Archive for the 'memory' Category
Categories: beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, National Gallery of Victoria, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: 2001 42A, After Zhao Ji's loquat and birds, Another battle no. 3, Apollo in transit, architecture and history of Beijing, Autumn in the Forbidden City, avant-garde performance, body is proof of identity, built metropolis, Cactus garden, Cang Xin, Cang Xin Communication, Cang Xin Six photographs from the Communication, Chi Peng, Chi Peng Apollo in transit, China and its history, Chinese art, Chinese characters, Chinese contemporary art, Chinese contemporary photography, Chinese family unit, Chinese landscape - Tattoo, Chinese landscape - Tattoo No. 1, Chinese landscape - Tattoo No. 4, City walls, construction and environmental degradation, consumerism and globalisation in China, consumerism and modernisation, contemporary Chinese artists, contemporary existence, Contemporary Photography from China, Cultural Revolution, Demolition and Dialogue, East Village Beijing no. 15, Fine series A, Forbidden City, fragility of the natural environment, history and tradition, Hong Hao, Hong Hao My things no. 2, Hong Lei, Hong Lei After Zhao Ji's loquat and birds, Hong Lei Autumn in the Forbidden City, Huang Yan, Huang Yan Chinese landscape, Huang Yan Chinese landscape - Tattoo, Huang Yan Chinese landscape - Tattoo No. 1, Huang Yan Chinese landscape - Tattoo No. 4, modern Shanghai life, My things no. 2, natural landscape, On the quiet water heavenly city, On the wall: Guangzhou (4), One and Thirty, One hundred signs of demolition, personal identity, Preincarnation, Qiu Zhijie, Qiu Zhijie Fine series A, Qiu Zhijie Fine series C, Qiu Zhijie Fine series D, Qiu Zhijie Standard Pose, Qiu Zhijie Tattoo, Qiu Zhijie Tattoo no. 7, Rong Rong, Rong Rong East Village Beijing no. 15, Shanghai family tree, Sheng Qi Memories, Sheng Qi Memories (Mao), Sheng Qi Memories (Me), Sheng Qi Memories (Mother), Shi Guowei, Shi Guowei Cactus garden, shānshuǐ, Six photographs from the Communication, Standard family, Standard Pose, Tattoo no. 7, the body is language, traditional and contemporary life in China, traditional Chinese culture and values, traditional Chinese stories and paintings, traditional style of Chinese landscape painting, Turning Points, Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China, Wang Jinsong, Wang Jinsong One hundred signs of demolition, Wang Qingsong, Wang Qingsong Another battle no. 3, Wang Qingsong City walls, Wang Qingsong Preincarnation, Wang Qingsong Standard family, Weng Fen, Weng Fen On the wall: Guangzhou (4), Western historical painting, Wood horse, Yang Yongliang, Yang Yongliang Eclipse, Zhang Dali, Zhang Dali 2001 42A, Zhang Dali Demolition and Dialogue, Zhang Huan, Zhang Huan Shanghai family tree, Zhuang Hui One and Thirty
Exhibition dates: 22nd June 2019 – 27th January 2020
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Writing the body politic / broken
Ho hum, ho hum.
The exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria is an extension of the 2008 exhibition Body Language: Contemporary Chinese Photography with many of the same photographs being shown again, with new additions to the collection.
Nothing much seems to have changed in the last 12 years. Contemporary Chinese photography still concentrates on limited narratives based around the performing body, the body positioned in time and space in relation to history, memory, tradition, culture and consumerism. What the "turning points" are in the title of this exhibition remains unclear. Turning points for who? The art, the artists, the stories they tell, or the restrictive nature of contemporary Chinese culture.
Certain things remain constant: an emphasis on the performing body, (its) theatrical style, (in) elaborate tableaux, contemporary consumer society, urban reconstruction, and tradition and change. The body is usually isolated against contextless backgrounds, free floating, paired with a rather stilted iconography derived from Chinese culture – coins, calligraphy, statues, spirits, tattoos as traditional historical painting, calligraphy, buildings, revolution – focusing on "the dismantling of tradition during a period of rampant consumerism and modernisation."
Even while these artists apparently possess, "an urgent desire to explore individual and social identity in a time of unprecedented change … that reflect the tensions in Chinese society as the processes of social change meet traditional culture and expectations head-on", no/body mentions the elephant in the room – the repressive and aggressive nature of the Chinese government, it's suppression of dissent both internally and externally, its appalling human rights record and its expansionist policy in the South China Sea. The paradox is that while, "Hai Bo's paired portraits illustrate the cultural shifts that have occurred over forty years as people in China have become increasingly able to show their individuality", that individuality is closely controlled by the State. Step out of line, as many artists have found to their peril, and you are soon done for.
No mention here of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the current democracy protests in Hong Kong, or the recently released report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which contains a damning essay on China's "global threat" to human rights. No other government "flexes its political muscles with such vigour and determination to undermine the international human rights standards and institutions that could hold it to account." The HRW report cites a slew of violations ranging from the mass detention of Uyghur Muslims in the far-western autonomous region of Xinjiang, to increased censorship, to the use of technologies for mass surveillance and social control. Nothing to see here!
The work of most of the artists in this exhibition seems insular, inward looking – chained to the country's past and present, memory and history, culture and its re/constitution. Addressing its constitution through supplication. Addressing the representation of institutional power in socialist regimes through images with heroic overtones. It's almost as if these artists are painting symbols, painting a monosyllabic mythology of how their country was and is now with no turning point in sight. Parsing on ancient and modern to no great effect.
The only two artists who really lay it on the line, who confront the dragon, are Rong Rong's photographs of a performance by artist Zhang Huan titled 12 square metres (1994, below) in which the artist sat naked, smeared in honey and fish oil in a local public toilet for an hour before cleansing himself in a polluted pond; and Sheng Qi's Memories (Mother), Memories (Me) and Memories (Mao) (2000, below) in which the artist was deeply affected by the changed political climate following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and uses his disfigurement "as the backdrop for a series of self-portraits that juxtapose his past and present."
These are the photographs that I will remember. The others, stolid, prosaic, are lost.
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the images in the posting. All installation images are by Dr Marcus Bunyan and proceed in a clockwise direction around the exhibition. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Cang Xin (Chinese, b. 1967) Six photographs from the Communication series (1996-2006)
Cang Xin (Chinese, 1967)
Type C photograph ed. 10/10
Gift of Larry Warsh, 2016
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
© Courtesy of the artist
Cang Xin is a celebrated performance artist who uses photography as an adjunct to his practice. In these photographs he is documenting a ritualistic performance in which he licks various objects that have a symbolic resonance for him. Each object has a link to China and its history, although those meanings remain intentionally obscured and subjective. The artist literally experiences the objects through a sense of taste and a physical action; the intimate act of licking becomes a gesture of communication or communion with the past.
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing at left, Qiu Zhijie (Chinese, b. 1969) Tattoo no. 7 (1994); at second left, Rong Rong (Chinese, b. 1968) East Village Beijing no. 15 (1994); and at middle right, Zhang Huan (Chinese, b. 1965) Shanghai family tree (2001)
Qiu Zhijie (Chinese, b. 1969)
Tattoo no. 7
From the Tattoo series 1994
Type C photograph, ed. 8/10
101.6 x 76.2 cm
In his Tattoo series, Qui Zhijie overlays self-portraits with drawings, images and objects, such as the coins shown here. Discussing this series, he writes, 'The Tattoo series focuses on the problematic relationship between an image and its background … In this series the two find common ground. The substance of the subject, the weight of the person, and the physicality of the figure all dissolve … This series is a response to the futility and drowning of the individual brought about by the onslaught of the Chinese media culture which began to develop during the 1990s'.
Rong Rong (Chinese, b. 1968)
East Village Beijing no. 15
Gelatin silver photograph, coloured dyes
Rong Rong is well known for his images that show the lives and activities of the avant-garde Beijing East Village artistic community during the 1990s. This photograph is one of a series created to document a famous performance by fellow artist Zhang Huan, during which Zhang covered his naked body with honey and fish oil and sat on a stool in a public toilet, allowing flies to swarm over his body. Rong Rong's photographs, made throughout the performance, form a crucial record of this performative action that was intended to comment on the squalid conditions in which the artists were living.
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Zhang Huan (Chinese, b. 1965) Shanghai family tree (2001)
Zhang Huan (Chinese, b. 1965)
Shanghai family tree
Type C photographs ed. 25/25
Purchased with funds donated by Jason Yeap and Min Lee Wong, 2008
© Zhang Huan Studio
The faces of the two young men and the young woman in Zhang Huan's suite of nine photographs are used like the blank pages in a book carrying an increasingly oppressive weight of words. The Chinese characters inscribed on their faces gradually obliterate their features and identities. In the final photograph, the trio are shown in front of a new housing development in Shanghai. Their features are totally obscured, suggesting a parallel between the loss of personal identity and the rapid pace of development that is rendering the city unrecognisable.
In 1999 the internationally renowned Chinese performance and video artist, sculptor and photographer Zhang Huan wrote of his distinctive approach to his practice: 'The body is the only direct way through which I come to know society and society comes to know me. The body is proof of identity. The body is language'. The complex tangle of history and tradition that can override the individual appears as a theme in much of Zhang Huan's avant-garde performances and photographs and, as seen in this work, is frequently expressed through the use of language. In Shanghai family tree Zhang Huan (to the left) poses with a man and woman, their faces becoming increasingly obscured by Chinese characters. This work seems to suggest the importance of language which, while it can overwhelm the individual, undoubtedly also helps define a person's relationship to society.
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing two photographs from Zhuang Hui's One and Thirty series (1996)
Zhuang Hui (Chinese, b. 1963)
From the One and Thirty
Type C photograph, ed. 3/3
Gift of Larry Warsh in honour of Tony Ellwood, Director NGV, 2018
The series title of these photographs, One and Thirty, is didactic. There are 'thirty' portraits in the sequence and 'one' figure who appears in each image, the ever-smiling figure of the artist. Each photograph shows Zhuang Hui posed with an individual he has selected as the representative of a particular vocational or social group. In one of the works shown here Zhuang is photographed seated beside an older man holding a baby on his knee, a classic doting grandfather; in the other image he is photographed with a smartly dressed, young professional woman.
Wang Qingsong (Chinese, b. 1966)
Standard family
48.2 x 124.4 cm
Wang Jinsong's Standard family project investigates contemporary Chinese culture and the effects of the one-child policy, which was introduced in China in the 1970s as a means of curbing population growth. Without any clear agenda or critical stance, Wang invited families to participate in photo shoots where the parents invariably elected to pose flanking their lone child. When the images are repeated and presented in a grid, the 'standard' nature of the family unit becomes evident, allowing for a reading of generic poses and expressions across the various families, and inviting speculation and commentary on the effects of collectivism when imposed on social structures.
