Exhibition dates: 14th August – 1st November, 2020
Curator: John Rohrbach
G. S. Smith, Salt Lake City, UT [Taking in the view] c. 1880 Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
While the premise for this exhibition is interesting – that cabinet cards acted as a “primer” for coaxing “Americans into thinking about portraiture as an informal act, forging the way for the snapshot and social media with its contemporary “selfie” culture – in reality, the notion is far fetched.
Of the many millions of cabinet cards produced during their period of proliferation (1880s-1910s), only a small percentage, perhaps as low as 3%, would ever fit the performative type illustrated in this posting. Most were of the “solemn records of likeness and stature type”, typically full-length, half-length or a head and shoulders portrait, usually of a single person, sometimes a couple or family. Even then, the performative type of cabinet card would have a limited distribution, either within the family or commercially.
The four sections of the exhibition – Caught in the Act (actors, orators and other public figures); The Trade (commercial advertising); Sharing Life: Family and Friends (family albums); and Acting Out (people at play; reality and truth) – are logical partitions of these certain types of cabinet card. But what interests me more are the psychological aspects of having ones photograph taken. Why is the person’s photograph being taken, at whose direction (the photographers, the sitters)… who is posing the individual, what do they intend to convey through the image, who decides what that message is and, of course, how does the viewer decipher the message. “The interpretation of a person’s acting out and an observer’s response varies considerably, with context and subject usually setting audience expectations.” (Wikipedia)
Here we must acknowledge that the acting out is not singular but plural, for it is as much an act on the part of the photographer as it is the sitter. How much the outcome is dependent on the “director” or the subject is an act of constant negotiation (and, of course, it is also an outcome of the ritual of production).
The curator John Rohrbach observes that, “In our current moment of ‘selfie’ culture and social media-centered interaction, understanding the history of self-presentation and portraiture is more prescient than ever…” but this statement, linking cabinet cards and selfies, is a very very long bow to draw. This is because cabinet cards are not “selfies” as we perceive them now – informal snapshots taken by the self – but posed and performed photographic studies that require inherent discipline, structure and form constructed by the photographer and the sitter to achieve their end.
I often wonder about the revelatory process of having one’s portrait taken in the early days of photography. I know from texts that I have read that some people found the process slow and irritating, the results unsatisfactory. On the other hand, imagine being made to stand still for several seconds when you are not used to being completely still. Could there possibly be a moment in time and space, of meditation and reconciliation with oneself, a revelation in the stillness of the seconds of exposure. A revelation more spiritual than performative? *Two girls (1864, below)
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Acting
The art or practice of representing a character on a stage or before cameras.
Acting serves countless purposes including the following: It reminds us of times past and forgotten, or gives us a glimpse of a possible future. It portrays our raw, unadulterated, vulnerable, emotional, and at times, ugly, horrifying humanity. It provokes emotion, thought, discussion, awareness, or even imagination.
Acting Out
A child is “acting out” when they exhibit unrestrained and improper actions. The behaviour is usually caused by suppressed or denied feelings or emotions.
Acting out reduces stress. It’s often a child’s attempt to show otherwise hidden emotions. Acting out may include fighting, throwing fits, or stealing. In severe cases, acting out is associated with antisocial behaviour and other personality disorders in teenagers and younger children. …
Acting Out a) represents in action and b) translates into action, expressing (something, such as an impulse or a fantasy) directly in overt behaviour without modification, not complying with social norms.
In the psychology of defence mechanisms and self-control, acting out is the performance of an action considered bad or anti-social. In general usage, the action performed is destructive to self or to others. The term is used in this way in sexual addiction treatment, psychotherapy, criminology and parenting. In contrast, the opposite attitude or behaviour of bearing and managing the impulse to perform one’s impulse is called acting in.
The performed action may follow impulses of an addiction (e.g. drinking, drug taking or shoplifting)[citation needed]. It may also be a means designed (often unconsciously or semi-consciously) to garner attention (e.g. throwing a tantrum or behaving promiscuously). Acting out may inhibit the development of more constructive responses to the feelings in question. …
Interpretation
The interpretation of a person’s acting out and an observer’s response varies considerably, with context and subject usually setting audience expectations.
Alternatives
Acting out painful feelings may be contrasted with expressing them in ways more helpful to the sufferer, e.g. by talking out, expressive therapy, psychodrama or mindful awareness of the feelings. Developing the ability to express one’s conflicts safely and constructively is an important part of impulse control, personal development and self-care.
Anonymous. “Acting out,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 04/10/2020
G. S. Smith, Salt Lake City, UT [Taking in the view] (detail) c. 1880 Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Howie, Detroit, MI George Moore and Fred Howe 1890s Collodion silver print Robert E. Jackson Collection
Fred Howe, the Fatman and George Moore, the living skeleton; they are the most comical boxers in the world. Fred Howe’s father was a carpenter at Alleghany City, Penn., and Fred started to learn the same trade, but soon became too fat. At the age of eighteen he joined the Forepaugh Circus as a “tat boy,” and there met his present sparring partner.
George Moore was born in Helena, Montana, where his father had a little dry goods shop. Until he was twenty-one years of age George worked in his father’s shop. But his greatest desire was to see the world. When the fist big circus came to Helena, the manager offered him an engagement to exhibit himself as the “living skeleton,” and he closed with the offer at once. Fred Howe, they soon became great friends. The doctors advised both to take as much exercise as possible – the one to gain flesh, and the other to get rid of it. These smart Yankee lads then resolved to combine duty with pleasure, so they went in for boxing. For a long time they practised privately. One day, however, the manager was told of the fun by some of his “freaks,” who had been allowed to see a set-to” between the two gladiators. The manager then arranged a round or two, and the moment he saw Howe and Moore face each other, he offered them a long engagement at an increased salary, if only they would do their boxing before the public. Today these funny fellows are not only expert boxers, but also perfect comedians in their “art.” Their boxing is uproariously funny.
Moore is 6ft. 3in. in height, and weighs but 97lb., Howe is only 4ft. 2in. high, and weights exactly 422lb.
The Strand Magazine
Howie, Detroit, MI George Moore and Fred Howe (detail) 1890s Collodion silver print Robert E. Jackson Collection
Alfred U. Palmquist (Swedish, 1850-1922) and Peder T. Jurgens, St. Paul, MN [Skater] 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
The Swede Alfred U. Palmquist (1850-1922) immigrated to America in 1872. In 1874, together with the Norwegian Peder T. Jurgens he opened the photo studio Palmquist & Jurgens in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Alfred Palmquist was born in Finland to Swedish parents on June 21, 1850. We know nothing about his childhood and upbringing except that he emigrated to Minnesota in the United States at the age of twenty-two. A year later, he and a colleague started a photo studio in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which was named Palmquist & Lake.
Ten years later, in 1883, Palmquist entered into a collaboration with Peder T. Jurgens. We only know about his partner Jurgens that he was Norwegian and had previously supported himself as an economist. Peder Jurgens worked in the company between the years 1882 to 1888. The new company was then of course named Palmquist & Jurgens and lived on until the beginning of the 20th century. During the 1870s and 1880s, most photographers worked in their studios… Palmquist & Jurgens was such a typical photography company that preferred people to come to their studio to be photographed. The company had specialised in photographing famous families in Saint Paul.
M. C. Hosford, West Rutland, VT [Getting the cleaver] 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
M. C. Hosford, West Rutland, VT [Getting the cleaver] (detail) 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
M. C. Hosford, West Rutland, VT [Getting the cleaver] (detail) 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
M. C. Hosford, West Rutland, VT [Getting the saw] 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Acting Out: Cabinet Cards and the Making of Modern Photography offers the first-ever in-depth examination of the photographic phenomenon of cabinet cards. Cabinet cards were America’s main format for photographic portraiture through the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Inexpensive and sold by the dozen, they transformed getting one’s portrait made from a formal event taken up once or twice in a lifetime into a commonplace practice shared with family and friends.
Building on the museum’s history as a leader in American photography, this exhibition reveals how photography studios and their sitters across the United States introduced immediacy to studio portraiture and transformed their sessions into avenues of fun and personal expression. Sections will trace the cabinet card’s development and evolution, from its beginnings in celebrity culture through the marketing and advertising innovations of practitioners to the diversity of what people brought to their sittings. Not only did Americans embrace photography as a commonplace fact of life during these years, they openly played with the medium’s believability. In short, cabinet cards made photography modern.
This August, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art will present Acting Out: Cabinet Cards and the Making of Modern Photography, an exhibition offering the first in-depth examination of the nineteenth-century photographic phenomenon of cabinet cards. Charting the proliferation of this under appreciated photographic format, Acting Out reveals that cabinet cards coaxed Americans into thinking about portraiture as an informal act, forging the way for the snapshot and social media with its contemporary “selfie” culture. Acting Out presents hundreds of photographs – many on view publicly for the first time – from collections nationwide, including examples from the Carter’s own extensive photography collection. On view August 18 through November 1, 2020, the exhibition is organised by the Carter and will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, cabinet cards gave birth to the golden age of photographic portraiture in America. Measuring 6 1/2 by 4 1/4 inches, roughly the size of the modern-day smartphone screen, they were three times larger than the period’s leading photographic format. This larger size revealed previously obscured details in the images captured, encouraging action-ready gestures and the introduction of an astonishing array of props. Where photographs had once functioned as solemn records of likeness and stature, cabinet cards offered a new outlet for entertainment and remembering life’s everyday moments.
Acting Out investigates how this new performative medium prompted sitters to become far more comfortable with having their portrait made. By the time Eastman Kodak introduced its new affordable Brownie camera in 1900, cabinet cards had primed Americans to photograph every aspect of their lives. Though produced over 100 years ago, cabinet cards have a familiarity and a levity that resonates with our experience of photography today.
“Acting Out exemplifies the Carter’s commitment to organising exhibitions rooted in groundbreaking scholarship, a core tenet of our curatorial philosophy,” stated Andrew J. Walker, Executive Director. “This exhibition harnesses the resources of our vast photography collection and archive to show visitors the contemporary relevance of the medium’s pre-modern history.”
The exhibition is organised into four sections chronicling the birth and evolution of the cabinet card:
Caught in the Act: Actors, orators, and other public figures were among the first to embrace cabinet cards. This section examines how the creative innovations employed by New York photographer Napoleon Sarony and his cohorts built public enthusiasm for a new kind of photographic portraiture founded on a relaxed sense of immediacy that influenced studio photographers across America.
The Trade: This section looks at the entertaining and evocative ways that photographers worked to overcome low prices and fierce competition, and to stand out from their peers. Their creative solutions gave rise to the ubiquity of cabinet cards across America by the 1880s.
Sharing Life: Family and Friends: Over the last quarter of the nineteenth century, cabinet cards were often the favoured means for recording and celebrating family life. This evocative section reveals the ways in which cabinet cards established a model for family albums as channels for sharing and boasting of the joys and transits of life.
Acting Out: If portraiture was the ostensible subject of cabinet cards, play was just as important. This section examines Americans’ acceptance of the camera as a tool for shared amusement as they toyed with photography’s pretence of reality and truth.
“In our current moment of ‘selfie’ culture and social media-centered interaction, understanding the history of self-presentation and portraiture is more prescient than ever,” said John Rohrbach, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Carter. “This exhibition reveals how nineteenth-century Americans approached photography far more playfully than ever before, a transformation that forever shifted our relationship to the medium.”
Acting Out: Cabinet Cards and the Making of Modern Photography was organised by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. The exhibition is supported in part by the Alice L. Walton Foundation Temporary Exhibitions Endowment and accompanied by a 232-page catalogue co-published with the University of California Press, Berkeley. The book is the first dedicated to the history of the cabinet card and features colour plates of 100 cards at their actual size. Contributors include Dr. John Rohrbach, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Dr. Erin Pauwels, Assistant Professor of American Art at Temple University; Dr. Britt Salvesen, Department Head and Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Fernanda Valverde, Conservator of Photographs at the Carter.
Press release from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Unknown photographer [Chess against myself] 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Unknown photographer [Chess against myself] (detail) 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Hatch and White, Burlington, WI [Man in woman’s clothing] c. 1891 Collodion silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Benjamin J. Falk, New York, NY Helena Luy 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Benjamin J. Falk (American, 1853-1925)
When Napoleon Sarony died in 1896, Benjamin J. Falk ascended to the first place in the world of performing arts photography…
Falk’s contemporaries, who spoke primarily of the clarity, verisimilitude, and composure of his images, never recognised his greatest power as a portraitist. Falk was a man of extraordinary erotic engagement with his sitters, and the intensity of his attention becomes visible only when one sees the entirety of his work envisioning one of the several women – Belle Archer, Mrs. James Brown Potter, Cleo De Merode, Cissy Fitzgerald, Amy Busby, the Barrison Sisters – who capture his imagination. He was capable of refracting the sitter’s beauty in a tremendous array of scenes, costumes, and attitudes, doing so without making the images seem artificial.
When asked in 1893 what was most important in creating effective portraits, he replied matter of factly, “I name expression, posing and lighting in the order as they appear to be most important. The technique of the profession being absolutely under the control of the operator since the introduction of the dry plates, there is no excuse now for any but perfect photographic results. I have always made my price high enough, so that I did not have to consider the cost of material while doing my work.” The camera, in the proper hands, is, in many ways, a finer art tool to-day than the chisel or the brush, although, like them, it has its limitations.
Specialty
The first strong adherent of artificial light sources in the studio, Benjamin Falk created portraits that were among the most dramatically sculptural looking images of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Possessed of a playful visual wit, he often experimented with his images, using curious juxtapositions, unusual poses, and lighting highlights to convey distinctiveness of personality. Increasingly indifferent to painted backdrops, he did many portraits against blank walls or bleached out backcloths. He began the fashion for faces and figures suspended in a milky white ground that became ubiquitous shortly after 1900.
Anonymous. “Benjamin J. Falk,” on the Broadway Photographers website [Online] Cited 05/09/2020
Benjamin J. Falk, New York, NY Helena Luy (detail) 1880s Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Napoleon Sarony, New York, NY [Fanny Davenport] c. 1870 Albumen silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Napoleon Sarony (American, 1821-1896)
Napoleon Sarony (March 9, 1821 – November 9, 1896) was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular portrait photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theatre. His son, Otto Sarony, continued the family business as a theatre and film star photographer.
Sarony was born in 1821 in Quebec, then in the British colony of Lower Canada, and moved to New York City around 1836. He worked as an illustrator for Currier and Ives before joining with James Major and starting his own lithography business, Sarony & Major, in 1843. In 1845, James Major was replaced in Sarony & Major by Henry B. Major, and the firm continued operating under that name until 1853. From 1853 to 1857, the firm was known as Sarony and Company, and from 1857 to 1867, as Sarony, Major & Knapp. Sarony left the firm in 1867 and established a photography studio at 37 Union Square, during a time when celebrity portraiture was a popular fad. Photographers would pay their famous subjects to sit for them, and then retain full rights to sell the pictures. Sarony reportedly paid the internationally famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt $1,500 to pose for his camera, equivalent to $42,683 in 2019. In 1894, he published a portfolio of prints entitled “Sarony’s Living Pictures”.
Fanny Lily Gipsey Davenport (April 10, 1850 – September 26, 1898) was an English-American stage actress. The eldest child of Edward Loomis Davenport and Fanny Elizabeth (Vining) Gill Davenport, Fanny Lily Gypsey Davenport was born on April 10, 1850 in London.
Most of her siblings were actors, including Harry Davenport. She was brought to the United States in 1854 and educated in the Boston public schools. At age 7, she appeared at Boston’s Howard Athenæum as Metamora’s child, but her real debut occurred in February 1862 when she portrayed King Charles in Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady at Niblo’s Garden.
In February 1862, she appeared in New York City at Niblo’s Garden at the age of 12 as the King of Spain in Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady. From 1869 to 1877, she performed in Augustin Daly’s company; and afterwards, with a company of her own, acted with especial success in Sardou’s Fédora (1883) her leading man being Robert B. Mantell, Cleopatra (1890), and similar plays. She took over emotional Sardou roles that had been originated in Europe by Sarah Bernhardt. Her last appearance was at the Grand Opera House in Chicago on March 25, 1898, shortly before her death.
Her first husband was Edwin B. Price, an actor. They married on July 30, 1879, and divorced on June 8, 1888. On May 18, 1889, she married her leading man, Melbourne MacDowell. Both marriages were childless. Davenport died September 26, 1898, from an enlarged heart, at her summer home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Unknown photographer [Two girls] 1864 Albumen silver print (carte de visite) Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Unknown photographer [Two girls] (detail) 1864 Albumen silver print (carte de visite) Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
A. M. Nikodem, Chicago, IL [Cat] 1880s Albumen silver print Robert E. Jackson Collection
A.M. Nikodem
According to Origin, Growth, and Usefulness of the Chicago Board of Trade: Its Leading Members, and Representative Business Men in other Branches of Trade (1885): “Miss A.M. Nikodem, Photographic Artist. No. 701 West Madison Street. – One of the most popular and finely appointed photographic studios in Chicago is that conducted by Miss A.M. Nikodem, who succeeded Mr. M. T. Baldwin one year ago. This lady, who is regarded as one of the most skilful and accomplished photographic artists in the city, occupies an entire two-storied building completely equipped with all modern improvements and appliances and her elegantly furnished parlours are the resort of the élite of Chicago. Miss Nikodem is the only lady in the city who give personal attention to the taking of pictures, etc., and having had an extended practical and theoretical training she has attained a marked perfection in her art. In social circles Miss Nikodem occupies a prominent position both as a skilful artist and estimable lady, while in the business world she is held in high esteem as an enterprising and capable woman.”
Nikodem occupied the studio at this address from 1885-1891, and then moved to another location. 1895 is the last year in which she seems to be listed in Chicago city guides. Despite her prominence, photographs from her studio are exceptionally uncommon. Nikodem’s skill is fully on display in this portrait. The three or four other examples of her work we could find, all in library special collections, are all of women or girls, and they display a uniform artistic excellence and technical photographic skill.
W. A. White, Wilson, KS My first baby friend Tompie and his pet 1896 Collodion silver print Robert E. Jackson Collection
W. A. White, Wilson, KS My first baby friend Tompie and his pet (detail) 1896 Collodion silver print Robert E. Jackson Collection
W. A. Wilcoxon, Bonaparte, IA [Baby] 1890s Collodion silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Unknown photographer [Painter] 1890s Albumen silver print William L. Schaeffer Collection
Unknown photographer [Painter] (detail) 1890s Albumen silver print William L. Schaeffer Collection
Charles L. Griffin, Scranton, PA [Toddler with dog] c. 1892 Gelatin silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
F. J. Nelson, Anoka, MN Domestic Bread c. 1890s Collodion silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Gilbert G. Oyloe (American, 1851-1927) Ossian, IA [Woman] 1880s Albumen silver print Robert E. Jackson Collection
Oyloe had a studio in Ossian during the 1880’s and 1890’s.
James F. Ryder, Cleveland, OH Verso 1880s Planographic print Gift of Robert E. Jackson Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Charles Quartley, Baltimore, MD [Church woman] 1880s Albumen silver print Robert E. Jackson
Caroline Bergman, Louisville, KY Untitled [Bergman’s Photograph Gallery] c. 1890 Relief print Gift of Robert E. Jackson Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Louise and Caroline Bergman
Louis Bergman opened a Louisville photo studio in 1872 on W Market. After 1885, however, Caroline Bergman (his wife) is listed as the proprietor and photographer, and Louis is listed only as “manager”. This very successful studio was in operation until 1896.
Louis Bergman’s … studio was located at 56 & 58 Market Street, in Louisville, Kentucky. Perusal of Louisville business directories reveals that Bergman began business with a partner. Bergman & Flexner; the firm was listed in the 1868 and 1869 directories. He was reported to be the sole proprietor of a studio from 1872 until 1886. Bergman was listed at a number of different addresses over these years. Using these addresses, it appears that this particular photograph was taken between 1873 and 1881. From 1886 through 1894 the proprietor of the studio became Caroline Bergman. The Photographic Times and American Photographer (1883) reported that Bergman was Vice President of the Photographers Mutual Benefit Society of Louisville. Louis Bergman (c. 1838 -?) was born in Hanover, Germany to Prussian parents. His wife, Carrie (1845 -?) was born in Louisiana to German parents. The couple married in about 1865. The Bergman’s had a daughter, Lillie, who was 12 years-old at the time of the 1880 census. The census listed Louis as a photographer and Carrie as a homemaker. It is interesting to note that when the couples daughter reached 18 years of age, Carrie became the studio’s proprietor / photographer.
Anonymous. “Man with a Great Beard in Louisville, Kentucky,” on The Cabinet Card Gallery website 03/01/2012 [Online] Cited 05/09/2020
R. O. Helsom, Menomonie, WI Verso 1880s Relief print Gift of Robert E. Jackson Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Cabinets c. 1880s Celluloid-covered album Robert E. Jackson Collection
Amon Carter Museum of American Art 3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard Fort Worth, TX 76107-2695
Exhibition dates: 26th June – 27th October, 2019 Visited September 2019 posted September 2020
Curators: Matthieu Rivallin and Pia Viewing
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Nageur sous l’eau, Esztergom Underwater swimmer, Esztergom 1918 Contact original
“”… especially haptic qualities are demanded of the deconstructionist performer, spectator, and reader; not to follow optically the ‘line of ideas’ in the text or in a picture and see only the representation proper, the surface, but to probe with the eyes the pictorial texture and even to enter the texture.”69 Such “touching” with the eye did not lead to a secure tactile experience of being firmly planted on the ground, for all grounds, all foundations, were suspect, however construed. We are, as Nietzsche knew, swimming in an endless sea, rather than standing on dry land. To “touch” a trace, groping blindly in the dark, is no more the guarantee of certainty than to see its residues.”
Gandelman, Claude. ‘Reading Pictures, Viewing Texts’. Bloomington, Indiana, 1991, p. 140 quoted in Martin Jay. ‘Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought’. Berkley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 512.
Touching with the eye
Part 2 of a large posting on the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours, which I saw in Tours in September 2019.
This posting contains photographs from his famous series “Distortions” (fascinating to see the original plates for the book of the same name, complete with cropping marks and red lead pencil annotations); American works from 1936 onwards, when Kertész moved to the United States to avoid the persecution of the Jews and the threat of World War II; and the late work colour Polaroids.
I admit that Kertész is not my favourite photographer. While I admire some of his photographs, I feel emotionally distant from most of them. Edward Clay observes in the quotation below that Kertész was “one of the most lyrical and formally inventive photographers of the twentieth-century… [His photographs] often convey a quiet mood of melancholy … He remains revered for his clarity of style and ability to blend simplicity with emotion, prizing impact over technical precision, seeking metaphors and geometry in everyday objects and scenarios, to turn the mundane into the surreal.”
Personally, I don’t find his photographs emotional nor lyrical, only a few poetic. Not melancholic, but geometric. In later works, he simplifies, simplifies, simplifies much like his friend Mondrian did. For me, the balance between sacred / geometry, the sacred geometry of the mystery of things, is often unbalanced in these images (particularly relevant, given the title of this exhibition). Is it enough just to turn the mundane into the surreal? Where does that lead the viewer? Is it enough to just observe, represent, without digging deeper.
At his best, in images such as Underwater swimmer, Esztergom (1918, above), Arm and Fan, New York (1937, below) and Washington Square, New York (1954, below) there is a structured, avant-garde mystery about the reality of the world, as re/presented through the object of the photograph, it’s physical presence. In Underwater swimmer, the body is stretched and distorted by an element, water, not a man-made mirror. His photographs from Hungary, Italy and early Paris possess a sensitivity of spirit that seems to have been excised from his life, the older he got. Far too often in later images, there is a “brittleness” to his photography, in which the object of reflection sits at the surface of the image, all sparkling in unflinching light. The single cloud oh so lonely in the sterile city; the man looking at the broken bench; the “buy, buy, buy” of consumer culture. You consumer Kertész’s later images, you do not reflect on them.
“André Kertész, one of the most lyrical and formally inventive photographers of the twentieth-century, whose work advocated for spontaneity over technical precision, has left a distinctive legacy of poetic images which form a bridge between the avant-garde and geometrical precision. A roamer for much of his life, his feelings of rootlessness manifest in his work and often convey a quiet mood of melancholy. …
Claiming “I am an amateur and I intend to stay that way for the rest of my life”, Kertesz was a great source of inspiration to photographic legends such as Cartier-Bresson.
He remains revered for his clarity of style and ability to blend simplicity with emotion, prizing impact over technical precision, seeking metaphors and geometry in everyday objects and scenarios, to turn the mundane into the surreal. Nothing was too plain or ordinary for his eye, since he had a special ability to breathe life into even the most ‘unremarkable’ subjects.”
Edward Clay. “André Kertész: between poetry and geometry,” on ‘The Independent Photographer’ website, May 19th 2020 [Online] Cited 26/08/2020
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #34 1933 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #40 1933 Gelatin silver print
Installation views of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing photographs from the series Distortions, the bottom image showing at left, the photograph Underwater swimmer, Esztergom 1918 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Planches originales de la maquette du livre ‘Distortions’ (installation view) Original plates of the model of the book ‘Distortions’ 1975-1976 Collection Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing photographs from the series Distortions Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #60 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #86 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #86 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #109 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #6 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #159 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #128 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #70 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #70 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion #80 (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Distortion (installation view) 1933 Contact original Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Portrait déformé (Visage de femme), Paris (installation view) Distorted Portrait (Face of a Woman), Paris 1927 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
One of the twentieth century’s great photographers, André Kertész (Budapest, 1894 – New York, 1985) left a prolific body of work spanning more than seventy years (1912-1984), a blend of the poetic and the intimate with its wellspring in his Hungarian culture. The Art of Poise: André Kertész traces this singular career, showcasing compositions that bear the stamp of Europe’s avant-garde art movements, from the artist’s earliest Hungarian photographs to the blossoming of his talent in France, and from his New York years to ultimate international recognition.
Kertész arrived in Paris in October 1925. Moving in avant-garde literary and artistic circles, he photographed his Hungarian friends, artists’ studios, street life and the city’s parks and gardens. In 1933 he embarked on his famous Distortions series of nudes deformed by funhouse mirrors, producing anamorphic images similar in spirit to the work of Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp and Henry Moore.
In addition to this profusion of activity, he explored the possibility of disseminating his work in publications. Between 1933 and the end of his life he had designed and published a total of nineteen books.
In 1936 Kertész and his wife Elizabeth left for New York, where he began with a brief assignment for Keystone, the world’s biggest photographic agency. He struggled, though, to carve out a place for himself in a context whose demands were very different from those of his Paris years.
Inspired by the rediscovery of his Hungarian and French negatives, from 1963 onwards he devoted himself solely to personal projects, and was offered retrospectives by the French National Library in Paris and MoMA in New York. This fresh recognition sparked a flurry of books in which he harked back to the high points of his oeuvre. In his last years, armed with a Polaroid, he returned to his earlier practice of everyday photography.
