Tag: László Moholy-Nagy

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

Exhibition: ‘Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 25th October 2011 – 11th March 2012

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
Untitled [Street Scene, Double Exposure, Halle]
1929-1930
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.8 x 23.7cm (7 x 9 5/16 in)
Gift of T. Lux Feininger, Houghton Library, Harvard University
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Another photographer whose work was largely unknown to me. His work can be seen to reference Pictorialism, Eugene Atget, Constructivism and Modernism, the latter in the last three photographs of the Bauhaus buildings at night which are just beautiful! The capture of form, light (emanating from windows) and atmosphere is very pleasing.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

P.S. Don’t be confused when looking at the photographs in the posting. Note the difference in the work of Lynonel and his two sons Andreas and Theodore (nicknamed Lux).

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

Lucia Moholy (British born Czechoslovakia, 1894-1989)
Untitled [Southern View of Newly Completed Bauhaus, Dessau]
1926
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 5.7 x 8.1cm (2 1/4 x 3 3/16 in)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
Untitled [Train Station, Dessau]
1928-1929
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.7 x 23.7 cm (6 15/16 x 9 5/16 in.)
Gift of T. Lux Feininger, Houghton Library, Harvard University
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Werner Zimmermann (German, 1906-1975)
In Der Werkstatt [In The Workshop]
About 1929
Gelatin silver print
7.9 × 11cm (3 1/8 × 4 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

T. Lux Feininger (American born Germany, 1910-2011)
Metalltanz
1929
Gelatin silver print
Image: 10.8 x 14.4cm (4 1/4 x 5 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of T. Lux Feininger

Widely recognised as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman who taught at the Bauhaus, Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956) turned to photography later in his career as a tool for visual exploration. Drawn mostly from the collections at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, October 25, 2011 – March 11, 2012, presents for the first time Feininger’s unknown body of photographic work. The exhibition is accompanied by a selection of photographs by other Bauhaus masters and students from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection. The Getty is the first U.S. venue to present the exhibition, which will have been on view at the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from February 26 – May 15, 2011 and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich from June 2 – July 17, 2011. Following the Getty installation, the exhibition will be shown at the Harvard Art Museums from March 30 – June 2, 2012. At the Getty, the exhibition will run concurrently with Narrative Interventions in Photography.

“We are delighted to be the first U.S. venue to present this important exhibition organised by the Harvard Art Museums / Busch-Reisinger Museum,” says Virginia Heckert, curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the Getty’s installation. “The presentation at the Getty provides a unique opportunity to consider Lyonel Feininger’s achievement in photography, juxtaposed with experimental works in photography at the Bauhaus from our collection.”

Lyonel Feininger Photographs

When Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) took up the camera in 1928, the American painter was among the most prominent artists in Germany and had been on the faculty of the Bauhaus school of art, architecture, and design since it was established by Walter Gropius in 1919. For the next decade, he used the camera to explore transparency, reflection, night imagery, and the effects of light and shadow. Despite his early skepticism about this “mechanical” medium, Feininger was inspired by the enthusiasm of his sons Andreas and Theodore (nicknamed Lux), who had installed a darkroom in the basement of their house, as well as by the innovative work of fellow Bauhaus master, László Moholy-Nagy.

Although Lyonel Feininger would eventually explore many of the experimental techniques promoted by Moholy-Nagy and practiced by others at the school, he remained isolated and out of step with the rest of the Bauhaus. Working alone and often at night, he created expressive, introspective, otherworldly images that have little in common with the playful student photography more typically associated with the school. Using a Voigtländer Bergheil camera (on display in the exhibition), frequently with a tripod, he photographed the neighbourhood around the Bauhaus campus and masters’ houses, and the Dessau railway station, occasionally reversing the tonalities to create negative images.

Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939 also includes the artist’s photographs from his travels in 1929-1931 to Halle, Paris, and Brittany, where he investigated architectural form and urban decay in photographs and works in other media. In Halle, while working on a painting commission for the city, Feininger recorded architectural sites in works such as Halle Market with the Church of St. Mary and the Red Tower (1929-1930), and experimented with multiple exposures in photographs such as Untitled (Street Scene, Double Exposure, Halle) (1929-1930), a hallucinatory image that merges two views of pedestrians and moving vehicles.

Since 1892 Feininger had spent parts of the summer on the Baltic coast, where the sea and dunes, along with the harbours, rustic farmhouses, and medieval towns, became some of his most powerful sources of inspiration. During the summers Feininger also took time off from painting, focusing instead on producing sketches outdoors or making charcoal drawings and watercolours on the veranda of the house he rented. Included in the exhibition are photographs Feininger created in Deep an der Rega (in present-day Poland) between 1929 and 1935 which record the unique character of the locale, the people, and the artistic and leisure activities he pursued.

In the months after the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, and prior to Feininger’s departure from Dessau in March 1933, he made a series of unsettling photographs featuring mannequins in shop windows such as Drunk with Beauty (1932). Feininger’s images emphasise not only the eerily lifelike and strangely seductive quality of the mannequins, but also the disorienting, dreamlike effect created by reflections on the glass.

In 1937 Feininger permanently settled in New York City after a nearly 50-year absence, and photography served as an important means of reacquainting himself with the city in which he had lived until the age of sixteen. The off-kilter bird’s eye view he made from his eleventh-floor apartment of the Second Avenue elevated train tracks, Untitled (Second Avenue El from Window of 235 East 22nd Street, New York) (1939), is a dizzying photograph of an American subject in the style of European avant-garde photography, and mirrors the artist’s own precarious and disorienting position between two worlds, and between past and present.

The Bauhaus

Walter Gropius, director of the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1928, changed the face of art education with his philosophy of integrating art, craft, and technology with everyday life at the Bauhaus. When Gropius’s newly designed building in Dessau was completed in December 1926, its innovative structure did more than house the various components of the school; it became an integral aspect of life at the Bauhaus and a stage for its myriad activities, from studies and leisurely pursuits to theatrical performances. From the beginning, the camera recorded the architecture as the most convincing statement of Gropius’ philosophy as well as the fervour with which the students embraced it. The photographs in this complementary section of the exhibition also examine the various ways photography played a role at the Bauhaus, even before it became part of the curriculum.

In addition to the collaborative environment encouraged in workshops, students found opportunities to bond during their leisure time, whether in a band that played improvisational music or on excursions to nearby beaches, parks, and country fairs. One of the most active recorders of life at the Bauhaus was Lyonel Feininger’s youngest son, T. Lux, who was also a member of the jazz band.

Masters and students alike at the Bauhaus took up the camera as a tool with which to record not only the architecture and daily life of the Bauhaus, but also one another. Although photography was not part of the original curriculum, it found active advocates in the figures of László Moholy-Nagy and his wife Lucia Moholy. With his innovative approach and her technical expertise, the Moholy-Nagys provided inspiration for others to use the camera as a means of both documentation and creative expression. The resulting photographs, which included techniques such as camera-less photographs (photograms), multiple exposures, photomontage and collages (“photo-plastics”), and the combination of text and image (“typo-photo”), contributed to Neues Sehen, or the “new vision,” that characterised photography in Germany between the two world wars.

It was not until 1929 that photography was added to the Bauhaus curriculum by Hannes Meyer, the new director following Gropius’s departure. A part of the advertising department, the newly established workshop was led by Walter Peterhans, who included technical exercises as well as assignments in the genres of portraiture, still life, advertisement, and photojournalism in the three-year course of study.”

Press release from the J.Paul Getty Museum website

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
Untitled [Night View of Trees and Street Lamp, Burgkühnauer Allee, Dessau]
1928
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.7 x 23.7cm (6 15/16 x 9 5/16 in)
Gift of T. Lux Feininger, Houghton Library, Harvard University
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Andreas Feininger (American, 1906-1999)
Stockholm (Shell sign at night)
1935
Gelatin silver print
17.4 x 24.2cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Estate of Gertrud E. Feininger
© Estate of Gertrud E. Feininger

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
Drunk with Beauty
1932
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.9 x 23.9cm (7 1/16 x 9 7/16 in)
Gift of T. Lux Feininger, Houghton Library, Harvard University
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
Bauhaus
March 22, 1929
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.8 x 23.9cm (7 x 9 7/16 in)
Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lyonel Feininger
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

T. Lux Feininger (American born Germany, 1910-2011)
Untitled (Georg Hartmann and Werner Siedhoff with Other Students)
1929
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of T. Lux Feininger

Lyonel Feininger and Photography

Lyonel Feininger took up the camera at the age of 58 in fall 1928. Despite his early skepticism about this “mechanical” medium, the painter was inspired by the enthusiasm of his sons Andreas and Theodore (nicknamed Lux), as well as by the innovative work of László Moholy-Nagy, a fellow master at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany.

Photography remained a private endeavour for Feininger. He never exhibited his prints, publishing just a handful during his lifetime and sharing them only with family and a few friends.

Bauhaus Experiments in Photography

Although Feininger explored many of the experimental photographic techniques being practiced at the Bauhaus, he remained isolated and out of step with the rest of the school. Working alone and often at night, he created expressive, introspective, otherworldly images that have little in common with the playful student photography more typically associated with the school.

Using a Voigtländer Bergheil camera (on display in the exhibition), frequently with a tripod, he photographed the neighbourhood around the masters’ houses, the Bauhaus campus, and the Dessau railway station, experimenting with night imagery, reversed tonalities, and severe weather conditions.

Halle, 1929-1931

In 1929 Feininger created numerous photographic sketches to prepare for a series of paintings he was commissioned to make of the city of Halle, Germany.

A photograph of Halle included in the exhibition, Untitled (Bölbergasse, Halle), was the basis for one of these paintings, which is now lost. It was perhaps the most inventive and photographic of the Halle series, transforming a view of an unremarkable street into a dramatic, almost abstract composition through tight framing and an unusual perspective. The painting is visible in a 1931 photograph of the artist’s studio also included in the exhibition

Feininger also made many photographs of his Halle studio and the paintings he produced there. While many are purely documentary, others are sophisticated compositions that explore formal relationships between a particular painting and the space in which it was created, such as the one shown at right.

Feininger would never again use photography so extensively in connection with his paintings as he did in conjunction with the Halle series.

France, 1931

After completing his painting commission in Halle, Feininger spent several weeks in June and July of 1931 in France. In Paris and in the village of Bourron, he created images with his Voigtländer Bergheil camera as well as with his newly acquired Leica (also on display in the exhibition), in which he used 35 mm film for the first time. He also sketched and photographed Brittany on a bicycle tour with his son Lux, capturing views of the architecture and seaside.

In Paris, primed by his recent experience of photographing historic buildings in the streets of Halle, Feininger was drawn to architectural views and urban scenes. On returning from a day trip, he wrote to his wife Julia: “I wandered on foot through the city, flâné! Armed with both cameras, I made photographs… From ‘Boul-Miche’ I crisscrossed through the Quartier Mouffetard… through all possible old narrow and fabulous lanes and I hope that I snapped some very, very good things. Luckily the ‘Leica’ functioned flawlessly” (June 16, 1931, Feininger Papers, Houghton Library).

The Baltic Coast, 1929-1935

Beginning in 1892 Lyonel Feininger spent parts of his summers on the Baltic coast, where the sea and dunes, along with the harbours, rustic farmhouses, and medieval towns, became some of his most powerful sources of inspiration.

Every summer between 1929 and 1935, he used the camera to document family trips to Deep an der Rega (in present-day Poland), where the beach became a playground for his three athletic sons, Andreas, Laurence, and Lux. Feininger looked forward to his time in Deep and the restorative, transformative effect it always had on him.

Shop Windows, 1932-1933

From September 1932, when the National Socialist majority of the Dessau city council voted to close the Bauhaus, through March 1933, when he and his family left for Berlin, Feininger made a series of unsettling photographs that feature mannequins in shop windows. Feininger’s images emphasise not only the eerily lifelike and strangely seductive quality of the mannequins but also the disorienting, dreamlike effect created by reflections on the glass.

In the work shown here, the reflection seems to transport the languid central figure – “drunk with beauty” and oblivious to the camera – beyond the confines of the glass.

Germany to America, 1933 to 1939

Feininger came under increasing scrutiny by the National Socialists, who had stepped up their campaign against the avant-garde after rising to power in January 1933. He produced few paintings during this oppressive period, but continued to photograph regularly in spite of having little access to darkroom facilities. In 1937 he and his wife moved to the United States, renting an apartment in Manhattan – marking his permanent return to New York after an absence of nearly 50 years.

