left out of major retrospectives and conversations about Abstract Expressionism.
The concept for this exhibition came about when Jewish Museum chief curator Norman L. Kleeblatt noticed that Krasner and Lewis works seemed to almost be in conversation with each other in a show he curated in 2008, Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976.
Krasner and Lee’s paintings share interesting similarities. They are small, easel-size paintings, unlike the larger, more celebrated canvases of Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko, and one can sense individual cultural influences, i.e. the influence of Hebrew writing on Krasner’s glyphs and jazz on Lewis’s calligraphic figures. This exciting pairing has been called a “profound exhibition” by The New York Times and is definitely a must-see this fall.![]() |
| Opaque Shading, 1960, another oil on paper, was once in the collection of Oral Lovell. |
Swann set a record for highest auction price for a work by Norman Lewis in our October 10, 2013 sale, when his Untitled oil on canvas brought $581,000. In our upcoming October 9 sale of African-American Fine Art, we have more wonderful examples of 1950s works by Lewis, including a 1953 Untitled oil on canvas, and works on paper, such as a 1954 Untitled (Abstract Composition) and the painterly Opaque Shading, 1960.
Many thanks to Alaina McEachin of Swann's African-American Fine Art department for this post.
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September 18, 2014, 1:23 pm
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| Lot 367: a Self-Portrait of Thomas Hart Benton. |
Our September 23 auction offers a particularly strong selection of American Regionalist examples including an extensive collection of Thomas Hart Benton lithographs. Benton, dedicated to naturalistic and representational work, created 93 lithographs of primarily rural subjects, which were mostly sold through Associated American Artists in New York for for about $5 each.![]() |
| Lot 378: Benton's Wreck of the Ol' 97. |
Coming up for auction are The Race, 1942, based on the same-titled oil painting of a lone horse racing a steam engine across a barren Midwestern prairie; Wreck of the Ol' 97, 1944, depicting the derailment of the Southern Railway locomotive while en route from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina, in September of 1903; as well as drawings by Benton, including a Self-Portrait, lithographic crayon on paper, circa 1940, a gift from the artist to writer Selden Rodman, whom he knew from summers on Martha's Vineyard--Benton contributed several articles to a magazine Rodman edited called Common Sense.![]() |
| Lot 388: John Steuart Curry's John Brown. |
Additional Regionalist works include John Steuart Curry's lithograph portrait of abolitionist John Brown, 1939and Grant Wood's Approaching Storm, lithograph, 1940.![]() |
| Lot 381: Grant Wood's Approaching Storm |
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September 22, 2014, 9:11 am
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| This Untitled watercolor from Alma Thomas's Space Series, circa 1969-72, is featured in our October 9 auction. |
Alma Woodsey Thomas, abstract painter and art educator, was born on this date in 1891 in Columbus, Georgia--today would have been her 113th birthday.
In 1960, Thomas retired from Shaw Junior High School in Washington, DC after 35 years as a teacher, and began a full-time career as an artist. By 1972 she had received national acclaim with her one-person exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a first for an African-American woman.
Today we recognize in her bold colors and brush strokes a keen sense of the beauty of abstraction found in nature. Thomas found inspiration close to her Washington DC home--from the azalea blossoms in her garden to the Apollo landings broadcast on television.