Text from the Jeu de Paume website for the earlier exhibition The Art of Poise: André Kertész
Text from the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) La Tulipe mélancolique, New York Melancholic Tulip, New York 1939 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Paris (installation view) 1984 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Paris 1984 Gelatin silver print
Installation views of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing at top left, Ballet, New York 1938; and at bottom left, Lake Placid 1954 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Ballet, New York (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Ballet, New York 1938 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Lake Placid (installation view) 1954 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1939 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York 1939 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1954 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Escalier, rampe, ombres et femme, New York (installation view) Staircase, banister, shadows and woman, New York 1951 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Escalier, rampe, ombres et femme, New York (installation view) Staircase, banister, shadows and woman, New York 1951 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) “Buy”, Long Island 1963 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) 6th Avenue, New York 1973 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Nuage égaré Lost cloud 1937 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Nuage égaré Lost cloud 1937 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Poughkeepsie, New York (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Poughkeepsie, New York 1937 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Of New York… (installation view) New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1951 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Of New York… (installation view) New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) “Buy”, New York (installation view) 1966 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Of New York… (installation view) New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Double page de la maquette originale du livre ‘Of New York…’ (installation view) Double page of the original model of the book ‘Of New York…’ 1975-76 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing at second left, New York 1939; and at third left, New York 1936 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1939 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York 1936 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing at second right, Arm and Fan, New York 1937 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Bras et ventilateur, New York (installation view) Arm and Fan, New York 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Bras et ventilateur, New York Arm and Fan, New York 1937 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Of New York… (installation view) New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1947 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Le retour au port, New York (installation view) Return to port, New York 1944 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing at left, Disappearance, New York 1955 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) La Disparition, New York (installation view) Disappearance, New York 1955 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) La Disparition, New York (installation view) Disappearance, New York 1955 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Disappearance, New York 1955 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) New York (installation view) 1969 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Text from the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours
Installation views of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing at left in the bottom image, Broken Bench, New York 1962 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Le Banc cassé, New York Broken Bench, New York 1962 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Of New York… (installation view) New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Soixante ans de photographie (installation view) Sixty years of photography 1912-1972 Paris, éditions du Chêne, 1972 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Jour pluvieux, Tokyo (installation view) Rainy day, Tokyo 1968 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) McDougall Alley, New York (installation view) 1965 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Washington Square, New York 1954 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Washington Square, New York (installation view) 1954 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Washington Square, New York 1954 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Jardin d’hiver, New York (installation view) Winter Garden, New York 1970 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Martinique 1972 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Soixante ans de photographie (installation view) Sixty years of photography 1912-1972 Paris, éditions du Chêne, 1972 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Dans la cave, Williamsburg (installation view) In the cellar, Williamsburg 1951 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Nara, Japan 1968 Gelatin silver print
Text from the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours
Harold Riley André Kertész (installation view) Manchester, The Manchester Collection, 1984 Collection Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours showing his late Polaroid work Photos: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) 12 December 1979 (installation view) 1979 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Untitled (installation view) 1979-1981 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) June 1979 (installation view) 1979 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) 21 June 1979 (installation view) 1979 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Untitled (installation view) 1979-1981 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) 13 August 1979 (installation view) 1979 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) July 3, 1979 1979 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Untitled 1979-1981 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019 Inkjet print from a reproduction of a polaroid, 2019
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) 13 August 1983 Tirage jet d’encre d’après la reproduction d’un polaroid, 2019
Jeu de Paume at the Château de Tours 25 avenue André Malraux, 37000 Tours Phone: 02 47 70 88 46
Lawson (American) Spinning Days (Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine) Nd, presented 1927 Tipped in silver gelatin print Image: 22.5 x 17cm
These special images are a bit of a mystery. I purchased them as a lot from an op shop (charity shop) here in Melbourne, Australia.
How such quintessential, historic American photographs come to be in Australia is beyond me.
With their links to the American Revolution, Brigadier General Peleg Wadsworth of the Revolution, Wadsworth Hall, Wadsworth-Longfellow house, General Peleg Wadsworth Jr., and the daughters and granddaughters of the Republic, they could turn out to be very important images.
After research I can find no birth and death dates for George Wadsworth Davis, and no information on the photographers “Lawson” or “Huntings Studio, North Conway N.H.”
I believe the photograph Spinning Days to be earlier than the text on the back of the photograph which is dated Dec. 26th 1927, mainly because Brigadier General Peleg Wadsworth died in 1829, and taking 30 years per generation, the photograph of the granddaughter would place the image c. 1890-1900 (her dates are 1830-1908). The type of frame and the silver, patterned paper on the rear of the frame would support this supposition. I also believe that the beautiful photograph Moat Mt and Saco River, North Conway N.H. dates to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century due to the nature of its original frame. This looks to be a platinum palladium print as well.
The poem by the son George Wadsworth Davis about his mother Francis Wadsworth Davis is just delightful: his feelings for his ageing mother captured in a picture of her – tender, romantic, loving.
If anyone has more information on these images, please email me at bunyanth@netspace.net.au. Thank you!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Lawson (American) Spinning Days (Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine) Nd, presented 1927 Tipped in silver gelatin print Image: 22.5 x 17cm
The subject of this picture was Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine – the granddaughter of Brigadier General Peleg Wadsworth of the Revolution – and daughter of General Peleg Wadsworth of the ? Militia.
Mrs Hubbard posed for this picture – in the hall of the Wadsworth Home – to please our artist-friend who was with the family for the summer.
The braided rug on the floor was made by her mother many years before the picture was painted.
The spinning wheel is one hundred and twenty five years old, and always in the Wadsworth family.
Presented by her mother – Mrs Francis(?) W. Davis – W her daughter – Mrs. D. Davis Skinner
Dec. 26th 1927
Text from the verso of the framed photograph
Lawson (American) Spinning Days (Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine) (verso detail) Nd, presented 1927 Tipped in silver gelatin print
Lawson (American) Spinning Days (Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine) (details) Nd, presented 1927 Tipped in silver gelatin print
Lawson (American) Spinning Days (Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine) (verso) Nd, presented 1927 Tipped in silver gelatin print
Lawson (American) Spinning Days (Mrs. Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard of Hiram, Maine) (verso details) Nd, presented 1927 Tipped in silver gelatin print
LUSANNAH W. HUBBARD (Osgood) (American, b. March 28, 1830 – died April 14, 1908)
Many will learn with deep regret the death at Hiram, Me., of Mrs Lusannah Wadsworth Hubbard on Wednesday, April 15, at the old Wadsworth homestead where she has made it her home since 1867. She was 78 years of age or nearly so. Many who have partake of her hospitality at Wadsworth hall will remember her with much pleasure. She had all the graces of her gently blood and was one who had the esteem and respect of all who knew her. She was a woman among women.
Mrs. Hubbard was the daughter of Gen. Peleg Jr., [1793-1875] and Lusannah (Wadsworth) Wadsworth [1797-1879] [Mrs. Hubbard died 1908 – ? of Francis Wadsworth – Rounds(?) mother of Francis Wadsworth Davis, mother of Dora Davis Skinner(?)] and their home was that in which she died. Her father and mother were cousins. The mother was the daughter of ?ura and Lydia (Bradford) Wadsworth of Hiram. Her father was the youngest of the 11 children of Peleg Wadsworth, who built the Wadsworth-Longfellow house and where he was born in 1792. He also had 11 children. Mrs Hubbard’s grandfather, Gen. Peleg Wadsworth [1748-1829], was one of the most prominent men in the State in his time. He was a major general in the Revolution, member of Congress 14 years and the founder of the town of Hiram, with all that implies. He built the house at Hiram in 1800 and moved there six years later. Many with recall the enjoyable centennial celebration at Wadsworth hall in 1900, when Mrs. Hubbard was the hostess, assisted by her sister, Mrs. Louisa Rounds of Minneapolis. The father was a major general in the militia and a very prominent citizen in his time. Mrs. Hubbard was a descendant of eleven Mayflower Pilgrims and a cousin of Henry W. Longfellow [1807-1882]. Lieut. Henry Wadsworth, who as on the Constitution and perished at Tripoli in 1804, and Commodore Alexander Scammel Wadsworth [1790-1851], who was a mid-shipman at Tripoli, with his brother and a lieutenant with Hull, when he fought the Guerriere in 1812 with the Constitution, were he uncles. She was a Wadsworth of the Wadsworths.
Mrs. Hubbard married in 1849 J. E. Osgood and in 1853 John P. Hubbard. She survived Mr. Hubbard. They had children and with her during the later years has been her daughter, Mrs. J. B. Pike, and her children. She was buried with her kindred at Hiram on Friday afternoon.
Mrs. Hubbard was proud of her ancestry and she had sufficient reasons for it. She was much interested in the preservation of the birthplace of her father, built by her grandfather in 1783 and 1786, now the precious possession of Portland, the Wadsworth-Longfellow house. She was a generous contributor of family relics to the collection and visited the house every season. Her gratitude to the people of Portland for what they have done for the old house seemed without limit and she often referred to the world of the ladies. The Elizabeth Wadsworth chapter, D. A. R., was named for her grandmother. The epitaph of this grandmother could well be hers:
“A woman of eminent piety. Blessed are the dead Who died in the Lord.”
N.G.
Text from the verso of the framed photograph, no attribution or source.
George Wadsworth Davis (American) Francis Wadsworth Davis, Hiram, Maine Nd Toned silver gelatin print(?) Image: 36 x 25.7cm
Francis Wadsworth Davis (1852-1940), Photo taken by her son George Wadsworth Davis in Hiram, Maine.
George Wadsworth Davis (American) Francis Wadsworth Davis, Hiram, Maine (detail) Nd Toned silver gelatin print(?) Image: 36 x 25.7cm
George Wadsworth Davis (American) Francis Wadsworth Davis [1852-1940], Hiram, Maine (verso) Nd Toned silver gelatin print(?) Image: 36 x 25.7cm
Tho her hair is streaked with silver and she has stouter grown
I fair would fancy her thoughts have backward turned in the flight of time
To tho days of forty years ago, when her dark-haired southern love came up the winding road.
And today her son comes up the shaded pathway And sees his mother here at the bar, standing With the wistful eyes, the tender smile of girlhood days.
As the sun sends its level rays around the fragrant earth to light her silvered hair with the golden sheen of youth again
It is this view of mother Taken as I saw it that afternoon that I have tried to picture here.
GHD
Text from the verso of the framed photograph
George Wadsworth Davis (American) Francis Wadsworth Davis [1852-1940], Hiram, Maine (verso detail) Nd Toned silver gelatin print(?) Image: 36 x 25.7cm
George Wadsworth Davis (American) Francis Wadsworth Davis [1852-1940], Hiram, Maine (verso detail) Nd Toned silver gelatin print(?) Image: 36 x 25.7cm
Francis Wadsworth Rounds Davis (American, 1852-1940)
Born Peoria, Peoria, Illinois, United States June 24, 1852 Died Bridgton, Cumberland, Maine, United States November 23, 1940 aged 88)
George Wadsworth Davis (b. 1870?)
Frances Wadsworth Rounds Davis and the Wadsworth memorial Wadsworth Cemetery Hiram, Oxford County, Maine, USA
From Huntings Studio, North Conway N.H. Moat Mt and Saco River, North Conway N.H. Nd Platinum palladium print(?) Image: 27.5 x 36cm
Photograph in it’s original 1890-1920 frame.
From Huntings Studio, North Conway N.H. Moat Mt and Saco River, North Conway N.H. Nd Platinum palladium print(?) Image: 27.5 x 36cm
From Huntings Studio, North Conway N.H. Moat Mt and Saco River, North Conway N.H. (verso) Nd Platinum palladium print(?) Image: 27.5 x 36cm
From Hunting’s Studio, North Conway N.H. Moat Mt and Saco River, North Conway N.H. (verso detail) Nd Platinum palladium print(?) Image: 27.5 x 36cm
Label
From Hunting’s Studio North Conway N.H. Moat Mt and Saco River North Conway N.H.
I cannot find any information about this photographic studio online.
W. Woods North Moat Mountain, looking southwest from Intervale. Cathedral Ledge cliff is in right middle ground 2006 CC BY-SA 3.0
North Moat Mountain
North Moat Mountain is a mountain located in Carroll County, New Hampshire. North Moat is flanked to the south by Middle Moat Mountain, and to the west by Big Attitash Mountain.
North Moat Mountain stands within the watershed of the upper Saco River, which drains into the Gulf of Maine at Saco, Maine. The northwest side of North Moat Mtn. drains into Lucy Brook, thence into the Saco River. The east side of North Moat drains into Moat Brook, thence into the Saco. The southwest side of North Moat drains into Deer Brook, thence into the Swift River, a tributary of the Saco.
Ken Gallager The Saco River in Conway, New Hampshire 2006 Public domain
Saco River
The Saco River is a river in northeastern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine in the United States. It drains a rural area of 1,703 square miles (4,410 km2) of forests and farmlands west and southwest of Portland, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean at Saco Bay, 136 miles (219 km) from its source. It supplies drinking water to roughly 250,000 people in thirty-five towns; and historically provided transportation and water power encouraging development of the cities of Biddeford and Saco and the towns of Fryeburg and Hiram. The name “Saco” comes from the Eastern Abenaki word [sɑkohki], meaning “land where the river comes out”. The Jesuit Relations, ethnographic documents from the 17th century, refer to the river as Chouacoet.
North Moat Mountain map showing Portland and Boston
Map of Hiram, Maine showing North Moat Mountain and Saco River
Wadsworth Hall, Hiram, Maine CC BY-SA 3.0
Wadsworth Hall
Wadsworth Hall, also known as the Peleg Wadsworth House, is a historic house at the end of Douglas Road in Hiram, Maine, United States. A massive structure for a rural setting, it was built for General Peleg Wadsworth between 1800 and 1807 on a large tract of land granted to him for his service in the American Revolutionary War. Wadsworth was the leading citizen of Hiram, and important town meetings took place at the house. He was also the grandfather of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who visited the estate as a youth. The house remains in the hands of Wadsworth descendants. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The main block of the house is a rectangular 2-1/2 story wood frame structure set on a massive granite foundation, with a gabled roof. Its main facade is seven bays wide, notably larger than the five more typically found in rural settings. The main entrance is centred on this face, sheltered by a 19th-century portico. A pair of small windows are above the doorway, with larger paired windows on either side on the second level. The left side of the house has three windows on each of three levels, and a doorway leading to the cellar. The right side has two windows on each of three levels. A two-story ell extends to the rear of the house, with a later two-story addition extending it further. There are a number of farm-related outbuildings, including 19th-century barns, behind the house.
The interior of the house is rustic and relatively simple. Its main feature on the first floor is a large chamber with a high ceiling, which was used by General Wadsworth for public meetings. The house is finished in plain pine boards, with modest Federal styling.
General Wadsworth’s primary residence, now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House and a National Historic Landmark, is located on Congress Street in Portland, and was built in 1785-86. Wadsworth was granted 7,800 acres (3,200 ha) by the state in 1790 for his war service; this property extended from the Ossipee River to the Saco River in what is now the town of Hiram. The house was built between 1800 and 1807 by Stephen Jewett, a carpenter, and Theophilus Smith, a mason, both of whom were from nearby Cornish. After its completion, Wadsworth gave his Portland home to his daughter Zilpah and her husband Stephen Longfellow, parents of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow is known to have frequently summered at his grandfather’s estate as a child.
Wadsworth, in his role as a leading citizen in Hiram, opened his house for meetings and town functions, and even used the large hall for militia drills during bad weather. The house and surviving property retain a rural setting, accessed via a narrow dirt road.
John Shaw Smith (British, 1811-1873) The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem April 1852 Albumen silver print, printed c. 1855 George Eastman Museum, gift of Alden Scott Boyer Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
From December 1850 to September 1852, John Shaw Smith travelled throughout the Mediterranean with a camera. He used the paper negative process that William Henry Fox Talbot patented in 1841. Shaw Smith masked out uneven tonality or aberrations in the sky with India ink, a common practice at the time, and he introduced clouds into his prints through combination printing. Rather than a cloud negative made from life, however, his second paper negative consisted of clouds hand-drawn with charcoal.
John Shaw Smith (British, 1811-1873) The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem April 1852 Calotype negative George Eastman Museum, gift of Alden Scott Boyer Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Completing a triumvirate of postings about aeroplanes, air, and sky … we finish with a posting on a small but perfectly formed exhibition, Gathering Clouds: Photographs from the Nineteenth Century and Today at George Eastman Museum.
The technical competence of the early photographers, and the sheer beauty of their images, is mesmerising. To overcome the technical deficiencies of early photographic processes – where the dynamic tonal range between shadows and highlights was difficult to capture on one negative – the artists used painted clouds, hand-drawn clouds, and combination prints with cloud negatives made from life. You name it, they could do it to fill a sky!
My particular favourites in this elevated selection, these songs of the earth and sky, are three. Firstly, that most divine of daguerreotypes, a woman by Southworth & Hawes c. 1850 (below). “The heavenly realm had long been represented by clouds in Western art.” Secondly, and always a desire of mine, are the seascapes of Gustave Le Gray. There is something so spatial, so serene about his images. One day I know I will own one. And finally, the surprise that is that most beautiful of images, Marsh at Dawn 1906 (below). You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out it was by that doyen of modernist photography, Imogen Cunningham, a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its dedication to the sharp-focus rendition of simple subjects. How an artist evolves over the life time of their career.
I have added text to some of the images from the George Eastman Museum virtual tour, and also added further biographical notes on the artists below some of the photographs. I do hope you enjoy the magic of these accumulated – a cumulus related images.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to George Eastman Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Gathering Clouds traces the complex history of photography’s relationship with clouds from the medium’s invention to Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalents. The exhibition demonstrates that clouds played a seminal role in the development and subsequent reception of photography in the nineteenth century. At the same time, with Equivalents serving as a connection between past and present, the exhibition features contemporary works that forge new aesthetic paths while responding in various ways to the history of cloud photography.
Clouds and the Limitations of Photography
In the nineteenth century, clouds were technically difficult to photograph. As early as the 1830s, the medium’s inventors observe that photographic plates were more sensitive to violet and blue wavelengths of light and less sensitive to warm greens, yellows, oranges and reds. In order to record grass and trees in a landscape, photographers had to expose the plate to light longer, which left the sky overexposed; if they times their exposure to record the sky properly, the grass and trees were underexposed. Furthermore, clouds disappeared from even properly exposed skies because blue and white registered the same tonal value on the plate. Pink and orange skies created enough contrast for photographers to capture clouds, but the yellow hue of the late-day sun made it a challenge to record the browns and greens of the landscape. Cloudless skies are therefore a common feature of nineteenth-century photographs.
Clouds & Combination Printing
Painted Clouds and Combination Prints with Hand-Drawn Clouds
Southworth & Hawes (Albert Sands Southworth, American, 1811-1894; Josiah Johnson Hawes, American, 1808-1901) Woman c. 1850 Daguerreotype George Eastman Museum, gift of Alden Scott Boyer Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Around 1850, Southworth & Hawes began adding hand-painted clouds to select portraits of women. This was undoubtedly an aesthetic decision, but the association of women with clouds also corresponds with mid-nineteenth-century views of white women and their role in American society. At the time, piety was seen as a virtue bestowed on women by God – a strength upon which men were to draw. The heavenly realm had long been represented by clouds in Western art.
Southworth & Hawes (Albert Sands Southworth, American, 1811-1894; Josiah Johnson Hawes, American, 1808-1901) Woman (detail) c. 1850 Daguerreotype George Eastman Museum, gift of Alden Scott Boyer Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Count Camille Bernard Baillieu d’Avrincourt (French, 1824-1862) Château de Chambord c. 1855 Salted paper print George Eastman Museum, gift of Kodak-Pathé Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Count Camille Bernard Baillieu d’Avrincourt received praise from his peers for his technical skill and artistic sentiment. The clouds in Baillieu d’Avrincourt’s photographs of the Château de Chambord demonstrate his commitment to both. Perhaps dissatisfied with the relationship of clouds to the tower, he used combination printing to alter the placement of the cloud formation between the two prints.
Count Camille Bernard Baillieu d’Avrincourt (French, 1824-1862) Château de Chambord c. 1855 Salted paper print George Eastman Museum, gift of Kodak-Pathé Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
“We have the sky always before us, therefore we do not recognise how beautiful it is. It is very rare to see anybody go into raptures over the wonders of the sky, yet of all that goes on in the whole world there is nothing to approach it for variety, beauty, grandeur, and serenity.”
H. P. Robinson, ‘The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph’, 1896
At the end of the nineteenth century, Henry Peach Robinson (British, 1830–1901) emphasised the significance of the sky in landscape photography. “The artistic possibilities of clouds,” he further noted, “are infinite.” Robinson’s plea to photographers to attend to the clouds was not new. From photography’s beginnings, clouds had been central to aesthetic and technological debates in photographic circles. Moreover, they featured in discussions about the nature of the medium itself. Gathering Clouds demonstrates that clouds played a key role in the development and reception of photography from the medium’s invention (1839) to World War I (1914-1918). Through the juxtaposition of nineteenth-century and contemporary works, the exhibition further considers the longstanding metaphorical relationship between clouds and photography. Conceptions of both are dependent on oppositions, such as transience versus fixity, reflection versus projection, and nature versus culture.
Gathering Clouds includes cloud photographs made by prominent figures such as Anne Brigman (American, 1869-1950), Alvin Langdon Coburn (British, 1882-1966), Peter Henry Emerson (British, 1856-1936), Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884), Eadweard Muybridge (British, 1830-1904), Henry Peach Robinson, Southworth & Hawes (American, active 1843-1863), and Adam Clark Vroman (American, 1856-1916). Selections from the group of photographs that Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) titled Equivalents (1923-34) serve as a link between past and present. The featured contemporary artists are Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, 1977), John Chiara (American, b. 1971), Sharon Harper (American, b. 1966), Nick Marshall (American, b. 1984), Joshua Rashaad McFadden (American, b. 1990), Sean McFarland (American, b. 1976), Abelardo Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948), Vik Muniz (Brazilian, b. 1961), Trevor Paglen (American, b. 1974), Bruno V. Roels (Belgian, b. 1976), Berndnaut Smilde (Dutch, b. 1978), James Tylor (Kaurna, Māori & Australian, b. 1986), Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953), Will Wilson (American, Navajo, b. 1969), Byron Wolfe (American, b. 1967), Penelope Umbrico (American, b. 1957), and Daisuke Yokota (Japanese, b. 1983).
Text from the George Eastman House website
Combination Prints with Cloud Negatives Made from Life
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Mediterranean with Mount Agde 1857 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, gift of Eastman Kodak Company, ex-collection Gabriel Cromer Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
The seascapes that Gustave Le Gray made between 1856 and 1858 were both praised and panned by his contemporaries. Some faulted the clouds for being too luminous in relation to the sea. One critic maintained that in Le Gray’s photographs, the clouds and the landscape – made on two separate negatives and combined during printing – were untrue to the laws of nature.
Combination Prints with Cloud Negatives Made from Life
Gioacchino Altobelli (Italian, 1825-1878) The Colosseum c. 1865 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Gioacchino Altobelli used combination printing to achieve a “moonlight effect,” made by photographing the sun (not the moon) behind clouds. Altobelli likely made such photographs with foreign travellers in mind. Inspired by Romantic poets like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Lord Byron, tourists to Rome often visited the Colosseum by moonlight.
At the end of 1865 the two painter-photographers divided and Gioacchino Altobelli moved to a studio at Passeggiata di Ripetta n.16 that had been used by the photographer Michele Petagna. A new company was formed “Photographic Establishment Altobelli & Co.” which leads us to assume that Atobelli was working in conjunction with other photographers probably including Enrico Verzaschi.
In the beginning of 1866 Altobelli asked for a declaration of ownership (a brevet) to the Department of Commerce in Rome for his invention of the application of color to photographic images (a union of photography with chrome-lithography). The manager of the Pontifical Chrome-Lithography strongly opposed his application as they are already using such an invention from his own Company. Few months later Altobelli asked for another brevet that is granted him this time, “to perform in photograph the views of the monuments with effect of sky”. His method, similar if not identical to that of Gustave Le Gray, consisted in taking a first photograph of a monument where the exposure was adjusted to highlight the architectural characteristics sought. Subsequently Altobelli took at another time one or more additional photographs exposed to capture strong sky and cloud contrasts. In the dark room Altobelli captured on photographic paper the double exposure of the two perfectly aligned plates – this resulted in a well illuminated monument contrasted with a strong sky that gave the feeling of “claire de lune”. In November 1866 Altobelli obtained the brevet for 6 years. It is probable that he didn’t know that in Venice the photographers Carlo Ponti and Carlo Naya were already using the “claire de lune” technique – moreover they tinted them with aniline giving their prints a beautiful blue tone as if the water of the lagoon was illuminated at night by the moon. However the brevet allowed the painter-photographer Gioacchino Altobelli to have great notoriety in Rome and this helped him to increase his work as a portraitist.
Text from the Luminous-Lint website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
George N. Barnard (American, 1819-1902) Rebel Works in Front of Atlanta, Ga. No. 1 1866 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase, ex-collection Philip Medicus Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Within one copy of Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign (1866), George N. Barnard sometimes used the same cloud negative to print in cloudscapes to two different scenes, such as in the example shown here. Moreover, between two copies of the album, he is also known to have used different cloud negatives to reproduce the same scene. In reviews of the album, the cloudscapes received particular attention. One reviewer claimed that the pictures’ clouds conveyed “a fine idea of the effects of light and shade in the sunny clime in which the scenes are laid.” In part because of Barnard’s practice of re-using cloud negatives, however, it is impossible to know whether Barnard even photographed the clouds while in the South.
George N. Barnard (American, 1819-1902) Rebel Works in Front of Atlanta, Ga. No. 1 (detail) 1866 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase, ex-collection Philip Medicus Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
One of the first persons to open a daguerreotype studio in the United States, George Barnard set up shop in Oswego, New York. In 1854 he moved his operation to Syracuse, New York, and began using the collodion process, a negative / positive process that allowed for multiple prints, unlike the unique daguerreotype.
Along with Timothy O’Sullivan, John Reekie, and Alexander Gardner, Barnard worked for the Mathew Brady studio and is best known for his photo-documentation of the American Civil War. In 1864 he was made the official photographer for the United States Army, Chief Engineer’s Office, Division of the Mississippi. He followed Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous march to the sea and in 1866 published an album of sixty-one photographs, Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign. After the war he continued primarily as a portrait photographer in Ohio, Chicago, Charleston, South Carolina, and Rochester, New York, where he briefly worked with George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company.
Text from the J. Paul Getty website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
Combination Prints with Cloud Negatives Made from Life
Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) Cape Horn, Columbia River, Oregon 1867 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, museum accession Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
In 1867, Carleton E. Watkins travelled to Oregon for two purposes; to photograph the state’s geological features, and to document the sites and scenes along the Oregon Steam Navigation Company’s steamboat and portage railway route. This photograph was circulated with and without clouds, suggesting a third function for his Oregon views. The introduction of clouds into the prints staked a claim for the photograph’s artistic potential, in addition to its original scientific and commercial goals.
Clouds and Landscape on a Single Negative
Eadweard J. Muybridge (English, 1830-1904) Clouds 1868-1872 From the series Great Geyser Springs Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, museum accession Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Painted Clouds and Combination Prints with Hand-Drawn Clouds
Unidentified maker Mount Fuji c. 1870 Albumen silver print with applied colour George Eastman Museum, gift of University of Rochester Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Hand-painted Japanese photographs made for Western tourists often played to their prospective consumers’ assumptions and desires. Near the port city of Yokohama, Mount Fuji was readily accessible to foreign travellers, and photographs of the mountain were common. Guidebooks primed visitors to delight in the clouds surrounding the mountain, an expectation to which this photograph – with its hand-painted clouds – caters.
