"Modernist Photography 1910–1950"
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
November 20, 2010-July 3, 2011
Art of the Americas, Gallery 335
The ink was still drying on post impressionist art when the so-called Modernist era in American photography emerged in the first decade of the 20th century. "Modernist Photography 1910–1950", is a potent little collection of work by American photographers who blazed a trail that influenced nearly every photographer who followed them well into the mid 1900s.
The exhibit is dominated by photographs by three giants of American photography: Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Paul Strand (1890-1976), and Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and complemented by photographs of Edward Weston (1886-1958), Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), and Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and other photographers less well known but part of the wave that ricocheted off the innovations these artists pioneered.
Alfred Stieglitz was the first champion of photography as fine art. Between 1908 and 1946, he opened three galleries in New York City that exhibited beautifully printed photographs and contemporary pieces of art, often avant-garde, in other mediums.
The large view finder cameras used by Stieglitz, Strand, Steichen and their contemporaries became a tool that not so much competed but complemented work done with the easels and palettes used by European and American artists who preceded them and were their contemporaries. The three main elements of the exhibit are portraits and nudes, still life and close-up, and still life and abstraction.
Most of the photos are tightly cropped, hardly a landscape to be found, forcing us to find the universal in a very tight compact space arranged by the photographer. The still lifes and many of the nudes float lightly on the frontier of abstract art, suggesting rather than representing familiar shapes.
The photographic prints vary in tonality, grain structure, focus, crispness, and concentration or diffusion of light. The predominantly silver gelatin prints are gorgeously, meticulously, developed. The juxtaposition of techniques along the four walls of the exhibit often offers stark contrast between the intentions or styles of the photographers as they either find their niche or push the envelope from the norms of the day.
The fact that the images are in black, white and infinite shades of gray deepens a sense of perception in viewers accustomed to rich color and enriches the feeling of being transported to a seminal period of American photography.
A quartet of prints by Strand, Stieglitz, and Steichen reveals their impact on each other’s artistry. Steichen’s close-cropped sepia toned portrait of his future wife “Dana 1923”, mysterious, pensive, was likely inspired by Paul Strand’s enigmatic composition “Rebecca, New York, 1920”. Both Stieglitz and Strand were influenced by the portraits Alfred Stieglitz had begun making of his wife Georgia O'Keeffe in 1918 (Georgia O'Keeffe, A Portrait, 1918). All three men used their wives for photographic inspiration for years.
Edward Weston’s iconic “Nude, 1936”, of his future wife Charis Wilson, a vision of sunlight and shadow in a California cabin doorway captures an aesthetic at once feminine and abstract. A brilliant juxtaposition to Weston’s print is Arthur Siegel’s “Photogram, 1948”, which, with the squint of an eye, could easily be a similar composition and subject as if imagined by Pablo Picasso.
These artists were forever expanding their sensibilities. Strand’s “Vermont Church 1944” is an exceedingly crisp and spare composition heralding his burgeoning interest in New England architecture, landscape, and later, the faces of its rural inhabitants.
Charles Sheeler’s gelatin silver print “Buggy, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (1915-1917)”, captures an ordinary object in the shadows of a Bucks County barn. Like many of the photographs in the exhibit, it causes the viewer to shift back and forth from representational and abstract ways of admiring it.
Wright Morris’s “Abandoned House, 1941” feels like a Larry McMurtry novel in stark black and white. The sense of desolation and weight of history in the snow crusted plains of Nebraska sets off a series of questions in the viewer’s mind: what happened here?
In an age of rapid change, the visual impact of this precious exhibit is like speeding from a superhighway onto a roadway packed with deep gravel, a swift but gentle deceleration that makes us wonder how the 20th century can feel like such a long, long time ago.
In a hundred years, what will an exhibit entitled “Modernist Photography 2010–2050” look like? Will there still be museums to host it? Will our artifacts be digital or carbon based? And what will matter to the people who live in that future time.
In the meantime, a visit to this exhibit, tucked between the sparkling, light drenched exhibition spaces in the Museum of Fine Arts new Art of the Americas wing, is the perfect spot to see the classic roots of American photography.
Paul Strand’s enigmatic composition “Rebecca, New York, 1920” (left), Edward Steichen’s close-cropped sepia toned portrait of his future wife “Dana 1923” (center), Alfred Stieglitz "Georgia O'Keeffe, A Portrait, 1918" (right).
Edward Weston, "Nude 1936", Arthur Siegel’s “Photogram, 1948” - brilliant idea to hang these near each other.
Georgia O'Keeffe, a sensual oil on canvas mounted on masonite
Edward Weston's visions of linear and round forms
Charles Sheeler's crisp, focused "Champion Spark Plug" 1920s, Alfred Steiglitz's velvety "Pear and Apple" 1919
Wright Morris’s “Abandoned House, 1941”
Edward Steichen, "Dana, 1923"
Alfred Stieglitz "House and Grape Leaves" 1934, Paul Strand "Church, Vermont" 1944. Both men found beauty in everyday architecture and the human face and form.
Charles Sheeler, “Buggy, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (1915-1917)”, a great mix of representational and abstract art
NOTE: with so much ambient light, there are unavoidable reflections on the glass that covers the prints. I took the photos with no flash, as per museum rules. The slower shutter speeds plus hand held camera make extraordinarily crisp prints seem fuzzy (less noticeable on grainy photos in the exhibit).
I like better when you embed the photos in the text - but this is a most interesting article.
Posted by: Susaan Straus | April 17, 2011 at 07:01 PM