Exhibition: ‘William Eggleston, Paris’ at Fondation Cartier, Paris

Exhibition dates: 4th April – 21st June, 2009

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Untitled from the Paris series
2006-2008
Colour print
27.9 x 35.6cm
Series of 32 works: 27 colour prints, 4 diptychs and 1 painting
Commission for the exhibition William Eggleston, Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2009
Gift of the artist 2009
© Eggleston Artistic Trust, Memphis

Perhaps it’s just me, but I seem to have become a little jaded towards the recent photographs of William Eggleston.

Other than the green reflection of lights in rainwater (above) the photographs seem to have lost their unique voice, the social insight that gave his earlier work it’s zing – provocative images that challenged how we live through a meditation on subject matter, construction of space, and tone of “colour”. How the colour that surrounds us inflects our very being.

In these photographs it feels like there has been little development in his style over the years with a consequent lessening of their visual impact. Now Eggleston’s colour just feels like a party trick, performed by rote with little consequential meaning to either the colour or the image. Perhaps the way we look at the world (and how we picture it) has finally overtaken the director’s prescient creative vision – his auteurship, his authorship.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fondation Cartier for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

“In Eggleston’s best work, the work that made him famous, color is intrinsic to the meaning of the photograph. Its not simply a garnish to draw the eye. His best photographs are not ‘about’ the color; they are about larger issues that the color is used in the service of. This is whats missing in his Paris pictures. The color here is pure ornament, eye candy to seduce you into forgetting that the picture has nothing to say.”

Anonymous. “William Eggleston Mails It In From Paris,” on the Leicaphilia website April 21, 2014 [Online] Cited 06/02/2019

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939) 'Untitled', Paris series, 2006-2008

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Untitled from the Ωris series
2006-2008
Colour print
27.9 x 35.6cm
Series of 32 works: 27 colour prints, 4 diptychs and 1 painting
Commission for the exhibition William Eggleston, Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2009
Gift of the artist 2009
© Eggleston Artistic Trust, Memphis

For the last three years, American photographer William Eggleston has photographed the city of Paris as part of a commission for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Taken throughout different seasons, these new images by one of the fathers of colour photography portray the local and the cosmopolitan, the glamorous and the gritty, the everyday and the extraordinary.

This exhibition also provides an exceptional occasion to bring together William Eggleston’s distinctive pictures and his recent paintings, an unknown aspect of his work that has never before been presented to the public.

Text from the Fondation Cartier website

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Untitled from the Paris series
2006-2008
Colour print
35.6 x 27.9cm
Series of 32 works: 27 colour prints, 4 diptychs and 1 painting
Commission for the exhibition William Eggleston, Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2009
Gift of the artist 2009
© Eggleston Artistic Trust, Memphis

William Eggleston’s recent book Paris, published by Steidl and commissioned by Foundation Cartier, is a collective body of work that comprises his oeuvre of color drawings and recent Paris photographs. Similar to Ben Shahn, Charles Scheeler, Diego Rivera, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha, Eggleston has reached out beyond photography to express his creative talents.

The photographs and drawings are intertwined throughout the book, creating an interesting visual cadence. The page spreads illustrate various layout designs, including a single image of either a photograph or drawing on a spread, pairs of drawings and photographs and pairs of drawing facing a photograph. All of the drawings and photographs are contained within the boundaries of the page. …

We know mostly of Eggleston’s photographs, but from the dating on one of the drawings included in this book, we can determine that Eggleston has been working with the drawing medium since 1968. It is interesting to speculate as to how one medium may have influenced the other for Eggleston. As an example, the earlier photographs by Shahn and Scheeler seem to have had an influence on how these two artists subsequently worked their framing, pictorial space, mass & line quality in their subsequent paintings.

The Paris photographs that Eggleston made of graffiti or his tight framing in conjunction with a longer lens to compress the pictorial space are visually similar in style to his drawings. The subjects he photographs are framed to create similar vibrant color masses and lines as his drawing, abstracting reality into basic graphic components. …

Eggleston’s photographs are constructed like spontaneous glances; partial views of what might be consider a traditional subject, creating color abstractions of lines, patterns and mass. Trees, pipes, people, walls, garbage, décor, wall paper, display windows are bisected and truncated, with edges and lines following out of the photographs borders. These images seem to be created by a restless and nervous energy.

With these drawings, paintings and photographs, Eggleston shows a interesting handling of these mediums and offers an insight as to how influential the period of Abstract Expressionism is to his photographic process.

Extract from Douglas Stockdale. “William Eggleston – Paris,” on The PhotoBook Journal website September 12, 2009 [Online] Cited 06/02/2019

Fondation Cartier
261, Boulevard Raspail
75014 Paris, France

Opening hours:
Open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 11am – 8pm
Closed on Mondays
Late closing on Tuesday, at 10 pm

Fondation Cartier website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Diane Arbus’ at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

Exhibition dates: 9th May – 31st August, 2009

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Tattooed Man at a Carnival, Md.
1970
Gelatin silver print
15 x 14 5/8 in. (38.3 x 37.3 cm)

Diane Arbus is one of my favourite photographs – how I would love to see this exhibition!

I have posted some photographs from the exhibition, including all ten images from the Box of Ten 1971 that features in the show.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Museum of Wales for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'A young man in curlers at home on West 20th St., N.Y.C. 1966' 1966 from the exhibition 'Diane Arbus' at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, may- Aug, 2009

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A young man with curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C.
1966
Gelatin silver print

One of National Museum Cardiff’s main art exhibitions in 2009 reveals the work of legendary New York photographer Diane Arbus (1923 -1971), who transformed the art of photography. Diane Arbus, which comprises 69 black and white photographs including the rare and important portfolio of ten vintage prints: Box of Ten, 1971, is one of the best collections of Arbus’s work in existence. A large selection of these images will be on display at the Museum from 9 May until 31 August 2009.

Capturing 1950s and 1960s America, Arbus is renowned for portraits of people who were then classed on the outskirts of society nudists, transvestites, circus performers and zealots. In one of her most famous works, Identical Twins, Roselle, NJ of 1967, the twins are photographed as if joined at the shoulder and hip with only three arms between them.

Her powerful, sometimes controversial, images often frame the familiar as strange and the strange or exotic as familiar. This singular vision and her ability to engage in such an uncompromising way with her subjects has made Arbus one of the most important and influential photographers of the twentieth century.

This singular vision and her ability to engage in such an uncompromising way with her subjects has made Arbus one of the most important and influential photographers of the twentieth century.

