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Posts Tagged 'Cindy Sherman
Exhibition: 'The world is beautiful: photographs from the collection' at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Categories: American, american photographers, Ansel Adams, Australian artist, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, memory, Paris, Paul Outerbridge, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, Robert Frank, space, street photography, time, Walker Evans, William Eggleston and works on paper
Tags: Albert Renger-Patzsch, Albert Renger-Patzsch Hamadryas Baboon, Albert Renger-Patzsch Mantelpavian, Albert Renger-Patzsch The world is beautiful, Albuquerque New Mexico, America's dark soul, American photography, Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams Moonrise Hernandez, Australian art, Australian photographer, Australian photography, canberra, Carbro colour photograph, Carol Jerrems, Carol Jerrems Vale Street, Child with toy hand grenade, Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman Untitled #92, Clarence White School of Photography, Diane Arbus, Diane Arbus Child with toy hand grenade, Die Dinge, Die Welt ist schön, edward weston, Edward Weston Guadalupe Mexico, Edward Weston Tina Modotti, Eiffel Tower, Ernst Haas, Ernst Haas Albuquerque New Mexico, Garry Winogrand, Garry Winogrand World's Fair New York, Graveyard and steel mill, Graveyard and steel mill Bethlehem, Greenwood Mississippi, Guadalupe Mexico, Helen Levitt, Helen Levitt New York 1972, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Henri Cartier-Bresson Rue Mouffetard, Ilse Bing, Ilse Bing Eiffel Tower, Imogen Cunningham, Imogen Cunningham Magnolia Blossom, Laurence Aberhart, Laurence Aberhart Taranaki from Oeo Road, Lee Friedlander, Lee Friedlander Nashville, Lisette Model, Magnolia Blossom, Man Ray, Man Ray Woman with closed eyes, Moonrise Hernandez New Mexico, National Gallery of Australia, New York 1972, Nude lying on a love seat, Olive Cotton, Olive Cotton Skeleton Leaf, paradox of expansion via reduction, Paul Outerbridge, Paul Outerbridge Nude lying on a love seat, Robert Frank, Robert Frank Pablo, Rue Mouffetard Paris, Skeleton Leaf, Taranaki from Oeo Road, TeMounga Taranaki, The world is beautiful, The world is beautiful: photographs from the collection, Tracey Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt Up In The Sky, Untitled #92, Up In The Sky, Vale Street, Walker Evans, Walker Evans Graveyard and steel mill, William Eggleston, William Eggleston Greenwood Mississippi, Woman with closed eyes, World's Fair New York
Exhibition dates: 4th December 2015 – 10th April 2016
Despite a focus on the camera's relationship to the beauty and pure form of the modern world – "the attraction and charm of the surface" – these photographs are more than just being skin deep. In their very straightforwardness the photographs propose a "rigorous sensitivity to form revealed patterns of beauty and order in the natural and man-made alike." But more than the portrayal of something we would not see if it were not for the eye of the photographer, the lens of the camera, the speed of the film, the sensitivity of the paper, the design of the architect, the genetics of nature … is the mystery of life itself.
Modernist structures and mass-produced objects in plants and animals can never beat a good mystery. Just look at Man Ray's Woman with closed eyes (c. 1928, below) or the look in the eyes of Robert Frank's son, Pablo. You can never pin that down. While form may be beauty, mystery will always be beautiful.
Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.
"German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch was a pioneering figure in the New Objectivity movement, which sought to engage with the world as clearly and precisely as possible.
Rejecting the sentimentality and idealism of a previous generation, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) emerged as a tendency in German art, architecture and literature in the 1920s. Applying this attitude to the field of photography, Renger-Patzsch espoused the camera's ability to produce a faithful recording of the world. 'There must be an increase in the joy one takes in an object, and the photographer should be fully conscious of the splendid fidelity of reproduction made possible by his technique', he wrote.
This selection reflects the range of subjects that Renger-Patzsch returned to throughout his career. It includes his early wildlife and botanical studies, images of traditional craftsmen, formal studies of mechanical equipment, commercial still lifes, and landscape and architectural studies. His images of the Ruhr region, where he moved in 1928, document the industrialisation of the area in almost encyclopaedic detail. All of his work demonstrates his sustained interest in the camera's relationship to the beauty and complexity of the modern world.
In 1928 Renger-Patzsch published The World is Beautiful, a collection of one hundred photographs whose rigorous sensitivity to form revealed patterns of beauty and order in the natural and man-made alike. Embodying a new, distinctly modern way of looking at the world, the book established Renger-Patzsch as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century."
Text by Emma Lewis on the Tate website
"The world is beautiful is an exhibition of photographs taken over the last 100 years from the National Gallery of Australia's magnificent photography collection, including work by Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Max Dupain, Bill Henson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman and many more.
It draws its title from one of the twentieth-century's great photographic moments, the publication of Albert Renger-Patzsch's book The world is beautiful in 1928. Renger-Patzsch's approach embodied his belief that 'one should surely proceed from the essence of the object and attempt to represent it with photographic means alone'.
Inspired by this confidence in the medium, the exhibition looks at the way the camera interacts with things in the world. One of photography's fundamental attributes is its capacity to adopt a range of relationships with its subject, based on the camera's physical proximity to it. Indeed, one of the most basic decisions that a photographer makes is simply where he or she places the camera. The pictures in this exhibition literally take you on a photographic trip, from interior worlds and microscopic detail to the cosmic: from near to far away.
Together, these photographs capture some of the delight photographers take in turning their cameras on the world and re-imaging it, making it beautiful through the power of their vision and their capacity to help us see the world in new ways."
Text from the National Gallery of Australia website
Close up, the world can be surprising. There is an undeniable intensity and focus that comes with getting up close to people and objects. It is rude to stare, but photography has no such scruples.
Pioneers of the medium attempted to photograph organic forms through a microscope, making once-hidden worlds accessible. The pleasure photographers take in getting up close to their subject has followed the medium's progress. This was especially the case during the twentieth century, when advances in photographic technology and profound shifts in our relationship to space brought about by events such as war often turned our attention away from the outside world.
For many photographers, the camera's capacity to subject people and objects to close scrutiny has provided a way of paring back vision to its essence, to view the world unencumbered by emotion and sentiment. For others, getting up close is not just about physical proximity; it is also about psychological and emotional states that are otherwise difficult to represent. Experiences such as intimacy, love and emotional connection, as well as disquiet, anxiety and hostility, can all be suggested through the use of the close-up. Photographers have also used it literally to turn inwards, escaping into the imagination to create dreamworlds. The camera-eye really can see what the human eye cannot. (Text from the National Gallery of Australia website)
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Mantelpavian [Hamadryas Baboon]
Gelatin silver photograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
"In photography one should surely proceed from the essence of the object and attempt to represent it with photographic terms alone." Albert Renger-Patzsch
Renger-Patzsch's primary interest was in the object as a document, removed from its usual context and unencumbered with sentiment. Die Welt ist schön [The world is beautiful], published in Munich in 1928, is one of the great photographic books in the history of photography and its influence across the world was profound. It is an astounding study of the world, celebrating beauty wherever the photographer found it – in modernist structures and mass-produced objects or in plants and animals. The connection and continuity of industry to the natural world is conveyed by emphasising underlying structural and formal similarities. The Gallery has a major holding of works by Renger-Patzsch, including a copy of Die Welt ist schön and 121 vintage prints, most of which were reproduced in the book.
Renger-Patzsch was always firmly committed to the principle of the photograph as a document or record of an object. While the title for his most famous contribution to photography came from his publisher, he wanted his now-iconic 1928 book Die Welt ist schön (The world is beautiful) to be titled simply Die Dinge (Things). In 1937 he wrote that the images in his book, 'consciously portray the attraction and charm of the surface'. Indeed, the power of these pictures resides in their straightforwardness. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Edward Weston (United States of America 1886 – 1958)
No title (Guadalupe, Mexico, 1924): from "Edward Weston fiftieth anniversary portfolio 1902-1952".
20.7 h x 17.8 w cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1981
In 1923 Weston travelled from San Francisco to Mexico City with his son, Chandler and his model and lover, Tina Modotti. The photographs he made there represented a startling, revolutionary breakthrough. Everything got stripped down to its essence, with objects isolated against neutral backgrounds. For these heroic head shots, he moved out of the studio, photographing in direct sunlight, from below and with a hand-held camera. They are monumental but still full of life: Weston was excited by the idea of capturing momentary expressions, in people he found 'intense and dramatic'. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Man Ray (United States of America 1890 – France 1976)
No title (Woman with closed eyes)
Not signed, not dated. Stamp, verso, l.r., "Man Ray / 81 bis. Rue / Campagne Premiere / Paris / XIV".
Image 8.9 h x 12.8 w cm sheet 8.9 h x 12.8 w cm
Robert Frank (Switzerland born 1924 – emigrated to United States 1947)
Image 20.8 h x 31.0 w cm sheet 27.0 h x 35.4 w cm
Frank set out on a two-year road trip across the States in 1955. The images he made of race and class divisions, poverty, alienated youth and loneliness expose America's dark soul. Others, such as this haunting image of his son, Pablo, were more personal. A selection appeared in The Americans, published in Paris in 1958 and in the States the following year. Many saw it as a bitter indictment of the American Dream, others saw an evocative, melancholic vision of humanity that is deeply moving. As Jack Kerouac commented in his introduction to the American edition, Frank 'sucked a sad, sweet, poem out of America'. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Carol Jerrems (Australia 1949 – 1980)
Vale Street
St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant 1982
© Ken Jerrems and the Estate of Lance Jerrems
"I try to reveal something about people, because they are so separate, so isolated, maybe it's a way of bringing people together I don't want to exploit people. I care about them."
Carol Jerrems, 1977
Carol Jerrems became prominent in the 1970s as part of a new wave of young photographers. Influenced by the counter-culture values of the 1960s, they used art to comment on social issues and engender social change. Jerrems photographed associates, actors and musicians, always collaborating with her subjects, thereby declaring her presence as the photographer. Vale Street raises interesting questions about what is artifice and what is real in photography. She deliberately set up this image, employing her aspiring actress friend and two young men from her art classes at Heidelberg Technical School. Vale Street has achieved an iconic status in Australian photography; the depiction of a confident young woman taking on the world is an unforgettable one. It is an intimate group portrait that is at once bold and vulnerable. In 1975 it was thought to be an affirmation of free love and sexual licence. The image also appears to be about liberation from society's norms and taboos – 'we are all three bare-chested, we have tattoos and so what?'
