?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(DIANE ARBUS) A postcard from Arbus to John Gerbino from Florida, describing her experience photographing Germaine Greer. Photomechanical postcard, measuring 5 1/2x3 1/2 inches (14x8.9 cm.), with a reproduction of a faceless woman on a beach and Arbus' inscription in ink on verso. 1971
The card is not postmarked, but with a full inscription from Arbus to John Gerbino: "Dear John, / She was terrific. / The best thing is her amazing dynamics / she is bold, lusty [?], funny / outrageous radiant / silly. All sorts of / things. Maybe you / should run more / than one. / Saved this card / for you/ Thank Barbara / She did it superbly / and Germaine / was really nice / Diane"
Provenance: Mailed from the Artist; to John Gerbino, 1971
This postcard, as well as lots 57-58 and 253 in this auction, was gifted to John Gerbino by Diane Arbus. Gerbino was, at the time, a young art director, and the two were acquaintances and colleagues from 1964, when Gerbino worked at Harper's Bazaar and Arbus was working as a freelance photographer, until her death in 1971. The two shared a level of respect and admiration, such as that when Arbus was preparing work for her participation in the 1967 exhibition "New Documents" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, she asked Gerbino to review her contact sheets.
In 1969, as Art Director for Essence magazine, Gerbino hired Arbus to illustrate two stories: "How Radical is Black Youth?" published in November 1970 and "Conversation: Ida Lewis and Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr." published just one month later. In 1971 Gerbino went to work for the magazine New Woman and it was in that role that he hired Arbus to take images of Germaine Greer. Greer had just published her landmark book The Female Eunuch, and the radical text was receiving overwhelming attention. However, these portraits were never published.
Each of the portraits offered here reveal the essential qualities that make Arbus' work unique and noteworthy, including a high level of intimacy with her sitter, an unusual perspective, and a keen eye toward the inner life of her subject. The Greer portrait in particular is startling in its immediacy and appearance of candid rawness, qualities to which Arbus herself alludes in her note to Gerbino.
