Austrian artist – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs’ at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland

Exhibition dates: 25th February – 29th May 2023

Curator: Walter Moser

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
Portfolio of Doggedness (VALIE EXPORT, own words, conversation with Elisabeth Lebovici), in cooperation with Peter Weibel
1968
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Joseph Tandl

I would really like to meet this artist.

Recent postings have hit a rich vein with exhibitions on artists and concepts which challenge the patriarchal, hegemonic status quo… through an exploration of diversity and the enunciation of different points of view. Postings have included exhibitions on the femme fatale, queer lives and Ukranian modernist painting and artists such as Samuel Fosso, Jimmy DeSana, and Andy Warhol.

Upcoming postings continue the theme with exhibitions by Ming Smith, Ernest Cole, Hannah Villiger, Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems, and Lucinda Devlin.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Installation view VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs, Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Fotomuseum Winterthur / Conradin Frei

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
TAPP und TASTKINO (TAP and TOUCH CINEMA)
1968
Albertina, Wien – The ESSL Collection
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich, photo: Werner Schulz

“As usual, the film is ‘shown’ in the dark. But the cinema has shrunk somewhat – only two hands fit inside it. To see (i.e. feel, touch) the film, the viewer (user) has to stretch his hands through the entrance to the cinema. At last, the curtain which formerly rose only for the eyes now rises for both hands. The tactile reception is the opposite of the deceit of voyeurism. For as long as the citizen is satisfied with the reproduced copy of sexual freedom, the state is spared the sexual revolution. Tap and Touch Cinema is an example of how re-interpretation can activate the public.”

~ Valie Export

At age twenty-eight, Waltraud Hollinger changed her name to VALIE EXPORT, in all uppercase letters, to announce her presence in the Viennese art scene. Eager to counter the male – dominated group of artists known as the Vienna Actionists – including Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler – she sought a new identity that was not bound by her father’s name (Lehner) or her former husband’s name (Hollinger). Export was the name of a popular cigarette brand. This act of provocation would characterise her future performances, especially TAPP und TASTKINO (TOUCH and TAP Cinema) and Aktionhose: Genitalpanik (Action Pants: Genital Panic). Challenging the public to engage with a real woman instead of with images on a screen, in these works she illustrated her notion of “expanded cinema,” in which film is produced without celluloid; instead the artist’s body activates the live context of watching. Born of the 1968 revolt against modern consumer and technical society, her defiant feminist action was memorialised in a picture taken the following year by the photographer Peter Hassmann in Vienna. VALIE EXPORT had the image screen printed in a large edition and fly-posted it in public spaces.

Gallery label from Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980, September 5, 2015 – January 3, 2016 from the MoMA website Nd [Online] Cited 05/05/2023

VALIE EXPORT’s multimedia work eludes any simplistic categorisation or definition. As a pioneer of performance art, installation art and video art, EXPORT has consistently broken through the boundaries separating media genres, while using her own body as an artistic medium. Photography has always played a key role in her practice – be it for documentary or experimental purposes, as an element in multimedia installations or as art in its own right. EXPORT has had a constant awareness of the importance of visually recording her performances. Back in 1968 two of her best-known performances, “TAPP und TASTKINO” and the action “Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit”, were attended by photographers and filmmakers. For the performance “TAPP und TASTKINO”, a request was put out by megaphone asking spectators and passers-by to touch EXPORT’s breasts, which were covered by a box inspired by a cinema auditorium with a curtain that the artist wore like a garment. Participants had to maintain eye contact with EXPORT for a defined period of time while touching her, with the artist thereby reversing the voyeuristic male gaze, a typical feature of cinema. For “Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit”, EXPORT took artist Peter Weibel through the centre of Vienna on a lead, with him crawling on all fours, provocatively drawing attention to the prevailing gender relations and power dynamics by reversing them. Photography was not merely used to make a complete document of EXPORT’s work. Rather, action and photography entered into a dialogue, creating a mutual dependency between them: on the one hand, actions were recorded (and ultimately communicated too) by means of photography; on the other, by virtue of their production, publication and reception – especially of key moments such as the interaction between artist and participants in “TAPP und TASTKINO” and their switch of perspective – EXPORT’s action photos acquired a status that was independent of the performances. EXPORT’s focus on the critical examination of mechanisms of representation dates right back to the start of her career, when she began dealing with the different characteristics of the photographic image and imaging media, questioning the way they worked and subjecting photography to conceptual analysis by lifting the lid on the conditions governing the technical processes of image-making. Deconstructing the photographic gaze and its implicit power structures were of key importance here.

Dimitris Lempesis. “VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs,” on the Dream Idea Machine website Nd [Online] Cited 04/05/2023

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
Action Pants: Genital Panic
1969
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Peter Hassmann

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
BODY SIGN B
1970
Albertina, Wien – The ESSL Collection
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Gertraud Wolfschwenger

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
VALIE EXPORT – SMART EXPORT, self-portrait
1970
Albertina, Wien – The ESSL Collection
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Gertraud Wolfschwenger

VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs is the first exhibition to focus on the photographic oeuvre of the artist VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940), whose at times provocative performances and experimental installations have been a source of controversy. The show examines EXPORT’s use of photography as a critical exploration of processes of depiction and representation. At the interface of film, video art, drawing and body art the photographs offer a new perspective on her creative oeuvre. VALIE EXPORT’s multimedia work eludes any simplistic categorisation or definition. As a pioneer of performance art, installation art and video art, EXPORT has consistently broken through the boundaries separating media genres, while using her own body as an artistic medium. Photography has always played a key role in her practice – be it for documentary or experimental purposes, as an element in multimedia installations or as art in its own right.

EXPORT has had a constant awareness of the importance of visually recording her performances. Back in 1968 two of her best-known performances, TAPP und TASTKINO and the action Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit, were attended by photographers (and filmmakers). For the performance TAPP und TASTKINO, a request was put out by megaphone asking spectators and passers-by to touch EXPORT’s breasts, which were covered by a box inspired by a cinema auditorium with a curtain that the artist wore like a garment. Participants had to maintain eye contact with EXPORT for a defined period of time while touching her, with the artist thereby reversing the voyeuristic male gaze, a typical feature of cinema. For Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit, EXPORT took artist Peter Weibel through the centre of Vienna on a lead, with him crawling on all fours, provocatively drawing attention to the prevailing gender relations and power dynamics by reversing them.

