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Jack Whitten- Secrets From The Woodshed

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Dead Reckoning I, 1980, Acrylic on canvas, 73 x 73 inches.

When Jack Whitten left us, far too soon, this past January 20th, his hard earned, long-time-coming place among the most important and innovative Painters of his time was assured. This was most recently brought home for me in Spring, 2017 with the excellent Jack Whitten at Hauser & Wirth, where I was completely enthralled by the selection of 19 Paintings, all from 2016, save one each from 2015 and 2017.

Quantum Wall (A Gift for Prince), 2016, Acrylic on canvas with tivar. 190 x 84 inches(!), seen at  Jack Whitten, at Hauser & Wirth, February 7, 2017.

Jack Whitten often said his Paintings were “made,” not “Painted1.” In creating these Paintings, he worked with what he called “tesserae,” a chunk of acrylic that had been cut from a large slab of acrylic poured into a mould that were then applied to the canvas like mosaics. Walking through Jack Whitten last year, each Painting was so meticulously “made,” I couldn’t believe he could make so many of them in one year, in his late 70s.

Installation view of the first gallery of Jack Whitten at Hauser & Wirth, February 7, 2017. Quantum Wall (A Gift for Prince), seen above is on the back wall.

Standing front and center in the main gallery, the Paintings were accompanied by something I never saw before- a Jack Whitten Sculpture(!)- Quantum Man (The Sixth Portal), 2016. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Surrounded by the Paintings, I came away struck by how different it seemed from them. During the run of the show, the Art documentarians, Art21, created this short piece on Jack Whitten. It serves as a wonderful introduction-

Earlier this year, the collected journals, essays and public talks of the Artist were published in the massive 500+ page book, Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed (see BookMarks at the end). But, there was more…MUCH more hidden in that woodshed. It turned out the Artist had been creating a body of Sculpture going back to 1963 that he kept to himself, only having shown them twice in Crete, where he had a home and where he created many of his Sculptures. Except for that one work included in his last Hauser & Wirth show in 2017, he had never shown his Sculpture in this country (as far as I know).

Until now.

I’ve never seen the likes of this before. Lichnos, 2008, named after a somewhat dangerous Greek fish, at the entrance at The Met Breuer, November 23, 2018.

A few years ago he finally decided to show them. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see the resulting show, Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017 (henceforth, Odyssey), when it opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art on April 22nd, before moving to The Met Breuer on September 6th.

To say it’s a revelation is a huge understatement. Odyssey isn’t “A” revelation- It’s a revelation in so many ways, I can’t count them.

The meaning of my life- in one Photo. Installation view of the first gallery shows Jack Whitten’s earlier Sculpture surrounded by five of his Paintings. I was filled with wonder each and every time I entered this space.

When I entered the 3rd Floor at The Met Breuer to see it for the first time on October 5th, I had walked no more than 100 feet into the first gallery, when I realized, “THIS is why I go to Art shows.” Meaning, I live for the chance to discover something new and great. Standing in a spot where I could take in the whole room, I felt like I was, truly, in a different world- a world that, somehow, had managed to synthesize the past and the present in a completely unique and fresh way that pointed straight ahead. That visit, I never made it out of the first room shown above. So transfixed was I by every work it contained, it took me 3 subsequent visits to see all of the show. Each of my eventual eight visits left me filled with wonder at this wider view of the sheer scope and range of Jack Whitten’s creativity and talent. I felt that I was standing in a space that was somehow sacred. Each work reverberated with a deeper essence greater than the sum of its parts or its stunning design. Each has a spirit of its own.

As I moved through the show, at the pace of a frozen glacier (remember them?), I was struck by the feeling that it’s so sad that having overcome so much in his life Jack Whitten didn’t live to see this utter triumph- a show mounted by two of this country’s great Museums that once and for all establishes him as a Master Artist of our time.

And then, another revelation hit me, in the form of a question- WHEN was the last time a great Artist who had worked his entire life creating a major body of work in one medium (in this case, Painting) passed away and then ANOTHER major body of his work, in a completely different medium (Sculpture) was discovered? If you can think of one, let me know.

While Jack Whitten’s Sculpture feature wood, that’s not all they consist of. His brilliance extended to his taste, evidenced in the materials he carefully selected for these works. A partial list includes lead, copper, a wide range of wood (see this list-2), fishing line, various bones, and Gorilla Glue & saw dust are combined with any number of more common objects. Yes, those “blades” seen in the 3 striking works in the foreground are marble.

Moving through the show, it became apparent that the style of Jack Whitten’s Sculpture evolved every bit as much as his style of Painting did. New materials came into the mix, creating a vocabulary that extended dramatically beyond wood, but the essence of their spirit remained consistent.

The White House, September 22, 2016. *- Photo by Cheriss May arts.gov

Jack Whitten was born (in 1939) and raised in Alabama before becoming discouraged by the racial turmoil he had encountered and seen first hand, particularly in the demonstrations he took part in3. He moved to NYC in 1960 to study at Cooper Union. Here, he was able to learn from “both sides,” he put it, encountering some of the most well known white and black Artists of the time, including Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jacob Lawrence, Philip Guston, Romare Bearden, Franz Kline, Andy Warhol and many others4. In fact, throughout his life, Jack Whitten met many of the great figures of his time, from Dr. Martin Luther King to John Coltrane to President Obama, seen above awarding him a National Medal of Arts for 2015. More importantly, he felt he learned from each one. He also saw some of the great cultural and societal events of our times- including Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, after having met him a few years earlier.

Jack Whitten was, also, an eyewitness to the first plane flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11 from 14 blocks away! Incredibly, his voice is heard on the only video there is of that plane impacting the North Tower, by the Naudet brothers who were making a documentary on the New York Fire Department. Following them around, that morning they answered a call about a gas leak at the building Jack Whitten owned on Lispenard Street. The Naudets happened to be filming the firemen who were trying to find it when the plane flew right over their heads! Jack Whitten’s voice is the one heard making the expletive as it crashes into the North Tower5. He subsequently made one of his most powerful and important Paintings, in my opinion, 9.11.01, in 2006.

9.11.01, 2006. Acrylic, ash, animal blood, hair, and mixed media on canvas, 120 × 240″ (304.8 × 609.6 cm). Seen at Jack Whitten: The Messenger, MoMA, July 31, 2025.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Earlier this year, the Baltimore Museum of Art, who had sold works by Andy Warhol and Franz Kline (both of whom Jack Whitten knew) to fund new acquisitions astutely used some of that money to buy 9.11.01. The Museum’s Director, Christopher Bedford called it, “the most significant acquisition I’ll ever make for a museum.” He went on to say that he feels that “in 100 years it will be regarded as highly as Matisse’s Blue Nude, 1907, currently considered the crown jewel of the Museum’s holding6.”

All throughout his life, he followed his own path. Shortly after arriving in NYC, he visited the City’s Museums, where he saw the work of African Artists in The Met and the Brooklyn Museum that had the biggest and longest lasting influence7 on his Art, especially his Sculpture, which he began about 1963.

Power Figure: Male (Nkisi), 19th century, Angola or Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“All of this stuff was inspired by those figures. All of it. That’s the source,” Jack Whitten said of his Sculpture and these early African figures he saw in NYC museums (per the Audio Guide).

Homage to Malcolm, 1965, front, Homage to the Kri-Kri, 1985, left, the Painting, Black Monolith III For Barbara Jordan, 1998, rear center and Power Figure: Male (Nkisi) 19th century from Angola, via The Met’s permanent collection, right, one of the possible influences on Jack Whitten’s Sculpture, who visited The Met after moving to NYC in 1960, to study its collection of African Art.

Finding inspiration, (Odyssey includes some of the African, early American and Mycenaean Art from The Met’s permanent collection that may have influenced him), he also honored the purpose of many of these older works. And so, we see works that are “Power Figures,” “Guardians” (including one for wife, his daughter as well as himself), “Totems,” or “Reliquaries,” while others reference animals, including Owls, Scorpions, Orfos, Lichnos and Sharks. Two reference contemporary figures (something his Paintings do more often)- the then recently deceased Malcolm X, created in 1965, above, and the fascinating John Lennon Altarpiece created in 1968 (seen further below). In discussing his Homage to Malcolm, I was struck by the Artist’s comment on the Audio Guide regarding the “rough to smooth” character of the work, explaining, “The man had many stages to his personality. It’s another example of white folks trying to squeeze black people into one dimensional people. But, we’re not that.”

The Afro-American Thunderbolt, 1983-84

It then became apparent that a number of other Sculptures in this show also move from “rough to smooth,” each with exquisite craftsmanship.

Detail.

One of the reasons I think Mr. Whitten may have kept his Sculpture to himself is that many of the works are personal. He created a series of Guardian figures for his family, and this one for himself. As he said on the Audio Guide, “Growing up in the South, we had no protectors, so I built that one for myself, and it has served me well.”

The Guardian III, For Jack, 1986. Notice the blue section underneath, made from coiled fishing line. These “hidden” colors appear in a number of his Sculptures, where they seem to glow from underneath.

With, apparently, only those closest to him knowing, Jack Whitten managed to rewrite Sculptural history for the 20th and 21st centuries, beginning by forging his own way with African Art that by-steps the influence of the European modernists and Cubism, (including no less than Picasso, who’s own monumental 2015 Sculpture show at MoMA I wrote about here) of the early 20th century8.

Even though he studied at Cooper Union, looking at his career, it becomes obvious he learned every bit as much, if not more, from his conversations with other Artists, his observations and through discovering his own techniques- in both Sculpture and Painting.

Black Monolith II (For Ralph Ellison), 1994, Acrylic, molasses, copper, salt, coal, ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, eggshell, razor blade on canvas, 58 x 52 inches.

Detail of the center of the “head.”

If Odyssey only consisted of Jack Whitten’s Sculpture, it would still be a major show. That it ALSO contains 16 major Paintings provides an unprecedented opportunity to see works from the same periods in different medium side by side. The whole is brilliantly installed, bringing different combinations of work into view at the same time as the visitor moves around. The sum of its parts takes Odyssey to an entirely different level into the realm of historic, in my opinion, where it now joins the list of truly great shows to have appeared at The Met Breuer. It’s becoming a formidable list, possibly unequalled in NYC since it opened on March 15, 2016. Imagine that.

Bush Woman, 1974-5, in front of Delta Group II, 1975, the only work by the Artist in The Met’s collection, as far as I know. The superb installation of Odyssey is apparent in the juxtaposition of these two works, where the similarities and the differences are apparent and striking. Given both, it’s endlessly fascinating to me that Jack Whitten finished these two pieces in the same year.

“My inspiration for painting comes from the wood. All of my ideas in painting come from the wood. My head is bursting!” he said, referring to his Sculpture9.

John Lennon Altarpiece, 1968, seen in front of Black Monolith VIII (For Maya Angelou), 2015, 84 x 63 inches, left and The Guardian I, For Mary, 1983, right.

I bore those words in the front of my mind as I looked closer. During the last 3 of my 8 visits, I tried hard to see what he meant, and, truth be told, I am still trying to connect his Sculpture to his Painting. Then again, that’s the nature of the mystery of inspiration.

This is NOT by Gerhard Richter. Its Slberian Salt Grinder, 1974, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 72 x 50 inches, by Jack Whitten that predates the German Painter’s “Squeegee Paintings” by about 15 years! Displayed “In Memoriam – Jack Whitten” at MoMA, seen on October 26, 2018.

He’s said this connection begins with his Slab series of Paintings, like Slberian Salt Grinder (on view at MoMA at the moment, “In Memoriam – Jack Whitten,” and so not included in Odyssey), above. “Painters use paint. I am a painter. My years of carving wood have been the single most important influence on my painting. The Slab paintings from the 1970s are elementary form derived directly from my sculptures10.” These works may have been a visual “response” to Jazz immortal John Coltrane’s famous “sheets of sound.” Jack Whitten created these “planes of light,” as he called them11. Interestingly, Jack Whitten’s Slab works pre-date Gerhard Richter’s work in a not dissimilar style, done with a squeegee, by over a decade12, something he has rarely been given credit for. Whitten created a 12 foot long tool he called the “developer,” that looked like a long wooden rake, to create the Paintings in this period, as he spoke about in the Art21 piece earlier.

The Saddle, 1977. A title with a few interpretations, including sexual.

Regardless how they directly influenced his Sculpture, as he didn’t in his Paintings, it quickly became obvious that Jack Whitten wasn’t going to stand still here, either. The sizes and shapes continued to be completely unpredictable and, taken as a whole, often without recognizable precedent. Still, the craftsmanship is always masterful, the combination of elements surprising and fresh, and the result unique. Added to all of this, over my visits, I found they don’t give up all their secrets quickly, or easily.

Detail revealing the tiny women’s portraits among the metal work, possibly referencing the sexual interpretation of the work’s title? As I took this Photo, a visitor next to me said, “The woodwork is beautiful…it’s insane.”

The visitor was right, of course. In fact, Jack Whitten earned his living for years using his masterful woodworking skills, until he was finally able to support himself through his Art. His feelings about his struggles and lack of greater acceptance and recognition are poignantly revealed in Notes From The Woodshed.

Anthorpos #1-3, 1972-4, three of the earlier Sculptures in Odyssey flanked by two of his Black Monolith Series of Paintings- VII Du Bois Legacy: For W.E. Burghardt, 2014, left, and VI Mask (Updated Version for Terry Adkins), 2014 right. (That’s a covered Breuer window in the back)

In August, 2017, the Artist said- “Wood is elemental matter; it is alive, organic and waiting for someone to release its spirit…that’s my job. When I find an interesting log, I study it and wait for the subject to reveal itself. I have logs that have been resting in my storage space for more than forty years. I do not impose the subject, it is within the log13.”

Memory Container, 1972-3, left, with Black Monolith, V Full Circle: For LeRoi Jones A.K.A. Amiri Baraka, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 63 inches. Jack Whitten and LeRoi Jones (at the time) used to go and hear Jazz together at The 5 Spot Cafe (which I wrote about recently). About him, Jack Whitten said, “He made this full circle in life. He had a strong center anchor. It was very important for me to meet a black person who could be that outspoken.” (Audio Guide)

Mr. Whitten may have been influenced by Ancient Art and African Art but he took his own approach to it- “Whitten’s private logbooks show him pointing to the need to relate to African objects without the interfering filter of earlier modernisms (“Picasso’s European interruptions,” he called them14.”) He proceeded to do this in any number of ways, from creating his own forms, to adding a plethora of personal and found items to a number of these works, including Memory Container, 1972-3.

Detail of the right side of container of Memory Container as seen in the prior Photo.

All the while, he was Painting. “The point I want to make with painting is that abstraction, as we know it, can be directed towards the specifics of subject- a person, a thing, an experience. My goal is to use painting to build abstraction as symbol15.” His Black Monolith series of Paintings, dating back to the 1980’s are stunning examples of what he was speaking about.

Black Monolith, IX (Open Circle For Ornette Coleman), 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 84×63 inches. Mr. Coleman, who Jack Whitten met at the 5 Spot Cafe decades earlier,  is the only Artist Mr. Whitten memorialized who I met. He was extraordinarily nice and unforgettably generous to me.

As remarkable as seeing the previously unknown body of Sculpture is, perhaps equally remarkablly ALL 11 Black Monliths are included in Odyssey! In my view, they may be his supreme achievement in Painting.

Black Monolith IV For Jacob Lawrence, 2001, Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 inches.

Detail.

There are worlds in each work.

Gray Matter, 2010, stands in front of Atopolis: For Edouard Glissant, 2014, Acrylic on 8 canvas panels, 124 x 248 inches, on loan from MoMA.

Just when I was convinced of the abstract nature of Jack Whitten’s Sculpture, I happened on this Photo hanging on a wall in the Chelsea Restaurant, The Dish!

Taken as a whole, Odyssey presents a body of work that is so wondrous, so singular, so strong, so endlessly creative that it continually astounds.

Technological Totem Pole, 2013. Jack Whitten refers to the marble base as “the charger,” and he spoke about seeing totems from Alaska and elsewhere at the Brooklyn Museum. “Later on I began to think of them as computer based. Information is stored in them, about the tribe, the history of the people…When I use modern technology, it’s a way of connecting the present to the past.” (Audio Guide). And yes…the clock is telling the correct time.

Take the final Sculpture in the show for example, Technological Totem Pole, 2013. In place of all the items Jack Whitten had included on his earlier work that may be seen as having been influenced by work from the past, here he adds artifacts of the current time to a pole in a work that can be seen as a “tribute” to our time, or maybe a statement about what we will leave behind- it’s up for each viewer to decide.

Detail.

For me, like every piece that proceeds it, it’s another example of Jack Whitten’s endlessly creative mind, as well as being a testament to how far his Sculpture came in 50 years.

On a personal level, Jack Whitten’s work moves me greatly. When I first realized it, I wasn’t quite sure why. Is it his story of staying true to his vision and constantly creating fresh, unique, and innovative work? That’s part of it, I’m sure. So is that he didn’t live to see the wide acclaim this Odyssey has received. The other part is that his Painting, and now his Sculpture, both comprise bodies of work that embody our time, I feel, witnessed in the range of people he tributed as much as by how. Even more than that, having never had the chance to meet Jack Whitten, when I listen to him speak and see him on video, I’m always taken by what a “regular guy” he was, yet he was someone who responded to many of the things that speak to me- from his taste in Jazz (including Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane- neither of who I got to see perform live as he did), to his feelings about life and the world around him. Then, there’s the other side of Jack Whitten- a mystical, spiritual side combined with a visionary. In that sense he reminds me of Jazz’ Sun Ra or Ornette Coleman- you’ve never heard anything like them before. At first listen you might think they’re nuts, but closer inspection reveals an extraordinary rigor to every single note the write or play. While countless Musicians pick up an instrument, very very few can play it like no one else can.

In an Art age dominated by “movements” from Abstract Expressionism to Pop to Minimalism and beyond, Jack Whitten’s Art looks like no one else’s. He is his own movement. An Artist who literally “made” his own way, and kept going, kept moving ahead, no matter what. Even through serious illness towards the end.

