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“The past neglect of the body in social theory was a product of Western mind-body dualism that divided human experience into bodily and cognitive realms. The knowledge-body distinction identifies knowledge, culture, and reason with masculinity and identifies body, nature, and emotion with femininity. Viewing human reason as the principal source of progress and emancipation, it perceives “the rational” as separate from, and exalted over, the corporeal. In other words, consciousness was grasped as separate from and preceding the body (Bordo 1993; Davis 1997). Following feminist thinking about women’s bodies in patriarchal societies, contemporary social theories shifted focus from cognitive dimensions of identity construction to embodiment in the constitution of identities (Davis 1997). Social construction theories do not view the body as a biological given but as constituted in the intersection of discourse, social institutions, and the corporeality of the body. Body practices, therefore, reflect the basic values and themes of the society, and an analysis of the body can expose the intersubjective meaning common to society. At the same time, discourse and social institutions are produced and reproduced only through bodies and their techniques (Frank 1991, 91). Thus, social analysis has expanded from studying the body as an object of social control and discipline “in order to legitimate different regimes of domination” (Bordo 1993; Foucault 1975, 1978, 1980) to perceiving it as a subject that creates meaning and performs social action (Butler 1990). The body is understood as a means for self-expression, an important feature in a person’s identity project (Giddens 1991), and a site for social subversiveness and self-empowerment (Davis 1997).”
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Orna Sasson-Levy and Tamar Rapoport. “Body, Gender, and Knowledge in Protest Movements: The Israeli Case,” in Gender & Society 17, 2003, p.381. For the references in the quotation please see the end of the paper at attached link.
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Despite my great admiration for John Coplans photographs of his body, on the evidence of these press photographs and the attached video, this exhibition seems a beautiful if rather tame affair considering the subject matter. Of course these photographs of the body can be understood as a means for self-expression and self-empowerment but there seems little social subversiveness in the choice of work on display. The two Mapplethorpe’s are stylised instead of stonkingly subversive, and could have been taken from his ‘X’ portfolio (the self portrait of him with a bull whip up his arse would have been particularly pleasing to see in this context). The exhibition could have included some of the many artists using the body as protest during the AIDS crisis (perhaps my favourite David Wojnarowicz or William Yang’s Sadness), the famous Burning Monk – The Self-Immolation (1963) by Malcolm Browne, photographs by Stellarc, Arthur Tress, Duane Michals, Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus, Francesca Woodman, Sally Mann, Cindy Sherman to name but a few; even the Farm Security Administration photographs of share cropper families by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange would have had more impact than some of the photographs on display here. Having not seen the entire exhibition it is hard to give an overall reading, but on the selection presented here it would seem that this was a missed opportunity, an exhibition where the body did not protest enough.
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Many thankx to the Albertina, Vienna for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
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theartVIEw – The Body as Protest at ALBERTINA
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Ishiuchi Miyako
1906#38
Nd
Courtesy by The Third Gallery Aya
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Hannah Villiger
Block XXX
1993-1994
© The Estate of Hannah Villiger
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Ketty La Rocca
Le mie parole e tu
1974
Courtesy Private Collection, Austria
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John Coplans
Self Portrait Interlocking Fingers No 6
1999
Silbergelatinepapier
Albertina, Wien
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Bruce Nauman
Studies for Holograms
Siebdruck, 1970
© VBK, Wien 2012
Foto: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln
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Robert Mapplethorpe
Vincent
1981
Silbergelatinepapier
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
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“The exhibition The Body as Protest highlights the photographic representation of the human body - a motif that has provided a wide variety of photographers with an often radical means of expression for their visual protest against social, political, but also aesthetic norms.
The show centers on an outstanding group of works by the artist John Coplans from the holdings of the Albertina. In his serially conceived large-format pictures, the photographer focused on the rendering of his own nude body, which he defamiliarized through fragmentation far from current forms of idealization. Relying on extremely sophisticated lighting, he presented himself in a monumental and sculptural manner over many years. His photographs can be understood as amalgamations of theoretical and artistic ideas, which in the show are accentuated through selective juxtapositions with works by other important exponents of body-related art.
The body also features prominently in the work of other artists such as Hannah Wilke, Ketty La Rocca, Hannah Villiger, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Miyako Ishiuchi. By means of these positions, such diverse themes as self-dramatization, conceptual photography, feminism, body language, and even transience are analyzed within an expanded artistic range. Moreover, the exhibition offers a differentiated view of the critical depiction of the human body as it has been practiced since 1970.”