Standard family (detail)
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Qiu Zhijie's Standard Pose series (1996-98)
Qiu Zhijie (Chinese b. 1969)
Fine series A
From the Standard Pose series 1996-98
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Larry Warsh, 2016
In common with many photographers working in China in the 1990s, Qiu Zhijie uses the performing body in his images. Throughout his career he has combined performance, video and photography to create works that explore ideas of history, individuality and identity in contemporary China. The four photographs from the Standard Pose series reference propaganda images produced during the Cultural Revolution and consider the failure of the future that they promised. Photographed in a simple studio setting and wearing contemporary clothes, the models, with their overly dramatic poses and facial expressions, appear comical rather than heroic.
Fine series C
Fine series D
Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China explores the work of established and emerging photo-artists working in a time of rapid social and economic change.
In the 1990s, Chinese photography became one of the most dynamic and exciting areas in contemporary international art. Artists in China increasingly began to use photography to not only to document their lives but to question and challenge the status quo. The 'first generation' of contemporary Chinese artists included here – those born in the 1960s – examined the societal impact of the Cultural Revolution, and reflected on their own and their families' personal experiences. The next generation of photographers, born in the 1980s and later, bring not only different life experience, having come of age in the twenty-first century, but are actively engaged with the global community in ways that were not possible in previous decades.
The works included in this exhibition offer commentaries on individuality and identity, cultural change, the transformation of Chinese cities, and the impact of consumerism and globalisation on contemporary society.
The National Gallery of Victoria began to collect contemporary Chinese photography in 2004, and in 2008 presented the exhibition Body Language: Contemporary Chinese Photography. Since that time the Gallery has continued to build this aspect of the collection.
More recently, in 2016 and 2017, the NGV photography collection was transformed through the generosity of Larry Warsh. An American collector, publisher and founder of AW Asia, a private organisation and exhibition space in New York, Warsh presented a suite of twenty-nine contemporary Chinese photographs as a gift to the Gallery. His donation comprises works by some of the most important Chinese photographic artists working in the 1990s and early 2000s, including Hong Lei, Rong Rong and Wang Qingsong. Warsh's presentation effectively doubled the NGV's holdings of contemporary Chinese photography, and this exhibition, which includes a number of works from this important gift, was made possible because of his generosity.
Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website [Online] Cited 23/12/2019
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing at left, Wang Qingsong's City walls (2002); at second left bottom Zhang Dali 2001 42A (2001) from the Demolition and Dialogue series; at centre, Chi Peng's Apollo in transit (2005); at centre right, Yang Yongliang's Eclipse (2008); and at right Huang Yan's Chinese landscape – Tattoo (1999)
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Wang Qingsong's City walls (2002)
Wang Jinsong's photograph shows aspects of the architecture and history of Beijing, drawing attention to the abandonment of time-honoured buildings, homes and ways of living. City walls comprises a grid of 360 images of buildings in Beijing. The great majority of the photographs are of generic concrete constructions, printed in a grey monotone. Interspersed among these are richly coloured images showing traditional architecture. The placement of the photographs in a grid creates an immediate visual link to the idiosyncratic brick construction of the older buildings, which are rapidly being replaced by new, uniform reinforced concrete structures.
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing at top, Weng Fen's On the wall: Guangzhou (4) (2002) and at bottom, Zhang Dali's 2001 42A (2001)
Zhang Dali (Chinese, b. 1963)
from the Demolition and dialogue series
type C photograph
63.5 × 114.0 cm
This photograph, showing a partially demolished wall emblazoned with a large-scale painted outline of the artist's head and his pseudonym, AK-47, brings together several aspects of the practice of multidisciplinary artist Zhang Dali. Zhang went into self-imposed exile from China in 1989 and when he returned to Beijing six years later, he found his home was in the midst of rapid change. Zhang wanted to protest the loss of traditional buildings, document the ruined remnants before they were swept away, and convey his sense of the loss of history and identity that was a consequence of those changes.
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Chi Peng's Apollo in transit (2005)
Chi Peng's works often contain naked figures spiriting or running through 'history', while refusing any start or ending of their visual narrative. Unravelling like a traditional Chinese scroll, the red brick wall surrounding the Forbidden City extends the length of this digitally altered panoramic image. The artist has inserted repeat images of himself running left to right alongside the wall, in front of a variety of onlookers. A metaphor for East / West relations, this theatrical image brings together potent symbols of traditional and contemporary life in China.
Yongliang Yang (Chinese, b. 1980)
From the On the quiet water, heavenly city series 2008
Inkjet print 73.0 x 200.0 cm (image) 81.6 x 208.2 cm (sheet)
Presented by the Mering Corporation Pty Ltd through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2012
© Yang Yongliang
Eclipse (detail)
Yang Yongliang creates an optical illusion by combining elements of a traditional Chinese shānshuǐ (mountain-water) landscape painting with imagery from modern Shanghai life. From afar, the work appears to be a watercolour on paper, representing misty mountains and an ethereal sea stretching to the horizon. Upon closer inspection, the ghostly formations are revealed as digitally constructed collages of apartment blocks, buildings, construction sites and giant cranes. The built metropolis becomes indistinguishable from the natural landscape, highlighting the insidious modernisation, construction and environmental degradation characteristic of contemporary existence.
Installation views of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Huang Yan's Chinese landscape – Tattoo No. 4 and Chinese landscape – Tattoo No. 1 (1999)
Huang Yan (Chinese, b. 1966)
Chinese landscape – Tattoo (Number 1)
1999, printed 2004
80.1 x 108.0 cm irreg. (image and sheet)
Purchased, 2004
© Huang Yan, courtesy of Red Gate Gallery, Beijing
Prior to commencing his photography practice in the 1990s, Huang Yan trained as a painter. His recent work combines the centuries-old, traditional style of landscape painting with new technology; the images are contemporary while also affirming traditional Chinese culture and values. The artist alludes to complex traditions in this 'self-portrait' in which his bare chest is painted with a traditional shānshuǐ (mountain-water) landscape painting. The title of the work implies permanence, yet the scenes painted on the body are ephemeral, suggesting the fragility of the natural environment and the transience of the body.
Hong Lei (Chinese, b. 1960)
After Zhao Ji's loquat and birds (Song dynasty)
Autumn in the Forbidden City
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing at centre, Wang Qingsong's Preincarnation (2002) and at right, Shi Guowei's Cactus garden (2016)
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing one image from Wang Qingsong's Preincarnation (2002)
Wang Qingsong works in a theatrical style, constructing and photographing elaborate tableaux in which his models play the roles of characters from traditional Chinese stories and paintings, popular culture and Western historical painting. In the foreground of this work, men carry tools to vandalise or disassemble giant sacred 'sculptures' standing atop lotus thrones. The title suggests that the man has been reborn into the past, and upon arriving in Chinese pre-history, is set to destroy it in his relentless pursuit of materialism. This work alludes to China's relationship with its early history, and the dismantling of tradition during a period of rampant consumerism and modernisation.
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Shi Guowei's Cactus garden (2016)
Shi Guowei (Chinese, b. 1977)
Gelatin silver photograph, colour dyes
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2017
Shi Guowei's subtly coloured image is created through the application of layered pigment to the surface of the photograph. In some areas of the work, the colour is applied with lifelike precision, in others it registers as being 'not quite right'. His palette recalls that of early colour photographs in which the colour fades or shifts over time, creating a nostalgic quality; however, it also creates an awareness of the artificiality inherent in the scene. Although the planting in this cactus garden is 'naturalistic', it is clearly a constructed landscape, and not the wild arid landscape it would seem at first glance.
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing at top, Sheng Qi's Memories (Mother), Memories (Me) and Memories (Mao) (2000)
Sheng Qi was a key member of the '85 New Wave art movement in China that championed freedom of expression in the arts over state-approved Social Realism. He was deeply affected by the changed political climate following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and responded in a physically direct and shocking way. He cut off the little finger of his left hand, buried it in a flowerpot, and went into self-imposed exile in Rome. When he returned to Beijing a decade later, he used his disfigured hand as the backdrop for a series of self-portraits that juxtapose his past and present.
Sheng Qi (Chinese, b. 1965)
Memories (Me)
119.1 x 80.5 cm irreg. (image) 126.9 x 86.9 cm irreg. (sheet)
© Sheng Qi, courtesy of Red Gate Gallery, Beijing
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing at left, Wang Qingsong's Another battle no. 3 (2001) and at right, Hong Hao's My things no. 2 (2001-02)
Another battle no. 3
© Wang Qingsong
Wang Qingsong works in a theatrical style, constructing and photographing elaborate tableaux in which his models play the roles of characters from traditional Chinese stories and paintings, contemporary life, popular culture, and Western historical painting. In this work he shows a wounded soldier, trapped behind the battlelines, caught between gunfire and razor wire that is littered with soft-drink cans, one of the most common forms of litter found globally. In this highly theatrical image Wang has taken imagery from popular cinema and used it to highlight the challenges presented by Western-style consumerism.
Hong Hao (Chinese, b. 1965)
My things no. 2
Completely filled from edge to edge with ordinary, domestic objects, this image is a visual archive of things used by the artist in everyday life. Describing his creative process, Hong Hao writes, 'Day by day, I put my daily consumed objects into a scanner piece by piece, like keeping a visual diary. After scanning the original objects, I'll save them in digital forms and categorise these digital files into different folders [on] my PC, in order to make a collage of them later on. This task, like a yogi's daily practice, has become a habit in my day-to-day life as well as a tool to observe the human condition in contemporary consumer society'.
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Wang Jinsong's One hundred signs of demolition #1980 (1998)
Wang Jinsong (Chinese, 1963)
One hundred signs of demolition #1980
The two photographs from the series One Hundred Signs of Demolition show the Chinese character 'chai', meaning 'demolition', that is commonly painted on the walls of buildings earmarked for destruction. For Wang Jinsong it has become a symbol of the inexorable push for urban reconstruction. In his photographs 'chai' came to stand for the loss of the ancient city, where buildings were once on a domestic scale and constructed to facilitate interaction in communal space, and their replacement with more socially isolating multistorey tower blocks.