In the years that followed, photography remained an important part of Feininger’s life, though few prints exist from his time in America.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

T. Lux Feininger (American born Germany, 1910-2011)
Untitled (Bauhaus Band)
About 1928
Gelatin silver print
3 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
© Estate of T. Lux Feininger

Photography at the Bauhaus

The exhibition Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939 features a complementary selection of over 90 photographs from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection made at the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, by the architect Walter Gropius. Students entered specialised workshops after completing a preliminary course that introduced them to materials, form, space, colour, and composition. Lyonel Feininger was one of the first masters appointed by Gropius.

The school moved to Dessau in 1925 and to Berlin in 1932, closing under pressure from the National Socialists in 1933.

The Bauhaus Building as Stage

Walter Gropius’s building in Dessau became an integral aspect of life at the Bauhaus. The camera recorded the architecture as the most convincing statement of Gropius’s philosophy of uniting art, design, and technology with everyday life, and captured the fervor with which the students embraced this philosophy.

Tight framing, dramatic use of light and shadow, and unusual angles from above and below underscored the dynamism generated by the program. The campus’s architecture was often incorporated into rehearsals and performances by the school’s theater workshop.

Masters and Students

Bauhaus masters and students alike took up the camera as a tool for documentation and creative expression.

Photography served as a medium to record student life at the Bauhaus. In addition to the collaborative environment encouraged in classes and workshops, students found opportunities to bond during their leisure time, whether in a band that played improvisational music, in excursions to nearby beaches, parks, and fairs, or at Saturday-night costume parties.

One of the most active recorders of life at the Bauhaus was Lyonel Feininger’s youngest son Theodore, nicknamed Lux, a student who also became a member of the jazz band.

László Moholy-Nagy

At the Bauhaus, photography found active advocates in the figures of László Moholy-Nagy and his wife Lucia Moholy. Hired in 1923 to head the metal workshop and teach the preliminary course, Moholy-Nagy promoted photography as a form of visual literacy and encouraged experimental techniques of what he called a “new vision,” which included dramatic camera angles, multiple exposures, negative printing, collage and photomontage (fotoplastik), the combination of text and image (typofoto), and cameraless photography (the photogram, made by placing objects on photosensitised paper).

Moholy-Nagy did not differentiate between commercial assignments and personally motivated projects; he used the same strategies in both sectors of his practice.

Walter Peterhans

A photography workshop was established at the Bauhaus in 1929, led by Walter Peterhans, a professional photographer and the son of the director of camera lens manufacturer Zeiss Ikon A.G. The three-year course of study included technical exercises as well as assignments in portraiture, still life, advertisement, and photojournalism.

In his own work, Peterhans created haunting still lifes and portraits that are at once straightforward and evocative. Titles such as Portrait of the Beloved, Good Friday Magic, and Dead Hare lend surrealistic overtones to the meticulous arrangements of richly textured, disparate objects that he photographed from above, resulting in ambiguous spatial relationships.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Walter Peterhans (German, 1897-1960)
Untitled (Composition with Nine Glasses and a Decanter)
1929-1933
Gelatin silver print
© Estate Walter Peterhans, Museum Folkwang, Essen

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
Bauhaus
March 26, 1929
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.9 x 14.3cm (7 1/16 x 5 5/8 in)
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
“Moholy’s Studio Window” around 10 p.m.
1928
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.8 x 12.8 cm (7 x 5 1/16 in.)
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)
On the Lookout, Deep an der Rega
1932
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.7 x 12.7cm (6 15/16 x 5 in)
Gift of T. Lux Feininger, Houghton Library, Harvard University
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Irene Bayer-Hecht (American, 1898-1991)
Untitled [Students on the Shore of the Elbe River, near Dessau (Georg Muche, Hinnerk Scheper, Herbert Bayer, Unknown, Unknown, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy Nagy, Unknown, Xanti Schawinsky)]
1925
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7.5 x 5.4cm (2 15/16 x 2 1/8 in)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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

Opening hours:
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Jewish Historical Museum website

Exhibition: ‘Saul Leiter: New York Reflections’ at the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam

Exhibition dates: 24th October 2011 – 4th March 2012

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Taxi
1957
© Saul Leiter, Collection Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

“I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.”

“Seeing is a neglected enterprise.”

Saul Leiter

“Leiter’s sensibility… placed him outside the visceral confrontations with urban anxiety associated with photographers such as Robert Frank or William Klein. Instead, for him the camera provided an alternate way of seeing, of framing events and interpreting reality. He sought out moments of quiet humanity in the Manhattan maelstrom, forging a unique urban pastoral from the most unlikely of circumstances.”

Martin Harrison. ‘Saul Leiter Early Color’

The first of two postings on the underrated, underexposed American photographer Saul Leiter. These photographs are a delightful surprise! Some, like Through Boards (1957, below) are as illuminating as any Rothko going around. His art is not of the documentary gaze but of a brief glimpse, glanz, refulgence of desire ∞ snatched from the nonlinearity of time ∞ cleft in(to) its fabric. What wonderfully composed reflections they are. I absolutely adore them.

The media release states, “… but where his color photography is concerned, he cannot be compared with any other photographer. In the 1940s and 1950s, Leiter was virtually the only non-commercial photographer working in color.” Galleries must beware such bombastic claims: other photographers working in colour in the 1940s-50s include Paul Outerbridge, László Moholy-Nagy, Nickolas Muray, Jack Smith, Eliot Porter and William Eggleston to name but a few (also see the posting on the exhibition Beyond COLOR: Color in American Photography, 1950-1970).

The second posting will be from a major retrospective of his work at The House of Photography at Deichtorhallen.

Perhaps this photographer is finally getting the accolades he so rightly deserves.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Haircut
1956
© Saul Leiter, Collection Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Through Boards
1957
© Saul Leiter, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Harlem
1960
© Saul Leiter, Collection Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Snow
1960
© Saul Leiter, Collection Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

From 24 October 2011 to 4 March 2012 the JHM is presenting a retrospective exhibition of the work of the American photographer and painter Saul Leiter (1923-2013). Following a long period of obscurity, Leiter’s work has recently been rediscovered in the United States and Europe. This is the first exhibition of his work in the Netherlands.

Saul Leiter is celebrated particularly for his painterly colour photographs of the street life in New York, which he produced between 1948 and 1960. Amid the hectic life of the city he captured tranquil moments of everyday beauty. He was able to transform mundane objects – a red umbrella in a snowstorm, a foot resting on a bench in the metro, or a human figure seen through the condensation on a pane of glass – into what has been described as ‘urban visual poetry’. His photographs are frequently layered, near-abstract compositions of reflections and shadows, which recall paintings by abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, with whom Leiter felt a strong affinity.

Saul Leiter is seen as belonging to the New York School of Photographers, a group of innovative artists, most of them Jewish, who achieved fame in New York in the period 1936-1963, primarily with their images of the street and their documentary photography. His black-and-white work displays a lyricism, dreaminess and surrealism that might prompt comparison with photographers such as Ted Croner, Leon Levinstein and Louis Faurer, but where his colour photography is concerned, he cannot be compared with any other photographer. In the 1940s and 1950s, Leiter was virtually the only non-commercial photographer working in colour.

Born in Pittsburgh, Leiter was destined to become a rabbi like his father. But his growing interest in art led him to abandon his religious studies. Instead, he went to New York and dedicated himself to painting. His friendship there with the abstract expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart, who was experimenting with photography, and the work of the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, inspired Leiter to take up photography. His friendship with the photographer W. Eugene Smith was another inspiring influence.

The exhibition Saul Leiter: New York Reflections was prepared by the JHM in collaboration with the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. Besides over 60 colour and 40 black-and-white examples of his street photography, a small selection of fashion photographs, paintings, and painted photographs will be shown. Visitors will also be able to watch a recent documentary about Leiter by the British film maker Tomas Leach. This autumn, the publisher Steidl will be publishing the third edition of Early Color, the first book of Leiter’s photographs, compiled in 2006 by Martin Harrison of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Press release from the Jewish Historical Museum website

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Foot on El
1954
© Saul Leiter, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Taxi
1956
© Saul Leiter, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Reflection
1958
© Saul Leiter, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Paris
1959
© Saul Leiter, Collection Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Walk with Soames
Nd
© Saul Leiter, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Jewish Historical Museum
Nieuwe Amstelstraat
1 1011 PL Amsterdam
Phone: +31 (0)20 5 310 310

Opening hours:
Daily from 10.00 – 17.00

National Gallery of Victoria website

Review: ‘The mad square: Modernity in German Art 1910-37’ at The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 25th November 2011 – 4th March 2012

Irene Bayer (American, 1898-1991)
No title (Man on stage)
c. 1927
Gelatin silver photograph
Printed image 10.6 h x 7.6 w cm
Purchased 1983
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

This is one of the best exhibitions this year in Melbourne bar none. Edgy and eclectic the work resonates with the viewer in these days of uncertainty: THIS should have been the Winter Masterpieces exhibition!

The title of the exhibition, The mad square (Der tolle Platz) is taken from Felix Nussbaum’s 1931 painting of the same name where “the ‘mad square’ is both a physical place – the city, represented in so many works in the exhibition, and a reference to the state of turbulence and tension that characterises the period.” The exhibition showcases how artists responded to modern life in Germany in the interwar years, years that were full of murder and mayhem, putsch, revolution, rampant inflation, starvation, the Great Depression and the rise of National Socialism. Portrayed is the dystopian, dark side of modernity (where people are the victims of a morally bankrupt society) as opposed to the utopian avant-garde (the prosperous, the wealthy), where new alliances emerge between art and politics, technology and the mass media. Featuring furniture, decorative arts, painting, sculpture, collage and photography in the sections World War 1 and the Revolution, Dada, Bauhaus, Constructivism and the Machine Aesthetic, Metropolis, New Objectivity and Power and Degenerate Art, it is the collages and photographs that are the strongest elements of the exhibition, particularly the photographs. What a joy they are to see.

There is a small 2″ x 3″ contact print portrait of Hanna Höch by Richard Kauffmann, Penetrate yourself or: I embrace myself (1922) that is an absolute knockout. Höch is portrayed as the ‘new women’ with short bobbed hair and loose modern dress, her self-image emphasised through a double exposure that fragments her face and multiplies her hands, set against a contextless background. The ‘new women’ fragmented and broken apart (still unsure of herself?). The photograph is so small and intense it takes your breath away. Similarly, there is the small, intimate photograph No title (Man on Stage) (c. 1927) by Irene Bayer (see above) that captures performance as ‘total art’, a combination of visual arts, dance, music, architecture and costume design. In contrast is a large 16 x 20″ photograph of the Bauhaus balconies (1926) by László Moholy-Nagy (see below) where the whites are so creamy, the perspective so magnificent.

No title (Metalltanz) (c. 1928-1929) by T. Lux Feinenger, a photographer that I do not know well, is an exceptional photograph and print. Again small, this time dark and intense, the image features man as dancer performing gymnastics in front of reflective, metal sculptures. The metal becomes an active participant in the Metalltanz or ‘Dance in metal’ because of its reflective qualities. The print, from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is luminous. In fact all the prints from the Getty in this exhibition are of the most outstanding quality, a highlight of the exhibition for me. Another print from the Getty that features metal and performance is Untitled (Spiral Costume, from the Triadic Ballet) by T Grill c. 1926-1927 (see below) where the spiral costume becomes an extension of the body, highlighting its form. Also highlighting form, objectivity and detachment is a wonderful 3 x 5″ photograph of the New Bauhaus Building, Dessau (1926) by Lucia Moholy from the Getty collection, the first I have ever seen in the flesh by this artist. Outstanding.

Following, we have 4 photograms by Lucia’s husband, László Moholy-Nagy which display formalist experimentation “inspired by machine aesthetic, exploring a utopian belief that Constructivism and abstract art could play a role in the process of social reform.” Complimenting these photograms is a row of six, yes six! Moholy-Nagy including Dolls (Puppen) 1926-1927 (Getty), The law of the series 1925 (Getty), Lucia at the breakfast table 1926 (Getty), Spring, Berlin 1928 (George Eastman House), Berlin Radio Tower 1928 (Art Institute of Chicago) and Light space modulator 1930 (Getty). All six photographs explore the fascinating relationship between avant-garde art and photography, between they eye and perspective, all the while declaiming what Moholy-Nagy called the “new vision”; angles, shadows and geometric patterns that defy traditional perspective “removing the space from associations with the real world creating a surreal, disjointed image.” This topographic mapping flattens perspective in the case of the Berlin radio tower allowing the viewer to see the world in a new way.

