2010 AIPAD Review, Part 2 of 4

Part 1 of this multi-part AIPAD post can be found here.

Robert Mann Gallery (here): Holly Andres (3), Michael Kenna (4), Robbert Flick (2), Joe Deal (5), Gail Albert Halaban (2), Mary Mattingly (1), Jeff Brouws (1), Wijnanda Deroo (1), Susan Rankatis (2), Aaron Siskind (2), Henry Wessel (1), Robert Frank (4), Ansel Adams (1), Alfred Stieglitz (2), Paul Strand (1), Paul Haviland (1), Elijah Gowin (1 set of 8). USC professor Robbert Flick was another discovery for me at the show. All of the individual images in the grid below were taken in the same concrete parking structure, with a mix of natural and fluorescent light slashing across the dark floors and walls. (Robbert Flick, SV# 034/81 - Inglewood Parking Structure #2, 1981, at $10000.)

Scheinbaum & Russek (here): Luis Gonzalez Palma (5), Manuel Alvarez Bravo (5), Beaumont Newhall (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (2), Andre Kertesz (2), Flor Ganduno (1), Manuel Carillo (1), Brett Weston (1), Paul Caponigro (2), Walter Chappell (1), Edward Weston (1), Harry Callahan (3), Minor White (3), Aaron Siskind (2), Lynn Geesaman (2), Eliot Porter (6), plus 2 bins. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Walter Chappell nude below, not only because it is a spectaular image that would fit well into our collection, but also because we took it out of the frame to see the notes on the back, which explain that the print was reversed for the cover of Aperture #79, at the request of Minor White. (Walter Chappell, Nude Armpit, Wingdale, NY, 1962/1969, ay $8500.)

Yossi Milo Gallery (here): Myoung Ho Lee (1), Loretta Lux (5), Youssef Nabil (4), Kohei Yoshiyuki (9), Sze Tsung Leong (11), Robert Bergman (2).

Robert Koch Gallery (here): Larry Schwarm (2), Ilse Bing (2), Eadward Muybridge (1), Francis Frith (1), Michael Wolf (3), Brian Ulrich (1), Amy Stein (1), Jeff Brouws (4), Josef Koudelka (2), Bill Owens (1), plus 1 bin. The Koudelka image below was not at all what I envision when I think of his work, but I very much liked the simplicity of the forms in this wide print. (Josef Koudelka, Dunkerque-Port, 1986/1991, at $18000.)

Joseph Bellows Gallery (here): Bevan Davies (4), Terry Wild (2), Steven Salmieri (2), Randall Levenson (3), Wayne Lazorik (2), Enrico Natali (4), Nacio Jan Brown (2), Joanne Leonard (2), Jack Teemer (2), Joni Sternbach (6), Bill Arnold (1), Jay Boersma (4), Michael Light (4 large format books), plus 4 bins. This booth had plenty of unexpected and tempting work in it. I enjoyed both Joni Sternbach's atmospheric tintype surfers, as well as Michael Light's massive aerial scenes of Los Angeles highways and refineries. My favorite image in the booth was this small Terry Wild image below; I liked the stark contrast of adjacent black and white walls. (Terry Wild, Los Angeles, CA, 1969, at $5000.)

Project 5 (here): Jill Greenberg (6), Thomas Allen (8), Guido Castagnoli (7), Stuart O'Sullivan (1), Olaf Otto Becker (1). Project 5 brings together the work from five different New York galleries: ClampArt, Foley Gallery, Sasha Wolf Gallery, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, and Amador Gallery. The first portfolio from the group contains five prints: one each from a single artist from each gallery stable. I liked the contagious energy in this small booth, driven by three of the gallery directors collaborating to answer questions.

Catherine Edelman Gallery (here): Julie Blackmon (5), Gregory Scott (3), Lauren Simonutti (21), Joel-Peter Witkin (2), Keith Carter (1), Holly Roberts (2). I have recently been exploring some of the undefined edges of contemporary photography, where cameras are no longer used and traditional definitions of photography are hopelessly quaint. Gregory Scott's lightbox works in this booth have HD video embedded inside; stand and watch one for a while and a small portion of it will change and then stop again, turning the idea of a still frame on its head. It's not video art, nor is it exactly photography; it's something else, a 21st century mashup, with a hint of where we may see the medium go in the future. (Gregory Scott, Color Grid, 2009, at $22000.)

Gitterman Gallery (here): Alfred Stieglitz (2), Louis Faurer (1), Josef Breitenbach (1), Eugene Smith (1), Minor White (1), Edward Weston (1), Ferenc Berko (5), Kenneth Josephson (7), Roger Mayne (1), Allen Frame (4), Lewis Baltz (2), plus 2 bins. As always, there were good things to see in Tom Gitterman's booth. I enjoyed the two Baltz images, as well as the selection of Josephson prints (we'll visit the larger show on view at the gallery soon). Below is a Ferenc Berko from the late 1940s, a spare composition of thin lines and simple abstracted black shapes, almost like a Calder. (Ferenc Berko, Store Display, Chicago, 1947-48, at $5500.)