Henry Peach Robinson (British, 1830-1901) Evening on Culverden Down c. 1870 Albumen silver print Lent by Patrick Montgomery
An influential practitioner of combination printing, H.P. Robinson argued that printing in clouds was essential to the photographer’s endeavour to interpret nature. A “properly selected cloud,” he wrote, allowed the photographer to control the composition, thereby rescuing the “art form from the machine.”
Clouds and Landscape on a Single Negative
Charles Victor Tillot (French, 1825-1895) Vues instantannées, effets de nuages, Barbizon Instant views, cloud effects, Barbizon 1874 Albumen silver print Lent by Patrick Montgomery
Charles Victor Tillot’s instantaneous views were criticised for being to dark. In addition to practicing photography, Tillot was a painter and exhibited with the Impressionists, whose central concerns were the effects of light and the truthfulness to nature. As a photographer, Tillot was attentive to the play of light both on the clouds – the most fleeting aspect of the scene – and in unaltered photographs.
Lala Deen Dayal (Indian, 1844-1905) Jahaz Mahal between 1879 and 1881 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, gift of University of Rochester Library Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Lala Deen Dayal (Hindi: लाला दीन दयाल) 1844 – 1905; (also written as ‘Din Dyal’ and ‘Diyal’ in his early years) famously known as Raja Deen Dayal) was an Indian photographer. His career began in the mid-1870s as a commissioned photographer; eventually he set up studios in Indore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. He became the court photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, Mahbub Ali Khan, Asif Jah VI, who awarded him the title Raja Bahadur Musavvir Jung Bahadur, and he was appointed as the photographer to the Viceroy of India in 1885.
In the early 1880s he travelled with Sir Lepel Griffin through Bundelkhand, photographing the ancient architecture of the region. Griffin commissioned him to do archaeological photographs: The result was a portfolio of 86 photographs, known as “Famous Monuments of Central India”.
Photograph of the Jahaz Mahal at Mandu in Madhya Pradesh, taken by [Indian photographer] Lala Deen Dayal in the 1870s. The Jahaz Mahal or Ship Palace is part of the Royal Enclave in northern Mandu and dates from the late 15th century. It is a long, narrow, two-storey arcaded range crowned with roof-top pavilions and kiosks, built between two artificial lakes, the Munj Talao and Kapur Sagar. It was so named because from a distance in this setting it resembled a ship. Conceived as a pleasure palace, it housed the harem of Ghiyath Shah Khalji, a Sultan of Malwa who ruled between 1469 and 1500. This is a perspective view of the façade taken from one end, showing a flight of steps ascending to the roof terrace at left and rubble in the foreground. The palace is one of several at Mandu, a historic ruined hill fortress which first came to prominence under the Paramara dynasty at the end of the 10th century. It was state capital of the Sultans of Malwa between 1401 and 1531, who renamed the fort ‘Shadiabad’ (City of Joy) and built palaces, mosques and tombs amid the gardens, lakes and woodland within its walls. Most of the remaining buildings date from this period and were originally decorated with glazed tiles and inlaid coloured stone. They constitute an important provincial style of Islamic architecture characterised by an elegant and powerful simplicity that is believed to have influenced later Mughal architecture at Agra and Delhi.
Text from the British Library website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
Painted Clouds and Combination Prints with Hand-Drawn Clouds
Unidentified maker The Roman Forum c. 1885 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, gift of George C. Pratt
Painted Clouds and Combination Prints with Hand-Drawn Clouds
William Henry Jackson (American, 1843-1942) Mt. Hood from Lost Lake c. 1890 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum, gift of Harvard University Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Writing in 1883, the poet Joaquin Miller declared that the constantly moving cloud effects around Mount Hood added “most of all to the beauty and sublimity of the mount scenery.” Perhaps Miller’s description of the clouds elucidates William Henry Jackson’s decision to print clouds from drawn – as opposed to photographed – negatives. Jackson might have lacked cloud negatives that communicated motion and vigour and felt compelled to draw them himself.
William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942) was an American painter, Civil War veteran, geological survey photographer and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of America’s national symbol Uncle Sam. …
The American photographer along with painter Thomas Moran are credited with inspiring the first national park at Yellowstone, thanks to the images they carried back to legislators in Washington, D.C. America’s great, open spaces lured these artists, who delivered proof of the natural jewels that sparkled on the other side of the country.
From 1890 to 1892 Jackson produced photographs for several railroad lines (including the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) and the New York Central) using 18 x 22-inch glass plate negatives. The B&O used his photographs in their exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Unidentified maker Plate V 1896 Chromolithograph From the International Cloud-Atlas, edited by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson (Swedish, 1838-1925), Albert Riggenbach (Swiss, 1854-1921), and Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (French, 1855-1913), published by Gauthier-Villars et Fils (Paris) George Eastman Museum, purchase with funds from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Published in 1896, the International Cloud-Atlas standardised the definitions and descriptions of cloud formations and outlined instructions for cloud observations so that scientists could communicate dependable data across borders. The atlas was illustrated with chromolithographs made after photographs. Photography thus played a central role in overcoming the difficulty of applying language to ever-changing cloud formations. To cloud scientists, photograph was valued not for its perceived objectivity but for its ability to capture minute details in a sea of infinite and transient forms. Photographs helped ensure that cloudspotters everywhere could use a standard vocabulary to describe their observations.
Unidentified maker Plate III 1896 Chromolithograph From the International Cloud-Atlas, edited by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson (Swedish, 1838-1925), Albert Riggenbach (Swiss, 1854-1921), and Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (French, 1855-1913), published by Gauthier-Villars et Fils (Paris) George Eastman Museum, purchase with funds from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Unidentified maker Plate IV 1896 Chromolithograph From the International Cloud-Atlas, edited by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson (Swedish, 1838-1925), Albert Riggenbach (Swiss, 1854-1921), and Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (French, 1855-1913), published by Gauthier-Villars et Fils (Paris) George Eastman Museum, purchase with funds from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Alfred Horsley Hinton (English, 1863-1908) Day’s Awakening 1896 Platinum print George Eastman Museum, gift of the 3M Foundation, ex-collection Louis Walton Sipley. Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
“In the photographic rendering of clouds, not as atmospheric phenomena, but as vehicles of beautiful thought, we have to-day something of an indication of how much superior the photograph may be wen made and controlled by an artist mind.” ~ A. Horsely Hinton, 1897
Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863 – 25 February 1908) was an English landscape photographer, best known for his work in the Pictorialist movement in the 1890s and early 1900s. As an original member of the Linked Ring and editor of The Amateur Photographer, he was one of the movement’s staunchest advocates. Hinton wrote nearly a dozen books on photographic technique, and his photographs were exhibited at expositions throughout Europe and North America. …
Hinton’s landscape photographs tend to be characterised by prominent foregrounds and dramatic cloud formations, often in a vertical format. He typically used sepia platinotype and gum bichromate printing processes. Unlike many Pictorialists, Hinton preferred sharp focus to soft focus lenses. He occasionally cropped and mixed cloud scenes and foregrounds from different photographs, and was known to rearrange the foregrounds of his subjects to make them more pleasing. His favourite topic was the English countryside, especially the Essex mud flats and Yorkshire moors.
Combination Prints with Cloud Negatives Made from Life
Osborne I. Yellott (American, b. 1871 – d. unknown) Winter Evening 1898 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
“Before printing a cloud negative into any view the worked should always ask himself whether those particular clouds are properly appropriate to the scene, or whether they lend expression to the scene.” ~ Osborne I. Yellott, 1901
Yellott distinguished between two branches of cloud photograph: clouds for their own sake and clouds for printing in. The first he identified as a “delightful hobby,” the pursuit of which would lead to a collection of “pleasing or unusual” cloud formations to be viewed as lantern-slide projections or as cyanotypes in an album. The second, practiced by Yellott himself, required more discrimination: the photographer must carefully select their clouds and camera position.
Osborne I. Yellott (American, b. 1871 – d. unknown) Winter Evening (detail) 1898 Albumen silver print George Eastman Museum Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Clouds and Landscape on a Single Negative
Adam Clark Vroman (American, 1856-1916) Cibollita Mesa (South from top of Mesa) 1899 Platinum palladium print George Eastman Museum, purchase with funds from the Charina Foundation Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
“… if fortune favours you, you may find a background of such beautiful clouds as only the light clear air of the south-west can produce. All day long these fleecy rolls of cotton-like vapour have tempted you, until you are in danger of using up all your… plates the first day out. You think there never can be such clouds again – but keep a few for tomorrow, they are a regular thing in this land of surprises.”
Vroman, 1901
Vroman never used combination printing to add cloud effects to his celebrated photographs of the SW landscape. Rather, the Pasadena bookstore owner capture both cloudscapes and landscapes on an orthochromatic plate and made prints from this single negative. By the mid-1880s, orthochromatic plates were available and made the photography of clouds and landscape easier.
Adam Clark Vroman (1856-1916), a native of LaSalle, Illinois, moved to Pasadena, California, in 1892. He was an amateur field photographer who worked primarily with glass plate photography and was the founder of Vroman’s Bookstore located in Pasadena. His impressive body of photographic work from the late 1890s and early 1900s documents his multiple expeditions to the pueblos and mesas of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, several of these trips alongside Dr Frederick Webb Hodge with the Bureau of American Ethnology. Vroman’s close friendship with the natives, notably the Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo, allowed him to capture intimate images of their daily lives and customs as well as the lands that they inhabited. These photographs provide a stark contrast from common depictions of the time period that portrayed American Indian peoples as either exotic subjects or as savages.
His work during this period also reflects his extreme fondness of the glowing, superior quality of light found in the Southwest region. During these expeditions he worked primarily with a 6 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ view camera as well as with 4″ x 5″ and 5″ x 7″ cameras. Between 1895 and 1905, Vroman documented the interiors and exteriors of the Spanish missions in California prior to the restoration of the buildings. He photographed areas in California such as Pasadena, Yosemite National Park, as well as the eastern region of the United States, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Vroman was also an avid art collector with an interest in the crafts of Native Americans and treasures from Japan and the Far East. He spent the last years of his life traveling to the East Coast and Canada, as well as to Japan and to countries in Europe. He died in Altadena, California, in 1916 of intestinal cancer.
Text from the Online Archive of California website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
Combination Prints with Cloud Negatives Made from Life
Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934) The Sketch (Beatrice Baxter) 1903 Platinum print George Eastman Museum, gift of Hermine Turner
Gertrude Käsebier’s addition of clouds, which are absent from the original negative, gives this photograph a meditative quality that parallels the subject’s contemplative state. As a leading Pictorialist, Käsebier viewed photographs as an art form and drew inspiration from the work of famous painters. Perhaps, then, she was aware of painter Joghn Constable’s belief that the sky as the “chief organ of sentiment” in a picture.
Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934) The Sketch (Beatrice Baxter) (detail) 1903 Platinum print George Eastman Museum, gift of Hermine Turner
Alvin Langdon Coburn (British, b. United States, 1882-1966) Clouds in the Canyon 1911 Gum bichromate over platinum print George Eastman Museum, bequest of the photographer
Unidentified maker (French) Cumulus c. 1918 Gelatin silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Unidentified maker (French) Mer de nuages (Sea of clouds) c. 1918 Gelatin silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Equivalent 1925 Gelatin silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase and gift of Georgia O’Keeffe Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Equivalent probably 1926 Gelatin silver print George Eastman Museum, purchase and gift of Georgia O’Keeffe Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum
Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air.
Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra”, (IV, xii, 2-7)
Trevor Paglen’s artwork draws on his long-time interest in investigative journalism and the social sciences, as well as his training as a geographer. His work seeks to show the hidden aesthetics of American surveillance and military systems, touching on espionage, the digital circulation of images, government development of weaponry, and secretly funded military projects. …
Since the 1990s, Paglen has photographed isolated military air bases located in Nevada and Utah using a telescopic camera lens. Untitled (Reaper Drone) reveals a miniature drone mid-flight against a luminous morning skyscape. The drone is nearly imperceptible, suggested only as a small black speck [in] the image. The artist’s photographs are taken at such a distance that they abstract the scene and distort our capacity to make sense of the image. His work both exposes hidden secrets and challenges assumptions about what can be seen and fully understood.
Text from the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
After Constable, [is] a series of unique visions of the landscape of Hamstead Heath by Abelardo Morell.
In June of 2017, the photographer Abelardo Morell took a pilgrimage to England, visiting the landscape of nineteenth-century Romantic painter John Constable. In the hopes of capturing the spirit of Constable’s work, Morell pitched a tent in the middle of London’s Hampstead Heath. This tent, a constructed camera obscura, projected the surrounding landscape onto the earthen ground through a small aperture at the tent’s top. Describing his camera obscura, Morell stated, “I invented a device – part tent, part periscope – to show how the immediacy of the ground we walk on enhances our understanding of the panorama, the larger world it helps to form.”
Photographing the ground below him, Morell captured both the texture of the earth as well as its vast surrounding landscape: both macro- and micro-visions of Constable’s surroundings, caught in harmony on one plane. With this layering, the photographs blend both image and texture. Always drawn to the dimension of a painting’s surface, Morell sought to emulate texture in his own photographs. In Constable’s romantic visions of Hampstead Heath from the early nineteenth century, the painter captured the english landscape in gestures of tactile, thick paint. With the roughness of the ground underneath the projected sky, each photograph’s plane echoes a painting’s surface.
Text from the Rosegallery website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
This series explores my connection with Kaurna yarta (Kaurna land) through learning, researching, documenting and traveling on country. Turalayinthi Yarta* is a Kaurna phrase “to see yourself in the landscape” or “landscape photography”. In a two year period I travelled over 300 km of the southern part of the Hans Heysen trail that runs parallel along the Kaurna nation boundary line in the Mount Lofty ranges. Combining photographs and traditional Nunga** designs to represent my connection with this Kaurna region of South Australia.
*Yarta means Land, Country and Nation in Kaurna language **Nunga means South Australian Aboriginal people or person (Nunga language)
Text from the James Tylor website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
John Chiara is an experimental photographer who makes unique works by directly manipulating photosensitive paper. Chiara always believed that too much was lost in the final photograph because of the enlargement processes in the darkroom. In 1995, he was working primarily with making contact prints with large-format negatives, but in subsequent years he developed equipment and processes that allowed him to make large-scale, colour, positive photographic images without the use of film. The largest of his devices is a field camera that is large enough for Chiara to enter; he attaches the paper to this camera’s back wall and uses his hands and body to burn and dodge the image instinctively. Chiara’s developing process often leaves anomalies in the resulting images, which he embraces.
Text from the Artsy website [Online] Cited 21/08/2020
George Eastman Museum 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607, USA
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde, Jardin Marco Polo, Paris 1907 Albumen silver print
Atget’s shadow
A delicious posting on the work of the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927). Atget’s photographs bridge the gap between subjective and objective representation – on the one hand extolling the subjective quality of art as an expression of the artist’s inner self; but on the other, providing a rejection of artistic consciousness, his objective “documents for artists” appealing to the Surrealists who used his images in publications such as Révolution Surréaliste.
In their presence, the photographs of Atget proffer an intimate in/tension (intention) – between representation and abstraction, documentary and modern, ordinary and dream. His photography, “which focussed on seemingly ordinary sights on the streets of Paris – a door knocker, a mannequin, a window rail – is seen as a forerunner of Surrealist and modern approaches to photography.”1
Further, “The critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin famously invoked crime scenes in discussing Atget’s photographs. He was pointing to their emptiness, their clinical attention to details of the urban landscape, their absolute rejection of the sentimental and the grandiose. … In Atget’s Paris, “the city is evacuated, like an apartment that hasn’t yet found its new tenant,” Benjamin wrote.”2
And yet, there is always something of the artist in every photograph, no matter how criminal the raping of time.
Thinking of my latest body of work “A Day in the Tiergarten”, my current research into parks and photographers, and then looking at Atget’s photographs of parks, I believe that the “park” with Atget takes some of its meaning from the ownership of the parks and the royalty / citizen system that was in place at the time AND what that might allow. Here is the photographer bearing his heavy camera like a tramp on the road, wandering in an empty domain owned by a higher power – and using its magnificence to discover more about the self searching vagabond.
Sometimes the question: “is there anyone here” is answered like Cocteau in Beauty and the Beast, and the answer is: “yes there is – yourself” says the (objective) camera. Sometimes, in other ways, the photographer goes nearly crazy with the possibilities of photography: what is the truth about my presence, the presence of a rock, or the sky? Yes, there is you, but in saying that it opens up all these other (subjective) possibilities. The options of inserting ourselves into representation, into what photography can hold, drives us crazy.
As Lee Friedlander observes, “The photographs of these places … are a hint, just a blink at a piece of the real world. At most, an aphrodisiac.”
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ “Surrealism did not always involve the strange and absurd. For example, the photography of Eugène Atget (1857-1927), which focussed on seemingly ordinary sights on the streets of Paris – a door knocker, a mannequin, a window rail – is seen as a forerunner of Surrealist and modern approaches to photography… Only a year before his death, in 1926, Atget was approached by Man Ray for approval to use his photograph, L’Eclipse – Avril 1912 for the front cover of the publication La Révolution Surréaliste. Despite protestations that, “these are simply documents I make”, Atget’s rejection of artistic self-consciousness combined with his pictures of an old, often hauntingly deserted Paris, appealed to Surrealists.”
Anonymous. “Surrealist photography,” on the V&A website [Online] Cited 07/08/2020
2/ Anonymous. “Atget’s Paris, 100 years later,” on the Art Daily website 31/05/2020
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The subject itself,” he wrote of landscape, “is simply perfect, and no matter how well you manage as a photographer, you will only ever give a hint as to how good the real thing is. We photographers don’t really make anything: we peck at the world and try to find something curious or wild or beautiful that might fit into what the medium of photography can hold.”
“The photographs of these places,” he added, “are a hint, just a blink at a piece of the real world. At most, an aphrodisiac.”
Lee Friedlander
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Ancien Hotel dit de Sartine – 21 rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris 1906 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Ancien Monastère des Bénédictins Anglais, 269 rue Saint-Jacques. Paris 5 1900 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Hôtel du Maréchal de Tallard, 78 rue des Archives c. 1898-1905 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Grille de l’ancien pavillon de chasse de Philippe-Égalité (Hospice Debrousse), 148 rue de Bagnolet. Paris 20 1900 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Heurtoir, St. Étienne du Mont (Cherub Door Knocker) 1909 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Heurtoir, 6 rue du Parc Royal c. 1901-1914 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) L’Oranger (with Shadow of Photographer and His Camera) 1900 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Le Portail de l’église Saint-Éliphe, Rampillon (Seine-et-Marne) 1921 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Le Portail de l’église Saint-Éliphe, Rampillon (Seine-et-Marne) 1921 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Le Portail de l’église Saint-Éliphe, Rampillon (Seine-et-Marne) 1921 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Le Portail de l’église Saint-Éliphe, Rampillon (Seine-et-Marne) 1921 Albumen silver print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Le Portail de l’église Saint-Éliphe, Rampillon (Seine-et-Marne) 1921 Albumen silver print
The critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin famously invoked crime scenes in discussing Atget’s photographs. He was pointing to their emptiness, their clinical attention to details of the urban landscape, their absolute rejection of the sentimental and the grandiose.
As Benjamin observed, Atget established a beneficial “distance between man and his environment.” And Lima’s haunting updated recreations confirm the long-dead photographer’s disquieting insight – Paris doesn’t care about your presence. It is indifferent, and will certainly go on without you.
You can feel joy at standing on a Paris street, but the feeling is not reciprocated.
Atget, who was born in 1857, initially tried unsuccessfully at acting and painting. In 1890, he set up shop as a photographer, in order – as a sign over his door said – to provide “Documents for Artists.” He knew that painters needed images as models for their work, and he set about furnishing them.
For nearly three decades, he trudged through the city, bearing his heavy tripod and documenting a Paris of narrow streets and grime-covered low buildings that was already disappearing.
In 1920, Atget wrote: “I can say that I possess all of Old Paris.”
The world was mostly indifferent to Atget’s work until, several years before his death in 1927, he met a young American photographer, Berenice Abbott, who was working as an assistant to the artist Man Ray. She photographed him, wrote about him, acquired many of his prints and promoted him relentlessly for 50 years.
Today, Atget is recognised as a major figure in the history of photography.
The empty Paris of his prints looms out of the half-light of what seems like perpetual fog. His buildings are independent of people. They don’t even need them. Paris, the message seems to be, continues. It does not care about the individual presence. The city is not sentimental about humankind.
True, traces of humanity are ever-present in his pictures – torn advertising posters, artisanal shop signs, bins of vegetables, rows of boots. But these are only reminders that the city might once have been inhabited. And there are few people in the images to confirm this.
In Atget’s Paris, “the city is evacuated, like an apartment that hasn’t yet found its new tenant,” Benjamin wrote.
Compare that with the images from today. The occasional masked figures are incidental to the landscape. That they wear masks, hiding part of their faces, is a further denial of their humanity.
The “picturesque” – which Atget shunned, as Benjamin points out – is more difficult to avoid…”
Anonymous. “Atget’s Paris, 100 years later,” on the Art Daily website 31/05/2020
Exhibition dates: 13th September – 4th December 2019 Visited September 2019 posted July 2020
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam Photo: Marcus Bunyan
These are my thoughts at the time of my seeing the exhibition.
I have been blessed this trip by seeing an amazing selection of master photographers… Brassaï being no exception.
Every print in this exhibition is a vintage print. They were made by Brassaï before 1968. If larger than 30 x 40cm they were made after 1945 when he started printing with an enlarger.
As usual, the iPhone camera makes all the images too light and adds too much contrast. Think darker, less contrast in these vintage prints.
Brassaï’s prints are – just like those of Josef Sudek and August Sander that I have seen on this trip – much softer and with a more limited tonal range than I imagined. They are all the more atmospheric and magical because of it.
To walk around the exhibition and then arrive at an alcove (see walk through below)… to stand in front of Le Môme Bijou, the old lady with the jewellery and Billiard Player, is such a privilege. I am surrounded by the presence of these famous images. I peer intently at each of them, observing the details, feeling their eyes stare back at me. No deflection of intent, just these human beings and their spirit presented in a photograph. Brassaï captured their essence before they drifted away, just in that moment.
In the latter print the dark billiard ball was almost indistinguishable from the baize; in the former, the circular light in the woman’s eyes means that Brassaï must have set up a light, or that there was a light source, above and behind the camera. Specular highlights twinkle off jewellery and pearls. Even as she is draped in her bourgeois, bohemian ornamentation this dame of the night possesses a resilient, composed, determined air.
Personally, I think Brassaï’s Graffiti series are far stronger than Lee Friedlander’s series of the same name.
The juxtaposition of the photographs in Paris at Night is something I will always remember.
The more scrupulously [the photographer] has respected the independence and autonomy of his subject, and the closer he has gone toward it instead of bringing it nearer to himself, the more completely his own personality has become incorporated into his pictures.
Brassaï
Foam is proud to present the first retrospective of Brassaï in the Netherlands. The French photographer of Hungarian descent is considered a key figure of 20th-century photography.
Brassaï (1899-1984) created countless iconic images of 1930s Parisian life. He was famous for capturing the grittier aspects of the city, but also documented high society, including the ballet, opera, and intellectuals – among them his friends and contemporaries like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse. The exhibition at Foam traces his career with over 170 vintage prints, plus a selection of drawings, a sculpture and documentary material.
Brassaï gathers many of the artistic facets of the photographer, from photos to drawings of female nudes. It is organised in twelve thematic sections: Paris by Day, and by Night, Minotaure, Graffiti, Society, Places and Things, Personages, Sleep, Pleasures, Body of a Woman, Portraits – Artists, Writers, Friends and TheStreet. Each is very different from the next – reflecting the diversity of Brassaï’s photographic work.
Digital walk through of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam in September 2019
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at second right in the bottom image, Brassaï’s Paris 1937, and at right Paris c. 1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Foam is proud to announce the first retrospective of Brassaï in the Netherlands. This French photographer of Hungarian descent is considered as one of the key figures of 20th-century photography. Brassaï (1899-1984) created countless iconic images of 1930s Parisian life. He was famous for capturing the grittier aspects of the city, but also documented high society, including the ballet, opera, and intellectuals – among them his friends and contemporaries like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse. The exhibition at Foam traces his career with over 170 vintage prints, plus a selection of drawings, a sculpture and documentary material.
Gyula Halász, Brassaï’s original name, was born in 1899 in Brassó, Transylvania (then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, nowadays Brasov, Romania). He studied at the University of Arts in Berlin before finally settling in Paris in 1924, a city that was to become the main subject of his work. He started as a painter but soon discovered that his strongest and most original talent lay in photography. To keep his real name for his paintings, he signed journalistic work, caricatures and photographs with ‘Brassaï’ (from Brassó). His photos would make this pseudonym more famous than his real name. Brassaï’s work of the 1930s would become a cornerstone of a new tradition as photography was discovered as a medium with aesthetic potential. A generation earlier photographers had merely emulated the established arts. Now photography became an art in itself and the perfect medium to capture modern life.
The nocturnal scenes collected in his book Paris by Night (1933) are complemented by his work that reveals the everyday life of the city by day. The monuments, picturesque spots, scenes from daily life and architectural details are present in his work as a reflection of the irresistible fascination the artist felt for the French capital. In his quest to cover all of the facets of Paris, he also immersed himself in the city’s darker side. For Brassaï the gang members, outcasts, prostitutes and drug addicts all represented the least cosmopolitan aspect of Paris, an aspect that was more alive and more authentic. He compiled a huge collection of images of entertainment venues, ranging from night clubs to popular festivals and featuring the people who frequented them. Brassaï was deeply immersed in a wide circle of friends among the writers and artists of Montparnasse, who also became the subjects for some of his portraits. Most of the portraits taken by Brassaï were of well-known people, putting him into a very comfortable position. He collaborated with the luxury art magazine Minotaure right from its very first issue and enjoyed a prominent role for the publication over the years. After the war, he also travelled regularly on commissioned shoots for the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar.
The exhibition at Foam gathers many of the artistic facets of the photographer, from photos to drawings of female nudes. It is organised in twelve thematic sections: Paris by Day, and by Night, Minotaure, Graffiti, Society, Places and Things, Personages, Sleep, Pleasures, Body of a Woman, Portraits – Artists, Writers, Friends and TheStreet. Each is very different from the next – reflecting the diversity of Brassaï’s photographic work.
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Les Escaliers de Montmartre, Paris 1936 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La rue Quincampoix (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La rue Quincampoix (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Pillar of the Elevated, Metro Glacière (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Near the rue Mouffetard (installation view) c. 1945 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the lower image at centre, Brassaï’s Concierge’s Lodge, Paris, 1933 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Concierge’s Lodge, Paris (installation view) 1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Concierge’s Lodge, Paris (installation view) 1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Concierge’s Lodge, Paris 1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Lovers at the gare Saint Lazare (installation view) c. 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Sunday Painter, avenue du Général Leclerc (installation view) 1946 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Sunday Painter, avenue du Général Leclerc (installation view) 1946 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Hôtel de la Belle Étoile (installation view) 1945 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) A Corpse on the Banks on the Seine (installation view) 1931 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Les Fétes de Paris: La Nuit Féerique de Longhamp 1937 In L’illustration, no. 4, 923 (July 10, 1937) 13. Rue Saint-Georges, Paris (9°) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Regards, no. 155 (December 31, 1936) Back cover Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at at left, Brassaï’s Meat Porters, Les Halles c. 1935 and at second left, Au Cochon Limousin 1935 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Meat Porters, Les Halles (installation view) c. 1935 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Au Cochon Limousin (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Les Halles (installation view) 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Cesspool cleaners (installation view) c. 1931 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Paris de nuit / Paris at night
Brassaï had been making photographs for barely two years when luck and ambition brought him a contract for a book on nocturnal Paris. When Paris de nuit (Paris at Night) was published to acclaim in December 1932, “Brassaï” became a familiar name in the world of photography. The book’s rich photogravures, marginalises pages, and bold design made it an icon of modernity. Many of Brassaï’s best night picture were made after Paris de nuit appeared, however, and many of his greatest images of Parisian nightlife were not published until 1976.
