Lot Essay
My New York is the New York of transition. -The Old gradually passing into the New...-Not the "Canyons" but the spirit of that something that endears New York to one who really loves it-not for its outer attractions-but for its deepest worth-& significance.-The universal thing in it. Stieglitz in a letter to Hamilton Easter Field, 16 November 1920. (Alfred Stieglitz, p. 202).
Raised in New York, Alfred Stieglitz reveled in the fantastic growth of the city and, as a photographer, found in it a metaphor for the changes he experienced. As early as 1893 he was working in the throes of urban life, making street photographs reminiscent of his earlier European genre scenes in that romance, sentiment and atmosphere still influenced his vision. Within ten years a hard edged and straight approach would supercede this. Later, he would describe his New York views by saying My photographs are a picture of the chaos in the world and of my relationship to that chaos (quoted in Norman, p. 161). A modernist aesthetic would become his coda and the themes that would dominate his career - the portraits of O'Keeffe and those closest to him, his nature studies, the views from his window - would intensify.
As early as 1902 he would make pictures from his window, continuing to do so from his first gallery, 291 (1905-1917), and then at An American Place (1929-1946). This strategy - that of a seemingly dispassionate voyeur - has its logical conclusion in the series of pictures he made from the Shelton Hotel in 1931 and 1935.
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe maintained a home at the Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue and 49th Street for ten years, from 1926 to 1935, with O'Keeffe leaving to spend her summers in New Mexico in 1929. During this time they both made use of the hotel's modernist high vantage point. Between 1925 and 1929 O'Keeffe produced some 20 cityscapes. Stieglitz photographed from the Shelton in two distinct time periods, 1931/32 and in 1935 producing approximately 30 different views.
The construction of the Waldorf-Astoria, 444 Madison Avenue and other skyscrapers plays a dominant role in the earlier photographs, so much so that over two-thirds depict the construction of buildings (Alfred Stieglitz, p. 32). The 1935 group is a dedication to a single viewpoint in which Stieglitz's varying of the focal length, exposure time and time of day took precedence over any desire to panoramically dedicate the view to film. These views are reductive, frank and austere, perhaps an acknowledgement of the Precisionist and De Stijl movements of the time. Some of the last photographs he would make (he retired from photographing two years later due to poor health), they are profound in their minimalism. A total of eleven different images exist in this series, so similar that all seemingly have been made at nearly the same time.
The view offered here may be the most consummate of the group. With its sweeping cloud movement, recalling his Equivalents, the issues at hand for Stieglitz at the time - the changing face of New York, his marriage to O'Keeffe, his ailing health and advancing age all seem to be implied. While other views formally vary in the relationships of the structures to the frame of the photograph, or graphically describe the dynamic forms of the rooftops before the facades, it is in this view that the implicit passage of time is an important compositional element. While they are representational images, they do not abandon the idea that photography could embody subjective expression. By contrasting the beauty of the skyscrapers with their unremitting growth, Stieglitz made the buildings symbolic not only of the continous change of New York, but of change itself as a principle of all being. (Greenough in Alfred Stieglitz, p. 26). For Stieglitz to photograph New York at this time was to equate his own angst to the inherent conflict of the temporal qualities of nature with the ambitions of man. The cloud swirls and diagonal light versus the staunch verticality of the RCA Building, the French Building, 444 Madison Avenue and the slight punctuation of the twin spires of St. Patrick's, seems to accomplish this. In From the Shelton, West the paradox revealed is that nothing seems more permanent than the concrete and steel but nothing is as eternal as the play of light on the facades or the force of wind in the clouds.
In 1949, three years after Stieglitz died, O'Keeffe made substantial donations of his photographs, art and letters to several museums. The National Gallery received what is referred to as the "key set", a group of approximately 1600 images, including the only other known print of this image. Other institutions receiving donations included the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, Fisk University and several others. The voluminous archive of letters went to the Beinicke Rare Book Library at Yale at the urging of Carl Van Vechten and Lincoln Kirstein. As a result, prints from the 1935 series from the Shelton in private hands are very rare. This is the first time this image - or a print from this group - has been offered at auction.
