Collectors snapped up paintings, photographs, custom-designed clothes, fine jewelry, and other items. Other highlights from the several-day sale, which began on February 22, included Banksy’s Thrower Triptych (2017), which sold on opening night for nearly $2 million; an untitled Keith Haring from 1982 that fetched $756,000; and a pair of silver leather platform boots adorned on either side with John’s initials in a vivacious red, which realized $94,500—about 19 times its low estimate of $5,000.

Bonnie Brennan, president of Christie’s Americas, said in a statement:  “It was a great honor for Christie’s to have been entrusted with the auction of the contents of Elton John’s Atlanta home. The collection was assembled over 30 years in an American city that meant so much to Elton John and his family.”

John’s photography collection represented over 350 of the lots—about one third of the whole collection—and included works by seminal fashion photographers Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, and Irving Penn. One Avedon silver print, depicting a serpent coiling around a naked Nastassja Kinski, went for $201,600.

“Beyond including artistic and personal treasures the sale cemented the cultural legacy of one of the world’s most iconic figures,” Darius Himes, Christie’s international head of photographs, said in a statement. 

Last fall, John, together with husband and manager David Furnish, sold their 13,000-plus-square-foot Atlanta residence for more than $7.2 million. John purchased the property in the 1990s. Now, the New York Times reports, the pair is consolidating their collection of artworks and mementos.

Highlights include John’s Yamaha conservatory grand piano on which he wrote the hit Broadway shows “Billy Elliot” and “Aida” for $50,000; Julian Schnabel’s portrait of John for $300,000; and a 2017 Banksy triptych of a masked man throwing a bouquet of flowers for $1.5 million. The singer’s iconic sunglasses, initialed silver platform boots, and a 1970s ivory and gold costume made by textile designer Annie Reavey will also appear on the block.

During his time in Georgia, John amassed a comprehensive collection including work by Dorothea Lange, Hungarian photographer André Kertész, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

His interest in photography was encouraged by local gallerist Jane Jackson, who ultimately became the director of the Sir Elton John Photography Collection in 2003. Part of this collection was on view as part of the exhibition “The Radical Eye” at Tate Modern in 2016–17.

Works from John’s collection also appeared in the 2000 exhibition, “Chorus of Light” at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, many of which will soon hit the block, including pieces by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Andres Serrano.

This is the first time that a major selection from the singer’s collection has been open to public sale since 2003.

The Headlines

GUESS WHO’S BACK? The news came as a surprise. Gabriel Attal, whom The New York Times called France’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister, named his cabinet on Thursday, two days after being appointed to lead France’s government. No-one expected Rachida Dati – a key figure in Nicolas Sarkozy‘s conservative government – to replace Rima Abdul Malak as culture minister, and yet this is her new position. The former justice minister (2007-2009) has been serving as mayor of the 7th arrondissement since 2008, for the rightwing LR party, which she was kicked out from a few hours after the announcement of her return to the French cabinet: “I deplore this poaching methode, which does not bode well for the country”, said Eric Ciotti, the president of Les Républicains, in a press release. Dati has been under investigation since July 2021 for corruption and influence peddling over her dealings with disgraced former Renault chief Carlos Ghosn. What does it all have to do with culture?

JUMP UP! Last November, Sir Elton John sold his long-standing Atlanta condo for $7.225 million. The legendary singer will soon be saying goodbye to its contents next month, at Christie’s New York. The auction, which will consist of eight separate live and online sales kicking off on 21 February, is the reflection of a man with both eclectic and specific tastes. The lots include his Bentley Continental, his Atlanta Braves jersey, dozens of Versace silk shirts, a diamond necklace proclaiming “The Bitch Is Back” (a reference to a 1974 song of the same name), vertiginous silver platform boots, and an ivory jumpsuit that looks “like a glam rock version of Kermit the Frog”. But there’s also a museum-worthy collection of photography—with works by fashion photographers like Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton in addition to prints by artists like Wolfgang Tillmans, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Candida Höfer—as well as a heart-shaped collage that Damien Hirst dedicated to John and his husband, David Furnish.