Last supper was one of a number of photographs commissioned for the exhibition Christian Dior and Chinese Artists that opened at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, in 2008. The work references the iconography of Western paintings of Christian subjects, in particular depictions of the Last Supper; however, in place of the twelve disciples Wang presents fashion models, and the simple meal traditionally depicted in Western art has been replaced with a feast of digitally enhanced, oversized, unnaturally perfect fruit and vegetables. The result is an image of affluence and excess.
Hai Bo (Chinese, b. 1962)
I am Chairman Mao's Red Guard
Hai Bo's paired portraits illustrate the cultural shifts that have occurred over forty years as people in China have become increasingly able to show their individuality. In this image, a photograph of a young woman proudly wearing the uniform of the student paramilitary movement, known as the Red Guard, and holding Mao's Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (commonly known as the Little Red Book) is shown counterpointed by a contemporary picture of the same person, now a smiling middle-aged woman wearing a floral dress. Such a garment would have been unthinkable – and unattainable – forty years earlier.
Installation view of the exhibition Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne showing Hai Bo's Wood horse (1999)
Hai Bo (Chinese, 1962)
Wood horse
Gelatin silver photograph ed. 16/20
NGV International
180 St Kilda Road
Daily 10am – 5pm
National Gallery of Victoria website
Categories: architecture, beauty, black and white photography, book, designer, drawing, existence, film, gallery website, illustration, light, London, memory, Paris, psychological, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: Aaron Douglas, Aaron Douglas Dance, Aaron Douglas Untitled (Dancers and Cityscape), Adolphe-Leon Wilette La Vierge verte, Adolphe-Leon Wilette The Green Virgin, Agony, Anita Berber, Aubette 63, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Auguste and Louis Lumiere Film Lumiere no. 765, Ausblick im Nachtlokal, Barbican Art Gallery, Beauty Thee Will I Praise, Before the Performance, Berlin Weimar Nightlife 1920s-30s, Berliner Reise, Bierseidelbetrachtung I, Boohoo boohoo boohoo, Burial Ground, Cabaret Del Diavolo, Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art, Café Nollendorf, Cage cage cage, Camille Saint-Saëns, Camille Saint-Saëns Valse mignonne, Cave of the Golden Calf, Cave-dwellers, Chansonette, Chat Noir, Chat Noir 1880s-90s, Ciné-Dancing, Cocaine, Colette Omogbai, Colette Omogbai Agony, Curt Moreck, Curt Moreck Guide to 'Depraved' Berlin, Damenkneipe, Danse serpentine [II], design art and clubbing, Design for Deer Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club, Design for Tiger Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club, Devil's Dog, Dodo Burgner, Dodo Burgner Revue neger, Dodo Burgner Revue neger (Josephine Baker), Dodo Burgner The Fortune Teller, Drop curtain design, Edward Burra, Edward Burra Savoy Ballroom Harlem, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler Ausblick im Nachtlokal, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler Lissy, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler View of a Nightclub, Erna Schmidt-Caroll, Erna Schmidt-Caroll Chansonette, Erna Schmidt-Caroll Singer, Faramarz Pilaram, Faramarz Pilaram Untitled (Composition 8), Fasting (Carnival), Film Lumiere no. 765, Final colour design for the screen wall of the Ciné-Dancing at L'Aubette, Folies Bergère, Folies Bergère La Danse du Feu, Gelede, George Auriol, George Auriol Programme for the Chat noir Theatre, George Auriol Théâtre du Chat Noir, George Grosz, George Grosz Beauty Thee Will I Praise, George Grosz Menschen in Cáfe, George Grosz People in a Cáfe, George Grosz Schönheit dich will ich preisen, Georgina Beier, Georgina Beier Gelede, Guide to 'Depraved' Berlin, Haller Revue Under and Over, Harlem Jazz Clubs and Cabarets, Harlem Jazz Clubs and Cabarets 1920s-40s, Heech and Hands, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Miss Loïe Fuller, Henri Rivière, Henri Rivière and Henry Somm, Henri Rivière and Henry Somm shadow theatre, Henri Rivière Poster for the performances Clairs de lune, I'm a Clever Waterman, Ibadan, Ibadan & Osogbo Mbari Clubs, Ibadan & Osogbo Mbari Clubs 1961-66, Indian Dance, Interior courtyard of the Mbari Artists' and Writers' Club, Into the Night, Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art, Jeanne Mammen, Jeanne Mammen Bar, Jeanne Mammen Before the Performance, Jeanne Mammen Bierseidelbetrachtung I, Jeanne Mammen Café Nollendorf, Jeanne Mammen Fasting (Carnival), Jeanne Mammen Masked Ball, Jeanne Mammen Maskenball, Jeanne Mammen She Represents!, Jeanne Mammen Sie reprasentiert!, Jeanne Mammen The Contemplative Drinkers I, Jeanne Mammen Untitled (Vor dem Auftritt), Jeanne Mammen Vor dem Auftritt, Jitterbugs (II), Jitterbugs (III), Josephine Baker, Jules Chéret, Jules Chéret Folies Bergère, Jules Chéret The Fire Dance, Kamran Diba, Kamran Diba I'm a Clever Waterman, Karl Hofer, Karl Hofer Tiller Girls, Kermesse, L'Aubette, L'Aubette: Design for a composition for the floor of the café-brasserie and the café-restaurant, L'Aubette: Projet de composition pour le sol du café-brasserie et du café-restaurant, La Danse du Feu, La Loïe Fuller, La Vierge verte, Leyl Matine-Daftary, Leyl Matine-Daftary Still-life, Lissy, Loïe Fuller, Loïe Fuller 1890s, London Cave of the Golden Calf, Malangatana, Masked Ball, Maskenball, Max Beckmann, Max Beckmann Berliner Reise, Max Beckmann Nackttanz, Max Beckmann Trip to Berlin, Mbari clubs, Menschen in Cáfe, Miss Loïe Fuller, Muraina Oyelami, Muraina Oyelami Burial Ground, nightclubs and art, Otto Dix, Otto Dix Anita Berber, Paris Chat Noir 1880s-90s, Paris Loïe Fuller 1890s, Parviz Tanavoli, Parviz Tanavoli Boohoo boohoo boohoo, Parviz Tanavoli Cage cage cage, Parviz Tanavoli Heech and Hands, Pensdream, People in a Cáfe, Persian stories, Poster for the performances Clairs de lune, Programme for the Chat noir Theatre, Réouverture du cabaret du Chat Noir, Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret, Revue neger (Josephine Baker), Rudolf Schlichter Damenkneipe, Rudolf Schlichter Women's Club, saqqakhaneh, Savoy Ballroom Harlem, Schall und Rauch, Schönheit dich will ich preisen, She Represents!, Sie reprasentiert!, Simplicissimus, Slide on the Razor, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp Aubette 63, Spencer Gore, Spencer Gore Design for Deer Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club, Spencer Gore Design for Tiger Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club, Strasbourg L'Aubette, Tehran Rasht 29, Théâtre du Chat Noir, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen Réouverture du cabaret du Chat Noir, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret, The Ciné-bal (cinema-ballroom) at Café L'Aubette, The Contemplative Drinkers I, The Fire Dance, The Fortune Teller, The Green Virgin, Theo van Doesburg, Theo van Doesburg Ciné-Dancing, Theo van Doesburg Final colour design for the screen wall of the Ciné-Dancing at L'Aubette, Tiller Girls, Topkeller, Troglodytes, Twins Seven-Seven, Twins Seven-Seven Devil's Dog, Twins Seven-Seven THE BEAUTIFUL LADY and THE FULLBODIED GENTLEMAN THAT REDUCED TO HEAD, Twins Seven-Seven Untitled (Devil's Dog), Uche Okeke, Uche Okeke murals, Uli Beier, Valente Malangatana Ngwenya, Valse mignonne, View of a Nightclub, Vor dem Auftritt, Weimar Nightlife, Weimar Nightlife 1920s-30s, William H. Johnson, William H. Johnson Jitterbugs (II), William H. Johnson Jitterbugs (III), Wintergarten, Women's Club, Wyndham Lewis, Wyndham Lewis Drop curtain design, Wyndham Lewis Indian Dance, Wyndham Lewis Kermesse, Yoruba myths and culture
Exhibition dates: 4th October 2019 – 19th January 2020
Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883-1931)
The Ciné-bal (cinema-ballroom) at Café L'Aubette, Strasbourg, designed by Theo van Doesburg
Image: Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, donation Van Moorsel, archive (code): DOES, inv.nr AB5252
Part 2 on this exceptional exhibition. Of particular interest here are:
the inspired paintings and drawings by Jeanne Mammen of Berlin nightlife which documents "the changing role of women and offer rare images of queer female desire." Her work, associated with the New Objectivity and Symbolism movements, is incisive and sympathetic in its observation of difference and "depravity". Her line is strong and the characterisation, assured;
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler's "scenes of Hamburg after dark [which] convey a raw sense of possibility through bold line, clashing colour and startling imagery." The attitude of the hands in the painting Lissy (1931, below) balanced by the simplicity of the chair at left, and the furious line and bleeding, washes of watercolour of the men at the table at right – replete with their protruding, predatory teeth – make this a compelling image.
I think I might have found myself a new art hero.
Many thankx to the Barbican Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the media photographs in the posting. All installation images are iPhone images by Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Strasbourg: L'Aubette 1928 wall text
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art
Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 4 October 2019 – 19 January 2020
© Tristan Fewings / Getty Images
Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan
L'Aubette: Projet de composition pour le sol du café-brasserie et du café-restaurant (L'Aubette: Design for a composition for the floor of the café-brasserie and the café-restaurant) (installation view)
Gouache and graphite pencil on tracing paper
Paris, Centre Pompidou – Museé national d'art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Final colour design for the screen wall of the Ciné-Dancing at L'Aubette (installation view)
East India ink and paint on paper
Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. Gift Van Moorsel
Theo van Doesburg Ciné-Dancing wall text
Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (downstairs gallery, room recreation)
Downstairs gallery, room recreation
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (Swiss, 1889-1943)
Aubette 63 (installation view)
Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg
Paris: Loïe Fuller 1890s wall text
Unknown photographer (attributed to Falk Studio)
Loïe Fuller
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC
Auguste and Louis Lumiere
Film Lumiere no. 765, 1 – Danse serpentine [II]
Hand-coloured 35mm film
49 secs (complete clip)
Video: Marcus Bunyan
Magnificent! Not Loïe Fuller but one of her many imitators. She refused to be captured on film.
Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901)
Miss Loïe Fuller
Bibliothèque de l'Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Collections Jacques Doucet
Inv. no. NUM EM TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 49 e
Courtesy Bibliothèque de l'Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Collections Jacques Doucet
Jules Chéret (French, 1836-1932)
Fioles Bergère, La Loïe Fuller (installation view)
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Folies Bergère, La Danse du Feu (The Fire Dance) (installation view)
Paris: Chat Noir 1880s-90s wall text
Henri Rivière (French, 1864-1951)
Poster for the performances Clairs de lune by Georges Fragerolle, L'honnête gendarme by Jean Richepin and Le treizième travail d'Hercule by Eugène Courboin (Le Chat Noir, 16 December 1896) (installation view)
Cliché and letterpress printing in black on wove paper on linen
58.7 cm x 42.2 cm
Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing Henri Rivière and Henry Somm's shadow theatre and wall text
Adolphe-Leon Wilette (French, 1857-1926)
La Vierge verte (The Green Virgin) (installation view)
Collection Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University
In this oil study for a stained-glass window exhibited inside the cabaret, the black cat is held aloft in adoration under the full moon, as though part of an occult ceremony. The 'chat' noir' of the cabaret's title was celebrated throughout its design, symbolising fierce independence as well as night-time frolics. It gazes imperiously at the onlooker from Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen's famous posters, perches on a crescent moon in Adolphe-Léon Willette's street sign, and endangers pet goldfish in humorous cartoons.
Wall text
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss-born French, 1859-1923)
Réouverture du cabaret du Chat Noir (Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret) (installation view)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Réouverture du cabaret du Chat Noir (Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret)
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
George Auriol (French, 1863-1938)
Théâtre du Chat Noir (Couverture aux coquelicots) (Programme for the Chat noir Theatre (Cover with Poppies)) (installation view)
Photomechanical print
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Opening 4 October 2019, Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art explores the social and artistic role of cabarets, cafés and clubs around the world. Spanning the 1880s to the 1960s, the exhibition presents a dynamic and multi-faceted history of artistic production. The first major show staged on this theme, it features both famed and little-known sites of the avant-garde – these creative spaces were incubators of radical thinking, where artists could exchange provocative ideas and create new forms of artistic expression. Into the Night offers an alternative history of modern art that highlights the spirit of experimentation and collaboration between artists, performers, designers, musicians and writers such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Loïe Fuller, Josef Hoffmann, Giacomo Balla, Theo van Doesburg and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, as well as Josephine Baker, Jeanne Mammen, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Ramón Alva de la Canal and Ibrahim El-Salahi.
Focusing on global locations from New York to Tehran, London, Paris, Mexico City, Berlin, Vienna and Ibadan, Into the Night brings together over 350 works rarely seen in the UK, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, films and archival material. Liberated from the confines of social and political norms, many of the sites provided immersive, often visceral experiences, manifesting the ideals of the artists and audiences who founded and frequented them. The exhibition features full-scale recreations of specific spaces, such as the multi-coloured ceramic tiled bar of the Cabaret Fledermaus in Vienna (1907), designed by Josef Hoffmann for the Wiener Werkstätte, and the striking abstract composition of the Ciné-Dancing designed by Theo van Doesburg for L'Aubette in Strasbourg (1926-28). The exhibition will feature a soundscape created by hrm199, the studio of acclaimed artist Haroon Mirza, specifically commissioned for the show.
Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, said: "Into the Night casts a spotlight on some of the most electrifying cabarets and clubs of the modern era. Whether a creative haven, intoxicating stage or liberal hangout, all were magnets for artists, designers and performers to come together, collaborate and express themselves freely. Capturing the essence of these global incubators of experimentation and cross-disciplinarity, immersive 1:1 scale interiors will take the visitor on a captivating journey of discovery."
Into the Night begins in Paris, on the eve of the 20th century, with two thrilling and iconic locations of the avant-garde. The theatrical shadow plays of the Chat Noir in the 1880s are brought to life through original silhouettes and works that decorated the interior of the cabaret, which acted as a forum for satire and debate for figures such as founder Rodolphe Salis, artist Henri Rivière and composer Erik Satie. The captivating serpentine dances of Loïe Fuller staged at the Folies Bergère in the 1890s were trail-blazing experiments in costume, light and movement. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec captured her performances in his extraordinary series of delicately hand-coloured lithographs, brought together for the exhibition. Visitors will encounter the immersive "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total work of art) design of the Cabaret Fledermaus (1907) in Vienna by the Wiener Werkstätte, where experimental cabaret productions were staged. The exhibition includes original documentation of Oskar Kokoschka's exuberant puppet theatre and Gertrude Barrison's expressionist dance.
The Cave of the Golden Calf (1912), an underground haunt in Soho epitomising decadence and hedonism, is evoked through designs for the interior by British artists Spencer Gore and Eric Gill, as well as Wyndham Lewis's highly stylised programmes for the eclectic performance evenings – advertised at the time as encompassing "the picturesque dances of the South, its fervid melodies, Parisian wit, English humour." In Zurich, the radical atmosphere of the Cabaret Voltaire (1916) is manifested through absurdist sound poetry and fantastical masks that deconstruct body and language, evoking the anarchic performances by Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings and Marcel Janco. This is the birthplace of Dada, where humour, chaos and ridicule reign. Two significant clubs in Rome provide insights into the electrifying dynamism of Futurism in Italy in the 1920s. Giacomo Balla's mesmerising Bal Tic Tac (1921) is summoned by colour-saturated designs for the club's interior, capturing the swirling movement of dancers. Also on show are drawings and furnishings for Fortunato Depero's spectacular inferno-inspired Cabaret del Diavolo (1922) which occupied three floors representing heaven, purgatory and hell. Depero's flamboyant tapestry writhes with dancing demons, expressing the club's motto "Tutti all'inferno!!! (Everyone to hell!!!)".
A few years later, a group of artists and writers from the radical movement Estridentismo, including Ramón Alva de la Canal, Manuel Maples Arce and Germán Cueto, began to meet at the Café de Nadie (Nobody's Café) in Mexico City, responding to volatile Post-Revolutionary change and the urban metropolis. The ¡30-30! group expressed its values by holding a major print exhibition (partially reassembled here) in a travelling circus tent open to all. Meanwhile in Strasbourg, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp worked together to create the L'Aubette (1926-28), conceived as the ultimate "deconstruction of architecture", with bold geometric abstraction as its guiding principle. The vast building housed a cinema-ballroom, bar, tearoom, billiards room, restaurant and more, each designed as immersive environments.
After a period of restraint in Germany during the First World War, the 1920s heralded an era of liberation and the relaxation of censorship laws. Numerous clubs and bars in metropolitan cities, such as Berlin, playing host to heady cabaret revues and daring striptease; the notorious synchronised Tiller Girls are captured in Karl Hofer's iconic portrait. Major works by often overlooked female artists such as Jeanne Mammen and Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, as well as George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, capture the pulsating energy of these nightclubs and the alternative lifestyles that flourished within them during the 1920s and 1930s. During the same time in New York, the literary and jazz scenes thrived and co-mingled in the predominantly African American neighbourhood of Harlem, where black identity was re-forged and debated. Paintings and prints by Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence convey the vibrant atmosphere and complex racial and sexual politics of the time, while poetry by Langston Hughes and early cinema featuring Duke Ellington shed light on the rich range of creative expression thriving within the city.
Into the Night also celebrates the lesser known but highly influential Mbari Artists and Writers Club, founded in the early 1960s in Nigeria. Focusing on two of the club's key locations, in Ibadan and Osogbo, the exhibition explores how they were founded as laboratories for postcolonial artistic practices, providing a platform for a dazzling range of activities – including open-air dance and theatre performances, featuring ground breaking Yoruba operas by Duro Ladipo and Fela Kuti's Afro-jazz; poetry and literature readings; experimental art workshops; and pioneering exhibitions by African and international artists such as Colette Omogbai, Ibrahim El-Salahi and Uche Okeke. Meanwhile in Tehran, Rasht 29 emerged in1966 as a creative space for avant-garde painters, poets, musicians and filmmakers to freely discuss their practice. Spontaneous performances were celebrated and works by artists like Parviz Tanavoli and Faramarz Pilaram hung in the lounge while a soundtrack including Led Zeppelin and the Beatles played constantly.
The exhibition is curated and organised by Barbican Centre, London, in collaboration with the Belvedere, Vienna.
Press release from the Barbican Art Gallery [Online] Cited 28/12/2019
Berlin: Weimar Nightlife 1920s-30s wall text
Rudolf Schlichter (German, 1890-1955)
Damenkneipe (Women's Club)
© Viola Roehr v. Alvensleben, Munich
Photo: akg-images
Damenkneipe (Women's Club) (installation view)
Installation view with Rudolf Schlichter's Damenkneipe (Women's Club) c. 1925 at left, followed by work by Jeanne Mammen
Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Bar (installation view)
Ömer Koç Collection
© DACS, 2019
Bierseidelbetrachtung I (The Contemplative Drinkers I) (installation views)
Untitled (Vor dem Auftritt) (Before the Performance) (installation views)
Jeanne Mammen Foundation at Stadtmuseum Berlin
Café Nollendorf (installation view)
Watercolour and India ink over pencil
Jeanne Mammen's paintings and drawings of Berlin nightlife document the changing role of women and offer rare images of queer female desire. In contrast to the bitingly satirical images characteristic of George Grosz and Max Beckmann, Mammen sympathetically portrays her mostly female figures. Café Nollendorf is one of several by Mammen published in Curt Moreck's subversive 1931 Guide to 'Depraved' Berlin (shown nearby). It illustrates his account of a lesbian club for 'open-minded' clientele. Mammen was also a successful commercial artist, recording modern fashions and mores in popular magazines.
Otto Dix (German, 1891-1969)
Anita Berber (installation view)
Otto Dix met the 26-year-old cabaret dancer and silent film star Anita Berber in Dūsseldorf in 1925. Berber was among the most provocative performers of her time, appearing at major Berlin venues like the Wintergarten and the Apollo, as well as the political cabaret Schall und Rauch and the lesbian club Topkeller. In her notorious dance 'Cocaine', accompanied by Camille Saint-Saëns' Valse mignonne (1896), Berber played a sex worker and addict, wearing a leather corset with her breast exposed. Simulating trembles of pain, she dances spasms of hallucination before collapsing on the floor. Despite her theatrical makeup, Dix's portrait offers a more intimate side of Berber.
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing on the left, the work of Dodo Burgner and on the right, the work of George Grosz.
