Exhibition dates: 11th April – 25th August 2019
PLEASE NOTE: Postings will be limited over the next 2 months as I travel to see photographic prints and exhibitions in Europe: August Sander, Brassai, Kertesz, Josef Sudek, Fortepan and more. Hopefully I will post photographs of my adventures on the Art Blart Facebook page.
T. Lux Feininger (German-American, 1910-2011)
Bauhausbühne Dessau: ‘Lichtspiel’ von Oskar Schlemmer mit dem Tänzer und Pantomimen Werner Siedhoff / Bauhaus Stage Dessau: ‘Light Play’ by Oskar Schlemmer with the dancer and pantomime Werner Siedhoff
1928
Gelatin silver print
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
© Estate of T. Lux Feininger
“Im Grunde ist es nichts anderes als die Welt seiner Bilder, die in den Bühnenschöpfungen Schlemmers Gestalt gewinnt. […] Es ist eine künstliche, aber auch eine in hohem Maße künstlerische Welt, die ihren Eindruck auf ein formenempfindliches Auge nicht verfehlen wird.” (Curt Glaser: Schlemmers Bühnenentwürfe, 1932). / “Essentially, it is nothing but the world of his pictures that takes form in Schlemmer’s stage creations. […] It is an artificial, but also to a high degree artistic world which cannot fail to make an impression on an eye that is sensitive to form.” (Curt Glaser: Schlemmer’s Stage Designs, 1932).
A COSMIC posting of all that is good about the Neues Sehen (New Vision) photographic movement (Neues Sehen considered photography to be an autonomous artistic practice with its own laws of composition and lighting, through which the lens of the camera becomes a second eye for looking at the world. This new way of seeing was based on the use of unexpected framings, the search for contrast in form and light, the use of high and low camera angles, etc…. Moholy-Nagy, László, (1932) The new vision, from material to architecture. New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam).
Alien orchids, dizzying perspectives and superlative light shows. Design, film, photo, collage, photogram, reflection, dance, portrait, fragmentation, architecture, beauty.
I’m in love with Florence Henri 🙂
Dr Marcus Bunyan
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Many thankx to the Museum of Photography, Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting, and to Nick Henderson for the installation photographs. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
O.T. (Am Strand) / No title (on the shore)
c. 1929
Gelatin silver print
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. “Ich habe fast nie einen vorbedachten plan bei meinen fotos. Sie sind aber auch nicht zufallsergebnisse. Ich habe – seitdem ich fotografiere – gelernt, eine gegebene situation rasch zu erfassen. Wenn mich dabei die verhältnisse von licht und schatten stark beeindrucken, fixiere ich den am günstigsten erscheinenden ausschnitt. Das strandbild ist auch auf diese weise entstanden.” (László Moholy-Nagy in: Uhu, 1929) / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart. “With my photos, I almost never have a predetermined plan. Nor however are they the result of happenstance. I have learned – ever since I began making photographs – to grasp a given situation quickly. When I am also strongly impressed by relationships of light and shadow, I record the framed view that seems most favorable. The beach picture was also produced in this way.” László Moholy-Nagy in: Uhu, 1929)
Max de Esteban (Spanish, born 1959)
TOUCH ME NOT: Fleeing the Presence of Death
2013
Inkjet print
Courtesy of Max de Esteban
In Touch Me Not (2013), Max de Esteban focuses on microelectronic de-vices: CDs, plastic boxes, and electronic circuit boards derived from computers. As data carriers that are X-rayed, the metal surfaces and structures do not reveal any information and refuse to be read.
Bauhaus and Photography catalogue cover
Installation views of the exhibition Bauhaus and Photography at the Museum für Fotografie, Berlin
International Exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund Film und Foto (FiFo) at Städtische Ausstellungshallen
Poster for Film und Foto
1929
Offset lithograph
33 x 23 1/8″ (84 x 58.5 cm)
Willi Ruge (German, 1892-1961)
Selbstbildnis aus der Regenwurm-Perspektive / Self-portrait from earthworm perspective
c. 1927
Gelatin silver print
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
© Erbengemeinschaft Ruge
To mark the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus, this exhibition opens up a dialogue between contemporary art and the photographic avant-garde of the 1930s.
The Bauhaus is not just a key figure in the history of twentieth-century design and art, but also of photography. How are the innovations that were made then still influencing the evolution of the visual language of today’s photography and contemporary aesthetic concepts? What role does the photographic avant-garde of circa 1930 play for contemporary artists? This exhibition juxtaposes works by artists such as László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Man Ray, Jan Tschichold, Hedda Walther, Florence Henri, Hans Robertson and Erich Consemüller with groups of works by Thomas Ruff, Dominique Teufen, Daniel T. Braun, Wolfgang Tillmans, Doug Fogelson, Max de Esteban, Viviane Sassen, Stephanie Seufert, Kris Scholz, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Antje Hanebeck and Douglas Gordon.
The historical reference point of the exhibition is the Werkbund exhibition Film and Photo, which was shown in Stuttgart, Berlin and Zurich, among other locations in 1929/30. The Berlin leg was put together by the Kunstbibliothek. The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), who had already made a name for himself with his experimental photographic works, curated one room on the history of photography, and one on the future. The Bauhaus artist was interested in conducting a systematic investigation of Neues Sehen (New Vision) in photography. The historical exhibition, which functioned as a kind of manifesto, intervening in the debates of the time around the position of photography in the hierarchy of art, is reconstructed virtually with over 300 exhibits. Additionally, there will be a recreation of part of the Berlin exhibition. The reconstruction of the original exhibition design will be complemented by numerous vintage prints from the holdings of the Kunstbibliothek and a presentation of films from the 1920s. In combination with photographic works by contemporary artists, the exhibition opens up a dialogue between this historical event and the present moment.
Students from the design department at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and the faculty of design at Nuremberg Tech offer a glimpse into the future, presenting their own forward-looking designs, which also incorporate digital media.
Text from the Museum für Fotografie website [Online] Cited 03/08/2019
David Octavius Hill / Robert Adamson (1802-1870 / 1821-1848)
Lady Mary Hamilton (Campbell) Ruthven
1843 / Reprint 1890-1900 by James Craig Annan
Pigment print
David Octavius Hill / Robert Adamson (1802-1870 / 1821-1848)
Newhaven Fisherman. John Henning and Alex H. Ritchie
1843 / Reprint 1890-1900 by James Craig Annan
Oil/bromide transfer print or pigment print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Au Franc Pinot, quai Bourbon, 1
1902
Aus der Folge / From the series L’Art dans le Vieux Paris
Albumen print
Atget, der sich selbst als Dokumentarfotograf verstand, wurde auf der FiFo als Erneuerer der Fotografie vorgestellt. / Atget, who saw himself as a documentary photographer, was presented at FiFo as a renewer of photography.