“That painting came out of a lot of pain,” Jack Whitten said in the Art21 piece earlier. Black Monolith XI (Six Kinky Strings: For Chuck Berry), 2017. Jack Whitten speaks about the “battle” he fought with illness to create this amazing work, one of his final pieces, in the Art21 video Posted earlier.

With Odyssey, we get to finally see one of the great “secrets” in Modern and Contemporary Art. It’s almost as if there is suddenly now a “second act” to Jack Whitten’s career- over 50 years in the making. But, being able to finally see his Sculpture in concert with his Painting, we also get a bit of a sense of his full accomplishment- for the first time. The result is it’s going to demand a complete rewriting of Mr. Whitten’s achievement and accomplishment in the Art history books. They will now begin with the words-  “Jack Whitten was one of the most important Painters and Sculptors of his time.” EITHER one of those would be more than enough to make him a major figure in Art. Both? That brings to mind the names of Duchamp, Man Ray, Barnett Newman, Burgoyne Diller, Cy Twombly, Louise Bourgeois, Ellsworth Kelly, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Lee Bontecou, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, fellow Alabamian Thornton Dial, and Picasso, among contemporaries. Rarified air.

In February, 2017 the Brooklyn Rail published an interview with Jack Whitten which ended with interviewer Jarrett Earnest asking him “What do you see as  the role of art today?”

He replied- “I use the word antidote. There is so much shit going on in society that I don’t believe in—the only thing I believe in is art. I have nothing else. Art is the only thing I’ve got to go on, and I see it as being able to provide an antidote to all this evil shit that is going on. And it is evil—I cannot stress that enough. Obviously, it’s going to get much worse too. We haven’t seen nothing yet. All of us will be tested—that I can promise you.”

Phoenix for the Youth of Greece, 1983

Detail. In the circular compartment, Jack Whitten placed an artificially aged handwritten note that reads- “Using the bones from the past, we can understand the present and foresee the future.”

It’s always sad for me when a truly great Art show ends. As Odyssey closed, I consoled myself by looking forward to the opening of another (as yet, unannounced) show- the long overdue, full scale, Jack Whitten Retrospective. Because, If Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017  doesn’t make the case that NOW is finally the time for it? Nothing will.

BookMarks-

2 books. About as big a selection of Jack Whitten books as you are likely to find these days.

Jack Whitten: Odyssey: Sculpture 1963–2017 – With the closing of Odyssey, the real work of studying, appreciating and learning from this newly discovered body of work can begin. It’s gotten off to a great start with the exceptional catalog for the show. Given how few books are in print about Jack Whitten, it’s easily the best place to start exploring his Art and learning about him. I first saw it at the NYABF in September, before the show opened. I knew right then this would be a major, unforgettable show. Highly recommended.

As I mentioned earlier, Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed, released earlier this year, is over 500 pages of journals and other writings by the Artist that have an effect not unlike that of reading a diary. While it includes technical detail regarding his work  in progress at whatever time, already completed, or to come, the Artist’s writings are also full of feelings, anecdotes, realizations and exhortations. As such, it’s a fascinating glimpse into both the Art world of his time and a record of his journey, and often, his struggle. Particularly recommended to Artists, it’s very readable for the general reader (it does not include any illustrations of his Art) and will serve as an invaluable reference book and exceedingly valuable historical document going forward.

If you can find it, Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, published in 2015 by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, is the catalog for the last, great Jack Whitten traveling museum show of the same name, the largest show of his Paintings to date. Now out of print and becoming harder to find, it’s very well done, with both valuable essays and a decade by decade selection of the Paintings, the only overview of his Paintings published to date.

It’s my hope that the study and appreciation of Jack Whitten’s work is only beginning, which should be the case for an Artist I feel will be one of the more influential figures in Painting & Sculpture going forward. There are, fortunately, some excellent video interviews with him currently up online. As good as the available books are, there’s nothing like hearing him speak.

My thanks to Leah Straub of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, for her assistance.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman, from the prophetically titled The Shape of Jazz to Come, recorded in 1959, around the time Jack Whitten met him at the 5 Spot Cafe, which I recently wrote about.

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  1. Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017 Exhibition Catalog (henceforth Odyssey Catalog), P.39 ↩
  2. Woods used by Jack Whitten in his Sculpture include-American white oak
    Black mulberry (a staple throughout his Sculptural career)
    and white mulberry
    Cretan walnut
    Olive wood
    Wild cypress
    Carob wood
    Serbian oak ↩
  3. Graphically described in this 2017 interview. ↩
  4. Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, P.19 ↩
  5. Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, P.43-4. ↩
  6. //news.artnet.com/art-world/baltimore-deaccessioning-proceeds-1309481 ↩
  7. //brooklynrail.org/2017/02/art/JACK-WHITTEN-with-Jarrett-Earnest ↩
  8. See the discussion beginning on p.20 of the Odyssey catalog. ↩
  9. Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed, P.395. ↩
  10. Odyssey Catalog, P. 38 ↩
  11. //prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_alexandergray_com/Whitten_Walker_Blog_9_22_20150.pdf ↩
  12. //www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/richter-abstract-painting-809-3-ar00027 ↩
  13. Odyssey catalog, P.38 ↩
  14.  Odyssey catalog, P.21 ↩
  15. Jack Whitten, Alexander Gray Associates Exhibition Catalog, 2013, P. 3. ↩

Vincent van Gogh- Home, At Last


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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Vincent van Gogh spent his life looking…for things he never found. Detail of his  Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887. All works shown were seen at The Met and are oil on canvas.

While a reported 1,000,000 visitors have been busy seeing Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination on The Met’s 1st floor, downstairs in the Costume Institute, and uptown at The Cloisters1, many visitors may have missed the fact that there is big news upstairs at 1000 Fifth Avenue. No, I’m not talking about the skylight renovation project, which is ongoing, and which has thrown the European Paintings galleries into a bit of temporary chaos. I’m talking about the fact that happy times have again returned to Gallery 825 near the southern wall of the Museum in the European Paintings galleries on the second floor, where The Met has reunited, what for me, has long been one of the glories of it’s collection, and one of the glories of NYC: 10 of their Paintings by Vincent van Gogh, now that all of them by the beloved Artist have returned from loans.

HOW great is it to be able to walk into a room and see THIS? For me, it’s one of the great joys of life in NYC. One part of the newly reinstalled Gallery 825 showing 9 of the 10 Van Goghs in this room. #10 is on the other side of the Self-Portrait with Straw Hat in the vitrine. This shot was available for literally one second over 3 visits and the 3 hours I spent here recently.

A further 6 are adjacent to them in Gallery 822, making 16 of the 18 oil on canvas Paintings they own by my count on view at the moment.

1,500+ visits in I rarely pay attention to gallery # signs. You really can’t go wrong in The Museum. I always just wander and enjoy being surprised. For those with limited time, yes, it might be best to have a plan. Or? Just wander.

Of the 6 or 7 million folks who visit The Museum from all over the world, I’m sure seeing these works are on the lists of many. I made a visit to see their reinstallation, which puzzles me is some regards, and I had a revelation that caused me to make 2 return trips solely to further study what I found.

Also in Gallery 825, opposite the Van Goghs seen above, is a beautiful selection of work by his friend, Paul Gauguin, with works by Pointillists, including George Seurat, and a Rousseau, filling out the room. Seeing the Gauguin, I was struck by the thought that they have, and will, spend much more time together in this room than he and Vincent did in real life, a bit of a poignant reminder of the temporary nature of all of Vincent’s relationships and friendships, besides that with his younger brother, Theo (which did have some lapses, due to disagreements).

Across from Vincent in Gallery 825, is a corner of Paintings, an amazing sculpture(!) and a wood carving(!) by his friend, Paul Gauguin.

Regarding the installation of the Van Goghs in Gallery 825, two caveats. First, the works at each end of the wall are a bit difficult to see due to the placing of the guard rope. It’s worse for the smaller work on the left, Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885, than it is for the larger work, First Steps, after Millet, 1890 at the other end.

Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885, left, Sunflowers, 1887, right.

Regardless? My rule of thumb is this- “If THIS was your ONLY Painting by Vincent van Gogh- Would you hang it like THIS?”

First Steps, after Millet, 1890, quite popular with visitors, is a bit hard to see. When you stand near that post, you’ll understand what I mean. Rousseau’s The Repast of the Lion, 1907, is hung on the wall, right. It may have been interesting for visitors if The Met hung one of the 6 oil Paintings they own by Van Gogh’s cousin Anton Mauve (1838-1888), his only teacher (for a short time), here. Rousseau is far more popular.

This may, or may not, be a function of the fact that gallery space in the European Paintings Galleries is a bit scarce right now due to the skylight renovations. It pains me to no end there are only THREE Rembrandts on view at the moment!, so it’s great timing that at least the Van Goghs have been reunited.

The other caveat is in seeing the work on the front of Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, The Potato Peeler, 1885. It’s a work from his earlier, “dark,” period and due to the glare from the lights, is very hard to see due to the reflections on the vitrine they’re in. It probably needs a vitrine with self-contained lighting on each side, which may not be practical due to conservation issues. It’s so darkly Painted it makes me wonder how popular Vincent would be now if he had continued Painting with this palette for the rest of his career.

The Potato Peeler, 1885, with Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, on it’s back. Yes, Vincent was so poor, he had to use the other, unprimed, raw side of his canvases, in this case to Paint the astonishing Self-Portrait. Admittedly, a very difficult piece to light, particularly in a vitrine. A better view is here.

Coincidentally to the return of the Van Goghs, I’ve been absolutely lost in Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s, 2011 Van Gogh: The Life, as riveting a 976 page biography as I’ve ever read. Messers Naifeh and Smith, coming off the Pulitzer Prize for their Jackson Pollock biography, spent ten years in painstaking international research, with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, tapping into 100 years of Van Gogh research, a wealth of previously unmined sources (including hundreds of unpublished family correspondences), and of course, Vincent’s justly famous letters, themselves fresh off the completion of the 15 year Van Gogh Letters Project, which, with the Van Gogh Museum, revisited every existing letter written by or received by Vincent. The results were published in 2014 in a 6 volume profusely illustrated (Vincent’s letters contain many drawings and illustrations) and completely annotated hardcover set, Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Letters, that clocks in at 33 pounds (only a few left- hurry! See BookMarks at the end), or the entire corpus is now available for free online!! Van Gogh: The Life, is so big, Naifeh and Smith have created a website to contain the full versions of the book’s extensive footnotes, picture galleries and an extensive bibliography. Their book has been called, “The definitive biography for decades to come,” by Leo Jansen, curator, the Van Gogh Museum, and co-editor of Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Letters.

It’s about time! It’s hard to think of any other Artist born after 1850 who’s life (and death) is shrouded in myth, fantasy and fiction more than Vincent van Gogh’s has been.

Cypresses, June, 1889

Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, exactly a year after Vincent van Gogh died. His parents had a son, who they named Vincent, who was stillborn in 1852, and laid to rest under a marker inscribed “Vincent van Gogh.” His mother, Anna Carbentus, “never understood her eldest son…As time passed, she liked him less and less. Incomprehension gave way to impatience, impatience to shame, and shame to anger. By the time he was an adult, she had all but given up hope for him. She dismissed his religious and artistic ambitions as “futureless wanderings” and compared his errant life to a death in the family. She accused him of intentionally inflicting “pain and misery” on his parents. She systematically discarded any Paintings and Drawings that he left at home as if disposing of rubbish…She outlived Vincent by 17 years. Even after his death, when fame belatedly found him, she never regretted or amended her verdict that his art was “ridiculous2.'”

Yikes! WHAT can you possibly say to that? Still? As late as 1888, 2 years before he died, THIS is how he longed to see her- with an approving smile for him. Something he probably had to imagine. His father, Dorus, a Parson, was left to try and intermediate, but more often then not, having his own passionately held ideas and beliefs, that rarely seemed to coincide with his eldest son’s, met with little success.

Vincent van Gogh, First Steps, after Millet, Oil on canvas, 1890. It’s hard not to see Vincent’s yearning for family in this scene. Here, the subjects are, ironically and fittingly, frozen in time- forever apart. Painted after an original chalk and pastel Drawing by Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875, one of Vincent’s biggest influences), because, he said, Millet “had no time to Paint them in oils3.” The compositional changes he made to the original are fascinating.

To say that Vincent wound up pining for the love of his family his entire life, that he never received to the extent it was “enough” for him, would be a huge understatement. At 11, they dropped him off on the steps of a boarding school 13 miles away from the home he longed to be in and said goodbye to him. It was an “abandonment,” his term, he never got over. At one point, he wrote about his parents, “(They) cannot feel for or sympathize with me.””(They) completely lack warm, live sympathy.””They are creating a desert around themselves.””(They) have hardened their hearts.””(They) are harder than stone.””When I’m at home, I have a lonesome, empty feeling4.” For the rest of his life, which would largely be lived away from home, he valued nothing more than trying to win back their love, or, failing this, to find a surrogate family to fill this need, which he never did for long. Vincent’s two attempts at a relationship (the word “romantic” doesn’t seem appropriate), first to a widowed cousin, the second to a prostitute pregnant with someone else’s child, that he hoped would lead to marriage and thereby family stability, ended in humiliation. The closest he ever got to having a lasting friendship was, mostly at a distance, with his younger brother Theo.

While living this loveless, largely friendless life he went from one utter failed attempt at a job or career to another, until, finally, in August, 1880, he turned to becoming an Artist as a last resort. A month short of ten years later, in July, 1890, he would be dead. He was just 37 years old. In August, 1882, he wrote about having a feeling that he would not live long-

“I would like to leave some memento in the form of Drawings and Paintings…I have to accomplish in a few years something full of heart and love, and do it with a will. Should I live longer, so much better, but I put that out of my mind. Something must be accomplished in these few years5.”

 

Sunflowers, 1887. About as “alive” as still life gets. It positively bursts with so much energy you might think it was on fire.

In his short Artistic career, he would leave about 2,100 Artworks, including an astonishing 860 oil Paintings, and those letters. His contemporary, Claude Monet, was born 13 years before him, in 1840, and died 36 years after him, in 1926, outliving him by almost 50 years to age 86. If Vincent had lived to be 86, he would have passed in 1939. IF he had been as productive for those 50 years as he was in his first 10? He would have left us 10,500 Artworks, including 4,300 oil Paintings! But, given how hard his life was to that point and the wear and tear it took on him, and that he had what were, possibly, both diagnosed and undiagnosed illnesses6, it was probably a very long shot, at best, he ever had a realistic chance of making it to 86.

Irises, 1890, the last year of Vincent’s life. The “pale” background is due to the fading of the original color.

I was one of the millions who grew up with Irving Stone’s Lust for Life. Reading it as a teenager, I naively took it as fact, not realizing there was such a thing as a “fictionalized biography.” Irving Stone set out to make biography as exciting as dime store novels. He did this to Michelangelo, too, with The Agony and the Ecstasy. In both instances, Art lovers are left to dig on their own in the historical record for the facts. Often overlooked by those who think Lust is a “biography” is the section of “Notes” warning the reader that he had to concoct scenes. Writing 40 years after Vincent passed, he never knew him. Making matters worse, he seems to have relied on people who weren’t there for “information” on key scenes, like his death. The resulting Film of the same name brought all of this to countless millions more. After reading Lust, I was compelled to dig deeper, to get “closer” to Vincent. I was given a 3 volume older edition of his Complete Letters, which is way more compelling than any novel (even one, like Mr. Stone’s that draws on them), and now with Van Gogh: The Life, the background has been filled in with 100 years of verifiable research. There’s no longer any need for fiction-  The real story is a way better page turner! If you love his work, dig deeper into his life and you’ll be rewarded by getting closer to the Artist. Reading Vincent’s letters, and now The Life, what comes consistently across to me is his LOVE for Life. When I look at his Art, I see an Artist who loves what he sees and wants to preserve it with pen or paint. Even during his earlier period when he Painted very poor farmers and others in a very dark palette. He Paints them to honor their work and their lives.

Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885. The Photo is distorted because, as I said, it must be seen at an angle.

At The Met, seeing these works together again, I was struck by how very different they are. Though they were Painted over less than 8 full years, they’re different one from the next. They’re different from virtually everything else of their time.

Vincent desperately wanted to be a Portraitist. He (over)spent much of his limited budget on models, but, as in so many other things, he was his own worst enemy in that he began Painting from life before he finished his studies, according to his Cousin Mauve, and others. The results are often a bit “rough,” but just as often surprisingly poignant and unique, particularly in his Self-Portraits, which he did so many of when he lacked for other sitters. It’s hard for me to look at any of Vincent’s portraits and not think that he was really Painting himself, particularly when he Paints people he barely knows. Here, it’s hard not to see another instance of his longing for family and domesticity. La Berceuse (Woman Rocking A Cradle; Augustine-Alex Pellicot Roulin), 1889 (who he knew better than most), It’s an image of home and family he Painted to hang in the famous Yellow House he briefly shared with Gauguin. If that string she’s holding wasn’t tethered to the cradle, she might be floating away like the flowers in the background almost appear to be.

His portraits look like no one else’s. Ditto his landscapes7, his interiors and still lifes. The same can be said for his Drawings, which were unforgettably seen in The Met’s landmark Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings show in 2005. And, they’re different from what’s come since. His work set the stage for what is called Expressionism, though no one else seems to have directly pursued his stylistic innovations, like his use of wavy lines to depict nature.

Meanwhile, Wheatfield with Cypresses, 1889, gets it’s own wall in Gallery 822.

Who else Paints like this?