Dodo (Dodo Burgner, German, 1927-1933)
Revue neger (Josephine Baker) (installation view)
Gouache over pencil on cardboard
Collection Krümmer, Hamburg
The Fortune Teller, published in ULK (installation views)
George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)
Schönheit, dich will ich preisen (Beauty, Thee Will I Praise) (installation views)
Publisher: Malik-Verlag, Berlin
Printer: Kunstanstalt Dr. Selle & Co. A.G. Berlin
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler's Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub) 1930
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (German, 1899-1940)
Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub) (installation view)
Private collection, Berlin
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub) wall text
Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub)
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, showing at left, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler's Lissy (1931) and at right, Karl Hofer's Tiller Girls (before 1927)
Lissy (installation views)
Private collection. Courtesy Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Karl Hofer's Tiller Girls
(before 1927)
Karl Hofer (German, 1878-1955)
Tiller Girls (installation view)
Tiller Girls
Kunsthalle Emden – Stiftung Henri und Eske Nannen
© Elke Walford, Fotowerkstatt Hamburg
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London with Erna Schmidt-Caroll's
Chansonette (Singer) third from left
Erna Schmidt-Caroll (German, 1896-1964)
Chansonette (Singer) (installation views)
© Estate Erna Schmidt-Caroll
Chansonette (Singer)
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing the work of George Grosz and Max Beckmann
Menschen in Cáfe (People in a Cáfe) (installation view)
Black ink and pen on paper
On loan from the Trustees of the British Museum
Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950)
Nackttanz (Striptease), from Berliner Reise (Trip to Berlin) (installation view)
Lithograph, one from a portfolio of eleven (including cover)
Publisher: J.B. Neumann, Berlin
Sie reprasentiert! (She Represents!), published in Simplicissimus vol. 32, no 47, February 1928
Printed magazine
Maskenball (Masked Ball), published in Jugend vol. 34, no 5, January 1929
Fasting (Carnival), published in Simplicissimus vol. 34, no 46, February 1930
'Slide on the Razor', performance as part of the Haller Revue 'Under and Over', Berlin, 1923
Courtesy Feral House
Ibadan & Osogbo Mbari Clubs 1961-66 wall text
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Twins Seven-Seven Devil's Dog (1964) and at right, Twins Seven-Seven THE BEAUTIFUL LADY and THE FULLBODIED GENTLEMAN THAT REDUCED TO HEAD (1967)
Twins Seven-Seven
Devil's Dog (installation view detail)
Ink, gouache and varnish on paper
Iwalewahaus, Universitat Bayreuth
THE BEAUTIFUL LADY and THE FULLBODIED GENTLEMAN THAT REDUCED TO HEAD (installation views)
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London with at left, Muraina Oyelami's Burial Ground (1967) with Georgina Beier's Gelede (1966) third from right
Muraina Oyelami (Nigerian, born 1940)
Burial Ground (installation views)
Collection of M.K. Wolford
Georgina Beier (British, b. 1938)
Gelede (installation view)
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London with at second left, Valente Malangatana Ngwenya's Untitled (1961)
Valente Malangatana Ngwenya (Mozambican, 1936-2011)
Untitled (installation views)
Iwalewahaus, Universität Bayreuth
The programme at the Mbari clubs was highly international: in addition to artists from across Africa, those from Europe, the Caribbean and the UA (particularly African Americans) were often invited to participate. When Mozambican artist Malangatana exhibited in Ibadan in 1962, Uli Beier's accompanying text described his work as 'wild and powerful but it is more than that. Far from being repelled by the scenes of horror, we are brought under an irresistible spell. For Malangatana's work also contains a strong element of human sympathy and suffering and agony… he is full of stories. The artist was closely involved in the struggle against Portuguese rule in Mozambique and many of his works can be seen as allegories of colonial oppression.
Colette Omogbai (Nigeria, b. 1942)
Agony (installation view)
Oil on hardboard
Collete Omogbai held her first solo exhibition at the Mbari club in Ibadan in 1963, while still a student. Deconstructing the body ith saturated colours and jagged shapes, Agony conveys great emotional intensity. Omogbai's highly expressive forms reflect the modernist ideas advocated in her 1965 manifesto, 'Man Loves What is "Sweet" and Obvious', in which she parodied mainstream taste: "'Give us reality', Man proclaims, 'if possible, the reality as real as that of Bouguereau… No touch of black'." Like many of the works in this section, it was acquired by Mbari founder Ulli Beier and later entered the collection of the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
Iwalewahaus|DEVA, University of Bayreuth
© Colette Omogbai
Untitled (Devil's Dog) (installation views)
Devil's Dog wall text
Untitled (Devil's Dog)
© DACS, 2019. Courtesy DEVA|Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth and CBCIU, Oshogbo
Interior courtyard of the Mbari Artists' and Writers' Club, Ibadan, with murals by Uche Okeke
© Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo, Oshun State, Nigeria / Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, Germany
Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing some of the publishing output of the Mbari clubs and wall text
London Cave of the Golden Calf wall text
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery
Spencer Gore (British, 1878-1914)
Design for Tiger Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club (installation view)
Oil and pencil on card
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Design for Deer Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club (installation view)
Oil and chalk on paper
None of the original decorations from the Cave of the Golden Calf survive except for Eric Gill's carved bull calf. Contemporaneous reports, however, describe their collective impact as intense, conveying a hedonistic energy. Gore's murals depicted an Arcadian hunt, with frisking tigers and deep portrayed in glowing colours. The Times recounted 'mural decorations representing we should not care to say what precise stage beyond impressionism – they would easily, however, turn into appalling goblins after a little too much supper in the cave'. The artists then at the forefront of modernism in Britain, were dubbed 'Troglodytes' or 'Cave-dwellers' by the press.
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing some of the works by Wyndham Lewis (below)
Wyndham Lewis (English, 1882-1957)
Kermesse (installation views)
Gouache, watercolour, pen and black ink, black wash and graphite on paper
Wyndham Lewis designed the cabaret's programme and posted as well as some of its interior decorations, which are now lost. His large oil painting, Kermesse (1912), whose dynamic figures evoked a carnival spirit hung on the club's wall; only this drawing now survives. Along with other British modernist contemporaries, Lewis was fascinated by dance during this period, producing multiple works that may have been inspired by the cabaret's 'exotic' programme.
Drop curtain design (installation views)
Pencil, black in and watercolour on paper
V&A Theatre and Performance, London
Indian Dance (installation view)
Chalk and watercolour on paper
Tate, Purchased 1955
Harlem Jazz Clubs and Cabarets 1920s-40s wall text
Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing at left, Jacob Lawrence's Vaudeville (1951); at second left, William H, Johnson's Jitterbugs (III) (c. 1941); at second right, William H, Johnson's Jitterbugs (II) (c. 1941); and at right, Edward Burra's Savoy Ballroom, Harlem (1934)
Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917-2000)
Vaudeville (installation view)
Egg tempera and pencil on Fibreboard
in this work, Lawrence pays tribute to his formative experiences watching vaudeville performances at the Apollo Theater as a young man during the Harlem renaissance. He later recalled, 'I wanted a staccato-type thing – raw, sharp, rough – that's what I tried to get'. The vibrant composition reveals Lawrence's virtuoso handling of colour and form. The patterned backdrop comprises circles, triangles and organic forms in myriad colours, interlocking to create a syncopated, rhythmic effect. In contrast to their carnivalesque costumes and the comedic nature of vaudeville, the figure bear sorrowful expressions, perhaps reflecting the 'melancholy-comic' mood that contemporary Harlem writer Claude McKay identified as central to the black American experience.
William H. Johnson (American, 1901-1970)
Jitterbugs (III) (installation view)
Oil on plywood
Gift of the Harmon Foundation
Jitterbugs (II) (installation view)
Oil on paperboard
Edward Burra (English, 1905-1976)
Savoy Ballroom, Harlem (installation views)
Gouache and watercolour on paper
Omer Koc Collection
Aaron Douglas (American, 1899-1979)
Dance (installation view)
Gouache on illustration board
Collection of Dr Anita White
© Heirs of Aaron Douglas/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2019
Untitled (Dancers and Cityscape) (installation views)
Tehran Rasht 29 1966-69 wall text
Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing the Tehran Rasht 29 1966-69 section
Kamran Diba (Iranian, b. 1937)
I'm a Clever Waterman (installation view)
Lithograph (reproduction of lost painting)
Collection Kamran Diba
I'm a Clever Waterman was first created during a performance by artist and architect Kamran Diba and his contemporaries, which combined movement and live music with live painting. Faramarz Pilaram added the calligraphic text, which includes the work's enigmatic title and the number 29, reflecting the importance of the Rasht 29 club to their artistic circle. The painting was shown at the bar area at Rasht but was lost during the 1979 Iranian Revolution: only the print survives now.
I'm a Clever Waterman
© Kamran Diba
Leyl Matine-Daftary (Iranian, 1937-2007)
Still-life (installation view)
Mohammed Afkhami Collection
Parviz Tanavoli (Iranian, b. 1937)
Heech and Hands
Collection Parviz Tanavoli
© Parviz Tanavoli
Cage, cage, cage (installation view)
1966 (repaired 2009)
Wood, metal, feather, glass, paint and light
Boohoo, boohoo, boohoo, or her, or a gazelle (installation view)
Wood, paint, plexiglass and metal
Throughout the 1960s Iran's economy was rapidly industrialising. Tanavoli began incorporating found industrial elements into his work, scouring welding shops, blacksmiths, potteries and street vendors for salvage. Boohoo, boohoo, boohoo, or her, or a gazelle, which was shown at Rasht 29, incorporates the decorative grille motif that recurs in the artists work. Playfully juxtaposed with elements from pop culture, the grille alludes to the traditional design of a saqqakhaneh, the sacred commemorative water fountains from which the artistic community took its name.
