Reinstallation of the Permanent Collection of Photography, 2011 @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of a total of 214 black and white and color photographs from 141 different photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against grey and white walls in a series of 6 connecting rooms on the third floor of the museum. The works on view span the entire history of the medium, ranging from 1841 to the present, and are arranged roughly chronologically. This reinstallation of the permanent collection of photography was curated by Sarah Meister.

The following photographers are included in the show, with the number of works and dates in parentheses. The names have been listed in their order of appearance around the galleries.

Room 1

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (1, 1841-1848)
John B. Greene (1, 1855-1856)
William Henry Fox Talbot (1, 1844)
Bisson Freres (1, 1841-1846)
Felice Beato (1, 1860)
Samuel Bourne (1, 1864)
Robert Hewlett (1, 1857)
Carleton Watkins (1, 1889)
Gertrude Kasebier (1, 1907)
Robert Demachy (1, 1910)
Frederick Evans (1, 1903)
Edward Steichen (1, 1900)
Jules Janssen (2, 1885)
Adam Clark Vroman (1, 1902)
Jacob Riis (1, 1890)
Radio Corporation of America (1, 1926)
E.J. Bellocq (1, 1912)
Eugene Atget (1, 1899)
Unknown (2, 1923 and 1933)
Underwood and Underwood (1, 1910)
Automatic Camera/Photomaton (1, 1928)
Arthur Bedou (1, 1915)
Dornac (1, 1892)
Lewis Hine (1, 1908)
Seeberger Freres (1, 1912)
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1, 1917)

Room 2
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Alfred Stieglitz (1, 1922)
Jospeh Cornell (1, 1933)
Imogen Cunningham (1, 1931)
Hugo Erfurth (1, 1926)
Edward Weston (1, 1925)
Alexander Rodchenko (2, 1924 and 1932)
Stanislaw Witkiewicz (1, 1911)
Edmund Kesting (1, 1928)
Man Ray (1, 1930)
Laszlo Mohloy-Nagy (1, 1923)
Tina Modotti (1, 1924)
Umbo (1, 1930)
Walker Evans (2, 1935 and 1936)
Ben Shahn (1, 1935)
Dorothea Lange (1, 1937)
Jack Delano (1, 1940)
Marian Post Wolcott (1, 1938)
John Vachon (1, 1938)
August Sander (2, 1927 and 1929)
Eugene Atget (2, 1921 and 1925)
Brassai (1, 1932)
Ilse Bing (1, 1932)
Bill Brandt (1, 1936)
Helen Levitt (1, 1941)
Antonio Reynoso (1, 1944)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1, 1934)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1, 1934)
Paul Strand (1, 1920)
Ralph Steiner (1, 1929)
Berenice Abbott (1, 1936)
Lewis Hine (1, 1930)
Arkadii Shaikhet (1, 1930)

Room 3
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Barbara Morgan (1, 1943)
Weegee (2, 1942 and 1950)
Emmy Andriesse (1, 1945)
Ernst Haas (1, 1947)
US Army Signal Corps (4, 1944 and 1945)
Dmitri Baltermans (1, 1942)
Times World Wide Photos (1, 1941)
Unknown (1, 1953)
Neal Boenzi/New York Times (1, 1956)
Meyer Liebowitz/New York Times (1, 1957)
Unknown (14 panels of vernacular families)
Robert Rauschenberg (1, 1949)
Geraldo de Barros (1, 1949)
Aaron Siskind (1, 1949)
Minor White (1, 1964)
Frederick Sommer (1, 1961)
Guy Bourdin (1, 1956)
Clarence John Laughlin (1, 1941)
Josef Sudek (1, 1954)
Ansel Adams (1, 1932)
Eugen Wiskovsky (1, 1946)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1, 1952)
Robert Doisneau (1, 1956)
Leonard Freed (1, 1954)
Lisette Model (1, 1942)
Roy DeCarava (1, 1952)

Room 4
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Rudy Burckhardt (4, 1940)
Philip Elliott (3, 1950)
Lola Alvarez Bravo (1, 1958)
Louis Faurer (1, 1949)
Leon Levinstein (1, 1952)
Robert Frank (1, 1956)
Garry Winogrand (1, 1962)
Christian Stromholm (1, 1959)
Paolo Gasparini (1, 1968)
Diane Arbus (1, 1965)
Unknown (1, 1957)
Lee Friedlander (1, 1970)
Jerry Schatzberg (1, 1964)
Arnold Newman (1, 1955)
Richard Avedon (1, 1965)
Irving Penn (1, 1979)
Harry Callahan (2, 1957)
Zeke Berman (1, 1979)
Kenneth Josephson (1, 1967)
Martus Granirer (1, 1964)
Otto Piene (1, 1964)
Shomei Tomatsu (1, 1960)
Daido Moriyama (1, 1970)
Miyako Ishiuchi (1, 1977)
Kohei Yoshiyuki (1, 1973)

