30/06/00

Visatec Solo Kit 308 Photo Studio Flash

The kit contents can be individually customised to the photographer's needs, and expanded at any time. It is no bigger than a travel bag. The Visatec SOLO Kit 308 is based on the Visatec SOLO 800 B. Compare to the Solo Kits 108 and 208, the 308 is a more comprehensive for bigger jobs. It comprises three compact units with numerous accessories.
The most impressive features of the Visatec SOLO 800 B are its light output, stepless 3 f-stops output range, proportional halogen modelling light and built-in photocell. The patented bayonet allows reflectors to be quickly interchanged and rotated a full 360°; it will accept any of the wide assortment of Visatec light shapers.
The case keeps everything nicely organized, protects its valuable contents from damage and offers a studio or location flash system that is always ready for action.
Photo (c) Visatec / Bron Elektronik AG - Tous droits réservés - http://www.bron.ch/
Other posts about Visatec products:

Boris Mikhailov: Hasselblad Award 2000

Boris Mikhailov receives the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, 2000

The Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation has selected Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, who lives in both Charkov and Berlin, as the winner of the 2000 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. The prize, consisting of SEK 500,000 and a gold medal, will be awarded at a ceremony in Göteborg, Sweden, November 25th, 2000. A new exhibition of Boris Mikhailov´s work, curated and organized by the Hasselblad Center, will be opened in conjunction with the ceremony.

The Foundation’s decision to award the 2000 prize to Boris Mikhailov was motivated by the belief that:
"Boris Mikhailov is unquestionably the leading photographer with a "Soviet background" today. In recent years, his exhibits and books have attracted enormous international attention. At this point in his over thirty year long career, Boris Mikhailov continues to develop his great theme - his narrative of the wreck of the Soviet utopia. Boris Mikhailov's stance is critical; his work is consistently humanist in approach, with strong emotional elements and a sense of humor that audiences in both East and West have found moving. Despite working under extremely difficult circumstances, he has always succeeded in creating deeply engaging and exciting photographic art".
The Jury for the 2000 Award, which submitted the proposal to the Board of Directors of the Foundation, consisted of: Jan Kaila, (chairman) photographer, Helsinki, Finland; Hasse Persson, photographer, Hyssna, Sweden; Joan Fontcuberta, photographer and editor of Photovision, Barcelona, Spain and Dr. Margarita Tupitsyn, Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, New York, USA.

Boris Mikhailov was born in 1938, in Charkov, Ukraine. He is based in Charkov and Berlin. He trained as a technical engineer. At the age of 28 he began to work with photography, and was soon sacked from the factory where he worked, when the KGB discovered nude photos he had taken of his wife. Thus began his full-time career as a photographer.

Boris Mikhailov is unquestionably the most outstanding photographer of Soviet origin. During his over-thirty-year career, he has produced works which are already considered as classics. At the same time, he has continued to develop, rather than remaining as a classical artist he has gone on to work in radical and often provocative ways. In 1998 he organized an exhibition entitled "Case History", with photographs reflecting daily life. A book entitled Case History was also published in 1999. In it, he returned photography to square one, with his simple, straightforward pictures of human beings in states we turn away from and would prefer to ignore, but which, in the name of our fellow human beings, we should acknowledge as long as they exist.

Mikhailov habitually works in extended series, often quite different from each another in form. This makes it difficult to define his photographic style, his aesthetics. However, he is always consistent with regard to the function of photography as medium. It is his view that the medium must be used to help the viewer understand more about the relationship between individuals and society.

Boris Mikhailov's production has always been astonishing and eclectic. Many of his early works such as the "Private Series" (from the late 1960s), the "Red Series" (1968-75), and "Luriki" (1971-85) are playful in attitude. The photos in "The Private Series" resemble a photo album, showing people in their own rooms, women exercising, people dancing and partying; situations foreign to Soviet iconography. In the "Red Series", Mikhailov photographed everyday situations, in a snapshot style, drawing the viewer's attention to the red objects which inevitably appear in them. In this way, he rearranges the Soviet propaganda image. "Luriki" consists of an entire archive of photos which Mikhailov obtained in the 1970s when he was working for a "commercial" photographer, retouching and coloring old photographs.

