LONDON.- Phillips announced highlights ahead of the London Photographs auction on 22 November. Comprising 139 lots, the sale is led by Richard Avedon’s career-defining work The Beatles Portfolio of 1967. Opening the sale is the single-owner offering A View from the Garden: Photographs from a Private Cotswolds Collection, featuring works by 20th-century masters Peter Hujar, Imogen Cunningham, and Robert Mapplethorpe, among others. This season’s ULTIMATE showcases sold-out works by Zhang Huan, Sohei Nishino and Bastiaan Woudt as well as works by auction newcomers Prince Gyasi, Ilona Langbroek, Alice Mann, Susan Gamble, and Jeremy Cowart. Other sale highlights include works by Man Ray, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Helmut Newton, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Nick Brandt. Closing the sale is ULTIMATE ELLEN VON UNWERTH, a selection of 20 Polaroids premiering at Phillips. The auction is online now with highlights on view in Phillips Paris gallery from 7-11 November and a public preview in Phillips London galleries on Berkeley Square from 16-22 November until the live auction on 22 November at 2pm.
Yuka Yamaji, Head of Photographs, Europe, and Rachel Peart, Head of Department, London, said, “We are delighted to present our November auction, which features our top lot The Beatles Portfolio – legendary photographer Richard Avedon’s generation-defining portraits of 20th century’s most iconic band as well as the single-owner offering A View from the Garden: Photographs from a Private Cotswolds Collection, including two exceptional works by Peter Hujar. The 16th edition of ULTIMATE presents collectors with a curated selection of exclusive works available for sale only at Phillips and introduces two new mediums to Phillips Photographs – a hologram and an NFT – both by artists debuting at auction. We look forward to welcoming visitors to view the sale in person in our Paris and London galleries this November.”
Leading the sale is Richard Avedon’s celebrated portrait portfolio of The Beatles, which has remained in a private collection for over 20 years. Issued in small edition of 6 plus 3 artist’s proofs and rendered in the intensely saturated colours of the dye-transfer process, Avedon’s portraits of The Beatles leverage the photographer’s unfailing eye for the cultural moment and capture the genre-defying impact of four of the 20th century’s most significant musicians. Avedon’s The Beatles Portfolio, first published in Look magazine in January 1968, is as much a collective portrait of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as it is of the decade in which it was made. The musicians and the photographer were at the height of their careers when they came together in a penthouse studio in Thompson House, London, in August of 1967, to make these images, and the resulting portraits represent a collaboration of visionary proportions.
Also featured in the sale are Richard Avedon’s iconic photographs of Audrey Hepburn and Nastassja Kinski as well as works from Nick Brandt and Wolfgang Tillmans Included in ULTIMATE this November is Zhang Huan’s Family Tree, which was produced in 2000, after Zhang’s move to New York, and presents an intimate exploration of culture and selfhood. The writing on his face includes Chinese proverbs, family relations and histories, literary texts and words deriving from the ancient practice of physiognomy. Gradually obscuring Zhang’s discernible features, the calligraphy shifts from legibility into an obliterating mask. Using the camera to record the evolution of this ephemeral performance, the artist delves into the correlation between his natural and constructed self. The nine photographs of Family Tree together transform viewers into participants, inviting them not only to engage with Zhang’s performance, but also to reflect upon their own intrinsic and constructed identities.
Bastiaan Woudt’s 2020 Rhythm comes to auction this November through ULTIMATE. In this monumental, monochromatic work, Woudt highlights the essential elements of his subject’s silhouette, obscuring part of her face with a large, flat circle, against a plain background. Rhythm encapsulates the self- taught photographer’s bold yet elegant aesthetic, developed through experimentations in both in-camera and post-production techniques. Drawing inspiration from black-and-white photographs by 20th century masters Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Woudt aims to capture the essence of analogue photography through digital means. This striking image graces the cover of his 2021 monograph, also titled Rhythm, and was featured in his first solo museum exhibition, Twist, at Bergen’s Museum Kranenburgh.
A highlight of the sale is the single-owner offering A View from the Garden: Photographs from a Private Cotswolds Collection. Featuring over 30 works, this selection showcases an array of established masters such as
Peter Hujar, Imogen Cunningham, Diane Arbus, and Robert Mapplethorpe as well as contemporary talents such as Joel Sternfeld, Vik Muniz, and Robert Polidori. This collection effortlessly balances strong examples of portraiture, still life and landscape with abstraction and conceptual art to capture the breadth the medium has to offer.
In addition to the live auction on 22 November, a dedicated online-only sale will open for bidding from 16 to 23 November. A Classic Vision: Photographs from A Private European Collection will feature over 50 classic photographs from 20th century masters, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, Elliott Erwitt, and Garry Winogrand.