Text from the Albertina website
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Hannah Wilke
Gestures
1974-76
Basierend auf der gleichnamigen
Video Performance von 1974
(35:30 min, b&w, sound)
Silbergelatinepapier
12 Blatt je 12,7x 17,8 cm
© Marsie, Emanuelle, Damon and Andrew Scharlatt, The Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, L.A./ VBK, Wien 2012
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John Coplans
Frieze No. 6
1994
Silbergelatinepapier
Albertina, Wien
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John Coplans
Self Portrait (Hands)
1988
Silbergelatinepapier
Albertina, Wien
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Ketty La Rocca
Craniologia
1973
Radiografie mit überblendeter Fotografie
SAMMLUNG VERBUND
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Robert Mapplethorpe
Thomas
1986
Silbergelatinepapier
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
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John Coplans
Self Portrait Interlocking Fingers No 17
2000
Silbergelatinepapier
Albertina, Wien
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John Coplans
Back with Arms Above
1984
Silbergelatinepapier
© The John Coplans Trust
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Albertina
Albertinaplatz 1
1010 Vienna, Austria
T: +43 (0)1 534 83-0
Opening hours:
Daily 10 am to 6 pm
Wednesday 10 am to 9 pm
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Many thankx to the Städel Museum for allowing me to publish the reproductions of the artwork in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
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Click to view slideshow..
Installation photographs of Dark Romanticism. From Goya to Max Ernstat the Städel Museum, Frankfurt. Photos: Norbert Miguletz
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Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901)
Villa by the Sea
1871-1874
Oil on canvas
108 x 154 cm
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
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Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)
Kügelgen’s Tomb
1821/22
Oil on canvas
41.5 x 55.5 cm
Die Lübecker Museen, Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus, on loan from private collection
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Ernst Ferdinand Oehme (1797-1855)
Procession in the Fog
1828
Oil on canvas
81.5 x 105.5 cm
Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
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Samuel Colman (1780-1845)
The Edge of Doom
1836-1838
Oil on canvas
137.2 x 199.4 cm
Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Laura L. Barnes
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Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Dream caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Awakening
1944
Oil on wood
51 x 41 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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“The Städel Museum’s major special exhibition Dark Romanticism. From Goya to Max Ernst will be on view from September 26th, 2012 until January 20th, 2013. It is the first German exhibition to focus on the dark aspect of Romanticism and its legacy, mainly evident in Symbolism and Surrealism. In the museum’s exhibition house this important exhibition, comprising over 200 paintings, sculptures, graphic works, photographs and films, will present the fascination that many artists felt for the gloomy, the secretive and the evil. Using outstanding works in the museum’s collection on the subject by Francisco de Goya, Eugène Delacroix, Franz von Stuck or Max Ernst as a starting point, the exhibition is also presenting important loans from internationally renowned collections, such as the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée du Louvre, both in Paris, the Museo del Prado in Madrid and the Art Institute of Chicago. The works on display by Goya, Johann Heinrich Fuseli and William Blake, Théodore Géricault and Delacroix, as well as Caspar David Friedrich, convey a Romantic spirit which by the end of the 18th century had taken hold all over Europe. In the 20th century artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte or Paul Klee and Max Ernst continued to think in this vein. The art works speak of loneliness and melancholy, passion and death, of the fascination with horror and the irrationality of dreams. After Frankfurt the exhibition, conceived by the Städel Museum, will travel to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
The exhibition’s take on the subject is geographically and chronologically comprehensive, thereby shedding light on the links between different centres of Romanticism, and thus retracing complex iconographic developments of the time. It is conceived to stimulate interest in the sombre aspects of Romanticism and to expand understanding of this movement. Many of the artistic developments and positions presented here emerge from a shattered trust in enlightened and progressive thought, which took hold soon after the French Revolution – initially celebrated as the dawn of a new age – at the end of the 18th century. Bloodstained terror and war brought suffering and eventually caused the social order in large parts of Europe to break down. The disillusionment was as great as the original enthusiasm when the dark aspects of the Enlightenment were revealed in all their harshness. Young literary figures and artists turned to the reverse side of Reason. The horrific, the miraculous and the grotesque challenged the supremacy of the beautiful and the immaculate. The appeal of legends and fairy tales and the fascination with the Middle Ages competed with the ideal of Antiquity. The local countryside became increasingly attractive and was a favoured subject for artists. The bright light of day encountered the fog and mysterious darkness of the night.
The exhibition is divided into seven chapters. It begins with a group of outstanding works by Johann Heinrich Fuseli. The artist had initially studied to be an evangelical preacher in Switzerland. With his painting The Nightmare (Frankfurt Goethe-Museum) he created an icon of dark Romanticism. This work opens the presentation, which extends over two levels of the temporary exhibition space. Fuseli’s contemporaries were deeply disturbed by the presence of the incubus (daemon) and the lecherous horse – elements of popular superstition – enriching a scene set in the present. In addition, the erotic-compulsive and daemonic content, as well as the depressed atmosphere, catered to the needs of the voyeur. The other six works by Fuseli – loans from the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Royal Academy London and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart – represent the characteristics of his art: the competition between good and evil, suffering and lust, light and darkness. Fuseli’s innovative pictorial language influenced a number of artists – among them William Blake, whose famous water colour The Great Red Dragon from the Brooklyn Museum will be on view in Europe for the first time in ten years.