In the self-portrait here we see Brassaï’s first camera, a Voigtländer Bergheil that used 6.5 x 9 cm glass plates one at a time. The long exposures of night photography – often five minutes or more – required a tripod, which Brassaï frequently used for other pictures as well. While much of the adventurous European photography of the 1920s and 1930s celebrated mobility and speed, spontaneity was alien to Brassaï’s sensibility. He favoured images that are sharp, deliberate, and stable.
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing a modern enlargement of Brassaï’s Morris Column, avenue de l’Observatoire 1934 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Morris Column, avenue de l’Observatoire (installation view) 1934 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at right, Brassaï’s Self portrait, On the boulevard Saint-Jacques 1930-1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Self portrait, On the boulevard Saint-Jacques 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print
Voigtländer Bergheil Built in 1932 6.5 x 9cm negative Green
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the bottom image at left, Brassaï’s The Tour Saint-Jacques 1932-1933, and at third right View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino c. 1933 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) The Tour Saint-Jacques (installation view) 1932-1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino c. 1933 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at right, Brassaï’s Avenue de l’Observatoire in the Fog c. 1937 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Avenue de l’Observatoire in the Fog (installation view) c. 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Avenue de l’Observatoire in the Fog c. 1937 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) pp. 9-10 1932 Book
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) pp. 13-14 1932 Book
Digital flick through of Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) book 1932 Video: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) pp. 19-20 (installation view) 1932 Book Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Minotaure, no. 7 (June 1935) Pages 24-25: Photographs by Brassaï, “Nuits parisiennes” (Parisian Nights) Pages 26-29: Photographs by Brassaï Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Portraits – artists, writers and friends
In Brassaï’s era, portraits and nudes were bread-and-butter genres for any professional photographer. As a portraitist Brassaï made a speciality of artists and writers, who often were his friends, and in 1982 he collected many of the best pictures in Les artistes de ma vie (The Artists of My Life), for which he also wrote the lively text. He excelled at two distinct types of portraiture: In one, the artist is framed by his environment – the studio. In the other, the subjects confronts the photographer frankly, and the setting hardly matters. In an undated note, Brassaï summed up his approach to the second type: “To oblige the model to behave as if the photographer isn’t there really is to stage a comic performance. What’s natural is precisely not to dodge the photographer’s presence. The natural thing in that situation is for the model to pose honestly.”
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the top photograph at right, Oskar Kokoschka in his Studio, Paris 1931-1932 (below) and in the bottom photograph at third right, Brassaï’s Kiki de Montparnasse and her Friends, Thérèse Treize and Lily c. 1932 (below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Oskar Kokoschka in his Studio, Paris (installation view) 1931-1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Kiki de Montparnasse and her Friends, Thérèse Treize and Lily (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the bottom photograph at left, Brassaï’s Jean Genet 1948 (below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Jean Genet 1948 Gelatin silver print
Graffiti
The appreciation of graffiti as a powerful if anonymous art form began to blossom in the twentieth century. Like African tribal objects and the art of children, graffiti was admired as more expressive and vital than the refined forms of traditional Western art. Brassaï was among the first to embrace it. He was an inveterate magpie who collected all manner of neglected artefacts and natural specimens throughout his life. Virtually as soon as he began making photographs, he used the medium to collect the graffiti that appeared abundantly on the walls of Paris – predominantly images that had been scratched or gouged rather than drawn or painted and, as he pointed out, in which irregularities of the wall itself played a role. He compiled hundreds of these pictures, a small sample of which is presented here.
Minotaure
Between arriving in Paris in early 1924 and taking up photography six years later, Brassaï developed a wide circle of friends among the international community of artists and writers in Montparnasse. Among them were Les deux aveugles (The Two Blind Men), as the art critics Maurice Raynal and E. Tériade called themselves. In December 1932 – the same month Brassaï’s book Paris de unit (Paris at Night) appeared – Tériade invited Brassaï to photograph Pablo Picasso and his studios in and near Paris for the first issue of Minotaure, a lavish art magazine launched in June 1933 by the Swiss published Albert Skira. Thus began one of the key friendships of Brassaï’s life. Over the next few years he played prominent role in Minotaure, notable as a collaborator of Salvador Dalí, as an illustrator of texts by André Breton, and, on a few occasions, as an artist in his own right.
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing to the right, photographs from Brassaï’s series Graffiti Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Minotaure, nos. 3-4 (December 1933) Pages 6-7: Photographs and text by Brassaï, “Du mur des cavernes au mur d’usine” (From the Wall of the Caves to the Wall of the Factory). Photos: Marcus Bunyan
This was the first appearance in print of Brassaï’s series Graffiti.
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) The Sun King (installation view) 1945-1950 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Untitled (installation view) 1950 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Untitled (installation view) 1945-1955 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Untitled (installation view) 1945-1955 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932; and in the centre, Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933 and Market Porter, Les Halles 1939 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Personages
In the introduction to a book of his photographs that was published in 1949, Brassaï linked the modern arts of photography and film to the work of artists of the past who had depicted everyday life, among them Rembrandt van Rijn, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He praised them for the “desire to get beyond the anecdotal and to promote [their] subjects to the dignity of types.” Brassaï himself had a talent for rendering at the same time a generic social role and a particular individual who inhabited it, as if his attentiveness to the person would elevate him or her into a distinctive personage.
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left, Festival in Seville 1951; and at right, La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left, Festival in Seville 1951; at centre, La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932; and at right, Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing a photograph from the section Personages, La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932; and at right, Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933; and at right, Market Porter, Les Halles 1939 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Market Porter, Les Halles (installation view) 1939 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Bal des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe c. 1932 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Chez Suzy 1931-1932 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) At the Hôtel des Terrasses (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from Brassaï’s series Sleep Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sleep
In 1945 Brassaï wrote a brief essay to accompany some of his pictures of sleepers. It reads in part “All things that stand against their inclination – a tree, a column, a tower, a rock – are regarded with a malign eye by gravity … She especially has a grudge against man, that foolhardy being who, in open collusion with the sunlight, alone among his brothers under the spell of gravitation, dares to stand up. For sunlight and gravity fight over living beings, the one turning over what the other has put up. Alas! Sunlight lives a long way away and can never be found when she is needed the most. Thus gravity is suited to have the last word.”
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from Brassaï’s series Sleep with at left, Paris c. 1934; and at centre, Sleeping c. 1935 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) c. 1934 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Sleeping (installation view) c. 1935 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 20th February – 17th May 2020? Coronavirus
Participating artists: Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, Kenneth Anger, Knut Åsdam, Richard Avedon, Aneta Bartos, Richard Billingham, Cassils, Sam Contis, John Coplans, Jeremy Deller, Rienke Dijkstra, George Dureau, Thomas Dworzak, Hans Eijkelboom, Fouad Elkoury, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Hal Fischer, Samuel Fosso, Anna Fox, Masahisa Fukase, Sunil Gupta, Peter Hujar, Liz Johnson Artur, Isaac Julien, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Karen Knorr, Deana Lawson, Hilary Lloyd, Robert Mapplethrope, Peter Marlow, Ana Mendieta, Anenette Messager, Duane Michals, Tracey Moffat, Andrew Moisey, Richard Mosse, Adi Nes, Catherine Opie, Elle Pérez, Herb Ritts, Kalen Na’il Roach, Collier Schorr, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Clarie Strand, Michael Subotzky, Larry Sultan, Hank Willis Thomas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Piotr Uklański, Andy Warhol, Karlheinz Weinberger, Marianne Wex, David Wojnarowicz, Akram Zaatari.
“As a writer Berger recognised that experience – whether it be personal, historical or aesthetic – will never conform to theories and systems. To read him today is to accept his failures and detours as a unique willingness to take risks.”
John MacDonald. “John Berger,” in the Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June, 2020
D-Construction: deliberate masculinities in a discontinuous world
Reviewers of this exhibition (see quotations below) have noted the preponderance of images of “traditional masculinity” – defined as “idealised, dominant (and) heterosexual” – and the paucity of images that show men as working, intelligent, sensitive human beings, “that men ever earned a living, cooked a meal or read a book… scarcely anything about the heart or intellect. Men are represented here almost entirely in terms of their bodies, sexuality or supposed type.” I need make no further comment. What I will say is that I believe the title of the exhibition to be a misnomer: a person cannot be “liberated” through photography, for photography is only a tool of a personal liberation. Liberation comes through an internal struggle of acceptance (thence liberation), one that is foremost FELT (for example, the double life one leads before you acknowledge that you are gay; or experiencing discrimination aimed at others and by proxy, yourself) and SEEN (the bashing of a mother as seen by a small child). Photographs picture the outcomes of this struggle for liberation, are a tool of that process not, I would argue, liberation itself.
What I can say is that I believe in masculinities, plural. Fluid, shifting, challenging, loving, working, intimate, spiritual masculinities that challenge normalcy and hegemonic masculinity, which is defined as “a practice that legitimises men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of the common male population and women, and other marginalised ways of being a man.”
What I don’t believe in is masculinities, plural, that seek to fit into this [dis]continuous world (for we are born and then die) through the stability of their outward appearance, conforming to theories and systems – personal, historical or aesthetic – without reference to subversion, small intimacies, the toil of work, love and the passion of sexual bodies. In other words, masculinities that are not afraid to push the boundaries of being and becoming. To take risks, to experience, to feel.
While I was overjoyed at the “YES” vote on gay marriage that took place in December 2017 in Australia because I felt it was a victory for love, and equality… another part of me rejected as anathema the concept of a gay person buying into a historically patriarchal, heterosexual and monogamous institution such as marriage – too honour and obey. This is an untenable concept for a person who wants to be liberated. Coming out as I did in 1975, only 6 short years after the Stonewall Riots, the last thing I EVER wanted to be, was to be the same as a “straight” person. I was different. I fought for my difference and still believe in it.
Of course, in 2020 it’s another world. Today we all mix in together. But there is still something about “masculinities”, which in some varieties, have a sense of privilege and entitlement. Of power and control over others; of violence towards women, trans, other men and anyone who threatens their little ego, who leaves them, or jilts them. Their jealousy, their ego, bruised – they are so insecure, so insular, that they can only see their own world, their own minuscule problems (but massive in their eyes), and enforce their will on others.
My advice to “masculinities’, in fact any human being, is to go out, get yourself informed, experience, accept, and be the person that nobody thinks you can be. Be a human being. Examine your inner self, look at your dark side, your other side, your empathetic side, and try and understand the journey that you are on. Then, and only then, you might begin on that great path of personal enlightenment, that golden path on which there is no turning back.
Below I discuss some of these ideas with my good friend Nicholas Henderson, curator and archivist at the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Barbican Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is a major group exhibition that explores how masculinity is experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed as expressed and documented through photography and film from the 1960s to the present day.
Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day. Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the Barbican brings together the work of over 50 international artists, photographers and filmmakers including Laurie Anderson, Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Isaac Julien and Catherine Opie.
In the wake of #MeToo the image of masculinity has come into sharper focus, with ideas of toxic and fragile masculinity permeating today’s society. This exhibition charts the often complex and sometimes contradictory representations of masculinities, and how they have developed and evolved over time. Touching on themes including power, patriarchy, queer identity, female perceptions of men, hypermasculine stereotypes, tenderness and the family, the exhibition shows how central photography and film have been to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture.
In fact, while there are a few gender-fluid figures here, they’re vastly outnumbered by manifestations of “traditional masculinity” – defined as “idealised, dominant (and) heterosexual”. Lebanese militiamen (in Fouad Elkoury’s perky full-length portraits from 1980), US marines (in Wolfgang Tillmans’ epic montage Soldiers – The Nineties), Taliban fighters, SS generals, Israel Defence Force grunts, footballers, cowboys and bullfighters fairly spring out of the walls from every direction. And what’s evident from the outset isn’t so much their diversity, as a unifying demeanour: a threatening intentness that comes wherever men are asked to perform their masculinity, but also a childlike vulnerability. …
Masculinity, the viewer is made to feel, criminalises men (Mikhael Subotzky’s images of South African gangsters on morgue slabs); isolates them (Larry Sultan’s poignant image of his elderly father practising his golf swing in his sitting room); renders them stupid (Richard Billingham’s excruciating, but now classic photo essay on his alcoholic father, ‘Ray’s a Laugh’). To be a man, it seems, is to be condemned to endlessly act out archetypal “masculine” behaviour, whether you’re an elderly drunk in a Birmingham high-rise or the elite American students taking part in the shouting competition staged by Irish photographer Richard Mosse.
Mark Hudson. “Does the Barbican’s Masculinities exhibition have important things to say about men?” on the Independent website Friday 21 February 2020 [Online] Cited 03/03/2020
There is not much here about work – unless you count the wall of Hollywood actors playing Nazis. You would never think, from this show, that men ever earned a living, cooked a meal or read a book (though there is a sententious vitrine of ‘Men Only’ magazines). Beyond the exceptions given, there is scarcely anything about the heart or intellect. Men are represented here almost entirely in terms of their bodies, sexuality or supposed type.
Laura Cumming. “Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography review – men as types,” on the Guardian website Sun 23 Feb 2020 [Online] Cited 03/03/2020
“The body can be taken as a reflection of the self because it can and should be treated as something to be worked upon … in order to produce it as a commodity. Overweight, slovenliness and even unfashionability, for example, are now moral disorders,” notes Don Slater
“The state of the body is seen as a reflection of the state of its owner, who is responsible for it and could refashion it. The body can be taken as a reflection of the self because it can and should be treated as something to be worked upon, and generally worked upon using commodities, for example intensively regulated, self-disciplined, scrutinized through diets, fitness regimes, fashion, self-help books and advice, in order to produce it as a commodity. Overweight, slovenliness, and even unfashionability, for example, are now moral disorders; even acute illnesses such as cancer reflect the inadequacy of the self and indeed of its consumption. One gets ill because one has consumed the wrong (unnatural) things and failed to consume the correct (‘natural’) ones: self, body, goods and environment constitute a system of moral choice.”
Slater, Don. Consumer Culture and Modernity. London: Polity Press, 1997, p. 92.
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing John Coplans’ work Self-portrait, Frieze No 2, Four Panels 1994 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Plan of the Masculinities: Liberation through Photography exhibition spaces
Introduction
Masculinities: Liberation through Photography explores the diverse ways masculinity has been experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed in photography and film from the 1960s to the present day.
Simone de Beauvoir’s famous declaration that ‘one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one’ provides a helpful springboard for considering what it means to be a male in today’s world, as well as the place of photography and film in shaping masculinity. What we have thought of as ‘masculine’ has changed considerably throughout history and within different cultures. The traditional social dominance of the male has determined a gender hierarchy which continues to underpin societies around the world.
In Europe and North America, the characteristics and power dynamics of the dominant masculine figure – historically defined by physical size and strength, assertiveness and aggression – though still pervasive today, began to be challenged and transformed in the 1960s. Amid a climate of sexual revolution, struggle for civil rights and raised class consciousness, the growth of the gay rights movement, the period’s counterculture and opposition to the Vietnam War, large sections of society argued for a loosening of the straitjacket of narrow gender definitions.
Set against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, when manhood is under increasing scrutiny and terms such as ‘toxic’ and ‘fragile’ masculinity fill endless column inches, an investigation of this expansive subject is particularly timely, especially given current global politics characterised by male world leaders shaping their image as ‘strong’ men.
Touching on queer identity, race, power and patriarchy, men as seen by women, stereotypes of dominant masculinity as well as the family, the exhibition presents masculinity in all its myriad forms, rife with contradictions and complexities. Embracing the idea of multiple ‘masculinities’ and rejecting the notion of a singular ‘ideal man’, the exhibition argues for an understanding of masculinity liberated from societal expectations and gender norms.
Room 1-4
Disrupting the Archetype
Over the last six decades, artists have consistently sought to destabilise the narrow definitions of gender that determine our social structures in order to encourage new ways of thinking about identity, gender and sexuality. ‘Disrupting the Archetype’ explores the representation of conventional and at times clichéd masculine subjects such as soldiers, cowboys, athletes, bullfighters, body builders and wrestlers. By reconfiguring the representation of traditional masculinity – loosely defined as an idealised, dominant heterosexual masculinity – the artists presented here challenge our ideas of these hypermasculine stereotypes.
Across different cultures and spaces, the military has been central to the construction of masculine identities – which has been explored through the work of Wolfgang Tillmans (below) and Adi Nes (below) among others, while Collier Schorr (below) and Sam Contis’s powerful works (below) address the dominant and enduring representation of the lone cowboy. Athleticism, often perceived as a proxy for strength which is associated with masculinity, is called into question by Catherine Opie’s and Rineke Dijkstra’s tender portraits (below). The male body, a cornerstone for artists such as John Coplans (above), Robert Mapplethorpe and Cassils (below), is meanwhile exposed as a fleshy canvas, constantly in flux.
Historically, the non-western male body has undergone a complex process of subjectification through the Western gaze – invariably presented as either warlike or sexually charged. Viewed against this context, the work of Fouad Elkoury and Akram Zaatari, as well as the found photographs of Taliban fighters that Thomas Dworzak discovered in Afghanistan (below), can be read as deconstructing the Orientalist gaze.
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing a detail from Wolfgang Tillmans’ epic montage Soldiers – The Nineties Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing a detail from trans masculine artist Cassils’ series Time Lapse, 2011 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing at left a detail from trans masculine artist Cassils’ series Time Lapse, 2011, and at right the work of Rineke Dijkstra Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Adi Nes’ series Soldiers, 1999 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Adi Nes (Israeli, b. 1966) Untitled 2000 From the series Soldiers Courtesy Adi Nes & Praz-Delavallade Paris, Los Angeles
Adi Nes (Israeli, b. 1966) Untitled 1999 From the series Soldiers Courtesy Adi Nes & Praz-Delavallade Paris, Los Angeles
Adi Nes was born in Kiryat Gat. His parents are Jewish immigrants from Iran. He is openly gay. Nes is notable for series “Soldiers”, in which he mixes masculinity and homoerotic sexuality, depicting Israeli soldiers in a fragile way.
Nes creates cinematic images that reference war, sexuality, life, and death with the kind of stylised polish you might expect from a photographer whose images have appeared in the pages of Vogue Hommes. His partially autobiographical work is deliberate and staged in an attempt to raise questions about sexuality, masculinity and identity in Israeli culture. “The beginning point of my art is who I am,” he says. “Since I’m a man and I’m an Israeli, I deal with issues of identity with ‘Israeli-ness’ and masculinity, but my photographs are multi-layered.”
“The challenge of the photographer is to catch the viewer for more than one second in front of the picture,” says Nes, explaining his provocative images. “If you catch the viewer in front of the picture, it can touch the viewer.”
Anonymous text “Adi Nes on masculinity, sexuality and war,” from the Phaidon website 2012 [Online] Cited 07/03/2020
Thomas Dworzak (Germany, b. 1972) Taliban portraits 2002 Kandahar, Afghanistan
While covering the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak came across a handful of photo studios in Kandahar which despite the Taliban’s ban on photography had been authorised to remain open, for the sole purpose of taking identity photos. Complicating the conventional image of the hypermasculine soldier, the colour portraits Dworzak found in the back rooms of these studios depict Taliban fighters variously posing in front of scenic backdrops, holding hands, using guns or flowers as props or enveloped in a halo of vibrant colours, their eyes heavily made up with black kohl. These stylised photographs directly contradict the public image of the soldier in this overwhelmingly male-dominated patriarchal society.
Masculinities: Liberation through Photography catalogue cover
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Catherine Opie’s series High School Football, 2007-2009 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
‘Male Order’ invites the viewer to reflect on the construction of male power, gender and class. The artists gathered here have all variously attempted to expose and subvert how certain types of masculine behaviour have created inequalities both between and within gender identities. Two ambitious, multi-part works, Richard Avedon’s The Family, 1976, and Karen Knorr’s Gentlemen, 1981-1983, focus on typically besuited white men who occupy the corridors of power, while foregrounding the historic exclusion not only of women but also of other marginalised masculinities.
Male-only organisations, such as the military, private members’ clubs and college fraternities, have often served as an arena for the performance of ‘toxic’ masculinity, as chronicled in Andrew Moisey’s The American Fraternity: An Illustrated Ritual Manual, 2018. This startling book charts the misdemeanours of fraternity members alongside an indexical image bank of US Presidents, alongside leaders of government and industry who have belonged at one time or another to these fraternities. Richard Mosse’s film, Fraternity, 2007, takes a different tack by painting a portrait of male rage that is both playful and alarming.
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Richard Avedon’s series The Family (1976) Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Early in 1976, with both the post-Watergate political atmosphere and the approaching bicentennial celebration in mind, Rolling Stone asked Richard Avedon to cover the presidential primaries and the campaign trail. Avedon counter-proposed a grander idea – he had always wanted to photograph the men and women he believed to have constituted political, media and corporate elite of the United States.
For the next several months, Avedon traversed the country from migrant grape fields of California to NFL headquarters in Park Avenue and returned with an amazing portfolio of soldiers, spooks, potentates, and ambassadors that was too late for the bicentennial but published in Rolling Stone’s Oct. 21, 1976, just in time for the November elections.
Sixty-nine black-and-white portraits … were in Avedon’s signature style – formal, intimate, bold, and minimalistic. Appearing in them are President Ford and his three immediate successors – Carter, Reagan, and Bush. Other familiars of the American polity such as Kennedys and Rockefellers are here, and as are giants who held up the nation’s Fourth Pillar during that challenging decade: A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times who decided to publish the Pentagon Papers, and Katharine Graham who led Woodward and Bernstein at Washington Post.
Alex Selwyn-Holmes. “The Family, 1976; Richard Avedon” on the Iconphotos website May 18, 2012 [Online] Cited 03/03/2020
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Karen Knorr’s series Gentlemen, 1981-1983 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Piotr Uklanski’s Untitled (The Nazis), 1998, a collage of actors dressed as Nazis, courtesy of Massimo De Carlo Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 7-8
Too Close to Home: Family and Fatherhood
Since its invention photography has been a powerful vehicle for the construction and documentation of family narratives. In contrast to the conventions of the traditional family portrait, the artists gathered here deliberately set out to record the ‘messiness’ of life, reflecting on misogyny, violence, sexuality, mortality, intimacy and unfolding family dramas, presenting a more complex and not always comfortable vision of fatherhood and masculinity.
Loss and the ageing male figure are central to the work of both Masahisa Fukase and Larry Sultan (both below). Their respective projects marked a new departure in the way men photographed each other, serving as a commentary on how old age engenders a loss of masculinity. An examination of everyday life, Richard Billingham’s tender yet bleak portraits of his father, as chronicled in Ray’s a Laugh, cast a brutally honest eye on his alcoholic father Ray against a backdrop of social decline (below).
Anna Fox’s disturbing autobiographical work undermines expectations of the traditional family album while revealing the mechanics of paternalistic power. Meanwhile, the father-daughter relationship is brought into sharp focus in Aneta Bartos’s sexually charged series Family Portrait which unsettles traditional family boundaries (below).
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing the photographs of Larry Sultan from the series Pictures from Home Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Richard Billingham’s photographs from the series Ray’s a Laugh Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing the photographs of Aneta Bartos’s sexually charged series Family Portrait Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Aneta Bartos (Born Poland, lives New York) Mirror 2015 From the series Family Portrait Archival inkjet print 30 x 30.65 inches
Aneta Bartos (Born Poland, lives New York) Apple 2015 From the series Family Portrait Archival inkjet print 30 x 30.65 inches
Since 2013 New York based artist Aneta Bartos has been traveling back to her hometown Tomaszów Mazowiecki, where she was raised by her father as a single parent from the age of eight until fourteen. Then 68 years old, and having spent a lifetime as a competitive body builder, Bartos’ father asked her to take a few shots documenting his physique before it degenerated and inevitably ran its course. The original request of her father inspired Bartos to transform his idea into a long-term project called Dad. A few summers later Dad developed into a new series of portraits, titled Family Portrait, exploring the complex dynamics between father and daughter.
Text from the Antwerp Art website [Online] Cited 01/03/2020
“The pastoral setting is a romanticised portal to Bartos’s past. Her father’s poses are often heroic; at times the pictures are playful and flirty, almost seductive. Seen together, they display the sadness of a man who knows he is ageing, with the subtext of his waning sexuality. They are bittersweet, images of time passing and memories being preserved.”
Elisabeth Biondi quoted on the Postmasters website 2017 [Online] Cited 01/03/2020
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Peter Hujar’s series Orgasmic Man 1969 (see below) Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 9-12
Queer Masculinity
In defiance of the prejudice and legal constraints against homosexuality in Europe, the United States and beyond over the last century, the works presented in ‘Queering Masculinity’ highlight how artists from the 1960s onwards have forged a new politically charged queer aesthetic.
In the 1970s, artists such as Peter Hujar (below), David Wojnarowicz, Sunil Gupta (below) and Hal Fischer (below) photographed gay lifestyles in New York and San Francisco in a bid to claim public visibility and therefore legitimacy at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence. Reflecting on their own queer experience and creating sensual bodies of work, artists such as Rotimi Fani-Kayode (below) and Isaac Julien (below) portrayed black gay desire while Catherine Opie’s seminal work Being and Having, 1991 (below), documented members of the dyke, butch and BDSM communities in San Francisco playing with the physical attributes associated with hypermasculinity in order to overturn traditional binary understandings of gender.
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs by Karlheinz Weinberger Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Sunil Gupta’s series Christopher Street 1976 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Gupta went on to study under Lisette Model at the New School and take his place among the most accomplished photographers, editors, and curators of his generation, exploring the way identities flower under various sexual, geographical, and historical conditions. But Christopher Street is where it all began. His subjects are engaged in an unprecedented moment in which it seemed possible to build a world of their own. He shows inner lives, barely concealed within the downturned face of a mustachioed man with his hands in his pockets, and outer ones as well, as other men cruise the lens right back, or laugh with each other, unbothered by the stranger with the camera. They were often just engaged in the everyday and extraordinary act of simply existing as gay. In each photograph, Gupta somehow projects a protective and versatile desire: to remember and be remembered at once.
Extract from Jesse Dorris. “Christopher Street Revisited,” on the Aperture website May 30th, 2019 [Online] Cited 29/02/2020
The 1976 Christopher Street series marks the first set of photographs Gupta made as a practicing artist, using the camera as a tool for open expression. His decision to use black and white film was partly aesthetic, yet also practical, as he was developing the prints in his bathroom. Although he uses a documentarian style, Gupta was by no means an impartial observer behind the camera, he was a participant, enthralled by his subjects.