Finally two groups of photographs that are simply magnificent.

First 8 photographs in a row that focus on the order and progressive nature of the modern world, the inherent beauty of technology captured in formalist studies of geometric forms. The prints range from soft pictorialist renditions to sharp clarity. The quality of the prints is amazing. Artists include the wonderful E. O. Hoppé, Albert Renger-Patzsch (an outstandingly beautiful photograph, Harbour with cranes 1927 that is my favourite photograph in the exhibition, see below), Two Towers 1937-1938 by Werner Mantz and some early Wolfgang Sievers before he left Germany for Australia in 1938 (Blast furnace in the Ruhr, Germany 1933, see below). These early Sievers are particularly interesting, especially when we think of his later works produced in Australia. Lucky were many artists who survived in Germany or fled from Nazi persecution at the last moment, including John Heartfield who relocated to Czechoslovakia in 1933 and then fled to London in 1938 and August Sander whose life and work were severely curtailed under the Nazi regime and whose son died in prison in 1944 near the end of his ten year sentence (Wikipedia).

August Sander. Now there is a name to conjure with. The second magnificent group are 7 photographs that are taken from Sander’s seminal work People of the 20th Century. All the photographs have soft, muted tones of greys with no strong highlights and, usually, contextless backgrounds. The emphasis is on archetypes, views of people who exist on the margins of society – circus performers, bohemians, artists, the unemployed and blind people. In all the photographs there is a certain frontality (not necessarily physical) to the portraits, a self consciousness in the sitter, a wariness of the camera and of life. This self consciousness can be seen in the two photographs that are the strongest in the group – Secretary at West German radio in Cologne, 1931 and Match seller 1927 (see below).

There is magic here. Her face wears a somewhat quizzical air – questioning, unsure, vulnerable – despite the trappings of affluence and fashionability (the smoking of the cigarette, the bobbed hair). He is wary of the camera, his face and hands isolated by Sander while the rest of his body falls into shadow. His right hand is curled under, almost deformed, his shadow falling on the stone at right, the only true brightness in this beautiful image the four boxes of matches he clutches in his left hand: as Sander titles him ironically, The Businessman.

Working as I do these days with lots of found images from the 1940s-1960s that I digitally restore to life, I wonder what happened to these people during the dark days of World War 2. Did they survive the cataclysm, the drop into the abyss? I want to know, I want to reach out to these people to send them good energy. I hope that they did but their wariness in front of the camera, so intimately ‘taken’ by Sander, makes me feel the portent of things to come. How differently we see images armed with the hindsight of history!

In conclusion, this is a fantastic exhibition that will undoubtedly be in my top ten of the year for Melbourne in 2011.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Michael Thorneycroft for his help and The National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the accredited photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Felix Nussbaum (German, 1904 – after September 1944)
The mad square (Der tolle Platz)
1931
Oil on canvas
97 x 195.5cm
Berlinische Galerie
Public domain

László Moholy-Nagy (American born Hungary, 1895-1946)
Berlin Radio Tower
1928
Gelatin silver print
36 × 25.5cm
Julien Levy Collection, Special Photography Acquisition Fund
© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Over the winter and spring of 1927-1928, Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy took a series of perhaps nine views looking down from the Berlin Radio Tower, one of the most exciting new constructions in the German capital. Moholy had already photographed the Eiffel Tower in Paris from below, looking up through the tower’s soaring girders. In Berlin, however, Moholy turned his camera around and pointed it straight down at the ground. This plunging perspective showed off the spectacular narrowness of the Radio Tower, finished in 1926, which rose vertiginously to a height of 450 feet from a base seven times smaller than that of its Parisian predecessor (which opened in 1889). Moholy attached exceptional importance to this, his boldest image: he hung it just above his name in a room devoted to his work at the Berlin showing of Film und Foto, a mammoth traveling exhibition that he had helped to prepare. Moholy also chose this view and one other to offer Julien Levy, the pioneering art dealer, when Levy visited him in Berlin in 1930. The following year the pictures went on view at the Levy Gallery in New York, in Moholy’s first solo exhibition of photographs.

Text from the Art Institute of Chicago website

László Moholy-Nagy (American born Hungary, 1895-1946)
Das Lichtrequisit (The light prop)
1930
Gelatin silver print
24 × 18.1cm (9 7/16 × 7 1/8 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© 2014 Estate of László Moholy-Nagy / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Light-Space Modulator is the most spectacular and complete realisation of László Moholy-Nagy’s artistic philosophy. Machine parts and mechanical structures began to appear in his paintings after his emigration from Hungary, and they are also seen in the illustrations he selected for the 1922 Buch neuer Künstler (Book of new artists), which includes pictures of motorcars and bridges as well as painting and sculpture. Many contemporary artists incorporated references to machines and technology in their work, and some, like the Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin, even designed plans for fantastic structures, such as the ambitious Monument to the Third International, a proposed architectural spiral of glass and steel with moving tiers and audiovisual broadcasts. (See Tatlin’s Tower.)

In the Light-Space Modulator, Moholy-Nagy was able to create an actual working mechanism. Although he censured capitalism’s inhumane use of technology, he believed it could be harnessed to benefit mankind and that the artist had an important role in accomplishing this. Moholy had made preliminary sketches for kinetic sculptures as early as 1922 and referred to the idea for a light machine in his writings, but it was not until production was financed by an electric company in Berlin in 1930 that this device was built, with the assistance of an engineer and a metalsmith. It was featured at the Werkbund exhibition in Paris the same year, along with the short film Light Display Black-White-Gray, made by Moholy-Nagy to demonstrate and celebrate his new machine.

The Light-Space Modulator is a Moholy-Nagy painting come to life: mobile perforated disks, a rotating glass spiral, and a sliding ball create the effect of photograms in motion. With its gleaming glass and metal surfaces, this piece (now in the collection of the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University) is not only a machine for creating light displays but also a sculptural object of beauty, photographed admiringly by its creator.

Albert Renger-Patzsch (American born Hungary, 1895-1946)
Harbour with crane
c. 1927
Gelatin silver photograph
Printed image 22.7 h x 16.8 w cm
Purchased 1983
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Wolfgang Sievers (Germany 1913 – Australia 2007)
Blast furnace in the Ruhr, Germany
1933
Gelatin silver photograph
27.5 h x 23 w cm
Purchased 1988
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Ruhr region was at the centre of the German acceleration of industry in pre-war Germany, with rapid economic growth creating a heavy demand for coal and steel. In keeping with Modernist trends in photography, Sievers shot this blast furnace – the mechanism that transforms ore into metal – from an unusual, dynamic angle. It dominates the frame, appearing menacing and strange. Despite being imprisoned and beaten by the Gestapo, Sievers studied and taught at a progressive private art school until graduation in 1938. In that year he escaped Germany after being called up for military service, ending up in Australia.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Match seller
1927
From the portfolio People of the 20th century, IV Classes and Professions, 17 The Businessman

Robert Wiene, Director (German 1873-1938)
Still from from the Cabinet of Dr Caligari
1919
5 min excerpt, 35mm transferred to DVD, Black and White, silent, German subtitles
Courtesy Transit Film GmbH
Production still courtesy of the British Film Institute and Transit Film GmbH

Felix H Man (German, 1893-1985)
Luna Park
1929
Gelatin silver photograph
18.1 x 24cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1987
© Felix H Man Estate

Hannah Höch (German, 1889-1978)
Love
1931
From the series Love
Photomontage
21.8 x 21cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1983

Hannah Höch made some of the most interesting Dada collages and photomontages, including Love, an image of two strange composite female. Höch’s technique of pasting images together from magazine clippings and advertisements was a response to the modern era of mass media, and a way of criticising the bourgeois taste for ‘high art’. In many of her works, Höch explores the identity and changing roles of women in modern society.

The Mad Square takes its name from Felix Nussbaum’s 1931 painting which depicts Berlin’s famous Pariser Platz as a mad and fantastic place. The ‘mad square’ is both a physical place – the city, represented in so many works in the exhibition, and a reference to the state of turbulence and tension that characterises the period. The ‘square’ can also be a modernist construct that saw artists moving away from figurative representations towards increasingly abstract forms.

The exhibition features works by Max Beckman, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Kurt Schwitters and August Sander. This group represents Germany’s leading generation of interwar artists. Major works by lesser known artists including Karl Hubbuch, Rudolf Schlichter and Hannah Höch are also presented in the exhibition in addition to works by international artists who contributed to German modernism.

The Mad Square brings together a diverse and extensive range of art, created during one of the most important and turbulent periods in European history, offering new insights into the understanding of key German avant‐garde movements including – Expressionism, Dada, Bauhaus, Constructivism, and New Objectivity were linked by radical experimentation and innovation, made possible by an unprecedented freedom of expression.

World War 1 and the Revolution

The outbreak of war in 1914 was met with enthusiasm by many German artists and intellectuals who volunteered for service optimistically hoping that it would bring cultural renewal and rapid victory for Germany. The works in this section are by the generation of artists who experienced war first hand. Depictions of fear, anxiety and violence show the devastating effects of war – the disturbing subjects provide insight into tough economic conditions and social dysfunction experienced by many during the tumultuous early years of the Weimar Republic following the abdication of the Kaiser

Dada

The philosophical and political despair experienced by poets and artists during World War 1 fuelled the Dada movement, a protest against the bourgeois conception of art. Violent, infantile and chaotic, Dada took its name from the French word for a child’s hobbyhorse or possibly from the sound of a baby’s babble. Its activities included poetry readings and avant‐garde performances, as well as creating new forms of abstract art that subverted all existing conditions in western art. Though short‐lived, in Germany the Dada movement has profoundly influenced subsequent developments in avant-garde art and culture. The impact of the Dada movement was felt throughout Europe – and most powerfully in Germany from 1917-21.

Bauhaus

The Bauhaus (1919‐1933) is widely considered as the most important school of art and design of the 20th century, very quickly establishing a reputation as the leading and most progressive centre of the international avant‐garde. German architect Walter Gropius founded the school to do away with traditional distinctions between the fine arts and craft, and to forge an entirely new kind of creative designer skilled in both the conceptual aesthetics of art and the technical skills of handicrafts. The Bauhaus was considered to be both politically and artistically radical from its inception and was closed down by the National Socialists in 1933

Constructivism and the Machine Aesthetic

Having emerged in Russia after World War I, Constructivism developed in Germany as a set of ideas and practices that experimented with abstract or non-representational forms and in opposition to Expressionism and Dada. Constructivists developed works and theories that fused art and with technology. They shared a utopian belief in social reform, and saw abstract art as playing a central role in this process.

Metropolis

By the 1920s Berlin has become the cultural and entertainment capital of the world and mass culture played an important role in distracting a society traumatised by World War 1, the sophisticated metropolis provided a rich source of imagery for artists, it also come to represent unprecedented sexual and personal freedom. In photography modernity was emphasised by unusual views of the metropolis or through the representation of city types. The diverse group of works in this section portray the uninhibited sense of freedom and innovation experienced by artists throughout Germany during the 1920s

New Objectivity

By the mid 1920s, a new style emerged that came to be known as Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity. After experiencing the atrocities of World War 1 and the harsh conditions of life in postwar Germany, many artists felt the need to return to the traditional modes of representation with portraiture becoming a major vehicle of this expression, with its emphasis on the realistic representation of the human figure

Power and Degenerate Art

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 modern artists were forbidden from working and exhibiting in Germany, with their works confiscated from leading museums and then destroyed or sold on the international art market. Many avant‐garde artists were either forced to leave Germany or retreat into a state of ‘inner immigration’.

The Degenerate art exhibition, held in Munich in 1937, represented the culmination of the National Socialists’ assault on modernism. Hundreds of works were selected for the show which aimed to illustrate the mental deficiency and moral decay that had supposedly infiltrated modern German art. The haphazard and derogatory design of the exhibition sought to ridicule and further discredit modern art. Over two million people visited the exhibition while in contrast far fewer attended the Great German art exhibition which sought to promote what the Nazis considered as ‘healthy’ art.