This is all the more remarkable when you consider how little training in Drawing & Painting Vincent received, which, beyond his own studies of Charles Bargue’s legendary Drawing Course, and other texts, amounted to a month with his cousin, Painter Anton Mauve, and some classes, including a short-lived enrollment in Paris classes that were also attended by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Much of the rest can be attributed to talent, though part of the individuality in his Art can be attributed to isolation, I think. He worked most of his entire 10 year career by himself, with only occasional company or interaction with other Artists, though he voraciously and passionately looked at Art for most of his life, even long before he was an Artist. He assimilated all that he saw, felt it deeply and thought about it continually, yet he was able to create Art in his own style that, while partially based in Millet, he continually evolved. So much so that no two of these 16 works (in both galleries) are really in the same style, there are differences between each and every one of them. Most unique of all, to my eyes, is the Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat. Though at first glance it looks to be somewhat “pointillistic,” it’s not. Only Vincent achieves a somewhat similar effect with lines instead of dots. The results are something else entirely.

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887, one of my personal favorite works in entirety of The Met, Painted on the raw, unprimed side of the canvas, (as you can see in the detail posted at the beginning), which adds to the unique texture of the work. Painting on this side can cause conservation problems, though it looks good for 131 years old.

I’ve looked at it countless times over a few decades now and every time I see it, I marvel at it’s unique way of seeing the world. Though I’d stood here countless times before, suddenly something struck me. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Midway through my visit, I moved away from the Van Goghs taking in the whole group. As I stood there, I noticed people posing for pictures with Vincent’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.

People from who knows where.

That day, I was in the middle of the section of his biography where he desperately tries to see the object of his love, his widowed cousin, 35 year old mother of one, Kee Vos, who had adamantly rejected his proposal of marriage in August, 1881, with the infamous words, “Never, no, never!” (Vincent was 28). Not one to give up, EVER, he relentlessly pursued the matter, finally traveling to see her that November, only to find her absent. “At one point, he put his hand over a gas-lamp flame and demanded, ‘Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in this flame.’ Someone eventually blew out the lamp, but weeks later his burned flesh was visible from a distance8.” The longing and the emotional scars remianed for the rest of his life.

In the long, beautiful, letter he wrote to Theo after this event (Letter #193, December 23, 1881), showing every ounce of his talent as a writer, after a long summary of the event, he said-

“I can’t live without love, without a woman. I wouldn’t care a fig for life if there wasn’t something infinite, something deep, something real. I will not, I may not live without love. I’m only human, and a human with passions at that, I need a woman or I’ll freeze or turn to stone, or anyway be overwhelmed.”

128 years after his death on July 29, 1890, I couldn’t help but notice that there were no shortage of women who wanted a picture with him. Many of them had, no doubt, traveled quite long distances, themselves, to get one.

Then, I started to notice whole families posing with his Self-portrait.

Hmmm…

I did a quick mental scan of the building. I can’t think of another work in the entire Museum that families pose in front of for a group self-portrait (feel free to let me know if you can).

Vincent, calmly looking out at us for all time behind glass, while I wondered, “What would you be feeling right now?”

Maybe it doesn’t happen often? I decided to go back 2 more times to see. Each time, the same thing happened- more families from all over the world, convened in front of one of my very favorite Paintings in The Museum, Vincent’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.

Why?

I didn’t ask, so I still don’t know.

Standing there during one visit the thought suddenly occurred to me- IF I was somehow permitted to be allowed to bring back any one person from the dead, that person would be Vincent van Gogh. (Hey, in your imagination, you’re free to do whatever you want, too.)

Why Vincent?

Smiling, while I had a tear in my eye.

Because for his entire life, Vincent wanted little else more than to be loved by his family. Failing to get that, he started looking for surrogate families that would accept him, but these situations didn’t last long. Here, 128 years after he passed away, all these families have come who knows how far, and in the midst of the The Met’s 4 NYC blocks full of the greatest Art created by woman and mankind, they feel compelled to gather as a group for a picture, AND INCLUDE HIM. Realizing this, I came close to being overcome.

I would just love to be able to stand there next to him and watch his reaction.

As close as I’ll ever get to knowing what it felt like to sit next to Vincent van Gogh. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Paris, 1887, Colored chalk on cardboard. Vincent and Toulouse-Lautrec were friends for a time while taking classes. They routinely ended their day in a bar. Here, in this marvelous, and unique side view of the Artist, no doubt Drawn from life, he shows Vincent with an absinthe glass in front of him. *-  Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Photo.

Today, Vincent van Gogh is, very possibly, the world’s most beloved Artist. For this almost entirely self-taught Artist, who was a virtual beginner at 28 years old, to create what he did in 10 years, in almost total isolation and become what he is now, is possibly the most astounding story in Western Art. The fact that his life was lived with so much hardship, suffering, loneliness and lack of acceptance serves to add even more layers to a hard-to-believe story. So, I would love to travel the world with him as he sees how millions of people around the world react to his Art today.

Would he be completely overwhelmed by all of this if he were to see it now? More than likely, it would be too much for him to grasp all at once. It would be for anyone.

I’ll never know.

There’s another question this “revelation” raised. Why? As in “WHY does his work speak to so many people?”

I think it’s because Van Gogh, throughout his life, in each different path he tried, what he sought, along with trying to win the love of his family, was to be consoled. This word comes up so often in Van Gogh: The Life that I started noting each instance. It’s continual and central to things that were important to him. He sought it in his efforts to become a Preacher. In his attempts at love. But, throughout his life he made Drawings and he collected prints (at one time, his collection of prints numbered over 1,000) that he continually rotated on his walls- before and during his Art career. He went to see Art in museums and galleries. Though they found his Paintings “unsaleable,” his extended family were part owners of one of the biggest Art Galleries in Europe9, where he worked for a few years. Looking back, one can see that throughout his life, even before he became a Painter, he had a passion for Art. He found consolation in Art.

“In Vincent’s reality, images evoked emotions. Born into a family and an era awash in sentimentality, Vincent looked to images not just to be instructed and inspired, but, most of all, to be moved.
Art should be ‘personal and intimate,’ he said, and concern itself with ‘what touches us as human beings10.'”

I think it’s, perhaps, the main reason he became an Artist- because Art offered consolation, and as Naifeh and Smith say, “No one needed consolation more than Vincent did.”

128 years later, his Art has consoled countless millions of Art lovers and continues to every day.

Vincent has found a loving family. At long last.

BookMarks-

The Van Gogh monograph section at the legendary Strand Bookstore.

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s, 2011 Van Gogh: The Life is compelling reading for anyone interested in Vincent van Gogh, or Art history. It’s written in a way that seems to have an Art audience in mind, with frequent digressions into matters like Art he was looking at, thinking about, hanging on his walls, what he was reading, as well as details about the materials he was using. The book is, perhaps, most widely known for it’s “Appendix A: A Note on Vincent’s Fatal Wounding,” separate from their main narrative, in which the authors make their case for believing that Vincent DID NOT commit suicide!, but rather was the victim of a homicide, accidental homicide, or an accident! As I said in the piece, the Appendix aside, the reason to read Van Gogh: The Life is that it’s built on extensive research bringing to bear the fruits of 100 years of Van Gogh scholarship that ends the need to rely on fictionalized accounts.

Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (Vol. 1-6), in 6 volumes that weighs 33 pounds is the current “definitive” edition. Published for the USA by Thames & Hudson, the hardcover box set currently lists at $650.00. As I mentioned in the piece, the entire corpus of Vincent’s Letter has been made available, for FREE, online. While the books look like they would be easier to use in some ways, the internet site is easier to use in others. For those wanting something a bit more shelf and wallet friendly, Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, by the same team and published by Yale University Press in 2014, contains 265 letters over 784 pages, a concise version that is far less expensive. Older editions of Vincent’s Letters are far cheaper in printed editions than the new, 6 volume edition, though not as complete, lacking the 4,300 illustrations, annotations, supplementary texts and newly discovered letters the new complete edition has.

Taschen’s Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings by Metzger & Walther has been released in a few sizes over the years, including a “small” version (5.5 x 8 by 2 inches and 2.8 pounds) that has sat on my night table for a good while. Generally, I prefer the largest size of Taschen’s Paintings books (because they give as close to a life size reproduction as possible, sometimes larger), but since they’ve never issued an XL size of this (probably because it would be XXL), I use this small one to explore his work, then look elsewhere for larger images of pieces I want to study closer. It’s very good for getting an overview and for seeing his progression during each period. At 19.95 list, with 774 pages and countless color illustrations, it’s one of the better deals in current Art books. Just remember- this current edition is small. It does exist in larger versions (including a few that are 2 volumes in a slip case) that are now out of print, but not expensive. With continued controversy about real and fake Van Goghs (akin to his countryman, Rembrandt), I hope the Van Gogh Museum will issue a definitive (for the moment) Catalogue Raisonne of his all of Paintings & Drawings, but nothing has been announced as far as I know11. So, in the meantime, the Taschen book remains the best place to start looking at Vincent’s work, in my view. The Van Gogh Museum has digitized much of it’s world leading collection of the works Vincent sent to Theo, who died a skance 6 months after Vincent, that were preserved by Theo’s wife, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (who the world of Van Gogh lovers owe an incalculable debt to for saving and promoting his work, and for preserving, compiling and first publishing their letters, and to their son Vincent Willem van Gogh, who established the foundation which led to the creation of the Museum), so those works, including their 200 Paintings, may be seen and studied there.

Out of print, but not expensive, is Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series), the catalog for The Met’s 2005 show of the same name mounted in conjunction with the Van Gogh Museum. The Met has made it available as a pdf for free here. I recommend it for Artists and Art Students interested in Drawing. Largely a self-taught draftsman (he studied Charles Bargue’s legendary Drawing Course on his own), Van Gogh’s Drawings reveal the limitations of his education (as do his Paintings), but do not get enough credit for their uniqueness and daring, in my view. The Charles Bargue: Drawing Course is something anyone interested in studying a “traditional/classical” method of Drawing, largely from casts, should check out, particularly if you, like Vincent, lack a teacher. Naifeh and Smith recount that Vincent didn’t complete his studies of Bargue due to an impatience to begin Drawing from life, which others told him he was not ready for. They may have had a point, but it’s also another reason his work looks like no one else’s.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “I’ve Been Waiting For You,” by another iconic individualist, Neil Young. It was memorably covered by yet another one- David Bowie, on Heathen in 2002. Yes, I resisted the obvious “Home At Last,” by Steely Dan.

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  1. My friend, the fashion guru extraordinaire, Magda, wrote an excellent piece on the Cloisters part of the show, here. ↩
  2. Van Gogh: The Life, P32. Page numbers refer to the eBook edition, which has 1574 pages. ↩
  3. Van Gogh in Saint-Remy and Auvers, Met Museum, P.173 ↩
  4. Van Gogh: The Life, P.409 eBook edition ↩
  5. Van Gogh: The Life, P.569 eBook edition ↩
  6. Here. ↩
  7. Personally, I don’t see Vincent in the work of Edvard Munch (1863-1944), even in The Scream, as some do. ↩
  8.  Van Gogh: The Life, P.415 eBook Edition. ↩
  9. His uncle Cor, one of the officers of the firm did commission 19 Drawings from him, in two purchases. By the way, Vincent did sell more than one Painting during his lifetime. The exact number he sold is not known. ↩
  10. Van Gogh: The Life, P.475 eBook edition ↩
  11. The Van Gogh Museum has been producing catalogs of the Paintings & Drawings in it’s collection. At the moment the complete Drawings have been published in 4 volumes and 2 of the 3 volumes of the complete Paintings in it’s collection have been published. ↩

The Met To Close The Met Breuer In 2020

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Outside The Met Breuer.

This, today, from Met Museum President and CEO, Daniel Weiss-
The Met
Dear Member:

I am writing to bring you up to date on a new series of developments related to The Met Breuer and, more generally, on our long-term goals for modern and contemporary art at The Met.

We are in the process of creating an arrangement between The Met and The Frick Collection through which the Frick will use the Breuer building while its own building undergoes a substantial upgrade and renovation. This collaboration would ensure that the public continues to have access to the Frick’s collections, exhibitions, library resources, and education programs.

Although final details are still under review, as currently envisioned the Frick would begin its programming at the Breuer building in late 2020, after obtaining the necessary public approvals for its renovation project. The Met will continue operations at the Breuer until the summer of 2020.

In the last few years, under the outstanding leadership of Sheena Wagstaff, the Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Met Breuer has received critical and public acclaim for its exhibition program, which has been devoted to telling multiple histories of modernism from across the world.

Most of all, we have enjoyed sharing the building with Members like you. Together, we have examined modern and contemporary art through unparalleled exhibitions such as Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300-Now) and Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, and important displays of artists who were overdue for recognition, such as Nasreen Mohamedi, Marisa Merz, Lygia Pape, Kerry James Marshall, and, now on view, Jack Whitten.

In the coming months, we have several major exhibitions planned for the current Modern and Contemporary galleries at The Met Fifth Avenue, including Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera later this fall, and our special exhibition galleries in the main building, as well as a number of large photography exhibitions. Finally, our programming at Breuer will continue until summer 2020, with a very exciting and diverse exhibition schedule ahead.

Our long-term commitment remains with the main building, and, of course, the Cloisters. We are actively working to reinvigorate and reimagine the role of modern art in the Fifth Avenue building, guided by the leadership of The Met’s new Director, Max Hollein, and in partnership with Sheena and the Modern and Contemporary team.

We are extraordinarily proud of our work at The Met Breuer. Over the last three years, we have accomplished exactly what we set out to do, namely, present modern and contemporary art within the context of our broader mission and encyclopedic collection. Building on that success, we are now able to realize an even more ambitious program at The Met Fifth Avenue.

I am excited about the collaboration with The Frick, and the opportunity to unify and expand modern and contemporary initiatives at The Met Fifth Avenue.
Dan
The Met
Fifth Avenue 1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028		 The Met
Cloisters 99 Margaret Corbin Drive
Fort Tryon Park
New York, NY 10040		 The Met
Breuer945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021		 metmuseum.org

According to Mr. Weiss, the new arrangement will save The Met about 45 million dollars over 4 years1. That The Met would try and exit their lease on the Breuer building early is not totally unexpected, but that they were able to execute it so soon (two and a half years after the Met Breuer opened in March, 2016, and a year and seven months after the resignation of Director, Thomas P. Campbell, under who’s regime, the Museum had taken on the Breuer), seems quite fortuitous for their bottom line beginning in a few years, and so will probably be seen as a coup for the Museum. Part of the reason The Met wanted the Breuer was to display Modern & Contemporary Art while those galleries at 1000 Fifth Avenue were being renovated. With that plan shelved in 2017, and the existing galleries continuing to serve, today’s announcement makes me wonder what effect, if any, there is to the April, 2013 gift of Leonard Lauder’s superb collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures, among them 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, and 14 Légers valued at more than $1 billion, which was seen as part of The Met leasing the Breuer, and which were to be housed in part of the new Modern & Contemporary Wing. Nothing about it is mentioned in Mr. Weiss’ letter.

Thornton Dial, History Refused to Die, 2004, verso, seen in the excellent show of the same name that just ended at The Met 5th Avenue,, put on by Sheena Wagstaff and her team.

On the Art front, I am pleased to see that Sheena Wagstaff will, apparently, continue as Chairperson of Modern & Contemporary Art. As I’ve said, in my view, she has done a terrific job.

UPDATE- To be clear, The Met will still hold the lease on the Breuer building. They will be “subleasing” it to The Frick Collection for the final 4 years of The Met’s lease on it. This wasn’t made clear at the time of Mr. Weiss’ letter.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “One Too Many Mornings” by Bob Dylan from The Times They Are A-Changin’. Lyrics, here. 

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. New York Times, March 5, 2016 ↩

Three Years of NighthawkNYC!

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If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

July 15th, 2018 marks the third Anniversary of NighthawkNYC.com. Almost 200 pieces in (24 full length pieces thus far in 2018 alone!), I feel like a largely different person today- wholly as a result of this site. I’m not talking about the full time job it became early on, one that swallowed my “life” such as it was whole, in one gulp. I’m talking about all the learning that’s happened from assimilating all I’ve seen, read, and heard. It’s time to pause and reflect.

Art Heaven. “Hey, man. Question- How do you get all of those empty gallery shots?” The answer? Patience. That’s right. I pick my spot and wait until I get it. Just go when it’s not likely to be packed! This one of the Grand Staircase at The Met in February might be my favorite. It makes it feel like it’s open just for me.

First, and foremost, my thanks to all of you who take the time to read these pages. Over three years, I’ve heard from many of you, and I appreciate your taking the time to write, offer feedback, comments and support.

Two generations of Magnum Photos. The legendary Susan Meiselas, left, a former Magnum Photos President, and the creating-her-own-legend-as-we-speak, Bieke Depoorter, right, one of Magnum’s newer members, at Aperture, June 15, 2018.

Thanks to the Artists who have taken their valuable time to speak with me as I work on these pieces, and then after to give me their feedback. 

The great Sanle Sory, all the way from Burkina Faso, graciously poses for me at the opening of the terrific show of his studio portraits from the 1960s to the 80s at Yossi Milo Gallery on April 26. He’s every bit as nice as he is talented. And that’s saying something.

After long thought and discussions, I recently added a Paypal Donation button, accessible by clicking the white box at the upper right of the screen to help defray expenses and keep this site ad-free and independent. I want NighthawkNYC to be about Art, Music and Life, and having written for a national Music magazine for 4 years, I relish the independence I now have. Being independent means I get to write about shows that speak to me, and hopefully others, shows that I feel are important.

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room, at David Zwirner, December, 2017. I waited over 2 hours on a frigid day to spend the 60 seconds visitors were permitted in this space. Hmmm…

It also comes with responsibility. As you may have noticed, I don’t write about shows I don’t like, or that don’t speak to me. Why? I don’t believe in being negative. It’s very hard to survive as an Artist or Musician in 2018. I prefer to revisit things that don’t speak to me now in the future and reassess. I’ve discovered a lot of great Artists that way. Part of my goal with this site is to give those who don’t have a chance to see these shows a sense of what they were like. Of course, given the sheer volume of shows going on in Manhattan (let alone the rest of the City and now New Jersey), there’s just no way I can cover all of them. I have to be selective. While I have included Artists who are not “big names” yet but are doing great and/or important work that I feel deserve to be better known, I’d like to ramp this up going forward. I’m always looking for “candidates.”

