family portraits – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin’ at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Exhibition: 1st April 2023 – 2026

Curators: Maike Steinkamp and Joachim Jäger, Neue Nationalgalerie.

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Skull
1983
Oil on canvas
55 x 50cm

Continuing our Gerhard Richter odyssey travelling through the bodies of his work, from ‘photo-paintings’ to huge abstract squeegee paintings (see the trailer from the excellent film Gerhard Richter Painting below) to different ‘overpainted photographs’ from last week’s posting on the subject.

“The works in this exhibition highlight the tension between abstraction and figuration, between photography and painting, which underlies Richter’s entire oeuvre.”

Enjoy!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Neue Nationalgalerie for allowing me to publish the art works in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Gerhard Richter Painting (Trailer)

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing at centre, Tante Marianne (Aunt Marianne) (1965/2019, below); and at right, Skull (1983, above)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing at left, Tante Marianne (Aunt Marianne)(1965/2019, below); and at right, Uncle Rudy (1965/2000, below)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Uncle Rudy
1965/2000
Photo-painting
87 x 50cm
Edition 111

… One Always Paints One’s History Gerhard Richter

Richter’s ‘photo-paintings’ are based on photographs, images of celebrities and elements of consumer culture found in magazines and newspapers.

The mechanical process of copying photographic images is tempered by Richter’s characteristic ‘blurring’ of the painted image. Made by lightly brushing the wet pigment with a soft brush, this alteration of the painted surface parallels our actual perception of the world which is always passing, in flux and never fixed and still.

A family photograph album was one of the few items Richter took with him when he fled Dresden for the West and some of these family snapshots provided the basis for early photo-paintings whose muted blue, brown and grey tones, resemble historical photographs. Blurring and other treatments of the painted surface are Richter’s means of maintaining the emotional distance, stillness and banality of such photographs while communicating the weight of historical events and physical reality.

Works such as Aunt Marianne [below] and Uncle Rudi [above] sit at the intersection of personal and national histories yet are treated in a similar manner to found, anonymous images from the media. The truths behind the blurred veil of these family portraits were in some cases only explicit years after their making. For example, Richter was unaware of the tragic life story of his Aunt and her death in a Nazi sanatorium when he painted their double portrait, which includes the artist as a baby in the foreground.

Anonymous. “Gerhard Richter’s Remarkable Command of Style and Genre,” on the QAGOMA website 20 Dec 2017 [Online] Cited 17/10/2023

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Tante Marianne (Aunt Marianne)
1965/2019
Photo-painting
100 x 115cm

Freedom

Freedom can often require leaving something or someone behind. It comes at a price.

When Gerhard Richter left East Germany in March 1961 he had to do it covertly. He travelled as a tourist alone, first to Moscow and then to Leningrad. On the return the train stopped at West Berlin where Richter stashed additional suitcases he had brought with him, before returning to Dresden to collect his wife, Marianne Eufinger, known as ‘Ema’.

The borders between the Communist, German Democratic Republic and West Germany were being sealed — just months away from the erection of the Berlin Wall that was to divide the two Germanys for 28 years until its demolition in 1989. Trains and subways were still operating between the Soviet-occupied East and West Berlin making it the last remaining link to the free west.

Richter had a friend drive himself and Ema from Dresden to East Berlin where they boarded a train (without suitcases, which drew suspicion) for the western sector of Berlin where they registered as refugees. Between 1958 and 1961, 700,000 people fled East Germany for the West. Richter’s parents were never allowed to leave East Germany or to visit their son. They died in 1967 and 1968.

Richter was nearly thirty years old when he left East Germany. In Dusseldorf, where he studied and eventually taught, he began to number his works and reject almost everything he had done that was associated with his previous life. But your past never leaves you.

Richter has never been defined by a specific style and has used a variety of materials, techniques and methodologies during his career, like many young artists today. This represented a creative freedom for Richter who had spent more than a decade as a student and young apprentice in East Germany painting murals and making art within the narrow socialist confines of the German Democratic Republic. His academic training in Dresden did however, equip him with skills and technical facility that found expression later in still life paintings, portraits and landscapes.

Memory

The late writer, critic and essayist, John Berger once asked the question,

‘What served in place of the photograph; before the camera’s invention? The expected answer is the engraving, the drawing, the painting. The more revealing answer might be: memory’.

Photographs have been central to the art of Gerhard Richter. One of the few things he took with him to West Germany was a family album of photographs – some of which became the basis for later paintings. After arriving in West Germany, Richter began to systematically collect photographs, clippings from magazines and books and eventually took many thousands of his own photographs. This accumulation of photographic and reproduced images became the basis for his vast life-long project called Atlas.

Richter’s Atlas includes an extraordinary range of imagery, from harrowing images of the Holocaust to tender images of his children. It was created at a time before digital photography became so common place – when photographs were understood to be a trace of something or some time. Like footprints, fossils, markings on a tree – traces of what has been. Digital technology has changed photography from something we once looked at and reflected upon to something we Send. Once they were an index of memory, now we distribute them in their millions, and forget them.

David Burnett. “5 Thing to Know About Gerhard Richter,” on the QAGOMA website 20 Dec 2017 [Online] Cited 17/10/2023

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Herr Heyde
1965/2001
Photo-painting
54.8 x 64cm
Edition 119

A special exhibition by Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

“Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin” shows for the first time the long-term loan of the Gerhard Richter Kunststiftung to the Nationalgalerie. The central work in the exhibition, held in the Grafisches Kabinett of the Neue Nationalgalerie, is the series “Birkenau” (2014), consisting of four large-format, abstract paintings. “Birkenau” is the result of Richter’s long and in-depth engagement with the Holocaust and the possibilities of representing it. Alongside the “Birkenau” series, other works from various phases of Richter’s career will be exhibited, among them “Squatters’ House” (1989), “4900 Colours” (2007), and “Strip” (2013/2016). There is also another large group of works from Richter’s striking series of overpainted photographs, in which he addresses the tension between photography and painting. The exhibition has been realised in close collaboration with the artist.

In an oeuvre spanning six decades, Richter (b. 1932 in Dresden) has repeatedly explored the possibilities and limits of painting. The works in this exhibition highlight the tension between abstraction and figuration, between photography and painting, which underlies Richter’s entire oeuvre. From the 1960s onwards, he addressed the question of whether or not art was still possible after the Holocaust and the terror regime of National Socialism. Since then, Richter, who moved from East Germany to West Germany in 1961, has repeatedly addressed the topic of German history and his own family history. In this exhibition we are displaying photo editions of the paintings “Aunt Marianne”, “Uncle Rudi”, and “Mr. Heyde”, which Richter painted based on photographs and rendered blurry by smudging the oil paints. For him this was a way to avoid direct depiction.

He is also concerned with the refusal of a direct image in his abstract paintings, which he has made since 1976. Richter now paints with intense colour and in several layers. The paint is applied with a squeegee, mixed and at the same time partially scraped off again. Layers of colour tear open and the lower surfaces shine through, which gives the image a pronounced, deep structure. The result is an interplay between chance and conscious decision in which the process of creating the work of art remains visible.

In 1999 Richter made “Black, Red, Gold” (1999) for the entrance hall of the Reichstag building, which houses the German Bundestag, a work made of enamelled glass plates that he intends as a sign of a new beginning. In this exhibition we show the small-format glass work “Black, Red, Gold” (1999), which refers to the Bundestag version. It is presented in combination with two mirror works, the photo editions, and the paintings “Skull” (1983) and “Squatters’ House” (1989).

In the work “4900 Colours”, which is composed of 196 individual square panels, each of which is subdivided into 25 colour squares, Richter returned to the investigation of colour fields that he first undertook from 1966 to 1974. At the time, he was fascinated by industrially produced colour sample cards, their smooth perfection, their accuracy of colour reproduction and the possibilities of variation. The squares were the exact opposite of emotional emphasis, sublimity or expressiveness – that is, of properties that until then had seemed to be characteristic for painting. In 2007 he returned to the topic with two paintings, in the context of his work on the south transept window for the Cologne Cathedral and “4900 Colours”. For “Strip”, Richter divided the “Abstract Picture” (724-4) from 1990 into ever smaller segments by means of a computer-controlled process, stretched them out by mirroring the axes and rearranged the sections. The result is a combination of seemingly randomly-found striped motifs and their deliberate ordering by the artist. Both “Strip” and “4900 Colours” are a radical evolution of abstract painting in which Richter tested the boundaries of the medium once again and took it to its logical conclusion.

The notion of painting’s possibilities and limits also plays a central role in the cycle “Birkenau” from 2014. Richter’s starting point was four photographs from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, secretly taken in August 1944 by Jewish prisoners who risked their lives to do so. They are the only known photographs from the extermination camp that were taken by the victims themselves and they were only published after the Second World War. In 1967 Richter had already included one of these photos in his “Atlas”. But it was not until the publication of these images in Georges Didi-Huberman’s book Images Despite Everything (2008), in which the French philosopher used them to analyse how the Holocaust could be represented, that Richter felt the impetus to address the subject again.

Richter transferred the four motifs with charcoal and oil paint to individual canvases and then decided to paint over them abstractly. With each additional layer of paint, the painted photographic originals disappeared a little more until they were finally no longer visible to the viewer. Richter thus carried out a process of abstraction, born of the conviction that he could not do justice to the incomprehensible horror of the Holocaust with a direct depiction. His abstract painting offers moments of form and colour that create a melancholic, thoughtful mood, especially in the many black and grey surfaces. The abstract does not exclude the figurative; instead, the works create a space between showing and not showing, enabling a broad range of open-ended reflection. Opposite the four “Birkenau” paintings is a large, grey, four-part mirror. Almost since the beginning, Richter’s paintings were accompanied by sculptures made of glass and mirrors, with which he explores the boundary between “natural” and “artistic” images in a variety of ways. The mirrors refer to an external reality and enable personal reflection for everyone in the room.

The relationship between abstraction and figuration, photography and painting, appears on a new level in the series “Overpainted Photos”, begun in 1986. These are small-format photographic prints, often 10 x 15 centimetres, which the artist draws from his own private collection: photos of museum visits, trips, walks or his family. Despite their small dimensions, they play an important role in the artist’s development: they embody the interface between abstract painting and the representation of a photographic image as no other group of artworks does.

In 2021 the Gerhard Richter Art Foundation committed a total of 100 artworks to the collection of the Nationalgalerie (National Gallery) as a permanent loan that will be on display at the Museum of the 20th Century upon its completion. From March through October 2021 the “Birkenau” cycle was on display in the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery). Beginning in April 2023, the exhibition “Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin” will be shown in the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery). In the future, it will be presented with curatorial or artistic interventions in ever-changing contexts. Exhibition catalogues will be available.

In the future, this group of works will be on display in a dedicated room on the upper levels of the Museum of the 20th Century (now under construction). The exhibition in the Grafisches Kabinett (prints and drawings room) of the New National Gallery contains 41 paintings and mirrors, 20 overpainted photographs, and 31 colour sketches in a 500-square-metre space. All are loans from the Gerhard Richter Art Foundation to the Nationalgalerie.

Biography

Gerhard Richter was born on 9 February 1932 in Dresden. Between 1949 and 1950 he worked as a sign and stage painter, and in 1951 he was accepted at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Dresden. In 1956 he completed his studies in mural painting. In 1961, Richter moved from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he began a second course of study at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düs-seldorf (Düsseldorf Art Academy). There he began his artistic work on the threshold between painting and photography. Beginning in 1963, he made paintings based on illustrations and private photo albums, the motifs of which he slightly blurred.

From 1971 to 1994 Richter taught painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. At the same time he expanded his own spectrum of painting. Various groups of works – paintings, colour panels, landscapes, monochrome grey pictures, objects, mirror and glass – emerged in rapid succession. For his intensely coloured abstract paintings, which he has made since 1976 and which form the most extensive group in his oeuvre, he has used home-made squeegees in addition to paintbrushes since the early 1980s. With these tools he creates completely independent compositions shaped by chance. In between, Richter repeatedly painted smaller groups of realistic landscapes, still lifes, portraits and also history paintings, such as the cycle “18. Oktober 1977” (1988), in which he addressed the death of the RAF terrorists Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. In the “Overpainted Photographs”, which he has been making since 1986, the artist combines painting and photography in another unique way.

In 1998 Richter was commissioned to design the foyer of the Reichstag building, for which he created the “Black, Red, Gold”, consisting of six large-format enamelled glass panels. In 2007, Richter’s south transept window in the Cologne Cathedral is finished. At the same time, he created the monumental painting “4900 Colours”. From then on Richter focused more on glass, though he had already begun to use it in 1967. He also began to work with digital images. It was not until 2014 that Richter re-turned to painting. He painted the cycle “Birkenau”, in which he revisited his decades-long preoccupation with the Holocaust. In 2019 the artist founded the Gerhard Richter Art Foundation. In 2021 the foundation gave the Nationalgalerie one hundred works, including the “Birkenau” cycle, as a long-term permanent loan.

Text from the Neue Nationalgalerie

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Besetztes Haus (695-3) (Occupied house (695-3))
1989
Oil on canvas
82 x 112cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Schwarz, Rot, Gold (Black, Red, Gold)
1999
Resin paint on glass
99 x 99cm

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing works from the series Birkenau (2014, below)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Birkenau
2014
Oil on canvas
260 x 200cm

“Birkenau” by Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter, one of today’s most important artists, created an abstract painting entitled Birkenau in 2014. In the four-part work, which consists of large-format paintings of equal size, Richter used as his models authentic photographs that were secretly taken in 1944 by the Sonderkommando (special task force) of the Jewish prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Among other things, the Sonderkommando was responsible for burning the bodies from the gas chambers.

