Fine Art Photographs at Auction: Ruff

Showing posts with label Ruff. Show all posts

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Monday, February 25, 2008

Auction Complete

Photo : photograph created in 2004 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Size : 3" x 3 1/2"
Title : "Eclipse"
Includes re-edition of the book "Atlas zum Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik," first edited in 1861. This 8.9" x 7.7" re-edition released in same limited quantity as this print. Print included in envelope in back of book and stamped "Ex Libris Thomas Ruff"

eBay listing, completed Monday, March 03, 2008

Opening bid was $1

Total # of bids : 24
Final price : $710

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph taken in 1994 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Size : 7 7/8" x 8 1/4"
Title : "Nacht 14 III"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1238)

Opening bid was $1300
Estimated value was between $2000 and $3000

Total # of bids : 6
Final price : $2000 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $2500

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph taken in 1994 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Size : 7 7/8" x 8 1/4"
Title : "Nacht 14 II"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1237)

Opening bid was $1300
Estimated value was between $2000 and $3000

Total # of bids : 9
Final price : $2600 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $3250

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph taken in 1994 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Size : 7 7/8" x 8 1/4"
Title : "Nacht 18 II"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1236)

Opening bid was $1300
Estimated value was between $2000 and $3000

Total # of bids : 10
Final price : $2400 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $3000

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph taken in 1992 by Thomas Ruff
Size : 7 7/8" x 8 1/4"
Title : "Nacht 5 I"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1235)

Opening bid was $5500
Estimated value was between $8000 and $12000

Total # of bids : 15
Final price : $3000 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $3750

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph created in 2002 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Size : 35" x 25 5/8"
Title : "Substrate 6 II"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1094)

Opening bid was $2000
Estimated value was between $3000 and $5000

Total # of bids : 21
Final price : $8500 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $10,625

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : 6 color photographs from series "Nudes" created in 2001 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Sizes : various; ranges from 8 1/4" x 18 7/8" to 9 1/2" x 14 1/4"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1097)

Opening bid was $3500
Estimated value was between $5000 and $7000

Total # of bids : 1
Final price : $3500 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $4375

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Thomas Ruff - January 31

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph created in 2001 by German photographer Thomas Ruff
Size : 9.1" x 11.42"
Title : "Substrate 1 II"

Auctioned publicly by Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in New York City (Lot #1096)

Opening bid was $2000
Estimated value was between $3000 and $5000

Total # of bids : 6
Final price : $8500 + 25% Buyer's Premium = $10,625

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Friday, January 11, 2008

Thomas Ruff - January 16

Auction Complete

Photo : color photograph created in 2006 by Thomas Ruff
Size : 9.1" x 11.42"
Title : "Titan 2006"

eBay listing, completed Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Opening bid was $1

Total # of bids : 30
Final price : $2300

Full auction details : click here
Search for current Ruff listings : click here
Search for other completed Ruff listings : click here (log-in required, but sign up is trivial)
Brief bio of Ruff : click here
List of Ruff photobooks : click here

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Thomas Ruff - Brief Biography & Book List

Brief Bio
Thomas Ruff, born 1958, is a German photographer living and working in Düsseldorf, Germany. He graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the late 1970s, studying photography under Bernd and Hilla Becher. He would later teach there, in the same position his teachers held, from 2000 to 2005. He works in series of photographs, focusing for a time on a central theme. One of his first series was "Portraits," extremely large format portraiture of his friends taken against solid color backgrounds. In another series, "Night," he uses a night vision camera to take photographs of buildings in Düsseldorf. This series was partially in reaction to images broadcast from the First Gulf War.

Although Ruff does take his own photographs, as in the examples above, he also uses the photographs of others and digitally alters them for his own purposes of expression. Examples include selecting and enlarging newspaper photographs after removing the captions, the series "Stars," where he digitally altered astronomical photos, "Machines," where he recolored black and white negatives of industrial equipment, "Nudes," where he blurred and altered Internet pornography, and more recently "jpeg," a series based on altering various JPEG images widely available on the internet following the 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attack in America.

Ruff's investigations are often as much - if not in fact more - about the nature of photographs and imagery than the content of the images themselves. Ruff explains his intentions in some detail in an excellent 1993 interview with Philip Pocock in the Journal of Contemporary Art. A more recent 2005 interview in The Brooklyn Rail is also quite informative, and covers many more of his series. Popphoto.com published a brief interview with Ruff in 2008.

The Tate magazine featured an article on Thomas Ruff in their 5th issue. The Guggenheim has a brief biography on their website, as does the Goethe Institute (put up following their display of Ruff's series "Machines.") A gallery in NY representing Ruff has several examples of Ruff's work, including a selection from many of his different series.

Books