The implication that this scene is perfectly natural is reinforced by locating the figures in a landscape. The young woman is strong and unafraid of the judgement of the viewer. The necklace around her neck is an ankh – a symbol of the new spiritualty of the Age of Aquarius and a re-affirmation of the ancient powers of women.
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Anne Gray (ed), Australian art in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002
Paul Outerbridge (United States of America 1896 – 1958; Paris 1925-28, Berlin and London 1928)
Nude lying on a love seat
Carbro colour photograph
Like the Australian-born Anton Bruehl, Paul Outerbridge studied at the Clarence White School of Photography in New York. White was keen to see photography establish itself as a practical art that could be used in the service of the rapidly expanding picture magazine industry. Within a year of enrolling in the school, Outerbridge's work was appearing in Vogue and Vanity Fair. During his lifetime, Outerbridge was known for his commercial work, particularly his elegant, stylish still-life compositions which show the influence of earlier studies in painting. He was also admired for the excellence of his pioneering colour work, which was achieved by means of a complicated tri-colour carbro process.
Much of Outerbridge's fame now rests on work that he made following more private obsessions. His fetishistic nude photographs of women are influenced primarily by eighteenth-century French painters such as Ingres. Although the depiction of nudes was a genre pursued from the inception of photography, Outerbridge's interest in breaking down taboos resulted in this material, if known at all, being passed over or vilified in his lifetime. Outerbridge sought to express what he described as an 'inner craving for perfection and beauty' through these often mysterious, languid and richly toned images. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2014)
Cindy Sherman (United States of America born 1954)
Untitled #92
Type C colour photograph
61.5 h x 123.4 w cm
This is one of 12 Centerfolds made by Sherman in 1981. The Centerfolds present Sherman posing in a range of situations, each suggesting heightened emotional states and violent narratives; these associations are augmented by the uncomfortably tight framing and the panoramic format used by Sherman across the series. Initially commissioned for the art magazine Artforum, the Centerfolds were never published because they were deemed, with their apparently voyeuristic points of view, to reaffirm misogynist views of women. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
William Eggleston (United States of America born 1939)
Greenwood, Mississippi
(1973) prtd 1979
Dye transfer colour photograph
With its intense red, Eggleston's picture of the spare room in a friend's home is one of the most iconic of all colour photographs. Often called The red room, this photograph was intended to be shocking: Eggleston described the effect of the colour as like 'red blood that is wet on the wall'. But the radicalness of the picture is not just in its juicy (and impossible to reproduce) redness; it is also found in the strange view it provides of a domestic interior, one that Eggleston has described as a 'fly's eye view'. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Imogen Cunningham (United States of America 1883 – 1976)
Magnolia Blossom
Image 17.1 h x 34.6 w cm mount 38.2 h x 50.7 w cm
During the 1920s, raising three young sons, Cunningham began to focus on her immediate surroundings. This restricted environment encouraged Cunningham to develop a new way of working, as she began to place her camera closer to the subject: to zebras on a trip to the zoo, to snakes brought to her by her sons, and perhaps most famously to the magnolia blossoms and calla lilies she grew in her garden. Observing what she termed the 'paradox of expansion via reduction', the intensity and focus attendant to this way of seeing flooded her work with sensuality and reductive power. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Olive Cotton (Australia 1911 – 2003)
Skeleton leaf
This leaf skeleton – a leaf that has had its pulp removed with heat and soda – was probably photographed in front of a window in Cotton's home near Cowra, NSW. Since the 1930s Cotton had been drawn to the close study of nature, and many of her best photographs feature close-ups of flowers, tufts of grass and foliage. This photograph is notable because it was taken in the studio, and reflects the austerity and simplicity that pervaded Cotton's work in the decades after the Second World War. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Lee Friedlander (United States of America born 1934)
Nashville, 1963
The further away we move from a subject, the more it and its story open up to us. While the close-up or compressed view tends to be very frontal (the camera presses up against the subject), the defining characteristic of much mid-century photography was its highly mobile relationship to space: its extraordinary capacity to survey and to organise the world.
The space between the camera and its subject can suggest impartiality and detachment. Documentary photographers and photojournalists, for example, open their cameras up to their subjects, as if to 'let them speak'. But the depiction of the space between the camera and its subject, and the way that it is rendered through the camera's depth of field, can also reflect decision making on the part of the photographer. By adjusting the camera's settings, and thus choosing to render part of the subject in focus, the photographer can direct our focus and attention to certain parts of an image. In this way, photographers put forward an argument based on their world view. Photography can change the way we think about the world. (Text from the National Gallery of Australia website)
Ilse Bing (Germany 1899 – United States of America 1998; France 1930-1941 United States from 1941)
Eiffel Tower, Paris
Signed and dated recto, l.r., pen and ink "Ilse Bing/ 1931"
Image 22.3 h x 28.2 w cm sheet 22.3 h x 28.2 w cm mount 35.0 h x 41.8 w cm
Bing took up photography in 1928 and quickly developed a reputation as a photojournalist and photographer of modernist architecture. Inspired by an exhibition of modern photography and the work of Paris-based photographer Florence Henri, Bing moved to Paris 1930 and quickly became associated with the city's photographic avant-garde. Bing worked exclusively with the fledgling Leica 35mm-format camera; her interest in the pictorial possibilities of the hand-held Leica can clearly be seen in this striking view of the Eiffel Tower. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Walker Evans (United States of America 1903 – 1975)
Graveyard and steel mill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
19.1 h x 24.0 w cm sheet 20.2 h x 25.2 w cm
Garry Winogrand (United States of America 1928 – Mexico 1984)
World's Fair, New York
Image rights: © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Winogrand had a tremendous capacity to photograph people in public spaces completely unawares. This image records a group of visitors to the 1964 World's Fair; it focuses on three young women – Ann Amy Shea, whispering into the ear of Janet Stanley, while their friend Karen Marcato Kiaer naps on Stanley's bosom. The figures fill the space between the picture's fore- and middle-grounds, to the extent of allowing the viewer to examine people's expressions and interactions in close detail. This in turn allows us to encroach on the personal space of people we don't know. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Diane Arbus (New York, United States of America 1923 – 1971)
Child with toy hand grenade, in Central Park, New York City
During workshops with Lisette Model, Arbus was encouraged to develop a direct, uncompromising approach to her subjects. She did this using the square configuration of a medium-format camera which Arbus most usually printed full frame with no cropping. Model also convinced Arbus, who had been interested in myth and ritual, that the more specific her approach to her subjects, the more universal the message. In many ways this image of a boy caught hamming it up in Central Park, with his contorted body and grimacing face, captures and prefigures many of the anxieties of America during the sixties, a country caught in an unwinnable war in Vietnam and undergoing seismic social change. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (France 1908 – 2004)
Rue Mouffetard, Paris
1954 prtd c. 1980
Helen Levitt (United States of America 1913 – 2009)
"The streets of the poor quarters of the great cities are, above all, a theatre and a battleground." Helen Levitt
Inspired by seeing work by Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1935, Levitt took to the streets. Children became her most enduring subject. Like Evans, Levitt was famously shy and self-effacing, seeking to shoot unobserved by fitting a prism finder on her Leica. Her approach eschews the sensational; instead she is interested in capturing small, idiosyncratic actions in the everyday. Her images were often shot through with a gentle, lyrical humour though a dark strangeness also surfaces at times. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Ernst Haas (Austria 1921 – United States of America 1986; United States from 1951)
For Haas, colour photography represented the end of the grey and bitter war years and he started seriously working in the medium after moving to America in 1951. Work on his photoessay, Land of Enchantment and film stills assignments for The Misfits, The Bible and Little Big Man took Haas to the Southwest. The desert landscape of Albuquerque, located on Route 66, had been totally transformed by progress since the 1920s. Photographing the street after rain, Haas has signified that evolution by way of his distinctive ability to translate the world into shimmering energy. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Photography has a long-standing interest in faraway places. In 1840, right in photography's infancy, astronomical photography was launched when the first photograph of the moon was made. As photographic imaging technology has improved, so has the medium's capacity to make faraway places accessible to us.
Photography can bring foreign places and people closer to home, or collect together images of places and structures that are located in different places. It can also attempt to give a picture to experiences that are otherwise difficult to grasp or represent, such as complex weather events or transcendental phenomena.
Against the odds, there are photographers who make images that are about what cannot be seen. Faraway is often used as a metaphor for thinking about the ineffable and the inexplicable. Science and spirit go hand-in-hand. 'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious', Albert Einstein believed. Photographers can take us to new worlds. (Text from the National Gallery of Australia website)
Ansel Adams (San Francisco, California, United States of America 1902 – Carmel, California, United States of America 1984)
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
Ansel Adams Museum Set
Adams became the most famous landscape photographer in the world on the back of his images of America's West. While mass tourism was invading these wilderness areas, Adams's photographs show only untouched natural splendour. His landscapes are remarkable for their deep, clear space, distinguishable by an uncanny stillness and clarity. The story of Moonrise is legendary: driving through the Chama River Valley toward Española, Adams just managed by a few seconds to catch this fleeting moment before the dying sunlight stopped illuminating the crosses in the graveyard. Through hours of darkroom manipulation and wizardry, Adams created an image of almost mystical unworldliness. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Tracey Moffatt (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia born 1960)
Up in the sky [Up in the sky – a set of 25 photolithographs]
No. 8 in a series of 25
Image 61.0 h x 76.0 w cm sheet 72.0 h x 102.0 w cm
KODAK (Australasia) PTY LTD Fund 1997
Up in the sky is unusual in Moffatt's oeuvre for being shot out of doors on location. Her photomedia practice is informed by an upbringing watching television, fascinated by film and pop culture. This series takes many of its visual cues from Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone of 1961 as well as the Mad Max series – the references, twisted and re-imagined, are like half-forgotten memories. She addresses race and violence, presenting a loose narrative set against the backdrop of an outback town. The sense of unease is palpable: Moffatt here is a masterful manipulator of mood. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Laurence Aberhart (Aotearoa New Zealand born 1949)
Taranaki, from Oeo Road, under moonlight, 27-28 September 1999
Gift of Peter Fay 2005
For four decades, Aberhart has photographed the Taranaki region of New Zealand's North Island, including its settled landscape and its most distinctive feature, the sacred TeMounga (Mount) Taranaki. Using an 8 x 10-inch view camera, Aberhart has over time built up an important archive documenting the social geography and landscape of the Taranaki. Aberhart describes the conical mountain as a 'great physical and spiritual entity' and sees his photographs of it as a counterbalance to the countless images of the mountain that circulate on tea towels and postcards. (Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)
Parkes Place, Canberra
Australian Capital Territory 2600
Open daily 10.00 am – 5.00 pm
(closed Christmas day)
National Gallery of Australia website
Exhibition: 'The Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s: Works from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Vienna' at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Categories: american photographers, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: 1970s avant-garde, Alexis Hunter, Alexis Hunter Approach to Fear Voyeurism, Ana Mendieta, Ana Mendieta Glass on Body Imprints, Annegret Soltau, Annegret Soltau Selbst, Approach to Fear Voyeurism, Art is a criminal action No. 4, Art is Just a Piece of Cake, avant-garde, Birgit Jürgenssen, Birgit Jürgenssen Nest, Birgit Jürgenssen Selbst mit Fellchen, Birgit Jürgenssen Self with pelts, Bus Riders I, Bus Riders II, Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman Bus Riders I, Cindy Sherman Bus Riders II, Cindy Sherman Lucy, Cindy Sherman Untitled #443, Female Energy Exchange Venus, feminist avant-garde, Feminist photography, Francesca Woodman, Francesca Woodman Untitled Rome, Glass on Body Imprints, hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, hand coloured silver gelatin photographs, Hausfrauen-Küchenschürze, Hochhaus, image of woman, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Lynn Hershman-Leeson Roberta Construction Chart #1, Martha Rosler, Penny Slinger, Penny Slinger Wedding Invitation, photographs by women, photography of the female body, Renate Bertlmann, Renate Bertlmann Tender Pantomime, Renate Bertlmann Zärtliche Pantomime, Renate Eisenegger, Renate Eisenegger Hochhaus, Roberta Breitmore, Roberta Construction Chart #1, SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Tapp und Tastkino, Tender Pantomime, The Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, Ulrike Rosenbach, Ulrike Rosenbach Art is a criminal action No. 4, Ulrike Rosenbach Female Energy Exchange Venus, Ulrike Rosenbach Weiblicher Energieaustausch Venus, Untitled #443, VALIE EXPORT, VALIE EXPORT Tapp und Tastkino, Vienna, Wedding Invitation, Weiblicher Energieaustausch Venus, woman photographers, Works from the Sammlung Verbund, Zärtliche Pantomime
Exhibition dates: 13th March – 31st May 2015
Early Cindy Sherman, very good; Francesca Woodman, wow; but Ana Mendieta, you are a star!
