Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
December 13, 1998 - March 7, 1999

More than any other postwar Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama (b.1929, Japan) has influenced the form and direction of artistic production in the United States. Between 1958, when she arrived in New York City, and the late 1960s, when performance began to dominate her art, she created a body of work that made a widely known and highly significant contribution to the contemporary scene. A comprehensive exhibition of works from this period, Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 is co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Japan Foundation, in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition is the first at a U.S. museum to focus on Yayoi Kusama's work. It includes more than 50 paintings, collages, and sculptures from Yayoi Kusama's New York period, as well as reconstructions of three of the artist's precedent-setting environmental installations.

"Kusama's work has been dominated by a marathon dance of production that obliterates any separation between art and life," said Lynn Zelevansky, co-curator of the exhibition. "She and her art are wedded so inextricably that it is impossible to tell where one begins and the other leaves off. In confronting the depth and breadth of her work one encounters an unusually raw form of invention."

Combining aspects of surrealism and abstract expressionism with elements from minimalism and pop art, Yayoi Kusama's work proved remarkably prescient of post-minimalism in the United States, a nascent trend that would not fully emerge until the latter half of the 1960s. It also set precedents for artwork focusing on the body that has been produced by some of today's most influential younger artists. Yet up until very recently Yayoi Kusama remained little known in the West, her vital contribution to contemporary art largely overlooked. Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 explores the decade that Yayoi Kusama lived and worked in New York. The exhibition premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in March 1998 followed by a stop at The Museum of Modern Art. Following its showing in Minneapolis, it will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (April 29 July 4, 1999).

Yayoi Kusama gained attention shortly after arriving in New York by producing a series of paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s that are covered with all-over "nets" of pattern. These almost monochromatic paintings, which she called Infinity Nets, are made up of a single element that is repeated to cover an entire, often very large, canvas, edge to edge. In the early 1960s, Yayoi Kusama began working in other media. Collages of air-mail and file-folder labels constitute a visual pun on the new minimal art that is unusual in its mix of elegance and humor.

Her sculpture consists of household furniture and mundane objects covered with stuffed phallus-like protrusions, forecasting a preoccupation with the body. Her first sculpture, Accumulation No. 1 (1962) was made using a frame of an old armchair as a support covered with stuffed phallic protrusions sewn from canvas. Yayoi Kusama's sculptures from this period were handmade and extremely labor-intensive. In Ironing Board (1963) a steam iron sits, face down, threatening to scorch a sea of phalluses covering the surface.

By 1965 she had introduced a profusion of color into her sculpture through the use of dotted and striped fabrics. Red Stripes (1965) consists of phallic forms sewn from red and white striped fabric, stuffed and mounted onto a wood backing. In her food obsession sculptures Yayoi Kusama applied dried macaroni to the surfaces of clothing and accessories. Macaroni Handbag (1965) is a simple purse covered with pasta, and then painted gold.

The exhibition includes reconstructions of three of Yayoi Kusama's installations: Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show (1964), Infinity Mirror Room (1965), and Narcissus Garden (1966). In Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show , a protrusion-covered rowboat sits within a room papered with thousands of black-and-white reproductions of the same boat. Infinity Mirror Room consists of a four-sided mirrored room in which the floor has been taken over by red and white dotted phalluses. These are endlessly reflected and multiplied, along with the viewer, creating a dazzling and seemingly infinite space.

Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden marks a pivotal moment in the artist's transition from installation to performance. It was created at the Venice Biennale in 1966. She was neither invited to show nor given permission to present her art that year at the Biennale, but her outdoor installation garnered a great deal of attention. The "garden" consisted of 1,500 identical mirrored balls spread across the lawns outside the Italian pavilion. At the Walker this work will be installed in the South house of the Cowles Conservatory in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

YAYOI KUSAMA was born in 1929 in Japan and arrived in New York in 1958 at the age of 29. During the period in review, her work was shown extensively in the United States and Europe. In New York, she exhibited with major painters and sculptors of the time, among them Claes Oldenburg, Robert Morris, and Andy Warhol. Abroad, she was included in exhibitions of the Nul and Zero groups, together with such figures as Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni. After her return to Japan in the early 1970s, Yayoi Kusama was largely forgotten in this country. Recently, however, she has regained prominence, largely due to renewed interest and enthusiasm from a younger generation of artists.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 192-page catalogue with essays by co-curators Lynn Zelevansky, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Laura Hoptman, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawing, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and by two noted scholars of contemporary Japanese art, Alexandra Munroe and Akira Tatehata. The volume, published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, contains 94 color and 52 black-and-white illustrations.

WALKER ART MUSEUM
Vineland Place, Minneapolis, MN 55403
www.walkerart.org

Updated 23.06.2019

Andy Warhol at Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Andy Warhol: Shadows
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
December 4, 1998 - June 13, 1999

Dia Center for the Arts presents an exhibition of Andy Warhol's Shadows (1978), a single work comprised of over 100 panels. The installation will be on view in Dia's 545 West 22nd Street exhibition gallery. 

Acquired directly from the artist in 1979, Shadows remains a centerpiece of Dia's collection. The scale and ambition of Shadows, while grand even for Warhol, is characteristic of the key works in Dia's collection. This presentation of Shadows will constitute the second exhibition in Dia's new facility at 545 West 22nd Street. The paintings will be hung contiguously around the 298 feet of the gallery's perimeter, sequenced according to the artist's original plan, and in conformity with his conception of the work, which he designated as "one painting with...parts."

Each panel, measuring 76 x 52 inches, is of acrylic paint, variously silkscreened and handpainted on canvas. The whole encompasses an extraordinary range of colors, from subtle and muted to brilliant neon, placing Shadows among Warhol's most remarkable and compelling works.

Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to immigrant parents of Czechoslovakian descent. He studied design at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949. After a successful and distinguished career as a commercial illustrator in New York in the 1950s, he began exhibiting his paintings with silkscreened Pop imagery in 1962. In 1963 he began making films. Thereafter, his work was shown widely. Andy Warhol died on February 22, 1987.

Dia Center for the Arts
www.diacenter.org

Olympus D-400 Zoom Digital Camera

Olympus D-400 Zoom Digital Camera

Olympus Camedia D-400 Zoom Digital Camera

(c) Olympus America Inc.

Announced on November 2, 1998, the Olympus D-400 Zoom filmless digital camera continues the Olympus winning tradition, as it is two weeks old today yet has already received its first award. Designed as a camera first and foremost, the D-400 Zoom has an ergonomically designed point & shoot body and features popular in today’s film cameras. These include a 4 mode pop-up intelligent flash, through-the-lens auto focus and 3X optical zoom (35-105mm lens system), auto white balance with 5-step manual override, center weighted and spot metering systems for exposure metering with +/-2 step manual EV control in ½ step increments. This camera is also designed as a "digital" device with many high-tech features, including a 1.3 megapixel resolution (1280 x 960) CCD censor, 2X Digital Telephoto at any focal length, floppy disk compatibility to computer systems, and reusable SmartMedia cards. Finally, it is a consumer electronics device, with video connectivity to popular consumer products and direct printing to the Olympus Personal Photo Printer without the need of a computer.

Olympus America Inc., today unveiled the world’s largest 360° panorama photo created with a digital camera. Shot with the Olympus D-400 Zoom, the newly announced point & shoot digital camera, if placed on end, the photo would tower four stories high. It is 45 feet x 3 feet tall, but is mounted end to end so attendees can view it from within. The photo will be displayed during Comdex in Las Vegas at the Olympus Booth #1648 (LVCC).

The image was created on busy Fremont Street in Las Vegas. This street was chosen because it is an extremely challenging subject for any camera to handle (digital or film-based alike), with great variations in the type of lighting and thousands of bright incandescent and fluorescent lights. The photographer used the Olympus D-400 Zoom’s autofocus and adjusted the exposure, color temperature and white balance to create the perfect image. White balance and exposure are automatic, but may be overriden by the user.

18 photos were taken with a 30% overlap at 1280 x 960 resolution in uncompressed mode to allow for the greatest detail. The photos were then enlarged with raster image software from 3M and automatically stitched with professional panorama stitching technology from Enroute Imaging’s QuickStitch. The finished panorama photo was then printed on a large format HP3500 CP printer at 600 dpi on opaque vinyl media, again from 3M. The resulting image is both technically and artistically stunning.