Text from the National Museum of Cardiff website [Online] Cited 18/05/2009. No longer available online

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A Jewish Giant at home with his parents in the Bronx
1967
Gelatin silver print

From 1969 to 1971 Arbus was absorbed in the creation of a limited edition portfolio, A box of ten photographs. The portfolio was intended to present her work as an artist in the manner of the special print editions offered by new artists’ presses such as Crown Point and Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE). This group of pictures and its presentation was a very conscious statement of what she stood for, and how she regarded her own photography. The pictures range from the relatively early ones of the Nudists in their summer home and Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I., both of 1963; through the now iconic Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967 and Westchester Couple sunning themselves on their lawn, to the later pictures of the Jewish giant, the Mexican Dwarf in his hotel room, N.Y.C. and the King and Queen of a senior citizens’ dance, N.Y.C., all of 1970. There is clearly an attempt to be representative of the general idea, the larger plan behind her work. There is also a significant stylistic range, from the graceful daylight in the picture of the older couple in the nudist camp, to the later picture of the elderly king and queen, whom she photographed with sharp flash. She included Xmas tree, a work without human subjects. The prints for this portfolio were selected three years after the New Documents exhibition, before there was thought of another show. But the pictures constituted a kind of exhibition in and of themselves, to be examined one at a time, rather than all at once. From her letters, we know that the idea of a clear box was very important; it was to serve as both a container and a display case allowing the owner to reorder and display the pictures easily. Just as she had wanted the black border of the print to show in the New Documents exhibition, here she wished to exhibit the entire print as it appeared on the photographic paper …

Most of the pictures in the portfolio either depict families or refer to the family. Even the corner of the cellophane-looking room in Levittown is made by peering over the two outstretched arms of a family armchair, posed like the trousered knees of the empty chair in the picture of the Jewish giant. The idea of the family album was a private but expressive metaphor for her. As in a family album, each member is part of the larger group; they are related, perhaps even tolerated, and harmony may be rare and perhaps even uninteresting. But they are all considered with the same intelligent and human regard. She photographed the Jewish giant as a mythic figure, enclosed in a modest Bronx living room, an unconventional member of an otherwise conventional family: ‘I know a Jewish giant who lives in Washington Heights or the Bronx with his little parents. He is tragic with a curious bitter somewhat stupid wit. The parents are orthodox and repressive and classic and disapprove of his carnival career…They are truly a metaphorical family. When he stands with his arms around each he looks like he would gladly crush them. They fight terribly in an utterly typical fashion which seems only exaggerated by their tragedy… Arrogant, anguished, even silly.’

Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from the book Diane Arbus Revelations.1

1/ Phillips, Sandra. “The Question of Belief,” in Diane Arbus Revelations. London: Random House, 2003, pp. 66-67.

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'Mexican dwarf in his hotel room N.Y.C. 1970' 1970

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Mexican Dwarf in his hotel room, N.Y.C.
1970
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I. 1963' 1963

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I.
1963
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1966' 1966

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Identical twins, Roselle, N.J.
1967
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
King and Queen of a senior citizens’ dance, N.Y.C.
1970
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A family on their lawn one Sunday in Westchester, N.Y., 1968
1968
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J.
1963
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C., 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, NYC., 1966
1966
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A child crying, N.J.
1967
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A young man and his pregnant wife in Washington Square Park, N.Y.C., 1965
1965
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Untitled (1)
1970-1971
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Untitled
1970-1971
Gelatin silver print

National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3NP

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 – 5pm

National Museum of Wales website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Two exhibitions by photographer John Wood: ‘On the Edge of Clear Meaning’ at Grey Art Gallery, New York and ‘Quiet Protest’ at the International Center of Photography, New York

Exhibition dates: Grey Art Gallery, 12th May – 18th July, 2009; International Center of Photography, 15th May – 6th September, 2009

Fantastic to see such a talented artist, a truly ground breaking artist, get the recognition he so richly deserves!

Grey Art Gallery

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Untitled
1986-1989
Stained gelatin silver print from paper stencil

John Wood (American, 1922-2012) 'Beach Drawing' 1983 from the exhibition 'On the Edge of Clear Meaning' at Grey Art Gallery, New York, May - July, 2009

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Beach Drawing
1983
Gelatin silver print
14 15/16 x 19 1/8″ (37.8 x 48.5cm)

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning, on view at the Grey Art Gallery from May 12 through July 18, 2009, is the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date. Featuring the full range of his career from the 1960s to the present, the show includes over 150 photographs, mixed-media works, and artists’ books. A selection of Wood’s photomontages, Quiet Protest, will be on view concurrently at the International Center of Photography.

John Wood (born 1922) has consistently challenged traditional photography, often incorporating painting, drawing, and collage as well as cliché verre, solarisation, and offset lithography. The artist emphasises the role of drawing in his work: “Mark making, calligraphy, the kinetic motion of the movement of the hand, are very important to me; probably more important than anything else.” Transgressing the boundaries of “pure photography,” his eclectic practice has helped usher in alternative approaches to the medium. With their adroit manipulations of picture and text, his diaristic, multi-media compositions anticipate today’s digital imagery. On the Edge of Clear Meaning is Wood’s first museum retrospective, spanning his career from the early 1960s to the present.

His early childhood was marked by the Depression, and his family moved frequently. After serving in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot during World War II, he enrolled at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer, studying with Harry Callahan and Art Sinsabaugh to hone both conceptual and formal issues in his work. He left Chicago to teach photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, New York, where he would live for thirty-five years. He now resides in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife, Laurie Snyder, who teaches photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art. They migrate each summer to their home and studio in Ithaca, New York.

In keeping with the Grey Art Gallery’s tradition of presenting the work of under-represented artists, this exhibition introduces John Wood as a master of various multi-media processes and testifies to his insatiable curiosity about new materials and repeated use of favourite sources. Through disciplined but lively investigation of different media, the artist eroded traditional definitions of photography and produced work that is both powerful and subtle. As Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey, notes, “John Wood has been a life-long teacher, inspiring and training numerous students, artists, and arts professionals. We are honoured to bring the breadth of his work to New York City, home to many art schools, colleges, and universities.”

Text from the Grey Art Gallery website and press release [Online] Cited 10/05/2009. No longer available online

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Eagle Pelt
1985
Gelatin silver print
20 1/8 x 15 3/8″

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Pear Tree, Cooling Tower, and Apples
1991
Collage, gelatin silver print, Polaroid SX70, and paper
19 1/4 x 15 3/8″

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Blackbird, Some Have Hunger
1986
Collage, cyanotype, and graphite
20 x 24″

International Center of Photography

Quiet Protest is a series of photographic works by the noted mixed media artist and educator John Wood, spanning a period from the 1960s through the 1990s. Part of a larger retrospective at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, the “Quiet Protest” series explores political and social issues of the day through thoughtful photo montage pieces that exist in marked contrast to more traditional aggressive documentary photography. Rather than offering explanations or promoting solutions, Wood’s manipulated photographs present contemplative routes into issues ranging from the Vietnam War to domestic gun violence to ecological concerns. As Wood wrote in 1970, ” …maybe the time has come for creative photography to encompass the large problems without propaganda or journalism…”

Text from the International Center of Photography website [Online] Cited 10/05/2009. No longer available online

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Rifle, Bullets and Daises
1967

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Triangle in the Landscape: Eleven Second 90 Degree Turn of a Paper Triangle
August 6, 1985 (Hiroshima Day)

John Wood (1922-2012)

John Cheney Wood (July 10, 1922 – July 20, 2012) was an American artist and educator who challenged traditional photography and often incorporated other mediums into his work. He was born in California in 1922. In 1943 he volunteered for the Army Air Corps, where he served as a B-17 pilot until 1945. At the time of his death he lived in Baltimore, Maryland, with artist Laurie Snyder.

