Lot 78
  • 78

Margaret Bourke-White

Estimate
120,000 - 180,000 USD
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Description

  • Margaret Bourke-White
  • GARGOYLE, CHRYSLER BUILDING, NEW YORK
  • Gelatin silver
warm-toned with black ink borders, mounted, signed in pencil on the mount, the 'Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White' stamp on the reverse, framed, a Houk-Friedman Gallery, New York, label on the reverse, 1929-30

Provenance

The photographer's estate

Acquired by Syracuse University from the above

Acquired by Lee Witkin from the above

Private Collection, New York

Collection of Barry Friedman

Acquired by a Private Collector from the above

Acquired by the present owner from the above

Literature

Lee D. Witkin, A Ten Year Salute: A Selection of Photographs in Celebration, The Witkin Gallery, 1969-1979 (Danbury, New Hampshire, 1979), p. 103 (likely this print)

Other prints of this image:

Stephen Bennett Phillips, Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design 1927-1936 (The Phillips Collection, 2003), p. 11

Jonathan Silverman, For the World to See: The Life of Margaret Bourke-White (New York, 1983), p. 58

Therese Mulligan and David Wooters, eds., Photography from 1839 to Today: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY (Köln, 2000), p. 588

Condition

This lush, warm-toned early print, on double-weight paper with a matte, slightly pebbled surface, with ink borders, and with the photographer's signature on the mount, is the ideal presentation of a Bourke-White photograph from this period. It is in generally very good to excellent condition. The upper right edge is somewhat rubbed, and a small, very narrow, one-inch portion of the inked edge has worn away. The corners are slightly bumped, and the inked corner tip of the lower right corner of the print is beginning to lift. Under the right edge of the mount, a strip of paper tape is visible. It has been used to attach the print to the mount. When examined in high raking light,14 circular areas of light silvering are visible, likely from the original glue used to mount the photograph. None of these issues has a negative impact on the overall fine appearance of this impressive print. The light gray mount is brittle, with age-darkening at the periphery, as well as 4 small tears that have been mended on the reverse. The lower right corner has a small crease.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

In 1930, the Chrysler Corporation commissioned Margaret Bourke-White to photograph their new, 77-story, 1,046-foot skyscraper while it was still under construction.  In her autobiography, Portrait of Myself, Bourke-White says of her first glimpse of the Chrysler Building gargoyles,

'On the sixty-first floor, the workmen started building some curious structures which overhung 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue below.  When I learned these were to be gargoyles à la Notre Dame, but made of stainless steel as more suitable for the twentieth century, I decided that here would be my new studio.  There was no place in the world that I would accept as a substitute.  I was ready to close my studio in Cleveland in order to be nearer Fortune, but it was the gargoyles which gave me the final spurt to New York' (p. 78).

When the building's landlord expressed doubt about renting such prime real estate to a woman, in what was then, briefly, the tallest building in the world, Fortune magazine intervened on her behalf.  Later that year, Bourke-White opened her studio, and she remained there until early 1933.   

It was from this space on the southeast side of the Chrysler Building that Bourke-White photographed one of the two imposing gargoyles accessible to her.  Designed by Chesley Bonestell and inspired by the 1929 Chrysler Plymouth hood ornament, they were among the many automotive-themed ornaments, including hubcaps, mudguards, winged radiator caps, and stylized cars, adorning this exuberant, luxurious building.  The Chrysler Building's flamboyance was not seen again in skyscraper architecture.  The Crash of 1929 and the Depression intervened, and more austere European modernist design became the norm in the following decades.

Fearless, Bourke-White often delighted in climbing out onto the gargoyles themselves, 800 feet above the street, to photograph the city. This was not the first skyscraper that the daring Bourke-White had photographed.  Fascinated and exhilarated by tall structures and heights, she had previously made a variety of images of and from Cleveland's Terminal Tower, and she would go on to document other large structures and to photograph from airplanes and helicopters.