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ART REVIEWS
The Snapshot as Art---The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg is well known as the poet of the so-called Beat Generation, a group of literary geniuses writing about sexual freedom, anarchy, and other anti-establishment themes. Ginsberg’s life -long friends, included Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs , Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, William Orlovsky, Robert Frank, and Bernice Abbot--- and all are subjects photographed by Ginsberg during his career from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. The exhibition, Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, consisting of 80 black and white photographs, may be seen at Washington’s National Gallery of Art until September 6, 2010. The show offers an important record of this important “beat” counterculture, before and after its participants enjoyed international fame. Ginsberg’s early photographs were spontaneous poses of friends, largely taken with inexpensive equipment and processed in drug stores. Nevertheless, the eye of the poet is present in both his early and later works. In many works, he intentionally included literary references, and careful placement of objects in the compositions and in his later photographs—when he became a serious photographer, both his equipment and processing and his approach to portraiture, was professional. Ginsberg was, according to his biographer Bill Morgan in an interview with the show’s curator Sarah Greenough, a person who labeled everything, including many of his photographs. His friends Robert Frank and Bernice Abbot added captions to their work, inspiring Ginsberg to add comments and captions to the front of his images—adding another dimension to the art form (see above work). The images, especially those taken in his later years (he died in 1997 at age 70) are, for a person who didn’t consider himself a photographer, thoughtfully composed and more carefully printed than his early works. The show is important, not only because Ginsberg has documented an important period of America’s literary history, but also because it brings us a rare example of how the casual photograph can become art, when the eye of the poet becomes more important than the tools used to record the images. The exhibition catalogue, Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, may be ordered by calling the National Gallery of Art at 1-800-697-9350 or www.nga.gov
From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection
The National Gallery of Art has kicked off the year 2010 by spotlighting eighty-three works from the superb collection of paintings bequeathed to the gallery by the renowned collector, Chester Dale. Dale’s entire gift consists of 300 paintings. Dale, an investment banker, and his wife Maud invested their fortunes into what would become the foundation of the gallery’s collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century French Art. Visitors to the gallery have seen many of the 83 works in the show in various galleries, especially the permanent French Collection, but to see them together, and organized so coherently, makes the show refreshing and deeply insightful. The galleries are organized by portraits (men and women separately), landscapes, still life, “monumental modernity” (such as Henri’s work, shown above), and portraits of the artists themselves. The cast includes the well-known masters, emphatically Dale’s favorite artists, and personal friends such as Bellows and Leger, and the “Who’s Who” of French art including Renoir’s “Girl With a Hoop, 1885” (one of the Gallery’s most popular images} and several paintings by Modigliani, a favorite of Chester Dale. The show will run until July 31, 2011.
An illustrated catalogue by Kimberly A. Jones, curator of the exhibition, and essays by Maygene Daniels offer insights into the Dale’s collection habits alongside pages containing excellent reproductions of the works in the exhibition. The 192-page hardcover book may be purchased online at http://shop.nga.gov/ or by telephone at 1-800-697-9350.
The Sacred Made Real
The painting above shows Diego Velazquez’ portrait of Juan Martinez Montanes. Velazques, among the finest painters in seventeenth century Spain has captured Montanes, considered the finest sculpture in Baroque Spain, while he is painting, or polychroming a clay bust. The combination of sculpture and painting explodes in one of the most unique exhibitions ever hosted by the National Gallery of Art. “The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700” which is on exhibition until May 31, 2010 conveys “…the artistic excellence and spiritual profundity of Spanish Baroque Art” said the Gallery’s Director, Earl A. Powell III. The figures in the exhibition convey extraordinary and realistic human features. Many are life -sized works often carried through the streets of Spain’s centers during religious festivities. Spain’s master sculturers produced these carved figures, later to be polychromed by the greatest painters of Baroque Spain. This challenge took place during the Spanish Counter-Reformation ,using art to encourage the masses to return to the Church by creating realistically animated sacred figures with a spiritual presence. The 224-page catalogue features essays on the technical aspects of polychroming, and shows fine reproductions of the works in the exhibition and more, and is available from the Gallery Shops at (800) 697-9350 or E-mail mailorder@nga.gov
Hendrick Avercamp and the Little Ice Age
The Dutch winter landscape is among the most visually satisfying subjects of art. Avercamp, following a tradition of winter scenes started by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted vignettes of an assortment of golfers, beggars, fishermen, masked figures—a vast cross section of social types enjoying winter skating activities and more on the frozen Dutch waterways during the early 17th century, in the middle of a geological period aptly called “The Little Ice Age!” Perhaps compensating for his handicap—Avercamp was hearing impaired and mute—his works are meticulously executed and show extraordinary detail. Many figures are repeated in several works, suggesting that he may have known his subjects—his father owned a popular Apothecary and many of the customers could have been models for the figures. Although the general mood captured by Avercamp is joyous and playful, the gallows in the distance in some works are reminders of the dark side of life, especially during the coldest winters on record in Holland. One might enjoy seeing one of the world’s first lighthouses, a tall structure with a bird’s nest at the top, the flying birds substituting for a magnified light yet to be invented! The show features 14 paintings and 16 drawings and a selection of Dutch ice skates in the West Building’s Dutch Cabinet Galleries at the National Gallery of Art, and will be on view until July 5, 2010. The catalogue for the show is beautifully illustrated, and is the first monograph on Avercamp in 25 years essays. It is available at mailorder@nga.gov
About Marshall | Photo Galleries | Executive Portraits Copyright © 2010
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