László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Fotogramm (Fotogramm mit Eiffelturm) / Photogram (photogram with Eiffel Tower)
1925 / 1989-29
Reproduction by the artist from the unique specimen, Silver gelatin print
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
Das Fotogramm war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart und Berlin zu sehen. Die Motivvorlage ist 1929 in Moholy-Nagys Buch von material zu architektur abgebildet: “spielzeug / durch die bewegung erzeugtes, virtuelles volumen – optische auflösung des festen materials […] spielzeuge sind in vielen fällen die zeitgemäßen plastiken. Sie enthalten oft geistreiche übersetzungen technischer ideen, die meist mehr von dem wesen technischer vorgänge vermitteln als gelehrte vorträge.” / The photogram was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart and Berlin. The template for this motif is reproduced in Moholy-Nagy’s book from material towards architecture (1929): “toy / through the virtual volumes generated by movement – optical dissolution of the solid material […] toys are in many cases contemporary sculptures. They often contain ingenious translations of technical ideas, most convey more concerning the nature of technical procedures than learned lectures.”
Erich Consemüller (German, 1902-1957)
Bauhausbühne Dessau: ‘Vorhangspiel’ von Oskar Schlemmer mit dem Tänzer und Pantomimen Werner Siedhoff / Bauhaus Stage Dessau: ‘Curtain Play’ by Oskar Schlemmer with the dancer and pantomime Werner Siedhoff
1927
Gelatin silver print
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
© Stephan Consemüller
In 1927, Consemüller was commissioned by Gropius to photographically document Bauhaus’s activities and people. This resulted in the creation of around 300 photographs documenting the school’s work and environment. “Bauhaus Scene,” a frequently reproduced photograph of his, combines three works by Bauhaus artists in one photo. It depicts a woman sitting in Breuer’s Wassily Chair, wearing a theatrical mask made by Oskar Schlemmer and a dress designed by Lis Volger-Beyer. Other notable photographs of his feature Bauhaus architecture, often with figures interposed.
Text from the Wikipedia website
László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Funkturm Berlin / Radio Tower Berlin
1925
Gelatin silver print
Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966)
Catasetum tridentatum. Orchidaceae
1922-1923
Gelatin silver print
“Eines der wundervollsten Fotos, das überhaupt in unserer Zeit entstanden ist, ist die Rengersche Orchideenblüte […]. Hier ist ein fotografischer Bildraum entstanden, der mehr räumlich als plastisch lebendig ist.” (Die Form, 1929) / “One of the most marvellous photographs produced during our time is the orchid blossom by Renger […]. Emerging here is a photographic picture space that is more lively in spatial than in sculptural terms.” (Die Form, 1929)
![Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) 'Bügeleisen für Schuhfabrikation, Faguswerk Alfeld [Shoemakers' irons, Fagus factory, Alfeld]' 1928](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/renger-patzsch-bugeleisen-fur-schuhfabrikation.jpg)
Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966)
Bügeleisen für Schuhfabrikation. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld / Flat iron for shoe fabrication. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld
1926
Gelatin silver print
![Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) 'Gebirgsforst im Winter (Fichtenwald im Winter)' [Mountain forest in winter (spruce forest in winter)] 1926](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/renger-patzsch-gebirgsforst-im-winter.jpg)
Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966)
Gebirgsforst im Winter / Montane woods in winter
1926
Gelatin silver print
Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966)
Töpferhände / Potter’s hands
1925-1927
Gelatin silver print
Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Einblick in ein Klavier. Scherzo / View into a piano
1928 or earlier
Gelatin silver print
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart.
Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Finale
before October 1928
Gelatin silver print
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart.
Jan Tschichold (1902-1974)
Laster der Menschheit / Vice of Humanity
1927
Plakat (Raster- und Tiefdruck) / Poster (halftone and intaglio)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
© Familie Tschichold
Das Plakat war 1929 im Raum 1 der FiFo in Berlin zu sehen. “Zu den elementaren Mitteln neuer Typographie gehört in der heutigen, auf Optik eingestellten Welt auch das exakte Bild: die Photographie.” (Jan Tschichold: Elementare Typographie, 1925). / The poster was shown in 1929 in Room 1 at FiFo in Berlin. “In the contemporary world, with its orientation toward optics, among the elementary resources of the new typography is the exact image: photography.” (Jan Tschichold: Elementary Typography, 1925).
Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902 Leipzig, Germany – 11 August 1974 Locarno, Switzerland) (born as Johannes Tzschichhold, also Iwan Tschichold, Ivan Tschichold) was a calligrapher, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role in the development of graphic design in the 20th century – first, by developing and promoting principles of typographic modernism, and subsequently (and ironically) idealising conservative typographic structures. His direction of the visual identity of Penguin Books in the decade following World War II served as a model for the burgeoning design practice of planning corporate identity programs. He also designed the much-admired typeface Sabon.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Florence Henri (French, 1893-1982)
Komposition mit Garnrollen / Composition with spools of thread
1928
Gelatin silver print
© Florence Henri
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart.
![Max Burchartz. 'Lotte (Eye)' (Lotte [Auge]) 1928](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/max-burchartz-lotte-eye-1928-web.jpg)
Max Burchartz (German, 1887-1961)
Lotte (Eye) (Lotte [Auge])
1928
Gelatin silver print
11 7/8 x 15 3/4″ (30.2 x 40 cm)
Max Burchartz (German, 1887-1961)
Grete W. (Augen) / Grete W. (eyes)
c. 1928
Gelatin silver print
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart.
Charlotte Rudolph (German, 1896-1983)
Sprung / Leap (Gret Palucca)
1928
Gelatin silver print
On permanent loan from Österreichischen Ludwig-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft
© Albertina, Vienna
Eine ähnliche Aufnahme der Fotografin Charlotte Rudolph von Palucca bildete László Moholy-Nagy 1925 in dem Buch Malerei Photographie Film ab. / This shot of Palucca by the photographer Charlotte Rudolph was reproduced by László Moholy-Nagy in the book Painting Photography Film in 1925.
Florence Henri (French, 1893-1982)
O.T. (Komposition mit Teller und Spiegel) / No title (composition with plate and mirror)
1929 or earlier
Gelatin silver print
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
© Florence Henri
© Galleria Martini & Ronchetti
Courtesy Archives Florence Henri
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart.
![Florence Henri. 'Fenêtre [Window]' 1929](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/florencehenri_06_fenetre-web.jpg)
Florence Henri (French, 1893-1982)
Pariser Fenster / Parisian window
1929 or earlier
Gelatin silver print
© Florence Henri
Die Aufnahme war 1929 auf der FiFo in Stuttgart zu sehen. / This photo was on view in 1929 at FiFo in Stuttgart.