A Polish resistance group smuggled a camera with a black and white film into the camp, and this was later used to take a total of seven photos. A Polish woman, Helena Datoń, then brought the film out of the camp in a toothpaste tube, thereby enabling the photographs to be published. These photos later became famous because they were used as vital evidence of the unspeakable crimes in Birkenau.

Through the discussion on the creation of Richter’s work Birkenau, these shocking photographs finally have become a special part of public memory. At the same time the artist has completely concealed them in his work, thus making them invisible. This makes his painting a remarkable place of remembrance.

…

In 2008 Gerhard Richter first saw four reproductions of the photographs taken at that time in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, dated 11th February. Fascinated by the impact of the photographs he decided to include them in his collection of photographs and motifs (the famous Atlas), which constitute, as it were, a documentation of his iconographic memory. He finally completed painted copies of the four photographs and hung them in his studio. Soon after that, he decided to use them as models for a work that was to bear the title Birkenau. After numerous considerations and studies he produced the final version in 2014, consisting of four large-format abstract paintings (oil on canvas, each measuring 260 x 200 cm).

Richter, however, made the Birkenau originals completely invisible by painting over them. Birkenau thus became a purely abstract work. However, the title, the documentation provided by the artist and the museum presentation, in which the work was consequently exhibited along with the photographic originals, make the original templates present in a more than subtle way. The knowledge of the original photos is thus constantly present.

Since the first presentation of the work in the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden in 2016, the creation process, its impact and the manifold contexts of Richter’s Birkenau have been frequently and extensively described, reviewed and interpreted.[8] It is significant, however, “that the work, which is dedicated to the Holocaust, is also a remarkable memorial of the history of Poles in Germany, something that the artist has personally acknowledged.[9] Without the Polish resistance movement Richter’s Birkenau would not have existed.

By covering the visible source of this memory with a painterly gesture, Richter has constructed a place of remembrance and stimulated a debate on the subject.[10] He creates a balance between the memory and the aesthetics of the abstract, which allows a peculiar double existence of both areas. Out of respect for what happened in the Birkenau camp, Richter does not show the harrowing documents, but makes them tangible and tangible in his paintings through artistic means. The artistic work entitled Birkenau contains the camp Birkenau, “present but not visible”.[11]

The artist addresses what is probably the darkest chapter in human history and takes viewers on a tightrope walk between memory and aesthetics, cruelty and beauty, bewilderment and curiosity, leading them to the borderline between what is obvious and what is being repressed. However, in the end aesthetics win out: the painting is what Richter as an artist has to contribute to this theme. It is an “image in spite of everything,” which, as Richter observed, is primarily intended to provide us with solace.[12]

[8] See above all: Gerhard Richter, Birkenau, Museum Frieder Burda, Köln 2016 and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Gerhard Richters Birkenau-Bilder, Köln 2016

[9] Jacek Barski: Conversations with Gerhard Richter on 12. and 26. March 2018

[10] Paul Valéry (1871-1945) referred to the paradox of memory in his Cahiers (1921-1922): “Sensitivity is the instantaneous / incessant / phenomenon that charges the ‘memory’ in a certain direction – through quanta; and that discharges it again – again through quanta – in the same direction. If the charge ‘memory’ itself is felt, then we are dealing with the phenomenon of expectation. Waiting means perceiving an upgrowth. However, the discharge not only reduces the charge, but also allows it to grow or at least makes it more suitable for all dischargers… Memory is therefore not accumulation, but construction. The content of memory is an act – a current event”; Paul Valéry, Cahiers, Paris 1973-1974, quoted from the German edition: Frankfurt am Main, 1989, volume 3, p. 441.

[11] “Present but not visible” is part of the postmodern discourse as a dictum at the latest since 2006 (year of publication of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, New York, 2006, German Edition Against the Day, see here p. 593).

[12] In the place indicated

Jacek Barski. “”Birkenau” by Gerhard Richter,” on the Porta Polonica website March 2020 [Online] Cited 24/10/2023

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Birkenau
2014
Oil on canvas
260 x 200cm

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing at left, Abstract painting (2016); and at right, Abstract painting (2017)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Exhibition text

Over decades of artistic production, Gerhard Richter has repeatedly explored the possibilities and limits of painting. His work constantly alternates between figuration and abstraction.

From the very beginning, Richter was concerned with the question of whether or not art was still possible after the Holocaust and the terror regime of National Socialism. Photo editions in the exhibition recall Richter’s early, significant works on this subject. He found a multi-layered and globally acclaimed artistic response in 2014 with the painting cycle “Birkenau.” The four paintings are the central work of this presentation. The starting point is photographs from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Richter transferred the motifs with charcoal onto four canvases and then decided to paint over them abstractly. With each layer of paint, the painted copies of the photographs disappeared a little more until finally they were no longer visible to the viewer. The “Birkenau” series is juxtaposed with a four-part grey mirror, which actively involves us, the viewers, in the work and invites us to reflect.

The exhibition also presents artworks from various creative phases. Above all, Richter’s colour-intensive, abstract pictures, such as the series “Aladdin” (2010), are on display. The monumental paintings “4900 Colours” (2007) and “Strip” (2013/2016) are also shown here. In the case of the latter, 2 x 10 metre work, Richter prepared it with the support of an image-generating computer programme. Two other groups of works created in recent years include the significant series “Overpainted Photographs” and the luminous colour sketches.

The presentation was developed in close collaboration with the artist. In the future, interventions by artists from in various fields will present Gerhard Richter’s art in ever-new contexts.

Text from the Neue Nationalgalerie

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
13.2.98
1998
Painted over photograph
10.0 x 14.8cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
25.2.98
1998
Painted over photograph
10.0 x 14.8cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
28.2.98
1998
Painted over photograph
10.0 x 14.8cm

When Gerhard Richter first started painting over photographs in the early 1990s he realised that these small works summarised much of what he was trying to achieve on a larger scale. By adding thick paint to the seamless ‘perfect’ surface of a photograph, the integrity of something we take for granted and habitually accept as representing reality, is compromised and thrown into question. Gerhard Richter’s abstract paintings often appear similar at first glance. Only when we have the opportunity to see several together, do we begin to see the subtle nuances and often radical differences between them. Gerhard Richter has said on many occasions that he distrusts the world as it is represented through photographs, the media, religion and ideologies. For him painting provides the means to apprehend the world through a language not made of words but of acts of looking, thinking, gestures, doubt and hope. Painting has a language of its own and can only be understood through resisting the temptation to describe it with words.

Anonymous. “Gerhard Richter’s Remarkable Command of Style and Genre,” on the QAGOMA website 20 Dec 2017 [Online] Cited 17/10/2023

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
17. Nov 99
1999
Painted over photograph
10.0 x 14.8cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
20.6.05
2005
Painted over photograph
10.0 x 14.8cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Aladdin
2010
Lacquer behind glass on aluminium Dibond
40 x 50cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
MV. 133
2011
Painted over photograph
10.1 x 15.1cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
MV. 134
2011
Painted over photograph
10.1 x 15.1cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
MV. 136
2011
Painted over photograph
10.1 x 15.1cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
MV. 140
2011
Painted over photograph
10.1 x 15.1cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
MV. 142
2011
Painted over photograph
10.1 x 15.1cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
19. März 2015
2015
Painted over photograph
10.0 x 14.8cm

A common response by many thousands of people following the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001 was incomprehension. The ‘reality’ of the situation was almost impossible to accept or understand. The event was immediately and constantly compared to a movie. The French theorist, Jean Baudrillard commented that the repeated broadcasts of the footage served ‘to multiply it to infinity and, at the same time, they are a diversion and a “neutralisation” – the more we see the events, the less comprehensible they become’.

Baudrillard was interested in the way that photographic media affect our perception of reality and the world. He believed that the overwhelming amount of imagery that we consume in the forms of television, film and video, computer games and the internet results in a ‘hyperreality’, a simulation of the real.

Gerhard Richter said that, ‘Photography has almost no reality; it is almost a hundred per cent picture. And painting always has reality: you can touch the paint; it has presence; but it always yields a picture – no matter whether good or bad. … I once took some small photographs and then smeared them with paint. That partly resolved the problem, and it’s really good – better than anything I could ever say on the subject’.

David Burnett. “5 Thing to Know About Gerhard Richter,” on the QAGOMA website 20 Dec 2017 [Online] Cited 17/10/2023

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
22.6.16
2016
Painted over photograph
12.6 x 18.8cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
25.6.16 (1)
2016
Painted over photograph
12.6 x 18.7cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Abstract painting
2016
Oil on wood
200 x 250cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Abstract painting
2016
Oil on wood
175 x 250cm

Many of Richter’s large abstract paintings also derive from an observation of natural phenomena: ‘They do set up associations. They remind you of natural experiences, even rain if you like’.

In his abstract paintings, Richter uses a squeegee to rub and scrape the paint across his canvases to create a blurring of one area of colour into another. Often there’s a feeling that you’re looking at an out of focus photograph.

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Abstract painting
2016
Oil on wood
40 x 30cm

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing Richter’s work, 4900 colours (2007, detail below)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
4900 colours (detail)
2007
680 x 680cm
(196 panels, each 48.5 x 48.5cm)

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing at left, Richter’s work, Tante Marianne (1965/2019, above); and at centre right, Strip (930-3) (2013/2016, below)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing at centre, Richter’s work Strip (930-3) (2013/2016, below)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Installation view of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin, State Museums in Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, April 1, 2023 to 2026 showing Richter’s work, Strip (930-3) (2013/2016, below)
© Gerhard Richter 2023
Photo: David von Becker

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Strip (930-3)
2013/2016
Digital printing on paper between Alu-Dibond and Perspex
200 x 1000cm

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
Strip (930-3) (detail)
2013/2016
Digital printing on paper between Alu-Dibond and Perspex
200 x 1000cm

Kulturforum, Neue Nationalgalerie
Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin

Opening hours:
Tue + Wed 10am – 6pm
Thu 10am – 8pm
Fri – Sun 10am – 6pm

Neue Nationalgalerie website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘(un)expected families’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition dates: 9th December 2017 – 17th June 2018

Christopher Churchill (American, b. 1977)
Hutterite Classroom, Gildford, MT
2005
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Elisa Fredrickson / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

It’s hard to get a sense of this exhibition from the media images, therefore difficult to make any constructive comment on the strength of the exhibition.

Apparently, “The exhibition’s gallery feels very domestic. Groups of photos hang on the walls – different sizes, colours, formats and frames – like you’d see in a living room or hallway. MFA curator Karen Haas confirms that evocation is absolutely intentional.

“Photographers from the very beginning have been fascinated by the way that the camera could capture images of loved ones, freeze them in time,” she says. “They form sort of reliquaries of memory, and these sorts of relationships to the objects – that idea of the photograph as a talisman-like object I think has been somewhat forgotten in our contemporary world.” …

Haas’ goal in creating this show is to illustrate how broad and diverse family configurations can be – without defining them. “The families that we’re born into, generational families,” she describes, “but also romantic unions, couples and chosen families – families we have chosen for ourselves.” And that includes the military and the church, Haas says. “I think the family is such a basic social construct – so basic to so many of our lives – that I hope that these kinds of images will really resonate with people.” (Text from Andrea Shea. “Portraits At The MFA Question What Family Looks Like,” on the Wbur website December 20, 2017 [Online] Cited 16/02/2022)

Outsider family, insider family, single parent family, nuclear family, extended family, reconstituted family, childless family, gay family, step family, “family has always taken diverse forms: affluent and destitute, cohesive and fractured, expected and unexpected. Taken together, the photographs challenge visitors to consider what family means to them.”

But what is most important is this: “There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to what is the best type of family structure. As long as a family is filled with love and support for one another, it tends to be successful and thrive. Families need to do what is best for each other and themselves, and that can be achieved in almost any unit.” (Michelle Blessing. “Types of Family Structures,” on the Love to Know website Nd [Online] Cited 16/02/2022)

Families all have secrets, no matter how perfect they may seem to the outside world. Whether it be domestic violence behind closed doors or skeletons in the closet there is always more than meets the eye. And that’s where these photographs of families fail in their representation of the family. That, and the title of the exhibition – (un)expected families – because in the 21st century, nothing should be unexpected. By adding emphasis to the (un), the title merely propagates a form of discrimination, of outsider as different and therefore worthy of abuse because of that very difference. Expected families: we are all human beings and therefore anything is to be expected.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Bringing together more than 80 pictures taken by American photographers from the 19th century to today, (un)expected families explores the definition of the American family – from the families we are born into to the ones we have chosen for ourselves. The works on view depict a wide range of relationships, including multiple generations, romantic unions, and alternative family structures. Using archival, vernacular, and fine art photographs, (un)expected families offers a variety of perspectives on the American family, from Dorothea Lange’s depiction of a migrant family at the time of the Dust Bowl to Louie Palu’s portraits of US Marines fighting in Afghanistan. The exhibition illustrates that the family has always taken diverse forms: affluent and destitute, cohesive and fractured, expected and unexpected. Taken together, the photographs challenge visitors to consider what family means to them. (un)expected families features celebrated practitioners like Nan Goldin, Carrie Mae Weems, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Harry Callahan, as well as a number of renowned Boston-area artists, such as David Hilliard, Nicholas Nixon, Abe Morell, and Sage Sohier.

Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Home Workers, New York
1915
Lewis W. Hine/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Migrant family, Texas
1936
Gelatin silver print
Sophie M. Friedman Fun
Dorothea Lange/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Louis Faurer (American, 1916-2001)
Ritz Bar, New York
1947-1948
Estate of Louis Faurer/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Duane Michals (American, b. 1932)
When he was young, he could not imagine being old. And now that he is old, he cannot imagine ever having been young
1979
Gelatin silver print
Duane Michals, courtesy of the DC Moore Gallery, New York, and Osmos, New York

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Yazoo City, Mississippi
1979
Gelatin silver contact print
Museum purchase with funds donated by the National Endowment for the Arts and Richard L. Menschel, Bela T. Kalman, Judge and Mrs. Matthew Brown, Mildred S. Lee, and Barbara M. Marshall
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nan Goldin (American, b. 1953)
Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! in the bathroom, New York
1991
Cibachrome print
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund for Photography
© Nan Goldin
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. But in fact my pictures show me just how much I’ve lost.” ~ Nan Goldin

Tina Barney (American, b. 1945)
Thanksgiving
1992
Chromogenic print
Contemporary Curator’s Fund, including funds donated by Barbara and Thomas Lee
Tina Barney/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Tina Barney
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Sage Sohier (American, b. 1954)
Mum in her bathtub, Washington, D.C.
2002
Inkjet print
Living New England Artists Purchase Fund, created by the Stephen and Sybil Stone Foundation
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Tammy Hindle
2006
Digital inkjet print
Gift of James N. Krebs
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Julie Mack (American, b. 1982)
Self-portrait (Julie) with family in SUV, Michigan
2007
Chromogenic print
James N. Krebs Purchase Fund for 21st Century Photography
© Julie Mack. Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery, New York
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

David Hilliard (America, b. 1964)
Rock Bottom
2008
Panorama Construction

Rock Bottom features, in the left panel, a close up sharp focus portrait of Hilliard’s father standing in a lake, with a severe and harsh facial expression, yet vulnerably placing his hands on his chest between his two sailor swallow’s tattoos. In the right panel, Hilliard himself appears somewhat further from the camera. With a gentler facial expression, the photographer contrasts with his tense patriarchal figure, but features a similar hairy chest and matching tattoos – giving the viewer a hint on the subject’s father-son relationship. The middle panel is exclusive for environmental portraiture and the creation of meaning in the composition: a sunny day at the lake, where the blue skies and soft clouds perfectly reflect on the water and separate the subject matters. The real meaning of the juxtaposition relies on the knowledge of Hilliard’s personal life and the presence of the middle panel: although the father accept his son’s homosexuality, the issue has clearly been a source of tension between them, creating both emotional and physical distance between the subject matters. Represented by the central panel, a stunning view divides the two generations both visually and metaphorically, symbolising the idea of emotional distance in an atypical form.

Like most of Hilliard’s photographs, Rock Bottom exposes how physical distance is often manipulated to represent emotional distance. The presence of the middle panel, exclusively dedicated to environmental portraiture and the emphasis on the importance of our surroundings, also suggests the emotional distance between the subjects. The lack of elements and presence of great depth of field of the center panel insinuates that, regardless of the level of intimacy between the subject matters – distance is always palpable.

Marina Pedrosa. “David Hilliard: Building Meaning Through Composition,” on the medium website [Online] Cited 22/08/2018. No longer available online

Julie Blackmon (American, b. 1966)
Baby Toss
2009
Elizabeth and Michael Marcus
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982)
Mom
2008
Gelatin silver print
From “The Notion of Family” (Aperture, 2014)
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Caleb Cole (American, b. 1981)
The Big Sister
2012
From the series Odd One Out (2010-Present)
Archival pigment print
49 × 68cm (19 5/16 × 26 3/4 in.)
Museum purchase with funds donated by James N. Krebs

Bringing together more than 80 pictures taken by photographers from the 19th century to today, (un)expected families at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), explores the definition of the American family – from the families we’re born into to the ones we’ve chosen. The photographs in the exhibition, on view from December 9, 2017 through June 17, 2018, depict a wide range of relationships – multiple generations, romantic unions and alternative family structures – whether connected by DNA, shared life experiences, common interests or even a social media network. Encompassing both carefully staged portraits and serendipitous snapshots, the selection of vernacular, documentary and fine art photographs in (un)expected families illustrates that the concept of family has long taken many forms – a subject that has fascinated photographers since the invention of the camera – and challenges visitors to consider what family means to them. Drawn primarily from the MFA’s holdings, the exhibition includes photographs by celebrated artists such as Nan Goldin, Gordon Parks, Nicholas Nixon, Sally Mann, Diane Arbus, Tina Barney, Emmet Gowin and Bruce Davidson. Loans from private collections include Victorian-era “hidden mother” photographs of children and turn-of-the-century portraits of women in intimate relationships sometimes referred to as “Boston marriages.” Additionally, (un)expected families highlights many New England photographers whose work centers on familial relationships, debuting eight photographs – acquired specifically for the exhibition – by Zoe Perry-Wood, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Amber Tourlentes, Caleb Cole, Tanja Hollander, David Hilliard and Jeannie Simms. An interactive component of (un)expected families invites visitors to share thoughts about their own families on response cards. A selection will be displayed in the gallery on a rotating basis, and all will be archived as part of the permanent exhibition record. Additionally, a free family guide engages children with close looking and drawing activities. The exhibition is generously supported by an anonymous donor.

“Almost as soon as exposure times became short enough to make portraiture feasible, photographers have been drawn to capture likenesses of loved ones. Perhaps that power to freeze a moment in time is what explains why family photographs are so often described as the first thing one would save from a burning building,” said Karen Haas, Lane Curator of Photographs. “I find it particularly fascinating that there seems to be a growing interest among contemporary photographers to focus on families in their work – even as with the rise of smartphones and social media, our own personal pictures are increasingly relegated to the ether, rarely experienced as tangible objects.”

The images presented in (un)expected families span 150 years. Among the oldest pictures are photographs of “hidden mothers” (1860s-1870s), depicting infants in the laps of concealed adults – a trick to keep the children still during long sittings or exposures. The mothers or nursemaids were draped with scarves or blankets, or hidden behind furniture or painted backdrops. Similarly, the contemporary photograph Nayla, Ted, Alexandra, Nick, March 30, 1995 (1995) by Cambridge-based Elsa Dorfman (born 1937) focuses solely on the children. While names of the parents are among those handwritten on the bottom of the large-scale Polaroid, only their legs are visible in the composition. Another contemporary photograph juxtaposed with the Victorian-era “hidden mothers,” which were made during a period of high infant mortality rates, is Tammy Hindle (2006) by Nicholas Nixon (born 1947). Part of Nixon’s series documenting a family’s heartbreaking loss of a child, the image shows the mother, Tammy, carrying a portrait of the baby, Claire, to the funeral service, their bodies appearing to magically merge in the reflection within the picture frame.

Father-and-son relationships are explored in images by Dawoud Bey (born 1953), Duane Michals (born 1932) and Jim Goldberg (born 1953), all of which incorporate texts that amplify the moving and often painful stories behind the images, as well as recently acquired photographs by David Hilliard (born 1964) and Arno Rafael Minkkinen (born 1945). Hilliard’s triptych Rock Bottom (2008) is one of an extended series of panoramic photographs that trace the shifting narrative of the gay artist’s complicated relationship with his father. The beautifully choreographed self-portrait visually links the two men, unmistakably related to each other and sporting identical swallow tattoos, across a serene expanse of lake. Minkkinen’s 31-12-86, Self-Portrait with Daniel, Andover (1986), recently gifted to the MFA by the artist, is one of a little-known series of portraits that he took of his son Daniel as the boy grew and matured from infancy to adolescence. The photograph shows Daniel sitting on a bed, bathed in raking light and looking directly at his father’s large-format camera. With his head hidden from view, Minkkinen’s outstretched arms perfectly echo the curve of the headboard and create a haunting embrace that speaks to a parent’s deep-seated desire to encircle and protect a child.

Seventeen photographs representing multiple generations of a family are arranged in a salon-style hang, ranging from intimate depictions of parents with children, such as Baby Toss (2009) by Julie Blackmon (born 1966); to pairs of siblings, such as Twins at WDIA, Memphis (about 1948) by Ernest C. Withers (1922–2007); to a 1925 panorama capturing an extended family reunion encompassing about 200 people. The display also features recently acquired photographs by Sage Sohier (born 1954) and Jeannie Simms (born 1967). Sohier’s Mum in her bathtub, D.C. (2002) is from an extended series devoted to her mother, a former fashion model who had posed for Richard Avedon and Irving Penn in the 1940s. Simms’ Arnie, Susan & Elijah, Jamaica Plain, MA (2015) is from a series documenting the lives of couples married in Cambridge after Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to issue same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, 2004.

Recently acquired works by Amber Tourlentes (born 1970), Zoe Perry-Wood (born 1959) and Jess Dugan (born 1986) also document the experience of LGBTQ couples, families and individuals. Tourlentes has regularly made LGBTQ family portraits on the Town Hall stage in Provincetown, Massachusetts, during its annual Family Week, sometimes revisiting the same subjects over the course of several years. Perry-Wood has spent the last decade photographing another annual event, the Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth (BAGLY) Prom, which offers a safe and celebratory occasion for young couples – an alternative to more traditional high-school proms. Allowing her subjects to pose in front of the camera in a studio-like setting, as seen in José and Luis (2015), Perry-Wood helps to give them a sense of personal agency and collective pride at a pivotal moment in their lives. Unlike Tourlentes and Perry-Wood, Dugan photographs her subjects – friends within the LGBTQ community – in natural light and the privacy of their own living spaces, exploring issues of gender, identity and social connection through large-format portraits such as Devotion, from the series Every Breath We Drew (2012).

With the invention of the small and affordable Kodak camera in the late 19th century, followed by the instant camera in the 1940s, many Americans no longer felt the need to visit formal portrait studios in order to record their personal lives. Among the casual snapshots featured in (un)expected families are Polaroids of Caroline Kennedy and her cousin Tina Radziwill, taken by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) in the summer of 1972 and exhibited at the MFA for the first time. The artist – along with filmmaker Jonas Mekas and photographer Peter Beard – was hired by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to teach the children filmmaking and photography. Also on view are an album of photographs commemorating a fraternity at Baker University in Kansas (1910s) and six snapshots depicting “Boston marriages” (1920s-1930s) – a turn-of-the-century term used to describe two women living together without the support of a man – romantic relationships in some cases and simply platonic partnerships in others.

Several groupings in the exhibition are centered on places of family life. Working roughly 50 years apart, one on New York’s Lower East Side and the other in Harlem, Lewis Hine (1874-1940) and Bruce Davidson (born 1933) both found the kitchen table an ideal site for their documentary photographs of tenement families in New York City. The groundbreaking Kitchen Table series (1990) by Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) – featuring the photographer herself as the central figure, alongside lovers, children and friends – speaks to all those who have loved, quarrelled and come together around a communal table. Similarly, Tina Barney (born 1945) often acts as both guide and participant in her photographs – including Thanksgiving (1992) – which portray complex family moments in the wealthy East Coast social scene that she grew up in. In another selection of photographs by Julie Mack (born 1982), Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015) and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), the car is shown as a setting for a contemporary family self-portrait, a shelter for a homeless family in Los Angeles, and a vehicle for escape for migrant farm workers and their families during the Dust Bowl.

Alongside biologically related families and romantic unions, the exhibition highlights bonds among close-knit communities – “chosen families” – often documented by photographers embedded within the groups. Louie Palu (born 1968) spent several years covering the conflict in Afghanistan, producing portraits of U.S. Marines that capture the terrible toll of war etched on their faces and reflected in their eyes. Danny Lyon (born 1942) was a student at the University of Chicago when he first befriended members of the Chicago Outlaws, a notorious motorcycle club. For a number of years, he documented the individual gang members, their families and friends, as well as races, meetings, social gatherings, rides throughout the Midwest and even their funerals. Nan Goldin (born 1953) uses her camera as a form of diary to record the lives of friends, whom she considers a surrogate family. In Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! in the bathroom, NYC (1991), Goldin represents two drag queens in New York City’s East Village, working in her characteristically direct, snapshot-like style. For the artist, who has lost many in her circle to HIV-AIDS, such images form tangible records of powerful human connections in fragile times.

Ethel Shariff in Chicago (1963) by Gordon Parks (1912-2006) and Hutterite Classroom, Gilford, MT (2005) by Christopher Churchill (born 1977) are among the photographs depicting religious communities. Ethel Shariff, the eldest daughter of longtime Nation of Islam head Elijah Mohammed, stands at the apex of Parks’ group portrait, surrounded by fellow members of the organisation’s women’s corps. Churchill’s photograph is from a series of pictures on the theme of American faith – a project he undertook in the years just after 9/11. Traveling across the country, he visited various sacred landscapes, places of worship and religious communities including the Hutterites, a branch of the Anabaptists who trace their beginnings back to the Protestant Reformation. For Churchill, the series became an exploration into the very basic human need to be connected to something greater than ourselves. Similarly, Tanja Hollander (born 1972) traveled all over the world – across the U.S. and Europe, but also as far away as Kuala Lumpur and New Zealand – for five years, tracking down all of her hundreds of Facebook friends and making portraits of them set in their own homes. Shot with an iPhone or a simple point-and-shoot camera, these intimate pictures – two of which were acquired for the exhibition – present a fascinating commentary on the role of social media and interpersonal relationships in the 21st century.

