Henri Cartier Bresson began his art career studying painting with Andre Lhote and in those early days took up the camera as a means to make notes and to compile documents of the things that interested him. This exhibition presents us with a side by side study of his work and those of his mentors, the intention being to emphasize that he was not an artist working in isolation but one among many who were exploring the meaning and the possibilities in modern art. I understood this exhibition as an attempt to establish his credentials as a serious artist. Having seen it I find that I have quite another understanding: except for his ability to capture the spontaneous, the fleeting moment, seen in juxtaposition to these specific artists he comes off here as merely one among many who lack “the spark of genius” and whose works are perhaps a little too academic and pedestrian.
It is truly remarkable how many early twentieth century artists devoted time in their early careers to an understanding of the technique of cubism. The broad appeal and response to the Picasso/Braque breakthrough validated the importance of their work: it is seminal to the understanding of modern art. And it is a testament to the early 20th Century artists that they understood this from the first prior to it being a required course in the literature, the colleges, and the art schools of that day.
In this exhibition Andre Lhote is represented by several paintings showing us his comprehension of cubism. And while they are nice paintings rendered in his as opposed to the Picasso/Braque palette, as paintings they do not transcend the reference. If anything they are too much more in the art deco tradition. Where Cartier Bresson follows Lhote’s lead, his works too have that same academic character. In the work by the two artists that appears on the web site, I don’t see that the Lhote drawing makes the Cartier Bresson photograph more important or that it elucidates its value. They are merely similar.
Far more interesting are the works by Brassai, 1899-1984. In these the artist has begun with a black and white photograph, he has isolated the various shapes, and then used pen and ink, in a process here described as cliché verre, and with energetic lines he has created a strong sense of movement and of energy. The works indicate that he, better then Lhote, understood cubism intrinsically. The works are spontaneous, clever, and witty…in several the female nude of the photograph has been drawn over and “cubisiced” except for the breast and nipple, obviously for the artist the “holy of holies”.
When Cartier Bresson follows that concept he produces works such as the 1933 “Solerno, Italy”. In that photograph the wall of a building across the frame serves as a ground. A wall to the left and in perspective is another plane as is the shadow cast by that wall across the bottom of the frame. Just off center in the middle of this created space we see a silhouette of a young boy standing near a caisson. The various planes, textures, and tonal values create the image on the surface of a modern art work. The emptiness of the space and the emotional void of the subject references de Chirico, another artist cited here as an influence.
The Cartier Bresson photograph is one of his better known works and anyone who looks at art works would recognize immediately that it has been made in reference to modern art. Thus there is not much new learned in this exhibition except, perhaps, that Brassai is a photographer whose works one wants to know better.
Andre Kertesz, 1894-1985, is a third influence and his work suggests several insights although I am uncertain that these are the insights the museum wanted us to make. In his work we can see that Kertesz worked with a large format camera. As is typical of that medium his works are carefully composed, the lighting, all natural lighting, is carefully considered, and his beautiful prints are “tack sharp”. Comparing his “Paris, a gentleman”, a well dressed man standing in a park setting, to Cartier Bresson’s very similar “Allee du Prado, Marseilles”, the influence is obvious but what is also obvious is that the enlargement from the 35mm negative lacks Kertesz sharpness. In the Kertesz there are areas of flat tonal values whereas in the Cartier Bresson print those similar flat areas show a variation of tonal values because of the grain of the film; it is an area of mottled tone rather than flat color.
With that awareness the same sense of grain and of the soft edges can then be seen in other well known Cartier Bresson works…such as “Hyeres, France” seen also at the Met in the Gilman Collection (see The Gilman Collection below, July 2008). In this the steps and the railing in the foreground are in a softly sharp focus but the bicyclist whizzing by is in a softer focus, as would be expected of an object moving across the front of the lens. In addition to sensing the grain and the 35mm negative in this work, one also begins to question the spontaneity of this composition: did Cartier Bresson acted quickly and photograph something he saw that was about to happen or did he stand on the balcony and have the bicyclist ride back and forth in the street until he felt that he had made the photograph he had conceptualized?
