Exhibitions: ‘Howard Greenberg, Collection’ and ‘Freaks, The Monstrous Parade: Photographs from Enrico Praloran Collection’ at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Exhibition dates: both 21st September 2012 – 6th January 2013

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Migratory Cotton Picker
Eloy, Arizona, 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Library of Congress
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

This is a meta-post where I have brought together photographs from the second exhibition Freaks, The Monstrous Parade: Photographs from Enrico Praloran Collection and all the good quality images of Todd Browning’s cult film Freaks (1932) that were available online, since the museum only provided me with three media images (the first three) on a fascinating subject. By reflection, the photographs from Freaks have a strange correlation to the photographs that appear in the Howard Greenberg, Collection.

There is an interesting discussion by Amanda Ann Klein on her blog (see link below) about her students reaction to the film that she taught as part of her Trash Cinema class. She observes that, “Freaks preaches acceptance and… the belief that we are all “God’s children.” And yet, the film was intended to “out horror” Frankenstein through its fantastic display of disabled bodies…” but that her students did not see it as an exploitation film, in fact they approved of the revenge taken by the freaks on Cleopatra and Hercules at the end of the film, even though this seemed to replicate the very imagery Browning denounced earlier in the film. Klein insightfully notes that “it did prove to be an interesting example of how a film’s reception can change dramatically over time.”

The content of a work of art is never fixed by the author as the context and meaning of the work is never fixed by the viewer. As David Smail notes the truth changes according to, among other things, developments in our values and understandings. There can be many truths depending on our line-of-sight and point-of-view but a subjective non-final truth has to be actively struggled for:

“Where objective knowing is passive, subjective knowing is active – rather than giving allegiance to a set of methodological rules which are designed to deliver up truth through some kind of automatic process [in this case the image], the subjective knower takes a personal risk in entering into the meaning of the phenomena to be known … Those who have some time for the validity of subjective experience but intellectual qualms about any kind of ‘truth’ which is not ‘objective’, are apt to solve their problem by appealing to some kind of relativity. For example, it might be felt that we all have our own versions of the truth about which we must tolerantly agree to differ. While in some ways this kind of approach represents an advance on the brute domination of ‘objective truth’, it in fact undercuts and betrays the reality of the world given to our subjectivity. Subjective truth has to be actively struggled for: we need the courage to differ until we can agree. Though the truth is not just a matter of personal perspective, neither is it fixed and certain, objectively ‘out there’ and independent of human knowing. ‘The truth’ changes according to, among other things, developments and alterations in our values and understandings … the ‘non-finality’ of truth is not to be confused with a simple relativity of ‘truths’.”

Smail, David. Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1984, pp.152-153.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne for allowing me to publish some of the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Madrid
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos
Courtesy of Fondation HCB and Howard Greenberg Collection

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Seville
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos
Courtesy of Fondation HCB and Howard Greenberg Collection

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Greyhound Bus Terminal, 33rd and 34th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, Manhattan
1936
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Ruth Orkin (American, 1921-1985)
American Girl in Italy
1951
Gelatin silver print
© Ruth Orkin
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Edward Weston (American, 1886–1958)
Nahui Olin
1923
Platinum print
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Edward Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879–1973)
Gloria Swanson
1924
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874–1940)
Powerhouse Mechanic
1924
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

André Kertész (American born in Hungary, 1894-1985)
Chez Mondrian
1926
Gelatin silver print on carte postale
The Howard Greenberg Collection

Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902–2002)
The Daughter of the Dancers
1933
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Negro Church, South Carolina
1936
Gelatin silver print
© Library of Congress
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California
1936
Gelatin silver print
© Library of Congress
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Young Girl in Profile
1948
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Fifth Avenue
c. 1959
© Howard Greenberg Gallery
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Collection

The Musée de l’Elysée presents different approaches to collecting photography by means of these original exhibitions.

Howard Greenberg, Collection

Howard Greenberg has been a gallery owner for over thirty years and is considered today one of the pillars of the New York photography scene. While his position as a dealer is well established, little was known of his passion for collecting, presently revealed to the public for the first time. The primary reason to explain why it took so long to discover this collection is because building such a collection demands time. Only in time can the maturity of a collection be measured; the time necessary to smooth trends, confirm the rarity of a print, and in the end, validate the pertinence of a vision. In an era of immediacy, when new collectors exhibit unachieved projects or create their own foundation, great original collections are rare. Howard Greenberg’s is certainly one of the few still to be discovered.

The quality of a collection does not rely on the sole accumulation of master pieces but can best be assessed through a dialectical movement: a collection is the collector’s oeuvre, a set of images operating a transformation in the perception not only of the photographs, but also of photography. This renewed perception is two-fold in the Greenberg collection; through the surprising combination of two approaches, the experimental practice of photography that questions the medium as such, bringing it to the limits of abstraction on one hand, and on the other, a documentary practice, carried out through its recording function of the real. This apparently irreconcilable duality takes on a particular signification in the Greenberg collection, an investigation of the possibilities offered by photography, a quest for photography itself, questioning what it is.

Howard Greenberg and his collection have largely contributed to the writing of a chapter of history. While contributing to the recognition of long neglected figures of the New York post-war photography scene, filling a gap, as gallery owner, Howard Greenberg, the collector, ensured the preservation of a coherent body by building over that period a unique collection of major photographs.

This collection of over 500 photographs was patiently built over the last thirty years and stands out for the high quality of its prints. A set of some 120 works are exhibited for the first time at the Musée de l’Elysée, revealing different aspects of Howard Greenberg’s interests, from the modernist aesthetics of the 20s and 30s, with works by Edward Steichen, Edward Weston or the Czech School, to contemporary photographers such as Minor White, Harry Callahan and Robert Frank. Humanist photography is particularly well represented, including among others, Lewis Hine and Henri Cartier-Bresson. An important section is dedicated to the Farm Security Administration’s photographers, such as Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange, witnesses to the Great Depression years of the 30s. Above all, the collection demonstrates the great influence of New York in the history of 20th century photography with the images of Berenice Abbott, Weegee, Leon Levinstein or Lee Friedlander conveying its architecture and urban lifestyle. Commending its work and prominent position, and wishing to make his private collection available to a large audience, Howard Greenberg selected the Musée de l’Elysée to host his collection.

The Musée de l’Elysée and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson jointly produce this exhibition which, after Lausanne, will subsequently be presented in Paris.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée website

Freaks, The Monstrous Parade: Photographs from Enrico Praloran Collection

American director Tod Browning (1880-1962) has a particular attraction for the uncanny. Freaks, his cult movie shot in 1932, is inspired by a short story written by Clarence Aaron “Tod” Robbins. Set in a circus, the performers are disabled actors. The movie caused a scandal when it was released and Freaks was soon censored, reedited, shortened, sometimes removed from theatres, and in cases banned in some countries. Not until the 60s, when it was presented at the Cannes Festival, was the movie acclaimed to the point of becoming a reference for artists such as Diane Arbus or David Lynch.

The Musée de l’Elysée presents a selection of some fifty vintage black and white silver prints, gathered by Enrico Praloran, a collector based in Zurich. This unique set is the opportunity for an encounter with the movie’s strange protagonists, Johny Eck, the Half Boy, Daisy and Violet Hilton, the Siamese sisters, Martha Morris, the “Armless Marvel”, or the Bearded Lady and the Human Skeleton. They all are artists for real, coming from the Barnum Circus.

The plot is transcribed in images through stills from the movie’s major scenes, completed by set or shooting photographs, taking us behind the scenes, including on the footsteps of Tod Browning himself.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée website

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (Cleopatra followed by the freaks)
1932
Still photograph
1932
Courtesy of Praloran Collection, Zurich

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (Johnny Eck)
1932
Still photograph
Courtesy of Praloran Collection, Zurich

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks
1932
Still photograph
Courtesy of Praloran Collection, Zurich

Freaks centres on an enchanting performer, Cleopatra, who entices a “midget,” named Hans, into falling in love with her. They were called midgets then, now they are referred to as little people. The “midget” is in fact engaged to another woman who is incidentally, also a “midget,” named Freida. Cleopatra was at first only trying to fool around with Hans and get money from him occasionally. She soon realised that Hans had inherited quite a large amount of money. She devises a plan to marry Hans and later poison him to inherit the money. Arguably, the most famous scene in Freaks is Hans and Cleo’s wedding reception. The “freaks” reluctantly decide to accept her despite her “normality” and chant the notoriously disturbing yet hilarious quote, “We accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!” Afterwards, Hans then becomes very ill by Cleo’s hand. He soon figures out her plan and the freaks become offended. They knew she could not be one of them. The film ends with a horrific and disturbing chase in the rain where the “freaks” follow her slowly and Cleo screams for her life. Her and her lover, the “muscle man,” are caught and not killed, but worse. They become freaks themselves. They are mutilated, castrated, and deformed until they are the subject of a freak show. They became one of the “freaks” they hated so much…

One of the most gut-wrenching things about this films is the fact that every “freak” in the film was a real person with the same deformity their characters had. This gives the story a profound sense of reality, making the betrayal of Hans by Cleo all the more tragic. The film was extremely controversial when released and hated by audiences. The scenes where Cleo and the muscle man were mutilated had to be cut from the film in order to be shown in theatres. That footage has since been lost. In a viewing of the film, a sudden jump takes place after the freaks catch Cleo. The audience feels cheated. We have waited so long to see Cleo get her punishment. Part of that dissatisfaction adds to the mystique of this bizarre trip. The film was forgotten about until the mid 1970s where it was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film. A counterculture film runs counter to the the norm of society. Freaks is a great example of fame by taboos and controversy. It explores themes of humanity that are still relatively unexplored today.

Text from the Cult Films and Cultural Significance website December 6, 2011 [Online] Cited 14/09/2020

Freaks is a tale of love and vengeance in a traveling circus…

In her essay “Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks as/at the Limit,” Elizabeth Grosz attempts to unpack our fascination with freak shows. She concludes that the individuals most frequently showcased in these spectacles, including Siamese twins, hermaphrodites, “pinheads” (microcephalics), midgets, and bearded ladies “imperil the very definitions we rely on to classify humans, identities and sexes – our most fundamental categories of self-definition and boundaries dividing self from otherness” (57). In other words, while we comfort ourselves by breaking down the world into neat binary oppositions, such as Male/Female, Self/Other, Human/Animal, Child/Adult, “freaks” blur the boundaries between these reassuring oppositions. She concludes, “The freak confirms the viewer as bounded, belonging to a ‘proper’ social category. The viewer’s horror lies in the recognition that this monstrous being is at the heart of his or her identity, for it is all that must be ejected or abjected from self-image to make the bounded, category-obeying self possible” (65). We need the freak to confirm our own static, bounded identities. And yet, I think there is a certain terror that we may not be as bounded as we think. If the hermaphrodite can transcend traditional gender categories, then perhaps our own genders are more fluid. For many that is a truly horrifying thought.

For example, in one of the film’s earliest scenes we witness the “pinheads” Schlitze, Elvira and Jenny Lee dancing and playing in the forest. From a distance they look like innocent, happy children. But as the camera approaches, it is clear that they are neither children, nor are they quite adults either. Thus it is the ambiguity here, rather than the disability itself, which is momentarily disturbing…

Grosz also mentions that “Any discussion of freaks brings back into focus a topic that has had a largely underground existence in contemporary cultural and intellectual life, partly because it is considered below the refined sensibilities of ‘good taste’ and ‘personal politeness’ in a civilised and politically correct milieu” (55).

Amanda Ann Klein. “Teaching Todd Browning’s FREAKS,” on the Judgemental Observer blog, September 13, 2009 update September 1, 2014 [Online] Cited 14/09/2020

~ Grosz, Elizabeth. “Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks as/at the Limit,” in Rosemarie Garland Thomson (ed.). Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press, 1996, pp. 55-68

~ Hawkins, Joan. “‘One of Us’: Tod Browning’s Freaks,” in Rosemarie Garland Thomson (ed.). Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press, 1996, pp. 265-276

~ Norden, Martin F. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (Cleopatra and freaks)
1932
Still photograph

Tod Browning (director)
Publicity photo for Freaks, featuring much of the cast with director, Tod Browning
1932
Still photograph

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (with Siamese Twins Daisy and Violet Hilton)
1932
Still photograph

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks
1932
Still photograph

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (shooting the wedding banquet)
1932
Still photograph

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (with Cleopatra and Hans at the wedding banquet)
1932
Still photograph

Tod Browning (director)
Freaks (Olga Baclanova as Cleopatra after her transformation into chicken woman)
1932
Still photograph

Theatrical poster for Freaks
1932

God’s Children

In this scene from Freaks (1932, Tod Browning), we meet several of the film’s characters.

