Art Market Monitor

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Man Ray Makes a $3m Record in Paris

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Man Ray’s photograph Noir et Blanche, 1926 sold for nearly twice the high estimate today breaking through the $3m barrier.

Christie’s France is pleased with the total realised for Thomas Koerfer’s private collection of photographs with €3,782,500/£3,328,600/$4,387,700. The highly anticipated masterpiece by Man Ray was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder after a long bidding battle between 4 clients on the phone and 3 clients present in the room. This photograph, formerly in the collection of Jacques Doucet, portraying Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray’s muse and lover of was sold €2,688,750/$3,120,658, establishing a new auction record for a photograph by Man Ray,for any photograph sold in France and established a new world auction record for any classic photograph

Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (€1-1.5m) Offered at Christie’s France in November

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After a long torpor, the photography market has suddenly become a hotbed of activity. Into this building interest, Christie’s brings Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche estimated at €1m-1.5m. The well-known image of Kiki de Montparnasse was first published in the Paris edition of Vogue in 1926:

Christie’s France is pleased to announce that it will offer “Stripped Bare: Photographs from the Thomas Koerfer Collection,” comprising 73 lots and led by the emblematic Man Ray masterpiece, Noire et Blanche, formerly in the collection of Jacques Doucet, on November 9, while collectors are gathered for the Paris Photo Fair.

Thomas Koerfer is a highly-regarded film director, writer as well as producer, whose films include TheDeath of the Flea Circus Director, Henry’s Romance, The Passionate and Embers. From childhood Koerfer was surrounded by the art collection of his parents and in 1992 he established his own collection by concentrating on modern and contemporary photography, and some years later he added paintings and sculptures from the same era. The entire collection focuses on the body and human form as well as the various aspects of sensuality and sexuality and represents the most comprehensive and nuanced group of works on this theme. Ten years after starting to collect photography, Thomas Koerfer was elected President of the Board of the Foundation of the Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2002 and also became a member of the board of the Kunsthalle Zurich, a position he held for ten years. His collection was exhibited in 2007 at CO Berlin, followed by a show at the Kunsthaus Zurich in 2015.

Man Ray Estate Plays Chicken with Getty in WSJ

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The Man Ray estate wants out. The executor, Eric Browner, is 86 years old and the heirs would like to see some cash in their pockets. The problem is that the estate was valued at $20m half a decade ago, before the art market turned its remorseless gaze fully on Surrealism. The Wall Street Journal sums it up:

Today, Mr. Browner manages 15,000 copyrights for the artist and oversees licensing contracts worth roughly $300,000 a year—from Mandarin Hotel headboards embroidered with Man Ray’s images to Zara’s taupe-colored Man Ray shirts. The trust’s proceeds are split among a dozen heirs.

Mr. Browner said he’s been feeling family pressure lately to sell the archive before he dies. He has had discussions with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington; both museums said they demurred […] Last month, a few curators from the Getty Research Institute came out to the trust, said Marcia Reed, the institute’s curator and head of collection development. Ms. Reed said she is “very interested” in the artist, but her team hasn’t yet presented its findings to the Getty board. […]

The trust’s decision to sell Man Ray’s studio contents has already irked some in the art establishment. Mr. Baum, the Surrealist dealer, dismissed Mr. Browner’s target price as “crazy,” given that “it’s the residue of an archive,” whose top works were cherry-picked years ago by auction houses. Other dealers who have looked through the archive peg its value closer to $6 million. The Browners stand by the appraisal.

Merry Foresta, an independent curator who worked on a 1988 Man Ray retrospective at the Smithsonian, said she worries the trust will be tempted to break up the archive and sell off its parts if they can’t eventually get their asking price. “The archive’s value for researchers hinges on it staying together,” she said.

The Surreal Selling of Man Ray (Wall Street Journal)

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