Room 5
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Joseph Dankowski (20, 1970)
David Goldblatt (1, 1967)
Ernest Cole (1, 1960-1963)
Jeane Moutoussamy-Ashe (1, 1977)
Frank Stewart (1, 1981)
Geoff Winningham (1, 1971)
Candice Lenney (1, 1977)
William Gedney (1, 1975)
Martine Barrat (1, 1984)
Stephen Shore (1, 1973)
Frank Gohlke (1, 1973-1974)
Robert Adams (1, 1974)
Lewis Baltz (1, 1974)
Joel Sternfeld (1, 1979)
Nicholas Nixon (1, 1973)
Bill Owens (1, 1972)
Tod Papageorge (1, 1969)
Henry Wessell (1, 1972)
William Eggleston (1, 1980)
Sheron Rupp (1, 1984)

Room 6
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Jan Groover (1, 2006)
Michael Spano (1, 2003)
Bernd and Hilla Becher (18, 1959-1973)
Hai Bo (2, 1999)
Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1, 1981)
Vik Muniz (1, 2003)
Tina Barney (1, 1998)
William Christenberry (1, 2004)
Brian Rose (1, 2006)
Nicholas Faure (1, 1997)
Guy Tillim (2, 2008)
Leandro Katz (6 panels, 1978-1979)
Jiro Takamatsu (1, 1973)

Comments/Context: In between the special exhibitions and annual features like the New Photography series that usually populate the photography calendar at the MoMA, the curatorial team reinstalls the permanent collection of photography in the main series of galleries on the third floor. While this isn't a press release type event (or one that generally gets written about at all), it does offer an opportunity to peer into the minds of the organizers, mostly to see how new acquisitions are filling holes and to consider how the implied narrative arc of the history of photography is slowly evolving.

This is now my fourth year of covering the rehanging of the collection, and it's instructive to go back and remember what has been done in recent years (all the reviews are linked below). Three years ago, a grouping mechanism was used, where half a dozen images or so by a single photographer (from a related series) were chosen and hung in clusters, allowing a deeper dive into a smaller number of master photographers. Two years ago, the show was dominated by recent acquisitions (particularly 19th century) and peppered with lesser known works and artists, making the story more diffuse and harder to follow. Last year, the history of photography was seen through the prism of female photographers (known and unknown), providing a surprisingly different set of anchor points and references.

In prior years, these rehangings were "unsigned", in that they were tacitly meant to represent an institutional point of view rather than an individual one; therefore we could arguably read them as a monolithic perspective, an orthodoxy as to the "right" (or at least most recent) history of photography. What's different now is that MoMA has moved away from this approach and has begun to "sign" the reinstallations; this one was curated by Sarah Meister, and presumably the task (or opportunity) will rotate to someone else in the future. But make no mistake, this is now a new world, where a large number of alternate histories of photography are suddenly both acceptable and encouraged, and the process of identifying any one individual slice through the central mass of the collection could produce an unexpected and insightful outcome.

This selection of works sprinkles in a few more recognizable icons than the effort two years ago, and as a result, feels a bit more comfortably tied to a known line of thinking. The first room does a whirlwind tour of the 19th century (travel, scientific experimentation etc.), starting with the early masters and crossing over into Pictorialism, mixing artful images and vernacular shots with equal aplomb. The recently acquired Watkins still life of a box of peaches is the single best work in the entire exhibit; it is mind blowingly modern and lusciously crisp. It's the kind of picture that forces you to reevaluate everything you think you know about 19th century photography. (Carleton Watkins, Late George Cling Peaches, 1889, at right, top.)

The second room is the standard "between the wars" room, with bunches of European avant-garde and Surrealism, North American modernism, and FSA documentary reportage. To my eye, this group felt a little like "one of each", since there's one Brandt, one Brassai, one Weston, one Strand, one Man Ray etc., although never one of the better known images of the master identified on the wall label, presumably to keep things fresh. (Man Ray, Untitled, 1930, and Edward Weston, Nude, Mexico, 1926, at right, second and third from top.)