The second room of the exhibition is dedicated to the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya. The Städel will display six of his works – including masterpieces such as The Witches’ Flight from the Prado in Madrid and the representations of cannibals from Besançon. A large group of works on paper from the Städel’s own collection will be shown, too. The Spaniard blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary. Perpetrator and victim repeatedly exchange roles. Good and evil, sense and nonsense – much remains enigmatic. Goya’s cryptic pictorial worlds influenced numerous artists in France and Belgium, including Delacroix, Géricault, Victor Hugo and Antoine Wiertz, whose works will be presented in the following room. Atmosphere and passion were more important to these artists than anatomical accuracy.
Among the German artists – who are the focus of the next section of the exhibition – it is Carl Blechen who is especially close to Goya and Delacroix. His paintings are a testimony to his lust for gloom. His soft spot for the controversial author E. T. A. Hoffmann – also known as “Ghost-Hoffmann” in Germany – led Blechen to paint works such as Pater Medardus (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) – a portrait of the mad protagonist in The Devil’s Elixirs. The artist was not alone in Germany when it came to a penchant for dark and disturbing subjects. Caspar David Friedrich’s works, too, contain gruesome elements: cemeteries, open graves, abandoned ruins, ships steered by an invisible hand, lonely gorges and forests are pervasive in his oeuvre. One does not only need to look at the scenes of mourning in the sketchbook at the Kunsthalle Mannheim for the omnipresent theme of death. Friedrich is prominently represented in the exhibition with his paintings Moon Behind Clouds above the Seashore from the Hamburger Kunsthalle and Kügelgen’s Grave from the Lübecker Museums, as well as with one of his last privately owned works, Ship at Deep Sea with full Sails.
Friedrich’s paintings are steeped in oppressive silence. This uncompromising attitude anticipates the ideas of Symbolism, which will be considered in the next chapter of the exhibition. These ‘Neo-Romantics’ stylised speechlessness as the ideal mode of human communication, which would lead to fundamental and seminal insights. Odilon Redon’s masterpiece Closed Eyes, a loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, impressively encapsulates this notion. Paintings by Arnold Böcklin, James Ensor, Fernand Khnopff or Edvard Munch also embody this idea. However, as with the Romantics, these restrained works are face to face with works where anxiety and repressed passions are brought unrestrainedly to the surface; works that are unsettling in their radicalism even today. While Gustave Moreau, Max Klinger, Franz von Stuck and Alfred Kubin belong to the art historical canon, here the exhibition presents artists who are still to be discovered in Germany: Jean-Joseph Carriès, Paul Dardé, Jean Delville, Julien-Adolphe Duvocelle, Léon Frédéric, Eugène Laermans and Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer.
The presentation concludes with the Surrealist movement, founded by André Breton. He inspired artists such as Ernst, Brassaϊ or Dalí, to create their wondrous pictorial realms from the reservoir of the subconscious and celebrated them as fantasy’s victory over the “factual world”. Max Ernst vehemently called for “the borders between the so-called inner and outer world” to be blurred. He demonstrated this most clearly in his forest paintings, four of which have been assembled for this exhibition, one of them the major work Vision Provoked by the Nocturnal Aspect of the Porte Saint-Denis (private collection). The art historian Carl Einstein considered the Surrealists to be the Romantics’ successors and coined the phrase ‘the Romantic generation’. In spite of this historical link the Surrealists were far from retrospective. On the contrary: no other movement was so open to new media; photography and film were seen as equal to traditional media. Alongside literature, film established itself as the main arena for dark Romanticism in the 20th century. This is where evil, the thrill of fear and the lust for horror and gloom found a new home. In cooperation with the Deutsches Filmmuseum the Städel will for the first time present extracts from classics such as Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), Faust (1926), Vampyr (1931/32) and The Phantom Carriage (1921) within an exhibition.
The exhibition, which presents the Romantic as a mindset that prevailed throughout Europe and remained influential beyond the 19th century, is accompanied by a substantial catalogue. As is true for any designation of an epoch, Romanticism too is nothing more than an auxiliary construction, defined less by the exterior characteristics of an artwork than by the inner sentiment of the artist. The term “dark Romanticism” cannot be traced to its origins, but – as is also valid for Romanticism per se – comes from literary studies. The German term is closely linked to the professor of English Studies Mario Praz and his publication La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica of 1930, which was published in German in 1963 as Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Die schwarze Romantik (literally: Love, Death and Devil. Dark Romanticism).”
Press release from the Städel Museum website
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Francisco de Goya (1746-1828)
Flying Folly (Disparate Volante)
from “The proverbs (Los proverbios)”, plate 5, 1816-1819, 1.