Swann is lucky to have three strong examples of her work in our October 9 auction--each of these watercolors conveys the powerful simplicity of her unique style of abstraction. ![]() |
| In February 2012, Swann sold Thomas's March on Washington, oil on canvas, 1964, one of the artist's few representative works from the 1960s, for $72,000. |
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Dr. Amalia Amaki, noted art historian and artist, wrote the catalogue introduction for The Richard A. Long Collection of African-American Art. Dr. Amaki, a native Atlantan, received her Ph.D in 1994 at Emory University in 20th-century American History and Culture, at the same time that Long was at Emory serving as the Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts. They went on to become friends and Long even became a patron of her art. The introduction from the catalogue follows:![]() |
| Richard A. Long | Photo by Susan J. Ross | © Susan J. Ross |
Richard A. Long (1927-2013), renowned scholar of language and the arts, was a central figure in African American cultural life for nearly fifty years, being particularly important to Atlanta, Georgia’s art communities. As a professor, raconteur, author, and collector, he shared a breadth of knowledge about African Diaspora expression in lectures, literature, tours, conversations, and informal gatherings at his home. While the Atticus Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University, he directed over thirty dissertations, sat on additional committees, and often convened graduate seminars in his living room, with a general walk-through of his art collection on the main floor of his residence as the opener to the first class meeting. He hosted Romare Bearden, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and other notables, and conducted impromptu talks with small groups of artists or associates about his visits with Alma Thomas, Lois Jones, James Porter, James Wells, Hale Woodruff, Barbara Chase Riboud, and his close friend Beauford Delaney among others. He remained committed to artists with local and regional ties, often attending events with South Carolinian Jonathan Green to be supportive, and providing updates on the events in the life of Robert Tomlinson, a former Emory University colleague who relocated to Paris. He consistently organized trips to France and Haiti to advance and sustain culture-based agenda. ![]() |
| James Baldwin & Richard A. Long | © Susan J. Ross |
A native of Philadelphia, Long received his B.A. and M.A. in 1947 and 1948 from Temple University. He did post-graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and abroad in Oxford, England and Paris, France. From 1957-1958 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Paris, completing doctoral work in medieval literature at the University of Poitiers in 1965. An avid reader since childhood, Long was already intrigued by New Negro era literature when he entered Temple at age sixteen, especially Alain Locke’s The Negro in Art(1940). In 1944 he visited Locke’s home and had a personal tour of his art collection. The next year, he became the youngest member of the Philadelphia Beaux Art Club, gaining awareness of additional artists from related exhibitions. He saw paintings by Beauford Delaney for the first time at the home of sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller’s nieces, Dorothy and Marie Warrick ca.1947. He met Delaney ten years later during his Paris residency, and a lifelong friendship was forged that culminated professionally with the artist creating a portrait of him in 1965, and Long mounting a retrospective of Delaney’s work at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1978 – a project that was ten years in the making. ![]() |
| Richard A. Long & Maya Angelou | © Susan J. Ross |
Long began teaching English at West Virginia State College – Melvin Van Peeples was his student, then became a colleague of James E. Lewis and Samella Lewis at Morgan State College (now University). He returned from an acting lecture position while a Ph.D. student at the University of Poitiers to teach English and French at Hampton Institute (now University) and direct the College Museum. As the museum administrator, he facilitated the addition of works by William H. Johnson and other established artists acquired for collection. In 1968 he joined the faculty at Atlanta University where he founded the African American Studies program. He was visiting lecturer at Harvard University from 1971-1973, and lectured in linguistics at the University of North Carolina the following year. He took an adjunct position at Emory University in 1973, being named the Atticus Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University in 1987 until retiring as Emeritus in 2000 with intermittent visiting lecturer positions in West, Central and South Africa. ![]() |
| Richard A. Long & Radcliffe Bailey | © Susan J. Ross |
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| Richard A. Long, Camille Billops, Crystal Britton & Elizabeth Catlett | © Susan J. Ross |
Long served on the editorial boards of the Langston Hughes Bulletin, Phylon and the Zora Neale Hurston Bulletin. He served as president for the College Language Association and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. He was Commissioner for the Smithsonian Museum's National Museum of African Art and was on the boards of the High Museum of Art and the Society of Dance History Scholars. He founded the Triennial Symposium on African Art, Atlanta University's Annual Conference at the Center for African and African American Studies and the New World Festivals of the African Diaspora. He was a U.S. Committee Member at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria from 1971-1977 and has acted as a consultant for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.![]() |
| Sonia Sanchez, Richard A. Long, Carrie Mae Weems & Stephanie Hughley | © Susan J. Ross |
His writings include Black Americana (1985), The Black Tradition in American Dance (1989), African Americans: A Portrait (1993), Grown Deep: Essays on the Harlem Renaissance(1998), One More Time: Harlem Renaissance History and Historicism(2007), and Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration (2008), He edited Negritude: Essays and Studies (1967) (with Albert Berrian) and Afro-American Writing: Prose and Poetry (1972, 1991) (with Eugenia Collier) andBlack Writers and the American Civil War (1989). His work has also been included in over twenty anthologies and encyclopedias of African American culture.
by Amalia K. Amaki
The Richard A. Long Collection of African-American Art makes up the first 47 lots in Swann's Thursday, October 9 auction. Highlights include works by many of Dr. Long's artist friends, including Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney and Alma Thomas.