The next room follows chronologically into the 1940s and 1950s, bringing together a selection of professional press and vernacular photography with images from those working in a more fine art context where introspection, expressionism, and abstraction were taking hold(Siskind, Sommer, Sudek, Minor White et al.). The styles and approaches could hardly be more different, but their juxtaposition offers the first glimpses of multiple paths forward, of combination, dialogue, and confrontation. (Barbara Morgan, Use Litter Basket, 1943 and Aaron Siskind, Palm Springs, 1949, at right, fourth and fifth from the top.)

The fourth room continues a broad expansion of photographic paths forward, with 1950s hand held camera work (Frank, Winogrand, Levinstein, Faurer etc.), large format portraiture (Penn, Avedon, Newman), various forms of conceptual photography, and the arrival of the Japanese avant-garde (Tomatsu, Moriyama) in the 1970s. (Paolo Gasparini, Bello Monte, Caracas, 1968, and Zeke Berman, Still Life with Necker Cube, 1979, at right, sixth and seventh from top.)

Continuing into the other half of the divided space (which I have named the fifth room), the South Africans are added to the mix, along with the New Topographics photographers and the arrival of 1970s color. Again, many of the names will be familiar, but the specific image choices will keep you guessing. (Joel Sternfeld, Solar Pool Petals, Tuscon, Arizona, 1979, and William Eggleston, Untitled from Troubled Waters portfolio, 1980, at right, eight and ninth from top.)

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The last room in the show runs from roughly 1980 to the present, and it's here where I think the exhibit loses momentum a bit. Maybe a different way to say the same thing is that I was looking for a more definitive point of view on the current state of the world, and felt like I didn't get as sharp an opinion as I might have liked. The challenge is of course to make sense of the chaos, to follow both "contemporary art" and purely "photographic" progressions and to bushwhack a path through the thicket of competing aesthetics and mind sets, which is tough to do in a single room filled with a relatively small number of large pictures. That said, I did enjoy the Barney, the Tillim diptych, the Christenberry mess of kudzu and the multi-layered diCorcia. Perhaps a better way to look at this last room is to see it as simply a collection of new acquisitions that can tell us something about what the museum is interested in and continuing to follow closely, even if the thematic patterns are hard to discern. (William Christenberry, Kudzu Devouring Building, Near Greensboro, Alabama, 2004, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Catherine, 1981, at right, tenth and eleventh from top.)

In the end, I think this reinstallation of the permanent collection of photography makes a case for three distinct periods: the early period, from inception to roughly 1950, where the influence of vernacular photography and "history" is more pronounced and instructive, the middle period, from roughly Frank to Eggleston, where there is a flowering of bold experimentation in multiple directions, but mostly still connected to the existing photographic traditions, and the current period, where photography is stretching beyond its usual borders, crossing over into the context of contemporary art. In this realm, we're opening a dialogue beyond the confines of looking inward at photographic history and instead playing on a grander stage. While I'm sure this is an oversimplification of the nuanced ideas of the curators, I think this general framework has merit, especially if it can help to make the underlying forces tugging at contemporary photography more legible.

Collector's POV: Since this is a permanent collection exhibition, it seems only fitting to forego the prices and secondary market discussion that usually fills this section.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Previous installations of the permanent collection of photography: 2010 (here), 2009 (here), 2008 (here)

Permanent Collection of Photography
Through March 2012
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Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

2011 AIPAD Review, Part 1 of 2

For collectors like us, a visit to the annual AIPAD Photography Show in New York is like being a kid in a candy store; it combines countless moments of wonder with a mind-numbing case of weary visual overload. The show remains the single best annual gathering of photography in the United States, and this year's 82 exhibitors crisscrossed from 19th century to contemporary work, with a heavy dose of vintage black and white material in between.

Unlike previous years when I have had more time to linger, I only had one afternoon to enjoy the booths this year; no opening night gala, no intimate dinners or cocktail receptions, no leisurely repeat visits on succeeding days. So my experience of the 2011 version of AIPAD was more focused and less methodical than other incarnations; a targeted visit to those booths whose gallery owners I wanted to see or who had work I was particularly interested in, and a cursory swing through the rest. As the years pass, I am more and more struck by the sense of community to be found in these halls: collectors large and small, working photographers, museum curators, gallery owners/dealers, all slowly becoming a dense network of international friends to catch up with, all sharing a common passion for those pictures that make our eyes light up, wherever and whatever they may be. This blog has woven me into the fabric of this community more deeply than I had imagined, and I thoroughly enjoyed having a few quick moments with good friends from afar and putting faces with many personalities I had only known via email. I only wish I had had more time to sift through each and every bin.

