There may be important lessons to be learned from this

season's New York photo sales.

At the Sotheby's Photographs Part I sale held on April 7th,

only 49% of the works offered found buyers, (although the second

day's stronger performance brought the average up to 65%). As

eight of the ten top lots were bought by dealers, this may be a

signal to the trade that prices are now low enough to permit

dealers to buy stock for their inventories. As one was heard to

comment at the sale, "Today, I'm just bidding for merchandise, not

for love".

At the parallel sale held at Christie's on April 5th and 6th,

dealers also featured prominently, with six of the top ten lots

selling to the trade. The buyers were evidently just as selective

as they were at Sotheby's, as again, more than one-third of the

items failed to meet their reserves. As a result, it is possible

that the experts at both galleries will recommend lower reserves

next season, and this could yield more opportunities for bargain

hunters.

Perhaps surprisingly, there were a certain few works which

appeared this spring for which the estimates were inadequate.

"Everybody wants what's on the cover of the catalogue,"

prophetically proclaimed the man to my right before the start of

the Sotheby's evening sale. The piece to which he was referring

was Rudolf Koppitz's Bewegungsstudie (Study of Movement), which

had been expected to fetch $30,000-50,000. When it was ultimately

put on the block, it almost quadrupled the low end of the estimate

to bring $112,500 and claim top honors for the entire sale.

The number three lot in the sale, an image of Dorothea Lange's

White Angel Breadline, San Francisco which fetched $75,100, set a

record for the artist, and, as well, provided the novel spectacle

of a bow-tied boy bidding tens-of-thousands of dollars. Evidently

with the blessing of his father, a New York dealer, he also bid

$40,250 for Alexander Rodchenko's Lilja Brik. Fifth grade show-

and-tell may never be the same.

There was one work, however, which the experts must surely

have wished had been sold. Perhaps anticipating a slow night, the

auctioneer announced that she would postpone bidding on lot #13,

Alfred Stieglitz's Georgia O'Keeffe, (est.: $75,000-90,000) until

a particular bidder could be reached on his cellular phone. The

audience actually booed, and, perhaps in an act of collective

vengeance, refused to bid the work past its reserve when it was

finally offered later in the sale.

At Christie's, the grand total of all the lots sold was

somewhat higher than that at Sotheby's, $2,567,902 versus

$2,311,450. Five pieces managed to pass the $100,000 mark, with

the top lot, a complete set of the 2,257 hand-pulled photogravures

comprising Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian, selling

to a Midwestern dealer for $464,500.

One work which had clearly not been expected to earn top-five

status was Baron Adolphe de Meyer's For Elizabeth Arden; estimated

to bring only $20,000-25,000, it sold to an anonymous bidder for

$140,000 and set a record for the artist. (Incidentally, it was

the lot depicted on the cover of the catalogue.) The photo was one

of approximately 20 consigned from the collection of Thomas

Walther, five of which placed in the top ten.

One of the other pieces which fetched more than $100,000 was

noteworthy in that it set a record, albeit a less substantial one.

An untitled "rayograph", which Man Ray created by placing a

drinking glass, straight pin, and other objects on photo-sensitized

paper, set a "rayograph record" when it sold to a European dealer

for $156,500, nearly double the low end of its estimate ($90,000-

120,000). This is not entirely surprising considering the success

of the sale of 594 works by the artist held at Sotheby's, London

just two weeks earlier.

Two of the lessons for next season?

Should you wish to a consignor be,

the cover is a necessity,

or should you wish to bid next fall,

be certain you can make that call.

May, 1995