Note: I have now seen all four of the current Picasso exhibitions and they are posted here in the reverse order in which I saw them, that having to do with the order in which they were written and posted. I believe they will make sense if read in this order. gm.
Many years ago I realized that one could get some kind of education in the arts by attending museum lectures and while I have always thought that that was a very good idea, when I saw the announcement for the series of three Picasso lectures accompanying this exhibition, I realized that in fifty years of visiting the Met I had never once stepped into the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. (My road to hell is otherwise handsomely paved as well.) Because I am so curious at present about the works of Picasso I decided to order tickets at once.
Recently I found the Met Museum page on You Tube and so I wondered if I might not be paying good money for something I could see for free on the internet, but as an old theatergoer I know that there is a difference between seeing something “live” and something on tape or film. And in this case there was a big difference. I have seen the speaker, Gary Tinterow, Englehard Chairman of Nineteenth and Twentieth century and Contemporary Art, on some of the You Tube tapes, but seeing him in person was a very different experience. On tape he looks small. (The camera is above him and looking down. Big mistake.). But in person he is large and has a commanding presence. He is also very amiable, he has a rich baritone voice, and he relates in a very professional and personal way to the members of the audience which charm he does not always have when speaking directly to a machine that only stares at him. He is an ideal spokesperson for the museum …the listener feels himself included in the work of the organization.
After the second lecture I bought the catalogue for the exhibition and when I got it home and began reading it I realized that Mr. Tinterow was merely repeating to us, seemingly without notes, the material that it contained. So it then became my hope that he might offer something in the way of an aside or two that would justify the expense and effort of my lecture-going. He did.
I would say that the most exciting moment in these lectures was that time when he first used the word “quotation”. When discussing architecture it is common for repeated and familiar details and forms in new buildings to be spoken of as references or as “quotations” of other and usually earlier works. Yet when discussing Picasso’s work it is most commonly said that he stole ideas from this person or that, theft being inferred as his common coin. Only a year ago I heard a docent at MOMA telling his tour group that Picasso would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. I was livid. Quotation! Quotation! Quotation! Well, bless Gary Tinterow for using the correct language. I hope this becomes standard museum practice …all over town!
He mentioned on two occasions that Picasso was an intellectual and an avid reader and specifically that he read Freud extensively. I would also think that he had read Carl Jung. Picasso makes so many references to classical mythology and to the figures within those mythologies that I would think he was working in his own way with components of the collective unconscious.
He mentioned that Picasso often used classical paintings or drawings as a source for making a new painting, that it merely offered him a starting point for a drawing or painting. That, I think, is an insight that needs to be followed up in regard to Picasso’s work. Yes he did reference or quote other works, as most artists have done, and he did it throughout his lifetime, not just in the series from master paintings he did late in his life. Despite those references he made the work his by working in his own painting vocabulary and by using the source as a means to express his feelings about something. But his is decidedly painting that often originates inside a museum and I am aware of his admiration for Cezanne and of Cezanne’s admonition to painters to get out of the museum and to redo Poussin “from life”. This dichotomy in Picasso’s work …from life/from paintings … is a very good area for future study.
Discussing the works of the young Picasso Gary Tinterow showed slides of the works that had inspired him, works by Puvis de Chavannes, El Greco, Gauguin, and Toulouse Lautrec. What he did not mention but which was immediately apparent to me, sitting at a distance in the audience, was that all of those artists had one thing in common, beyond the fact that they were all very popular at that time, an attainment that would not have been lost on the very ambitious young Spaniard: namely, that each made very passive paintings. As a result we can see that same passivity in Picasso’s imitation Lautrec’s, and in his blue and rose period works. It is almost as if the young artist was tentative in all that he did, not quite certain exactly where he wanted to go with his talent. Quoting those particular passive painters gave him breathing space.
I say breathing space because originally when Picasso left Barcelona he had wanted to go to Munich but did not have the money to do so. Munich at that time was where all the action was in regard to modern painting. Paris, though desirable, was his second choice. (In American art see Marsden Hartley). And I say breathing space because of the fact that Picasso had been trained as an academic painter…he needed a period of time to feel his way into “something” different, if not different, something that spoke exclusively to his moment in time, to his “age”.
Another area where I think Picasso scholarship could focus its inquiry is in the way that Picasso painted. Having been trained academically his imitation and referencing earlier and well regarded modern painters would have shown him alternative methods for creating works on canvas with paint. The fame and approval given to the other painters would have legitimized his first explorations of similar paint application. In looking at the paintings in the galleries it can be seen that early on Picasso worked in a number of methods …from thin washes to thick impastos …and sometimes both. One of the very wonderful aspect of the catalogue is that for each work listed and shown there is at the end of each entry a set of technical notes describing in detail how each painting and drawing was made and with what and on what materials.
In regard to that “something” different I think we can accept as true the observation that from the 1907 Paris exhibition of Cezanne’s paintings Picasso would have seen that the surfaces of those paintings were not flat and passive but that they were broken up into a rhythmic dynamic. Picasso first exhibited his concept of surface dynamic in the cubist works he made with Braque beginning just after that exhibition.
I think if one were to follow his development as a painter, one would find that there are two dominates in his work: that which is expressed and the concept which permits the expressiveness. While the concept is very important I think it does not have more weight than the expressiveness. A third element of a painting, the finish, seems to have been of less importance to him.
As for his copying the “masters” of his day I was reminded of Emerson’s essay, The Uses of Great Men, in which he encouraged young artists and future public figures to choose a hero from the pantheon of great men and to model one’s life, to role play, until one found his own voice. The danger of this, of course was suggested by Ezra Pound who warned that many young writers begin their careers by imitating writers they admire and that most writers never get beyond this initial stage of imitation.
Finally, I was hoping that something would be said that would help me to better understand cubism. It is often spoken of as an amalgamation of different views of the same subject. While that might be true of the subject in the center of the format, it does nothing to explain those areas of the format between the subject and the edges of the format, the surround. One comment that Gary Tinterow made that I appreciated, was that in his referencing African art, Picasso was using repeated shapes, rhymes, from the figure, and incorporating them into the surround. Good clue. Add to that Cezanne’s surface dynamic and I think we might be on to something.
Before moving into the galleries, I want to repeat what was said at the opening of the lectures. With the economy being what it is there has been much talk about museums doing exhibitions now from their holdings as this is generally thought to be less expensive. Mr. Tinterow told us that in this case it was not. Every Picasso work in the museum was studied, reevaluated, and cleaned. All of the prints were reframed. He said that in the end the work done cost many times more than a loan exhibition would have cost.
In the New York Times review of the show the writer commented that by putting all of the Picasso works on view the museum and the benefactors could get a very clear idea what areas of this collection needed to be enhanced and expanded. While that might seem cynical on the face of it, it does seem a good idea nonetheless. Gary Tinterow stated that the museum collection was one of three in this country that covered the full range of Picasso’s career. Picasso is credited with having created thousands of art works …sometimes as many as 30,000. Despite its breadth of about 500 art works, (by contrast the Picasso Museum in Paris has three thousand works), in sum this collection looks very thin.
In part that has to do with an agreement back in the 40’s and 50’s among the three leading museums in New York City. But that is another story. If the Met Museum is at fault it is because some fifty years have passed since that agreement ended and it appears that they have not increased their Picasso holdings. As for there being Picasso works on the market I think any six paintings from the Late Paintings Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery a year ago would make an obviously handsome addition to this collection. (See this blog, April 2009.)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art cares for 34 Picasso paintings, 58 drawings, watercolors, and pastels, 2 sculptures, 10 ceramic plaques, and 400 Picasso prints. Seen altogether this is a very impressive collection. Yet considering the venue, one of the world’s foremost art museums, it seems inadequate. Perhaps the most stunning painting is the iconic and well known Gertrude Stein portrait. But there are others that are almost equally as good …Seated Harlequin, 1901, The Blind Man’s Meal, 1903, The Actor, 1905, Bust of a Man, 1908, Still Life with Bottle of Rum, 1911, (apparently one of only three analytic cubist paintings in the collection, albeit a very good one …but I can see five to a dozen in any other museum …you get my drift.), Woman in White, 1923, Mandolin, Fruit Bowl and Plaster Arm, 1925, Harlequin, 1927, Head of a Woman, 1927, The Dreamer, 1932, Reading at a Table, 1934, Woman and Musketeer, 1967. All of these are absolutely wonderful but, again, this is the Met, and with all of these filling, let’s say, Gallery One, lacking a Gallery 2, one feels himself coming up short much sooner than he had expected.
Among the best drawings are works from the Alfred Stieglitz collection, given to the museum in 1949 by Georgia O’Keefe. (See also the Philadelphia Museum Picasso exhibition below.) Considering the art works I’ve seen in the last year from these bequests to various museums I can’t think of an exhibition I would rather see than to have all of those works together again. Mr. Stieglitz seems to me to have had the very best eye of the twentieth century. Encore. Encore.
One wonderful surprise in this exhibition was the discovery of such a large number of pastels. Pastel is one of my favorite mediums and I had no idea that Picasso had made any if not so many. Each of them is splendid. Unlike his paintings, which often have the quality of having been dashed off in an afternoon, each of these looks to have been lovingly and carefully laid on the paper in a very academic frame of mind …Shades of Chardin! These raised a thousand questions but I won’t ask them here.
The gallery of cubist works is arranged in the order in which the works were made and it gives tremendous insight into the development of cubism and into the mind of the artist and what he was attempting to do.
One of the most exciting moments of this exhibition was walking into a gallery and being overwhelmed by number of prints on display from the 347 Suite. While it is only 118 prints filling a very large room, it seemed to be many hundreds more. I was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s dictum: Nothing succeeds like excess. Picasso is considered one of the great twentieth century draughtsman credited with having created over 2,500 prints. The gallery with the 347 Suite brought home a small indication of the magnitude of that achievement.
I was also favorably impressed by the lighting in this gallery. Once again a museum is using the permanent ceiling track lights but here the lamps are closer to the wall, they are used to create a wall wash rather than to highlight each art work, and as a result there are no glaring reflections of light fixtures and no reflection of the viewer in the glass over the art works. I don’t know why other art museum cannot resolve the problems with their lighting in such a simple manner.
But the highlight of this exhibition was, for me, the Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kramer Collection of Picasso Linocuts. Over the years I have seen Picasso linocuts in books, but only a few of them, and I had no idea that he had made so many. In total, I believe, there are about 150 in this series. The Kramer collection has 140 of them. The linoleum surface is without grain and practically without resistant and to see what Picasso has carved into them, using what I ascertain from all of his work as his preference for a thick line, and printed in a very limited palette, is stunning. It is especially stunning when so many are seen occupying a single gallery.
One of the great pleasures I find in museum going is to be introduced to collections of works with a very limited focus …I think of the Bergman Collection of Contemporary Drawings in the Chicago Art Institute and the Schnitzler Collection of Han Dynasty tomb figures in the museum in Portland, Oregon. More so than the larger collections, the Chester Dale’s and the Samuel Kress’s, I find these small collections to be far more personal and exciting. Rather than overwhelming they are inspiring.