Many thankx to the Hamburger Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Featuring 34 international women artists, this wide-ranging exhibition highlights the early days of the feminist art movement. With over 150 major works drawn from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND in Vienna, it documents how female artists in the 1970s began collectively reshaping the "image of woman" – something that had never happened before in the history of art. During this period, increasing numbers of women who had been born during or just after the Second World War had the opportunity to study at an art school or academy, enabling them to emancipate themselves from the traditional role of artist's muse or model. Dr Gabriele Schor, director of the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, coined the term "feminist avant-garde" to highlight the pioneering role played by these artists.
The female artists have turned to new media such as photography, film or video, due to the fact that these are not laden with art-historical baggage; others employ performance or action-based art as their chosen means of expression. Along with artists such as VALIE EXPORT, Cindy Sherman and Martha Rosler whose work is familiar to a wide audience, the exhibition also provides a rare opportunity to discover some equally accomplished but less well-known members of the "feminist avant-garde".
VALIE EXPORT (*1940)
Tapp und Tastkino
Video, S/W, Ton
© VALIE EXPORT / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 / Courtesy of Galerie Charim, Wien / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003)
S/W-Photographie
© Estate of Birgit Jürgenssen / Courtesy of Galerie Hubert Winter, Wien / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014/2015 / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Ulrike Rosenbach (*1943)
Art is a criminal action No. 4
S/W-Photographie auf Barytpapier
© Ulrike Rosenbach / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Francesca Woodman (1958-1981)
Untitled Rome, Italy
1977-1978/2006
© Courtesy George and Betty Woodman, New York / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
"Featuring 34 international women artists, this wide-ranging exhibition highlights the early days of the feminist art movement. With over 150 major works drawn from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND in Vienna, it documents how female artists in the 1970s began collectively reshaping the "image of woman" – something that had never happened before in the history of art. During this period, increasing numbers of women who had been born during or just after the Second World War had the opportunity to study at an art school or academy, enabling them to emancipate themselves from the traditional role of artist's muse or model. Dr Gabriele Schor, director of the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, coined the term "feminist avant-garde" to highlight the pioneering role played by these artists.
They went on to create works that challenged social norms and the mechanisms of the art business, developing radical new artistic practices and breaking with a male-dominated reality. Against the background of the civil rights movement and the women's movement, feminist issues emerged as a matter of public debate: the personal was now political. Within a very short period of time, women began raising awareness and gaining public recognition by organising collective actions, demonstrations and independent exhibitions. The artists of the "feminist avant-garde" have examined how traditional images determine the perception of women and how they construct their own personal and social identity. Their work addresses a wide range of themes, such as the relegation of women to the one-dimensional role of housewife and mother, the use of one's own body in art, female sexuality, notions of beauty and violence against women.
The female artists undermine the stereotype roles in a subversive way. Martha Rosler, for example, uses exaggeration and parody to criticise women's traditionally domestic role, and Birgit Jürgenssen tied a cooker around her neck like an apron in her work Hausfrauen-Küchenschürze. By playing with the camera or employing masquerade and costumes as an effective means of self-representation, women artists have challenged conventional notions of identity or femininity and exposed these as social constructs. Cindy Sherman, Suzy Lake, Hannah Wilke and Martha Wilson cast themselves in a variety of roles for their photographic investigations into everyday and historical clichés. In a similar way, Lynn Hershman Leeson created a fictional alter ego as "Roberta Breitmore" and enacted this character for a number of years. While accepted cultural ideals of beauty and perfection play an important role for all of the artists mentioned above, these themes are specifically and impressively addressed in the work of Rita Myers and Ewa Partum.
Numerous women artists have turned to new media such as photography, film or video, due to the fact that these are not laden with art-historical baggage; others employ performance or action-based art as their chosen means of expression. VALIE EXPORT, for example, invited passers-by on Munich's Stachus square to visit her Tapp-und Tastkino – meaning that they could put their hands inside a box she was wearing over her naked chest. Female artists have often exploited their own bodies as art material, whereby some – such as Ana Mendieta or Gina Pane – have pushed themselves to the very limits of physical endurance. Using humour, irony, subtlety and provocation, the artists of the "feminist avantgarde" have deconstructed the traditional female iconography.
Along with artists such as VALIE EXPORT, Cindy Sherman and Martha Rosler whose work is familiar to a wide audience, the exhibition also provides a rare opportunity to discover some equally accomplished but less well-known members of the "feminist avant-garde".
The SAMMLUNG VERBUND was founded in 2004 in Vienna by VERBUND, Austria's leading producer of electricity from hydropower. The collection focuses on international contemporary art from 1970 to the present day, with a unique emphasis on the Feminist Avant-garde of the 1970s.
Featured artists: Helena Almeida (*1934, Portugal), Eleanor Antin (*1935, USA), Lynda Benglis (*1941, USA), Renate Bertlmann (*1943, Österreich), Teresa Burga (*1935, Peru), Lili Dujourie (*1941, Belgien), Mary Beth Edelson (*1933, USA), Renate Eisenegger (*1949, Deutschland), VALIE EXPORT (*1940, Österreich), Esther Ferrer (*1937, Spanien), Lynn Hershman-Leeson (*1941, USA), Alexis Hunter (1948-2014, Neuseeland, England), Sanja Iveković (*1949, Kroatien), Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003, Österreich), Ketty La Rocca (1938-1976, Italien), Leslie Labowitz (*1946, USA), Suzanne Lacy (*1945, USA), Suzy Lake (*1947, USA), Karin Mack (*1940, Österreich), Ana Mendieta (1948-1985, Kuba/USA), Rita Myers (*1947, USA), ORLAN (*1947, Frankreich), Gina Pane (1939-1990, Frankreich), Ewa Partum (*1945, Polen), Ulrike Rosenbach (*1943, Deutschland), Martha Rosler (*1943, USA), Carolee Schneemann (*1939, USA), Cindy Sherman (*1954, USA), Penny Slinger (*1947, England), Annegret Soltau (*1946, Deutschland), Hannah Wilke (1940-1993, USA), Martha Wilson (*1947, USA), Francesca Woodman (1958-1981, USA), Nil Yalter (*1938, Ägypten/Frankreich)."