Additional highlights of (un)expected families include photographs in a variety of formats. Caleb Cole (born 1981) is a local photographer particularly fascinated by the dynamics of family photographs found at estate sales and flea markets in which one of the subjects – in contrast to the rest of the smiling faces – appears especially sad or downcast. Cole digitally alters these vernacular images to isolate the single, lonely figure, all the while maintaining the shapes of the remaining sitters so that the “odd one out” is set off against the blank, white expanse of the group. In The Big Sister (2012), a recent acquisition, a young girl whose parents have just introduced her to a new baby looks dejectedly off into space as if desperately wishing she could return to her former status as an only child. Digital projections from the series To Majority Minority (2014-2015) by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (born 1964) are also based on found snapshots, sourced from photo albums of immigrant families that have come to the U.S. from all over the world. Working with the owners of these albums, Matthew digitises the images and then recreates the figures and their poses using contemporary family members in place of the original sitters. By presenting them as projections that seamlessly flow from one generation into another, the artist measures the passage of time through the faces of subsequent generations, and the accompanying texts tell stories inspired by the treasured photographs of their ancestors.

Press release from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Photographer unknown (American)
Untitled (Hidden Mother)
c. 1860s-1870s
Hand-coloured tintype
Collection of Lee Marks and John C. DePrez, Jr., Shelbyville, Indiana
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Elaine Mayes (American, b. 1936)
Group Portrait, Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco
c. 1970
Elaine Mayes/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ernest C. Withers (American, 1922-2007)
Twins at WDIA, Memphis
about 1948
Gelatin silver print
Sophie M. Friedman Fund / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
She is a Tree of Life to Them
1950
Gelatin silver print
Lucy Dalbiac Luard Fund
Consuelo Kanaga/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Ethel Shariff in Chicago
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Gus and Arlette Kayafas in honor of Karen E. Haas / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Roswell Angier (American, b. 1940)
Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mills, Pilgrim Theatre, Boston
1973
Gelatin silver print
Polaroid Foundation Purchase Fund, reproduced with permission / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jock Sturges (American, b. 1947)
Misty Dawn and Alisa, Northern California
1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Elizabeth Lea
© Jock Sturges
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Felix and his Wife, Buffalo
1992
From the series Lower West Side Revisited
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Denise Jarvinen and Pierre Cremieux
© Milton Rogovin, Copyright 1952-2002 / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Louie Palu (Canadian, b. 1968)
U.S. Marine Gysgt. Carlos “OJ” Orjuela, age 31. Garmsir, Helmand, Afghanistan
2008
Inkjet print
Museum purchase with funds donated in honour of Linda and Alex Beavers
Louie Palu/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

And then there’s Louie Palu’s black and white portraits of Marines. These are some of the few single-person portraits among images of families or groups. Paired with a group photo, there is an initial sense of loneliness. But isolate the image and it’s a different story.

“In the military, you arrive alone and leave the military alone but live on a battlefield as part of a close group of people who will do everything to support you and are willing to risk their life to save yours,” he said. “When you are a soldier, your comrades can define a life-changing experience not a single member of your biological family will ever understand. When you come home, your mother, father, wife, brothers, sisters and children can never connect to that experience like your comrades can. When you are in a group, you are strong, and when you are alone, you are not.”

Text from Rena Silverman. “In Search of the American Family,” on the New York Times website Nov. 20, 2017 [Online] Cited 16/02/2022

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
Red Book: Tina Radziwill and Caroline Kennedy, Montauk
1972
Polaroid photograph
Sheet: 10.8 x 8.6cm (4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.)
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY

Elsa Dorfman (American, 1937-2020)
Nayla, Ted, Alexandra, Nick, March 30, 1995
1995
Polaroid polacolor
Gift of Elsa Dorfman in memory of Dorothy Glaser
© Elsa Dorfman, 2013, all rights reserved / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Elsa Dorfman (American, 1837-2020)

Elsa Dorfman (April 26, 1937 – May 30, 2020) was an American portrait photographer. She worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was known for her use of a large-format instant Polaroid camera. …

Dorfman’s principal published work, originally published in 1974, was Elsa’s Housebook – A Woman’s Photojournal, a photographic record of family and friends who visited her in Cambridge when she lived there during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many well known people, especially literary figures associated with the Beat generation, are prominent in the book, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Robert Creeley, in addition to people who would become notable in other fields, such as radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, and civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate (who would become Dorfman’s husband). She also photographed staples of the Boston rock scene such as Jonathan Richman, frontman of The Modern Lovers, and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

In 1995, she collaborated with graphic artist Marc A. Sawyer to illustrate the booklet 40 Ways to Fight the Fight Against AIDS. She photographed people, both with and without AIDS, each engaged in one of forty activities that might help AIDS victims in their daily life. The photographs were exhibited 1995 at the Lotus Development Corporation in Cambridge, in Provincetown and New York City. The artist donated the costs of producing the photographs for this project.

Dorfman co-starred in the documentary No Hair Day (1999).

She was known for her use of the Polaroid 20 by 24 inch camera (one of only six in existence), from which she created large prints. She photographed famous writers, poets, and musicians including Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg. Due to bankruptcy, the Polaroid Corporation entirely ceased production of its unique instant film products in 2008. Dorfman stocked up with a year’s supply of her camera’s last available 20 by 24 instant film.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Dawoud Bey (American, b. 1953)
Kevin
2005
From the series Class Pictures
Chromogenic print
Museum purchase with funds donated by the Friends of Photography and The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection
© Dawoud Bey
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) is a photographer known for his colour portraits of various subjects, perhaps most notably teenagers. This 2005 photograph is of a teen named Kevin and is from Bey’s series Class Pictures, which is a study of high school students across the country

Jess T. Dugan (American, b. 1986)
Devotion
2012
From the series Every Breath We Drew
Jess T. Dugan/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Jess T. Dugan

Tanja Hollander (American, b. 1972)
Brittany Marcoux and Brian McGuire, Swansea, Massachusetts
2012
Inkjet print
Museum purchase with funds donated by James N. Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Tanja Hollander

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (British, b. 1964)
To Majority Minority – Thuan
2014-2015

The word immigrant conjures up families passing through Ellis Island or young men climbing across the southwest border fence. The United States of America of yesterday, filled with immigrants of European descent is giving way to a new multi-coloured and multicultural America. By 2050 “minority” populations in the U.S. will become the majority of the population. In this new multi-coloured America, we need to reframe our understanding of our newest immigrants in terms of their cultures, religions and stories.

In this project, I explore the generational transition from immigrant to native within families, starting with portrait photographs from these immigrant’s albums. These old photographs reflect where they have come from, revealing family histories and shared stories of immigration. The final portrait animation helps us empathise with these new Americans beyond the stereotype of the family at Ellis Island or the presumed terrorist.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts

Opening hours:
Saturday – Monday, Wednesday 10am – 5pm
Thursday – Friday 10am – 10pm
Closed Tuesdays

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class’ at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Exhibition dates: 27th April to 13th August 2017

Curator: Dr Martin Engler, Head of the Collection of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum
Co-curator: Dr Jana Baumann, Städel Museum

Artists: Volker Döhne, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Tata Ronkholz, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth and Petra Wunderlich

Bernd Becher (German, 1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (German, 1934-2015)
Gutehoffnungshütte, Oberhausen, Ruhrgebiet
1963
Gelatine silver print on baryta paper
75.3 x 91.4cm
Art Collection Deutsche Börse Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher

“What the teachings of Bernd and Hilla Becher sparked off – and their students developed further – is a new conception of the artwork according to which the boundaries between sculpture, painting and photography dissolve in terms of media and aesthetics alike. In other words, in the very moment in history when photography emancipated itself to become an independent medium, it sounded its own death knell.” (Press release)

WHAT ABSOLUTE RUBBISH – the second sentence, that is!

Just look at the photographs as pictures.

The Bechers and their students’ photographs might invoke a new concept of the pictorial but that does not mean the death of photography far from it. In fact, this conceptualisation opens up an expanded terrain of becoming for photography (continuing the theme of the last post on the work of Walker Evans). In this sense, the work of these artists is vital to an understanding of the place of photography within the observation, construction and taxonomy of contemporary culture and its pictorial representation. Everything in contemporary art relates not to beauty or aesthetics but to the social.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Städel Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. For more information please see the interactive website.

One of the most radical changes in art’s relation to its aesthetic, media, and economic contexts is closely associated with the students of the first Becher Class at the Düsseldorf art academy – but even more so with the names of their teachers, Bernd and Hilla Becher. The exhibition brings together 200 major works, some in large format, by these important artists, as well as a selection of their early works.

Bernd Becher (German, 1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (German, 1934-2015)
Half-Timber Houses
1959-1961/1974
Silver gelatine print on baryta paper
152.4 x 112.5cm
Sammlung Deutsche Bank
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher

“This is a purely economic architecture […]. It is erected, used and discarded.”

Becher, Bernd and Hilla cit. in: “Beauty in the Awful”, in: Time. The Weekly Newsmagazine, 94, 10, 5 September 1969, p. 69.

The same subject in nine different types: as in a scientific documentary the photos show nine coal silos before a neutral light-grey background. The Bechers’ photos all follow the same approach: from an elevated vantage point the artists photograph details and total views of objects or entire industrial facilities and position them centrally in the picture. Every detail is razor sharp. The sky is predominantly overcast. The photographs are black and white. Nothing is to distract from the subject, to guarantee a presentation that is as objective as possible.

Bernd Becher and Hilla Wobeser begin to collaborate in 1959. At the time both study at the art academy Düsseldorf. Two years later they marry. During the following five decades the artist couple produces mostly tableaus of several parts – consisting of three, nine, twelve or more photos; they call them typologies. Their subjects are disused headstocks, furnaces, oil refineries, water reservoir towers, grain silos, gasometres or even half-timbered houses in former workers’ settlements – all of them testimonies of a declining industrial culture.

The Bechers depict the half-timbered houses from the Siegerland in a sober and restrained fashion. The picture removes the buildings from their original context. One view follows the next. Thus the form of the single building becomes more important than its function. In the photographs the half-timbered houses become aesthetic objects with a sculptural character. Bernd and Hilla Becher do not present their images individually, but in a grid. Not the single photo is the work, but the total of the typology is.

When Hilla and Bernd Becher presented their works at the Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1969, this coincided with an exhibition on US-American minimal art – a juxtaposition that was to prove programmatic. In 1972 the American sculptor Carl Andre mentioned the insightful connection of the Bechers’ works and the movements of minimal and conceptual art. This prominent, art-theoretical connection significantly contributed to the great international success of the Bechers. This is also why – especially in the USA – the two are considered concept artists more than photographers. …

The Bechers’ method of working – ostensibly – is concerned with sobriety and anonymity, rigidity and objectivity. They work in series, where the whole and a part of this whole, total view and detail are balanced. Setting their photographs into the context of sculpture, they test the boundaries of the genres of photography and sculpture. Working and presenting their works in series, they move the photograph beyond the individual work: the viewer can never see everything at once; instead the eye oscillates between detail and general context.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website Nd [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Bernd Becher (German, 1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (German, 1934-2015)
Half-Timber Houses (detail)
1959-1961/1974
Silver gelatine print on baryta paper
152.4 x 112.5cm
Sammlung Deutsche Bank
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher

The Becher School of Photography. An American Perspective – Vortrag von Alexander Alberro

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Weidengasse Cologne VIII 1977
1977 (2013)
Gelatine silver print on baryta paper
42.6 x 36.7cm
Loan from the artist
© Candida Höfer, Köln; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Volker Döhne (German, b. 1953)
Untitled (Colourful)
1979 (2014)
Colour print from colour transparency
37 x 47cm
Private collection
© Volker Döhne, Krefeld 2017

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
Interior 1 D
1982
Chromogenic colour print
47 x 57cm
Loan from the artist
© Thomas Ruff; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Doorman, Passport Control
1982 (2007)
Inkjet print
43.2 x 52.5cm
Loan from the artist / Courtesy Sprüth Magers
© Andreas Gursky / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017 / Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
Moedling House
1982-1984
Gelatine silver print on baryta paper
66 x 80cm
Loan from the artist
© Axel Hütte

Petra Wunderlich (German, b. 1954)
Fossa Degli Angeli, Italy
1989
Gelatine silver print on baryta paper
61 x 75.2cm
Private collection
© Petra Wunderlich; VG Bild-Kunst 2017

From 27 April to 13 August 2017, the Städel Museum is staging a comprehensive survey on the Becher Class at the Düsseldorf art academy and the major paradigm shift in the medium of artistic photography with which the Bechers and their students are associated. With the aid of some 200 photographs by Volker Döhne, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Tata Ronkholz, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth and Petra Wunderlich – a group of whom some enjoy international renown and others are due for rediscovery – the exhibition will examine the influence exerted by Bernd and Hilla Becher on their students at the Düsseldorf school. What unites the students’ works with those of their teachers? How do they differ? Is there really such a thing as the “Becher School” or is it ‘merely’ a matter of several highly successful photographers who happened to be studying at the ‘right place’ at an especially propitious moment in history? And how have those artists influenced our present conception of what a picture is? Taking the artist duo’s work as a point of departure, the exhibition “Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class” will acquaint viewers with the radical changes in the medium of artistic photography that became manifest in the works of the Becher pupils in the eighties and above all the nineties, and investigate the art-historical impact of this development up to the very present. It will feature major large-scale works as well as key early endeavours by the members of what is presumably the most influential generation of German photographers in the field of fine art.