Comparing the effects of the large format camera to those of the 35mm is not to suggest that one is correct and the other not or that one is preferable to the other. It merely bring to mind that the kind of photographs made by each of these different cameras creates a different end product each with its own sense of time and space, the 35mm camera suggesting immediacy, spontaneity, and energy and the larger format cameras suggesting a strong sense of place and the eternal moment. Digital photography somewhat successfully unites those two worlds.
In this exhibition we are shown how modern art has informed modern photography, as if to validate its importance. What I sense lacking in this exhibition is any suggestion that photography is an art form in and of itself and that it is independent of painting. A great photograph is important because it is a photograph, not because it references painting. Henri Cartier Bresson’s work is important because of his quick eye, his quick wit, and his mastery of the craft of photography. If I understand this exhibition correctly, I am somewhat of the opinion that the wrong inferences were made here.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/cartierbresson
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Made in Chicago: The LaSalle Photography Collection at The Chicago Cultural Center
Within minutes of entering the gallery I began to realize that I was looking at one of the finest collections of photographs that I had ever seen. Not only was each of the works arresting, there was a consistency of excellence throughout the collection. Referring to the guide and the accompanying book, Chicago Photographs, I learned that this exhibition represented the convergence of two entities: The LaSalle Bank Photography Collection and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
In 1967 Samuel Sax, the president of the then Exchange National Bank, later the LaSalle Bank, and more recently The Bank of America, made the decision to form a collection of photographs for the offices and public areas of the bank in order to bring the presence of fine art to the people. He hired Beaumont Newhall, the curator of the Eastman Kodak Collection, and his wife, the photography critic, Nancy Newhall, to begin the collection. Continued by successive generations this collection now numbers over 5,000 works. One area of that collection is devoted to works made by Chicago photographers and works about Chicago places and the people of the city. Those works form the basis of this exhibition.
In 1937 Laslzo Moholy-Nagy came to Chicago to set up the New Bauhaus/American School of Design, now a part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Following the methods established at the Weimer Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy set up a course of study that sought to educate toward visual literacy. This was not a system through which the students came to understand the possibilities of modern art but through which they learned to use everything of the modern industrial world to create works germane to their epoch. The school was one of the first to include photography as an academic discipline and to teach it as an art form. Harry Callahan, the self-taught Detroit photographer, was hired to be the first instructor of photography.
This exhibition is composed of approximately 150 of those Chicago works made by 60 different photographers. Of those 60, 17 were on the original staff of the Moholy-Nagy school and many of the others are second and third generation students of the earlier students. Hence there is a Chicago School of Photography about which I have known nothing prior to this visit. The photographers from outside Chicago, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, among others, are represented by works that are compatible with this area of the collection.
From the first viewing it can be understood that these photographs are photographs, each is an object in and of itself made through the photographic process: they are works on paper made through the manipulation of light. While there is always a subject and a viewpoint, the whole of the work, including the photographic process, is the essential thing. As a result each of these works has a tremendous presence.
There is also a strong sense of the photographer’s love of place, respect and love for its people, and the energy and joy of working in a creative process. As I become more familiar with Chicago and the work of Chicago artists I am coming to see that this is a hallmark of the work done in that city. There is a purity of local or regional “feeling” that transcends the personal “feeling” of the artist and goes beyond a myopic political and philosophical world view. In many of these works one senses that the photographer is content, and pleased, to be the intermediary between the found experience and the artful communication of that experience through the use of an understanding of photography as an art form.