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October 15, 2014, 2:41 pm
O. Winston Link’s photographs have infused Swann's Photograph Department auctions with a consistent, quiet power for years, but lot 175 brings a new dramatic force to the October 17 sale. ![]() |
O. Winston Link, Hotshot, Eastbound, Iager, West Virginia,
special edition oversized silver print, 1956, printed 1991. |
Hotshot, Eastbound, Iager, West Virginia is an uncommon oversized special edition silver print created by Link in 1991 for Danziger Gallery. The artist even reconfigured his darkroom in order to make space for the mighty prints. As Link labored to finish printing the photographs, his marriage to his young wife, Conchita, unraveled rapidly and she forced him from their home. Respectfully, Link vacated, and upon reentering their home after their divorce was finalized in 1993, he discovered that Conchita had stripped the house not only of his cameras and equipment, but also of thousands of prints, including the 20x24'' special editions.Conchita was subsequently arrested, indicted and convicted of grand theft in the first degree for stealing more than $300,000 through forging Link's signature, misusing his bank accounts, and handing over $60,000 to her lover, a man named Edward Hayes who had been hired by Link to restore a steam engine that he owned. Conchita spent years in prison, but never confessed the whereabouts of the stolen goods.
In 2003, after Conchita was released from prison, a suspect image turned up for sale in an online auction. Prosecutors conducted a sting operation in which an investigator posing as a corporate collector recovered 30 prints valued from $350,000 to $500,000. In 2004, Conchita and Edward Hayes, now married, pleaded guilty to the charges against them. The recovered booty consisted of more than 100 20x24" prints 400 16x20" prints approximately 1,000 additional O. Winston Link photographs, included early notebooks and writings, and the original ink stamp Link affixed to his prints: a total trove estimated at several million dollars.![]() |
O. Winston Link, Hotshot, Eastbound, Iager, West Virginia,
special edition oversized silver print, 1956, printed 1991. Estimate $12,000 to $18,000. |
The Hotshot Eastbound, Iaeger, WV being offered in the October 17 auction was held as evidence in the trial against Conchita Mendoza Link Hayes. The photograph has a special OWL hand stamp on verso indicating that this print was recovered from the successful sting operation against Conchita, who also altered the print date. The print is still in an evidence bag from the trial with glowing red Grand Jury Exhibit, People's Exhibit, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service Forensic Laboratory stickers on the outside. ![]() |
| The verso of the photograph in the October 17 auction. |
Hotshot is from the Collection of Thomas Garver, a former assistant to O. Winston Link, who was subsequently Link's agent, the author of Link's second book of railroad photos and the organizing curator of the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia.
Thanks to Alex Van Clief in Swann's Photographs Department for this intriguing blog post!
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October 17, 2014, 2:21 pm
The Bay Psalm Book is often described as the first book printed in America. Issued in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640, it was certainly the first book printed in the English colonies of America, and the first book printed in what later became the United States. A copy sold last year for $14,165,000. However, it was hardly the first book printed in the Americas, as printing began in the Spanish colonies at least 100 years before the Bay Psalm Book was made.On November 6, Swann will offer the spectacular Latin Americana Library of Dr. W. Michael Mathes, which includes hundreds of books printed in the Spanish colonies, a selection of important European books on the Spanish colonies and a small group of important early manuscripts. Among the highlights are twenty books printed in the Americas before the Bay Psalm Book: twelve printed in Mexico City from 1556 to 1635; seven printed in Lima, Peru from 1595 to 1636; and one printed in 1612 at the remote missionary outpost of Juli, Peru. Also included are several 16th-century Mexican notarial forms and a 1623 Mexican broadside. ![]() |
Estatutos generales de Barcelona, the first Mexican printing of the regulations
of the Franciscan order, 1585. Estimate $35,000 to $50,000. At auction November 6. |
Some of these are important works and great rarities. Speculum conjugiorem by Alonso de la Veracruz is the first book on marriage printed in the New World, and was produced by Juan Pablos, the first printer in the Americas, in Mexico in 1556. Bartholomé de Ledesma’s De septem novae legis sacramentis summarium, 1566, is a complete first edition of a treatise explaining seven sacraments for use in the Mexican church. A 1585 printing of the regulations for the Franciscan Order, Estatutos generales de Barcelona, features two woodcut illustrations, and the first Spanish-Aymara dictionary, Vocabulario de la lengua Aymara, printed in southeastern Peru in 1612 at a small Jesuit press on the shore of Lake Titicaca, hasn’t been seen at auction since 1981.
