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Photography - the new painting? By Gerry Badger, from Ag25 |
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Gerry Badger charts the rise of the photograph in the auction rooms In the past year or so, it has become commonplace for art critics to refer to photography as the ‘new painting’. They imply two things by this fashionably glib, half-ironic sobriquet. Firstly, they are stating that for most contemporary artists, painting has become a secondary activity, that many more would-be movers and shakers in the art world are utilising photography (movie as well as still) rather than painting. Indeed, the most powerful patrons of the new art - the museum and the boardroom - seem to be acquiring photographs wholesale. A prime example is the Saatchi Collection, where two out of three shows seem largely photographic. Where once the walls of corporate headquarters were hung with paintings or examples of the traditional printmaker’s art, nowadays they are lined with large C-type colour prints. Secondly, by calling photography the new painting, commentators are acknowledging a startling sea change in the art market. Three or four decades ago, some corporations began collecting photography instead of painting because prices of the latter had risen to prohibitive levels. The prices of the top painters led those of photographers by a factor of at least 50, and by a 100 or more in some cases. A Gustave le Gray or Edward Weston could be bought for £2,000, against an average Picasso for £200,000 at the very least. This is no longer the case. Prices for classic photography rose rapidly during the 1990s, reaching a climax at Sothebys Bond Street on 27 October, 1999. The renowned French collector, André Jammes, was selling off part of his collection, which meant not simply undisputed masterpieces of early French and English photography, but the actual prints reproduced over and again in photographic history books - as the assembled gathering of curators, collectors and dealers knew only too well. >> Next page |
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