Edition, 1864
Etching and aquatint
21,7 x 32,6 cm
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
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Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931)
Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror
Germany 1922
Filmstill
Silent film
© Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
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Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
Vampire
1916-1918
Oil on canvas
85 x 110 cm
Collection Würth
Photo: Archiv Würth
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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René Magritte (1898-1967)
Sentimental Conversation
1945
Oil on canvas
54 x 65 cm
Private Collection
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Paul Hippolyte Delaroche (1797-1856)
Louise Vernet, the artist’s wife, on her Deathbed
1845-46
Oil on canvas
62 x 74.5 cm
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes
© Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes
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Gabriel von Max (1840-1915)
The White Woman
1900
Oil on canvas
100 x 72 cm
Private Collection
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William Blake (1757-1827)
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
c. 1803-1805
Watercolor, graphite and incised lines
43.7 x 34.8 cm
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of William Augustus White
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Roger Parry (1905-1977)
Untitled
1929
Illustration from Léon-Paul Fargue’s “Banalité” (Paris 1930)
Gelatin silver print
21.8 x 16.5 cm
Collection Dietmar Siegert
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie
Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt
Tel: +49(0)69-605098-170
Opening hours:
Tuesdays, Fridays to Sundays 10-18 h, Wednesdays and Thursdays 10-21 h
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Installation shots of the new Jeff Wall exhibition at NGV Australia. Review to follow in due course.
Many thankx to Jemma Altmeier and all the media team at NGV for all their wonderful help and congratulations to the curators, Susan van Wyk and Dr Isobel Crombie, for their restrained yet contemporary installations and for getting the exhibitions to Melbourne. They look magnificent. Well done!
Many thankx to the NGV for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan © National Gallery of Victoria. May not be reproduced without permission.
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, The Destroyed Room 1978
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Jeff Wall
Canadian 1946-
The Destroyed Room (detail)
1978
Transparency in light box, AP
159.0 x 234.0 cm
Collection of the artist © Jeff Wall
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, The Destroyed Room 1978, and at right, Double Self-Portrait 1979
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, Double Self-Portrait 1979
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, Doorpusher 1984, and at right, Polishing 1998
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Jeff Wall
Canadian 1946-
Polishing (detail)
1998
Transparency in light box, 1/2
162.0 x 207.0 cm
State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia Purchased with assistance from the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 1999
© Jeff Wall
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Jeff Wall
Doorpusher (detail)
1984
Transparency in lightbox
2490 x 1220 mm
© Jeff Wall
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at centre, Doorpusher 1984, and at right, Polishing 1998
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, Diagonal Composition 1993, and at right, Doorpusher 1984
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Jeff Wall
Canadian 1946-
Diagonal Composition
1993
Transparency in light box, AP
40.0 x 46.0 cm
Collection of the artist © Jeff Wall
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Jeff Wall
Pipe Opening (detail)
2002
Transparency in light box, AP
40.0 x 46.0 cm
Collection of the artist © Jeff Wall
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, A view from an apartment 2004-05
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999-2000
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Jeff Wall
Canadian 1946-
After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (detail)
1999-2000
Transparency in light box, AP
174.0 x 250.5 cm
Collection of the artist © Jeff Wall
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Jeff Wall
Canadian 1946-
A view from an apartment (detail)
2004-05
Transparency in light box, 1/2
167.0 x 244.0 cm Tate, London Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members, 2006
© Jeff Wall
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Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai) 1993
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The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Federation Square
Corner of Russell and
Flinders Streets, Melbourne
Opening hours:
10am – 5pm
Closed Mondays
National Gallery of Victoria website
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The glorious paintings of Fritz Winter show a beautiful synergy with the abstract photographs. The relationship between painting and photography has always been a symbiotic one, a close mutualist relationship that has benefited both art forms. This is fully evidenced in this outstanding posting, where I have tried to sequence the artworks to reflect the nature of their individuality and their interdependence. Great blessings on the curators that assembled this exhibition: an inspired concept!
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Many thankx to the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
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Fritz Winter
K 35
1934
Oil on Paper on Canvas
110 x 75 cm
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Alvin Langdon Coburn
Vortograph
1917 (1962)
Gelatin Silver Print
30.6 x 25.5 cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film
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Francis Bruguière
Abstract Study
c. 1926
Gelatin Silver Print
24.3 x 19.3 cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film
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Fritz Winter
Einfallendes Licht II [Incident Light II]
1935
Oil on Paper on Canvas
44.2 x 33.4 cm
Konrad Knöpfel-Stiftung Fritz Winter im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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“In his lesser known early work, the German painter Fritz Winter (1905-1976) made an obsessive analysis of the aesthetic aspects of light. As a Bauhaus student he was influenced by the international avantgarde’s boundless euphoria for light between Expressionism and Constructivism. The light of large cities with headlights, cinemas and illuminated advertisements gave a new impulse to aesthetics; xrays, radioactivity and microphotography made it possible to perceive previously unknown sources of energy and natural phenomena.
In his pictures of light beams and crystals created in 1934-36, Winter devoted himself with virtuosity to aspects such as the reflection, radiation and refraction of light. His virtually monochrome paintings incorporate crystal shapes and bundles of rays; they focus on the earth’s interior and the infinite expanse of the cosmos; they block the pictorial space with dark grids or lend it a glasslike transparency.