Walter Funkat (German, 1906-2006)
Glaskugeln / Glass spheres
1929
Gelatin silver print
© NRW-Forum
Many Ray (American, 1902-1958)
Rayograph
1921-1928, print 1963
Fotogramm
Gelatin silver print
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
© Man Ray Trust, Paris / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
László Moholy-Nagy and the FiFo
László Moholy-Nagy – Bauhaus artist and pioneer of media art – co-curated the legendary exhibition Film und Foto (FiFo) in 1929, which was set up by the Deutscher Werkbund in the exhibition halls on Interimtheaterplatz in Stuttgart. The FiFo, which subsequently travelled to Zurich, Berlin, Gdansk, Vienna, Agram, Munich, Tokyo and Osaka, presented a total of around 200 artists with 1200 works and showed the creations of the international film and photography scene of those years. Moholy-Nagy curated the hall, which reflected the history and present of photography. His artistic perspective on the history of photography and his efforts to provide a comprehensive overview of the contemporary fields of photo-graphic application were fundamental. At the exit of the large hall, Moholy-Nagy suggestively posed the question of the future of photographic development. On the basis of extensive scientific research, the Moholy-Nagy room was virtually reconstructed with approximately 300 exhibits.
The exhibition Film und Foto took its starting point in 1929 in Stuttgart, but was opened only a short time later in the Kunstgewerbemuseum (today: Gropius Bau) in Berlin. In the inner courtyard of the museum, large partition walls were erected to present the numerous photo exhibits. The hanging concept, handed down through three documentary photos, apparently deviated from the Stuttgart hanging. A corner situation, mainly showing photographs by Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy, was restored in a 1:1 reconstruction. In this way, the curatorial concept of comparative contemplation, as envisioned by Moholy-Nagy, can be re-experienced.
Play with Images
The rooms organised by László Moholy-Nagy at FiFo illustrated the continuity between the formal and optical qualities of photography, as well as the forward-looking influence of technical image media on contemporary culture. Moholy-Nagy’s works were interpretable as exemplifying visual modernism. They comprised close-up portrait fragments, architectural photographs using unconventional perspectives, and playful photo collages. Appearing entirely new at the time were the technical and material qualities of these photographs, as well as the aesthetic principles upon which they functioned. This was true in particular for the boldly configured light spaces of his photograms. These cameraless photographs embodied Moholy-Nagy’s artistic intentions in a very special way, and the medium offered him maximal autonomy in the use of light as a creative resource.
As examples of the photography of the Neue Sehen (New Vision), his works also entered the Kunstbibliothek, which – as the organiser of the Berlin FiFo – also acquired works by other artists from the show. The selection on view here evokes the comparative play with images and with modes of perception and use that was instigated by Moholy-Nagy, while confronting photographs from the 1920s with those from the 19th century. The form of presentation using passe-partouts and frames, prescribed by museum custom, renders the material and formal properties of each individual original print sensuously graspable.
A New Way of Seeing: An Homage to Film und Foto
In the exhibition Film und Foto, the camera emerged as the key to an expanded perception of the world, and as a mediator of new modes of seeing. In conjunction with photographic and cinematic experimentation, the New Objectivity and the New Vision came to epitomise avant-garde production. The central role of film for 20th-century culture was now recognised and manifested for the first time. Today, devices that can produce photographs or filmic scenes depending upon the chosen setting are at our disposal. This medial juxtaposition was conceptualised for the first time at FiFo – not coincidentally in 1929, the year sound film was inaugurated. Questions such as: “What is a photograph?” “What is a cinematic image?” “What is a technically produced image?” were investigated. In the Russian room, El Lissitzky hung photographs in open frames that were reminiscent of filmstrips, and ran excerpts from Soviet films on continuous loops from daylight projectors directly adjacent to them. The presentation of both media in both tandem and on equal terms was realised for the first time here in a modern dispositive. The program The Good Film, assembled by Victor Schamoni, ran at the former Kunstgewerbemuseum, today the GropiusBau, and at other Berlin cinemas, establishing cinema as an art form.
Daniel T. Braun
Daniel T. Braun describes his pictorial work as performative form re-search. Behind this lies an actionist stubbornness that wrestles unknown facets from the analogue forms of photography. The work group of Rocketograms may serve as an apt example. Following the action forms of action painting, Braun brings light-sensitive colour photographic paper into physical contact with burning pyrotechnics. With the uncommon use of magnesium torches, he refers to undertakings largely forgotten today, which were used for lighting in the early days of photography. In addition, the artefacts created in this way have an emphatically expressive effect. The moment of explosion is inscribed in the unique pieces in a virtually picture-creative way. Referring to Susan Sontag, Braun explicitly directs his goal “not to the creation of harmony, but to the overexpansion of the medium through destructive processes.”
A material-based exploration of light is also reflected in several sculptures, which Daniel T. Braun has transferred into another aspect of being through nuanced lighting and rotations in the studio. In the photographic image, the recorded light traces of the objects develop a strange independence. They seem to elude the observer’s gaze and yet are present in a peculiar way.
Max de Esteban
In the photographic works of Max de Esteban we encounter references critical of civilisation. His digital photo collages are designed as visual textures. They are inscribed with a skepticism based on media theory. He already indicates the vertigo that the works can trigger in their titles: Heads Will Roll is the name of a series of works from 2014. Fragments of perception from the media world are transformed into a visual totality. A spectrum of constructive forms and colour surfaces, as handed down from Modernism, is combined with individual motif elements from the image pool of mass media. In the sense of Zygmunt Bauman, the motifs of Heads Will Roll represent the unredeemed world of a “retrotopia”.
In Touch Me Not (2013), Max de Esteban focuses on microelectronic de-vices: CDs, plastic boxes, and electronic circuit boards derived from computers. As data carriers that are X-rayed, the metal surfaces and structures do not reveal any information and refuse to be read.
Doug Fogelson
For his series Forms & Records, the American artist Doug Fogelson visit-ed a historically significant site of the New Bauhaus. His analogue black-and-white and colour photographs were taken in the darkroom of the IIT Institute of Design (ID) photography school in Chicago, which was found-ed by László Moholy-Nagy.
Fogelson’s graphically adept pictorial inventions can be understood as an expression of visual archaeology. He uses architectural models, vinyl singles, film and tape strips from the immediate post-war era as found motifs. In doing so, he refers to concepts of recording, designing, documenting and ephemerality in order to find his way back from a historical distance to the basics of form-finding with light. In addition, Moholy-Nagy’s series also refers to suggestions published in 1922 in his essay “New Plasticism in Music. Possibilities of the Gramophone”. The Bauhaus teacher there implements his ideas on the manipulative use of wax records with the intention of creating new sounds.
Douglas Gordon
In an obsessive way, the video and photographic works of Douglas Gordon wrestle with the receptive parameters of New Vision. His passionate engagement reveals itself in the leitmotif of the eye. For the artist’s book Punishment Exercise in Gothic (2001), the Scottish Turner Prize winner portrays himself in a black-and-white photograph, which shows his bleached portrait in cut. The fragmented cyclopean gaze is directed straight at the viewer and can be interpreted ambiguously. The motif is based on Max Burchartz’s photograph Lotte (eye), a key image of photo-graphic modernism presented in 1929 at the Stuttgart exhibition Film und Foto. In the book, the artist repeats his self-portrait no less than 118 times.