The Freaks Revenge

In this scene from Freaks (1932, Tod Browning), the freaks take their revenge on Hercules and Cleopatra.

The Musée de l’Elysée
18, avenue de l’Elysée
CH – 1014 Lausanne
Phone: + 41 21 316 99 11

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday 10am – 6pm
Closed Tuesdays

The Musée de l’Elysée website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Lewis Hine: Photography for a Change’ at the Netherlands Museum of Photography, Rotterdam

Exhibition dates: 15th September – 6th January 2013

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Lunch Time, New York
1910
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

“In the last analysis, good photography is a question of art.”

“I wanted to show the thing that had to be corrected: I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.”

Lewis Wickes Hines

Something that you really don’t get in reproductions is the absolutely beautiful tonality of Hine’s social documentary photography. Even less so when the images provided by the institution are degraded by scratches, dust, spots and colour irregularities. Despite these media images being 300 dpi when I received them from the museum media department they were in very average condition. For example, the image of Christmas Fiddles (below) was in such poor condition when enlarged that I had to spend over half and hour cleaning up the image to make it pictorially legible to the viewer at a larger size.

This is not an unusual occurrence and, unbeknownst to the readers of the archive, I spend many hours quickly cleaning the digital files before they are presented to you. Some individual images and sets of images are of such poor quality that I simply cannot use them at all. I will do a posting on this issue soon, but suffice to say that museums that spend thousands of hours and dollars staging impressive photographic exhibitions really let themselves down in the promotion of the exhibition if they provide dodgy scans and unusable media images to people that promote the exhibition for free. In this world of media saturated images it should be the norm that the “quality” of the image outweighs the indifferent quantity. With faster and faster download speeds larger images can be viewed more readily online and therefore scans provided by institutions must live up to this enlarged capacity.

Hopefully you can get some idea of the work of this socially conscious photographer, an American photographer who saw the camera as both a research tool and an instrument of social reform, whose images helped change the world with regard to child labour. Unfortunately success and reputation counted for nought. He died totally impoverished in 1940, shortly before a resurgence of public interest in his work raised him to the highest level of American photographers. What an infinite sadness.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Installation view of the exhibition Lewis Hine: Photography for a Change at the Netherlands Museum of Photography, Rotterdam

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Belgrade. Christmas Fiddles
1918
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Belgrade. Christmas Fiddles (detail)
1918
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Construction workers, Empire State Building, NYC
1930-1931
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

From 15 September 2012 to 6 January 2013, the Netherlands Museum of Photography will present the first large retrospective in the Netherlands of the work of the renowned American photographer Lewis Hine. Hine was an enthusiastic photographer who wished to improve people’s lives through his photos. His pictures of immigrants on Ellis Island, of child labour, and of workers busy on the Empire State Building high above New York belong to the visual icons of the 20th century. The internationally touring exhibition contains more than 200 photos and documents, many in their original state and originating from the collection of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York State. Lewis Hine is an initiative of three European institutions: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (Paris), Fundación MAPFRE (Madrid) and the Netherlands Museum of Photography (Rotterdam). It is with great pride that the Netherlands Museum of Photography can now present this exhibition that harmonises perfectly with its aim to pay attention to the canon of international documentary photography.

Lewis W. Hine (Wisconsin, 1874 – New York, 1940), a sociologist and photographer, belongs to the group of famous photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz, Robert Frank, Robert Capa, Eugène Atget to whom the Netherlands Museum of Photography has previously devoted impressive exhibitions. Hine is known as a 20th-century pioneer of social documentary photography. It is characteristic of Hine that he strongly believed in the camera’s powers of conviction. Thus, armed only with a heavy camera he fought for social justice. For the National Child Labor Committee he travelled more than 75,000 kilometres through the United States to photograph children working in agriculture, the mines, factories, sewing attics, and on the streets. His photos were partly responsible for reforms in these fields. The themes in Hine’s work – child labour, situations of human indignity, and the vulnerability of immigrants and refugees – are still current. Despite his present reputation, his early successes and the fact that many governmental organisations made use of his photos, he died totally impoverished in 1940.

Empire State Building and Building the Rotterdam

In 1932 Lewis Hine published the famous photographic book entitled Men at Work, which covered the construction of the Empire State Building. From the most audacious vantage points he took photos of the 381-metre building, showing the strength and willpower of humankind, man’s contribution to industry. The tall buildings on the Wilhelminapier have determined the skyline of Rotterdam for many years, just as the Empire State Building did in New York around 1930. The Wilhelminapier is now under full development. De Rotterdam Building, designed by Rem Koolhaas of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architectural) will be completed in 2013-2014. The photographer Ruud Sies has followed the genesis of the largest building in the Netherlands for four years now. The project entitled Building the Rotterdam – a work in progress by Ruud Sies was inspired by the work of Lewis Hine and establishes the connection with the Wilhelminapier as a historical location. To the Netherlands Museum of Photography, this is a reason to include this project in the exhibition of the work of Lewis Hine.

Exhibition

With 170 vintage photos from the period 1903-1937 as well as 42 documents, this exhibition of Hine’s work is the first extensive and well-documented overview in the Netherlands and even in Europe. Hine’s entire oeuvre is on show, ranging from his earliest portraits of immigrants on Ellis Island to his work in Europe after the First World War. The Lewis Hine touring exhibition was on display in Paris toward the end of 2011, and in Madrid at the beginning of this year. For this international journey, Hine’s work has undergone preventative preservation treatment and is exposed to a minimum amount of light. After the exhibition in the Netherlands, the work will return to the George Eastman House in America to relax in a dark depot.”

Press release from the Netherlands Museum of Photography website

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Coal mine worker in West Virginia. Eleven year old boy
Tipple boy at the Turkey Knob coal mine in Macdonald, West Virginia
1908
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Little Mother, Pittsburgh District
1909
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Anonymous photographer (American)
Lewis Hine photographing children in a slum
1910
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Waiting for the dispensary to open Hull House District, Chicago
1910
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1874. He moved to New York City in 1901 to teach at the Ethical Culture School. There Hine used photographs as educational tools, and soon began to photograph immigrants at Ellis Island. He hoped his photographs would encourage people to “exert the force to right wrongs.” While continuing to teach at ECS, Hine began to do freelance work for the National Child Labor Committee, an association that transformed his professional life.

In 1908, the NCLC provided Hine a monthly salary to photographically document children in factories, mills, canneries, textile mills, street trades, and agricultural industries. Through his photographs he sought to alert the public to the extent of child labor in America, and the degree to which it denied these children their childhood, health, and education. In one year, Hine covered 12,000 miles in his quest to end abusive child labor. By 1913, Hine was considered the leading social welfare photographer in America.

Hine enjoyed a long and successful career following his work for the NCLC. He worked for the American Red Cross (1917-1920), photographing refugees and civilians in war-torn Europe, a new series of photographs of immigrants at Ellis Island (1926), a series of photographs documenting the construction of the Empire State Building (1930), photographs of drought-ridden communities in Arkansas and Kentucky (1931), as well as work for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In 1936-1937 Hine was appointed head photographer for the National Research Project of the Works Progress Administration. The ageing Hine, however, was disappointed at the rebuff of his attempts to secure work with the Farm Services Administration, where director Roy Stryker considered Hine old fashioned and difficult. Lewis Hine died in 1940, shortly before a resurgence of public interest in his work raised him to the highest level of American photographers.

Text from Child Labour in Virginia: Photographs by Lewis Hine web page [Online] Cited 21/12/2012 no longer available online

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Paris Gamin
1918
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Mechanic at steam pump in electric power house
1920
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Candy Worker, New York
1925
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Man on hoisting ball, Empire State building
1931
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
Steelworker standing on beam
1931
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Lewis Hine  (American, 1874-1940)
The Sky Boy
1931
Gelatin silver print
© George Eastman House

Netherlands Museum of Photography
Wilhelminakade 332
3072 AR Rotterdam
The Netherlands

Opening hours
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 5pm
Closed Mondays

Nederlands Museum of Photography website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Licht-Bilder (Light images). Fritz Winter and Abstract Photography’ at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Exhibition dates: 9th November 2012 – 17th February 2013

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
K 35
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
110 x 75cm
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

The glorious paintings of Fritz Winter show a beautiful synergy with the abstract photographs. The relationship between painting and photography has always been a symbiotic one, a close mutualist relationship that has benefited both art forms. This is fully evidenced in this outstanding posting, where I have tried to sequence the artworks to reflect the nature of their individuality and their interdependence. Great blessings on the curators that assembled this exhibition: an inspired concept!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
Vortograph
1917 (1962)
Gelatin silver print
30.6 x 25.5cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
Abstract Study
c. 1926
Gelatin silver print
24.3 x 19.3cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Einfallendes Licht II (Incident Light II)
1935
Oil on paper on canvas
44.2 x 33.4cm
Konrad Knöpfel-Stiftung Fritz Winter im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled (Photogram)
c. 1939-1941
Gelatin Silver Print
40 x 47.8cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

In his lesser known early work, the German painter Fritz Winter (1905-1976) made an obsessive analysis of the aesthetic aspects of light. As a Bauhaus student he was influenced by the international avant-garde’s boundless euphoria for light between Expressionism and Constructivism. The light of large cities with headlights, cinemas and illuminated advertisements gave a new impulse to aesthetics; x-rays, radioactivity and microphotography made it possible to perceive previously unknown sources of energy and natural phenomena.

In his pictures of light beams and crystals created in 1934-1936, Winter devoted himself with virtuosity to aspects such as the reflection, radiation and refraction of light. His virtually monochrome paintings incorporate crystal shapes and bundles of rays; they focus on the earth’s interior and the infinite expanse of the cosmos; they block the pictorial space with dark grids or lend it a glass-like transparency.

For the first time, 25 Licht-Bilder by Fritz Winter will be juxtaposed with an international selection of 40 of the earliest abstract photographs in history of art. In the 1910s to 1930s artists experimented with the most varied of photographic techniques to ascertain the genuine qualities of photography beyond the merely representative. The New Vision in photography and abstract painting become immediately obvious through the display of vintage prints and paintings side by side.

The exhibition combines 25 exceptional paintings by Fritz Winter from German museums and private collections as well as 40 international lenders of photographic works including Centre Pompidou, Paris, George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Neue Galerie Kassel, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Munich and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.