Bonni Benrubi Gallery (here): Massimo Vitali (1), Georges Dambier (2), Matthew Pillsbury (4), Andreas Feininger (3), Gillian Laub (3), Abelardo Morell (4), Josef Hoflehner (1), Laura McPhee (1 diptych), Jehad Nga (2).

Halsted Gallery (here): Irving Penn (1), Emmet Gowin (1), Harry Callahan (2), Walker Evans (4), Andre Kertesz (5), Ruth Orkin (3), George Tice (1), Larry Glazer (1), Berenice Abbott (2), Frederick Evans (2), Michael Kenna (2), Ansel Adams (2), Arnold Newman (1), O. Winston Link (1), Edward Weston (4), Imogen Cunningham (1), Bill Brandt (1), Morris Engel (1), William Christenberry (1), plus 3 bins. The Halsteds have been running their photo gallery for 40 years now, and there was a fun book on the table in the booth showing old pictures of various family members paired with famous photographers, interspersed with letters and other correspondence. In the booth, I liked the vintage Max Yavo from San Francisco best, with its overlapping layers of houses. (Max Yavno, Army Street, 1940s, at $4500.)

Higher Pictures (here): Barbara Crane (9), Issei Suda (3), LaToya Ruby Frazier (4), Alfred Gescheidt (10), Scott Peterman (3), Sam Falls (4), Jill Freedman (7). While I have written about Barbara Crane's repeats previously, I continue to find them original and exciting. (Barbara Crane, Dan Ryan Expressway, Chicago, 1975, at $7000.)

Beijing Jade Jar Fine Art (no website that I could find): Zhou Ning (3), Hu Wugong (3), Wang Shilong (3), Wang Yishu (2), Fu Yu (2), Yiming Jiang (9), Lu Houmin (6), Yu Deshui (6), Liu Tiesheng (1), Jin Hongwei (13). It was great to see a mix of vintage and contemporary Chinese photography in this booth; we need to see much more of this kind of work here in the United States to begin to make sense of the evolution of Chinese photography.
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Continue to Part 3 here.

Ferenc Berko @Gitterman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 48 black and white images, framed primarily in black and matted (a few are framed in white), and hung in the main gallery, hallway and smaller side room on the first floor, and in the main gallery and hallway on the second floor. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, taken in the period between 1933 and 1951; most are vintage prints, with a handful of later prints mixed in. The images were taken in London, Paris, Budapest, various locations in India, Chicago and New York. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: As collectors of nudes, over the years, we have come across the work of Hungarian photographer Ferenc Berko from time to time and wondered whether one of his best images would make a good addition to our collection, without knowing much about his entire body of work or his history as an artist; for us, he has always seemed somewhat peripheral to the main action of his better known contemporaries. Having recently taken on the artist's estate, Gitterman Gallery has put together a well-edited survey show of Berko's surprisingly varied early work that makes a strong case for reconsidering the value of his artistic contributions.
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Chronologically, the show starts with Berko's early street scenes of London (where he was a student), reminiscent of the work of his friend and mentor E.O. Hoppé. The photographer then moved to Paris, where a series of nudes were done in collaboration with his wife. Unlike the pared down nudes of the West coast American photographers of the same period (Weston, Cunningham et al), Berko's nudes have a strong "European" feel to them (more similar to the concurrent nudes of Man Ray), many with avant-garde styling and dense wallpaper patterning. Also during this time, he makes a trip back to his native Hungary to make compelling portraits of Jews on the streets of Budapest.

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To avoid the increasing Nazi influence in Europe, Berko then moves across the globe to India to become a filmmaker. His photographs from the early 1940s combine a more humanist view of daily life in India with an undertone of modernist sensibility, evident in the architecture of his compositions. Berko's life and photography take another unexpected turn after the war, when his friend László Moholy-Nagy invites him to teach photography at the ID in Chicago. His work from this period shows the influence of the New Bauhaus and of the early ideas of Abstract Expressionism: pared down urban geometries of fire escapes and telephone wires (think Callahan), contrasty solarized nudes, and gestural graphical abstractions of paint chips and found objects (think Siskind).

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As a whole, I think the show successfully argues that Berko was not a derivative chameleon in these years, switching his stripes to copy the fashions of the art world, but often an active participant in the leading edge evolution of important artistic approaches over time. When his specific works are carefully matched to the time lines of other more prominent photographers, it becomes obvious that Berko was experimenting with similar ideas during similar years, not merely riding their coattails later. As such, while he will likely remain a secondary figure in the history books, many of the images on display here certainly stand up well with the best of his better known contemporaries.

Collector's POV: The images in this show are priced between $3500 and $7500. Berko's work has not found its way into the secondary markets much in the past several years; only a few lots have been sold, ranging in price between $1000 and $2000. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for collectors interested in accessing his best work.

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In the past, we have found many of Berko's nudes a bit too obvious for us (perhaps even a bit cheesy in some cases), but seeing a well edited group of his pictures in person, I was convinced that we should reconsider some of these works once again. Berko's late 1940s abstracted Chicago images would also clearly fit well with other city scenes we own from that same period.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Obituary: NY Times, 2000 (here)
• Feature by Bill Jay (here)

Ferenc Berko

Through January 23rd

Gitterman Gallery
170 East 75th Street
New York, NY 10021