"The results are spectacular!" said Walter Urie, Professional Photographer. "The Olympus D-400 Zoom performed unbelievably. I’ve used expensive and sophisticated cameras in my profession, but this filmless camera outperformed these cameras creating a breathtaking panorama."

"The Olympus camera is so powerful that it allowed us to stitch the world’s largest panorama with our QuickStitch software without retouching the images," said Paul Cha, Executive Vice President, Enroute Imaging. "This panorama photo surpasses any ever taken with a digital camera and is our most aggressive effort to date."

"The D-400 Zoom is the perfect camera for taking panorama photos since it has a special panorama mode built in," said Dave Veilleux, Director of Marketing Communications, Olympus America, Digital & Imaging Systems Group. "The exposure is automatically locked with the first image in a panoramic set so subsequent photos are consistently exposed – even in widely illuminated subjects. This results in a smooth, even panoramic photograph."

Fernando Botero at Marlborough Gallery, NYC - Drawings and Watercolors on Canvas

FERNANDO BOTERO
Drawings and Watercolors on Canvas
Marlborough Gallery, New York
November 4 - December 5, 1998

Marlborough Gallery presents an exhibition by the world renowned Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. Botero was born in Medellin, Colombia in 1932. He moved to Bogota in 1951 where he had his first one-man show at the age of nineteen. He presently lives and works in Paris, France and Pietrasanta, Italy.

The exhibition is comprised of approximately thirty large-scale drawings on canvas and includes portraits, still lifes, and scenes of family and city life. The drawings are executed in the mediums of charcoal, sanguine and watercolor and range in size from an average of about 50 by 40 inches to a monumental triptych measuring 7 by 14 feet entitled The Street. In this “tour de force” sanguine drawing, certainly one of the largest ever done by an artist, there are three arenas of action bound together and unified structurally by a giant slabbed sidewalk and an extended row of houses that form a contiguous frieze-like background in each panel. In the left panel a man wearing a suit and tie and bowler hat is having his shoes shined by a tiny figure in tattered striped pants and a baseball cap, while a beautiful woman passes by nonchalantly holding a parasol and each character seeming to be oblivious to one another. In the center panel, another woman whose voluptuous curves are shown off in her white polka dot dress and elegant necklace walks her little dog and is greeted by a gallant gentleman tipping his hat to her. In the right panel, a grand, aproned nanny is taking an enormous child out for a daily stroll in a baby carriage while in the lower corner a plump dog squats facing forward, alone in his awareness of the viewer, and in the upper corner a man’s small head appears looking out a window intrigued by all the goings on in The Street. In another drawing of striking fascination, Portrait of Velasquez, Fernando Botero carries on his long established tradition of creating in his inimitable style portraits of artists he admires. In this full length portrait Velasquez is seen as a courtly gentleman holding a brush in his right hand and a palette in his left. The drawing rendered in rich, deep charcoal conveys the elegance of the artist’s clothes and with touches of sanguine in the sashes of the artist’s pantaloons and in the cross emblazoned on the front of his waist coat, charm and delicacy are added to Fernando Botero’s monumental interpretation. All the drawings in this exhibition bear witness to an inventive imagination and a phenomenal draftsmanship both in the artist’s facility to draw any subject he chooses and in the wide range and variations of effects that his drawing skills can achieve. Fernando Botero’s drawings can be dramatic and monumental as in the case of many of the works in this show and also as in other drawings, graceful and expressive of the most refined lyricism. There is no question that, generally speaking, behind every great artist lies a great draftsman. This drawing exhibition demonstrates beyond any doubt the accomplished mastery of a great artist.

Fernando Botero’s work is distinctly his own and highly original. His art strikes a universal human chord that goes beyond regional tastes and temporal values and reaches a fundamental feeling in people all over the world. There is, perhaps, no other living artist who has so many admirers and collectors. His work is sought-after as much in the United States, South America, and Europe as it is in South Africa, Asia, and Australia. Asia Pacific Sculpture News attributed this phenomenon to “a vision of humanity that transcends the boundaries of cultural specificity, a vision of humanity that pulsates to the ancient universal rhythms of life.”

Fernando Botero has had innumerable one-man exhibitions. In the last five years alone he has had over thirty exhibitions worldwide devoted solely to his work. Among the most prominent museum exhibitions are the following: Forte de Belvedere, Florence, Italy (1991); Kunst Haus, Vienna, Austria (1992); Grand Palais, Paris, France (1992); Palais des Papes, Avignon, France; Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia; Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (1992-93); Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland (1994); The Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois (1994); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina (1994); Shinjuku Mitsukoshi Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan (1995); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1996). He has had highly successful outdoor exhibitions of his monumental sculptures in Monaco, Paris, New York, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Fernando Botero’s work can be found in forty-six museums. Among the most prominent are: The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, Venezuela; Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota, Colombia; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany; Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany; and The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Many books have been published on Botero’s work in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.

A fully illustrated catalog of the Fernando Botero show is available.

MARLBOROUGH GALLERY
40 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
www.marlboroughgallery.com

HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera

HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera

Hewlett-Packard announced the first 1-megapixel camera with digital zoom available for under $400 -- the HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera.

HP believes the PhotoSmart C30 camera, which also features enhanced image-quality capabilities, provides the best price/value ratio ever offered in a 1-megapixel digital camera.

"This combination of new features, coupled with a very competitive price, will put digital photography within reach for even more users," said Cheryl Katen, general manager of HP's Home Imaging Division. "Whether they're looking for a high-quality photo or want an image to send over the Web, this digital camera will meet their needs."

The HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera's improved image quality is based on a built-in CCD (charged-coupled device) and primary-color (RGB) filter and HP's image-processing enhancements. These image-quality features help users create bright, true-to-life photos that offer exceptional clarity. The new RGB filter is designed to reduce the chromatic noise level and capture images that are sharper and more pleasing to the eye. The color sensor also enhances image sharpness and color fidelity, creating more appealing images with noticeably finer details and rich, fully saturated colors.

The camera's 2X digital zoom enables users to minimize file size and boost image size by cropping out unwanted portions of a photo. The new feature provides users with photos that are instantly ready to e-mail to friends and colleagues.

Digital zoom is built into the HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera, making it unnecessary for users to tote around heavy, breakable lenses. The user still has the convenience of a compact, lightweight camera with the advantage of zoom.

The HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera comes with a color LCD (liquid crystal display) located on the rear panel of the camera. The color display allows users to preview photos they want to take, review and select the photos they want to upload to their PCs or delete unwanted photos on the spot.

The camera ships with a 4MB removable CompactFlash memory card, which acts like re-usable digital film. The camera works with all industry-standard CompactFlash cards, which are available in various capacities, and it also includes an ac adapter and long-life batteries.

The HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera comes with HP photo-finishing software, which automatically downloads photos whenever the camera is connected to a PC; features index-page printing; and provides exclusive page-layout capabilities to enable efficient use of paper.

U.S. Pricing and Availability: The HP PhotoSmart C30 digital camera, available now, is expected to sell for approximately $399 through retailers in North America. The camera is expected to be introduced in other regions of the world at later dates.

HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY

www.hp.com

CoBrA paintings at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

CoBrA paintings 

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

October 29, 1998 - February 14, 1999

Out of the devastation of World War II, a drive towards liberated subjectivity in the figurative styles of Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon influenced American and European art. In 1948, European artists Karel Appel, Cornelis van Beverloo (known as Corneille), and George Constant established the "Experimental Group," seeking new forms of elemental expression. Through contacts with similar northern European groups, this movement evolved into the international expressionist group CoBrA.

The CoBrA Group - comprised of artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam - existed for only a few years, from 1948 to 1950, but some of the artists who become known through the group continued to achieve international acclaim. These included Appel, Corneille, Constant, Asger Jorn, Constant A. Nieuwenhuys and Pierre Alechinsky. Their unifying stylistic bond was a free, organic expressiveness in paint handling and an emphasis on imagery defined in the individual imagination.

Over the three years of its existence, the founding members and their collaborators produced ten issues of a journal entitled CoBrA and numerous exhibitions. Their efforts instigated artistic exchanges that aimed to provide organization to the loose affiliation of northern European artists.

