Once in a while we feel compel to take a stroll down memory lane. If we languished right away and ever since for the Swinging Sixties, keep found memories of the colorful Seventies it took a while to revisit the next decade. The auction titled The 80s at Phillips de Pury in New York opens the door to that time capsule which for some of us, not unlike the Sixties, if you remember it in details you might not have really lived the times.
The Eighties, synonym of excessive indulgence, materialistic values was a time that could easily stay in the backroom of our memories. Still, beyond the Studio 54, the rise of MTV and the Apple computer, shoulder pads and cocaine, the Eighties come also as a gateway between times. Great classic photographers such Horst P. Horst and Andreas Feininger were still shooting, forty years on and still going; Annie Leibovitz was developing highly stylized conceptual portraits, Herb Ritts and Robert Mapplethorpe rose to stardom while Jean-Paul Goude was creating Grace Jones and the list goes on, from Tina Barney to Cindy Sherman. A lot was done in the Eighties, a lot was good at the time and with the years some went from good to great.
Gilles Decamps