One of the most provocative, pulsating films of the 1970s—Performance starring James Fox and Mick Jagger—comes under the spotlight at Sotheby’s S2 gallery in London later this month (25 November-23 December). Images taken on the set of the cult movie by the society photographer Cecil Beaton will go on show in the selling exhibition, capturing the racy, dark underworld of gangsters, bohemia and sexual intrigue in swinging London. “Beaton visited the set [a basement flat in Notting Hill] to document the shoot; his previous commission had been taking a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, a testament to his status as the most sought after society photographer in England at the time,” says a Sotheby’s statement. Meanwhile, not many people realise that since 1977, Sotheby’s has also been the guardian of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, a repository of more than 100,000 negatives and 9,000 vintage prints.