The students of the first in a long line of Becher Classes at the Düsseldorfer art academy introduced elementary changes to contemporary art’s aesthetic, media and economic contexts. They not only contributed decisively to shaping international photography in the 1990s, but also fundamentally redefined the status and perception of artistic photography in general. Their works can be considered as one of the most self-confident emancipations of photography as art in the mediums history, while at the same time reflecting the (not merely digital) moment when the boundaries between the media dissolve.

“Bernd and Hilla Becher’s first – meanwhile world-famous – students played a tremendously important role in establishing photography as an expressive medium on a par with other art forms. The nine artists featured in our show occupy a realm where the distinction between painting and photography is no longer clear. The permeability of the boundary between the media is deliberate in their work, and in that respect they mirror one of the key focuses of the Städel Museum’s collection of contemporary art,” observes Städel director Dr Philipp Demandt. And exhibition curator Dr Martin Engler adds: “What the teachings of Bernd and Hilla Becher sparked off – and their students developed further – is a new conception of the artwork according to which the boundaries between sculpture, painting and photography dissolve in terms of media and aesthetics alike. In other words, in the very moment in history when photography emancipated itself to become an independent medium, it sounded its own death knell.”

The founding of a chair for artistic photography at the Düsseldorf art academy in 1976 provided perhaps the single most important impulse for a change in how the medium of photography was perceived. In close cooperation with his wife Hilla Becher, Bernd Becher held that chair until 1996. Even before their appointment to the Düsseldorf school, the Bechers had been taking pictures of historical industrial architecture, subscribing to a work concept that exceeded the scope of a common documentary approach in photography. They portrayed mining headframes, blast furnaces, gas tanks, water towers and other testimonies to a vanishing industrial culture – frontally, in central perspective, with fascinating depth of field, and where possible before the backdrop of a uniformly grey sky. They arranged the individual shots in grids to form large-scale tableaus they called typologies. The concern here was no longer merely the illustration of reality, but its perception. Reality could no longer be depicted singly, but only in a multiplicity of simultaneous images. From the formal aesthetic point of view, the staging of the pictorial subjects was now far more than documentary in nature. The affinity to minimal and concept art – evident in the rigour of the pictorial vocabulary, the industrial aesthetic and the new perception of a work in stages – is unmistakable.

Especially in their early work, the students of the first Becher Class explored their teachers’ artistic strategy with great intensity. Yet as they continued to pursue it in the nineties, they did so ever more independently, and in their own highly individual styles. With the aid of various strategies in terms of scale, presentation and motif, and not least of all with abstract pictorial inventions provoked by digital image techniques, they took the interpenetration of the mediums of painting and photography to an extreme. The result was a new concept of the picture that blurs aesthetic and media distinctions. “The dissolution of media boundaries, but also the use of technical innovations, are characteristic of the works of the first Becher Class. It is here that the impact of a changing media culture is felt,” explains Dr Jana Baumann, the co-curator of the exhibition.

A show devoted to such a complex phenomenon on the one hand, and such productive teaching activities on the other, must inevitably be limited in scope. “Photographs Become Pictures” concentrates deliberately on the students of the early years of the Becher Class, beginning with Höfer, Döhne, Hütte and Struth in 1976 and ending with the completion of Gursky’s and Sasse’s studies in 1987/1988. In retrospect, it is precisely in the heterogeneity of the first Becher Class – with its wide range of approaches that have influenced our present-day understanding of the pictorial image – that the success of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s teachings is evident.

Candida Höfer (b. 1944) is known above all for her pictures of public interiors such as libraries, universities, museums and waiting rooms. Nevertheless, the purely documentary aspect is ultimately of secondary importance to her, as is also true of her teachers. Particularly when she turned to colour photography, she began producing iconically clear shots of meaning-charged interiors extremely striking in their rigorous aesthetic. In composition, repetition and rhythm as well as the sculptural emphasis, Höfer’s formal staging of her interiors is reminiscent of the Becher typologies.

A distinct affinity to the typologies is also evident in early street shots by Thomas Struth (b. 1954), such as West Broadway, Tribeca, New York (1978) or Sommerstrasse, Düsseldorf (1980). He proceeded in a manner similar to his teachers, but broadened his spectrum of motifs. He is concerned in his work with cultural structures; in addition to streets he also depicts museums or religious cult sites and portrays families. With the aid of social and ethnological allusions he reveals orders and interrelationships, thus achieving a universal survey of human and their lifeworld in imagery.

Petra Wunderlich‘s (b. 1954) black-and-white series depict details of churches or quarries that the artist has introduced to a new, abstract compositional framework. By this method she reduces architecture visually to its stereometric tectonics in such a way that elementary architectonic forms unexpectedly emerge from the “broken” surfaces of nature. Wunderlich’s photographs, like those by the Bechers, can be read as sociological and historical testimonies.

The workgroups of Volker Döhne (b. 1953) closely resemble Bernd and Hilla Bechers’ typologies with regard to concept and motif alike. He developed series such as Small-Scale Iron Industry (1977/78) or Small Railway Bridges and Underpasses in the Bergisches and Märkisches Land (1979). With his experimental Colour (1979) series, he then emancipated himself from his teachers.

Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) was interested primarily in factory gates, shop windows, beverage kiosks and snack bars, which she photographed in the even light of grey days. Many aspects of these works are strongly reminiscent of the Becher photographs: the consistent placement of the subject at the pictorial centre, the unchanging size of the prints, but also the serial, typologically comparative approach.

Thomas Ruff (b. 1958) is likewise deeply indebted to his teachers’ serial method, which we encounter in his work in ever-different formulations. His portraits as well as the strongly enlarged nocturnal shots of, in part, found material, convey his fundamentally sceptical attitude towards photography’s claim to truth and documentation. His persistent investigations of new pictorial sources and technologies are perhaps the most impressive demonstrations of the manner in which Ruff continues the approach of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

Axel Hütte‘s (b. 1951) early architectural details investigate social situations using a mode of photographic expression distinguished by distance and anonymity. Within this context, he devotes himself as much to spoiled landscapes as to supposedly untouched nature which nevertheless has always been formed by human intervention. A conspicuous aspect of his work is the strong reference to historical landscape painting, whose formal compositional principles he both copies and deconstructs. Whereas the Bechers directed their attention to the sculptural or conceptual potential of their pictures, Hütte focusses on painting as the leading medium of modern art.

Jörg Sasse (b. 1962) initially devoted himself to highly artificial and at the same time prosaic arrangements of petit-bourgeois domestic culture. His later “tableaus” represent a virtual antithesis to the reductive rigour of these early works. Using digital and analogue techniques alike, he began processing found pictures as well as images of his own making, in which context he blurred the distinction between painting and photograph beyond recognition.

Andreas Gursky‘s (b. 1955) early photographs are likewise characterised by a keen interest in everyday surroundings – the private as well as the public sphere, the context of work as well as leisure time. Like Sasse, he investigates the aesthetic boundary between photographic and painterly image production. By means of digital manipulations he uses to duplicate and mount the pictorial motif to the point of abstraction, he creates perplexing pictorial architectures that merge construction and reality in large-scale colour prints.

The development of the Becher Class shows how concept art’s expanding notion of the artwork led to a new concept of the pictorial including photography. What the teachers introduced in rudiments was taken by their students and the following generation of artists to a momentous change in the picturing of reality. The realisation that photography cannot reproduce reality impartially does not detract from the medium. On the contrary, it means an enhancement in terms of artistic potential. What is more, the lack of focus in the portrayal of reality – in the literal and figurative sense alike – enriches photography’s complexity. It is not least of digital changes that enables innovative pictorial invention. Yet the boundaries of the photographic image also became fluid in the development from individual work to typology and series, and from detail to overall image. The answer to all questions about the significance, classification, doctrine and conception of what we refer to as the “Becher School” can thus be found in an insight as simple as it is surprising: in the very moment in history when photography emancipated itself to become an independent medium, it sounded its own death knell.

Press release from the Städel Museum

At left in the bottom image, Axel Hütte (b. 1951) 15 artists USA (David McDermott, Stephen Prina, Mike Kelley, Peter McGough, David McDermott, Doug Starn, Mike Starn, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Ross Bleckner) 1988 (2003)(detail)

Candida Höfer (left) and Thomas Struth (b. 1954) Louvre 3, Paris 1989 1989 (2012) (right)

Thomas Struth (b. 1954) Paradiese 09 Xi Shuang Banna, Provinz Yunnan, China, 1999

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Paradiese 09
Xi Shuang Banna, Provinz Yunnan, China, 1999

Thomas Ruff (b. 1958) House No. 1 1987 (right)

Axel Hütte (b. 1951)

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
Castellina
1992 (2015)
Chromogenic colour print
98.4 x 120.3cm
DZ BANK Kunstsammlung © Axel Hütte

In the bottom image, Thomas Struth (b. 1954) The Consolandi Family, Mailand, 1996 (2014) (left)

Exhibition views “Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class”
Photo: Städel Museum

The Bechers

For their photographs Bernd and Hilla Becher are awarded the “Golden Lion” in the category of “sculpture” at the Venice Biennale in 1990. How is that possible? Surprisingly at the time there was no separate category for photography at the Biennale. But this is not the real reason. Already in 1969 the first larger exhibition of the Bechers is called “Anonymous Sculptures”, just like their first volume of photographs. The artists very consciously link the genres of photography and sculpture. This idea informs their entire oeuvre.

An Overall Concept

The artist couple directs the attention to formal, creative aspects of the photographed edifices at the same time allowing them to disappear in the typology’s grid. The rigidity of their pictorial vocabulary and the interest in an industrial aesthetic evidences the close proximity of the Bechers’ creative work to minimal and concept art.

Photography in Germany

“In principle it [photography] was a fallow field, where nothing ‘noteworthy’ had taken place in the past fifty years. We saw us in the tradition of objective photography of the 1920s; Bernd and Hilla Becher were the first to reconnect to this. There was absolutely nothing that we could fight or needed to disengage with. We could start from scratch.” ~ Thomas Ruff

“New Objectivity” this was the motto of the 1920s – also in photography. It was no longer the pictorial language of painting, but precision, focus and truth to detail, characteristics of photography that had garnered the artists’ interest.

The photographer August Sander focused on the society of the Weimar Republic and created a typology: in 1925 his pictorial atlas People of the 20th Century, where he systematically assembled hundreds of portraits of stereotypes of people of the most diverse social backgrounds and occupations. All of his sitters are portrayed frontally, which makes the photographs comparable. Sander also engaged in the photography of landscapes, industrial sites and cities.

Two more representatives of the photography of New Objectivity are also worth mentioning here: Albert Renger-Patzsch recorded industrial buildings and machinery in a sober directness. Karl Blossfeldt adopted scientific standards and photographed plants – always before a neutral background, removed from their natural setting.

Bernd and Hilla Becher draw on these approaches and develop them in their works. With a few exemptions, photography was not considered an autonomous artistic medium in Germany. Still in the 1960s, photography in art predominantly served as a means of documentation of actions, happenings and performances. Yet painting and photography interact. The painter Gerhard Richter for example, used photos as templates for his paintings since the early 1960s. The Bechers in turn greatly contributed to the recognition of photography as autonomous artistic medium with their photographs.

The Becher Class: Adoption, Distinction

DÖHNE GURSKY HÖFER HÜTTE RONKHOLZ RUFF SASSE STRUTH WUNDERLICH

These are the students of the first Becher class. In 1976 Bernd Becher is appointed first professor for photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. In close cooperation with his wife Hilla he teaches there for twenty years. Their first students become artists, who will have a formative influence on photography in the 1980s and the 1990s internationally. The Becher students intensely study their teachers’ work. Especially in their early works comparable approaches develop: a distanced perspective, an interest in architecture and striving for technical precision.

The Bechers are preoccupied with an industrial architecture in decline, representative also of the social changes affecting the respective region. Taking this as a starting point, their students consider their direct surroundings and social contexts. They seek to identify systems of classification and in their photographs investigate the relationship of individual work and series. In the process the Becher students adopt their own positions. They discover new themes, techniques and creative strategies. Regardless of the distinctions they are indebted to the conceptual approach of their teachers, which they then developed in their individual ways.

In their teaching and their work Bernd and Hilla Becher explore a concept of the image, where medial and aesthetic distinctions of sculpture, painting and photography dissolve. Their students continue this work in very different ways. In the 1980s and 1990s their enquiries lead to a critical reflexion of the possibilities of representing reality. The lack of focus in the depiction of reality – literally and figuratively – represent an increase in artistic complexity. Innovative pictorial creations were now possible by way of digital intervention.

The borders of the photographic image blur at the stage between single work and typology and series. The alternation of perception, oscillating between detail and total image extend the possibilities of photography. The meaning of what is called “Becher school” can be summarised in a simple and surprising statement: at the historic moment, when photography becomes an independent medium, it also realises its potential and explores its limits. Photography reaches its limits, transgresses it and thus ultimately questions its existence.

Kiosks and Streets

The developments in American photography are also important to the Becher-students: Ed Ruscha, whose photos show everyday subjects, is one of their role models. In 1966 he creates Every Building on the Sunset Strip. With a simple handheld camera Ruscha photographs every building on the Los Angeles boulevard of that name; he presents his pictures in a fanfold or an artist’s book. This quickly reveals the serial principle behind the work. Volker Döhne’s approach in Reconstruction II is similar. He, too, documents the commercial architecture, largely determining the surrounding.