Photography has taught me to open my eyes and look more carefully at the world around me.

Looking back over these 3 years, it’s obvious that the amount of coverage I’ve given to Painting has been on the decline, while Photography has, almost, taken over. Two years running, I have had the most extensive coverage of The Photography Show/AIPAD anywhere. (2017, here. 2018, here). What can I say? It’s a symptom of my seeing fewer and fewer Painting shows in the galleries that speak to me. Painting remains my favorite Artform, so this pains me very much. On the other hand, given that there are more cameras in the world than people, that people are living and working longer, that Photographic technology has been growing and evolving as never before in this century, it’s all combined to create an almost perfect storm, putting us, it seems to me, in a “golden age” of Photography. A big part of what’s created this moment is that Photography is (often) best seen in PhotoBooks and not on gallery or museum walls.

Dashwood Books in SoHo carries nothing but PhotoBooks.

This has led to an unprecedented explosion of PhotoBooks from famous and unknown Photographers and PhotoBook publishers big, small and D.I.Y. Somewhat remarkably, this is a movement that has almost entirely resisted electronic books (eBooks) in favor of good ole physical books. In fact, the publishers I spoke to at AIPAD this year UNANIMOUSLY told me they have NO intention of going to eBooks! This has brought an unprecedented number of Photographers into the consciousness of the world at large, whereas in the past, great Photographers (like Saul Leiter, Fred Herzog and many others) worked for much of their lives completely ignored. It is now possible to see more Photographs by more Photographers in a visit to a good bookstore than it is to ANY museum or gallery in the world. This is more than a publishing revolution. It’s an indication that the way Artists reach their public is changing, something that could have huge ramifications for the Art World as a whole. Buckle up! It’s going to be utterly fascinating to see how this plays out.

10:26pm at the world famous Strand Bookstore’s Art Book Department. 4 minutes before closing. The last one out, again. I’m here an average of 4 times a week. Some weeks more.

And so, as you may have also noticed, books have come more and more to the fore. I’ve always mentioned them. In response to requests I’ve gotten for recommendations of places to start delving into an Artist, I decided to devote a section at the end of the piece I call “BookMarks” to recommended books. Of course, many Artists have extensive bibliographies (and then there’s Picasso…or Daido Moriyama), so it’s often hard to decide where to start. I decided to share my thoughts since I generally look at as many books as I can find on an Artist I’m writing about, and I wind up living with a good many of them (cough). As far as I know, I was the first one to bring to public attention that Chris Ware’e superb book Monograph comes in a limited, signed, edition. Even the publisher, Rizzoli, made no mention of it. I heard from a number of you who were subsequently able to get a copy. Though “BookMarks” is new, I want to thank Monika Condrea and Steidl, the world’s premier PhotoBook publisher, for their support, and the Guggenheim Museum for their support of my Chinese Contemporary Art & Danh Vo pieces.

Amerika the Stoker, 1993-94, by my late friend, Tim Rollins & K.O.S. seen in American Landscape at Lehmann Maupin in May, 2018.

Three years later, in addition to being fortunate enough to have seen so many amazing shows, meeting so many Artists and speaking to so many art lovers, gallerists and scholars, as it was when I started NHNYC, the main joy for me remains learning- discovering someone new and great I didn’t previously know and/or discovering a new great work by, enlightening fact about, or gaining a new insight into an Artist I do know.

Her shirt reads “Something good is worth finding.” It could be my mantra.

In mulling it all over? If there’s one thing I have learned it’s that there’s A LOT to learn, see, explore and even enjoy. Three years in? As the song, “The Rhythm Changes” says, I’m still here, but I’ve only scratched the surface. 

“Are we there yet?”

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “The Rhythm Changes,” by Kamasi Washington & Patrice Quinn from The Epic. genius.com commenter, Crown_of_the_Barren-Synod said of this track, “While our opinions, beliefs, physical characteristics and even our personality can change with time there is still some being- our self- which transcends all of these characteristics and their transience.”

Special Thanks to Kitty for research assistance.
Special Thanks to Sv for pushing me to begin, and since, for her support.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

Thomas Cole- Ahead of His Time. And Ours

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If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

And then? There is beauty… 

The entrance. Not seen to the right, an intro video narrated by none other than Sting.

With all the recent talk about the Art world loving “ugly” Art, including Painting1, along came The Met’s Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings. It’s an homage to “beautiful” Painting- to American Landscape Painting, to the birth of the Hudson River School that Mr. Cole is often credited with being a co-founder of (the first Art movement to form in America), and, it’s a testament to some very great Painters who expressed their passionate love of nature and it’s beauty on canvas and paper. Tucked away in galleries in the back of the first floor of the renovated American Wing, it was fitting that it was installed as close to the (man-made) natural glory of Central Park as is possible in American Wing. After closing at The Met on May 13th, it’s now been reinstalled, and added to, at London’s National Gallery, where it’s called Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire.

A hard act to follow. This is how the show begins- with a text intro accompanied by TWO amazing works by no less than JMW Turner.

The beauty it contains is (at least) three fold. First, there is the beauty of Thomas Cole’s Painting. We get to watch the Artist develop over time and travels, from his native England (where he was born in 1801), to America after his family emigrates here in 1818, to return trips to England and on to Italy, until he finds his voice, a voice that resonates as powerfully today as it ever has. Proof of that can be seen in expected and unexpected places, ranging from his direct disciples to contemporary masters, like Ed Ruscha and Rod Penner. Since influence is a continuum, we also get to see work by other Artists who influenced Thomas Cole, and who he learned from. This second kind of beauty, in the form of beautiful works by these influences and contemporaries, who’s presence caught me completely by surprise in the show. In fact, as soon as I entered, I was immediately bowled over by not one but two masterpieces by no less than the man many consider to be THE supreme landscapist, JMW Turner. And? There would be more!

Talk about setting the bar high.

J.M.W. Turner, Leeds, 1816, Watercolor, scraping out, pen and ink on paper. “One of the earliest and most sophisticated depictions of an industrial city, ‘Leeds’ was painted when Cole was 15 years old and living 60 miles away in Chorley, another center of textile production. Turner…chronicles the pollution and chaos of the growing city,” paraphrasing the wall card.

J.M.W. Turner, Dudley, Worcestershire, 1832, Watercolor and body color on paper. “Dudley lies in ‘the Black Country,’ an area characterized by smoke and soot from hundreds of forges, furnaces and hearths. Topographical features present a sharp contrast of ancient and modern: on top of the hill, the ruins of Dudley Castle, echoed by the recently rebuilt neo-Gothic tower of Saint Thomas’s Church, allude to the town’s history, while industrial mills vent dark smoke into the air in the foreground. The scene offered Turner the opportunity for a meditation on change over time, and for a solemn commentary on the industrial sublime.” Per the wall card, paraphrased.

Staggered, but not felled, by these bodyblows, my head cleared long enough to think about how Turner brilliantly uses two different styles sixteen years apart to convey similar messages. Whereas his later works strike us now as almost “impressionistic,” here he’s showing us real scenes. Already a lot to take in, I was ready to go home. Ah, but fear not. The “star” of our show would not be eclipsed. Thomas Cole hit the ground running.

View of Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains, 1827, Oil on panel. Cole discovered the Catskills in 1825, and he was about 26 when he Painted this masterful mix of landscape, realism and the sublime, as it was called at the time, in an American setting. This breathtaking vista was  one of his favorite spots.

The third kind of beauty on view is the beauty of nature that all of the works on view- by Cole, Turner, John Trumbull, Claude Lorrain, John Constable, John Martin, and the others included depict. The works included focus on natural beauty, what man has done with and to that natural beauty, and the possible ramifications of that.

The Garden of Eden, 1828, Oil on Canvas. Thomas Cole, the “romantic” is on view here, though in the service of the “message,” or “warning,” of paradise about to be lost. A theme that will recur.

The Hudson River School spent decades in eclipse in the 20th century as abstraction took center stage, but they’ve never failed to influence Artists, and their “popularity” has seemed to be on the upturn over the past 20 years. Upstairs in the American Wing, The Met’s Hudson River School permanent galleries are one of the lesser known glories of The Museum, judging by the fact that I’ve yet to see them crowded. While Art history has moved on, giving us countless styles, schools and movements since, no where else can the glories of original America be seen (pre-landscape Photography). Though the names of many of the places they Painted are familiar we longer can largely not recognize them. Beyond that, the Hudson River School includes some of the great Artists in 19th Century Painting. While they have enjoyed a “cult” following lo these many years, it’s high time they gain the wider acceptance and appreciation their work deserves. There’s no better place to start that than with a closer look at Thomas Cole.

View on the Catskill- Early Autumn, 1836-37, Oil on canvas.

Thomas Cole, who was born in England and emigrated to the U.S. in 1818, was 28 when he met JMW Turner on a return visit to London after a decade here. He visited Turner’s Gallery2. There, he saw, and was deeply impressed by, Turner’s Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps. The Met’s wall card tells us Thomas Cole was not taken with Turner’s later work.

JMW Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, 1812, Oil on canvas.

At London’s newly opened National Gallery, he discovered Claude Lorrain and John Constable’s Hadleigh Castle, which haunted him for the rest of his life. He and Constable became friends.

John Constable, Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames-Morning after a Stormy Night, 1829, Oil on canvas

In 1831, he went to Italy, where he painted this-

Aqueduct near Rome, 1832, Oil on canvas. Intriguingly, both of these work show ruins, in this case, that left by a great empire.

In Aqueduct near Rome, 1832, we see the ruins of a once great civilization, seen by Cole during his Italian trip and Painted from sketches he made of it. Among the ruins, we see a shepherd and his flock, a human skull, reminders of the passing of time and life going on. Looking at it in hindsight, it’s hard not to see it as something of a precursor for his masterwork, the 5 Painting series, The Course of Empire, 1934-36, the inclusion of which, on loan from the New York Historical Society, is one of the highlights of the show. Originally intended to hang over and around a fireplace by the gent who commissioned them, they seem much better hung as they are here, in a semi circular row where the endless detail in each can be better considered and appreciated. Interestingly, the largest of the five, designed to go in the center directly over the fireplace surrounded by the other four in vertical rows of 2 on each side, may well be the least “important.” At least, that’s a Met curator who spoke about the show in the galleries said.

Course of Empire, 1834-36, The rise and fall of civilization as seen from the same place. Notice the same distinctive mountain peak appearing in each Painting.

From The Course of Empire – The Savage State, 1834

From The Course of Empire – The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1934.

Detail. In the center foreground, the Artist has included a Self-Portrait as a young man, Drawing, also showing the place of Art in this “ideal” world.

From The Course of Empire – The Consumation of Empire, 1836.

From The Course of Empire – Destruction, 1836.

From The Course of Empire – Desolation, 1836.

After Thomas Cole died in 1848, he was remembered by a number of Artists, including Frederic Church and Asher Durand, but his influence is ongoing. The London reinstallation of this show, at the National Gallery, is accompanied by a show of the work of the American Artist, Ed Ruscha, one of the most influential Artists of our time, who personally installed his own renowned Course of Empire series in a dialogue with one of his great influences. Mr. Ruscha traveled to NYC to speak about Thomas Cole at The Met on April 8th, and that fascinating conversation may be seen and heard here. In it, he speaks about visiting the New York Historical Society (“and not MoMA”) during his visits to the City because he wanted to see Cole’s The Course of Empire, who own the series, repeatedly.

Ed Ruscha, Jet Baby, 2011, lithograph. *- Photo by Hamilton Press.

Many of Mr. Ruscha’s recent Paintings and prints have featured a mountain peak, often in snow, a constant reminder of the beauty and wonder of nature that was so close to Thomas Cole’s heart, and possibly a reference to the peak that recurs in each work of Cole’s The Course of Empire series. At The Met, Mr. Ruscha spoke about his love of nature in terms reminiscent of Thomas Cole. It speaks volumes that Mr. Ruscha would go to such lengths to bring Thomas Cole to a wider audience. But, he’s not alone. The string of Artists who’s work would seem to bear at least some debt to Thomas Cole is a very long one. Then there’s the line of Artist’s who’s work contrasts with Thomas Cole’s as they show us what man has done to the landscape in the years since, as he saw this beginning to happen in View from Mount Holyoke, 1836, below.

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm- The Oxbow, 1836, Oil on canvas.

Landscape Painting was joined by Landscape Photography, from about the 1850’s culminating in the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston in the first half of the 20th century. They were followed by Stephen Shore3, Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Joe Deal and others who were given a landmark show in 1975-76 at the George Eastman House, Rochester, called New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. The show’s theme was that the American landscape was no longer what it once was in the days of Ansel Adams,  Weston and Cole, that industrialization, commercialization and development had changed the landscape, and so, this new generation of Artists were bent on depicting the American Landscape they saw all around them.

Sketch for View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), 1936. Thomas Cole masterfully lays out his conception of the composition with a remarkable sparseness of brushstrokes, which only seems to lack the self portrait he included in the final masterpiece seen above. Instead, there is what appears to be a female figure to the lower right. Though in it’s permanent collection, I’ve never seen this remarkable 5 1/2 by 9 1 /2 inch Sketch on display in The Met before.

Painters, too, were hard at work doing the same thing- Painting the world they saw around them. Thomas Eakins painted the encroachment of the industrial world in The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871. In the 20th Century, the Regionalists, including Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood did their best to focus on the beauty of nature and the American Landscape, but even in their work, the modern world is encroaching. This was all presaged in Thomas Cole’s View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm- The Oxbow, 1836, in which the Artist shows us undeveloped land, left, developed land to the right, as he, himself, looks back at the viewer from a crevice right in the lower center, a man caught between the past, the present and the future. In this work he gives us at least the first two installments of The Course of Empire, and, with his turned look at the viewer seems to be directly asking us “Whither to from here?”

“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet.
Shall we turn from it?
We are still in Eden;
the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”
(Quotes by Thomas Cole from the introductory video.)

Thomas Cole’s Sketch Box, with added Italianate landscape, perhaps used for the Sketch, above.

The “Ash Can” School painted the harsh reality of American urban life as it rapidly expanded. Meanwhile, Georgia O’Keefe and Charles Sheeler were two Artists who walked the line between the traditionalists and the modern world, with the former gradually disappearing in Sheeler’s work (as both a Photographer and a Painter) as time went on, while Ms. O’Keefe added abstraction to her images of the natural world, while also Painting the city. Edward Hopper lived in both worlds for most of his life, splitting time between Manhattan and Maine. Hopper has been followed by Richard Estes, who also splits his time between Manhattan and Maine, and like Hopper, paints works that show the beauty of nature, in one thread, and the extremes of human development in his Paintings and “Urban Landscape” print series. 

John Salt, Red Mailbox #2, 2015, Casein on linen, seen at Meisel Gallery, 2018.

Along with Mr. Estes, other Painters, including John Salt and Rod Penner, like Thomas Cole, were born elsewhere, yet give us landscape Paintings of contemporary American scenes, as do many Photographers, including Catherine Opie, below, while others, including Emmet Gowin, Edward Burtynsky and David Maisel, have taken to the air to create works based on some of the most extreme uses man has made of the earth…so far.

Catherine Opie, Untitled #7 (1999), 1999, C-print, seen at Lehmann Maupin, 2018.

David Maisel, Termiinal Mirage 2, 2003, seen at Yancey Richardson Gallery. An aerial shot taken at the Great Salt Lake. The Artist calls the appeal of works like this “the apocalyptic sublime.”

Whether they have been influenced by Thomas Cole, or their work stands in contrast to his, somewhere in all of it lies a message (intentional or not) that is not all that dissimilar to that of Thomas Cole in one of the stages of The Course of Empire. The overriding question becomes- Which stage are we in?

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Message in a Bottle,” by Sting and the Police.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. Like this piece in the New York Times ↩
  2. George Jones Interior of Turner’s Gallery: The Artist Showing His Works, 1852, Oil on millboard, is here in this show on loan from the Ashmolean. My Photo of it appears in my Post on Ellen Harvey’s recent shows since her wonderful work, Arcadia is somewhat based on it. It may be seen here. ↩
  3. The only one to show color work. ↩

Stephen Shore: Beneath The Surfaces

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If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Let’s play “Curriculum Vitae Roulette.”

First, make a list of ages going down the left side of the page. Next, write down some amazing feats, then slice them up individually, put them in a hat and mix them up.

No cheating! Blindfold, please. Begin!

Pull them out one at a time and lay them in a row going down, one next to each age. Repeat step 5 until the hat is empty. We’ll start with a given- the birth year. Let’s say…”Born 1947.” Ok. Let’s see what we have.

Born- 1947
Age 6- Gets a gift of a darkroom kit. Proceeds to develop and print his family photos.
Age 8- Gets a 35mm camera. “I started photographing seriously. Before that, my real interest was darkroom work,” he would later say.
Age 10- Receives a copy of Walker Evans’ American Photographs, the catalog for Walker’s legendary 1938 MoMA show, perhaps, the first important American PhotoBook, which has a powerful and lasting impact on him. He would later call Evans “a kindred spirit1.”

Our subject. Self Portrait, 1957. He was ten. TEN!! Click any Photo for full size. (See- “A Note About Glare In My Photos” in this footnote-2.

Age 11- Has a Leica and a Nikon. Begins doing street photography.
Age 14- 1962- Legendary Photographer, then Director of Photography at MoMA, Edward Steichen, acquires 3 of his Photographs for MoMA. They ask him what his personal philosophy is. “None,” he replies. “I’m only 14.”
Age 15- First article about his Photography is published.

Angry Young Man With A Camera, U.S. Camera Magazine, 1963.

Age 16 & 17- Takes Photos like these-

Untitled, New York, 1964. A forerunner of similar images to come in the next decade, and beyond.

Untitled, 1965. I can’t look at this without thinking of Richard Estes’ now classic reflections from the 1970’s, like Central Savings.