Antje Hanebeck
Antje Hanebeck dedicates her artistic photography to the architecture of post-war Modernism and the present. A moment of the documentary does not apply to her. Instead, she operates with a coarse-grained, tonal black-and-white aesthetic that seems pre-modern in an confounding way. Graphic and photographic elements are subtly intertwined and contrasted with the captured buildings, which retain their strictly constructive character. “Her pictures are picture puzzles, riddles, question marks, which – also – resist any temporal classification” (Hans-Michael Koetzle). This al-so applies to the large-format work Borough (2008). Hanebeck’s motif refers to photographs taken by László Moholy-Nagy in 1928 on the viewing platform of the Berlin Radio Tower. However, her spectacular downward gaze leads to a new irritation of perception. The irritation can only be re-solved by a change of view – a 90 degree turn of the head to the left. Of course, the artist’s intervention is not limited to the formal. “The Borough motif undergoes transformation into a newly created, utopian, urban land-scape through a rotation.” (Ellen Maurer Zilioli).
Behind the poetic name of the work Desert Rose lies the National Museum of Qatar, designed by Jean Nouvel, which is due to open in March 2019. The French star architect develops his representative buildings from various stylistic concepts, including Bauhaus modernist architecture. It is not uncommon for the buildings to be symbolically formulated. In her horizontal-format photographs, Hanebeck exposes a section of the constructive sub-layers of the “desert rose”. She interprets the functional longwall system of the steel pillars as a deeply vital, vibrating fabric.
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs
“The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules, the ‘how to do it’. The rescue of photography takes place through experimentation.” Programmatically, this quotation by László Moholy-Nagy is prefixed in a catalogue on the works of Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs. The Swiss artist duo, who have been working together since 2003, is interested in the shifting of photo-technical boundaries, in a productive confusion of the perception of things and their representation. Onorato & Krebs act inven-tively, ironically and always with analogue means in their image findings. For their work group Color Spins, created in 2012, they have developed their own rotational apparatuses. The dynamic light sculptures, which are captured by colour photography, create a surprising illusionism. With a wink, the figurations recall the famous ensembles that Oskar Schlemmer developed more than a hundred years ago and later performed on the Bauhaus stage in Dessau.
The ephemeral light sculptures of the black-and-white series Ghost from 2012, on the other hand, step in front of the dreary backdrop of a piece of woodland. A disturbing surreality emanates from the appearances. The medium of photography still retains its magical character in the works of Onorato & Krebs.
Thomas Ruff
The phg series by Thomas Ruff is characterised by digital processes. They can be interpreted as an homage. The work phg.05_II, in its spiral form, recites one of László Moholy-Nagy’s most famous photograms from 1922. The three-letter abbreviation, which recalls the name of a file format, refers to a contemporary approach to image generation. The process is completely virtualised. Both the generation of the objects and the simulation of the shadows on the paper take place in an immaterial space.
“With phg, Ruff transfers an analogue technique into virtual space – and at the same time questions all attributes assigned to the photogram, such as immediacy and objectivity, as they were relevant to Moholy-Nagy’s ‘Photography of New Vision'” (Martin Germann). But the phg series can also be thought of in the opposite way. By radically erasing the analogue essence of the photogram, but retaining the terminology of the photograms, Ruff redeems a central doctrine of photography for the digital pre-sent. As early as 1928, László Moholy-Nagy brought the doctrine to a formula: “Photography is the shaping of light.”
Viviane Sassen
What is photography? Viviane Sassen understands the imaging process as a peculiar “art of darkening”. Umbra (Latin: “shadow”) is the title of her group of works created in 2014. In it, the Dutch fashion and art photographer explores in a number of variations the effect aspects of semi-transparent colour surfaces placed in desert sceneries. For the three-part work Vlei, Viviane Sassen locates square plates of coloured glass in a hollow. In their form and colour, these plates are reminiscent of the abstract paintings by Bauhaus master Josef Albers. The surfaces of the Umbra series are also partly captured in perspective foreshortening. They, too, assert themselves as an autonomous, colour-shaded picture within the picture. Sassen’s arrangements always retain a slight contradictoriness. Moments of realism and abstraction are equally effective in them.
The artist’s book Umbra from 2015 brings together eleven coloured shad-ow motifs in the form of a loose-leaf collection. The motifs once again operate with variations of gaze and reflections. Sassen’s artistic oeuvre often contains feminist references to modernist photography. The work Marte #03, for example, is based on Germaine Krull’s experimental self-portraits.
Kris Scholz
In the age of the digital, there can be no question of a demand for ahistoricity, as evoked by the New Vision. This is documented by the series Marks and Traces by Kris Scholz. His large-format colour photographs show worn floors, floor boards, and tabletops from German, Spanish, Moroccan and Chinese studios and art academies. One may initially classify the motifs as pictorial documents. “But just as important is the question of who left these markings and traces. As documents, his pictures ‘fail’ because they hardly provide any information” (Gérard A. Goodrow). The perceptual perspective of the pictures is based on a radically lowered gaze that was already applied by Umbo and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s. Scholz also uses stretched linen as a medium for his highly abstract large formats, which, despite their sharpness of detail, are, from a greater distance, perceived as painterly artefacts.
Stefanie Seufert
The works of Stefanie Seufert show an architectural reference. Her sculptures from 2016 are titled Towers. Photographic papers serve as the start-ing point for her experimental exploration. In the darkroom, these papers are edited by elaborate folding and exposure processes. From the respective layers and trace-like superimpositions, a materiality of its own is formulated, which the artist consciously expands into space. “Fragile, strangely monumental and oddly alien to themselves, they arise from a folding of the picture, which now occupies a space, encloses a space and suggests the idea of an (interior) space of the pictures themselves” (Ma-en Lübbke-Tidow). As tower-like artefacts, Seufert’s Towers, which are reminiscent of contemporary high-rise buildings, literally stand in the way of the viewer. Like an ensemble of materialised metaphors, they insist on autonomy that includes both alienation and abstraction.
Dominique Teufen
The artistic works of Dominique Teufen are characterised by an expansive drive of photography towards the genres of sculpture and architecture. Her group of Blitzlicht-Skulpturen (flashlight sculptures) was created in 2013. The setting follows a strict arrangement. Like architectural models, glass structures composed of shapes of cubes, slabs, and pyramids are positioned on the stage of a black plinth or white table. Something theatrical happens on it. The camera flashes. Reflective surfaces reflect the light onto the walls, catch these light forms again and connect the perspectival surfaces and lines to an illusion: the concrete moves into the background, the light as a sculpture enters the room; as soon as the eye suspects it, only the photograph remains as a witness to its existence. Teufen’s tableaus explore border areas. What already is architecture? What is sculpture? What, in turn, is photography?
