New York skyscraper – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White’ at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Exhibition dates: 2nd October 2010 – 2nd January 2011

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Canyon, Broadway and Exchange Place
1936
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Gift of Marvin Breckinridge Patterson

Berenice Abbott – what a photographer! You couldn’t have thought of a better person to save the archive of Eugene Atget for the world. It’s all there at the bread store.

Marcus

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Many thankx to Tracy Greene for her help and The Amon Carter Museum of American Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Hell Gate Bridge
1937
Gelatin silver print
Collection of Norma B. Marin, Courtesy Meredith Ward Fine Art

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Squibb Building with Sherry Netherland in Background
1935
Gelatin silver print
Collection of Norma B. Marin, Courtesy Meredith Ward Fine Art

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Manhattan Bridge Looking Up
1936
Gelatin silver print
The Art Institute of Chicago, Works Progress Administration Allocation

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Bread Store, 259 Bleecker Street
1937
Gelatin silver print
Museum of the City of New York

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906-1971)
Chrysler Building, New York
c. 1930-1931
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Margaret Bourke-White/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906-1971)
Boy with hound dog
1936
Gelatin silver print
13 1/4 x 17in (33.5 x 43.2cm)

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Penny Picture Display, Savannah
1936
Gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White. This special exhibition explores the work of three of the foremost photographers of the twentieth-century and the golden age of documentary photography in America. American Modern will be on view through January 2, 2011; admission is free.

Featuring more than 140 photographs by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), Margaret Bourke-White (1906-1971) and Walker Evans (1903-1975), American Modern was co-organised by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. The exhibition is the result of a unique partnership between three curators: Jessica May and Sharon Corwin of the Carter and Colby, respectively, and Terri Weissman, assistant professor of art history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Together, the three curators present the works of these three artists as case studies of documentary photography during the Great Depression and demonstrate how three factors supported the development of documentary photography during this important period in American history: first, the expansion of mass media; second, a new attitude toward and acceptance of modern art in America; and third, government support for photography during the 1930s.

“This exhibition considers the work of three of the best-loved American photographers in a new light, which is very exciting,” says curator Jessica May. “Abbott, Evans, and Bourke-White are undisputed masters of the medium of photography, but they have never been shown in relation to one another. This exhibition offers viewers an opportunity to see works together that have not been shown as such since the 1930s.”

In addition to vintage photographs from over 20 public and private collections, the exhibition also features rare first-edition copies of select books and periodicals from the 1930s. American Modern, May says, “reminds us that documentary photography was very much a public genre – this was the first generation of photographers that truly anticipated that their work would be seen by a vast audience through magazines and books.”

Press release from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art website [Online] Cited 01/12/2010 no longer available online

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906-1971)
[Iron Mountain, Tennessee]
1937
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Margaret Bourke-White/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Margaret Bourke-White Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906–1971)
Delman Shoes
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Margaret Bourke-White/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Margaret Bourke-White Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
[Lunchroom Window, New York City]
1929
Gelatin silver print
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arnold H. Crane, 1971

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
People in Downtown Havana
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Lincoln Kirstein

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Posed Portraits, New York
1932
Gelatin silver print
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne

Amon Carter Museum
3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard
Fort Worth, TX 76107-2695

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday:  10am – 5pm
Thursday: 10am – 8pm
Sunday: Noon – 5pm
Closed Mondays and major holidays

Amon Carter Museum of American Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Skyscrapers: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs of the Early Twentieth Century’ at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibition dates: 6th June – 1st November 2009

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Untitled (New York City)
1929-1933
Gelatin silver print
6 1/2 x 4 7/16 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001

What a fantastic exhibition! Thank you to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for allowing me to reproduce the wonderful photographs below, many from photographers that I have never heard of before.

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Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art.

Lloyd Ullberg (American, 1904-1996)
PSFS Building, Philadelphia
c. 1932-1933
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 10 x 7 3/8 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund, 1999

At the turn of the 20th century when they first began to appear, skyscrapers were seen as symbols of modernity and testaments to human achievement. Stretching the limits of popular imagination, they captured the attention of visual artists working in a variety of mediums. This summer the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Skyscrapers: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs of the Early Twentieth Century, an exhibition that traces the rise of the American skyscraper as an iconic image. The exhibition will feature more than 50 works from the Museum’s collection, dating from 1908 to 1941, which demonstrate the many ways artists chose to portray the new giants in their landscape.