In 1984, Mikhailov initiated a remarkable project: gluing small black-and-white photos of everyday occurrences in Charkov onto the back of his uncle's unfinished lecture notes. Later, he added various kinds of handwritten text fragments to the photographs. The project was published in 1998, as an elegant art book entitled Unfinished Dissertation. In the 1980s, Mikhailov also experimented with a number of narrative ideas. In 1986, he photographed an almost film-like series entitled "Salt Lake", in which he portrayed people swimming in salt water -- possibly polluted, possibly clean -- surrounded by gigantic waste pipes in a decaying industrial site.

Perestroika and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union brought about dramatic changes, even for photographers and artists. "The new freedom" was paradoxical for Boris Mikhailov, bringing him personal artistic and also financial success, but at the same time implying serious collective destruction. (According to Mikhailov, the post Soviet Union is a far greater economic disaster than anyone in the West can imagine). Mikhailov’s series "By the Ground" (1991) and "At Dusk" (1993) describe life on the new, contemporary, capitalistic Ukrainian streets. The brown toning and the title "By the Ground" both allude to Russia under the Tzar as portrayed by Maxim Gorky, where people lived in a constant struggle for a decent life. The blue toning in "At Dusk" refers, in turn, to a state of war; here Mikhailov has portrayed the sheer struggle for survival.

In the parodic series "I am not I" (1992), Mikhailov posed for the camera nude and surrounded by various male attributes (such as swords and dildos), in scenery reminiscent of great nineteenth century "salon" art.

In the new, bewildering social reality, Mikhailov appears to ask himself and his colleagues: "Why do we create images, and for whom?"

ERNA AND VICTOR HASSELBLAD FOUNDATION
Ekmansgatan 8 - 412 56 Göteborg

Ben Nicholson, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London - Major Works

Ben Nicholson : Major Works
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
29 June - 29 July 2000

To coincide with the release of the first, very revealing, biography on Ben Nicholson written by Sarah Jane Checkland, the Bernard Jacobson Gallery is showing a selection of important works from throughout the career of arguably the most important British abstract artist.The exhibition includes many works unseen in Britain for many years, rare works from the early 30’s and an important White Relief from the later 30’s.

Ben Nicholson was at the very centre of the international avant-garde of the 1930’s and 1940’s. His work at the cutting edge of abstraction. At this time he was working very closely with Naum Gabo and Piet Mondrian and it was Ben Nicholson who persuaded Piet Mondrian to come and live in London when things were looking bad in Europe.

From the forties onwards his career went from strength to strength. He represented Britain in the Venice and Sao Paolo biennales. His work was collected by every major museum in the world. He also became an influential figure on the British art establishment encouraging the, very reluctant, Tate’s purchase of abstract works.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk

29/06/00

Visatec Solo Kit 208 Photo Studio Flash

The Visatec Solo Kit 208 contents can be individually customised to the photographer's needs, and expanded at any time. The kit is no bigger than a travel bag. It is based on the Visatec SOLO 800 B and contains two flash units with appropriate accessories.
The most impressive features of the Visatec SOLO 800 B are its light output, stepless 3 f-stops output range, proportional halogen modelling light and built-in photocell. The patented bayonet allows reflectors to be quickly interchanged and rotated a full 360°; it will accept any of the wide assortment of Visatec light shapers.
The case keeps everything nicely organized, protects its valuable contents from damage and offers a studio or location flash system that is always ready for action.
Photo (c) Visatec / Bron Electronik AG - Tous droits réservés - www.bron.ch