In 1948 Wayne Miller received a Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph The Way of Life of the Northern Negro. Working on the Southside he documented the migration of the Southern Black American population to the industrial north. His portraits, especially “Strike Captain”, are powerful, loving, and respectful without political outrage or indignation. His subjects, the men and women he recorded, will endure because of their strength of character, their commitment to their betterment, and the positive outlook of their expectations. In the record of the Black American experience this is a very decidedly different view compared to what has become the conventional wisdom. These works should have a very much greater public recognition than they do.
Two excellent abstractions by Aaron Siskind stand out. One is merely a painted board on which the heavy layers of white paint have cracked and chipped showing the dark, almost black wood beneath the surface. As a portrait of an aged surface, this photograph has the spontaneity of action painting. In another, an old piece of wood has daubs of either black paint or black glue that create a grid pattern. It is a wonderful contrast of tonal values and textures.
The Harry Callahan works are made with a large format camera…street scenes, portraits, and landscapes…each with the sense of a found photograph. The works are consciously made with a very specific artistic approach, a mature understanding of fine art. They have a deliberately achieved result. Callahan has the most distinctive sense of composition. Yet he maintains a sense of wonder and spontaneity. It is almost as if he consciously set out to see how far removed he could make his work seem to be from a snapshot but still retain the sense of a casual photograph. His works are truly remarkable. Based on the several photographs seen here I would say that Callahan is a major American photographer and I am curious why he does not have higher name recognition. It is possible that I have heard his name but I have no memory of having seen his work before this.
Of the individual works that stand out in this collection:
Scott Fortino. An empty parking lot fronting the lake. In color, it is a study in grays. We see the surface of the cement, the sand beyond, and the gray sky as a flat ground beyond that. On the left the broken pavement creates a jagged black area. On the right an orange plastic construction fencing swirls down the frame. This photograph is utterly simple but its impact is tremendous.
Jason Lazarus. “Inside Calibrini Green”. Calibrini Green was one of the first public housing projects. Contrary to the expectations it became a breeding ground for crime and social decay. It was razed. Just prior to that one of the tenants wrote his life history and experience here in a message on the walls. Lazarus photographed this message. When the building was torn down the message was destroyed and only this photograph documents that history. In its straightforward and quiet way it is the record of a cry of the heart.
Ray Metzker. Composition Philadelphia. A collage of one inch by two and one half inch frames in high-contrast black and white, forms…people, objects…in a rigid grid pattern approximately two by three feet. There is a wonderful design sense at work here. This has the most stunning impact, an all-over design that literally glitters.
Arthur Siegel. Right of Assembly. Shot from high overhead, a very large group of men is a sea of black, gray, and white hats against a ground of black winter coats.
Nathan Keay. Trying to Fit In. A group of four prints of a young man lying on his side and bending from the knee and the waist around the inside and outside corners and some of the furniture within his apartment. A very witty set of photographs.
Joseph Jachna. Two abstractions. Excellent!
Michelle Keim. Lake III. A color coupler print. The lake and the sky, the sky an intense cerulean blue, the lake the same but fades at the bottom to the very deepest blue. The form of the subject matter has been reduced through the extreme manipulation of the color. A real triumph of color.
Jonas Dovydenas. Iron Worker, Chicago, 1969. Seen from the back, a shirtless young man sits on the very end of an I-beam some fifty floors above the street. He is attaching one of the structural members of this new building to another. Beneath and beyond him the grid of the downtown is a ground in a vanishing perspective. This is the male nude in modern art: the human form against a ground of human ingenuity. Excellent.
The book which accompanies the exhibition, Chicago Photographs, 2004, ISBN 09702452-3-8, contains many of these works and many others that are not shown here. Seeing the book and the photographs together it brought to mind once again the value of seeing the actual works. Whereas in the book most of the works are shown in about the same size, in the exhibition we see the size the photographer thought the best for the impact of the work. Thus the Keay set of prints is each about five by seven inches whereas the Michelle Keim portrait of the lake is extremely large, which size helps to further reduce the definition of the subject matter. It is indeed true that size matters and in most cases it can be seen that the photographer’s choice was right. And while the book is beautifully printed all of the prints have the same finish. In the exhibition there is a real difference in the surface finish of the works, again, another of the photographer’s options and choices.