In an ironic way, a catalogue of questions opens up in Teufen’s installation Selfiepoint from 2016. The expansive work formulates the invitation to shoot a selfie with the smartphone and thus to practice a central iconic gesture of our time. The backdrop of a mountain landscape quickly turns out to be a whimsically composed mountain of paper. It originated solely from the copier. What remains is a creative desire for self-reflection. Selfiepoint reminds us that the snapshot aesthetics of amateur photography have already been tried out by the students at the Bauhaus. At that time, the students were already playfully exploring new ways of presenting individual and group portraits with the 35 mm camera.
Wolfgang Tillmans
To what extent was the Bauhaus politically oriented? With a view to photography, the question still arises today as to the degree to which New Vision can be assigned to an artistic avant-garde of Modernism. Because the latter “aims, beyond the aesthetic, at radical social change […] which hardly applies to the protagonists of the New Vision. They were interested in little more than new perspectives from which they put people and things into the picture” (Timm Starl). The accusation of aestheticism arises. It contradicts the thesis that a reflexive visual process already provides political impulses itself. For the self-conception of contemporary art, however, the integration of political fields of thought and action has gained central importance. Both aspects of the political can be found exemplarily in the work of Wolfgang Tillmans. In June 2016, the artist launched an Anti-Brexit campaign for which he designed a 25-part poster series and called for Great Britain to remain in the EU. Tillmans does not want his project to be understood as an art action. He uses images from his Vertical Landscapes, which is a group of motifs of heavens and horizons. His photo-graphs are used as a form of agitation and placed in a tradition of image propaganda. Think, for example, of the collages by John Heartfield.
An edition realised by Wolfgang Tillmans in 2016 at the invitation of Tate Modern in London acts with a different field of photography. The occasion is the reopening of the Switch House, a brick building apse by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The sequence of images shows the still empty room areas of the museum on colour photocopies. Even this materiality undermines the auratic charge of the building. In their limited colour spectrum, Tillmans’ pictures produce “patterns and reductions that are literally subtracted from the naturalistic image” (Heinz Schütz). Paradoxically enough, the reproductions are transformed back into unique pieces through alienating colour shifts.
Daniel T. Braun (German, b. 1975)
Overseer
2003
Raketogramm / colour photogram
c.170 x 106 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Daniel T. Braun (German, b. 1975)
Rafael Shafir
2006
Raketogramm / colour photogram
c. 260 x 130 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Antje Hanebeck
Borough
2008
Textildruck im Spannrahmen
230 x 230 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs
Spin 07 (green brown)
2012
Colour print
Courtesy the artists & Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf
© Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs
Daniel T. Braun (German, b. 1975)
SBSVI Nr. 6
2013
C-Print analog
110 x 90 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Kris Scholz
Marks and Traces, Caochangdi 1
2013
Fine art print on canvas
200 x 150 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Kris Scholz
Marks and Traces, Chongqing 5
2018
Fine art print on canvas
200 x 150 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Dominique Teufen (Swiss, b. 1975)
Flashlight Sculpture #3
2013
Colour print
60 x 90 cm
Courtesy Christophe Guye Galerie, Zürich
© Dominique Teufen
Dominique Teufen (Swiss, b. 1975)
Flash Sculpture # 5
2013
Colour print
60 x 90 cm
Courtesy Christophe Guye Galerie, Zürich
© Dominique Teufen
Doug Fogelson (American, b. 1970)
Forms and Records No. 11
2014
Fotogramm
Silver gelatin paper
Courtesy Doug Fogelson
© Doug Fogelson
Doug Fogelson (American, b. 1970)
Forms And Records No 6
2014
Photogram, light box
© Doug Fogelson
Doug Fogelson (American, b. 1970)
Forms And Records No 08
2014
Photogram, light box
© Doug Fogelson
Doug Fogelson (American, b. 1970)
Forms And Records No 13
2014
Photogram, light box
© Doug Fogelson
Max de Esteban (Spanish, born 1959)
HEADS WILL ROLL: Geographies of Permanent Emergency
2014
Inkjet print
Courtesy Max de Esteban
© Max de Esteban
Vivianne Sassen (Dutch, born 1972)
Red Vlei
2014
Colour print
Courtesy Vivianne Sassen
© Vivianne Sassen
Viviane Sassen (Dutch, born 1972)
Yellow Vlei
2014
Colour print
Courtesy Vivianne Sassen
© Vivianne Sassen
Daniel T. Braun (German, b. 1975)
Atmozons & Horizspheres no. 11
c. 2015
Photogram / luminogram on colour film
114 × 80cm
C-Print analog, 2+1 AP
© Daniel T. Braun und VG Bild-Kunst
Daniel T. Braun (German, b. 1975)
AZ Nr. 6
2016
Photogram on coloUr film / C- Print analog
c. 84 x 120 cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Stefanie Seufert
owers Option #2, Just Yellow, Atlas Grey, Dark Aubergine
2016
Fotogramm / Colour paper
Courtesy Stefanie Seufert
© Stefanie Seufert
Antje Hanebeck
CaSO4•2 H2O 46
2018
Pigment print
Courtesy Antje Hanebeck
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
Museum für Fotografie
Jebensstraße 2, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Phone: +49 30 266424242
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Exhibition: ‘Balthasar Burkhard’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich
Tags: "Click!" said the Camera, aerial photographs, aerial photography, Amsterdam Canvases 1969-70, arald Szeemann, architectural photography, Auf der Alp, avant-garde European photography, Balthasar Burkhard, Balthasar Burkhard arald Szeemann, Balthasar Burkhard Bernina, Balthasar Burkhard Bull, Balthasar Burkhard Camel, Balthasar Burkhard Design for Body II, Balthasar Burkhard early photographs, Balthasar Burkhard Ecosse, Balthasar Burkhard feet 2, Balthasar Burkhard in his studio, Balthasar Burkhard Jean-Christophe Ammann at Andy Warhol's Factory, Balthasar Burkhard Mexico City, Balthasar Burkhard Michael Heizer Berne Depression, Balthasar Burkhard Nuages 8, Balthasar Burkhard On the Alp, Balthasar Burkhard oT, Balthasar Burkhard Richard Serra Splash Piece, Balthasar Burkhard Rio Negro, Balthasar Burkhard Scotland, Balthasar Burkhard Silberen, Balthasar Burkhard Study of The Head, Balthasar Burkhard The Bed, Balthasar Burkhard The Knee, Balthasar Burkhard The Knie, Balthasar Burkhard the last day of documenta 5, Balthasar Burkhard The Reindeer, Berner Bohème, Bernese Seeland region, Bernina, Body and Sculpture, Chicago and the Self-Invention of the Artist, cloud photography, Conceptual Art, contemporary art, Design for Body II, documenta 5, Ecosse, emancipation of photography, Esther Altorfer, feet 2, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Gotthard Schuh, Happening & Fluxus, Harald Szeemann, heliography, Jakob Tuggener, Jean-Christophe Ammann, Jean-Christophe Ammann at Andy Warhol's Factory, Jean-Christophe Ammann Balthasar Burkhard, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Kurt Blum, large format photography, large-scale photographic canvases, Markus Raetz, materiality of the image, Mexico City, Michael Heizer Berne Depression, Monika Raetz-Müller, monumental photographic tableaux, monumental tableau, nature and culture, Niele Toroni, nineteenth century photography, Nuages 8, On the Alp, Paul Senn, performance art, photo actuelle suisse, photo canvases, Photo works, photographic journal, photographic tableau, photography of cities, photography of clouds, Portraits: Types and Individuals, post-war humanist photography, Richard Serra Splash Piece, Rio Negro, sculptural human landscapes, self-invention of a photographer, Silberen, site-specific architectures, Study of The Head, Swiss art, Swiss art scene, Swiss artist, Swiss conceptual art, Swiss performance art, Swiss photographer, Swiss photography, The Amsterdam Canvases 1969-70, The Bed, The Knee, The Knie, the last day of documenta 5, The Reindeer, Thomas Kovachevic, Urs Dickerhof, Urs Lüthi, visible reality, Visualised thought processes, Visualisierte Denkprozesse, When Attitudes Become Form
Exhibition dates: 10th February – 21st May 2018
As is so often the case with an artist, it is the early work that shines brightest in this posting.