Photography was not merely used to make a complete document of EXPORT’s work. Rather, action and photography entered into a dialogue, creating a mutual dependency between them: on the one hand, actions were recorded (and ultimately communicated too) by means of photography; on the other, by virtue of their production, publication and reception – especially of key moments such as the interaction between artist and participants in TAPP und TASTKINO and their switch of perspective – EXPORT’s action photos acquired a status that was independent of the performances.

EXPORT’s focus on the critical examination of mechanisms of representation dates right back to the start of her career, when she began dealing with the different characteristics of the photographic image and imaging media, questioning the way they worked and subjecting photography to conceptual analysis by lifting the lid on the conditions governing the technical processes of image-making. Deconstructing the photographic gaze and its implicit power structures were of key importance here.

For EXPORT, the critical analysis of systems of representation invariably went hand in hand, in the context of both media and society, with a questioning of the male gaze directed at a body viewed as female. Making reference to her own body, she repeatedly probed the role of the woman, the artist and the subject in patriarchal sociopolitical structures. In 1970, for example, EXPORT had a garter tattooed on her thigh for Body Sign Action to give visible expression to the woman’s status as a sexual object and projection surface for male fantasies. Besides capturing the act of being tattooed, EXPORT also took photographs of the tattoo itself. The work expresses the pain involved – quite literally – in having patriarchal norms inscribed on a body that is seen as female. With her series Body Configurations (1972–1982), EXPORT investigates the relationships between the subject and power-political structures through body postures too. She explicitly couches her critique of the processes of depiction and representation in feminist terms: her work centres on the relationship between subject and space, body and gaze, femaleness and representation.

The exhibition VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs, which was devised in close collaboration with the artist, focuses on the impact that photography has had on her creative output. However, following the logic of EXPORT’s work, the exhibition not only presents photographs but also juxtaposes different media and works created between 1968 and 2007.

About VALIE EXPORT

VALIE EXPORT was born in 1940 in Linz, Austria, and now lives and works in Vienna. She is one of the pioneers of performance art and conceptual art. In 1967, in what was a radical gesture at the time, she gave up her father’s and her ex-husband’s names and laid claim to a new identity, VALIE EXPORT. Her works have been shown worldwide as part of numerous solo and group exhibitions. EXPORT has taught at various international institutions and was a professor for performance and multimedia at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne from 1995 to 2005. The VALIE EXPORT Center Linz was established through the acquisition of the artist’s estate in 2015, thus laying the foundations for an international research centre to foster artistic and academic engagement with media art and performance art.

Press release from Fotomuseum Winterthur

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
Verletzungen I (Injuries I)
1972
Wien – The ESSL Collection
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Hermann Hendrich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
Train II
1972
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Verkreuzung (Crossing)
1972, printed 1980
Black and white silver gelatin print on baryta paper laid on chip board
Each board 165 x 200cm (64.96 x 78.74 in)
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
ASEMIE – The Inability to Express Oneself Through Facial Expression
1973
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Alfred Damm

die unfähigeit = the inability

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
From the Geometric Sketchbook of Nature, Tree Triangle
1973
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
Nachfügung (Supplement)
1974
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Eric Timmermann

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Petri / fikation (after: William Blake, Naomi Entreating Ruth and Orpah to Return to the Land of Moab, 1795)
1976, printed 1980
Black and white silver gelatin print on baryta paper laid on chip board
139.5 x 99.5cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Petri / fikation (after: William Blake, Naomi Entreating Ruth and Orpah to Return to the Land of Moab, 1795)
1976, printed 1980
Black and white silver gelatin print on baryta paper laid on chip board
140 x 100cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Die Geburtenmadonna
1976, printed 1980
Black and white silver gelatin print on baryta paper laid on chip board
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
DIVIDE ET IMPERA! after: Martin Schongauer, The Holy Family, 1475-1480
1976
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

Divide et impera! = divide and rule!

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1941)
Anfügung (Attachment)
1976
Albertina, Wien – Familiensammlung Haselsteiner
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Einkreisung (Encirclement)
1976
From the series Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations)
Gelatin silver print with red ink
14 x 23 7/16″ (35.5 x 59.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Carl Jacobs Fund
© 2012 VALIE EXPORT / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VBK, Austria

In her series Body Configurations, the artist had herself or female colleagues photographed in local streets, stairwells, and alleyways, contorting their bodies to mimic the harsh geometries of the city. Influenced not only by the Actionists but also by the human sculpture of Robert Morris, Export complicates the coolly inhuman systems of Minimalism by reintroducing the human body into abstraction, an intimate yet public gesture that effortlessly transmutes the personal into the political.

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
From the series Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations)
1972-1976
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Abrundung I (Rounding I)
1976, printed 1980
Black and white silver gelatin print on baryta paper laid on chip board
80 x 130.5cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

VALIE EXPORT (Austrian, b. 1940)
Elongation
1976, printed 1980
Black and white silver gelatin print on baryta paper laid on chip board
80 x 130.5cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45 CH-8400
Winterthur (Zürich)

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Closed on Mondays

Fotomuseum Winterthur website

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Exhibition: ‘Instantly! Vienna Street Photography’ at the Wien Museum, Vienna

Exhibition dates: 19th May – 23rd October 2022

Michael Frankenstein & Comp. (Austrian, 1843-1918)
Währinger Straße
1880’s
Wien Museum Collection

It is so good to post a diverse range of photography exhibitions on Art Blart. Here we have some interesting early street photographs of Vienna, images that I have never seen before.

No bibliographic information was included with the media press kit, not even the nationality of the photographers, so I have added as much information as I could find online about the artists.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition poster
Graphics: Schienerl D/AD

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

Moriz Nähr (Austrian, 1859-1945)
At the old Naschmarkt, Vienna
1885
Wien Museum Collection

Moriz Nähr (Austrian, 1859-1945)

Moriz Nähr was an Austrian photographer. Nähr was a friend of the members of the Vienna Secession art group. He is best known for his portraits of Gustav Klimt, Gustav Mahler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Moriz Nähr (1859-1945) is one of the most important innovators of photography in “Vienna around 1900”. His photographic oeuvre is mentioned today in the same breath as that of the famous Parisian photographer Eugène Atget. Nähr enjoyed a life-long artist’s friendship with Gustav Klimt and was connected with the artist through a special network of eminent personalities from the arts, culture and philosophy. Numerous portrait photographs of Klimt emphatically document the two artists’ bond. Klimt was also inspired by Nähr’s photographic motifs, as illustrated by the conformities in the photographer’s pictures and Klimt’s painting Beech Forest I created in 1902. The legends surrounding Moriz Nähr are based on the one hand on his close ties with Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession and on the other hand on his connections with the family of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the imperial Habsburg family, especially with the heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who appointed him court photographer in 1908. Owing to his work as a freelance photographer as well as to his various commissions, he has left behind a multi-faceted oeuvre comprising not only landscape-, architecture-, and portrait photography but also street photography (Scenes from the Naschmarkt, 1918) as well as photographs documenting exhibitions (Vienna Secession).

