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WALKER EVANS (American, 1903-1975) BIRCH TREES signed and dated "Walker Evans 1929" in pencil on mou
Currency:USD
Category:Everything Else / Other
Start Price:NA
Estimated At:80,000.00 - 120,000.00 USD
NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2002 Apr 15 @ 16:00UTC-08:00 : PST/AKDT
WALKER EVANS (American, 1903-1975) BIRCH TREES signed and dated "Walker Evans 1929" in pencil on mount vintage gelatin silver print mounted on board 715/16 x 53/4 in. (20.2 x 14.3 cm) 1929 ESTIMATE: $80,000-120,000 PROVENANCE Phillips NEW YORK, Sale Number 661, May 5, 1987, Lot 180 Private Collection, New York In 1929, Walker Evans was living in Brooklyn Heights and moonlighting on Wall Street in order to support his serious daytime pursuit of photography. Influenced by the work of Eugene Atget, he would wander from his apartment in Brooklyn Heights along the waterfront (Keller, Judith WALKER EVANS, Los Angeles, 1995, p.4). It is perhaps one of these daytime outings that resulted in BIRCH TREEs 1929. In early 1931, Walter Knowlton, critiquing an exhibition by Evans, Ralph Steiner and Margaret Bourke-White at the John Becker Gallery, sized up Evans as a formalist (Keller, p.6): "Walker Evans is a patternist....Often he is precious; occasionally he is exceptionally poetic....Mostly he sees nature not socially but pictorially; as an assemblage of lights, lines and forms to be caught in an interesting arrangement" (Walter Knowlton, "Around the Galleries," CREATIVE ART, May 1931 pp.375-76). Evans' photographs of nature, devoid of human presence, are exceptionally rare. In this early photograph of a birch tree, we are given a glimpse of Evans' methodology that would later place him among the most influential photographers in the history of art. As John Szarkowski said "He thought photography as a way of preserving segments out of time itself, without regard for the conventional structures of picture building. Nothing was to be imposed on experience; the truth was to be discovered, not constructed" (John Szarkowski, WALKER EVANS New York, 1971). Made with a 21/2 x 41/4 inch roll film camera this may be the only enlargement extant. The negative is in the Walker Evans archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Tuesday April 9, 2002 10:00am to 5:00pm; Wednesday April 10, 2002 10:00am to 5:00pm; Thursday April 11, 2002 10:00am to 5:00pm; Friday April 12, 2002 10:00am to 5:00pm; Saturday April 13, 2002 10:00am to 5:00pm; Sunday April 14, 2002 1:00pm to 5:00pm
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