Press release from the Hamburger Kunsthalle website
Renate Bertlmann (*1943)
Zärtliche Pantomime [Tender Pantomime]
S/W-Photographie (aus einer 6-teiligen Serie)
© Renate Bertlmann / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Renate Eisenegger (*1949)
Hochhaus (Nr.1)
S/W-Photografie auf Holz kaschiert (aus einer 4-teiligen Serie)
© Renate Eisenegger / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Alexis Hunter (1948-2014)
Approach to Fear Voyeurism
Silver bromide photography, painted with colored ink (from a 12-part series)
© Alexis Hunter / Courtesy of Richard Saltoun, London / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 / SAMMLUNG VERBUND , Wien
Ohne Titel (Selbst mit Fellchen) [Untitled (Self with pelts)]
Lynn Hershman-Leeson (*1941)
Roberta Construction Chart #1
© Lynn Hershman Leeson / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Ana Mendieta (1948-1985)
Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints)
C-Print (from a 6-part series)
© The Estate Ana Mendieta / Courtesy of Galerie Lelong, New York / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Weiblicher Energieaustausch, Venus [Female Energy Exchange, Venus]
S/W-Photografie auf PE Papier (aus einer 3-teiligen Serie)
© Ulrike Rosenbach / Bildrecht, Wien, 2015 / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Cindy Sherman (*1954)
Untitled #443 (Bus Riders II)
© Cindy Sherman, New York
Courtesy: Metro Pictures, New York/ SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Untitled (Bus Riders I)
1976/2005 (from a 15-part series)
Untitled (Lucy)
Silbergelantineabzug
Courtesy: Metro Pictures, New York / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Penny Slinger (*1947)
Wedding Invitation – 2 (Art is Just a Piece of Cake)
S/W-Photografie
© Penny Slinger / Courtesy of the Artist and Broadway 1602, New York / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Annegret Soltau (*1946)
Selbst [Myself]
B/W photograph on baryta paper (from a 14-part series)
© Annegret Soltau / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 / SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
Photo: Heide Kratz
Glockengießerwall 20095 Hamburg
Tel: +49 (0)40-428 131 204
Tuesdays to Sundays 10 am – 6 pm
Thursdays 10 am – 9 pm
Hamburger Kunsthalle website
Exhibition: 'A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio' at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York Part 1
Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, Cindy Sherman, colour photography, curator, digital photography, documentary photography, Edward Steichen, English artist, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, MoMA, New York, Paul Outerbridge, photographic series, photography, Polaroid photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, surrealism, time and works on paper
Tags: A World of Its Own, A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, Adrien Tournachon, Adrien Tournachon Pierrot Surprised, Anna May Wong, Auto Polaroid, Barbara Kasten, Barbara Kasten Construct I-F, Barbara Kasten Construct NYC 17, Bruce Nauman, Bruce Nauman Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor, Cactus and Photographer's Lamp, Charles Sheeler, Charles Sheeler Cactus and Photographer's Lamp, Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman Untitled #131, Composite Photo of Two Messes, Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor, Construct I-F, Construct NYC 17, Edward Steichen, Edward Steichen Anna May Wong, Elad Lassry, Elad Lassry Nailpolish, Francis Bruguière, Francis Bruguière Light Abstraction, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, George Platt Lynes, George Platt Lynes Untitled 1941, Geta Brâtescu, Geta Brâtescu The Studio, Images de Deauville, Invocation of the Drawing, James Casebere, James Casebere Subdivision with Spotlight, Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia Margaret Cameron Madonna with Children, Julia Margaret Cameron Untitled (Mary Ryan), L'Atelier. Invocarea desenului, Laboratory of the Future, Light Abstraction, Lucas Samaras, Lucas Samaras Auto Polaroid, Madonna with Children, Man Ray, Man Ray Laboratory of the Future, Mary Ryan, Maurice Tabard, Maurice Tabard Untitled 1929, MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, Nadar Pierrot Surprised, Nailpolish, New York, Paul Outerbridge, Paul Outerbridge Images de Deauville, performance photography, photocollage, photographic collage, photographic composites, Photographic Practices in the Studio, photography studio, Pierrot, Pierrot Surprised, Polapan, studio photography, Subdivision with Spotlight, Sundial (07.13), Surveying the Studio, the photographic studio, The Studio as Set, The Studio as Stage, The Studio. Invocation of the Drawing, Untitled #131, Uta Barth, Uta Barth Sundial (07.13)
Exhibition dates: 8th February – 2nd November 2014
The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor
Curators: Organized by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography
A bumper two part posting on this fascinating, multi-dimensional subject: photographic practices in the studio, which may be a stage, a laboratory, or a playground. The exhibition occupies all MoMA's six photography galleries, each gallery with its own sub theme, namely, Surveying the Studio, The Studio as Stage, The Studio as Set, A Neutral Space, Virtual Spaces and The Studio, from Laboratory to Playground.
The review of this exhibition "When a Form Is Given Its Room to Play" by Roberta Smith on the New York Times website (6th February 2014) damns with faint praise. The show is a "fabulous yet irritating survey" which "dazzles but often seems slow and repetitive." Smith then goes on to list the usual suspects: "And so we get professional portraitists, commercial photographers, lovers of still life, darkroom experimenters, artists documenting performances and a few generations of postmodernists, dead and alive, known and not so, exploring the ways and means of the medium. This adds up to plenty to see: around 180 images from the 1850s to the present by some 90 photographers and artists. The usual suspects here range from Julia Margaret Cameron to Thomas Ruff, with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lucas Samaras, John Divola and Barbara Kasten in between." There are a few less familiar and postmodern artists thrown in for good measure, but all is "dominated by black-and-white images in an age when colour reigns." The reviewer then rightly notes the paucity of "postmodern photography of the 1980s, much of it made by women, that did a lot to reorient contemporary photo artists to the studio. It is a little startling for an exhibition that includes so many younger artists dealing with the artifice of the photograph (Ms. Belin, for example) to represent the Pictures Generation artists with only Cindy Sherman, James Casebere and (in collaboration with Allan McCollum) Laurie Simmons" before finishing on a positive note (I think!), noting that the curators "had aimed for a satisfying viewing experience, which, these days, is something to be grateful for."
SOMETHING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR… OH, TO BE SO LUCKY IN AUSTRALIA!
Just to have the opportunity to view an exhibition of this quality, depth and breadth of concept would be an amazing thing. Even a third of the number of photographs (say 60 works) that address this subject at any one of the major institutions around Australia would be fantastic but, of that, there is not a hope in hell.
Think Marcus, think… when was the last major exhibition, I mean LARGE exhibition, at a public institution in Australia that actually addressed specific ISSUES and CONCEPTS in photography (such as this), not just putting on monocular exhibitions about an artists work or exhibitions about a regions photographs? Ah, well… you know, I can't really remember. Perhaps the American Dreams exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery, but that was a GENERAL exhibition about 20th century photography with no strong investigative conceptual theme and its was imported from George Eastman House.
Here in Australia, all we can do is look from afar, purchase the catalogue and wonder wistfully what the exhibition actually looks like and what we are missing out on. MoMA sent me just 10 images media images. I have spent hours scouring the Internet for other images to fill the void of knowledge and vision (and then cleaning those sometimes degraded images), so that those of us not privileged enough to be able to visit New York may gain a more comprehensive understanding of what this exhibition, and this multi-faceted dimension of photography, is all about. It's a pity that our venerable institutions and the photography curators in them seem to have had a paucity of ideas when it comes to expounding interesting critiques of the medium over the last twenty years or so. What a missed opportunity.
Dr Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish six of the photographs in the posting. The rest of the images were sourced from the Internet. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Surveying the Studio
Bruce Nauman (American, born 1941)
Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor
40 1/2″ x 10′ 3″ (102.9 x 312.4 cm)
Gift of Philip Johnson
Uta Barth (American, born 1958)
Sundial (07.13)
Chromogenic color prints
each 30 x 28 1/4″ (76.2 x 71.8 cm)
The Photography Council Fund
Geta Brâtescu (Romanian, born 1926)
The Studio. Invocation of the Drawing (L'Atelier. Invocarea desenului)
Gelatin silver prints with tempera on paper
33 1/16 x 27 9/16″ (84 x 70 cm)
Modern Women's Fund
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Laboratory of the Future
9 1/16 x 7″ (23.1 x 17.8 cm)
Gift of James Johnson Sweeney
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)
Cactus and Photographer's Lamp, New York
9 1/2 x 6 5/8″ (23.5 x 16.6 cm)
Gift of Samuel M. Kootz
"Bringing together photographs, films, videos, and works in other mediums, A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio examines the ways in which photographers and artists using photography have worked and experimented within the four walls of the studio space, from photography's inception to today. Featuring both new acquisitions and works from the Museum's collection that have not been on view in recent years, A World of Its Own includes approximately 180 works, by approximately 90 artists, such as Berenice Abbott, Uta Barth, Zeke Berman, Karl Blossfeldt, Constantin Brancusi, Geta Brătescu, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Jan Groover, Barbara Kasten, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Paul Outerbridge, Irving Penn, Adrian Piper, Edward Steichen, William Wegman, and Edward Weston.
The exhibition considers the various roles played by the photographer's studio as an autonomous space; depending on the time period, context, and the individual motivations (commercial, artistic, scientific) and sensibilities of the photographer, the studio may be a stage, a laboratory, or a playground. Organized thematically, the display unfolds in multiple chapters. Throughout the 20th century, artists have explored their studio spaces using photography, from the use of composed theatrical tableaux (in photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron or Cindy Sherman) to neutral, blank backdrops (Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe); from the construction of architectural sets within the studio space (Francis Bruguière, Thomas Demand) to chemical procedures conducted within the darkroom (Walead Beshty, Christian Marclay); and from precise recordings of time and motion (Eadweard Muybridge, Dr. Harold E. Edgerton) to amateurish or playful experimentation (Roman Signer, Peter Fischli/David Weiss). A World of Its Own offers another history of photography, a photography created within the walls of the studio, and yet as groundbreaking and inventive as its seemingly more extroverted counterpart, street photography."
Text from the MoMA website
The exhibition is divided into 6 themes each with its own gallery space:
1. Surveying the Studio
2. The Studio as Stage
3. The Studio as Set
4. A Neutral Space
5. Virtual Spaces
6. The Studio, from Laboratory to Playground
The Studio as Stage
George Platt Lynes (American, 1907-1955)
Anonymous gift
Lucas Samaras (American, born Greece 1936)
Auto Polaroid
Eighteen black-and-white instant prints (Polapan), with hand-applied ink
each 3 3/4 x 2 15/16″ (9.5 x 7.4 cm)
overall 14 5/8 x 24″ (37.2 x 61 cm)
Gift of Robert and Gayle Greenhill
Auto Polaroid (details)
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
Madonna with Children
10 1/2 x 8 5/8″ (26.7 x 21.9 cm)
Gift of Shirley C. Burden
Untitled (Mary Ryan?)
13 3/16 x 11″ (33.5 x 27.9 cm)
Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)
Adrien Tournachon (French, 1825-1903)
Pierrot Surprised
11 1/4 x 8 3/16″ (28.6 x 20.8 cm)
Suzanne Winsberg Collection. Gift of Suzanne Winsberg
Maurice Tabard (French, 1897-1984)
6 9/16 x 6 1/2″ (16.7 x 16.5 cm)
Gift of Robert Shapazian
Edward Steichen (American, born Luxembourg. 1879-1973)
16 9/16 x 13 7/16″ (42.1 x 34.1 cm)
Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954)
Untitled #131
35 x 16 1/2″ (89 x 41.9 cm)
Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Fund
The Studio as Set
Barbara Kasten (American, born 1936)
Construct I-F
Color instant print (Polaroid Polacolor)
Acquired through the generosity of Wendy Larsen
Construct NYC 17
Silver dye bleach print
29 3/8 x 37 1/16″ (74.7 x 94.1 cm)
Gift of Foster Goldstrom
James Casebere (American, born 1953)
Subdivision with Spotlight
14 13/16 x 18 15/16″ (37.6 x 48.1 cm)
Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
Light Abstraction
9 15/16 x 7 15/16″ (25.2 x 20.2 cm)
Gift of Arnold Newman
Paul Outerbridge (American, 1896-1958)
Images de Deauville
Tri-color carbro print
15 3/4 x 12 1/4″ (40 x 31.1 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Ralph Seward Allen
Elad Lassry (Israeli, born 1977)
14 1/2 x 11 1/2″ (36.8 x 29.2 cm)
Fund for the Twenty-First Century
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
Wednesday – Monday, 10.30 am – 5.30 pm
Friday, 10.30 am – 8.00 pm
MOMA website
Exhibition: 'Cindy Sherman – Untitled Horrors' at Kunsthaus Zürich
Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, Cindy Sherman, colour photography, digital photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space and time
Tags: American film noir, Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman - Untitled Horrors, Cindy Sherman clowns, Cindy Sherman society portraits, Cindy Sherman Untitled #122, Cindy Sherman Untitled #129, Cindy Sherman Untitled #146, Cindy Sherman Untitled #153, Cindy Sherman Untitled #170, Cindy Sherman Untitled #216, Cindy Sherman Untitled #235, Cindy Sherman Untitled #304, Cindy Sherman Untitled #348, Cindy Sherman Untitled #363, Cindy Sherman Untitled #363 (Bus Riders I), Cindy Sherman Untitled #420, Cindy Sherman Untitled #544, Cindy Sherman Untitled #549-C, Cindy Sherman Untitled #93, Cindy Sherman Untitled Film Stills, clowns, gender, Hollywood/Hampton Types, identity, Italian Neo-Realism, Kunsthaus Zürich, modelling identity, performative utterances, performativity, physicality, Sex Pictures, Untitled Film Stills, Untitled Horrors
Exhibition dates: 6th June – 4th September 2014
I remember some time in the dim distant past when Cindy Sherman's photographs actually had relevance and were important in and of themselves… but perhaps my memory is playing tricks with me. Memory is a strange thing for we remember only fragments of fragments, like an echo chamber, a distant echo of something (the construction of identity and gender) that was once cutting edge, now overtaken by reality itself – on the red carpet, in the cosmetic surgery offices, in the media mags. Once there may have been an original, an original Cindy Sherman, an original idea, but now there just seems to be pastiche after pastiche of a Sherman nobody is sure ever really existed.