For the first time, 25 Licht-Bilder by Fritz Winter will be juxtaposed with an international selection of 40 of the earliest abstract photographs in history of art. In the 1910s to 1930s artists experimented with the most varied of photographic techniques to ascertain the genuine qualities of photography beyond the merely representative. The New Vision in photography and abstract painting become immediately obvious through the display of vintage prints and paintings side by side.
The exhibition combines 25 exceptional paintings by Fritz Winter from German museums and private collections as well as 40 international lenders of photographic works including Centre Pompidou, Paris, George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Neue Galerie Kassel, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Munich and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.”
Press release from the Pinakothek der Moderne website
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Fritz Winter
Stufungen [Gradations]
1934
Oil on Paper on Canvas
100,5 x 75.5 cm
Konrad Knöpfel-Stiftung Fritz Winter im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Alfred Ehrhardt
Adular, Maderanertal, Schweiz
1938/39
Gelatin Silver Print
49.5 x 30 cm
Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film
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Fritz Winter
Weiß in Schwarz [White in Black]
1934
Oil on Paper on Canvas
100.5 x 75.5 cm
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Neue Galerie
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Fritz Winter
Licht, A 1
1934
Oil on Paper on Canvas
59 x 45 cm
Private Collection
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Untitled (Photogram)
1925
Gelatin Silver Print
23.7 x 17.8 cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
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Alfred Ehrhardt
Beryll, Minas Geraes, Brasilien
1938/39
Gelatin Silver Print
49.7 x 29.9 cm
Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© bpk, Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film
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Pinakothek Der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40
Munich
Opening hours:
Daily except Monday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 8pm
Pinakothek der Moderne website
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Here’s my pick of the eleven best artists/exhibitions which featured on the Art Blart blog in 2012. Enjoy!
Marcus
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6th March – 24th March 2012
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Robyn Hosking
The Wing Walker
2011
Mixed media
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Robyn Hosking
The Wing Walker (detail)
2011
Mixed media
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… My favourite has to be The Wing Walker (2011) as an irate Julia Gillard tries to get rid of Kevin Rudd once and for all, even poking him with a stick to push him off the edge of the biplane. Balanced on a slowly revolving turntable with the world at its centre, this political merry-go round is panacea for the soul for people sick of politicians. This is brilliant political satire. The planes are all ends up and even when Julia thinks she has got rid of Kevin there he is, hanging on for dear life from the undercarriage of one of the planes…
Reminding me of the fantasy creatures of Tom Moore, these whimsical manifestations deal with serious, life changing and challenging issues with purpose, feeling and a wicked sense of humour. I really enjoyed this art (and joy is the correct word) because it takes real world issues, melds fantasy and pointed observation and reflects it back, as the artist observes, in a funfair’s distorted mirror. Magic!
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Exhibition dates: 6th March – 31st March 2012
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This is a fine exhibition of the work of celebrated English photographer Martin Parr at Niagara Galleries, Richmond, albeit with one proviso. The mainly large colour prints are handsomely displayed in plain white frames within the gallery space and are taken from his well known series: Last Resort, Luxury, New British and British Food. Parr’s work is at its best when he concentrates on the volume of space within the image plane and the details that emerge from such a concentrated visualisation – whether it be the tension points within the image, assemblage of colour, incongruity of dress, messiness of childhood or philistine nature of luxury.
And so it goes. The dirt under the fingernails of the child eating a doughnut, the lurid colours of the popsicle and jacket of the kid with dribble on his face, all fantastic… They are joyous paeans to the quirky, incongruous worlds in which we live and circulate. They evidence life itself in all its orthogonal absurdity.
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Martin Parr
England. New Brighton.
From the series Last Resort
1983 – 1985
Pigment print
Edition of 5
102 x 127 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
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Martin Parr
England. New Brighton.
From the series Last Resort
1983 – 1985
Pigment print
Edition of 5
102 x 127 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
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Exhibition dates: 14th March – 7th April 2012
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I have always loved the work of Nicola Loder ever since I saw her solo exhibition Child 1-175: A Nostalgia for the Present at Stop 22 Gallery in St Kilda in 1996. This exhibition is no exception. Loder is the consummate professional, her work is as imaginative and intriguing as ever and there has been a consistent thematic development of ideas within her work over a long period of time. These ideas relate to the nature of seeing and being seen, the mapping of identity and the process of its (dis)appearance…
Loder’s exquisitely sensuous description of disappearance allows us to see the phenomenal word afresh. I look forward with a sense of anticipation to the next voyage of discovery the artist will take me on.