Ice cream parlour, garage, drug store, stationers, dwelling house, shoe shop – nicely aligned. Volker Döhne focuses on the urban space dominated by nondescript post war architecture and empty sites. Other than his American colleague Ed Ruscha, Döhne always positions his camera head-on in the same angle. Surprisingly this emphasises the buildings’ volume. Like his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher he emphasises the three-dimensional, sculptural aspect of buildings and pursues a concept that he determined before he began to photograph.

The Bechers assemble identical, yet different photographs to a static tableau. Döhne on the other hand, required the viewer to move along the strip and proceed down the row of photographs. Above all the viewer must add together the photos of the Krefelder Straße by himself: the work forms as a result of the viewer’s active viewing and perception.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Volker Döhne (German, b. 1953)
Krefeld, Ostwall corner Rheinstraße, (Reconstruction II)
1990 (1992)
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
47 × 37cm
Private collection

Volker Döhne (German, b. 1953)
Krefeld, Rheinstraße 82 (Reconstruction II)
1990 (1992)
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
47 × 37cm
Private collection

Volker Döhne (German, b. 1953)
Krefeld, Rheinstraße 84 (Reconstruction II)
1990 (1992)
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
47 × 37cm
Private collection

Volker Döhne (German, b. 1953)
Krefeld, Rheinstraße 86 (Reconstruction II)
1990 (1992)
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
47 × 37cm
Private collection

Volker Döhne (German, b. 1953)
Krefeld, Rheinstraße 88 (Reconstruction II)
1990 (1992)
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
47 × 37cm
Private collection

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Beverage kiosk, Düsseldorf, Hermannstraße 31
1978
Gelatine silver print on baryta paper
41.2 x 51.2cm
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln/Dauerleihgabe der Sparkasse KölnBonn
© Tata Ronkholz, Nachlassverwaltung Van Ham Art Estate 2017

Cigarette and gumball machines are fixed to exterior walls. Advertising posters overlap. Beverages, magazines and sweets are visibly lined up behind glass. It is Tata Ronkholz’ serial presentation that enables the comparison of the kiosks and their study as a social phenomenon in urban contexts.

Kiosks are everyday meeting points and the setting for social life. At the same time their role fundamentally changed in the past decades. Ronkholz photographs kiosks as socially grown places. She positions them centrally in their architectural environment – people are absent. This is what the photos have in common with Becher-photographs. Like her teachers, Ronkholz is committed to the conservation and archiving of a changing urban culture.

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Dusseldorf, Sankt-Franziskusstraße 107
1977
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
41.2 × 51.2cm
Courtesy The Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne / Permanent Loan of the Sparkasse KölnBonn

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Without title
1978
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
41.2 × 51.2cm
Courtesy The Photographische Sammlung / SK Foundation Culture, Cologne / Dauerleihgabe der Sparkasse KölnBonn

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Düsseldorf, Germany, Konkordiastraße 85
1978
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
41.2 × 51.2cm
Courtesy The Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne / Permanent Loan of the Sparkasse KölnBonn

Picture Parallels

Bernd and Hilla Bechers students are linked to the work of their teachers in many ways. And yet they devote themselves, in part, to new motifs, subjects, and picture formats during their studies. In addition to architecture, they also photograph interiors, simple everyday objects or people.

In the early 1980s the Becher-students Axel Hütte and Thomas Ruff turn to portrait photography practically at the same time. They capture their models with neutral facial expressions, generally head-on before a monochrome background. The extreme setting makes the individual recede while the surface of the background dominates. In the series the single faces turn into an interchangeable motif somewhere between person and typology.

From Near and Far

The directions of the persons’ gazes differs. Nothing distracts from their faces. The neutral background and the close details are reminiscent of giant passport photographs. One almost overlooks that some of the sitters are famous artists today.

Axel Hütte’s portraits with their conscious play with blurring and sharpness are irritating: some areas in the photo show up the slightest detail, while others are slightly blurred – a conscious reference to the Bechers’ works, characterised by their extreme depth of focus. When observing Hütte’s works from close-up the face becomes a surface of structures. If one wants to see it in focus, one needs to distance oneself. Thus the viewer is kept at bay and always in motion.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
15 artists USA (David McDermott, Stephen Prina, Mike Kelley, Peter McGough, David McDermott, Doug Starn, Mike Starn, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Ross Bleckner)
1988 (2003)
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
113 x 91cm each
Loan from the artist

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
15 artists USA (David McDermott, Stephen Prina, Mike Kelley, Peter McGough, David McDermott, Doug Starn, Mike Starn, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Ross Bleckner) (detail)
1988 (2003)
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
113 x 91cm each
Loan from the artist

Pictures Generation

Thomas Ruff explores the gap between reality and image. This is something he shares with the American artists of the so-called “Pictures Generation” from the 1970s and 1980s. This informal group of artists, among them Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Richard Prince, grew up with a flood of pictures in cinema, television and the print media. Their works show distrust for the media, as well as a fascination with it. The artists make use of existing images from film, advertising and art. They copy, quote and redesign this material – more subtly than the artists from American Pop Art in the 1960s. Instead of working with found images in print, collage or painting, the artists of the “Pictures Generation” make small interventions. By introducing minor changes or by producing a practically identical copy of an image they very consciously play with conventional ways of perception. In their works they draw attention to mechanisms of picture production and the methods of artificial construction of reality through pictures.

Photos of Faces

Like Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff does not believe in an image of human character. He is convinced that only the exterior reality – the appearance – can be represented. In this sense Ruff’s portraits are photos of faces that resemble expressionless surfaces. The monochrome background hides any hint at a recognisable location.

The face becomes a surface and thus resembles a projection screen for an advertising message. The serial juxtaposition turns the individual in Ruff’s photographs into a type that also represents a particular generation. The stereotypes communicated by mass media and the influence of images on individual and collective opinion-forming are being questioned.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
Portrait (G. Benzenberg)
1985
Chromogenic colour print
41 × 33cm
Loan from the artist

“Looks good. Continue in colour.”

The bed, bath and living rooms, the kitchen unit and the furniture of the 1950s and 1970s, Thomas Ruff finds at the homes of relatives and friends in the Black Forest, where he comes from. Bernd and Hilla Becher preferably work in black and white. Ruff on the other hand starts experimenting with colour photography early on during his studies:

“At some point I started, making use of the colour practice, which I […] had developed, in my interiors, and I thought this looked better than in black and white photos. The colleagues said, you cannot do this. Then I also asked Bernd Becher and he said: “Looks good. Continue in colour.”

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
Interior 3 A
1979
Chromogenic paint removal
45.7 x 39.4cm
Loan from the artist

A Question of Mise-en-Scène

The two clips on yellow ground look like two flies. The bright background emphasises the form of the represented objects. Their original function becomes secondary. The simple stationary objects become worthy of the photographer’s meticulous attention. Jörg Sasse uses and parodies the strategies of advertising photography, ever concerned with presenting an object as something special.

From the start, Sasse’s work shows a painterly tendency as well as a penchant for abstraction. This is also apparent in a sequence of still lives with reduced colour and shapes. In his early work Sasse is interested in his immediate environment. He seeks to capture the unusual in the everyday. This links his work with the typologies of his teachers. Other than they do, Sasse does not give titles to his works; instead he gives them random numbers. This allows him to remove the represented object even further from its original context without offering a new interpretation.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Jörg Sasse (German, b. 1962)
ST-84-12-06
1984
Chromogenic paint removal
18 × 24cm
Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation

Kitchen, Bath Room and Living Room

Almost in symmetry Jörg Sasse’s photo shows a light blue jug and a glass jug on two hobs. It belongs to a series, which Sasse dedicated to modest interiors between the post war years and the economic miracle. Sometimes the photos show individual objects, sometimes a combination of two or three objects. They capture details of tiles, furniture or floors.

They give the impression as if the objects were arranged by coincident or as if the inhabitants had left them behind like this. At the same time the scenes appear to be very artificial. Sasse transforms colour, shape and structure of the interior settings into individual, abstract compositions. He focuses on formal contrasts, sequences and similarities. According to the artist it is “not the preoccupation with interiors but with the picture.” The photographer is more interested in the painterly composition than in the representation of reality.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Jörg Sasse (German, b. 1962)
W-84-02-13, Dusseldorf
1984
Chromogenic paint removal
57.2 × 67.6cm
Courtesy Gallery Wilma Tolksdorf

Courtyards and Street Canyons

The artists Axel Hütte and Thomas Struth share an interest in urban non-spaces, indistinct streets or architectures.

In the 1980s modernist residential dwellings like the brutalist, square James Hammett House in London, become increasingly less popular and are turned into social housing. The raw concrete façade of the London block of flats spreads across almost the entire picture. The empty square in front of it is abandoned. There is no sign of inhabitants: a forbidding place.

Like Bernd and Hilla Becher in their pictures of industrial buildings, Axel Hütte emphasises the angular and unwieldy shapes of the architecture in his London series. From a distance the sad, functional façade appears to be an abstract pattern of rhythmically changing shades of grey, behind which the architecture recedes.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
James Hammett House
1982-1984
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
66 x 80cm
Loan of the artist

In the Street

The row of houses on New York’s 21st Street seems never ending. Old houses and modern high rises alternate and form a sequence of textures and geometric forms rich in contrast. Thomas Struth was struck by the deep street canyons of the metropolis. He took his photos from the middle of the street, positioning the camera at eye-level – a method that resembles that of his teachers. It is an unusual perspective unfamiliar to both pedestrians and drivers.

Struth begins capturing urban spaces already when in Cologne and Düsseldorf. A stipend takes him to New York in 1978. His photographic approach offers a completely new view of the city’s urbanity and structure.

“I may very well stem from the legacy of documentary photography and do use its means and perspective, but my true concern exceeds this. […] To me the street is a space, where manifold influences and historical events convene and become apparent. The public space has a subconscious language, addressing us continuously.”

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
West 21st Street, Chelsea, New York
1978 (1987)
Gelatine silver print on baryta paper
66 x 84cm
DZ BANK art collection at the Städel Museum
© Thomas Struth

Variety

Landscapes, families, places of leisure, libraries, museums – the subjects of the Becher-students are equally as varied as their approach to photography. Their own positions develop more and more, while shared characteristics with their teachers’ oeuvre become apparent.

“Not the subject, but the representation of a landscape is what matters to me.” ~ Axel Hütte

Almost two thirds of the picture are concealed by thick fog. The rocks in the foreground, however, are razor sharp. In Furka Axel Hütte plays with the contrast of diffusion and focussed parts of the picture. He explores landscape photography and thus consciously enters into competition with the genre of painting.

Foggy landscape is of great importance in the paintings of German Romanticism. This art movement, which began in the late 19th century, is characterised by mystic nature, where religious ideas are intertwined with subjective sentiment. Caspar David Friedrich is recognised as one of the most important representatives of Romanticist landscape painting. To him nature mirrored the human soul. In his painting Mountains in the Rising Fog, which he painted around 1835, the hills are veiled and only the outlines can be made out. In his photographs, Hütte refers to this tradition and employs similar techniques to guide the viewer’s gaze and to compose the picture. The landscape can be sensually grasped. The atmosphere and the subjective experience come to the fore. While his teachers sought the proximity to sculpture, Hütte’s work reflects the strategies of painting.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
Furka
1994 (2012)
Chromogenic colour print
56.7 × 65.7cm
DZ BANK Kunstsammlung

The Silence Beside the Storm

Andreas Gursky’s works are dedicated to traffic hubs, mass events, economic centres, transit zones or places of leisure. Gursky’s focus is always on the common denominator and questions the relationship of man with nature and society. The photograph Teneriffa, Swimming Pool shows a holiday resort from a bird’s eye perspective that makes the tiny holidaymakers almost disappear. The force of nature represented by the foaming sea is in stark contrast with the artificial silence of the adjacent pool.

Like his teachers, Gursky keeps a distance to his subject. But unlike them he does not work in series and concentrates on single works. Bernd and Hilla Becher’s compositions are always about one centrally positioned object. Gursky’s images on the other hand are rich in detail and the motives are spread across the picture plane in captivating sharpness – he plays with visual challenge.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Teneriffa, Swimming Pool
1987
Chromogenic colour print
104.5 × 127cm
On loan from the artist / Courtesy Sprüth Magers

Own Vantage Points

Candida Höfer too, photographs public spaces. Her photographs follow the architecture of the buildings she finds. At the same time she chooses unusual positions for her camera and thus resists the symmetries or views prescribed by the spaces. Her photos defy architectural hierarchies and structures and thus communicate the spatial experience in a particular way.

Waiting Room Cologne III 1981 is an early example of Höfer’s artistic method. The furniture reaches diagonally into the space, a dynamic underscored by the pattern of the parquet flooring. The row of tables and chairs in the bottom corner is cut off by the edge. Instead of creating a balanced symmetrical composition, she works with alternative vantage points.

This allows Höfer to emphasise her personal view of the interior architecture. Concurrently she is enquiring how the architectural space is influenced by the way people use it in the course of time. The Waiting Room with Neo-Baroque décor dating from the second half of the 19th century forms a stark contrast to the simple furniture that is easily 100 years less old.

“By means of the print I then create my own space once again. It is not my intention to show the space in a manner as realistic as possible.”

