Jeff Wall

Galerie Meert Rihoux, Brussels (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Brussels, Galerie Meert Rihoux, Jeff Wall, 1991

Exhibition Catalogue, Vancouver, Art Gallery, Jeff Wall, 1990, n.p., illustration of another example in colour
Thierry de Duve, Boris Groys, and Arielle Pelenc, Jeff Wall, London 1996, p. 82, illustration of another example in colour, and p. 61, installation view of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Munich, Kunsbau der Städtischen Galerie, Jeff Wall: Space and Vision, 1996, no. 19, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeff Wall, 1997, p. 93, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Oxford, Museum of Modern Art; Salford, The Lowry; Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Open City: Street Photographs since 1950, 2001-02, p. 147, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Life Death Love Hate Pleasure Pain: Selected Works from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Collection, 2002, p. 207, illustration of another example in colour
Thierry de Duve, Boris Groys, and Arielle Pelenc, Jeff Wall, London 2003, p. 82, illustration of another example in colour, p. 61, installation view of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst, Jeff Wall: Photographs, 2003, no. 16, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Codroipo, Villa Manin, Love/Hate From Magritte to Cattelan: Masterpieces from the Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2004, p. 211, illustration of another example in colour
Theodora Vischer and Heidi Naef, Eds., Jeff Wall: Catalogue Raisonné 1978-2004, 2005, p. 63 and p. 296, no. 15, illustration of another example in colour
Michael Newman, Ed., Jeff Wall Works and Collected Writings, Barcelona 2007, p. 65, illustration of another example in colour
Thierry de Duve, Jeff Wall: The Complete Edition, 2010, p. 72, illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter in the original and fails to convey the luminescent effect of the light box. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals two minute superficial scratches in the plexiglass towards the top right corner and another along the right edge. There is a shallow dent of 3mm to the top right corner edge, visible only from the side.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Pleading is unique among Jeff Wall’s oeuvre, as one of just two photographs depicting figures to be described as "Documentary" in his catalogue raisonné. Whereas Wall’s pioneering conceptual photography is defined by a proclivity to stage or imitate an ‘actual’ moment before the camera, Pleading is a snapshot taken on Windmill Street in Soho, London. Blown up to the immersive lightbox scale that Wall adopted to rival historical salon painting, Pleading’s 35 mm film evinces a grainy, almost pointillist texture, separating it from the meticulous clarity of his large-format negatives. Pleading is intriguing not only for its captivating composition and subject, but for its highly exceptional status within Wall’s oeuvre. As such, a version rests in the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Wall’s conceptual practice left behind street photography’s aim of aesthetically perfecting a documentary picture. The photos of Robert Frank or Henri Cartier-Bresson, while visually compelling, were perceived by Wall to lack the modernist self-awareness, and self-critique, associated with avant-garde practice. Whereas painting, faced with photography’s invention, deposed its historical purpose – to depict – and entered “a troubled phase of restless searching for an alternative ground of validity”, photography was intrinsically bound to continue representation (Jeff Wall, ‘“Marks of Indifference”: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975, p. 247). Aiming to satisfy the modernist dictum that a media should undermine its own claims to absolute truth, Wall has developed an epoch-defining methodology of unsettling a photograph’s inherently documentary status. This degree of distance utterly defines Wall’s oeuvre, with the fascinating and illuminating exception of two photographs: Pleading and In the Public Garden (1993).

Of Pleading, Wall has said: “I thought it would be interesting and consistent to act against my way of working… I don’t usually go hunting for pictures with the standard hunting equipment, the 35 mm camera, but if, without hunting, I catch something, then I can be a ‘photographer,’ too. My other work does not interfere with that, quite the contrary” (Dirk Snauwaert and Jeff Wall, ‘Dirk Snauwaert: Written Interview with Jeff Wall’ in: Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews, New York 2007, p. 264-5). Pleading thus challenges Wall’s own methodology and seizes upon the capacity of ‘real life’ to itself appear staged, dramatic, and indeterminate. Wall’s choreographed photographs are marked by a subtle visual of control, detectable via compositions that mimic canonical paintings – as in A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993) – or that contain highly charged, cinematic interactions, as for example with The Quarrel (1998). Emotionally affecting, the images yet appear to unfold on a stage set, as engineered presentations. Pleading is remarkable for occupying a fine edge combining this theatrical ambiance with the insistent presence of organic human life.

Pleading equally coalesces two of Wall’s most central themes: figures in conversation, and the Baudelairian quest to depict ‘modern life.’ In 1982, Wall began to take pictures staged in the street, deeply influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s text The Painter of Modern Life (1893), and convinced – as many nineteenth-century French painters were – that city sidewalks, parks, and roads were the best place to capture contemporary experience. Of equal importance to Pleading is the dialogue of its protagonists. Speaking about the photograph as necessarily fragmentary, cropped, and incomplete, Wall has said: “...a picture of someone talking is to me an elemental example of the problem of the outside and the threshold” (Arielle Pelenc and Jeff Wall, ‘Arielle Pelenc in Correspondence with Jeff Wall’ in: Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews, New York 2007, p. 252). Because the words are lost, pictures of persons speaking are to Wall a prime means of highlighting an elementary aspect of the medium: lacking the ‘whole picture.’ In Pleading, two women in conservative black outfits, like those of religious canvassers, speak with two men outside a Soho cinema, one facing the camera and clutching a paper or pamphlet in a gesture of supplication. So much a beholder can guess, yet the true nature of the interaction – and of the pleading – remains a mystery, perhaps even to Wall himself.

New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard said: “reportage is interesting only when placed in a fictional context, but fiction is interesting only if it is validated by a documentary context” (quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeff Wall, 1997, p. 25). Proving this statement as thoroughly as ever, Pleading neatly confounds the boundaries of Wall’s usual approach, extending his abilities to discover the same compelling human emotion and compositional perfection characteristic of his ‘cinematographic’ work within the organic life of the street.