Anonymous. “Moriz Nähr: Photographer of Viennese Modernism,” on the Leopold Museum website 2018 [Online] Cited 16/10/2022

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

August Stauda (Austrian, 1861-1928)
Kaserngasse (today Otto-Bauer-Gasse), Vienna
c. 1902
Wien Museum Collection

August Stauda (Austrian, 1861-1928)

August Stauda (b. July 19, 1861 in Schurz , Bohemia ; d. July 8, 1928 in Vienna) was one of the leading Viennese architectural photographers who made a name for himself as a city photographer and documentarist of “old Vienna”.

Stauda first completed an apprenticeship as a clerk in Trautenau, worked as such in Pilsen and came to Vienna in 1882 to do military service. Here he learned the craft of photography from his uncle, the city and portrait photographer Johann Evangelista Stauda and opened his own studio in 1885 at Schleifmühlgasse 5 in the 4th district of Vienna, Wieden (at the current address of the Kargl Gallery). From 1913 he was a sworn expert. During the First World War he had to file for bankruptcy. Stauda was married but had no children.

In addition to landscape shots, he captured the “old Vienna” in more than 3,000 photographs – inspired by the commission of the monument and homeland protector Count Karl Lanckoronski-Brzezie. He was particularly interested in those parts of the city that underwent significant urban planning changes around the turn of the century, especially parts of the 2nd, 3rd and 9th districts. While the appearance of the city centre at that time is still recognisable today, the contemporary pictures of Mariahilfer Strasse or Neulerchenfelder Strasse show how the passage of time has also changed the city.

Almost three thousand negatives and prints of his pictures of Vienna are now in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The collection of prints in the possession of the Wien Museum is almost as large.

Other large holdings of Stauda are in the graphic collection of the Albertina, in the archive of the Federal Police Headquarters in Vienna and in the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków.

Text from the German Wikipedia website translated by Google Translate

August Stauda (Austrian, 1861-1928)
9., Nußdorfer Straße 24 / Alserbachstraße 1
1899
Albumen print
Image: 22.4 × 27.6cm
© Wien Museum

August Stauda (Austrian, 1861-1928)
4., Margaretenstraße 45 / Große Neugasse 37
1899
Albumen print
© Wien Museum

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

Vienna’s street life in fascinating, never-before-seen photos: The exhibition traverses the city’s pictorial history from the 1860s until today. Most of the works come from the photo collection of the Wien Museum, which show-cases its vast holdings like never before.

The focus of the exhibit is the developing gaze on big city life, from the 1860s to the present. In addition to iconic images of Vienna that capture decisive moments in urban life, the show presents numerous never-before exhibited or published photographs that bring the city’s everyday life as well as the lives of
its inhabitants to the fore: impressive street scenes, intimate snapshots, and fleeting glimpses of urban life.

Iconic images by prominent photographers like Franz Hubmann, August Stauda, Elfriede Mejchar, Robert Haas, Erich Lessing, Edith Suschitzky, Ernst Haas, Harry Weber, and Barbara Pflaum are presented alongside countless new discoveries and previously unpublished works. They capture everyday life in Vienna in enduring snapshots.

The exhibit paints a new portrait of the metropolis on the Danube, inviting visitors on an exciting pictorial journey from early urban photography to the Instagram aesthetics of the present.

Text from the Wien Museum website

Emil Mayer (Austrian, 1871-1938)
On the way with the tram
1905-1912
Wien Museum Collection

Digitally cleaned and balanced by Marcus Bunyan

Emil Mayer (Austrian, 1871-1938)

Dr. Emil Mayer FRPS (October 3, 1871 – June 8, 1938) was an Austrian photographer, lawyer, inventor, and businessperson.

After Mayer completed his studies at the University of Vienna, he established a law practice at Salvatorgasse 10 in Vienna.

Mayer’s first experience in photography was as an amateur and he was a member of several Viennese photographer associations that focused on artistic photography. His artistic photos include documentary images of Wienerstraße.

Mayer was an honorary member of many domestic and foreign photographers’ clubs. He also authored a textbook and was awarded several patents for photographic devices.

Finally, Mayer left his law firm and founded a photographic technology company DREM-Zentrale with Nikolaus Benedik. The company’s name was an abbreviation of DR. E. Mayer. International branches of the company included, DREM Products Corporation in New York and DREM Products Ltd. in London, England.

On June 6, 1903, he married Elisabeth Deutsch (March 18, 1882 – June 8, 1938).

To escape persecution from the Nazi regime after the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Mayer and his wife died by suicide in their home (BöcklinStraße 12) in Vienna on June 8, 1938.

Text from the Wikipedia website

See more photographs by Emil Mayer on the Vintage Everyday website

Emil Mayer was a Viennese photographer who did most of his work with a hand-camera on the streets of Vienna around the 1910s. Although he was a lawyer by profession, his greatest passion was for photography: he was the long-time president of one of Vienna’s most prominent camera clubs, and by the time of his death was internationally known for his work in photography.

Mayer’s photographs document a short-lived period of stability and prosperity in Austria’s history. The Viennese writer Stefan Zweig recalled this time in his autobiography: “Everything had its norm, its definite measure and weight. … Every family had its fixed budget, and knew how much could be spent for rent and food, for vacations and entertainment… In this vast empire everything stood firmly and immovably in its appointed place, and at its head was the aged emperor; and were he to die, one knew (or believed) another would come to take his place, and nothing would change in the well-regulated order.”

Mayer died in June, 1938 – he committed suicide along with his wife, soon after the Nazi occupation of Vienna – and we know that the Gestapo entered his apartment soon afterwards, with the result that his entire personal collection of photographs was almost certainly destroyed.