This is an excellent exhibition, well designed and laid out, well interpreted, and with good, professional lighting.
This is a link to a tour of the exhibit on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/metmuseum
This is the link to the Met Museum page featuring the Picasso exhibit:
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={CD70B3F0-D1B8-4501-9B63-085D213E0E9B}&HomePageLink=special_c2a
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Celebrating the Muse; the Women in Picasso's Prints. The Marlboro Gallery, NYC
About twenty five years ago I began a more concentrated study of modern art than I had done prior to that time, especially the life and works of Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. It soon became apparent to me that there were two schools of thought in which it was claimed that either Matisse or Picasso was the greatest artist of the twentieth century. In 1986 I visited the Pompidou Center where I saw the late, magnificent Matisse papiers colles, and on the next day I saw the nearby Picasso Museum. The strongest impression made in the latter venue was the ubiquitous presence of women in his art works and what I strongly felt was the artist’s blatant hatred for them. Comparing the work of the two artists seen back to back and considering the strong distaste I felt for the Spaniard’s misogyny decided me to throw my support to the Matisse camp.
However: on a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, merely reading the title for their permanent collection, From Matisse to the Present, and seeing a collection with an almost glaring omission of the work of Picasso, made me aware that with Matisse we might have some very pretty paintings but that without Picasso there is no modern art. In the insight of that moment Picasso rose to the summit of the pantheon. I have not however been able to divest myself of what I have perceived of as his strong misogyny; not, that is, until I began reading the Richardson biographies and especially not until I saw the exhibition at this gallery.
Richardson brings to our attention Picasso’s habit of using the women in his life as his present subject matter. Sometimes this is overt and obvious and at other times the identity of the subject is hidden or coded. And what is very clearly stated in all of those works, as it is in Picasso’s works as a whole, is that the artist has been very forthright and honest about expressing his feelings about his subject matter, in this case the woman who is the subject …whether those feelings are anger, tenderness, or more complex and conflicted.
When reading about Picasso’s early years I think there is a tendency for us to look on those years from the perspective of what we know of the later years. We might indeed be aware of his poverty, his hunger, and his struggles, but knowing that it all turned out well in the end lessens our understanding and our full appreciation of the reality of those years for him.
Those of us who have been to Paris are well aware that the Parisians can be among the rudest and most unfriendly persons on earth. If we do not speak Parisian French, god help us. The young Picasso did not speak French and so he would not have been made to feel welcome in his travels about the city. In addition he was extremely short …about five foot four. This would not have made him attractive to the women there, and for Picasso, who had a very strong attraction to women as well as a dependency from having been an only son, this would have been alienating as well. Living on a very meager income, if not in abject poverty, he would have felt a further alienation as he looked about him upon the glories of fin de siècle Paris. To find himself in Paris, in a foreign culture, without sympathy, without recognition, and without succor, must have been extremely unsettling for him.
He did have friends. He had traveled to Paris with friends from Barcelona; he lived in the Catalan section of Paris. But all of these friends appear to have been male. His first friends in Paris and his first patrons were males and they were almost exclusively homosexual males. At that time homosexuality was a criminal offense. While there might have been some encouragement from these early supporters, knowing that they were social outcasts might have mitigated the sense of support he received from them.
There was also, according to Richardson, a period of drug use, specifically opium, among his new found French friends. While that might be explained as a socially acceptable thing to do among members of that set, there are so many in similar circumstances who do not take drugs that we might consider agreeing with the view that drug abuse is a form of self medication: one takes drugs because he doesn’t feel well.
All of these feelings of alienation and isolation are evident in Picasso’s work of that period. Among the influences we can see evidence of Puvis de Chavannes, El Greco, Toulouse Lautrec, and Gauguin. But while we see the influences we are aware that he has only used them to make works like works of theirs that he has seen, in few of them does he make the work his own. When he does, notably in the Blue Period, the works are extremely morose, if not morbid.
Clearly it was a period of despair and many sources attribute this to the death of his friend Casagemas. I think it is more likely that all of these factors contributed to his mood. And I think the only thing that likely kept him going was his desire to be an artist, and not merely an artist, but among the greatest of the artists …clearly a result of his family engendered sense of entitlement. …yes, young Caesar was ambitious.
In 1904 this all began to change. Not because he was just naturally moving on as an artist but because of the events in his personal life. In that year he met Fernande Olivier and began his first extended intimate relationship. Socially he began to be not merely a member of an exclusively male crowd but a man among men and women. With Fernande on his arm his Spanish male pride could be asserted.
From that time there is a lighter palette, a lightening of subject matter …his subjects are now the living rather than the dead and the dying. Something has opened him up and given him light and air. The work began to pour out of him …the saltimbanques, the Rose period…so much so that we might say he had been inspired.
In 1906 Picasso and Fernande spent the summer in Spain, in the village of Gosol. I think most sources consider this the moment when Picasso began to master modern art. From that time he first exhibited his responses to ethnic and prehistoric art and a new understanding of classical art. There followed very shortly his work with Braque which resulted in cubism. Fernande figures in many of the paintings of the Gosol period. In the catalogue for the Marlboro exhibition, Plate1, Tète de Femme, 1905, is, I believe, Fernande, in a very sweet, sensual, and loving portrait. Because of her presence in his life at that time I think it would be correct to think of Fernande as the first muse in his life … She salvaged him, she resurrected him, she inspired him, but most importantly she gave him permission to be creative.
From my own experience I know that a companion, a mate, can be a muse, an inspiration, or a completely destructive force, often both simultaneously. And while it was once common to refer to “the little woman” behind the successful man, there are probably many, many abject failures over the centuries who followed the siren’s lure of a jealous, possessive, selfishly misguided mate.
In Picasso’s life, where there were so many women with whom he was intimate, perhaps we should not think that he was by nature simply promiscuous, as most men are, but that like the well known artist’s works he studied and drew inspiration from, he might have exhausted the source of inspiration from each of those women as well. Thus not one woman but many women inspired him over the years and played the part of his muse.
As common as the presence of women in his work is the presence of the personal in his work; Picasso’s work is a life record of his emotional experience. Because women tend to be more concerned with the emotional temperature of their relationships than their men do …or so women have told me …it is tempting to think that it was the women in his life who encouraged him to be honest with them, with himself, and in his work. Clearly those women meant something to him and I think it behooves us to consider their individuality rather than to look on him as a man who used them for his own ends. Every relationship is an entity created by the other entities which compose the relationship, in this case by the man and by the woman. While Picasso might have found inspiration from each of the women who passed through his life, so did each of them find something of personal value in their relationship with him. But rather than viewing his life and work from the perspective of a sting of women subject to his whims, let’s give each of those women their individuality and agree that there is another perspective …that of individual women who over the course of their lives had at one time an intimate contact with an artist named Picasso.
Let’s think of all this as the experience of a very complex and talented genius who has enriched our lives and simply consider all of it as the story behind some remarkably magnificent art works, works that stand on their own whatever their inspiration might have been. That of course is always the test: does the work stand on its own? Is this drawing interesting as a drawing?
The Marlboro Gallery has mounted an exhibition of 205 Picasso prints featuring the women in his life, each described here as the muse of the moment. I don’t remember seeing one drawing here that was not interesting. And what struck me immediately was that there is no sense of misogyny in any of them. In fact the opposite is true: he loved these women, each in her turn. And working with them as the subject of drawings, of art works, he has made some incredibly wonderful art works.
In 2005 I saw the Vollard Suite at the Fort Worth Museum of Contemporary Art. It was my first encounter with an extended exhibition of his prints and I was bowled over by his sheer delight in seeing the results that issued from his marking device moving across the surface of a ground spilling out the contents of his imagination. Seen as components in an extended narrative each print was an arabesque of delight. I had not realized before seeing them again here at the Marlboro Gallery that Marie-Therese had been the inspiration for them, or if not the inspiration, that she had played so large a part in their ebullience. And seeing them again I suddenly realized that almost every one of them featured a little bowl of flowers. I had never suspected that Picasso could have been so … “sweet”.
Gary Tinterow, in his talk at the Metropolitan, mentioned on two occasions that Picasso had read Freud’s work avidly and was quite an adherent of his insights. If so, one can see humor in the 347 Suite: Freud has gone on record with the statement that the only unnatural sexual act is an act one cannot get into a position to perform. In this suite, which is blatantly sexual, executed when he was 87, Picasso shows us that there is in fact no position one cannot get into in order to fuck. I think Freud would have been amused. I know I was.
But all of these prints are wonderful. It is a full career retrospective and we are able to share in the artist’s delight in his subject matter and in his process, and to empathize with his emotional experience. In his book, Modern Prints and Drawings, Paul Sachs lists his criterion for determining the success of drawings and prints: is there clarity of form, is there flexibility and sensitiveness of touch, is there expressiveness, is there feeling for the medium, etc. In all of these prints the answers are yes. But there is an especial yes in the feeling for the medium: each medium has elicited from the artist a unique response that could only have been expressed in that particular medium. While the subject remains somewhat the same, the woman, the muse, the whole variety of the print making media is needed for this artist to honestly express his multifaceted emotional experience. And, in the end, I think it is that, his profound expressiveness, which earns for Picasso the title of the greatest artist of the twentieth century.
There are two things that enhance the pleasure of the seeing here. One of them is the gallery itself. This is a large space, basically a square divided into nine sections. On the north, east, and south walls there are large floor to ceiling windows. Thus the galleries are flooded with both natural and artificial light. There is a wonderful sense of variation in moving into and out of open and closed spaces. There is a wonderful sense of light and air in every part of the galley. There were no glaring lights on the glass nor were there reflections of the observer over the art works. Bravo!
But what was most wonderful the day I was there was that I was the only person there. (Later two others, each with a profound respect for quiet, ventured in.) Fifty years ago when I was new to New York, before museums became big time players in the tourist industry, this is what museums were like. Alas, alas, and rue the day! But perhaps that is the answer for those of us who appreciate seeing the fine arts: from now on let’s confine our fine art viewing to commercial galleries and let museums continue to rush headlong to their own self destruction. As ye sow…
Excellent. Excellent! Unfortunately this has now closed in New York. But it will be opening soon in London. If you have nothing better to do this summer…
http://www.marlboroughgallery.com/exhibitions/celebrating-the-muse-women-in-picassos-prints-from-1905-1968
However: on a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, merely reading the title for their permanent collection, From Matisse to the Present, and seeing a collection with an almost glaring omission of the work of Picasso, made me aware that with Matisse we might have some very pretty paintings but that without Picasso there is no modern art. In the insight of that moment Picasso rose to the summit of the pantheon. I have not however been able to divest myself of what I have perceived of as his strong misogyny; not, that is, until I began reading the Richardson biographies and especially not until I saw the exhibition at this gallery.
Richardson brings to our attention Picasso’s habit of using the women in his life as his present subject matter. Sometimes this is overt and obvious and at other times the identity of the subject is hidden or coded. And what is very clearly stated in all of those works, as it is in Picasso’s works as a whole, is that the artist has been very forthright and honest about expressing his feelings about his subject matter, in this case the woman who is the subject …whether those feelings are anger, tenderness, or more complex and conflicted.