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October 25, 2014, 6:56 am
Diego Rivera (1886-1957), the painter who helped establish the Mexico Mural Movement and was a leading figure in Social Realism, was born in Guanajuato in North-Central Mexico. In 1897, Rivera began studying at the oldest art school in Latin America, the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City (now the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes). He stayed until 1907, and then left for Europe to continue his studies. Rivera spent most of the next 14 years abroad, mainly in Paris, where he was deeply involved in the thriving avant-garde art scene. He was immersed in the artistic circle in Montparnasse and was good friends with Modigliani, who painted several portraits of him in 1914.
Despite being away from Mexico, Rivera intently followed the political situation at home. The Mexican Revolution officially ended in 1920, after a decade of bloodshed and political upheaval. The new government, led by Álvaro Obregón, used art as a vehicle to unify society and promote their values of equality. Rivera was recruited for this effort; he was asked by the government to first tour Italy to study Renaissance frescoes (this classical influence is easily detected in his work) and then to return to Mexico as a muralist. The country's Minister of Education commissioned local artists, among them Rivera, to create murals around Mexico City to celebrate the lives of the working class and the indigenous people. Rivera embraced the projects and, as a result of them, quickly gained recognition and prominence as a leading muralist in Mexico.
Simultaneously, Rivera was garnering the attention of the Soviet Union for his outspoken support of Communism. In 1928, while in Russia on an invitation from the government, Rivera met and befriended Alfred J. Barr, future director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This friendship, as well as the admiration and patronage of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, an avid collector of his work and one of the founding members of the museum, helped lead to Rivera's one-man show at MoMA in 1931, an event that brought the artist into the American mainstream. It was the museum's second solo exhibition since its 1929 inception, preceded only by an Henri Matisse show. Rivera created five "portable murals" specifically for the exhibition, completing them in the six weeks between his arrival in the city and the exhibition's opening. The show caused a buzz with the press and was a huge hit with the public, solidifying Rivera's status in the United States. His work was so well received that he completed three additional murals of New York scenes after the show's opening and received numerous additional mural commissions across America (notably the Detroit Industry Murals, 1932-33, for the Ford Motor Company).
Carl Zigrosser, director of the Weyhe Gallery and advocate of modern Mexican art, met the artist while Rivera was in New York for his MoMA show. Zigrosser recognized the artist's rising popularity and encouraged Rivera to embrace lithography as a way to make money and disseminate his art. Imagery used in his murals inspired (and in some cases was replicated in) his prints, such as meditations on his heritage and identity, Mexican history, political strife, and the celebration of the working class. Rivera also made several intimate portraits of his then-wife, Frida Kahlo. The artist created only fourteen prints in his entire career, mainly lithographs published by the Weyhe Gallery, as well as one linoleum cut in the late 1930s in Mexico.
Thanks to Sylvie Francois, of Swann's Prints & Drawings department, for contributing this essay, which appears in full in the catalogue for our October 29 auction of Old Master Through Modern Prints.
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November 3, 2014, 7:56 am
On November 6, Swann will auction The Latin Americana Library of Dr. W. Michael Mathes. The catalogue for the auction begins with a biography of the sale's namesake, written by Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D., an archaeologist and friend of Dr. Mathes. We've included it in full below, as it appears in the printed catalogue.
In Memoriam: W. Michael Mathes
August 15, 1936 – August 13, 2012
Mike Mathes was a brilliant historian, a champion of both Californias, and a grán sabio of the Mexican borderlands. An incredibly productive writer in Spanish and English, Mike was also an inspiring teacher and spirited lecturer.
William Michael Mathes was born in Los Angeles on April 15, 1936, to a family with deep roots in Texas. The name “William” had already been claimed within his family, so W. M. Mathes came to be known from a very early age as Michael, Mike to his friends. Mike grew up in the City of the Angels and at a comparatively young age developed an interest in Mexico. He learned Spanish in order to get around, and began exploring with his family the fascinating country just a few hours away to the south. By the time he was 13, Mike, now going by Miguelsouth of the border, was the proud owner of a war-surplus jeep, and was driving himself down to northern Baja California and beyond every chance he got.