This 2011 AIPAD Review will be split into 2 parts, with our customary booth reports, lists of the photographers on view (the number of pictures by each in parentheses) and some additional commentary or a specific image as further illustration. Given my limited time, I only tallied details on 33 booths; those that have been omitted were not necessarily any less compelling, I just didn't have the time to dive deeper and explore the fringes with more care. I'm sure there were great works hidden on interior walls, behind panels or in boxes that I missed in my haste. Overall, my selections inherently have some bias toward vintage black and white photography, given the dominance of vintage work on view. Anecdotally, the vintage dealers I talked to seemed to be having a more successful fair than their contemporary counterparts, but this was early in the run of the show, so who knows how it actually played out when the masses arrived over the weekend.

The galleries presented are in no particular order, and as always, apologies for the marginal images, as they are often marred by reflections or glare:

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here): Ola Kolehmainen (2), Monika Bravo (3), Bruce Davidson (2), Jim Campbell (1), Pertti Kekarainen (4), Shirley Shor (1), Niko Luoma (1). The Wolkowitz booth was the usual mix of Finns and new media photography. There was a terrific gridded Kolehmainen on the outside wall at the entrance of the show, but I was most surprised by the large scale Luoma. While I have seen these geometric line works before in a variety of colors and patterns, two details were new to me in this image: the monochrome black and white and the monumental size. Given it's density, it's a picture you can get lost in; it was priced at $16000.

Weston Gallery (here): Danielle Nelson-Mourning (2), Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Oliver Gagliani (1), Imogen Cunningham (1), Pirkle Jones (1), Edward Weston (5), Wynn Bullock (3), Harry Callahan (2), Ansel Adams (4), George Ballagny (1), Charles Marville (1), Eugene Cuvelier (1), Francis Frith (1), Dr. John Murray (1), JB Greene (1), Edouard Baldus (1), John Thomson (1), plus two bins.

Weinstein Gallery (here): Alec Soth (16). The Weinstein booth was a single artist display of Soth's new Broken Manual work. Having not seen this body of work in person before, I was most impressed by the continuity of mood across the diverse set of images; it mixes melancholy, fear, anger, distrust, and isolation into a heady brew. I also hadn't realized that the images were printed in specific and different sizes, i.e. some are small and some are large, and they are not all available in all sizes; Soth has chosen how he wants each image to be sized, thereby creating a certain rhythm to the changes in scale when the works are hung together. The interleaving of color and black and white images also breaks up the natural flow, forcing the viewer to look more closely. The overall effect is controlled and powerful; it's certainly among his best work. My favorite image was actually a black and white work on one of the exterior walls, a picture of a solitary light bulb strung up in the forest (priced at $15500); the glare was so awful off the face of the frame that I couldn't get even a marginal picture. So instead, here's another subtle gut puncher - the white cave with empty hangers (priced at $20700).

Robert Koch Gallery (here): David Parker (1), Masao Yamamoto (3), Andre Kertesz (1), Helen Levitt (1), Imre Kinski (1), Eliott Erwitt (2), Hugh Brown (2), Jeff Brouws (4), Michael Wolf (5), Frantisek Drtikol (1), Joseph Ehm (2), Jusef Sudek (4), Karoly Danassy (1), plus two bins.

Paul M. Hertzmann Inc. (here): Richard Misrach (2), Andre Kertesz (2), Donald Ross (1), Minor White (2), Pim Van Os (1), Brett Weston (1), Alfred Stieglitz (1), Dorothea Lange (1), Edward Weston (2), Eugene Atget (1), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1), Roger Parry (1), Berenice Abbott (1), Antonio Garduno (1), Consuelo Kanaga (1), Arthur Siegel (1), Osamu Shiihara (2), GP Fieret (1), plus four bins. I liked the avant-garde jitteriness of this Shiihara multiple exposure nude from the 1930s; it was priced at $9500.

Joseph Bellows Gallery (here): Wayne Lazorik (2), Leroy Robbins (6), Bill Arnold (2), Todd Walker (2), Randal Levenson (3), Thomas Barrow (2), Bevan Davies (4), Terry Wild (1), Charles Johnstone (6), plus two bins.

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Irving Penn (4), Gregory Vershbow (2), Cig Harvey (1), Mario Gaicomelli (3), Alex Webb (2), Ilse Bing (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (3), Walker Evans (3), Minor White (1), Carleton Watkins (1), Baron Adolph de Meyer (1), Edward Weston (1), Lewis Hine (1), Ansel Adams (3), Aaron Siskind (2), Helen Levitt (1), Arno Rafael Minkkinen (1), Francesca Woodman (4), Paulette Tavormina (3). This Siskind is the kind of image that fits right in the heart of our own collection: a city architectural scene, with strong abstract contrasts of line and form. Priced at $40000.