Visatec Solo Kit 108 Photo Studio Light

The Swiss lighting specialist has assembled a practical kit designed for cost-conscious photographers using medium-format and 35 mm cameras. The handy travel bag contains one Visatec SOLO 800 B compact flash unit (including flash tube, 300 W modelling light, protecting glass and protection cap) along with a standard reflector, umbrella reflector, white umbrella and 5 m synchronous cable.
The most impressive features of the Visatec SOLO 800 B are its light output, stepless 3 f-stops output range, proportional halogen modelling light and built-in photocell. The patented bayonet allows reflectors to be quickly interchanged and rotated a full 360°; it will accept any of the wide assortment of Visatec light shapers.
The dimensions of the case are just 51x20x36 cm (outside dimensions), and it weighs only 6,5 kg. The kit can therefore be taken onto any airliner as cabin baggage, or carried on the luggage rack of a bike.
Photo (c) Visatec / Bron Electronik AG - Tous droits réservés - http://www.bron.ch/

Regard derriere l ecran de la TV

Rubrique Magazines et Revues > Dans les revues de la Documentation française
La Documentation française publie dans sa collection Les Etudes de La Documentation française un ouvrage intitulé Télévision de pénurie, télévision d'abondance. Des origines à Internet de Rémy Le Champion et Benoît Danard avec une préface d'Hervé Bourges. La télévision est entrée dans tous les foyers. Cependant, que connaît-on d'elle aujourd'hui au-delà des apparences ? Car si le secteur est devenu une véritable industrie, l'économie de l'audiovisuel s'avère bien plus complexe et subtile qu'il n'y paraît. Rémy Le Champion et Benoît Danard visent à faire mieux comprendre les règles et les mécanismes de fonctionnement de ce qui se passe derrière l'écran. Ils présentent l'évolution rapide du secteur, ses enjeux, ses perspectives, à travers notamment ses rapports avec l'État - la forte croissance de ce marché ayant surtout bénéficié aux acteurs privés. Leur analyse, originale et didactique, rassemble des données multiples, aussi bien sur les télévisions généralistes publiques ou privées que sur les chaînes thématiques, la télévision à péage, le câble, le satellite et la télévision numérique. Hier, la télévision publique n'offrait que quelques heures quotidiennes de programmes. Aujourd'hui, les images se bousculent sur les écrans. Ce n'est qu'un début. Si la télévision de pénurie n'a plus cours, la véritable télévision d'abondance reste encore à venir. La question est à présent de savoir selon quelles règles les télévisions de service public et les télévisions privées peuvent coexister dans un monde où les révolutions technologiques s'accélèrent et la concurrence s'accentue. Rémy Le Champion, professeur associé à l'Université Paris II-IMAC, est producteur et animateur d'un magazine hebdomadaire sur les nouvelles technologies de l'information, diffusé par Canal-Web. Il exerce des fonctions d'expert auprès de la Commission européenne. Benoît Danard, chef du service des études, des statistiques et de la prospective du Centre national de la cinématographie, est chargé d'enseignement en économie des médias à l'Université de Paris IX-Dauphine et ancien responsable des analyses économiques du Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel. Télévision de pénurie, télévision d'abondance Des origines à Internet Rémy Le Champion et Benoît Danard La Documentation française
Collection Les études de la Documentation française 224 pages, 19 €

25/06/00

Van Gogh, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Van Gogh: Face to Face
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
July 2 - September 24, 2000

Van Gogh: Face to Face, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the first comprehensive museum exhibition devoted to the full range of Vincent van Gogh’s achievements in portraiture.  Featuring approximately 80 drawings and paintings generously lent from private collections and museums around the world, Van Gogh: Face to Face breaks new ground, revealing the artist’s fascination with the human form.  The exhibition, which is on view in the Museum’s Gund Gallery, is organized chronologically, beginning with early drawings (many of which have never been on view in the United States) of the urban poor and peasants of van Gogh’s native Netherlands.  Following van Gogh from the Netherlands to France, Van Gogh: Face to Face explores the artist’s transformation as he is exposed to the Parisian avant-garde, adopting impressionist and pointillist techniques, and finally as he surpasses these movements, bringing his work to the brink of modern art. 