There are certainly some horrors among this posting, images that I wish I had never seen, and never really wish to see again. As the amount of 'Untitled' works rises (untitled is such a cop out!) the numbers, and the body count, become irrelevant. The early work, through the 80s to the early 90s, had important things to say but now the artist formally know as Sherman is earth mother goddess to all, and ancestral trickster to many. Enough please!
Many thankx to the Kunsthaus Zürich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of Cindy Sherman – Untitled Horrors at Kunsthaus Zürich
Photo: Lena Huber
61 × 121.9 cm
Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo
© Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
Vanmoerkerke Collection, Belgium
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, Donation: The New Carlsberg Foundation
© Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New Yor
184.2 × 125.4 cm
Skarstedt Gallery, New York
179.1 x 120.7 cm
Collection Metro Pictures, New York
"From 6 June to 14 September 2014, the Kunsthaus Zürich plays host to a major retrospective featuring American artist Cindy Sherman (b. 1954). Sherman is one of the leading exponents of staged photography. In her work she deals with issues of identity, (gender) roles and physicality, almost always using herself as the model. Cindy Sherman's earliest works were created in 1975. Preceding the celebrated 'Untitled Film Stills' (1977-1980), these photographs were produced at home using an external shutter release, yet they were already concerned with the issues of identity and role play that are central to her oeuvre. The exhibition Cindy Sherman – Untitled Horrors includes a selection of these early and rarely shown works as well as her latest pieces, some of them monumental and covering entire walls. Sherman references the techniques and forms of advertising, cinema and classical painting.
THE THREATENING HEART OF UNTITLED HORRORS
The principal focus of the overview, which has been compiled by the Kunsthaus together with the artist, is the threatening and grotesque. The retrospective's subtitle, 'Untitled Horrors', is partly a reference to the exhibition's content, but also a play on the fact that Cindy Sherman invariably labels her photos 'Untitled'. She leaves it to the viewer to read the pictures in their own way, inviting them to develop the stories behind them as they see fit, and come up with their own titles.
110 WORKS IN TOTAL
The presentation includes all the key works from the various phases of Cindy Sherman's artistic career. Iconic pieces from the early period, such as the famous 'Untitled Film Stills' series, reminiscent of Italian Neo-Realism and American film noir, appear alongside the later photographs of 'Hollywood/Hampton Types' (2000-2002), while the 'Clowns' (2003-2004) encounter the 'Sex Pictures' series from 1992. These juxtapositions reveal the remarkable consistency with which, throughout her long career, the artist has engaged with fundamental issues of human existence and repeatedly explored new avenues of formal expression. Curated by Mirjam Varadinis and created in association with the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the 110-work presentation dispenses with a linear or chronological approach, choosing instead to create unexpected combinations that shed new light on the oeuvre of this important artist and her exploration of the self through film and photography."
Text from the Kunsthaus Zürich website
Private collection, courtesy Segalot LP, New York
146.7 × 99.1 cm
Collection Metro Pictures & Skarstedt Gallery
Collection Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
Untitled #363 (Bus Riders I)
Tate; purchased with funds provided by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, 2001
Chromogenic color print (2-teilig)
Each: 182.4 × 115.8 cm
172.7 × 254 cm
Untitled #549-C
Pigment / print on PhotoTex, adhesive fabric,
Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
CH–8001 Zurich
Tue/Fri–Sun 10 am – 6 pm
Wed/Thu 10 am – 8 pm
Kunsthaus Zürich website
Exhibition: 'People In A River Landscape: August Sander And The Photography Of The Present From The Lothar Schirmer Collection' at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Categories: beauty, black and white photography, Cindy Sherman, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, space, time and works on paper
Tags: Alte Pinakothek Self-portrait Munich, Alter Posthof in Bacharach, Antlitz der Zeit, August Sander, August Sander Alter Posthof in Bacharach, August Sander Bauernpaar, August Sander Bauernpaar - Zucht und Harmonie, August Sander Children in the city, August Sander Der erdgebundene Mensch, August Sander Deutz Bridge, August Sander Die Familie in der Generation, August Sander Handlanger, August Sander Hans Poelzig, August Sander Heinrich Hoerle, August Sander Painter [Heinrich Hoerle], August Sander Peasant Couple, August Sander People of the 20th century, August Sander Stadtwald, August Sander The Architect, August Sander The Architect [Hans Poelzig], August Sander The Rhine near Boppard, August Sander Urban Forest, August Sander View from the Mülheim Bridge, Bauernpaar - Zucht und Harmonie, Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman Untitled #127, Das Lichtbild, Der erdgebundene Mensch, Die Familie in der Generation, German artist, german photographer, German photography, Handlanger, Hans Poelzig, Heinrich Hoerle, Heinrich Zille, Hilla Becher, Jeff Wall, Jeff Wall The Thinker, Kurt Wolff Verlag, Lothar Schirmer collection, Michael Fried, New Objectivity, People in a River Landscape, People of the 20th century, Rhineland, Rhineland landscapes, Sander Antlitz der Zeit, Sander Das Lichtbild, Sander Rhineland landscapes, Stammmappe, The Earthbound Human, The Rhine near Boppard, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Ruff Portrait (T. Ruff), Thomas Ruff selfportrait, Thomas Struth, Thomas Struth Alte Pinakothek Self-portrait Munich, Why Photography Matters, Wolfgang Kemp
Exhibition dates: 2nd April – 24th August 2014
What a fascinating exhibition this looks to be… I wish I could see it!
Quite a few Sander photographs I have never seen before in the posting.
Sander is another photographer that would be near the top of my list.
Many thankx to the Pinakothek der Moderne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Stadtwald [Urban Forest]
Lothar Schirmer Collection, Munich
© The Photographic Collection, SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archive, Cologne, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014
Children in the city
21.3 x 26 cm (sheet)
Alter Posthof in Bacharach
Die Familie in der Generation
Deutz Bridge, Rhine in winter
The Rhine near Boppard, Osterspey
The Rhine II
View from the Mülheim Bridge, Sunrise
August Sander's epochal cycle People of the 20th Century is considered one of the most important works in the history of art and photography of the last century.
Sander's photographic typology of German society did not only fascinate artists, writers and philosophers of that period but, at the same time, formed an important point of reference for the artistic concept contemporary photographers had of themselves. This is also reflected in the Munich publisher Lothar Schirmer's photographic collection, the starting point of which was a group of some 80 works by Sander comprising not only portraits, but also landscapes and urban pictures, acquired in the early 1970s.
This batch of works, acquired from the artist's estate back in the 1970s, comprises not only more than 40 originals of Sander's famous portraits, including masterpieces such as the Stammmappe focussing on farmers in Westerwald, the portrait of the artist Heinrich Hoerle in the austere style of New Objectivity and Handlanger, with its impressive visual directness, but also a rare group of lesser known Rhineland landscapes and vedute of Cologne from the 1930s. Precisely the last two groups of works mentioned are enduring proof that Sander's vision of an equally authentic and veritable document of the times was not only to be limited to people within their social and societal structure but should also include their immediate surroundings, the landscape and the urban environment – an aspect that, for a long time, was given little attention in analyses of the photographer's work since his death in April, fifty years ago.
In view of the undisputed importance of Sander's portraits, it is surpising that a more extensive selection of the photographer's work is only now to be seen in the exhibition People in a River Landscape – and that in Munich too, although there were in fact a number of links between the artist and the city. Sander's pioneering photography book, Antlitz der Zeit, was published in 1929 by the Munich-based Kurt Wolff Verlag; one year later, his works were to be seen in the exhibition Das Lichtbild – one of the rare presentations of Sander's works anywhere before 1933; and in the 1960s and '70s his extensive estate was stored not far from Munich.
Sander's photographs from this collection will be exhibited for the first time in their entirety and be displayed in dialogue with works by contemporary artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth and Jeff Wall. The selection will be extended by a rare group of extraordinary photographs taken in Berlin by Heinrich Zille in the late 19th /early 20th century and enlarged by Thomas Struth almost 100 years later.
The exhibition presents a both representative and focussed cross section of Sander's photographic oeuvre. At the same time it shows the medium of photography in a wider perspective by placing individual groups of works by Sander in dialogue with those of contemporary artists. Starting with a typology by Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose encyclopaedically structured work can be regarded as an immediate successor to Sander's photographic credo, the selection – supplemented by works from the holdings of the Sammlung Moderne Kunst – includes Andreas Gursky's Rhine picture, urban views by Thomas Struth and Jeff Wall and portraits by Thomas Ruff and Cindy Sherman, among others. The interplay between the past and the present, between small-format, black-and-white prints and colour images the size of large canvases, between austere documentary works and staged and digitally processed pictures, not only illustrates the immediate relevance of Sander's concept, far beyond any temporal or formal distinctions, but also how photography has become established as an artistic form of expression in its own right within the context of contemporary art. This topic will be explored in greater depth in the accompanying series of lectures Why Photography Matters, at which the artists Hilla Becher and Thomas Struth, as well as the art historians Wolfgang Kemp and Michael Fried will be speaking. As a modest homage to another historical precursor, the exhibition finishes with a rare group of photographs of Berlin by Heinrich Zille taken at the turn of the century, which Thomas Struth enlarged and reinterpreted in 1985 using the original negatives."