Press release from the Pinakothek der Moderne website

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Stufungen (Gradations)
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
100.5 x 75.5cm
Konrad Knöpfel-Stiftung Fritz Winter im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Alfred Ehrhardt (German, 1901-1984)
Adular, Maderanertal, Schweiz
1938-1939
Gelatin silver print
49.5 x 30cm
Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Weiß in Schwarz (White in Black)
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
100.5 x 75.5cm
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Neue Galerie
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Licht, A 1
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
59 x 45cm
Private Collection
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled (Photogram)
1925
Gelatin silver print
23.7 x 17.8cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Alfred Ehrhardt (German, 1901-1984)
Beryll, Minas Geraes, Brasilien
1938/1939
Gelatin silver print
49.7 x 29.9cm
Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© bpk, Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Pinakothek Der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40
Munich

Opening hours:
Daily except Monday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 8pm

Pinakothek der Moderne website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Review: ‘Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 28th September – 11th November 2012

Installation photograph of the series 'Beneath the Roses' (2003-2008) from the exhibition 'Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Installation photographs of the series Beneath the Roses (2003-2008) from the exhibition Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne
Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan

Downfall of a dream: (n)framing the enigma in Gregory Crewdson’s Beneath the Roses

After the excoriating diatribe by Robert Nelson in The Age newspaper (“Unreal stills, unmoving images” Wednesday October 17 2012) I hope this piece of writing will offer greater insight into the work of this internationally renowned artist. With some reservations, I like Crewsdon’s work, I like it a lot – as do the crowds of people flocking to the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy to see the exhibition. Never have I seen so many people at the CCP looking at contemporary photography before and that can only be a good thing.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first. The early series Fireflies are small silver gelatin photographs that capture “the tiny insects’ transient moments of light as they illuminate the summer night.” These are minor works that fail to transcend the ephemeral nature of photography, fail to light the imagination of the viewer when looking at these scenes of dusky desire and discontinuous lives. The series of beautiful photographs titled Sanctuary (2010) evidence the “ruin of the legendary Cinecittà studios, which was founded by Mussolini in the 1930s and is associated with the great Italian film director Federico Fellini.” Wonderful photographs of doorways, temples, dilapidated stage sets with excellent use of soft miasmic light creating an atmosphere of de/generation (as though a half-remembered version of Rome had passed down through the generations) interfaced with contemporary Rome as backdrop. The digital prints show no strong specular highlights, no deep blacks but a series of transmutable grey and mid tones that add to the overall feeling of romantic ruin. It is a pity that these photographs are not printed as silver gelatin photographs, for they would have had much more depth of feeling than they presently possess. They just feel a little “thin” to me to sustain the weight of atmosphere required of them.

But it is the series Beneath the Roses (2003-2008) that has made Crewdson truly famous. Shot using a large format camera, Crewdson makes large-scale photographs of elaborate and meticulously staged tableaux, which have been described as “micro-epics” that probe the dark corners of the psyche. Working in the manner of a film director, he leads a production crew, which includes a director of photography, special effects and lighting teams, casting director and actors. He typically makes several exposures that he later digitally combines to produce the final image. Photographs in the series of “brief encounters” include external dioramas (shot in a down at heel Western Massachusetts town), where Crewdson shuts down streets and lights the whole scene; to interior dialogues where houses are built on sound stages and the artist can control every detail of the production. Influences on these works include, but are not limited to:

David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks), Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo), Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters), the paintings of Edward Hopper, Diane Arbus (the detritus of her photographic interiors), film noir, psychoanalysis, American suburbia, the American dream, the photographs of Walker Evans, Cindy Sherman and surrealism. Concepts that you could link to the work include loneliness, alienation, apathy, resignation, mystery, contemplation and confusion, identity, desire, memory and imagination.

Now to the nuts and bolts of the matter.

Another major influence that I will add is that of the great Italian director Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita – The Sweet Life) who shot most of that film on the sets at Cinecittà studios in Rome. It is perhaps no coincidence that Crewdson, on his first overseas film shoot, shot the series Sanctuary at the very same location. Crewdson’s photographs in the series Beneath the Roses are an American form of “The Sweet Life.” In 1961, the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther praised Fellini’s “brilliantly graphic estimation of a whole swath of society in sad decay and, eventually, a withering commentary on the tragedy of the over-civilized… Fellini is nothing if not fertile, fierce and urbane in calculating the social scene around him and packing it onto the screen. He has an uncanny eye for finding the offbeat and grotesque incident, the gross and bizarre occurrence that exposes a glaring irony. He has, too, a splendid sense of balance and a deliciously sardonic wit that not only guided his cameras but also affected the writing of the script. In sum, it is an awesome picture, licentious in content but moral and vastly sophisticated in its attitude and what it says.”1 The same could equally be said of the Crewdson and his masterpieces in Beneath the Roses. Crewdson is in love with Fellini’s gesture – of the uplifting of the characters and their simultaneous descent into “sweet” hedonism, debauchery and decadence using the metaphor of downfall (downfall links each scene in La Dolce Vita, that of a “downward spiral that Marcello sets in motion when descending the first of several staircases (including ladders) that open and close each major episode.”)2 Crewdson’s “spectacular apocalypses of social enervation”3 mimic Fellini’s gestural flourishes becoming Crewdson’s theme of America’s downfall, America as a moral wasteland. Crewdson’s is “an aesthetic of disparity” that builds up a cumulative impression on the viewer that finds resolution in an “overpowering sense of the disparity between what life has been or could be, and what it actually is.”4

Crewdson’s cinematic encounters are vast and pin sharp when seen in the flesh. No reproduction on the web can do their physical presence justice; it is the details that delight in these productions. You have to get up close and personal with the work. His dystopic landscapes are not narratives as such, not stills taken from a movie (for that implies an ongoing story) but open-ended constructions that allow the viewer to imagine the story for themselves. They do not so much evoke a narrative as invite the viewer to create one for themselves – they are an “invitation” to a narrative, one that explores the anxiety of the (American) imagination, an invitation to empathise with the dramas at play within contemporary environments. For me, Crewdson’s extra ordinary photographs are a form of enigma (a puzzling or inexplicable occurrence or situation), the picture as master puzzle (where all the pieces fit perfectly together in stillness) that contains a riddle or hidden meaning. Clues to this reading can be found in one of the photographs from the series (Blue Period, see detail image, below) where Crewdson deliberately leaves the door of a bedside cupboard open to reveal a “Perfect PICTURE PUZZLE” box inside. The viewer has to really look into the image and understand the significance of this artefact.

Another reading that I have formulated is of the transience of space and time within Crewdson’s series. In the disquieting, anonymous townscapes people look out from their porches (or the verandas are lit and empty), they abandon their cars or walk down desolate streets hardly ever looking directly out at the viewer. The photographs become sites of mystery and wonder hardly anchored (still precisely anchored?) in time and space. This disparity is emphasised in the interior dialogues. The viewer (exterior) looks at a framed doorway or window (exterior) looking into an scene (interior) where the walls are usually covered with floral wallpaper (interior / exterior) upon which hangs a framed image of a Monet-like landscape (exterior) (see detail image, above). Exterior, exterior, interior, interior / exterior, exterior. The trees of the landscape invade the home but are framed; exterior/framed, interior/mind. There is something mysterious going on here, some reflection of an inner state of mind.

In his visual mosaics Crewdson engages our relationship with time and space to challenge the trace of experience. His tableaux act as a kind of threshold or hinge of experience – between interior and exterior, viewer and photograph. His photographs are a form of monism in which two forces (interior / exterior) try to absorb each other but ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium. It is through this “play” that the context of the photographs and their relationship to each other and the viewer are “framed.” This device emphasises the aesthetic as much as information and encourages the viewer to think about the relationship between the body, the world of which it is part and the dream-reason of time.5 This intertextual (n)framing (n meaning unspecified number in mathematics) encourages the viewer to explore the inbetween spaces in the non-narrative / meta-narrative,”and by leaps (intuitive leaps, poetic leaps, leaps of faith)”6 encourage escapism in the imagination of the viewer. It is up to us as viewers to seek the multiple, disparate significances of what is concealed in each photograph as “felt knowledge” (Walter Benjamin), recalling to mind the sensory data placed before our eyes, something that can be experienced but cannot be explained by man: “the single moment of the present amidst the transience of life and searching for some kind of eternal truth.”7

Finally, in a more adverse reading of the photographs from the series Beneath the Roses, I must acknowledge the physically (not mentally) static nature of the images where every detail of the mise-en-scène is fully articulated and locked down: from the perfect trickle of blood running from the woman’s vagina in Blue Period, to the reflections in mirrors, the detritus of living scattered on the bedroom floor, the dirty telephone, packed suitcases and keys in locks to the desolate looks of the participants that never engage with the viewer. Despite allusions of despair, in their efficacy (their static and certain world order), there is no real chthonic madness here, no real messiness of the capture of death, murder and the wastage of human life (famine, AIDS, cancer or the blood running over the pavement in one of Weegee’s murder scenes for example). This is Fellini’s gross and bizarre LITE. Americurbana “is being addressed with the same reserve and elegance that ensures that the institution – artistic, political, what you will – is upheld and never threatened. It is pre-eminently legible, it elicits guilt but not so much as to cause offence.”8 I must also acknowledge the male-orientated viewpoint of the photographs, where men are seated, clothed, lazy or absent and all too often women are doing the washing or cooking, are naked and vulnerable. In their portrayal of (usually) half dressed or naked females the photographs evidence a particularly male view of the world, one that his little empathy or understanding of how a female actually lives in the world. For me this portrait of the feminine simply does not work. The male photographer maintains control (and power) by remaining resolutely (in)visible.

Overall this is a outstanding exhibition that thoroughly deserves that accolades it is receiving. Sitting in the gallery space for an hour and a half and soaking up the atmosphere of these magnificent works has been for me one of the art experiences of 2012. Make sure that you do not miss these mesmerising prophecies.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Crowther’s review first published in The New York Times, April 20, 1961. In Fava and Vigano, 105 quoted in Anon. “La Dolce Vita,” on Wikipedia Footnote 30 [Online] Cited 20/10/2012. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Dolce_Vita

2/ Anon. “La Dolce Vita,” on Wikipedia Footnote 30 [Online] Cited 20/10/2012. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Dolce_Vita

3/ Sultanik, Aaron. Film, a Modern Art. Cranbury, N.J: Cornwall Books, 1986, p. 408

4/ Richardson, Robert. “Waste Lands: The Breakdown of Order,” in Bondanella (ed.), Federico Fellini: Essays in Criticism, p. 111 quoted in Anon. “La Dolce Vita,” on Wikipedia Footnote 30 [Online] Cited 20/10/2012. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Dolce_Vita

5/ Bacon, Julie Louise. “Liquid Archive: On Ambivalence,” in Liquid Archive. Melbourne: Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), 2012, p. 119

6/ Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “The Museum – A Refuge for Utopian Thought,” in Rüsen, Jörn; Fehr Michael, and Ramsbrock, Annelie (eds.). Die Unruhe der Kultur: Potentiale des Utopischen. Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2004. In German.

7/ Kataoka, Mami commenting on the work of Allan Kaprow. “Transient Encounters,” in Broadsheet: Criticism, Theory, Art Vol 41.3, September 2012, p. 174

8/ Geczy, Adam. “A dish served lukewarm,” in Broadsheet: Criticism, Theory, Art Vol 41.3, September 2012, p. 177

Many thankx to the artist, Gagosian Gallery and the Centre for Contemporary Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Special thankx to Director of the CCP Naomi Cass and Ms. James McKee from Gagosian Gallery for facilitating the availability of the media images. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

All photographs © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Installation and detail photographs © Dr Marcus Bunyan

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Blue Period)
2003-2005
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962) 'Untitled (Blue Period)' 2003-2005 (detail)

Details from Gregory Crewdson’s Untitled (Blue Period) (2003-2005, above) from the series Beneath the Roses (2003-2008)
Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan

“The American middle-class nightmare: nothing is clean, orderly, idyllic, or romantic. In his perfectly staged, hyperrealistic tableaux, photographer Gregory Crewdson reveals the claustrophobic limbo and abyss of spiritual repression that is the typical suburb. Here, hushed-up violence, alienation, isolation, and emptiness are nothing new or unfamiliar, but rather part of the everyday neighbourhood experience.”

Gregory Crewdson, In a Lonely Place, Abrams Publishing, New York, 2011

“I have always been fascinated by the poetic condition of twilight. By its transformative quality. Its power of turning the ordinary into something magical and otherworldly. My wish is for the narrative in the pictures to work within that circumstance. It is that sense of in-between-ness that interests me.”

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Maple Street)
2003-2005
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Shane)
2006
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Brief Encounter)
2006
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962) 'Untitled (Railway Children)' 2003-2005

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Railway Children)
2003-05
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

In a Lonely Place presents selections from three major series by Gregory Crewdson, Fireflies (1996), Beneath the Roses (2003-2008), Sanctuary (2010) and, presented for the first time, the video Field Notes (2009). The exhibition title comes from Nicholas Ray’s 1950s film noir of the same name, one of many films that inspired Crewdson. In a Lonely Place is evocative of an underlying mood-a quiet feeling of alienation and loneliness that links the three series selected by curators Estelle Af Malmborg, Jens Erdman Rasmussen and Felix Hoffmann. In a Lonely Place presents the first comprehensive exhibition of Crewdson’s work in Australia.