The series … captures a specific moment in history – a cross section of a thriving community in one of New York’s most dynamic areas – Manhattan’s Christopher Street. Dressed in the latest fashions, moving confidently and relaxing on street corners, their visible presence is a signifier of a specific period of public consciousness. Un-staged and spontaneous, most of the artist’s subjects are unaware of the camera and are simply going about their day. Now, with hindsight, Gupta is struck by the routineness of the images, stating:
‘There is a poignancy they never had at the time… A few years later, the AIDS crisis took hold. The public nature of gay life was forced back into the shadows. Thousands of men died. New York shut down its bathhouses, gay parties became private, and this whole world became hidden again.’
Fusing the public with the personal, the Christopher Street series reflects the openness of the gay liberation movement, as well as Gupta’s own “coming out” as an artist. More than a nostalgic time capsule, the photographs reveal a community that shaped Gupta as a person and cemented his lifelong dedication to portraying people who have been denied a space to be themselves.
Extract from Anonymous. “Sunil Gupta: Christopher Street,” on the Monovisions website 24 May 2019 [Online] Cited 29/02/2020
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Handkerchiefs 1977 From the series Gay Semiotics Gelatin silver print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Jock 1977 From the series Gay Semiotics Gelatin silver print
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing at left, photographs from Isaac Julien’s series After Mazatlàn, 1999/2000 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Catherine Opie’s series Being and Having 1991 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
The exhibition brings together over 300 works by over 50 pioneering international artists, photographers and filmmakers such as Richard Avedon, Peter Hujar, Isaac Julien, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager and Catherine Opie to show how photography and film have been central to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture. The show also highlights lesser-known and younger artists – some of whom have never exhibited in the UK – including Cassils, Sam Contis, George Dureau, Elle Pérez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hank Willis Thomas, Karlheinz Weinberger and Marianne Wex amongst many others. Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is part of the Barbican’s 2020 season, Inside Out, which explores the relationship between our inner lives and creativity.
Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, said: ‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography continues our commitment to presenting leading twentieth century figures in the field of photography while also supporting younger contemporary artists working in the medium today. In the wake of the #MeToo movement and the resurgence of feminist and men’s rights activism, traditional notions of masculinity has become a subject of fierce debate. This exhibition could not be more relevant and will certainly spark conversations surrounding our understanding of masculinity.’
With ideas around masculinity undergoing a global crisis and terms such as ‘toxic’ and ‘fragile’ masculinity filling endless column inches, the exhibition surveys the representation of masculinity in all its myriad forms, rife with contradiction and complexity. Presented across six sections by over 50 international artists to explore the expansive nature of the subject, the exhibition touches on themes of queer identity, the black body, power and patriarchy, female perceptions of men, heteronormative hypermasculine stereotypes, fatherhood and family. The works in the show present masculinity as an unfixed performative identity shaped by cultural and social forces.
Seeking to disrupt and destabilise the myths surrounding modern masculinity, highlights include the work of artists who have consistently challenged stereotypical representations of hegemonic masculinity, including Collier Schorr, Adi Nes, Akram Zaatari and Sam Contis, whose series Deep Springs, 2018 draws on the mythology of the American West and the rugged cowboy. Contis spent four years immersed in an all-male liberal arts college north of Death Valley meditating on the intimacy and violence that coexists in male-only spaces. Complicating the conventional image of the fighter, Thomas Dworzak‘s acclaimed series Taliban consists of portraits found in photographic studios in Kandahar following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, these vibrant portraits depict Taliban fighters posing hand in hand in front of painted backdrops, using guns and flowers as props with kohl carefully applied to their eyes. Trans masculine artist Cassils‘ series Time Lapse, 2011, documents the radical transformation of their body through the use of steroids and a rigorous training programme reflecting on ideas of masculinity without men. Elsewhere, artists Jeremy Deller, Robert Mapplethorpe and Rineke Dijkstra dismantle preconceptions of subjects such as the wrestler, the bodybuilder and the athlete and offer an alternative view of these hyper-masculinised stereotypes.
The exhibition examines patriarchy and the unequal power relations between gender, class and race. Karen Knorr‘s series Gentlemen, 1981-83, comprised of 26 black and white photographs taken inside men-only private members’ clubs in central London and accompanied by texts drawn from snatched conversations, parliamentary records and contemporary news reports, invites viewers to reflect on notions of class, race and the exclusion of women from spaces of power during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Toxic masculinity is further explored in Andrew Moisey‘s 2018 photobook The American Fraternity: An Illustrated Ritual Manual which weaves together archival photographs of former US Presidents and Supreme Court Justices who all belonged to the fraternity system, alongside images depicting the initiation ceremonies and parties that characterise these male-only organisations.
With the rise of the Gay Liberation Movement through the 1960s followed by the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, the exhibition showcases artists such as Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowiz, who increasingly began to disrupt traditional representations of gender and sexuality. Hal Fischer‘s critical photo-text series Gay Semiotics, 1977, classified styles and types of gay men in San Francisco and Sunil Gupta’s street photographs captured the performance of gay public life as played out on New York’s Christopher Street, the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. Other artists exploring the performative aspects of queer identity include Catherine Opie‘s seminal series Being and Having, 1991, showing her close friends in the West Coast’s LGBTQ+ community sporting false moustaches, tattoos and other stereotypical masculine accessories. Elle Pérez‘s luminous and tender photographs explore the representation of gender non-conformity and vulnerability, whilst Paul Mpagi Sepuya‘s fragmented portraits explore the studio as a site of homoerotic desire.
During the 1970s women artists from the second wave feminist movement objectified male sexuality in a bid to subvert and expose the invasive and uncomfortable nature of the male gaze. In the exhibition, Laurie Anderson‘s seminal work Fully Automated Nikon (Object/Objection/Objectivity), 1973, documents the men who cat-called her as she walked through New York’s Lower East Side while Annette Messager‘s series The Approaches, 1972, covertly captures men’s trousered crotches with a long-lens camera. German artist Marianne Wex‘s encyclopaedic project Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, 1977, presents a detailed analysis of male and female body language and Australian indigenous artist Tracey Moffatt‘s awkwardly humorous film Heaven, 1997, portrays male surfers changing in and out of their wet suits.
Further highlights include New York based artist Hank Willis Thomas, whose photographic practice examines the complexities of the black male experience; celebrated Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase‘s The Family, 1971-1989, chronicles the life and death of his family with a particular emphasis on his father; and Kenneth Anger‘s technicolour experimental underground film Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1965, explores the fetishist role of hot rod cars amongst young American men.
Press release from the Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Hank Willis Thomas’ series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 2005-2008 (below) Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 13-14
Reclaiming the Black Body
Giving visual form to the complexity of the black male experience, this section foregrounds artists who over the last five decades have consciously subverted expectations of race, gender and the white gaze by reclaiming the power to fashion their own identities.
From Samuel Fosso’s playfully staged self-portraits, taken in his studio, in which he performs to the camera sporting flares and platforms boots or flirtatiously revealing his youthful male physique (below) to Kiluanji Kia Henda’s fictional scenarios in which he adopts the troubled personas of African men of power, the works presented here reflect on how black masculinity challenges the status quo (below).
The representation of black masculinity in the US is born out of a violent history of slavery and prejudice. Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 by Hank Willis Thomas (below) draws attention to the ways in which corporate America has commodified the African American male experience while simultaneously perpetuating and reinforcing cultural stereotypes. Similarly, Deana Lawson’s powerful work Sons of Cush, 2016, highlights how the black male figure is often ‘idealised (in their physical beauty) and pathologised by the culture (as symbols of violence or fear)’.
Hank Willis Thomas (American, b. 1976) The Johnson Family 1981/2006 From the series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 2005-08
Concerned with the literal and figural objectifications of the African American male body, in his complex series Unbranded Hank Willis Thomas redeploys magazine adverts featuring African Americans made between 1968 – a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights – and 2008, which witnessed the accession of Barack Obama to the US presidency. By digitally stripping the ads of all text, branding and logos, Thomas draws attention to the ways in which corporate America has commodified the African American experience while simultaneously perpetuating and reinforcing cultural stereotypes.
Hank Willis Thomas (American, b. 1976) It’s the Real Thing! 1978/2008 From the series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 2005-2008
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing a photograph from Kiluanji Kia Henda’s series The Last Journey of the Dictator Mussunda Nzombo Before the Great Extinction Act I Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing part of Marianne Wex’s encyclopaedic project Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, 1977 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 15-16
Women on Men: Reversing the Male Gaze
As the second-wave feminist movement gained momentum through the 1960s and ’70s, female activists sought to expose and critique entrenched ideas about masculinity and to articulate alternative perspectives on gender and representation. Against this background, or motivated by its legacy, the artists gathered here have made men their subject with the radical intention of subverting their power, calling into question the notion that men are active and women passive.
In the early 1970s pioneers of feminist art such as Laurie Anderson (below) and Annette Messager consciously objectified the male body in a bid to expose the uncomfortable nature of the dominant male gaze. In contrast, filmmakers such as Tracey Moffatt (below) and Hilary Lloyd (above) turn the tables on male representations of desire to foreground the power of the female gaze.
In his humorous series The Ideal Man, 1978 (below), Hans Eijkelboom invited ten women to fashion him into their image of the ‘ideal’ man. Through this act Eijkelboom reverses the male to female power dynamic and inverts the traditional gender hierarchy.
Laurie Anderson (American, b. 1947) Man with a Cigarette 1973 From the series Fully Automated Nikon (Object/Objection/Objectivity)
Laurie Anderson (American, b. 1947) Two men in a car 1973 From the series Fully Automated Nikon (Object/Objection/Objectivity)
Anderson photographed men who called to her or whistled her on the street. In her artist statement she writes about one experience,
“As I walked along Houston Street with my fully automated Nikon. I felt armed, ready. I passed a man who muttered ‘Wanna fuck?’ This was standard technique: the female passes and the male strikes at the last possible moment forcing the woman to backtrack if she should dare to object. I wheeled around, furious. ‘Did you say that?’ He looked around surprised, then defiant ‘Yeah, so what the fuck if I did?’ I raised my Nikon, took aim began to focus. His eyes darted back and forth, an undercover cop? CLICK.
As it turned out, most of the men I shot that day had the opposite reaction. When i confronted them, the acted innocent, then offended, like some nasty invisible ventriloquist had ticked them into saying dirty words against their will. By the time I took their pictures they were posing, like taking their picture was the least I could do.”
“I decided to shoot pictures of men who made comments to me on the street. I had always hated this invasion of my privacy and now I had the means of my revenge. As I walked along Houston Street with my fully automated Nikon, I felt armed, ready. I passed a man who muttered ‘Wanna fuck?’ This was standard technique: the female passes and the male strikes at the last possible moment forcing the woman to backtrack if she should dare to object. I wheeled around, furious. ‘Did you say that?’ He looked around surprised, then defiant. ‘Yeah, so what the fuck if I did?’ I raised my Nikon, took aim, began to focus. His eyes darted back and forth, an undercover cop? CLICK.”
Anderson takes the power from her male pursuers, allowing them nothing more than the momentary fear that their depravity has just been captured in a picture.
“A playful video that glories in the female gaze and objectification of men. It zeros in on the Australian national sport, surfing, and in particular on several dozen good-looking muscular men changing into or out of their swimming trunks. This ritual is usually conducted in parking lots or on sidewalks, always near cars and sometimes inside them; it usually but not always involves a beach towel wound carefully around the torso. Ms Moffatt begins by shooting her subject unseen from inside a house and gradually moves closer and closer, engaging some in conversations that are never heard. The soundtrack alternates between the ocean surf and the sounds of drumming and chanting, male rituals of another, more authentic Australian culture. By the tape’s end, the artist’s voyeurism has shifted to participation; the camera shows her free hand, the one not holding the camera, darting into view, trying to undo the towel of the last surfer.”
New York Times
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing part of Hans Eijkelboom’s series The Ideal Man, 1978
Glossary of Terms by CN Lester
Homosociality: Typically non-romantic and/or non-sexual same-sex relationships and social groupings – may sometimes include elements of homoeroticism, as they are frequently interdependent phenomena.
Normativity: The process by which some groups of people, forms of expression and types of behaviour are classified according to a perceived standard of what is ‘normal’, ‘natural’, desirable and permissible in society. Inevitably, this process designates people, expressions and behaviours that do not fit these norms as abnormal, unnatural, undesirable and impermissible.
Hegemonic Masculinity: ‘Hegemonic’ means ‘ruling’ or ‘commanding’ – hegemonic masculinity, therefore, indicates male dominance and the forms of masculinity occupying and perpetuating this dominant position. The term was coined in the 1980s by the scholar R. W. Connell, drawing on the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony.
Hierarchy: Across many cultures throughout history, and continuing into the present moment throughout large parts of the world, gender functions as a hierarchy: some gender categories and gender expressions are granted higher value and more power than others. Men are often higher up the gender hierarchy than women, but the gender hierarchy is affected by racism, disablism, ageism, transphobia and other factors; in the West, men in their thirties are likely to be considered higher up the gender hierarchy than men in their eighties, for example.
Gender roles: Specific cultural roles defined by the weight of gendered ideas, restrictions and traditions. Men and women are often expected, sometimes forced, to occupy oppositional gender roles: aggressor versus victim, protector versus nurturer and so on. Many gender roles are specific to intersections of race, class, sexuality, religion and disabled status – examples of these types of gender roles can be seen in the stereotypes of the Jezebel or the Dragon Lady.
Patriarchy: Literally ‘the rule of the father’, a patriarchy is a society or structure centred around male dominance and in which women (and those of other genders) are not treated as or considered equal.
Queer: A slur, a term of reclamation and a specific and radical site of community and activism in solidarity with many kinds of difference, and specifically opposed to heteronormativity and cisnormativity. Queer studies and queer theory are important emerging fields of study.
Gender identity: Identity refers to what, who, and how someone or something is, both in the way this is understood as selfhood by an individual, and also the self as it is shaped and positioned by the world. Gender identity can be a surprisingly difficult term to pin down and is perhaps best understood as the stated truth of a person’s gender (or lack of gender), which is in itself the sum of many different factors.
Fetishisation: To turn the subject into a fetish, sexually or otherwise. Fetishisation in terms of gender and desire frequently occurs in conjunction with objectification and power. Men and women of colour are frequently fetishised by white people, in society and in artistic practice, through different stereotypes and limitations. Trans and disabled people are also subject to fetishisation, particularly in bodily terms. Kobena Mercer’s critical essay on Robert Mapplethorpe, ‘Reading Radical Fetishism’,1 and David Henry Hwang’s play and afterword to M. Butterfly (1988) both explore the notion of fetishisation.
1/ Kobena Mercer, ‘Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe’, in Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds, Fetishism as Cultural Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 307-29.
Critical race theory: A branch of scholarship emerging from the application of critical theory to the study of law in the 1980s, critical race theory (CRT) is now taken as an approach and theoretical foundation across both academic and popular discourse. CRT names, examines and challenges the social constructions and functions of race and racism. Rejecting the idea of race as a ‘natural’ category, CRT looks instead to the cultural, structural and legal creation and maintenance of difference and oppression. Scholars working in this field include Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Patricia Williams.
Me Too movement: ‘#MeToo is a movement that was founded in 2006 to support survivors of sexual violence, in particular black and brown girls, who were in the program that we were running. It has grown since then to include supporting grown people, women, and men, and other survivors, as well as helping people to understand what community action looks like in the fight to end sexual violence’ – Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too movement.
Male gaze: A term coined by film critic Laura Mulvey, the notion of the male gaze develops Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of le regard (the gaze) to take into account the power differentials and gender stereotyping inherent in ways of looking within patriarchal, sexist culture. The male gaze refers to how the world – and women in particular – are looked at and presented from a cisgender, straight, frequently white male perspective. In visual art the male gaze can be understood in multiple ways, from the male creator of the work, to men within the work viewing women or the world around them, to the (assumed) male viewer of the work itself. Many women artists have countered the male gaze through deconstruction and through the creation and promotion of works that centre the ‘female gaze’.
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Exhibition dates: 7th September – 1st December, 2019
Visited September 2019 posted June 2020
Curator: Estrella de Diego, Professor of Modern Art at the Complutense University of Madrid
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) George Antheil (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the early 20th century.
This was one of the most memorable photography exhibitions of my European sojourn during August – October 2019, in the most beautiful of gallery spaces. I was so very lucky to complete my time in Europe before the current pandemic arrived.
I will comment more on the exhibition in Part 2 of the posting, but suffice to say it was a real pleasure to see the work of Berenice Abbott side by side with the photographs of Eugène Atget, an artist she did much to champion (including printing his photographs). Her portraits of Atget taken in the year of his death were magnificent. They provide a portal between old and new, between the artist looking back on his work (his life), and the 20th century artist realising that they have to accommodate Atget within their future kinēsis … and in so doing, Abbott pictures an artist whose spirit possessed all of Old Paris.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All iPhone photographs by Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 2 of the posting.
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
This autumn Huis Marseille will present a large retrospective of the famous American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). This is the first time that an extensive selection of her work, held by important American collections, will be shown in the Netherlands. Abbott is one of the key figures in the history of 20th-century photography. Her legacy is not only an eclectic photographic oeuvre but also a strong opinion on the role of photography in society, to which she gave expression in numerous publications. Her work forms a bridge linking the artistic avant-garde in the ‘Old World’ with the emerging art scene of the 1920s and 1930s in New York.
Modernity
The idea of modernity pervades all of Berenice Abbott’s work: from her portraits of pioneering artists and intellectuals, and her astonishing views of the city of New York, to her photos of scientific themes, documenting the results of various physics experiments. Abbott’s oeuvre also reflects her own modernism, her constant desire to be on the front line, and her exceptional talent for not just noticing the changes that were going on around her but for depicting them to striking effect. Berenice Abbott was an enthusiastic proponent of modernism in photography, and was strongly opposed to pictoralism, the painterly style that dominated photography in the early 20th century. In her view a good photograph was shaped by the specific characteristics of photography itself, and not by those of painting.
Lost Generation
In 1918 Berenice Abbott left her birthplace Ohio and moved to New York to study sculpture, where she soon gravitated towards Greenwich Village, a hotbed of avant-garde and radical artists, bohemians, and others whose lifestyles put them outside the American mainstream. In 1921 she arrived in Paris and joined the artistic community of Montparnasse on the famous left bank of the Seine. Its writers and artists included many American expats who, disillusioned by the senseless violence of the First World War and by Prohibition in America, had taken refuge in Europe. The American writer Gertrude Stein called them the ‘lost generation’, a generation to which Abbott also belonged, which questioned traditional values and favoured an alternative kind of life. Abbott would go on to portray many of these writers, including Djuna Barnes and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Portrait photographer
Abbott’s life as a photographer began in 1923, in the Parisian studio of the famous American photographer, Dadaist and Surrealist Man Ray. As his assistant she learned the technical, artistic and commercial aspects of portrait photography. In 1926, with financial support from the immensely rich American art collector Peggy Guggenheim, she opened her own Paris studio. Her clients were mostly expats, socialites, bohemians, writers, artists and the ‘new women’ who, like herself, were willing to live on the margins of society in order to be free. Many had broken ties with their origins and their gender, such as the journalist Janet Flanner, the publisher Jane Heap, and the writer Sylvia Beach. Abbott immortalised them in assertive, powerful portraits. Beach was also the publisher of James Joyce’ Ulysses (1922), a book that Abbott greatly admired, and she portrayed the writer, his wife and daughter on several occasions.
Eugène Atget
Through Man Ray in Paris Abbott met the photographer Eugène Atget, with whose work she felt an immediate visual and artistic affinity. For decades Atget had documented Paris in plain, unadorned images, and with a keen eye for seemingly unimportant details. After his death in 1927 Abbott looked after a large part of his oeuvre, promoting it tirelessly in America through exhibitions and books. The present exhibition therefore also includes a small selection of photos by Eugène Atget, which Abbott printed from the original negatives in 1956.
Changing New York
The heart of the exhibition is formed by Abbott’s photos of New York City. When she returned to New York in 1929 she felt an immediate urge to photograph the city itself, with its enormous contrasts and contradictions, a city that changed constantly and was never the same from moment to moment. In 1935 she received a substantial grant from the Federal Art Project, a government initiative that was intended to create jobs and boost the economy following the crisis years, and this allowed her to begin work in earnest. She called her project Changing New York; it was also published in book form in 1939, with texts by her partner Elizabeth McCausland. Her camera transformed New York into a living being, with an extraordinary character, which visitors can experience to this day as they move through its busy streets and stare amazed at the modern beauty of its skyscrapers. Shops, people, bridges, streets, interiors, construction sites, iconic buildings seen from outside or from above – everything comes together to create a portrait of the city.
Science
In the late 1930s Abbott became deeply interested in science, and saw that photography could play a role as spokesperson. The cerebral world of science needed the vitality and imaginative powers of photography to reach a wider audience. Moreover, the scientific interpretation of the world was not reserved for scientists alone; any citizen ought to be able to consider a scientific question, and photography could serve as an intermediary. With this goal in mind, for years Abbott did darkroom experiments with all kinds of camera techniques. In 1957 the Physical Science Study Committee of the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology hired her services to provide photographic illustrations for new and influential schoolbooks.
Curation
The exhibition was created in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE, a Spanish non-profit organisation with which Huis Marseille has worked regularly over the last ten years – most recently in 2016 for the Stephen Shore retrospective in Huis Marseille. It was curated by Estrella de Diego, Professor of Modern Art at the Complutense University of Madrid, and has been shown in Barcelona and Madrid.
Loans
The exhibition comprises almost 200 vintage photographs generously loaned from the New York Public Library, the Museum of the City of New York, the International Center of Photography (NY), the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), the Howard Greenberg Gallery (NY) and the MIT Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts), together with a selection of Abbott’s publications on loan from the Rijksmuseum library and other collections.
Publication
Estrella de Diego, Julia van Haaften, Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity, Madrid (Fundación Mapfre) 2019.
Text from the Huis Marseille website
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Jean Cocteau (installation views) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Jean Cocteau, the author of so many memorable films and works of literature, is shown embracing a sort of mask that perhaps alludes to the repeated play of mirrors that runs through his Orphic Trilogy. He represents the kind of masculinity that Abbott renders in her portraits of homosexual activists such as André Gide and Cocteau or the ‘new men’ who had ceased to be certain of their identity – like the characters in the novels of George Bernard Shaw or Thomas Hardy – and had adopted a less monolithic masculinity. This trait can also be found in D.H. Lawrence, and in James Joyce, who sat for Abbott in 1928.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Janet Flanner in Paris (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at right the image Janet Flanner in Paris, 1927 Photo: Eddo Hartmann
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Janet Flanner in Paris 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Abbott’s portraits depict some of the modern intellectuals with whom she associated in New York’s Greenwich Village following her arrival there from the native Ohio. These included people who also had links with Paris, such as the writer and journalist Janet Flanner, a personal friend of the writer Djuna Barnes. Abbott gave Flanner an ambiguous aspect; with her cropped hair and masculine dress she is another representative of the strong ‘New Women’. Abbott photographed many of these New Women who were prepared to live on the margins of society in order to safeguard their freedom.
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing in the top image at left, the photograph of Janet Flanner (1927, above); and at second left, Eugène Atget (1927, below) Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
In 1927 Berenice Abbott produced two portraits, front-facing and in profile, of Eugène Atget, the photographer who was adored by the Surrealists and who captured the mood of late 19th-century Paris. The portraits, reminiscent of a documentary work – of police records, almost – highlight Abbott’s extraordinary skill as a portrait photographer. Atget provided the inspiration for Abbott’s wonderful portrait of New York City, Changing New York. She made generous efforts to promote the French photographer’s work, even acquiring his negatives after his death.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget 1927 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s photographs of Eugène Atget Photo: Eddo Hartmann
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) James Joyce, Paris (installation view) 1920 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Audrey McMahon (installation view) 1925-1946 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Audrey McMahon was the Director of the New York region of the Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943; the region she oversaw included New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Born in New York City in 1898, she attended the Sorbonne, and she was the director of the College Art Association. …
Her approach to the administration of the Federal Art Project attempted to give the artists employed a great deal of freedom, and as she recalled later, “It is gratifying to note… that almost all of the painters, sculptors, graphic artists, and muralists who recall those days remember little or no artistic stricture.”
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Jane Heap (installation view) 1929-1931 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Jane Heap (November 1, 1883 – June 18, 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was also her lover), she edited the celebrated literary magazine The Little Review, which published an extraordinary collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. Heap herself has been called “one of the most neglected contributors to the transmission of modernism between America and Europe during the early twentieth century.”
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Jane Heap 1929-1931 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam with in the bottom image at left, Eugène Atget’s photo Eclipse, Paris 1912 Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) L’éclipse (installation view) April 1912 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Pendant l’éclipse 1912 Albumen print
Although the moon is not visible in this photograph by Eugène Atget, its presence and appeal are implied. The crowd gathered in Paris’s Place de la Bastille on April 17, 1912, was observing a solar eclipse through viewing apparatuses. Atget, rather than recording the astronomical event itself, turned his attention to its spectators. Though Atget made more than 8,500 pictures of Paris and its environs in a career that spanned over thirty years – most documenting the built environment – this photograph is an unusual example that focuses on a crowd of people.
Text from the MoMA website
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing the photographs of Eugène Atget with at second right Avenue des Gobelins, 1925 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Avenue des Gobelins 1925 Albumen print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Interior of a worker’s room, Rue de Romainville, 19th arr. (installation view) c. 1910 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Courtyard, 7 Rue de Valence, 5th arr. (installation view) June 1922 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Courtyard, 7 Rue de Valence, 5th arr. June 1922 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 13. Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue St. Rustique (installation view) March 1922 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue St. Rustique March 1922 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 9. Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Ragpicker’s Hut (installation views) 1910 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Street diversions (or B organ) 1898-1899 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 16 Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Street Pavers (installation views) 1899-1900 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Street Pavers 1899-1900 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 12 Library of Congress
Abbott saw in Eugène Atget a documentary photographer who revealed in his photographs of Paris a city frozen in time, a city that one might almost describe as antiheroic. Abbott understood that all documentary photography (and an photograph can be documentary, free from fault lines) contains a larger amount of autobiography, and Atget’s photography tells the story of a man and his camera traipsing around the city to seek out its nooks and crannies. To take a photo is to think with your eyes and with your brain. To observe is to be part of the scene.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Butcher’s shop, Rue Christine (installation view) c. 1923 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Butcher’s shop, Rue Christine c. 1923 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 17 Library of Congress
The surrealists were fascinated by Eugène Atget and his shifting play with Paris’s innermost structure, his phantasmagorias. In contrast with this, Abbott emphasises the documentary characteristics of Atget, at first glance a ‘realist’ photographer who captured the deserted landscapes of the city described by Albert Valentin in 1928 as “cerebral landscapes”. Atget photographed the everyday, the events in the house next door, expressing the sense of encountering the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange – rather like Abbott did, years later.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Mannequin (installation views) 1926-1927 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Mannequin 1926-1927 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 15. Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Shop, Avenue des Gobelins (installation view) 1925 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Bar interior, 15 Rue Boyer, 20th arr. 1900-1911 Albumen print
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Aerial View of New York by Night at centre and New York Stock Exchange at centre right Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at left, Aerial View of New York by Night (1936, below) Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Aerial View of New York by Night March 20, 1936 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
The changes in points of view in [the book] Changing New York – which sometimes seem like a juggling act or a pirouette, ways of seeing form above and from outside – are what convert the most emblematic or familiar places into landscape seen for the first time. And then there is the beautiful photograph of New York at night, the image that offers a full view, the one captured whole by our gaze” an exercise in light that prefigures Abbott’s later photographs on scientific themes.