Yancey Richardson Gallery (here): Alex Prager (1), Olivo Barbieri (2), Victoria Sambunaris (1), Masao Yamamoto (4), Mark Steinmetz (1), Sebastiao Salgado (1), Esko Mannikko (2), Andrew Moore (2), Laura Letinsky (2), Rachel Perry Welty (4).

Gitterman Gallery (here): Frantisek Drtikol (1), Andre Kertesz (2), Clarence White (3), Jessie Tarbox Beals (1), Seneca Ray Stoddard (1), Eugene Atget (1), Aaron Siskind (5), Harry Callahan (4), Minor White (1), Ken Josephson (2), Gita Lenz (3), Ralph Eugene Meatyard (3), Charles Traub (2), Dr. Dain Tasker (1), plus two bins. This was a Callahan multiple I hadn't seen before; elegant wavy grasses as squiggly lines across the surface of water. Priced at $35000.

Richard Moore Photographs (here): Percy Loomis Sperr (17), Weegee (1), Peter Sekaer (4), Walker Evans (1), Dorothea Lange (1), Ralph Steiner (2), Bill Owens (1), Karl Struss (1), Margarethe Mather (1), plus three bins.

Edwynn Houk Gallery (here): Sebastiaan Bremer (2), Vik Muniz (1), Man Ray (1), Bettina Rheims (2), Robert Polidori (1), Alfred Stieglitz (1), Edward Steichen (1), Paul Strand (1), Hannes Schmid (1), Brassai (1), Andre Kertesz (1), Edward Weston (1), Dorothea Lange (3), Bruce Davidson (1), Walker Evans (1), Sally Mann (1), Joel Meyerowitz (1), Stephen Shore (4). The Houk booth had an embarassment of spectacular photographic masterworks along its interior walls. Bypassing a few notable icons, I was most drawn to this stunning Lange of the SF waterfront strike of 1934. It's an amazingly nuanced print of a visceral image; priced at $165000.

Lee Gallery (here): Gustave Le Gray (1), Gertrude Kasebier (2), Alfred Stieglitz (1), Heinrich Kühn (11), F. Holland Day (1), plus four bins. This Kühn dahlia is one I hadn't ever seen before; I actually liked it better than the more famous rubber plant nearby. The texture and patina of the layered leaves is soft and tactile. Priced at $25000.

Deborah Bell Photographs (here): Andy Warhol (6), Marcel Broodthaers (1), Vito Acconci (1), Dennis Oppenheim (1), Marcia Resnick (7), Diane Arbus (1), Louis Fauer (2), Garry Winogrand (1), GP Fieret (4), George Gardner (2), August Sander (2), Susan Paulsen (2).

Amador Gallery (here): Bernd and Hilla Becher (3), Gabriele Basilico (3), Ryuji Miyamoto (1), Arnold Odermatt (8), Robert Voit (8). Basilico's 1980s images of Dunkirque are among my favorites from his whole career, so I was happy to see one on display in the Amador booth. I'm a sucker for silhouetted industrial forms, and this series is filled with contrasty cranes and traffic lights, abstracted into interlaced geometric lines. Priced at $4500.

Halsted Gallery (here): Irving Penn (2), Paul Anderson (1), Don Hong Oai (1), Kim Kauffman (1), Andre Kertesz (3), Edward Weston (2), Berenice Abbott (3), Arnold Newman (4), Brett Weston (3), Michael Kenna (2), Aaron Siskind (1), George Tice (2), Walker Evans (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1), Leonard Freed (1), Ruth Orkin (1), Nicholas Nixon (1), August Sander (1), Karl Struss (1), JH Lartigue (1).

Catherine Edelman Gallery (here): Lucie & Simon (1), Myra Greene (15), Elizabeth Ernst (4), Julie Blackmon (3), Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison (8), Gregory Scott (1), Lori Nix (1), Lauren Simonutti (8). I've slowly been getting my head around Lori Nix' meticulous tabletop dioramas (and their place in the history of staged model building - Simmons, Casebere, Demand etc.), so I spent some time looking at this real but unreal laundromat more closely. The attention to detail is staggering, especially in the subtleties of aging and the nuances of light; priced at $4000.

Part 2 of our AIPAD Review is here.