I think an area of concern in our disintegrating national economy, wherein banks are buying other banks, is what is to become of corporate collections when the collecting institution fails. I trust that someone in Chicago is standing by with a bag full of money to buy this collection should it be threatened in the general calamity. This collection has such a distinct personality it would be a real crime to let it be broken up.
The Chicago Cultural Center:
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalEntityHomeAction.do?BV_SessionID=@@@@0514323272.1229961646@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccdadefmmhdldicefecelldffhdfho.0&entityName=Cultural+Center&entityNameEnumValue=128
In 1967 Samuel Sax, the president of the then Exchange National Bank, later the LaSalle Bank, and more recently The Bank of America, made the decision to form a collection of photographs for the offices and public areas of the bank in order to bring the presence of fine art to the people. He hired Beaumont Newhall, the curator of the Eastman Kodak Collection, and his wife, the photography critic, Nancy Newhall, to begin the collection. Continued by successive generations this collection now numbers over 5,000 works. One area of that collection is devoted to works made by Chicago photographers and works about Chicago places and the people of the city. Those works form the basis of this exhibition.
In 1937 Laslzo Moholy-Nagy came to Chicago to set up the New Bauhaus/American School of Design, now a part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Following the methods established at the Weimer Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy set up a course of study that sought to educate toward visual literacy. This was not a system through which the students came to understand the possibilities of modern art but through which they learned to use everything of the modern industrial world to create works germane to their epoch. The school was one of the first to include photography as an academic discipline and to teach it as an art form. Harry Callahan, the self-taught Detroit photographer, was hired to be the first instructor of photography.
This exhibition is composed of approximately 150 of those Chicago works made by 60 different photographers. Of those 60, 17 were on the original staff of the Moholy-Nagy school and many of the others are second and third generation students of the earlier students. Hence there is a Chicago School of Photography about which I have known nothing prior to this visit. The photographers from outside Chicago, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, among others, are represented by works that are compatible with this area of the collection.
From the first viewing it can be understood that these photographs are photographs, each is an object in and of itself made through the photographic process: they are works on paper made through the manipulation of light. While there is always a subject and a viewpoint, the whole of the work, including the photographic process, is the essential thing. As a result each of these works has a tremendous presence.
There is also a strong sense of the photographer’s love of place, respect and love for its people, and the energy and joy of working in a creative process. As I become more familiar with Chicago and the work of Chicago artists I am coming to see that this is a hallmark of the work done in that city. There is a purity of local or regional “feeling” that transcends the personal “feeling” of the artist and goes beyond a myopic political and philosophical world view. In many of these works one senses that the photographer is content, and pleased, to be the intermediary between the found experience and the artful communication of that experience through the use of an understanding of photography as an art form.
In 1948 Wayne Miller received a Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph The Way of Life of the Northern Negro. Working on the Southside he documented the migration of the Southern Black American population to the industrial north. His portraits, especially “Strike Captain”, are powerful, loving, and respectful without political outrage or indignation. His subjects, the men and women he recorded, will endure because of their strength of character, their commitment to their betterment, and the positive outlook of their expectations. In the record of the Black American experience this is a very decidedly different view compared to what has become the conventional wisdom. These works should have a very much greater public recognition than they do.
Two excellent abstractions by Aaron Siskind stand out. One is merely a painted board on which the heavy layers of white paint have cracked and chipped showing the dark, almost black wood beneath the surface. As a portrait of an aged surface, this photograph has the spontaneity of action painting. In another, an old piece of wood has daubs of either black paint or black glue that create a grid pattern. It is a wonderful contrast of tonal values and textures.