CoBrA artists had roots in surrealist automatism, Freudian psychology and existentialism. With the French artist Dubuffet, whom CoBrA members knew and admired, they also shared an interest in anonymous, untutored art and in the everyday experience of the common man.

The exhibition celebrates the 1958 founding of the Fellows, which was organized originally as a support group to assist the museum's collecting efforts.

Dozens of important works of art have been purchased for the collection by the Fellows Fund, including works by Carl-Henning Pedersen, Alfred Jensen, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Philip Pearlstein, John Sloan, Anselm Keifer and Andy Warhol. These works are on display as part of the exhibition.

CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART

4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA

www.cmoa.org

Ugo Rondinone, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

Ugo Rondinone

Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

24 octobre - 28 novembre 1998

La galerie Almine Rech présente une exposition de Ugo Rondinone. On peut rappeler brièvement les oeuvres de cet artiste qui ont été montrées auparavant en France et qui les unes après les autres ont précisé la vision qu’on peut avoir de son oeuvre.

Dans la série des photos intitulées "I don’t live here anymore ",1995 (1), Ugo Rondinone manipule digitalement des photos de femmes représentées dans diverses poses suggestives, remplaçant leurs traits par les siens de façon suffisamment cohérente pour que l’image garde son contenu érotique. En se coulant dans différents corps, il teste le sien, son apparence et pose la question de la réalité. L’artiste ne peut nous proposer que la sienne, artificielle. Si "L’éloge du maquillage" (2) vient à l’esprit en évoquant "I don’t live here anymore",1995, les grands paysages sur papier à l’encre de chine ne contredisent pas ce rapprochement. Faits à partir de petits croquis sur le motif, ces paysages sont recomposés, assemblés, agrandis dans l’atelier, créant avec force détails un paysage inventé, nature transformée. Ce travail, comme les grandes toiles appelées “ cibles “, demande calme et isolement dans l’atelier, à la fois contrainte et plaisir désirés par l’artiste.

La figure du clown, récurrente dans l’oeuvre d’Ugo Rondinone est omniprésente dans "Where do we go from here" (3). Dans cette pièce les clowns d’Ugo Rondinone, personnages ambigus, à la fois réels et fictifs, ayant une double vie, déguisés et maquillés, somnolent, ronflent même par intermittence ! (4) Un parallèle peut s’établir avec l’artiste quand il attend et s’isole, ne se prêtant pas à un rôle d’amuseur, "caricatureur" de la réalité. Par son apparence outrancière, vieillote, "émouvante", le clown est aussi à l’opposé d’une vision pure et "avant-gardiste" de l’art. Par cette image, Ugo Rondinone parle du doute, de l’échec, ouvre la porte d’une polémique quant à des certitudes formelles.

Comme une métaphore de lui-même, les oeuvres d’Ugo Rondinone sont le rythme de sa vie intérieure: détachement, attente, isolement, retour d’énergie vitale, engagement.

Les cibles, tableaux présents depuis le début dans l’oeuvre de l’artiste dont les formats ont changé, évoquent des peintures dans le genre "color-field painting". Leur apparence est séduisante, stimulante par leurs couleurs acidulées, elles semblent décoratives, parodies de peintures abstraites, mais elles ont le magnétisme des dessins bouddhistes ou coraniques, qu’on fixe pour favoriser la méditation, à la fois énergétiques et "planantes"; elles entraînent, si l’on s’y prête, le spectateur dans leur tourbillon.

Les trois installations qui sont montrées à la galerie Almine Rech, regroupent d’une certaine façon les thèmes cités et qui évoluent dans l’oeuvre d’Ugo Rondinone.

(1) Galerie Froment et Putman, 1995.

Migrateurs, ARC,- Commissaire Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1995 (catalogue).

Fenêtre sur cour, Galerie Almine Rech, 1 Avril - 17 Mai 1997 (catalogue).

(2) Charles Beaudelaire, "Curiosités esthétiques".

(3) Centre d’Art Contemporain, Le Consortium, Dijon, 1997.

(4) Le son et la musique ont un rôle important dans les installations d’Ugo Rondinone.

GALERIE ALMINE RECH

24 rue Louise Weiss, 75013 Paris

www.galeriealminerech.com

Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, NMWA, Washington DC - National Museum of Woman in the Arts

Berenice Abbott: Changing New York 
National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC
October 22, 1998 - January 19, 1999

To put it mildly, I have and have had a fantastic passion
for New York, photographically speaking.
Berenice Abbott

Changing New York is photographer Berenice Abbott’s extraordinary documentation of New York from 1935 to 1939, when the city lost its 19th-century trappings to skyscrapers that would transform the skyline. From Oct. 22, 1998 through Jan. 19, 1999, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) exhibits 126 of the 305 unique vintage prints produced by Berenice Abbott for the project, many on display for the first time.

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) arrived in New York as an aspiring sculptor from her native Ohio in 1918, then joined the expatriate exodus of artists to Paris in 1921. She began work in photographer Man Ray’s studio, beginning as a darkroom assistant and building a reputation as a portraitist of the cultural elite that rivaled his. Berenice Abbott found her aesthetic muse in Eugene Atget, and rescued his photographs documenting the streets of Paris. When she returned to New York in January 1929 to locate a publisher for a book of Eugene Atget’s photographs, Berenice Abbott was inspired by the change: "The new things that had cropped up in eight years, the sights of the city, the human gesture here sent me mad with joy and I decided to come back to America for good."

In 1935, with the patronage of the Museum of the City of New York, Berenice Abbott received funding from the Federal Arts Project that allowed her to work for the next four years creating her masterpiece, Changing New York. She concentrated not only on new skyscrapers and mass transit but also on subjects that were disappearing because of these changes. Although people are represented, architecture is the principal subject. Berenice Abbott and an assistant transported 60 pounds of camera equipment through the city streets of New York, including a large view camera with negatives measuring 8-by-10 inches, the same size as the prints.

As the project progressed, Berenice Abbott developed a more daring, experimental style, and she returned to some sites, such as the Flatiron Building, with new compositional ideas. She exposed the last negative for Changing New York in November 1938; due to financial and bureaucratic difficulties she never finished her master plan. Because of its support of Berenice Abbott’s work, the Museum of the City of New York received a unique set of mounted prints, as well as the project’s negatives, proofs, and research files.

The prints selected for this exhibition are arranged in eight geographical sections, mirroring Berenice Abbott’s approach to her subject: Wall Street, Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Lower West Side, Middle West Side, Middle East Side, North of 59th Street, and Outer Boroughs. More than half of the project depicts sites in lower Manhattan, more due to historical importance than artistic preference.

Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York, 1935-1939 was organized by the Museum of the City of New York. It is curated by Bonnie Yochelson, consulting curator at MCNY, who will lecture at NMWA on Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. Yochelson is also the author of Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, the Complete WPA Project (The New Press), the first comprehensive catalogue of MCNY’s Abbott collection, available in NMWA’s museum shop in hardcover ($60). 

Funding for the exhibition and the accompanying book has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Furthermore Division of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and Commerce Graphics, Ltd, Inc. Presentation at NMWA is generously supported by the Women’s Committee and the Members’ Exhibition Fund.

The exhibition will travel to der Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, March 26—June 24, 1999; Musée Carnavalet in Paris, Oct. 11, 1999—Jan. 16, 2000; and the Stockholms Stadsmuseum, Feb.—May 2000.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
www.nmwa.org

Updated 05.07.2019

Compact numérique Nikon Coolpix 600

Sortie en 1998, après le Coolpix 100 et le Coolpix 300, sorties en 1997, le compact Nikon Coolpix 600 est le troisième appareil photo numérique fabriqué par Nikon. Par rapport aux deux premiers appareils, le boitier du Coolpix 600 prend la même forme que la plupart des appareils photos argentiques de format APS.

La même année sort le Coolpix 900.