When reading about Picasso’s early years I think there is a tendency for us to look on those years from the perspective of what we know of the later years. We might indeed be aware of his poverty, his hunger, and his struggles, but knowing that it all turned out well in the end lessens our understanding and our full appreciation of the reality of those years for him.
Those of us who have been to Paris are well aware that the Parisians can be among the rudest and most unfriendly persons on earth. If we do not speak Parisian French, god help us. The young Picasso did not speak French and so he would not have been made to feel welcome in his travels about the city. In addition he was extremely short …about five foot four. This would not have made him attractive to the women there, and for Picasso, who had a very strong attraction to women as well as a dependency from having been an only son, this would have been alienating as well. Living on a very meager income, if not in abject poverty, he would have felt a further alienation as he looked about him upon the glories of fin de siècle Paris. To find himself in Paris, in a foreign culture, without sympathy, without recognition, and without succor, must have been extremely unsettling for him.
He did have friends. He had traveled to Paris with friends from Barcelona; he lived in the Catalan section of Paris. But all of these friends appear to have been male. His first friends in Paris and his first patrons were males and they were almost exclusively homosexual males. At that time homosexuality was a criminal offense. While there might have been some encouragement from these early supporters, knowing that they were social outcasts might have mitigated the sense of support he received from them.
There was also, according to Richardson, a period of drug use, specifically opium, among his new found French friends. While that might be explained as a socially acceptable thing to do among members of that set, there are so many in similar circumstances who do not take drugs that we might consider agreeing with the view that drug abuse is a form of self medication: one takes drugs because he doesn’t feel well.
All of these feelings of alienation and isolation are evident in Picasso’s work of that period. Among the influences we can see evidence of Puvis de Chavannes, El Greco, Toulouse Lautrec, and Gauguin. But while we see the influences we are aware that he has only used them to make works like works of theirs that he has seen, in few of them does he make the work his own. When he does, notably in the Blue Period, the works are extremely morose, if not morbid.
Clearly it was a period of despair and many sources attribute this to the death of his friend Casagemas. I think it is more likely that all of these factors contributed to his mood. And I think the only thing that likely kept him going was his desire to be an artist, and not merely an artist, but among the greatest of the artists …clearly a result of his family engendered sense of entitlement. …yes, young Caesar was ambitious.
In 1904 this all began to change. Not because he was just naturally moving on as an artist but because of the events in his personal life. In that year he met Fernande Olivier and began his first extended intimate relationship. Socially he began to be not merely a member of an exclusively male crowd but a man among men and women. With Fernande on his arm his Spanish male pride could be asserted.
From that time there is a lighter palette, a lightening of subject matter …his subjects are now the living rather than the dead and the dying. Something has opened him up and given him light and air. The work began to pour out of him …the saltimbanques, the Rose period…so much so that we might say he had been inspired.
In 1906 Picasso and Fernande spent the summer in Spain, in the village of Gosol. I think most sources consider this the moment when Picasso began to master modern art. From that time he first exhibited his responses to ethnic and prehistoric art and a new understanding of classical art. There followed very shortly his work with Braque which resulted in cubism. Fernande figures in many of the paintings of the Gosol period. In the catalogue for the Marlboro exhibition, Plate1, Tète de Femme, 1905, is, I believe, Fernande, in a very sweet, sensual, and loving portrait. Because of her presence in his life at that time I think it would be correct to think of Fernande as the first muse in his life … She salvaged him, she resurrected him, she inspired him, but most importantly she gave him permission to be creative.
From my own experience I know that a companion, a mate, can be a muse, an inspiration, or a completely destructive force, often both simultaneously. And while it was once common to refer to “the little woman” behind the successful man, there are probably many, many abject failures over the centuries who followed the siren’s lure of a jealous, possessive, selfishly misguided mate.
In Picasso’s life, where there were so many women with whom he was intimate, perhaps we should not think that he was by nature simply promiscuous, as most men are, but that like the well known artist’s works he studied and drew inspiration from, he might have exhausted the source of inspiration from each of those women as well. Thus not one woman but many women inspired him over the years and played the part of his muse.
As common as the presence of women in his work is the presence of the personal in his work; Picasso’s work is a life record of his emotional experience. Because women tend to be more concerned with the emotional temperature of their relationships than their men do …or so women have told me …it is tempting to think that it was the women in his life who encouraged him to be honest with them, with himself, and in his work. Clearly those women meant something to him and I think it behooves us to consider their individuality rather than to look on him as a man who used them for his own ends. Every relationship is an entity created by the other entities which compose the relationship, in this case by the man and by the woman. While Picasso might have found inspiration from each of the women who passed through his life, so did each of them find something of personal value in their relationship with him. But rather than viewing his life and work from the perspective of a sting of women subject to his whims, let’s give each of those women their individuality and agree that there is another perspective …that of individual women who over the course of their lives had at one time an intimate contact with an artist named Picasso.
Let’s think of all this as the experience of a very complex and talented genius who has enriched our lives and simply consider all of it as the story behind some remarkably magnificent art works, works that stand on their own whatever their inspiration might have been. That of course is always the test: does the work stand on its own? Is this drawing interesting as a drawing?
The Marlboro Gallery has mounted an exhibition of 205 Picasso prints featuring the women in his life, each described here as the muse of the moment. I don’t remember seeing one drawing here that was not interesting. And what struck me immediately was that there is no sense of misogyny in any of them. In fact the opposite is true: he loved these women, each in her turn. And working with them as the subject of drawings, of art works, he has made some incredibly wonderful art works.
In 2005 I saw the Vollard Suite at the Fort Worth Museum of Contemporary Art. It was my first encounter with an extended exhibition of his prints and I was bowled over by his sheer delight in seeing the results that issued from his marking device moving across the surface of a ground spilling out the contents of his imagination. Seen as components in an extended narrative each print was an arabesque of delight. I had not realized before seeing them again here at the Marlboro Gallery that Marie-Therese had been the inspiration for them, or if not the inspiration, that she had played so large a part in their ebullience. And seeing them again I suddenly realized that almost every one of them featured a little bowl of flowers. I had never suspected that Picasso could have been so … “sweet”.
Gary Tinterow, in his talk at the Metropolitan, mentioned on two occasions that Picasso had read Freud’s work avidly and was quite an adherent of his insights. If so, one can see humor in the 347 Suite: Freud has gone on record with the statement that the only unnatural sexual act is an act one cannot get into a position to perform. In this suite, which is blatantly sexual, executed when he was 87, Picasso shows us that there is in fact no position one cannot get into in order to fuck. I think Freud would have been amused. I know I was.
But all of these prints are wonderful. It is a full career retrospective and we are able to share in the artist’s delight in his subject matter and in his process, and to empathize with his emotional experience. In his book, Modern Prints and Drawings, Paul Sachs lists his criterion for determining the success of drawings and prints: is there clarity of form, is there flexibility and sensitiveness of touch, is there expressiveness, is there feeling for the medium, etc. In all of these prints the answers are yes. But there is an especial yes in the feeling for the medium: each medium has elicited from the artist a unique response that could only have been expressed in that particular medium. While the subject remains somewhat the same, the woman, the muse, the whole variety of the print making media is needed for this artist to honestly express his multifaceted emotional experience. And, in the end, I think it is that, his profound expressiveness, which earns for Picasso the title of the greatest artist of the twentieth century.
There are two things that enhance the pleasure of the seeing here. One of them is the gallery itself. This is a large space, basically a square divided into nine sections. On the north, east, and south walls there are large floor to ceiling windows. Thus the galleries are flooded with both natural and artificial light. There is a wonderful sense of variation in moving into and out of open and closed spaces. There is a wonderful sense of light and air in every part of the galley. There were no glaring lights on the glass nor were there reflections of the observer over the art works. Bravo!
But what was most wonderful the day I was there was that I was the only person there. (Later two others, each with a profound respect for quiet, ventured in.) Fifty years ago when I was new to New York, before museums became big time players in the tourist industry, this is what museums were like. Alas, alas, and rue the day! But perhaps that is the answer for those of us who appreciate seeing the fine arts: from now on let’s confine our fine art viewing to commercial galleries and let museums continue to rush headlong to their own self destruction. As ye sow…
Excellent. Excellent! Unfortunately this has now closed in New York. But it will be opening soon in London. If you have nothing better to do this summer…
http://www.marlboroughgallery.com/exhibitions/celebrating-the-muse-women-in-picassos-prints-from-1905-1968
Picasso: Themes and Variations, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC.
Picasso: Themes ands Variations
I have made my last visit to what was once known as The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. It has become nothing more now than a hyped up tourist venue down there with Times Square, the Empire State Building, and Coney Island.
On the day of my last visit, Monday, May 3rd, I discovered that if the building can comfortably accommodate one thousand visitors, they think nothing of packing in twelve to fifteen thousand people. The scene inside is a nightmare.
I was hoping to see the exhibition of Picasso prints but that gallery was so full of slowly shuffling zombies circulating in such a tight mass absolutely nothing could be seen but the wall high above the framed works.
Thinking I might catch something on the 5th Floor at the Henri Bresson exhibit I found a dead end room, sweltering with the heat of body humidity and packed as tightly as a subway at rush hour. Again, zombies.
Stopping on the way down at the early twentieth century painting gallery I merely threw myself into the surging mass, lifted my feet and let them carry me where they would.
The escalators, when you can find them, looked like scenes of the damned in Metropolis.
I would have lodged a complaint with the management but obviously they are Making Money and in America Making Money is the only measure of success. I am sure my complaint would have fallen on deaf ears. My only riposte could have been to quote H.L. Menken: No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. But I also noticed that all of these folks were speaking in foreign tongues. So perhaps it is the triumph of the American Century…our lack of taste and our vulgar commercialization of absolutely everything is now the basis of a world culture.
Well you can have it folks. I’ve had my fill of it. There is no better example of Reagan Republican sleaze and greed anywhere… so get out there, MOMA, and drill into the deep pockets of all those globe trotting wealthy tourists …drill, baby, drill.
Absolutely nothing could ever induce me to step into this place again. Fine art venue? I don’t think so.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/966
I have made my last visit to what was once known as The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. It has become nothing more now than a hyped up tourist venue down there with Times Square, the Empire State Building, and Coney Island.
On the day of my last visit, Monday, May 3rd, I discovered that if the building can comfortably accommodate one thousand visitors, they think nothing of packing in twelve to fifteen thousand people. The scene inside is a nightmare.
I was hoping to see the exhibition of Picasso prints but that gallery was so full of slowly shuffling zombies circulating in such a tight mass absolutely nothing could be seen but the wall high above the framed works.
Thinking I might catch something on the 5th Floor at the Henri Bresson exhibit I found a dead end room, sweltering with the heat of body humidity and packed as tightly as a subway at rush hour. Again, zombies.
Stopping on the way down at the early twentieth century painting gallery I merely threw myself into the surging mass, lifted my feet and let them carry me where they would.
The escalators, when you can find them, looked like scenes of the damned in Metropolis.