In Beneath the Roses, anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios. Crewdson’s scenes are tangibly atmospheric: visually alluring and often deeply disquieting. Never anchored precisely in time or place, these and the other narratives of Beneath the Roses are located in the dystopic landscape of the anxious American imagination. Crewdson explores the American psyche and the dramas at play within quotidian environments.

In his most recent series, Sanctuary (2010), Crewdson has taken a new direction, shooting for the first time outside the US. During a trip to Rome, he visited the legendary Cinecittà studios, which was founded by Mussolini in the 1930s and is associated with the great Italian film director Federico Fellini. Crewdson discovered fragments of a past glory, with occasional unexpected views of the surrounding contemporary Roman suburbia. Cinecittà is a lonely place deserted by the film crews who once used the site to recreate settings of ancient Rome, medieval Italy and nineteenth-century New York.

In the intimate photographs of Fireflies, Crewdson portrays the mating ritual of fireflies at dusk, capturing the tiny insects’ transient moments of light as they illuminate the summer night. Unlike the theatrical scale of the Beneath the Roses and Sanctuary series, Fireflies is a quiet meditation on the nature of light and desire, as the images reflect not only upon the fleeting movements of the insects in their intricate mating ritual, but upon the notion of photography itself, in capturing a single ephemeral moment.

Gregory Crewdson received a BA from the State University of New York, Purchase, New York in 1985 and an MFA in Photography from Yale School of Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in 1988. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. He is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at the Yale School of Art, Yale University. Gregory Crewdson is represented by Gagosian Gallery and White Cube Gallery.

Press release from the Gagosian Gallery website

Installation photograph of the series 'Sanctuary' (2010) from the exhibition 'Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Installation photographs of the series Sanctuary (2010) from the exhibition Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne
Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (1)
2009
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (17)
2009
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (8)
2009
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (2)
2009
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled
1996
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gregory Crewdson – Close Up – Ovation

In this Ovation TV original special, acclaimed photographers Albert Maysles, Sylvia Plachy, Andrew Moore and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders discuss the impact their work has on their lives and on culture as a whole.

Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is best known for elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.

In this interview, acclaimed photographer, Gregory Crewdson shares with us insight into his techniques.

Centre for Contemporary Photography

No permanent exhibition space at the moment

Gagosian Gallery website

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Dennis Hopper – The Lost Album. Vintage Photographs of the 1960s’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 20th September – 17th December 2012

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Guy With 5 Hogs
1961-1967
Location: USA
6.97 x 9.85 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Unlike an earlier posting of photographs by a well known film director (the underwhelming, in fact pretty awful, Wim Wenders: Places, Strange and Quiet), these “lost” photographs by Dennis Hopper are very good. I love their quiet, intimate strength, their fun, wit and vivacity; and the portraits capture the essence of the sitter with a decisive elegance and eloquence.

The photographs perfectly capture the social milieu of the time and the pervading ethos of the fracturing of the image plane, a la Gary Winogrand or Lee Friedlander. Nice to see the work full frame as well, meaning that the photographers’ previsualisation was strong in camera; that Hopper had an excellent understanding of the construction of the pictorial frame negating the necessity for cropping of the image.

Enlarging the face of Martin Luther King Jr., (below) and then looking into his eyes, I felt I had a connection with this person. Nostalgia, longing, sadness and joy at his life and the feeling that I was looking into the eyes of one of the great human beings of the twentieth century.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Martin-Gropius-Bau for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I never made a cent from these photos. They cost me money but kept me alive. These are my photos. I started at eighteen taking pictures. I stopped at thirty-one. (…) These represent the years from twenty-five to thirty-one, 1961 to 1967. I didn’t crop my photos. They are full frame natural light Tri-X. I went under contract to Warner Brothers at eighteen. I directed Easy Rider at thirty-one. I married Brooke at twenty-five and got a good camera and could afford to take pictures and print them. They were the only creative outlet I had for these years until Easy Rider. I never carried a camera again.”

Dennis Hopper 1986

“The necessity to make these photos and paintings came from a real place – a place of desperation and solitude – with the hope that someday these objects, paintings, and photos would be seen filling the void I was feeling.”

Dennis Hopper 2001

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Double Standard
1961
Location: Los Angeles, Ca USA
6.87 x 9.79 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, David Hockney, and Jeff Goodman
1963
Location: USA
17.25 x 24.74cm
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper The Lost Album – Vintage Prints From the Sixties book. Prestel, 2012, p. 78

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
James Rosenquist
1964
Location: Billboard Factory, Los Angeles, Ca USA
6.81 x 9.68 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Artist Ed Ruscha
1964
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda at their wedding, Las Vegas
1965
Location: Las Vegas, USA
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Tuesday Weld
1965
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Jane Fonda (with bow & arrow), Malibu
1965
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Bruce Conner (in tub), Toni Basil, Teri Garr, and Ann Marshall
1965
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Untitled (Blue Chips Stamps)
1961-1967
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper The Lost Album – Vintage Prints From the Sixties book. Prestel, 2012, p. 154

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Untitled (Hippie Girl Dancing)
1967
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

The exhibition shows a spectacular portfolio of over four hundred vintage photographs taken by Dennis Hopper in the 1960s. Tucked away in five crates and forgotten, they were discovered after his death. There can be no doubt that these works are those personally selected by Hopper from the wealth of shots he took between 1961 and 1967 for the first major exhibition of his photography. The pictures themselves document how the works were installed in the Fort Worth Art Center Museum, Texas, in 1970 by himself and Henry T. Hopkins, the museum’s director at the time. None of these works have been displayed in Europe before. The portfolio that has now come to light is a treasure. It consists of small plates, sometimes numbered on the back with brief notes in Hopper’s hand and showing traces of wear. Mounted on cardboard, without frame of glass, they were attached directly to the wall.

The images have a legendary quality. Spontaneous, intimate, poetic, unabashedly political and keenly observed, they document an exciting epoch, its protagonists and milieus. These photographs reflect the atmosphere of an era, being outstanding testimonials to America’s dynamic cultural scene in the 1960s. On the viewer they exercise an irresistible attraction, bearing him away on a journey into the past, often into his own history.

Many of these pictures are icons, such as the portraits of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Paul Newman and Jane Fonda. They also cover a wide range of subjects. Dennis Hopper is interested in everything. Wherever he happens to be, whether in Los Angeles, New York, London, Mexico or Peru, he takes in his surroundings with empathy, enthusiasm and intense curiosity. He seeks and savours the “essential moment”, capturing the celebrities and types of his time with the camera: actors, artists, musicians, his family, bikers and hippies. He leaves an impressive photographic record of the “street life” of Harlem, of cemeteries in Mexico, and of bullfights in Tijuana. Hopper accompanies Martin Luther King Jr. on the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and, in images of great beauty and serenity, he converts the every day life and the neglected into a picture of beauty and silence as if converting Abstract Expressionism from the language of painting into that of photography.

Between 1961 and 1967 Hopper applied himself intensely on photography.

Hopper’s photographs are legendary images, spontaneous, intimate, and poetic as well as decidedly political and keenly observant – documents of an exciting period, its protagonists and milieus. Many of these photos have become iconic: the portraits of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Paul Newman or Jane Fonda. They also cover a range of topics and motifs. Hopper was interested in everything. Wherever he was, in Los Angeles, New York, London, Mexico or Peru, he was a precise observer, full of empathy and curiosity. He captured the geniuses of his day, the actors, artists, musicians and poets, his family and friends, the “scene”, bikers and hippies. He wandered the streets of Harlem and the graveyards of Durango and watched the bullfights in Tijuana with fascination. Hopper followed Martin Luther King Jr. with his camera on the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. And he paid attention to things small, ordinary, and neglected, transforming the “remains of our world” into images of great beauty and tranquility, as if converting Abstract Expressionist painting into the language of photography.

Press release from the Martin-Gropius-Bau website

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Beverly Renee on Bed
1961
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper The Lost Album – Vintage Prints From the Sixties book. Prestel, 2012, p. 62

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Andy Warhol and Members of The Factory (Gregory Markopoulos, Taylor Mead, Gerard Malanga, Jack Smith)
1963
Location: in The Factory, NYC, NY USA
6.57 x 9.87 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Niki de Saint Phalle (kneeling)
1963
Location: USA
6.66 x 9.83 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Art dealer Irving Blum with model Peggy Moffitt
1964
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

The Lost Album

Gelatine silver vintage prints, 1970
Collection of the Dennis Hopper Art Trust

More than four hundred photos came to light after Hopper’s death. He had selected them for his first photography exhibition in 1970 at the Fort Worth Art Center Museum. They show signs of wear: fingerprints, scratches, discolouration, a frayed corner or tiny dent. Mounted on cardboard, numbered on the back with notes in Hopper’s handwriting, they were hung directly on the wall from small wooden strips without frames or glass. The hanging in the Martin-Gropius-Bau is based on the original installation of 1970.

The vintage prints, in portrait and landscape format, are all of a similar size, c. 24 x 16cm; twenty of them are in a larger format (c. 33 x 23cm). Of the 429 Hopper chose for his first exhibition, eleven are believed lost; they are replaced here by new prints, which will be clearly indicated. In only two cases was it impossible to locate the corresponding negative, and a placeholder with the title is mounted instead. The rediscovered boxes contained an additional nineteen, unnumbered vintage prints along with the 429, which Hopper took with him to Fort Worth but probably never hung in the exhibition. They have been incorporated into the “Album” here (I-XIX).

Additional information on the photographs

1. Brooke Hayward, Marin Hopper

Brooke Hayward, born and raised in Los Angeles, was at home in the glamorous world of Hollywood through her parents, the film producer Leland Hayward and Hollywood star Margaret Sullavan, and Hopper in turn knew a lot of extraordinary people through his involvement in the acting and art worlds. Hopper and Hayward’s home became the center of an illustrious group of actors, artists, musicians, writers, and film producers. Soon after moving [into their house] they threw a “movie star party” for Andy Warhol to celebrate his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery (1963).

“Since I was a small child, growing up in L.A., I remember that my dad was always capturing the scene around him through the lens of his camera. What he always described as taking the most pleasure in exploring, or focusing on, much like Marcel Duchamp signing the Hotel-Green-Sign for him on the night of his opening at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1963, and Rauschenberg’s practice, was the philosophy that an artist can point to something and claim it’s art because in that moment it is to them.” (Marin Hopper, 2012)

2. Los Angeles Art Scene

Walter Hopps and Edward Kienholz founded the Ferus Gallery at 736A North La Cienega Boulevard in March 1957. Ferus was very underground, like a crazy club with exhibitions, readings and fashion shows. “The openings were wild, everybody had a blast, and nobody made a penny.” Hopper attended every opening and went to performances and happenings, whether it was Oldenburg’s Los Angeles performance Autobodys in 1963, Robert Rauschenberg’s performance Pelican at the Culver City Ice Rink in 1966, or Allan Kaprow’s Fluids in 1967, when with the help of friends he stacked blocks of ice to form enclosures at different sites in Los Angeles.

In 1966, Claes Oldenburg made a piece of plaster wedding cake (which he stamped on the back) for each guest at the wedding party for Jim Elliot, curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Rauschenberg was wearing this stamp on his tongue when Hopper photographed him at the wedding.

3. New York

Hopper frequently traveled to New York, strolling through the Museum of Modern Art and the galleries, sometimes in the company of Henry Geldzahler, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and visited Warhol, at whose Factory he encountered Gerard Malanga, Taylor Mead or David Hockney. Hopper met Robert Rauschenberg in New York and visited Roy Lichtenstein in his studio.

In London, where he exhibited his assemblages at the Robert Fraser Gallery in 1964, he made the acquaintance of Peter Blake, one of the key figures of British Pop Art, David Hemmings, the star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow up (1966), and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones.

