The Master, Judd Tully, has this interesting nugget in his Art + Auction story wrapping up the Art Capital-Annie Leibovitz saga. Leibovitz still has to raise cash to settle her debts. So her new/old gallery has come up with a new version of an older plan:

Danziger says he intends to print a Master Set of 150 of the photographer’s most famous images in three different sizes and sell them in an edition of 10, to be released incrementally. “Annie is very interested” in another project for commissioned portraits, he adds. “We’re planning to take her work to Art Basel in Miami in December and are planning a show at the Chelsea gallery in early 2010.”

Picture Imperfect (ArtInfo.com)

New York Magazine‘s Andrew Goldman has a long story on Annie Leibovitz’s career and money management troubles. Aside from portraying her as a distracted, obsessive perfectionist, he also shows that the photographer remained decidedly conflicted about using her photographs to earn additional cash. At the prompting of Susan Sontag, she left James Danziger as her gallery and spent a decade with Edwynn Houk. Goldman says that was because Houk handled the estates of legendary photographers and Sontag had artistic ambitions for Leibovitz. Leibovitz, however, had trouble following through. And worse was to come with Phillips de Pury:

Neither did Leibovitz behave as if the money to be earned in the fine-art market was worth the effort. Edwynn Houk, her gallerist until last year, had no trouble selling her images. Leibovitz, however, could never get around to signing the prints. A buyer might have paid in full but still not get his picture for two years. “Nothing seems easier to me,” Houk says of the stack of photos perpetually collecting dust in her studio. “It’s a mystery why it took so long.” It was a complaint Houk was unable to register with Leibovitz directly because of her habit of postponing their scheduled calls. “Our record was sixteen months,” he says with a sigh.[…]Continue Reading