The works from On the Alp possess an essential power; the daring capture of actions and performances by the international avant-garde of the day make you wish you had been there; and the installation photograph of ‘The Knie’, Kunsthalle Basel in 1983 (below) makes me want to see more of his 1980s installations, with their shift in scale and repetitive nature. There are no more examples online, but a couple of photographs can be seen in the first installation photograph below.
I can leave the underwhelming aerial, cloud and landscape work well alone. There are many people in the history of photography who have taken better photographs of such subject matter. His life-sized photographs of animals again do nothing for me. They possess a reductive minimalism riffing on the canvas backgrounds of Avedon blown up to enormous size (as in most contemporary photography, as if by making something large the photograph gains aura and importance) but they lead nowhere. Perhaps in their actual presence (the physicality of the print) I might be transported to another place, but in reproduction they are a one-dimensional non sequitur.
From the energy of the earlier work emerges “a beauty contest between animals in a photo-shoot”, scrupulous studio photos that demand to be taken seriously, but mean very little. Here, passion has lost out to rigorous and deathly control.
Marcus
.
Many thankx to Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Together, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz will showcase the oeuvre of Swiss artist Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010) in a major retrospective. Burkhard’s work spans half a century: from his early days as a trainee photographer with Kurt Blum to his seminal role in chronicling the art of his time, eventually becoming a photographic artist in his own right who brought photography into the realms of contemporary art in the form of the monumental tableau. More than 150 works and groups of works chart not only the progress of his own photographic career, but also the emergence of photography as an art form in the second half of the twentieth century. An exhibition in collaboration with Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano.
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
from On the Alp
1963
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
oT (Urs Luthi, Balthasar Burkhard, Jean-Frederic Schnyder), Amsterdam
1969
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Untitled (Jean-Christophe Ammann at Andy Warhol’s Factory), New York
1972
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Jean-Christophe Ammann
oT (Balthasar Burkhard), USA
Venice, 1972
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Together, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz have launched a major retrospective exhibition dedicated to the lifetime achievement of Swiss artist Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010). His oeuvre is almost unparalleled in the way it reflects not only the self-invention of a photographer but also the emancipation of photography as an artistic medium in its own right during the second half of the twentieth century.
The exhibition charts the many facets of Burkhard’s career, step by step, from his apprenticeship with Kurt Blum – in which he adhered closely to the traditional reportage and illustrative photography of the 1960s, and undertook his first independent photographic projects – to his role alongside legendary curator Harald Szeemann, and his documentation of Bern’s bohemian scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Balthasar Burkhard is the author of many iconic images of such groundbreaking exhibitions as When Attitudes Become Form at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969 and the 1972 documenta 5, capturing radical and frequently ephemeral works, actions and performances by the international avant-garde of the day.
Meanwhile, Burkhard endeavoured to make his mark both as a photographer and as an artist, developing his first large-scale photographic canvases in collaboration with his friend and colleague Markus Raetz, trying out his skills as an actor in the USA, and ultimately being invited to hold his own highly influential exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel and Musée Rath in Geneva in 1983 and 1984. These enabled him to liberate photography from its purely documentary role by creating monumental tableaux in which he developed the motif of the body into sculptural human landscapes and site-specific architectures.
Throughout the course of his career, Burkhard turned time and again to portraiture. Whereas his early photographs tended to show artists in action within their own setting, his later portraits adopted an increasingly formalised approach. During the 1990s, he transposed this stylistic reduction to a wide-ranging series of animal portraits reminiscent of the encyclopaedic style of nineteenth century photography.
Another milestone of Burkhard’s oeuvre can be found in his vast aerial photographs of major mega cities such as Tokyo and Mexico City. These images, shot from an aircraft, like his images of the earth’s deserts, were destined to become a personal passion. Balthasar Burkhard’s quest for a morphology, for a formula that could encapsulate both nature and culture, is particularly evident in his later work, which ranges from pictures of waves and clouds, Swiss mountains and rivers, to the delicate fragility of plants. His interest was always focused on the materiality of the image. Alongside the highly idosyncratic and somewhat darkly sombre tonality of his prints, Burkhard constantly sought to explore every aspect of photography’s aesthetic and technical potential.
Encompassing half a century of creativity, the joint exhibition by Fotomuseum and Fotostiftung not only shows individual works, but also reflects on Balthasar Burkhard’s own view of how his photographs should be presented, underpinned by a wealth of documents from the archives of the artist. The exhibition is divided in two parts and shown in parallel in the exhibition spaces of Fotomuseum and Fotostiftung.
Press release
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010) / Markus Raetz
The Bed
1969/70
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
oT (Michael Heizer, Berne Depression), Berne
1969
© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Untitled (Richard Serra, Splash Piece), Berne
1969
© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
oT (Harald Szeemann, the last day of documenta 5), Kassel
1972
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
With this major retrospective, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz pay homage to the Swiss artist Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010). His oeuvre is almost unparalleled in the way it reflects not only the self-invention of a photographer, but also the emancipation of photography as an artistic medium in its own right during the second half of the twentieth century.
Together, the two institutions chart the many and varied facets of Burkhard’s career, step by step. Fotostiftung presents early works from the days of his apprenticeship with Kurt Blum and his first independent documentary photographs. The exhibition also traces Burkhard’s role as a photographer alongside the curator Harald Szeemann and capturing images of Bern’s bohemian scene in the 1960s and 1970s. During that time, Burkhard carved his niche as a photographer and artist, developing his first large-scale photographic canvases in collaboration with his friend Markus Raetz and eventually breaking away from the European art world in search of both himself and new inspiration in the USA.