Karl Grill (German active Donaueschingen, Germany 1920s)
Untitled (Spiral Costume, from the Triadic Ballet)
c. 1926-1927
Gelatin silver print
22.5 x 16.2cm
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

In 1922, Oskar Schlemmer premiered his “Triadic Ballet” in Germany. He named the piece “Triadic” because it was literally composed of multiples of three: three acts, colours, dancers, and shapes. Concentrating on its form and movement, Schlemmer explored the body’s spatial relationship to its architectural surroundings. Although an abstract design, the spiral costume derived from the tutus of classical ballet.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Secretary at West German radio in Cologne
1931, printed by August Sander in the 1950s
From the portfolio People of the 20th century, III The woman, 17 The woman in intellectual and practical occupation
Gelatin silver photograph
29 x 22cm
Die Photographische Sammlung /SK Stiftung Kultur, August Sander Archiv, Cologne (DGPH1016)
© Die Photographische Sammlung /SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

Timeline

1910

~ Berlin’s population doubles to two million people

1911

~ Expressionists move from Dresden to Berlin

1912

~ Social Democratic Party (SPD) the largest party in the Reichstag

1913

~ Expressionists attain great success with their city scenes

1914

~ World War I begins
~ George Grosz, Oskar Schlemmer, Otto Dix, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Franz Marc enlist in the army

1915

~ Grosz declared unfit for service, Beckmann suffers a breakdown and Schlemmer wounded

1916

~ Marc dies in combat
~ Dada begins at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich

1917

~ Lenin and Trotsky form the Soviet Republic after the Tzar is overthrown

1918

~ Richard Huelsenbeck writes a Dada manifesto in Berlin
~ Kurt Schwitters creates Merz assemblages in Hanover
~ Revolutionary uprisings in Berlin and Munich
~ Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and flees to Holland
~ Social Democratic Party proclaims the Weimar Republic
~ World War I ends

1919

~ Freikorps assassinates the Spartacist leaders, Karl Leibknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
~ Bauhaus established in Weimer by Walter Gropius
~ Cologne Dada group formed
~ Treaty of Versailles signed

1920

~ Berlin is the world’s third largest city after New York and London
~ Inflation begins in Germany
~ National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) founded
~ Kapp Putsch fails after right‐wing forces try to gain control over government
~ First International Dada fair opens in Berlin

1921

~ Hitler made chairman of the NSDAP

1922

~ Schlemmer’s Triadic ballet premiers in Stuttgart
~ Hyperinflation continues

1923

~ Hitler sentenced to five years imprisonment for leading the Beer Hall Putsch
~ Inflation decreases and a period of financial stability begins

1924

~ Hitler writes Mein Kampf while in prison
~ Reduction of reparations under the Dawes Plan

1925

~ New Objectivity exhibition opens at the Mannheim Kunsthalle
~ The Bauhaus relocates to Dessau

1926

~ Germany joins the League of Nations

1927

~ Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis released
~ Unemployment crisis worsens
~ Nazis hold their first Nuremburg party rally

1928

~ Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The threepenny opera premieres in Berlin
~ Hannes Meyer becomes the second director of the Bauhaus

1929

~ Street confrontations between the Nazis and communists in Berlin
~ Young Plan accepted, drastically reducing reparations
~ Stock market crashes on Wall Street, New York
~ Thomas Mann awarded the Nobel Prize for literature

1930

~ Resignation of Chancellor Hermann Müller’s cabinet ending parliamentary rule
~ Minority government formed by Heinrich Brüning, leader of the Centre Party
~ Nazis win 18% of the vote and gain 95 seats in the National elections
~ Ludwig Miles van der Rohe becomes the third director of the Bauhaus
~ John Heartfield creates photomontages for the Arbeiter‐Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ)

1931

~ Unemployment reaches five million and a state of emergency is declared in Germany

1932

~ Nazis increase their representation in the Reichstag to 230 seats but are unable to form a majority coalition
~ Miles van der Rohe moves the Bauhaus to Berlin
~ Grosz relocates to New York as an exile

1933

~ Hindenberg names Hitler as Chancellor
~ Hitler creates a dictatorship under the Nazi regime
~ The first Degenerate art exhibition denouncing modern art is held in Dresden
~ Miles van der Rohe announces the closure of the Bauhaus
~ Nazis organise book burnings in Berlin
~ Many artists including Gropius, Kandinski and Klee flee Germany
~ Beckmann, Dix and Schlemmer lose their teaching positions

1934

~ Fifteen concentration camps exist in Germany

1935

~ The swastika becomes the flag of the Reich

1936

~ Spanish civil war begins
~ Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles
~ Olympic Games held in Garmisch‐Partenkirchen and Berlin
~ Thomas Mann deprived of his citizenship and emigrates to the United States

1937

~ German bombing raids over Guernica in Spain in support of Franco
~ The Nazi’s Degenerate art exhibition opens in Munich and attracts two million visitors
~ Beckmann, Kirchner and Schwitters leave Germany
~ Purging of ‘degenerate art’ from German museums continues 1

1/ Timeline credit: Chronology compiled by Jacqueline Strecker and Victoria Tokarowski from the following sources:

~ Catherine Heroy ‘Chronology’ in Sabine Rewald, Glitter and Doom: German portraits from the 1920s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, exh cat, 2006, pp. 39‐46
~ Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg, eds, ‘Political chronology’, The Weimar Republic sourcebook, Berkely 1994, pp. 765‐71
~ Jonathan Petropoulos and Dagmar Lott‐Reschke ‘Chronology’ in Stephanie Barron, ‘Degenerate Art’: the fate of the avant‐garde in Nazi Germany, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, exh cat, 1991, pp. 391‐401

László Moholy-Nagy (American born Hungary, 1895-1946)
Bauhaus Balconies
1926
Silver gelatin photograph

John Heartfield (German, 1891-1968)
Adolf, the superman: swallows gold and spouts rubbish
1932
From the Workers Illustrated Paper, vol 11, no 29, 17 July 1932, p. 675
Photolithograph
38 x 27cm
John Heartfield Archiv, Akademie der Künste zu Berlin
Photo: Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kunstsammlung, Heartfield 2261/ Roman März
© The Heartfield Community of Heirs /VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

John Heartfield’s photomontages expose hidden agendas in German politics and economics of the 1920s and 30s. This image was published six months before the National Socialist Party came to power, and shows Hitler with a spine made of coins and his stomach filled with gold. The caption says that he ‘swallows gold’, alluding to generous funding by right-wing industrialists, and ‘spouts rubbish’.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880-1938)
Woman in hat
1911
Oil on canvas
Art gallery of Western Australia, Perth

George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)
Suicide (Selbstmörder)
1916
Oil on canvas
100 × 77.5cm
Tate Modern
Public domain

Rudolf Schlichter (German, 1890-1955)
Tingle tangel
1919-1920
Oil on canvas

George Grosz (German, 1890-1945)
Tatlinesque Diagram
1920
Watercolour, collage and ink on paper
41 x 29.2cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Otto Dix (German, 1891-1969)
Dr Paul Ferdinand Schmidt
1921
Oil on canvas
63 x 82cm
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany

El Lissitzky (Russian, 1890-1941)
New Man (Neuer)
1923
Color lithograph on wove paper
12 × 12 1/2 in. (30.5 × 31.8cm)

Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950)
The trapeze
1923
Oil on canvas
196.5 x 84cm
Toledo Museum of Art
Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Photo: Photography Incorporated, Toledo

Werner Graul (German, 1905-1984)
UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft) (publisher)
Metropolis
1926
Lithographic poster

Christian Schad (German, 1894-1982)
Self-Portrait with Model (Selbstbildnis mit Modell)
1927
Oil on wood
29 15/16 x 24 3/16 in. (76 x 61.5cm)
Private collection, courtesy of Tate
© 2015 Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Heinrich Hoerle (German, 1895-1936)
Three invalids
c. 1930
Oil on canvas

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

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Exhibition: ‘László Moholy-Nagy. The Art of Light’ at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest

Exhibition dates: 9th June – 25th September 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Chairs at Margate
1935
Gelatin silver print diptych
36.9 x 29.5cm (each)
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

Different press photographs from this exhibition, one that I last posted when it was at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin.

Marcus

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

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
K VII
1922
Oil on canvas
115.3 x 135.9cm
Tate, London
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Composition A XI
1923
Oil on canvas
Image: 115.6 x 131.1cm
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Eton. Eleves watching cricket from the pavilion on Agar’s Plough
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1939
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
Image: 22.8 x 34.2cm
Courtesy of László Moholy-Nagy Estate and Andrea Rosen Gallery Inc., New York
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1940-1944
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
Image: 22.8 x 34.2cm
Courtesy of László Moholy-Nagy Estate and Andrea Rosen Gallery Inc., New York
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy is a world-famous figure of twentieth-century avant-garde art. His visual art and theoretical works, photographs, films, educational activities and photograms – taken without a camera and now synonymous with his name – were of such significance that it is no exaggeration to say that since Moholy-Nagy, we see things differently; since Moholy-Nagy, our thinking about art has been transformed. His innovations over the decades have become so natural, his influence so pervasive, that we now almost have to rediscover him once again. In the series of Hungarian photographers who accomplished world fame – Robert Capa, Martin Munkácsi, György Kepes – the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art now presents the work of László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), focussing primarily his photography. This is a long-overdue show: Hungary has not held such an exhibition of Moholy-Nagy’s work since 1975, not even on the centenary of his birth in 1995.

Moholy-Nagy began his creative career in the first half of the twentieth century in Lajos Kassák’s activist circle where, at twenty years old, he was one of Hungary’s youngest avant-garde artists. In 1919 he left for Vienna then Berlin, where he came under the influence of Dadaism and Constructivism, which he later developed further independently. On the invitation of director Walter Gropius in 1923, he became a teacher at the Weimar Bauhaus, then the most progressive art school. There, alongside the Metal Workshop, he also led the definitive course in new arts education, the Foundation. The Bauhaus was more than a school: it was a way of life that unified life, art and science. As well as exploring painting, leading the Metal Workshop, writing and editing books and applying new typographies at the experimental, innovative Bauhaus school, Moholy-Nagy also turned towards photography and film as forms offering new possibilities in art. Photography, and in particular film represented new technologies that questioned the traditional principles of art, among them the uniqueness of the artefacts and the personal signature of the artist.

The central organising principle in Moholy-Nagy’s diverse activities was light: light defined his paintings, sculptures, photoplastics, photograms, photographs, typography and theatre sets. He did not regard photography as a tool for the perfect imaging of reality, rather, it was his conviction that the camera offered new discoveries and possibilities for modern people to finally liberate themselves from the obligation to depict, to copy reality. The years at the Bauhaus proved to be an experience that defined his entire life. After Berlin, Weimar and Dessau, he settled in Chicago in 1937, where he founded the ‘New Bauhaus’ and remained until the end of his life, working as an experimental, innovative artist and theorist. He regarded art as an activity that embraced the whole of life which was non-hierarchical, accessible and cultivatable by everyone, and he was a firm believer in the educational role of art.

The Ludwig Museum’s exhibition presents his diverse life achievement from 1922, with Moholy-Nagy’s photography, films, and works ‘made with light’ in central focus. His first writings on light as a medium were published in 1923, in the Broom magazine, New York. One of the most exciting parts of the exhibition is the compilation of all Moholy-Nagy’s films, shown together here for the first time and according to the artist’s original conception. Such an ambitious and large-scale exhibition of Moholy-Nagy’s oeuvre could only have been realised with international collaboration. This exhibition brings together over 200 pieces and documents from over twenty museums around the world (Tate, Whitney, Tokyo Metropolitan, etc.) as well as private collections. It is based on the curatorial concept of the director of Madrid’s la Fábrica, Oliva Maria Rubio, and is the result of joint work between the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. The exhibition has previously shown in Madrid, Berlin and The Hague, and will open to audiences in Budapest until the end of September.

Moholy-Nagy’s rich oeuvre also allows us to make slightly different emphases according to location. In Berlin, the legendary 1929 Film und Foto (FiFo) exhibition and his pedagogical works were emphasised, while in The Hague, the focus was on the time he spent in the Netherlands between 1933 and 1935. With the participation of two internationally-renowned Hungarian art historians, experts of Moholy-Nagy, Krisztina Passuth and Éva Bajkay, the Budapest exhibition is complemented by photographs and publications from Hungarian collections. Thanks to László Moholy-Nagy’s family, valuable documents that have not been seen in any of the earlier locations have been added to the exhibition.

