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| Passion Investments: Art |
Exposed to Brilliance
Cay Sophie Rabinowitz
08/01/2005
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Ruff’s work is most reminiscent of the Bechers’ somber monotony. As
a student, Ruff made color portraits of his friends and fellow students, each
framed like a passport photo, against a plain background. These enigmatic
portraits resolutely refuse to provide any insights into the psychology of the
sitters, who wear unremarkable clothes, with a neutral expression. Likewise,
Ruff’s precisely detailed pictures of ordinary interiors and buildings offer few
signs of human life.
 |  | | THOMAS RUFF'S Porträt (T. Stricker) and Porträt (A. Ruff) refuse to
show insight into human life. (Photography courtesy of David Zwirner, New York.) |
Though Gursky remains committed to the camera as a
device to create truth, his scientific series, which does not involve
portraiture, often requires extensive post-production techniques such as color
enhancement or digital manipulation. Gursky is oriented to social settings:
industry (high-tech production in Rotterdam); finance (the Shanghai Bank);
visual culture (Turners at the Tate Museum in London); leisure (rock concerts,
soccer). In a work titled Schiphol, which shows a large window overlooking
Amsterdam airport’s runway, Gursky’s lens functions as an all-seeing eye to
demonstrate how these settings structure, support and organize society. In 2001
the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted Gursky’s first U.S. retrospective,
where his impossibly vast, all-encompassing, bird’s-eye views seemed
omnipotent.
When Lisa Spellman, owner of New York’s 303 Gallery, introduced
Gursky and Ruff to the New York market in the early 1990s, their work commanded
about $2,000 for a single photograph. By the late 1990s, their works fetched
$10,000 to $20,000. New York dealer Sara Meltzer remembers when spending $28,000
on a Struth was an astronomical sum. She adds, “There was much discussion about
whether something produced as an edition could hold its value.” Now, with prints
selling for $150,000 to $300,000, these artists, their dealers and collectors
have made contemporary photography a highly competitive market. Many serious
collectors who concentrated on German photography in the early days are no
longer as interested now that prices are inflated. But Meltzer also admits that
they never expected the turnover to be so great.
In November 2001, Christie’s
set an auction record for Gursky when an immense panorama of a Parisian
apartment block, Paris, Montparnasse, sold for $600,000 to Korean art advisor
June Lee. In February 2002, Lee paid $619,000 for Untitled V, a veritable
still-life of shoes on display. Since then prices have fallen. “They were crazy,
and the market has peaked out,” explains Gerard Goodrow, Christie’s director of
Contemporary Art. “The Montparnasse image did so well because it was the only
one available; the others are in museums.”
At the November 2004 Phillips de
Pury sale, two Gursky works performed impressively. Athens (diptych) sold for
$299,200 and Union Rave for $232,000. Struth’s Kunsthistorisches Museum III,
Wien and Stanze di Raffaello II, Roma sold for $136,800 and $153,600,
respectively. Even considering the ebbs and flows of the art market, a collector
who would have stumbled upon one of these works 10 years ago could boast an
investment that far outpaces the S&P 500. In 1995, one of Struth’s most
sought-after images, Galleria dell’Accademia, sold for $14,000 at Christie’s.
Two years ago, another print of the same image sold for a triple-estimate
$342,000 at Sotheby’s.
Cay Sophie Rabinowitz is senior U.S. editor of Parkett, an international
contemporary art publication.
Additional Information
 A Collector's Advisory.
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