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Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1 – 41 by Nicola Loder, installation photograph at Helen Gorie Galerie
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Nicola Loder
Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1-41 (no 11)
2012
Polyester thread, muslin
86 x 69cm
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Exhibition dates: 25th April – 12th May 2012
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Jane Brown
Big Trout, New South Wales
2010
Museo silver rag print
59 x 46 cm
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Jane Brown
Adelong, New South Wales
2011
Fibre based, silver gelatin print
16.5 x 20.5 cm
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This is a good exhibition of small, darkly hewn, traditionally printed silver gelatin photographs, beautifully hung in the small gallery at Edmund Pearce and lit in the requisite, ambient manner. There are some outstanding photographs in the exhibition. The strongest works are the surrealist tinged, film noir-ish mise-en-scènes, the ones that emphasise the metaphorical darkness of the elements gathered upon the stage. Photographs such as Big Trout, The Female Factory, Adelong, New South Wales and Captain’s Flat Hotel, New South Wales really invoke a feeling of unhomely (or unheimlich), where nature is out of kilter. These images unsettle our idea of Oztraliana, our perceived sense of Self and our place in the world. They disrupt normal transmission; they transmutate the seen environment, transforming appearance, nature and form.
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Exhibition dates: 18th April – 19th May 2012
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Jacqui Stockdale
Rama-Jaara the Royal Shepherdess
2012
Type C Print
100 x 78cm
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Jacqui Stockdale
Lagunta Man, Leeawuleena
2012
Type C Print
100 x 78cm
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These are incredibly humorous, magical and symbolic photographs. A thought came into my mind when I was in the gallery surrounded by the work: for me they represented a vision of the Major Arcana of the Tarot (for example Jaguar Hombre could be seen as an inverted version of the Hanged Man with his foot in a figure four, the Hanged Man symbolising the need to just be in the world, yielding his mind and body to the Universal flow). The Major Arcana deal with the human condition, each card representing the joys and sorrows every man and woman can experience in a lifetime. In a way Stockdale offers us her own set of subversive Major Arcana, images that transgress the boundaries of the colonial vernacular, offering the viewer a chance to explore the heart of the quiet wild.
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Exhibition dates: 4th May – 26th May 2012
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It was such a joy then to walk around the corner from the CCP to the Colour Factory Gallery and view the exhibition Littoral by emerging artist Kristian Laemmle-Ruff. This is one of the best, if not the best, “photography” exhibition I have seen so far this year. As soon as you walk into the simple, elegant gallery you are surrounded by fourteen large scale horizontal photographs that are suffused with colour variations bouncing across the gallery – here a blue, there a green, now a lush orange palette. The effect is much like Monet’s waterlilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris; seated in the middle of the four curved paintings you are surrounded by large daubs of paint of various hues that have an elemental effect – resonances of earth, air, water, fire – on the viewer. The same affection of colour and space can be found in Laemmle-Ruff’s photographs.
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Kristian Laemmle-Ruff
Olympic Stadium
2012
Type C print
100cm x 67cm
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Kristian Laemmle-Ruff
Truck in Safi
2010
Type C print
100cm x 67cm
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Exhibition dates: 1st June – 15th July 2012
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What we are left with in these images are vestiges of presence, remnants or traces of people that have passed on. In a kind of divine intervention, these photographs ask the viewer questions about the one fact that we cannot avoid in our lives, our own mortality, and what remains after we pass on. We can never know these people and places, just as we can never know the place and time of our death – when our “time” is up – but these photographs awaken in us a subconscious remembering: that we may be found (in life), then lost (through death), then found again in the gaze of the viewer looking at the photographs in the future present. We are (dis)continuous beings.
There is no one single reading of these photographs for “there are only competing narratives and interpretations of a world that cannot be wholly, accurately described.” These indescribable photographs impinge on our consciousness calling on us to remember even as the speed of contemporary life asks us to forget. This ethical act of looking, of mourning and remembering, of paying homage to presence acknowledges that we choose not to let pass into the dark night of the soul these traces of our forebears, for each emanation is deeply embedded within individual and cultural memory.
These photographs are a contemporary form of Western ‘dreaming’ in which we feel a link to the collective human experience. In this reification, we bear witness to the (re)assemblance of life, the abstract made (subconsciously) concrete, as material thing. These images of absent presence certainly reached out and touched my soul. Vividly, I choose to remember rather than to forget.
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Exhibition dates: 2nd June – 29th July 2012
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The main work We Are All Flesh (2012) reminded me of a version of the game The Hanged Man (you know, the one where you have to guess the letters of a word and if you don’t get the letter, the scaffold and the hanged man are drawn). The larger of the two hanging pieces featured two horse skins of different colours intertwined like a ying yang paux de deux. Psychologically the energy was very heavy. The use of straps to suspend the horses was inspired. Memories of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and The Godfather rose to the surface. My favourite piece was 019 (2007). Elegant in its simplicity this beautiful display case from a museum was dismantled and shipped over to Australia in parts and then reassembled here. The figurative pieces of wood, made of wax, seemed like bodies drained of blood displayed as specimens. The blankets underneath added an element of comfort. The whole piece was restrained and beautifully balanced. Joseph Beuys would have been very proud.