Wood had the ability to work across a variety of artistic forms, from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing. Wood moved freely between conceptual and visual exploration, not adhering to a single style. Although he often raised questions about political, social and environmental issues, he avoided promoting personal solutions or adding narratives to the images. The artist instead preferred to focus on the viewer’s interpretation and the possibility for multiple meanings.

Text from the Wikipedia website

John Wood (American, 1922-2012)
Loon, Drawer and Bomb
1987
Collage, cyanotype, and toned silver gelatin print

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning book cover

Book

In his introductory essay to this monograph – featuring the diverse photo practice that has characterised John Wood’s nearly 50-year career – David Levi Strauss states, “In photo-historical terms, Wood is thought of as one of those renegades who went against ‘pure photography’ by incorporating drawing, painting, collage and every other technique he could get his hands on (not to mention explicit political content), into his practice, thus ushering in the multi-media of the 1960s that caused crisis in ‘straight photography.’ Long before it became the signal medium of the avant-garde, collage was a folk art, practiced by children, lovers and grandmothers.” This comprehensive volume accompanies a retrospective that begins in Rochester, New York at The George Eastman House, The Memorial Art Gallery and the Visual Studies Workshop, then travels to The International Center for Photography and The Grey Art Gallery in New York before concluding at Syracus’ Light Work gallery.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning by David Strauss et al (Hardcover) 2008

Available from the Amazon website

Grey Art Gallery
New York University
100 Washington Square East

Opening hours:
Monday – Friday: 12.00 – 5.00pm
Closed weekends

Grey Art Gallery website

International Center of Photography
79 Essex Street New York, NY 10002
between Delancey Street and Broome Street

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday: 11.00am – 7.00pm
Closed Tuesdays

International Center of Photography website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘William Wegman: Fay’ at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Exhibition dates: 16th May – 16th August, 2009

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Front Facade
1993
Polaroid
Courtesy of the artist

A selection of photographs of Fay by William Wegman. Gotta love that dog!

Marcus

Many thankx to the Akron Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

William Wegman (American, b. 1943) 'Miss Mit' 1993 from the exhibition 'William Wegman: Fay' at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio, May - Aug, 2009

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Miss Mit
1993
Polaroid
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
On Set
1994
Polaroid
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Patriotic Poodle
1994
Polaroid
Courtesy of the artist

The Akron Art Museum is deeply honoured to be one of only two venues to present William Wegman: Fay, a wonderfully witty and moving exhibition about the artistic collaboration between William Wegman (b. 1943) and his celebrated Weimaraner Fay (1984-1995).

The breadth of Wegman’s audience is truly remarkable. In addition to being internationally renowned in art circles, he is one of the few artists to successfully disseminate his work – especially the photographs, videos and books featuring his beloved Weimaraner dogs – through the mass media.

Wegman is a conceptual artist who works in many different media. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1943, he graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1965 with a BFA in painting. Subsequently, he enrolled in the Masters painting and printmaking program at the University of Illinois. In 1970, he moved to southern California and began exhibiting his photographs. He was one of the earliest artists to explore video and has used photography for over four decades.

While living in California, Wegman acquired Man Ray, a Weimaraner whom he named after the surrealist French photographer. The dog became his partner in both life and art during their 12 year collaboration. Man Ray became so famous that, upon his passing, he was named ‘Man of the Year’ by the New York City newspaper The Village Voice.

Grief-stricken by Ray’s death, Wegman made the decision not to get another dog, but some years later he came to meet another Weimaraner:

“When we first met in Memphis, Tennessee, she was six months old and her name was Cinnamon Girl. I named her Fay after Fay Wray, of course, but also after my first colour Polaroid with Man Ray and the nail polish, which I had titled Fay Ray. Her fur was taupe, lighter and warmer-toned than Man Ray’s, and she had yellow eyes like in a Rousseau painting. I had no intention of photographing Fay. Man Ray was irreplaceable. I didn’t want to mar my memory of him.

… In a short time Fay matured from a coltish youth into a Garboesque beauty. My pictures grew with her. Now she was the muse, the adored one. Skin-deep beauty became the soul of my work.” ~ William Wegman, Polaroids, New York, 2002

Fay had a chameleon-like quality very different from Man Ray’s concrete presence. The bond between the artist and his muse is undeniable. Images of Fay balanced upon an ironing boarding in Sphinx (1987) and coolly starting into the lens from beneath a black net in Netted (1988) show her deep trust in Wegman. His work with Fay captures the canine in a spectrum of emotions. Her huge, expressive citron eyes convey in one shot tragedy and in the next, joy. A series of photographs show Fay swathed in human clothing, posed as a woman, with the human arms and legs of her co-model. The canine appears part human, her expression incredibly familiar. Fay also posed with a variety of props, from roller-skates to masks of fruit, flowers and other found objects.

The Akron Art Museum is fortunate to be able to include in this exhibition not just black and white photographs but also large format Polaroids and chromogenic (colour) prints, from the artist’s personal collection. In addition to 56 still photographs, extensive selections from Wegman’s videos featuring Fay will be on continuous view in the exhibition.”

Text from the Akron Art Museum website

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Basic Shapes In Color
1993
Chromogenic colour print
24″ x 20″
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Fay Ray
1988
Gelatin silver print
16.2 x 16.2cm. (6.4 x 6.4 in.)
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Oaken
1992
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Lawn Chair
1988
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Retriever
1994
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
U-Tree
1992
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy of the artist

William Wegman (American, b. 1943)
Untitled (Ghent Fay with Apples)
1990
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy of the artist

Akron Art Museum
One South High
Akron, Ohio 44308

Opening hours
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: 11.00am – 5.00pm
Thursday: 11.00am – 8.00pm
Closed: Monday and Tuesday

Akron Art Museum website

William Wegman website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Review: ‘My Jesus Lets Me Rub His Belly’ exhibition by Martin Smith at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 21st April – 16th May, 2009

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972) 'Hot/humid/oppressive/stifling/still' 2009 from the exhibition 'My Jesus Lets Me Rub His Belly' by Martin Smith at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne, April - May, 2009

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
Hot/humid/oppressive/stifling/still
2009
Pigment print and collage
90 x 130cm

This is an interesting, well constructed exhibition of photographs, collage and sculpture by Martin Smith presented at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne that addresses issues of place and faith: memories of growing up within a religious framework. The work is well resolved, the themes explored are poignant, full of pathos, laden with sardonic humour and pull no punches.