Born in 1853 in Groot-Zundert, the Netherlands, the son of a Dutch Reformed pastor, van Gogh made his first foray into the art world in his youth, when he served as a clerk in art galleries initially in the Hague, then in London and Paris. In 1877, he began theological studies in Amsterdam and from1879-80, van Gogh served as an evangelist to oppressed miners in the Borinage coal-mining region of Belgium.  It was not until 1880 that van Gogh decided to abandon his religious endeavors and devote himself to becoming an artist.

The Hague, January 1882 – 1883

Van Gogh moved to The Hague, the country’s most dynamic artistic center, in 1882.  Although the artist was given a monthly stipend from his brother, Theo, he could not afford to hire professional models.  This gallery captures the models van Gogh could employ: aged men known as old pensioners or “orphan men” and other urban poor.  In drawings such as Orphan Man with Top Hat, 1882 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and The Wounded Veteran, 1882 (Fogg Art Museums, Cambridge), van Gogh conveys the inherent dignity of these unfortunate men.

While living in The Hague, van Gogh became friendly with Clasina Hoornik, called Sien, a poor seamstress and onetime prostitute. Sien and her children moved in with the artist and van Gogh began depicting her, her mother, her younger sister and her children in his drawings.  These moving works, such as Sien with Cigar Sitting on the Floor near Stove, 1882 (Kröller- Müller Museum, Otterlo) and Young Girl in an Apron, 1883 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), capture the sadness and emotional poverty of the sitters.  They occupy a central place in the collection of somber character studies van Gogh drew during this period.

Nuenen, 1883 – 1885

During his time in Nuenen, van Gogh committed himself to the belief that peasants working the land were the true subjects of modern art, an attitude embodied in the work of Jean-François Millet (1814 – 1875). Van Gogh produced many works with this theme in mind including dark, complex renderings such as Peasant Woman with Red Bonnet, 1885 ( Van Gogh Museum) and Head of a Peasant, 1884 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). Eventually these character likenesses led to van Gogh’s first masterpiece, the monumental The Potato Eaters (1885), which remains on view in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  After receiving negative criticism of this painting, the artist decided to move again and after a few months in Antwerp, he moved to Paris, never to return to his native country.

Paris, March 1886 – February 1888

Exposure to the avant-garde artists in Paris such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, transformed van Gogh’s attitude toward color.  He abandoned the browns and grays of his Dutch paintings and adopted the Impressionist palette of bright, clear colors.  Following their example, he also applied paint using impressionist and pointillist techniques.  A stunning example of the new energy and vibrancy in his work is captured in Self-Portrait, 1887 (The Art Institute of Chicago), which demonstrates his interest in using small, dotted brushstrokes like his contemporaries Seurat and Paul Signac. Throughout much of his career, van Gogh could not afford to hire models and instead painted his own image many times.  In Boston, Van Gogh: Face to Face includes seven impressive self-portraits of the artist, the largest number of self-portraits on view during the exhibition’s tour.

Arles, February 1888 – 1889

The excitement and intensity of the Parisian art scene proved too much for van Gogh, so he moved to the more tranquil setting of Arles in the heart of Provence. The strong light and clear skies of the region inspired the artist.  And, just as Paris had freed him of using earth tones, his experience in Arles unlocked his passion for intense color.  Paintings such as Italian Woman 1887-88? (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and The Zouave, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) incorporate tones of vivid red, pink, yellow, violet and green and mirror van Gogh’s enthusiasm for his new home. 

