?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(CHANTERELLE MENUS) A pair of benefit menus with photographs by Cindy Sherman and Lorna Simpson. Silver prints, the images measuring 8 1/4x12 inches (21x30.5 cm.) and 5x4 inches (12.7x10.2 cm.), one sheet slightly larger, the mounts 13 3/4x17 7/8 inches (34.9x45.4 cm.) and 13 3/4x9 inches (34.9x22.9 cm.), the first with Sherman's typed credit and date on mount recto, the second with a typed caption on recto, and Simpson's typed credit on verso of the folded mount. 1989 and 1990
WITH--A menu designed and signed by Richard Prince. Photomechanical print on woven paper, the image measuring 18x12 1/2 inches (45.7x31.8 cm.). 1994.
Gifted by Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Company, 1989-90; to the Estate of Pierre Apraxine, New York
These works were designed to illustrate the menus for the benefit dinners of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Company organized at the famous French restaurant Chanterelle on October 30th, 1989, October 22nd, 1990, and December 5th, 1994. The menus and a dedication note by Bill T. Jones are inscribed on the mount verso (2) and inside the folded mount (one).
Born in Estonia as a member of an exiled noble Russian family and educated in Belgium, Pierre Apraxine came to the United States in 1970 as a Fulbright Scholar to work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was educated in classical draftsmanship and was largely self-taught as a student of photography. From 1976 to 2007 Mr. Apraxine was the art curator for the Gilman Paper Company headed by the late Howard Gilman. There he assembled several collections of contemporary paintings and sculptures, visionary architectural drawings (now at the Museum of Modern Art), and photographs.
The photography was acquired as the market was forming, a time of heady newness and excitement. The more than 8,500 works in the collection came to tell the history of the medium as well as the history of industrialization and modernization, a remarkable alchemy of timing and a unique way of looking that remains unparalleled.
In 1993 the collection of photographs was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a landmark exhibition: "The Waking Dream: Photography's First Century" (the museum then acquired the collection in 2005). In 1994 he was the recipient with Maria Morris Hambourg of the International Center of Photography Writing Award for the catalogue.
Apraxine curated several exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum, authored additional important titles, and was the curator in charge of the installation of Gustave Le Gray at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