I would have lodged a complaint with the management but obviously they are Making Money and in America Making Money is the only measure of success. I am sure my complaint would have fallen on deaf ears. My only riposte could have been to quote H.L. Menken: No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. But I also noticed that all of these folks were speaking in foreign tongues. So perhaps it is the triumph of the American Century…our lack of taste and our vulgar commercialization of absolutely everything is now the basis of a world culture.
Well you can have it folks. I’ve had my fill of it. There is no better example of Reagan Republican sleaze and greed anywhere… so get out there, MOMA, and drill into the deep pockets of all those globe trotting wealthy tourists …drill, baby, drill.
Absolutely nothing could ever induce me to step into this place again. Fine art venue? I don’t think so.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/966
Friday, April 16, 2010
PICASSO and the Avant Garde in Paris 1915-1945, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
With one exception many years ago I have successfully avoided the museum Big Ticket Blockbuster Exhibitions, especially those with timed tickets. Whereas American museums were once considered teaching institutions, in the last few decades they have morphed into the cultural branch of the corporate stranglehold on American and now, rather than teaching, American museums are desperate to Make Money, they seem to have become adherents of Reagan Republican sleaze and greed. This exhibition is a good example of that change: Ticket prices are higher than the suggested contributions. Visitors are urged to buy their tickets in advance but if they do there is a three dollar surcharge if a credit card is used. Private tours of the exhibition can be arranged before the exhibition opens to the public at 11:00AM and those tickets are only $36.00. At the exit a wall sign announces that once you leave you may not reenter. And at the end of your circuit you are dumped into a site specifically built gift shop to impulsively buy the obligatory tourist souvenirs and mementos. The whole of this exhibition is tainted with the scuz of Money Money Money.
The recent Cheney Bush economic downturn the has left museums in the same financial difficulties as the rest of the population and one way museums have addressed the issue is to present exhibitions composed of works …from the permanent collection. It’s great to see works that are rarely on view but charging Blockbuster admission prices to see what’s in the back room comes off as a little cynical and a trifle overreaching; I feel as if I were being asked to help defray the cost of storage.
Despite my misgivings I decided to see this because I think this museum is one of the finest in the country and because I have been studying Picasso’s work these last few years. Had it been a good exhibition there might have been some redeeming values. Alas, it is not and there are none. One reason it is so uninteresting is that the title is misleading. In the announcement of the exhibition the word PICASSO stands in very large letters and beneath it in very small letters we can read: And the avant garde in Paris, 1915 -1945. Unfortunately the works shown seem weighted in favor of “the others” so that it is in reality …Picasso and the Avant Garde in Paris.
In addition, the scholarship seems wanting. It opens with the well known self portrait of Picasso that is attributed to his coming under the influence of early Iberian sculpture. Much is made of the fact that the man holds a palette but not a paint brush. Scant mention is made of the fact that he was trained in the academic style but that this painting is done with very loose and flowing brush work in contradistinction to the academic tradition. A painting is first and foremost about painting and how the paint is applied to the ground is what the painting is about. How and why Picasso made that change is one of the keys to understanding the development of modern art. Rather than concentrating on what was not there, the missing paintbrush, the museum could have been more informative by focusing on what was there …the paint on the ground.
It then segues into his work with Braque, cubism, with only the slightest mention of the influence of African Art. Les Demoiselle d’Avingon is mentioned but without showing that painting to the visitors who do not know it we cannot understand what Braque and Picasso were attempting to do…reconfigure picture space as an experience of expressive form. We are shown the sculpture, The Glass of Absinthe, but unless one knows that it references an African totemic/ritual object, it is merely bewildering. The standard conventional wisdom is repeated, that cubism was a technique showing the various aspects of an object all at once, but if diagrams had been provided to support that statement it would have been shown that that is not quite correct …cubism is much more than that.
No mention is made of Cezanne’s influence on Picasso’s work or on the work that Matisse was doing at that time, that Picasso felt himself in competition with Matisse, and that Braque shifted his allegiance from Matisse to Picasso, essentially from primarily color to primarily form. All of that motivated and powered the drive behind cubism.
There is a brief reference to a period after World War I which is denoted as A Return to Order, a classic revival, but for Picasso this was merely a period in which he measured his growth away from the tradition.
Although Picasso knew the people in the surrealism movement and associated with them personally he never considered himself a surrealist. However, the museum presents his work with those others as if indeed he was one of the pack. Picasso was never one of the pack: Picasso was always a pack unto himself!
Missing at this point is mention of his work with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes and the influence that had on his work. But much else is missing also. On any given day Picasso was likely to work in one style or another or all of them on the same day. We see his work, The Three Musicians, 1921, and we are left to figure for ourselves that it was done after the two cubist periods and the Return to Order period and in the midst of the so called surrealist period. The museum also claims that this painting, similar to the one at MOMA is the better of the two. I disagree. This one is a good, clear and straight forward example of synthetic cubism but the painting at MOMA is more brilliant and has the shimmer of exuberant life.
As for the others whom Picasso inspired, yes there are many and many of their works are shown …too many in fact. The point can be made with fewer works…more works here, especially the gallery of salon cubists, comes off as merely tiresome.
Finally, what is most noticeably absent is any mention of Picasso’s private life. Without that reference one cannot really understand Picasso’s work: Picasso’s life was very public, he set the trend in life as well as art and his work is very autobiographical, Picasso was the most personally revealing of any artist.
At the exit there are three Picasso Lithographs: Black Figure, 1948, Girl with Hairnet, 1949, and Bust with Starry Background, 1949. These are three of the best works in the exhibition. They are clearly stated, they are masterfully executed, each is a self contained visual experience, and each brims with the artist’s joy of discovery, a discovery of the art within himself…the hallmark of all of Picasso’s work. It is curious that all three of these are beyond the 1945 cut off date of the exhibition, but considering those dates, it can be seen that these are the works of a man who had been living and painting in Paris for fifty years working day in and day out …and many nights as well …and who would continue to paint and draw at the top of his game for another twenty five years. What is missing most of all in this exhibition is an emphasis on Picasso’s protean energy, his constant joy of the discovery of the art within himself, and his superior creativity that lifted him heads and shoulders above those who swam in his wake. Yes: it was a wake, not a school.
The museum web site has an over view of the exhibition that I find better than the exhibition. There is just not enough PICASSO in this exhibition to justify the effort to see it and it is certainly not worth the money. The moral of this story: Avoid museum blockbuster timed ticket exhibitions, especially those with works from the storage room…in too many we can see that they’re in storage for obvious reason.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/354.html?page=2#gallery2
Picasso in Context.
This exhibition in a long hallway outside the PICASSO exhibit is a representative sample of the work of artists from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery. Stieglitz was the first gallery owner in the United States to show the work of Matisse and Picasso and the European moderns. The American artists he represented had been to Paris and Munich and had returned to this country determined to create an American modern art. Whereas the artists in the Parisian avant garde turned their attention to creating derivative works in the Matisse/Picasso/Braque manner, these young American artists seem to have been liberated and inspired. In this large group, given to the museum by Georgia O’Keefe in 1949, there are seven Marsden Hartley’s, two Arthur Doves, an early Stuart Davis, a Georgia O’Keefe, and a Charles Sheeler. (In my notes I did not indicate that there were any John Marin’s, another Stieglitz artist.) There are a number of Paul Strand photographs, portraits of Picasso and Braque, et al. as well.
Some of these works are excellent …the two Doves are among his best. The Hartley’s are excellent as well.
I confess that my positive response to this work might very well have been overly subjective. I have been focused on the Stieglitz artists for the past few years and so it is always wonderful to come across a group of them on view. The more I see of their work the more I find that I agree with Stieglitz: these are the best early twentieth century American painters. In fact I am inclined to say that Marsden Hartley is the very best twentieth century American Artist. He left major works in all of the various styles that he explored, he eventually created a very personal and poetic idiom, and he has more depth, more autobiographical content, and more sincerity than any other American artist of this century. His work is a record of his life experience and his responses to those experiences.
And he also has a sense of humor. In his large painting, Winter Chaos, Blizzard 1909, the mountain forest in a snowstorm, one can imagine him resuming his work after a night of rest, looking at the canvas, and saying to himself: “Now let me see, where did I leave off?” And then there’s Our Lady of the Melon.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/392.html
The recent Cheney Bush economic downturn the has left museums in the same financial difficulties as the rest of the population and one way museums have addressed the issue is to present exhibitions composed of works …from the permanent collection. It’s great to see works that are rarely on view but charging Blockbuster admission prices to see what’s in the back room comes off as a little cynical and a trifle overreaching; I feel as if I were being asked to help defray the cost of storage.
Despite my misgivings I decided to see this because I think this museum is one of the finest in the country and because I have been studying Picasso’s work these last few years. Had it been a good exhibition there might have been some redeeming values. Alas, it is not and there are none. One reason it is so uninteresting is that the title is misleading. In the announcement of the exhibition the word PICASSO stands in very large letters and beneath it in very small letters we can read: And the avant garde in Paris, 1915 -1945. Unfortunately the works shown seem weighted in favor of “the others” so that it is in reality …Picasso and the Avant Garde in Paris.
In addition, the scholarship seems wanting. It opens with the well known self portrait of Picasso that is attributed to his coming under the influence of early Iberian sculpture. Much is made of the fact that the man holds a palette but not a paint brush. Scant mention is made of the fact that he was trained in the academic style but that this painting is done with very loose and flowing brush work in contradistinction to the academic tradition. A painting is first and foremost about painting and how the paint is applied to the ground is what the painting is about. How and why Picasso made that change is one of the keys to understanding the development of modern art. Rather than concentrating on what was not there, the missing paintbrush, the museum could have been more informative by focusing on what was there …the paint on the ground.
It then segues into his work with Braque, cubism, with only the slightest mention of the influence of African Art. Les Demoiselle d’Avingon is mentioned but without showing that painting to the visitors who do not know it we cannot understand what Braque and Picasso were attempting to do…reconfigure picture space as an experience of expressive form. We are shown the sculpture, The Glass of Absinthe, but unless one knows that it references an African totemic/ritual object, it is merely bewildering. The standard conventional wisdom is repeated, that cubism was a technique showing the various aspects of an object all at once, but if diagrams had been provided to support that statement it would have been shown that that is not quite correct …cubism is much more than that.
No mention is made of Cezanne’s influence on Picasso’s work or on the work that Matisse was doing at that time, that Picasso felt himself in competition with Matisse, and that Braque shifted his allegiance from Matisse to Picasso, essentially from primarily color to primarily form. All of that motivated and powered the drive behind cubism.
There is a brief reference to a period after World War I which is denoted as A Return to Order, a classic revival, but for Picasso this was merely a period in which he measured his growth away from the tradition.
Although Picasso knew the people in the surrealism movement and associated with them personally he never considered himself a surrealist. However, the museum presents his work with those others as if indeed he was one of the pack. Picasso was never one of the pack: Picasso was always a pack unto himself!