Raised in New York, Alfred Stieglitz reveled in the fantastic growth of the city and, as a photographer, found in it a metaphor for the changes he experienced. As early as 1893 he was working in the throes of urban life, making street photographs reminiscent of his earlier European genre scenes in that romance, sentiment and atmosphere still influenced his vision. Within ten years a hard edged and straight approach would supercede this. Later, he would describe his New York views by saying My photographs are a picture of the chaos in the world and of my relationship to that chaos (quoted in Norman, p. 161). A modernist aesthetic would become his coda and the themes that would dominate his career - the portraits of O'Keeffe and those closest to him, his nature studies, the views from his window - would intensify.
As early as 1902 he would make pictures from his window, continuing to do so from his first gallery, 291 (1905-1917), and then at An American Place (1929-1946). This strategy - that of a seemingly dispassionate voyeur - has its logical conclusion in the series of pictures he made from the Shelton Hotel in 1931 and 1935.
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe maintained a home at the Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue and 49th Street for ten years, from 1926 to 1935, with O'Keeffe leaving to spend her summers in New Mexico in 1929. During this time they both made use of the hotel's modernist high vantage point. Between 1925 and 1929 O'Keeffe produced some 20 cityscapes. Stieglitz photographed from the Shelton in two distinct time periods, 1931/32 and in 1935 producing approximately 30 different views.
The construction of the Waldorf-Astoria, 444 Madison Avenue and other skyscrapers plays a dominant role in the earlier photographs, so much so that over two-thirds depict the construction of buildings (Alfred Stieglitz, p. 32). The 1935 group is a dedication to a single viewpoint in which Stieglitz's varying of the focal length, exposure time and time of day took precedence over any desire to panoramically dedicate the view to film. These views are reductive, frank and austere, perhaps an acknowledgement of the Precisionist and De Stijl movements of the time. Some of the last photographs he would make (he retired from photographing two years later due to poor health), they are profound in their minimalism. A total of eleven different images exist in this series, so similar that all seemingly have been made at nearly the same time.
The view offered here may be the most consummate of the group. With its sweeping cloud movement, recalling his Equivalents, the issues at hand for Stieglitz at the time - the changing face of New York, his marriage to O'Keeffe, his ailing health and advancing age all seem to be implied. While other views formally vary in the relationships of the structures to the frame of the photograph, or graphically describe the dynamic forms of the rooftops before the facades, it is in this view that the implicit passage of time is an important compositional element. While they are representational images, they do not abandon the idea that photography could embody subjective expression. By contrasting the beauty of the skyscrapers with their unremitting growth, Stieglitz made the buildings symbolic not only of the continous change of New York, but of change itself as a principle of all being. (Greenough in Alfred Stieglitz, p. 26). For Stieglitz to photograph New York at this time was to equate his own angst to the inherent conflict of the temporal qualities of nature with the ambitions of man. The cloud swirls and diagonal light versus the staunch verticality of the RCA Building, the French Building, 444 Madison Avenue and the slight punctuation of the twin spires of St. Patrick's, seems to accomplish this. In From the Shelton, West the paradox revealed is that nothing seems more permanent than the concrete and steel but nothing is as eternal as the play of light on the facades or the force of wind in the clouds.
In 1949, three years after Stieglitz died, O'Keeffe made substantial donations of his photographs, art and letters to several museums. The National Gallery received what is referred to as the "key set", a group of approximately 1600 images, including the only other known print of this image. Other institutions receiving donations included the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, Fisk University and several others. The voluminous archive of letters went to the Beinicke Rare Book Library at Yale at the urging of Carl Van Vechten and Lincoln Kirstein. As a result, prints from the 1935 series from the Shelton in private hands are very rare. This is the first time this image - or a print from this group - has been offered at auction.