Age 17- Meets Andy Warhol and begins to frequent, and Photograph, Warhol’s Factory. Of how this came about, he later said- “I made a film Elevator, which is shown in this gallery (see below), and it was shown the same night that Andy Warhol showed a film called The Life of Juanita Castro, and I had the opportunity then to meet him. And I asked if I could come to the Factory and take pictures. He said, “yes3.”

Ivy Nicholson, Chuck Wein, Peter Knoll, Danny Fields and Andy Warhol, the Factory, New York, 1965-67. I spent an evening hanging out with Ivy Nicholson, left in the white, in the early 2000’s. After a few drinks, she sold me one of her CD’s.

Age 24- 1971- First living photographer to have a one-man show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ok…I’m ROFLAICGU! (Rolling on the floor laughing, and I can’t get up!) Yeah…I know. Dumb exercise. NO ONE would believe that could actually happen, right?

But…Um? It did. It really did. ALL of it4! To ONE person. That’s actually the short list of the early life and career of Master Photographer Stephen Shore. REALLY!

Once I got over the staggering accomplishments Stephen Shore achieved by age 24, which I’m not sure I still have (bearing in mind that William Eggleston didn’t start seriously taking Photographs until he was 185!), I could start actually beginning to assess what the man’s achieved, and is still achieving. The former was gloriously on display in MoMA’s retrospective. The latter was, also, gloriously on display at 303 Gallery on West 21st Street earlier this year, in two shows simply titled Stephen Shore. In between, and every day since, there’s his Instagram page which is a veritable one Artist iPhone Photo Museum, that’s amended daily. As he passes age 70, Stephen Shore is one of the most respected, and influential, Photographers of our time.

He got there the hard way- by continually forging his own way, even though those often lay outside of the “accepted mainstream,” like color Photography was in the world of “Fine Art Photography” in 1972 when he started using it, as he has relentlessly sought new ways to solve “Photographic problems.”

The first room features Stephen Shore’s earliest work, arranged counterclockwise. Which means that after you enter the gallery, to the right, you are presented with the latest works in the room, and you work your way to the earliest, on the left. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? In the center of the room, Mr. Shore’s 16mm film, Elevator, 1964, the film Andy Warhol saw that led to him Photographing the Factory, is featured.

Stephen Shore at MoMA was a terrific chance to get the big picture. Taking full advantage of its very generous six month run, I learned more than I have from any Photography show since William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest at David Zwirner in late 2016 led to a deep dive into the world of contemporary Photography.

Many, even most, of those familiar with his work know American Surfaces” or Uncommon Places long considered his classics, (the resulting PhotoBooks of each were cited in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s The Photobook: A History, Volume II). They may not be familiar with his earlier, or later work. Over such a long career, it’s impossible to cover everything Mr. Shore has done, but MoMA has done an exemplary job of hitting a good many of the high notes along the way, including many of his most familiar Photographs surrounded by a good many that are not so well known. Along the way, it seemed to me, the show manages to tie his many and varied projects into a running thread. For an Artist who’s work has continued to evolve for going on 60 years, that’s an accomplishment, and for work that some may look at and not understand, it’s a valuable insight, and perhaps a “way in.”

The first room features Stephen Shore’s earliest work, arranged counterclockwise. Which means that after you enter the gallery, to the right, you are presented with the latest works in the room, and you work your way to the earliest, on the left. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? In the center of the room, Mr. Shore’s 16mm film, Elevator, 1964, the film Andy Warhol saw that led to him Photographing the Factory, is featured.

Fittingly, the first room begins with early work, and ends with his Photographs of Warhol’s Factory, while his short film, Elevator, 1964, plays in the middle of the gallery. It’s the film Warhol saw the led to Stephen Shore being invited to Photograph at the Factory. He would spend large parts of the next three years, from 1965-67 documenting it. It’s only recently that Stephen Shore has chosen to exhibit his Warhol/Factory work. “I rejected my Factory period for a long time. For so many of the others involved, it was the pinnacle of their lives. For me it just wasn’t. It was the beginning6.”

Marcel Duchamp, 1966, Photographed at Warhol’s Factory. With its evocative lighting, this unusual portrait was the final work displayed in the first gallery, though it’s actually the first Photograph viewers see after entering the show.

Lately, he’s seemed to come to terms with this work, as was seen in the 2016 Phaidon collection he was involved with, “Factory:Andy Warhol Stephen Shore.” Though different from all that came after that Stephen Shore has done, to my eyes, this is not only historically important work that documents the Factory as well as it has been. Each image brings unique elements- particularly the arrangement of the figures. Through it all, there is an intimacy on view that only a personal knowledge of the subjects can bring. It’s work that belies the youth of its creator and it more than holds its own as an historically important body of work that also holds up as Stephen Shore’s first “mature” body of work. At 17.

Detail of July 22-23, 1969, 1969. Stephen Shore Photographed a friend every 30 minutes for 24 hours. Even while his friend slept.

From there, Stephen Shore looked for new realms to explore, new problems to solve. He explored Conceptual and Serial Photography, which we see in the second gallery. The great Painter and Photographer, Ed Ruscha, had broken ground with his book Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, a series of Photographs Mr. Ruscha took of gas stations from L.A. to Oklahoma City, which, influenced Stephen Shore deeply. As I walked through the rest of the show, I couldn’t escape the feeling that Conceptual and Serial Photography continues to influence his work- to this day. Ever since, most of the work he has done has been in series, whether in personal projects or commissions.

“Mick-a-Matic” Camera. Believe it or not, Stephen Shore used a Mick-a-Matic in 1971  to take his first color Photos, (some on view at MoMA, in the All The Meat You Can Eat section). He used it to get a “snapshot” feel, a pursuit he continued using a Rollei 35mm camera in his first landmark series, American Surfaces, in 1972-73.

In the 3rd gallery, we re-visit a show that Mr. Shore curated called All The Meat You Can Eat, 1971. On display were examples of the vernacular uses of Photography, with a few shots by Stephen Shore (apparently taken with the  “Mick-a-Matic”), but most taken by others. About it, he said, “I was just fascinated by how photography was used. I was interested, also, in the meaning conveyed by how it was used—that we see a snapshot differently than we see an art photograph, that we see an advertisement differently than we see a postcard7.” It was around this time that he became interested in color Photography. “Because postcards and snapshots, in 1971, were all in color, I had to begin examining color photography. In fact, most photography that an average person encountered at the time was color. While art photography, the photography that would be found in galleries, was almost always in black and white. That convention bothered me8.” Regarding his interest in the snapshot, he spoke about a certain quality that some of them had- “…it’s very hard to find the quality of the unmediated image(3. As quoted here. I amended the quote to “unmediated” with the input of Mr. Shore.].” All of this combined to lead him further down the road of Conceptualism, though with a better camera (a Rollei 35mm), and take him, literally on the road.

Installation view of 219 images from the over 300 that comprise American Surfaces as displayed in the 4th gallery at MoMA, recreating how they were first displayed.

He returned with American Surfaces, 1972-73. In keeping true to the snapshot model, he even sent his film to Kodak in New Jersey for processing, like every other snap shooter at the time was doing9. “It began as a road trip. My idea was to keep a visual diary of meals I ate, people I met, televisions I watched, motel rooms I slept in, toilets I used, as well as the towns I would drive through, and, through this visual diary and series of repeated subjects, build a kind of cultural picture of the country at the time10.”  The resulting series of over 300 35mm prints are in the familiar 3 1/16 by 4 5/8 inch snapshot size, though it’s debatable how many of them have that “unmediated” feel. Looking at them now, is a fascinating example of the impact of the passing of time. While the series was met with less than stellar reviews, most notably from the legendary head of MoMA’s Photo Department, John Szarkowski, The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought the entire series. It’s already hard for us to see them as they looked in 1973, but it’s not hard to find the innumerable examples of influence of this series in the work of others since…like in countless people’s social media feeds of every meal they eat, every place they visit, etc, etc. 40-odd years later? Stephen Shore has said that he found Robert Frank’s The Americans “too pointed11. That certainly cannot be said of American Surfaces, though the influence of Walker Evans, Ed Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher, along with Andy Warhol, are to be found, if anything, it’s remarkably open.

Excerpts from American Surfaces, 1972-73, Stephen Shore’s now a classic groundbreaking first series, a visual diary of a road trip . Taken with a 35mm Rollei camera.

Mr. Szarkowski’s criticism of whether the semi-automatic Rollei had created the results, rather than Mr. Shore’s abilities, led the Artist to double down on his intentions. Realizing he couldn’t make 8 x 10 prints from the small negatives without too much grain, he decided to go on another road trip, with bigger cameras. He tried a 4 x 5 camera made famous by press Photographers like Weegee before settling on an 8 x 10 inch camera, which required a large tripod and for the Photographer to shoot under a black hood. The results were worth it. Uncommon Places retains every bit of its majesty and mystery. Though it reprises many of the themes familiar from American Surfaces- meals, motel rooms, architecture, and portraits, the results have a magic that have more than held up since Aperture first published them in 1982. They remain THE series people are referring to when they say something “looks like a Stephen Shore.”

U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973. Ahh…the wide open spaces…that only an 8 x 10inch camera can provide.

Both American Surfaces and Uncommon Places are personal and impersonal at the same time. Personal because these are his trips. These are the meals he ate, the rooms he slept in, the people he met, the places he saw. Impersonal because the Artist himself is not seen, nor do we get any indication of what meaning any of these places, people or things have for him. In that sense, they are different from most tourist’s snapshots. The shots of places are like the Paris of Atget, or many of Walker Evans shots of America. The difference I see between American Surfaces and Uncommon Places is the former is marked by Photos that say “look at this,” whereas the latter creates “a little world that a viewer can move their attention through without (his) directing it12.”

Lookout Hotel, Ogunquit, Maine, July 16, 1974, 1974.

It’s up to the viewer to piece them together- individually and as a group, like William Eggleston’s “Los Alamos,” 1965-74, which is also a travelogue of sorts, who’s period partially overlaps.

Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, 8/13/79, 1979. The only work in the show to hang on a wall by itself would seem to lie at the heart of the show.

Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, 8/13/79, 1979, strikes me as a bit of a rosetta stone when looking at much of Stephen Shore’s work. Intriguingly, it hangs on a wall by itself at something of the heart of the show. At first glance, it appears to be a fairly ordinary landscape view with some folks (perhaps a family) frolicking on the beach in the mid foreground. “…what I realized is that it renders the world in such detail that I don’t have to move into something close to make it clear in a picture. I can let it be a small part of a larger, more complex picture. And so, rather than the picture being, in a way, a view through my eyes, it becomes something else. It becomes a complex world where the viewer can move their attention13.”

The gallery of Print on Demand books, with a row of iPads displaying Stephen Shore’s Instagram page, right.

He demonstrates this in the gallery to its left, in a room full of hanging books, print-on-demand titles he created in the early 2000’s. Of the 20 books hanging in this gallery, one is devoted to Merced River.

The complete contents of Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, 8/13/79, 1979, one of the print on demand books seen above.

In it, the Artist presents the master image as a series of sectioned images, showing us that each one could be a stand alone Photograph. While each proves fascinating on its own, for me, most interesting is the bottom left Photograph, in which we see a side view of the scene Ansel Adams shows us in his famous Photographs, Monolith, Face of Half Dome, 1927, and Moon And Half Dome, 1960.  Stephen Shore was one of the Artists included in the ground breaking 1975 exhibition titled New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, at the George Eastman House in Rochester. Mr Shore, along with Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Joe Deal and 4 other American Photographers were shown turning away from the classic landscapes of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston’s time and showing the American Landscape as it now existed- altered by man.

This gallery of landscapes taken in the Montana, Texas, Upstate New York and Scotland was something of a beautiful revelation. Complete with landscapes hanging in mid-air.

There’s a “calmness” that overrides almost everything I’ve seen by Stephen Shore. There’s very little “action.” Even in his commissioned Photographs of the New  York Yankees in Spring Training, not much is going on. Players sit in a group, or stand at the plate, motionless. What we’re almost always given to look at is a “surface” of some kind. But, what strikes me about Stephen Shore’s work is that it almost always leaves me pondering what’s under that surface.

Gallatin County, Montana, April 18, 1981. The second time I met him, I asked Stephen Shore about Painters he liked. He replied, “Anselm Kiefer.” Then added, “I don’t think of Painters when I’m working.” That doesn’t stop me from thinking about them. Looking at this work, I’m reminded of Van Gogh’s immortal Wheatfield With Crows. Minus the crows.

Gallatin County, Montana, August 2, 1983. Again in the gallery that I came to call “The Hall of Landscapes,” this one struck me as being a non-“New Topographic” landscape, and so is rare in his work. Here, there is no evidence of man altering the landscape. Instead, we see an image almost split in two between land and sky, though it’s hard to tell exactly how far off the crest of the hill is, and so it reminds me of Holden Street, North Adams, Massachusetts, July 13, 1974, from Uncommon Places, as a work in which distance and perspective are key elements. Along with the peaceful beauty.

I met Stephen Shore twice during the show’s very generous six and a half month run. I asked him how he felt about the show. “I’m thrilled,” he replied. Well, that might not sounds like an earth-shaking, newsworthy response. But, then I thought about Stephen Shore’s career, and how the initial reaction to his work was not always positive (see below). At MoMA, all these years later, with glories around every corner in every gallery, he’s been “proven right,” so to speak. The show is an unmitigated triumph.

The central gallery devoted to his book, The Nature of Photographs, about looking at Photographic prints, features his work and the work of others he uses as examples in the book, like Thomas Struth, center.

Add to that, he’s been the Director of the Photography Program at Bard College since 1982, as well as the author of the highly respected primer on looking at Photographs, The Nature of Photographs,  which was first published in 1998 (See the “BookMarks” section at the end for my recommended Stephen Shore books…though you really can’t go wrong.). His influence on other Photographers is everywhere and already incalculable, and seems likely to continue indefinitely. There’s certainly a lot in 2018 for Stephen Shore to be “thrilled” about.

3 Stereoscopic viewers each containing 10 different Stereo Photographs Stephen Shore took in 1974 with a Studio-Realist 3-D camera.

Stephen Shore’s Instagram page, January 6, 2018.

Stephen Shore has been posting virtually daily on Instagram since 2014. Of his approach, and some of the comments he’s received he wrote this on February 18, 2018-

  • stephen.shore “Shore seems intent on proving that anyone can photograph as well as he can, and I must admit he’s building an airtight case. The specific concept behind this exhibit is not readily apparent to me, which would make me feel old-fogeyish as all get-out if I weren’t still young enough to not give a fuck.” This is from a review (in the Village Voice) of a show of mine in 1972. This is how some people viewed the very work of mine that you now respect and perhaps view as “iconic” at the time it was made. It sounds very much like the criticism I’m hearing today – except you all are more polite and respectful. Every now and then I write about my use of Instagram and this seems like an appropriate time. Some photographers refer to their feed as their “gallery”; they see it as a means to make public their best work. There are also well known photographers who have an assistant go into their archives and post one of their best known images each day. My own approach is to post almost every day a picture I made with my phone with Instagram in mind. I see the pictures as a kind of visual jotting – similar to the way Walker Evans used the Polaroid SX-70 camera when he was about the same age as I am now. I’m definitely not defining how Instagram should be used, just stating my intentions. I want to thank all of you for taking the time to express your views. You might find this article of interest: http://stephenshore.net/press/Photograph_Dec_17.pdf

(One of) Stephen Shore’s iPhones. When I met him in January, as seen below, he was holding a different one. Still, this one was most likely used for his Instagram page. Your results may differ.

While countless social media feeds now look eerily similar to American Surfaces when he first showed them in the fall of 1972, the show was “totally baffling then to almost everyone who saw it14.” Now, Stephen Shore uses Instagram in his own way, and after 4 years of doing so, with an iPhone, its influence can be seen in his other new work. In addition to the MoMA show, 2018 began with a show of new work by Stephen Shore at Cheslea’s 303 Gallery, his long time dealer. On view were recent Photographs taken with his new Hassleblad Digital  X1D camera, which features a touchscreen, much like an iPhone.

Stephen Shore arrives at the opening of his show at 303 Gallery, January 11, 2018. Moments later, this room was packed.

His recent work may look familar to anyone who’s seen his Instagram page. Mr. Shore explained that while he was out walking his dogs he did a lot of looking at the ground. He became interested in “details” he’d see of the ground or the street. More surfaces, yes, but looking through his past, pre-Instagram work, reveals the occasional image similar to these. Using the 50 megapixel Hasselblad X1D Medium Format Mirrorless Digital Camera, he’s able to take images that he can print at sizes of 5 feet, that are, he says, “more highly resolved than work from my 8 x 10 camera15.”

New York, New York, May 19, 2017, seen at 303 Gallery, January, 2018.

I find the results enthralling. Some of the 9 works on view at 303 reminded me of Aaron Siskind, but in the level of detail Mr. Shore brings to bear, they’re completely and entirely something else. Seeing details printed in such a scale presented a small world, where only an occasionally recognizable object, like a matchstick, would give a sense of scale.

New York, New York, May 19. 2017, left, and London, England, June 9, 2017, right, both seen at 303 Gallery, January, 2018.

New York, New York, May 19.2017, seen at 303 Gallery, January, 2018.

New York, New York, May 19.2017 seen at 303 Gallery, January, 2018.

New York, New York, May 20.2017, seen at 303 Gallery, January, 2018.

Without that familiar object, some almost look like a Photograph of the Earth, or some other planet, seen from space. In these works, he’s gotten closer to the surface than ever, about as close to it as possible.

Detail of New York, New York, May 19, 2017. Kinda, sorta looks like North America, no?

For most of his career he seemed to be striving to make big scenes big, possibly to have the impact of being there. These seems to be striving to also make small scenes big. In his latest work, he brings the viewer so close it’s almost as if he’s trying to see under the surface.

Back over at MoMA, there is a small room of works in which he has actually gone under the surface.

Ashkelon, Israel, 1996, at MoMA.