Faramarz Pilaram (Iranian, 1937-1982)
Untitled (Composition 8) (installation view)
Ink, metallic paint and acrylic on paper
Barbican Art Gallery
Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS
Mon – Tue 12noon – 6pm
Wed – Fri 12noon – 9pm
Sat 10am – 9pm
Barbican Art Gallery website
Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, London, memory, Paris, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, Robert Frank, space, street photography, time and works on paper
Tags: 1950s photography of America, 41st Street and 7th Avenue, 42nd Street New York, American art, american artist, American photography, Bar New York, Bar New York City, Bryant Park New York, C/O Berlin, C/O Berlin Robert Frank Unseen, Cantonal Assembly Hundwil, Charity Ball New York, Charity Ball New York City, City Fathers Hoboken, Contact Sheet 18, Contact Sheet 31, Contact Sheet 62, Factory Detroit, Gli Americani, Landsgemeinde, Les Americans, Mary and Pablo, Mississippi St Louis, Nevada, New Jersey, New York City, On the road to Carolina, Parade - Hoboken, photography of America, Portfolio 40 Photos, Robert Frank 41st Street and 7th Avenue, Robert Frank 42nd Street New York, Robert Frank Bar New York, Robert Frank Bryant Park New York, Robert Frank Cantonal Assembly Hundwil, Robert Frank Charity Ball New York, Robert Frank City Fathers Hoboken, Robert Frank Contact Sheet 18, Robert Frank Contact Sheet 31, Robert Frank Contact Sheet 62, Robert Frank Florida, Robert Frank Geneva, Robert Frank Gli Americani, Robert Frank Landsgemeinde, Robert Frank Les Americans, Robert Frank London, Robert Frank Los Angeles, Robert Frank Mary and Pablo, Robert Frank Mississippi St Louis, Robert Frank Nevada, Robert Frank New York, Robert Frank New York City, Robert Frank On the road to Carolina, Robert Frank Parade - Hoboken, Robert Frank Paris, Robert Frank Peru, Robert Frank Portfolio 40 Photos, Robert Frank Rodeo New York City, Robert Frank The Americans, Robert Frank Times Square New York, Robert Frank Trolley - New Orleans, Robert Frank U.S. 91 leaving Blackfoot, Robert Frank Unseen, Robert Frank USA, Robert Frank Wanamaker Fire 10th Street East, Robert Frank Yom Kippur East River, Rodeo New York City, Route US 91 leaving Blackfoot, Swiss photographer, Swiss photography, the americans, Times Square New York, Trolley - New Orleans, U.S. 91 leaving Blackfoot, Wanamaker Fire 10th Street East, Yom Kippur East River
Exhibition dates: 13th September – 30th November 2019 posted January 2020
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin
Utopian dreaming / dystopian dreams
Synchronicity… when I visited this exhibition on the 16th September 2019, the grand man had only died the previous week on the 9th September 2019.
This was a fabulous exhibition of mainly VINTAGE prints (see labels) at C/O Berlin, with the added bonus of seeing many Robert Frank photographs I had never seen before.
The vintage prints were much larger than I had thought they would be
The English photographs were very impressive. A similar tonal range to Josef Sudek's prints in these works i.e. no hard blacks or whites zones 2.5-8
The Americans – to actually see a large vintage print of the Trolley Car was incredible. The Black American man's face was only his mouth, nose and eyes, the rest was completely dark
The vintage prints seemed more whimsical than the later prints: not so much contrast. Sometimes edges bleed off, grain was large, depth of field low, skylines askew. Frank loved his silhouettes and chiaroscuro
It was a great pleasure to see these iconic photographs together in one place. Several times I had to catch my breath as one famous image followed another. But then there were images I had never seen before. Mostly vintage prints as well… as close to Frank's original vision as you can get. More poetic, more spontaneous, than the later prints. The United States photographs form a road trip of impressions, a reflective and elegiac poem to the American dream.
It's not often that you can say that an artist changed how we see and interpret the world but that is the case. Through his seminal work The Americans, Frank's importance to the history of photography and visual culture cannot be denied. Americans didn't like the mirror that was held up to their society by an outsider, a European Jew. Frank certainly wasn't afraid to picture the underbelly of America – a phlegmatic portrait of a disaffected and divided country that still has great relevance today.
All installation photographs by Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing photographs titled Landsgemeinde / Cantonal Assembly Hundwil, Schweiz (1949). Later silver gelatin prints. No individual titles. Donation of the artist.
Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
Landsgemeinde / Cantonal Assembly Hundwil, Schweiz (installation views)
Gelatin silver photograph, later print
Donation of the artist
Installation views of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin
Peru (installation view)
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
Permanent loan of the Volkart Stiftung
Robert Frank. Unseen wall text
Geneva (installation view)
Vintage silver gelatin print
Times Square, New York (installation view)
Portfolio. 40 Photos (installation views)
First Edition Steidl, Göttingen, 2000
Mississippi, St Louis (installation view)
Property of the Confédération Suisse, Federal Office of Culture, Bern
Paris (installation view)
Mary and Pablo, New York (installation views)
Robert Frank (b. 1924 in Zurich, d. 2019 in Nova Scotia, Canada) traveled thousands of kilometres between America's East and West coasts, taking almost 30,000 photographs. Just 83 black-and-white pictures from this mixture of diary, social portrait, and photographic road movie have influenced generations of photographers after him. Frank's book The Americans was first published in Paris before it was released in the United States in 1959 with an introduction by the Beat novelist Jack Kerouac. Oblique angles, cropped figures, and blurred movement became the hallmarks of a new photographic style that would change the course of postwar photography. In 1985, Franks photographs have been displayed in Germany for the first time – in the Amerika Haus in Berlin. Now, C/O Berlin presents contact sheets, first editions, and vintage material from the photographer's early work at the same place. His time in Switzerland, travels through Europe and South America, and unpublished pictures from the United States in the 1950s will be shown together with famous classic photos from The Americans.
Robert Frank. Unseen reveals the narrative power of a visual language that Frank developed long before it earned him international recognition.
The exhibition was organised in cooperation with the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur.
Robert Frank was born in Zurich in 1924. A trained photographer, he traveled to New York for the first time in 1947, where he found a position at the Harper's Bazaar photo studio. He worked between Europe and the US for several years and in 1950, Edward Steichen invited him to participate in the 51 American Photographers exhibition at Museum of Modern Art, New York. Frank freelanced for Life, McCall's, Look, Vogue and other magazines. In 1955, he was the first European to receive a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship that funded a comprehensive photo series for which he traveled across America. The result was the seminal photobook The Americans (1959). Following the volume's unexpected success, the photographer turned to film. His later work juxtaposed Polaroids and autobiographical text fragments. This year Frank published his most recent book, Good Days Quiet, at the age of 95. Frank's photographs have been exhibited internationally, most recently at Les Rencontres d'Arles (2018); Albertina, Vienna (2018); Art Institute of Chicago (2017); Museum Folkwang, Essen (2014); and at Tate Modern, London (2004). His films were shown at C/O Berlin in 2009. Robert Frank lived in New York and in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he died on September 9, 2019.
Text from the C/O Berlin [Online] Cited 28/12/2019
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at bottom, photographs of London
London (installation view)
Arnold Kübler Archive
London (installation views)
Gelatin silver photographs, later prints
Permanent loan of the Friends of the Fotostiftung Schweiz
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at left, Nevada (1956); at second left, Los Angeles (1956); and at right, On the road to Carolina (1955)
Robert Frank (American, 1924-2019)
Nevada (installation view)
Los Angeles (installation view)
On the road to Carolina (installation view)
Route US 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho (installation views)
Route US 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at left, Florida (1956); at third left, New York City (early 1950s); and at right, Ranch Market, Hollywood (1955-56)
New York City (installation view)
Vintage gelatin silver photograph
Florida (installation view)
Swiss Foundation for Photography Collection, Winterthur
© Robert Frank
Courtesy Swiss Foundation for Photography Collection, Winterthur
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at left, Bar – Gallup, New Mexico (1955) and at right, Rodeo – New York City (1954)
Rodeo – New York City (installation views)
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at right,
Charity Ball, New York (installation views)
Installation views of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at left in the bottom photograph, Bar – New York (1955) followed by, Yom Kippur – East River, New York City (1954)
Wanamaker Fire, 10th Street East, New York (installation view)
Bar – New York (installation view)
Bar – New York
Yom Kippur – East River, New York City (installation view)
USA (installation view)
Contact Sheet 62 / Factory, Detroit (installation views)
From The Americans. 81 Contact Sheets.
Yugensha, Tokyo/Motomura Kazuhiko, 2009
Contact Sheet 31 / U.S. 91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho (installation views)
Contact Sheet 18 / Trolley, New Orleans (installation views)
Installation view of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing wall text
Bryant Park, New York (installation view)
around 1955
42nd Street, New York (installation view)
41st Street and 7th Avenue (installation view)
Les Américans book cover and pages (installation views)
Delpire. Paris
Gli Americani book cover (installation view)
The Americans book cover and pages (installation views)
Grove Press, New York
Trolley – New Orleans (installation view)
Installation views of the exhibition Robert Frank. Unseen at C/O Berlin showing at left, Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey (1955) and at right, City Fathers – Hoboken, New Jersey (1955)
Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey (installation view)
(American, 1924-2019)
City Fathers – Hoboken, New Jersey (installation views)
C/O Berlin Foundation, Amerika Haus,
Hardenbergstraße 22–24, 10623 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 2844416 62
Daily 11 am – 8 pm
C/O Berlin website
Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, intimacy, landscape, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: american artist, American bohemia, American culture, American gay culture, American street photographer, American street photography, American studio photography, andy warhol, Andy Warhol Screen Tests, Andy Warhol The Factory, animal, Beauregard Under Plastic (1), Bill Elliott, Bill Rafford, Bill Rafford and Vince Aletti in Dresses Fire Island, Boy on a Park Bench, Boy on Raft, Boys in Car Halloween, Bruce de Ste. Croix, Candy Darling, Chloe Finch, Christopher Street Pier #4, Christopher Street Pier (2), cityscape, Come Out!!, Dana Reitz, Dana Reitz's Legs Walking, Daniel Schook Sucking Toe (Close-up), David Warrilow, David Warrilow (1), David Wojnarowicz, David Wojnarowicz and Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz Reclining (2), Dean Savard Reclining, Dog in the Street Provincetown, East Village, Ethyl Eichelberger, Ethyl Eichelberger as Minnie the Maid, Ethyl Eichelberger Dressed as a Man, Fire Island, first anniversary of Stonewall, Fran Lebowitz, Fran Lebowitz at Home in Morristown, From Rockefeller Center, From Rockefeller Center: The Equitable Building, Gary in Contortion (1), Gary in Contortion (2), Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana Veiled, Gay Liberation Front, Gay Liberation Front (GLF), Gay Liberation Front Poster Image, gay liberation march, Girl in My Hallway, Greer Lankton, Greer Lankton's Legs, Group Picture, Hudson River, Isaac Hayes, Jackie Curtis and Lance Loud, James Lawrence Slattery, Jerome Robbins, Jerome Robbins at Bridgehampton (3), Jeu de Paume, Jim Fouratt, landscape, Louise Nevelson, Louise Nevelson (2), Man in Costume on Toilet, Manny Vasquez, Manny Vasquez (Back with Bullet Wound), Mural at Piers, New York bohemia, Nina Christgau (2), nude, Nude Self-Portrait Running, Palermo Catacombs #11, Paris, Pascal Imbert, Paul Hudson, Paul Hudson (Leg), Paul Thek, Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar Beauregard Under Plastic (1), Peter Hujar Bill Elliott, Peter Hujar Bill Rafford and Vince Aletti in Dresses Fire Island, Peter Hujar Boy on a Park Bench, Peter Hujar Boy on Raft, Peter Hujar Boys in Car Halloween, Peter Hujar Bruce de Ste. Croix, Peter Hujar Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, Peter Hujar Chloe Finch, Peter Hujar Christopher Street Pier #4, Peter Hujar Dana Reitz's Legs Walking, Peter Hujar Daniel Schook Sucking Toe (Close-up), Peter Hujar David Warrilow (1), Peter Hujar David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar David Wojnarowicz Reclining (2), Peter Hujar Dean Savard Reclining, Peter Hujar Dog in the Street Provincetown, Peter Hujar Ethyl Eichelberger as Minnie the Maid, Peter Hujar Ethyl Eichelberger Dressed as a Man, Peter Hujar Fran Lebowitz at Home in Morristown, Peter Hujar Gary in Contortion (1), Peter Hujar Gary in Contortion (2), Peter Hujar Gary Indiana Veiled, Peter Hujar Gay Liberation Front Poster Image, Peter Hujar Girl in My Hallway, Peter Hujar Greer Lankton, Peter Hujar Greer Lankton's Legs, Peter Hujar Group Picture, Peter Hujar Hudson River, Peter Hujar Isaac Hayes, Peter Hujar Jackie Curtis and Lance Loud, Peter Hujar Jerome Robbins at Bridgehampton (3), Peter Hujar Louise Nevelson (2), Peter Hujar Man in Costume on Toilet, Peter Hujar Manny Vasquez (Back with Bullet Wound), Peter Hujar Mural at Piers, Peter Hujar Nina Christgau (2), Peter Hujar Nude Self-Portrait Running, Peter Hujar Palermo Catacombs #11, Peter Hujar Pascal Imbert Scarred Abdomen, Peter Hujar Paul Hudson, Peter Hujar Paul Hudson (Leg), Peter Hujar Paul Thek, Peter Hujar Public Garden Taormina, Peter Hujar Randy Gilberti High Heels, Peter Hujar Reclining Nude on Couch, Peter Hujar Robert Levithan on Bed, Peter Hujar Robyn Brentano (1), Peter Hujar Rockefeller Center (2), Peter Hujar Self Portrait in White Tank Top, Peter Hujar Self-Portrait Jumping (1), Peter Hujar Sheep Pennsylvania, Peter Hujar Skippy on a Chair, Peter Hujar St. Patrick's Easter Sunday, Peter Hujar Stephen Varble Soho, Peter Hujar Surf (2), Peter Hujar Susan Sontag, Peter Hujar William S. Burroughs (1), Peter Hujar Woman and Girl in Window Italy, Peter Hujar Young Man and Boy, Peter Hujar Zachy and Gamal Sherif (Twins), Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, portrait, Public Garden Taormina, Randy Gilberti, Reclining Nude on Couch, Robert Levithan on Bed, Robyn Brentano, Robyn Brentano (1), Rockefeller Center, Rockefeller Center (2), Screen Tests, Self Portrait in White Tank Top, Self-Portrait Jumping (1), Sheep Pennsylvania, Skippy on a Chair, Speed of Life, St. Patrick's Easter Sunday, Stephen Varble Soho, still life, studio photographic work, studio work, Surf (2), Susan Sontag, Susan Sontag Christopher Street Pier (2), Susan Sontag From Rockefeller Center: The Equitable Building, the Factory, Vince Aletti, Warhol Screen Tests, William S. Burroughs, William S. Burroughs (1), Woman and Girl in Window Italy, Young Man and Boy, Zachy and Gamal Sherif (Twins)
Exhibition dates: 15th October 2019 – 19th January 2020
Curators: Joel Smith and Quentin Bajac
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar: Speed of Life at Jeu de Paume, Paris
"I photograph those who push themselves to any extreme, and people who cling to the freedom to be themselves."
A huge posting to finish what has been a bumper year on Art Blart: two book chapters published, a photographic research trip to Europe in which I saw some incredible exhibitions and took over 7000 photographs for my art work, lots of postings and writing and, sadly, the loss of two friends – my mother in Australia, the bohemian photographer and poet Joyce Evans and vision impaired photographer Andrew Follows.
I couldn't think of a better posting to finish the year than with a photographer who put it all on the line: Peter Hujar. Not for him the world of Apollonian perfection, wishing for fortune and fame, relying on some big time backer to promote him. Hujar stuck to his craft, carving images, performances if you like, from dystopian contexts and Dionysian revellers. "Hujar was the instigator of the performances captured in his portraits, as much as a director as a photographer."
Paraphrasing Mark Durant, we might say that Hujar was a poet of the urban nocturne, a photographer of subjective desire known for his gritty, erotic, sentimental yet (im)personal images. Philip Gefter observes that, "A hallmark of Hujar's portraiture is the invisibility of technique – a kind of visual innocence – as if the camera were not present and the subject had been happened upon." Richard Woodward says that Hujar, "observed his companions in this outlaw life with what might be called warm objectivity." Photographer Duane Michals says that, "Hujar was a pioneer, years ahead of Mapplethorpe in his sexual candor, as well as an artist whose photographs are less swank and less affected."
Ah! what a time it was to be an artist and to be gay in New York, with the likes of Hujar, Warhol, Mapplethorpe, Wojnarowicz, Haring, Arthur Tress, and Duane Michals, to name but a few. A time of sexual liberation, followed by a period of disease and death. Hujar pictures this "scene" – the flowering of gay life and then the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. He pictures the constellations as they swirl around him. He allows the viewer to enter his world without judgement, just showing it how it was – a world of avant-garde dance, music, art, and drag performance; "glowing skyscrapers, assorted rubble, discarded rugs, boys in drag, and girls passed out in his doorway." This is it he is saying, this is how I live, this is who surrounds me, suck it up and breathe it in. He allows the viewer to enter his world of ideas and possible metaphors. No judgement is offered nor accepted.
As my appreciation of his photographs grows, I reflect on the skill that it takes to make these photographs look effortless. Hujar, "a student of Lisette Model, admirer of August Sander, and friend of Diane Arbus, made his photographs distinctly his own: a perfect and unmistakable mirror of his own body and milieu." A mirror of strength and determination / of friendship / of love – his pictures gather, together, a feeling for – the freedom of people, and places, to be themselves. Do places have feelings? yes they do! (I remember visiting the Coliseum in Rome and having to leave after 20 minutes the energy of the place was so bad; and then visiting the Loretta Sanctuary in Prague and feeling, such calm and peace in that place, that I have rarely felt before).
Hujar's photographs are memorable. Nan Goldin and Vince Aletti said that his work, "like that of so few photographers, can't be forgotten and becomes even deeper and more compelling over time." His work is so compelling it's like you can't take tear your eyes away from the photographs. They demand repeat viewing. They seem possessed of an awareness of their own making. That is Hujar's music, his signature.
Like any great artist, his images reveal themselves over time, expounding his love of life and his intimate and free engagement with the world. Hujar was, is, and always will be… a watcher, a dreamer, a cosmic spirit.
Many thankx to Jeu de Paume for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Many thankx to David for the iPhone installation images. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The life and art of Peter Hujar (1934-1987) were rooted in downtown New York. Private by nature, combative in manner, well-read, and widely connected, Hujar inhabited a world of avant-garde dance, music, art, and drag performance. His mature career paralleled the public unfolding of gay life between the Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
In his loft studio in the East Village, Hujar focused on those who followed their creative instincts and shunned mainstream success. He made, in his words, "uncomplicated, direct photographs of complicated and difficult subjects," immortalising moments, individuals, and subcultures passing at the speed of life.
What was Hujar's truth, his photographic truth? Hujar understood and utilized photography's tension between document and theatricality. In the act of photographing there is a performance, not only on the part of the subject, but for the photographer as well. For Hujar, to photograph was a balancing act between fierce observation and manifesting his devotion. As Jennifer Quick observes in her essay for the catalogue, This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, "While Arbus and Mapplethorpe are known for their detached postures, Hujar's silent, tacit presence pervades his work. Like Avedon, Hujar was the instigator of the performances captured in his portraits, as much as a director as a photographer." That Hujar is considered in the same company of Avedon, Arbus, and Mapplethorpe, reminds us that the retrospective Speed of Life is long overdue.
Hujar's restlessness led him to wander beyond the confines of the studio. Like Brassai, Hujar was a poet of the urban nocturne, prowling the streets with his camera as the day unraveled. Brassai's Paris is gritty, erotic, sentimental, yet impersonal. Hujar's photographs of New York's streets at night embrace emptiness and furtive gestures, glowing skyscrapers, assorted rubble, discarded rugs, boys in drag, and girls passed out in his doorway. His nighttime images of the Hudson river are disquieting, suggesting powerful currents not fully understood by the dappled surfaces. The thrill and danger of an anonymous sexual encounter is manifested in the 1981 image, Man Leaning Against Tree. It is the moment for Hujar to surveille and assess, when the object of desire is seen but has not yet turned his head to return the gaze. There is a little bit of softness in the image, due, perhaps, to the dim light or the camera moving while the shutter remained open. This image is as much a document of Hujar's habits of looking as it is about the man leaning against the tree. Despite claims of photography's objectivity or passive observation, the photographer, consciously or not, visually manifests subjective desire, and Hujar was masterful in this regard. …
While all photographs are tethered to mortality, there is something exemplary in Hujar's cool acceptance of our temporality. He was fully engaged with his moment yet unsentimental in his attachment. Whether he was photographing a lover or an abandoned dog as elegant as it is scruffy, we can sense that Hujar's interest was intellectual and physical in equal measure. He may not have been comfortable with the world as it was, but he embraced and even loved what was in front of his camera. "My work comes out of my life, the people I photograph are not freaks or curiosities to me," he said. "I like people who dare."
Mark Alice Durant. "Peter Hujar's Photographic Truth," on the Saint Lucy website [Online] Cited 01/11/2019
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Public Garden, Taormina, Sicily
Tirage gélatino-argentique
The Morgan Library & Museum, achat en 2013 grâce au Charina Endowment Fund
© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Sheep, Pennsylvania
Gay Liberation Front Poster Image
Hujar put his art to political use in 1969. In late June, a police raid inspired fierce resistance from the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, in the West Village. Hujar's boyfriend at the time, Jim Fouratt, arrived on the scene to organise for the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the first political group to cite homosexuality in its name. Hujar agreed to make a photograph for a GLF poster. Early one Sunday morning that fall, members of the group assembled and ran back and forth past the photographer on Nineteenth Street, west of Broadway. The poster, bearing the slogan COME OUT!!, appeared in late spring 1970 in advance of the gay liberation march that marked the first anniversary of Stonewall.