Anonymous. “Extraordinary Candid Vintage Photographs That Capture Street Scenes of Vienna, Austria From the 1900s and 1910s,” on the Vintage Everyday website January 18th 2016 [Online] Cited 16/10/2022

Unknown photographer
At the Ferdinandsbrücke, Vienna
c. 1911
Wien Museum Collection

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

Franz Holluber
In the Schottengasse
1931
Wien Museum Collection

Martin Gerlach jun. (Austrian, 1879-1944)
Tiefer Graben 36
c. 1935
Wien Museum Collection

Martin Gerlach junior (Austrian, 1879-1944)

Martin Gerlach junior (April 2, 1879 in Vienna – July 18, 1944 in Vienna) was an Austrian photographer.

Martin Gerlach, son of Martin Gerlach senior, first learned the photography trade from his father, attended the Imperial and Royal Graphic Teaching and Research Institute from 1896-1899 and later perfected his knowledge with Josef Löwy and Hermann Clemens Kosel.

In 1906 he founded his own photo studio and after the First World War became the house photographer for the collector Camillo Castiglioni. After the death of Albert Wiedling, he continued to run the Gerlach & Wiedling publishing house from 1923 together with his son Walter Wiedling.

Martin Gerlach junior became famous through his architectural photographs of the interwar period (municipal buildings of the First Republic, construction of the Wiener Höhenstraße, etc.) as well as through his work on the RAVAG program magazine and through publications in collaboration with the artists Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos.

His photo archive of Viennese architecture, industry and the interwar period, which his son continued and supplemented with images from the period after 1945, came into the possession of the City of Vienna in 1989 and is now managed by the photo archive of the Austrian National Library.

On March 1, 1940, Gerlach applied for membership in the NSDAP and was accepted on April 1 (membership number 9,017,291). After his death, his widow, Anna (née Mohl), continued the studio, which was then taken over by his son Kurt Gerlach (1919-2003) in 1947. His son donated the famous Loos archive with 200 glass negatives to the Albertina collections in the 1990s .

Alongside Bruno Reiffenstein (1868-1951), Martin Gerlach is today regarded as one of the most important photographers of the Austrian monarchy.

Text from the German Wikipedia website translated by Google Translate

Franz Hubmann (Austrian, 1914-2007)
Unusual Plant Transport, Wien
1954
Wien Museum Collection
© Franz Hubmann / Imagno / picturedesk.com

Franz Hubmann (Austrian, 1914-2007)

Franz Hubmann (born October 2, 1914 in Ebreichsdorf, Lower Austria; died June 9, 2007 in Vienna) was an Austrian photographer and photojournalist.

Hubmann initially embarked on a career as a textile technician, from 1936 to 1938 he ran a hat factory. It was only after the Second World War that he decided to turn his hobby into a career. In 1946, as a 32-year-old father, Hubmann began a three-year apprenticeship at the Graphic Teaching and Research Institute in Vienna.

In 1951, when he was the head of the Austrian tourism advertising agency, he met Karl Pawek , who was the publisher of the Austria International magazine at the time – a long-term collaboration began. In 1954 they founded magnum together – the magazine for modern life. The aim of the magazine was to gently guide people into the new world of modernity. Hubmann’s photo series, such as those about the Café Hawelka, were his breakthrough as a photographer and photojournalist. He was the lead photographer until the magazine closed in 1964.

Over the decades he has published around 80 illustrated books, in particular on contemporary, historical and folklore themes. In addition, he produced 17 television films for ORF in the 1960s and early 1970s, including the 5-part series Die Hohe Schule der Fotografie (The high school of photography).

In professional circles, Hubmann was considered the doyen of Austrian photography, the “Austrian Cartier-Bresson”. He was a photographer who captured what was specifically Austrian and especially Viennese in photographic stories and narratives like no other.

Text from the German Wikipedia website translated by Google Translate

Heinrich Steinfest
Spectators at horse race
1956
Gelatin silver print

Leo Jahn-Dietrichstein (Austrian, 1911-1984)
In the Prater
1957
Wien Museum Collection
© Leo Jahn-Dietrichstein, Wien Museum

Leopold Jahn (Austrian, 1911-1984)

Leopold Jahn, stage name Leo Jahn-Dietrichstein (born March 30, 1911 in Vienna ; † November 1, 1984 in Vienna) was an Austrian artist (photography, painting and graphic artist).

He attended the teacher training college with a focus on mathematics, physics, chemistry and art education. In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and assigned to Russia. In the Crimea he was wounded and sent back home. Photos from this period can be found in the Military History Museum in Vienna. After the end of the war he walked from his posting in Yugoslavia to East Tyrol, where his family had been relocated during the war. His sons were born in 1942 (Klaus Leopold) and 1946 (Kurt Georg).

He worked as a photographer, painter (classic modern) and graphic artist and published a photo book about East Tyrol, took part in various exhibitions and also had several solo exhibitions. In 1951 he returned to Vienna with his family. He was reinstated in the teaching profession, but continued to work as a photographer. He photographed post-war Vienna. From this time there are, among other things, spectacular photos of the renovation of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. A selection of these photos is owned by the Vienna Museum and the Vienna Office for the Protection of Monuments.

As an artist, he also photographed his artist friends, such as the New York fashion photographer Roland Pleterski, the sculptor Wander Bertoni, and the painter and sculptor Leherb. A selection of these photos are owned by the Vienna Museum. He also made photo reports on the Balkans and Italy.

In 1957 he published a book on Portugal. He worked for the Österreich Illustrierte, the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, the Österreichischer Verlag, Radio Österreich, for the Magnum agency and for the Süddeutscher Verlag. In 1973 he published a book about Ludwig Boltzmann in the publishing house Jugend und Volk.

Until his retirement he remained in the school service of the city of Vienna. After that he mainly dealt with macro photography. He was particularly interested in the crystal formation of chemical substances. In this context, he worked with large industrial companies such as Schoeller-Bleckmann and Waagner Biro.

Text from the German Wikipedia website translated from the German by Google Translate

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

Leo Jahn-Dietrichstein (Austrian, 1911-1984)
In the Kärntner Straße
1950-1965
Wien Museum Collection
© Leo Jahn-Dietrichstein, Wien Museum

Vienna’s street life in fascinating, never-before-seen photos: The exhibition “Instantly! Vienna Street Photography” traverses the city’s pictorial history. Most of the works come from the photo collection of the Wien Museum, which showcases its vast holdings like never before.