Liens vers d'autres messages connexes du blog : Anciens Compacts Nikon --- Nikon Coolpix 100 --- Nikon Coolpix 300 --- Nikon Coolpix 700 --- Nikon Coolpix 775 --- Nikon Coolpix 800 --- Nikon Coolpix 880 --- Nikon Coolpix 885 --- Nikon Coolpix 900 --- Nikon Coolpix 950 --- Nikon Coolpix 990 --- Nikon Coolpix 995 --- Nikon Coolpix 2000 --- Nikon Coolpix 2100 --- Nikon Coolpix 2500 --- Nikon Coolpix 3100 --- Nikon Coolpix 3500 --- Nikon Coolpix 3700 --- Nikon Coolpix 4300 --- Nikon Coolpix 4500 --- Nikon Coolpix 5000 --- Nikon Coolpix 5400 --- Nikon Coolpix 5700 --- Nikon Coolpix SQ

Trance: Hypnotic Video Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Trance, An Exhibition Of Hypnotic Contemporary Video

Although rapid, MTV-style editing may be the mode most commonly associated with contemporary video, a significant number of notable video artists are exploring more deliberate and slowly paced approaches to the medium. Trance: New Work in Video, an exhibition on view from October 6, 1998 through January 10, 1999, will feature seven works made by artists during the 1990s.

The videos in Trance have been edited using techniques such as slow motion and repetition to produce powerful and hypnotic effects. Projected directly onto a large screen, each video will be shown for a period of two weeks. Trance will be on view in the Video Gallery 179 on the first floor.

Featured artists include Pipilotti Rist, a Swiss artist whose video Pamela (1997) is a mesmerizing take on a day in the life of a flight attendant; Canadian Rodney Graham, whom we watch sleep in the back of a van as it drives through the city streets of Vancouver in Halcion Sleep (1994); New Yorker Seoungho Cho, a native of South Korea whose work, Identical Time (1997), presents images of a blighted subway journey to reflect upon urban isolation and dislocation; Philadelphia's Peter Rose, who explores subterranean rituals that celebrate the solstices and equinoxes of the sun in Understory (1997); Helen Mirra, a resident of Chicago, excerpts Jean Vigo's 1934 film L'Atalante in Third (1998), a spellbinding video in which time seems suspended; British artist Abigail Lane whose work Never Never Mind lyrically blends sound and image to capture a few pigeons in a seemingly "neurotic" moment; and American Bill Viola, who created The Passing (1991) as a personal response to birth and death in the family.

Trance has been organized by Kathleen Forde of the Department of 20th-Century Art.

Sony announces Mavica Printer FVP-1

(c) 1998, Sony Corporation - All rights reserved

Sony Corporation announces plans to launch a new digital color printer, called the Mavica Printer [FVP-1], that is equipped with a 3.5-inch FDD (Floppy Disk Drive). This printer allows users to print pictures taken by Sony's Digital Mavica digital still camera and stored on a 3.5-inch floppy disk.

Availability: Nov. 20, 1998 in Japan

Price: 64,800 yen

Initial Monthly Production: 2000 units

The Mavica Printer offers printing at 1,410,000 pixels (306 x 306 dpi), and it incorporates a 3.5-inch FDD as well as video input / S video input terminals. In addition to Sony's Digital Mavica, the printer can be used with video cameras and VCRs.

Main Features of the Sony Mavica Printer FVP-1

Prints directly from a floppy disk, by simply inserting the disk into the FDD

Resolution of 1,410,000 pixels (306 x 306 dpi)

Equipped with video input / S video input terminals for printing pictures taken from video material

Offers compatibility with Super Coat polished paper, which improves the color reproduction and life of the print

Includes image processing software, for creating original greeting cards, postcards, stickers and labels.

Operates with a wide variety of printing paper such as Super Coat (for high durability), pre-cut stickers, labels for floppy disks, etc.

Robert Bourdeau, Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto - Industrial Sites: United States and Europe (1990-1998)

Robert Bourdeau, Industrial Sites: United States and Europe (1990-1998) 
Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto
September 24 - October 24, 1998

Sixty-seven-year-old Robert Bourdeau, Canada's premier contemporary photographer whose professional career dates back 30 years, is internationally debut a large body of black and white photographs of inactive and abandoned industrial sites at the Jane Corkin Gallery in Toronto.

Jane Corkin Gallery will also bring the show, Robert Bourdeau to Paris Photo, one of the world's leading photography fairs, from November 20-23, 1998.

Taken during the past eight years throughout the United States, and most recently in rural France, Luxembourg and Germany, the series of photographs reconfirms the artist as a master of light, form and texture with his prints of architecture and landscape. As an architect who preferred to focus on large-format photography, he understands both his subject and his art like few others.

"Robert is historically significant as he honed his craft with photographic-guru Minor White beginning in 1959, and is a living artistic link to his more famous predecessor Paul Strand," says his dealer Jane Corkin, a pioneer and 20-year veteran of the sale of photography as fine art. "Like these masters, he has advanced the traditional landscape aesthetic by rejecting pictorialism to more importantly express universal emotion and meaning. His luminous images rely on precision, clarity and geometry that allow his inner spirituality to be conveyed through his subjects."

Following an annual routine of traveling in the summer to remote sites worldwide that feature both architecture and nature to make his photographs, and then printing them during the winter, Robert Bourdeau's subjects range from rain forests in Costa Rica to ancient Buddhist ruins in Sri Lanka. The new series includes landscapes and structures of coal mines, textile mills, quarries, grain elevators and steel plants.

"These industrial sites are places that possess a power in which I feel vulnerable, with a sense of ominous stillness and qualities that transcend the specificity of time," says Robert Bourdeau. "They are in a state of transition, transformation and possible transcendence where order and chaos are in perpetual altercation. I must emphasize that the series is not a documentary, but a photographic and inner quest."

Another important element of Robert Bourdeau's work is its ambiguity of foreground and background, made possible by the viewer's tendency to first focus on both the rich and subtle tonalities of the prints - always a combination of soft grays, pearlescent whites, and velvety blacks - rather than the entire subject. In his prints, nothing is out of focus as the original image would be viewed by human eyes. As such, subjects at different distances appear to merge and flatten.

Robert Bourdeau photographs with a large-format view camera on a tripod - a Kodak Master View. In printing, sometimes he makes a contact print by placing a negative, as large as 11 by 14 inches, directly on the paper, and sometimes he slightly enlarges an 8 by 10 inch negative. Waiting for the right moment to photograph once he has selected his image, he may spend hours before releasing the shutter - often at sunrise or sunset.

"Bourdeau is concerned with peeling back the surface to reveal the geometries of nature," says James Borcoman, curator emeritus of photographs at The National Gallery of Canada. "Ultimately, Bourdeau is searching for the landscape beyond the landscape, reaching for intimations of cosmic mysteries."

Robert Bourdeau himself remembers a comment that Minor White expressed to him in 1968 that also applies to his work, "If we can't expose our film, we'll expose our hearts."

Exclusively represented by Jane Corkin Gallery since 1980, Robert Bourdeau has also exhibited his work in significant solo shows: The Canadian Embassy in Tokyo (1997); The Painting School of Montmiral in Castelnau de Montmiral, France (1991); The National Gallery of Canada (1989-90); Winnepeg Art Gallery (1988-90 travelling exhibition); Art Gallery of Ontario (1981); International Center of Photography in New York (1980); and the National Film Board's Photo Gallery in Ottawa (1979). His work is also in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art and The Renaissance Society in Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Gallery of Canada; and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, among others.

Aside from a monograph, Robert Bourdeau (Mintmark Press, 1980), the artist's work is feature in other books including Children in Photography, 150 Years (Jane Corkin/G.M. Dault, 1990), Photographs: 150 Years (Jane Corkin Gallery, 1989), 12 Canadians, Contemporary Canadian Photography (McClelland & Stewart, 1980), The Photographers Choice (Addison, 1976).

After studying architecture at the University of Toronto, Robert Bourdeau's subsequent resolve to devote himself to a purely meditative photography was strengthened by his friendships with Minor White and Paul Strand, both of whom he acknowledges as profound influences on his artistic direction. Robert Bourdeau resides in Ottawa, the nation's capital; he was born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1931.

The Bourdeau exhibition at Jane Corkin Gallery - which begins to celebrate this fall its twentieth anniversary as a gallery devoted to photography - may be previewed during the Toronto International Film Festival by special arrangement.

JANE CORKIN GALLERY
179 John Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 1X4
www.janecorkin.com

Bernd Arnold, Büro für Fotos, Cologne

Bernd Arnold: Wahlkampfrituale

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

18 September - 17 October 1998

Wahlkampfrituale = "rituals of an election campaign"

The black & white reportage photographs by BERND ARNOLD (b. 1961) taken in summer 1998 are not only a documentation on the election campaign for the new chancellor in Germany (Bundestagswahl), but the most current documentation about this event.