Missing at this point is mention of his work with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes and the influence that had on his work. But much else is missing also. On any given day Picasso was likely to work in one style or another or all of them on the same day. We see his work, The Three Musicians, 1921, and we are left to figure for ourselves that it was done after the two cubist periods and the Return to Order period and in the midst of the so called surrealist period. The museum also claims that this painting, similar to the one at MOMA is the better of the two. I disagree. This one is a good, clear and straight forward example of synthetic cubism but the painting at MOMA is more brilliant and has the shimmer of exuberant life.
As for the others whom Picasso inspired, yes there are many and many of their works are shown …too many in fact. The point can be made with fewer works…more works here, especially the gallery of salon cubists, comes off as merely tiresome.
Finally, what is most noticeably absent is any mention of Picasso’s private life. Without that reference one cannot really understand Picasso’s work: Picasso’s life was very public, he set the trend in life as well as art and his work is very autobiographical, Picasso was the most personally revealing of any artist.
At the exit there are three Picasso Lithographs: Black Figure, 1948, Girl with Hairnet, 1949, and Bust with Starry Background, 1949. These are three of the best works in the exhibition. They are clearly stated, they are masterfully executed, each is a self contained visual experience, and each brims with the artist’s joy of discovery, a discovery of the art within himself…the hallmark of all of Picasso’s work. It is curious that all three of these are beyond the 1945 cut off date of the exhibition, but considering those dates, it can be seen that these are the works of a man who had been living and painting in Paris for fifty years working day in and day out …and many nights as well …and who would continue to paint and draw at the top of his game for another twenty five years. What is missing most of all in this exhibition is an emphasis on Picasso’s protean energy, his constant joy of the discovery of the art within himself, and his superior creativity that lifted him heads and shoulders above those who swam in his wake. Yes: it was a wake, not a school.
The museum web site has an over view of the exhibition that I find better than the exhibition. There is just not enough PICASSO in this exhibition to justify the effort to see it and it is certainly not worth the money. The moral of this story: Avoid museum blockbuster timed ticket exhibitions, especially those with works from the storage room…in too many we can see that they’re in storage for obvious reason.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/354.html?page=2#gallery2
Picasso in Context.
This exhibition in a long hallway outside the PICASSO exhibit is a representative sample of the work of artists from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery. Stieglitz was the first gallery owner in the United States to show the work of Matisse and Picasso and the European moderns. The American artists he represented had been to Paris and Munich and had returned to this country determined to create an American modern art. Whereas the artists in the Parisian avant garde turned their attention to creating derivative works in the Matisse/Picasso/Braque manner, these young American artists seem to have been liberated and inspired. In this large group, given to the museum by Georgia O’Keefe in 1949, there are seven Marsden Hartley’s, two Arthur Doves, an early Stuart Davis, a Georgia O’Keefe, and a Charles Sheeler. (In my notes I did not indicate that there were any John Marin’s, another Stieglitz artist.) There are a number of Paul Strand photographs, portraits of Picasso and Braque, et al. as well.
Some of these works are excellent …the two Doves are among his best. The Hartley’s are excellent as well.
I confess that my positive response to this work might very well have been overly subjective. I have been focused on the Stieglitz artists for the past few years and so it is always wonderful to come across a group of them on view. The more I see of their work the more I find that I agree with Stieglitz: these are the best early twentieth century American painters. In fact I am inclined to say that Marsden Hartley is the very best twentieth century American Artist. He left major works in all of the various styles that he explored, he eventually created a very personal and poetic idiom, and he has more depth, more autobiographical content, and more sincerity than any other American artist of this century. His work is a record of his life experience and his responses to those experiences.
And he also has a sense of humor. In his large painting, Winter Chaos, Blizzard 1909, the mountain forest in a snowstorm, one can imagine him resuming his work after a night of rest, looking at the canvas, and saying to himself: “Now let me see, where did I leave off?” And then there’s Our Lady of the Melon.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/392.html
The Platinum Process: Photographs from the 19th to the 21st Century, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
After I had been in this gallery some while I nodded as I passed the young woman attendant working there. She smiled and said: “You must really like photography.” “And why do you say that”, I asked. “Because you been in here a long time and you’ve looked at just about everything. Everyone else just looks at a few pictures and then they leave.” “That’s because they can’t see anything,” I said. “When you stand in front of the photographs, the only things you see are the reflections of the lights up on the ceiling.”
She turned and looked at the nearest photograph. “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.” Now if she could see that, granted …with prompting, why couldn’t the people who designed this installation see that? Does it have to do with selective vision wherein we have an area of interest and we see only those things that fall within the scope of that interest but none of the details of the things beyond it? I can imagine this installation being planned; I can imagine thought being given to the placement of the photographs by subject or by the dates they were made, etc. But for some reason the most important part of this installation, the lighting, (without light there is no photograph), was unseen by anyone on the design team, or, if it was, it was acceptable to them.
The gallery is in the Perelman Building, an annex across the street from the main building of the Museum. A standard issue art deco/classic revival building that looks to have been a place of government offices, it was taken over by the museum and when I was here two years ago it had just been opened. A jitney transports the museum visitors to and fro. On the ground floor the building has been converted to three small and one larger exhibition spaces, it has an entry and a café, and beyond and above there are offices for museum staff.
The gallery used for photography exhibitions is a rectangle about three times longer than it is wide. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for the standard canister lighting fixtures. The canister lamps throw a light that illuminates a general area with only the slightest ability, apparently, to focus that light in a specific place. Looking into each photograph one sees the reflection of that one light source obliquely overhead as well as the other light fixtures near it. One also sees the reflections of himself and the photographs on the other side of the room. The photographs on the end walls reflect the length of the room and all of the overhead lighting fixtures. In some of the photographs this creates wonderful patterns of little lights ….but I doubt that that was the intention of the exhibition designers.
Platinum prints are something of a rarity. They were first made in the latter part of the nineteenth century up to the period of World War I when the materials became scarce because of their need for the war effort. Just before that time the silver gelatin print was introduced and as it had a faster developing time it became the preferred standard print. Eventually the platinum print was abandoned. In the 1960’s Irving Penn researched the process and working with DuPont Chemical was able to revive it. (Only one of his photographs is shown. Alas, it is at the long end of the room, it is horizontal, and it presents not a photograph but a dazzle of lights.) At the present there are a few photographers who continue to use the process.
Unlike the silver gelatin print in which the solution deposits the silver on the surface of the paper, so that those photographs are all surface, the chemicals used in the platinum process penetrate the fibers of the paper. By treating the paper with successive layers of the chemical and repeating the printing process, the photographer can make photographs with the deepest and richest tonal values. Because the chemicals can be brushed onto the paper, either once or in successive passages, effects can be obtained that cannot be obtained in any other process. Platinum prints can only be contact printed. Although they are more stable than silver gelatin prints, they are more susceptible to atmospheric pollutants which cause an acid reaction in the paper.
A vitrine in the center of the room holds three copies of Paul Strand’s iconic photograph, Wall Street. One is a recent, 1976, platinum print, one is a silver gelatin print, and one is a photogravure. Paul Strand’s original platinum print, one of only two, is on a facing wall. As these prints are placed on the bottom of the display case one has to lean over the glass in order the see them. Unfortunately, leaning over the case is a blinding experience as the only thing that can then be seen is the bright glare of the light pointing straight down from directly over head. Whereas an opportunity has been presented for the public to educate its eye, under these poor conditions the objects presented might as well be pages ripped out of old copies of Life Magazine.
On this blog I attempt to write only positive responses to the exhibitions and artworks that I see. It would seem to me that negative commentary loses an audience rather than builds one and I certainly would like to build an audience for discussions of the fine arts. But because poor museum lighting is beginning to be more and more common I think something needs to be said …as in the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
This exhibition is a waste of time all around: for the staff that spent time putting it together and for the public that came here and, as per the attendant, walked in and then walked right back out. As I know people who make their living designing lighting installations for various upscale venues, and as I know that there are a very wide variety of lighting fixtures on the market that serve the needs of those venues, and as I have seen exhibitions with lighting successfully designed using those fixtures at the International Center for Photography in New York, I can say with complete confidence that the lighting in this exhibition, as well as that of exhibitions I have seen recently at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,( Harry Callahan, Yousef Karsh), and The National Gallery in Washington, (In the Darkroom), see below, is unacceptable and should not be tolerated by a museum or the public.
It’s possible the upper echelon of the museum management thinks that photography is not really one of the fine arts and that well designed lighting using the correct instruments is an unwise expenditure of time and money. For a corporation the first priority is to increase profits. The quality of the product or service produced is no longer of any importance. The mission statement for customer relations now reads: “Damn the customer”. Whatever the reason for this poor lighting, I could not help but suspect that it was just another example of the corporate take over of the fine arts institutions in this country.
As I was one of three visitors in this annex of the museum, perhaps the public, a public that walks in and then walks right back out, has spoken: attendance in the photography galleries is low because the public will not accept the poor quality of the exhibitions here. Considering that the public’s standards are pretty low to begin with, that should be doubly embarrassing to the museum.
One last consideration: if the staff thinks that this presentation is “OK”, (and should museum exhibitions be just “OK”?), perhaps the museum management should consider getting a new staff.
Despite not being able to see the photographs well I was aware that among these early works the subject matter of photography …landscape, portrait, and still life, followed the precedent set in the field of painting. In early photography there were the pictorialists who used the camera to create works “like painting”. Later there were the purists, Paul Strand among them, who attempted to make works with the camera that only the camera could make, although with his focus on the common and mundane I am too often reminded of Dutch genre painting.
That makes you aware that for many years all photographs were very much alike and that the differences between them were in the camera angle and in the kind of prints made from the negatives. Seeing all of that in these older photographs helps me to understand the photographers who came along in the late 1950’s who were itching to do “something more”. It also helps me to better understand more recent photographers who do things now that I’m not sure I understand at all. But since I think I understand why they want to go there, perhaps there is hope for me yet.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/362.html
She turned and looked at the nearest photograph. “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.” Now if she could see that, granted …with prompting, why couldn’t the people who designed this installation see that? Does it have to do with selective vision wherein we have an area of interest and we see only those things that fall within the scope of that interest but none of the details of the things beyond it? I can imagine this installation being planned; I can imagine thought being given to the placement of the photographs by subject or by the dates they were made, etc. But for some reason the most important part of this installation, the lighting, (without light there is no photograph), was unseen by anyone on the design team, or, if it was, it was acceptable to them.
The gallery is in the Perelman Building, an annex across the street from the main building of the Museum. A standard issue art deco/classic revival building that looks to have been a place of government offices, it was taken over by the museum and when I was here two years ago it had just been opened. A jitney transports the museum visitors to and fro. On the ground floor the building has been converted to three small and one larger exhibition spaces, it has an entry and a café, and beyond and above there are offices for museum staff.
The gallery used for photography exhibitions is a rectangle about three times longer than it is wide. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for the standard canister lighting fixtures. The canister lamps throw a light that illuminates a general area with only the slightest ability, apparently, to focus that light in a specific place. Looking into each photograph one sees the reflection of that one light source obliquely overhead as well as the other light fixtures near it. One also sees the reflections of himself and the photographs on the other side of the room. The photographs on the end walls reflect the length of the room and all of the overhead lighting fixtures. In some of the photographs this creates wonderful patterns of little lights ….but I doubt that that was the intention of the exhibition designers.