Photography at the 2011 Armory, Part 4 of 4

The 4th and final portion of our 2011 Armory summary covers Pier 92, also known as the Armory Show Modern. Part 1 of the review (which includes an explanation of the format) can be found here; Parts 2 and 3 can be found here and here.

Marlborough Gallery (here): Hans Silvester (1)

JGM. Galerie (here): Anne & Patrick Poirer (2)

Vivian Horan Fine Art (here): Cindy Sherman (1), Lynda Benglis (6). I had no idea photography was part of Benglis' artistic practice. These color lanscapes were carefully traced with gold paint in certain areas. I didn't ask the prices.

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Springer & Winckler Galerie (here): Georges Rouse (2), Andy Goldsworthy (2), Hiroshi Sugimoto (4), Sigmar Polke (4), Arnold Odermatt (18). The entire outside wall of this booth was devoted to Odermatt. Aside from the two color portraits of children, they were all black and white car crashes from Karambolage.

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Wetterling Gallery (here): Nathalia Edenmont (6), Mike and Doug Starn (1 diptych, 1 triptych). I liked the simple fragility of this massive Starn leaf. It was priced at $38000.

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): Shinichi Maruyama (3), Michael Wolf (6), Barbara Morgan (2), Rosalind Solomon (1), Andre Kertesz (10), Nathan Lyons (3 diptychs), Trine Sondergaard (10), Frederick Sommer (1), John Wood (2), Edward Weston (1), Alfred Stiedglitz (1), Irving Penn (2), Todd Hido (3), Paul Strand (1), Yao Lu (1), Aaron Siskind (10). I never tire of Siskind's building facades, with their patterns of windows, moldings, and architectural lines. They clearly also work well when hung as a group/grid, so the geometries and differences in scale/color can play off one another.

Francis Naumann Fine Art (here): Man Ray (6). This Man Ray nude was terrific close up; it was priced at a hefty $250000. I also liked the suite of mathematical objects (particularly the star shaped form in the upper left), which I had never seen before. They were priced at $120000 for the set of 4.

Marc Selwyn Fine Art (here): Richard Misrach (1), Robert Mapplethorpe (1), William Wegman (2), Donald Huebler (1), Robert Heinecken (3). I've always liked Heinecken's Polaroid foodgrams. They were priced at $11000 each.

Alan Koppell Gallery (here): Hiroshi Sugimoto (2), Diane Arbus (1), Gregory Crewdson (1), Richard Hamilton (3), Robert Frank (1), Robert Moskowitz (1)

Armand Bartos Fine Art (here): Barbara Kruger (1)

Gerald Peters Gallery (here): J. Henry Fair (1)

HackelBury Fine Art (here): Doug and Mike Starn (2), Garry Fabian Miller (4), Pascal Kern (10)

Yancey Richardson Gallery (here): Victoria Sambunaris (2), Sharon Core (1), Olivo Barbieri (2), Rachel Perry Welty (2), Alex Prager (7 + 1 video), Andrew Moore (1), Laura Letinsky (2), bryan Graf (3)

Amy Wolf Fine Art (here) and Elrick-Manley Fine Art (here): Hannah Wilke (4)

Chowaiki & Co. (here): Cindy Sherman (1)

James Barron Art (here): Elinor Carucci (1), Sally Mann (1), Kohei Yoshiyuki (1), Brian Finke (1), Wolfgang Tillmans (1). This installation shot doesn't do justice to the delicacy of this huge abstract Tillmans. The pigment washes down the surface in tiny traceries and puffs of purple smoke. The print was priced at $78000.

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Nancy Hoffman Gallery (here): Lisea Lyons (2)

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Nohra Haime Gallery (here): Eve Sonneman (2 diptychs)

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Contessa Gallery (here): David Drebin (5)

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Next up: Photography at the 2011 ADAA Art Show

Abstract Expressionist New York @MoMA

JTF (just the facts): A single room of photography, seen as part of the larger exhibition (entitled The Big Picture) located on the 4th floor of the museum, not far from De Kooning's Woman I. The mini-exhibit takes the form of a group show of the work of 9 photographers. There are a total of 29 black and white photographs on view, framed in white and matted, and hung against grey walls. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, made between 1943 and 1973. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers have been included, with the number of works on view in parentheses:
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Harry Callahan (9)
Paul Caponigro (1)
Walter Chappel (1)
Roy DeCarava (1)
Nathan Lyons (2)
Robert Rauschenberg (1)
Aaron Siskind (10)
Frederick Sommer (1)
Minor White (3)