The main body of the exhibition are contemporary personal photographs of sunsets, landscapes and urban spaces (such as the photograph of Central Park in New York, above). Incised into the surface of the photograph, actually cut into the surface, are narratives of boredom, anger and the blind injustice of devotion, memories of stories of a fifteen year old boy. In some of the photographs the lettering follows the pictorial representation of the photograph, in others it overwrites it. The cut letters fall away to the bottom of the picture and are captured by the picture frame, sitting at the bottom of each image like the leaves of autumn – half remembered stories that become jumbled in the mind, played over and over again.

These images consolidate both photographic and written texts while at the same time undermining their veracity and referentiality. Image and text are performative, playing off of each other to provide a transgressive textuality that becomes a mode of agential resistance capable of fragmenting and releasing the subject. In this engagement between image and text the work becomes intertextual, the ritual of production engaging a network of texts, a discursive multiplicity that traverses the entire scope of social, cultural, and institutional production. The childhood taboo of not criticising ‘faith’ is cross/ed in the process of re-remembering, re-inscription.

In these assemblages the surface of the photograph and the body of the text are subverted through a ritualised cutting, like the incision of the stigmata into the body of Christ. They become sites of resistance. As Deleuze and Guittari have noted of this process the site of resistance is both a productive and disruptive re-territorialization and de-territorialization of meaning:

“For them (Deleuze and Guattari), assemblages are the processes by which various configurations of linked components function in an intersection with each other, a process that can be both productive and disruptive. Any such process involves a territorialization; there is a double movement where something accumulates meanings (re-territorialization), but does so co-extensively with a de-territorialization where the same thing is disinvested of meanings. The organization of a territory is characterized by such a double movement … An assemblage is an extension of this process, and can be thought of as constituted by an intensification of these processes around a particular site through a multiplicity of intersections of such territorializations.”1

The particular site, the particular intersection that Smith addresses in his work is that of memory, faith and place. The lack of fixity in this intersection provides the artist with abundant opportunity to reinscribe the already inscribed ritual of faith, subverting the iteration of the norms already attributed to it, providing a loss of original meaning and the gaining of new meanings. This productive, disruptive re-inscription provides the positionality of the work and the viewer struggles with the emotional conflicts that result from this territorialization: even if you don’t know these stories they challenge what you believe, now.

Counterbalancing the colour photographs are white collages that are embossed with the answer to the celebrants greeting “The Lord be with you” to which the people respond “And also with you.” Hovering in the background of the work the words are again subverted, this time in a resurrection of cut letters – instead of being cut into the photograph the letters project outwards towards the viewer forming commodified shapes such as cars, underpants and people. The joy doesn’t stop there: the two sculptures in the exhibition add to the chaos with a wonderful sense of humour.

Through their hypertexts the work “becomes more and more layered until they are architectural in design, until their relationship to the context from which they have grown cannot be talked about through the simple models offered by referentiality, or by attributions of cause and effect.”2

Without absolute attribution the work becomes a form of transubstantiation. The flexibility of memory and the orthodoxy of religion are transformed into a spirituality of the self that the child of fifteen with blood running down his arms from his personal stigmata of boredom could never have imagined. At the end of days, when all is said and done, the funny diatribes with their ambiguous photographs are homily and heretic, and together form a more inclusive body of bliss: ‘And also with you and you and you and you’.

Whatever your faith, whoever you are.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Wood, Aylish. “Fresh Kill: Information technologies as sites of resistance,” in Munt, Sally (ed.,). Technospaces: Inside the New Media. London: Continuum, 2001, p. 166

2/ Burnett, Ron. Cultures of Vision: Images, Media, & the Imaginary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 137-138

Thank you to Edwin Nicholls for his help.

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972) 'Hot/humid/oppressive/stifling/still' 2009 (detail)

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
Hot/humid/oppressive/stifling/still (detail)
2009
Pigment print and collage
90 x 130cm

Installation view of Martin Smith's exhibition 'My Jesus Lets Me Rub His Belly' at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

In the above installation photograph you can just see the cut letters lying at the bottom of the picture frame

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972) 'I still hate that man' 2009 from the exhibition 'My Jesus Lets Me Rub His Belly' by Martin Smith at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne, April - May, 2009

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
I still hate that man
2009
Pigment print and collage
130 x 180cm

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
My Frenetic, Anxiety Driven Snuffing
2009
Pigment print and collage
90 x 130cm

Artist statement

I grew up in the bayside suburbs of Brisbane, Australia with a speech impediment. My teenage years were spent watching and observing, as I was too embarrassed to speak. My inability to express myself during this time left an indelible mark on my personal history and has provided the impetus for my artistic enquiries. Therefore it is no surprise that my art practice is primarily about language and the modes of representation used to express and interpret personal experience.

Among the studio methodologies that I employ are the combination of traditional story telling writing with vernacular photography. The text and the images have no literal relationship and I am very careful to avoid any obvious connection between the two. I write personal stories then hand-cut the text out of the image. The removed letters from the image are collected and captured by the picture frame, sitting at the bottom of each image like fallen leaves creating an Autumnal scene where visible change has occurred and the picture and the figure are going through a transition. The text punctures the surface of the image disrupting the way we view and read the work. We can’t fully view the image because of the text and we can’t read the text without the image creating a constant back and forth between the two. When viewing the visual and textual oscillation between the two narrative devices that have no literal connection we find balance outside the picture frame in a new discursive space. It is through this collision of narrative and languages that unique interpretations of personal experience are built. I am interested in exploring spaces of meaning that are created when two or more narrative devices are blended.

In other works the letters are also glued directly onto the wall of the gallery to form recognisable but featureless figures. These installations explore how meaning and identity are generated through language. The individual letters (the building blocks of language) combine together to form a representation of a life that exists only through the formulation of language.

Recently I performed a stand-up ‘comedy’ routine as another vehicle for exploring story-telling and personal histories. The routine titled “Hello Newmarket Hotel” was performed at an ‘open mic’ night in front of a regular comedy audience. The aim was to recreate and recontextualise a particularly painful childhood memory while incorporating known ‘comedy’ tropes. This work along with my whole practice is interested in the role that photography, and other forms of narrative, plays in the construction of our identity and how personal histories are written and interpreted.