Press release from the Pinakothek der Moderne website
Large-format slides in lightbox
Courtesy of the artist
© Jeff Wall
Handlanger [Odd-job man]
© Cindy Sherman / Courtesy Schirmer/Mosel München
The Architect [Hans Poelzig]
Portrait (T. Ruff) [Selfportrait]
C-Print/Diasec
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014
Der erdgebundene Mensch [The Earthbound Human]
Bauernpaar – Zucht und Harmonie [Peasant Couple – Breeding and Harmony]
Alte Pinakothek, Self-portrait, Munich
© Thomas Struth / Courtesy Schirmer/Mosel München
Painter [Heinrich Hoerle]
Barer Strasse 40
Daily except Monday 10am – 6pm
Pinakothek der Moderne website
Exhibition: 'Louise Lawler. Adjusted' at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest
Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: American Conceptual artist, andy warhol, Cindy Sherman, Conceptual Art, conceptual photography, Documenta 12, Ema (Nude on a Staircase), formal-aesthetic analogies, fractured harmony, Gerhard Richter, Gerhard Richter Ema (Nude on a Staircase), Hand On Her Back (traced), Hungary, I-O (adjusted to fit), Incidental contiguities, Jack Goldstein, Jasper Johns, Julia Margaret Cameron, Life After 1945 (Hats), Louise Lawler, Louise Lawler 16, Louise Lawler Adjusted, Louise Lawler Andy Warhol, Louise Lawler Baby Blue, Louise Lawler Chandelier, Louise Lawler Gerhard Richter, Louise Lawler Hand On Her Back (traced), Louise Lawler I-O, Louise Lawler Jasper Johns, Louise Lawler Julia Margaret Cameron, Louise Lawler Life After 1945 (Hats), Louise Lawler Lucio Fontana, Louise Lawler Monogram, Louise Lawler Nude, Louise Lawler Nude 2002, Louise Lawler Pink and Yellow and Black I, Louise Lawler Pink and Yellow and Black II, Louise Lawler Pollock and Tureen (traced), Louise Lawler Portrait, Louise Lawler Portrait 1982, Louise Lawler Salon Hodler, Louise Lawler Salon Hodler (traced), Louise Lawler Still Life (Napkins), Louise Lawler Taking Place, Louise Lawler Unsentimental, Louise Lawler WAR IS TERROR, Lucio Fontana, Ludwig Museum, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, melancholy and postmodernist criticality, Museum Ludwig, performative relics, Pictures Generation, Pink and Yellow and Black I, Pink and Yellow and Black I (Red Disaster), Pink and Yellow and Black II, Pink and Yellow and Black II (Green Coca Cola Bottles), poetic ambiguities, Pollock and Tureen (traced), Richard Prince, Salon Hodler, Salon Hodler (traced), Sherrie Levine, Still Life (Napkins), WAR IS TERROR, Whitney Biennial 2008
Exhibition dates: 11th October 2013 – 26th January 2014
Complex and polyglot, conceptual and analytical, but simultaneously ironically light, elegiac, and unfathomable. Abstract, non-evaluative, impartial presentations and suggestive settings gazing toward the fringes of art. Strongly shaped by institutional critique, the works are casual (causal?) sociological commentaries reflecting on aesthetic, economic, and historical factors in art.
But do you like them?
Many thankx to the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Etude pour La Lecture, 1923, This Drawing is for Sale, Paris
© Louise Lawler, Metro Pictures, New York, Sprüth Magers Berlin/London
Etude pour La Lecture, 1923, This Drawing is for Sale, Paris, 1985 is a gelatine silver print showing a corner in a Paris room. The image is a careful composition of vertical and horizontal lines made up by architectural features in the background and, in the foreground, a square-edged leather covered chair on the right and a group of framed artworks, stacked against the wall, on the left. A free-standing ashtray in the image centre firmly anchors the composition on its vertical-horizontal axis: its narrow metal tube stand creating a strong vertical line and the ashtray repeating the horizontal plane of the chair arm below it. One artwork is visible in its entirety: a drawing by Fernand Léger (1881-1955) showing two women, one standing and one reclining, both holding books. Propped on a much larger frame that is turned towards the wall, the image – Etude pour La Lecture, 1923 – reinforces the combination of horizontal and vertical elements in Lawler's picture. Below it, a painting of an organic form, also by Léger (La Racine, 1934), is partially visible behind the arm of the chair. (Text from the Tate website)
(Holzer, Nadin and Other Artists)
Cibachrome (museum box)
28 1/2 x 37 1/4 x 1 inches
72.40 x 94.60 x 2.50 cm
Top left: Edward Weston photographs of his son Neil Weston
27 x 39-5/8 inches
Andy Warhol Artwork © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
I-O (adjusted to fit)
19 5/16 x 23 3/8 inches
49,10 x 59,40 cm (410.1)
Taking Place – Il m'aime, un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout (He loves me, a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all)
Cibachrome face mounted to plexiglass on 2″ museum box
Salon Hodler
Unsentimental
Pollock and Tureen (traced)
Bedruckte Folie / printed vinyl
Salon Hodler (traced)
Hand On Her Back (traced)
"The Museum Ludwig is hosting the first comprehensive exhibition in Germany of the American Conceptual artist Louise Lawler (born 1947, lives and works in New York). The exhibition comprises around 80 works, which are positioned throughout the entire building, thus engendering surprising situations through their encounters with the Museum Ludwig's permanent collection. In addition, a new series of ten "tracings" has been created for the show – outline drawings that are reminiscent of children's coloring books and draw on earlier works by Lawler. Furthermore, the artist has agreed to create two new, large-format "stretches" for the Museum Ludwig. These are photos that she has printed out on self-adhesive vinyl film and whose proportions she tailors to the space in question – even if that means deforming the motifs. Lawler's work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including Documenta 12, the Whitney Biennial 2008, and recently in a large overview at the Wexner Art Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Louise Lawler photographs works by other artists and captures them in their various contexts: in museums, in private collections, at auctions, or in storage. Her works illustrate just how much the meaning of art is influenced by how it is presented and by the attendant circumstances in the institutions where it is located. Her analytical and at times ironic approach is revealing, but by no means evaluative, such as when her view of an abstract work by Jackson Pollock correlates with the way she looks at a decorative soup tureen.
Louise Lawler, who embarked on her oeuvre in the late 1970s, belongs to the broader field of the "Pictures Generation," which also includes Sherrie Levine, Jack Goldstein, Richard Prince, and Cindy Sherman. At the same time, her beginnings were also strongly shaped by the institutional critique of the early 1970s, and consequently her works were initially interpreted as sociological commentaries reflecting on aesthetic, economic, and historical factors in art. Yet beyond this, her photographs illustrate to this day that an impartial presentation of art simply does not exist; they reveal the ideological implications inherent in the suggestive settings given to artworks, which would otherwise scarcely be visible. Lawler directs her gaze toward the fringes of art, as it were, creating subtle commentaries of a poetic casualness via compositions that distinguish themselves by their formal approach as well as by their eccentricity.
Pink and Yellow and Black II (Green Coca Cola Bottles) from On a Wall, On a Cow, In a Book, In the Mail
Pink and Yellow and Black I (Red Disaster) from On a Wall, On a Cow, In a Book, In the Mail
To describe Louise Lawler's artistic practice is not easy: it is complex and polyglot, conceptual and analytical, but simultaneously ironically light, elegiac, and unfathomable. Lawler eyes the incidental, undermining the economy of attention, dislocating hierarchies, and querying, with the air of critical nonchalance, the system of art and its institutions. When works of art, arranged based on their colors and forms like flowers, unashamedly reveal the tastes and values of their owners, or sculptures held in gloomy depots are deprived of the attention they deserve, then Lawler's works are a means of redress – what is not visible is given visibility. Her camera registers not only the life of artworks (after they have left the artists' studios) in museums, corporate collections, depots, or at auctions, it also penetrates the most intimate abodes of the collectors, intruding even into their bedrooms. Lawler's practice here is ambivalent, hardly judgmental, but constantly interested in poetic ambiguities, fractured harmony, and suggestive relationships. Her work does not seek out the essence of art but looks for compulsions, rules, and their readability. Incidental contiguities, formal-aesthetic analogies, but also savage thought shape the work of Louise Lawler, which had its beginnings in the late 1970s in the context of appropriation art and followed in the footsteps of the practice of institutional critique, which has been all too often discursively co-opted. Almost forty years later a differentiated perspective on this subtle work opens up, a work that does not understand melancholy and postmodernist criticality as a contradiction and unfolds its potency precisely in subtle unsharpness.
We are delighted that with Adjusted Louise Lawler has put together such an extensive survey of her work for the very first time, a show that covers the early conceptual and performative relics, the so-called ephemera, as well as a wide-ranging selection of photographic works and the latest wall works. Although the greater part of her oeuvre is photographic, it becomes clear that Lawler is not a photographer. She uses the medium as a means to appropriate situations and, in resolute focusing, to let the things which would otherwise remain unarticulated speak for themselves. Her exhibition title, Adjusted, which is to be understood as referring to her large format wallpapers adjusted to fit the given circumstances, is the distant echo of a critical practice fully aware that adjusting is a dialectic process where there are neither winners nor losers, neither conquerors nor conquered.
Louise Lawler's exhibition Adjusted opens simultaneously with the new presentation of the collection Not Yet Titled. New and Forever at Museum Ludwig, which emphasizes the provisional nature of art historical narratives and presentations, colliding with the claim to eternity raised by the institution of the museum. Lawler's exhibition spans the entire building, intervenes in the contexts of the collection, and spreads itself out, then retreats, or functions plainly and simply as a casual commentary. The reflectivity of her work, its context-specific changeability, presents the provisional as a quality constitutive for art, which in the process makes it clear just how much circumstances determine the way of looking at things."