Gay Liberation Front Poster Image (installation view)
Candy Darling on her Deathbed
Candy Darling
In September 1973, transgender Warhol Superstar Candy Darling (born James Lawrence Slattery) was hospitalised for lymphoma. She asked Hujar to make a portrait of her "as a farewell to my fans." Out of several dozen exposures, Hujar chose to print this languorous pose. As rendered in the print, Candy's banal, fluorescent-lit hospital room looks as elegant as the studio props in a Hollywood starlet's portrait. Hujar later wrote that his style cues came from Candy, who was "playing every death scene from every movie." The image, first seen in print in the New York Post after Candy's death six months later, became the most widely reproduced of Hujar's works during his lifetime.
Candy Darling on her Deathbed (installation view)
Fran Lebowitz at Home in Morristown, New Jersey
Self-Portrait Jumping (1)
Self-Portrait Jumping (1) (installation view)
Susan Sontag (installation view)
Christopher Street Pier (2) (installation view)
Christopher Street Pier (2)
Jeu de Paume presents a selection of 150 photographs of this singular artist from October 15th, 2019 to January 19th, 2020. The exhibition follows Hujar's work from the beginnings mid 1950 until the 1980s, shaping a portrait of the underground New York City.
The life and art of Peter Hujar (1934-1987) were rooted in downtown New York. Private by nature, combative in manner, well-read, and widely connected, Hujar inhabited a world of avant-garde dance, music, art, and drag performance. His mature career paralleled the public unfolding of gay life between the Stonewall uprising* in 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
After graduating from high school in 1953, Hujar worked as an assistant to commercial photographers until 1968. Five years of contributing features to mass-market magazines convinced him that a fashion career "wasn't right for me" and in 1973 he opted for an autonomous, near-penniless life as an artist. In his loft studio above a theater in the East Village, Hujar focused on those who obeyed their creative instincts and shunned mainstream success.
At age forty-two, he published his only monograph, Portraits in Life and Death, and opened his first solo gallery show. The searching intimacy he achieved as a portraitist carried over into unsentimental photographs of animals and plants, landscapes, buildings, and the unique features of nude bodies.
Hujar's brief affair in 1981 with the young artist David Wojnarowicz evolved into a mentoring bond that changed both their lives. On their excursions to blighted areas around New York, Hujar crafted the portrait of a city in free fall, complementing Wojnarowicz's dark vision of Reagan-era America.
Peter Hujar died of AIDS-related pneumonia in November 1987.
Press release from Jeu de Paume
In 1953, Peter Hujar finished high school in Manhattan, where he had studied photography. He then worked for some fifteen years as an assistant to commercial photographers. Punctuating those years were two long periods in Italy, buoyed by scholarships – a first one that was obtained by a boyfriend (1958-1959) and then his own (1962-1963). From 1968 to 1972, he tried to make it as a freelancer in the mass-market world of fashion, music, and advertising photography. The hustle "wasn't right for me," and he turned his back on the commercial mainstream. From this time on he lived on almost nothing, squeaking by on small jobs, taking paying jobs only when necessary and focusing on the subjects he found compelling. In 1973, he moved to the crumbling East Village, into a loft that would become the setting for his mature studio work, most notably the vast majority of his portraits.
Portraiture was central to Hujar's practice. The subjects of his art, Hujar wrote, were "those who push themselves to any extreme" and those who "cling to the freedom to be themselves." "In a sense, I am still a fashion photographer. These people are chic but in a dark kind of way. Most of them are unknown or maybe known to just a few, but they have all been creative adventurers and possess a certain spirit."
Most of his portraits were posed, but Hujar often expected his models to perform in front of the camera, which made many of the shoots truly collaborative ventures. Disguises and props were often incorporated, and his subjects were sometimes veiled, simultaneously revealing and masking themselves.
The reclining portrait is a photographic genre Hujar made his own. The pose features extensively in his 1976 monograph Portraits in Life and Death, and he continued to rely on it as a means of capturing something unique in his sitter: to face a camera lens from a reclining position is an unfamiliar and provoking experience.
"The happiest times with Peter, when he wasn't photographing, were walking around Manhattan, looking at the crowns of buildings, and the fantasies about 'living there,'" remembers Gary Schneider, one of his close friends.
Born in New Jersey, Hujar spent all his life in New York, and more specifically in Manhattan, whose buildings, streets, and piers he started photographing more extensively in the second half of the 1970s. Divided between Downtown's derelict areas and Midtown's skyscrapers, Hujar's New York is often a nocturnal city: a place of abandoned structures, night-time cruising, and early-dawn vistas. A few journeys outside New York, during the summer months, to the beaches of Fire Island in the Hamptons, and, in the early 1980s, to the countryside around Germantown, forty miles north of New York, along the Hudson River, offer other glimpses of Peter Hujar's personal geography, testifying to the variety of subjects that he found worth photographing.
Portraiture of bodies was another focal point of Hujar's last decade of work. In 1978, some of his works were included in The Male Nude: A photographic Survey at the Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery in New York.
Bodies, he suggested, could be read as freely as faces for character, emotion, or life story.
He photographed bodies in the extremes of youth and old age, bodies displaying unique features, and bodies in transient states, notably pregnancy and arousal.
Whether photographing faces or bodies, Hujar was attentive to the characteristics conferred by time and experience, such as Manny Vasquez's spinal tap scar and the imprint left by socks on Randy Gilberti's ankles. "I want people to feel the picture and smell it," he said of his nudes, which he contrasted to the idealised bodies in Robert Mapplethorpe's work.
Gracie Mansion Gallery, 1986
When exhibiting his work, Hujar employed two distinct methods. He displayed prints either in isolation (notably in his loft, where just one photograph at a time was on view) or in large groupings, two images high, as on this wall. For the last exhibition during his lifetime, in January 1986 in New York, Hujar covered the walls of the Gracie Mansion Gallery with a frieze of seventy photographs in no apparent order. He fine-tuned the layout for days until no one type of image (portrait, nude, animal, still life, landscape, cityscape) appeared twice consecutively. Each of his subjects thus preserved its own identity and singularity rather than serving as a variation on an imposed theme.
The arrangement highlighted his inventive range, created echoes among seemingly unrelated images, and drew attention to preoccupations that had recurred throughout his career. The display in this room centres on images taken in the 1980s and is freely inspired by that 1986 exhibition.
In 1964 Peter Hujar was a regular visitor to The Factory, Andy Warhol's studio at 231 East 47th Street in New York. He posed four times for Screen Tests, brief portraits filmed by Warhol and screened in slow motion. Together with his friend Paul Thek, Hujar was chosen as one of the "Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys", whose film portraits were regularly shown at the Factory and at parties and events elsewhere. Among the other personalities figuring in the Screen Tests in 1964-1965 were the actor-directors Dennis Hopper and Jack Smith, together with writer-critic Susan Sontag and poet John Ashbery – both of whom would later pose for Hujar.
From Rockefeller Center: The Equitable Building
Reclining Nude on Couch
Boy on Raft
Boys in Car, Halloween
Dana Reitz's Legs, Walking
Dana Reitz's Legs, Walking (installation view)
Gary in Contortion (2)
David Wojnarowicz Reclining (2)
David Wojnarowicz Reclining (2) (installation view)
A hallmark of Hujar's portraiture is the invisibility of technique – a kind of visual innocence – as if the camera were not present and the subject had been happened upon, discovered there, as Ludlam appears to be, in medias res.
Philip Gefter. "Peter Hujar's Downtown," on the NYR Daily website [Online] Cited 01/11/2019
David Wojnarowicz (installation view)
"Hermetic appeal and an identification with psychic damage came together in Hujar's last important relationship, with the meteoric younger artist David Wojnarowicz, who was a ravaged hustler when they met at a bar in late 1980 and who died from AIDS in 1992. They were lovers briefly, then buddies and soul mates. Wojnarowicz said that Hujar "was like the parent I never had, like the brother I never had." In return, he inspired fresh energies in Hujar's life and late work. In a breathtakingly intimate portrait of Wojnarowicz with a cigarette and tired eyes, from 1981, the young man's gaze meets that of the camera, with slightly wary – but willing and plainly reciprocated – devotion: love, in a way. Their story could make for a good novel or movie – as it well may, in sketched outline in your mind, while you navigate this aesthetically fierce, historically informative, strangely tender show."
Peter Schjeldahl. "The Bohemian Rhapsody of Peer Hujar: Photographs at the crossroads of high art and low life," on The New Yorker website January 29, 2018 [Online] Cited 01/11/2019
Ethyl Eichelberger as Minnie the Maid
Greer Lankton
Hujar observed his companions in this outlaw life with what might be called warm objectivity. Whatever the portrait subject – doll maker and transgender pioneer Greer Lankton, model Bruce St. Croix sitting naked on a chair and handling his huge erection, Warhol superstar Candy Darling on her death bed, or a pair of cows in a muddy field – he photographed them directly with his 2 1/4, often at close range, without props or gauzy lighting.
Richard B. Woodward. "Peter Hujar: Speed of Life @Morgan Library," on the Collector Daily website February 21, 2018 [Online] Cited 01/11/2019
Gary Indiana Veiled
Some iPhone installation photographs and others
Woman and Girl in Window Italy
Young Man and Boy, Italy (installation view)
He began as a street photographer, on the prowl for unrehearsed gestures, as can be seen in a 1958 picture in Italy of a well-dressed young man touching his thick coif of dark hair and standing next to a pudgy boy in a cap who has his hands in his pockets.
Young Man and Boy, Italy
Palermo Catacombs #11, Rows of Bodies
Man in Costume on Toilet, Backstage at Palm Casino Review (installation view)
Nude Self-Portrait, Running / Nude Self-Portrait Series (Avedon Master Class) (installation view)
Group Picture (installation view)
Stephen Varble, Soho, Franklin Street (III) (installation view)
Stephen Varble, Soho, Franklin Street (III)
Beauregard Under Plastic (1) (installation view)
Beauregard Under Plastic (1)
Bill Elliott (installation view)
Dean Savard Reclining (installation view)
Dean Savard Reclining
Chloe Finch (installation view)
Chloe Finch
Skippy on a Chair (installation view)
Jackie Curtis and Lance Loud (installation view)
Zachy and Gamal Sherif (Twins) (installation view)
Zachy and Gamal Sherif (Twins)
Ethyl Eichelberger, Dressed as a Man (installation view)
Girl in My Hallway (installation view)
Girl in My Hallway
© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Frae