The Bundestagswahl had not even been concluded upon the opening date of the exhibition. The photographs had not even been requested by any newspaper and were first time shown at the Büro für Fotos. The photojournalist Bernd Arnold has created a series of images kept free from any type of editing interference. The series is the third part of a trilogy. It is the third part of his research on the behavioural attitudes he has observed in different contexts of society.

In the first part he documented the catholic life scenery in Cologne (compiled in the book "Das Kölner Heil", 1997). The second part is a collection of TV set sceneries, "Ist die Erde eine Mattscheibe?" ("Is the Earth a Telly?").

The entire trilogy shows organisers - show masters - of public events and their audience. Both are conditioned by similar ways of conducts, which are very theatrical, close to what one can imagine as a "ritual". In his very specific and individual photographic style Bernd Arnold lights the precisely calculated gestures of the actors of these public manifestations and succeeds in reflection on the aspects of power and its fascination.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de

Polaroid at Photokina 1998

Polaroid at Photokina 1998

Polaroid opened its Photokina’98 exhibition in Cologne, Germany, highlighting new products for amateur photographers and new cyber-ready imaging techniques for professional photographers and business communicators. Polaroid’s "Live For The Moment" exhibition at Photokina ‘98 runs through September 21.

For the consumer, Polaroid is extending its "Live For The Moment" lifestyle message with the introduction of new and enhanced products for amateur photographers and special niche markets.

New Cameras

At Photokina 1998, Polaroid is introducing the world’s first single-use, totally recyclable instant camera that comes complete with ten ready-to-go instant pictures, measuring 4-3/8 x 2-1/2-inches (11.2 x 6.4cm).

The same film format in an economical reloadable camera with its own unique contemporary styling also makes its first European appearance at the Cologne photographic show. Launched earlier this year in Japan, the new Polaroid JoyCam "Hippaley" (Japanese for "pull out") compact camera, like Single-Use Instant , features manual film ejection and a go-anywhere configuration. The new JoyCam has rapidly become the camera of choice in its premiere market among trend-setting teens and young adults, along with the new Polaroid Xiao (from the Chinese for "small" and "smile"), the world’s smallest Polaroid camera. Also a major hit from Nippon Polaroid K.K., the Xiao camera produces mini Polaroid instant pictures measuring 1.4 x 1-inch (36 x 24mm) and has proven to be the ideal portrait camera with photos being taken, traded, worn on clothing and attached to notebooks and schoolbags. The Xiao camera accepts new 12-exposure Polaroid "Pocket Film." The new, very fun camera and film are scheduled for global introduction in 1999.

New Polaroid ColorShot: World’s Fastest Digital Photo Printer

Following its introduction in its advanced USB (Universal Serial Bus) version in Hanover, Germany, earlier this year, Polaroid’s new ColorShot digital color printer premieres at Photokina ‘98 in a parallel-port version designed for "legacy" computers.

Polaroid ColorShot is the world’s fastest (as quick as 25 seconds) digital color printer providing photo-quality instant color pictures on the desktop using new self-developing Polaroid ColorShot film or Polaroid Image film. The new ColorShot printer provides a true digital "darkroom" for rapid hard-copies of photos captured on the Internet, from e-mail, from a digital camera and from scanned images.

Accompanying the ColorShot debut is the premiere of Polaroid’s new "Connectibles" series of "DirectConnect" cables with integral control unit allowing transfer of digital images to the ColorShot digital printer without the intervention of a computer.

Polaroid is demonstrating its new software called DirectPhoto that permits inclusion of photos in e-mail without the recipient requiring special photo-receipt software and for incorporating photos in desktop publications.

Extreme Films

Also on view at Photokina were Polaroid’s "Extreme" films: a sharper, brighter, bolder, faster-appearing film for Polaroid 600-series cameras and larger-format Image cameras (known as Spectra cameras in the United States) called Extreme Gloss; a matte-surfaced film called Extreme Matte for Polaroid 600 instant photography permits after-exposure creative enhancement with pen, pencils and markers; and black-and-white Extreme Monochrome film for Polaroid 600-series cameras. In the United States and other select world markets, Polaroid’s new Extreme film generation is known as Platinum (Extreme Gloss), AlterImage (Extreme Matte) and Black-and-White (Extreme Monochrome) film.

Newly Styled Cameras for New Customers, New Markets

Complementing Polaroid’s new Extreme film line is the new Polaroid 600 Extreme instant camera, sporting the recently Euro-restyled architecture of the newest Polaroid 600 camera line.

Also on display is the Polaroid SpiceCam -- the European hit in instant photography over the past year and the first Polaroid camera to be named after a rock group -- the Spice Girls.

BabyCam Kit Polaroid is also launching its first-ever "BabyCam" kit in Europe, which features a Polaroid 600 instant camera, an instant visual diary/album for "your baby’s first moments shared in an instant," and distinctive new packaging. The BabyCam kit is designed and packaged to allow retailers, photographic outlets, specialty baby and maternity shops as well as mass merchandisers to promote via point-of-sale displays the once-in-a-lifetime benefits of taking Polaroid instant photographs of the new baby.

35mm Cameras

Making their world debut at Photokina ‘98 are three ultra-contemporary cameras in Polaroid’s new 900 series. They include the 900 FF (for Focus Free) and 900 AF (for Auto Focus) -- both featuring an extra-large viewfinder for more accurate photo composition. The new Polaroid 900-series of high-fashion, high-style 35mm cameras includes the economically priced new Polaroid 900 Zoom camera with a macro-lens setting for dramatic close-ups and a 2:1 (35mm-70mm) motorized zoom-lens. All three new Polaroid 35mm cameras are fully automatic in operation.

New Polaroid Professional Films

For professional photographers, Polaroid has expanded the formats available in its latest highly acclaimed professional film range to include a new 4 x 5-inch

- (9 x 12cm) instant color sheet film called Polacolor 79 and a new 8 x 10-inch

- (18 x 24cm) instant color film called Polacolor 879. The new films, making their world debut at Photokina ‘98, join with the range of Polaroid professional "peel-apart" instant films launched earlier including 10-exposure 3-1/4 x 4-1/4-inch

- (8.2 x 10.8cm) films for professional photographers and for "Studio Polaroid" franchisees, as well as a convenient 4 x 5-inch (9 x 12 cm) Polacolor pack film.

Products for Retailers and Studio Express Franchisees

Bringing the latest technology to instant document portraiture for retailers and Studio Express franchisees, Polaroid is unveiling its new Studio Polaroid 302 Camera System featuring a handheld video camera with built-in LCD "pose preview" screen for passport and other document portraits; the economical new Studio Polaroid 350 Video Document Picture System for Polaroid instant photographic prints; and the ultimate digital "solution" for portrait documents and other client photo services -- the new, high-tech Studio Polaroid 700 Digital Document Imaging System.

Polaroid DirectPhoto software is also "bundled" in a new Polaroid Digital DirectPhoto kit that includes a Polaroid 600 CloseUp camera and a 20-exposure twin-pack of new Polaroid NotePad film, a dedicated "business edition" film based on Polaroid’s latest instant film chemistry.

Because of the film’s high definition colors and edge sharpness, NotePad film is billed as "great for scanning," affording the rapid cyber-transfer of visual information over e-mail, via the Internet or for computer-transferring both visual and written data (NotePad film features note-book-like lines on the lower white border to facilitate on-location notations or written cutlines) in a single visual/written cyber-document.

Additional Polaroid business edition films designed for both office and home use are Polaroid’s new Write-On film affording the ability to add notes or highlight areas directly on the matte-surface print. Called a "writable & drawable" film, new Write-On film can also be scanned and transmitted via computer using Polaroid’s DirectPhoto software. Completing Polaroid’s new commercial film portfolio is new Copy & Fax film, a black-and-white film that produces already "screened" instant prints ideal for photocopying and faxing. A built-in 85-line screen within the new Copy & Fax 10-exposure film pack provides clear "newspaper-like" photo quality images when received by fax or used to add illustrations to photocopied documents.