Press release from the Ludwig Museum

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
The Benevolent Gentleman
1924
Photoplastic, gelatin silver print

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Jealousy
1924-1927
Photoplastic, gelatin silver print
30 x 24.6cm
Victoria & Albert Museum Collection, London
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
La Canebière Street, Marseilles – View Through the Balcony Grille
1928
Gelatin silver print
24.4 x 17.5cm
George Eastman House Collection. Donated by Katharine Kuh
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Costume Design for Tales of Hoffmann
1929
Watercolour on paper
34.3 x 27cm
Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Ann Arbor, Michigan
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VEGAP 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Portrait of Ellen Frank
c. 1929
Gelatin silver print

Interior view of the exhibition László Moholy-Nagy. The Art of Light at Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art
© BUJNOVSZKY Tamás / Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Archives

Interior views of the exhibition László Moholy-Nagy. The Art of Light at Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art showing at left in the bottom image, Composition – Assemblage – Photogram (1926, below); and at right, Photogramm No. II (1929, below)
© BUJNOVSZKY Tamás / Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Archives

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Composition – Assemblage – Photogram
1926
Photogram and mixed media

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Photogramm No. II
1929
Silver gelatin photograph
95.5 x 68.5cm

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Lago Maggiore, Ascona, Switzerland
c. 1930
Silver gelatin photograph

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) and Paul Hartland
Carnival: Composition with two masks
c. 1934
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art
Palace of Arts
Komor Marcell u. 1, Budapest, H-1095
Phone: +36 1 555 3444

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday: 10am – 6pm
Closed on Mondays

Ludwig Museum website

Exhibition: ‘Acquisitions of Twentieth-Century Photography’ at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Exhibition dates: 7th December 2010 – 14th February 2011

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

Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Don’t Smoke, Visits Saloons
1910

Lewis Hine. May 1910. Wilmington, Delaware. “James Lequlla, newsboy, age 12. Selling newspapers 3 years. Average earnings 50 cents per week. Selling newspapers own choice. Earnings not needed at home. Don’t smoke. Visits saloons. Works 7 hours per day.”

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Bessie Fontenelle and Little Richard in bed, Harlem New York
1968
Gelatin silver print

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Squatting girl/spider girl, New York City
1980

From 7 December, the Rijksmuseum will display a selection of 20th-century photographic works acquired in recent years with the support of Baker & McKenzie. The sponsorship from the renowned law firm has already allowed the museum to purchase more than thirty photographs, including works by László Moholy-Nagy, Bill Brandt, Robert Capa and Helen Levitt, as well as photography books by Man Ray and others. When it reopens in 2013, the Rijksmuseum will be the only museum in the Netherlands able to provide an overview of the history of photography in the Netherlands and abroad.

The most recent acquisition sponsored by Baker & McKenzie and the independent art fund Vereniging Rembrandt is a monumental photograph by Bauhaus photographer László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). The photograph from 1929 is a key work that marks the transition into modernity. From atop a high bridge, the Pont Transbordeur in Marseille, Moholy-Nagy pointed his camera straight down, where an almost abstract pattern of metal beams contrasted with the sailing boat passing under the bridge. Metal, bridges, machines, aeroplanes and cars formed the icons of a new era for Moholy-Nagy’s generation of artists. They were faced with advancing technology, an enormous increase in scale and mechanisation, and a faster pace of life.

The other photographs to be displayed represent a range of movements in the history of photography. Two photographs by Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972) will be displayed. They are both studies of form focusing first and foremost on composition, just as in the Moholy-Nagy work. It was in around 1920 that Hoppé photographed the play of light on cobblestones in New York, and the building of a metal construction in Philadelphia.

The documentary aspects of photography will also be highlighted, with magnificent portraits of a black mother and her child in a report about Harlem in the late 1960s (by Gordon Parks), and a portrait of two men in the southern ‘Cotton States’ of America during the Great Depression of the 1930s (by Peter Sekaer). As early as 1909, Lewis Hine used photography as a weapon in the struggle against injustice. Commissioned by the National Child Labour Committee he documented the child labour industry, in this case a small boy standing on the street selling newspapers.

During the 1930s, Bill Brandt published a (now famous) book on life in London at the time, from which came the photograph Sky lightens over the suburbs, which is both a study of form and documentary in nature. It shows a forest of glistening roofs, depicted in a melancholy yet realistic manner.

In 1942, Piet Mondrian was photographed in his studio by Arnold Newman, a session from which the Rijksmuseum has acquired a range of photographs. There are few portraits of Mondrian in Dutch collections, making this series particularly special.

A work by Helen Levitt is one of the few colour photographs included in the exhibition. Until the 1980s, colour photography was simply ‘not done’ and Levitt was one of the first to experiment with the method. The photograph of a girl searching for something underneath a green car is a marvellous example of composition in colour.

Press release from the Rijksmuseum website

Arnold Newman (American, 1918-2006)
Piet Mondrian, New York
1942
Gelatin silver print

Emil Otto Hoppé (British born Germany, 1979-1942)
Steel construction, Philadelphia
1926
Gelatin silver print

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungary, 1895-1946)
View from Pont Transbordeur, Marseille
1929
Gelatin silver print

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Jan Luijkenstraat 1, Amsterdam

Opening hours:
Every day from 9.00 to 17.00

Rijksmuseum website

Martin-Gropius-Bau website

Exhibition: ‘László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light’ at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 4th November 2010 – 16th January 2011

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Am 7 (26)
1926
Oil on canvas
75.8 x 96cm
Ernst und Kurt Schwitters Stiftung/ Sprengel Museum, Hannover
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

My apologies for the paucity of reviews of local exhibitions on the archive recently. It’s not that I haven’t been going to exhibitions far from it, just that nothing has really struck me as worthy of an in depth review!

Recently I went to the new Monash University Gallery of Art (MUMA) and the opening exhibition of the gallery, CHANGE (until 18th December). This is a hotchpotch of an exhibition that showcases the “breadth and depth of the Monash University Collection, reflecting on the changing forms, circumstances and developments in contemporary art practice from the 1960s to the present day – from late modernism to our contemporary situation … the exhibition signals the potential for institutional change that MUMA’s new situation represents.” Avowing an appeal to the senses the exhibition has some interesting works, notably a large canvas by Howard Arkley, Family home – suburban exterior 1993, Daniel von Sturmer’s installation The Field Equation (2006), Mike Parr’s bloody, mesmeric performance Close the Concentration Camps (2002) that you just can’t take your eyes off and part of Tracey Moffatt’s haunting series Up In The Sky (1998), the “part” declamation leaving one unable to decipher the narrative of the work without seeing the whole series on the Roslyn Oxley9 website. This is symptomatic of the whole exhibition – somehow it doesn’t come together, one of the problems of large, non-thematically organised group exhibitions.

The spaces of the new gallery are interesting to wander through but seem a little pokey and confined. A series of smallish intersecting rooms to the left hand side of the gallery leads one around to a big gallery to the right hand side (the best space), before another small front room. Down the spine runs a narrow enclosed area with exposed trusses and ducts that is unimaginative in design and redundant as an exhibiting space. Overall the gallery feels claustrophobic being an almost hermetically sealed environment enclosed by several sliding glass doors at entry points (and yes, I do know that a gallery has to have regulated temperature, light and humidity). This is at odds with the idea of exhibiting fresh, exciting art that breathes life.

I also ventured to Anna Pappas Gallery to see the exhibition of photographic work Endless Days by Vin Ryan (until 23rd December). Nice idea but a disappointment. Featuring grided, colour-coded photographs of the physical artefacts used to plate 20 meals eaten by the Ryan family the information within the prints is almost indecipherable, the selection of plates, cups and objects so small as to become mere colour decoration. I struggled to see what the objects actually were; even in the 5 individual prints of a meal the definition of the objects was weak, the printing not up to standard. The moral of the story is this: if you are going to use the photographic medium for artwork make sure that a/ you know how to construct an image visually using the medium and b/ that you get someone who knows what they are doing to print the photographs for you if you can’t print them well yourself.

On to better things. In this posting there are some outstanding photographs: the imaginative camera angles of Moholy-Nagy (heavily influenced by Constructivism and Suprematism) where truly ground-breaking at the time. The iconic From the radio tower, Berlin (1928) is simply breathtaking in the photographs ability to flatten the pictorial landscape into abstract shape and form.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Eton. Eleves watching cricket from the pavilion on Agar’s Plough' c. 1930 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Eton. Eleves watching cricket from the pavilion on Agar’s Plough
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
15.7 x 20.7cm / 16.3 x 21.3cm
Achat 1994. Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Photogram' c. 1938 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Photogram
c. 1938
Original photogram from Chicago
204 x 252cm
Swiss Foundation of Photography, Winterthur
Donation in memoriam S. and Giedion Welcker
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Untitled' 1940’s from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1940’s
Fujicolor crystal archive print
27.9 x 35.6cm / 52.1 x 63.5cm
Courtesy László Moholy-Nagy Estate and Andrea Rosen Gallery Inc., New York
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

For Moholy-Nagy was always a theoretician and practitioner in equal measure, always wanting to be a holistic artist. He approached his work – painting, photography, commercial and industrial design, film, sculpture, scenography – from a wide variety of aspects and practised it as a radical, extreme experiment, by refusing to place his hugely differing works in any sort of aesthetic hierarchy. He also attached enormous importance to education, which is why, at the request of Walter Gropius, he worked in this field for the Bauhaus in Weimar (1923-1925) and Dessau (1925-1928). In Chicago, where he settled in 1937, he again assumed teaching duties and founded the “New Bauhaus”, which sought to realise the programmes of the German Bauhaus in the United States. Shortly afterwards he founded the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he was to remain active until his death in 1946. The institute was later incorporated in the Illinois Institute of Technology, which offers study courses to this day.

From Weimar to Chicago Moholy-Nagy retained his faith in his pedagogical ideal, which for him meant not only teaching, but the moral education of human beings. He believed in education as a means of developing all the abilities lying dormant in the students and as a means of paving the way to a “new, total human being.”

All of Moholy-Nagy’s theoretical contributions arose out of his artistic and pedagogical work. In his numerous writings he gradually presented his ideas, thus developing a complete artistic and pedagogical aesthetic. In his 1925 landmark essay “Painting, Photography, Film” he developed an aesthetic theory of light – light as a matrix of art and art as light. He applied his aesthetic theory of light not only to painting, photography and film, but also to theatrical and commercial design.

From that point on light became the foundation of Moholy-Nagy’s practical and theoretical work. For him art of whatever kind only acquired meaning when it reflected light. Painting was also reinterpreted on the basis of this criterion. Moholy-Nagy described his development as a painter as a shift away from “painting from transparency” to a painting that was free of any representational constraints and created the possibility of painting “not with colours, but with light.” This theory reached its full potential in photography and film. Etymologically, the word “photography” means “writing with light.” The artistic essence of film consists in the portrayal of “inter-related movements as revealed by light projections.” Although he was not in charge of the photography classes in the Bauhaus, it was there that he wrote Painting, Photography, Film, drawing upon his photographic experience. He invented the “photogram,” a purely light-based form of graphic representation, thus demonstrating an ability to create photographic images without a camera at the same time as the “Rayogram” was invented by Man Ray in Paris. He saw photography as a completely autonomous medium whose potential was still to be discovered. He criticised “pictoriality,” propagating an innovative, creative and productive photography. He regarded seriality as one of the main features of the practice of photography and opposed the “aura” of the one-off work in contrast to the infinite multifariousness of the photographic cliché, thus anticipating one of Walter Benjamin’s theses.

The distinction between production and reproduction is a basic theme of his art. A prominent aspect of every work is its ability to integrate the unknown. Works that only repeat or reproduce familiar relationships, are described as “reproductive,” while those that create or produce new relationships are “productive.” For Moholy-Nagy the ability of a work of art to create something new (a basic feature of Modernism) is a key criterion. He postulated for painting, photography and film a moral and aesthetic imperative – the New. Art had to confront new times and an industrial civilisation. In the systematic implementation of this thesis 1926 turned out to be the year in which his pictorial output was greater than his works in other fields, but 1927 witnessed a positive flood of photographic, scenographic, kinetic and film productions. Painting was something he never abandoned. He decided to drop the representational painting inherited from the past and to devote himself to non-representational or “pure” painting instead. The emergence of photography gave painting the perfect opportunity to free itself from all figurative or representative imperatives. Artists did not have to decide in favour of one medium or another, but should use all media to capture and master an optical creation.