Comments/Context: If you were to look in one of my little notebooks where I write down notes from photography shows I visit, you'd see that for every show, I try to put down a list of stream of consciousness adjectives that pop into my head while seeing the work on view. Later, when I write the reviews, I use these words to help me get back into the same frame of mind I experienced while standing in the gallery. For this show, which is only a small part of a much more sprawling exhibit of painting and sculpture, my notebook contains the word INFURIATING written in all capital letters.
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I can't say that I can remember ever using the word infuriating to describe a show of photography, and yet, my annoyance with the exhibit was indeed quite piercing. The reason is that I think the selection and sequencing of works is a massive missed opportunity to tell a more compelling and coherent story about the role and influences of Abstract Expressionism in photography. While I realize that MoMA does not hold every great work of AbEx photography, I had such high hopes that we would, for once and for all, get a lucid explanation of how photography and the other arts interacted with each other, how the visual vocabulary evolved over those decades, how aesthetic ideas bounced around and were incorporated back and forth between artists in different mediums. Unfortunately, this mini-show could best be called "Some Abstract Expressionist Photography from the Collection"; it entirely lacks a definite point of view, it has no apparent thesis which it is attempting to prove.
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This is not to say that the photography on view is somehow deficient. On the contrary, there are great works, particularly by Siskind and Callahan, that tackle many of the same themes of abstraction raised out in the painting galleries: scale, gesture, fluidity, and compositional complexity. As one might expect, Siskind's peeling paint, up-close walls, and dripped surfaces make an appearance, as do Callahan's swirling light on water, spiky grasses, and multiple exposure city views.
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Rather than simply dismantling this show as a disappointing failure, let me offer two ways that I think it might have been more successful in teasing out the connections to the work in the other galleries. First, the works in this room are not organized chronologically, they are instead mixed around, likely based on the quirks of balance in hanging the room. What I would have preferred is a very rigorous chronological look at how photography was evolving over these decades. We needed to see the specific difference between the aesthetic ideas of early 40s Siskind and Callahan, versus what came in the late 40s, or 50s, or even 60s. These periods don't all meld into one, they are distinct, and there are important evolutions of style and subject matter that get muddied by jumbling the pictures around. Similarly, the work of other AbEx photographers needed to be put into this chronological framework to better see how they fit into the larger trends. Then this whole package could be better matched against the themes explored in painting and sculpture - and then we would be able to see how photography reconsidered the gestural ideas of painting, how the picture plane got flattened, who influenced who, who took something and changed it, and who was simply derivative. Until we line up the works by date, and match all the photographs from 1942-1945 with the works in painting and sculpture from those same years (for example), we won't be able to draw any conclusions about what was really going on. This is what was so intensely irritating for me about the approach that was employed; it is impossible to discern any thoughtful connections.

Another way to perhaps clarify the ideas would be to pare the photo portion of the exhibit down to just Siskind, or just Siskind and Callahan (although we might make an argument that he really isn't "New York"), instead of a survey of the many photographers working during the period. Then again, a strict chronological hanging might help tease out the nuances of aesthetic influence, albeit on a smaller, single artist scale. I found the inclusion of an image from Siskind's Homage to Franz Kline series to be particularly maddening. Of course, I understand why it is here; it has bold strokes of black lines that echo Kline and show that Siskind was interested in many of the same ideas. But it was done in the 1970s. It is an afterthought, a look back, not a point of actual influence in the discussion. There are no paintings from the 1970s or 1980s in the larger exhibit that are "in the style of" the earlier AbEx painters. That's not what this exhibit is about.

I was really hoping that this exhibit would integrate photography into the larger thesis, treating it as an equal in the exploration of how this important period in American art history actually took place. Instead, photography is off in the corner, once again a novel tangent, and the organization of the works actually on display does nothing to make the case that anything important or influential went on behind the camera. What chafes me most is that I think that there may indeed be some startling connections that would be amazing to see, if someone would take the time to rigorously look for them. That unfortunately did not happen here. And so I scratched down my all capitals INFURIATING and left the room wondering about what might have been.
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Collector's POV: Since this is a group show of vintage work in a museum setting, I'm going to forgo the usual discussion of prices and auction histories. But while my comments above might lead you to believe I somehow didn't like the work on view, the truth is in fact the exact opposite. In fact, we actually own prints (or variants) of several of the works on display in the show and will likely add more images to our collection from this photographic period in the future.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Exhibition site (here)
• Review: NY Times (here)
• Review roundup: Hyperallergic (here)

Abstract Expressionist New York
Through April 25th

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Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

Ryan McGinley and Aaron Siskind

While I realize many of you read the New York Times as regularly as we do, the Ryan McGinley photo essay in the past weekend's New York Times Magazine (here) seems worthy of a short discussion. For those of you who haven't seen the pictures, there are eleven color images of Winter Olympic athletes, outfitted in designer clothing (lots of wispy strips of fabric) and soaring through the air (as required by their various sports) against soft, pastel skies.