In 1990s Stephen Shore became fascinated by archeology. After reading extensively on the subject, he undertook projects at excavation sites, beginning with some ancient sites in Israel. Once again, as in a good deal of his earlier and later work, the images are without people. What he shows us here are ancient objects dug out from under the surface. In this case Stephen Shore shows us the surface and what literally lives under it. What we see are the remnants of human activity, life…their presence. In this case the remnants of a lost civilization.

Beitin, West Bank, January 13, 2010, at MoMA.  It almost looks like the side of a large hill, with eons of geological strata facing us, with the current civilization on top, though it’s most likely a flat road or open space leading to the town in the distance.

While thousands of years have past since humans created and used these objects and places, in Ashkelon, Israel, and the other sites he Photographed, are they really all that different from what he shows us in American Surfaces, from 46 years ago? I’m sure a good number of those places are gone now, too. The main difference is that American culture is still here. What lies on the surface eventually gets covered over or is lost to time. One day there may be archeological digs going on here. “American Surfaces” is an unintentional piece of our cultural past, as are any vintage Photographs. In its case, it’s an artfully done series of over 300 works that taken together gives us a bigger sense of our culture in 1972. Much of the same can be said for Uncommon Places, since it continues many of the same themes. The larger 8 x 10 format is, perhaps, shown to best effect in the landscapes. In these, we see the effect that humans have had on the land- constructing buildings of various kinds, or otherwise modifying the land- the very crux of what was meant by “New Topographics,” Photographs of the man-altered landscapes.

“Lately I’ve been paper thin
So, why can’t I fly?
Why can’t I move with the wind on a whim?”*

Photographs are two dimensional representations on the surface of Photographic paper, of course. There is no “going underneath” the surface of a Photograph. Stephen Shore has long been something of an Archeologist Photographer, showing us our world as he finds it, a world teaming with evidence and artifacts of human presence, and so the resulting Photographs are often packed with so much information the temptation arrises to ponder what it “means,” what lies “under” the surface.

El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas, July 5, 1975 (*- )from Uncommon Places. This is one image I’ve literally spent hours looking at and thinking about. MoMA Photograph, and included in the Nature of Photographs section of the show.

Until, I came across this that he, himself, said. “…I was fascinated by what the world looks like when you pay attention to it, and I’m still interested in this act of attention. And so the pictures are reflective of the condition of a self, paying attention.”

Remember that game we played in the beginning? Stephen Shore’s real life C.V., now approaching book length, gets even more impressive every day. Exploring it serves to show me that one of the great lessons, and examples, of both shows is that over such a long and fruitful career, Stephen Shore has continually resisted repeating himself. There are other Photographers who have made a career out of attempting Uncommon Places-style work, but Mr. Shore has relentlessly moved forward, seeking new Photographic problems to solve and continuing to evolve as an Artist. Think about how few Artists have been able to do this. Among Musicians,  The Beatles, weren’t able to last more than 10 years before they broke up, and even among individual Musicians or Artists there are very few who have a similar track record. When considering Stephen Shore’s ongoing accomplishment, I look over this already long piece and the first thing I think about is how much I’ve left out. But, the joy of delving deeply into any great Artist’s work is that of discovery. I don’t claim to have “discovered” all that there is to discover in Stephen Shore’s work in 6 months. Particularly because- He’s going to surprise me, again, tomorrow.

BookMarks- (A series that looks at books related to the subject of this Post.)-

A copy of the Phaidon edition of Stephen Shore’s The Nature of Photographs: A Primer.

PhotoBooks have been a big part of Stephen Shore’s career. If you want to explore Stephen Shore’s work, the excellent Aperture Foundation has 2 books available that are both essential, in my view. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, updates the original 1982 Aperture classic, Uncommon Places, (now out of print with first edition/first printing copies selling for about $900.00 at the moment). I recommend the Aperture’s 2015 update, Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, which lists for $65.00, because Mr. Shore added 20 rediscovered images, in what is now, as Aperture says, the “definitive edition,” of this unique and endlessly influential series.

Second, last year, Aperture released Stephen Shore: Selected Works, 1973-1981, which was one of my choices for the PhotoBook of the Year. Though a bit too large (note all the white space around the Photos), the concept of this book is brilliant. Aperture explains- “Over the past five years, Shore has scanned hundreds of negatives shot between 1973 and 1981. In this volume, Aperture has invited an international group of fifteen photographers, curators, authors, and cultural figures to select ten images apiece from this rarely seen cache of images. Each portfolio offers an idiosyncratic and revealing commentary on why this body of work continues to astound; how it has impacted the work of new generations of photography and the medium at large; and proposes new insight on Shore’s unique vision of America as transmuted in this totemic series.” Check out the list of the 15 contributors- Wes Anderson, Quentin Bajac, David Campany, Paul Graham, Guido Guidi, Takashi Homma, An-My Lê, Michael Lesy, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Francine Prose, Ed Ruscha, Britt Salvesen, Taryn Simon, Thomas Struth, Lynne Tillman.

American Surfaces, first released in 1999 with 77 Photographs, was reissued in an expanded, 300 Photograph edition, in 2005 by Phaidon, that came in a reproduction of a 1970’s Kodak film processing bag. it’s currently available (without the nifty bag) in a very good paperback edition that lists for 39.95, and is still essential for anyone interested contemporary Photography.

Stephen Shore has been Director of the Photography Program at Bard College, NY, since 1982, and The Nature of Photographs: A Primer, first published in 1998, and now republished by Phaidon, is as close as we have to his “textbook” on the subject. Not a “how to take great Photos” book, it’s more a study of looking at the end result- prints. Mr. Shore believes that aspiring Photographers should spend at least some time working with film, and that includes its end product- the print. As the world of Photography becomes more and more digital, and fewer Photographers have experience working with film and printing in a darkroom, this book becomes an ever-more valuable document from a master of the darkroom for over 64 years. In it, Mr. Shore talks about “the physical and formal attributes of a Photographic print that form the tools a Photographer uses to define and interpret…content,” such as flatness, frame, time and focus, each accompanied by classic images, the choice of which is fascinating on its own. Rembrandt never wrote a book about “The Art of the Print.” Ansel Adams did in the 1960s. Stephen Shore has for our time.

Finally, an under the radar book I recommend is Winslow Arizona: Stephen Shore (English and Japanese Edition),” 2014, published by Amana. It’s a collection of Photographs Mr. Shore took in one day in 2013 in the titular town he had first seen in 1972. The series was created for for a slideshow which was recreated at MoMA. I find it a beautiful collection of first rate later Stephen Shore images. Being that the entire collection was taken in one day may be intimidating for some who aspire to become Photographic Artists, it’s remarkable for the rest of us.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Surface” by Bonobo
*- Stephen Shore at MoMA is my NoteWorthy Show for May, 2018.
My thanks to Stephen Shore.
My previous Posts about Photography are here.

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  1. MoMA Catalog, P.92 ↩
  2. “A Note About Glare in my Photos- Yes, I know. It’s annoying. It makes it very hard to see the Art or the Photo being displayed. I try very hard to minimize it in my Photos, even leaving out works where the glare is insurmountable (this was an especially BIG problem with MoMA’s great Frank Lloyd Wright show. For a while I thought I’d have no Photos to run of it.). Most galleries and museums don’t glaze their Art with non-reflective acrylic. For one thing, it’s quite expensive. For another, lighting in museums, particularly, is often less than ideal in spite of the efforts of some of the world’s best museum staffs. This is almost always an issue for any Art with glass or acrylic in front of it. Time and again I’ve pointed this out to curators who, much to my surprise, have actually agreed with me. Um? Then why isn’t it better? Add to this the proximity of other Art that is lit, and this is a problem for me in preparing these Posts. But? It’s also a problem for any show visitor. WHOEVER goes to the show is going to experience it- THIS is what they are going to see. So…I’ve thought about this problem long and hard in regard to the Photos I Post here. What I’ve decided, for better or worse, is that instead of using Photos of the Art from galleries or other sources, I’m running Photos of the Art as it actually appears in the show because this is how show attendees would most likely see it. My purpose is to give a sense of what the show was like and what it was about. To this end? I think this makes the most sense. In the “Self Portrait” Stephen Shore took at age 10, the glare was insurmountable, particularly in the large dark area to the lower left. I tried over numerous visits to minimize the glare, even trying different cameras, but given the yellow room, the bright lights and the proximity of the other frames reflected in it, it was just not possible. I decided that the reflections seem to auger the work to come in Mr. Shore’s illustrious future, and to “let it be.” ↩
  3. MoMA Exhibiton AudioGuide https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/45/706 ↩
  4. References for the list- UO Interview, and P.2 Tony Hiss/John Szarkowski stephenshore.net ↩
  5. Thomas Weski, William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color, P. 177 ↩
  6. wallpaper July 26, 2007  https://wallpaper.com/art/Stephen-Shore-interview ↩
  7. MoMA Exhibition AudioGuide https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/45/715 ↩
  8. MoMA Exhibition AudioGuide https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/45/715 ↩
  9. The first edition of the 2005 expanded version of “American Surfaces,” even comes in a recreation of a 1972 Kodak film processing bag. ↩
  10. MoMA Audio Guide ↩
  11. http://issuemagazine.com/a-ground-neutral-and-replete/8/#/ ↩
  12. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/sky-arts-ignition-doug-aitken-source ↩
  13. MoMA Exhibition AudioGuide https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/45/709 ↩
  14. https://newrepublic.com/article/115243/stephen-shore-photography-american-surfaces-uncommon-places ↩
  15. Source for this paragraph is a video Stephen Shore made about the X1D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BplS1MmZXk ↩

William Eggleston’s Secret Lab

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Set the Way Back Machine to December, 2016, when William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest was at David Zwirner Gallery, 537 West 20th Street, where all the trouble began. I had one of those “Dubliners” moments, where James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus has an epiphany and his life (and the story) is forever altered.

My life hasn’t been the same since.

A signed copy of the catalog for the 2016 show, William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest: Selected Works, with William Eggleston’s characteristically vibrant signature, is all that remains to remind me…

As I walked through that show, revisiting the classic images on view (a total of 40, many in a larger size that I still haven’t gotten used to), I left with an overpowering realization that I needed to do a deep dive into the world of contemporary Photography, to catch up on it, Post-Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” 1958 (though Mr. Frank is still with us, of course, and still releasing great books with Steidl. Long may he wave!), and see what’s been going on. I also wanted to do this to gain some perspective on William Eggleston’s place in Photography and his accomplishment to date.

Henri Cartier-Bresson has his cryptic “decisive moment.” Robert Capa has “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Eggleston has his own quote that will keep us guessing indefinitely.

Yes, I knew that famous quote, and William Eggleston’s work, but not in depth. Steidl’s 10 volume set of “William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest,” containing 1,010 images from this body of work, released concurrently with the show, was a sizable step towards addressing that. Never before (or since) had such a large body of color work been published in one set. Add to it the unrelenting quality of the images, and Mr. Eggleston’s extraordinary eye, and you’re face to face with a landmark body of work. From there, I went back to his prior Steidl sets, William Eggleston: Chromes, 2011, and Los Alamos Revisited, 2012, both of which contain his earliest color work (the former his early slides, the latter his early prints). At this point, there was no denying William Eggleston’s exceptional importance in the world of Photography, being one of the few to bring a new way of seeing to the world.

The question became- “Who else is important?” I’ve explored some of the others I’ve discovered in these pages since Mr. Eggleston’s David Zwirner show, this past year and a half, including 4 article looks at The Photography Shows, AIPAD, in 2017 and 2018. How times have changed here at NHNYC. William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest didn’t even get a full article to itself! The spark that started a bonfire. The journey continues.

On the road, again. William Eggleston’s Los Alamos was shot on the road, over trips he took across the country between 1966 and 1974. When he, and his friend the curator Walter Hopps hit Los Alamos, NM, scene of the Atomic Bomb development in WW II, the Photographer commented about wanting “his own secret lab.” Click and photo for full size.

So, after literally hundreds of Photo shows seen, countless PhotoBooks perused and too many bought in the interim, here I was, once again, on the precipice of another William Eggleston show. This one at no less than The Metropolitan Museum of Art, featuring the recently promised gift of one of the seven Portfolios of “Los Alamos,” never previously seen as a set in NYC, containing the Artist’s earliest color print work. A sense of trepidation filled me- What new havoc would Mr. Eggleston wreck upon me now?

Untitled, 1967-74, Gelatin silver print. Perhaps a touch of the lingering influence of Henri Cartier-Bresson here?

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. As I approached the show’s entrance, I realized The Met had decided to give us more. This monumental show of one of the landmark bodies of color Photography begins with two walls of William Eggleston’s comparatively little known black & white work(!), flanking each side of the show’s entrance  containing a total of 11 black & white Photographs created between 1959 and 1974 mounted on mustard walls! 11 Photographs might not sound like many but their subjects and styles are so varied they present a fascinating capsule look at where his work was before he turned to color film.

I’ve seen some of his black & white work in the two Steidl books centered on it1, to feel they are an overlooked realm of his work that deserves a closer look. But, such is the all-encompassing power of his color work that it has garnered only occasional attention.

William Eggleston fell asleep reading Cartier-Bresson’s Les Europeans, Paris, 1964, shown here in this Photo by his wife, Rosa, as seen in William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color, P. 176. (Not in the exhibition. )

Early on, William Eggleston was captivated by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. He so worried about copying him that during a trip to Paris in 1964, where the French master lived and worked for many years, he didn’t take a single Photograph. Returning home, he realized that “foreign land” surrounded him right there in Memphis (including the new shopping malls and strip malls that were sprouting like weeds) and he set about Photographing it. That is what we see in these 11 black & white shots- a great Artist stepping beyond influences and beginning to trust his own vision. In the shots with human subjects, the influence of Cartier-Bresson’s infamous “Decisive Moment” would seem to be there, but he’s putting his own stamp on it. By the early 1970’s he was on his way.

Untitled, 1967-74, Gelatin silver print. Light & dark…day & night…this is one of the most “different” images by William Eggleston I’ve seen.

Moving beyond the images with people, some others show a fascination with a wider view, courtesy of a wide-angle lens, in landscapes where it’s hard to discern details of the scene (above). In these people-less works, compositionally, they’re still fascinating and still “democratic,” the term he used recurringly connoting nothing being more important than anything else in the frame. But, overall, they lack the laser focus that permeates Los Alamos, and much of what has followed.

Untitled, 1967-74, Gelatin silver print. This begins to call to mind any number of William Eggleston’s later color Photos, like Los Alamos.

The revelation from these earlier black & white Photos, for me, is they emphasize the Artist’s gift for composition (including a penchant for Photographing from unusual angles). But this really shouldn’t be a surprise. Like Cartier-Bresson and that other great master of early color Photography, Saul Leiter, William Eggleston is also a Painter. Turning to color film, however, he would also have to find his way. “I’d assumed that I could do in color what I could do in black and white, and I got a swift harsh lesson. All bones bared. But it had to be,” he’s quoted on a wall. The stage having been set, the main event beckoned.

Only SEVEN sets of this large 5 volume set were released in 2002, along with 3 Artist’s Proofs. This extraordinarily rare complete set, in, apparently, pristine condition, is a promised gift to The Met, who is showing the 75 Dye-transfer prints it contains, (15 per box) complete, for the first time ever, in NYC, along with 13 others from the extended series.

Walter Hopps’ Introduction to Los Alamos as it appears in the Steidl set. *- Photo courtesy of Steidl.

The first selection was shown at Museum Ludwig, Cologne in 20022, when this Portfolio was released, along with a catalog for the show, also titled, Los Alamos. The Portfolio consists of 75 dye transfer prints, in 5 boxes of 15, perhaps the most revered type of color print, as they possess a larger color gamut and tonal scale than any other process. Since Kodak stopped making the materials  for this process, they are rarely created today3 These images were known to me to now through Steidl’s three volume set,  Los Alamos Revisited, where they are supplemented by other images from the series. In the “Editorial Note” at the end of Volume 3, Gerhard Steidl says “Los Alamos is presented in its entirety in this three volume set,” though there are far fewer than the 2,200 images Mr. Hopps says was created, above. As good as Steidl’s books are, no book can match seeing a dye transfer print in person.

The first wall of William Eggleston: Los Alamos.

Along the show’s first wall, the second print is the image Mr. Hopps refers to as being William Eggleston’s first color Photograph.

Untitled, 1965, Dye-Transfer print, as are all the Photos that follow.

This man in this incredibly odd image, that would seem to be as far away from “Art” as one could imagine, is not pushing a shopping cart into a row of them. He’s pushing color Photography into the world of Fine Art Photography. Interestingly, 53 years later, for such a famous Photograph, seeing it in person in a dye-transfer print, it’s not a shot that screams with color, as so many others in Los Alamos do. It’s subtle relative to many of the others in the Portfolio. The colors emerge from shadows. Glimpses of light in a grey world. What strikes me are the subtle shades of silver in the carts- some of which are in the light, some are in shade. Then there’s the shadows. They echo the two figures we see, but the woman in the sunglasses isn’t one of them. They are the Photographer and the shopping cart man. The shadows are, almost, black and white images, something I’ve yet to see someone point out. As part of the “grey world” they wonderfully echo the black & white world he’s left behind in the “new world” of color Photography William Eggleston had embarked upon.

It almost looks like a black & white Photo. Detail of the left center showing William Eggleston, left shadow, taking the photo of the cart worker, on the right.

He would never go back.

Memphis, 1971-74

Memphis, 1965-68

William Eggleston began his career working in isolation “that was almost inconceivable.” “Photography wasn’t even born yet,” he said later. He even had no knowledge of the controversy the appearance of The Americans caused4. Going back before The Americans, it must be said that it seems to me that it’s hard to speak about ANY American Photographer of the 20th (or 21st) centuries without mentioning Walker Evans, though he did very little color work, and late in his career. It’s hard NOT to see the influence of Walker Evans everywhere in work created after his FSA works of the 1930’s. That includes the work of William Eggleston. I say that not to diminish his accomplishment by any means. I say it because almost every Artist in the western world has been influenced by someone who came before him or her. William Eggleston’s work has a rawness to it, akin to extremely proficient snapshots that I also see in some of Walker Evans’ work. William Eggleston knew the work of Walker Evans before he embarked on the work shown at The Met, but he proves himself over and over to be among the few who’s own vision is strong enough to overcome “echoes” of any influence. This was first seen in his controversial at the time, now landmark 1976 MoMA show Photographs by William Eggleston5,” and in much of what he’s shown us since.

