Lot 31

Featured in this season’s spotlight section, Christie’s Photographs presents twelve lots by American photographer Peter Hujar from the collection of Dianne Benson. As Hujar was one of the most active and influential figures of the lively downtown New York art scene during the 1970s and 1980s, well acquainted with artists and performers of all sorts, it is not at all surprising that he would have worked with Dianne Benson, then known as ‘Dianne B.’ Benson was the owner of the eponymous cutting-edge boutique on somewhat-staid Madison Avenue as well as owner of the first Comme des Garçons boutique in the United States, which she opened in SoHo in 1981. While designing clothing herself for the boutique, she is also credited with having been the first American boutique to import designers Issey Miyake and Jean Paul Gaultier. In the early 1980s Benson began commissioning artists including Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz and Hujar to create campaigns for the boutique. The rare grouping of works being offered here includes some of the images made by Hujar for these campaigns. Among those featured in the portraits are favored muses David Wojnarowicz, Ethyl Eichelberger and Greer Lankton along with effortlessly glamorous portraits of Dianne B. and her boutique employees, who were in some cases also Hujar’s friends. Several of the prints in this group are very likely unique.Most known for his emotionally revealing–many times erotic–masterly printed portraits from a period of exploration in gender and sexuality, Hujar produced work for the Dianne B. campaigns during what’s generally considered the peak of his career. The models for these images appear luxuriously clothed in couture pieces from Benson’s boutique in whimsical, romantic and sometimes enigmatic poses. Benson’s campaigns, like much of what she did as a designer and boutique owner, were delightfully unconventional and she gave the artists near total freedom. Several of Hujar's images were featured in advertisements for the boutique that ran in magazines including Interview and Artforum, among others (fig. 2) and five of his images from this present group appeared as part of a set of postcards issued by Benson for Christmas of 1983, which she titled 'The Twelve Perfect Christmas Gifts from Dianne B.' (fig. 1). The postcard set comprised of Hujar's images along with other colorful, pop-art inspired photographs, all contained within a bright red paper folder designed by artist Ken Tisa; the models in the images are adorned in Gaultier, Miyake and Dianne B. creations. Like many photographers of the mid-20th century, Hujar’s career as an artist intermittently involved commercial fashion photography. One of the most important moments in the earlier part of Hujar’s career was in 1967 when he earned a spot in the master class taught by Richard Avedon and famous art director Marvin Israel. It was after this class that Hujar started booking assignments for Harper’s Bazaar and for other underground street-fashion and music magazines. And as was the case with Avedon, Irving Penn and others, the fashion work that Hujar made for Dianne B. was fully integrated with his personal body of work. All of the characteristics of Hujar’s most recognized and lauded works are articulated in these images. The present group includes examples of Hujar’s embrace of gender fluidity in both his portrait the drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger as well as in the alluring diptych portraits of transsexual artist Greer Lankton; it includes emotional vulnerability eloquently conveyed in the rare–very likely unique–variation image of David Wojnarowicz in Bed. The forthright openness of Dianne B. in the portrait of her sitting, facing Hujar straight-on, exemplifies Hujar’s ability to delve into his subjects, not as objective studies, but as acts of true and penetrating interpersonal connection with people who genuinely interested him. By the late 1970s, early 1980s Hujar’s portraits had matured to take on the distinct aesthetic for which his work continues to be known. Formally, the square image from his medium-format camera and his printing of the entire negative had both become recognizable elements in many of his portraits. The minimally adorned single room of his loft at 12th street and 2nd avenue with his commonly-employed table and chair had also become iconic in Hujar’s studio portraiture by this time (and is the mise-en-scène of most of the lots in this group). Meanwhile, outside his home studio, Hujar focused on the downtown art scene, particularly the dynamic culture of dance, drag-performance and music that percolated throughout the city at night. He was a fan of Ethyl Eichelberger’s drag performances, oftentimes for Charles Ludlam’s ‘Ridiculous Theatrical Company’, and at one point Hujar referred to Eichelberger as ‘The greatest actor in America.’ The early 1980s was important for Hujar not only in that it marks his most productive and arguably his most successful period as an artist; this time also marks the personally momentous entrance of Wojnarowicz into Hujar’s life and the beginning of their artistically collaborative relationship. The two met for the first time in the winter of 1980–1981, just before Hujar started working with Dianne B. While their relationship was initially romantic, Hujar came to be more of a mentor to the significantly younger artist. Wojnarowicz’s drawings and Hujar’s photos can be seen together in Dianne B’s summer mailer of 1984, now existing as one of the many pieces of whimsical ephemera that memorializes their nascent relationship. The two would remain extremely close friends and collaborators for the rest of Hujar’s life, which ended abruptly at the age of 53 due to AIDS. After his diagnosis in January of 1987 Hujar largely isolated himself, other than attending Greer Lankton’s wedding in the spring; he died on Thanksgiving Day with Wojnarowicz, Eichelberger and other friends by his side.The fact that many of the portraits in this group are evidently work prints but yet printed with such sensitivity and reverence for perfection, tells one about Hujar’s approach to each of his prints, to his life and to his career. He could have easily achieved more fame during his lifetime, but chose not to. He was as particular about his lifestyle and who he spent time with as he was about how each of his prints looked and was presented. The act of physically printing his images himself was extremely important to Hujar as if the sexual, emotional subtleties of his subjects could only be justly expressed through his personal handling of the paper and chemicals. This sensitivity was applied to all of the friends, performers, characters and lovers that came before his camera. Hujar’s photographs of the boutique employees, for example, have not been approached from a distance, but rather as part of an active communion with those who were part of the stylish, adventurous downtown world he inhabited, and as expressions of his probing to find something within each of them or between himself and them.In each of the images in this rare collection of works from such a pivotal time in Hujar’s life, we see everything about why his photographs only continue to gain appreciation over time: Hujar made his subjects beautiful not by transforming, re-contextualizing, or exploiting who they were nor by reducing them to formal, aestheticized compositional elements; he made them beautiful by celebrating them for who they chose to be, and exactly as they were in his eyes.