Excerpt from the Foreword by Philipp Kaiser
Life After 1945 (Hats)
Cibachrome (mounted on museum box)
© Louise Lawler, Metro Pictures, New York, Sprüth Magers Berlin and London
(Lucio Fontana)
Cibachrome (museum mounted)
(Gerhard Richter. Ema (Nude on a Staircase) 1966, 200 cm x 130 cm, Oil on canvas)
Still Life (Napkins)
Digital cibachrome on aluminum museum box
19-3/4 x 14-1/4 inches
WAR IS TERROR
(Julia Margaret Cameron)
Cibachrome, type on wall (sometimes)
(image) 39 1/2 x 28 inches
100,30 x 71,10 cm
(Jasper Johns)
Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art
1095 Budapest Komor Marcell Street 1
Hungary 06 1 555-3444
Tuesday – Sunday: 10.00 – 20.00
Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art website
Exhibition: 'Yasumasa Morimura: Theater of the Self' at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Categories: beauty, black and white photography, Cindy Sherman, colour photography, digital photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, Japanese artist, light, memory, painting, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space and time
Tags: A Requiem: Mishima 1970, A Requiem: Oswald 1963, A Requiem: Red Dream, A Requiem: Vietnam War, Andy Warhol in Motion, andy warhol museum, Cindy Sherman, Doublonnage (Marcel), Japanese artist, japanese photographer, Japanese photography, M's self-portrait, M's self-portrait No. 56/B 9, M's Self-portrait No.15, Marilyn Monroe, open self-portrait, Portrait (Futago), self-portrait, Self-portrait (Actress)/after Elizabeth Taylor 1, self-portraiture, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Warhol, Theater of the Self, To My Little Sister: for Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura, Yasumasa Morimura A Requiem, Yasumasa Morimura A Requiem: Mishima 1970, Yasumasa Morimura A Requiem: Oswald 1963, Yasumasa Morimura A Requiem: Red Dream / Mao, Yasumasa Morimura A Requiem: Theater of Creativity, Yasumasa Morimura A Requiem: Vietnam War, Yasumasa Morimura Andy Warhol in Motion, Yasumasa Morimura Doublonnage (Marcel), Yasumasa Morimura Elizabeth Taylor, Yasumasa Morimura Futago, Yasumasa Morimura M's self-portrait No. 56/B 9, Yasumasa Morimura M's Self-portrait No.15, Yasumasa Morimura Mao, Yasumasa Morimura Marilyn Monroe, Yasumasa Morimura Oswald, Yasumasa Morimura Portrait (Futago), Yasumasa Morimura Self-portrait (Actress), Yasumasa Morimura To My Little Sister: for Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura: Theater of the Self
Exhibition dates: 6th October 2013 – 12th January 2014
Cindy Sherman, eat your actress out…
A fascinating, erudite analysis of the difference between Edouard Manet's Olympia and Yasumasa Morimura's Futago can be found on the seemingly anonymous Hoegen: Thoughts About Gender, Sex And Sexuality web page (excerpt below). If you can find an author's name it would be appreciated!
Many thankx to The Andy Warhol Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
"In Anne D'Alleva's article concerning reception theory, she draws upon several scholars of art and literature to discuss the importance of not only the artist, but also of the viewer. She discusses the symbiotic relationship that must exist and the merits of the ideal viewer. The two artworks that she mentions to support her arguments are Edouard Manet's Olympia and Ysumasa Morimura's Futago. These two artworks are prime examples of works that establish an ideal viewer, or viewers, as well as a mirror stage. These two theories assist the art historian to go beyond the biography of the artist and question the relationship of the image and it's audience.
Just as Wolfgang Iser believes there is an implied reader for literature, one must believe that there is an implied viewer of Edouard Manet's Olympia and a different implied viewer for Yasumasa Morimura's Futago (114). In the case of Manet's Olympia, one might believe the ideal implied viewer is a white and wealthy man of the upper class. This ideal viewer would appreciate, or maybe question, the bold gaze of Olympia, and possibly even recognize her as the popular courtesan (116)…
The ideal viewer for Morimura's photograph is not as easy to define. One might make the presumption that Morimura desires the same ideal viewer of Manet, so that they can simply see the work differently. Also, one could assume that he intended his painting to be viewed by Asian, upper class homosexuals who have seen Manet's Olymia and want to connect on a more personal level. Either of these audiences may be ideal.
According to Ernest Kris, art "requires the participation of both artist and spectator." (110) Therefore, there must be something that establishes a relationship of the ideal viewer and the photograph of Yasumasa Morimura. Since it is a photograph, and not a painting, there is a humanistic connection that is not present in Manet's Olympia that ultimately assists the creation of an image-audience relationship. The gaze is not a representation of a gaze but the actual gaze of Morimura establishing a deeper relationship with the ideal viewer of the artist and subject. Since the ideal audience is harder to define for Morimura's photograph, the establishing element of the relationship between the ideal viewer and the artwork are also hard to define. If the ideal viewer is exactly that of Manet's: a white, wealthy, upper-class man, then the "shock factor" of the image is multiplied. The ideal viewer has just begun to accept this shocking image of a nude female daring to look at her viewer when Morimura decided to change the race, gender, and possibly the sexual orientation of the subject of the artwork. This assumption, however, provides that the viewer come with "pre-understanding" as described by Roman Ingarden (113); in this case, a memory of Manet's Olympia. If one assumes that this image is meant for the common man, this relationship is established through the use of photography, the universal and common way to capture images. If one assumes the connection between the inclusive group of Asian, male, homosexuals, then the establishment of the relationship is directly associated with the subject and artist…
The reception theory of Ernest Gombrich states the importance of perception is clearly prevalent within these works (113). The artists have taken their own interpretations of these works, but one must value the fact that their ideal viewers can be similar and have similar perceptions. The differences of their individual perceptions provide for the differences between their viewers. However, the perception of the viewer, whether ideal or not, is the ultimate reflection of the artwork in the culture.
Clearly, the mirror stage is present in these two images. The viewer does not seem to view their self in the artwork directly, but they do feel a connection to the work. Morimura most definitely used Manet's Olympia as a basis image for his Futago. Although some details are incongruous, the overall effect of Futago is a mirrored image of the whole self of Olympia. There are several differences in these paintings that one may attribute to race and gender that affect the dynamics of the mirror effect. Most obviously, Morimura, who was his own subject in his photographic rendition of Manet's Olympia, is a man. This affects the mirror image of the body. He is leaner, has no curves and is more muscular. Also, his race affects skin color as well as the some of the details of the picture. He has clearly chosen a kimono to replace the intricate shawl, and a seated, waving cat to replace standing one – both of these depictions have significance in Asian culture (116). Cultural implications are evident.
Overall, these two images reflect Anne D'Avelia's idea that that two similar artworks can have two different implied viewers. Also, they can mirror each other in certain respects, but diverge in others. These help reinforce D'Avelia notes that gender, expression, details, and race, all play roles in developing the image-audience relationship. They also reflect our class work exploring the troubling of gender norms and the gaze."
Portrait (Futago)
Color photograph
82 ¾ x 118 inches
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; A.W. Mellon Acquisition Endowment Fund, 92.108
To My Little Sister: for Cindy Sherman
Ilfochrome print mounted on aluminum
Private Collection, New York
Doublonnage (Marcel)
59 x 47 ¼ inches
Yasumasa Morimura's reprisals of European masterpieces are, at once, acts of homage and parody. Painstakingly realized, his photographic reconstructions of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn and Edouard Manet, among others, bring compositional questions together with those pertaining to race, gender and sexuality. In doing so, they reveal both the aesthetics and the politics embedded in the art historical canon.
This section of the exhibition focuses on Morimura's restaging of scenes from award winning films featuring Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Liza Minnelli, Jodie Foster and many others. It is notable that the artist's impersonations are not anonymous but well-known stars, archetypes of Hollywood's leading ladies. As stated in their titles, each work is a self-portrait and together they propose a range of possibilities for the artist's own identity. Morimura has stated, "My own self-definition includes this entire zone of possibilities. When I apply this way of thinking to making a self-portrait, it becomes what I call an 'open self-portrait.'"
M's Self-portrait No.15
18 ½ x 21 ¼ inches (framed)
Collection of the artist, on deposit at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
Self-portrait (Actress)/after Elizabeth Taylor 1
Ilfochrome print mounted to plexiglass
47 ¼ x 37 ¼ inches
Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
M's self-portrait No. 56/B 9 (or "as Marilyn Monroe")
11 ¾ x 14 inches
"For more than three decades Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura has forged an extraordinary body of work that reimagines the visual culture of the West, as well as that of his native Japan. Whether portraying Elizabeth Taylor, Mao Zedong or Andy Warhol, Morimura's iconic images examine the practice of photography while also claiming a space for the self in historical narratives. The artist inserts himself as the subject(s) in all of his works. The exhibition, Yasumasa Morimura: Theater of the Self, is a retrospective of Morimura's 30 year career covering his fascination with the self-portrait, celebrity, gay and transgendered life, art history, and popular culture align him closely with the work of Andy Warhol. Morimura has described himself as Warhol's "conceptual son."
Developed in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition focuses on three important bodies of work: his celebrated "Art History" photographs in which he painstakingly restages European masterpieces; "Requiem" in which Morimura recreates iconic photographs relating to political and cultural life; and the "Actors" series in which he assumes the personae of Hollywood luminaries such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Audrey Hepburn.
Milton Fine Curator of Art, Nicholas Chambers states, "Including almost 100 images, many of which have never before been seen in the United States, Theater of the Self offers audiences an in-depth view of Morimura's work. His pictures reveal a sophisticated form of engagement with the worlds of celebrity, art and the mass media that is at once celebration and critique, homage and parody, and has the effect of questioning the nature of the individual's relationship to culture-at-large.""
Press release from The Warhol website
The artworks comprising the Requiem Series are derived from photographic sources and depict prominent masculine figures in moments of triumph or transition. Substituting himself for ideologues, dictators and creative thinkers, Morimura reflects on what these figures represent for the broader culture and on the role of photography in celebrating, demonizing or memorializing them.
A Requiem: Vietnam War 1968 – 1991
A Requiem: Theater of Creativity / Andy Warhol in Motion
Digital video, black and white, silent, 3:58 minutes
Collection of the artist
A Requiem: Mishima 1970
Digital video, color, sound, 7:42 minutes
A Requiem: Red Dream / Mao
C- print mounted on alpolic
A Requiem: Oswald, 1963
The Andy Warhol Museum
117 Sandusky Street
Friday 10am – 10pm
The Andy Warhol Museum website
Yasumasa Morimura: Theater of the Self exhibition microsite
LIKE ART BLART ON FACBEOOK


Let me just say something. If you knew me prior to my little food transformation, you knew that if there was one thing I HATED with a passion it was Mexican food.
The smell of it made me gag, and I refused to go to any such restaurant.
Everyone who was cool liked Mexican food, and I definitely wasn't cool. (I know, I know, it's a generalized statement, but I promise it's how I felt).
My reason was simple. I threw up once when I was ten when my aunt made me eat a quesadilla. So, a lifelong hatred was warranted, right?
Later in life, this hate relationship I had posed a big issue. The problem wasn't that my taste buds were unpopular. It was that Mexican food is my husband's favorite food group–like lick the plate kind of favorite.
If you're friends with me now, you know taco night is one of my favorites. So, what changed?
Well, to be quite honest, my taste buds. As I continued this journey to real foods, my taste buds CRAVED fresh foods. I ate jalapeno for the first time. Now, I actually know what cilantro is.