4. Civil Rights Marches

The Selma to Montgomery March: “[Marlon] Brando got me involved [in the march] … He pulled up in his car and said, ‘What are you doing day after tomorrow?’ and I said ‘Nothing’, and he said, ‘You want to go to Selma?’ And I said, ‘Sure, man. Thanks for asking me!’ [Then at the march, police] dogs were biting, and people were being bombed, and it was like, ‘Where are we?'” (Dennis Hopper)

The third march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, began on March 21, 1965, extended for 54 miles, took five days, and involved 4,000 marchers led by Martin Luther King Jr. and allies such as Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. It was the highpoint of the American Civil Rights Movements. Hundreds of ministers, priests, nuns, and rabbis followed King’s call to Selma. “It was like a holy crusade …” Numerous photographers, such as Spider Martin, James Karales, Steve Shapiro, and Bruce Davidson, documented the largest ever gathering of people during the civil rights movement in the South.

5. Mexico

He was completely obsessed with bullfighting and began attending fights regularly at the Tijuana arena in the 1950s. Hopper went to Mexico as an actor in 1965 when Henry Hathaway surprisingly offered him a role in his film The Sons of Katie Elder (1965).

A Western town was erected in the middle of Durango. Of course, Hopper had his camera with him. He photographed John Wayne and Dean Martin on the set and natives who were part of the crew or who just stopped by to watch, but he also roamed the area and the streets of Durango and Mexico City. In the 1920s and 1930s Mexico had held a great fascination for European as well as American avant-garde painters, photographers, and writers. Edward Weston lived in Mexico City; Henri Cartier-Bresson went there for a year in 1934, befriending the young photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Their images have shaped our perception of that country, a perception that is also echoed by some of Hopper’s photographs.

Wall texts from the exhibition

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Paul Newman
1964
Location: Malibu, Ca USA
9.7 x 6.66 inches
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Ike and Tina Turner
1965
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1965
Location: Montgomery, Alabama, USA
9.2 x 13.6 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (detail)
1965
Location: Montgomery, Alabama, USA
9.2 x 13.6 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
James Brown
1966
Location: USA
9.7 x 6.77 inch
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper (American, 1936-2010)
Self-portrait at porn stand
1962
© The Dennis Hopper Trust, Courtesy of The Dennis Hopper Trust

Dennis Hopper The Lost Album – Vintage Prints From the Sixties book cover

Lying hidden away in Dennis Hopper’s home until their discovery months after the artist’s death in 2010, this collection of spectacular photographs, exhibited only once in 1969-70 at the Fort Worth Art Center Museum, is a testament to Hopper’s prolific and enormous talent behind the camera. These photographs are spontaneous, intimate, poetic, observant, and decidedly political. While some are portraits of figures within Hopper’s circle of actor, artist, musician, and poet friends – including Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, and Robert Rauschenberg – they also include images from his extensive travels in Los Angeles, New York, London, Mexico, and Peru. Hopper’s abiding support of the Civil Rights movement and social justice is evident in his shots from the march on Selma and Harlem street scenes. In images of beauty and stillness he transfers Abstract Expressionism into the artistic language of photography. Throughout this stunning volume Hopper’s sensitive, keenly observant eye shines through, making it clear that he was a deeply committed chronicler of the events that were unfolding around him.

Author: Petra Giloy-Hirtz
Prestel
240 pages
25 x 2.5 x 30cm
25 September 2012

Purchase on the Amazon website

Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
Corner Stresemannstr. 110
10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30 254 86-0

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday 10 – 19
Tuesday closed

Martin-Gropius-Bau website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘George Bellows’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: 10th June – 8th October 2012

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Stag at Sharkey’s
1909
Oil on canvas
92 x 122.6cm (36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

What a joy it is to be able to post this work!

Bellows is one of my favourite artists. The energy and vigour of his work is outstanding, whether it be crashing waves on a rocky shore, the straining musculature of the male body in the boxing paintings and drawings or the more subtle renditions of colour and atmosphere in his portraits and cityscapes. There are hints of the darkness of Goya (especially in the painting The Barricade, 1918 / Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808, 1814), the frontality of the portraits of Bronzino (with an added air of vulnerability) and, towards the end of his life, portends of what might have been had he lived – the simplification of line, form and colour in works such as Dempsey and Firpo (1924, below), reminiscent of, but distinct from, the work of his friend Edward Hopper.

Bellows use of colour, light and form is extra ordinary. His use of chiaroscuro is infused with colour and movement, the volume of his modelling of the subjects depicted transcending their impressionistic base. The “shading” of his work is as much psychological as physical: the looming darkness of the buildings in Pennsylvania Station Excavation (1909, below), the churning foam of the desolate sea shore or the pensive look of Emma in the Purple Dress (1919, below). His understanding of the construction of the picture plane is exemplary. Note the use of diagonals and horizontals used in the construction of most of his paintings and drawings, especially the upraised hands, extended feet in his boxing portraits.

One can only wonder what this incredible artist would have achieved had he lived into the 1960s like his friend Edward Hopper. For me he remains an absolute hero of mine. From the first time I ever saw his work (and I have only ever seen it in reproduction, imagine seeing it in the flesh!) I fell in love with his sensibility, his love of the world and the people in it. I cannot explain it more fundamentally than that. A love affair where his work touched my heart and that, really, is the greatest compliment that you can give an artist. That their art moves you.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art, Washington for allowing me to publish the reproductions of the paintings in this posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Both Members of This Club
1909
Oil on canvas
133 x 177.8cm (52 3/8 x 70 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Chester Dale Collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The White Hope
1921
Lithograph
37.4 x 47.6cm (14 3/4 x 18 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Fund

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Counted Out, No.1
1921
Lithograph
31.8 x 28.5cm (12 1/2 x 11 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Fund

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Dempsey through the Ropes
1923
Black crayon
54.61 x 49.85cm (21 1/2 x 19 5/8 in.)
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1925

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Dempsey and Firpo
1924
Oil on canvas
129.5 x 160.7cm (51 x 63 1/4 in.)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
© Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins

When George Bellows died at the age of forty-two in 1925, he was hailed as one of the greatest artists America had yet produced. In 2012, the National Gallery of Art will present the first comprehensive exhibition of Bellows’ career in more than three decades. Including some 130 paintings, drawings, and lithographs, George Bellows will be on view in Washington from June 10 through October 8, 2012, then travel to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 15, 2012, through February 18, 2013, and close at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, March 16 through June 9, 2013. The accompanying catalogue will document and define Bellows’ unique place in the history of American art and in the annals of modernism.

“George Bellows is arguably the most important figure in the generation of artists who negotiated the transition from the Victorian to the modern era in American culture,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “This exhibition will provide the most complete account of his achievements to date and will introduce Bellows to new generations.”

Works in the exhibition

Mentored by Robert Henri, leader of the Ashcan School in New York in the early part of the 20th century, George Bellows (1882-1925) painted the world around him. He was also an accomplished graphic artist whose illustrations and lithographs addressed a wide array of social, religious, and political subjects. The full range of his remarkable artistic achievement is presented thematically and chronologically throughout nine rooms in the West Building.

The exhibition begins with Bellows’ renowned paintings and drawings of tenement children and New York street scenes. These iconic images of the modern city were made during an extraordinary period of creativity for the artist that began shortly after he left his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, for New York in 1904. Encouraged by Henri, his teacher at the New York School of Art, Bellows sought out contemporary subjects that would challenge prevailing standards of taste, depicting the city’s impoverished immigrant population in River Rats (1906, private collection) and Forty-Two Kids (1907, Corcoran Gallery of Art).

In addition to street scenes, Bellows painted more formal studio portraits of New York’s working poor. These startling, frank subjects – such as Paddy Flannigan (1908, Erving and Joyce Wolf) – reflect the artist’s profound understanding of the realist tradition of portraiture practiced by such masters as Diego Velázquez, Frans Hals, Edouard Manet, and James McNeill Whistler.

Bellows’ early boxing paintings chronicle brutal fights; to circumvent a state ban on public boxing, they were organised by private clubs in New York at that time. In his three acclaimed boxing masterpieces – Club Night (1907, National Gallery of Art), Stag at Sharkey’s (1909, Cleveland Museum of Art), and Both Members of This Club (1909, National Gallery of Art) – Bellows’ energetic, slashing brushwork matched the intensity and action of the fighters. These works will be on view together for the first time since 1982.

The series of four paintings Bellows devoted to the Manhattan excavation site for the Pennsylvania Railroad Station – a massive construction project that entailed razing two city blocks – focuses mainly on the subterranean pit in which workmen toiled. Never before exhibited together, these works range from a scene of the early construction site covered in snow in Pennsylvania Station Excavation (1909, Brooklyn Museum) to a view of the monumental station designed by McKim, Mead, and White coming to life in Blue Morning (1909, National Gallery of Art).

Bellows was fascinated with the full spectrum of life of the working and leisure classes in New York. From dock workers to Easter fashions paraded in the park, he chronicled a variety of subjects and used an array of palettes and painting techniques, from the cool grays and thin strokes of Docks in Winter (1911, private collection) to the jewel-like, encrusted surfaces of Snow-Capped River (1911, Telfair Museum of Art). While Bellows portrayed the bustling downtown commercial district of Manhattan in his encyclopaedic overview New York (1911, National Gallery of Art), he more often depicted the edges of the city near the shorelines of the Hudson and East Rivers in works such as The Lone Tenement (1909, National Gallery of Art) and Blue Snow, The Battery (1910, Columbus Museum of Art).

The artist visited Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine for the first time in 1911 and returned to Maine every summer from 1913 to 1916. In 1913 alone he created more than 100 outdoor studies. His seascapes account for half his entire output as a painter, with the majority done after the 1913 Armory Show. Shore House (1911, private collection) and The Big Dory (1913, New Britain Museum of American Art) are among Bellows’ most important seascapes and pay homage to his great American predecessor, Winslow Homer (1836-1910).

In 1912 Bellows started working more consistently as an illustrator for popular periodicals such as Collier’s and Harper’s Weekly, and in 1913 for the socialist magazine The Masses. These illustration assignments led him to record new aspects of American life ranging from sporting events to religious revival meetings, as seen in The Football Game (1912, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden) and Preaching (Billy Sunday) (1915, Boston Public Library). Along with Bellows’ more affordable and widely available lithographs (he installed a printing press in his studio in 1916), the published illustrations broadened the audience for his work.

Bellows supported the United States’ entry into World War I, resulting in an outpouring of paintings, lithographs, and drawings in 1918. For this extensive series, he relied on the published accounts of German atrocities in Belgium found in the 1915 Bryce Committee Report commissioned by the British government. The paintings evoke the tradition of grand public history paintings, as seen in Massacre at Dinant (1918, Greenville County Museum of Art), while the drawings and lithographs recall Francisco de Goya’s 18th-century print series The Disasters of War.

Bellows’ late works on paper survey modern American life, from the prisons of Georgia to the tennis courts of Newport, and highlight complex relationships between his various media. Taken from direct experience as well as fictional accounts, they range in tone from lightly satirical and humorous (Business-Men’s Bath, 1923, Boston Public Library) to profoundly disturbing and tragic (The Law Is Too Slow, 1922-1923, Boston Public Library).

In Emma at the Piano (1914, Chrysler Museum of Art), Bellows depicts his wife and lifelong artistic muse. His portraits of women constitute a larger body of work than his more famous boxing paintings. They cover all stages of life and include both the naive, youthful Madeline Davis (1914, Lowell and Sandra Mintz) and the more refined, matronly Mrs. T in Wine Silk (1919, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts).

The show will end with paintings in a variety of styles made in 1924, the year before the artist’s sudden death from appendicitis. Painted in Bellows’ studio in rural Woodstock, New York, these last works, including Dempsey and Firpo (1924, Whitney Museum of American Art), Mr. and Mrs. Philip Wase (1924, Smithsonian American Art Museum), and The White Horse (1922, Worcester Art Museum), will prompt visitors to contemplate the artist Bellows might have become had he lived into the 1960s, as did his friend and contemporary Edward Hopper (1882-1967).