Mike entered Loyola Marymount University in 1954, and graduated as a history major in 1958. His specialization was, of course, Mexico, and his area of interest within Mexico was Baja California. During his undergraduate years, Mike would take off for Mexico and be gone for weeks at a time. He would usually return, flat broke, but happy and content from having explored yet another abandoned mission site, or an out-of-the way archive that had somehow escaped the anti-clerical flames of the Mexican Revolution.
Mathes entered the University of Southern California, and enrolled in the Masters program. At the same time, 1960, Mike expanded his intellectual horizons by going to Spain to work in the civil and ecclesiastical archives most relevant to his ongoing research on Baja California, and Spanish Colonial Alta California. He received his Masters in History from USC in 1962, and took a job as a Librarian at the University of New Mexico shortly afterwards.
In Albuquerque Mike finally was being paid to do what he liked best, archival research and archival organization and expansion, and when not in harness at the library, continued to take off to do fieldwork in Mexico. He also decided that what he really wanted to do was teach on the university level, so he enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of New Mexico while still working there as its best-informed librarian on Spanish Colonial sources both in the New World and the Old. It was while back in Spain yet again that Mike was approached by one of the Jesuit deans of the University of San Francisco, and offered a teaching job in history at that institution provided he could complete his dissertation in time for the new semester. So, in 1966, Mike not only earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico, but moved back to California, this time the Bay Area, so as to begin teaching that subject at USF.
Mike was loved and celebrated by his fellow scholars in Mexico and in Spain, yet never really got the recognition or the appreciation he truly deserved in gringolandia. In the country of his birth, despite his remarkable publication record and solid career as a teacher, he was often the odd man out. Mathes’ intellectual honesty would not permit him to compromise with the academic fad of the moment, and he stuck to his guns no matter how the chips might fall both in historical research and in contemporary politics.
The two honors that meant the most to Mike, and which still inspire awe amongst his friends and colleagues, were his award of the Order of the Aztec Eagle in 1985, the highest honor Mexico can bestow. This is normally reserved for Mexico’s own poets and Presidents, and rarely extended to foreigners, especially norteamericanos. Twenty years later, in 2005, Mike was similarly honored by Spain, with the Order of Isabel la Catolica. This was, again, the highest award offered to Spanish writers, artists, and patriots, seldom if ever given to non-penisulares.
Mike was the best kind of historian, not only completely enamored of his subject, but not confined nor constrained by it either. He knew more about the archaeology of Baja California than most archaeologists, and more about its ethnohistory than most anthropologists. Mathes was instrumental in persuading the Mexican government to establish an INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) office in Baja California, specifically so as to administer the historic archaeology associated with its missions. Baja California being, at the time, the only major portion of the Mexican Republic without INAH representation. Mike loved to talk to his historical counterparts wherever he found them, be they in La Paz, Mexicali, México D.F., or at the Real Academia Española. He also loved to talk to Indians, charros, and licenciados, it made no difference to him who you were provided that a mutual interest in the past was evinced.
Mathes was very generous with his time. He was a conscientious editor and proofreader when he honored you by going over the draft of something you thought might interest him. Some errors, definitely within the category of pet peeves in both speech and writing were certain to set him off: using the term “baja” (an adjective) instead of Baja California would, for example, trigger an historico-political lecture guaranteeing that the compound term would exclusively be used henceforth. Similarly, misuse of the word “Spanish” for the people who came from the Iberian peninsula (“Spanish” is the language that the Spaniards spoke, Mike would invariably insist) would have him gritting his teeth just as much as the incautious use of “South America” to include Mexico by the geographically challenged.
In the early 1990’s, Mike generously donated much of his own library, comprising 45,000 books, manuscripts, and historical documents, which became the core holding at the Colegio de Jalisco, in Zapopan, now accessible to scholarly charros from all over Mexico. The institution has named the library after Mike, the historian who was a librarian long before he became a teacher.
Upon his retirement at the University of San Francisco in 1993, Mike left California for Plainview, Texas. Mike became, if anything, more active than ever in his Mexican research ventures. Besides writing and editing, he also began to lead tours up and down the mission chain of Baja California.
We must be content with what he shared with all of us for so many years. Without his presence and his voice, we are left to treasure his memory, and his amazing contribution to scholarship that will outlive all of us.