The focus of the exhibit is the developing gaze on big city life, from the 1860s to the present. In addition to iconic images of Vienna that capture decisive moments in urban life, the show presents numerous never-before-exhibited or published photographs that bring the city’s everyday life as well as the lives of its inhabitants to the fore: impressive street scenes, intimate snapshots, and fleeting glimpses of urban life.

The exhibit shows how the medium of photography functioned in the creation and dissemination of new urban vistas. In this way, the images also tell the story of a rapidly changing metropolis. They capture the hustle and bustle on streets, squares, and markets, uncover unexpected encounters, and document moments of indolence and pleasure. All in all, the exhibition paints a new portrait of the metropolis on the Danube, inviting visitors on an exciting pictorial journey from early urban photography to the Instagram aesthetics of the present.

Text from the Wien Museum website

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

The photographs show Vienna to be a slower, sleepier, and until recently greyer city in contrast to larger metropolises like New York, Paris, and London. In the earliest photographs taken in the latter half of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries, the dynamism of modern forms of transportation like the tram and the automobile contrast starkly with the leisurely pace at which people move about the urban landscape.

Not only unhurried in the sense of movement, Vienna is presented as a city which has changed at a slower pace both architecturally and in terms of the manner in which people use it. The photographs capture views and angles down streets or across squares that are largely recognizable and assimilable to the contemporary viewer. Institutions like the Naschmarkt, meanwhile, remain important hubs of commerce just as they were over 100 years ago, as a photograph by Moriz Nähr taken of an elderly fruits and vegetables seller in 1885 shows all too clearly.

Nightlife and Vienna after dark are unimportant subjects in Viennese street photography. It is not that Vienna had or has no nightlife – the theater, the cabaret, and so on – but rather that nightlife was not seen by photographers as important to the city’s understanding of itself. Vienna is not a city of sin but a city of leisure. Photographers turn their lens on the coffeehouse, where patrons read the newspaper, play chess, or hold court. The Viennese are captured swimming in the Danube, sunbathing, playing cards, or going to the funfair. These street photographs perpetuate the idea of a certain Viennese Gemütlichkeit, a feeling of warmth, friendless, and good cheer.

Liam Hoare. “Instantly!” on The Vienna Briefing website Jun 1, 2022 [Online] Cited 08/10/2022

Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020)
From the series Simmeringer Haide, Erdberger Mais
1967-1976
Wien Museum Collection
© Elfriede Mejchar

Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020)

Elfriede Mejchar (May 10, 1924 in Vienna – October 11, 2020) was an Austrian photographer.

Elfriede Mejchar grew up in Lower Austria. From 1939 she attended school in Germany, where she then began an apprenticeship as a photographer. When the war ended in 1945, Mejchar lived in Lower Austria again. In 1961 Mejchar passed the master’s examination at the Graphic Teaching and Research Institute in Vienna. From 1952 to 1984, Mejchar worked as a photographer at the Federal Monuments Office in Vienna and then as a freelancer. She was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery.

Text from the German Wikipedia website translated by Google Translate

Andreas Baumann (Austrian, b. 1968)
From the series Wiener Autofahrer unterwegs (Viennese motorists on the road)
1998
Wien Museum Collection
© Andreas Baumann

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA showing at right, photographs from Andreas Baumann’s series Wiener Autofahrer unterwegs (Viennese motorists on the road)
Photo: timtom

Reinhard Mandl (Austrian, b. 1960)
At Franz-Josefs-Kai
2000
Wien Museum Collection
© Reinhard Mandl

Didi Sattmann (Austrian, b. 1951)
Seestadt Aspern
2014
Wien Museum Collection
© Didi Sattmann

Young people illegally bathing in the lake

Instantly! Vienna Street Photography, exhibition view, 2022, Wien Museum MUSA
Photo: timtom

Wien Museum
1040 Vienna, Karlsplatz 8
Phone: +43 (0)1 505 87 47 0

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday and public holidays 10am – 6pm

Wien Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Edith Tudor Hart – In the Shadow of Tyranny’ at the Wien Museum, Vienna

Exhibition dates: 26th September 2013 – 12th January 2014

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
From the series Moving and Growing
1951
© Wien Museum

More images from this wonderful photographer who was a low-level Soviet agent while exiled in Britain after the Second World War and who destroyed most of her photos as well as many negatives out of fear of prosecution in 1951. Thanks to contemporary research we can begin to see the vision of this artist. In her photo essays, an impassioned record, she imaged social injustice and showed it to the world… creating her own inimitable style and a “comprehensive and freestanding body of work.”

“Her photos are impressive for the quality of the dialogue with those portrayed and the social context is always visible and tangible. “The women, children and workers photographed by her seem less objectified and, to some extent at least, are placed in a better position to represent themselves,” writes Duncan Forbes, curator of the exhibition.” (press release)

The quality of the dialogue with those portrayed. You can feel that in these images, that the photographer has a care and respect for the people that she is photographing, probably more so than the photographs of Bill Brandt from the same period. She seems to have more connection and concern for her subject matter. I love their grittiness, poignancy and above all their humanity. Look at the arrangement of figures in Family, Stepney, London (about 1932, below) as the viewers eye is led by the two staggered boys on the bed up to the eldest daughter, looking away off camera, while the mother steadfastly gazes directly into the camera clutching her youngest daughter tightly. The smile on the little girls face is a joy.

“No Home, No Dole” was the reality of life in London back then, with the Great Depression taking hold. I remember growing up in the 1960s and things weren’t much better in my grandmothers house, even the old farmhouse I grew up in. No hot running water, my mother bathing us kids in a tin tub on the kitchen floor with water heated up in the kettle on the stove. It was subsistence living for we were the poorest of the poor. That Edith Tudor Hart had the courage of her convictions and recorded these environments shows a human being of great moral character. That the images still survive we are grateful.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Wien Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. View the exhibition online catalogue.

“If curator Duncan Forbes and photographers Owen Logan and Joanna Kane have resurrected an amazing archive, Tudor-Hart’s own life is curiously out of focus. Her struggles and sorrows are mute beneath the weight of her images. Her late life feels only half-lived: she struggled under the scrutiny of the security services until her death in 1973; she destroyed much documentation, including her list of negatives. As a woman photographer with left-wing associations, work became scarce. As a communist and a suspected traitor she was blacklisted and in the 1950s she gave up photography altogether.