Platinum prints are something of a rarity. They were first made in the latter part of the nineteenth century up to the period of World War I when the materials became scarce because of their need for the war effort. Just before that time the silver gelatin print was introduced and as it had a faster developing time it became the preferred standard print. Eventually the platinum print was abandoned. In the 1960’s Irving Penn researched the process and working with DuPont Chemical was able to revive it. (Only one of his photographs is shown. Alas, it is at the long end of the room, it is horizontal, and it presents not a photograph but a dazzle of lights.) At the present there are a few photographers who continue to use the process.
Unlike the silver gelatin print in which the solution deposits the silver on the surface of the paper, so that those photographs are all surface, the chemicals used in the platinum process penetrate the fibers of the paper. By treating the paper with successive layers of the chemical and repeating the printing process, the photographer can make photographs with the deepest and richest tonal values. Because the chemicals can be brushed onto the paper, either once or in successive passages, effects can be obtained that cannot be obtained in any other process. Platinum prints can only be contact printed. Although they are more stable than silver gelatin prints, they are more susceptible to atmospheric pollutants which cause an acid reaction in the paper.
A vitrine in the center of the room holds three copies of Paul Strand’s iconic photograph, Wall Street. One is a recent, 1976, platinum print, one is a silver gelatin print, and one is a photogravure. Paul Strand’s original platinum print, one of only two, is on a facing wall. As these prints are placed on the bottom of the display case one has to lean over the glass in order the see them. Unfortunately, leaning over the case is a blinding experience as the only thing that can then be seen is the bright glare of the light pointing straight down from directly over head. Whereas an opportunity has been presented for the public to educate its eye, under these poor conditions the objects presented might as well be pages ripped out of old copies of Life Magazine.
On this blog I attempt to write only positive responses to the exhibitions and artworks that I see. It would seem to me that negative commentary loses an audience rather than builds one and I certainly would like to build an audience for discussions of the fine arts. But because poor museum lighting is beginning to be more and more common I think something needs to be said …as in the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
This exhibition is a waste of time all around: for the staff that spent time putting it together and for the public that came here and, as per the attendant, walked in and then walked right back out. As I know people who make their living designing lighting installations for various upscale venues, and as I know that there are a very wide variety of lighting fixtures on the market that serve the needs of those venues, and as I have seen exhibitions with lighting successfully designed using those fixtures at the International Center for Photography in New York, I can say with complete confidence that the lighting in this exhibition, as well as that of exhibitions I have seen recently at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,( Harry Callahan, Yousef Karsh), and The National Gallery in Washington, (In the Darkroom), see below, is unacceptable and should not be tolerated by a museum or the public.
It’s possible the upper echelon of the museum management thinks that photography is not really one of the fine arts and that well designed lighting using the correct instruments is an unwise expenditure of time and money. For a corporation the first priority is to increase profits. The quality of the product or service produced is no longer of any importance. The mission statement for customer relations now reads: “Damn the customer”. Whatever the reason for this poor lighting, I could not help but suspect that it was just another example of the corporate take over of the fine arts institutions in this country.
As I was one of three visitors in this annex of the museum, perhaps the public, a public that walks in and then walks right back out, has spoken: attendance in the photography galleries is low because the public will not accept the poor quality of the exhibitions here. Considering that the public’s standards are pretty low to begin with, that should be doubly embarrassing to the museum.
One last consideration: if the staff thinks that this presentation is “OK”, (and should museum exhibitions be just “OK”?), perhaps the museum management should consider getting a new staff.
Despite not being able to see the photographs well I was aware that among these early works the subject matter of photography …landscape, portrait, and still life, followed the precedent set in the field of painting. In early photography there were the pictorialists who used the camera to create works “like painting”. Later there were the purists, Paul Strand among them, who attempted to make works with the camera that only the camera could make, although with his focus on the common and mundane I am too often reminded of Dutch genre painting.
That makes you aware that for many years all photographs were very much alike and that the differences between them were in the camera angle and in the kind of prints made from the negatives. Seeing all of that in these older photographs helps me to understand the photographers who came along in the late 1950’s who were itching to do “something more”. It also helps me to better understand more recent photographers who do things now that I’m not sure I understand at all. But since I think I understand why they want to go there, perhaps there is hope for me yet.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/362.html
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Luis Melendez, Master of the Spanish Still Life, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
One of my favorite paintings is the self portrait of this artist which I first saw at the Louvre in 1986. This is a sensitive and slightly handsome young man executed in a mastery of the portrait style of that era, 1746, the year Goya was born. Filling the lower right hand quadrant of the painting, the young man holds up to the viewer an academic charcoal drawing of a male nude. At the time I first saw it I was studying life drawing in New York and the inclusion of this figure drawing would have appealed to my personal interests. But I have also had a life long fascination with tromp l’oeil painting and so I was thrilled to find a painting with a tromp l’oeil drawing. From a certain distance it is almost impossible to accept the drawing as anything other than a work on paper. (On closer view it can be seen that the painting’s varnish has yellowed slightly and that the paint surface has crackled. Oh, well!)
Adding to the charm of the drawing is the clearly indicated horizontal fold across the center width of the paper, with beautifully stated, but subtle, highlight and shadow, and the curled left side of the paper which casts an oblique shadow over the body of the drawing. In the great hallway just outside this gallery there are two charcoal male nudes by John Singer Sargent which can be used for ready reference of Melendez’ mastery of the tromp l’oeil drawing.
As a portrait in a particular style there is a wealth of detail that is absolutely thrilling; the subtle indication of pattern in the dark ground, the lace work on his cuffs, and in the play of light over the surface of his sensitive nails and fingertips: his nails have the luster of pearls. But the most exciting passage in this painting, which this exhibition allows us to see close up as if face to face with the man, is the artist’s eyes; looking into his eyes is like looking into the eyes of a living person; truly they are the windows into his soul. I love painting and drawing, in any style, whose only raison d’être is the artist’s statement: I did this because I can do it and I can do it better than anyone else. And I equally love it when a person of great accomplishment is appropriately arrogant in regard to his talent. Bravo, Senor Melendez!
But the exhibition is not about his mastery of portraiture or charcoal drawing, it is about his mastery of the tromp l’oeil still life: Americans would be more familiar with the work of Harnet, Peto, and the many Brothers Peale. Melendez studied at the Spanish Academy, where his father was a professor …one is reminded of the young Picasso and his father. Unfortunately the father fell out of favor and was removed from his position and in the process the son was expelled. Afterward Melendez made four appeals to the crown to gain the position of court painter. Except for a series of still life decorations, included in this exhibition, he was never granted official status. He died in a state of poverty and relatively unknown.
Little more is known about him. It is not known when his paintings were made or for whom. And the curious thing about the paintings seen here is that they all appear to have issued from the same time…there is no early, middle or late development in the work …it is all of a piece. Melendez was taught a technique, he mastered that technique, and apparently he painted in exactly that technique for the whole of his life. Again I was reminded of the young Picasso, who, having mastered a technique, threw it off in an effort to take Western art into a new era yet with constant references to what it had gone before.
As a rule I dislike the work of artists who achieve a signature style and then spend the rest of their lives knocking out work for the marketplace in that same manner …Stuart Davis and Mark Rothko come immediately to mind. But I do make exceptions and Melendez has always been one of them made palatable because there are so few of his works (there are thirty in this exhibition). They are few and far between in museums. And that is to the good: one has a limited patience for admiring repetitive work especially paintings in which we see each juicy seed of a pomegranate and very especially paintings in which we see a half dozen pomegranates split open to display their thousands of luscious seeds: he does go to extremes! In fact, there is a real affinity here to the compulsiveness of outsider art.
These are wonderful paintings each with a carefully made composition built around objects such as serving vessels of pottery, glass, copper and silver, with thoughtful arrangements of the fruits, a flawless balance of colors, of light and shadow, in fact a mastery of light and shadow, and suffused overall by that wonderful golden Spanish light. Despite the politics and the peccadilloes from which he must have suffered, each painting indicates his persistent declaration of his love of the nurturing fruits of the earth and of his irrepressible desire to paint. I am a strong believer that the desire to paint is as inherently human as the desire to sing and to dance. Through it all Melendez painted. And how! Bravo!
On the museum web site page the link to the Boston Globe review has five or six photographs of the paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8517
Adding to the charm of the drawing is the clearly indicated horizontal fold across the center width of the paper, with beautifully stated, but subtle, highlight and shadow, and the curled left side of the paper which casts an oblique shadow over the body of the drawing. In the great hallway just outside this gallery there are two charcoal male nudes by John Singer Sargent which can be used for ready reference of Melendez’ mastery of the tromp l’oeil drawing.
As a portrait in a particular style there is a wealth of detail that is absolutely thrilling; the subtle indication of pattern in the dark ground, the lace work on his cuffs, and in the play of light over the surface of his sensitive nails and fingertips: his nails have the luster of pearls. But the most exciting passage in this painting, which this exhibition allows us to see close up as if face to face with the man, is the artist’s eyes; looking into his eyes is like looking into the eyes of a living person; truly they are the windows into his soul. I love painting and drawing, in any style, whose only raison d’être is the artist’s statement: I did this because I can do it and I can do it better than anyone else. And I equally love it when a person of great accomplishment is appropriately arrogant in regard to his talent. Bravo, Senor Melendez!
But the exhibition is not about his mastery of portraiture or charcoal drawing, it is about his mastery of the tromp l’oeil still life: Americans would be more familiar with the work of Harnet, Peto, and the many Brothers Peale. Melendez studied at the Spanish Academy, where his father was a professor …one is reminded of the young Picasso and his father. Unfortunately the father fell out of favor and was removed from his position and in the process the son was expelled. Afterward Melendez made four appeals to the crown to gain the position of court painter. Except for a series of still life decorations, included in this exhibition, he was never granted official status. He died in a state of poverty and relatively unknown.
Little more is known about him. It is not known when his paintings were made or for whom. And the curious thing about the paintings seen here is that they all appear to have issued from the same time…there is no early, middle or late development in the work …it is all of a piece. Melendez was taught a technique, he mastered that technique, and apparently he painted in exactly that technique for the whole of his life. Again I was reminded of the young Picasso, who, having mastered a technique, threw it off in an effort to take Western art into a new era yet with constant references to what it had gone before.
As a rule I dislike the work of artists who achieve a signature style and then spend the rest of their lives knocking out work for the marketplace in that same manner …Stuart Davis and Mark Rothko come immediately to mind. But I do make exceptions and Melendez has always been one of them made palatable because there are so few of his works (there are thirty in this exhibition). They are few and far between in museums. And that is to the good: one has a limited patience for admiring repetitive work especially paintings in which we see each juicy seed of a pomegranate and very especially paintings in which we see a half dozen pomegranates split open to display their thousands of luscious seeds: he does go to extremes! In fact, there is a real affinity here to the compulsiveness of outsider art.