The Digest

Asked about data-scraping, Ai Weiwei answered that art that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence is “meaningless”. Ironically enough, the Chinese artist, who is about to collaborate with an AI, added: “I’m sure if Picasso or Matisse were still alive they will quit their job. It’d be just impossible for them to still think [the same way].” [The Guardian]

The DiGen Art gallery, which is short for Digitally Generated Art, settled in late December 2023 next to the American University of Beirut. Founded by former banker Alex Rayes and Camille Hajjar, graduate from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, it is the first space entirely devoted to digital art in Lebanon and the second in the Middle East. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Argentinian artist Liliana Porter, who has appeared in more than 450 exhibitions in 40 countries, shared her secret to achieve longevity in the arts. “I always think that if whatever you do is true, it’s going to be good. It’s important to start from yourself as a point of reference and then look for what you need outside, not the other way around: to really have a dialogue with yourself and be true to yourself”, said the 82-year-old artist, ready for a new adventure. [CULTURED]

Open since mid-November, the 13th edition of the Taipei Biennial has been successful in exploring the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on each and everyone of us, Le Monde reports. Its theme and title “Small World” may not have come off original at first, but its treatment has been so far, through an eclectic selection of art works and through the “Taiwanese point of view” which remains relatively free given the political context. [Le Monde]

Villa 71 will be heading to the auction block via Concierge Auctions from January 18 to January 24. The $125 million glass-enclosed home, which was designed by architect Viktor Udzenija, a protégé of Norman Foster, will be sold at no reserve, with starting bids expected from $50 million and up. [Forbes]

The Kicker

PATT’S PATTERNS. Sit back and relax. The weekend is upon us. Speaking of releasing the pressure, haven’t you heard? After designing clothes inspired by cities he visited, Robert Pattinson imagined an elegant ear-shaped sofa, along with designer Nicole Gordon. The “Twilight” star “engineered a conversation piece cozy enough to keep everyone talking all night long”, as Frances Dodds put it. The actor wanted to make a couch that would not have a lot of hard lines, something people “could embrace—which would embrace them right back”. He had some free time on his hands after filming wrapped for “The Batman” movie (2022) and started sketching. [Architectural Digest]

“Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection” will include over 300 modern and contemporary prints from more than 140 photographers, with most of them on display to the public for the first time. The images range from the 1950s to the present.

“Fragile Beauty takes our collaboration to really exciting new heights, showcasing some of the most beloved photographers and iconic images from within our collection,” Sir Elton John and David Furnish said in a press statement. “Working alongside the V&A again has been a truly memorable experience, and we look forward to sharing this exhibition with the public.”

The artists include major names such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Zanele Muholi, Ai Weiwei, and Carrie Mae Weems.

The selection from the British music icon and Canadian filmmaker’s photography collection also includes fashion images, news events, celebrity portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Miles Davis, and Chet Baker, as well as photojournalism from important historical moments such as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, AIDS activism in the 1980s and September 11, 2001.

The “Rocket Man” singer began collecting photographs in 1991, shortly after getting sober, according to the Associated Press. The couple’s private collection has grown to more than 7,000 fine art photographs, one of the largest ones of its kind in the world.

John and Furnish also lent photographs by fashion photographer Horst P. Horst to the V&A in 2014, and made a “significant donation to the museum” in 2019 that led to the renaming of a room in its photography center to the The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery.

In 2016, selections from the celebrity couple’s collection were shown at the Tate Modern for the exhibition “The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection“.

“Fragile Beauty” will take place at The Sainsbury Gallery in V&A South Kensington from May 18, 2024 until Jan. 5, 2025.

A brigade of black SUVs pulls up in front of Chris Burden’s Urban Light (2008), where the sculpture’s glowing lamp posts are foregrounded by a tinted pink sunset and the unrelenting flashes of a dozen event photographers. Later in the night, Pashgian explains the peculiar properties of Southern California light photons, but for now, a man is shouting from across Wilshire Boulevard.