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Waiting Room Cologne III 1981
1981
Chromogenic colour print
155 × 155cm
Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation

Libraries as Brand

Above all Candida Höfer is famous for her large-scale interior views of libraries devoid of people. The workspaces in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris are lined up like books in libraries. The artist frequently focuses on places that preserve and order knowledge and culture. Apart from libraries she also worked on museums or operas. She is interested in how humans influence architecture through their culture. Her photos are always determined by a cool sobriety. This is what they have in common with the photographs of the Bechers. However, Höfer always works with the light and the space present in each situation. She strives to capture the atmosphere and aura of a space.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Bibliothèque Nationale de France Paris XIII 1998
1998
Chromogenic colour print
155 × 215cm
Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation

The Picture in the Picture

In his series Museum Photographs Thomas Struth focuses on imposing interior spaces such as the gallery at the Louvre in Paris – unlike Höfer, he always shows the visitors, too. They become a multifaceted continuation of the figures in the paintings on the wall. Through the photograph Struth establishes a connection of pictorial space and real space, the painterly and photographic space. Here, the formerly competing media painting and photography enter into a dialogue as equals.

Simultaneously the viewer is confronted with different levels of viewing: those who contemplate Struth’s photos inevitably also observe the visitors at the Louvre contemplating the art works there. Thus the artist prompts a reflection on how we deal with art and its history, with seeing and being seen. Struth does not influence the positions of the visitors in his Museum Photographs. He waits for situations that can serve as the basis of his compositions. Struth merely decides on the space and the visual angle he takes.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Louvre 3, Paris 1989
1989 (2012)
Chromogenic colour print
152.2 × 168.3cm
DZ BANK Kunstsammlung im Städel Museum, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Family Relations

The photo The Consolandi Family, Milano by Thomas Struth belongs to the series Family Portraits, which shows relationships that are complex and full of tension. The viewer is challenged to explore the connections of the family, reflected in subtle looks, mimics or posture.

The Family Portraits evolved from an unpublished project, which Struth and a friend of his, a psychoanalyst, pursued in the early 1980s. Patients were asked to submit a couple of photographs that were typical of their families, which Struth then combined in a portfolio. Drawing on this project, the photographer began to work with family portraits he took. He photographed people he knew in their homes. The individuals were asked to choose their position in a space that the artist had selected. Struth’s psychological interest in the family as a social fabric is evident. The order resembles a sociagram after all.

Like the Bechers’ works, Struth’s photographs are determined by an intrinsic dynamic full of tension. While his teachers work with industrial fields of force, he balances psychological energies. This results in an alternation of perception – the eye sways between single pictorial elements and the total composition.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
The Consolandi Family, Milan 1996
1996 (2014)
Chromogenic colour print
178 × 214.2cm
Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation

Picture Editing

In February 1982 the first great scandal about a digitally edited press picture occurs: for the title of the periodical National Geographic – actually indebted to scientific exactitude – the pyramids at Gizeh have been pushed closer together so they would fit the portrait format. This represents a fundamental shift in photo and media culture that also affects the work of the Becher students.

Ruff, Sasse and Gursky especially, develop their works digitally. This inevitably distances them from their teachers’ documentary approach more and more. The artists do not depict reality they create their own reality. This results in photographs that cannot be explained through analogue camera technology. The truth in the pictures is questioned, just like the viewer’s perception. In nascent form this approach is already present in the typologies created by the Bechers.

Digital interventions

This photo of an average residential block from 1987 marks a turning point in Thomas Ruff’s oeuvre. Things – namely a tree and a street sign – are missing. Ruff decided to have these details erased. He also retouched an opened skylight. This is one of the first digitally edited pictures in the circle of the Becher students. Ruff’s idea is to emphasise the symmetrical appearance and the hermetic quality of the building. Still, he is not really meddling with the picture’s structure of reality.

Ruff’s photos of the House Series confront the viewer with urban banality. The enormous scale of the works, measuring nearly 2 x 3 metres exaggerates the uneventfulness as a crucial characteristic of this architecture. From the 1980s the Becher students increasingly use large formats. They become a trademark of the group. Mostly presented with a wooden frame the artists elevate the photos to the level of paintings. Like the Bechers, Ruff worked in series, but no longer arranged his works in typologies. His series preserve the suspicion of a single image that might represent the world.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
House No. 1
1987
Chromogenic colour print
179 × 278cm
Loan from the artist

Giant Grid

In photos like Paris, Montparnasse Andreas Gursky enlarges the image to a monumental scale of over four metres in width. He, too, relies on digital editing. The frontal view of the residential block is presented in strictly right-angular lines. The building is so wide that it would be impossible to capture it in a single photo. Hence, Gursky used two photos and joined them on the computer.

From a distance, the geometrical grid of the building looks abstract. The skeleton structure of the block also means that the windows offer hundreds of single images. However, it is impossible to simultaneously perceive the detail as well as the overall structure. Gursky requires the viewer to constantly alternate his focus between close-up and distance.

“My pictures are always composed for two aspects […]. The smallest detail can be read from close up. From afar they are mega-signs.”

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Exhibition view “Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class” showing Andreas Gursky’s Paris, Montparnasse 1993 (before 2003)
Photo: Städel Museum

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Paris, Montparnasse
1993 (before 2003)
Chromogenic colour print
207 × 422cm
On loan from the artist / Courtesy Sprüth Magers

Pixel and Pixel and Pixel

Sasse’s work 1546 (1993) also plays with perception at the border of abstraction. The single pixels as a trace of the digital reworking are immediately visible. The realistic representation of a curtain is ruptured. Instead pixel and square colour fields become the focus, while the original sense of space is lost. The photo appears two-dimensional.

Sasse takes up a basic issue with the illusion of space that has a long art historic tradition. Already in early Renaissance the artist and scholar Leon Battista Alberti considers painting as a window to the world. He considered it important for an illusionist way of painting to conceal the two-dimensionality of the canvas. In his oeuvre Sasses draws on this issue. He questions photography and painting’s claim to realism and questions the possibility of pictorially representing reality at all.

Anonymous text from the Becher Class at the Städel Museum website [Online] Cited 27/12/2021

Jörg Sasse (b. 1962) 1546, 1993 (centre) and Jörg Sasse (b. 1962) 7341, 1996 (right)

Jörg Sasse (German, b. 1962)
1546
1993
Chromogenic colour print
137 × 200cm
Private collection

Jörg Sasse (German, b. 1962)
7341
1996
Chromogenic colour print
93 x 150cm
DZ BANK art collection at the Städel Museum
© Jörg Sasse; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Städel Museum
Schaumainkai 63
60596 Frankfurt

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday – Sunday 10.00am – 6.00pm
Thursday 10.00am – 9.00pm
Monday closed

Becher Class at the Städel Museum website

Städel Museum website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Irving Penn: Centennial’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Part 2

Exhibition dates: 24th April – 30th July 2017

Irving Penn. The high priest of high modernist photography.

I know a lot of people adore his photography but I am not an acolyte quietly accepting his elevation to sainthood in the high temple of art museums.

I find Penn’s aesthetic aesthetic, his performing photography if you like, unappealing. To me his work is more about the photographer than it is about the subject. His photographs, in whatever style – portraiture, nude, still life – seem cold and lifeless. Like a dead fish. There is little pleasure to be gained from looking at his photographs or the people in them. I find little celebration of photography in his work, as in, this is what the camera does at its best, a dialogue between photographer and subject.

Penn was a commercial photographer who had aspirations of being an artist. As Mark L. Power observes, “One of the characteristics of the Penn style was the expressive silhouette or outline around the figure, a sculptural delineation of form, at once beautiful and austere, whether his subject was a still life, a fashion model or a portrait.” My god did he love silhouette and shadow, usually played off against a plain backdrop.

There is that key word, play. There is no sense of spontaneity in his photographs, no sense of fun, no sense of an understanding of the aura of the subject.

I think of the portraits of August Sander or Richard Avedon’s series In the American West (the latter using a plain backdrop), both with their depth of vision and feeling for the people they were photographing … and then I look at the Cuzco portraits of Penn. I get nothing back about the lives of these people in Penn’s photographs. I think of the distorted nudes of Bill Brandt with their sensuality and sublime angles … and then I look at the nudes of Penn. They just don’t stack up, they feel clumsy, trite. I look at his colour still life, and I imagine the colour work of Paul Outerbridge, the absolute intensity of feeling that I can recall from Outerbridge’s still life in my mind’s eye. No such feeling exists in Penn’s still life.

If you watch the video of Penn at work in Morocco in 1971 (below), everything is controlled to within an inch of its life. A tilt of the head here, a raise of the chin there. This is a commercial studio photographer at work. As I said earlier, the work is not a celebration of photography but about the control of the photographer through the pose of the subject. Jammed into a wedge of scenery the sitters perform for his camera – Schiaparelli, Capote, Charles James et al – flaccid characters, almost caricatures in their positioning. Other than variants such as the intense eye of Pablo Picasso, or the blindness of Ingmar Bergman, I don’t believe that Penn was ever, will ever be, a great portraitist. He has no feeling for his sitters.

Of course, there is “the relationship of content to form – a relationship that underpins all art” at which Penn excels, but he is no Atget, Evans or Eggleston, where we are constantly surprised at where the photographer places the camera, how they place the frame, how they “form the starting point of the image’s visual structure,” how we wonder at the results, how we day dream the narrative. As Victor Burgin observes, “… what the world ‘is’ depends extensively upon how it is described: in a culture where the expression ‘old bag’ is in circulation to describe an ageing woman that is precisely what she is in perpetual danger of ‘being’.”

In Penn’s work the photograph and its representation is never in any danger of “becoming”, it already is. Penn’s “old bag” never changes. By repeating the same trope over and over – the formalist aesthetic, the silhouette, the plain back drop, the controlled pose – his work never evolves, never moves with an illusive quality to a place that the viewer does not feel they already know. The world of murky imperfection, uncertainty and ephemeral juxtapositions to which our mortal senses have access is replaced by a world of perfection and light in which everything has its predestined place.

Perhaps I just long for the fundamental contradictions of life in art, antinomies, options for now and the future.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

See Part 1 of the posting

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

Irving Penn on Location in Morocco, 1971

This 8mm film footage, shot by Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in 1971, shows Irving Penn at work in his portable studio on location in Morocco. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Irving Penn: Centennial,” on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from April 24 through July 30, 2017.

Irving Penn Centennial

A preview of the exhibition Irving Penn Centennial April 24 – July 30, 2017 at The Met, featuring Jeff Rosenheim, Curator in Charge, Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Maria Morris Hambourg, Independent Curator and Former Curator in Charge, Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“As a way of beginning, one might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. All of us, even the best-mannered of us, occasionally point, and it must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others. It is not difficult to imagine a person – a mute Virgil of the corporeal world – who might elevate the act of pointing to a creative plane, a person who would lead us through the fields and streets and indicate a sequence of phenomena and aspects that would be beautiful, humorous, morally instructive, cleverly ordered, mysterious, or astonishing, once brought to our attention, but that had been unseen before, or seen dumbly, without comprehension. This talented practitioner of the new discipline (the discipline a cross between theater and criticism) would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much of our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.”

John Szarkowski. “Atget, Pointing”

“The word classic is often used about Penn’s work; it entails a certain gravitas characterised by rigour almost to the point of aloofness, an awareness of beauty throughout many genres, a graphic elegance of line and contour that is uniquely his, and a relationship of his work to artists of the past, usually painters rather than photographers. Although it could be said his photography was an advertisement for a haut monde world, his work was sometimes a subtle and somewhat sly subversion of the values of that lifestyle.”

Mark L. Power. “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty,” at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.

The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of the great American photographer Irving Penn (1917-2009), this exhibition will mark the centennial of the artist’s birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Penn mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail.

The exhibition follows the 2015 announcement of the landmark promised gift from The Irving Penn Foundation to The Met of more than 150 photographs by Penn, representing every period of the artist’s dynamic career with the camera. The gift will form the core of the exhibition, which will feature more than 200 photographs by Penn, including iconic fashion studies of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the artist’s wife; exquisite still lifes; Quechua children in Cuzco, Peru; portraits of urban labourers; female nudes; tribesmen in New Guinea; and colour flower studies. The artist’s beloved portraits of cultural figures from Truman Capote, Picasso, and Colette to Ingmar Bergman and Issey Miyake will also be featured. Rounding out the exhibition will be photographs by Penn that entered The Met collection prior to the promised gift.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Young Quechuan Man, Cuzco
December 1948, printed 1949
Gelatin silver print
7 15/16 x 7 3/16 in. (20.1 x 18.2cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

In Cuzco, Penn photographed both residents and visitors who came to the city from nearby villages with goods to sell or barter at the Christmastime fiestas. Many arrived at the studio to sit for their annual family portraits. Penn later recalled that they “found me instead of him [the local photographer] waiting for them, and instead of paying me for the pictures it was I who paid them for posing.”