Press release from the National Gallery of Art website

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
River Rats
1906
Oil on canvas

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Forty-two Kids
1907
Oil on canvas
106.7 × 153cm (42 × 60 1/4 in.)
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund)
National Gallery of Arts, Washington
Open access

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Beach at Coney Island
1908
Oil on canvas
106.7 x 152.4cm (42 x 60 in.)
Private collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Blue Morning
1909
Oil on canvas
86.3cm (33.9 in) x 111.7cm (43.9 in)
National Gallery of Art
Chester Dale Collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
New York
1911
Oil on canvas
106.7 x 152.4cm (42 x 60 in.)
National Gallery of Art
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The Big Dory
1913
Oil on panel
18 in (45.7cm) x 22 in (55.8cm)
New Britain Museum of American Art
Harriet Russell Stanley Fund

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Riverfront, No. 1
1914
Oil on canvas
115.3 x 160.3cm (45 3/8 x 63 1/8 in.)
Columbus Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Howald Fund
Public domain

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Preaching (Billy Sunday)
c. 1915-1923
Crayon, ink, and wash on paper
Boston Public Library
Public domain

“I like to paint Billy Sunday, not because I like him, but because I want to show the world what I do think of him. Do you know, I believe Billy Sunday is the worst thing that ever happened to America? He is Prussianism personified. His whole purpose is to force authority against beauty. He is against freedom, he wants a religious autocracy, he is such a reactionary that he makes me an anarchist.” – GB, in “Touchstone,” p. 270. The artist’s intent to satirise Billy Sunday was evident to almost everyone but the evangelist himself. An earlier depiction of Billy Sunday in action is seen in “The Sawdust Trail” (M. 48) done in 1916 (below). (Mason)

Text from the Digital Commonwealth website

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The Saw Dust Trail
1916
Oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Layton Art Collection

The catalog quotes Bellows: “I paint Billy Sunday… to show the world what I do think of him. Do you know, I think Billy Sunday is the worst thing that ever happened to America? He is death to imagination, to spirituality, to art.”

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Tennis at Newport
1920
Oil on canvas
109.2 x 137.2cm (43 x 54 in.)
James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Return of the Useless
1918
Oil on canvas
149.9 x 167.6cm (59 x 66 in.)
Courtesy Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The Barricade
1918
oil on canvas
124.8 x 211.5cm (49 1/8 x 83 1/4 in.)
Birmingham Museum of Art, Museum purchase with funds provided by the Harold and Regina Simon Fund, the Friends of American Art, Margaret Gresham Livingston, and Crawford L. Taylor, Jr.

George Bellows

American, 1882-1925

Throughout his childhood in Columbus, Ohio, George Bellows divided much of his time between sports and art. While attending Ohio State University, he created illustrations for the school yearbook and played varsity baseball and basketball. After college Bellows rejected an offer for a professional athletic career with the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, instead pursuing a career as an artist.

In opposition to his father’s wishes, Bellows enrolled in the New York School of Art in 1904. There Bellows elected to study not with the popular and flamboyant William Merritt Chase, but rather with the unorthodox realist Robert Henri. Henri led a radical group of artists, including John Sloan and William Glackens, who exhibited under the name “The Eight.” Although Bellows was elected to the National Academy of Design, he rejected the superficial portrayal of everyday life promoted by the academies. Instead he and his colleagues emphasised the existing social conditions of the early twentieth century, especially in New York. Because their subjects were considered crude and at times even vulgar, critics dubbed them the Ashcan school. Bellows never became an official member of The Eight, but his choice of subjects – docks, street scenes, and prizefights – were typical of the group. Unlike the members of The Eight, Bellows’ enjoyed popular success during his lifetime, particularly with the boxing images that demonstrate his passionate interest in sports and a bold understanding of the human figure.

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Pennsylvania Station Excavation
1909
Oil on canvas
79.38 x 97.16cm (31 1/4 x 38 1/4 in.)
Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The Lone Tenement
1909
Oil on canvas
123.2 x 153.4 x 12.7cm (48 1/2 x 60 3/8 x 5 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Chester Dale Collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Rain on the River
1908
Oil on canvas
81.3 x 96.5cm (32 x 38 in.)
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Jesse Metcalf Fund
© Photography by Erik Gould, courtesy of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Blue Snow, The Battery
1910
Oil on canvas
86.4 x 111.8cm (34 x 44 in.)
Columbus Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Howald Fund

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Shore House
1911
Oil on canvas
101.6 x 106.7cm (40 x 42 in.)
Private collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Men of the Docks
1912
Oil on canvas
Randolph College, founded as Randolph-Macon Women’s College, 1891, Lynchburg

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Summer Surf
1914
Oil on board
62.6 x 72.7 x 4.8cm (24 5/8 x 28 5/8 x 1 7/8 in.)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Forth and Back
1913
Oil on panel
38.1 x 49.5cm (15 x 19 1/2 in.)
Private collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Churn and Break
1913
Oil on panel
45.7 x 55.9cm (18 x 22 in.)
Columbus Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Edward Powell

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
An Island in the Sea
1911
Oil on canvas
87 x 112.7cm (34 1/4 x 44 3/8 in.)
Columbus Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Howald Fund

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Emma in the Purple Dress
1919
Oil on panel
128.27 x 107.95 x 8.89cm (50 1/2 x 42 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Raymond J. and Margaret Horowitz
© Digital Image (C) 2009 Museum Associates / LACMA / Art Resource, NY

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Emma in the Black Print
1919
Oil on canvas
101.9 x 81.9cm (40 1/8 x 32 1/4 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of John T. Spaulding
© Photograph 2012 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Mrs. T in Wine Silk
1919
Oil on canvas
121.9 x 96.5cm (48 x 38 in.)
Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, Gift of John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell, 1973

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Margarite
1919
Oil on panel
81.28 x 66.04cm (32 x 26 in.)
Private collection

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Emma at the Piano
1914
Oil on panel
73cm (28.7 in) x 94cm (37 in)
Chrysler Museum of Art Blue
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Paddy Flannigan
1908
Oil on canvas
76.8 x 63.5cm (30 1/4 x 25 in.)
Erving and Joyce Wolf

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Frankie, The Organ Boy
1907
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Purchase, acquired through the bequest of Ben and Clara Shlyen

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett)
1907
158 x 87cm (62 3/16 x 34 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Arts, Washington
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Open access

Advised by his friend and teacher Robert Henri to select subjects that reflected the realism of modern urban life, George Bellows portrayed the recreational activities of New York City’s lower-class children in such paintings as River Rats (1906, private collection), and Forty-two Kids (1907). In 1907 he painted two full-length portraits of individual children: Little Girl in White and Frankie the Organ Boy (both now at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO). Unlike his late 19th-century predecessors, who popularised the street urchin genre by representing well-scrubbed, idealised children playing with pets or engaged in entrepreneurial activities, Bellows portrayed his subjects in a bluntly realistic manner. The subject of this painting, Queenie Burnett, was the artist’s laundry delivery girl. Her underprivileged background is evident in her gaunt face, exaggeratedly large eyes, unkempt hair, and ungainly figure.

This was Bellows’s first figural work to be exhibited around the country – it was included in 15 public exhibitions during his lifetime – and he was awarded the first Hallgarten Prize when the painting was shown at the National Academy of Design in 1913.

Text from the National Gallery of Art website

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Business-Men’s Bath
1923
Lithograph
16 1/2 × 11 3/4in. (41.9 × 29.8cm)
Boston Public Library

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The Law Is Too Slow
1922-1923
Boston Public Library
Print Department, Albert H. Wiggin Collection

Based upon a 1903 newspaper story, dateline Wilmington, Delaware, about a black man who burns at the stake while a mob of perpetrators stand and watch.

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
The White Horse
1922
Oil on canvas
86.6cm (34.1 in) x 111.7cm (44 in)
Worcester Art Museum

George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Wase
1924
Oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Paul Mellon

George Bellows spent summers in Woodstock, New York, where Mrs. Wase worked as a cleaning woman and her husband was a gardener. Bellows chose to show the couple stiffly posed and strangely detached from one another. Mrs. Wase’s face shows the worries of a lifetime, and Mr. Wase stares off into the distance, as if thinking of another time or place. Between them, a portrait, perhaps of Mrs. Wase as a bride, hangs on the wall. Their clothes match the shadowy gray of the parlour. Bellows painted suggestions of a brilliantly green summer day beyond the closed shutters, as if to emphasise the distance between youthful optimism and the resignation of old age. The artist experimented with new ways to paint portraits throughout his career, and from 1915 to 1920 he exhibited with the National Association of Portrait Painters, whose mission was to separate from ”the tiresomely conventional and perfunctory portrait.” (Myers, “‘The Most Searching Place in the World’: Bellows and Portraiture,” in Quick et al., The Paintings of George Bellows, 1992)

Text from the Smithsonian American Art Museum website

National Gallery of Art
National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

National Gallery of Art website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Ansel Adams: At the Water’s Edge’ at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA

Exhibition dates: 9th June – 8th October 2012

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

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
1942
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Leaf, Glacier Bay National Monument, Alaska
c. 1948
From What Majestic Word, In Memory of Russell Varian, Portfolio IV (1963)
Gelatin silver print
© 2010 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Barnacles, Cape Cod
1938
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
The Golden Gate Before the Bridge, San Francisco
1932
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

This summer, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) will unveil an exhibition shedding new light on one of history’s most iconic and beloved photographers. Ansel Adams: At the Water’s Edge features more than 100 photographs combining famous images with extraordinary lesser-known works that focus on the artist’s treatment and exploration of water in all its forms. Full of energy and dynamism, Adams’ photographs of seascapes, beaches, bays, tide pools, clouds and waterfalls provide a fresh perspective on the artist’s celebrated career. Ansel Adams: At the Water’s Edge was organised by the Peabody Essex Museum where it will be on view for its exclusive U.S. engagement from June 9 through October 8, 2012, and will then travel to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK.

“Throughout his life, Adams was drawn to the water for its visual potential, exploring where elemental forces meet,” says Phillip Prodger, exhibition curator and PEM’s curator of photography. “As an innovative Modernist, he explored seriality, motion and time, using a range of techniques to capture a definitively fluid and elusive substance.”

In this exhibition, drawn from the Ansel Adams Archive at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona and other prominent private and institutional collections, viewers will have the opportunity to see the pictures that Adams made for himself. Both grand and intimate at turns, these personal, and sometimes experimental images express his thoughts about the natural world, and often push the boundaries between realism and abstraction. Ranging in size from 3 x 5-inch prints to 10 x 12-foot murals, many will be appearing publicly for the first time at the Peabody Essex Museum. Adams was one of the first photographers to work in the large-scale mural format which has now become standard among contemporary artists.

At the Water’s Edge provides a fresh look at Ansel Adams, as well-known and beloved pictures of rugged mountains, desert landscapes, and rocky cliffs blend with sparkling, spraying, whirling waters in all of their flowing power and reflective nuance. The undeniable attraction of water as a photographic subject captured Adams at an early age. The very first photograph Adams ever made, shown at PEM for the first time, features a watery pool at the Panama Pacific Exhibition of the 1915 World’s Fair, made when Adams was just 14 years old. Over time, his lens claimed the territory between Yosemite National Park and the Pacific, as well as Hawaii and Alaska, where he shot images shown in this exhibition.

Notably, he made a powerful group of photographs of New England, the only coastal location outside of California that Adams photographed steadily. Over a course of decades, he explored the coast from Connecticut to Maine, especially in Massachusetts, making repeated trips to Cape Cod and Boston’s North Shore.

Highlights

Visitors will have the opportunity to see rarely-viewed objects, including the print of Golden Gate before the Bridge that used to hang over Ansel Adams’ desk, and which he considered among his very best photographs. At the same time, stunning, oversized exhibition prints of iconic photographs including Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite, Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park and Stream, Sea, Clouds, Rodeo Lagoo, Marin County, California will be on display, among others.

One of the surprises revealed in At the Water’s Edge is Adams’ interest in using sequential imagery to freeze motion in time. An especially powerful example is the majestic surf sequence, San Mateo County Coast, California, 1940. Adams was possibly the first well-known photographer since Eadweard Muybridge to attempt to use photography in this way, employing seriality and sequence to create a cohesive narrative. Another series of photographs of Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, shows a different approach to sequentiality. A poignant exploration of form, movement and time, they can be viewed as Adams’ version of Monet’s haystacks. As with Monet, Adams visited Old Faithful at different times of day, photographing in varying light and changing atmospheric conditions.