Polaroid DirectPhoto Imaging Software, the Digital DirectPhoto kit and new NotePad, Write-On and Copy & Fax film highlight Polaroid’s new Digital Imaging Center designed for retailers eager to service the growing Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) market and for retailers now servicing customers with office supplies. Polaroid’s new compact Digital Imaging Center merchandiser makes its world premiere at Photokina ‘98 as a customizable self-serve merchandiser designed to expand to feature such other Polaroid business imaging products as scanners, printers, projectors and the new multi-format range of Polaroid photo-quality inkjet paper.

Polaroid Corporation

www.polaroid.com

Image and Society in the Weimar Republic

A Laboratory of Modernity: Image and Society in the Weimar Republic

Exhibition explores the visual culture of Germany during the Weimar period.

 

This is a special exhibition, organized to accompany Professor Eric Rentschler's fall course at Harvard in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Weimar Cinema: The Laboratory of Modernity, explores aspects of the dynamic, avant-garde visual culture of Germany between the two world wars, including many direct and indirect references to film.

Seven extraordinary vintage photographs by László Moholy-Nagy, lent by Robert and Gayle Greenhill of New York City, will anchor the exhibition, which will also include works by artists such as Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Otto Dix, George Grosz, August Sander, John Heartfield, Josef Albers, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Herbert Bayer, and others.

A Laboratory of Modernity has been selected by Tawney Becker, curatorial assistant of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Graham Bader, graduate student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard.

 

Although the short-lived and turbulent Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was a period at times troubled by political and economic instability, ultimately succumbing to the Nazi rise to power in Germany, new media and technologies emerged, fueling the vibrant cultural scene, particularly in the cities. The fall of the imperial regime and its institutions at the end of World War I infused the arts with new vitality. The founding of the Bauhaus, a progressive school for art, architecture, and design, in 1919 heralded a new era for art education, production, and industrial design. Modernism took hold, and avant-garde culture flourished even as the democracy and the economy were weak. It was a time of conflicts and contrasts: new artistic movements and trends struggled with broadening political and social conservatism. The 1920s saw the efflorescence of the photo-illustrated press, and the freshness of the new media-photojournalism, documentary film, broadcasting, and sound recording-in works from this period are felt to this day.

A Laboratory of Modernity is structured around three key themes that investigate use of materials and technique as well as content. The first section Montage: Abstraction and Politics features artistic explorations of the montage technique in collage, prints, and photographs. The flood of technologically recorded reality in both image and sound made suddenly available to the public triggered a splintering of vision seen in the various types of montage witnessed in literature and theater as well as the visual arts. Moholy's manipulation of light in his photograms and dadaist collages by Hannah Höch and Kurt Schwitters evoke the excitement of early experimentation, opening a path for later political application in Heartfield's scathing photomontages for the Berlin-based Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (workers' illustrated paper) and Lissitzky's dynamic use of the technique in his Catalogue for the Soviet Pavilion for the International Press Exhibition Cologne 1928.

The Modern Subject takes various forms in the second grouping, which is divided into sections focused on figures and types, artist portraits, and the mannequin or doll-like figure. Here exploration of the figure reveals the artists' varied approaches to process and subject-whether viewed through the sober lens of the "New Objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit) in realistic portraits by Rudolf Schlichter or Karl Hubbuch, in Otto Dix's intense self-portrait, or in the satirical caricature of Hitler as a barbarian by George Grosz. Beyond these prints and drawings, the photography in this section-penetrating documentary photographs of the German people as catalogued by August Sander and Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, the inspired manipulation of the image by Herbert Bayer and Moholy-Nagy, the unusual viewpoint in Werner Feist's Head (1929), and Joseph Albers' and Lyonel Feininger's investigations of the mannequin-exemplify the new range of approaches to the figure that the camera made possible.

The Weimar period is popularly identified with 1920s Berlin, and it was in the city where culture boomed. Artistic incentive to experiment and explore also drives the Urban Visions presented in the third group of the exhibition. Moholy-Nagy was one of the key members of the Bauhaus faculty and proponent of "productive creation," not reproduction; his ground-breaking Bauhaus Book No. 8: Painting, Photography, Film (1925) in which Paul Citroen's photomontage Metropolis I (1923) is reproduced, is included in the exhibition. Experiments with distorting and often dizzying angles and abstraction are captured in architectural views by Moholy-Nagy and his wife Lucia Schulz Moholy as well as in photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch and a student of the Bauhaus, Iwao Yamawaki. Grosz's socio-critical street scenes reflect his sharp political views whereas Herbert Bayer's mock-ups for a movie house and a multi-media building still carry the freshness of ideas of the brainstorming architect-designer.

A Laboratory of Modernity will provide the public with a first glimpse at several recent acquisitions by the Busch-Reisinger and the Fogg, including exciting photography from this period as well as a few rarely seen examples of work by women photographers. The exhibition is supported with funds from the John M. Rosenfield Teaching Exhibition Fund.

 

Related Events

Gallery talks at Busch-Reisinger Museum

November 7-8, with Christine Mehring, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History of Art & Architecture.
November 28-29, with Graham Bader, graduate student, Department of History of Art & Architecture.
December 5, with Sarah Miller, Werner and Maren Otto Curatorial Intern, Busch-Reisinger Museum
December 20, January 9, with Tawney Becker, curatorial assistant, Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Film Series - Weimar Cinema

September 22 through December 15, 1998
Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), directed by Robert Wiene

Destiny (1920), directed by Fritz Lang

Nosferatu (1922), directed by F.W. Murnau

The Last Laugh (1924), directed by F.W. Murnau

The Joyless Street (1925), directed by G.W. Pabst

Secrets of a Soul (1926), directed by G.W. Pabst

Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang

Berlin, Symphony of a Big City (1927), directed by Walter Ruttman

The White Hell of Pitz Palü (1929), directed by A. Franck and G.W. Pabst

M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang

The Blue Angel (1930), directed by Joseph von Sternberg

Mädchen in Uniform (1931), directed by Leontine Sagan

The Blue Light (1932), directed by Leni Riefenstahl

 

HARVARD ART MUSEUMS

Busch-Reisinger Museum from October 31, 1998 through January 10, 1999

Delacroix: The Late Work, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Delacroix: The Late Work
Philadelphia Museum of Art
September 15, 1998 - January 3, 1999

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the artist's birth, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Delacroix: The Late Work, an exhibition exploring the final years of the great French painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). Some 70 paintings and 40 works on paper by one of the most important artists of the 19th century, lent by museums and private collections throughout Europe and the Americas, are arranged by theme in six categories—animals, allegory and mythology, flowers and landscapes, literary illustrations, scenes of North Africa, and religion—that reveal the artist's immense achievement during the last 15 years of his life. 

Delacroix: The Late Work sheds new light on this monumental figure in the history of art, whom the renowned French poet Charles Baudelaire described in 1845 as "the most original painter of ancient or modern times." Considered the last "Old Master," Delacroix consciously placed himself in the painterly tradition of Veronese, Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt, yet he was also the driving force in the French Romantic Movement, a radical new approach to art developed in Paris in the early decades of the 1800s. Delacroix formed the link between the traditions of the past and the modern movements, ultimately having a profound influence upon the Impressionists, particularly Renoir and Cézanne, as well as such 20th-century masters as Picasso and Matisse. Cézanne said that Delacroix had "the greatest palette of France, and no one beneath our skies possessed to a greater extent the vibration of color. We all paint through him."

Eugène Delacroix was a remarkably prolific artist, creating in his lifetime over 850 paintings and more than 2000 watercolors and drawings. This exhibition focuses on the works of the mature artist, from the year 1848 to his death in 1863 at the age of 65. These last years of his life were a time of profound reflection for Delacroix, steeped in nostalgia and swept by deep, erotically charged, emotions. Among the great admirers of Delacroix's talent was the American novelist Henry James, who in 1872 remarked that the painter's "imaginative impulse begins where that of most painters ends."

The exhibition features a selection of Eugène Delacroix's late representations of North Africa, a place where the artist had spent several months in 1832. It was a visit that would have a profound effect on the light, color, and imagery of his painting for the rest of his life. These subjects, reconsidered some 30 years after his actual experience, are a vivid testimony to his love of North Africa and its hold on his imagination. Delacroix will conclude with an exploration of the artist's representations of religious subjects. It is one of the great paradoxes of modern art history that Delacroix, a worldly Parisian who confessed skepticism of any organized religion, should be the greatest religious painter of the 19th century. This exhibition presents a unique opportunity to examine the range and power Delacroix's biblical subjects, such as The Good Samaritan (c. 1850; Waterhouse Collection), which were executed with a deep awareness of similar works by such masters as Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, and Veronese, as well as the sequence of closely related compositions of Christ on the Sea of Galilee that also look forward to Monet's famous series paintings.