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s New York Stock Exchange (1933, below) Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York Stock Exchange 1933 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Washington Square, looking north (installation views) April 16, 1936 Gelatin silver print Museum of the City of New York Gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1949 Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) From Trinity Church Yard (installation view) March 1, 1938 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) John Watts statue, from Trinity Churchyard looking toward One Wall Street, Manhattan March 1, 1938 Gelatin silver print Wikipedia, Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Broadway near Broome Street, Manhattan (installation views) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at bottom left, Lamport Export Company, 507-511 Broadway, Manhattan October 7, 1935; and at top right, Broadway and Thomas Street 1936 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Broadway and Thomas Street (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at third right, Abbott’s 5th Avenue, No’s 4, 6, 8 March 20, 1936 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s 5th Avenue, No’s 4, 6, 8 March 20, 1936 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 5th Avenue, No’s 4, 6, 8 March 20, 1936 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Tempo of the City II, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street looking west from Seymour Building, 503 Fifth Avenue September 6, 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection Wikipedia, Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Allen Street, No’s 55-57, Manhattan (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Unknown photographer Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A (installation view) 1917 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The older I grow, the more exponentially I appreciate and love these early photographs. Imagine having a collection like this!
Wonderful to see Edward Steichen’s Portrait – Lady H (1908, below) as I have a copy of Camera Work 22 in my collection.
The V&A has been collecting photographs since 1856, the year the Museum was founded, and it was one of the first museums to present photography exhibitions. Since then the collection has grown to be one of the largest and most important in the world, comprising around 500,000 images. The V&A is now honoured to have added the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection to its holdings, which contains around 270,000 photographs, an extensive library, and 6,000 cameras and pieces of equipment associated with leading artists and photographic pioneers.
Take a behind-the-scenes look at our world class photography collection following the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection, which has enabled a dramatic reimagining of the way photography is presented at the V&A. The photographs curators introduce a series of five highlights that are on display in the new Photography Centre, which opened on 12th October 2018. The first phase of the centre will more than double the space dedicated to photography at the Museum.
Text from the V&A and YouTube websites
Unknown photographer Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A (installation view) 1917 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The V&A has been collecting and exhibiting photographs since the 1850s. This image shows part o a photographic exhibition held over 100 years ago in the same galleries you are standing in today. The exhibition presented a densely packed display of images depicting the Allied Powers during the First World War.
Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) Christ Carrying his Cross (installation views) 1827 Heliograph on pewter plate The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photos: Marcus Bunyan
The French inventor Niépce made the earliest surviving photographic images, which he called ‘heliographs’ or ‘sun-writing’. Only 16 are thought to still exist. Although Niépce experimented with light-sensitive plates inside a camera, he made most of his images, including this one, by placing engravings of works by other artists directly onto a metal plate. He would probably have had the resulting heliographs coated in ink and printed.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) Christ Carrying his Cross (installation view) 1827 Heliograph on pewter plate The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) The Adamson Family (installation view) 1843-1845 Salted paper print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The partnership between Scottish painter Hill and chemist Adamson merged the art and science of photography. The pair initially intended to create preliminary studies for Hill’s paintings, but soon recognised photography’s artistic potential. With Hill’s knowledge of composition and lighting, and Adamson’s considerable sensitivity and dexterity in handling the camera, together they produced some of the most accomplished photographic portraits of their time.
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877) The Haystack 1844 From The Pencil of Nature Salted paper print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-1894) Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap (installation views) 1852-1854 Albumen print; Calotype negative The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Turner took out a licence to practice ‘calotype’ photography from Talbot in 1848. He contact-printed positive images from paper negatives. The negative (below) and its corresponding positive (above) are reunited here to illustrate this process, but the pairing as you see them would not have been the photographer’s original intention for display. Although unique negatives were sometimes exhibited in their own right, only showing positive prints was the norm.
Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-1894) Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap (installation view) 1852-1854 Albumen print; Calotype negative The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Road to Chailly, Forest of Fontainebleau (installation view) 1852 Albumen print from a collodion glass negative Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (installation view) 1852 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (installation view) 1852 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fenton was one of the most versatile and technically brilliant photographers of the 19th century. He excelled at many subjects, including war photography, portraiture, architecture and landscape. He also made a series of lush still lives. Here, grapes, plums and peaches are rendered in exquisite detail, and the silver cup on the right reflects a camera tripod.
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view detail) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Still Life with Fruit and Decanter 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British born Sweden, 1813-1875) Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger(installation view) c. 1856 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rejlander probably intended this photograph to be part of a larger composition telling the biblical story of Salome, in which the severed head of John the Baptist was presented to her on a plate. Rejlander never made the full picture, however, and instead produced multiple prints of the head alone.
Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British born Sweden, 1813-1875) Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger (installation view) c. 1856 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898) The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith (installation view) 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Frith’s photographs were popular and circulated widely, both because of their architectural interest and because they often featured sites mentioned in the Bible. Photographs of places described in biblical stories brought a new level of realism to a Christian Victorian audience, previously only available through the interpretations of a painter or illustrator.
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898) The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith (installation view) 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898) The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean(installation view) 1856-1859 Albumen Print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean 1856-1859 Albumen Print Art Institute of Chicago Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre (installation view) 1856-1857 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre (installation view) 1856-1857 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre 1856-1857 Albumen print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (installation view) 1857-1859 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (installation view) 1857-1859 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea (installation view) 1855 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea (installation view) 1855 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) Lucia (installation view) 1864-1865 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898) Tea Merchant (On Duty) and Tea Merchant (Off Duty) (installation view) 1873 Albumen prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lewis Carroll is best known as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but he was also an accomplished amateur photographer. Approximately half of his photographs are portraits of children, sometimes wearing foreign costumes or acting out scenes. Here, Alexandra ‘Xie’ Kitchen, his most frequent child sitter, poses in Chinese dress on a stack of tea chests.
Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898) Tea Merchant (On Duty) (installation view) 1873 Albumen prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898) Tea Merchant (Off Duty) (installation view) 1873 Albumen prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) Pomona (installation view) 1887 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The South Kensington museum (now the V&A) was the only museum to collect and exhibit Julia Margaret Cameron’s during her lifetime. This is one of several studies she made of Alice Liddell, who as a child had modelled for the author and photographer Lewis Carroll and inspired his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Cameron, Carroll and Liddell moved in overlapping artistic and intellectual circles. Here, surrounded by foliage, a grown-up Alice poses as the Roman goddess of orchards and gardens.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) Pomona (installation view) 1887 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) Frederick Holland Day (installation view) 1900 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The British-American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. Active in the early 20th century, he gained recognition from a young age as a talented photographer. His style ranged from the painterly softness of Pictorialism to the unusual vantage points and abstraction of Modernism. As well as being a practising photographer, Coburn was an avid collector. In 1930 he donated over 600 photographs to the Royal Photographic Society. The gift included examples of Coburn’s own work alongside that of his contemporaries, many of whom are now considered to be the most influential of their generation. Coburn also collected historic photographs, and was among the first in his time to rediscover and appreciate the work of 19th-century masters like Julia Margaret Cameron and Hill and Adamson.
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view) 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Day made this portrait when he visited the Hampton Institute in Virginia, which was founded after the American Civil War as a teacher-training school for freed slaves. The institute’s camera club invited Day to visit the school and critique the work of its students. Day’s friend and fellow photographer, Frederick Evans, donated this strikingly modern composition to the Royal Photographic Society in 1937.
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view) 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view) 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934) The Letter 1906 Platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Käsebier studied painting before opening a photography studio in New York. Her Pictorialist photographs often combine soft focus with experimental printing techniques. These sisters were dressed in historic costume for a ball, but their pose transforms a society portrait into a narrative picture. In a variant image, they turn to look at the framed silhouette on the wall.
Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Francis James Mortimer (British, 1874-1944) Alvin Langdon Coburn at the Opening of His One-Man Exhibition the Royal Photographic Society, London (installation view) 1906 Carbon print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Annie Wardrope Brigman (American, 1869-1950) The Spirit of Photography c. 1908 Platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) Kensington Gardens (installation view) 1910 Platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Cover of Camera Work Number XXVI(installation view) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) Portrait – Lady H(installation view) 1908 Camera Work 22 1908 Photogravure The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) Portrait – Lady H 1908 Camera Work 22 1908 Photogravure The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) New York (installation view) 1916 Camera Work 48 1916 Photogravure The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) was an American photographer, publisher, writer and gallery owner. From 1903-1917, he published the quarterly journal Camera Work, which featured portfolios of exquisitely printed photogravures (a type of photograph printed in ink), alongside essays and reviews. Camera Work promoted photography as an art form, publishing the work of Pictorialist photographers who drew inspiration from painting, and reproducing 19th-century photographs. It also helped to introduce modern art to American audiences, including works by radical European painters such as Matisse and Picasso.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) Vortograph (installation view) 1917 Bromide print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rudolph Koppitz (American, 1884-1936) Bewegungsstudie (Movement Study) 1926 Carbon print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Koppitz was a leading art photographer in Vienna between the two World Wars, as well as a master of complex printing processes, including the pigment, gum and broccoli process of transfer printing. Tis dynamic and sensual composition captures dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet frozen mid-movement.
Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85) Shortly Before Dawn (installation view) 1932-39 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bayer had a varied and influential career as a designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director and architect. He taught at the Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, and later began to use photomontage, both in his artistic and advertising work. Using this process, he combined his photographs with found imagery, producing surreal or dreamlike pictures.
Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85) Shortly Before Dawn (installation view) 1932-39 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951) Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam (installation view) 1934 Foto-choma Eilers Given by Joan Luckhurst Eilers Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In the 1930s, the Dutch photographer Bernard Eilers developed an experimental new photographic colour separation process known as ‘Foto-chroma Eilers’. Although the process was short-lived, Eilers successfully used this technique to produce prints like this of great intensity and depth of colour. Here, the misty reflections and neon lights create an atmospheric but modern view of a rain-soaked Amsterdam at night.
Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951) Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam (installation view) 1934 Foto-choma Eilers Given by Joan Luckhurst Eilers Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958) Valentine to Charis(installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
When Weston met the model and writer Charis Wilson in 1934, he was immediately besotted. This valentine to her contains a cluster of objects arranged as a still life, including the photographer’s camera lens and spectacles. Some of the objects seem to hold a special significance that only the lovers could understand. The numbers on the right possibly refer to their ages – there were almost thirty years between them.
Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999) Portrait of Gabrielle (‘Coco’) Chanel 1937 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Variant, American Vogue, 1 December 1937, p. 86: ‘Fashion: Mid-Season Prophecies’
Caption reads: Chanel in her fitted, three-quarters coat / Mademoiselle Chanel, in one of her new coats that are making the news – a three quarters coat buttoned tightly and trimmed with astrakham like her cap. 01/12/1937
Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965) Women with headscarf, McCall’s Cover, July 1938(installation view) 1938 Tricolour carbro print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store(installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Art Project emptied Abbott to make a series of photographs entitled Changing New York, documenting the rapid development and urban transformation of the city. This picture shows the facade of a downtown hardware store, its wares arranged in a densely-packed window display with extend onto the pavement.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store(installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store 1938 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photographs of African masks, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Evans to photograph objects in its major exhibition of African art. Using his 8 x 10 inch view camera, he highlighted the artistry and detail of the objects, alternating between front, side and rear views. In total, Evans produced 477 images, and 17 complete sets of them were printed. Several of these sets were donated to colleges and libraries in America, and the V&A bought one set in 1936 to better represent African art in its collection.
The term ‘negro’ is given here in its original historical context.
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bill Brandt (British, 1904-1983) Dubuffet’s Right Eye Alberto Giacometti’s Left Eye Louise Nevelson’s Eye Max Ernst’s Left Eye (installation view) 1960-1963 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bill Brandt (British, 1904-83) Dubuffet’s Right Eye (installation view) 1960-1963 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
German-born Brandt moved to London in the 1930s. In his long and varied career, he made many compelling portraits of people including Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, the Sitwell family, Robert Graves and E.M. Forster. For this series he photographed the eyes of well-known artists over several years, creating a substantial collection of intense and unique portraits. The pictures play upon ideas of artistic vision and the camera lens, which acts as a photographer’s ‘mechanical eye’.
Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976) Simple Still Life, Egg (installation view) 1950 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Throughout his career, Sudek used various photographic styles but always conveyed an intensely lyrical vision of the world. Here, his formal approach to a simple still life presents a poetic statement, and evokes an atmosphere of contemplation. Sudek’s motto and advice to his students – ‘hurry slowly’ – encapsulates his legendary patience and the sense of meditative stillness in his photographs.
Otto Steiner (German, 1915-1978) Luminogram (installation view) 1952 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Otto Steiner (German, 1915-1978) Luminogram (installation view) 1952 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) True Color (installation views) 1974-1987 Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007 American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Known for his dynamic street photography, Cohen’s work presents a fragmented, sensory image of his hometown of Wiles-Barre, Pennsylvania. This set of pictures was taken at a time when colour photography was just beginning to be recognised as a fine art. Until the 1970s, colour had largely been associated with other advertising or family snapshots, and was not thought of as a legitimate medium for artists. Cohen and other photographers like William Eggleston transferred this perception using the dye-transfer printing process. Although complicated and time-consuming, the technique results in vibrant and high quality colour prints.
Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) True Color (installation view detail) 1974-1987 Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007 American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) True Color (installation view detail) 1974-1987 Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007 American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Graham Smith (British, b. 1947) What she wanted & who she got (installation view) 1982 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Since the 1980s, Graham Smith has been photographing his hometown of South Bank near Middlesbrough. His images convey his deep sensitivity towards the effects of changing working conditions on the former industrial north-east. In this photograph, despite the suggested humour of the title, we are left wondering who the couple are and what the nature of their relationship might be.
Jan Kempenaers (Belgian, b. 1968) Spomenik #3 2006 C-type print
The Kosmaj monument in Serbia is dedicated to soldiers of the Kosmaj Partisan detachment from World War II.
Jan Kempenaers (Belgian, b. 1968) Spomenik #4 2007 C-type print
This monument, authored by sculptor Miodrag Živković, commemorates the Battle of Sutjeska, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the former Yugoslavia.
Kempenaers toured the balkans photographing ‘Spomeniks’ – monuments built in former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and ’70s on the sites of Second World War battles and concentration camps. Some have been vandalised in outpourings of anger against the former regime, while others are well maintained. In Kempenaers’ photographs, the monuments appear otherworldly, as if dropped from outer space into a pristine landscape.
Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Victoria and Albert Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 2000
Curators: Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Curator of British Art 1850-1915, and Stephen Calloway with Alice Insley, Assistant Curator, Historic British Art
#MuseumFromHome
Frederick Evans (British, 1853-1943) Aubrey Beardsley [with hands] 1893 Platinum print and photogravure, mounted on opposing pages of a paper folio Wilson Centre for Photography
While working as a clerk, Beardsley spent his lunchtimes browsing in Frederick Evans’ nearby second-hand bookshop. This had an important impact on his developing artistic and literary tastes. Beardsley became close friends with Evans, who was also a talented amateur photographer. The image on the left has become known as the ‘gargoyle portrait’ because Beardsley’s pose echoes the famous carved figure on Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. This portrait was used in early editions of Beardsley’s work and has become the defining image of the artist.
There he is
There he is, all aquiline nose, patrician air; thin wrists and hands that infinity strengthens,
Mannerist hands, hands like the buttresses of some great cathedral, supporting that noble face.
There he is, this genius of invention, this suave sophisticate, this pervader of decadent beauty,
this grotesque who produced a thousand drawings in seven years, who lived a thousand lives in just seven years.
There he is, this son of Blake, this offspring of Lautrec and japonaiserie,
all primed in subtle sexualities, shocking, fame, subversion… strange.
There he is, love of yellow, flowering enormous genitalia, erotic illustrations of distorting scale, women ambiguity,
as bold as life, diseased as death, driving his body on while his mind accretes mythologies.
Now he stands, a fantastical visionary, existing as product of unchecked imagination.
An illusion, a fabrication of the mind; an unrealisable dream, a fancy,
his utopia a grotesque, chimerical beauty.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Tate Britain for allowing me to publish the media images in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Tate Britain’s major new exhibition celebrates the brief but astonishing career of Aubrey Beardsley. Although he died tragically young at the age of just 25, Beardsley’s strange, sinuous black-and-white images have continued to shock and delight for over a century. Bringing together 200 spectacular works, this is the largest display of his original drawings in over 50 years and the first exhibition of his work at Tate since 1923.
Beardsley (1872-1898) became one of the enfants terribles of fin-de-siècle London, best remembered for illustrating Oscar Wilde’s controversial play Salomé. His opulent imagery anticipated the elegance of Art Nouveau but also alighted on the subversive and erotic aspects of life and legend, shocking audiences with a bizarre sense of humour and fascination with the grotesque. Beardsley was prolific, producing hundreds of illustrations for books, periodicals and posters in a career spanning just under seven years. Line block printing enabled his distinct black-and-white works to be easily reproduced and widely circulated, winning notoriety and admirers around the world, but the original pen and ink drawings are rarely seen. Tate Britain exhibits a huge array of these drawings, revealing his unrivalled skill as a draughtsman in exquisite detail.
The exhibition highlights each of the key commissions that defined Beardsley’s career as an illustrator, notably Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur 1893-1894, Wilde’s Salomé 1893 and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock 1896, of which five of the original drawings are shown together for the first time. As art director of the daring literary quarterly The Yellow Book, the artist also created seminal graphic works that came to define the decadence of the era and scandalised public opinion. Bound editions and plates are displayed alongside subsequent works from The Savoy and illustrations for Volpone 1898 and Lysistrata 1896, in which Beardsley further explored his fascination with eroticism and the absurd.
Beardsley’s imagination was fuelled by diverse cultural influences, from ancient Greek vases and Japanese woodblock prints, to illicit French literature and the Rococo. He also responded to his contemporaries such as Gustave Moreau, Edward Burne-Jones and Toulouse Lautrec, whose works are shown at Tate Britain to provide context for Beardsley’s individual mode of expression. A room in the exhibition is dedicated to portraits of Beardsley and the artist’s wider circle, presenting him at the heart of the arts scene in London in the 1890’s despite the frequent confinement of his rapidly declining health. As notorious for his complex persona as he was for his work, the artist had a preoccupation with his own image, relayed throughout the exhibition by striking self-portraits and depictions by the likes of Walter Sickert and Jacques-Emile Blanche.
Additional highlights include a selection of Beardsley’s bold poster designs and his only oil painting. Charles Bryant and Alla Nazimova’s remarkable 1923 film Salomé is also screened in a gallery adjacent to Beardsley’s illustrations, showcasing the costume and set designs they inspired. The exhibition closes with an overview of Beardsley’s legacy from Art Nouveau to the present day, including Picasso’s Portrait of Marie Derval 1901 and Klaus Voormann’s iconic artwork for the cover of Revolver 1966 by the Beatles.
Aubrey Beardsley is organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, with the generous support of the V&A, private lenders and other public institutions. It is curated by Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Curator of British Art 1850-1915, and Stephen Calloway with Alice Insley, Assistant Curator, Historic British Art.
Press release from the Tate Britain website
Aubrey Beardsley at Tate Britain – Exhibition Tour | Tate
Join Tate curators Caroline Corbeau-Parsons and Alice Insley as they discuss the iconic illustrator’s short and scandalous career.
Before his untimely death aged twenty-five, Beardsley produced over a thousand illustrations. He drew everything from legendary tales featuring dragons and knights, to explicit scenes of sex and debauchery. His fearless attitude to art continues to inspire creatives more than a century after his death.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Withered Spring 1891 Graphite, ink and gouache on paper National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection
The framing of the main image by ornamental panels and lettering shows the influence of aesthetic movement illustrators, as well as that of Burne-Jones. The inscription on the gate behind the figure is partly obscured. In full it would read ‘Ars Longa Vita Brevis’ (‘art is long-lasting, life is short’). As Beardsley was diagnosed with tuberculosis aged seven, this Latin saying must have had personal resonance.
Introduction
Few artists have stamped their personality so indelibly on their era as Aubrey Beardsley. He died in 1898 at the age of just 25 but had already become one of the most discussed and celebrated artists in Europe. His extraordinary black-and-white drawings were instantly recognisable. Then, as now, he seemed the quintessential figure of 1890s decadence.
At the end of the 19th century, a period that had seen vast social and technological changes, many began to fear that civilisation had reached its peak and was doomed to crumble. ‘Decadent’ artists and writers retreated into the imagination. Severing the link between art and nature, they created a new sensibility based upon self-indulgence, refinement and often a love of the bizarre. No other artist captured the danger and the beauty, the cynicism and brilliance of the age as Beardsley did with pen and ink.
Beardsley was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of seven. The disease was then incurable, so he knew from childhood that his life would be a brief one. This led him to work at a hectic pace. One contemporary described his determination ‘to fill his few working years with the immediate echo of a great notoriety’. Moving rapidly from style to style, he created well over a thousand illustrations and designs in just five years. Beardsley was catapulted to fame in 1893 by an article about his work in The Studio magazine. He went on to illustrate Oscar Wilde’s play Salome and become art editor of The Yellow Book, a periodical that came to define the era.
Beardsley’s illustrations displayed remarkable skill and versatility, but few people ever saw his actual drawings. He always drew for publication and his work was seen primarily in books and magazines. He was one of the first artists whose fame came through the easy dissemination of images, his reputation growing day by day as his sensational designs appeared.
This exhibition offers a rare chance to see many of Beardsley’s original drawings. It also sets Beardsley in his social and artistic context. Works by other artists punctuate the exhibition, showing how he absorbed diverse artistic influences but always retained his own style.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Incipit Vita Nova 1892 Graphite, ink and gouache on paper Linda Gertner Zatlin
The title of this drawing refers to Dante Alighieri’s 1294 text La Vita Nuova and translates as ‘New Life Begins’. Some have seen the foetus as a potent symbol for Beardsley. Its significance is unclear beyond linking sexuality, life and death, all key themes in Beardsley’s work. It also reflects his fascination with shocking imagery and the grotesque, the term used traditionally to describe deliberate distortions and exaggerations of forms to create an effect of fantasy or strangeness. He once said, ‘if I am not grotesque I am nothing’.
Beginnings
Beardsley’s artistic career spanned just under seven years, between 1891 and 1898. When he was 18 he met the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, an artist he deeply admired. Having seen Beardsley’s portfolio, Burne-Jones responded: ‘I seldom or never advise anyone to take up art as a profession, but in your case I can do nothing else.’ On his recommendation, for a short time Beardsley attended classes at Westminster School of Art.
Beardsley longed for fame and recognition. This went hand in hand with an intensely cultivated self-image and pose as a dandy-aesthete. This important aspect of his identity is illuminated through self-portraits and portraits by his contemporaries throughout the exhibition.
Witty, tall, ‘spotlessly clean & well-groomed’, Beardsley was soon noted for his dandyism. A delight in refinement and artificiality in both dress and manner, dandyism was integral to the decadent creed. Some contemporaries related the artist’s extreme thinness and fragile physical appearance to ideas of morbidity also associated with decadence.
While Beardsley rejected the label of decadence, his work explores many aspects of it, such as a fascination with the ‘anti-natural’ and the bizarre, with sexual freedom and gender fluidity. What present-day society refers to as LGBTQIA+ identities were only just beginning to be formulated and articulated during his lifetime. Beardsley was attracted to women, but he was a pioneer in representing what we might now call queer desires and identities. Though fascinated by all aspects of sexuality, it seems likely that his explorations of these interests were primarily through literature and art.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Self-portrait 1892 Ink on paper British Museum Presented by Robert Ross in 1906
Apart from a few childish sketches, this is Beardsley’s first recorded self-portrait, made at the age of about 19. His newly adopted centre-parted fringe, fashionable high collar and large bow tie show that he had already formed a distinctive self-image. A few months earlier, he had described himself as having ‘a vile constitution, a sallow face and sunken eyes’.
Russell & Sons (Photographers) Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley c. 1893? Cartes de visite / cabinet card Albumen print
Please note: This photograph is not in the exhibition
Edward Coley Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898) The Finding of Medusa; The Death of Medusa (The Birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor); Perseus Pursued by the Gorgons 1875-1876 Gouache, paint and ink on paper Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1919 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
This design forms part of Burne-Jones’s ambitious scheme for a series of large wall decorations on the theme of Perseus. Although the work was never completed as he intended, Burne-Jones still proudly displayed ten full-scale preparatory drawings for the panels in his garden studio. They must have made a strong impression on Beardsley when he visited Burne-Jones in August 1891.
Edward Coley Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898) The Finding of Medusa 1875-1876 Gouache, paint and ink on paper Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1919 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
Edward Coley Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898) The Death of Medusa (The Birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor) 1875-1876 Gouache, paint and ink on paper Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1919 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
Edward Coley Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898) Perseus Pursued by the Gorgons 1875-1876 Gouache, paint and ink on paper Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1919 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
Perseus eventually discovers Medusa with her sisters, the Gorgons. Unlike her they are all immortal. Using Athena’s mirror to defend himself, Perseus beheads Medusa, at which point the winged horse Pegasus and the warrior Chrysaor spring from her decapitated body. When the Gorgons attempt to punish Perseus for killing their sister, he evades them by using the helmet given to him by the sea nymphs, thus becoming invisible.
Gallery label, June 1993
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Litany of Mary Magdalen 1891 Graphite on cream wove paper laid down on board 227 × 169 mm The Art Institute of Chicago, The Charles Deering Collection Public domain
The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506) was a key reference for both Burne-Jones and Beardsley. At Burne-Jones’s suggestion, Beardsley particularly studied the early engravings after Mantegna’s designs. Throughout his life Beardsley kept a set of reproductions of these prints pinned to his wall. In this subject of his own invention, he freely borrows details of costume, pose and gesture from figures in various of Mantegna’s works, particularly The Entombment (c. 1465-1470).
Andrea Mantegna (Italian, c. 1431-1506) The Entombment of Christ c. 1465-1475 Engraving and drypoint; second state of two 11 7/16 × 16 3/8 in. (29 × 41.6cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1937 Public domain
Please note: This engraving is not in the exhibition
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Tannhäuser 1891 Ink, wash and gouache on paper National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection Public domain
Beardsley was an avid opera-goer. He attended several performances of Wagner’s works at this time, including Tannhäuser at Covent Garden in April or May 1891. He would return to Wagnerian subjects many times in his art and writings. The story of Tannhäuser was a particular favourite. He later made it the subject of his own erotic novella The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser. Here he shows the knight in pilgrim’s robes, among trees that appear like prison bars, trying to find his way back to the goddess’s enchanted realm, the Venusberg.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Die Götterdämmerung 1892 Ink, wash and gouache on paper Aubrey Beardsley Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University
Beardsley took this subject from Wagner’s opera, the title of which translates as ‘The Twilight of the Gods’. It has been suggested that the frieze-like composition depicts three different moments of the story. According to this interpretation, the scene to the right refers to the prologue, showing the Fates, with the bearded Wotan holding his magic spear. He also appears seated at the centre of the composition with Siegfried standing by him to tell his story to a group of hunters. Finally, Wotan may be represented again seated, in profile, wearing his Wanderer’s hat.
Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), is the last in Richard Wagner’s cycle of four music dramas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Ring for short). It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 17 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of the Ring.