What’s left, or rather what has been patiently reconstructed, is an impassioned record of the terrible long shadow of tyranny in Europe, and of a divided Britain that makes you both deeply ashamed and occasionally proud.”

Moria Jeffrey review of the exhibition 04/07/2013 on the Art Global website [Online] Cited 06/01/2014 no longer available online

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Unemployed Workers’ Demonstration, Trealaw, South Wales
1935
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery / Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Prater Ferris Wheel, Vienna
1931
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery / Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

The rediscovery of a great Austrian-British photographer Edith Tudor-Hart (1908-1973), who is known in Austrian history of photography as Edith Suschitzky, belonged to the group of those politically engaged photographers who faced political developments in the inter-war years with socially critical force.

Edith Suschitzky studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau and worked as a photographer in Vienna around 1930 – while simultaneously a Soviet agent. In 1933 she married an Englishman who likewise had close connections to the Communist Party, and fled with him to Great Britain. There she created brilliant social reportage in the slums of London or in the coal mining areas of Wales, today some of the key examples of British workers’ photography. The exhibition is the first monographic presentation of Edith Tudor-Hart’s work. As well as the period in England, a selection from the early Viennese works are on show. Her unpretentious, documentary-influenced photographs on social themes come mainly from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland

Following Barbara Pflaum, Elfriede Mejchar and Trude Fleischmann, the Wien Museum is once again putting on a solo exhibition dedicated to a great Austrian photographer: Edith Tudor-Hart (1908-1973), also known in the annals of photographic history by her maiden name Edith Suschitzky. She belonged to the group of politically engaged male and female photographers who, from the 1920s onwards, responded to political developments from a socially critical standpoint – both in Austria and in exile in England, where she became an important figure in the Worker Photography Movement. The exhibition, which was previously on show in Edinburgh, is the first ever overview of the work of this in equal measure fascinating and significant artist. It arose out of a cooperation between the National Galleries of Scotland and the Wien Museum and has been curated by Duncan Forbes, the long-standing Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland and the new Director of the Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Edith Tudor-Hart was born in Vienna in 1908 as Edith Suschitzky and grew up in a social-democratic household; her father ran a workers’ bookshop in the Favoriten district of Vienna and a revolutionary publishing house. She had contact with the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and the Communist International already from a young age and both charged her with tasks – with legal party work as well as with intelligence activities. Early on, Tudor-Hart become interested in pedagogy; she completed training in the Montessori method and moved in circles that promoted radical, anti-authoritarian school and education reforms. It was likely the period of study at the Bauhaus in Dessau (1928-1930) that first brought her to photography, even though Tudor-Hart is listed in the archives only as a participant on the famous preparatory course and not as a student in the photography department. Her first pictures were taken in about 1930 and “show a technically accomplished photographer, who explored subjects such as the deprivation of the working class and the reform-oriented culture of Austrian Social Democracy as well as the threat posed by military and fascist forces” (as the historian of photography Anton Holzer has written). At the same time she embarked on a career as a photo journalist for illustrated publications.

It was the period in which, thanks to technological advances, photography in the mass media had gained immensely in importance. From the beginning, Tudor-Hart viewed the camera as a political weapon that could be used to document social injustices; she had little time for the formal experiments of the avant-garde. Photography had ceased to be “an instrument for recording events and became instead the means to bring events about and to influence them. It became a living art form that involved the people” (Edith Tudor-Hart). Her first photo series, published in the magazines Der Kuckuck, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung and Die Bühne, include a reportage on the deprived East End of London and a series on everyday life in the Vienna Prater. That she was a Communist and yet was working for a social-democratic publication such as Der Kuckuck was down to the fact that the KPÖ played a minimal role in the media (and political) landscape of Austria – in this respect the young photographer had to adapt to the commercial realities of her profession. However, she was also active for the Soviet news agency TASS and, in addition, she continued with her intelligence activities. She was described by a fellow agent as “modest, competent and brave”, ready “to give her all for the Soviet cause”. This eventually became Edith Tudor-Hart’s undoing: when the Austrian government moved against Nazis and Communists, she was arrested without further ado. In the same year she married the English doctor Alexander Tudor-Hart, which allowed her to escape to Great Britain in 1934. “When one views Suschitzky’s photographic work from her Vienna years, it becomes clear that already in her early period, she created a comprehensive and freestanding body of work,” writes Anton Holzer.

Among the miners in Wales

In exile, Edith Tudor-Hart’s photographs took on a sharper socially critical edge. She went with her husband to South Wales, where he practised as a doctor in the coal mining region. The economic crisis had hit heavy industry and mining in northern England particularly hard and in many small towns and villages, nine out of ten men were unemployed. The photos from the mining and shipbuilding region of Tyneside also tell of crippling economic hardship and social decline. With her pictures, Tudor-Hart clearly stood out from the mainstream of British photography, characterised at that time by a bourgeois, somewhat sweet and sentimental aesthetic. Her photos are impressive for the quality of the dialogue with those portrayed and the social context is always visible and tangible. “The women, children and workers photographed by her seem less objectified and, to some extent at least, are placed in a better position to represent themselves,” writes Duncan Forbes, curator of the exhibition. During the slight economic recovery of the mid-1930s, Tudor-Hart was able to build up a photo studio in London: “Edith Tudor-Hart – Modern Photography” it said on her headed paper. She specialised in portraiture and was also able to obtain some advertising work, for example for the toy manufacturer Abbatt Toys. In addition, she supplied photos to new British illustrated publications, including the magazine Lilliput and the popular paper Picture Post, as well as to government departments such as the British Ministry of Education. For her, working for the traditional papers of Fleet Street was, however, not an option. Alongside the equally consistent and nuanced workers’ photography, Tudor-Hart concentrated on work with children, especially after the Second World War, and in this she could call on a wide network of contacts. These included the Austrian paediatrician and curative educator Karl König as well as Anna Freud and Donald Winnicott, two of the leading protagonists of child psychoanalysis. She was concerned with issues of child welfare, heath and education and received commissions from agencies such as the British Medical Association, Mencap and the National Baby Welfare Council. In contrast to the static, studio-based portrait photography customary at the time, Tudor-Hart showed families and especially children as natural and lively.

