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Lot Essay
1966 was a significant year for Diane Arbus. That January she applied for her second Guggenheim Fellowship, and by mid-March had learned of her successful application and its accompanying grant of $7500, a consequential affirmation of the importance of her work. That year she made some of her most celebrated images, including A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C., A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, N.Y.C., and the image being offered here.
During the latter months of 1966, Arbus attended a convention of identical twins in Roselle, New Jersey. It was there that she made one of the most indelible works of art of the twentieth century. At the same time, John Szarkowski was working on an exhibition for The Museum of Modern Art that would come to be known as ‘New Documents,’ comprised of works by Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand. By January 1967, in preparation for that exhibition, Arbus had made a print of Identical twins, printed it as a postcard, and mailed it to various friends and acquaintances to encourage them to see the show. ‘New Documents’ opened on February 27, 1967. Fifty years later, the exhibition was to become the subject of a Museum of Modern Art monograph documenting the exhibition in detail and exploring its continued significance.
As can be seen in the contact sheet reproduced in the 2003 exhibition catalogue, Diane Arbus: Revelations, Arbus photographed three sets of twin girls on this roll of medium-format film. Six of the sheet’s twelve exposures are of Cathleen and Colleen Wade, and the now celebrated image can be seen upside down, as the second image from the bottom on the left negative strip. The sisters stand shoulder to shoulder in matching corduroy dresses, white tights, and headbands. As noted on page 182 of Revelations, Arbus wrote on the December 11th page of her appointment book ‘GREAT GIRL TWINS. REN EYES,’ a reference to her younger sister, Renne. Arbus’s chosen frame stands out both for its startling directness and the enigmatic, forever-indecipherable expressions of the twins’ faces.
Four years later, Arbus was to choose this image for A Box of Ten Photographs, her only portfolio, which she designed with Marvin Israel and self-produced in 1970 and 1971. Originally conceived to be an edition of 50, the printing was not fully realized during her lifetime, and Arbus sold only four sets: two to Richard Avedon, one to her friend Bea Feitler, and one to Jasper Johns. In 2018, A Box of Ten Photographs will be the focus of a major exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
Large format, lifetime prints of Identical twins are scarce and rare to the market. The present lot was printed by Neil Selkirk in the months following Arbus’s death; the notation in the upper left corner, ‘NS print’ is in Selkirk’s hand and was written long before the Estate stamp was applied, in order to differentiate the print from lifetime prints. Thus, this 16x20 inch print pre-dates the Estate decision to print out the edition of 50 that Arbus had begun in 1970; it is therefore uneditioned.
In the spring of 1972, the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, headed by esteemed curator John Szarkowski, mounted a full-scale retrospective of her work, helping to cement her place in a quickly evolving canon of great 20th century artists. Subsequent decades have testified to her lasting influence, and in recent years ambitious surveys of her work have been mounted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Jeu de Paume, Paris, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
During the latter months of 1966, Arbus attended a convention of identical twins in Roselle, New Jersey. It was there that she made one of the most indelible works of art of the twentieth century. At the same time, John Szarkowski was working on an exhibition for The Museum of Modern Art that would come to be known as ‘New Documents,’ comprised of works by Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand. By January 1967, in preparation for that exhibition, Arbus had made a print of Identical twins, printed it as a postcard, and mailed it to various friends and acquaintances to encourage them to see the show. ‘New Documents’ opened on February 27, 1967. Fifty years later, the exhibition was to become the subject of a Museum of Modern Art monograph documenting the exhibition in detail and exploring its continued significance.
As can be seen in the contact sheet reproduced in the 2003 exhibition catalogue, Diane Arbus: Revelations, Arbus photographed three sets of twin girls on this roll of medium-format film. Six of the sheet’s twelve exposures are of Cathleen and Colleen Wade, and the now celebrated image can be seen upside down, as the second image from the bottom on the left negative strip. The sisters stand shoulder to shoulder in matching corduroy dresses, white tights, and headbands. As noted on page 182 of Revelations, Arbus wrote on the December 11th page of her appointment book ‘GREAT GIRL TWINS. REN EYES,’ a reference to her younger sister, Renne. Arbus’s chosen frame stands out both for its startling directness and the enigmatic, forever-indecipherable expressions of the twins’ faces.
Four years later, Arbus was to choose this image for A Box of Ten Photographs, her only portfolio, which she designed with Marvin Israel and self-produced in 1970 and 1971. Originally conceived to be an edition of 50, the printing was not fully realized during her lifetime, and Arbus sold only four sets: two to Richard Avedon, one to her friend Bea Feitler, and one to Jasper Johns. In 2018, A Box of Ten Photographs will be the focus of a major exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
Large format, lifetime prints of Identical twins are scarce and rare to the market. The present lot was printed by Neil Selkirk in the months following Arbus’s death; the notation in the upper left corner, ‘NS print’ is in Selkirk’s hand and was written long before the Estate stamp was applied, in order to differentiate the print from lifetime prints. Thus, this 16x20 inch print pre-dates the Estate decision to print out the edition of 50 that Arbus had begun in 1970; it is therefore uneditioned.
In the spring of 1972, the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, headed by esteemed curator John Szarkowski, mounted a full-scale retrospective of her work, helping to cement her place in a quickly evolving canon of great 20th century artists. Subsequent decades have testified to her lasting influence, and in recent years ambitious surveys of her work have been mounted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Jeu de Paume, Paris, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.