Greenwood, 1971-74

Memphis, 1971-74

Santa Monica, 1974

Speaking of the continuum of influence, it’s hard to walk around this show and not see each image as a jumping off point for the work of so many others. Yet, the big mystery in them- “What do they mean?”- is only answered until you look at them again.

Mississippi, upper right and upper left, Memphis, lower left and lower right, all 1971-74

Part of their “charm” is how the cars, furniture, objects, and places look dated to us now. That’s inevitable with Photography as time goes on. Then, of course, there’s the power of his colors to seduce the eye like few others can.

Louisiana, 1971-74

While I’m eternally pondering the “What is he saying?” question myself, I always come back to studying, and admiring, his compositions. Their balance, or their off kilterness…in both cases, manage to retain interest.

Mississippi, 1971-74. Balance. Well? Almost. But, that’s life, right?

Greenwood, upper left,  Memphis, upper right, both 1971-74, Untitled (Bottle on Cement Porch), lower left, and Untitled (White Phone and Vacuum Cleaner, lower right, both 1965-74.

Images like the group of four above spawn countless “I could do that” comments. While I don’t deny the possibility someone could, what’s overlooked is the time and the context. These were taken over 45 years ago, when no one was “doing that.” When seen in the context of the history of Photography, they were, therefore, unprecedented, particularly in color. And yes, today? Countless people, and Photographers, are trying to “do that,” though we’re still waiting for the “next William Eggleston” to reveal him or herself, and so am I.

Louisiana, 1971-74

What to make of this image, with its carefully considered composition, shot from a low angle? I don’t know and my efforts at gaining insights reached a dead end. Ostensibly it’s here because it’s part of the complete portfolio, and as such, it’s now in The Met’s Permanent Collection. Though taken over a generation ago, it remains disturbing and offensive, and puzzling. In a 2004 interview in The Guardian, Sean O’Hagan quoted William Eggleston saying, “A picture is what it is, and I’ve never noticed that it helps to talk about them, or answer specific questions about them, much less volunteer information in words. It wouldn’t make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them. People always want to know when something was taken, where it was taken, and, God knows, why it was taken. I mean, they’re right there, whatever they are.” As a result, I can’t help but think it calls into question the whole sense of “detachment” that exists in all of these works. At this point, it seems these questions are going to remain indefinitely.

The last wall at The Met includes the image taken during the plane trip home, far right, as if to put a “bow” on the project.

My current feeling about Louisiana, 1971-74, and the series as a whole, is that these are glimpses of America, moments that passed in front of the Photographer and his camera, that may, or may not, be gone forever, but will remain frozen in time. Taken as a whole, it’s as compelling a portrait of America as Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, (perhaps an inspiration for Mr. Eggleston), is, in my view, albeit in a completely different way. While Jack Kerouac inspired a generation of “Beatniks,” and countless others, Mr. Eggleston has inspired two generations of Photographers, and counting. In Los Alamos we see the mundane, the beautiful, the ugly, and the never noticed before, all seen by a man possessing one of the most singular eyes in Contemporary Art. If not in Art. Period.

Yes, William Eggleston went to “war with the obvious.” And he imposed his will upon it.

————————————

BookMarks- (A new feature regarding Art and/or PhotoBooks related to this Post). If you want to begin to explore the work of William Eggleston, William Eggleston’s Guide, published by MoMA is the place to start. After that, you really can’t go wrong with any Eggleston book published by Steidl or Twin Palms Publishers, though I would recommend considering William Eggleston: Los Alamos Revisited, next.

If you find yourself taken by Los Alamos, I highly recommend Steidl’s 3 volume box set.” Produced by William Eggleston, The Eggleston Artistic Trust and Gerhard Steidl, given the involvement of the Artist, it’s highly unlikely to be surpassed as a definitive document of this landmark series. The production is first rate in all respects. At Steidl’s booth at The Photography Show/AIPAD this year there was some question around how much longer copies of Los Alamos Revisited would be available. Released in 2012, I wouldn’t wait long to get one. Steidl’s previous William Eggleston Box set, Chromes, released the year before, is now out of print. The asking price for the cheapest USED copy known to me at the moment is $1,500.00.

*- Soundtracks for this piece are “Inventions & Sinfonias” by Johann Sebastian Bach as performed by Glenn Gould. Mr. Eggleston is, also, a Pianist, who recently released his first CD, William Eggleston: Musik (Vinyl). He lists J.S. Bach as his favorite composer. Something we agree on.

Update 5/22/18- Rewatching the fascinating documentary, The Colorful Mr. Eggleston, I saw what sure looks like one of the other sets of Los Alamos. At the 7 minute mark, Mr. Eggleston is speaking at what looks to be the Eggleston Artistic Trust, and behind him to the right, there are five similarly color boxes sitting on a shelf next to a “Coke” sign.

William Eggleston speaking in The Colorful Mr. Eggleston, with what looks to be a set of Los Alamos on the shelf behind him. Walker Evans, also, Photographed, and collected, Coke signs. *- Screenshot from The Colorful Mr. Eggleston.

My thanks to Monika Condrea and Steidl for their assistance.

My previous pieces on Photography are here. 
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You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color, and William Eggleston: Black and White the latter to be expanded in a reissue later this year. At that time it will serve as the best resource on his black & white work. ↩
  2. The show then traveled through Europe before making 3 stops in the USA until it finally closed in January, 2005. ↩
  3. More recently, the Eggleston Artistic Trust has begun producing larger (often 45 x 65 inch) pigment prints, which were shown in that 2016 David Zwirner show. Personally, I greatly prefer the original sizes in almost every case. ↩
  4. William Eggleston: From Black and White To Color, P.183 ↩
  5. Immortalized by the show’s catalog, William Eggleston’s Guide,” 1976, one of the first essential books of color Photography, still in print. ↩

What The Met Is Wearing To It’s Gala

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“I would go out tonight
But I haven’t got a stitch to wear”*

Sorry. I care not one iota for “celebrities,” but I do care deeply about my second home, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NYC, aka The Metropolitan Museum of Art. So, while the rest of the world is ooohhhhinng and ahhhhhing over who’s wearing what (or not wearing what), I’m much more interested in what the building is “wearing” to tonite’s “Met Gala,” formally called the “Costume Institute Gala.” So? I thought I’d give you a look at it during the last moments the public was allowed in late Sunday, May 6th, as preparations for what is still widely called “the fashion event of the year” were winding up. The Met was closed today to allow for finishing touches…you know…nails and hair…

My Cathedral of Art looking more like a regular Cathedral. I don’t plan on covering this year’s Met Fashion Show, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination. I’ll leave that to my friend, the incomparable Magda. But, wow, the signage sure strikes me as being “loaded.”

After 1,600 visits these past 15 years, I still get goose bumps when I turn the corner and see this in front of me. Oh, look! They finally built me an apartment out front! Yes, the satellite trucks were there 24 hours before “opening step off.”

The view of the world famous stairs under the tent.

The view in Gallery 300, just south of the Grand Staircase, (aka Byzantium South). Yes, the “real” outfits are being hidden, but I do love how carefully so many of them are draped. Well? It’s The Met.

Gallery 304- Medieval Europe, with the figures going all the way back into the next galleries.

Gallery 305- Medieval Sculpture Hall. The Met’s famous Christmas Tree is installed right in front of the Spanish Choir Screen. The figures go all the way back, almost to the Robert Lehman Collection.

Alexander McQueen, partially seen in Gallery 306- Medieval Treasury.

The American Wing Courtyard seems to be the focal point of the evening’s festivities.

The riser with the chairs is over what is now the American Wing Courtyard Cafe. Before that, it used to be a Sculpture Court. I spent countless hours Drawing here in the ever-changing light, with Central Park to the immediate right, often spending Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday here. The Sculpture has been moved to the center of the Courtyard, or upstairs in the remodeled American Wing.

Looking towards the center of the Courtyard from the American Wing.

Gallery 305 Medieval Sculpture Hall

Gallery 300 now closed.

Gallery 301- Late Roman

As always, watch out for the fashion police! Even the concrete blocks were protected with shrink-wrap.

I wonder how many Gala attendees will opt to head to “Bar & Grille,” instead.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “This Charming Man,” by Morrissey and Johnny Marr from “The Smiths,” 1984.

“On The Fence, #19 . The Met Gala Edition”

This Post is dedicated to MQD and NSS.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

Danh Vo: Awakening From The Nightmare

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

“‘History,’ Stephen said, ‘is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’”
James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 2.

Museum Mile, late winter, 2018. Guggenheim Museum ahead on the right.

A typewriter sits almost alone on the floor of a gallery on the Guggenheim Museum’s 5th floor.

I stood opposite it for a few minutes over multiple visits, considering the installation of this gallery and watching other visitors pass by.

Only a few stopped to read the wall card, above it to the right. For those that didn’t, I couldn’t help wonder what they were thinking. “A typewriter? What? Why? Is this “Art?”

The wall card.

A few days later, about 50 blocks south, I saw another typewriter sitting alone on display.

Tennessee Williams’ Olivetti Typewriter seen at Tennessee Williams: No Refuge but Writing, at The Morgan Library, April, 2018.

This one was one of the great Tennessee Willams’ two most cherished possessions, along with a copy of Hart Crane’s Poems. A typewriter can be a weapon of murder, of Art, and now in both cases, an “Art object,” with completely opposite impacts. At the Guggenheim, Danh Vo’s placing of the Unabomber’s typewriter, (with it’s keyboard turned towards the side, and so, not an invitation to the viewer to use it, but to look at it as an object), is rife with irony, and very subtle power. Seeing both machines reminded me that a typewriter is a typewriter is a typewriter- it’s the person using it that makes it a tool for timeless beauty, or for catastrophic destruction. 

Therein lies the crux of Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away, which fills Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic rotunda. Along with Art that he (or his calligrapher father) makes by hand, to a large extent Danh Vo’s Art relies on carefully selected actual historical items who’s significance fit the three primary threads that run through his Art- the history of Vietnam (dating back to it’s colonial past), American history, and his personal & family history. The Artist chooses objects for their ongoing power to speak to us through the history they witnessed or participated in. They are now mute witnesses, but like possessions in one’s home, their sum a portrait of where the Artist “lives,” so to speak. Combined, and seen over a large show, these three histories (Vietnamese, American and personal) interweave and dialogue with each other. The national and global becomes personal. For viewers, they are pieces of histories that speak to us still, like events that happened before our birth are “pieces” that have real and lasting effects on our lives many years after.

Then, I moved to the right, and saw what was installed along the intervening gallery wall in the next gallery.

On the wall behind the Unablomber’s Typewriter, left, is part of We The People, 2011-16, Copper, right. Installed (ironically, or coincidentally) so they mirror each other.

It’s a work called We The People,. Well, it’s part of the work called We The People, which totals over 300 pieces in all, each one part of a full size replica of the Statue of Liberty!

Every American “knows” the Statue of Liberty. How many would recognize one of her hands if seen by itself? The front of her left hand, minus her thumb (which is lying on the floor just behind me).

Vo’s parents idolized the U.S. as a land of political freedom and economic power, values their son couldn’t help but pick up, though later he suffered from disenchantment. Danh Vo was inspired after finally visiting the Statue in person to have it painstakingly replicated in copper. Press two pennies together between your fingers. That’s how thick the skin is on both sculptures! He and his team used the same techniques used to craft the original (though in China, instead of France), each of it’s 300 body fragment parts serving as both a reminder of the whole and an autonomous sculpture on it’s own. “In taking the Statue of Liberty as subject, Vo appropriated the definitive symbol of not just America but of the abstract notion of freedom itself. The metaphoric fracturing of the American body politic in the literal body of Liberty not only suggests the fragility of the philosophy she enshrines, it also enacts a profound violence on the fabric of the national consciousness1.”  In the catalog for the show, curator Katherine Brinson speaks of the damage to the American psyche that would be done seeing the actual Statue in pieces, referring to nerve the 1986 campaign to restore the Statue struck in the American public. Showing a replica of it is brings none of that trauma and instead allows the viewer to see it anew.

“I thought it would be interesting to make something that people felt so familiar with, in all the different ways that people project on the sculpture, and try to destabilize your own thinking of it,” the Artist said in 2013.

From the start, Danh Vo never intended to assemble the pieces he made, but rather to distribute them around the world, so it’s effect would be international, allowing no single person or entity to own more than 8 pieces of it. While about 50 parts of We The People, were previously seen locally in a 2014 Public Art Fund show in Brooklyn Bridge Park and City Hall Park, having seen only 6 pieces of it I still found it utterly remarkable- A remarkable concept. Remarkable that someone could do it and do it so well. Remarkable that he or she would choose to recreate all of it and not assemble it. Remarkable that this Artist, Danh Vo, is not now and has never been, an American2.

Two pieces from We The People,, another view of the works seen adjacent to the gallery with Kaczyinski’s Typewriter.

Danh Vo (pronounced yon voh) was born in Ba Rja, Vietnam, 4 months after the Vietnam War ended. Nonetheless, as it does with countless others in innumerable ways, the War casts it’s long shadow over Danh Vo’s life and Art, directly and indirectly. As seen in Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away, the War, which ended 43 years ago this April 30th, occupies the center, a defining event in his life though he wasn’t even alive during it. After he was born, his family was among 20,000 resettled to Phu Quoc in far southwest Vietnam, and then to Ho Chi Minh City, as part of a government “reeducation” program. In 1979, when Vo was 4, his family fled Vietnam in a homemade boat with 117 others, and were rescued at sea by a Danish freighter.

After escaping Vietnam in a homemade boat and being rescued at sea, Vo, age 4, left, and his family were taken to a refugee camp in Singapore. Having left everything behind, they were gifted the items seen in this Photo by Christian missionaries, which the Artist has turned into a “Christmas card” long after the fact. “Untitled,” 2007, Photogravure.

After a winter in a camp in Singapore, the family was eventually resettled in Denmark, where Vo was raised. Today he lives in Berlin and Mexico City. “I don’t really believe in my own story, not as a singular thing, anyway. It weaves in and out of other people’s private stories of local history and geopolitical history. I see myself, like any other person, as a container that has inherited these infinite traces of history without inheriting any direction. I try to compensate for this, I’m trying to make sense of it and give it a direction for myself,” the Artist has said3.

Two pieces of “We The People-

In 2012, he won the Hugo Boss Prize, which resulted in his first show at the Guggenheim Museum, the remarkable I.M.U.U.R.2, (I am you and you are too), which consisted of about 4,000 Artworks and items that belonged to the late Painter, Martin Wong. It says quite a bit that Danh Vo would take his first opportunity of a show in one of NYC’s “Big Five” Museums and devote it to the work of another Artist. Martin Wong is someone who’s work Danh Vo has championed, as he owns at least one his Paintings. In that sense, it’s part of the thread of his personal history that his work continues to explore. It was also  a unique opportunity to walk around in the mind and life of the late Artist while it created an effect not unlike one of Martin Wong’s Paintings.  It also served to expose visitors (including myself) to the work of a terrific Painter, who died in 1999 at age 53. (For further information, I recommend “Martin Wong: Human Instamatic,” which was produced for a 2016 Bronx Museum of Arts show.)

Another piece of We The People, one of the last pieces fabricated. The hand that holds the tablet.

The exhibition catalog for Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away, surprisingly lacks any direct information about it. Instead, it provides excellent background and analysis of the individual Art works, with the bulk of the book consisting of an extensive, complete catalog of Danh Vo’s exhibition history prior to Take My Breath Away, with numerous, fascinating installation views of each show that allows the viewer to this show to consider most of the Art on view here in different combinations and in different installations. This served to heighten my respect for his gift of installation. At almost 350 pages, it’s the first full-length monograph on Danh Vo, and now stands as the go-to reference on the Artist and his work over the first part of his career.

Untitled, 2018. Adds “Fabulous Muscles” to the show’s title, Take My Breath Away, yes, the theme from the 1980’s film “Top Gun,” was etched on the glass window in the Museum’s rotunda floor by the Artist’s father, Phung Vo. It was almost impossible to get a full shot of it. This was as close as I got over innumerable attempts.

As for Take My Breath Away, it’s rare (and wonderful, I find) to walk into a large show and almost all of it feels “different,” unlike almost anything I’ve seen before. A classic case of this was Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle, in 2003, also, at the Guggenheim, where almost every single object felt like it had been created by beings from another world. Danh Vo uses, mostly, recognizable objects, but he often deconstructs them or combines them in new and totally unexpected ways and then displays them brilliantly in ways that are Zen-like, daringly unexpected, and fresh.

In another gallery, a different “statue” is seen. “Oma Totem,” 2009, consists of items that belonged to the Artist’s grandmother. After deciding to emigrate to Germany in 1980, upon her arrival, she was gifted a washing machine, a television and a refrigerator, by an immigrant relief program, along with a crucifix, gifted by the Catholic Church. Vo has turned them into his work, “Oma Totem.” At the Guggenheim, it/they also sit virtually alone in a gallery, turned sideways. They’re a monument to being a refugee, of leaving one culture behind, while another now stands before you. As the wall card says, “…the sculpture reduces its subject’s harrowing experience of war and exile to the set of archetypes- refugee, convert, and consumer- that were assigned to Vo’s grandmother by her new society.”

Oma Totem, 2009, Philips television set, Gorenje washing machine, Bomann refrigerator, wooden crucifix, and personal casino entrance card, with “Uro,” 2009, Keys on a chain, behind on the wall.

Partially hidden on the wall behind them, is Uro, 2009, which consists of keys left over from a past relationship. The chain that connects them is all that remains of the connection they once shared. 