After the Second World War and with the onset of the Cold War, Tudor-Hart’s personal situation worsened as she was still active as a low-level Soviet agent. In 1951, shortly after the Soviet spy Kim Philby was interrogated for the first time, she destroyed most of her photos as well as many negatives out of fear of prosecution. “Her life as a partisan for the Soviet cause ended with her a defeated and demoralised woman,” writes Duncan Forbes. She stopped publishing photos at the end of the 1950s, presumably at the request of the British secret services. Despite being questioned numerous times she was never arrested. Edith Tudor-Hart lived out her final years until her death in 1973 as an antiques dealer in Brighton.

That her photographic work was rediscovered is thanks to her brother, the photographer and cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky. He saved a number of negatives from destruction and, in 2004, presented his sister’s photographic archive to the Scottish National Galleries. This exhibition and catalogue make Edith Tudor-Hart’s exceptional work accessible to a wider public for the first time. The exhibition was on show at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh in spring 2013 and, after its run at the Wien Museum, will also be on display in Berlin. For the first time, it offers an overview of Tudor-Hart’s work from her years in both Vienna and England; many of the photos have never been seen before. Furthermore, the first comprehensive work on this great Austrian artist is being published on the occasion of this exhibition.

Press release from the Wien Museum website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Family, Stepney, London
about 1932
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery / Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Gee Street, Finsbury, London
about 1936
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery / Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Unemployed Family, Vienna
1930
© Wien Museum

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
“No Home, No Dole” London
about 1931
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery / Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Self-portrait, London
about 1936
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery / Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

Wien Museum
1040 Vienna, Karlsplatz 8
Phone: +43 (0)1 505 87 47 0

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday and public holidays 10am – 6pm

Wien Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour’ at Somerset House, London

Exhibition dates: 8th November 2012 – 27th January 2013

Curator: William E. Ewing

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Harlem, New York, 1947
1947
Gelatin silver print / printed 1970s
Image: 29.1 x 19.6cm
Paper: 30.4 x 25.4cm
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

They may be channelling the master, but none does it like Cartier-Bresson. There is a spareness and spatial intensity to Cartier-Bresson’s work that is absolutely his own. Look at the photograph directly above (Harlem, New York, 1947). A railing leads the eye in bottom right, echoed by the bottom jamb of the window. The opening is set for the old man to perform complete with curtains, talking stage right. The jamb zig zags above a trilby-wearing, cigarette-smoking man’s head leading to a wire mesh fence that takes the eye out of the frame on the left. The two men, lower than the old man in the framed window, look in a completely different direction to him. Counterpoise. The image pulls in two directions. Above their head a series of cantilevered staircases ascends to the heavens, thought ascending. A masterpiece.

So many of the other photographers in this posting crowd the plane with people looking in all directions, closed off foregrounds or tensionless images. Images that are too complex or too simple. There is an opposition to Cartier-Bresson’s images that is difficult for the viewer to resolve neatly, yet they appear as if in perfect balance. Look at Brooklyn, New York, 1947 towards the bottom of the posting. Nothing in this still life is out of place (from the light to the multiple, overlapping shadows and the out of focus elements of the composition) yet there is humbling agony about the whole thing. It is almost is if he is saying, “cop a load of this, this is what I can see.” And what a fabulous eye it is.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Andy Freeberg (American, b. 1958)
Sean Kelly, Art Basel Miami
2010
Artist: Kehinde Wiley
63 x 43cm
Pigment ink print
© Andy Freeberg
Courtesy Kopeikin Gallery

Carolyn Drake (American, b. 1971)
New Kashgar. Kashgar, China
2011
30.48 x 20.32cm
Digital Light Jet print
© Carolyn Drake 2012

Ernst Haas (Austrian-American, 1921-1986)
New Orleans, USA,
1960
Chromogenic archival print
50 x 35cm
© Ernst Haas Estate, New York

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Cat next to red car, New York,
1973
Type C prints
18 x 12 inches
© Estate of Helen Levitt

Jeff Mermelstein (American, b. 1957)
Untitled (Package Pile Up, New York City)
1995
Chromogenic print
© Jeff Mermelstein
Courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Positive View Foundation announces its inaugural exhibition Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour, to be held at Somerset House, 8 November 2012 – 27 January 2013. Curated by William A. Ewing, the exhibition will feature 10 Henri Cartier-Bresson photographs never before exhibited in the UK alongside over 75 works by 15 international contemporary photographers, including: Karl Baden (US), Carolyn Drake (US), Melanie Einzig (US), Andy Freeberg (US), Harry Gruyaert (Belgium), Ernst Haas (Austrian), Fred Herzog (Canadian), Saul Leiter (US), Helen Levitt (US), Jeff Mermelstein (US), Joel Meyerowitz (US), Trent Parke (Australian), Boris Savelev (Ukranian), Robert Walker (Canadian), and Alex Webb (US).

The extensive showcase will illustrate how photographers working in Europe and North America adopted and adapted the master’s ethos famously known as ‘the decisive moment’ to their work in colour. Though they often departed from the concept in significant ways, something of that challenge remained: how to seize something that happens and capture it in the very moment that it takes place.

It is well-known that Cartier-Bresson was disparaging towards colour photography, which in the 1950s was in its early years of development, and his reasoning was based both on the technical and aesthetic limitations of the medium at the time. Curator William E. Ewing has conceived the exhibition in terms of, as he puts it, ‘challenge and response’. “This exhibition will show how Henri Cartier-Bresson, in spite of his skeptical attitude regarding the artistic value of colour photography, nevertheless exerted a powerful influence over photographers who took up the new medium and who were determined to put a personal stamp on it. In effect, his criticisms of colour spurred on a new generation, determined to overcome the obstacles and prove him wrong. A Question of Colour simultaneously pays homage to a master who felt that black and white photography was the ideal medium, and could not be bettered, and to a group of photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries who chose the path of colour and made, and continue to make, great strides.”

Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour will feature a selection of photographers whose commitment to expression in colour was – or is – wholehearted and highly sophisticated, and which measured up to Cartier-Bresson’s essential requirement that content and form were in perfect balance. Some of these artists were Cartier-Bresson’s contemporaries, like Helen Levitt, or even, as with Ernst Haas, his friends; others, such as Fred Herzog in Vancouver, knew the artist’s seminal work across vast distances; others were junior colleagues, such as Harry Gruyaert, who found himself debating colour ferociously with the master; and others still, like Andy Freeberg or Carolyn Drake, never knew the man first-hand, but were deeply influenced by his example.