Skyscrapers includes prints by John Marin and Charles Sheeler, photographs by Berenice Abbott and Alfred Stieglitz, and drawings by Earl Horter and Abraham Walkowitz. The works in Skyscrapers reflect a wide range of styles and practices, from Walkowitz’s loosely drawn “New York Improvisations” (1910) to Abbott’s luminous photograph “New York at Night” (c. 1932), which captures the dazzling allure of the city’s glowing evening skyline. The combination of mediums included in the show allows the viewer to consider the relationship between drawing, printmaking, and photography in this dynamic period.

“The visual impact of skyscrapers on the modern urban landscape is unmistakable, and for more than a century artists have been engaging with this theme,” John Vick, The Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and the exhibition’s organiser, said, noting that the Museum’s collection includes well over 500 works related to skyscrapers. Vick added that “their distinctive contours and exaggerated scale offered artists both a chance to experiment with modernist aesthetics and a subject on which to project personal or collective ideas and emotions.”

The exhibition also offers a view into the interaction of architecture and urban development with art’s role as a form of documentation. Among the famous buildings featured are Chicago’s gothic-ornamented Tribune Tower, New York City’s Art Deco Empire State Building, and Philadelphia’s modernist PSFS Building. An atmospheric etching of a rainy nighttime scene at One Broad Street in Philadelphia by artist Allan Randall Freelon (American, 1895-1960) shows how this important intersection at the heart of the city would have appeared in the 1930s.

The towering, occasionally menacing, physical presence of these structures is a frequent visual theme in the works – whether in Howard Norton Cook’s woodcut “Skyscraper” (1929, below) or Sherril Schell’s photograph “Window Reflection – French Building” dating from 1930-1932. Horter’s graphite drawing “Manhattan Skyline” (1916) shows a row of newly-built towers thrusting skyward in strong, vertical lines and overshadowing the residential rooftops in the foreground, an image that suggests the city’s emergence as a financial and commercial giant.

Other works take a more abstract approach, exploring the visual exciting patterns created by these massive new structures. Such works include Marin’s 1913 and 1917 prints of the Woolworth Building and Herbert Johnson’s aerial photograph of building rooftops from c. 1930-1932.

Philadelphia Museum of Art press release [Online] Cited 19/06/2009 no longer available online

Earl Horter (American, 1880-1940)
Manhattan Skyline
c. 1916
Graphite on cream wove paper
Sheet: 11 7/16 x 8 3/4 inches (29.1 x 22.2cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Gift of Carl Zigrosser, 1953

Like many of the drawings and etchings of New York made by Horter while he lived in the city during the first two decades of this century, this view of the Manhattan skyline was shown in his first one-man exhibition at the New York gallery of Frederick Keppel and Company in 1916. It was organised by Carl Zigrosser, research librarian at Keppel, who later became this Museum’s first curator of prints and drawings. Zigrosser bought the drawing from the exhibition and donated it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art thirty-seven years later.

Text from the Philadelphia Museum of Art website

Wendell MacRae (American, 1896-1980)
Summer
c. 1930-1932
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 6 9/16 x 4 5/8 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001

Stella Simon (American, 1878-1973)
6th Avenue
c. 1930-1932
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 9 1/2 x 7 3/16 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001

Allan Randall Freelon (American, 1895-1960)
Number One Broad Street
c. 1934
Aquatint with roulette and burnishing
Plate: 11 7/8 × 9 13/16 inches (30.2 × 24.9cm)
Sheet: 15 1/8 × 12 1/16 inches (38.4 × 30.6cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Purchased with the Thomas Skelton Harrison Fund, 1943

Sherril Schell (American, 1877-1964)
Buildings on West 35th Street
c. 1930-1932
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 8 x 6 5/16 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001

Howard Norton Cook (American, 1901-1980)
Skyscraper
1929
Woodcut
Image: 17 15/16 x 8 5/8 inches (45.6 x 21.9cm)
Sheet: 19 1/16 x 9 3/4 inches (48.4 x 24.8cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Gift of Carl Zigrosser, 1960

Sherril Schell (American, 1877-1964)
Window Reflection – French Building
c. 1930-1932
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 7 15/16 x 6 1/8 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001

Ralph Steiner (American, 1899-1986)
Untitled (New York City)
1931
Gelatin silver print
Image/Sheet/Mount (With Black Border from Negative): 9 15/16 x 7 15/16 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
New York at Night
c. 1932
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 13 3/8 x 10 5/8 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Gift of Theodore T. Newbold in memory of Lee Witkin, 1984

Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Opening hours
Thursday – Monday 10.00am – 5.00pm
Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays

Philadelphia Museum of Art website

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