Another unexpected addition is the exceedingly rare Japanese-style screen, Grass and Pool, 1948, dating from a period of tremendous creativity in Adams’ work. Standing on round metal feet, it was designed to be shown directly on the floor in a domestic environment. In subject and treatment, it was inspired by Asian painted screens in which picture planes are flattened and perspectives tilted. The three articulated panels can be angled to catch the light differently, the rhythm of the fold cleverly mirroring the angular pattern of the exposed grass.

For Adams, part of the appeal of creating such a work was thwarting conventional expectations about what a photograph might look like and where and how it could be shown. Like many modernists, Adams considered photographs not just as images but as objects – the craft and sheer physical presence of the work reinforced its significance as a work of art and the focus of contemplation.”

Press release from the Peabody Essex Museum website

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Kaweah Gap, Sierra Nevada, California
1932
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite, Tetons
c. 1937
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
1942
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Cathedral Peak, Tuolumne River
1944
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Surf Sequence #1, San Mateo County Coast, California
1940
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Surf Sequence #3, San Mateo County Coast, California
1940
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Surf Sequence #4, San Mateo County Coast, California
1940
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Photograph of Old Faithful Geyser Erupting in Yellowstone National Park
1941
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Upper Yosemite Fall
1946
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Nevada Fall Profile
1946
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Upper Yosemite Fall
1960
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Fern Spring, Dusk, Yosemite Valley
c. 1961
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Stream, Sea, Clouds, Rodeo Lagoon, Marin County, California
1962
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Waterfall, Northern Cascades, Washington
1960
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© 2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Peabody Essex Museum
East India Square
161 Essex Street
Salem, MA 01970-3783 USA
Phone: 978-745-9500, 866-745-1876

Opening hours:
Open Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
Closed Mondays

Peabody Essex Museum website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘In Focus: Picturing the Landscape’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 22nd May – 7th October 2012

Curator: Brett Abbott

Francis Frith (English, 1822-1898)
The Pyramids of Dahshoor, From the East
1857
Albumen silver print
11.6 x 16.2cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

“Hence the photographer’s most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically.”

Edward Weston. The Complete Photographer. January 20, 1943

Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel (British, 1792-1871)
Valley of the Saltina near Brieg at Entrance of the Simplon
1821
Graphite drawing made with the aid of a camera lucida
19.7 × 29.7cm (7 3/4 × 11 11/16 in.)
Gift of the Graham and Susan Nash Collection
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Dr Samuel A. Bemis (American, 1793-1881)
View within Crawford Notch, New Hampshire
c. 1840
Daguerreotype
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Boston dentist Samuel Bemis, one of the first Americans to use a daguerreotype outfit successfully, practiced photography during his summer months in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His landscape views of the area are the earliest surviving American photographs to depict untamed nature. Here he depicts a scene of rugged beauty.

An innovative amateur, Bemis was not a masterful technician of the complicated daguerreotype process. The dark tone of the sky and the light areas along the slope of the mountain indicate inadequate processing of the daguerreotype plate.

John Beasly Greene  (American, 1832-1856)
Thebes, Village of Ghezireh
1853-1854
Salted paper print from a waxed paper negative
9 1/8 x 12 inches
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

John Greene was an archaeologist, the well-to-do son of a banker from Boston who lived in Paris, and a photographer. By 1853 the twenty-one-year-old Greene had learned to use Le Gray’s waxed-paper process, the technique of choice for traveling Frenchmen. That same year he made the first of two expeditions to Egypt and Nubia, bringing back more than two hundred negatives of monuments and landscapes, some ninety-four of which, printed by Blanquart-Evrard in 1854, comprise the album “Le Nil, monuments, paysages, explorations photographiques par J. B. Greene.” So rare are these albums that we assume that Greene published them at his own expense. On his second trip, in 1854-1855, he not only photographed but also excavated, especially at Medinet-Habou. During an archaeological and photographic expedition to Algeria the following winter, this exceptionally talented young man died of an undisclosed illness.

Greene’s Egyptian landscapes are startlingly barren. Coalescing from large, softly nuanced tonal planes, the views seem to shimmer above the page almost to the point of evaporating, like distant desert mirages. Generally, Greene placed the geological or archeological structure of these pictures at a distance, surrounded by sand and sky. This, the most minimal of his visions, sums up the Egyptian landscape. Stretching between the great river and the endless expanse of sky, and between the great river and the desert, is a thin band of fertile earth – the ligament of life that gave rise to a great civilisation. That the picture functions like a diagram may owe to Greene’s knowledge of hieroglyphics; the Egyptian pictograph for “country” is a flat, floating disk, hardly more than a horizontal line.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879)
Fontainebleau
1854
Salted paper print
15.9 × 21.3cm (6 1/4 × 8 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Francis Frith (English, 1822-1898)
The Pyramids of Dashour
1856-1857
Albumen silver print
6.8 × 6.5cm (2 11/16 × 2 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Weston J. and Mary M. Naef

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Sugar Pine Cones
Negative 1925-1930; print 1931-1932
Gelatin silver print
11.6 x 16.2cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Kelp on Tide Pool, Point Lobos
1939
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Rather than depicting a traditionally picturesque vista or capturing accurate perspective, photographers of the 20th century began to explore the various but particularly photographic ways that the natural world could be seen through the camera lens. Often this led to spatial experimentation. Taken at Point Lobos in California, this image by Edward Weston plays with the perception, and misperception, of space. The photographer cropped his photograph of a tide pool to show kelp puncturing the water’s surface in the foreground, while in the upper register an underwater landscape appears simultaneously near and far.

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
[Detroit]
1941
Gelatin silver print
8.1 × 11.4cm (3 3/16 × 4 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of Harry Callahan

Callahan referred to this photograph, made shortly after an inspiring encounter with Ansel Adams, as “my first good picture.” Unlike Adams’s dramatic landscapes, Callahan’s composition focuses on an overlooked pedestrian setting in his native Detroit. Raising the horizon line, the artist achieved a delicate, calligraphic interplay among the reeds and telephone poles and their reflections across the surface of a bog.

Wyn Bullock (American, 1902-1975)
Point Lobos Tide Pool
1957
Gelatin silver print
19.1 × 24.1cm (7 1/2 × 9 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Bullock Family Photography LLC. All rights reserved

In Focus: Picturing Landscape, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, May 22 – October 7, 2012, offers a rich trove of landscape photography from some of the most innovative photographers in the genre. Drawn exclusively from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition brings together the work of twenty photographers, spanning the medium from the mid-1800s to the current decade, including Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Imogen Cunningham, William Garnett, John Beasly Greene, Eliot Porter, Clifford Ross, Toshio Shibata and Edward Weston.

“The range of photographs chosen for this exhibition were selected from hundreds of extraordinary landscape works in the Getty Museum’s photography collection with an eye towards the various ways that photographers have responded to the daunting challenge of depicting the natural landscape photographically,” says Karen Hellman, assistant curator, Department of Photographs, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and curator of the exhibition.

Since the invention of the medium, photographers have turned to the landscape as a source of inspiration. Changing artistic movements and continual technical advancements have provided opportunities for camera artists to approach the subject in diverse and imaginative ways. The Getty originally presented In Focus: The Landscape in June 2008, curated by Brett Abbott. Expanding on the first presentation of photographs, this second exhibition on landscape in the Getty Museum’s In Focus series examines how photographers have sought to capture the breadth and perspective of the landscape through a camera lens. The exhibition is organised around three main themes: nineteenth-century technical developments by photographers such as Francis Frith who captured intriguing views of the Egyptian Pyramids in the 1850s; works that show purely photographic approaches such as those by Edward Weston and Harry Callahan; and more recent ways in which photographers have framed the landscape to make environmental and conceptual statements.

One of the earliest works in the exhibition is actually not a photograph but a drawing made by Sir John Frederick Herschel in 1821 with the aid of a camera lucida, an optical device sometimes used as a drawing aid by artists of the period. The exhibition also includes a very early full-plate daguerreotype of a landscape made by Boston dentist Samuel Bemis in 1840. During the first decades of the 20th century, artistic experimentation flourished and tested the boundaries of the genre. Photographers such as Edward Weston and Harry Callahan sought to explore the landscape as abstraction and pure form. In the second half of the 20th century, photographers began to explore the landscape in more socially conscious ways. Eliot Porter devoted himself to publishing work in concert with conservation efforts. Virginia Beahan has delved into the landscape as a site of human history, rather than simply a subject of aesthetic contemplation.

Contemporary artists continue to be inspired by the rich tradition of landscape photography. Also included in the exhibition is a large-scale photograph by Clifford Ross from his 2006 Mountain series, produced from extremely high-resolution digital files in order to make prints that came as close as possible to replicating reality. Several works will be on view for the first time, including a photograph taken in the forest of Fontainebleau, outside of Paris, by Charles Marville in the 1850s, and a photograph from Point Lobos, California, by Wynn Bullock, as well as a work by the Japanese photographer Toshio Shibata acquired with funds from the Getty Museum Photographs Council.

In Focus: Picturing Landscape is the eleventh installation of the ongoing In Focus series of thematic presentations of photographs from the Getty’s permanent collection, and includes twenty-two works by twenty photographers.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

William A. Garnett (American, 1916-2006)
Sandbars, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
1966
Cibachrome print
34.4 x 51cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of William A. Garnett

Nature and photography have been linked since the inception of the medium. Whether driven by the challenge of capturing the expanse and perspective of a vista or by the myriad possibilities of creating a unique artistic experience, the act of depicting the natural landscape has inspired photographers from the 1800s to the present.

To create this image, photographer William Garnett piloted his plane over sand bars in Cape Cod. In addition to the natural beauty of the ocean, the photographer invites us to explore space and perception in a unique way. The undulating forms of the sandbars play with the boundaries between foreground and background. Changing tones of blue challenge us to know if we look at water, sky, or even a view from outer space.

Eliot Porter (American, 1901-1990)
Aspens and Grass, Elk Mountain Road, New Mexico, October 3, 1972
1972
Dye transfer print
26.2 x 20.6cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Bequest of the artist
© 1990 Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Toshio Shibata (Japanese, b. 1949)
Tsuru City, Yamanashi Prefecture
1989
Gelatin silver print
44.5 × 55.5cm (17 1/2 × 21 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Toshio Shibata

Virginia Beahan (American, b. 1946) and Laura McPhee (American, b. 1958)
Apple Orchard, Manzanar Japanese-American Relocation Camp, Owens Valley, California
1995
Chromogenic print
75.3 × 95.3cm (29 5/8 × 37 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Nancy and Bruce Berman
© Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee

Here Beahan and McPhee delve into the landscape as a site of human history and conflict. With the High Sierra as a backdrop, rusty remnants of the Manzanar relocation camp, used to detain Japanese Americans during World War II, occupy the foreground. In the middle ground stand the desiccated trunks of an orchard, part of an 1860s settlement that was abandoned after the land’s water was diverted in the 1920s to irrigate Los Angeles. The orchard, in turn, had uprooted a community of Paiute Indians, who had lived there for generations.

Virginia Beahan (American, b. 1946) and Laura McPhee (American, b. 1958)
Mount Rainier, Washington
2000
Chromogenic dye coupler print
75.5 x 96.5cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Nancy Goliger and Bruce Berman
© Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee

Clifford Ross (American, b. 1952)
Mountain IV
2004
Chromogenic colour print
63 x 118 in
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Clifford Ross Studio

A persistent aspect of picturing a landscape has been the concept of the ideal. Recent photographers have framed nature not only to emphasise its beauty but also to highlight its unattainability in a modern context.

Photographer Clifford Ross was inspired to create this image of Mount Sopris while on a family holiday. In order to, as the photographer put it, “grab as much of the mountain as [he] possibly could in one shot,” Ross invented a camera, the R1, which exposes 9 x 18 inch aerial film. When processed by hand and scanned, the negatives produce files with a hundred times higher resolution than those made with the average professional digital camera. Yet even though he pursues a near replica of reality, Ross also manipulates the digital file to re-create the landscape as he remembers experiencing it. Viewers have the ability to examine the scene in greater detail than they might even in person.