In Arles, van Gogh became friendly with the postman Joseph Roulin and his wife Augustine.  The artist painted them and their three children more frequently than any sitters other than himself.  In the Boston viewing of Van Gogh: Face to Face, there are 17 Roulin portraits¾the greatest number of Roulin portraits ever on view in an exhibition¾including seven versions of The Postman Joseph Roulin.  Representing the Roulin family became one of van Gogh’s most ambitious projects; the artist wrote to his brother Theo, “But I have made portraits of a whole family…if I manage to do this whole family better still, at least I shall have done something to my liking and something individual.”  Of all the people he painted, van Gogh expressed the greatest enthusiasm for Joseph Roulin, who continued to visit the artist after he was hospitalized in Arles. 

While living in Arles in 1888, van Gogh wrote to his friends Émile Bernard and Gauguin, urging each of them to send him a self-portrait, promising that he, in turn, would do the same.  Eventually, Gauguin traveled to Arles to live and paint with van Gogh.  The artists worked together for two months before their relationship became strained.  The situation culminated in a violent argument on December 23.  That night van Gogh mutilated his left ear and was subsequently hospitalized.  During his remaining four months in Arles, he was plagued by recurring attacks of mental and physical illness, now generally thought to have been a form of epilepsy. 

St.-Rémy and Auvers, May 1889 – July 1890

Following the most devastating of his attacks in Arles, van Gogh committed himself to an asylum in nearby St.-Rémy in May 1889.  Van Gogh experienced four seizures at the asylum, during which he could not paint, but between the attacks he was able to work.  His access to models was extremely restricted, so once again he resorted to self-portraiture. Van Gogh: Face to Face showcases one of his two final self-portraits of 1889 (National Gallery of Art,Washington), about which he wrote, “They say…that it is difficult to know yourself¾but it isn’t easy to paint yourself either.  I am working on two portraits of myself at this moment…One I began the day I got up; I was thin and pale as a ghost.”

Van Gogh’s desire to be closer to Theo and his family, and to the artistic stimulus of Paris, soon overcame him.  He left the asylum in St.-Rémy and moved to Auvers, where he was under the care of Dr. Gachet, an amateur artist who was a serious collector of modern art and admired van Gogh’s paintings.

While there, van Gogh explored the nearby countryside and painted the local inhabitants, including Adeline Ravoux, the daughter of his innkeeper. The portrait, Adeline Ravoux, 1890 (The Cleveland Museum of Art) captures the soulful gaze of the sitter and conveys the emotion and personality that van Gogh deemed essential to portraiture. 

Van Gogh’s exhilaration and extraordinary productivity were short-lived.  On July 27, 1890, the painter went alone into the countryside and shot himself in the chest.  Despite severe injury, he struggled back to his room but died two days later and was buried at Auvers.  Theo wrote to their mother, “Life was such a burden to him, but now, as often happens, everyone is full of praise for his talents.”

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON 
www.mfa.org

18/06/00

Robert Gwathmey: Master Painter, PAFA, Philadelphia - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Robert Gwathmey: Master Painter 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - PAFA, Philadelphia 
June 17 - August 13, 2000 

This compelling traveling exhibition, for which the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will serve as the only East Coast venue and its final stop, surveys the career of Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988).

One of the most committed social realists of his generation, Robert Gwathmey received a degree from the Pennsylvania Academy in 1930. A native Virginian, he was highly regarded during the postwar period for his sensitive observations of rural life in the American South, painted in a modernist idiom of geometric forms and bold colors largely inspired by Pablo Picasso. This retrospective of more than 60 paintings and graphics explores the life and work of a complex man, deemed one of the first white artists to produce unsentimental depictions of African-American life.

Organized chronologically and thematically, the exhibition focuses on five decades of Robert Gwathmey's production, from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. This survey highlights the artist's changing perspective from a moralist-particularly in his incisive look at the stark structure of Southern society, defined by race and caste-to that of a social satirist, in his pointed takes on social relations, excessive materialism, and the pop and op art movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Dubbed by the New York Times, at the time of his death from Parkinson's disease, an "artist of social passions and style," Robert Gwathmey always viewed himself as an observer, dually committed to art and civil action.

