Modernist Photography 1910-1950: American Images in Black and White

Museum of Fine Arts Boston
October 5, 2010
Gallery 335
Wing of the Americas, Third Level

Modernist Photography 1910-1950

Nothing like a tiny room full of stunning black-and-white photographs to jam the brakes on your parade through the Boston Museum of Fine Arts new Wing of the Americas. To walk unexpectedly into this gallery of gelatin silver prints is like driving straight into a gravel pit from the smooth surface of a superhighway.

You've been dazzled by the saturated colors and oversized canvases of abstract and representational 20th-century art in the surrounding galleries and whoosh, you’re surrounded by forty 8 x 10 inch black-and-white photographs. They practically beg you to stand close and peer inside. Combined they’d fit into one of the frames of a painting in the next gallery.

The 19th century French impressionists and the Cubist movement of the early 1900s had blown away the doors of what people considered traditional art. The American artists in this exhibit raucously raced through those open thresholds to show that the young medium of photography had a seat at the table.

Photographers in the first half of the century were pushing the technical boundaries of their cameras and the horizons of their imaginations to produce portraits, nudes, close-ups, and abstract compositions. Subject matter from the aesthetic to the mundane held interest for them – shapes of architectural, human and natural form, subtle social commentary and random compositions that capture the swing of America’s hips at the dawn of a new century.

Their palette ranged from lustrous blacks to Arctic whites with 1000 shades of gray in between.

The quartet of miniature prints by Karl Straus 1886-1983 has the feel of atmospheric 19th-century etchings, 20th century homage to the bygone century.

Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge 1911 (R)

Morris Engel’s (1918–2005) crisp print titled “Comics New York City 1949” captures a lovely moment in time - the total innocence of a boy sitting on the curb, engrossed in the comic book held tightly in his hands. The comic book was a far more compelling way for kids to practice reading in every format from Classic Comic Books (Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, The Red Badge of Courage, Romeo and Juliet, for starters) to science fiction, mystery, westerns and yes, Archie and Veronica. I read them all…but I digress.

Charles Sheeler (1883–1965) was as adept with oil paint as he was with photographic paper. His oil painting, one of two color pieces in the exhibit, “Bleeder Stack River Rouge Ford Plant 1927,” (R) is paired with his photograph “Pulverizer Building 1927” showing his fascination with the geometric architecture and shapes of an emerging industrial America and is a subtle link to the American paintings in adjacent galleries.

Margaret Bourke White’s “The American Way of Life 1937” is a show-stopper.   African-Americans in a 1937 breadline stand under a giant billboard proclaiming “World’s Highest Standard of Living… There’s no way like the American Way.” Who would have guessed this photo could strike such a visceral chord today.

No exhibit of 20th-century photography would be complete without compositions of the female form by Edward Weston (1886–1958) and Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976). Weston's nearly abstract shape of “Nude 1935” and Cunningham’s “Alta on the beach” are two classics.
The pairings of photographs are often playful. Ansel Adams’s (1902-1984) composition of the soft petals of a rose juxtaposed with Edward Weston's nude are an unusual pair and totally congruous.

Gordon Parks (1912–2006), widely acclaimed for his fashion photography, had a keen eye for social commentary.  His “Outside Liberty Theater 19th if the” is a stark reminder of urban segregation in not-so-long-ago mid-20th century America.

"Coffee Shop,Railway Station, Indianapolis, 1956", by Robert Frank (b 1926) captures the sense of personal isolation in urban America much the same way as Edward Hopper, whose work hangs in another gallery.

Much of the photography in this intimate space was created during the same period as the bigger than life abstract works in the galleries in the adjoining rooms by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, and realist paintings by Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, and George Bellows and dozens of others.

With that context, it makes total sense that the photographs in the “Modernist Photography 1910-1950” exhibit represent similar disparate artistic visions. Gallery 335 is a terrific point of entry to lay the groundwork for viewing the rest of the third level’s 20th century art through the mid-1970s.

Photographs taken by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. in Gallery 335

Berenice Abbott (1998-1991) Gasoline Station from the series Changing New York, 1935 

Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) Sunbath,Alta on the beach, 1925-1930

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) Dorothy True, 1919

 

 

Comments

[Bambi Good]

another brilliant piece! is there nothing you can't write about and draw us in? hadn't seen this particular exhibit yet tho I've visited that room 3 times already..... I hope all is well with you and wish I could write more.

[Paul Tamburello aka pt at large]

The MFA is firing on all cylinders these days, some great exhibits and of course the fleshy Degas and The Nude exhibit that runs through Feb 2012. I'll bet you'll find your way to that one and so will I.
Thanks for your comment!