Martin Smith 2017

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
The Relationship Blossomed
2009
Pigment print and collage
115 x 115cm

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972) 'The Relationship Blossomed' 2009 (detail)

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
The Relationship Blossomed (detail)
2009
Pigment print and collage
115 x 115cm

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
The Homily
2009
Pigment print and collage
130 x 90cm

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
And also with you #2
2009
Collage on paper, eva
42 x 30cm

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
And also with you #3
2009
Collage on paper, eva
42 x 30cm

Martin Smith (Australian, b. 1972)
After 3 months on the road Mary started to loosen up
2009
Photographic carving on marble base
18 x 10 x 10cm

Sophie Gannon Gallery
2, Albert Street
Richmond, Vic 3121

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

Sophie Gannon Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Opening 2: ‘Urban Edge’ photographs by John Bodin at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th May, 2009

Opening night crowd for John Bodin exhibition at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

John Bodin photographs at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

Opening and installation views of John Bodin’s exhibition Urban Edge at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

“Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows … Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived …

Space calls for action, and before action, the imagination is at work. It mows and ploughs. We should speak of the benefits of all these imaginary actions.”

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

More interesting are the eerie contemplative photographs of John Bodin presented at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne, our second opening of the night. In a well presented show Bodin’s hyper-real photographs employ a limited colour palette to portray the constructed landscape of the urban fringe. The images work well because the artist leaves room for doubt in the mind of the viewer – what am I looking at, where is it, do I subconsciously remember these places? How do the photographs make me feel about the edges of the world, this strangeness that we inhabit? They engage the viewer in a fluid architecture of space and place.

Light and colour are important tools for Bodin and he plays with their form, darkening pavements, shooting at night, making subtle negative interpretations of roads and underground car-parks while desaturating buildings, landscapes and skies of ‘natural’ colour. Walls bleed in Witchhunt (2007) and then you work out the photograph is taken under a bridge with a pavement, graffiti providing the title of the work. Blue light emotes from behind the cloaked window of a house in Shrouded (2005) and you are left wondering by the crazed cellular like constructions of As if by Nature (2007).

Haunting and elegiac these compositions are worthy of your attention.

Lovely to meet Catherine Fogarty and John Bodin. Thank you for your help!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

John Bodin (Australian)
Witchhunt
2007

John Bodin (Australian)
Shrouded
2005

John Bodin (Australian)
As If By Nature
2007

“Urban Edge continues on from the 2006 ‘Urban Abstraction’ exhibition at Anita Traverso Gallery by introducing contrasting elements and structure from the natural world alongside stark semi-abstracted urban scapes. Whilst we may at first perceive these as opposing forces, I contend that the integration is more harmonious than we think.”

John Bodin

When John Bodin takes a risk – which indeed he seems to do aplenty – he does so with a self-assurance that would make many photographers – and artists in general – weep.

All the clichés are there in his work – the towering skyscraper, the car traversing the road at dusk, the pitted track through the woods. But when Bodin frames his image something quite magical occurs. Rather than raise an eyebrow and say – ‘seen it all before’ – instead we are seduced into the deep chiaroscuro, the inarguably romantic, shadowy mis en scene.

Bodin has said that his photographs “comment on the conditioning process of familiarisation.” Indeed, the strange moment of familiarity is immediately cushioned by the sensual softness of tone he employs. If anything, it is the shock of the old.

Bodin has said that his study in philosophy and meditation serve as a visual source of reflection and are integral to his image making.

Whether it is a distinctly phallic office tower or the moments of surrealism in a found structure in the rural countryside, Bodin’s work exudes a strange peacefulness, a distinctly contemplative air. Everything he grabs from reality is given Bodin’s own air of tranquility. He doesn’t eschew colour exactly, but he tones it down, blanketing his subjects in a kind of downy, nostalgic but not quite melancholic fashion that links his entire oeuvre.

A work such as Lover’s Lane – a sandy track somewhere by the coast – links his sensual eye with a not altogether comforting sense of intimacy. The shadows of the trees encroach in an almost threatening tangle of dark shapes – the ideal place to reassure a trembling lass as they wander into the dark.

In 2006, the renowned fellow-photographer Les Horvat said in an opening speech that Bodin’s “stated interests in philosophy and meditation serve as a fertile source of reflection, integral to his image making. His images cleverly explore the contrast between the form and the aesthetic of the landscape. They do this by examining the utility of urban structure, and juxtaposing it against an aesthetic emotional sensibility that is evocatively expressed through his images.

“The paradox he lays before us is that on one hand, they ingeniously remind us of our human incursions in the natural world; on the other, they suggest that the significance of the landscape is actually assigned by these incursions,” stated Horvat.

Bodin has travelled extensively and in 2003 he served a short residency in New Delhi, India. Closer to home he held a solo show in May 2006 and participated in 11 group exhibitions over the last six years. He was a finalist in the 2005 New Social Commentaries Acquisitive Prize and the acclaimed Prometheus Visual Art Award in 2007. The respect Bodin holds amongst his peers is renowned and, as this show attests, will only grow with time.

Ashley Crawford. “John Bodin,” in Photofile 86 2009, p. 14

John Bodin in front of his work at the opening of his exhibition 'Urban Edge' at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

Artist John Bodin in front of his work Lover’s Lane (2007, left) and Object of Speculation (2008, right) at the opening of his exhibition Urban Edge at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

John Bodin (Australian)
Midnight Solitude
2005

John Bodin (Australian)
Stumbling into Grace
2008
Type c print
120 x 80 cm

John Bodin (Australian)
Mondrian in Berlin
2005
Type C-print
60 x 80cm

John Bodin (Australian)
Adrenalin Addiction
2006
Type-C photograph
108 x 183cm

Anita Traverso Gallery
PO Box 7001, Hawthorn North 3122

Mobile: 0408 534 034

Anita Traverso Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Opening 1: ‘Faith in a Faithless Land’ photographs by Jill Orr at Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th May, 2009

Installation view of Jill Orr exhibition Faith in a Faithless Land at Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne

First cab off the rank on a busy night of openings in Melbourne were the self-conscious photographs of Jill Orr presented at Jenny Port Gallery in Richmond, Melbourne (the gallery now in Collingwood). Beautifully hung in the gallery space in white frames the photographs were the least engaging artworks on the night. Their message seemed over determined, the use of reflection to add layering to the human-landscape mis en scene trite. Perhaps the performance itself would have evinced a more authentic, nuanced connection with the viewer vis a vis a response to the overwhelming expanse of nature and the place humans occupy on the thin crust of the earth. These photographs did not make that telluric connection and left me emotionally uninvolved in their pictorial representation.

Unfortunately I cannot show you any of the photographs because of copyright reasons but thank you to Jenny for allowing me to photograph the installation itself.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Installation views of Jill Orr exhibition Faith in a Faithless Land at Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne

Jenny Port Gallery

This gallery is now closed.