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November 4, 2014, 2:26 pm
A highlight in our upcoming auction of Contemporary Art is a leather jacket tagged by various 1980s graffiti artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). These artists frequented the popular four-floor after-hours New York City nightclub Danceteria. Between floors, one of the elevator operators, Joy, invited celebrity guests and artists to tag her jacket. In addition to Basquiat, who was a regular attendee, notable patrons included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. Madonna also performed at Danceteria in her early days.
Basquiat's contributions include female anatomical references: "breast,""ass," etc. Another notable tag is the mirror-image "Serenity Prayer" drawn by fashion designer and artist Stephen Sprouse (1953-2004). Additional inscriptions on the jacket are attributed to the street artists known as Stash and Energy.
Basquiat dove into his short but prolific career as a graffiti artist at the end of his troubled teen years, after dropping out of high school and being banished from his Brooklyn home. He spray painted designs on buildings in lower Manhattan using the tag SAMO and received widespread attention after participating in The Times Square Show in June 1980 and joining the Annina Nosei gallery in SoHo in 1981. Basquiat had a friendship with and was extraordinarily influenced by Andy Warhol during the 1980s. When Warhol died on February 22, 1987, Basquiat's heroin addiction became more acute and he had a fatal overdose at the age of 27.![]()
The jacket may be a relic of the heady days of the 1980s New York City underground art scene, but Basquiat's artwork has endured and entered the mainstream. Auction records for his work are in the tens of millions. He is so ingrained in popular culture that rapper and art collector Jay-Z dressed as Basquiat for Halloween this year. The hip-hop artist's interest in Basquiat is well known--he spent $4.5 million on a Basquiat painting last year--and he's not alone, as retail giant Uniqlo, through a partnership with MoMA, sells apparel emblazoned with Basquiat designs.
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November 6, 2014, 11:17 am
In our November 25 auction, we are offering an archive of a young woman on a tour of the Mayan ruins. She was Elizabeth T. Miller (1911-1985) of Baltimore, a commercial artist visiting Guatemala and Mexico in 1940. The lot includes her diary, eight large photo albums, several articles she wrote about the trip, and four reels of 16-millimeter film shot which were probably shot by her cousin and traveling companion, archaeologist Benjamin Kurtz.
We can't screen the video during the preview at Swann, but thought this digital transfer file might be of interest. It opens with Miller and her traveling companions scaling Chichen Itza, and also shows them attempting to drive a battered Ford through the jungle (15:51 to 17:10), a visit to Mexico City, a bullfight at the 29-minute mark, and more.
While there is no sound, the vivid colors and smiling faces of the young American adventurers capture the imagination and transport the viewer to a not-too-distant time when the world was very different, but the excitement of discovery held no less weight.
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November 12, 2014, 8:37 am
Examples of Fluxus artwork appear in many of our auctions, and demand seems to be on the rise for works by the group, which was active from the early 1960s through the late 1970s. There have been recent shows at MoMA and NYU's Grey Art Gallery featuring the avant-garde, multimedia artistic movement that was founded by Lithuanian-born George Maciunas (1931-1978) and had ideological ties to Dadaism.
Fluxus utilized a myriad of media, including performance art, music, found material, ephemera and poetry, with the idea of making art accessible while also negating its highfalutin' elitist status. Fluxus artists combined art with the everyday experience, to the point that anything had the potential to be art, and anyone was able to understand, interact with and experience it. The use of ephemeral objects emphasized the fleeting nature of existence (the flux) that Fluxus artists aimed to capture and celebrate.
A highlight in today's auction of Contemporary Art is a collection of 11 Fluxkits, each contained in its own plastic case. They include Flux Napkins, Games and Puzzles and a Flux Suicide Kit.
A different lot of fluxkits, this one containing seven, sold at a May 13, 2014 auction for $15,625. The set had once been in the collection of avant-garde filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek.
Our Art & Illustrated Books auctions also feature Fluxus material, such as Jonas Mekas's Reminiscensijos (Reminiscences), designed by Maciunas, with photographic plates, printed verse in Lithuanian and a thick wood cover stenciled with the edition number, $1,440 and Maciunas's Apron. Stomach Anatomy and Apron. Venus de Milo, screenprinted vinyl with grommets, $360 each.
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