PETER HUJAR (1934–1987)

'If Only I Spoke French' (Greer Lankton in Jean-Charles de Castelbajac sheets), 1983

Details

PETER HUJAR (1934–1987)
'If Only I Spoke French' (Greer Lankton in Jean-Charles de Castelbajac sheets), 1983
two gelatin silver prints
left image: stamped 'AUTHENTICATED/ THE PETER HUJAR ARCHIVE, LLC/ Vintage Silver Print/ Made by the artist' and numbered 'EPH 5451A-1' in pencil (verso); right image: stamped 'AUTHENTICATED/ THE PETER HUJAR ARCHIVE, LLC/ Vintage Silver Print/ Made by the artist' and signed by Stephen Koch, Executor, and numbered 'EPH 5451-2' in pencil (verso); credited, titled, dated and annotated 'Trial pictures for 12 Perfect Xmas Gifts from Dianne B.' in ink on affixed label (frame backing board)
each image/sheet: approximately 9 5/8 x 7 in. (24.4 x 17.7 cm.)
The image on the left is believed to be a unique print.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner, 1983.

Literature

Dianne B. advertisement, Interview, New York, December 1983.

Lot Essay

New York artist Greer Lankton (1958–1996) was born Greg Lankton in 1958 to the son of a Presbyterian minister in Illinois. In 1979, at the age of 21, she underwent a sex change using funds her father collected from his church congregation. Shortly thereafter she moved to New York where she became one of the central figures of the East Village art scene while living with photographer Nan Goldin. Lankton's own art took the form of large dolls resembling idols of hers, including transgender icon Candy Darling and drag performer Divine. Given this artistic and social realm that she had found herself in, along with her status as a transgendered artist, it's inevitable that her path would have crossed with Hujar's. In 1983 Hujar depicted her glamorously in several portraits, including the two comprising this lot.

The image on the left first appeared in the December 1983 issue of Interview magazine and the image on the right was used for Dianne B.'s promotional Christmas postcard set issued that same year, 'The Twelve Perfect Christmas Gifts from Dianne B.', where the image was titled If Only I Spoke French. In both of the images Lankton appears in Hujar's bed.

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