Jill Orr website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray’ at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo NY

Exhibition dates: 8th May – 5th July, 2009

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965) 'Frida with Olmeca Figurine, Coyoacan' 1939 from the exhibition 'Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray' at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo NY, May - July, 2009

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida with Olmeca Figurine, Coyoacan
1939
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Forty-seven exquisite colour and black-and-white photographs of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo by the American photographer Nickolas Muray are featured in this exhibition organised and circulated by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services. Muray and Kahlo first met in Mexico in 1931 and soon began a love affair that lasted ten years and continued as an enduring friendship throughout their lives. The photographs, selected from the Nickolas Muray Archives, capture the exotic mystery and proud beauty of Frida Kahlo through the eyes of this accomplished portrait photographer, who loved her deeply. Organised at the Albright-Knox by Associate Curator Holly E. Hughes, the exhibition will also include reproductions of Kahlo’s letters to Muray, explanatory wall texts, and an educational brochure.

Text from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery website [Online] Cited 01/05/2009. No longer available online

Many thankx to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965) 'Frida, Mexico, 1940' c. 1940 from the exhibition 'Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray' at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo NY, May - July, 2009

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida, Mexico, 1940
c. 1940
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida with her sister Cristina, Nickolas Muray, and Rosa Covarrubias, Coyoacán
1939
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida Painting the Two Fridas, Coyoacan
1939
Silver gelatin print

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida with Nick in her Studio, Coyoacán
1941
Silver gelatin print

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida with Granizo, Coyoacán
1939
Silver gelatin print

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida in the Dining Area, Coyoacán
1941
Gelatin silver print

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida and Diego, San Angel
1941
Gelatin silver print

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida Kahlo
c. 1940
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
The Breton Portrait
1939
Silver gelatin print

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida with Magenta Rebozo, New York
1939
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray

In 1913, with the threat of war in Europe, Muray sailed to New York City, and was able to find work as a colour printer in Brooklyn.

By 1920, Muray had opened a portrait studio at his home in Greenwich Village, while still working at his union job as an engraver. In 1921 he received a commission from Harper’s Bazaar to do a portrait of the Broadway actress Florence Reed; soon after he was having photographs published each month in Harper’s Bazaar, and was able to give up his engraving job. In 1922 he also made a portrait of the dancer Desha Delteil.

Muray quickly became recognised as an important portrait photographer, and his subjects included most of the celebrities of New York City. In 1926, Vanity Fair sent Muray to London, Paris, and Berlin to photograph celebrities, and in 1929 hired him to photograph movie stars in Hollywood. He also did fashion and advertising work. Muray’s images were published in many other publications, including Vogue, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The New York Times.

Between 1920 and 1940, Muray made over 10,000 portraits. His 1938 portrait of Frida Kahlo, made while Kahlo sojourned in New York, attending her exhibit at the Julien Levy Gallery, became the best known and loved portrait made by Muray. Muray and Kahlo were at the height of a ten-year love affair in 1939 when the portrait was made. Their affair had started in 1931, after Muray was divorced from his second wife and shortly after Kahlo’s marriage to Mexican muralist painter Diego Rivera. It outlived Muray’s third marriage and Kahlo’s divorce and remarriage to Rivera by one year, ending in 1941. Muray wanted to marry, but when it became apparent that Kahlo wanted Muray as a lover, not a husband, Muray took his leave for good and married his fourth wife, Peggy Muray. He and Kahlo remained good friends until her death, in 1954.

After the market crash, Muray turned away from celebrity and theatrical portraiture, and become a pioneering commercial photographer, famous for his creation of many of the conventions of colour advertising. He was considered the master of the three-color carbro process. His last important public portraits were of Dwight David Eisenhower in the 1950s.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida With Hand at Her Throat, Mexico City
1940
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida leaning on a sculpture by Mardonio Magaña, Coyoacán, Mexico
1940
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida in Pink and Green Blouse, Coyoacán
1938
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965) 'Friday on White Bench, New York' 1939

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida on White Bench, New York
1939
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

An exhibition of photographs of the acclaimed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo taken by her friend and lover, the internationally renowned portrait photographer Nickolas Muray (1892-1965), will be on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery from May 8 through July 5, 2009. Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray, From the Collection of the Nickolas Muray Archives celebrates Kahlo’s life and work and comprises approximately fifty colour and black-and-white photographs, along with archival material, including excerpts from letters between Kahlo and Muray. The installation in Buffalo will feature Frida Kahlo’s Self- Portrait with Monkey, 1938, from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection.

Born in Hungary in 1892, Nickolas Muray came to the United States in 1913, marking the beginning of his forty-five-year career living and working in New York City. Originally hired by Condé Nast Publications to prepare illustrations for magazines, in 1920 Muray set up a photography studio at his home in Greenwich Village. Following an assignment in 1921 for Harper’s Bazaar magazine to photograph the Broadway star Florence Reed, Muray’s career as a portrait and celebrity photographer took off. Soon he was photographing “everybody who was anybody” and his work was regularly featured in such publications as Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Ladies’ Home Journal.

Nickolas Muray and Frida Kahlo first met in Mexico in 1931 and soon began a love affair that lasted ten years and continued as a friendship that endured all their lives. The images included in this exhibition, dating from 1937 to 1940, were taken during the height of the couple’s on-again, off-again, ten-year love affair. The photographs included were selected from the Nickolas Muray Archives and capture the exotic mystery and proud beauty of Frida Kahlo through the eyes of this accomplished portrait photographer who loved her deeply.

Text from the Artdaily.org website

Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907-1954)
Self-Portrait with Monkey
1938
Oil on masonite
40.6 cm × 30.5cm (16.0 in × 12.0 in)
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Of her 143 self-portraits, 55 include Kahlo’s pets. It is as though she saw them as an extension of her own self and being. Spider monkeys are known to have long, spindly legs and arms that look almost disproportionate to their body. Their strange appearance may have reflected Kahlo’s own discomfort with her physical body. Having contracted polio at an early age, she had one leg that was thinner than the other. She used colourful, large skirts to cover the disfigurement.

Kahlo doted on her pet monkeys. In her self-portraits, they are often shown sitting close to her, physically enfolding or grasping her in some way. They appear to be protective, friendly and gentle.

In many cultures, monkeys are used to symbolise lascivious, or primal behaviour. They are a mirror image of man, reminding him of his animal nature and close proximity to the natural world. Through monkeys, man sees his own connection to the animal kingdom with its uncontrollable, primal urges. In renaissance art, fettered monkeys were often used to symbolise men who are entrapped or bound by their desires.

In Kahlo’s paintings, monkeys do not appear in this way. They are more gentle, child-like and tender. Partially due to their wild natures, monkeys are often associated with fertility or lust in Mexican mythology. Kahlo’s trust and connection with her pets may have been in part due to her own feelings of inadequacy and frustration around her inability to carry to children. One of the reasons feminists celebrate Kahlo’s work is her unabashed claim to her own sexuality. She was not afraid to acknowledge her own sexual feelings or desires.