For photography collectors, these works will be immediately reminiscent of Aaron Siskind's Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation from the 1950s. McGinley has however traded Siskind's pared down, abstracted black and white silhouettes for unabashedly dreamy and romantic views. He has also expanded the scope of the pictures to include more sky, making the often graceful flying look even more precarious and unlikely. While not every picture in this series works for me, if these commissioned images are ever turned into artworks, I hope they are printed at monumental scale to cover a whole wall, the contrast between small figure and huge ground amplifying the peaceful bliss of floating.

Aaron Siskind: Recurrence @Silverstein

JTF (just the facts): 101 black and white gelatin silver prints (mostly vintage), displayed in the back two rooms of the gallery. The main room has a dark wall, while the smaller room in the far rear is white. The images span much of Siskind's career, from 1940s work in Gloucester to 1980s images of tar dripped roads. (Mediocre installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Taking on the estate of a recognized master who had previously been represented by one or more other galleries has its own special challenges. By and large, these kinds of estates have been "picked clean" by the preceding representatives, the best of the early and influential work skimmed off and sold years or decades earlier, often leaving behind a grab bag of later and less well known work that doesn't seem to have an audience among collectors and museums, unless someone is looking to build a comprehensive sample of the artist's career.

Bruce Silverstein seems to be willing to dig through these estates in search of diamonds in the rough. Starting with the Kertesz estate, and now with the Siskind estate, his job has been to sift through what remains and try to make sense of it all. Most importantly, he has brought a fresh pair of eyes to work that has been overlooked and under appreciated.

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This show is built around the insight that Siskind's work is best understood when seen the way Siskind took the pictures: in series. Long before the Bechers developed their typologies, the ID in Chicago was teaching students to shoot in multiples, to make projects of a single subject matter observed in detail. This exhibit is then groups of pictures rather than a gathering of single images. There is a cluster of reeds, some broken windows, a group of wall stones. There are pieces of driftwood and swirling strands of seaweed. There are building facades, close ups of paint on walls, and divers soaring through the air. All are displayed in groups of 4, 6, 9, 12 or even 16 pictures; there are few single pictures hung in isolation.

What is striking about this exhibit is that it shows, regardless of the subject matter, and over nearly 50 years of taking pictures, Siskind was ultimately interested in lines, patterns, color contrasts, and the beauty of simple forms. Over and over again, the groups of images show him meticulously exploring a subject, in search of interesting compositional relationships between the lines. Siskind seems to have been intrigued by both the sharp and geometric, as well as the rounded and swirling. While some of his work does have a formal rigidity to it (the building facades with grids of windows for example), most of the works have a more fluid, gestural quality, more in tune with the prevailing ideas in the world of Abstract Expressionism. As he got older, these gestures seemed to get looser, with the paint splatters and tar ribbons of the 1970s and 1980s becoming larger and more like calligraphy.

What I like best about this superb exhibit is that it puts all of these different projects into a larger context. Seen as single images, isolated from the rest of his work, some of these pictures don't hold up particularly well. But seen in groups, riffing on the same ideas as their neighbors, the pictures have a much stronger resonance. I think the show does an excellent job of showing that Siskind continued to make thought provoking pictures in his own unique style his entire career, not just in his 1950's heyday. Siskind's artistic approach across his lifetime was remarkably consistent, and the later works merit more attention and praise than they have heretofore received. This show does a good job of forcing us as viewers to think about the quality of his entire output, rather than just his greatest hits. Every single group in the gallery is worth some patient looking. In our view, this is a show worth going out of your way to see.

The Aaron Siskind foundation website is here.

Collector's POV: There are plenty of superlative prints in this show that would fit perfectly into our collection. Prices range from $3500 on the low end to $30000 on the high end for single images, with some prints sold only in groups with larger total prices. Siskind made a large number of later prints in his life, and as a result, the market for his work has gotten muddied and confused. Vintage prints of his most famous images are hard to come by, but vintage images of variants in any one series are often much more reasonable (and available). We already own several Siskinds (here), but we still found many things to tempt us.

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Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

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Aaron Siskind: Recurrence

Through February 21st

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Silverstein Photography

535 West 24th Street

New York, NY 10001