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cuzco Children
December 1948, printed 1968
Platinum-palladium print
19 1/2 x 19 7/8 in. (49.5 x 50.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Two Men in White Masks, Cuzco
December 1948, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
10 9/16 x 10 7/16 in. (26.8 x 26.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cuzco Father and Son with Eggs
December 1948, printed January 1982
Platinum-palladium print
11 3/4 x 11 5/16 in. (29.8 x 28.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 18
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
41 x 38.4cm (16 1/8 x 15 1/8 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 42
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.1 x 37.5cm (15 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 57
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.4 x 37.5cm (15 1/2 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 72, New York
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.7 x 37.5cm (15 5/8 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 130
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
40 x 38.1cm (15 3/4 x 15 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Kerchief Glove (Dior), Paris
1950, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
15 3/8 x 15 5/16 in. (39.1 x 38.9cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Balenciaga Sleeve (Régine Debrise), Paris
1950
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 10 7/16 in. (25.9 x 26.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

In general, daughters from nice families were not encouraged to be in-house models. “Being a studio model was viewed as preferable,” said Régine Debrise, who posed for the photographers Irving Penn and Henry Clarke before becoming an editor at French Vogue, “because the hours were contained and the conditions were better. Being in-house meant sharing the cabine, often a cramped room, with 10 other girls, and it lacked any kind of privacy.”

Anonymous. “Cabine fever: inside Dior’s fitting room,” on The Telegraph website [Online] Cited 14/07/2017. No longer available online

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Balenciaga Mantle Coat (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris
1950, printed 1988
Platinum-palladium print
21 15/16 x 17 5/8 in. (55.7 x 44.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Lisa Fonssagrives (May 17, 1911 – February 4, 1992), born Lisa Birgitta Bernstone was a Swedish fashion model widely credited as the first supermodel.

Before Fonssagrives came to the United States in 1939, she was already a top model. Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including Town & Country, Life, Time, Vogue, and the original Vanity Fair. She was reported as “the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business”. Fonssagrives once described herself as a “good clothes hanger”.

She worked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn, in 1950. She went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Woman with Roses (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Lafaurie Dress), Paris
1950, printed 1968
Platinum-palladium print
22 x 15 11/16 in. (55.9 x 39.9cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast (Fr.)

Jeanne LaFaurie was a Paris couturiere working from 1925 until 1958. The house was known for dependable, if not spectacular, clothing and fine draping. Courreges worked there as a draftsman in 1947. Michel Goma became the house designer 1950-1958, when he bought the house and renamed it. It closed in 1963.

pastperfectvintage.com. “La Faurie, Jeanne,” on the Vintage Fashion Guild website Jul 17, 2010 [Online] Cited 21/12/2021

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Rochas Mermaid Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris
1950
Platinum-palladium print Image
19 7/8 x 19 11/16 in. (50.5 x 50cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Rochas is a fashion, beauty, and perfume house founded in 1925 by French designer Marcel Rochas (born 1902, died 1955) the first designer of 2/3-length coats and skirts with pockets. “His designs could be seen as the polar opposite of Chanel’s simplicity. Dresses were proper gowns and came with the optimum amount of frills, with lace, wide shoulders and nipped-in waists.”

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Large Sleeve (Sunny Harnett), New York
1951, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
14 3/4 x 14 3/4 in. (37.5 x 37.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Annemarie Margot “Sunny” Harnett (1924 – May 1987) was an American model in the 1950s and actress. She can be found in fashion magazines throughout that era – including frequently on the cover of Vogue – and was often a model of choice by photographer Edgar de Evia. Harper’s Bazaar ranks her as one of the 26 greatest models of all time.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Marchand de Concombres [Cucumber Seller]
1950, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Marchande de Ballons, Paris
1950, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
15 3/4 × 12 9/16 in. (40 × 31.9cm)
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© Les Editions Condé Nast S. A.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Window Washer
1950, printed 1967
Platinum-palladium print
19 7/8 × 14 13/16 in. (50.5 × 37.6cm)
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Fishmonger, London
1950, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
19 11/16 × 14 13/16 in. (50 × 37.6cm)
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Pablo Picasso at La Californie, Cannes
1957, printed February 1985
Platinum-palladium print
18 5/8 x 18 5/8 in. (47.3 x 47.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

When Penn arrived at Picasso’s house in the south of France, the artist pretended not to be home. But after Penn’s assistant climbed over the locked gate, Picasso granted the photographer ten minutes. Covering his sweat-shirt with a Spanish cape, Picasso tried to playfully deflect him. Variants of this image show how Penn patiently worked the pose, allowing the artist his costume play while progressively boring in to isolate the riveting gaze of his left eye.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Ingmar Bergman, Stockholm, 1964
1964, printed 1992
Gelatin silver print
15 1/16 x 14 15/16 in. (38.3 x 37.9cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Single Oriental Poppy, New York
1968, printed 1989
Dye transfer print
21 7/8 x 17 1/8 in. (55.5 x 43.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Naomi Sims in Scarf, New York, c. 1969
c. 1969, printed 1985
Gelatin silver print
10 1/2 x 10 3/8 in. (26.6 x 26.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Naomi Ruth Sims (March 30, 1948 – August 1, 2009) was an American model, businesswoman and author. She was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal, and is widely credited as being the first African-American supermodel. …

She became one of the first successful black models while still in her teens, and achieved worldwide recognition from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, appearing on the covers of prestigious fashion and popular magazines. The New York Times wrote that (her) “appearance as the first black model on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1968 was a consummate moment of the Black is Beautiful movement”. She also appeared on the cover of the October 17, 1969 issue of Life magazine. This made her the first African-American model on the cover of the magazine. The images from the 1967 New York Times fashion magazine cover and the 1969 Life magazine cover were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition entitled The Model as Muse.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Ungaro Bride Body Sculpture (Marisa Berenson), Paris, 1969
1969, printed 1985
Gelatin silver print
11 15/16 x 9 5/16 in. (30.3 x 23.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Emanuel (Maffeolit) Ungaro (1933-2019) was a French fashion designer, who founded the fashion house called the House of Emanuel Ungaro in 1965. At the age of 22, he moved to Paris. Three years later he began designing for the House of Cristobal Balenciaga for three years before quitting to work for Courrèges. Four years later, in 1965 with the assistance of Swiss artist Sonja Knapp and Elena Bruna Fassio, Emanuel Ungaro opened his own fashion house in Paris.

Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson (born February 15, 1947) is an American actress and model. A fashion model who came to prominence in the 1960s – “I once was one of the highest paid models in the world”, she told The New York Times – Berenson appeared on the cover of the July 1970 issue of Vogue as well as the cover of Time on December 15, 1975. She appeared in numerous fashion layouts in Vogue in the early 1970s and her sister Berry was a photographer for the magazine as well. She was known as “The Queen of the Scene” for her frequent appearances at nightclubs and other social venues in her youth, and Yves Saint Laurent dubbed her “the girl of the Seventies”.

Eventually, she was cast in several prominent film roles, including Gustav von Aschenbach’s wife in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, the Jewish department store heiress Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film Cabaret, for which she received acclaim (including two Golden Globe nominations, a BAFTA nomination and an award from the National Board of Review), and the tragic beauty Lady Lyndon in the Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon (1975).

Texts from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970
1970, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
20 1/8 x 19 1/2 in. (51.1 x 49.6cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Three Dahomey Girls, One Reclining, 1967
1967, printed 1980
Platinum-palladium print
19 11/16 x 19 11/16 in. (50 x 50cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Tribesman with Nose Disc, New Guinea, 1970
1970, printed 2002
Gelatin silver print
Image: 15 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. (39.4 x 39.1 cm.)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cigarette No. 52, New York
1972, printed April 1974
Platinum-palladium print
23 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (59.7 x 47cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cigarette No. 85, New York
1972, printed Fall 1975
Platinum-palladium print
18 1/8 x 23 1/16 in. (46.0 x 58.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cigarette No. 98, New York
1972, printed June 1974
Platinum-palladium print
23 3/16 x 17 1/16 in. (58.9 x 43.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Deli Package, New York
1975, printed March 1976
Platinum-palladium print
15 7/8 x 20 11/16 in. (40.3 x 52.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Two Miyake Warriors, New York, 1998
June 3, 1998, printed January-February, 1999
Platinum-palladium print
21 x 19 5/8 in. (53.4 x 49.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Issey Miyake (born 22 April 1938) is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances…

In the late 1980s, he began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production. In which the garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric’s ‘memory’ holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear. He did the costume for Ballett Frankfurt with pleats in a piece named “the Loss of Small Detail” choreographed by William Forsythe and also work on ballet “Garden in the setting”.

Text from the Wikipedia website

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198
Phone: 212-535-7710

Opening hours:
Thursday – Tuesday 10am – 5pm
Closed Wednesday

The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Nicholas Nixon: Family Album’ at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition dates: 28th July, 2010 – 1st May 2011

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Bebe, Cambridge
1980
Gelatin silver contact print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds donated by the National Endowment for the Arts and Richard L. Menschel, Bela T. Kalman, Judge and Mrs. Matthew Brown, Mildred S. Lee, and Barbara M. Marshall
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In the history of photography Nixon’s ongoing series of family portraits The Brown Sisters (1975- ) is the best in the world. Beautifully structured and composed the photographs are nuanced and sensitive to the people portrayed and the passage of time. The subjects project and recede within the image frame, exposing vulnerability, intimacy and strength. Simply breathtaking!

Marcus

.
Many thankx to Amelia Kantrovitz for her help and to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Clementine and Bebe, Cambridge
1985
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Nicholas Nixon
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Cambridge
1986
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the photographer
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Themes such as the passage of time and the enduring nature of close family relationships are brought into focus in the exhibition Nicholas Nixon: Family Album at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). The show, on view from July 28, 2010, through May 1, 2011, in the MFA’s Herb Ritts Gallery, features more than 70 black and white portrait photographs by Nicholas Nixon, one of the most celebrated American photographers of this generation. Among them are pictures of Nixon’s wife, Beverly (Bebe) Brown Nixon, and their two children, Clementine and Sam. Nicholas Nixon also includes The Brown Sisters, the ongoing annual series of portraits of Bebe and her sisters taken each summer for the past 35 years. Nixon will take another photograph of the sisters this summer, which will be hung in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

The promised gift to the MFA of The Brown Sisters series is the impetus for Nicholas Nixon. The group of photographs has been lent to the Museum for the exhibition from the collection of James Krebs, a Distinguished Benefactor of the MFA, and his late wife, Margie. Also included are works by Nixon purchased by the Museum, and a number that were given and lent to the MFA by the artist. Nicholas Nixon is presented with support from the Shelly and Michael Kassen Fund.

“Nicholas Nixon rose to prominence in the mid 1970s for his large-format black-and-white views of Boston and New York. Since then, he has turned almost exclusively to portraiture, and has produced many celebrated series of pictures – of the elderly, people with AIDS, and couples – but his portrayals of his family are particularly evocative and beloved. Nick has been a friend of the MFA for a long time and has generously given the Museum many of his photographs,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA.

Nicholas Nixon’s photographs of family are both personal in nature and have a universality with which observers can connect. These pictures, a number of which have never been publicly displayed, celebrate the bonds of close family relationships, especially as they grow over time. Included in the exhibition is the luminous image that Nixon took of his wife in the bathtub, Bebe, Cambridge (MFA, Boston, 1980). The beautiful glowing light on her face suggests her interior state, as well as the depth of their long relationship. There are also many photographs in the show that highlight the richness and warmth of daily life with children. In an image from 1985, a cropped view of Bebe pictures her gazing downward, as Clementine’s fist emerges from the bottom of the frame, evoking the power of a new life. A close-up of Clementine’s face made the following year, with her wide eyes gazing upward, captures the toddler’s impression of wonder. The latest photograph of Clementine in the exhibition dates to 2003 and depicts her as a young woman, embracing her mother. Images of Nixon’s son, Sam, are also included, showing him in different stages over the years and in portraits with his sister.

The most recognised images in the exhibition are those that Nixon has taken of the Brown sisters each summer since 1975. The four women – Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie – always appear in the same order in the portraits, from left to right. These compelling photographs reveal the evolving nature of the sisters’ relationship over time. The serial portraits begin with The Brown Sisters, 1975 (James and Margie Krebs Collection, 1975), which captures them as young women, ranging in age from 15 to 25. With each passing year, observers can note changes in appearance, stance, and demeanour. In several of the portraits, the presence of the photographer is suggested through the shadow of himself and his camera projected across the figures, which makes reference to his role in the family dynamic. The series unfolds in a grid display on the central wall of the Ritts Gallery.

“In his serial pictures of family, Nicholas Nixon explores a classic conundrum in photography: how to suggest the passage of time by means of an instrument that records the instantaneous image. His effort is related to that of several predecessors – Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Harry Callahan, to name the most important – who, like him, used their wives as subject matter, photographing them over a period of years. What Nixon has added to the discussion – beyond recording facets of appearance, personality, or emphasising formal concerns – is his emphasis on the meaning of family,” said Anne Havinga, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs, who curated the show with Emily Voelker, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs.

Born in Detroit in 1947, Nixon graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in English, and from the University of New Mexico in 1974 with a Masters of Fine Arts degree. Later that year, he moved to Boston, where he teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Nixon is known for his documentary photography, especially city views and portraits rooted in the snapshot tradition. He works primarily in black and white, creating gelatin silver prints with a 8 x 10-inch view camera as did many of the great photographers who influenced him, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Walker Evans. Working in large format and making contact prints enables him to create images of crisp detail and subtle tone. In recent years, Nixon has also begun to experiment with colour, although the photographs in the exhibition are all black-and-white, for which he is best known. He is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and two Guggenheim Fellowships, and, in addition to the MFA, his work is included in numerous museum collections, among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Press release from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website [Online] Cited 26/04/2011 no longer available online

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1976
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1978
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1980
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1996
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1999
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Avenue of the Arts
Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523
617-267-9300

Opening hours:
Thursday and Friday 10am – 10pm
Saturday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top