In Kahlo’s painting, the monkeys appear loyal. It feels as though Kahlo is connected with the creatures in some way. There is a bond there. Never the less, the monkeys also often appear by Kahlo’s shoulder or back, reflecting the image of a ‘monkey on your back’, a phrase commonly used to describe a problem or burden of some kind. With their association with animal nature, disfigured or primal humanity and lascivious primal urges, Kahlo may have felt at once supported by and burdened by her connection to her animal ancestors.

Extract from Kitty Jackson. “Symbolism in Art: Frida Kahlo – Self Portrait with Monkey,” on the ArtDependence Magazine website, September 4, 2017 [Online] Cited 20/01/2019

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida in Front of the Cactus Organ Fence, San Angel
1938
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida with Blue Satin Blouse, New York
1939
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Frida on Rooftop, New York
1946
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Cristina and Frida, New York
1946
Colour print, assembly (Carbro) process

Albright-Knox Art Gallery
1285 Elmwood Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14222-1096

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, and Independence, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Days

Albright-Knox Art Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Portraits of New York: Photographs from the MoMA’ at La Casa Encendida, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 27th March – 14th June, 2009

Curator: Sarah Hermanson Meister, associate curator of MoMA’s Department of Photography

Many thankx to La Casa Encendida for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) 'Wall Street, New York' 1915 from the exhibition 'Portraits of New York: Photographs from the MoMA' at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, March - June, 2009

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Wall Street
1915
Platinum palladium print

Wall Street is a platinum palladium print photograph by the American photographer Paul Strand taken in 1915. There are currently only two vintage prints of this photograph with one at the Whitney Museum of American Art (printed posthumously) and the other, along with negatives, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This photograph was included in Paul Strand, circa 1916, an exhibition of photographs that exemplify his push toward modernism.

It depicts a scene of everyday life in Manhattan’s Financial District. Workers are seen walking past the J.P. Morgan & Co. building in New York City on the famous Wall Street, of which the photograph takes its name. The photograph is famous for its reliance on the sharpness and contrast of the shapes and angles, created by the building and the workers, that lead to its abstraction. This photograph is considered to be one of Strand’s most famous works and an example of his change from Pictorialism to straight photography. Strand moved from the posed to portraying the purity of the subjects. It is one of several images that stand as marks of the turn to modernism in photography. …

Technique

This photograph depicts the J.P. Morgan building in New York City. Strand photographed “people hurrying to work past the banking building” situated on Wall Street, from which the photo takes its name. the subject depicted is a real-life subject without manipulation. The depiction of the real nature of the medium and the subject is an example of straight photography. There is no focal point, with the lines converging off of the frame of the image. The financial building take majority of the frame. Emphasis is placed on the strong shapes created by the architecture of the building. The workers are included in the image, but are faceless and are trumped in size by the massive square shapes from the building they walk past. Also, the workers are captured in motion which on film makes them appear blurry. This aesthetic that Strand creates in Wall Street is his break toward the modern, the straight photography, demonstrating that Pictorialism is no longer part of his aesthetic. Strand captured the building with clean, sharp lines. The building is covered in the high contrast, chiaroscuro. It is heavily in the shadows, but still creates an overwhelming presence over the people that walk past it. These people are also shrouded in the contrast made evident with the clean lines and black and white nature of his photos and photography as a medium. The people jump from their places, being the dark figures in the light of the sun that beams in from the left of the frame.

Strand fills the image with his recognisable aesthetic. The photo is platinum print, one of the materials frequently used by photographers of the time. Strand was unique in how he printed his photos. As stated on the George Eastman House website section Notes on Photography, Strand would make large prints from small negatives. He also left them in their matte condition that was inherent with platinum print. With his printing techniques, he “added a richness to the image.” As with the time, the photo is entirely black and white. There is a heavy contrast with the black and white areas of the photo. Strand creates diagonal shapes that pull emphasis to subject of the building and away from the people.

Aspects

Having taken Hine’s class at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, social change became important to Strand and appeared often in his art. As a pupil of Hine, Strand learned of the social aspect his work could have. With Wall Street, he sought to portray a social message. He captured the faceless people next to the looming financial building in order to give a warning. Strand shows “the recently built J.P. Morgan Co. building, whose huge, dark recesses dwarf the passersby with the imposing powers of uniformity and anonymity.” The people cannot escape the overwhelming power that this modern establishment will have on their future and the future of America. He warns us to not be the small people that look almost ant-like next to this building that has a massive amount of control over the American economy.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Unidentified photographer
Brooklyn Bridge
c. 1914
Gelatin silver print
7 5/8 × 9 9/16″ (19.4 × 24.3cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The New York Times Collection

La Casa Encendida presents an exhibition organised by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, which showcases a fundamental part of the institution’s assets: its photography collection. Portraits of New York: Photographs from the MoMA offers an overview of the history of photography against the backdrop of this iconic metropolis through the work of more than 90 artists.

For the show’s curator Sarah Hermanson Meister, associate curator of the MoMA’s Department of Photography, “Portraits of New York amply reflects the history of synergies between this medium and the Big Apple during a period of important transformations for both. The photographs generated by the restless and constant commitment of numerous photographs to New York City have played a fundamental role in determining how New Yorkers perceive the city and themselves. These photographs have also defined the city’s image in the world’s imagination.”

Featured artists include Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Andreas Feininger, Larry Fink, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Lewis W. Hine, William Klein, Irving Penn, Cindy Sherman, Edward Steichen, Thomas Struth and Garry Winogrand.

Text from the La Casa Encendida website

Lewis Wickes Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Welders on the Empire State Building
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
10 5/8 × 13 5/8″ (27 × 34.6cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund

Ted Croner (American, 1922–2005) 'Central Park South' 1947-1948 from the exhibition 'Portraits of New York: Photographs from the MoMA' at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, March - June, 2009

Ted Croner (American, 1922–2005)
Central Park South
1947-1948
Silver gelatin print
10 15/16 x 13 3/4″ (27.8 x 34.9cm)
Gift of the photographer
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ted Croner (1922-2005) was an American photographer, described as an influential member of the New York school of photography during the 1940s and 1950s. His images are said to represent the best example of this movement.

Born in Baltimore in 1922 and raised in North Carolina, Croner developed an interest in photography while in high school. He honed his skills while serving as an aerial photographer in World War II before settling in New York City in 1947. At the urging of fashion photographer Fernand Fonssagrives, he enrolled in Alexey Brodovitch’s class at The New School where he studied with Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon and Lisette Model. During this period he produced many of his most memorable images including “Taxi, New York Night, 1947-48”, which appears on the cover of Bob Dylan’s 2006 album, Modern Times. Another of Croner’s photographs was used on the cover of Luna’s album Penthouse.

