Art News reports that an upcoming auction in May 2022 may see the sale of the most expensive photograph so far. The art piece in question is Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), a famed photograph of a nude woman’s back that’s overlaid with a violin’s f-holes. Ray was an American surrealist artist/film director who spent most of his life in Paris.
The photograph is expected to fetch between $5 million and $7 million. If it does sell within that range, it will become the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.
As Art News further reports, this print of the iconic Man Ray photograph, which depicts his muse Kiki de Montparnasse, is a rare one in that it is considered an original photographic copy. It was made around the time its corresponding negative was first produced, making it valuable in the eyes of photography experts.
Man Ray’s current record was set in 2017 when an original edition of Noire et Blanche (1926) sold for $3 million during a Christie’s sale in Paris. The current auction record for a photograph is held by Andreas Gursky, whose 1999 landscape Rhein II sold at Christie’s in 2011 for $4.3 million.
“As a photographic work, it is unprecedented in the marketplace,” said Darius Himes, Christie’s international photographs specialist in a statement. “We are proud to handle it.”
The photograph is the top lot to be offered from the holdings of New York collectors Rosalind Gersten Jacobs and Melvin Jacobs, fashion retailers who had deep ties to Surrealist circles. The Jacobs bought Le Violon d’Ingres directly from Man Ray in 1962, and have held on to it since. The work will be offered in a live single-owner sale dedicated to the Jacobs’ Surrealist art collection at Christie’s in New York.