Press release from Somerset House website

Jeff Mermelstein (American, b. 1957)
Unitled ($10 bill in mouth) New York City, 1992
1992
Chromogenic print
20 x 16 in.
© Jeff Mermelstein
Courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Joel Meyerowitz (American, b. 1938)
Madison Avenue, New York City
1975
Archival Pigment Print
© Joel Meyerowitz 2012
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Brooklyn, New York, 1947
1947
Gelatin silver print / printed in 2007
Image: 19.8 x 29.8cm
Paper: 22.9 x 30.4cm
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Terrace Rooms & Courtyard Rooms, Somerset House
Strand, London, WC2R 1LA

Opening hours:
10am – 6pm daily

Somerset House website

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Exhibition: ‘Vienna – Art & Design’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 9th October 2011

Media preview for Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

A subtle pleasure

The delicate paintings are smaller with a flatness of texture and a sombreness that I had not imagined; magnificent in their subtlety. The real stars of this wonderful exhibition, however, are the design pieces. Whether silver, wood, ceramic, glass or jewellery the designs are balanced by a glorious aesthetic. Never has a tea service looked so ravishing or decadent.

This is not a wham bang show like Dali or that other King of some fame showing elsewhere. This is for a discerning audience – one that can take time (between pots of tea) to study and go ooh and aah!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan 2011 except the photographs of the full paintings which come from the NGV press CD ROM.

I just couldn’t help myself!
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

At right

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904

Stylish, provocative, rebellious, and unforgettable – the world has seen nothing like Vienna in 1900. A century ago, a group of radical young artists, architects, writers, musicians, designers and thinkers overturned all the rules and created a brave new world. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos were central to this artistic revolution which transformed Vienna into a dynamic metropolis at the forefront of ground-breaking modernism.

Vienna at the dawn of the twentieth century was opulent, elegant and daring. Casting aside outmoded social mores and moralities, private life became public spectacle. Cabarets, coffee houses, and nightclubs teemed with radical debate and artistic abandon. Gustav Klimt’s society portraits immortalise the chic women who presided over this creative ferment. Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna Workshops created the bold new interior design and the household objects with which these women furnished their elegant homes, establishing the modern ‘look’. As Sigmund Freud defined sexual fragmentation and erotic obsession for a new millennium, Egon Schiele explored human sexuality in images of unparalleled and startling frankness.

Vienna: Art & Design will explore this extraordinary period of artistic and intellectual genius, bringing together more than 250 works of art, including painting, drawing, graphic and decorative art, furniture, fashion, jewellery and photography, most never before seen in Australia. Visitors will experience the inventiveness and brilliance of a unique generation who laid the foundations for life in the twentieth century – a legacy still vividly alive today.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

Otto Wagner (architect) (Austrian, 1841-1918)
Alexander Albert (manufacturer) Austria active c. 1904
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
J. & J. Kohn, Vienna (manufacturer)
Adjustable-back chair (Sitzmaschine)
1908
Ebonised Beech (Fagus sp.), plywood, steel
(a-b) 110.8 x 68.1 x 83.7cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Jardine Matheson Australia, Fellow, 1983
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (commissioning workshop)
J. Soulek, Vienna (manufacturer)
Bureau, from the Gallia apartment boudoir
1913
Painted wood, gilt, glass, silk, brass
(a-m) 179.4 x 110.9 x 64.6cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Samuel E. Wills Bequest, 1976
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Otto Wagner (architect) (Austria 1841-1918)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation view)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner (architect) (Austria 1841-1918)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation detail)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner objects including shelving, stool, chair and hot air blower (rear) in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918)
The Park (installation detail)
1909
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view part of the second room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Otto List
Young lady in black and white (installation detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Charles Robert Ashbee (designer) (British, 1863-1942)
Standing cup and cover (installation view)
1901
Silver, turqoise

Josef Hoffmann (designer) (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956)
Sports Trophy (installation view)
1902
Silver, gilt, malachite
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (designer) (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (manufacturer) Austria-Hungary 1903-1932
Tea service (installation view)
c. 1909-1911
Silver-gilt, wood
(1.A-E) 21.5 x 29.0 x 26.8cm (overall) (kettle, stand and burner)
(2) 10.8 x 15.4 x 20.2cm (teapot)
(3.A-B) 8.7 x 8.8 x 6.8cm (overall) (sugar basin and lid)
(4) 4.8 x 8.5 x 15.6cm (milk jug)
(5) 3.4 x 36.3 x 29.9cm (tray)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room three of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing part of Gustave Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze: Central wall 1901-1902 (detail at top)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Max Klinger (German, 1857-1920)
Beethoven (installation view)
c. 1902
Plaster
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room four of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with at right, Gustav Klimt’s painting Emilie Flöge (1902)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge (installation detail)
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room five of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

At right

Koloman Moser (designer) (Austrian, 1868-1918)
Armchair (installation view)
1903
Painted beech

Second right

Josef Hoffmann (designer) (Austrian, 1870-1956)
Collapsible library steps (installation view)
1905
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler (installation detail)
1906
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler
1906
Oil on canvas
152.0 x 134.0cm
Belvedere, Vienna

Installation views of room six of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956)
Tea and coffee service (installation view)
1909
Silver, ivory
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with, against the wall,

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Sideboard, from the Langer apartment
1903
Mahogany (Swietenia sp.), mirror, brass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Johann Heeg (manufacturer)
Clock
1906-1907
Brass, glass, clock mechanism, enamel paint, steel
(a-b) 42.7 x 43.0 x 32.7cm (overall) (c) 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.8cm (key)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Waltons Limited, Fellow, 1987

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children
1901
Oil on canvas

with Josef Hoffmann furniture in the foreground
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustave Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Portrait of Hermine Gallia (installation detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Pieces of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Mosser silver in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria. Love the reflected light!
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation views of room eight of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Objects by Dagobert Peche (left, right and second right) and Josef Hoffmann in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six) (installation detail)
1910
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six)
1910
Oil on canvas
101.0 x 101.5cm
Belvedere, Vienna

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