These Photographers Have Made Big Money From Their Art
Art is subjective — but the monetary values these pictures have gained is not.
I recently started a new job, and while I do have a lot of New Job Things to do, I also have a fair bit of downtime. One day, during this downtime, I decided to go on Wikipedia to read about various topics involving cameras and photography. I’m a videographer, and while I learned a fair bit of practical knowledge about cameras in film school, I never really got very deep into the history of it. Eventually, I landed on a page titled “List of most expensive photographs”. I love a good Wikipedia list — a lot of them slap real hard — so I gave this one a read. Out of the 30 photographs listed, just three photographers occupied 23 of those spots.
So, what does that mean? Well, for one, these three people must be absolutely swimming in cash. Two, these pictures must surely be exceptional in some way to have netted these ludicrous prices. Are they rare? Were they made by some old master? Is there some kind of exceptional story behind them? What’s the draw? Or, is this some kind of money laundering scheme?
Before we get into the pictures themselves, let’s take a brief look at the people who took them.
First up is Andreas Gursky. He’s a German photographer whose career started in the late 70s. A trademark of his photographs is the manufactured, repetitive nature of them. He takes man made objects — buildings, 99 cent stores, cruise ships, and manipulates them digitally, giving them an eerie effect. Photomanipulation has been a thing since the genesis of photography, but I think it’s cool that Gursky seemed to be an early adopter of Photoshop. It’s not clear what programs he used early on, but since Photoshop first debuted around that time, it would make sense. I like his works, even just the few that I’ve seen while writing this. There’s something about the desolate, almost unnerving nature of the vastness of man-made objects that really speaks to me, I guess. Out of the three artists, I think I like Gursky’s work the most.
Next is Richard Prince. He is an American painter and photographer whose career also began in the 70s. His work is a little harder to describe. He has done a lot of rephotographs, which is, as I understand it, taking existing pictures and re-photographing them to show them in a new light. You know, I get some abstract concepts, but this one…I kinda don’t. We’ll explore the works that landed him on this Wikipedia list later, the most notable of which is a rephotography piece.
He does have one picture that I like — it’s an untitled piece from 1995–1999. It depicts a lone basketball hoop in a field. The odd juxtaposition of the hard angles of the white metal hoop contrasted with the verdant field and background of trees is nice, actually. While it might be considered “creepy” by some, it’s the kind of picture that I want hanging up in my apartment. It also reminds me of an early-2000s metalcore album cover — maybe some Midwest outfit writing about depression and substance abuse with simple riffs and mellow breakdowns.
Finally, we have Cindy Sherman. Her name actually stood out to me most on this list when I noticed it repeated so often, and also caused me to notice two other names repeating often. Like the rest, her career began in the 70s. Is that a pattern? Maybe something about post-60s free love, anti-war, Warhol and Lichtenstein artistry had an effect on the following generation of artists. Sherman is most known for photographing herself as different characters, drawing inspiration from golden era Hollywood films and b-movies for her most notable series, Untitled Film Stills. She uses herself not as the subject of her photos, but rather a medium of expression — a canvas on which paints a myriad of characters to reflect the many different ways women are portrayed in the media.
Sherman received a MacArthur fellowship grant in 1995. She also…sorta-kinda did a little blackface for a series called Bus Riders. Sherman is known for transforming herself into other people for “art” but I think most can agree this was a bit much.
Topping the list of most expensive photographs is Andreas Gursky’s 1999 photo Rhein II. Like the rest of his work, it is a digitally manipulated photo of the Rhein river bordered by manicured grass, a sidewalk, and an overcast sky. This photo sold for a whopping $4.3 Million in 2011 to an anonymous buyer.
Something to note here — the print of this photo swapped hands a few times before being sold: first to a Cologne art gallery, who sold it to an anonymous collector, who then sold it to the very wealthy anonymous buyer at Christie’s New York, an auction house. So, you have to wonder how much, if any, of those millions actually went to Gursky. If you’re wondering, the first Rhein photo is also on this list but further down at number 27, selling for a measly $2 million. It is almost exactly the same picture, but with less vivid colors and a narrower field of view. There have been three separate prints of this version that have also sold for millions of dollars.
Number two on this list is a photograph that I really do not want to show due to the fact that it is quite literally CP. In fact, I’m wondering if I’ve been put on a list somewhere just for looking it up. It is the 1981 photograph Spiritual America by Richard Prince, a rephotography piece originally by Garry Gross in 1975 of a 10 year old Brook Shields.