Croner also had a successful career as a fashion and commercial photographer – his work was published in Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. He also worked extensively with corporations such as Coca-Cola and Chase Manhattan Bank. Croner is best known for his haunting night images of New York City taken in the 1940s and 1950s. He was one of several important photographers who belonged to the New York school of photography.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Arthur Fellig (Weegee) (American, 1899-1968) 'Coney Island' 1940

Arthur Fellig (Weegee) (American, 1899-1968)
Coney Island
July 22, 1940
Silver gelatin print
10 5/16 x 13 11/16″ (26.2 x 34.8cm)
Anonymous gift
Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2019 Weegee/ICP/Getty Images

Photographs from the MoMA, which will provide an in-depth look at an essential component of the MoMA’s assets: its photography collection. Curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister, associate curator of the museum’s department of photography, the exhibition offers an overview of the history of photography through the work of over 90 artists, with the iconic city as a backdrop. It includes some of the most prestigious names in photography, such as Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walter Evans, Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Cindy Sherman, Irving Penn and Alfred Stieglitz.

For Sarah Hermanson Meister, associate curator of the MoMA’s Department of Photography, “Portraits of New York amply reflects the history of synergies of this medium and of the Big Apple during a period of important transformations for both. The photographs generated by the restless and constant commitment of numerous photographers to the city of New York have played a fundamental role in determining how New Yorkers perceive the city and themselves. These photographs have also defined the city’s image in the world’s imagination.

[…] The urban landscape of the city is a combination of the old and the new in constant evolution, and these physical transformations are repeated in the demographic changes that have characterised the city since the 1880s, when massive waves of immigrants began to arrive. This same diversity can be seen in the photography of New York of the past four decades. Just as its architects are inspired and limited by surrounding structures and building codes, and just as its inhabitants learn and rub up against each other and previous generations, so too the photographers of New York transport the visual memory of a an extensive and extraordinary repertoire of images of the city. They take on the challenge of creating new works that go beyond traditions and respond to what is new in New York.”

The exhibition curator continues: “Throughout the 20th century, numerous artists have felt inspired by New York’s combination of glamour and rawness. The city – which acquired its modernity at the same pace as photography, and in an equally impetuous and undisciplined way – has always been a theme of particular vitality for photographers, both those who have visited the city and those who live in it. On one occasion, faced with the challenge of capturing the essence of New York with a camera, the photographer Berenice Abbott wondered, “How shall the two-dimensional print in black and white suggest the flux of activity of the metropolis, the interaction of human beings and solid architectural constructions, all impinging upon each other in time?” Each of the photographs reproduced here is a unique response to that question.

New York may not be the capital of the United States, but it prides itself on being the capital of the world. Its inhabitants are intimate strangers, its avenues are constantly teeming and its buildings are absolutely unmistakeable, though they are packed so close together that it is impossible to see just one. The New York subway runs twenty-four hours a day, which has earned it the sobriquet of “the city that never sleeps.” It is the model for Gotham City, the disturbing metropolis that Batman calls home, and a symbol of independence and a wellspring of opportunities in a wide variety of films, from Breakfast at Tiffany‘s to Working Girl. And this is just a sample of the captivating and abundant raw material that the city offers to artists, regardless of the medium in which they work. However, it is the convergence of photographers in this city – in this place that combines anonymity and community, with its local flavour and global ambitions – that has created the ideal setting for the development of modern photography.

Text from the La Casa Encendida website [Online] Cited 28/04/2009. No longer available online

Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933)
Untitled from the Brooklyn Gang series
1959
Silver gelatin print
6 3/4 x 10″ (17.1 x 25.4cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2019 Magnum Photos, Inc. and Bruce Davidson

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954)
Untitled Film Still #21
1978
Silver gelatin print
7 1/2 x 9 1/2″ (19.1 x 24.1cm)
Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B. Menschel
Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2019 Cindy Sherman

Each of Sherman’s sixty-nine Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), presents a female heroine from a movie we feel we must have seen. Here, she is the pert young career girl in a trim new suit on her first day in the big city. Among the others are the luscious librarian (#13), the chic starlet at her seaside hideaway (#7), the ingenue setting out on life’s journey (#48), and the tough but vulnerable film noir idol (#54). To make the pictures, Sherman herself played all of the roles or, more precisely, played all of the actresses playing all of the roles. In other words, the series is a fiction about a fiction, a deft encapsulation of the image of femininity that, through the movies, took hold of the collective imagination in postwar America – the period of Sherman’s youth, and the crucible of our contemporary culture.

In fact, only a handful of the Untitled Film Stills are modelled directly on particular roles in actual movies, let alone on individual stills of the sort that the studios distribute to publicise their films. All the others are inventive allusions to generic types, and so our sure sense of recognition is all the more telling. It tells us that, knowingly or not, we have absorbed the movie culture that Sherman invites us to examine as a powerful force in our lives.

Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 295.

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Woman with Veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C
1968
Silver gelatin print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Babe Ruth
c. 1927
Gelatin silver print
13 3/8 × 10 7/16″ (33.9 × 26.5cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Mrs. Nickolas Muray

Berenice Abbott (American, 1891-1991) 'Night View, New York City' 1932

Berenice Abbott (American, 1891-1991)
Night View, New York City (New York at Night)
1932
Silver gelatin print
12 7/8 x 10 9/16″ (32.7 x 26.9cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2019 Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics

La Casa Encendida
Ronda Valencia, 2 28012 Madrid

Opening hours:
La Casa Encendida is open from Monday to Sunday from 10am to 10pm every day of the year except national and Community of Madrid holidays

La Casa Encendida website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

The work of Eric Tabuchi

April 2009

Eric Tabuchi (French, b. 1959) 'Station #1' 2002

Eric Tabuchi (French, b. 1959)
Station #1 from the book Twentysix Abandoned Gas Stations
2002

One of my favourite artists at the moment is Frenchman Eric Tabuchi. I don’t know a lot about him as there is only an exhibition list on his website and no other details but this does not matter. His work speaks for him. Taken in simple formalist objective style his colour photographs tell it like it is, speaking the images of existence in a clear and precise manner. His work ‘en serie’ are conceptually based but the images themselves are straight forward, images that depict the ironies and degradations of environments and artefacts without moral judgement. His photographs have links back to the formalist style of the German Bernd and Hiller Becher whose work has influenced many contemporary photographers (including Andreas Gursky, Candid Hofer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth amongst others).

Tabuchi’s latest artist book Twentysix Abandoned Gas Stations is a contemporary reprise on the very first modern artist’s book Twentysix Gasoline Stations produced by Ed Ruscha in 1963. Using minimalist notions of repetitive sequence and seriality Tabuchi addresses a contemporary landscape full of abandoned technologies, toxic environments and architectural wastelands foretelling the badlands of future worlds. As in all his bodies of work the body of the human is absent, the sense of corporeal distance from object to viewer devastating. His constructions, both photographic and environmental, speak eloquently to the human present, presence absence.

He is a photographer to remember.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Eric Tabuchi for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.