After a year of artistic study at Baltimore's Maryland Institute of Design, a sojourn that marked Robert Gwathmey's first trip North (although he had visited Europe the previous year), he trained at the Pennsylvania Academy from 1926 to 1930. Working primarily with Franklin Watkins and Daniel Garber, Robert Gwathmey had yet to settle on his distinctive cubist-derived style and social subject matter. Nevertheless, his formative years in Philadelphia would shape his future practice on a variety of levels.

Robert Gwathmey received his greatest acclaim in the 1940s. By this time, he was largely based in New York, where he maintained an active presence in the gallery scene and his work was collected by major museums. In 1942, he joined the faculty of the Cooper Union as a drawing instructor, a position he held until 1968. An inspiring teacher who encouraged his students to concern themselves with ethics and morality in both aesthetic and social terms, Robert Gwathmey influenced many younger artists. (The contemporary African-American artist Faith Ringgold credits Robert Gwathmey for her interest in fusing aesthetic and life experiences in her multimedia production.)

During the 1950s, Robert Gwathmey's figurative work, along with that of his colleagues Philip Evergood, Ben Shahn, and Jacob Lawrence, was overshadowed by the critical dominance of abstract painting. By the 1960s, a decade of civil unrest, his art of social protest was again back in fashion. In 1973, Robert Gwathmey was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and, in 1976, he became an associate member of the National Academy of Design. The so-called Robert Gwathmey house-a collage of cubistic forms-quickly became a landmark in American residential architecture.

Robert Gwathmey: Master Painter is organized by the Butler Institute of American Art.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - PAFA
Broad and Cherry Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19102

03/06/00

Inside Out: New Chinese Art at National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Inside Out: New Chinese Art
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
2 June - 13 August 2000

Inside Out: New Chinese Art is the first major international exhibition of contemporary Chinese art to explore the vitality and dynamic changes in Chinese culture in the late 20th century. The artists in this exhibition have been working in a period when the deeply-rooted cultural assumptions and centuries-old visual traditions are under enormous pressure from rapid modernisation, changing political realities and conflicting global, ethnic and local identities.

The exhibition explores the many ways in which the challenges of recent social, economic and cultural changes have confronted artists in mainland China and the Chinese diaspora - Hong Kong, Taiwan, and those who have emigrated to the West since the late 1980s. Inside Out presents an astonishing body of art - confronting, clever, mysterious, elegant and always thought-provoking - across the widest range of artistic media.

Consisting of nearly 90 works created in the years 1985-1998, Inside Out includes painting, sculpture, photographs, installations, videos and prints by some of the world's leading contemporary artists. The show explores many major themes including the artist's response to the globalisation and the commercialism of contemporary society; the use or rejection of cultural heritage and artistic traditions; and the relationship of the individual to society against the underlying quest for artistic identity, both in China and abroad.

Co-curated by the Asia Society in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition was first shown in late 1998 simultaneously at the Asia Society and P.S.I. Contemporary Art Center in New York. 

Vishakha Desai, Director of the Asia Society Galleries in New York remarked, "These works have been selected to show the explosion of creativity among these artists in the past dozen years or so, and to convey a sense of dynamism in their work - we also hope to break down barriers between audiences of Asian and Western art - this art is Asian but it is also contemporary in an international context."

Huge installations include Xu Bing's famous Book from the Sky, with its elegant play on Chinese literary traditions in the form of nonsensical printed calligraphy. Similar themes inform Gu Wenda's ethereal enclosure, Temple of Heaven (China Monument), constructed of traditional furniture, videos and screens of human hair which also challenged conventional Chinese respect for learning. 