Text from the Martin Gropius-Bau website [Online] Cited 26/11/2010 no longer available online

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Oscar Schlemmer in Ascona' 1926 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Oskar Schlemmer in Ascona
1926
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokio
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Pneumatik' 1924 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Pneumatik
1924
Collection E. Zyablov, Moskau
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Flower' c. 1925-1927 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Flower
c. 1925-1927
Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'From the radio tower, Berlin' 1928 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
From the radio tower, Berlin
1928
Gelatin silver print
28 x 21.3cm
Private collection
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Lago Maggiore, Ascona, Switzerland' c. 1930 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Lago Maggiore, Ascona, Switzerland
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
20.8 x 28.4cm
Collection Spaarnestad Photo/Nationaal Archief
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) / Paul Hartland. 'Carnival: Composition with two masks'  c. 1934  from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy – Art of Light' at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) / Paul Hartland
Carnival: Composition with two masks
c. 1934
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010

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

Opening hours:
Wednesday to Monday 10.00am – 19.00pm
Tuesday closed

Exhibition: ‘In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Exhibition dates: 25th October, 2009 – 14th March, 2010

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877) 'Lace' 1839-1844 from the exhibition 'In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 2009 - March, 2010

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877)
Lace
1839-1844
Photogenic drawing (salted paper print)
Sheet (trimmed to image): 17.1 x 22cm (6 3/4 x 8 11/16 in.)
Support: 24.8 x 31.1cm (9 3/4 x 12 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund
Public domain

Many thankx to Kate Afanasyeva and the National Gallery of Art for allowing me to reproduce the photographs from the exhibition below. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Anna Atkins (British, 1799-1871) 'Ferns, Specimen of Cyanotype' 1840s from the exhibition 'In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 2009 - March, 2010

Anna Atkins (British, 1799-1871)
Ferns, Specimen of Cyanotype
1840s
cyanotype
National Gallery of Art, Washington
R.K. Mellon Family Foundation Fund

Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. 'The Letter' c. 1850 from the exhibition 'In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 2009 - March, 2010

Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes
The Letter
c. 1850
daguerreotype
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund

Southworth and Hawes’ aspirations for their portraits went far beyond those of the average photographer of their day. Whereas most daguerreotypists, simply concerned with rendering a likeness, used stock poses, painted backdrops, and even head restraints to firmly fix their subjects, Southworth and Hawes were celebrated not just for their technical expertise, but also for their penetrating studies, innovative style, and creative use of natural light. They sought to elevate their subjects “far beyond common nature” and embody their “genius and spirit of poetry,” as Southworth wrote in 1871. “What is to be done is obliged to be done quickly. The whole character of the sitter is to be read at first sight; the whole likeness, as it shall appear when finished, is to be seen at first, in each and all its details, and in their unity and combination.”2

Among Southworth and Hawes’ most accomplished studies, The Letter is exceptional in its composition and mood. Most American daguerreotype portraits made in the 1840s and 1850s were frontal, bust-length studies of single figures who rarely show any kind of facial expression because of the often long exposure times. The Letter, however, is a highly evocative study. With its carefully constructed composition and tight pyramidal structure, it presents two thoughtful young women contemplating a letter. Through their posture and expression, these women seem to gain not only physical support from each other, but also emotional strength. Although the identity of the women is unknown, as is the content of the letter, this large and distinguished daguerreotype reflects Southworth and Hawes’ aspiration to capture “the life, the feeling, the mind, and the soul” of their subjects.3

(Text by Sarah Greenough, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Saint John the Evangelist, Chartres Cathedral
c. 1854
Salted paper print from a paper negative
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Eugene L. and Marie-Louise Garbaty Fund, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund and New Century Fund
Public domain

In 1851 the French government’s Commission des Monuments Historiques selected five photographers to document architectural treasures throughout the country. Nègre was not included, perhaps because he was a member of the opposition party, but he took it upon himself to photograph extensively in Marseilles, Arles, Avignon, and Aix-en-Provence in the early 1850s, and in 1854 he made many photographs of Chartres Cathedral.

Nègre applied his growing understanding of light, shadow, line, and form in Saint John the Evangelist, Chartres Cathedral, and the photograph beautifully illustrates his willingness to sacrifice “a few details,” as he wrote, to capture “an imposing effect.” In addition, unlike photographers associated with the Commission des Monuments Historiques, who were asked to provide general studies of a building’s façade, Nègre was free to explore more unusual views. The statue of Saint John the Evangelist is situated high in the north spire of Chartres, several feet above a nearby balcony. Although difficult to see and even harder for Nègre to record (he most likely perched his camera on a platform), the view in his photograph succinctly captured what he called the cathedral’s “real character” and “preserved the poetic charm that surrounded it.”

Unknown photographer (American 19th Century)
George E. Lane, Jr.
c. 1855
Ambrotype
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Kathleen, Melissa, and Pamela Stegeman
Public domain

Étienne Carjat (French, 1828-1906)
Charles Baudelaire
1861, printed 1877
Woodburytype
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Jacob Kainen
Public domain

William James Stillman (American, 1828-1901)
The Acropolis of Athens
1869/1870
Carbon print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel

J.G. Ellinwood (American, 1844-1924)
Portrait of a Woman
c. 1870
Tintype, hand-coloured
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Mary and Dan Solomon Fund

Clarence White (American, 1871-1925)
Mrs. White – In the Studio
1907
platinum print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel and R.K. Mellon Family Foundation Fund

Karl Struss (American, 1886-1981)
Columbia University, Night
1910
Gum dichromate over platinum print
Image: 24.1 × 19.9cm (9 1/2 × 7 13/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel

Laura Gilpin (American, 1891-1979)
Ghost Rock, Colorado Springs
1919
Platinum print
24.2 x 19.1cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Marvin Breckinridge Patterson Fund
© 1979 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled (Positive)
c. 1922-1924
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
c. 1922-1924
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
New Century Fund

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Magasin, Avenue des Gobelins
1925
gelatin silver print, printed-out
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund
Public domain

Aleksandr Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Pioneer with a Bugle
1930
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund

Sid Grossman (American, 1913-1955)
San Gennaro Festival, New York City
1948
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Anonymous Gift

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Snow
1960, printed 2005
Chromogenic colour print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Saul Leiter

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A Young Man in Curlers at Home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C., 1966
1966
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Collectors Committee

The extraordinary range and complexity of the photographic process is explored, from the origins of the medium in the 1840s up to the advent of digital photography at the end of the 20th century, in a comprehensive exhibition and its accompanying guidebook at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. On view in the West Building, from October 25, 2009 through March 14, 2010, In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes Before the Digital Age chronicles the major technological developments in the 170-year history of photography and presents the virtuosity of the medium’s practitioners. Drawn from the Gallery’s permanent collection are some 90 photographs – ranging from William Henry Fox Talbot’s images of the 1840s to Andy Warhol’s Polaroid prints of the 1980s.

“In the Darkroom and the accompanying guidebook provide a valuable overview of the medium as well as an introduction to the most commonly used photographic processes from its earliest days,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art.

In the Darkroom

Organised chronologically, the exhibition opens with Lace (1839-1844), a photogenic drawing by William Henry Fox Talbot. Made without the aid of a camera, the image was produced by placing a swath of lace onto a sheet of sensitised paper and then exposing it to light to yield a tonally reversed image.

Talbot’s greatest achievement – the invention of the first negative-positive photographic process – is also celebrated in this section with paper negatives by Charles Nègre and Baron Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard as well as salted paper prints made from paper negatives by Nègre, partners David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, and others.

The daguerreotype, the first publicly introduced photographic process and the most popular form of photography during the medium’s first decade, is represented by a selection of British and American works, including an exquisite large-plate work by the American photographers Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes (see photograph above). By the mid-1850s, the daguerreotype’s popularity was eclipsed by two new processes, the ambrotype and the tintype. These portable photographs on glass or metal were relatively inexpensive to produce and were especially popular for portraiture.

The year 1851 marked a turning point in photographic history with the introduction of the collodion negative on glass and the albumen print process. Most often paired together, this negative-print combination yielded lustrous prints with a subtle gradation of tones from dark to light and became the most common form of photography in the 19th century, seen here in works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, and Gustave Le Gray.

Near the turn of the 20th century, a number of new, complex print processes emerged, such as platinum and palladium, gum dichromate, and bromoil. Often requiring significant manipulation by the hand of the artist, these processes were favoured by photographers such as Gertrude Käsebier, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston.

One of the most significant developments of the late 19th century was the introduction of gelatin into photographic processes, which led to the invention of the film negative and the gelatin silver print. These became the standard for 20th-century black-and-white photography. A chronological selection of gelatin silver prints, including a contact print made by André Kertész in 1912; a grainy, blurred image of Little Italy’s San Gennaro festival at night by Sid Grossman from 1948 (see photograph above); and a coolly precise industrial landscape by Frank Gohlke from 1975, reveals how the introduction of the film negative and changes in the gelatin silver print process profoundly shaped the direction of modern photography. This section also explores the development of ink-based, photomechanical processes such as photogravure, Woodburytype, and halftone that enabled the large-scale, high-quality reproduction of photographs in books and magazines.

The final section of the exhibition explores the rise of colour photography in the 20th century. Although the introduction of chromogenic colour processes made colour photography commercially viable by the 1930s, it was not widely employed by artists until the 1970s. The exhibition celebrates the pioneers of colour photography, including Harry Callahan and William Eggleston, who made exceptional work using the complicated dye transfer process. The exhibition also explores the range of processes developed by the Polaroid Corporation that provided instant gratification to the user, from Andy Warhol’s small SX-70 prints to the large-scale Polaroid prints represented by the work of contemporary photographer David Levinthal.

Press release from the National Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 15/02/2010 no longer available online

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'The Cloisters, Tintern Abbey' 1854 from the exhibition 'In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 2009 - March, 2010

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The Cloisters, Tintern Abbey
1854
Salted paper print from a collodion negative
18.3 x 22.1cm (7 3/16 x 8 11/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel
Public domain

Although Roger Fenton’s photographic career lasted for only 11 years, he exerted a profound influence on the medium. Trained as a lawyer, he began to paint in the early 1840s, studying in Paris with Michel-Martin Drölling and later in London with Charles Lucy. But in 1851 he took up photography and produced a distinguished and varied body of work. He was a pivotal figure in the formation of the Photographic Society (later known as the Royal Photographic Society), garnering support from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He is best known for his 1855 photographs made during the Crimean War, among the first to document war. But he also made ambitious studies of English cathedrals, country houses, and landscapes as well as portraits of the royal family, a series of still lifes, and studies of figures in Asian costume.

When Fenton first began to make photographs, he generally posed figures in a fairly stiff, even anecdotal manner. But in 1854 he began to use figures to create a sense of tension at once intriguing and compelling. The Cloisters, Tintern Abbey shows this more dynamic approach. Fenton placed people in three groups, not interacting with one another but engaging in silent and solitary dialogue with their decaying surroundings. Tintern Abbey had, of course, inspired many artists and poets to reflect on both “the life of things” – as William Wordsworth wrote in his 1798 poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” – and on the transitory nature of life itself.

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Cathédrale de Chartres – Portique du Midi XIIe Siècle (Chartres Cathedral, South Portal, 12th Century)
c. 1854, printed c. 1857
photogravure
National Gallery of Art, Washington
William and Sarah Walton Fund

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Fruit and Flowers
1860
Albumen print from a collodion negative
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Paul Mellon Fund
public domain

In the summer of 1860 Fenton made his most deliberate and exacting photographs to date: a series of still lifes. Although the subject obviously had its roots in painting, his densely packed compositions are far removed from the renditions of everyday life by the Dutch masters. Instead, Fenton extravagantly piled luscious fruits and intricately patterned flowers on top of one another and pushed them to the front of his composition so that they seem almost ready to tumble out of the photograph into the viewer’s space. It is that very immediacy – the precarious composition, the lush sensuousness of the objects, and our knowledge of their imminent decay – that makes these photographs so striking.