The Harry Callahan works are made with a large format camera…street scenes, portraits, and landscapes…each with the sense of a found photograph. The works are consciously made with a very specific artistic approach, a mature understanding of fine art. They have a deliberately achieved result. Callahan has the most distinctive sense of composition. Yet he maintains a sense of wonder and spontaneity. It is almost as if he consciously set out to see how far removed he could make his work seem to be from a snapshot but still retain the sense of a casual photograph. His works are truly remarkable. Based on the several photographs seen here I would say that Callahan is a major American photographer and I am curious why he does not have higher name recognition. It is possible that I have heard his name but I have no memory of having seen his work before this.
Of the individual works that stand out in this collection:
Scott Fortino. An empty parking lot fronting the lake. In color, it is a study in grays. We see the surface of the cement, the sand beyond, and the gray sky as a flat ground beyond that. On the left the broken pavement creates a jagged black area. On the right an orange plastic construction fencing swirls down the frame. This photograph is utterly simple but its impact is tremendous.
Jason Lazarus. “Inside Calibrini Green”. Calibrini Green was one of the first public housing projects. Contrary to the expectations it became a breeding ground for crime and social decay. It was razed. Just prior to that one of the tenants wrote his life history and experience here in a message on the walls. Lazarus photographed this message. When the building was torn down the message was destroyed and only this photograph documents that history. In its straightforward and quiet way it is the record of a cry of the heart.
Ray Metzker. Composition Philadelphia. A collage of one inch by two and one half inch frames in high-contrast black and white, forms…people, objects…in a rigid grid pattern approximately two by three feet. There is a wonderful design sense at work here. This has the most stunning impact, an all-over design that literally glitters.
Arthur Siegel. Right of Assembly. Shot from high overhead, a very large group of men is a sea of black, gray, and white hats against a ground of black winter coats.
Nathan Keay. Trying to Fit In. A group of four prints of a young man lying on his side and bending from the knee and the waist around the inside and outside corners and some of the furniture within his apartment. A very witty set of photographs.
Joseph Jachna. Two abstractions. Excellent!
Michelle Keim. Lake III. A color coupler print. The lake and the sky, the sky an intense cerulean blue, the lake the same but fades at the bottom to the very deepest blue. The form of the subject matter has been reduced through the extreme manipulation of the color. A real triumph of color.
Jonas Dovydenas. Iron Worker, Chicago, 1969. Seen from the back, a shirtless young man sits on the very end of an I-beam some fifty floors above the street. He is attaching one of the structural members of this new building to another. Beneath and beyond him the grid of the downtown is a ground in a vanishing perspective. This is the male nude in modern art: the human form against a ground of human ingenuity. Excellent.
The book which accompanies the exhibition, Chicago Photographs, 2004, ISBN 09702452-3-8, contains many of these works and many others that are not shown here. Seeing the book and the photographs together it brought to mind once again the value of seeing the actual works. Whereas in the book most of the works are shown in about the same size, in the exhibition we see the size the photographer thought the best for the impact of the work. Thus the Keay set of prints is each about five by seven inches whereas the Michelle Keim portrait of the lake is extremely large, which size helps to further reduce the definition of the subject matter. It is indeed true that size matters and in most cases it can be seen that the photographer’s choice was right. And while the book is beautifully printed all of the prints have the same finish. In the exhibition there is a real difference in the surface finish of the works, again, another of the photographer’s options and choices.
I think an area of concern in our disintegrating national economy, wherein banks are buying other banks, is what is to become of corporate collections when the collecting institution fails. I trust that someone in Chicago is standing by with a bag full of money to buy this collection should it be threatened in the general calamity. This collection has such a distinct personality it would be a real crime to let it be broken up.
The Chicago Cultural Center:
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalEntityHomeAction.do?BV_SessionID=@@@@0514323272.1229961646@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccdadefmmhdldicefecelldffhdfho.0&entityName=Cultural+Center&entityNameEnumValue=128
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