Photography - still and video - is the preferred media of many works in Inside Out. Zhang Huan's To Raise the Water Level in a Fish Pond plays visual and political games with a host of naked villagers against the luminous blue surface of the pond. Other works allude to traditional Chinese art forms: in Zoon, Huang Chih-yang's grotesque figures appear in ink on hanging paper scrolls, while The Dream of China by Wang Jin creates a shimmering dragon robe from polyvinyl chloride and fishing line.

Pop remains a favourite style with Wang Guangyi's Great Castigation Series targeting the global domination of Coca Cola. Zhang Xiaogang's startling Bloodline: Family Portrait shows a blank-faced Mao-badged couple and child, figuratively and literally linked by lines of blood.

As critics of the show have pointed out "These artists have the courage to say things are changing - how am I going to deal with this?"…"This exhibition offers a promise of insight into the psyche of the awakening giant of modern China." An extensive program of performances, artists' talks, lectures and films accompanies the exhibition.

NGA - NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA
Parkes Place East, Canberra ACT 2600

Andy Warhol: Social Observer at PAFA, Philadelphia

Andy Warhol: Social Observer 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
June 17 - September 21, 2000

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts presents Andy Warhol: Social Observer. This major exhibition examines an aspect of Warhol's work and career that has never been fully explored in a museum setting: the depth and variety of the artist's critical observations of American society, and the ways in which his strategies of observation changed over the course of his career.

Andy Warhol: Social Observer focuses on what the artist looked at, how he looked at those subjects and, in certain situations, how he himself was perceived by the society so inclined to keep its media trained on him. The exhibition is divided into seven sections: disguise, death and humanity, politics, advertising, cover stories, celebrity, and symbolism. Organized thematically, the sections highlight Warhol's engagement with what he perceived as the socially relevant in art and life. An artist famous for having promoted himself as apathetic, vacuous, and superficial, Warhol will be seen as having been socially active and politically concerned.

In addition to 86 paintings, prints, photographs, and one film, the exhibition features archival material borrowed from The Andy Warhol Museum. This includes selections from the artist's collection of photographs, newspaper articles, and promotional materials that figured prominently in the production of his art. One of Warhol's "Time Capsules," compiled for posterity, will also be on view to provide a glimpse into a rarely examined aspect of his infatuation with the stuff of popular culture.

Andy Warhol: Social Observer gathers together extraordinary examples of the artist's journalistic reportage, including selections from his series devoted to "Electric Chairs," "Car Crashes," "Most Wanted Men," and "Race Riots." The exhibition also goes beyond the early years associated with this Disaster imagery to delve deeper into the complexity and range of Warhol's production by featuring works that suggest new ways to understand this artist who is best known as an originator of Pop art. Whereas many Warhol exhibitions have focused primarily on the artist's early output, Social Observer takes stock of the full expanse of his life's work. By examining both the medium and the message, it offers fresh insights and makes significant advances in the scholarship of this preeminent post-war American artist.

Andy Warhol: Social Observer runs concurrently with Robert Gwathmey: Master Painter, a retrospective of the work of the PAFA graduate and mid-century social realist renowned for his role as an observer of Southern rural life. As a complementary pair, the exhibitions will examine the documentary currents of social realism, which had its origins in the 1930s, and explore their connections to the photographic and mass-media based art-making techniques employed by Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol: Social Observer is organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Mellon Financial Corporation Foundation, with additional funding from the Women's Committee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

A variety of adult and family educational programming-an artists' panel, film series, lectures, and gallery talks-will accompany the exhibition's presentation, as well as a fully illustrated catalogue authored by Assistant Curator Jonathan P. Binstock, the exhibition's organizer, with essay contributions by both Maurice Berger, distinguished art historian and Senior Fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of the New School for Social Research in New York City, and Trevor Fairbrother, Deputy Director and John and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern Art at the Seattle Art Museum.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry Streets | Philadelphia, PA 19102
pafa.org