National Gallery of Art website

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Cavalry Maneuvers behind barrier, Camp de Châlons
1857
Albumen silver print from glass negative
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Platt D. Babbitt (American, 1822-1879)
Niagara Falls
c. 1860
Ambrotype
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Vital Projects Fund

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
The Terminal
1893, printed 1920s/1930s
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Martha’s Vineyard 108
1954
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Diana and Mallory Walker Fund

Dave Heath (Canadian, born United States, 1931-2016)
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
1963
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Howard Greenberg

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Untitled (Car in Parking Lot)
1973
Dye imbibition print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Anonymous Gift

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Providence
1977
Dye transfer print

Robert Adams (American, b. 1937)
Summer Nights #2 (Longmont, Colorado)
1979
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Mary and David Robinson

Richard Misrach (American, b. 1949)
Dead Fish, Salton Sea, California
1983, printed 1997
Chromogenic colour print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Anonymous Gift

Mark Klett (American, b. 1952)
Under the Dark Cloth, Monument Valley, May 27
1989
Gelatin silver print from Polaroid instant film negative
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Collectors Committee

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Shipbreaking #10, Chittagong, Bangladesh
2000, printed 2001
Chromogenic colour print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Fund for Living Photographers

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The National Gallery of Art, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW.

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

Schirn Kunsthalle website

Exhibition: ‘László Moholy-Nagy  Retrospective’ at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Exhibition dates: 8th October, 2009 – 7th February, 2010

All images are featured in the exhibition. Many thankx to the Schirn Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'LIS' 1922 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy  Retrospective' at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, October 2009 - February 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
LIS
1922
Oil on canvas
131 x 100cm
Courtesy Kunsthaus Zürich
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'K XVII' 1923 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy  Retrospective' at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, October 2009 - February 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
K XVII
1923
Oil on canvas
95 x 75cm
Courtesy Kunsthalle Bielefeld
Photo: Axel Struwe, Fotodesign BFF, Bielefeld
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
COMPOSITION A XXI
1925
Oil on canvas
96 x 77cm
Courtesy LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster
Photo: LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster/Rudolf Wakonigg
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Bauhaus Balconies' 1926 from the exhibition 'László Moholy-Nagy  Retrospective' at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, October 2009 - February 2010

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Bauhaus Balconies
1926
Silver gelatin photograph
49.5 x 39.3cm
Courtesy Collection of George Eastman House

László Moholy-Nagy Retrospective exhibition view, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2009 showing at right Bauhaus Balconies (1926) and second right K XVII (1923)
© Photograph: Norbert Miguletz
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
A 19
1927
Oil on canvas
80 x 96cm
Courtesy Hattula Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy Retrospective exhibition view, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2009 showing at centre, A 19 (1927)
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
© Photograph: Norbert Miguletz
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) became known in Germany through his seminal work as a teacher at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau (1923-1928). His pioneering theories on art as a testing ground for new forms of expression and their application to all spheres of modern life are still of influence today. Presenting about 170 works – paintings, photographs and photograms, sculptures and films, as well as stage set designs and typographical projects – the retrospective encompasses all phases of his oeuvre. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, it offers a survey of the enormous range of Moholy-Nagy’s creative output to the public for the first time since the last major exhibition of his work in Kassel in 1991. Never having been built before 2009, the artist’s spatial design Raum der Gegenwart (Room of Today), which brings together many of his theories, will be realised in the context of the exhibition.

No other teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, nor nearly any other artist of the 1920s in Germany, an epoch rich in utopian designs, developed such a wide range of ideas and activities as László Moholy-Nagy, who was born in Bácsborsód in Southern Hungary in 1895. His oeuvre bears evidence to the fact that he considered painting and film, photography and sculpture, stage set design, drawing, and the photogram to be of equal importance. He continually fell back upon these means of expression, using them alternately, varying them, and taking them up again as parts of a universal concept whose pivot was the alert, curious, and unrestrained experimental mind of the “multimedia” artist himself. Long before people began to talk about “media design” and professional “marketing,” Moholy-Nagy worked in these fields, too – as a guiding intellectual force in terms of new technical, design and educational instruments. “All design areas of life are closely interlinked,” he wrote about 1925 and was, despite his motto insisting on “the unity of art and technology,” no uncritical admirer of the machine age, but rather a humanist who was open-minded about technology. His basic attitude as an artist, which exemplifies the idealistic and utopian thinking of an entire era, may be summed up as aimed at improving the quality of life, avoiding specialisation, and employing science and technology for the enrichment and heightening of human experience.

After having graduated from high school, Moholy-Nagy began to study law in Budapest in 1913, but was drafted in 1915. During the war, he made his first drawings on forces mail cards and began dedicating himself exclusively to art after having been discharged from the army in 1918. Moholy-Nagy moved to Vienna in 1919 and to Berlin the following year, kept in close contact with Kurt Schwitters, Raul Hausmann, Theo van Doesburg, and El Lissitzky, and immersed himself in Merzkunst, De Stijl, and Constructivism. He achieved successes as an artist with his solo presentation in the Berlin gallery “Der Sturm” (1922), for example. In spring 1923, he was offered the post of a Bauhaus master in Weimar by Walter Gropius. Taking responsibility for the preliminary course and the metal workshop, he decisively informed the Constructivist and social reorientation of the Bauhaus. Interlinking art, life, and technology and underscoring the visual and the material aspects in design were key issues of his work and resulted in a modern, technology-oriented language of forms. His didactic approaches as a Bauhaus teacher still present themselves as up-to-date as his work as an artist. For him, education had to be primarily aimed at bringing up people to become artistically political and creative beings: “Every healthy person has a deep capacity for bringing to development the creative energies found in his/her nature … and can give form to his/her emotions in any material (which is not synonymous with ‘art’),” he wrote in 1929.

In spite of his manifold activities and inventions in the sphere of so-called applied art, Moholy-Nagy by no means advocated abolishing free art. Before, during, and long after his years at the Bauhaus, he produced numerous paintings, drawings, collages, woodcuts, and linocuts, as well as photographs and films as autonomous works of art. Like his design solutions, his works in the classical arts, in painting and sculpture, also reveal his aesthetically and conceptually radical approach. His Telephone Pictures, whose execution he controlled by telephone, exemplify this dimension: using a special graph paper and a colour chart, he worked out the composition and colours of the pictures and had them realised according to his telephonic instructions by technical assistants. He also pursued new paths with his famous Light-Space Modulator of 1930, conceiving his gesamtkunstwerk [“total work of art”] composed of colour, light, and movement as an “apparatus for the demonstration of the effects of light and movement.” It was equally new territory he conquered in the fields of photography and film: considering his cameraless photography, his photograms, and his abstract films such as Light Play Black, White, Gray (1930), Moholy-Nagy must still be regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century photographers and key figures for today’s media theories.

Thanks to his experiments with photography and the photogram, László Moholy Nagy was one of the first typographers of the 1920s to recognise the new possibilities offered by the combination of typeface, surface design, and pictorial signs with recent photographic techniques. As a Bauhaus teacher for typography, he designed almost all of the 14 Bauhaus books published between 1925 and 1929 and – besides co-editing them with Walter Gropius – took care of the entire presentation of the books’ contents and the organisation of their production. With its dynamic cycles and bars and concentration on a few, clear colours, their design resembled the Constructivist artists’ paintings and drawings. While Moholy-Nagy’s early typographic works are frequently still characterised by hand-drawn typefaces, he later strove for a “mechanized graphic design” also suited for commercial advertising through their systematisation and standardisation. After he had left the Bauhaus in 1928, he founded his own office in Berlin, where he, among other things, developed advertising solutions for Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s designs for the Jena Glassworks. Faced with the Nazis’ seizure of power, Moholy-Nagy emigrated to the United States via Amsterdam and Great Britain and founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937 and, after it had been closed, the Chicago School (and later Institute) of Design in 1939, where he continued to champion an integration of art, science, and technology. László Moholy-Nagy died of leukaemia in Chicago on 24 November 1946.

The exhibition at the Schirn also presents the Raum der Gegenwart (Room of Today), which offers a concise summary of Moholy-Nagy’s work. The sketches for this environment, which assembles many of his theories, date back as far as 1930. Not having been built before 2009, the Raum der Gegenwart (Room of Today) is now realised in the Schirn on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary 2009.

Press release from the Schirn Kunsthalle website [Online] Cited 20/01/2010. No longer available online

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Light Play Black, White, Gray
1930

The sculpture Light-Space Modulator is a key work in the history of kinetic art and even the art of new media and, therefore, one of the most important works of art of its time. Conceived initially by Moholy-Nagy at the beginning of the twenties of the last century and built between 1928 and 1930…

Light-Space Modulator was exhibited in 1930 in a show organised in Paris on the work of the German Werkbund. From the point of view of the object, it forms a complex as well as beautiful set of elements of metal, plastic and glass, many of them mobile by the action of an electric motor, surrounded by a series of coloured lights.

Moholy-Nagy used it to produce light shows that he photographed or filmed, as in the case of the film shown here. Although in black and white, the film manages to capture the kinetic brightness of the sculpture.

László Moholy-Nagy Retrospective exhibition view, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt showing Room of Today (reconstruction 2009) with at centre, Light-Space Modulator 1930 (replica)
© Photograph: Norbert Miguletz
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Fotogram with Eiffel Tower and Peg Top
c. 1928
Silver gelatin photograph
38.7 x 29.9cm
Courtesy Galerie Berinson, Berlin
Photo: Friedhelm Hoffmann, Berlin
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy Retrospective exhibition view, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt showing at left, Photogramm No.II (1929)
© Photograph: Norbert Miguletz
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Photogramm No.11' Enlargement before 1929

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Photogramm No.II
1929
Silver gelatin photograph
95.5 x 68.5cm
Courtesy Galerie Berinson, Berlin
Photo: Friedhelm Hoffmann, Berlin

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Marseille, Port View
1929
Silver gelatin photograph
48.7 x 37.9cm
Courtesy Collection of George Eastman House

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
SPACE CH 4
1938
Oil on canvas
68.5 x 89 cm
Courtesy Hattula Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
CH BEATA I
1939
Oil on canvas
119 x 120cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
Photograph by David Heald
© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
CH XIV
1939
Oil on canvas
118 x 119.5cm
Courtesy of Museu Colecção Berardo
Photo: Museu Colecção Berardo/Paulo Raimundo
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
CH SPACE 6
1941
Oil on canvas
119 x 119cm
Courtesy Hattula Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Dual forms with Chromium Rods
1946
Plexiglas and chrome-plated brass rods
93 x 121 x 56cm
Exhibition View, Schirn Kunsthalle 2009
© Photograph: Norbert Miguletz
Courtesy The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Untitled' 1936-1946

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1936-46
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
27.9 x 35.6 cm
Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy for the Estate of László Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1937-1946
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
27.9 x 35.6cm
Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy for the Estate of László Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1939
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
27.9 x 35.6cm
Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy for the Estate of László Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled/Night-Time Traffic (Pink and Red Traffic Stream with White Sparks)
1937-1946
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
27.9 x 35.6cm
Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy for the Estate of László Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) 'Photograph (Self-Portrait with Hand)' 1925/29, printed 1940/49

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Self-portrait
c. 1926
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Hattula Moholy-Nagy
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Römerberg
D-60311 Frankfurt
Phone: +49.69.29 98 82-0

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Friday – Sunday 10am – 7pm
Wednesday – Thursday 10am – 10pm

The Frick Art and Historical Center website

Exhibition: ‘Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art’ at the Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh

Exhibition dates: 3rd October, 2009 – 3rd January, 2010

Curator: Tom Hinson, Curator of Photography

Many thankx to the Frick Art and Historical Center for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Matthew Brady (American 1823-1896) 'Prosper Whetmore' 1857

Matthew Brady (American, 1823-1896)
Prosper M. Wetmore
1857
Salted paper print from wet collodion negative
47 x 39.4cm (18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.)
CC0 1.0 Universal

A popular author, legislator, and general in the New York State militia, Wetmore, here at age 59, still resembles Edgar Allen Poe’s description of him from a decade earlier: “about five feet eight in height, slender, neat; with an air of military compactness.” Brady’s portrait studio, with branches in New York and Washington, DC, was the most important of its era in America, thanks in part to its success in photographing political, social, and cultural figures. These early celebrity portraits, such as those of the wedding of performer Tom Thumb (seen in the centre of the gallery), could sell thousands of copies. Brady is now best known for images of the Civil War, most taken by photographers he hired.

Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website

Anne W. Brigman (American, 1869-1950) 'The Hamadryads' c. 1910 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art' at the Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Oct 2009 - Jan 2010

Anne W. Brigman (American, 1869-1950)
The Hamadryads
c. 1910
Platinum print

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965) 'Bucks County Barn' 1915 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art' at the Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Oct 2009 - Jan 2010

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)
Bucks County Barn
1915
Gelatin silver print
9 1/4 x 7 5/16″ (23.5 x 18.6cm)

Margaret Bourke-White (American 1904-1971)
Terminal Tower
1928
13 1/4 x 10″ (33.7 x 25.4cm)
Gelatin silver print

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Black and White Lilies III
1928
Gelatin silver print

Alfred Steiglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keefe
1933
Gelatin silver photograph

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Resident, Conway, Arkansas
1938
Gelatin silver print
11 15/16 x 9 1/2 in. (30.32 x 24.13cm)

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled
1939
Photogram
Gelatin silver print

On October 3, 2009, Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art opens at The Frick Art Museum. This exhibition is composed of fifty-nine photographs from Cleveland’s extraordinary collection that chronicle the evolution of photography in America from a scientific curiosity in the 1850s to one of the most potent forms of artistic expression of the twentieth century.

Icons of American Photography presents some of the best work by masters of the medium, like Mathew Brady, William Henry Jackson, Eadweard Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank, encompassing themes of portraiture, the Western landscape, Pictorialism, documentary photography, and abstraction.

The exhibition explores the technical developments of photography, starting with outstanding examples of daguerreotypes – a sheet of copper coated with light sensitive silver. The daguerreotype gave way to salt, albumen, and then gelatin silver prints. Technologies improved to accommodate larger sizes, easy reproduction of multiple prints from a single negative, and commercially available negative film and print papers. As we move into an increasingly digitised twenty-first century, the lure of the photographer’s magic and the mysteries of making photographic images appear on paper is still strong.

Icons of American Photography presents a remarkable chronicle of American life seen through the camera’s lens. The earliest days of photography saw a proliferation of portraiture – intimately personal and honest in composition. A rare multiple-exposure daguerreotype by Albert Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Hawes (1808-1901) presents the sitter in variety of poses and expressions, while the formal portrait of Prosper M. Wetmore, 1857, by Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady (1823-1896) is more typical of early portraiture. The carefully staged daguerreotype, Dead Child on a Sofa, c. 1855, is an outstanding example of the postmortem portrait. The high rate of infant mortality throughout the 1800s made this variety of portraiture common, satisfying the emotional need of the parents to have a lasting memory of their loved one.

Advances in photographic processes allowed for a range of expressive qualities that were exploited by photographers with an artistic flair. In a style known as Pictorialism, works such as Hamadryads, 1910, by Anne Brigman (1869-1950) imitated the subject matter of painting. In Greek mythology a hamadryad is a nymph whose life begins and ends with that of a specific tree. In this work, two nudes representing wood nymphs were carefully placed among the flowing forms of an isolated tree in the High Sierra. The platinum print method used by Brigman allowed for a detailed, yet warm and evocative result. Edward Steichen’s Rodin the Thinker, 1902 (see below), was created from two different negatives printed together using the carbon print process. This non-silver process provided a continuous and delicate tonal range. For even greater richness, these prints were often toned, producing dense, glossy areas in either black or warm brown.

During the late nineteenth century, the U.S. Congress commissioned photographers to document the American West. Photographs by Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) and William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) are the most celebrated from among this era. The exhibition includes O’Sullivan’s East Humbolt Mountains, Utah, 1868 (see below), and Jackson’s Mystic Lake, M.T., 1872 (see below), as well as Bridal Veil, Yosemite, c. 1866 (see below), by Carleton Watkins (1829-1916). Photographers carried large-format cameras with heavy glass negatives to precarious vantage points to create their sharply focused and detailed views. Decades later, Ansel Adams (1902-1984) carried on the intrepid tradition when he swerved to the side of the road and hauled his view camera to the roof of his car to make the famous image Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.

Responding to the rapid growth of the twentieth century, many photographers shifted their attention from depictions of the natural world to the urban landscape. The power, energy, and romance of the city inspired varied approaches, from sweeping vistas to tight, close-up details and unusual camera angles. Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) established her reputation during the late 1920s by photographing industrial subjects in Cleveland. Her Terminal Tower, 1928, documents what was then the second tallest building in America. Berenice Abbot’s (1898-1991) New York, 1936 (see below), is one of many depictions of this vibrant metropolis. The human life of the city intrigued many photographers, including Helen Levitt (1913-2009) whose photographs of children are direct, unsentimental and artful; Weegee [Arthur Fellig] (1899-1968) who unflinchingly documented crime and accident scenes; and Gordon Parks (1912-2006) who chronicled the life of African Americans.

Exploiting the new medium, numerous photography projects were instituted as part of FDR’s New Deal. The most legendary was that of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) run by Roy Stryker, who hired such important photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. One of the most iconic images of the New Deal was Dust Storm, Cimarron County, 1936 (see below), by Arthur Rothstein (1915-1985). In the spring of 1936, Rothstein made hundreds of photographs in Cimarron County in the Oklahoma panhandle, one of the worst wind-eroded areas in the United States. Out of that body of work came this gripping, unforgettable image. Dorothea Lange’s (1895-1965) work chronicled the human toll wrought by hardship in Resident, Conway, Arkansas, 1938.

As an art form, photography kept in step with formalist modern styles and an increasing trend toward abstraction. Known for his precisionist paintings, Charles Sheeler’s (1883-1965) Bucks County Barn, 1915, features a geometric composition, sharp focus, and subtle tonal range. In Black and White Lilies III, c. 1928 (see above), Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) combined the clarity and directness of Modernism with her long-held interest in botanical imagery. For two decades she created a remarkable group of close-up studies of plants and flowers that identified her as one of the most sophisticated and experimental photographers working in America.

Photographers such as Edward Weston (1886-1958) and Paul Strand (1890-1976) employed a straight-on clarity that highlighted the abstract design of everyday objects and the world around us. A completely abstract work by artist László Moholy-Nagy (1894-1946), Untitled, 1939 (see above), is a photogram made by laying objects onto light-sensitive photographic paper and exposing it to light. The objects partially block the light to create an abstract design on the paper.

By 1960, photography had attained a prominent place not only among the fine arts, but in popular culture as well, ushering in a new era of image-based communication that has profoundly affected the arts as well as everyday life.

Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art is organised by the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition is curated by Tom Hinson, Curator of Photography.

Press release from the The Frick Art and Historical Center website [Online] Cited 06/12/2009 no longer available online

Unknown photographer (American)
Dead child on a sofa
c. 1855
Quarter plate daguerreotype with applied colour

Carelton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Yosemite Valley from the Best General View No. 2
1866
Albumen silver print

Carleton Watkins had the ability to photograph a subject from the viewpoint that allowed the most information to be revealed about its contents. In this image, he captured what he considered the best features of Yosemite Valley: Bridal veil Falls, Cathedral Rock, Half Dome, and El Capitan. By positioning the camera so that the base of the slender tree appears to grow from the bottom edge of the picture, Watkins composed the photograph so that the canyon rim and the open space beyond it seem to intersect. Although he sacrificed the top of the tree, he was able to place the miniaturised Yosemite Falls at the visual centre of the picture. To alleviate the monotony of an empty sky, he added the clouds from a second negative. This image was taken while Watkins was working for the California Geological Survey. His two thousand pounds of equipment for the expedition, which included enough glass for over a hundred negatives, required a train of six mules.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 14/05/2019

Carelton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Bridal Veil, Yosemite
1866
Albumen silver print

Eadweard J. Muybridge (American born England, 1830-1904)
Valley of Yosemite, from Rocky Ford
1872
Albumen silver print

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
East Humboldt Mountains, Utah
1868
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
Image: 19.7 x 27cm (7 3/4 x 10 5/8 in.)
The Cleveland Museum of Art
James Parmelee Fund

By nature and by experience gained during the Civil War, O’Sullivan was ideally suited for the physical and creative demands required of the official photographer for the geological exploration of the fortieth parallel, led by the enterprising Yale geologist Clarence King. The goal of the expedition was to survey the geological structure and natural resources of a swath of territory 100 miles wide, from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains across the Great Basin to the Rocky Mountains. While on the expedition in 1867-1869 and 1872, O’Sullivan simultaneously pursued his own interest in perfecting a balanced, aesthetic style of landscape photography while providing a faithful record of the natural terrain. As typified in this print, he positioned the camera at a distance parallel to the majestic scenery, presenting a shallow, flattened depiction of space. The image describes in sharp detail the sheer beauty and rugged scale of this Western landscape.

Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website

William Henry Jackson (American, 1843-1942)
Mystic Lake, M.T.
1872
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
Image: 23.3 x 50.7cm (9 3/16 x 19 15/16 in.)
The Cleveland Museum of Art
John L. Severance Fund

One of the best-known 19th-century landscape photographers of the American West, Jackson took thousands of negatives between 1870 and 1888 while working for the federal government and the railroads. Beginning in 1870, he began an eight-year assignment as official photographer to the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories led by Ferdinand V. Hayden. This beautiful view of Mystic Lake, located at the head of the East Gallatin River, is one of the most picturesque photographs of the mountainous American West. Jackson used for the first time 11-by-14-inch negatives that captured the scene’s rich textures, the brilliant play of light and shade, and the power and romance of this enthralling vista. Jackson described the scenic lake as “well stocked with most excellent trout, it is quite a pleasure-resort, despite the difficulties to encounter in reaching it.”

Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Rodin The Thinker
1902
Gum bichromate print

When Edward Steichen arrived in Paris in 1900, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was regarded not only as the finest living sculptor but also perhaps as the greatest artist of his time. Steichen visited him in his studio in Meudon in 1901 and Rodin, upon seeing the young photographer’s work, agreed to sit for his portrait. Steichen spent a year studying the sculptor among his works, finally choosing to show Rodin in front of the newly carved white marble of the “Monument to Victor Hugo,” facing the bronze of “The Thinker.” In his autobiography, Steichen describes the studio as being so crowded with marble blocks and works in clay, plaster, and bronze that he could not fit them together with the sculptor into a single negative. He therefore made two exposures, one of Rodin and the “Monument to Victor Hugo,” and another of “The Thinker.” Steichen first printed each image separately and, having mastered the difficulties of combining the two negatives, joined them later into a single picture, printing the negative showing Rodin in reverse.

“Rodin – The Thinker” is a remarkable demonstration of Steichen’s control of the gum bichromate process and the painterly effects it encouraged. It is also the most ambitious effort of any Pictorialist to emulate art in the grand tradition. The photograph portrays the sculptor in symbiotic relation to his work.

Suppressing the texture of the marble and bronze and thus emphasiSing the presence of the sculptures as living entities, Steichen was able to assimilate the artist into the heroic world of his creations. Posed in relief against his work, Rodin seems to contemplate in “The Thinker” his own alter ego, while the luminous figure of Victor Hugo suggests poetic inspiration as the source of his creativity. Recalling his response to a reproduction of Rodin’s “Balzac” in a Milwaukee newspaper, Steichen noted: “It was not just a statue of a man; it was the very embodiment of a tribute to genius.” Filled with enthusiasm and youthful self-confidence, Steichen wanted in this photograph to pay similar tribute to Rodin’s genius.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 14/05/2019

Arthur Rothstein (American, 1915-1985)
Dust Storm, Cimarron County
1936
Gelatin silver photograph
40.4 × 39.6cm

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Columbus Circle
1936
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24.6 x 19.6cm (9 11/16 x 7 11/16 in.)
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Sundry Purchase Fund

A native of Springfield, Ohio, Abbott studied art and photography in Paris. Arriving in New York in 1929, she was shocked by the past decade’s vertical building boom, and dedicated herself to documenting the city’s new structures and fast-disappearing historic ones. She made this image from the ninth floor of the General Motors building in New York while working for the Federal Art Project, a governmental agency that employed artists during the Depression. The statue of Columbus, at centre, is dwarfed by two advertising signs: one for Schenley rye whiskey and a landmark 80-x-50-foot display for Coca-Cola that required 3,000 incandescent bulbs.

Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website

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