31/10/98

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

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

24/10/98

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

18/10/98

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

16/10/98

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

01/10/98

Trance: Hypnotic Video Art


Philadelphia Arts
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.