The “visceral gothic” contained in the exhibition was very evident. I liked the artist’s trembling and shuddering. Her narratives aroused a frisson, a moment of intense danger and excitement, the sudden terror of the risen animal
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Berlinde De Bruyckere
We Are All Flesh
2012
Treated horse skin, epoxy, iron armature
280 x 160 x 100 cm
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galleria Continua
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Berlinde De Bruyckere
019
2007
Wax, epoxy, metal, glass, wood, blankets
293.5 x 517 x 77.5 cm
Private Collection, Paris
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Exhibition dates: 23rd March – 16th September 2012
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This is an intimate and stimulating photographic exhibition at the NGV International featuring the work of artists Mike and Doug Starn, David Stephenson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bill Henson, Adam Fuss, Simone Douglas, Park Hong-Chun, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Sam Shmith, Christoph Dahlhausen and Patrick Bailly-Maitre-Grand. It is fantastic to see an exhibition of solely contemporary photographs at the National Gallery of Victoria taken from their collection (with nary a vintage silver gelatin photograph in sight!), one which examines the orchestration of light from which all photography emanates – used by different photographers in the creation, and there is the key word, of their work. Collectively, the works seem to ooze a mysterious inner light, a facing towards the transcendent divine – both comforting, astonishing and terrifying in part measure.
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Hiroshi Sugimoto
Japanese 1948-, worked in United States 1972-
Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount
1993
Gelatin silver photograph
42.3 x 54.1 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the Bowness Family Fund for Contemporary Photography, 2009
© Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy The Pace Gallery, New York
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Mike Starn
American 1961-
Doug Starn
American 1961-
Sol Invictus
1992
Orthographic film, silicon, pipe clamps, steel and adhesive tape
175.0 x 200.0 x 35.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the National Gallery Women’s Association, 1994
© Doug Starn, Mike Starn/ARS, New York. Licensed by VISCOPY, Sydney
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Exhibition dates: 28th September – 11th November 2012
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In his visual mosaics Crewdson engages our relationship with time and space to challenge the trace of experience. His tableaux act as a kind of threshold or hinge of experience – between interior and exterior, viewer and photograph. His photographs are a form of monism in which two forces (interior / exterior) try to absorb each other but ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium. It is through this “play” that the context of the photographs and their relationship to each other and the viewer are “framed.” This device emphasises the aesthetic as much as information and encourages the viewer to think about the relationship between the body, the world of which it is part and the dream-reason of time. This intertextual (n)framing (n meaning unspecified number in mathematics) encourages the viewer to explore the inbetween spaces in the non-narrative / meta-narrative,”and by leaps (intuitive leaps, poetic leaps, leaps of faith)” encourage escapism in the imagination of the viewer. It is up to us as viewers to seek the multiple, disparate significances of what is concealed in each photograph as “felt knowledge” (Walter Benjamin), recalling to mind the sensory data placed before our eyes, something that can be experienced but cannot be explained by man: “the single moment of the present amidst the transience of life and searching for some kind of eternal truth.”
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Installation photograph of the series Beneath the Roses from the exhibition Gregory Crewdson: In a Lonely Place at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne
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© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
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Exhibition dates: 28th November 28 – 15th December 2012
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Installation photograph of Ikea by Janina Green at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne
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Janina Green
Orange vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, handtinted with orange photo dye
85 x 70 cm
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Fable = invent (an incident, person, or story)
Simulacrum = pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original
Performativity = power of discourse, politicization of abjection, ritual of being
Body / identity / desire = imperfection, fluidity, domesticity, transgression, transcendence
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Intimate, conceptually robust and aesthetically sensitive.
The association of the images was emotionally overwhelming.
An absolute gem. One of the highlights of the year.
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What a dazzling, sensual (sur)realist Manuel Álvarez Bravo was, one of my favourite photographers of all time. What an eye, what an artist! The beauty of some of his images simply takes my breath away – such as The daughter of the dancers (La hija de los danzantes / La Fille des danseurs) (1933, below). Álvarez Bravo was one of a triumvirate of photgraphers that greatly influenced me when I started to study photography, along with Eugene Atget and Minor White. I feel a special affinity to him as we share the same initials.
The posting also includes two colour photographs, the first I have ever seen of Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Unfortunately the quality of some of the media photographs was again incredibly poor and I had to spend an inordinate amount of time repairing damage to the scans in order to bring them to you in this posting. Enjoy.
PS. Please see my posting Photography in Mexico: Selected Works from the Collections of SFMOMA and Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser for a discussion of Manuel Álvarez Bravo and contemporary Mexican photography.