Delacroix: The Late Work presents paintings and works on paper that are multi-faceted and introspective, suffused by an increasingly complex and passionate use of color as well as a renewed spiritual intensity. Soon after the artist's death, Théophile Silvestre spoke to these same qualities in the final years of the artist's life: "Delacroix died, almost smiling...a painter of great genius, who had the sun in his head and storms in his heart, who for forty years played the entire keyboard of human emotion, and whose grandiose, terrible, and delicate brushes passed from saints to warriors, from warriors to lovers, from lovers to tigers and from tigers to flowers."

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated, 350-page catalogue, with essays on subjects including Delacroix's technique, how the artist was viewed by his contemporaries, and issues of continuity and variation in his work.

The exhibition has been organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in Paris. The curators of the exhibition are Joseph J. Rishel, Senior Curator of European Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Arlette Sérullaz, Curator of Prints at the Musée du Louvre and Director of the Musée Delacroix; and Vincente Pomarède, Chief Curator of Paintings at the Musée du Louvre. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the exhibition's only venue in North America.

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
www.philamuseum.org

Peter Saul: Recent Drawing, Nolan Eckman Gallery, NYC

Peter Saul: Recent Drawing
Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York
September 17 – October 17, 1998

Peter Saul likens his art to a cold shower or unwelcome interrogation. Clearly, what the artist has in mind is a confrontation. Notwithstanding, the work that he extends to us as provocation is revealing and elemental, highly personal, and fully imbued with humor and charm (a pie in the face, perhaps?).

Peter Saul’s bright colors and lunatic subjects are also litmus tests for the soul; fearlessly visceral, incendiary, and downright disturbing. Define the opposite of political correctness and you will have found Peter Saul. He will accept any reaction but indifference. He speaks in the language of everyday people, uses familiar images and trusts unfailingly in our judgment and humanity.

Over the years, Peter Saul has methodically cut and slashed his way through much of American culture. He has grappled with Vietnam, Angela Davis, the Women’s Movement, racism, Ronald Regan, the male ego, and (recently) Viagra. Through political and topical commentary, Saul partakes of the artistic tradition of social criticism and satire, as embodied by Rabelais, Hogarth, Gross, and Dix.

Peter Saul was born in 1934 in San Francisco. As a young man, he moved between Holland, Paris, and Rome before returning to California in 1964. He resided in Austin, Texas since 1981, and continues to exhibit in this country and internationally. This is his first exhibition at Nolan/Eckman.

NOLAN/ECKMAN GALLERY
560 Broadway, New York, NY 10012
www.nolaneckman.com

Canon Speedlite 550EX Flash and Wireless Transmitter ST-E2 specifications

Canon Speedlite 550EX is the main component of a new flash system designed together with the EOS-3 SLR camera. It provides full compatibility with the new area AF technology employed by the EOS-3 and refined E-TTL autoflash for improved performance. Other main features include a maximum Guide Number of 180 (ISO 100, ft.), an AF-assist beam which links to the EOS-3's 45-point area AF, FP Flash (high speed sync), FE lock (a flash version of AE lock), and FEB (Flash Exposure Bracketing). The Speedlite 550EX also incorporates a built-in wireless transmitter, which can control other Speedlite 550EX units set up as slave units. Flash coverage is set automatically from 24mm to 105mm, and a wide-angle panel extends the coverage to 17mm. The new Speedlite runs on 4 AA-size batteries, and can also be used with optional external power supplies such as Compact Battery Pack E and Transistor Pack E. Recycling times are similar to those experienced with the Speedlite 540EZ. Speedlite 550EX is compatible with all EOS models.

The most impressive feature of the 550EX, however, is its ability to support a wireless multiple flash system which allows photographers to set up unlimited numbers of additional Speedlite 550EX flashes as slave units while controlling their flash output from the camera position. Even when using multiple Speedlites, photographers can utilize all of the 550EX's advanced features including E-TTL, FP flash, FE lock and Flash Exposure Bracketing (FEB).

All 550EX controls are located on the rear of the unit, including a Master/Slave switch, indicating whether the flash will be used as a Master (on the camera's hot shoe) or as a remote Slave. The remote flash system permits photographers to set up as many as three groups (designated A, B or C) of 550EX Speedlites set up as slave units with virtually unlimited numbers of flash units possible within each group.

When using the EOS-3 with multiple Speedlite 550EX flash units, or when shooting with E-TTL wireless autoflash using the Speedlite 550EX in conjunction with the wireless Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2, the output ratio of two different slave groups can be set on the master unit. The A:B flash ratio can be set to any of thirteen half-step increments ranging from 8:1 to 1:8. Flash exposure compensation for slave group C can be set on the master unit in 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments up to +/- 3 stops. This is ideal for background or accent lighting when shooting portraits in a studio setting, for example. Power output for each Slave unit can be controlled directly from the Master flash or Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2, eliminating the need to adjust each Slave unit from its remote location. In addition, the system offers a "modeling lamp" function which gives photographers a good idea of how lighting will fall on the subject. The wireless remote flash system has a range of approximately 35 feet when used outdoors and approximately 50 feet indoors. Each slave unit, when signalled by a test flash from the Master Unit, indicates its readiness in ascending order according to its assigned group, giving photographers the ability to verify that the slave units are within range and functioning properly. An LED indicator on the back of the Master Unit acts as a flash exposure confirmation signal, and is fully effective even in wireless multiple flash setups.

Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2

Canon's wireless Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2 is ideal for use by photographers who do not need to have any light source emanating directly from the camera position, but wish to utilize the system's remote flash capabilities. Mounted on the hot shoe of the camera, the wireless transmitter serves as the Master, controlling the functions of up to two groups of 550EX Slave units. Like the 550EX, the ST-E2 also has a built-in AF-assist beam which is linked to the EOS-3's area AF.

The new Canon Speedlite 550EX flash and Wireless Transmitter ST-E2 will be available in USA at Canon authorized camera dealers in early December.

Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition: Reflections in a Looking Glass at Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin

Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
September 14 - December 11, 1998

I'd give all the wealth that years have piled
The slow result of Life's decay
To be once more a little child
For one bright, summer-day
--Lewis Carroll

Jabberwocky, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Snark, and the Boojum. Perhaps no greater menagerie of eccentric cultural icons has ever been known. To honor the life of the reserved man who gave the world these unforgettable characters, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center presents "Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition."

Commemorating the 100-year anniversary of Lewis Carroll's death, "Reflections in a Looking Glass" celebrates the creative genius of the man who authored Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, two of the greatest children's stories ever penned. Today, nearly 130 years since they were first published, the two have yet to go out of print, have been translated into over 70 languages, and, in addition to the Bible and works by Shakespeare, are the most quoted books in the Western world. Yet while known to the world for his writing, the man born Charles L. Dodgson was also an accomplished photographer, mathematician, inventor of numerous games and puzzles, and an Oxford Don.

Produced by a unique collaboration of curators from a wide-range of disciplines, "Reflections in a Looking Glass" explores the breadth of Lewis Carroll's life and work, presenting a rare collection of original manuscripts, photographs, drawings, games, and letters. Notably, the exhibition displays precious treasures such as The Rectory Magazine, an illustrated journal created by Lewis Carroll and his siblings; the 1865 India Alice; photographs of Alice Liddell, the true-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's famed character; a board game Carroll invented in 1887; and rare translations of the author's books, including one by Vladimir Nabokov.

While the exhibit's curators originally sought to independently present the varied aspects of Lewis Carroll's career, they soon discovered that their subjects seemingly disparate passions and pursuits were well-integrated throughout his life and work. This awareness informed the exhibition's design, leading to a final presentation that adeptly explores the relationship between Carroll's personal life and his creative opus. "His work as a teacher and mathematician, his hobby of photography, his soaring imagination, his fascination with words, and his deeply religious cast of mind, all were brought to bear in his friendships with children, the true 'family' of his life," notes co-curator Sally Leach.