“Die Götterdämmerung,” notes Emma Sutton in Aubrey Beardsley and British Wagnerism in the 1890s (2002), “Beardsley’s only drawing of the concluding part of the Ring cycle, was probably prompted by the first performance for a decade of the Ring in London in June and July 1892. It is extremely likely that he attended a performance of the drama; he certainly attended Siegfried, and produced drawings on Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and of the principle singers, in this year.
No interpretation of the drawing has, to my knowledge, ever been offered, perhaps because its stylistics might suggest that it is an incomplete or experimental, Impressionistic work. The drawing is, however, an intricate and highly knowledgeable representation of Wagner’s work, demonstrating Beardsley’s comprehensive knowledge of Die Götterdämmerung (and, indeed, of the whole cycle) from the very start of the decade. Beardsley presents the gods shrouded in long drapes in a bleak forest setting; with their elongated limbs and enveloping robes they appear androgynous figures, listless and melancholy, entrapped by the sharp bare stems that rise from the border and ground around them.
Despite the undulating lines of the landscape, Die Gotterdammerung is a scene of desolate stasis, bleakly portraying Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods. A compression of several scenes from Wagner’s drama, the drawing is, I would suggest, an extraordinarily innovative and ambitious attempt to evoke concisely the narrative events and cumulative tone of the entire drama.”
~ Emma Sutton, Aubrey Beardsley and British Wagnerism in the 1890s (2002)
Anonymous. “Aubrey Beardsley’s “Die Götterdämmerung”,” on the Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton website [Online] Cited 02/03/2020
Le Morte Darthur
In early 1892, Beardsley received his first major commission. His friend, the photographer and bookseller Frederick H. Evans, introduced him to J.M. Dent. The energetic and enterprising publisher was looking for an illustrator for Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century version of the legends of King Arthur. Dent planned a substantial edition in the style of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press books. Between autumn 1892 and June 1894 Beardsley produced 353 drawings, including full and double-page illustrations, elaborate border designs and numerous small-scale ornamental chapter headings. He received £250 over the course of this commission. This freed him to leave his hated job as a clerk and focus on art-making.
Beardsley gradually grew weary of this colossal undertaking and went off-brief. Subversive details started to appear in his drawings. He also introduced incongruous characters such as mermaids and satyrs, goat-legged hybrid creatures from classical mythology.
His illustrations were reproduced using the relatively new and economical line block printing process in which drawings are transferred onto printing plates photographically. Beardsley was at first disappointed with the printing of his drawings, but he quickly adapted his style to suit the line block process. Uniquely, this could reproduce both the finest of lines and large, flat areas of black.
The works in this room demonstrate the development of Beardsley’s art over two years, and how he combined many different sources to create his own visual language.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Achieving of the Sangreal 1892 Ink and wash on paper Private collection
This is the sample drawing that secured Beardsley the Morte Darthur commission. Dent declared it ‘a masterpiece’, and it was used as the frontispiece for Volume II. It seems to refer to the crucial episode of the book, in Chapter XIV, where Sir Percival kneels to make a prayer to Jesus in the presence of Sir Ector, and the Sangreal (popularly called the Holy Grail) appears to him, ‘borne by a maiden’.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) How Morgan Le Fay Gave a Shield to Sir Tristram 1893 Ink on paper The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
(Illustration from: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur. London: Dent, 1894)
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) How la Beale Isoud Wrote to Sir Tristram c. 1893 Ink over graphite on paper Alessandra and Simon Wilson
This drawing brings to mind the comment by the art historian John Rothenstein that ‘the greatest among Beardsley’s gifts was his power of assimilating every influence and yet retaining, nay developing, his own peculiar individuality’.
Isoud (Isolde) here resembles the Pre-Raphaelite figure Jane Morris. The German Renaissance form of her desk is borrowed from Albrecht Dürer’s engraving St Jerome in his Study (1513-1514). The simple, flattened construction of the space reflects Beardsley’s interest in Japanese prints. These contrast with the flowing lines of the sunflower border, a typical aesthetic motif.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) How Sir Tristram Drank of the Love Drink 1893 Ink on paper Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Scofield Thayer
This is one of Beardsley’s boldest and most rhythmic drawings. Tristram’s outstretched arm follows the movement of the hybrid flower. The flat outline of Isolde’s recoiling body parallels that of Tristram’s cloak, all against the strong vertical and horizontal lines formed by the curtains with their stylised rose border. Isolde’s long cape, seen from the back, is a forerunner of Beardsley’s famous Peacock Skirt in his Salome illustrations (on display later in this exhibition).
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) How La Beale Isoud Nursed Sir Tristram 1893 Ink over graphite on paper Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Scofield Thayer
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) How King Arthur saw the Questing Beast, and thereof had great marvel 1893 Ink and wash on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Together with Siegfried Act II (shown nearby), this drawing reflects the height of Beardsley’s fine ‘hair-line manner’. The drawing has great variety of treatment, showing that Beardsley’s style evolved while working on the commission. To alleviate boredom, he took great liberties with Malory’s text. He introduced mythological characters with little to do with the Arthurian legend, such as Pan, here. There are also discreet additions, including a treble clef top right, and even a phallus on the far left of the bank.
Something suggestive of Japan
The European craze for Japanese visual culture had begun in the 1860s after trade links were re-established. Beardsley grew up surrounded by western interpretations of Japanese art. In the summer of 1891, together with his sister Mabel, he visited the London mansion of the shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. There he saw the ‘Peacock Room’ created 15 years earlier by the expatriate North American artist James McNeill Whistler. Decorated with borrowed and reworked Japanese motifs, this masterpiece of the aesthetic movement had become one of the most celebrated interiors in London. Mesmerised by his visit, Beardsley began to introduce such details into his own drawings.
Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e) were also an important influence. Beardsley adopted their graphic conventions. His new style included areas of flat pattern contrasted with precisely drawn figures against abstracted or empty backgrounds. Like several artists at this time, he also favoured the distinctive, tall and narrow format of traditional Japanese kakemono scrolls.
In a letter to a friend, Beardsley bragged, ‘I struck for myself an entirely new method of drawing and composition, something suggestive of Japan… The subjects were quite mad and a little indecent.’
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-98) Design for a Frontispiece to Virgilius the Sorcerer c. 1893 Ink over graphite on paper laid down on board The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Robert Allerton
Following the glowing article in The Studio, many publishers approached Beardsley with commissions for illustrations and book covers. David Nutt, an old established publishing firm, generally specialised in early texts and folklore. Although made for Nutt’s ‘medieval legends’ series, Beardsley’s design is, somewhat incongruously, in the style of a Japanese print.
A New Illustrator
Beardsley first came to public notice in April 1893. He was the subject of the lead article, ‘A New Illustrator’, in the first issue of the new art magazine The Studio. In it, the graphic art expert Joseph Pennell praised Beardsley’s work as ‘quite as remarkable in its execution as in its invention: a very rare combination.’
Pennell welcomed Beardsley’s use of ‘mechanical reproduction for the publication of his drawings’. The article highlighted how photographic line block printing showed the true quality of an artist’s line.
The reproductions in The Studio article included both medieval and Pre-Raphaelite style illustrations for the forthcoming Le Morte Darthur and examples of Beardsley’s work inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. This displayed his versatility and led to further commissions for books and popular journals, such as the Pall Mall Magazine. J.M. Dent, the publisher of Le Morte Darthur, rightly worried Beardsley would get bored of that long-term project. To keep him interested, he invited him to create hundreds of tiny ‘grotesque’ illustrations for the Bon-Mots series, three miniature books of witty sayings. In this context, the term grotesque relates to distortion or exaggeration of form to create an effect of fantasy or strangeness. For Beardsley the idea was central to his way of seeing the world. Summing up his own art, he later said, ‘I am nothing if I am not grotesque.’
Grotesque
In art history, the grotesque – which originally referred to the decoration of grottoes – has come to denote a strand of Renaissance art composed of deliberately weird elements, often including imaginary hybrid forms. These often combine parts of human heads and bodies, animals and plants. Mermaids, satyrs, fauns and other mythical figures frequently appear in Beardsley’s art. But he also added foetuses, often with adult bodies, and other distorted figures to his grotesque repertoire. The resulting imagery is playful, irreverent and fantastical, but also has dark undertones. The grotesque lies at the heart of Beardsley’s art. He explained: ‘I see everything in a grotesque way. When I go to the theatre, for example, things shape themselves before my eyes just as a I draw them… They all seem weird and strange to me. Things have always impressed me in this way.’
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Kiss of Judas 1893 Ink on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
This drawing illustrates a short story by ‘X.L’ (the North American writer of horror fiction Julian Osgood Field). The macabre tale tells of a legend of the descendants of Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus in the Christian New Testament. It is written with the arch tone of much 1890s fiction:
‘They say that the children of Judas, lineal descendants of the arch traitor, are prowling about the world, seeking to do harm, and that they will kill you with a kiss.’ ‘Oh, how delightful!’ murmured the Dowager Duchess.
Smaller figures appear in many of Beardsley’s works, such as the nude in The Kiss of Judas. Some viewers have read these as representations of people with dwarfism. In most cases we do not know if this was Beardsley’s intention. He never strived for realism in his work. He played with scale, exaggerating and distorting lines and shapes, including in self-portraits. But the cultural stereotyping of people with dwarfism was prevalent in Beardsley’s lifetime. In the late 19th and early 20th century, they were predominantly seen as sources of entertainment in ‘freak shows’ and carnivals. These offensive attitudes almost certainly influenced Beardsley’s imagery to some extent.
Salomé
In 1892, Beardsley made a drawing in response to Salomé, Oscar Wilde’s play, originally written in French and based on the biblical story. Salomé falls in love with Iokanaan (John the Baptist). When he rejects her, she demands his head from her step-father, Herod Antipas, as a reward for performing the dance of the seven veils. Beardsley depicts her about to kiss Iokanaan’s severed head. Wilde admired the drawing and he and his publisher, John Lane, chose Beardsley to illustrate the English translation of the play. The illustrations weave together themes of sensuality and death, and explore a wide range of sexual desires. The play’s publication created a sensation, just as Beardsley and Wilde had hoped.
Beardsley delighted in hiding provocative elements in his drawings. Lane recalled, ‘one had, so to speak, to place his drawings under a microscope, and look at them upside down’. Nervously, he censored ‘problematic’ details in Beardsley’s title page and the illustration Enter Herodias and rejected two designs altogether from the first edition. Even so, Lane missed many erotic details and, surprisingly, also allowed publication of Beardsley’s teasing drawings that include caricatures of Wilde.
Beardsley produced 18 designs in total, of which only 10 appeared in the first printing of the play. The impressions exhibited here come from the portfolio which Lane issued in 1907, almost a decade after Beardsley’s death. This was the first edition to contain all the original designs and an additional one, Salome on Settle.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Climax 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
The flowing, sinuous lines in this design demonstrate how much art nouveau is indebted to Beardsley. He abandoned the Japanese kakemono format and hairline style of his original version of the image J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan (also in this room). By simplifying the lines of the design, he creates a more powerful focus on the moment when Salome can finally kiss Jokanaan’s lips – now that he has been beheaded. The stream of blood forms an elegant ribbon, while the lily rising from the pool that the fluid creates symbolises his chastity.
The Climax
The Climax is an 1893 illustration by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), a leading artist of the Decadent (1880-1900) and Aesthetic movements. It depicts a scene from Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, in which the femme fatale Salome has just kissed the severed head of John the Baptist, which she grasps in her hands. Elements of eroticism, symbolism, and Orientalism are present in the piece. This illustration is one of sixteen Wilde commissioned Beardsley to create for the publication of the play. The series is considered to be Beardsley’s most celebrated work, created at the age of 21. …
First published in 1894, The Climax consists of strong, precise lines, decorative motifs characteristic of the developing Art Nouveau style, and the use of only black ink. Beardsley’s style was influenced by Japanese woodcuts also known as Ukiyo-e, which comes through in the flatness of imagery, compositional arrangement, and the stylistic motifs. Elements of eroticism are also apparent.
The main focus of this illustration, Salome, floats in midair and in her hands she holds the head of John the Baptist just after she kissed it, depicting the final words said by Salome in the play “J’ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan, j’ai baisé ta bouche” (“I have kissed your mouth, Jokannan, I have kissed your mouth”). Her hair billows in snake-like tendrils above her as she stares powerfully into the eyes of John the Baptist. His severed head drips blood that nourishes the phallic lily. The flower also symbolises purity. Composing the background behind these two figures is a white quarter section of the moon and a stylised depiction of peacock feathers, a signature motif in Beardsley’s illustrations, made of concentric circles.
Beardsley satirised Victorian values regarding sex, that at the time highly valued respectability, and men’s fear of female superiority, as the women’s movement made gains in economic rights and occupational and educational opportunities by the 1880s. Salome’s power over men can be seen in the way that Beardsley presents her as a monster-like figure, reminiscent of Medusa.
Reaction
Beardsley said of his drawing that rather than using thicker lines for the foreground than those for the background, he felt that the lines should be the same width. Morgan Meis of The New Yorker states that “his influence on the look of Art Nouveau, and then on early modernism, is hard to overstate. His thick black lines fused the graphical ideas of the past with the techniques and subject matter of a new age just on the horizon.” He was an inspiration to Japanese illustrators, graphic designers, and printmakers of the early 20th century Taishō period.
The Climax is described as among his finest works by Ian Fletcher and established him as one of the “Decadence”. It was not appreciated, though, by mainstream art critics of the time, who found the Salome drawings repulsive and unintelligible. Art historian Kenneth Clark said that it “aroused more horror and indignation than any graphic work hitherto produced in England.”
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Dancer’s Reward 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
Salome is contemplating her prize. Gaping, she tilts Jokanaan’s severed and bleeding head towards her. Once again, their expressions mirror each other. The elongated arm of the executioner holds up the platter on which the head rests. This drawing resonates with European symbolist art, in which the contemplation of a severed head is a recurring image.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Toilette of Salome (second version) 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Stomach Dance 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
Salome is shown performing her celebrated dance to the sounds produced by an impish musician. Wilde wrote appreciatively to Beardsley after Salome was published: ‘For Aubrey: for the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the dance of the seven veils is, and can see that invisible dance.’
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Eyes of Herod 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
This illustrates the passage before Salome’s famous dance in exchange for the head of Jokanaan. Talking about Herod, Salome remarks pensively: ‘Why does the Tetrarch look at me all the while with his mole’s eyes under his shaking eyelids? It is strange that the husband of my mother looks at me like that. I know not what it means. Of a truth I know it too well.’
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Enter Herodias 1893 (published 1907) Stephen Calloway
Enter Herodias is named after a stage direction in Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé. Wilde originally wrote the play in French, and he chose Beardsley to illustrate the English translation of the play. Beardsley drew erotic and satirical images, some of which were entirely unrelated to the plot of play.
Enter Herodias shows the moment when Salome’s mother enters the stage. To the bottom right there is a caricature of Oscar Wilde holding a copy of Salome and gesturing up at his own play. It also includes two nude figures. Herodias’s breasts are exposed but she is covered by the large cloak. John Lane, who was Beardsley’s publisher, demanded that Beardsley cover the page on the right’s genitalia with a fig-leaf. But he failed to spot the penis-shaped candles the artist had drawn in the foreground, and the erection of the figure to the left.
Beardsley’s obsession with the erotic played upon Victorian taboos. Beardsley was often deliberately trying to be provocative. Many people at the time thought that Beardsley’s obsession with erotic art came from the fact that he was young and ‘consumptive’. Today we call ‘consumption’ Tuberculosis (or TB). A strange, but frequent 19th century perception of TB was that it went hand in hand with an obsession about sex.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) John and Salome 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
This depicts a scene of powerful tension between Jokanaan (left) and Salome (right). By the use of mirrored poses and interlocking folds of drapery – like an image of yin and yang – he expresses the characters’ conflicted feelings of attraction and rejection. John Lane refused the design, either because of the partial nudity of Salome, or possibly because of the androgynous appearance of the Baptist who could here be Salome’s twin.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Black Cape 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Peacock Skirt 1893 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
This is one of Beardsley’s most famous and acclaimed designs. It conflates two scenes from the play. In one, the page of Herodias warns the young Syrian about looking too much at Salome. In the other, Herod promises 50 of his white peacocks in exchange for Salome’s dance and imagines them forming a ‘great white cloud’ around her. The scene was abstracted by Beardsley in a flamboyant demonstration of his calligraphic skills.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) J’ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan 1892-3 Ink and wash on paper Aubrey Beardsley Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University
This is Beardsley’s first interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s play, before it was translated into English. It was reproduced in the first issue of The Studio, and it is characteristic of Beardsley’s intricate hairline style. It may well have been a bid to illustrate the play. If it was, it paid off, as Wilde did ask John Lane to commission Beardsley. The artist applied some green watercolour to the drawing after it was published.
Gustave Moreau (French, 1826-1898) The Apparition (detail) 1874-1876 Watercolour on paper Musée d’Orsay, Paris, gift of Charles Ayem
This watercolour made a strong impression on Oscar Wilde at the 1876 Paris Salon exhibition. It represents the bloody vision of John the Baptist’s head appearing while Salomé dances for Herod. It featured in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s 1884 novel À Rebours (Against Nature). In it, the reclusive hero contemplates this watercolour. Wilde could quote at length from this ‘bible’ of decadence. Both the novel and The Apparition played a part in the creation of Wilde’s own Salomé.
Alla Nazimova (1879-1945) Charles Bryant (1879-1948) Salomé 1923 Film, 35 mm, black and white Running time: 1hr 12mins Sets and costumes by Natacha Rambova, after Aubrey Beardsley
This 1923 silent “Salome” is probably the best filmed version of the scandalous Oscar Wilde one-act play. It’s basically a photographed avant-garde theatre production performed on a single set based on Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations for the published play.
Alla Nazimova’s Salomé
This 1923 silent film is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play. The imaginative set and costumes by Natacha Rambova are directly inspired by Beardsley’s drawings, and credited as such. The project was conceived and led by Alla Nazimova, a famous Hollywood actor during the silent movie era. She was drawn to Salome and financed its screen adaptation herself. Nazimova had relationships with women and her film reflects themes of same-sex desire present in Beardsley’s drawings. Charles Bryant, with whom she pretended to be married, was credited as the director, as women did not have equal status in Hollywood.
This film perpetuates some demeaning stereotypes that were current during Beardsley’s lifetime and beyond. This is reflected particularly in the portrayal of the musicians with dwarfism. At that time people with restricted growth were widely associated with servitude and treated as a source of spectacle.
Posters
When Beardsley first travelled to Paris in 1892, he was enthralled by the many posters that adorned the city. The French posters showed the possibilities of this new mass-produced outdoor format and the potential of large-scale colour reproduction. Beardsley was quick to embrace this. Understanding that posters would be viewed in passing, often at a distance, his designs experimented with bold, simplified forms and solid blocks of colour. For Beardsley, advertising was central to modern life and an opportunity to integrate art into everyday experience. As he put it, ‘Beauty has laid siege to the city’.
In the autumn of 1894, the first ever English exhibition of posters opened in London. Pictorial posters were enjoying a boom in Britain and were beginning to be recognised as an art form. The exhibition featured work by celebrated French artists such as Jules Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, known as the ‘fathers’ of the modern poster. Significantly, it also included several works by Beardsley. Not only did this place Beardsley’s posters on a par with the art that had inspired him, it also attested to his importance in the development of British poster design.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901) Divan Japonais 1892 Colour lithograph on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
In Paris, Beardsley would have encountered Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters, including this one, on hoardings across the city. It advertises the popular cabaret nightspot, the Divan Japonais, and depicts two stars of Parisian nightlife, the singer Yvette Guilbert and the dancer Jane Avril. Beardsley was inspired as much by Toulouse-Lautrec’s vivid portrayal of modern life as his striking style, typified by dramatic blocks of colour, silhouettes and bold outlines. The admiration was mutual: Toulouse-Lautrec also expressed the wish to buy a copy of Salome.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Pseudonym and Autonym Libraries 1894 Colour lithograph on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
This poster shares its title with the series of novels and short story collections it promotes. The name was inspired by the publisher, T. Fisher Unwin’s, recognition that women often wrote under a pseudonym, whereas men used their actual name (autonym). The woman pictured here appears confident as she rushes towards the bookshop, implying that knowledge brings freedom.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Isolde Printed 1899 Colour lithograph and line block print on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Turning again to Wagner for inspiration, Beardsley depicts the tragic heroine, Isolde, on the brink of drinking the fateful love potion. She stands against a stage curtain, bright red in the original design and equally bold in the orange used for this first printing. Beardsley asserted, ‘I have no great care for colour, but [in posters] colour is essential’. This design was published as a colour lithograph supplement in The Studio in October 1895.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) A Comedy of Sighs 1894 Colour lithograph on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
This was Beardsley’s first poster design. It appeared on walls and hoardings around London shortly after the publication of Salome and introduced his art to an even wider audience. The poster stole the limelight from the performances of the two short plays it advertised. Critics were outraged by the woman’s ‘ugliness’ and the indecency of her plunging neckline. Punch magazine even punned, ‘Let’s “Ave-a-nue” Poster!’
Beardsley’s Circle
This room introduces the key figures in Beardsley’s life. The glowing article in The Studio and his success with Le Morte Darthur had brought him into the public eye at the age of 20. Following this, a sequence of fortuitous meetings with leading cultural figures of the day led him to the heart of avant-garde literary and artistic circles in 1890s London. Witty, talented and well-read, he was rapidly taken up by a group of young artists and writers who identified as aesthetes, acutely sensitive to art and beauty. These included the portrait painter William Rothenstein; Max Beerbohm, the essayist and caricaturist; and the art critic and dealer Robert Ross, the friend and former lover of Oscar Wilde. Beardsley’s fame grew with the publication of his illustrations to Wilde’s Salome in 1894 and his involvement in the fashionable magazine The Yellow Book, a period addressed in the following room. At this point his group of friends began to expand rapidly. But with the fall of Wilde early in 1895, Beardsley moved first to Dieppe, and thereafter spent little time in England.
In his last years his circle included fellow contributors to The Savoy magazine: the poets W.B. Yeats and Arthur Symons and the painter Charles Conder. The wealthy French-Russian poet and writer Marc-André Raffalovich became an important supporter and patron. His most significant friend in this period was Leonard Smithers, his endearing but unscrupulous publisher.
His mother and sister Mabel were constants throughout his brief life. They were with him when he died at Menton on the French Riviera in 1898.
This room nods at Beardsley’s orange and black decoration scheme in the Pimlico house that he and Mabel owned briefly in 1894. ‘Orangé’ was famously described as the chief decadent colour by Joris-Karl Huysmans in his 1884 novel À rebours (Against Nature), which may have informed Beardsley’s choice.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Professor Fred Brown 1892 Graphite and ink on paper Tate. Presented by Mrs Helen Thorp 1927
In 1891 Beardsley enrolled at the Westminster School of Art on the advice of Edward Burne-Jones. For just a few months he attended evening classes given by the school’s principal, the painter Fred Brown. Brown was a pillar of the avant-garde exhibiting society, the New English Art Club. Beardsley added the society’s initials to Brown’s name in the title of this drawing.
Jacques-Émile Blanche (French, 1861-1942) Charles Conder 1904 Oil paint on canvas Tate, Presented by Georges A. Mevil-Blanche 1947
Conder specialised in painting fans and small pictures on silk depicting romanticised figures in 18th-century costume. He and Beardsley became close during the planning of The Savoy magazine in the summer of 1895 when many of their circle were gathered in Dieppe.
Jacques-Emile Blanche lived near Dieppe and was a friend of Degas, Manet and Renoir. However, he also made frequent visits to England, where he painted and exhibited and was well known in artistic and society circles. This is a portrait of the British painter Charles Conder (1868-1909), who was greatly interested in contemporary French art. Conder befriended Toulouse-Lautrec who helped him obtain an exhibition in Paris. Blanche first met Conder in Paris, but they became friends in 1895 when they both spent the summer in Dieppe. This portrait, which captures his flamboyant character, was painted in Conder’s house in London.
Gallery label, August 2004
Jacques-Émile Blanche (French, 1861-1942) Aubrey Beardsley 1895 Oil paint on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London
The society painter Blanche welcomed many of the English artists and writers who visited Dieppe to his nearby family home. This portrait, painted during the summer of 1895, shows the extent to which Beardsley had adopted the dress and cultivated the manner of Parisian dandies such as Comte Robert de Montesquiou.
Walter Richard Sickert (British, 1860-1942) Aubrey Beardsley 1894 Tempera on canvas Tate, Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund 1932
Sickert observed Beardsley in Hampstead churchyard following a ceremony for the unveiling of a bust commemorating the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821). Though angular and painfully thin, he was elegantly dressed as always. Keats had died young from tuberculosis. The parallel between the poet and the artist cannot have been lost on those friends, like Sickert, who knew of Beardsley’s condition.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (English born America, 1882-1966) W.B. Yeats 1908 Photo-etching on paper National Portrait Gallery, London
Yeats was a leading figure of the Irish poetic and nationalist movement, the ‘Celtic Twilight’. He was also central as an activist in London literary circles. The idea of the poets, writers and artists of the 1890s as sensitive, decadent and doomed owes much to Yeats’s myth-making in his later memoirs. In these he painted a compelling picture of ‘The Tragic Generation’.
The writer and art critic Robert Ross was a pivotal figure in the aesthetic and decadent culture of 1890s London. He was Oscar Wilde’s first male lover and later became his literary executor, working tirelessly to safeguard his works and re-establish his reputation. Ross also used his connections and influence to promote and protect many friends, including Beardsley and his family. His 1909 book on Beardsley was one of the first serious studies and remains a valuable source of insights.
Reginald Savage (British, 1886-1932) John Gray c. 1896-1897 Lithograph on paper National Portrait Gallery, London
As a young poet John Gray was initially a protégé of Oscar Wilde. He later moved away from the decadents and converted to Catholicism. He was ordained in 1901 and served for many years as the priest at St Peter’s Morningside, Edinburgh. The church was built by his lifelong companion Marc-André Raffalovich, a wealthy writer who provided Beardsley’s principal financial support in his last years.
The Yellow Book
In 1894, Beardsley became art editor of The Yellow Book, a magazine that would become the most iconic publication of the decade. Its distinctive appearance immediately set the tone. Yellow was fashionable, urban, ironic and risqué, recalling the yellow wrappers of popular French erotic novels. The first volume was an instant and controversial success. Notably, it put art and literature on an equal footing. But it was Beardsley’s drawings that stole the show and gave the magazine its avant-garde reputation. Their bold style and daring modernity received praise and scorn in equal measure. With each new volume, his notoriety increased. To many the publication embodied the decadent spirit, and, as one critic observed, ‘to most, Aubrey Beardsley is The Yellow Book.‘
However, Beardsley’s meteoric success was short-lived. In 1895, Oscar Wilde was put on trial for sexual relationships with men and prosecuted for ‘gross indecency’. As the scandal tore through London, the backlash turned towards the notorious magazine and its audacious art editor. In the public mind, Beardsley was already connected to Wilde through his Salome illustrations. When Wilde was seen at his arrest carrying a yellow book (in fact a French novel, not The Yellow Book), the link between the author and the artist was damning. Outraged crowds broke the windows of the publishing house. John Lane, the publisher, succumbed to pressure and sacked Beardsley.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Cover Design for The Yellow Book Vol.I 1894 Ink on paper Tate. Bequeathed by John Lane 1926
Beardsley instantly set the tone for the magazine with this design for the first volume. His highly stylised manner, dramatically setting pure white against flat black, was completely new. The subject, two masked revellers abandoning themselves to hedonism, was also bold. The overt sensuality of the laughing woman was particularly shocking for the time. Oscar Wilde described her as ‘a terrible naked harlot’.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Edited by Aubrey Beardsley 1872-1898 (art) and Henry Harland 1861-1905 (literature) The Yellow Book, Volume I 1894 Elkin Mathews & John Lane, London April 1894 Stephen Calloway
In 1894 Aubrey Beardsley became the first Art Editor for The Yellow Book, a new literary periodical. There were hostile reactions to The Yellow Book from the wider press, who were alarmed by the shocking and ‘immoral’ illustrations and writing. The Westminster Gazette even commented that the publication should be made illegal. Things only got worse for Beardsley and The Yellow Book in 1895. The trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde for ‘gross indecency’ with men became linked to the publication. The press mistakenly reported seeing Wilde leaving the Cadogan Hotel with a copy of The Yellow Book under his arm. In fact, he was carrying a French erotic novel, which often had yellow covers.