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Many thankx to the Jue de Paume, Paris for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Waves of paper (Ondas de papel / Vagues de papier)
c. 1928
Épreuve gélatino-argentique tardive (vintage silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Concrete triptych 2 / La Tolteca (Tri’ptico cemento-2 / La Tolteca. Triptyque béton-2 / La Tolteca)
1929
Épreuve gélatino-argentique d’époque
Collection Familia González Rendón
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Bicycle Heaven (Bicicleta al cielo / Bicyclette au ciel)
1931
Épreuve gélatino-argentique moderne (modern silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Striking Worker, Assassinated (Obrero en huelga, asesinado / Ouvrier en grève, assassiné)
1934
Épreuve gélatino-argentique tardive (vintage silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
The Good Reputation Sleeping (La buena fama durmiendo / La Bonne Renommée endormie)
1938
Épreuve gélatino-argentique tardive (vintage silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Current, Texcoco (Corriente, Texcoco / Courant, Texcoco)
1974-1975
Épreuve chromogénique d’époque
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
The Colour (El color / La Couleur)
1966
Épreuve chromogénique d’époque
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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“Getting away from the stereotypes about exotic Surrealism and the folkloric vision of Mexican culture, this exhibition of work by Manuel Álvarez Bravo at Jeu de Paume offers a boldly contemporary view of this Mexican photographer.
The photographic work done by Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexico City, 1902-2002) over his eight decades of activity represent an essential contribution to Mexican culture in the 20th century. His strange and fascinating images have often been seen as the product of an exotic imagination or an eccentric version of the Surrealist avant-garde. This exhibition will go beyond such readings. While not denying the links with Surrealism and the clichés relating to Mexican culture, the selection of 150 photographs is designed to bring out a specific set of iconographic themes running through Álvarez Bravo’s practice: reflections and trompe-l’œil effects in the big city; prone bodies reduced to simple masses; volumes of fabric affording glimpses of bodies; minimalist, geometrically harmonious settings; ambiguous objects, etc.
The exhibition thus takes a fresh look at the work, without reducing it to a set of emblematic images and the stereotyped interpretations that go with them. This approach brings out little-known aspects of his art that turn out to be remarkably topical and immediate. Images become symbols, words turn into images, objects act as signs and reflections become objects: these recurring phenomena are like visual syllables repeated all through his œuvre, from the late 1920s to the early 1980s. They give his images a structure and intentional quality that goes well beyond the fortuitous encounter with the raw magical realism of the Mexican scene. Indeed, Álvarez Bravo’s work constitutes an autonomous and coherent poetic discourse in its own right, one that he patiently built up over the years. For it is indeed time that bestows unity on the imaginary fabric of Álvarez Bravo’s photographs. Behind these disturbing and poetic images, which are like hieroglyphs, there is a cinematic intention which explains their formal quality and also their sequential nature. Arguably, Álvarez Bravo’s photographs could be viewed as images from a film. The exhibition explores this hypothesis by juxtaposing some of his most famous pictures with short experimental films made in the 1960s, taken from the family archives. The show also features some late, highly cinematic images, and a selection of colour prints and Polaroids. By revealing the photographer’s experiments, this presentation shows how the poetic quality of Álvarez Bravo’s images is grounded in a constant concern with modernity and language. Subject to semantic ambiguity, but underpinned by a strong visual syntax, his photography is a unique synthesis of Mexican localism and the modernist project, and shows how modernism was a multifaceted phenomenon, constructed around a plurality of visions, poetics and cultural backgrounds, and not built on one central practice.”
Press release from the Jue de Paume website
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
The daughter of the dancers (La hija de los danzantes / La Fille des danseurs)
1933
Épreuve au platine-palladium tardive (vintage platinum / palladium photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Hair on Patterned Floor (Mechón / Mèche)
1940
Épreuve gélatino-argentique moderne (modern silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s photograph of a long lock of wavy hair lying on a geometrically patterned floor juxtaposes texture and materials, dreams and taboos, and invokes questions about the drama taking place outside the photograph. Was this hair placed on the floor intentionally, or did it fall accidentally? The natural presumption is that the hair belonged to a woman, but could it have belonged to a man? Stripped of a luxurious mane, so symbolic of power and passion, is its one-time “owner” now weak and indifferent? This complex image has led one writer to assert that “in theme and form, the photograph is divided between the hint of seduction and that of punishment.”
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Ways to Sleep (De las maneras de dormir / Des manières de dormir)
c. 1940
Épreuve gélatino-argentique moderne (modern silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Unpleasant portrait (Retrato desagradable / Portrait désagréable)
1945
Épreuve gélatino-argentique tardive (vintage silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Lovers of the false moon (Los novios de la falsa luna / Les Amoureux de la fausse lune)
1967
Épreuve gélatino-argentique tardive (vintage silver gelatin photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Covered Mannequin (Maniquí tapado / Mannequin couvert)
1931
Épreuve au platine-palladium tardive (vintage platinum palladium photograph)
Collection Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
© Colette Urbajtel / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, s.c.
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Jeu de Paume
1, Place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
métro Concorde
T: 01 47 03 12 50
Opening hours:
Tuesday: 12.00 – 21.00
Wednesday – Friday: 12.00 – 19.00
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 – 19.00
Closed Monday