The second part of the exhibition at Fotomuseum shows the work created by Burkhard after his return to Europe, and his exploration of the photographic tableau. It was during this phase that he largely succeeded in emancipating photography from its purely documentary function. Using monumental formats, he translated the motif of the human body into sculptural landscapes and site-specific architectures. He went on to apply his stylistic device of formal reduction to portraits and landscapes. This marked the beginning of a series of experiments in the handling of photographic techniques. From long-distance aerial photographs of mega-cities such as Mexico City and Tokyo to close-up studies of flowers and plants, Burkhard seemed to be constantly seeking a formula that would embrace both nature and culture, encapsulating a sensory and sensual grasp of visible reality.
Encompassing half a century of creativity, the exhibition not only shows individual works, but is also underpinned by applied projects, films and many documents from the archives of the artist. This wealth of material allows a reflection both on Balthasar Burkhard’s own view of how his photographs should be presented in the exhibition space as well as his constant weighing-up of other media.
Part I (Fotostiftung Schweiz)
Early photographs
Balthasar Burkhard was just eight years old when his father gave him a camera to take along on a school excursion. Burkhard himself describes this early experience with the camera as the starting point of his career. It was also his father who suggested an apprenticeship with Kurt Blum, one of Switzerland’s foremost photographers, ranking along-side Paul Senn, Jakob Tuggener and Gotthard Schuh. Blum taught the young Balz, as he was nicknamed, all the finer points of darkroom technique as well as the art of large-format photography. The earliest work from Burkhard’s apprentice years is a reportage of the school, in the form of a book, while his documentation of the Distelzwang Society’s historic guildhall in the old quarter of Bern was clearly a lesson in architectural photography. Yet, no sooner had he completed his apprenticeship than Burkhard was already embarking on his very own independent projects inspired by post-war humanist photography, such as Auf der Alp, a study of rural Alpine life, for which he was awarded the Swiss Federal Grant for Applied Arts in 1964.
Chronicler of Bohemian Life in Bern
Even during his apprenticeship, Burkhard moved in the Bernese art circles to which his teacher Kurt Blum also belonged. In 1962, he created a first portrait, in book form, of painter and writer Urs Dickerhof. Shortly after that, he became friends with his near-contemporary Markus Raetz, and started taking photographs for the charismatic curator Harald Szeemann, who was director of Kunsthalle Bern from 1961 to 1969. Burkhard immersed himself in the vibrantly dynamic Swiss art scene, documenting the often controversial exhibitions of conceptual art at the Kunsthalle, and capturing the lives of Bern’s bohemian set with his 35mm camera. These visual mementos would later be collated in a kind of photographic journal. Initial collaborative projects with artists included a 1966 artists’ book about the village of Curogna (Ticino) and a window display for the Loeb department store in Bern featuring photographic portraits of the Bernese artist Esther Altorfer, devised in collaboration with Markus Raetz and his later wife, fashion designer Monika Raetz-Müller.
Landscapes 1969
Inspired by his friend Raetz, Burkhard photographed bleak and rugged snow-covered landscapes in the Bernese Seeland region. Heaps of earth piled up along the wayside reminded him of Robert Smithson’s Earthworks, which had just emerged in contemporary art. As Burkhard would later explain, “I wanted to leave out everything relating to myself, so that I could truly relate to what remained. I distanced myself from my subject-matter. I succeeded in stepping back both from myself and from my work.”
A close-up of bare agricultural soil, vaguely reminiscent of a lunar landscape, forms the basis for an object with a neon tube created in 1969 for the legendary exhibition When Attitudes Become Form in collaboration with Harald Szeemann, Markus Raetz and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder. In 1969, Burkhard’s brown-toned landscapes were included in the 1969 exhibition photo actuelle suisse in Sion. They were subsequently published as his first independent portfolio by Allan Porter in the May issue of Camera magazine, which was dedicated to avant-garde European photography and its affinity with contemporary art.
The Amsterdam Canvases 1969-70
When Markus Raetz took a studio in Amsterdam in 1969, he and Burkhard continued to work on joint projects. Photographs of everyday motifs were enlarged, practically life-sized, onto canvas, and caused a sensation in the spring 1970 exhibition Visualisierte Denkprozesse (Visualised thought processes) at Kunstmuseum Luzern, curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann, who wrote: “On huge canvases, they [Raetz and Burkhard] showed, among other things, a spartan studio space, a bedroom, a kitchen, a curtain. They relativised the purely object-like character by hanging the canvases on clips. The resulting folds enriched the images by adding a new dimension.” In other words, the folds in the canvas created a “quasi ironic and disillusioning barrier.” Burkhard’s large-format works foreshadowed the monumental photographic tableaux that would eventually herald the ultimate march of photography into the museum space some ten years later.
Documentarist of the International Art Scene
By the end of the 1960s, Harald Szeemann and his polarising, controversial exhibitions were drawing increasing attention far beyond the boundaries of Switzerland. In particular, his (in)famous 1969 show When Attitudes Become Form unleashed heated debates that ultimately led to Szeemann’s resignation as director of Kunsthalle Bern. Then, in 1970, he shocked the members and visitors of the Kunstverein in Cologne with an exhibition dedicated to Happening & Fluxus. Here, too, Burkhard was on hand with his camera. Jean-Christophe Ammann, with whom Burkhard undertook a research trip to the USA in 1972, photographing many artists’ studios, proved no less controversial a figure. Moreover, Burkhard also photographed artists, actions and installations at the 1972 documenta 5 in Kassel, which was headed by none other than Szeemann himself. Given the expanded concept of art that prevailed at the time, which strengthened the role of performance art and installation works alike, photography, too, gained a newfound core significance. Indeed, it was only through photography that many of these innovative works were preserved for posterity.
Chicago and the Self-Invention of the Artist
Following a relatively unproductive period in the wake of documenta 5, during which he worked, among other things, on an unfinished documentary project about the small Swiss town of Zofingen, Burkhard spent the years between 1975 and 1978 in Chicago, where he taught photography at the University of Illinois. It was while he was there that he once again reprised the series of photo canvases he had been working on in Amsterdam between 1969 and 1970. This led to new large-format works portraying everyday scenes such as the back seat of an automobile or the interior of a home with a TV, as well as three now lost photographs of roller skaters and a very androgynous back-view nude study of a young man. In 1977 the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago presented these canvases together with a selection of the Amsterdam works in what was Burkhard’s first solo exhibition. Critics were impressed by his “soft photographs”. The Chicago Tribune, for instance, enthused: “‘European’ grace is wedded to ‘American’ strength in a supreme artistic fiction that suggests the wide-screen format of film.”