Indeed Lewis Carroll delighted in creating story photography by dressing up child subjects in costume or placing them in history tableaux, revealing a love for fanciful play which so endeared him to his young friends. This pastime, and the sometimes provocative photos it produced, also engendered endless speculation on the full extent of Carroll's relationship with his young friends. Yet though perhaps disturbing to a contemporary audience, Morton N. Cohen, a preeminent Carroll scholar, asserts that Carroll "never transgressed propriety or violated innocence."

The exhibit will be held in the Leeds Gallery of the Flawn Academic Center on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. Several related activities will complement "Reflections in a Looking Glass." On October 8, Professor Cohen speaks on Lewis Carroll's life; particularly his friendships with children. On Sunday, October 11, in conjunction with Austin's Museum Day, the Ransom Center hosts a "Mad Hatter's Tea-Party"--an afternoon of music, story-telling, puzzles, games, and other entertainment for children and their adult friends. Roy Flukinger, the Ransom Center's senior curator of photography, lectures on Lewis Carroll's accomplished photography on October 22. In addition, building on the popularity of Lewis Carroll's books, the Ransom Center worked with educational consultants to develop classroom materials for K-12 teachers, conducting an educational workshop to showcase these materials on July 22, 1998.

A catalogue devoted to Lewis Carroll's photography (published by Aperture and including many of the Ransom Center's holdings) will be for sale during the exhibition. 

After closing in Austin, "Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition" will tour four sites in New York and California.

HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER
The University of Texas at Austin
www.hrc.utexas.edu

Bernard Frize, De Pont foundation for contemporary art, Tilburg

Bernard Frize: Recent paintings
De Pont foundation for contemporary art, Tilburg
5 september 1998 - 3 january 1999

De Pont presents the first solo presentation in the Netherlands of the work of the French painter Bernard Frize (Paris, 1949). The exhibition, organized in close cooperation with the artist, includes about thirty recent paintings as well as a number of older works, and gives a clear view of the diversity of Bernard Frize's method.

In France, where painting is considered by many to be an outmoded medium, Bernard Frize is one of the few painters. His paintings are the product of a methodical approach. `I opt for a way of working,' he maintains, `and the painting is simply a result of that.' In spite of his pragmatic approach, Bernard Frize's paintings are extremely diverse, and often a pleasure to the eye. Particularly striking are their luminous colors. These are, incidentally, chosen at random, because Bernard Frize displays no aesthetic preference, in this regard also. By adding resin to the paint he creates a smooth, silky texture. This lends an air of artificiality to the paintings, suggesting that they haven't been made by human hands.

Bernard Frize's works develop generally as a series, based on a certain technique or procedure. Consequently there is no stylistic coherence in the ordinary sense. And even when the paintings have been made in the same or in a similar way, they can appear to be quite different. For example, Avril (1991), an eleven-part work included in the exhibition and presenting a shifting panorama of colors, has more in common with Suite Segond SF N5 (1980), a small painting composed of brightly colored round shapes, than one might imagine at first glance.

For the latter work, part of the De Pont Collection, Bernard Frize removed the dried-up surface layers from several cans of paint, and then applied these next to and on top of each other until the canvas was completely covered. Avril is also realized with dried-up paintskins, in this case originating from a rectangular wooden crate in which Bernard Frize had poured a variety of colors. The paints blended into each other while he waited eleven times until a layer of sufficient thickness had formed. The shading between the colors of the eleven parts therefore also has a cinematic quality. The images follow one another, with each image literally being an exposure of the situation at a given moment.

A number of paintings in the exhibition are covered with a thin veil of color traces that blend into each other. For these works Bernard Frize tied several brushes together. This enabled him to continually apply paint to the whole canvas because of the compounded width. And after each brush had been supplied with its own color, he spread the thin paint in one motion across the canvas. In other works he lets brushes, each dipped in a separate color, depart, for instance, from points left on the canvas. They lead to a line in the middle where the paint merges. The strokes then continue to the right-hand side of the canvas, while having taken on a different color in the meantime.

Bernard Frize likes simplicity. In his view, this is the hallmark of a good work. For two decades, he has tried countless procedures, followed many methods which can produce a painting. The obvious logic of his works is, however, sometimes curiously or not totally sound, and the process of painting can never be entirely controlled. Yet these resulting anomalies and surprises are exactly what makes one want to view his paintings again and again.

A catalogue with a text by Dominic van den Boogerd accompanies the exhibition.

DE PONT FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Wilhelminapark 1, Tilburg
www.depont.nl

Hasselblad XPan Dual-format Camera

US Launch of Hasselblad XPan Dual-format Camera

Hasselblad is now expanding its world of imaging by opening the door to a 35 mm film based dual-format camera - the Hasselblad XPan. This new camera concept can be seen as a bridge between the medium format and the 35 mm format, and is a natural development of the Hasselblad camera system, enabling it to cover an even broader spectrum of photographic needs. 

The Hasselbad XPan appeals to a wide variety of photographers involved in advertising, architectural, nature photography, and beyond. In addition, its use in illustrative and art photography can be advantageous as the full panorama format can provide an additional creative input into image making. 

The Hasselblad XPan incorporates a dual-format facility providing a full panorama 24x65 mm format as well as a conventional 24x36 mm format on the same film. This innovative camera offers all the convenience and advantages of the 35 mm format, but provides the option to rapidly switch to the full panorama format, without changing film. It becomes, therefore, the first and only dual-format camera on the market that expands the format instead of masking it, ensuring that every exposure utilizes the full area of the film. In addition, the 65 mm width of the full panorama images is similar to the medium format, ensuring that the Hasselblad XPan will always give you superb image quality. 

The Hasselblad XPan is a feature-packed and highly professional rangefinder type camera that combines the user-friendliness of modern technology with Hasselblad quality. The camera body is compact and ergonomically designed. It is a robust aluminium and titanium construction partly clad with synthetic rubber and built to withstand many years of hard work - a camera suitable for the true professional photographer as well as for the discerning amateur. 

The full panorama format is made possible by the large image circles of the interchangeable 5.6/30 mm, 4/45 mm and 4/90 mm lenses, which have been specially designed for the Hasselblad XPan. These light and extremely compact "medium format" lenses are characterized by razor-sharp image quality and excellent coverage. Multicoating of the glass elements ensures top quality results, exhibiting brilliant contrast and full tonal scale. The focusing ring with its smooth action ensures quick and accurate focusing, and the lenses are stylishly finished in black, in tune with the rest of the camera. 

Viewing and focusing are by way of a bright-frame viewfinder and coupled rangefinder. Viewfinder information is adjusted automatically according to the focal length of lens as well as an automatic parallax adjustment for close shots. No accessories or manual adjustments are necessary, so changing lenses is rapid and trouble-free. 

Film loading is automatic and convenient. After being inserted, the film is automatically withdrawn from the cassette. The camera has a DX code sensor with manual override for maximum control. As the film is exposed, it is transported back into the cassette, frame-by-frame. This valuable feature cleverly protects the exposed section of the film, even if the camera is opened by accident. 

The TTL exposure meter supplies a centre-weighted average reading to provide an automatic aperture-priority facility with manual override.The camera can be used in single or continuous exposure mode. In continuous mode the frame rate is 3 frames/s with 24x36 format and 2 frames/s with 24x65 format. Using the camera in its auto-bracketing mode provides three consecutive exposures in ± 0.5 or ±1- step differences. 

The main LCD display, located on the camera back, presents all necessary information including film speed, shutter speed and battery status. Another LCD provides exposure counter information, with further information being shown in the viewfinder. 

The Hasselblad XPan camera was introduced in July 1998. The camera was introduced to the American press at a Press conference in New York on August 19, 1998. Deliveries will commence in September 1998. 

Update:

In August 1999 Hasselblad XPan received the prestigious EISA award as the European Professional Camera of the Year 1999-2000. The award citation was as follows: 

"In principle, Hasselblad XPan is two cameras in one. Firstly, it is a remarkably slender panoramic camera that delivers sharp 24x65 mm extended format images on 35 mm format film. On the same roll of film, it is also possible to take (24x36 mm) regular format pictures. This makes XPan a highly versatile camera, being the ideal choice for landscape, while providing unique capabilities for documentary, fashion and commercial photography in an unusual image format." 

Hasselblad USA, Inc.

10 Madison Road
Fairfield, NJ 07004

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