These are wonderful paintings each with a carefully made composition built around objects such as serving vessels of pottery, glass, copper and silver, with thoughtful arrangements of the fruits, a flawless balance of colors, of light and shadow, in fact a mastery of light and shadow, and suffused overall by that wonderful golden Spanish light. Despite the politics and the peccadilloes from which he must have suffered, each painting indicates his persistent declaration of his love of the nurturing fruits of the earth and of his irrepressible desire to paint. I am a strong believer that the desire to paint is as inherently human as the desire to sing and to dance. Through it all Melendez painted. And how! Bravo!
On the museum web site page the link to the Boston Globe review has five or six photographs of the paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8517
Monday, March 29, 2010
Harry Callahan, American Photographer. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
I made a quick trip up to Boston last week specifically to see this exhibition of Harry Callahan’s photographs. It was only just over a year ago that his work began to make a lasting impression on me and so strong is that impression that I think no trip to see his work is too far afield. When planning the trip it seemed serendipitous that the museum was also showing the work of Melendez, a painter who’s work I have long enjoyed. As it turned out, seeing the two exhibitions together has helped me more clearly define the difference between painting and photography.
When we look at a painting we have a dual perception: a perception of the surface and a perception of depth created on the surface. While there is no deep picture space in Melendez’ still lifes, in the shallow space he created there is nonetheless an almost palpable sense of three dimensions. By contrast, despite the photographer’s ability to capture aerial and linear perspective, to control depth of field, and to play soft focus against hard edges, when we look at a photograph we have only a perception of surface. This comes from the fact that the camera makes its record with but one eye.
I was also reminded once again of Cezanne’s work. Cezanne was one of the first painters to make the painting an object in and of itself. At the time Cezanne was painting photography was coming into its own and many painters were asking: what can painting do that photography cannot. For Cezanne the answer was the interplay between the two perceptions and especially the finish of the surface. Because a Harry Callahan photograph is also presented as an object in and of itself I believe he must have asked: what can photography do that painting cannot. Knowing that he worked with Moholy Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes I think it is a safe surmise that he was interested in creating patterns with light and shadow on a neutral surface. Thus in his photographs he is not expressing his feelings about the subject but his fascination with the possibilities of the medium. (Again this is distinct from Ansel Adams’ slavish devotion to photographic technique.) But where Moholy Nagy was concerned only with the formal values, Harry Callahan added a deeper and more human context to his work.
One positive aspect of this exhibition is the opportunity to see the photographs in the sizes that the photographer chose to make them. I am a firm believer that a photograph has a correct size and that the photographer is the one who makes that determination. The most common size here is about 8 by 10, there are some at about 5 by 7, and there are many that are cropped within those two sizes…4 by 4, 6 by 6, 8 by 8, etc. There are only one or two that are larger, no more than 11 by 14, and there are two that are about 2 by 3 inches. I believe Harry Callahan most often worked with 35mm film and so I think we can deduce from his small prints that he wanted the sharpest possible images.
There is no texture to his paper, it is value free. From what I could ascertain every one was printed on a similar paper. The prints are neither glossy nor matte, somewhat like what we used to call double weight but without the texture of that paper. All of the black and white photographs are silver gelatin prints and the few color photographs are dye transfer. Perhaps some day in the near future museums will include more technical data in their photography exhibitions: if exhibitions are intended to inspire they should inspire through a discussion of materials and techniques as well as through results.
One of the amusing aspects of Callahan’s work is that he made it almost impossible to discuss his work without the example under discussion close at hand. This is a result of his choice of titles. In this exhibition we see Eleanor, 1949, Eleanor 1949, and Eleanor 1949. Others are Chicago 1949, Chicago 1949, and Chicago 1949. But despite his predilection for patterns and his choice of anonymity of subject one insight that does assert itself in his work is his love of women, not in the sense of his carousing or wanting to carouse but in his view of the feminine as mythic and essential.
There are ten Eleanor photographs in the exhibition. Eleanor was his wife. In many of the photographs she is nude. One of the photographs that makes the strongest impression is Eleanor, 1949, in which she is in the water with only her head and shoulders exposed. Her long hair streams on the surface. Her breast is seen through the water beneath the surface. Her eyes are down cast or closed. Even as a cipher without affect she is extremely feminine. The photograph is so unusual and so strong, it is one of his most iconic images, that she can only be understood as his muse. And so, through this series of photographs, Eleanor does become The Muse.
From his series of photographs taken on the street without the passers by knowing what he was doing, (all of them here are women …and each rigidly in control of her social persona), we can note again a consistent fascination with their femininity. But this can be felt as well in his Cape Cod 1974. In this we see the beach below and the sky above, a study of two grays. But the contour line of the horizon dips down in the center and beyond there is the very slightest indication of a very thin, dark slit of sea. Regardless of our prior associations with the textures presented, this becomes a very sensuous and feminine presence.
One element that I also see in Callahan’s work, but which I could not study here because there were so few prints that presented the opportunity, is his tendency to make photographs that reference snapshots. That has to do with commonplace subjects and settings but with a reconfigured composition. The one photograph here that illustrates my perception is Eleanor and Barbara, 1953, in which a woman and her daughter stand on a brick roadway in front of an architectural composition. Callahan has placed them too far back into the composition for this to be a Sunday afternoon memento, but they are too forward facing to be simply incidental. There is a darkness overall as if the negative had been underexposed. I see this approach consistently in his work and in a more comprehensive exhibition I think one could spend more time developing an understanding of that aspect of his work.
The photographs are from the museum collection and from several private collectors …future benefactors we might suppose. My favorite of his photographs, Chicago, 1949, the black trees silhouetted against the gray Lake Michigan, is from the Lane Collection. (…which doesn’t surprise me: The Lane Collection is one of the finest collections of modern American art and is resident at this museum. Almost all of those artists are from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery.) The Bank of America Collection, formerly the La Salle Bank Collection; see this blog, December, 2008, has loaned all of the photographs made with multiple exposures. I think it is safe to assume that the museum has none of that series in their collection. Because Harry Callahan is one of America’s very best and most American photographers, let’s hope the benefactors make haste and step to the plate: so little of his work is on the market that the prices are not likely to go down. Their refusal to be generous, however, might have something to do with the presentation in this exhibition space, see The Herb Ritts Gallery below.
With all of the difficulties of this exhibition space in mind and considering the very high quality of the reproductions of his work in the book, Harry Callahan, the Photographer at Work, see this blog January, 2009, I believe one has a better opportunity to study and know his work through the book than in this exhibition. While this exhibition covers many years of his career it has more the nature of a sampler than of a comprehensive overview.
On the page below the link to art tattler has some of his photos as well as some of the Melendez paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8636
When we look at a painting we have a dual perception: a perception of the surface and a perception of depth created on the surface. While there is no deep picture space in Melendez’ still lifes, in the shallow space he created there is nonetheless an almost palpable sense of three dimensions. By contrast, despite the photographer’s ability to capture aerial and linear perspective, to control depth of field, and to play soft focus against hard edges, when we look at a photograph we have only a perception of surface. This comes from the fact that the camera makes its record with but one eye.
I was also reminded once again of Cezanne’s work. Cezanne was one of the first painters to make the painting an object in and of itself. At the time Cezanne was painting photography was coming into its own and many painters were asking: what can painting do that photography cannot. For Cezanne the answer was the interplay between the two perceptions and especially the finish of the surface. Because a Harry Callahan photograph is also presented as an object in and of itself I believe he must have asked: what can photography do that painting cannot. Knowing that he worked with Moholy Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes I think it is a safe surmise that he was interested in creating patterns with light and shadow on a neutral surface. Thus in his photographs he is not expressing his feelings about the subject but his fascination with the possibilities of the medium. (Again this is distinct from Ansel Adams’ slavish devotion to photographic technique.) But where Moholy Nagy was concerned only with the formal values, Harry Callahan added a deeper and more human context to his work.
One positive aspect of this exhibition is the opportunity to see the photographs in the sizes that the photographer chose to make them. I am a firm believer that a photograph has a correct size and that the photographer is the one who makes that determination. The most common size here is about 8 by 10, there are some at about 5 by 7, and there are many that are cropped within those two sizes…4 by 4, 6 by 6, 8 by 8, etc. There are only one or two that are larger, no more than 11 by 14, and there are two that are about 2 by 3 inches. I believe Harry Callahan most often worked with 35mm film and so I think we can deduce from his small prints that he wanted the sharpest possible images.
There is no texture to his paper, it is value free. From what I could ascertain every one was printed on a similar paper. The prints are neither glossy nor matte, somewhat like what we used to call double weight but without the texture of that paper. All of the black and white photographs are silver gelatin prints and the few color photographs are dye transfer. Perhaps some day in the near future museums will include more technical data in their photography exhibitions: if exhibitions are intended to inspire they should inspire through a discussion of materials and techniques as well as through results.
One of the amusing aspects of Callahan’s work is that he made it almost impossible to discuss his work without the example under discussion close at hand. This is a result of his choice of titles. In this exhibition we see Eleanor, 1949, Eleanor 1949, and Eleanor 1949. Others are Chicago 1949, Chicago 1949, and Chicago 1949. But despite his predilection for patterns and his choice of anonymity of subject one insight that does assert itself in his work is his love of women, not in the sense of his carousing or wanting to carouse but in his view of the feminine as mythic and essential.
There are ten Eleanor photographs in the exhibition. Eleanor was his wife. In many of the photographs she is nude. One of the photographs that makes the strongest impression is Eleanor, 1949, in which she is in the water with only her head and shoulders exposed. Her long hair streams on the surface. Her breast is seen through the water beneath the surface. Her eyes are down cast or closed. Even as a cipher without affect she is extremely feminine. The photograph is so unusual and so strong, it is one of his most iconic images, that she can only be understood as his muse. And so, through this series of photographs, Eleanor does become The Muse.
From his series of photographs taken on the street without the passers by knowing what he was doing, (all of them here are women …and each rigidly in control of her social persona), we can note again a consistent fascination with their femininity. But this can be felt as well in his Cape Cod 1974. In this we see the beach below and the sky above, a study of two grays. But the contour line of the horizon dips down in the center and beyond there is the very slightest indication of a very thin, dark slit of sea. Regardless of our prior associations with the textures presented, this becomes a very sensuous and feminine presence.
One element that I also see in Callahan’s work, but which I could not study here because there were so few prints that presented the opportunity, is his tendency to make photographs that reference snapshots. That has to do with commonplace subjects and settings but with a reconfigured composition. The one photograph here that illustrates my perception is Eleanor and Barbara, 1953, in which a woman and her daughter stand on a brick roadway in front of an architectural composition. Callahan has placed them too far back into the composition for this to be a Sunday afternoon memento, but they are too forward facing to be simply incidental. There is a darkness overall as if the negative had been underexposed. I see this approach consistently in his work and in a more comprehensive exhibition I think one could spend more time developing an understanding of that aspect of his work.