I still won't eat Mexican at the very Americanized versions of it. 1. Because they are really unhealthy 2. They aren't fresh at all.
If I find myself at a social function and can't avoid it, I order the vegetable fajitas and fresh guacamole and chow down.
But now, Mexican food is on the main rotation. I can't go too long without it before I really miss it and our newfound love starts to waiver. I need it in my life. Lots.
My idea of a fresh taco night is some homemade corn tortillas, fresh and preferably local veggie toppings, some guacamole, and a nice protein (refried beans, walnut meat, or some good quality local meat).
I know Walnut Meat sounds weird. But it's really not. What's weird is the nasty ground beef in a log. Yes, things I used to buy.
If you are looking for meat free options, or just wanting to try something different, give this a shot. I know it will surprise you.
Get a good tortilla. I prefer to make my own using this recipe, but you can also get some good quality sprouted corn tortillas at the grocery store. The biggest thing here is to use organic–since corn is a top GMO crop.
Food for Life Sprouted Corn Tortillas. One of the best options with incredible ingredients. (I find at Earthfare and Kroger).
Garden of Eatin Shells (I have found at Earth Fare and Kroger). My only hesitation with this is the oil isn't organic, and I don't like that….But for a treat–would be nice.
Get some great toppings. We love: refried beans (so easy & cheap to make!), black beans, spinach/lettuce, onions, avocado, mushrooms, peppers, jalapeno, organic corn (frozen, then cooked), tomato or salsa, mango OR anything else your heart desires. Be creative & let the family get involved.
Assemble your ingredients, and voila–an incredible, filling meal!
Since going dairy free, I've discovered cool ways to make "dairy" like things without using milk, and sour cream is one of them. Who woulda thought I could still enjoy these things? I love using this Cashew Sour Cream with soups, tacos, or even this Mexican Lasagna (recipe coming soon).
Put all ingredients in a high powered blender.
Blend until smooth, stopping to scrape sides down if necessary.
Put the cashews in a large bowl and cover with filtered water. Cover with a dish towel and set aside for 2 hours or up to overnight.
Put all ingredients in a food processor.
Pulse a few times until walnuts are broken down, spices are mixed, and the consistency is like taco meat.
(optional step) Transfer to a saucepan and cook on medium, stirring frequently, until heated through.
1. Put the walnuts in a bowl and cover with filtered water. Cover with dish towel and set aside for 8 hours or overnight.
2. This is a family sized portion. Feel free to cut the recipe in half for less, or double for more.
The South Carolina heat is definitely moving in. It's the "I'm standing still outside, and I'm pouring sweat" kind of summer so far. And I have a feeling it'll be around for a while.
So, we might as well get used to it, have some friends over for a cookout, and eat things like watermelon and berry cobbler.
Except for my husband–he won't eat watermelon. Serious question, who doesn't like watermelon?
This recipe is adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks, Forks Over Knives. I made some adjustments to make it fit what we normally have on hand, and the taste we prefer.
I hope this makes your summer cookout a little nostalgic–but without all the bad stuff.
I like to serve mine with homemade coconut whipped cream.
Grease an 8 x 8 pan with coconut oil.
In a bowl, mix together all of the "Filling" ingredients.
Pour in prepared pan, cover with foil, and bake for 25 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk together the almond milk and vinegar. Set aside for 5 minutes. Then add the vanilla extract.
In a bowl, combine oat flour, baking powder, coconut palm sugar, and salt.
In a small bowl, mix together applesauce and almond butter.
Cut the applesauce mixture into the flour with a fork, until it becomes crumbly.
Pour in the milk mixture and stir until just combined.
Once the filling has cooked, reduce the oven to 350 degrees.
Remove the foil from the pan.
Plop spoonfuls of batter on top of the berry filling until all batter is used.
Combine the Sprinkling ingredients and pour on top of cobbler.
Return to oven and bake for 20 more minutes.
Writing this post about Ranch Dressing helps me remember how far my sweet husband has come in his journey! Ranch dressing was just HIS thing. Every salad needed a thousand croutons, bacon, and a mound of Ranch Dressing. I don't think he ever had anything else before he met me.
The point is–I realize Ranch Dressing is a food group to some. I was never big on Ranch, but for me it was BBQ sauce. So–I get it!
The real thing is atrocious. Like, really, really bad. It has no place in our diet. But there's good news, I promise. Most of the ingredients are FAKE anyways, so there's always a way to make fake stuff the REAL WAY.
For the very first ingredient, you see soybean oil. Soybeans are one of the top genetically modified crops in the United States. Sugar is most likely made from GMO sugar beets. You see chemicals, and MSG, and artificial flavors. Think about that. Artificial flavors. That means they are fake. They are made in a lab. And remember, if it's made in a lab, it takes a lab to digest. We aren't labs. We're people. We're human, and we can't process these kinds of foods.
Feel blah after you eat? Feel tired? Your body spends most of its energy digesting food. So what you put in your body DOES matter. If it spends all day trying to digest foreign ingredients, it doesn't have much room left to get you through your day.
Here's the good news. You don't have to give up ranch dressing. That's the cool thing about this journey. We aren't giving up stuff (well, except the bad stuff!). You just have to find a better way to eat the things you love. I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't live without chocolate chip cookies!
Here's an EASY, quick way to have Ranch Dressing. Use it on a salad, as a vegetable dip, or make something fancy like these Beer Battered Buffalo Cauliflower Bites (I used gluten free beer and gluten free flour blend).
Read this recipe to hear my thoughts on Vegenaise!
Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.
This recipe is easy peasy. Kind of like our Easy Peasy Tortilla Chips, but tasting like a milkshake. I mean, really, is there anything wrong with this picture?
Believe it or not, sometimes I don't want green stuff. As I've mentioned, I am 100% a recovering sugar addict, BUT living this clean lifestyle has helped me understand why I was so addicted. White refined sugar is like a drug–it actually makes your brain remember the feeling you had (as does MSG) and then reminds you that you need it over and over again.
For me, once I got educated, I was DONE. I wasn't gonna let some white powdered mess rule my life.
I will say that I eat sweets every single day. Lots of my recipes come from some favorite blogs like Detoxinista or Oh She Glows, but some are just from experimenting in the kitchen. You can check out our whole desserts tab to see what we like, plus many of our smoothies taste like desserts too, like this recipe!
This one's so simple, it feels odd putting it on paper. But, it has a protein punch (from the almond butter) and has a milkshake consistency. It's guilt free–so I don't feel bad drinking it for breakfast, although I usually drink it mid-afternoon for a boost!
Put all ingredients in the blender and blend until creamy!
This has been an awesome week. I'm not sharing many details right now, other than to say I'm quickly discovering how I can fully THRIVE to live in my own life. I have a LONG post coming in the next month or so about this.
I've been so excited that I'm having trouble sleeping. I know, it's totally against my own rules, but my brain literally won't turn off. I'm breaking out my lavender oil and having to take baths at night just to calm down.
I've been super busy, fitting in regular life, doctors' appointments, baseball, the website, and music, but y'all know THIS girl's still gotta eat.
For breakfast, I made our Blueberry Muffin Oatmeal recipe, but halved it because I was the only one eating it. I washed it down with a glass of 100% organic apple juice.
The previous night, I made some incredible stuffed peppers–recipe adapted from this one!
I had some leftover quinoa stuffing, so for lunch this day, I had a salad, grilled pineapple, and stuffing!
In the afternoon, I was "snacky" hungry so I ate a bag of these Kale Chips. If you haven't tried these, YOU HAVE TO!! This Mango Habanero kind is to die for (I found at Kroger).
As I've been starting back singing, I have to get back in the routine of running–as it's the one sport that really strengthens my lungs! Ok, I have to admit, taking a selfie while running is not only difficult, but downright embarrassing.
But you know me, I'm all about being real. So here is my no makeup mid-run selfie. You know, thriving to live!
This particular night was a crazy one because we had a baseball game, and I was by myself. I knew I wouldn't get to eat dinner until everyone else was fed, bathed, and in bed (probably around 9pm!), so I prepared ahead of time, and took this Vanilla Milkshake Smoothie (made with frozen banana, maple syrup, almond butter, and almond milk) with me so I had a protein/energy punch to get through the game.
So yes, my favorite thing about Andrew's new job is that there's no stress on baseball nights. Because on nights like these when I'm by myself, I really, really see no light at the end of the tunnel. It was almost 9 o'clock before I was able to eat. I was exhausted and TOO TIRED to cook myself something.
So in desperate times, I always have a back up plan in my pantry–in the form of Amy's Organic Soups. These things ROCK and have all organic ingredients, and even vegan options for me, as I've been 100% vegan for about 2 months to see how I feel eliminating dairy and egg from my diet.
This Lentil Vegetable one is my favorite. I served it with a toasted Food for Life Gluten Free English Muffin, and it was delicious!
I'm pretty sure I was too tired for dessert this night. Hey–one benefit of a busy schedule?!
A note about being vegan: I have been a vegan for about 2 months now as an experiment. I am not against animal products, just promote local and organic options when available. Andrew, my husband, still eats plenty of meat, and we coexist beautifully. I just don't want anyone reading to think that I think EVERYONE should be a vegan, because as of right now, my belief is that it DOESN'T work for everyone. I think the stuffed peppers would be amazing with some local spicy sausage, and I'm always an advocate of adding some grilled chicken to any dish!
What are YOU eating today??


CLOUDS. SNOW LIKELY AFTER MIDNIGHT. LOWS IN THE UPPER TEENS.
15 TO 30 MPH...INCREASING TO 25 TO 40 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.
CHILL VALUES IN THE SINGLE DIGITS ABOVE ZERO AFTER MIDNIGHT.
20S BELOW ZERO IN THE AFTERNOON.
WAS 95.78 FEET...AND THE WATER TEMPERATURE WAS 34 DEGREES.


Come Out & Meet The A2 Hosting Team!
Last year when we were sending out our happy hour invitation, we made a minor, last second edit to it. Since we didn't quite know how well the event would turn out, we changed the invitation from the First "Annual" A2 Hosting Happy Hour to just The First A2 Hosting Happy Hour. The good news is that the event was such a good time that we in fact decided to do it again.
Come on out and join us on June 6th from 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM EST at the Corner Brewery (720 Norris Street Ypsilanti, MI). Mingle with the A2 Hosting staff and some of our other customers! If that's not a good enough reason to join us, we're going to have free food, free drinks and even giveaways (including an IPAD mini)!
So we can best plan for the event, please let us know by May 31st that you will be attending. We can't wait to meet you and to see you there!