Beschreibung:

Richard Avedon (1923-2004)Francis Bacon, artist, Paris 4-11-79, 1979
Mural-sized gelatin silver print; flush-mounted to linen, signed and editioned '8/10' in pencil, with stamped title, date, copyright, and edition information, on the reverse, framed.
46 3/4 x 74 7/8 in. (118.8 x 190.2 cm.)
FootnotesProvenance
Christie's New York, 12 October 2000, Sale 9432, Lot 68
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Literature
Richard Avedon, An Autobiography (New York, 1993), plate 214
Richard Avedon: Evidence, 1944-1994 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994), pp. 56 and 161
Richard Avedon: Portraits (New York: The Metropolitan Musuem of Art, 2002), unpaginated
Michael Juul Holm, ed., Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004 (Humlebæk: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2007), pp. 24-5
Avedon Warhol (London: Gagosian Gallery, 2016), plate 124
Note
Over the course of Richard Avedon's storied career that spanned six decades, he is perhaps best known as a deeply gifted portraitist. The American photographer used his camera to capture a diverse range of people, including writers, musicians, politicians, fashion icons, and working-class men and women. Of all these portraits, he perhaps achieved the greatest acuity of observation in his images of fellow visual artists. No other portrait exemplifies this better than the present work, Francis Bacon, artist, Paris 4-11-79.
This double-portrait of the beloved British painter ingeniously mimics the sequential narrative of Bacon's own canvases, which he often constructed as diptychs or triptychs. Here, Avedon selected two negatives taken during the same shoot in 1979 and abutted the images in the final composition. Avedon captured the highly distinctive physicality of the 70-year-old: Bacon's craggy, shadowed face, foppish hair, and penetrating gaze reveal as much as they conceal. His slightly open mouth expresses Bacon's pensive, serious nature.
Years later, Avedon recounted the making of Bacon's portrait:
"I explained the nature of the diptych I wanted to achieve. I'd made a little sketch of what I hoped to do. I asked him to exchange his jacket for my plain, dark sweater. . . Bacon immediately acted the role of the private Bacon with the greatest purity and economy of gesture, and yet it was filled with authentic feeling. Without my saying a word, he understood what my portrait was about, what it called for from him, and he still remained true to himself. No one could act Bacon but Bacon." (Richard Avedon Portraits, unpaginated)
During 2023, many exhibitions and events have celebrated the centennial of Avedon's birth. This double portrait of Bacon was prominently displayed in the critically acclaimed landmark exhibition Avedon 100, mounted at Gagosian New York from 4 May through 7 July 2023. Record crowds descended on the gallery to view works spanning Avedon's entire career. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition Richard Avedon: Murals (on view 19 January to 1 October 2023) investigates his mural-sized portraits, begun in 1969.
Prints of Francis Bacon, artist, Paris 4-11-79 are held in public collections including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2000.67.12); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Centre Pompidou, Paris (AM 2020-378).
A significantly smaller print of this image, measuring approximately 20 x 32.2 inches, sold at Sotheby's New York in May 2023 for $152,400 against an estimate of $30,000-50,000. A print in the same image size as the present lot has not appeared at auction since 2014, when edition 9/10 sold at Phillips New York for $209,000 against an estimate of $120,000-180,000.