Nov 13, 2001 - Sale 1915

Sale 1915 - Lot 112

Unsold
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
DAVID ROBBINS
Talent.<>

Suite of 18 black-and-white silver prints, 1986-87. Each is 241x190 mm; 9 1/2x7 1/2 inches. With the sitter's name in white letters at lower left, and David Robbins's and "James J. Kriegsmann, Photographer of Celebrities" hand stamps on verso along with the artist's limitation notations 76/100 and initials, in pencil; in the original frame, with a National Museum of American Art caption label on obverse.

From the collection of Joshua P. Smith.

Alan Belcher * Gretchen Bender * Ashley Bickerton * Jennifer Bolande * Michael Byron * Clegg & Guttmann * Jenny Holzer * Larry Johnson * Jeff Koons * Thomas Lawson * Robert Longo * Allan McCollum * Peter Nagy * Joel Otterson * Steven Parrino * David Robbins * Cindy Sherman * Robin Weglinski.

Robbins's tongue-in-cheek insight into the sort of advertising and self-promotion required of the successful artist is wittily evident in this suite of 18 photographs. (After all, he also included a picture of himself.) Each portrait, of then emerging, "dowtown" New York po-mo figures, is modeled on the signature head shot actors and actresses traditionally employ to sell themselves.

The work was included in Joshua Smith's seminal exhibition "The Photography of Invention, American Pictures of the 1980s," which was shown at the National Museum of American Art, and is reproduced in the companion book.
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