I’ll spare you all the details since I think we’d rather not read about the sexual exploitation of a 10 year old, but other publications have covered the topic. In 1975, with the consent of Shield’s mother, photographer Garry Gross (who really lived up to his name, I guess) took a series of completely nude and grossly seductive photos of Shields, who, again, was 10 at the time, for Sugar n’ Spice, a Playboy publication. You know — Playboy, the magazine that is totally known for its articles and not the big boobie centerfolds that prepubescent boys would find discarded in the woods. The full title of the publication is actually Sugar & Spice: Surprising and Sensuous Images of Women. Since when were little girls considered women?
There is scant little information about who paid the large sum of $3.9 million for this picture in 2014. According to the Christie’s website, it has changed hands a few times, from private collectors to art galleries. It was also exhibited several times from 1983–2010. Within this Christie’s listing, there is much waxing-poetic about the artistic nature of what essentially amounts to a man taking a picture of a picture of something that would and should be illegal to produce let alone possess, and while I do have an appreciation for art that may be misunderstood or misrepresented by the masses (I’m looking at you, Netflix adaptation of Thriteen Reasons Why), I draw the line at child pornography.
Third on this list is the 1981 photo Untitled #96 by Cindy Sherman. It depicts Cindy, portraying herself as a teenage girl, lying on what looks to be a tile or linoleum floor, clutching a scrap of newspaper. Sherman is known for her Untitled Film Stills series, and while this isn’t one of them, it does remind me of an 80s teen movie. The picture is tightly cropped, but I think it is a nice composition and the orange color motif is interesting. Here’s Sherman’s thought process when conceptualizing the piece:
I was thinking of a young girl who may have been cleaning the kitchen for her mother and who ripped something out of the newspaper, something asking ‘Are you lonely?’ or ‘Do you want to be friends?’ or ‘Do you want to go on a vacation?’ She’s cleaning the floor, she rips this out and she’s thinking about it.
A very simple, not-convoluted explanation for art, who could’ve seen that coming?
This picture sold for $3.8 million in 2011, and another print was sold for $2.8 million the following year; however, the Wikipedia list does not combine those prices — though, $6.6 million for a single picture would definitely make this top the list. I really like the cinematic nature of a lot of Sherman’s work (except for, y’know, the blackface) and, if you’re wondering, she did direct a film in 1987 starring Carol Kane and Molly Ringwald. It has a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, so do with that information what you will.
A question permeated throughout my mind as I was perusing this list: Why have these pictures sold for so much? To answer that, we need to examine how art is valued. One deceptively simple answer to this question comes from art dealer Augusto Arbizo, who says “an artist’s exhibition history, sales history (if any), career level, and size of artwork” determines the price an artwork will fetch. This, however, wasn’t always the case.
Artists like Warhol and Rothko (and, one could assume, their contemporaries) were well aware that art had morphed into a business. As Donald Kuspit said, “money no longer serves and supports art, art serves and supports money.” In the 1980s, when Gursky, Prince, and Sherman would have reached the zenith of their creative output, art was big business. By now, Jeff Koons had employed dozens of people (who he would later go on to lay off in 2019 in favor of an automated process — even the art world faced industrialization, it seems) to create art for him in his SoHo factory. The kind of art that was created at this point was no longer to expand minds, but rather to expand wallets.
From this, we could assume that Gursky, Prince, and Sherman had a combination of business savvy, notoriety, and skill to have their works sell for so much. Sherman and Prince drew a lot from popular American culture, with Prince’s rephotography pieces and Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, and this cultural regurgitation made popular by Warhol and the likes was sure to gain some attention. Gursky, on the other hand, was working in the at-the-time uncharted territory of digital photomanipulation that has now become a novelty.
These days, the fine art world is even more incomprehensible and, at times, elitist than in previous years. With the emergence of the environment-crushing NFT that takes the concept of Jeff Koons’ art factory and turns it up to 11 with randomly-generated pixel dudes bought and sold with dangerously unstable currencies, I think I’d much rather be an artist back in Gursky, Sherman, and Prince’s day.
In the early to mid 2010s, when these pieces were being auctioned off, art was still clearly big business. That’s not to say that there weren’t people creating art for personal expression or for the love of the craft — those people, it seems, just weren’t ending up at Christie’s.
