Marilyn Monroe: Still Captivating 50 Years After Her Death

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, whose relationship with the camera is legendary, their pairing indelible. One of the most photographed icons of the 20th century, images of Monroe both reveal her vulnerabilities and display with alluring sensuality the glamorous bombshell persona that defined her career. Monroe is said to have both understood perfectly how to manipulate the camera’s snap to her own advantage, and how to operate a camera herself. Today her soft gaze remains piercing, compelling, and always a little bit enigmatic.

Weegee's lighthearted image of Marilyn last sold at
Swann in February 2012 for $12,000. 

Swann regularly offers iconic images of Marilyn Monroe as well as images less frequently seen. A suite of four distortions by the charming and gritty New York photographer Weegee emphasizes Monroe’s playful side. Here Monroe mugs for the camera, a celebrity caught in a lighthearted moment in the crowd.

This poignant image by Eve Arnold brought $5,520 in April 2012.
Another print will be offered in our October 4 sale.

Contrastingly, Eve Arnold’s photograph of Monroe on the set of “The Misfits” depicts a young woman lost in thought and standing alone against a stark, wide landscape. The image is personal, aching, and implicitly compares the starlet to the fierce, sweeping, bold American landscape.

Bert Stern's Marilyn (Crucifix II) sold for $24,000 in 2009.

The most iconic (and the most frequently seen at auction) images of Monroe are those taken at Bert Stern’s session with the actress just six weeks before her death, in series later titled “The Last Sitting.”  Stern gave Monroe the contact sheets for the film he shot; she returned it with her own red grease pencil editing marks. Later Stern enlarged these images, creating mural-sized photographic prints of Monroe with a crucifix-like red cross over her body. They are beautiful and haunting, reminding the viewer of Monroe’s own insecurities and her unforgettable beauty.

In Swann’s upcoming auction of Photographs, we will offer a different mural-sized image of Monroe, by Edward Clark. This time she is carefully coiffed, posing in the manicured style of Grace Kelly. It’s Marilyn before she was Marilyn, stunningly set against a dramatic black background. The least expected of the images we know of her, it adds another side to the prism that is the Marilyn Monroe we still adore and admire.  

So, what did you do this summer?

While the art world in New York vacations in the summertime, Swann's specialists are busy — but having fun. Nicho Lowry, Daile Kaplan and Todd Weyman are all traveling with The Antiques Roadshow, and recently made a stop in Seattle to look for hidden treasures in their areas of expertise (posters, photographs and prints, respectively). Check out this fun "Appraise it Yourself" game featuring Nicho on the Roadshow website.

The gang's all there: Daile & Nicho in this snapshot from the road, taken by Todd!

Meanwhile, Nigel Freeman, director of Swann's African-American Fine Art department, was appointed to the advisory board of Hampton University's Museum. The Hampton University Museum is the oldest African American museum in the United States, and features over 9,000 objects, inculding the largest existing collection of works in any museum by Elizabeth Catlett and Jacob Lawrence, among other artists.

The stunning interior of the Hampton University's Museum.

Finally, a friend of Swann is celebrating the release of her book! Jennifer L. Anderson's Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America will be released this September. The book, published by the Harvard University Press, is a history of the desirable furniture making-material and the economic strife that followed its fashionable status in early American culture. Jennifer was recently interview by the New York Time's Eve Kahn.

Jennifer's book will be released this September.

The Trumpet Newsletter Fall/Winter 2012

The next issue of Swann's newsletter The Trumpet will be in mailboxes very soon. The colorful, large-format piece filled with dazzling highlights from the upcoming auction season will also be available via email. If you'd like to receive this and future issues electronically--and help us save paper--please send an email to enewsletter@swanngalleries.com.

Check out this video of The Trumpet on press at our printer:

What's New? Old Master Drawings.

Guido Reni, The head of a woman looking left.

Swann is pleased to announce that we will be reinstating our Old Master Drawings auction this January to coincide with Master Drawings week in New York. The sale, which will be held on January 24, will offer fine drawings by artists who worked in Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries. For inquiries, please contact fine art specialist Todd Weyman at 212-254-4710, ext. 32 or tweyman@swanngalleries.com

An American Masterpiece: Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian

On October 4, Swann will offer a complete set of Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian in our auction of Fine Photographs & Photobooks.

Consigned by well-known bookman John King, this complete set of 20 folios on Japan tissue (featuring 722 large-format photogravures), and 20 text volumes (with more than 1500 small-format photogravures on vellum) is ink numbered 113/500, and appears to be the only version containing a treasure trove of 111 large-format photogravures signed by Curtis. To view all of the plates, click here.

Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) was a 20-century American artist and photographer known for his images of Native-American tribes west of the Mississippi. Complete with 20 folios and 20 text volumes, The North American Indian is one of the most stunning and ambitious photographically illustrated books ever produced.

Documenting the “vanishing race” of Native Americans, Curtis anticipated the project would take 15 years to complete. This legendary project was initially endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, who introduced Curtis to his first patron J.P. Morgan, the legendary bibliophile and financier. Morgan directed Curtis to make “the handsomest ever produced." He advanced Curtis $75,000 for five years, after which his son invested an additional $300,000 to facilitate its production.

Detroit native John King has been a book seller for more than four decades. “This set, which contains splendid rare photographic folio plates, many with Curtis’ signature and accompanying handsome text volumes, parallels the importance of the original Audubon,” King said, “and deserves to be shared with collectors who can appreciate its scarcity, artistry and the recording of a great peoples.”

Wednesday's Top Lots: Vintage Posters

Wednesday's Vintage Posters sale brought nearly half a million dollars, and was Swann's highest grossing August poster auction ever. The sale set numerous auction records, including Fred Spear's Enlist, 1915. Spear's poignant and memorable design brought $22,800, a record not only for the poster, but for the artist as well. It was the day's top lot.

Fred Spear, Enlist, New York, 1915. 

Always a classic, James Montgomery Flagg's I Want You, 1917, sold for $13,200 with buyer's premium, breaking the previous auction record for this poster, also set by Swann.

James Montgomery Flagg, I Want You for U.S. Army, New York, 1917. 

There were also surprises among the top lots. An anti-Bolshevik poster, Wolnosc Bolszewicka, which depicts Trotsky as a devil seated on a pile of skulls, earned $13,200, more than 10 times the estimate. The designer, who made the poster in Poland during the Polish-Soviet War, is unknown.

Wolnosc Bolszewicka, designer unknown, Warsaw, 1920.