Beardsley, who had collaborated with Wilde on Salome and whose art was strongly linked with The Yellow Book, was caught up in the scandal. He was dismissed as editor for The Yellow Book. Having lost his regular source of income, he was forced to sell his house and he temporarily moved to France.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Slippers of Cinderella 1894 Ink and watercolour on paper Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press
This is one of the rare drawings in which Beardsley used colour. It was first printed in black and white as he added the watercolour later. When it was published in the second volume of The Yellow Book, it was accompanied by a caption, probably written by the artist himself. This outlined a darker version of the Cinderella story, in which she is poisoned by powdered glass from her own slippers.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) La Dame aux Camélias 1894 Ink and watercolour on paper Tate. Presented by Colonel James Lister Melvill at the request of his brother, Harry Edward Melvill 1931
Beardsley was fascinated with the depiction of women at their dressing-tables. Here, the woman gazing into the mirror is the tragic heroine of the novel La Dame aux Camélias (1848), by French writer Alexandre Dumas. Beardsley may have identified with her because she, like him, had tuberculosis. He added washes of watercolour to the drawing between 1894 and 1897, after it had been published in The Yellow Book.
The title refers to the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, published in 1852, which tells the tragic story of a courtesan who sacrificed herself for her lover. The picture is part of a group of drawings of a woman at her dressing table and was originally published simply as Girl at Her Toilet. It is not clear whether Beardsley intended it from the outset to be a portrait of Madeleine Gautier, but it appears to relate to an earlier drawing of 1890, which is inscribed with the title of Dumas’s novel and bears some resemblance to this work in the silhouetted figure and treatment of the draperies. Beardsley may have identified with Madeleine Gautier, since, like her, he suffered from tuberculosis and would eventually also die of the disease.
The leitmotif of a woman admiring herself in a mirror recalls the paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), which Beardsley would have known. He may also have had in mind the work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917), who devoted much of his later career to pictures of woman at their toilet. Like many of Beardsley’s drawings of this period the picture is highly stylised. A solid black mass envelops the lower half of the room and seems about to consume the figure. Her arms have disappeared altogether, and her face is barely revealed above the extravagant collar of her frilly overcoat. The influence of Japanese woodcuts, which Beardsley collected, is apparent in the broad flat areas of colour and the use of silhouette. The most carefully realised passages in the drawing are the objects on the dressing table and the floral pattern of the wallpaper, which depicts either roses or camellias. The woman’s profile reveals dark shadows under the narrowed eyes and a turned down mouth, giving the impression of either illness or dissipation. However, in general, realism and individuality are suppressed in favour of surface pattern and overall design.
The drawing was first published in the journal St Paul’s on 2 April 1894, and at the time it was one of Beardsley’s most popular works. Six months later it was illustrated with the present title in Volume Three of The Yellow Book, an avant-garde journal of which Beardsley was art editor. Between 1894 and 1897 Beardsley added watercolour washes of pinkish-purple to the drawing, reducing the clarity of the image.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Black Cat 1894-1895 Line block print on paper Stephen Calloway
Commissioned by a North American publisher, Beardsley made four designs for the macabre tales of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). This illustrates Poe’s story of a man who tries to cover up the murder of his wife by concealing her body in the wall. He is betrayed by the shrieks of his black cat, mistakenly enclosed in the wall as well. The fearsome cat appears out of the darkness, its form outlined in white and starkly contrasting with the white of the dead woman’s face.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Frontispiece to Chopin’s Third Ballade 1895 Ink and wash on paper Tate. Presented by the Patrons of British Art through the Tate Gallery Foundation 1999 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was one of Beardsley’s musical heroes. Beardsley emphasises his delicately pointed fingers here. This relates to Chopin’s reputation as a powerful and subtle pianist. Beardsley’s setting is not historically accurate. Instead it is reminiscent of 1870s aesthetic movement interiors. The position of the figure and the curtain recall Whistler’s celebrated portrait of his mother, copied by Beardsley in the letter nearby.
Private collection, Maas Gallery
The Third Ballade was one of the greatest compositions by the Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin who died in 1849 at the age of thirty nine. While an initial viewing might suggest a simple equestrian portrait, there is an implicit subtext of female domination in the woman’s mastery of the horse. Her determined expression, and the disparity between the horse and rider, reinforce this. Although never published in his lifetime, this design was used to illustrate Beardsley’s obituary in The Studio in 1898.
Gallery label, August 2004
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Fat Woman 1894 Ink on paper Tate. Presented by Colonel James Lister Melvill at the request of his brother, Harry Edward Melvill 1931
John Lane refused to publish this drawing in The Yellow Book. The most likely reason is because it is an unflattering caricature of the artist Beatrice Whistler, James McNeill Whistler’s wife. Seated in the Café Royal, she is depicted as a domineering member of the demi-monde. Beardsley’s alternative title for the drawing – A Study in Major Lines – emphasises its artistic qualities but also jibes at Whistler’s musical titles.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Title page to The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser 1895 Line block and letterpress print on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
This design was planned as the frontispiece for Beardsley’s own novel. The story was an erotic and humorous version of the Tannhäuser legend, in which the poet discovers the home of Venus and becomes one of her worshippers. Beardsley had ambitions to be a writer and he continued to obsess over the ultimately unfinished novel until his death. He admitted early on that it progressed ‘tortoise fashion but admirably’. Initially Lane agreed to publish the novel, but in the aftermath of Wilde’s trial he did not dare.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Mirror of Love 1895 Ink over traces of graphite on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Beardsley first met Marc-André Raffalovich, a poet and writer, in April 1895. It was not long afterwards that he drew this frontispiece for his collection of poems, The Thread and the Path. The figure in the mirror expresses the theme of the first poem: the quest towards a new ideal that transcended traditional definitions of gender and sexuality. However, the publisher, David Nutt, was shocked by the figure which he believed had both female and male attributes and refused to print it.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Venus between Terminal Gods 1895 Ink on paper Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (The Higgins Bedford)
This drawing was also intended as an illustration for Beardsley’s unrealised novel for John Lane. It depicts Venus framed by two statues of male gods in the form of herms. Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), then President of the Royal Academy, was interested in the rising generation of artists and often commissioned drawings from them. Beardsley recorded that Leighton was encouraging about his work and greatly admired this design.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Caprice Verso: Masked Woman with a White Mouse c. 1894 Oil paint on canvas Tate. Purchased 1923
This is Beardsley’s only known oil painting. Unusually, it is double-sided. He began it in Walter Sickert’s studio, under his guidance. The subject on the front, Caprice, was painted first and relates closely to The Comedy Ballet of Marionettes I, displayed nearby. It shows a young woman being led through a doorway by an unfinished figure in a fanciful 18th-century costume. In the late-17th and 18th centuries, servants in European noble households included people of colour who were often enslaved and people with dwarfism. They were considered as ‘trophies’, demonstrating the power and status of those they served. Servants with dwarfism were often treated as ‘pets’, expected to amuse and entertain.
This is the only known oil painting by the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and was painted in the studio of Walter Sickert. It comprises two pictures on one canvas. Caprice, in which a woman is invited through a doorway by a dwarf, and on the back, Woman with a White Mouse. Both are ambiguous scenes that appear to represent carnival. Caprice derives from the drawing Comedy Ballet of Marionettes I which appeared in The Yellow Book in 1894. Like Beardsley’s drawings, Caprice simplifies shape and colour to strengthen the effect.
Gallery label, February 2016
This is the only known oil painting by Beardsley and, unusually, it comprises two pictures on the one canvas. The first painting to be completed appears to have been A Caprice, a fanciful yet sinister work, depicting a woman in a black dress with green trimmings and a black dwarf in a red costume. On the other side, painted between the stretchers, is an almost surreal image of a masked woman with a white mouse. Both works are unfinished, and should be regarded as experimental
A Caprice appears to derive from the drawing Comedy Ballet of Marionettes I, one of a series of three which appeared in the avant-garde journal, The Yellow Book, in July 1894. In both drawing and painting the woman is being invited by the sinister dwarf to pass through a doorway. The sexual connotations of this gesture are made more overt in the drawing, where the phallic form of the door is emphasised. Beardsley was constantly challenging the conventional view of male-female relations and in the second drawing in the series the woman approaches a door symbolising the female sexual organs.
The symbolism of Woman with a White Mouse also appears to be sexual, and Wilson refers to Freud’s theory that in dreams such things as mice become a substitute for the penis. Nevertheless, although Reade, too, describes the symbolism in this picture as ‘Freudian’, he also points out that Freud’s work was unknown in England in 1894.
Aware of the dramatic potential of black and shadowed areas, Beardsley contrasts areas of dark and light to great effect in both works. He also employs his favourite complementaries, red and green, to provide a stronger colour note in A Caprice. Stylistically he may have been influenced in these paintings by the early work of William Rothenstein (1872-1945), with whom he shared a studio, and whose pictures are inhabited by similarly bold and gloomy saturated forms. He may also have had in mind the work of the Venetian artist Pietro Longhi (1702-1783).
The title A Caprice was invented by the Beardsley scholar R.A. Walker who was the picture’s first owner. The name invites associations with the work of the fin-de-siècle poet Théodore Wratislaw (1871-1933), who published a selection of poems entitled Caprices in 1893.
Frances Fowle December 2000
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Masked Woman with a White Mouse c. 1894 Oil paint on canvas Tate. Purchased 1923
Masked Woman with a White Mouse was painted second. Beardsley seems to have preferred this side and hung it on the wall in the house he bought in Pimlico.
The Savoy
Dismissed from The Yellow Book, Beardsley faced the loss of his income and a newly hostile atmosphere in London. Despite his international fame, his financial situation was precarious, and he was forced to sell his house. Beardsley left England for Dieppe, the favourite French seaside resort of English writers and artists. There he encountered Leonard Smithers, an enterprising publisher (and occasional pornographer). Smithers proposed starting a new magazine to rival The Yellow Book.
With Beardsley as art editor and the poet Arthur Symons in charge of literature, The Savoy was launched in 1896, at first as a quarterly. After two issues, Smithers – perhaps unwisely – decided to publish monthly. The consequent strain on his resources meant The Savoy folded after just a year. However, over just eight numbers it became one of the most significant and most beautifully produced ‘little magazines’ of the period.
The Savoy was published in Britain, but social and artistic conservatism were on the rise there following Wilde’s trial. Smithers was the only publisher who would print work by Wilde or Beardsley at this time. Some booksellers, like W.H. Smith, refused to display works by Beardsley in their windows. W.B. Yeats famously declared that The Savoy had valiantly waged ‘warfare on the British public at a time when we had all against us’.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Savoy, Number 1 1896 Edited by Aubrey Beardsley 1872-1898 (art) and Arthur Symons 1865-1945 (literature) Leonard Smithers, London, January 1896 Stephen Calloway
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Third Tableau of Das Rheingold c. 1896 Ink on paper Lent by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Museum Appropriation Fund
This drawing, like a play-within-a-play, illustrates an episode in Under the Hill in which the Abbé is ‘ravished with the wit and beauty’ of a performance of Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Savoy, Number 2 1896 Edited by Aubrey Beardsley 1872-1898 (art) and Arthur Symons 1865-1945 (literature) Leonard Smithers, London, April 1896 Stephen Calloway
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Ave Atque Vale 1896 Ink on paper Private collection
This drawing accompanies Beardsley’s translation of the Hail and Farewell poem (Carmen CI) by Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BCE). In it, the Roman poet addresses his dead brother. Beardsley’s spare and beautiful composition captures the moving spirit of the poem. It attracted considerable praise when it appeared in the seventh number of The Savoy. Max Beerbohm wrote that ‘Catullus could not have craved a more finely emotional picture for his elegy’.
The Rape of Lock
Beardsley was a great admirer of the poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Oscar Wilde had ridiculed his poetic taste, claiming ‘there are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to like Pope’.
Yet in 1896 Beardsley embarked on the illustration of his mock-epic poem, The Rape of the Lock (1712). In Pope’s title, the word ‘rape’ is used in its original sense of theft or abduction, rather than referring to sexual assault. The poem makes fun of a real incident during which Lord Petre (renamed ‘the Baron’) cut off a lock of the hair of Arabella Fermor (‘Belinda’ in the poem) without her permission, causing a feud between their families.
Inspired by the linear intricacies of French 18th-century copper-plate engravings, which he admired and collected, Beardsley developed a new, highly decorative style. The title page amusingly credits him as having ’embroidered’ the illustrations.
This is the first time that so many of the original drawings for the book have been exhibited together.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Dream 1896 Ink over graphite on paper The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Beardsley drew this as the frontispiece for Pope’s poem. It illustrates Ariel, Belinda’s guardian sylph (a spirit of the air), by her bed, while she is still dreaming. Beardsley used his new ‘stippled manner’ or use of dots, to render the intricate patterns on the bed curtains.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Baron’s Prayer 1896 Ink and graphite on paper Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Scofield Thayer
The Baron is depicted kneeling at an altar made from a pile of books of love stories. He prays to the God of Love for help to obtain the prize of a lock of Belinda’s hair.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Rape of the Lock 1896 Ink over graphite on paper Private collection
The drawing illustrates the fateful moment when the Baron approaches to cut a lock of Belinda’s hair. She is unaware, her back turned to him. The fancifully dressed pageboy in the foreground (who may be a person with dwarfism) seems to reference a similar character in The Toilette scene in the Marriage A-la-mode series by William Hogarth (1697-1764). This adds an 18th-century connection to the work. He is the only figure to engage with the viewer, as if to point knowingly to the Baron’s mischief.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Cave of Spleen 1896 Ink on paper Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection
Belinda, sitting to the right, across the drawing, has sought refuge in the Cave of Spleen. Umbriel, a gnome, is addressing her. Beardsley interpreted the author’s fantastical description of the cave and creatures within. This unleashed his delight in grotesque forms:
Unnumbered throngs on every side are seen of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen. Here living teapots stand, one arm held out, One bent; the handle this, and that the spout… Men prove with child, a powerful fancy works, And maids, turned bottles, cry aloud for corks.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Battle of the Beaux and the Belles c. 1896 Ink on paper The Henry Barber Trust, the Barber Institute of Fine Art, The University of Birmingham
Belinda, furious at the theft of the lock of her hair, faces her attacker the baron. Beardsley chose to depict the moment in the poem just before she throws a pinch of snuff in his face and overpowers him. This drawing was praised for its dramatic action. Beardsley’s virtuosity as a draughtsman is seen in the close-laid lines of his Rape of the Lock illustrations which were particularly admired by his contemporaries. Many thought this series of designs his best work.
Mademoiselle de Maupin
Beardsley worked on illustrating Théophile Gautier’s novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) for Leonard Smithers between February and October 1897. The hero of the story, D’Albert, searches for the ‘perfect’ woman. Instead he becomes overwhelmingly drawn to a young man. The object of his desire is eventually revealed to be Madelaine de Maupin, a woman who does not conform to gender expectations of the day, particularly through dress, and is attracted to both men and women. The plot reflects on an ideal unification of male and female attributes, a widely discussed idea in literary and artistic circles in 19th-century Europe.
In his preface, Gautier promoted ‘art for art’s sake’. This would become the doctrine of the aesthetic movement, which developed in the late 19th century to promote beauty over meaning or morality in art. D’Albert and de Maupin’s sexual encounter is described in terms of aesthetic perfection. However, de Maupin leaves D’Albert immediately afterwards.
Beardsley used watercolour in his drawings to create a new softer decorative style. His friend Robert Ross suggested that this technique was ‘less demanding’ at a time when his health was in rapid decline. But Beardsley later reverted to a more detailed approach, showing that he was simply exploring new modes of expression.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Mademoiselle de Maupin 1898 Photo-etching on paper Stephen Calloway
This is Beardsley’s frontispiece for Mademoiselle de Maupin. It shows the heroine dressed in her preferred outfit, men’s clothes as imagined by Beardsley. This is the first illustration of just six that Beardsley completed for Smithers’s planned edition of Gautier’s novel. He had optimistically intended to draw 32 but was too unwell to fulfil this ambition.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Lady with the Rose 1897 Ink, wash and graphite on paper Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Scofield Thayer
D’Albert does not find Madelaine de Maupin straight away. He first embarks on an affair with a woman he calls Rosette, the subject of this illustration. Beardsley developed different ‘types’ of women in his work, defined by particular features. Here, Rosette, sultry with large, heavy-lidded eyes, conforms to Beardsley’s late ‘type’. The striped walls of the room recall the style of interior decoration that Beardsley had favoured in his own house at 114 Cambridge Street, Pimlico.
Curiosa
While recuperating in the south of England during the summer of 1896, Beardsley began his two most explicit series of drawings yet. These were both inspired by classical sources. The first was a set of eight designs for the Ancient Greek comedy, Lysistrata, by Aristophanes. In this famous satirical play, Athenian and Spartan women bring an end to conflict by refusing to have sex with their warring menfolk until there is peace between their two cities. Beardsley’s other, equally outrageous set of drawings was made for Juvenal’s Sixth Satire, a misogynistic attack on the morals and sexual habits of the women of Ancient Rome.
These subjects chimed with Beardsley’s own irreverent humour and fascination with all aspects of sexuality – and, perhaps, his own sexual frustrations. Smithers, who prided himself that he would ‘publish what all the others are afraid to touch’, no doubt encouraged him. Matching the exuberant eroticism of the texts, Beardsley adopted a starkly linear style for these drawings. This bold new direction was inspired by his knowledge of Ancient Greek vase painting and Japanese erotic prints.
Very few of Beardsley’s contemporaries would have known of these drawings. Their ‘indecency’ meant they could not be published and advertised in the usual way. Instead they were only made available by Smithers to a select group of like-minded collectors through private subscription. Even so, Beardsley seems to have had second thoughts, perhaps prompted by his growing Catholic faith. On his deathbed, he wrote to Smithers imploring him to destroy all his ‘obscene drawings’, a request that Smithers ignored.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Lysistrata Shielding her Coynte 1896 Ink over graphite on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Beardsley made this as the frontispiece image for the book. It introduces the key themes of the play. Lysistrata, the women’s leader, turns her back on a statue of an aroused male deity, usually a symbol of fertility and virility. With one hand she seems to bar sexual relations or, perhaps, pleasure herself. With the other she holds an olive branch and delicately touches the top of an enormous phallus. The implication is that peace will bring an end to war and male sexual frustration. Her knowing smile reveals her control. Her sexual empowerment disrupts traditional Victorian views of male power and of female ignorance about sex.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Two Athenian Women in Distress 1896 Collotype print on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Beardsley referred to this scene as ‘the rampant women’. The play describes the women deserting Athens as abstinence begins to take its toll. One woman even tries to escape by flying on the back of a sparrow. The bird was used as a symbol for male virility and dominance in contemporary pornography, as Beardsley would have known. He subverts that association here by making the sparrow a symbol of female sexual liberation. The drawing for this illustration was destroyed in a fire in 1929. Fortunately, a set of full-size collotype photographic reproductions had been made shortly before.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Cinesias Entreating Myrrhina to Coition 1896 Line block printed in purple on paper Victoria and Albert Museum Wikipedia Commons Public domain
Originally Beardsley wanted to print the Lysistrata series in purple ink, but Smithers abandoned this idea, probably for financial reasons. It depicts Myrrhina dashing away after teasing her husband, Cinesias. Myrrhina has provoked him to the point that he will do anything in return for sex. She has all the power while her husband is incapacitated by desire. Her clothes, particularly the thigh-high black stockings, suggest Beardsley was influenced by 18th-century pornography and more recent erotic works such as those of the Belgian artist Félicien Rops (1833-1898).
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Examination of the Herald 1896 Ink over graphite on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Beardsley was greatly inspired by Japanese shunga (erotic) prints. He even hung a series by Utamaro (c. 1753-1806) on the walls of his house in Pimlico, London – to the shock of those that visited. His study of such art is apparent in his adoption of exaggeratedly large phalluses to dramatise the extent of the men’s sexual frustration. In this illustration, the herald’s arrival in Athens to announce that Sparta is prepared to make peace becomes a bawdy joke. The young Spartan is conspicuously vigorous and virile. In contrast, the Athenian is elderly and shrivelled. His close inspection could be read as desire for the younger man or an interest in restoring his own virility.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Lacedaemonian Ambassadors 1896 Ink over graphite on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
The success of the women’s sex strike is apparent in this drawing. The Lacedaemonian (or Spartan) ambassadors arrive in Athens to make peace, their frustrated sexual desires evident in their absurdly enlarged erections. Beardsley subverts this symbol of male virility and power as it incapacitates the Spartans and makes them ridiculous. The drawing also reveals Beardsley’s knowledge of classical culture. In Ancient Greek comic stage performances, actors sometimes wore large stage-prop phalluses to signal aspects of their character to the more distant sections of the audience.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) The Impatient Adulterer 1896-7 Ink over graphite on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
Beardsley described this drawing as ‘the adulterer fiddling with his foreskin in impatient expectation’. It illustrates Juvenal’s warning against Roman women who pretend to be ill, only so they can stay in bed and await their lovers. The man’s intention is clear, his toes are curled in desire and echo his insulting hand gesture, making the horns of a cuckold (a man whose wife is unfaithful). Contemporary viewers would also have identified his low brow as an indicator of an unintelligent and brutish character – perhaps a subtle signal that this is not his plot, but that of his scheming lover.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Messalina and her Companion 1895 Graphite, ink and watercolour on paper Tate. Presented by A.L. Assheton 1928
Messalina was the third wife of the Roman Emperor, Claudius I, and a shrewd political strategist. Yet historically she has been portrayed entirely in terms of her sexuality, either as a woman with no control over her desires or as a ruthless courtier using sex to achieve her goals. In his Sixth Satire, Juvenal perpetuated the myth that she secretly volunteered in a brothel. In this, Beardsley’s first depiction of the empress, he shows her disguised in a blonde wig and hooded cloak as she goes on one of her nightly visits. It was rejected from The Yellow Book as too daring.
Epilogue
After a wild spur-of-the-moment trip to Brussels in the spring of 1896, Beardsley suffered a much more severe haemorrhage of the lung from which he never fully recovered. Painfully aware of his own mortality, he moved from place to place in search of the ‘healthier’ air his doctors advised. Though the advance of his condition was relentless, with each change of location came new inspiration. His final years are characterised by a pattern of enthusiastically taking up new projects only to grow tired and abandon them. While his focus and energy gradually diminished, his late works show that his ambition, intellect, imagination and technical power did not.
Beardsley died in Menton in the south of France on 16 March 1898. He was 25 years old. As his friend Robert Ross commented: ‘there need be no sorrow for an “inheritor of unfulfilled renown.” Old age is no more a necessary complement to the realisation of genius than premature death. Within six years… he produced masterpieces he might have repeated but never surpassed.’
William Rothenstein (English, 1872-1945) Aubrey Beardsley 1897 (published 1899) Lithograph on paper National Portrait Gallery, London
This sensitive portrait of Beardsley was drawn by Rothenstein, one of his closest friends. It was probably done while Beardsley was in Paris in April 1897. The city – with its promenades, shops and cafés – raised his spirits and temporarily revived his health.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Volpone Adoring his Treasure 1898 Ink over graphite on paper Aubrey Beardsley Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
Beardsley’s final project was to illustrate Ben Jonson’s 17th-century play, Volpone or the Foxe. He had originally planned a sequence of 24 illustrations but died before the project was completed. This picture of Volpone worshipping at the altar of his wealth is a testament to Beardsley’s technical skill. Evoking 17th-century engravings, the drawing balances intricate linework with curving forms and blocks of white space. This was to be his last great drawing. It poignantly shows that Beardsley’s imagination and stylistic development continued even as his health was declining.
Monsieur Abel Aubrey Beardsley in the room in which he died, Hôtel Cosmopolitain, Menton 1897 Photograph, collodion printing-out paper print on paper National Portrait Gallery, London
This photograph is the last portrait of Beardsley before his death. Despite his poor health, he is still dressed elegantly and languorously posed. The walls are covered with his cherished prints by Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506). The bookshelf is lined with photographs of those he loved and admired: his mother and sister, Raffalovich and a likeness of Wagner. On his desk stands a crucifix, reflecting his recent conversion to Catholicism.
Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Ali Baba 1897 Line block print on paper Victoria and Albert Museum
This is Beardsley’s only other completed design for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It was made almost a year after his first drawing (shown nearby) and intended as the cover of the book. Ali Baba is shown, having discovered the cave of treasures, dripping in jewels and grown fat.
After Beardsley – The Early Years
The fall of Oscar Wilde was a blow from which the decadent artistic and literary world of the fin de siècle (‘end of century’) never fully recovered. But it was Beardsley’s death in 1898 that truly marked the end of an era. His friend Max Beerbohm caught this mood when he wrote of himself, ‘I belong to the Beardsley period’.
Beardsley’s drawings had been much imitated in his lifetime. Following his death, many young illustrators sought to step into his shoes. They worked in his style or, in some cases, made deliberate forgeries of his work. Few approached his skill as a draftsman or the rich fantasy of his imagination. Gathered here are some notable exceptions.
Collected editions of Beardsley’s drawings published after his death brought his work to an even wider audience. Alongside the illustrations to his most famous books, these included many of his drawings previously printed only in ephemeral publications. His designs proved influential for artists not only in Britain, but also throughout Europe and in Russia and Japan.
The large stylised flower held by the woman and the bold expressive lines used by Mackintosh in this poster were enough for contemporaries to make a link with Beardsley. The art dealer Alexander Reid exhibited posters and designs by Mackintosh, Beardsley and others together in his Glasgow gallery in 1895. This prompted a comparison between both artists in the press.
Harry Clarke (Irish, 1889-1931) The Hindu Maid 1916 In Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales, 1st edition, George Harrap & Co, London 1916 Private collection
Harry Clarke (Irish, 1889-1931) ‘Music! Music’ cried the Emperor. ‘You little precious golden bird, sing!’ 1916 In Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales, 1st edition, George Harrap & Co, London 1916 Private collection
The Irish artist Harry Clarke became known for his book illustrations and, later in his career, for his stained-glass windows. His illustrations for Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales were his first to be published, in 1916. They reveal a close observation of Beardsley’s intricate lines, but also of his subjects. ‘Music! Music’ … in particular seems to pay homage to Beardsley’s Self-portrait in Bed, published in The Yellow Book.
Harry Clarke (Irish, 1889-1931) ‘I know what you want,’ said the Sea Witch 1916 In Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales, 1st edition, George Harrap & Co, London 1916 Private collection Wikipedia Commons Public domain
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