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Lutz Bacher / MATRIX 242’ at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco

Exhibition dates: 18th July – 7th October 2012

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

Lutz Bacher (American, 1943-2019)
Bien Hoa (detail)
2006-2007
inkjet print mounted on aluminium
24 x 36 in.
Courtesy of Ratio 3, San Francisco

Since Lutz Bacher’s first MATRIX exhibition in 1993, the Berkeley-based artist has become a leading figure in contemporary art; she was the subject of a retrospective at MoMA PS1 in 2009 and was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial. MATRIX 242 presents an important but rarely seen series from 2006-2007 that sheds light on the artist’s often elusive practice.

Bien Hoa is is based on a set of ten photographs Bacher discovered at a Berkeley salvage store. All of the photographs were created by an American soldier named Walter, who was stationed at Bien Hoa Air Base during the Vietnam War. Walter inscribed the backs of all but two of the pictures before mailing them home to his partner in Oakland. Bacher has enlarged and reprinted the photographs to hang above the verso of the originals, which disclose Walter’s annotations. These have a surprisingly casual tone, given what must have been the harrowing experience of being a soldier stationed in Vietnam. In some cases, Walter’s inscriptions sound almost like a tourist writing a postcard; in others, he seems to have been more concerned with the composition of the image than with the grisly content of a scene. “This is Bien Hoa looking at it from the Air Base. This is a pretty good picture. Now do you think that’s beautiful? Can you see the wire, keeping the people from attacking the Air Base? That’s what those fences are out there for.”

By strategically juxtaposing these images and texts, and placing them in a museum setting, Bacher reveals the slippery nature of perception. She prompts us to wonder, Why was Walter so concerned with the quality of his images? Why were these photographs discarded? What became of Walter?”

Text from the BAM/PFA website

Lutz Bacher (American, 1943-2019)
Bien Hoa (detail)
2006-2007
inkjet print mounted on aluminium
24 x 36 in.
Courtesy of Ratio 3, San Francisco

The ten photographic sets that make up Lutz Bacher’s Bien Hoa (2006-2007) are deceptively simple. Large colour inkjet images, reproductions of yellowed black-and-white photographs, are presented above handwritten notes written on the backs of the original prints. The annotations were made by a man stationed at Vietnam’s Bien Hoa Air Force Base in 1969, identified only as Walter, who is alternately the author and the subject of the images. We see Walter posing at a military desk with his section chief, in an armed helicopter adorned with a playboy bunny, in front of sand bagged barracks, and at gunpoint, “surrendering” to a Vietnamese woman. Other photographs depict the bleak situation – burned-out helicopters, fire drills, and fences separating the base from the local town. Bacher found the cache of photographs, which had been mailed from Vietnam, at a Berkeley salvage store. Originally meant for an intimate audience, the photos are displaced by Bacher’s decision to remake them as her art. She channels the voice of an African American man fighting in the Vietnam War, decisively situating that voice, through her own authorship, in a new time and context.

On their own, the images are charged with America’s uneasy history of armed aggression and recall our complex legacy of racism and popular unrest; with Walter’s notes, however, that general discomfort becomes deeply personal. Referring to an image of himself seated inside a helicopter he writes: “This is a Huey Cobra, the badest [sic] Helicopter in Vietnam. Those are rockets on the side of the ship. I wish I could take off and come home. Your Man, Walter.” With his comments, Walter reveals feelings of complicity in the military apparatus of the war, as well as his desire to return home. It is hard not to wonder how Walter wound up in Vietnam and what became of him: was he drafted or enlisted by the many recruiters targeting African American neighbourhoods at the time, promising subsidies? Did he return home safely?

Presented, as they are here, in a museum setting, Walter’s self-conscious commentaries on his photographs take on new relevance. In some cases, Walter’s inscriptions sound almost like a tourist writing a postcard; in others, he seems to have been more concerned with the composition of the image than with the grisly content of a scene: “This is a practice session that the Fire Department has every now and then. They are practicing on a burning helicopter. I messed up on my border at the top of the picture.” Bacher’s enlargements invite us to hone in on these details and scrutinise the photographs aesthetically, as Walter directs: “This is Bien Hoa looking at it from the Air Base. This is a pretty good picture. Now do you think that’s beautiful? Can you see the wire, keeping the people from attacking the Air Base?” Walter’s grim interjections foil our sense of detached aesthetic judgment.

Likewise, Bacher, conspiring with Walter, complicates easy explanations of her work. Curiously, the only two photographs in the series that remain unannotated feature a gun. In the first, Walter poses solemnly in front of sandbagged barracks in full military uniform. In the second, he is dressed in Vietnamese garb, playfully surrendering at gunpoint to a local woman. This reversal, from American soldier to Vietnamese prisoner, illustrates not only the paradox of Walter’s situation, but also Bacher’s. Without captions to describe Walter’s feelings, it is unclear if he fought willingly or if, like many soldiers at that time, he was ambivalent about our presence in Vietnam, or perhaps even sympathised with the local’s desire to enact political change. Faced with these gaps in explanation, viewers are left to wonder about Walter’s intentions in setting up the photographs as he did, with this strange role reversal. The reasons for Bacher’s own reversal, exchanging her voice for Walter’s, is also left ambiguous.

Shifting between Walter, of whom nothing is known, and Bacher, Bien Hoa’s narrative refuses to be fixed in any one time or place. For that reason, the work feels contemporary, alive with the contradictions that make up our present moment. Bacher uses found images, objects, and text to confound easy understandings of authorship, gender, race, violence, and power. Despite being composed of discarded photographs, Bien Hoa resonates as a pivotal description of a fraught moment in United States history, yet this history still feels open to interpretation. Bacher, exhuming the photographs and aligning her voice with Walter’s, inverts any sense of their cohesion.”

Dena Beard
Assistant Curator
Exhibition brochure

Lutz Bacher (American, 1943-2019)
Bien Hoa (detail)
2006-2007
inkjet print mounted on aluminium
24 x 36 in.
Courtesy of Ratio 3, San Francisco

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

BAMPFA is located at 2155 Center Street
between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue, in downtown Berkeley
Phone: (510) 642-0808

Opening hours:
Thursday – Sunday, 11am – 7pm
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Elliott Erwitt. Retrospective’ at Kunst Haus Wein, Vienna

Exhibition dates: 14th June – 30th September 2012

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
USA. Fort Dix, New Jersey. 1951
1951
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

There is something whimsical and abidingly Chaplinesque about Elliott Erwitt’s photographs (see the feet in FRANCE. Paris. 1989, below) – that is until he lands a knockout blow flush on the chin with a devastatingly serious, weighty image like USSR. Moscow. 1959. Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon (even though the two protagonists were apparently talking about banalities). Erwitt’s “art of observation” is a gift of the eye and the mind, where the artist must be truly aware of the world around them in order to capture the mosaic of reality.

As the press release astutely observes, “Erwitt has a gift that few photographers possess, the gift of conveying a subtext with each photo: sentiment, anger, a little happiness; an emotion that can only be recognised by looking very closely; a “before” and an “after”. Erwitt himself calls this the “essence of what happens”. For Erwitt, photography is about really seeing things: “You either see, or you don’t see.”

Very perceptive and so very true.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Kunst Haus Wein, Vienna for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“It’s not the subject, it’s how you treat the subject.”

“I take a lot of pictures of dogs because I like dogs and because they don’t object to being photographed and they also don’t ask for prints.”

Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt @ Kunst Haus Wien

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
Small dog standing by woman, New York City
1946
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
ENGLAND. Brighton. 1956. Elizabeth Allan
1956
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
USA. New York. 1974. Felix, Gladys and Rover
1974
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

Elliott Erwitt, the “Woody Allen of photography”, who views his subjects with his heart as much as with his eye, captures human – sometimes all-too-human – situations in his oeuvre. Kunst Haus Wien presents pieces of the mosaic that is Erwitt’s reality, taken from over half a century of his photographic work. This comprehensive retrospective includes about 150 works by a highly active photographer. Erwitt embodies a type of photographer that has become extremely rare, one who views his subjects with his heart as much as with his eye and thereby sees things that most people rarely notice: the little humorous situations and passions of everyday life, the tiny moments in which gestures and facial expressions say more than a thousand words.

Erwitt is one of the leading photographers of his generation. Extremely versatile, with a broad spectrum of interests, he points his camera at human – sometimes all-too-human – situations: Some of them involve animals, others are political, still others capture a touching moment. Photography, for Erwitt, is above all an “art of observation” that depends first and foremost on the special way in which one views the world. In our world of fast-moving TV images and digitally enhanced pictorially compositions in advertising and fashion, Erwitt’s works restore to the photographic medium its original power. His snapshots are pieces of the mosaic of reality. Erwitt has a gift that few photographers possess, the gift of conveying a subtext with each photo: sentiment, anger, a little happiness; an emotion that can only be recognised by looking very closely; a “before” and an “after”. Erwitt himself calls this the “essence of what happens”. For Erwitt, photography is about really seeing things: “You either see, or you don’t see.”

Kitchen Debate

The ability to tell a whole story in one picture is Elliott Erwitt’s strength – as in the summer of 1959, when US Vice President Richard Nixon met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. Erwitt’s snapshot documents how Capitalism and Socialism collided head-on in the form of the volatile Nixon and the surly Khrushchev. Actually, what he photographed was – as he later discovered – merely a conversation about banalities between two politicians during the Cold War, and yet this turned out to be the political photograph that would make him famous. Erwitt’s photo of the so-called Kitchen Debate cemented Nixon’s image as a hardliner and Erwitt’s own reputation as a journalistic photographer who had the qualities of an “invisible insider”.

Dogging Dogs

Erwitt has always taken photographs for his own pleasure as well: street scenes, people – and dogs. The photographer relates to dogs on a very friendly basis; he barks at them and photographs them in situations that show how “human” they can be. He takes some of these photos on walks in Central Park in New York, others at dog fairs and dog pageants. Erwitt’s dog photos have filled whole books and he could probably pride himself on having created the first image of dogs as cultural creatures.

Museum Watching

The “art of observation” has led Erwitt to take numerous photographs of people in museums: He portrays people in their silent dialogue with art when they pause – engrossed or sceptical – to take a closer look at an artwork. The particular environment of the museum is an ideal one for his sharp and at the same time affectionately ironic eye for people.

Naked

When Elliott Erwitt mingles with nudists and takes photographs, the result is very different from the usual photographs of nudes. Erwitt shows people unclothed and undisguised, far from ideals of beauty and staged poses. These photos form a kind of sociogram of nudist culture and are perhaps Erwitt’s most extreme attempt to capture the “conditio humana” in photographs.

Personal Exposures

Between politics and irony, between concerned photography and street photography, these works reveal touching moments that Erwitt has encountered and observed. These photographs allow room for intimacy. They include pictures of his family as well as famous portraits of actors and artists.

Photographs and Anti-Photographs

Elliott Erwitt, the son of Russian émigrés, was born in 1928 in Paris. After his birth, the family moved to Milan, where Elliott spent the first ten years of his life. In 1938, the Erwitts fled the Italian fascists and returned to Paris, after which they escaped the Nazis on the last passenger ship to the USA. The family landed in New York, but Elliot’s father soon decided he did not want to stay there. The family travelled all the way across the USA to California and started a new life in Los Angeles. Today, Elliott Erwitt lives in New York.

As a photographer, Erwitt has always worked for the advertising industry and at the same time realised his own photographic projects. This double context of assignment photography and authorship photography has typified his entire career, although the borders between the two fields have often been fuzzy. In 1948, Erwitt met the photographic legend Robert Capa, who invited him to join Magnum Photos. In 1954 he became a full member of the agency, where he soon felt completely at home. He served as President of Magnum Photos from 1966 to 1969.

Elliott Erwitt is one of an elite group of photographers whose pictorial language has heavily influenced American photojournalism. In decades of successful work as a photographer and as a director of documentaries and television films, Erwitt has always also remained an “amateur” – in the sense of its Latin root, meaning “lover” – of photography. In his photos he combines irony with insight and lightness with profundity, thereby creating humorous images that can often make life just a little bit easier for the beholder.

Press release from Kunst Haus Wein, Vienna

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
USA. Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh. 1950
1950
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
USSR. Moscow. 1959. Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon
1959
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos