Man Ray’s Photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse Sells for Record $12.4 M. – RisePEI
Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), a famed {photograph} depicting a nude lady’s again overlaid with a violin’s f-holes, bought for $12.4 million Saturday —setting a report as the costliest {photograph} ever to be bought at public sale.
The sale got here after a drawn-out bidding interval that lasted practically 10 minutes throughout Christie’s New York’s public sale devoted to Surrealist artwork.
Led by auctioneer Adrien Meyer, two bidders on the cellphone with Christie’s New York and Paris-based pictures specialists Darius Himes and Elodie Morel sparred for the classic version. Finally, after bids climbed to unexpected heights, the uncommon print hammered at a worth of $10.5 million to applause, going to Himes’s bidder and properly outpacing its $7 million excessive estimate.
The print of the enduring Man Ray {photograph}, which depicts his muse Kiki de Montparnasse, is a uncommon one in that it’s thought of an authentic photographic copy. It was made across the time its corresponding destructive was first produced, making it worthwhile within the eyes of pictures consultants.
The outcome surpassed the earlier public sale report for {a photograph} by an element of thrice — set in 2011 when Andreas Gursky’s 1999 panorama Rhein II bought at Christie’s for $4.3 million. The sale additionally shattered the earlier report for {a photograph} by Man Ray, which was set in 2017 when an authentic version of Noire et Blanche (1926) bought for $3 million throughout a Christie’s sale in Paris.
Forward of the sale, Himes, Christie’s worldwide pictures specialist known as the work “unprecedented within the market.”
The {photograph} is the highest lot to be supplied from the holdings of New York collectors Rosalind Gersten Jacobs and Melvin Jacobs, trend retailers who had deep ties to Surrealist circles. The Jacobs purchased Le Violon d’Ingres instantly from Man Ray in 1962 and have held on to it ever since. Gersten Jacobs, a longtime Macy’s govt, died in 2019 on the age of 94.
