The Arbus Traveling Circus

Diane Arbus may be dead, but she’s having a moment. A major retrospective — the first in New York in three decades — is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nicole Kidman has reportedly signed on to play the photographer in an upcoming movie. And the upcoming photograph auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips de Pury & Company include several Arbus images and artifacts, timed to benefit from the recent attention paid to her life, legend, and art.Arbus may be only the second female photographer granted a onewoman show at the Met (the first was Helen Levitt), but her fame has already transcended art-history books. Like Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo, whose lives were as original and compelling as the magnificent relics they left behind, Ms. Arbus’s fame transcends the art world. A legend has sprung up around her image: low-slung black leather pants, jagged rock star hair, fearless photography, and a penchant for the perverse. The fact that she killed herself in 1971 has only sealed her repute.Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips de Pury & Company have all assembled larger-than-usual Arbus offerings for next week’s sales. Auction previews begin today at Christie’s and Phillips and tomorrow at Sotheby’s. Collectors cashing in on museum connections is nothing new. But among the Arbus lots are a couple of intensely personal items up for sale, including a painting made by a lovestruck teenage Arbus. These make the auctions especially intriguing.The works show various facets of her art, and prices range from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand. “The market for Arbus has been steadily climbing over the years,” said the head of Sotheby’s photographs department, Denise Bethel. “But the museum shows have definitely given it a huge boost.”In fall 2003, just before the Met exhibition opened at its first venue, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, prices at auction and in galleries for Arbus’s works leaped. Sale prices for certain prints doubled their estimates, while a portfolio of 10 prints sold at Phillips de Pury & Company (est. $90,000–$120,000) to dealer Larry Gagosian for $405,500.In February, 2004, San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery, which represents the Arbus estate, lined its booth at the Art Show with Arbuses, the first time the dealer had shown work from just one artist at the fair.Prices went even higher during the April 2004 auctions. By this time, the Arbus show had left San Francisco and traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, leaving hungry collectors in its wake. At Sotheby’s an American private collector paid $478,400 for Ms. Arbus’s famed 1967 “Identical Twins, (Cathleen and Colleen) Roselle, N.J.” setting a record for a work sold by the artist at auction.By October, even more major Arbuses suddenly appeared at auction. “Eddie Carmel, Jewish Giant With His Parents in the Living Room of their Home, Bronx, NY” — a portrait of an 8-foot mutual-fund salesman whom Ms. Arbus photographed for 10 years before landing her famous image — went for $388,800.Next week Sotheby’s will offer 10 lots connected to Ms. Arbus. The most expensive lot is expected to be a copy of Ms. Arbus’s literally titled “A Box of Ten Photographs,” a boxed set of some of her greatest images, dating from 1963–1970. Ms. Arbus planned to make 50 editions of her portfolio, but only completed around 11 before her death in 1971. The rest were printed after she died. Richard Avedon and Jasper Johns were among the first to each buy a set. The lot is estimated at $250,000–$350,000.Other lots include images of a topless dancer, a tattooed man from a carnival, and a waitress at a New Jersey nudist camp, who wears an apron and not much else. Along with the famously bleak and stirring prints are more personal items, including the only known painting by Ms. Arbus.”The Angel Gabriel,” a somber portrait by the 15-year-old Diane Nemerov, when she was a Park Avenue teenager tucked away for the summer at an art school in the Berkshires, where she spent pined for her love, Allan Arbus. The two married in 1941 and divorced in 1969.The slight, ghoulish creature in the painting seems to resemble an extraterrestrial but is in fact her future husband. Diane gave the painting to her closest friend at the artist colony, 19-year-old Alex Eliot, who called Diane his first love. Sixty-seven years later, Mr. Eliot is selling the painting at auction, at Sotheby’s, with a $20,000–$30,000 estimate.“It’s a very loving and tender evocation of her man’s spirit, in my view, and it relates to Egyptian art,” said Mr. Eliot by phone from his home in Venice, Calif. Diane and Allan favored the Egyptian art galleries at the Met, according to Mr. Eliot. “It’s as if she was visualizing this truly wonderful man, and was seeing him, as, so to speak — and this is from me, not from her — she’s visualizing him as a reincarnation,” he said.Mr. Eliot remained friends with Ms. Arbus for many years, and kept the painting stored in a portfolio folder. He went on to write 18 books and work as art editor for Time Magazine from 1945–1960. He and his wife are also selling a small 1944 nude study of 21-year-old Diane by her husband Allan, expected to sell for $10,000–$15,000.Christie’s has lined up eight Arbus lots, including a diminutive version of “Identical Twins” — actually a postcard Arbus printed, signed, and mailed to Barabara Gluck, an art director at a New York advertising agency. The card invited Ms. Gluck to see a 1967 group show at the Museum of Modern Art, which included 30 works by Ms. Arbus. “Dear Barbara, Please do go across the street and see the show,” wrote Ms. Arbus. “It looks beautiful I think and I want you to see, Diane.” The estimate is $40,000–$60,000.The top Arbus lot is the “Child With a Toy Hand Grenade, Central Park, N.Y.C., 1962” of a thin, blond boy grimacing, clenching his fingers, and clutching a hand grenade, which is labeled a toy but looks as real as can be. His knees are scarred and dirty, and one strap on his jumper has fallen down. The 1962 print was a gift to Ms. Arbus’s friend, the artist Patricia Hill, who is the seller. It is one of six known versions of the print, and the only one signed on the front, which accounts for the $300,000–$400,000 estimate.Mr. Eliot says the popular image of Arbus is still only part of the picture. “She was very funny, very tender, and she was a marvelous godmother to my eldest daughter, so warm, so witty, and so fun, and so full of enjoyment,” said Mr. Eliot. “And this side of her, of course is not known, it hasn’t been written about much.” In the market, too, it appears, collectors are just getting to know her.“The Arbus market in general has steadily grown and matured and has reached a point,” said Christie’s head of photography, Joshua Holdeman. “But I still feel it doesn’t correlate to her importance in art history.”Photographs at Christie’s April 26 at 10 a.m. & 2 p.m. (20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-492-5485). Photographs at Sotheby’s April 27 at 10:15 a.m. & 2:15 p.m. (1334 York Avenue, at 71st Street, 212-606-7000). Photographs at Phillips de Pury & Co. April 27 at 7 p.m. and April 28 at 10 a.m. & 2 p.m. (450 W. 15 Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, 212-940-1200).

The Arbus Traveling Circus

The Arbus Traveling Circus

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