Lot 1124
Rosenberg, Arnold. Marcel Duchamp. Collection of 32 negatives taken in December 1958 at Marcel Duchamp's 14th Street Studio in New York City, including twelve negatives for the famous photos of Duchamp playing chess on a glass table. Twenty other negatives show Duchamp talking, gesturing, smoking his pipe, etc.
Rosenberg (1931 -) is best known for these photographs of Duchamp playing chess. Rosenberg had contacted Duchamp and told him of his desire to do a portfolio of photographs of Duchamp and his work. Duchamp agreed and suggested that Rosenberg set up a background which would simulate a nude descending a staircase (see following lot--after Duchamp's famous 1912 painting, "Nu descendant un escalier n° 2"). While waiting for an artist's model to arrive, Rosenberg and Duchamp had time to get better acquainted and Rosenberg took a number of close-up shots of Duchamp before setting up for the "staircase" photo. After a long day of shooting the "staircase" photo, Duchamp, who was a chess aficionado, suggested that Rosenberg join him in a game. We don't know who won the chess game but Rosenberg shot these photos from underneath the glass table as Duchamp moved the chess pieces about and history was made.
ALL RIGHTS OF REPRODUCTION ARE INCLUDED WITH THE PURCHASE OF THIS LOT.
Arnold T. Rosenberg is an American-born photographer who began his career in the late 1950s as an assistant to Irving Penn. In 1961, he opened his studio in New York City. His photographs have been published widely in national and international magazines and he was a contributing photographer for the New York Times, Opera News and New York Magazine. His photographs appear in numerous cookbooks for Craig Claiborne & Pierre Franey. Photographs of the architect Marcel Breuer have been on exhibit at the Vitra Museum in Germany.
In 1979, Rosenberg was among the first American photographers invited to travel to The Peoples Republic of China as part of a cultural exchange between the two countries. On a commission from Philippe de Montebello, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rosenberg photographed a Ming Dynasty courtyard in Suzhou which became the prototype on permanent exhibit at the Met. While in Beijing he was asked to lecture at Beijing University. These images have been exhibited in Shanghai.
Mr. Rosenberg's photographs are found in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in N.Y. and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The photographs taken at Marcel Duchamp's studio in 1958 are now part of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.
Estimated Value $20,000-UP.
Arnold Rosenberg.
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