Self-Portraits
In Chicago, Burkhard rekindled his friendship with performance and conceptual artist Thomas Kovachevic, whom he had first met at documenta 5 and who now introduced him to the local art scene. At the same time, Burkhard toyed with the notion of trying his chances as a film actor in Hollywood. With Kovachevich’s help, he produced a series of self-portraits, both Polaroids and slides, which he presented in a small snakeskin-covered box as his application portfolio. He approached Alfred Hitchcock and Joshua Shelley of Columbia Pictures, albeit unsuccessfully. His only film role was in Urs Egger’s 1978 Eiskalte Vögel (Icebound; screened in seminar room I). Burkhard later transformed some of his self-portraits into large-scale canvases, through which he asserted his newfound sense of identity as an artist, making himself the subject-matter of his own artistic work. One of these was also shown in the Photo Canvases exhibition at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery.
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
feet 2
1980
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
‘The Knie’, Kunsthalle Basel (installation view)
1983
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Study of The Head
c. 1983
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Design for Body II
c. 1983
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Part II (Fotomuseum Winterthur)
Body and Sculpture
The 1980s heralded the advent of a particularly productive period for Balthasar Burkhard in which he adopted a more sculptural approach to photography, treating his prints as an integral part of the exhibition architecture. Just as he himself had witnessed how the generation of artists before him had called the classic exhibition space into question, so too did his own latest works now begin to take control of that space. Burkhard became one of the foremost proponents of large-scale photographic tableaux, as evidenced by his groundbreaking exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel in 1983 and Museé Rath, Geneva, in 1984.
It was in the photo canvases he made in Chicago during the late 1970s that Burkhard first turned towards the motif of the body as a sculptural form with which he would continue to experiment over the coming years. Such an overtly sculptural approach to the body and to the nude as landscape soon began to demand a larger format than Burkhard had previously been using. An arm, almost four metres long, framed by heavy steel, or the multipart installation Das Knie (Knee), reflect the very core of his creative oeuvre in all its many facets: monumentality, fragmentation and the breaking of genre boundaries by transposing two-dimensional images into spatially commanding installations.
Portraits: Types and Individuals
The increasing formal reduction of Balthasar Burkhard’s images continued in the field of portraiture. He invited fellow artists such as Lawrence Weiner and Christian Boltanski to sit for him. With this series, it seemed that he had finally put behind him his days as a chronicler of the art scene, reliant on the techniques of applied photography.
Portraits of a rather different kind are his profiles of animals, in an equally reduced setting, against the backdrop of a tarpaulin. Redolent of Renaissance drawings or nineteenth century animal photography, his images of sheep, wolves and lions come across as representing ideal and typical examples of their species without anthropomorphising them, while at the same time wrenching them out of their natural environment. These images reached a broad audience through the popular 1997 children’s book “Click!”, said the Camera, which was republished in its second edition in 2017.
Architectural Photography
Given his increasing success in the art world, Burkhard could well afford to be selective about his choice of commissioned works. He had already been taking photographs for architects connected with the Bern-based firm Atelier 5 back in the 1960s, and was still accepting commissions in this field in the 1990s. Burkhard’s photographic essay on the Ricola building designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron indicates just how thoroughly his own distinctive artistic syntax permeates his commissioned and architectural photography, right through to the details of fragments and materials. These photographs were shown in the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 1991, having been explicitly designed for this particular exhibition space. As in his artistic oeuvre, Burkhard operates here with spatially commanding installations, skilfully dovetailing the architectural motif with the presentational form.
Aerial Photography
In the 1990s, before the art world had even begun to turn its attention to the subject of megacities, Burkhard was already taking a keen interest in the world’s major conurbations. Following in the footsteps of his father, who had been a Swiss airforce pilot, he took bird’s-eye-view photographs from a plane. His panoramic shots of cities such as London, Mexico City and Los Angeles were preceded by small-format studies of clouds: the so-called Nuages series. Having incorporated a study of rural Switzerland into his formative training in 1963 with the series Auf der Alp (On the Alp), he returned once more to focus on the landscape of his homeland in the early 2000s with an entire series of aerial photographs of the Bernina mountain range.
Landscape and Flora
In the last two decades of his life, Burkhard concentrated primarily on landscape and flora, turning to historical precedents both in his techniques and in his choice of motif. The desert formations of Namibia, in which all sense of proportion is lost amid the remote and untouched wilderness, set a counterpoint to the sprawling urban expanses of Mexico City and London. The diptych Welle (Wave), by contrast, pays homage to the work of French artist Gustave Courbet, with Burkhard making a pilgrimage to the tide swept shores where the father of Realism had painted in 1870.
In another series, Burkhard adapts the aesthetics of botanical plant studies, which were as widely used around the turn of the twentieth century as the complex photographic process of heliography, and transposes these to larger-than-life formats. Whereas Burkhard, as a young photographer, had captured the exuberant art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, snapshot-style, he later went on, as an artist-photographer, to explore the potential of the photographic tableau, diligently researching near-forgotten techniques and the sensual details of the visible world.
Artwork and Commissioned Work
The site-specific installations of his photographs and Burkhard’s own dedicated approach to museum spaces warrant an excursion into the archives of the artist, paying particular attention to four exemplary exhibitions.
One spectacular and iconic show was the Fotowerke (Photo works) exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in 1983. Curated by artist Rémy Zaugg, the installations can be reconstructed thanks to the catalogue and copious documentation. Contact prints and studies, for instance, help to give an insight into the no longer extant thirteen metre work Körper I (Body I) as well as shedding light on the choice of motif for further body fragments.
A 1984 solo exhibition at the Le Consortium in Dijon, on the other hand, shows how Burkhard responded with his group of works Das Knie (Knee) to an entirely different installation context within the given space. Similarly, at the Musée Rath in Geneva that same year, Burkhard, together with his friend Niele Toroni, instigated a radical juxtaposition of photography and painting based on the pillars of the exhibition venue.
At Grand-Hornu in the Belgian town of Mons, by contrast, his life-sized photographs of animals were mounted at eye level. While Burkhard chose a large format for the exhibition venue, the images in his children’s book “Click!”, said the Camera tell of a beauty contest between animals in a photo-shoot. This apparent discrepancy between artwork and commissioned work never seemed to be relevant to Burkhard. The sheer volume of his studio photos, alone, indicates just how scrupulously precise he was about the way he wanted to be perceived as a serious photographer.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation views of the exhibition Balthasar Burkhard at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February – May 2018
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Balthasar Burkhard in his studio
1995
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Camel
1997
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Bull
1996
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
The Reindeer
1996
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Mexico City
1999
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Mexico City
1999
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Nuages 8
1999
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Ecosse (Scotland)
2000
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Bernina
2003
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Silberen
2004
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010)
Rio Negro
2002
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard
Fotostiftung Schweiz
Grüzenstrasse 45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zürich)
Tel: +41 52 234 10 30
Opening hours:
Daily 11 am – 6 pm
Wednesday 11 am – 8 pm
Closed on Mondays
Fotostiftung Schweiz website
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45 CH-8400
Winterthur (Zürich)
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11 am – 6 pm
Wednesday 11 am – 8 pm
Closed on Mondays
Fotomuseum Winterthur website
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