“What’s the event?” he asks to no response. “Anybody?”

Angela Strassheim's Untitled, 2004, from the collection of Elton John.

COURTESY MARVELLI GALLERY, NEW YORK

David Dechman
New York
WEALTH MANAGEMENT
20th century

Randi and Bob Fisher
San Francisco
APPAREL (GAP, INC.)
20th century; contemporary

Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla
New York
INHERITANCE; REAL-ESTATE DEVELOPMENT
20th century; contemporary

Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Los Angeles
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
20th century

Michael Jesselson
New York
WEALTH MANAGEMENT
20th century

Elton John
London; Atlanta
ENTERTAINMENT
20th century; contemporary

Andrew Pilara
San Francisco
INVESTMENT BANKING
20th century; contemporary

Lisa and John Pritzker
San Francisco
HOTELS AND INVESTMENTS
20th century; contemporary

Thomas Walther
Zurich
INHERITANCE (MACHINE-TOOL MANUFACTURING)
19th century; 20th century

Michael Wilson
London
FILM
19th century; 20th century

“It depends on who you talk to,” a prominent curator of photography told me when I asked him to name the world’s top ten photography collectors.

He was right. I asked 20 prominent dealers, auctioneers, collectors, museum directors, and curators. No one had the same list. A further survey produced a consensus, as well as comments on other major topics in the photography world.

“I have not seen anything like it,” Sandra Phillips, curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, told a reporter recently. She was talking about Pier 24, a 28,000-square-foot gallery that was created last year by Andrew Pilara, a San Francisco investment banker, in an old warehouse in San Francisco that displays the collection of the Pilara Foundation, which he established. Pilara is on the list of Top Ten.

Pier 24 houses about 2,000 photographs, including works by Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Edward Burtynsky, Lee Friedlander, Robert Adams, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dorothea Lange, Richard Misrach, and many others. Admission is free, and the space is open to the public Monday through Thursday by appointment only.

Pier 24 recently presented an exhibition of the collection of Randi and Bob Fisher, who are also on the Top Ten. Bob Fisher’s parents founded Gap Inc. Among the artists in the show were Edward Weston, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, and Andreas Gursky. Other exhibitions are being planned for Pier 24.

Another topic being discussed is the increasingly global nature of the market, with great depth in France, England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, the Middle East, and elsewhere.

Unlike the contemporary art market, there is less speculation and less buying for investment with photography, according to several observers. Collectors are mainly buying because they experience the works and want to live with them.

Other observers point out that more and more collectors of contemporary art are collecting photography, including Eli Broad, who is on the ARTnews list of Top Ten art collectors and has bought many works by Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall, among others. “Is Eli a photo collector? No,” said one curator. “Does he have a lot of photos? Yes.”

A photography auctioneer said, “We see more and more clients of other departments—Impressionist, modern, contemporary, and American painting —becoming interested in buying photography, whereas 15 years ago they would not.”

The Top Ten for photography also includes Thomas Walther, who has been collecting photography for more than 30 years. In 2001 the Museum of Modern Art acquired—it was a partial gift, partial purchase—328 works by most of the leading European and American photographers of the 1920s and ’30s. The list included Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Manuel Bravo, Paul Outerbridge, Berenice Abbott, and many others.

In 2000 the Metropolitan Museum presented the exhibition “Other Pictures: Vernacular Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection.” Dating from the 1910s through the ’60s, the photos were by anonymous amateurs and were discovered in flea markets, in shoeboxes, or in family albums.

“In the last ten years,” Walther told me, “I have increasingly gone into the 19th century, with works by Gustave Le Gray, Linus Tripe, Henri Le Secq, Roger Fenton, Charles Marville, Francis Frith, William Fox Talbot, and many others.”

Walther has acquired about 2,000 photographs.

“I pursue my collecting with the utmost passion,” he said.

The Top Ten are listed in alphabetical order, and were selected based on how active they are rather than on the size or value of their collections.

Milton Esterow is editor and publisher of ARTnews.