The photographs are from the museum collection and from several private collectors …future benefactors we might suppose. My favorite of his photographs, Chicago, 1949, the black trees silhouetted against the gray Lake Michigan, is from the Lane Collection. (…which doesn’t surprise me: The Lane Collection is one of the finest collections of modern American art and is resident at this museum. Almost all of those artists are from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery.) The Bank of America Collection, formerly the La Salle Bank Collection; see this blog, December, 2008, has loaned all of the photographs made with multiple exposures. I think it is safe to assume that the museum has none of that series in their collection. Because Harry Callahan is one of America’s very best and most American photographers, let’s hope the benefactors make haste and step to the plate: so little of his work is on the market that the prices are not likely to go down. Their refusal to be generous, however, might have something to do with the presentation in this exhibition space, see The Herb Ritts Gallery below.
With all of the difficulties of this exhibition space in mind and considering the very high quality of the reproductions of his work in the book, Harry Callahan, the Photographer at Work, see this blog January, 2009, I believe one has a better opportunity to study and know his work through the book than in this exhibition. While this exhibition covers many years of his career it has more the nature of a sampler than of a comprehensive overview.
On the page below the link to art tattler has some of his photos as well as some of the Melendez paintings.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=8636
The Herb Ritts Photography Gallery, The museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Generally I have an infallible sense of direction. In Boston I do not. I have no idea where north and west lie in that city but since I am able to get around and see the things I want to see, I don’t let it bother me. It’s a small and pleasant city just perfect for walking and one can pretty much find what he wants to see simply by turning around slowly and looking into the near distance.
The Museum of Fine Arts is at the side of the Fens and as that park is an oval I am even more directionally challenged than elsewhere in the city. Thus in discussing the Museum I need to establish an arbitrary point of orientation. I will say that the side of the museum facing Huntington Avenue, the original front and entrance, is south, the side facing the Fens is north, the new American Wing is to the east, and the parking lot and the older new wing are to the west. When entering from the old main entrance, from the south, one can pass around the Grand Stairway into a circular room that opens over head to the central rotunda. A corridor continues through to the north entrance and another makes a straight line through several galleries to the west side of the building. The Herb Ritts gallery is the last room at the end of that corridor in what was once the far west side of the original building. While I was in that gallery two women passed through and one said to the other: “I remember when this area was the cafeteria.”
When I first visited the museum in September 2006, the entrances were on the Huntington Avenue, south, side and on the West. Two years ago an entrance had been opened on the renovated north side, the south entrance was closed, and the west was still in use. Now the south entrance has been reconfigured and reopened, the north entrance is open and the west entrance is closed ….EXCEPT FOR GROUPS. Please keep that emphasis in mind!
The addition at the west side of the building opens from the street into a very large public space the full height of the building. It is clad in white marble or some such stone. To the left as one enters there is a coat room and rest rooms, there is a long hallway which passes beside the very upscale restaurant for the ladies who lunch, and parallel to that is a very large book store. At the far end of that hallway is a stairway leading down to the lower scale cafeteria on the ground floor. On the other side of this long hallway is an auditorium and above that is a large gallery for travelling road show exhibitions.
To the right as one enters from the outside there is a pair of escalators up and down to the floor above. Passing straight ahead as one enters from the outside one confronts the eight glass doors into the Herb Ritts Gallery, or the old museum proper.
When this foyer had been an entrance there were ticket sellers and takers, information booths, and a crush of babbling humanity desperate to experience The Arts. There was the tintinnabulation of silver plated service clashing with the good china in the upscale restaurant. There were hordes of school children to and fro-ing from the cafeteria. Now that it is no longer an entrance EXCEPT FOR GROUPS, there is no presence of museum staff at all. One still hears the dining room ruckus, one still hears the hordes of hungry children, and the babbling of the lost and aimless, but the first staff member one encounters is the attendant in the Herb Ritts Gallery.
The Gallery, the museum’s designated photography exhibition space, is surprisingly small. It is about twenty by thirty feet. In the west wall there are those eight doors opening into the former new entrance, on the north there is a large freight elevator with heavy metal doors as well as a set of double metal doors ceiling high which is used by staff members, on the east a double doorway leads into the long corridor back to the rotunda, and on the south there is a pair of double glass doors leading into the Asian Arts Galleries. Of the approximately one hundred linear feet of wall space, at least a third of it is taken up by doorways …all of which are in CONSTANT use.
When I visit a museum to see a specific exhibition I usually first spend about an hour, at least, looking at the art works. I gave this exhibit the hour and then later in the day I returned and gave it a second look. I returned the next day and visited this gallery two more times. In two days I spent more than three hours looking at the Harry Callahan photographs. During each of my visits there was always foot traffic through this gallery, there was always the noise from excited groups coming into the museum unaware that they were actually in the museum galleries, there was always someone asking the attendant for directions to other areas of the museum.
As per the signage the west entrance is now indeed used for groups. On the first day of my visit four different groups of preschool children were shepherded through the gallery, many of whom pointed out to mommy the white haired old man. (Who in their right mind thinks a fine art museum is an appropriate venue for preschool children!) On both days there were several groups of middle school children and one group of high school children. The one observation that can be made about Boston children is that they are never, at any age, told to be quiet in public spaces …by anyone …parents, teachers, chaperons, or museum staff..
As for the gallery itself, the worst aspect of it is the lighting. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for clip lights and the photographs in this exhibition are illuminated with standard canister lamps. The wattage seems rather low. Otherwise the room has only an ambient glow. As a result the photographs on the north wall reflect those on the south, and vice versa, the photos on the east wall reflect the large white stone space outside the gallery and the photographs on the free standing wall on the west reflect the lights and art works in the galleries leading back to the rotunda. The works in shiny silver frames kick reflected light into the viewer’s eyes. Not one of these art works is well lighted. I consider that a disgrace. But it is lighting similar to what I saw in the Yousef Karsh exhibition two years ago, which was bad and so I can conclude that as far as lighting fine art photographs is concerned, this museum is indifferent.
Imagine trying to see art works in that little tiny overcrowded dim room. Imagine trying to study and concentrate in the midst of all that hubbub. This museum needs to understand that anything put on view in that room will only be seen as trivial by anyone passing though there. It is a profoundly disrespectful venue for the work of someone like Harry Callahan. But perhaps this museum is still of the opinion that photography is not really one of the fine arts. Perhaps, indeed, as it appears, they really just don’t care…these photographs, any photographs, are merely filler for this problematic, migratory space.
The Museum of Fine Arts is at the side of the Fens and as that park is an oval I am even more directionally challenged than elsewhere in the city. Thus in discussing the Museum I need to establish an arbitrary point of orientation. I will say that the side of the museum facing Huntington Avenue, the original front and entrance, is south, the side facing the Fens is north, the new American Wing is to the east, and the parking lot and the older new wing are to the west. When entering from the old main entrance, from the south, one can pass around the Grand Stairway into a circular room that opens over head to the central rotunda. A corridor continues through to the north entrance and another makes a straight line through several galleries to the west side of the building. The Herb Ritts gallery is the last room at the end of that corridor in what was once the far west side of the original building. While I was in that gallery two women passed through and one said to the other: “I remember when this area was the cafeteria.”
When I first visited the museum in September 2006, the entrances were on the Huntington Avenue, south, side and on the West. Two years ago an entrance had been opened on the renovated north side, the south entrance was closed, and the west was still in use. Now the south entrance has been reconfigured and reopened, the north entrance is open and the west entrance is closed ….EXCEPT FOR GROUPS. Please keep that emphasis in mind!
The addition at the west side of the building opens from the street into a very large public space the full height of the building. It is clad in white marble or some such stone. To the left as one enters there is a coat room and rest rooms, there is a long hallway which passes beside the very upscale restaurant for the ladies who lunch, and parallel to that is a very large book store. At the far end of that hallway is a stairway leading down to the lower scale cafeteria on the ground floor. On the other side of this long hallway is an auditorium and above that is a large gallery for travelling road show exhibitions.
To the right as one enters from the outside there is a pair of escalators up and down to the floor above. Passing straight ahead as one enters from the outside one confronts the eight glass doors into the Herb Ritts Gallery, or the old museum proper.
When this foyer had been an entrance there were ticket sellers and takers, information booths, and a crush of babbling humanity desperate to experience The Arts. There was the tintinnabulation of silver plated service clashing with the good china in the upscale restaurant. There were hordes of school children to and fro-ing from the cafeteria. Now that it is no longer an entrance EXCEPT FOR GROUPS, there is no presence of museum staff at all. One still hears the dining room ruckus, one still hears the hordes of hungry children, and the babbling of the lost and aimless, but the first staff member one encounters is the attendant in the Herb Ritts Gallery.
The Gallery, the museum’s designated photography exhibition space, is surprisingly small. It is about twenty by thirty feet. In the west wall there are those eight doors opening into the former new entrance, on the north there is a large freight elevator with heavy metal doors as well as a set of double metal doors ceiling high which is used by staff members, on the east a double doorway leads into the long corridor back to the rotunda, and on the south there is a pair of double glass doors leading into the Asian Arts Galleries. Of the approximately one hundred linear feet of wall space, at least a third of it is taken up by doorways …all of which are in CONSTANT use.
When I visit a museum to see a specific exhibition I usually first spend about an hour, at least, looking at the art works. I gave this exhibit the hour and then later in the day I returned and gave it a second look. I returned the next day and visited this gallery two more times. In two days I spent more than three hours looking at the Harry Callahan photographs. During each of my visits there was always foot traffic through this gallery, there was always the noise from excited groups coming into the museum unaware that they were actually in the museum galleries, there was always someone asking the attendant for directions to other areas of the museum.
As per the signage the west entrance is now indeed used for groups. On the first day of my visit four different groups of preschool children were shepherded through the gallery, many of whom pointed out to mommy the white haired old man. (Who in their right mind thinks a fine art museum is an appropriate venue for preschool children!) On both days there were several groups of middle school children and one group of high school children. The one observation that can be made about Boston children is that they are never, at any age, told to be quiet in public spaces …by anyone …parents, teachers, chaperons, or museum staff..
As for the gallery itself, the worst aspect of it is the lighting. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for clip lights and the photographs in this exhibition are illuminated with standard canister lamps. The wattage seems rather low. Otherwise the room has only an ambient glow. As a result the photographs on the north wall reflect those on the south, and vice versa, the photos on the east wall reflect the large white stone space outside the gallery and the photographs on the free standing wall on the west reflect the lights and art works in the galleries leading back to the rotunda. The works in shiny silver frames kick reflected light into the viewer’s eyes. Not one of these art works is well lighted. I consider that a disgrace. But it is lighting similar to what I saw in the Yousef Karsh exhibition two years ago, which was bad and so I can conclude that as far as lighting fine art photographs is concerned, this museum is indifferent.
Imagine trying to see art works in that little tiny overcrowded dim room. Imagine trying to study and concentrate in the midst of all that hubbub. This museum needs to understand that anything put on view in that room will only be seen as trivial by anyone passing though there. It is a profoundly disrespectful venue for the work of someone like Harry Callahan. But perhaps this museum is still of the opinion that photography is not really one of the fine arts. Perhaps, indeed, as it appears, they really just don’t care…these photographs, any photographs, are merely filler for this problematic, migratory space.
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