Lot 164
  • 164

Max Yavno

Estimate
25,000 - 35,000 USD
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Description

  • Max Yavno
  • MUSCLE BEACH
  • Gelatin silver print
large-format, flush-mounted, framed, a Santa Barbara Museum of Art exhibition label on the reverse, 1949, likely printed in the early 1960s

Provenance

Acquired from the photographer, 1971

Exhibited

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Watkins to Weston: 101 Years of California Photography, February - May 1992; and traveling thereafter to:
Sacramento, Crocker Art Museum, June - August 1992
Laguna Beach, Laguna Art Museum, January - March 1993

Literature

Watkins to Weston: 101 Years of California Photography, 1849-1950 (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1992), p. 175 (this print)
Max Yavno and Lee Shippey, The Los Angeles Book (Boston, 1950), pp. 78-9
Jennifer Watts and Claudia Bohn-Spector, This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in Los Angeles Photographs (The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, 2008), p. 157

Condition

This photograph, on glossy paper that is mounted to thick board, is in generally excellent condition. The print is trimmed to the image, and the edges are very slightly darkened. Only visible upon very close examination in high raking light are a number of pin-point-sized and small impressions, none of which appears to break the emulsion. When this print is examined with ultraviolet light, it appears to fluoresce.
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

Max Yavno is best remembered for two volumes of photographs, The San Francisco Book of 1948 and The Los Angeles Book of 1950.  Commissioned by Houghton Mifflin, the books paired Yavno’s images with text provided by a popular columnist from each city—in San Francisco, the Chronicle’s Herb Caen, and in Los Angeles, the L. A. Times’s Lee Shippey.  Part promotion, part documentary, the books showcased Yavno’s talent and published for the first time images that are classics today. 

The strip of Los Angeles shoreline first known as Muscle Beach was just south of the Santa Monica pier.   A weight-lifting platform, parallel bars, and other exercise equipment had been installed by the Works Progress Administration, and from the 1930s through the 1950s, crowds watched such bodybuilders as Joe Gold, Jack LaLanne, and Pudgy and Les Stockton strike poses and flex their muscles.  Muscle Beach was a gym and a social hall all in one.  In 1959, a decade after the present image was taken, the ‘Beach’ was officially moved to nearby Venice, only to be brought back to Santa Monica in the 1980s.    

Yavno’s Muscle Beach, the quintessential beach photograph of its decade, captures all of the exuberance and optimism of post-war America.   Cinematic in its scope, filled with the ‘balmy surrealism of direct sunlight,’ as David Travis once observed, it is a narrative of tanned bodies, swimsuits, malt shops, and muscle men.  Its only rival is Weegee’s Coney Island, the quintessential beach photograph from nearly a decade before.  One of the best-loved images from the Los Angeles series, it is one of a handful of Yavno’s icons. 

Large-format early prints of any of Yavno’s images rarely appear at auction.  The cropping of the image offered here comes closest to that used by Yavno for The Los Angeles Book