“If you were to climb the Himalayas tomorrow,” 2006, Rolex watch, Dupont lighter, American military class ring. Three items his father, Phung Vo, cherished as signs of his “success” in his new country. The Artist hd to negotiate with him to get him to give these to him for this work. Displayed in a lit vitrine behind glass, like they would be in a fine jewelry store, the work’s title was taken from a Rolex ad campagin.

 

Beyond the image of America his parents had while he was growing up, it’s interesting how much American history is in his work. As with the typewriter seen earlier, not all of it pertains to Vietnam.

“She was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene,” 2009, Brass bugle, felt cap with velvet, bayonet sheath, field radio with wood and leather case, sashes, wooden drumsticks, fife, leather sword belt with gold and silver details, and 13-star American flag. The Artist purchased this at auction, exactly as it appears now, adding only the title. It was created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It would seem to also stand for America in it’s ascendency to the country Vo’s parents idolized.

Taking his place in the now long line of Artists working with found objects, (primarily, though Danh Vo also makes Art by hand), with Marcel Duchamp appearing to be particularly inspiring for him, he brings new dimensions to this now 100 year old (at least) genre through the use of historic and personal items, his choice to disassemble them or leave them, and in the breathtaking way, in my opinion, that he installs them. .

A chandelier from the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Majestic, Paris, where the Paris Peace Accords were signed, ending the Vietnam War.

Photo from the Exhibition Catalog, P.XXXIII

Even when these items are literally in pieces their parts are shown in surprising ways.

Untitled, 2009, Carry-on bag, fruitwood St. Joseph (Germany, late 16th century). Danh Vo acquired a wooden sculpture that was too big to transport by plane. So? He cut it into sections and put each into a bag so he could carry them on. At the Guggenheim, they were distributed, in their bags, with at least one also on a handcart.

At other times, the pieces are recombined in extraordinary new ways, as in these sculptures.

(Unpronounceable title uttered by the demon in The Exorcist), Poplar Virgin of the Annunciation, 2nd century, with Greek marble sarcophagus, ca 1350, left. Throughout the show, Vo displays sculpture that has either been broken up into parts (by the Artist or found that way), and displayed them either alone or with parts of a totally different sculpture, as seen here on the left, the lower half of which shows a lion devouring an antelope, “juxtaposing the sacred and the profane4,” though it’s also visually striking and unprecedented to my eyes, the effect only enhanced by it’s installation.

Untitled, 2018, Marble Eros (Western Europe, 2nd century CE) and sandstone eagle (Germany late 19th century). Notice the wooden shims left unpainted underneath it. Museum staff told me that the Artist stopped them from Painting them, something they would always do.

At the Guggenheim, the staff regaled me with stories of how the Artist laid out this show with almost Zen-like techniques. He left shims unpainted, chandeliers uncrated, and left other pieces where the handlers left them. I was told it was “unprecedented.”

16:32, 26.05  Late 19th-century chandelier. “Leave it just like that,” the Artist must have said to the Art handlers. Because they did. Open shipping crate on unpainted blocks and all.

I found the installation completely captivating, a model of taste and restraint, a breath of fresh air. Looking through the catalog (where those responsible for the display of the work in prior shows are not credited), I see a similar brilliance in the design of each show. Whatever one thinks of Danh Vo’s Art, he has a mastery of display that borders on showmanship.

Lady Gaga, live at Radio City Music Hall, January 20, 2010, her first major NYC Concert, in a show designed by the brilliant stage designer, Es Devlin. The stage was set inside a “frame” that goes all the way around it, with a screen in front of it that was never removed. Many of the designs for songs reminded me of Art works. It became obvious to me that either Ms. Devlin, Lady G, or both, were channeling Art history. This one, with the singer’s hair fastened to rings threaded through the pole the dancers hold on each side of her, and then moved around the stage, reminded me of Joseph Cornell.

I said “showmanship,” meant with respect, because the only other instance I can think of where I saw such amazing, beautiful display was at Lady Gaga’s first “big” NYC concert at Radio City Music Hall in January, 2010, in a show designed by the brilliant stage designer, Es Devlin5. At the time, I was completely floored by what I saw, though I immediately knew that whoever was responsible for it had gone to school on Art history. There were elements of Dali, Magritte, and especially Joseph Cornell throughout. Danh Vo, is adding display to the accomplishments of Duchamp, and Rauschenberg, making it an inherent and critical part of his Art.

Lot 20, Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs, 2013, right, and 08:43, 26.05, 2009, Late-19th century chandelier, left, behind Painted screen. At the Guggenheim, Danh Vo turned the museum’s “bays” into stage sets of a sort, some, like this one, behind transparent screens. Vo acquired 2 chairs from John F. Kennedy’s Administration that he proceeded to dismantle. The parts, and the fabric, are shown on their own elsewhere in the show. Here the frame of one chair is juxtaposed with parts of a chandelier, from the room the Vietnam War Paris Peace Accords were signed in a beautiful, haunting display. Like a memory, it’s both there and not there. In front of both is a thin curtain on which a beast, possibly a lion, is shown with an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. A reference to Kennedy being short down in 1963?

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim Museum to be seen from the top, down. He intended for viewers to take the elevator to the top and walk down the gently sloping ramp, something I always do. Yet, I have never seen a show laid out this way. Instead, each one insists visitors walk up the 6 ramps. Well, it is a small elevator. So, this gallery, above and below, was among the first I saw in this show, and created a powerful effect.

Detail showing part of the JFK Administration chair and the transparent screen in front of it.

Danh Vo is an Artist who’s also something of a cultural anthropologist, someone who’s attuned to the deeper significance of historic objects as part of history and histories. Like Ai Weiwei, he’s not bashful about deconstructing them to mine even deeper significance. It helps that he’s also blessed with a terrific sense of reconfiguring these objects and pieces of objects in stunning and fascinating installations that he varies greatly from show to show, creating unique experiences each time. Seen in pieces, they are often completely new experiences which cause the viewer to see them in new ways. From looking at the catalog’s compilation of these past shows, Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away is both a high watermark in the young Artist’s career and a “beacon” of a calling card that he is an Artist to watch. The Guggenheim took a chance with this show, and then took another chance in giving Danh Vo so much leeway in it’s installation. They, and he, have succeeded in creating a show that is rich in layers of meaning and relevance for the moment. The Guggenheim’s commitment to Danh Vo’s Art, going back to I.M.U.U.R.2, is something I believe NYC’s Big Museums should be doing, and doing more of.

At a time when the Vietnam War seems prime to slip from the consciousness of America and the world as it’s survivors age, pass on, and the world moves on, Danh Vo serves to show that the legacy of Vietnam is multi-generational in it’s effect and impact on the world. Something that is not news to anyone who was involved in it.

It also shows us that even Art can come from something so horrific. Art that has much to tell us now, lest we find our selves in another “nightmare of history” one day.

An unexpected Postscript-

It turns out that Danh Vo and I have someone in common. Or, we had.

Danh Vo speaks about his experiences with Tim Rollins at the Tim Rollins Memorial Celebration, SVA Theater, NYC, April 30, 2018, which also happened to be the 43rd Anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, on April 30, 1975.

On April 30th, I went to the Memorial Celebration at the SVA Theater on West 23rd Street for my late friend, the Artist and educator Tim Rollins. Much to my surprise, Danh Vo was there, and was one of a number of well-known Artists, and friends, who spoke about Tim Rollins during the service! He also generously donated the flowers. Sitting way in the back, in the jam packed auditorium, I was taken by a group of them to the left of the stage.

One group of flowers donated by Danh Vo at the Tim Rollins Memorial Celebration, April 30th, 2018, at the SVA Theater.

The way they were half in the light, and half in shadow perfectly summed up the experience of the evening for me. Was Danh Vo responsible for the lighting? I tend to doubt it because the lights were for what was going on onstage. Such is my respect for his installations, he had me wondering.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “I Want To Come Home For Christmas,” by Marvin Gaye and Forest Hairston in 1972.

My thanks to Kristina Parker and May of the Guggenheim Museum.

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  1. Exhibition Catalog, P. XLII ↩
  2. As far as I know. He has lived here, though he does not now. ↩
  3. Exhibition Catalog, P. XXIII ↩
  4. Ibid P.39 ↩
  5. Seen in concert 6 months later, at MSG, all of the avant garde stage design had been replaced by a more traditional, over the top, arena extravaganza documented in an HBO Special. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the Es Devlin production, one of the most amazing concert productions I have ever seen, has not appeared on video. ↩

Edvard Munch: Between The Canvas & The Camera

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is mostly known in the USA for The Scream, so, Edvard Munch: Between The Clock & The Bed, at The Met Breuer was something of a revelation, an all too rare chance to see a selection of his work, in this case 43 Paintings, and see a bit more of what the Norwegian Artist was all about. The fact that more than half of the works on view remained in his collection until his death gave it a personal feel. Munch, who never married, considered his Paintings to be his children. So, when he passed away in January, 1944, he bequeathed his collection to the city of Oslo- 1,100 Paintings, 4,500 Drawings and 18,000 Prints, now housed in the Munch Museum.

Installation view of the entrance at The Met Breuer.

The personal feeling was heightened by the fact the show included 16 self-portraits, created over the 6 decades he was active. And so, we get to see the changing face of Edvard Munch-

Self-Portrait, 1886, Oil on canvas. Age 23. The first work Munch signed, created using a spatula and by scratching the surface, in some areas, baring the canvas.

Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, Oil on canvas.

The Night Wanderer, 1923-24, Oil on canvas.

Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, 1940-43, Oil on canvas. In his last significant “self-scrutiny” as he referred to his self-portraits, he stands before the faceless clock and bed, in front of his Paintings, facing mortality, and immortality.

Munch’s journey saw him experiment with a variety of styles, including Impressionism. But, even early on, as seen in his “Self-Portrait,” 1886, above, he showed signs of breaking out and finding his own way. Once he did, there is a strain in his mature work that is, famously, characterized by a depth of feeling that regularly includes agony and isolation, which he expresses in a style uniquely his own. Those works are what is mostly seen at The Met Breuer, and they proved captivating in one of the best shows thus far in 2018.

Ashes, 1925, Oil on canvas. The anguished man..the sensuous woman, and the log in the rear turning to ashes, it’s flame apparently gone out…

In these works, he’s moved beyond “Impressionism,” and all that’s left is raw emotion, powerfully and poignantly expressed in unusual poses and striking compositions.

Sleepless Night: Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil, 1920, Oil on canvas

In another Self-Portrait, Sleepless Night: Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil, 1920, the walls, floors and table surfaces seem to vibrate, and fade into other dimensions, as if the spaces themselves are emoting. Here and in the later Self-Portraits, Munch has also moved past the great self-portraitist, Van Gogh, to reveal himself at seemingly odd and unexpected random moments. The loneliness in these self-portraits as an older man is still somewhat startling, something rarely seen in Art History to that point. Michelangelo’s, apparent, inclusion of himself as Nicodemus in The Deposition aka The Florentine Pieta,” and, of course, Rembrandt’s late Self-Portraits being two that come to mind.

Of course, any discussion of loneliness, pain and agony in Munch must include The Scream.

The Scream, 1895, Lithographic crayon. The inscription near the lower right, reads, “I felt a loud unending scream piercing nature.”

At The Met Breuer,The Scream was included in an 1865 version done in lithographic crayon, Interestingly, he has rendered virtually the entire composition in lines, except for the coats and the sides of the railing. But, the highlight of this show was the chance to see precursors of The Scream, which I had never seen before.

Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair, 1892, Oil on canvas. A precursor to the first version of The Scream, 1983, The wall card says Munch referred to this work as “the first Scream.”

On January 22, 1892, while in Nice, where he painted Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair, Munch recorded in his diary an event that took place years earlier in Norway, “I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired and I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and city. My friends walked on. I stood there trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.”

Despair, 1894, Oil on canvas.

These two take an opposite, introverted approach to the famous Scream. As such, they seem much more in character with the Edvard Munch seen in the rest of this show (admittedly, a low single digit percentage of his Painted output), and so serve to sharpen the feeling that The Scream is that rare moment of extroverted outburst that so many of his other works keep just below the surface. All three works (counting the Painted “Scream,” not here) are marvelously original, with searingly burning skies that even Van Gogh might have envied. The two above are masterpieces in their own right, in my view.

Photo, circa 1870, showing the Ljaborveien road Munch depicts. Oslo is in the background.

The show also included an 1870 Photo of the Ljaborveien road Munch depicts. It was here that Munch “felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature,” which he would immortalize over two decades later.

Starry Night, 1922-24, Oil on canvas. Even this late in his career, the influence of Van Gogh remains, here as a jumping off point. Note the two shadowy figures.

As I moved through this marvelous show, while bearing in mind that these works are only a tiny percent of his oeuvre, I couldn’t help but feel that after he left Impressionism behind, the influence of Vincent Van Gogh lingered. Of the countless Artists who have been similarly influenced, Edvard Munch is one of the very few who’s work would make an interesting counterpoint if hung along side his.

“The Sick Child,” 1907, Oil on canvas. One of the seminal works in Munch’s career.

Whereas Vincent never shows us pain in an actual event, leaving us to feel it, and everything else, in the “quiet” scenes he shows us after, like in his Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear,or in the garden scenes of the hospital he’s in. Edvard Munch shows us the events, like The Scream, and his terminally ill sister in The Sick Child, 1907, and this seemingly inconsolable woman, below, in Weeping Nude, 1913-14, as if to let us feel what he’s feeling and see why. The deaths of his mother when he was 5, and then that of his beloved sister, Sophie, when Munch was 13, both from tuberculosis (despite the fact that his father was a physician), stayed with him the rest of his life. He created six versions of The Sick Child, (the one above is #3), using a different model, over FORTY years (between 1885 and 1927), such was it’s hold on him. Therefore, it’s hard to think Painting these scenes were “therapeutic” for him.

Weeping Nude, 1913-14, Oil on canvas.

Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed shows an Artist who stands apart. He found his own way, apart from everything else that was going on in the Art world during his time. In an Art world full of genres, I find it refreshing that his work doesn’t really belong in one, as a reminder that no Artist’s work does. And? As I discovered in an interesting satellite show, Like Edgar Degas, Thomas Eakins, and other Artists of the time who are generally considered Painters, it turns out that Edvard Munch was, also, an avid Photographer.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait on the Beach with Brushes and Palette in Warnemunde, 1907, Printed from a collodion contact print. Perhaps channeling Gauguin in Tahiti.

If his Painting is not as well known here as it should be, his Photography is completely unknown. Into the void came the Scandinavian House who mounted a thorough show of these works (along a few graphics, and his experiment with filmmaking), titled Edvard Munch: The Experimental Self, as a satellite to The Met Breuer’s show. Part of the reason his Photography is unknown is that his surviving Photographs are extremely fragile. So much so, they had to be scanned and reproduced to be displayed here.

Edvard Munch strikes what would turn out to be a familiar pose in the introduction to this surprising show of his Photography and Films.

As I’ve been exploring the world of Contemporary Photography intensely since December, 2016, one thing that’s become apparent to me is that a surprising number of Painters have, also, been Photographers of varying degrees of seriousness, and almost none of them have had their Photography taken seriously- either by the Art world or by the world of Photography. Edvard Munch is yet another Painter who explored Photography. In his case, “explored” might be the best term to characterize his approach.

Scandinavian House Installation view. 3 prints in the far gallery, Photographs in the near gallery.

Munch considered himself an amateur as a Photographer, though he was pleased with the results he got and said that he planned on preparing this work for display at some point. It is interesting that none of the Photographs on view were, apparently, studies for subsequent Paintings, even with, as in The Met Breuer show, so many Self-Portraits included.

Self-Portrait wearing glasses and seated, with two Watercolors at Ekely, 1930, Print after an original silver gelatin print. Munch, hauntingly, with parts of two of his works, in, perhaps, a double exposure?

Munch Photographed during two periods. First, between 1902 and 1910, a period that began with the tumultuous end of a relationship during which one of the Artist’s fingers was mutilated by a gunshot, and ended with a rest cure for “emotional turmoil,” and again between 1927 and the mid-1930s, a period that began with the success of retrospectives in Berlin and Oslo and ended with a hemorrhage that temporarily impaired his vision in his right eye.

4 Self-Portraits, all taken in 1930. Munch was, apparently, very fond of this very serious pose, taken by himself with an extended arm, or with a cable shutter release, as it appears over and over again at different times, as seen here.

The “revelations” I found in his Photography was that along with the fact that he was his own preferred model with a camera, his poses are more serious. This may be due to the need to hold still during the long exposure times, but it does offer an interesting counterpoint to the Edvard Munch we see in his Paintings and Prints, where he seems more “natural.” It also appears that Munch was one of the first Artists obsessed with the “selfie,” and given how many variations he made with the same pose makes one wonder if Andy Warhol knew about them.

Courtyard at Pilestredet 30B, 1902, Original contact print on silver gelatin paper. I prefer this interesting shot of one of his childhood homes. He moved the camera while the shutter was opened and he, too, apparently liked the results enough to sign it.

The Photographs don’t portray the isolation and loneliness, nor the depth of emotion and expression his Paintings do. Therefore, it seems to me they will be considered an appendix to his Paintings and Graphic work, of interest, primarily, to Munch specialists.

Detail of Munch and the faceless clock in Between the Clock and the Bed.

All in all, Edvard Munch has been a figure who’s notoriety largely rests on one work, The Scream. It’s a work that speaks to the depth of feeling that characterizes a good many of the rest of his Paintings seen at The Met Breuer. The show proved his Paintings retain their power to speak to us and they reward both close, and repeat, looking. Perhaps even more than the Impressionists, Edvard Munch, working away in isolation in Oslo, created Paintings & Prints that resonates with our time. Like that clock with no hands, the emotions he Paints are timeless.

Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed is my NoteWorthy show for March, though it ended on February 4th. Edvard Munch: The Experimental Self ended on April 7th.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Forlorn,” by Weather Report, which may be heard here.

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